Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘justice’

Silence of the Lambs: The Media Ignores Declassified Documents on the Manufacturing of the Russian Conspiracy

By: Jonathan Turley | July 22, 2025

Consider this story: An outgoing president and his top officials are told that there is no evidence of Russian collusion or influence in the national election. The White House then moved to suppress the intelligence assessment and reverse the conclusions, while false claims were leaked to the press.

That is not just a major but a Pulitzer-level story, right?

Apparently not. The legacy media has largely ignored the declassified evidence and possible criminal referral on the Obama administration seeding the Russian collusion narrative just before the first Trump Administration. It supports allegations in the real Russian conspiracy: the conspiracy to create a false Russian collusion scandal to undermine the election and administration of Donald Trump in 2016.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard suggested last week that intelligence was “manufactured and politicized” despite countervailing conclusions from American intelligence that there was no collusion or influence on the election. Critics have noted that CBS only covered the story to refute it.

The release of this information is historically significant, as it finally allows the public to see how this effort began with the Clinton campaign and was then actively cultivated by Obama officials. We previously learned that the Clinton campaign spent millions to create the infamous Steele dossier and then hid their role from the public.

Attorney Marc Elias, the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign, pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.) During the campaign, reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. When journalists discovered after the election that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie, they met with nothing but shrugs from the Clinton staff.

New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Elias was back when John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress on the Steele dossier and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.

Not only did Clinton reportedly spent over $10 million on the report, but Obama was briefed that she was going to create a Russian collusion narrative as part of her campaign. Aware of that Clinton effort, these new documents suggest that Obama and his aides actively sought to affirm the allegations just before Trump’s inauguration. The FBI then ramped up its own efforts despite also being told that the Steele dossier was unreliable and contradicted.

I disagree with the use of the charge of treason being thrown around with this release. Based on this evidence, it would be hard to make a criminal case against Obama, let alone the specific charge of treason. However, there are good-faith allegations raised about prior congressional testimony of key players in the Obama Administration. There may be viable criminal allegations ranging from perjury to obstruction to making false statements to federal investigators.

It is too early to gauge the basis for possible criminal charges. However, the release of this new evidence is both historically and legally significant. There is now a legitimate concern over a conspiracy to create this false narrative to undermine the incoming Administration. It proved successful in derailing the first Trump Administration. By the time the allegations were debunked, much of the first term had been exhausted. That is worthy of investigation and the public has a right to expect transparency on these long-withheld documents.

The silence of the legacy media is hardly surprising, given the key role the media played in spreading these false claims. Most media outlets find themselves in an uncomfortable position, having fostered an alleged conspiracy for years. Most reporters are not keen on making a case against themselves in spreading of these false claims.

Category:

Crime, Law, Political

Tagged with:

More Heat Than Light: New York Judge Blocks ICE Access to Rikers Island Over Alleged Adams Conflict

By: Jonathan Turley | June 17, 2025

This week, New York Judge Mary Rosado issued an opinion in Council of City of N.Y. v. Adams. The court is blocking the city from allowing the federal government to maintain office space at Rikers Island. The reason is that Rosado agreed that Mayor Eric Adams had a conflict of interest and likely bargained away the access as part of a quid pro quo arrangement to get the Justice Department to drop criminal charges against him. The opinion is quite extraordinary and, in my view, fundamentally flawed. The opinion generated more heat than light on the proper handling of a conflict of interest.

The court recounts the testimony of Danielle R. Sassoon, Esq., Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, regarding a January 31, 2025, meeting with President Donald J. Trump’s Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, and the mayor’s criminal defense counsel. She claimed that “Adams'[] attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with [immigration] enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.”

After that meeting, on February 3, 2025, Mayor Adams’ criminal defense attorney, Alex Spiro, wrote to Bove that the prosecution of the mayor will “become increasingly problematic as the Trump administration seeks to aggressively enforce immigration laws and remove undocumented immigrants …. [T]he federal government cannot possibly rely on Mayor Adams to be a fully effective partner in all situations in ongoing public-safety missions while he is under federal indictment ….”

One week later, on February 10, 2025, Bove directed federal prosecutors to dismiss with prejudice the pending criminal charges against Mayor Adams. The plaintiffs allege that these negotiations traded away city policies or privileges in exchange for the dropping of the charges, a charge that Adams vehemently denies. On February 13, 2025, after meeting with the Administration’s “Border Czar,” Thomas Homan, Mayor Adams announced that he would issue an executive order allowing federal immigration authorities to be present on Rikers Island. The next day, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss all pending criminal charges against Mayor Adams.

After the announcement, a number of deputy mayors resigned in protest. Adams then appointed Randy Mastro as First Deputy and delegated to him the authority to “[p]erform any function, power or duty of the mayor in negotiating, executing and delivering any and all agreements, instruments and any other documents necessary or desirable to effectuate any of the matters” related to public safety.

On April 8, 2025, Mastro issued Executive Order No. 50, authorizing the Department of Corrections to enter a Memorandum of Understanding with federal law enforcement agencies allowing them to maintain office space on Department of Corrections property, specifically Rikers Island.

The timing of these actions raised objections from many, both inside and outside City Hall. That included United States District Judge Dale Ho, who agreed to dismiss the criminal charges with prejudice, but not after lashing out at the administration. Ho wrote that “[e]verything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the [i]ndictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.” He further warned that the suggestion “that public officials may receive special dispensation if they are compliant with the incumbent administration’s policy priorities … is fundamentally incompatible with the basic promise of equal justice under law.”

I disagreed with Judge Ho’s use of the order to opine on an alleged quid pro quo that was not established in the record or even material to his decision. Ho agreed that he could not “force the Department of Justice to prosecute a defendant” and agreed to dismiss the matter with prejudice. That was the correct and only decision that he could make. However, he further strongly suggested the need for an investigation but lamented that he “did not have the authority to appoint an independent prosecutor.”

I do not question Judge Ho’s sincere objections or the good-faith basis of many in raising this allegation. However, I do not believe that judges or justices should use their positions to opine on political or ethical issues that are not clearly before them. The issue before Judge Ho was solely the dismissal of a criminal case and he had no record, or in my view license, to hold forth on his unsupported suspicions in the case.

The matter, however, was raised and litigated directly before Judge Rosado by the city council, which sought to nullify the Executive Order as being violative of city ethical rules. Specifically, the city council cited New York City Charter § 2604(b)(3), which provides in pertinent part that “[n]o public servant shall use or attempt to use his or her position as a public servant to obtain any … privilege or other private or personal advantage, direct or indirect, for the public servant or any person or firm associated with the public servant.”

Judge Rosado found a likelihood of prevailing on the merits, citing Baker v. Marley, 8 NY2d 365, 367 (1960), that an action must be declared null and void when the action “directly or immediately affects him individually.” She specifically found:

Plaintiff-Petitioner has shown a likelihood of success in demonstrating, at a minimum, the appearance of a quid pro quo whereby Mayor Adams publicly agreed to bring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) back to Rikers Island in exchange for dismissal of his criminal charges. This showing is grounded in (1) Mayor Adams’ public statements; (2) Mayor Adams’ criminal defense attorney’s written overtures to the Department of Justice; (3) the temporal proximity between these overtures and Mr. Bove’s directive to dismiss the criminal charges against Mayor Adams; (4) statements from former Acting United States Attorney Danielle R. Sassoon and Assistant United States Attorney Hagan Scotten; (5) Mr. Homan’s statement that he will “be in [Mayor Adams’] office, up his b ___, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’” and (6) the written findings by United States District Judge Dale Ho.

Although Defendants-Respondents deny any quid pro quo in conclusory fashion, this is insufficient and almost expected. As wisely stated by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the quid pro quo need not be stated in express terms “for otherwise the law’s effect could be frustrated by knowing winks and nods. The inducement from the official is [violative] if it is express or if it is implied from his words and actions ….” Based on the record, Plaintiff-Petitioner has made a sufficient showing of an implied, if not an express quid pro quo based on Mayor Adams, Mr. Spiro, Mr. Bove, and Mr. Homan’s words and actions.

In my view, the decision is wrong on a number of key elements.

Who decides?

First, Judge Rosado heard this case despite the fact that there is a process for such allegations to be raised and adjudicated before the Conflict of Interest Board. Rosado recognizes the obvious problem and admits that

“[t]o be clear, the Conflicts of Interest Board is the preferred and proper forum for many garden variety conflict of interest disputes, such as those involving improper gifts, failures to disclose financial interests, and other financial conflicts.‘

“However, the Conflicts of Interest Board is not equipped with the powers and tools to grapple with the case, which involves the promulgation of an Executive Order at lightning speed, upending a decree of New York policy barring federal law enforcement authorities from maintaining a presence on Department of Corrections property.”

I found the court’s logic on this portion of the opinion to be conclusory and counterintuitive. There is nothing in the law or regulations that defines the Board as focused on “garden-variety” conflicts. It is the system created by the city council to address conflict allegations and, while Judge Rosado believes that she can do better than the board, that is hardly a convincing basis to circumvent the process for the adjudication of such claims. Rosado ignores that this is a specialized body expressly tasked with such conflicts. It is unclear how the court is “better equipped” with its own limited staff to address such matters, other than having the ability to issue judicial injunctions.

Deception or Delegation?

Putting aside this act of judicial overreach, there is also the problem that the order was ultimately issued not by Adams but by Mastro. There are very compelling public policy reasons for taking this action. The city is struggling with the massive demands of its undocumented immigrant population. Before he was ever charged, Adams was viewed as a moderate on such questions who was open to greater federal enforcement. Many states and cities cooperate with federal authorities in this way as a matter of public policy.

Judge Rosado admits that there is a valid question of whether the delegation constituted a type of recusal or cleansing of the decision. However, she maintained that Mastro is not independent because he was appointed by Adams and reports to him. Moreover, she cited New York City Charter § 2604(b)(3), which states that delegating oversight or management does not necessarily erase a conflict of interest. She notes that Adams said publicly that he did not recuse himself and found:

“The Defendants-Respondents’ hyperbolic argument that if Mayor Adams cannot delegate to First Deputy Mayor Mastro, then there is nobody he can delegate to, is without merit. First Deputy Mayor Mastro, although an accomplished and highly educated attorney, is not independent of Mayor Adams and therefore cannot be considered impartial and free from Mayor Adams’ conflicts. First Deputy Mayor Mastro reports directly to Mayor Adams, is appointed by Mayor Adams, and can be fired by Mayor Adams. He is Mayor Adams’ agent.”

It is not clear, however, who would be sufficiently free of Adams’ authority to allow for them to make the myriad of decisions vis-a-vis federal authority. In this matter, Mastro and the Mayor’s office are arguing that he made an independent judgment on the merits of the policy. More importantly, Judge Rosado ignores the implications of her order. She never explains how the city is to function if any order dealing with the federal government could be viewed as part of a quid pro quo. There are a host of joint operations and programs with the federal government. Where does one draw the line and who then makes these decisions ranging from housing to prisons to voting? Rosado seems to shrug and say that anyone reporting to the Mayor or subject to his authority is not sufficiently independent.

