RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/03/31/trump-supporter-found-guilty-faces-ten-years-in-prison-for-2016-anti-hillary-meme-n1683566

Donald Trump has been indicted, essentially for the crime of being Donald Trump and opposing the Left’s total hegemony over everything. But as Trump himself has often warned, they’re not really after him, they’re after us, and he is just in the way. A 33-year-old Trump supporter named Douglass Mackey discovered the truth of that adage in the worst possible way on Friday, the first day of America as a Leftist banana republic in which foes of the regime are targeted solely for their opposition to that regime. Mackey was convicted of election interference and faces up to ten years in prison, all because of a meme he tweeted during the 2016 election. Yes, you read that right: a meme.

Back during the wild and woolly days of that campaign, according to a Friday press release from the “Justice” Department, Mackey, under the name Ricky Vaughn, “established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Presidential Election.” The Justice for Democrats Department didn’t bother to explain exactly what it means to have held a position so illustrious as that of the 107th most important influencer of the 2016 presidential election. How did the DOJ go about determining this? Did it somehow discover that Mackey/Vaughn had induced a certain number of people to change their votes, but that 106 other people had gotten people to change more votes?

These are actually important questions because on Friday, Mackey was convicted “by a federal jury in Brooklyn of the charge of Conspiracy Against Rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.” That’s what he faces ten years in prison for doing. Mackey’s “conspiracy” was really quite simple. While the language the Department Formerly Associated with Justice used sounds quite weighty and conjures up images of Mackey meeting in dark rooms with other sinister figures to plot ways to sabotage voting machines or prevent people from being able to enter polling places, what they’re really talking about is a meme.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/01/trump-isnt-a-special-case-hes-a-test-case/

Liberals might be scratching their heads over why potential Donald Trump rivals are rushing to denounce his indictment. The reason is simple. Conservative Republicans know that if this assault is allowed to stand, they will be next.

The left, as well as the rabble of never-Trump Republicans, like to tell everybody that the unprecedented measures taken against Trump – culminating with this week’s indictment – are justified because he poses a unique threat to our precious democracy.

Just to review, we’re talking about measures like Democrats impeaching him twice on the flimsiest of grounds. Like federal law enforcement engaging in a coordinated campaign to smear him as a Russian stooge. Like journalists dropping any shred of objectivity and professionalism to attack Trump, up to and including peddling obvious falsehoods.

Measures like Big Tech companies signing on as paid censors of the federal government to stamp out “misinformation.” Like national security “experts” selling lies about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Like raiding Trump’s home.

But the lie at the center of all this is that Trump is a special case that justifies such previously unimaginable antics.

He’s not.

Trump is a test case.

https://spectator.org/i-pledge-allegiance-to-the-banana-republic/

Show me the man,” Lavrentiy Beria boasted, “and I’ll show you the crime.”

It took nearly a century. But this mindset eventually migrated from Moscow to Manhattan.

The grand jury convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, CNN reports, voted to indict former President Donald Trump on more than 30 charges related to business fraud.

Bragg pledged to not prosecute laws against trespassing, prostitution, skipping a subway fare, and resisting arrest. The unstated flipside of selectively ignoring laws involved wielding criminal charges against individuals in violation of laws not passed by any legislature but instead imagined by woke district attorneys.

The former president’s votaries scoff at the idea of this case succeeding. Manhattan voted for Joe Biden over Trump 85 percent to 15 percent. The former president does not face a jury of his peers. He faces a jury of seething partisans. This feels par for the course.

The Obama administration unleashed the surveillance state to spy on Trump’s presidential campaign in a maneuver unprecedented in any place where the rule of law prevails.

Courts opted to reflexively view cases against Trump as those extreme instances in which the violation of attorney-client privilege represents no violation at all.

The same Justice Department that hushed for months any talk of Joe Biden holding onto a cache of classified documents turned the raid on Mar-a-Lago for the same offense into a made-for-TV spectacle.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ron-desantis-tort-reform-law-donald-trump-trial-bar-attorneys-d4e840?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Donald Trump is grabbing anything to attack Ron DeSantis, and he’s even joining forces with the plaintiff bar in a bizarre alliance. Fortunately for Floridians, their Governor won this exchange.

Mr. DeSantis last Friday signed legislation that will reduce legal costs for businesses, insurers and their customers. Litigation abuse is a tax that every citizen pays into the tort system, costing each Florida household more than $5,000 in 2020, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.

Enter Mr. DeSantis, who this year proposed a package of tort reforms to curb abuses. Several changes target plaintiff attorneys’ common practice of inflating damages by presenting to juries the charges for medical costs billed by healthcare providers rather than what health insurers would pay out, which is typically much less.

