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Here’s The Single Most Important Question 2024 GOP Presidential Candidates Must Answer


BY: BEN WEINGARTEN | JUNE 06, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/06/heres-the-single-most-important-question-2024-gop-presidential-candidates-must-answer/

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There is one fundamental question that any candidate vying for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 2024 must answer — but that as of yet has gone largely unaddressed, at least publicly, as the field spars over significant but ultimately subordinate issues. The question is this: How will you win the general election under the present voting system?

An inability to answer this question clearly, compellingly, and convincingly imperils Republican odds of retaking the White House, no matter how favorable their prospects might look come next November. It is incumbent on anyone who wants to earn the Republican presidential nomination to answer this question at the outset, and to operate accordingly.

Over the last two election cycles, Republicans lost in historically aberrant if not unprecedented ways. That, or they underachieved relative to what conditions on the ground would have suggested. Political analysts have pointed to numerous factors to explain why the results broke the way they did, but perhaps the one constant in the presidential and midterm elections was that they were both held under a radically transformed voting system.

Democrats are so well-positioned to thrive under this system that even under the most favorable political circumstances, and with a “perfect” Republican presidential candidate, it is not at all clear that such a candidate would prevail. At least that is the prudent assumption under which Republicans serious about winning the presidency should be operating.

As Americans well know, we are lightyears removed from the election days of old — singular days when people voted in person, on paper ballots, after presenting identification. Now, we have mass mail-in elections, conducted over weeks, where those voting in person often do so on electronic machines, and with lax identification standards.

New Norms

Democrats largely developed and long fought for this system, willing it into existence under the cover of Covid-19. Naturally, they have successfully manipulated and exploited the voting regime they made.

Ballot harvesting is becoming an accepted norm. Candidates not only have to earn votes but figure out how to collect as many votes as they possibly can. Are Republicans overnight going to out-harvest their opponents, or figure out some new means to identify and turn out voters otherwise sitting on the sidelines in sufficient numbers to overcome Democrats’ ballot-harvesting superiority?

“Zuckerbucks” continue to loom over our contests as well, despite bans in many states. The left is doing everything it can to steer private money toward public election administration — administration done in conjunction with left-wing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seemingly targeting the Democrat ballots needed to win.

Prepare for Lawfare

Lawfare is also now an integral part of our election system. Republicans have started to devote significantly greater attention and resources to the litigation game, but to catch up to Democrats will require a long-term, sustained effort, backed with real money. And filing suit over election policies and practices after votes have already been cast of course has proven a losing proposition, as demonstrated by courts’ unwillingness to grapple with fundamental issues around the 2020 election largely on technical grounds.

Meanwhile, Democrats have engaged in efforts to ruin the lives of Republican election lawyers — in their own words to “make them toxic in their communities and in their firms” — seeking to kneecap their competition before it ever reaches the courtroom.

Are Republican candidates devising comprehensive election lawfare strategies right now to both aggressively target existing election chicanery and stave off that which is to come — with the courage and intellectual heft behind it needed to win in the face of an unrelenting and calculating opposition?

Daunting Challenges

These in-built challenges exist before even discussing election fraud, and the imperative for a Republican candidate to exhaust every available means to prevent it, and in the absolute worst case to detect and mitigate it — this at a time when voting happens at further remove from the election booth than ever before, making finding and proving fraud all the more difficult.

Layer on top of these issues the broader forces any such candidate will be up against, and the prospect of winning becomes even more daunting.

Among them is a concerted ruling-class effort to stymie any Republican nominee who might challenge its power and privilege, as President Donald Trump found himself up against in 2020. As Time’s Molly Ball described it in her infamous “Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” exposé, Trump faced: a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.

They were not rigging the election,” Ball wrote, “they were fortifying it.”

This “cabal” will re-engage in 2024 and redouble its election “fortification” efforts, perhaps especially in “controlling the flow of information” — this is the working assumption Republicans must operate under. Candidates should also assume the deep state will engage in all manner of dirty tricks. The election interference has already begun in earnest. Frankly, it has been ongoing since 2016.

Given the Democrats’ advantages, it would be foolish for any Republican candidate, no matter how formidable, and against an opponent no matter how weak, to presume victory is preordained or even likely in 2024.

The two leading candidates have, to their credit, acknowledged the challenges presented by the voting system and Republicans’ failings in competing under it.

Former President Donald Trump has vowed that “we will become masters at ballot harvesting.” “We have no choice,” he has said, but to “beat Democrats at their own game.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also recently said, “We’re going to do ballot harvesting,” and that he won’t “fight with one hand tied behind [his] back.”

In that spirit, Republican candidates should devise and articulate a comprehensive plan to win, aimed at an electorate largely dubious of a system they see as rigged. Many are demoralized by this system, which could dampen turnout in key areas.

A Plan

In an ideal world, such a plan would begin with an effort to lobby state legislatures to pass a battery of election integrity-strengthening laws seeking to restore voting, to the greatest extent possible, to the standard of single-day, in-person, and with identification; purge voter rolls of ineligible names; provide maximum transparency and visibility into the voting process for observers, challengers, and the candidates; facilitate real-time arbitration over contested ballots and irregularities, and clear remedies for broader alleged malfeasance; empower state authorities to pursue vote fraud; and impose utterly crippling criminal penalties on anyone who engages in it.

Beyond a legislative effort to ensure end-to-end election integrity from delivery of ballot to vote-counting, candidates must lay out a realistic roadmap for success by internalizing lessons of recent election cycles and forthrightly recognizing Republicans’ strengths and weaknesses. They must determine how to optimally deploy finite resources to triumph in a bloody political war, and play on whatever advantages Republicans may have.

To prepare such a plan, candidates should seek to identify: Democrats’ most effective and decisive strategies and tactics in recent election cycles; what Democrats will do to improve upon these efforts; Republicans’ greatest strategic and tactical failures and successes in recent election cycles; Republican advantages yet to be exploited; and the most significant election integrity-eroding laws, policies, and practices on a state-by-state basis in recent election cycles.

Such an analysis would help the candidates determine which strategies and tactics to replicate, improve upon, experiment with, and totally discard. It would also help them anticipate the strategies and tactics they should combat using whatever means available, and, relatedly, discern what rules and features of the game they must relentlessly litigate over — as Democrats will no doubt be doing.

Then, candidates could develop a precinct-level plan to find and maximize turnout among voters in the most pivotal locales while building as strong and aggressive an on-the-ground poll challenging/fraud detection operation as possible to deter illegal or unethical Democrat behavior; develop a related lawfare plan; and determine how much money they must raise to implement the plans, when and where to allocate the funds, and to whom.

At minimum, this thought exercise would yield critical insights, and instill in voters and donors alike confidence there is a robust and coherent operation in place to maximize the odds for success.

The planning must begin now.

Only by competing and winning under a rotten system rewarding the kind of organizing and action historically anathema to conservatives will there ever be an opportunity to dismantle that system.


Ben Weingarten is Editor at Large for RealClearInvestigations. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, columnist at Newsweek, and a contributor to the New York Post and Epoch Times, among other publications. Subscribe to his newsletter at weingarten.substack.com, and follow him on Twitter: @bhweingarten.

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DeSantis Campaign Ad Hits Trump for Not Firing Fauci


By Eric Mack    |   Monday, 05 June 2023 06:01 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/ron-desantis-campaign-ad/2023/06/05/id/1122476/

The campaign for Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is firing back at COVID-19 barbs hurled by Donald Trump, trolling the former president for refusing to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“Donald Trump became a household name by firing countless people *on television*,” the DeSantis War Room campaign’s Twitter account wrote, sharing a campaign video ad.

“But when it came to Fauci…”

The ad shows scenes from the Trump-led “The Apprentice,” showing Trump repeating his famous “you’re fired” line.

The ad then cuts to then-President Trump talking about how he cannot fire Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Fauci was a leading voice for the Trump administration’s initial COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in March 2020.

“Today I walk in, I hear I’m going to fire him,” Trump is shown during one of his 2020 pandemic daily press briefings. “I’m not firing him. I think he’s a wonderful guy.”

The DeSantis War Room campaign ad then turns to multiple interviews where Trump admitted he did not fire Fauci because of “a firestorm on the left,” saying he was not “allowed to,” and even Trump admitting that Fauci was a problem.

“Every time he goes on television there’s a bomb, but there’s even a bigger bomb if you fire him,” Trump says in a TV interview in the ad.

“Frankly, you can’t win that one; if I would have done it, I would have taken heat,” the ad shows Trump saying in another interview.

Fauci retired just days before the Republican Party was set to retake control of the House majority — therefore taking the speaker and committee chair gavels for oversight.

DeSantis has famously called Fauci “an elf” who needed to be “chucked across the Potomac River.”

“I’m just sick of seeing him,” DeSantis said during a 2022 midterm gubernatorial campaign speech. “I know he says he’s going to retire. Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac.”

Trump has pitched an “Agenda 47” plan — named after the next president of the U.S. being the 47th — “to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption once and for all, and corruption it is.”

“First, I will immediately reissue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats, and I will wield that power very aggressively,” Trump said in his details campaign policy video, posted to Rumble this spring.

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DeSantis: I’ll Pardon Trump, Other DOJ ‘Weaponization’ Victims


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Thursday, 25 May 2023 03:33 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/ron-desantis-donald-trump-pardon/2023/05/25/id/1121220/

New GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said on Thursday that if he’s elected, he will “be aggressive” in using presidential pardons to free people charged or convicted through the weaponization of the Department of Justice, and that includes his main rival for the party’s nomination, former President Donald Trump.

“What I’m going to do is … on day one, I will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases, who people are victims of weaponization or political targeting, and we will be aggressive at issuing pardons,” the Florida governor told podcasters, Buck Sexton and Clay Travis.

DeSantis added that the DOJ and FBI have been weaponized in many ways under President Joe Biden, and he acknowledged that in some of the cases where people are charged with crimes, “people may have a technical violation of the law.”

“But if there are three other people who did the same thing, but just in a context like BLM [Black Lives Matter] and they don’t get prosecuted at all, that is uneven application of justice, and so we’re going to find ways where that did not happen,” said DeSantis. “And then we will use the pardon power — and I will do that at the front end.”

He said many presidents wait until the end of their administration, but he promised that his administration will “find examples where the government’s been weaponized against disfavored groups, and we will apply relief as appropriate.”

However, DeSantis also explained that the pardons will be considered “case by case,” meaning that a blanket pardon wouldn’t be given to Trump, who is facing several criminal probes.

“That could be from a grandma who got arrested and prosecuted too much all the way up to, potentially, Trump himself,” Travis said. He then asked the governor, “Is that fair to say when you analyze what the charges might have been brought on a federal level?”

“I would say any example of disfavored treatment based on politics or weaponization would be included in that review, no matter how small or how big,” DeSantis responded.

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Ann Coulter Op-ed: How Not To Be President


May 24, 2023 by Ann Coulter

Read more at https://anncoulter.com/2023/05/24/how-not-to-be-president/

How Not To Be President

     Now that we know Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is running for president (along with several others whose names I can’t remember), I have a helpful primer on what NOT to do as president.

     I base this advice on the conduct of the most inconsequential president in U.S. history, Donald Trump. With the exception of the judiciary — something neither he nor Jared saw a way of monetizing, thank God — Trump’s entire presidency can be summarized as: obnoxious tweets, followed by immediate and complete capitulation.

     The problem with the Trump diehards is that they’d read the bad-ass tweets, pump their fists, but then wander off, never bothering to find out what happened next. Here’s what happened: Trump surrendered. Over and over and over again.

     There were so many surrenders that The New York Times had to keep coming up with new synonyms for “loser”: “Trump Gives Ground,” “Trump Backs Off,” “Trump Drops,” “Trump Accommodates Democrats,” “Trump Seethes,” “Trump Signals Defeat,” “Trump’s Surprise Retreat,” “Trump Confronted by a Loss,” “The Biggest Surrender of His Presidency,” and so on.

     In his first two years in office, Trump had a Republican House and a Republican Senate — he could have done anything! Let’s see how he fulfilled his signature promise to build a wall, as told in tweets and headlines.

     FIRST SPENDING FIGHT:

     “… (if) the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be! #BuildTheWall” — Trump tweet, April 24, 2017

     “Don’t let the fake media tell you that I have changed my position on the WALL. It will get built and help stop drugs, human trafficking etc.” — Trump tweet, April 25, 2017

     New York Times Headline, April 26, 2017: “Wall ‘Will Get Built,’ Trump Insists, as He Drops Funding Demand”

     SECOND SPENDING FIGHT:

     “If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall … One way or the other, we’re going to get that wall.” — Trump at Phoenix rally, Aug. 22, 2017

     “I think everybody knows this president isn’t somebody who backs down.” — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, Aug. 23, 2017

     Months of negotiations and studly tweets (Jan. 4, 2018: “We must BUILD THE WALL, stop illegal immigration,” etc. etc.) led to this:

     New York Times headline, March 22, 2018: “Spending Plan Passed by Congress Is a Rebuke to Trump.”

     “Rebuke” is putting it mildly: The bill expressly prohibited Trump from building a wall and, for good measure, also blocked the hiring of thousands of new Border Patrol agents.

     But Trump bounced back with more masterful tweeting!

     “I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill (because) … the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.” — Trump tweet, March 23, 2018

     Then, the very next day …

     New York Times headline, March 24, 2018: “Trump Seethes, but Signs Bipartisan Spending Plan”

     True, Trump had given away the store, but look at what he said while signing the Don’t Even Think About Building a Wall bill:

     “I looked very seriously at the veto. I was thinking about doing the veto.”

     Not only that, but he vowed, “I will never sign another bill like this again — I’m not going to do it again.”

     You’ll never guess what he did again.

     THIRD SPENDING FIGHT:

     “I want to know, where is the money for Border Security and the WALL in this ridiculous Spending Bill, and where will it come from after the Midterms? Dems are obstructing Law Enforcement and Border Security. REPUBLICANS MUST FINALLY GET TOUGH!” — Trump tweet, Sept. 20, 2018

     Months of negotiations finally ended with …

     “Trump Signs Bill Reopening Government for 3 Weeks in Surprise Retreat From Wall” — The New York Times, Jan. 25, 2019

     Surprise! By then, 41 newly-elected House Democrats had been sworn in and there was no hope of getting a wall or anything else through Congress.

     How does a Republican president get buffaloed like this by a Republican Congress? Reagan enacted his entire radical agenda (and won the Cold War) without ever, not once, having a Republican House and Senate.

     It wasn’t only Trump’s wall that followed the obnoxious tweet/face plant trajectory. It was everything. Tweeting “LAW & ORDER!” as the country went up in flames; retweeting #FireFauci while never daring to remove King Anthony from his throne; spending months tweeting about “Rocket Man,” then staging a theatrical meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — to accomplish what exactly?

     I’ll need another column to even begin to capture the horror of this wasted presidency.

     Gov. DeSantis, I’m pretty sure I don’t need to tell you this, but please don’t do any of that.

     COPYRIGHT 2023 ANN COULTER

Jason Chaffetz Op-ed: Durham report revealed corruption that could mean this stunner for Trump in 2024


Jason Chaffetz

By Jason Chaffetz | Fox News | Published May 19, 2023 4:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/durham-report-revealed-corruption-could-mean-stunner-trump-2024

Who is going to trust the Department of Justice now? In the wake of Special Counsel John Durham’s long-awaited report, Americans now know there was widespread political collusion and deliberate deception from the very top of the Obama administration, the Clinton campaign, the corporate media and the Department of Justice (DOJ), all in favor of the Democrats.  Not only did they abuse their power and lie to the public, they seem to be proud of it. 

With these facts now added to the long list of formerly crazy conspiracy theories come true, former president Donald Trump is essentially inoculated from any future prosecution by virtue of the public mistrust in an obviously weaponized federal government. Even if prosecutors somehow manage to get a partisan jury to convict, the public will see it as a political witch hunt predicated primarily on partisan politics.  

The more they try to “get ’m” the stronger they make him. 

John Durham
Special Counsel John Durham has created a firestorm of controversy with his just-released report on government collusion that targeted Donald Trump. (Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images)

For this reason, both Democrats and Republicans should fear what could come next if they don’t clip the wings of this rogue federal agency and institute serious systemic changes. If they can do it to Trump, and they did, then they can do it again to anyone. 

One thing has become crystal clear: the Justice Department cannot and will not police itself. DOJ is unwilling and unprepared to discipline let alone prosecute its own. That’s one reason the work of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is so vital. 

To restore its position as a coequal branch of government, Congress must lose its reluctance to wield the heavy tools available in the law and the Constitution. It can and must develop an independent means of enforcing congressional subpoenas.  

The threat of impeachment of Senate-confirmed bureaucrats must become more feared. The House of Representatives must unite to implement what is perhaps the most powerful tool – the power of the purse. And Congress should reconsider and expand the role of independent offices of inspectors general (OIG) to ensure the Justice Department can no longer ride above the law.  

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Republicans have been bafflingly reluctant to wield impeachment power. Getting support to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in 2015 was a heavy lift. It shouldn’t be. If Congress doesn’t hold administration officials accountable, who will? Under the advice-and-consent clause of the Constitution, the Senate was given a co-equal voice to confirm a bureaucrat and remove them, but they do not. 

Likewise, Congress has failed to secure its own subpoena power. For too long, the body has been content to rely on the DOJ to enforce congressional subpoenas. But now that we clearly see the DOJ applying a political litmus test to such requests, the American people need a new solution. For Democrats, subpoenas are enforced in record time with guns drawn. For Republicans, the DOJ will only enforce “legitimate” subpoenas based on their own whims after months of review. 

Congress can also leverage the power of the purse to play hardball by denying agency funding until the government produces requested documents and witnesses. But they don’t. 

While all of those options are on the table, perhaps the most effective solution could come from empowering the government’s independent inspectors general. Most everyone in government is currently subject to review by an office of Inspector General (OIG).  

One thing has become crystal clear: the Justice Department cannot and will not police itself. DOJ is unwilling and unprepared to discipline let alone prosecute its own. That’s one reason the work of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is so vital. 

The ability of these investigators to subpoena documents, interview witnesses and expose wrongdoing has yielded important evidence and numerous criminal referrals. But they don’t have authority to make any prosecutorial decisions – and they probably should. 

To the shock of most people, the IGs are prohibited from investigating wrongdoing by attorneys at the DOJ. Nor can they compel testimony once someone leaves federal service, and both of these need to change. 

Before the Durham report, there were two IG reports on the Russia collusion hoax that combined for more than 1,000 pages. They included discipline and criminal referrals that DOJ ignored. Consequences for wrongdoing by federal law enforcement have been minimal.  

Even ex-FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to making a false statement after altering a document in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, received only probation and community service for his crime. He forged documents to effect an election and he didn’t even lose his law license! 

Sadly, the American people have lost trust in some of the most important institutions, the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Justice. And this may very well propel Trump back into the White House. 

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Jason Chaffetz is a FOX News (FNC) contributor and the host of the Jason In The House podcast on FOX News Radio. He joined the network in 2017.

6 Freshly Documented Instances Of Systemic Pro-Democrat FBI Corruption


BY: JOY PULLMANN | MAY 17, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/17/6-freshly-documented-instances-of-systemic-pro-democrat-fbi-corruption/

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Former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann and others lied to the nation about the special counsel report released Monday that deeply documents years of systemic FBI corruption in favor of the Democratic Party. That report reveals and adds detail to multiple instances in which FBI employees used high-level intelligence and law-enforcement positions to promote misinformation that affected at least two presidential elections, always on behalf of Democrats.

Special Counsel John Durham’s report lists and compares multiple such instances to illustrate “Systemic Problems” that are “difficult to explain.” Many more have been uncovered in the past few years. This information key to Americans’ oversight of their government through free and fair elections has been blacked out on corporate media airwaves and censored online by private grantees and social media companies obeying funding conditions and threats from federal officials.

1. Weaponizing Democrat Party Misinformation Developed With Probable Foreign Spies

It just so happens that the false information the FBI used to immediately open a spy operation on Democrats’ opposition was developed by the Democrat presidential campaign, in conjunction with at least two potential or allegedly former foreign spies.

According to the Durham report, top FBI, DOJ, and CIA officials, as well as President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, were told “within days of its receipt” that the Hillary Clinton campaign had developed a “plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server.”

CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama, Biden, FBI Director James Comey, and Attorney General Eric Holder on this intelligence on Aug. 3, 2016, a few days after Clinton’s campaign developed the plan. The CIA reportedly got this info about Clinton’s smear plan from its surveillance of Russian intelligence.

This means that, in the summer of 2016, the FBI and DOJ, and the head of the Democrat Party, knew that the Steele dossier, Alfa Bank allegations, and other claims of Donald Trump being a traitorous Russian stooge “were part of a political effort to smear a political opponent and to use the resources of the federal government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies in support of a political objective.”

This should have gotten the FBI to question its Crossfire Hurricane operation, Durham’s report says. Instead, however, the FBI raced ahead, with FBI headquarters demanding faster pursuit of Trump under what they knew were false pretenses.

The FBI’s actions indicated a clear double standard for Republicans and Democrats, the report shows. “Unlike the FBI’s opening of a full investigation of unknown members of the Trump campaign based on raw, uncorroborated information, in this separate matter involving a purported Clinton campaign plan, the FBI never opened any type of inquiry, issued any taskings, employed any analytical personnel, or produced any analytical products in connection with the information,” notes the Durham report.

The report says if the Clinton campaign knowingly supplied this false information to the government, that’s a criminal offense. Durham claims his team was unable to establish this criminal intent, but it’s obvious it existed even if it can’t be established with emails and voice recordings.

So, again, months before the press started stampeding false claims of Russian collusion into three impeachment attempts that strangled Trump’s ability to wield the power voters had given him, the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, the sitting president and head of the Democratic Party, and Democrats’ next president were aware it was a political disinformation operation with no basis in fact. The head of that same FBI that ran a multi-year spy operation against Trump based on this claim knew it was politically motivated disinformation before the lie even got its boots on.

This goes far beyond agency “bias.” It is the complete corruption of half of the nation’s political party system and its federal law enforcement. It is the systematic disenfranchisement of Americans who don’t agree with the national security blob — or wouldn’t, if that blob allowed them to learn true facts about its evil machinations.

It is the systematic weaponization of the U.S. national security apparatus against constitutional self-government. It is the end of government of the people, by the people, and for the people in the United States of America. That’s what Durham’s report shows. Anyone who doesn’t treat this as a five-alarm fire set by saboteurs is helping fan the flames.

2. Protecting Democrats’ POTUS Pick While Slandering Republicans’ POTUS Pick

Several times, the Durham report notes that FBI and Department of Justice officials treated the Clinton and Trump campaigns completely differently. Another notable way was in regard to potential contacts with agents from foreign governments.

When the feds learned of a foreign influence operation seeking to target Hillary Clinton, they gave her campaign what is called a “defensive briefing.” That means they warned the campaign about the potential for undue foreign influence.

When the feds learned that a foreign influence operation might be seeking to target Trump, they warned almost everyone except the Trump campaign. The FBI, DOJ, and CIA not only gave Trump’s campaign no defensive briefings on such potential threats, the report says, these agencies used the threats as an excuse to surveil Trump’s campaign and boost Clinton’s disinformation operation linking Trump to Russia in the press.

“The speed with which surveillance of a U.S. person associated with Trump’s campaign was authorized … are difficult to explain compared to the FBI’s and the [Justice] Department’s actions nearly two years earlier when confronted with corroborated allegations of attempted foreign influence involving Clinton, who at the time was still an undeclared candidate for the presidency,” says the report on pages 73 and 74.

3. Dismissing Foreign Funds Transfers for Clinton, Not for Trump

In contrast to the bureau’s full-scale rush to use its powers to smear Republicans with known falsehoods, the report shows that when the FBI knew the Democrat presidential campaign might be violating federal law, the FBI stood down. When an informant told the FBI the Clinton campaign was likely accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions, the FBI told the informant to drop it and did nothing further.

“Once again, the investigative actions taken by FBI Headquarters in the [Clinton] Foundation matters contrast with those taken in Crossfire Hurricane,” says Durham’s report. “As an initial matter, the NYFO [FBI New York Field Office] and WFO [Washington Field Office] investigations appear to have been opened as preliminary investigations due to the political sensitivity and their reliance on unvetted hearsay information (the Clinton Cash book) and CHS reporting. By contrast, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was immediately opened as a full investigation despite the fact that it was similarly predicated on unvetted hearsay information.”

Another double standard was revealed in this contrasting FBI treatment of different political parties: “Furthermore, while the Department appears to have had legitimate concerns about the Foundation investigation occurring so close to a presidential election, it does not appear that similar concerns were expressed by the [Justice] Department or FBI regarding the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

4. Putting Powerful Democrats Above the Law

We already knew from the years The Federalist has spent unraveling Spygate that former FBI Counterintelligence Division Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok and his mistress, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s staff lawyer Lisa Page, weaponized their government positions to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. These are the two who infamously texted that they’d “stop” Trump from becoming president.

Durham’s report shows multiple instances of McCabe, Strzok, Page, and their superiors wielding federal law enforcement positions as weapons against Republicans. The Durham report contains more evidence that high-level federal intelligence officials see it as routine to put powerful Democrats above the law.

Besides the disparate treatment outlined above and many other such instances, Durham’s report includes a telling text exchange between Strzok and Page. It shows them deciding not to apply the law to Hillary Clinton because of her powerful position. It seems that the powerful are indeed above the law in the United States — provided they’re affiliated with the Democratic Party.

5. Refusing Interviews with the Special Counsel

Key FBI figures refused interviews with Durham’s team, including Comey, Strzok, the Clinton campaign’s Marc Elias, McCabe, Page, and Glenn Simpson of the opposition research firm that cooked up the Steele dossier for Clinton’s campaign.

Add that to the many instances of “former” FBI and CIA figures being employed in social media companies to assist with government censorship demands, and going on TV to fuel the Russiagate hoax and other lies to Americans about crucial public issues. It adds up to yet another indication of an intelligence state using its vast — and unconstitutional — powers on behalf of the Democrat Party.

6. Refusing to Obey Congressional Subpoenas About Records on Biden Corruption

Durham’s report indicates that the FBI repeatedly sat on evidence the Clinton campaign was accepting bribes — payments in exchange for policy preferences. The FBI is still doing that with Joe Biden. According to several high-level members of Congress, the FBI has been refusing to release to them subpoenaed, non-classified information about how it handled documentation alleging that Biden also traded political favors for campaign donations.

“We know the FBI relied on unverified claims to relentlessly target a Republican president. What did the FBI do to investigate claims involving a Democrat President?” asked Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Numerous private and congressional watchdogs have documented that the Biden family has received millions of dollars from foreign individuals and companies connected to hostile governments including communist China.

“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley said in a press release earlier this month. “What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further.”

Congressional subpoenas have the force of law. Federal agencies operate at the discretion and funding of Congress, according to the Constitution. The FBI’s leadership doesn’t seem to believe, however, that constitutional checks and balances apply to them. So long as Congress doesn’t enforce its own prerogatives, the FBI’s corrupt leaders are right.

It’s been publicly known for decades that the FBI uses its surveillance, investigatory, and other law enforcement powers to manipulate American politics. Recall its surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. and infamous FBI head J. Edgar Hoover’s spying on the Supreme Court, Congress, and presidents.

The Durham report is, in that respect, nothing new. What would be new would be punishing the FBI’s use of blackmail, smear operations, threats, censorship, illegal spying, and election rigging. If that doesn’t happen, the United States is quite simply not a free country anymore.


Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

Donald Trump to Newsmax: Durham Report ‘Great Vindication’


By Eric Mack    |   Tuesday, 16 May 2023 07:31 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/donald-trump-john-durham-report/2023/05/16/id/1120066/

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday told Newsmax the release of the Durham Report offers some substantial “vindication” for him at long last – and some evidence of “treason” by perpetrators of the Russia collusion hoax.

“This is the biggest story of – maybe in the history of – our country: The crime of the century,” Trump told Tuesday night’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.”

“That’s been very obvious to me for a long time,” he added to host Rob Schmitt. “I would tell you, it’s a great vindication. It feels good. The report has been, you know, wildly praised.

“I wish it would have come faster, but the detail he went into — 308 pages — the detail is extraordinary. I guess you could call it treason, you could call it a lot of different things, but this should never be allowed to happen in our country again.”

Trump denounced deep state forces he said had worked to cast a “cloud” over his 2016 campaign and subsequent administration, saying the blaming of Russia for election interference was a myth peddled by Democrats.

“There is a deep state,” Trump said. “There are a lot of problems, and I did a lot of firing, but it goes down very low, when you look at it.”

Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 foe, created the Russia hoax to excuse her loss, Trump added.

“Let’s blame it on Russia,” Trump said in reference to the internal discussions by Clinton’s campaign. “Somehow, somebody came up with the idea: Let’s blame her loss on Russia.”

Trump said this myth had real power, as “the fake news started picking it up” and ultimately refused to let it go: “It ended up going 2½ years, and they made the most of it.

“It’s a disgrace, but this was really an excuse for why she lost the election and she blamed it on Russia.

“It’s very sad, very bad for our country.”

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The Left’s 2020 ‘Fake Electors’ Narrative Is Fake News


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 15, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/15/the-lefts-2020-fake-electors-narrative-is-fake-news/

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Headlines recently proclaimed that eight of Trump’s “fake” electors accepted immunity deals. Of course, in reporting the news, the corporate outlets all missed the real story — that the electors’ testimony failed to incriminate anyone, including Trump, and that the county prosecutors engaged in massive misconduct. Equally appalling, however, was the corrupt media’s continued peddling of the “fake electors” narrative. 

There were no “fake” electors. There were contingent Republican electors named consistent with legal precedent to preserve the still ongoing legal challenges to the validity of Georgia’s certified vote. 

Nor was appointing an alternative slate of electors some cockamamie plan devised by Trump lawyers. On the contrary, Trump’s election lawyers and the contingent electors followed the precise approach Democrats successfully used when the date Congress established for certifying an election came before the legal challenges John F. Kennedy had brought in Hawaii were decided. And that approach allowed Kennedy to be certified the winner of Hawaii’s three electoral votes on Jan. 6, 1961, even though the Aloha State had originally certified Richard Nixon the victor.

The Hawaii scenario in 1960 mirrors in every material respect the facts on the ground in Georgia on Dec. 14, 2020 — the date both the Democrat and Republican presidential electors met and cast their 16 electoral votes for Joe Biden and Donald Trump respectively. 

Here’s What Happened in Hawaii Six-0 

Election day in 1960 fell on Nov. 8 and pitted Kennedy, a Democrat, against Republican Richard Nixon. The outcome remained unknown for some time, with a total of 93 electoral votes from eight different states undecided in the days following the election. Hawaii was one of those states. 

By Dec. 9 of that year, Kennedy had accumulated enough electoral votes to win the White House, but Hawaii’s winner was still in question. While the presidency did not depend on Hawaii’s three electoral votes, Democrats there had challenged the initial returns that gave Nixon a 141-vote edge, or 0.08 percent margin of victory.

