A Never-Trump Prosecutor Threatens Free Speech What the Trump indictments are really about. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-never-trump-prosecutor-threatens-free-speech/

The indictment of Donald Trump for speaking out against the results of the 2020 election, and in the words of the indictment, fomenting “a conspiracy to defraud the United States,” has been challenged by legal commentators from both political parties. These jurists consider the prosecutor’s “novel legal theories” dubious or even preposterous, not to mention unconstitutional. If successful, this politicization of the legal system that attacks one candidate for the presidency and benefits the other, carries with it a huge moral hazard.

Democrat legal scholar Jonathan Turley has identified this risk: “The hatred for Trump is so all-encompassing that legal experts on the political left have ignored the chilling implications of this indictment. This complaint is based largely on statements that are protected under the First Amendment. It would eviscerate free speech and could allow the government to arrest those who are accused of spreading disinformation in elections.”

This corruption of First Amendment law––one already judged unconstitutional in several Supreme Court decisions–– will further empower significantly the already growing threats to free speech. “Woke” Dems for decades have been weakening this foundation of every free government and society. But if Trump’s political enemies can treat the ex-president this way with impunity, then we all will be further down the road to tyranny.

Part of sketchy federal prosecutor Jack Smith’s shambolic reasoning is the charge that Trump “lied” about the integrity of the 2020 election. That Trump is a serial liar is a NeverTrump cliché, reflecting his enemies’ inability or indifference to distinguish rhetorical hyperbole, a feature of political speech since ancient Athens, from a willful lie. As Salena Zito memorably said, when Trump uses such exaggerations, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”

Moreover, how does Smith determine that Trump knew he was lying?  As Kimberley Strassel writes, “But how do you prove legally that Trump truly didn’t believe his false claims? And even if you can prove that Trump lied, how do you legally distinguish his falsehoods from the lies other political leaders have told over the years?”

As Strassel explains Smith’s argument, though Trump has a First Amendment right to lie, “Yet if that politician is advised by others that his comments are untruthful and nonetheless uses them to justify acts that undermine government ‘function,’ he is guilty of a conspiracy to defraud the country. Dishonest politicians who act on dubious legal claims? There aren’t enough prisons to hold them all.”

A Gift to Putin: No Uranium Mining Near the Grand Canyon A new government land grab makes the U.S. more dependent on Russia.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-to-putin-no-uranium-mining-near-the-grand-canyon-6c1916bf?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

With a stroke of his pen, President Biden on Tuesday walled off from development nearly a million acres of land that includes some of America’s richest uranium deposits. This is another monument to the Administration’s destructive energy policy.

The Antiquities Act of 1906 lets Presidents set aside federal land for national monuments to protect historic objects. Barack Obama used the law to remove millions of acres of federal land from oil and gas development. Yet even he resisted progressive calls to set aside uranium-rich land outside the Grand Canyon. Mr. Biden shows no such restraint.

On Tuesday he declared a national monument on 1,562 square miles in Arizona called Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, meaning “where tribes roam.” The monument will conserve “landscape sacred to Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples and advance President Biden’s historic climate and conservation agenda,” the White House says.

The statement omits that the land also includes America’s only source of high-grade uranium ore that is economically competitive on the global market. The U.S. imports about 95% of uranium used for nuclear power reactors, mostly from Kazakhstan, Canada, Russia and Australia. Russia is the U.S.’s third biggest uranium source.

Mr. Biden banned imports of Russian fossil fuels by executive order last spring, but U.S. nuclear plants continue to rely on Russian uranium for 12% of their fuel supply. The new national monument—the fifth of the Biden Presidency—will make it that much harder for the U.S. to replace Russian uranium. Vladimir Putin sends his thanks.

The unstated purpose of the national monument appears to be to block uranium mining. Arizona Democrat Rep. Raul Grijalva has proposed legislation that would permanently withdraw the Grand Canyon area from new mining claims. Democrats couldn’t pass this through Congress, so Mr. Biden is doing so by decree.

A Florida Trial and a D.C. Grand Jury for Trump A D.C. grand jury is an obvious rubber stamp. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-florida-trial-and-a-d-c-grand-jury-for-trump/

The elites may have to hold one of their show trials in Florida, but the grand jury had to be in D.C.

Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday asked the Justice Department to explain its use of an out-of-state grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago case.

While the Mar-a-Lago case is being handled out of her Fort Pierce, Fla., courtroom, much of the grand jury work ahead of the indictment was conducted through a Washington, D.C., grand jury.

A D.C. grand jury is an obvious rubber stamp for political prosecutors. A D.C. grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, as long as it was a Republican. That’s why the real show is in Washington D.C.

Going down to Florida is a bit inconvenient because it’s one of those provinces of the empire.

For many months, Justice Department prosecutors had questioned witnesses in the Florida case before a federal grand jury in Washington.