The Order

Judge Rosado ultimately finds against Adams, but includes rhetoric exulting the prior pro-immigration policies that further undermines the opinion:

The Court finds that Plaintiff-Petitioner has demonstrated imminent and irreparable harm for purposes of obtaining a preliminary injunction. The harm to intangible assets such as damage to reputation, loss of goodwill, and brand tarnishment are routinely found sufficient to grant injunctive relief. New York City, which thrives as a global hub due in large part to its reputation as being a welcoming home for immigrant communities from around the world, risks having this goodwill and invaluable reputation irreparably damaged as a result of an Executive Order borne out of Mayor Adams’ alleged conflict of interest. New York City, through legislation and decades of policy, has established a reputation as a “Sanctuary City.” This reputation, and the goodwill built from decades of policy decisions, and which have provided New Yorkers with numerous intangible cultural and economic benefits, risks being irrevocably tarnished. The harm to New York City’s reputation as a Sanctuary City, and the goodwill with numerous communities that flows from that reputation, is best preserved through a preliminary injunction prohibiting Defendants-Respondents from acting on Executive Order No. 50.

…

The Court is also cognizant of threat of irreparable harm in a more concrete sense—that is the threat to detained New York State and City residents and their dignity. There is ample evidence that there is already a serious, imminent and ongoing risk that immigrant New Yorkers, and even foreign tourists to New York City, are being wrongfully detained. There are documented reports of individuals being deported to stranger third-countries, and New York City residents are taken into custody for expressing political views contrary to the federal government’s agenda. Residents who are here seeking asylum are being deported to countries they claim to have previously faced persecution for their sexuality, politics, or religion. And this concrete harm flows to the Plaintiff-Petitioner…

I was frankly astonished by the direct discussion of the mayor’s criminal charges in the conjunction with negotiations over enhanced federal enforcement. While I understand the defense counsel’s job to seek any lawful avenue for relief, I would have immediately cut off such discussions as inappropriate from the perspective of the Justice Department. If such discussions occurred, there is a legitimate concern over a quid pro quo. However, this is not how courts should address such allegations. I believe both Judge Ho (who ruled correctly) and Judge Rosado (who did not) exceeded the parameters for their opinions with extraneous commentary. That is particularly the case with Judge Rosado. More importantly, I believe that Judge Rosado is simply wrong in circumventing the designated board for addressing conflicts of interest and issuing this sweeping opinion.

This is not an easy matter for any board or court. These meetings and the timing of these decisions raise obvious concerns. However, courts are not allowed to engage in conjecture. It is not just plausible but likely that Adams would have extended the access to Rikers Island even without any change in his criminal case.

I do not see the limiting principle in this decision. Adams is still the mayor and may have independent and good-faith reasons for orders that are favorable for the federal government. Indeed, his order was the correct one on the merits. While Judge Rosado never explores the countervailing benefits while writing at length on the costs to a city of immigrants, they are obvious and cannot be ignored. In other words, Adams had every reason to support federal enforcement as a Mayor who ran on making New York a safer city.

This matter should have been left to the Conflicts of Interest Board, and the decision itself is ill-considered and incomplete.

Category:

Crime, Law

Tagged with:

Jacksonian Obstruction: Smith Explains How He Was Planning to Circumvent the Decision in Fischer

By: Jonathan Turley | January 14, 2025

The release of the first part of Jack Smith’s report at midnight was the special counsel’s version of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision: we had seen it before. Putting aside the public filings where Smith fought to get this information out before the election, there was little new in the report. What the report did not contain is an explanation of how Smith destroyed his own cases against Trump. However, one notable element was Smith’s reliance on a dubious concurrence by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the subject of a prior column on what would be an interpretation that was too clever by half.

Much of the report was vintage Smith in dismissing countervailing precedent and insisting that he could “obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.” He may be right about obtaining a conviction before a D.C. jury and a highly motivated judge against Trump. However, he would not have been able to sustain any conviction — and this report makes that abundantly clear.

Smith repeats the same conclusory evidence, such as citing how Trump said “fight” ten times in his January 6th speech. He minimized the immunity decision by removing some evidence but kept largely the original indictment. However, the treatment of the obstruction claims was the most telling and indicative of Smith, who has repeatedly lost cases due to overextending constitutional and statutory authority.

The Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. United States rejecting the use of obstruction of legal proceedings against January 6th defendants will potentially impact hundreds of cases. For some, it may lead to dismissals or, in the cases with multiple charges, resentencings. One of those cases that will be impacted is the pending prosecution of former president Donald Trump who is facing four charges, including two obstruction counts. It was not clear if Special Counsel Jack Smith would yield to the decision or possibly take the dubious path laid out by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her concurrence.

However, Smith tended to push the law to the breaking point to bag defendants. That was the case when his conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell was unanimously reversed as overextending another law.

As I wrote previously after the decision, “It is doubtful that [Smith] will go quietly into the night after the Fischer decision.” In most cases, a prosecutor would go back and secure a superseding indictment in light of the loss of the obstruction claims. Those claims were central to the narrative of the government under the Trump indictment. However, I wrote that it “is not Smith’s style” to yield to precedent and that he would likely “take a not-so-subtle hint from Jackson in her concurrence.”

Jackson supported the majority in finding that the obstruction provision, Section 1512(c), was enacted after the Enron case to address the destruction of documents and records.

Section 1512(c)(1) prohibits corruptly obstructing an official proceeding by altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a record, document, or other object with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding. However, a second provision under subsection (c)(2) allowed for charges that would “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding. The Court held that the obstruction cases under Section 1512(c)(2) must be tied to impairing the integrity or availability of evidence.

However, in a single justice concurrence, she added a way that Smith and other prosecutors might still be able to shoehorn January 6th into a Section 1512 offense:

“That official proceeding [Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote] plainly used certain records, documents, or objects—including, among others, those relating to the electoral votes themselves. And it might well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding “in ways other than those specified in (c)(1).” Ante, at 8. If so, then Fischer’s prosecution under §1512(c)(2) can, and should, proceed. That issue remains available for the lower courts to determine on remand.”

Once again, no other justice joined Jackson in the concurrence.

Right on cue, Smith revealed that he was going to do precisely what I feared in taking a position supported by a single justice. In his report, Smith wrote:

“Mr. Trump’s and his co-conspirators’ obstruction involved replacing valid elector certificates from the contested states with false ones they had manufactured-the Office anticipated the possibility of such a result in Fischer and confirmed that the evidence would prove Mr. Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt even under a narrow interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2).”

Just saying that a proceeding involves “certain records” is transparently artificial and forced. Even the submission of an alternative slate of electors is not the destruction of electors certified by the secretaries of state.

The federal law allows for challenges in Congress, which Democrats previously utilized without claims of insurrections or attacks on democracy. J6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), voted to challenge the certification of the 2004 results of President George W. Bush’s reelection; committee member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to challenge Trump’s certification in 2016. Both did so under the very law that Trump’s congressional supporters used in 2020. And Pelosi and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the challenge organized by then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in 2004.

Those challenges under the same loose theory could have been viewed as attempting to negate or destroy certifications from the states. It would have likely, in my view, result in another reversal. However, Smith is always about securing convictions more than sustaining appeals. That is why he filed the second case in D.C., where he was given the best possible judge for the prosecution, a judge viewed by many as predisposed against Trump.

In a sentencing hearing of a Jan. 6 rioter in 2022, Chutkan had said that the rioters “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution.” She added then, “[i]t’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was then brought to her for trial by Smith.

So Smith was going to proceed on the theory of a single justice with the help of a favorable jury and a motivated judge. Little has changed with Smith since his unanimous reversal in the McDonnell case, which seems much of the reason that he was appointed.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

This column also appeared on Fox.com

Category:

Crime, Law, Political

Tagged with:

Justice Department Indicts Alleged Swatters of Turley, Members of Congress, and Others

By: Jonathan Turley | November 25, 2024

Yesterday, I was notified by the Justice Department confirming that a recent swatting indictment includes the person or persons responsible for my own swatting a year ago. One of the defendants, Thomasz Szabo, was arrested a couple weeks ago.

The indictment below charges two foreign nationals: Thomasz Szabo, 26, of Romania, and Nemanja Radovanovic, 21, of Serbia.

Szabo and Radovanovic are each charged with one count of conspiracy, 29 counts of threats and false information regarding explosives, and four counts of transmitting threats in interstate and foreign commerce.

Their alleged conspiracy began as early as December 2020. It continued through January 2024, using personal identifying information, including home addresses, to falsely report emergencies to provoke a police response at the victim’s home. According to the Justice Department, they used various monikers to communicate. Szabo used “Jonah,” “Jonah Goldberg,” “Plank,” “Rambler,” “War Lord,” “Shovel,” “Cypher,” “Kollectivist,” “Mortenberg Shekelstorms,” and “NotThuggin2”. Radovanovic used “XBD31,” “XDR,” “Angus,” “Thuggin,” “Thug Hunter,” “NotThuggin,” “DCL,” and “AOD.”

The indictment alleges that their crimes encompassed 40 private victims and 61 official victims, including members of Congress, cabinet-level executive branch officials, and senior federal law enforcement officials. It also included four businesses, four religious institutions, and one victim university.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe is prosecuting the case. Under the Crime Victims Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. 3771 (1), the indictment triggers ten rights for me and the other alleged victims, including the right to be heard at a hearing involving any plea, sentencing, or parole proceeding. I was given my own Victim Identification Number (VIN) and Personal Identification Number (PIN) under the CVRA for future communications.

I am grateful to the Justice Department and these cooperating U.S. and foreign offices for their work in finding the alleged culprits who swatted my home between Christmas and New Year’s in 2023.

Whatever the role politics may have played, or our current divisions, swatting constitutes a very serious crime that can result in lethal accidents and trauma for victims. It also pulls law enforcement resources away from real crimes. In my case, five or six officers were needlessly pulled from their other duties to respond to the call.

For some, these stories become irresistible opportunities to vent against the victims or even bizarre attacks on conservative legal theory. The liberal gotcha site, Above the Law, covered my swatting with the usual ad hominem attacks while adding a truly unhinged spin to the story. Senior Editor Joe Patrice (who has defended “predominantly liberal faculties” and not hiring conservative or libertarian law professors) insisted that swatting is somehow the fault of gun owners, Second Amendment advocates, and “edgy” police:

“Swatting is a byproduct of a nation awash in more and more powerful weapons and more and more edgy cops. And that makes these false police reports regrettably a manifestation of our age of failing to confront the disconnect between the text and history of the Second Amendment and the lazy ahistorical interpretation of this Supreme Court.”

Prosecutors notably did not include the conservative justices as co-conspirators with Szabo and Radovanovic.

This indictment is a valuable addition to deterring a crime that has become all too common. The fact that this investigation stretched to Hungary and Romania showed the extraordinary effort needed to make these arrests. The arrests are the result of an investigation that involved a global effort, including the U.S. Secret Service Washington Field Office and Criminal Investigative Division, the FBI’s Washington Field Office and Minneapolis Field Office, the U.S. Capitol Police, the U.S. Secret Service’s Bucharest Resident Office, Miami Field Office, Syracuse Resident Office, Springfield Resident Office, the FBI’s Legat Office in Bucharest and the U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the Western District of Washington, the District of South Dakota, the Middle District of Florida, the Southern District of Florida, the Southern District of Illinois, and the Northern District of New York.

