Destroying Evidence Again?

On Friday, a website called rsbnetwork posted the following:

Shocking new information from Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., appears to prove that President Trump was right yet again when it comes to the Jan. 6 Select Committee, which closed up shop earlier this year after an inconclusive investigation and hours of witness testimony.

During an interview on Real America’s Voice with “Just the News, No Noise,” Rep. Loudermilk stated that the Jan. 6 Committee did not preserve their deposition tapes, based on a conversation he had with Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who served as the Jan. 6 Select Committee chairman.

“That is true, I can confirm that,” Rep. Loudermilk stated when asked if the videotapes of infamous witness Cassidy Hutchinson were gone. “And all of the video tapes of all the depositions are gone.”

This story should have been easy to find in numerous sources, but this is the only source I found. Hopefully it is in other places so that Americans can be aware of the game being played.

The article notes:

Rep. Loudermilk explained on RAV, “I wrote a letter to Bennie Thompson asking for them and he confirmed that they did not preserve those tapes. He didn’t feel that they had to. But according to House rules, you have to preserve any data and information and documents that are used in an official proceeding – which they did. They actually aired portions of these tapes on their televised hearings, which means they had to keep those, but yet, he chose not to.”

He added that he believes “they exist somewhere, we’ve just got to find where all these videos are.”

The mind-blowing revelation that the Jan. 6 Committee allegedly failed to preserve their deposition tapes may come as a shock to some, but it is worth noting that President Donald Trump accused them of destroying evidence and records this past summer when Rep. Loudermilk raised a red flag on the issue.

The Republicans may think that they control the House of Representatives, but there are enough traitors in their ranks to prevent them from actually doing anything.

I Guess That Testimony Did Not Go As Planned

On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the ongoing trial of President Trump in New York. It is becoming apparent that President Trump is being tried for a crime where there was no victim.

The article reports:

A Deutsche Bank AG executive told a court in New York on Tuesday that it is not unusual for loan clients to overstate their net worth, and that the bank does its own due diligence in determining eligibility for loans.

Another executive testified that the bank had benefited from its business relationship with Trump and had wanted to continue that relationship — all of which runs against Attorney General Letitia James’s civil fraud case against Trump: there was no one harmed by alleged overestimates of his worth.

Trump faces the first case ever brought in New York in which a borrower is being sued for fraud when no one is claiming actual harm. The state is seeking a $250 million fine against Trump, and wants him to be forced to give up control of his businesses.

Judge Arthur Engoron, an elected Democrat, issued a summary judgment that Trump was liable before Trump was ever able to mount a defense. The current phase of the trial is simply about the penalty. But it is undermining the state’s basic allegations.

On December 1st, The Messenger reported:

The evidence shows that banks made money on these loans, which were paid off either early or on time. In fact, none of the banks complained about the Trump organization’s estimations, which were accompanied by a warning that the banks should not rely on those estimates.

Moreover, James is seeking to kill a corporation once viewed as iconic in New York, not just by denying the certificates for the Trumps to do business in the city but by imposing $250 million in penalties for money that no one actually lost.

That all became curiouser this week when two bankers were called by the defense. Rosemary Vrablic and David Williams worked on Deutsche Bank loans to the Trumps for years, and they testified that the banks made millions and viewed Trump as a much-sought-after “whale” client — what Vrablic described as a “very high net-worth individual.”

Williams testified that net worth is “subjective” in such documents as property valuations and are offered as mere “estimates.” It is not uncommon for a bank’s estimates to differ from a client’s.

If nothing else, this illustrates the absurdity of the case.

The Future If President Trump Is Elected In 2024

If you are a government worker, you should probably work very hard to make sure President Trump does not become President again. The changes he is planning to make will be good for the country, but not necessarily appreciated by government employees.

On Tuesday, Newsmax posted an article about what is being planned if President Trump is elected. President Trump is a much greater threat to the deep state than he was in 2016–he has a much better idea of who the goods guys are and who the bad guys are. That is one of many reasons there will be a desperate attempt to stop him from being elected.

The article reports:

Project 2025, a well-funded effort that is essentially a transition team orchestrated by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, has already begun recruiting and screening potential candidates who would be in place for the next Republican administration.

More specifically, a second Donald Trump administration.

The goal, according to a report by Axios, is to have 54,000 like-minded Trump loyalists ready to be hired and placed across every level of the federal government in January 2025.

The article notes:

In order to install 54,000 federal workers hand-picked by this effort, Trump has said he would reinstate Schedule F, a personnel policy to erase employment protections for tens of thousands of federal workers through reclassification, which makes them easier to fire.

And with the army in place, Trump in the early days of his second administration can revamp the Justice Department, FBI and intelligence community, swiftly move on deporting illegals “by the millions per year,” and eradicate woke ideology from the military, according to Axios.

“And the goal is that we are just like a snowball rolling downhill. It keeps building momentum and whoever the nominee is, whoever the next president is, we’re going to be ready on Day One,” Chretien said.

Sweeping reform is what is needed. The question is whether or not we can have an honest election to allow that reform to happen.

Statements Like This Used To Be Investigated As Criminal

On Sunday, Red State posted an article about a disturbing statement made by a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Representative Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York, stated in an interview with Jen Psaki that President Trump needs to be eliminated.

The article reports:

Our friends at our sister site, Twitchy, picked up the comment. Goldman was on MSNBC with Jen Psaki. They were talking about an interview former President Donald Trump had with ABC’s Jonathan Karl. In that interview, Trump told Karl that he had wanted to go up to the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot to try to stop what was going on. But Trump said the Secret Service discouraged that. The MSNBC chyron at the bottom of the screen framed that as “New audio: Trump says he wanted to join Jan. 6 crowd,” which miscasts what Trump said.

