President Trump vs the Deep State


Introduction by The Editor:
Donald Trump is a political outsider, starting his political career at the top.  One of President Trump's biggest obstacles is the Washington Establishment, also known as the Deep State.  These are the career bureaucrats, especially those in the Pentagon and the three-letter spy agencies who are quite comfortable with the way Washington works and don't want anyone to rock the boat, to say nothing of draining the swamp.

Related pages:

Obstructionism
The numerous traps and stink bombs Obama left for Trum




Background, overview and recap articles:

(Scroll down for timely news, or click here.)


The Deep State Exposed Itself.  The Deep State promised that Trump would crash the economy and impetuously start wars.  Instead, he stopped wars, reduced the cost of energy, and expanded middle-class opportunities.  The Deep State insisted that he had "colluded" with Russia.  In reality, Hillary Clinton's campaign and Barack Obama's espionage chiefs invented the Russia Hoax in order to illegally spy on Trump and pressure him into leaving office.  The Deep State claimed that Trump engaged in an illicit quid-pro-quo arrangement with Ukraine in order to get political "dirt" on Biden.  In truth, he exposed both Biden's and other Deep State players' financial corruption with foreign regimes.  The Deep State says President Trump must go to prison for leaving office with classified documents (even though the president possesses inherent classification authority) but that Jim Comey, Hillary Clinton, Mike Pence, Joe Biden, and countless other Establishment offenders should be excused for unlawfully possessing classified documents of their own.  The Deep State says that it was perfectly fine for Barack Obama to use drone strikes to murder U.S. citizens without any form of due process and to deliver political speeches that encouraged violence against police officers (and resulted in a number of targeted assassinations during his presidency).  At the same time, the Deep State claims that President Trump's January 6, 2021 speech questioning the 2020 election's legitimacy in the wake of rampant mail-in ballot fraud was an act of "treason" deserving of the death penalty.  For eight years now, the Deep State's two-tiered "justice," overt propaganda, and malicious political targeting have been too conspicuous for rational people to ignore.

Gitmo's Unsolved Deaths.  If street thug prosecutors manage to railroad President Trump to prison, could he be Epsteined?  Many Americans would be shocked to know that the government has previously covered up horrible prison deaths with outrageous lies.  One of the most notorious incidents happened at a secret CIA facility located just outside the perimeter of Guantanamo. [...] The incidents at Guantanamo starkly reveal how easy it is for the Deep State to conceal crimes of murder.  Instead of being forthright, they spew out nonsense with impunity.  The big question is whether Trump needs to fear being their next victim.

The Invisible Power Controlling the US Government.  Inverted totalitarianism does not have an authoritarian leader, but instead is run by a non-transparent group of bureaucrats.  This unelected, invisible ruling class runs the country from within.  They are easily influenced by corporate interests due to both the lure of powerful jobs after federal employment and the capture of our legislative bodies by the lobbyists serving concealed corporate interests.  One element of inverted totalitarianism is that the administrative state typically inserts stricter and stricter rules and regulations to control the populace.  Not at the behest of Congress or the President, but rather by and for the interests of the administrative state itself.  Power begets power.  We the people are forced into compliance by an unknown and unknowable invisible ruling class, with no way to even understand who, what, or how they are forcing this compliance upon us.  As if that is not bad enough, in these modern times, the globalist corporations and financial groups have come to play a larger and larger role in controlling this administrative state.

The Silent Coup.  Many historians and folks who just read the newspaper every morning and watch the news at night felt that something quite different and very odd was occurring.  Where were all the leaks coming from?  Why all the Russia Russia Russia talk?  What was all this 25th Amendment talk about?  Why was there immediate talk of impeachment?  What was with the quick firing of Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn by Vice President Mike Pence?  Why did the progressive liberal media obviously show that they had a favorite?  Why the criminality in the 2020 election?  Why the Jan. 6 roundup of citizens who only wanted free and fair elections?  Now it is clear for all to see, the Deep State was running a coup against Donald Trump.  A coup against candidate Trump.  A coup against President-elect Trump.  And a coup against President Trump while in office.  The Deep State, including the Fourth Branch of government (the intelligence apparatus), went after Trump from the moment he came down the escalators.  Not a military coup that we once thought of from a banana republic.  No rifle fire, hand grenades, nor mortar launchers.  But a soft and silent, yet deadly coup done by people with suits and ties and dresses and skirts in law firms and excutive offices.

Trump uncovered a spirit of racketeering running the country.  When I look at the last four years and how our country seemed to get more divided than any time since the Civil War, it's easy to conclude that President Trump is the reason it occurred.  From the moment he declared war on the corruption in D.C., he became a target of all those entrenched power brokers who have been able to hide their venal activities from an unsuspecting public.  Trump became the loudest whistleblower in history when he talked about draining the swamp that had been operating like an organized crime family for generations.  In order for a Mafia-like mob to operate effectively, it must keep its nefarious pursuits from public exposure.  Hence, President Trump had to be destroyed!

The Insect Politicians of the Administrative State.  The United States Civil Service, sometimes called the "administrative state" or "deep state," is supposed to be professional.  It ought to be apolitical, like an ant colony or beehive, serving a queen, the sovereign people, as they express themselves, under law, through their representatives in the elected offices.  Whether the designers of the modern progressive civil service intended it to be apolitical is an open question.  Even if it were so designed, civil servants are not and cannot be ants or bees.  They are people.  Without robust mechanisms — prompt dismissals, firings, and swift and unfeelingly severe sanctions for misconduct — to enforce the political will of the sovereign people, they are bound to express a political will of their own.  They will become insect politicians.

Federalist Co-Founder Notes The Real Reason Behind The Media's Trump-Ukraine Obsession.  Since the 2016 election, the media has just been engulfed with Trump Derangement Syndrome.  They hate Trump.  They hate Republicans.  And this has blinded them to being hit with buckshot on a near-daily basis.  For two years, they peddled the Trump-Russia collusion myth that was a manufactured lie based on the infamous Steele Dossier, aka Trump dossier, that was compiled by ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele.  It was never fully verified, most of the allegations in it were trash, and even members of British intelligence were skeptical.  The FBI was not, as evidenced by their lack of due diligence in verifying this biased piece of political propaganda.  A Google search could have pointed out the glaring errors within the dossier.  This was a political opposition research project funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democrats.  It was based on second-hand sources, some of which were still active in the Kremlin.  If anything, this proves Clinton-Russia collusion and interference in the 2016 election.  The report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller debunked this entire project.  So, the Democrats had to suffer humiliation, as did their media allies — but impeachment was still the end goal.  It was why they retook the House in 2018.

Lets Call the Russian Collusion "Hoax" What it Really is.  Euphemism, the counterfeit of good manners, is the enemy of truth, which is the only ally worth having.  I have been thinking about this constellation of ideas recently as the news has been full of talk about the "Russian collusion hoax."  Use of the term "hoax" got a big boost in the aftermath of the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on the question of whether there was actionable cooperation, coordination, or collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.  Two years, $34 million, and a wide swath of debilitating rumor, innuendo, and unrelated indictments and prosecutions later and we know that the answer to that question is "No, there was no cooperation, coordination, or collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin." [...] But thinking about it, I conclude that the term "hoax" is wholly inadequate to describe the enormity of the political scandal that was perpetrated against Donald Trump, against the office of the president, and ultimately against the American people.

Sally Yates -vs- Michael Flynn.  After the November 8th, 2016, election everyone within the Obama network associated with the Trump surveillance operation was at risk.  This is the impetus for the "Muh Russia" collusion-conspiracy narrative that was used as a mitigating shield.  Within a few days after the election ODNI James Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan began pushing the Russia election interference narrative in the media.  Without notifying anyone, NSA Director Mike Rogers went to Trump tower on November 18th, 2016.  Despite his compartmentalization it appears Rogers identified the NSA database abuse as the likely underpinning for some form of political surveillance.  By mid-December 2016 the Obama administration was deploying a full-court-press using their media allies to promote the Russia conspiracy.  However, despite their public proclamations Clapper and Brennan were refusing to give any specifics to congress.

USA Today Calls For Investigation Into Obama-Era Deep State Election Manipulation.  Interesting indeed!  Here is the left-leaning USA Today finally calling for an accounting of Obama-era officials, (including Mr. Obama himself) and the roles they played in what became the 2+ year-long, multi-million dollar waste of time known as the Mueller investigation that saw the U.S. intelligence agencies politically weaponized to alter the Election Day outcome.  Treason, sedition, intimidation, corruption, you name it they seemingly did it all.

Real Scandal Of Trump Term Starts To Unravel.  The most immense and dangerous public scandal in American history is finally cracking open like a ripe pomegranate.  The broad swath of the Trump-hating press that has participated in what has amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow the government are reduced to reporting the events and revelations of the scandal in which they have been complicit, in a po-faced ho-hum manner to impart to the misinformed public that this is as routine as stock market fluctuations or the burning of an American flag in Tehran.  For more than two years, the United States and the world have had two competing narratives:  that an elected president of the United States was a Russian agent whom the Kremlin helped elect; and its rival narrative that senior officials of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and other national intelligence organizations had repeatedly lied under oath, misinformed federal officials, and meddled in partisan political matters illegally and unconstitutionally and had effectively tried to influence the outcome of a presidential election, and then undo its result by falsely propagating the first narrative.  It is now obvious and indisputable that the second narrative is the correct one.

The Enemy Within.  What we learned in the wake of the 2016 Presidential election in the United States was the most shocking secret our country has ever had to come to terms with:  the US Government had become a criminal enterprise controlled by a cabal of elite insiders; "The Enemy Within".  This was decades in the making, but we were warned this day would come.  We were told in the founding fathers own words about governments turning on their people, and the people's right to 'throw off the chains of Tyranny', to President Eisenhower's famous speech warning us about the grave danger posed by a large military alliance and partnership with the private sector companies that make up the defense contractor community — what he called the Military Industrial complex.  Decades after President Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial complex, his nightmare has come to life. [...] America's rise to this National Security State was driven by the cold war, but it has become a permanent fixture for two ever present reasons:  money, and power.

Criminality Of Deep State Investigation Of Trump Confirmed — Has U.S. Become A Banana Republic?  Both the Justice Department and FBI have maintained they didn't really know that Trump Dossier compiler Christopher Steele had any bias at all against Trump.  And, even when they got their hands on Steele's unverified dossier on Trump, they claim they didn't know that Steele's employer, Fusion GPS, had any conflicts of interest.  Moreover, when they appeared before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get the OK to spy on former Trump aide Carter Page, they didn't tell the court what they knew.  They lied.  Or at the very minimum, concealed the truth.  This is a crime.  How can we be sure that top officials at Justice and the FBI knew all this?  Ohr said so.

Red Handed:  All the Collusion was in the Deep State.  Let's begin with the obvious — if President Trump's foreign policy views warranted an FBI investigation, then why didn't the bureau probe the pro-Russia stances of former American leaders such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?  Many forget that President Obama once told his Russian counterpart at the time, Vladimir Putin lackey Dmitry Medvedev, that he would have "more flexibility" after his re-election in 2012 — an ominous indication that Obama was cutting secret deals with the Russian government behind the scenes.  Remarkably, he then stood by and did nothing as Putin invaded Ukraine.  Likewise, Hillary Clinton was never investigated for her disastrous "Russia reset" in the early years of the Obama administration and received no meaningful scrutiny for the sale of Uranium One to Russia despite receiving $145 million in donations from some of the people involved in that transaction through the Clinton Foundation. [...] Then there's Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the "Gang of Eight" and a member of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, who employed a Chinese spy for 20 years.  Did the FBI treat her as a Chinese asset?  No, they went directly to her and briefed her on the problem.

Democrats: A plague on the nation.  Our once most revered institutions, the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, have been thoroughly corrupted.  Mueller, a willing participant in that corruption, is up to his eyeballs in the cover-up.  Will any of these people at the DOJ, the FBI, and the CIA, ever be held accountable?  To date, they have not been.  The power they have within the Deep State is beyond formidable; it is seemingly absolute.  It appears that America has become a sort of medieval oligarchy.  Trump, as the outsider he is, is a grave threat to all of those who believed they were in control in perpetuity.  They are ready and willing to do anything, no matter how illegal or immoral, to depose him, to expel him from office.

The War On Trump Is All About Keeping Liberals And Their Lackeys In Power.  [T]his year ends with our loser ruling class shedding any pretense of legitimacy in its quest to reclaim the power we took back from it in 2016.  The reaction to Donald Trump by our alleged betters [...] is instructive.  They have abandoned all the principles they once claimed to support — democracy, civil rights, due process, and equality.  None of those principles help them to keep or regain power anymore, so they are expendable.  As are you.  Liberalism was always a lie and a scam, right from its sordid beginnings among the progressives with their creepy messianic fervor, their infatuation with "expertise" (and hence, their embrace of evils like eugenics), and their contempt for the Constitution.  Liberals consider themselves the anointed, divinely entitled to rule over us lesser folk, and they aren't going to let anything get in the way of retaking the throne.

Are the Investigations the Cover-Up?  Those of us who have been paying attention know that serious crimes were committed at the highest levels of government in an attempt to exonerate Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump.  There was collusion between government agencies, including collusion with foreign agents, to illegally influence the 2016 Presidential election.  There is enough evidence on the table to be confident of these claims.  And those of us who care about rule of law, who want to see justice done to the criminals in this conspiracy, have been waiting for years to see that happen.  We hear that these serious matters are being investigated.  We hear that there are whistleblowers inside the government who want to come forward and expose the corruption.  We hear that there are many, many more documents which will substantiate our worst fears about one of the greatest scandals in the history of our country.  We have been assured that there are several investigations looking into the various aspect of this abuse of power.  Inspector General Michael Horowitz, prosecutor John Huber, and others are looking into the corruption.  Mueller is supposedly tasked with exposing foreign influence on the Presidential election.  But what if the 'investigations' are really the cover-up?  What if the investigations are carefully structured to protect criminal actions rather than expose them?  What if the investigations are actually being used to hide evidence from the citizenry?

The Democrats Are the Threat to Democracy.  In fact, Trump has spent the last two years having the legitimacy of his unprecedented election to the presidency challenged by unelected and unaccountable members of the U.S. intelligence community — all of whom have partisan axes to grind against Trump.  The president fired FBI Director James Comey; he helped to remove senior FBI officials, like Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page; Trump revoked the security clearances of former officials, like John Brennan, not because he was hiding something from the world.  Rather, Trump took these actions as a means of self-defense against former Obama officials masquerading as unbiased intelligence officers.  Fact is, the intelligence community — like the rest of the federal government — was weaponized by former President Barack Obama and used to punish political enemies of the Democratic Party.

Fake bombs are not bombs.  Fake news is fake news.  The American left to this day is unable to accept the results of the 2016 election.  So certain that their candidate would prevail, they have suffered a psychotic break from which they have not recovered.  Every sentient being now knows that it was Hillary, the DNC, the FBI, the DOJ, and the NSA that collaborated to prevent Trump from becoming president.  She and they fabricated the "dossier," planted spies in the Trump campaign, falsified FISA warrants, and leaked to the media.  Their plan was a Deep State coup like nothing else in U.S. history.

Spygate: The True Story of Collusion.  The sudden legitimacy of Trump's candidacy was not welcomed by the U.S. political establishment.  Here was a true political outsider who held no traditional allegiances.  He was brash and boastful, he ignored political correctness, he couldn't be bought, and he didn't care what others thought of him — he trusted himself.  Governing bodies in Britain and the European Union were also worried.  Candidate Trump was openly challenging monetary policy, regulations, and the power of special interests.  He challenged Congress.  He challenged the United Nations and the European Union.  He questioned everything.

Yes, The Deep State Is Real — And Working To Undermine Our Nation.  President Trump earlier this week said that he would release a trove of documents related to the Russia investigation and declassify their contents.  Included are 21 pages taken from a June 2017 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application used to spy on former Trump aide Carter Page.  Along with those pages, Trump also seeks release of unredacted FBI notes made during interviews conducted for the FISA application, along with text messages related to Russia and notes from FBI interviews with Bruce Ohr, the No. 4 official in the Justice Department.  Why is that key?  Ohr had close ties to former British spy Christopher Steele, who authored the so-called Trump dossier for Fusion GPS.  Steele, whose work was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and by the Clinton-controlled Democratic National Committee, served as an informant to the FBI until he was let go for leaking to the media.  But Ohr's wife, Nellie, continued to work for Fusion GPS, a fact that Bruce Ohr didn't reveal on his mandatory federal disclosure filings.

Knowing What We Know Now, We Must Remind Ourselves.  As we absorb the corrupt evidence within what the DOJ, FBI, CIA and intelligence community was willing to do to stop the Trump administration; as we absorb the totality of all methods deployed by the professional political establishment to destroy Donald J Trump; as we begin to quantify the scale of corruption within our political institutions, and continue bearing witness to the ongoing war against our the presidency; it is worthwhile revisiting a warning, a call to arms, from two-years-ago.  The lies, the severity of hatred and opposition, now make much more sense.

How Anti-Trump Leakers Moved From Offense to Defense.  RCI has found that the anti-Trump leaks fall into two broad categories, or phases.  Initially the leaking was an offensive operation aimed at disrupting Trump's agenda, especially through leaks alleging connections between his campaign and the Russians.  Its early successes included leaks of highly classified material that led to the firing of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from overseeing that probe.  The second phase — which began roughly a year into the Trump administration — has been more defensive, pushing back against congressional oversight committees that had uncovered irregularities in the FBI's investigation of Trump.  This phase has been marked by the willingness of press outlets to run stories backing off earlier reported leaks that proved to be deeply misleading — including the roots of the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign and the relationship between Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr and the opposition research firm that produced a central document of that probe, the largely discredited "Steele dossier."

The Three Hard Truths of the Trump Era.  [#3] The deep state is real.  Despite the media's obsessive and positive coverage of Robert Mueller's "collusion" investigation, and their willful shooing aside of its numerous shortcomings and inconsistencies, the truth is slowly but surely coming out.  And it appears Trump was right all along.  There can be little doubt that, given what we know now, federal agencies were harnessed to both excuse Hillary Clinton's transgressions and impede Donald Trump's Presidency.  The facts are:  [A] Partisan agents loyal to Hillary were hugely influential in both the investigation into her emails and the investigation into Trump's collusion with Russia.  [B] The FBI relied heavily on the Steele dossier, which has been largely debunked, to justify its collusion investigation.  [C]  There were numerous conflicts of interest in both investigations:  in regards to Hillary's emails, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe's wife had ties to long-time Clinton ally and former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.  In regards to Mueller's "collusion" investigation, the wife of a top DOJ official was hired by FusionGPS, the firm behind the notorious dirty dossier, specifically to investigate the President.

Mueller, Comey, and the Deep State Rescue of Sandy Berger.  [Scroll down]  Republican presidents struggle against a collective of entrenched careerists, soulless opportunists, and left-wing ideologues — the so-called "deep state."  The ideologues are in it for the power, the careerists for the pensions, and the opportunists for the applause.  Working together with their media partners, they follow the path of least resistance, which is almost inevitably to the left.  When a Democrat is president, they have his back.

You're Surrounded Mr. Mueller, Give Yourself Up.  [Scroll down]  Seamus Bruner of The Epoch Times has just put together a list of 25 DOJ and FBI officials who have resigned in the last year. [...] As I look at this list, I know it includes only a fraction of those who have risked their careers and their reputations because they simply couldn't bear to see Donald Trump in the White House.  Before this is over, others will be added to the list.  Perhaps even Rod Rosenstein.  And there will likely be former top-level Obama officials caught in the net as well.  Perjurers John Brennan and James Clapper come to mind.  In addition to the men and women who have been working against Trump in the DOJ and the FBI, there were/are employees in the State Department and the CIA, holdovers from the Obama administration, who are complicit.  The mainstream media has played a huge role in perpetuating this hoax.  They have breathlessly distorted events to influence public opinion.  Instead of reporting the news, they have worked overtime to shape it.  For an example of how the mainstream media has aided and abetted the left's attempt to impeach Trump, we need to look no further than their outrage over the revocation of John Brennan's security clearance.

Why aren't the Democrats horrified by the corruption at the FBI and DOJ?  It is becoming clearer by the day, after over a year of investigations, that the Obama administration did indeed weaponize the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, the ATF, the IRS and the NSA.  Over those eight years, each of the above agencies was transformed into an arm of the Democratic Party tasked with crippling the opposition and abrogating the Constitution.  Since all of the mainstream media already were arms of the DNC, it is well and truly a miracle that Donald Trump prevailed throughout his campaign to win the election, as the entire DC bureaucracy and media were aligned against him.  Most of them still are.

The Deep State Wears Black Robes.  Freedom Watch Founder Larry Klayman discusses the bad legal advice President Trump is getting about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia-gate probe and urges the president to hire new lawyers to go after Mueller and the Deep State.  He also declares Judge Brett Kavanaugh "uniquely unqualified and unfit" to serve on the Supreme Court because of his controversial decision in favor of Barack Hussein Obama's illegal NSA mass surveillance program, which targeted President Trump!  Klayman is proposing the use of citizen grand juries to go after the Deep State operatives who control the intelligence agencies and have "the ability to gather information to blackmail" people such as Kavanaugh to do their bidding.  [Video clip]

It's Oakland in Muellerville.  Wikipedia defines this autogleipsimous activity as "a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself."  The Mueller investigation and its attendant pseudo-pods in the media and "intelligence community" are indeed self-perpetuating.  But they exhibit a purpose that goes far beyond their own self-perpetuation.  No, in this safari, big game is the object, the end, the purpose, to wit the destruction of the president of the United States.  That is the true purpose of this charade:  not the truth about "Russian meddling," not alleged wrong doing by Paul Manafort in 2005, not a lack of candor under FBI questioning by George Papadopoulos (who?) or Michael Flynn.  The one true purpose (in addition to the welcome subsidiary effect of helping out the ratings of the MSM) is to hobble Donald Trump, a prelude to removing him from office.

Just How Far Will the Left Go?  The Obama apparat and the proverbial deep state never imagined Trump could win and thus to ensure that he would not just be defeated but humiliated, vied to use the power of government to destroy the Trump candidacy.  The National Security Council was weaponized and thus unmasked the names of surveilled Americans and leaked their names to the press to undermine the Trump campaign.  The Department of Justice was weaponized to ensure Hillary Clinton was exonerated for her misdeeds concerning her email server and quid pro quo collusion with a variety of foreign and domestic influence peddlers and buyers.  The FBI and CIA were weaponized to subvert the Trump campaign, by peddling an unverified smear dossier, paid for by Hillary Clinton, by implanting informants into the Trump campaign, and by undermining a FISA court through dishonest presentations of evidence for warrants to spy on American citizens.  All such behavior was assumed to ensure the landslide Clinton victory and thus would be seen as sacrifice beyond the call of duty to be rewarded by a President Clinton not as illegal behavior to be punished during a Trump administration.  And as a result, the more culpability that was exposed, the more the culpable went on the offensive — on the theory that constant attack is the best defense against their own criminal liability.  T

The Real Threat to American Democracy.  We know that the FBI and DOJ swept under the rug Hillary's gross negligence in handling classified information and that Bill Clinton arranged a secret meeting with Loretta Lynch while the investigation was ongoing.  The only reason we know that the meeting occurred was due to the efforts of one brave local investigative reporter.  To this day, the FBI and DOJ are waging a war on the president — nothing less than an attempt to nullify the people's vote in 2016.  Clearly, the FBI's and DOJ's malicious attacks on the president indicate that they think power belongs to the ruling elites, not the people.

Obama single-handedly ruined the FBI and the DOJ.  While the devious machinations of the Deep State are not new, it was the Obama administration, most likely Obama himself, who brought us to this low point, the wholesale corruption of the FBI and the DOJ leadership.  Obama surrounded himself with like-minded globalist elites who thought no laws applied to them:  Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, the Podestas, Ben Rhodes, Jonathan Gruber, and more.  Eric Holder was the most unprincipled attorney general, more even than John Mitchell, who served time in federal prison.  We learned from the I.G. report that Obama lied when he said he learned of HRC's private server from the media.  He knew because he, too, corresponded with her from a private email, just as Comey used a non-FBI email account.  None of these people, not one, respected our Constitution or the laws meant to govern their agencies.  This is what Obama did to America.  He virtually destroyed the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ by turning them into weapons with which to destroy his opponents.

The Deep State Is an Organism, Not a Conspiracy.  The FBI folks like Strzok, Page, McCabe, Attorney #2 and so on appear to have been an actual conspiracy (definition: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful) but they alone certainly aren't sufficient to justify people talking about a "Deep State."  But that's beside the point.  From the point of view of the Administrative State, which survives on a diet of fresh government programs and mutual backscratching, Trump's unexpected election was like a wound.  It was a danger to the organism, and the organism responded using its immune system — which is composed of "incompetence, idiocy, bureaucratic self-aggrandizement, and partisan hackery."

From 9/11 to Spygate:  The National Security Deep State.  [Scroll down]  We know some of what Mueller was doing.  The same official who paved the way for raiding the president's lawyer, who illegally seized material from the Trump transition team and whose case is based in no small part on illegal eavesdropping, fought alongside Comey against surveilling terrorists.  Materials involving the Muslim Brotherhood were purged.  Toward the dawn of the second Obama term, Mueller met with CAIR and other Islamist groups and a green curtain fell over national security.  But the surveillance wasn't going anywhere.  Instead it was being redirected to new targets.  Those targets were not, despite the wave of hysterical conspiracy theories convulsing the media, the Russians.  Mueller's boss was still quite fond of them.  Barack Obama did have foreign enemies that he wanted to spy on.  And there were plenty of domestic enemies who could be caught up in that trap.

Spygate:  The Coming Storm.  A growing segment of the American public now knows that the country's intelligence community was spying on the Trump campaign, and then attempting to sabotage the Trump Administration with false allegations of "Russian collusion."  That's #Spygate in a sentence.  A long and tawdry web composed of lies, obstruction, and leaking has slowly been unraveled until the falsehoods of the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, and other assorted deep state actors were revealed.  FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has been fired, and is counting his GoFundMe cash in preparation for large legal bills.  Former FBI Director James Comey publicly set fire to his reputation during his recent book tour.  James Clapper was hired recently on CNN to analyze all the nefarious stuff he did as the former director of national intelligence.  Last, but certainly not least, former CIA head John Brennan has had to settle for pompous raging on Twitter — which is just about the most amateur thing that an ex-spymaster can possibly do.  The erstwhile leaders of our "intelligence community" have proven to be not very intelligent at all.

Why the Mueller probe is really five scandals, not one.  [Scandal #3]  The calculated effort to undermine and discredit then-candidate and now-President Donald Trump is actually a continuation of a deep anti-Republican bias in the Justice Department.  This Justice Department tradition is well catalogued in Sidney Powell's stunning book, "Licensed to Lie:  Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice."  If you have any illusions about the Justice Department's objectivity, keep in mind that employees of this department gave 97 percent of their 2016 campaign donations to Hillary Clinton — while the department was supposedly investigating her for illegally using a private email server to send and receive classified information as secretary of state.

An Unparalleled Scandal.  The Deep State is clearly out of control.  Back when we uncovered the Clinton email scandal, Judicial Watch fought tooth and nail with the State Department, the Justice Department and the FBI for documents.  Little did we know that, even as they were protecting Hillary Clinton, these agencies were also targeting her political opponent, Donald Trump.  And, since then, we've uncovered a scandal unparalleled in American history in terms of abuse by government officials, offices, and agencies for political purposes.  The Obama administration used the Justice Department, the FBI, and other agencies to spy on its political opposition; and worked with Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, to launder suspect intelligence from foreign nationals and use that as a pretext to spy on Donald Trump and his associates.  It's an incredible story, one that begins with the Obama White House and continues in the Deep State today.

A Conspiracy of Dunces.  Imagine, if you will, a cabal of government employees expecting one person to easily win the presidential election, and then the other candidate, the one they couldn't fathom leading the country, actually wins.  Now imagine those government employees aren't slogging away in the mailrooms of various departments, but they are the upper-echelon of the nation's intelligence agencies and they resolve to cripple the newly-elected president anyway they can.  You don't have to imagine it, it happened.  And we appear to be living in the aftermath of that effort.

Attacking Trump's Attorney:  Calling All Tea Partiers.  Raiding the office of the personal attorney of the president of the United States is the most outrageous of the Deep State's unprecedented, unhinged, and relentless attempts to overturn the 2016 election.  This raid should tell everyone that the Deep State will twist and bend the law to get rid of Trump.  As stated by President Trump, the Deep State truly is engaged in a disgraceful witch hunt.  Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton are loyal Deep State operatives.  They have been stealthily transforming America into a socialist-progressive nation in which the federal government controls every aspect of our lives.  Trump is the new sheriff in town determined to crush the Washington, D.C. cartel by draining the swamp.  The Deep State is determined to block and destroy Trump at any and all cost.

The left at work:  Let's hope Trump survives.  The country is at present enduring the dire consequences of the depth and breadth of the Obama administration's many illegal activities.  Former CIA chief John Brennan surveilled American citizens, some of them senators, as Obama was pushing the horrific Iran deal, and he's never been charged with that crime.  In collusion with the Clinton campaign and the DNC, these Obama operatives used a fictional dossier to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials.  They seriously meant to prevent him from getting close to a victory.  They conspired to clear Hillary Clinton of her many crimes so she could continue her bid for the presidency.  Who are the culprits?  All upper-echelon bureaucrats who considered themselves above the law:  Comey, Holder, Lynch, Clapper, Brennan, McCabe, Rice, and Power are well known names, the public faces of Obama's administration.  Now we know there was a host of lesser known operatives working behind the scenes, as Lois Lerner did, to manipulate facts and events in order to ensure Clinton's win.  Without question, this bunch of white-collar criminals has orchestrated the biggest, most serious campaign of political corruption in American history.  One would think every member of both parties in Congress would be outraged, that every American would be equally angry.  But no.  The Democrats have all lined up to defend these felons, and the Democrats are absolutely without shame in doing so.

America Is In Utter Jeopardy.  The vicious hatred of President Donald J. Trump by people ranging from republican party statists like Paul Ryan or the retiring Jeff Flake and democrats like Chuckie Schumer is not because Mr. Trump is the most horrible person to set foot in the Oval Office.  The hatred of Trump stems from his mission to reverse the curse of putting the interests of foreign nations and illegal border-crossers over the interests of you and I, Americans born and raised.  The simple yet powerful mission to make America great again immediately became a dividing line between those of us who love this republic and appreciate her many good attributes and the others who wish for her demise.  As horrific as the situation is politically with the swamp dwelling statists who are seeking to kill, steal and destroy our unalienable rights, especially the right to bear arms and protect ourselves, family and property.  That struggle pales in comparison to the awful drumbeat of government school indoctrination that has literally caused the creation of legions of young Americans who are literally seeking to destroy the republic from within.

This trap was set well before Trump won.  So this is the new standard for electing a president here in America, the greatest living experiment in self-governance.  A man can run the gauntlet against more than 20 professional politicians and come out victorious.  He can win more than 40 Republican primary contests and beat every professional political campaigner out there, earning the votes of more than 14 million Republicans.  He can then turn his attention to beating the most powerful, entrenched political machine America has seen in nearly a half-century.  (That corrupt machine had just pulled off its most devious and dishonest scam ever — rigging a presidential primary to snatch the party's preferred Socialist candidate away from Democrat voters.)  In the end, President Trump won the presidency fair and square, earning the votes of more than 60 million Americans and — crucially — winning the 30 states he needed to take the White House.


Timely news and commentary:



The subsection about General Mark Milley is now at the bottom of this page.)


Trump blasts DOJ for unsealing evidence against him just before the election.  Former President Donald Trump blasted the Department of Justice on Tuesday, accusing the agency of "election interference" for unsealing critical evidence against him about one month before Election Day.  A federal judge unsealed a 165-page court filing Tuesday chock full of Special Counsel Jack Smith's argumentation and evidence against Trump in the ongoing election interference case.  "For 60 days prior to an election, the department of injustice is supposed to do absolutely nothing that would taint or interfere with a case," Trump wrote on TruthSocial.  "They disobeyed their own rule in favor of complete and total election interference.  I did nothing wrong, they did!  The case is a scam, just like all of the others, including the documents case, which was dismissed!"  Trump's comments Tuesday refer to the "60-day rule," the DOJ's practice of avoiding major legal announcements just before the election.  That rule was thrust into the forefront when the FBI held a press conference about Hillary Clinton's emails before the 2016 election.

Trump Slams DOJ, Jack Smith Over Unsealed Motion in Election Interference Case: 'Hit Job'.  Former President Donald Trump slammed the Department of Justice (DOJ) for unsealing a motion from Special Counsel Jack Smith regarding Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, describing it as a "hit job."  In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that the Democrat Party was "weaponizing" the DOJ against him "because they know" he is winning, pointing out that this unsealed motion came after Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Trump's vice presidential running mate, "humiliated" Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) in the vice presidential debate on Tuesday.  "Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris," Trump wrote.

Why They Hate Trump.  Donald Trump dared to challenge the political status quo.  By publicly questioning the economic and foreign policy decisions of the Establishment Class in Washington, D.C., he became an existential threat to a system that has long worked against the interests of the American people.  As David Plouffe, one of Barack Obama's closest advisers, inveighed before the 2016 presidential election: "It is not enough to beat Trump.  He must be destroyed thoroughly.  His kind must not be allowed to rise again." [...] Why is this one American's voice so threatening to the old guard?  It's simple:  President Trump is (1) a political outsider who (2) rejects the supremacy of the administrative state and (3) prioritizes Americans over foreign nationals.  It might seem strange to call Donald Trump an "outsider."  He's a billionaire.  He's famous.  He's served as president of the United States.  But for all his success, wealth, and celebrity, he is not a member of the ruling political class.

Heroes and Villains.  [Scroll down]  Just yesterday, former Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking of Mr. Trump returning to office, told MSNBC's Jen Psaki:  "They will use the mechanisms of the DOJ to go after people who are their political foes.  This is something that has never really happened in the history of this republic."  Mr. Holder may have been born at night, but probably not the night before last.  Apparently, he has not noticed the uses to which current AG Merrick Garland has put "Joe Biden's" DOJ, bending heaven, earth, and the law to put Mr. Trump behind bars and bankrupt him — not to mention the scores of Trump-adjacent lawyers prosecuted in cockamamie cases based on their efforts to pursue ballot fraud in the 2020 elections.

Trump in January.  To the Democrat Party bosses, as well, and to the Swamp, and to the globalists, Trump is a monster only because he is a real and standing threat, again, to their own long-term ambitions and vices. [...] The Democrats do not like being out of office, nor do they hand over the reins in good faith.  Look at Lincoln, Bush (see Al Gore), and of course Richard Nixon, who got away with far less than your average rogue Democrat.  Hillary Clinton took some of the White House's bespoke dinner china when she left (that was hers, right?). The Obamas were hideously ungracious to the incoming Trumps (the Obamas wouldn't even leave town, 'eva!).  Democrats are adverse to being nice, to playing fair, and to just going.

Appeals Court May Overturn or Reduce Donald Trump's Massive $478 Million Civil Fraud Judgment.  A Manhattan judge found Donald Trump guilty in February of fudging his net worth and the value of his real estate holdings to obtain favorable rates from banks and insurers.  New York Attorney General Letitia James wanted to criminalize what was a common practice in the cutthroat New York City real estate market for two reasons.  First, Trump spent ten years overstating his wealth.  Second, the trial judge did not detect any remorse or contrition from Trump or his sons who were the other defendants.  Apparently, the judge didn't like the fact that the Trumps failed to grovel.  Then there was the bonus that James is a Democrat and Trump is a Republican presidential candidate.  'Nuff said.  But the case has now reached the New York Court of Appeals.  The five-judge panel seemed skeptical of AG James's application of the particular fraud statute she used to stick it to the former president.

Another Presidential Election, Another Deep State Letter Opposing Trump.  Two weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Politico published a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officers falsely claiming that a New York Post story about the infamous Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.  The letter was organized by Antony Blinken of the Biden campaign and former CIA Director Michael Morell.  The CIA cleared it for publication.  Many Americans were outraged over this letter because it represented former intelligence officers, several with high-paid government contracts, misusing their profession to meddle in a U.S. presidential election and mislead the American public.  Undeterred by the considerable blowback generated by the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop letter, the Harris campaign has organized a similar letter against President Trump in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election that claims he is unfit to be commander-in-chief and endorses Kamala Harris.

The least shocking endorsement of them all.  The Drudge Report, the deep-state's electronic bulletin board, promoted an NYT column it ran under General Stanley McChrystal's name:  "Why Kamala Harris Has Won Me Over."  The column reflected much soul-searching and deep thinking by the the general. [...] This is a phony epiphany.  Character requires candor, which this piece lacks.  The retired general had no decision to make.  He detests Trump and would vote for Thomas Crooks if he had to. [...] Like Kamala, the general is silent on Biden making Afghanistan the only war America ever lost.  To be sure, Vietnam and Iraq were stalemates but this was an all-out surrender with America giving the Taliban American arms in tribute.  McChrystal is a political player who got cashiered because he forgot the chain of commanded and publicly dissed the commander in chief.  This made him a media darling, especially when he dissed Trump.  This also made McChrystal a sham at the end of his military career, something he carried over into civilian life.

New York court is set to hear Donald Trump's appeal of his $489 million civil fraud verdict.  A New York appeals court is set to hear arguments in Donald Trump's fight to overturn a civil fraud judgment that could disrupt his real estate empire and cost him close to a half-billion dollars.  The former president and current Republican nominee has given no indication he plans to attend Thursday's hearing in Manhattan.  Trump's lawyers are asking the state's intermediate appellate court to nullify a judge's findings that he deceived banks, insurers and others for years by lying about his wealth on paperwork used to make deals and secure loans.  They contend that Judge Arthur Engoron's verdict was "egregious" and should be reversed.

Kamalism Will Destroy America.  General Mark Milley committed treason when he told his Chinese counterpart that he would be warned of an American attack.  Before any voter fraud, the Trump administration was overthrown by bogus investigations, impeachments, never ending character assassination, and lies like those concocted by the infamous 51intelligence officers — who most probably changed the outcome of the election by their authoritative lie that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian "disinformation."  This was a coup, and Republicans should say so.  All these things are part of a concerted effort to destroy the American way of life.

The truth of the latest bomb Trump assassination scare could be darker than you imagine.  News spread like wildfire yesterday of yet another assassination attempt against Trump as explosives were allegedly found in a car near the location Trump was scheduled to speak at his Long Island rally. [...] Almost as quickly as the story spread, the media swooped in to debunk it as "misinformation." [...] Of course, it's quite possible that this incident is just a bizarre fluke.  That a random person just happened to be engaging in an innocent bomb sniffing exercise at an event where the former President, who has survived two assassination attempts, was to speak an hour later.  It's also possible that there's more to the story.  Revolver News' Darren Beattie pointed out that the feds often run drills or training exercises concurrently with suspicious or questionable events.  That way, if the bad actors are caught in the act, they have the plausible deniability of explaining their behavior as a training exercise rather than something more nefarious.

Trump Assassins:  Off-the-Books Assets?  Prior to their respective assassination attempts targeting Trump, Ryan Routh and Thomas Crooks had extraordinary proximity to U.S. Intelligence, demonstrated foreknowledge of Trump's schedule and security, and acquired skills that intelligence agencies have a history of sharing with assets.  Routh staked out Trump's golf club for twelve hours, lying in wait behind bushes to ambush him during an unscheduled game of golf.  Unfamiliar with the locale, Routh managed to give security the slip, bringing an AK-47-style rifle onto Trump's golf course.  Routh managed to give a U.S. Secret Service agent the slip again after being fired upon, losing his pursuer despite initially being only ten feet away from the agent (whose gunfire somehow missed Routh), escaping in his vehicle only to be caught later thanks to a witness who snapped a picture of his license plate.  For the second time, it was not the Secret Service, but locals who caught the gunman.

Is Obama cash underwriting Iran's election interference?  Now it is clear and substantiated by our intelligence agencies that Iran has been funneling intelligence regarding the Trump campaign to Kamala Harris.  Like so much right now, the American people are expected to swallow this outrage and 'move on,' while the Left shrieks louder that it isn't so.  Of course it is true and has been very arguably so since Obama got into office.  The absolutely tiresome ya-da-da about Russian interference again (concurrent with Hillary's return to the MSM main ticket), is what the media, in the last three election cycles, is dragging out of its moldy box of tricks.  But not Iran — the MSM will stay away from Iran, as they have thus far.  They must have got the memo.

Iran Hacked Trump Data, Sent It to Biden Campaign.  Iranian hackers in late June and early July sent what the agencies described as "unsolicited emails" to people associated with the Biden campaign.  This came weeks before Biden announced in a statement that he was suspending his reelection bid before backing Vice President Kamala Harris, his then-running mate.  The emails contained non-public information that was stolen from the Trump campaign.  The FBI and the other agencies said that Iran has tried to send the stolen Trump data since June to media organizations.  In August, the agencies said that Iran had launched a multifaceted approach to influence the U.S. election and sow discord among the American electorate.

Leftists Deserve the J6 Treatment.  Remember: illegally appointed special counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting President Trump in D.C. for exercising his constitutional right to free speech after the 2020 election.  Smith's case essentially claims that Trump was not entitled to question the legitimacy of the mail-in ballot-tainted election and that his refusal to concede to Joe Biden directly led to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  The fact that Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, are using the imprimatur of the criminal justice system as a smokescreen to railroad and possibly imprison the leader of the opposition party is bad enough.  By treating President Trump's speech as the "proximate cause" of other alleged crimes (consisting mostly of questionable trespass violations reimagined and inflated into felonies) committed by strangers, the Biden-Garland-Smith Triumvirate of Tyranny has turned every American's opinion into a potential criminal act.

Three Types of Assassination:  The Desperate Effort to Eliminate Trump.  This article is about three types of assassination.  The first, which President Trump has endured nonstop since he first entered the political arena, is character assassination.  The second is legal assassination, sometimes called "lawfare."  The term is appropriate, because it is derived from warfare.  This is the attempt to lawlessly, but under the guise of law, bankrupt, ruin, defame and even imprison a dangerous political opponent. [...] And finally, when all else fails, there is actual assassination.  These three types of assassination are connected, and typically one leads to another.

Corruption within the Secret Service and the Supreme Court.  The big news from Sunday is that Trump — thank God — survived a second assassination attempt and, just as thankfully, no one else was killed or injured.  Currently, we have no explanation for the shooter's pinpoint accuracy regarding where he'd find Trump.  What some may have missed, though, was another story yesterday in the New York Times claiming that a massive Supreme Court leak implied that Chief Justice John Roberts, a notable squish, manipulated normal procedures to save Donald Trump via the Court's immunity decision.  Both these events — the would-be assassin's weirdly precise knowledge about Trump's whereabouts and the Supreme Court's leaks — tell us that something is rotten in the state of the Deep State.

In Huge Blow to Fani Willis, Judge Drops Two Counts Against President Trump in Lawfare RICO Case.  Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee on Thursday dropped two criminal counts against President Trump in Fani Willis's lawfare RICO case.  In August 2023, corrupt Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis indicted President Trump and 18 co-defendants for daring to challenge the 2020 election.  Judge McAfee said two of the counts related to conspiracy and filing false documents are outside of Fani Willis's jurisdiction since she is a local District Attorney and not a federal prosecutor.  A total of five of the 13 charges of the original indictment have now been dropped against President Trump.  Judge McAfee dropped three of the charges earlier this year.

Beating the Cheat.  It can't actually be said that the either the Butler assassination attempt or Joe's bugout upended the 2024 campaign.  That had already largely occurred by the second week of July.  Every last effort against Donald Trump by the progressive establishment and their Deep State and bureaucratic allies had collapsed by that point.  The lawfare campaign miscarried completely, generating sympathy for Trump and anger against his tormentors.  The Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States put an end to that chapter and cleared the way for Donald Trump's next move.  Judge Aileen Cannon's dismissal of Jack Smith's demented records case is simply icing on the cake.

Trump May Not Win in Pennsylvania — Until After the Election.  Donald Trump is likely to win the most votes in Pennsylvania, but unless he leads by at least 3 percent on Election Day, it is likely that Kamala Harris will be declared the winner.  If that happens, the Republicans will have to take extraordinary steps to dispute the stolen election.  To understand the need for an extra 3 percent, we must review the serious problems of the 2020 election, which remain today.

Guess Who's Not Going to Jail Before the Election?  For some time now the Left has been salivating over the prospect that New York judge Juan Merchan would jail Donald Trump on September 18, before the election.  Reports were that a cell in Riker's was being readied for him and even that he'd be denied Secret Service protection (such as it is) while incarcerated.  Not going to happen.  The week stated off badly for Manhattan District attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor of that case, when on a hidden camera Nicholas Biase, Bragg's chief spokesman said, "Honestly, I think the case is nonsense." [...] Of course, the case contending it was felonious for the way money paid to "hush" Stormy Daniels was reported is, in fact, nonsense.  A few days later, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik filed an official ethics complaint against Judge Merchan for refusing to recuse himself despite "his family's increased financial ties" to the proceedings (His daughter has garnered millions of dollars fundraising on behalf of Kamala Harris.)

Judge in Trump Non-Disclosure and Records Case Sued for Hiding His Disclosures and Records.  How many data points must you identify before you can identify a pattern?  This is a question I've pondered about in the case of New York's Acting Judge Juan Merchan.  He is the judge presiding over the bookkeeping and non-disclosure agreement case of Donald Trump.  What happens when you hide evidence of a pattern?  Ironically — and illegally — Judge Merchan and the people at the oxymoronically-named Ethics Commission for the New York State Unified Court System have been hiding the judge's records and disclosures since 2018. America First Legal is suing both Merchan and ethics overseers for illegally hiding the judge's disclosures for the past seven years.

Jonathan Turley Says He Thinks 'Merchan Was Aware' Sentencing Trump Before Election Would Help Him Win.  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley on Friday said that Judge Juan Merchan's decision to delay former President Donald Trump's sentencing could be an effort to avoid boosting his campaign.  Merchan had scheduled Trump's sentencing for Sept. 18, but on Friday, he postponed the date to Nov. 26 "if necessary," according to his order.  Turley, on "America Reports," claimed that Merchan's rulings against Trump during his case were advantageous to his reelection bid, suggesting that maintaining the September sentencing date would have further intensified support for the former president.

President Trump Accurately Identifies the Institution at the Epicenter of Government Controlled Voter Fraud.  President Trump sends out a "cease and desist" message that absolutely nails the institutional origin of the voter fraud process as it is permitted and facilitated.  Although slightly using a coded message, within the spelling, punctuation and pertinence, the identification "DoJ" is transparently clear.  I hope everyone can see it. [...] The identification of the DoJ as the primary institutional silo that permits voter fraud is keenly accurate.  That same institutional silo has the capability to stop voter fraud by prosecuting all of the public-private officials and NGO's who participate in the process.  Main justice facilitates voter fraud through a subsidiary of secondary divisions (sub-silos) within the main institution.  The Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is a critically compromised agency and must be addressed accordingly in order to confront the weaponized bureaucracy underneath the leadership level.  This is why the Attorney General position is so critical in 2025.

No Trial Date to Be Set in DC Trump Case Until Immunity Is Sorted Out.  It.'s [sic] been a while since Special Counsel Jack Smith's legal team and that of former President Donald Trump faced off in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.  The 2020 Election case brought by Smith against Trump has been in limbo since it went up on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the presidential immunity issue.  [Advertisement]  Since the SCOTUS July 1 ruling on the scope of immunity, the parties have made various filings, and Smith has filed a superseding indictment, but Thursday marked the first day the parties were actually back before Judge Tanya Chutkan in person, a fact which Chutkan acknowledged as she greeted Trump attorney John Lauro.  [Tweet]

Jim Jordan Launches Inquiry Into Jack Smith's 'Latest Sham Indictment'.  Last week, as Mia covered, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment against former and potentially future President Donald Trump to do with January 6. Days later, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, taking issue with the "latest sham indictment" and calling Smith's move out as "Election interference." As Jordan began by reminding, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Trump v.  United States decision on July 1, which found that the office of the president has immunity from criminal prosecution.  The Court issued such an opinion "explaining the parameters of presidential immunity and rebuking Special Counsel Jack Smith for violating this Constitutional principle in his political prosecution of President Donald J. Trump," as Jordan put it.

Who Really Is Barack Obama?  A Counterintelligence Inquiry.  Trump bears a grudge against the Intelligence Community for the many leaks that spooks provided to the media during his presidency at his expense (I reported several of them).  Trump believes that there was a full-blown secret conspiracy against him perpetrated by IC leaders to smear him with imaginary connections to Moscow.  He's largely right to think that.  I spent the years of Trump's presidency discussing allegations of his clandestine links to the Kremlin in detail.  Those connections to Russian intelligence were not wholly imaginary.  From any counterintelligence perspective, Trump's dalliances with Moscow were highly concerning. [...] Trump has nothing to be proud of in this matter, but he was never a Russian spy, neither was he "installed to destroy us" per the online "Resistance" wine-mom mantra.

Jack Smith, Democrat-Lawfare Complex Hit Man.  The modern Democratic Party operates like a Mafia family.  Like the Mob, Democrats have a specific organizational hierarchy.  There are the grand bosses who sit atop the entire food chain, such as the Obamas and the Clintons.  There are the trusted consiglieres, such as Attorney General Merrick Garland and outside super-lawyer Marc Elias.  There are caporegimes, such as Govs.  Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul.  Heck, there was even a years-long omerta vow of silence surrounding President Joe Biden's obvious physical and mental decline. [...] In the year 2024, so-called special counsel Jack Smith — yes, only so-called, as both Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Aileen Cannon recently concluded — is the foot soldier par excellence for the Democratic Party, and the Democrat-lawfare complex that now serves as the party's tip of the electoral spear.

Trump Will Seek Jack Smith's Dismissal in January 6 Case, Argues That Prosecution 'Must End as a Matter of Law'.  The joint status report presented to Judge Tanya Chutkan and co-authored by the teams behind President Trump and Special Counsel Jack Smith discloses that the two sides are anything but synced on how the 45th President should be tried for January 6. The filing is a preview of Trump's plan to stymie the prosecution.  Judge Chutkan requested the summary in advance of a hearing she has scheduled for Wednesday on how the election subversion case against Trump ought to proceed.  The prosecution has been upended — but not entirely derailed  — by the Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v.  United States that official presidential acts are presumptively immune.  Mr. Smith digested that ruling by convening a fresh grand jury to hand up the same four charges from his original indictment, though he pared down his recitation of evidence to omit those interactions between Trump and the Department of Justice that the justices held were entitled to "absolute" immunity.  His new charge sheet is nine pages shorter, but otherwise much the same.

As Campaign Enters Home Stretch, Trump Remains Bound and Gagged by Democratic Lawfare.  While Donald Trump continues his impressive pace of rallies and interviews and running mate JD Vance continues to humiliate the regime press, Kamala Harris is re-upping Joe Biden's 2020 strategy of staying out of the public eye as much as possible; her schedule regularly consists of "internal discussions and briefings" rather than the sort of turf-hitting grind one expects of a presidential candidate.  Harris's disastrous pre-taped, partially-aired CNN interview before a nauseatingly-compliant Dana Bash last week is a reminder why she was the most unpopular vice president on record and why her team plans to keep her under wraps up to the finish line.  At the same time Kamala coasts during this critical period, the month of September will find Trump's lawyers in two courtrooms as the lawfare against the former president reaches different stages in New York City and Washington, D.C.  The proceedings represent egregious election interference, which is infuriating considering it is unlikely either case ultimately survives the Supreme Court's immunity test presented in the landmark Trump v US opinion published in July.

Colorado, Michigan and Wisconsin refusing to remove RFK Jr. from ballot, all to hurt Trump.  The rebellion of states has begun after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign and threw his support behind Donald Trump in the 10-or-so battleground states that Trump has to win in order to achieve an election victory.  In his campaign suspension speech, Kennedy urged his supporters in the other 40 states to still vote for him, but indicated that he is voluntarily removing his name from the ballot in about 10 battleground states, some of which are refusing to cooperate because they want Trump to lose.

The Editor says...
In other words, the election officials in several states are interfering with the process because of their personal preferences.

D.C. Swamp-Dwellers Say It Doesn't Matter Who Wins the Presidency, They'll Do What They Want.  If he is reelected this November, will Donald Trump manage to drain the swamp this time?  The swamp-dwellers are saying no.  Ever since he began his first run for president, Trump has famously vowed to drain the swamp, that is, clear out the far-left bureaucracy in Washington that bears so much responsibility for the leftward drift of the nation over the last decade and a half. [...] In fact, before Trump was elected and the Washington bureaucracy rose against him, few people, if any, knew that there was a swamp at all.  One of the most important results of the Trump presidency was not one anyone intended: it revealed the deep corruption and politicization of the civil service.  Now, a more experienced Trump is again vowing to destroy the swamp, but the swamp-dwellers are insisting that they're not going anywhere and will continue to run things.  The gauntlet has been thrown down.

Will Democrats Repeat the Fraud of 2020?  Even before Trump became president, the Uniparty establishment made their political and personal hatred for him well known and spent his entire term working to delegitimize his election and remove him from office.  Despite these attempts, the Democrats 2020 campaign did not suggest they were serious about beating him.  They nominated a feeble and fading, two-time failed primary candidate in Joe Biden, used COVID as an excuse to shield him from the public, and ran on a radically left agenda that was the antithesis of Trump's increasingly popular America First one.  It wasn't until the early hours of November 4th, 2020, that it became obvious why that was the case:  It wasn't President Trump versus Joe Biden, but rather their election theft machine.  Now, we are once again seeing them use similar tactics as we approach the 2024 election.

How are Ukraine Stakeholders, CIA and U.S. Intelligence Community Going to Stop Donald Trump?
  •   To stop him in 2016, the FBI and DOJ ran a comprehensive surveillance operation against his campaign.  The same people manufactured a completely fabricated case of Trump colluding with Russia.  Have you forgotten?
  •   To stop him in 2017, the DOJ and Congress ran a comprehensive Special Counsel operation against his presidency.  The justification of the SC operation was to prove a completely fabricated case of Trump colluding with Russia.  The real reason for the SC operation was to cover up the FBI and DOJ completely fabricating the case of Trump colluding with Russia.  Have you forgotten?
  •   To stop him in 2019, congress and the intelligence apparatus (Mary McCord and Michael Atkinson) manufactured an impeachment hoax using Ukraine, a fabricated DoD plant on the National Security Council (Vindman), the CIA (Ciaramella) and the Intelligence Community Inspector General (Attkinson).  Have you forgotten?
  •   To stop him in 2020, the U.S. Intelligence Community, working through the U.S. CDC, seeded a global pandemic and quickly manufactured an election result using mail-in ballots to manufacture 81 million votes for a completely controlled candidate with dementia.  Have you forgotten?

Our Future.  In the current presidential campaign the Democrats' main issue is that Trump is a dictator who will destroy democracy.  This from a Democrat regime that has turned law into a weapon against political candidates such as Trump who is currently fighting four felony indictments and as many civil indictments in the midst of the presidential campaign.  Clearly, the Democrat Department of Justice (sic) and the Democrat New York attorney general are using law to interfere in the election.  All of this is underway while one of the Democrats' indictments of Trump is that he interfered in an election by the way he reported a business expense.  The corrupt Democrat judge presiding over this farce intends to sentence Trump next month.  The double standards are extraordinary and go far beyond mere mudslinging.  We are watching the party in power use the police powers of the state in an effort to control the outcome of an election.  As for the Democrats' commitment to democracy, how strong is this commitment when some of them are saying that they will not accept the election outcome if Trump wins?  Doesn't this make them "January 6 insurrectionists"?

Watergate(s) on Steroids.  The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post bragged early in 2017, "Resistance from within:  Federal workers push back against Trump."  The story said, "Less than two weeks into Trump's administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president's initiatives.  Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make."  This was immoral, unprecedented and unconstitutional.  The press acted like not graciously accepting defeat was a good thing.

Everybody Knows the Captain Lied.  The dice have been loaded for decades.  The war was over in 1963 when the CIA, on behalf of the Deep State, murdered John F. Kennedy.  The American people (the good guys) lost, and the Deep State won.  They got their war in Vietnam.  They got their Welfare State.  They got guns, butter, a currency unlinked from gold, and the green light to create debt to infinity.  The Deep State has consolidated their power and control over every aspect of our lives in the six decades since they killed JFK.  They have used every crisis they create to abscond with more of our liberties, freedoms, rights and wealth.  In addition to the never-ending wars created around the globe to benefit their military industrial complex, their wars on poverty, drugs, terror, CO2, and covid have enriched them and their lackeys, while exacerbating the very things they declared war upon.  None of these wars are meant to be won.  Keeping the masses in fear and ignorance makes them easier to control.

Site Notes.  Some people think DC corruption is really, really bad.  Trust me, it's worse than that.  My thoughts on staffing, roles and responsibilities are from a pragmatic place of what can reasonably be expected to be achieved.  CTH has never joined this nonsensical "trusty-planner" mindset.  There is no plan.  There never was a plan.  There is one guy, Donald Trump, trying to enact policies to the benefit of the American people.  Every democrat and every republican want him to fail.

Rage Against the Machine.  [Scroll down]  Examples:  The current lawfare against Trump and others in his circle.  Charging them with felonies for essentially jaywalking, for doing things all administrations have done, pretending these are now crimes.  Literally trying to put their opponents in prison as third world countries and communists of all stripes have done in the past.  Using the bureaucracies to forward their pet nonsensical ecological ideas to destroy energy creation, to destroy our economy, and the capacity of so many of us just to keep up with living expenses.  Using our foreign policy institutions and the CIA to forward the goals of the corrupt and greedy military/industrial complex.  Pushing us towards WWIII without a sense of proportion as to what that would mean for the country and the world.  Opening the border to the control of the cartels, bringing us illegal drugs, human trafficking, the sex trading of children, and the intent to replace our country with citizens malleable to the whims of the left.

Democracy in Name Only:  How Kamala Harris Became Democratic Nominee.  Just before his election in 2008, Barack Obama famously (or infamously) said that we were on the threshold of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America."  He was right about that.  But the irony was that the transformation entailed the establishment of political stasis.  Throughout his first term, Donald Trump endeavored to change some important things, to roll back that "fundamental transformation" that Obama had overseen.  The FBI and other agencies of the regulatory state, abetted by the propaganda press, intervened to stymie him at every turn.  He was investigated, indicted, impeached, nearly bankrupted, and, just a week or so ago, shot.  The Dems love the rhetoric of "change," just as they cherish the word "democracy."  Their actions show that they are hostile to both.  Change is incompatible with the maintenance of their perquisites and privileges, just as genuine democracy is fraught with peril for the establishment.  Take democracy seriously and who knows?  You might wind up with someone like Donald Trump.

How far will the left go to eliminate Trump?  Everything that Trump said about the corruption in the Deep State has come to fruition.  They used flimsy evidence and tyrannical methods to imprison his supporters, including many of his top-level staff members and attorneys.  Not only did they charge the former president with accounting misdemeanors that had expired under the statutory limitations' laws, but they upgraded them to felonies.  He was kept off the campaign trail for several months, forced to sit in courtrooms defending himself from bogus accusations.  With the American people watching the trials on television, the Biden administration was hoping the public would be indoctrinated to believe that Trump was a criminal.  Then, with a New York leftist for a prosecutor and a jury of Trump-haters, they got what they wanted when he was found guilty of 34 felonies.  As fast as you could say "kangaroo court," Biden was blasting his opponent as a felon who didn't deserve to be a candidate for president.

Deep State Carnival Barkers Distract Us with Kamala.  A manufactured cycle of psychological highs and lows keeps Americans' attention directed toward anything that is glamorous and away from everything that matters.  Consider the roller coaster we've all been riding at higher and higher rates of speed and evermore-dangerous heights these last few months:  One New York judge abuses a civil fraud statute to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from Donald Trump.  Another ignores settled law and relevant facts to help convict him of thirty-four fake felonies.  Democrats break out in euphoria.  Then, the U.S. Supreme Court steps in to recognize presidential immunity in a way that threatens three other criminal cases against bogeyman Trump.  Democrats scream obscenities in protest and demand the Court's "cancellation."

8 shots to Hell.  "By any means necessary" they say.  They cheated at the ballots in 2020 and mostly got away with it.  But that didn't defeat Trump or make his supporters disappear.  Trump decided to run for president in 2024.  They tried lawfare, but he is so honest they couldn't come up with any legitimate charges against him.  Never mind, they came up with transparently phony charges and got the whore media to make believe they were real.  Trump beat some of the charges, is contesting the ones he lost, and paid crippling bonds on the crazy fines against him.  He's still standing.  He's still going to rallies that regularly crush attendance at Biden rallies.  He is more popular than ever.  He debated Biden, who came across as the demented sack of evil that he is.  So, with nothing left, the media started giving their followers permission to assassinate Trump by openly discussing the idea.

When Democrats Incite an Assassination.  [Scroll down]  Right now, lawfare assassin Jack Smith is arguing in front of black-robed tyrant Judge Chutkan that the once-and-future President Trump should be tossed in the hoosegow for daring to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election and "inciting" the so-called Capitol "insurrection" on January 6, 2021.  Anybody with a brain knows that there was never an insurrection, that President Trump never encouraged any criminality of any kind, and that trampling on a president's right to free speech pretty much assures that the rest of us will soon be prosecuted for our political speech, too.

Trump's Resilience And The Inevitable Endpoint of Democrat Politics.  The Democrats conspired to sabotage [Donald Trump] beginning before he was president and never gave up.  There have been lies about Russia, kids in cages, "Good people on both sides," suckers and losers, and (a Biden favorite) Trump encouraging the drinking or injecting bleach.  He was impeached for talking with Ukraine, investigated for allegedly trying to coerce Georgia's Secretary of State to create votes after the 2020 election, and impeached for inciting that January 6th "Insurrection," even though no such insurrection occurred, that he urged people to be peaceful, and that Twitter shut down his efforts to calm the crowd.  The countless manufactured court cases have just been more of the same.  All this while Democrats and their mouthpieces in the Propaganda Ministry have been telling Americans that Trump is a threat to the nation, calling him Hitler, and suggesting that if he gets into office, he'll never leave.  Donald Trump has been on the defensive for the last eight years.  What's more, his supporters have been abused, harassed, thrown in jail and, as happened to Ashli Babbitt on January 6th and Corey Comperatore on Saturday, killed.

Any Assassination Investigation That Includes Merrick Garland Or Chris Wray Is A Coverup.  The FBI has been deeply intertwined with DOJ and other spy agencies' decade — or more — of politicized corruption.  As has been well established by years of investigative work by The Federalist, other outlets, and congressional investigations, the FBI worked hand-in-hand with other U.S. spy agencies to frame Trump as a Russian traitor.  This election-interference operation prompted a special counsel investigation that hamstrung Trump's governance and deceived millions of voters with a constant campaign of leaks and lies.  As part of this operation, the FBI paid for Russian disinformation to take down the elected U.S. president.  Another special counsel investigation later found agency bias was to blame for multiple FBI violations of law and policy to "prevent Trump from becoming president."  The bias that led to this federal effort to end democratic control of U.S. military and intelligence agencies has not only continued since, it's expanded.

Note:  All the discussion of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is now accumulating on a page of its own, located here.

On Day He Was Supposed to Be Sentenced, Trump Files Motion to Have His NY Convictions Thrown Out.  This was not the day the Democrats had planned.  They were hoping to see a handcuffed Donald Trump hauled to jail while Joe Biden cemented his lead in the presidential campaign.  Oh, how the tides have turned.  On Thursday, July 11 — the day Trump was supposed to be hauled off after his conviction on 34 counts of business fraud in New York — we instead saw the resurgent former president angling to get those bogus charges tossed even as Joe Biden desperately tried to salvage his flagging campaign.  But times have changed after the bombshell July 1 immunity ruling by the Supreme Court: [...]

Dems Are Consolidating Absolute Power In The Name Of 'Democracy'.  Colorado became the first state to remove former president Donald Trump from the primary ballot after a left-wing activist group backed a challenge from Colorado voters to disqualify him under the 14th Amendment.  The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump was ineligible to appear on the ballot.  Maine made a similar move, along with a county in Illinois where Judge Tracie Porter ordered Trump be removed from the primary ballot after the board of elections unanimously voted against removing him.  Porter ruled Trump should be removed from the ballot and ordered "any votes for him to be suppressed."  The U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision overturning the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling and found states did not have the constitutional authority to boot Trump from the ballot.  When that didn't work, Democrats focused their efforts on tossing their opponent in jail.

Missouri AG Sues New York For Lawfare 'Interference' In Presidential Election.  Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a lawsuit Wednesday against New York alleging in part that the lawfare trial against former President Donald Trump violated Missourians' First Amendment right "to hear from a presidential candidate in the 2024 presidential election," as stated in a press release announcing the suit.  In a lawfare case brought by a D.A. who campaigned on taking on Trump, the former president was found guilty by a New York jury in May on 34 charges related to a crime that "nobody can quite articulate."  Following the Supreme Court's immunity decision, Trump's team moved to overturn his conviction, and Trump's sentencing was delayed until Sept. 18, less than two months before Election Day.  In the lawsuit, Bailey filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking the Supreme Court to stop any further proceedings related to the New York lawfare case until after the election.

Clarence Thomas Raises Another Reason Jack Smith's Case Against Trump May Be Unconstitutional.  In a concurring opinion in Trump v.  United States, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas highlighted "another way in which this prosecution" — led by Special Counsel Jack Smith — "may violate our constitutional structure."  Specifically, Thomas writes that "the Attorney General purported to appoint a private citizen as Special Counsel to prosecute a former President on behalf of the United States" but he's "not sure that any office for the Special Counsel has been 'established by Law,' as the Constitution requires."  "Few things would threaten our constitutional order more than criminally prosecuting a former President for his official acts," Thomas explains in his concurring opinion.  "Fortunately, the Constitution does not permit us to chart such a dangerous course."  Thomas explains that the Constitution requires Congress to create any federal offices "by law" as an "important check against the President" who "cannot create offices at his pleasure."  As such, if "there is now law establishing the office that the Special Counsel occupies, then he cannot proceed with this prosecution" because a "private citizen cannot criminally prosecute anyone, let alone a former president."

The Lies We Have Lived Through.  The October surprise laptop disinformation lie may have cost Trump the 2020 election.  But it was concocted so that Joe Biden could stare at the debate camera and swear to the American people that Trump was a liar, citing "51 intelligence authorities" who insisted Hunter Biden's laptop was a likely hallmark of Russian disinformation.  We were asked to believe that clever Russian disinformationists fabricated all the sick photos and selfies of poor Hunter, knew the Biden family's intimate tensions and fault lines as evidenced in the computer's texts and emails, and were able to package and deposit the computer to either a Russian operative masquerading as a computer repairment or have it delivered to the supposedly useful idiot.  The truth was, the FBI had the laptop during the debate and had long verified its authenticity — and thus kept mum as its brethren intelligence apparatchiks lied to the nation.  What the untruth did not fully reveal was that Biden's campaign foreign policy guru, Anthony Blinken (the current Secretary of State), cooked up the entire ruse.

Clarence Thomas Questions Jack Smith's Authority in Blistering Opinion on Immunity Ruling.  Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned Jack Smith's authority as special counsel in his concurring opinion on the high court's presidential immunity ruling.  The Supreme Court on Monday ruled 6-3 that Trump has absolute immunity for his core Constitutional powers.  Former presidents are entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for their official acts.  The Supreme Court ruled there is no immunity for unofficial acts.

Be careful, Donald.  I am worried about President Trump.  Now that he has demolished Joe Biden in this week's presidential debate, many on the Left would like to see him vanish.  Democrats are desperate, and likely to try to stop him by fair means or foul. [...] There is no shortage of evil people who would 'Epstein' someone if the incentive were big enough.  Already many people have mysteriously died if they crossed some former presidents, so it is no secret that assassins are out there (look up "arkancide" and then when you're done with that, ask why security cameras were "malfunctioning" when Epstein "hung himself" in his jail cell.)  Trump cannot afford to be put in a jail cell with iffy equipment.  Donald Trump is deeply hated by the Deep State, by many Democrats in politics, and by those with contacts in what passes in some pathetic circles for the media.  The communist, globalist, and Islamist agendas, foreign and domestic, are in grave danger from Trump and his voters.

Put a Fork in Him.  [Scroll down]  Democrats and liberals did not stand up and work to deny Biden his reelection bid because they hate Donald Trump so much they could not believe he would survive the onslaught of the legal cases against him and his own indiscipline.  They believed he would sabotage himself as he did in 2020, and that would be what mattered.  They would be saved from their own weak candidate by the weakness of the opposing candidate.  The thing is, they never really had any substantive reason backed by data to think this.  Trump has never given any indication of being a weaker candidate than Biden in the eyes of the electorate.

Jack Smith's January 6 Case Against President Trump Torpedoed After Supreme Court Overturns 1512(c)(2) Obstruction Charge.  The US Supreme Court on Friday delivered a devastating blow to Biden's corrupt Justice Department and overturned the obstruction charge used to jail hundreds of January 6 defendants.  Biden's corrupt DOJ charged more than 300 J6ers with 18 USC §1512(c)(2).  Additionally, two of the four charges against Trump in Jack Smith's DC case are conspiracy to obstruct so the Supreme Court's ruling on Friday torpedoed the special counsel's case against Trump as well.  The Supreme Court earlier this year heard oral arguments in Fischer v.  United States and at issue was statute 18 USC §1512(c)(2):
Whoever corruptly —
(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or
(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
On Friday, in a 6-3 vote, the court holds that to prove a violation of the law, the government must show that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding, or attempted to do so.

Decoding New York's Legalese:  President Trump Was Wrongly Prosecuted and Convicted.  The corruption of the law in the Manhattan case against President Donald J. Trump should shock every American, and the devil is in the details of the law, the prosecution, the judge, the jury, and the conviction.  There were two financial accounts referred to in the prosecution.  The first is a revocable trust fund for Donald J. Trump which was created just after he became president, and the second is the personal account of Donald J. Trump.  The indictment indicates that Trump received invoices from Michael Cohen where each invoice was then added to the general accounting ledger with a voucher number, and then a check was issued to pay each invoice.  11 counts of the indictment are for receiving invoices from Michael Cohen.  The first invoice covered two months (January and February), and the other 10 invoices covered one month each for legal services.  How anyone can even suggest that receiving an invoice is falsifying a business record is nonsensical — Joe Hoft at joehoft.com pointed out that this is comparable to being in receipt of a bill for electricity.  Yet, Trump was found guilty on all eleven counts for falsifying business records for receiving invoices.

How CIA interference with the 'Spies Who Lie' letter made Biden the president.  It is chilling to contemplate that, if it had not been for the malign intervention of the CIA in the 2020 election, Donald Trump would have won a second term and the wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza would never have happened.  We now see that the CIA staged a domestic disinformation campaign to protect its favored candidate, the decrepit and pliable Joe Biden, from the political consequences of his corruption.  Now we are told that former CIA Director Gina Haspel was in on the "Dirty 51" letter in October 2020 that falsely claimed Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation.  This bombshell, revealed by former CIA chief operating officer Andrew Makridis to congressional investigators, will go down in history as an act of sabotage against the American people by a rogue intelligence agency.

Trampling the 5th Amendment.  Americans have long derided dictators for eliminating political opponents by prosecuting them on dubious grounds and denying them due process.  Hence, they would have widely condemned the use of these techniques to obtain the criminal conviction of a candidate for high office — were it not for the fact that the candidate was Donald Trump.  President Biden and most other Democrats found the sausage so appetizing that they ignored how it was made.  Although the court's violations of the 5th Amendment could be corrected by higher courts if they took the Constitution seriously, much damage has already been done to the credibility of the courts and the sanctity of the electoral process.

Attack On Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was a CIA Operation.  Congress just released a report confirming that the effort to discredit the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop was a CIA operation.  The report reveals the Biden official who triggered the operation and active CIA contractors involved in the operation.  [Video clip]

Report Says Mike Morell, David Buckley Were on CIA Payroll When They Signed Hunter Biden Letter.  A bombshell report released Tuesday afternoon by the House Judiciary GOP claims that at least two of the 51 "former" intelligence officials who signed a letter discrediting the Hunter Biden "Laptop from Hell" as Russian disinformation were actually on the CIA's payroll at the time they signed the letter[,] despite actively asserting that they didn't have access to any classified information.  Former Deputy Director Michael Morell and former CIA Inspector General David Buckley are the two signatories named in Tuesday's report as being on active contract at the time they signed the statement.  Since the CIA "declined to declassify the entire universe of signatories who were on active contract," though, it's unknown how many signatories were both colluding with the Biden campaign and on the CIA payroll.  In addition, the report states that the statement's co-author, former Senior Intelligence Service Officer Marc Polymeropoulos, included classified information in his proposed media talking points "that had to be removed before publication."

It Was a Quiet Insurrection.  The established oligarchy has a stranglehold on our representative republic government and is choking the life out of our inalienable rights.  The legislature writes so many bills and laws that there is no possible way for Americans to know what is what, and if and when we are "breaking a law."  Because of their ability to twist words and mold the laws for their own purpose, America and the world have watched as Biden and his Democrat Party run one attack after another against President Donald John Trump.  What they did to him while he was president, and what they are doing to him now, is unlawful and unconstitutional, yet they get away with it.  Remember there were many republicans running interference for the Democrats during both impeachments of President Trump, and there were republicans sitting on the fake January 6 committee that set it all up, in order to "crucify" President Trump.

The Poor Legal Arguments of Jack Smith.  On Friday [6/21/2024], Judge Aileen Cannon, overseeing the Florida-based records prosecution of former president Donald Trump, heard a lawsuit regarding the legitimacy of the appointment of special prosecutor Jack Smith.  On Sunday, his office provided the response to those complaints.  On Monday, the court entertained the oral arguments regarding this issue.  Based upon his arguments, even a non-lawyer such as myself can see that the two cases (Florida and Washington, D.C.) are illegitimate.  Now we must await Judge Cannon's opinion.  On Sunday evening, Mark Levin announced on Fox News that his Landmark Legal Foundation had filed a brief concerning the validity of Jack Smith's appointment.  He laid out the legal arguments.  Further information demonstrates the weakness of Smith's argument.  Levin noted that Ed Meese and Michael Mukasey provided briefs arguing against Smith's appointment.

Imposing a Permanent Gag Order on Trump.  Gag orders, constitutionally dubious, are meant to protect the integrity of a judicial proceeding.  However, even with the trial over, the gag orders imposed on former President Trump are not going away.  DA Bragg's office (which had just freed the antisemitic Columbia Hamas rioters) demanded a continuation of the gag order which prohibits him from commenting on the individuals involved in the trial.  Since Trump is also running for president and Biden is spending $50 million to attack him over the various Democrat trials imposed on him, this effectively bans a presidential candidate from debating a campaign issue.  The New York Court of Appeals claimed that "no substantial constitutional question is directly involved" in gagging a presidential candidate when in reality several are involved.  But weasel words like "substantial" and "directly" give away the game.  Imposing a gag order post-trial on a potentially indefinite basis has no legal validity.  There is no longer a judicial proceeding to protect.  The basis for Bragg's demands is the DA's claim that he's still getting death threats and that Trump may seek revenge.  There will be plenty of people who hate Bragg regardless of what Trump says and the rationale that the rhetoric poses a personal risk rather than a risk to a case allows for a permanent gag order.

Keeping Trump Under Gag Order Likely Violates His — And Americans' — Rights, Experts Say.  With the trial over, former President Donald Trump no longer has to sit in the courtroom each day, but even as the first presidential debate approaches, he still can't speak freely about what happened there.  New York's highest court declined Tuesday to take up Trump's appeal, and Bragg's office insists the gag order is needed through sentencing.  Keeping a gag order in place after conviction is exceedingly uncommon, legal experts told the DCNF, noting there is a strong case to be made that doing so violates Trump's civil rights, especially when there was never much justification for issuing one at all.  [Advertisement]  "This really goes right to the heart not only of Donald Trump's First Amendment rights, but the rights of the American people to hear from the candidates running for president," former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey told the DCNF, highlighting that Biden is making Trump's 34 felonies a "core feature" of his re-election.  "Biden is going to talk about it, and Trump has to walk on eggshells to make sure he doesn't offend the judge," he continued.

Legal Insurrection Through Lawfare, Part 2.  The Department of Justice is the most heavily politicized of the U.S. government.  In 2016, 91.6% gave to Democrats.  Homeland Security employees came in at 75% Democrat, and the Department of Education was as high as 96% Democrat.  The National Education Association has never donated to a Republican presidential candidate.  All federal government departments have moved from very liberal to radical via the red diaper/red thread chain of the Obama administration hierarchy.  Critical theory and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) remained practically undisturbed by Trump and then emerged revitalized on the first day of Biden's administration.

Armed Enemies Within Plot Trump's Murder.  The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability will soon hold a hearing on "potential vulnerabilities within the U.S. Secret Service" that prevent this agency from protecting high-profile figures such as President Donald J. Trump from assassination.  This follows reports of fights breaking out among armed Secret Service agents and "potential insider threats" that threaten national security.  The federal law enforcement agency has been plagued by sex and alcohol scandals but more recently its agents have been trying to protect themselves from dog bites by the German Shepherd "Commander," the Biden family dog.  The Secret Service is a component of the Department of Homeland Security, run by Open Borders architect Alejandro Mayorkas.  That means that the federal official ultimately in charge of the Secret Service "protection" for Trump is at the same time turning a blind eye to hundreds of foreign terrorists entering the country, perhaps to assassinate Trump.  The handwriting is on the wall — Trump's life is in danger because the federal agency in charge of protecting him has been seriously compromised and perhaps even infiltrated.

Trump is a Marked Man.  With right-wing parties making gains in European Union parliamentary elections, it is apparent that a global rejection of the status quo is paving the way for President Trump to win the U.S. presidency in a decisive manner.  While some commentators are focused on whether Joe Biden can make it all the way to November's elections because of his senility and old age, the real question is whether the communists and globalists decide the time is right to take out Trump by any means necessary.  Communist groups are promising "Revolution Summer 2024," a series of protests targeting Biden and Trump but Trump is clearly the main enemy of intelligence agencies here and abroad and is being "Marked for Death," the title of a new report from my group, America's Survival, Inc.  The Marxist groups active in the Democratic Party believe their street protests can force Biden to step down, but Trump is a different story.  That will require a sophisticated intelligence operation so that the fingerprints of the federal agencies that are supposed to protect Trump and the American people can be obscured.

Russia's KGB and Ours.  [Scroll down]  If the Deep State is in fact dominated by the Soviet KGB, now known as the FSB, that would explain a lot.  It would also explain why the Russia-gate hoax against Trump was based on Russian disinformation.  I have come to accept the view of spy catcher James Jesus Angleton, the former CIA counterintelligence chief, who concluded the CIA was hopelessly infiltrated by our enemies.  It turns out so was the FBI, which employed Robert Hanssen as a counter-intelligence agent assigned to catch Soviet/Russian spies, when he was working for the Soviets and the Russians.  When you understand how America's Deep State has become a branch of the KGB, your view of America and the world changes.  You come to better understand the no-war wars of Joe Biden and the failure to back American allies and confront our enemies.  You come to suspect that characters like Hunter Biden were protected for years by federal agencies like the FBI and the IRS because he (and his father) served the interests of American intelligence agencies.  I have been around too long to buy the excuse that federal agencies are just incompetent.

Near Half of Independents Say Biden Uses DOJ To Target Political Enemies.  New polling data suggests a significant portion of the electorate believes the Biden government "...has actively used the Justice Department to investigate political enemies with little or no evidence of actual wrongdoing."  The data is troubling for Joe Biden as it shows a sizeable portion of independent voters — 41 percent — agree that the Biden government has purposefully targeted its political enemies.  Additionally, even one in ten Democrats agree. [...] A large number of independent voters in the Ipsos poll also signaled they believe major figures in the Democratic Party played a part in pushing Bragg to prosecute Trump.  Nearly 40 percent of independent respondents said they believe New York Attorney General Letitia James was involved in pushing Bragg to prosecute.

Joe's Distemper Is Showing.  Here in the Big Apple, through the workings of a depressingly corrupted legal machinery — the New York state court system was once the envy of the jurisprudential world (one of the major reasons the city served as financial capital of the world) — the Democrats finally achieved what they have long sought: pinning the appellation "convicted felon" (at least temporarily) on Donald Trump.  They and their media allies now create a deafening echo repeating the phrase incessantly.  Yet if demeanor is any indication, it is Joe Biden, and not Donald Trump, who has the look of a man being led to his political execution.  Perhaps he knows that while Mr. Trump looks forward to a successful appeal of his phony conviction, Biden has lost nearly every appeal he's made to the American people since his election.