Based on the original count in favor of Nixon, the acting governor of Hawaii, Republican James Kealoha, certified the Republican electors on Nov. 28, 1960. On Dec. 13, over the objections of the state attorney general, state circuit court Judge Ronald Jamieson ordered a recount. Then, on Dec. 19, both the Nixon and Kennedy electors met, “cast their votes for President and Vice President, and certified their own meeting and votes.” 

In casting their electoral ballots for Kennedy, the three Hawaiian Democrats certified they were the “duly and legally qualified and appointed” electors for president and vice president for the state of Hawaii and that they had been “certified (as such) by the Executive.” The Hawaii electors further attested: “We hereby certify that the lists of all the votes of the state of Hawaii given for President, and of all the votes given for Vice President, are contained herein.”

Two of the three Democrat electors were retired federal judges, William Heen and Delbert Metzger, and Heen personally mailed the Democrat electoral votes to Congress on Dec. 20. In fact, the envelope containing the certificates, further attested: “We hereby certify that the lists of all the votes of the state of Hawaii given for president … are contained herein.”

Ten days later, on Dec. 30, 1960, Judge Jamieson held that Kennedy had won the election. In so holding, Jamieson stressed the importance of the Democrat electors having met on Dec. 19, as prescribed by the Electoral Count Act, to cast their ballots in favor of Kennedy. That step allowed the Hawaii governor to then certify Kennedy as the winner of Hawaii’s three electoral votes and, in turn, Congress to count Hawaii’s electoral votes in favor of Kennedy.

The Peach State Repeat

The Georgia situation in 2020 mirrored the events of 60 years ago in Hawaii. 

Election day in 2020 fell on Nov. 3, although by then many ballots had already been cast, given the adoption of mass mail-in and early voting. Trump held a lead in Georgia until the morning of Friday, Nov. 6, when Biden overtook the incumbent. With the margin remaining tight, on Nov. 11, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a statewide audit. 

Following the audit, Biden remained in the lead by approximately 12,000 votes, leading Raffensperger to certify the election results on Friday, Nov. 20, 2020. Republic Gov. Brian Kemp signed the certification the same day. Then on Nov. 21, Trump requested a recount, as allowed under Georgia law given the closeness of the count.

On Dec. 4, 2020, then-President Trump and Republican elector David Shafer filed suit in a Fulton County state court against Raffensperger, arguing tens of thousands of votes counted in the presidential election had been cast in violation of Georgia law. While Trump’s lawsuit was still pending, on Dec. 7, 2020, based on the recount, Raffensperger recertified Biden as the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of 11,779. 

Trump and Shafer’s Fulton County lawsuit contesting the election results remained pending on Dec. 14, 2020, the date the presidential electors were required by federal law to meet. Thus, while the Democrat electors met and cast their ballots for Joe Biden, the Republican electors met separately and cast their 16 votes for Trump. 

At that time, Shafer made clear the Trump electors had met and cast their votes to ensure Trump’s legal battle in court remained viable. Nonetheless, following Biden’s election, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis targeted the Republican electors as part of her criminal special purpose grand jury investigation.

While the grand jury has since issued a report and been disbanded, Willis agreed to grant immunity to eight of the electors, likely to push them to implicate the other electors. However, their lawyer confirmed in a court filing that none of the electors implicated anyone in criminal activity. 

Since then, Shafer’s attorneys, Holly Pierson and Craig Gillen, wrote Willis a detailed letter reviewing the Hawaii precedent. The attorneys noted they had made three prior written requests to meet “to discuss the factual and legal issues” relevant to Shafer’s role as a contingent Trump elector but had “not yet received any response to those requests.” 

The 11-page, single-spaced letter then proceeded to detail both the Hawaii precedent for Shafer’s actions following the 2020 election and the legal advice the Republican elector received that “he and the other contingent presidential electors should meet at the state capitol building on December 14, 2020, and perform the duties of a presidential elector to preserve potential remedies in the event Trump et al. v. Raffensperger, et al. was successful.” 

In addition to detailing the Hawaii precedent from 1960, Shafer’s lawyers highlighted the fact that in contesting the 2000 election, lawyers for then-Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore cited that very precedent to support his position that two elector slates could be appointed. In fact, Democrat Rep. Patsy Mink of Hawaii suggested the 2000 Florida electoral dispute be resolved based on that Hawaii precedent too. And three Supreme Court justices in Bush v. Gore cited the Hawaii precedent as a basis for allowing the Florida recount to proceed. 

As the letter and Hawaii precedent make clear, Shafer and the other Trump electors not only did nothing wrong, but they acted prudentially to ensure that if the state court lawsuit resolved in the president’s favor, Georgia’s electoral votes would be properly counted on Jan. 6, 2020.

Here we see one of the only differences between Trump’s legal challenge and Kennedy’s: The Hawaii state court promptly resolved the merits of Kennedy’s legal challenge, while in violation of the Georgia Election Code that requires lawsuits contesting elections to be heard within 20 days, the Fulton County court delayed assigning a judge to hear Trump’s election dispute and then delayed the first scheduled hearing until Jan. 8, 2021 — two days after Congress certified Biden the winner of the 2020 election. 

Now you know the rest of the story. There were no fake electors. The question now is whether Willis will charge Shafer and others with fake crimes.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Exclusive: RNC Launches New Year-Round Election Integrity Department Ahead Of 2024


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MAY 12, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/12/exclusive-rnc-launches-new-year-round-election-integrity-department-ahead-of-2024/

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The Republican National Committee (RNC) is gearing up for next year’s presidential race with the launch of a new department dedicated solely to election integrity. The new internal infrastructure will bring on year-round staff operating new technology designed to facilitate recruitment and litigation, according to a 35-page report shared exclusively with The Federalist.

“The RNC built a historic election integrity program in 2022: we put 80,000 volunteers on the ground, secured key legal victories, and learned how we can grow even stronger in the future,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told The Federalist. “As we prepare for 2024, the RNC will establish a full-time permanent Election Integrity Department that will combine our existing tools to build on our unprecedented progress.”

The report sent to RNC members Thursday details the party’s plans to transform the GOP’s election integrity efforts from pop-up operations into year-round initiatives that remain ongoing immediately after each election. Prior to 2021, the national Republican Party was restricted from engaging in electoral oversight, such as hiring poll watchers over a 1981 consent decree. That meant any initiatives designed to maintain integrity in American elections were patchwork efforts coordinated by independent campaigns with the support of the GOP congressional campaign committees. The decades-long order was lifted in 2018 after more than three decades, and the party officially resumed efforts on poll watching and voter fraud in the 2021-2022 election cycle.

“The need for the RNC to be the permanent and year-round home for the Republican [Election Integrity Operations] is glaringly obvious, and the party is fortunate that we now have that,” the report reads. “For the past two years, the RNC has worked tirelessly as a bridge among those groups with unprecedented cooperation.”

The RNC is now preparing to hire an army to the tune of “tens of thousands” of attorneys and poll watchers with an aggressive litigation strategy to ensure a free and fair election next year.

“Beginning with the successful 2021 operations in Virginia and New Jersey, the RNC established a multifaceted [Election Integrity Operations] program in partnership with the NRSC and NRCC that resulted in dozens of lawsuits,” wrote Ashley MacLeay and Art Wittich, who chaired the RNC committee behind the report.

The fallout from the 2020 election, wherein Democrats exploited lockdown-era protocols to radically expand unsupervised access to the ballot box, has led the GOP to prioritize election integrity as a pillar of the RNC’s 2024 campaign strategy.

Three years ago, Democrat operatives through Facebook’s Center for Tech and Civic Life took over the administration of elections and erected ballot boxes in liberal strongholds to gin up turnout. Mark Zuckerberg’s project gave more than $400 million to the effort, with only a small fraction of the “Zuckbucks” spent in areas won by President Donald Trump.

[READ: The 2020 Election Wasn’t Stolen, It Was Bought By Mark Zuckerberg]

Other efforts by Democrats to rig the 2020 contest included turning election day into election season, with voters able to cast ballots weeks before November, absent of the typical safeguards that protect against fraud. All happened while Big Tech conspired with the corporate press and even federal intelligence agencies to manipulate public opinion throughout the process.

While Republicans are limited with what they can do to confront the corporate collusion, the new RNC department marks an effort to master the mechanics of modern elections. The GOP is also planning to jump in the ballot harvesting game in states with loose restrictions. The party largely refrained from participating in the mass collection of ballots three years ago to the detriment of Republican candidates who faced Democrat opponents eager to exploit relaxed protocols.

Last fall, the RNC took a two-pronged approach to ballot harvesting: GOP attorneys fought to ban the practice in states such as Arizona, where attorneys were successful, while party workers took advantage of harvesting in states where efforts failed to rein in the rules.

[RELATED: Conservatives, Get Busy Ballot Harvesting Or Get Busy Losing]

“The RNC ballot harvested where the law allowed it in 2022, helping to secure key congressional wins that flipped the House,” McDaniel told The Federalist. “We will build on and expand those efforts in 2024 where legal while still holding Democrats accountable for bad laws that undermine election integrity.”


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

Feds Started A Dangerous Game With Hunter Biden’s Laptop, But GOP Lawmakers Can Finish It


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 11, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/11/feds-started-a-dangerous-game-with-hunter-bidens-laptop-but-gop-lawmakers-can-finish-it/

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The interim report of the House Intelligence Committee and Weaponization Subcommittee released Wednesday established extensive coordination between the Biden campaign and those behind the statement signed by 51 former intelligence officials that painted the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation. More explosive, however, is the fact, first reported on Tuesday by The Federalist, that a Central Intelligence Agency employee solicited a former CIA officer to sign the statement. 

Yet there is still much more to unravel to expose the breadth and depth of the info op painting the infamous laptop as Russian disinformation and the government actors involved. Here are five threads that will lead to the truth.

Subpoena All 51 Signatories

As its title stated, the House’s report focused on “How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters.” While the October 2020 letter signed by the former intelligence officials is only part of the scandal, it’s a solid entry point to learning the identity of many of those involved. 

The report already established Secretary of State Antony Blinken — then a senior adviser to the Biden campaign — contacted Obama’s CIA acting director, Mike Morell, to discuss the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Morell also testified that speaking with Blinken spurred him to craft the letter in question so Biden could reference it during his final debate against then-President Trump. 

The House report highlighted several other plays involved in gathering signatories for the letter and revealed that at least one CIA employee solicited an individual to sign the letter. 

The House stressed its investigation is continuing but that neither Blinken nor the CIA have yet to provide documents requested by the committees relating to both the statement and the interactions between its signatories and the CIA. The committees also reportedly scheduled interviews with former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. 

But it is not merely Brennan and Clapper who should be interviewed. While they are two of the most prominent former intelligence officials to have signed the letter, every signatory should be questioned and asked to provide relevant communications. If they refuse, subpoenas should be served and enforced.

Specifically, Brennan, Clapper, and other signatories should be asked to identify anyone they communicated with, or tried to, about the laptop or the letter to reveal the identity of the “nine additional former IC officers” who were unnamed but represented as supporting the letter’s conclusions.

Those 60 people should be asked about everyone with whom they spoke or attempted to speak about the laptop or the letter at any time, including those connected to: 1) the Biden family, 2) the Biden campaign, 3) elected officials, 4) the Democrat Party, 5) politicians opposed to Trump, 6) the media, 7) current government officials, 8) other signatories, 9) foreign governments, and 10) anyone else. All related communications should be obtained.

Based on those findings, any individuals not previously known should be added to the list of those to be questioned and subpoenaed. Those names will likely include many members or allies of the Biden campaign. We already know former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Biden adviser Michael Carpenter and Andrew Bates, then a Biden campaign spokesman and the director of his “rapid response” team, were involved in pushing the “Russian disinformation” narrative.

Additionally, from Morell’s testimony to House investigators, we know the head of Biden’s campaign, Steve Ricchetti, was involved, given that he arranged to personally thank Morell for the letter. Morell also said Jeremy Bash, whom Morell knew through Beacon Global Strategies, arranged Morell’s conversation with Ricchetti, raising the possibility that Beacon Global Strategies played a role in the plot. 

These individuals should be further questioned on their roles related to the letter: Did they draft any language? Propose revisions to the language? We know some of this already from the House report, but there’s more to probe.

Furthermore, all of the signatories should be asked: Had they read the New York Post articles? Did they know of the existence of the laptop or the FBI’s seizure of it? Why did they supposedly believe it was Russian disinformation? Did they have any doubts? Did they watch the final Trump-Biden debate and, if so, did they believe Biden had accurately described their letter? What about Politico’s infamous “Russian disinfo” article? Did they believe Biden or Politico had misrepresented their letter? If so, to whom, if anyone, did they express their concerns? If not, why not? 

Probe FBI’s Involvement

The aforementioned strategy is a good starting point, but because members of the Biden campaign and others involved outside the government may not know — or be honest — about who inside the government participated in the election-interference scheme, investigators should simultaneously work from the FBI out.

Congressional oversight committees should start by interviewing and obtaining all relevant documents, voluntarily or by subpoena, from the FBI agents with knowledge of the laptop. They should begin with those who first learned of its existence when the father of John Paul Mac Isaac — the owner of the computer repair store where Hunter had abandoned his laptop — contacted the agency. 

According to Mac Isaac, in October 2019, his father, a retired Air Force colonel, reported the laptop to FBI agents in the Albuquerque, New Mexico field office. Mac Isaac’s father spoke with an agent, telling him that his son had “the laptop of the son of a presidential candidate” and that it “has a lot of bad stuff on it, and he needs your help.” 

Mac Isaac’s father also told the agent the hard drive contained pornographic material and content that was “geopolitically sensitive,” including “dealing with foreign interests, a pay-for-play scheme linked to the former administration, lots of foreign money.” And while Mac Isaac’s father offered the FBI a copy of the laptop, the agent instead asked to review the repair contract.

After reviewing it, the agent reportedly “consulted with a regional legal officer,” then told Mac Isaac’s father they should “lawyer up” and not “talk to anyone about this.” The agent then directed the repairman’s father to the door. 

An agent later reportedly contacted Mac Isaac’s father, who provided the agent with his son’s contact information. Then, “on December 9, 2019, the FBI served a subpoena on John Paul for the computer, the hard drive, and all related paperwork,” which Mac Isaac provided. 

Mac Isaac would later claim one of the two FBI agents who retrieved the laptop from his Delaware store suggested he keep quiet. According to Mac Isaac, as the agents were leaving, he quipped, “Hey, lads, I’ll remember to change your names when I write the book.”

At that point, Mac Isaac claimed, “Agent DeMeo paused and turned to face me,” replying: “It is our experience that nothing ever happens to people that don’t talk about these things.”

After seizing the laptop, the “local FBI leadership told employees, ‘You will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop,’” according to multiple whistleblowers. The whistleblowers further alleged that “the FBI did not begin to examine the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until after the 2020 presidential election — potentially a year after” retrieving it.

These details give congressional investigators ample leads to uncover who in the FBI knew about the Hunter Biden laptop, beginning in Albuquerque and then moving to the FBI’s Baltimore field office, which holds jurisdiction over Delaware-based investigations.

The agents involved should be questioned to learn what they knew, what they did, and with whom they spoke, including whether they communicated with any member of the Biden family, campaign, or media. Investigators should also obtain the various FBI reports, the subpoena, the warrant used to obtain the subpoena, the chain of custody for the laptop and other seized material, and all written or electronic communications. 

Focusing on the FBI is especially important because the day after the Post broke the laptop story, Russia-collusion hoaxer Ken Dilanian, ran an “exclusive” at NBC, reporting that “federal investigators are examining whether emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation.” The next day, USA Today similarly reported the FBI’s supposed involvement in investigating whether a Russian influence operation was at play. On Oct. 17, 2020, USA Today reiterated that the “federal authorities” are investigating whether the laptop is “disinformation pushed by Russia.”

However, the FBI was not investigating whether the laptop was related to a “foreign intelligence operation,” but instead was investigating Hunter Biden. This FBI leak nonetheless furthered the “Russia disinformation” narrative. In fact, Blinken went on to share one of the USA Today articles with Morell. Then Morell referenced the nonexistent FBI investigation as a justification for the letter, as a text included in the House report shows. 

Specifically, Morell texted Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA acting chief of operations, saying, “I’m thinking of writing something that says the FBI is investigating whether there is Russia involvement in this thing and that makes sense because it has the feel of a Russian op.” Morell asked Polymeropoulos if he wanted to help with the effort, leading the duo to draft the initial version of the statement together.

Questioning the FBI agents with knowledge of the laptop and obtaining relevant communications would help establish who was behind the leak and whether anyone from the FBI communicated with the Biden campaign, the CIA, or any of the letter’s signatories. Likewise, this line of inquiry would establish if anyone with knowledge of the laptop cautioned social media companies — or suggested other FBI agents warn Big Tech — to expect a “hack-and-leak” operation.

Probe DEA’s Involvement

A third line of inquiry requires looking to the Drug Enforcement Administration and its role in executing a search warrant on the Massachusetts office of Hunter Biden’s former psychiatrist Keith Ablow. 

On Oct. 30, 2020, NBC News first reported that during a February 2020 DEA raid on Ablow’s office, agents reportedly recovered a second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden from a safe in Ablow’s basement. The DEA then returned the computer to Hunter’s lawyer George Mesires.

For a year, Ablow had reportedly “made repeated efforts to persuade Hunter Biden to retrieve his computer.” But then the DEA raided Ablow’s office just a few months after the FBI had seized Hunter’s other laptop from Mac Isaac. 

The DEA agents involved should be asked whether they knew Ablow possessed the laptop and whether that fact motivated the execution of the search warrant. Did the DEA agents speak with any FBI agents? Did the DEA know of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s investigation into Hunter? Did agents review the laptop before returning it? If not, why not? If so, what information did they discover, and why was the laptop not retained as evidence? 

This line of inquiry may prove a dead end, or it could reveal more election interferers.

Dig Into Biden Briefings

Next, investigators should review the intelligence briefings provide to Biden since October 2019 when the FBI first learned of the laptop’s existence. Given the incriminating evidence contained on it, the intelligence briefings should have alerted Joe Biden to the national security risk.

If the briefings included details about the laptop, the individuals involved should be questioned and documents subpoenaed to learn who knew what and did what with the information. But if the briefings did not mention the laptop, investigators should ask those responsible for putting together the briefings about their knowledge of the laptop and their explanation for omitting mention of it. 

Investigate the Giuliani Investigators

A fifth line of inquiry should look to those behind the investigation of Rudy Giuliani. 

The New York Post’s Miranda Devine previously reported: “[T]he FBI spied on the former mayor’s cloud for two years from May, 2019, a month after he began working as then president Donald Trump’s personal attorney. … So the FBI had access to all Giuliani’s emails and iMessages for two years,” meaning it’s possible the FBI saw Bob Costello’s Aug. 27, 2020, email to Giuliani “telling him of Mac Isaac’s ‘amazing discovery.’”

In that email, Costello wrote: “I am arranging to get a complete copy of the hard drive as it contains lots of materials beyond the Ukraine stuff according to the owner. … The five emails he sent show that Hunter was directly involved in orchestrating his father Joe Biden’s intervention to stop the Ukrainian investigation of Burisma.” The email continued: “I believe that we are on the verge of a game changing production of indisputable evidence of the corruption we have long suspected involving the Biden’s and Ukraine — but there is more.”

The joint committees’ investigation should run down the possibility that those investigating Giuliani had access to his emails and learned of the laptop before the Post’s stories. If so, with whom did the agents share that knowledge? Again, interviews and documents are necessary to determine if any of these FBI agents were responsible for the leaks or communicated with the Biden campaign or Big Tech.

Wednesday’s report provides crucial details about the info ops run on Americans, but there is much more left to investigate to uncover all of the players who helped interfere in the 2020 election.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Defense Attorneys Allege Massive Misconduct in Georgia’s Crumbling Get-Trump Crusade


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 08, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/08/defense-attorneys-allege-massive-misconduct-in-georgias-crumbling-get-trump-crusade/

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Contrary to misleading headlines, none of the eight electors granted immunity in Fulton County’s anti-Trump war ‘said anything … incriminating to themselves or anyone else.’

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“At Least Eight Trump Electors Have Accepted Immunity in Georgia Investigation,” headlines uniformly blared on Friday. The legacy outlets echoing that narrative, however, buried the lead, which is that Fulton County’s get-Trump district attorney can’t even find incriminating evidence against the former president when she grants immunity to targets of her criminal investigation. A strong secondary story, also ignored or downplayed by the left-wing media, reveals multiple incidents of alleged misconduct by the D.A.’s office. 

The attorney representing eight Republicans targeted by the Fulton County D.A. filed a scathing response on Friday to the D.A. office’s motion to disqualify her from continued representation of her clients. Kimberly Debrow’s 28-page response detailed several previously unknown instances of questionable conduct by prosecutors targeting Donald Trump, his lawyers, and several high-profile Georgia Republicans. And contrary to the misleading headlines of the last several days, Debrow revealed that none of the eight individuals granted immunity “said anything in any of their interviews that was incriminating to themselves or anyone else.” 

How We Got Here

Debrow’s response began by providing an important backdrop to Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis’ motion to disqualify Debrow from the still-ongoing probe into supposed “coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections in this state.” Willis’ probe began in earnest in January of 2022, when she obtained permission from the chief judge of Fulton County to impanel a “special grand jury.” While the “special grand jury” lacked the authority to indict anyone, it had subpoena power and was also charged with issuing a report making “recommendations concerning criminal prosecution.” 

The special purpose grand jury issued its report earlier this year. Although much of the report remains under seal, in February a state court judge authorized the release of limited excerpts, including the grand jury’s conclusion “that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it.” However, as I detailed when the story broke, that conclusion is meaningless without context, and the context makes clear that Willis misrepresented to the grand jury — and the American public — the substance of then-President Trump’s telephone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021.

Specifically, Willis falsely portrayed Trump as asking Raffensperger to “‘find 11,780 votes’ in the former President’s favor.” As the transcript of Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger established, however, the then-president did nothing of the sort. Instead, during the call, Trump’s lawyer explained to Raffensperger that “the court is not acting on our petition,” and sought an investigation into several categories of votes that appeared cast in violation of Georgia law.

While Willis branded Trump’s call to Raffensperger a “central focus” of her investigation, as Friday’s court filing reveals, the Fulton County D.A. also targeted Republicans named as “Trump electors” from the 2020 presidential election. Initially, the D.A.’s office told those electors, all 11 of whom were jointly represented by Debrow and fellow attorney Holly Pierson, they were “solely witnesses in the investigation.” Under those circumstances, they voluntarily agreed to be interviewed by Willis’ team. In late April 2022, Nathan Wade, a “private attorney” Willis hired to be special prosecutor, interviewed two electors and then canceled a third interview before unexpectedly subpoenaing the Republicans to testify before the grand jury.

A legal dispute between Wade and the defense attorneys ensued over the extent to which the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination protected the electors from being forced to respond to questions before the grand jury. Before the court had a chance to rule on the matter, however, Wade informed the court that the D.A.’s office intended to offer immunity to one or more of the electors. 

Immunity Talk

While not identifying which of the 11 electors the D.A. would offer immunity to, Wade represented that the D.A. was prepared to offer “full immunity from prosecution for any acts taken related to the December 14, 2020, meeting at the Georgia State Capitol to execute purported electoral college votes in favor of former President Donald J. Trump and former Vice President Michael R. Pence.” 

In response, Pierson and Debrow wrote to each of their clients, explained the existence and implications of the potential immunity offers, and noted whether a conflict of interest existed because the lawyers represented all 11 electors, but the D.A. would only be offering some of them immunity. The defense attorneys gave their clients a follow-up 13-page, single-spaced memo that comprehensively detailed the issues and then spoke with each client individually. All 11 electors opted to continue with joint representation and rejected the D.A.’s suggestion of immunity. 

At the time, the defense attorneys informed both the court and the D.A.’s office of their clients’ decision, noting first their fundamental distrust of “the motives and intentions of the DA and the investigative team in this case,” and “their perception that this investigation into their lawful conduct is not based on (or even interested in) the facts or the law but instead is politically motivated.” 

The defense counsel further noted their clients had “grave concerns” that if they testified truthfully “that neither they nor the other electors committed any illegal act or engaged in any sort of conspiracy with regard to the 2020 election the DA and your team would not accept that truth…” The electors thus feared prosecutors would “charge them with perjury or false statements to law enforcement officials or similar after their truthful, immunized testimony merely because the immunized witness is not in a position to tell the DA’s Office or the grand jury the story they want to hear.”

After the electors rejected the prosecutors’ overtures, the D.A.’s office responded by filing a motion to disqualify Pierson and Debrow, which would force the electors to hire new attorneys. In late November 2022, the court held that joint representation was permissible for 10 of the electors but that a conflict of interest required Chairman David Shafer to be separately represented. The electors and their attorneys then decided Pierson would represent Shafer and Debrow would represent the 10 remaining electors, and the court ruled such representation was permissible, over the D.A.’s objections.

Soon after, Debrow emailed the D.A.’s team to discuss a potential immunity deal, but it was not until April 4, 2023, that prosecutors responded. On April 7, 2023, Wade, the attorney Willis hired to be special prosecutor, provided draft immunity agreements for eight of the 10 electors. The two not offered immunity opted to obtain new legal representation, and Debrow’s remaining eight clients then accepted the revised immunity offers. Thereafter, seven of the eight electors sat for recorded interviews with Wade questioning them on behalf of the D.A.’s office and with Debrow representing them. The final elector was out of the country and thus has not yet been interviewed. 

Manipulation and Intimidation

During Wade’s questioning, Debrow claims he attempted to mislead and confuse her clients by suggesting the D.A.’s office had previously made an actual offer of immunity in late 2022, as opposed to merely floating the potential for an immunity deal. In one case, Debrow detailed how, when she attempted to clarify for her client Wade’s misleading questions, the prosecutor threatened to leave, rip up the immunity agreement, and indict the elector. 

The D.A.’s office then filed a second motion to disqualify Debrow, falsely representing to the court that “some of the electors represented by Ms. Debrow told members of the investigation team that no potential offer of immunity was ever brought to them in 2022.” The Fulton County D.A. knew that representation was false, Debrow stressed in her response, highlighting the evidence previously presented to both the court and prosecutors that detailed the extensive discussions Debrow had with her clients about the initial immunity outreach.

Willis also sought to force Debrow off the case by arguing some of her clients “stated that another elector represented by Ms. Debrow committed acts that are violations of Georgia law.” 

“This statement is categorically false, and provably so,” Debrow countered. Here, Debrow first detailed her extensive legal experience, including her service as an assistant district attorney in three Georgia counties, before stressing she was present for every interview and would have recognized any such incriminating testimony. “Nothing even similar to any such statements were made by any of the interviewed electors,” Debrow said, adding that the transcripts confirmed her representation.

Significantly, Debrow told the court that “none of the interviewed electors said anything in any of their interviews that was incriminating to themselves or anyone else,” meaning they also had not implicated Trump, his lawyers, or any of the other potential targets of Willis’ criminal investigation. That fact was lost on the reporters, however, who since Friday have focused instead on the mere fact that the eight electors had accepted immunity agreements — implying that meant they had dirt to dish.

Ignoring the Real Story

The corporate media were likewise content to ignore the allegations of serious misconduct. Those included Willis’ misrepresentation to the court about whether the electors’ attorney had informed them of the prior immunity discussion and Wade’s alleged attempt to mislead and intimidate one of the witnesses by threatening to indict him. 

Wade’s involvement here is particularly ironic given that a Fulton County judge held the special prosecution team could no longer investigate one of the electors, then-state Sen. Burt Jones, because Willis had hosted and headlined a fundraiser for Charlie Bailey — a Democrat seeking to challenge Jones in the general election for lieutenant governor. Wade, like Willis, had donated to Bailey’s campaign.

Noteworthy too is Wade’s work with Willis, as Wade was a private attorney whom Willis specifically hired to work on 2020 election investigation. Willis bringing on a pit bull to further her get-Trump efforts smells disgustingly similar to Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s use of outside “special assistant district attorneys,” including three from a high-powered, Democrat-connected law firm, to help find a way to indict Trump.

Also appalling is the attempt by Willis’ office to force Debrow off the case — a tactic sadly seen sometimes when a prosecutor proves unable to manipulate a witness into saying what the government wants. 

The trial court has yet to rule on the Fulton County D.A.’s motion to disqualify Debrow, and maybe there will be something more of concern that the prosecutor omitted from the motion. But the detailed excerpts included in Debrow’s response brief appear to doom Willis’ attempt to force the electors to hire new attorneys. And if, as Debrow’s represented, the electors said nothing “incriminating to themselves or anyone else,” much more of the Fulton County D.A.’s case is likely doomed too.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Another Day, Another Shoddy Politico Hit Piece Aimed at the Conservative Legal Movement


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | MAY 02, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/02/another-day-another-shoddy-politico-hit-piece-aimed-at-the-conservative-legal-movement/

The Federalist Society

Every day a new hatchet job aimed at justicesjudges, and the conservative legal movement appears in the corporate media. The purpose of this coordinated campaign, as we saw today during the Senate’s judiciary hearings, is to provide more fodder to delegitimize the court and intimidate jurists.

Now, activist groups have always shopped oppo research to journalists. Most of it is so absurdly unpersuasive that no self-respecting writer, partisan or not, would take ownership of it. These days, though, with little quality control and virtually no consequences for spreading false partisan attacks, a person without journalistic ethics can probably build a career on the stuff.

Which brings me to Heidi Przybyla’s new piece at Politico: “Leonard Leo used Federalist Society contact to obtain $1.6 billion donation.” This is her second hit piece in a week — in the first, she couldn’t decipher/purposely misrepresented Neil Gorsuch’s financial disclosure form.

This one begins like so:

“Leonard Leo, who helped to choose judicial nominees for former President Donald Trump, obtained a historic $1.6 billion gift for his conservative legal network via an introduction through the Federalist Society, whose tax status forbids political activism.”

It’s difficult to untangle the accusation being leveled here. The three chilling components of the tale — “Donald Trump,” the “$1.6 billion gift,” and the “Federalist Society” — all make for good conspiratorial copy, but they have nothing to do with each other in the context of this story.

Basically, a well-known Washington operative named Leonard Leo was introduced to a prospective donor by his old Federalist Society coworker. According to the piece, which is thin on specifics, it looks like Leo, who had helped Trump with his originalist judicial nominees, convinced Barre Seid to give him funding instead of the Federalist Society, which he promised to disseminate more effectively. That’s it.

Who knows, maybe Przybyla is under the impression that it’s illegal for one-time employees of 501(c)(3)s to interact with any prospective political donors they meet through old acquaintances. Maybe she thinks prospective donors to tax-exempt groups are forever prohibited from speaking or giving to any political operatives. Maybe she thinks there are a special set of rules only conservatives must follow. But dropping the words “tax status forbids political activism” at the top of the story is clearly meant to insinuate that some unscrupulous behavior will be exposed.

Sorry. All we learn after reading the 1700-word piece is that a bunch of normal Washington, D.C. fundraising stuff is happening and that no one broke any law or did anything unethical. The point of the piece, as it is with the recent spate of these stories, is to create the impression of unethical behavior. Specifics aren’t important. That’s why the story is padded with journalistic-sounding red herrings and a string of scary words like “dark money” — a term favored by activist journalists who want to make completely legal and ethical contributions to completely legitimate political causes sound creepy, illicit, ominous, and unsavory.