As more such cases are prosecuted, it will hopefully shatter the sense of anonymity and impunity of such culprits. Once again, I am very thankful for the effort of all of these agencies in bringing this case.

Here is the indictment: radovanovicszabo_indictment_24-cr-386.pdf

*Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “**The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage*.”

Category:

Crime, Law, Political

Tagged with:

Adversarial Process or Oppo Research? Judge Agrees to Release More Trump Material Before the Election

By: Jonathan Turley | October 11, 2024

It appears that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan and Special Counsel Jack Smith are not done yet in releasing material in advance of the election. In a previous column, I criticized the release of Smith’s 180-page brief before the election as procedurally irregular and politically biased, a criticism shared by CNN’s senior legal analyst and other law professors. Nevertheless, on Thursday, Judge Chutkan agreed to a request from Smith to unseal exhibits and evidence in advance of the election. The brief clearly contains damning allegations, including witness accounts, for Trump. The objection to the release of the brief was not a defense of any actions taken on January 6th by the former president or others, but rather an objection to what even the court admitted was an “irregular” process.

As discussed earlier, Smith has been unrelenting in his demands for a trial before the election. He has even demanded that Donald Trump be barred from standard appellate options in order to expedite his trial. Smith never fully explained the necessity of holding a trial before the election beyond suggesting that voters should see the trial and the results — assaulting the very premise of the Justice Department’s rule against such actions just before elections.

To avoid allegations of political manipulation of cases, the Justice Department has long followed a policy against making potentially influential filings within 60 or 90 days of an election. One section of the Justice Department manual states “Federal prosecutors… may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election.”

Even if one argues that this provision is not directly controlling or purely discretionary, the spirit of the policy is to avoid precisely the appearance in this case: the effort to manipulate or influence an election through court filings.

With no trial date for 2025, there is no reason why Smith or Chutkan would adopt such an irregular process. The court could have slightly delayed these filings until after the approaching election or it could have sealed the filings.

If there is one time where a court should err on the side of avoiding an “irregular” process, it is before a national election. What may look like simply an adversarial process to some looks like oppo research to others. Delaying the release would have avoided any appearance of such bias.

For Smith, the election has long been the focus of his filings and demands for an expedited process. Smith knows that this election is developing into the largest jury verdict in history. Many citizens, even those who do not like Trump, want to see an end to the weaponization of the legal system, including Smith’s D.C. prosecution. Trump has to lose the election for Smith to be guaranteed a trial in the case.

Chutkan has given the Trump team just seven days to oppose her order. That would still allow the material to make it into the public (and be immediately employed by the media and Harris campaign) just days before the election. The move will only increase criticism that this looks like a docket in the pocket of the DNC.

It is telling that, once again, the timing just works out to the way that is most politically impactful. Many are left with a Ned Flanders moment of “well, if that don’t put the “dink” in co-inky-dink.”

Category:

Crime, Law, Media, Political

Tagged with:

Garland’s Moment of Truth: With the Perjury Referral, the Attorney General Faces a Clear Choice Between Principle and Politics

By: Jonathan Turley | June 6, 2024

“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.” Those words from Hamlet captured the moral dilemma for many of us as we face the costs of conscience.

For each of us, there often comes a moment when our principles are put to an undeniable and unavoidable test. It may be as simple as cheating on a test, shoplifting a product, or admitting to a wrong. It is natural to want to avoid such moments, particularly when we cannot even admit to ourselves that we may not be the person we have long claimed.

For Attorney General Merrick Garland, that moment of truth has finally arrived. Garland has long maintained that he is an apolitical attorney general who does not even consider the political consequences of his actions. Over the last three years, some of us have questioned that commitment in a series of actions or, more importantly, non-actions. Yet, Garland has always been able to evade responsibility by shifting decision-making to others or claiming a lack of knowledge.

Yesterday, Garland ran out of room to maneuver when three House committees (Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means) sent him formal referrals for the perjury prosecution of Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden. The evidence of false answers to Congress is overwhelming and Garland’s department has prosecuted Trump associates and others with far less in past cases, including the prosecution of former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Here is the Committee’s summary of the allegations, which I also previously discussed in a column:

During his deposition, Hunter Biden made false statements about holding a position at Rosemont Seneca Bohai (RSB), a corporate entity that received millions of dollars from foreign individuals and entities who met with then-Vice President Biden before and after transmitting money to the RSB account that then transferred funds to Hunter Biden. After deposing Hunter Biden, the Committees obtained documents showing Hunter Biden represented that he was the corporate secretary of RSB.

Additionally, Hunter Biden during his testimony relayed an entirely fictitious account about threatening text messages he sent to his Chinese business partner while invoking his father’s presence with him as he wrote the messages. Hunter Biden testified he had transmitted this threat to an unrelated individual with the same surname. However, documents released by the Committee on Ways and Means demonstrate conclusively that Hunter Biden made this threat to the intended individual, and bank records prove Hunter Biden’s Chinese business partners wired millions of dollars to his company after his threat. A portion of the proceeds has been traced to Joe Biden’s bank account.

During James Biden’s transcribed interview, he stated that Joe Biden did not meet with Tony Bobulinski, a business associate of James and Hunter Biden, in 2017 while pursuing a deal with a Chinese entity, CEFC China Energy. His statements were contradicted not only by Mr. Bobulinski, but Hunter Biden. Mr. Bobulinski also produced text messages that establish the events leading up to and immediately following his meeting with Joe Biden on May 2, 2017.

These are straight-forward questions and answers. More importantly, both men knew and prepared for these questions. They were widely discussed before their testimony. They appear to have knowingly lied. The question is what Garland is now prepared to do about it.

For Garland, a bill has come due. I supported his appointment as Attorney General because I respected his integrity and intellect as a federal judge. I believed his claim that he would not allow political considerations to cloud his judgment. I grew more critical as I saw Garland struggling to avoid decisions that would work against President Biden or his family.

Now, Garland has what appears flagrant perjurious statements made by the President’s son and brother. Given the fact that these were anticipated questions, the false answers appear premeditated and egregious. Hunter and Jim Biden displayed a sense of impunity in denying facts that the committees (and many commentators) believe are well established on the available evidence. Those facts were highly embarrassing to the Biden family and they allegedly chose to lie rather than admit to them.

The fact that such alleged false statements occurred in the midst of an impeachment investigation only magnifies the concerns. This was an effort to establish the President’s knowledge of a massive corrupt influence peddling operation maintained by his family.

The gun charge in Delaware is a relatively minor criminal allegation. This is far more serious and could impose far greater punishment for the President’s son.

In the Trump cases, the Justice Department moved with impressive speed in going to grand juries against figures for false statements or contempt of Congress. There was little handwringing, no hem and hawing.

So, Garland’s moment of truth has arrived. He will either have to meet it or shrink from it. Either way, the Attorney General is about to give the full measure of himself and his office.

Category:

Crime, Political

Tagged with:

The Deepfake Privilege? The Justice Department Makes Startling Claim to Withhold the Biden-Hur Audiotape

By: Jonathan Turley | June 3, 2024

We have been discussing the dubious constitutional basis for President Joe Biden withholding the audio tapes of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur. I have previously written that the claim of privilege makes little sense when the transcript of the interview has already been released. It seems curious that Biden is claiming to be the president “who cannot be heard” in withholding the audio version. It just got wackier as the Justice Department seeks to create a new type of “Deepfake privilege” that would effectively blow away all existing limits on the use of the privilege when it comes to audio or visual records of a president.

Multiple committees are investigating Biden for possible impeachment and conducting oversight on the handling of the investigation into his retention and mishandling of classified material over decades. Classified documents were found in various locations where Biden lived or worked, including his garage. The mishandling of classified material is uncontestable. Broken boxes, unprotected areas and lack of tracking are all obvious from the photos.

Biden made the situation even worse with a disastrous press conference in which he attacked Hur and misrepresented his findings.

Hur’s ultimate conclusion that Biden’s diminished cognitive abilities would undermine any prosecution left many dumbfounded. After all, the man who is too feeble to prosecute is not only running a superpower with a massive nuclear arsenal but running for reelection to add four more years in office.

From impeachment to oversight to the 25th Amendment (allowing the removal of a president for incapacities), there are ample reasons for Congress to demand information and evidence from the government on these questions. Congress is also interested in looking at repeated omissions for “inaudible” statements. Under this sweeping theory that Biden can legitimately withhold these recordings under executive privilege, any president could withhold any evidence of incapacity or criminality.

As previously explained, the claim that the audiotape but not the transcript remains privileged is hard to square with precedent or logic. However, now the Justice Department appears to be pivoting with a new claim with a late Friday filing. The filing obtained by Politico states that the audiotape must be withheld due to the risk that it could be altered by artificial intelligence and passed off as authentic in a deepfake release: “The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files.”

Consider the implications of that argument for a second. It would mean that any visual or audio recording of the President could be withheld due to the danger of digital or other manipulation. It would eviscerate any existing limits on privilege assertions.

It is also absurd since you could create such fake recordings using the transcript and Biden’s voice from countless interviews through AI programs. The Justice Department acknowledges that obvious logical disconnect by noting that the release would make any fake version more credible.

“To be sure, other raw material to create a deepfake of President Biden’s voice is already available, but release of the audio recording presents unique risks: if it were public knowledge that the audio recording has been released, it becomes easier for malicious actors to pass off an altered file as the true recording.”

The filing is logically and legally absurd. It is also dangerous.

For a president who is already carefully insulated from questions and controlled in public appearances, the argument would allow staff to completely control any public or, more importantly, congressional review of his actual speech and discourse.

In seeking to prevent “malicious actors” from altering reality, the government is claiming the right to frame reality as an inherent constitutional prerogative.

The argument ignores that, if an audiotape is released, it is harder to pass off a fake as genuine. As it stands, actors can claim tapes as leaked or derived from other sources. In the absence of an official tape, such arguments can be difficult to refute.

The fact that this spurious argument is being made by Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is another disappointing sign that he has abandoned his pledge to remain apolitical in office. This litigation is clearly designed for one overriding purpose: to delay any release until after the election when it cannot harm the President.

It is the legal version of a deepfake — misrepresenting the law to mislead citizens into believing that they are better off with less information on the credibility and competence of their president.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

“Patently False”: Special Counsel Files Blistering Reply to Hunter Biden Motion to Dismiss

Jonathan Turley | March 10, 2024

Special Counsel David Weiss has filed a blistering opposition to the motion to dismiss by Hunter Biden in California that cites his own book and conflicting statements as creating “nothing more than a house of cards.” The filing (below) shows how Hunter’s claims (repeated by many in the media) collapse under even cursory review in court.

Weiss’s filing bulldozes through arguments of selective prosecution and political influence in the case. He specifically notes that Biden repeatedly makes statements without any proof or support in his filings.

The filing begins by outright accusing Hunter Biden and his counsel of lying to the court about what occurred after the earlier plea agreement fell apart in court after the judge in Delaware asked about a sweeping immunity clause in paragraph 14. Notably, Weiss said that it was Hunter Biden’s legal team that inexplicably shut down negotiations by playing hardball in seeking to preserve the original agreement:

“The government proposed changes to the agreements that addressed only the issues identified during the hearing. Exh. 3. The defendant rejected these counterproposals on August 7, 2023. Id. Instead, the defendant began insisting that the proposed Diversion Agreement had bound both parties, even though it had not been approved by the Chief U.S. Probation Officer, a condition precedent to formation that would have brought it into effect. Moreover, by taking this position, he chose to shut down any further negotiations that could address the issues raised at the hearing.”