Representative Godman later tweeted an apology for ‘using the wrong word.’

The article notes:

So let’s see. Saying people should act “peacefully and patriotically” is inciting. But saying someone should be “eliminated” is just using the “wrong word.” That makes a lot of sense. The funny thing here is that had Trump said what Goldman said, Goldman would likely be encouraging people to try to prosecute him over it. But Goldman’s a Democrat, so of course, out comes the pass, and he apologizes, so everything is cool. 

The double standard is alive and well in Washington.

Injustice in Our Justice System

Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D   

There is an old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We are seeing glaring examples of this in our justice (maybe better our injustice system).    As any sensible person can see, President Trump is being singled out by the Democrat’s for persecution not prosecution. Their fear of him is palpable and they will do anything to stop him from running again. We must make sure they fail, or our constitutional republic will never recover. 

Some judges have become political pawns rather than fair arbiters of facts and truth.  The case in New York is a prime example. The judge issued a summary judgement  against President Trump before even hearing his defense. The judge is a lifelong Democrat as is the prosecutor Latisha James.  As in the other three cases against President Trump, this judge placed a “gag” order on President Trump that violates his first amendment right to free speech. The case in Atlanta about election interference also includes a gag order. There is no legal justification for preventing a defendant from commenting critically about the trial process or the motivation of the judge or prosecutor. The only legal justification for a gag order by a judge is based on 18USC1512 which is concerned with violence, threats and intimidation of witnesses. It says nothing about criticizing the judge, clerk or prosecutor. In today’s judicial system the outcome of a case often has more to do with the judge who tries the case than the facts presented. This is not blind justice. It is right out of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Communist China. 

Another troubling development, as shown by the fraudulent cases against the former president, is the prosecution or threat of prosecution of his attorneys and staff.  Prosecutors in the Atlanta case are using what is called RICO tactics that were designed to be used against organized crime. What they do is threaten the defendant’s attorney with felony prosecution if he or she does not reveal supposedly privileged conversation with their clients. The enormous cost of defending oneself is often sufficient to bankrupt the attorney. This actually amounts to blackmail. Who can trust the truthfulness of a person who is threatened with jail time, professional ruin and financial destruction if they do not go along with the prosecutors and turn states evidence against their client who came to them, expecting  attorney/client privacy? This is not the justice that our Founding Fathers expected would occur in our country. 

So what do we do about this trend?  First, as stated above we must support the re-election of President Trump to show the leftist Democrats that these tactics will not work in this country. Second, we must get our state legislators to pass legislation that makes the communication between attorney and client  absolutely privileged and cannot be used by any prosecutor in a trial or lawsuit. It should be similar to the spousal rule that a wife cannot be forced or coerced into testifying against her husband and vice versa. In fact, an attorney should not be allowed to testify willingly against a client based on privileged communications. Third, there should be an independent  process that can review the actions of a judge to ensure that political motivations are not influencing the judge’s actions and decisions.   

Without these or similar actions to protect the integrity of the justice system, the citizen’s confidence that we can receive justice before the law will continue to be undermined. 

This May Not Be Going As Planned

On Tuesday, NBC News reported that a Michigan judge has refused to hear the case that would remove President Trump from the ballot in 2024.

The article reports:

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.

If January 6th was an insurrection, it was the first insurrection in history where the police opened the doors and the insurrectionists had no guns. At some point the full video evidence will be released, and the public will realize that they have been lied to. The only person shot in the ‘insurrection’ was an unarmed civilian. There was also a death in the tunnel due to police brutality (article here).

I firmly believe that January 6th was a false flag operation designed to keep President Trump permanently out of the White House. Otherwise, why were his instructions to the crowd constantly misquoted?

The Court Gets It Right

On November 10th, The Epoch Times reported that the Minnesota Supreme Court has refused to take a case designed to remove President Trump from the ballot.

The article reports:

The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit that sought to keep former President Donald Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot on Wednesday, after having heard arguments on whether they should take the case.

In a brief opinion and order written by Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson, the justices said the petition was dismissed without prejudice.

Free Speech for People, a liberal group, had sued on behalf of eight local voters, arguing that the secretary of state putting President Trump on the ballot would be an “error.”

The article notes the reason the group has tried to remove President Trump from the ballot:

The 14th Amendment grants citizenship and equal rights to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. Ratified after the Civil War, it also included a section that prohibited those who had participated in “rebellions” or “insurrections” against the nation from holding office.

The Minnesota petition argued that, under section three of the 14th Amendment, President Trump is disqualified from holding elected office again because he engaged in an “insurrection.”

There are some problems with this. The most obvious is the fact that generally speaking insurrectionists have guns. The only people who had guns on January 6th were the police, and the only person who was shot that day was an innocent civilian. The second problem with this charge is the speech President Trump gave on that day. In his speech on January 6th, President Trump stated, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Those are not the words of an insurrectionist.

Dealing with Threats from China

Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D    

In spite of the naïve efforts of Henry Kiesinger, who advocated the policy of reaching out to communist China, China has become militarily and economically not only our rivals, but in some ways they have surpassed us. Is their government less totalitarian and communist in their principles and actions? Definitely not. Quite the opposite–their plan is to dominate the world, and they appear to be succeeding. A compromised Joe Biden who clearly has been profiting from shady business deals his son and brother made with China is not helping. 