According to Przybyla, for example, the pro-court packing smear outfit Demand Justice is a “progressive judicial group.” Leo, on the other hand, helms a “dark money vehicle,” a “dark money group,” and even a “dark money network,” all phrases that appear in this one Politico piece. “Dark money” is mentioned seven times in case you miss its first six appearances.

In the end, the real crimes here are that conservatives are raising money and that a “conservative” legal movement has experienced some success and stands in the way of unconstitutional, progressive policy goals. That makes leftists angry. That’s the story.  


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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The Russia Hoax Orbiting Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is So Much Bigger Than Blinken


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | APRIL 27, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/27/the-russia-hoax-orbiting-hunter-bidens-laptop-is-so-much-bigger-than-blinken/

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While Blinken provides an entry point to unraveling the Russian-disinformation hoax, there is much more to learn.

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Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week’s revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents. 

Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.

Blinken and Morell reportedly “discussed possible Russian involvement in the spreading of information related to Hunter Biden.” According to Morell, Blinken’s outreach “set in motion” what led to the public statement signed by 51 former intelligence agents that falsely framed the laptop as Russian disinformation.

This revelation is huge — but it’s only a start to understanding the scope of the plot to interfere in the 2020 election by framing the laptop exposing Biden family corruption as foreign disinformation.

The First Clue

The first hint that Blinken’s outreach to Morell was a single spoke in the wheel of the Biden campaign’s deception came from a follow-up email Blinken sent Morell on Oct. 17, 2020. In it, Blinken shared a USA Today article that reported “the FBI was examining whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a ‘disinformation campaign.’” The very bottom of Blinken’s email contained the signature block of Andrew Bates, then a Biden campaign spokesman and the director of his “rapid response” team, suggesting Bates had sent the article to Blinken for him to forward to Morell.

Blinken forwarding an article claiming the FBI was investigating the laptop as a potential “disinformation campaign” is hugely significant because we know the FBI was doing no such thing. The FBI knew both that the laptop was authentic and that John Paul Mac Isaac had possession of the hard drive, just as the New York Post had reported, albeit without identifying the computer-store owner by name. 

The USA Today article nonetheless furthered the narrative that Morell and the other former intelligence officials would soon parrot in their “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” — that the emails have “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

For those who lived through the Russia-collusion hoax, it was the USA Today article and the presidential campaign’s use of Russia to deflect attention from the Biden scandal that bore the “classic earmarks” of an information operation — one that mimicked Hillary Clinton’s ploy four years prior. Given the similarities between the two Russia hoaxes, it seemed likely the Biden campaign worked with the press to push the Russian-disinformation narrative. 

USA Today Didn’t Start the Falsehood 

Sure enough, the legacy press began pushing the narrative days before Blinken emailed Morell the article on Oct. 17.

On Oct. 14, 2020, the same day the New York Post broke the first laptop story, Politico ran an article, co-authored by Russia-hoaxer extraordinaire “Fusion Natasha” Bertrand, raising questions about the authenticity of said laptop. “This is a Russian disinformation operation. I’m very comfortable saying that,” Bertrand quoted former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Biden adviser Michael Carpenter.

At the time, Carpenter also ran the Penn Biden Center — the same place a cache of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president and senator were discovered in a closet.

Politico also quoted Bates, whose signature block would later appear on Blinken’s email to Morell. Bates spun the scandal as one about Rudy Giuliani, who had provided a copy of the hard drive to the Post, and Giuliani’s supposed connection “to Russian intelligence.” 

Intel Community Helped Peddle Russia Hoax 2.0

As was the case with the Russia-collusion hoax, the Biden campaign received an assist from the intelligence community. On Oct. 14, 2020, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence analysts “had picked up Russian chatter that stolen Burisma emails” would be released as an “October surprise.” 

Burisma, of course, was the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden nearly $1 million to sit on its board during his father’s final year as vice president. 

The chief concern of the intelligence analysts, the Times reported, “was that the Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt Mr. Biden’s candidacy.”

Lying Leakers Advance the Narrative

The next day, another foundational Russia-collusion hoaxer, Ken Dilanian, published an “exclusive” at NBC. Citing “two people familiar with the matter,” Dilanian claimed that “federal investigators are examining whether emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation.” Dilanian also quoted Bates, who again focused on Giuliani and his alleged connection to Russia.

The Washington Post also embraced the narrative on Oct. 15, reporting, “U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.” Based on “four former officials,” The Washington Post reported that Giuliani had interacted with people tied to Russian intel.

More Lies Leaked to USA Today 

This brings us to USA Today’s Oct. 16, 2020, article, “FBI Probing Whether Emails in New York Post Story About Hunter Biden Are Tied to Russian Disinformation.”

Federal authorities are investigating whether a Russian influence operation was behind the disclosure of emails purporting to document the Ukrainian and Chinese business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic nominee Joe Biden,” USA Today opened its article, citing “a person briefed on the matter” and immediately bringing up Giuliani. 

According to USA Today, that person “confirmed the FBI’s involvement but did not elaborate on the scope of the bureau’s review.”

The next day, Oct. 17, USA Today followed up with the article, “A Tabloid Got a Trove of Data on Hunter Biden from Rudy Giuliani. Now, the FBI is Probing a Possible Disinformation Campaign.”

It began by saying the New York Post portrayed the laptop contents as a “smoking gun.” “Enter the FBI,” USA Today interjected, reporting that “federal authorities” are investigating whether the laptop is “disinformation pushed by Russia” and claiming there are many questions about the laptop data’s authenticity.

Experts say the story has many hallmarks of a disinformation campaign,” it continued, using language strikingly similar to what the former intel officials would use days later.

Blinken Uses Reporting to Prod Morell

It is unclear which of the two USA Today pieces Blinken forwarded to Morell because both articles included the FBI investigation claims. It seems likely, however, that Blinken sent Morrel the second article because USA Today’s Oct. 17 coverage included a quote from supposed “experts” who said the New York Post “story has many hallmarks of a disinformation campaign.” 

That language tracked near-perfectly the wording used by the 51 former intelligence officials in their infamous Oct. 19 statement, which claimed the laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” 

That’s Not All

Morell’s contact with Blinken reportedly went beyond the phone call and email. According to CNN, following his conversation with Blinken, “Morell had conversations with other former intelligence community officials, which is what led to the letter,” and then Morell “circled back to the Biden campaign to let them know that the letter efforts were underway.” 

In testimony to House oversight investigators, Morell told how Biden’s campaign helped strategize releasing the statement, according to a letter Reps. Jim Jordan and Michael Turner sent to Blinken last week. Specifically, “Morell testified that he sent an email telling Nick Shapiro, former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the Director of the CIA John Brennan, that the Biden campaign wanted the statement to go to a particular reporter at the Washington Post first and that he should send the statement to the campaign when he sent the letter to the reporter.” Shapiro was another signatory of the statement.

Politico, however, eventually first broke the story and published the statement, under the headline “Hunter Biden Story is Russian Disinfo, Dozens of Former Intel Officials Say.”

Mission Accomplished 

In his testimony to House investigators, Morell “explained that one of his two goals in releasing the statement was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election,” Jordan and Turner wrote. In fact, according to attorney Mark Zaid, who represents several of the signatories, “when the draft [statement] was sent out to people to sign, the cover email made clear that it was an effort to help the Biden campaign.”

Both parts of the ploy worked. When the final presidential debate arrived on Oct. 22, 2020, and then-President Trump confronted Biden with the details revealed in Hunter’s “laptop from hell,” Biden responded by telling the American public:

There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. They have said that this has all the … five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.

Biden Campaign Thanks Morell for the Assist

Morell testified that after the debate he received a call from Jeremy Bash, who was one of the 51 signatories of the statement. Bash asked Morell if he had a minute to talk to Steve Ricchetti, head of the Biden campaign. Bash testified that he said “yes,” Bash got Ricchetti on the line, and the Biden campaign representative thanked Morell “for putting the statement out.” 

More Than Dirty Politics

Morell’s testimony revealed Blinken and the Biden campaign’s role in prompting the bunk statement from the former intel officials. But the contemporaneous media reporting exposes a larger scandal: Representatives of our government helped promote that narrative by falsely telling media outlets the FBI was investigating whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a Russian-disinformation campaign. 

The FBI’s role in assisting the Biden campaign’s plot transforms this case from one about dirty politics to a scandal involving government interference in the 2020 election. Accordingly, the House oversight committees need to determine which members of the FBI or intelligence agencies were responsible for the false media leak and whether anyone working on behalf of the Biden campaign collaborated with those government actors.

The committees thus need to gather evidence and question not merely Blinken, but every signatory of the statement, especially Bash; members of the Biden campaign, such as Bates and Ricchetti; and Biden advisers, including Carpenter. 

While Blinken provides an entry point to unraveling the Russian-disinformation hoax, there is much more to learn.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Judge Nukes Alvin Bragg’s Request To Quash Subpoena Because ‘No One Is Above The Law’


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | APRIL 20, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/20/judge-nukes-alvin-braggs-request-to-quash-subpoena-because-no-one-is-above-the-law/

Alvin Bragg
‘By bringing this action, Bragg is engaging in precisely the type of political theater he claims to fear,’ the court wrote.

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A federal judge on Wednesday denied Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s request for a court order to prevent the House Judiciary Committee from questioning a former prosecutor involved in the investigation of Donald Trump. Bragg, however, didn’t just lose on the merits. The court’s 25-page order eviscerated the Manhattan D.A. — and his former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz.

Two weeks ago, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, issued a subpoena directing Pomerantz to appear before the House Judiciary Committee at 10:00 on April 20, 2023. Pomerantz was previously a special assistant district attorney before abruptly resigning because Bragg had allegedly decided not to seek criminal charges against Trump.

Bragg responded to news of the subpoena by directing Pomerantz not to provide any information about his prior work to the Judiciary Committee. He also filed a complaint in federal court against Jordan and the committee, seeking an order declaring the Pomerantz subpoena invalid. Bragg simultaneously sought entry of a temporary restraining order to freeze the subpoena pending resolution of his lawsuit.

On Wednesday, federal Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil denied Bragg’s request to stop the Judiciary Committee from questioning Pomerantz. “Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. No one is above the law,” Vyskocil wrote in a transparent swipe at the New York prosecutor who hung his pathetic indictment on that platitude. 

While Bragg posited that the Judiciary Committee lacked a valid legislative purpose to issue the subpoena, Vyskocil rejected that argument. Congressional committees have the constitutional authority to conduct investigations and issue subpoenas, the court explained, and the court’s role is “strictly limited to determining only whether the subpoena is ‘plainly incompetent or irrelevant’” to any legitimate committee purpose. Because Jordan and the committee identified several valid legislative purposes underlying the subpoena, the court held Bragg could not quash it.

The court also held that the “speech or debate clause,” which provides that “for any Speech or Debate in either House,” Senators and Representatives “shall not be questioned in any other Place,” likely would prevent Bragg from suing Jordan and the committee.

Vyskocil also rejected Bragg’s argument that requiring Pomerantz to submit to questioning would infringe on the attorney-client and work-product privilege the Manhattan D.A.’s office held regarding communications Pomerantz was privy to. Here, the court stressed that the indictment of Trump occurred long after Pomerantz had resigned and that any privilege that may have existed was likely waived by Pomerantz publishing his book, “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account.”

“As its subtitle indicates, the book recounts Pomerantz’s insider insights, mental impressions, and his front row seat to the investigation and deliberative process leading up to” the Trump indictment, the court wrote. Yet Bragg did next to nothing to stop the publication of the book. Under these circumstances, “Bragg cannot seriously claim that any information already published in Pomerantz’s book and discussed on prime-time television in front of millions of people is protected from disclosure,” the court concluded.

It Gets Better

The court’s conclusion, however, wasn’t the highlight of the decision. Rather it was Vyskocil’s summary of how the country arrived at a place where it sees a state prosecutor filing a complaint in federal court against the House Judiciary Committee that includes 35 pages and a vast majority of exhibits that “are nothing short of a public relations tirade against former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump.”

That descriptor alone should give pause to anyone still believing Bragg’s indictment of Trump was righteous. But the opinion highlighted many more facts that confirm the targeting of Trump was a witch hunt.

For instance, it included many excerpts from Pomerantz’s book showing the criminal charges against Trump were ridiculous. So-called “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels “did not amount to much in legal terms,” Pomerantz wrote. “Paying hush money is not a crime under New York State law, even if the payment was made to help an electoral candidate.” 

The book excerpts quoted by the court included numerous additional problems Pomerantz saw with the legal theory Bragg eventually relied upon in charging Trump. Trump and his legal team have been highlighting these same many flaws. And now a federal judge just told the country that the “very experienced, sophisticated, and extremely capable attorney” Pomerantz — who had wanted to charge Trump — agreed with all (or most) of Trump’s legal arguments. 

The court also noted that Pomerantz was a “pro bono” attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office. This should strike the public as strange, especially in light of the well-heeled credentials the opinion highlighted: his clerkship at the Supreme Court, his work as a federal prosecutor, and his many years as a criminal defense attorney and partner at the prominent New York City law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

While the court omitted any mention of Paul, Weiss’ connections to the Biden administration and Democrats, referring to Pomerantz’s “pro bono” status should raise some red flags.

If not, Vyskocil was more explicit elsewhere in the opinion, such as when she said she was “unmoved by Bragg’s purported concern at the prospect of ‘inject[ing] partisan passions into a forum where they do not belong.’”

“By bringing this action, Bragg is engaging in precisely the type of political theater he claims to fear,” the court wrote.

Beyond chastising Bragg for playing politics, Vyskocil rebuked him for his legal arguments, most devastatingly when Bragg argued the court should quash the subpoena of Pomerantz to ensure the grand jury’s secrecy.

“The secrecy of the grand jury proceedings in the pending criminal case was compromised before the indictment was even announced,” Vyskocil countered, citing CNN’s coverage of the charges against Trump based on leaks. 

The court also unleashed a few zingers on Pomerantz. While Pomerantz complains he is in a “legally untenable position” because he will be forced to make a choice between “legal or ethical consequences” or “potential criminal and disciplinary exposure,” the court “notes that Pomerantz is in this situation because he decided to inject himself into the public debate by authoring a book that he has described as ‘appropriate and in the public interest.’” 

And in response to Pomerantz making “it abundantly clear that he will seek to comply with Bragg’s instructions” not to respond to the subpoena, the court remarked that Pomerantz “claimed deference to the District Attorney’s command is a surprising about-face, particularly given that Pomerantz previously declined the District Attorney’s request to review his book manuscript before publication.”

What Next?

Those already well-versed in the outrageousness of the indictment will take delight in the court’s ripostes. The question remains, however, whether the opinion’s detailed summary of the flaws in Bragg’s legal theory — as identified by Pomerantz himself — will convince the remainder of the country that the indictment is a sham. Or will they discard Vyskocil’s decision as a Trump-appointee diatribe?

Maybe it will take the Judiciary Committee questioning Pomerantz on those precise weaknesses for the unconvinced to realize that once again Trump is right — it is a witch hunt. 

We should know soon whether the questioning will go forward and whether Pomerantz will respond to the questions or follow Bragg’s directive. But if the latter, both Bragg and Pomerantz will find themselves back in front of Vyskocil because the Trump appointee wisely ruled that any future disputes related to the Pomerantz subpoena or other subpoenas related to the Judiciary Committee’s inquiry must be filed in the same case mater. 

Vyskocil’s devastating conclusion likely caused Bragg as much heartache as her denial of his motion to declare the subpoena of Pomerantz invalid. For Bragg knows that absent reversal by the Second Circuit, the same outcome awaits further challenges of the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena power.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Manhattan D.A. Enlisted a Who’s Who of Biden Admin Buddies for Trump Takedown


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | APRIL 12, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/12/manhattan-d-a-enlisted-a-whos-who-of-biden-admin-buddies-for-trump-takedown/

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg with Joe Biden and NY AG Letitia James
There’s quite a pattern to the Manhattan D.A. office’s unprecedented use of outside, Democrat-connected lawyers to investigate Trump.

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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A New York City law firm with “strong ties” to Democrats and the Biden administration, and a big-time fundraiser for both, lent the Manhattan district attorney three lawyers to help him take down Donald Trump. This cohort included former Special Assistant District Attorney Mark F. Pomerantz, whose leaked resignation letter appears responsible for the Manhattan prosecutor’s decision to indict Trump.

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg became the first prosecutor to bring criminal charges against a former president when he moved forward last week with the arraignment of Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records. The pathetic, barebones indictment was quickly denounced by pundits on both sides of the political aisle. Then on Friday, the House Judiciary Committee raised additional concerns about the role Matthew Colangelo, the former No. 3 man in the Biden administration’s Department of Justice, played in the targeting of Trump.

While Bragg’s hiring of Colangelo to reportedly “jump-start” the investigation into Trump further indicates the indictment was politically motivated, the Manhattan D.A. office’s unprecedented use of outside, Democrat-connected lawyers to investigate Trump pre-dates Colangelo’s arrival by nearly a year.

A Pattern

In early to mid-February of 2021, Bragg’s predecessor, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, arranged for private criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to be a special assistant district attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office. Pomerantz, whom The New York Times noted was to work “solely on the Trump investigation,” took a temporary leave of absence from his law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where he had defended former Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., against alleged campaign finance violations. But even before being sworn in as a special assistant to the Manhattan D.A., Pomerantz had reportedly “been helping with the case informally for months…” 

According to the Times, “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office.” One must wonder, then, how much more unusual it is for the Manhattan D.A.’s office to receive the “informal” assistance of a private criminal defense attorney. The legacy news outlet, however, justified the hiring of Pomerantz based on the “usual complexity” of “the two-and-a-half-year investigation of the former president and his family business.” 

A few months later, the D.A.’s office welcomed two more outsiders, Elyssa Abuhoff and Caroline Williamson, who also both took leaves of absence from the New York powerhouse Paul, Weiss to work on the Trump investigation as special assistant district attorneys.

For a law firm to lend not one but three lawyers to the Manhattan D.A.’s office seems rather magnanimous, until you consider Paul, Weiss’s previous generosity to Joe Biden. During Biden’s White House run, the law firm hosted a $2,800-per-plate fundraiser for about 100 guests. 

The chair of the Paul, Weiss law firm, Brad Karp, also topped the list of Biden fundraisers, bundling at least $100,000 for the then-candidate. “As someone who cares passionately about preserving the rule of law, safeguarding our democracy and protecting fundamental liberties, I’ve been delighted to do everything I possibly can to support the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket,” Karp wrote in an email.

Karp’s support of the Democrat presidential ticket isn’t surprising given that his fellow Paul, Weiss partner Robert Schumer is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s brother. 

Biden’s connection to the firm, however, dates much further back, with the former secretary of homeland security in the Obama-Biden administration, Jeh Johnson, also heralding from Paul, Weiss. Once elected president, Biden nominated Jonathan Kanter, a former partner of Paul, Weiss, to serve as the top antitrust enforcement official at the Justice Department. In fact, according to Bloomberg, Paul, Weiss has “emerge[d] as Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center.”

A Resignation

The three Paul, Weiss alumni sent to the Manhattan D.A.’s office to bolster the Trump investigations would all make news, but for different reasons. Pomerantz first garnered headlines when he resigned as a special assistant district attorney in early 2022, after Bragg became Manhattan’s D.A.

In his resignation letter, leaked to The New York Times, Pomerantz said that in late 2021, Bragg’s predecessor, Vance, had “concluded that the facts warranted prosecution, and he directed the team to present evidence to a grand jury and to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump and other defendants as soon as reasonably possible.” But after replacing Vance as D.A., Bragg decided “not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges at the present time,” Pomerantz wrote, adding, “The investigation has been suspended indefinitely.”

What Pomerantz’s letter did not say, however, was that in late 2021, “at least three career prosecutors asked to move off the investigation,” reportedly “concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges.” Instead, in his resignation, Pomerantz declared he believes “Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations,” that “the public interest warrants the criminal prosecution of Mr. Trump,” and that “such a prosecution should be brought without any further delay.” 

Pomerantz later rejoined Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and authored a book about the Trump investigation.

Pomerantz’s letter and his claims that Bragg had suspended the Trump probe triggered a political firestorm, which the Manhattan D.A. sought to quell by telling the public the investigation was ongoing.

Criminal Charges

Meanwhile, the Manhattan D.A.’s office pushed forward in its criminal case against the Trump Corporation. A grand jury had indicted the Trump Corporation in late June of 2021 on charges it engaged in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on the salaries of high-level executives by instead funneling compensation through perks, such as luxury apartments and cars. A second Trump corporation would later be added to the criminal case that went to trial in late 2022.

The trial team that prosecuted the case included the other two Paul, Weiss attorneys on loan to the Manhattan D.A.’s office: Abuhoff and Williamson. Bragg borrowed a third outside attorney, Gary T. Fishman, from New York’s Democrat Attorney General Letitia James. Along with three regular members of the Manhattan D.A.’s office, the three “special assistant district attorneys” helped convict the Trump-related business entities in early December 2022. 

After securing convictions of the two Trump corporations, Abuhoff and Williamson ended their “special assistant district attorney” relationship with Bragg’s office in December 2022 and went back to Paul, Weiss — a return that would be short-lived. Abuhoff rejoined the Manhattan D.A.’s office in February 2023, and Williamson returned the next month, but now both as regular members of the staff. 

So short was their time back at Paul, Weiss, in fact, that one must wonder if the firm paid them bonuses following their departure from the Manhattan D.A.’s office. The Federalist posed this question to Paul, Weiss, but the inquiry went unanswered. Paul, Weiss also did not respond to questions concerning whether the lawyers received any compensation or Paul, Weiss benefits while on leave to the D.A.’s office. 

Abuhoff and Williamson’s return to the D.A.’s office followed the news that in early December, Bragg had hired Matthew Colangelo from the Biden DOJ to “jump-start” the office’s investigation into Trump. Upon his inauguration, Biden had appointed Colangelo to serve in the No. 3 slot at the DOJ, showing the trust Biden has in the lawyer now charged with taking down his opponent Trump. 

Colangelo had also previously worked in the Obama-Biden administration and as chief counsel and executive deputy attorney general in A.G. James’ office, where he and Fishman reportedly investigated Trump. As noted above, James would later lend Fishman to the Manhattan D.A.’s office, keeping with her campaign promise to “be a real pain in the -ss” to Trump. It’s no wonder House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan is concerned about Colangelo’s role in the unprecedented indictment.

Connecting the Dots

But the issue goes much beyond Colangelo, for it seems likely Bragg never would have hired Colangelo had Pomerantz’s resignation letter never been leaked to The New York Times. It’s outrageous that Pomerantz was reportedly “informally” advising the former Manhattan D.A. while working for the “Biden-Era N.Y. Power Center” law firm with extensive connections to Democrats. Equally outrageous is the fact that the same law firm lent the D.A.’s office three lawyers to bolster the Trump investigation.

It seems Bragg was swayed by New York politics to alter the communist boast of Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” The Manhattan D.A. had the man but couldn’t find the crime. 

“Lend me your top attorneys to show me a crime,” is the new motto of the political machine New York Democrats built to purge the country, communist style, of Trump. That should horrify every American.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

The one pivot Republicans could make to start winning again


 By Liz Peek | Fox News | Published April 11, 2023 4:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/one-pivot-republicans-make-winning

Republicans have an abortion problem, and there is only one Party leader who can fix it: Donald Trump.

Let me explain. Like the proverbial dog chasing the bus, the GOP spent years campaigning on the promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who would repeal Roe v. Wade but when finally successful, had no idea how to navigate the resulting political landscape. Democrats have used the reversal of Roe and Republicans’ subsequent anti-abortion initiatives to paint the party as extreme, thereby winning over women and younger voters.

The overturning of Roe handed abortion policy back to the states, where it will stay for the foreseeable future. Our country is so divided on the issue that Congress is unlikely to pass a nationwide law any time soon.

MACE CALLS TEXAS MIFEPRISTONE RULING ‘UNCONSTITUTIONAL,’ SAYS GOP ON ‘WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY’ ON ABORTION

Given that power, some red states like Texas have enacted draconian laws banning all or nearly all abortions, a position that is unpopular with the majority of Americans. Other states have had long-standing restrictions on the books that were not enforceable because of Roe; now, some of those are in play.

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Wisconsin, for instance, has a statute from 1849 that banned most abortions. That law is under review by the state’s Supreme Court. Just recently, Badger State residents voted to fill a seat on that court; a Democrat who favors abortion rights won that race by a shockingly wide margin after the contest became the most expensive such match-up in Wisconsin’s history. Because of that win, liberals now hold a majority on the state court, for the first time in decades. 

Remember that Donald Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, and then lost it in 2020 to Joe Biden, both by narrow margins; it is truly a “swing state”. In the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans actually gained seats in Wisconsin’s state legislature. So, the recent loss of the court seat, driven by the dispute over abortion, should be a wake-up call to Republicans.

WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT ELECTION TURNOUT BREAKS RECORD AS DEM-BACKED CANDIDATE WINS

Red states, too, have delivered warning shots to Republicans. Last year in Kansas, voters soundly defeated a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have banned abortions. Even in conservative Kansas, about 60% of voters shot down the measure. As in the Wisconsin senate race, turnout was extremely high.

Polling shows very clearly that Americans want abortion to be safe, legal and also to be restricted to the early months of pregnancy. Some 61% of Americans in a Pew survey last year said abortion should be legal in all or most cases – about the same number that defeated the Kansas resolution. 

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Polling also shows strong support (70%) for the kind of referendum offered voters in Kansas.  There are 14 states currently that have a total or near-ban on abortions, including some swing states like Wisconsin and Georgia – states which could determine the outcome of future presidential elections. Other swing states, like Ohio and Arizona, have bans that are on hold pending court rulings.

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How can Republicans be faithful to voters who firmly oppose abortion but also appeal to the majority, and win elections? By demanding that every state put abortion laws before voters, instead of allowing governors and state legislatures to dictate policy. In some states, that would likely result in a continuation of broad restrictions; in others, it would not. That’s called democracy, with all voters having their say. The GOP needs a leader to declare this the Party’s policy. The only person able and perhaps willing to do so is Donald Trump.

First, remember that abortion was not an issue central to Trump’s 2016 campaign. Indeed, he was barely familiar with party orthodoxy when he claimed early on that women who had abortions should be “punished,” a position he quickly reversed when admonished from the right and the left. Banning abortion ranks below China’s threat, a strong military and solid economic growth for the former president, and a lot of Republicans would agree with him.

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Second, Donald Trump has been blamed for post-Roe election losses in the midterms and in special elections. He would relish, instead, pinning those losses on the GOP’s abortion policies. 

Third, Trump can remind voters that the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of freedom and liberty. How can the GOP claim that mantle while denying half the country one of the most personal freedoms that exists – how to manage their own bodies and their families?

Fourth, Democrats have taken an extreme position on abortion by passing offensive laws in states they dominate. In New York, abortion is allowed up to and including at nine months, if “in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.” The law does not specify what the health threat might be; depression might satisfy the “health care provider” who does not even have to be a doctor. It is time the GOP turned the “extremist” weapon on Democrats. 

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Fifth, Republicans need to broaden their appeal if they want to win elections. In the recent Chicago mayor’s run-off race, Paul Vallas, easily the more accomplished of the two competing Democrats, was defeated partly because his opponent ran ads featuring a 2009 clip in which Vallas describes himself as “more of a Republican than a Democrat.” Imagine: the Republican brand is so tarnished that in a troubled city bleeding residents, the “R” word elects a man with virtually zero credentials.

Any Republican candidate who comes out with a balanced abortion policy, even one that channels the majority of voters, will lose support among Evangelicals and the powerful pro-life movement. On the other hand, Trump is in an extremely strong position currently, notwithstanding his many legal issues, has been a champion of religious freedom and should be uniquely able to withstand the tempest. He can remind pro-lifers that he delivered a conservative Supreme Court, without which voters would not be able to choose. And, it is worth noting that not that long ago, the GOP, including then-Governor Ronald Reagan, were leaders in liberalizing abortion policy.

By siding with the American majority, Trump could do something powerful for the GOP: make it great again.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM LIZ PEEK

Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.

Ann Coulter Op-ed: You’re Being Played, Republicans!


April 5, 2023 by Ann Coulter

Read more at https://anncoulter.com/2023/04/05/youre-being-played-republicans/

A few years ago, I posted this riddle on Twitter:

      What’s easier to roll than an Easter egg?

Answer: Donald Trump.

Now, I can add:

What’s easier to roll than Donald Trump?

Answer: Republican voters.

Democrats are playing Republicans like a fiddle. The left’s sole objective is to make Trump the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee. He’s already lost three election cycles for the GOP — why not make it four?

A month ago, things were looking bad for the Democrats.

Immediately after Trump announced for president last November, he may as well have gone into the witness protection program. Even Fox News cut away from his announcement speech. He had to have dinner with a noted Hitler enthusiast to get any attention, and, when he spoke at CPAC in February, the room was half-empty.

Looming before them was the threat from Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis. He was beating Trump in the presidential polls without even announcing. He’d scored victory after victory against Democrats and won his reelection bid — in a purple state! — by 20 points, despite attacks from Trump.

Against DeSantis’ smarts and energy, the Democrats would be running President Senile Dementia and a vice president whose sole credentials are that she is black and a woman.

They had only one hope: Get Trump the nomination. Liberals: HE’S A DANGER TO THE NATION! NEVER HAVE WE FACED SUCH PERIL! Now let’s do everything we can to make sure he gets the nomination.

And that’s why Democrats indicted Trump on absurd charges this week, with the media covering the event like it was the capture of Osama Bin Laden. Today, the party mandarins are sitting around laughing as Republicans trip over themselves to defend Trump.

This was the whole point of my book, “Resistance Is Futile: How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind.” Instead of attacking Trump for the things he’d actually done, liberals would run off and make wild charges, forcing normal people to say, I don’t like the guy, but he’s not a Russian agent.

The endless stream of preposterous charges against Trump only helped him.

So why not launch another ridiculous accusation to help him get the nomination? That’s exactly what they did in last year’s GOP primaries, supporting Trump’s nut-bar candidates, knowing they would go on to lose the general election. By boosting Trump’s candidates, Democrats managed to pull out a historic midterm victory for Biden.

And now, they’re doing it again, trying to trick Republicans into choosing the worst possible presidential nominee. Guess what? It’s working! New GOP motto: Unable to learn from the third kick of a mule.

In response to Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday, all conservative media swept aside news of out-of-control crime, chaos at the border, fentanyl overdoses and the looming recession. Their No. 1 job became: SAVE TRUMP! A major conservative talk radio host even suggested DeSantis stand down and endorse Trump.

True, everyone at MSNBC is a Trump-hating zealot. But this helps obscure the real objective. Half the Democrats genuinely hate Trump, and the other half are saying, This is fantastic. We’re going to win him the nomination.

Politico reports that Biden’s senior advisers reacted to Trump’s recent surge in the polls with unmitigated joy. “We beat Trump once, they say, and will again.”

They’re absolutely right. After voters reject you once, they almost never change their minds. In all of U.S. history, losing presidential candidates have run again about a dozen times. Only three of those renominations were successful — and only one since 1892. (Nixon was the only one to do it in the past 131 years. Of course, that first election probably was stolen from him, but Nixon graciously conceded, instead of running around making a complete ass of himself.)

