Author Topic: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War  (Read 33533 times)


Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
ET: Suit moves forward against SPLC
« Reply #251 on: April 07, 2023, 10:01:39 AM »
Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center Moves Forward
The Southern Poverty Law Center headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., in June 2019. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
The Southern Poverty Law Center headquarters in Montgomery, Ala., in June 2019. (Google Maps/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Ryan Morgan
By Ryan Morgan
April 5, 2023Updated: April 7, 2023
biggersmaller Print

0:00
6:11



1

A federal judge is allowing a defamation lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to move forward after the SPLC labeled an immigration reform advocacy group as an “anti-immigrant hate group.”

Judge William Keith Watkins of Alabama’s Middle District Federal Court denied the SPLC’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the Dustin Inman Society (DIS) on March 31.

The Dustin Inman Society, which describes itself as an organization with a mission of “promoting the enforcement of immigration laws in the United States,” has argued that the SPLC’s description of their organization as a “hate group” is defamatory and exposes them to an increased risk of violent retribution.

The Dustin Inman Society is named after Dustin Inman, a 16-year-old Georgia boy killed in a car crash in 2000 that involved an illegal immigrant.

The SPLC is a nonprofit civil rights litigation and advocacy organization that also runs a website purporting to track extremist activity within the United States. The SPLC documents these extremist group labels on its “Hate Map” web portal.

The “Hate Map” web portal includes labels for anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, antisemitism, Christian identity, general hate, hate music, KKK, male supremacy, Neo-Confederacy, Neo-Nazi, Neo-Völkisch, racist skinhead, radical traditional Catholicism, and white nationalism.

A complaint (pdf) by the DIS argues the SPLC’s abruptly reversed a prior decision not to add the Dustin Inman Society to its “Hate Map”. In 2011, the SPLC allegedly told the Associated Press that the DIS did not belong on the group’s “Hate Map” because DIS was pursuing its immigration policy objectives through the legal process rather than threats of violence or intimidation of immigrants.

“Because [DIS Founder and President D.A. King] is fighting, working on his legislation through the political process, that is not something we can quibble with, whether we like the law or not” the SPLC allegedly announced in 2011.

Despite this prior decision not to list DIS as a hate group, the SPLC reversed course in February 2018, adding the “anti-immigrant hate group” label. The DIS complaint alleges the SPLC made no change to its criteria for labeling organizations as hate groups and that the DIS had not changed its behavior to warrant such labeling. Instead, the complaint indicates that a motivating factor for the “hate group” label was that the SPLC registered lobbyists in Georgia opposed a “pro-enforcement” immigration bill working through the state legislature.

King told the Daily Signal that the SPLC’s goal with the revised hate group label “was clearly to paint us as the extremists and to marginalize us in the eyes of state lawmakers and the media. That effort was largely successful.”

Violent Threats
The lawsuit argues that other individuals and organizations, like the Family Resource Council and Dr. Charles Murray, have faced violent threats after becoming the subjects of the SPLC’s hate group labels.

By denying the SPLC’s motion to dismiss the case, DIS’s defamation lawsuit against the organization can proceed.

NTD News reached out to the SPLC for comment, but the organization did not respond before this article was published.

The DIS lawsuit alleges the SPLC’s “hate group” labeling is a particularly concerning decision because the group has a reputation as a reputable source of information on extremist activity. Indeed, mainstream media outlets routinely cite the SPLC in their reporting on hate groups and extremism in the United States.

“SPLC is not taking the posture of an opinion columnist or political pundit, but instead claims it has specialized knowledge of the groups it monitors, holding itself out as having the ability to conduct in depth investigations and offering expertise on the groups it monitors and to make factual determinations regarding the organizations it includes in the ‘hate map’, not mere opinion,” the DIS lawsuit alleges.

In recent years, Republican and conservative commentators have increasingly pushed back on the SPLC, arguing the organization holds a bias that disfavors conservatives. In August of 2020, during the Republican National Convention for the 2020 election, the Republican Party adopted a resolution declaring “The SPLC is a radical organization, and that the federal government should not view this organization as a legitimate foundation equipped to provide actionable information to DHS or any other government agency.”

The SPLC said the RNC’s resolution gave “comfort to hate groups.” SPLC president and chief executive Margaret Huang said the resolution was designed to “excuse the Trump administration’s history of working with individuals and organizations that malign entire groups of people—including Black Lives Matter advocates, immigrants, Muslims and the L.G.B.T.Q. community—with dehumanizing rhetoric.”

In October 2020, the SPLC announced it was revising its Hate Map to no longer include labels for “black separatist” groups.

SPLC Lawyer
Last month, a lawyer for the SPLC was charged with domestic terrorism after he was arrested alongside anti-police activists at a demonstration opposing the construction of a new police training facility in Atlanta, Georgia.

Videos from the incident showed demonstrators throwing rocks and fireworks at police officers, and several pieces of construction equipment were set on fire.

The SPLC said the lawyer arrested during that protest event was working as a legal observer who was working on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) at the time.

The SPLC also said their employee’s arrest at the destructive demonstration “is not evidence of any crime, but of heavy-handed law enforcement intervention against protesters.”


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18353
    • View Profile
good response by Just. Thomas
« Reply #253 on: April 07, 2023, 10:57:56 AM »
I am thinking that behind DJT
the Justice Thomas is the second most targeted Conservative/Republican in the world

 :x


Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
WSJ: The Smearing of Justice Thomas
« Reply #254 on: April 07, 2023, 07:05:21 PM »
The Smearing of Clarence Thomas
The left gins up another phony ethics assault to tarnish the Supreme Court.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
April 7, 2023 6:45 pm ET



The left’s assault on the Supreme Court is continuing, and the latest front is the news that Justice Clarence Thomas has a rich friend who has hosted the Justice on his private plane, his yacht, and his vacation resort. That’s it. That’s the story. Yet this non-bombshell has triggered breathless claims that the Court must be investigated, and that Justice Thomas must resign or be impeached. Those demands give away the real political game here.

***
ProPublica, a left-leaning website, kicked off the fun with a report Thursday that Justice Thomas has a longtime friendship with Harlan Crow, a wealthy Texas real-estate developer. The intrepid reporters roamed far and wide to discover that the Justice has sometimes traveled on Mr. Crow’s “Bombardier Global 5000 jet” and that each summer the Justice and his wife spend a vacation week at Mr. Crow’s place in the Adirondacks.