Now that we are in this adversarial position with a powerful China, made so primarily by our buying their products, what do we do about it? There are several things we must do. First, we must clearly recognize their global ambitions as a threat to our country and treat them as such.  Second, we must stop awarding them special privileges such as favored nation status and exemptions from rules governing other developed countries. Third, China must no longer be permitted to purchase land or major businesses in our country.  Allowing them to buy our farm land and food processing industries is about the dumbest things we could do.  Fourth, many colleges and universities are receiving research grants and programs funded, and in many cases staffed, by the Chinese. This not only allows them access to our developing new technologies but also to  control the actual outcome and reporting of this research. Look where Dr. Fauci’s funding of gain of function research in the Wuhan lab got us.    Fifth, we need to return the manufacture of essential products to this country as President Trump had initiated. The idea that most of our essential pharmaceuticals are manufactured overseas is seriously risky.    Sixth, close the border and deport all illegals including the increasing numbers of Chinese that are coming over the southern border. 

Last but not least, we should shut down access to the social platform TikTok as India has done. TikTok is increasingly being accessed by the youth of our country. It is estimated that 60% of TikTok users are age 11 to 26. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is like most Chinese corporations, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. In fact, our federal government has banned TikTok from being used on any federal government devices. If TikTok presents this kind of risk, why are we allowing our impressionable youth to be exposed to the propaganda, personal data collection, and anti-American ideas prevalent on it?  A recent study showed that the mechanism that TikTok uses of short videos can in the long term affect a person’s brain and diminish their ability to focus and stay on task. This is particularly true for young users. Thirty four of our 50 states have joined the prohibition of using TIkTok on state owned devices. So far, only Montana has banned TikTok on private/personal devices.

North Carolina should step up and do the same. 

Given the compromised Biden regime, the Republican controlled House of Representatives is our only current option to address this issue.   Another reason, among many, to vote for Donald Trump. 

The Economy Is Questionable At Best

I love it when a Democrat is in power–when unemployment rises it is always a surprise–even at Fox News.

On November 3rd, Fox News posted an article about the current state of the American economy.

The article reports:

U.S. job growth slowed more than expected in October, a sign the labor market is finally softening in the face of higher interest rates, stubborn inflation and other economic uncertainties.

Employers added 150,000 jobs in October, the Labor Department said in its monthly payroll report released Friday, missing the 180,000 jobs forecast by Refinitiv economists.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, unexpectedly ticked up to 3.9% — the highest level in nearly two years. The pickup in the jobless rate suggests that layoffs are on the rise; the survey of households shows that the number of workers laid off rose in October by 92,000 from the previous month.

The unemployment number of 3.9% is not really a good measure of the economy unless it is looked at in relation to the workforce participation rate, currently slightly down at 62.7. Just to give some perspective, the workforce participation rate was 62.8% when President Trump took office in January 2017. It peaked at 63.3 in February 2020 (the ‘stop the spread’ shutdown began in March 2020). The reported unemployment rate is calculated only counting people who are looking for jobs. I suspect that if you counted everyone who is able to work but not working, the number would be much higher.

The article also notes:

The report also contained steep downward revisions to job growth at the end of the summer. Gains for August and September were revised down by a total of 101,000 jobs to a respective 165,000 and 297,000, the government said, suggesting that the labor market is weaker than it previously appeared.

The bottom line here is that the economy is not really growing although inflation is. For further details, please follow the link above to read the entire article.

 

A Temporary Victory For Free Speech

On Saturday, The Daily Wire reported that the gag order placed on President Trump regarding the federal 2020 election case has been paused.

The article reports:

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.

Imposing a gag order on a leading candidate for public office sets a scary precedent, and I hope it gets entirely removed. There really should be no question as to whether this gag order is unconstitutional, but our legal system has been turned on its head in order to ‘get Trump.’

Taking Out The Cartels   

Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D      

Israel is again fighting for their existence against a terrorist force that not only wants to eliminate the state of Israel but also all Jews. Hamas has been acquiring advanced weapons, principally from Iran, for several years. When your enemy arms itself it never turns out well. The situation with the so-called drug cartels is similar in a lot of ways.   Let’s take a look at our options to deal with them. 

First, we need to recognize the threat that the drug cartels present to our country.   Estimates are that over 100,000 of our citizens die each year due to drug overdosing–especially fentanyl.  At that rate we will have over one million drug deaths within 10 years.  In comparison, there were 36,634 Americans killed during the Korean War and 56,220 Americans killed in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, there were massive protests throughout this country. Where are the protests against the drug cartels, and what is happening as a direct result of Biden’s open border policy? I am certain that we all have friends or family members that have been impacted by drug overdose deaths.  Just because it happens individually does not minimize the threat to our country. Most of these lethal drugs are manufactured and smuggled into our country by the drug cartels. The second obvious threat from the drug cartels is their encouragement, control and profiting from illegal immigration. The amount of money they are making is staggering. Estimates are that over 8 million illegals have come over the border since Biden took office. This is more people than 38 of our 50 states!  At an estimated $6,000 dollars profit on each illegal that they funnel across our border; that amounts to billions of dollars to the drug cartels. Much of this money is used to purchase weapons that are making the cartels a formidable fighting force. The recent attack on a Mexican police station killing half of their personnel shows where this is going.   

So, what do we do about it? Clearly, the Biden administration intends to do nothing.  First we must secure our border. Second, during his administration, President Trump was able to coerce the Mexican government to deploy 26,000 of their troops on their side of the southern border. Clearly, the Mexican government has no plans to do the same now. They are facilitating this problem, not helping to correct it. Do we have a right and duty to protect our country from what is actually an invasion? Of course we do, but sadly it will not be done unless Biden is replaced.   

