Below is my column on the rise of Antifa deniers in Washington. Once embraced and even marketed on the left, Antifa has become the group that must not be named as political violence rises across the country. It does not matter that radicals identify as Antifa, coordinate protests, carry Antifa flags, wear signature clothing, and espouse the same ideas from the “Antifa handbook.” There have even been people elected as Antifa representatives. Yet, the current spin is to pretend that they do not exist as a single organization to deflect the debate over violence on the left. Even with the past and current FBI directors saying that they exist as a group, politicians are mocking those who object to Antifa, even journalists and others targeted by its members.
This week, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) claimed that “nobody” knows what the left-wing terrorist organization Antifa is and that it does not exist. However, he previously promoted the “Antifa Handbook” in 2018 and praised the group as terrifying Trump. Now, however, he has joined the chorus of Antifa denials as political violence rises around the country.
Here is the column:
Roughly seventy years ago, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover famously declared, “There is no organized crime in America.” Hoover’s stubborn denial of the existence of the mafia continued despite ample evidence to the contrary, from arrests to congressional testimony.
Many have speculated on why Hoover maintained his stubborn denial. Perhaps, they say, he was trying to avoid the political embarrassment of long ignoring the single largest criminal network in the country.
Many today seem to be adopting a Hoover-esque wilful blindness about another violent group: Antifa. Politicians and pundits are denying that the left-wing anarchist group exists, mocking President Trump’s designation of Antifa as a terrorist organization.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) seemed to morph into Hoover before our very eyes, including a posting in which he challenged anyone to “name one member of ‘Antifa.’” Former House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) was widely ridiculed for denying the existence of Antifa. Others on the left have joined Goldman in this absurd claim. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel committed part of his monologue to assure viewers that Antifa is no more than a mythical “chupacabra.” “You understand there is no Antifa,” he said. “This is an entirely made-up organization.”
By design, Antifa avoids typical leadership hierarchies and organizational structures. Antifa was first created in the 1920s, associated with the Weimar-era German communist group Antifaschistische Aktion.
It is easy to satisfy Goldman’s demand in naming some members, since they self-identify as members of Antifa. One such student came from my campus and proclaimed that Antifa was winning after his arrest for property destruction. When another radical was arrested after taking an axe to a congressional office, he self-identified as a member of Antifa. Before Kyle Benjamin Douglas Calvert, 26, implanted an IED device outside of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office in downtown Montgomery, he put up stickers reading “support your local Antifa.” Numerous Antifa members have been arrested, including some who claimed to be journalists.
Many protesters belong to Antifa groups that have names like “Rose City Antifa” and offshoots like Love and Rage and Mexico’s Amor Y Rabia. Antifa members have been elected to the French and European parliaments.
Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” called by some the “Antifa bible,” explains that the group is united in its opposition to free speech. “Most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists,” he writes. “From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”
Ironically, when many on the left are not denying its existence, they are rallying their members or actually selling Antifa merchandise. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison — now the Minnesota attorney general — proclaimed that Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer.
But ,with Antifa violence on the rise, Democratic leaders have gone back to denying its existence even as Antifa deploys its signature black hoodies and masks.
Indeed, some liberal activists admit to having coordinated violent protests with Antifa groups. For example, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Dwayne Dixon was a member of the radical gun club Redneck Revolt, a group recently referenced in flyers quoting the assassin of Charlie Kirk to rally the left. The flyers read, “Hey, Fascist! Catch! The only political group that celebrates when Nazis die.”
During a panel at Harvard University, Dixon reportedly admitted that an Antifa-linked group requested his gun club to provide security during the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia: “Prior to that day, as the planning for the defense of Charlottesville proceeded, the local Anarchist People of Color Collective … had requested that Redneck Revolt be present to secure Justice Park for a wide variety of activists who were expected to assemble.”
The denial of the existence of an actual group is meant to deflect the discussion of the rising violence from the left, as these same politicians fuel the rage with reckless rhetoric. But they’re not so good at keeping their story straight. While whipping up the mob with claims that democracy is dying and comparing their opponents to Nazis, they deny the existence of the very group that politicians like Ellison praise for targeting conservatives.
Hoover declined to admit the mafia existed until, on November 14, 1957, dozens of mobsters were found meeting in a farmhouse in Apalachin, New York.
What is different is that Antifa has repeatedly had such farmhouse moments, with prosecutions revealing a national movement with self-identified members. So why the denial? These are the shock troops for some politicians who think that they can use the violent group for political advantage. They are mistaken. Antifa is unlikely to have much use for establishment liberals once it gains more power.
Until then, Antifa can count on the Goldmans of the world to give them cover in denying that they exist.
In the film “The Usual Suspects,” the character Verbal Kint offered this explanation for the invisible villain Keyser Söze: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.”
Below is my column in the Hill on the rise of rage politics. There was barely a respite from the rage rhetoric after the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the sniper attack on the ICE facility. Gov. Gavin Newsom is back this week to calling his opponents “fascists” while other Democratic politicians are back to calling ICE “fascists.”
Here is the column:
“Let your rage fuel you.” Those words from Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger captured what I have called “rage politics” in America.
Across the country, politicians and pundits are fueling rage, encouraging voters to embrace it. If you turn on the television, you would think that Darth Sidious had taken over: “Give in to your anger. With each passing moment, you grow stronger.”
I do not think for a second that Spanberger supports violence. She was sharing with voters the “sage advice” of her mother, which she said she has applied in her political career. However, the anger is all around us.
Recently, I debated Harvard Law Professor Michael Klarman, who declared, “I am very angry” and “I am enraged.” In denouncing ICE as “thugs” and saying Trump supporters are “fascists,” Klarman explained that the rage had a purpose: “to shake people out of their insomnia.”
Rage, however, comes at a cost in politics. I recently wrote a book about rage and free speech, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”It discusses our history of rage politics and how it has led to violence and crackdowns. Rage gives people a license to say and do things that they would not otherwise say or do. It is addictive, it is contagious, and it is dangerous.
We are seeing the result of rage rhetoric all around us. That includes the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the sniper attack on ICE agents in Texas this week, in addition to violent protests around the country. Rage allows you to deny the humanity of those you disagree with. Recently, two sisters were caught on video destroying a memorial to Kirk. Kerri and Kaylee Rollo were later arrested. However, they immediately opened a GoFundMe site to call for donations for “fighting fascism” and Kaylee wrote “my sibling was fired from her job.” Hundreds of donors gave the sisters thousands of dollars as a reward for the latest such attack on a Kirk memorial.
For many months, some of us have warned that violent rhetoric was crossing over into political violence. Democratic politicians have spent months ratcheting up the rhetoric against ICE agents, who have suffered more than a 1,000 percentincrease in attacks, including the recent sniper attack.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the day before that attack, signed a law that purports to bar ICE agents from wearing masks in California. He openly mocked them, asking, “What are you afraid of?“
Joshua Jahn answered that question the following day in Texas when he fired at ICE personnel, only to shoot three of their detainees.
Previously, Newsom had warned voters that Trump was building ICE into a personal army that might be used to suppress voting in the upcoming midterm elections. “Do you think ICE is not going to show up around voting and polling booths to chill participation?” he said.
Others added to the rage rhetoric by declaring the impending death of democracy and lashing out at ICE. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), who has used violent rhetoric in the past, declared that ICE agents were acting like “slave patrols” in hunting down immigrants in the streets.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) used a commencement address to denounce “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets. They’re in unmarked vans, wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons… just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans, and disappeared.”
Others, like Boston Mayor Michele Wu, echoed the claims that ICE personnel are “Nazis” and called ICE Trump’s “secret police.”
The rage rhetoric (and claims of a fascist takeover) has been adopted by a wide range of Democratic politicians, often using the same catchphrases of an “authoritarian playbook.” In our debate, Professor Klarman warned that this was all “authoritarianism rooted in old-fashioned white supremacy.”
As discussed in my book, politicians and pundits have long sought to ride the wave of rage into power or influence. Rage is a powerful narcotic. The problem is when it becomes an addiction. There is always a certain percentage of the population that will believe such hyperbolic claims.
Those are the people who end up trying to kill jurists like Justice Brett Kavanaugh or politicians like Trump. It was also seen in the assassination of Democratic politicians earlier this year in Minnesota.
With the recent assassination and attacks on ICE, some are expressing regret. One of the most telling was Hillary Clinton on MSNBC, who said that we should “stop demonizing each other” while blaming “the right” for most of the hate. It was a curious call from a woman who called Trump supporters “deplorables” and suggested that they should collectively be forced into “deprogramming” as a cult. Just before the interview, Clinton had embraced the “fascism” mantra and, during the interview, she went right back to attacking Republicans.
A new poll shows that 71 percent view political violence as a serious problem, but the rage rhetoric continues unabated.
The perfunctory calls for lowering the temperature after the latest shooting are unlikely to last. Key figures in public life keep injecting rage directly into the veins of American politics. It is hard to go “cold turkey” in breaking that addiction, but you first have to want to do so. There is no indication that our rage-addicts are anywhere near a step-program for recovery. If history is any measure, this fever will only break when voters clearly reject the politics of rage.
Below is my column in the Hill on the murder of Charlie Kirk, the latest victim of our age of rage. The evidence of Antifa scribblings and indoctrination of the shooter came as no surprise. For months, some of us have been warning Democratic leaders about their dangerous rhetoric and how it would be received by the most radical elements in the Antifa movement.
Here is the column:
“Prove me wrong.”
For years, that tagline of Charlie Kirk and his group, Turning Point USA, enraged many on the left. In “an age of rage,” nothing is more triggering for the perpetually angry than an invitation to debate issues.
Indeed, someone has now killed him for it.
What is most chilling about the assassination is that it was not in the slightest degree surprising. This follows two attempted assassinations of President Trump and the killing of a pair of Minnesota politicians.
I heard of the assassination in Prague as I prepared to speak about the age of rage and the growing attacks on free speech. I was profoundly saddened by the news. I knew Charlie and respected his effort to challenge the orthodoxy on college campuses. We all have received regular death threats (and Charlie more than most), but there is still a hope that even the most deranged will leave these threats at the ideation rather than the action stage.This killer left Charlie’s wife, Erika, and her two young children as the latest victims of senseless violence against someone who refused to be silenced.
We do not have to know much about the shooter to recognize the rage. The person who killed Charlie did not view him as a father or even as a person. That is the transformative, enabling effect of rage.
In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,”I write about rage and the uncomfortable truth for many engaging in rage rhetoric: “What few today want to admit is that they like it. They like the freedom that it affords, the ability to hate and harass without a sense of responsibility. It is evident all around us as people engage in language and conduct that they repudiate in others. We have become a nation of rage addicts, flailing against anyone or anything that stands in opposition to our own truths. Like all addictions, there is not only a dependency on rage but an intolerance for opposing views. … Indeed, to voice free speech principles in a time of rage is to invite the rage of the mob.”
Charlie was brave, and he was brash. He refused to yield to the threats while encouraging others to speak out on our campuses.
He was particularly hated for holding a mirror to the face of higher education, exposing the hate and hypocrisy on our campuses. For decades, faculty have purged their ranks of conservatives and libertarians. Faced with the intolerance of most schools, polls show that a large percentage of students hide their values to avoid retaliation from faculty or their fellow students.
Charlie chose to change all that. TPUSA challenges people to engage and debate them. The response from some on the left has been to trash their tables and threaten the students. Recently, at UC Davis, police stood by and watched as a TPUSA tent was torn apart.
Charlie is only the latest such victim, and he is unlikely to be the last.
For months, some of us have warned about the rise in rage rhetoric. Some believe that they can ride a wave of rage back into power. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) has called for people to take to the streets to save democracy and posted a picture of himself brandishing a baseball bat.
Likewise, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) declared, “I’m going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”
Various radical groups welcome such rage rhetoric, particularly Antifa. The most violent anti-free speech group in the U.S., Antifa has long attacked journalists and others with opposing views. In his “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,”Professor Mark Bray noted that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists. … From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”
Alleged shooter Tyler Robinson, 22, reportedly left telltale Antifa markings on evidence, including marking bullets inscribed with the lyrics: “Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao”(from an Italian anti-fascist anthem) and “Hey, fascist! Catch!”
I previously testified in Congress about the dangers of Antifa, and I discuss the group in my book. Despite such warnings, Democratic leaders have dismissed those dangers or actually embraced Antifa.
Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison (D), now Minnesota’s attorney general, previously celebrated how Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. Liberal sites sell Antifa items to celebrate the violent group, including onesies for “Antifa babies.”
Some politicians have privately expressed alarm at the rising violent speech in their ranks. One Democratic member told Axios, “Some of [our supporters] have suggested … what we really need to do is be willing to get shot.”
Just before he was shot at Utah Valley University, Kirk rallied the group with its signature chant of “prove me wrong.” Someone responded by killing him.
Of course, the murder proved nothing except that senseless hate is sweeping over our country. Someone preferred to kill Kirk rather than engage with him or others who held opposing views.
It is precisely the lack of debate and dialogue that has triggered this type of violence. For those dwelling deep in the hardened silos of our news and social media, dissenting voices become increasingly intolerable.
Charlie is still exposing that hypocrisy. As I prepared to address Charlie’s murder in Prague, anti-free speech groups were already using his murder to justify even greater limits on free speech to combat hate and disinformation. This is the ultimate dishonoring of his life and his legacy. Charlie died in the fight for free speech, challenging speech codes and censorship.
Greater censorship will not make political violence less likely; it will only make the likelihood of another Charlie Kirk less likely. Europe shows that extremists flourish under speech controls. The neo-Nazis are having a banner year in portraying themselves as victims.
It is the rest of us that are deterred by speech codes. According to polling, only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Fifty-nine percent of Germans do not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Only 17 percent feel free to express themselves on the internet.
Charlie was hated because he exposed the left’s intolerance of opposing views … all in the purported cause of achieving greater tolerance. By challenging others to debate, he triggered a generation of speech-phobics who are more interested in silencing others than speaking on their own account.
Charlie was hated for stripping away the pretense and self-delusion of those canceling, blacklisting, and attacking others for holding opposing views. He did so by standing in harm’s way.
The conservatives that Kirk coaxed out of the shadows can honor his memory by showing that they will not be silenced. They can step forward and renew his same challenge: “Prove me wrong.”
Below is my column that ran earlier on Fox.com on the calls for the termination of academics and others who have criticized Charlie Kirk or expressed satisfaction with his murder. Unfortunately, such hateful remarks are nothing new in academia. However, this is not about them. It is about us, and more importantly, it is about Charlie and what he fought for his entire life. We cannot allow our anger or sorrow to lead us into becoming the very people that Charlie denounced in his life. If you “Stand with Charlie,” you stand with free speech.
Here is the column:
“Stand with Charlie!” That message spontaneously appeared throughout the world after the unspeakable violent attack by an extremist. No, it was not the response to the murder of Charlie Kirk this week. It was ten years ago with the killing of staff at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. World leaders, including the French, German, and Turkish presidents, joined a march for free speech despite their own speech crackdowns, including prior targeting of the magazine and the victims.
The chief editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, had refused to be silenced by the French government and declared, “I would rather die standing than live on my knees.” He was the first person the gunmen asked for in their attack on the office, and he was one of the first to be killed.
At the time, I wrote about the breathtaking hypocrisy and noted that one of the few surviving editors of the magazine refused to join the march with those who relentlessly pursued them with criminal investigation. After the march, France, Germany, and other Western governments expanded their censorship laws and the prosecution of viewpoints deemed inflammatory or hateful.
In the ultimate dishonoring of the memory of the Charlie Hebdo staff, the French officials then proceeded to use their own murders to justify increasing prosecution of speech
The killing of Charlie Kirk in the United States ten years later is clearly different in one critical respect. There will be no “I am Charlie” campaign on the left. Some on the left have celebrated the killing while others, mouthing regret, attacked Kirk and suggested that he brought this upon himself.
That is hardly a surprise. Kirk spent his tragically short life exposing the hypocrisy and intolerance of the left, particularly in higher education. They hated him for it. Universities and colleges have long been bastions of the left with the purging of most conservative or Republican faculty from most departments and the maintenance of an academic echo chamber in classrooms.
Kirk challenged all that. He drove many mad by inviting them to debate issues. The response was often violence, including the trashing of tables of his group, Turning Point USA. Ultimately, he was killed for insisting on being heard.
However, we are facing the same danger of self-consuming hypocrisy — ten years after that other Charlie shooting. Some on the right are calling for people who denounce Kirk or celebrate his death to be fired. That ranges from professors to public employees.
I knew Charlie. While I cannot call myself a close friend, we spoke about the lack of free speech on our campuses and the efforts to cancel or fire those with opposing views. More than anyone today, Kirk brilliantly exposed that hypocrisy by putting himself and his group in harm’s way.
The way to honor Charlie Kirk’s life and legacy is not with hypocrisy and intolerance. That is what he died fighting against.
To fire people on campuses for speaking out against Charlie Kirk would make an utter mockery of his work and his death. It would be like banning LGBTQ groups in response to the assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978.
Charlie Kirk wanted unfettered debate. He wanted people to be able to express themselves regardless of how the majority felt about their views. He was the victim, not the advocate, of cancel campaigns.
There are instances where hateful views may raise grounds for termination. A secret service agent is under investigation after dismissing the assassination. Given the need to protect conservative as well as liberal figures (including those in the current administration), the bias in the postings can raise legitimate grounds for inquiry.
Likewise, those who use their official, academic, or corporate positions to espouse hateful messages risk termination.
However, many of these individuals were speaking as individuals outside of their positions, and their hateful commentary is not necessarily compromising or conflicting with their positions.
Hate speech in the United States is protected speech. The crackdown on speech deemed hateful, inflammatory, or intolerant has been the signature of the left, the very thing that Charlie campaigned against.
It is never easy to show restraint when you are angry or grieving. After all, many of those objecting to these cases today were silent or supported crackdowns on conservatives for years on and off campuses. They lack any self-awareness or shame in demanding protections that they rarely extend to others with opposing views. That is the value of an age of rage. It gives you license to silence and attack others for their views while insisting that you are the real victim.
However, we cannot become those we have long fought against in the free speech community. More importantly, we cannot become those whom Charlie fought against up to the very moment of his murder. We honor his legacy by protecting the thing that Charlie cherished the most. We need to “Stand with Charlie” and support free speech.
Below is my column in The Hill on the controversial remarks of Sen. Tim Kaine (D. Va.) denouncing a nominee who believed in natural law and the concept of God-given rights. By the end of the hearing, Kaine effectively lumped Alexander Hamilton with Ayatollah Khomeini in his statement at the committee hearing.
Here is the column:
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) this week warned the American people that a Trump nominee for a State Department position was an extremist, cut from the same cloth as the Iranian mullahs and religious extremists.
Riley Barnes, nominated to serve as assistant secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, revealed his dangerous proclivities to Kaine in his opening statement when he said that “all men are created equal because our rights come from God, our creator; not from our laws, not from our governments.”
It was a line that should be familiar to any citizen — virtually ripped from the Declaration of Independence, our founding document that is about to celebrate its 250th anniversary. Yet Kaine offered a very surprising response in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes,” he said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia (sic) law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”
The idea that laws “come from the government” is the basis of what is called “legal positivism,” which holds that the legitimacy and authority of laws are not based on God or natural law but rather legislation and court decisions.
In my forthcoming book celebrating the 250th anniversary, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I detail how the Declaration of Independence (and our nation as a whole) was founded on a deep belief in natural laws coming from our Creator, not government. That view is captured in the Declaration, which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Kaine represents Virginia, the state that played such a critical role in those very principles that he now associates with religious fanatics and terrorists. In fact, Kaine’s view did exist at the founding — and it was rejected. Alexander Hamilton wrote that “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”
Although the Framers were clear, Kaine seemed hopelessly confused. He later insisted that “I’m a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights.”
This country was founded on core, shared principles of natural law, including a deep commitment to individual rights against the government. The government was not the source but the scourge of individual rights. This belief in preexisting rights was based on such Enlightenment philosophers as John Locke who believed that, even at the beginning when no society existed, there was law, “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone,” he wrote. “And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind.”
Note that a natural law can also be based on a view of the inherent rights of human beings — a view of those rights needed to be fully human. Like divinely ordained rights, these are rights (such as free speech) that belong to all humans, regardless of the whim or want of a given government. They are still not “rights [that] come from our laws or our governments.”
The danger of legal positivism is that what government giveth, government can take away. Our prized unalienable rights become entirely alienable if they are merely the product of legislatures and courts.
It also means that constitutional protections or even the constitutional system itself is discardable, like out-of-fashion tricorn hats. As discussed in the book, a new generation of Jacobins is rising on the American left, challenging our constitutional traditions. Commentator Jennifer Szalai has denounced what she called “Constitution worship” and argued that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us. A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”
That chorus includes establishment figures such as Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley Law School and author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
Other law professors, such as Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale, have called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
That “reclamation” is easier if our rights are based not in natural law, but rather in the evolving priorities of lawmakers like Kaine. Protections then become not the manifestations of human rights, but of rights invented by humans. Kaine’s view — that advocates of natural law are no different from mullahs applying Sharia law — is not just ill-informed but would have been considered by the founders as constitutionally blasphemous.
He is, regrettably, the embodiment of a new crisis of faith in the foundations of our republic on the very eve of its 250th anniversary. This is a crisis of faith not just in our Constitution, but in each other as human beings “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Below is my column in Fox.com on the release of the last declassified material on the origins of the Russian collusion investigation. After the release, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in the New York Times insisted that they never relied on the Steele dossier. The column only reaffirmed the level of dishonesty and duplicity that marked their tenures in office. (The Times still printed this claim despite being demonstrably untrue).
The documents quote Brennan in overruling career analysts and intervening to include the dossier in the intelligence assessment. Moreover, the column echoes the media spin that the investigation was about an attempted Russian interference while dismissing the collusion claim that consumed much of the first term. (Even after leaving office, Brennan continued to push the false collusion claim). Both countries routinely hacked each other’s emails — that is why we have the most recent incriminating evidence on the Clinton campaign’s funding and spreading the false collusion claims. We hacked their emails. We have also regularly tried to influence the elections of other nations. The key to the dossier and the Russian investigation was the allegation of collusion and the central role of the Clinton campaign in creating the narrative that Trump was a Russian asset.
Here is the column:
This week, Washington was rocked by new releases in the declassification of material related to the origins of the Russian investigation. The material shows further evidence of a secret plan by the Clinton campaign to use the FBI and media to spread a false claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. With this material, the public is finally seeing how officials and reporters set into motion what may be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in American politics. There never was a Russian collusion conspiracy. This is the emerging story of the real Russian conspiracy to manufacture a false narrative that succeeded in devouring much of the first term of the Trump Administration.
What is emerging in these documents is a political illusion carefully constructed by government officials and a willing media. The brilliance of the trick was getting reporters to buy into the illusion; to own it like members of an audience called to the stage by an illusionist.
The effort closely followed the three steps of the classic magic trick: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige.
The Pledge
The trick began with the pledge, the stage where the public is set up by showing ordinary events with the suggestion that it is about to transform into something extraordinary. The key is to make something seem real that is actually not.
The Clinton campaign delivered the pledge by secretly funding the Steele dossier, using Fusion GPS and a former British spy named Christopher Steele, to create a salacious account of Trump being an agent of Russia. New emails state that Hillary Clinton personally approved the operation.
It was Elias who was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.)
Later, John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, appeared before Congress for questioning on the Steele dossier. Podesta emphatically denied any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.
The FEC ultimately sanctioned the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee over the handling of the funding of the dossier through his prior firm.
The Turn
The next step is the turning point when the ordinary becomes something extraordinary. This required the involvement of the government. The Clinton team worked behind the scenes to feed the dossier to the FBI. It would be the criminal investigation that would transform the ordinary accounts, like Carter Page speaking in Moscow, into an elaborate Russian plot. Even though the FBI was warned early on that Page was a CIA asset, not a Russian asset, the Clinton team found eager officials in the Obama Administration to assist in the illusion.
The newly disclosed evidence shows how the turn was made. In July 2016, Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The original Russia investigation — funded by Clinton’s campaign — was launched days after this briefing.
Months later, it would be Brennan who overruled his own CIA analysts in his ordering of a second last-minute assessment at the end of the Obama Administration in support of the Russian allegations. It would help make the turn with the all-consuming Russian investigation that would follow.
Career analysts were not buying the turn. They objected that the reliance on the Steele dossier “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.” One CIA analyst told investigators that “[Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s main flaws, [Brennan] responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’”
That is the key to the turn; it needs only to be enough to fool the audience.
The Prestige
The final stage is called the Prestige, where the magician faces the toughest part of the trick. As explained in the 2006 movie “The Prestige,” the viewer is “looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.” However, “making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back.”
The difference is that this trick was designed to derail Trump and it worked. In the end, however, the Special Counsel and Inspector General both rejected the Russian collusion claims. The public then reelected Trump. Now, the prestige may be revealed by the CIA.
Reports indicate that the CIA is about to declassify material showing that foreign sources were also in on the trick. The information reportedly indicates that foreign sources were aware of the move to create a Russian collusion scandal and expected that the FBI would play a role in the plan. That was before the bureau launched its controversial Crossfire Hurricane probe. One source said the foreign intelligence predicted the move “with alarming specificity.”
The most recently declassified material shows that the Russian actors in 2016 hacked emails from the Open Society Foundations, formerly known as the Soros Foundation. The emails reveal a broader network of activists and allies who were aware of the Clinton conspiracy.
Leonard Bernardo, who was the regional director for Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations, explained that “during the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated…from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications.”
Bernardo added, “Julie (Clinton Campaign Advisor) says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later, the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”
The media (including the Washington Post and New York Times, which won Pulitzer prizes for reporting on the debunked claims) are apoplectic in dismissing these disclosures. The last thing they will do is report on how they helped sell a political hoax. The problem is that they never said it was a trick. They said it was the truth. That is why they cannot honestly cover the story. To do so would not be coverage, it would be a confession.
It appears that everyone was in on the trick: the U.S. government, the media, even foreign governments. The only chumps were the American people. Now they are about to see how it was done.
Below is my column in the Hill on the termination of funding for National Public Radio. Now that we have ended government-sponsored media, the question is whether the media will cease acting like a state media. The good news is that the market could force a correction that the media has largely refused to make.
Here is the column:
With the final elimination of public funding for National Public Radio as part of a $9 billion savings package, the era of the American state media will technically come to an end. However, what makes for state media is not state support alone.
So, the state media is dead — long live the state media.
That variation of the traditional mourning cry of the British monarchy will be heard more in whispers than proclamations this week in Washington. The government subsidy for NPR has long been a subject of controversy. Many opposed NPR for its open bias in reporting news, a record that thrilled the left and outraged many on the right. Just before the final vote, NPR CEO Katherine Maher gave another interview that left many agape. She denied any such bias and asked whether anyone could point to a single story that showed a political or ideological slant.
Ignoring a myriad of such examples, Maher then went from defiant to delusional, insisting that NPR was trying hard to “understand those criticisms.”
It was a bit late for Maher to feign surprise or confusion, particularly as a CEO whose selection to take over the struggling NPR many of us opposed. Her glaring and overt bias did not seem like the antidote to NPR’s shrinking audience and revenue. In 2024, NPR had a window to actually “understand” the criticism and make adjustments. Instead, it treated the government subsidy as an entitlement, backed by Democratic members in Congress. The board would have done better to select a neutral journalist. Instead, it doubled down, hiring a candidate with a long record of far-left public statements against Republicans, Trump, and others.
This is the same CEO who attacked respected senior editor Uri Berliner when he tried to get NPR to address its bias and restore greater balance on the staff. Berliner noted that NPR’s Washington headquarters has 87 registered Democrats among its editors and zero Republicans.
Maher slammed the award-winning Berliner for his “affront to the individual journalists who work incredibly hard.” She called his criticism “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” Berliner resigned after noting how Maher’s “divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR” that he had been pointing out.
But I have argued that NPR’s well-established bias and publication of baseless conspiracy theories are not the real reasons for taking away its federal funding. The truth is, NPR represented an embrace of a state media model used in other countries that Americans thoroughly reject.
Maher bizarrely tried to rally support for government funding by insisting that we must “keep the government out” of the media. Congress just did precisely that by clawing back NPR’s funding.
The government has occasionally supported the media, but generally to benefit all media outlets. For example, in 1791, Madison declared that Congress had an obligation to improve the “circulation of newspapers through the entire body of the people” and sponsored the Post Office Act of 1791, giving newspapers reduced postage rates.
Notably, those same Democrats in Congress who decried the reduction of funding for NPR would have revolted over funding for more successful radio outlets, such as Fox Radio. Indeed, some of the same members had previously pushed cable carriers to consider dropping Fox News, the most popular cable news channel.
What Congress did with prior funding of a single preferred media outlet was wrong. Liberals and Democrats fought to protect the funding even though NPR’s shrinking audience is now overwhelmingly white, affluent, and liberal.
However, the end of government subsidies will not necessarily mean the end of an effective state media. As I noted in my book “The Indispensable Right,” we have seen how the media can create the same effect as state media by consent rather than coercion. For years, media outlets have echoed the same party line, including burying negative stories and repeating debunked stories. Actual readers and listeners abandoned the mainstream media in droves. “Let’s Go Brandon” became a national mantra mocking journalists for their inability even to see and hear if the sights and sounds don’t fit their preconceived narratives.
Just as Maher has expressed utter confusion on how anyone could view NPR as biased, these editors and journalists will cling to the same advocacy journalism, rejecting the principles of objectivity and neutrality. However, there is still one hope for restoring traditional journalism: the market.