Everyone acts as if Trump’s 2016 win was a gigantic, stupendous victory, when in reality he barely squeaked by. Don’t confuse “startling” with “big.”

He was running against the most hated woman in politics.

Moreover, the country had been incessantly told that Hillary had it in the bag. On Election Day, The New York Times put her chances of winning at 85%. Princeton professor Sam Wang — who’d correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states in 2012! — said Clinton was more than 99% likely to be the next president. How many Clinton voters saw those polls and thought, I’ll just say I voted for her and go get my nails done.

Yet and still, out of 139 million votes cast in 2016, Trump won with a mere 80,000 votes across three states. Flip those votes, and Hillary wins.

Trump’s winning was a shock, but it wasn’t an amazing, spectacular victory, indicative of some sort of electoral magic.

And then, of course, Trump went on turn his presidency over to Jared and Ivanka, betray his voters (But he moved the embassy!) and lose the next three election cycles.

Republicans: No matter how angry you are at Democrats for politicizing the law, please remember: Trump. Will. Lose. To. Biden. There is absolutely no scenario in which he wins. The good news is there’s virtually no scenario where Biden wins — unless Trump is his opponent.

     COPYRIGHT 2023 ANN COULTER

A Word From Franklin Graham


April 5, 2023

Trump campaign rakes in over $10 million since indictment announcement, sells photoshopped ‘mugshot’ T-shirt


By Paul Steinhauser , Adam Sabes | Fox News | Published April 5, 2023 5:04pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-campaign-rakes-over-10-million-since-indictment-announcement-sells-photoshopped-mugshot-t-shirt

The presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump’s 2024 bid says it has brought in over $10 million in donations since an indictment against him was announced a week ago. Trump was indicted March 30 as part of a years-long investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for hush money payments.

A source within the Trump campaign told Fox News Digital that the campaign raised $4 million in the first 24 hours following the indictment news, and an additional $6 million in the ensuing days.

In the days after the indictment, the Trump campaign sent out an abundance of fundraising emails.

DEMOCRAT VOTERS TORCH BRAGG FOR ‘TRAGIC’ TRUMP INDICTMENT AS CRIME SOARS: ‘WORST PROSECUTOR IN AMERICA’

Former President Donald Trump sits with his defense team in a Manhattan court on April 4, 2023, in New York City.
Former President Donald Trump sits with his defense team in a Manhattan court on April 4, 2023, in New York City. (Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)

“The American people know that whenever I’m viciously and unfairly attacked, it’s really an attack on YOU,” a fundraising email from the Trump campaign on Wednesday afternoon reads.

His campaign is also selling T-shirts that show a photoshopped mugshot of Trump.

“Not guilty,” the text below the photoshopped mugshot states.

The former president's campaign is also selling T-shirts that show a photoshopped mugshot of Trump.
The former president’s campaign is also selling T-shirts that show a photoshopped mugshot of Trump. (Trump Campaign)

On Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree on Tuesday. Falsifying records is typically considered a misdemeanor charge, but rises to a felony when a defendant’s “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

During a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was asked why the second alleged concealed crime wasn’t specified in the indictment.

TRUMP FACES MAXIMUM SENTENCE OF 136 YEARS IN PRISON FOR 34-COUNT INDICTMENT

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks on Donald Trump arraignment April 4, 2023.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks on Donald Trump arraignment April 4, 2023. (Fox News)

“Let me say as an initial matter that the indictment doesn’t specify it because the law does not so require. In my remarks, I mentioned a couple of laws which I will highlight again now,” Bragg said. “The first is New York state election law, which makes it a crime to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means. I further indicated a number of unlawful means, including additional false statements, including statements that were planned to be made to tax authorities. I also noted the federal election law cap on contribution limits.”

Bragg is also accusing Trump and his associates of using a “catch and kill” scheme to possibly bury potentially damaging information that came ahead of the election in 2016.

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Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower, Monday, April 3, 2023, in New York, the day before his arraignment.
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower, Monday, April 3, 2023, in New York, the day before his arraignment. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

“Trump then went to great lengths to hide this conduct, causing dozens of false entries in business records to conceal criminal activity, including attempts to violate state and federal election laws,” Bragg alleged. “In total, 34 false entries were made in New York business records to conceal the initial covert $130,000 payment.”

Fox News’ Paul Best, Danielle Wallace and Emma Colton contributed to this report.

Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in New Hampshire. 

No One Is Above the Law? Give Me A Break


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | APRIL 04, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/04/no-one-is-above-the-law-give-me-a-break/

The Clintons at Donald Trump's inauguration
On exacting poetic political justice.

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Lock Donald Trump up, or don’t lock him up, but don’t tell me that “no one is above the law.” It’s one of the most ludicrous fantasies peddled by the left.

Plenty of people are “above the law.” James Clapper, who lied under oath to Congress about spying on the American people, is above the law. John Brennan, who lied about a domestic spying operation on Senate staffers, is above the law. Unlike Trump advisor Peter Navarro, Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder was never going to be handcuffed and thrown in prison for ignoring a congressional subpoena. He is above the law.

Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, is also above the law. The then-Secretary of State set up a private server in her home to circumvent transparency surrounding her slush-fund foundation. She sent 110 emails containing marked classified information, and 36 of those emails contained secret information. Eight of the email chains contained “top secret” information. Every one of those instances was a potential felony punishable with up to ten years in prison.

We learned all of this from James Comey, then FBI director, who noted that Hillary had been “extremely careless” in conducting her business. Comey didn’t recommend charges because, he claimed, the state couldn’t prove Clinton’s intent — even though “gross negligence,” not intent, was the only standard he needed. Gross negligence and extreme carelessness are synonyms. Comey concocted a new standard to protect Clinton because she is above the law.

When Hillary’s husband, also above the law, perjured himself under oath, Democrats argued that puritanical conservatives were only pursuing Bill because of some trumped-up charge over “sex.” Using that logic, Trump’s campaign finance charges related to Stormy Daniels’ “hush money” are also about sex. This is different because Trump is the boogeyman, and everyone knows he’s guilty of something. The important thing is getting that mug shot.

Don’t worry, though; former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, “Everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence.” By “everyone,” she means Republicans. And if you think this authoritarian formulation is an accident, you haven’t been paying attention. When Democrats were smearing Brett Kavanaugh as a (gang) rapist a few years back, Mazie Hirono was asked whether the then-nominee deserved the “same presumption of innocence as anyone else in America?” After all, this wasn’t about any judicial disagreement but about alleged criminal behavior. The Hawaii senator responded, “I put his denial in the context of everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches his cases.”

In other words, if you’re a conservative, your politics are evil; and if your politics are evil, you’re probably evil. I imagine that was the rationalization used by Kamala Harris when reading obvious fabrications about Kavanaugh into the Congressional Record. It is likely the rationalization of Lois Lerner or Merrick Garland — both above the law — when they weaponized government agencies against political opponents. It is almost surely the rationalization of Alvin Bragg. This is what justifies the contemporary left’s increasing comfort with deploying the state to punish and destroy political enemies. For many progressives, the legal system isn’t merely a tool for criminal justice (if that) but a way to exact poetic political justice.

(Though it should probably be mentioned that Alvin Bragg promised to use the DA’s office to enact social justice, not any kind of impartial or neutral justice. People who don’t pay for public transportation, those who trespass, those who resist arrest, those who obstruct governmental administration, or those involved in prostitution, are all above the law in New York City.)

Despite there being perfectly sound political arguments against Trump, we have been on a hysterical journey that has taken us from accusing Trump of being a seditious actor working on the orders of an antagonistic foreign government — the most successful conspiracy theory ever spun in American politics — to indicting him on some rickety seven-year-old campaign finance violation charge. Giving a porn star “hush money” is an immorality, not an illegality. Are DAs now going to be in the business of indicting political opponents who put $130,000 on the wrong side of the ledger during a race that cost hundreds of millions of dollars? I look forward to this kind of justice being meted out equally.

Everyone knows, of course, what’s going to happen when (or if) Republicans return the favor. Cries of fascism, that’s what. When Harry Reid blew up the judicial filibuster, it was to preserve the republic. When Republicans use that very precedent for themselves, they are power-hungry partisans. When Democrats throw congressmen off subcommittees, they do it for democracy. When Republicans follow suit, they are bigots. When a Republican governor retaliates against Disney for involving itself in educational issues, it’s 1933 all over again. But when a Democrat governor punishes companies like Walgreens for their stand on abortion drugs, it is a blow against injustice. This goes on and on and on.

Not that anyone cares about double standards anymore. I’m not naïve. And no one is innocent in politics. But the contemporary left’s utter and growing disdain for any semblance of limiting principles — the kind of abuse that helped Trump win the presidency in the first place — continues to do profound damage to the system. Trump is an easy target. The next target, I assure you, will be a Republican who is even “worse than Trump.” And the justifications for throwing out norms to stop them will be exactly the same.

Conservatives who contend that Democrats won’t like where the Trump arraignment leads are probably engaged in some wish-casting. Those who hold the upper hand in our major institutions aren’t too worried about short-term threats of retribution. And, anyway, progressives love Calvinball, a “system” of constantly shifting norms that rewards those most willing to use power. That’s the point.


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

Trump Refused To Prosecute Hillary Clinton. Democrats Have No Such Restraint


BY: JOY PULLMANN | APRIL 03, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/03/trump-refused-to-prosecute-hillary-clinton-democrats-have-no-such-restraint/

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton
If it is indeed ending democracy to jail political opponents, let’s be clear about which party is dragging the nation down that route.

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Bill and Hillary Clinton’s long, crooked political careers have been marked by multiple well-established high crimes and misdemeanors. Not the least of these was Hillary’s decision to commit what amounts to multiple felonies by using an insecure private email system to conduct top-secret public business while U.S. secretary of state under Barack Obama.

This criminal behavior that so-called U.S. justice systems openly and repeatedly refused to punish was undertaken to hide treasonous actions. Those include selling political access and favors to foreign adversaries, as journalist Peter Schweizer and others, including The Federalist and members of Congress, have repeatedly and thoroughly documented.

Selling political favors to foreign opponents, including communist China and authoritarian Russia, is clearly treason. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “treason” as: “The betrayal of allegiance toward one’s own country, especially by committing hostile acts against it or aiding its enemies in committing such acts.” The Clintons got filthy rich from it.

Clinton then compounded that with more treasonous conduct when she lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

It is by now well-established that Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid various actors to lie to U.S. intelligence agencies about Trump in an operation that eventually essentially negated the 2016 election — including encouraging federal employees’ treasonous behavior and two falsely predicated impeachments — and helped lose Republicans the 2020 election. Her campaign even tacitly confirmed this by paying a slap-on-the-wrist Federal Election Commission fine while still refusing to admit guilt for it a few weeks ago, seven years after the fact.

Did FBI agents ever show up at Hillary Clinton’s house over her clearly criminal and treasonous “documents dispute”? Nope. The FBI’s director instead essentially confirmed she had committed multiple felonies but decided not to investigate or prosecute her for it because she was a presidential candidate for a major political party.

Hillary paid to have Trump falsely smeared as a traitor, laundering the slander through U.S. agencies that are supposed to provide equal justice under the law but now function as weapons to damage Democrats’ political opposition. In conjunction with others in the Obama administration that likely include Obama himself, she colluded with multiple security-state agencies to slander, undermine, hamper, and now threaten with jail time Democrats’ top political opponent.

That’s treason. It’s election erasure. It’s ongoing. And these traitors are all running about totally scot-free, while they jail their political opponents for what at best are misdemeanors, and for which they refuse to prosecute anyone on the left who perpetrates them — from street rioters all the way up to their presidential candidates.

My colleague Elle Purnell pointed out that when Trump countenanced chants of “lock her up” at his rallies over Clinton’s never-penalized repeat criminal behavior, Democrats lost their minds, and insisted this was the stuff of dictatorships, tyranny, and political repression.

“Dictatorships lock up the opposition, not democracies,” said Spygate intelligence official Michael McFaul. “Since when do Americans advocate jailing political opponents?” said top Spygate propagandist Julia Ioffe, then at Politico.

“In a democracy, you can’t threaten to jail your opponents,” Obama said in 2016. “We have fought against those kinds of things.” “In America, we don’t send our political opponents to jail,” tweeted an official Democratic National Committee Twitter account.

The Clintons are clearly traitors willing to endanger their nation for profit, and it would be fully just to prosecute them as such. Yet as president when he had the chance, Trump decided not to pursue it. According to Trump Attorney General Bill Barr’s recently published memoir, “Trump brought up the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and surprised Barr by saying that he had wanted the matter to be dropped after the 2016 election,” according to a review of Barr’s memoir in the fall 2022 Claremont Review of Books.

“‘Even if she were guilty,’ he told Barr, “for the election winner to seek prosecution of the loser would make the country look like a ‘banana republic.’”

Ever since riding down his golden escalator, Trump has been ceaselessly vilified as a tinpot dictator, an evil supervillain, an authoritarian, the second coming of Adolf Hitler. But Democrats cannot change the facts, which include that Trump had fully legitimate justification to prosecute his horribly corrupt political opponent and refused to do so. They can make no such argument for themselves.

So, if it is indeed the stuff of banana republics and ending democracies to jail one’s political opponents, let’s all be clear about which political party is dragging the nation down that route. And let all in authority who care about equal justice under the law begin fiercely applying Democrats’ standards to them until they stop perverting justice to destroy our country.

The no-holds-barred legal shutdown and prosecution of leftist insurrectionists filling state capitols in support of a transgender child murderer would be one such proportionate response.


Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

If ‘No One Is Above The Law,’ Democrats And Their Partisan Pawns Would Be Arraigned, Not Trump


BY: JORDAN BOYD | MARCH 31, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/31/if-no-one-is-above-the-law-democrats-and-their-partisan-pawns-would-be-arraigned-not-trump/

POTUS Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
If Democrats truly valued rule of law, they would pursue cases against many more people before even considering indicting Trump.

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America’s two-tiered justice system status was solidified on Thursday after a Manhattan grand jury voted to hit former President Donald Trump with a felony indictment and the threat of imprisonment. Cue the chorus of Democrats and corporate media mouthpieces who spent all of Thursday night on Twitter condescendingly warning: “no one is above the law, not even the former president.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the anti-Trump Adams, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Rep. Adam Schiff, and even Trump’s ex-attorney Michael Cohen say Trump- or anyone else- doesn’t just get a free pass because he’s a 2024 presidential candidate. Yet, it doesn’t take an expert to know that the sole reason Trump ever faced indictment is because his political enemies requested it.

In addition to suggesting that Trump is not “above the law,” former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed that the former president has the opportunity to “prove innocence” in court. Of course, the law, smugly touted by Pelosi, dictates that defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty- not the other way around.

Whether Pelosi’s “innocence” comment was a Freudian slip or a genuine assertion, we may never know. What we do know is that for years, Democrats have operated under the belief that their party members and their partisan allies are above the law.

1. The Criminals Alvin Bragg Refused To Prosecute

While Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was busy searching for ways to indict Trump, violent criminals were taking over New York City streets.

During Bragg’s first year in office, major crime in New York City increased by 22 percent. Since then, the DA has made a career out of reducing charges for armed robbers, freeing cop-beaters, relaxing bail, and letting violent antisemites off.

Bragg’s soft-on-crime policies may have earned him left-wing billionaire financier George Soros’ favor and dollars, but even Democrat-voting New Yorkers know that he’s no stranger to giving better treatment to convicts than law-abiding people like this bodega owner who defended himself against a murderous criminal.

2. Hillary Clinton

If Democrats truly cared about campaign finance law violations, they would have already prosecuted several members of their party, including Hillary Clinton.

In 2022, the Federal Elections Commission fined Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign for falsely attributing the money that the Democrat used to orchestrate the Russian collusion hoax. If Trump is guilty of intent to conceal a campaign finance crime, a motivated prosecutor might look at the DNC and Clinton campaign’s efforts to hide their involvement in the so-called Steele “dossier” and find they were guilty of the same crime.

In addition to her election meddling, Clinton and her staff mishandled highly classified information, which resulted in at least 91 security violations. Instead of raiding her house and asking the DOJ to prosecute her, the FBI “inexplicably agreed to destroy [Clinton staffers Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson’s] laptops knowing that the contents were the subject of Congressional subpoenas and preservation letters.”

Clinton also played a central role in the decision to abandon four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, where they were murdered by terrorists.

3. Barack Obama

Before Clinton was forced to pay for her scheming, President Barack Obama faced “one of the largest fees ever levied against a presidential campaign,” $375,000, for “campaign reporting violations.” Instead of facing calls for prison time, Obama received years of protection from the corporate media and fake fact-checkers who repeatedly downplayed his violation as a proportionally small infraction compared to the billion dollars he raised on the campaign trail.

4. Election Law-Breakers Like Marc Elias

Marc Elias has repeatedly tried to undermine U.S. elections. He has such a reputation for meddling and manipulating elections that even a federal judge reprimanded him for it. Unlike Douglass Mackey, who was charged by the DOJ for posting a meme encouraging Hillary voters to “text” their votes, however, Elias has not faced any charges or unannounced raids.

5. President Joe Biden

A president avoiding paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes seems like the kind of thing federal agencies, including the recently financially invigorated Internal Revenue Service, should explore. Yet Biden, who hasn’t explained millions of dollars of his recorded income, and First Lady Jill Biden together reportedly dodged about $517,000 in Medicare and Obamacare taxes between 2017 and 2020 without scrutiny.

6. Hunter Biden

The president’s son isn’t just a walking liability for the Biden family name, he’s a glaring national security threat with a long, infamous history of using illicit drugs, engaging in possibly criminal sexual escapades with foreign women, and selling access to his dad under the guise of doing business with foreign oligarchs from places like China.

Besides all this and his reckless handling of a lost gun in 2018 — which, against normal protocol, the Secret Service reportedly helped him cover up — Hunter likely lied on federal forms about his drug use to purchase that gun, a felony, with barely a whisper of punishment.

7. Eric Swalwell

Speaking of communist China, Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell canoodling with a known spy for the nation’s No. 1 enemy seems like a pretty serious offense. Instead of a member of the House Intelligence Committee facing consequences for giving foreign spies access to key U.S. government offices and information, Swalwell is still comfortably rage-tweeting about Trump and MAGA supporters and appearing as a guest on corrupt corporate media programs.

8. Eric Holder

Former Attorney General Eric Holder misled Congress during its investigation of the Obama-era “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal, which used taxpayer dollars to put guns into the hands of Mexican drug lords. Holder was held in contempt, but that’s pretty much the only punishment he received for intentionally dodging subpoenas and hiding documents from congressional oversight.

9. Susan Rice

President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, unmasked members of the Trump transition team and then lied about it. Unmasking may be a legitimate and legal process for those with the authority, but covering up an attempt to target the political enemies of the regime is an abuse of power that deserves examination.

Instead, it was yet another action taken by the U.S. intelligence apparatus to justify spying on American citizens.

10. The Pelosi Family

Suspected insider trading deserves at least a second glance by federal investigators, but it looks like, so far, Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul have gotten away with conveniently timing their stock purchases and sales to massively grow their wealth.

[Read: “Democrats Say ‘No One Is Above The Law,’ But This List Of Their Corrupt Allies Proves Otherwise”]

The same people who love lording “no one is above the law” over Americans are the ones who think they are above any semblance of oversight or law, or constitutionality. If Democrats truly valued rule of law, illegal border crossers, Russia hoaxers, Jeffrey Epstein’s clients, pro-abortion vandals, rioters, and the people who run corrupt government agencies like the Department of Justice, the FBI, the NSA, and the Manhattan DA’s office would be the ones standing in court next week, not Trump.


Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

Trump Indictment Launches Era Of Police-State Politics in America


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MARCH 31, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/31/trump-indictment-ushers-in-era-of-police-state-politics-in-america/

Donald Trump boards his plane
America has entered the era of ‘show me the man and I’ll show you the crime’ politics.

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A Manhattan grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office confirmed following late-Thursday media leaks. While the indictment remains under seal, one thing seems certain: America has now entered the era of “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” politics.

The Democrat district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, breathed new life into the infamous boast of Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, when the Manhattan prosecutor targeted the former president in connection to a 2016 payment made to Stormy Daniels. Bragg’s decision to push for an indictment against Trump, presumably for falsifying business records, promises to herald in a new political age — one in which local prosecutors will target partisan enemies, big and small, making a mockery of the criminal justice system in the process.

The fact that news of the charges leaked to the left’s favorite scribes at The New York Times, while the indictment remained still under seal, punctuates perfectly the Sovietesque times in which we live: The legacy media may not be state-run, but they peddle propaganda, nonetheless.

Guesswork

Until the indictment is unsealed, any discussion of the charges requires some guesswork, and with sources late Thursday reportedly telling CNN the grand jury charged Trump with more than 30 counts, the prognostication is much more difficult. But from earlier reports, it appears the D.A.’s criminal case against Trump revolves around Sections 175.05 and 175.10 of the New York penal code. 

Both sections define the state crime of “falsifying business records,” with Section 175.05 providing “a person is guilty of falsifying business records in the second degree when, with the intent to defraud, he makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.” Section 175.10 converts the “second degree” misdemeanor to a felony if the person falsified business records with the “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission” of another crime. 

The factual theory for charging the former president with falsifying business records seems to rest on “Trump allegedly causing the Trump Organization to falsely report payments made to Michael Cohen in 2017 as ‘legal expenses,’ when the money instead reimbursed (and then some) Cohen for the $130,000 payment he made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to keep the porn star from publicly claiming she had sex a decade earlier.” The Trump Organization then reportedly paid Cohen $35,000 a month for “legal services” in 2017, while Cohen never provided any legal work for the business.

Legal pundits believe the indictment will ratchet up the alleged falsifying of “legal expenses” offense to a felony by charging Trump with lying about the payments to Cohen to conceal a violation of federal election law. Cohen has already admitted to paying off Daniels to advance Trump’s electoral chances, and he appears poised to be a star witness against Trump. Another possibility, however, is that the Manhattan D.A.’s indictment accuses Trump of falsifying the organization’s “legal expenses” to aid in tax fraud.

The U.S. attorney has already declined to charge Trump with federal election law violations, making any attempt by Bragg to tie the federal offense to the state charge of falsifying business records reek of political payback. 

Bragg’s expected use of Trump’s physical absence from New York — ironically because he was serving as commander-in-chief in D.C. — to sidestep the five-year statute of limitations that applies to a felony of falsifying business records, will also add to the stench of the case. And a public that watched Trump hounded since he first announced his candidacy for president isn’t likely to focus on the legal technicalities of the statute of limitations. Rather, the average American will consider the delayed charging of Trump to be a desperate ploy to concoct a crime.

Trump himself was quick to advance this theory, opening his press release by calling the indictment “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history.” “From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower,” the former president continued, the “Radical Left Democrats … have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement.”

“You remember it just like I do,” Trump stressed, ticking off the attacks: “Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid; and now this.”

30-Count Craziness

Trump will reportedly appear in a Manhattan court on Tuesday for his arraignment. Whether the indictment is unsealed before then is unknown. But the leaks continue, including, as noted above, news that the grand jury reportedly charged Trump with more than 30 criminal counts. 

Unless Bragg has uncovered something much beyond the details already reported about the Daniels payment, the Manhattan prosecutor will have only made matters worse by pushing for an indictment of the former president on more than 30 criminal counts. Given the lack of leaks about anything new, the most likely scenario is that the grand jury got to 30-plus counts by charging Trump with separate counts for each of the monthly payments made to Cohen in 2017. Then, the grand jury could add additional counts for each month Trump allegedly made the payment to “aid or conceal the commission” of another crime.

With this approach, it isn’t hard to see how easily the grand jury could convert one hush-money payment into some 30 crimes. And while the left and the Never Trump right might see a lengthy indictment as further proof of Trump’s malfeasance, if the indictment contains no new details, the piling on to reach the reported 33 counts against the former president doesn’t make Trump look more guilty — it makes Bragg look more like Beria. 


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Alan Dershowitz explains why judge may quickly toss out Trump indictment: ‘Foolish, foolish decision’


By: CHRIS ENLOE | March 31, 2023

Read more at https://www.theblaze.com/news/dershowitz-trump-case-tossed-statute-of-limitations/

Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz explained why he believes the indictment against former President Donald Trump will be quickly tossed from court. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed on Thursday that a grand jury has indicted Trump over allegations related to an alleged hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. The indictment, however, remains under seal, and the exact charges will not be publicized until Trump is arraigned, which is expected to take place next week.

Reacting to the unprecedented news, the Harvard Law School emeritus professor predicted a judge will toss the case on statute of limitations grounds.

“I think the most important thing is they indicted him when he was out of New York, and that means they could have indicted him within the statute of limitations when he was out of New York. The statute of limitations is way expired,” Dershowitz explained on Newsmax. “They claimed they couldn’t have indicted him because he was outside of New York, but now they’ve indicted him when he’s not in New York.”

Dershowitz added that Bragg made a “foolish, foolish decision, which will cause the case to be thrown out, I think, on statute of limitations grounds.”

A scholar of American criminal law, Dershowitz predicted Trump’s attorneys will file an immediate motion to dismiss the case based on statute of limitations grounds.

Bragg reportedly investigated Trump for falsifying business records over allegations that money he claimed went to Michael Cohen for legal services actually went to Daniels. In New York, the crime of falsifying business records is generally a misdemeanor — for which the statute of limitations is two years — but it can be a Class E felony if the crime occurred “to conceal another crime.” The statute of limitations in that case is five years. It is not yet known what second crime prosecutors allege Trump committed to elevate the charge to a felony, though it is believed that prosecutors will argue the hush-money payment constituted a violation of campaign finance laws.

At the center of the statute of limitations concern is whether they were triggered in 2017 — when the payments to Cohen were allegedly made — or in 2018 on the basis of bookkeeping implications.

As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy explained:

Assuming the statute of limitations was thus triggered in 2018, the five-year period would lapse sometime this year. That, at least in part, explains the frenetic investigative activity that has gone on the last few weeks: If the state doesn’t indict soon, the case would be time-barred. Or . . . it could be time-barred already.

The indictment came despite the Justice Department declining to prosecute it. The Federal Election Commission also declined the case.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Stalin-Style Justice

A.F. BRANCO | on March 31, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-stalin-style-justice/

NY DA Bragg’s unprecedented indictment of President Trump is for purely political reasons.

DA Bragg Get Trump
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden

Ann Coulter Op-ed: Transgender Nation


March 29, 2023 by Ann Coulter

Read more at https://anncoulter.com/2023/03/29/transgender-nation/

Talk about bad luck! What are the odds of the Nashville school shooter being a transgendered person who is ALSO mentally ill?

Arguably, there were hints.

In a form of modern Lysenkoism, young transgenders overwhelmingly come from homes with signs that say: “In This House, We Believe: Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights, No Human Is Illegal, Science Is Real, Love Is Love, Kindness Is Everything.”

Specifically, a study of adolescent and young adult transgenders found that the adults in the home who identify as “parents” were 91.4% white; 70.9% had a bachelor’s degree or higher and 85.9% favored gay marriage. Parent respondents were 91.7% female.

This is a weirdly specific profile. Only about a third of Americans have B.A.s; a third of the population is white and female, and about a third supported gay marriage (until it was made a capital offense to oppose it — changing even Barack Obama’s mind!)

How many other biological conditions are correlated with political ideology?

I guess there’s “long-haul COVID.” So there are two biological FACTS where the main vector is: Liberal White Women. And of course, innumerable studies have shown that mental illness is far more prevalent in liberals than conservatives, which may be the umbrella condition.

On the other hand, counterfactual self-identifications are popping up all over. For example, the media are currently self-identifying as purveyors of information, and Trump is self-identifying as a bad-ass tough guy who can get the job done.

For nearly two weeks now, the media have produced wall-to-wall coverage of … a rumor started by Trump himself. On March 18, he posted on his social media site: “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”

Tuesday came and went without his supposed antagonist, New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, making any arrest, but the media can’t stop talking about Trump. (You ever get the impression that Trump and the media are working together?)

In response to the press’s flood-the-zone coverage of a rumor started by someone they call a liar, Trump has been self-identifying as a total stud, the hero who built the wall and kept the country open while others quaked in the face of COVID!

Last week, he posted a picture of himself — carefully selected for its bad-assedness — swinging a baseball bat next to a photo of Bragg.

What justifies this tough-guy image?

I agree 100% with the issues Trump ran on in 2016, but this is the guy who claimed to have a bone spur in his foot to avoid actual military service.

The complete opposite of his image on “The Apprentice,” barking “You’re fired!” at hapless employees, the real Trump couldn’t fire anyone. He asked former campaign aide-turned-lobbyist Corey Lewandowski to fire his attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

A slew of other Trump administration employees were fired by tweet — just the way George Patton did! These include: White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. He fired his FBI director, James Comey, by handing the dismissal letter to the White House press corps before telling Comey, who found out by watching TV (in this one case, style points to Trump).

Sitting with Democrats and Republicans at the White House, Trump wimped out on the Second Amendment, announcing that he supported a whole laundry list of anti-gun proposals, including taking arms away without due process. He even mocked Republicans for being “afraid of the NRA” — unlike him, the tough guy willing to swing a baseball bat at a photo. The NRA, he said, has “power over you people, but they have less power with me.”

A few days later, the NRA stopped by the Oval Office — and Trump retracted it all, tweeting out his unwavering support for the Second Amendment.

He released prisoners because Kim Kardashian told him to, bombed Syria because his daughter told him to, and shut down the country because a scaredy-cat cable news host told him to.

This is the guy who sells superhero NFTs of himself? Where does he get the idea that people see him as a macho fighter, as opposed to a spaghetti-spined nitwit who couldn’t stand up to girls like Ivanka and Paul Ryan? (Hey, whatever happened to that wall?)

As soon as there was blowback on the ridiculous baseball bat meme, here was Trump, backpedaling as fast as his bone-spurred feet would let him. He told some cockamamie story about how he never even noticed the picture! (Because Trump isn’t at all obsessed with his own image.)

I’m not allowed to offer a professional opinion without conducting an examination, but based on the symptoms, there’s a good chance that Trump is a liberal white woman.

     COPYRIGHT 2023 ANN COULTER

Major New Development in the Trump Arrest Saga


By: Matt Vespa | March 22, 2023 1:00 PM

Read more at https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/03/22/trump-wont-be-arrested-today-n2620997

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

The NYPD officers mobilized to quell any unrest in New York City upon news of a possible indictment against former President Donald Trump can probably rest easy: the grand jury isn’t meeting today and possibly tomorrow. No reason was offered, but the panel that’s to decide whether Trump broke the law regarding his hush money payment scheme to former porn star Stormy Daniels isn’t going to issue any indictment this week (via Politico):

The Manhattan grand jury hearing evidence in the criminal investigation of Donald Trump’s alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to a porn star won’t meet Wednesday as regularly scheduled, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The reason for the adjournment wasn’t immediately clear. The grand jury typically meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, one of the people familiar with the matter said, and it heard from witnesses earlier this week.