The piece is loaded with words and phrases intended to convey that this is all somehow disreputable: “superyacht”; “luxury trips”; “exclusive California all-male retreat”; “sprawling ranch”; “private chefs”; “elegant accommodation”; “opulent lodge”; “lavishing the justice with gifts.” And more.

Adjectival overkill is the method of bad polemicists who don’t have much to report. The ProPublica writers suggest that Justice Thomas may have violated ethics rules, and they quote a couple of cherry-picked ethicists to express their dismay.


But it seems clear that the Court’s rules at the time all of this happened did not require that gifts of personal hospitality be disclosed. This includes the private plane trips. ProPublica fails to make clear to readers that the U.S. Judicial Conference recently changed its rules to require more disclosure. The new rules took effect last month.

Justice Thomas would have been obliged to disclose gifts that posed a conflict of interest involving cases that would be heard by the High Court. But there is no evidence that Mr. Crow has had any such business before the Court, and Mr. Crow says he has “never asked about a pending or lower court case.”

The most ProPublica can come up with is that “Crow has deep connections in conservative politics.” Oh dear. One hilarious section reports that a painting at Mr. Crow’s New York resort includes Mr. Crow, Justice Thomas and three friends smoking cigars. One of the friends is Leonard Leo, “the Federalist Society leader regarded as an architect of the Supreme Court’s recent turn to the right,” ProPublica says.

This conspiracy is so secret that it’s hiding in plain sight. Can anyone imagine such a story ever being written about a liberal Justice on the Court?

Justice Thomas said in a Friday statement that “early in my tenure at the court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.” He added that “these guidelines are now being changed,” as the Judicial Conference announced new guidance. “And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” the statement said.

***
None of this will stop the political stampede to portray the Crow-Thomas friendship as a scandal to tarnish the Justice and the current Court. This campaign has been underway with particular ferocity since the Court’s majority shifted during the Trump years toward Justices who have an originalist view of interpreting the law and Constitution.

Justice Thomas is the leading target because his long-held views on the law have found new adherents. As the longest-tenured Justice now on the Court, he has the power to assign writing duties for opinions when he is in the majority but Chief Justice Roberts isn’t.

“Is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas corrupt? I don’t know,” tweeted Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu. “But his secretive actions absolutely have the appearance of corruption. And he apparently violated the law. For the good of the country, he should resign.” You gotta love the “I don’t know” but he should resign anyway formulation.

The liberal press—pardon the redundancy—has climbed onto its ethical high horse and is demanding “reform” at the Court. “All of this needs robust investigation,” demanded Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin dutifully saluted upon Mr. Whitehouse’s order and said his committee “will act” to impose a new “enforceable code of conduct” for the Court.

This ethics talk is really about setting up an apparatus that politicians can then use against the Justices if there is any transgression, however minor or inadvertent. The claims of corruption are intended to smear the conservative Justices and tarnish the Court to tee up case recusals, impeachment or a Court-packing scheme if Democrats get enough Senate votes to break the filibuster.

It’s all ugly politics, but the left is furious it lost control of the Court, and it wants it back by whatever means possible.

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18353
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #255 on: April 08, 2023, 07:16:25 AM »
ProPublica, a left-leaning website, kicked off the fun [smear]

yes saw Josh Kaplan on CNN few nights ago
he is the righteous virtue signaler who was behind the story

and of course surrounded by the usual panel of leftist smear experts doing their assigned roles .   

no mention if any other justices get gifts speaking fees or other  - only Just. Thomas




Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
AMcC: Where is Jim Jordan's evidence?
« Reply #259 on: April 15, 2023, 09:05:22 AM »
What Is Jim Jordan’s Evidence That the FBI Is Using Undercover Agents to Infiltrate Catholic Congregations?
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
April 15, 2023 6:30 AM

This is an explosive allegation. It needs to be backed with strong proof.

Obviously, it is outrageous that intelligence analysts at an FBI field office in Richmond, Va., proposed investigating Catholics, under the demeaning label of “Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology.” It would be all the more egregious if it turned out that the FBI had used one or more undercover operatives to infiltrate Catholic congregations in the Richmond area, as House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) alleges in a letter to FBI director Chris Wray.



That said, I am having trouble following Jordan’s letter, which is embedded in a report by our Ari Blaff, and is accompanied by a subpoena demanding that Wray testify before the committee. Specifically, what is Jordan’s evidence, which he says comes from the FBI itself, that the bureau has infiltrated at least one Catholic community with an undercover agent?

This is an explosive allegation. And, always ready with a gasoline can whenever a fire breaks out, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) has quickly upped the ante. Taking Jordan’s accusation as a given, Hawley has sent a letter accusing Attorney General Merrick Garland of committing perjury in Senate testimony last month when he denied that the Justice Department has been developing sources inside churches. Fox News reports on Hawley’s letter, in which he accused the AG of “turn[ing] Catholic congregations into front organizations for the FBI” and demanded that Garland tell him exactly how many “undercover informants or other agents” had infiltrated houses of worship.


If the FBI and the Justice Department are conducting undercover investigations of Catholic congregations, on suspicion of terrorism no less, then Jordan and Hawley are right to be hounding them for an explanation. But what makes Jordan say, and Hawley thus assume, that they are doing this?


The intelligence analysis from the FBI’s Richmond office is an objectionable eight-page screed, preciously labeled a “Domain Perspective.” It maintains that suspected white-supremacist terrorists (labeled “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists,” or “RMVEs”) are drawn to an “ideology” they describe as “radical-traditionalist Catholic.” The authors distinguish “RTCs” from “‘traditionalist Catholics”: Though the latter, too, “prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings and traditions,” you see, they resist RTCs’ “violent rhetoric” and “more extremist ideological beliefs,” such as disdain for post-Vatican II popes (especially Francis and John Paul II) and “frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white-supremacist ideology.”


As I read this claptrap, it reflects stupidity rather than action. That is, the FBI intelligence analysts who wrote it recommend that the bureau develop sources who might be in a position to report on efforts by the RMVEs — i.e., the suspected terrorists, or at least larval “violent extremists” — to exploit RTC social-media sites and churches in order to promote violence. The analysis does not indicate that the FBI has approved this recommendation, let alone acted on it. To the contrary, moreover, FBI headquarters has blasted the analysis and ordered its retraction.