Trump Verdict Makes NYC 'Venezuela-on-the-Hudson'.  A former president was convicted of 34 misdemeanors for paperwork errors (whose statute of limitations had run out) that were changed to felonies because he had supposedly violated another state law — nowhere mentioned in the indictment — that makes it a crime to use "unlawful" means to promote or oppose the election of a candidate.  And what was that "unlawful" means?  Well, the defendant didn't know because those other "unlawful" means (i.e., other crimes) weren't mentioned in the indictment, either.  The judge told the jurors that they didn't need to even agree on what other crimes the defendant had committed, seemingly in conflict with hundreds of years of English and American jurisprudence, including the Constitution's guarantee of due process of law.  No, said the judge, the jury could consider violations of tax law or a violation of federal campaign finance law or of some other unnamed law for listing as a legal expense — instead of as a campaign expense — a settlement payment made to an individual who was represented by counsel in a perfectly legitimate, and perfectly legal, transaction.  But no need for a unanimous decision on that issue.  A violation of federal campaign finance law?  What were a local prosecutor and a state court judge doing bringing up a violation of federal law over which they have no jurisdiction whatsoever?

35 and a Citizen.  [I]t seems a good time to review who can be president and whether or not you can give money to a person to shut up. [...] The feds — you know, the people who absolutely adore Trump — looked at this issue and said no.  The Federal Election Commission did the same.  But NY DA Alvin Bragg and his team apparently all sat around a bong one night and had a great "highdea:"  say the misdemeanor paperwork charges are actually a felony because he futzed with the paperwork in the furtherance of another crime.  They never really did settle on what that other crime was and only brought it up in closing arguments so the defense could not rebut the alleged but never filed charges and then the judge said to the jury that it really didn't matter and that whichever predicate allegation you want to base your conviction — sorry, your deliberations on — is fine and you can mix and match them if you want, too. [...] Another funny thing about the trial is that what Trump did — paying someone to shut up — is not illegal.  At all.

Judge Marchan [was] NOT Chosen Randomly — The FIX Was In.  Democrat-appointed Judge Juan Merchan went out of his way to stack the deck in favor of Manhattan Democrat District Attorney Alvin Bragg's false criminal case against former President Donald Trump for allegedly falsifying business records.  Merchan was allegedly randomly assigned the Trump and Bannon cases by the New York court system.  That is a lie — he was also assigned to the politically motivated cases of Trump CFO on tax fraud as well as his War Room Trump advocate Steve Bannon whom he recently sentenced to 4 months for allegedly lying to Congress.  Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has filed a complaint with the New York State Unified Court System over the claim that Merchan was randomly assigned the case.  "If justices were indeed being randomly assigned in the Criminal Term, the probability of two specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is quite low, and the probability of three specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is infinitesimally small," Stefanik wrote.  "And yet, we see Acting Justice Merchan on all three cases."

Time to Jettison the Animals.  [Scroll down]  The putative replacements for [Biden] — Newsom, Hillary, Pritzker, Whitmer, Harris — are political creatures at least as loathsome to voters as "JB" has become.  And the obvious pitfall for Michelle O is that her husband looks like a wannabe American Caesar seeking a fourth term.  What else have they got?  Nothin'.  Some utterly unknown governor they can primp up in a few months?  Fugeddabowdit.  They'll have to run one of the loathsomes, take the "L," and hope for the best, perhaps make a get out of jail "deal" with dealmaker supreme Mr. Trump.  Or, they could attempt another mighty prank:  kill him.  You can imagine they'll try it, having exhausted all other gambits.  If they succeed, and it doesn't provoke an instant civil war, Mr. Trump's faction has a pretty deep "bench" of capable figures who can step in and run against the Party of Chaos, Hoaxes, and now Murder.  If the assassins botch the job, I wouldn't want to be them on that dreadful day.

Caution:  May not have happened.  See update below.
Juror Sent Cousin Message Saying Trump Was Convicted A Day Before Judgement.  Aren't the jurors supposed to be in seclusion?  This is the kind of thing that should lead to a mistrial[.]  [Tweet]  What should happen is that a mistrial is declared and a higher court jumps in to say "stop.  This is insane.  It would get crushed on appeal, and Merchan and Bragg are sanctioned."

There was just a huge twist in the Trump case.  His New York judge brought these social posts to the world's attention.  [T]he social media post of a very dumb person might have just saved the Republic.  [Numerous tweets]  This little quip made me think this was a nothingburger, but the New York justice system apparently thought it was reliable enough to put out a formal letter on Friday evening, which means this guy likely is related to one of the jurors. [...] They sent out a legal letter on Friday night without any vetting at all??  But if it's real, is it a psyop that was designed to give Democrats an out after successfully pinning Donald Trump with the label felon?  Was a mistrial always the plan to keep Trump's numbers from going even higher behind bars?

Update:
Don't Be Shocked If the Story About the Trump Juror Spilling the Guilty Verdict Ends Up Being Fake.  We knew the trial was a sham.  The verdict was baked into the cake long before opening arguments began, but now we have evidence.  Judge Merchan's office issued a letter to Donald Trump's defense team alerting them that one of the jurors discussed the verdict with a family member, who later shared that foreknowledge on the court's public Facebook account.  [Advertisement]  We'll see what happens.  It could be troll bait, but this trial became more of a circus if true.  The person who posted about the verdict claimed to have a cousin on the jury for Donald Trump's hush money trial.  [Tweets]  [Advertisement]  Before we discuss how this will impact the verdict, let's see who "Michael Anderson" is and whether he has a cousin on the jury.  All of this can and should be investigated.  The New York Post's Miranda Devine said the whole conviction should be tossed if true.  UPDATE: Is this fake?  I wouldn't be shocked if this is too good to be true.  The rigging and bias in this trial were believable from the start, but this might be a stretch.

American Prometheus Chained at Mar-A-Lago.  The First Amendment protection given to a free press so that darkness can be stripped away is a useless joke, as the majority of mainstream media would rather cheerlead a lie than investigate corruption.  The darkness shows that there are indeed two sets of legal systems: one to protect Democrats and one to ruthlessly persecute Republicans.  The darkness professes that the Constitution simply does not apply to Donald Trump, as the ends justify the means, believing it to be a righteous and noble deed to eradicate him from Public service, no matter the costs.  Two bogus, failed impeachments; five partisan and political indictments; the twisting of the 14th Amendment Insurrection clause in an attempt to disqualify Trump from appearing on the ballot, then unanimously rebuffed at the Supreme Court; the absence of any such charges — much less a conviction — made such a notion repulsive.  Now, a kangaroo court conviction has been set in motion by a blindly biased judge and a corrupt prosecutor.  There seems to be no end.

The Myth That Biden Had Nothing to Do with the Prosecutions of Trump.  The five criminal and civil prosecutions of Donald Trump all prompt heated denials from Democrats that President Biden and Democrat operatives had a role in any of them.  [Advertisement]  But Joe Biden has long let it be known that he was frustrated with his own Department of Justice's federal prosecutors for their tardiness in indicting Donald Trump.  [Advertisement]  Biden was upset because any delay might mean that his rival Trump would not be in federal court during the 2024 election cycle.  And that would mean he could not be tagged as a "convicted felon" by the November election while being kept off the campaign trail.  [Advertisement]  Politico has long prided itself on its supposed insider knowledge of the workings of the Biden administration.  Note that it was reported earlier this February that a frustrated Joe Biden "has grumbled to aides and advisers that had Garland moved sooner in his investigation into former President Donald Trump's election interference, a trial may already be underway or even have concluded..."  [Advertisement]

Mocking the left's missteps.  [Scroll down]  Make no mistake: the verdict in the sham that was the Trump trial was one of those watershed moments that brought everything into focus.  Up 'til now, you could fool yourself into thinking things were still semi-normal, so to speak.  But now we're talking about the serious consequences of the weaponization of the government by one political party against its opponents.  If that can be done against the man at the top, what's to stop them from doing that to everyone else?  All of this should be a signal it's time to stop playing nice with the left.  Leftists expect us to use their words and follow their silly rules, while they use any means to attack the country and Western culture and cancel conservatives.

America's Corrupt Political Class Should Be Prosecuted, Not Trump.  [W]ith the Trump conviction in New York, we may well have just witnessed the nadir of abuse of prosecutorial discretion.  It's not just that a former president — and the leading contender to be the next president — has been convicted of a felony on dubious and untested charges.  For all of the demands that we respect "rule of law" in the wake of the Trump verdict, it has become patently obvious that prosecuting corruption is not bound by law or principle — it's about gatekeeping.  Those favored by our entrenched institutions get away with it, those who threaten unaccountable power do not.  The Washington establishment has kept its Sauron-like gaze fixed on Trump in the hopes that you won't notice that nearly our entire political class is corrupt in ways that threaten the country far more than paying off a mistress and classifying it as "legal services."  To understand how distorted the system has become, it helps to understand how Trump's various court battles stack up next to his political peers.

Georgia Court of Appeals Halts All Proceedings in Trump RICO Case.  Fani Willis' trial against Trump is most certainly not happening before the 2024 election!  The Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday halted all proceedings in Trump's RICO case until the court rules on the effort to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.  "The proceedings below in the Superior Court of Fulton County are hereby stayed pending the outcome of these appeals," the order read.

The Trump Verdict Indicts an Angry Elite.  The work of Trump's prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, and his judge, Juan Merchan — consistent with their middling legal pedigrees — is shoddy.  Trumping up a charge on a clean man like a legal MacGyver takes talent.  These guys don't have it.  Bragg and Merchan's show trial is hobbled by many grave errors.  Chief among them is that Merchan allowed jurors to disagree on exactly what unlawful conduct Trump supposedly intended to commit or cover up.  Practically, that meant Trump had to put forth evidence that he had no unlawful intent once Bragg produced just enough evidence to convince some jurors of one intent and others of another.  But a prosecutor must bear to the trial's end the burden of proving a defendant's guilt beyond all reasonable doubt.  Merchan let Bragg get away with leaving some jurors with reasonable doubt on what other jurors may have thought Trump's criminal intent was and vice versa so that ultimately all jurors could have reasonable doubt yet still convict.  That's an unconstitutional outrage.

The Editor says...
The jury system in America is becoming one of its weak links.  The prosecution doesn't have to prove anyone's guilt — all they have to do is convince the jury to find him guilty.  So the most gullible dunces in the jury pool are selected, and after a few days of small-town theater in the courtroom, the verdict is delivered.  The outcome depends far more upon the performances of the lawyers than the quality of the evidence.

Georgia Appeals Court Halts Trump Election Case.  The Georgia Court of Appeals ordered on June 5 a stay on all proceedings in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's case against former President Donald Trump and eight codefendants, challenging the district attorney's ability to prosecute the case.  "The proceedings below in the Superior Court of Fulton County are hereby stayed pending the outcome of these appeals," reads an order by the court clerk, citing a Georgia Supreme Court case ordering the stay of criminal case proceedings during an interlocutory review.  This comes as the court has agreed to review whether Ms. Willis should be disqualified.

Jesse Watters: "There is Something Very Fishy About How Judge Merchan Came to Preside Over This Case".  The Gateway Pundit reported that GOP Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filed a misconduct complaint with the New York State Unified Court System related to the "random" assignment of far-left radical and conflicted Judge Juan Merchan to Trump's NYC 'hush money' trial.  Stefanik announced, "I just filed an official misconduct complaint with the New York State Unified Court System related to the "random" assignment of Acting Manhattan Justice Juan Merchan, a Biden donor whose daughter is fundraising millions off his unprecedented work, to criminal cases against President Donald J. Trump, his companies, and his allies."  Stefanik is not the only one raising questions about the "random" assignment of crooked Judge Juan Merchan as the judge to oversee the Trump Bragg case.

America Has Crossed the Rubicon.  Last week, America finally crossed the Rubicon from a nation of liberty and the rule of law to a banana republic thugocracy where the ruling party indicts, arrests, and imprisons its political opposition. [...] Donald Trump's conviction on nonsensical misdemeanor process crimes, beyond the statute of limitations, a dispute over whether fees paid to a lawyer were actually legal fees (as opposed to what, medical bills?), that these payments influenced an election concluded a year before said payments were made, tried within a rigged courtroom construct by a conflicted judge and attorneys guaranteeing a guilty verdict, and last but not least federal charges inappropriately tried at the state level after the feds declined to pursue these charges.  These all blew up Lady Justice's scales and any premise of due process or equal protection under the law.

Joe Biden's Fingerprints Are All Over The Criminal Prosecutions Of Donald Trump.  In response to Americans' outcry over the political prosecutions of Donald Trump and a Manhattan jury convicting the former president on 34 felony counts, President Joe Biden declared, "It's irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don't like the verdict."  Coming from the Commander-in-Rigging, this proclamation means nothing.  Biden and those seeking to ensure his re-election have their hands all over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's prosecution of the former president.  A lead prosecutor for Bragg during the trial was Matthew Colangelo.  In December 2022, Colangelo left the Biden Department of Justice to "jump start" the criminal case against Trump.  Biden had previously named Colangelo his acting associate attorney general — the third-highest-ranking official in the DOJ.

Trump's Conviction Signals New Political Era.  The rule of law means, above all, restraint, predictability, and equal treatment.  It is supposed to ensure that no single branch of government has too much power and that the other branches, as well as mandatory processes, constrain the government and its personnel.  The rule of law is not merely a set of rules but a culture.  Over many decades, that culture has broken down and become distorted due to the malevolent influence of legal realism, which has been amplified by the extreme partisanship of the law schools and the managerial class.  Collectively, almost every holder of institutional power — the courts, the media, the military, and Congress, along with state and federal prosecutors — has deviated from its normal course to deal with the allegedly unprecedented threat from Donald Trump.  The fact there has been a trial and a verdict is not some vindication of the rule of law.  Dictatorships also have laws, elections, and trials.  In fact, they are infamous for their "show trials," where the trial process becomes an exercise in propaganda and mythmaking for the regime.

Mark Levin's Legal Advice for Trump Is Spot On.  Following the guilty verdicts against Trump in the sham trial in New York City, radio host Mark Levin, who served as chief of staff to former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, has sound legal advice for Trump:  get the case out of New York and to the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as possible.  Trump will most certainly appeal his conviction, but an appeal within the New York court system likely won't happen before the election.  There's always the possibility that Judge Juan Merchan, a Biden donor who basically was a puppet of the prosecution, may, in fact, sentence Trump to prison before the election.  "The issue is how to get out of the New York system and bring the case to the Supreme Court, which may or may not take it up," explains Levin in a post on X.  "That is why I look to Bush v Gore, where the [Supreme Court] decided to step in BECAUSE it was a presidential election.  There was another court involved, the Florida Supreme Court.  And it was that court that the Supreme Court believed was violating the Equal Protection Clause.  That was the doctrine it settled on, given the unequal treatment of voters."

'Intentional Misfeasance' Makes Show Trial Conviction Ripe For Reversal, Legal Experts Say.  Leftist District Attorney Alvin Bragg's show trial delivered the Democrat Party's dream:  A felony conviction against their most hated political enemy.  The prosecution and the trial also were also littered with legal landmines and "reversible error" that should make former President Donald Trump's looming appeal a slam dunk, legal experts say.  [Advertisement]  Historical and stunning but not surprising to many who have closely followed left-wing lawfare in recent years, the 12 angry Manhattan jurors after two days of deliberations found Trump guilty on all 34 trumped-up felony counts against him.  Judge Juan Merchan has scheduled sentencing for July 11, just four days before the Republican National Convention is slated to begin in Milwaukee, where the GOP is poised to again nominate Trump as its presidential candidate.  He will face President Joe Biden in the rematch of 2020's mess of an election.  Trump also is facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison, depending on the vindictiveness of a New York judicial system that has already proved to be quite vindictive.

Tyranny Is Upon us:  Law and Juries Are Weaponized.  Keep in mind that these are 34 made-up felonies based on how an expense was recorded by accountants and attorneys.  Trump did not record the expense.The expense was recorded according to accounting standards.  Keep in mind that a single accounting reporting charge, a misdemeanor, was magically turned into 34 federal felonies of election violations, if memory serves, the argument being that Trump won the election by misreporting the expense.  There are so many civil and criminal show trials going on against Trump that it is hard to keep track of all the absurdities.  Keep in mind that it is a case without complainants, without harmed parties.  It is a case brought by a prosecutor who can show no party harmed.  What is frightening is that legally this is a case for which there are no legal grounds for bringing it.  Yet, the bar associations, the law schools, the media said nothing.  Getting Trump was so important that law was sacrificed for the purpose.  Trump's demonization made a fair trial impossible, and few jurors can resist using their power against a rich person.

Essential Information For Understanding Why Trump's Appeal Will Succeed.  Donald Trump has been convicted by a jury in Manhattan.  "I was convicted.  I'm appealing!"  Most of us have a TV legal drama perspective.  I rise to shine light on this process so that we can properly understand how a guilty verdict was reached in a case where Donald Trump did nothing illegal, immoral, or fattening.  A prosecution must satisfy conditions laid out in the Constitution, which is, should anyone forget, the highest law of the land.  It specifies safeguards for the legal process.  In the 5th Amendment, we find "No person... shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law..."  That due process is further defined in the 6th Amendment.  ["]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, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.  (Emphasis added)["]  The prosecuting attorney is an officer of the court and is duty-bound to guard these steps carefully.  DA Alvin Bragg ran roughshod over them.

Beneath the Law!  "No one is above the law!" trumpet the progressive Democrat fanboys in the wake of the Donald Trump sham conviction in New York for alleged crimes on paper.  Joe Biden literally tweeted those exact words.  Nobody is above the law except thoroughly corrupt, senile, and decrepit Joe Biden, who took classified documents when he was a senator and vice president when he had absolutely no authority to do so.  Biden either directed or allowed his despicable son Hunter to accept millions of dollars in bribes from corrupt foreign oligarchs and even our nation's enemies. [...] Judge Juan Merchan committed enough reversible errors to virtually guarantee that the convictions will eventually be overturned by a more sane and reasonable court still willing to follow the Constitution, but when the defendant's last name is Trump, don't count on it.

Of Course They'll Put Trump in Jail.  Why wouldn't Judge Juan Merchan finish the job and add to the left's glee in calling Donald Trump a "convicted felon" by sentencing him to jail?  That fact that Trump's sentencing is on July 11, mere days before the Republican National Convention, would not impede a judge who, according to Trump attorney Alina Habba, covered his mouth to laugh during his sentencing.  It would be no impediment to the hand-picked jurist who allowed prosecutors to hide the underlying "crime" for the entire trial, hide witnesses, and overrule the majority of the defense objections in this goat rodeo.

Trump Found Guilty — a Travesty of Justice for America.  Trump was found guilty of a crime, but can anyone say what it is?  Prosecutorial misconduct is dripping.  It's the judge, not Trump who belongs in prison. [...] This case was convoluted in theory and dripping with prosecutorial misconduct and should have been dismissed.  If they can do this to Trump, they can do whatever they want to anyone.  And they will, for political purposes.  Ironically, people worried that Trump is dangerous and will abuse power.  Think of what Hillary did both in offense and gross obstruction.  Nothing.  The prosecutor was sent directly from the DOJ.  A state case.  A misdemeanor, on which the Statute of Limitations had run out, was used to produced 34 felony counts on committing a Federal offense for which he was not charged.  This is the emerging face of the US judiciary and legal system.  Better hope Democrats do not get the trifecta.

A Guilty Verdict for Trump and Its Consequences for the Country.  Twelve New York jurors have found Donald Trump guilty of falsifying business records, a total of 34 felony counts, in history's first criminal conviction of a former President.  What a volatile moment for the country.  Will the judge jail Mr. Trump?  Will voters re-elect him in November anyway, in disgust of this concocted case?  What if it's thrown out on appeal?  Will Republicans retaliate?  The nation might soon regret this rough turn.  Thursday's guilty verdict wasn't entirely surprising, given the jury pool in Manhattan.  If Mr. Trump had lucked out, he might have drawn one or two stubborn skeptics, like the Henry Fonda character in "12 Angry Men," resulting in at least a hung jury.  Instead the fortunate one was Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who filed the weakest of the four indictments of Mr. Trump, but who managed to drag his case first over the finish line.  Normally a felony conviction would be politically fatal for a candidate appearing on the ballot in five months.  But normally a prosecutor wouldn't have brought this case.

Donald Trump's conviction is nothing more than a 'thrill kill'.  Political prosecutions are something most citizens associate with dictatorships.  But the Trump prosecution has forced many to confront the undeniable reality of the politicization of our legal system. [...] Trump was convicted in a trial with a Biden donor judge, who has a daughter who is a major Democratic operative, a lead prosecutor previously paid as a DNC political consultant and a jury selected in a district that voted roughly 90% against Trump.  The trial itself was a travesty.  Even after sitting in the courtroom watching the trial and the verdict, I still have no idea what Trump was convicted of in the case.  The charges were built on a dead misdemeanor barred with the passage of the statute of limitations.  It was zapped back into life by alleging that the falsification of business records occurred to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election.  Merchan told the jury members that they did not have to agree on what those unlawful means may have been.

Beware the cornered rat!  [Scroll down]  Thus, Biden became president, and since then the Democrats have been on an aggressive blacklisting campaign to destroy anyone who opposed them.  That campaign reached its summit yesterday with Trump's conviction in what could be called the most ludicrous and disgusting legal case ever brought against any American.  Not only can no one name the crime that Trump was supposed to have committed, the jury was given instructions that it could find him guilty even if they themselves couldn't agree on that crime.  As expected, the public's response to Trump's conviction has been to increase his support.  One quick poll suggested Trump's support had grown by six points almost immediately. [...] In fact, all signs suggest the guilty verdict will help Trump win, because the public clearly sees this as a show trail designed by the Democrats to destroy their number one political opponent.  And Americans don't like these kinds of bullying tactics.

Did Judge in Trump Case Violate Constitution With His Jury Instructions?  These Attorneys Think So.  Defense attorney Randy Zelin and former Trump attorney Tim Parlatore said on Friday that Judge Juan Merchan violated the U.S. Constitution with his instructions to the jury in former President Donald Trump's trial.  Merchan instructed the jury that it is not a requirement for them to be in unanimous agreement about what "other crime" Trump committed, instead receiving a choice of three separate crimes they can select to convict the former president.  The two attorneys on "CNN Special Report" said Merchan's jury instructions were flawed to the point that an appeals court could conceivably overturn the conviction.  "I hate to do this, but I would be remiss if I didn't," Zelin said.  "Whether you are driving in a Ford or a Ferrari, if someone gives you bad directions, you're going to end up lost.  And those jury instructions were just a complete, just take the Constitution, throw it out a window, burn it, shoot it, and hang it."

It was rigged, let us count the ways.  Start with Judge Juan Merchan's infamous "gag order," a blatant and arguably unconstitutional attack on President Trump's free speech rights, and which Trump is suing Merchan over.  That order, which supposedly prevents Trump from disparaging witnesses, court officers, or their families, and which Merchan held Trump in contempt of court for "violating" over 10 times, was issued for one reason, and one reason only: because Judge Merchan's daughter, Loren Merchan, is a card-carrying member of the anti-Trump resistance.  No, really: she has a photo of Trump in jail as her X profile photo.  And, incidentally, she has made out like a bandit.  She was paid $4 million by Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff to push Schiff's since-debunked accusations of Russian collusion.  Since then, Merchan (the daughter) has raised around $100 million off the back of the trial.  Ordinarily, a judge with this kind of a compromising connection to such a viciously partisan figure would be expected to recuse himself.  It may even be grounds for an appeal.  But Merchan clearly didn't care.  He wanted to be the judge who "got Trump" because even if he was overruled, he and his daughter will dine out on that for the rest of their lives.

Bearing Witness To The Downfall Of Our Constitutional Republic.  My friends who believe either that what happened to Trump was not such a big deal or that the rule of law is not yet totally corrupted because Trump is likely to prevail on appeal miss the point.  Anarchy at this level in America is outside of any of our experiences. [...] What is it about New York City and the Democrat party, in general, that's got it in for Trump so bad that a politician can run for office on the single pledge that he or she will put Trump in jail, and no one bats an eye?  That's what a rogues gallery of politicians or political appointees espoused, including the New York state Attorney General, the Manhattan District Attorney, and the U.S. Justice Department's number three, who resigned and stepped down to prosecute Trump in New York.  All of us bear stark witness to something never before seen in American political life — the successful use of lawfare in to nullify a political enemy.  How else can you explain the wantonness of New York's attempt to silence its conservative enemies?

Biden declares it's 'dangerous' for anyone to say Trump trial was 'rigged'.  On Friday, Joe Biden addressed the guilty verdict reached the day prior in the falsified business records case against Trump, declaring that it's "dangerous" for people to say that it was a rigged trial.  [Advertisement]  "It's reckless, it's dangerous, it's irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don't like the verdict," Biden said.  [Video clip]  [Advertisement]  "The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed."

The Editor says...
There is little or no room on this website for statements by Joe Biden.  Everything in Biden's statement was a lie.  Surely somebody else writes all of his public statements; but even so, he willingly repeats the lies and puts his name on them.

Fear Not, Patriots, Trump Just Won the Election.  My lovely fiancee Jessica wanted to go to the bar to sulk after the ridiculous verdict against Trump came down.  It's easy to be sad.  Commie animals outside the courtroom — too stupid to see that they too can now be politically persecuted — are cheering.  Facebook dopes are taking victory laps just as they have done after every nonsensical strike Trump has taken but always recovered from.  One thing I adore about communists is that they never learn from their mistakes. [...] I suspect several things will happen next.  I believe Biden, who has taken millions of dollars from Chinese commies, will pretend to take the "high road" and refuse to debate Trump because he is now a "convicted felon," which was always the plan.  You don't need me to say this, but the donations will continue to go through the roof.

Kangarooed.  A jury of shills rather than a jury of peers found Donald Trump guilty of 34 counts of ... what were the crimes again?  Doesn't matter.  The Democrats got the verdict they were looking for.  And it wasn't justice on their minds.  They wanted retribution.  They wanted to hang an anchor around Trump's neck during the campaign.  They wanted the equivalent of a political execution.  They got it all.  Yet they still want more.  The Democratic Party is now officially the party of Stalin.  Its operatives and functionaries have long tilted much closer to Sovietism than Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson.  Today they have fallen fully into the arms of Uncle Joe.  Maybe it's merely a coincidence that the titular head of the party is also known as Uncle Joe.

I Wish We Did Not Know Happens Next.  After a conviction of any kind, the left will ramp up to eleven on the "Trump as felon" narrative, and the anger on the right will boil over in response.  There will be efforts to disqualify Trump from the ballot, and a very orchestrated preemptive political attack from the media and Congressional Democrats on SCOTUS to either prevent an appeal or to discredit the court and their decision as partisan — proof of the need to pack the court or personally destroy conservative justices.  Those who've openly spat on the rule of law will loudly claim to be its protectors.  They will dust off the same winning message from 2020 that the only way to get rid of the constant, loud anti-Trump unpleasantness generated overwhelmingly by the left is to get rid of Trump.

Six Week Trial And Nobody Knows The Crime.  The trial entered the final arguments stage on Tuesday, after a trial when the crime was never divulged.  This trial was scripted with the one intention of Biden being able to label his primary competitor a convicted felon.  Every day of the trial gave ammunition for an appeal, but the one remaining fact loomed over the trial:  there was no crime. [...] This trial is a classic con game that distracts people from the real issues of the failed Joe Biden presidency.  Look at Donald Trump, who is constrained to a chair in a courtroom and unable to campaign.  Don't look at the price at the gas pump.  Don't look at the thousands of young men crossing our southern border.  Don't look at the two wars we are funding.  Don't look at Biden defying the Supreme Court and transferring student loans to every American.  Don't look at the cost of your weekly shopping cart of groceries.  This was the plan, but it is not working.  The trial is not working out as planned by the Democrats, and people are not falling for the gaslighting.  Biden has been trying to convince Americans he was on the right track and they needed to understand the new parameters.  He actually insulted the intelligence level of Americans, and Americans do not forget being played for fools.

Trump Verdict Is Indictment Of GOP Leaders Who Can't Be Bothered To Resist Republic-Wrecking Lawfare.  Former President Donald Trump was convicted Thursday by 12 jurors in Democrat-dominated New York City for a crime no one can articulate that was brought by a George Soros-funded district attorney and overseen by a Biden donor.  But the conviction wasn't just an indictment of Democrat lawfare — it was an indictment of how feckless Republican "leaders" have become.  As radio host Michael Berry quipped in a post on X, the sham verdict in New York "probably made some Republicans in Congress so mad that they will even consider holding some hearings."  [Advertisement]  [Tweet]  It's funny until it's not.  Republican leaders have remained largely tight-lipped about Democrats' anti-Trump lawfare despite holding the House and control of several states in which Biden surely could be brought up on charges pertaining to the porous border or defying the Supreme Court.  But Republicans did and continue to do nothing.  Take, for example, the belated and worthless response from Senate Minority "Leader" Mitch McConnell.

Criminal Convictions and the Presidency.  On Thursday May 30, a New York court led by Judge Juan Merchan convicted a U.S. President of 34 felony counts. [...] Pursuing political prosecutions of candidates in order to interfere with an election is dangerous and likely to boomerang rhetorically upon those seeking their own ends in this abuse of power. [...] The Justice Department is showing itself to be a partisan organization that views its operations of law enforcement to be subordinate to an ideological goal that is the defense of the Democrat Party and its hold upon the executive branch.  The American public should not cooperate with this plain election interference and evident violation of among our most precious civil rights: freedom of speech.  The prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment of U.S. Presidential candidates is not unprecedented, but it does not insure the reduction in political power or appeal to any such candidate.  These encroachments are the truest threat to our democratic republic.

The Trump Verdict:  Guilty.  The dirty work of Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller investigation failed, the Fulton County prosecution is stayed pending appeal, and Special Counsel Jack Smith won't get his cases to trial before the November 2024 election.  But they always had New York — the State has made Trump and his company and his family a political target — and District Attorney Alvin Bragg came through with the early indictment.  The target might have been Trump, but the real goal was to influence the 2024 election, no matter the shaky facts and dubious legal theories of the case.  Democracy must be saved even through unlawful and unethical means.  The enemies of society must be hunted, the obstacles to progress must be destroyed.  Even when they're innocent[.]  Especially when they're innocent.

Manhattan jury finds former President Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts.  A Manhattan jury found former President Donald Trump guilty on all counts in his hush money trial and made him the first former U.S. president convicted of a crime.  The verdict on 34 charges, reached after deliberating for 11 hours over two days, means Mr. Trump will campaign against President Biden as a convicted felon.  Mr. Trump, seated, looked at the foreperson but then looked straight ahead and briefly shook his head as the foreperson repeatedly said "guilty" to all the counts.

Biden campaign pounces on Trump's guilty criminal trial verdict: 'No one is above the law'.  President Biden's 2024 re-election campaign says the unanimous guilty verdicts Thursday in former President Trump's criminal trial show that "no one is above the law."  Trump was found guilty by a jury in New York City on all 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in his history-making case in which a former or current president for the first time was tried in court.  "Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain," Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement minutes after the verdict was read in court.

The Editor says...
Yep, no one is above the law, other than Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Eric Holder, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Henry Cuellar, Robert Menendez, Barack H. Obama, Nancy Pelosi, James Comey, the guy that broke Jeffrey Epstein's neck, the "sleeping" guards outside Epstein's maximum-security cell, the guy that rubbed out Vince Foster, the guy who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, John Doe #2 in the OKC bombing, the BLM and Antifa rioters in the summer of 2020, the fifty-one former intelligence officials who vouched for a fictitious document to get Joe Biden elected, the numerous coordinated criminals who stole the 2020 presidential election in the middle of the night, and about 30 million illegal aliens.

Should Garland be charged with lying to Congress?  Merrick Garland recently testified before the House Judiciary Committee, and among other things, was "battered" over his decision to keep the recorded interview tapes between Joe Biden and special counsel Robert Hur hidden from the public.  Garland has the audacity to say that no one is above the law, and his Justice department never considers politics in its decisions, but those statements are demonstrably not true. [...] Alejandro Mayorkas has continually lied to Congress[,] and has never been charged.  Anthony Fauci has continually lied to Congress[,] and has never been charged.  Does anyone believe that "politics" aren't part of the decision-making process, as Garland has yet to charge Jim and Hunter Biden for lying to Congress?  The Justice Department has never cared about the Biden family business of taking kickbacks.  Why would they change now?  Former FBI director James Comey listed all the crimes Hillary committed, but let her off so as not to get in the way of her presidential run.  Comey and others continually lied to the FISA court to illegally spy on people surrounding President Trump, and were never charged.  The FBI never charged drug-running terrorists, instead opting to let them off the hook, because Obama ordered them to stand down for the sake of his Iranian nuclear deal.  That is purely a political decision.  The FBI knowingly lied to social media companies, a scheme to censor the information about the "Laptop from Hell" from the public just a month before the November 2020 election, but none of those involved in this coverup were ever charged.  Isn't this election interference?  What about Garland himself?  He clearly is above the law.  He lied to Congress about his involvement with the White House and the National School Boards Association on a coordinated effort to target parents.

American justice?  The Biden Department of Injustice, the FBI, CIA, DIA, M-O-U-S-E, and other government agencies have been so thoroughly compromised — and weaponized against anyone who would dare to challenge them, that there appears to be no way back to decency, objectivity, and sanity.  This erstwhile constitutional, representative republic has devolved into a banana republic in just a few short years.  Barack Obama's stated goal of "fundamentally transforming" the (formerly) United States has come to fruition.  The nation that long did more to advance human freedom and dignity than any other is now just another polity controlled by power-hungry madmen seeking their own glorification over that of the Creator.  Donald Trump has been convicted of, well, being Donald Trump — and standing in the way of Biden's re-election.  Nothing more and nothing less.

Trump is a convict, but will it matter?  This is an extremely strange moment for American democracy.  Polls suggest that independent voters — the people who decide American elections — will not vote for a man who is a convicted felon.  But now Donald Trump, currently the favourite to win re-election in November, has been found guilty, on 34 counts, of falsifying business records — and nobody knows if that verdict will make him more popular or less.  On the one hand, Trump has been traduced — 34 times over.  A legitimate or at least actual court has decided that, yes, he deliberately altered his financial accounts, possibly for election campaign reasons back in 2016.  He is now a convict. [...] On the other hand, this Manhattan case has always felt like a political hit job — proof of what Trump has long claimed, that the system is rigged against him, that the Democrats will stop at nothing to keep him out of power.  Alvin Bragg, the District Attorney, cobbled together various tax misdemeanours and turned them into an indictment.

The Merchan Scale.  [Scroll down]  That wasn't Trump's problem in the case in New York.  That was straight-up Bolshevism on display.  A judge instructing the jury that they didn't have to reach a unanimous conclusion on every count?  In front of the cameras and everything?  That is just flat-out amazing and a level of judicial malfeasance that requires it's own scale.  On a scale of 1-10 of judicial malfeasance, that's somewhere in the 12 or 13 range, requiring a different scale all together, the Merchan Scale of judicial malfeasance.  When a judge has gone completely off script and began making up his own laws right in the courtroom, one must be rated on the Merchan scale that starts at 3 and goes to 15, because, on the Merchan Scale, there is no innocence.  That is just an archaic principle used way back in say 2015, before Trump had all of the rules of judicial practice altered to fit the level of lawfare they intended to use against him from 2015 to the present.

Judge Merchan's Instruction to the Jury Will Leave Your Jaw on the Floor.  Fox's John Roberts has since issued an update to his original "smorgasbord" interpretation of Judge Merchan's instructions.  He posted, "It is more nuanced than that.  All 12 need unanimity that Trump committed a crime.  But the underlying unlawful means is a smorgasbord they can pick from — and they don't all need to agree on what it was."  [Advertisement]  What this means is that there must still be a unanimous guilty verdict, but the jurors do not have to be unanimous about what the actual offense was.  There are three to choose from, and all 12 jurors don't have to agree, just so long as there are 12 votes overall.  I'm told that's New York law in these cases.  Even with this correction, none of the underlying problems with the case against Trump have changed.  There's still no crime that the prosecution has defined, there's still no magic math that lets two misdemeanors add up to a felony, and there's still no getting around Merchan allowing the prosecution to do almost anything while shackling Trump's defense.

Trump's Trial Has Already Damaged the Office of the Presidency.  In the short term, polls suggest that even a guilty verdict will have little effect on Trump's political standing.  A Quinnipiac poll reports that a conviction would make only 6 percent of self-identified Trump voters less likely to vote for him.  With Trump wrapping up the Republican nomination during his prosecution and leading in polls nationally and in six of the seven battleground states, the trials may have even helped him politically (though they might cost him in the general election).  Part of the blame for this rests with the Democrats who brought such farcical charges to knock Trump out of the race.  Win or lose, the weakness of the New York hush-money trial has put Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg's partisan motives on full display.  He focused the trial on the salacious details of the encounter between Trump and Stephanie Clifford (the real name of pornographic-film actress Stormy Daniels), which had almost no relevance to the actual legal charges.

Four-Four-Four.  The more time we have to look through Judge Juan Merchan's byzantine jury instructions in Donald Trump's "hush money" trial in Manhattan, the worse they look.  The vague nature of the instructions has even led to disputes among legal analysts who have struggled to make sense of the case from the beginning.  At Townhall, our colleague Matt Vespa has a good rundown of one of the most glaring problems with the instructions.  The judge gave the jurors the unheard-of option of picking any one of three crimes that were "concealed" by the entry of "false business records" and said that all twelve of them didn't necessarily have to agree on which of the three crimes was committed.  In other words, he appears to be opening the door to a conviction without a unanimous finding by the jury.  Matt warns that we "should be prepared for a conviction."

Stefanik Complaint:  Judge Merchan Was 'Intentionally Selected' To Ensure Trump Is Convicted.  Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., has submitted an official misconduct complaint to the New York State Unified Court System regarding the allegedly "random" selection of Juan Merchan as the judge over the ongoing case against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan, she announced Tuesday evening.  [Tweet]  Her complaint comes toward the end of a criminal trial in which Trump has faced 34 felony charges stemming from accusations that he instructed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pay "hush money" to pornographer Stormy Daniels to conceal an alleged past affair.  Trump is accused of falsifying financial records by failing to label these payments as campaign expenses, an absurd allegation given that labeling such payments as campaign expenses would have been illegal.  [Advertisement]  Stefanik's complaint pertains to Merchan's assignment to three separate criminal cases related to Trump, including his ongoing criminal trial, the previous trial against the Trump Organization, and the upcoming trial against Trump ally Steve Bannon.  The New York State Unified Court System's rules state that criminal cases are assigned to judges randomly, but Stefanik doubts this rule was followed in Democrats' lawfare crusade, which has proved to be their top 2024 campaign strategy.

Justice Merchan gets even sleazier.  New York State Justice Juan Merchan, who is presiding over New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg's trial of President Trump over a bookkeeping issue is getting sleazier now that Bragg's case is starting to fall apart, giving the Red Queen of the Alice In Wonderland story a run for her money.  At issue now are his instructions to the 12-person jury as it goes into deliberations, telling them that they don't need to agree about what the supposed 'underlying' crime of Donald Trump was that would make his hush money payment to porn "star" Stormy Daniels a felony, which is the legal basis for turning the bookkeeping issue into a 34-count felony.  They just need to think that Trump was thinking about commiting a crime when he signed off on the check and what that crime was can be anyone's guess.  But no matter:  Sentence first, verdict later.

Corrupt Judge Says Jury Can Convict Trump Without Agreeing on Crime.  Closing arguments in former President Donald Trump's Manhattan "hush money" trial begin today, and the judge gave the jury the green light to convict him without agreeing on the underlying 'predicate' crime he committed.First, into the legal weeds:  Trump's being charged for labeling "hush money" payments to adult actress Stormy Daniels as "legal fees." That alone is just a misdemeanor crime, and the statute of limitations has already expired. [...] Judge Juan Merchan sided with the prosecution and ruled that the jury does not need to agree on the alleged felony in order to find Trump guilty.

Will Biden Take Us Down With Him?  Biden's handlers thought it was a sly Machiavellian move to coordinate local, state, and federal prosecutors to wear down Trump, bankrupt him, destroy him mentally and physically, and brand him as a criminal felon — through a long winter, spring, summer, and fall of lawfare of the sort never witnessed in America before. [...] The judges — Lewis Kaplan (Carroll case), Arthur Engoron (James), and now, the most touchy, and prejudicial of the three, Juan Merchan (Bragg) — have proved so imprisoned by their Trump animus, so ideologically transparent, so intent on ignoring even the pretense of applying the law equally to all parties, that they have lost the American people.  Ditto Fani Willis.  The nation is daily becoming more embarrassed — and angry over — how the world's once finest example of jurisprudence has been reduced to the status of the Soviet show trials.

Here's why the case against Trump should end in 'not guilty'.  With the closing arguments set for Tuesday in the trial of former President Donald Trump, defense attorneys are in a rather curious position.  There is still debate among legal experts as to the specific crime that District Attorney Alvin Bragg is alleging.  Trump's lawyers are defending a former president who is charged under a state misdemeanor which died years ago under the statute of limitations.  It was zapped back into life in the form of roughly three dozen felonies by claiming that bookkeeping violations — allegedly hiding payments to Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence about a supposed affair with Trump — were committed to hide another crime.  But what is that second crime?

The Plan to Convict Trump.  At last, we can see Alvin Bragg's underlying criminal theory:  he doesn't have one.  Bragg and Judge Merchan are running the real trial in the court of public opinion, not to deliver justice but to hurt Trump's presidential campaign by branding him a convicted felon during the election.  They seek to do this by lying to the jury — for example, by pretending to have a criminal theory.  The prosecution rested their case without specifying the second crime, nor giving a shred of evidence for the first:  even if we took Michael Cohen's testimony at face value, ignoring that he's a serial perjurer who confessed to six different felonies on Monday morning alone, his claim that Trump himself ordered the monthly payments that were calculated from Cohen's loan reimbursement demand and deemed them "legal fees" would not constitute a crime.  That case is dead in the water on appeal, but Merchan's parallel trial, which has little to do with established law and instead runs on innuendo and vagaries, aims for a temporary conviction.

Prosecutors Are Still Hedging on Exactly What 'Crime' Trump Tried To 'Aid' or 'Conceal'.  Donald Trump is charged with 34 felonies in New York because he allegedly falsified business records to conceal "another crime."  In the run-up to Trump's trial, which began last month and is expected to conclude next week, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was cagey about exactly what that other crime was.  His prosecutors suggested several possibilities without picking one in particular, and they are still hedging on this crucial point.  It looks like the case will go to the jury with that central question unresolved.  That's fine, according to a ruling that Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the case, made this week.  For a verdict to be valid, Trump's lawyers argued, the jury should have to settle on a specific legal theory.  The prosecution disagreed.  Under "the standard application of the law," lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo argued, jurors can convict Trump as long as they unanimously agree that he falsified business records with "an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof."  In Colangelo's view, jurors do not have to agree on what that underlying crime was.

Top Dem Hakeem Jeffries Sent Over $1.4 Million to Trump Trial Judge's Daughter's Home.  Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has sent over $1.4 million to Loren Merchan, according to investigative reporter Laura Loomer.  Merchan is the daughter of the judge overseeing Democratic District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg's election interference prosecution of Donald Trump in Manhattan, Juan Merchan.  "Hakeem Jefferies is a client of Judge Merchan's daughter, Loren Merchan, and has sent her over $1,428,879.99 in payments to her PERSONAL RESIDENCE!" Loomer posted on X (formerly Twitter).

U.S. Intelligence Deserves the Distrust It Is Generating.  President Obama sought to change the demographics and the political complexion of the federal work force, and intelligence leaders such as CIA director John Brennan (2013-2017) made clear that they intended to change the organizational cultures of agencies in politically significant ways.  They succeeded brilliantly, with overt activism in defense of Obama/Brennan changes beginning in 2016, when Trump emerged as a potential threat to the "progress" that Obama's policies allegedly had achieved.  This radical change became glaringly obvious when former CIA deputy director Michael Morell invoked his CIA credentials in a New York Times op-ed to rationalize endorsing Hillary Clinton for president while harshly criticizing Trump.  Morell then became one of the "talking heads," along with Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director Michael Hayden, and several dozen less-senior people whom the mainstream liberal press promoted as legitimate observers of everything relevant to their anti-Trump campaign.

Justice Merchan's gagged witness goes public with what he would have told the jury.  After Michael Cohen's disastrous testimony, it would seem that the case against President Trump over the bookkeeping entry in a hush-money payment case would be in tatters as it goes to the jury.  Many legal eagles have said as much.  But the politically partisan New York justice in this case, Juan Merchan, doesn't give up that fast and clearly wants to salvage the case.  He's instructing the jury to ignore the detail about the 'underlying crime' and treat the case the same way a burglary case is treated. [...] We'll get to the burglary analogy in a minute from the character named Vance, but the bottom line is, Merchan is trying to slant the jury the prosecutor's way, telling them not to bother about the little detail about what the underlying crime was that makes the hush money payment a jailtime felony.  They can make it up, if they like. [...] The underlying "crime" of course is trying to influence an election.  Apparently no one is allowed to influence an election, and especially not a candidate.

Alvin Bragg is in a Lot of Trouble After Michael Cohen's Testimony.  Here's Why.  Political allies of former President Donald J. Trump — and even members of the corporate media — are criticizing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's decision to bring Michael Cohen as his prosecution's star witness in Trump's hush money trial.  The disgraced perjurer's testimony may have undermined Bragg's entire case against Trump.  Cohen spent four days testifying, where it was revealed he stole upwards of $60,000 from the Trump Organization — the payments being meant for a vendor.

Maybe Trump knows what he's doing.  After twice being railroaded by a New York judge and jury, a third railroading is inevitable.  The evidence doesn't matter.  He is not on trial for 34 tedious counts of election violations and bad bookkeeping.  He is on trial for being Donald John Trump.  Guilty as charged.  But The Donald's goal is not to avoid prison.  His goal is to return to the Oval Office in January.  Once you understand that, you see the logic behind having him testify because he makes himself defiant and worthy of our respect and admiration.  Recall that a year ago, Democrats and their handmaidens — a polite way of saying massage parlor girls — in the media drooled over the prospect of seeing Donald Trump in a mugshot.  They convinced themselves that a mugshot would ruin him and hand the nomination to Ron DeSantis.  Much to their chagrin, there was no happy ending.  Democrats and the media watched helplessly as the mugshot improved Trump's poll numbers because it made him a sympathetic victim of a rigged criminal justice system.

Hemingway: The Point Of Trump Show Trial Is A Quick Conviction, Not Fairness.  "There's no actual crime.  There's no evidence to support the crime.  The star witness might be the worst witness we've ever seen in American history.  And yet, the whole point of a show trial is to secure a quick and easy conviction.  That's why it's happening in New York with a very biased jury," Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway said on Fox News' "Outnumbered."  [Video clip]

Jonathan Turley Questions Why Judge Who Donated To Biden Was 'Hand-Picked' For Trump Trial.  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Monday that the judge in the Trump business records trial violated ethics rules with his donation to President Joe Biden's 2020 election campaign, and questioned why he was presiding over the case at all.  Merchan made a $15 donation to Biden's election campaign in 2020, a $10 donation to a group called "Stop Republicans" and a $10 donation to a "Progressive Turnout Project," according to data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Turley said that the small size of the donation was irrelevant.  "It is very clear, they say you can't make political contributions and he did," Turley said on "Fox and Friends" after co-host Ainsley Earhardt mentioned the donations.  "And the fact it is 'de minimus' or small, really, I think, misses the point.  You make donations to show your support, that is what that $15 did."

Sinking the Republic.  The trial going on in New York is a classic example of what we all have coming in the years ahead.  The judge, Juan Merchan, when asked to recuse himself due to conflicts of interest simply declared himself "not conflicted" despite the fact that his daughter is raising money for Democrat candidates on the basis of her father putting Trump in jail.  That is authoritarian rule and while the communists in the media scream about the threat of Trump imposing authoritarian rule should he be re-elected in November, they are completely happy with authoritarian rule when it's imposed against their political enemies.

What if Justice Merchan has been compromised?  Given what we know about what has been going on in Justice Juan Merchan's Manhattan courtroom, including the preposterous, over-the-top bias of this judge for the prosecution and his overt antipathy for the defendant, Donald Trump, what explains his willing destruction of his own reputation as a judge?  Each and every legal scholar who has weighed in on the course of the trial, from Alan Dershowitz to Jonathan Turley and countless others, (with the exception of those paid by CNN and MSNBC) is gobsmacked by Merchan's thoroughly unconstitutional rulings, gag orders, contempt charges, exclusion of practically every witness with relevant testimony for the defense, and his allowance of non-relevant witnesses like Stormy Daniels. [...] We've known for years now that our judicial system has been corrupted, transformed into an extension of the Democrat party by President Obama and Joe Biden, but Justice Merchan has taken their unscrupulousness to a wholly new and shocking level.

Mark Levin: 'Bragg Should Be Disbarred' — He Has Violated the Brady Rule.  Thursday on FNC's "Hannity," conservative talker Mark Levin laid out why New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg may have knowingly violated former President Donald Trump's constitutional rights throughout and other established legal precedents during his office's prosecution of Trump.  Levin called for Bragg's disbarment, referring to him as a lawless government official and citing the numerous violations as justification.  [Video clip, transcript.]

Defund Jack Smith. Then Investigate Him.  An increasingly toxic relationship with U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, accusations of grand jury and prosecutorial abuse, and the government's recent revelations that investigators mishandled and possibly misplaced key evidence threatens to launch Smith into the Fani Willis/Alvin Bragg category — a corrupt, egotistical clown with crashing public credibility and waning support from some of his most loyal toadies.  Smith's already shaky reputation isn't the only thing in jeopardy.  As I explained here, Judge Cannon has set a mini trial of sorts over the next several weeks that puts Smith, in essence, on the defendant's side of the courtroom for once; even the leftwing blog Lawfare recently acknowledged as much.

Trump asks NY high court to intervene in fight over gag order in hush money trial.  Donald Trump is seeking to have New York's highest court intervene in his fight over a gag order that has seen him fined $10,000 and threatened with jail for violating a ban on commenting about witnesses, jurors and others connected to his hush money criminal trial.  The former president's lawyers filed a notice of appeal Wednesday, a day after the state's mid-level appellate court refused his request to lift or modify the restrictions.  The filing was listed on a court docket, but the document itself was sealed and not available.  Trump presidential campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said it's a request for the state's Court of Appeals to take up the matter.

Cohen Made Huge Admission in NYC Trump Case and Now the Tumblers Begin to Fall in Place.  We're just now beginning to understand a few more things about this Jenga-like prosecution of Donald Trump.  Other than the feds, in the form of the Southern District of New York federal prosecutors and the Federal Elections Commission declining to prosecute Trump for his payments to his attorney, we learned Tuesday [5/14/2024] that Robert Mueller's Special Counsel's Office wanted a piece of Michael Cohen before he reported to prison in 2018.  Indeed, when all the questions are answered, we might discover that it was Mueller's pitbull, Andrew Weissmann, the FBI, and the DOJ who were responsible for his bizarre plea deal that sparked the idea for this wrong-headed case.

Trial Judge's Daughter Helped Campaign to Kick Trump Off Colorado Ballot.  They aren't even trying to HIDE the corruption in New York.  After all, nobody will call them on it until an appeals court reverses a conviction against Trump in the New York fake hush-money case.  [Tweet]  It had been revealed earlier that Judge Merchan's daughter was making bank off the trial, and now a Post Millennial report outlines how Loren Merchan has been working to destroy Donald Trump for months and making a pretty penny in the process.

Legal experts:  New York hush money trial must end in Trump acquittal.  As the New York hush money trial of Donald Trump has continued to unfold, critics of the prosecution have marveled at just how thin the case truly is, and according to some high-profile commentators, acquittal is something that just now requires.  In the estimation of observers such as former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, writing for National Review, the bottom line is that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg simply cannot prove that the former president has committed a crime.

DA Bragg's office reportedly deleted critical phone records between Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen.  DA Alvin Bragg, in his prosecutorial pursuit of former President Donald Trump, has had a handful of serious setbacks over the past week or so.  According to The Epoch Times, that was evidenced once again after a paralegal from Bragg's office testified "that some phone call records between Michael Cohen and Stephanie Clifford's (a.k.a.  Stormy Daniels) lawyer were deleted."  The deleted records, of course, pose evidentiary issues for Bragg's prosecutors that Trump's lawyers immediately seized upon.

Spoliation defined
Black's Law Dictionary, 1991, page 1401.

The Making of a Banana Republic.  It is a presidential election year and a leading candidate for president of the United States, who also happens to be a former president of the United States, is currently a criminal defendant chained to a dingy courtroom four days of the week — time that he should be spending interacting with voters out on the campaign trail.  That's terrible.  But it's only the beginning.  The daughter of the presiding judge is a professional political operative for the presidential candidate's opposition party, and the candidate himself is subject to an over-inclusive and unconstitutional gag order.  The George Soros-funded district attorney, who campaigned on a platform of prosecuting that candidate, only pressed charges after his own left-wing predecessor opted not to do so due to the frivolous nature of the charges.  One of the Soros-funded DA's subordinates curiously joined his team, just in time to prosecute the candidate, from a high-ranking perch in the Department of Justice that is headed by the candidate's chief political rival.

Judge Cannon Puts Jack Smith on Trial.  U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon may have just indefinitely postponed Donald Trump's espionage and obstruction trial but that doesn't mean her federal courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida will lie dormant over the next few months.  In officially vacating the existing May 20 trial date — an impossibility considering the defendant will be in a Manhattan courtroom for the foreseeable future — Cannon declined to set another date, calling it "imprudent" at this stage of the process.  She noted a "myriad" of unresolved matters in Special Counsel Jack Smith's 42-count indictment against the former president and his two co-defendants, Mar-a-Lago employees Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Olivera, for willfully retaining national defense information and attempting to impede the government's investigation.  Cannon, however, did schedule a number of proceedings that could be considered a way to put the Department of Justice on trial.  In a stunning turn of events, Cannon, appointed by Donald Trump in 2020, is poised to make Smith a defendant of sorts.

Trump's trial is a stupendous legal catastrophe.  Some had asked whether a jury selected in Manhattan, which voted overwhelmingly against Trump, could be fair in judging the former president.  But now that we have moved beyond this point, the real problem Trump has is that his best arguments are legal in nature:  prosecutors appeared to cobble together misdemeanours and felonies in order to find something with which to "get Trump."  The underlying crime is seemingly a minor misdemeanour — falsifying business records — which long ago expired under the statute of limitations.  In order to turn it into a felony within the statute of limitations, prosecutors will have to show that Trump falsified the records in order to impact his election, thus constituting a federal election felony.  The problem is, however, that federal authorities have not prosecuted Trump for this federal election crime.  Moreover, state prosecutors have no jurisdiction over federal election law.  Finally, we were not even clear, when the trial began, as to precisely which federal election laws the District Attorney was relying on.

Just One More Thing, Stormy:  Do You Know Anything About Trump's Business Records?  Ten years after the porno performer claims she and Trump had a sexual encounter, she ordered her attorney to wring money out of Trump before the election while the getting was good.  In all, $130,000 was paid to her representative.  The money was paid by Michael Cohen.  And now, 18 years after the alleged sexual encounter, prosecutors put Trump on trial for stealing the 2016 election by listing his payments to his attorney on the balance sheet in 2016 as attorney payments instead of campaign expenditures.  The judge has given his blessing to prosecutors to link these payments to Cohen as a conspiracy to steal the election and think about breaking another law to elevate them to felonies.

Democrats may be the dog that caught the car.  [Scroll down]  Now, if Alvin Bragg had charged Trump with a single felony count of [blah, blah, blah] and a jury had convicted him, the judge in the case could have sentenced Trump to probation and a substantial fine, perhaps even requiring him not to leave the state or at least having him check-in in-person with his probation officer on a regular basis, which would have allowed Democrats to significantly impede the Trump campaign.  Additionally, it would allow the Democrats to run advertisements claiming that Donald Trump was a "convicted felon."  But because TDS is real and the concept of "nuance" is completely lost on liberals, they instead charged ahead like a bull in a china shop with 34 felony indictments against the former president.  This means if Trump is convicted, the judge will have no choice but to impose an incredibly harsh sentence.  Consider, if Trump is convicted of 34 felonies, offering a lenient sentence such as probation would be prima facie evidence that the case were overcharged, especially if the judge postponed sentencing pending appeal.

Johnson: Merchan not 'serious judge' after threatening Trump with jail time in election year.  House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., blasted Judge Juan Merchan on Tuesday for fining former President Trump 10 times for gag order violations during an ongoing presidential campaign.  Merchan is presiding over Trump's hush money case in New York.  "The judge, who is a well-known Democrat, is pursuing an indefensible gag order on President Trump.  Now, just think about that.  Think about the magnitude of that.  He's trying to override President Trump's constitutional right to defend himself against the constant smears of his political opponents, in an election year," Johnson said during a news conference on Tuesday after a House GOP conference meeting.  "You cannot call yourself a serious judge and threaten a presidential candidate with jail time when he defends his reputation in public in the middle of a campaign.  And I think everybody of good conscience understands that," he added.

Democrats are Silencing Voices of Opposition.  In the 'Hush Money' trial, which began on March 25, Democrat Judge Juan M. Merchan cited Trump's prior comments about him and others in the case in granting the prosecution's request for what it termed a 'narrowly tailored' gag order barring Trump from making certain out-of-court statements.  Prosecutors cited what they called Trump's 'long history of making public and inflammatory remarks' about people involved in his legal cases when it asked for the gag order.  Further damaging Trump's ability to campaign and raise funds, Judge Merchan ruled that Trump must be in court when it's in session.  Merchan gave a warning "...that if Trump disrupts the proceedings, he could face jail time."  In what has to be the greatest case of chutzpah ever, Marchan said, "There's no agenda here.  We want to follow the law.  We want justice to be done.  That's all we want."  He also said he is certain of his "ability to be fair and impartial."  He said that despite the facts he's contributed to Democrats and his daughter is a party consultant.

FBI Staged Fake Photo of Classified Documents for PR Purposes.  You know that famous photo of Trump's purloined Top Secret documents?  The one that the FBI released that showed all those classified documents hidden in folders?  [Advertisement]  It's kinda, sorta faked.  Staged.  Not accurate at all.  A sham.  A con.  [Photo]  No, it's not a photoshop.  That would be worse, I suppose.  Maybe.  You see, those folders that scream Top Secret were brought by the FBI and the documents were inserted in them by FBI agents.  Think about this for a minute.  The General Services Administration shipped these documents to Trump, which is why they are stuffed away in Mar a Lago in the first place.  Then, the Archives met with the Biden administration to prod it to investigate Trump.  Then the FBI raids Mar a Lago, armed with folders screaming "Top Secret," photographs them, and releases the photo to the world, suggesting that Trump stole away with these documents in these folders screaming Top Secret.  Smells like a setup.

Will the Supreme Court Let This Crisis Go to Waste?  In Trump v. United States, the Court is considering whether Donald Trump has immunity for actions taken while he was president.  The DoJ argued that the motive for presidential actions should determine whether immunity applies and that the discretion and good motivations of DoJ attorneys should be trusted to make that determination (try not to laugh).  Justice Alito questioned the wisdom of that argument, asking if the DoJ should be trusted, "given its history of abusive partisan prosecution."  That is about as close as a Supreme Court justice will ever come to telling a government solicitor general that the latter has squandered his last ounce of credibility.  It appears that the Supreme Court justices are becoming aware that our justice system is now a tangle of broken constitutional promises and inconsistent legal decisions.  But do they realize that they helped create this mess?

Judge Cannon Indefinitely Suspends Jack Smith's Witch Hunt Against Trump.  In a dramatic twist in one of the most high-profile cases in recent history, Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered the indefinite suspension of Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation into former President Donald Trump.  The ruling effectively halts further pre-trial proceedings while the court sorts through a labyrinth of discovery matters, disclosure issues, and other complex legal motions.  In her meticulously detailed five-page order, Judge Cannon cited the interconnected nature of numerous pre-trial motions, discovery disputes, and Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) considerations as compelling reasons to vacate the scheduled May 20, 2024 trial date.  Instead, the judge alluded to the need for additional time to ensure a fair and comprehensive legal process.

Judge Cannon Indefinitely Postpones Jack Smith's Classified Documents Trial After Special Counsel Admits to Evidence Tampering.  Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday afternoon indefinitely postponed Jack Smith's classified documents trial against Trump.  As previously reported, Judge Cannon on Monday night postponed a key deadline in the classified documents case after Special Counsel Jack Smith admitted to tampering with evidence.  Cannon on Monday evening temporarily stayed a May 9 deadline for President Trump and his co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira related to CIPA.  On Tuesday afternoon, Judge Cannon set a second set of pre-trial deadlines to manage pending discovery and disclosure matters.

America:  Goodbye my Country.  Today America is governed by an illegitimate tyrannical regime, and nothing has been done about it.  The Republican Party is useless.  Only Trump soldiers on with four orchestrated criminal indictments and a number of civil cases arrayed against him.  The media, Democrats, and Rino Republicans are all against him.  Only the people are for him, and the people are powerless.  They don't even have the vote as the Democrats made clear by stealing the last two elections.  Those prosecuting Trump have no concern that they are destroying America's reputation and reducing the power of all future presidents, making them even more subservient to the deep state.  America's only representative — Donald Trump — is so overloaded with criminal and civil prosecutions that he has no time to campaign and even as a billionaire is overwhelmed with the legal costs of defending himself from obvious nonsensical charges.

Bragg's own witness, Hope Hicks, implodes case against Trump.  In an epic miscalculation that backfired spectacularly, prosecutors in the Manhattan hush money trial of Donald Trump called Hope Hicks to the witness stand.  The moment cross-examination began, their misbegotten case against the former president began to collapse.  Hicks, who served as press secretary during the 2016 presidential campaign, explained that Trump's motive for suppressing salacious stories was to protect his wife, Melania. "Absolutely... I don't think he wanted anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed about anything on the campaign.  He wanted them to be proud of him."  In an epic miscalculation that backfired spectacularly, prosecutors in the Manhattan hush money trial of Donald Trump called Hope Hicks to the witness stand.  The moment cross-examination began, their misbegotten case against the former president began to collapse.

Biden's Political Persecution of Trump Damages the U.S. and Aids the PRC.  A fundamental aspect of American politics is that it is simultaneously domestic and international.  Domestic events impact international ones, and vice versa.  What happens within the U.S. also reaches global audiences.  In that light, the civil and criminal trials in New York City in Judge Arthur Engoron's and Juan Merchan's courtrooms of former President Donald Trump have a world impact, as do the trials in Fulton County, Georgia, and by the Special Counsel for Trump Inquires, Jack Smith, in Washington, D.C., and Florida.  While Trump's trials have multifaceted domestic political effects which will play out to election day on November 5, 2024, these events also have myriad and adverse international implications.

The insanity at the heart of the Trump trial.  Perhaps the weirdest, and by far the most unjust, thing about former President Donald Trump's trial in New York is that we do not know precisely what crime Trump is charged with committing.  We're in the middle of the trial, with Trump facing a maximum of more than 100 years in prison, and we don't even know what the charges are!  It's a surreal situation.  Yes, we know that Trump is charged with falsifying business records of payments made to the porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 and 2017.  But falsifying business records is a misdemeanor with a two-year statute of limitations, meaning prosecutors would be prohibited from charging Trump with that crime after 2019, which was five years ago.  They obviously missed that deadline by a mile.  We also know that New York law allows falsifying business records to be upgraded to a felony if the alleged falsification was done with "intent to defraud that includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof."  In that case, the statute of limitations extends to five years, which would have allowed prosecutors to charge Trump as late as 2022.  Prosecutors missed that deadline, too.

NY Prosecuting Trump for Being Extorted.  None of the liberals calling for Trump's head know what he's accused of, they just know he did it.  They don't remember how the previous accusations ended or even what they were, despite having taken the strongest of positions; and here they are, again, taking the strongest position on the one issue they want you to know they care about:  Donald Trump is Guilty.  So that's the Manhattan jury pool.  Almost all of them read the New York Times so it's no wonder.  But to be fair, no one else knows what Trump's accused of, either.  Not the lawyers, not the pundits nor the people they interview.  Three weeks in, no one on either side or on the outside knows what the crime is.

'Election Interference': Bragg Case Gag Order Puts Unprecedented Limitations On Trump Campaign.  Allies close to former President Donald Trump are furious with the gag order imposed on him and his campaign by New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, telling the Daily Caller it is hamstringing his campaign like no other has been before.  On Tuesday, the start of week three of Trump's Manhattan trial, Merchan held the 2024 Republican presidential nominee in contempt of court and issued a $9,000 fine for repeatedly violating a gag order.  Merchan has also threatened jail time if Trump continues to violate the order.  Trump and his campaign have been barred from speaking about Matthew Colangelo, a lead prosecutor in the case who spent two years serving in the Biden administration's Department of Justice (DOJ) as acting associate attorney general.  After working near the top of the DOJ under Attorney General Merrick Garland, Colangelo joined the Manhattan District Attorney's office as senior counsel in December 2022.

Judge Cannon Set to Unseal Information Related to Obama Judge's Order.  Judge Aileen Cannon is set to release information related to Judge Beryl Howell's order piercing through Trump's attorney-client privilege.  Cannon set a telephonic status conference for next Wednesday, May 8.  [Tweet]  Jack Smith used a DC grand jury — and a radical Marxist Obama-appointed DC judge (Beryl Howell) in the classified docs case before quietly roving down to Florida to file the charges.  Judge Beryl Howell ruled against Trump at every turn!

Trump-haters hit a brick wall at SCOTUS.  Trump-hating prosecutors' joy ride hit a brick wall in the Supreme Court last Thursday, where six Justices doubted and ridiculed liberals' attempts to prosecute Trump in federal court.  This was so thoroughly a rout of Biden's minions that it also diminishes the impact of the ongoing New York County prosecution of Trump.  Delusional Biden supporters have expected federal prosecutors to rescue Biden by putting Trump on trial before the election.  But a barrage of comments by a Supreme Court majority exposed fatal defects in this legal strategy of anti-Trumpers to win the presidential election by prosecuting Trump.  Chief Justice Roberts did more than reject the decision by the Democrat-dominated D.C. Circuit that went against Trump.  Roberts mocked that decision for relying on a senseless tautology, which is also known as begging the question — assuming the truth of a statement without proving it.

This is 100% Obama:  The Rigged Communist Show Trial Against Trump.  The Intentional Destruction of America.  George HW Bush talked about "1,000 points of light."  Obama uses "1,000 points of destruction" to achieve his goal- the intentional destruction of America.  You can see it all happening just blocks apart right now — all built around Columbia University and NYC.  Upper Manhattan is where the anarchy at Columbia is on display.  The Jew-hatred.  The America-hatred.  The hatred of capitalism.  The desire to destroy the greatest nation in world history, ever blessed by God.  And then a few miles south to lower Manhattan is the courtroom where a rigged communist show trial is happening to destroy the greatest symbol of everything Obama hates- President Donald J. Trump.

Harmeet Dhillon Reveals Judge Juan Merchan's Sneaky Move To RIG Trump's Trial.  In an explosive appearance on the Megyn Kelly Show, Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney closely associated with former President Donald Trump's legal affairs, vehemently criticized Judge Juan Merchan's conduct in Trump's ongoing hush money trial.  Dhillon has been actively involved in high-profile legal cases, such as defending Project Veritas and participating in election integrity efforts during the 2020 presidential election.  According to Dhillon, Merchan has made the controversial decision to exclude campaign finance experts from testifying, a move she argued could unfairly impact the trial's outcome.  As the case is set to resume Tuesday in Manhattan, concerns over judicial fairness have intensified.  Dhillon described the situation that has been compromised by biased judicial oversight.

The Troubling Story of John Eastman and Election Lawfare.  John Eastman gave legal counsel to President Trump while he was still in office on cases dealing with election fraud.  He became nationally known after he spoke at the protest rally on the Ellipse prior to the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 riots.  He authored the "Eastman Memos," brainstorming papers in which he analyzed potential means of responding to the illegalities in the 2020 election that he had uncovered through investigation.  Since Jan. 6, 2021, Eastman has endured three years of malicious lawsuits, bar complaints, subpoenas, and testimony before the House January 6 committee.  The lawsuits include his inclusion in the indictment of President Trump and 17 of his associates by Fulton County, GA, District Attorney Fani Willis on racketeering charges.  In June of 2022, FBI armed agents frisked him and seized his phone, which they have kept in evidence for over two years.  It prompted Tucker Carlson to host him on Fox News to share details of the encounter.

The 'Deep State' Is Far Deeper Than Anyone Imagined.  For decades, pollsters have been telling us the electorate yearned for a third way, a nonpartisan who wasn't wedded to either party and would represent the vast middle.  Along comes the brash, imperfect real estate developer who had worked with both sides of the aisle in "the art of a deal."  The media elite loved it, especially the most salacious exploits of the prowling Manhattan mogul.  That is right up until presidential candidate Trump embraced a reformulated version of America First that turned out to be a direct threat to those global media empires.  You know, the ones who profitably ran all those Big Pharma ads while "reporting'" on COVID. It wasn't long before the crude tapes and "hush money" stories started rolling in.  Indeed, Trump's real sin was his desire to return to the economic and foreign policy nationalism that had been summarily quashed by globalists in both parties.  And it was a grave enough transgression to warrant his destruction by any means necessary.

Jonathan Turley Says Bragg's Case Against Trump Is 'Collapsing' After Witness Testimony.  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley on Friday said the prosecution's case against former President Donald Trump is failing as a key witness is benefiting the defense.  Trump is on trial facing 34 felony counts of allegedly falsifying business records in relation to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.  The prosecution's first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, was helpful to Trump as the prosecution made mistakes that the defense capitalized on during cross-examination, Turley asserted on Fox News' "Outnumbered."  [Video clip]  "It's a breakdown in the courtroom.  They have a witness that is disassembling in front of them," Turley said.  "The prosecution never revealed to the jury in the direct that Pecker had actually killed stories for other celebrities, that he had been working on stories two decades before the election with Trump that he was suppressing.  And now it's only getting worse.  Yesterday was really bad In terms of the cross-examination for the prosecution.  Today is much worse.  I mean, here Pecker is saying that Trump didn't want to purchase the story.  Yesterday when he asked him about reimbursing Cohen, he said he didn't know anything about that."

A Supreme Form of Election Interference.  The president for America First Legal Stephen Miller told Newsmax on Friday [4/26/2024] that the four criminal indictments against former President Donald Trump amount to "the most supreme form of election interference."  Trump is facing a total four separate indictments for business fraud, unlawful retention of classified documents, and two cases of election interference.  Opening arguments for the business transaction case began this week in Manhattan.  Miller pointed out that because of Trump's various legal entanglements he has been kept off the campaign trail.

Jonathan Turley, Leo Terrell Say Bragg's Team Still Hasn't Proven Trump Committed Crime.  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley and civil rights attorney Leo Terrell said Thursday prosecutors still have not shown evidence former President Donald Trump committed a crime in the "hush money" case pursued by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  Prosecutors called former media executive David Pecker of the National Enquirer to the stand Monday, Tuesday and Thursday to detail how the publication purchased the rights to stories involving Trump while not publishing them regarding a $130,000 payout to porn star Stormy Daniels.  Turley noted that the prosecutors had not tied Trump personally to illegal actions while questioning the media executive about Trump's alleged involvement in the schemes.

Democrats Need To Be Held To Account For Denying Trump's Due Process Rights.  Due process of law, or at least its absence, is the heart of the unconstitutional lawfare aimed at Donald Trump this week in a New York courtroom, ostensibly for hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.  This is a crossing of the Rubicon moment for our Republic.  "Due process" is ancient shorthand for the sum of all the procedures the government must comply with and honor before it may take a person's life, liberty, or property.  The right to due process is over 1,000 years old in English jurisprudence.  It is a right of every citizen and a duty of every government.  A year ago, I wrote about DA Bragg charging Trump with a crime, but not identifying the crime.  Within the past few days, Andrew McCarthy called the prosecution a "farce" and listed its many failings.  Prof. Jonathan Turley wrote that Trump is not being prosecuted for any actual crime.  Prof. Jed Shugerman called the prosecution unfounded, both a "legal embarrassment" and a "historic mistake."  Matthew Whitaker said that Judge Merchan, who presides over the Manhattan kangaroo court, is hopelessly conflicted to a degree that would make Joe Biden blush.

'Trial By Ambush': Former Federal Prosecutors Say Alvin Bragg's Strategy Is Unlike Anything They've Seen Before.  When defendants go on trial, the allegations against them are generally clear.  Not so with former President Donald Trump and his "hush money" case.  Prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office offered new transparency not only to the public, but seemingly also Trump's defense attorneys on Tuesday when, one year after indicting the former president, they finally pulled back the curtain to reveal the motivating crime in their case: a violation of state election law.  Former federal prosecutors told the Daily Caller News Foundation Bragg's lack of clarity is unfair to the defense, who can't prepare to argue against a charge they don't know, and unlike what they've seen before.  "I don't recall ever having a trial where the defense didn't know what the government was trying to prove," former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey told the DCNF, likening Bragg's approach to a "trial by ambush."

Trump's Defense Attorney Cripples Alvin Bragg's Entire Case.  During the cross-examination of the prosecution's first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, defense attorney Emil Bove aimed to raise doubts about the core arguments in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case against former President Donald Trump.  Bove highlighted the tabloid's practice of purchasing stories to prevent their release, a common tactic in what has been referred to as "checkbook journalism."  By pointing out that this practice was not unusual, Bove sought to portray the deal with former playboy model Karen McDougal as standard procedure rather than part of an illegal conspiracy to influence the 2016 election.  He emphasized other instances where Pecker's magazine suppressed damaging stories for public figures like Rahm Emanuel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and others, suggesting that such actions were not out of the ordinary.  [Tweet]

Supreme Court Majority Is Sympathetic to Trump's Immunity Claim With No Trial Likely Before the Election.  The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments stemming from Special Counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of former President Donald Trump on felony charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election.  Jack Smith sent his advocate, Michael Drebeen, a veteran of over 100 Supreme Court appearances and Robert Mueller's unethical investigation of President Trump, into a proverbial Cuisinart of hostile questions.  If the questions and statements of the justices are to be taken at face value, Trump's trial will not take place before November's election and possibly not at all.

What is this, if not a conspiracy?
Report, Lawfare Beach Friends Meet Every Friday to Discuss Legal Filings and Best Trump Attack Strategy.  Politico is outlining how a group of Lawfare ideologues meet every Friday to discuss their constructed legal filings and the next week of attack angles against President Donald Trump.  In essence, the core group inside the meeting are what Christine Blasey-Ford called the "beach friends" when discussing who constructed the legal avenues for the ridiculous attack against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.  As we have noted for the past several years, it's this same group of Lawfare ideologues, mostly former DOJ administrators and lawyers, who are behind every anti-Trump effort.  The primary trio is Mary McCord, Norm Eisen (left in red tie), and Andrew Weissmann.  These are the three members who write the briefs and court motions that Jack Smith then files.

Can the Swamp be Drained?  On October 17, 2016, Donald Trump issued a press release and subsequent Tweet stating, "I will make our Government honest again — believe me.  But first I am going to have to #DrainTheSwamp." in Washington, D.C.  Thereby creating a campaign slogan that was instrumental in his winning the 2016 election as Trump seized on an extremely popular position that resonated with a majority of the electorate.  Trump recycled a phrase used by Ronald Reagan in reference to the necessity of reducing a bloated government bureaucracy. [...] Both men failed in their respective attempts to "drain the swamp."  Reagan was stymied by a Democrat-controlled House for both of his terms.  Trump, during the first two years of his term, was hamstrung by an avalanche of politically-motivated leaks and inane investigations as well as intransigence on the part of the Republicans in both Houses of Congress.  In his second two years, a malevolent Pelosi-led House focused almost entirely on impeaching him twice.

A Prosecution In Search of a Crime.  Donald Trump is undergoing a criminal trial in Manhattan.  He is charged with filing corporate records that included a false statement; namely, that payments to Michael Cohen that were described as being for legal services were, in fact, to reimburse Cohen for making one or more payments to Stormy Daniels in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement.  But those payments to Daniels were perfectly legal, and filing a false corporate document is a misdemeanor on which the statute of limitation has passed.  So in order to charge Trump, District Attorney Alvin Bragg had to allege that the false documents were filed in order to cover up another crime.  That would make it a felony.  But what is that other crime?  Bragg has been coy about it.  In truth, there was no other crime, and Bragg's prosecution is election interference on behalf of the Democratic Party, plain and simple.  One would think that this case could not have gone to trial without a clear specification of that other crime and evidence in support of it.  But that appears to be what has happened, courtesy of trial judge Juan Merchan, who is in on the scam.

Biden should be more concerned than anyone about the precedent the Trump trials are setting.  [Scroll down]  Alex Berenson's essay about the bad precedent these trials set drew me to this idea. [...] He outlines the absurdity of the case, a ledger error within Trump's own personal notes as at the crux of the case, and a claimed underlying crime of trying to influence his own election, which is absurd.  On that, he notes that the so-called crime happened in 2017, which was after he was already elected president.  The whole kangaroo case would be laughable if it didn't involve jailtime for Trump if he is convicted by a Democrat judge and jury, meaning, they could knock him out of the race to do their version of kangaroo "justice" as appeals go on.

Did Letitia James Accidentally Reveal the Real Reason for Her Trump Witch Hunt?  A New York judge ruled on Monday that the $175 million bond judgment against former President Donald Trump will remain intact despite New York Attorney General Letitia James's efforts to challenge it.  James's legal team argued that the court should nullify Trump's reduced judgment of $175 million in his non-jury civil fraud trial.  Her team raised concerns about the ability of Knight Specialty Insurance, the company behind the substantial bond, to actually pay the bond if necessary.  That's a rather curious position since she had asked for a much larger $370 million in damages — it's as if the entire point was to achieve a judgment that would be impossible for Donald Trump to pay.  It's as if the entire point of her case was to seize his assets under bogus pretenses and be a hero to the radical left.

Gag Order Hearing:  D.A. Alvin Bragg Backs Down from Wanting Trump in Jail.  Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg backed down from asking New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan on Tuesday to jail former President Donald Trump for allegedly violating a gag order, according to court reporters.  Trump appeared to call Bragg's bluff, saying in April that it would be a "GREAT HONOR" to become a "modern-day Nelson Mandela" in the "clink" for speaking the truth about Merchan.  [Advertisement]  Bragg called for the Tuesday hearing to ask Merchan to punish Trump for allegedly violating his gag order.  Merchan has the authority to fine and send the former president to jail for up to 30 days for allegedly violating the order.  [Advertisement]

Judge Juan Merchan's 'Manifestly Unfair' Gag Order on Trump Comes Under Serious Legal Scrutiny.  A gag order that severely limits what former President Donald Trump can say publicly about a case where a Democrat district attorney is seeking to put him in jail was the focus in court on Tuesday as part of the business records trial he faces in Manhattan.  Democrat District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused Trump of violating the gag order 11 times for allegedly attacking witnesses and other members of the court — even if they have attacked him.  [Advertisement]  [Promotional video]  New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the case and who imposed the gag order, could fine Trump up to $11,000.  As examples of attacks, Bragg's team cited in an April 1 filing some of Trump's posts on Truth Social, including one in which Trump called on Merchan to recuse himself from the case, and called him "biased and conflicted."

In Trump trial, Manhattan DA Bragg's hocus-pocus case exposed on first day.  Hocus-pocus is a meaningless distraction or illusion that is intended to fool.  That neatly summarizes District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case against Donald Trump.  The DA hopes to snooker a Manhattan jury into convicting the former president with a bag of legal tricks.  In most courtrooms, the chicanery would never work.  But in this Trump-hating venue the defendant's jury of purported peers are likely predisposed to accept magic for magic's sake. [...] The first sleight of hand happened the moment the lead prosecutor addressed jurors during opening statements on Monday.  Assistant DA Matthew Colangelo (formerly Joe Biden's number three official at the Justice Department) told the panel, "This case is about a criminal conspiracy."  Really?  Why, then, is Trump not charged with that?  Even though Colangelo repeatedly accused the defendant of participating in a criminal conspiracy, the word "conspiracy" can be found nowhere in Bragg's indictment.  It's not there because there was no criminal conspiracy.

Special Counsel Jack Smith Lacks Standing to Defend the D.C. Circuit's ruling on Presidential Immunity in the Supreme Court.  [Scroll down]  Jack Smith is in the eyes of the law a private citizen, and all the acts he has taken since his appointment on November 18, 2022 are null and void.  This is as true of the acts Smith has taken in the Florida classified documents case, against Donald Trump, under the eye of the 11th Circuit, as it is of the actions Smith has taken in the D.C. District Court case, against Trump involving the events of January 6, 2021.  All those he has imprisoned or entered into plea bargains with are free.  Indeed, Jack Smith can be sued in torts for unconstitutionally depriving people of liberty and property.  The absence of standing to defend the D.C. Circuit's opinion below on Smith's part cannot be waived by Donald Trump's or anyone else's failure to raise it sooner.  And, the absence of defendant standing must be raised sua sponte by any federal judge or Supreme Court Justice who Jack Smith purports to appear before in any case whether the case involves Donald Trump or anyone else.  Standing must exist at all stages of litigation including throughout all authorized appeals and habeas corpus petitions.  We argue that under the Constitution only Congress can create the Office of Special Counsel to which Jack Smith was appointed.  The power to create federal offices is an exclusively congressional power and may not be usurped by the executive branch.