Assuming that happens, the Mexican government must be enlisted to assist with this problem. Unfortunately, it appears that the drug cartels have become so powerful that Mexico may not be able to deal with them even if they were motivated to do so. This may require our sending American forces to put an end to the drug cartels. Remember these cartels have members that have infiltrated into our southern states and other areas in the country. There is a precedent for this from 1915, when President Wilson authorized the sending of American troops into Mexico under General John J. Pershing to deal with the threat from Poncho Villa. Dealing with this current threat without sending our troops is preferable, but Mexico needs to get the message that either they deal with it or we will be forced to.    

Israel has learned a lesson from the Hamas attack; we must do likewise.   

This Could Get Very Interesting

On Friday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the upcoming trial of President Trump regarding the events of January 6h.

The article reports:

Former President Donald Trump’s defense team filed a new motion on Thursday indicating that the former president will present classified information exposing foreign interference in both the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Presidential elections.

The article includes an excerpt from one of the court documents in the case:

The Indictment in this case adopts classified assessments by the Intelligence Community and others that minimized, and at times ignored, efforts by foreign actors to influence and interfere with the 2020 election.

President Trump will offer classified information at trial relating to foreign influence activities that impacted the 2016 and 2020 elections, as well as efforts by his administration to combat those activities.

President Trump will also present classified information relating to the biased and politicized nature of the intelligence assessments that he and others rejected during the events in question.

Collectively, this evidence will undercut central theories of the prosecution and establish that President Trump acted at all times in good faith and on the belief that he was doing what he had been elected to do.
The article concludes:

According to Halper-Hayes ( Dr. Jan Halper-Hayes, a former Global Vice President of Republicans Overseas UK), Trump had chosen not to disclose such evidence early to prevent civil unrest, believing it could lead to a civil war.

“I sit on a task force at the Department of Defense, and the thing is, they’ve got the goods. They’ve got the goods. And Trump knew that if he presented any of the goods early on, we’d have a civil war, that he really felt that the people needed to see how bad it could get,” said Halper-Hayes.

“See, the thing is, think about Edward Snowden and all the information he had. Think about the fact that our military, our Department of Defense Space Force, if you think that they don’t have the actual real results from the election, then you’re fooling yourself,” said Halper-Hayes.

Dr. Halper-Hayes further delved into Executive Order 13848,” enacted by Trump on September 12, 2018, arguing that it was designed to combat foreign interference in U.S. elections, with a focus on the 2020 elections.

“Now, let me say something about this 2020 election, is that Biden is the legitimate president, but he’s the legitimate president of what is now the bankrupt US. Corporation and that was a treaty in 1871,” said Halper-Hayes.

She continued, “Well, on September 12, 2018, Trump created an executive order. Within that, he outlined in future elections any kind of foreign or domestic interference specifically for the 2020 election. So we say, how did he know some of these things were going to happen? Election integrity on both sides of the aisle is tough. It’s really tough. But what this has done is it opened the door for Trump to present his case.”

It will be very interesting to see if this case ever makes it to trial.

 

A Gag Order That Allows The Other Side To Lie

President Trump has been placed under a gag order to limit his comments about one of the lawfare cases against him. However, the Special Counsel continues to leak lies to the media. There is a glaring recent example of that dynamic reported by various news sources.

On Tuesday, The Conservative Treehouse reported:

Remember, on August 21st, in another ridiculous Lawfare operation, Special Counsel Jack Smith told ABC that Mark Meadows testified that President Trump never attempted to declassify any information {Go Deep}.   That report was transparently false, yet the media ran with it and multiple alternative media promoted it.  Pure nonsense.

In this latest Lawfare effort, again from Special Counsel Jack Smith, again to ABC news, again about former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the claim is the Special Counsel granted Meadows immunity (that’s the hook), and that Meadows told President Trump the 2020 election was not rigged or stolen.

Now remember, Mark Meadows wrote about the rigged and stolen 2020 election in his book, so why would he undermine his own story by saying something completely the opposite to Jack Smith that is only coming out now?   The Occam’s razor answer is, he didn’t.  This lawfare story is all made up, fictitious, anonymous sources, manufactured to create a public impression.

Bolstering the likelihood that Meadows gave no such testimony, Meadows lawyers, when contacted by media, said the story is fake news.   Yet again, everyone falls for it.  This is how Lawfare succeeds, and this is how Trayvon Martin’s fake and fabricated ear-witness girlfriend becomes the key witness and embarrasses the prosecution on the stand.

The article includes the following Tweet:

The mainstream media isn’t even trying to hide its lies anymore. Thank goodness for journalists like Catherine Herridge who are willing to tell the truth.

 

This Will Be A First (And Not A Good First)

On Sunday, Julie Kelly posted an article at Substack about the potential gagging of President Trump during the election season (a season that I think began in November of last year).

The article reports:

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.

Smith’s prosecutors and Trump’s defense attorneys will square off during what is expected to be a fiery hearing to debate the special counsel’s proposed gag order ostensibly needed to prevent Trump from unduly influencing the D.C. jury pool with his criticism of the prosecution and those involved. A jury pool, by the way, almost exclusively populated by Democrats with deep contempt for Trump.

Chutkan set a March 2024 trial date for Smith’s four-count indictment against Trump for attempting to “overturn” the 2020 election; the indictment and trial, anticipated to last four to six weeks, represent a history-making case of election interference—a sitting Democratic president using his Department of Justice to ruin his presumptive Republican rival.

But forcing Trump to endure not one but two federal criminal trials isn’t enough to quench the Biden regime’s insatiable appetite for destruction. Smith, citing social media posts and interviews, wants Trump, his lawyers, and even his campaign associates banned from making any comments about the case.