It then accuses Biden and his counsel as outright lying to the court:

“In his motion, in multiple places, the defendant falsely states that DOJ ‘inexplicably demanded Mr. Biden plead guilty to felonies with jail time.’ He cites nothing in support of his false claims, which is a consistent theme across his motions. The government attaches as Exhibit 3 a redacted letter from the defendant’s counsel which confirms the defendant understood that the government had proposed changes to only those paragraphs that were at issue during the hearing, not paragraphs regarding the charges the defendant must plead to or any “jail time” the defendant must serve. As shown in Exhibit 3, the government proposed changes to Paragraphs 14, 15 and 17 of the Diversion Agreement, and Paragraph 5(b) of the Plea Agreement. The government proposed no changes to Paragraph 1 of the Plea Agreement, which required the defendant to plead guilty to two misdemeanors. Nor did the government propose any changes to Paragraph 6 of the Plea Agreement, in which the United States had agreed to recommend a sentence of probation. The defendant rejected these counterproposals and refused further negotiations…His newly invented claim in his motion that the government “inexplicably demanded Mr. Biden plead guilty to felonies with jail time” is patently false, unsupported by evidence, and belied by his own letter and representations in his filings in the Delaware case.”

The rest of the filing is equally devastating.

Weiss notes that Biden repeatedly misrepresents facts or claims authority that does not exist. He notes that Biden does not cite any cases of similarly situated individuals who were not prosecuted. For example, it notes:

“The only attempt the defendant makes to link animus directly to prosecutors is his claim that “reports indicate Mr. Weiss himself admitted [the charges] would not have been brought against the average American.” Motion at 13. However, his citation does not include a reference to reports (plural), rather it includes a single New York Times citation, which includes a denial immediately after the quoted excerpt: “A senior law enforcement official forcefully denied the account.” An anonymous account that is “forcefully denied” is not evidence that can satisfy the defendant’s burden of producing “clear evidence” of discriminatory intent and animus by prosecutors.”

In rejecting the two cases that he references, Weiss takes a swipe at Hunter’s book. When he published the book, some of us noted that he was making statements against his own interest in possible prosecutions. Weiss just made that a reality:

“The defendant compares himself to only two individuals: Robert Shaughnessy and Roger Stone, both of whom resolved their tax cases civilly for failing to pay taxes. Shaughnessy failed to file and pay his taxes, but he was not alleged to have committed tax evasion. By contrast, the defendant chose to file false returns years later, failed to pay when those returns were filed, and lied to his accountants repeatedly, claiming personal expenses as business expenses. Stone failed to pay his taxes but did timely file his returns, unlike the defendant. Neither Shaughnessy nor Stone illegally purchased a firearm and lied on background check paperwork. And neither of them wrote a memoir in which they made countless statements proving their crimes and drawing further attention to their criminal conduct. These two individuals are not suitable comparators, and since the defendant fails to identify anyone else, his claim fails.”

The brief even takes a shot at the use of public statements by former Attorney General Eric Holder to prove selective prosecution, noting that Holder seems hopelessly conflicted in his own claim of selective prosecution:

“The defendant cites media commentary by former Attorney General Eric Holder, who acknowledged that the defendant is not similarly situated to other individuals: ‘This isn’t some kind of ordinary run-of-the-mill tax case, [] this was an abuse of the tax system . . .’”

The filing annihilates the public claims of Hunter and his allies. It is the difference between making a case in the court of public opinion and making a case in an actual court of law.

Special Counsel Opposition

Category:

Law

Tagged with:

Adam Johnson Op-ed: J6 Prosecutor’s Alleged Stabbing Rampage Exposes Our Failed Justice System

BY: ADAM JOHNSON | OCTOBER 02, 2023

mug shot of J6 prosecutor Patrick Scruggs

By way of introduction, my name is Adam Johnson — but most people know me as “the Lectern Guy.” On Jan. 6, 2021, I kind of broke the internet after I was photographed smiling and waving as I was carrying then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s podium through the Capitol rotunda. Suffice it to say, the authorities did not look kindly on what I did, and I was later arrested.

Eventually, I was transferred to a courtroom after four days in isolation to be met by Assistant United States Attorney Patrick Scruggs for my arraignment in Tampa. I had the opportunity to brush my teeth and shower for the first time in days that morning and was hoping to make a good impression. His freshly pressed suit and American flag pin fixed to his lapel evoked a sense of due respect. I was the criminal here today.

The magistrate read the complaint, while I sat contrite. Scruggs was adamant in his insistence that “Everyone should be held accountable for their crimes.” It seemed reasonable enough to me. I had made the inexcusable decision to enter a building through open doors and carefully move furniture without permission. For these transgressions, Scruggs implored the magistrate to set conditions of my release to match my supposed crimes.

My firearms and passport were confiscated, I received a nightly curfew, and I was ordered to wear an ankle monitor, be drug tested at random, and not travel beyond a few select counties in my state.

At the time I was unsure if it was excessive. I was just happy to be back home with my family. I might have even been thankful. This man, Patrick Scruggs, had deemed me worthy to reside with my family and be among the public.

He must be one of the good ones, I thought.

But on Sept. 26, 2023, Patrick Scruggs was arrested and charged for brutally attacking a motorist with a deadly weapon during a road rage incident. He allegedly stabbed another motorist with a pocket knife. Within 24 hours, Scruggs posted bail with no conditions set for his release.

These days, I can’t help but think about Rome a lot. For instance, the personification of justice has historical roots reaching back to Emperor Augustus in 27 BC. It was manifested in sculpture.

She is our Lady Justice, the Roman goddess Justitia, blindfolded to bias, scales in balance to establish a constancy to her obligation, and a double-edged sword to carry out swift justice.

Her effigy is displayed internationally, but her real significance is the universal truth of what she represents; there is a moral contract with which we hold each other accountable. The details of the contract have long been debated, and multiple revisions have been reworked, replaced, and repealed. And while most provisions for change within the contract simply come from progress, there are moments in history that alter justice suddenly and irrevocably.

These events seem to emerge spontaneously, but the succinct response by the captors of Justitia paints a different story.

Most of us are likely familiar with the phrase “never forget,” probably in the context of 9/11. But I’ve always interpreted it to mean that if we want to preserve the idea of America, lines may need to be redrawn. Specifically, the lines where our rights and our security meet.

It seemed like a fair trade; my civil liberties and assurances would be restored once we got the bad guys. We were all in this together, after all.

The line between citizen and terrorist had been blurred and those lamenting from soapboxes not fortunate enough to have the talking stick were ridiculed for their lack of patriotism and adorned with foil crowns.

Lest you think me hyperbolic, consider that the Patriot Act passed with only a single nay vote.

The canary in the coal mine fell on deaf ears, and justice became malleable in the name of national security. Some rebuked the invasion, most didn’t care, and the rest flagrantly celebrated it. The social credit score of knowing you are morally superior has its perks — for a time.

We were the good guys. We had our time in the sun, resigning with men acting as gods, forever in their favor. Call it naiveite if you want, but we were never meant to dine on Mount Olympus. “Never forget: The Sequel” would be released less than 20 years later.

But on Jan. 6, 2021, a group of unarmed “terrorists” managed to shut down an entire nation by walking through hallways, praying in gathering spaces, and moving furniture.

These new bad guys didn’t hide in caves or plant explosives in public spaces, with the exception of one shadowy figure who would adopt a legacy akin to the Sasquatch. Terrorism had a new face, and this time he wore Cabela’s and questioned a school board’s decisions to include pornography in libraries meant for children. An inquisition would ensue, and the ivory tower that once stood as a beacon of light for all nations would turn its gaze upon the very citizens that reinforced the bricks of its foundation.

More than 1,000 individuals have been charged as a result of the events on Jan. 6. Their homes were raided, their livelihoods destroyed, and their reputations dragged out like the entrails of field-dressed prey. Bail was denied, they endured months of isolation, and the Geneva Conventions was violated.

The inquisitors were hailed as heroes of democracy, despite the fact that most of the crimes committed were nonviolent misdemeanors that had historically resulted in fines and probation, when they were prosecuted at all.

Protesting in D.C. was not a novel occurrence. In fact, it not only has a lengthy history, it has a contemporary one as well. Storm a building during a Supreme Court justice confirmation hearing? Not a problem. Set fire to a church, injure Secret Service members, and cause the sitting president to be ushered to a bunker for safety? Why that’s just democracy in action.

Move a lectern 20 yards for a photo opportunity, however — well, that’s now “terrorism.”

Multi-decade sentences were recommended and administered to some of the participants that day. Moving a fence became tantamount to insurrection, resulting in a 17-year sentence, while Rene Boucher, who broke several of Sen. Rand Paul’s ribs during a lawn dispute, received a mere nine months! Not even the powerful were immune from this new breed of power!

As complex and nuanced as the justice system promotes itself to be, it is rudimentary at its core: You are either a facilitator of it or a victim of it.

Three years ago, I didn’t want to believe this. My worldview was anything but nihilistic, and I believed that once I had a chance to be seen and heard, the misunderstanding would be laughed off.

But the plot thins. The veil slips. The shroud is lifted. We have seen the man behind the curtain, and we are at an impasse.

If we have learned anything over the past two decades, it is this: Any power we are willing to give away so our enemies might be smitten will inevitably be used against us as well given a long enough timeline.

To restore our Lady Justice, we must honor the principles she once stood for. Scruggs will have his day in court, but no single case will restore equilibrium.

As I said earlier, I think about Rome a lot. The fall of an empire can’t be attributed to a singular event, much less a singular person. Nero was blamed for starting the fire that reduced more than half of Rome to ashes, but the citizens were content with bread and circuses.

The mob cheered as their neighbors were persecuted and slaughtered by Nero. Justice had become bloody retribution to entertain the masses. Sound familiar?

Our rulers and persecutors may be acting like Nero, but it doesn’t mean we have to be their mob; we cannot meet injustice with more injustice.

Justice is not demanding we prosecute vindictively. She is blindfolded to narratives, balanced without bias, and consistent in punishment. If the least of us agree to this moral contract and if we choose to believe in equal justice under the law, we can begin to restore our nation.

Adam Johnson is 38-year-old father of five. He spends his time training jiu-jitsu and is currently writing his first book while pursuing higher education. You can follow him @lecternleader on X.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

As Michigan Charges Trump Electors With Felonies, Recall How Leftists Everywhere Urged 2016 Electors to Defect to Hillary

BY: JORDAN BOYD | JULY 19, 2023

Author Jordan Boyd profile

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

If the last two election cycles have proven anything, it’s that Democrats hold an undeniable double standard when it comes to objecting to elections.

The radically different treatment Republicans receive when contesting poorly administered elections intensified this week when Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged 16 Republican electors in her state for participating in what she deemed a “false electors scheme.” Defendants, all 55 years or older, each face eight various conspiracy and forgery felony counts that carry a sentence of five to 14 years in prison each.