A Florida case and a D.C. grand jury. Why not just try all political cases in D.C.?

The easiest way to understand all this is to think of what’s located in Washington D.C. as the occupying force. Much like the British during the American Revolution, it’s the epicenter of the imperial regime that is out of touch with most of the country, but rules over it anyway. Colonials from the hinterlands sometimes visit and are impressed by the big grand buildings. When they come to work there as members of Congress, they’re either taught their manners by their betters until they join the elites or they wash out.

D.C. is the imperial city and they don’t like to venture too far from their base of power.

For many months, Justice Department prosecutors had questioned witnesses in the Florida case before a federal grand jury in Washington. The secret proceedings yielded much of the evidence at the crux of the case. But in May, the grand jury activity appeared to continue at a federal courthouse in Miami. Ultimately, prosecutors filed charges in a West Palm Beach courthouse — a courthouse in the same district as Miami and the area where Mar-a-Lago is located.

Go On, Gavin, Don’t Be Afraid — Debate DeSantis

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/09/go-on-gavin-dont-be-afraid-debate-desantis/

“Boy, a few dark clouds appear on your horizon and you just go all to pieces.” – Butch to Sundance in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

Some months ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would be “all in” on a debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis later accepted. Now some are wondering if Newsom’s offer was sincere because it looks as if he wants to avoid the verbal sparring. Which makes sense: Newsom probably knows he can’t take the heat.

Newsom was fast-tracked for political stardom through his connections to San Francisco wealth and power. He was groomed and polished by the Gettys, the Pritzkers and the Fishers, not only in politics but in business, where he was set up not to fail.

But on his way to the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, which took him through the San Francisco mayor’s and the lieutenant governor’s offices, he never faced a capable political opponent in an election or debate. His path to the next political office was always clear of anything that might slow him or cause him even the slightest adversity. It has always been Blue sailing for him in California.

When Newsom did run into a minor storm, he crumbled. In what’s been called his “damn” interview in August 2021 with editorial and opinion writers from McClatchy’s California newspapers, the governor, about a month before he survived a failed recall, reacted to not-at-all-hostile questions by uttering “damn’ nine times, and slamming “his desk with his hand and fist 59 times,” the California Globe Reported.

A youtuber who posted the video online called Newsom’s reactions “a whiny self-pitying recall rage rant.” Larry Elder, who ran for governor in the recall election, tweeted that Newsom had morphed “into Captain Queeg.”

When DeSantis confronts Newsom with hard questions, and indisputable facts, how is he going to hold it together? How does he explain that people are fleeing from California and to Florida without losing his cool?

The Real Reason Palestinians Do Not Have a Free Media by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19873/palestinians-free-media

This fierce crackdown on Palestinian journalists, however, is ignored by the mainstream media in the West. When Palestinian journalists are brutally attacked, where is the outrage of foreign journalists? Their outrage seems reserved only for stories that reflect negatively on Israel.

All three media outlets [The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN] were obsessed with the case of Abu Akleh because they were trying to implicate Israel, even though there was no conclusive evidence that she had been hit by an Israeli bullet.

On August 3, a video posted on social media featured Palestinian Authority officers in plainclothes severely beating Palestinian journalist Nidal Al-Natsheh…. His crime: he tried to report about a protest by university students against human rights violations committed by the Palestinian Authority.

On July 31, Palestinian Authority security officers arrested journalist Sami Al-Sa’i… Al-Sa’i has been arrested a number of times for allegedly criticizing the Palestinian Authority on social media. Because of his repeated incarcerations, he has been unable to find work…. Recently, to support his family, he has been selling juice on the streets of Tulkarem.

On July 17, Palestinian Authority security forces arrested journalist Akil Awawdeh… Hours before his arrest, Awawdeh had ridiculed the Palestinian security forces’ spokesperson for stating the Palestinian Authority does not arrest people because of their political affiliation.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate named a number of other journalists also detained and threatened by Hamas security forces and militiamen: Ehab Fasfous, Fouad Jaradah, Mohammed Abu Awn, and Mohammed Haddad.

Many in the international community who pretend to be “pro-Palestinian” do not really care about the Palestinians at all, or about the too-many-to-count vicious human rights violations committed against them every day. They only care about one thing: bash Israel.

These journalists appear so obsessed with reporting on Israel’s “crimes” – real or imagined – that, presumably to avoid casting the Palestinians in a bad light, they painstakingly avoid any story that might reflect negatively on the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. By doing that, however, the international community and media are, in reality, doing incalculable harm to the Palestinian people, who are then forced to continue suffering, without a murmur of help from anyone, under the repressive and undemocratic regimes of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

Christopher F. Rufo Bring on the Counterrevolution Conservatives need a national agenda that reclaims American institutions from the Left. A blueprint exists, from a surprising source.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/bring-on-the-counterrevolution

America is trapped in the loop of 1968. The politics of that fateful year have set the patterns and bounds of our national life for decades.