Now that NPR is off the public dole, it will have to compete fairly with other radio outlets for audiences and revenue. It is free to alienate most listeners who have center-right viewpoints, but it will have to sustain itself on a smaller share of the market.
Other outlets are facing the same dire choice. Recently, the Post encouraged writers and editors to leave if they were unwilling to get on board with a new direction at the newspaper. Previously, Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis had told his writers that the newspaper was experiencing massive losses in readers and revenues because “no one is reading your stuff.” It triggered a revolt on the staff, which would have rather run the paper into insolvency than return to objectivity and neutrality.
The same preference was seen with the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. What had been David Letterman’s formidable program had become a shrill echo chamber for the far left as Colbert engaged in nightly and mostly unfunny diatribes against Trump and Republicans. As its ratings and revenues fell, Colbert was unmoved. At the same time, Fox’s Greg Gutfeld continued to crush the competition as viewers abandoned CBS and other broadcast networks.
The year’s second-quarter ratings showed Fox News’s “Gutfeld!” drawing an average of three million viewers. Gutfeld’s more conservative takes on news remain unique among these late-night shows. In comparison, “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert came in second last quarter with an average 2.42 million viewers, despite being a far more costly program.
As liberals expressed outrage over the cancellation and alleged that CBS’s owner, Paramount, was seeking to garner favor with the Trump Administration, even CNN admitted that the show under Colbert had become “unfortunately unprofitable.” Colbert’s show was reportedly losing $40 million a year with a bloated staff and declining audience.
Paramount issued a statement insisting that Colbert’s cancelation was “not related in any way to the show’s performance.” Perhaps, but media companies are hardly in the habit of cancelling profitable, high-performing programming.
Ultimately, the market is correcting what the media would not. Roughly half of this country is center-right, and 77 million people voted for Trump. They are turning to social media and new media rather than remain a captive audience to a biased legacy media committed to advocacy journalism.
As media outlets fail, there may also be more pressure on journalism schools to return to core principles rather than crank out social justice warriors no one wants to read or hear from.
In the meantime, Maher and NPR can continue to stay the course and try to make up in pledge drives what they lost in public subsidies. However, the whole thing will now have to pay for itself without passing along costs to the rest of the non-listening country.
Below is my column in The Hill on calls from the left for other countries to hit the United States with sanctions and other measures as a “bad actor.” After losses in elections and Congress, some are sending out a “broken arrow” signal for other nations to crack down on the United States.
Here is the column:
“Broken arrow” is arguably the most chilling and desperate order that an American military commander can issue. When faced with an enemy about to overrun a surrounded force, a commander uses it to call in an air or artillery strike on his own position.
This month, many on the American left are issuing their own “broken arrow” signals, including calling on globalist allies to hit the U.S. with sanctions and other measures. They are seeking to achieve through sanctions what they could not achieve through elections. The most recent such call came from commentator Elie Mystal on “The Joy Reid Show” this week.
“Our country needs to be sanctioned,” he said. “We are the bad guys on the world stage. We are a menace to not only free people everywhere, but we are a menace to peaceful people everywhere at this point, and I’m not even going to say that we’ve only been a menace for the past three or four months.”
Mystal’s call was hardly a surprise for those familiar with his writings. A regular commentator on MSNBC, he previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.” Yet, he is not alone in signaling that his position is being overrun by his fellow citizens.
After Elon Musk bought Twitter with a pledge to dismantle its censorship system, former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called upon Europe to use its infamous Digital Services Act to force him to censor fellow Americans.
To the delight of globalists, she declared, “Before I describe the details of Russia’s recent online influence campaigns, I would like to call upon you to stand firm against another autocracy: The United States of America.”
This year, I spoke in Berlin at the World Forum and was surprised to see many Americans joining European leaders in support of the forum’s slogan, “A New World Order with European Values.” Attended by figures such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, the conference heralded Europe as key to countering the threat posed by the U.S. Others denounced America as the world’s villain with boycotts and protests during Fourth of July celebrations. One leading influencer declared that “this country is beyond f**ked” and encouraged citizens to “walk away from the illusion that they built” around this country.
The crisis of faith on the left often seems to be triggered by any adverse decision or election. In 2022, the Pima County, Arizona Democratic Party tweeted“F–k the Fourth” after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
This year, Fourth of July celebrations were canceled in Los Angeles under the claim that officials feared a mass arrest by ICE — rather implausible, considering that protests against ICE will be held as planned.
Others are organizing protests this week, declaring“F**k fourth of July. We have a king that we need to get rid of first.”
The problem for those calling on the EU to fight the U.S. is democracy itself, something of a headache for the global elite in Brussels. European governments are cracking down on conservative and other groups, which are soaring in popularity, with calls for stronger borders and reversing mass immigration trends. Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and other countries have experienced a similar surge in the popularity of conservative parties.
The fact is, many of the triggers for these “No Kings” protests are the product of the democratic process from the “Big Beautiful Bill” to changes in immigration policy. Citizens voted for change and successfully secured it, and some people are angry about it.
At the same time, our courts continue to function as designed in reviewing these orders and policies. Trump has won some and lost some before the Supreme Court, as constitutional limits are defined and enforced.
In my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I explore the future of American democracy in the 21st Century in light of economic and political movements, including the current crisis of faith of many on the left over our fundamental values and institutions.
The irony is that this crisis is largely centered among the most privileged classes. Yet recent Gallup polling shows patriotism is at an all-time low. However, the drop is found almost entirely among Democrats. Only 36 percent of Democrats reported being extremely or very proud to be American, compared to 92 percent of Republicans.
Some are simply moving to foreign countries. The New York Times has fanned the flames of those claiming that the U.S. is a new fascist regime. Recently, it featured the declaration of three Yale professors fleeing American fascism for the free nation of Canada. In their piece, titled “We study fascism and we are leaving the United States,” the professors explain that “the lesson of 1933 is that you get out sooner rather than later.”
But what these professors call fascism looks a lot like the democratic process to others. The problem with democracy is that it does not always produce the outcome you want.
For some, support for democratic choice seems to extend only to fellow citizens who make the “right” choice, from their own perspective, of course. So faced with losses in elections and in Congress, many are shouting “broken arrow” and hoping for external help in crushing the opposition.
Yet the fact is, this country is not being “overrun.” Those are fellow citizens who are calling for these policy changes and rejecting far-left policies. Just as many in Europe are calling on the EU to block far-right democratic victories, many in this country are advocating for the trashing of the Constitution or transnational interventions to reverse political voting trends.
The fact is, the far left is not truly surrounded. They have simply retreated into smaller and smaller echo chambers rather than engage the rest of the country on these issues. Viewed from within the protected spaces of MSNBC or BlueSky, you can feel surrounded, but it remains a type of self-isolation. It is like watching wagons frantically circling on the plains without a hostile in sight. The problem is that most of America has moved on.
In the end, the calls for a globalist intervention are a final desperate call of America’s self-isolated left.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right.”
Yesterday, I wrote a column in the Hill discussing how Trump is unlikely to go to Congress in launching an attack on Iran and how he has history on his side in acting unilaterally. The column noted that many Democratic politicians and pundits who were supportive of such unilateral actions by Democratic presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are suddenly opposed to Trump using the same power. It is the Claude Rains School of Constitutional Law where politicians are “shocked, shocked” that Trump is using the authority that they accepted in Democratic predecessors.
Democratic members are calling for impeachment, while others are declaring the attacks unconstitutional. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is particularly shocked that Trump took the action and is calling for a vote under the War Powers Act.
Schumer insisted that “no president should be allowed to unilaterally march this nation into something as consequential as war with erratic threats and no strategy.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has issued a similar statement.
Schumer is the same politician who was silent or supportive in earlier unilateral attacks by Democratic presidents. In 2011, Obama approved a massive military campaign against Libya. I represented a bipartisan group of members of Congress challenging that action. We were unsuccessful, as were such prior challenges.
I have long criticized the abandonment of the clear language of the Constitution on the declaration of wars. Only eleven such declarations have been made in our history. That has not happened since World War II in 1942. Over 125 military campaigns have spanned from Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is not a rule honored solely in the breach.
Democrats were supportive when Clinton launched cruise missile attacks under Operation Infinite Reach on two continents on August 20, 1998. He ordered attacks in locations in Khartoum, Sudan, and Khost Province, Afghanistan.
The War Powers Act has always been controversial and largely ineffectual. Presidents have long asserted the inherent powers to conduct such attacks under their Article II authority as the designated Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The WPA requires the President to inform Congress within 48 hours in a written notice to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate of the action.
The WPA further bars the use of armed forces in such a conflict for more than 60 days without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. There is a further 30-day withdrawal period.
President Trump reportedly did immediately notify Congress after the attack under the WPA .
Presidents have routinely ignored the WPA when it limited their ability to conduct foreign military operations. In 1999, Clinton ignored the 60-day deadline and continued to bomb forces in Kosovo. His actions were also challenged, but the court in Campbell v. Clinton just shrugged off the violation and said it was a non-justiciable political question.
In responding to the current demands, Trump could look to a curious ally: Hillary Clinton.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed for unilateral attacks during the Obama Administration. She dismissed the need to consult, let alone secure authorization, from Congress. In March 2011, Clinton testified that there was no need for such consultation and declared that the Administration would ignore a 60-day limit on unauthorized military actions.
Obama also defied the War Powers resolution on Syria. He actually did ask for congressional authorization to take military action in that country in 2013, but Congress refused to approve it. He did it anyway. Despite Congress expressly denying, ” authorization for the introduction of United States Armed Forces,” both Obama and Trump did precisely that.
Trump was wise to notify Congress. However, what occurs after that is anyone’s guess. The WPA and the AUMF have been paper tigers for decades and most in Congress wanted it that way. Politicians long ago abandoned their responsibilities to declare war. What remains has been little more than political theater.
Even under the WPA, Trump would have 60 days to prosecute this war and another 30 days to draw down forces without congressional approval. The court, in Campbell v. Clinton, noted that even if Clinton violated the WPA by continuing operations after the 60-day period, he was technically in compliance by withdrawing forces before the end of the 90-day period.
Trump could likely prosecute this campaign in 90 days. Indeed, if it goes beyond 90 days, we will likely be facing a potential global war with retaliatory strikes on both sides. In such an environment, it is very unlikely that Congress would withhold support for our ongoing operations.
In the meantime, the calls for impeachment are absurd given the prior actions of presidents in using this very authority. Once again, some Democrats appear intent on applying a different set of rules for impeaching Trump than any of his predecessors. Trump can cite both history and case law in allowing presidents to take such actions. At most, the line over war powers is murky. The Framers wanted impeachments to be based on bright-line rules in establishing high crimes and misdemeanors.
This is all part of the Claude Rains School of Constitutional Law. Members will once again express their shock and disgust in the use of the same authority that they once accepted in prior presidents. Trump has a great number of risks in this action from global military and economic consequences. The War Powers Act is not one of them if history is any measure.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and has both testified and litigated in the area of war powers, including the prior representation of members of Congress. He also testified in both the Clinton and Trump impeachment hearings.
N.B.: A slightly different version of this column ran on Fox.com
Below is my column in the Hill on resumption of the claims that “democracy is dying” as part of the “No Kings” protests. When this column posted, I was inundated with the usual threats and profanity. However, the emails and messages were particularly vehement this week. (One on Father’s Day explained that when a bullet is put in my head, my children would celebrate). For self-professed champions of democracy, there is nothing more deflating and demoralizing than being told that democracy is not dying. “No Kings” is the ultimate virtue signal, but it requires a monarch to make the self-image complete. There are obviously important issues to debate and to protest. However, we can have that debate without the absurd claims that our constitutional system is failing, as claimed by many politicians and pundits.
Here is the column:
Across the nation today, thousands of protests are being organized by left-wing groups, unions, and other organizations, with chants of “No Kings, No Kings, No Kings.” The mantra is a calculated campaign to cement the notion that Donald Trump has assumed dictatorial powers. It is a curious campaign, since every indication is that our constitutional system is operating precisely as designed.
Courts have ruled both in favor of and against the Trump administration. Congress has held hearings and passed legislation on various issues. We have the oldest and most stable constitutional system in the history of the world. The Constitution is not only designed for times like these — it was written in a time like this.
The superficial appeal of such campaigns is evident in the triggering event that sparked the protests. The Trump administration is holding a parade to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States Army — the kind of celebration that is common among our closest allies, from France to Great Britain.
Since this anniversary coincides with Trump’s birthday, it is claimed that it is nothing more than a royal birthday bash, even though Trump has been calling for such military parades since his first term.
The well-funded protests are being fueled by Democratic leaders, who are resuming their claims that citizens must either protest this weekend or accept tyranny in the United States. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) went so far as to declare, “If we don’t show up, Democracy dies.”
The Democrats seem to believe that the “death of democracy” theme that failed spectacularly in the last election can now rescue their party from record-low polling. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson (who is at 6 percent popularity with his constituents) announced, “I am counting on all of Chicago to resist in this moment.”
Even some judges appear to have picked up on the mantra. Before issuing his order to stop Trump’s use of the National Guard in Los Angeles this week, District Court Judge Charles Breyer declared in open court that Trump was another “King George.” He then wrote an opinion that included in it many Democratic talking points — suggesting, for example, that Trump was creating disorder by calling out the National Guard to deal with disorder. Breyer further indicated that the violence in Los Angeles was relatively minor, despite potentially deadly attacks on law enforcement, arson, and looting.
Many of us have noted that there are good-faith arguments on both sides of this issue. However, since the Madison Administration, the Supreme Court has warned lower courts not to second-guess the basis for deployments. Rather than confine himself to the relative authority of the federal and state governments on ordering deployments, Judge Breyer eagerly entered the political fray on these collateral issues. The impression is that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) had Breyer at hello.
The “No Kings” mantra is meant to implant this image in the public psyche, despite the lack of evidence that democracy is in any real danger. It is called the illusory truth effect, whereby the repetition of a false claim can create an impression of truth. Ironically, it is a technique denounced by some of these very same critics as a common means of disinformation. They cite the effect as a justification for censorship of opposing views.
Yet, what is disinformation to some is information to others. “Democracy is dying” may be an absurdity, but it is also their advocacy — and it is protected speech, no matter how disinformative.
The danger is that these Democratic politicians are fueling the most radical and violent elements in our country with their “rage rhetoric.” The images reinforce the “no holds barred” message.
People watch unhinged members such as Rep. LeMonica McIver (D.-N.J.) hitting federal officers and forcing her way into federal facilities and the lessons are not lost on them. They see Rep. Maxine Waters (R-Calif.), who has fueled the anger in prior riots, accusing California Guardsmen of coming to shoot people in Los Angeles and telling them, “You better shoot straight.”
Many are fueling the rage as a license to oppose Trump by any means. What they will not admit is that they need the rage. They like it.
That was evident in the disruption of a press conference by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) who not only yelled at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, but resisted efforts of security to move him into the hall. He then claimed to be a victim of authoritarianism.
The right to disrupt has never been a basis for democracy, but it is a basis for anarchy. The Democratic Party has finally embraced the philosophy of former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who famously pulled the fire alarm in order to prevent a vote from happening on the House floor.
Before he was voted out of office, Bowman was shown on videotape screaming about gun control in the Capitol as his colleagues left the floor following a vote. Various Democratic members, including former House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), tried to calm Bowman. However, when Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) asked Bowman to stop yelling, Bowman shouted back: “I was screaming before you interrupted me.”
These politicians and pundits will not tolerate such interruptions this weekend. Whatever unfolds, it’s Trump’s fault. There is a national rave planned, and the republic be damned.
Below is my column in Fox.com on the deployment of National Guard in Los Angeles. Another round of court challenges is unfolding, but the escalation is likely to continue on both sides. While the Guard’s motto is “Always Ready, Always There!” California Democrats do not want them between rioters and federal law enforcement.
Here is the column:
Gov. Gavin Newsom was in his element this week. After scenes of burning cars and attacks on ICE personnel, Newsom declared that this was all “an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act.” No, he was not speaking of the attacks on law enforcement or property. He was referring to President Donald Trump’s call to deploy the National Guard to protect federal officers.
Newsom is planning to challenge the deployment as cities like Glendale are cancelling contracts to house detainees and reaffirming that local police will not assist the federal government.
Trump has the authority under Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code to deploy the National Guard if the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” The Administration is saying that that is precisely what is unfolding in California, where mobs attack vehicles and trap federal personnel.
Most critics are challenging the deployment on policy grounds, arguing that it is an unnecessary escalation. However, even critics like Berkeley Law Dean Erwin have admitted that “Unfortunately, President Trump likely has the legal authority to do this.”
There is a fair debate over whether this is needed at this time, but the President is allowed to reach a different conclusion. Trump wants the violence to end now as opposed to escalating as it did in the Rodney King riots or the later riots after the George Floyd killings, causing billions in property damage and many deaths.
Courts will be asked to halt the order because it did not technically go through Newsom to formally call out the National Guard.
Section 12406 grants Trump the authority to call out the Guard and employs a mandatory term for governors, who “shall” issue the President’s order. In the memo, Trump also instructed federal officials “to coordinate with the Governors of the States and the National Guard Bureau.” Newsom is clearly refusing to issue the orders or coordinate the deployment.
Even if such challenges are successful, Trump can clearly flood the zone with federal authority. Indeed, the obstruction could escalate the matter further, prompting Trump to consider using the Insurrection Act, which would allow troops to participate directly in civilian law enforcement. In 1958, President Eisenhower used the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to Arkansas to enforce the Supreme Court’s orders ending racial segregation in schools.
The Trump Administration has already claimed that these riots “constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” In support of such a claim, the Administration could cite many of the Democratic leaders now denouncing the claim.
After January 6th, liberal politicians and professors insisted that the riot was an “insurrection” and, in claiming that Trump and dozens of Republicans could be removed from ballots under the 14th Amendment. Liberal professors insisted that Trump’s use of the word “fight” and questioning the results of an election did qualify as an insurrection. They argued that you merely need to show “an assemblage of people” who are “resisting law” and “using force or intimidation” for “a public purpose.” The involvement of inciteful language from politicians only reinforced these claims. Sound familiar?
Democrats are using this order to deflect from their own escalation of the tensions for months. From Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz calling ICE officers “Gestapo” to others calling them “fascists” and “Nazis,” Democratic leaders have been ignoring objections that they are fueling the violent and criminal responses. It did not matter. It was viewed as good politics.
While Newsom and figures like Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) have called these “peaceful” protests, rocks, and Molotov cocktails have been thrown at police as vehicles were torched. Police had to use tear gas, “flash bang” grenades, and rubber bullets to quell these “peaceful” protesters.
There appears little interest in de-escalation on either side. For the Trump Administration, images of rioters riding in celebration around burning cars with Mexican flags are only likely to reinforce the support of the majority of Americans for the enforcement of immigration laws.
For Democrats, they have gone “all in” on opposing ICE and these enforcement operations despite support from roughly 30 percent of the public.
Some democrats are now playing directly to the mob. A Los Angeles City Council member, Eunisses Hernandez, reportedly urged anti-law enforcement protesters to “escalate” their tactics against ICE officers: “They know how quickly we mobilize, that’s why they’re changing tactics. Because community defense works and our resistance has slowed them down before… and if they’re escalating their tactics then so are we. When they show up, we gotta show up even stronger.”
So, L.A. officials are maintaining the sanctuary status of the city, barring the cooperation of local police, and calling on citizens to escalate their resistance after a weekend of violent attacks. Others have posted the locations of ICE facilities to allow better tracking of operations while cities like Glendale are closing facilities.
In Washington, Jeffries has pledged to unmask the identities of individual ICE officers who have been covering their faces to protect themselves and their families from growing threats.
While Democrats have not succeeded in making a convincing political case for opposing immigration enforcement, they may be making a stronger case for federal deployment in increasingly hostile blue cities.
Across the country, a new defense is being heard in state and federal courtrooms. From Democratic members of Congress to judges to city council members, officials claim that their official duties include obstructing the official functions of the federal government. It is a type of liberal license that excuses most any crime in the name of combating what Minn. Gov. Tim Walz called the “modern-day Gestapo” of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The latest claimant of this license is Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), who was charged with assaulting, resisting, and impeding law enforcement officers during a protest at Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. McIver is shown on video forcing her way into an ICE facility and striking and shoving agents in her path.
This was not a major incursion, but these state and federal officials joined a mob in briefly overwhelming security and breaching the fence barrier after a bus was allowed through the entrance. Federal officials were able to quickly force back the incursion.
McIver and House Democrats insisted that McIver’s forcing her way into the facility might be trespass and assault for other citizens, but she was merely exercising “legislative oversight.” Rep. Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) declared“You lay a finger on someone – on Bonnie Watson Coleman or any of the representatives that were there – you lay a finger on them, we’re going to have a problem.”
Rep. Eric Swallwell (D., Cal.) promised more such actions: “I promise you there’s gonna be more un-noticed visits by my colleagues where they show up and they better be let in.”
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) even ominously warned the federal government that Democrats would bring down the house if it tried to charge McIver: “It’s a red line. They know better than to go down that road.”
Well, the red line was crossed in a big way after Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba charged McIver with a felony under Title 18, United States Code, Section 111(a)(1). The ACLU called the charge “authoritarianism” and insisted that these state and federal politicians “have every right to exercise their legally authorized oversight responsibilities for expanded immigration detention in New Jersey.”
The problem with the oversight claim is that McIver’s status as a member of Congress does not allow her access into closed federal facilities. Congress can subpoena the Executive Branch or secure court orders for access. However, members do not have immunity from criminal laws in unilaterally forcing their way into any federal office or agency. If that were the case, Rep. Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez would not have posted images of herself crying at the fence of an immigrant facility, she could have climbed over the fence in the name of oversight.
Conversely, Republicans in the Biden Administration could have simply pushed their way into the Justice Department to seek the files on the influence-peddling scandal.
Yet, the point of the claim is less of a real criminal defense and more of a political excuse.
It is the same claim being heard this week from Worcester City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj who was shown in a video shoving and obstructing ICE officers attempting to arrest a woman on immigration charges. Two other individuals (including a Democratic candidate for a school board) were arrested, but not Haxhiaj who claimed that she was merely protecting “a constituent.” After the melee, the city manager issued an order preventing city police from assisting in any way in the carrying out of such civil immigration enforcement efforts by the federal government.
Even judges are claiming the same license. In Wisconsin, Judge Hannah Dugan has been charged with obstructing a federal arrest of an illegal immigrant who appeared in her courtroom. Dugan heard about agents waiting outside in the hallway to arrest the man and went outside to confront the agents. She told them to speak to the Chief Judge and that they needed a different warrant. The agents complied and the Chief Judge confirmed that they could conduct the arrest. In the interim, however, Dugan led the man out a non-public door and facilitated his escape (he was arrested after a chase down a public street).
Judge Duggan also claimed that she was carrying out her duties even though her hearing was over, the charges were not part of state matter, and the arrest was being carried out outside of her courtroom. She was declared “a hero” by Democratic politicians and pundits.
As Democratic leaders like Walz engage in rage rhetoric and paint Republicans (and federal law enforcement) as Nazis, political violence is on the rise across the country. Many of the people burning Teslas and engaging in such crimes claim the same type of license that the ends justify the means. That includes affluent professionals who are now shoplifting from Whole Foods as a “protest” against Jeff Bezos meeting with Trump.
When the Administration sought to investigate those burning Teslas and dealerships, Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) denounced it as a “political weaponization” of the legal system. The comments suggest that such arson is somehow a form of political expression on the left.
House Minority Leader Jeffries was correct that a “red line” was crossed but not the one that he was thinking of in threatening consequences for any charges. The red line is the one separating political expression and criminal conduct.
Border Czar stressed repeatedly to political leaders that they can protest and refuse to help but “you can‘t cross the line” into obstruction and interference with their operations.
If oversight means that members can force their way into any federal facilities, we would have 535 roaming inspectors general who could wander at will through the executive branch.
Rep. McIver would be better to claim a different type of oversight, in allowing her passion to briefly overwhelm her judgment in rushing into the facility.
In the end, however, McIver and Duggan may have a license of a different kind.
Both have the advantage of being charged in liberal districts where they would appear before sympathetic jurors. They need to just convince a single jury to engage in “jury nullification,” to vote based on the cause, not the crime, in the case.
Below is my column in the Hill on recent disclosure that the Biden Administration may have withheld evidence contradicting the Chinese on the origins of COVID. Millions of Americans lost loved ones and would like to know who was responsible. It appears that our government and many experts were less motivated to find that answer.
Here is the column:
Imagine a world war that left more than seven million dead, hundreds of millions became ill, wrecked the global economy, and left a generation with lasting psychological and developmental injuries. We have seen such wars in history. What is different in this circumstance, however, is that all of that happened, and yet, years later, we still have no agreement on the original cause or possible culprits behind a pandemic that ravaged the world.
Worse yet, many politicians, experts and journalists do not seem inclined to find the answers. This is like fighting World War II and then shrugging off the question of what actually started it.
New questions are being raised over long-withheld evidence on the origins of COVID, information that contradicted the accounts of not just the Biden administration but also allies in academia and the media.
The Chinese first reported the outbreak in December 2019 and insisted that it came from a wet market in Wuhan — a natural or “zoonotic” transfer from bats sold at the market. Others were skeptical and pointed to the nearby Wuhan government virus lab, known to have conducted coronavirus studies with bats. This lab had a history of safety and contamination concerns.
The “lab-leak theory,” which was always the most obvious explanation, was further reinforced by scientists who saw evidence of possible manipulation of the virus’s genetic code, particularly the “spike protein” that enables the virus to enter the human body in a “gain of function” operation. There was (and still is) a serious controversy over the origins of the virus, but any debate was quickly scuttled in favor of the natural theory.
The Chinese immediately moved to crush any speculation of a lab-leak. Wuhan scientists were gagged and the Chinese refused to allow international investigators access to them or the lab in question. The Chinese also used their considerable influence over the World Health Organization and other groups to dismiss or downplay the lab theory..
Now, a long-withheld military report has finally been released by the Trump administration. It appears to confirm what was once denied by the Biden administration: U.S. military service members contracted COVID-19-like symptoms after participating in the World Military Games in October 2019 in Wuhan.
That contradicts China’s timeline. It suggests a longer cover-up in that country, which allowed the virus to spread not only to the U.S. but to countries around the world. Other nations also reported that their military personnel had fallen ill after attending the same games, suggesting that the virus was not only spreading but already raging in the area at that time.
The most disturbing aspect of this report is not the alleged conduct of the Chinese government, but that of our own. Rumors of U.S. military personnel coming down with the virus had long been out there. Republicans in Congress repeatedly asked the Biden administration about any report on the outbreak. Then-Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told The Washington Post in June 2021 that the military had “no knowledge” of COVID-19 infections among the troops participating in those games.
Even as the illness associated with the games became known, the Biden administration repeatedly refused to confirm the U.S. cases, and a 2022 report was withheld from both Congress and the public. If true, the level of duplicity and dishonesty is shocking. In the U.S. alone, more than 1.2 million died and more than 111 million were made sick by this virus. Yet the Biden administration is accused of withholding this information from the world. Why?
This disclosure follows an equally troubling disclosure that scientists in the Biden administration actually found support for the lab theory but were silenced by their superiors.
Last December, the Wall Street Journal released an alarming report on how these scientists supported the lab theory on the origin of the COVID-19 virus. Not only were the FBI and its top experts excluded from a critical briefing of Biden, but government scientists were reportedly warned that they were “off the reservation” in supporting the lab theory.
As scientists were being attacked publicly and blacklisted for supporting the lab theory, experts at both the FBI and the Energy Department found the lab theory credible. Although no theory could be proven conclusively, it was deemed a more likely scenario than the natural-origin theory. The CIA also found the lab theory credible.
What the public was hearing was entirely different. They were hearing the same narrative laid out by the Chinese government in December 2019. The Chinese relied upon western scientists to form a mob against anyone raising the lab-leak theory as a possible explanation. Many were enlisted to sign letters or publish statements denouncing the idea. It became an article of faith — a required virtue signal among university scientists. The western media were equally primed to quash the theory.
After President Trump embraced the lab theory, the Chinese had the perfect setup. The media was on a hair-trigger in opposition and denounced his comments as not only unfounded but also racist. MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace mocked Trump and others for spreading “conspiracy theories.” MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt insisted that “we know it’s been debunked that this virus was manmade or modified.”
MSNBC’s Joy Reid called the lab leak theory “debunked bunkum.” Over at CNN, reporter Drew Griffin criticized the “widely debunked” theory and host Fareed Zakaria told viewers that “the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory” in the lab leak.
The Washington Post was particularly dogmatic. After Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) raised the lab-leak theory, he was chastised for “repeat[ing] a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.”
The Post’s “fact checker” Glenn Kessler mocked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for entertaining the theory. “I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus to jump from the lab,” he posted. “Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”
Even in 2021 when countervailing evidence was surfacing, the unrelenting attacks continued. New York Times science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli urged journalists not to mention the “racist” lab theory. Social media companies also enforced the narrative and, with the coordination of the Biden Administration, experts raising the lab theory were targeted, censored, and blacklisted.
It now appears that the COVID outbreak may have occurred months before the alleged wet market release — months that could have been used to contain the virus. Instead, China is accused of suppressing the news and allowing the virus to spread worldwide. Our military personnel alone went home from the Wuhan games to 25 states, potentially carrying it with them. When information on these infections connected to the games was reported around the world, China even suggested that the U.S. used the games to release the weaponized virus.
In 2020, I wrote a column on why China seemed poised to avoid any liability for what might be the greatest act of negligence in history. The sheer size of the disaster somehow seemed to insulate China. As Joseph Stalin had once said, “a single death is a tragedy” and “a million deaths is a statistic.”
Try more than seven million, and you have a statistic that was not worth confronting the Chinese over. What was done was done.