“The grand jury has been told to stay home today. They’re on standby for tomorrow,” one senior law-enforcement official said.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been facing immense pressure since Trump declared on his platform, Truth Social, that he would be arrested this week. There’s no evidence that an arrest warrant has been issued; there’s no indictment yet. Trump’s team even acknowledged that they were unaware of any development. Still, it brought the former president back into the news cycle with attacks against Bragg, who Republicans, especially Trump supporters, are accusing of playing politics with the justice system. That criticism is not unfounded, as the charges against Trump are reportedly not felony-level, but Bragg’s office is allegedly trying to finagle ways to make that case. The statute of limitations has also expired on the charges purportedly being considered, so this is another witch hunt.

Bragg’s office also could decline to charge Trump, too. That’s another real possibility. This week has been fraught with reports and sources claiming that an arrest is a real possibility, with the backdrop of mass law enforcement mobilization offering some credibility to those developments. 

Democrats’ Banana-Republic Persecution Of Donald Trump Must Meet A Republican Response


BY: TOM CRIST | MARCH 22, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/22/democrats-banana-republic-persecution-of-donald-trump-must-meet-a-republican-response/

Donald Trump
This is the equivalent of a nationally televised jaywalking arrest to humiliate a person due solely to personal hate.

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American media has bombarded us daily from all directions to make sure we know that Donald Trump indirectly paid a woman to shut her mouth as she and her now-convict lawyer, Michael Avenatti, shook him down for money.

In New York, false financial accounting can be a low-level misdemeanor, but it’s rarely prosecuted. Now Alvin Bragg, a municipal prosecutor, is trying to make a name for himself by charging former President Trump with that crime.

This is the equivalent of a nationally televised jaywalking arrest to humiliate a person due solely to personal hate. George Soros, Bragg’s benefactor, must be grinning from ear to ear.

Hillary Clinton Got Off For a Worse Deed

Trump’s former lawyer accounted for the payment as consulting or attorney’s fees. Allegedly, so did President Trump, and $130,000 changed hands.

For perspective, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paid $1 million for the infamous fictional “Steele dossier.” They paid for this using one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent lawyers, Marc Elias, as a cutout to hide who was paying for this opposition research that falsely claimed Trump was colluding with Russia.

They then laundered the dossier through various contacts to try to destroy Trump and get Clinton elected president. Those people officially accounted for the $1 million dossier expense as “legal fees.”  So, one side paid people to lie. The other paid someone not to lie, or at least not to speak.

Clinton lives in New York, the state in which Trump is likely to be charged over a $130,000 payment. She has not been charged for the $1 million payment. Do these events really sound vastly different to you?

Bragg hopes to spin that unserious charge into a federal campaign finance violation. Meanwhile, the dossier fraud, which affected two presidential elections and two presidential impeachments, was settled with a $113,000 fine.

Bragg’s Case Is a Mess

City prosecutors cannot charge people with federal crimes. Only feds can charge federal crimes, not some city prosecutor. Bragg has allegedly met with the Secret Service about how they will react to a New York City police officer approaching President Trump with handcuffs (if they can find one who will do it). Bragg is way over his head and wading into deep political waters.

New York Attorney General Tish James ran for office almost exclusively on a “get Trump” platform. She hated the man and promised to find a crime he committed, rather than responding to a crime and looking for a perpetrator. After years of not finding anything, she did not charge Trump with any crimes. Same state. Same New York laws. More investigative tools. Yet she passed on the opportunity to arrest a president.

The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the same alleged crime and also chose not to prosecute. Every prosecutor in the state above Bragg’s office passed on this one knowing they could not prove President Trump committed a crime. Or they realized that no serious person could charge Trump and not also indict Democrats.

Bragg is the same Manhattan DA who has publicly decriminalized crimes in the name of wokeness. This alleged prosecutor will ignore criminal violence and release people on their own recognizance after a stern talking to for beating someone half to death or attacking police. But he wants to charge Trump for this garbage after every one of his superiors has declined to do so. Why? Incompetence? Tunnel vision? Irrational hate? Why choose?

Democrats’ Hate Could Prompt a Constitutional Crisis

Many Democrats want Trump arrested for anything. They want to see him in cuffs more than they want their own kids to be happy and healthy. They have been searching for someone stupid or reckless enough to “perp walk” the man for the cameras. They might very well have found him. If Bragg does it over this fluff, it will prove to be a poor career choice for him and could have much broader implications that are rungs above his pay grade.

Some Dems even want conservatives to riot if a cop cuffs Trump, just like a lack of security made it easy for people to barge into the Capitol through open doors just to be charged and arrested. They might get their wish. And it is likely a trap. If it happens and people protest, see whether New York City will give them all “room to vent” like city officials gave lefty rioters for months. Hopefully, any protests will be peaceful. I will not be involved in any of it.

A lot of people continue to be surprised at these events and have truly had enough of the second set of rules for conservatives. If the hard left keeps pushing this kind of thing, it will eventually be deeply sorry.

Feds raided Trump’s house with a tactical team over papers a librarian wanted. Oddly, CNN was present and ran the story on a loop. Joe Biden dropped 50 years of classified documents all over the country and the feds let his personal lawyers (who lacked security clearances) sort them before giving them to the government at their leisure.

They investigate Trump from all sides. They give Biden a pass on everything. The feds investigated Trump’s sons and son-in-law for any irregularity. Yet Hunter Biden, a man in a long line of alleged Biden bag men, lives in a $40,000-per-month Malibu beach house and sells splatter paintings to anonymous purchasers for exorbitant amounts.

Wildly Unequal Legal Treatment

Everyone is supposed to just sit back and accept the different treatment and think it is okay and normal. This is far from normal—it is a thumb in the eye of half the American population.

Even apparently peaceful Jan. 6, 2021 protestors have been in pre-trial detention for two years. Black Lives Matter and Antifa got carte blanch to riot and burn courthouses with impunity with at least tacit support from the White House and open support from the vice president, who encouraged people to donate money to bail the rioters out of jail.

Firebomb a pro-life crisis pregnancy center and take credit for it, and Biden’s inept AG will give you a pass. Pray in front of an abortion clinic and you will be charged with a list of felonies. This is not sustainable. People, in large numbers, will eventually stop taking it.

The Acceleration of Dangerous Trends

In accordance with their oaths, prosecutors are not supposed to charge people with crimes they cannot prove, since doing so can ruin people’s lives even if they are eventually acquitted. The citizenry remembers the charge, not the acquittal.

Likewise, presidents are not supposed to issue executive orders they know will be overturned as unlawful, just for political gain and show. Both have been happening for the last two years at a clip never before encountered. Team Biden is daring half the country. Stand up, but do not take the bait.

Many think Bragg will charge Trump soon because he can. These people might not be ready for the fallout they will provoke. And by that, I do not mean violence. I mean turnabout.

Republicans may politically finally address Democratic Party lawfare, taking an eye for an eye. Some have recently shown backbone their predecessors lacked. Their voters will increasingly elect officials who promise to do so. Trump himself was a harbinger of this.

Republicans Need to Respond, Good and Hard

If Bragg pulls the proverbial trigger, everyone had better be really sure about his next moves. Bragg and his upstream cronies will not be able to take it back, apologize, call for calm, or put that leftist authoritarian genie back in the bottle.

If they think they are right and their ideas the best, Democrats should square up and try to beat at the polls whomever the Republican candidate is in 2024. Another round of transparent politically driven rigging, especially like this, after the ridiculous failures of their impeachment efforts and Jan. 6 show trials, will light a dangerous fuse for which the American people have lost patience.

Most countries that fail to address unequal treatment start dying from within. Every American should want to avoid that for all our sakes. Bragg staying out of presidential politics and focusing on the skyrocketing violent crime rate in his own backyard would be a welcome next step.

When Republicans take the White House, they should make sure prosecutors at every level have every resource and unclassified document they require to investigate and, if mandated, charge everyone on team leftist. No letting things slide. If the Dems want old-fashioned dirty politics, the other side might finally give it to them good, hard, and thoroughly.


Thomas Crist is a husband, father, lawyer, and political conservative who loves his country and despises all myopic hypocrisy regardless of its source.

Indicting Trump Will Usher In America’s Banana-Republic Stage


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MARCH 21, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/21/indicting-trump-will-usher-in-americas-banana-republic-stage/

Donald Trump
The move to indict a former president for the first time in our country’s history will make political prosecutions the new norm in America.

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A Manhattan grand jury appears poised to indict Donald Trump, according to news reports and the former president himself. Here’s what you need to know to understand the chatter about the anticipated criminal charges against Trump—and why the move to indict a former president for the first time in our country’s history will make political prosecutions the new norm in America.

While only the grand jury and prosecutors know for certain what charges against Trump, if any, are being considered, the consensus is that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, is pursuing a criminal case against Trump for allegedly falsifying business records, in violation of Sections 175.05 and 175.10 of the New York Penal Code.

Section 175.05 provides “a person is guilty of falsifying business records in the second degree when, with the intent to defraud, he makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.” Falsifying business records in the second degree is a misdemeanor, subject to a two-year statute of limitations.

A violation of Section 175.10, however, is a felony, subject to a five-year statute of limitations. That section defines the offense of falsifying business records in the first degree and provides that if a person falsifies business records with the “intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission” of another crime, the offense is one in the first degree.

The underlying factual theory for charging the former president rests on Trump allegedly causing the Trump Organization to falsely report payments made to Michael Cohen in 2017 as “legal expenses,” when the money instead reimbursed (and then some) Cohen for the $130,000 payment he made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to keep the pornography performer from publicly claiming she had sex with Trump a decade earlier. In total, the Trump Organization reported legal expenses of $420,000 paid to Cohen in 2017, at a monthly rate of $35,000. Cohen, however, had provided no legal services for the Trump Organization that year.

To bump what would be a misdemeanor under New York law to a felony, pundits are suggesting the D.A. will argue Trump caused the Trump Organization to falsify its business records to conceal the commission of one or more federal election crimes. The Manhattan prosecutor, however, might also advance the theory that Trump caused the Trump Organization to falsely report the payments with the intent of committing tax fraud.

Even before reaching the merits of the legal theories being bandied about to charge Trump criminally, a public suspicious of the Get-Trump attitude seen over the last seven years will notice the statute of limitations seems to bar Bragg’s prosecution of Trump. But Bragg has two ways to sidestep the two- and five-year statutory time limits.

First, if Bragg charges Trump with a felony, the longer five-year period applies. While more than five years have passed since the Trump Organization last recorded a “legal expense” to Cohen, New York’s former governor, Andrew Cuomo, by executive order extended the statute of limitations for one year (or thereabouts) due to Covid-19. That tolling would make a felony indictment against Trump timely.

Alternatively, because New York law provides that any time a defendant remains “continuously outside” of the state is excluded from the statutory period, an indictment against Trump would be timely. From late January 2017 on, Trump was “continuously outside” New York, first in D.C. and then in Florida, meaning the statute of limitations only ran those few times Trump was in New York. That isn’t even close to the two years necessary for the misdemeanor statute of limitations to expire, much less the five-year period applicable to felony offenses.

So, the statute of limitations won’t likely bar one or more falsifying business records counts. But what about the merits?

Cohen already pleaded guilty to federal charges related to his payments to Stormy Daniels. But to convict Trump on the anticipated state charges, the Manhattan prosecutor would need to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump (1) caused the Trump Organization to falsify its business records (2) “with the intent to defraud.”

From public reporting, it appears Cohen is a star witness for the prosecution, likely testifying Trump directed him to make the payments to silence Daniels and promising reimbursement from the Trump Organization. Whether a paper trail supports Cohen’s testimony is unclear, but without one, it will be Cohen’s word—the word of a convicted felon—crucial to establish the crime.

Cohen’s testimony also already appears under fire. A “former legal advisor to Cohen,” Robert Costello, reportedly testified before the grand jury on Monday, “solely to undermine” Cohen’s credibility.

But prosecutors will need to prove more than that Trump caused the Trump Organization to falsify its business records. They will need to establish he also had the “intent to defraud.” Here, the defense can easily counter that Trump’s intent was to avoid embarrassment to his family caused by what he claims is a lie, rather than to “defraud” anyone.

Should prosecutors nonetheless prove their case, it is only a misdemeanor, unless they can further establish Trump intended “to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission” of another crime. Proving either will be even more challenging.

First, to establish Trump intended to conceal a violation of federal election law, the Manhattan D.A. would need to prove Trump had committed an election-law crime. While Cohen alleged paying off Daniels to advance Trump’s electoral chances, Trump has another justification, namely avoiding any embarrassment for himself and his family, that does not run afoul of federal election law.

Proving Trump intended to commit tax fraud would likely be a difficult case to prove as well, with prosecutors needing to establish Trump’s knowledge of the intricacies of the corporation’s tax filings to show he held the requisite intent.

This inside-the-law analysis reveals an exceedingly weak case, but that is only a fraction of what the public will care about. On top of the questionable charges, the general public will see a man hounded for seven years with false claims of Russia collusion and other supposed crimes. They will see a statute of limitations that on its face appears to have run. And they will see a local prosecutor pushing charges previously rejected by a federal U.S. attorney.

Then there was the public pressure placed on Bragg to indict Trump, best exemplified by the backlash he faced after he apparently backed off charging the former president for crimes supposedly connected to the Trump Organization’s finances. At the time, “two prosecutors quit his office,” and “one of the prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz, wrote a highly critical book that the media has celebrated.”

In short, the public will see a vindictive political prosecution of Trump.

Maybe there will be a time to charge a president or a former president with a crime, but the facts here do not support making that leap. While D.A. Bragg and those pushing for Trump’s indictment may seek cover behind the well-worn American proposition that “no one is above the law,” the corollary is equally important: Our political enemies are not targeted for prosecution.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Arresting Trump: An End-Of-America Watch Party


BY: EDDIE SCARRY | MARCH 20, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/20/arresting-trump-an-end-of-america-watch-party/

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Even if Democrats really were concerned about our convoluted election regulations, no serious person thinks New York’s district attorney has a case against Trump.

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As the saying goes: If even Never Trump Jonah Goldberg doubts your wisdom in bringing criminal charges against the former president, then you know it’s a stupid case.

Nobody actually says that, but it’s one of many indicators that the indictment potentially coming this week from Democrat New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg (yes, that’s his actual name) is so absurd as to make anyone wonder if our justice system really is a joke.

Trump on Saturday announced that he expected to be arrested soon in relation to the very old, very stale, very tiresome allegation that he violated campaign finance laws when he reimbursed his lawyer for a payment made to a porn actress in order to supposedly cover up a past affair. The accusation is that Trump did it to protect his campaign and intentionally neglected to publicly disclose the payment, as would be required by law.

I think Democrats have no interest whatsoever in campaign finance violations and really just enjoy thinking about Trump’s sex life. But even if they really were concerned with the integrity of our convoluted election money regulations, no serious person thinks Bragg has a case. That’s evidenced no less than by the fact that the people who considered pursuing this charge previously eventually dropped it— including Bragg!

While Trump was in office and Bragg was a U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, his office looked at this very case and decided it wasn’t worth pursuing. It’s a horse that has been beaten to death, resuscitated, and beaten again. Then smacked on the rear one more time.

But persecuting Trump has no downside for Democrats chasing fame. And now is as good a time as any. The historic nature of putting a former president in handcuffs as he campaigns for another term is too good for a low-rent prosecutor to pass up.

Not so good for a republic that wants to last another year, let alone 200, but that’s never top of mind for people like Bragg.

Try to wrap your mind around it. The former president, the likely Republican presidential nominee in 2024, might be seen on live national television cuffed, placed in the back of a squad car, and taken to a police station for his mug shot. All this over campaign paperwork that would any other time be resolved with a corrected filing and, perhaps, a penalty fee.

And that’s only if you presume Trump is guilty. Rational people think he might have tried hiding an affair, but that it’s absolutely possible it was for other reasons. (I wonder if anyone has ever in American history tried hiding an affair for reasons outside of protecting his prospects to be elected U.S. president. Interesting question, but far from settled!)

If Bragg brings an indictment, that’s one up for him and another one down for faith in America.


Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of “Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone.”

DeSantis slams ‘Soros-funded’ Manhattan DA for ‘weaponizing the office’ as Trump rumors swirl


By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published March 20, 2023 12:43pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-slams-soros-funded-manhattan-da-weaponizing-office-trump-rumors-swirl

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Monday as a “Soros-funded prosecutor” who is “pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office” as he reportedly considers indicting former President Donald Trump on charges related to alleged hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.

“I’ve seen rumors swirl, I have not seen any facts yet, and so I don’t know what’s going to happen,” DeSantis said in Florida when asked about the potential indictment of the former president.

“But I do know this,” he said. “The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor, and so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.”

HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE DEMANDS MANHATTAN DA ALVIN BRAGG TESTIFY ABOUT POSSIBLE TRUMP INDICTMENT

Eyes are on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, and former President Donald Trump when thinking about the 2024 presidential election.
Eyes are on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, and former President Donald Trump when thinking about the 2024 presidential election. (Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images / File)

The potential charges against Trump stem from the $130,000 hush-money payment that then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen made to Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.

NY PROSECUTOR EYEING TRUMP HAS FACED REPEATED CRITICISM FOR BEING SOFT ON CRIME

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. attorneys office for the Southern District of New York opted out of charging Trump related to the Stormy Daniels payment in 2019, even as Cohen implicated him as part of his plea deal. The Federal Election Commission also tossed its investigation into the matter in 2021.

Stormy Daniels
Stormy Daniels (AP Photo / Markus Schreiber / File)

“And so, you’re talking about this situation with, and like, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair — I just I can’t speak to that,” DeSantis said.

COURT UPHOLDS GOV. RON DESANTIS’ SUSPENSION OF PROSECUTOR WITH ‘MILITANT AGENDA’

“But what I can speak to is that if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction, and he chooses to go back many, many years ago to try to use something about porn star hush-money payments, you know, that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office,” DeSantis said. “And I think that that’s fundamentally wrong.”

DeSantis said “Soros-funded prosecutors” may carry out “a high-profile politicized prosecution, and that’s bad.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference in New York on Sept. 8, 2022.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference in New York on Sept. 8, 2022. (Victor J. Blue / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“But the real victims are ordinary New Yorkers, ordinary Americans and all these different jurisdictions that they get victimized every day because of the reckless political agenda that the Soros DAs bring to their job,” DeSantis said. “They ignore crime and they empower criminals, and that hurts people, hurts a lot of people every single day.”

GRAHAM SLAMS SOFT-ON-CRIME BRAGG FOR TARGETING TRUMP WHILE NEW YORKERS ‘LUCKY’ NOT TO GET ‘MUGGED’

In 2022, during Bragg’s first year as Manhattan’s top prosecutor, he downgraded more than half of felony cases to misdemeanors. He campaigned on criminal justice reform and sent a “Day One” memo to staff upon taking office to downgrade certain felonies, such as armed robberies of commercial businesses. The move came at a time when crimes were up 27.6% in New York City, Fox News Digital previously reported.

Bragg declined to prosecute 35% more felony cases than in 2019.

George Soros
George Soros (Reuters / Lisi Niesner / File)

“These Soros district attorneys are a menace to society,” DeSantis said. “And I’m just glad that I’m the only governor in the country that’s actually removed one from office during my tenure.”

TRUMP CALLS MANHATTAN DA INVESTIGATING HIM A ‘RACIST IN REVERSE’

Last year, DeSantis suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren, a Democratic prosecutor backed by liberal billionaire George Soros, for “neglecting his duties.” Warren had pledged not to bring charges against anyone who violates state abortion restrictions or bans on gender-transition procedures for minors. Warren is currently suing DeSantis.

As for a potential Trump indictment, DeSantis said, “We are not involved in this and won’t be involved in this.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives a victory speech after defeating Democrat gubernatorial candidate Rep. Charlie Crist during his election night watch party at the Tampa Convention Center on Nov. 8, 2022, in Tampa, Florida.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives a victory speech after defeating Democrat gubernatorial candidate Rep. Charlie Crist during his election night watch party at the Tampa Convention Center on Nov. 8, 2022, in Tampa, Florida. (Octavio Jones / Getty Images)

“I have no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus by some Soros DA,” he said. “He’s trying to do a political spectacle. He’s trying to virtue signal for his base. I’ve got real issues I got to deal with here in the state of Florida.”

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DeSantis said there are “so many things pending” in front of the Florida state legislature.

“I’ve got to spend my time on issues that actually matter to people,” he said. “I can’t spend my time worrying about things of that nature.”

Trump, on Monday afternoon, responded to DeSantis on his TRUTH Social. 

“Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he’s unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are ‘underage’ (or possibly a man!),” Trump posted, seemingly referring to an unsubstantiated claim about DeSantis that has circulated in left-wing blogs. 

Trump added: “I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do!”

DeSantis’ team declined to comment on the former president’s post. 

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

Mike Pence Pandering to D.C. Media Is Pathetic and Disqualifying


BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | MARCH 14, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/14/mike-pence-pandering-to-d-c-media-is-pathetic-and-disqualifying/

Mike Pence talks to reporter
Any candidate who is playing footsie with the propaganda press, in an incomprehensible ploy to curry favor with them, disqualifies himself from contention.

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On Saturday night, former Vice President Mike Pence addressed the annual Gridiron Club dinner, a white-tie gathering of Beltway media and political insiders. He took the opportunity to praise the D.C. media, attack Tucker Carlson, and condemn Donald Trump.

“History will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6,” Pence said. “Make no mistake about it: What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way,” Pence said of Tucker Carlson’s journalism, which is at odds with the official narrative.

Pence praised the corporate media as well, saying, “We were able to stay at our post in part because you stayed at your post. The American people know what happened that day because you never stopped reporting.”

As if Pence’s views on the virtues of the propaganda press weren’t disappointing enough, his handlers bragged to the same media that he had lavished them with praise and attacked Trump and Carlson as part of his long-shot campaign to win the Republican nomination for president.

Really. According to a new Politico article, the Pence team intentionally crafted their remarks because they “believed it would help Pence win over his most skeptical audience these days: Washington insiders and journalists.”

No offense, but how are these people political professionals? How many decades of political history have taught everyone with a pulse that Republican pandering to the media is a fool’s errand? In what world does this strategy make sense?

The strategy has never worked and will never work.

Consider the media’s most beloved Republican presidential contender, 2008 nominee Sen. John McCain. The Arizona senator was treated so well by the media for his self-styled “straight-talk” and attacks on fellow Republicans that he used to refer to them jokingly as his “base.” It’s true that their support of him did help him obtain the nomination. But the moment he posed even a tiny threat to Sen. Barack Obama, the true object of their devotion and affection, they turned on him in a heartbeat. He might as well have been Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, or Mitt Romney.

Nothing about Pence suggests he would receive even a short honeymoon of the type McCain benefited from. He should have learned this lesson when, as governor of Indiana, he caved to media demands that he decrease religious freedom in his state. His cowardice did not result in favorable media coverage then or while he was vice president. They loathe every single thing about him. They even mock him for how he and his wife protect their marriage!

It’s true that attacking fellow conservatives or Republicans will always generate some favorable media coverage. It’s the only way a non-leftist can be published in The New York Times, for instance. It’s the primary way to get airtime on NBC or CNN. It’s self-abasing and a dereliction of duty to your voters, but, hey, a fleeting moment of non-hostility from the corporate press is worth it, right?

Contrast Pence’s effort with how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis handles corporate media. He treats them as if he understands they are Republicans’ most steadfast political opponents. In press conferences, he points out the flaws in their assumptions and lies in their questions. He does not give them breaking news in the futile hope that they will be nicer to him later. He treats non-leftist press the same as or better than he treats the corrupt propaganda press. His communications team publicly posts the ridiculous questions they’re asked, and how they answer those questions. He refuses to treat requests as legitimate if they come from media who have lied about him.

The only thing worse than a Republican who impotently complains about “media bias” instead of understanding that the country is in the midst of an all-out information war is a Republican who actually praises the press for its war on Republican voters.

Substantively Wrong

The other main problem with Pence’s pandering to the corporate press is that it was substantively in error. It rewrites his own history in the chaos and drama of the 2020 election. Here is Mike Pence in December of 2020, for example:

And as our election contest continues, I’ll make you a promise: We are going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We are going to keep fighting until every illegal vote is thrown out! We are going to win Georgia, we are going to save America, and we will never stop fighting to Make America Great Again!

And here is Mike Pence on Jan. 4, 2021, just two days prior to the big rally and subsequent riot at the Capitol:

I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities. I promise you, come this Wednesday, we’ll have our day in Congress. We’ll hear the objections, we’ll hear the evidence!

Moments before that “day in Congress” began, Pence issued his letter to Congress saying he believed his role that day would be only ceremonial. However justified, it was something of a shock to the voters who had supported him and the president in their battle over election irregularities. If he wants to blame third parties for riling up the masses, he may want to consider his own role.

Pence is also wrong to attack Carlson for showing video footage of the riot at odds with the official narrative put forth by Nancy Pelosi and her cronies in the press. Tucker’s footage did not deny the violence that Pelosi and her fellow Democrats showed day after day for years for partisan gain. But it did show that Jacob Chansley was given something of a tour of the Capitol that day and was not viewed as violent by any of the many police officers he encountered. It showed that mysterious witness Ray Epps gave testimony about his whereabouts that contrasted with video evidence. And it showed that the Jan. 6 Committee’s show-trial had lied by omission when it falsely conveyed Sen. Josh Hawley’s behavior as the riot unfolded.

Calling these journalistic revelations a “disgrace” to reporters who lack Carlson’s independence and courage is shameful and reprehensible.

Finally, Pence was wrong to effusively praise the corporate press for its behavior in the aftermath of Jan. 6. The media never “reported” or covered the event or its circumstances so much as it exploited them for political purposes. The very same media that excused and vociferously defended the violent and deadly Black Lives Matter riots that besieged the White House, a federal courthouse, and police precincts, turned on a dime to treat the Jan. 6 riot as a literal insurrection, an absolutely absurd claim. The same media that reacted with abject horror and hysteria to the suggestion that order should be restored in cities across America as violent rioters terrified the citizens suddenly decided in the case of Trump supporters that First Amendment protections of speech, press, and assembly were negotiable, constitutional rights to a defense were unimportant, and certain citizens didn’t deserve speedy trials or due process.

No American should praise such behavior from the propaganda press. And no man seeking the votes of Republicans should pander to the propaganda press for political reasons, even if it weren’t delusional to think it would work.

The country is in the midst of an information war. The corporate media are a more formidable political opponent of Republicans than any Democrat running for office. Any candidate for the Republican nomination had better have a plan to protect and defend Republican voters and their goals. And any candidate who is playing footsie with these political opponents, in an incomprehensible ploy to curry favor with them, disqualifies himself from contention.


Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. She is the author of “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Reach her at mzhemingway@thefederalist.com

Republicans Can’t Beat Democrats’ Election-Industrial Complex By Adopting Its Strategies


BY: JOSEPH ARLINGHAUS AND WILLIAM DOYLE, PH.D. | MARCH 16, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/16/republicans-cant-beat-democrats-election-industrial-complex-by-adopting-its-strategies/

ballot box
The sudden rise of well-funded election activist nonprofits represents a paradigm shift away from persuading and motivating voters, and toward manipulating the election process to benefit Democrats.

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Over the last several months, a growing number of Republicans, including Donald Trump himself, seem to be having a change of heart about universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting.

While few Republicans are ready to completely abandon policies that support election integrity and transparency, more and more seem willing to follow the old adage “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” and suggest that Republicans become significantly more reliant on universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting to win elections. There is no worse idea in politics today.

Conservatives do not have the institutional or financial support to match Democrats in election activism and ballot harvesting, nor are they likely to be able to any time in the near future. The advantages Democrats have accrued over the last 20 years in election manipulation and “lawfare” are nearly insurmountable.

But this is not necessarily a portent of gloom and doom. The growing number of ultra-left Democratic candidates are deeply unpopular and would be unelectable outside deep-blue areas under the election norms that prevailed prior to the Covid-19 lockdowns and the 2020 presidential election.

Democrats’ performance in 2020 and 2022 would almost certainly have been far worse under conditions that involved persuading voters to go to the polls on Election Day, rather than relying on a complex web of wealthy nonprofits and armies of election activists to churn out mountains of mail-in ballots, submitted by indifferent voters, during greatly extended early voting periods.

Raw Institutional Power

Republicans need to better understand the vast institutional power that is arrayed against them on the left in the form of lavishly funded 501(c)(3) nonprofits and charitable foundations, along with legions of election lawyers, data analysts, and election activists.

Consider the shadowy Arabella Advisors, a nonprofit consulting company that guides the strategy, advocacy, impact investing, and management for high-dollar, left-leaning nonprofits and individuals. Arabella provides these clients a number of services that enable them to enact policies focused on left-of-center issues such as election administration and “voting rights.”

Arabella Advisors also manages five nonprofits that serve as incubators and accelerators for a range of other left-of-center nonprofits: the New Venture Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Hopewell Fund, the Windward Fund, and the North Fund. The New Venture Fund was the second-largest contributor, behind Mark Zuckerberg, to the Center for Tech and Civic Life in 2020. The Sixteen Thirty Fund spent $410 million during the 2020 election cycle, which was more than the Democratic National Committee spent.

These nonprofits have collectively supported hundreds of left-wing policy and advocacy organizations since the network’s creation. In 2020, Arabella’s nonprofit network boasted total revenues exceeding $1.67 billion and total expenditures of $1.26 billion and paid out $896 million in grants largely to other left-leaning and politically active nonprofits.

There is no comparable organization with anything close to this level of financial clout in the Republican world.

Beneath philanthropic foundations and holding companies such as Arabella, there is a world of left-of-center 501(c)(3) nonprofits focused on elections. The Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute has identified at least ten 501(c)(3) nonprofits that we believe played key roles in the 2020 election on behalf of the Democrat Party.

These groups were already in place and ready to implement strategies calculated to give Democrats an electoral advantage long before state-by-state legal barnstorming transformed the norms of American voting systems in the name of Covid-19.

Some of these groups are mainly policy-oriented, focused on increasing Democrat votes by promoting vote-by-mail, ballot drop box initiatives, extended early voting periods, and the relaxation of voting standards such as voter ID. These organizations ranged from local efforts such as the New Georgia Project to national projects like Democracy Works, The Voter Project, and the National Vote at Home Institute.

Another group of nonprofits sprang into action in 2020 to finance the implementation of the Democrats’ election agenda, including hiring new personnel, voter canvassing, ballot harvesting, new election infrastructure such as ballot drop boxes, targeted public relations campaigns, and expensive ballot “curing” efforts.

These organizations, which ended up spending well more than $400 million in 2020, include the now infamous Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), the Center for Secure and Modern Elections (CSME), and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), among others. Once again, there is no similar complex of election-oriented institutions in the Republican world.

Democrats’ ‘Election-Industrial Complex’

These organizations are not arms of political campaigns nor “dark money” partisan advocacy groups, both of which are normal parts of the traditional electoral process. They have nothing to do with persuading voters or “getting out the vote” in the traditional sense, but are instead devoted to gaining an advantage for Democrat candidates by changing election laws, manipulating the election process, and promoting new voting technologies.

This complex web of lavishly funded nonprofits and foundations is not just large and extremely powerful: It is without comparison on the right.

The institutions that support the left’s election activism are so large and so powerful, one might refer to them as an “election-industrial complex.” Election activism is a multi-billion-dollar per year business in the world of Democratic Party politics.