It’s as though we have lived an endless recurrence: the Black Panther Party reappears as the Black Lives Matter movement; the Weather Underground pamphlets launder themselves into academic papers; the Marxist-Leninist guerrillas trade in their bandoliers and become managers of an elite-led revolution in manners and mores. The ideology, narrative, and aesthetics of the left-wing social movements of that earlier time, though now often degraded through cynicism and repetition, have maintained the position of a jealous hegemon.

The cultural revolution that began a half-century ago, now reflected in a deadening sequence of acronyms—CRT, DEI, ESG, and more—has increasingly become our new official morality. Many conservatives have made an uneasy peace with this transformation of values, even as the culture around them has, in many places, collapsed.

This attitude no longer suffices. It is time to break the loop of 1968. We need a counterrevolution.

This is the word that haunts the revolutionary mind. The French Revolution fell to the forces of Thermidor; the Revolution of 1848 fell to the empire of the bourgeoisie; the Bolshevik Revolution fell to the democratic-capitalists, the imperialist-backed juntas, and the forces of global capitalism. Marx himself viewed counterrevolution as an overwhelming threat. “Every important part of the revolutionary annals from 1848 to 1849 bears the heading: Defeat of the revolution!” he lamented.

The urgent task for the political Right today is to comprehend the dynamics of revolution and counterrevolution and to create a strategy for dislodging the New Left ideology of 1968, which has solidified control over the most fundamental structures of American society. The challenge must be met not solely in the realm of policy debate but on the deepest political and philosophical grounds.

Today’s counterrevolution is not one of class against class but takes place along a new axis between the citizen and an ideologically driven state. Its ultimate ambition is not to replace the new “universal class”—the heirs of the 1960s cultural revolution, who have worked to professionalize it and install it in elite institutions—or to capture the bureaucratic apparatus that the universal class currently controls; instead, it seeks to restore the nation’s founding principle of citizen rule over the state.

Jack Smith’s Sham Indictment Shows Biden Regime Wants To Face Trump The ceaseless lawfare makes Trump more likely to be Republican nominee By Josh Hammer

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/07/jack-smiths-sham-indictment-shows-biden-regime-wants-to-face-trump/

A federal indictment of former President Donald Trump on charges pertaining to his ham-fisted contestation of the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent Jan. 6, 2021 jamboree at the U.S. Capitol was all but a foregone conclusion, and Department of Justice-appointed special counsel Jack Smith delivered the goods on Tuesday. In a 45-page sham indictment of the 45th president’s post-2020 Election Day conduct, President Joe Biden’s hatchet man argued for a ludicrously broad view of fraud and criminal conspiracy, a chilling view of free speech and a dystopian view of the attorney-client relationship. With its unprecedented politicization of the rule of law and brazen siccing of the federal prosecutorial apparatus on a leading partisan foe, the Biden Regime has made explicit that which should have already been obvious: The Regime wants a presidential rematch against Trump next fall.

Smith’s much-anticipated four-count indictment paints Trump as the focal point of a sprawling criminal conspiracy to reverse the results of the 2020 election. Under Smith’s theory of the case, Trump and his six “co-conspirators” directed a national effort to sow doubt about various states’ Election Day results and galvanize Republican-held state legislatures to submit competing slates of Electoral College electors, culminating in the intense pressure placed upon former Vice President Mike Pence to reject various states’ slates of electors on Jan. 6. But if Trump earnestly believed the 2020 election was stolen due to rampant fraud, then his attempts to direct his Department of Justice to work with the afflicted states to submit for consideration alternative slates of electors was justifiable; in fact, if he truly subjectively believed fraud on that great of a scale had occurred, one could plausibly argue his constitutional oath of office required such actions.

Smith’s move to get around this is to argue, based on nothing more than secondhand remarks, that Trump subjectively knew the 2020 election was not, in fact, stolen. But no matter how many different names of lawyers Smith trots out who apparently told Trump that he had in fact lost the election, it will be near-impossible for Smith to prove that Trump actually, deep down, knew he lost. It is entirely possible, for instance, that for every 99 people in his orbit who told him he lost, Trump chose to believe the one person who told him that he had really won; confirmation bias is real, and Trump is well known for taking the advice of the most recent person he happened to have spoken with. Smith’s attempted criminalization of Trump’s free speech right to push for competing slates of electors is also laughable when considering that various Democratic officials tried precisely the same thing — submitting alternative slates of electors by sowing doubt about the integrity of a presidential election in certain states — after George W. Bush’s presidential victories in 2000 and 2004, as well as Trump’s own presidential victory in 2016.

End birthright citizenship now By William Davis

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/end_birthright_citizenship_now.html

The U.S. has long been a magnet for illegal immigration, and no policy has had more of a magnetic force than the guarantee of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens.