Below is my column in the Hill on the rising political violence on the left. Many have found an irresistible release from both reason and responsibility in rage. A new study found more people embracing political violence. Joel Finkelstein, the lead author of the report, stated that “what was formerly taboo culturally has become acceptable… We are seeing a clear shift – glorification, increased attempts and changing norms – all converging into what we define as ‘assassination culture.’” Roughly 40 percent reportedly found it somewhat justifiable to burn a Tesla or even to kill Donald Trump.
Here is the column:
“We should replace our piece of crap Constitution.”
Those words from author Elie Mystal, a regular commentator on MSNBC, are hardly surprising from someone who previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.” But Mystal’s radical rhetoric is becoming mainstream on the left, as shown by his best-selling books and popular media appearances.
There is a counter-constitutional movement building in law schools and across the country. And although Mystal has not advocated violence, some on the left are turning to political violence and criminal acts. It is part of the “righteous rage” that many of them see as absolving them from the basic demands not only of civility but of legality. They are part of a rising class of American Jacobins — bourgeois revolutionaries increasingly prepared to trash everything, from cars to the Constitution.
The Jacobins were a radical group in France that propelled that country into the worst excesses of the French Revolution. They were largely affluent citizens, including journalists, professors, lawyers, and others who shredded existing laws and destroyed property. It would ultimately lead not only to the blood-soaked “Reign of Terror” but also to the demise of the Jacobins themselves as more radical groups turned against them.
Of course, it is not revolution on the minds of most of these individuals. It is rage. Rage is the ultimate drug. It offers a release from longstanding social norms — a license to do those things long repressed by individuals who viewed themselves as decent, law-abiding citizens. Across the country, liberals are destroying Tesla cars, torching dealerships and charging stations, and even allegedly hitting political dissenters with their cars.
Last week, affluent liberal shoppers admitted that they are shoplifting from Whole Foods to strike back at Jeff Bezos for working with the Trump administration and moving the Washington Post back to the political center. They are also enraged at Mark Zuckerberg for restoring free speech protections at Meta.
One “20-something communications professional” in Washington explained“If a billionaire can steal from me, I can scrape a little off the top, too.” These affluent shoplifters portrayed themselves as Robin Hoods. Of course, that is assuming Robin Hood was stealing organic fruit from the rich and giving it to himself.
On college campuses, affluent students and even professors are engaging in political violence. Just this week, University of Wisconsin Professor José Felipe Alvergue, head of the English Department, turned over the table of College Republicans supporting a conservative for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He reportedly declared, “The time for this is over!” Likewise, a mob this week attacked a conservative display and tent on the campus of the University of California-Davis as campus police passively watched. The Antifa protesters, carrying a large banner with the slogan “ACAB” or “all cops are bastards,” trashed the tent and carried it off.
Of course, many of the American Jacobins are themselves bourgeois or even affluent figures. And they are finding a host of enablers telling them that the Constitution itself is a threat, and that the legal system has been corrupted by oligarchs, white supremacists, or reactionaries. This includes leading academics and commentators who are denouncing the Constitution and core American values. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, is the author of “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
In a New York Times op-ed, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the nation to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
Commentator Jennifer Szalai has scoffed at what she called “Constitution worship.” “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us,” she wrote. “A growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.”
Members of Congress such as Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) have called for Tesla CEO Elon Musk to be “taken down” and said that Democrats have to be “OK with punching.” Some take such words as a justification to violently attack a system supposedly advancing the white supremacy or fascism. Fortunately, such violence has been confined so far to a minority of radicalized individuals, but there is an undeniable increase in such violent, threatening speech and in actual violence.
The one thing the American Jacobins will not admit is that they like the rage and the release that it brings them. From shoplifting to arson to attempted assassination, the rejection of our legal system brings them freedom to act outside of morality and to take whatever they want.
Democratic leaders see these “protests” as needed popularism to combat Trump — to make followers “strike ready” and “to stand up and fight back.”
For a politician, a mob can become irresistible if you can steer it against your opponents. The problem is controlling the mob once it has broken free of the bounds of legal and personal accountability.
Below is my column in The Hill on the President stating that he is not joking about pursuing a third term. The statement lit up the media. However, it works better as a jump scare for liberals than a credible claim for the courts.
Here is the column:
The late Justice Antonin Scalia famously said that Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes.” His point was that courts are skeptical of using minor provisions in a statute to achieve sweeping new legal changes.
The challenge of stuffing an elephant into a mousehole came to mind this week after President Donald Trump said that he is “not joking” about considering a third term and that experts told him it is possible under the Constitution.
One often has to take such moments with a heavy dose of skepticism from a president who clearly relished handing snake-in-a-can soundbites to the media just to watch the resulting screams. If so, he was not disappointed. The media went into renewed vapors as commentators pronounced, yet again, the death of democracy.
However, given the president’s statement, it is important to be clear about the basis for this theory, which has long been something of a parlor game for law professors on how a president might be able to circumvent the two-term limitation imposed by the 22nd Amendment.
Let’s start with the language. Ratified in 1951, the amendment was passed ironically by Republicans who were reacting to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to break from the tradition of two-term presidencies by seeking a third term. The intent was clear. They believed that serving more than two terms exposed the country to the danger of a politician occupying the office for life or prolonged periods. To prevent that, the amendment states:
“No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice, and no person who has held the office of president, or acted as president, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.”
Notably, the language includes those who were not necessarily elected to the office but “held” the office for more than two years (presumably through succession to the office due to a vacancy).
Few seriously doubt the intent of the amendment to prevent any person serving a third term to force a change of leadership in the nation. That is when the mousehole comes in. The amendment refers to a person being “elected.” Thus, some advocates claim that the amendment does not prevent a president from “serving” a third term — only being “elected” to such a term.
This strained interpretation would mean that the drafters were solely aggrieved by the thought of someone running for the office and not serving in the office. There is no compelling historical support for that interpretation.
Under this interpretation, a two-term president could engineer a third term by running for vice president and having the elected president then resign after the inauguration. The problem with this tactic is another amendment. The 12th amendment states that “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”
Trump could not run for vice president because he is ineligible to be president. Accordingly, he would likely be barred from many state ballots from running for vice president.
Yet, there is an even smaller mousehole. Trump could have two people run for president and vice president as stand-in officeholders while he could engineer his election as Speaker of the House of Representatives. After the election, they could both resign, and Trump would be third in the line of succession. Putting aside the considerable level of faith in both the president and vice president resigning, the maneuver would make a mockery of the constitutional design behind the amendments.
It would also make leading Republican candidate’s mockeries as types of “mini-mes” for Trump. Even the debate of such a maneuver before the election would demean figures like Vice President J.D. Vance as mere cutouts in a Constitutional sleight-of-hand.
The fueling of this talk also works in favor of those politicians and commentators who continue to claim that Trump is an autocrat committed to the destruction of the American democracy. It suggests that Trump is open to trashing constitutional traditions or language to achieve prolonged power. In fairness to those advocating this theory, this is not an assault on democracy or a call for tyranny. It is an effort to use clever interpretations of the Constitution to allow for a third term. Voters would be aware of this maneuver when going to the polls (which is doubtful), and courts would have to uphold the interpretation (which is even more doubtful).
In the end, the powder is not worth the prize in raising this prospect. President Trump has carried off the political comeback of the century. His administration is set to make history with sweeping changes that continue to garner considerable support among the public. This claim will only undermine that legacy, and the support needed to achieve it.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
Below is my column in the New York Post on the increasing political violence on the left, particularly targeting Elon Musk, his companies, and his clients. There have been more arrests of people engaging in property destruction. What is most striking, however, is how Democrats have torched their core beliefs to pursue a scorched Earth campaign against Musk.
Here is the column:
In this “Age of Rage, it is common for people to become the very thing that they despise in others, jettisoning their most cherished values to strike out at those they hate. Since the election, Democrats have shown that very self-destructive quality of rage in adopting anti-immigrant, anti-free speech, anti-labor, and even anti-environmental positions to get at Donald Trump or his supporters. It consumes every part of a person. It is addictive, and it is contagious. What these rage addicts will not admit, however, is that they like it; they need it.
This time, they are targeting Elon Musk, whose dealerships, charging stations, and customers have been hit by political violence from the left. While other billionaires from George Soros to Mark Zuckerberg have spent big on elections for the left, Musk is somehow uniquely evil because he gives money to Republicans and supports the Trump Administration.
This scorched Earth campaign was evident this week in New York, where democratic legislators are again moving to weaponize state laws for political purposes — just like they did with Trump. New York state Sen. Pat Fahy (D-Albany) is pledging to bar Musk from direct sales in the state.
Notably, Fahy has been a longtime advocate of electric vehicles. The move will make it more difficult not just for Musk but other EV dealers to survive, but climate change policies be damned. Fahy and her colleagues want to get at Musk in any way they can.
Fahy explained, “No matter what we do, we’ve got to take this from Elon Musk. He’s part of an effort to go backwards.”
The move is not unique:
* The left decries political violence like January 6th but is largely silent as Teslas are set on fire and Cybertrucks are covered with graffiti. It promotes boycotts and rallies with a wink at the vandals. As the violence increases around the country, the left has held protests featuring signs like “Burn a Tesla, Save Democracy.”
* Democrats have made the defense of immigration a core issue and have objected even to the use of the term “illegal” or “unlawful” to refer to those crossing the Southern border. Yet, they have attacked Musk due to his status as a naturalized citizen. He is denounced as a “foreigner” “meddling” in our government. Some questioned Musk’s loyalty because he is a naturalized American.
* Those who insist that they believe in free speech are supporting censorship and opposing Musk for restoring free speech protections on X.
* In California, labor advocates oppose expanded operations from SpaceX that would benefit workers in the state. California Coastal Commissioner Gretchen Newsom tried to block increased SpaceX launches despite their benefit for both the California economy and national security. Because he “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race,” it does not matter that this would cost money and labor opportunities. Retaliation for “hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods” was more important.
Still, the greatest hypocrisy may be found in the Democrats’ willingness to abandon environmental priorities for political revenge. It is a contest of virtue-signaling. Fighting for Mother Earth is fine on most days, but nothing compares to destroying Elon Musk.
Lawmakers and advocates are also pressuring pension funds to divest from Tesla while trying to force Tesla showrooms to close — at the cost of New York jobs.
Tesla is an American company making and selling cars in this country. It sells more electric vehicles in the US and New York than any other manufacturer. Yet it must now be destroyed because, unlike a Soros or a Zuckerberg, Musk’s political views are not acceptable to the left.
Tesla was allowed to operate five locations to directly sell to consumers under a 2014 deal because it was viewed as good for New York jobs, the New York economy, and, most importantly, the environment.
None of that matters now.
Fahy explained, “The bottom line is, Tesla has lost their right to promote these when they’re part of an administration that wants to go backwards. Elon Musk was handed a privilege here.”
It also does not matter that companies like Rivian and Lucid (and their employees) will be caught in the crossfire. Nothing matters but revenge.
Many Democrats seem to have lost a capacity for shame. They are disgusted only by the refusal of others to yield to their demands, not the use of any means to achieve political ends. The question is, what do Democrats like Fahy now stand for when everything they are is now defined by those they hate?
Below is my column in the Hill on the recent World Forum where leaders gathered to declare “A New World Order with European Values.” Globalists gathered in Berlin to seek a new era based on European values that not only involve the expansion of transnational systems but the contraction of free speech rights.
Here is the column:
“A New World Order with European Values.” Emblazoned across banners and signs, those words met the participants at this week’s meeting of the World Forum in Berlin. Each year, leaders, executives, journalists and academics gather to address the greatest threats facing humanity. This year, there was little doubt about what they view as the current threat: the resurgence of populism and free speech.
In fairness to the Forum, “a New World Order” likely sounds more ominous for some civil libertarians than intended. While the European Union is a transnational government stretching across 27 nations, the organizers were referring to a shift of values away from the United States to Europe.
As one of the few speakers at the forum who was calling for greater protections for free speech, I found it an unnerving message. Even putting aside, the implications of the New World Order, the idea of building a world on today’s European values is alarming for free speech.
Free speech is in a free fall in Europe, with ever-expanding speech regulations and criminal prosecutions — including for having “toxic ideologies.”
The World Forum has a powerful sense of fraternity, even an intimacy, among leaders who see each other as a global elite — a cadre of enlightened minds protecting citizens from their own poor choices and habits. There has long been a push for transnational governing systems, and European figures see an opportunity created by the conflict with President Trump. The European Union is the model for such a Pax Europaea or “European peace.”
The problem is that this vision for a new Holy Roman Empire lacks a Charlamagne. More importantly, it lacks public support.
The very notion of a “New World Order” is chilling to many who oppose the rise of a globalist class with the rise of transnational governance in the European Union and beyond.
This year, there is a sense of panic among Europe’s elite over the victory of Trump and the Republicans in the U.S., as well as nationalist and populist European movements. For globalists, the late Tip O’Neill’s rule that “all politics is local” is anathema. The European Union is intended to transcend national identities and priorities in favor of an inspired transnational government managed by an expert elite.
The message was clear. The new world order would be based on European, not American, values. To rally the faithful to the cause, the organizers called upon two of the patron saints of the global elite: Bill and Hillary Clinton. President Clinton was even given an award as “leader of the century.” The Clintons were clearly in their element. Speaker after speaker denounced Trump and the rise of what they called “autocrats” and “oligarchs.” The irony was crushing. The European Union is based on the oligarchy of a ruling elite. The World Forum even took time to celebrate billionaires from Bill Gates to George Soros for funding “open societies” and greater transnational powers.
The discussions focused on blunting the rise of far-right parties and stemming the flow of “disinformation” that fosters such dissent. Outside of this rarefied environment, the Orwellian language would border on the humorous: protecting democracy from itself and limiting free speech to foster free speech.
Yet, one aspect of the forum was striking and refreshingly open. This year it became clear why transnational governance gravitates toward greater limits on free speech. Of course, all of this must be done in the name of democracy and free speech.
There is a coded language that is now in vogue with the anti-free speech community. They never say the word “censorship.” They prefer “content moderation.” They do not call for limiting speech. Instead, they call for limiting “false,” “hateful” or “inciteful” speech.
As for the rise of opposing parties and figures, they are referred to as movements by “low-information voters” misled by disinformation. Of course, it is the government that will decide what are acceptable and unacceptable viewpoints.
That code was broken recently by Vice President JD Vance, who confronted our European allies in Munich to restore free speech. He stripped away the pretense and called out the censorship.
With the rise of populist groups, anti-immigration movements and critics of European governance, there is a palpable challenge to EU authority. In that environment, free speech can be viewed as destabilizing because it spreads dissent and falsehoods about these figures and their agenda. Thus far, “European peace” has come at the price of silencing many of those voices, achieving the pretense of consensus through coerced silence.
Transnational governance requires consent over a wide swath of territory. The means that the control or cooperation of media and social media is essential to maintaining the consent of the governed. That is why free speech is in a tailspin in Europe, with ever-expanding speech regulations and criminal prosecutions.
Yet, it is difficult to get a free people to give up freedom. They have to be very afraid or very angry. One of the speakers was Maria A. Ressa, a journalist and Nobel laureate. I admire Ressa’s courage as a journalist but previously criticized her anti-free speech positions. Ressa has struck out against critics who have denounced her for allegedly antisemitic views. She has warned that the right is using free speech and declaring “I will say it now: ‘The fascists are coming.’”
At the forum, Ressa again called for the audience of “powerful leaders” to prevent lies and dangerous disinformation from spreading worldwide.
But the free speech movement has shown a surprising resilience in the last few years. First, Elon Musk bought Twitter and dismantled its censorship apparatus, restoring free speech to the social media platform. More recently, Mark Zuckerburg announced that Meta would also restore free speech protections on Facebook and other platforms.
In a shock to many, young Irish voters have been credited with killing a move to further expand the criminalization of speech to include “xenophobia” and the “public dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material” from viewpoints barred under the law.
Anti-free speech forces are gathering to push back on such trends. Indeed, Hillary Clinton has hardly been subtle about the dangers of free speech to the new world order. After Musk bought Twitter with the intention of restoring free speech protections, Clinton called upon the European Union to use its infamous Digital Services Act to make Musk censor her fellow Americans. She has also suggested arresting those spreading disinformation.
The European Union did precisely that by threatening Musk with confiscatory fines and even arrest unless he censored users. When Musk decided to interview Trump in this election, EU censors warned him that they would be watching for any disinformation.
For many citizens, European governance does not exactly look like a triumph over “oligarchs” and “autocrats.” Indeed, the EU looks pretty oligarchic with its massive bureaucracy guided by a global elite and “good” billionaires like Soros and Gates.
Citizens would be wise to look beyond the catchy themes and consider what Pax Europaea would truly mean to them. We have many shared values with our European allies. However, given the current laws limiting political speech, a “New World Order Based on European Values” is hardly an inviting prospect for those who believe in robust democratic and free speech values.
Below is my column in The Hill on the disgraceful Democratic attacks against Elon Musk over his status as a naturalized citizen. For years, some of us have raised concerns over the adoption of McCarthyite tactics and rhetoric by the left to demonize those with opposing viewpoints, including critics of the massive censorship system under the Biden Administration. Those attacks are now reaching a dangerous crescendo after the 2024 loss in the presidential election.
Here is the column:
This month, 75 years ago, Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wisc.) gave his infamous speech denouncing disloyal Americans working at the highest levels of our government. It was the defining moment for what became known as McCarthyism, which attacked citizens as dangerous and disloyal influences in government.
Some of us have criticized the rising “rage rhetoric” for years, including that of President Trump and Democratic leaders, denouncing opponents as traitors and enemies of the state.
In the 2024 election, the traditional red state-blue state firewalls again collapsed, as they had in 2016. The response among Democrats has been to unleash a type of new Red Scare, questioning the loyalty of those who are supporting or working with the Trump administration in carrying out his promised reforms.
Elon Musk is the designated disloyal American for many on the left. That rage has reached virtual hysteria on ABC’s “The View.” This is the same show before the election on which hosts warned that, if Trump were elected, journalists and homosexuals would be rounded up and “disappeared.”
After the election, democracy seemed to stubbornly hang on, so the hosts had to resort to attacking as disloyal anyone joining the government or supporting Trump’s policies.
This week, co-host Joy Behar followed many others in questioning Musk’s loyalty and attacking him over being a naturalized American citizen: “The guy was not born in this country, who was born under apartheid in South Africa. So, [he] has that mentality going on. He was pro-Apartheid, as I understand it.”
Behar was then forced, perhaps by panicked ABC lawyers, to walk back the comment — such retractions having become a regular feature on “The View“. What came out was the type of jumbled confusion that results when you interrupt a lunatic on the metro in mid-rave.
Behar stated: “I’m getting some flack because I said that Musk was pro-apartheid. I don’t really know for sure if he was … He was around at that time, but maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t—he might have been a young guy, too. So, don’t be suing me, okay Elon?”
This anti-immigrant attack on Musk, however, has worked its way into many Democrats’ talking points, even though their party had previously claimed to defend immigrants against racist Republicans seeking to close the Southern border and deport criminal illegal immigrants.
On Capitol Hill, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) launched a xenophobic tirade that should have shocked the conscience of the nation. She warned citizens that Musk could not be trusted because he is an immigrant who has been a citizen for only a couple of decades: “Mr. Musk has just been here just 22 years and he’s a citizen of three countries. I always ask myself the question: With the damage he’s doing here when push comes to shove, which country is he loyal to? South Africa, Canada, or the United States? And he’s only been a citizen, I’ll say again, 22 years.”
Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney was another joining in to attack Musk for being an immigrant. “You may be unfamiliar with that part of our history since you weren’t yet an American citizen,” she wrote on Musk’s social media platform, X.
These attacks are straight out of McCarthy’s playbook. It was McCarthy who insisted that “there are no degrees of loyalty in the United States — a man is either loyal or he’s disloyal…” Of course, McCarthy (and the earlier Red Scare) attacked government employees, writers and others on the left. It is now the left that is employing the same tactics, including censorship, blacklisting and public vilification.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, the Democrats, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, painted Republicans as either aspiring or actual fascists. That continued recently with Minnesota Gov. and former Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz (D), who referred to Republicans as “fascists and Nazis.”
Even journalists and civil libertarians have been reviled using the same terms. After a hearing on censorship two years ago, MSNBC contributor and former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) attacked journalists and members who had spoken in favor of free speech. She denounced the member witnesses (Sen. Chuck Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson and former Rep. Gabbard) as “Putin apologists” and Putin-lovers.
Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic delegate representing the Virgin Islands in the U.S. House, even suggested arresting respected journalist Matt Taibbi, who, along with Michael Shellenberger, testified on their investigation into a massive censorship system developed under the Biden administration.
The attack on Musk is particularly disgraceful, given his contributions to his adopted country. Ironically, filmmaker Michael Moore denounced the deportations of criminal illegal immigrants last week by noting that Trump was deporting someone who might cure cancer or be the next Steve Jobs. Well, this is a naturalized citizen who not only could be the next Elon Musk. He is Elon Musk.
As politicians and pundits question Musk’s loyalty, Space X is moving to rescue two astronauts stranded in space. Musk has volunteered his time and skills to achieving a record reduction in the size and waste in government. One can disagree with his priorities or the means he uses to achieve his goals, but he has nobly stepped forward to serve his country despite death threats from the left.
Musk is also facing such attacks in Canada, where thousands have signed petitions to strip him of his citizenship. The left did not seek to revoke the citizenship of figures who have eviscerated free speech and other individual rights in that country. It is Musk who is persona non grata.
This is nothing new for Musk, whom the left has targeted since he announced an intention to buy Twitter and restore free speech protections on that site.
The concern is not for Musk, who has the intestinal fortitude (and financial means) to stand up to a global mob. Moreover, with polls showing overwhelming support for reducing the size of government and the budget, the campaign to obstruct these efforts is unlikely to resonate with voters.
The danger is more acute for the country as disagreements over policy are transformed into attacks over loyalty. It is the most dangerous form of rage rhetoric, an effort not to debate but to demonize those with whom you disagree.
When you have members of Congress standing in front of the Capitol, denouncing naturalized citizens as untrustworthy after a mere 22 years as a citizen, it is a moment that would have made McCarthy blush.
Below is my column in the Hill on the new American emigres: “disinformation experts” who are finding themselves unemployed with the restoration of free speech protections.
Here is the column:
President Trump’s election has brought about mass layoffs among federal employees and contractors, including some who have sued and others who have protested.
But one group — that of America’s would-be censors — is taking its cause worldwide.
During the Biden administration, a massive industry took root, sweeping up billions in taxpayer funds to research, target and combat those accused of misinformation, disinformation and “malinformation.”
Although the exact number is uncertain, many trained censors are now facing unemployment. These self-described “disinformation experts”have become the modern equivalent of rōnin, the Japanese samurai who found themselves without a master and wandered the land looking for a new use of their skill set. They are finding precisely that calling in academia, not-for-profit groups and, most importantly, Europe.
A speech-regulation industry that was booming under Biden has gone bust under Trump. Over the last four years, massive amounts of money were poured into universities, non-governmental organizations and other groups in an unprecedented alliance of government, academia and corporations. The media lionized many in the industry as “saving democracy”by controlling, targeting and suppressing others’ political speech. Not only did federal agencies fund these efforts, but they also coordinated censorship of groups and individuals with opposing views, even objecting to jokes on the internet.
Universities cashed in on this largesse as well. It was popular with most liberal administrators and lucrative for academics.
The sudden shutoff of the federal spigot comes as a blow, but it does not mean the speech warriors will simply convert their censor-shields into plowshares. Many will follow in the footsteps of Nina Jankowicz, briefly the head of a now-defunct disinformation governance board. After the outcry over the board, Jankowicz quickly found her skills were in demand in Europe.
Free speech has been in free-fall in Europe for decades. Germany has long enforced a robust system of speech criminalization that began with Nazi symbolism but steadily expanded to include inciteful speech, insults and merely “disinformative” statements. The United Kingdom and France showed the same insatiable appetite for the inexorable expansion of censorship and prosecutions.
The European Union has also been ground zero for the anti-free speech movement’s aggressive use of the Digital Services Act, which bars speech that is viewed as “disinformation” or “incitement.”
When it passed over the objections of free speech advocates, European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager was perfectly ecstatic, declaring it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now, it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”
That is why Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent speech in Munich was so historic. For the free speech community, Vance went into the belly of the beast and denounced the anti-free-speech movement in the heart of Europe. The response to the Vance speech has been nothing short of panic in the anti-free-speech community. Many are assembling in conferences in Europe, including the upcoming World Forum in Berlin. Bill and Hillary Clinton will be in attendance. (I will also be speaking at the conference.)
It was Hillary Clinton who, after Elon Musk purchased Twitter with the pledge to dismantle the censorship system, called upon the EU to force him and others to censor her fellow U.S. citizens. She embraced the infamous Digital Services Act, which seeks to impose a global system of speech control. She has also suggested the arrest of those spreading disinformation.
Immediately after the speech, familiar European and American voices denounced Vance and doubled down on the need for Europe to hold the line against dangerous free speech.
For the free speech community, there could not be a better place for this debate to unfold. Germany has demonstrated the false claims of the anti-free-speech community over the years. Indeed, you might call their arguments “disinformation.”
Vance and others who have challenged the European censorship systems have been attacked as Nazi enablers or sympathizers. Many of those who have fostered this attack are part of the regulator ronin. Others simply repeated the narrative without thought or support.
Take CBS anchor Margaret Brennan, who confronted Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the outrageous fact that Vance was supporting free speech while “standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.” The claim is stupefyingly uninformed. The first thing that the Nazis did in coming to power was to crack down and criminalize free speech — just as many on the left have done in European countries.
A few have insisted that the Nazis were brought to power by the lack of government controls over what views could be expressed. But this is not true either. The crushing irony is that Article 118 of the Weimar Constitution guaranteed free speech only “within the limits of the general laws.” It did not protect statements deemed by the government as factually untrue, and speech was actively regulated.
Adolf Hitler, for example, was barred from speaking publicly. The Nazis did not use free speech because they did not have it. They did, however, use the denial of free speech to claim that the government was afraid to have certain views aired in public.
Germany has replicated the old system that failed to stop (and perhaps even helped) the Nazis, doubling down on speech controls and criminalization. As I discuss in my book, there has never been a successful censorship system in the history of the world — not one. Germany is again a chilling example of the true record of such systems.
Past polling of German citizens found that only 18 percent felt free to express their opinions in public. Only 17 percent felt free to express themselves on the internet. So, the neo-Nazi movement is flourishing, even as average German citizens feel chilled in their own speech.
Despite this history, the regulatory ronin are hard at work to scare the public back into empowering and especially into funding their efforts.
The outgoing chairman of the Munich Security Conference spoke through tears as he expressed his “fear” that Vance’s call for free speech could take hold in Europe. He tellingly added, “It is clear that our rules-based international order is under pressure. It is my strong belief … that this multipolar world needs to be based on a single set of norms and principles.”
This “international order” has striven to impose a single set of norms on speech, particularly through vehicles like the Digital Services Act. The effort stands at odds with the very essence of the American constitutional system and values.
The only thing both sides agree on is that this is an existential fight. For those in the free speech community, it will determine the future of what Justice Louis Brandeis called “the indispensable right.” For the other side, it is the future of a European model of free speech, limiting the right to deter those with extreme or inciteful views.
The recent successes in the U.S. at X and more recently at Meta are real. However, the displaced speech regulators are not just going to retool and learn to code or train to work in the hospitality industry.
As Vance’s speech showed, we are more isolated than ever. Even Americans like Clinton have joined with the Europeans to fight for censorship. It is time to take a side and fight for freedom of speech.
Below is my column in the Hill on the historic defense of free speech by Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich last week. Where John F. Kennedy went to Berlin to declare “Ich bin ein Berliner,” Vance went in Munich to declare a type of “Ich bin ein Amerikanisch.” He spoke of free speech as an American with a power and clarity that is unrivaled in modern times. As expected, he is being attacked by Europeans and many in this country on the left. However, his speech was a tour de force of our core values.
Despite that profound point, on Feb. 14, Vance found that transformative moment. Speaking to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference, he shocked his audience by confronting them over their attacks on free speech in the West. For the free speech community, it was truly Churchillian — no less than the famous Iron Curtain speech in which Churchill dared the West to confront the existential dangers of communism.
Roughly 80 years after Churchill’s speech, Vance called our allies to account not for the growing threat from countries like Russia or China, but from themselves. To a clearly shocked audience, Vance declared that he was not worried about “external actors” but “the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”
Vance then pulled back the curtain on the censorship and anti-free-speech policies of the European Union and close allies ranging from the United Kingdom to Sweden. He also chastised one of the most vehemently anti-free speech figures in Europe, Thierry Breton, who led the EU efforts to control speech with draconian measures under the infamous Digital Services Act.
Vance called out the hypocrisy of these nations asking for greater and greater military assistance “in the name of our shared democratic values” even as they eviscerate free speech, the very right that once defined Western Civilization.
The point was crushing.
Before we further commit to the defense of Europe, he argued, we should agree on what we are defending. These European nations are erasing the very distinctions between us and our adversaries.
In my recent book, I discussed many of the examples cited by the vice president. One of the most telling came from Canada last year, when the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau temporarily blocked the citizenship of Russian dissident Maria Kartasheva. The reason was that she had a conviction (after a trial in absentia) in Russia for condemning the Ukrainian war. The Canadian government declared that Kartasheva’s conviction in Russia aligns with a Criminal Code offense relating to false information in Canada.
In other words, her use of free speech could be prosecuted in Canada under its abusive Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code, punishing speech deemed to be “convey[ing] false information with the intent to alarm or injure anyone.”