Unredacted motion reveals collaboration between Biden White House and NARA to concoct classified docs case against Trump.  On Monday, a version of Donald Trump's motion to compel discovery in the Mar-a-Lago documents case was released by Judge Aileen Cannon with much of the information originally redacted by Biden's special counsel Jack Smith being unredacted.  In one section titled "Early Indications of NARA Bias," which was heavily redacted in its original, January 16 version, it now states that NARA General Counsel Gary Stern sent an internal email attaching a draft letter to President Trump's [Presidential Records Act] representatives.  Stern noted that he 'had several conversations' with [White House Office of Records Management]'s [redacted] and that [redacted] had 'raised some of these concerns directly with David [Ferriero, NARA's Archivist]."  "Stern's draft concluded that 'things were very chaotic, as they always are in the course of a one-term transition,' and he acknowledged that 'the transfer of the Trump electronic records is still ongoing and won't be complete for several more months.'"

Judge Cannon Unmasks Redacted Documents Revealing Biden White House Direct Ties to Mar-a-Lago Raid, Jack Smith Investigation.  Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday ordered key evidence in Jack Smith's classified documents case to be unredacted.  The newly unredacted documents revealed Biden's White House had direct ties to the Mar-a-Lago raid.  The Biden Regime was also directly tied to Jack Smith's investigation despite claims to the contrary from US Attorney General Merrick Garland.  Before with redactions:  Jack Smith wanted to hide the fact that the National Archives had several conversations with the Biden White House.

'Conspiracy Theories' Aren't Theoretical Anymore.  There is nothing demented or delusional about believing our government would willingly facilitate the murder of a political threat.  The actions of the DoJ in conjunction with the legislation proposed by the Democrats makes that perfectly clear.  The plot to place Donald Trump at the tender mercies of a prison's "genpop" is not the only evidence of government criminal conspiracy.  The ATF really did traffic guns to Mexican drug cartels to promote gun-control legislation.  One federal agent and countless civilians were killed with those guns.  The DoJ sought to remove a duly elected President — even to the point of the Deputy Attorney General offering to "wear a wire" to record conversations with the President (with cabinet support).  The FBI really did set up some useful idiots to advanced their domestic terrorist narrative (the Governor Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping).  It was a classic entrapment scheme in which federal assets planned the crime, and hapless stooges stepped in the trap.  All this is changing our worldview and is causing us to observe our government with a new level of skepticism.

'Hush money' is not a crime, and Bragg has no case against Trump.  Opening statements get underway in Manhattan Monday morning in Donald Trump's "hush money" trial — the first-ever criminal trial of a former American president and, indeed, of a de facto major-party presidential nominee.  It got me to thinking:  Why do we call it the "hush money" trial?  Well, sure, the media-Democrat complex loves the salacious overtones of that spin.  But that's not the real reason.  If Trump had robbed a bank or, as he once famously put it, shot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight, we'd be talking about Trump's bank robbery trial or his murder trial.  That is, we'd be talking about the crime.  The problem that Democrats and their note-takers have, the problem that the elected progressive Democratic prosecutor Alvin Bragg has, is that what they want to accuse Trump of is not a crime.

CNN Panel Finds It 'Pretty Remarkable' Juror Can Go To Dentist Appointment While Trump Restricted From Major Events.  A CNN panel on Monday said they found it striking that an alternate juror in former President Donald Trump's case can attend a dentist appointment while the defendant cannot attend momentous events.  Opening arguments for Trump's trial related to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels began on Monday, and the judge overseeing the case, Juan Merchan, reportedly will end the session early to allow one of the alternate jurors to attend the appointment.  Merchan previously ruled that Trump must be in the courtroom throughout the trial because of his status as a criminal defendant, meaning he is not permitted to attend the Supreme Court's Thursday presidential immunity argument and may not be able to go to his son Barron's graduation.

Two Former High-Profile Trump Critics Now Admit It:  His Foes Are the Real Threat to Democracy.  Two high-profile Trump critics, one of whom was even touted as the presidential candidate who could topple Bad Orange in 2020, have just shown that they realize that the real threat to this tottering republic is coming not from the man they once happily joined in on hating, but from his enemies[.]  First it was the man whom Tucker Carlson indelibly dubbed the "Creepy Porn Lawyer."  Michael Avenatti, porn star Stormy Daniels' former lawyer, is now doing time for a variety of crimes including theft and fraud.  This has given him some time to think about the man whose indictment he called for back in 2018, and whom he thought he could defeat for the presidency in 2020.  Avenatti has thought so much about the whole thing that he has done a 180 and completely changed his positions.  Now he is even willing to testify on Trump's behalf.  "The defense has contacted me," Avenatti said Saturday from the minimum-security prison in Los Angeles where he is doing his time.

Yes, They Want Him Dead:  Dem. Rep. Introduces Bill to Make It Easier to Kill Trump.  The Democrats have been trying to destroy Donald Trump ever since he announced his candidacy for president back in 2015. They've framed him for Russian collusion, election interference, and even rape.  They've impeached him twice.  They've tried to bar him from the ballot.  They still may succeed in convicting him of bogus crimes and even sending him to prison, all in the hope of making sure that he doesn't walk back into the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2025.  Yet even all this isn't enough for some of these sinister authoritarians.  Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Racism) on Friday introduced a bill to "terminate United States Secret Service protection for felons."  Thompson evidently doesn't count a competent prose stylist among his handlers, for the "Short Title" of this bill is as verbose as it is grandiose, self-important, and silly: ''This Act may be cited," it announces on its first page "as the 'Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable Former Protectees Act' or the 'DISGRACED Former Protectees Act.'"  Thompson's bill stipulates that Secret Service protection "shall terminate for any person upon sentencing following conviction for a Federal or State offense that is punishable for a term of imprisonment of at least one year."  There is an unmistakable hint that the Democrats plan to imprison Trump for at least a year, ideally so that he will be behind bars on November 5, 2024 and January 20, 2025.

Trump's Jury Trial Will Be As 'Fair' As The Russia Hoax And 2020 Election.  Jury selection for 12 jurors wrapped up Thursday in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's lawfare against former President Donald Trump, with the next phase of the trial expected to begin as early as Monday.  But with two selected jurors booted for potential bias and perjury and at least one juror who made clear she doesn't like Trump's "persona," can he really get a fair trial?  After two of the initial seven selected jurors were struck from the panel, another seven were chosen Thursday.  The jurors will hear Bragg's claim that Trump broke the law by allegedly classifying payments made by his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pornographer Stormy Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement as "legal fees" instead of campaign expenditures.  Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York declined to charge Trump in 2018.

Did Letitia James Just Admit Her Persecution Of Trump Is Revenge For Obama?  Yesterday Letitia James asked the judge to disallow Trump's $175M bond.  There will be a hearing on Monday.  Notice at the 45-second mark how Letitia says she is upset by how Trump treated Obama.  This prosecution smells like a Valerie Jarrett operation.  [Video clip]

Alan Dershowitz reveals why Trump has drawn 'a bad jury' for his New York hush money trial.  Alan Dershowitz, a longtime trial lawyer and former attorney for Donald Trump, says that the ex-president's jury at his New York hush money trial is bad news for his one-time client.  Following three days of legal wrangling a panel of seven men and five women has now been selected and they will assess his guilt or innocence over the coming weeks.  Dershowitz, 85, says that the makeup of the jurors — who include a corporate lawyer, an investment banker, a software engineer and a teacher — suggest Trump will fare poorly.

Why Is Judge Juan Merchan Refusing to Honor Trump's Due-Process Rights?  I observed in a post this week that, compared to some of Donald Trump's other recent complaints about Judge Juan Merchan, there is more substance to his grousing about the judge's denial of his request that the trial be adjourned for a day so that he may be in attendance at the United States Supreme Court next Thursday, April 25.  That's the day the justices will hear argument on the question of whether the former president has immunity from prosecution in the 2020 election-interference indictment brought in Washington, D.C., by Biden Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.  There are competing legal and practical considerations here.  Practically speaking, if I'm a Trump appellate lawyer, I would prefer that he not come to the Supreme Court argument.  I don't think the justices would appreciate the spectacle.

The big money bankrolling the Left's lawfare.  As Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's transparently political prosecution of former President Donald Trump began last week, it is important to remember that the former president is not the only target of the Democratic Party's campaign to use government power to silence political dissent.  The Left's efforts to intimidate conservative activists this month included Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) delivering a congressional subpoena to Federalist Society Co-Chairman Leonard Leo.  It was voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee last November without securing a single Republican vote.  Durbin has not explained why the subpoena was not delivered for five months.  His attack on Leo comes as another elected Democrat, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb, has also used his office to harass Leo.  After a complaint filed by the dark money-funded Campaign for Accountability, Schwalb opened an investigation into Leo's management of two nonprofit organizations.

Democrat House reps stop just short of explicitly calling for Trump's assassination.  Rep. Bennie Thompson (D. Miss.), who chaired the House J6 Committee, introduced legislation that calls for President Donald Trump to lose his Secret Service protection if he's convicted and sent to prison.  Thompson fully understands that there is a strong likelihood that the current Manhattan hush money trial or the upcoming Georgia RICO trial, both of which are open partisan lawfare rather than justice, will see at least one felony conviction and prison sentence for Trump.  In other words, this legislation is an almost explicit call for Trump's assassination.  It's been apparent since the get-go that the myriad criminal actions against Trump are a form of election interference.  Each case has no basis in law or fact.  All are purely partisan actions intended not only to prevent Trump from re-taking the White House but to tell anyone else who opposes the Democrat machine that the machine will go into Destructor-mode.  Now, though, we're seeing an even more sinister side to the Democrats' anti-democratic and immoral actions, all of which are zooming the U.S. toward a constitutional crisis as profound as that which faced America in 1861.

Prospective 'Hush Money' Juror Claimed to Be Unbiased, Admits Trump Makes Her 'Angry'.  A prospective juror who had told the court she was unbiased in President Donald Trump's so-called "hush money" trial.  However, that same juror has just admitted during a recent interview that she is actually "not a fan" of Trump.  Alarmingly, the juror then started listing various reasons why Trump makes her "angry."  She then continued by blasting Trump's handling of the pandemic and his views on China and abortion.  Worryingly, the juror wasn't dismissed over her obvious bias.

Crazy America.  [Scroll down]  Proof of Mr. Trump's rapey-ness has been finally and formally declared in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial.  It's certified, you see, though the trial itself was a joke of performative pretense.  All you really need is a cast of characters, including the judge, Lewis Kaplan, who are sufficiently deranged and degenerate to carry out the performance.  New York State Attorney General Letitia James was up next to attempt the financial castration of Mr. Trump with an artfully concocted civil case that magically transformed a normal real estate transaction into a victimless fraud (say, what?), prompting the Rumpelstiltskin-like Judge Arthur Engoron to declare an unprecedented cash penalty of $354-million, designed to enable the confiscation and forced sale of Mr. Trump's buildings.  That hasn't quite worked yet, and may never work, given how appeals courts up to SCOTUS might view the malicious prosecution based on Ms. James's repeated campaign promise to... pin something on Trump.

Democrats Move a Bill "to Ensure Trump Is Murdered".  Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) introduced legislation on Friday to terminate Secret Service protection "for any person upon sentencing following a conviction for a Federal or State offense that is punishable for a term of imprisonment of at least one year."  Democrats not only want to imprison Donald Trump for an invented crime, they don't want him to have any protection.  This is why we need the House to remain intact.  The DISGRACED Former Protectees Act claims there would be "potential for conflicting lines of authority within prisons."  It would also "allow judges to weigh the sentencing of individuals without having to factor in the logistical concerns of convicts with Secret Service protection."  It is meant for Donald Trump.  They filed 91 charges against him because they want to imprison him until he dies.  The bill's fact sheet says his "unprecedented 91 felony charges in Federal and State courts across the country have created a new exigency that Congress must address."

Rigged: Judge Merchan Let an Anti-Trumper Who Lied Onto the Jury.  Judge Juan Merchan's anti-Trump bias is so bad he isn't even pretending to make the jury selection process fair.  Earlier this week, Fox News' Jesse Watters reported on how the process has been rigged against Trump, and he brought up how liberal activists are trying to sneak onto the jury.  "They are catching undercover liberal activists lying to the judge.  They're saying, 'Oh, have you ever said anything on social media about Donald Trump?'  'No, I can't remember.'  'Well, what about this post where you said he should be in prison?'  'Oh yeah, that one.'  'Strike!' and they keep throwing these undercovers at him." [...] But not everyone who has been caught lying was booted.  One of 12 seated jurors includes a woman who lied on her questionnaire to cover up her anti-Trump views.  Trump's lawyer, Todd Blanche, sought to have Juror No.  B133 removed because she had posted a video on social media celebrating Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election.  "This is a woman who said she never attended a Trump rally," Susan Necheles, another of Trump's attorneys, pointed out before adding that this was "clearly an anti-Trump event."

How Alvin Bragg made (preposterous) history with Donald Trump's case.  Alvin Bragg is to be commended for getting to trial on the Trump hush-payments case.  Lesser prosecutors would have been daunted by the prospect of creating a national melodrama and a norm-breaking prosecution of a former president over what is, in essence, a misdemeanor business-records charge.  They would have blanched at relying on serial perjurer Michael Cohen as a star witness.  They would have recognized the inherent ambiguity over whether the hush payments to Stormy Daniels were personal payments or campaign expenses.  They would have been reluctant to torture the law to stretch the statute of limitations just far enough to cover the events in question, and would have been too embarrassed by the chronological difficulty involved in arguing that events in 2017 influenced the 2016 election.

What Won't the Swamp Do to Stop Trump?  For nearly a decade, the D.C. swamp has used every tool in its arsenal to take down first candidate, then president, and then citizen Donald J. Trump.  They've lied, connived, impeached, indicted, sued, misconstrued, cheated, deleted, changed laws, ignored laws, and just plain broken laws to take The Donald down.  [Indeed], they used a pandemic virus — which wee Tony Fauci helped fund the synthesis of, and later dissembled about the provenance of, all while becoming a saint to the left and filthy rich — to unilaterally, and without consent of the people, change voting laws and lead many to believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate.  If they've half a brain in their head — which precludes President Biden, his V.P., and his press secretary — creatures of the swamp should be quaking in their hip boots about now.  Because if Trump earns a second term, vengeance — or restorative justice, if you prefer — will be for the Lord of Queens.

Dems want to send Trump to prison without Secret Service protection.  Key Democrats revealed new legislation Friday that would strip former President Donald Trump of his Secret Service agents if he is convicted and sentenced to prison.  Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said it's about making sure Mr. Trump doesn't get special treatment for whatever crime he might be sentenced.  He is worried that having to accommodate a Secret Service protective detail could lead to accommodations for a former president.  "It is regrettable that it has come to this, but this previously unthought-of scenario could become our reality," the Mississippi lawmaker said.  "Therefore, it is necessary for us to be prepared and update the law so the American people can be assured that protective status does not translate into special treatment — and that those who are sentenced to prison will indeed serve the time required of them."

It's a Bill of Attainder — of the worst kind.
Democrats Move to Strip Trump of Secret Service Protection.  Democrats want Trump dead.  House Democrats on Friday moved to strip President Trump of his Secret Service protection if he is convicted.  Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson introduced a resolution that would terminate Trump's Secret Service protection.  The legislation dubbed the "Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable (DISGRACED) Former Protectees Act would apply to all Secret Service protectees convicted and sentenced under felony charges. [...] "Obvious subtext here is that removing USSS would make it easier for someone to kill Trump, which is arguably the goal of Thompson's bill, H.R. 8081," Byron York said.  [Tweet]

New Report Confirms Trump Won't Receive a Fair Trial.  A Left-leaning columnist is admitting that the 12-person jury selected to serve on former President Donald Trump's trial leans more Democrat than not.  New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman confirmed a common belief among Trump supporters — which is that the 2024 hopeful won't get a fair trial in the majorly liberal city of Manhattan.  "One thing that's been striking during this round of voir dire is there a lot of people who, based on their answers, are more left-of-center than not, politically," Haberman wrote.  "But some seem to be trying to show they can consider alternative viewpoints, and others seem to want to show they believe in the concept of jury service as independent from personal opinions."  Attorney and legal scholar Jonathon Turley pointed out that only about 12 percent of New Yorkers voted for Trump in 2020.  In comparison, President Joe Biden won the Manhattan vote by 86 percent that same year.

Trump Could Be Jailed for Speaking About His NYC Case Due to Judge's 'Unconstitutional' Gag Order.  President Trump could go to jail if Judge Juan Merchan rules him in contempt of court in his New York City bookkeeping trial.  When court resumed on Thursday after a day off, New York City prosecutors argued that former President Trump had broken the gag.  Merchan imposed the order in March and later expanded it to keep Trump quiet about the judge's daughter who works to elect Democrats, including Joe Biden.  She has used the trial as a fundraiser for her Democrat clients.  Prosecutors claim that Trump has broken the gag order ten times and have asked for higher fines and other punishment for him.  They want to raise the fine for each offense from $1,000 to $3,000.  The judge will hold a hearing on the gag order on Tuesday.

The trouble with Trump's jurors shows the results of a post-truth society.  This essay is not about the fact that Trump's "hush money" trial is completely corrupt for myriad reasons.  These reasons include but are not limited to the fact that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg violated due process by revitalizing invalid election fraud claims and time-barred misdemeanors allegations by elevating them into unnamed felonies.  I'm also not talking about the judge having a daughter who is a highly-placed anti-Trump activist raising money off the trial.  Instead, this post focuses on one specific thing:  The fact that it is impossible for Trump to have a fair jury in this corrupt trial.  The lack of fairness begins with the fact that Trump is the most famous man in the world, and he is running for president.  There is literally no one on earth, unless they have the awareness of a potato, who doesn't have an opinion on the case, and who doesn't understand that its outcome will affect the election.

Criminalizing Trivialities.  In the two federal indictments brought by Jack Smith, the Fulton County indictment brought by disgraced District Attorney Fani Willis and her lover Nathan Wade (now removed from the case for misconduct), and the indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, state and federal prosecutors have abused federal and state fraud-type criminal statutes.  By my count, of the remaining 88 or so felony charges against Donald Trump, roughly 60 of them reveal egregious misuses of fraud-type criminal statutes.  This essay analyzes the 34 counts in Bragg's indictment, the trial of which is just underway.  What follows is not an analysis of the elements of the offenses charged against Donald Trump, which are often narrower than prudence dictates or legislatures intend.  Rather, this essay explains how honest prosecutors use common sense to evaluate "fraud-type" cases, an evaluation that involves more than a mere hyper-technical application of facts to elements.

The 12 jurors picked in Trump's hush money trial, including a woman who called him 'selfish'.  Twelve Manhattan residents have been picked to decide the fate of Donald Trump in his historic hush money trial.  Seven men and five women — including a corporate lawyer and a woman who called the ex-president 'selfish' — will ultimately determine if Trump is guilty or not guilty of hiding a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about their alleged affair.  The brutal selection process which included extensive questioning and research into their backgrounds took three days to complete.

Grotesque Bias Against Trump.  [Scroll down]  The [Access Hollywood] tape is not actually an admission of sexual assault — it is the opposite, in fact — but put that aside.  Trump is charged with the misdemeanor (bootstrapped into a felony by the prosecutor) of filing business records that were incorrect.  What [...] does the Access Hollywood tape have to do with Trump's accounting records?  Nothing.  I can see no basis for this ruling other than an outrageous effort at election interference by the trial judge, Juan Merchan.  It does not bode well for the coming weeks — during which, by the way, Trump will be required to be present at the trial and will not be able to campaign.  More election interference.

The lynching of a president.  [Scroll down]  Law professor Jonathan Turley laid into the whole premise of the 34-count indictment for maybe having sex with a hooker.  Turley wrote, "I have long been critical of the case as a clear example of the weaponization of the criminal justice system.  No one seriously believes that Alvin Bragg would have spent this time and money to prosecute what is ordinarily a state misdemeanor if the defendant was anyone other than Trump.  One does not have to like Trump to repel from the spectacle about to unfold in Manhattan."  I have a quibble.  One must vote for Trump if one wants to keep any semblance of a free country.  Democrats not only have gone 10 bridges too far, but they have burned them all down.  Democrats are using race with black prosecutors Fani Willis and Mister Bragg fronting the prosecutions in state courts.  Ted Kaczynski-look alike Jack Smith is handling the federal case.  The problem for Democrats is they keep spiking the ball and it keeps bouncing back, hitting them in the eyeball.  For years they dreamed of a mugshot of Trump on one of their trumped-up charges.  They finally got one.  It backfired.

Jesse Watters Reviews First Seven NYC Jurors in Trump's Rigged Criminal Case.  The first seven jurors in President Trump's NYC lawfare case in liberal Judge Juan Merchan's court.  Judge Juan Merchan on Tuesday accused Trump of intimidating a juror who admitted she posted a pro-Biden video to her Facebook page.  Jury selection was still underway on Tuesday in the Stormy Daniels 'hush money' trial after more than 50 prospective jurors were dismissed from the jury pool on Monday.  One potential juror was brought in for questioning after Trump's lawyers discovered she posted a pro-Biden celebratory video in 2020.

Trump will Be Found Guilty in NYC And Bragg Will Try to Imprison Him.  New York City is out to destroy Donald Trump, and Alvin Bragg's criminal trial starts today — Monday.  We already know the outcome — Trump will receive nothing of a fair trial, and Bragg, with the judges, will find Trump Guilty, and they WILL try to imprison Trump on Riker's Island and cheer when an inmate kills him.  I feel sorry for those who are blinded by their hatred of Trump.  This is tearing down the country, and whatever they do to Trump has opened the door for rouge Republican prosecutors to do the same to Democrats.  This is the start of the American Civil War, and ironically, the first one began on April 12th, 1861, and here this one will be instigated on April 15th, 2024 — 163 years later [...] Bragg, who has called Trump a "rich white guy," is even introducing racism to this event in addition to Bragg being a zealot Democrat.  Of course, racism only works in one direction, like a ONE-WAY street.  Nobody will ever address that issue.  New York is notorious for corruption in the legal system.

When Contempt Is Necessary.  This week's Trump Trial of the Week is the bazillionth attempt by the ruling party to nail the leader of the opposition on ...something, anything, whatever's to hand.  So naturally a certain artfulness is required.  In this case, if one accepts as true the charges of corrupt prosecutor Alvin Bragg, Trump paid former crony Michael Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels.  Which would be a falsification of business records.  Which is, under the "laws" of New York, a misdemeanour - albeit one in which the statute of supposed limitations has already kicked in.  So Bragg is arguing that the expired misdemeanour is actually a non-expired felony, because it was used to cover up another crime.  What other crime he has not said.  And, as is now familiar in the State of New York, the corrupt judge Juan Manuel Merchan has been happy to indulge him.  So we are in the quintessentially American realm of the Higher Bollocks.  That means so-called conservative legal scholars fill the airwaves conceding that yes, it's an almighty stretch but, in the fullness of time (which, as I can attest after twelve years in the choked septic tank of DC justice, can be very full indeed), Judge Merchan's whims and caprices will likely be overturned on appeal.  So the system works — eventually.

'Truly Un-American': Legal Expert Mike Davis Slams Use of Unconstitutional Gag Order.  The first criminal trial against former and potentially future President Donald is moving forward, with Tuesday bringing us more of jury selection.  As Matt covered on Monday, the trial thus far has been incredibly unfair to Trump, and not merely because it's such a weak case.  Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan, who has been criticized as "a Democratic operative in a robe," won't even let Trump attend his son's high school graduation.  Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is no better, though, as he's looking to punish Trump for violating the unconstitutional gag order thrust upon him.  The Article 3 Project's Mike Davis called out such a move from Bragg in his many posts shared to his X account, as well as with his many media appearances.  This included an appearance with Jack Posobiec, who also shared coverage from The Post Millennial.  As Davis has warned before, when the gag order was first announced back in late February, "these are republic-ending tactics by these Democrats."  [Tweet]

The Deep State's Accelerating Attacks On Trump Show A Consciousness Of Guilt.  To cover for the Democrat collective's illegal acts, the Biden administration, via the DOJ and FBI, is using lawfare, in the form of malicious and selective prosecution, and vexatious civil litigation to target Trump to make it impossible for him to be a viable in the 2024 election.  The federal government as self-evidently coordinated closely with state prosecutors.  These cases, in chief, lack merit and use convoluted stretches of the law.

The Manhattan case against Trump is a travesty.  The facts of the case starting this week are simple.  It's the legal theories that are convoluted.  Donald Trump paid a porn star named Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about their affair.  (Leave aside for a moment whether it's possible to have an "affair" with a porn star, and leave aside whether Stormy blackmailed him into making the payment.)  Despite the opprobrious term "hush money," this type of payoff is perfectly legal and happens all the time.  In fact, it's the most frequent outcome of a sexual harassment case, where it's politely termed a "confidential settlement agreement."

Here's the Real Reason the Soros-Bought NYC Prosecutor Put Trump on Trial.  There's nothing at all funny about putting a former president of the United States of America on trial for misdemeanor record-keeping offenses and turning those into felonies through a badly done magic trick.  The underlying reason why the George Soros-selected prosecutor put Donald Trump on trial starting Monday, however, is yet another reason why this case should be laughed out of court.  The avowed Trump-hating prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, is part of the effort by the left to tie up the former president in court so he can't campaign for president.  Additionally, they hope that by ringing up all manner of charges against Trump, they'll smear his reputation.

Crib Notes for the Trial of the Century.  [Scroll down]  Fast-forward to the 2020 election.  "Joe Biden" manages to charm swing-state voters from his basement hide-out, moves into the puppet-theater known as the White House, and unleashes the dogs of lawfare on former president Trump so as to knock him off the political game-board for once and for all.  "JB's" Attorney General, Merrick Garland, sends Deputy AG Matthew Colangelo to work in DA Alvin Bragg's office, to construct some kind of case out of the Stormy Daniels / Michael Cohen debris.  The result is an improbable farrago of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to the Stormy Daniels hush-money payments, converted from misdemeanors to felonies on the theory that the falsifications were intended to conceal other election law crimes, including "influencing the 2016 election."  Each count for which Trump is convicted could result in a prison sentence of up to four years, to be served consecutively, meaning 136 years in jail.  Mr. Trump thus becomes the proverbial ham sandwich that an ambitious DA can convince a grand jury to indict.

A serial perjurer will try to prove an old misdemeanor against Trump in an embarrassment for the New York legal system.  The famous Roman philosopher and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero once said, "The more laws, the less justice."  This week, New York judges and lawyers appear eager to prove that the same is true for cases against Donald Trump.  After an absurd $450 million decision courtesy of Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will bring his equally controversial criminal prosecution over hush money paid to a former porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.  Lawyers have been scouring the civil and criminal codes for any basis to sue or prosecute Trump before the upcoming 2024 election.  This week will highlight the damage done to New York's legal system because of this unhinged crusade.  They've charged him with everything short of ripping a label off a mattress.

FBI Interrogated Trump's Valet Driver without Trump's Knowledge — And Turned Ambush Interview Into Perjury Trap:  Court Docs.  Judge Aileen Cannon ordered the public release of the FBI's interview of Trump's valet driver Walt Nauta.  Walt Nauta is a former White House employee and Navy veteran who worked valet for Trump and served as a personal staffer at Mar-a-Lago.  According to the transcript of the May 2022 interview, the FBI interrogated Trump's aide Walt Nauta — without Trump's knowledge.  The FBI agents approached Walt Nauta and asked for a voluntary interview under the guise of national security interest (similar to the General Flynn ambush).

Congress Is Lying to You About FISA.  A few years ago, we learned conclusively that, in fact, the FBI and the federal intel agencies — the dozen or more federal intel agencies we have, for some reason — had been working secretly against Donald Trump's presidential campaign.  Trump had whispered about this, then shouted about it, was roundly denounced as a conspiracy nut, a lunatic.  But in the end, he was vindicated.  It was true.  These agencies spied on Trump, and they leaked some of what they learned to the media, which used it against Trump.  Then these agencies concocted false stories about Trump.  They tried to crush Trump completely in 2016 and then for the entire course of his presidency.  Then they did the same thing in 2020 during the presidential election.  And they're doing it still.  They're trying to put him in prison for the rest of his life.

Jack Smith Signals He'll Try To Circumvent SCOTUS If It Says Obstruction Charges Aren't Real Crimes.  Democrat hacks have claimed that Special Counsel Jack Smith's indictments against Donald Trump over the former president's challenging of the 2020 election are legally sound.  So why is Smith grasping at legal straws in his latest court filing?  On Monday, Smith filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the nation's highest judicial body to dismiss Trump's presidential immunity claims.  Citing the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the special counsel indicted Trump in August over his speech questioning the administration of the 2020 election.  This prompted the former president's legal team to file a motion essentially arguing that Trump "should be immune from prosecution because the conduct he is accused of constituted official acts of the president," as Fox News summarized.

Judge Grants Donald Trump's Request to Reconsider Gag Order.  A New York appeals court judge on Tuesday permitted the full Appellate Division First Department to consider relaxing a sweeping gag order against former President Donald Trump.  The appellate court could reportedly decide to delay the criminal trial while it considers Trump's gag order appeal.  Trump sued New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan in an appeals court on Monday to challenge the judge's sweeping gag order.  Merchan, who is presiding over the New York criminal case, imposed the gag order after news surfaced about a connection between Merchan's daughter and conspiracy theorist Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

Letitia James to Start Seizing Trump's Properties.  According to former federal prosecutor Eric Lisann, Knight Specialty Insurance won't be allowed to post a $175 million bond for Donald Trump as he appeals a fraud judgment.  This statement came in response to lawyer Dave Kingman's assertion that the insurance company wouldn't be able to secure the bond for Trump. [...] On April 1, Trump submitted a $175 million bond to prevent the seizure of his assets by New York Attorney General Letitia James during his appeal of a civil fraud ruling.  However, the court's filing system rejected the bond shortly afterward due to missing paperwork, including a "current financial statement."  James later questioned the adequacy of the bond and highlighted that Knight Specialty Insurance Company (KSIC), is not authorized in New York, rendering it ineligible to obtain a certificate of qualification from the Department of Financial Services.  KSIC has resubmitted its paperwork to restart the process.

Democrats Slip and Accidentally Confirm the Campaign Is All About Throwing Trump in Prison.  Oops.  Democrats just said the quiet part out loud about their lawfare campaign against Donald Trump, his lawyers, associates, and former aides leading to the 2024 presidential election.  Since Democrats and their fellow travelers in the Department of "Justice" first pushed the cascade of questionable cases, the political left continues to maintain that Trump is just a bad guy who did bad things leading up to, during, and after the 2020 presidential election.  All stories, comments, and the like assume that Donald Trump has done something horrible and should be thrown in jail.  Orange Man bad.  Sure, the forces going after Trump worked with the Biden Administration to coordinate at least some of these cases, but these cases had to take jerry-rigged convolutions to get us to where we are right now.

Report: Donald Trump to Sue Judge Juan Merchan in Gag Order Challenge.  Former President Donald Trump will reportedly sue New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan in an appeals court to challenge his sweeping gag order.  Merchan, who is presiding over the New York criminal case, imposed a gag order on Trump after news surfaced about a connection between Merchan's daughter and conspiracy theorist Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).  Trump believes Merchan should recuse himself, citing a conflict of interest regarding his daughter's position at a Democrat consulting firm that supported President Biden's 2020 campaign.

Democrats Plan to Kneecap Trump's Candidacy.  The deep state, swamp, blob, ruling class, establishment, uni-party, or whatever is today's term de jour for the permanent administrative state has been pulling out all the stops to vanquish Trump.  Nonsensical lawfare investigations, lawsuits, special counsels, and baseless accusations are thus far having no effect on "Teflon Don."  That could change, but the Democrats and Never-Trumpers are determined and resourceful.  What's their plan, given that Trump has so far been unstoppable? [...] Formerly red, now deep blue, Colorado, with a feckless Republican Party as dysfunctional as a circular firing squad, attempted via their far-left Secretary of State, to keep Trump off the Colorado ballot claiming he is an "insurrectionist."  Never mind that he has neither been accused nor convicted (other than by Democrats and the media) of insurrection.  That did not matter to the Colorado Supreme Court which in their self-proclaimed wisdom deemed that Trump did indeed incite an insurrection.

Vectoring Dangerously.  [Scroll down]  While all that is churning things up, the next round of Trump trials are set to kick off in Alvin Bragg's New York and Fani Willis's Fulton County (Atlanta), GA.  Both cases have publicly wrecked themselves.  In the New York case, you have the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, Loren Merchan, 37, a Democratic Party consultant who has multi-million-dollar contracts with Rep. Adam Schiff, the nation's leading RussiaGate hoaxer, and working partner of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, a chief witness in the matter of a hush-money payment made to porn-star Stormy Daniels (hush money, you might note, not being illegal).  Any political motivation to see in that cast of characters?  And that is apart from the sheer bullshit nature of the case, as packaged for Mr. Bragg by US Attorney Matthew Colangelo, who was swapped out of the Main DOJ HQ in Blobville to the office of Soros-connected DA Bragg in Manhattan specifically to engineer a political prosecution.

Biden's plan to save the 'deep state'.  The Biden administration is bracing for a second Trump term by rolling out a rule that would complicate Donald Trump's pledge to fire tens of thousands of federal workers if he wins in November.  The new rule is also a huge gift to the public-sector unions that Joe Biden needs firmly in his corner.  The latest edict, issued by the US Office of Personnel Management, is an almost direct response to Trump's stated plans to purge the bureaucracy.  That's not how the OPM is framing it, of course; instead, OPM deputy director Rob Shriver said it "is about making sure the American public can continue to count on federal workers to apply their skills and expertise in carrying out their jobs, no matter their personal political beliefs."  Those political beliefs caused never-ending ire in the Trump years, of course.

Trump's Judges Aren't Using Legal Reasoning.  Even if you don't happen to be a lawyer, law professor or legal scholar, it isn't hard to see a big problem with many of the published decisions made by judges who are hearing defense arguments and motions made by President Trump, in the continued "lawfare" cases being used by the DNC (not the United States) to persecute him financially, and block him politically.  There are a number of these judicial positions that are out in the press.  I'd like to focus on just one:  the most recent case in Georgia involving free speech.  I'm not going to write up a "case review" that is readily available from several professional critics involving substantive and procedural law.  What I want to point out here, rather, is that the government's case, and the judge's opinion stemming from it, rest on systematic logical fallacy.

Alvin Bragg's 'hush money' case:  No due process and a judge whose objectivity is highly suspect.  From the second it was filed, it was clear that Alvin Bragg's indictment against Donald Trump for the payments he made to Stormy Daniels was a due process disaster.  The complaint alleges legal conduct and then concludes that this legal conduct constituted illegal action of an undisclosed nature.  The case should have been tossed instantly.  But now that we know that the judge trying the case has deep Democrat ties and is trying to prevent Trump from exposing those ties, it's becoming clear why it's proceeding to trial.

Some Basic Law Stuff for Conservatives Watching This Legal Chaos.  There is almost no resemblance between what is happening with Trump and the law as normally practiced among normal people in normal times.  Remember, there's a Trump Exception to all the rules and all the norms that rejects any kind of precedent and procedure, as well as simple fairness, in its pursuit of the Bad Orange Man and his allies.  When you understand that, you will understand why I shake my head when people ask me my legal opinion about what's going on.  My legal opinion about what's going on is it has nothing to do with the law at all.  Understand that what we're seeing now are attempts to frame Donald Trump and people affiliated with him to abuse and misuse the legal system to gain a political advantage.  This is nothing new.  It is something scumbags have been doing for thousands of years.

Time is Running Out to Save Western Civilization.  The U.S. is moving quickly towards a centralized state.  Our liberties, our culture, and our national greatness are being subverted.  Subverted by a corrupt, clever, twisted, amorphous blob of powerful people.  Most of the old media, the new technocratic media (i.e.,: Facebook and Google), one entire political party, part of the other party, along with the unelected bureaucracies and spy agencies of the U.S. are all a part of this blob.  Evil that's difficult to overcome.  What this blob is doing is not new.  These current evils have often been repeated.  During the French Revolution, Robespierre et al. terrorized their population, and thought they could control people, not just what they did, but what they thought.  Their ideas turned bloody.  Would our elites repeat those evils to retain power?  Yes.  Consider the horrid treatment of the J6 prisoners and the Trump family as a beginning.  More recently, the Soviet state and its satellites controlled their citizens in horrible ways.  China has been doing the same since the Cultural Revolution and continues today.  This is not new.  Unchecked tyranny corrupts, causing massive harm.

Jack Smith's Case Against Trump Appears to Be Falling Apart.  Special Counsel Jack Smith's efforts to imprison Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents have hit a few snags recently, and the latest snag is, indeed, a big one.  "Special Counsel Jack Smith could be blocked from using evidence against Donald Trump contained in grand jury investigation files, which were transferred to the former president's Florida classified documents case this week, a former prosecutor has suggested," reports Newsweek.  "In 2023, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., heard evidence from witnesses — including Trump's attorney, Evan Corcoran — while considering whether charges should be brought against the former president and others for hoarding classified documents.  However, Trump and his co-accused were later indicted in Florida and, under federal rules, the grand jury files were transferred on Monday to Trump-appointed judge, Aileen Cannon's court."  According to former prosecutor Bill Shipley, the transfer of the case from D.C. to Florida gives Judge Cannon control over what evidence can be included — especially testimony that may have violated attorney-client privilege.  [Tweet]

Democracy By Deception.  These are people who have used every form of resistance, including using the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign, hoping to discover some scandal.  After he won, in 2016, they refused to recognize him as the winner, because of the "Russian collusion" they invented.  They made false accusations of criminality and kept alive the "investigation" for three years to keep him from fulfilling his duties as POTUS, had organizations sue him every time he enacted a policy, calling it racist or fascist.  They sued him to keep from building the wall.  The whole power of the federal government was turned on him, a sight unimagined in America.  They kept him in constant legal conflict. [...] He suffered treachery from within his own cabinet and advisors, apparently not understanding that having an "R" by one's name did not mean they were not an enemy.  They were proud of their interference in his administration, planting agents to work against him, give him faulty advice, who refused to follow orders and delayed every command to wait out his term.  In the 2020 election, they had 51 former intelligence agents and directors swear to a fraudulent document that called Hunter's laptop Russian disinformation and not one of them have faced trial.  They used the FBI to influence social media sites to silence political opposition and critics of their crimes of election interference.  They are now disbarring and imprisoning any attorney who brought election fraud cases to court.

Judge sets new hearing date in 2020 Georgia election interference case.  In a Monday afternoon [3/25/2024] order, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee set a new hearing date in the 2020 election interference case.  Attorneys representing former president Donald Trump and former Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer are due back in court on Thursday for a hearing to address three motions, according to the judge's order. [...] Former president Trump's attorney, Steve Sadow, has asked the court to dismiss the indictment against Trump.  He argues that Trump's alleged criminal conduct was actually political speech protected by the First Amendment.

Cracks begin to appear:
NY Appeals Court Reduces Trump Bond in Civil Fraud Appeal and Extends Deadline.  While former President Donald Trump is in a New York courtroom Monday seeking to obtain a dismissal or delay of the "hush money" criminal case brought against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump notched a legal victory in a New York appellate court regarding the $454 million appeal bond he was due to pay by Monday.  Per initial reports, the appellate court reduced the requisite appeal bond to $175 million and extended the deadline for paying it by 10 days.  [Tweet]

This is still excessively high.
Appellate Court Rules Trump Can Post $175 Million Bond to Cover Letitia James' Judgment.  An appellate court ruled that President Trump can post a $175 million bond to cover Letitia James' $464 million judgment.  Trump has 10 days to post the bond.  Marxist New York Attorney General Letitia James last Thursday took the initial step to seize Trump's assets.  She filed judgments in Westchester County where Trump's private estate and golf course named Seven Springs is located.  President Trump had until Monday to either pay the judgment or convince the appellate court to allow him to defer the payment pending appeal.

Turley for Attorney General!
Judge's 'absurd' bond in NYC Trump case could have been reduced to almost nothing, says Turley.  Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley reacted Monday to former President Trump's bond being slashed to $175 million in the New York City civil fraud case, calling the original $454 million amount "absurd."  Turley called the bond change a needed "restraint" to the legal system in New York, warning the "political vortex" hasn't played well with voters or companies.

Donald Trump: 'It Will Be My Honor to Post' $175M Bond.  Former President Donald Trump vowed to post an adjusted bond amount of $175 million within ten days, according to a court ruling on Monday — while decrying the court cases against him as "election interference."  The new bond amount of $175 million is far less than Judge Arthur Engoron's order required Trump to post.  The five-panel New York appeals court ruled Trump could post a bond "in the amount of $175 million" to cover the judgment.  The court also delayed enforcement of the $464 million judgment by ten days.  The order also means Trump can still operate a business in New York and obtain loans from New York financial institutions, CNN reported.

Finally — House Subcommittee Chairman Pete Sessions Starts Looking at Root of DC Lawfare Activity.  Representative Pete Sessions is Chairman of the Subcommittee for Govt Operations and the Federal Workforce within the House Oversight and Government Accountability Committee.  The subcommittee has a few key Republican representatives, including Clay Higgins and Byron Donalds, who are aligned with MAGA, Donald Trump, pushback against the weaponization of our modern UniParty government — and they appear as allies in the effort to stimulate a larger awakening amid the American electorate.  As readers here are very aware, I am exceptionally frustrated with the willful blindness that permeates most of our Republican representatives.  The GOP reps ignore the root causes of the problems and choose to focus on the politics of narratives.  As a result, congressional hearings, soundbites, letters written etc. generate nothing that stops the weaponization of govt.  Quite simply, there are specific people within the administrative state that are the core of the corrupt activity.

Change in America.  And then there is Donald Trump.  We are a nation of laws, the press and the Washington establishment say again and again.  Yet Trump has stood against the permanent elites, the permanent establishment, the permanent institutions.  This is why they hate him so.  He has provided a voice to many who have believed for a very long time that the system is rigged.  We don't have voice.  We don't have say.  It's all an insider deal.  The swamp.  Now Trump is expected to pay almost half a billion dollars in fines because he supposedly overvalued the worth of his properties.  He has said this would never have happened to him if he hadn't been running for President, and, of course, he is right.  However, this is just another example of an institution, a permanent power structure and the elites within it, trying to undermine the will of the people, rig the election, obliterate anyone outside the system from representing the average Allan and average Anne, who feel they no longer have representation within the system.

Fani Willis Delivers a New Threat to Donald Trump, Sets Up a Constitutional Crisis.  Does Fani Willis, who is currently trying to throw former president Donald Trump in jail, want to be a prosecutor or in a Netflix special?  The Fulton County District Attorney was caught red-handed having an affair with a prosecutor she hired, paid an exorbitant amount of taxpayer money to, and then took lavish vacations with, providing no proof she reimbursed him for the expenses.  It wasn't her first brush with corruption, either.  Willis was previously dragged before a judge to explain why she hosted a fundraiser for the political opponent of one of the possible targets in the Trump case.  What was her punishment in both cases?  A stern talking-to.  The system always protects its own, and that means instead of tempering her completely unprofessional and out-of-bounds behavior, Willis is doubling down.

The Music Stops as CNN Panel Guest Explains What Seizing Trump's Property Could Do.  The hands that grab former President Donald Trump's New York properties could hand him the White House, a pollster says.  Pollster Frank Luntz appeared on CNN Thursday amid talk that New York State Attorney General Letitia James could begin seizing Trump's properties Monday.  James sued Trump in a civil fraud case that ended up with Trump being ordered to pay out millions, with $464 million due Monday.  Trump has indicated that making that payment — which state rules say must be made for Trump to appeal — could be difficult, leading to speculation that James is ready to seize Trump properties in New York state's swanky Westchester County.  Luntz said if James does that, she is helping Trump.

Frank Luntz on CNN: If Letitia James Starts Seizing Trump's Assets 'You Are Going to Elect Donald Trump'.  Frank Luntz recently appeared on CNN and was asked about the possibility of New York AG Letitia James seizing Trump's assets.  He gave the far left network a stark warning, saying that if James does this, she will essentially make Trump's case for him and he will surely be elected.  The point Luntz is making is a good one, but it may have already happened in the mind of the public.  People already see this happening.  The mere possibility of it is as real as if it already happened.

Never-Trumper Frank Luntz warns seizing his properties will backfire bigly.  Political pollster Frank Luntz is no fan of Donald Trump but he sees the former president back in the White House if the current persecution against him continues.  Luntz issued a direct message to New York Attorney General Letitia James and warned that the legal machinations against the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee could backfire, speaking specifically about reports that James may be preparing to seize Trump properties as part of the civil fraud case she brought against him.  During a CNN panel discussion, Luntz cautioned the New York AG not to "play politics" lest her efforts propel Trump to a victory in November.

New York State Targets U.S. Citizen Donald Trump with Unprecedented Lawfare Maneuver.  The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, but also mentions "excessive fines" and bail.  The "excessive fines" clause surfaces (among other places) in cases of civil and criminal forfeiture.  In New York state, Attorney General Letitia James, in coordination with New York Judge Arthur Engoron, are seeking to continue the targeting of President Donald Trump with a series of financial judgements, penalties and control mechanisms intended to isolate the leading 2024 Republican presidential candidate from his wealth.  As if something akin to the John Galt character in Atlas Shrugged was coming to life, no American individual has ever faced this level of intentional weaponization of power.  If the state appellate court does not intervene, I predict a federal judge will have to get involved.  The reason is simple; the State of New York is clearly violating the 8th Amendment, and despite the compromised judiciary, the scale of overreach is even beyond the ability of the pretending judicial system to overlook it.

Trump's Third Act has begun.  The Democrats planned to cripple Trump financially so he couldn't spend as much on the campaign.  Trump turned Leticia James into his best fundraiser.  Lots of interesting developments lately on the topic of the 2020 election.  The Simulation wants at least one of those fresh allegations to be a Kraken.  Trump's legal maneuvering is likely to keep him eligible for the election.  You can fantasize about a heroic Democrat such as Newsom swooping in and replacing Biden, but it's looking less likely every day.  If it had always been the plan, it would have happened by now.  Looks like Biden has to stay on the job to keep the Biden Crime Family out of jail.  The predictable Democrat Summer Hoax will add some excitement, but it will be forgotten and debunked by November.

Fairness for Trump?  Former President Donald Trump has just days to come up with a bond, a nearly half-billion-dollar bond, to ensure that he will pay the outrageously excessive judgment against him in the lawsuit filed by New York's Democratic attorney general, Letitia James.  Nailing Trump has been a longtime goal for James — in her campaign for state attorney general, she pledged to "bring him down."  Now, with the help of a compliant judge — in New York, Trump did not have the right to a jury trial — James is threatening to confiscate Trump's assets before he is even able to appeal the verdict against him.  It's happening because under New York law, James can force Trump to put up the whole judgment, $454 million, before he can appeal.  And if Trump doesn't produce the cash or secure a bond for the money, James can seize his assets and sell them off.  That is all before an appeals court can review the highly questionable proceeding against Trump.

Radical Judge Engoron Punishes Trump More, Orders Court to Oversee Organization's Finances for 3 Years.  Not content with slapping former President Donald Trump with almost half a billion dollars in fines for a "crime" in which there were no victims, New York Judge Arthur Engoron ruled Thursday that the court will effectively take over the Trump Organization.  At least, that's how it reads, seeing as Trump will have to disclose his every financial move to his government overlords. [...] Who will be monitoring the operations of the multi-national real estate conglomerate?  An experienced businessperson?  A financial expert?  No, it will (continue to) be another judge: [...] That already sounds like enough, but there's even more.  The court has to be notified of just about every piece of paper shuffled during the workday: [...]

Trump's Legal Team Fights Back as Letitia James Takes Initial Step to Seize Trump's Golf Course and Private Estate.  President Trump's legal team fought back as Letitia James took the initial step to seize Trump's assets on Thursday after his attorney said he was unable to secure a bond to appeal the massive judgment in the NYC fraud case.  Letitia James filed judgments in Westchester County where Trump's private estate and golf course is located.  President Trump has four days to either pay the judgment or convince the appellate court to allow him to defer the payment pending appeal.  Trump's legal team has filed an appeal and requested a stay on the massive $464 million judgment.

Letitia James appears to eye Trump's Westchester golf club and 212-acre estate as properties she could seize.  New York AG Letitia James may be gearing up to seize Donald Trump's Westchester golf club and Seven Springs estate as the deadline looms for the ex-president to secure the $454 million bond a judge imposed after his fraud trial.  The attorney general formally registered judgements in Westchester County where Trump has the two properties just north of Manhattan on March 6.  According to the county clerk's online database, the judgements were registered against Trump, the Trump Organization and his two adult sons Don Jr. and Eric.  The action was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Donald Trump may not pay bond — and instead let Letitia James seize Trump Tower: insiders.  As Donald Trump faces a Monday deadline to post a $454 million bond in the civil fraud case against him in New York, insiders said he may be weighing a little-discussed option:  Doing nothing.  The ex-president reportedly has been struggling to raise the cash for the bond — either from banks or wealthy friends — with his lawyers claiming on Monday that it was a "practical impossibility."  While some reports have raised speculation that Trump may "go nuclear" with a Chapter 11 filing to protect his prize real estate assets across Manhattan, experts said bankruptcy would create unwelcome complications as the 2024 election season comes to a head.

Judge Allows Trump And Co-Defendants To Appeal Fani Willis Ruling.  Judge Scott McAfee ruled Wednesday that former President Donald Trump and eight other co-defendants can seek review of his decision not to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.  McAfee granted the certificate of immediate review sought by defendants, finding it "of such importance to the case that immediate review should be had."  The decision means defendants can appeal McAfee's decision, which allowed Willis to stay on the case against Trump after special prosecutor Nathan Wade stepped down, despite finding an "appearance of impropriety" in their actions.  "The challenged order is not one of final judgment, and the State has informed the Court that it has complied with the order's demands," McAfee wrote.  "Thus, unless directed otherwise by an appellate court, supersedeas shall only apply to the order being appealed."

Trump Team Says It's Unable to Obtain Bond in Civil Fraud Case.  Former President Donald Trump is unable to post a bond in his appeal of a New York civil fraud judgment against him, according to a court filing by his attorneys on Monday [3/18/2024].  Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in the 2024 general election, was sued by Democratic state Attorney General Letitia James of New York for allegedly falsifying his company's assets in order to obtain loans for business ventures, with the New York Supreme Court's Trial Division issuing a ruling on Feb. 23 that ordered him to pay the state of New York $454 million.  Trump, who has appealed the decision, moved the court's Appellate Division on Monday to stay the execution of the judgment and indicated that he is unable to obtain a "supersedeas" bond that would guarantee the final amount pending the outcome of the appeal.

Democrats Cannot Win a Fraud-Free Election.  Under Biden, Americans are seeing unprecedented weaponization.  Jack Smith was appointed special counsel in the classified documents and January 6th indictments of President Trump, both widely viewed to be politically motivated.  Smith was directly appointed by Biden's Attorney General, Merrick Garland.  Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis met directly with the Biden administration shortly before prosecuting Trump for election interference.  In the New York-based hush money case, Matthew Colangelo, who previously targeted Trump during his time in the New York AG's office, recently left the Biden/Garland DoJ and joined Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's team that is targeting Trump.  Beyond targeting the preferred candidate of millions of Americans, Biden's FBI has also targeted traditional Catholics, labeling them as potential violent extremists, in addition to Biden's White House encouraging major social media platforms to violate the First Amendment by removing posts they disagreed with.

Joe Rogan Rips 'Banana Republic' Indictments of Trump: 'Looks Like You're Trying to Prosecute Your Political Opponents'.  Joe Rogan slammed the indictments of Trump during a recent episode of his podcast, calling it the stuff of banana republics.  In his criticisms, he singled out Letitia James and Fani Willis, questioning what their real motivations are and suggesting that this looks like nothing more than the targeting of political opponents, which is exactly what it is, of course.  This is notable because if Joe Rogan is asking these questions, millions of Americans are thinking the same thing, and not just Trump supporters.

Jack Smith Gets 'Worst Possible Outcome' After Recent Ruling:  Former Official.  Several former U.S. officials warned that special counsel Jack Smith appears to be struggling in his classified documents case against former President Donald Trump — even after the federal judge in the case denied an attempt to dismiss the charges against the former president.  This week, Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order that denied President Trump's motion to dismiss the case on grounds of "unconstitutional vagueness."  While she noted his attorneys raised questions that warrant consideration, she said that their arguments relating to the Espionage Act should be made in "connection with jury-instruction briefing."  Andrew Weissmann, a former U.S. attorney who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's team, said on MSNBC that the judge's ruling not to dismiss the case was the "worst possible outcome for the government" and Mr. Smith.  Because, he argued, if the judge had agreed to dismiss the case, it could "have been appealed" to an appeals court in the meantime.

Adam Schiff Is Big Mad at Justice Department for Taking Too Long to Prosecute Trump.  Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) railed against the Justice Department on Sunday for taking too long to indict and prosecute former President Donald Trump in the various cases against him.  He also lashed out at Trump for seeking to delay his trials.  While Schiff insists that his criticism is motivated by a desire for justice, it is abundantly obvious that this is more about politics.  Schiff made his remarks during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."  The host brought up Schiff's disagreement with Attorney General Merrick Garland's handling of the investigations into the former president, particularly when it comes to the timing.  The lawmaker responded, noting that the Justice Department "did wait at least a year to look beyond the foot soldiers, that is, those that broke into the Capitol that day and refrained from looking at those who were the inciters of the attack on the Capitol."  He continued, lamenting that the cases against Trump could stretch beyond the election.

Lawfareland gets nervous.  This newsletter has noted that the elected Democrats, Biden DOJ-appointed prosecutors, legal activists, and others who have filed criminal charges and lawsuits against former President Donald Trump have crafted a multiple-redundant line of attack.  If one case fails, there is another to back it up, and if that case fails, there is another to back it up, and so on.  There are four criminal cases against the former president, all charging him with felonies.  At the beginning of this week, there were 91 felony counts against Trump, but a judge in the Georgia prosecution threw out some counts, so the total number of felony counts Trump faces now stands at 88.  That is a lot of redundancy.  All it takes is for Trump to be convicted on a single count in a single case for Democrats and their allies to make a million campaign ads branding President Joe Biden's challenger a "convicted felon."  Polls have shown that some voters who might otherwise support Trump will back away if he is convicted of a felony.  That alone might be enough to swing the election.  So of course the Democratic lawfare team, and its cheerleaders in the media, is desperate that at least one Trump trial start and reach a verdict before the Nov. 5 election.

Judge Questions Why Trump Was The Only President Charged Over Handling Of Classified Material.  The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's Florida case questioned during a Thursday hearing why he was the only president who has been charged over his handling of classified material, according to multiple reports.  During a hearing to consider various motions Trump filed to dismiss the case, Judge Aileen Cannon noted no former president had similarly faced criminal charges over the handling of classified material, according to NBC News.  Trump's attorneys brought up special counsel Robert Hur's report finding evidence President Joe Biden willfully kept classified documents, but declining to charge him, according to CNN.  "Even with other former presidents, there was never a situation remotely similar to this one," prosecutor Jay Bratt told Cannon, according to CNN.

Andy McCarthy Says Robert Hur Testimony Shows Why 'Biden Should Pardon Trump'.  Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy on Wednesday asserted President Joe Biden should pardon former President Donald Trump after special counsel Robert Hur's Tuesday testimony.  Hur testified on his report that concluded there should be no charges against Biden despite him willfully withholding classified documents.  Trump faces charges related to classified documents and Biden should pardon him to get rid of the alleged double standard, McCarthy asserted on "Fox and Friends."

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg Agrees to 30-Day Delay of 'Hush Money' Trial.  More information is now available as to the rationale for Bragg's office agreeing to the delay:  "Specifically, yesterday the USAO produced approximately 31,000 pages of additional records and represented that there will be another production of documents by next week," the district attorney's office said in a motion to the court requesting the delay.  Based on our initial review of yesterday's production, those records appear to contain materials related to the subject matter of this case, including materials that the People requested from the USAO more than a year ago and that the USAO previously declined to provide," the motion said.

Judge Dismisses 6 Charges in Georgia Trump Indictment Ahead of Expected Fani Willis Decision.  The judge overseeing the racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia dismissed six counts of the indictment Wednesday.  Judge Scott McAfee, who is expected to soon decide whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will be disqualified from the case over an alleged conflict of interest, sided with defendants in a separate motion to toss certain counts.  He wrote that six counts did not "give the Defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently, as the Defendants could have violated the Constitutions and thus the statute in dozens, if not hundreds, of distinct ways."  McAfee's ruling said that the state can still bring new indictments on the six charges, which all center on "Solicitation of Violation of Oath by Public Officer."

Judge in Georgia election interference case dismisses three counts against Trump.  The judge presiding over the election interference case in Georgia has dismissed some of the criminal counts against former President Donald Trump.  In a ruling Wednesday, Judge Scott McAfee found that six of the counts in the indictment against Trump and some of his co-defendants, including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawyer Rudy Giuliani, lacked sufficient detail.  The judge left open the possibility that prosecutors could re-file the counts.

Federal Judge Sides With Trump, Allows More Time to File Motions.  The federal judge overseeing the Trump classified documents case handed defense lawyers a win on Monday, allowing a 10-day extension to file motions.  In a paperless order on Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted former President Donald Trump a 10-day extension, meaning that he shall file a reply to their pretrial motions by March 24.  His lawyers had made the request this week, arguing that they are preparing for a separate criminal trial in New York over state charges that he allegedly falsified business records at the end of the 2016 election.  The former president's attorneys wrote that both President Trump and his attorneys "are currently preparing for a trial in New York, New York that is scheduled to begin on March 25, 2024, and the need to simultaneously devote attention to that case.  "This matter has been necessitated in part by the discovery violations and strategic scheduling demands of the Special Counsel's Office that have prejudiced President Trump in multiple respects," they added.

House GOP opens probe into Democrat J6 panel 'collusion' with Atlanta prosecutor pursuing Trump.  Republican congressional investigators have opened an inquiry into the extent of "collusion" between the Democrat-run House Jan. 6 committee and the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis during her prosecution of Donald Trump.  In a status report released Monday, the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee chaired by Rep. Barry.  Loudermilk, R-Ga., said that it located a letter in which Willis in 2021 asked for the House Democrats to send her any evidence that would further her prosecution of Trump.  The committee said it was concerned that the Democrat-run investigation led by Reps.  Benny Thompson and Liz Cheney may have shared evidence such as video depositions with Willis's office while not providing them to the Republicans that took over the House chamber in 2023.  The Republicans raised their concerns in chapter of the report Monday entitled "collusion with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis."

Infamous Trump-Raffensperger Call at Heart of Fani Willis Prosecution Was Illegally Recorded.  Can an illegally recorded phone call be used to form the basis of a prosecution?  That's a question that is about to become very relevant following a bombshell revelation regarding the infamous phone call between Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.  On the call, Trump can be heard telling Raffensperger, "I just want to find 11,780 votes."  That statement was one of the centerpieces of the former president's second impeachment.  Was it definitive, though?  In context, Trump had also asked Raffensperger to "find the fraud," indicating that he thought there were legitimate votes left to be uncovered.  Regardless, Fulton County DA Fani Willis used the phone call as the foundation for her RICO prosecution against Trump and his associates.  According to a new book published by Michael Isikoff (who was an original pusher of the Russian collusion hoax), that call was illegally recorded by Jordan Fuchs.

New Book Admits Fani Willis' Get-Trump Investigation Began With Illegal Recording.  Democrat Fani Willis' legal troubles extend beyond recent revelations that she deceptively hired her otherwise under-qualified, secret, married lover to run the political prosecution of former President Donald Trump and other Republicans in Georgia.  A new book from Mike Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman admits that a widely misunderstood phone call, on which Willis' political prosecution rests, was illegally recorded.  That means the entire prosecution could crumble with defendants having a new avenue to challenge Democrat lawfare.

Trump 'Lawfare' Update.  Former President Donald Trump's victory in the Supreme Court 14th Amendment case, together with delay and disorder in the criminal cases against him, has set off panic among Democrats who hoped to use prosecutions and other legal maneuvers to keep Trump from winning a second term.  "Supreme Court ruling darkens critics' hopes for a judicial curb on Trump," read one headline in the Washington Post.  You might find it outrageous that people in positions of great power and responsibility, in the midst of a campaign, would use the justice system to "curb" one of the two major presidential candidates.  You might find it outrageous that those people — a coalition of elected Democrats, Biden administration appointees, Democratic Party activists and career lawfare specialists — are in fact desperately pushing the system to work faster to win verdicts by Election Day.  But there it is.  The anti-Trump coalition has launched six main attacks on Trump. [...]

Democratic Panic:  A Trump Conviction is the Only Way Biden Can Win.  It's not like this was a secret or something you couldn't have figured out for yourself, still it's sort of revealing when Democrats say the quiet part out loud.  I'm talking specifically about a new Thomas Edsall column in the NY Times titled "'This Could Well Be Game Over.'"  The game in this case is the 2024 election and the over refers to Joe Biden's chances of winning it if Donald Trump isn't convicted of a serious crime prior to November.

If Trump wins in November, expect a real insurrection from Democrats.  The reaction by Democratic Party politicians and pundits to the Supreme Court ruling on March 4, 2024 — voiding the effort by Colorado to throw Donald Trump off its ballot — reveals some very fundamental realities that must be faced by all Americans.  To put it bluntly:  These Democrats have no intention of accepting a victory by Donald Trump in the upcoming election, even if he should win by a majority so vast that no amount of election rigging can disguise it.  The first reaction to that decision was a major tell.  Jean Griswold is the secretary of state of Colorado who had taken Trump off the ballot, claiming he was an insurrectionist even though that was merely her opinion as Trump has not only never been convicted of that crime, he has not even been charged with it. [...] Spurred by her blind hatred of Trump, Griswold's refusal to deal with reality here is disturbing, to say the least.  First, the court made it very clear, unanimously, that the states don't have this authority when it comes to federal elections.  That she as a lawyer could not recognize the plain legal arguments here that were agreed to by even the most radical leftists on the court indicates how blind she has become to reasonable disagreement.

The Consequences of Jack Smith's Rush to Trial.  Jack Smith is rushing to prosecute former President Donald Trump for the events of Jan. 6 so that the American people can have the benefit of his evidence, and the views of the jury, before they vote in November.  This rush violates Justice Department rules.  The Supreme Court now faces the question whether it too will be a party to this rush and, if not, how it will avoid it.

House Dems Prep an "Insurrection" Bill Barring Trump from Taking Office.  The Supreme Court didn't dig into the weeds of the entire insurrection debate, but one obvious issue with the various efforts to remove Trump from the ballot in various states was that insurrection had been left entirely to Democrat state officials to define.  That kind of nonsense however won't fly in an actual legislative process.  Now that the Supreme Court blocked state officials from announcing that Trump can't be on the ballot because he's an "insurrectionist", House members are now trying to play the same game. [...] For now, in a GOP House, the bill is mostly virtue signaling, but tellingly Raskin is not so much trying to define insurrection as trying to define J6 as an insurrection.  It's the typical end run around the process of defining the thing because otherwise Democrat BLMers might fall afoul of it.  The Raskin bill conveniently defines J6 as an insurrection and carefully defines the term so as to specifically apply it to Trump.  It does not however define what an insurrection is making the whole exercise into a bill that specifically exists to block a particular candidate from being able to take office on grounds that would be unlikely to apply to his own party.  Does that raise some major banana republic issues?  Obviously.  Still, has Raskin considered what kind of can of worms he's opening here?

The Colorado Secretary of State says she now trusts the people to make the decision she didn't trust them to make four months ago.  The cabal that calls itself the Democratic Party of Colorado nearly pulled a coup last fall.  Unburdened by any inconvenient process that might have been due, a Democrat state judge decided that Donald Trump was an insurrectionist.  Therefore, under a clause of the 14th Amendment designed to prevent former Confederates from running for federal office, Trump was ineligible to run for president.  Never mind that Trump had never been convicted or even charged with the crime of insurrection.  On appeal, four of the seven Democrat-appointed justices on the Colorado Supreme Court agreed.  The other three in their strident dissent all but wondered out loud what kind of Colorado-legal weed the majority was smoking.  The next stop was the United States Supreme Court.

Maine Secretary of State Withdraws Determination That Donald Trump Should Be Banned from Ballot.  Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) withdrew her previous determination that former President Donald Trump should be prohibited from appearing on the ballot, doing so following the Supreme Court's nine-to-zero decision, which determined that states do not possess the authority to ban a candidate from the ballot using the Fourteenth Amendment's "Insurrection Clause."  In December, Bellows determined that she believed Trump to be ineligible to appear on the state's ballot based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Insurrection Clause.  However, she said at the time that the decision would not be carried out until the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in.

Democrats Jump at Chance to 'Revive Legislation' to Kick Trump Off of the Ballot.  The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 9-0 decision on Monday that Colorado erred in removing former and potentially future President Donald Trump from the ballot.  As the Court ruled, though, "responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States."  Democratic Reps.  Jamie Raskin (MD), Eric Swalwell (CA), and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL) have thus wasted no time in their crusade to "revive legislation" to kick Trump off of the ballot and deny the American people their right to vote for or against him.  As Raskin explained it when offering his reaction to CNN's Dana Bash, these and other members are working "to revive legislation that we had to set up a process by which we could determine that someone who committed insurrection is disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment."  [Tweet]

The Fani Willis Scandal Is So Much Bigger Than Trump.  Is any public figure having a worse start to the year than Fani Willis?  The once-lauded Fulton County prosecutor was billed as the savior of "democracy" not too long ago. [...] During the recent hearings on her misconduct, Willis claimed that she paid Wade back.  The proof?  There is none.  According to Willis, she used a horde of cash she keeps at her home, but not a single receipt or bank statement has been produced to prove any transfer of money was made.  Things have gotten so bad that both Wade and Willis are now facing discipline from the Georgia State Bar, but that may be the least of their worries.  What started as a prosecution of Trump has become its own story, and it can't be ignored.  Even if the former president weren't involved, this would still be a major scandal.  A top prosecutor in one of America's largest cities was funneling cash to a married man she was sleeping with and then going on vacations paid for by that money.  Forget disbarment.  We could be talking about removal from office and even criminal charges for Willis at some point in the future.

Supreme Court puts Trump back on Colorado Republican primary ballot.  The Supreme Court on Monday [3/4/2024] unanimously reversed the Colorado court ruling that barred Donald Trump from appearing on the state's Republican presidential primary ballot because of a provision in the U.S. Constitution related to people who engage in insurrection.  The decision Monday said that "States have no power under the Constitution to" enforce the provision disqualifying people from federal office if they engaged in insurrection, "especially the Presidency."  The ruling said states could disqualify people from holding state offices on those grounds.  The Supreme Court's ruling mean that no other state can bar Trump, or any other candidate, from a presidential ballot by invoking the insurrection clause in the Constitution.  "For the reasons given, responsibility for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates rests with Congress and not the States," the ruling said.  "The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand."

American Paralysis and Decline.  Most accept that had former President Donald Trump just not run for president in 2024 or was a man of the left, he would not now be facing four different felony court cases.  Most accept that three of the four prosecutors have either in advance promised to get Trump or have proved grossly unethical.  Most know it is wrong to try to remove a leading presidential candidate from state ballots.  Yet many shrug that this new weaponization of America's legal system is the flamboyant Trump's own problem, not their own.  So they ignore the third worldization of our political system, which they quietly acknowledge is otherwise leading us to a Venezuela-like mess.

Jack Smith Asks DC Judge Boasberg to Decide What Trump Classified Doc Evidence to Show Florida Judge.  If you ever needed a good point to highlight the nature of political Lawfare, this is a great example.  Julie Kelly essentially notes that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is asking DC Judge James Boasberg to decide what evidence should be given to Florida Judge Aileen Cannon. [...] There is a certain level of cognitive disassociation needed by the media to ignore how the DOJ is using a DC court system to prosecute a Florida case against Trump.  Boasberg, an ally of SSCI Chairman Mark Warner, has intercepted several cases that brought sunlight upon the corrupt DC system.  In each case Boasberg ruled in favor of maintaining the corruption, including his willfully blind support of the FBI searching NSA databases to conduct illegal surveillance of Americans, and including Boasberg's personal appointment of Mary McCord to run defense on behalf of the corrupt DOJ main office.

Is Trump's Mega-Fine Unconstitutional?  Although the Eighth Amendment is not explicitly limited to criminal cases, its three subjects — bail, fines and punishments — all relate generally to criminal cases.  Trump's fine was imposed in what was denominated a civil case.  But it was not a traditional civil case between private parties, because no private parties were allegedly damaged by Trump.  It was a case brought by the State of New York, which would receive the fine.  Moreover, the fine was intended to deter the kind of conduct of which Trump was accused.  These factors make the fine seem closer to the usual attributes of a public criminal case than of a private civil case.  A functional analysis of the fine in this case could well conclude that it is really criminal in nature and should be covered by the Eighth Amendment.  Trump's lawyers will certainly argue at this point, though they are unlikely to succeed on the initial appeal.  They will then almost certainly seek certiorari, a review by the Supreme Court of the United States, by alleging a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Democrats are determined to destroy not just the political career but the life of President Trump.  It is important to reiterate that there is no basis for any of these cases against Trump.  Had he not run for President in 2016 these cases would never have existed.  Perhaps if he had struck a deal with the establishment in 2020 to never run again and to abandon the MAGA agenda, he would have been spared.  The persecution of the January 6th protestors is proof that Trump supporters will also not be spared.  The goal is to crush the MAGA movement, which is the first truly grassroots movement, one so successful that it won the topmost elected office in the country and the world.  For Trump supporters, the real disappointment occurs when elected GOP officials either behave like bystanders or worse, join the Democrats whenever President Trump is targeted.  Many of these officials are there because of endorsement from President Trump.

Illinois Judge Kicks Trump Off The Ballot, Says Any Votes For Him Must Be 'Suppressed'.  While outlets like The Washington Post have tried to convince Americans that "Democracy Dies in Darkness," it actually dies in Illinois courthouses where judges whose expertise revolves around parking tickets kick former presidents off ballots.  In the left's latest attempt at election interference, Cook County Judge Tracie Porter kicked former President Donald Trump off the primary ballot on Wednesday — but put her own order on hold because she knows it won't stand.  Porter ruled Trump must be removed from the state's March 19 primary ballot but stayed her own order until Friday pending a likely appeal.  Porter said the quiet part out loud, ruling that the board of elections, which unanimously voted against removing Trump from the ballot, "shall remove Donald J. Trump from the ballot for the General Primary Election on March 19, 2024, or cause any votes for him to be suppressed."  The suit was brought by the left-wing group Free Speech For People, which argued Trump is ineligible based on the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause.  Trump has not been charged with nor convicted of inciting or partaking in insurrection.

Politicized Prosecutions Are A Warning Shot Across The Bow For All Americans.  New York Gov. Kathy Hochul knows she has spooked her state's business community.  That's why she went on a talk show last week to calm their very legitimate fears that they would be next.  If former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted and fined hundreds of millions of dollars for a common business practice, who is safe?  Hochul said New Yorkers are generally "honest people, and they're not trying to hide their assets and they're following the rules... This judge determined that Donald Trump did not follow the rules."  Hence the $355 million fine levied by the court.  But the truth is Trump engaged in a common business practice for developers.  As "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary noted in a Fox News interview, "Forget about Trump, every single real estate developer everywhere on Earth does this.  They always talk about their asset being worth a lot, and the bank says no.  That's just the way it is."  The broader effect of such politicized prosecutions is clear — Americans are increasingly convinced we live in a nation with a two-tiered justice system.

If Illinois prevails in keeping Trump off of the ballot, our republic is finished.  Cook County has been labeled "Crook County" for good reasons.  Chicago Circuit Judge Tracie Porter decided that former President Donald Trump should be disqualified from appearing on the Republican presidential primary ballot in Illinois.  This decision was based on allegations tied to his involvement in the events of January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol.  The judge's ruling, invoking the insurrection clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, has sparked a significant debate over the balance of free speech, political activism, and the boundaries of legal disqualification from public office.  Insurrection?  Give me a break.  Trump was not part of the demonstration and even if he were, it's free speech and not an "insurrection."  This ruling, while currently delayed in anticipation of an appeal, underscores a concerning trend towards the politicization of legal mechanisms and the potential for judicial overreach, to say the least; it is paramount to recognize the implications such decisions may have on the democratic process, especially when considering the role of the judiciary in electoral matters.

Fani Willis Plays the Stooge.  Our master-criminal coconspirators came up with a plan to return someone who is otherwise unelectable, Joe Biden, to the Oval Office.  They'd use a novel application of the law, to indict Trump and 18 others for doing absolutely nothing illegal.  Their plan was quite clever:  prosecute Trump and his pals in a friendly venue, and then see if the Donald can campaign from a cell as well as Joe can campaign from a basement.

The 8th Amendment comes out in favor of Trump.  On February 16, 2024, a judge in New York State imposed fines totaling just over $360 million on former president Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, and several related Trump companies and trusts in the civil case brought by the New York attorney general.  President Trump's sons Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump were fined just over $4 million each.  The court imposed additional sanctions, including injunctions against former president Trump; Donald Trump, Jr.; and Eric Trump from serving as officers or directors in New York corporations for specified numbers of years, among other sanctions.  The media reporting on the court's decision has been massive since the decision was rendered.  However, little or no reporting focused on the constitutionality of the fines under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  President Trump and his co-defendants all have substantial 8th Amendment "excessive fine" challenges to raise.  In fact, a review of the facts and applicable law reveal that this decision is simply more election interference.

Trump Appeals $450M NY State Fraud Judgment, Calls Out 'Fake Political Prosecutions'.  Donald Trump and his sons have appealed the stupefying $454 million (including interest) New York civil fraud judgment determined by Judge Arthur Engoron.  The former president was accused of inflating the value of his assets to obtain better financing and deals for his properties.  It is unclear as of this writing whether Trump has posted bond, which according to law could require the full amount of the massive fine.  Trump and his lawyers argued that the judge clearly overstepped his bounds: [...] Although there were no victims in the former president's alleged "crimes," and no banks or other creditors claiming they were victimized, Judge Engoron nevertheless ordered the seemingly vindictive penalty and also ordered that Trump and sons could not do business in the state for three years.

Will The Democrats Let Donald Trump Be President If He Wins?  The Supreme Court will not throw Donald Trump off the ballot through some sort of deus ex MSNBCmachina, and Trump's polls are improving while President Crusty's are getting worse, so we face the real possibility of Donald Trump winning the presidency.  Obviously, it's not a done deal, but it is a bigger possibility than it used to be.  Well, the Democrats are facing it, and now they're trying to figure out how to stop him from taking office if and when he wins the election.  This is a really bad idea.  But of course, the Democrat Party is the Party of Bad Ideas, and the Party of Nanny Fascism.  And it is also remarkably free of any recognition of its own hypocrisy.  It's become popular to say that the issue is not hypocrisy but hierarchy, and that the Democrats feel entitled to do whatever they want.  They don't want Trump to be president, so what are they going to do about it?  Whatever they have to do to hold power.

Democrats Plot An Insurrection To Stop 'Insurrectionist' Trump.  We've now reached peak Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Democrats are actually making plans to prevent Donald Trump from taking office even if he legitimately wins the election.  In other words, they are plotting an insurrection to keep the man whom they claim is an insurrectionist out of the White House.  Logic, common sense, the future of the country, [notwithstanding].  How do we know this is what they are scheming?  Because, as President Joe Biden's poll numbers continue to drop, his mental and physical health rapidly deteriorate, and options to replace him on the ballot shrink, Democrats are openly talking about it.  The Colorado attorney arguing before the Supreme Court to keep Trump off that state's ballot warned the justices that if they didn't stop him from being elected "it could come back with a vengeance."

The Persecution of Donald Trump Means Turning Ordinary Activities Into Crimes.  Like millions of Americans before me, I've done exactly what Donald Trump did; namely, sought a loan based upon my best estimate of what my property was worth — and I didn't look to what the tax assessor said in reaching that value.  However, as part of the Democrats' lawfare, Letitia James twisted a perfectly ordinary act into something evil, and a partisan judge put his imprimatur on her efforts.  If it's allowed to stand, the results will be devastating, not just for the political class but also for normal Americans. [...] [O]ne would imagine that some banks or insurance companies lost money because they loaned money to Trump or that Trump defaulted on them.  That didn't happen.  Indeed, Trump paid back the loans with interest.  There were literally no victims, and banks still wanted to lend to him!  But that didn't matter.  The bottom line is that, according to James, Trump used one set of books for getting a loan and another set of books for taxes.  But of course, outside of a politicized prosecutor's office, that's normal, not actionable.

If A President Can Have His Money And Property Snatched By His Political Opposition, This Isn't A Free Country.  Voters in a few months are supposed to cast a ballot for their preferred presidential candidate.  Meanwhile, we just watched one of our major political parties attempt to literally bankrupt the likely nominee of the other, and seize his property.  Whatever you want to say of America anymore, it can't possibly be called free and our elections aren't anything close to fair.  A Democrat judge linked up with a Democrat district attorney in New York last week, ruling that Donald Trump, who earned more votes in 2020 than any sitting president in history, pay the city about half a billion dollars in penalties and fines, plus forego his right to conduct business or borrow money in the entire state.  The pretext for the obscenity is that Trump in his years as a real estate developer routinely defrauded lenders by inflating the value of his assets, a hideous crime that resulted in his victims' insolvency and buried by insurmountable debt.  Wait, that's not right.  Let me check my notes.  Sorry, what actually happened is that the banks who took the risk of financing Trump's ventures raked in fistfulls of profits and continued chasing him to continue their lucrative partnerships.  In other words, the parties "wronged" by Trump got richer.  With each passing day, nearly $100,000 in interest is tacked onto the sentence and the D.A., Letitia "peek-a-boo" James (as Trump calls her for hilarious yet unknown reasons), has gone so far as to threaten state seizure of the former president's marquee real estate properties should he fail to pay the sum.

Jack Smith Will Annoy the Supreme Court.  The Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause provides that a congressman may not be put on trial for any "legislative act." [...] A president has it harder, according to Special Counsel Jack Smith.  In the Justice Department's prosecution of President Trump for contesting the 2020 election results, Smith argues that he may put Trump on trial for official presidential acts.  All that's required to arrest Trump, says Smith, is that just over half of a biased Washington, D.C., grand jury conclude that his words or deeds fall within the vague wording of a rarely charged criminal statute.  In Smith's telling, he may put a president on trial for standing in the Speaker's Lobby off the House floor to urge congressmen to vote against certifying an election — but because voting is a legislative act, not the congressmen who stand three feet away and actually cast the votes as urged.  Smith admits that a president must be protected by at least a qualified immunity from criminal prosecution — but he refuses to spell out exactly what that immunity is.

Blue Laws for Red Citizens.  There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.  One, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes.  They filed their legal writs in big-city, left-wing America — Atlanta, New York, Washington — where liberal judges and jury pools predominate in a manner not characteristic of the country at large.  Two, they are overtly political.  Bragg, James, and Willis have either campaigned for office or raised campaign funds by promising to get or even destroy Donald Trump.  Carroll's suit was funded by left-wing billionaire Reid Hoffman.  Smith sued to rush his court schedule in hopes of putting Trump on trial before the November election.  Three, there would not be any of these cases had Donald Trump not run for the presidency or not been a conservative.

The Crime of Donald Trump.  Technically speaking, Donald Trump is guilty of something — he's guilty of the crime of being Donald Trump.  He hasn't broken any laws, but laws have been modified to break him. [...] The Democrats have been shown one term of Donald Trump in power and they didn't like what they saw.  Energy independence, historically low unemployment, almost zero inflation, a strong economy... I mean, who wants that?  Not the Democrats, that's for sure.  They prefer to keep a horribly corrupt, senile old man in the White House by any means necessary, and that means a never-ending onslaught of lawfare designed to bankrupt even a billionaire.  Let's begin with the judgments already issued against Donald Trump and then evaluate the ongoing court cases.  We will break down each case according to judge name instead of a state because New York has multiple cases against him.

New York's Trump Fraud Findings Refute Judge's Conclusions.  [Scroll down]  Notwithstanding that New York, for the above reasons, has no valid claim on behalf of itself or any of the lenders for common law fraud and misrepresentation, New York is claiming under a state statute that some immaterial mistakes or misrepresentations justify recovery, not for the banks, but for the benefit of the state of New York, of all gains or profits that the borrower may have made on each project where claimed illegality may have occurred.  All of this results, notwithstanding that the lenders suffered no financial or other loss, were not fraudulently induced to do anything, and were aware and comfortable with the notion that the banks are totally responsible for performing their own due diligence, securing of their own appraisals, and developing their own valuations.  In the Trump case, that approach has led to a claim that New York is entitled to recover for its own account (not for the account of any lender) the sum of at least $355 million, apparently just to teach Trump and others a lesson.