Collusive agreements between physicians and lawyers to inflate charges will no longer be protected by attorney-client privilege. Lawyers could previously ensure that juries saw only the inflated amounts billed by their hand-picked doctors, and juries often based awards on those trumped-up bills.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-manchin-inflation-reduction-act-green-subsidies-president-biden-5b168948?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

We interrupt the latest Donald Trump melodrama for a word from Biden Administration regulators. While the world isn’t watching, and certainly the press corps isn’t, regulators on Friday announced they are essentially rewriting last year’s Inflation Reduction Act so more electric vehicles will qualify for subsidies.

In return for his vote, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin insisted on numerous conditions for the IRA’s $7,500 EV tax credit. He wanted to encourage more U.S. manufacturing and ensure subsidies don’t go to the affluent. The law imposed an income limit to qualify for subsidies of $150,000 for individual EV buyers, as well as a price cap for vans, SUVs and pickups ($80,000), and sedans ($55,000).

To qualify for $3,750 of the credit, an increasing share of a vehicle’s battery minerals such as lithium and nickel also had be extracted or processed in the U.S. or in a country with which the U.S. has a free-trade agreement. The other half of the credit was supposed to be available only for vehicles in which a majority of its battery components are made in North America, starting at 50% this year and up to 100% by 2029.

Few cars currently on the market were expected to qualify for even half of the credit. Most minerals are mined and processed in countries with which we don’t have trade agreements, such as China, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Key battery components—namely, active anode and cathode materials—are mostly produced in China, Japan and South Korea.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/christopher_wray_and_the_politicization_of_the_fbi.html

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has shocked many Americans by becoming a politicized law enforcement arm of the Democrat party. As the target of one of the FBI and Department of Justice political attacks — solely because I had been talking to Ukrainian whistleblowers about Biden family corruption in that country — I want to discuss the problem.  It starts with the most political Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray.

How exactly did Wray become Director? The saga of who headed the most prestigious and respected (previous to Wray) law enforcement agency under Donald Trump includes political naiveite as well as sophistication, depending on the actor.

The naiveite begins with the Trump transition team.  My husband (and law partner) Joe diGenova and I sent message after message to the team to have President-elect Trump fire then-Director James Comey immediately. We were well aware of his many instances of harassing conservatives with baseless federal investigations. 

We were informed that “New Yorkers” on Trump’s team thought it would look “unseemly.” They were unaware that cleaning house in a new administration is regular order in D.C.  How did it look months later when Trump fired Comey in the midst of the Russia, Russia, Russia! investigation?

Having limited knowledge of both Washington politics (one must know who the alligators are to drain the swamp) and federal law enforcement, Trump turned to a person who should have such knowledge to propose a Comey replacement: former U.S. Attorney (Eastern District of New Jersey) and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.  Christie had been a political opponent, then avid supporter of Trump.  What better background for a person asked to suggest a new FBI Director.  Christie’s choice: Chris Wray.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19540/leadership-crisis-in-america

These numbers should frighten everyone. It is hard to imagine how a country functions effectively if only 21% of its citizens believe they can trust their government to do the right thing most of the time. What does this mean and why are the numbers so low?

Many of the people present on January 6th did not accept the results of the 2020 presidential election and were protesting the outcome. They simply could not be convinced that Joe Biden won fair and square. Believing in free and fair elections is a bedrock principle of representative government; without it, the critical support needed to underpin our entire system is gone.

As I noted, however, in 2006 based on an intelligence report I demanded be declassified, there were WMDs found in Iraq. They were in varying states and conditions, and led to the injury of some members of our Armed Forces, but they did not point to the ongoing program Americans had been led to believe existed. The New York Times more recently validated this WMD finding, which had largely been swept under the rug for political expediency.

Among SVB’s customers are many Chinese companies that are being fully covered while citizens impacted by the East Palestine train derailment have found out they do not qualify for traditional FEMA disaster assistance. It is hard to build trust in citizens when the government seemingly treats one group better than it treats others.

Americans have seen so many examples of outright government deceit. FBI and intelligence leaders fostered the notion that President-elect Trump was compromised by Russia. The “Russia hoax” persisted for more than two years as a cloud over the head of President Trump and incapacitated the country. Congressional leaders such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff promised the American people that he had direct evidence about Trump that warranted the president’s impeachment. Later, it became clear that he did not, but that has not stopped him from continuing to push his fabrication as he mounts a Senate bid in California. Fifty-one intelligence professionals and leaders signed a letter implying that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation and not real. They were all wrong.