Vance ran through just a fraction of the parade of horribles, from Britain arresting people for silent prayers near abortion clinics to Sweden prosecuting a religious protester who burned a Koran, with Judge Göran Lundahl insisting that freedom of expression does not constitute a “free pass to do or say anything.” Apparently, it does not include acts once called blasphemy or insulting religion.
Vance also mocked the underlying premise for speech crackdowns to combat “disinformation,” pointing out that these measures constitute a far greater threat to citizens in the West than any external threat. He had the courage to say what has long been verboten on the restriction of speech to combat foreign influence: “if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”
In perhaps the greatest single declaration uttered by an American leader since John F. Kennedy in Germany declared “Ich bin ein Berliner,” he added: “If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people that elected me and elected President Trump.”
The reaction of the European diplomats was one of astonishment. Few even offered the usual polite applause. Instead, rows of smug leaders looked straight ahead with the same level of disgust as if Vance were the second coming of the Visogoths threatening the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace.
In a single speech, Vance shattered the hypocrisy of our allies’ calling for a defense of the West while abandoning Western values. They did not like it, and many in the American press joined in dismissing his address. He was called a “wrecking ball” for bringing up the anti-free speech movement that has swept over Europe. One German official declared “This is all so insane and worrying.” This is a diplomat from a nation that shredded free speech for decades, to the point of arresting people over their ringtones.
Of course, our own anti-free speech voices were in attendance, too. Politico quoted one “former House Democratic staffer” who bravely attacked Vance anonymously: “I was aghast … He was blaming the victim. What the f— was that? I had my mouth open in a room full of people with their mouth open. That was bad.”
No, it was not bad. It was glorious.
After Elon Musk purchased Twitter with the pledge to dismantle the company’s censorship system, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned to the EU, calling on it to use its Digital Service Act to force the censorship of her fellow American citizens. That did not leave many people agape. But Vance’s defense of free speech is considered a breathtaking outrage.
In “Hillbilly Elergy,” Vance explained his lack of faith in transformative moments.
“I’ve seen far too many people awash in a genuine desire to change, only to lose their mettle when they realized just how difficult change actually is,” he wrote.
And there is no “genuine desire to change” in Europe. The appetite for censorship is now insatiable, and free speech is in a free fall.
In the midst of this crackdown, Vance spoke with a quintessentially American voice. It was clear, honest and unafraid. There was no pretense or evasion. It was a speech about who we are as a nation and the values that still define us — and no longer define our allies. They saw him as a virtual hillbilly, an American hayseed who does not understand transnational values.
For the rest of us, it was a true elegy — part lament and part liberating.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the unhinged response to Vice President J.D. Vance’s historic defense of free speech in Europe. The chorus of criticism from press and pundits was immediate. Literally speaking through tears, German diplomat Christoph Heusgen responded to VP Vance: “It is clear that our rules-based international order is under pressure. It is my strong belief that this more multipolar world needs to be based on a single set of norms and principles.” Indeed, it is and that is a good thing. Vance was speaking truth to transnationalists who view free speech as a threat to the “international order” that they maintain. The response from the American left was even more bizarre. Not only did CBS’s Margaret Brennan suggest that free speech caused the holocaust, but Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) said that Vance, in defending free speech, used “some of the same language that Hitler used to justify the Holocaust.”
Here is the column:
On Friday, Vice President JD Vance gave a historic defense of free speech at the Munich Security Conference. In front of a clearly hostile assemblage of European diplomats, Vance confronted our allies with their systemic censorship as they demanded more support to “defend democracy.” For the free speech community, it was akin to Ronald Reagan’s call: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Vance questioned how our allies could claim to be the bastions of freedom while denying free expression to their citizens. He then delivered this haymaker: “If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people that elected me and elected President Trump.”
Not surprisingly, the Europeans sat on their hands while glaring at Vance for calling them out for their hypocrisy. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius declared Vance’s remarks were “not acceptable.” An unnamed German official in attendance declared, “This is all so insane and worrying.”
The outrage of the Europeans was only surpassed by our own anti-free speech voices in government, the media and academia. Commentator and CNN regular Bill Kristol called the speech “a humiliation for the US and a confirmation that this administration isn’t on the side of the democracies.” It appears that free speech is no longer viewed as pro-democracy. Indeed, it could be outright fascism.
In one of the most bizarre attacks, CBS anchor Margaret Brennan confronted Secretary of State Marco Rubio over Vance’s support for free speech given the fact that he was “standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.” In other words, it was free speech that brought Hitler to power and caused the Holocaust. Brennan’s statement is completely detached from history and logic.
Germans did enjoy free speech protections after World War I, though the Weimar Constitution was more limited than the First Amendment. However, one of the first things that the Nazis did in coming to power in 1933 was to crack down on free speech and criminalize dissent. Censorship is the harbinger of authoritarianism and Germany is the ultimate example of how no censorship system in history has ever succeeded in killing one idea or stopping a single movement.
Brennan could not have picked a better country to utterly destroy the point that she was trying to make in favor of limits on free speech.
Germany continued to censor and criminalize speech after World War II, targeting the neo-Nazi movement and other prohibited viewpoints. Authorities charged citizens for everything from wine labels to ringtones with banned content. The government has sought to force figures like X owner Elon Musk to censor Americans and others to combat anything that it deems “fake news” or “disinformation.”
Of course, Germany’s massive censorship effort has done little to deter the thriving neo-Nazi movement. What it has done is chill the speech of ordinary citizens. One poll of German citizens found that only 18% of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Only 17% felt free to express themselves on the internet.
Other nations joined in the harrumphs with equally disingenuous statements, including the United Kingdom. British diplomats expressed shock despite their systemic suppression of free speech, including arresting citizens for simply praying to themselves near abortion clinics.
The British have doubled down on censorship with sweeping new laws. Hundreds have been arrested recently for speech crimes like spreading “fake news” or disinformation that could lead to “non-trivial psychological or physical harm.”Previously, British citizens were arrested for criticizing religious groups or opposing homosexuality or immigration. In one case, Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime.
The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his “toxic ideology” based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire.
In 1963, John F. Kennedy went to Germany to declare “Ich bin ein Berliner” to express solidarity with those who were fighting for the right to live and speak freely behind the Iron Curtain.
More than 60 years later, Vance returned to essentially declare “Ich bin ein Amerikanischer,” affirming our commitment to a right that not only defines the United States, but once defined Western civilization. He argued that if we are to defeat our foreign adversaries, we must first protect those rights that distinguish us from them.
The response of our press and pundits only proved Vance’s point. We have returned to the moment described by Tom Paine during our Revolution, a time that would “try men’s souls.”
Those opposing free speech today are like “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot” who, Paine warned, would “shrink” from the defense of our values.
The anti-free speech movement that has swept over Europe has finally reached our shores.
Vance drew a bright line in Europe and we will all have to decide on which side to stand. Some obviously have made the decision to stand with Europe.
For the rest of us, we will stand with free speech.
The defense of free speech by Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich, Germany, has led to open panic on the left in fighting to maintain European censorship and speech criminalization. The response of the American press and pundits was crushingly familiar. From CBS News to members of Congress, Vance (and anyone who supports his speech) was accused of using Nazi tactics. It is the demonization of dissent.
The suggestion that free speech cleared the way for the Holocaust left many scratching their heads, but it is an old saw used by the anti-free speech community, particularly in Germany.
When they came to power, the Nazis moved immediately to crack down on free speech and criminalize dissent. They knew that free speech was not only the “indispensable right” for a free people, but the greatest threat to authoritarian power.
Figures like Brennan appear to blame free speech for the rise of the Nazis because the Weimar Constitution protected the right of Germans, including Nazis, in their right to speak. However, the right to free speech was far more abridged than our own First Amendment. Indeed, it had many of the elements that the left has pushed in Europe and the United States, including allowing crackdowns on disinformation and fake news.
Article 118 of the Weimar Constitution, guaranteed free speech but added that it must be “within the limits of the general laws.” It did not protect statements deemed by the government as factually untrue and speech was actively regulated.
Indeed, Hitler was barred from speaking publicly. It was not free speech that the Nazis used to propel their movement, but the denial of free speech. They portrayed the government as so fearful and fragile that it could not allow opposing views to be stated publicly.
This ridiculous and ahistorical spin also ignores the fact that other countries like the United States had both fascist movements and free speech, but did not succumb to such extremism. Instead, free speech allowed critics to denounce brownshirts as hateful, dangerous individuals. To blame free speech for the rise of the Nazis is like blaming the crimes of Bernie Maddoff on the use of money.
Nevertheless, before the last election, the left was unrelenting in accusing those with opposing views as being Nazis or fascists. During the election, it seemed like a one-answer Rorschach test where Democrats saw a Nazi in every political inkblot.
While the narrative failed in spectacular fashion, the script has not changed. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) expressed sympathy for the “absolute shock, absolute shock of our European allies” to be confronted in this fashion. Rather than address the examples of systemic attacks on free speech, Moulton reached again for the favorite talking point: “if you listen, listen carefully it’s actually much deeper and darker. He was talking about the enemy within. This is some of the same language that Hitler used to justify the Holocaust.”
Like Brennan, Moulton is warning that free speech can be a path to genocide. However, his take is that anyone claiming to be the victim of censorship is taking a page out of the Nazi playbook. The logic is simple. The Nazis complained about censorship. You complained about censorship. Thus, ipso facto, you are a Nazi.
Others joined the mob in denouncing Vance and supporting the Europeans. CNN regular Bill Kristol called the speech “a humiliation for the US and a confirmation that this administration isn’t on the side of the democracies.”
By defending free speech, you are now viewed as anti-democratic. It is part of the Orwellian message of the anti-free-speech movement. Democracy demands censorship, and free speech invites fascism.
It is hardly a novel argument. It was the very rationale used in Germany after World War II to impose what is now one of the most extensive censorship systems in the world. It was initially justified as an anti-Nazi measure but then, as has occurred repeatedly in history, became an insatiable appetite for speech controls. Indeed, the country returned to the prosecution of anything deemed disinformation and fake news by the government.
The result has indeed silenced many, but not those neo-Nazis who are flourishing in Germany. Past polling of German citizens found that only 18% of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Only 17% felt free to express themselves on the internet. As under the Weimar Constitution, fascist groups are portraying themselves as victims while finding alternative ways to spread their message.
Yet, the American media continues to peddle the same disinformation on the value of censorship. After its anchor made the widely ridiculed claim about free speech leading to genocide, 60 Minutes ran an interview with German officials extolling the success of censorship.
CBS’ Sharyn Alfonsi compared how the United States allows “hate-filled or toxic” speech while Germany is “trying to bring some civility to the worldwide web by policing it in a way most Americans could never imagine.”
German prosecutors (Dr. Matthäus Fink, Svenja Meininghaus and Frank-Michael Laue) detailed how they regularly raid homes to crack down on prohibited views with the obvious approval of CBS.
They acknowledged that “the people are surprised that this is really illegal, to post these kind [sic] of words… They don’t think it was illegal. And they say, ‘No, that’s my free speech,’ And we say, ‘No, you have free speech as well, but it also has its limits.’”
Alfonsi explained that the law criminalizes anything the government considers inciteful “or deemed insulting.” She then asked “Is it a crime to insult somebody in public?” The prosecutors eagerly affirmed, but added that the punishment is even higher to insult someone on the Internet.
Meininghaus started to explain that “if you’re [on] the internet, if I insult you or a politician …” Alfonsi could not even wait for the end of the sentence and completed it for him: “It sticks around forever.”
As CBS was completing the sentences of speech regulators, many in Europe were celebrating the Vance speech as breathing new life into the embattled free speech community. What is most striking is how the press and the pundits could not help themselves. They are eagerly proving Vance’s point. This is an existential fight for the “indispensable right.”
Below is my column in The Hill on Musk-mania gripping Washington. Democrats are using Musk to double down on rage rhetoric and rallying supporters to “fight in the street” in a declared “war.” It is a familiar pattern for many of us.
Here is the column:
Across the Internet, politicians and pundits are in a monstrous mood. The same people who spent the last year declaring the imminent death of democracy if Donald Trump were elected are now insisting that the real threat is the “monster” he has unleashed upon the federal bureaucracy. It is the thing of legend, a Beltway monster that you told your children about around campfires late at night: An outsider who comes to town and lays waste to government waste, firing thousands and slashing budgets. Part Frankenstein, part Bigfoot, that creature never had a name, but would be beholden to no one and uninterested in the status quo. The monster now has a name, and it is Elon Musk.
Democratic politicians are now claiming that reducing government is equivalent to destroying government. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) yelled dramatically to an outdoor crowd this week that Musk’s government efficiency efforts are “taking away everything we have.”
For decades, both Democratic and Republican presidents have run on reducing government and making it more efficient. But everyone knew that such campaign pledges would be quickly discarded after each election. What is so terrifying this time is that Musk means it. We know that because he has done it before.
When Musk bought Twitter with the promise of dismantling its censorship system and culture, he started by firing virtually everyone. Critics immediately declared that he was a fool and did not understand how to run a social media company. Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich said that Musk’s firings meant the death of Twitter and triumphantly declared, “You break it, you own it.”
It did not exactly work out that way. Musk fired as much as 90 percent of his staff and the company survived. Liberals only grew more determined, seeking even to boycott his other companies and bar Space X from needed national security missions. As liberal media and pundits raged, Musk stayed firm and survived. Now Amazon has increased advertising on X, which is now the sixth most popular social media site. It has reportedly hit 500 million subscribers and a reported 40-plus percent profit margin. It is set to make billions with a greatly reduced overhead due to the firings.
Musk’s model has been watched — and to some degree replicated — by other companies. The only way to change a culture is sometimes to change the people. Take the U.S. Agency for International Development, where Musk led an effort to freeze operations at the agency and move it to within the State Department. Notably, they are not shutting down the agency, and Trump has said that he wants to continue foreign aid needed for core missions like clean water and disease prevention, for example.
There are good-faith reasons to be concerned that vital programs must not be abruptly ended. However, the complaint is that USAID is the ultimate example of a bloated agency with a high percentage of funding going to administrative costs over field operations.
The State Department reportedly plans to reduce the USAID workforce from over 10,000 to less than 300. It is vintage Musk. It is easier to take the trauma upfront and then rehire the employees needed to fulfill the mission with a leaner workforce.
That process is easier if you can get people to leave voluntarily. Part of it is performative like Musk showing up at Twitter with a sink — to let reality “sink in” for the thousands of employees.
It appears to be working. Many employees are taking an offer to leave with a generous severance package. The idea is simple: If you throw a badger into a crowded car, people will get out. Musk is that badger.
As for Musk being a democracy-devouring Frankenstein, the rhetoric is again outstripping reality. The fact is that liberals rarely hunt monsters, they create their own monsters.
The making of “Muskenstein” can be found in the cancel campaign launched against him as soon as he pledged to restore free speech on Twitter. An unprecedented alliance of government, corporations, media, and academia were arrayed against him.
This same alliance has worked countless times to get corporations and CEOs to comply with its demands for censorship. But Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, was unbowed. Liberals correctly saw Musk’s defiance as an existential threat. For years, they had exercised virtual total control of social media, legacy media, and academia. Opposing views were denounced as dangerous disinformation.
The key to their system was that you maintain orthodoxy by coercing people into silence. During the COVID pandemic, scientists who challenged the enforced view of masks, COVID-19 origins, and other issues were banned or fired. Others remained silent as they watched colleagues exiled for expressing their opinions.
Musk had to be destroyed, or others might start to believe that they could also defy the groupthink.
The problem is that intolerance for opposing views creates thousands of renegades and outsiders. I was one of them. I was once associated with liberal academia, which frankly worked to my advantage in favorable media and academic opportunities.
I then began to question the growing orthodoxy in academia over the loss of free speech and viewpoint diversity, including the purging of faculties of conservative and libertarian voices. I was quickly targeted for it. But that campaign gave me an even greater understanding of the dangers of the anti-free speech movement from outside the system.
On a much higher level, Musk seems to have felt the same liberating aspects of being declared persona non grata. They turned Musk into the very monster they feared.
They are now doing the same thing with Mark Zuckerberg. After the head of Meta announced that he was going to end the robust censorship system on Facebook and other sites (as well as downsizing staff), the left went after him with the same unhinged hatred.
Like Musk, Zuckerberg had been celebrated as an industry icon, but is now condemned as a grotesque abomination. Politicians such as Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) — who once threatened Zuckerberg not to restore free speech values like Musk — are now set against him. There is talk of boycotts as many liberals retreat into the safe space of BlueSky, a site that essentially protects liberals from opposing views.
BlueSky’s appeal is that it stays close to shore, where the waters are safe and shallow. The problem for many on the left is that more and more people want to venture beyond those navigational buoys. Like Musk, they want to consider new horizons and possibilities.
In Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain Hector Barbossa warns Captain Jack Sparrow, “You’re off the edge of the map, mate! Here there be monsters!” For liberals, we are now off the map where creatures of mythological shapes dwell.
They found them exactly where they thought they would be. After all, they created them. They have made monsters of everyone who challenges the confines of their known world.
Below is my column on Fox.com on the bizarre controversy surrounding New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and his suggestion that he was housing an illegal migrant in his home. It is a new version of Murphy’s Law on how virtue signaling can turn into a virtual nightmare for Democrats over immigration.
Here is the column:
For years, engineers have cited Murphy’s Law that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” The law is attributed to aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr. from the 1940s. However, this week, the law seems re-written by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who is under fire after suggesting that he may be sheltering an undocumented woman above his garage.
Murphy was being interviewed by the liberal group Blue Wave New Jersey and thrilled his Democratic base by indicating that he had given sanctuary to an undocumented person in his home. It was a curious moment when, after promising sanctuary, Murphy not only appeared to out his guest but then taunted ICE to come and try to take her. After seemingly staking out the immigrant like a sacrificial goat in a lion hunt, Murphy’s virtue signaling summoned the authorities. And now, the Iceman Cometh.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan vowed to “look into” the Governor’s house guest.
The interview illustrated how some strive to prove their progressive bona fides at the cost of those they claim to be protecting. It is akin to the good people of Martha’s Vineyard singing to undocumented persons just before shipping them off to a distant military base.
Of course, Murphy appeared to struggle with calling her an undocumented migrant, let alone an illegal alien. Instead. she was described by the governor as a person “whose immigration status is not yet at the point that they are trying to get it to.”
Murphy explained how
“Tammy and I were talking about – I don’t want to get into too much detail, but there is someone in our broader universe whose immigration status is not yet at the point that they are trying to get it to. And we said, you know what? Let’s have her live at our house above our garage.”
You could almost hear the cooing from the crowd. Murphy then added the taunt to the tell: “And good luck to the feds coming in to try to get her.” Of course, the most important “details” for the woman are her status and location.
The most important detail for Murphy was to suggest that he and Tammy have a real live undocumented person housed above their cars. Not a poster or pamphlet on undocumented entry, but a real undocumented person. Of course, what can be lost in such moments is not just the person’s identity but her humanity. She did not seem like a real person at all . . . more like some prop or novelty item to brag about. What was so striking about the interview is that ICE is not generally rounding up undocumented persons. Rather they have focused on aliens who have committed criminal acts. While Murphy and others have issued chest-pounding declarations to defy the federal government, the public is overwhelmingly in support of the effort. Murphy previously declared that he would “fight to the death” against Trump’s agenda.
A recent poll by The New York Times and Ipsos found that an astronomical 88 percent of citizens supported “deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have criminal records.”
Within days of the Trump Administration coming into office, thousands of such targets were located and arrested. For other immigrants, there is still a comfort in numbers. With millions allowed into the country under President Biden, most are keeping a low profile in the knowledge that they are not the priority for ICE.
However, when a governor openly taunts the government and advocates the use of private homes as sanctuaries, he forces the hand of the government. It is even more problematic if this is the governor’s public residence or under the protection of state officers. Murphy may be using such state resources to violate federal law.
It was not clear what the status of Murphy’s guest was. The governor’s breathless account of his own courageous stand suggested that she would be subject to deportation, if discovered.
Under Section 1324 of Title 8 of the United States Code, it is unlawful when anyone “conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation.”
That is when Murphy’s law kicked in with a vengeance. After his boast about “hav[ing] her live at our house above our garage,”a close associate later suggested that it was all a type of liberal projection. It is now claimed that he never actually made the offer to the person, but “mentioned to someone else that they could move in if they want, so I think that’s where some of the misunderstanding was.” The source also added that “The person wasn’t undocumented. The person was a legal resident of the United States of America.”
Ok, let’s get this straight. Murphy did an interview with a liberal group on how he agreed to “have her live at our house above our garage” but could not share any other details to be safe. Nevertheless, Murphy warned about the reception if “the feds com[e] in to try to get her.” Yet, his associate is now claiming that there is no harbored illegal to get. Not only was she never in the garage, but she is perfectly legal and is not subject to deportation. It was like Murphy bragging that he has Chris Christie living above his garage. It is hardly the stuff of Harriett Tubman and the Underground Railroad.
The bizarre controversy, however, has greater importance in what Murphy was struggling to convey. He and other governors are pledging to bar any cooperation with the federal government in the deportation of unlawful immigrants. The latest example was Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, who pledged to continue to defy federal enforcement even at the loss of substantial state aid. As with Murphy’s faux resident refugee, the declarations in states from Illinois to New Jersey to Massachusetts will force the hand of the federal government. While the federal government cannot “commandeer” state officials in the enforcement of federal law, it also does not have to subsidize those officials in frustrating enforcement efforts. The Trump Administration is expected to move to block funds for sanctuary states and cities. So, in addition to billions being spent on housing and benefits, these states will lose billions in federal aid.
What is most striking is that it never mattered if the Murphy claim was true or not. For many, it was another “I am Spartacus Moment” from a New Jersey Democratic politician that fell comically flat. Gov. Murphy’s law should be a cautionary tale for all of his Democratic colleagues in state houses. Virtue signaling can summon costs not just for themselves but for their states.
Below is my column in The Hill on the furious response of some judges in Washington over the Trump pardons. One judge, however, may have ventured too far in effectively banishing commuted defendants from Washington, D.C. without his prior approval.
Here is the column:
Even though President Trump had made it a campaign pledge to pardon those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, the roughly 1,500 pardons Trump issued on his first day produced familiar reactions from politicians and pundits.
In Philadelphia, District Attorney Larry Krasner pledged to pursue those pardoned or commuted with new charges on the state level — eclipsing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in repackaging federal crimes as state offenses. Others cited the pardons as evidence of an even greater plot or purpose. On MSNBC, former NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund head Sherrilyn Ifill declared that the pardons were all part of a plan to build an army of “brownshirts.”
Not to be outdone, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) warned that Trump was issuing pardons to create a “reserve army of political foot soldiers to act on behalf of MAGA and Donald Trump.”
Such hyperbole, particularly the Nazi references, is now commonplace. Indeed, the left jumped the shark on the Nazi-mania and death-of-democracy mantra months ago. This week, however, some of the most strident comments seem to be coming from the federal bench itself. Indeed, some judges used dismissal hearings to launch into what seemed at points like cable-ready commentary. Take District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee who had previously presided over Trump’s election interference case.
Chutkan had been criticized for failing to recuse herself from that case after she made highly controversial statements about Trump from the bench. In a sentencing hearing of a Jan. 6 rioter in 2022, Chutkan said that the rioters “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution.” She added then, “[i]t’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was still under investigation at the time and, when Trump was charged, Chutkan refused to let the case go. She then pursued Trump with a vigor second only to Special Counsel Jack Smith.
In the latest hearing, Chutkan again decided to use the bench to amplify her own views of the pardons and Jan. 6. She proclaimed that the pardons could not change the “tragic truth” and “cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror that the mob left in its wake. And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”
In fairness, judges often express the gravity of offenses at sentencing, and most of us certainly share the strong revulsion over what occurred on Jan. 6. However, these cases are being dismissed after an election whose winner explicitly pledged to close the prosecutions through executive clemency.
The defendant in her courtroom was there to have a required dismissal entered in his case, not to hear Judge Chutkan speaking truth to power. In this case, she is the power. It is the power to rule dispassionately on the specific case before her. It is not the power to hold court on the merits of presidential decisions.
Down the hall, Chutkan’s colleague Judge Beryl Howell, also an Obama appointee, lashed out at Trump’s actions, writing,“[T]his Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement.”
Yet, all of that paled in comparison to what their colleague U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, also an Obama appointee, did with his Jan. 6 cases. He ordered J6 defendants to seek prior approval before going to Capitol Hill or even coming within any of the 69 square miles of the nation’s Capital. Thus, Mehta practically banished Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and seven other defendants. It does not appear that the Trump Justice Department requested such restrictions, but Mehta was able to impose them because those defendants had received commutations rather than pardons. A commutation does not require the dismissal of a case, and courts are generally allowed to set conditions for released defendants.
However, these are new conditions imposed after presidential commutations. More importantly, they could affect the exercise of First Amendment rights from free speech to free association to the right to petition the government. For example, Rhodes and others would have to disclose intended meetings with members of Congress or participation in political events. Rhodes previously asked to speak to the House committee that investigated the riot, but the Democrat-controlled committee refused to allow it. (A Yale law graduate, Rhodes insisted that the hearing be conducted in public, the very condition Hunter Biden made with the support of some of these same members.)
What if Rhodes now wants to meet privately with members to supply his testimony? He would need Mehta to approve it and potentially make such plans public.
In my book, “The Indispensable Right,” I discuss the J6 cases and serious concerns over what a top Justice Department official called the “shock and awe” campaign to make an example of the defendants by throwing the book at them.
Nevertheless, even though I opposed the seditious conspiracy charges on legal grounds, I did not support the pardoning of violent offenders who attacked police officers.
The court system plays a key role in either tamping down or fueling rage in society. The book details how “rage rhetoric” often became state rage during periods of crackdowns on free speech. Over the last two centuries, some judges used their courtrooms to lash out at political opponents, anarchists, unionists or communists.
I was particularly concerned in these cases with sentences that seemed visceral, even gratuitous, in denying free speech rights. In Washington, judges-imposed limits on what political views defendants could read or share. For example, Judge Reggie B. Walton, a Bush appointee who had previously called Trump a “charlatan,” had before him a typical Jan. 6 case — that of Daniel Goodwyn, 35, of Corinth, Texas. Goodwyn pleaded guilty on Jan. 31, 2023, to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building. It is a minor offense that generated little jail time.
However, Walton faulted Goodwyn for appearing on Fox News and spreading “disinformation,” and so he ordered the government to monitor what he was viewing and discussing. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked Walton for that surveillance order, but he doubled down. On remand, the Biden Justice Department insisted that Goodwyn was unrepentant and still viewing “extremist media.”
Walton, therefore, determined that the risk was too great in Goodwyn spreading “false narratives” when we are “on the heels of another election.”
Now, his colleague is similarly ordering that those freed under Trump’s commutations will disclose and seek approval to go to the Capitol to speak with members or other citizens.
Many of us have long viewed the Jan. 6 riot as a desecration of our constitutional process. Few people want to defend Rhodes or either the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. However, the First Amendment was not written to protect popular speech or popular individuals.
The Mehta order should not push President Trump toward converting these commutations into pardons. It should also not prevent us from questioning the court’s authority to regulate the exercise of First Amendment rights.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the latest attack on Elon Musk from the left. There is a mania on the left in calling people with opposing views “Nazis” and referencing the Third Reich. The left has jumped the Nazi shark in this rhetoric as the public tunes out these increasingly hysterical voices.
Here is the column:
One of the least successful efforts of the left and many in the media this election was to paint Republican voters as “Nazis” hellbent on destroying democracy. While once verboten as a political comparison, liberal politicians and pundits have developed something of a Nazi fetish, where every statement and gesture is declared a return of the Third Reich. It seems like each news event presents a Rorschach test where every inkblot looks like a Nazi.
That mania reached absurd, even comedic, levels with the attack on Elon Musk over an awkward gesture during the inauguration celebration. An exuberant Musk told the crowd, “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.” As he gave those words, he placed his right hand on his chest and stretched his arm outward, his palm facing the floor. He then repeated the gesture before putting his hand on his chest again. It was all done in a matter of seconds, but it was enough for the usual mob to erupt in faux outrage.
Pundits insisted that Musk had chosen the moment to come out as a Nazi on national television. The Washington Post breathlessly reported this week how the “Nazi-style salute” had “invigorated fans on the far right.” The usual liberal professors were rolled out to offer a patina of authority to the ridiculous claim.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University, declared, “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”
Mike Stuchbery went on X (the company owned by the man he now suggests is a Nazi reenactor) to declare, “I studied the Nazis at university, taught the history of Nazi Germany on two continents and wrote for major newspapers about Nazi Germany. I am internet famous for fact-checking chuds [gross people] on the history, ideology and policy of Nazi Germany. That was a Nazi salute.”
Well, that settles it.
As the outrage continued, any doubt or dissent was denounced as evidence that you are obviously a Nazi as well. That became a bit embarrassing when the leading Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League, stated the obvious: This was not a Nazi salute but rather an “awkward gesture.”
The core principle of liberal mob tactics is that there can be no divergence, even by a group like the ADL. The way to deal with opposing ideas or writings is by making someone persona non grata. If you do not cancel others, you will be canceled.
So, the ADL was effectively declared soft on Nazis by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): “Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity. People can officially stop listening to you as any sort of reputable source of information now. You work for them. Thank you for making that crystal clear to all.”
We’ve reached a level of absurdity where Jewish advocates are treated like they are virtual Nazi sympathizers.
This is not the first time the Democrats have labeled Trump and his supporters “Nazis.”
It started years ago as Democrats repeated analogies of Trump to Hitler and his followers to brownshirted neo-Nazis. Defeating Trump has been compared to stopping Hitler in 1933, and media personalities like Rachel Maddow went on the air with a hysterical claim that “death squads” were authorized by the Supreme Court.