Pay to Play:  Trump Faces a Staggering Cost for Appeal.  In the wake of the massive judgment against Donald Trump, many in New York are celebrating the prospect that the former president could be forced to sell off his property just to be able to appeal the $355 million judgment against him.  While Trump has good grounds to object to this excessive fine, he still has to come up with close to a half billion dollars just to make his arguments to the New York Court of Appeals.  In order to file an appeal, the courts require a deposit for the full amount of the damages or a bond covering the full amount.  Even with escrow options, the call for cash or collateral can be enough to put some executives in a fetal position.  It can be challenging enough for many companies drained from years of litigation.  For Donald Trump, the demand for $355 million plus $100 milion in interest could force a fire sale on properties to pony up just the deposit.

The Leftist Lynch Mob Attacking Trump.  I really, really don't care if you hate Donald Trump, think he is a threat to democracy, or honestly believe that he wanted to overthrow the US government (if you believe that you have been successfully brainwashed and need a deprogrammer, but whatever...).  Even if all that describes you, I think you are a browshirt if you approve of the lawfare being used against the former president.  Whatever fantasy you hallucinate, it's impossible to not see that none of the lawsuits, investigations, or prosecutions being used to cripple Trump is anything but a distortion of our legal system in order to achieve a political goal.  The latest verdict — the outrageous fine imposed on Trump for harming literally nobody — is beyond absurd.  It is outrageous — worthy of any third-world dictatorship in which El Jefe wants to cripple a political opponent without enduring the PR nightmare of outright executing him.

Trump learns.  Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 without needing to dig up dirt on Hillary because the FBI already did that with the email scandal.  But he failed to dig up dirt on Biden in 2020.  The open secret in DC was Biden was easily bought.  Everyone knew — except Trump.  Now as he faces lawfare — the act of tying a man up in court to bleed him dry from legal fees — Trump apparently has learned to dig up dirt on at least one of his persecutors:  Fani Willis the George Soros district attorney in Atlanta who threw her weight and indicted President Trump and associates, hoping to bring him down.  Thus far, all she has done is boost his electoral chances by forcing him to take a mugshot.

Private Equity Fund Manager Announces He "Will NOT Waste Time" Researching New Business Opportunities in New York After Engoron Ruling.  On Friday, far left Judge Arthur Engoron fleeced $355 million from President Trump for taking out loans in New York State and paying them back on time and with interest.  The charges were brought against Trump by crazed New York State Attorney General Letitia James.  There were no victims in the so-called crime.  The banks did their due diligence before they loaned Donald Trump the money and testified they would gladly do it again.  Judge Engoron called this a crime and ruled that President Donald Trump owed the state $355 million.  But that's not all.  As Volokh Conspiracy reported Engoron also put a Clinton-appointed judge in control of Trump business empire in New York State.

DA Alvin Bragg Is Trying to Punish Trump For Something That's Not a Crime.  Much has been made of Donald Trump's claim of presidential immunity as it relates to the criminal case in Georgia and other legal actions against the former president.  Special counsel Jack Smith and prosecutor Fanni Willis claim Trump "unlawfully interfered with the 2020 presidential election by trying to enlist state and federal officials in his efforts to stop Biden from taking office," according to Reason.com's Jacob Sullum.  But Trump's claim of immunity isn't quite as "wild" as some on the left suggest.  Presidential immunity was designed to prevent "frivolous, politically motivated criminal charges against former presidents," as Sullum points out.  That might not be the case entirely with the Smith and Willis cases.  After all, there are statutes that may have been violated.  The three-judge appeals court hearing Trump's immunity claim found the argument unconvincing.  The court ruled that "the danger" Trump perceived "appears slight" given prosecutors' "ethical obligations" and "additional safeguards," such as "the right to be charged by a grand jury upon a finding of probable cause."

Democrats weaponized justice system to punish Trump in business case.  Oscar Wilde wrote that "moderation is a fatal thing.  Nothing succeeds like excess."  Justice Arthur Engoron took that line to heart with his absurd imposition of $455 million in fines and interest against Donald Trump and his corporation.  It succeeded wonderfully with New Yorkers, who celebrated the verdict like a popular public execution.  It also worked wonderfully to make it difficult to appeal.  Much of the criticism of the decision focused on the unprecedented use of the law and the excessive size of the fine.  The New York statute has been on the books for decades and has always been something of an anomaly in not requiring an actual victim or loss to justify disgorgement or fines.  Even the New York Times agreed that it could not find a single case in history where this statute was used against an individual or a company that did not commit a criminal offense, go bankrupt, or leave financial victims.

New York Governor Admits State Legal Targeting Was Only at Donald Trump.  New York Governor Kathy Hochul has admitted the lawfare deployed against the Trump organization and President Donald Trump himself was a specific plan for his targeting and any other business interests or people within New York should not be concerned.  It's a rather brazen admission all things considered; however, if it changes the public outlook as the various New York lawfare cases against President Trump continue, is yet to be determined.

Update Far Outside the Wire.  [Scroll down]  We already know if Donald Trump can take the MAGA fight back to Washington DC, the entire apparatus of government, and yes that includes your elected representatives, will fight to destroy him at every opportunity.  So, how exactly do we: (a) support President Trump, (b) push back against the weaponized state, (c) confront our government abusers?  There are more of us than them, yet each of our efforts seems to face the full force of "them" against a divided sense of "us."  One of the ways we have discussed direct push back is a modern version of a workers solidarity movement.  Essentially, the creation of a system where targeted general work strikes can have an impact on the system that is targeting us.

Biden administration to put up 'roadblocks' in case of Trump win?  Siccing federal intelligence agencies on Trump, covering up his political opponents "shenanigans" and crimes, lying under oath, arbitrarily changing states' voting laws, ushering in massive mail-in voting, somehow receiving and/or counting hundreds of thousands of votes for Biden in the middle of the night with almost none for Trump, launching endless spurious lawsuits against Trump with the intention of preventing him from campaigning and putting him in prison, and threatening to pack the court and end the filibuster are just some of the things Democrats, Deep Staters, and assorted other never-Trumpers have done, almost all with the stated intention of "preserving our democracy."  Mindboggling.  Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot weren't much more opposed to democracy, but were far less hypocritical.  And yet Democrats, Deep Staters, and assorted other never-Trumpers always seem to get away with it.

CIA Manipulated Evidence To Hide Evidence Russia Wanted Clinton To Win In 2016, Not Trump:  Report.  The Central Intelligence Agency manipulated intelligence information to make it look like Russia wanted Donald Trump to win the 2016 presidential election despite having more credible information showing that Russia wanted Hillary Clinton to win, according to a new report.  The effort to manipulate the information was headed up by John Brennan, Obama's CIA director, who disregarded evidence that the Russians preferred Clinton because she was more predictable and highlighted questionable evidence claiming Russia favored Trump, sources told independent journalists Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag.

Is Ukraine Bill a Pretext for Third Trump Impeachment?  The Ukraine funding bill poised to pass the Senate could be used as a predicate to impeach Donald Trump should he win a second term, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, argued Monday.  Vance joined a forum on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, along with Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and others.  Over the weekend, with 18 Republicans joining the Democrat majority, the Senate moved to close debate and go to a vote on a $95 billion supplemental spending bill for Ukraine, which is defending itself from Russia's invasion, and Israel, which is attempting to eradicate Hamas after its Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.  About $61 billion of aid would go to Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.  "There is actually a very good argument that the exact same legal justification for the impeachment of 2019 would hold with this legislation," Vance said of Trump's impeachment by a Democrat-run House over his phone call to Ukraine's president.

Checking The Scorecards On The Lawfare Contests Being Waged By The Biden Administration and Its Allies Against Donald Trump.  The big news here is the removal of the scheduled March 4 trial from the District Court's calendar this past week. [...] After an Appeals Court issues an opinion resolving the appeal, the Court issues a "Mandate" returning jurisdiction over the case to the District Court.  Until that Mandate comes back, a District Court is powerless to move ahead on the case for any purpose, and a defendant is not obligated to cooperate or participate in any proceedings in the District Court.  Lots of hand-wringing and teeth gnashing by the Lefty Legal Beagles have resulted from the fact that waiting for the decision from the Appeals Court has now derailed the trial schedule. [...] The final hurdle to getting the DC case back on track is the other Special Counsel case filed in Florida.  I'm 100% certain Smith regrets having filed that case first.  Filing the DC case second, and then advocating for a trial date in DC that came ahead of the trial date ALREADY SET in the Florida case, really PO'd the Judge in Florida more an anyone really understands.  THAT IS JUST NOT DONE.

What Trump's 'Retribution' Really Means.  Trump's entrance into politics began as a mockery but has now progressed into impeachments, indictments, ballot removals, arrests, and God knows what else to come between now and November.  These are real issues, and any candidate who suggests that these things should be "left in the past" concedes that he either isn't aware of how legitimate voter concern about these issues are or willfully ignoring them for political gain.  Either explanation is disqualifying.  Republicans ignoring or not recognizing these attacks as real issues is a wrong.  But Democrats' current and most brazenly hypocritical instance of gaslighting to date is even more alarming.  Leftist TV panels can frequently be heard shrieking at the thought of Trump indicting his political opponents.  Yes, they somehow say this without ever noting that Biden and his cronies have already set the precedent for this.  They almost deserve credit for getting through their TV segments with a straight face.  But despite all their theatre, it isn't "retribution" they truly fear, but rather accountability, and perhaps with good reason.

Icing the Puck, Supreme Court Style.  In theory, or at least in cocktail lore, there's still one last Japanese soldier in a cave somewhere who hasn't heard that World War II is over — and, as the Emperor of Japan announced on the radio, that it was concluded "not entirely to Japan's advantage."  That last soldier may also be the only person who doesn't realize that the various lawsuits filed against Donald Trump have nothing whatsoever to do with the stated substance of the suits but are designed and brought solely to interfere with the coming presidential election, which, polls currently tell us, Trump may win.

Further Thoughts on Projection and the Truth.  The palm for the funniest post on X, formerly Twitter, this weekend goes to former national security adviser John Bolton.  "There are," he wrote, "clear dangers to a second term for Donald Trump."  Like what, John?  "For one, he has made it known he will seek retribution against his political enemies using agencies like the Justice Department.  It's certain Trump has plans to repeatedly cross lines that will cause conflict, often constitutional conflict."  Imagine, a president of the United States weaponizing "agencies like the Justice Department" to harass his political opponents!  Whoever heard of such a thing?  Well, there are the 1,200 or so people who have been targeted by the DOJ for hanging around the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.  And, believe it or not, the DOJ is planning to charge "thousands" more for "parading," "obstructing an official proceeding," etc.  Do you remember the name Enrique Tarrio?  He wasn't even in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, but that didn't matter.  He was a leader of the "Western chauvinist" group The Proud Boys.  So not only was he swept up by the FBI but he was given a 22-year prison sentence, the longest of anyone so far who had been on that kinetic sightseeing trip to the Capitol.

Initial 3-Judge Panel Within DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Rules Against Presidential Immunity.  Three judges from the Washington DC Circuit Court of Appeals have denied the immunity request from President Trump.  In a rather stark decision reached by the panel[,] "We have balanced former President Trump's asserted interests in executive immunity against the vital public interests that favor allowing this prosecution to proceed," the court wrote in its ruling Tuesday.  "We conclude that the interest in criminal accountability, held by both the public and the Executive Branch, outweighs the potential risks of chilling Presidential action and permitting vexatious litigation."

Supreme Court Grants Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold 10 Minutes to Justify Her Position on Disqualifying President Trump From Ballot.  Apparently the Lawfare crew have been working and coaching overtime to give Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold a framework to explain to the Supreme Court how Colorado's very specific election laws allow for presidential candidates to be disqualified despite meeting all constitutional requirements.  State Solicitor General Sharon Stevenson would be the legal mind representing Jena Griswold.  This should be an interesting attempt.  Griswold asked the Supreme Court for 15 minutes to explain how Colorado law supersedes the U.S. Constitution.  In an order announced earlier today [pdf here], the court has granted Ms. Griswold 10 minutes to make her case.  The oral arguments will take place on Thursday, February 8th.

Federal judge in DC postpones Trump's March trial on charges of plotting to overturn 2020 election.  A federal judge in Washington formally postponed Donald Trump's March trial on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election as a key legal appeal from the former president remains unresolved in the courts.  U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday vacated the March 4 trial date in the case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith but did not immediately set a new date.  The move opens the door for a separate prosecution in New York, charging Trump in connection with hush money payments to a porn actor, to proceed first.

Will 2024 Be the Most Dangerous Election of Our Lifetime?  We got a glimpse of how our bureaucratic overlords view the voters in 2016; when the DoJ, FBI, and CIA worked to influence the election.  When their gal failed to win, they continued their efforts to unseat our electoral choice.  But all of that was just a warmup for January 6, when they took things to a whole new level.  When pipe bombs were discovered outside the Democrat and Republican headquarter buildings in Washington D.C., it triggered a nationwide investigation.  Thousands of MAGA supporters were  intimidated  interviewed by FBI agents for the suspicious behavior of being in the same zip code as the bombs on January 6 — oh, and attending a Trump rally.  Also on January 6th, an unarmed insurrection nearly took down our government, at the encouragement of undercover federal assets planted in the crowd (snark intended).  Our federal criminal justice system has subsequently imprisoned hundreds, for little more than trespassing and taking selfies — many at the invitation of Capitol police.  Now the DoJ has announced plans to prosecute thousands more for daring to cross an unmarked line on the Capitol lawn that their taxes pay for.  After the Republicans took control of the House, the "stop MAGA" operation seems to have moved into the coverup stage.  The Swamp's desperation to keep something hidden reveals just how dangerous our own government has become.

Trump's Federal Election Trial Postponed Indefinitely by Judge.  The trial date in the election interference case against former President Donald Trump was postponed, the federal judge overseeing the case confirmed on Friday.  "The court will set a new schedule if and when the mandate is returned," U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in the order, handing a victory to the former president as he appeals the case on arguments that he was immune from prosecution.  More than 50 days have passed since Judge Chutkan paused the case amid the former president's appeal to the D.C. Court of Appeals.  Over the past several weeks, she has signaled that the initial March 4 trial date would not hold.  The judge on Friday also wrote that prospective jurors who were asked to appear in court in the coming days won't have to fill out a written questionnaire.

Verdict Delayed in Trump Civil Fraud Trial as Judge Engoron Weighs Lifetime Business Ban.  The verdict in former President Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in Manhattan that could see him banned for life from doing business in New York has been delayed until mid-February, according to a court spokesperson.  Justice Arthur Engoron said during the trial's closing arguments on Jan. 11 that he hoped to make his final decision by Jan. 31 in a much-anticipated verdict that could, in addition to hitting the former president with a lifetime business ban, see him fined $370 million.  After the tentative Jan. 31 deadline came and went without a verdict, a spokesperson for the New York State Office of Court Administration, Alfred Baker, said that the judge is now expected to deliver his decision in early to mid-February.

Fani Willis gets slapped with 22 articles of impeachment.  Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has found herself in hot water over the past few weeks as allegations of misconduct have sprung forth, casting a dark shadow on her behavior in the legal world, particularly as she continues to spearhead the Georgia election-related case against President Donald Trump.  As reported by RSBN, a story surfaced in the media that broke allegations concerning Willis's involvement with an alleged romantic partner whom she hired to prosecute Trump, thus resulting in reported financial benefits.  This partner has allegedly been identified as Nathan Wade, a private attorney.

The Trump-Carroll Case is Blatantly the Greatest Miscarriage of Justice in Modern American History.  The awarding of nearly $90 million to the second-rate advice columnist E. Jean Carroll will doubtless be remembered for generations as the greatest miscarriage of justice in contemporary American history.  Jean Carroll's case was not just ludicrous on the face of it, but between the judge, the "experts" who testified, and the mechanisms by which the case even came to be, it's impossible for any ordinary person in the West to see this as anything more than the continuation of a series of hoaxes perpetrated on former President Donald J. Trump with the desire to keep him from re-entering the Oval Office in January 2025.

The extortion of Donald Trump.  [Scroll down]  Governor Hochul of New York signs into law the Adult Survivors Act, a law that allows survivors of sexual assault to sue their abusers regardless of when the abuse occurred.  At face value, it sounds like a good and righteous law.  One of the first to file was E. Jean Carroll.  She had no evidence except what she said and what she told a few friends, which was eerily similar to an episode of Law & Order:  Special Victims Unit.  She also had a photograph of her and Trump in a crowd together.  President Trump claims to this day he never met her.  (Do you remember everyone who was in a crowd when you were in the picture?) Nevertheless, the evidence, which was virtually nonexistent, was irrelevant.  President Trump could never get a fair trial in NYC.  He was found liable for sexual abuse and ordered to pay $5 million.  Of course, President Trump fumed about this.  Wouldn't you fume about a law that was specifically designed as a political attack against you and allowed no possibility of defending yourself and required no evidence?  Now another NYC jury has found Trump guilty of defamation and ordered him to pay $83.3 million.  They intended to send a message, but the message they sent has the exact opposite meaning of what they intended.

Why is no one wondering how the Trump trials have such idiotic jurors?  [Scroll down]  A jury consultant's job is to research, as closely as possible, each prospective juror by any means necessary so that the defense can select the persons who may be most disposed to find their client not guilty.  Of course, prosecutors hire jury consultants as well to determine who among the pool will be likely to find the person on trial guilty.  On its face, this seems to be an obviously unethical practice; depending on who got the most jurors of their choosing is likely to win.  How can this be legal, one might ask.  It probably should not be, but one thing is clear:  Juries are rarely a "jury of one's peers" anymore.  They are carefully and deceptively chosen.  We can be certain that jury consultants were hired to select the people who would sit in judgment of President Trump for each of the numerous trials to which he has been so unfairly subjected.

Secret Service Agents [have been] Ordered to Not Wear Red Ties Because President Trump Wears Red Ties.  Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino revealed in his podcast Friday that the Secret Service has ordered agents to not wear red ties.  The order came down last week after an agent guarding Trump was photographed sporting a similarly colored red tie as Trump as he took the stage at a campaign rally in New Hampshire.  Bongino warned, "They're gonna get this guy hurt."  Bongino said an email edict went out after the photo of the agent wearing a red tie while guarding Trump was published in the Guardian last Sunday.  Bongino said agents are [angry] about the tie order.  Bongino said Trump needs to clean out Secret Service management when he returns to the White House next year, citing the agency's tanking of the White House cocaine investigation last year.

Trump demands Fani Wills is disqualified from his election fraud case because she 'inappropriately injected racial bias'.  Donald Trump has demanded Fani Willis be disqualified from his Georgia election fraud case after she 'injected race' into the case, and called for the charges against him be dropped.  The former president's co-defendant Michael Roman alleged in court filings that Willis had an inappropriate relationship with Nathan Wade, the lawyer she hired to help run the criminal case.  The bombshell court document has led to a flurry of allegations, including Wade buying flights and cruises for Willis as they carried on their fling.  The scandal centered around Wade's divorce from his wife of 26 years has thrown the case into chaos and now the president's legal team is demanding she is removed.

If Fani Willis' Get-Trump Case Were Legit, Democrats Wouldn't Be So Desperate To Keep It In The DA's Office.  Democrats are desperately fighting to keep the Fulton County prosecutor's office in charge of the Georgia criminal case pending against Donald Trump and his associates.  And that tells you all you need to know about the merits of the get-Trump prosecution launched by the now-falling Democrat star Fani Willis.  "Fani Willis's Grand-Slam Indictment Against Donald Trump," blared one headline from last August, championing the news that the Democrat-elected county prosecutor had charged Trump and 18 others in a sprawling 41-count indictment.  For months, Willis wore the crown of the country, being honored everywhere from the local Atlanta Business League to the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where she received the title of 2023's Most Influential Black American.  She was reportedly even up for Time's Person of the Year.  But now The New York Times has run an op-ed calling for Willis to take a leave of absence from the Fulton County district attorney's office.

Lawyers for Trump urge the Supreme Court 'to put a swift and decisive end' to ballot removal efforts.  Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Thursday urged the Supreme Court "to put a swift and decisive end" to efforts to kick him off the 2024 presidential ballot over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.  In a written filing, Trump's lawyers called on the court to reverse a first-of-its-kind Colorado Supreme Court decision that said Trump should not be on the state's Republican primary ballot because of his role in the events that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.  The justices are hearing arguments Feb. 8 in a case that both sides say needs to be resolved quickly so that voters know whether Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, is eligible to hold the presidency.

Trump case could go off rails as Fani Willis love triangle, corruption investigation heats up.  A messy love triangle between the high-powered district attorney in charge of the 2020 election-fraud case involving former President Donald Trump, the married lover she chose to be special prosecutor and his estranged wife is imploding in Fulton County.  Nobody on either side of the political aisle understands what Fulton County DA Fani Willis was thinking when she hired her reported boyfriend, a personal injury lawyer with zero high-profile felony trial experience, to be the lead special prosecutor in what is likely the biggest case of her career.  Nor do people understand why she'd blur her personal and professional life by jetting off for a $2,600 cruise and romantic trip to California's Napa Valley with still legally married Wade while working on the sprawling and complex racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and his allies.

Trump Team Renews Motion for Mistrial in E. Jean Carroll Defamation Case After She Deletes Emails that Exonerate Trump.  As Cristina Laila reported earlier[,] President Trump appeared in court on Wednesday as E. Jean Carroll testified in a trial where the jury will decide how much Trump has to pay for his so-called 'defamatory' statements about her.  Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, previously ruled that Trump is liable for defamatory statements he made about E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of rape. [...] Under cross-examination by Trump's lawyer Alina Habba, E. Jean Carroll admitted she deleted emails under subpoena. [...] Carroll admitted to deleting emails under subpoena because she didn't want to upset her lawyers.  How is this not a criminal act?  Why was she not charged with destroying evidence?

Maine Election Official So Desperate to Keep Trump off Ballot She's Appealing Judge's Hold on Decision.  Maine's Democrat secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, is so determined to promote "trust in our free, safe and secure elections" that she wants to make sure voters in the state aren't allowed to vote for the leading GOP contender, former President Donald Trump.  After Trump appealed Bellows' unilateral decision to keep his name off the Republican primary ballot, Superior Court Judge Michaela Murphy called for a hold on her decision while the nation waits for the Supreme Court to weigh in on a similar situation in Colorado.  Waiting for the nation's top court to render judgment was just too inconvenient for Bellows, evidently, as she announced Friday that she was going to appeal Murphy's decision to the state's top court, and she wants a quick answer: [...]

Fulton DA accuses special prosecutor's wife of 'interfering' with Trump probe.  Fulton County's district attorney on Thursday fired back at allegations she has engaged in an "improper" relationship with her top deputy, accusing his estranged wife of trying to obstruct her prosecution of Donald Trump and his allies.  Fani Willis has been subpoenaed to give a pretrial deposition in the divorce case of Nathan and Joycelyn Wade on January 23, but in a blistering court filing on Thursday the DA's attorney said that subpoena should be quashed.  Joycelyn Wade "has conspired with interested parties in the criminal election interference case to use the civil discovery process to annoy, embarrass and oppress District Attorney Willis," argued Cinque Axam on Willis' behalf.

Three Former Attorneys General File Brief Insisting Trump is Constitutionally Qualified to Appear on Ballot.  Three former attorneys general, including Bill Barr who is not even supporting Trump in 2024, have filed a brief insisting that Trump is constitutionally qualified to appear on the ballot.  This move comes as a response to the efforts in Colorado, Maine and other states where leftists have sought to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot.  The argument of these former AGs was drafted with the help of law professors and is rock solid.

Trump's Lawyers Accuse Jack Smith of Concealing Evidence, Working With Biden Admin.  Former President Donald Trump's lawyers alleged Tuesday night that special counsel Jack Smith concealed evidence about his office's collaboration with the Biden administration.  In a 68-page Wednesday filing in the Florida case concerning his handling of concealed documents, Trump's legal team claimed it obtained heavily redacted documents through a Freedom of Information Act request revealing "politically motivated operatives in the Biden Administration and the National Archives and Records Administration" have been involved in pushing the classified documents probe since 2021.  Trump's lawyers asked the judge to require Smith to produce any "additional evidence of bias and political animus," writing that the documents obtained through FOIA "should have been disclosed by the Office, in unredacted form, at the outset of the case."

Collusion!? Jan. 6 Committee Inserted Itself Into Fani Willis' Georgia Case Against Trump.  In the spring of 2022, Georgia prosecutors investigating Donald Trump over his actions related to the 2020 election received an early boost from another set of investigators:  the House Jan. 6 select committee.  In mid-April of that year, Committee staff quietly met with attorneys working on the case in Fulton County for DA Fani Willis, right around the time she was preparing to convene a special grand jury investigation[,] during which she employed her alleged paramour, Nathan Wade, who would also coordinate with the Biden White House on their case.  So[,] Fani coordinated with both the J6 committee and the White House, who helped them assemble their case against the former president.  According to Politico, the Jan. 6 committee attorneys allowed the DA's team to review (but not keep) a 'limited set of evidence' they had gathered.

The 14th Amendment's History Militates Against Colorado's Ruling Against Trump.  A doctrine used once in December 1868 to make sure that former Confederate President Jefferson Davis never held office again has been revived to justify removing former U.S. President Donald Trump's name from the ballot of the Colorado Republican primary.  The doctrine, called self-execution, allows the terms of the 14th Amendment to be applied without action by Congress.  Self-execution is inconsistent with the 14th Amendment's text, which provides for enforcement by the U.S. Congress.  If it were ever applied to cases beyond those of Davis and Trump (and, as this essay argues, it's seriously doubtful it should apply to Trump), the results would be chaotic.  Trump has appealed on the grounds that the Colorado ruling violates his due process rights.  U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on February 8.

Lawfare Against Trump Is Running Out of Gas.  We should dispense with the tired narrative that four conscientious state and federal prosecutors — independently and without contact with the Biden White House or the radical Democrats in Congress — all came to the same disinterested conclusions that Donald Trump should be indicted for various crimes and put on trial during the campaign season of 2024.  The prosecutors began accelerating their indictments only once Trump started to lead incumbent Joe Biden by sizable margins in head-to-head polls.  Moreover, had Trump not run for the presidency, or had he been of the same party as most of the four prosecutors, he would have never been indicted by any of them.  Yet now they are in a doom loop of discovering that the more they seek to rush to judgment before the election and gag Trump from speaking publicly about these star-chamber proceedings, the more he rises in the polls.

[The] White House [is] Coordinating Trump Prosecutions.  In late 2022, when asked by reporters about the probability that former President Trump would run for a second term, President Biden pledged to make sure "he does not become president again."  This was largely ignored at the time because Trump had not yet been bombarded with the brazenly partisan prosecutions that he is now fending off.  In hindsight, it is clear that Biden was referring to a carefully planned lawfare campaign coordinated by the White House.  His administration's fingerprints are all over every prosecution from the first indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to the recent attempt to remove Trump from the Colorado primary ballot.  The Colorado ballot case provides the clearest White House connection.  As The American Spectator noted last year, the initial lawsuit was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in September of last year.  Noah Bookbinder, CREW's President, was appointed to an advisory council in March of 2022 by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and his name appears on White House visitor logs multiple times in 2023, according to a recent Daily Caller report.

Lawmakers and others are 'secretly' plotting a military mutiny if Trump is elected.  Constitutional norms are falling all over the place, but it's the left that's doing it.  Shorn of his eccentric rhetoric, Trump governed in the grand tradition of 20th-century American presidents:  strong national security, focus on the economy, an eye to energy independence, etc.  It is Biden who has broken every norm in American history:  destroying the border, destroying energy independence, and arresting political opponents.

What Was That About a Deep State?  Check Out These Plans to Deal With Trump If He Wins.  Joe Biden and the Democrats truly take the cake.  Biden is down in the polls to former President Donald Trump, who is the leading GOP candidate.  So they're doing all they can to play up the "threat to democracy" from Trump.  Now I have no doubt whoever was leading would immediately become "Hitler" to them, because that's how they do things.  That's their only play, given Biden has such a horrible record.  He has no real accomplishments on which to run.  According to an NBC report, the powers that be are already trying to work to put Trump in check.  People talk about the deep state.  Check out what they're saying here, it's something else.  They're worried that Trump may win so the unelected people want to thwart how the elected representative of the people might exercise his power.

Fani Willis and the corrupt mainstream media.  Last week contained more than one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.  On Monday, January 8th, Ashleigh Merchant, lawyer for Michael Roman (one of the 18 Trump co-defendants in The State of Georgia v.  Donald J. Trump, et al.), filed a "bombshell" motion alleging that Willis "improperly hired an alleged romantic partner to prosecute Donald Trump and financially benefited from their relationship."  The "alleged romantic partner" is special prosecutor Nathan Wade. [...] According to RedState, on the same day that Ashleigh Merchant filed her motion against Willis and Nathan Wade, Jocelyn Wade subpoenaed Willis to appear for a deposition in the Wades' divorce proceedings.  This whole sorry saga is a disaster for the Fulton County DA and her efforts to prosecute the former president.

Judge Cannon Smacks Down Hitman Jack Smith Again — Rejects His Request to Force Trump to Reveal Defense Strategy.  Judge Aileen Cannon denied without prejudice Special Counsel Jack Smith's motion to compel Trump to disclose his defense strategy in the classified documents case in Florida.  In November, Jack Smith tried to force Trump to disclose his decision on whether he would use an "advice-of-counsel" defense in the classified documents case.  This could have forced Trump to waive attorney-client privilege.  Thankfully Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, denied Jack Smith's request.

Can America Survive This Perversion of Our Justice System?  Execution without due process is murder by an officer of the state.  According to Jack Smith, Obama is immune for extrajudicial killing, but Donald Trump is not for trying to investigate election fraud in 2020.  We can also consider the immunity of the vice president, who admitted on video to strong-arming the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor investigating his son's company.  That was an act committed as an official of the United States.  Is there immunity for that?  How about taking bribes to skewer foreign policy while in office from foreign countries?  Immunity for that?  News flash:  The only thing preventing Biden's legal team from trying that argument is that they do not want immunity to be extended to Trump.

Trump 14th Amendment Challenger Arrested on Federal Tax Charges.  A man who filed a number of lawsuits in different states to try to prevent former President Donald Trump from appearing on election ballots has been arrested on federal tax charges.  John Anthony Castro was charged last week with 33 counts of aiding the preparation of false tax returns, according to Department of Justice prosecutors.  They said that he ran a virtual tax business that gave customers returns beyond what they were really owed.  "Castro would promise a significantly higher refund than taxpayers could receive from other preparers and on many occasions, offered to split the additional refund with taxpayers," federal prosecutors wrote in court documents.  "In order to achieve these larger refunds, Castro generated false deductions, that were not based in fact, and which were submitted without the taxpayer's knowledge."

Jim Jordan launches investigation into Fani Willis after revelations she hired romantic partner in Trump case.  House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has launched an inquiry into Nathan Wade, the prosecutor hired by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis with whom she had allegedly been in a romantic relationship with.  "The committee on the Judiciary continues to conduct oversight of politically motivated prosecutions by state and local officials.  Based on recent reports, we believe that you possess documents and information about the coordination for the Fulton County District Attorney's Office (FCDAO) with other politically motivated investigations and prosecutions and the potential misuse of federal funds," the letter began.

Keyword:  Cahoots.
President Of Left-Wing Group Behind Trump's Colorado Ballot Removal Visited Biden White House Multiple Times.  The CEO of the left-wing legal group behind former President Donald Trump's removal from the Colorado ballot went to the Biden White House multiple times last year, visitor logs show.  Noah Bookbinder, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), visited the White House twice in 2023, visitor logs from January to September 2023 indicate.  He first visited on Jan. 6, 2023, the two-year anniversary of the 2021 Capitol riot, to watch Biden award the Presidential Citizens Medal to law enforcement officers who responded to the unrest, a CREW spokesperson told the Caller.  The visitor logs appear to confirm Bookbinder's attendance at the event.

Fani Willis subpoenaed in Trump prosecutor's divorce case — as it emerges he wasn't even approved by board.  Embattled District Attorney Fani Willis has been subpoenaed to testify in the divorce case of the special prosecutor handling the Trump election interference case, with whom she stands accused of having an "improper relationship."  Furthermore, it has emerged that the attorney, Nathan Wade, wasn't even approved by the relevant board before being hired by Willis, who presides over Fulton County in Georgia.  Willis hired Wade, an Atlanta-based private attorney, as a special prosecutor in the case against former President Donald Trump and 18 of his associates over their alleged actions following the 2020 election.  Despite Wade having no experience prosecuting a complex Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act case like the one against Trump, he was handed a contract that has so far earned his company more than $650,000 in legal fees from the DA's office.

Report: Fani Willis Secretly Colluded with January 6 Committee; Could Blow Up Case.  Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis secretly colluded with the one-sided, Democrat-run January 6 Committee to obtain tips that would help her prosecute Donald Trump — and tried to keep it out of court, and public view, using a procedural trick.  The revelation could upend the prosecution of Trump and 18 co-defendants because the evidence was concealed to keep it away from discovery requirements that would allow defense lawyers to see what was shared, and the extent of the collaboration.

Biden 'Saves' Democracy by Destroying it.  When faced with the possible return of President Donald Trump, the current agenda of the Democratic Party is summed up simply as "We had to destroy democracy to save it."  The effort shares a common theme:  any means necessary are justified to prevent the people from choosing their own president, given the fear that a majority might vote to elect Donald Trump.  Sometimes the anti-democratic paranoia has been outsourced to state and local officials and prosecutors to erase Trump from the primary and likely general election ballots as well.  One unelected official in Maine, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, is a Democrat, an official never elected by the people, and a non-lawyer rendering a legal edict.  Yet she has judged Trump guilty of "insurrection."  And presto, she erased his name from the state's ballot.  Yet Trump was never charged, much less convicted, of "insurrection."

Trump [is] banned from speaking in his own defense in closing argument in New York fraud trial.  The judge in former President Donald Trump's New York fraud trial has barred him from speaking in his own defense during closing arguments later this week.  The former president, 77, is a defendant in the case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.  His business empire in New York is on the line, and James has asked for his business to be fined $370 million for inflating property prices to get favorable loan deals.

Judge blocks Trump from making his own closing statement in NYC civil fraud trial.  Donald Trump won't deliver his own closing statement at his New York civil fraud trial after all — after the judge said he needed to stick to "relevant, material facts."  Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron emailed Trump attorney Christopher Kise Wednesday saying he was assuming the 77-year-old former president wouldn't agree to the "lawful limits" and "therefore, he will not be speaking in court tomorrow."  Kise first notified the judge in a January 4 email that after the lawyers give their arguments in the $370 million case on Thursday, "President Trump plans to present argument at closing as well," court records show. Andrew Amer, a lawyer with the New York Attorney General's Office, which is prosecuting the case, opposed allowing Trump the chance to speak, warning that he "is prone to giving irrelevant speeches, lacks self-control, is evasive in responding to questions and has repeatedly violated court orders for which he has been sanctioned."

Letitia James Visited Joe Biden White House Several Times Amid Trump Witch Hunt.  Radical Marxist New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) visited the Biden White House three times between April 2022 and August 2023, according to White House visitor logs.  In September 2022, Letitia James announced a civil fraud lawsuit against former President Donald Trump and his family.  AG James has been investigating whether the Trump Organization inflated values of some of its properties.  "Today, I filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump for engaging in years of financial fraud to enrich himself, his family, and the Trump Organization," Letitia James said in September 2022.

Have No Fear, 'Big Brother' Is On Duty.  [Scroll down]  Has our federal bureaucracy become a hive of worker bees, with no central leadership but with individuals instinctively working for the health of the bureaucracy? [...] The hive perceived Donald Trump as a threat, and it's still frenetically stinging those who might send him, or someone like him, back to Washington.  When a Washington prosecutor bee asks a jury of bees to sting a January 6 defendant, they respond instinctively and aggressively — with guilty verdicts for virtually every charge.  Evidence and the rule of law are apparently irrelevant when the welfare of the hive is at stake.

Those Behind the Efforts to Disqualify Trump Have Something in Common.  All over America, party loyalists whose preferred candidate is President Joe Biden are engaging in lawfare to win at the ballot box by any means necessary.  Some of the bad-faith actors spearheading the efforts to defeat former President Donald Trump — the GOP's far-and-away frontrunner — before Election Day even begins are beneficiaries of puppeteering philanthropist George Soros. [...] Maine was the second state to officially declare Trump ineligible.  In Colorado, the state Supreme Court decided on Dec. 19 to enforce Trump's disqualification.  Leading the charge in the Colorado case to ensure Trump's removal is the Orwellian-named Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).  Between FY 2017 and 2021, CREW was given more than $2.8 million in grants by the Foundation to Promote Open Society, which acts as one of Soros's two chief grantmaking vehicles, for "general support" and "support[ing] political advocacy on ethics in government," according to an Open Society Foundations database.

The allegations against Fulton County's prosecutor.  [Scroll down]  Separate from the vendetta against Trump, if the charges are true, it smells horrible that Willis illegally appointed her boyfriend to a position that saw him receiving $625,000 from Fulton County taxpayers.  Let's not stop there, though.  As the old Ginsu knife commercials used to say... but wait!  There's more.  We can add a whole new level of stench to the smell coming out of Fulton County.  The same filing includes copies of the invoices from Nathan J. Wade explaining why the Fulton County taxpayers owed him $654,000 dollars.  In the bills, aside from the usual lawyer stuff (team meetings, telephone calls, meeting with the DA, research, writing, etc.), there are two that really stand out:  [#1] May 23, 2022: "Travel to Athens; Conf with White House Counsel."  Willis charged eight hours for that day, at $250 per hour, for a total of $2,000.  It's unclear how much time was allocated to travel and how much to the meeting.  [#2] November 21, 2022: "Interview with DC/White House."  Once again, this was an eight-hour day at $250 per hour, the only difference being that it's clear that Wade's entire eight hours was spent in conference with the White House counsel.  That's a lot of time to spend in conference. [...] I don't know if it's illegal for the White House to have worked with a state prosecutor in this way, but it's certainly problematic, especially when the target is almost certainly going to be the opposition candidate in the next election.

Ted Cruz Has an Idea on How SCOTUS Could Rule Unanimously to Keep Trump on the Ballot.  As the senator explained to co-host Ben Ferguson, matters for the Court to address include both whether or not there was an insurrection on January 6, 2021, which Trump was in charge of, and which would thus mean he would be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, as well as whether or not Colorado was overstepping.  Cruz also had strong words for the Colorado Supreme Court, calling their decision "lawless."  Sharing at one point how he believed taking up this case was "a no-brainer," Cruz also said that "I think all nine [justices] agreed 'we needed to take it' and I don't think they hesitated on it," given how major a Constitutional question it was.  "Under the Constitution, it is difficult to imagine a more consequential question and a question that demands the Supreme Court to get it," he added.  When it comes to the topic Cruz would speak to throughout the episode, in the Court not wanting to be seen as political, the senator also offered that "I don't think the Court was eager to get into this issue at all," explaining that "the justices are not looking to opine on this, but once Colorado ruled, they had no choice and they had no choice but to do it quickly."

Democrats Want Criminals To Vote, But No Ballot Access For Trump.  Although former President Donald Trump hasn't been convicted of a crime despite two impeachments, FBI investigations, and myriad prosecutions, Democrats want him stripped from ballots while their party supports ballot access for criminals.  The official who unilaterally stripped Trump from the ballot in Maine did so based on her personal view that "Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use" on Jan. 6, 2021.  She is not a judge, and even if she were, such a pronouncement would be contrary to law.  Trump's much-viewed public statements on that day were not a clear incitement to violence, and therefore are First Amendment-protected speech.  Leftists are criminalizing speech by claiming it equals violence, breaking constitutional standards.  The claim is belied by the facts:  The vast majority of people listening to Trump that day were not incited to violence.  There's plenty of evidence that incitement occurred instead among the proportionally few rioters.  Claiming Trump incited insurrection is a political projection intended to promote a one-party state.

The Roots of Lawfare.  The first nationally infamous use of "lawfare" was most likely the battle in 2005 to remove Tom Delay (R Texas) from his position as Speaker of the House.  The vendetta against Tom Delay was led by one Ronnie Earle, the DA in Austin, Texas who had a strong dislike for Delay (One might call it TDDS). Ultimately the case was overturned on appeal, but the battle was won, as Delay was removed from office.  Recognize that one of the purposes of Lawfare is to remove the person from the political scene.

A Culture in Collapse.  The post civilization civil bookend to that precivilizational subterfuge was a systematic legal effort, for the first time in American history, to remove in an election year the leading primary and general election candidate Donald Trump from various state ballots.  The Soviet-like charge was that he was guilty of "insurrection," a crime he has never been charged with, much less convicted of.  Meanwhile, three state prosecutors and one special federal counsel — all leftists and some previously bragging in their own election campaigns of their intention to destroy Trump — have charged candidate Trump with an array of felonies.  The vast majority of Americans agree Trump would never have been so charged had he just not sought to seek reelection — or had been a liberal Democrat.

Here's The Legal Question That Could Determine The 2024 Election.  The disqualification of former President Donald Trump from the ballot in several states may depend on whether the U.S. Supreme Court believes that the president of the United States is an "officer of the United States" according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. [...] Trump has since appealed both decisions, with the Colorado case being granted certiorari by the Supreme Court on Friday.  One of the questions Trump has presented to the court in his petition for certiorari is whether, as the president, he was an "officer of the United States" as the term is used in the amendment, which elsewhere does not specify the president or vice president as such an officer, a question that has divided legal experts considerably.  [Tweet]

Over 80 Percent of Democrats Believe States Should Disqualify Trump from 2024 Ballot.  Eighty one percent of Democrats believe states should disqualify former president Donald Trump from presidential ballots, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll.  By contrast, 90 percent of Republicans believe states should keep Trump's name on the ballot.  Independents are more closely split:  44 percent believe states should remove Trump's name from ballots, while 56 percent believe states should allow Trump's name to remain on ballots.  Both Colorado and Maine have disqualified Trump from their respective primary ballots because his actions in the wake of the 2020 election allegedly violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which forbids individuals who have "engaged in insurrection" from seeking federal office.

President Nothing:  Joe Biden is a figurehead for Obama.  The press has never fully explained why people voted for him.  Oh sure, they said he was not Trump, but Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Pocahontas Warren also were not Trump in 2020 and each was well ahead of Biden when they suddenly dropped out after raising millions and garnering far more votes than he had.  Whatever happened to the unspent millions they raised?  No one in the media seems interested in finding that out.  The press is too busy advancing the Democrat Party line to bother with holding Democrats accountable.  We know what happened.  Obama picked Biden just as he had picked Hillary four years earlier.  After Biden failed in Iowa and New Hampshire, Obama paid off the rivals and had Jim Clyburn fix the South Carolina primary, which for Democrats is largely a black primary.  Unleashing a pandemic panic and race riots across the nation, Obama almost pulled it off.  He needed a last-minute mail-in forgery operation to take key states to seal the deal.  Knowing Trump had the votes to come back in 2024, Obama has had him impeached, indicted and in civil court.

Iowa AG Brenna Bird:  Efforts to Take Trump off the Ballot 'Absolutely Election Interference'.  Efforts to take former President Donald Trump off the ballot — particularly in Colorado — are "absolutely election interference," Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird told Breitbart News Saturday.  "What Colorado is trying to do, what their Supreme Court did, is absolutely election interference," Bird said.  "And it is just wrong when Americans can't vote for the presidential candidate of their choice, and he's the leading candidate on the Republican side."

27 states file an amicus brief in Supreme Court to keep Trump on the Colorado ballot.  Twenty-seven states have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, urging the court to keep former President Donald Trump on the Colorado ballot. [...] Attorneys general in the states of West Virginia, Indiana and multiple other states argued in the filing that declaring Trump an "insurrectionist" under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution would have "vast consequences that reach far beyond Colorado."  The Supreme Court is set to hear the arguments for the brief on Feb. 8, according to Fox News.

Trump is backed by more than two dozen states' attorneys general in Supreme Court fight.  Republican attorneys general from 27 states have filed a court brief supporting Donald Trump in his Supreme Court battle to remain on Colorado's 2024 presidential ballot.  In a 22-page 'friend of the court' brief filed on Saturday, the attorneys general called on the high court to strike down a Colorado court decision barring Trump under the 14th Amendment's insurrectionist ban.  The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case on February 8, and its decision on Trump's eligibility to run for president will have far-reaching implications for the November election, after Maine acted separately to ban Trump on similar grounds.

It's the Same People — Politico Confirms Robert Mueller Agents/Lawyers Are Jack Smith Agents/Lawyers.  I have long been saying the Jack Smith special counsel team is the reassembly of the Robert Mueller team.  Today, inside an article outlining other ancillary matters about the 2020 election challenges, Politico inadvertently confirmed my suspicions.  First, the non-pretending Big Picture.  The Clinton exoneration FBI Team became the Trump investigation FBI Team (Crossfire Hurricane) — which then became the Robert Mueller FBI Team (exact same people, plus some additions) — which then became the J6 Investigation FBI Team (exact same people, plus some additions) — which then became the Jack Smith FBI Team (same exact people).  Not only is it one long continuum, but it's also the EXACT SAME PEOPLE.

What happens if... ?  This is a very scary essay to write, but it must be said and deeply considered.  Tucker Carlson has long opined that Trump's greatest threat is being "Epsteined."  Democrats have pulled out all the stops to prevent him from ever entering the White House ever again, yet at every one of their attempts his popularity grows.  Every new attempt to keep him off the ballot spirals ever deeper into the "crazy zone" with reasons they seemingly pull out of thin air, and judges that are O.K. to rule on these specious arguments; I won't belabor them because this has been well-covered on these pages.  Obviously, these attempts won't ultimately succeed because the law is not on the side of the accusers (I know that many readers will say the law doesn't matter anymore, but I'm going to pretend, for now, that it does).  Therefore, Trump will be the Republican nominee.  But what happens if someone takes the final irreversible step of removing Trump from the face of the earth?  Tucker believes Democrat Plan B is to back Nikki Haley.

President Trump Asks the Court to Hold Jack Smith in Contempt For Violating Order.  President Trump's attorneys on Thursday asked the Court to hold Special Counsel Jack Smith in contempt for violating Judge Chutkan's order staying all proceedings in the January 6 case against Trump.  "President Donald J. Trump respectfully moves this Court for an order to show cause why prosecutors Jack Smith, Molly Gaston, and Thomas Windom (collectively, the "prosecutors") should not be held in contempt for violating the Court's order 'stay[ing] any further proceedings that would move this case towards trial or impose additional burdens of litigation on Defendant.' Doc. 186 at 2 (the 'Stay Order')." Trump's lawyer wrote in the order reviewed by The Gateway Pundit.

Trump's brief to the Supreme Court is solid, well-written, persuasive, and underreported.  Six days ago, Donald Trump's lawyers filed a 34-page brief in the Supreme Court.  In legal-speak, their brief is called a "petition for certiorari."  It asks the U.S. Supreme Court to review the 4-3 decision by the Colorado Supreme Court banning Trump from the Colorado ballot.  This case presents one of the most important legal and political issues of this century:  Whether a state can exclude a national candidate from the state's ballot on the grounds that he committed a federal crime that he was never convicted of or even charged with.  But the media has largely ignored Trump's brief.  I have not seen a single news report about it.  Reporters embarked on crazy endzone dancing when the Colorado decision came out last month, which has apparently left them too woozy and hungover to report on a particular salient fact — namely, that this play is almost certainly under review by the real Supreme Court.  And initial indications point to the on-field ruling being overturned.

Ex-CIA Analyst Warns About Intel Agencies Being Involved in 2024 Election.  Looks like electoral mischief might be afoot again.  According to ex-CIA analyst, now professor at Georgetown University Dr. John Gentry, he believes the alphabet agencies will try to interfere in the 2024 election. [...] Gentry termed the effort to downplay the Hunter Biden laptop as "clearly political" and that "in no uncertain terms" it was done "explicitly" with the "intent to help the Biden campaign."  He said he was already seeing signs. [...] Gentry also pointed out how the intel agencies had been compromised by politics, that the standard of not being involved in politics was largely "gone" and political activism was "common."  He pointed to two main reasons: former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.  Gentry said that they did things pursuant to DEI and "policy actions, in terms of specific recruitment efforts" that helped to precipitate this change.

Raskin's Disturbing Defense of Removing Trump From Ballot Includes Chilling Words About SCOTUS.  CNN had Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) in on Sunday to talk about the efforts by Democrats to boot former President Donald Trump from the ballot using the 14th Amendment.  Raskin made some comments that a lot of people are talking about.  The first part was what he said about the disqualification process.  He had the temerity to claim that what they were trying to do against Trump was the most "democratic" form of disqualification.  This takes some kind of gall to attempt this level of spin; [Tweet]

Trump Ballot Bans and the Specter of Bush v. Gore.  It's safe to say that Chief Justice John Roberts would rather keep the U.S. Supreme Court out of the legal battles that seem destined to define the 2024 presidential election.  Unfortunately for Roberts, it will be all but impossible for the Court to avoid deciding whether state officials and courts possess the legal authority to remove Donald Trump from primary ballots after declaring him guilty of a crime for which he has never been charged.  Because SCOTUS is likely to rule in favor of Trump, it will produce outrage on the left and countless comparisons to Bush v. Gore.  Consequently, it's a useful exercise to debunk the myths still purveyed by the Democrats about that fabled 2000 ruling.

Destroying democracy to save it:  Maine shows the danger of zealots in our legal system.  Maine's Shenna Bellows issued a "decision" that declared Trump an "insurrectionist" and ineligible to be president.  She joined an ignoble list of Democratic officials in states such as Colorado who claim to safeguard democracy by denying its exercise to millions of Americans.  Yet the most striking aspect of this poorly crafted decision was not its litany of conclusory findings, but rather Bellow's implausible suggestion that she struggled over the decision.  Bellows was a natural choice for challengers, who have been searching for any officials or courts willing to embrace this dangerous theory under the Fourteenth Amendment that they can unilaterally bar candidates deemed rebellious or insurrectionalist. [...] In our cynical politics, Bellows and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, among others, have become wildly popular for seeking to complete the effort to defeat Trump by removing him from the ballot.  This cynicism is captured in statements from pundits who warn that Democrats can no longer rely on the election process, given Trump's soaring popularity.

Conservative Group Files Lawsuit Against Maine Official Who Removed Trump From the Ballot.  Maine's Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has been under scrutiny ever since she decided to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot as part of a national effort to influence the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.  She has been the subject of criticism from folks on both the left and the right.  As I wrote earlier, she already faces impeachment proceedings, which Republican state Rep. John Andrews announced on Friday evening.

Maine Secretary of State, a Non-Attorney, Makes Legal Ruling Striking Trump from Ballot Based on YouTube Videos.  Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows unilaterally ruled that former President Donald Trump is unqualified to appear on the 2024 primary ballot despite lacking a law degree and substituting YouTube videos for due process.  Bellows, who previously worked as Executive Director of the Maine Chapter of the ACLU but is not an attorney and did not attend law school, made the legal conclusion in her ruling that "the declaration on [Trump's] candidate consent form is false because he is not qualified to hold the office of the President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment."

The Mastermind Behind the Campaign to Thwart Trump.  The intricate web of political tactics deployed against former President Donald Trump unveils a key orchestrator:  Norm Eisen.  As a co-founder of the Voter Protection Program and a significant figure in the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), Eisen's involvement in shaping strategies to impede Trump's political journey is becoming increasingly evident.  His role extends beyond mere opposition; it represents a calculated effort to influence critical decisions and events that have left indelible marks on the American political narrative.  Eisen's influence is particularly discernible in two major political junctures:  the absence of National Guard deployment on January 6th and the legal maneuvers leading to Trump's disqualification from the 2024 presidential ballot.  These instances are not isolated events but rather elements of a broader, cohesive strategy aimed at neutralizing Trump's influence in American politics.  This article delves into Eisen's multifaceted role, uncovering the tactics and implications of his actions in the grander scheme of American political dynamics.  From his advisory role in state-level decisions to his legal orchestrations at the federal level, Eisen emerges as a central figure in the concerted efforts to challenge Trump's political legitimacy and aspirations.

Meet The Left-Wing Activist Politician Who Kicked Trump Off The Maine Ballot.  Democratic Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, the woman responsible for kicking former President Trump off the state's 2024 election ballot, is a longtime left-wing activist and Democratic politician.  Bellows unilaterally removed Trump from the ballot Thursday night under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, barring individuals from running for office if they engaged in an insurrection.  The former president has not been charged with, or convicted of, engaging in an insurrection.  Bellows became Maine's Secretary of State in January of 2021 after she was elected by the legislature following two terms in the Maine senate from 2016-20, her official bio states.  Her second term began in January of 2023 and goes for two years.

Federal Government Operatives And Soros Money Behind Plot To Keep Trump Off Ballot.  Maine's top election official removed Trump from the state's 2024 primary ballot on Thursday, joining the Colorado Supreme Court in disqualifying Trump from running for president.  Maine's Secretary of State Shenna Bellows determined that Trump was ineligible to run under the 14th Amendment due to his alleged role in the January 6 Capitol riot. [...] But the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the storming of the Capitol was a security failure, not a coup attempt, and that undercover law enforcement informants or officers may have allowed, or even encouraged, it to happen.  January 6 prosecutors have failed to prove a clear link between the rioters and Trump or his associates.  And the fact that the Department of Justice declined to indict Trump for inciting an insurrection is a tacit recognition that Trump's words leading up to the riot were legal speech.  Even some Democrats and mainstream news commentators agree the Maine decision has no merit.

The Mess in Maine.  Normally campaign season is a period of heightened engagement, as people scour the Internet to research even the most inane questions, knowing that at the end of the process, they get to cast votes on them.  It's why news companies tend to fatten up in election years, like Grizzlies during salmon runs.  People are absorbed by dramas in which they feel themselves to be participants.  This year the public is being forced to research questions in which they have no say.  We all understand now that there's a disqualification clause in the 14th Amendment.  We also understand that this clause seems to have been written with deliberate vagueness.  I'm no lawyer, but I doubt the 14th Amendment was designed to empower unelected state officials to unilaterally strike major party frontrunners from the presidential ballot.  If it was, that's a shock.  I must have missed that in AP Insane Legal Loopholes class.  Is there any way this ends well?

Maine GOP state lawmaker moves to impeach state secretary over Trump ballot removal.  A Maine Republican state lawmaker wants to impeach the Maine secretary of state who removed former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot.  GOP state Rep. John Andrews said he wants to pursue impeachment against Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows after she disqualified Trump from the 2024 Republican primary ballot on Thursday.  In her ruling, Bellows cited Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bans from office those who "engaged in insurrection."  Andrews said in a statement that he filed a request with the Maine Revisor's Office saying he wanted "to file a Joint Order, or whichever is the proper parliamentary mechanism under Mason's Rules, to impeach Secretary of State Shenna Bellows."

Persecutor Jack Smith fears presidential immunity.  A single executive is part of our three-branch balanced republic, and the executive is restrained by impeachment and having to stand for election for a maximum two terms.  Unfortunately, the contemporary democrat/Socialist/Communist Party recognizes no restraint, and impeachment has become a favored strategic harassment, a weapon employed for the first time in history against Donald Trump when he was no longer in office.  Considering Congress has delegated — abandoned — much of its power to an entirely unaccountable and increasingly aggressive and totalitarian Deep State, that point can't be underestimated.

Maine's Secretary of State Is An Anti-Trump Partisan Democrat.  Maine's Secretary Of State Shenna Bellows joined Democrats in their attack to take down former President Trump as the 2024 election was terrible news for President Joe Biden.  The Trump campaign is accusing Bellows of being a "rabid anti-Trump Democrat" who is relying on her interpretation of the 14th Amendment despite not being a lawyer and never graduating from law school.  She was also a Biden elector in 2020.  In March 2022, Bellows claimed Biden is fighting for democracy, saying, "In speaking to the battle between autocracies and democracies, President Biden reminds us of a crucial struggle of our time.  Our democracy is worth fighting for.  It matters." [Tweet]  She is such a leftist that she thinks that the New York Times is right-wing.  [Tweet]

Jackboot Smith Aims to Silence Trump.  This is absurd, unconstitutional, and Putinesque.  Jack Smith should be immediately removed for even proposing this.  In a move worthy of any aspiring tyrant, Special Counsel Jack Smith is asking the court to prevent Donald Trump from making arguments that he believes are relevant to his defense.  Smith, as the prosecutor, may disagree with Trump's arguments, but last I checked, in our justice system, it is up to a jury to determine the facts of a case.  [Tweet]  Smith's sweeping motion would essentially silence Trump — preventing him from criticizing the Special Counsel, law enforcement, the electoral process, or just about anything else.

Maine Democrat Secretary of State Determines, Without Judicial Hearing, Donald Trump is Disqualified from 2024 GOP Primary Ballot.  At the same time the Colorado Republican Party files a petition to the United States Supreme Court to overturn a disqualification ruling issued by the Colorado Supreme Court, a challenge that will result in President Trump appearing on the Colorado ballot, the Democrat Maine Secretary of State has ruled by fiat that Trump should be disqualified.  Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows issued a public statement declaring that under her independent determination, President Trump should be disqualified. [...] It is a remarkable display of political hubris and hypocrisy to see the Lawfare leftists proclaim they are defending democracy by trying to destroy the foundational "right to vote" of the American electorate.  Then again, the hubris and hypocrisy are a feature of communism, not a flaw therein.

Maine tries to dump Trump:  Secretary of state rules Donald is not eligible for election ballot.  Maine has become the second state to disqualify Donald Trump from the primary ballot, citing the 14th Amendment's ban on anyone who engaged in insurrection from holding office.  The decision by Maine's secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, follows a similar conclusion made on December 19 by Colorado's Supreme Court.  Trump's team on Thursday night said they will appeal the decision, as they will in Colorado.  On Thursday, the Republican Party in Colorado appealed against their Supreme Court's decision, meaning that he is back on the ballot until an expected U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Jack Smith asks court to ban Trump from introducing evidence of Jan. 6 security failures.  Special Counsel Jack Smith's office asked a federal judge Wednesday to prevent former President Donald Trump from introducing evidence at his Jan. 6 criminal trial concerning selective prosecution and security failures that occurred at the Capitol or making arguments his actions were protected by the First Amendment, suggesting such a defense amounted to politics.  Trump has tried "to inject into this case partisan political attacks and irrelevant and prejudicial issues that have no place in a jury trial," Senior Assistant Special Counsel Molly Gaston wrote in the court filing.  The special counsel is seeking to bar Trump from claiming that he is being selectively prosecuted and introducing evidence supporting such allegations.

Jackboot Smith Aims to Silence Trump.  This is absurd, unconstitutional, and Putinesque.  Jack Smith should be immediately removed for even proposing this.  In a move worthy of any aspiring tyrant, Special Counsel Jack Smith is asking the court to prevent Donald Trump from making arguments that he believes are relevant to his defense.  Smith, as the prosecutor, may disagree with Trump's arguments, but last I checked, in our justice system, it is up to a jury to determine the facts of a case.  [Tweet]  Smith's sweeping motion would essentially silence Trump — preventing him from criticizing the Special Counsel, law enforcement, the electoral process, or just about anything else.

'Under the United States'....  The Colorado Court claimed that the [14th] Amendment was "self-enforcing."  This means that they completely ignored the plain language of the Amendment.  Section 5 says, "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."  One of the key principles of legal interpretation is, expressio unius est exclusio alterius (the expression of one thing means the exclusion of others).  In short, as Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his book A Matter of Interpretation (2018), this is the commonsense way to read the law.  Section 5 says Congress has to enforce Section 3.  It is not self-enforcing.  Scalia is in good company here.  Not one member of the Congress that wrote the 14th Amendment is on record to suggest that it was self-enforcing.  They were all agreed with the need for Congress to flesh things out by statute.  Strike one.  The second issue is insurrection.  Logically, Donald Trump, the sitting president, could not commit insurrection against himself.

Michigan Supreme Court rejects bid to take Trump off primary ballot.  The Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an attempt to remove former President Trump from the state's primary ballot under the 14th Amendment's insurrection ban.  A liberal-leaning group had appealed a state appeals court ruling that concluded, regardless of whether the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from holding office, Michigan's secretary of state lacks the legal authority to remove him from the ballot.  The state's highest court, controlled by Democrats, let that lower ruling stand, saying in an unsigned order that it was "not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court."  The decision hands a legal victory for Trump as his lawyers seek to stave off 14th Amendment lawsuits filed across the country, aimed at preventing the former president's return to the White House.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud:  Biden Might Lose, So Screw the Constitution.  There is a debate raging on the Left about the Colorado Supreme Court's unconstitutional decision to strip Donald Trump off the ballot.  The decision, as you know, is based on a claim that Trump's behavior post-election amounted to "insurrection" and that the 14th Amendment precludes insurrectionists from running for president.  I am no lawyer, but I can see many problems with this argument, including the obvious one that insurrection is a legal term with a specific definition.  As it is a violation of a law, an insurrectionist must be convicted to be defined as such.  In other words, you can't just say, "He is an insurrectionist," and Wham! he is ineligible to be president.  We have a legal system in which there is a presumption of innocence, and, by the way, Trump is not even charged, no less convicted of "insurrection" or "rebellion."  Lots of lawyers have pointed this out, although there are plenty of Left-wing lawyers who long ago gave up on the notion of laws being anything other than malleable tools for enforcing their desires.  One would have to assume that the US Supreme Court will overturn this decision, but we still have to ask why the Left is going in this direction.

Trump Attorneys:  Appeals Court Should Toss D.C. Indictment On 'Immunity' Grounds.  "During the 234 years from 1789 to 2023, no current or former President had ever been criminally prosecuted for official acts," the Trump lawyers wrote.  "That unbroken tradition died this year, and the historical fallout is tremendous.  The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our Nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our Republic — the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system."  Trump's lawyers urged the appellate panel that's set to hear oral arguments on Jan. 9 to kick the case back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan "with instructions to dismiss the indictment with prejudice."

Jack (Smith) Not So Nimble.  It seems clear to me that Jack Smith was appointed for the purpose of besetting Donald J. Trump and finding a means to keep him from running for president again.  If I'm right, Smith's many strategies have come to naught this week and it is extremely unlikely that the cases he instituted in the District of Columbia and Florida (meritless as I think they are) will ever be resolved before the election. [...] Further complicating matters, the Supreme Court just granted certiorari upon a petition by a person charged with obstructing an official proceeding on January 6 — the Fischer case.  And much of the case before Judge Chutkan uses the same arguments against Trump that are at issue in that case.  Oral arguments in that case probably won't be heard until sometime in March or April, and surely it will take time for an opinion by the Court, an opinion which has significant bearing on a great deal of Smith's case.  If the government loses that case, there will not be much left for Smith to prosecute should by some miracle he gets a trial before the election.

Former AG drops bombshell allegation against Jack Smith: 'Has no more authority' than Taylor Swift.  According to former President Ronald Reagan's Attorney General Ed Meese, special counsel Jack Smith is a "naked emperor" whose requests should be rejected by the Supreme Court because he was unconstitutionally appointed to begin with.  Meese joined forces with law professors Steven G. Calabresi and Gary S. Lawson to file a friend-of-the-court brief on Wednesday arguing that, as a private citizen, Smith's appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution. [...] "Under the Appointments Clause, inferior officers can be appointed by department heads only if Congress so directs by statute... and so directs specifically enough to overcome a clear-statement presumption in favor of presidential appointment and senatorial confirmation," Meese wrote, according to Fox News Digital.  "No such statute exists for the Special Counsel."

A smart amicus brief says Jack Smith is an illegitimate special prosecutor.  Leftist judges usually write horrible opinions that are filled with bazillions of case citations and facts, most of which are, at best, marginally relevant.  They do this to hide that the conclusions are intellectually and factually bankrupt.  Rule of thumb in the law:  The clearer an argument, the stronger the position.  That's true for any legal argument, as is demonstrated by the amicus brief that former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese and two law professors filed before the Supreme Court.  It argues with exquisite clarity that Jack Smith's appointment as Special Prosecutor was unconstitutional, which would void everything he's done. [...] The operative facts are simple.  Despite having a whole host of Assistant U.S. Attorneys available to him, when it came to investigating the allegations swirling around January 6, Merrick Garland appointed someone who is not a U.S. Attorney but is, instead, a private citizen to investigate the matter (and, naturally, to bring preordained charges).

Turley: January 6 Wasn't Insurrection or Rebellion — 14th Amendment Doesn't Apply.  Thursday on FNC's "The Story," network contributor Jonathan Turley questioned the merits of the Colorado Supreme Court's decision to bar former President Donald Trump from the 2024 primary election ballot.  According to Turley, the 14th Amendment didn't apply because January 6 was a riot, not an insurrection.  "It's nonsense," he said.  "I mean, first of all, there's really interesting analogies to go to Bush v. Gore, you know, a little over 20 years ago, they had another 4-3 decision by another state Supreme Court.  And what the court did is they were uncomfortable with the ambiguous standards being used by Florida.  This is even more so.  When I read the 14th Amendment, I see the words insurrection or rebellion.  This was neither.  This was a riot. [...]"

Supreme Court Sends Jack Smith Packing — Denies His Request For Ruling on Trump Immunity Argument.  The US Supreme Court on Friday denied Jack Smith's request for a ruling on Trump's immunity argument.  Jack Smith last Monday asked the US Supreme Court to weigh in on Trump's immunity claims.  President Trump on Wednesday urged the US Supreme Court to reject Jack Smith's request to expedite the ruling on his immunity argument.  Trump's lawyers argued that Trump is immune from federal prosecution for alleged 'crimes' committed while he served as US President.

Democrats Are Staging A Coup In Broad Daylight.  If it wasn't obvious before now that the left will do anything to stop Donald Trump from winning a second term in the White House, the events of the last few days should leave no doubt in any American's mind.  Democrats, including President Biden, are prepared not only to rig the 2024 election in broad daylight but also to twist the U.S. Constitution and undermine the republic so they can hold on to power.  As most everyone knows by now, an infamous 4-3 majority of the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that voters in their state will not be allowed to cast a ballot for Trump in next year's presidential election.  The court's outlandish claim is that Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot because Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says candidates who have "engaged in insurrection" are prohibited from holding public office.  According to the court, which is dominated by left-wing ideologues appointed by Democrat governors (all the judges on the Colorado Supreme Court are Democrats, some are just more radical than others), Trump meets this definition because he "incited" a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.  Never mind that Trump has yet to be convicted of a crime associated with Jan. 6 (or any crime for that matter) or that the 14th Amendment doesn't include the president or vice president in a list of offices to which its Section 3 provision applies.

Whatever It Takes Won't Be Enough.  And just like that — snap ! — the news about the Colorado Supreme Court's droll action against candidate DJ Trump vanished from the front page (or top screens) of The New York Times.  Do you know why?  I'll tell you:  Because the political Left has finally managed to embarrass itself with a "lawfare" gambit so nakedly fatuous that it exposes the faction's drive to destroy the election process, and with it our country.  This is what you get from a regime that faked its way to power and now must strain to cover up its long train of crimes, abuses, and effronteries to common sense, while running out of tricks to keep fooling even its own deranged followers.  Somehow, the act of kicking a leading candidate off the ballot has finally registered as inconsistent with "defending our democracy."

There's A Direct Line Between Joe Biden's Deep State And Trump Getting Removed From Colorado's Ballot.  The left-wing legal organization behind Colorado's decision to remove former President Donald Trump from its Republican primary ballot has a direct link to the Biden administration.  Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) President and CEO Noah Bookbinder is a member of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) tasked with giving real-time advice to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS website says.  CREW brought the Colorado case against Trump and celebrated the Colorado Supreme Court's 4-3 ruling to keep Trump off the state's GOP primary ballot.  "Our Constitution clearly states that those who violate their oath by attacking our democracy are barred from serving in government.  It has been an honor to represent the petitioners, and we look forward to ensuring that this vitally important ruling stands," Bookbinder said in a press release.  Bookbinder is a former trial attorney for the Department of Justice's (DOJ) public integrity section and former chief counsel for criminal justice for the Senate Judiciary Committee.  He repeatedly donated to former President Barack Obama's re-election campaign during his tenure with the Senate, Federal Elections Commission (FEC) records show.

Four Fascist Colorado Judges Tell Voters Who to Vote For.  Let's remove the fact that this insurrection accusation against Trump is objectively laughable.  Former President Donald Trump has not been convicted of anything, much less insurrection.  Insurrection is a crime.  You cannot be guilty of insurrection until a jury finds you guilty.  Nevertheless, these four black-robed fascists ruled against a former American president as though he were a convicted criminal.  These fascists punished a man who, according to our sacred Constitution, is presumed innocent.  Whether we are talking about a former president or a convicted three-time felon who now stands accused of a fourth felony, before a jury rules, it is un-American for anyone to punish either as though they are guilty.  Four State Supreme Court judges blithely ignoring that basic Constitutional protection is nothing less than the stuff of banana republics.  What's more, in this particular case, Trump is not the only one suffering at the hands of four belligerents with no respect for the Constitution and Rule of Law.  We The People are being punished.

Here Are the 16 States Where Efforts to Remove Trump from the Ballot Are Underway.  With their advocates buoyed by the apparent success of the Colorado-based lawsuit to deny former President Donald Trump a place on the 2024 presidential ballot, efforts to use the courts to thwart Trump's chance at the White House are underway in almost a third of U.S. states.  The core argument against Trump — the front-runner in the GOP primary race — is that a part of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment bars those who have committed insurrection against the government from seeking federal office, specifically listing the legislative branch.  Success requires two things.  First, a judge has to rule that Trump committed an insurrection against the country, which a Colorado judge did in a ruling equating the [e]vents of Jan. 6, 2021, with an insurrection and holding Trump culpable.  Second, the amendment has to be interpreted as saying it includes the presidency, which the Colorado Supreme Court did this week in its ruling that said the former president can't be on the ballot.

Washington Post Editorial Board:  The Supreme Court Should Toss the Colorado Decision.  People (including our own Ed Morrissey) have been saying this since the decision appeared Tuesday but I'm still a bit surprised to see the Washington Post's editorial board making the same case.  After laying out the basis of the Colorado decision under the 14th Amendment, the board points out "the law is not so clear."  The board argues that section 3 of the Amendment should probably apply to the president (which is what the Colorado Supreme Court found) but says that doesn't really matter unless you've also concluded that President Trump did in fact commit insurrection in connection with Jan. 6.  And on that point, the Colorado court is way out on a limb.

Trump off the ballot?  First, the reason Trump is being excluded is new, untested, and profoundly controversial in its application here.  Basically, the court is saying Trump cannot appear on the primary ballot because of a subsection of the Fourteenth Amendment meant to exclude Confederate officials who waged a civil war against the United States.  Using that provision to exclude Trump is utterly novel.  Its unprecedented use here invites the conclusion that it is being wielded as a political sledgehammer by Trump's opponents and that some of those opponents wear judicial robes.  Trump's supporters took a nanosecond to reach that conclusion, and they are furious.  But it's not just them.  All his Republican opponents came out immediately against the court ruling.  The backlash against the ruling will also spill over to other Trump prosecutions.  Prosecutors waited three full years to bring these cases, and it is not a wild conjecture to think they waited to inflict maximum damage on a presidential campaign.  Special Counsel Jack Smith strengthened that conclusion recently when he appealed directly to the US Supreme Court to contest Trump's claim of immunity.  Smith's argument for by-passing the normal appellate process boils down to the raw claim that "I need to try this guy before the election."  That's a political declaration, not a legal argument.

Who does kicking Trump off the Colorado ballot help?  Does kicking a popular candidate off the electoral ballot protect democracy?  Or is that in fact deeply anti-democratic?  These are the questions that many Americans are pondering after Colorado's Supreme Court voted four to three to block Donald Trump from running in its state in the election next year, citing the insurrection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. [...] Donald Trump is probably not going to win in Colorado — he lost comfortably in the state to Hillary Clinton< in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 — but that's not the point.  The ruling is a clear attempt to establish that Trump, by "inciting an insurrection" on January 6, is persona non grata in American elections according to the Constitution.  It could be used as a precedent to block Trump from running across America in 2024.  Similar cases are making their way through courts in several other states.

Democratic lawfare vs.  Donald Trump.  The story of the 2024 campaign so far is the effort by Democrats and their appointees to use criminal charges and lawsuits to force former President Donald Trump out of the race for a second term in the White House.  The name for such an effort is lawfare — that is, "the strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate or hinder an opponent," to cite one law dictionary.  The latest development, of course, is the Colorado Supreme Court ruling disqualifying Trump from being on the state ballot.  All seven members of Colorado's highest court were appointed by Democrats.  The case was started by a Washington-based, aggressively anti-Trump activist group called CREW, or Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which recruited local Coloradans to file suit against Trump.  The Colorado case, of course, comes amid a growing number of Democratic legal efforts to bring down Trump.  Here are five additional examples.  All were brought by Democratic or Democratic-appointed prosecutors, and three of the five are being tried before Democratic-appointed judges.

California, Maine Exploring Options to Keep Trump Off Ballot Following Colorado Ruling.  The states of California and Maine are now exploring options to keep former President Trump off their respective state ballots in the wake of Colorado's ruling.  As Breitbart News reported on Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled "in a 4-3 opinion that the Constitution's 'Insurrection Clause' prohibits former President Donald Trump from appearing on the ballot for the presidency in 2024."  "The court found by clear and convincing evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection as those terms are used in Section Three" of the Fourteenth Amendment, the ruling read.  The ruling will partially reverse a previous ruling from Colorado District Court Judge Sarah Wallace, who ruled in November that the Fourteenth Amendment would not apply in the case of former President Trump, being that he is not an officer of the United States as was defined at the time of the amendment's ratification following the Civil War.

The Colorado Ballot Exclusion of Trump is Backfiring.  The unconscionable Colorado Supreme Court decision to exclude Donald Trump from the state's ballot, in what many believe to be a political maneuver to sideline the former president on very dicey grounds, may very well may backfire.  Many prominent Republicans are now calling for President Biden to removed over his complete mishandling of the border.  The Colorado Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision rooted their ruling in the 14th Amendment's "insurrection clause" that prohibits anyone who has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, including members of Congress, officers of the United States, or state executives and judicial officers, from engaging in insurrection.  They made this determination under the presumption that Trump was involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack even though there has been no criminal trial against the former president.

The backdoor insurrection conviction will not stand.  The Colorado Supreme Court yesterday decided that Donald Trump "engaged in an insurrection or rebellion" on or about Jan. 6, 2021.  Under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, he is therefore ineligible for the presidency and would be removed from the Colorado ballot.  A few points to consider:  The Court on its own volition stayed its order until Jan. 4 to give Trump an opportunity to appeal the case to the real Supreme Court, the United States one.  If he does so, and he will, and the Supreme Court decides to hear the case, and they will, then the order is further stayed until the Supreme Court issues its decision this spring or summer.  The Colorado Supreme Court is comprised of seven justices.  All seven were appointed by Democrat governors.  The U.S. Supreme Court has a materially different composition.  Six of the nine justices are Republican appointees.  Notwithstanding that the Colorado Supreme Court is unanimously Democrat appointees, their decision was 4-3.  Three of the seven Democrat-appointed justices sided with Trump.  The Colorado decision is contrary to decisions in Minnesota and Michigan, whose supreme courts are also majority Democrat appointees.  It's fair to say that the Colorado decision is an outlier, even among Democrat jurists.

Colorado's Supreme Court Blocks Democracy to Bar Trump on the 2024 Ballot.  The Colorado Supreme Court has issued an unsigned opinion, making history in the most chilling way possible.  A divided court barred Donald Trump from appearing on the 2024 presidential ballot.  For months, advocates have been filing without success in various states, looking for some court to sign off on a dangerous, novel theory under the Constitution's 14th Amendment.  They finally found four receptive jurists on one of the bluest state supreme courts in the land.  Even on a court composed entirely of justices appointed by Democratic governors, Colorado's Supreme Court split 4-3 on the question.  The majority admitted that this was a case "of first impression" and that there was "sparse" authority on the question.  Yet, the lack of precedent or clarity did not deter these justices from making new law to block Trump from running.

Radical-Left Colorado Supreme Court Disqualifies Trump from 2024 Ballot.  As the Gateway Pundit reported, President Trump will not be on the ballot in Colorado in 2024 thanks to their far-left Supreme Court.  The Court dubiously cited Section 3 of the US Constitution's 14th Amendment which states public officials who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the US may be disqualified from public office.  Trump did not engage in an insurrection nor has been charged with one.  As TGP readers know, this ruling came in response to a suit brought by the George Soros-funded Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW).  CBS News previously reported the group filed its lawsuit against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Trump in September, arguing the 45th president is disqualified from public office under Section 3.

The Colorado Supreme Court 4-3 Decision Is Pure Nonsense.  President Donald Trump was not charged with "insurrection," is not accused of "insurrection," does not fit the complaint under the definitions of "insurrection," and has never been found guilty of insurrection.  The complaint is moot before the court. [...] As long as President Trump appeals the decision to the Supreme Court, the appeals court stays their own ruling — essentially indefinitely.  The Colorado primary ballots printed, and the primary election will be over, before the Supreme Court puts this on their docket.  In addition to the virtual guarantee the high court will overrule this political nonsense, SCOTUS can make the entire issue moot before them by following their own normal schedule for submissions, arguments, deliberation and opinions delivered by the court.  The Colorado appellate court knows this, that's why they put this self-stay into their 4-3 ruling.

'Election Interference': Colorado Supreme Court Removes Trump From Ballot.  The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in an unprecedented 4-3 decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state's presidential primary ballot, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.  This is a nakedly partisan, anti-democratic decision that ignores the law and prior precedent.  Under the text and history of the 14th Amendment, as well as court precedent, Trump is not disqualified from running for office for numerous reasons.  First, Section 3 of the 14 Amendment applies only to individuals who were previously a 'member of Congress,' an 'officer of the United States,' or a state official.  Individuals who are elected — such as the president and vice president — are not officers within the meaning of Section 3.  Second, no federal court has convicted Trump of engaging in 'insurrection or rebellion.'  In fact, the Senate acquitted Trump of that charge in his second impeachment.  Third, some scholars assert Section 3 doesn't even exist anymore as a constitutional matter after the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898 — a matter completely ignored by the court today.  Fourth, prior court rulings have held that Section 3 is not self-executing and Congress has never passed any federal law providing for enforcement, meaning that courts such as the Colorado Supreme Court have no legal authority to enforce Section 3.

A Left-Wing Appeals Panel Is Rigging Trump's J6 Case Through Bogus Fast-Track Process.  For Democrats to succeed with their 2024 presidential campaign strategy of imprisoning the current front-runner in the race, they need a massive assist from key judges.  District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan has done everything in her power to speed up the process for one of the complicated cases Democrats have filed against former President Donald Trump.  Whereas the standard federal fraud and conspiracy case takes about two years to get to trial, controversial Special Counsel Jack Smith and Chutkan have worked in concert to get the trial started in March, a breathtaking seven months after Trump's indictment.  Likewise, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Florence Pan is doing her part to assist the effort to give Trump far less time than other defendants to prepare for a trial against him.  Last week, she led a panel to fast-track an appeal in order to facilitate Smith's goal of securing a quick conviction before one of Washington, D.C.'s notoriously partisan juries.  "Any fair-minded observer has to agree" that Smith and Chutkan are acting based on the election schedule, conceded former federal prosecutor and left-wing pundit Elie Honig.  "Just look at Jack Smith's conduct in this case.  The motivating principle behind every procedural request he's made has been speed, has been getting this trial in before the election."  Election interference isn't incidental to this prosecution, then, it's the entire point.

NY AG Brags That the Judge Ruled Against DJT Before the Trial.  NY Attorney General Letitia James gave a very deceptive statement in a new video about the Trump family's alleged fraud over the years.  She must have been thinking of the Biden Crime Family.  She mentioned what we already knew.  Judge Engoron determined Trump engaged in "significant financial fraud" before the trial ever began, and any defense was presented.  In fact, Engoron wouldn't even let the family present some evidence verbally.  "Before this trial even began, the judge ruled in our favor and found that Donald Trump did engage in years of significant financial fraud," Attorney General admitted. "We uncovered throughout this trial, we revealed the full extent of that fraud.  We introduced extensive evidence and questioned more than two dozen witnesses."  They don't seem to realize this is Soviet-like.  Even Russia pretends to have legitimate trials.  These communists are out in the open now.