“The evidence will demonstrate there was no legal authority for the false electors to purport to act as ‘duly elected presidential electors’ and execute the false electoral documents,” Nessel, an avid anti-“election denier” activist, said in a statement. “Every serious challenge to the election had been denied, dismissed, or otherwise rejected by the time the false electors convened.”

The corporate media hailed Nessel’s allegations as a “righteous prosecution” and “compelling.” History, however, shows the charges are nothing more than a political ploy to advance the left’s war on anyone who questions election results or seeks solutions to preserve election integrity. In fact, attacks on the Trump electors in Michigan, a state where election fraud was reported in both 2020 and 2022, come from the same party and its institutional allies that formally objected to every GOP presidential certification this century and shamelessly attempted to turn electors against their political enemy Trump in 2016.

Sanctimonious Scrambling

As soon as it was clear that Donald Trump, despite the deep state’s best efforts to hoax him out of the running, would become the 45th president of the United States, Democrats and their allies scrambled to influence electors to reject Americans’ wishes. Corporate media quickly rose to the top as the loudest voice calling for electoral disobedience. Articles demanding state electors “prevent an irresponsible demagogue from taking office” and overrule Americans to install Hillary Clinton as president popped up in the pages of The Atlantic, The Washington Post, the Daily Beast, Vox, and Time.

The New York Times even published an article from a Texas-based Republican elector explaining “Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump.”

“The Electoral College is essentially an undemocratic system that’s been jury-rigged to make it somewhat more democratic,” another Vox article asserted to reassure any skeptics.

These last-ditch attempts to keep Trump out of the White House were eagerly amplified by people like MSNBC’s Joy Reid and NYT’s Jonathan Weisman, in tweets collated by journalist Michael Tracey.

Propaganda press puppets such as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, WaPo’s EJ Dionne, and NYT’s Paul Krugman added their two cents about why electors should act on their open disdain for a Trump presidency on Twitter and on TV.

Chris Hayes and Michael Moore pushed for electors to block President-elect Donald Trump from becoming the president on MSNBC.

"They think electors should be persuaded to part with their pledges and vote against Donald Trump."

"Yes, they absolutely should do that." pic.twitter.com/iINfV5hYE3
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) July 19, 2023

Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign who later bragged about her role in meddling with the 2016 election by spreading the Russia collusion hoax, also joined in on the dogpile.

Clinton’s top political adviser John Podesta urged a foreign intervention intelligence briefing for electors prior to their vote, hoping that news about Russia would fuel the campaign’s efforts to question the legitimacy of Trump’s victory.

Petitions calling on electors to “Make Hillary Clinton President” made their rounds on the internet. These were promoted by celebrities such as singer Pink and their sentiments echoed by movie star Mark Ruffalo.

Video ads of celebrities pleading and pressuring electors to “prevent an unfit candidate from becoming president” by voting against Trump also circulated.

“You have position, the authority, and the opportunity to go down in the books as an American hero who changed the course of history,” the activists claimed in one “Unite For America” campaign video.

When leftists’ partisan ploy to swindle electors didn’t work, they turned to congressional Democrats to object to Trump’s presidential certification. Multiple Democrats attempted to verbally object to the electoral votes from multiple states until then-Vice President Joe Biden was forced to quiet his colleagues’ ramblings about voting machines and Russia collusion to proceed with formally handing Trump the presidency. Even after that, prominent Democrats such as former President Jimmy Carter and failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supported the theory that Trump was illegitimately elected. Polls showed 42 percent of Americans thought the same.

No Such Thing As ‘False Electors’

In her charges, Nessel repeatedly painted the Michigan defendants as “false elector” co-conspirators who participated in a “desperate effort” to “interfere with and overturn our free and fair election process, and along with it, the will of millions of Michigan voters.” Legally, however, there’s no such thing as “false 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,” my colleague Margot Cleveland explained in May when corporate media tried to smear Republican electors in the Peach State.

A similar elector swap to those in Michigan and Georgia happened in Hawaii in 1960. As Cleveland pointed out, it received praise instead of scrutiny because Democrats and their preferred candidate came out on top.

After Richard Nixon was initially declared the victor in Hawaii in 1960, both Nixon’s and John F. Kennedy’s electors decided to meet and “cast their votes for President and Vice President, and certified their own meeting and votes.” The three Hawaii electors, all Democrats, cast their votes for Kennedy.

When state circuit court Judge Ronald Jamieson eventually ruled Kennedy the winner of the presidency, Cleveland said he “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,” she continued.

The stark difference between how Democrats and Republicans are treated on the elector issue merely confirms Americans’ worst fears about the nation’s two-tiered system of justice. More Democrats denied that former President Donald Trump won the 2016 election than the people who claimed President Joe Biden wasn’t legitimately elected in 2020 — but it’s Republicans who face jail time for expressing concern.

If you’re a loyal leftist partisan harping on voting machines and Russian “hacking,” objecting to every GOP victory, and demanding electors vote against the will of the people, you’re a hero and protector of democracy. If you do the same to the benefit of a Republican candidate, you’ve fomented a “coup attempt” and betrayed the soul of the nation.

At a time when the justice system is weaponized against Trump and his followers, that’s a damning double standard that not even the most corrupt, partisan actors can ignore.

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.

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Rep. Tim Burchett to Newsmax: ‘Classic Misdirection’ in Hunter Biden Case

By Fran Beyer | Monday, 03 July 2023 02:33 PM EDT

House Oversight Committee member Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., on Monday charged that Hunter Biden’s lawyers engaged in “classic misdirection” in an effort to exonerate the president’s son of alleged shady business dealings. The alleged misconduct “goes really deep,” Burchett told Newsmax‘s “John Bachman Now.”

“There [are] two forms of justice in this country,” he said, “the Bidens and the rest of us.”

“The Justice Department in their infinite wisdom after this so-called five-year investigation gives [Hunter Biden] a slap on the wrist,” Burchett lamented. “In Tennessee, I’ve seen people do more time and more punishment for traffic violations … than what Hunter Biden got.”

Hunter Biden is set to appear before a judge July 26 to formally strike a plea agreement with prosecutors on tax and gun charges that will likely spare President Joe Biden’s son time behind bars. A plea agreement calls for Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes; he also must commit to court-imposed conditions that will spare him full prosecution on a felony gun charge.

“You’ve got over 20 intelligence professionals who said that the [Hunter Biden] laptop was a Russian hoax, and now we know it isn’t,” Burchett said. “And yet none of those so-called intelligence people are being called on the carpet for it or being denied their security clearances. So this goes really deep.”

According to Burchett, allegations from Hunter Biden’s lawyer that included assertions a whistleblower in the case was “disgruntled” is “classic misdirection. You know, ‘don’t look at this.'”

“That’s exactly what the attorney’s doing – what he’s paid to do,” Burchett said

But Americans “cannot disregard” the “over $10 million that flowed through Hunter Biden for no other reason than he was the vice president’s son and to gain access to the vice president who is now the president,” he added.

Hunter Biden “got his hand caught in the cookie jar — both hands and both feet,” Burchett asserted. “And this thing is going to go deep, and there’s more and more to it.”

Burchett lamented the “five-year investigation” being unable to find what the House Oversight Committee found.

“I’m no accountant by any stretch,” he said, “or an attorney, but I could read. I could follow the trail of the money, the laundering.”

Hunter Biden clients do not pay “tens of thousands or millions of dollars,” and “you don’t set up 21 bank accounts in LLCs that don’t do anything,” according to Burchett.

“You have to do something,” he said. “That’s why the mob used to invest in flower shops and things like that. Because you know it shows a cash flow.

“You can run it through some kind of business.”

But when it comes to the Bidens, he alleged, “They just stuck it in their pocket.”

About NEWSMAX TV:

NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!

Find NEWSMAX in over 100 million U.S. homes via cable/streaming – More Info Here
Watch NEWSMAX TV online – See It Here
Download the FREE NEWSMAX App on Your Smartphone to Watch Now!

Related Stories:

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Merrick Garland’s J6 Juries Prove Durham’s Point: Conservatives Can’t Get A Fair Trial In D.C.

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 22, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

VISIT ON TWITTER@PROFMJCLEVELAND

Special Counsel John Durham breached neither ethics nor etiquette when he highlighted the difficulty of obtaining a conviction in a politically charged case when the jury holds opposing partisan views. He merely stated the reality on the ground in D.C.-area federal courts. And by his own actions prosecuting the J6 defendants solely in the nation’s capital, Attorney General Merrick Garland has confirmed that assessment by proving the corollary: Criminal cases against individuals viewed by the local populace as political pariahs make for easy convictions.

“Did the Durham Report’s Criticism of Juries Go Too Far?” The Washington Post’s headline from last week asked rhetorically. It was quite an ironic concern coming from the legacy outlet serially guilty of publishing fake news to propagate the Russia-collusion hoax. A better question for the “democracy dies in darkness” rag would be: Did Clinton and Democrats’ Dirty Politics Go Too Far?

But no, instead of focusing on the substantive content contained in the 300-plus pages of Durham’s report detailing malfeasance by the Department of Justice and FBI and the Clinton campaign’s responsibility for the scandal, The Washington Post focused on Durham’s introductory remarks explaining the “special care” the special counsel’s office used in making criminal charging decisions — decisions Durham stressed were “based solely on the facts and evidence developed in the investigation and without fear of, or favor to, any person.”

After noting the high burden the Constitution places on the government in criminal cases, Durham explained why, in numerous instances, he did not seek criminal charges even though the conduct deserved “censure or disciplinary action.”

“In examining politically-charged and high-profile issues such as these, the Office must exercise — and has exercised — special care,” Durham explained. “First, juries can bring strongly held views to the courtroom in criminal trials involving political subject matters,” Durham continued, “and those views can, in turn, affect the likelihood of obtaining a conviction, separate and apart from the strength of the actual evidence and despite a court’s best efforts to empanel a fair and impartial jury.”

Those taking umbrage at Durham’s remarks, claiming they erode faith in our justice system, seem to have missed that the Justice Department’s manual, “The Principles of Federal Prosecution,” quoted in the special counsel report, makes the same point. Sometimes while “the law and the facts create a sound, prosecutable case,” the manual explained, there is still “the likelihood of an acquittal due to unpopularity of some aspect of the prosecution or because of the overwhelming popularity of the defendant or his/her cause…” It continues:

For example, in a civil rights case or a case involving an extremely popular political figure, it might be clear that the evidence of guilt viewed objectively by an unbiased factfinder would be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction, yet the prosecutor might reasonably doubt, based on the circumstances, that the jury would convict.

Prosecutors in such cases, the manual explained, might assess a guilty verdict unlikely “based on factors extraneous to an objective view of the law and the facts.”

In other words, biased juries and politics, rather than an “objective view of the law and the facts,” may dictate whether a defendant is convicted or acquitted. These are not merely the sentiments of Durham or Republicans, but the Department of Justice. So it isn’t Durham’s words that erode trust in the legal system, but rather insular juries.

It also isn’t merely the unsuccessful cases Durham brought against Michael Sussmann in the D.C. federal court and Igor Danchenko in the nearby federal court in Virginia that foster Americans’ distrust of the justice system. It is also the DOJ’s insistence that the scores of J6 prosecutions remain in the nation’s capital.