When Trump held a massive rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden before the election, the media were apoplectic and immediately declared it … you guessed it … akin to a Nazi rally. From the Washington Post to the New York Times, the media formed an affinity group meeting to fret over “echoes of 1939.” In case anyone missed the message, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz emphasized “a direct parallel” with the Nazis.
Over at the Nation, David Zirin treated Madison Square Garden (known for everything from cage fights to dog shows) as an almost Vatican-like space: “With his fascist New York City rally, Donald Trump has befouled what many believe to be a sacred space: Madison Square Garden.”
So Trump is a Nazi. Musk is a Nazi. Half the country are Nazis. The problem is that, if you say everyone is a Nazi, then no one is a Nazi. It loses its meaning.
That includes Ocasio-Cortez, who appears to have joined the ranks of the Reich after critics posted her making a Musk-like gesture during a speech.
There was no torrent of media fretting about how the gesture reflected the extremism of AOC’s questioning need for a Supreme Court, seeking to bar Trump and dozens of Republicans from ballots, or supporting censorship. AOC is a certified Nazi hunter, a license that seems only to be available to figures on the left.
Of course, labeling political opponents as diabolically evil fanatics and seeking to bar candidates from ballots sounds a lot like … well … it sounds familiar.
There is an alternative. We can put the rage rhetoric aside and have honest debates over differences on politics and laws. In other words, we can fight over policy … and leave the Nazis out of it.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the pardoning of the January 6th defendants by President Donald Trump. The scope of the pardon appears broader than some had hoped. What is clear is that any such relief should not extend to violent actors, particularly those who attacked police officers. However, the Justice Department itself may have made the strongest case for presidential pardons.
Here is the column:
On January 20, 2025, the “shock and awe” campaign of the Justice Department came to an end as President Donald Trump pardoned 1,500 January 6th defendants.
Four years ago, the Justice Department set out to send a chilling message to the nation. In an interview with CBS News a year later, Justice Department official Michael Sherwin indicated that they wanted to send a message with the harsh treatment of defendants. Sherwin explained that “our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.’ … We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.”
The awe is gone but the shock remains at the Justice Department. If Sherwin and his colleagues hoped to “Trump proof” the nation, they failed in spectacular fashion. While there was ample basis for criminal charges, the excessive treatment of some of the January 6th defendants undermined the credibility of their prosecutions for many.
That is no easy feat.
Most of us denounced the January 6th riot as a desecration of our constitutional process. Those who engaged in the rioting, and most importantly the violence, needed to be punished. However, what followed left many increasingly uneasy. The Justice Department rounded up hundreds and, even though most were charged with relatively minor crimes of unlawful entry or trespass, the Justice Department opposed the release of many from jail and sought absurdly long sentences in some cases. It also sought restrictions on defendants that raised troubling first amendment concerns.
In my recent book, “Indispensable Right,” I discuss these cases and their troubling elements.
A good example is the handling of the most well-known case of the so-called QAnon Shaman. Bare-chested, wearing an animal headdress, horns, and red-white-and-blue face paint, Jake Angeli Chansley became the iconic image of the riot.
Seeking to make examples of these defendants, the Justice Department took special measures in hammering Chansley. He was held in solitary confinement and denied bail.
Chansley was treated more harshly because of his visibility. It was his costume, not his conduct, that seemed to drive the sentencing. In the hearing, Judge Royce Lamberth noted, “He made himself the image of the riot, didn’t he? For good or bad, he made himself the very image of this whole event.”
Lamberth hit Chansley with a heavy 41-month sentence for “obstructing a federal proceeding.”
However, long withheld footage, showed recently that Chansley (like hundreds of people that day) simply walked into the Capitol past police officers and was then escorted by officers through the Capitol. At one point, two officers not only appear to guide him to the floor but actually try to open locked doors for him. Chansley is shown walking unimpeded through a large number of armed officers with his four-foot flag-draped spear and horned Viking helmet on his way to the Senate floor.
Does that make Chansley’s actions acceptable, let alone commendable? Of course not. He deserved to be arrested and punished. However, what many saw was a troubled individual being made an example for others.
In my book, I discuss how, in history, “rage rhetoric” was allowed to become “state rage.” This is one such case.
Trump ran on the promise to pardon these defendants and secured not just the White House but the popular vote. It was not just the public that rejected the narrative of January 6th as an “insurrection.”
In the recent Supreme Court decision in Fischer v. U.S. to reject hundreds of charges in January 6th cases for the obstruction of legal proceedings, the Court left most cases as simply a mass trespass and unlawful entry.
The shock may be gone for these defendants, but it may only be beginning for the Justice Department and the FBI.
When the campaign of Hillary Clinton secretly funded the infamous Steele Dossier to launch the Russian conspiracy investigation, it was the Justice Department that was not just the willing but eager partner.
The “insurance policy” described by former FBI official Peter Strzok was redeemed in investigations that derailed much of Trump’s first term.
Later, it was the Justice Department again that pursued a no-holds-barred effort to convict Trump before the election.
The Justice Department is the hardest of silos in Washington to reform. Unlike most departments, it is largely homogenous, with thousands of lawyers who share professional and cultural ties. It is a department composed of people who are by their very definition, litigious.
Trump insisted on selecting an Attorney General, nominee Pam Bondi, who has no past ties or identification with the department. For the Justice Department, it must feel like the Visigoths arriving at the gates of Rome . . . only to be let in by the citizens.
According to polling, the public ultimately found the “barbarians” less threatening than those who have insisted that Rome would fall. That must certainly be shocking for many in Washington, but the record of the Justice Department showed how the awe can become awful when officials feel the license of state rage.
Below is my column on the Biden family pardons in Fox.com. President Joe Biden merely confirmed the worst expectations of his critics. The true condemnation rests with those in the media who enabled the Biden influence-peddling operation.
Here is the column:
At 11:45 am, the media felt the final sting of the Biden scandal. It was delivered by President Joe Biden, who shattered any pretense of principle in pardoning family members allegedly implicated in the influence-peddling corruption scandal.
According to an old fable, a scorpion convinced a leery frog to carry him across a river, noting that he could not sting him since they would both drown. Halfway across, the scorpion struck and the frog asked why he would doom them both. The scorpion replied “I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s in my nature.”
For those of us who have written about the corruption of the Biden family for decades, the pardons were crushingly predictable. The President simply couldn’t resist the urge. In a city where corruption is a cottage industry, the Bidens have long been in a league of their own, from nepotism to influence peddling to illicit lobbying. In the influence-peddling scandal, millions were generated from foreign sources in virtual plain view.
There were the luxury hotel rooms, a diamond, a sports car, and massive payments called “loans. In the summer of 2019, one Chinese businessman wired Hunter Biden $250,000 using Joe Biden’s Delaware home as the beneficiary address.”
The sense of absolute impunity came out in shake-down communications. For example, there was the WhatsApp message to a Chinese businessman openly threatening the displeasure of Joe Biden if money was not forked over without delay. In the message, Hunter warned:
“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
That sense of impunity was due to mainstream media forming a protective shell around the family. The media refused to pursue the scandal despite the Hunter Biden laptop and clear evidence of influence peddling.
In 2020, CBS News’s Lesley Stahl literally laughed mockingly at then-President Donald Trump when he raised the Hunter Biden laptop and what it revealed about the Bidens. (Yet Stahl still recently expressed confusion and alarm that people were abandoning legacy media for new media.)
Reporters assured citizens that the laptop was presumptive “Russian disinformation.” Even after the media belatedly acknowledged that it was authentic, MSNBC and Washington Post analysts were still making the claim last year.
After Republicans in the House detailed millions in payments, the media shifted to claiming that there was no real scandal unless it was shown that Joe Biden actually received money directly. It was a ridiculous claim since courts have long treated money going to family members as the same as going directly to a principal as criminal conduct.
The media continued to protect Biden, as evidence showed that Biden had repeatedly lied about not meeting with Hunter’s clients or not having knowledge of his foreign dealings.
As the media narrative continued to collapse, it latched on the promise of Biden that he would never pardon his son – proof that the President was willing to let the criminal justice system run its course. Biden then was shown to be lying about the pardon promise. After he was forced out of the election, Biden signed a pardon for any crimes over a decade committed by his son.
The media gave muttered “harrumphs” and moved on. Many said that it was understandable for a father of a son who struggled with drugs.
Now, in the final minutes of his presidency, Biden pardoned his other allegedly implicated family members, including James Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens, and Francis Biden. James Biden was previously referred for criminal charges for lying under oath to Congress as part of its investigation into the corruption scandal.
The pardons were clearly timed to avoid media scrutiny and questions. While he described the act as one of “conscience,” it was an almost mocking act of corruption.
In a strange way, it passed in Bidenworld as an honest moment. There were no claims of supporting an addicted son or dealing with a pending case. It was done in the final minutes because it was raw and obvious. There is no pretense or apology. Just good old-fashioned corruption Biden-style.
It was as honest a moment as when Biden told a friend that “no one f**ks with a Biden.” There was nothing revealing in this about Biden. He could shrug and say, “It’s in my nature.” The sting instead fell on the media, which trusted Biden not to demean it further with such an unethical and disgraceful final act.
The funny thing is that Biden made it across the river. He boarded his final flight with his family (and himself) protected by the misuse of his presidential authority. However, if he looked out the window, he could see his media allies slipping stunned beneath the waters.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
The release of the first part of Jack Smith’s report at midnight was the special counsel’s version of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision: we had seen it before. Putting aside the public filings where Smith fought to get this information out before the election, there was little new in the report. What the report did not contain is an explanation of how Smith destroyed his own cases against Trump. However, one notable element was Smith’s reliance on a dubious concurrence by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the subject of a prior column on what would be an interpretation that was too clever by half.
Much of the report was vintage Smith in dismissing countervailing precedent and insisting that he could “obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.” He may be right about obtaining a conviction before a D.C. jury and a highly motivated judge against Trump. However, he would not have been able to sustain any conviction — and this report makes that abundantly clear.
Smith repeats the same conclusory evidence, such as citing how Trump said “fight” ten times in his January 6th speech. He minimized the immunity decision by removing some evidence but kept largely the original indictment. However, the treatment of the obstruction claims was the most telling and indicative of Smith, who has repeatedly lost cases due to overextending constitutional and statutory authority.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. United States rejecting the use of obstruction of legal proceedings against January 6th defendants will potentially impact hundreds of cases. For some, it may lead to dismissals or, in the cases with multiple charges, resentencings. One of those cases that will be impacted is the pending prosecution of former president Donald Trump who is facing four charges, including two obstruction counts. It was not clear if Special Counsel Jack Smith would yield to the decision or possibly take the dubious path laid out by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her concurrence.
However, Smith tended to push the law to the breaking point to bag defendants. That was the case when his conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell was unanimously reversed as overextending another law.
As I wrote previously after the decision, “It is doubtful that [Smith] will go quietly into the night after the Fischer decision.” In most cases, a prosecutor would go back and secure a superseding indictment in light of the loss of the obstruction claims. Those claims were central to the narrative of the government under the Trump indictment. However, I wrote that it “is not Smith’s style” to yield to precedent and that he would likely “take a not-so-subtle hint from Jackson in her concurrence.”
Jackson supported the majority in finding that the obstruction provision, Section 1512(c), was enacted after the Enron case to address the destruction of documents and records.
Section 1512(c)(1) prohibits corruptly obstructing an official proceeding by altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a record, document, or other object with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding. However, a second provision under subsection (c)(2) allowed for charges that would “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding. The Court held that the obstruction cases under Section 1512(c)(2) must be tied to impairing the integrity or availability of evidence.
However, in a single justice concurrence, she added a way that Smith and other prosecutors might still be able to shoehorn January 6th into a Section 1512 offense:
“That official proceeding [Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote] plainly used certain records, documents, or objects—including, among others, those relating to the electoral votes themselves. And it might well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding “in ways other than those specified in (c)(1).” Ante, at 8. If so, then Fischer’s prosecution under §1512(c)(2) can, and should, proceed. That issue remains available for the lower courts to determine on remand.”
Once again, no other justice joined Jackson in the concurrence.
Right on cue, Smith revealed that he was going to do precisely what I feared in taking a position supported by a single justice. In his report, Smith wrote:
“Mr. Trump’s and his co-conspirators’ obstruction involved replacing valid elector certificates from the contested states with false ones they had manufactured-the Office anticipated the possibility of such a result in Fischer and confirmed that the evidence would prove Mr. Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt even under a narrow interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2).”
Just saying that a proceeding involves “certain records” is transparently artificial and forced. Even the submission of an alternative slate of electors is not the destruction of electors certified by the secretaries of state.
Those challenges under the same loose theory could have been viewed as attempting to negate or destroy certifications from the states. It would have likely, in my view, result in another reversal. However, Smith is always about securing convictions more than sustaining appeals. That is why he filed the second case in D.C., where he was given the best possible judge for the prosecution, a judge viewed by many as predisposed against Trump.
In a sentencing hearing of a Jan. 6 rioter in 2022, Chutkan had said that the rioters “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution.” She added then, “[i]t’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was then brought to her for trial by Smith.
So Smith was going to proceed on the theory of a single justice with the help of a favorable jury and a motivated judge. Little has changed with Smith since his unanimous reversal in the McDonnell case, which seems much of the reason that he was appointed.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the statement by Acting Justice Juan Merchan in the sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump. Merchan’s effort to justify the handing of the case sounded like the second defense argument made in the hearing. It likely changed few minds in the court of public opinion.
Here is the column:
This week, the sentencing of President-Elect Donald Trump saw one of the most impassioned defense arguments given at such a hearing in years . . . from the judge himself. Acting Justice Juan Merchan admitted that the case was “unique and remarkable” but insisted that “once the courtroom doors were closed, the trial itself was no more special, unique, and extraordinary than the other 32 cases in this courthouse.”
If so, that is a chilling indictment of the entire New York court system. Merchan allowed a dead misdemeanor to be resuscitated by allowing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to effectively prosecute declined federal offenses. He allowed a jury to convict Trump without any agreement, let alone unanimity, on what actually occurred in the case. Merchan ruled that the jury did not have to agree on why Trump committed an alleged offense in describing settlement costs as legal costs. Neither the defendant nor the public will ever know what the jury ultimately found in its verdict.
I once described this case as a legal Frankenstein: “It is the ultimate gravedigger charge, where Bragg unearthed a case from 2016 and, through a series of novel steps, is seeking to bring it back to life…Bragg is combining parts from both state and federal codes.”
Even liberal legal experts have denounced the case and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) recently called it total “b—s–t.”
Now, Merchan seemed to assure this Frankenstein case that he was just like any other creature of the court. It did not matter that he was stitched together from dead cases and zapped into life through lawfare.
Merchan knows that there is a fair chance this monstrosity will finally die on appeal, and he was making the case for his own conduct. The verdict, however, is likely to last far longer than the Trump verdict. It is a judgment against not just Merchan but the New York legal system, which allowed itself to be weaponized against political opponents.
In the Mary Shelley novel, Frankenstein says “I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel.”
Trump can now appeal the case as a whole. Prior appeals in the New York court system were unsuccessful, and hopes are low that the system will redeem itself. However, Trump can eventually escape the vortex of the New York court system in search of jurists willing to see beyond the rage and bring reason to this case.
Notably, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass cited Chief Justice John Roberts in his argument before Merchan, noting that Roberts recently chastised those who attack the courts. (Roberts just the night before joined liberal justices and Justice Amy Coney Barrett in refusing to stay the sentencing). Steinglass portrayed Trump as an existential threat to the rule of law.
Roberts, however, is everything that Merchan is not. You can disagree with him, but he has repeatedly ruled against his own preferred outcomes in cases, including rulings against President Trump and his campaign and Administration. For his part, Trump declined to criticize the court and declared that “This is a long way from finished and I respect the court’s opinion.”
Indeed it is. Merchan’s monster will now go on the road and work its way back to the Supreme Court. Outside of New York this freak attraction will likely be viewed as less thrilling than chilling.
The election had the feel of the townspeople coming to the castle in the movie. In this case, however, the townspeople were right about what they saw in the making of a creature that threatened their very existence. Lawfare is that monster. It threatens us all, even those who hate Trump and his supporters. Once released, it spreads panic among the public which can no longer rely on the guarantees of blind and fair justice. That includes businesses who view this case and the equally absurd civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James as creating a dangerous and even lawless environment. Many are saying “but for the grace of God go I” in a system that allows for selective prosecution.
In the sentencing proceeding, Merchan was downplaying his hand in creating this Frankenstein. However, the case is the fallen angel of the legal system. While heralded in court by Bragg’s office as the triumph of legal process, it is in fact the rawest and most grotesque form of lawfare. Many will be blamed as the creators of this monster but few will escape that blame, including Merchan himself.
Below is my column in The Hill on the one thing that the forthcoming report of Special Counsel Jack Smith will not address: how he destroyed his own case against Donald Trump. Smith will be something of a tragic figure for future special counsels. The only thing missing is a shirt reading, “I spent over two years and $50 million dollars and all I got was this lousy t-shirt (and a redacted report).”
Here is the column:
The expected release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report will occur as early as this weekend, albeit without those sections dealing with the Florida documents case. (Other defendants are still facing prosecution in that case.) However, the most glaring omission will be arguably an explanation of how Smith lost this war without firing a single shot in a trial.
After more than two years, two separate cases and countless appeals (not to mention more than $50 million spent), Smith left without presenting a single witness, let alone charge, at trial. It is an example of how a general can have the largest army and unlimited resources and yet defeat himself with a series of miscalculations.
History probably won’t be kind to Smith, whose record bespeaks a “parade general” — a prosecutor who offered more pretense than progress in the prosecution of an American president.
Indeed, this report will be one of Smith’s last chances to display a case that notably never got close to an actual trial. One-sided and unfiltered, it will have all of the thrill of a Sousa march of a regiment in full dress. We know because we have seen much of this before. At every juncture, Smith has taken his case out on parade in the court of public opinion.
The Smith report will reportedly concern only the Washington case alleging crimes related to Jan. 6 and the 2020 election — a case that was always a bridge too far for Smith.
When first appointed, Smith had a straightforward and relatively easy case to make against Trump over his removal and retention of presidential materials. The case was not without controversy. Some of us questioned the selective nature of the prosecution given past violations by other presidents, particularly as shown by the violations of President Biden going back decades found by another special counsel.
However, the case originally focused on the conspiracy and false statements during the federal investigation into the documents at Mar-a-Lago. Those are well-established crimes that Smith could have brought to trial quickly with a solid shot for conviction.
But Smith’s undoing has always been his appetite. That was evident when he was unanimously reversed by the Supreme Court in his case against former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R).
In Florida, Smith was in signature form. He took a simple case and loaded it up with press-grabbing charges regarding the retention of classified material. In so doing, he slowed the case to a crawl. As a defense lawyer who has handled classified documents cases, I said at the outset that I did not believe he could get this case to a jury before the 2024 election, and that after that election, Smith might not have a case to present. Smith had outmaneuvered himself.
Then came the Washington filing, the subject of this forthcoming report. It was another vintage Smith moment. Smith played to the public in a case that pushed both the Constitution and statutoryprovisions beyond the breaking point. He simply could not resist, and he was only encouraged after the assignment of Judge Tanya Chutkan, a judge viewed by many as predisposed against Trump.
In a sentencing hearing of a Jan. 6 rioter in 2022, Chutkan had said that the rioters “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution.” She added then, “[i]t’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was then brought to her for trial by Smith.
The D.C. case was doomed from the outset by both a prosecutor and judge who, in their zeal to bag Trump, yielded to every temptation. As time ticked away, Smith became almost apoplectic in demanding an expedited path to trial, including cutting short appeals. After refusing to recuse herself, Chutkan seemed to indulge Smith at every turn. But the Supreme Court failed to agree that speed should trump substance in such reviews.
With both cases slipping out of his grasp, Smith then threw a final Hail Mary. He asked Chutkan to let him file what was basically a 165-page summary of this report against Trump before the election. There was no apparent reason for the public release of the filing, except to influence the election — a motivation long barred by Justice Department rules. Chutkan, of course, allowed it anyway, despite admitting that the request was “procedurally irregular.” It did not work. Although the press and pundits eagerly repeated the allegations in the filing, the public had long ago reached its own conclusion and rendered its own verdict in November.
In my view, Smith’s D.C. case would never have been upheld, even if he had made it to a favorable jury in front of a motivated judge. As established by the court in Trump v. United States,Smith could not rely on much of his complaint due to violating constitutionally protected areas.
Smith responded to the immunity decision again in typical Smith fashion, largely keeping the same claims with minimal changes. His new indictment was to indictments what shrinkflation is to consumer products — the same package with less content. As in the McDonnell case, Smith was going for conviction at all costs, despite a high likelihood of the case eventually being overturned.
Then the public effectively put an end to both cases by electing Trump.
The Smith investigation should be a case study for future prosecutors in what not to do. An abundance of appetite and arrogance can prove as deadly as a paucity of evidence and authority.
Ironically, Smith will not be the only special counsel offering such a cautionary tale. The report of Special Counsel David Weiss into the Hunter Biden controversy will also be released soon. Weiss was widely denounced for allowing major crimes to lapse against Hunter Biden and offering an embarrassing sweetheart plea deal that collapsed in open court. Notably, Weiss succeeded by minimizing his charges (for the wrong reason). In that way, Weiss has one claim that Smith does not: He made it to court and secured a conviction. Indeed, he was about to prosecute a second case when President Biden pardoned his son.
Weiss’s report will likely only increase questions over his failure to pursue Hunter more aggressively. For Smith, the question is whether he was too aggressive, to the detriment of his own prosecution.
Prosecutions are not the sole measure of success for a special prosecutor. At times, the report itself can be of equal, if not greater, importance to the public.
This is not one of those cases.
The public will be given Smith’s detailed account of a case that was never brought and would likely never have held up. At more than $50 million, it is arguably the biggest flop since “The Adventures of Pluto Nash.“The difference is that it did not take more than two years to watch Eddie Murphy’s film disaster, and the actor did not then write up a report on how good the movie really was.
Below is my column at Fox.com on the sentencing of President-Elect Donald Trump. The conviction should be overturned on appeal. However, the most lasting judgment will be against the New York court system itself in allowing this travesty of justice to occur.
Here is the column:
With the sentencing of Donald Trump Friday, the final verdict on the New York criminal trial of the president-elect is in. The verdict is not the one that led to no jail or probation for the incoming president. Acting Justice Juan Merchan has brought down the gavel on the New York legal system as a whole.
Once considered the premier legal system in the country, figures like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Justices Arthur F. Engoron and Juan Merchan have caused the system to be weaponized for political purposes. Trump will walk away from this trial and into the White House in less than two weeks, but the New York system will walk into infamy after this day.
The case has long been denounced by objective legal observers, including intense Trump critics, as a legal absurdity. Even CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig denounced the case as legally flawed and unprecedented while Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., simply called it total “b—s–t.”
It is a case based on a non-crime. Bragg took a long-dead misdemeanor and zapped it back into life with a novel and unfounded theory. By using federal violations that were never charged, let alone tried, Bragg turned a misdemeanor into dozens of felonies and essentially tried Trump for federal offenses.
Merchan not only allowed those charges to be brought to trial but then added layers of reversible errors in the effort to bag Trump at any cost. For that, he was lionized by the liberal media and many New Yorkers. However, Trump still managed to pull in 3.6 million New York votes, or 42.7%, in the 2024 election. After all of the lawfare and every advantage (including a heavily biased media and a larger war chest), Vice President Kamala Harris lost hundreds of thousands of votes in 2024 in comparison to Joe Biden just four years earlier.
Many polls showed that the public saw the Manhattan criminal case for what it was: raw lawfare targeting a leading political opponent. The election itself felt like the largest verdict in history as citizens rejected the political, legal, and media establishments in one of our nation’s most historic elections.
The New York court system will now have a chance to redeem itself, but few are holding their breath. The appellate court has still not ruled on an appeal of Attorney General Lettia James’s equally absurd civil lawsuit against Trump. Despite judges expressing skepticism over Engoron’s use of a law to impose a grotesque $455 million in fines and interest, we are still waiting for a decision.
Most are waiting for this criminal case to escape the vortex of the New York court system. With this appeal, this peddler’s wagon of reversible errors will finally pull up in front of the Supreme Court itself.
With its ruling on Thursday night, the setting for a decision could not be better for Trump. The Supreme Court has again demonstrated that it has shown restraint and independence in these cases. In response to the ruling, Trump struck the perfect note Thursday night and declined to criticize the Court, stating that “This is a long way from finished and I respect the court’s opinion.”
The ultimate penalty on Friday morning from Judge Merchan reflects the lack of seriousness in the case. It was more inflated than the Goodyear blimp, pumped up by hot rage and rhetoric. The sentence was the pinprick that showed the massive void within this case.
The verdict is in. The New York legal system has rendered it against itself.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
Below is my column in Fox.com on the potentially historic change in policy at Meta to restore free speech protections. As one of the longest and loudest critics of the company over its censorship history, it is admittedly hard to trust. However, an alliance of Mark Zuckerberg with Elon Musk could prove the most important development for free speech
Here is the column:
“Faithful friends are hard to find.” For the free speech community, those words from Shakespeare have long been tragically true. Indeed, until Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X), we were losing ground around the world to an unprecedented anti-free speech coalition of government, corporate, media, and academic interests. Now, Musk may have added a major new ally that could help turn the tide for free speech: Mark Zuckerberg.
In a new video, Meta’s CEO announced that the company would adopt X standards and restore free speech protections across Facebook, Instagram, and Meta platforms. Meta will also end its third-party fact-checking program, introduce a ‘community notes’ system, and focus on removing criminal and fraudulent material—the very guidelines proposed by some of us in prior years.
For the free speech community, it was like the United States entering World War II to support Great Britain. Where Musk stopped the progress of the global anti-free speech movement, Zuckerberg could actually help us regain ground around the world.
As one of Zuckerberg’s most vocal critics over free speech, it is admittedly hard to trust. We all love redemptive sinners, but it would be more impressive if the redemption preceded the apprehension.
So allow me a brief cathartic moment…
In the last few years, a mix of House investigations and litigation has forced more of the censorship system under the Biden Administration into public view. That is expected to draw even greater attention with the continued discovery in Missouri v. Biden, showing years of false statements about the extent of this government-corporate alliance across social media platforms.
In my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I wrote about Zuckerberg and Meta’s record on censorship, including their failure (until recently) to release the Facebook files.
Meta resisted efforts to uncover this evidence for years, even after Musk released the Twitter Files and revealed a censorship system described by one court as perfectly “Orwellian.”
While Zuckerberg portrayed Meta as an unwilling partner in this censorship system in his video, he and the company ignored many years of objections from many of us regarding the critical role the company plays in targeting and censoring opposing viewpoints. Facebook even ran a creepy ad campaign to try to convince young people to embrace what they call “content modification” as part of their evolution with technology. It did not work.
When the anti-free speech movement targeted Musk, Zuckerberg did nothing for years. Fearing that other companies might restore free speech protections, members of Congress, including now Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), sent a chilling letter to Facebook stating that it should not even consider such a move or risk becoming “part of our ongoing oversight efforts.”
In a November 2020 Senate hearing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), D-Conn., warned Zuckerberg and other CEOs that he and his Senate colleagues would not tolerate any “backsliding or retrenching” by “failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.”
While Musk defied those threats, the pressure seemed to work with Zuckerberg. It was not until the Republicans won both houses and the White House that Zuckerberg and Meta decided that free speech was worth fighting for.
In his exclusive interview with Fox News, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, admitted that the Trump election changed the situation for Meta: “We have a new administration coming in that is far from pressuring companies to censor and [is more] a huge supporter of free expression.”
It is a chilling statement if one thinks of what might have happened if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, arguably the most anti-free speech ticket in history, had won. The suggestion is that the new spring at Meta would have turned into a frozen tundra for free speech.
Around the world, free speech is in a free fall. Speech crimes and censorship have become the norm in the West. A new industry of “disinformation” experts has commoditized censorship, making millions in the targeting and silencing of others. An anti-free speech culture has taken root in government, higher education, and the media.
We will either hold the line now or we will lose this indispensable right for future generations. Zuckerberg could make this a truly transformative moment but it will take more than a passing meta-culpa.
We need Zuckerberg now more than ever. So, with that off my chest, I can get to what I have longed to say: Mr. Zuckerberg, welcome to the fight.
Below is my column in the Hill on the resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his anti-free speech legacy. The collapse of free speech in Canada is a cautionary tale for Americans. It shows how Trudeau and the Liberal Party used faux rhetoric of tolerance and inclusion to justify intolerance and exclusion.
Here is the column:
With Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he will step down as prime minister, Canada is now looking for a new leader after a decade under his policies. The question is whether anyone will look for the remnants of Canadian free speech in the wreckage of the Trudeau government.
Canada has long been a country caught between two influences: the United Kingdom and the United States. It has shared DNA with both nations. Unfortunately, it has largely followed the British approach in treating free speech more like a privilege than a right. That dubious tradition was magnified over the last decade by a wholesale attack on free speech deemed hostile, insulting or triggering for different groups. In many ways, Canada has been a cautionary tale for many in the U.S., as the same voices of censorship and criminalization grow on our campuses and in Congress.
Indeed, BlueSky, a social media site that offers a safe space for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views, has apparently embraced Canadian-style standards for censorship as part of its pitch for those with viewpoint intolerance.
For over a decade, Trudeau has been the cheerful face of modern censorship. While exuding tolerance and inclusivity, he hammered critics with draconian measures and perfectly Orwellian soundbites. In the name of tolerance, he proudly proclaimed intolerance for opposing views.