“In service of his criminal conspiracies, through false public statements, the defendant sought to erode public faith in the administration of the election and intimidate individuals who refuted his lies,” Smith wrote in his September motion for a wide-ranging gag order. “The defendant is now attempting to do the same thing in this criminal case—to undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and prejudice the jury pool through disparaging and inflammatory attacks on the citizens of this District, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses. [The] Court can and should take steps to restrict such harmful extrajudicial statements.”

The article concludes:

Trump’s lawyers responded in pointed fashion, calling the gag order “an extraordinary step of stripping President Trump of his First Amendment freedoms during the most important months of his campaign against President Biden.”

Which obviously is Smith’s motivation. A top DOJ official during the Obama-Biden administration, Smith has his marching orders. In a follow-up motion, Smith wrote that Trump’s candidacy shouldn’t be used as a “cover for making prejudicial statements about this case.”

After Monday’s hearing, it is Chutkan’s next move.

And Team Trump should be worried.

Not only does Chutkan have a history of making outlandish remarks in January 6 cases, she wrote the opinion that pierced presidential privilege and forced Trump to produce his records to the January 6 Select Committee. She also ruled against the Trump administration in cases involving illegal immigrants seeking abortions. Given her brazen partisanship from the bench, it is safe to assume her gag order is already a work in progress.

What has happened to the judicial process in America is a disgrace. I am convinced that the majority of our judges have never read the U.S. Constitution.

UPDATE:  The gag order has been put in place. It will be interesting to see what happens next. This will probably find its way to the Supreme Court. What the Supreme Court will do with it is anyone’s guess.

Reevaluating The Past

I came across this video on Twitter. I wish all Americans would watch it. It illustrates one man’s journey in realizing the good that President Trump did for America. There are some basic differences between businessmen and politicians, and many Americans did not appreciate that fact when Donald Trump became President.

The above is posted because the “Show more” on the post below is not active. The information that you would receive by clicking “Show more” is above. In order to watch the video, click on “Watch on X,”

A Few Comments On The Trump Trial In New York

From Jonathan Turley at The Daily Caller:

Fox News legal analyst and constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley laid out a major problem for Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil case against former President Donald Trump on Monday.

James sued Trump in Sept. 2022, accusing him of committed fraud to secure more favorable terms for loans. Judge Arthur Engoron ruled Tuesday that Trump and his businesses exaggerated his net worth and deceived banks and insurance companies.

…“But I also want to note that James’ comments ignore one thing, in front of that courthouse,” Turley continued. “She ran for office on the pledge to bag Donald Trump. She didn’t say on what grounds. She ran to bag him on any grounds, and so she doesn’t have any more credibility in making these comments than did the Trump team, for people who view this as a very political environment. You know, many of us wrote at the time that we were deeply concerned about a candidate for attorney general that was essentially pledging a trophy defendant as the basis for running for office. And she delivered it … And so I think that she has also damaged her own credibility in that effort.”

From Attorney Robert DuChemin at Substack:

…That is why I find it bizarre that New York would go after the Trump Organization for what the state claims are inflated real estate values. It took me only one trial to learn that appraisers say what they are paid to say.

…The case against the Trump organization, however, is not a criminal case. That is why he was not entitled to a jury. Nevertheless, although the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees us the right to jury trials only in criminal cases, the Eighth Amendment prohibits “excessive fines.” Several U.S. Supreme Court decisions have held that any fine designed as “punishment” instead of restitution is excessive. Many intermediate appellate and trial courts have ignored those decisions but some recent comments by members of the current Supremes have indicated they are going to stop the practice.

Therefore, because there were no damages incurred as a result of the alleged fraud, New York will be limited by the Eighth Amendment in their ability to fine the Trump Organization. Anything above court costs and some nominal fine would likely violate the Eighth Amendment.

In short, the New York case is clearly the persecution of a political opponent. If I was the judge I would have thrown out the state’s case immediately. But then again, I am not a judge in a communist state that values party loyalty over truth and justice.

Let’s see if the court acknowledges or abides by the Eighth Amendment. Please follow the link to read the Substack article. Attorney DuChemin definitely has a way with words.

Laughable!

On Friday, The New York Sun posted an article about the $250 million civil fraud case brought by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, against President Trump.

The article reports:

On Tuesday, a New York Supreme Court judge, Arthur Engoron, used a Palm Beach County assessor’s appraisal of Mar-a-Lago at $18 million as evidence to rule in a pre-trial judgment that Mr. Trump, his sons, and co-defendants in the Trump Organization committed fraud by inflating the values of their real estate holdings to gain more favorable terms on loans and insurance.

If Judge Engoron’s ruling stands, Mr. Trump could lose control of his New York properties. The stakes are high. The rest of the counts against Mr. Trump in the civil fraud case will be tried starting Monday, after an appeals court denied Mr. Trump’s bid to delay it this week.

Mar-a-Lago, a members’ only club where Mr. Trump also lives, is likely out of reach of New York regulators, but the accusation that Trump overstated its value is central to Judge Engoron’s fraud ruling. So is Mar-a-Lago worth only $18 million? That valuation is certainly raising eyebrows in real estate circles and on social media for being “insanely low.”

Palm Beach is one of the wealthiest towns in the world and the value of a historic, waterfront property there such as Mar-a-Lago can be astronomical. “I spoke with my appraisers,” a Palm Beach real estate broker, Lee Allen Schultz, tells the Sun, “they thought the $18 million was ridiculous.”

The article also notes:

Mr. Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985 for $10 million, but Palm Beach property prices have gone up substantially in recent years. Forbes magazine appraised Mar-a-Lago at $160 million in 2018. The  property boasts 128 rooms, a 20,000-square-foot ballroom, tennis courts, and a waterfront pool.