D.C. Jury Pool Is Biased

Following the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, the Department of Justice has charged hundreds with federal crimes. Because the alleged offenses occurred in D.C., federal law provides that “venue,” meaning the physical location for the criminal proceedings, is proper in the federal D.C. district court.

Congress, however, has provided two bases to change venue. First, a federal court must transfer the criminal proceedings if the defendant requests a change of venue and “so great a prejudice against the defendant exists … that the defendant cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial there.”

While many J6 defendants have moved for a change of venue based on such prejudice, the DOJ has uniformly opposed the transfers. And because the “so great prejudice” standard is nearly insurmountable, the federal D.C. district court has denied the change of venue requests, even against evidence that 90 percent of D.C. voters cast their ballots against Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Furthermore, while almost everyone in D.C. knows about the indictments, polls show more than 70 percent of them — which is 15 percent higher than the national average — have formed an opinion about guilt or innocence.

Nor have the D.C. federal courts granted a change of venue “for convenience” — a second statutory basis Congress provided — which would allow the J6 defendants to be tried in their home states for their convenience, the convenience of witnesses, and “in the interest of justice.” Given that the DOJ farmed out the J6 cases to field offices throughout the United States, tasking local agents with surveilling and arresting the defendants, and that there are U.S. attorney offices in every state, trying the defendants across the country is also no inconvenience to the federal government.

So even if the prejudice is not “so great” that it is mandatory to change the venue of the case, why does the DOJ oppose the discretionary transfer for convenience?

Because Garland — like Durham — knows D.C. juries “bring strongly held views to the courtroom in criminal trials involving political subject matters and those views can, in turn, affect the likelihood of obtaining a conviction.” In fact, so great is the concern of a pro-DOJ bias that several defendants have made the nearly unheard-of decision in a criminal case to waive their right to a jury trial and have the judge decide their fate.

Americans likewise recognize the effect biased juries have on case outcomes. The attorney general ignoring the public perception of Lady Justice peaking from behind her blindfold will further erode respect for the judicial system and likely prompt future jurors to convert the trial process to a payback system — convicting the innocent or acquitting the guilty in a misguided attempt to right the scales of justice.

What Courts and Congress Should Do

The courts and Congress can and should respond. When faced with discretionary venue changes for “convenience,” courts should weigh more the “convenience” of the defendants and “the interest of justice.” When a question of mandatory transfers based on “great prejudice” arises, the courts should stop pretending our partisan divide is passable based on jurors’ promises.

Congress has several options too. While it has authorized the Supreme Court to promulgate rules governing federal criminal procedures, it retains the power to enact its own rules. At a minimum, in high-profile criminal cases, Congress should grant both the prosecution and the defense more “peremptory challenges” — challenges to members of the jury pool that can be used for any reason (except invidious discrimination). This will eliminate some of the most concerning situations.

For instance, in Durham’s trial against Hillary Clinton’s former lawyer, Sussmann, the federal judge rejected several of Durham’s “for-cause” challenges against jurors who had contributed to the Clinton campaign. When for-cause challenges fail, attorneys must rely on a limited number of peremptory challenges, six for the special counsel’s legal team and 10 for Sussmann. Expanding the number of peremptory challenges would allow for the removal of more potentially prejudiced jurors, and without a venue change, this represents the best mechanism for ensuring an unbiased jury.

More significantly, though, Congress should amend the venue rules to give defendants a better opportunity to relocate highly politicized cases to less partisan locales. While the courts already have that power, they have proved themselves too parsimonious to date.

But what about when partisanship prejudices the prosecution? Here, the Sixth Amendment places limits on venue, providing that in “all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law…”

In other words, while a defendant may consent to a change of venue, he can also demand a trial in “the State and district wherein the crime” was committed.

However, the Constitution also gives Congress the authority to “ascertain” the districts. To counter the overwhelmingly parochial D.C. populace, redrawing the borders of the district to limit venue there to the physical Capitol buildings, and then have the rest of D.C. subsumed by the surrounding districts in Virginia and Maryland, would ensure a broader jury pool.

Only so much can be done, however, to ensure juries don’t supplant the rule of law with their political passions, acquitting the guilty because they prefer the defendant’s politics to the prosecutor’s. But that’s the reality that comes from a constitutional system that protects individual rights against government abuse and believes “that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

That’s a good thing, especially as the current DOJ frames pro-lifers and parents as domestic terrorists. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing to remind Americans that juries may not convict because of strongly held political passions rather than actual innocence. Nor is it a bad thing to push Congress to ensure the venue statutes counter bias to the largest extent possible.

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.

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

Black Lives Matter Activists Executed A Shocking $83 Billion Shakedown Of American Corporations

BY: CLAREMONT INSTITUTE CENTER FOR THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE | MARCH 24, 2023

Black Lives Matter Protest Times Square New York City June 7 2020 — Our database tracking contributions and pledges made to the BLM movement shows a historic transfer of wealth to divisive leftwing causes.

CLAREMONT INSTITUTE CENTER FOR THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots of 2020 were the largest and most successful shakedown in American history. These “mostly peaceful protests” — which burned more than 200 American cities and wreaked more than $2 billion in damages — achieved more than anyone could have predicted: changes in laws, private sector policies, and perhaps most importantly, a historic transfer of wealth to racial and leftwing causes. As a result, American corporations gave or pledged more than $83 billion to either BLM or BLM-related causes.

We created a database tracking contributions and pledges made to the BLM movement and related causes, which we define as organizations and initiatives that advance one or more aspects of BLM’s agenda, and which were made in the wake of the BLM riots of 2020. To date, our data spans more than 400 companies and $83 billion in pledges and contributions.

The famed consulting firm McKinsey and Company thinks the number is far larger. They calculated that from May 2020 to October 2022 companies pledged about $340 billion “to racial equity, specifically for Black Americans after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.” Our number is conservative by comparison. But unlike McKinsey, we provide details about the pledges and contributions of specific companies.

We are surprised at some of the incredulity in our calculations. So too is BLM, which suggests that objections to wealth transfers of this scale are rooted in “white supremacy,” and “a pathology that Black organizations don’t deserve to be funded.”

BLM called for reparations. In a sense, they succeeded, as these reparations were paid out to BLM itself (approximately $122 million) and to its vast NGO archipelago and other racialized causes and schemes under various names.

While the money was given or pledged in different ways, it was unmistakable for so-called “racial justice.” Sometimes this meant cash transfers to partners of BLM, like the Color of Change, the NAACP, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the ACLU.

Sometimes it meant cash or pledges to other “reparative” initiatives including race-based, discriminatory hiring programs; race-based, sub-prime lending; race-based scholarships; and partisan voter initiatives. Sometimes it meant Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which are the polite versions of BLM calibrated to middle-class, middle-management tastes. The DEI ideology disagrees with BLM in few ways, if any.

DEI and BLM share one mission: to punish white America, through different means. The latter through riots and pressure campaigns, the former through preferential hiring and promotion of members of protected groups. Both aim to redistribute honor, privileges, and money to black Americans. Both are extorting special privileges and money by using white guilt.

Moreover, both are attempting to do so by cultural revolution, and both stand openly against meritocracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and individual rights. Correctly understood, DEI is an expression of BLM’s broader agenda.

We already know the exorbitant amount of money given or pledged by large banks like JPMorgan ($30 billion), Bank of America ($18 billion), and Silicon Valley Bank ($70 million) in the wake of the 2020 BLM riots to subsidized and sub-prime race-based lending, race-based investment targeting, supply chain diversity initiatives, and nonprofits advancing racial justice.

But BLM was so effective that even seemingly middle-America companies shelled out big. For example, Cargill, the Minnesota-based food producer, launched its “Black Farmer Equity Initiative,” a redistributive program that attributes declining numbers of black farmers to “the legacy of systemic racism” and seeks to “dismantle Anti-Black racism” and “operationalize equity across the food and agriculture system.” Cargill pledged $11 billion to the initiative through 2030.

Kroger, a ubiquitous neighborhood grocery chain, spent at least $13 million to advance racial division, including $5 million toward its “Framework for Action: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” initiative and a $500,000 contribution to LISC’s Black Economic Development Fund, a discriminatory investment fund that promotes BLM. Kroger also partnered with the discriminatory, race-based hiring platform OneTen, which aims to “hire, promote, and advance one million Black individuals who do not have a four-year degree into family-sustaining careers over the next ten years.”

Caterpillar, the producer of heavy equipment, donated $500,000 each to the NAACP and the Equal Justice Initiative. It too partnered with OneTen. John Deere donated $1 million to the NAACP, again, an official partner of BLM.

Defense contractors, traditionally neutral and dedicated to keeping America safe, also submitted to BLM’s demands. Northrop Grumman donated $1 million to the NAACP and an additional $1 million to organizations promoting social justice as part of an employee charitable gift matching program. It also partnered with OneTen.

Raytheon pledged $25 million over five years to “advance racial justice, empowerment, and career readiness in underserved communities.” The commitment includes donations to the NAACP, Equal Justice Initiative, and National Urban League; community outreach; public policy lobbying; and a supplier diversity initiative.

Boeing pledged a minimum of $25 million by 2023 toward racial “equity” and “social justice.” In 2020, it contributed $15.6 million to organizations addressing “racial inequity,” including $1 million to the Equal Justice Initiative.

The list goes on, and should be further explored by journalists in order to understand the full extent of the shakedown. By caving to BLM, American companies not only became the tools of radicals but also laid the groundwork for future violence and extortion.

The Center for the American Way of Life is a branch of The Claremont Institute. The mission of The Claremont Institute is to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.

Category:

Crime, Political

Tagged with:

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Blocks Jan. 6 Committee

By Jack Davis October 27, 2022

Efforts by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion to examine phone records of the Arizona Republican Party chairwoman have been stymied by a member of the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal wing.

Justice Elena Kagan on Wednesday temporarily blocked the panel from accessing the phone records of Dr. Kelli Ward and her husband, Mark Ward, according to The Hill.

Kagan’s order was terse, saying, “Upon consideration of the application of counsel for the applicants, it is ordered that the October 22, 2022 order of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, case No. 22-16473, is hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.

“Likewise, respondent T-Mobile USA, Inc. is temporarily enjoined from releasing the records requested by the House Select Committee pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court.

“It is further ordered that a response to the application be filed on or before Friday, October 28, 2022, by 5 p.m. (EDT).”

Kagan was involved because she is the justice assigned to handle emergency requests from Arizona.

The Wards had sued to block access to their phone records. After losing their case at the district court level, they appealed, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit voted 2-1 to deny their bid to protect their records, according to CNN.

That prompted the emergency appeal to Kagan. “This is an unprecedented case with profound precedential implications for future congressional investigations and political associational rights under the First Amendment,” the Wards said in the appeal.

“In a first-of-its-kind situation, a select committee of the United States Congress, dominated by one political party, has subpoenaed the personal telephone and text message records of a state chair of the rival political party relating to one of the most contentious political events in American history—the 2020 election and the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021.”

The appeal painted the case as potentially setting a dire precedent.

“If Dr. Ward’s telephone and text message records are disclosed, congressional investigators are going to contact every person who communicated with her during and immediately after the tumult of the 2020 election. That is not speculation, it is a certainty. There is no other reason for the Committee to seek this information,” the Wards’ filing said.