Trudeau shows how speech codes and virtue signaling are now chic on the left. In a town hall event, Trudeau chastised a woman for asking a question that used the term “mankind” and instructed her, “We like to say ‘peoplekind’ … because it’s more inclusive.” (He later claimed he was joking. If so, many of his policies have the same punchline and are no joking matter.)
In many ways, Trudeau’s true colors emerged in his crackdown on the trucker protests opposing COVID-19 mandates in 2022, a campaign widely supported by an enabling media. Trudeau invoked the 1988 Emergencies Act for the first time to freeze bank accounts of truckers and contributions by other Canadian citizens, powers long condemned by civil liberties groups in Canada.
The anti-free speech apple did not fall far from the tree. It was Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, who as prime minister used the predecessor to the act for the first time in peacetime to suspend civil liberties.
Trudeau was widely criticized for his anti-free speech policies, including his move to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act to criminalize any “communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”
It was used to prevent “social media platforms [from being] used to threaten, intimidate, bully and harass people, or used to promote racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, misogynistic and homophobic views that target communities, put people’s safety at risk and undermine Canada’s social cohesion or democracy.”
Under Trudeau, human rights commissions became virtual speech commissars in Canada. A conservative webmaster was prosecuted for allowing third parties to leave insulting comments about gay people and minorities on the site. Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley insisted that “the minimal harm caused … to freedom of expression is far outweighed by the benefit it provides to vulnerable groups and to the promotion of equality.” Even a comedian was prosecuted for insulting jokes involving lesbians.
Recently, a Canadian mayor and a town were prosecuted for not hoisting an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag” in celebration of Pride Month — even though they did not have a flagpole.
Despite crushing the trucker protests, the Canadian parliament extended Trudeau’s emergency powers to allow him to continue to harass and threaten those on the right. Despite broad opposition, the Liberal Party, the NDP and other allies were able to muster 181 votes to keep authoritarian powers alive in Canada. (The Canadian courts later, belatedly, declared the Trudeau powers unconstitutional).
Many of the same legislators would later push to increase the penalties for certain speech crimes to life imprisonment. One of the most tragically ironic moments for Canada came last year, when Trudeau’s government blocked the citizenship of Russian dissident Maria Kartasheva because she has a conviction in Russia. She had been tried in absentia by a judge sanctioned by Canada for her exercise of free speech in Russia in condemning the Ukrainian war. The Canadian government informed Kartasheva that her conviction in Russia aligns with a Criminal Code offense relating to false information in Canada.
Think about that. Canada was concerned because she violated anti-free speech laws that are similar to its own. The Russians convicted her of disseminating “deliberately false information,” and Canada convicts’ people under laws like Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada for efforts “to convey, cause, or procure to be conveyed false information with the intent to alarm or injure anyone.”
That is why some of us spit out our soup in 2022 when Trudeau’s government condemned Cuba for its own crackdown on protesters, claiming that “Canada strongly advocates for freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly free from intimidation.” Trudeau also condemned China for cracking down on protests over COVID-19, the very subject of his own crackdown on the truckers.
Yet Trudeau has been a darling of the Canadian and American press despite a disapproval rate of around 68 percent among Canadian citizens. The media clearly approves of his position that “freedom of expression is not without limits” when others seek “to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet.”
So the question is: Now that Trudeau is heading out, where do Canadians go to get their free speech back?
Below is my column in The Hill on the rising rage of the holiday on the left as we approach the second Trump inauguration. From looking forward to harassment at restaurants to the purchase of Antifa-themed Christmas gifts, some appear to be planning for a hate-fest in the New Year.
Here is the column:
“May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.”
Those words, from Disney’s new Snow White actress Rachel Zegler, came shortly after half of the country, roughly 77 million Americans, voted for Donald Trump.
Only a few weeks ago, Kamala Harris and her supporters were rallying the country to choose “love over hate.” Now, the “joy” is gone. Tis the season of the liberal hate-fest.
As Washington prepares for the inauguration, we are seeing a return to rage.
During the first Trump administration, liberal servers and restaurant owners pledged not to serve Trump officials. Now, the Washingtonian is reporting on the planned resumption of the harassment of those serving in the Trump administration.
Zac Hoffman, manager at the National Democratic Club and “D.C. restaurant veteran,” told the magazine that abusing conservatives was only natural and understandable: “You expect the masses to just ignore RFK eating at Le Diplomate on a Sunday morning after a few mimosas and not to throw a drink in his face?”
One bartender stated that Trump people may “theoretically [have] the power to take away your rights, but I have the power to make you wait 20 minutes to get your entrée.”
Suzannah Van Rooy, a server and manager at Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill, declared that she would not serve some Trump officials. “It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate Republicans,’” she said. “It’s that this person has moral convictions that are strongly opposed to mine, and I don’t feel comfortable serving them.”
This campaign of hate is all too familiar to conservatives. Many remember when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family were kicked out of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. As others were denied service or chased from restaurants, Democratic members like Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, supported such harassment.
For those restaurants not willing to follow the Red Hen model, the response was equally unhinged. Mariya Rusciano runs a D.C. pizza restaurant. She posted congratulations to Trump on X after the election to encourage everyone to come together as a nation. The response from Democrats was furious, filled with pledges to boycott the restaurant and force it out of business.
It is not just service and civility that are scarce in Washington. Even while accusing Trump of putting his political and personal interests ahead of the nation, Biden is now reportedly moving to veto a bipartisan bill to relieve pressure on our overwhelmed court system.
The Judges Act, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, would add 66 new judgeships to an over-worked court system. The White House supported the bill right up until Trump won the election. While some Democrats are still trying to get the White House to change its mind, liberal groups are applauding the expected veto “to prevent President Trump from having more vacancies.”
If Biden carries out his threat, it will be not only gratuitous but illogical. The bill deliberately staggers the addition of judges over the next decade so that presidents of both parties will presumably be able to appoint them. Moreover, the Senate is still closely divided, and “blue-slipping” (whereby senators can hold up some nominations) remains in effect.
More importantly, the reason for this bipartisan effort is due to a dire need for our courts. Judges are drowning in dockets with rising caseloads. In 2004, the number of cases in district court pending for more than three years was 18,280. This year, there are 81,617. If justice delayed is justice denied, our court system is becoming a tar pit of injustice, with litigants left without verdicts or relief for years.
The word of the intended veto stripped away any pretense of the White House putting the public interest before politics. A veto would put rage before reason. In my recent book, I discussed how addictive rage is. People do not like to admit it, but they like being angry. Sometimes, people can choose madness as a release from reality. It offers a righteous license to slip from the bounds of civility and decency. It allows people to harass Republicans in restaurants or to scream profanities outside of their homes.
It allows a president to say that he might block judgeships for a struggling court system, just because he does not want his successor to make any of the appointments. It is the reason 41 percent of adults under 30 believe that killing others, like healthcare executives, is justified, according to an Emerson College poll.
We cannot seem to shake this rage addiction even after an election or during a holiday committed to peace and understanding. One liberal site, Crooked Media, is actually selling holiday items featuring the violent extremist group Antifa — one of the most anti-free speech groups in history, which routinely attacks journalists, speakers, and conservative demonstrators. Created by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor, the Crooked Media site is selling a line of Antifa items for liberals, including Antifa onesies for infants and “Antifa Dad” shirts to seemingly celebrate political violence.
It seems the joy, bipartisanship, and civility have all expired like last year’s eggnog. Even Disney’s new Snow White seems to have taken the cue from the Evil Queen and treated this election as “a blast of wind to fan my hate.”
Below is my column in the New York Post on the news reports that President Joe Biden is seriously considering preemptive pardons for political allies. In granting what I have called “White Knight pardons,” Biden would achieve more of a political than legal purpose. Democrats are worried about the collapsing narrative that President-elect Donald Trump will destroy democracy, end future elections, and conduct sweeping arrests of everyone from journalists to homosexuals. That narrative, of course, ignores that we have a constitutional system of overlapping protections that has blocked such abuses for over two centuries. Ironically, preemptive pardons would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses.
Here is the column:
There are growing indications that President Joe Biden is about to fundamentally change the use of presidential pardons by granting “prospective” or “preemptive” pardons to political allies. Despite repeated denials of President-elect Donald Trump that he is seeking retaliation against opponents and his statements that he wants “success [to be] my revenge,” Democratic politicians and pundits have called for up to thousands of such pardons.
While there is little threat of any viable prosecution of figures like the members of the January 6th Committee, the use of “White Knight pardons” offers obvious political benefits. After many liberals predicted the imminent collapse of democracy and that opponents would be rounded up in mass by the Trump Administration, they are now contemplating the nightmare that democracy might survive and that there will be no mass arrests.
The next best thing to a convenient collapse of democracy is a claim that Biden’s series of preemptive pardons averted it. It is enough to preserve the narrative in the face of a stable constitutional system . Indeed, Biden’s pardon list has replaced the usual Inauguration Ball lists as the “must-have” item this year. Pardon envy is sweeping over the Beltway as politicians and pundits push to be included on the list of presumptive Trump enemies.
The political stunt will come at a cost. Preemptive pardons could become the norm as presidents pardon whole categories of allies and even themselves to foreclose federal prosecutions. It can quickly become the norm in what I recently wrote about as our “age of rage.”
It will give presidents cover to wipe away any threat of prosecution for friends, donors, and associates. This can include self-pardons issued as implied condemnations of their political opponents. It could easily become the final act of every president to pardon himself and all of the members of his Administration. We would then have an effective immunity rule for outgoing parties in American politics.
Ironically, there is even less need for such preemptive pardons after the Supreme Court recognized that presidents are immune for many decisions made during their presidencies. Likewise, members have robust constitutional protections for their work under Article I, as do journalists and pundits under the Constitution’s First Amendment.
We have gone over two centuries without such blanket immunity. In my book The Indispensable Right, I discuss our periods of violent political strife and widespread arrests. Thomas Jefferson referred to John Adams’s Federalist government as “the reign of the witches.” Yet even presidents in those poisonous times did not do what Joe Biden is now contemplating.
Moreover, presidential pardons have a checkered history, including presidents pardoning family members or political donors. Bill Clinton did both. Not surprisingly, Clinton last week attempted to add his own wife’s name to the sought-after Biden pardon list. He added, however, “I don’t think I should be giving public advice on the pardon power…It’s a very personal thing.”
That is precisely the point. The power was not created to be used for “very personal things,” like pardoning your half-brother and a fugitive Democratic donor on your last day in office. Yet, despite that history, no president has seen fit to go as far as where Biden appears to be heading.
We have a constitutional system that allows for overlapping protections of individuals from abusive prosecutions and convictions. It does not always work as fast as we would want, but it has sustained the oldest and most stable constitutional system in history. These figures would prefer to fundamentally change the use of the pardon power to maintain an apocalyptic narrative that was clearly rejected by the public in this election. If you cannot prove the existence of the widely touted Trump enemies list, a Biden pardon list is the next best thing.
After years of lying to the American people about the influence-peddling scandal and promising not to consider a pardon for his son, Biden would end his legacy with the ultimate dishonesty: converting pardons into virtual party favors.
In doing so, he has ironically lowered the standard and expectations for his successors. Joe Biden has become the president that Richard Nixon only imagined. He would establish with utter clarity that this power is not presidential, but personal and political . . . and many in the Beltway are waiting to give him a standing ovation.
Below is my column on Fox.com on the settlement of ABC News of the defamation case brought by President-elect Donald Trump. The settlement has enflamed many on the left as well as reportedly some at ABC News. However, ABC likely saw this as a no-win situation as it faced potentially embarrassing depositions.
Added by WhatDidYouSay.org
Here is the column:
The late Richard J. Daley famously declared that “we as Democrats have no apologies to make to anyone.”
That doctrine seems still to be alive and well with many in the party when it comes to President-elect Donald Trump. After ABC News and its anchor George Stephanopoulos apologized to Trump this week to settle a defamation lawsuit, many Democrats were apoplectic.
Marc Elias, the controversial lawyer involved in the funding of the infamous Steele dossier by the Clinton campaign, denounced ABC News for bending a knee to Trump. He then trolled for contributions for his own organization as “unapologetically pro-democracy.”
Of course, ABC was not apologizing for advancing democracy but for alleged defamation. The network and the anchor expressed “regret” for stating that Trump was found “liable for rape” in a New York civil case. (The jury found that Trump had sexually abused and defamed E. J. Carroll). While Trump was never convicted of rape, Stephanopoulos repeated the claim ten times in his interview with Re. Nancy Mace, (R., S.C.).
What made the settlement interesting is that ABC was previously relying on the statements of the judge in the New York case, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who declared that the charge of rape was “substantially true…as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
Stephanopoulos played up his defiance of Trump with CBS’s late-night host Stephen Colbert. To the delight of Colbert, who regularly attacked Trump on his show and openly supported both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Stephanopoulos proclaimed that he wouldn’t be “cowed out of doing my job because of a threat.” He added, “Trump sued me because I used the word ‘rape,’ even though a judge said that’s in fact what did happen. We filed a motion to dismiss.”
So what happened?
Well, two things and both are related to the timing of the settlement.
First, the settlement came just before ABC and Stephanopoulos were to be called for depositions, as ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisette M. Reid. That discovery was likely to prove more embarrassing for the network than it would Trump and could have revealed internal messages on the controversy.
The danger is on full display in another courtroom where CNN has been losing critical motions in a defamation case where punitive damages could result. Anchor Jake Tapper and CNN are being sued by Navy veteran Zachary Young after falsely suggesting that he and his organization were exploiting desperate Afghan refugees. Discovery uncovered malicious and unprofessional emails from producers promising to “nail” Young and making the segment his “funeral.” Disney was not eager to put its matinee personality, Stephanopoulos, through a similar meat grinder.
Second, the settlement occurred after an election in which Trump won the trifecta of the White House, Congress, and the popular vote.
Like most media, ABC was known for its unrelenting attacks on Trump and favorable coverage toward his opponents. The network’s iconic show, The View, has become an unhinged, partisan rave session against Trump, Republicans, and the majority of American voters. The show’s hosts now regularly read retractions or corrections to blunt allegedly defamatory screeds from its hosts. It has gotten to the point that the ABC General Counsel may soon need a chair at the table.
Disney is trying to adopt a more neutral stance after years of opposition for its stances on political issues and accusations of ultra-woke products. It is still struggling to appeal to over half of the country, including the most recent controversy involving the star of its soon-to-be-released remake of Snow White.
After the election, actress Rachel Zegler declared herself “speechless” over the results. That would have been a welcomed state for Disney, but the actress then found her voice in the most polarizing way, publicly praying “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.” Zegler was clearly miscast in the film. It was the evil Queen that was supposed to harken “a blast of wind to fan my hate.”
On top of these controversies, ABC News was attacked by many over its handling of the Trump debate with Vice President Kamala Harris and it’sbiased “fact-checking.” With networks like MSNBC and CNN in a ratings and revenue free fall after the election, Disney clearly wants to start fresh with the new administration. Both are facing possible sales at potentially bargain basement prices. The media echo chamber against Trump failed spectacularly in this election. With record levels of distrust of mainstream or legacy media, the public has increasingly shifted to new media.
In the meantime, Trump has been running the table on lawfare with the dismissal of the two federal cases and a victory on presidential immunity in the Supreme Court. The Georgia prosecution is falling apart over the conduct of the prosecutors rather than that of the defendant. The New York civil case faced a highly skeptical court over the grotesque award against Trump and his corporation. Even Democratic politicians like Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) now feel comfortable admitting publicly that the New York hush money prosecution was “bullsh*t.”
For many politicians and pundits, the election seemed to flip the magnetic poles of the country. We now have ABC News giving millions to the Trump Presidential Library as democratic donors move toward a boycott of the Biden President Library.
With networks like MSNBC and CNN struggling for their very existence, ABC is intent on having a chair when the music stops. While the ABC settlement may not be an admission of guilt, it is a recognition of the reality after this historic election.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the news reports that outgoing Rep. Susan Wild (D. Pa.) was the person who violated the rules (and oath) of the House Ethics Committee and leaked information to the media this month. The information concerned the investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.). Wild embodies the collapsing ethical foundation of the Democratic Party as members struggle to justify the Biden pardon.
Here is the slightly expanded column:
“You must be wary of those seeking to use their influence and their expertise to wrongful ends.” Those words were spoken at the George Washington Law School commencement ceremony two years ago by the recently defeated Rep. Susan Wild (D., Pa.).
This week, the words took on a new meaning after Wild was accused of leaking information from the House Ethics Committee. Wild embodies a party that is in an ethical and political free fall this month. If news reports are accurate, Wild appears to have given our students a curious ethical lesson in how not to be a lawyer or legislator.
Wild was fighting to release the report of the investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.). When Gaetz decided to withdraw from Congress, the report was not released. That is when details from the committee were leaked to the media, and the press reported that “two sources said Wild ultimately acknowledged to the panel that she had leaked information.”
Keep in mind that this is the House Ethics Committee, and she is a member. She is also a member of Congress who took an oath as part of the panel’s rules that “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will not disclose, to any person or entity outside the Committee on Ethics, any information received in the course of my service with the Committee, except as authorized by the Committee or in accordance with its rules.”
Wild herself has not publicly confirmed or denied the alleged leaking of the information. If the reports are true, Wild knowingly violated an oath that she took not to release information from the Ethics Committee because she was unhappy with losing votes on the release of information.
Her office seems to have shrugged off media inquiries. As in the past controversy, Wild has avoided public comment on the report that she was the leaker.
This controversy speaks to more than one unethical former representative. This month, we have seen Democrats line up to support one of the most unethical and abusive uses of presidential pardon power in history. President Biden not only pardoned his son but pardoned him for any crimes over a decade, including some that many felt implicated President Biden himself.
The President issued the pardon after repeatedly lying to the public when he was a candidate that he would never do so. In the previous election, Biden lied to the public about not having met Hunter Biden’s clients or having knowledge of his dealings in the influence-peddling scandal.
Biden’s lack of ethics surprised no one. However, even today, the support that he received from Democratic leaders over the pardon has been shocking. Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate majority whip, even called it a “labor of love.” Indeed, much of the corruption in Washington is a labor of love, from nepotism to influence peddling to corrupt pardons. Indeed, faced with overwhelming opposition of the public to the Biden pardon, Democratic members look like the comical choreography of “Prisoners of Love” from the movie The Producers. (“Oh, you can lock us up and lose the key; But hearts in love are always free!”).
The distorted view of ethics in the Democratic Party was vividly on display during an embarrassing moment recently at the White House when Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that a poll showed “64% of the American people agree with the pardon — 64% of the American people. So, we get a sense of where the American people are on this.” That poll actually showed the majority of Americans opposed the pardon. Yet, it was 64 percent of Democrats who favored a president giving his own son a pardon. It is all about the ends rather than the means in today’s politics of rage.
The 2022 words of Wild were particularly poignant because they were used as part of a false attack made by Wild at my own school. In a speech to the law students on living an ethical life as a lawyer, Wild accused me of testifying falsely in the Trump impeachment that only criminal acts are impeachable after saying the opposite in my testimony in the Clinton impeachment. The only problem is that Wild’s statement was demonstrably and undeniably false. I testified in both the Clinton and Trump impeachments that an impeachable offense need not be an actual crime. Ironically, Wild’s own Democratic colleagues and later the House managers in the Senate Trump trial repeatedly cited my testimony on that very point.
None of this matters in the Wild world of Democratic ethics. It is very simple. Whatever Democrats are attempting cannot be “wrongful ends.” More importantly, it is the ends, not the means, that are the measure of ethics. Since they are only fighting for what is right, the ends justify the means from cleansing ballots of Republicans (including Trump) to supporting a massive censorship system to ignoring court decisions to count invalid votes. It is the same sense of ethics that led someone at the Supreme Court to leak a draft of the Dobbs decision. Even though the leak shattered court ethical rules and traditions, the leaker was lionized by many on the left.
For years, the “by any means necessary” wing has dominated the Democratic Party. Ironically, the collapsing of the party’s credibility with the public has left little to show beyond a litany of unethical means used to achieve unrealized ends.
Below is my column in USA Today on states and cities joining the “resistance” to the Trump Administration and its immigration policies. Last week, California Attorney General (AG) Rob Bonta joined that alliance after issuing new guidance to courthouses, healthcare facilities, universities, schools, labor agencies, public libraries and shelters on opposing federal enforcement efforts. However, the costs of the resistance will be borne by the citizens of these states and cities in a confrontation with federal authority.
Here is the column:
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston recently became the latest Democratic leader to engage in a chest-pounding call to arms in resistance to the incoming Trump administration’s plan to deport people who entered the United States unlawfully. While a post-election poll by YouGov for CBS News shows that a massive 73% of adults want President-elect Donald Trump to prioritize the repatriation of illegal migrants, the mayor pledged to not only have Denver police “stationed at the county line to keep (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) out” but also that “you would have 50,000 Denverites there.” Johnston said it would be like a “Tiananmen Square moment” and answered yes when questioned whether he’d be ready to go to jail.
That moment soon passed, however, as lawyers apparently explained to the mayor that armed resistance to the federal government is often called – wait for it – insurrection. It appears that Johnston was not keen on becoming the Jefferson Davis of the left, so he backpedaled, stating, “Would I have taken it back if I could? Yes, I probably wouldn’t have used that image.”
Yet, Johnston is not alone in pledging resistance to repatriation efforts. Cities are reaffirming or adopting sanctuary city status, including most recently Boston. The cities pledge to continue their ban on any cooperation with the federal government in detaining or removing unlawful migrants. Other mayors are pledging to use city funds to pay for the defense costs of those fighting deportation. The doubling down on sanctuary city promises will likely draw more migrants to those communities, which some mayors have welcomed despite the heavy costs of housing, education and other city services.
Immigration proved to be one of the top issues for voters in this year’s election, which brought control of both houses of Congress and the White House to the GOP. Citizens overwhelmingly supported new tough immigration measures, including deportations. With Democratic cities joining the “resistance,” they may find the costs even higher. Congress cannot compel cooperation without triggering constitutional concerns. In Federalist #46, James Madison recognized the right of state officials to oppose federal policies, including “the refusal to co-operate with officers of the Union.”
In cases such as Printz v. United States (1997), which involved federal requirements that states cooperate on gun control measures, the Supreme Court enforced an anti-commandeering line that allowed states to refuse such federal orders.
Cities rely on federal money to pay for migrant services
However, this is a two-way street. Just as cities and states do not have to carry water for the federal government, the federal government does not have to supply the water to the states. The second Trump administration and Congress can play hardball by barring federal funds in various areas for these cities. With their status as sanctuary cities, housing, law enforcement and social programming costs will continue to rise. Many of those budgets are heavily infused with federal funding. However, if cities resist or frustrate federal policy, there are ample reasons why the federal government might restrict funding.
Such measures can go too far. The Supreme Court has warned that financial penalties can be so coercive that they effectively commandeer states. However, the federal government is not required to spend money on services where costs are rising at least in part because of resistance to federal law. Under constitutional law, the federal government cannot be a bully, but it does not have to be a chump.
It’s clear that elected leaders like Johnston did not think very long or well before starting a war with the incoming administration. In addition to the possible loss of federal funds, acts of resistance can trigger criminal liability if they amount to actively shielding or hiding unlawful migrants sought by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under federal immigration law, it is a felony when anyone in “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation.”
That is not triggered by a simple refusal to cooperate, but some officials have been accused of crossing the line, including state judges. It also could endanger private groups that work closely with these cities in housing and transporting unlawful migrants.
Obama defended federal government’s power over immigration
Moreover, as I wrote recently, Trump can cite a curious ally in this fight: Barack Obama. During the Obama administration, the federal government largely triumphed over states in barring their interference with federal immigration policies. Back then, Democrats supported President Obama in claiming that the federal government had overriding authority on immigration in cases like Arizona v. United States.
The pressure on cities could grow if the Trump administration prioritizes members of violent gangs such as Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) or Tren de Aragua for deportation. To resist those efforts would be politically unpalatable in cities dealing with crime associated with such gangs. It could take years to hash out these efforts. However, if Denver’s Mayor Johnston is any measure of the resistance, the chest-pounding may decline when the federal funding dries up.
Below is my column in The Hill on the calls for “blanket pardons” for hundreds and even thousands of people. Despite Trump’s ill-considered statement about how the J6 Committee members should go to jail for what they did on NBC this weekend, Trump has also insisted that he wants “success” to be his revenge. Many in the media are also omitting that Trump immediately said “no” to whether he would direct either the Attorney General or the FBI director to indict or investigate. While I have been a vocal critic of the J6 Committee, I know of no crime that could be credibly pursued against the members, as I have written. More importantly, presidents do not just send people to jail. There will be no round-up of opponents and democracy will survive. We have an entire constitutional system designed to prevent arbitrary prosecutions or authoritarian measures. These White Knight pardons are meant to preserve a collapsing narrative of how Trump wants to round up his enemies and end democracy. It has resulted in a strange and uniquely Washington phenomenon: pardon envy.
Here is the column:
Liberal pundits and press in Washington are facing a growing nightmare in Washington. No, it is not the victory of President-elect Donald Trump or the Democrats’ loss of both houses of Congress and the popular vote in this election. It is the possibility that democracy may not collapse as predicted, and Trump might not even round up his opponents en masse.
For months, liberals have been telling voters that this will likely be their last election and that democracy is about to end in the U.S. ABC host Whoopi Goldberg declared on “The View” that Trump will immediately become a dictator who will “put you people away … take all the journalists … take all the gay folks … move you all around and disappear you.”
Many predicted they would be on the top of the enemies list and the first to be rounded up.
Now, the moment is nearly here, and pundits are dreading that the public may notice there is no line of democracy champions being frog-marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. Faced with such a scenario and a further loss of credibility, many are coming up with the next best thing — pretending they stopped the roundup by having Biden pardon everyone. The spin will be that Trump would have gone after rivals but was prevented from doing so by Biden.
The idea is to portray yourself as a white knight, riding down to protect the vulnerable and timid from the coming hoard.
Even if democracy inconveniently survives, Biden can preserve the narrative with sweeping pardons. The White House is reportedly exploring giving preemptive pardons to figures ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci, Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).
Cheney previously declared that this “may well be the last real vote you ever get to cast.” A pardon would preserve her persona as a modern-day Joan of Arc who avoided being burnt at the stake only by the grace of a Biden pardon. Others seem to be panicking that there may be a list of pardoned people, but they will be left off. Call it “Pardon Envy.” The only thing worse than not being on a Trump enemies list is not being on a Biden pardon list.
Before the election, MSNBC host Al Sharpton and regular Donny Deutsch warned viewers that they would likely be added to an “enemies list.” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow ominously told her viewers that, “Yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.”
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin seemed apoplectic that she and others might be omitted from both lists. One has to be somewhat sympathetic to Rubin. To be left both unpardoned and unarrested is to lose all standing among the “save democracy” social set.
Rubin, once dubbed the Post’s Republican columnist, has called for the Republican Party to be burned down and recently advised people how to keep panic alive despite the election: “You can’t talk broad themes. You have to boil it down to nuts and bolts, and you have to be pithy. What do I mean by pithy? How about this: Republicans want to kill your kids. It’s true.”
In a podcast, Rubin explained that Biden should pardon “thousands” to blunt Trump’s “initial round of revenge” from journalists to the “little guy and gal” counting votes. She advised that he should pardon whole “categories” of people to pardon anyone Trump may have “identified by name or type” to offer “protection from a maniac.”
In her most recent column, Rubin repeated the call for Biden to pardon “scores of Americans” due to a “reasonable fear that a weaponized FBI directed by a vengeful president will carry out threats to pursue his enemies.”
The key is to issue broad pardons to suggest that, absent such extraordinary action, “this maniac” would have purged whole areas of blue states. It is like telling everyone that you are wearing a tin-foil hat to prevent aliens from snatching you. When someone points out that they have not seen any aliens, you can respond, “See, it worked!”
The Biden White House is considering the use of such white-knight pardons to claim that the president did not protect just his son (and himself) with the pardon power but many others. Biden wants to remove the stain of his abuse of the pardon power to benefit his own family by turning it into a literal party favor for other Democrats and Trump critics. Even though Trump has denied any interest in retribution, saying that “my revenge will be a success,” preemptive pardons leave the impression that they did in fact preempt something that would have occurred.
A white-knight pardon can also work when you are protecting someone who does not want to be saved. That is the case with a Trump pardon. Such a pardon is absolutely not needed and would constitute the most hostile pardon in history. The federal cases against Trump are effectively dead. Even though they were dismissed without prejudice, it is extremely unlikely they would be resumed. Moreover, the cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith were riddled with constitutional problems and unlikely to be sustained even with a conviction.
The only ongoing legal threat to Trump is from Democratic prosecutors on the state level, such as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. A pardon would not apply to such cases anyway.
Yet, to pardon Trump for nonexistent federal cases would be to suggest that Biden saved him from prosecution. This is the same president who did nothing for years until the cases collapsed. He would now claim that he worked to bring the nation together after calling Trump a virtual Nazi and his supporters “garbage.”
Trump may be the only one who is not interested in a trophy pardon. What is the value of being part of the resistance if you are not being pursued, persecuted or pardoned?
It seems like some of the same people who had hoped to be on the list for the Biden Inaugural balls are now making calls to make the Biden pardon list. If Biden were to yield to calls for hundreds or even thousands of pardons, the loss of political standing for those not making the list could become intolerable. For any self-respecting armchair resistance fighter in 2025, a Biden pardon could become the latest status symbol.
Below is my column in The Hill on how some Democrats are joining a diaspora of the disgruntled and despondent in leaving the country or finding safe spaces away from opposing viewpoints. It appears that nothing succeeds like secession when you lose an election.