Mar-a-Lago is deed restricted and cannot be converted to a residential property, which may lower its value. The brokers who spoke with the Sun, though, say the appraised value between $18 and $27.6 million is laughable. They also note that Mar-a-Lago’s property tax assessed value is $33 million, which is also “very low,” though property owners generally like this to be low to save money on taxes.

The article concludes:

The $18 million assessment may be laughable, but the ramifications are serious. Judge Engoron wrote in his decision that Mr. Trump’s $426 to $612 million valuation of Mar-a-Lago to secure loans was “an overvaluation of at least 2,300 percent.”

“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Judge Engoron wrote. “The documents here clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business, satisfying OAG’s burden to establish liability as a matter of law against defendants.”

It should be noted that all loans were paid back, everyone was happy and no one was defrauded. So who is unhappy and why was this lawsuit brought at all? Those are the questions we should be looking at.

Why You Should Never Trust The Mainstream Media

On August 23rd, The Media Research Center posted an article about how the mainstream media is covering the run-up to the 2024 Presidential Election.

The article reports:

Does that sound like fair coverage from the press?

The media includes the following analysis of t he coverage of two other candidates:

■ …But DeSantis Whacked With Bad Press, Too: The evening newscasts allocated 40 minutes to Governor Ron DeSantis’s battle against the “woke” agenda in Florida, including new rules on how schools should present information on matters related to race and sexual identity, and his subsequent legal battles with the Disney corporation. The evening newscasts were just as lopsidedly negative here as they were with Trump’s courtroom battles: 92 percent negative vs. eight percent positive.

But the “woke” agenda made up only about one-third of TV’s DeSantis coverage, and the remainder of the governor’s coverage was more balanced: 58 percent negative, vs. 42 percent positive. Overall, the evening newscasts treated DeSantis to 78 percent negative coverage — hardly favorable, but not as preposterously lopsided as their coverage of Trump.

■ Less Media Hostility for Mike Pence: The only other candidate with a significant amount of coverage was former Vice President Mike Pence. More than half of Pence’s coverage was devoted to just two controversies: the classified documents found at Pence’s home in January (14 minutes), and January 6 (27 minutes).

The networks’ spin on Pence’s documents case was split evenly: 50 percent positive, 50 percent negative evaluations. The negative press came early on, as news of the discovery of documents was accompanied by earlier soundbites of Pence telling ABC anchor David Muir flatly that he “did not” take any classified documents when he left the White House. In early June, however, that coverage turned positive — reflecting the Justice Department’s decision to close its investigation without any charges.

When it came to January 6, the network spin on Pence was neutral; the former Vice President was portrayed merely as a witness and a Trump critic. Yet because of their overwhelming focus on Trump’s legal problems, January 6 was the single biggest topic in Pence’s coverage as well, eclipsing much of the rest of his candidacy.

Overall, the networks’ spin on Pence was negative, but not lopsidedly so: 57 percent negative, vs. 43 percent positive. None of the other candidates received enough evaluative coverage to even calculate percentages.

If we are going to keep our republic, we need an honest media.

Good Analysis From Victor Davis Hanson

On Friday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at Townhall about the media’s handling of recent scandals.

The conclusion of the article is most telling:

The 2020 Biden campaign and an ex-CIA head rounded up “51 intelligence authorities” to mislead the country into believing that Russian gremlins in the Kremlin had fabricated a fake laptop.

Ponder that absurd fantasy: Moscow supposedly had created fake nude pictures, fake photos of Hunter’s drug use, and fake email and text messages from Hunter to the other Bidens.

The media preposterously convinced the country that the Russians and, by extension, Trump had once again sandbagged the Biden campaign.

No apologies followed when the FBI later admitted it had kept the laptop under wraps for more than a year, knew it was authentic, and yet said nothing as the media and former spooks misled the country and warped an election.

Now we are enmeshed in at least four court trials on cooked-up charges that could as easily apply to a host of Democrats as to Trump.

For the last eight years, discredited media has never expressed remorse for any of the damage they did to the country. And they will not again when their latest mythological indictments are eventually exposed.

However, there are some things mentioned in the article that are even more disturbing:

Had journalists just been honest and independent, then-candidate Joe Biden might have lost a presidential debate and even the 2020 election. The public would have learned that Hunter’s business associates and his laptop proved Joe was deeply involved in his son’s illicit businesses.

Later, as the evidence from IRS whistleblowers mounted, the White House stonewalled subpoenaed efforts and sought to craft an outrageous plea deal reduction in Hunter’s legal exposure.

Reporters ignored the Ukrainians who claimed Joe Biden himself talked to them about quid pro quo arrangements.

They again discounted Hunter’s laptop, explicitly demonstrating that Hunter was whining that he had handed over large percentages of his income to his father, Joe –variously referred to as the Big Guy and a “ten percent” recipient on many deals.

Part of being a representative republic is having educated voters. Right now the media is doing everything it can to avoid educating voters on the scandals surrounding the Biden family. Unless you have cultivated a group of alternative news sources, you are an uninformed or misinformed voter. If uninformed or misinformed voters make up the majority of the electorate, our republic will not survive.

Summing It All UP

On Monday, Don Surber at Substack posted an article putting President Trump’s mugshot in perspective. The article compares the mugshot to another mugshot from 2005 of Tom DeLay where Tom DeLay was smiling. I need to mention that the mainstream media was very upset with the fact that he was smiling. I also need to mention that a jury trial found Tom DeLay innocent. Of course the accusations ruined his career (just as they ruined the career of Bob MacDonald whose guilty verdict was overturned by the Supreme Court). There is a pattern here–it’s called lawfare and is used by the Democrats to get rid of their political opponents. President Obama used a variant of it in 2004 when he managed to get the messy divorce records of his main primary opponent unsealed and leaked to the press. I have no doubt that somewhere behind all of the prosecution of President Trump you will find puppet strings pulled by President Obama or his associates.