“There can be no greater chill on public participation in partisan politics than a call, visit, or subpoena, from federal investigators,” they wrote.

The appellate panel ruled against the Wards, saying the federal subpoena “is substantially related to the important government interest in investigating the causes of the January 6 attack and protecting future elections from similar threats.”

“The investigation, after all, is not about Ward’s politics; it is about her involvement in the events leading up to the January 6 attack, and it seeks to uncover those with whom she communicated in connection with those events,” Judges Barry Silverman and Eric Miller wrote in the majority opinion. “That some of the people with whom Ward communicated may be members of a political party does not establish that the subpoena is likely to reveal ‘sensitive information about [the party’s] members and supporters.’”

The two judges who formed the majority castigated the activities of the Wards, who were electors pledged to former President Donald Trump.

“Ward participated in a scheme to send spurious electoral votes to Congress, a scheme that the committee describes as ‘a key part’ of the ‘effort to overturn the election’ that culminated on Jan. 6,” the opinion said.

In her dissent, Judge Sandra Ikuta said the Wards have valid constitutional rights that were insufficiently considered.

“The communications at issue here between members of a political party about an election implicate a core associational right protected by the First Amendment,” Ikuta wrote.

“Regardless of Ward’s position regarding the 2020 election, her right to engage in discussions with her political associates remains entitled to First Amendment protection against the government’s compelled disclosure of her political affiliations,” the judge said. “We must be vigilant to protect First Amendment rights — even when raised by an individual alleged to have engaged in a nefarious ‘scheme.’”

Jack Davis

Contributor

Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

The FBI And DOJ Criminalizing Opposition to the Regime Is How the Republic Ends

BY: JOY PULLMANN | AUGUST 08, 2022

Author Joy Pullmann profile

JOY PULLMANN

VISIT ON TWITTER@JOYPULLMANN

On Thursday, Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder decided it was the time to bring the subtext of the Jan. 6 show trials and related domestic security state activities into the open.

“My guess is that by the end of this process, you’re going to see indictments involving high-level people in the White House, you’re going to see indictments against people outside the White House who were advising them with regard to the attempt to steal the election, and I think ultimately you’re probably going to see the president, former president of the United States indicted as well,” Holder told SiriusXM host Joe Madison.

Holder noted that the U.S. Department of Justice he formerly headed is working with the illegally constituted Jan. 6 Commission towards this goal. We know these entities are also working with the FBI, whose head bit his thumb at congressional oversight repeatedly in a public hearing last week.

Locking Up Opposition Politicians Is What Putin Does

An indictment of former President Donald Trump would be a breathtakingly authoritarian turn. It would amount to the U.S. security state refusing to accept “no” from America’s voters yet again. An indictment would be an unelected and unaccountable federal agency overruling voters’ two-time rejection of impeachment through their elected representatives.

This is the core danger of the administrative state: Its now open propensity to go rogue. It is apparently hellbent now on turning the United States into a banana republic.

Democrats called Donald Trump a fascist, authoritarian, and wannabe dictator for chants at his rallies of “Lock her up,” referring to his opponent Hillary Clinton. At the time, leftists pointed out that imprisoning, interrogating, investigating, and otherwise using government resources to harass and prosecute one’s political opponents was the mark of tyrannical regimes such as Vladimir Putin’s and Adolf Hitler. “Democracies don’t lock up political opponents,” the Washington Post editorial board told us in 2016.

That is still true when the ones pushing the interrogations, investigations, entrapments into committing felonies, show trials in unusual venues with no cross-examination or due process, early morning home raids, excessive detainment, and asymmetrical punishments are Democrats. Democrats are trashing republican institutions, expectations, and guarantees for political purposes, most visibly now in their Jan. 6 effort to destroy the lives of protestors largely charged with misdemeanors and to expand Spygate tactics more broadly.

Spygate Is Setting Up Field Offices In Swing States

It’s not just the de facto head of the opposition party whom powerful government agencies are putting in their sights, it’s down-ballot party leaders. The FBI has gone from using its spy resources to affect the results of presidential elections with Spygate and its Hunter Biden laptop disinformation to using its police powers to affect gubernatorial elections. And these are just the operations we know about.

In Michigan, the FBI openly meddled in the upcoming election by affecting the selection of candidates, arresting and charging the formerly leading Republican candidate for governor for misdemeanors. The FBI raided Ryan Kelley’s home while polls showed him leading the primaries. In the primary election last week, he came in fourth.

The Jan. 6 Committee is now demanding documents and interviews with Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor Doug Mastriano, who attended the Jan. 6, 2021 rally. The sole allegation against him is that he walked past “police lines,” which could mean anything, as the scene was chaotic and police were woefully understaffed.

This means Mastriano is being targeted for peacefully exercising his rights to free speech and public assembly. The Jan. 6 Committee won’t allow him to record their planned interrogation, a basic feature of legal self-defense and impartial justice. In fact, selectively excerpted video clips and quotes from these secret interrogations have been a constant feature of the commission, further reinforcing its use as a political weapon against the right rather than a pursuit of justice.

Of the 120,000 people the FBI alleges were present on Jan. 6, 2021 — perhaps 1 percent of whom entered the Capitol building — the vast majority were garden-variety Trump supporters, which include numerous state and local officials. State and local lawmakers are a party’s farm team. Subjecting them to investigation for peacefully protesting is a way to kneecap their entire party.

Weeks before the 2020 election, the FBI announced it had foiled an alleged plot to kidnap the Michigan governor.

But now, in 2022, the story is VERY different. What happened, who authorized this operation, and is this typical of the DOJ's domestic terrorism unit?

🧵
— Rep. Dan Bishop (@RepDanBishop) July 28, 2022

Asymmetric Justice Is Injustice

Put all of this against the systematic refusal of Democrat DAs, judges, and juries to prosecute people who openly engage in political violence from the left. In 2020, leftist rioters who coordinated across state lines and in far greater numbers and criminal activity than Jan. 6 attendees firebombed federal buildings, murdered people, looted, burned down downtowns, and assaulted police officers. Of course, essentially nobody involved in perpetrating the Spygate setup of an American president has been brought to justice, most recently including Michael Sussmann.

This summer, a leftist group has allegedly attacked two dozen pro-life maternal care centers in multiple states and a congressional office and promises to continue, but Wray couldn’t provide almost any information on alleged FBI investigations into it. Despite an assassination attempt on one Supreme Court justice this summer, the DOJ has still not filed charges against the people harassing and threatening justices and their families at their homes. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland failed for weeks on end to enforce laws against such harassment of justices, creating the conditions for the aggression to intensify.

This is unacceptable, and Wray and Garland should be fired. They won’t be, though, and that’s the problem.

The @FBI is too busy hunting down every grandma and goofball who trespassed and took selfies on January 6th.

And too busy harassing Loudoun County parents who dared to speak up at public school board meetings.

After “solving” @BubbaWallace’s “noose.”

So wait in line, Justices. https://t.co/OlxwNCMyKy
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 5, 2022

Amplifying pre-existing double standards of justice is far beyond troubling, it’s a destruction of the justice system. A country that harshly prosecutes people or lets them off Scot-free based on their political affiliation is a banana republic.

A two-tier justice system is not a justice system. It is a totalitarian system. Its purpose is not justice but population control. The more people see that moving into place, the more likely it is that some guy gets raided by the FBI for political reasons one morning and — God forbid — goes postal because he has no hope for a fair trial after they take him in.

Certainly even more ordinary Americans are realizing through all of this that the entire federal deck is prejudiced against them. Desperation makes people do wild things. Whatever happens, Republicans can be sure it will be wrapped around their necks with ropes of lies to further subjugate them and everyone who votes for them with the further erasure of our constitutional rights and way of life.

Equality Under the Law Is the Nonviolent Way Out

Remember, 75 million people voted for Trump in 2020. This isn’t some fringe Davidian cult, it’s half of the nation’s voters. Democrats are scaring them, for good reason. And Republicans are doing jack nothing to calm things down.

We’re watching federal agencies use their powers not to catch criminals but to criminalize peaceful political views and actions. We’re witnessing a growing campaign to lock people up for their opposition to the ruling political party, which is not only profoundly un-American but profoundly dangerous societally. This is the prosecution of a political cold civil war that could very easily heat up again in another January 6-like outburst, or worse.

As Mike Anton writes, Democrats may want that. But do Republicans? Any who thinks he might after what we’ve been through in the past seven years is either fool or quisling.

If Republicans think this is all going to blow over just because they haul in the FBI director for another no-consequences hearing, or even if they promise yet another goes-nowhere, punishes-nobody investigation of agencies we know are meddling in elections, framing elected officials, and telling elected members of Congress what to do instead of the reverse, they’re idiots. Their only hope of averting even worse political circumstances is to make damned sure they kneecap these scary federal agencies as their top priority ASAP.

We aren’t in business-as-usual Kansas anymore, Toto. We’re in crisis times that call for serious leadership, not LARPing as leaders on screens.

Sending billions to Ukraine while China grows stronger and every domestic sector is on fire isn’t serious. Lambasting Joe Biden for inflation while not pledging to pass the policies that reverse it, starting with slashing the federal government’s spending, isn’t serious. Yelling at the FBI director Republicans helped confirm isn’t serious (get better vetting staff, folks). Confirming a Supreme Court justice who obviously hates the Constitution isn’t serious. Not going on a crusade to clean out the FBI and DOJ Agean-stables-style isn’t serious. And pretending the Jan. 6 commission is anything but a miscarriage of justice is disqualifying.

We need the GOP to provide serious leadership, because Democrats are a serious threat to equal justice for all, and that’s going to destroy the country for good if it’s not stopped post-haste. Americans desperately need swift and prudent action to avert even more unthinkably dangerous events. Those who refuse to plan and take that action despite accepting from voters the responsibility to do so will be infamous to history as cowards and traitors.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “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. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

Category:

Law, Political

Tagged with:

Today’s THREE Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Executive Rewrite

A.F. BRANCO on April 9, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-executive-rewrite/

By Biden’s own words “no amendment to the constitution is absolute”. In other words not safe.

Donations/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 Cartoon – Weighing the Options

A.F. BRANCO on April 11, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-weighing-the-options/

The Chauvin Jury may be more worried about the after-effects of the verdict than justice.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Unibomber

A.F. BRANCO on April 12, 2021 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-unibomber/

According to Biden, no amendment is absolute. What about women’s right to vote? Abolition of Slavery?

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

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

New Cache of 339 Emails Shows Fusion GPS Emailing Anti-Trump Intel Directly to Obama’s DOJ: Report

Reported By Benjamin Arie | Published May 2, 2019 at 3:55pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/new-cache-339-emails-shows-fusion-gps-emailing-anti-trump-intel-directly-obamas-doj/

It’s no secret that liberals across the country have tried desperately to stop Donald Trump since he became a candidate, but their efforts to undermine him may now be coming back at themselves like a boomerang.

A scandal which began before the 2016 election was even held has just exploded, at least if a bombshell report from the watchdog group Judicial Watch is accurate. The organization has been diligently unraveling the facts around Fusion GPS, and what they recently found is jaw-dropping.