ELECTION-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

The Democrats’ election-industrial complex burst into full view in 2020 with CTCL’s $332 million Covid-19 Response Grant Project, funded almost entirely by Facebook founder Zuckerberg, which was aimed at gaining control of election offices in areas that were critical to Democrat campaigns in 2020 through large, “strings attached” grants.

The bulk of that money was spent in a sophisticated effort to increase turnout among a specific profile of voter in order to benefit Democrat candidates. All large CTCL grant recipients were required to “encourage and increase absentee voting” mainly through providing “assistance” in absentee ballot completion and the installation of ballot drop boxes, and to “dramatically expand strategic voter education & outreach efforts, particularly to historically disenfranchised residents.”

It has yet to sink in among many Republicans that the CTCL, and the myriad other election activist nonprofits they partnered with in 2020 to carry out their plans, represent a substantively different challenge than Democrats outspending Republicans in conventional election spending. 

The sudden rise to prominence of these institutions represents a paradigm shift in the way elections are organized, away from persuading and motivating voters, and toward manipulating the election process, introducing new voting rules, and supporting voting technologies that benefit Democrats and handicap Republicans.

This is the paradigm that many Republicans now propose to embrace, with virtually no institutional or financial support.

Conservatives Must Rebuild Classic Electoral Norms

Conservatives are supposed to be involved in conserving things, and there are few things more worth conserving than the U.S. election system as it has existed throughout most of American history. U.S. elections used to be the envy of the world even 10 years ago, but since then have deteriorated to the point where a large and growing proportion of the population views election results with deep skepticism.

Viewing the grotesque Covid-19 era distortions in the present electoral landscape as an unalterable fait accompli means abandoning our election system to a vast institutional complex that seeks to make the voting booth a relic and Election Day an anachronism.

Even worse, the left’s election-industrial complex seeks to reshape voting into a private activity, to be undertaken at home at the initiative of community organizers and activists, as opposed to a public activity that takes place in a neutral public square, and which relies on the initiative of the voters. In the liberal election utopia, the sanctity of the voting booth and the secret ballot must give way to the collective intimacy of the kitchen table and the oversight of neighborhood political bosses.

For Republican activists to commit to a long-term strategy of universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting would not only be a losing proposition from a practical standpoint, it would also contribute even further toward the transformation of our political system away from the control of civically engaged voters, and toward the consolidation of control in the hands of a small cadre of partisan activists and community organizers, as well as their numerous partners in the nonprofit world and administrative state.

There is a larger argument to be made, that universal absentee ballots and ballot harvesting must be opposed, not just from a practical standpoint, but also from a moral and philosophical point of view.  We will have much more to say in the future about how universal mail-in ballots represent an objectively disordered way of deciding elections, which must therefore be unconditionally opposed.  


Joseph Arlinghaus is the president and founder of Valor America, a conservative federal election SuperPAC founded in 2016 to use the latest social science research and randomized controlled election experiments that revolutionized the Democratic election world after 2005. He serves on the advisory board to the Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute. William Doyle, Ph.D., is research director at the Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute. He specializes in economic history and the private funding of American elections.

How Sarah Sanders Is Putting Arkansas On The Map


By: Brent Scher | March 13, 2023

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/how-sarah-sanders-is-putting-arkansas-on-the-map-2659587206.html/

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R.) / Getty Images

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Less than one month into her first term as Arkansas governor, Sarah Sanders was tapped to deliver the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union, a speaking slot typically granted to rising stars in the party with the intent to elevate them onto the national stage. But stepping onto the national stage doesn’t appear to be Sanders’s goal—at least for now.

OTS

In her address, she used Arkansas as the example of what Republicans are doing across the country. “Here in Arkansas and across America, Republicans are working to end the policy of trapping kids in failing schools and sentencing them to a lifetime of poverty,” Sanders said.  ”We will educate, not indoctrinate our kids, and put students on a path to success.”

In an hour-long interview, the former White House press secretary dodged questions about the 2024 election, diverting the conversation back to what she’s doing in Arkansas.

She already has substantive accomplishments to point to. This past Tuesday, exactly one month after her State of the Union response, the state legislature passed Sanders’s signature legislation, an ambitious overhaul of Arkansas schools, and she has already signed it into law. Corey DeAngelis, a leading advocate for school choice, said Arkansas is now the “gold standard for educational freedom.”

The bill is a kitchen-sink approach to education reform—in addition to establishing universal school choice, it yanks obscene sexual materials and critical race theory from classrooms, sets stringent new learning standards, and raises the base teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000.

“This is what bold conservative education legislation looks like,” Sanders said from the governor’s office, where she monitored the debate on the bill taking place on the other side of the Capitol.

And Sanders says Arkansas as a whole can be the “blueprint” for what conservative states could do.

Sanders joins a crowd of superstar Republican governors making headway by focusing on schools, and armed with a legislature of staunch conservatives, she’s charging ahead of other states. Florida’s Ron DeSantis is still fighting to get the sorts of reforms passed by Arkansas in Sanders’s first few weeks over hurdles in his legislature—his universal school choice bill, for example, faces even some Republican opposition. Sanders came out of her long campaign in Arkansas eager to establish herself as the “Education Governor” and thus far is doing just that.

Sanders’s growing profile has also made her a target of Democratic activists and politicians. Washington Post columnists are writing hit pieces questioning why anyone would move to Arkansas: “Good luck recruiting Californians for Arkansas, Sarah Sanders,” wrote Philip Bump. Shortly after Sanders’s national address, California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom took aim at Arkansas’s crime rate and last week was taking shots on Twitter about local Arkansas pieces of legislation.

Sanders acknowledges that she’s drawing more scrutiny to her state, but she doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. “We outkick our coverage, frankly, in a lot of places,” she said.

“When it comes to politicians on the national stage for a small state, we have some pretty big names out there,” the governor said. “I’m sure you’ll find people that will disagree, but my opinion is that it’s a good thing for our state, and I plan on using that platform to better us.”

Sanders says the critics are unavoidable. “I try to tune it out and stay focused on the objectives in front of us. There are people who wouldn’t care what’s in the bill, they’re gonna hate it simply because I’m associated with it. They don’t want to see me be successful. Certainly, that’s disappointing, but not surprising, and it’s not gonna slow us down from doing things that we feel like are the right thing to do.”

Sanders sharpened her ability to drown out the critics as White House press secretary. Not only was Sanders the longest-serving Trump administration press secretary—she was the only person to hold the job for more than a year—she was also the most successful, taking over as the daily briefing became a media feeding frenzy and adding a semblance of order to the chaos. She remains beloved by staff, some of whom followed her to Arkansas, and her former boss, to whom she still talks regularly.

Though Sanders is taking advantage of lessons learned at the White House, former colleagues say she’s also developed the ability to talk fluently about policy.

“We used to tell her, you need to get more detail,” said a former White House colleague. “Now the opposite is the case. She’s gone from somebody who was laser-focused on communications with a thin understanding of the policy to somebody who is a policy expert. It’s impressive to me.”

It’s not the first transformation of her career, Sanders says. When she first joined the Donald Trump campaign, she never foresaw that she’d become the lead spokeswoman for Trump’s administration.

“I was much more on the strategy and political operation side, and really didn’t see myself as a front person or the public-facing individual,” she explained.

Sanders joined the Trump campaign in 2016 to do coalition-building in the South, but after a few TV appearances, Trump called her to say he wanted to see her on television every day. And at the White House, after Sanders filled in for then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer while serving as his deputy, Trump tapped her to fill the job.

Her rise to the Arkansas governorship is a different story. Sanders announced her run in January 2021 and, as the prohibitive favorite from the outset, had two years to prepare for the job. It’s during that time that she decided she wanted to be the “Education Governor”—she not only became an expert on the issue but also gained confidence that she had to make it her trademark legislation.

“I went to all 75 counties,” Sanders said. “Everywhere I went as I traveled on the campaign for two years, every community wants their kids to do better. If we don’t have a good education system in place, then we are not setting our kids up for success.”

On the ground in Arkansas, Republicans say Sanders has brought a “new energy” to the legislature. “The whole atmosphere and mood of everything is different,” said Bart Hester, who leads the state’s upper chamber. “It’s such a fun energy, an exciting and new energy. It’s fun to come in everyday.”

Hester says the onslaught of opposition from teachers’ unions against the education bill was no match for Sanders.

“We have a governor now where members are more scared of her than they are their superintendents or the teacher union—we’ve never experienced that,” Hester said. “They don’t want to disappoint her—they know that she’s super popular, they don’t want to be the guy that was against their number-one priority.”

Sanders scoffs at suggestions that her education plan was a “copycat” of legislation championed by DeSantis, another high-profile Republican governor. “Hard to copy when ours is much bigger and goes much further,” Sanders said. But she has nothing negative to say about her Republican counterpart in Florida, and says there’s a “great sense of camaraderie and willingness to share best practices” between her and DeSantis, who has emerged as Trump’s chief competition in the Republican Party.

Sanders is yet to weigh in on who the Republican presidential nominee should be in 2024—her “focus is solely on Arkansas,” she says, in the same way every ambitious and upwardly mobile politician does. And Trump, her former boss, reportedly called Sanders in recent weeks to ask for her endorsement, which still hasn’t come.

But she also said she “maintains a great relationship” with Trump, and left the door open for an endorsement in the future.

“When the time comes, maybe, but right now, I don’t want to do anything that takes away from the huge agenda list that we have to get done here in Arkansas,” Sanders said. “I don’t intend on slowing down on that front at any point soon. And so I don’t want to do anything that takes away, not just my attention, but also the attention of what we’re accomplishing.”

A former White House colleague who remains close to Sanders doesn’t expect her 2024 neutrality to change any time soon. “Trump’s not her boss anymore,” the former colleague said. “Her boss is the people of Arkansas, and that’s where I assume her priorities will lie.”

Republicans in the state appreciate her focus on Arkansas and recognize she’s putting the work they’re doing in the Capitol first. “Everyone wants a minute with her—she can be Sarah the national celebrity, or Sarah the governor, and she only has so many minutes in a day,” Hester said. “She is spending those minutes as Sarah the governor.”

Republican state senator Matt McKee says Sanders has the whole legislature bullish on Arkansas.

“I know Florida’s been at the forefront, Texas has done things, but Arkansas can be the place,” McKee said.

Sanders says her appreciation for Arkansas has grown since moving her family back to her home state. After traveling to each county for her campaign, she has enhanced her ability to sell the state to visitors. The governor boasts that she can point to the best place to eat in any Arkansas town—this reporter was sent to CJ’s Butcher Boy Burgers in Russellville.

When it comes to dining, things are going more smoothly for Sanders in Arkansas. Thus far, she says she hasn’t been denied service, as she was in 2019 at the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia.

TikTok

“You know, knock on wood, I have not been asked to leave any restaurant so far,” Sanders said. “It’s amazing to be home.”

We Wouldn’t Need Tucker Carlson If The Jan. 6 Committee Hadn’t Put On A Partisan Show Trial


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | MARCH 09, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/09/we-wouldnt-need-tucker-carlson-if-the-jan-6-committee-hadnt-put-on-a-partisan-show-trial/

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If we had transparency and a functioning press, people wouldn’t need to turn elsewhere.

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Thanks to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Fox News host Tucker Carlson now has access to more than 40,000 hours of unreleased surveillance video from the Jan. 6 riot. It’s created quite a bit of consternation and anger in the media. Of course, if the Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack, handpicked by Nancy Pelosi, hadn’t withheld inconvenient evidence from the public in the first place, then McCarthy wouldn’t have had the chance to give the Fox News host anything. Republicans have Fox. The Jan. 6 committee has virtually every other outlet.

Mitch McConnell is also outraged by Carlson’s framing of the surveillance video. Perhaps if the Kentucky senator had voiced outrage when the committee handed unfettered access to a former producer of “Good Morning America” and “Nightline,” so he could create a slick, selectively edited program that made Jan. 6 look like the September Massacres of the French Revolution, we wouldn’t be here. It says a lot about McConnell that he’s more upset by a media personality sharing videos than he is about Chuck Schumer, a government official, demanding a private company censor journalism.  

[RELATED: Dear Mitch McConnell: You Were Not Elected To Do The Bidding Of Chuck Schumer And CNN]

“I could take footage from World War II, find a little piece of it, and convince somebody it’s the moon landing,” former Jan. 6 committee member Adam Kinzinger told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last night. “There’s footage of soldiers [in Vietnam] at their bases hanging out in Saigon,” Cooper responded. “… You can take video of anybody in the course of a day.”

You can. And you can also take footage showing soldiers in Vietnam abusing civilians to create the perception that most servicemen abused civilians. The “mostly peaceful” formulation, typically used by liberals to whitewash leftist violence, is shameful. And so is the partisan fearmongering surrounding Jan. 6.

It’s difficult for me to muster any sympathy for the nutjobs who entered the Capitol building. It’s implausible that most of them didn’t understand what they were doing was wrong, dangerous, or illegal, whether they were just milling about or banging on doors or vandalizing offices. Many, of course, acted in threatening and violent ways. It was a national embarrassment.  

None of that makes the dishonest political revisionism of the Jan. 6 committee any truer. It’s clear the QAnon Shaman wasn’t moments away from overthrowing the republic and declaring Donald Trump the king of America. It wasn’t anywhere close to “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” or the new Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Which is why Democrats conflate the actions of rioters with those of the thousands of people who protested the election results outside, the president who enflamed the crowd with conspiratorial rhetoric, and the politicians who were inside voting on certification. Wrong or right, conspiracists or not, the latter people did not do anything illegal.

Put it this way, the central difference between Jan 6, 2021, and the last day or two of May 2020, when Secret Service agents had to stick Donald Trump into a bunker for hours as a throng of “protesters” began overwhelming security at the White House, some throwing rocks and bottles and trying to break down barricades, was the effectiveness of the police.  

Then again, QAnon Shaman, like anyone else accused of rioting, deserves a fair trial. If his lawyer is telling the truth, the defense had no access to video of cops peacefully escorting the man around the Capitol. We have no clue if that footage is exculpatory, but it is clearly relevant. QAnon Shaman was sentenced to over three years in prison, with another nearly three years of probation.

If Cooper were a member of a functioning press, he would have been grilling Kinzinger about his committee’s lack of transparency and denial of basic due process. Pelosi blocked members who could have asked for answers regarding security breakdowns or demanded the release of countervailing evidence or tempered the hyperbole and grandstanding that dominated the hearings.

Cooper knows that journalists “selectively” edit and cherry-pick video all the time. He knows that the Jan. 6 committee “selectively” edited and cherry-picked video, as well. Maybe seeing both narratives gives us a far better sense of what happened that day. There was a riot, not a coup d’etat. And the media should be elated that we have more footage for the historical record. Then again, that was never the point, was it?


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

How Trump Derangement Gave Birth To The Censorship-Industrial Complex


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 24, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/24/how-trump-derangement-gave-birth-to-the-censorship-industrial-complex/

Trump Derangement fake news protest sign in a crowd of people
Unlike the military-industrial complex, the Censorship Complex affects all aspects of governance, controlling the information available to you on every topic.

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The Biden administration may have abandoned plans to create a “Disinformation Board,” but a more insidious “Censorship Complex” already exists and is growing at an alarming speed. 

This Censorship Complex is bigger than banned Twitter accounts or Democrats’ propensity for groupthink. Its funding and collaboration implicate the government, academia, tech giants, nonprofits, politicians, social media, and the legacy press. Under the guise of combatting so-called misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information, these groups seek to silence speech that threatens the far-left’s ability to control the conversation — and thus the country and the world.

Americans grasped a thread of this reality with the release of the “Twitter Files” and the Washington Examiner’s reporting on the Global Disinformation Index, which revealed the coordinated censorship of speech by government officials, nonprofits, and the media. Yet Americans have no idea of the breadth and depth of the “Censorship Complex” — and how much it threatens the fabric of this country.

In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower cautioned against the “potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power” via the new sweeping military-industrial complex. Its “total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — [was] felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.” Replace “military-industrial” with “censorship,” and you arrive at the reality Americans face today.

Origins of the Censorship Complex

Even with the rise of independent news outlets, until about 2016 the left-leaning corporate media controlled the flow of information. Then Donald Trump entered the political arena and used social media to speak directly to Americans. Despite the Russia hoax and the media’s all-out assault, Trump won, proving the strategic use of social media could prevail against a unified corporate press. The left was terrified. 

Of course, Democrats and the media couldn’t admit their previous control over information converted to electoral victories and that for their own self-preservation, they needed to suppress other voices. So instead, the left began pushing the narrative that “disinformation” — including Russian disinformation — from alternative news outlets and social media companies handed Trump the election.

The New York Times first pushed the “disinformation” narrative using the “fake news” moniker after the 2016 election. “The proliferation of fake and hyperpartisan news that has flooded into Americans’ laptops and living rooms has prompted a national soul-searching, with liberals across the country asking how a nation of millions could be marching to such a suspect drumbeat. Fake news, and the proliferation of raw opinion that passes for news, is creating confusion,” the Times wrote, bemoaning the public’s reliance on Facebook.

“Narrowly defined, ‘fake news’ means a made-up story with an intention to deceive, often geared toward getting clicks. But the issue has become a political battering ram, with the left accusing the right of trafficking in disinformation, and the right accusing the left of tarring conservatives as a way to try to censor websites,” the Times wrote, feigning objectivity. But its conclusion? “Fake and hyperpartisan news from the right has been more conspicuous than from the left.” 

Two days later, Hillary Clinton repeated the narrative-building phrase, condemning what she called “the epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year.” But then, as if to remind Democrats and the legacy press that he had wrestled control of the narrative from them, Trump branded left-wing outlets “fake news” — and just like that, the catchphrase belonged to him. 

Disinformation Is Scarier if It’s Russian

That didn’t deter the left in its mission to destroy alternative channels of communication, however. The media abandoned its “fake news” framing for the “disinformation” buzzword. “Misinformation” and “mal-information” were soon added to the vernacular, with the Department of Homeland Security even defining the terms.

But silencing conservatives would require more than merely labeling their speech as disinformation, so the various elements of the Censorship Complex deployed what they called “the added element of Russian meddling” in the 2016 election, with Clinton amplifying this message and blaming the spread of social media misinformation for her loss. 

Priming the public to connect “disinformation” with Russia’s supposed interference in the 2016 election allowed the Censorship Complex to frame demands for censorship as patriotic: a fight against foreign influence to save democracy!

The Censorship Complex Expands

The Censorship Complex’s push to silence speech under the guise of preventing disinformation and election interference hit its stride in 2017, when FBI Director Christopher Wray launched the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) purportedly “to identify and counteract malign foreign influence operations targeting the United States.” 

The “most widely reported” foreign influence operations these days, Wray said, “are attempts by adversaries — hoping to reach a wide swath of Americans covertly from outside the United States — to use false personas and fabricated stories on social media platforms to discredit U.S. individuals and institutions.” Wray’s statement perfectly echoed the claims Clinton and Democrats had peddled ad nauseam in the press, and it foreshadowed how the Censorship Complex would soon mature. 

The launch of the FITF in 2017 brought together numerous representatives from the deep state. The FBI’s Counterintelligence, Cyber, Criminal, and Counterterrorism Divisions worked closely with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, and other intelligence agencies, as well as “state and local enforcement partners and election officials.”

Significantly, the FITF viewed “strategic engagement with U.S. technology companies, including threat indicator sharing,” as crucial to combatting foreign disinformation. That perspective led to the FBI’s hand-in-glove relationship with Twitter, which included monthly and then weekly meetings with the tech giant, some of which CIA representatives attended. This symbiotic relationship also led to the censorship of important — and true — political speech, such as the New York Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop, which exposed the Biden family’s pay-to-play scandal right before a critical presidential election.

State Department Renovates Its Wing 

In 2011, by executive order, the Department of State established the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications to support government agencies’ communications “targeted against violent extremism and terrorist organizations.” While renamed the Global Engagement Center in 2016, the center’s counterterrorism mission remained largely unchanged. But then at the end of that year, Congress expanded the Global Engagement Center’s authority, directing it “to address other foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation activities.” And with language straight out of the Russia hoax playbook, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 further refined the Global Engagement Center’s mission:

The purpose of the Center shall be to direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and foreign non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States and United States allies and partner nations.

Together, the State Department and the many intelligence agencies behind the FITF worked not just with Twitter but with the array of tech giants, such as Google and Facebook, pushing for censorship of supposed mis-, dis-, and mal-information. But the deep state was not alone. The “disinformation” contagion also reached the Hill, nonprofits, think tanks, and academic institutions with both politics and a desire to suckle at the federal teat driving a frenzied expansion of the project. Together these groups pushed for even more silencing of their opponents, and the Censorship Complex boomed.

The danger Eisenhower warned the country of in 1961 is mild in comparison to the threat of the Censorship Complex. Unlike the military-industrial complex that reached only one function of the federal government, the Censorship Complex affects all aspects of governance, controlling the information available to you and your fellow Americans on every topic.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Presidents’ Day

A.F. BRANCO | on February 22, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-presidents-day/

Biden goes to Ukraine while Trump heads to the East Palestine Ohio Disaster. Who’s putting America first?

Presidents’ Day
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.

To Distract from GOP’s Biden Family Business Investigation, Media Dredge Up More ‘But Trump’ Excuses


BY: JORDAN BOYD | FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/14/to-distract-from-gops-biden-family-business-investigation-media-dredge-up-more-but-trump-excuses/

Joe Biden speaking behind podium
Corporate media are trying to distract from the Biden family scandals by conflating that corruption with the Trump family’s conduct.

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One of House Republicans’ first steps after regaining the majority was to launch an investigation into President Joe Biden’s role in the Biden family’s lucrative pay-to-play business. Corporate media, however, are trying to distract from the first family’s scandals by conflating them with the conduct of the Trump family.

The Washington Post published an article last week, during the height of buzz about the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family’s influence-peddling operation, pointing the corruption finger at former President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“An investment fund overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is backing ventures that profit the former president and his senior adviser, raising questions of conflict,” the article alleges.

Within days of the report’s publication, corporate media outlets such as CNNMSNBC, and even Rolling Stone featured anti-Trump information on their pages and networks. The point of amplifying the report is twofold. First, it gives the media and their Democrat allies more ammo against Trump’s third presidential run. The Washington Post is clear about that:

Now, with Trump running for president again, some national security experts and two former White House officials say they have concerns that Trump and Kushner used their offices to set themselves up to profit from their relationship with the Saudis after the administration ended.

Second, reports about the Trumps give anyone looking to escape conversations about the Biden family’s well-documented history of enriching their bank accounts with funds from foreign oligarchs an excuse to pivot to their favorite scapegoat.

Already, leftist commentators are claiming the Biden family “deserves grace,” while the Trumps deserve investigation. Despite countless real reports and ongoing federal investigations into the Biden family’s affairs, MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan even bizarrely asserted there is “no real evidence” that the Biden family business leveraged Joe Biden’s status for personal profit.

The Political Enemy Playbook

Even before Trump’s White House tenure, the corporate media did everything in their power to make him look like a corrupt politician who was sold out to foreign governments. When they weren’t amplifying the Russia hoax, a fake scandal created and paid for by Democrats, the propaganda press scrutinized Trump’s tweets, twisted his words, and tried to undermine his presidency with lies that won Pulitzers.

They also aided Democrats in orchestrating two sham impeachments against Trump, whom they claimed was guilty of treason. These political attacks were sustained with plenty of negative press coverage of Trump’s sons, daughters, and son-in-law.

Where was the media’s outrage about White House familial corruption when Hunter exploited his father’s political reputation to strike business deals with oligarchs in Ukraine and China and then likely gave a cut to his dad? Joe Biden and his youngest son are the epitomal of the scandal and corruption Democrats and the corrupt corporate media desperately want Trump and his family to be.

There are literal receipts of the Biden family conducting shady business dealings overseas and profiting from relationships with sworn enemies, yet publications such as The Washington Post and The New York Times worked overtime to downplay and mischaracterize the findings to save the Biden patriarch from criticism and losing the 2020 election.

They didn’t want the public to know that when Biden was vice president and overseeing the Obama administration’s Ukraine relations, Hunter received a whopping $50,000 per month to sit on the board of a Ukrainian energy company he had no qualifications to be on. They didn’t want the public to hear that Hunter also raked in millions from the wife of the former Moscow mayor, and they certainly didn’t want Americans to discover that just two weeks after he traveled to communist China on his dad’s Air Force Two jet, Hunter helped his Chinese business partners secure a deal that gave them control of a cobalt mine in Congo.

Hunter helped his Chinese business partners secure a deal that gave them control of a cobalt mine in Congo.

Why COBALT? It’s one of the primary components of EV batteries.

No, for the media, there was no politically advantageous reason to expose that “an arm of the Chinese government” funneled money directly to a company managed by Hunter to compensate him for offering legal representation to the vice-chairman and secretary-general of Chinese energy company CEFC, Dr. Patrick Ho Chi Ping, the “spy chief of China.” And there was certainly no good reason for them to communicate that Ho, who was arrested, charged, and later convicted for using millions of dollars to “bribe top officials of Chad and Uganda in exchange for business advantages for CEFC,” made a phone call to James Biden, Joe’s brother.

Instead of covering bombshell stories about the questionable actions of a tight-knit family whose patriarch is in charge of the U.S. government, the propaganda press is still hyper-fixated on the Trumps.

When they aren’t going after the former first family, the media are amplifying the current president’s excuses and shilling for his son, who admitted through his lawyers that the infamous laptop exposing the Biden family’s foreign dealings was his. This investigation, they have claimed over and over and over and over and over, is a politically motivated one. But it’s not.

It’s About Joe, Stupid

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has repeatedly declared Republican investigators are interested in Joe Biden’s “knowledge of and role in his family’s foreign business deals to assess whether he has compromised national security,” not Hunter.

Evidence obtained in our investigation reveals the Biden family business model is built on Joe Biden’s political career and connections. Biden family members attempted to sell access around the world, including individuals who were connected to the Chinese Communist Party, to enrich themselves to the detriment of American interests,” Comer said in a statement last week. “If President Biden is compromised by deals with foreign adversaries and they are impacting his decision making, this is a threat to national security.

Despite the corporate media’s attempts to distract from, stifle, and smear Republicans’ investigation into the Biden family business by going after Trump again, the GOP can’t give up. Unlike when Democrats rallied their partisan network to falsely paint Trump as a Russian asset, this legitimate and evidence-based investigation is essential to determining whether U.S. national security is compromised from top to bottom because of Biden.


Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

‘Anonymous Sources’ Are How Corporate Media Launder Smear Operations as News


BY: JORDAN BOYD | FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/10/anonymous-sources-are-how-corporate-media-launder-smear-operations-as-news/

New York Times building in black and white
It happened with the Russia hoax, it happened all during Trump’s time in the White House, and it happened again with the Chinese spy balloon.

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Anonymous sources were once rarely used in journalism. They would only be cited when trying to preserve someone’s physical safety or report on the most sensitive national security matters, and there was an expectation that such unusual sourcing be reviewed by editors and carefully corroborated whenever possible.

Now anonymous sourcing has become the norm in reporting and is frequently used as a political weapon to disseminate Democrats’ talking points and smear their enemies. The illicit use of anonymous sources to launch libel against Democrats’ enemies ballooned after Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, and the tactic was used to develop the Russia-collusion hoax and multiple other smears.

The most recent example may be the Chinese spy balloon news cycle. When word reached the public that Red China spent days hovering over the United States collecting sensitive information, public outrage ensued. Dozens of legislators and governors and Trump demanded President Joe Biden shoot down the balloon as soon as possible.

The Biden administration refused, claiming that neutralizing the airborne threat could cause harm to civilians. This initial claim aired in corporate media, sourced to an anonymous “official” who offered no evidence, that “the balloon did not pose a military or physical threat” to the United States. This decision, once again, drew ire from Americans.

Once the administration finally did shoot down the balloon over the Atlantic, the Biden administration pointed fingers. An unnamed official at the Department of Defense allegedly told reporters at an off-camera press briefing on Feb. 4 that Chinese balloons like this one “transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration.” 

That admission kicked off a corporate media frenzy. The press took the Pentagon’s word for it and accused Republicans of a “double standard.” Those who called for the end of the balloon, the press claimed, were hypocrites and Trump even more so because he “failed” to shoot down the spy equipment while in office.

Less than one day later, Trump and several high-level Trump national security officials who would have been briefed about a security breach during their tenure went on the record, with their names behind their statements, to deny any knowledge of Chinese spy balloons surveilling the United States under their watch. https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/109812699029727017/embed

“I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States,” Mark Esper, who was defense secretary from 2019 to 2020, told CNN.

Christopher Miller, who was acting defense secretary from 2020 to 2021, admitted “the first time I ever heard of anything like this was this weekend.”

“Had not a clue,” Miller said. “If something like that had happened, that’s like a national security threat.”

“I certainly never became aware that there was a three-bus-sized floating device coming across our country for five days, either as CIA director or secretary of state. [And] I’ve talked to others who are on my teams — they don’t know anything about it either,” said Mike Pompeo, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and secretary of state under Trump.

Robert O’Brien, another former Trump national security advisor, said, “Unequivocally, I have never been briefed on the issue.” Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe outright stated the Biden administration’s anonymously sourced claim was “not true.”

Even former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has a history of fabricating intel and smears about Trump, said the Biden administration’s conveniently timed revelation was news to him.

“I don’t know of any balloon flights by any power over the United States during my tenure, and I’d never heard of any of that occurring before I joined in 2018,” Bolton told Fox News. “I haven’t heard of anything that occurred after I left either.”

Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, “clarified” two days after the Pentagon’s initial accusation that “we did not detect those threats” at the time Trump was in office. The Narrative™ that Trump failed to shoot down Chinese spy balloons had already made its way onto the pages and TV screens of millions by the time the Biden administration decided to walk back its smears against the previous administration filtered through an anonymous source to compliant media outlets.

On Feb. 7, days after Trump staff denied on the record and one day after the Pentagon claimed Red China’s repeat airborne espionage was only discovered retrospectively, corporate media still insisted spy balloons were “spotted on several occasions during President Donald Trump’s administration, including three instances where they traveled near sensitive US military facilities and training areas.”

The source? “People familiar with the matter” who worked under Trump. The people making these claims were conveniently not named, giving them cover to make any accusations they liked and media to air them with no accountability for either entity.

The Smear Operation Playbook

Classic journalism ethics state anonymous sourcing should be rare because the “public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.” Yet the practice of relying on unnamed information suppliers to communicate breaking news has become commonplace, especially when fronting smears against Democrats’ opponents. As a matter of fact, anonymously sourcing what later prove to be complete lies is often rewarded by the journalism industry today.

The most notable example of anonymous sourcing as a weapon was the Russia hoax. That is a years-long coup led by Democrats and intelligence agencies with the eager help of the corporate media to disqualify Trump from the White House and prevent his presidency from being effective. The Russia hoax also resulted in failed impeachments. It’s fair to say it never could have been pulled off without outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more using unnamed sources to discredit their political enemies.

The Trump years were rife with media manipulation involving anonymous sources. In one dramatic episode, the media claimed to prove that Donald Trump Jr. was sent an email by Wikileaks giving him early access to leaked emails from top Democrats. Not only was the report untrue — CNN never saw the source email to Donald Trump Jr. and instead relied on the word of two anonymous sources who got the date on the email wrong — but the botched CNN report dramatically exposed how anonymous sources can lead to misinformation.