Don Surber notes:

Craig Smith wrote in Newsweek, “In the early ’90s, I was a militant activist and bank robber. I saw myself as a black Robin Hood, stealing from white-owned banks to fund black cultural events. I was caught and sentenced under then-Senator Joe Biden’s 1994 crime bill to an unheard of 52 years, though I was a first time offender and no one was hurt during any of my robberies. And I was released by Trump’s 2019 criminal justice reform bill, the First Step Act, thanks to Trump’s prodding of Congress to reverse many of the draconian laws written and supported by our current president.

“The former president freed 5,000 incarcerated people like me from outrageous sentences. Yet he is now facing the possibility of serving a sentence of his own. As I watched former President Donald Trump get perp-walked and mugshot at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia, I couldn’t help but notice the deep irony: The same criminal justice system that Trump made radical reforms to is now being used to discredit him and hamper his chances of winning the presidency for a second time.

“None of us who have benefited from Trump’s radical reform of the criminal justice system under the First Step Act are blind to that irony. But it goes beyond that: Trump’s repeated run-ins with the law, and what seems like an unfair obsession with catching him and punishing him disproportionately for his so-called crimes, reminds a lot of us of what was done to us.”

…Smith ended his column, “At the end of the day, these repeated arrests may end up having a very unintended consequence. Instead of proving to the country that Trump is unelectable, it may have removed a barrier in the form of him being unrelatable. These arrests have made Trump relatable to the 5 million people in America under some form of supervision by the U.S. criminal legal system.

“In 2020, President Trump got the votes of 18% of black men. Don’t be surprised if he gets more in 2024 if he’s the GOP nominee for president. Now that he’s suffered the indignity of what Joe Biden’s crime bill put so many of us through, he will be an even bigger champion of our cause.”

The defiance in Trump’s mugshot has turned the tables on the press and the rest of the sociopaths who want Trump and his supporters dead. He has become Liam Neeson in Taken.

It’s time for Americans to wake up and see what has happened to justice in this country.

Working Together To Interfere In The Next Election

On  Saturday, The New York Post posted the following:

The White House counsel’s office met with a top aide to Special Counsel Jack Smith just weeks before he brought charges against former President Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents — raising serious concerns about coordinated legal efforts aimed at President Biden’s likely opponent in 2024.

Jay Bratt, who joined the special counsel team in November 2022, shortly after it was formed, took a meeting in the White House on March 31, 2023, with Caroline Saba, deputy chief of staff for the White House counsel’s office, White House visitor logs show.

They were joined in the 10 a.m. meeting by Danielle Ray, an FBI agent in the Washington field office.

Nine weeks later, Trump was indicted by Smith’s office on June 8, 2023.

Bratt, 63, also met with Saba at the White House in November 2021, when Trump was mired in negotiations with the National Archives, who were demanding the return of presidential records from his Mar-a-Lago estate before a formal investigation had not yet been opened.

The article notes:

Bratt, a Harvard-educated attorney, is a longtime Department of Justice hand and has served as chief of its counterintelligence and export control section in the national security division since October 2018. The section focuses on investigating and prosecuting cases affecting the national security and foreign relations of the United States.

The article concludes:

In this capacity, Bratt visited Mar-a-Lago in June 2022 to inspect storage facilities at the property and personally interacted with Trump.

He later became a leading advocate for the unannounced FBI raid of the property in August of that year, the Washington Post reported.

Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta — who has also been charged by the special counsel’s office — accused Bratt in June of trying to coerce his client’s cooperation by floating Woodward’s past application to be a judge.

In a sealed filing obtained by The Guardian, Woodward alleged that Bratt floated his past judicial application to suggest it might be looked at more favorably if his client were to cooperate with the government against Trump.

The activities of the Biden administration and the deep state in their interference with the 2024 election is frightening. This alone should wake Americans up to what is happening. We truly are in danger of losing our republic if the weaponization of the Justice Department is allowed to continue.

Taking Off The Mask

There are a lot of people running scared about the coming 2024 presidential election in America. Most of them are running scared because they fear that Donald Trump will be elected. So exactly what might a Donald Trump administration look like in 2025?

I suspect that President Trump has a much better handle on who the good guys in Washington are (if there are any left). I also suspect that because there is no possibility of a second term, we will see a new dimension of ‘bull in a china shop.’ (Actually I think that would be a good thing.) But we would also see the reins of government given to an astute businessman who genuinely wants to help Main Street America instead of Wall Street America. President Trump’s tax policies benefited the Middle Class (article here). Another benefit of a second Trump administration would be making sure America retained its sovereignty. He would be a block against the creeping globalism. So where am I going with this?

On Thursday, Slay News reported the following:

A top World Economic Forum (WEF) adviser has called for an end to elections, arguing that they “are bad for democracy.”

WEF “agenda contributor” Adam Grant, who also serves as a senior adviser to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, insists that “eliminating elections altogether” would ensure that governments and public offices have “more integrity.”

The comments from Grant, who is also a senior adviser to the Department of Defense and Google, come amid concerns that Democrat President Joe Biden is preparing to enforce new Covid restrictions and even “climate lockdowns.”

If Biden were to declare a climate or Covid “emergency,” he would be awarded sweeping new powers to enforce restrictions that could disrupt the critical 2024 election.