Meet Lawyer Michael Dreeben, The Man Behind Three Major Anti-Trump Operations.  Eyebrows were raised last week when it was discovered that Special Counsel Jack Smith had added attorney Michael Dreeben to his legal team.  "An interesting detail:  Michael Dreeben somehow snuck into Jack Smith's office.  He was Mueller's appellate guy," enthused Marcy Wheeler, a proponent of the debunked conspiracy theory that Donald Trump stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia.  Fellow Russia-collusion hoaxer Rachel Maddow of MSNBC ran an entire segment to announce the exciting news that Dreeben is "helming this part of the case," meaning Smith's request to the Supreme Court to look at whether American presidents may be prosecuted for actions taken while they are president.  Left-wing legal activist (and, yes, another bitter clinger Russia-collusion hoaxer) Joyce Vance said her "friend" Dreeben had "framed this petition" before the Supreme Court.  Mueller, of course, is Robert Mueller, the ostensible head of the Mueller probe that treated the Russia conspiracy scam as credible and leaked information to the propaganda press to ensure it had maximum effect.

NY Attorney General Letitia James Admits Her Guilt in Denying Trump Due Process.  In her latest video, New York Attorney General Letitia James admitted her guilt in compromising former President Donald Trump's right to due process.  This comes after she claimed that Judge Arthur Engoron had found Trump guilty of "significant financial fraud" even before the current trial began.  Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $250 million in 'damages' when there is no victim in this fraud case and she is also seeking to ban Trump and his sons from operating any businesses in New York.  She accused Trump of inflating his assets and defrauding lenders and insurance companies.

Dog whistle:
Will the Deep State actually assassinate Donald Trump?  The inevitability of another Trump nomination — and possible electoral victory next November — is something Beltway elites are coming to grips with.  Robert Kagan, the neo-con husband of liberal zionist Victoria Nuland, said as much in a recent column for CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post.  Nuland is a bureaucratic parasite (what the media calls a "diplomat") who currently serves in the Biden regime.  Her primary job right now is to ensure yours and my tax dollars are funneled to Volodymyr Zelensky's ever-widening pockets.  Kagan's article is several thousand words long. [...] It is an unhinged rant about how Trump will usher in a "dictatorship" if he ever gets re-elected, which, Kagan admits, is looking very possible.  Kagan theorizes that if Trump wins the presidency he will "immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office."  Kagan then ominously asks his audience — most of whom are probably intelligence agents — what they are going to do to prevent this from happening.  "If we thought there was a 50 percent chance of an asteroid crashing into North America a year from now, would we be content to hope that it wouldn't?" he wonders.  "Or would we be taking every conceivable measure to try to stop it, including many things that might not work but that, given the magnitude of the crisis, must be tried anyway?"

CNN Legal Analyst Makes Concerning Statement About Prosecution of Trump.  CNN had an interesting discussion involving senior legal analyst Elie Honig concerning whether Jack Smith was acting based on the election schedule.  Honig believed that he was.  [Tweet with video clip]  But Honig didn't leave it there.  "The motivating principle behind every procedural request he's [Smith] made has been speed, has been getting this trial in before the election," Honig said.  He noted how the trial date that Smith asked for — "five months out" — was fast compared to Jan. 6 trial requests.  "Donald Trump is being given far less time to prepare," he said.  Then Honig noted the DOJ policy that you're not supposed to do anything that might impact the election.

Republican Elise Stefanik demands ethics probe into D.C. judge who's ruled in Trump's January 6 case.  Top Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik filed a judiciary complaint accusing the judge in Donald Trump's January 6 case of engaging in 'highly inappropriate political speech.'  The staunch Trump ally and GOP conference chair requested an ethics investigation into D.C. Circuit Court Judge Beryl Howell over her November remarks at the Women's White Collar Defense Gala.  During the address Howell signaled the January 6 Capitol riot had been the result of 'big lies.'

Anything you have ever said can be used against you, years later.
Jack Smith Will Use Trump's Cellphone Data in Federal Election Trial.  Anti-Trump special counsel Jack Smith revealed that he plans to present data analysts to comment on Donald Trump's White House cellphone and Twitter data in an upcoming Washington, D.C., trial in the federal election case.  Smith wrote in a court filing on Dec. 11, 2023, that the government intended to call up to three expert witnesses to testify in the case.  Trump is charged with four counts related to his post-election efforts to challenge the process and results of the 2020 election, according to the Epoch Times.  The filing also explained how leftist prosecutors plan to use the mountains of data obtained under warrant from Twitter about Trump's account, including location data.

Lawsuits Against Trump Are So Transparently Political They're Backfiring Badly With Democrats.  It turns out that the American people know a scam when they see one — even Democrats.  A new I&I/TIPP poll shows indisputably that the lawsuits against Trump are beginning to boomerang in the minds of Democrats. [...] Donald Trump is currently indicted on 91 obviously orchestrated felony counts, as well as other lawsuits in multiple venues around the U.S. There's the indictment about legally held documents at Mar-a-Lago, there's the one about "inciting" an insurrection, and there's the fraudulent civil lawsuit in New York on which the judge has already ruled the former president is guilty without hearing the evidence.  Then there's the other New York case alleging "hush money" payments.  There's the lawfare special from the 1980s alleged assault in New York.  There's the racketeering lawsuit brought by Fani Willils in Georgia alleging the former president tried to "subvert" an election.  There are lawsuits to keep him off the ballot in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, and 17 other states.

Jack Smith Collected Images, Website Visits And Usage Data From Trump's Cellphone, Filing Reveals.  Special Counsel Jack Smith collected data from the cellphone former President Donald Trump used in the White House, according to a recent court filing.  Smith revealed three expert witnesses he may call on during Trump's coming 2020 election trial in a court filing Monday, including one who "extracted and processed data from the White House cell phones used by the defendant [Trump] and one other individual."  Data reviewed by Smith's expert witness includes images and website visits, along with phone "usage" around Jan. 6, 2021, according to the filing.

Jim Jordan wants a medal for stating the obvious.
Jim Jordan Claims Fulton County DA Fani Willis Colluded With J6 Committee to Indict Trump.  Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan's probe into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' indictment against former President Donald Trump has seen an interesting turn of events.  Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, has been looking into the indictment over suspicions that it is motivated more by politics than by a pursuit of justice.  On Tuesday, Jordan sent another letter to Willis highlighting her refusal to comply with the demands in the previous letter the committee sent.  Of particular note, however, is a new revelation that Willis' office reached out to the Democrats' House Select Jan. 6 Committee to get information that could aid in her effort against Trump.  In the letter, Jordan notes that Willis' indictment and prosecution against the former president "implicate substantial federal interests, and the circumstances surrounding your actions raise serious concerns about whether they are politically motivated."  The lawmaker pointed out, "It is noteworthy that just four days before this indictment, you launched a new campaign fundraising website that highlighted your investigation into President Trump."

Subtle Like a Brick Through a Window - CIA Outlet Approves Donald Trump Assassination.  I have stayed away from this subject for eight years; however, everyone in/around U.S. politics knows the Washington Post, owned by Big Tech Amazon, is effectively the PR firm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  No one inside the DC beltway does not understand this basic truth.  Therefore, when the husband of State Dept official Victoria Nuland, a man named Robert Kagan, writes an op-ed in the CIA newsletter, effectively calling for President Trump to receive the Julius Caesar treatment, the non-subtle message is for the CIA to repeat their Kennedy performance and kill President Trump.  As alarming as this acceptance might sound, there are no intellectually honest people who would deny it.

There Are Games Afoot In The Scheduling of Trump's Two Federal Cases.  First Commandment of federal criminal trial practice:  Thou shalt not take deliberate steps to disrupt a federal judge's calendar.  There is almost nothing that will bring a federal prosecutor or defense attorney grief and vituperation more quickly or in greater volume than to deliberately do something that forces a federal judge to alter his or her schedule to accommodate something an attorney has done.  At the top of that list for prosecutors there is probably a new entry now — indicting the highest profile defendant possible in two different courts and then seeking a schedule in the second case that makes it impossible for the earlier-indicted case to proceed as scheduled.  What's happening now with scheduling in the Florida and D.C. cases is that each Judge is playing a game of "chicken" with the other court's calendar.

The legal labyrinth facing Donald Trump.  Donald Trump's children are due to give evidence in a New York courtroom in a civil action against the family and their company.  He, himself, is due to testify in the case next week.  Trump's journey through the courts is turning into a legal labyrinth.  You'd be forgiven for losing track, so here's a refresher guide.

Video footage depicts gross misconduct by Judge Engoron's law clerk in Trump trial.  The civil fraud case against President Donald Trump has hit a snag after Judge Arthur Engoron's law clerk, Allison Greenfield, was exposed for previously praising Joe Biden as the "best president in the history of the United States."  Greenfield made the cringeworthy comment while attending a Democrat fundraiser back in October 2022.  While she sat in the front row, Greenfield yelled "Yeah!" while shaking her head in agreement with Democrat politician speakers as they bashed Trump.  All of this took place while the Trump civil fraud case was still pending, which many say constitutes a mistrial.  Greenfield's bias apparently invalidates her as a qualified law clerk in the case.

New York Appeals Court Reinstitutes President Trump Gag Order Without Any Explanation.  In the New York civil action against Donald Trump, all the banks and lenders did their own due diligence on financing terms with Donald Trump.  All operational loans and Trump Org. business loans were paid back.  There were no defaults or banking interests adversely impacted.  There are no victims of what the State calls "fraud," yet this judge is ruling the Trump organization must dissolve all business interests in the state and exit.  Inside the insufferable nonsense represented by the trial Judge Arthur Engoron, acting on behalf of his partisan political clerk Allison Greenfield, issued a gag order forbidding President Trump from complaining about the political affiliations of the judge, clerk and any other court official or possible witness.  After an interim stay of the gag order by an appellate justice, the New York appeals court has reversed the stay and reinstituted the gag order.

New York Appeals Court Reinstates Gag Order on Trump in Letitia James' Show Trial.  A New York Appeals Court on Thursday reinstated a gag order against President Trump in Letitia James's Soviet-style civil fraud case.  Earlier this month a New York Appeals judge temporarily lifted NY Judge Arthur Engoron's gag order on Trump.  New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $250 million in 'damages' in her lawfare case against President Trump.  There are no victims in this fraud case.

Judge Chutkan Denies Trump Motion to Subpoena for Missing J6 Records.  Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over Special Counsel Jack Smith's case against former President Donald Trump for 2020 election interference, this week denied a motion by the former president to seek materials he said the House Committee investigating January 6, 2021, had not turned over to the National Archives.  On Monday, Chutkan rejected Trump's motion, accusing him of going on a "fishing expedition."

Deutsche Bank May Have Just Destroyed Letitia James' Civil Fraud Case Against Trump.  Deutsche Bank might have just blown up Letitia James's civil fraud case against President Trump.  Radical Marxist New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking $250 million in 'damages' when there is no victim in this fraud case and she is also seeking to ban Trump and his sons from operating any businesses in New York.  She accused Trump of inflating his assets and defrauding lenders and insurance companies.  A Deutsche Bank executive who worked to approve at least one of Trump's loans testified on Tuesday that it is "atypical, but not entirely unusual" to reduce a client's asset values and still approve a loan.  This type of lending is typical in high net-worth, high-profile clients like Donald Trump.  Anyone with basic knowledge of banking, lending, portfolio and credit risk management knows this.

Trump is Winning Ballot Access Cases.  The ongoing campaign by progressive activists to deny former President Trump a place on state ballots received yet another serious setback late Friday.  After a weeklong bench trial, Denver District Court Judge Sarah Wallace issued a 102-page opinion in Anderson v. Griswold concluding that "Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to Trump."  She ordered Colorado's Secretary of State Jena Griswold to place his name on Colorado's presidential primary ballot.  This is the fourth state in three weeks to reject efforts to keep Trump off their ballots.  This case will inevitably be appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court.  On Oct. 30, a judge in New Hampshire declined to hear Castro v. Scanlon because the plaintiff lacked standing to sue and the complaint raised a "nonjusticiable political question."  On Nov. 8, the Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed Growe v. Simon, as follows:  "Because there is no error to correct here as to the presidential nomination primary, and petitioners' other claims regarding the general election are not ripe, the petition must be dismissed."  On Nov. 14, a Michigan judge rejected LaBrant v. Benson on the grounds that the courts have no authority to prevent Trump's name from appearing on the state's primary ballot.

Trump's lawyer goes to battle with government over his ability to call January 6 trial witness a 'slimy liar'.  U.S. Court of appeals court judges asked a series of probing questions about a federal judge's 'gag' order that would prevent him from 'targeting' potential witnesses in the January 6 case.  The judges picked apart Judge Tanya Chutkan's order, which prohibits Trump from targeting court personnel and witnesses, following his repeated attacks on Special Counsel Jack Smith.  But they also acknowledged the difficulty of managing the case, asking whether the former president could use social media to in effect tell a witness 'don't act treasonously — don't cooperate' as a form of intimidation.  Trump's lawyer raised repeated concerns that the order would infringe on the former president's First Amendment rights, and members of the three-judge panel who are considering it weighed in with some of their own misgivings, while asking questions about who the former president could go after and under what circumstances.

Trump Might Just Enter 2024 Election Unscathed As Court Dates Are Delayed, Legal Attacks Falter.  As former President Donald Trump's legal difficulties continue to stack up, scheduling conflicts and trial delays offer relief and highlight an emerging path for him to enter the 2024 election without facing a potential conviction, should he be the Republican nominee.  Facing the strain of four separate criminal indictments while running a presidential campaign, Trump has sought to postpone trials in his cases until after the election.  At least two judges — the one overseeing his Florida classified documents case and another overseeing his New York case for allegedly falsifying business records — have signaled a willingness to delay, while Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis believes the Georgia trial may not conclude until early 2025.

In win for Trump, judge stays gag order in New York civil fraud case.  President Donald Trump scored a judicial win on Thursday when an appeals court judge temporarily lifted a gag order preventing him from criticizing court personnel and the prosecutors in his New York civil fraud case.  The gag order was originally imposed by Judge Arthur Engoron after Trump posted an image of his primary clerk, calling her "Schumer's girlfriend."  Judge David Friedman curtailed the restrictions while the appellate process plays out, suggesting it ran afoul of Trump's First Amendment rights, the Associated Press reported.  The decision followed an emergency hearing on Thursday after Trump's legal team challenged the gag order the evening prior.  "I don't see a reason for restrictions because Ms. James is continuing to disparage my client.  Both sides need to be able to speak and the fact that I, frankly, couldn't and my client couldn't speak, for the past however many days, is so unconstitutional," Trump attorney Alina Habba argued.

Trump Asks For Mistrial In Civil Fraud Case Due To 'Tangible And Overwhelming' Evidence Of Bias.  Former President Donald Trump filed for a mistrial Wednesday in his New York civil fraud case, citing "tangible and overwhelming" evidence of bias.  Trump's 30-page motion alleges that Judge Arthur Engoron engaged in extrajudicial activities "publically commenting" in the trial and is impremissably "co-judging" with his law clerk Allison Greenfield, who is involved with "extensive, public partisan activities."  He also attacked the gag orders Engoron issued barring Trump and other parties from speaking publicly about members of his staff as being imposed to prevent these issues from "becoming public."  "Such evidence, coupled with an unprecedented departure from standard judicial procedure, has tainted these proceedings and a mistrial is warranted," his lawyers said.  "Specifically, the Court's own conduct, coupled with the Principal Law Clerk, Allison Greenfield's ("Principal Law Clerk") unprecedented role in the trial and extensive, public partisan activities, would cause even a casual observer to question the Court's partiality."

Michigan judge denies effort to keep Trump off 2024 ballot.  A Michigan judge on Tuesday dismissed an effort to keep former President Donald Trump off the state's ballot in 2024.  The judge said that under Michigan law, the secretary of state does not have the authority to intervene in a primary election if the party chooses to list a candidate who would not qualify for the office.  "The ultimate decision is made by the respective political party, with the consent of the listed candidate," the judge wrote.  The decision comes after a group of Michigan voters in September filed a legal challenge to Trump's candidacy, arguing that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and his and conduct surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, making him ineligible for office.

Selective prosecution against Trump.  There are two brief but powerful statements about law and justice etched in stone upon the two buildings in Washington, D.C. which house those most responsible for carrying them out.  On the Department of Justice building, on its most visible Pennsylvania Avenue side, these words appear: "Where law ends tyranny begins."  On the Supreme Court building we behold:  "Equal Justice Under Law."  Both of these precepts can only have authentic meaning if selective enforcement of the law for improper purposes is avoided.  Where law ends is where discretionary enforcement begins, and it will be tyranny if carried out selectively for improper ends.  Equal justice under law also cannot exist if carried out with such selectivity.

Judge rejects Donald Trump's bid to delay classified documents trial until after the election.  Donald Trump has been hit with a fresh legal blow after a federal judge rejected his pleas to delay his classified documents until after the election.  U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon called the request to postpone by the former president's defense lawyers 'premature', and signalled the trial will start in May.  The decision came as Trump tore into a CNN report that Mar-a-Lago staff — including a maid, a plumber and a woodworker — could be called to testify.

Elise Stefanik Files Complaint Against Judge Overseeing Trump Civil Fraud Trial.  Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik filed a complaint against the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's civil fraud trial, calling him out for "inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance," she announced on Twitter Friday.  Stefanik filed her complaint against Judge Arthur Engoron with the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, alleging that he is "not honoring [Trump's] rights to due process and a fair trial," according to her tweet.  She pointed to examples of Engoron's "clear judicial bias," including telling Trump's attorney last year that his client is "just a bad guy" who Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James "should go after."  His "bizarre and biased behavior is making New York's judicial system a laughingstock," Stefanik wrote.  "If Judge Engoron can railroad a billionaire New York businessman, a former President of the United States, and the leading presidential candidate, just imagine what he could do to all New Yorkers," she told the commission.

Unfairly Targeting Trump.  The Left's never-ending attempts to vilify everyone in Donald Trump's orbit never cease to amaze.  From top advisors to future cabinet members, they are taking down anyone who merely agrees with the former president.  Even the waitstaff at Mar-a-Lago are not immune.  Are Democrats so intolerant that they cannot entertain an opposing thought without massive, overreaching destruction?  Does a challenge to a socialist's core threaten them so much that there are no barricades to stop the crossing of the Rubicon and into unconstitutional realms?  If the Left's anti-Trump witch-hunt is indeed about obtaining power, then there is no longer any schoolhouse rock in Washington, D.C. There used to be off-limits zones, but that went away with Trump's first presidency.

It sounds like a Perry Mason moment!
Trump Pulls Out Paper from His Suit During Testimony, Says It Completely Vindicates Him.  It was a show-stopper moment in the political show trial of former President Donald Trump.  On the witness stand on Monday in his civil fraud trial in Manhattan, the former New York real estate king and leading 2024 GOP presidential candidate drew a piece of paper from his jacket pocket that he said would end the case once and for all.  Naturally, he wasn't allowed to read it.  According to the New York Post, the document was likely a disclaimer notice, a kind that's routine in major financial transactions, that warned potential lenders to the Trump Organization that they needed to conduct their own valuations of Trump properties before deciding to lend the business money.

Trump Lawyer Alina Habba:  NY Judge Was 'Definitely Assisting' Anti-Trump Lawyers.  Justice Arthur Engoron was "definitely assisting" the opposing attorneys in espousing anti-Trump sentiments on Monday, former President Donald Trump's lawyer and spokeswoman Alina Habba said during a Tuesday appearance on Breitbart News Daily, outlining the absurdities of the New York civil fraud case while discussing some of the drama around Trump's testimony.  Trump testified at the New York County Supreme Court on Monday and had a back-and-forth with Justice Arthur Engoron, which went viral after the judge reportedly asked Trump's counsel, "Can you control your client?  This is not a political rally."  Trump counsel Chris Kise reportedly responded, "You're in control of the courtroom, not me."  In another viral moment, Habba told Engoron he was there to "hear what he [Trump] has to say" after repeated interruptions.  "I'm not here to hear what he has to say.  He's here to answer questions," Engoron retorted.

Special Counsel Jack Smith argues that Trump can still be convicted in Jan 6 case even if former president genuinely believed he won the election.  Special Counsel Jack Smith's team have filed another blistering filing in Donald Trump's January 6 case, accusing him of 'deceit, trickery, or dishonest means,' while arguing his own belief that he won the 2020 election isn't relevant to charges he defrauded the government.  The indictment that has Trump heading toward a March trial in federal court in Washington, DC charges that he 'made knowingly false claims that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 presidential election,' then led a conspiracy to try to overturn the results for Joe Biden.  This included 'dozens' of claims of substantial fraud, dead voters, or illegal alien voters, even while top officials in his own government were telling him there was no such large scale fraud.

The Editor says...
I am convinced that tens of millions of legitimate voters — including myself — believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, or he would have won in the absence of wholesale fraud.  Organized fraud.  Premeditated fraud.  Fraud that can only be carried out after an extensive conspiracy.  (There — I said it.)  Someday the truth will be known.

Former Trump Official Sues Biden Admin Over Committee With Members Who Signed Hunter Biden Laptop Letter.  Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Richard Grenell along with America First Legal are suing the Biden administration, according to a copy of the lawsuit first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the formation of the "expert" board to address issues of national security in September to include Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former CIA Operations Officer Paul Kolbe, who all signed an October 2020 letter casting doubt on the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop and suggesting its release was a Russian disinformation ploy.  The latest legal action alleges that the group's creation was done in an illegal manner and that it lacks credible members, according to the copy of the lawsuit.

Court Pauses Order Restricting Trump's Speech About Federal Election Case.  A gag order against former President Donald Trump related to his federal 2020 election case has been paused by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals after Trump filed an emergency request on Thursday saying the order violated his First Amendment rights.  The court issued an administrative stay, saying that the decision was made to give the judges more time to hear Trump's arguments.  The court said that the ruling "should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits."  U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, had imposed the gag order on Trump Sunday night after Trump criticized former chief of staff Mark Meadows.  Chutkan is overseeing special counsel Jack Smith's federal election case against Trump, who has denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

DC Appeals Court Overrules Judge Chutkan Gag Order.  A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has lifted District Judge Tanya Chutkan's gag order prohibiting Trump from criticizing the special counsel, Jack Smith, or "any foreseeable witness" in the case.  In my opinion, it was the generalized "foreseeable witness" part of the Chutkan order that became the central issue for the appellate court.  Jack Smith could name anyone as a potential witness, just to silence the accused.  President Trump's team previously indicated in their filing to the appeals court that they are prepared to seek immediate relief at the Supreme Court.  However, at least now, that approach will not be needed as the DC Appellate Court has blocked the gag order.

Knowing They Will Lose At The Ballot Box,Soros-Funded Leftists Turn To Lawfare To Defeat Trump.  If leftists have their way, the 2024 presidential election will be decided in courtrooms by liberal judges — not by Americans at ballot boxes across the country.  With President Biden's poll numbers at all-time lows and public polling showing former President Trump consistently leading in 2024, Democrats are scrambling not to win the support of voters but to simply disqualify their opponent through Democrat operatives, attorneys, and judges.  This strategy is especially rich coming from the "democracy is on the ballot" crowd.  Apparently, "democracy is on the ballot" means only Joe Biden is on the ballot.  I've been in Denver this week witnessing the latest use of lawfare to defeat Trump in front of Democrat judges instead of American voters.  Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is behind the irresponsible and left-wing billionaire-funded lawsuit.  CREW, which received funding from George Soros' Open Society Foundations, has a history of frivolous lawsuits targeting Donald Trump.  The left-wing organization exists to abuse the legal system to harm Republicans, and they might get lucky this time with their Hail Mary attempt to take out Trump.  The judge presiding over their case is Sarah Wallace, a Democrat donor who was appointed just last year by Democrat Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

Could Be Interesting — Tucker Carlson Visits Julian Assange?  For a brief moment I will allow myself to imagine that Tucker Carlson's research team is aware of the information we have previously provided.  If so, an interview with Julian Assange could be exceptionally interesting.  Tucker posts on Twitter that he was visiting with Julian Assange today:  [Tweet] [...] Julian Assange was not a threat to Donald Trump, but he was a threat to those who attempted to stop Donald Trump.  In 2017, the DC system was reacting to a presidency they did not control.  As an outcome, the Office of the President was being managed and influenced by some with ulterior motives. [...] Why would CIA Director Mike Pompeo be so concerned about Julian Assange and Wikileaks in April 2017?  In April of 2017 Pompeo's boss, President Donald Trump, was under assault from the intelligence community writ large, and every deep state actor was leaking to the media in a frenzied effort to continue the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy.  The Trump-Russia effort was so all consuming that FBI Director James Comey was even keeping a diary of engagement with President Trump in order to support an ongoing investigation built on fraud — yet, Mike Pompeo is worried about Julian Assange.

Colorado Prosecutors Caught in Major Lie in Court Case to Remove President Trump from Ballot.  The Democrat Party's radical far-left attorneys in Colorado delivered their opening statement to toss President Trump from the ballot in the state.  During their opening remarks, the Trump-hating attorneys shared two clips of President Trump's speech at the Ellipse to a million supporters on January 6, 2021.  They insist President Trump started a violent riot.  But they refused to play video of his statement calling on his supporters to peacefully march to the US Capitol.  But that's not all.  The prosecuting attorneys also lied about their timeline of events they showed the court on Monday.  The attorneys misrepresented the time stamps on the videos they played in court — not be minutes but by hours!

Complaint Calls for Trump New York Trial Judge's Clerk to Be Disbarred for Excessive Political Donations.  The top clerk for New York Justice Arthur Engoron, Allison Greenfield, appears to have violated judicial rules preventing officers of the court from making excessive political donations, Breitbart News has learned.  What's more, it appears Engoron was advised of Greenfield's violations in a 72-page complaint addressed to his court via email that was also filed with the New York State Bar Association the same day he decided to issue a gag order against former President Donald Trump in his case currently playing out in Engoron's Manhattan courtroom.  Engoron has subsequently fined Trump a total of $15,000 for two alleged violations of that gag order preventing the former president from criticizing his principal law clerk.

Trump civil fraud trial is a sham.  One of the central allegations in this trial is that Trump and his associates used "false and misleading" financial statements to secure more favorable loan terms.  However, it is crucial to distinguish between aggressive business practices and fraudulent intent.  Trump's alleged inflated valuations of assets can be attributed to his shrewd business acumen.  Real estate values often vary and are subject to interpretation, making differing valuations familiar in the industry.  The prosecution must demonstrate that Trump and his associates deliberately misled lenders and not simply that they had different assessments of asset values.  It is essential to emphasize that the charges against Trump and the Trump Organization are civil, not criminal.  In a civil trial, the burden of proof is considerably lower than in a criminal case.  The prosecution merely needs to show that specific actions occurred and that they were fraudulent without having to prove malicious intent.  This lower standard for evidence makes it easier for allegations to be brought forward but does not necessarily indicate wrongdoing.

Consequences of American Communism.  [Scroll down]  Unfortunately, too many people are looking at the political polls and think that it's just a matter of time before Trump is re-elected.  That's not an answer, that's a hope.  Even if the globalist powerbase in control of our politicians would allow a fair election to take place, Trump will be as hamstrung as he was last time.  Simply being the president does not eradicate the massive administrative state that turned its back on him and his policies in his first term.  Blue states sued him over everything he tried to do just to gum up the works and get it into the courts, shutting it down for years while the issue worked through the legal system and whether he won or lost, the momentum and any benefit of it was drained out in the process.

Court challenges to keep Trump off 2024 election ballots begin in two states.  A legal effort to use the Constitution's "insurrection" clause to block former President Donald Trump from running for office in 2024 is becoming a more serious threat as hearings begin in two states over cases that could reach the highest court.  A weeklong hearing begins in Colorado on Monday over a lawsuit that cites the Civil War-era provision of the 14th Amendment that blocks those who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and later "engaged in insurrection" from holding higher office.  Oral arguments over a similar question also start at the Minnesota Supreme Court on Thursday. [...] The practical outcome for the challengers is to see that Trump stays off the November 2024 presidential election ballot in both states.

The Editor says...
Has President Trump been tried and convicted?  Even if Trump is guilty of insurrection, which he isn't, why not let the voters decide, to "preserve democracy?"  If Canada can put Castro Junior on the ballot, the U.S. can hold a referendum on Trump and let the voters take him or leave him.

Trial begins on whether Trump should be kept off the 2024 ballot in Colorado.  A Denver court began hearing arguments Monday in a lawsuit seeking to bar former President Donald Trump from the state's 2024 ballot over his role in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.  The trial comes after Colorado Judge Sarah Wallace last week rejected the latest attempt by Trump to toss the lawsuit, which was filed on behalf of six voters in Denver district court last month.  The lawsuit argues Trump should be prohibited from running in future elections, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states no person may hold office if they "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" after swearing under oath to support and defend the Constitution.  The suit alleges Trump violated his oath of office in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Denver judge overseeing Trump disqualification case won't recuse over political contribution.  On the first morning of a weeklong hearing to determine if Donald Trump is constitutionally ineligible to appear on Colorado's 2024 presidential primary ballot, the judge overseeing the case rejected Trump's request to recuse herself over a $100 political contribution she made prior to taking the bench.  Scott Gessler, an attorney for Trump, "reluctantly" filed a motion on Saturday seeking Denver District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace's recusal.  Gessler indicated he only learned on Oct. 27 that, prior to her appointment as a judge, Wallace made a $100 contribution to the Colorado Turnout Project.  "Its website proudly proclaims that the group was formed 'shortly after Colorado Republicans refused to condemn the political extremists who stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,'" Gessler wrote.  "A contribution to the Colorado Turnout Project shows support for the view that January 6, 2021, constituted an 'insurrection.'"

President Trump Absolutely Destroys Lawless NYC Judge Engoron After Case Collapses.  President Trump used his Constitutional right to Free Speech on Friday to go off on the crooked Judge Arthur Engoron, New York State Attorney General Letitia James for continuing this lawfare suit against President Trump and his family after the star witness testified this week that there is zero evidence that President Trump misrepresented the value of his assets to gain business loans for his company.  There is no victim in this lawsuit.  President Trump paid off each loan and the banks admitted they would readily loan him money for future projects.  Engoron is the same bizarre and unhinged judge who opened the garbage trial against Donald Trump and his business empire by giggling to the cameras.

It's almost like there's a conspiracy against Trump.  The moment that Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the outlines of a conspiracy began.  Obama, Biden, their staff, Democrat lifers in the DOJ, FBI, CIA, the Pentagon, the establishment media, woke billionaires and the Democrat party, foremost among them House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, shaped a plan to wreck his presidency and cheat to defeat him in 2020. [...] Dr. Anthony Fauci's Wuhan virus coincidently escaped the lab.  Aware, and against Trump, the CCP permitted thousands of infected passengers to enter the U.S. where it created a pandemic.  Anticipating it and seemingly prepared for it, the Democrat party exploited it to create a seismic, unprecedented distortion in public policies around economy-killing lockdowns, and in voting rules, increasing unverifiable ballots by previously unheard of multiples.  It coordinated with its champions in social, print and network media to censor and suppress [embarrassing] information about its own candidate and his depraved family.

Trump Exonerated in Years-Long DOJ Probe.  Former President Donald Trump was exonerated by the Department of Justice on Thursday in an investigation into the FBI's intentions to vacate the prestigious J. Edgar Hoover building.  The investigation determined that allegations of collusion made to defend his Washington, D.C. hotel were without merit.  Democratic members of Congress were the first to request the report.  They claimed that President Trump exerted pressure on former Director Christopher Wray to authorize a relocation plan that would have thwarted the development of a competing hotel on the site of the Hoover Building, but provided no evidence to support their claims.  This request resulted in the Oversight and Review Division of the DOJ publishing the report.  Once the Bureau realized that selling the Hoover Building to a private developer would not generate sufficient funds to purchase a new structure, it ultimately decided against proceeding.

Hole opens in Fani Willis' RICO case against Trump.  An analysis of the Georgia organized crime case being brought against President Donald Trump and a dozen of his close associates during the 2020 election fight has revealed a hole in the case.  So far, among the four defendants who have reached plea agreements, none has ended up with a guilty verdict to the core claim, the RICO organized crime count.  The charges brought by prosecutor Fani Willis claim that Trump and others broke the law when they worked to reverse the decision that Joe Biden won the state in 2020.  Willis famously claims that Trump's insistence to state officials that they look for additional ballots was confirmation of a crime, even though similar comments are routine for politicians in the heat of an election fight.  Since then, of course, evidence of significant outside election influence for the 2020 results has become known, including the $400 million plus that Mark Zuckerberg handed out to recruit voters from Democrat districts to help Joe Biden.

Jack Smith Asks Judge Chutkan to Impose Stricter Gag Order on Trump, Send Him to Jail If He Talks About Witnesses.  Special Counsel Jack Smith asked Judge Tanya Chutkan to impose a strict federal gag order on Trump and send him to jail if he talks about any witnesses.  In August Trump was hit with 4 counts in Jack Smith's January 6 case up in DC:  Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.  Jack Smith is using the DC J6 case to gag Trump.  The special counsel's prosecutors accused Trump of attempting to "prejudice the jury pool through disparaging and inflammatory attacks on the citizens of this District, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses."

Romney is not stupid.  He's either lying or incompetent.
Mitt Romney confesses he didn't know anything about Burisma when he voted to impeach President Trump.  Mitt Romney voted to impeach President Trump for a phone call in which the president encouraged Ukraine to investigate allegations of serious corruption — coincidentally involving the Biden crime family — but according to a new book, the failed politician admits he had no idea what Burisma was when he voted to impeach a duly-elected president for calling on foreign governments to investigate alleged criminality.  That is extreme ignorance (not to mention dangerous) when a senator is willing to impeach a president just because he doesn't like him, all without knowing the facts.

[A] Democrat-Appointed Colorado Judge [Enables an] Effort to Kick Trump Off [the] 2024 Ballot.  A Colorado judge Friday denied a motion by Donald Trump and the Colorado GOP to throw out a lawsuit seeking to block Trump from appearing on the ballot in Colorado.  The ruling was issued by Judge Sarah Wallace, a Colorado district court judge.  Wallace was appointed to the bench earlier this year by Democrat Gov. Jared Polis.  Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, faces challenges to appear on the ballot in multiple states based on his alleged role in events of January 6, 2021.  Those lawsuits cite the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in the aftermath of the Civil War, which bans those who "engaged in insurrection" from holding public office.  Trump has not been convicted of insurrection and was acquitted by the U.S. Senate of charges of engaging in insurrection.

Sidney Powell's Guilty Plea Points to a Faltering Case in Atlanta.  While the media spin will be different, my first impression of Sidney Powell's guilty plea in the Fulton County election-interference case is:  It signals that District Attorney Fani Willis's much-heralded RICO indictment — in which 19 are charged, including Powell's famous co-defendant Donald Trump — is a dud.  Powell is the second defendant in the case to be offered a misdemeanor plea to dispose of what was publicized as an indictment of the grand conspiracy to destroy American democracy.  A bail bondsman named Scott Hall, who was implicated in the same scheme as Powell in Willis's sprawling indictment — namely, a plot to access voting data in rural Coffee County, Ga. — was permitted to plead guilty on September 29 to misdemeanor charges involving intentional interference with the performance of election duties.  Like Powell (and Trump), Hall was hit with the big RICO-conspiracy charge, as well as several felony charges.  Like Powell, his plea to the minor charges will assure him of a non-prison sentence.

Judge temporarily lifts narrow gag order on Trump in 2020 election interference case.  The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump's 2020 election interference case in Washington agreed Friday to temporarily lift her narrow gag order.  The ruling gives Trump's lawyers time to prove why the former president's comments should not be restricted as the case heads toward trial.  U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said the gag order would remain on hold — for now — while she considers Trump's bid to speak freely about the case as he challenges the restrictions in higher courts.

A federal judge's gag order against Trump may be satisfying.  But it isn't constitutional.  Although I often wish that Donald Trump would shut up, he has a constitutional right not to.  A federal judge went too far in restricting his free expression Monday when she imposed a gag order on the former president.  U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the Washington prosecution of Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, ordered him to refrain from rhetoric targeting prosecutors and court personnel as well as inflammatory statements about likely witnesses.

Government Gangsters:  How the Deep State Imperils National Security.  Like most Americans, Kash Patel grew up believing that the country was run as a democracy, with a government that honors the will of the people and is accountable to them.  It was only much later, as an attorney and then as a senior advisor to former president Donald Trump, that he encountered — and confronted — what has come to be called the Deep State, people at the highest levels of government, business, and culture who subvert democracy to serve their own ends.  In his recent book Government Gangsters:  The Deep State, The Truth and the Battle for our Democracy, Patel describes the Deep State in broad terms as the politicization of core American institutions and the federal government.  More specifically, this oligarchy includes elected leaders, journalists, business leaders, and NGOs with leftist ideologies.  But its most entrenched and active arm comprises "members of the unelected federal bureaucracy who think they have the right to rule America, not Congress or the president."

Donald Trump fined $5,000 for violating gag order in New York fraud trial and warned twice about imprisonment.  Former President Donald Trump was fined $5,000 by a New York judge on Friday for violating a gag order not to speak about any members of the court staff — and was warned twice about possible imprisonment.  "Donald Trump has received ample warning from this Court as to the possible repercussions of violating the gag order.  He specifically acknowledged that he understood and would abide by it," Judge Arthur Engoron said in his order Friday.  "Accordingly, issuing yet another warning is not longer appropriate; this Court is way behind the 'warning' stage."

Jack Smith Gives Trump Huge Win — Withdraws Key Subpoena.  Indicators suggest that the ongoing federal litigation against former President Donald Trump, in which he is accused of meddling in the 2020 election, is waning.  Recent action by special counsel Jack Smith to revoke a substantial subpoena demanding information regarding the president's fundraising activities during the specified time frame.  Smith is reportedly reducing the quantity of subpoenas he has issued to facilitate an investigation into whether President Trump solicited funds in support of allegations that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election fraudulently.

Trump Files Notice Of Appeal For Gag Order Blocking Statements About Special Counsel, Witnesses.  Former President Donald Trump will appeal a gag order issued Tuesday by the federal judge overseeing his 2020 election case.  Trump filed his notice of appeal just hours after U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, issued the written order.  Chutkan partially granted the Department of Justice's proposed order from the bench Monday, blocking Trump in the written order Tuesday from making public statements targeting Special Counsel Jack Smith or his staff, the defense counsel or their staff, court staff and "any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony."  The order issued by Chutkan also blocks Trump from "directing others to make any public statements" falling into the prohibited categories.

Ex-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell pleads guilty in Georgia election interference case.  Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty Thursday morning in the Georgia election interference case just a day before jury selection in her trial alongside co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro was set to begin.  Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts in Fulton County Superior Court as part of a deal reached with prosecutors.  Powell agreed to serve six years of probation and pay a $6,000 fine and $2,700 in restitution to the state of Georgia.  She also agreed to submit an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia and to testify at related court proceedings.  Powell was one of 19 defendants named in District Attorney Fani Willis' indictment, which also charged former President Donald Trump.  Powell, who acted as one of Trump's lawyers after his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, was charged with racketeering, conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to commit computer theft, trespassing and invasion of privacy, and conspiracy to defraud the state.

Sidney Powell Flips, Cuts a Deal in Georgia.  Sidney Powell finally delivered a real "Kraken on steroids" in the 2020 election saga.  Only this time, it won't prove that the election got stolen — it will help Fani Willis build her RICO case against Donald Trump and 17 other co-defendants in Fulton County, Georgia.  Trump's key election attorney and architect of "Stop the Steal" cut a surprising plea deal this morning.  Powell will get probation for six misdemeanor guilty pleas and testimony against her co-defendants:  [Tweet with video clip]

Prediction:  Sidney Powell won't be cooperating against Trump.  Today, Sidney Powell accepted a plea agreement from the Fulton County District Attorney, pleading to six counts of "Conspiracy to Commit Intentional Interference with Performance of Election Duties."  Those are all misdemeanors.  She faces six years of probation, a $6,000 fine, and have to pay $2,700 in restitution.  Call that a win for the defense.  Here's why.  Powell was indicted with seven felony counts: conspiracy to violate Georgia's RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statute; two counts of conspiracy to commit election fraud; conspiracy to commit computer theft, trespass, and invasion of privacy; and conspiracy to defraud the state.  These charges are felonies that carry heavy penalties.  A conviction under Georgia's RICO conspiracy statute, for example, requires a punishment of between five and 20 years of imprisonment.  See Ga. Code Ann. § 16-14-5.  That gets us to our second point — the risk of conviction.

The Trump gag order should be struck down.  The imposition of a gag order on former President Donald Trump was overwhelmingly applauded by pundits and press alike.  Journalists described the order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan as "narrow" and "limited."  Most of them lionized Chutkan as an "unflinching" and "no-nonsense" judge who would not tolerate Trump's penchant for personal attacks and reckless rhetoric.  However, this order should concern everyone who values freedom of speech.  While the odds may favor Chutkan on appeal, this order should be overturned as overbroad and dangerous.  For years, many of us have been criticized Trump for his personal attacks on judges and opponents alike.  Undeterred, Trump has continued such inflammatory attacks on "deranged" Special Counsel Jack Smith and the "biased, Trump-hating Judge" Chutkan.  Smith has pushed aggressively for a gag order, even though one of the major issues in Trump's campaign is whether the Biden Administration has weaponized the criminal justice system against him and other Republicans. [...] These orders come at a great cost — limiting both parties and counsels in raising objections to alleged abuses of the government.

Judge Chutkan Releases Official Gag Order on Trump and It's Worse Than We Thought.  Judge Tanya Chutkan released the gag order on Trump and it is worse than we thought.  Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday imposed a gag order on Trump in the middle of a presidential election.  Last month Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a motion to gag Trump.  "The need for the proposed order is further evidenced by a review of the defendant's prejudicial statements in the weeks since the Government initially filed its motion on September 15," Jack Smith's prosecutors wrote in the court filing reviewed by this reporter.

Obtuse, Thy Name is Chutkan.  In one of the most disingenuously undefined judicial rulings in recent memory, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan says President Trump may not "target" a member of the court or prosecution in his rebuke of their official offices against him.  [Exhibit]  Obviously, Judge Chutkan intends to give herself the most latitude possible when defining what terms of speech may end up being considered "targeting." However, criticism is not a possible definition in ordinary parlance.  So, we'll see.  Additionally, Chutkan did not outline what, if any, punishment would be levied in the event she considers any statement to be considered "targeting."

Hate Trump All You Like, The Gag Order Is Still Wrong.  This week, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan overseeing United States v. Donald Trump issued a gag order prohibiting a leading presidential candidate, Donald Trump, from engaging in speech aimed at "government staff," among others, during his trial.  Listen, I understand the disdain some conservatives feel for the former president.  I share the sentiment.  But if you're cheering on a judge who's inhibiting political speech on rickety grounds, you're no friend of the "democracy" or the Constitution. [...] Who is Chutkan to dictate the contours of a presidential candidate's political speech?  What if one of the "participating government staff" or a family member is compromised by partisanship?  Moreover, preemptively suggesting that without gagging, Trump will engage in a "smear campaign" is as prejudicial to the case as any of the inflammatory things Trump has thrown around.  It implies that any accusation now aimed at prosecutors is untrue.

Judge Prohibits Trump From Speaking Out Against Prosecutors, Others.  Judge Tanya Chutkan, presiding over the case against former President Donald Trump for allegedly interfering in the 2020 presidential election, ordered certain restrictions on what President Trump can say in relation to his case after hearing arguments on the morning of Oct. 16.  Judge Chutkan said she would not impose restrictions on statements he makes about Washington, D.C., or criticism of the government, including the Biden administration and the Department of Justice (DOJ). However, President Trump will be prohibited from posting statements attacking special counsel Jack Smith, his staff, Judge Chutkan's staff and other court personnel, and the families of any of these people.  He is also limited in part about what he can say about potential witnesses; for example, he may make posts about former Vice President Mike Pence, but not in regard to underlying events connected to his case.

President Trump Responds to Obama Judge's Unconstitutional Gag Order.  Earlier today lawless Trump-hating DC Judge Tanya Chutkan hit President Trump with a gag order in his DOJ lawsuit by the Biden regime.  President Trump will be barred from speaking out against Special Counsel Jack Smith, court witnesses and more!  This is complete lawlessness and is meant to silence President Trump as Jack Smith continues to leak to the press on a weekly basis.  This was an unprecedented move by a Trump-hating DC judge who has openly spoken out against President Trump and his supporters.

Chutkan's Gag Order Is Pure Gold for Trump Campaign.  U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has issued a so-called "limited gag order" restricting what former president Donald Trump can say about his ongoing election interference prosecution in the District of Columbia.  In granting the motion of Special Counsel Jack Smith to silence Trump, Chutkan stated from the bench, "This is not about whether I like the language Mr. Trump uses.  This is about language that presents a danger to the administration of justice."  Judge Chutkan claimed that she was balancing Trump's First Amendment right to free expression with prosecutors' concerns that his frequent social media attacks might intimidate witnesses or imperil the integrity of the court's proceedings. [...] In other words, we won't know exactly what speech Chutkan is forbidding until she files her written order.  But, regardless of its terms, there can be no dispute that her gagging of the leading Republican candidate for the presidency is unprecedented and an alarming milestone on this nation's descent into banana republic status.

Beyond Orwell — DC Judge Rules President Trump is Not Permitted to Criticize Trial, Judge, Witnesses or Prosecution.  Yes, DC Judge Tanya Chutkan can decree from her perch that President Donald Trump is not permitted to criticize his persecution, the court, the witnesses who will testify against him or the political prosecution that is targeting the leading 2024 presidential candidate, but executing that decree is another kettle of fish entirely.  It is one thing to decree your control over independent speech, it is another thing entirely to try and enforce that decree.  Thankfully, and standing firm in his position, President Trump said in response he is "willing to go to jail, if that's what it takes for our country to win and become a democracy again."

Gagging Trump.  Another precedent-setting event related to the criminal prosecution of a former president is scheduled for Monday morning in the federal courtroom of Judge Tanya S. Chutkan in Washington.  Special Counsel Jack Smith is asking Chutkan — an Obama appointee with a record of biased and often inaccurate statements about Donald Trump and the events of January 6 in general — to silence the leading GOP presidential contender on a key campaign issue through the heart of the 2024 primary season.

Trump Hit With Gag Order!  Leading Presidential Candidate Barred from Attacking DOJ Hitman Jack Smith.  Lawless DC Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama-appointed judge, hit President Trump with a gag order on Monday.  President Trump will be barred from speaking out against Special Counsel Jack Smith, court witnesses and more!  This is complete lawlessness and is meant to silence President Trump as Jack Smith continues to leak to the press on a weekly basis.

Tripling value of Trump's NYC penthouse was 'minor' mistake, ex-CFO testifies at civil fraud trial.  Exaggerating the size of Donald Trump's Manhattan penthouse on financial documents amounted to just a minor mistake, his longtime finance chief testified Tuesday — waving off one of the key claims in the New York attorney general's fraud case against the ex-president.  Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg acknowledged that a 1994 document listed the Trump Tower triplex at its true size of 10,996 square feet — rather than the bloated 30,000 square feet that Trump, 77, allegedly falsely claimed for years on financial statements.  But Weisselberg said the misstated value of the apartment was "de minimis" — a Latin term frequently used in law to mean that something is too trivial to warrant consideration.  "I never even thought about the apartment," Weisselberg testified in Manhattan Supreme Court during trial over New York Attorney General Letitia James' $250 million fraud lawsuit against Trump.

Donald the Inevitable.  Readers may recall that I favored a DeSantis-Trump duel for the nomination until the day they really did indict Donald Trump.  It was then that the reality of the depth of the evil we fight hit home.  I will say it again: we have no choice but to re-elect him if we are to retake the republic from the bananas.  I am not alone.  In its report on despondent Never Trump donors, Disney's ABC said, "Trump hasn't polled at less than 50% in 538's national average since late August."  That is the immediate American reaction to the Mugshot — which Never Trumpers thought was going to save them but actually sank them.  But they valiantly go down with the ship.  The Washington Examiner — owned by Philip Anschutz, a Never Trumper — blames Trump for the indictments.

America's Armageddon.  [Scroll down]  I contend this scenario is not at all unrealistic, as we've seen our justice system weaponized against one political party, the arrest of Donald Trump for a misdemeanor, the attempted coup via the Steel Dossier, the purposeful undermining of our energy security, defunding of police, release of felons whose felony charges are reduced to misdemeanors, labeling parents as domestic terrorists, and ignoring of oaths of office and the law by opening of our borders north and south to whomever wishes to enter.  Anyone of the latter events is cause for great concern, but together they paint a picture of a purposeful strategy given such acts are not coincidental.  In simple terms, the current actions by a set of radical left progressive extremists are not ad hoc.  It is more likely a well-planned, and staged, implementation of a strategy.  We must consider this a real possibility if we are honest in assessing, imagining, and projecting what can unfold.

Trump Scores a Significant Victory in Court.  Leftist Judge Arthur Engoron's behavior and actions in Trump's civil fraud trial have been questionable at best.  His bizarre valuation of Mar-a-Lago at $17 million when real estate experts put it at closer to $300 million has been just one of many factors leading many to believe that the outcome of this trial has been predetermined by anti-Trump partisans.  Last month, Engoron even ordered the dissolution of Trump's businesses, a move that prompted a swift response from Trump's legal team.  Trump's attorney Christopher Kise argued that the dissolution of Trump's businesses would have been a disaster for not only the businesses but for the company's employees.  On Friday, a New York appeals court judge, Associate Justice Peter Moulton, reversed Engoron's order, though he did allow for the bogus civil fraud trial to continue.

Jonathan Turley Says New York AG 'Hell Bent' On Destroying Trump's Companies.  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Friday that Democratic Attorney General Letitia James of New York was "hell bent" on destroying former President Donald Trump's business empire.  New York Judge Arthur F. Engoron issued a ruling finding that Trump's business was guilty of committing fraud Sept. 26, ordering Trump's business licenses to be rescinded and seeking to dissolve Trump's businesses, but the dissolution was placed on hold by an appeals court judge Friday.  Trump has spoken out against the trial, calling it a "sham" and calling for Engoron to be disbarred.  [Video clip]  "Those employees don't really have a representative in court for their interest and there is also this question of just overkill," Turley told "Ingraham Angle" guest host Kayleigh McEnany.  "You know, there is evidence of overvaluing and undervaluing assets in this case.  That has long been a problem in real estate."

In Her Jan. 6 Courtroom, Judge Who Will Hear Trump's Case Is the Pot Calling the Defendant Incendiary.  At her first appearance in the criminal case against Donald Trump for his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya S. Chutkan repeatedly warned the former president's lawyers that politics would not be tolerated in her courtroom.  But even as she warns Trump about his "inflammatory" language, Chutkan has routinely issued politically charged rulings and made incendiary statements of her own while presiding over some 30 cases involving Trump supporters charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, melee at the U.S. Capitol.  These include her public assertions that the 2020 election was beyond reproach, that the Jan. 6 protests were orchestrated by Trump, and that the former president is guilty of crimes.  She has described Jan. 6 as a "mob attack" on "the very foundation of our democracy." Chutkan's strident language raises questions about her impartiality in handling the case against the presumptive GOP nominee for president in 2024.

Georgia Election Case Defendant Seeks Dismissal Over Prosecutor's 'Embarrassing' Mistake.  An apparent paperwork oversight could jeopardize the case against one of former President Donald Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case, although one former state prosecutor said the issue would "at worst" likely be considered merely "embarrassing" by the presiding judge.  An attorney for Kenneth Chesebro argued in a court filing Wednesday that Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade was never qualified under state law to present the case to the Fulton County grand jury in the first place.  The motion to dismiss the charges against Chesebro says that makes Wade's work on the case, including the indictment against Chesebro, "void as a matter of law."

10 Ways Democrats Are Already Rigging the 2024 Election.  Who needs free and fair elections when you can just throw your political opponents behind bars ahead of a major election?  Spanning four separate cases and 91 felony counts, the DOJ and leftist prosecutors' seemingly coordinated efforts to imprison Trump could not represent a more obvious attempt to interfere in the election process.

Trump, Citing Immunity, Seeks Dismissal of Federal Election Charges.  Former President Donald Trump filed a motion on Thursday seeking the dismissal of federal election conspiracy charges on the grounds he cannot be prosecuted for actions he took while in the White House.  Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is to go on trial in Washington in March of next year for allegedly conspiring to subvert the results of the November 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.  The former president's lawyers, in a 52-page motion to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, argued the charges should be thrown out.

Judge Engoron Bars Trump, Trump Family Members From Transferring Assets without Notifying Appointed Court Monitor — Former Clinton Judge Barbara Jones.  Far-left Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron barred Trump and Trump's family members from transferring assets or creating new entities without notifying an appointed court monitor on day 4 of Letitia James' Stalinist show trial.  The independent court monitor, Barbara Jones, is a former federal judge appointed by Bill Clinton. [...] Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last Tuesday that Trump and Trump Org. are liable for fraud.  The judge also ruled that Mar-a-Lago is worth $18 million — of course, no one in the real estate business is buying this.

MSNBC Legal Analyst Says Letitia James Made 'Tactical Error' By Going After Trump For Court Appearance.  MSNBC legal analyst Rebecca Roiphe said Thursday that Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James made a "tactical error" by criticizing former President Donald Trump on Wednesday after his court appearance.  Speaking to reporters after the third day of hearings in the civil suit brought by James herself, she said the "Donald Trump show is over."  "This was nothing more than a political stunt.  A fund-raising stop, and now we can continue to go forward with our trial, and we are confident that justice will be served."

You can't drain a swamp from a raft in the middle.  Democrats will pervert the law in unimaginable ways to prevent a second Trump presidency, and the mainstream media will publish any lie to help them.  They will convict him a hundred times of a hundred crimes.  They impeached a former president for the first time in history; why not impeach a president-elect?  The legal maneuvers to prevent the inauguration of a president who is obsessively hated by the federal government, the left-wing media and corporations, and who has already been outlandishly persecuted for seven years, are unimaginable.  If all else fails, much of this nation will be burned to the ground.  Other things too awful to speak of could happen.  Gullible, emotional people raised to a fever pitch of hatred against one man for seven years might do anything.

Judge presiding over Trump's Manhattan civil trial exclusively donated to Democrats.  New York City Judge Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over former President Donald Trump's civil fraud trial, has exclusively donated to Democrats, according to a report.  Engoron wields unique authority over Trump's civil fraud case.  It is a jury-free bench trial, with Engoron overseeing it and ultimately determining its outcome and penalties.  New York Attorney General Letitia James wants a $250 million penalty imposed on Trump's businesses after accusing him of fraudulent practices.  Engoron, meanwhile, has shown support for Democrats with his checkbook in the past.

That's not how it works.  I appeared this afternoon on Fox Live Now to talk about the civil trial of Donald Trump and numerous Trump organizations for allegedly inflating property valuations to deceive banks and insurance companies.  The backdrop to the interview was Trump's statement as he entered court earlier in the day:  [Video clip][...] The judge ordered New York business certificates for numerous Trump entities cancelled.  That alone could have a devastating impact on the businesses.  The current trial is just about the additional penalties sought, including hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and an order barring Trump and his organizations from doing business in New York State.  That would be, as Trump has said, a business death penalty.  This all is egregious.  There is no claim that consumers or banks and insurance companies lost money, or were defrauded out of money.  That may not be an element of the offenses, but if you are going to destroy a massive business built over decades over property valuations without any impact on the public, it's an overreach.  And obviously politically motivated.

Trump Receives Another Dose of Political Persecution from a Democrat Judge.  On 26 September, a partisan Democrat judge in Manhattan determined that Donald Trump and his family business fraudulently inflated the value of his properties and other assets to obtain business licenses over the years.  The decision paves the wave for Trump-hating New York State Attorney General Letitia James (who campaigned on a "get-Trump" by calling him a "con man" and "carnival barker") to determine damages as she has been reduced to prosecuting (suing) Trump and his family for what amounts to a victimless non-crime.  A secondary goal appears to be to destroy Trump's ability to do business in New York in the future because the judge ordered the cancellation of certificates that let some of Trump's businesses operate in New York, as well as the appointment of a receiver to manage the dissolution of those businesses.

Judges are not business experts.  A DNC-affiliated New York judge determined, in a highly irregular summary judgment, that former president Trump's detailed financial valuation statements used to finance or refinance certain real estate and related businesses were overstated, or inflated, and suddenly an area of judicial concern, despite these valuations having been unchallenged and in good standing, in some cases for decades.  Why suddenly now is a judge making such a determination against them, and more importantly, how?  In summary judgments, there can be no genuine dispute as to any material fact, and any such judgment must be made as a matter of law.  In Trump's case, facts were disputed, and no law was followed, while due process was apparently an inconvenience in the court's rush to serve its political masters.

The horrible NY ruling against Trump and the horrible judge who issued it.  It was a given when a judge ruled against Donald Trump on the suit that New York State Attorney General Letitia James filed, alleging that Trump defrauded banks to obtain loans.  The ruling revealed two interesting and important things about how leftists and their fellow travelers use the legal system and about the ideological corruption of leftist judges.  It goes without saying that the verdict was a joke.  The claim was that Trump lied to lenders to get better loan terms.  Interestingly, none of the lenders complained, and Trump paid back every penny.  More than that, commercial lenders have a due diligence responsibility, meaning they're supposed to do their own valuations before lending millions of dollars.  At Trump's level, lying is virtually impossible.  Still, it should have been a big story:  A judge claims Trump committed fraud and banned him from conducting business in New York, the state where most of the properties Trump developed exist.  You'd think that this would have been news fodder for days.

Trump Fraud Case:  Democrat Judge, Democrat Prosecutor, Democrat City.  Former President Donald Trump, two of his sons, and two of his employees were found liable for fraud Tuesday in a case brought by an elected Democrat prosecutor before an elected Democrat judge in a staunchly Democratic city.  Arthur Engoron, an elected civil Justice of the New York County Supreme Court, issued a rare summary judgment that concluded that New York Attorney General Letitia James proved her case before the defense mounted its own.  He went further, sanctioning Trump's attorneys and fining them $7500 each for filing repeated motions to dismiss that Judge Engoron decided were frivolous, disregarding the expert opinion of a former judge, filed with the court.

Real estate insiders bewildered by judge's $18M valuation of Trump's Mar-a-Lago: 'Would list at $300M'.  A New York judge's Tuesday [9/26/2023] ruling valuing Donald Trump's sprawling, headline-making Florida estate at $18 million has left industry experts perplexed.  In his verdict, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron delivered a bombshell ruling that the former president committed fraud by inflating the value of his wealth, with details including the monetary value associated with Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.  This decision, which came down without a jury, has sent shockwaves through political — and real estate — circles, especially that $18 million base value for the property.  One prominent Palm Beach real estate broker, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The [New York] Post, "It's utterly delusional to think that property is only worth $18 million."  The insider added, "If that property were on the market today, I would list it at around $300 million, minimum ... at least.  He also has the separate golf course minutes away."

New York Judge Rules Without Trial, Jury or Verdict, That President Trump Must Dissolve All Business Interests in State.  This is John Galt level government targeting.  A New York State judge has arbitrarily ruled, no trial — no jury, that President Trump overvalued his real estate holdings in New York, which means he paid too much in taxes, in order to secure financing and loans.  All the banks and lenders did their own due diligence on the financing.  All operational loans and business loans were paid back.  There were no defaults or banking interests adversely impacted.  There are no victims of what the State calls "fraud," yet the judge is ruling the Trump organization must dissolve all business interests in the state and exit within 10 days.  New York Attorney General Latisha James campaigned for office with promises to target the Trump Organization and Donald Trump himself.  This is malicious lawfare in the extreme.

Judge In Fulton County Trump Case Reveals How Dangerous This Prosecution Is To Our Country.  Did former President Donald Trump ask then-Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark's legal opinion concerning Department of Justice options for addressing voting irregularities in Georgia, or did Clark volunteer his legal analysis on the question without the president's prompting?  The federal judge presiding over Clark's removal case, who will decide whether Clark must defend himself in the Democrat stronghold of Fulton County or in a Georgia federal court, focused on that question during last week's hearing.  In doing so, the judge revealed just how crazy — and dangerous — this political prosecution is to the future of our constitutional republic.

Former Trump Campaign Attorney Says Fulton County Case Based on Illegal Evidence.  Kenneth Chesebro, who served as an attorney for the Trump Campaign during the then-president's challenge of the 2020 elections, is arguing that the Fulton County District Attorney's office is violating attorney-client privilege in its pursuit of a case against him, former President Donald Trump, and 17 other defendants.  In Thursday filings, Mr. Chesebro moved to quash the charges against him in Fulton County, arguing that they were based on emails covered by attorney-client privilege, and have any such illegally obtained evidence thrown out.  The 19 co-defendants were charged with violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as 40 other charges, for their actions in the contesting of the 2020 election results.

Jack Smith Adds Radical Left-Wing Democrat Donor to Special Counsel Team Persecuting Trump.  Jack Smith added Alex Whiting, a 'war crimes prosecutor' to his special counsel team of nearly two dozen rabid prosecutors gunning for Trump.  Whiting is a radical left-wing Trump hater who previously praised Mueller's inquisition against the former president.  Former special counsel Robert Mueller's 'Trump-Russia collusion' investigation ended in a whimper and completely crumbled.  "Whiting has been a frequent commentator on the previous special counsel to investigate Trump:  Robert Mueller, who investigated links between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign.  Whiting wrote numerous articles and gave interviews assessing the strength of Mueller's case against Trump, often siding with those who saw extreme legal peril for Trump over his efforts to curb the investigation." Politico reported.

Jack Smith Was Hired as Hitman to Take Trump Out.  Don't be fooled.  Special Counsel Jack Smith was not hired to argue a brilliant case against President Donald Trump in a court of law.  Jack Smith was not hired to bring legitimate charges against President Trump.  Jack Smith was hired as a DOJ hitman to take out Trump.  Period.  Jack Smith has always been a hitman.  He was hired as a hitman before.  He was hired as a hitman to destroy Trump.  Jack Smith is not a genius in legal theory.  That's not his job.  When Attorney General Merrick Garland, top DOJ officials, and Joe Biden's handlers met to plan their next assault on the former president they all agreed on one thing.  They needed to destroy President Trump completely and ensure that he never makes it to Election Day.

Special Counsel Jack Smith calls for 'narrowly tailored' gag order against Donald Trump in January 6 case.  Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked for a 'narrowly tailored' gag order against Donald Trump, to stop him from making 'inflammatory' and 'intimidating' comments to the judge and witnesses in the federal January 6 case.  Smith's team has accused Trump of engaging in a campaign of 'disinformation' and harassment intended to intimidate witnesses, prosecutors and others involved in the trial.  The extraordinary filing says Trump's efforts to weaken faith in the court system mirror his attacks on the 2020 election and the results.

Fulton County DA Accused of Burying Evidence That Could Derail Trump RICO Case.  Sidney Powell's defense attorney in the Fulton County, Georgia, RICO case regarding an alleged effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state accused county prosecutors Thursday of withholding exculpatory evidence in violation of the law.  Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee also made a key ruling in the case severing Powell's and pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro's cases from those of former President Donald Trump and the 16 other defendants, CNN reported.  Both Powell, a former Trump campaign attorney, and Chesebro sought a speedy trial, consistent with their Sixth Amendment right, while Trump and the other defendants want the case slowed down to better prepare their defenses.

The Mathematics of Democrat 'Justice'.  Judge Tanya Chutkan of the D.C. Federal District Court has ruled that the trial there against Trump will begin March 4, 2024.  Many have already commented on how badly that will impact candidate Trump subjectively, given the electoral calendar's Super Tuesday primaries the next day.  Attention should also be directed to how Democrat "justice" is being imposed on defendant Trump in objective terms.

Weaponizing the Fourteenth Amendment.  By now, it is clear that the concerted effort to paint Donald Trump as a criminal has backfired.  After four indictments, including the most recent 13-count indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, Pres.  Trump holds a commanding lead among prospective Republican primary voters in Iowa and elsewhere.  Evidence indicates that Trump's criminal indictments strengthen, rather than shrink, his poll numbers.  Enraged by Trump's rising popularity, his political opponents are now looking to keep his name off the ballot entirely.  Already, this effort has gained momentum in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Arizona.  These states, egged on by elite law professors, have turned the 14th Amendment, which was previously used to prevent ex-Confederates from seeking office after the Civil War, into an improvised legal weapon designed to bar the former president from reclaiming office after his actions in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election.

California Attorney Files Lawsuit to Bar Donald Trump from 2024 Ballot.  An attorney in Venice, California, filed a federal lawsuit on Saturday to bar former President Donald Trump from California's 2024 presidential primary election, arguing that he is disqualified due to his alleged role in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according to a report.  The lawsuit argues that the Fourteenth Amendment states that no one can hold office who has previously taken an oath of office to support the Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" or gave aid to those who did, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

Trumpophobes Seek to Keep Him Off '24 Ballot for Crimes He Never Committed.  As if the four previous prosecutorial cow pies that surround Donald Trump were not fetid enough, the U.S. Supreme Court soon will step into efforts to bar him from state ballots.  Assorted Trumpophobes are using the Bill of Rights to deny Americans the right to vote for or against Trump for president.  Specifically, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies from high office certain individuals who "shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [U.S. Constitution], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."  This legal theory might make sense if Trump had been imprisoned for insurrection or rebellion.  It might hold water if he had been convicted of insurrection or rebellion.  This boomlet even might boast a thimble full of steam, if the Justice Department, a state attorney general, or some county prosecutor had indicted him for insurrection or rebellion.  Unfortunately for Trump haters, that never happened.

They Are Removing Trump From The Board.  What Are You Going To Do About It?  Regardless of any delusions you, I, or anyone else may harbor on this issue, the odds that Donald Trump will be saddled with at least one FELONY conviction out of the dozens he is currently charged with are exceedingly high.  It doesn't even matter whether the charges are with or without merit.  If a firing squad is pointing 91 rounds at someone, at least one of them is gonna hit the target.  This means that this time next year, instead of campaigning or even accepting the GOP nomination in person, the former president could either be in prison or on house arrest, playing golf with an ankle bracelet.  Make no mistake.  They are removing Trump from the board. [...] It seems evident that the powers that be want to secure a GOP nomination for Trump while making it impossible for him to win or even compete in the general election.  A win was already going to be an uphill climb, but now it's absolutely impossible, and they know it.

If President Trump Is Not an 'Officer of the United States,' Section 3 Should Not Apply.  As President Donald J. Trump continues to dominate the field, some are looking to disqualify him from the ballot in different states pursuant to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, [...] The gist of the argument is that Trump allegedly engaged in an insurrection against the United States and is, therefore, prohibited from holding office.  There are many reasons why this interpretation or argument should fail.  [#1] There was no insurrection.  To begin, there is no evidence that Trump engaged in an insurrection nor proof that an insurrection occurred.  As a matter of fact, the Senate acquitted Trump of such ridiculous charges during the second impeachment.

Six Republicans File Lawsuit to Remove Trump from 2024 Ballot in Colorado.  A coalition of six Republicans and unaffiliated Colorado voters, including former state and federal officials, filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to disqualify former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state's 2024 presidential ballot.  The plaintiffs are represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonprofit and "nonpartisan" watchdog organization, alongside law firms Tierney Lawrence Stiles LLC, KBN Law, LLC, and Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray LLC.  The plaintiffs are Norma Anderson, Michelle Priola, Claudine Cmarada, Krista Kafer, Kathi Wright, and Christopher Castilian.

Trump suffers big loss in E. Jean Carroll defamation case, judge says he's liable.  A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that Donald Trump is civilly liable for defamatory statements he made about writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019 when she went public with claims he had raped her decades earlier.  Judge Lewis Kaplan, as part of that ruling, said the upcoming trial for Carroll's lawsuit against Trump will only deal with the question of how much the former president should pay her in monetary damages for defaming her.  Normally, a jury would determine at trial whether a defendant is liable for civil damages claimed by a plaintiff.

Democrat Disconnect in D.C..  It should come as no surprise to anyone that a recent poll found that a majority of residents of the District of Columbia would convict Donald Trump over his challenge of the 2020 election results.  Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) once told me during an interview that the people in D.C., particularly those inside the Beltway, have absolutely no clue about what the rest of America is thinking, feeling, or experiencing.  Granted, not everyone or perhaps anyone who responded to the survey is a member of the Marble Mafia, but the response reflects the attitudes of the coastal elites and those who faithfully adhere to the accepted narratives as opposed to, say, anyone else.  The poll, conducted by Emerson College Polling, showed that 64% of Washington residents stated that if it were up to them, they would find Trump guilty of trying to undermine the election results.  Twenty-eight percent were unsure, while 8% said that they would find Trump innocent.

We're all witnesses to an attempted political murder.  Never before has the American people been subjected to the obnoxious spectacle of a former president being relentlessly pursued by craven partisans using government (read: taxpayer-funded) resources.  One explanation involves Mr. Trump's unique ability to bring out the worst in his enemies.  Actually, it may also be caused by a common character weakness among his opponents.  One would need an enormous score card to keep track of all the indictments and other litigations being heaped upon Mr. Trump.  He has thus employed an army of attorneys in order to resist the onslaught.  Being a billionaire has certainly come in handy for this effort — but a few billion dollars can go only so far.  The stubborn continuation of his candidacy for re-election allows him to raise campaign contributions, some of which can be applied to his legal defense — because they are an appropriate campaign expense, much like media advertisements, mailers and travel.  The prevailing countermeasure has been for the Deep State thugs to add Trump's lawyers to their target list.

MAGA vs. the DoJ.  Along with all its other efforts to hamstring Donald Trump's legal defense in the D.C. case, the DoJ has dumped 12.8 million documents on Trump's defense team, leaving them without adequate time to prepare before the March court date.  This is unlikely to earn them much consideration from Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has exhibited open hostility to Donald Trump.  This appears to be a new tactic developed by prosecutors to cripple defense efforts while remaining within the letter of the law.  On August 25, prosecutors dumped over 4 million documents on the defense team of accused cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried while at the same time making it next to impossible for him to actually view them.  (Bankman-Fried is being held at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, which has no facilities for accessing the documents.)  The solution for Trump's team is simple:  utilize his vast personal following as a crowdsourcing resource to analyze and sort out the documents.

Law and Order:  The Post-Constitutional Episode.  When Donald Trump was inaugurated, the city erupted in flames, store windows were smashed, cars were hammered, and protestors attempted to tear down the fence around the White House.  When George Floyd, a man with serious health problems, a long criminal record, and a history of drug abuse, died in custody, Black Lives Matter protests roiled cities with massive destructive protests.  In D.C., without authorization, on her own, the mayor painted a major thoroughfare with a giant "Black Lives Matter" message.  One District Judge was offended by the disparate treatment given these rioters and the draconian measures against the J6 protestors, almost all of whom had only engaged in peacefully seeking contested election results be sent back to the respective states for investigation before the results were certified. [...] She is the judge in the pending case here against Donald Trump.  Julie Kelly, almost singularly, has been covering the preliminary proceedings in this case and it is evident that Judge Chutkan has no interest in conducting a fair trial.  The judge has set a March 4 trial date (the day before Super Tuesday).  This is a time frame that will be impossible for the defense to meet.  For one thing, they've just been handed 12.8 million discovery documents by the prosecution, an amount of material to review and prepare a response to in a time frame which is grossly inadequate.  "DOJ could not name a single case in DC District that went from indictment to trial in 5 months," In fact, numerous J6 defendants have been confined to the DC jail without trial for over two years.  "Chutkan keeps saying case won't go to trial in 2026 and grasping for reasons why.  She continues to hammer Trump's lawyer for not reviewing possible evidence related to an indictment that didn't even exist."

Anti-Trump RINOS and the 14th Amendment.  The 14th Amendment, one of three post-Civil War amendments passed in 1866, contains several important legal provisions, including the Due Process Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Citizenship Clause.  But a lesser-known provision in Section 3 of the Amendment — the "Insurrection Clause," targeting individuals who have engaged in rebellion or insurrection against the United States, has gotten the RINOs excited.  Under the Insurrection Clause, no person shall hold certain federal or state offices if they previously took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and then engaged in rebellion or insurrection against it.  Historically, this applied to Confederate officers who first swore allegiance to the United States, but then launched massive armed attacks upon the United States complete with guns, cannons, and bayonets, and actually spilled oceans of American blood. [...] To get Trump, RINOS and Democrats join together to twist the Insurrection Clause into something opposite of its original meaning.

Federal Judge Dismisses Case Trying to Keep Trump Off 2024 Ballot.  A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Florida lawyer who claimed Trump should be banned from the 2024 ballot for inciting an insurrection.  The legal theory is based on Section 3 of the US Constitution's 14th Amendment which states public officials who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the US may be disqualified from public office.  Trump has not been charged with engaging in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.  Judge Robin Rosenberg a US District Judge for the Southern District of Florida ruled the attorney, Lawrence Caplan, lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.

Fani Willis Threatens to Violate Rights of Defendants in Trump RICO Case Because She's Not Prepared For Trial.  Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now threatening defendants in Trump's RICO case because she is not prepared for trial.  Earlier this month Fani Willis hit President Trump and 18 others with RICO and conspiracy charges for daring to challenge the 2020 election.  A Fulton County grand jury returned a 41-count indictment which included RICO and conspiracy charges against Trump.  There are 30 unidentified unindicted co-conspirators.

Trump Co-Defendant Eastman:  If We Don't Fight Back, We Will Never Have a Fair Election Again.  Wednesday on FNC's "The Ingraham Angle," Trump co-defendant John Eastman argued efforts to focus on alleged wrongdoing during the 2020 election were justified.  Eastman told host Laura Ingraham those aligned with former President Donald Trump had to fight back or face the possibility of never having a "fair election" again.  "The answer is not to just, you know, take a powder and concede because then it will get worse on the next go around," he said.  "The answer is to fight it with everything we've got because what's at stake here is too important. [...]"

Yuscil Taveras, the Mar-a-Lago IT director who flipped on Donald Trump, is a registered Democrat with a history of money troubles.  The Mar-a-Lago IT director who flipped on Donald Trump in the classified documents case is a part-time DJ and registered Democrat with a history of money troubles, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.  Yuscil Taveras, 45, managed to rack up debts of nearly $750,000 despite holding down a string of well-paid tech jobs and moonlighting as 'DJ Juicy.'  The dad-of-two battled back from bankruptcy but now finds himself a pivotal figure in Special Counsel Jack Smith's efforts to convict Trump of mishandling top secret government material.

The True Big Lie.  The entire case against Trump and his fellow defendants in the 2020 election-interference prosecutions can't even get off the ground unless it is more or less evidently true that the election was not stolen.  The fact of the matter is that it's not unreasonable to believe that the election was stolen, and consequently it isn't possible for it to be (more or less) evidently true that the election was not stolen.  That is why the case against Trump and his collaborators necessarily collapses, whether or not a corrupted legal system recognizes this.  There is no case against Trump and his confreres insofar as it's reasonable to believe that the 2020 election was stolen.  Trying to stop an apparently stolen election is what everyone should do.

New York AG Seeks Immediate Partial Judgment, No Trial, in $250 Million Fraud Lawsuit Against Trump.  New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking an immediate partial summary judgment in her multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, court documents show.  Documents dated Aug. 30 show that Ms. James urged Judge Arthur Engoron to issue a summary judgment on one of seven claims in her 200-page civil lawsuit filed against President Trump, The Trump Organization, and three of his adult children in 2022, alleging "years of financial fraud to obtain a host of economic benefits."  In her lawsuit, Ms. James claimed that over a 10-year period, from 2011 through 2021, President Trump and the other defendants had "engaged in numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation in the preparation of Mr. Trump's annual statements of financial condition," which included deceiving insurers, tax officials, and lenders by allegedly inflating the value of his properties, including his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Dave Smith on Rogan:  The Deep State vs. Trump.  If you've been following this blog for a a while, very little in this Joe Rogan interview with Dave Smith will be new to you.  But this is a nice explanation of how the early part of the Russiagate hoax developed if you weren't paying attention to the blow-by-blow revelations at the time.  [Video clip]

The criminalization of politics to get Trump is endangering everyone's rights.  The U.S. Constitution is clear:  Political speech is protected by the First Amendment.  Also, battles over the acceptance of electors to validate a presidential election are wholly within the political realm and should not be subject to criminal sanctions.  Yet our nation is very close to setting a dangerous precedent by criminalizing speech and politics, and one political faction is rushing into this folly headlong.  If the Biden administration is allowed to criminalize speech and politics, we will become a nation where the losers of presidential elections are arrested instead of being sent into retirement with book tours and libraries.  The criminalization of politics is a dangerous game that Democrats used to decry, when they thought the shoe might end up on the other foot.  No matter how you feel about former President Donald Trump's activities after the 2020 election, the reaction of putting Trump in jail for his speech and activities to organize opposition to Congress counting Electoral College votes would degrade our political system and set the precedent that one party can criminalize the political activities of the other.

Mark Levin Says Trump's Fulton County Indictment Is 'A Perfect Case For Grand Jury Abuse'.  Fox News host Mark Levin called the handling of the indictment of former President Donald Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, "a perfect case" of "grand jury abuse," citing the leak of a document.  Trump turned himself in at the Fulton County jail to be booked after a grand jury handed down indictments the night of Aug. 14, charging Trump and other associates, including former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City and attorneys Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Sidney Powell.  A document listing charges against Trump was posted on the website of the Fulton County courts the afternoon of Aug. 14 before being deleted.

Georgia Officials Didn't Follow Ethical, Legal Rules in Trump Indictment.  A judge in Fulton County, Georgia, failed to properly follow the precedent set by the state Supreme Court in allowing the county's top prosecutor to go forward with a grand jury investigation of former President Donald Trump after disquaifying the prosecutor from part of the probe for misbehavior.  In a legal analysis Aug. 15 in The Daily Signal, I pointed out the problems with the spurious indictment of Trump and 18 codefendants orchestrated by Fani Wills, the politically ambitious district attorney in Fulton County.  This combination of factors has resulted in an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and the structure of the American legal system.  So what is the ethical problem above and beyond the constitutional and legal problems with Willis' indictment of Trump?  On July 25, 2022, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney disqualified Willis from continuing to target then-state Sen. Burt Jones as part of her grand jury investigation.

Trump [is the] Victim of a Radically Transformed Federal Judiciary.  The judicial persecution of Donald Trump has exposed the blatant political bias that animates many Federal District Court judges.  Packing the Federal Judiciary at all levels with left-wing judges is the cornerstone of the Marxist Democrat Party strategy to permanently transform America.  If they win the presidency in 2024, they will have succeeded in packing the Federal Judiciary by the end of the term on January 20, 2029.  This process began in earnest with Barack Obama.  He came into office determined to fill the judiciary with left-wing judges, and he succeeded, as virtually every one of his appointments has revealed their bias and leftist ideology while serving on the various courts.  Joe Biden has followed in Obama's footsteps by nominating equally if not more ideologically bound left-wing judges.  The following federal judges are not animated by upholding the law or the Constitution but instead are motivated by political considerations and their allegiance to statist ideology.

U.S. Attorney Weiss Colluded With DOJ To Thwart Congressional Questioning, Emails Show.  Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit and shared exclusively with The Federalist establish that on multiple occasions, the Department of Justice intervened on behalf of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to respond to congressional inquiries related to the Hunter Biden investigation.  This revelation raises more questions about the June 7, 2023, letter dispatched to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan under Weiss's signature line, in which the Delaware U.S. attorney claimed he had "ultimate authority" over charging decisions related to Hunter Biden.  It also suggests Weiss and the DOJ may have conspired to mislead Congress.

The Left is 'willfully blind' to President Trump's rights.  A senior law professor at New York University Law, Professor Burt Neuborne, who is also the founding director of NYU's Brennan Center, and perhaps ironically a former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, penned a Guest Essay ("There's a Good Chance Trump Will Be Found 'Willfully Blind'), which is a fascinating example of falsification and post hoc fallacy:  he aggressively advances with astonishing mistruths that President Trump is already guilty based solely on accusations; makes from that particular false assumption, a false conclusion that the former president has limited legal remedies, and finally tries to sell the general reader on a legal theory that serves the Plaintiff (the "government") in its case against the Defendant: that President Trump will be found "willfully blind" by using false statements (questioning an election) to create an unlawful benefit (overturning it).

Democrats Aren't 'Interfering' In 2024 Election With Trump Trial, They're Blatantly Rigging It.  News broke Monday that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the judge overseeing the Jan. 6-related case against Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., set a March 4, 2024, trial date for the former president.  It just so happens that March 4 is the day before Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states, from California to Texas to Virginia, will hold Republican primary elections.  What a coincidence!  What this means is that Trump, the Republican front-runner by a wide margin, will not be able to campaign ahead of the most important date on the GOP primary calendar.  It also means he'll likely be tied up in court a week later on March 12, when four more states hold primary elections.  But this isn't merely election "interference," it's a naked attempt to rig the 2024 election.  The timing here is important, because not only will Trump be pulled off the campaign trail at a crucial time, he will almost certainly be convicted over the summer.  After all, the jury in this case will be drawn from a pool that voted 92 percent for Joe Biden.  No matter how outlandish and unconstitutional the charges are, no matter how utterly politicized the process is, a D.C. jury is going to convict Trump.