CNN’s faulty reporting was immediately “confirmed” by MSNBC and CBS. Of course, confirming erroneous reporting is an impossibility unless all three news outlets were relying on the same sources, confident that their anonymity would create the false impression that multiple sources could verify the story. In this case, the sources appear to have come from the office of Rep. Adam Schiff, a known liar and key perpetrator of the Russiagate hoax. This issue of multiple news outlets citing the same anonymous source has happened more than once, and it continues to be a problem.

But that failure was just the tip of the iceberg. During the Trump years, the media also claimed Trump’s national security adviser illicitly reached out to Russia’s government before Trump took office; that Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci was linked to the Russian Direct Investment Fund; that Trump attorney Michael Cohen confessed that Trump “directed” him to lie about contacting a Russian official; that Russia offered members of the Taliban bounties in exchange for killing American soldiers and Trump knew about it; that Trump pressured the Georgia secretary of state’s office to “find the fraud”; and many, many more complete fabrications relying on sources who hid their smears behind anonymity.

All of these claims were unvetted, untrue, and should have never been published. Instead, some were showered with praise and status. Others were barely corrected long after the coverage served its political purpose.

Real reporting requires due diligence. Corporate media, desperate to aid Democrats in their conquest of any Americans who disagree with them, have become pipelines of government information manipulation, especially from intelligence agencies. As a result, anonymous sources are easily duplicated and repackaged as “independent confirmation,” and so-called “news” sites are plagued with unverified intelligence and information — or, worse, allegations they verifiably know are untrue.

And they are happy about it. In 2019, then-New York Times Public Editor Liz Spayd denounced her employer for being “too timid in its decisions not to publish the material it had” quickly about Trump’s nonexistent connection with Russia.

“The idea that you only publish once every piece of information is in and fully vetted is a false construct,” she wrote. “If you know the FBI is investigating, say, a presidential candidate, using significant resources and with explosive consequences, that should be enough to write.”

Her call to normalize the unprofessionalism of partisan actors in newsrooms received amplification from fellow journos. The ubiquitous use and elevation of this unethical practice may have been popularized during the rise of Trump, but it has far outlived his presidency, something that independent media have routinely observed for years.

Today’s media complex relies on readers to keep trusting what it says, regardless of its extremely tainted records. The press doesn’t deserve that kind of benefit of the doubt.

Americans are still unclear on how many Chinese aircraft have compromised U.S. airspace and who let them. What they shouldn’t be unclear about is that the corrupt, untrustworthy, and democracy-threatening corporate media use anonymous sources to advance disinformation operations and push political narratives that often have no relationship to the truth.


Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

Don’t Fall for Joe Biden’s Economic Fairy Tale


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | FEBRUARY 08, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/08/dont-fall-for-joe-bidens-economic-fairy-tale/

Joe Biden delivers state of the union address with Kamala Harris and Kevin McCarthy behind him
The president’s biggest whopper? ‘I’m a capitalist.’

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Like Nero bragging about rebuilding Circus Maximus after burning it down, Joe Biden took to the podium tonight to take credit for solving a slew of problems he helped create.

At the top of his State of the Union address, the president boasted that he had “created more jobs in two years than any president created in four years.” No president — not Joe Biden nor Donald Trump — creates jobs. But Biden’s contention was exceptionally misleading, considering he inherited an economy that had been unplugged by an artificial, state-induced shutdown. If the government compels businesses to shutter, it doesn’t “create” jobs when allowing them to open.

On more than one occasion during the night, a mercurial Biden contended that Covid-19 had shut down the economy. No, states did. Politicians did. Biden was an aggressive proponent of those shutdowns. During the 2020 presidential campaign, the president regularly attacked Republican governors for opening too early and for ignoring federal health officials. Even in August of 2021, after it was clear that shutdowns hadn’t saved any lives, Biden was still criticizing Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis for rejecting a new round of Covid authoritarianism, telling him to “get out of the way” of those trying to “do the right thing.”

Three years ago, the unemployment rate was at 3.5 percent. Today, Biden reminded us that it was at a historic low of 3.4 percent. More than 30 million people lost their jobs to Covid lockdowns. Biden claims to have “created” 12 million jobs during the past two years. The one big difference is that the labor participation rate still hasn’t recovered to pre-Covid numbers. It’s great that people are working again. But millions fewer are in the market for jobs.

Biden also boasted that Americans were seeing “near” historic unemployment lows for black and Hispanic workers. These historic lows were achieved before Covid lockdowns. So, if Biden deserves credit for this, doesn’t Trump? Of course, there is no specific Biden economic policy that brought us near-historic unemployment lows for minorities or an unemployment rate 0.1 percent lower than the previous administration. Washington wasted trillions of dollars propping up an economy that it previously shut down.

Speaking of spending, Biden claimed that the preposterously misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act,” which you might recall was initially called “Build Back Better,” had helped alleviate spiking prices. Only when inflation became non-transitory, and a politically problematic issue, did Biden begin arguing that more spending would mitigate inflation. And only then did Democrats rename their bill, which was crammed with the same spending, corporate welfare, price fixing, and tax hikes — all long-desired progressive wish-list items. “The Inflation Reduction Act is also the most significant investment ever in climate change,” Biden said during his address, as if this sentence made any sense.

Presidents are often unduly blamed or given credit for economic events beyond their control. But it is no accident inflation took off as Democrats pumped hundreds of billions into a hot economy (in the case of the “infrastructure” bill, with the help of Senate Republicans) and aggravated foreseeable problems with policies that disincentivize work and undercut energy production. All this led to the biggest inflation spike since 1982. We are still at historic highs. A slew of products that consumers rely on still remain atypically expensive, and fears of additional price hikes have started to seriously corrode consumer confidence.

Biden lied that “25 percent” of the national federal debt was incurred by the previous administration when most of that debt was driven by entitlement programs passed, expanded, and revered by Democrats. And he misled the nation by claiming that his administration had “cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history,” when, in fact, those “cuts” were sunsetting pandemic emergency spending that Democrats had complained wasn’t enough.

Biden went into his well-worn platitudes and myths about how the rich don’t pay taxes — “[n]o billionaire should be paying a lower tax rate than a school teacher or a firefighter!” — and proposed higher rates on the wealthy and corporations. He also promised to micromanage the economy with a slew of new regulations that would interfere in voluntary contracts struck between employees and employers and consumers and businesses.

Biden implored Congress to pass the PRO Act, a bill that would empower the government to impose unions on businesses and workers who want no part of them. Biden hawked an entire menu of crude economic populism — including price controls and protectionist trade policies that would undermine growth, competition, job creation, and innovation while driving up the cost of virtually every construction project in the country.

There were numerous lies, half-truths, and deceptions. There was a slew of antiquated economic ideas and sloganeering. But, surely, the president’s biggest lie of the night was to claim, “I’m a capitalist.”


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

House Democrats Snub Chance at Bipartisan Border Oversight, Blame GOP For Crisis Biden Created


BY: JORDAN BOYD | FEBRUARY 07, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/07/house-democrats-snub-chance-at-bipartisan-border-oversight-blame-gop-for-crisis-biden-created/

CBP Chief Patrol Agent of the Tucson sector John Modlin testifies to House Oversight Committee
‘We went from … unprecedented to a point where I don’t have the correct adjective to describe what’s going on,’ one border chief said.

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Republicans convened the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Tuesday to evaluate the “front lines of the border crisis” but Democrats were less than cooperative in the GOP’s efforts to hear from two chief patrol agents.

“President Biden and his administration have created the worst border crisis in American history,” committee chairman Republican Rep. James Comer said in his opening remarks.

Comer and several other GOP members on the committee pointed to President Joe Biden as the reason millions of migrants, including suspected terrorists, illegally cross the border. Witnesses — CBP Chief Patrol Agent of the Tucson sector John Modlin and Chief Patrol Agent of the Rio Grande Valley sector Gloria Chavez — confirmed this in their testimonies.

“In the Tucson sector, interviewing people post-arrest, what became the most common response [from migrants] was that they believed that when the administration changed that the law changed and policy changed and that there was an open border,” Modlin said.

The chiefs agreed that border security measures like the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (often referred to as the “Remain in Mexico” policy), which Biden eliminated with the stroke of a pen at the beginning of his term, were “effective” at combatting the staggering number of illegal migrants flooding the border.

And staggering those numbers are.

“We went from what I would describe as unprecedented to a point where I don’t have the correct adjective to describe what’s going on,” Modlin said.

Democrats Opt for Smears over Accountability

House Democrats, who had two years to give Biden’s disastrous border the oversight it required but failed to do so, were less interested in asking the CBP officials questions and far more interested in criticizing Republicans for suggesting that Democrats’ lax border policies are responsible for the worst migrant influx in U.S. history.

Before the hearing, the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security tried to obstruct oversight by Republicans by keeping CBP officials from testifying. Democrats joined in their attempts to taint the GOP’s investigation into the border crisis with smears that Republicans wanted “to amplify white nationalist conspiracy theories instead of a comprehensive solution to protect our borders and strengthen our immigration system.”

The “QAnon caucus” and “anti-immigrant” name-calling continued in the hearing after ranking Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin launched another round of politically motivated attacks in his opening remarks.

The same Democrats who bought into and promoted the border patrol whipping lie claimed that Republicans “demonize migrants” and refuse to fund the border through Democrats’ omnibus wish list. Washington D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton even went so far as to blame the GOP for the El Paso Walmart shooting.

Despite Democrats’ attempts to turn the hearing into a political circus painting the border crisis as a funding problem, instead of a policy problem, the witnesses confirmed that the U.S. southern border is comprised in a way it’s never been in the past.

Cartels ‘Leveraging Chaos’

A large part of the Republicans’ border inquiry centered on the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border against cartels, which Chavez said have become “more active” in trafficking humans and drugs into the U.S. in “recent years.”

“Cartels are leveraging chaos at the border. They are using their human smuggling operations to overwhelm U.S. Border Patrol agents with large migrant groups, often placing migrants in peril,” Comer said. “They create these diversions at the expense of human life to traffic dangerous narcotics like fentanyl, across our southern border. These deadly drugs then make their way into communities across the United States and poison our neighbors and our children.”

“No one crosses the border in Tucson sector without going through the cartels,” Modlin confirmed in his testimony. Chavez testified the same about her district.

“[Migrants are] pretty much confined to whatever those cartels require to be able to see their family member again,” she said.

Democrats tried to claim that the problems at the border are a “humanitarian crisis, not a criminal one.” Yet, none of them mentioned the connection between cartels’ illegal activities and migrants, including the criminals’ lack of care for the men, women, and children who have to bribe them for passage to the U.S.

“What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are failing to recognize is in order to get here, [migrants] have to deal with a group of people that is not interested in human rights. They place no value on humanity. If they can make money on it, they will exploit it,” Republican Rep. Kelly Armstrong said. “I think one of the mistakes we make quite often is we talk about [cartels] like they’re drug cartels. They’re in the business of making money and whatever the path of least resistance is, is how they make money.”

Cartels’ billion-dollar migrant smuggling business, Modlin and Chavez said, deliberately puts illegal border crossers in danger so Border Patrol agents will leave their posts to conduct rescue missions.

“There are a lot of migrants out there that are out there requiring rescue. So, a lot of times, our agents are out there rescuing people, being task-saturated in rescues, abetting frontline operations, so therefore cartels take advantage of that,” Chavez said.

Rescue operations like those are dangerous and have, in recent years, proved fatal for American agents and migrants alike.

A Fentanyl Pipeline

Both Republicans and Democrats agree that the proliferation of fentanyl in the U.S. is a serious issue that needs addressing. What the representatives did not agree on is that it’s Biden’s policies that embolden the cartels to manufacture and smuggle fentanyl into the states.

Multiple Democrat representatives tried to blame the proliferation of fentanyl on U.S. citizens who are often selected to bring the drugs to the United States. Rep. Katie Porter even had the audacity to argue that because CBP is seizing more fentanyl now than it was before 2020, border security under Biden is a “success.”

“Regardless of who’s bringing it across the border, U.S. citizens, ports of entry, between ports of entry, not ports of entry, the drugs that are killing people in my communities are being made by the cartels,” Armstrong pointed out.

Modlin and Chavez both said their agents are overworked and overwhelmed by the crisis. Unless there’s a national policy shift on the border, the historic crisis is only going to get worse.

“What happens on the border affects the entirety of the country,” Modlin said.


Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

By Exposing Hamilton 68, The ‘Twitter Files’ Proved the Deep State Is a Weapon Aimed Directly at You


BY: SAMUEL MANGOLD-LENETT | FEBRUARY 03, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/03/by-exposing-hamilton-68-the-twitter-files-proved-the-deep-state-is-a-weapon-aimed-directly-at-you/

Spy computer
What else is the U.S. government using to monitor its citizens while mobilizing against domestic targets who have done nothing wrong?

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In a recent addition to the “Twitter Files,” Matt Taibbi revealed to the public how Twitter — the preferred social media platform of politicians, academics, and journalists — co-opted the algorithmic blacklist of a bipartisan neoliberal propaganda outfit known as Hamilton 68.

Hamilton 68 was a digital dashboard that, as my colleague Emily Jashinsky recently discussed, was used to perpetuate and mainstream the myth of Russian interference in American politics through algorithmic censorship and suppression. 

But it wasn’t just egghead professors, left-wing activist journalists, and the tragically narcissistic (Adam Schiff) who perpetuated the thoroughly repudiated lie that Russia determined the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by hijacking the internet.

Hamilton 68 was of unique interest to the unelected members of the American government who staff the national bureaucracy and compose the federal civil service. It was — and likely still is — used by these bureaucrats on a regular basis to substantiate and launder bogus intel into the government’s policy-making narrative to further establish a rule of permanent bureaucracy and chip away at the democratic nature of the American republic. 

Amanda Milius, a former member of the Trump administration and the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Content at the State Department, recently confirmed this when speaking to The Federalist.

Outsourcing Intelligence Makes Being Corrupt Easier 

According to Milius, from the day Hamilton 68 went online, senior officials at the State Department were elated because it enabled them to effectively outsource large swaths of their information sourcing for communications. Naturally, this was a huge time saver since “everything [was] 100 times redundant,” and having access to pre-sourced and verified intel from somewhere you trust while trying to maintain a fast-paced digital communications bureau with 24-hour access to the rest of the world would be a massive time saver.

Once the department began to process intel from Hamilton 68, they insisted that they could “use it as a tool to track all the Russian misinformation, which at that moment in 2017, was the shiny ball of foreign policy.”

Milius noted that with the election of Donald Trump, there was a distinct shift in the bureaucracy’s expressed priorities. Previously, the federal government had been preoccupied with the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), but along with Trump’s ascension to the presidency, federal agencies began to place a disproportionate emphasis on utilizing “public-private partnerships” to root out alleged Russian influence.

Another former senior government official recently suggested that information-based operations, a practice that in the digital era found its roots in the GWOT, was found to be useful in the domestic private sector as well. And this is likely how Hamilton 68 came into being. Individuals who had acquired specific skills while serving the country brought those skills home and began using them in service of political goals. 

And Milius’ experience with the State Department’s “bot detection” efforts that were meant to keep tabs on people spreading Russian disinformation online substantiates this. She affirmed that the public-private partnership between the federal bureaucracy and Big Tech, in particular, established a sense of comfort and familiarity between the two bodies. Because bureaucrats were able to “take free trips to Silicon Valley and hang out with people from Google and Facebook and Twitter,” the managerial elite in both entities knew they were operating on the same wavelength.

This additional face time likely provided both groups reassurance that their ideological goals were similar and that they would have allies in the quest to delegitimize and stonewall Trump’s presidency.

Swamp Creatures Tend to Be Lazy

Once Hamilton 68 came online, an inordinate amount of attention was placed on 644 Twitter accounts that were flagged as “bots” spreading “Russian disinformation.” Thanks to Taibbi’s reporting, it is now publicly documented that these accounts were overwhelmingly run by American citizens and other Western civilians with no connection to Russia whatsoever. But to people involved in conservative politics at the time, it was clear that Hamilton 68 was a con. 

“It was run by the teams that ran Russiagate, so this was yet another arm of their public attack on Trump and Trump supporters,” Milius said. “I was looking at the list of users, and I was like, ‘Bro, my secret handle is on there. Like all my friends are on there. I know these people. They’re not bots.’”

Milius stated that the individuals behind Hamilton 68 were directly providing “someone or multiple people” at the State Department with the lists of accounts being algorithmically monitored.

Such collusion would indicate the government was effectively taking orders from a politically biased third party about which private citizens it should monitor, suppress, and allow to be libeled by the corporate media.

And despite the fact that — as we now can deduce — the people behind Hamilton 68 knew what they were doing was fraudulent, the users who were algorithmically placed on these curated lists had information about them used to source not only news stories about a malicious foreign presence in American domestic issues but as the basis for intel used in reports within federal agencies. 

Furthermore, the data analytics included alongside Hamilton 68’s information were frequently drastically inflated to manufacture a sense of severity, Milius said, further indicating to her and to some of those with whom she worked that the entire operation was bogus. When data analysts in the State Department would compare the analytics provided by Hamilton 68 with the actual data from the monitored accounts’ traffic, they would find massive discrepancies, she noted. The people behind Hamilton 68 were blatantly lying, and if people looked in the right places the lies fell apart.

But because their numbers were few and leadership enjoyed the convenience of pre-sourced intel, Hamilton 68 continued to be utilized by the State Department. 

The Deep State Is a Hammer; Everything Else Is a Nail

Even Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, knew that Hamilton 68 was bogus. There is no reason to believe that GS-15s in the State Department had a good-faith reason to accept it at face value. After all, bureaucrats overwhelmingly favored Hillary Clinton in 2016, so why wouldn’t they take a chance at sabotaging someone they believed would lead the U.S. down the wrong path? 

Milius contends that the political bias of entrenched bureaucrats who make decisions in federal agencies played a key role in deciding to utilize a tool like Hamilton 68, subsequently prolonging the narrative of Russian collusion. 

“They wanted [Russian collusion] to be true so badly,” she said. “They felt like they were freedom fighters. In their minds, every Trump appointee was probably a Russian plant because, in their minds, Trump was a Russian plant.”

“The whole media pretended that this Russaigate thing was real. It didn’t just affect citizens. It affected everyone who worked in Washington, D.C., which includes everybody that worked with the [State] Department, the CIA, and more,” she continued. “These people were going home at night being told Trump and his people were Russian agents and then would come into work with the idea that they were going to save America from us.”

If Trump and everyone affiliated with him are Russian assets, and Russian assets pose an existential threat to the country, why wouldn’t a well-meaning new hire at the State Department who wants to grow in his career treat an intelligence briefing sourced from Hamilton 68 with the utmost importance if his boss told him to?

What Else Is Being Used Against Us?

Whether they were conditioned by their superiors and Big Tech or not, hundreds if not thousands of entries and mid-level bureaucrats perpetuated the lie the Russian government hijacked American politics. They, along with the corporate media and the universities, went along with this narrative to weaponize society against people — American citizens — who supported a democratically elected president from a major political party.

Taibbi’s reporting shows how Hamilton 68 was used by Big Tech and the corporate media to perpetuate the myth of Russian collusion by unfairly suppressing and regulating speech online. Milius’ experience at the State Department indicates how it was used to weaponize one of the most important parts of the federal government against the American people. 

Both narratives likely only give us a look under the hood. We know about the Hamilton dashboard — which is still operational, albeit under the slightly different moniker of Hamilton 2.0 — solely because of the “Twitter Files,” and we know of the use of Hamilton 68 at the State Department because of people like Milius who are willing to share their stories. 

We have no reason to believe Hamilton 2.0 isn’t being used by the government, nor do we know whether systems similar to the Hamilton dashboard are being used to curate lists of people on platforms other than Twitter. 

But we do know that unelected members of the government are weaponizing themselves against the American people in collaboration with the private sector as they chip away at our democratic republic. This is irrefutable.

So, the question remains: what else is the U.S. government using to monitor its citizens while mobilizing against domestic targets who have done nothing wrong?


Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @Mangold_Lenett.

California Would Disbar Ted Cruz And 18 Attorneys General If It Could


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JANUARY 27, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/27/california-state-bar-would-disbar-ted-cruz-and-18-attorneys-general-if-it-could/

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This is what happens when state bars use disciplinary proceedings to conduct lawfare against political opponents. 

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Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and the attorneys general from 17 additional states should all be disbarred, according to the reasoning of the disciplinary complaint the State Bar of California filed Thursday against former Trump campaign attorney John Eastman. That detail is one of many buried in the 35-page, 11-count disciplinary complaint made public yesterday in the latest lawfare attack on attorneys who deigned to represent Donald Trump. 

State Bar of California’s Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona announced on Thursday the filing of disciplinary charges against Eastman, allegedly arising from Eastman’s engagement “in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist then-President Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states.” The press release announcing the disciplinary charges further claimed that Eastman “made false and misleading statements regarding purported election fraud,” that provoked a crowd into assaulting and breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The 11 charges against Eastman prove troubling throughout, with the State Bar of California proposing to discipline Eastman for presenting legal analyses to his client, Trump, and for speaking publicly on his views about the election, with the bar even attempting to hold Eastman responsible any violence that occurred on Jan. 6. The disciplinary complaint also misrepresents numerous arguments Eastman and others made concerning the 2020 election, falsely equating claims of violations of election law with fraud.

But it is count two of the disciplinary complaint, charging Eastman with “seeking to mislead a court,” that exposes the California State Bar as a kangaroo court.

“On or about December 7, 2020, the State of Texas filed a Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint in the United States Supreme Court, initiating the lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania,” begins count two of the complaint against Eastman. The complaint then explains that in that lawsuit, Texas argued the defendant states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin “usurp[ed] their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their States’ election statutes.” As a remedy, Texas sought an order from the Supreme Court to “enjoin the use of unlawful election results without review and ratification by the Defendant States’ legislatures and remand to the Defendant States’ respective legislatures to appoint Presidential Electors in a manner consistent with the Electors Clause.”

Eastman, on behalf of then-President Trump, sought to intervene in the Texas v. Pennsylvania case, and in that motion, Eastman “expressly adopted the allegations contained in the Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint filed by Texas.” In adopting the allegations Texas made, Eastman, according to the California State Bar, “misl[ed] the Supreme Court by an artifice or false statement of fact or law,” in violation of California’s “Business and Professions Code” that governs attorneys’ conduct in the Golden State.

Under the California State Bar’s reasoning, then, Texas’ attorney general who filed the motion likewise “misled” the U.S. Supreme Court, as did the attorneys general of the 17 other states that supported Texas’ motion for leave to file a bill of complaint. So too would have Sen. Ted Cruz, had the Supreme Court agreed to hear the motion, as he had agreed to argue the case on Trump’s behalf in that circumstance. 

While count two represents but one of the 11 distinct charges levied against Eastman, it most clearly exposes the logical conclusion reached when state bars use disciplinary proceedings to conduct lawfare against political opponents. 

To date, the bars have limited themselves to targeting just a few attorneys working for Trump, with the D.C. Bar pursuing Rudy Giuliani and Jeff Clark, in addition to the California State Bar’s attack on Eastman. But there is no limiting principle to prevent the bars in other states from pursuing any politician with a law license who happens to represent the wrong person. 

That is an extremely dangerous precedent, which is why tomorrow at a press conference called by Eastman’s legal team, some big legal names will condemn the move. The hastily called conference is expected to bring together former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III and John Yoo, a current professor of law at the University of California-Berkley, former general counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and former deputy assistant attorney general. Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman and former California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, among others, are also expected at the conference.

Whether the legacy media will cover Eastman’s detailed response to the State Bar of California’s disciplinary complaint or bother to report on his press conference remains to be seen. But if Cruz and the attorneys general impugned by the California State Bar speak out, the corrupt press may not have any choice but to report on the ridiculous theories underlying the disciplinary attacks on Eastman.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.


The Real Scandal In The Classified Documents Debacle Is Washington’s Overclassification Problem

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE

JANUARY 25, 2023

4 MIN READ

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Laws governing classified documents in private possession have become a primary vehicle to thwart political opponents.

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Washington D.C. has long had an overclassification problem.

According to Yale Law Professor Oona Hathaway, more than 50 million documents are classified every year. In fact, “we don’t know the exact number because even the government can’t keep track of it all,” Hathaway told NPR last week. Now, laws governing classified documents in private possession have become a primary vehicle to thwart political opponents.

More documents marked classified have now been found in former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana residence, his team announced to Congress on Tuesday. The revelation marks the latest episode in classified documents popping up in the apparently improper possession of individuals who’ve conducted state business at the highest levels of government.

Last week, a 13-hour FBI search of President Joe Biden’s Delaware residence turned up yet another trove of documents with classified markings from his tenure in public office before he was afforded total classification powers as commander-in-chief. The search by federal agents came after the president’s attorneys found secret records in several locations, including a Washington office closet and his Delaware garage.

In August, it was first former President Donald Trump who found himself in hot water when 30 plainclothes FBI agents raided the 128-room palace at Mar-a-Lago in search of classified documents. Operating under a broad warrant issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland that allowed officials to confiscate any record Trump may have come into contact with, agents took 15 boxes of material from the Florida residence. Deep-state DOJ officials then began to leak to their public relations team at The Washington Post that former President Trump was harboring nuclear secrets.

[READ: There’s A Difference Between Biden And Trump’s Classified Documents Snafus, But It’s Not What You Think]

“A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter,” the Post reported, “underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.”

Of course, the public has little to no idea what, exactly, the documents spelled out. They are classified, after all. But the constant drip of document appearances from now three potential presidential contenders showcases how laws governing classified records can be used to get rid of nearly any federal elected official. Given that a criminal conviction of Trump has remained the top item on the Democrats’ policy agenda since 2016, it’s a conspiracy to think the enforcement of the rarely prosecuted Presidential Records Act is not being pursued for the sole purpose of thwarting his 2024 campaign — that is until the dam of others’ classified documents broke.

The real scandal isn’t that the current president, his predecessor, and the last vice president were improperly harboring classified documents beyond their government tenure. The real scandal is Washington’s chronic overclassification problem, which leads to the laws governing classified records becoming weaponized to take out political opponents. It’s probably only a matter of time before classified documents appear in the possession of any former federal employee who wants to run for president, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Even The Washington Post highlighted D.C.’s obsession with classifying everything way back in 1989. In classic swamp fashion, 34 years have gone by without fixing the problem. Congress did try to address the overclassification issue in 2010 with the Reducing Over-Classification Act. President Barack Obama signed the law, but lawmakers failed to define “over-classification,” rendering the legislation practically useless.

The federal government can and should keep certain information concealed from public view. It’s probably not wise to reveal details about American nuclear operations. But anyone who’s ever submitted a request for public records through the Freedom of Information Act understands Washington hates making anything public.

The Federalist is still waiting on the Department of Transportation, of all agencies, to comply with a records request that was filed in late 2021 related to Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s prolonged eight-week absence amid a supply-chain crisis. Once the agency coughed up documents as a result of a lawsuit from Protect the Public’s Trust this month, the secretary’s husband, Chasten, berated reporters for focusing on old news.


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

Ex-FBI Official Who Helped Launch Crossfire Hurricane Charged With Laundry List Of Crimes


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JANUARY 24, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/24/ex-fbi-official-who-helped-launch-crossfire-hurricane-charged-with-laundry-list-of-crimes/

Oleg Deripaska at WEF
Monday’s news is a body blow to the FBI, which already has two black eyes from the last seven years of scandals.

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The Department of Justice unsealed twin indictments on Monday against Charles McGonigal, a former FBI section chief involved in the decision to launch the Crossfire Hurricane investigation against then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Here are six takeaways from yesterday’s news.

1. McGonigal Charged with Conspiring with Russian Interpreter to Launder Money — and More.

Monday morning brought breaking news that the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York had unsealed a five-count indictment that charged McGonigal and Sergey Shestakov with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, and with conspiring to launder money. Prosecutors also charged Shestakov with lying to the FBI. 

McGonigal, as the indictment explained, was previously a “senior official” in the FBI, having been employed by the bureau from 1996 to 2018, and working in Russian counterintelligence, organized crime matters, and counter-espionage. From 2016 until his retirement in 2018, McGonigal was the special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI’s New York Field Office, a role in which he supervised and investigated Russian oligarchs, according to the indictment.

Shestakov, for his part, is described as a “former Soviet and Russian diplomat,” who was in that role from 1979 until his retirement in 1993. The press release announcing the charges notes that Shestakov is now a U.S. citizen, and he has “more recently served as an interpreter for United States federal courts and prosecutors.”

The indictment charged that McGonigal and Shestakov violated the sanctions imposed by the United States on Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, in violation of the IEEPA. Specifically, the indictment alleged the duo, in or about 2021, “agreed to and did investigate a rival oligarch of Deripaska in return for concealed payment from Deripaska.” 

According to Monday’s press release, McGonigal and Shestakov negotiated with a representative of Deripaska, identified as Agent-1 in the indictment, “to conceal Deripaska’s involvement” in the relationship “by, among other means, not directly naming Deripaska in electronic communications,” using instead various nicknames, such as “the big guy.” McGonigal, Shestakov, and Deripaska also allegedly used “shell companies,” to hide the payments coming from Deripaska.

McGonigal allegedly first met Deripaska’s representative, Agent-1, while still employed by the FBI, but then in the spring of 2021, after McGonigal had retired from the bureau, he was allegedly solicited to work directly for Deripaska. Specifically, the indictment charged that Deripaska hired McGonigal to investigate a second Russian oligarch with whom Deripaska had an ongoing dispute over control of a Russian corporation. In exchange, Deripaska allegedly agreed to pay the partners $51,280, followed by monthly payments of $41,790, although the payments were made to a New Jersey corporation, which then transferred the funds to McGonigal and Shestakov. 

The activities among McGonigal, Shestakov, and Deripaska’s intermediaries “largely” ceased, according to the indictment, upon the FBI executing search warrants and seizing McGonigal and Shestakov’s electronic devices on Nov. 21, 2021. Shortly before the FBI executed the search warrant, Shestakov allegedly lied to the FBI about his relationship with McGonigal, which formed the basis of the false statement charge against Shestakov.

2. McGonigal Is in More McTrouble

If the indictment in the Southern District of New York were not enough to shake McGonigal’s world, an hour later the Department of Justice released a second press release announcing the unsealing of a second indictment in the District of Columbia. This indictment charged McGonigal with making multiple false statements, concealing material facts, and falsifying records or documents — nine counts in total.

Underlying the nine criminal counts were allegations that McGonigal failed to accurately complete financial disclosure reports, which McGonigal was required to do on an annual basis, and failed to accurately report unofficial foreign travel and ongoing professional or official contracts with foreign nationals. 

The accusations are related to McGonigal’s alleged failure to accurately report his financial situation, connections with foreign nationals, and his relationship with several unnamed individuals. Those individuals are identified as Persons A, B, C, and D, with McGonigal receiving large cash payments in exchange for what appear to be questionable “favors.”