In an article for the New York Times, Grant suggests that the taxpaying public cannot be trusted to vote and argues that elections should be scrapped.

The article explains the alternative:

To replace the current election system, Grant advocates for “randomly selecting” officials from a “pool of candidates.”

Globalist WEF official Grant is vague on the details regarding who forms the “pool” and how they are admitted, however.

Nevertheless, the pool would be formed by the no-longer-elected “guardians of our democracy.”

Wow.

The ‘Elephant’ In The Room

On Thursday, Breitbart posted an article about the question that was not asked during the Republican debate on Wednesday night.

The article reports:

The first Republican presidential primary debate hosted by Fox News on Wednesday featured no questions on election integrity, despite polls showing the issue is important to conservatives.

“Not one question about election Integrity tonight,” former Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake posted on X. “If we can’t talk about our broken elections, how are we ever going to be able to fix them?”

Could that possibly be that no one wants to fix them?

The article notes:

A recent poll conducted by the Honest Elections Project (HEP) from July 13-16 showed that the vast majority of U.S. voters support election integrity initiatives such as voter ID requirements and limiting mail-in voting, according to a report last month by the Federalist.

The poll found some 88 percent back voter-ID rules — including black (82 percent) and Hispanic voters (83 percent), according to the report. It also found three-fourths of voters think in-person voting is better than mailed-in ballots, and “overwhelming opposition” to noncitizens and minors voting in U.S. elections.

The article concludes:

Former U.S. Senate candidate for Pennsylvania Sean Parnell posted on X, “For the most part, this debate was not in anyway representative of where the base of the Republican Party is. Most of these candidates miss the moment. It’s not difficult to see why Trump is by far & away the front runner.”

None of the candidates on the state last night have any idea what Americans are thinking. This is illustrated by where their campaign money comes from. It is interesting that (according to The Daily Caller on August 3rd):

Over 80% of Trump’s campaign fundraising has been financed by small donors, contributing less than $200, which political experts say underscores his large advantage over DeSantis, who is reliant on wealthy donors.

According to The Tampa Bay Times on August 22nd:

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy

Campaign’s cash on hand: $9 million

Cash on hand at super PAC supporting the candidate: $225,000

Portion of individual contributions that came from small-dollar donors: 52%

Notable facts: Ramaswamy personally loaned his campaign more than $15 million, providing by far the largest chunk of his campaign’s cash. His small-dollar donor percentage is high in part because the total sum of donations from individuals is only about $3 million. Still, the roughly $1.6 million his campaign has received from those small-dollar donors is comparable or higher than some other, more established political veterans.

Who is backing the majority of the Republican candidates? That is something that voters need to investigate before they vote?

Alan Dershowitz Gets It Right

On Wednesday, Alan Dershowitz posted an article at The Gatestone Institute website titled, “Justice Requires Fair Procedures.” As you read the highlights of this article, keep in mind that Alan Dershowitz is a life-long Democrat.

The article notes:

  • Justice, justice you shall pursue,” the Bible commands (Deuteronomy 16:20); and that, in doing justice, one must not “recognize faces.”
  • 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!
  • Injustice, once practiced against an unjust person, will serve as precedent for deploying it against just persons.

This is one of the major points in the article:

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. As H.L. Menken once observed:

“The trouble about fighting for human freedom is that you have to spend so much of your life defending sons of bitches; for oppressive laws are always aimed at them originally, and oppression must be stopped in the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

So, whatever one thinks of Trump, everyone who cares about liberty for all must oppose the weaponization of laws and procedures that are aimed at him, lest the weapons be turned on us.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Attorney Dershowitz makes some very important points about what is being done to the principles of justice in America right now.

Looking Behind The Curtain

The one thing President Trump has accomplished in Washington is bi-partisanship–the Democrats and the Republican establishment are working together to prevent him from ever becoming President again. After a while, you have to ask yourself what this is all about. Is he such a threat to the deep state that the corrupters want to make sure he does not get another chance to expose them or possibly put them out of power? It really does look that way. I fear for his safety if he wins the nomination or the presidency.

On Saturday, The Conservative Review reported the following:

GOP megadonors are privately courting popular Republican Govs. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Brian Kemp of Georgia to challenge former President Donald Trump in 2024, Axios reported Saturday.

As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has struggled to gain traction in the polls against the former president, the Republican contributors are seeking other potential alternatives to jump in last minute, according to Axios. Though Youngkin and Kemp have both previously ruled out a 2024 bid, several sources told the outlet they’re keeping the door open as top donors reach out.

“People are desperate. They are concerned with what could happen if Trump wins the primaries and they want a viable alternative,” a Republican source told Axios.

Billionaire Ronald Lauder is one of the GOP donors who would potentially back Youngkin if he makes a White House bid, sources who spoke with him told Axios. Billionaire Thomas Peterffy, who previously supported DeSantis for president, recently dropped $2 million into Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia political action committee (PAC).

Rupert Murdoch, who heads Fox News and the New York Post, is quietly hoping Youngkin challenges the four-time-indicted former president, according to Axios.

“Virginia’s getting attention because Governor Youngkin’s common-sense conservative leadership is working. There’s more to do, so the governor’s not taking his eye off Virginia; these (legislative) races are too important,” Spirit of Virginia PAC Chairman Dave Rexrode said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Please reread this sentence:

“People are desperate. They are concerned with what could happen if Trump wins the primaries and they want a viable alternative,” a Republican source told Axios.

What could happen? The Washington establishment could be decimated and their little fiefdom of corrupt money banished? Congressmen might actually be forced to vote in the interests of the people they represent? Yes, President Trump is a threat to Washington–a much needed threat.