Yet, Jordan writes:

Based on the limited information produced by the FBI to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis, and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith.

The “limited information” to which Jordan refers is set forth in a March 23 letter to his committee, signed by the bureau’s acting assistant director, Christopher Dunham. Understandably, the chairman complains that the letter withholds much of the information the committee seeks, which leaves him the burden of deciphering what the bureau has grudgingly revealed based, in part, on what it is unwilling to say. Still, while Jordan claims that “the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis,” he does not say this unidentified undercover agent infiltrated a Catholic community. That’s a strange thing for Jordan to leave out if he’s been told that’s what the agent did.

In any event, the Dunham letter is not public, so we don’t know what exactly the FBI said that leads Jordan to describe it as an acknowledgment that “the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent” in producing the Richmond analysis that FBI headquarters has condemned.

Jordan says that, based on Dunham’s letter, the committee knows that “the FBI, relying on information derived from at least one undercover employee, sought to use local religious organizations as ‘new avenues for tripwire and source development.’” He says an “example” of this is found in a section of the Richmond analysis entitled “Opportunities” (a section that is apparently redacted from the portions of the memo that were published on UndercoverDC.com). Jordan proceeds to describe this “example,” drawing on this recommendation in the analysis:

In addition to [redaction], engage in outreach to the leadership of other [Society of Saint Pius X] chapels in the FBI Richmond [area of responsibility] to sensitize these congregations to the warning signs of radicalization and to enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires. [Bolding and brackets in original; footnotes, which cite the Dunham letter, omitted.]

I don’t see any allusion to undercover activity in this passage. To be sure, we don’t know what “[redaction]” refers to. Perhaps I shouldn’t presume that Jordan doesn’t know what it means, either, but if he does know, and it has something to do with an undercover agent, he should explain that.

Although offered as an “example” of the FBI’s using an undercover agent, the passage Jordan excerpts suggests that the bureau’s office in Richmond should reach out to the leadership of specified Catholic groups — congregations of the Society of St. Pius X — to provide them with instruction on the “warning signs of radicalization” and “enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.”


Now, however sinister that may sound, it is the opposite of undercover activity. Contrary to Jordan’s description, it is also not necessarily an FBI suggestion that the community leaders “inform on Americans practicing their faith.” If the wayward Richmond analysts believed that the practice of these Catholics’ faith was the equivalent of promoting terrorism, the last people to whom they’d suggest reaching out would be the faith leaders. Instead, their suggestion is to seek the help of the leaders in discerning “suspicious activity” — not the practice of religion but the kinds of activities commonly engaged in by religiously motivated terrorists (e.g., urging of violence, recruitment to paramilitary training, etc.).

Furthermore, for all its many flaws, the focus of the Richmond analysis is not members of the Catholic congregations, at least not directly. The target is the so-called RMVEs — the suspected terrorists. In particular, the analysis highlights the RMVEs’ use of “RTC social media sites or places of worship as facilitation platforms to promote violence.” The idea is that the RMVEs are drawn to RTC facilities and may try to use them for terrorist purposes, and that members of the RTC congregations may notice this and be disturbed enough to report it.

This is reminiscent of the community outreach the FBI did with Muslim groups in the post-9/11 era. Top FBI officials — not undercover agents — would contact leaders of the Islamic community centers that often develop around local mosques. Whatever you thought about these efforts (I was not a fan), their objective was to avoid the need to have undercover operatives infiltrate Muslim communities.


To that end, the FBI would try to open lines of communication with the Islamic elders and explain the kinds of behaviors the bureau typically detected in young Muslims who might be falling under the spell of jihadist groups. The jihadists were known to recruit in Islamic community centers — that was not speculation, it was an indisputable fact that had been proven in court. The idea was to have community leaders either use their (hopefully moderating) influence to counter the jihadist exhortations or, if the “radicalization” had advanced to a dangerous point, report the situation to the FBI.


I am sensitive to this for two reasons. First, Jordan has a history of getting out over his skis on this sort of thing. I’ve recounted how, from the premise that the FBI had used “threat tags” to categorize investigations instigated by Attorney General Merrick Garland’s noxious directive to probe parents who were protesting woke indoctrination in the schools, Jordan leapt to the conclusion that the bureau was using Patriot Act counterterrorism authorities to conduct those investigations. In reality, there is to date sparse evidence that the FBI did much investigating at all, and no evidence (to my knowledge) that Patriot Act authorities were employed. And for his part, Wray took pains to distance the FBI from Garland’s directive and to emphasize that the bureau regards political dissent (First Amendment–protected expression) as, by itself, an unconstitutional basis for an investigation.

Second, I have helped the FBI run the kinds of undercover investigations that Jordan suggests would be objectionable. Indeed, I wrote a book about one of them, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. In 1990, after a jihadist named Sayyid Nosair murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane (founder of the Jewish Defense League) in midtown Manhattan, the FBI exploited the occasion of Nosair’s trial — a cause célèbre for metropolitan-area Muslim radicals — to place an informant in Nosair’s circle, which turned out to be led by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a renowned jihadist who had issued the fatwa approving the murder of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981. In short order, the investigation yielded evidence that the group was plotting bombings and political assassinations, and was using area mosques for proselytism, recruitment, fundraising, conspiratorial planning, and the storage of firearms.


The FBI was naturally uneasy about using an informant to infiltrate an enterprise that was tied together by its fundamentalist interpretation of religious doctrine, and about the fact that the investigation involved not only surveilling mosques but also recording incriminating conversations inside them. But here’s the thing: After the bureau shut down the undercover operation in September 1992 over a dispute with the informant, it did not try to replace him with another undercover agent, and as a result it was left with no window into the conspiracy; five months later, on February 26, 1993, the same jihadists bombed the World Trade Center.

Now, there are night-and-day differences here. The FBI investigations of jihadists beginning in the late 1980s were triggered by some surveillance of paramilitary exercises and firearms training, and by the fact that Nosair and others implicated in the training were complicit in the Kahane murder. In stark contrast, the FBI’s Richmond memo was triggered by a political smear promoted by the hard Left — namely, that America is under siege by white-supremacist domestic terrorists — which the bureau’s Richmond intelligence analysts exacerbated by their hunch (fueled by the Leftist propagandists at the Southern Poverty Law Center) that these supposed terrorists see traditionalist Catholics, or at least the “radicals” among them, as potential confederates.