It has become accepted as U.S. policy that children born to illegal aliens on U.S. soil automatically gain citizenship, but now at least one member of Congress is seeking to change this.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced legislation last month that would end unqualified birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens, while still allowing children born to refugees, permanent residents, and members of the military to obtain citizenship.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:  “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

This has long been interpreted by anti-borders activists as a guarantee of citizenship for any child of illegal aliens who happens to be born on U.S. soil, but this theory runs afoul of an 1898 Supreme Court holding, in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, that children born in the U.S. to aliens are citizens only “so long as” their parents had permission to be in the country. Unfortunately, this still-binding interpretation of the Constitution has been suppressed and forgotten.

The resulting acceptance of birthright citizenship has encouraged pregnant women all over the world to come to the U.S. before they give birth in order to “guarantee” U.S. citizenship for their children. A 2018 report from NBC News detailed the growing phenomena known as “birth tourism,” where expectant women from countries including Russia and China have scheduled trips to the U.S. shortly before their due date. This is an absurd way to admit new citizens, and unbecoming of the most powerful nation in the world.

Silk Road Paved with Cash: Court records confirm millions flowed to Biden family from China Prosecutor’s evidence trail in Hunter Biden case directly contradicts claims made by President for years.By Steven Richards and John Solomon

https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/silk-road-paved-cash-court-records-confirm-millions-flowed-biden

In the end, there really was a silk road of money that flowed from China to the Biden family’s coffers, despite Joe Biden’s insistence to the contrary.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware — which charged  Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes last month — released to a federal court last week a now-scuttled plea deal that affirmed the presidential son got millions himself from Chinese sources in 2017-18 alone. That included money from a Chinese energy firm as well as legal payments from a Chinese executive convicted of bribery.

The records confirm reporting from investigative author Peter Schweizer’s book “Red Handed,” Just the News stories and investigations by Congress that date to 2020 when Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed bank transfers from Beijing to Biden accounts.

Lawmakers told Just the News last week that the size of the payments from communist China and Joe Biden’s efforts to conceal them raise larger questions about whether such monies to his family caused the president to take actions like refusing to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon or shuttering the FBI’s main Chinese counter-intelligence program rooting out spies in U.S. academia.

The revelations raise questions whether Biden “would be sympathetic to the concerns of other nations or individuals based on previous relationships,” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn., a member of the House Oversight Committee investigating the Biden family’s finances, “And whether that is generally viewed as being compromised.

“When you look at China and their Thousand Talents program, and other programs similar to that, where they pick key individual keys or key government individuals to compromise them, then the policy that would support the United States of America never happens because the individuals are compromised. That is what is so concerning about this,” Perry told the Just the News, No Noise television show last week.

U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ office in Delaware last week released the text of the Hunter Biden plea deal that Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected and which was scrutinized by critics over its broad immunity provision the Department of Justice was prepared to gift the younger Biden.

The description of Hunter Biden’s income in Exhibit 1 of the deal confirms much of the compensation he was previously alleged to have received from Ukraine and China and covers the period from 2016 to 2019. Overall, in 2017 and 2018 Hunter Biden received approximately $4.9 million from confirmed foreign sources.

Ignore President Biden, Here’s What’s Really Happening in Israel What the judicial reform controversy is really all about. by David Harsanyi

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ignore-president-biden-heres-whats-really-happening-in-israel/

President Joe Biden has reportedly asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop pushing through a “divisive” judicial overhaul bill amid protests.

This is the same Biden, incidentally, who crammed through a massive, highly “divisive,” generational spending bill with zero votes from the opposition; the same guy who regularly rules by unconstitutional executive diktats; and the same guy who has done more to delegitimize the Supreme Court than any president in modern history.

In any event, the president is concerned. As is The New York Times, which reports, “The Israeli Parliament passed a deeply contentious law limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to overturn decisions made by government ministers.” What the Times means is that there is a new law limiting the judiciary’s ability to unilaterally declare legislation “unconstitutional” without using any legal justification whatsoever.

Because as it stands, Israel has a robust anti-democratic system overseen by a high court that is probably the most powerful judiciary in the free world. Netanyahu’s judicial reforms — only a tiny piece has passed — would bring Israel back all the way to 1995 when the “judiciary revolution” imbued the court with supreme power over legislation. The alleged authoritarian “backsliding” by Israel’s “far-right” government would likely create a far more “democratic” system.

The judiciary primacy might work if the Israeli court’s decisions were grounded in some kind of statutory authority, traditional legal framework, or even existing regulation and law. But there is no Israeli constitution. The court’s decisions are often arbitrary, politically expedient, constantly evolving, and sometimes contradictory. The court regularly blocks laws passed by center-right governments simply because judges claim policy is unreasonable.