Authoritarian Ruling Class Mulls Post-Civil War Measures To Bar Trump From The Presidency.  Anti-Trump legal scholars have been arguing that the third clause of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War measure barring Confederates from holding public office after participating in an insurrection, can be used against Donald Trump.  Attaching a broken boxcar to the back of this moving train, an Aug. 25 essay at Politico casually compares the case for 14th Amendment disqualification from the presidency to the disqualification of southern congressmen during the Civil War.  You may have already spotted a problem in that last sentence because the story Joshua Zeitz writes about Trump and the 14th Amendment has nothing to do with the 14th Amendment:  It's a story about the refusal of the House of Representatives to take notice of southern congressman in 1864, well before the Reconstruction amendments were ratified.

The statistical fraud of multiple counts and courts.  If "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring a criminal case unless the odds of conviction were well above a mere coin toss, then what are we to make of 91 counts, 34 in New York, 40 in Florida, 4 in D.C., and now 13 more in Georgia?  After all, it only takes one conviction for the Democrats to chortle: "See!  See!  He's a criminal!  Lock him up!"  And even if each count against Trump had only, say, a sixty percent chance of a guilty verdict, it would only take six counts for the overall statistical odds of obtaining at least one conviction to be above a confidence level of 99 percent.  So what can not six but 91 counts mean?  It means the Left can bring counts it knows are weak, yet still gain "success" from a statistical trick.  Even if each count has only a ten percent chance of "sticking" — and any prosecutor bringing such a poor case should be dismissed — with 91 such counts, then the odds of at least one "success" among them would still be over 99.99 percent.

Here's Proof That Trump's Trials Are Election Interference.  Earlier this month, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis proposed a March 4 trial date for her case against Donald Trump.  March 4 also just happens to be the day before Super Tuesday, on which 15 states hold their primaries.  However, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp threw cold water on that idea.  So naturally, Obama-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan went ahead and scheduled a start date for Trump's federal charges (for his alleged crimes between the 2020 election and January 6, 2021) for the exact same day.  Coincidence?  Please, don't make me laugh.  "Setting a trial date does not depend and should not depend on the defendant's personal and professional obligations," Judge Chutkan insisted during the hearing. "Mr. Trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work regardless of his schedule."

New Hampshire Secretary of State Backs Down, 'Not Seeking' to Remove Trump from Ballot.  New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan told NBC News on Monday he is "not seeking to remove any names" from the Republican primary ballot after Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk urged his supporters to call Scanlan's office following reports Scanlan was weighing using the Fourteenth Amendment to keep former President Donald Trump off the ballot.  On Friday, Scanlan met with New Hampshire attorney Bryant "Corky" Messner to discuss Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which says public officials are not eligible to hold office if they "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the United States.

Save the Rule of Law By Destroying It?  Three leftwing prosecutors are criminalizing politics with more than 90 simultaneous indictments of Donald Trump, the ex-president and currently the leading Republican primary candidate.  While New York prosecutor Letitia James is hounding Trump with a $250 million state lawsuit against the Trump organization and family, on the pretense of supposedly Trump overvaluing his real estate and filing inaccurate financial statements.  Is there any Mafia don, mass murderer, or terrorist who has faced so many indictments or suits in so many jurisdictions at almost the same time? [...] Americans ask themselves questions whose answers are never given.  Why are all these Trump prosecutors leftwing or with Democratic connections?  Would any of the 90 something indictments for "crimes" of years past have been lodged against a citizen Trump who had retired from politics?

The Establishment's 'Gallipoli Campaign' against the American People.  Of all the politicians in America, why did toads such as David Plouffe, Bill Kristol, and communist CIA chief John Brennan eventually see Donald Trump as such a threat?  First, because Donald Trump has always been his own man — unowned and unbowed by the cabal of corporate oligarchs, Intelligence Community shadow dictators, and institutional Marxist globalists that are now correctly understood as the permanent Deep State.  For all the ruling class's talk of "democracy," it abhors anything independent enough to exist beyond the managed control of its secretive clique.  Second, because Donald Trump articulates a vision of economic nationalism that threatens the interests of multinational corporations and one-world-government enthusiasts.  Enriching and protecting Americans, abiding by the limits of the U.S. Constitution, and defending individual liberty and national sovereignty — these straightforward goals are all antithetical to the Marxist collectivism and technocratic despotism of the World Economic Forum's planned new world order.

Georgia indictment of Trump is the same flawed product in a different package.  The processing of former President Donald Trump in the Fulton County jail followed a familiar pattern.  First came the mugshot, then the merchandise.  Both the left and the right immediately started selling mugs and t-shirts featuring the scowling image of Inmate P01135809.  Snap, scowl, sell and spin.  Our legal and political dialogue has now been reduced to the substance of a Benetton catalogue.  Politicians and pundits continue to assure the public that this indictment is not just the criminalization of political speech or election challenges.  Much of that spin returns to a familiar point of reference:  Trump's call to Georgia officials.  Indeed, I have been criticized for even suggesting that "the call" is not evidence of a crime, even though I continue to support the actions of the Georgia officials who resisted Trump's requests, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Trump and the Tower of Lies.  Donald Trump is never going to prison.  He is never going to be sentenced.  It's likely that at least some of the legal proceedings are never going to come to fruition, simply because the end result would be too embarrassing to the powers-that-be.  If in fact Trump is ever convicted at all, it will last only until it reaches an unbiased appeals court, at which point each count will be thrown out, one after the other. [...] The entire purpose of these exercises is to see to it that he doesn't run again — that there is no Trump '24 campaign — with the secondary intention of terrorizing anyone that may run in his stead or otherwise inconvenience the Democrats.  In this, they have failed miserably.  Despite this full-bore attack on all levels of the legal system from county to national, despite a legacy media completely in the pocket of the elites, despite the full cooperation of law enforcement and intelligence communities, despite last-ditch opposition from the GOP establishment, Donald Trump is not only maintaining his status as a candidate, he is prevailing.  Recent polls put him up to 46 points ahead of all rivals, a lead unparalleled in previous campaigns in which the frontrunners suffered none of Trump's problems.  Furthermore, Trump is running even with, and in some polls actually beating the incumbent.  This is an incredible achievement, and one for which Trump has received absolutely no credit — itself a sign of cognitive dissonance.

Steve Bannon Outlines National American Destiny as Attached to Trump Destiny.  Steve Bannon did an excellent monologue today [8/25/2023] outlining how President Donald Trump is one of only three people who have the destiny of the nation attached to their own destiny.  Together with President Abraham Lincoln and President George Washington, the destiny of our constitutional Republic as intrinsically tied to President Donald Trump.  [Video clip]

The election doubts of the DA prosecuting Trump for election doubts.  The DA in Georgia prosecuting President Donald Trump for his election doubts, and his statements about those, has been revealed as having her own doubts about elections, and making public statements about those.  Trump was booked Thursday on counts in an indictment created by Fani Willis, who is a hard-left activist who is fundraising on her agenda against Trump.  It's one of four indictments pending against Trump, and has been described as possibly the most political of the four, as it appears to make criminal the act of making a phone call or having a meeting.

Can the Trump-Hating Psycho Prosecutors Be Stopped?  Most respected legal analyses of the various charges against Trump agree that the law has been twisted into something unrecognizable in order to "get" him.  From a layperson's viewpoint, the Fulton County charges seem to be particularly awful, as does its district attorney, Fani Willis.

Trump Names 2 Democrats He Suggests Should Get Indicted on the Charges He Faces.  Former President Donald Trump suggested that under the standard by which he faces racketeering charges in Fulton County, Georgia, for contesting the 2020 presidential election, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams should also be indicted for contesting elections they lost.  "Hillary called me up and conceded," Trump told Tucker Carlson in the interview released Wednesday night on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, just before the first Republican 2024 presidential debate.  "Now the word is that [President Barack] Obama said, 'You have to do that.'  But she called up and totally conceded," Trump added.  "But now, every time you see her on television she's saying ... she's challenging the election."  Although Clinton, then the Democratic nominee for president, publicly conceded to Trump in 2016, she later referred to her former opponent as an "illegitimate president."

Justice Requires Fair Procedures.  The late US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once observed that the history of liberty is largely a history of procedural fairness.  Our constitution embodies that history by reading "the due process of law.  Lately, however, many so-called progressives have been willing to ignore procedural safeguards and due process in their campaign to get former President Donald Trump — to misuse the law in an effort to prevent the leading Republican candidate from running against the incumbent candidate for president.  In doing so, they are violating the second principle of justice: "Do not recognize faces."  That commandment is the basis for the blindfolded statute of justice.  Some progressives who would ignore procedural safeguards to get Trump acknowledge that this is because they regard him as especially dangerous and therefore undeserving of due process.  Special injustice for an unjust man!  But in our system of law, which is based on precedent, there is no such thing as special injustice.  Injustice, once practiced against an unjust person, will serve as precedent for deploying it against just persons.

Professor Turley:  Effort to Bar Trump From Ballot is 'Single Most Dangerous Constitutional Theory' Ever.  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley recently called the effort by Democrats to keep Trump off the ballot "dangerous."  Of course, the left doesn't care.  They believe the ends justifies the means.  Democrats would burn the country down to keep Trump from being reelected.

5 Things You Can Do Right Now to Help Dismantle the Federal Bureaucracy.  In America, we're supposed to have three branches of government and a robust system of checks and balances.  What we're not supposed to have is an unaccountable fourth branch of government that is impervious to the changes promised by winning presidential candidates.  Yet, thanks to the idea that government should be run by supposedly nonpartisan, apolitical experts, we have that fourth branch.  Some call it the administrative state; some call it the managerial state; some call it the Deep State.  For the sake of our constitutional republic, conservatives must dismantle much of the bureaucracy and return the power to those who are elected by — and accountable to — the American people.

Can Democrats Constitutionally End Trump's Campaign?  As the number of inane indictments of Trump demonstrates, the Democrats will do virtually anything to keep Donald Trump from ever again occupying the White House and threatening the Swamp's grip on the throats of the American people.  However, I don't think a traditional October Surprise is much of a danger in the 2024 election.  Why would Democrats wait until the last minute to release some exquisite horror that will send Trump packing?  They wouldn't.  The fact that they haven't released such a campaign-killing bit of information already means that they simply don't have one.  As such, the Democrats are in trouble.  Between having a guy who electrifies crowds like no one in American history, on the one hand, and on the other hand, having as their presumptive nominee a doddering Alzheimer's patient, means that Democrats really have two problems to solve, not one.

The disqualification of Donald Trump and other legal urban legends.  The popularity of urban legends is a testament to the will to believe.  The desire of people to keep Elvis alive or prove that a Sasquatch could exist furtively in our backyards shows the resilience of fables.  Constitutional urban legends often have an even more immediate appeal and tend to arise out of the desperation of divided times.  One of the most popular today is that former President Donald Trump can be barred from office, even if he is not convicted in any of the four indictments he faces, under a long-dormant clause of the 14th Amendment.  This 14th Amendment theory is something that good liberals will read to their children at night.  It goes something like this:  Donald Trump can never be president again, because the 14th Amendment bars those who previously took federal oaths from assuming office if they engaged in insurrection or rebellion.  With that, and a kiss on the forehead, a progressive's child can sleep peacefully through the night.  But don't look under the bed.  For as scary as it might sound to some, Trump can indeed take office if he is elected, even if he is convicted.  Indeed, he can serve as president even in the unlikely scenario that he is sentenced to jail.

The Corrupt DoJ has Charged Trump with a Fake Crime.  First, the legal basics: a standard criminal conspiracy comprises two parts: (1) an agreement among conspirators (2) to accomplish a criminal object.  For any conspirator to be liable for a criminal conspiracy, at least one must also (3) commit an "overt act" — that is, do something — for the purpose of accomplishing the criminal end.  The overt act need not be a crime in itself, and the criminal object need not ever have been accomplished.  You can't be indicted without specific facts alleged.  You can't be sent to trial on an indictment that just says "you violated such and such federal law."  The indictment must say how.  So a conspiracy indictment must do more than merely list a provision of a criminal statute as the object of a conspiracy.  It must identify a specific result intended by the conspirators that is a crime.

Trump Isn't Just the Target, He's the Pretext.  Emulating the Biden administration's Department of Justice's special counsel, Jack Smith, once again a partisan local Democratic prosecutor in a one-party jurisdiction has stretched state laws to indict a former president from their opposing party who is also the leading candidate for its 2024 nomination.  As previously demonstrated by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Georgia's Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will receive the plaudits and votes of her partisans for her indictment of Mr. Trump and 18 of his 2020 campaign associates.  Given the electoral insularity of her position in a Democratically controlled county, the enmity of Republicans and/or MAGA supporters is impotent to unseat her; and, in fact, it is politically beneficial to her, as it burnishes her credentials with Democratic primary voters.  (Ironically, this is akin to how these political indictments boost Mr. Trump's standing in the GOP primary).  The Fulton County, Manhattan, and the federal special counsel's indictments are politically motivated, even if juries agree in the heavily Democratic jurisdictions of Atlanta, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

CIA Sued for working with the Biden campaign to produce 'Dirty 51' intel letter calling Hunter's laptop disinformation.  The CIA has been sued for its role in helping to craft a letter from 51 intelligence officials discrediting Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation.  The letter that was signed by 51 intel officials in 2020 immediately before the presidential election falsely claimed that Hunter Biden's laptop had all the 'classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.'  A Republican report released in May showed that the CIA was actively involved in getting signatures for the letter which 'was a political operation to help elect' Joe Biden in November 2020.

Trump Can Prove It.  Establishment politicians and mainstream media have fought harder than on any other issue to convince the public that voter fraud is a conspiracy theory.  But unconstitutional changes to state election laws, unsupervised ballot drop boxes, voting machine errors, mathematically improbable voter turnout, and other examples of outright voter fraud that were denied a chance to be presented in court between the 2020 election and Biden's inauguration can't simply be chalked up as coincidental.  All those things occurring simultaneously make the fraud seem coordinated.  In response to the most recent indictments, Trump's attorneys indicated they finally have a platform to "fully re-litigate every single issue that occurred during the 2020 election," of which there were many.  The most important issue in America may finally get its due.

Prosecutorial Bolshevism.  In the United States of America, there are roughly 3,150 counties.  Most of them have prosecutors or district attorneys.  Each one of these can usually empanel a grand jury.  These grand juries can, with rare exceptions, meet in secret to consider indicting anyone at all.  There need be no publicity at all, but there usually is.  These grand juries can call witnesses and even require Americans to testify for days or even weeks on end on matters that took place years before.  The "defendants" in these matters are not allowed to have lawyers, although sometimes they do.  They are sometimes kept from their families and colleagues for long periods.  At any point the prosecutors can issue indictments for crimes, real or imagined, felonies or misdemeanors based on the proceedings of the grand juries.  In many jurisdictions, but not all, the mere fact of being indicted bars an American from holding public office or even running for public office.

Pollak on Savage:  Trump Could Take Oath of Office in Prison and Walk Free.  Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak told Dr. Michael Savage on his podcast Friday that it was possible Donald Trump could be railroaded by a D.C jury — but could take the oath of office in prison, pardon himself, and walk out a free man.

Mehdi Hasan Worries That World's Most Recognizable Man May Try To Sneak Out Of Country.  MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan worried Thursday that former President Donald Trump could pose a flight risk as the trial dates for his various indictments approach.  A grand jury indicted Trump late Monday night for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.  Eighteen others, including Trump allies Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro were indicted alongside the former president.  "He's afraid of the law," Hasan told "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough, referring to the former president.  "I genuinely think we need to start having a discussion about whether this guy is a flight risk.  And I don't say that lightly."

Georgia State Senator Takes First Step to Impeach Trump's Fulton County Prosecutor.  Georgia state Sen. Colton Moore (R) took the first step on Thursday towards impeaching Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for her actions against former President Donald Trump, a memo exclusively obtained by Breitbart News shows.  In a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp (R), Moore announced an initiative to begin an emergency session to conduct a thorough investigation into the actions undertaken by Willis.  On Tuesday [8/15/2023], a Georgia grand jury indicted Trump on 13 counts.  The lawmaker's investigation could lead to defunding Willis's investigation of Trump and/or ultimately impeaching the district attorney.  "We must strip all funding and, if appropriate, impeach Fani Willis," Moore said in a statement.

How Jack Smith Is Twisting Our Election Process.  If Special Counsel Jack Smith has his way, election integrity as we know it will be a thing of the past, and all election results in the future will be suspect.  I've got a particular interest in election integrity.  As the leader of Tea Party Patriots Action, I've spent the better part of the last two and a half years traveling the country, training tens of thousands of citizens for work as election officials and poll workers.  Our work has been necessitated by the doubts raised about election integrity in recent election cycles.  Poll after poll demonstrates Americans' distrust of our elections.  Our hope is that we can help reestablish the public confidence in elections necessary for them to function as they must — to allow the electorate to exercise its right to choose our leaders.

Fani's Fifteen Minutes of Fame.  Poor Fani.  Her moment of glory will be a short one.  Lawyers tell us that Fani's case against President Trump is likely to be moved to a federal court — because it is directed at federal officials and because the accusations are very similar to those made by Jack Smith in the January 6th indictments.  In the end, however, Fani may be happy to let the feds conduct the trial because some of the 161 "Acts of Racketeering" (ACTs) in the indictment involve dangerous criminals doing dangerous things.  For example, here is ACT 6 (in its entirety):  ["]On or about the 21st day of November 2020, MARK RANDALL MEADOWS sent a text message to United States Representative Scott Perry from Pennsylvania and stated, "Can you send me the number for the speaker and the leader of PA legislature.  POTUS wants to chat with them."  This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.["]  Exchanging telephone numbers:  That is pretty scary stuff.

GA State Senator Demands Emergency Session to Investigate Fulton County DA Fani Willis.  Georgia State Sen. Colton Moore (R) wants Gov. Brian Kemp to declare an emergency session to investigate Fulton County DA Fani Willis.  Willis is the one who brought charges against President Donald Trump, including a RICO charge.  A grand jury indicted him this week. [...] Moore has been asking people to sign a petition to investigate Willis:  ["]Corrupt District Attorney Fani Willis is potentially abusing her position of power by pursuing former President Donald J. Trump, and I am calling on my colleagues in the Georgia legislature to join me in calling for an emergency session to investigate and review her actions and determine if they warrant impeachment.  The politically-motivated weaponization of our justice system at the expense of taxpayers will not be tolerated. [... "]

Criminalizing Politics In The Trump Indictments.  I've made the point repeatedly that both the D.C. and Georgia indictments of Donald Trump start from a premise that isn't true — that an attempt to "overturn" an election in and of itself is criminal.  The means by which an election is overturned may be criminal, but the end goal is not.  With regard to the D.C. indictment, I questioned Where is the crime?

The Purpose Of The Trump Indictments Is To Demonstrate The Left's Power.  The latest indictment of former President Donald Trump is even more outlandish than Jack Smith's blatant attempt to criminalize free speech.  The indictment Monday out of Fulton County, Georgia, criminalizes mundane activities like asking for a phone number, texting, encouraging people to watch a televised hearing, and reserving a room at the Georgia capitol.  These activities, according to Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis, run afoul of the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute.  As far as Willis is concerned, Trump's legal efforts to challenge the election results in Georgia amounted to a criminal conspiracy, with Trump as the criminal mastermind.  What that means, outlandishly, is that every phone call or tweet related to those legal efforts, every step Trump and his team took to press their legal case, counts as "an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy."

Fulton County clerk responds to publishing Trump indictment ahead of grand jury decision: 'I am human'.  The Fulton County clerk who released an indictment document displaying charges against former President Donald Trump before the grand jury voted said she inadvertently hit "send" instead of "save" in an interview with WSB-TV Tuesday.  The court briefly posted a document on its website Monday afternoon listing 13 charges against the former president, Reuters first reported, which ultimately matched the charges released after the grand jury made its decision.  The Office of the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts initially responded to media reports by claiming the document was "fictitious," which Clerk Ché Alexander told WSB-TV was "the best word I could come up with."  "It was fictitious," she told the outlet. "It wasn't real.  It didn't have a stamp on it."  "I am human," Alexander said.  [Tweet]

To Understand The Latest Crazy Trump Indictment, Check Out The 6 Types Of Charges.  Late Monday [8/14/2023], Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in a 98-page indictment that included a total of 41 different counts.  The defendants are already fighting back, with Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, seeking to remove the case to federal court based on a statute that protects federal officials from state court prosecution for official conduct.  More counteroffensives will likely follow, with other former federal officials, including Trump, presumably also seeking removal to federal court, while the remaining defendants will probably expeditiously move to dismiss the indictment on a variety of grounds.

Dershowitz slams GA indictment, says Trump used same tactics as Al Gore in 2000: not a 'crime'.  The former legal counsel for Al Gore who challenged — and lost — the presidential election results in 2000 says Gore's team did "the same thing" as what a Georgia prosecutor is claiming Trump committed as a crime.  Donald Trump is facing a fourth indictment, this time from Fulton County, Georgia district attorney Fani Willis, involving allegations that Trump sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.  Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, speaking to Fox News Digital, criticized the pending indictment, calling Trump's actions "very similar" to that of Al Gore's legal strategy in the Bush v.  Gore case that decided the 2000 presidential election.

Trump Is Not Guilty Of Racketeering; The Deep State Is.  Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga, charged former President Donald Trump and 18 colleagues with racketeering under Georgia's RICO law.  The charge is that he conspired with them to overturn the 2020 Georgia presidential election results.  Experienced lawyers, such as those at Bochetto & Lentz, a law firm that says it specializes in "messy, complicated, high-pressure, and high-stakes cases," highlight the benefits of using RICO statutes, which enable prosecutors to tie numerous crimes into one case, even if they have covered an extensive period.  The person who didn't "pull the trigger, set a fire, or commit a burglary" can be charged under RICO laws.  It is little wonder that RICO has been traditionally used against the Mob.

Destruction of Rule of Law in Fani Willis' Georgia Star Chamber.  The attack on the First Amendment and the very structure of the American legal system by the Star Chamber of Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis is a profound assault on our democratic republic and the rule of law.  There's no other way to characterize the politically partisan indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants (along with 30 unindicted coconspirators) for legally questioning the legitimacy of the outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia.  Willis is trying to criminalize free speech and have a chilling effect on anyone in the future who might dare to question the results of an election.  Willis manufactured this egregious "case" with seeming unforgivable ignorance of the freedom to speak, to engage in political activity, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances that is protected by the First Amendment.

Mark Meadows Seeks to Remove Georgia Indictment to Federal Court.  Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows filed a motion on Tuesday to remove the Fulton County, Georgia, indictment against him to federal court.  Meadows was charged with two counts in a 41-count indictment that named himself, former President Donald Trump, and 17 others.  Meadows is being charged under Georgia's RICO statute and faces charges for soliciting an official to violate their oath of office.

Georgia Indictment Says Trump Telling People to Watch TV Is Proof of Racketeering Activity.  In their ongoing crusade to criminalize dissent, former President Donald Trump's persecutors might have sunk to a new low.  Trump's latest criminal indictment, handed up Monday by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, claimed the leading GOP 2024 presidential contender and his associates "constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities."  It included one assertion that defies belief.  In a section that detailed the supposed acts of racketeering, "Act 22" accused Trump of encouraging his Twitter followers to turn on the television.

The Level of Pretending Needed to Believe This is Jaw Dropping.  The Fulton County clerk of courts is putting out the third public statement trying to explain and justify why they posted the grand jury indictment of Donald Trump before the grand jury had even met to vote on the indictment.  This latest explanation is so incredulous it's almost impossible to believe they are making this public:  [Document]  According to the story above, the original indictment before the jury met, was a trial run upload, made of a totally fictious construct, with totally random charges, that just happened to line up with the exact same charges, in the exact same sequence, as the indictment after the jury voted.

Radical Georgia D.A. Fani Willis Launched Reelection Fundraising Site Days Before Trump Indictment.  Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis launched her reelection fundraising website days before a grand jury returned a 98-page, 41-count indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, per Atlanta First News.  The outlet reported that Willis's campaign emailed supporters on Thursday, notifying them that the website was up and running.

Democrats Denied Election Results 150+ Times Before Trump Was Indicted for Challenging Election.  Although a Georgia grand jury indicted former President Donald Trump on Monday for challenging the 2020 election result, Democrats have refused to accept the results of elections they lost for decades.  As Breitbart News reported, more than 150 examples show Democrats denying election results, including President Joe Biden; two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY); Reps.  Barbara Lee (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX); and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.  [Tweet with video clip]

The Democrats are Certain They Will Never be Held Accountable for the Trump Indictments and Biden Cover-Up.  Never in the 235 years since the ratification of the Constitution has an administration premeditatively and blatantly prosecuted, on specious and conjecturable charges, the titular leader of the opposition party and leading candidate for president.  And doing so while overtly flaunting their egregious actions to protect and cover-up for the incumbent president who has been exposed as potentially complicit in massive bribery and fraud.  In any previous election cycle, these overt and unabashed actions would have been the death knell for the incumbent president's campaign and his party.  Yet the Democrats are blatantly unconcerned, supremely confident that they will prevail in 2024 regardless of who they nominate.

Biden Junta Goes Full-on Stalinist Against Trump.  The Biden DOJ keeps hitting Donald Trump with new indictments, including one that could possibly draw the draw the death penalty.  These mounting attacks on the former president have drawn comparisons to a banana republic or third world dictatorship.  A new development suggests a different dynamic is in play.  Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr was recently asked if he would be willing to testify against Trump.  "Of course," Barr responded.  Special Counsel Jack Smith's case was "challenging," but Barr does not think it "runs afoul of the First Amendment."  That runs afoul of Bruce Thornton, who makes a strong case that quashing free speech is what Smith's inquisition is all about.  As Robert Spencer contends, "we're racing past" the banana republic stage and America is "heading toward becoming a new Stalinist regime in which critics of those in power are arrested by the regime itself, tried on false and fabricated charges, and executed."

Trump's Georgia Indictment is the Final Proof the 2020 Election Was Stolen.  The 2020 election was stolen.  The debate is over.  How do I know?  Because both the feds and Georgia just indicted our President for talking about, questioning, and trying to investigate a stolen election.  When the communist thugs, bullies and tyrants make it a crime to question a stolen election, in a country built around free speech, it's 100% proof they stole the election.  There is a perfect precedent.  In the NFL.  The game was called "The Miracle in the Meadowlands."  Everything about that fixed game reminds me of the 2020 stolen election.  It's a perfect match.

Justice Shrugged:  The Persecution of Donald Trump.  Here's what I dream of Donald Trump saying when he stands trial on bogus charges proffered by his political opponents:  "I do not recognize this court's right to try me ... I do not recognize my action as a crime."  Those are the fighting words of industrialist Hank Rearden when he was put on trial for ignoring an unjust law in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."  Although the circumstances of the cases differ, Rearden is a perfect avatar of Donald Trump, as both larger-than-life men are persecuted by the justice system for seeking to pursue their own self-interest and for refusing to surrender to government oppression.  Self-interest is central to the Objectivist philosophy of Rand, who grew up in Russia and witnessed first-hand the oppression of free thought and free enterprise following the 1917 Communist revolution.  Her masterpiece, "Atlas Shrugged," is the ultimate roadmap to how American democracy can be subverted by leftist bureaucrats and a corrupt media to destroy some individuals and intimidate the rest.

What the Fulton County judge could do.  Currently, there are more than 400,000 to 500,000 people — the number varies, depending on the source — charged with crimes who are being detained pre-trial, even while they are still "legally" innocent.  Many are jailed because they can't afford the bail.  There are hundreds of thousand cases where the judge set an exceptionally high bail just to ensure they cannot flee the jurisdiction.  However, pre-trial detention also applies to those charged who are deemed a flight risk, regardless of how high — or low — bail is set.  There are even no-bail situations — where prisoners are held just to make sure they don't disappear into the woodwork of our jammed-up legal system.  Former President Donald Trump is not a resident of Georgia.  His primary residence is in Palm Beach Florida, at Mar-A-Lago, while his secondary residence is in Trump Tower in Manhattan.  This makes Trump a "flight risk," at least in the narrow definition of someone who might flee the jurisdiction of Fulton County, Georgia.

Trump is now facing Ninety One criminal charges in four criminal cases.  Donald Trump has now been indicted in a fourth case, with the former president being charged Monday in Georgia over his efforts to overturn his 2020 general election defeat in the state.  The probe by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis began shortly after the release of a recording of a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the then-president suggested that Raffensperger could "find 11,780 votes" -- just enough to overtake Joe Biden.  Trump, a Republican, has described his phone call to Raffensperger as "perfect" and has portrayed the prosecution by the Democratic district attorney as politically motivated.

Trump Attorneys:  Georgia Indictment 'as Flawed and Unconstitutional as This Entire Process'.  Lawyers for former President Donald Trump responded after midnight Tuesday morning to the late-night indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, by District Attorney Fani Willis, calling it "as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process." [...] Critics noted that the 41-count indictment (which include 13 counts against Trump) accuses the defendants of crimes for simply arguing that the 2020 presidential election was flawed.  That, in turn implicates the First Amendment right to free speech and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.  The indictment also attempts to use a county court in Georgia to charge the defendants for crimes allegedly committed on a national scale and in violation of a federal election, which typically fall under federal jurisdiction.

Fulton County Georgia Briefly Publishes Then Removes Trump Indictment Document.  Primed for immediate nullification.  The indictment was briefly unsealed before the grand jury voted.  This is clear and demonstrable evidence of a prejudicial and malicious prosecution.  Divine providence.  The Fulton County DA Fani Willis has been preparing a malicious prosecution against Donald Trump for over a year.  The novel theories around the prosecutorial approach have been widely discussed and the grand jury foreperson previously gave rather odd public statements during gleeful interviews about the evidence the jury had received.  It is and was ridiculous in the extreme; however, that's how lawfare works.  Today Reuters and other media noticed the court filings against Donald Trump were briefly uploaded and then deleted from the website.  Again, more suspect and odd behavior from Fulton County, Georgia, a county widely known as the epicenter of Southern fraud.

Trump and 18 Others Indicted in Georgia; Charges Include Violation of RICO Act.  A grand jury in Georgia voted to indict Donald Trump on Monday over his efforts to expose the 2020 election fraud in the state and reverse his loss.  The 41-count indictment levied by Fani Willis, the District Attorney for Georgia's Fulton County, includes: violating the Georgia RICO Act; Solicitation of Violation of Oath by a Public Officer; Conspiracy to Commit Impersonating a Public Officer; Conspiracy to Commit Forgery in the First Degree; Conspiracy to Commit False Statements and Writings; Conspiracy to Commit Filing False Documents; Conspiracy to Commit Forgery in the First Degree; Filing False Documents; and Solicitation of Violation of Oath by a Public Officer.  The D.A. also charged 18 others, including former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, Jeff Clark, John Eastman.

Donald Trump, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis Indictment in Fulton County.  Indictments were returned by a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury Monday evening, against Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, former North Carolina Sen. Mark Meadows, and John Eastman.  The 41-count indictment includes charges of racketeering, solicitation of violation of an oath by a public officer, conspiracy, and filing a false statement.

New evidence shows just how biased Trump judge is in Jack Smith's case.  Judge Tanya Chutkan, the D.C. federal district court's hanging-ist judge when it comes to the January 6 cases, was (quite coincidentally, I'm sure) assigned to Donald Trump's case after Jack Smith essentially indicted him for believing that the November 2020 election was rife with fraud.  (A belief, apparently, available only to Democrats following elections.)  The fact that Chutkan hates January 6 defendants, of course, doesn't mean she's anti-Trump.  However, Julie Kelly has revealed a trial transcript in which Chutkan openly states her belief that Trump should be in jail.

Jack's Schizophrenic Indictment.  According to Jack Smith, the Electoral Count Act (ECA) gave Mike Pence and the members of Congress only one job to perform on January 6, 2021:  collect, count, and certify.  Smith calls it the "federal government function," and he claims Trump and his six co-conspirators took actions aimed at violating that "bedrock" function of our federal government.  That is how the Special Counsel starts the Trump indictment, and believe me, he lays it on thick.  There are numerous references to the three C's and to federal government function.  However, the Special Counsel's supporting arguments seem strangely incongruous.  Starting around paragraph 12 and proceeding for dozens and dozens of paragraphs, the Special Counsel supports the indictment by trying to prove there was no fraud in the various swing states.  Why would he spend so much ink on fraud in the states if the ECA only involves the simple federal function of collecting, counting, and certifying?

Moderate Republicans Sound the Alarm on David Weiss's Special Counsel Appointment.  House Republicans are seemingly unified in condemning U.S. prosecutor David Weiss's appointment as a special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation, including several moderate members of the GOP conference.  Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel in the "ongoing investigation" into Hunter Biden, "as well as for any other matters that arose or may arise from that investigation."  Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said he hopes Weiss "gets to the truth," but expressed concern with his appointment. [...]

The Weaponization of Justice.  Jack Smith, with a long history of partisan conduct, is the prosecuting attorney in the case in the District of Columbia charging Trump with disinformation regarding the 2020 election, a confection of dubious legal basis.  This week, the parties argued before District Court judge Tanya Chutkin the prosecution's right to muzzle Trump during his campaign as he and his team poison public opinion and a potential jury pool with leaks and accusations of wrongdoing.  Judge Chutkin has a history of sentencing J6 defendants to longer sentences than even the prosecution requested.  She warned counsel for Trump that politics had no place in her courtroom, but in at least one transcribed exchange with one of those defendants she tipped her hand, expressing her view that it was wrong that Trump was not yet jailed:  [Transcript]

A Sham Special Counsel.  Just when you thought the Justice Department's handling of the Hunter Biden case couldn't appear more corrupt, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday that he was appointing Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss as "special counsel" in the case.  Not only is Weiss the same controversial federal prosecutor who has botched the investigation of President Joe Biden's son so far, but the written rules governing special counsels call for the attorney general to appoint "an outside Special Counsel."  (Emphasis added.)  In other words, someone who doesn't have the inherent conflict of interest that any employee of the Justice Department has — such as when the department is investigating the son of federal prosecutors' ultimate boss, the president of the United States.  Yet what does Garland do?  Appoint the same U.S. attorney for Delaware who, through either incompetence or intentional action, already has compromised this investigation.

Obama-Appointed Judge Tanya Chutkan's Former Law Firm Represented Huma Abedin in Clinton Email Server Investigation.  Following the recent indictment against President Donald Trump, spearheaded by Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, it has been revealed that the case was assigned to an Obama-appointee judge, Tanya S. Chutkan.  The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Trump had requested an immediate recusal of far-left and anti-Trump U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, to preside over his ongoing "January 6th" case in Washington D.C. Trump characterizes the judge as a "biased" judge.

Obama Judge Tanya Chutkan Signals She will Gag Trump in Middle of Presidential Campaign.  Judge Chutkan is going to gag Trump in the middle of a presidential campaign!  Trump's lawyer appeared before Obama-appointed Judge Tanya Chutkan Friday morning for a hearing on a proposed gag order.  Judge Chutkan gave Trump only ONE DAY to respond to a motion for protective order (gag order) filed by dirty Jack Smith rather than give him the standard 14 days.  Chutkan signaled she will gag Trump in the middle of a presidential campaign.

Jack Smith isn't even trying to hide it.  Special Counsel Jack Smith has set court dates for his various charges against President Trump — and what a coincidence — they all coincide with key dates during the U.S. election. [...] But this is not about fairness to the defendant.  This is about swinging the election.  He tried earlier to get this so-called "speedy trial" done through his presidential records charges, where he sought a December trial date, and was granted a May 20 one, well into the election season.  So now he's gotten even by moving his January 6 charges even more strategically through the court dockets, even though legal experts have noted that they are pretty flimsy, meaning, he could theoretically present a stronger case if he made time to build the case.

Don't Be Surprised if Some Republicans Help Jack Smith Put Trump in Prison.  Many conservative patriots are gleeful today based on their belief that Jack Smith's most recent indictment of President Donald Trump is going to afford the MAGA movement its first real opportunity to litigate all the irregularities of the 2020 election and the events of Jan. 6 in a court of law.  This is the evidence they think will be needed for the president to rebut Smith's allegations that he is a fraudster because he knew all the time that the 2020 elections were legitimate.  But, before Trump's supporters pop the proverbial champagne bottle to celebrate, they probably would do well to consider the implications of the following language extracted directly from the first count of Smith's indictment: [...] Boiled down to the basics, Smith has alleged that Trump knew his claims of election fraud were false and used them to try to defraud the United States.  Some have asked how Smith even hopes to carry his burden of having to prove such knowledge ever existed in the president's mind beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Latest Trump Indictment Looks Like It's Backfiring.  If Joe Biden thought siccing his Department of Justice on Donald Trump would keep him from returning to the White House, that strategy appears to be backfiring.  A new poll conducted Aug. 2-7, which is entirely after the latest indictment by Special Counsel Jack Smith, shows that Trump now leads Biden in a 2024 rematch.  The survey by Premise found that Trump garners the support of 42% of registered voters, while Joe Biden gets 38%, giving Trump a 4-point advantage.  If you're a Democrat seeing this poll, it has to make you nervous.  Trump was indicted earlier this month, and Democrats have been accusing him of crimes from the moment he decided to run for president.  To them, the indictment not only represents Trump getting justice, but it's the key to keeping him out of the White House.

What Will Happen If Trump Goes to Trial for January 6 Charges?  Each week I resolve to try to write about some subject that does not include a reference to President Trump, but on most weeks some subject involving him is the most newsworthy story in the world.  The indictment of him and others over the intrusion on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol exposes several new perspectives.  It was no surprise, as it had been telegraphed months in advance.  The Democratic political strategists must have inspired themselves with Russian army tactics in mobilizing many weeks in advance ten divisions on the Ukrainian border under the direct gaze of NATO aerial reconnaissance which was shared with the whole world:  Democratic strategists had been announcing a quadruple indictment of the former president by their drone-like marionettes in the Justice Department for a long time.  What was surprising was the vacuous legal argument, yet it was received as plausible by some people who should have known better.  The former attorney general, William Barr, a man capable of profound reflection on the law and justice, and Vice President Pence, who never would have been heard of outside of Indiana were it not for Mr. Trump, have disclosed themselves as stage-four sufferers of inoperable Trumpphobia.

Special counsel got a search warrant for Twitter to turn over info on Trump's account, documents say.  Special counsel Jack Smith's team obtained a search warrant in January for records related to former President Donald Trump's Twitter account, and a judge levied a $350,000 fine on the company for missing the deadline to comply, according to court documents released Wednesday.  The new details were included in a ruling from the federal appeals court in Washington over a legal battle surrounding the warrant that has played out under seal for months.  The court rejected Twitter's claim that it should not have been held in contempt or sanctioned.  Smith's team repeatedly mentioned Trump's tweets in an indictment unsealed last week that charges the former president with conspiring to subvert the will of voters and cling to power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Why Wouldn't Americans See Politics in Trump Indictments?  It is sometimes said that the prosecutions of former President Donald Trump are "backfiring" on Democrats.  That is, instead of lowering Trump's political support, they are raising it.  That is indeed happening among Republicans and some independents.  But many Democrats still hope the cumulative weight of multiple indictments — there will soon be four, when the Georgia case is added to the New York case and the two federal cases — will make it impossible for Trump to win the general election.  That is why there seemed to be a mini panic recently when a number of political observers pointed out that, in spite of everything that has happened, Trump not only has a very good chance of winning the Republican nomination — he also has a reasonable chance of winning the presidency again.

Political Prosecution:  A Constitutional Crisis In The Making.  We tend to think of election interference as a fraudulent or nefarious activity directly connected to the election itself, whether by manipulating voting machines, ballot harvesting, paying for votes, registering votes from incompetent or non-existent people, voter intimidation, vote-count manipulation, etc.  But in the United States, we overlook the most obvious form of election interference that's common throughout the world and throughout history:  political prosecution.  Imagine you are the president of the United States, and you want to remain in power (or keep your party in power). Now imagine that you control the Department of Justice, the FBI, and a host of other intelligence agencies.  What would stop you from bringing multiple criminal cases against your main political rival?  And if you are being investigated by Congress for bribery and other crimes, what would stop you from bringing criminal indictments against those in Congress who pose a threat?  Political prosecution is the nuclear weapon of election interference.  In the hands of a corrupt politician, anything is possible.

New York Times Op-ed Warns of 'Terrible Consequences' of Prosecuting Trump.  Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, a noted critic of former President Donald Trump, published a "guest essay" in the New York Times on Tuesday warning of "terrible consequences" for the country in the ongoing prosecutions of Trump.  Goldsmith, who served in the George W. Bush administration, warned Times readers that while they might enjoy the idea of Trump being indicted and possibly imprisoned, the other half of the country did not see it that way, and would seek revenge: [...]

Federal Indictment of Donald Trump Is Weaponization of American Political System.  The indictment of former President Donald Trump by special counsel Jack Smith — with the full approval of Attorney General Merrick Garland — is an attack on the American political system and fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment to freely discuss, debate, and contest serious election and political issues.  It represents the ultimate weaponization of the Justice Department, a transformation started by President Barack Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, and completed by Garland, to take out a viable political opponent of Garland's boss and political patron, President Joe Biden.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Trump is charged with four felony counts under three federal statutes — 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 1512, and 241 — for supposedly conspiring to defraud the U.S., obstruct an official proceeding, and suppress the right of Americans to vote.  Why?  Because he "spread lies" questioning the outcome of the 2020 election by claiming "that he had actually won," according to the indictment, thus creating a "national atmosphere of mistrust and anger" and "erod[ing] public faith in the administration of the election."  That's the kind of language you would normally see in an editorial from The New York Times, not in a criminal indictment.  It is an opinion, not an actual rendition of facts.

Trump Indictment Is a Mockery of Common Sense.  Politics arise from disagreements.  People disagree about their values and opinions, about who should rule and how, and sometimes they disagree about facts, particularly complex ones.  What caused a recession?  Who started a war?  What is the best way to reduce crime?  These are factual questions of a sort, but beliefs about these kinds of facts are inseparable from one's values and loyalties.  For Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has now brought a second indictment against former President Trump, the world is much simpler:  There is only truth and fraud.  There are no honest disagreements, misunderstandings or debates.  Thus, most of the indictment consists of ridiculous constructs:  The election was not stolen, and we know because Jack Smith told us so.  Someone told Trump this, but Trump disagreed.  Because Trump didn't embrace the conventional wisdom, he is now a liar committing criminal fraud.

A Florida Trial and a D.C. Grand Jury for Trump.  The elites may have to hold one of their show trials in Florida, but the grand jury had to be in D.C.  ["]Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday asked the Justice Department to explain its use of an out-of-state grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago case.  While the Mar-a-Lago case is being handled out of her Fort Pierce, Fla., courtroom, much of the grand jury work ahead of the indictment was conducted through a Washington, D.C., grand jury.["]  A D.C. grand jury is an obvious rubber stamp for political prosecutors.  A D.C. grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, as long as it was a Republican.  That's why the real show is in Washington D.C.  Going down to Florida is a bit inconvenient because it's one of those provinces of the empire.

Prosecutor Working With Jack Smith Donated Thousands to Biden, Cory Booker, the Democratic National Committee.  David Rody, a prosecutor working with special counsel Jack Smith on the Trump indictment, is also a donor to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and the Democratic National Committee.  Rody is not a grassroots donor who gave $10 or $25 here and there, he donated thousands of dollars, meaning that he is obviously a partisan.  These people are abusing our legal system for political reasons and it's so obvious.

The Trump Indictment and 2024.  What is happening to Trump will not be limited to the Democrat's political opposition, but it will be directed at virtually everyone who oppose the dictates and policies of a de facto one-party socialist state.  The desperate and preposterous indictments of Donald Trump must be a wake-up call to the American people, in particular Republican and Independent voters.  These unconscionable actions underscore the reality that is no longer hyperbole to say that the 2024 election is the most important since 1860.  As in 1860, in 2024 the future of this nation hangs in the balance.  If the judiciary is captive to the Marxists, there is no turning back.

The Weaponization of Justice.  [Scroll down]  Administrations and their efforts to stock the justice department with supporters come and go.  But in the last decade the Left has viewed the Department of Justice as a political extension of the party — whose unchecked power must properly be directed to hurt enemies and help friends.  No wonder Eric Holder described himself as Obama's "wingman" and became the first Attorney General to be held in contempt for ignoring a congressional subpoena.  Never in U.S. history have the Department of Justice and sympathetic state and local prosecutors indicted a leading opposition candidate and likely nominee of one of the two major parties, and at the beginning of a presidential campaign.  Donald Trump is currently charged with nearly 100 felonies by at least two prosecutors.  He likely eventually will be hit with more than 500 indictments, from four prosecutors, every one of the latter with a long record of either leftwing associations or Democratic service.  The mass murderer Charles Manson faced less legal exposure.  No one believes Trump would have been indicted on such counts — most of them involving allegations from years past — were he not running for President.

The Three Politically Motivated Phony Indictments of Trump so Far.  There are three pending criminal cases against Donald Trump so far, with another one likely to arise in Georgia.  Biden-appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting Trump in Florida over allegedly taking classified documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.  He's charging him over J6 in D.C., and Georgia prosecutors may follow with a similar suit.  State prosecutors in New York have charged Trump with fraud over an alleged payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. No one actually believes the formerly most powerful man in the world, who had the top attorneys and advisors surrounding him, would blatantly commit felonies.  Everyone knows it's a fishing expedition by politically motivated prosecutors to exploit the left-leaning justice system and take lawfare to a new level — prosecution.  In the latest indictment, regarding J6, Trump has been charged with four felony counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights and witness tampering.  It essentially repeats the DNC talking points the MSM repeats ad nauseam; that he stoked violence and pretended the election was stolen.

Can Trump Get an "Impartial Jury" in DC?  What the Law Requires.  The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the accused the right to "an impartial jury."  But it also states that the trial should take place in "the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed."  What should happen, therefore, when it is virtually impossible for the defendant to get an impartial jury in that state or district?  In federal cases, the law provides for a change of venue under appropriate circumstances.  The prosecution of Donald Trump for the events around January 6, 2021 would seem to call for a change of venue.  The District of Columbia is the most extreme Democratic district in the country.  Approximately 95% of the potential jurors register and vote Democrat.  Whereas approximately 5% voted for Trump.  Furthermore, the anger against Trump is understandable in light of the fact that the events of January 6th directly involved many citizens of the district.  Moreover, the judge randomly selected to preside over this case has a long history of bias against Trump and his supporters, and her law firm has a long history of conflicts and corruption.

Why Trump Wasn't Charged With Insurrection.  For 31 months, the Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have characterized the Capitol Hill chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021 as an "insurrection." The House of Representatives reinforced this version of events by impeaching then-President Trump for "incitement of insurrection."  The Senate acquitted him, of course.  Nonetheless, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack referred the case to the Justice Department for further investigation.  Consequently, it was something of a surprise that the formal indictment unsealed last Tuesday by Special Counsel Jack Smith failed to charge Trump with fomenting insurrection.  This must have been particularly frustrating for those who have long insisted that the 14th Amendment prohibits Trump from serving a second presidential term.

Will the Biden Administration (sic) Let Trump — Or Any Republican — Take Office in 2025?  As if there is not enough going on out there to trouble your mind already, have you considered distinct possibility that the current PINO — the president-in-name-only — and his crypto-fascist clique would not allow Donald Trump to take office again if the Bad Orange Man somehow won the nomination and then defied the odds (I give him 15%) to somehow go Full Grover Cleveland?  Because there is a real chance they would not.  Crazy talk?  Yeah, but the crazy talk came from the lying piehole of our dust puppet alleged chief executive.  He shamelessly told us — like he shamelessly told us he fired that Ukrainian prosecutor as part of the Delaware Corleone crime club's corruptorama — that he absolutely would not let Trump take office again.  Sure, he qualified it by claiming, in his own grammatically challenged way, that he would only employ "legitimate efforts of the Constitution," but we have seen that, among other things, his idea of the "legitimate efforts of the Constitution" includes using his DOJ to frame the ex-president/his chief political rival.

Bartiromo: The DOJ Is Waiting for More Evidence of Things to Come Out on Joe Biden — Then They Will Give Georgia the Go Ahead to Release Another Indictment.  Maria Bartiromo went on FOX and Friends Weekend to discuss her upcoming show this morning.  Bartiromo announced her guests and then made a prediction on upcoming indictments against President Trump.  Maria Bartiromo:  I will also tell you that all of the lawmakers I spoke with over the weekend, and many of them are on board they want an impeachment inquiry started.  They believe that a Georgia indictment is coming in two weeks.  So I assume the DOJ is waiting for more evidence of things to come out on Joe Biden and the Biden Family taking money in and then they will give Georgia the go ahead to release another indictment on President Trump.

The Machinery of Government is Coated with Gunk.  The charges depend on Trump's state of mind and "proving the requisite intent on the part of Trump and his alleged co-conspirators on all of these charges is likely impossible, at least in front of a fair jury in a fair courtroom."  More troubling is that "Jack Smith's theory of the case necessarily requires criminalizing political speech," a core protection of the First Amendment.  Trump is surely not the first candidate to claim elections were stolen from them:  In 1824 Andrew Jackson claimed John Quincy Adams cheated him out of the election.  More recently Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams, to name but two, made that claim. [...] Of course, whatever infirmities there are in this case, the most obvious is that the facts in this case were known in 2020, and timing it now while demanding a speedy trial has "all the appearances" of Smith arrogating to himself the right to pick the next president.

Trump plans to ask for recusal of federal judge overseeing 2020 election case and for venue change.  Former President Donald Trump says he plans on asking the judge overseeing his federal charges related to the 2020 election to recuse herself and he wants to have the venue moved out of Washington, D.C., in order to get a fair trial. [...] D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee assigned to oversee Trump's federal election case, donated thousands of dollars to elect Barack Obama as president.  Additionally, she ruled against Trump in another case related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.  Chutkan is well known for dealing out the toughest sentences on Jan. 6 defendants, giving longer prison sentences than requested by prosecutors in more than 60% of those cases before her.  Trump had said last week that he hoped to be tried in an "impartial" venue such as a court located in nearby West Virginia, rather than in Washington, D.C., where the district's citizens voted overwhelmingly against him.

Here's the 'Democrat Dream Scenario' for the Trump Trial Ted Cruz Warns to Be Mindful Of.  [Scroll down]  The senator not only brought up concerns about election interference in how the Biden administration is trying to jail his most likely opponent.  It's also "an assault on democracy," Cruz explained, "because they don't trust the voters."  He again spoke about Biden's record in that "they don't want the voters to vote on Biden's record.  Because if we vote on Biden's record, Biden loses.  Instead, they want to use the Department of Justice to steal the election," also speaking once more to news coverage in that "they're trying to steal it by dominating the headlines by bringing the full force of the federal government to bring case after case after case."

Jonathan Turley spells out how foul the Trump indictment really is.  Every American's speech is entitled to First Amendment protection.  However, if the Biden administration has its way, that protection does not extend to Donald Trump.  With his usual clarity and insight, law professor Jonathan Turley spells out just how foul the Trump indictment really is.  As always, when it comes to the latest Democrat "gotcha" against Trump, this one is stink and dangerous, explains Turley.  Hidden behind the legal language and statutory citations is a straightforward effort to punish Trump for daring to speak his mind about the chicanery he (and half of the American voters) perceived in the 2020 election:  ["]Trump was not charged with conspiracy to incite violence or insurrection.  Rather, he was charged because he 'spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won.'["]  In other words, Trump is being accused of challenging the Democrat establishment's insistence that it won the election fair and square.  Any dissenting views must not only be silenced but must be punished, both to keep Trump off the ballot and as a warning to others.

Trump demands Washington DC federal judge Tanya Chutkan recuse herself from case.  Former President Donald Trump claimed 'there is no way' he can get a fair trial in his alleged election interference case, as he called for the judge in the case to be recused and for the trial to be moved out of liberal Washington, DC.  The 2024 GOP frontrunner announced on his Truth Social platform on Sunday that his lawyers will be asking for a recusal of federal court judge Tanya Chutkan on unspecified 'very powerful grounds.'

The Editor says...
As much as I like Donald J. Trump, I still think he needs to stay off of all social media and let his attorneys do all the talking.

Secretary Blinken is appalled at reports that a president jailed his political opponent.  [A] hallmark of narcissism is that you're never wrong.  No matter what happens, it's only bad if the other guy does it.  That's why I can't even pretend shock at the fact that Biden's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, took to Twitter to announce that the Biden regime condemns Putin for convicting Aleksey Navalny, Putin's political opponent.  Navalny has been a burr in Putin's side for some time now.  In 2011, after a contested election based on claims of election fraud (sound familiar?), the Putin regime jailed him for 15 days "for defying a government official."  Navalny instantly became a leading voice in opposing Putin.  He's been pushing back against Putin ever since — except that Putin has been pushing a whole lot harder. [...] Despite the Deep State's and Biden administration's conduct since 2016, Antony Blinken, Biden's Secretary of State, officially tweeted out that the Biden administration thinks it's a very bad thing when a sitting president jails his political opponent:  [Tweet]

DOJ Prosecutor Working on Special Counsel Jack Smith's Team Is a Biden Donor.  One of the veteran attorneys advising special counsel Jack Smith in his prosecution of former President Donald Trump has donated thousands of dollars to Democrat politicians, including President Joe Biden.  David Rody left his role as a partner at the Sidley Austin law firm in 2022 to join the Department of Justice (DOJ) as a senior counsel in the criminal division.  Now, he is helping advise Smith, who has indicted Trump twice for his alleged efforts to challenge the 2020 election and his handling of White House documents.

MSNBC's Joy Reid savors the 'demographic reality' that Trump's J6 judges are women of color.  Joy Reid just can't help herself when it comes to inserting race into absolutely everything and the upcoming trial of former President Donald J. Trump in a Wahington, D.C. courtroom presided over by a hostile Obama-appointed judge is no exception.  During MSNBC's coverage of Trump's traveling to the nation's capital for his arraignment on Thursday, the "race lady" took great pleasure in pointing out that both of the judges who the former president faced would be women of color, seeming to suggest that their ethnicity could have an effect on how the trial will play out.  Reid was clearly savoring the "demographic reality" of the D.C. courts and suggested that the Trump team's desire for a change of venues was rooted in racism rather than the reality that there is no way that he will get a fair trial in an area where the overwhelming majority of the jury pool hates his guts.

The Stunning Lack of Self-Awareness of Biden's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.  On Friday, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges of supporting "extremism."  This is actually his fifth criminal conviction, and, according to a report from USA Today, "Navalny and his supporters have repeatedly criticized his criminal convictions as politically motivated and described them as attempts by Russian President Vladimir Putin to silence his archenemy."  Navalny has been incarcerated since January 2021. He has reportedly been an outspoken critic of the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin and was found guilty of multiple charges, including creating and participating in an extremist community, financing extremist activities, organizing such a community, making public calls for extremist actions, and involving minors in dangerous activities.  Additionally, Daniel Kholodny, the former technical director of Navalny's YouTube channel, was also convicted of similar offenses, receiving a lesser sentence of eight years in a penal colony.

Turley Raises Questions About Case Against Trump:  Jack Smith 'Would Need To Bulldoze' First Amendment To Convict.  Attorney and law professor Jonathan Turley raised serious legal questions about Special Counsel Jack Smith's path to convicting former President Donald Trump.  In an op-ed published Saturday by The Hill, Turley warned that the latest indictment of Trump relating to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot threatens the First Amendment by giving the government an unprecedented power to criminalize false statements.  Trump was indicted earlier this week on four charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.  He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Bill Barr Refuses to Say if He Assisted the Jack Smith Targeting of Donald Trump.  [Scroll down]  Through research and eventually a stroke of luck, I was able to trace the people Attorney General Barr assigned to review the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense.  I found the people working for Durham and questioned the lead investigator.  Again, I immediately told everyone there was nothing being done to confront the corrupt entities who fabricated the nonsense.  After those events I also outlined the institutional silo corruption, a process Benny Johnson recently described as "the ghost in the machine".  While Johnson has the big picture accurate, these entities are not some unnamed random institutional bureaucrats.  They are people, they know exactly what they are doing, and they understand exactly how to control the mechanics.  These "ghosts" are the people AG Bill Barr was/is protecting.

Seriously Sketchy — Judge Boasberg Sits in Back of DC District Court During President Trump Appearance.  In March, when I wrote the outline about Judge Boasberg being the corrupt DC judge who broke the constitutional restrictions on executive privilege, which technically forced Mike Pence to turn over his notes and testify to James Smith and the DC grand jury, I said at the time, "The entire judicial system is corrupt, soup to nuts, all of it."  I was not using hyperbole.  For Judge Boasberg (who is on vacation) to show up in court and sit in the back row of the courtroom is a stunning visible display of judicial ideology and targeting.  In reality, Boasberg is bearing witness to the outcome he created by forcing a Vice President to give testimony against the Chief Executive, thereby establishing the basis for the fraudulent allegations Special Counsel Jack Smith was utilizing to target that same executive, President Donald Trump.  This is the same Judge Boasberg who sat as presiding judge on the FISA court.  The same Judge Boasberg who gave FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith a slap on the wrist for manufacturing evidence used in the Carter Page FISA application that defrauded the court.  The same Judge Boasberg who appointed former DOJ-NSD head Mary McCord as amicus curiae advisor to the court, after she knowingly and fraudulently submitted the FISA application to the court.

A Country Descending into Madness.  This is what it looks like when a country descends into madness.  Two standards of "justice" preclude any justice at all.  Hillary Clinton kept top-secret information on a home-brew private server that was infiltrated by malicious foreign actors, and she suffered no legal consequence — even after having destroyed Blackberry devices and other subpoenaed evidence of criminal culpability.  President Trump keeps personally declassified documents in his home, and the FBI sends a SWAT team into Mar-a-Lago so that Merrick Garland's goons can throw Trump in prison.  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama conspired with the Intelligence Community to frame Donald Trump as a Russian spy and remove him from office, and not a single perpetrator involved in that incendiary plot has been indicted.  Trump correctly points out that mail-in ballot fraud irreparably marred the 2020 election, and the violent thugs in control of D.C. level criminal charges against him that could lead to his execution.

The Latest ABC News Poll Is a Disaster for Everyone Involved.  We'll start with Donald Trump, as there are several ancillary questions asked about his recent indictment to discuss. [...] Specifically, the indictments of Trump are boosting his primary support while at the same time harming him in regard to the general election.  You have to remember that most people are never going to read the various indictments.  They are never going to see that the most recent January 6th-related charges are, legally speaking, extremely weak.  All they are going to hear is political rhetoric, and Democrats will presumably own the airwaves in 2024 given the former president's fundraising woes.  We saw a preview of that when special counsel Jack Smith gave his presser on Trump's latest indictment.  Instead of speaking to the law and what evidence existed, he gave an exposition on the events of January 6th.  That despite the fact that Trump is not charged with inciting January 6th.  But again, all that most people will hear is the rhetoric, not the legal realities.

Dershowitz: Jack Smith Could be Indicted for Fraud for Omitting Trump's 'Peaceful' Statement.  Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says that under his own "fraud" standard, Special Counsel Jack Smith could be indicted for omitting a key portion of then-President Donald Trump's speech in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021.  The indictment charges Trump with four counts, including "conspiracy to defraud the United States."  But in a portion recounting Trump's speech at the "Stop the Steal" rally, Smith repeats the errors made by House Democrats in Trump's second impeachment trial:  he focuses on Trump's use of the phrase "fight like hell," and omits a sentence highlighted by Trump's defense team:  "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

Vince Coglianese Lays Out DOJ's 'Massive Credibility Crisis'.  WMAL Talk radio host and Daily Caller Editorial Director Vince Coglianese ripped the new indictment against former President Donald Trump on the Wednesday edition of "Special Report with Bret Baier."  Coglianese questioned the credibility of the Justice Department and argued that Americans "fundamentally do not trust this institution."  "This is the prosecution and persecution of the leading candidate for president against Joe Biden," Coglianese said.  "I think we have a Justice Department with a massive credibility crisis on its hands.  Voters fundamentally do not trust this institution.  They have routinely gone after Trump through the years in the form of the FBI-Russia collusion hoax and, of course now all of these prosecutions."

Trump DC Indictment — Where is the crime?  The indictment may make out a persuasive case that Trump lied in the post-election period about election fraud, and disregarded the warnings of his most trusted and most loyal confidants that what he was saying was not true, but that doesn't equate to a crime.  The core of the alleged crime is disruption of the electoral count, but that took place because of the riot, and Trump has not been indicted (yet) for inciting the riot.  What the indictment purports to prove may be a reason not to vote for Trump, but it's far from clear it's a reason to criminally charge him.

6 Ways Jack Smith's Latest Indictment Is Legally Flawed And Politically Shady.  Special Counsel Jack Smith's latest indictment against President Trump seeks to criminalize political speech and taking incorrect legal advice.  Americans of all political stripes should be furious and deeply concerned by the course Smith has set this country on.  I have reviewed the new Trump indictment closely, and sadly, it is exactly what we have come to expect from Smith's team — a highly political document, riddled with legal and factual infirmities.  This indictment should have never been brought to a grand jury in the first place.  Moreover, its timing, particularly in light of Smith's statements and actions in the Trump documents case, is so highly suspect that it casts a political pall over the whole case.

Herridge: Attorney Points to Big Problem With Trump Indictment — Allegedly Exculpatory Evidence.  Looks like there are more problems with that indictment from Special Counsel Jack Smith, even as it just getting started with the arraignment of former President Donald Trump on Thursday.  Trump entered a not guilty plea to the four counts, which included conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.  According to a report from CBS News' Catherine Herridge, Tim Parlatore, who is the attorney for former NYPD Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, provided records to Jack Smith on July 23.  Parlatore thinks the Special Counsel may not have reviewed records before indicting Trump because he thinks those materials are exculpatory.

Joe Rogan:  Biden DOJ's Trump Indictments Are the 'Actions of a Banana Republic'.  Podcast host Joe Rogan said the U.S. Department of Justice's multiple indictments against former President Donald Trump are the "actions of a banana republic."  Rogan spoke about how the indictments against Trump galvanized his supporters.  "Yeah, and the people that love Trump, they feel like this is a witch hunt.  And they feel like all the things he's getting indicted for are [unfounded] anyway," Rogan said.  "Not only does it not work, but it kind of hardens their position that he's being targeted.  And these are like the the actions of a banana republic."

Lawyer:  Jack Smith 'has the entire law wrong'.  An attorney for former President Donald Trump said Thursday that Trump's defense will use a "very simple" strategy should charges over the 2020 election be brought to trial.  Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges during his Thursday arraignment after Special Counsel Jack Smith secured a four-count indictment of Trump relating to his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election.  Smith previously secured a 37-count indictment against Trump in June based on an investigation into allegations surrounding classified documents.  "The legal strategy in this case I think is very simple:  You attack the facts that Jack Smith put out that are wrong for instance, Jack Smith claiming, as you already pointed out, that Donald Trump did anything other than call for peace and patriotism on January 6th is wrong," attorney Jesse Binnall told Fox News host Jesse Watters Thursday evening.  "And then you attack the law, because Jack Smith has the entire law in this case wrong, and more importantly, he is ignoring the Constitution of the United States."

Jack Smith Admits Making False Claim to Court in Trump Case.  Special counsel Jack Smith's team made a startling admission in its case against former President Donald Trump, acknowledging in a new court filing that it failed to turn over all evidence to Mr. Trump's legal team as required by law and falsely claimed that it had.  Mr. Smith's team said in a July 31 court filing (pdf) in its classified documents case against the former president that it had incorrectly claimed during a July 18 court hearing that it had provided all Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage to Mr. Trump's defense attorneys, as required by law.  "On July 27, as part of the preparation for the superseding indictment coming later that day and the discovery production for Defendant De Oliveira, the Government learned that this footage had not been processed and uploaded to the platform established for the defense to view the subpoenaed footage," Mr. Smith's team wrote in the July 31 filing.

DOJ Indictment Of Trump Is A Declaration Of War Against American Voters.  On Tuesday, President Joe Biden's Justice Department took the unprecedented step of indicting former President Donald Trump — Biden's chief rival in the upcoming 2024 election — for repeatedly expressing his opinion that the last election was stolen, rigged, and unfair.  It's an opinion millions of Americans share, and to which they are unquestionably entitled thanks to the First Amendment.  That includes Trump, who has said repeatedly (and recently) that the 2020 election was stolen.  He'll probably keep saying it until his dying day, and he has every right to do so.  The idea that our Justice Department can indict someone, especially the sitting president's main political rival, over speech that's protected by the First Amendment is simply insane.  It puts us firmly into banana republic territory, where tinpot dictators jail their political opponents ahead of election day to ensure their "reelection."  Simply put, this indictment is nothing more than a declaration of war against American voters and their constitutional right to free speech.

At this point, why not bypass the legal niceties and just put Trump in jail?  The Biden Administration has clearly given up on the idea that the federal government exists to do anything but satisfy Joe Biden's whims.  So why not get it over with?  Throw Donald Trump in jail without due process, construct reeducation camps, and rename the FBI the Stasi? [...] If we lived in a free country with a working press there would at least be some outcry.  Stories about the corruption would be printed and crusading journalists would be ringing alarm bells about the destruction of democracy.  Actually, on that latter point, they are doing precisely that, only they are blaming the Republicans for not buckling to the inevitable.  The current definition of "democracy" is simply complying with anything the Left wants to impose on us.

The State Farm Late Night Ballot Stuffing Video Was NOT Debunked.  Once again, President Trump was indicted on Tuesday — the DAY AFTER Hunter Biden's best friend and business associate Devon Archer testified that the Joe Biden was included on 20 calls when his son was sitting with foreign officials arranging influence peddling deals for the family.  Archer also testified that Joe Biden met with Russia's Yelena Baturina who invested $40 million into Hunter Biden's real estate ventures.  And she also paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in consulting fees.  Joe Biden later excluded Baturina from his Russian sanctions list.  So what happened next?  President Trump was indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith.  For those paying attention, this is not the first time this has happened.  There have been at least six times now where new evidence was released implicating the Biden Crime Family and then President Trump is indicted by the Biden regime the very next day.

The Judge Assigned to Trump's January 6th Indictment Is Going to Be a Nightmare.  Once again, the political world has been engulfed by another indictment of Donald Trump, this time surrounding his alleged actions involving January 6th.  The details include four different counts, including two counts of conspiracy and two counts of obstruction.  Those four counts break down specifically to Trump allegedly attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, which has to do with January 6th, while the conspiracy charges appear to center on the supposed alternate electors scheme.  Obviously, arguments about selective prosecution and weaponization of the DOJ will be at the forefront for political circles, but even on legal grounds, this indictment appears to be far weaker than the one charging that Trump mishandled classified documents and conspired to obstruct the investigation into the matter.  Specifically, counts two and three sure seem like "disinformation" is being criminalized.  Regardless, putting even the legal arguments aside, one thing is certain:  The judge assigned to this case is going to be a nightmare.

Trump Could Have Spent Jan. 6 Talking About The Weather And Still Would Have Been Indicted.  Former President Donald Trump was indicted for the third time on Tuesday when Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled charges ostensibly related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.  According to Smith, Trump is guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy against rights, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding, all for raising electoral objections that Democrats have made for decades.  As protesters breached the first police barriers at the Capitol, Trump was still speaking at the White House, with explicit directions for demonstrators to "peacefully and patriotically make [their] voices heard."  That timeline itself undermines the left-wing narrative that Trump alone incited a deadly insurrection.

Jonathan Turley and Andy McCarthy Rip Apart Flawed Nature of New Trump Indictment.  As we reported earlier, Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped another indictment on former President Donald Trump, charging him with three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstruction on Tuesday.  At this point, it's getting a little ridiculous and frankly, transparent, as to how hard the Biden administration seems to be working to try to take Trump out of the race with lawfare and indictments.  Fox News' Bret Baier shared how Republicans are describing the indictment for what it is:  Democrats looking at a box of chocolates, trying to figure out what was the best box of chocolates to "prevent him from becoming president again."  That's hitting the nail on the head; that's what it's all about.

Special Counsel Jack Smith Unseals Criminal Indictment of President Trump for Protesting Results of 2020 Election.  Interestingly, nowhere in the indictment is anything criminally alleged relating to the January 6, 2021, events at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington DC.  However, you will notice in the Lawfare delivery of the remarks, Special Counsel Jack Smith factually speaks almost exclusively of the January 6th events.  The absence of a criminal charge (ie. seditious conspiracy or insurrection) when contrast against the extreme verbal emphasis of the event as outlined by Smith in the presser, will be missed by most.  Speaking of the non-criminal event as the context for a fabricated/stretched criminal allegation, is Lawfare in action.  Why emphasize but not charge?  Because the DOJ/FBI does not want the risk of litigated discovery and evidence of coordinated government activity therein, that's why.  Jack Smith knows he is out on a limb with his Lawfare effort to criminalize the legal and constitutional challenge to an election outcome.

Trump Jan 6 Case [is] Assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama Appointee.  The DC grand jury indicted Trump in the January 6 investigation.  "Trump indicted in federal probe over effort to undo election loss and subvert transfer of power in run-up to Jan. 6 riot" AP reported.  Trump was hit with 4 counts:  Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Indictment 3.0: Jack Smith Indicts Trump Day After Hunter, Joe Biden Implicated.  Special Counsel Jack Smith announced Tuesday evening that a grand jury in Washington, D.C., had indicted former President Donald Trump on charges relating to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.  The indictment was announced the day after President Joe Biden had been implicated in a long-running influence peddling-scheme by his son Hunter's former business partner, Devon Archer, in testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

Donald Trump Indicted For Third Time.  Former President Donald Trump has been indicted for a third time.  Officials announced Tuesday that Trump has been indicted in relation to his alleged attempt to interfere in the 2020 election and alleged involvement in Jan. 6. Trump was charged with "Conspiracy to defraud the United States," "Conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 proceedings" and "A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted."  "This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by substantial margins," the Trump campaign said in a statement.

Trump has been indicted again.  A grand jury has filed an indictment connected to the 2020 election.  At the moment the indictment is sealed and no official statement has been made about who has been indicted or why but the Washington Post is reporting the target is former president Trump.

Republican Party Elites Want to Change Primary Rules to [Deprive] Trump of Delegates.  A poll released earlier this month projected President Trump would win in a massive blowout in the Republican Primary. [...] This terrifies the GOP elites.  They hate Trump and hate the fact that they cannot sway Republican voters away from President Trump.  Massachusetts is the latest state where Republicans are playing with the rules to thwart President Trump in the upcoming primary.

They are rubbing our noses in their filth.  The false investigations, and fake indictments of Donald Trump are ridiculous and aimed at showing his supporters and his distractors alike that no one can escape them. [...] President Trump never really was in charge.  Obama led the resistance — an act of sedition — that thwarted Trump at every turn.  McConnell and the rest of the gullible guinea pigs in DC who call themselves conservatives aided and abetted Obama.  Trump's inability to govern properly is one of the reasons some commentators want to abandon him.  It is like telling a rape victim she should have fought harder.

It's time to prosecute the prosecutors.  With their lies about masks, vaccines, and lockdowns all exposed, another pandemic won't work, because nobody's buying that trick again.  So now, it's banana republic prosecutions against the Republican frontrunner, on multiple, coordinated fronts.  Note the timing here — not two years ago, but right before the election.  What a coincidence!  By bringing these prosecutions, Smith and Garland are breaking federal law by violating the Hatch Act, which states that a federal "employee may not ... use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election." But the unfortunate fact remains that few legal tools or weapons exist to hold rogue prosecutors accountable for these wild shenanigans.  Violators of the Hatch Act, for example, face a maximum $1,000 fine and debarment from working for the government for a maximum of five years.  But does anybody think a thousand-dollar fine will deter Smith and Garland from their rabid anti-Trump fixation?

Hemingway: DOJ Playing With Fire Trying To "Literally Imprison" The President's Top Political Rival.  "The Federalist" senior editor Mollie Hemingway, during an appearance Sunday on FNC's "Media Buzz, drives home the point that with the indictment of Donald Trump on federal charges over the January 6 riot, the Department of Justice is "working to literally imprison the top political opponent of the current president" over an issue of political speech.  She said Trump not being allowed to "do what everybody else was always allowed to do, which is protest election results and challenge election results" is "very dangerous."  "To criminalize that act, something the Democrats have done every single election since Reagan... The Department of Justice is acting in a very reckless fashion, and a competent media would be accurately talking about that, what a problem it poses to the very existence of our republic."

Trump attorneys: Fulton DA is raising political cash off her investigation.  Former President Donald Trump's Atlanta attorneys are making yet another attempt to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from further investigations into his alleged 2020 election meddling in Georgia.  On Thursday, Trump's attorneys filed a motion in Fulton County Superior Court, arguing Willis should be disqualified from her investigation because she allegedly is using the case to raise re-election funds.

Is there a judge anywhere in the US with the courage to say that the Emperor has no Clothes?  [Scroll down]  Again, is there an AG or a judge or justice with the moral core and the principles to do what is right anywhere in this country, who remembers we don't have emperors?  We all know that all these legal actions that have been filed against Trump — the NY nonsensical stuff, the documents case, the absurd Jean Carroll case, the numerous cases accusing him of election interference or inciting the fedsusrrection of January 6, 2021 — are all, shall we say, trumped up.  There must be an AG in some state — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan - states we know the Democrats cheated in 2020 — who is brave enough to stand up against this Stalinist offensive against the best President since Reagan?

Endless Trump Indictments And Jail Threats Means Republicans Can't Quit The Weaponization Fight.  The deep state's incessant attempts to undermine the 2024 presidential election by throwing President Joe Biden's number one political enemy in jail is getting old.  It seems like every day, Biden bureaucrats and Democrats manufacture new justifications for why former President Donald Trump deserves to be behind bars.  "Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden's DOJ, sent a letter ... stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and an Indictment," Trump announced in a Truth on Tuesday.

Mark Levin: Trump Attorneys Must File Motion to Investigate the Biden DOJ and Jack Smith.  Mark Levin called on the Trump attorneys to immediately file motion for order the Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the series of illegal leaks by Joe Biden's corrupt Department of Justice and Special Counsel Jack Smith used to interfere in the 2024 presidential election. [...] ["]This Department of Justice is destroying America.  It's destroying the 2024 election.  It's violating every norm, every tradition, everything it inherited to ensure that that department could be trustworthy and could be reliable.  It has criminalized politics.This Department of Justice is destroying America.  It's destroying the 2024 election.  It's violating every norm, every tradition, everything it inherited to ensure that that department could be trustworthy and could be reliable.  It has criminalized politics.["]

The push to disqualify Trump from 2024 using the 14th Amendment.  An effort to disqualify former President Donald Trump's White House bid is being undertaken by two civil rights groups that say the Jan. 6 Capitol riot could prevent Trump from holding office under the 14th Amendment.  Mi Familia Vota, a nonprofit organization to unite the Latino community, and Free Speech For People, an advocacy group pushing for political equality, have joined forces to create the "Trump is Disqualified" campaign.  The campaign aims to inform voters and state officials of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.  This section bars people from holding certain offices who have previously taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."  The groups are pushing efforts across the nation to bar Trump from appearing on the 2024 ballot next November, urging secretaries of state and chief election officials through letters to use what is known as the insurrectionist disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment to block Trump from "any future ballot," according to Free Speech For People.

Enough!  I could tell you that you will never get Donald Trump through the Republican Convention, that all of the money is for DeSantis and the rules are being re-written at the state GOPs to get rid of Trump during the primary for DeSantis, but most of you will not hear what I am saying.  Should he somehow manage that and it is still possible, I could tell you that there is no way Donald Trump wins in 2024; that despite the cheating that is now a part of American Democracy (yes, the capitalization was intended) as much as any Soviet-style election, except on a much grander and more physically exhausting scale, having to overcome actual people voting opposite of the preferred candidate rather than having but one name on the ballot.[...] Trump is a pipe dream.  The GOP won't even let him have the nomination.

217 Pages Reveal Obama Admin's Building of Trump-Russia Narrative.  Heavily redacted documents from the National Security Agency tell at least part of the story of a final-month rush by the outgoing Obama administration to torpedo the incoming presidency of Donald Trump.  The Daily Signal obtained 217 pages of documents from the NSA through a Freedom of Information Act request.  The documents reveal that Obama administration officials, from Vice President Joe Biden down to several ambassadors and many officials in the Treasury and Energy departments, gained access to secret information about President-elect Trump's incoming national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

If Alleged DOJ Misconduct Is True, A Judge Could Dismiss The Whole Case Against Trump.  Lost in the breathless headlines over the indictment of President Trump for alleged violations of the Espionage Act is a story that deserves much more attention than it has received thus far: the allegation that a senior official at the Department of Justice attempted to shake down Trump's co-defendant's lawyer.  It is a scandal in the making that could result in the investigation of senior DOJ officials, which should lead to public congressional hearings, and that might even result in the entire case against Trump being dismissed.

In Defense of Donald Trump.  Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis has some formidable hurdles to clear in her quest to convict Donald Trump for interfering in Georgia's 2020 election. [...] Trump's "big lie" is fundamental to her case.  To support her premise, she may cite the dozens of judges who have tossed the Trump legal team's lawsuits from their courts, seeing no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election.  She is not so likely to draw the court's attention to the fact that millions of Americans, who are not judges, have seen a plethora of evidence that amounts to nothing short of a calculated coup d'état, coordinated across several states.  Such evidence ranges from expert analysis to published graphs showing impossible spikes in Biden votes in three battleground states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia.  These fantastic vote spikes were logged in the wee hours of election night when, according to reports, no observers were present, as would be required by law.  As J.R. Dunn has stated, "The prosecution is going to have a very hard time stating a case without allowing in evidence that they desperately don't want anyone to hear."

Koch Network Plans to Spend $70 Million Exclusively to Block President Trump from GOP Nomination.  As if on cue, here comes another billionaire group by well-established political control agents in yet another multimillion effort to block President Trump.  This time it's Koch and his Americans for Prosperity network.  The Koch groups are planning to spend $70 million in their effort to eliminate the support of Donald Trump in 2024.  However, [it will be interesting] to watch how the downstream media networks attack Trump in order to get a piece of the spending allotment.  That's where knowing where the Koch money flows comes in handy.

America's justice system has been corrupted by political bias.  Three very different indictments — but one [bad] conclusion:  America's blatantly politicized justice system is broken.  Daniel Penny.  Hunter Biden.  Donald Trump.  'Isn't it amazing,' Trump is heard declaring on a bombshell audio recording leaked to CNN on Monday of a now infamous 2021 meeting at the center of a case against the former president over the mishandling of classified information.  'These are the papers,' Trump says as he reportedly flaunts 'secret' military plans detailing an attack on Iran.  Yes, isn't it amazing?  It's astonishing, in fact, that explosive details of perhaps one of the most important and unprecedented legal cases in America's history, against our most hated Republican president, keep leaking out as if from a broken water main.

CBS Report, Mysterious DoD Iran Attack Memo Does Not Exist and Is Not Part of Jack Smith Case Against Trump.  After a full media cycle of apoplexy and pearl-clutching, which included Andrew Weissmann appearing on MSNBC to declare "It's the end of Trump," CBS is now reporting there is no Defense Department memo about attacking Iran — the foundation of the media claims surrounding the leaked audio tapes from Special Counsel Jack Smith.  Worse still, and exactly as CTH previously outlined, despite the claims by CNN about how this audio would be used as the "central element" by the prosecution of Trump, the audio and mysterious memo are not part of the Special Counsel case.

Four Ways the Deep State Betrays Americans.  Do you think it is an accident that the Deep State has worked so hard to protect the Biden family from prosecution when the Chinese bought Joe long ago?  Do you think it is a coincidence that the Deep State is trying to put President Trump in prison for the rest of his days, when he has been the lone voice on the national stage calling for American independence from reliance upon foreign dictators?  Could the Deep State make it any more obvious that it works against Americans' interests and for the interests of World Economic Forum scum such as Klaus Schwab, George Soros, Bill Gates, and all the other anti-American, Marxist globalists?  For all intents and purposes, the Uniparty occupying D.C. is a wholly owned and operated corporate subsidiary of the communist Chinese.

Why is the Clinton Special Counsel Delaying Start of Trump Trial?  Usually trying to delay a trial is done to give your side more time to prepare.  Jack Smith, the Clinton-linked special counsel targeting Trump, is strangely asking for a significant delay on behalf of Trump's people. [...] Why is Smith filing motions on behalf of the defense?  If Trump's legal team wants to delay the case, they're capable of asking to do so.  And Smith's arguments perhaps provide them with grounds for doing so.  What's strange is the red team asking for a delay on behalf of the blue team.  It's a safe bet that Smith's concerns that Trump's lawyers have the time they need are not the real story.  Smith rushed to indict Trump, but now he wants to slow down.  Pushing the trial to December will, along with inevitable further delays, will take the trial into the primary season[,] as it's intended to do.  This isn't about winning the case, it's about, much as with Russiagate, keeping the case in the public eye.