Consequently, Jordan and his committee are right to be hounding the FBI to produce its evidence that there is a terrorist enterprise, analogous to the jihadist onslaught, in which white racists and traditionalist Catholics are conspiring. Like many of us, I suspect such evidence is scant, at best. Instead, I believe that the FBI, or at least parts of it, has been put in the service of a progressive political narrative. This has been happening since the Obama years. Eventually, it is going to lead to a dramatic overhaul of the bureau.


Still, Jordan needs to be careful here. The Judiciary Committee investigation of the FBI is extremely important. We need an effective top federal law-enforcement agency. We also need a Congress that can probe abuses of investigative authorities without demagoguing those authorities, which are vital to protecting Americans from real threats.

Jordan’s investigation must not devolve into a red-meat exercise for a Trump base bent on settling scores with feds cast by their man as his chief tormentors. If Jordan’s got proof that the FBI is using undercover agents to infiltrate Catholic groups, he should tell us what it is — his letter, for all the hoopla about it, does no such thing.

In sum, Chairman Jordan’s current letter suggests that at least part of the FBI (in Richmond) has considered doing with Catholic congregations what the FBI has done with Muslim congregations in the past. I am open to the argument that the two situations are not comparable, and that there is thus no reason, beyond political correctness and woke hostility to Catholicism, to subject Catholic congregations to such treatment.

Nevertheless, such treatment is not the same as undercover infiltration. Moreover, undercover infiltration should not be condemned as if it were an inconceivable investigative measure for dealing with violence motivated by religious beliefs. It is not that long ago, after all, that our concern was whether the FBI was being aggressive enough in infiltrating hubs of fundamentalist Islam.



ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18353
    • View Profile
gold rush
« Reply #262 on: April 24, 2023, 07:24:57 AM »
like the California gold rush

a few early on got rich and then the others seeking riches never do
this is total hoarse poop.  Leftist  Shysters and money grubbers:

https://news.yahoo.com/settlement-challenge-fox-news-disinformation-014117047.html


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18353
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #265 on: April 26, 2023, 05:02:14 PM »
 :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
Why Harlan Crow purchased Thomas' mother's home
« Reply #266 on: May 01, 2023, 09:48:26 PM »
Why Harlan Crow Purchased Clarence Thomas’s Mother’s Home
By MARK PAOLETTA
May 1, 2023 6:30 AM

The transaction was conducted ethically — but the Left's attacks on Justice Thomas have nothing to do with ethics.

The attacks on Justice Thomas never stop. Shortly after falsely accusing him of breaking the law by failing to disclose trips he took with his close friend Harlan Crow, the Democrats and their media allies are now smearing the justice by claiming that Crow’s purchase of Justice Thomas’s mother’s home was some scheme to enrich the justice.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Justice Thomas and Harlan Crow both acted honorably and ethically in this transaction, and it’s important to understand what led Crow to want to purchase this home. (Full disclosure: I worked on Justice Thomas’s confirmation as a lawyer in the White House in 1991, and I remain close friends with him. I have also co-edited the book Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words and have gone on trips with him and Harlan Crow, with whom I’m also friends. I have also represented Ginni Thomas in the House Select January 6 Committee inquiry.)

Crow, the son of a nationally renowned real-estate developer, was born into a wealthy family. Thomas was born into abject poverty, to uneducated parents, and had a father who abandoned the family when he was two years old. He grew up under segregation in the Deep South. Despite their different backgrounds, Crow’s and Thomas’s shared interests and values led them to cross paths. The two developed a close friendship after first meeting in 1996.

As has been well reported, Crow is a serious collector of American historical artifacts. He strives to preserve, learn from, and celebrate the history of our nation’s journey. As a friend of Justice Thomas, Harlan also recognized that the justice’s life story is one of the great American stories that highlights the best of America.

In 2001, Crow and Thomas visited the justice’s hometown of Savannah, Ga. During the visit, Crow visited the Carnegie Library, which was segregated when Thomas was growing up. It was here that Thomas fell in love with reading and widened his worldview to look beyond the racist laws and practices that were then in place. The library was in disrepair, and Crow wanted to help. He decided to provide funding in 2001 to restore this building where his friend, who was now the second black Supreme Court justice in our history, had first learned to dream. To honor this incredible success story, the gift came with a request to name a wing of the library after Justice Thomas.


On another visit to the area, Crow saw the run-down seafood cannery on the edge of the water in Pin Point, Ga. Pin Point was founded by freed blacks after the Civil War and had its own distinctive culture and dialect, Gullah-Geechee. In fact, Justice Thomas’s first language was Geechee, and he writes beautifully in his memoir about growing up in this community. Justice Thomas was born in a shanty fewer than 50 yards away with no running water and only one light bulb. The oyster and crab cannery buildings, owned by the Varn family, where Thomas’s mother and sister worked, were the center of the community. To preserve this important piece of American history, Crow bought the factory in 2008 and helped create a museum dedicated to celebrating the Gullah-Geechee culture. Because Varn and his wife still lived on the property, Crow included as part of the contract a lifetime-occupancy provision, meaning that the Varns could continue to live there for the rest of their lives without having to pay rent, while Crow took control of the property to preserve it and make it available to the community.

Crow also wanted to help renovate the convent of the nuns that Thomas had attended beginning in 1955: Saint Benedict the Moor Catholic School, the then-segregated, all-black elementary school. His grandfather had enrolled Clarence and his brother Myers in this school, which was run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, who were mostly from Ireland. They transformed Thomas’s life. Justice Thomas has always honored them, and he delivered a beautiful tribute to them in 1984:

There was no way I could have survived if it had not been for the nuns — our nuns, who made me pray when I didn’t want to and didn’t know why I should — who made me work when I saw no reason to — who made me believe in the equality of races when our country paid lip service to equality and our church tolerated inequality — who made me accept responsibilities for my own life when I looked for excuses. No, my friends, without our nuns, I would not have made it to square one.

The former convent was owned by the Savannah College of Art and Design and was part of its college campus. Crow agreed to upgrade the building and honor Justice Thomas by naming it the “Clarence Thomas Center for Historic Preservation.”