Investigations into the origins of the COVID pandemic, continuing attempts to set up some version of a Department of Misinformation and Disinformation – read: the government deciding for you what “truth” is, then punishing citizens who might disagree — and the weaponization of the government against citizens ongoing in the House of Representatives may expose even more examples of the federal government bureaucracy being deceitful in its interactions with the American people.

On key policies [the federal government] has failed miserably, from 9/11 to the latest crisis rocking the banking industry. That is 20 years of epic, systemic government failures. Throw in deception by some of the highest-ranking government officials and bailouts of foreign interests while U.S. citizens are left hanging, and you get why barely a fifth of Americans have faith in their leaders.

America is in crisis. More and more Americans are increasingly distrustful of America’s leadership across the board. In one of the latest surveys, Pew Research found only 21% of respondents said they “just about always” or “most of the time” – 2% and 19% respectively — trusted the government to do the right thing. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, that number was 49%. These numbers should frighten everyone. It is hard to imagine how a country functions effectively if only 21% of its citizens believe they can trust their government to do the right thing most of the time. What does this mean and why are the numbers so low?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/millions-of-dollars-to-floyd-2020-rioters/

Thanks to the work of two legendary leftist activist organizations and a Philadelphia law firm that is venerated within the ranks of the Democrat Party, $9.25 million was awarded to 343 Plaintiffs who claim they sustained “physical and emotional” damages in 2020 while engaging in peaceful George Floyd protests.

Also under the agreement, $500,000-$600,000 will be provided to the Bread & Roses Community Fund, a Socialist Feminist ‘equity’ based organization, for free mental health counseling for West Philadelphia residents as a result of perceived police abuses during the riots.

The City of Philadelphia was under no obligation to admit any wrongdoing as the suit progressed through the courts: that is to say, the city maintains that police actions during those riots were more justified in controlling the burning of squad cars, the destruction of a sizeable part of Center City near Rittenhouse Square, the blowing up of multiple ATM machines, and the destruction of businesses in Port Richmond along Aramingo Avenue, all of which necessitated a military-like response.

The 2020 Floyd rioters held Philadelphia hostage for a number of weeks, necessitating nightly curfews and terrorizing neighbors who feared that roving bands of anarchists would begin to torch private residences.

The police, if anything, exercised great restraint in controlling the rioters. In some instances, rioters chased police, turned over their squad cars and set them on fire.

Despite this reality, two other leftwing activist lawyers had a hand in the settlement.

Paul Hetznecker, known throughout the city as a radical lawyer who represented masked bandanna-wearing rioters who blocked an entrance to an interstate highway during the 2000 Republican National Convention (action by police at that time resulted in 4 police injuries and damage to at least 20 patrol cars), and attorney Michael Coard, famous in activist circles for his long dreadlocks, spoke to news outlets after the $9.25 million verdict.

“The First Amendment is sacrosanct,” Coard said:

It is not to be praised one day as this glorious document and then used like a piece of toilet paper the next day even if the city and police think that peaceful protesting is a shitty way to petition your government. What happened here is blatant, obvious and egregious. There should not only be civil liabilities but also more criminal prosecutions.

https://spectator.org/trump-indicted-the-corruption-of-justice/

As this is written, news arrives that a grand jury in Manhattan has indicted former President Donald Trump.

Shocking — not.

The column below was written before this news arrived. But without a doubt, this news makes the point of Trump and America versus the Deep State more relevant than ever.

If ever there were a corruption of justice, this indictment is it.

By chance, before this news arrived, there was one telling moment back to back with another.

On Saturday, March 25, former President Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Waco, Texas, and said this: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.”

Only days later, Americans read this headline in the Wall Street Journal:

The IRS Makes a Strange House Call on Matt Taibbi

An agent shows up at the home of the Twitter files journalist who testified before Congress.

The Wall Street Journal story reported:

Democrats are denouncing the House GOP investigation into the weaponization of government, but maybe that’s because Republicans are getting somewhere. That includes new evidence that the Internal Revenue Service may be targeting a journalist who testified before the weaponization committee.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/03/30/ron-desantis-throws-a-wrench-in-da-braggs-indictment-of-trump-n1683202

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has swiftly responded to the partisan indictment of Donald Trump. In a statement posted to Twitter, DeSantis denounced the weaponization of the legal system to promote political agendas, and called out  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s soft-on-crime record, contrasting it with his current willingness to stretch the law to target political opponents by stretching the law to its limits.

“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head. It is un-American,” DeSantis tweeted. “The Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney has consistently bent the law to downgrade felonies and to excuse criminal misconduct. Yet, now he is stretching the law to target a political opponent.”

Governor DeSantis also took the bold stance of refusing to assist in an extradition request due to the blatantly partisan nature of the investigation.

“Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda,” DeSantis said.