Fusion GPS, of course, is the “opposition research” firm which was contracted by the DNC to dig up dirt on Trump in the run-up to the election. The company is linked to the infamous dossier containing scandalous — and thoroughly debunked — claims about the president, but the controversy is much wider than just those papers.

It now appears that someone working for Fusion GPS was purposely and frequently collaborating with a deputy attorney general within the Obama administration, sending anti-Trump material in a way that was certainly unethical if not completely illegal.

The Obama-era official is Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, and the anti-Trump figure working for Fusion GPS was his wife.

“[A] series of ‘Hi Honey’ emails from Nellie Ohr to her high-ranking federal prosecutor husband and his colleagues raise the prospect that Hillary Clinton-funded opposition research was being funneled into the Justice Department during the 2016 election through a back-door marital channel,” explained veteran investigative journalist John Solomon for The Hill.

“Ohr has admitted to Congress that, during the 2016 presidential election, she worked for Fusion GPS — the firm hired by Democratic nominee Clinton and the Democratic National Committee to perform political opposition research,” the journalist said.

That kind of research is often used by political campaigns against their opponents, and is not by itself off limits. But Judicial Watch uncovered 339 emails which reveal that Nellie Ohr likely crossed the line by using her marriage as a political tool, and sending pages of anti-Trump research directly to official Department of Justice email accounts.

“They clearly show that Ohr sent reams of open-source intelligence to her husband, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, and on some occasions to at least three DOJ prosecutors: Lisa Holtyn, Ivana Nizich and Joseph Wheatley,” Solomon said.

“Such overt political content flowing into the email accounts of a DOJ charged with the nonpartisan mission of prosecuting crimes is jarring enough. It raises additional questions about potential conflicts of interest when it is being injected by a spouse working as a Democratic contractor trying to defeat Trump,” he continued.

But the scandal is deeper than just emails. Nellie and Bruce Ohr apparently had key roles in pushing the debunked Trump dossier and the false narrative that the future president was colluding with Russia.

“For instance, just 24 days after the anti-Trump screed was emailed, both Ohrs met in Washington with British intelligence operative Christopher Steele,” Solomon said. “She said she learned that Steele had concerns that he hoped the DOJ or FBI would investigate, with help from her husband.”

And that appears to be exactly what happened.

“The next day, Bruce Ohr used his official DOJ position to go to then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe with Steele’s allegations (later to become known as the Steele dossier), and the bureau opened its first investigation into Russia collusion,” he said.

There are obvious parallels to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two FBI officials who were also having an affair all while texting back and forth about how Trump should be stopped. More and more, it looks like partisan politics and anti-Trump collaboration was widespread within agencies which are supposed to be unbiased.

That is the real scandal here: Not that liberals tried to uncover dirt on a candidate, but that official government personnel within our own government eagerly participated in the partisan witch hunt.

It looks like there was collusion, but not by Trump.

Instead, the real collusion took place between Obama-era government officials and activists who saw nothing as off limits in order to install Hillary Clinton as president — and that should alarm every American, no matter their party.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Benjamin Arie

Summary

Nadler Announces House Committee Investigation Underway After Mueller Report Shows No Collusion

Reported By Jack Davis | Published March 25, 2019 at 7:38pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/nadler-announces-house-committee-investigation-underway-mueller-report-shows-no-collusion/

House Democrats are not letting the conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report impede them from further investigations of President Donald Trump. “We’re going to move forward with our investigations of obstruction of justice, abuses of power, corruption, to defend the rule of law, which is our job,” House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said Sunday, according to Bloomberg.

Nadler insisted his wide-ranging probe, which he has already begun, is not a rehash of the Mueller report.

“It’s a broader mandate than the special prosecutor had,” he said.

Mueller was initially charged with investigating allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in 2016. As noted by Attorney General William Barr in a note to Congress, those allegations have been proven false.

“The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 US Presidential Election,” Barr said in a letter to Congress.

But Nadler is now digging into the gray area in the Mueller report — whether Trump obstructed justice.

Barr’s letter said the report “leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”

Nadler said that he wants to put Barr in the hot seat to determine how Barr decided not to pursue an obstruction case against Trump.

“Attorney General Barr, who auditioned for his role with a memo saying that it was almost impossible for any president to commit obstruction, made a decision in under 48 hours,” Nadler said Sunday, according to CBS.

He referenced a 2018 memo Barr wrote that said “Mueller’s obstruction theory is fatally misconceived” and based “on a novel and insupportable reading of the law.”

Mueller said Barr needs to better explain himself.

“Given what Barr found on obstruction of justice, I think all of us should be very concerned about the even-handedness,” Nadler said Monday. “The American public needs to know how exactly did he conclude there is no obstruction of justice.”

Nadler issued a statement co-authored with fellow Democrats House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California and House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings of Maryland that gave Barr a zinger for not charging Trump.

“It is unacceptable that, after Special Counsel Mueller spent 22 months meticulously uncovering this evidence, Attorney General Barr made a decision not to charge the President in under 48 hours. The Attorney General did so without even interviewing the President. His unsolicited, open memorandum to the Department of Justice, suggesting that the obstruction investigation was ‘fatally misconceived,’ calls into question his objectivity on this point in particular,”the statement said.

The three Democrats maligned Barr’s impartiality.

“The only information the Congress and the American people have received regarding this investigation is the Attorney General’s own work product,” the chairmen said.

“The Special Counsel’s Report should be allowed to speak for itself, and Congress must have the opportunity to evaluate the underlying evidence,” the statement said.

It is unclear yet whether the full Mueller report will ever be released. Both Trump and his Democratic critics, however, have said it should be released in full.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jack Davis

Contributor, News

Summary

Violence Escalates, Another Pro-Life Woman Physically Attacked After Engaging in Civil Debate

Reported By Savannah Pointer | October 10, 2018 at 4:00pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/violence-escalates-pro-life-woman-attacked/

For the second time in as many days, an altercation between pro-life and abortion rights protesters ended in violence directed against the pro-life demonstrators. video uploaded by Toronto Against Abortion starts with what appears to be a civil conversation that took place Oct. 1 between two people from opposing sides of the issue. It was interrupted by someone physically attacking one the pro-life demonstrators. The video appears to consist of footage from several cameras that the pro-life demonstrators were wearing.”

See video footage here:

The attack, which appeared to be originally targeting the pro-life speaker heard on camera, eventually was carried out on a woman beside him, identified as Katie Somers by Life News, who retreated quickly.

“Blaise Alleyne, one of the pro-life team members, said they were engaged in civil discussion with several of the counter-protesters when one of them, allegedly Gabby Skwarko, became hostile,” Life News reported.

The attacker, a young woman, threw things, shoved, hit, grabbed and even wrenched away part of the victim’s items attached to their backpack.

“She chased after me, grabbed my full, stainless steel water bottle and smashed it on the ground, then grabbed my backpack, yanking me back and forth,” Somers told Life News. “I yelled, ‘Get away from me!’ And she came after me and shoved me.”

Other protesters on the street stepped in and blocked the attacker from continuing to act out her rage, but not before the suspect made contact with the victim several times. After noticing that she was being videotaped, the attacker came up to the person with the camera, shoving her chest out in a threatening manner, asking if she was being filmed.

“She then moved on to Blaise, bumping him in the chest with hers and saying, ‘Let’s go, are you filming me? Let’s do this!’” said Somers.

The attacker also threw a metal dolly at a group of pro-lifers, which according to Somers, suggested that she intended harm to others.

“The possibility of self defense was gone for me the moment she used the metal cart as a weapon,” Somers told LifeNews. “At that point I was terrified of having my teeth broken, being concussed, or worse, and my priority was to get away and to safety.”

Skwarko is reportedly a member of the Ryerson Reproductive Justice Collective and a former faculty of arts director at the Ryerson Students Union. This was the second incident of a similar nature to take place in the Toronto area in as many days.

The Conservative Tribune reported on an incident that took place Sept. 30 where another abortion rights advocate roundhouse kicked a pro-life advocate while in the middle of a discussion about abortion.

“According to a police news release, Jordan Hunt, 26, of Toronto, surrendered to police shortly after a video of him kicking a pro-life protester was posted online,” the Conservative Tribune reported.

The kick, which seemed unexpected due to the conversation surrounding it, appeared to be in response to a question that Hunt couldn’t answer.

After kicking the pro-life advocate, Hunt seemed to immediately regret his decision, saying, “I meant to kick your phone.”

Hunt was charged with eight counts of assault and seven counts of mischief. It was the second time he had been charged with assaulting someone at a political rally in the past year.

He has been ordered to stay at least 500 meters away from any “organized pro-life demonstration,” according to LifeSite News.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Savannah Pointer

Contributor, News

Savannah Pointer is a constitutional originalist whose main goal is to keep the wool from being pulled over your eyes. She believes that the liberal agenda will always depend on Americans being uneducated and easy to manipulate. Her mission is to present the news in a straightforward yet engaging manner.

@SavannahPoint

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

DOJ’s Pete Kadzik Has Been Colluding With the Clinton’s and It’s ALL EXPOSED Here

Category:

Political

Tagged with:

Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

Posts tagged ‘justice’

By: Jonathan Turley | July 22, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 17, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | January 14, 2025

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | November 25, 2024

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | October 11, 2024

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 6, 2024

Share this:

By: Jonathan Turley | June 3, 2024

Share this:

Jonathan Turley | March 10, 2024

Share this:

BY: ADAM JOHNSON | OCTOBER 02, 2023

Adam Johnson is 38-year-old father of five. He spends his time training jiu-jitsu and is currently writing his first book while pursuing higher education. You can follow him @lecternleader on X.

Share this:

BY: JORDAN BOYD | JULY 19, 2023

Sanctimonious Scrambling

No Such Thing As ‘False Electors’

Share this:

By Fran Beyer | Monday, 03 July 2023 02:33 PM EDT

Share this:

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | MAY 22, 2023

D.C. Jury Pool Is Biased

What Courts and Congress Should Do

Share this:

BY: CLAREMONT INSTITUTE CENTER FOR THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE | MARCH 24, 2023

The Center for the American Way of Life is a branch of The Claremont Institute. The mission of The Claremont Institute is to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.

Share this:

By Jack Davis October 27, 2022

Share this:

BY: JOY PULLMANN | AUGUST 08, 2022

Locking Up Opposition Politicians Is What Putin Does

Spygate Is Setting Up Field Offices In Swing States

Asymmetric Justice Is Injustice

Equality Under the Law Is the Nonviolent Way Out

Share this:

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Executive Rewrite

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Weighing the Options

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Unibomber

Share this:

Reported By Benjamin Arie | Published May 2, 2019 at 3:55pm

Share this:

Reported By Jack Davis | Published March 25, 2019 at 7:38pm

Share this:

Reported By Savannah Pointer | October 10, 2018 at 4:00pm

Share this:

Share this:

Justice is “Blind-ed”

Posted on April 15, 2014

Read more at http://conservativebyte.com/2014/04/justice-blind-ed/#Fitkq30BlB3piDdm.99

Share this:

In His Service

Email Subscription

Recent Posts

Family

NEWS

Opinion

Personal

Political

Spiritual

Archives

Spam Blocked

Tag Cloud

*Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “**The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage*.”