These were all nice gestures by Crow, consistent with his passion to preserve American history. In the process, he honored a local son who has gone on to be one of the most influential justices in American history. None of these projects provided any financial benefit to Justice Thomas.


In 2014, Crow visited Thomas’s boyhood home, where the justice’s mother, Leola Williams, was living. The neighborhood was unsafe, with crack houses nearby, and drug dealers and derelicts roaming the street. Crow asked Thomas what would happen to this home when his mother passed, and Justice Thomas replied that he would bulldoze it. Crow thought this was a horrible idea — this was the home where Thomas came to live with his grandparents in 1955, when he was seven. His life was forever changed by his being raised by his grandparents, and Crow did not want this home lost to history.

When Crow first expressed interest in buying the home, he did not know that Justice Thomas had an ownership interest in it — he thought it was just his mother’s home. Crow’s team did their due diligence and came up with a market price of $133,000 for the home and two vacant lots on the same street. The vacant lots were previously owned by Thomas’s grandfather and later inherited by Thomas, his mother, and the estate of his deceased brother. (This sale did not include the farmhouse in Liberty County, Ga., in which Justice Thomas still has a one-third interest.)

As part of the contract, Crow granted a lifetime-occupancy agreement to Thomas’ mother, then 85, just as he had done with the Varns several years earlier. This was no gift, as the lifetime-occupancy agreement was part of the market-price calculation. This arrangement allowed Crow to begin the work to preserve the property immediately while allowing Mrs. Williams, now 94, to continue to live there. Crow also bought several other homes and lots on this street, and this small area has since been transformed into a beautiful, vibrant, and safe street.

In the years preceding this transaction, Justice Thomas and his wife put significant sums of money into making improvements to his mother’s house. Given these costs, their one-third share of its sale price amounted to a capital loss on the property. Because of that, Justice Thomas did not believe that the sale of his mother’s home was a reportable transaction. He never considered this inherited home as an “investment or trust,” which is the language that appears on the financial-disclosure form where a filer must report any transaction over $1,000. Now that this has been brought to his attention, Justice Thomas is expected to amend his previous financial-disclosure form to reflect this sale. Amendments are not uncommon.

Over the years, several justices have amended their filings. For example, in 2021, Justice Sotomayor amended her 2016 financial-disclosure form to add six trips that had been paid for by a third party. She had forgotten about them, and when she realized the omission, she amended her forms. Nobody questioned her integrity. Justice Jackson hadn’t disclosed her husband’s medical-malpractice-consulting fees for years, nor the income she received from teaching. She noted this oversight on the disclosure form she filled out for her Supreme Court nomination. Again, nobody questioned her integrity. Why is Justice Thomas being held to a different standard?

The latest attacks on Justice Thomas have nothing to do with ethics. Instead, the attacks are about undermining the Supreme Court now that it no longer acts as a super-legislature for implementing the Left’s progressive policies. Other justices have also suffered baseless attacks on their ethics and character. The Left is weaponizing financial disclosures to smear conservative justices. It’s important for defenders of the Court to call this out for what it is. Meanwhile, Justice Thomas and his colleagues can hopefully continue to focus on their work: issuing legal opinions that are faithful to the Constitution.


Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
WSJ sorts out the smears on Thomas and Sotomayor
« Reply #268 on: May 05, 2023, 12:25:56 PM »
Crisp, quality analysis by the WSJ here:

===================================


ProPublica is out with another deceptive hit piece on a Supreme Court justice, and the Daily Wire also gets into the act.
By James TarantoFollow
May 4, 2023 5:48 pm ET




Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas PHOTO: SHAWN THEW/SHUTTERSTOCK
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” That’s the 13th rule in Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” and reporters at ProPublica have followed it to a T with their recent attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas. They may soon need to invoke the seventh rule: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”

On Thursday the ProPublica troika—Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski—published the third in a series of hit pieces about Justice Thomas and his wealthy friend Harlan Crow. Whatever else one may say about the first installment, it was lurid rather than boring. In the first paragraph alone, “Thomas boarded a large private jet” for “nine days of island-hopping . . . on a superyacht staffed by a coterie.”



The second installment was a head-scratcher: Mr. Crow purchased some modest real estate from Justice Thomas and his relatives, who turn out to have taken a loss on the deal. The third is the oddest yet. This week the troika try to spin a scandal out of an act of personal philanthropy.

Mark Paoletta, a friend of Clarence and Ginni Thomas, provides the basic facts in a statement: Justice Thomas has a great-nephew whose parents were unable to raise him. In 1997, when the boy was 6, the Thomases took him in and became his legal guardians. By the time he reached high-school age, he was struggling.

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP


The Thomases confided in their friends Harlan and Kathy, and Mr. Crow suggested “sending their great nephew to Randolph Macon Academy” in Virginia. “Harlan had attended Randolph Macon, and he thought the school would be a good fit,” Mr. Paoletta writes. “Harlan offered to pay the first year of Justice Thomas’s great nephew’s tuition in 2006, and that payment went directly to the school.”

The young man enrolled at Randolph Macon for the school years beginning in 2006 and 2007, transferred to a boarding school in Georgia in 2008, and returned to Randolph Macon in 2009. Mr. Crow’s office confirms that he paid the tuition for 2006 and 2008 and not for 2007 or 2009. In a Thursday phone interview, Mr. Crow told me that he believes Mr. Paoletta’s account is accurate.

So what’s the scandal here? It isn’t clear, and the lack of clarity is part of ProPublica’s technique, which is to imply a violation while evading the question of what standard is supposed to have been violated.

“Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures,” the troika report. That’s true, but the question is whether he was required to do so. The answer is unambiguously no: The relevant statute requires reporting gifts to a “dependent child,” a term whose definition is limited to “any individual who is a son, daughter, stepson, or stepdaughter.” The statute would have kicked in if the Thomases had adopted the boy, but they didn’t.

Even ProPublica co-founder Richard Tofel was able to figure this out. On Thursday morning he tweeted that “it’s all okay because while Thomas said he was raising the kid ‘as a son,’ and had himself appointed legal guardian, the young man is officially just a great-nephew.” Disregard Mr. Tofel’s smarmy, partisan tone, and he has provided what is missing from the troika’s report—a clear explanation of why no disclosure was required.