Donald Trump's 2020 election loss was an inside job.  There are numerous bombshells in the congressional testimony of two IRS whistleblowers, but the most significant is that members of Trump's Department of Justice helped to tip the 2020 election to his opponent by slow-walking the investigation into Hunter Biden.  The interference with the probe began as soon as it looked like Joe Biden was going to win the Democrats' nomination.  That's the allegation made by supervising agent Gary Shapley, who detailed steps he and other IRS investigators wanted to take to gather evidence against Hunter for massive tax fraud and other crimes.  They planned to execute search warrants in New York, California, Arkansas and Washington, DC.  They also wanted to search Joe Biden's Delaware guest house because Hunter spent a lot of time there.  The probers laid out their plan in a probable cause memo, but it was inexplicably rejected by DOJ lawyers.

Who is lying?  Merrick Garland or the whistleblowers?  "I'm not the deciding official."  Those five words, allegedly from Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, shocked IRS and FBI investigators in a meeting on October 22, 2022.  This is because, in refusing to appoint a special counsel, Attorney Garland Merrick Garland had repeatedly assured the public and Congress that Weiss had total authority over his investigation.  IRS supervisory agent Gary A. Shapley Jr. told Congress he was so dismayed by Weiss's statement and other admissions that he memorialized them in a communication to other team members.  Shapley and another whistleblower detail what they describe as a pattern of interference with their investigation of Hunter Biden, including the denial of searches, lines of questioning, and even attempted indictments.  The only thing abundantly clear is that someone is lying.  Either these whistleblowers are lying to Congress, or these Justice Department officials (including Garland) are lying.

DOJ Request For Delay Of Trump Florida Trial Has Nothing To Do With Strength Or Weakness Of The Case.  When Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled the trial of Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case for August 14, 2023, no one who knew the slightest thing about court procedure expected that to hold.  Among other things, Trump doesn't even have a full defense team (his prior team quit), his new lawyers will need to get security clearances to view classified documents, and procedures for the handling and control of classified material would have to be worked out.  An August trial never was going to happen. [...] It's really not difficult to understand.  Please ignore the people who are claiming that it reflects that the government is afraid to present its case, or that it thinks the case is imploding.  And most of all, please ignore the conspiracy theorists who construct elaborate arguments and theories around it and so many other things.  These people are misleading — most of all — Trump supporters.

'Someone's got to go to prison'.  [Scroll down]  Now, in Biden's America it is the good guys who go to prison, as in the hundreds of J6 peaceful protesters who, in some cases, were merely present in DC that day.  The real bad guys, the Biden crime family, all those who invented and perpetrated the Russia collusion hoax on the American people for nearly three years, did not go to prison; not one of them: not Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and the long list of their co-criminals at the FBI and DOJ and in the media.  They were all complicit in what was effectively a coup, the calculated overthrow of the President of the US.  Trump did serve out his term, but the same crowd made damn sure he wouldn't serve another no matter what; even if he won, which he did!  All of these people knew the collusion story was a hoax but relished in its success at hog-tying the Trump administration.  Despite their traitorous crimes, Trump was the best president since Reagan!

Hearing Highlights of the Plot to Take Down Donald Trump in 2016.  On Wednesday, John Durham explained the findings of his investigation into the FBI handling of the Russia-Trump hoax to the House Judiciary Committee.  In the opening statement, Rep. Jordan explained what John Durham found.  There was no predicate for the Beria-style probe.  There was not one single substantive allegation in the dossier, but it was used just the same to enable spying on innocent Americans.  Durham also found that the FBI failed in its mission to follow the rule of law.  [Tweet with video clip]  After 40 years in the FBI, John Durham and his fellow investigators called the findings sobering.  Sobering is very euphemistic.  [Tweet with video clip]  He answered questions on a purported plan by one of Mrs. Clinton's foreign policy advisors to create a scandal tying Donald Trump to the Russians.  This plan was shared with then-CIA director Brennan, then-President Barack Obama, and his Vice President Joe Biden, and James Comey of the FBI, and the DNI on August 3, 2016.  No one stopped it.  In fact, they went along as if it were legitimate.  Why does Hillary and her advisor skate?  [Tweet with video clip]

The DOJ treats Donald Trump one way, Hillary and Biden another.  The Espionage Act of 1917 has never been used against a former president, vice president, or even a cabinet secretary — until last week.  According to Mark Levin, the 106-year-old law was never intended to be used the way it suddenly has been: to criminalize document cases.  "Whether the documents are classified or not, it doesn't matter who created them.  They're in the possession of the White House, the president, his staff," Levin says.  "The Presidential Records Acts, which was passed in 1978 and instituted effectively in 1981," Levin continues, "has no criminal penalty.  So, you can't start with a Presidential Records Act and all of a sudden say, 'Okay, let's move to the Espionage Act.'"  Levin notes that the Espionage Act wasn't even used against Lyndon B. Johnson, who had directed his staff to remove top secret information involving the Vietnam War and illegally tapped Nixon's phone.  "Nobody even thought about charging anybody with the Espionage Act," he says.

This kind of lawfare is evil.  In today's United States, a lawyer can become a celebrity for representing O.J. Simpson, but if you represent a former President of the United States be prepared to be attacked by your fellow lawyers and be driven out of the profession.  That is the mission of The 65 Project, which is managed by former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Teter.  Perkins Coie is the Democrat Mega law firm that represents everybody who is anybody in Democrat politics: the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Leadership Council, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  Other political clients include most Democratic members of the United States Congress.  It has also represented several presidential campaigns, including those of John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.  The group's political law practice was founded by Robert Bauer who recruited Marc Elias and made him chair of the group in 2009.  Basically, Perkins Coie IS the legal arm of the Democrat Party.  This basically implies that for all intents and purposes, so is the 65 Project.

Were They Spying on Trump All Along?  Secrets are only for the bureaucrats to leak as they please with no consequences, like the Flynn/Kislyak phone call, or to simply ignore when it involves their friends, such as Hillary's email scandal.  Neither James Comey nor the guy, John Huber, finally appointed by Jeff Sessions to look into the Hillary emails, even bothered to convene a grand jury.  The whole fake Huber investigation is particularly galling.  After Trump demanded action for years, all his DoJ did was appoint a guy who stayed in Utah and reviewed a few files.  But Donald Trump, no secrets for him.  As soon as he left office, Joe Biden cancelled the usual classified briefings all former Presidents get.  Then the hunt was on to nail him for having classified/declassified documents; something all former Presidents routinely possess.  Biden's DoJ had no trouble getting a grand jury for Trump, barely a year after he left office, and it was in the wrong venue, risking a dismissal of the whole case right away.

Washington Post helps those who are intimidating lawyers into not working for Trump.  The right to counsel for defendants is sacred to our democratic republic.  Preventing defendants from obtaining counsel clearly adds to the darkness that the Washington Post endlessly tells us is fatal to democracy.  A highly organized group of people is attempting to deny Donald Trump the right to legal counsel of his choosing by organizing a campaign of intimidation of lawyers who might be asked to serve his defense in the criminal matter he now faces.

Our Broken System Needs Disruption, And Trump Is The Disruptor.  Andrew Jackson was an irascible war hero known for his blunt manner, explosive temper, and inclined to physical violence.  He was elected President in 1828, his second attempt, as a reformer who promised to clean out the "deep state" corruption of his day.  By that time, our country's founders had passed on, and power had been inherited by a motley group of inheritors and cronies (Hunter?  Is that you?) who established a cozy kleptocracy to ensure their continued access to the public trough.  Unsurprisingly, ordinary citizens were very unhappy to the point where southern states, led by Sen. John Calhoun (S.C.), Jackson's future vice president, threatened to secede via federal "nullification," while northeastern elites, represented by Daniel Webster, worked assiduously to enhance federal control over the United States and its riff-raff citizenry.  Despite much howling, unceasing personal attacks, and violent opposition from the deep state of his time, Andrew Jackson persevered, fixed it... and was re-elected in 1832.  Andrew Jackson, in other words, was a disruptor.

Beyond a Banana Republic.  As radio personality Jesse Kelly remarks on Twitter, there are two ways to view what is happening with Donald Trump right now:  ["]Either you see what's happening to Trump as being about Trump or you see it being about a weaponized government planning to make any opposition a crime.  Only one of those views is correct.  You don't have to be a Trump fan to see it's the latter.["]  For most Americans who've paid the slightest bit of attention these past years, that's an obvious statement.  But as George Orwell said of his own time, we've "sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."  That particular phrase derives from a 1939 review of the book Power: A Social Analysis (1938), by Bertrand Russell.  What makes his observations interesting, and why it serves as another example of Orwell's prescience, is how precisely his commentary reflects what we are witnessing at this moment.

Trump Lawyers Targeted by Dark Money Group.  mong the unusual features of last week's arraignment of former President Trump in Miami involved the difficulty he had finding a qualified attorney to represent him in the classified documents case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith.  The corporate media inevitably made much of this issue.  The Washington Post, for example, quoted various anonymous sources who claimed that Trump's reputation as a "challenging client" caused several prominent lawyers to turn him down.  In reality, the problem resulted from an intimidation campaign by a radical pressure group called the 65 Project, whose explicit mission is to ruin any lawyer willing to represent Trump.

There Is No 'Moving On' From Corruption.  A common sentiment expressed by some voters on social media these days is the need to "move on."  This viewpoint seems to be particularly popular with those deeply desirous of a Republican candidate for president of the United States who is not Donald Trump.  They readily admit that Trump's policies were far better for the economy and view Biden's administration as disastrous.  Some even acknowledge that social media censorship and changes to election procedures — many unlawful — cost Trump the 2020 presidential election.  Even so, they say, "It's time to move on.["]  It's easy to chalk this up to "Trump fatigue" — weariness of Trump's ego and combative personality.  But an argument can also be made that this is the latest example of the public's reluctance to confront corruption and the erosion of standards in American governance.  What we're watching transpire in U.S. politics right now should be galvanizing the country.  But it doesn't seem to be, and we need to ask ourselves why.

Carpetbagger!
Dem in Congress said the quiet part out loud on MSNBC, that Trump 'needs to be shot'.  Call it a "Freudian slip," where a person accidentally says what she really is thinking.  Stacey Plaskett is a nonvoting member of Congress, a delegate representing the US Virgin Islands in the House of Representatives.  She was born and grew up in New York City, and graduated from the elite and expensive Choate Rosemary Hall prep school in Connecticut before going on the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown and law school at American University.  She says that she and her family frequently visited St. Croix, where her parents are from, in her childhood, and that apparently was good enough for the voters to choose her to represent them in Congress.  She's no loudmouth dummy, and instantaneously recognized what she said and corrected herself to say "stopped" in place of "shot," but that bell can't be unrung.  The word was there in her mind and slipped out before her superego could intervene and stop it, to use Freudian terminology.

Trump Indictment Timeline Reeks Of Deep State Information Operation.  Former President Donald Trump was indicted on the same day FBI Director Christopher Wray caved to House Republicans and allowed members of the Oversight Committee to view an agency document demanded by the GOP.  The document, an unclassified FD-1023 form, is said to implicate President Joe Biden in a criminal bribery scheme from his time as vice president.  According to Republican lawmakers who viewed the document in a secure room on Capitol Hill, the document from a credible confidential informant contains evidence President Biden took a $5 million-dollar bribe from a "foreign national."  That foreign national, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley says, is an executive at Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that showered Hunter Biden on the board in excess compensation.  "According to the 1023, the foreign national possesses 15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden," Grassley said on the Senate floor Monday, with 17 recordings in "total."  Grassley's bombshell floor speech brought the Biden bribery scandal back into the news cycle after FBI officials sought to suppress coverage of the scheme with Trump's second indictment.

6 Reasons DOJ's 'Get Trump' Documents Case Is Seriously Flawed.  [#5] Why are they bringing this case now?  They know Trump is the leading candidate for president.  They know he is beating Biden in the polls.  They must know how bad it looks for a sitting president's DOJ to indict that president's primary political opponent.  DOJ has long had policies in place to prevent new indictments from being brought, or overt investigative acts being committed, in the months preceding an election in order to avoid the appearance of political timing.  The same reasoning clearly applies here.  The special counsel's team did not have a statute of limitations issue, they could have easily just announced the facts as they saw them after the search warrant was executed and all the documents were recovered, and then held off on further investigative acts and the indictment until after November 2024.  The fact that they did not follow that course is strong evidence to me that a big part of this is the burning desire among many on the left to "get Trump."  They don't care about the law.  They don't care about the facts.  They don't care about norms or propriety or anything else.  They just want Trump in cuffs.

The Trump Indictment: Irresponsibility Squared.  [Scroll down]  That said, the indictment charges Trump with multiple counts of what is essentially the same offense.  This aids headline writers who want to write that the former president, who turned 77 on Wednesday, faces hundreds of years (310, to be exact) of imprisonment, but is at odds with Justice Department guidelines.  [Jack] Smith seems to be needlessly piling on here.  And do indictments usually include photographs of evidence, like the widely circulated view of the boxes in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom?  In addition, the indictment includes multiple quotations of Trump's assertions that classified material should remain secret.  Perhaps their inclusion can be justified as showing intent — that Trump knew that what he was doing was wrong.  But intent is not required by the Espionage Act, and the material recited looks like the sort of thing you see in negative political ads.

Trump Indictment a Violation of Federal Law.  The Presidential Records Act, the big red elephant in the room ignored by [Jack] Smith, at 44 USC § 2205 (3), gives a former president unrestrained access to the presidential records which he declares to be his and gives his designated agents also access to such records.  Yes, the National Archives can take control of those records, after consultation with the former President, and any disagreement on the designation of a record is to be resolved by a United States District Court in a civil proceeding, not a criminal prosecution.  But the Presidential Records Act simply does not create an exception prohibiting the former President's access to records marked as secret, classified, or confidential.  Under the Presidential Records Act, Trump, even as a former president, has all the access he wants to all his presidential records, even those which may have been classified, and may give such access to his designated agents.  End of story.

Trump is Charged Under a Law Meant to Suppress Political Opposition.  A year after the start of WWI, President Woodrow Wilson addressed his message to Congress and warned that the "gravest threats against our national peace and safety" did not come from "other governments", but from "within our own borders".  "Citizens of the United States," Wilson continued, "born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life."  Wilson, a notorious racist and a supporter of the KKK who had contempt for a wide variety of other peoples, likely had German immigrants, but not just them, in mind when he called for what would become the Espionage Act so that "we may be purged of their corrupt distempers."  "I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with," Wilson concluded.  While there were indeed pro-German terrorist conspiracies in those days, including the Black Tom bombing which damaged the Statue of Liberty and a plot to infect the country's horses, the Espionage Act of 1917 went far beyond prosecuting criminal activities.  Wilson had sought, but not received, the power to censor the press, he did get the power to censor the mail.

Former Asst. US Attorney Takes Apart Trump Case and Raises Some Important Questions.  [Will] Scharf is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who worked on two Supreme Court confirmations and clerked for two federal appellate judges.  He's also running for Missouri Attorney General.  Like many, he thinks the prosecution against the former president is "outrageous." [...] Scharf notes that Article 3 Project's Mike Davis and Judicial Watch's Michael Bekesha's argument:  ["] ...distills down to the idea that the President's authority to retain Personal Records, as well as his rights to access his Presidential Records, make it impossible to prosecute him under the Espionage Act section at issue here, § 793(e), because the government cannot prove 'unauthorized possession,' as required under the statute.["]

When are enough Americans going to realize our government is a criminal enterprise?  How corrupt is our Department of Justice?  In order to take Trump off the board, they have indicted President Trump on a long list of made-up, fabricated crimes regarding the documents confiscated in that misguided, illegitimate raid on Mar-A-Lago.  These charges are ludicrous, and a decent judge would and may well toss them.  The thoroughly corrupt Jack Smith has chosen to ignore all the precedents that should apply.  Tapes stored in Clinton's sock drawer?  Legal.  Sandy Berger stole docs from the National Archives?  Slap on the wrist.  Biden's many hundreds of documents and Pence's possession of "classified" docs?  Ignored by the DOJ.  Comey's disingenuous decision to give Hillary a pass for her oh-so-many and far more serious crimes got a pass.  So terrified of the most pro-America president since Reagan, the left has gone to extreme and illegal lengths to destroy the best President since Reagan. Biden's two years in office have brought the US to the brink of an abyss.  This indictment of Trump only proves the unfairness of our two-tiered system of justice.

The Lilliputians are All in Conspiracy Against Trump.  The framing of Donald Trump continues.  Fear and loathing are motivators, but, most importantly, the hope is to lash Trump to the ground so that he can't rise to the presidency in 2024.  Multiple indictments are the ropes.  Convicting Trump would be icing on the cake, but keeping him sidelined is critical.  Trump has now run afoul of the Espionage Act, say federal persecutors.  It might as well be the Escargot Act.  Does it matter, finally?  As establishment mouthpiece Rachel Maddow suggests, federal charges can disappear if Trump scrams from the presidential contest.  Fat chance, knowing Trump. [...] Grasps the establishment: A Trump presidency would be all-out war on their power and prerogatives, a war they worry they'd lose.  More and more Americans are against them.  That's where the fear and loathing of Trump comes in because they know that Trump 47 has every incentive to carry the fight to them.

Donald Trump's Arraignment.  First, the politics.  The early indications are that predictions that Trump supporters would rally around him in the event of an indictment appear to be true.  A poll by CBS News and YouGov found that 76% of likely Republican primary voters said that the indictment was politically motivated.  When asked if the indictment would change their view of Trump, 61% said it would not change their view at all, while 14% said it would change their view of Trump for the better.  Just seven percent said it would change their view of Trump for the worse, and 18% said it depends, meaning they weren't really sure.  In a Reuters-Ipsos poll, 81% of Republicans said "politics was driving the case."  "The indictment did not appear to dent Trump's standing in the Republican nominating contest for the 2024 presidential election," Reuters reported.  So the answer, at least for now, to the question of whether the indictment would hurt Trump among Republicans is no.

Biden's Banana Republic.  It was amazing to see Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointed special counsel, Jack Smith, step in front of the cameras and say of the indictment of former President Donald Trump: "No one is above the law."  Which is to say, Jack Smith looked the American people in the eye and straight up lied.  It was the stuff of a banana republic.  Fact?  Joe Biden, who did the same thing with classified documents as Donald Trump — and four times over — is not being indicted.  He is above the law.  Fact?  As Rep. James Comer's House Oversight Committee is revealing, Joe Biden now stands accused of routinely accepting bribes from China to enrich his family.  No indictment forthcoming.  Because Joe Biden is above the law.

Ill-advised indictments weaponize federal government against Trump.  The indictment of former President Donald Trump amid allegation of "mishandling national secrets" is the natural next phase of the left-wing establishment's arrogance and corruption.  The left has been desperately trying to stop Mr. Trump since he announced his candidacy in 2015.  (Recall the made-up Trump Tower-Moscow scandal, the phony Russia-Trump collusion scandal, the made-for-TV impeachment effort, etc.)  The constant attacks have eroded Americans' trust in government institutions, a far bigger problem than the left's hatred of Mr. Trump.  There are several other indictments that should have been announced to reestablish the rule of law.

Flashback: Biden Promised to Use His Power to Prevent Trump From Returning to White House.  As Donald Trump faces charges from the Biden administration over his possession of classified documents, many of his supporters and advocates have pointed out how the administration's actions parallel corruption long associated with third-world dictatorships.  And yet, during a press conference last November, Joe Biden actually promised he would do exactly that when asked about Trump's possible return to the White House.  "So the entire genesis of that G7 conversation was tied to your predecessor, who is about to launch another campaign.  So how do you reassure them, if that is the reason for their questioning, that the former president will not return or that his political movement, which is still very strong, will not... once again take power in the United States?" a reporter asked Biden.  "Well, we just have to demonstrate that he will not take power by — if we — if he does run," Biden said.  "I'm making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next president again."  [Tweet with video clip]

The National Security "Nuclear" Documents Outlined by Jack Smith Are Pure Lawfare Manipulation.  Devin Nunes was previously the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.  In that very specific role, Nunes was a member of the Gang of Eight who are briefed on all intelligence issues at the same level as the President, the chief executive.  The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman, is the #2 ranking intelligence oversight member within the national security oversight apparatus, exceeded in rank amid the Gang of Eight group only by the House Speaker.  As the HPSCI chairman, Nunes has a very granular understanding of intelligence language and the way the intelligence apparatus uses words within national security documents.  When Nunes talks about national security documents, he is a subject matter expert on the administration side of the process.  Why is that important right now?  Because Nunes knows how to contrast the wording in the Jack Smith indictment against wording used to describe national security documents.  [Video clip]

Is the Trump Indictment Part of Biden's 2024 Strategy?  Any discussion of Joe Biden's 2024 election strategy would be incomplete without examining the context of Biden's threat to stop Donald Trump from "taking power" after the 2024 election.  Just what did he mean by that?  Recall that on November 9, 2022, shortly after the Democrats' surprising showing in the midterm elections, Biden was speaking at a press conference in the state dining room at the White House.  There he made the infamous pledge to stop Trump in response to a sympathetic journalist asking about the concerns of foreign leaders over a second Trump term.

Our justice system is being weaponized to prevent Trump from becoming president again.  In case you didn't see it over the weekend, a Wall Street Journal editorial makes the point that the long and complicated indictment of former President Trump never once mentioned the Presidential Records Act that allows a president access to documents, both classified and unclassified, once he leaves the office.  And everybody should read that editorial.  The Journal goes on to say the indictment assumes Trump had no right to take any classified documents.  This assumption is completely false.  The whole point of this discussion, going all the way back to the insane invasion of Mar-a-Lago last summer, was about discussions and disagreements between Mr. Trump on the one hand and the National Archives on the other.

Tulsi Gabbard: Trump Indictment May Be 'Final Nail' in U.S. Democracy's 'Coffin'.  Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard slammed the recent indictment of former President Donald Trump, claiming the move is "not something that should happen" in the U.S., while warning it may be the "final nail in the coffin of our democracy."  Speaking this weekend at the 14th annual Western Conservative Summit in Denver, Colorado — one of the largest annual gatherings of conservatives outside Washington, DC — former congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard began by noting her love for the United States, her military service, and her later role in congress.

Three ways the indictment of Donald Trump hurts America.  Former President Donald Trump has been indicted for illegally storing and hiding classified documents.  As conservative radio host Steve Gruber describes it, the "bananafication" of our republic continues apace.  There are three reasons every American — even those of us not supporting Trump's 2024 campaign — should find this further assault on the former president repugnant.  First, it reinforces the view, shared by many conservatives, that our government delivers a two-tiered system of justice — one for people on the right and another for those on the left.  Donald Trump, after all, is not the only public official found to have mishandled secret documents.  Special Counsel Jack Smith claimed, as he brought the indictment: "We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone."  History suggests otherwise.

Republicans react to Trump indictment; suggest it is an attempt to 'preemptively steal the 2024 election'.  Former President Donald Trump revealed Thursday he had been indicted on seven counts in connection with his handling of allegedly classified documents.  Trump's attorney, Jim Trusty, called the charges — which reportedly include false statements, conspiracy to obstruct and a charge under the Espionage Act — "ludicrous."  Trusty confirmed to CNN that the Department of Justice sent a summons letter to the Republican presidential candidate's legal team via email listing the counts and scheduling a Miami federal court appearance for Tuesday afternoon.

Former DNI John Ratcliffe Accuses Special Counsel Team of Improper Actions in Effort to Get Trump.  Former DNI John Ratcliffe appeared with Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures," and he ripped into the indictment of former President Donald Trump, calling it a "travesty."  Ratcliffe reminded everyone of the past abuses that have gone on in the effort to get Trump and have been detailed in things like the Inspectors General reports and the Durham report.  He noted how the FBI lawyer made a false claim to the FISA court to get a warrant to surveil a Trump team member.  Ratcliffe said the same kind of thing was happening in this indictment.  He highlighted something that many reports are missing — that they were allegedly "committing crimes to prosecute crimes." Ratcliffe alleged that a member of Jack Smith's special counsel team had threatened "a lawyer representing President Trump's personal valet," Walt Nauta, and that the lawyer had to "flip" Nauta.  Otherwise, the lawyer might not get the position as a judge he was aiming for.

How the Left Learned to Love the Espionage Act.  For a century after the Espionage Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, our friends on the left have consistently denounced it as antithetical to democracy.  They objected when it was used to jail socialist Eugene Debs in 1918 and continued to condemn the statute 55 years later when the Nixon administration deployed it against Daniel Ellsberg pursuant to the Pentagon Papers.  As recently as 2013, the Guardian accused the Obama administration of McCarthyism for using this law to "persecute" whistleblower Edward Snowden.  Yet, now that Special Counsel Jack Smith has included 31 violations of the Espionage Act in his indictment of former President Trump, the left has had a "road to Damascus" experience concerning the once-reviled statute.

Can Trump Clean The Augean Stables on the Potomac?  I ask again, what was Trump's crime?  I think it was a dual manifestation of one crime.  His original sin, his unforgivable or eternal sin, was being elected president in 2016. The regime endeavored to expiate that sin by hampering Trump, then by impeaching him.  But here he is, persisting in his folly, seeking to commit the same tort again.  Conclusion: he must be destroyed.  Hence the treason trial masquerading as a legitimate judicial proceeding.  Reflecting on the latest chapter in the tale we might call "The Persecution of Donald Trump," the Wall Street Journal noted that this is "a fraught moment for American democracy.  For the first time in U.S. history, the prosecutorial power of the federal government has been used against a former President who is also running against the sitting President."  Donald Trump is currently, and by a large margin, the front runner of the opposition party in the 2024 presidential campaign.  The party in power is attempting to silence him, to take him out of the running, by mobilizing the police power of the state against him.  This is the sort of thing one expects from banana-republic regimes in Africa and Central America.

Former Federal Prosecutors Identify Several Flaws In Trump DOJ Indictment.  A pair of former federal prosecutors have identified a number of flaws in the 49-page indictment against former President Donald Trump they suggest will work in his favor if the case goes to trial.  Former DOJ Deputy Assistant Attorney General Victoria Toensing and former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova noted that all the allegations are problematic for Trump if they are true, but that doesn't mean the case is rock-solid.  As reported by Newsmax, "Trump on Thursday was indicted, accused, among other things, of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate.  The prosecution marks the first time in U.S. history that a former president faces criminal charges by the federal government he once oversaw.  He faces the possibility of prison if convicted."

Mark Levin Reacts to Trump Indictment — Frivolous Documents Charges.  I am deep in the weeds and assembling notes for outlines to be delivered in the next several articles.  However, that said, perhaps the only time Mark Levin's shouting was tolerable was last night as he responded to the indictment of President Trump.  [Video clip]

Marjorie Taylor Greene Outlines the FBI Document She Reviewed Highlighting Bribes to Joe Biden and Family — Video and Transcript.  Amid all the furor of the corrupt and political indictment against President Trump, Congress was permitted to read the witness statement from a Confidential Human Source who outlined allegations of bribery in testimony to FBI agents.  The FD-1023 report was written by FBI investigators in July of 2020.  It became an issue after the FBI seemingly took no action, and then recently claimed to be "investigating" the claims of the "highly credible" FBI source.  Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) reviewed the report and then gave her impression to the media.  [Video clip]

Trump Is Charged But Nobody Has Time To Investigate The Possibility That We Have A Spy In The White House.  Donald Trump is apparently being charged with seven counts of mishandling classified documents.  All of this is related, it appears, to boxes of documents allegedly found in the former President's home in Florida after he left office. [...] I will note for the record that the widely quoted claim that "nuclear launch codes" were amongst these documents is obviously false.  Outside of Hollywood's imagination, those codes don't exist in the way the public has been told they do.  The broader issue here is this.  How is it that DOJ and the FBI have found time to run this "crime" to the ground but apparently have dedicated no resources of any kind to pursuing the massive trove of evidence suggesting strongly that Joe Biden is fully compromised by the Communist Chinese and has taken literally tens of millions of dollars from individuals directly connected to Chinese intelligence?  If Trump was sloppy with classified documents — a claim as yet unproven — we can probably agree that is less than ideal.  If the guy sitting in the Oval Office is in the pay of our number one foreign enemy that seems like it would be a much bigger deal.

Jeff Clark Gives Solid Take on DOJ Trump Indictment Scheme.  First, it is important to always remember why this indictment is taking place.  The DOJ, specifically Lisa Monaco, are continuing the offensive against Trump in large part to cover for the actions of the Obama administration in the originating targeting of their political opposition.  Originating Spygate operations ('15-'16), Russiagate ('16-'17), Mueller ('17-'19), Impeachment #1 ('19-'20), Durham ('19-'23) and Jack Smith '22-present, are all part of one long continuum of weaponized DOJ and FBI operations.  The entirety of the effort is to protect the actions taken by the Obama administration.  In this interview Jeff Clark gives his opinion of the statutory weaknesses that exist in the case as outlined in the indictment.  The first two defense approaches will likely be:  (1) the Presidential Records Act supersedes the issues of document holding as noted in the use of the Espionage Act.  (2) However, if the Espionage Act [Statute 793(e)] has to be defended, the originating issue of "unauthorized possession" will be the second approach heading to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.  [Video clip]

Latest Trump Indictment Proves Deep State Is Trying To Rig Yet Another Election.  The same institutions that tormented former President Donald Trump for years with false accusations of collusion with Russia are making yet another brazen attempt to rig the next presidential election against the wishes of the American people.  Democrats and their cronies in the Department of Justice and the FBI have a history of election meddling to achieve their political goals.  The raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and subsequent persecution of the former president by Special Counsel Jack Smith, sanctioned by the same corrupt players who have targeted Americans for wrongthink for years now, prove to be no exception.  There's nothing the deep state isn't willing to try to do to keep their biggest threat — Trump and his voters — from regaining power.  Democrats and corporate media are so committed to this goal that they didn't even try to keep their desire to change election outcomes a secret.

Legal Opinions On Trump Indictment Incoming.  CTH has been hammering away on the Espionage Act angle — 793(e).  And with good reason.  Obviously CTH is getting some good legal advice.  Here CTH highlights a common misunderstanding.  Violations of the Espionage Act need not involve "classified" documents.  In fact, the entire classification system is a post WW2 innovation: [...] CTH is absolutely correct that the Trump situation is NOT what the Espionage Act purports to be about.  The use of the Espionage Act has regularly been prone to abuse, and it has always had its critics because of the very broad and vague language, such as "relating to".  Hopefully Trump's lawyers will attack from this angle in pre-trial motions.

The Trump Indictment Is Much More Than An Interesting Coincidence.  The very day that the Oversight Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives canceled a Contempt of Congress vote against FBI Director Christopher Wray after the latter agreed to turn over a witness file containing bribery allegations against President Joe Biden stemming back to his days as vice president of the United States, Donald Trump — former president and current poll leader among prospective 2024 GOP presidential candidates — informed the public that he has been indicted for mishandling presidential documents.  This extraordinary coincidence illustrates an important, baneful trend in American life: the use of criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits as a political weapon.  With a gross profusion of federal, state, and local laws in place, many of them hundreds of pages in length and larded with ambiguities and internal and external contradictions, it is easy to find some legal breach with which to charge someone whose policies you oppose or whom you simply dislike.  This costs your enemy time, effort, and money.

How to commit the perfect coup against a president and his supporters.  Everything from here on out is a theory, but it's a theory based upon readily available facts.  If you look at them in a particular way, those readily available facts show a sustained pattern of subverting the will of the people to obtain total political power, something that culminated in the recently announced indictment against Donald Trump.  If I were trying to overthrow a duly elected president, I'd start by saying he conspired with a foreign power to cheat in the election. [...] When it became apparent that the president was hugely effective at governing on those things that matter to ordinary people, such as the economy, national security, immigration, energy policy, etc., and that the false charges of treason and cheating weren't sticking, I'd look ahead to throwing the next election.  What I would need is a way to prevent the president from campaigning and a way to institutionalize election fraud.  Thankfully, I would have gamed out long before the election what a government can do if faced with a pandemic infection.  COVID's appearance was providential.

The Editor says...
Covid was, in my opinion, intentionally released as a biological weapon.  Its appearance was not providential, except in the sense of being fortuitously well-timed.  Disease is not a gift from God.

Biden's DOJ Tried to Bribe Attorney for Trump's Valet in Exchange for Testimony Against Trump.  On Thursday The Guardian reported that Joe Biden's DOJ attempted to bribe the attorney for Trump valet driver in exchange for testimony against Donald Trump.  Clearly, this is an illegal act and it should threaten the case against President Trump.  The only criminal act in this entire case is the actions by the Biden DOJ!

Trump Impeachment Lawyer David Schoen Destroys Case Against Trump.  [Video clip only.]

Biden's DOJ attempts to take out the GOP frontrunner.  The inevitability has finally been realized (if reports are true): Donald Trump has been indicted by the Biden DOJ. [...] After years and years of prosecutorial and investigative abuses and crimes, the Department of Justice has finally indicted Trump.  In doing so, the DOJ has inserted itself into the 2024 presidential election, again disenfranchising millions of voters.  It's a sad day for the country and a sobering day for those who wish for the equal administration of justice.  This story is still developing.  The New York Times states there are seven counts; we expect these to concern various provisions of the Espionage Act (18 USC 793), such as the dissemination of national security information and the unauthorized retention of national security documents.  We understand that the indictment has been filed in the Federal District Court in Miami.  Quick analysis: this is a comparatively good venue for Trump, given the support he has in Florida and in the Miami community.  It is much better than DC, where Trump would face unfavorable judges and a Democrat jury pool.

Who is Really Conducting the Jack Smith Prosecution of Trump?  On June 2nd former Mueller special counsel and impeachment operative, Andrew Weissmann and Norm Eisen respectively, published their current Trump prosecution memo using a novel and arcane interpretation of US Code 793.  Four days later media began reporting from leaks within the Jack Smith special counsel of the main legal approach they were going to use against President Trump.  What approach is Jack Smith taking, US Code 793!  This is not coincidental.

7 reasons to be highly skeptical of the legitimacy of the indictments of Trump
[#3] As Julie Kelly put it, "The indictment represents the first time in U.S. history a former president will face criminal charges."
[#4] The indictments are the product of an unprecedented raid on the residence of a president, at Mar-a-Lago
[#5] The seizure that resulted from the raid was overly broad, otherwise known as a fishing expedition: [...]
[#6] The media circus was immediate and intense, part of the joint effort of the deep state.  The legacy media, and the Democrats to weaken President Trump's candidacy in the general election, while solidifying his support among Republicans, so as to nominate a weaker (in the eyes of his opponents) candidate.

Report: Trump's Legal Team Informed He Is a 'Target' of Classified Documents Probe.  Federal prosecutors have told the legal team for former President Donald Trump that he is a "target of their investigation" into his handling of classified documents after leaving office, according to a report.  The New York Times reported Wednesday [6/8/2023] that the notification from Special Counsel Jack Smith was the "clearest signal yet that the former president is likely to face charges in the investigation."

Feds inform Trump he is target likely to be indicted as DOJ rebuffs prosecutorial misconduct claim.  Federal prosecutors have notified Donald Trump that he is a criminal target and likely to be indicted imminently in a probe into alleged classified documents — even as the Justice Department declined to delay charges to give time to investigate allegations of witness tampering submitted by the former president's legal team, according to multiple people on Wednesday familiar with the case.  The sources directly familiar with the case told Just the News that DOJ declined to delay the planned indictment of Trump to investigate allegations that a senior prosecutor working on the case tried to influence a key witness by discussing a federal judgeship with the witness' lawyer.  That allegation is still pending in a secret case before Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, the jurist who oversees the federal court in Washington, D.C., and the grand juries that convene in that courthouse, the sources said.

Indicting a Former President over Nonsense Is Playing with Fire.  Reports are circulating that federal prosecutors are about to ask a grand jury to indict former President Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents after leaving office.  If those reports are true, and prosecutors do move against Trump, it would be the first time in American history that the government had prosecuted the leading opposition candidate.  It would also destroy public faith in the rule of law and voters' trust in democracy.  The documents charges are incredibly weak, from what has been reported publicly thus far.  The president has full declassification authority, and there is no formal procedure for declassifying documents.  Breathless claims of "national security" secrets, even nuclear codes, being brought to Trump's estate at Mar-a-Lago turned out to be fantasies.  Prosecutors may fall back on charges of obstruction of justice, which seem to be just as speculative.

Leading GOP Election Officials: Feds' 'Treasonous' Interference Is A 'Direct Attack' On U.S. Elections.  Several leading Republican election officials are sounding the alarm about the federal government's persistent interference in U.S. elections.  Jay Ashcroft and Mac Warner, the secretaries of state of Missouri and West Virginia, respectively, recently told The Federalist they are increasingly worried about the mounting evidence documenting federal agencies' interference in prior elections to the benefit of the Democrat Party.  Ashcroft pointed to the long-awaited report from U.S. Attorney John Durham that confirmed what The Federalist has been reporting for years:  The FBI possessed no real evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russian government officials when it launched its investigation into the Trump campaign leading up to the 2016 election.  The political investigation — which was "based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence" — would continue throughout the 2016 election and well into Trump's presidency.

Durham reports shows Biden and Obama knew truth of Trump collusion hoax but kept silent.  A silence kept in order to hide the truth is a lie.  By that maxim, there are plenty of liars among prominent Democrats who knew that the damning Trump-Russia collusion narrative was all a hoax.  But they chose to remain mum, preferring instead to watch contentedly as an American president was vilified nonstop by a media-driven orgy of lies.  It consumed the nation for years and inflicted untold harm.  None of them had the decency to volunteer the truth.  This is one of the key findings in the 306-page Durham report that the special counsel filled to the brim with documented acts of deviousness, dishonesty and malice by high officials in government whom we are supposed to trust but should not.

After Covid: Twelve Challenges for a Shattered World.  [Scroll down]  Americans had become vaguely aware of this thing called the deep state before the pandemic response but the experience itself proved it.  Democracy did not exist.  We were at the mercy of bureaucrats and their decisions.  Courts did not step up.  When they finally did, the bureaucrats pushed back and said that no one has the right to control them.  There are hundreds of agencies and millions of deep-state employees who are accountable to no one and yet exercise massive power over our lives.  There is nothing about these institutions in the Constitution.  The bureaucratic state is a fourth branch of government when there are supposed to be only three.  The tentacles from Washington extend not only to every state and city but all over the world.

Durham reports shows Biden and Obama knew truth of Trump collusion hoax but kept silent.  A silence kept in order to hide the truth is a lie.  By that maxim, there are plenty of liars among prominent Democrats who knew that the damning Trump-Russia collusion narrative was all a hoax.  But they chose to remain mum, preferring instead to watch contentedly as an American president was vilified nonstop by a media-driven orgy of lies.  It consumed the nation for years and inflicted untold harm.  None of them had the decency to volunteer the truth.  This is one of the key findings in the 306-page Durham report that the special counsel filled to the brim with documented acts of deviousness, dishonesty and malice by high officials in government whom we are supposed to trust but should not.

[The] Deep State [is] Quietly Starting to Fear the Worst: The Return of the Trump Wrecking Ball.  Worried about too much systemic rigging and fraud for a Republican ever to win office again?  Good news!  The riggers themselves are quietly starting to worry it may happen.  Politico ran a story on Friday, and I must say, the title quickened my pulse.  Tellingly titled, "Hurricane Trump Is Coming — And Washington Hasn't Bothered to Prepare," the story ran with the subhead, "After 2020, reformers vowed to erect guardrails against a rogue chief executive.  They ran into a wall of complacency, partisanship and distraction."  As if Leftists would have done a single thing to curtail executive overreach while they held office.  Puh-lease.  The article fretted that the complacent deep state has done nothing to rein in a president who is on the wrong team.

51 People Who Should Never Have Clearances Again.  The 51 Intelligence Community professionals who signed a letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop showed "signs of Russian disinformation" should have their clearances immediately revoked and their access to classified information severed and never again restored.  Their blatant disregard for the proper process through which an intelligence investigation is conducted, as well as for national security matters in general, is ground to terminate their clearances immediately.

The Trump-Russia Collusion Conspiracy Was a Coup D'état.  The bottom line is that everything the Obama justice department, IC and FBI did, to include support from Republicans in congress during the 2016 election and aftermath, was a coup d'état against U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration.  This is the truth of the thing.  The U.S. media participation and subsequent denial of their culpability looks increasingly pathetic in the aftermath of the report outlined by Special Counsel John Durham.  However, it doesn't take a media admission of the coup effort for the demonstrable actions and evidence of the coup to be factual.  Read the report, all the evidence is there.  The truth stands alone, regardless of the discomfort it creates.

[During the 2020 election, the] CIA had 'no evidence' Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, says top intel officer.  A former top intelligence officer with oversight of threats ahead of the 2020 election said the Central Intelligence Agency had "no evidence" at the time that Hunter Biden's laptop had anything to do with a Russian disinformation campaign, despite claims from then-candidate Joe Biden's allies.  Just before the election, 51 former national security officials wrote a public letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."  It was signed by former President Obama CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, among others.  However, in an interview with Fox News Digital, former National Intelligence Officer for Cyber Chris Porter said that claims from Biden's supporters "did not reflect" the actual intelligence.

Pomerantz Pleads Fifth in Deposition, Claims GOP's Trump Indictment Probe Is 'Political Theater'.  Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, refused to answer any questions relevant to former President Donald Trump's indictment during much of a deposition before Congress on Friday.  Pomerantz warned in an opening statement he would do as much, according to a copy of the opening statement leaked to CNN and other legacy media outlets.  "It gives me no joy to invoke my legal rights, but I am glad that the law allows me not to cooperate with this performance of political theater," Pomerantz said, per his statement.  The deposition ran for roughly five hours.  A source with direct knowledge of the matter told Breitbart News that Pomerantz had invoked the Fifth Amendment for "most of his deposition."

John Brennan's closed-door hearing 'confirmed' Hunter laptop letter was 'all political': Jim Jordan.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News the testimony his panel heard in private from Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan "confirmed" the letter signed by 51 current and former intel officials was not on-the-level.  "[Brennan] sat for a four-hour interview and he further confirmed that this thing was all political," Jordan said on "Jesse Watters Primetime."  Jordan recounted his allegation that then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken was the "impetus" behind the letter, which he said was organized in-part by former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who testified before the Judiciary Committee earlier in May.

The Staggering Flaws of the Biden Family.  Good government should be non-partisan, competent, and trustworthy.  (It hasn't been for a long time.)  Democrat partisans overwhelmingly populate the vast majority of government departments, and no Republican administration has been able to put a dent in that political slant.  Constant leaks have become the story instead of relaying the accomplishments of Republican presidents.  Democrats don't have to use overt bias to enforce a progressive liberal bureaucracy to do their bidding; instead, they step aside and watch a parade of bias and salacious leaks flow endlessly to a media too willing to use unnamed sources.  President Trump faced an average of two leaks a day in his first 100 days, and to this day, virtually no one was punished in any government agency, including agency heads, for any leaks to reporters.

CIA Solicited Signatures For Hunter Biden Laptop Letter, Congressional Testimony Shows.  The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) both solicited signatures for and eventually approved the infamous 2020 letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Russian disinformation plot, recent congressional testimony suggests.  According to a report to be released Wednesday by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, multiple former U.S. intelligence officials testified under oath about the CIA's involvement in the distribution of the letter, which was eventually signed by more than 50 former senior U.S. intelligence officials.  "One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency's Prepublication Classification Review Board ('PCRB') informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it," the House investigative report notes.  "The Committees have requested additional material from the CIA, which has ignored the request to date."

The next step in the plan to remove Trump.  Just last week the Proud Boys trial around the events of January 6, 2021 concluded.  Four leaders of the Proud Boys were convicted of "seditious conspiracy" in a heavily biased DC court for their activities related to the mostly peaceful demonstrations of that date. [...] To my mind, there are some dangerous precedents that have been set for subsequent attacks on Donald Trump and on the GOP presidential campaign.  The first of these is having a court identify the J6 events as "sedition", meaning an attempt to overthrow the legitimate government.  Prior to this time, despite the J6 committee attempts to label the events as insurrection, there has been no successful effort to classify them as more than a riot.  Being able to apply a label of "sedition" is a huge legal step, bringing into play the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that prohibits anyone guilty of insurrection from holding the office of President.

Is Trump's Campaign and Reelection a Fool's Errand?  [Scroll down]  Can he even win the nomination?  Expect an endless stream of lawsuits and indictments tying up Trump in depositions and a barrage of negative press from Big Tech and the corporate media.  Expect far left judges to rule that Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot, with Soros-funded state secretaries of state eager to keep his name off their state ballots.  These trials will all be timed to begin next year when primary season heats up.  How can Trump run a campaign and hold rallies when he is tied up in depositions and court?  There will be Fulton County, Alvin Bragg, and Special Counsel Jack Smith all planning their big trials for campaign season next year.  Expect scores of women to accuse Trump of rape, even if they have no recollection of when or where it happened.  Trials will be held in Trump-hating NYC or other deep blue jurisdictions before leftist judges that will ensure that the trial is stacked against Trump.  That will be enough for lawfare to ensnarl Trump as the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver.  Expect the weaponized judicial and intelligence agencies to manufacture scandals against Trump, as they did with "Russian collusion" and hide or ignore scandals of his opponents, as with Hunter Biden's laptop.  If Trump somehow prevails and wins the nomination, his troubles are far from over.

Savor Trump's Electoral Landslide — Until the Phantoms Vote.  RINOs, psyops, controlled opposition like Breitbart and Fox and the grifter consultant class are selling the narrative that Trump wins the nomination bigly — then takes the Electoral College.  Joe Biden is on wobbly knees, at the edge of the actuarial life chart, leaving America with the most ridiculous replacement president.  His own party doesn't want him to run — but the party owners are stuck with him.  That too favors Trump.  Blissfully count the new Senate majority, the expanding House majority, and the keys to a White House that will finally drain the swamp.  Then, have a coffee, sit down and remember 2022.  That felt great too — until the day after the election.  To become president, Trump must win a bunch of swing states.  To win each state he needs more ballots in his pile than the other guy.  It's baked into the data — which we look at every day — that Trump is not going to win those swing states.  None of them.  It's not his fault.  He will probably get more votes, just not more ballots.

Judge in Trump's 'hush money' trial engages in blatant dissimulation.  My assessment of the probability of Donald Trump receiving a fair trial on the highly questionable charges (falsifying business records) brought against him by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg just plummeted to subterranean levels.  The judge in the case [...] issued a gag order and specified that he was not issuing a gag order and violated Trump's First Amendment rights while claiming he didn't violate his First Amendment rights.  The technical name [...] is dissimulation. [...] I don't pretend to be an expert on the law, but Justice Merchan has destroyed my confidence in his ability to conduct a fair trial.

Uncovered Recruitment Email Confirms Infamous 'Intel Letter' Was Meant to Interfere in the 2020 Election.  Former Obama-era CIA Director Mike Morell and current Secretary of State Antony Blinken were recently exposed as being behind the infamous "intel letter" that sought to dismiss Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation.  Now, a new report is providing unassailable evidence of exactly what the motive behind the gambit was.  According to The Washington Examiner, Morell sent a recruitment email to gather signatories for the letter.  Notably, in the email, he admitted that the entire purpose was to give Joe Biden a rebuttal to Donald Trump's attacks during the presidential debates. [...] Morell sent the email with an admission that the entire purpose was to provide a "talking point" for Biden to use.  Sure enough, that's exactly how it played out.  Trump brought up Hunter Biden's laptop at the debate in question, and Biden responded by claiming it was Russian disinformation, a claim that was bolstered by the supposed authority of all the intelligence officials who signed the letter.

"A full-blown Color Revolution-style attack on the US Supreme Court as an institution is now in its early stages".  "Color Revolution" is a term that has been around for a while and doesn't have a single clear definition.  But the term most famously was used as to the "Orange" Ukraine 2004 civil unrest that allegedly was manipulated by western intelligence agencies to topple a pro-Russia regime.  A color revolution then, is a form of manipulated mass civil disobedience meant to accomplish regime change.  We saw it used against Trump after the 2016 election, where manipulated and hysterical claims of Russia collusion were used to attempt to paralyze the Trump administration under the umbrella of "The Resistance" — and it worked well in stymying many of Trump's planned initiatives.  It all was highly organized and manipulated.

The Russia Hoax Orbiting Hunter Biden's Laptop Is So Much Bigger Than Blinken.  Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.  Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week's revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents.  Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story.  Blinken and Morell reportedly "discussed possible Russian involvement in the spreading of information related to Hunter Biden."  According to Morell, Blinken's outreach "set in motion" what led to the public statement signed by 51 former intelligence agents that falsely framed the laptop as Russian disinformation.  This revelation is huge — but it's only a start to understanding the scope of the plot to interfere in the 2020 election by framing the laptop exposing Biden family corruption as foreign disinformation.

Dominion vs. 'Russian Collusion' and 'Disinformation'.  Compare Dominion's writ with the twin "Russian collusion" and "Russian disinformation" hoaxes.  Lots of journalists and guests on network news, cable, public broadcasting, and internet news sites ran daily with the utter lie that the concocted Christopher Steele dossier was accurate.  Four years later, they were still claiming that Donald Trump had won the 2016 election only by enlisting the aid of the Russians — as an "asset" and puppet of Vladimir Putin.  All that was demonstrably untrue.  No one on these news shows ever produced any information validating the dossier, much less offered apologies to those whose lives they ruined, as in the case of Lt.  General Michael Flynn and Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.  The steady two-year drumbeat of media and DNC-fabricated untruths neutered the first two years of the Trump Administration.  Robert Mueller's $40 million, 22-month special counsel "investigation" leaked wild and lurid rumors of Trump indictments to come, and yet ultimately found no proof of collusion.  No matter.  The agendas of the Democratic Party's collaboration with the media were fulfilled.  The Trump Administration was wounded, forced on defense to reply to countless new fabrications, and smeared to the point of caricature.

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Says States 'Must Refuse To Place' Trump's Name On 2024 Ballot.  Former Labor Secretary for Bill Clinton Robert Reich said states should refuse to place Trump's name on the 2024 presidential ballot due to his alleged "treason."  Reich made the comments in an op-ed published Monday [4/24/2023] in The Guardian.  Reich argues that Trump is guilty of treason under the 14th amendment because of his claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.  The 14th amendment prohibits anyone guilty of insurrection against the United States from serving in public office.

To put it another way...
Bill Clinton's Commie Secretary of Labor Says Trump Must Be Barred From Running Again.  Robert B. Reich was Bill Clinton's labor secretary; since then he has been keeping busy teaching at Berkeley and gracing us all with his punditry on Twitter, where he has a million and a half followers.  Reich has become notorious for his unhinged far-Left rants; on Monday, he showed yet again why he has gained a reputation as an upscale Keith Olbermann.  In the UK's neo-Stalinist Guardian, Reich called for Donald Trump to be barred from running for president again — to preserve what Leftists love to call "our democracy," by which they mean their hegemony.

Bragg Drops Case Against Jordan, Allowing House GOP to Depose Ex-Manhattan Prosecutor.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has dropped his effort to quash a congressional subpoena to a former prosecutor who worked in his office, a congressional aide told The Epoch Times in a statement on Friday.  "This evening, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office withdrew its appeal in Bragg v. Jordan.  Mr. Pomerantz's deposition will go forward on May 12, and we look forward to his appearance," Russel Dye, spokesperson for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to The Epoch Times in a statement.  "Bragg caved.  Jim Jordan won," the House Judiciary Committee wrote in a statement on Twitter Friday.  The development wrapped up a legal clash between Bragg and House Judiciary Republicans, whereby Bragg had attempted to stop the lawmakers from requesting testimony from Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor who investigated former President Donald Trump's finances.  Pomerantz left Bragg's office in February 2022 in protest of Bragg's initial unwillingness to bring an indictment against Trump.

Ex-acting CIA director reveals he had 50 spies sign a letter saying Hunter Biden laptop scandal was Russian disinformation.  A retired CIA leader coordinated a letter from former intelligence chiefs claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation because he wanted to help Joe Biden's presidential campaign.  Mike Morell told the House Judiciary Committee that he was asked by Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State — who at the time was a senior member of the Biden campaign — to help discredit the laptop reporting.  Morell was a former acting CIA director, serving for two months in 2011 and four months from 2012 to 2013.  He retired from the CIA in September 2013.

Testimony Reveals Blinken — As Adviser to Biden Campaign — Spurred Letter from 51 Intel Officials Discrediting Hunter Laptop Story.  An author of the now-debunked public statement from 51 intelligence officials casting doubt on the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story revealed this month to Congress that Antony Blinken, then a senior adviser to the Biden campaign, was the impetus for the statement.  Former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell testified to the House Judiciary Committee on April 4 that now-Secretary of State Blinken called him about the laptop story just days after the New York Post published it and that the call "triggered" Morell to draft the statement.

Ex-top spy admits Hunter Biden laptop letter designed to influence 2020 election, Blinken involved.  A former acting CIA director has admitted to Congress that he organized the letter that falsely portrayed Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation in an effort to influence the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden and that he did so at the direction of current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to a letter released Thursday by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.  The extraordinary admission by career intelligence officer Michael J. Morell provides stunning evidence that the now-infamous letter from 51 security officials in October 2020 was not an organic intelligence community initiative but rather a political dirty trick originating with Blinken and the Biden campaign.  Jordan sent a letter demanding Blinken answer a series of questions about Morell's stunning testimony, as lawmakers weighed the enormity of America's top diplomat being willing to accuse a nuclear-armed superpower of interfering in the 2020 election without evidence.  That letter included major snippets of Morell's testimony.

Donald Trump's NYC case may be headed in only one direction, former prosecutors reveal.  Donald Trump was indicted recently on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — but New York City prosecutor Alvin Bragg's case against the former president faces significant legal hurdles, experts told Fox News Digital.  The 2024 Republican presidential candidate pleaded not guilty to the raft of accusations against him and has characterized the legal offensive as a politically motivated witch hunt.  "If it wasn't Donald Trump, no prosecutor in the world would have touched this," said former assistant district attorney Daniel Bibb, who spent more than two decades trying murder cases in Manhattan.  "If you and I did what Trump did, we never would have been charged."  Trump is the first former or current U.S. president to be indicted for a crime, but the case is more half-court heave than slam dunk, experts say.

Trump at the Gates.  Perhaps brilliant Democrat strategists pulled the strings of the clearly vacuous Manhattan DA, but to what avail?  Bragg is merely the latest to advance a "Get Trump" ploy.  Democrats have tried to waylay Trump since he announced for the presidency in the autumn of 2015.  Anyone with eyes can see that there was no overarching strategy other than nailing the Donald in the moment.  The Mueller special counsel investigation ate clock and spent $32 million of taxpayer money, only to report that no there was there.  Two goofy Pelosi-driven impeachments made impeachment a toothless, highly politicized gesture.  The January 6 "insurrection" is, with every new revelation, being laid bare as a political hit job by Democrats and by two  Republicans  pawns, venal and dumb Liz Cheney and equally spiteful and idiotic Adam Kinzinger.  The Democrats' machinations were piecemeal.  Everyone of their nefarious gambits were thwarted by a wily street fighter, Trump himself.

Mike Davis, Jim Jordan Slam Alvin Bragg's Lawsuit Against Jordan.  "Bragg is now trying to cover up his brazen violations of civil rights and his obvious election interference, through today's frivolous lawsuit to obstruct a congressional investigation."  Mike Davis, the founder and president of the Article III Project (A3P) and an advocate for a constitutionalist judiciary, ripped apart the lawsuit from Soros-tied Manhattan District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).  Bragg last week revealed a legally laughable 34-count indictment of Donald Trump.  Bragg charged Trump based on Trump's supposed hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels through lawyer Michael Cohen.  Cohen's lawyer previously said Cohen privately paid Daniels without a refund from Trump, but Bragg won't let up.  Now, ultimately in pursuit of Trump, Bragg is also taking aim at House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.

The world's newest dictatorship.  The United States can now join the ignoble list of authoritarian regimes where the party in power is the government, and they decide who can oppose them.  In the U.S., become a threat to the ruling party or get too popular and you'll be arrested and thrown in jail.  You disagree?  What do you call having President Trump arrested for a non-crime?  The NYC DA who arrested Trump didn't even bother to state a crime that Trump committed.  Oh, he listed 34 counts but no crime.  Even anti-Trump Politico questioned the legal basis for charging him.  Trump's crime is he opposes the Dems and Biden's authoritarian regime.  Hey, Alvin Bragg, 75% of rural Georgia opposes Biden and his regime, you gonna arrest us all?

Is 2024 Only A Mirage?  [T]he elitists know that the indictment of President Trump last week not only motivated him to want to hold them accountable for the witch hunts they have plagued him with over the last six years, but has also opened for him the precedent he needed to be able to indict them for their crimes.  Moreover, all of President Trump's persecutors no doubt have a very real fear of being held accountable should he regain power because they know in their hearts such retribution is something they would do if they were him.  Thus, whether or not President Trump would actually follow through with such a purge of these corrupt elitist criminals does not matter.  What does matter today is that they think he would, and they will therefore do anything they can between now and the next election to stop him.

Alvin Bragg's Insane Clown Circus Adds a Kangaroo to the Court.  We've been using the term "banana republic" to describe what has been going on, and it's been fitting.  At this rate, however, the United States may find itself getting sued by other banana republics for being an embarrassment to the team.  If you've been reading various assessments of the 34 charges, you know that even the left media is having difficulty finding a legal expert who will say that any of it is legally sound.  Someone just coming out of a coma and attempting to get up to speed on this story might wonder if Alvin Bragg ever really went to law school.

Alvin Bragg Might Be in Serious Trouble Following Trump Indictment.  Alvin Bragg might fancy himself a hero of the radical left for indicting Trump, but his desperate efforts, which included charging Trump 34 times for the same alleged crime, may have serious consequences for him.  A source familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital that the House Judiciary Committee is contemplating summoning Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and two prosecutors who quit his team last year to testify before Congress.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) have been pressuring Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his office for answers since last week, just days before the extraordinary indictment and arrest of a former U.S. President.  Jordan and Comer have requested that Bragg testify before Congress.

Jail Him, Or They Lose.  They've tried literally everything short of ordering a hit on him, and he still stands.  They have exhausted every avenue, option, and possibility, and they are left with a bag of nothing.  They tried a fake dossier, a made-up narrative that the media put on repeat.  They accused him of a high crime for a transcript of a phone call.  They accused him of advocating violence when his words said precisely the opposite.  Now they are trying to say he obstructed justice when he, in fact, followed the request of the FBI to the letter.  Now they are trying to say that another phone call is evidence of a felony when again, his exact words prove otherwise.  Now they have indicted him for something that if a crime is even evident (and clearly it is not), the statute of limitations ran out years ago.  They tried to argue he avoided paying taxes, only for the record to show he followed the tax code with precision.  They want to argue now that he intends to defraud the government of what he owes in taxes, even though during his four years in public office, he refused his $400k salary and returned it in full to the government coffers.  No elected leader has been more maligned, lied about, and attempted to be neutralized as they have with former President Trump.

If The Left Can Come After The President Of The United States, No One Is Safe.  "In reality, they're not after me, they're after you.  I'm just in their way."  Who can forget that meme President Trump posted to Twitter after his first impeachment?  In any event, it stands as a reminder of just how hostile the left is to the American people in its desperate attempt to maintain political rule.  Now, as President Donald Trump has been arrested and arraigned in New York City, we must consider the implications of his indictment, and what it means for the United States and the 2024 presidential election.  For all the criticisms of Donald Trump and his defects, one thing is certain:  liberals fear him.  No other man has posed such a threat to America's ruling liberal ideology.  Whether it was calling to impose tariffs, rebuild American manufacturing and industry, or reclaim any semblance of American political rights, Trump upset challenged Washington's bipartisan orthodoxy.  As for the indictment, there is no case against the former president.

Trump is not being treated normally and never has been.  Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump surrendered to the New York City courts to face an indictment on 34 felony charges.  The case arose from his accounting records of payments to a former paramour, Stormy Daniels.  The indictment itself is garbage, the product of an extremely ideological prosecutor.  Elevating these charges to a felony required that the bookkeeping errors furthered some other crime, but the indictment does not even identify the other crime. Indictments are usually bare bones, but the New York rule requires that an indictment "asserts facts supporting every element of the offense charged ... with sufficient precision to clearly apprise the defendant or defendants of the conduct which is the subject of the accusation."  Why did Trump surrender at all?

Bragg violated Trump's 6th Amendment rights in refusing to disclose underlying crime:  legal expert.  Former President Donald Trump's Sixth Amendment rights may have been violated when New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg refused to disclose the underlying crime the defendant intended to conceal through his alleged falsification of business records, legal experts opined Wednesday.  The Sixth Amendment provides in part for the right of a criminal defendant to "be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor..."  When questioned by a reporter as to what the underlying crime the indictment fails to name is, Bragg replied in New York State, he does not have to.

Fresh proof Bragg's Trump case is a reach, and nakedly political.  The numbers don't lie: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's case against Trump is a massive outlier, not the "bread and butter" move the crime-lover claimed it was.  Turns out, his office almost never prosecutes cases on charges like the ones he's mounted against the ex-prez — i.e., first-degree falsifying business records with the "intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof."  State crime data crunched by the Times-Union show that Bragg's office has gone after people for this as a top charge only eight times in the past few years.  Statewide, there have been fewer than 300 such cases since 2019.  This alone debunks Bragg's claim that the Trump case represents just another day in the office.

America Needs a New Normal.  Casting aside the "norms" that the Left loudly pined for just a few short years ago, far-Left Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg compelled the former president to appear in a Manhattan court to enter a plea in response to an indictment containing 34 counts of "falsifying business records," which is normally a minor misdemeanor charge.  The facts surrounding the case haven't changed in the years since multiple agencies of the federal government evaluated the merits and declined to take legal action against Donald Trump.  The allegations surrounding payments made to sad little cuck Michael Cohen, supposedly to reimburse him for paying an adult film star to keep quiet about her past alleged dalliances with Trump, aren't new and nothing in the indictment indicates there is any new evidence.  From all the legal analyses I've read about it, the case is pretty weak, especially the justification for trumping the charges up to felonies.

FEC Commissioner Undermines Entire Manhattan Prosecution, The Trump-Daniels NDA Is Not an Election Campaign Violation.  If the other substantive weaknesses in the politically constructed Manhattan case against Donald Trump do not lead to a pre-trial dismissal, this one should collapse it.  The Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) explicitly states the payments by President Trump to Stormy Daniels are not an election campaign violation.

FEC Already Investigated Trump-Stormy Payoff and Concluded No Crime Took Place.  The case against Donald Trump brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is melting faster than the Wicked Witch of the West.  The DA is keeping everyone in the dark about exactly what individual crime Bragg will try Trump on.  This is sort of important because, without a predicate crime, there's nothing to convict Trump of doing anything illegal.  Bragg has taken that crime and sliced it into 34 parts — a prosecutorial trick designed to make sure the jury convicts Trump of something — anything — to justify charging a former president with felonies.  And if Bragg wants to try Trump for violating federal campaign finance laws by trying to cover up the payment to Stormy Daniels, there's only one itsy-bitsy problem with that.  The Federal Election Commission already investigated the hush money payment and found nothing illegal about it.

Trump Pushes Legal Envelope Post-Indictment.  Trump is now the first former president in history to face criminal charges.  According to the charging documents read in court earlier that day and released by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, he had "repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election."

The Editor says...
The news media, with the exception of the New York Post, covered up the story of Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop, and the dirt it held, so one could rightly say that the news media also "hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election."  Hiding damaging information is nothing new.

Jim Jordan Subpoenas Manhattan Prosecutor Who Resigned over Suspended Trump Probe.  House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) escalated Republicans' investigation into the Manhattan district attorney's indictment of former President Donald Trump by subpoenaing a prosecutor on Thursday who resigned from the office last year over the district attorney's initial reluctance to pursue Trump's case.  Jordan's subpoena, reviewed by Breitbart News, directs Mark Pomerantz, who resigned from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office in February 2022, to appear before the committee for a deposition on April 20.  In a cover letter accompanying the subpoena, Jordan said his committee had legislative reasons to demand Pomerantz's testimony.

12 Anti-Trump Pundits And Lawmakers Who Think Bragg's Case Is Terrible.  For weeks now, former President Donald Trump and legal experts on the right predicted that the prosecution Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought against Trump was pathetic and partisan.  Not long after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records during his arraignment on Tuesday, some of his most outspoken political enemies also began casting doubt on Bragg's attempts to send the former president to jail.  Here are the notorious anti-Trumpers who willingly admitted that Bragg's case against the leader of the Republican Party is a weak attempt to keep him from winning the White House in 2024. [...]

Why All The Other 'Get Trump' Cases Are Just As Weak As The Manhattan DA's.  The grand jury indictment against former president and 2024 contender Donald Trump hasn't even been unsealed yet.  But the corporate press has already moved on, redirecting the public's focus to the other pending investigations — a subtle acknowledgment that the forthcoming charges by the Manhattan district attorney will be both weak and properly perceived as political persecution.  But the Fulton County, Georgia investigation and Special Counsel Jack Smith's probes of Trump are equally weak.  Later today [4/4/2023], Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will unseal the indictment returned last week by a grand jury against Trump.  Selective leaks suggest the former president will be charged with more than 30 criminal counts of business fraud related to hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels.

Report: Alvin Bragg Wants Trump Trial in January 2024, During Republican Primary.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg reportedly asked Judge Juan Marchan to hold the trial of former President Donald Trump in January 2024, which happens to be the middle of the presidential primary season.  Fox News reporter Jake Gibson, who was in the courtroom, said that prosecutors had asked for the January 2024 trial date.  The Iowa caucuses — the first contest in the Republican primary — will be on February 5, 2024.  That means prosecutors want a trial that would undoubtedly affect the race for the Republican nomination, both by distracting the current frontrunner, and by tarnishing him relative to other candidates in the race.

The Judge Overseeing Trump's Case Might Have a Major Conflict of Interest.  Meet the judge presiding over President Donald Trump's criminal case: Acting New York County Supreme Court Justice Juan Manuel Merchan, an apparent 2020 Biden donor whose daughter once worked for Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign.  According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, Merchan donated three times to ActBlue in the summer of 2020, once on July 26, 2020, when the judge's donation was — according to the FEC — earmarked for President Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.  The other two of Merchan's contributions were pledged to the Progressive Turnout Project (PTP), a left-wing PAC that rallies voter turnout for Democrat candidates, and Stop Republicans, a PTP sub-project that's dedicated to "resisting" Trump and the Republican Party.  [Tweet]

Is that really all there is to the Trump indictment?  How pathetic.  Is that all there is?  Yes, that's all there is.  The charges against Donald Trump are almost exactly as predicted.  They are weak and, most important, political.  As such, they are shockingly blatant punishment for Trump daring to become president.  In this sordid case, the letters DA stand for Democrat Attorney.  The charges are the crime.  Shame on Bragg for abusing his authority and turning his office into a partisan outpost.  The prosecutor who thinks most violent criminals are simply misunderstood youths just made history on a legal move that is breathtakingly flimsy.

Legal Experts Across the Political Spectrum Are Laughing at Alvin Bragg's Indictment of Donald Trump.  RedState's Nick Arama has had Alvin Bragg's number for quite some time, predicting that the 34-count indictment would amount to charge stacking and that there could be nothing a serious lawyer would put their name to in it.  I wrote earlier that once we saw the indictment we knew why Alvin Bragg wanted it to be sealed as long as possible, and that according to one reporter who was in the courtroom Trump's attorneys laughed when they read it.  Trump's attorney Joseph Tacopino seemed to confirm this with an answer during a press conference after the indictment:  [Tweet]

Trump Indictment: As Bad As We Thought.  You can read Alvin Bragg's indictment of Donald Trump and a supporting statement of facts [elsew]here.  The indictment is what we expected.  It all has to do with paying $130,000 to Stormy Daniels for a non-disclosure agreement, which was legal.  The payment was made by "Lawyer A," Michael Cohen.  Trump reimbursed Cohen using Trump's own money, which was legal.  The "34 counts" arise out of the fact that by agreement, Cohen got reimbursed by sending monthly invoices to Trump or his revocable trust.  So for each monthly bill from Cohen, we get three counts of falsifying documents: one for the invoice, one for the ledger entry, and one for the check stub.  Pathetic. [...] Bragg's statement of facts includes a long narrative about the National Enquirer and a woman other than Ms. Daniels ("Woman No. 1"), but that appears to be solely for lurid context, as no count of the indictment relates to that alleged woman.

Manhattan DA Bragg Reveals the 'Crime' Trump Tried to Cover-Up — And It's an Absolute Farce.  Donald Trump's arraignment in a Manhattan court on Tuesday was carried out with the minimum amount of fanfare — considering that this was a historic first grand jury indictment of a former president.  However, the court proceedings in the wake of ostensible felony leaks to the press about the sealed indictment did produce a curiosity:  How was radical activist Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg able to elevate charges that are misdemeanors past the statute of limitations and stack them into 34 felony charges, when the facts of the case did not show there was a cover up a more serious crime?  As the eagle-eyed legal commentator Techno Fog noted, there was a critical thing that the Trump indictment and statement of facts omitted.  [Tweet]

Trump's Indictment Is a Blunder of Historic Proportions.  There is little doubt that news of former President Donald Trump's indictment and pending arraignment will be met with jubilation on the Left.  The reality, however, is that the Left and the Right — the United States as a whole — will suffer the consequences of this blunder of historic proportions.  New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg's decision to bring charges will be a moment that historians, and society more broadly, will look back upon as a societal turning point.  The immediate reaction to the first criminal indictment of a former U.S. president has largely focused on the legalities, with charges related to the hush money allegedly paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels.  If this is true — and with the indictment still under seal, we don't yet know — it makes the situation worse not merely for Alvin Bragg, but for the entire country.

Daughter of Judge Overseeing Trump's Case Worked For 'Kamala Harris Campaign'.  The Gateway Pundit previously reported New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan is presiding over President Trump's Stormy Daniels 'hush payment' case.  Judge Merchan previously oversaw the tax fraud cases of the Trump's Org and the Trump Org's former CFO Allen Weisselberg.  Trump is not a fan of Merchan and took to Truth Social last week and wrote "Juan Manuel Merchan, was hand picked by Bragg & the Prosecutors, & is the same person who "railroaded" my 75 year old former CFO, Allen Weisselberg."  Merchan has been described as a life long Democrat and a bombshell discovery of his daughter's LinkedIn account reveals his daughter is not just a Democrat but a Democrat who previously worked on Kamala Harris' Presidential campaign.

Destroying the Rule of Law.  I could not care less if Donald Trump gave "hush" money to a porn star back in 2016.  What concerns me is why a misdemeanor is being upgraded to a felony offense by a New York City District Attorney.  The same DA who downgraded felony offenses to misdemeanors and released violent criminals back onto the streets to continue assaulting innocent citizens.  Why does this same DA prosecute something that has gone past the statute of limitations?  Something his predecessor refused to pursue, along with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice. [...] We have entered a new era in America.  The progressive socialist left has no regard for the rule of law.  They only care about the right to rule.  The Constitution does not bindthem, they only adhere to Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."  They do not want unity, they demand abject conformity, subjugation, and subservience.  Leftists do not want political opposition, they want no obstacles to their rule, and those ends justify their means.

Proof of Political Persecution Emerges, DA Bragg's Chief of Staff Wanted Trump Banned From Office.  Jordan Stockdale, the Chief of Staff for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, has been caught endorsing tweets calling for the impeachment, removal from office, and future prevention of Trump from holding public office again.  As Chief of Staff for Bragg, Stockdale's obvious bias against former President Trump should raise questions about both his and Bragg's ability to perform their duties impartially.  Many Republicans have voiced their concern about the partisanship and lack of objectivity from the Left during Trump's witch hunt indictment.  Screenshots revealed that Stockdale was liking comments from Bernie Sanders, Hilary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and many other left-winged members that were bashing Trump on Twitter.  Stockdale has since deleted his Twitter account.

Donald Trump: Civil Rights Hero.  The persecution of Donald Trump continues.  It seems no accident that within the same twenty-four-hour window, anti-American prosecutors both confirmed their intent to lock up a president for exposing the Deep State's vise-grip over government power and celebrated the conviction of an American meme-maker who had used his First Amendment rights to mock Hillary Clinton's voters before the 2016 election.  Highlighting both events as further proof of the country's two-tiered application of "justice," Tucker Carlson correctly noted that the in-your-face double-standard is precisely the point: leftist authoritarians want Americans to fear their power and meekly submit or respond unwisely and be crushed.  Just as with the government's outrageous persecution of J6 political prisoners for exercising inviolable freedoms once constitutionally secured by the Bill of Rights, perverting the criminal justice system into nothing more than an illegitimate vehicle for stomping on both Trump and his supporters is now official government policy.  As Carlson soberly concluded, "there is no coming back" from this moment.

Even If You Hate Trump, You Should Be Standing With Him Now.  Now that Donald Trump has been indicted, everyone who loves America as a free society, no matter where you may be on the political spectrum, should be standing with him.  There are many reasons why this simple fact has been obscured today, not least of them being Donald Trump himself. [...] Now that he has been indicted, however, all those considerations must take a back seat to the fact that Donald Trump is the man whom the authoritarian Left hates and fears more than anyone else, and is determined to destroy.  The Leftist establishment is so avid to destroy Trump that it has not hesitated to take the wrecking ball to Americans' trust in our most respected institutions.

The Final Fight Begins Now.  The truly unprecedented indictment, and now possible arrest, of a popular former president — not to mention current presidential candidate and possible future president — goes far beyond any semblance of traditional party politics.  Other past presidents who had their own shares of legal troubles, from Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, never faced nearly as much scrutiny, vitriol, and endless resistance as President Donald J. Trump.  The implications for this uniquely horrifying development are not limited to the upcoming 2024 presidential election, although that is certainly at the top of mind for many in the elite who desperately want to see President Trump shut out of public office for the rest of his life.  As the 45th president himself has said on several occasions, in perhaps the single most powerful statement of his entire political career: "They're not after me.  They're after you.  I'm just in the way."

There's No Coming Back From This.  Corrupt Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has decided to abuse the nation's justice and legal system to persecute the Democrats' top political opponent.  This corrupt, Soros-backed DA, who was hell-bent on indicting President Trump over some made-up "charges," used their usual strategy...pick a target, then find a "crime."  Is America officially a banana republic?  Americans are seeing the weaponization of the legal system before their very eyes.  This is what happens in third-world countries, not here.  The party in power, for the first time in the nation's history, has indicted a former president of the opposition party who is actively campaigning to take back the White House.  This is unprecedented and despicable.  There's no coming back from this.  If the leftist radicals can come for Donald Trump, they can come for you — and those like us who want to bring you the truth.

Tacopina: If Trump Were Not Running for Presidency 'He Would Not Have Been Indicted'.  Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" that if former President Donald Trump were not running for 2024, he would not be facing an indictment in Manhattan.  Anchor Dana Bash said, "I'm going to speak to Michael Cohen's attorney next.  He says that there is actual evidence that your client, the former president, participated in falsifying business records.  Have you seen any such evidence?"  Tacopina said, "Yeah.  I know there's no such evidence.  I mean, look, Michael Cohen's lawyers spitting Michael Cohen's side.  Michael Cohen is a pathological convicted liar."

Trump's indictment creates a new era for the GOP.  Swamp Republicans hardest hit.  The indictment and pending arraignment of Donald Trump signals a new era for the Republican Party.  The move by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, not coincidentally timed to push aside discussion of documentary proof of bribes funneled by China to Biden family members, has clarified the nature of the actual political system we live under today. [...] But there is no going back now to the pre-banana republic days when the norms of American politics made it unthinkable to trump up highly questionable charges to take the leader of the opposition out of contention in the next election. [...] Either the GOP contests the rule of Democrats by using all the tools that they use, or else the GOP loses viability by sticking with the "rule of law" norm that is nothing but an illusion at this moment.

Republicans Risk Running Headlong Into The "Rally-Around" Trap.  If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, he has Alvin Bragg to thank for single-handedly making Trump a martyr, causing a substantial rally-around effect.  It's understandable and predictable.  We've rallied-around Trump as a target, as has DeSantis.  There is truth to the claim that Trump serves as a proxy for the way many of us are abused by institutional rot.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Admits He Used Federal Dollars in Trump Investigation — Who Approved This?  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed he used federal funds in his investigation into Trump's so-called 'hush payment' to porn star Stormy Daniels.  House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil last week launched an investigation into DA Alvin Bragg, accusing him of abusing his power.  Last Monday the three House GOP lawmakers sent Bragg a letter demanding testimony and documents related to his investigation into the 'hush payment' after Trump said his arrest was imminent.

Trump's Legal Team Makes Major Decision Regarding Indictment.  Former President Trump's legal team makes a significant announcement against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's "politically motivated" indictment against him.  On Sunday [4/2/2023], Trump's attorney Joe Tacopina expects to make a motion to dismiss any charges against the former president.  "We will take the indictment.  We will dissect it.  The team will look at every potential issue that we will be able to challenge and will challenge.  And, of course, I very much anticipate a motion to dismiss coming because there's no law that fits this," Tacopina said during an interview on CNN.  The Trump lawyer said his team would not do anything at the arraignment because that would be "showmanship."  The indictment of Trump will be sealed until he appears at an arrangement hearing, which is currently scheduled for Tuesday.

Trump Spy Chief John Ratcliffe Flips Script, Says Indictment Leak Is A Crime.  Leaked details about Donald Trump's indictment are grounds for criminal charges, a top official from the former president's administration said on Sunday [4/2/2023].  John Ratcliffe, a former U.S. congressman and federal prosecutor who served as Trump's final director of national intelligence, reacted to reports that Trump faces around 30 counts related to business fraud as part of the investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  "The only felony of which we can be certain to come out of this Alvin Bragg prosecution in New York is the felony committed either by DA Bragg himself or someone on the grand jury that he's using for this perversion of our justice system," Ratcliffe told "Sunday Morning Futures" anchor Maria Bartiromo.  "The accused, Donald Trump, and his lawyers, don't know what's in this sealed indictment.  But for the past, what?  Seventy-two hours, the American public has been discussing supposedly 30 or 34 felony counts," he added.  "Leaking grand jury information is a felony.  And so the only people capable of that would be Alvin Bragg's team or members of the grand jury itself."

Former AG Barr slams 'pathetically weak' legal theory behind Trump indictment: 'An abomination'.  Former Attorney General Bill Barr reacted to the indictment of former President Trump over his alleged 2016 hush money scandal on Friday, calling it "an abomination."  Trump was indicted by a grand jury on Thursday.  He is the first ex-president in U.S. history to be indicted.  Barr appeared on Fox Business to discuss the indictment with host Larry Kudlow.  "Obviously, we don't have the indictment, so there's a little bit of speculation involved," Barr began.  "But based on the news reports, if they're accurate, this is an abomination."

"First Year Law Students Could Get This Dismissed" — Alan Dershowitz on Alvin Bragg's Indictment Against President Trump.  Esteemed Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz joined Steve Bannon on The War Room on Saturday to discuss Alvin Brigg's indictment against President Trump.  The Soros-funded New York City DA announced charges against Trump last week two days after bank statements were released showing the Biden Crime Family were being paid by China for selling their influence. [...] Dershowitz is correct.  The case should be tossed out and Alvin Bragg should be disbarred.  Americans better wake up to what the Communist-left is doing to this country.

Yes, we Have Gone Bananas.  New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr. has indicted former President Trump.  Arraignment is scheduled on Tuesday.  Sometime before then we are likely to see the charges against him, which reportedly — as is the normal order of weak cases — run to over 20 counts.  Charging so many counts is a prosecutorial trick based on experience:  Some jurors may think the more counts there are the greater the likelihood of a pony hiding in the manure pile; others may just want to get out of the deliberations and agree to one or two to get out of there.  Almost universal criticism of this move, by even the editors of the Washington Post, suggests there is ample reason to believe this is a meritless, politically motivated prosecution. [...] Bragg's office (a New York state operation) received federal funds to investigate Trump, and if you think Attorney General Merrick Garland was not in some way involved in this matter, you and I are in disagreement.

Will You Be Next?  It finally happened.  On Thursday, Soros-funded Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg got the indictment that so many on the political left have been pining for ever since Donald Trump ran for president in 2016.  Since then, Trump has had a target on his back, with unhinged leftists desperately trying to find a crime to pin on him.  The best they were able to get was a misdemeanor campaign finance violation.  This indictment is unprecedented in virtually every way, and should scare you to the core.  It is true that just because Trump is a former president, he is not above the law, but he's not exempt from equal justice under the law either.  But the offense he's been accused of is so minor that it normally merits a fine — just ask Hillary.

Pelosi's Tweet Reveals the Real Intentions Behind Trump's Indictment.  [Scroll down]  Back to Pelosi's tweet.  Pelosi wrote:  "No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence."  This is nothing short of a shocking statement, especially from a lawmaker with many decades of experience.  The presumption of innocence is the standard in any civilized democracy — anyone accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty.  The legal burden of proof lies on the prosecution, which must present compelling face-based evidence to before a judge or a jury.  The prosecution must prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  If reasonable doubt remains, the accused must be acquitted. [...] This remains the goal behind the exercise, to make the process the punishment.  To drag the trial along, and to drain all their resources and spirits of the accused.  To sully reputations permanently.  To make the accused feel worse than the worst of criminals in the U.S.  They know that these stories spread like wildfire and most people seeking a life of peace for themselves and their families choose to refrain from challenging the Democrats merely to avoid hardships.

