RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pandoras-donald-trump-prosecution-e060ceee?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The news late Thursday that a Manhattan grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump is a sad day for the country, with political ramifications that are unpredictable and probably destructive. If there was ever a case that opens Pandora’s box, the first indictment of a former President in U.S. history is it.

The indictment itself remains under seal, so we can’t examine the specific charges and evidence. But we know the charges relate to hush-money payments in 2016 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels about her alleged affair with Mr. Trump. Perhaps Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has new evidence that will be compelling.

But nearby, Ethan Greenberg and Sam Braverman offer speculation based on experience about the potential violations and pitfalls of the case in court. Their analysis doesn’t inspire confidence that this will go down well with the country, or even perhaps inside the courtroom.

As these columns have made clear, we believe any prosecution of a former President should involve a serious offense. The evidence should also be solid enough that a reasonable voter would find it persuasive. The last thing a politically polarized America needs is a case in which partisans line up on either side like a political O.J. Simpson trial. The prosecution must be seen by most of the country as an example of fair-minded justice.

That is doubly so when the case involves a former President who is also running again for the same office, as Mr. Trump now is. Add that the prosecutor belongs to the same Democratic Party as the current President whom Mr. Trump is running against, and the suspicion of a political prosecution will be rampant. This is why we urged Mr. Bragg not to revive a seven-year-old case that federal prosecutors declined to act on.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-takes-a-journalist-hostage-evan-gershkovich-wall-street-journal-vladimir-putin-fsb-dc2317a8?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Russia’s arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich escalates the Kremlin’s habit of taking Americans hostage, and it’s more evidence that Russia is divorcing itself from the community of civilized nations. President Vladimir Putin is now responsible for Mr. Gershkovich’s health and safety, and the Biden Administration has an obligation to press for his release.

Agents of Russia’s notorious Federal Security Bureau snatched Mr. Gershkovich on Wednesday in the city of Yekaterinburg, about 800 miles east of Moscow, where he was on a reporting trip. As of late Thursday, neither the Journal nor the U.S. government had been allowed to contact Mr. Gershkovich.

The FSB is the successor to the Cold War-era KGB, where Mr. Putin learned his brutal methods. An FSB statement on Thursday said the reporter, who is accredited to work in Russia by the country’s foreign ministry, is being charged with espionage.

The Journal denies the allegation, which is dubious on its face. The government closely monitors foreign reporters in Russia, and Mr. Gershkovich has worked there for years. The FSB could have expelled him long ago if it really believed he is a spy.