The troika instead quote Kathleen Clark, an “ethics law expert” at Washington University in St. Louis: “The most reasonable interpretation of the statute is that this was a gift to Thomas and thus had to be reported. It’s common sense.” That’s preposterous. What Ms. Clark calls “the most reasonable interpretation of the statute” is at odds with its plain language.

This is similar to what the troika did in the real-estate story. In that case Justice Thomas actually did err in failing to disclose the sale, yet the story didn’t say so outright. Instead the troika made a series of errors in interpreting his other disclosures and effectively imputed their own sloppiness to Justice Thomas. I detailed these errors in a lengthy article, and 2½ weeks later ProPublica has neither acknowledged its mistakes nor defended the accuracy of its work.

Instead, it simply moved on to the next hit. That’s propaganda, not journalism. The objective isn’t to further public understanding but, in Alinskyite fashion, to incite animus against a political target. The clearest proof of this is the absence of investigations from ProPublica and other so-called mainstream news outlets into the “ethics” of liberal justices.

A journalist of the right, Luke Rosiak of the Daily Wire, illustrates that point with a Wednesday piece about Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has developed a lucrative side gig as an author: “In all, she received $3.6 million from Penguin Random House or its subsidiaries, according to a Daily Wire tally of financial disclosures.”

This income was perfectly legitimate, and there’s no claim that Justice Sotomayor failed to make the required disclosures. So what’s the story? Twice—in 2013 and 2019—litigants who had sued the publisher alleging copyright violations lost in the lower courts and petitioned the justices to hear an appeal. The court denied both petitions. In both cases, Justice Stephen Breyer, another Random House author, recused himself from considering the petition. Justice Sotomayor didn’t.

Mr. Rosiak argues that the petitioner in the 2019 case, children’s-book author Jeannie Nicassio, “made a compelling argument that her case was worthy of being taken up by the Supreme Court.” The implication is that Justice Sotomayor showed favoritism toward her publisher by not recusing herself. But that’s nonsense. The decision to hear an appeal requires the agreement of four justices, irrespective of how many disagree. A recusal has the same effect as a vote not to hear the appeal.

If Justice Thomas had been in the same situation, would the mainstream press have gone after him? Certainly—Bloomberg did so last week. Mr. Rosiak is playing the same game and, in doing so, evidently attempting to follow Alinsky’s fourth rule: “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”

But it’s a stupid and destructive game, and Justice Sotomayor isn’t the enemy. She is a peer of Justice Thomas, a part of the institution that has been targeted for attack.

Mr. Taranto is the Journal’s editorial features editor.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
So much for the concept of Statute of Limitations
« Reply #269 on: May 10, 2023, 11:02:44 AM »
Pasting CCP's post here as well:

===================
this was almost certainly passed to get Trump

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-signs-adult-survivors-act

lets also no forget Conway became anti Trump after he was not offered administrative job :

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/carroll-v-trump-the-rape-case-that-started-at-a-resistance-party

RULE OF LAW  now the rule

RULE OF LAWYERS

the shysters of the profession

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
The Rule of Law
« Reply #270 on: May 10, 2023, 11:34:04 AM »


G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Time for our GM to admit this is really fg good
« Reply #272 on: May 13, 2023, 10:40:14 AM »
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/why-daniel-penny-was-charged/?bypass_key=c3RqMWlxRzY4NVVIVHhodzEvRHJ6UT09OjpTMWcxTTNOT2JGQk1XWFJoTkZONFMwUjNUR050WnowOQ%3D%3D&lctg=547fd5293b35d0210c8df7b9&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Saturday%202023-05-13&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart

"There are many things wrong with the federal government. One right thing about it is that prosecutors — all of them, from the attorney general and other top lawyers in Main Justice to the U.S. attorneys in all 94 federal districts throughout the country — are appointed, not elected. Only the president to whom they answer is elected and politically accountable. The federal system is designed to insulate the dispassionate rule of law from the heat of politics."

Like Hunter MANY obvious violations of state and federal law? Tell me how the system worked...

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #273 on: May 13, 2023, 01:32:07 PM »
Actually that response is , , , non-responsive.

Read again and you will see he is making the binary choice assertion that what we have (appointment) is better than what many/most States have (democracy) 

Do you agree or disagree?

For the record, I agree.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #274 on: May 13, 2023, 04:41:49 PM »
The feds are far worse of a threat to the American people than the Soros DA in Manhattan.

I can avoid the Blue Zoos, I can’t escape the DemStasi’s jurisdiction.


Actually that response is , , , non-responsive.

Read again and you will see he is making the binary choice assertion that what we have (appointment) is better than what many/most States have (democracy) 

Do you agree or disagree?

For the record, I agree.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #275 on: May 13, 2023, 04:56:27 PM »
A rational point, but still not quite responsive.

Would you rather the Feds be appointed or elected?

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #276 on: May 13, 2023, 10:41:42 PM »
A rational point, but still not quite responsive.

Would you rather the Feds be appointed or elected?

No feds at all is probably the best option. "Appointed professionals" is a lie.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #277 on: May 14, 2023, 07:50:36 AM »
That strikes me as evasive, but let's play:

What structural protections when a State violates the C'l rights of citizens?

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18353
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #278 on: May 14, 2023, 09:39:51 AM »
not sure what to make of Penny

respect he tried to be good samaritan

but also have real problem with someone applying a potentially deadly choke hold
for 15 minutes
he may have been trained on how to apply it but is he trained to let up before he kills someone?

is manslaughter 2 justified - maybe . I certainly think "negligence" can be applied

really tough situation / decision

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #279 on: May 14, 2023, 04:56:24 PM »
IMO the McCarthy piece on this is dead on.

ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18353
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #280 on: May 14, 2023, 05:23:03 PM »
just read AM
seems like a thorough summary
next concern is would a NYC jury convict for 2nd degree manslaughter ?

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/what-is-manslaughter-ex-marine-daniel-penny-to-face-charge-in-jordan-neely-subway-chokehold-death/4327893/#:~:text=New%20York's%20penal%20code%20says,the%20death%20of%20another%20person.%22

no doubt about it though :  the Sharpton/ Crump shake downs work

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #281 on: May 14, 2023, 06:07:05 PM »
That strikes me as evasive, but let's play:

What structural protections when a State violates the C'l rights of citizens?

Like the Army Sgt. wrongfully convicted for murder by a Soros prosecutor?