For instance, the indictment described Person A as a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Albania and who had previously worked for the Albanian intelligence agency. It then alleged McGonigal “hid aspects of his relationship with Person A,” including “that he had accepted more than $225,000 from Person A, had traveled to Europe with Person A, and met numerous foreign nationals through Person A.” 

It was McGonigal, according to the indictment, who approached Person A with the money-making scheme, when “no later than August, 2017,” he “inquired as to whether Person A could provide money to him.” Then on Sept. 7, 2017, Person A allegedly indicated he “was working on the money.” Thereafter, McGonigal traveled with Person A to Albania where he allegedly lobbied the Albanian prime minister on behalf of Person A. 

Over the next several months, McGonigal allegedly received three cash payments from Person A, ranging from approximately $65,000 to $80,000 each time. The indictment further charged that “McGonigal caused the FBI-NY to open a criminal investigation of a U.S. citizen in which Person A would serve as a confidential human source.” 

Specifically, on Nov. 25, 2017, McGonigal allegedly informed a federal prosecutor of “a potential new criminal investigation involving a U.S. citizen who had registered to perform lobbying work in the United States on behalf of an Albanian political party different from the one in which the Prime Minister was a member.” Then on Feb. 26, 2018, the FBI office “formally opened a criminal investigation focused on the ‘U.S. citizen lobbyist’ at defendant McGonigal’s request and upon his guidance.” 

The indictment suggests McGonigal opened the investigation into “the U.S. citizen lobbyist” to further his monetary relationship with Person A and others, with the allegations stressing that McGonigal remained in communication with the prime minister after Person A arranged for them to meet in September of 2017. Person A and Person B, the latter identified in the indictment as a former senior Albanian government official and informal adviser to the Albanian prime minister, both then assisted the FBI in the investigation of “the U.S. citizen lobbyist.” 

Elsewhere, the indictment charged that McGonigal attempted to arrange a meeting with Persons C and D and U.S. government authorities to benefit from the unnamed Person A. Among other things, the indictment claimed that McGonigal proposed Person D pay Person A’s company $500,000 in exchange for the scheduling of a meeting with a representative from the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. McGonigal then worked to coordinate the meeting, according to the charges.

3. The Shockwaves of This Latest FBI Scandal Hit Spygate

The two indictments alone represent another huge scandal to the FBI: McGonigal was no low-level agent but rather a special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York Field Office. And although McGonigal retired in 2018, some of his allegedly criminal conduct took place while still in that position and allegedly involved the launching of an investigation of a U.S. citizen who was lobbying for a political opponent of one of McGonigal’s foreign contacts.

In isolation, yesterday’s news is a body blow to the bureau, which already has two black eyes from the last seven years of scandals. But the New York indictment of McGonigal reverberates more directly to the SpyGate scandal and specifically the failure of the DOJ to pursue Christopher Steele for his own work for Deripaska.

The inspector general’s report on FISA abuse concluded that “Steele performed work for Russian Oligarch 1’s attorney on Russian Oligarch 1’s litigation matters,” with Deripaska the generically named “Oligarch 1.” Steele, the OIG report continued, “passed information to Department attorney Bruce Ohr advocating on behalf of one of Russian Oligarch 1’s companies regarding U.S. sanctions.” The report further found that Ohr and Steele’s communications concerning Deripaska occurred “in 2016 during the time period before and after Steele was terminated as a [confidential human source].”

Additionally, the OIG report connected that “Ohr said that he understood Steele was ‘angling’ for Ohr to assist him with his clients’ issues,” and that “Ohr stated that Steele was hoping that Ohr would intercede on his behalf with the Department attorney handling a matter involving a European company.”

Steele had reportedly also previously worked for Deripaska’s London-based attorney Paul Hauser, and Steele “appeared to lobby on behalf of Deripaska through a D.C.-based attorney, Adam Waldman.” Steele, however, never registered as a lobbyist under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or “FARA.”

Yet Steele has never been charged with violating FARA. Why?

While this question has been asked again and again, the federal charges against McGonigal for his work on Deripaska’s behalf bring this question to the forefront again. 

4. Speaking of Deripaska, There’s Another SpyGate Scandal Unresolved

The raising of Deripaska’s name in yesterday’s indictment also offers the chance to revisit another SpyGate scandal yet unresolved — a lesser noticed one buried in the hundreds of pages of the inspector general’s report on FISA abuse.

As I previously detailed, the IG report noted that on Dec. 7, 2016, Bruce Ohr called an interagency meeting to discuss Deripaska. During that meeting, Ohr apparently suggested trying to work with Deripaska, and later told a subordinate that the basis for the suggestion was that “Steele provided information that the Trump campaign had been corrupted by the Russians,” and that the corruption went all the way to President-elect Trump. So Ohr apparently suggested cutting a deal with a Russian oligarch based on the fake Steele dossier. 

It also appears that agents considered cutting a deal with Deripaska to possibly ensnare Paul Manafort, with the end goal being to take down Trump — another startling possibility that would reveal our FBI viewing Trump as worse than the Russian oligarch.

To date, little has been explored of possible efforts by the DOJ or FBI to go easy on Deripaska for the great goal of getting Trump. But maybe the renewed focus on Deripaska will resurrect these overlooked details.

5. McGonigal’s Role in Crossfire Hurricane Raises Huge Red Flags

The charges against McGonigal also raise concerns about his role in the decision to launch Crossfire Hurricane. 

In his congressional testimony, FBI Agent Jonathan Moffa testified that from July 28 to July 31 of 2016, officials in FBI headquarters discussed whether to open a counterintelligence investigation on Trump, purportedly based on information provided by a “friendly foreign government.” That information consisted of an Australian diplomat telling his American counterpart that Trump’s volunteer campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had suggested the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. In explaining how he had learned of the discussions over whether to open the investigation that became known as Crossfire Hurricane, Moffa testified he had received an email from McGonigal, the then-section chief in FBI headquarters, that contained the reporting from the friendly foreign government. 

After McGonigal helped decide to launch the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign, FBI Director James Comey named him “the special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York Field Office” in October of 2016. In that position, McGonigal stayed engaged in aspects of the investigation, with his “team” questioning Carter Page in March of 2017. McGonigal would later also express concerns about the Page FISA leaking after a briefing to the House Intel Committee, and sure enough, a few weeks later the story leaked.

Given that if the allegations in the indictments are true, McGonigal has proven himself willing to be bought, his involvement in Crossfire Hurricane is extremely troubling. 

6. A New Life for Durham

While McGonigal’s involvement in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation raises serious concerns, it also provides one final chance to learn the depth of the SpyGate scandal. With McGonigal facing serious federal criminal charges in two different districts, the incentive for him to seek a deal with the government is high. Given his involvement in the decision to launch Crossfire Hurricane and his later involvement in at least portions of the investigation, he may just have something to offer Special Counsel John Durham.

And McGonigal may have just the attorney to cut that deal: Seth DuCharme. DuCharme is listed as McGonigal’s attorney of record in court filings, and emails released pursuant to FOIA requests show DuCharme previously worked for Durham.

Whether McGonigal has anything of value to Durham, however, remains to be seen.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Discovery Of More Biden Docs Proves Mar-A-Lago Raid Was Just Another Russia-Collusion Hoax


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JANUARY 23, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/23/discovery-of-more-biden-docs-proves-mar-a-lago-raid-was-just-another-russia-collusion-hoax/

Joe Biden gets off Marine One
The discovery of more Biden documents highlights the ridiculous plot to destroy Trump that culminated in the raid of his Mar-a-Lago home.

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The FBI recovered an additional cache of classified documents from President Joe Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, following a 12-hour search conducted by federal agents on Friday. While this development adds to the scandal surrounding the current president, it does much more: It highlights the ridiculous plot launched to destroy Donald Trump that culminated in the raid of his Mar-a-Lago home.

“Six items” were recovered on Friday from Biden’s Delaware home, which consisted of “documents with classification markings and surrounding materials,” the president’s lawyer said in a statement released after the search. While the “crafty legalese” deployed by the attorney left unclear how many classified documents were contained within the “six items” recovered, Biden’s lawyer confirmed that the documents dated back to the Delaware Democrat’s time as both vice president and senator, so spanning from 2017 to as far back as 1973

The president’s lawyers had previously searched the Bidens’ Wilmington home (and garage), and while they discovered a handful of other documents marked classified, they apparently overlooked the “six items” the FBI found last week. 

The search of Biden’s home followed the discovery in November 2022 of at least 10 classified documents, including ones reportedly marked “top secret.” Those documents also dated back to his days as vice president under Barack Obama and were stored in a closet at a private office building in D.C. But the so-called “think tank” where they were stored, the Penn Biden Center, did not open until February 2018, meaning Biden had kept the classified documents found there at another location for the year following his time as vice president. 

That the classified documents Biden removed from the White House and earlier the Senate were not missed at the time and are only now being discovered — at least a decade later for some — and then only after multiple searches of different locations, contrasts sharply with what happened following Trump’s time in office. 

According to then-archivist of the United States, David S. Ferriero, he watched “the Trumps leave the White House and getting off in the helicopter” at the end of Trump’s term. Ferriero recalled someone was “carrying a white banker box,” prompting Ferriero to ask himself, “What the hell’s in that box?” 

Ferriero claimed, “[T]hat began a whole process of trying to determine whether any records had not been turned over to the Archives,” with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) “going through materials transferred from the White House in the chaotic final days of Trump’s presidency.” According to The Washington Post, “officials had noticed that certain high-profile documents were missing,” such as “Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he had termed ‘love letters.’” 

The NARA also could not locate the “National Weather Service map of Hurricane Dorian, which Trump had famously marked up with a black Sharpie pen to extend to Alabama,” or the letter Obama had left for Trump upon the change in administrations.

NARA sought the return of these documents, and in January 2022, Trump representatives worked with NARA employees to arrange for 15 boxes of presidential papers to be returned to the archive. Within those boxes were some documents marked “classified,” which led NARA to refer the matter to the Department of Justice. 

The DOJ then launched an investigation into Trump, even though when alerted to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents, NARA made no such referral. A grand jury later issued a subpoena for any presidential documents, and following a search of Mar-a-Lago by Trump’s representatives, those documents were turned over. However, after a source told the DOJ that some documents remained at Mar-a-Lago, the FBI obtained a search warrant and executed a surprise raid on the former president’s home.

This entire sequence began because NARA went looking for missing documents and then, rather than work with Trump to establish his presidential library and to arrange for the documents to be stored under the auspices of NARA’s custody at a mutually agreeable location — something NARA had done for Obama — NARA created a federal criminal case out of the matter.

Had NARA dug through former Senator and then-Vice President Biden’s documents looking for the smoking gun that was not there, they would have discovered the classified documents Biden absconded with too — and likely many more documents that over the last decade-plus years disappeared forever. Ditto for Obama.

The most recent discovery of “six items” containing an untold number of classified documents at Biden’s Delaware home illustrates this point. It also brings into focus the get-Trump scheme launched by a “backbench bureaucrat” that culminated in the raid on the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home.

With this reality now in focus, Americans would be wise to revisit the timeline leading up to the Mar-a-Lago raid because the Trump classified-document scandal bears all the hallmarks of a hoax peddled by the deep-state cabal and their corrupt media partners. 


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

How ‘The Twitter Files’ Undermine the J6 Report


BY: JORDAN BOYD | JANUARY 23, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/23/how-the-twitter-files-undermine-the-j6-report/

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Twitter employees’ desire to rid the platform of Trump kept them from telling the truth about the company’s capability for censorship.

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Censorship-hungry Twitter employees vented to the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 that their company wasn’t authoritarian enough when it came to curbing former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2021 Capitol riot, a newly released 122-page memo shows. “The Twitter Files,” however, prove Big Tech went out of its way to suppress the Republican president long before his ban from the platform on Jan. 8, 2021.

When the Twitter staff, or “Tweeps,” gave witness testimony to the J6 Committee last year, they likely didn’t anticipate a fact-check of their public statements against their internal communications. Then Elon Musk acquired the company in October of 2022 and released internal documents exposing Twitter’s key censorship decisions and election meddling.

Some of the material in the revelations dubbed “The Twitter Files” corroborates what these ex-staffers told the J6 Committee about Twitter’s hesitation to ban Trump until Jan. 8. Many of the uncovered documents and communications, however, prove that long before the riot, Twitter treated Trump differently than it did most world leaders.

Tweeps Agree: Big Tech Not Authoritarian Enough

Anika Navaroli, a member of Twitter’s censorship team, told the J6 Committee in anonymous testimony in July of 2022 that Twitter’s decision to delay the permanent suspension of Trump until after the riot was “absolutely indicative and emblematic of Twitter’s hands-off, willfully ignorant approach to the former President’s rhetoric on the service and on the platform.”

Much like hundreds of Twitter employees who wrote an open letter demanding the president’s permanent suspension, Navaroli claimed she lobbied for the curbing of Trump long before he was banned on Jan. 8, 2021, but her demands for action were ignored.

For months I had been begging and anticipating and attempting to raise the reality that if nothing — if we made no intervention into what I saw occurring, people were going to die,” Navaroli said in her interview with the Democrat-dominated committee. “On Jan. 5, I realized no intervention was coming. As hard as I had tried to create one or implement one, there was nothing. We were at the whims and the mercy of a violent crowd that was locked and loaded.

Navaroli’s frustrations furthered when, after being tasked with evaluating the validity of Trump’s online rhetoric following the Capitol riot, she ultimately dismissed the outgoing president’s tweets as above board under Twitter’s policies.

I also am not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet,” Navaroli wrote in a Slack chat with her colleagues on Jan. 8. “I’ll respond in the elections channel and say that our team has assessed and found no [violations] for the DJT one.”

Navaroli wasn’t alone. Another unnamed member of Twitter’s safety policy team told the J6 Committee that Twitter’s censorship teams weren’t equipped to “find a rationale to suspend the President’s account from the service, and ‘stop the insurrection’” on Jan. 6.

The team was left to respond to rampant incitement on Twitter under its own initiative, once again without clear instruction,” the committee report states, adding later, “This understaffed, ramshackle made [one of the employees moderating content on Jan. 6] feel like she was a security guard hovering over the Capitol, trying to defend the building as the crowd tweeted out its progress during the course of the assault.

It’s clear from these accounts that Twitter employees tried to find a cause for deplatforming Trump under the Big Tech company’s then-policies. When they failed to obtain the political results they desired, partisan Twitter executives sidestepped free speech loyalists at the company by changing the rules to target Trump alone. The Capitol riot was simply their catalyst.

Change the Rules to Win the Game

Once Twitter executives changed the rules to remove Trump, the company and its Democrat allies celebrated.

Months after Navaroli gave her testimony and Trump was barred from Twitter, members of the J6 Committee were still publicly praising her for “answering the call of the Committee and your country.”

Corporate media such as The Washington Post elevated her as “the most prominent Twitter insider known to have challenged the tech giant’s conduct toward Trump.” Business Insider amplified Navaroli with the headline, “Twitter whistleblower who foresaw the violence of Jan. 6 reveals her identity with an omen for the future of US democracy.

Navaroli’s testimony, along with other witnesses, helped Democrats conclude that “Trump’s suspension ended the preferential treatment Twitter gave his account for years” and that Big Tech failed to prevent violence by delaying its permanent ban on Trump until after the Capitol riot.

The former employee’s testimony confirms that Twitter saw President Trump’s potential violent incitement of his supporters as a cause for concern even prior to Election Day but chose not to take effective actions to prevent him from using the platform in this way. Moreover, this failure to act was consistent with Twitter’s longstanding deferential treatment of President Trump,” the report states.

Twitter Did Treat Trump Differently

The effort to permanently bar Trump may have concentrated around the Capitol riot and culminated with a mad scramble on Jan. 8, as Navaroli suggested. Still, as “Twitter Files” journalist Matt Taibbi noted in part three of the exposé, “the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots.”

Executives such as Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former legal and policy executive Vijaya Gadde, and Twitter’s recently fired general counsel and FBI veteran Jim Baker spent months building a network that could quickly respond to suppression requests and easily strike violative content and users.

“[T]he firm had a vast array of tools for manipulating visibility, most all of which were thrown at Trump (and others) pre-J6,” Taibbi noted.

The treatment Trump received from Twitter’s top censors may have been different, but it was far from the “deferential treatment” the J6 Committee concluded had occurred. Contrary to Tweeps’ testimonies, Trump faced several bouts of censorship including Twitter reducing the reach of his tweets, shadowbanning him, labeling his tweets with warnings, and temporarily suspending his account long before the Capitol riot.

As independent journalist Bari Weiss noted in part five of “The Twitter Files,” the Big Tech company was far more eager to justify that kind of censorship against Trump than to use it against actual dictators.

Twitter staff and executives were so overcome with their hatred for Trump that they were willing to create a reason to deplatform the president. What those employees didn’t anticipate is that their shenanigans would be blown open by “The Twitter Files” mere months after they gave sworn testimony to Democrats in Congress.

As evidenced by “The Twitter Files,” there was nothing stopping Tweeps from deplatforming Trump. In fact, Twitter, cheered by the same Democrats, worked for years to silence its political enemies at whatever cost.


Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

5 Reasons Corrupt Media Are Ignoring The Scandalous ‘Twitter Files’


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JANUARY 18, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/18/5-reasons-corrupt-media-are-ignoring-the-scandalous-twitter-files/

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Reporters refusing to cover ‘The Twitter Files’ prefer their role as propagandists to journalists.

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Soon after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, he gave a few reporters access to the tech giant’s internal communications, resulting in scandalous revelations about Twitter’s routine collusion with and censorship direction from the FBI — revelations you likely haven’t heard much about from the corporate media.

“The Twitter Files” showed that this symbiotic relationship between the feds and a so-called private company involved the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 election, the silencing of Covid dissenters, and even the squelching of regime-challenging journalists, among other bombshells. According to the communications, the federal government paid Twitter some $3,000,000 for its assistance. 

Notwithstanding these explosive revelations, backed up by the internal communications of high-level Twitter executives, the corporate media have ignored the scandals. But why? 

Here are five reasons the corrupt press has refused to adequately cover “The Twitter Files.”

1. Giving Credence To Trump’s 2020 Election Claims Would Be Unforgivable

Accurate coverage of “The Twitter Files” would require the media to report on the FBI’s role in burying the Hunter Biden laptop story shortly before the 2020 election. Among other things, “The Twitter Files” revealed the FBI met monthly and then weekly with Twitter’s team, warning them of various foreign efforts to interfere in the election. Those internal communications, when coupled with an earlier statement Yoel Roth, the then-head of Twitter’s site integrity, provided to the Federal Election Commission, establish the FBI was behind Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden story.

“Since 2018 he had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security,” Roth stated. “During these weekly meetings, the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October,” Roth said, adding that from those meetings he learned “that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.” Roth then explained that those “prior warnings of a hack-and-leak operation and doubts about the provenance of the materials republished in the N.Y. Post articles,” led Twitter to conclude “the materials could have been obtained through hacking.” 

When Roth’s statement is read together with the internal emails establishing that Twitter banned the New York Post’s blockbuster reporting under the guise that the materials had been hacked, the FBI’s responsibility for causing the censorship of this politically explosive story is clear. And because the FBI knew Hunter’s laptop had not been hacked and that the materials on it were authentic, by prompting the censorship of the story, the FBI knowingly interfered in the 2020 election.

Or as Donald Trump put it on Truth Social after “The Twitter Files” broke: “The biggest thing to come out of the Twitter Targeting Hoax is that the Presidential Election was RIGGED — And that’s as big as it can get!!!”

For the press to honestly cover “The Twitter Files,” then, would require it to give credence to Trump’s “RIGGED” claims — something it just cannot stomach. Instead, the corrupt media have responded to “The Twitter Files” with silence or spin.

2. Being the Press Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

A second reason the press refuses to cover “The Twitter Files” stems from the corrupt media’s inability to acknowledge its own bias, wrongdoing, and hackery. To report on the many scandals exposed by the files would require media elites to face their own involvement in censoring news and their failings as so-called journalists.

While historically, journalists stood in unity with their fellow reporters, when Twitter and other tech companies censored and then deplatformed the New York Post, the press — in the main — remained silent. In contrast, when Musk temporarily suspended reporters’ accounts who had posted location tracking information in violation of Twitter’s new rules, a thud sounded as the same journalists collectively collapsed on their fainting couches. 

Not only did these supposed standard-bearers of journalism not condemn the censorship, most ignored the story. Those that did not ignore it, such as NPR, discussed not the details of the scandal, but their justification for ignoring it. “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” NPR intoned.

Covering “The Twitter Files” now would be an implicit admission that they were wrong not to report on the laptop story and that they were equally amiss in failing to condemn the censorship of the Post. 

“The Twitter Files” also raise an uncomfortable set of questions for news outlets, namely: Did the FBI warn legacy media that supposed Russian disinformation, in the form of potentially hacked materials involving Hunter Biden, would drop? Is that why they ignored the story and allowed the censorship of the Post to go unchallenged? 

Reporting on “The Twitter Files” would force legacy outlets to confront the potential reality that the FBI had played them and that they were willing to trust the government rather than be a check on its abuse. 

“The Twitter Files” also vindicate Musk and counter the media narrative that his Twitter takeover spelled the beginning of the end for the tech giant. Not only did the avalanche of predicted hate speech not materialize, but under Musk’s leadership, Twitter’s newfound transparency has served both the public interest and a (functioning) free press. Reporting on these facts, then, would require the press not only to acknowledge its own failings but to apologize to Musk and admit their own complicity — things they are apparently unable to do.

3. Condemning the Feds Would Shut Down Sources and Hurt Their Heroes

The media are likely also ignoring “The Twitter Files” to protect their sources — both literally and figuratively. 

Many of the same FBI agents and governmental officials, such as Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who pushed for Twitter to censor speech probably serve as regular sources for the legacy media. This scenario is especially likely if the FBI pushed for the press to censor the Hunter Biden story, as it had with Twitter and Facebook. Reporting on “The Twitter Files” would thus force the media to hammer some of the same individuals who give them valuable leaks. Condemning those individuals could shut down various source networks the corrupt media can’t risk.

The media likely also don’t want to “hurt” their sources or the FBI agents who pushed the Russia disinformation lie to tech companies because they see themselves on the same anti-Trump team. 

Just as the media refuse to condemn the Department of Justice and FBI agents involved in pushing the Russia-collusion hoax because the press favored the unwarranted attacks on Trump that hamstrung his administration, the leftist media silently applauds the FBI’s interference in the 2020 election because it helped deny Trump a second term. 

In this regard, the legacy media and the deep state share the same worldview — that the ends justify the means. The media will thus keep mum about what the FBI did because they’re grateful that intelligence agencies destroyed Trump’s chance to defeat Biden by prompting the censorship of the October surprise. 

4. The Russian Bogeyman Must Be Preserved at All Costs

Ignoring “The Twitter Files” also helps the media preserve their Russia, Russia, Russia narrative.

The various “Twitter File” threads revealed several damning details concerning Russia’s supposed interference in American politics. First, they exposed how the FBI and federal intelligence agencies used Russia’s supposed interference in the 2016 election to push for more resources and collaboration with tech giants. Second, the files revealed that, notwithstanding federal agents’ claims, there were no systemic efforts by Russia to use Twitter to interfere in the U.S. elections. To the contrary, the internal communications showed the FBI pushing for evidence of Russian interference and Twitter executives countering that they weren’t seeing issues.

Third, as detailed above, “The Twitter Files” exposed that the Hunter Biden laptop story was not only not Russian disinformation but that the FBI used that excuse anyway to prompt censorship of the story.

Fourth and finally, the internal Twitter communications showed that the trending of the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag was not prompted by Russian bots or Russian-connected accounts and that Democrats such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Schiff’s claims to the contrary were false. Those communications also revealed that even though Twitter negated the Russian-interference theory — telling politicians point blank that the evidence showed #ReleseTheMemo was trending because of organic interest in the hashtag — Democrats and the media continued to push that false storyline.

Reporting on “The Twitter Files” would require the media to first acknowledge they were wrong in their #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag coverage. But what’s more, covering Twitter’s internal communications would force the press to dispel the notion that Russia is the bogeyman behind every Republican candidate and every negative story about Democrats.

Corrupt media need to maintain Russia as the bad guy for future elections, however, and to counter future scandals affecting Democrats. Accurate reporting on “The Twitter Files” would lessen the effects of any later resort to a Russia, Russia, Russia narrative — and the press can’t have that.

5. Reporters Prefer Their Role as Propagandists to Journalists

While there are many practical reasons the press refuses to report on “The Twitter Files,” as a matter of principle, it all comes down to one: The legacy media have none.

The so-called journalists working at outlets that were once the standard by which all journalists were judged today value politics more than they do their professional obligations. Informing the public and providing a check on the rich, the powerful, and the politicians are no longer the end goals of corrupt reporters; rather, they seek to use their power to advance their own personal beliefs and agendas. 

In short, the reporters refusing to cover “The Twitter Files” prefer their role as propagandists to journalists.


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Biden Turned Classified Documents into A Scandal to Get Trump, But Who’s Laughing Now?


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JANUARY 12, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/12/biden-turned-classified-documents-into-a-scandal-to-get-trump-but-whos-laughing-now/

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This entire scandal is a joke. And now, thanks to the get-Trump franchise, irresponsible Biden will be forever cast as a laughingstock.

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News broke late yesterday that a search of the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, uncovered additional classified documents from Joe Biden’s time as vice president, stored unsecured in the family garage and separately in another room of the house. And I still haven’t stopped laughing.

Since August of 2022, when the FBI launched an unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, the entirety of the anti-Trump universe insisted — insisted — that the recently departed commander-in-chief’s possession of documents marked classified was a big f-ing deal. 

Never mind that Trump had declassification authority as the president of the United States, or that the documents were stored at his home under the watchful eye of his Secret Service protection. Ignore too the fact that the National Archives could have worked with Trump to coordinate the storage of the documents under the technical possession of the government, but at a location of the former president’s choosing, just as was done with former President Barack Obama. 

But because the loony left couldn’t resist one more sequel in their get-Trump franchise, as Trump exited the Oval Office, a backbench bureaucrat at the National Archives launched another hoax meant to finally, finally destroy Trump. Several leaks and a year-plus later, the plot culminated in the raid of Trump’s home followed by the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump.

And because the National Archives and the Biden administration went nuclear against Trump for possessing documents at Mar-a-Lago marked classified, they have no option but to pretend to treat Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents in an equally serious way. So, the National Archives referred the matter to the Department of Justice, just as it had with Trump, even though when it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mishandling classified documents, no criminal referral followed. 

Likewise, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed a U.S. attorney to investigate Biden’s mishandling of the classified documents, to create the impression of equal justice under the law. Of course, given Garland’s appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump, a plain ol’ ordinary U.S. attorney doesn’t level up, and for that, the attorney general is already receiving heat.

But the heat comes from the hypocrisy, not the gravity of the situation. 

The Biden classified documents scandal is not a serious scandal. The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan is a serious scandal. Biden’s refusal to faithfully execute his duties as president of the United States by securing the southern border is a serious scandal. The Biden family pay-to-play escapades are a serious scandal. And the weaponization of the FBI and the intelligence community to interfere in the 2020 election and hand Biden the presidency is a serious scandal. This is not.

Laughable. Delicious. Outrageous. It is all those things and becomes more so by the day, with news that more classified documents are reposed in a residential garage, in addition to the closet at a D.C. think tank. And the story just becomes funnier the more the corrupt press tries to distinguish Biden’s possession of classified documents from Trump’s because Biden himself on video declared the possession of classified documents in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home to be “just totally irresponsible.” 

But a garage, Joe? Seriously? And is not knowing there were classified documents there, as Biden claims, any better?

The bottom line here is simple. This entire scandal is a joke. And now, thanks to the get-Trump franchise, irresponsible Biden will be forever cast as a laughingstock — and so will the propagandists in the press. 


Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

On Classified Documents, Joe Biden Is Out of Excuses


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JANUARY 12, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/12/we-need-a-special-counsel-to-investigate-joe-bidens-classified-documents-case-pronto/

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Every president probably stashes away classified documents. The chances of any president being successfully prosecuted for pilfering them are infinitesimal. Nevertheless, now that we’ve learned Joe Biden has engaged in the same behavior as Donald Trump — perhaps worse, considering vice presidents are afforded less leeway on classified documents — precedent and transparency, our very democracy, demand Attorney General Merrick Garland name a special counsel to investigate (I get results!)

Right now, none of the rationalizations offered by the media for Biden’s actions over the past few days are operational. When the story first broke, outlets stressed that one of the vital “distinctions” between the two incidents was that Biden was in possession of fewer documents than Trump. Biden aides, we learned, had been utterly shocked to discover only a “small number” of classified documents “locked” in the personal offices of the president’s “think tank” — as if the location or the number of documents, or the alleged lock, rather than the contents, were the most newsworthy aspect of the story.

Today, we learned that a second “batch” of classified documents was uncovered at an “undisclosed” location. Suddenly, everything got incredibly vague. Biden aides, we are told, began diligently rummaging through boxes to ensure they were in complete compliance with the law. A completely independent source told collusion-hoaxer Ken Dilanian that the “search was described as exhaustive, with the goal of getting a full accounting of all classified documents that may have inadvertently been packed in boxes when Biden cleared out of the vice president’s office space in January 2017.” It’s heartening to know that the Bidens are such diligent, law-abiding folk.

Yesterday, we were told that classified documents that are found in a serious office setting, rather than just “lying around” in a home, was an important difference between the two cases. Today, Biden’s lawyer says that “small number” of classified documents was also found “locked” in Biden’s garage and an “adjacent” room of his Wilmington home. (Don’t worry, the president assures us it was safely stored next to his beloved Corvette.) You know, if we find another “small number” of documents, we might just have ourselves a full cache.

No doubt, journalists are super curious to know how those classified documents got into Joe’s garage. I mean, the guy had a think tank office at his disposal in D.C. Moreover, the initial documents were alleged to have been discovered before midterms, and yet we’re only hearing about new ones months later — and in convenient dribs and drabs.

Soon after CBS’s initial story, a four-byline puff piece from CNN reported that the documents found in the think tank were related to Ukraine, Iran, and the U.K., so not just keepsakes and letters and such. This week we also learned, in another soft-peddled report by The New York Times, that Biden, despite his insistence that he knew nothing about his son Hunter’s foreign entanglements, had met with a liaison from the Ukrainian energy interest Burisma, among many other revelations. Recall, Obama officials had also raised concerns about the Biden family business. Is there any chance those Ukrainian documents would have been embarrassing to the president? Seems a reasonable question.

What’s important now, we’re going to be instructed, is that Biden “immediately” contacted the authorities and is fully “cooperating.” Is it possible, and I’m just theorizing here, that Biden and his aides are lying? For one thing, cooperating is fine, but it’s not everything. Trump has every right to hire a lawyer and fight the Archives over documents. Maybe he’s got a case, maybe he doesn’t. But perhaps Biden also simply picked an opportune time to cooperate with his own administration in an effort to avoid any transparency. Far from “immediately” handing over this material, the president’s been in possession of classified documents for nearly seven years. How does the DOJ know there aren’t more documents stashed away? How does it know Biden, like Trump, didn’t put them in his garage on purpose? Because he says so?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s entertaining watching the comically obvious attempts to mitigate the damage. But if Biden hasn’t done anything wrong, he has absolutely nothing to fear.


David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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