The Trump indictment shifts American political tectonics.  The day before yesterday, Donald J. Trump was indicted on phony political charges.  It may prove to be the day the real America will be resurrected, for two reasons:  One, the Left are petrified of MAGA politics, politics that loves America as founded, that loves its military as originally constituted before Woke happened, and whose capitalism is the greatest economic engine on the planet.  MAGA is for patriots and the Left are not patriots; they hate America.  The second reason Trump was indicted is because of the larger Soros & Co. plan to communize America, turn her into an oligarchy with Soros at the helm, to use "climate change" as the Trojan horse for the terrifying Great Reset, so Trump cannot stand in the way of that happening.  Alvin Bragg and his Soros backers, including Joe Biden, has just declared open warfare on half the American public.  Except now it's more than half, with this indictment.  Americans have always loved an underdog, the come-from-behind hero who battles evil against all odds and wins.  Donald Trump is that hero now and the Democrats have created him so.

Even the Washington Post Admits the Case Against Trump Is Probably [Specious].  When you're a far-leftist district attorney prosecuting the man the left hates the most, and you have lost the Washington Post, you might want to rethink your position.  This is the situation in which New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg finds himself as he continues functioning as the head of the progressive spear to be used to kill former President Donald Trump's chances of occupying the White House once again.  The Post's editorial board published an op-ed titled "The Trump indictment is a poor test case for prosecuting a former president," in which the authors cast doubt on the chances that Bragg will be able to carry out a successful prosecution of the former president based on the Stormy Daniels matter.

After Trump indictment, Manhattan DA accuses House GOP of 'unlawful political interference'.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office has fired back at House Republicans who are demanding documents and testimony about their case against former President Donald Trump, calling the GOP lawmakers' demands "unlawful political interference" in an ongoing criminal case.  In a letter sent Friday to three top House Republican chairmen, Leslie B. Dubeck, the general counsel for Bragg's office, slammed their "baseless and inflammatory allegations that our investigation is politically motivated."  Trump is the first American president to be indicted on criminal charges.  "The Committees' attempted interference with an ongoing state criminal investigation — and now prosecution — is an unprecedented and illegal incursion on New York's sovereign interests," Dubeck wrote.

Trump's lawyer says was 'initially shocked' by Manhattan indictment but is now feeling 'combative'.  Former President Donald Trump has launched a social media assault on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, the Democratic prosecutor going after him for alleged fraud, and even took aim at his wife in the most recent round of complaints since he was indicted last night.  Trump, 76, will be arraigned in Manhattan at 2.15 pm on Tuesday on an array of business fraud charges relating to 2016 hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.  He has denied any personal wrongdoing, and says he is the victim of a politically-motivated witch hunt led by the famously Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  The charges are not yet known — only once he is formally charged in person will the indictment become unsealed.

The martyrdom of Donald J. Trump.  Meanwhile, Bragg's office is trying desperately to stuff this toothpaste back into the tube.  The problem is that everybody's watching from front row seats — while all of these rodents scurry around.  And many already know that there's overwhelming evidence that Trump never even came close to committing a crime.  Leaked information confirms that Trump has been indicted.  Apparently, yesterday's earlier announcement that the Manhattan grand jury was taking a month's hiatus was intended to lull the Trump camp into complacency.  But is Trump really being damaged?  Or is this furthering the compelling drama of his martyrdom?  It is fortunate for America's destiny that Mr. Trump is pretty good at taking a punch.  It is problematic, however, as to whether he may respond with sufficient elegance.  But then again, he didn't rise to the top of the food chain by bungling opportunities.

Justice Department 'is irritated by Manhattan DA's indictment of Donald Trump.  Justice Department officials are said to be annoyed by the Manhattan District Attorney's decision to indict Trump, as they believe it is a weak case which could undermine more serious legal probes Trump is facing.  Alvin Bragg's intention to criminally charge the former president for his payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels was revealed on Thursday, sparking consternation and anger in Mar-a-Lago, and, according to The New York Times, in Washington DC.  The paper reported that 'senior officials' at the Justice Department had concerns about the strength of Bragg's case.

Soros family helped push Manhattan DA Bragg into power.  The Manhattan grand jury indictment Thursday night of former President Donald Trump is sparking new scrutiny of the George Soros-supported district attorney who led the investigation into Trump's alleged violations of state campaign finance laws.  The former president is expected to surrender to District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office early next week, following his indictment stemming from Bragg's investigation into Trump's alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.  Fox News Digital previously reported that in May 2021, financier George Soros pushed $1 million to the Color of Change PAC, which turned around and spent big, backing Bragg's candidacy.

Steve Scalise: Indictment of Donald Trump 'Clearest Example' of Democrats Weaponizing Government Against Their Opponents.  House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said in a statement on Thursday [3/30/2023] that the indictment of former President Donald Trump was the "clearest example" of Democrats using the government to target their political opponents.  Scalise, the number two Republican in the House, said in a written statement, "The sham New York indictment of President Donald Trump is one of the clearest examples of extremist Democrats weaponizing government to attack their political opponents.  Outrageous."

Trump indicted by N.Y. grand jury, first ex-president charged with crime.  A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict former president Donald Trump, making him the first person in U.S. history to serve as commander in chief and then be charged with a crime — and setting the stage for a 2024 presidential contest unlike any other.  The indictment was sealed, which means the specific charge or charges are not publicly known.  But the grand jury had been hearing evidence about hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, allegedly to keep her from saying she'd had a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.  It comes after weeks of speculation about whether and when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg might take such a step, setting the stage for a courthouse showdown between one of the most combative politicians in modern American history and local prosecutors who have pursued him for years.

A Rubicon Is Crossed.  So the Democrats decided to indict Donald Trump after all.  (I assume that Alvin Bragg would not have proceeded without a green light from higher-ups in the party.)  Here, as in so many other areas, we are in uncharted waters.  The Democrats have launched a sort of blitzkrieg against our traditions, our Constitution, our culture (at least, our culture as it was), and every form of restraint that makes civil society possible.  They have unleashed a wind, and seem serenely confident that they will never face a whirlwind.  I don't know, maybe they are right.  I do know that after today, our country will never be the same again. [...] The Democrats are behaving like a party from a pre-Enlightenment, pre-constitutional era.  Seeing themselves in the driver's seat, they are making a naked grab for totalitarian power across a broad range of issues and institutions.  Indicting a former president on frivolous grounds is shocking, but it is of a piece with the strategies Democrats are following in Washington and across the country.

Chuck Schumer Claims Trump 'is subject to the same laws as every American'.  In response to the Trump indictment, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is saying that Trump is subject to the same laws as everyone else.  This has become a Democrat talking point.  How many times have you heard Democrats say no one is above the law?  It's a total lie.  If it was true, Pelosi, Hillary, Biden and countless other Democrats would already be in jail.

Donald Trump Officially Indicted.  In a shocking twist, Donald Trump has been officially indicted by a Manhattan-based grand jury.  In the weeks prior, the situation had appeared to deteriorate for District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  On Wednesday, it was announced that the grand jury was being sent home for a month.  The assumption, a fair one at the time, was that Bragg needed more time to rescue his case.  That was apparently wrong, though, as the grand jury voted to indict on Thursday [3/30/2023].

A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century.  For more than half a century, McCarthyism stood as a defining chapter in the worldview of American liberals:  a warning about the dangerous allure of blacklists, witch hunts, and demagogues.  Until 2017, that is, when another list of alleged Russian agents roiled the American press and political class.  A new outfit called Hamilton 68 claimed to have discovered hundreds of Russian-affiliated accounts that had infiltrated Twitter to sow chaos and help Donald Trump win the election.  Russia stood accused of hacking social media platforms, the new centers of power, and using them to covertly direct events inside the United States.  None of it was true.  After reviewing Hamilton 68's secret list, Twitter's safety officer, Yoel Roth, privately admitted that his company was allowing "real people" to be "unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse."  The Hamilton 68 episode played out as a nearly shot-for-shot remake of the McCarthy affair, with one important difference: McCarthy faced some resistance from leading journalists as well as from the U.S. intelligence agencies and his fellow members of Congress.  In our time, those same groups lined up to support the new secret lists and attack anyone who questioned them.

Time to End the Veil of Secrecy Inside D.C. Kangaroo Court.  Judge Beryl Howell [...], appointed to the D.C. District Court by Barack Obama in 2010 and elevated to the court's highest post in 2016 — just in time to oversee numerous criminal investigations into Donald Trump — finished up her seven-year stint as chief judge earlier this month.  Colleagues and staff assembled in her courtroom as the proverbial torch was passed to Judge James Boasberg, another Obama appointee.  But according to Politico, the retirement celebration turned into a "roast" of sorts as one judge after another chided Howell for her closed-doors dealings.  "Howell seemed to freeze in her seat as the most senior jurist on the court, Judge Paul Friedman, publicly described her still-secret rulings in grand jury-related matters," reporters Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney wrote on March 17.  "[Her] fellow judges made clear they were as tantalized as the rest of the political world by Howell's secret work presiding over grand juries that could lead to charges against former President Donald Trump."

President Trump Kicking Off His 2024 Campaign in Waco Sends the Right Message to the Right People.  The Trump 2024 presidential campaign will officially kick off Saturday afternoon in Waco, Texas.  The symbolism of former President Trump, beset by potential political indictments at the state and federal level, starting his presidential campaign at the site of the most egregious and unprovoked act of violence perpetrated upon US citizens by the federal government in the history of the Republic can't go unnoticed by even the dimmest bulbs in the ranks of NeverTrump.

Why Alvin Bragg's case against Trump is falling apart.  While an indictment was expected this week, the grand jury looking into former President Donald Trump will go another week amid reports of opposition in the grand jury over what is viewed as a "weak" case.  The problem is that Bragg has long been searching for a crime in the criminal code to fulfill his pitch during his campaign that he was the man for voters who wanted to bag Trump.  The falsification of business records in reference to the $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels might have been a possibility, but it lacked two things.  First, it expired as a chargeable misdemeanor after two years — and that was roughly five years ago.  Second, it was a mere misdemeanor that could be brushed off by Trump even if they succeeded.

New Evidence Further Devastates Case Against Trump.  A letter written by porn star Stormy Daniels, which was shared by former President Donald Trump on his Truth Social account on Thursday, has further undermined the case against him by Soros-funded Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  The letter, dated 2018, refutes any claims of an affair between the two.

Trump could be in more danger than you think.  One of the things I often have to remind people about, including lawyers who should know better, is that each state has its own unique laws and procedures.  What is no big deal in most places may be a fiasco in another.  For Donald Trump, the upcoming New York "falsifying business records" charge he may be facing would be laughed out of court almost everywhere, as no money was stolen and no harm to anyone seems to have been done.  Unfortunately for him, he is stuck in the Empire State.  And as unfair as it sounds, I think Mr. Trump is in some real trouble.  The plan the Manhattan D.A. has is to convict him on a trivial offense, then hope a vindictive judge will throw the book at him.  This happens all the time to suspected mafiosi in New York courts, and it may be what's going on here.

Memos from 2018-19 shake up Trump case: Cohen denied having incriminating evidence on hush money.  An attorney who advised disgraced Trump organization lawyer Michael Cohen provided Manhattan prosecutors with voluminous documentation, including contemporaneous emails and memos, purporting to show that in 2018 Cohen wanted Donald Trump to help cover his legal bills and repeatedly claimed he had no evidence incriminating the former president in a hush money deal with porn actress Stormy Daniels.  "Cohen said he had no information against Trump," one memo summarizing attorney Robert Costello's interactions with Cohen stated.  That memo, dated April 2019, recounted Costello's interview with federal prosecutors about conversations he and colleagues had with Cohen a year earlier.  Costello, a former federal prosecutor who has represented famous clients like George Steinbrenner, Leona Hemsley, Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon, told Just the News on Tuesday he provided Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office with more than 300 pages of emails, memos and texts chronicling his dealings with Cohen.

'Game-Changer' Costello Testimony May Have Sunk Manhattan DA's Case Against Trump, Dershowitz Says.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's possible criminal case against former President Donald Trump may have derailed this week, according to Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz.  On Monday, former federal prosecutor Robert Costello testified in front of a Manhattan grand jury over matters related to a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star in 2016. Costello told the jury that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, expected to be Bragg's main witness in any case against Trump, "couldn't tell the truth if you put a gun to his head."  Dershowitz appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night and told host Sean Hannity that "Bob Costello has changed this case dramatically."

Trump Responds to Latest Illegal Leak to ABC News on Special Counsel Probe.  President Trump responded to the latest illegal leak to ABC News.  Judge Beryl Howell last Friday wrote that special counsel Jack Smith's prosecutors have evidence Trump 'committed criminal violations' in the classified documents case, according to a leak to ABC News.  Trump lawfully stored presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago residence but the Deep State is going after him anyway.

Memos from 2018-19 shake up Trump case: Cohen denied having incriminating evidence on hush money.  An attorney who advised disgraced Trump organization lawyer Michael Cohen provided Manhattan prosecutors with voluminous documentation, including contemporaneous emails and memos, purporting to show that in 2018 Cohen wanted Donald Trump to help cover his legal bills and repeatedly claimed he had no evidence incriminating the former president in a hush money deal with porn actress Stormy Daniels.  "Cohen said he had no information against Trump," one memo summarizing attorney Robert Costello's interactions with Cohen stated.  That memo, dated April 2019, recounted Costello's interview with federal prosecutors about conversations he and colleagues had with Cohen a year earlier.  Costello, a former federal prosecutor who has represented famous clients like George Steinbrenner, Leona Hemsley, Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon, told Just the News on Tuesday he provided Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office with more than 300 pages of emails, memos and texts chronicling his dealings with Cohen.

Chuck Schumer Refuses to State Confidence in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) refused to state his confidence in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is expected to indict former President Donald Trump.  Schumer's remarks came during a press conference on Wednesday.  "Do you have confidence in Alvin Bragg?" one reporter asked Schumer.  Schumer refused to answer, instead insisting that it is "premature to comment" on the situation.  "Look, the bottom line is, as I said, it's premature to comment on what's happening, and we'll have to wait and see what he does," Schumer responded.

Bombshell 2018 Letter Delivers a Gut Punch to Manhattan DA's Case Against Trump.  How much is Michael Cohen's testimony worth at this point?  I wrote that his legal adviser Robert Costello told the Manhattan grand jury considering the case against Donald Trump that Cohen was a serial liar, "far from solid evidence," and that Cohen had told him that he never told Trump about the payment to Stormy Daniels, the crux of the case against Trump.  Now there's newly-surfaced evidence that also throws a gut punch into District Attorney Alvin Bragg's case.  A February 2018 letter written by Michael Cohen's then-lawyer to the Federal Election Commission claims that Cohen "used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford," a/k/a Stormy Daniels, in 2016.  That also matches what Cohen told Costello.  [Tweet]

Will Alvin Bragg be a team player or is he in it for himself?  Alvin Bragg openly admitted during his election campaign that he would make it a priority, if elected, to prosecute Donald Trump, albeit without bothering to select a law that's been broken.  Bragg is only the next batter up to try and make party politics a crime.  He steps to the plate way down in the order following such heavy hitters as the FBI, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Leticia James and Merrick Garland.  If he indeed does follow through and charge the former president with a crime that he knows full well will never result in a conviction, he will do it against the express orders of the Democrat party hierarchy.  The power brokers on the left, from Barack Obama all the way down to The Squad, understand that Trump the Martyr is a far more serious and dangerous a candidate than The Donald of spring 2023, who lagged in the polls behind Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  Bragg must be fending off constant phone calls and messages passed on through plenipotentiaries begging him to not file charges.

Prosecutor: Secret Service Won't Allow Trump Handcuffing.  Former President Donald Trump is unlikely to be handcuffed if he's arrested, according to a Florida prosecutor who said the Secret Service wouldn't "allow local law enforcement to put their hands on the former president."  Trump said last week that he expects to be indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  Trump's attorney, Joseph Tacopina, told Newsmax he expects police to handcuff Trump during an arrest.  "I had this idea in my head that they'd [prosecutors] be dumb enough — if he [Trump] were indicted — to actually try to cuff him and walk him.  And then we can see how far we've really devolved in this country," Tacopina said on "Rob Schmitt Tonight" on Monday.  "I think that's what they're going to try to do."

Fake "Trump Supporters" at Manhattan Protest Are Identified As an Actor And an Anarchist.  President Trump asked his supporters to "Protest!" in advance of his alleged indictment by the radical Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg that was supposed to take place today.  Many Trump supporters believed it was a mistake for President Trump to call on his supporters to protest, as they feared many would be set up by fake Trump supporters who were really undercover FBI agents or informants or even members of Antifa.  The radical Anarchist group Antifa has been known to create violence at protests, making it appear as though the group who organized the event were actually responsible.  In Manhattan, during yesterday's protest in support of President Trump, independent reporter Rebecca Brannon did an incredible job of uncovering the fake "Trump supporters" who were supposed to be there to protest Trump's impending arrest by the radical Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.  Bragg had barricades placed around the Manhattan courthouse in NYC in an attempt to give the false impression that they needed to protect themselves from Trump supporters.  [Tweet]

Trump wants to appear in handcuffs if he's charged in NYC: report.  Former President Donald Trump has reportedly said he wants to be hauled into court in handcuffs if he's slapped with unprecedented charges in the "hush money" case involving porn star Stormy Daniels.  Trump, 76, told advisers of his plan, saying that if he has to go through the ordeal of getting arrested and arraigned, he'd prefer making it a "spectacle," the Guardian said Wednesday, citing unidentified sources close to him.  The ex-president — who's seeking the Republican nomination for a third White House bid in 2024 — also wants to avoid any special treatment that could make him look weak, the sources reportedly said.  It's unclear how serious Trump is about the plan, which could be stymied by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the Guardian said.

Tucker Carlson Makes a Chilling Prediction About Possible Trump Indictment.  On Monday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson made a compelling argument that indicting former President Donald Trump could lead to the permanent destruction of the United States justice system.  Although Carlson acknowledged that former presidents could be indicted if they have committed a crime, the undeniable fact is that Trump is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, and the abuse of the justice system by partisan prosecutors to take out a political opponent would be unprecedented and dangerous.  In fact, as Carlson pointed out, Alvin Bragg ran for district attorney on the promise that he would indict Trump.  He has spent years trying to find a way to pin several various crimes on him, and he's landed on the so-called "hush money" payment to Stormy Daniels — a payment the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has already said isn't even a campaign finance violation.

Tucker Carlson Breaks Down the Lawfare Constructed, Banana Republic, Persecution of Donald Trump.  For his opening monologue tonight, Fox News host Tucker Carlson breaks down the Manhattan case against President Trump as constructed by District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  Carlson notes and contrasts recent almost identical situations involving former Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards, and later Hillary Clinton.  The legal merits of the campaign finance case are farcical on their face as admitted by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), previously litigated via legal precedent (John Edwards), and even Supreme Court interpretation (VA Gov Bob McDonnell).  Additionally, even if there was a legal issue, there isn't, the statute of limitations on the claimed infraction has expired.  Furthermore, and seemingly overlooked by most pundits opining on the issue, the legal issue Bragg is attempting to weaponize is a federal campaign finance issue, out of the jurisdiction of the Manhattan district attorney.  So, what gives?

Trump's Lawyers Are Now Targeting the Georgia Grand Jury Probe.  The past few days have made it clear that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is determined to get Donald Trump for something — so much so that his office is trying to turn a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels into a campaign finance violation.  Bragg isn't the only one hoping to make a name for himself by taking Trump down.  Fulton County, Ga., DA Fani Willis is in the midst of her own anti-Trump crusade.

Trump Unveils Plan To 'Dismantle The Deep State'.  Former President Donald Trump unveiled his new plan Tuesday to "dismantle the deep state" by firing "rogue" bureaucrats and career politicians, according to a new policy agenda video.  Trump released a list of ten items that indicate how he plans to "clean out the deep state," starting with re-instating an executive order that would give the president the authority to fire bureaucrats, according to the video posted on Rumble.  The former president's plan would dismantle the "Washington Swamp," target corruption and ensure that federal bureaucrats and politicians are held accountable.

Soros-Funded DA Alvin Bragg [was] Caught Hiding Nearly 600 Pages of Exculpatory Evidence from NY Grand Jury in Trump Case.  Attorney Robert Costello, the former legal adviser to Michael Cohen, spoke to Tucker Carlson on Monday night after he testified to the Manhattan Grand Jury investigating President Donald Trump.  Costello told the FOX News audience that he testified for two hours in front of Alvin Bragg's Manhattan Grand Jury.  Robert Costello told Tucker Carlson, "I spoke to the jury for two hours... It was clear to me the Manhattan Grand Jury did not want to get to the truth."

Fulton County, Georgia, is also contemplating lawfare to derail Trump's presidential run.  Hot on the heels of news that Manhattan's DA, Alvin Bragg, is planning to charge Donald Trump for using private funds to silence a woman who later admitted that she never had sex with him, the Fulton County prosecutor's office in Atlanta, Georgia, is going ahead with plans to prosecute Trump and his associates under RICO laws for daring to challenge problematic vote counting in Georgia.  Tucker Carlson has warned that, if Democrats get away with using ideological prosecutors to attack our election system, the great American experiment is over. [...] Fulton County, of course, is one of the counties in which vote counting stopped for six hours in the middle of the night after the election.  Going into that six-hour pause, Trump was in the lead.  Coming out of it, Biden was in the lead.  There were other significant irregularities in Fulton County, all of which the political establishment protected from any investigation.  And of course, that's all Trump was asking for:  An investigation.

Final Grand Jury Witness Speaks After Testimony, Says Michael Cohen Is "Far From Solid Evidence".  While discussing Trump's potential indictment on Monday, Robert Costello, former legal advisor to Michael Cohen, referred to Cohen as a "convicted perjurer" and suggested that his testimony may not be reliable in any case.  Recently, a grand jury has been investigating Trump's business practices, including his alleged involvement in hush-money payments made to a woman who claimed to have had an affair with him before the 2016 presidential election.  As part of this investigation, Robert Costello, former legal advisor to Michael Cohen, testified before the grand jury.  Costello stated that he made the decision to testify despite warnings from others that he had nothing to gain.  He wanted to tell the truth to the grand jurors and counter the lies being promoted in the media.  Costello suggested that if there is solid evidence to go after Trump, that's alright — but he believes that Cohen is far from solid evidence.

Avenatti says there's no case against Trump.  Today is supposed to be I-Day — indictment day — in New York City.  For the 7th consecutive year, the loony left is predicting the imminent indictment and arrest of President Trump.  The walls are closing in!  Comey-Mueller-NYC DA have him right where they want him.  He will be frog-marched and perp-walked.  Just like Karl Rove.  Just like Dick Cheney.  The charge is he paid off Stormy Daniels, a hooker — or as the media now calls them, an adult entertainment actress — who claimed she had sex with him.  The case has bounced around in civil court where a judge ruled that her lawsuit was so frivolous that the whore would have to pay him!  As for this I-Day, Republicans know the drill and frankly, the dog-and-pony shows have become boring.  Her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, is a man of his convictions — of which there are three and he will spend the next 20 years in federal prison for being a crook.

Alvin Bragg's End Run Around the Constitution.  We've endured four years of Mueller's failed "Russiagate" hoax, two failed, politically-driven impeachment trials from radical House Democrats in Congress driven by Nancy Pelosi, not to mention the highly-partisan "January 6" Committee that failed to call a single witness adverse to their pre-cooked "it-was-an-insurrection" narrative, and a host of other Trump-related political prosecutions.  But now, this weekend's announcement from President Trump that he expects to be indicted on Tuesday in Manhattan forecasts the most radical tactic yet that the Democrats will use to block Trump's return to power: lawfare with unfounded charges in the criminal courts.  Let's be clear.  The feds have already declined to prosecute anything surrounding Trump's civil settlement with Stormy Daniels.  Perhaps that is because confidentiality clauses are part of millions of civil settlements in lawsuits around the country every day.  I've seen hundreds in my own career as a civil litigator.  In other words, nothing to see here.

House Judiciary Committee Demands Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Hand Over Documents and Testify Regarding Possible Donald Trump Indictment.  The House Judiciary Committee is ordering far-left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to hand over communications, documents, and testimony that Bragg is allegedly planning to use to indict former President Donald Trump.  Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent the letter Monday morning demanding Bragg's cooperation.  Rep. James Comer (R-KY) and Bryan Steil (R-WI) also signed the letter.

Manhattan prosecutor's office reportedly 'in chaos'.  When law is tossed out the window, is anybody surprised that chaos follows?  That's apparently what we have in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where Soros-financed District Attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly presiding over a chaotic shambles in the wake of news that his men intend to indict President Trump on politicized charges. [...] The root of it seems to be in Bragg's stated Trump-hate, which he openly campaigned on when he ran for office in Manhattan.  That's actually illegal, but the matter was ignored by voters.  As a Soros man, Bragg has a positively disordered view of what the role of prosecutor is in the city's legal infrastructure and what rule of law is.  Based on his history, he has a problem with the law.

This article from the Associated Press reeks with bias:
Will Trump be indicted?  What we know about the process.  The decision whether to indict former President Donald Trump over hush-money payments made on his behalf during his 2016 presidential campaign lies with a Manhattan grand jury that has been hearing evidence in secret for weeks.  An indictment of Trump, who is seeking the White House again in 2024, would be an unprecedented moment in American history, the first criminal case against a former U.S. president.  Law enforcement officials are bracing for protests and the possibility of violence after Trump called on his supporters to protest ahead of a possible indictment.

The Editor says...
The AP knows, or should know, that rioting and political violence come from the left.  In the one case where it appeared that Trump supporters got out of hand, it was (as I see it) due to leftist agitators mixed in with the crowd.

Dems will infiltrate Trump street protests to turn them violent.  Donald Trump has characterized his impending arrest this week as a political vendetta, and has urged his supporters to take to the streets in protest.  I agree with him that it's a political vendetta, but disagree about taking to the streets.  It is indeed a nakedly political act by the Manhattan District Attorney.  Numerous other prosecutors including sophisticated federal prosecutors have reviewed this same evidence, and have declined to pursue this case.  Rightly so.  It's a lousy case.  The legal theory is a stretch.  Moreover, the prosecution's fact witnesses are not credible.  One is a former porn star who has been caught numerous times lying and the other is Trump's former lawyer who is willing to say anything he's told to say in order to save his own hide.  Layer on top of that a prosecutor who is not exactly a top-notch trial lawyer and is known to get money from George Soros, and you have, as I said, a lousy case, even in New York where Trump has gone from loved to reviled.  The prosecution will lose.

A potential Trump indictment is a sideshow gift to the Biden family.  If Democrats really wanted Donald Trump to fade away, as they claim, they would stop persecuting him.  Maybe they are so blinded by hatred that they can't see that every time they use the heavy hand of the law against the former president, they just cement his status as a MAGA martyr.  Or maybe they are so terrified of running against Ron DeSantis in 2024 that they actually want to martyr Trump to ensure he wins the Republican presidential primary ready for a repeat contest with Joe Biden. [...] Whether or not Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg really is about to arrest Trump this week, as has been reported, over trumped-up hush-money charges relating to a one-time assignation 17 years ago with porn star Stormy Daniels, Friday's leak from the court could not have come at a better time for President Biden.

Arresting Trump.  On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump will be arrested by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.  Reportedly, the charges will pertain to alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels which purportedly violated campaign finance laws.  Alvin Bragg, the Soros-funded progressive District Attorney, has yet to explain the legal theory underlying the charges.  But, given his alarming and astounding demolition of Manhattan's criminal justice system, it will no doubt be a counterintuitive and inventive interpretation of the law.  No matter what charges are brought, it is clear that this prosecution will be just one more tawdry political hit job.

Indicting Trump Could Get Him Reelected.  If Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg actually indicts former President Donald Trump this week and prosecutes him in what will inevitably become a show trial, the Democrats will regret it.  This is ironic considering their absurd yet oft-repeated comparison of Trump to Adolf Hitler.  If these people knew anything about the latter's rise to power, they would realize that it was just such a trial that launched his genocidal political career in Germany.  Trump is no aspiring autocrat, but a politicized prosecution and biased coverage by the corporate media will certainly energize his base.  As former UN Ambassador John Bolton told CNN, "Having very much in mind the one rule of law for everybody ... I think historians would look back and say, that's the act that reelected Donald Trump president."  Bolton's allusion to equal treatment under the law was echoed in the New York Sun by Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School: "Mr. Trump should not be indicted for novel and unprecedented technical crimes for which no one else would be prosecuted."  George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley adds in the Hill that Bragg's case would be exceptionally weak at the very best: [...]

Surprise Trump Grand Jury Witness Revealed.  A source with knowledge of the "hush-money" investigation has confirmed to the New York Times that Rudy Giuliani lawyer Robert Costello, a former legal advisor to Michael Cohen, will be appearing before the grand jury on Monday with the sole intention of undermining Cohen's credibility.  Meanwhile, Cohen, the former lawyer for Donald Trump and star prosecution witness, has made himself available on Monday in case prosecutors decide to call him to provide rebuttal testimony against Costello. [...] According to Trump, Costello has "conclusive and irrefutable" evidence that should exonerate him.  What is this evidence?  Who knows?  But experts have already said that the case against Trump is ridiculously weak.  But hey, maybe Costello can provide solid evidence that will make it impossible for even a partisan grand jury and a partisan prosecutor to go forward with bogus charges.

Democrats' Daddy Issues With Trump Aren't Going to Work Out Well for Them.  American Democrats are continuing their descent into a Trump-induced madness from which there obviously won't be any return.  They've escalated their insane war on Donald Trump to a point that has the potential to backfire in grand fashion.  They really didn't think this one through.  Then again, they haven't thought any of their Trump tantrums through.  They're blinded by rage and won't stop until they get some red meat footage for the 14 viewers who still watch MSNBC and CNN. [...] It's not likely that whatever [Robert] Costello has to say will be enough to change New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg's mind — he's chomping at the bit to get his moment in the media as the guy who finally "got" Trump, no matter how fleeting the victory is.

Former U.S. Attorney Argues Trump Could Be Indicted for Same Thing Clinton Was Fined For.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is essentially using the same legal theory to potentially indict former President Donald Trump that Hillary Clinton's campaign was fined for, argued former United States Attorney Brett Tolman.  Tolman asserted Saturday [3/18/2023] that Bragg's legal theory that Trump tried to hide a campaign expenditure by using his then-lawyer to pay porn actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in alleged hush money before the 2016 presidential elections would have applied to Clinton when her campaign hid a payment for the phony Russian pee dossier against Trump as "legal fees."

Lauren Boebert: Democrats Believe Arresting Donald Trump Is Their 'Only Hope' of Victory in 2024.  Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) argued in a Twitter post that Democrats believe the anticipated arrest of former President Donald Trump is the party's "only hope" of winning the 2024 election.  Boebert, who has closely aligned herself with Trump since she first ran for the House of Representatives in 2020, argued, "Democrats know they won't be able to beat our ideas at the ballot box in 2024 so think this is their only hope."

Arresting Donald Trump.  For much of the last two months the rumors have swirled.  On Saturday the former President acknowledged it.  On Tuesday it may happen. [...] What happens if they put handcuffs on a former President?  If you've watched social media this weekend the reaction has ranged.  Trump supporters have asserted flatly that it insures his re-ascendancy to the White House.  Trump haters are mixed with some gloating "we finally got him!"  Some are accusing him of attempting to start a civil war.  They say this because he merely said "protest" in his post on Truth Social that went viral.  Between the gloating and the accusing there appears to be a good deal of panic on the left about the outcome. [...] The "evidence" is non-existent and they already know in a deep place inside themselves that the American people are fair-minded.  They understand that Americans are watching the next iteration of a witch hunt that has been long in the making and thwarted via self destruction at every point where they were convinced they had stopped him.

Trump and Hillary Have Been Accused of the Same Crime, but Hillary Never Faced Potential Arrest.  The justice system is supposed to be blind to political affiliations and treat all individuals equally under the law.  It's hard to deny that there seems to be a double standard when it comes to the way justice is applied to those on the left versus those on the right.  The mere possibility of Donald Trump facing possible arrest and charges for something that, at most, might result in a minor fine for a Democrat is a prime example of this disparity.  Just look at Hillary Clinton.  Last year, the Federal Election Commission fined Hillary Clinton for misreporting payments made to a law firm during the 2016 campaign to hide spending.  The law firm in question was Perkins Coie, which hired Fusion GPS to conduct research that resulted in the Steele Dossier, which was later used by Congress to impeach Trump.  Clinton classified these expenses as "legal services" and was fined $113,000 for the misrepresentation.

More about Bill and Hillary's accumulated baggage.

Trump Will Likely NOT Be Arrested, at Least on Tuesday.  Donald Trump announced on Saturday morning that he would be arrested on Tuesday, and the nation has been agog at the prospect of the Leftist establishment crossing the rubicon of arresting its principal opponent on flimsy charges and demonstrating before the entire world that the American republic is now the American banana republic, in which foes of the regime can expect the full weight of corrupt government authority pushing back against them for daring to dissent.  But now it turns out that the Manhattan district attorney's office, which has Trump in its sights, just may be stepping back from the brink:  Business Insider reported Saturday night that Trump's indictment is "on hold" until one more witness testifies Monday afternoon.  That's about all that has come to light, as the relevant authorities are being quite closemouthed about this whole thing.  Insider says that "a source with knowledge of the investigation" told them on Saturday night "there is one more witness."  The indictment is apparently not a certainty until this witness testifies.  But who is this witness?

Vivek Ramaswamy Warns Trump Indictment Would Be a 'National Disaster'.  Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a 2024 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, decried the prospect of former President Donald Trump being indicted.  "A Trump indictment would be a national disaster.  It is un-American for the ruling party to use police power to arrest its political rivals," Ramaswamy tweeted on Saturday [3/18/2023].  He made a reference to the 2004 presidential election in which Democrat John Kerry lost to George Bush and his running mate Dick Cheney.  "If a Republican prosecutor in 2004 had used a campaign finance technicality to arrest then-candidate John Kerry while Bush & Cheney were in power, liberals would have cried foul — and rightly so," Ramaswamy said. "Principles go beyond partisanship."

The coming Trump arrest is a very dangerous power play.  The Tea Party emerged in 2009.  Even though its rallies were peaceful and always left the rally locations immaculate, Democrats in and out of the media described Tea Partiers as dangerous, racist, wild-eyed activists.  The template was in place.  Trump mulled the idea of running for president, and leftists were initially excited because they foresaw an easy Hillary victory against him.  Trump became the primary candidate, the crowds turning out for him were unprecedented, and Hillary was revealed to have violated multiple national security laws, only to limp into the election thanks to a James Comey "fix."  Trump won, and Democrats had a massive, very public, complete mental breakdown.  Shortly before Trump entered office, high-level Democrats (Hillary?  Obama?) instituted what came to be the Russia collusion hoax.  Despite the Russia collusion hoax, the Ukraine phone call hoax, a failed impeachment, and myriad other faux scandals, Trump looked like a shoo-in for reelection.  The economy was booming, China was being constrained, illegal immigration was diminishing, peace was blossoming in the Middle East, and there were no new wars or concentration camps.  Something needed to be done.  Enter COVID.

Calls Grow on the Left for Trump to Be Held Without Bail — For a Misdemeanor.  The left is salivating at the idea that finally Orange Man Bad will be arrested and perp walked in front of the media next week.  But that is not enough for them.  Calls have gone out on Saturday for President Trump to be held without bail because they say he is a danger to the country over his call for supporters to protest should he be arrested.  The liberals are saying this is an incitement to another January 6 and therefore Trump should be kept behind bars where he could not post calls for protests on social media.  New York has extremely lax bail laws, making bail non-existent for most of those charged.  However, the liberals think an exception should be made for Trump.

Trump now says Manhattan's DA should be investigated for 'interfering' with the election.  Donald Trump is claiming full innocence and isn't buying the narrative from some Republicans defending him by saying the alleged hush-money payments he made to Stormy Daniels are a 'misdemeanor' at best.  The former president said on Sunday that there 'was no crime' and flipped the script on the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, demanding the Democratic prosecutors be investigated for 'interfering' with the presidential election.  Prosecutors argue that he violated a New York law which prohibits falsifying business records when he marked a $130,000 payment to Daniels as 'legal expenses.'

Jonathan Turley Destroys Manhattan DA's Case Against Trump.  The timing of the reported indictment about to drop against President Donald Trump can only be called suspicious, given the Stormy Daniels issue has been lying fallow for years, with President Donald Trump now a declared candidate for the 2024 presidential nomination.  It's about the perp walk and the theatrics.  Just like they tried the Jan. 6 Committee prior to the midterms, this is going to be the continuing thing that they will throw out there to attack Trump and the Republicans in the presidential race.  It's about the optics to move the middle/the independents away from Republicans.  But what about the legal case against Trump?  George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley called it what it is:  "legally pathetic."

Democrats Have Nothing — President Trump Did Nothing Wrong — But They Will Arrest Him Anyway.  The world is in a financial meltdown right now and our economy is on the brink of collapse.  This is due to Biden's actions.  Now the criminals running our government want to arrest a good man who did nothing wrong because he threatens their power.  The GOP RINOs tried to stop candidate Trump from winning the nomination in 2016, they couldn't.  Hillary called Trump and his supporters "deplorable" and he beat her.  Obama spied on Trump, and he got caught.  The Obama gang attempted a coup of the Trump Administration, it failed, Trump did nothing wrong.  The Democrats impeached him for daring to ask about the Bidens' actions in Ukraine, he was doing his duty, the Bidens were taking millions from foreigners in bribes and favors.  The Chinese drop COVID-19 with the Deep State doctors' help, they attempt to cover it up, Fauci and gang got caught.  President Trump won millions more votes than any President in history in the 2020 election so they stole it from him.

Manhattan DA Pursuing Felony Against Trump Has History of Reducing Charges Against Others.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is expected to bring felony charges against former President Donald Trump next week related to payments made in 2016 to settle rumors of an extramarital affair.  The charges, which Bragg upgraded from a misdemeanor class, stand in stark contrast to the prosecutor's history of reducing charges against the majority of cases on his watch.  Since taking office last year, DA Bragg has downgraded approximately 52 percent of all cases brought before his office.  A significant portion of these cases involved reducing felony charges to misdemeanors.  Under Bragg's predecessor, less than 40 percent of cases were comprised of similar downgrades.

George Soros Exposed as Major Force Behind Trump's Prosecution and Imminent Arrest.  President Donald Trump reacted to the news of his imminent arrest in New York by pointing out that the Manhattan District Attorney's office's "leader is funded by George Soros."  Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, whom Donald Trump is referring to in his post, was elected in November 2021 with indirect backing from left-wing billionaire George Soros, who gave $1 million to the Color of Change PAC, which spent it to elect Bragg.  The Color of Change PAC is a radical activist group that describes itself as "the nation's largest online racial justice organization."  Fox News reported that Soros has "funneled $40 million dollars into district attorney campaigns nationwide," including Bragg's.  Former New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton spoke out against the "$1 million donation that Hungarian-born philanthropist Soros gave to the Color of Change political action committee, which supported Bragg," the New York Post reported.

Trump Puts out a Post That Says Everything About His Legal Situation.  As RedState reported, Donald Trump put a statement on Saturday morning confirming that his indictment and arrest are imminent.  According to the former president, he'll be taken into custody on Tuesday after the Manhattan District Attorney's office charges him over a hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election.  The contention is that Trump broke the law by ordering Michael Cohen to make the payment, which was ultimately classified as a legal expense.  New York prosecutors assert that election laws were broken because it was actually a campaign expense meant to affect the election.  As a legal matter, it's incredibly weak, and it relies on a never-before-tried legal theory to upgrade the charge to a felony.  That would bypass the statute of limitations and put jail time in play for the former president.  Now, Trump is speaking out further, and I believe his latest Truth Social post says everything about his legal situation.  [Tweet]

Professor Turley exposes the incredible weakness of the Trump indictment.  Professor Jonathan Turley, one of the few brave honest liberals in academia, is far too nice a person to speak with utter contempt in his voice.  But the substance of what he has to say about the indictment and pending arrest of former President Donald J. Trump exposes contemptible behavior on the part of the New State justice system.  In two brief clips from an interview he did Saturday with Molly Line of Fox News, he exposes the flimsiness of the case against Trump and the illicit origin of the indictment.  First, how Trump could end up convicted even though the charges are likely to get thrown out on appeal: [...]

A Trump arrest will just underline the Deep State's crackdown on freedom.  What does this forthcoming indictment signal if not the establishment's intent on rigging the 2024 presidential election by means of a phony-baloney political indictment?  Consider the reaction of Prof. Alan Dershowitz to a Trump indictment based on the Stormy Daniels matter, long ago buried, but now revived by Manhattan D.A. Bragg.  This is "targeted injustice" according to Dershowitz.  Note that only John Solomon's Just the News website carried Prof. Dershowitz's response.  Generally, the media — as usual — are compliant with a Deep State move against the former president.  What better indication of how utterly unjust the justice system in deep red country when it comes to matters concerning Mr.Trump?  Mr. Trump predicts he will be placed under arrest Tuesday, March 21, and calls on supporters to protest.  Look for "Jan. 6" to be replaced by "Mar. 21" as the date of MAGA "insurrection" by the totalitarian forces in the country.

GOP Presidential Hopeful Responds to Possible Donald Trump Arrest: 'Dark Moment'.  Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said that rumors and reports claiming former President Donald Trump could be arrested soon are a "dark moment" in U.S. history.  "It is un-American for the ruling party to use police power to arrest its political rivals," Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur who recently declared his GOP candidacy, wrote on Twitter Saturday.  "If a Republican prosecutor in 2004 had used a campaign finance technicality to arrest then-candidate John Kerry while Bush & Cheney were in power, liberals would have cried foul — and rightly so."  "This will mark a dark moment in American history and will undermine public trust in our electoral system itself," Ramaswamy also wrote.  "I call on the Manhattan District Attorney to reconsider this action and to put aside partisan politics in service of preserving our Constitutional republic."  Later on Saturday, Ramaswamy called on former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who announced a Republican run for president, and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who is also reportedly mulling a presidential bid — to denounce Bragg.

Get ready for Manhattan DA's made-for-TV Trump prosecution: high on ratings, but short on the law.  "The moment that we are waiting for, we made it to the finale together" — those familiar words from "America's Got Talent" — could well be the opening line for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg next week, when he is expected to unveil an indictment of former President Trump.  With Trump's reported announcement that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday, it would be a fitting curtain raiser for a case that has developed more like a television production than a criminal prosecution.  Indeed, this indictment was repeatedly rejected only to be brought back by popular demand.  Trump faces serious legal threats in the ongoing Mar-a-Lago investigation.  But the New York case would be easily dismissed outside of a jurisdiction like New York, where Bragg can count on highly motivated judges and jurors.  Although it may be politically popular, the case is legally pathetic.  Bragg is struggling to twist state laws to effectively prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump over his payment of "hush money" to former stripper Stormy Daniels.

Government Tyrants Play with Fire.  The communist thugs controlling America's legal system have chosen to cross the Rubicon, it seems.  President Trump says he will be arrested Tuesday now that New York City's corrupt, Soros-funded district attorney has cooked up some cockamamie criminal indictment against him involving Stormy Daniels — the same political pawn who was already ordered to pay the president 300,000 dollars in legal fees as restitution in a prior case.  If anyone needed further evidence that we reside under a post-constitutional Uniparty regime with utter disdain for the rule of law, add this to the long list of government crimes and usurpations committed against the American people.  No doubt the politicians and their State-controlled agents in the press will actually hail President Trump's arrest as shimmering validation that "no one is above the law."  What poppycock!

A Subtle Way for Establishment Republicans to Sabotage Trump.  Having recently re-elected Mitt Romney's niece to the chair of the National Republican Committee, the press is giving Donald Trump the Ron Paul treatment, which is to say pretending he doesn't exist.  Not the least of these media outlets is FOX News, now spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch's liberal son and failed vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.  Similarly, in the mold of Uncle Mitt and Reince Priebus, Ronna Romney McDaniel is now promoting the National Republican Committee's pursuit of a loyalty pledge, binding campaigns to support whomever the press elevates to the nomination as a prerequisite to participate in debates.  Let's hope this loyalty pledge goes farther than the loyalty of Florida governor Ron DeSantis.  In 2018, DeSantis couldn't slap on another piece of Trump flair fast enough.  Now he treats MAGA like leprosy.

Judge Overseeing Trump Georgia Grand Jury Weighs in on Crazy Forewoman's Media Tour.  The judge overseeing the Georgia special grand jury weighed in on the crazy forewoman who went on a media tour last week.  To be clear, the Georgia special grand jury cannot bring any indictments, they can only recommend indictments and District Attorney Fanni Willis would then have to pursue the case.  Fulton County judge Robert C.  McBurney recently ordered parts of the grand jury report in the garbage Trump 2020 election investigation to be released as the prosecutor considers charges against Trump and his allies.  The grand jury concluded that "one or more witnesses" lied under oath and recommended perjury indictments.

I not a lawyer or a judge, but this is a Bill of Attainder:
Chinese Spy Lover Eric Swalwell Proposes Bill to Ban Trump From U.S.  Capitol.  Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif), who was kicked off the House Select Committee on Intelligence because of his years-long affair with a Chinese spy, is trying to stay in the headlines by proposing a plan to keep former President Trump out of the Capitol.  The bill, introduced by Rep. Nikema Williams (D-GA), would permanently bar Trump and several top aides from the Capitol because of their attempt to "undermine and overturn the 2020 presidential election."  The proposal asks the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms and the U.S.  Capitol Police to take "such actions as may be necessary" to keep Trump from entering the halls of Congress forever.

Why the 2020 Election was Unverifiable.  Joe Biden acquired his job through a legal process.  However, he did not earn enough verifiable votes to justify the certifications in six key swing states.  This issue is addressed in my new book, but here is some of my reasoning.  I have limited myself to one example of unverifiable votes for each of those swing states. [...] Before the 2020 election, the Michigan Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, implemented an illegal procedure that seriously undermined the integrity of the election.  Benson announced that all signatures would be presumptively valid — even if they were only slightly similar to registration signatures.  The announcement was, effectively, an invitation to fraudsters to grab all the unused ballot applications they could find or buy; and fill them out and send them in.  Trump opposed Benson's new procedure, and he ended up winning in court — four months after the election.  In March, 2021, State Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray:  "Nowhere in this state's election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid..."  By using an illegal standard for processing of signatures, and by announcing that new standard in advance so that fraudsters could exploit it, Benson effectively invalidated the Michigan election certification.

Atlanta, GA, "Special Grand Jury" Foreperson Speaks to MSNBC About Their Trump Investigation.  Putting aside the rules of grand juries speaking to media that do not apply because the Fulton County, GA, group was not a regular grand jury — but rather a "special grand jury", you might be interested to watch the foreperson of the group speak to MSNBC.  [Video clip] [...] In May of 2022 Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis assembled what is called a "special grand jury" to review claims that President Donald Trump attempted to coerce Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find votes and assist him in winning the November 2020 election.  The "special grand jury" exists outside the traditional justice system and as an outcome cannot produce indictments.  It was assembled, for all intents and purposes, as a quasi-grand jury with the intent on creating a continual political effort through a process best described as lawfare.

Georgia Grand Jury's Report Is Garbage Because Fulton County D.A. Fed Them Garbage To 'Get Trump'.  "Grand jury says Trump's election team committed perjury."  Without searching for the legacy media's coverage of today's release of a handful of pages from the report compiled by the Fulton County, Ga.  Special Purpose Grand Jury, I tapped out that mock headline.  Sure enough, the corporate press remains predictable.  "Georgia grand jury: 'Perjury may have been committed' in Trump election probe," The Washington Post headed its coverage.  "Georgia Grand Jury in Trump Inquiry Sees Signs of Perjury By Witnesses," The New York Times echoed.  USA Today similarly headlined its reporting, "Georgia Grand Jury Recommends Perjury Charges for Unnamed Witnesses in Trump Investigation."  But color me skeptical that any perjury occurred — because of what the Special Purpose Grand Jury said on page two of its report and because of what the partisan Fulton County D.A., Democrat Fani Willis, said in various court filings related to her "investigation."

Rep. Waltz Says DOD Told Him China Spy Balloons Crossed US During Trump Years But Gen. Mattis Did Not Tell Trump.  Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) joined Stuart Varney on Monday morning on FOX Business Network.  Rep Waltz says current Pentagon officials briefed him over the weekend and said Chinese spy balloons crossed over Texas and Florida during the Trump years.  Waltz then dropped this bomb.  Rep. Waltz said that General Mattis was Secretary of Defense at the time and decided not to inform President Trump because the Pentagon thought Trump was "too provocative and aggressive!"  This is a treason if true.  Mattis put the US in danger, offered comfort to the enemy, allowed Chinese spying on US installations, and then hid this from his superiors, including the President of the United States.

The Stench of Fascism Is Suffocating our Democracy.  The Democrats have targeted their chief political opponent Donald Trump, who received 74 million votes in the last election, with the longest, most determined, and most vicious campaign of character assassination in modern history, and possibly ever.  They have warned other potential presidential contenders like Governor Ron DeSantis that they will get the same treatment.  They have smeared Republicans as racists, white supremacists and white nationalists, and has done this in the service of rigged elections in its drive to establish a one-party state.

Who is running our government?  Classified documents, everywhere, and by everyone: Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Mike Pence... and the list keeps growing.  Now there are questions about Barack Obama, who took 30,000,000 documents to his Presidential library (it's doubtful he even knows what he has) and who has ignored the National Archive's requests for their return.  This is just more evidence of what the American people have learned really exists: The Deep State.  The Deep State successfully ousted Trump with constant leaks and political chicanery against a sitting president, all to foment distrust and dishonor, and to make his life and office a living Hades.  Pelosi's Congress was no slouch either and impeached him a second time, even after he left office (with the first impeachment over a phone call!).

50 ways for experts to lose their expertise.  It turns out that everyone was lying, including those 50 experts who called the laptop Russian misinformation.  Can't wait to see one of the 50 explain it to Representative Jim Jordan now that Hunter Biden admitted the laptop is his.  Wouldn't you love to see the Trump-Biden second debate now that we know that it was his laptop?  As you may remember, President Trump kept bringing up Hunter and Biden the experts.  In other words, the whole Russia-Trump story, from collusion to the laptop to Hamilton 68, was fake.

Another Trump-hating FBI lovebird flies out of the woodwork.  A certain amount of foofaraw came about when FBI bigshots Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were caught sending Trump-hating text-messages while in the throes of an extramarital affair.  And rightly, most of the attention went to the pair's illegal use of government property and underhanded Borgia-style machinations against the incoming U.S. president.  But their openly out there extramarital affair is worth noting, too.  Under FBI regulations, adulterous affairs are a firing offense, given that such behavior puts national security at risk and automatically leads to the loss of one's security clearance.  There's a lot of this going on at that troubled wokester agency now that a new lovebird case has emerged in the bust of FBI counterintelligence chief Charles McGonigal, yet nobody seems to be stopping it.  Sure enough, an angry mistress has emerged in McGonigal's case and she was reportedly instrumental in exposing his influence-peddling on behalf of a sanctioned Russian oligarch.

Classified Documents Are A New Potential Trap For Any Politician Who Crosses The Deep State.  Procedural complaints about classified documents are quickly turning into a catch-all trap that can depose duly elected officials, especially those tasked with oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies.  Last August, an unprecedented classified document complaint provided a pretext for an FBI raid on former President Donald Trump's home, in an eerie echo of the use of police and military resources against opposing politicians typical of banana republics.  That administrative power flex has now been turned into the unprecedented appointment of three special counsels, most recently against the deeply unpopular current Democrat Party figurehead, Joe Biden.  This all reverses the American structure of elected officials maintaining oversight of unelected permanent administrators.  Instead, we now have unelected bureaucrats performing selective "oversight" of elected officials.

Clinton-appointed judge slaps Trump with nearly $1M penalty for 'frivolous' lawsuit against Hillary.  A federal judge has ordered former President Donald J. Trump and his lawyer to pay nearly $1 million in sanctions to cover legal costs for failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other defendants in a failed lawsuit against them for promoting the Russia collusion hoax.  On Thursday night, US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks tore into Trump and attorney Alina Habba in a blistering 46-page filing that, in addition to blasting them for abusing the courts, ordered that the $938,000 financial penalty be paid.  "This case should never have been brought," wrote the Bill Clinton appointee.

Destroying American Democracy — An Inside Job.  Today we know that the "Russia hoax" was a lie.  After a 22-month investigation, no evidence of collusion between any element of the Trump campaign and Russia was uncovered.  The supposedly compromising evidence had never existed; the information in the "Steele dossier" was false — and the FBI had known it was from the start.  The entire fabrication had been an attempt to attack and politically weaken Trump.

Just What Kind Of A Republican Is Mitch McConnell?  Following the November 2022 midterm election fiasco, the evidence pointed even more strongly to an ongoing organized conspiracy among Republicans.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel deliberately tanked the midterms by denying funding and support personnel to pro-Trump candidates in many states, including Nevada, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.  McConnell foolishly diverted $9 million to support Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, over Kelly Tshibaka another Republican. [...] Why?  Murkowski voted to impeach President Trump, while Tshibaka supported the former president.  The inescapable conclusion seems to be that Republican leadership only supports candidates that support them, as opposed to those who support America and Americans.

Rebellion Against the People.  While it's important to justify one's position, to provide proof and evidence of crimes, betrayals and treason, I believe we're past the discovery phase and need to move on to the resolution.  What more do we need to know than the CIA has been involved in some of the most treacherous acts committed against the republic, that they've had their hands in the dirtiest of business?  What more do we need to know than the FBI has worked with social media companies to install a worthless, feckless president, perpetrating a treasonous coup in the guise of an election?  All of this, while recently verified, was information we had long since accepted as true.  Such villainous acts were known in 1992 when Vicki Weaver was shot down by a government sniper while holding her infant at Ruby Ridge.  Does that not speak of the inhumanity with which the government views all of us with dissenting views, those who will not simply obey every outrageous law or dictate?  To domestic enemies, patriots are scum.  This is a division between the people and those entrusted with power that cannot be ignored without the absolute destruction of the republic in all but name.  That is the current state of the union and has been, I would venture, since 1963.

The Coming Split.  Trump was the first president since Ronald Reagan (or some would argue, since earlier than that) who seemed to appreciate the dangers of unaccountable, unlimited, deep-state government.  And I'm willing to bet he'd appreciate those dangers a lot more in a second term, having fallen victim to them himself in the 2020 election.  But, despite the obvious differences, we're heading for a 1912-repeat, in which the Republican Party ignores its own voters.  The Republican machine has no intention of letting us choose Trump again: He is not a uniparty team player.  They'd rather lose an election to the Democrats, their brothers in crime, than win with Trump.  That leads us to the inevitable question:  What should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can't have him?  Do we knuckle under and vote for Ron DeSantis because he would be vastly better than any Democrat?

Stewart Rhodes warns Trump is next for politically motivated prosecution.  Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia who has been convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, said his case is a harbinger of what the Justice Department has in store for former President Donald Trump.  The former Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate turned militia leader warned that his conviction on the rare Civil War-era charge has set an ominous precedent that should alarm conservatives.  "Their success in my trial is paving the way for them to keep rolling through other people building up to Trump," Rhodes told The Washington Times.  "It was a warmup for what they're going to do.  That's what that was:  a political show trial."

Dems Vote to Release Six Years of Trump Tax Returns in Stunning Invasion of Privacy.  Add yet another government overreach to the "Things You Didn't Think Could Happen in America" file:  Democrats on the lame-duck House and Ways and Means Committee voted Tuesday to release six years of former President Donald Trump's tax returns. [...] But wait, you say to yourself, that's not possible; your tax returns are private by federal law, and therefore protected from release.  The Dems of course found a sleazy way around that.  The tax code allows the committee to look at people's tax returns to provide "oversight" of the Internal Revenue Service, and by writing an official report on their findings, then those returns can legally become public as part of the report.

Washington DC Labels Donald Trump an "Enemy of the State" — [but] "That's Why We Voted for Him".  The entire reason why CTH supported Donald J Trump in 2015 and forward was because he was a disruption to the DC system that few understood as deeply as an assembled bunch of politically homeless people right here on these pages and across America.  Since that original moment, Trump's presence has done exactly what we always knew it would do, EXPOSE THE CORRUPTION.  Trump is the Rosetta Stone, the physical embodiment of a massive unrepresented middle-class assembly that despises Washington DC and the corrupt political establishment they represent.  Republicans and Democrats are two wings of the same vulture feeding on the carcass of the American worker, or what the FBI calls "domestic extremists," people who just want to be left [...] alone.

Alan Dershowitz dismisses Jan. 6 committee's Trump referral: 'Worthless piece of paper'.  Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz denounced the Jan. 6 committee as a "kangaroo court" that produced a worthless report that should be "thrown in the wastebasket."  In an interview Monday evening on Newsmax TV, the eminent lawyer said that "not only is [the Justice Department] not obligated to do anything, it is obligated not to do anything" in response to the panel's recommendations Monday that former President Donald Trump be prosecuted.  According to Mr. Dershowitz, the panel operated against the spirit of one of only two civil-liberties provisions in the original Constitution, before the Bill of Rights was added — a ban on "bills of attainder."

10 Steps to Save America.  Americans distrust the "swamp," administrative state, or deep state.  Call what you will, the Washington nexus of bureaucracies, media, and lobbyists has created a huge, unelected permanent army of auditors, regulators, investigators, and punishers, all mostly exempt from audit and accountability and without fear of their elected overseers.  The easiest solution is to break up concentrations of power.  Transfer out of Washington, in this age of zoom and telecommunications, major cabinet departments like Health and Human Services, Energy, or Agriculture into the hinterland.  Restore the idea that lying to Congress, feigning amnesia, or pleading ignorance under oath to Congress or federal investigators or in depositions is a prosecutable felony with jail time.

Cleveland: FBI Lied About The Hunter Biden Laptop Story To Steal The Election From Trump.  "Our FBI lied to the media to get them to censor a story that directly impacted the 2020 election.  This is outrageous and you have to continue on to look at the other breadcrumbs we have," Federalist Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland said on "I'm Right with Jesse Kelly."  [Video clip]

A Corrupt, Evil Regime Intent on Imprisoning Trump.  Gunrunner, never-charged criminal, political hack, and perpetually aggrieved former attorney general Eric Holder is back, bloviating about President Trump being imminently arrested.  Given that we live in post-Republic times and that the Department of (in)Justice has exhibited no shame or remorse in its years-long campaign of political persecution and partisan double-standards, I'll take Obama's contemptible "wingman" at his word just this once.  So Democrats, Establishment Republicans, and the Deep State Leviathan plan on humiliating President Trump by frog-marching him before the world and tossing him in the clink.  So what?  They've been telegraphing this play for months, if not years.  We get it.  The U.S. government is irredeemably corrupt, we've officially entered banana republic territory, and all the worst tyrants in D.C. plan on rounding up and punishing anyone brave enough to fight back or dissent.

Trump Isn't The Nation's Greatest Threat To Democracy.  His Exile Is.  Former President Donald Trump is back as a candidate, but after leaving the White House, he never left the political arena — and therefore, the investigations designed to send him into political exile never let up either.  Trump's bid for a nonconsecutive second term is faced with the same level of resistance that hampered his first, when Beltway actors weaponized the levers of government to politically terminate their public enemy number one, beginning from before day one.  In February last year, Trump became the first and only president to undergo an impeachment trial in the Senate after he had already left office.  One week before Joe Biden took the presidential oath, Trump was hit with a snap impeachment from House Democrats who sought to indict the outgoing president for the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump v. Biden, the FBI, and the Deep State.  It's no secret that deeply and thoroughly embedded within our once well-reputed federal agencies, are members of what we colloquially call, the Deep State — perhaps another moniker ought to be "American Stalinists"?  Filed yesterday, the courts handling the Mar-a-Lago raid issued a new ruling.  The per curiam 21-page opinion in Donald J. Trump v. United States of America decision overturns the federal district court's appointment of a special master to review the documents seized by the politicized FBI at the direction of the viciously-partisan attorney general, Merrick Garland.  (Can you believe this man almost became a Supreme Court justice?)  Strangely, I don't find the plaintiff and defendant an accurate reflection of reality; rather it should read something like Trump v. the American Stalinists, or Trump v. Biden, Obama, and Garland.

Democrats Now Have Trump's Tax Returns.  The battle over Donald Trump's tax returns has concluded, and it will either be a bombshell development or a tremendous deafening silence, the latter of which has been the end to many hit pieces and innuendos of impropriety about the former president.  Democrats now have Trump's tax returns — which has been an obsessive topic among members of the media and the Democratic Party.  Liberals are convinced that some felonious activity is hidden within the pages of these financial documents.  Trump has fought tenaciously against legal actions forcing him to release these files, but his last stand — the Supreme Court — was unsuccessful.

The Trump Special Counsel is Another Clinton Payback.  When Bruce Wasserstein, a billionaire backer of the Clintons, provided a $25 million donation to Harvard Law, future Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, then serving as dean, welcomed it.  The gift built on the Wasserstein Fellows Program already established at Harvard Law which brought "outstanding public interest lawyers" to Harvard and provided them stipends of up to $24,000 to meet with and influence students toward social justice at the prestigious law school.  When Jack Smith became a Wasserstein Fellow, even while, unironically, serving as head of the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section, seemingly soliciting and accepting a grant funded by a leftist billionaire (but who watches the integrity of the head of the Public Integrity Section) he joined a list of leftist activist lawyers working for the ACLU, Earthjustice, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Soros' Open Society, Catholic Charities and the UN.

Appointment of Special Counsel Amounts to Election Interference and Sets Dangerous Precedent.  While Republicans kicked off the 2024 presidential race with the announcement that Donald Trump was running for president, in perhaps the ultimate sign of our ignominious times, Democrats, in effect, kicked off their half of the contest three days later by appointing a special counsel to escalate their political prosecution of him.  This is where "our democracy" stands today:  with its purported defenders engaging in the singularly anti-democratic act of siccing a hyper-politicized law enforcement apparatus on a candidate for the highest elected office, on dubious grounds, thereby subverting the political process by which we decide who represents us.  At a minimum, no doubt to an approving President Joe Biden, his law enforcement arm is now engaged in what amounts to election interference against arguably the president's top challenger — ironically probing in part then-President Trump's alleged interference with the transfer of power in 2020, when Trump could make the case the Deep State did the same to him from the inception of Russiagate in 2016 onward.  Worse, with Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel, the prospect of the former president being charged and convicted of something, anything, is more real than at any time during the perpetual campaign to purge Trump from the body politic.

The coup-attempt party.  A political light bulb went on regarding Adam Schiff's remark on CNN's "State of the Union" as reported by Breitbart's Pam Key.  In the interview, Schiff again mentioned the Russia hoax he has promoted for five years, if not longer.  (Note that Dana Bash did not call Schiff on this huge lie.).  With Schiff continuing to assert this gross falsehood, the Democrat Party has, for years, switched from being a loyal opposition party to priding itself as a party of the permanently-attempted coup.  How dumb of me not to have taken seriously the Democrat cries of "Resistance," as of the Trump inauguration, January 20, 2017 — but I then understood such cries to be figurative and fanciful references of a politically romantic nature.  But where were the Republican political experts like House Speaker Paul Ryan back in early 2017 when the "Resistance" was gearing up?  Alas, the anti-Trump Ryan was silently supporting the Resistance.  How could the Democrats have succeeded with the Mueller probe if Ryan had spoken out forcefully against what was apparently a coup attempt to oust the legitimately-elected president?

There's Something Fishy About the Special Counsel Investigating Trump.  Last week, the Biden administration's Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate former President Donald Trump, days after President Joe Biden's top GOP rival declared a third bid for the presidency.  Garland's appointment marks the naming of the third special counsel in five years to examine Trump-related matters.  But this particular pick has had some major misfires, one of which took out a high-profile potential Republican presidential candidate.  More than a decade ago, under President Barack Obama's leadership, Attorney General Eric Holder picked Smith to oversee the Justice Department's public integrity section.  A few years later, Smith's unit convicted former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, in 2014 on corruption charges for accepting over $165,000 in gifts and loans from an affluent businessman in exchange for promoting a dietary supplement.  However, two years went by, and the Supreme Court overturned the conviction in a unanimous ruling that found that the jury was given faulty instructions about what constitutes bribery under federal law.

Supreme Court smacks Trump.  Consider, please: the high court ruled, in Dobbs, that a right to abortion, created in Roe v. Wade, is nowhere found in the Constitution of the United States.  On November 22, half a year later, the high court stated, effectively, that a house of Congress has a right, found nowhere in the Constitution, to the tax returns of a president of the country.  To boot, the justices bestow such a right on a viciously partisan panel that was established to probe the four-hour disturbance at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 — and not the tax returns of the former president.  Not only should the justices have dismissed the action against Mr. Trump as the fruit of a poisonous House panel, but the Court should have denounced the subpoena demanding tax records as a bill of attainder — and noted that if tax records for a former president are subject to (unlawful) congressional subpoena, who among the people is protected against a tyrannical Legislature serving a dictatorial administration, with SWAT teams sent forth by a thuggish FBI to enforce totalitarian subpoenas?

It's Trump vs. the Establishment All Over Again.  Since the "red wave" fizzled out, a consensus has quickly emerged in the media that Donald Trump is no longer a viable political force.  The newly anointed prince of the Right, according to the tastemakers, is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump's more palatable, less chaotic protégé.  But DeSantis and Trump offer two very different things.  DeSantis is a conventional politician with Trump-like qualities, who can, at least according to his fan base, build a popular majority that is beyond Trump's reach.  Trump is a radical outsider to a rigged, illegitimate political system with which he has been at war for seven years, and which his supporters see as an existential threat to their way of life.

Dueling Investigations.  Scott noted earlier that Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to torment Donald Trump.  Garland said, I assume with a straight face:  ["]It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously, and to make decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.["]  Indisputably!  Right.  Smith will be returning to Washington from The Hague, where he is "chief prosecutor for the special court."  That will be good training for his role as the Democratic Party's agent in destroying Donald Trump.  The Democrats have been planning on indicting Trump for a long time, and appointing a special counsel is part of their plan.  It allows them to wash their hands of the investigation, pretending that impartial justice is simply taking its course.  For the record, Smith's charge includes both the events of January 6, 2021, and the innocuous documents that Trump stashed in his Mar-a-Lago basement.

Biden Says He's 'Making Sure' Trump Will Not Become President Again.  Old Joe Biden, the ostensible president of the United States, on Wednesday held one of his Potemkin press conferences before the gathering of sycophants and propagandists known as the White House press corps.  When a reporter said that Trump's movement was "still very strong," Biden laughed derisively and said, "Oh yeah?"  He added, "Well, we just have to demonstrate that he will not take power by — if we — if he does run.  I'm making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next President again."  How can he make sure of that?  He didn't say, and of course the sycophants didn't ask.

What Really Happened in the Midterms and Why.  By every account, this was a strange election.  Having had some time to think about it, I have determined the best explanation for November 8 is that this midterm election was intended to turn out pretty much the way it did.  Who intended it?  The Republican establishment.  Why?  To get rid of Trump. [...] This was a midterm election, so there are no real consequences beyond the control of Congress.  This means that if you can control one house, even by a slim margin, you can stall the agenda of the other side.  How large a majority you have is secondary and, in the long view, not that meaningful.  The establishment Republicans were willing to settle for less than expected numbers in the House to eradicate what they see as by far their biggest problem.  This was their chance to bury Trump and avoid a great deal of damaging unpleasantness at very low to no real cost.

It's been two years since 51 intelligence agents interfered with an election — they still won't apologize.  Exactly two years ago, on October 19, 2020, one of the dirtiest tricks in electoral history was played on the American people by 51 former intelligence officials, who used the false alarm of "Russian interference" to stop Donald Trump winning a second term as president.  Using the institutional weight of their former esteemed roles, they signed a dishonest letter to mislead voters 15 days before the election, claiming that material from Hunter Biden's laptop published by the New York Post "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."  In their expert opinion, "the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue."  Russia was "trying to influence how Americans vote in this election ... Moscow [will] pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win.  "A 'laptop op' fits the bill, as the publication of the emails are [sic] clearly designed to discredit Biden ... It is high time that Russia stops interfering in our democracy."  It was all a lie.  Their letter was the culprit "interfering with democracy" in broad daylight.  Not one of the 51 had seen any material from the laptop or bothered asking for it, [...]

Why Trump Must Run.  The final take on the disastrous Mar-a-Lago raid and its noxious aftermath — the latest in a series of "killing blows" aimed at Donald Trump and the movement he created — is that Trump must run once again for president and must win.  The logic behind this is simple:  the Deep State, in its slow, dull-witted, and utterly inept way, is making its big move, and Trump is the only visible figure who can stand against this.  The Left is well aware of this, and is terrified.

The Establishment's Response to Trump's Presidency.  In late July 2016, FBI Director James Comey notified certain members of the Obama White House, along with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, about the FBI's opening of the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump.  CIA Director John Brennan was already aware of the investigation since he was the one who had been providing the FBI with information regarding the Trump campaign. [...] But here's the thing.  The Intelligence Community (IC), the Obama administration, and the political establishment never expected Trump to win.  And when he did win, the IC was suddenly faced with a very real problem: How would they properly cover up their actions?  And how would they hobble the new Trump administration?  As it turns out, the timeline of their actions in the first few months of 2017 tells a story; it's one of an establishment response to the very real threat that the young Trump administration presented to the long-standing — and corrupt — political structure of our nation.

Connecting the 87,000 Dots between Trump and You.  Letitia James, the New York attorney general, has filed a civil lawsuit of $250 million against Donald Trump, his children, and the Trump Organization.  She alleges "Staggering Fraud." [...] There is something deeper going on here.  There is more than James doing this for political reasons.  Put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and we have a clear picture of the ulterior motives of the entire Democrat party.  Going back to the 2020 election, regardless of whether the truth about election fraud is real or not, why are the Democrats so fearful of Donald Trump running again?  If he was beaten as badly as they claim, by seven million popular votes, he should be history.  Apparently, he's not.  There is much truth to his claim that they are after the citizens of the United States and he is in the way.

Letitia James parades her economic and entrepreneurial illiteracy.  For years, most of the media, the federal Justice Department, and other Democrats have waged a vendetta against Donald Trump, perpetuating endless investigations in search of crimes.  So far, their efforts have failed, but that's not stopping another leftwing loon from boarding the Trump Derangement Syndrome train.  Since New York Attorney General Leticia James, could not find a crime, she has promised voters that she would destroy Trump, and now since election is coming soon, she's suing Trump and his family for alleged fraud for supposedly claiming their property was worth more than it is.  If the Trumps committed bank fraud, as James says, they would have sued him and filed a criminal referral on him, but they did not.  The state was not a victim, nor the bank, nor the citizens of New York, so why is she suing?

The Trump Raid — We're Missing the Point.  Seeking to prove that Trump did nothing wrong in possessing these documents is like trying to establish that the victims of Stalin's show trials weren't in fact Trotskyites.  Well, of course they weren't.  But Stalin didn't care if his enemies — perceived or real — were Trotskyites or "counter-revolutionaries."  What mattered to him was that they were his enemies.  And that's why we call their legal proceedings "show trials."  They weren't exercises in justice; they were facades for political suppression.  Did Trump commit a crime?  I doubt it.  Democrats have spent six years and tens of millions of dollars investigating virtually every step he's taken in his life.  So far, they've come up with nothing.  Which means that although Trump seems impetuous, he evidently hires excellent lawyers who ensure he always remains within the bounds of the law.  But at the end of the day, the question of Trump's innocence is irrelevant.  Because what we're witnessing is not a legal investigation but a political crusade — aided by the Justice Department — to crush a man it can't stand.  And if we allow the left to win this battle, we will have allowed it to cross a line from which there may be no turning back.  For this isn't about Trump.  It's about the left doing whatever it takes to retain political and ideological control of this country.  As one political commentator has pointed out, Trump represents everything the left hates, everything they've spent 50 years trying to eradicate.

The FBI Paid For Russian Disinformation To Frame Trump.  The FBI put a contributor to the Hillary Clinton campaign's Donald Trump smear dossier on FBI payroll as a confidential human source after investigating Igor Danchenko for allegedly spying for the Russian government, revealed Special Counsel John Durham in a court filing unsealed by a Virginia federal court yesterday.  The filing contains this bombshell and seven other significant details about the Democrat-led plot to use U.S. intelligence agencies to deny Americans the results of their choice for president in 2016.  The FBI made Danchenko a confidential human source, providing him and the FBI's use of him "national security" cover, in March 2017 and terminated that designation in October 2020, according to the court filing unsealed on Sept. 13.  Danchenko is the originator of the false claim trumpeted all over global media that Donald Trump told prostitutes to pee on beds the Obamas had slept in in a Russian hotel.

The DOJ's opposition to the special master exposes a nefarious motive.  When the federal judge ordered a special master to review the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago to determine whether the FBI possessed documents subject to "attorney-client and/or executive privilege" claims, I considered it a Pyrrhic victory because the DOJ had already reviewed all the documents.  I was more interested in whether the DOJ insisted that the appointed special master have a security clearance to review for classified or top-secret material.  Failing to do so would be a giveaway that the whole "classified information" claim was a scam.  On Thursday, however, the DOJ went one step further and did something that, to my mind, strongly indicates that its raid on Mar-a-Lago was intended to obtain and protect information that would be embarrassing to Obama, Biden, and the Deep State.

Clinton-Appointed Judge Dismisses Trump Lawsuit Against Hillary Clinton and FBI Crooks Who Manufactured Russia Collusion Hoax.  In April President Trump requested the Clinton-appointed judge overseeing his Russiagate case against Hillary Clinton and others be removed from the case due to obvious conflicts of interest.  President Trump earlier had sued a number of individuals and former officials for their actions related to the Russiagate hoax and attempted coup of his administration.  Somehow this case was assigned to Clinton-appointed Judge Donald Middlebrooks and Judge Ryon McCabe.  Judge Donald Middlebrooks was appointed by Bill Clinton to the Southern District of Florida in May 1997.  President Trump urged the courts to replace the Clinton judge with someone who is not biased in the case.  Judge Ryon McCabe later recused himself from the case.

For the Deep State, Trump Was Never President.  There is something peculiar going on with the post facto attempts to justify the search of Donald Trump's home.  At first we were told that he had purloined American nuclear secrets, complete with rank speculation that he sold them to the highest bidder.  Then the magistrate who authorized the search warrant ordered the release of a highly redacted supporting affidavit.  The affidavit said nothing about nuclear secrets and also had no specificity about the documents being sought; rather, it showed that the whole affair arose from a spat with the National Archives, the presidential equivalent of overdue library books.  When the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, evidently they took everything, including personal effects, passports, and a large number of sensitive documents protected by attorney-client privilege.  In a separate lawsuit brought by Trump, another federal judge appointed a special master to review the seized documents.  This decision implicitly recognized that Trump's claims of executive privilege may have some weight.  After this, the leaks changed.  The leakers dropped the nonsense about American nuclear secrets, and said, instead, that Trump possessed a report about an unnamed nation's nuclear capability.

Special Counsel Must Choose: Risk A Russia Hoaxer's Second Acquittal Or Expose More Deep-State Dirt.  Crossfire Hurricane agents never intended to drop their investigation of Donald Trump, and therefore any lies he told the FBI did not affect their decision-making, Igor Danchenko argued in a motion filed on Friday seeking dismissal of the criminal charges pending against him in a Virginia federal court.  With the trial set to start next month, Special Counsel John Durham must now decide whether to acknowledge the deep state's complicity or risk a second acquittal.  Durham charged Danchenko last year with five counts of making false statements to the FBI related to Danchenko's role as Christopher Steele's primary sub-source in the fake dossier the Hillary Clinton team peddled to the FBI and the media.  According to the indictment, Danchenko lied extensively when he provided Steele with supposed intel, and then later made false representations to the FBI during a series of interviews.

Remember that classifying documents usually protects the government, not you.  The late Angelo Codevilla was a brilliant political observer.  A reader reminded me of one of his articles that is singularly appropriate to the time in which we live.  The article, written in 2018, suggests to Trump that, in addition to firing Robert Mueller, instantly order the declassification of every document related in any way to the 2016 election.  Had Trump taken that advice, I'm certain we would today be living in a thriving America enjoying Trump's second term in office.  Aside from that wishful thinking, what's very clear is that bureaucrats too often classify documents not to protect America and Americans, but to protect themselves. [...] Ultimately, what Trump really did wrong was allowing a manifestly biased government process to take place.  He should have trusted the American people with information showing that the federal government is corrupt, possibly irredeemably so.  That he trusted a corrupt government to have an honest outcome reveals the dangerous naiveté that guided Trump during his first term.

When Must a Good Citizen Become a Dissident?  After Facebook's Zuckerberg recently confessed to censoring the New York Post's explosive Hunter Biden "laptop from Hell" story (evidencing a compromised and most likely criminally culpable Biden family) before the 2020 election in response to FBI pressure that the social media giant treat real news as "Russian disinformation" (thereby corroborating that the national security Deep State helped rig the presidential election), the FBI superciliously responded with the equivalent of a teenaged shoulder shrug and a haughty "so what?"  According to the FBI, our domestic spy agency regularly encourages censorship and secretive control over the free flow of information.  No big deal!  Except it is a very big deal.  Recent polling shows that nearly 80% of Americans believe that President Trump would have won re-election had voters "known the truth about Hunter Biden's laptop."  In other words, the Deep State stole an election.

Never Trump's Pursuit of Donald Trump Takes a Dark Turn.  The pursuit of Donald Trump continues apace by those who fancy themselves as Never Trump.  Per RedState's Sunday prior reporting, Adam Kinzinger recently did the one thing that makes him feel relevant by appearing on Meet the Press.  What followed was a ridiculous diatribe accusing Republicans of hypocrisy for wanting Hillary Clinton charged but not Donald Trump regarding the handling of classified information.  Putting aside that Trump was president and had the power of declassification, do you see how the game works?  The rules get changed in order to protect a Democrat, but instead of abiding by that new standard, Republicans are expected to play under the old rules.  Yeah, that's not how any of this works.  It is not hypocritical to want the law applied evenly, and while Clinton should have been charged, she wasn't and that changed things.  Trump should not be held to some arbitrary, "orange man bad" standard when it comes to enforcement of the law.

The Primary Architect of The Trump Targeting Operation Surfaces on ABC News.  For the past five years Mary McCord has been one of a small and select lawfare group organizing the targeting of President Trump.  Mary McCord led the support team who created the Carter Page FISA warrant using the Steele Dossier to replace the required 'Wood's file'.  McCord was the DOJ-NSD official who traveled with DOJ Deputy AG Sally Yates to talk to former White House counsel Don McGhan which weaponized the Flynn-Kislyak call to remove Trump's National Security Advisor.  Mary McCord was the person who organized Alexander Vindman and Eric Ciaramella to construct the first impeachment effort.  Additionally, it was Mary McCord along with her former legal counsel, turned Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson, who changed the ICIG whistleblower rules allowing an anonymous complaint to underpin the false accusations from Ciaramella against Trump.  It was also Mary McCord who was appointed by FISA court Judge James Boasberg as an amici curia to the court, intercepting issues of false information in filings from the DOJ-NSD to the court as constructed by Kevin Clinesmith.

Mark Zuckerberg Admits On Joe Rogan That Facebook Censored The Hunter Laptop Story At The Request Of The FBI.  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that before the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, the social media giant received a warning from the FBI which prompted Facebook to limit the story's reach on the platform ahead of the 2020 presidential election.  The billionaire tech mogul said the FBI approached Facebook and warned it "be vigilant" before the New York Post story on the contents in Joe Biden's son's laptop.  [Video clip]

Trump plans to take legal action against the DOJ and FBI.  One of the major causes leading up to the American Revolution was the "general warrant."  This was a search warrant that was completely open-ended, allowing the British government official to search anything, anywhere, at any time.  When they ratified the Bill of Rights, they explicitly banned general warrants, requiring that all search warrants must be specific.  The DOJ and FBI, though, went to Mar-a-Lago with a warrant so broad it allowed them to take anything.  Donald Trump has therefore announced that he will be bringing an action against the government alleging his Fourth Amendment rights were violated.

Dems' war on ex-President Donald Trump is without precedent.  When you cross the Rubicon, there is no going back.  Democrats are getting very close to that fateful moment.  Their dream to indict Donald Trump has turned into determination, putting them on a collision course with history.  No president has ever been prosecuted after leaving office, with even Richard Nixon escaping that infamy after Watergate because of how it would tear America apart.  Yet day by day, the evidence shows Dems have liberated themselves from such concerns and are resolved that this time will be different.  The number and fervor of their army of prosecutors reveal a contagious fever, and it often appears they are competing to be the first to file charges.  Will it be Attor