What did the DOJ do? Too busy hunting J6 protesters...




Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #285 on: May 24, 2023, 01:53:05 PM »
Agree.




G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 26643
    • View Profile

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
AMcC tries for GM's approval yet again
« Reply #289 on: May 24, 2023, 07:33:27 PM »



Obstruction Indictment May Be Imminent in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Case
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
May 24, 2023 12:12 PM

How a case that was originally about the mishandling of classified information became about misleading a federal grand jury.
How could Trump do it?

How could someone who sat in the Oval Office, responsible for national security, be so recklessly irresponsible with the nation’s defense secrets?


This was the sort of hair-on-fire stuff we heard from the media–Democratic complex for five months, beginning with last summer’s shocking FBI search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Did Trump sell classified information to China? Or did he just hand it off to his old pal Vlad Putin . . . or maybe even Nick Fuentes! It continued, day after day, court proceeding after court proceeding, Washington Post after New York Times after CNN. Right up until the calendar turned to 2023.

That’s when we suddenly learned . . . drumroll . . . that Joe Biden had been illegally hoarding classified information for decades, from his time in the Senate through his time as Obama administration vice president. He’d stored such information at location after location, from his private office to his private den to his private garage.

Only then did we hear that, well, whaddya know, it turns out to be very, very difficult to keep track of all these top-secret papers in a busy pol’s chaotic exit from high public office to the complex “private” world of leveraging political influence for Chinese cash. It’s not easy being “the big guy.”

Biden’s little problem prompted a major overhaul at the Justice Department, which had been cruising toward a Trump Espionage Act indictment (the lead crime — mishandling national-defense information — in its Mar-a-Lago search warrant).

Suddenly, there was no more chatter about how condemnable Trump was for keeping over 300 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, some of them at the highest levels of secrecy that could do grave damage to national security if mishandled — just like Biden’s haul. Suddenly, the Trump documents-retention case was no longer a documents-retention case.


There are now signs that an indictment could be imminent. The Wall Street Journal reports that Special Counsel Jack Smith has completed the investigative phase of his Mar-a-Lago inquiry, and is at the point of deciding whether (more like when) to indict Trump. The former president’s lawyers have dashed off a letter to Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, demanding a meeting, which suggests they believe Smith is poised to file charges.


Smith may already have proposed a charging decision to Garland. That is worth pausing over. There was no reason for Garland to appoint a special counsel for Trump because there is no conflict of interest in the Biden Justice Department’s investigating Trump. The conflict lies in the Biden Justice Department’s investigating Hunter Biden and the Biden family for suspected crimes. But Garland steadfastly refuses to appoint a scrupulous, nonpartisan prosecutor for those escapades because doing so could torpedo the unpopular president as he gears up for his reelection bid.

Garland thus appointed Smith out of political calculation, not to ward off a conflict of interest. He knew Trump, in seeking the presidency, would claim that Biden was weaponizing the Justice Department against the opposition. So to manufacture the illusion that Biden and his Justice Department are walled off from the Trump investigations, Garland appointed Smith and proclaimed him independent. But he’s not independent; he reports to Garland and the power he exercises belongs to Biden.

As often happens to those who engage in such subterfuge, Garland was too clever by half: When it turned out that Biden was a serial classified-information pilferer, the appointment of Smith left Garland no choice but to appoint a special counsel, Robert Hur, to probe Biden’s illegal document retention. But unlike Smith, who was given sweeping authority to investigate Trump over Mar-a-Lago and potential January 6 offenses, Hur has a narrow remit, relating only to mishandling classified documents. He is not authorized to open the Pandora’s box of the Biden family business of peddling Joe’s political influence for big bucks from corrupt, anti-American regimes.


Of course, Biden will never be charged with crimes related to classified documents. Justice Department guidance does not permit the indictment of a sitting president, but Garland will ultimately decide that no charges should be brought anyway. On that, he has gotten an assist from Mike Pence, who, right after ripping Biden for retaining classified documents from his time as Obama’s vice president, inconveniently discovered that he, too, had retained classified documents from his time as Trump’s vice president.

At first, it seemed that Biden’s misadventures with classified intelligence might make it politically impossible to charge Trump with any crimes arising out of his document retention at Mar-a-Lago. But the Democrats’ progressive base zealously wants Trump to be charged, and Biden is not in the habit of denying the base. Smith has thus homed in on a narrow path for distinguishing the Biden and Pence situations from Trump’s: While they cooperated with the government’s efforts to locate and return the secret intelligence to its proper files, Trump fought the government all the way. Obstruction.


Consequently, the most important document in the Mar-a-Lago case does not bear classified markings; it bears the raised seal of a federal grand-jury subpoena. The Trump case is no longer about classified documents. It is about how Trump caused false information to be communicated to investigators and the grand jury — specifically, through the sworn claim provided by his lawyers on June 3, 2022, that, after a diligent search, the approximately 38 documents they surrendered to the FBI that day were the only ones bearing classified markings left at Mar-a-Lago. Since Biden’s little problem arose, Smith has spent his time amassing evidence that Trump knew this was untrue and spent the ensuing weeks overseeing the handling and hiding of documents he knew he should have turned over to the FBI pursuant to the subpoena — many of which were found in his personal office when the FBI executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in early August.

That’s what the Mar-a-Lago case is now about: lying about the documents and hiding the documents, not the content of the documents — which would hit too close to home for Biden.

The signs indicate that Smith thinks he has made that case. If so, Trump will say he is being persecuted by his political adversaries. The Biden administration will say that anyone in America would be prosecuted for willfully misleading a grand jury. And as ever, other Republican presidential candidates will have to spend their time talking about Trump rather than their own campaigns — a perfect execution of the Democrats’ 2024 plan.


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18353
    • View Profile
DNC great for lawyers
« Reply #291 on: May 27, 2023, 10:18:26 AM »
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/05/27/new-york-city-bans-discrimination-based-on-weight-and-height-n1698517

endless cycle - > more regs -> more lawyers -> more lawyers -> more regs - more lawsuits -> more  money -> more control

no end in sight.

the rest of us have no say
in a Dem dominated word ......

where have all the good lawyers with integrity gone?




Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
“Cognitive Infrastructure”: Missouri v. Biden
« Reply #292 on: May 30, 2023, 08:01:40 AM »
This needs and seems worthy of a deep read.  Heading out now for two week road trip so have only skimmed this.  I will have internet and phone while on the road.


https://yournews.com/2023/05/27/2578720/cognitive-infrastructure-missouri-v-biden-lawsuit-biden-administration-designates-your/#close_banner


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18353
    • View Profile
Re: Politics by Lawfare, and the Law of War
« Reply #294 on: May 31, 2023, 01:32:18 PM »
***Project Veritas Sues James O’Keefe***

all the darn squabbling on our own side ...   :x

mean to girls  :roll:

wasting funds  :roll:

it is so hard to keep it together when we see this stuff coming out from our side.

of course this is from the daily beast (wait I thought they were going out of business.. but they got bought out and saved or something by some rich lib)


ccp

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 18353
    • View Profile
shysters deposing computer shop owner
« Reply #295 on: June 01, 2023, 10:41:23 AM »
how many times now?

https://www.axios.com/2023/06/01/scoop-hunter-biden-lawyer-deposes-laptop-shop-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbe_Lowell

who is paying this guy ?

how can this be ok to keep finding ways to harass someone who never committed a crime &
followed contract law &
and turned over data to the FBI?




Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
Front Page: One Nation, two sets of laws
« Reply #296 on: June 12, 2023, 08:11:27 PM »
https://www.frontpagemag.com/one-nation-two-sets-of-laws/

A good analytical framework here for efficiently and pithily making our points.

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 69127
    • View Profile
Newt: The Wrong Indictments
« Reply #297 on: June 13, 2023, 12:37:08 AM »
By Newt Gingrich
June 11, 2023Updated: June 12, 2023
biggersmaller Print

0:00
6:35



1

Commentary

The planned indictment of former President Donald Trump for “mishandling national secrets” is the natural next phase of the leftwing establishment’s arrogance and corruption.

The left has been desperately trying to stop 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 only eroded Americans’ trust in government institutions—which is a far bigger problem than the left’s hatred of Trump. There are several other indictments that should have been announced to reestablish the integrity of the rule of law.

First, corrupt FBI agents such as those identified in the Durham Report should have already been indicted for extraordinary violations of their oaths of office. They lied to FISA court judges. They deliberately pursued a case they knew was based on a lie. They leaked knowingly phony information to the left-wing media to further undermine Trump—first as a candidate and then as the President of the United States. They should all face legal consequences.

Other FBI officials should be indicted for colluding to protect Hillary Clinton when she clearly broke the law repeatedly. How many classified documents were saved on then-Secretary of State Clinton’s illegal home server? How did her emails end up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop? How does someone erase more than 32,000 potentially evidentiary emails and get off scot-free? How does a government official order her staff to destroy evidentiary hard drives with a hammer and face no consequences? Further, why did the then-director of the FBI arrogate to himself a decision that belongs to prosecutors and hold a press conference exonerating Clinton during a presidential campaign?

The Durham Report makes crystal clear the FBI’s double standard of aggressive hostility toward Trump and defensive deference toward Clinton. That there have not been any indictments of Clinton (or the Bidens for that matter) demonstrates that the current corrupt senior leadership of the FBI is protecting itself and its allies—and attacking its perceived enemies.

Second, there should be a wave of indictments against the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Delaware, and other universities that have been illegally accepting secret foreign money and refusing to report it to federal authorities.

As the U.S. Department of Education website notes: “Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA) requires institutions of higher education that receive federal financial assistance to disclose semiannually to the U.S. Department of Education any gifts received from and contracts with a foreign source that, alone or combined, are valued at $250,000 or more in a calendar year. The statute also requires institutions to report information when owned or controlled by a foreign source.”

We have no idea how many millions of dollars communist China gave to the universities of Pennsylvania and Delaware (where President Joe Biden has education centers). According to estimates (which are likely low), the University of Delaware (which houses about 1,850 boxes of Biden’s vice presidential and senatorial documents) received $6.7 million in anonymous donations from the Chinese government. The University of Pennsylvania received nearly $40 million ($60 million, including contracts). Both universities—and many more—are still breaking the law and not reporting foreign money they receive.

At the same time, former University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann (who also helped create the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington) became Biden’s ambassador to Germany. Former university Board of Trustees’ Chairman David L. Cohen is Biden’s ambassador to Canada.

These two became ambassadors after members of the Biden team received huge salaries from the University of Pennsylvania. At least 10 other people on the Penn Biden Center payroll ended up with senior positions in the Biden administration. This includes Secretary of State Antony Blinken. We have no idea the source of the money paid to Blinken when he managed the Penn Biden Center. Now, he’s America’s chief diplomat.

It is amazing the arrogance with which elite universities take millions from foreign sources and simply ignore the law and reject the federal government’s demands for information. The leadership of these institutions should be indicted for illegally accepting foreign money and hiding it from the public. Instead, they are more likely to become U.S. ambassadors.

Third, President Biden, Hunter Biden, and other members of the Biden family should be under indictment for influence peddling and accepting bribes.

Does anyone seriously believe the widow of the mayor of Moscow sent Hunter Biden $3.5 million out of the goodness of her heart? Did the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma pay Hunter Biden millions because of his expertise? Does anyone really think a Chinese billionaire sent Hunter Biden an exquisite diamond just because they are just good friends?

Chairman James Comer and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability have produced evidence that the depth of deliberate corruption in the Biden family operation is worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. The Bidens have created layers of phony companies as pass-throughs to hide a trail of foreign money they’ve been getting.

President Biden claims to know nothing of his son’s business dealings, but the records show then-Vice President Biden was routinely meeting with Hunter Biden’s business associates. The evidence is clear that Biden’s brother was also deeply involved in the influence-peddling scheme.

Much of this was initially reported as Hunter Biden’s laptop began to be investigated. Biden government officials immediately falsely claimed the story was Russian disinformation. Whistleblowers and potential eyewitnesses have been surfacing. Yet, after three years, there has been no action. In fact, FBI leadership insisted that the IRS disband a team that was looking into Hunter Biden and corruption.

These are the indictments that should have been announced this week. Instead, the FBI has protected the Bidens just as it protected the Clintons.

The contrast with the ruthless, dishonest, and illegal efforts to ruin President Trump is stunning.

This is the scale of corruption, bias, and lawlessness with which the American people should weigh the Trump indictments.

From Gingrich360.com

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.