Democrats who campaigned on the need for “joy” and “saving democracy” are strikingly unjoyful about the results of the democratic process in 2024. Before the election, slips like the one of President Joe Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage” were immediately denied or deflected. But once voters had given the Republicans control of both houses of Congress, the popular vote and the White House, leading Democratic figures and celebrities dropped all pretense of civility. They are now being open about their contempt for voters, calling them “f—-ing morons” and “arrogant, ignorant” adolescents.
After calling for Americans to come together for Kamala Harris, MSNBC’s Joy Reid sent out a heart-warming holiday message to those who voted for the GOP to “make your own dinner, MAGA. Make your own sandwiches, wipe your own tears.”
Those not wallowing in Reid’s anger are increasingly voicing themes of isolation, insurrection and secession.
For years, the contempt for Trump voters has been open and obvious in much of the media. The “Let’s Go Brandon” movement captured the lunacy of the press and politicians simply denying what citizens could see, hear and experience for themselves.
When asked for answers on issues like the economy and immigration, Harris paraded an army of celebrities to tell the public how to vote — shiny objects that they thought would be enough for shallow American voters.
They were wrong. Now that the public has made its choice, leading figures are condemning the majority of voters as a mix of misogynists, self-haters and fascists. Whoopi Goldberg, 69, even joined the “4B” sex strike against men. Others seem to be morphing into exactly what they said Trump would become as president: isolationist and insurrectionist.
Some have responded to the losses by retreating further into echo chambers protected from opposing views. Many dumped X in favor of BlueSky, a new social media safe space for liberals who fear being triggered by opposing views. Notably, censorship advocates such as Nina Jankowisz have fled to BlueSky. The site is portrayed as a return to the good old days when liberals controlled all of the social media and maintained a massive censorship and blacklisting system over political discourse.
New York Times tech reporter Kevin Roose wrote a column last week that offered the familiar “I can breathe again” account: “After an hour or so of scrolling through Bluesky the other night, I felt something I haven’t felt on social media in a long time: free.”
It is the ultimate irony. This election shocked many on the left precisely because they were writing and commenting on each other within their hardened media and political silos. They are unlikely to improve themselves by receding further into that safe space to rave about the “f—ing morons” who make up the majority of America.
Other Democratic politicians have moved beyond the chest-pounding of leaders like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) to pledges of more direct obstruction or inflammatory rhetoric.
Denver mayor Mike Johnson (D) declared that he was preparing the Mile-High City for its “Tiananmen Square moment” to fight the federal government in any attempt to deport unlawful migrants. Johnson warned that he would have not only Denver police “stationed at the county line to keep [ICE] out” but also “50,000 Denverites.”
Not long ago, Democrats were calling similar protests an “insurrection.” Johnson later walked back his remarks but insisted that his city would fight federal efforts to enforce the immigration laws.
Rather than such trench warfare, most Democratic governors and mayors are simply pledging not to cooperate with federal authorities, which is a lawful choice. The concern, however, is how others will react to the overheated rhetoric for months that this will be “our last election” and that Trump is the new Hitler. Such rage rhetoric gives people license to say and do things they would not ordinarily say or do. Leaders calling on citizens to “fight” ICE and the “fascists” can easily inspire violence, as we have seen in past years. Indeed, that was the very premise of the criminal case against Trump supported by many of these same leaders, alleging that his calls to “fight” against certification was a call for insurrection.
Some liberals are very publicly fleeing the country. Sharon Stone (who called American voters “uneducated”) is reportedly off to Canada. Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are off to a mansion in Cotswolds in England. Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman is also reportedly exploring a departure from the country after his millions of dollars failed to produce a victory for Kamala Harris.
Some, however, want to take part of the country with them. New York State Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Upper East Side) has received praise for her call for New York to join Canada. Where Alexandre Dumas believed that ‘Nothing succeeds like success,” some believe that, after losing an election, nothing succeeds quite like secession.
Krueger previously sought to block Trump from the ballot in the name of protecting democracy. That would have barred the 45 percent of New Yorkers who voted for the president-elect, but those voters would find themselves either Canadians or refugees under her proposal.
Krueger suggested that secession simply makes sense when the majority of the country disagrees with you. She believes New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont could form a new Canadian province.
“I got back some unofficial responses and heard this is probably sellable in Ottawa,” she said. “And look, if we were Europe, in the length of time we’ve been a nation, for Canada, if we were European countries, our borders would have moved around 20 times by now, right?”
She explained that this is all just “thinking outside of the box.” The box that she and other liberals find themselves in is called “democracy,” and they don’t like it.
Just for the record, the last time people thought “outside the box” and seceded, we got a war with roughly 700,000 people killed.
Yet, assuming New Yorkers can get used to milk in a bag and cheese curds as a snack, there may be an obvious appeal for the left in the True North. Formerly “strong and free,” Canada has become a nightmare for free speech with the ever-expanding criminalization of political speech. One professor, who said that Trump’s plans to combat censorship has left many frightened, said that if free speech protections are restored, “I will be on a plane [out of America].”
For New York Times reporters and officials alike, they will be able to “breathe again” in the controlled, regulated air of censorship countries like Canada.
The only challenge for our displaced and disgruntled diaspora will be that Canadians tend to be nice.
Below is my column in The Hill on new evidence released by the House related to the January 6th riot. The J6 Committee fueled doubts about the official accounts by using only Democratically appointed members and skewing the evidence. The new information further undermines the narrative pushed by both members and the media.
Here is the column:
On Jan. 6, 2021, the nation was rocked by the disruption of the certification of Joe Biden as our next president. With Donald Trump set to return to the White House in 2025, it is astonishing how much of that day remains a matter of intense debate. Those divisions are likely only to deepen after a slew of recent reports that have challenged the selective release of information from the House January 6 Committee.
January 6 remains as much a political litmus test as it is a historical event. Whether you refer to that day as a riot or an insurrection puts you on one side or the other of a giant political chasm. I viewed the attack on that day as a desecration of our constitutional process, but I did not view it as an insurrection. I still don’t.
It was a protest that became a riot when a woefully insufficient security plan collapsed. And that is a view shared by most Americans. One year after the riot, a CBS poll showed that 76 percent viewed it as a “protest gone too far.”
A Harvard study also found that those arrested on that day were motivated by loyalty to Trump rather than support for an insurrection.
A recent poll found that almost half of the public (43 percent) felt that “too much is being made” of the riot and that it is “time to move on.” Of course, that still leaves a little over half who view the day as “an attack on democracy.”
The continued distrust of the official accounts of Jan. 6 reflects a failure of the House Democrats, and specifically former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), to guarantee a credible and comprehensive investigation.
The House Select Committee to investigate January 6 was comprised of Democrat-selected members who offered only one possible view: that January 6 was an attempt to overthrow our democracy by Trump and his supporters. The committee hired a former ABC News producer to create a slick, made-for-television production that barred opposing views and countervailing evidence. The members, including Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney, played edited videotapes of Trump’s speech that removed the portion where Trump called on his supporters to protest “peacefully.”
The committee fostered false accounts, including the claim that there was a violent episode with Trump trying to wrestle control of the presidential limousine. The Committee knew that the key Secret Service driver directly contradicted that account offered by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
While the Democrats insisted that Trump’s speech constituted criminal incitement, he was never charged with that crime — not even by the motivated prosecutors who pledged to pursue such charges. The reason is that Trump’s speech was entirely protected under the First Amendment. Such a charge of criminal incitement would have quickly collapsed in court.
Nevertheless, the Washington Post, NPR, other media and the committee members called Jan. 6 an “insurrection” engineered by Trump. Figures such as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) insisted the committee had evidence that Trump organized a “coup” on Jan. 6, 2021. That evidence never materialized.
The lack of adequate security measures that day has long puzzled many of us. After all, there had been a violent riot at the White House before January 6, in which more officers were injured and Trump had to be moved to a secure location. The National Guard had to be called out to protect the White House, but those same measures (including a fence) were not ordered at the Capitol.
Two of the recent reports offered new details related to those questions.
One report confirmed that Trump did, in fact, offer the deployment of the National Guard in anticipation of the protest. The Jan. 6 Committee repeatedly dismissed this claim. After all, it would be a rather curious attempt at an insurrection if Trump was suggesting the use of thousands of troops to prevent any breach of Congress. The committee specifically found “no evidence” that the Trump administration called for 10,000 National Guard members to be sent to Washington, D.C., to protect the Capitol. The Washington Post even supposedly “debunked” Trump’s comments with an award of “Four Pinocchios.”
Yet evidence now shows that Trump personally suggested the deployment of 10,000 National Guard troops to prevent violence. For example, a transcript includes the testimony of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato in January 2022 with Liz Cheney present. Ornato states that he clearly recalled Trump’s offer of 10,000 troops.
Videotapes have also emerged showing Pelosi privately admitting that she and Democratic leadership were responsible for the security failure on Jan. 6.
Another new report from Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who chairs the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight, shows that it was the Defense Department that delayed the eventual deployment of National Guard in the critical hours of the riot. The evidence shows that, at 3:18 p.m., Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy “tells sheltering Members of Congress that he is not blocking the deployment of the National Guard and, while referencing the D.C. National Guard, shares that ‘We have the green light. We are moving.’” However, the secretary of the Army’s own timeline indicates that the DCNG did not physically leave the Armory until 5 pm.
That was the critical period for the riot. Around 2:10 p.m., people surged up the Capitol steps. Just an hour later, McCarthy said troops were on their way. At 4:17 p.m., Trump made his public statement asking rioters to stop — roughly an hour and a half later. Yet it was not until 5 pm that the troops actually left for the Capitol.
The House is also under greater scrutiny this week for new information on the shooting of the only person to die on Jan. 6. While Democrats have referred to many deaths on that day, the only person who died in the riot itself was Ashli Babbitt, a protester shot by Capitol Police. I have long disagreed with the findings of investigations by the Capitol Police and the Justice Department in clearing Captain Michael Byrd for this shooting. The media lionized Byrd and, in sharp contrast to other police shootings during that period, blamed the deceased. Again, an unjustified shooting of a protester would not fit the media narrative.
The concerns over the shooting were heightened by the Justice Department’s bizarre review and report, which notably did not state that the shooting was justified. Instead, it declared that it could not prove “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”
Babbitt, 35, was an Air Force veteran who was clearly committing criminal acts of trespass, property damage and other offenses at the time she was shot. However, Babbitt was unarmed when she tried to climb through a broken window.
Byrd stated “I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are.” In other words, Byrd admitted he did not see a weapon. He took Babbitt’s effort to crawl through the window as sufficient justification to kill her. It was not. And it is worth noting that Byrd could just as well have hit the officers standing just behind Babbitt.
The new report confirms that Byrd had prior disciplinary and training issues, including “a failed shotgun qualification test, a failed FBI background check for a weapon’s purchase, a 33-day suspension for a lost weapon and referral to Maryland state prosecutors for firing his gun at a stolen car fleeing his neighborhood.” In one incident, detailed in a letter from Loudermilk, Byrd was suspected of lying about the circumstances under which he shot at the fleeing car.
None of this means that Trump or even Babbitt are without fault in this matter. Trump’s speech was clearly “reckless and wrong,” and Babbitt herself was involved in that riot. However, these reports only further highlight what we still do not know about that day.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the effort of Alvin Bragg to suspend the criminal case against President-Elect Donald Trump for almost five years. It would be a terrible choice for the court and for the country.
Here is the column:
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg pushed Tuesday to create a new constitutional creature: the layaway president. It was once common for stores to hold expensive items that you really wanted but could not make the payment. So, they were tagged and kept on the shelf until you were ready to redeem your item.
For Bragg, that leaves Donald Trump tagged until 2029.
In a filing before Manhattan Justice Juan Merchan, Bragg suggested that the court should stay the pending criminal case and defer any sentencing “until after the end of defendant’s upcoming presidential term.” That would allow a city prosecutor to put a leash on a sitting president for four years. Trump would govern by the grace of this local judge and district attorney. In the meantime, pundits and politicians could portray the president as free on a type of work release program.
The suggestion is appalling to most of the people in the country, including the majority of voters who voted for Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats ran on this and other cases in the election. The result was arguably the largest jury decision in history.
That being said, I do not believe that the mere election of a president negates jury verdicts on 34 criminal counts. But ample reasons exist to overturn those verdicts or to dismiss this case. For example, after the verdict, the Supreme Court rendered its immunity decision barring the use of certain evidence against a president. Some of the evidence used in the Manhattan case likely fell within one of the protected categories. The prosecutors not only elicited testimony from Trump aides in the White House but then doubled down on the significance of that evidence in their closing arguments. Merchan could declare that the court cannot rule out the impact of such testimony on the final verdict.
Even if Merchan, as expected, does not dismiss the case on the basis for the immunity decision, the trial was rife with reversible error. This was a raw exercise of lawfare, and Merchan did little to ensure fairness toward the defendant. Yet none of those errors can be likely addressed until Merchan reaches final decisions on the motion to dismiss as well as the sentencing question.
While that will mean that Trump could, upon possible sentencing, formally become a convicted felon, the matter can then be finally pried out of the hands of Merchan and taken to higher courts for review. The worst possible option is the one suggested by Bragg, who would adopt the popular persona of Trump’s turnkey.
The President would be seen by many as governing on a type of conditional status from one of the most politically compromised prosecutors in the country. For Bragg and other Trump opponents, that may be far more satisfying than a sentencing now given the unlikelihood of any jail component.
After the years and millions spent on the case, it would be the ultimate buzz kill to have Trump sentenced to some fine or other non-carceral penalty. Many Democrats want to have Trump govern with an asterisk of a “President pending sentencing.” Instead, Trump would govern with the clock ticking toward a sentencing date.
It is a dangerous precedent. Such pending sentences can have a coercive impact on a president in dealing with given officials, including a state governor who might be willing to pardon a president.
Consider the effort of the governor of New York in restoring the lucrative state and local tax, or SALT, deductions. There is no reason to believe that Trump would succumb to such leverage (and he has already indicated that he would consider the change).
However, any decision on policies like SALT would be the subject of speculation of whether a reduction in taxation was made in the hope of a reduction in incarceration.
Critics would suggest that New York is yanking on the leash to achieve policy advantages. This is the same judge and prosecutor who gagged the leading candidate for the presidency in discussing aspects of the case in the months leading up to the election. Now, they would allow him to govern pending their own suspended decisions on his future.
The Trump case was always a thrill kill for Bragg. Under Bragg’s proposal, his supporters would prolong that thrill for four more years. The cost, however, would be devastating for the country.
This country needs a president, not a president on layaway from the Manhattan District Attorney.
Below is my column in The Hill on the growing distemper on the left after the loss of both houses and the White House in this election. In Pennsylvania, the politics of despair has stripped away all principle and pretense. There is a concerted effort to reelect Sen. Bob Casey by any means necessary. Even the Washington Post is now criticizing the effort.
Here is the column:
“People violate laws any time they want.”
Those words, shrugging off an alleged unlawful move last week, did not come from some Chicago gangbanger or Washington car thief. Those words of wisdom came from Democrat Commissioner Diane Marseglia in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They came in response to the fact that the Democratic majority on the election commission had decided to ignore a binding state Supreme Court ruling in an attempt to engineer the election of Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). Rather than prompting a degree of introspection, the loss of both houses of Congress and the White House has had a curious effect on many Democrats, dropping any pretense of protecting democracy over partisanship.
Despite polls showing that the public trusted former president Donald Trump more than Vice President Harris in combatting threats to democracy, Democrats made “saving democracy” the thrust of this election.
The polls reflected a certain common sense of the public when harangued with predictions from President Biden, Harris and a host of politicians and pundits that this would likely be our last election. Few believed that after over two centuries as the most stable and successful democracy in history, all three branches would collapse in unison and embrace dictatorship. Even fewer believed the predictions of the rounding up of homosexuals, journalists and political critics for camps in what some described as an American Third Reich.
American voters are not chumps and what they saw were strikingly anti-democratic positions from those claiming to be the defenders of democracy, including:
• Seeking to strip Trump from ballots under an unfounded theory rejected unanimously by the Supreme Court.
• Fighting to block opponents of Biden from ballots in the primary and general elections.
• Suing to keep Robert F. Kennedy on ballots after his withdrawal in swing states, in order to confuse voters and reduce the vote for Trump.
• Calling for blocking dozens of incumbent GOP officials and legislators from ballots as “insurrectionists.”
• “Protecting democracy” through the most extensive censorship in history and the blacklisting of opponents.
• Engaging in open and raw lawfare in the prosecutions of Trump in places like New York.
Each of these efforts ultimately failed to stop Trump and was opposed by a majority of voters even before the election. So now, Democrats are dropping the pretense for open partisanship. That was evident in Bucks County, when a motion arose to reject a challenge to count provisional ballots, including undated or invalidly dated mail ballots.
It should have been easy. To its credit, the majority-Democratic Pennsylvania Supreme Court had already refused a Democratic push to change the rules shortly before the election and to ignore the plain language of the election laws. In ordering the rejection of ballots without dates, Justice Kevin Doughtery (joined by Chief Justice Debra Todd) wrote a concurrence declaring “This Court will neither impose nor countenance substantial alterations to existing laws and procedures during the pendency of an ongoing election.’ We said those carefully chosen words only weeks ago. Yet they apparently were not heard in the Commonwealth Court, the very court where the bulk of election litigation unfolds.”
It is apparently still not being heard. In the Bucks County hearing, Marseglia spoke as she and Democratic Board chairman Robert Harvie, Jr., dismissed the earlier rulings in order to accept ballots without required signatures or mandatory dates. She declared that she would not second the motion to enforce the rulings “mostly because I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country and people violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.”
That was a lot of words to say that she does not really seem to care if this is lawful. For his part, Casey has shown the same abandon as he clings to his Senate seat at any cost. That cost, in this case, was an alliance with Marc Elias, the controversial Democratic lawyer at the center of the infamous Steele Dossier scandal. Elias has been sanctioned in court and criticized for his work to flip elections. He is known for baselessly blaming voting machine errors for electing Republicans and pushing gerrymandering plans rejected by the courts as anti-democratic.
Casey is unlikely to change the result without counting defective or challenged ballots. Fortunately, law and precedent “does matter in this country.” There are still officials who can transcend their political preferences to maintain the rule of law.After the last presidential election, many Trump appointees ruled against the former president, and many Democratic judges rejected the effort to strip Trump from ballots.
That does not mean that Democrats who value the weaponization of law will not continue to embrace lawfare warriors like New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).
Others will use the rage of these times as a license to ignore legal and ethical obligations altogether. They are arguably the saddest manifestation of our political discord. They are people who have not just lost faith in our system but in themselves. They have become untethered from any defining principle for their own conduct. This election has left them adrift in a sea of moral and legal relativism, with only their rage as a following wind. They cling to that rage as reason vanishes like a distant shore.
For the rest of us, there is work to be done as a nation committed to the rule of law. We cannot win at any cost when that cost is the very thing that defines us.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the reappearance of Marc Elias in leading the effort to undo the victory of Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. While some have distanced themselves from the controversial Democratic lawyer, Sen. Bob Casey has embraced Elias in his effort to retain the seat. Despite being sanctioned and ridiculed by courts in prior cases, Democrats continue to enrich Elias, who is the personification of the hypocrisy of some self-appointed “save democracy” champions. Casey continued on Tuesday to refuse to concede. Every candidate has a right to have all of the votes counted. However, regardless of the outcome of the effort, Casey’s association with Elias destroys any moral high ground for him and his campaign.
Here is the column:
Marc Elias is back and that is not good news. Despite the Pennsylvania race being called by the AP almost a week ago, Elias is working with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) to try to change that outcome. It is not surprising that Casey was left with Elias.
For many, Elias is a notorious figure who captures the hypocrisy of the “save democracy” crowd. Elias is an attorney who has been sanctioned in court and denounced by critics as a Democratic “dirty trickster” and even an “election denier.” Despite his checkered history, Elias remains the go-to lawyer for many Democratic campaigns.
It was Elias who was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.) During the campaign, reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. When journalists discovered after the election that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie, they met with nothing but shrugs from the Clinton staff.
Elias was back when John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress on the Steele dossier and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee were ultimately sanctioned by the FEC over the handling of the funding of the dossier through his prior firm. (I previously discussed the comparison to the criminal charges against Trump for treating the mislabeling of payments as “legal expenses.”).
Elias continued to be accused of not defending but thwarting democracy. In Maryland, Elias filed in support of an abusive gerrymandering of the election districts that a court found not only violated Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the map pushed by Elias “subverts the will of those governed.”
His work for New York redistricting was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters to end such gerrymandering but effectively negating the votes of Republican voters. In 2024, the Chief Judge of the Western District of Wisconsin not only rejected but ridiculed the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”
The point is that it does not have to make sense. Democratic campaigns fund Elias and his various profitable enterprises to seek to change the outcome of called elections.
That is the case with Casey. Trump won Pennsylvania’s presidential election, and Dave McCormick received tens of thousands more votes. With 99 percent of the votes counted, even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer relented in reversing his decision to bar McCormick from the orientation for new senators.
What is most striking is the strategy of Elias. The state has roughly 87,000 provisional ballots to count, but those ballots were generally challenged for defects or suspected invalidity. Even if they were to count, it is unlikely that they will break so overwhelmingly for Casey to overturn the result. Indeed, only about 30,000 were coming from Casey strongholds in Philadelphia and Allegheny County. However, Elias just wants to get within .5% to trigger a mandatory recount.
It is reminiscent of Trump demanding an additional recount in Georgia, maintaining on a call that all he needed was to “find 11,780 votes” to change the outcome. All Elias needs to do is find 40,000 votes.
Of course, when Trump made that comment, Elias and Democrats insisted that he was seeking to defraud the state by demanding a new recount.
It is not the first time Elias seemed to morph into those he denounced. Previously in New York, Elias unsuccessfully sought to flip the result in a congressional race by claiming that the Dominion voting machines somehow switched or changed votes. Sound familiar?
Casey will eventually have to accept defeat, but Elias will remain the break-the-glass option for Democratic campaigns when other lawyers have lost the appetite for challenging election results.
Below is my column in The Hill on the growing calls for an organized resistance to the Trump Administration by Democratic governors and prosecutors. They may find, however, that the resistance movement this time around will be facing significant legal and political headwinds.
Here is the column:
The single most common principle of recovery programs is that the first step is to admit that you have a problem. That first step continues to elude the politicians and pundits who unsuccessfully pushed lawfare and panic politics for years. That includes prosecutors like New York Attorney General Letitia James and politicians like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who affirmed this week that they will be redoubling, not reconsidering, their past positions.
For its part, The Washington Post quickly posted an editorial titled “The second resistance to Trump must start now.” They may, however, find the resistance more challenging both politically and legally this time around.
It is important to note at the outset that there is no reason Democratic activists should abandon their values just because they lost this election. Our system is strengthened by passionate and active advocacy. Rather, it is the collective fury and delirium of the post-election protests that was so disconcerting. Pundits lashed out at the majority of voters, insisting that the election established that half of the nation is composed of racists, misogynists or domination addicts who long to submit to tyranny.
Others blamed free speech and the fact that social media allows “disinformation” to be read by ignorant voters. In other words, the problem could not possibly be themselves. It was, rather, the public, which refused to listen.
I don’t think I could’ve said this any better. My friend Jenny spitting facts early in the morning. It’s time for the political elite in this country to realize America told you exactly how they felt on election day. This goes to the media as well. America is done with the… pic.twitter.com/v73sK7gnkF
That does not bode well for the Democratic Party. As someone raised in a liberal politically active family in Chicago, I had hoped for greater introspection after this election blowout. Ordinarily, recovery can begin with “a terrible experience” when someone hits rock bottom. After a crushing electoral defeat and the loss of the White House and likely both houses of Congress, one would think that Democrats would be ready for that first step to recovery. However, those hoping for a new leaf on the left do not understand the true addictive hold of rage.
In my recent book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I explore rage and our long history of rage politics. There is a certain release that comes with rage in allowing people to do and say things that you would never do or say. People rarely admit it, but they like it. It is the ultimate high produced by the lowest form of political discourse.
Over the course of the last eight years, the U.S. has become a nation of rage addicts. For months, Democratic leaders denounced Donald Trump and his supporters as fascists and neo-Nazis. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and others suggested that democracy itself was about to die unless Democrats were kept in power.
Just before the election, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called those voting for Trump “anti-American.” By Hochul’s measure, over half of the American electorate is now “anti-American.”
James is the face of lawfare. She may have done more to reelect Trump than anyone other than the president himself. She ran on nailing Trump on something, anything. In New York, she was joined by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in this ill-conceived effort. They fulfilled the narrative of a weaponized legal system. Every new legal action seemed to produce another surge in polling for Trump. Yet there James was, soon after the election, with another press conference promising again to unleash the powers of her office to stop Trump’s policies.
Then there was Pritzker, doing the community theater version of “The Avengers” and declaring, “You come for my people, you come through me.” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) added that he too will “fight to the death” against Trump’s agenda. Rather than lower the rhetoric, these rage-addicts ran out for another hit.
Our prior periods of rage politics were largely ended by the public in major election shifts like the one this month. Things, however, are different this time around both politically and legally. The problem for the resistance is the very democracy that they claimed to be saving. Democrats lost after opposing policies supported by an astonishing share of the public at a time of deep political division. That effort included opposing voter ID laws favored by 84 percent of the public, among other things. They are now committed to opposing policies central to this election blowout, including deportations of illegal immigrants, which is favored in some polls by two-thirds of Americans.
Likewise, Democrats have already doubled down on attacks on free speech, including blaming their loss on the absence of sufficient censorship. On MSNBC, host Mika Brzezinski blamed the loss in part on “massive disinformation.” Yet, according to some polls, free speech ranked as high as second among issues on Election Day.
According to CNN, Trump’s performance was the best among young people (18-29 years old) in 20 years, the best among Black voters in 48 years, and the best among Hispanic voters in more than 50 years. Harris actually lost a bit of support with women, and Trump won handily among some groups of women.
None of that seems to matter this time. We have an alliance of political media and academic interests wholly untethered to the views of most of the public. Yet, with both houses of Congress under Republican control, the investigations and impeachment efforts that hounded Trump throughout his first term will be less of a threat in his second term. For that reason, the center of gravity of the “second resistance” will shift to Democratic prosecutors like James, Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was just reelected. Various Democratic governors are also pledging to thwart Trump’s policies despite the results of the election.
The “second resistance” will try to use state power to oppose the very issues and policies that led to this historic political shift. That means that there will be a legal shift in the focus of litigation to inherent federal powers versus state powers. That battle will favor the Trump administration. In fairness to these Democratic politicians, they are certainly free to go to the courts, as Republicans did under Biden to argue for limitations on federal powers. But the promise of California Gov. Gavin Newsom to “Trump-proof” the state is easier to make rhetorically than it will be to keep legally.
Indeed, Trump will be able to cite a curious ally in this fight: Barack Obama. It was Obama who successfully swatted down state efforts to pursue their own policies and programs on immigration enforcement. Obama insisted that state laws were preempted in the area and the Supreme Court largely agreed in its 2012 decision in Arizona v. U.S.
Congress may even seek to tie the receipt of federal funds to states cooperating with federal mandates. For this reason, Democrats, who campaigned on the promise to end the filibuster for the good of democracy, suddenly became firm believers in that Senate rule right around 2:30 a.m. last Wednesday.
As the majority of the country walks away from the party shaking their heads, many activists are left only with their rage. Instead of reappraising the years of far-left orthodoxy and intolerance, some are calling to tear down the system or take drastic individual actions, including for women to break up with their boyfriends and husbands or to cut off their hair.
They will actually keep their rage and dump their relationships. Now that really is an addiction.
Below is my column in The Hill on the collapse of the lawfare campaigns against Trump. The first to go will likely be the two cases by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who became a lame-duck prosecutor at around 2:30 am last Wednesday. We are also waiting for what is likely to be a reduction or even a rejection of the Trump civil case by Attorney General Letitia James. While Democratic prosecutors are likely to continue, if not ramp up, their lawfare efforts, Trump will enter office with a fraction of the existing legal threats that have dogged him for years. For prosecutors, they are left like the ancient mariner:
Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
Here is the column:
Nearly two years ago, I wrote that Democratic prosecutors’ lawfare campaign against Donald Trump would make the 2024 election the single largest jury decision in history. Now that the verdict is in, the question is whether prosecutors will continue their unrelenting campaign against the president-elect and his companies.
The answer is that it may not matter.
The election reflected a certain gag sensation for a public fed a relentless diet of panic and identity politics for eight years. The 2024 election will come to be viewed as one of the biggest political and cultural shifts in our history. It was the mainstream-media-versus-new media election; the Rogan-versus-Oprah election; the establishment-versus-a-disassociated-electorate election.
It was also a thorough rejection of lawfare. One of the things most frustrating for Trump’s opponents was that every trial or hearing seemed to give Trump a boost in the polls. As cases piled up in Washington, New York, Florida and Georgia, the effort seemed to move more toward political acclamation than isolation. These cases are now legal versions of the Flying Dutchman — ships destined to sail endlessly but never make port.
If there is a single captain of that hapless crew, it is Special Counsel Jack Smith. For more than a year, Smith sought to secure a verdict in one of his two cases in Washington and Florida before the election. His urgency was seemingly shared by Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, but by few other judges or justices.
Around 2 am, Smith became a lame-duck prosecutor. Trump ran on ending his prosecutions and can cite a political mandate for it. Certainly, had he lost, the other side would be claiming a mandate for these prosecutions.
Trump’s new attorney general could remove Smith and order the termination of his continued prosecution. That is less of a problem in Florida, where a federal judge had already tossed out the prosecution of the classified documents case, which some of us saw as the greatest threat against Trump.
In Washington, Chutkan, who proved both motivated and active in pushing forward the election interference case, could complicate matters. Under federal rules, it is up to Chutkan to order any dismissal.
In the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Judge Emmet Sullivan resisted granting the dismissal sought by the Justice Department — a record that I criticized as both unusual and unwarranted.
Chutkan could run the incoming Trump administration around on any dismissal, but in the end, it should succeed in ending Smith’s ill-considered indictment. In reality, Smith was not only losing the Florida case but was likely to be reversed again in Washington due to his refusal to make sufficient changes in his indictment of Trump after the recent immunity decision by the Supreme Court.
Smith could make one last push to damage Trump in the period before the inauguration by pushing for an immunity decision from Chutkan. He would again likely find a supportive ally in Chutkan.
However, in the end, this would do little to change the fact that the Flying Dutchman will soon be without a crew or port of call.
One of the most immediate cases to resume is the prosecution in Manhattan by District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Many, including commentators like CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig, have denounced that case as legally flawed and obviously politically motivated.
Judge Juan Merchan is scheduled to rule on the immunity issue by Nov. 11 and to hold a possible sentencing on Nov. 26. Merchan has shown a pronounced bias against Trump in the past, and his counsel is likely anticipating a continuation of this pattern.
Merchan could sentence Trump to jail. However, such an abusive sentencing, even a brief one, would likely trigger an expedited appeal and would likely be stayed. Trump cannot pardon himself in a state case, but the case itself is a target-rich environment of arguable legal errors that could collapse on appeal.
Another case in New York is likely to move forward now. There is a pending appeal on the massive civil case against Trump brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. For many, James is the very face of lawfare as a prosecutor who ran on getting Trump on something, anything.
She ultimately secured another openly biased judge in Justice Arthur Engoron, who imposed an absurd, grotesque $455 million in fines and interest against Trump and his corporation. Notably, some of the judges on the appellate panel seemed to agree with that assessment, questioning not just the amount but the very use of this law in a case where there was no victim and no one lost a single dollar due to the fraud alleged.
My assumption is that the opinion is already written, held back only because of the election. It could now be issued and constitute a major change in the case. Whatever is left of that judgment, if anything, would then certainly be appealed.
Then there is the roaring dumpster fire in Georgia. An appellate court there will decide whether District Attorney Fani Willis and her office can continue prosecuting the case. If they are forced off the case, a new prosecutor must review the matter. While some criminal allegations against defendants can be established, the alleged racketeering conspiracy against Trump is legally flawed and likely to fail on appeal.
Trump will also continue to appeal civil cases such as the E. Jean Carroll case, which will linger long past the election.
Trump will not be the only defendant to see substantial changes on January 20, 2025. Trump has pledged to pardon those prosecuted over the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. The public elected him despite that pledge and over the opposition of Democrats. That will affect hundreds and may come in the form of a mix of pardons and commutations, depending on the underlying charges.
One lingering question will be whether those who supported this lawfare will be deterred in the future. The thrill-kill politics practiced by figures like James proved costly in this election. Polls showed that many citizens have lost trust in the FBI and now view the criminal law process as being politicized in places like New York.
The next few weeks will determine whether Democratic leaders are ready for a new course in ending the lawfare.
President Biden could pardon Trump. It would be a poison-pill pardon. Trump does not need a pardon as the incoming president, but Biden could take the matter off the table by treating him as presumptively guilty. He could not only claim to have taken the higher ground (even though he ran on and promoted the prosecutions of Trump as legitimate) but use it as cover for pardoning his own son.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) could also move to pardon Trump on the New York charges. Hochul was widely criticized for calling Trump supporters (now the majority of voters in the nation) “un-American.” She could seek to make amends with a pardon.
In the end, Trump read the jury correctly. Once the lawfare was unleashed, he focused on putting his case to the public and walked away with a clear majority decision. It is unlikely that this will end all of his lawfare battles, but it may effectively end the war.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, 2024).
Below is my column in Fox.com on the impact of the reelection of Donald Trump and the flipping of the Senate for the Supreme Court. The election may have proven one of the most critical for the Court in its history.
Here is the column:
In 1937, it was said that a critical shift of one justice in a case ended the move to pack the Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was described as the “shift in time saves nine.” In 2024, a shift in the Senate may have had the same impact. Trump’s victory means that absent a renewal of the court-packing scheme and other extreme measures of the left, the Court will remain unchanged institutionally for at least a decade.
The expectation is that Associate Justice Clarence Thomas could use this perfect time to retire and ensure that his seat will be filled with a fellow conservative jurist. Justice Samuel Alito may also consider this a good time for a safe harbor departure. They have a couple of years before they reach the redline for nominations before the next election.
The election means that court-packing schemes are now effectively scuttled despite the support of Democratic senators like Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.). Given Kamala Harris’s reported support, the Supreme Court dodged one of the greatest threats to its integrity in its history.
The impact on the law will also be pronounced. Returning the issue of abortion to the states will remain unchanged. A younger generation will grow up in a country where the voters of each state are allowed to determine what limits to place on abortions.
Likewise, gun rights and religious rights will continue to be robustly protected. The checks on the administrative state are also likely to be strengthened. Pushes for wealth taxes and other measures will likely receive an even more skeptical court.
The possible appointment of two new justices would likely give Trump a total of five to six nominees on the court. Liberals previously insisted that it was time for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to leave the Court, a campaign that I opposed. The appointment of seven of the nine justices by a single president would be unprecedented. (I expect, as with the calls to “end the filibuster” as undemocratic, the liberal campaign to push Sotomayor to retire ended around 2:30 am on Tuesday night).
Trump has shown commendable judgment in his prior nominations. All three—Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett—are extraordinary jurists who have already created considerable legacies. I testified at Neil Gorsuch’s Senate confirmation hearing and still consider him one of the most consequential and brilliant additions to the Court in decades.
These justices were subjected to appalling treatment during their confirmation process, including attacks on Barrett for her adopting Haitian children. New Trump nominees can expect the same scorched-earth campaign from the media and the left, but they will have a reliable Senate majority for confirmation.
These justices have shown the intellect and integrity that bring credit to the Court, including each voting in key cases with their liberal colleagues when their principles demanded it. Trump can cement his legacy by continuing that legacy over the next four years with nominees of the same caliber.
In this way, the election may prove the key moment in ending one of the most threatening periods of the Court’s existence. With the loss of the control of the Senate, the push for new limits on the Court and calls for investigations of conservative justices will subside for now. However, the rage in the media and academia will only likely increase.
Both media and academic commentators pushed for sweeping constitutional changes, including packing the Court or curtailing its jurisdiction. Many saw the Harris-Walz Administration as the vehicle for such extreme measures. Harris herself pledged to “reform” the Court.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, called for the scrapping of key constitutional elements in his “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.” In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, he described conservative justices as “partisan hacks.”
In the New York Times, book critic Jennifer Szalai denounced what she calls “Constitution worship” and warned that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.” She frets that by limiting the power of the majority, the Constitution “can end up fostering the widespread cynicism that helps authoritarianism grow.”
In a New York Times op-ed, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for liberals to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
Other law professors have denounced the “constitutional cult” and the First Amendment as the Achilles Heel of America. Given that the majority of voters reject panic politics and radical agendas, these figures are likely to become more activist and aggressive.
I recently debated a Harvard professor at Harvard Law School on the lack of free speech and intellectual diversity at the school. I noted that Harvard had more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.” It is not that Harvard does not resemble America; it does not even resemble Massachusetts in its virtual purging of conservative or Republican professors.
We just had a country where the majority of voters chose Donald Trump. Among law school faculty who donated more than $200 to a political party, 91 percent of the Harvard faculty gave to Democrats. Yet, the professor rejected the idea that Harvard faculty or its students should look like America (only 7 percent of incoming students identified as conservative). So, while the Supreme Court has a strong majority of conservatives and roughly half of the federal judges are conservative, Harvard law students will continue to be taught by professors who overwhelmingly reject those values, and some even reject “constitutionalism.”
The result is that the Court will continue to be demonized while the media and academia maintain their hardened ideological silos. The rage will continue and likely rise in the coming years. However, this critical institution just moved out of harm’s way in this election. It will remain the key stabilizing institution in the most successful constitutional system in history.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” He teaches a course on the Constitution and the Supreme Court.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the developments in the pending Trump cases. I previously wrote that, if Trump prevailed in this election, it was likely that Special Counsel Jack Smith would “not see a jury in either of his cases.” This morning, Smith is reportedly in discussions on the possible dropping of his two federal cases against the president-elect. The prosecutorial campaigns appear to be collapsing with the political campaigns against Trump.
Here is the column:
After years of thrill-kill prosecutions, the thrill is gone for lawfare warriors. Election Day’s greatest losers may be special counsel Jack Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Donald Trump’s victory was the largest jury verdict that some of us anticipated for years of unrelenting weaponization of the legal system.
Smith’s prosecutions ended with the 270th Electoral College vote secured around 2 a.m. Wednesday. His unrelenting efforts to convict Trump and then, when prevented from holding a trial, to release damaging material before the election have collapsed with the blue wall in the Midwest. Trump has said he plans to fire Smith on Day 1. That means the end of both the January 6 and the classified documents cases. That leaves James and Bragg as residue of long forgotten lawfare battles, but even their Trump’s prospects look good.
James was able to secure a fellow lawfare warrior in Justice Arthur Engoron, who imposed a grotesque $455 million in fines and interest. That ruling is pending an appeal that is expected to be a partial or even total victory for Trump. Unlike Engoron, the appellate judges expressed great skepticism in September over the size of the penalty and even the use of this law. Trump faced half a billion dollars in penalty in a case where no one lost a dime, and the alleged victim banks wanted more business with Trump and his company.
Separately, there is a hearing scheduled in front of Judge Juan Merchan for Nov. 11 on the “hush money” case involving Stormy Daniels, and a possible sentencing on Nov. 26. If Merchan seeks to jail Trump, it is unlikely to be carried out, as Trump appeals the case and the many alleged errors committed by the judge. Merchan made an utter mess of a case that should never have been filed, let alone tried. Even commentators like CNN’s senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, have denounced the case as selective prosecution and unfounded. The case should result in a conditional discharge with no jail time if Merchan can resist the temptation to unjustly punish Trump, a level of restraint that has largely proven difficult for him in the case.
Merchan created layers of appealable errors in the case. Putting those alleged errors aside, any sentencing to jail would create its own constitutional conflict with Trump’s performance of his federal duties. The question is whether the election will bring a moment of sobriety for New Yorkers who have spent years in a full rage-driven celebration of lawfare.
While Trump did not prevail in New York, he came closer than any Republican in decades. After this steady diet of politicized prosecutions in New York, Trump secured 44.3% of the vote, while Harris received 55.7%. In 2020, the margin was 23 points.
It is doubtful that the election will completely kill the appetite for lawfare in New York. As I wrote in my recent book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” “rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others.” What people do not want to admit that is that they like the rage.
Rage addicts will continue to push James and Bragg to continue these unhinged campaigns. It is not prosecutorial — it is recreational. We can only hope that James and Bragg feel a twinge of humility when their cases fall apart along with the Kamala Harris campaign. And Merchan has the opportunity to use this brief sobering moment and issue a conditional discharge without home or actual confinement. He can take judicial notice of Trump’s election as our next president and end this circus in Manhattan.
Instead of listening to the braying mob, he can act as a judge and tell New Yorkers, in the immortal words of B.B. King:
“The thrill is gone It’s gone away for good All the thrill is gone Baby, it’s gone away for good
… I’m free from your spell And now that it’s all over All that I can do is wish you well.”
Below is my column in Fox.com on the rising rage in this election. This week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul added her voice to the rage and said that anyone voting for Trump is “anti American.” Despite such statements, I found a reason to be hopeful in a brief encounter on my way to New York for the election coverage.
Here is the column:
When President Joe Biden took the podium in his hometown of Scranton, Pa., to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, many expected a return to the “self-professed unifier” Biden from the 2020 election, particularly after his recent comments calling tens of millions of Trump supporters “garbage.” If so, they were disappointed when it turned out to be the “take him behind the Gym” Biden. Speaking through clenched teeth, Biden seethed that he wanted to “smack [Trump] in the ass.” Even with the Harris campaign alarmed over his costly gaffes, Biden clearly could not resist the rage. He is not alone.
This entire election seems to be a type of political roid rage. In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how rage rhetoric and rage politics have long been part of our history. Politicians will often intentionally trigger rage to rally voters not in support of their policies but in opposition to their opponents.
However, Biden’s seeming inability to keep his rage in check is a common feature of this rage politics. As I wrote in the book, “rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others.” It is also contagious. Across the country, people are yelling at neighbors, tearing down signs, and even assaulting each other. What they are unwilling to admit is that they enjoy the rage. They like it.
As someone who has written about rage rhetoric and covered presidential elections for over two decades for different networks, I should be accustomed to these scenes. I am not. From the scenes outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan to the scenes outside of political rallies in Virginia, I find the rage depressing and deflating.
However, in flying to New York this weekend to join the Fox election coverage, I had a moment of real hope. I was driven to the airport by a man who told me that he was just months from his citizenship and how he and his wife were so thankful to soon be U.S. citizens. He came from a MiddleEastern nation where he long admired the United States for its freedoms, particularly the freedom of speech. Indeed, in his home country, he constantly ran into trouble with his government and was warned by his imam that he had to stop acting “like an American” by speaking his mind. He could not shut up, so he decided to become an American instead.
He then told me how confused he and his wife are by this election. They love the United States and cannot understand why people are so hateful and angry. “It is like they do not understand what they have here,” he noted.
Listening to him over the course of our ride, I started to feel something that I had not felt in a while: real hope.
Sometimes, our truest citizens are found among our newest converts. As I discuss in my book, the problem with our democracy is that most citizens grew up in a nation where basic rights like the freedom of speech are guaranteed. They have never known the absence of such rights. This man and his wife have. They were not born here. They had to escape their country at great peril and cost to become U.S. citizens. They chose us and what we stand for.
They follow other great Americans drawn to these shores by something unique about this country. One was Tom Paine. The man who was credited with rallying a nation behind a revolution only landed upon these shores two years before the Declaration of Independence. His rocketing to fame with the publication of Common Sense enraged some, like John Adams, who viewed him as an unkempt, unknown rabble-rouser.
Yet, it was precisely Paine’s immigration that gave his words such clarity and power. He saw this emerging nation as unique for all of humanity, a nation where citizens could live free without the calcified social, economic, and political limits of the Old World. His voice resonated with this nation because it was so genuine and authentic.
I heard that same voice on my way to the airport. Sometimes, it takes the newest among us to remind us of who we are to not only the rest of the world but also to each other.
I do not know what is coming out of that gate on election night. I have been there before. However, half of this country is going to be very, very upset either way this goes. What we need to struggle to remember is that this election does not define us. The rage does not define us. We defined ourselves almost 250 years ago and do so every day that new citizens like my new friend come to these shores. There is hope in who we are . . . even if we forget sometimes.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
Below is my Hill column on the current litigation controversies around the country. We are still watching litigation playing out just a day before the election. At the same time, we have some figures like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) reserving any recognition of a victoryunless they are satisfied with the integrity of the election. While I remain hopeful that the courts have gotten a head start on addressing many issues, there is a virtual army of lawyers in place from both major parties waiting for a green light to deploy. We just had a new filing in Georgia over handing in mail ballots and the Supreme Court has ruled against a RNC challenge with a statement that essentially said “don’t sweat the small stuff” when only a tiny number of ballots are impacted.
Here is this column:
“Something wicked this way comes.” Those words from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” capture a certain dread that takes hold of some of us tasked with covering the legal elements of the presidential election.
Just as Halloween ended, things in the days leading into Election Day have begun to get…well, spooky. Call it election jitters, but some of us have been here before. More than 200 cases have been filed around the country before the election this year. In the last week, worrisome elements have begun to pop up in various swing states.
Over the last couple of decades, I have covered presidential elections for three networks (as I will do for Fox News in this election). The lead-up to elections always includes a flurry of lawsuits. As the voting margin shrinks between the parties, the number of lawyers increases.
Some lawsuits are important efforts to make changes to remove barriers for voters or the counting of early balloting. For example, on Friday an emergency lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union secured an order for election officials in Cobb County, Ga., to overnight mail ballots to roughly 3,000 citizens and to guarantee that they be counted after a snafu by election officials. Other lawsuits are what I call “placeholders,” where campaigns establish areas of concern to be able to reference later in any specific challenges on or after Election Day.
The Supreme Court has already intervened to stop an effort by the Biden-Harris administration to force Virginia to put people back on the voting rolls who had identified themselves as non-citizens. It is a crime for non-citizens to vote. Although Virginia allows any mistaken information to be corrected (and also allows for challenged voters to file provisional ballots), lower courts ordered Virginia to enable people to vote who had said they were not citizens.
Some of these early challenges are welcomed, in the sense that we still have time to work out problems. Courts are notoriously reluctant to intervene after an election with the limited time before the certification of votes. They often refuse challengers access to vital election board information or bar cases as speculative or litigants as lacking in standing. This fuels the public’s distrust of the integrity of the election.
Some challenges potentially involve a high number of votes in swing states. For example, in North Carolina, the Republican National Committee is suing the North Carolina State Board of Elections over 225,000 people who may not have been appropriately registered because that state failed to require a driver’s license or partial Social Security number.
In Arizona, a judge had to order Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to release the names of roughly 218,000 voters who may have been allowed to register without the proof of citizenship required by state law.
There is also a growing concern over possible systemic voting registration violations in multiple districts in Pennsylvania. Initially, 2,500 forms were marked as suspicious for possible false names, duplicative handwriting or unverifiable or incorrect identifying information. Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams and her team found that about 60 percent of the 2,500 forms were potentially illegitimate. Monroe County District Attorney Mike Mancuso linked the registrations to “Field and Media Corps,” a subsidiary of Fieldcorps, an Arizona-based organization.
Field and Media Corps appears to have taken down its website, but it previously identified itself as a subsidiary of FieldCorps. It described itself as “connecting campaigns and projects with communities of color across the state. Our clients benefit from our social activism and coalition leadership experience gained through decades of leading campaigns, highlighting social inequalities, and developing BIPOC coalition building.”
FieldCorps has reportedly been working for the Harris-Walz campaign, the Mark Kelly campaign in Arizona and other Democratic campaigns. Efforts to reach FieldCorps for comment have been unsuccessful.
The concern is that companies like FieldCorps could be replicating errors across districts and states in the rush to register new voters. If these are knowing falsifications, it could constitute a federal crime.
We also have the same controversies arising in this election about changes to voting laws just before the election. In 2020, many voters were opposed to courts in states like Pennsylvania issuing last-minute changes. Many assumed that these laws had been finally worked out to guarantee the criteria for consideration of mail-in ballots and other forms of voting. However, with less than two weeks to go, a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court voted 4-3 to order a significant change in election rules. The Election Code in the state is a model of clarity — it says that a provisional ballot “shall not be counted if the elector’s [mail] ballot is received in a timely manner by a county board of elections.” However, the court ruled that provisional ballots must be counted even if an individual has already sent in a mail ballot rejected for violating a mandatory rule, such as failure to place the ballot in a secrecy envelope or to date or sign the envelope. Late Friday night, the Supreme Court declined to block the counting of the provisional ballots.
However, on Friday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did hold the line on another major change of the state election laws ordered by a lower court. The court stayed a decision that it is unconstitutional to reject mail ballots without handwritten dates on the return envelopes. The stay means that the law will remain in effect for the election. Justice Kevin Doughtery (joined by Chief Justice Debra Todd) wrote a reassuring concurrence for many of us having to follow these cases: “‘This Court will neither impose nor countenance substantial alterations to existing laws and procedures during the pendency of an ongoing election.’ We said those carefully chosen words only weeks ago. Yet they apparently were not heard in the Commonwealth Court, the very court where the bulk of election litigation unfolds.”
In what may be the closest election in history, late changes to election laws are inflammatory for an already suspicious electorate. According to the Gallup polling, only 63 percent are “very (34 percent) or somewhat confident (29 percent) that votes in the upcoming midterm elections will be accurately cast and counted.” That is near a record low, and there is a 45 percentage point gap separating Republicans (40 percent) and Democrats (85 percent) in their confidence in election integrity.
To my astonishment, voting officials are still committing basic errors. In Bucks County, Pa., voters were turned away in their attempt to apply in person for mail-in ballots. Some were told that there were computer or staffing problems. A court then ordered additional days to request ballots, so that matter at least is resolved. Yet such glitches are concerning. This is not rocket science. Rocket science is Elon Musk catching a massive booster rocket on what looked like a giant barbeque fork. Getting the staff and computers in place in a historic election should not be a great challenge.
Given the emotions and closeness of this election, any such irregularities will only confirm the worst expectations of some voters. They are often neither sinister nor particularly suspicious. With tens of millions voting, there are going to be problems. Election officials can help reduce the suspicions by being more forthcoming in sharing information. In past years, officials have acted reflectively to oppose any disclosures while seeking the dismissal of cases. That largely succeeded legally but proved costly politically. It left many allegations (including ill-supported theories) unresolved in the minds of many citizens.
It would be far better for the nation to resolve questions before the elections and strive for greater transparency in post-election challenges. That is why, if something wicked this way comes, we can more easily send it along its way.
Below is my column on Fox.com on the expanding boycott of the Washington Post by Democratic politicians, pundits, and members of the press. The reason? Because owner Jeff Bezos wants to stay politically neutral and leave the matter to the public. In an age of advocacy journalism, the return to neutrality is intolerable. The reaction is itself revealing. In a heated meeting this week at the Post, writers were apoplectic with attacks on Bezos and alarm over the very notion of remaining neutral in an election. One declared to the group: “One thing that can’t happen in this country is for Trump to get another four years.” The immediate and reflexive call of the left for boycotts and canceling campaigns is all too familiar to many of us. The question is whether the targeting of Bezos could backfire in creating a major ally for the restoration of American journalism.
Here is the slightly altered column:
It is not every day that you go from being Obi-Wan Kenobi to Sheev Palpatine in twenty-four hours. However, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos now has the distinction of having Luke (Mark Hamill) lead a boycott of his “democracy dies in darkness” newspaper as the daily of the Darkside.
Then something fascinating happened. Bezos stood his ground.
The left has made an art form of flash-mob politics, crushing opposition with the threat of economic or professional ruin. Most cave to the pressure, including business leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg. That record came to a screeching halt when the unstoppable force of the left met the immovable object of Elon Musk. The left continues to oppose his government contracts and pressure his advertisers over his refusal to restore the prior censorship system at X, formerly Twitter.
Now, the left may be creating another defiant billionaire. This week, Bezos penned an op-ed that doubled down on his decision not to endorse a presidential candidate now or in the future. Some of us have argued for newpapers to stop all political endorsements for decades. The encouraging aspect of Bezos’s column was that he not only recognized the corrosive effect of endorsements on maintaining neutrality as a media organization, but he also recognized that the Post is facing plummeting revenues and readership due to its perceived bias and activism.
I used to write regularly for the Post, and I wrote in my new book about the decline of the newspaper as part of the “advocacy journalism” movement. As Bezos wrote, “Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.”
Bezos previously brought in a publisher to save the Post from itself. Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis promptly delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The response was that the entire staff seemed to go into vapors, and many called for Lewis to be canned. Bezos stood with Lewis.
Now, resignations and recriminations are coming from reporters and columnists alike. In a public statement, Post columnists blasted the decision and said that while maybe endorsements should be ended, not now because everyone has to oppose Trump to save democracy and journalism. The statement produced some chuckles, given the signatories, including Phillip Bump and Jen Rubin, who have been repeatedly accused of pushing false stories and reckless rhetoric. (Rubin later denounced Bezos for his “Bulls**t explanation” and said that he was merely “bending a knee” to Trump.).
Bezos could do for the media what Musk did for free speech. He could create a bulwark against advocacy journalism in one of the premier newspapers in the world. Students in “J Schools” today are being told to abandon neutrality and objectivity since, as former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has explained, “all journalism is activism.”
After a series of interviews with over 75 media leaders, Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, reaffirmed this shift. As Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, stated: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Few can stand up to this movement other than a Bezos or a Musk. However, the left has long created their own monsters by demanding absolute fealty or unleashing absolute cancel campaigns. Simply because Bezos wants his newspaper to restore neutrality, the left is calling for a boycott of not just the Post but all of his companies. That is precisely what they did with Musk.
A Bezos/Musk alliance would be truly a thing to behold. They could give the push for the restoration of free speech and the free press a real chance to create a beachhead to regain the ground that we have lost in the last two decades. The left will accept nothing short of total capitulation and Bezos does not appear willing to pay that price. Instead, he could not just save the Post but American journalism from itself.
If so, all I can say is: Welcome to the fight, Mr. Bezos.
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What Did You Say? 
‘Hit Us, Please’ — America’s Left Issues a ‘Broken Arrow’ Signal to Europe
By: Jonathan Turley | July 7, 2025
Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2025/07/07/hit-us-please-americas-left-issues-a-broken-arrow-signal-to-europe/
Below is my column in The Hill on calls from the left for other countries to hit the United States with sanctions and other measures as a “bad actor.” After losses in elections and Congress, some are sending out a “broken arrow” signal for other nations to crack down on the United States.
Here is the column:
“Broken arrow” is arguably the most chilling and desperate order that an American military commander can issue. When faced with an enemy about to overrun a surrounded force, a commander uses it to call in an air or artillery strike on his own position.
This month, many on the American left are issuing their own “broken arrow” signals, including calling on globalist allies to hit the U.S. with sanctions and other measures. They are seeking to achieve through sanctions what they could not achieve through elections. The most recent such call came from commentator Elie Mystal on “The Joy Reid Show” this week.
Mystal’s call was hardly a surprise for those familiar with his writings. A regular commentator on MSNBC, he previously called the Constitution “trash” and urged not just the abolition of the U.S. Senate but also of “all voter registration laws.” Yet, he is not alone in signaling that his position is being overrun by his fellow citizens.
After Elon Musk bought Twitter with a pledge to dismantle its censorship system, former Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called upon Europe to use its infamous Digital Services Act to force him to censor fellow Americans.
Nina Jankowicz, the former head of Biden’s infamous Disinformation Governance Board, appeared recently before the European Parliament. She called upon the 27 EU countries to fight against the U.S., which she described as a global threat.
This year, I spoke in Berlin at the World Forum and was surprised to see many Americans joining European leaders in support of the forum’s slogan, “A New World Order with European Values.” Attended by figures such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, the conference heralded Europe as key to countering the threat posed by the U.S. Others denounced America as the world’s villain with boycotts and protests during Fourth of July celebrations. One leading influencer declared that “this country is beyond f**ked” and encouraged citizens to “walk away from the illusion that they built” around this country.
Democratic politicians and pundits have fueled the anger by claiming fighting the current U.S. government is like fighting against the Nazis, including most recently former Vice President Al Gore. Others like Rep. Pramila Jayapal have called ICE agents “terrorists” for enforcing immigration laws.
The crisis of faith on the left often seems to be triggered by any adverse decision or election. In 2022, the Pima County, Arizona Democratic Party tweeted “F–k the Fourth” after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
This year, Fourth of July celebrations were canceled in Los Angeles under the claim that officials feared a mass arrest by ICE — rather implausible, considering that protests against ICE will be held as planned.
Others are organizing protests this week, declaring “F**k fourth of July. We have a king that we need to get rid of first.”
The problem for those calling on the EU to fight the U.S. is democracy itself, something of a headache for the global elite in Brussels. European governments are cracking down on conservative and other groups, which are soaring in popularity, with calls for stronger borders and reversing mass immigration trends. Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and other countries have experienced a similar surge in the popularity of conservative parties.
The fact is, many of the triggers for these “No Kings” protests are the product of the democratic process from the “Big Beautiful Bill” to changes in immigration policy. Citizens voted for change and successfully secured it, and some people are angry about it.
At the same time, our courts continue to function as designed in reviewing these orders and policies. Trump has won some and lost some before the Supreme Court, as constitutional limits are defined and enforced.
In my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I explore the future of American democracy in the 21st Century in light of economic and political movements, including the current crisis of faith of many on the left over our fundamental values and institutions.
The irony is that this crisis is largely centered among the most privileged classes. Yet recent Gallup polling shows patriotism is at an all-time low. However, the drop is found almost entirely among Democrats. Only 36 percent of Democrats reported being extremely or very proud to be American, compared to 92 percent of Republicans.
Some are simply moving to foreign countries. The New York Times has fanned the flames of those claiming that the U.S. is a new fascist regime. Recently, it featured the declaration of three Yale professors fleeing American fascism for the free nation of Canada. In their piece, titled “We study fascism and we are leaving the United States,” the professors explain that “the lesson of 1933 is that you get out sooner rather than later.”
But what these professors call fascism looks a lot like the democratic process to others. The problem with democracy is that it does not always produce the outcome you want.
For some, support for democratic choice seems to extend only to fellow citizens who make the “right” choice, from their own perspective, of course. So faced with losses in elections and in Congress, many are shouting “broken arrow” and hoping for external help in crushing the opposition.
Yet the fact is, this country is not being “overrun.” Those are fellow citizens who are calling for these policy changes and rejecting far-left policies. Just as many in Europe are calling on the EU to block far-right democratic victories, many in this country are advocating for the trashing of the Constitution or transnational interventions to reverse political voting trends.
The fact is, the far left is not truly surrounded. They have simply retreated into smaller and smaller echo chambers rather than engage the rest of the country on these issues. Viewed from within the protected spaces of MSNBC or BlueSky, you can feel surrounded, but it remains a type of self-isolation. It is like watching wagons frantically circling on the plains without a hostile in sight. The problem is that most of America has moved on.
In the end, the calls for a globalist intervention are a final desperate call of America’s self-isolated left.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right.”
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