Joe Biden’s Fingerprints Are All Over The Criminal Prosecutions Of Donald Trump
BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND JUNE 03, 2024
In response to Americans’ outcry over the political prosecutions of Donald Trump and a Manhattan jury convicting the former president on 34 felony counts, President Joe Biden declared, “It’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don’t like the verdict.” Coming from the Commander-in-Rigging, this proclamation means nothing.
Biden and those seeking to ensure his re-election have their hands all over Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the former president. A lead prosecutor for Bragg during the trial was Matthew Colangelo. In December 2022, Colangelo left the Biden Department of Justice to “jump start” the criminal case against Trump. Biden had previously named Colangelo his acting associate attorney general—the third-highest-ranking official in the DOJ.
There’s Plenty More Where That Came From
Colangelo’s role in prosecuting his former boss’s political opponent provides the most obvious evidence of the Biden administration’s involvement in the Manhattan D.A.’s criminal targeting of Trump, but the rigging started much earlier. As I previously reported, the incestuous relationship between the Manhattan D.A.’s office and Team Biden began as early as mid-February 2021. Then, “Bragg’s predecessor, District Attorney Cyrus Vance, arranged for private criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Mark Pomerantz to be a special assistant district attorney for the Manhattan D.A.’s office.”
As The New York Times reported at the time, Pomerantz was to work “solely on the Trump investigation” during a temporary leave of absence from his law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison. “But even before being sworn in as a special assistant to the Manhattan D.A., Pomerantz had reportedly ‘been helping with the case informally for months.’” Even Democrats’ most reliable Old Grey Lady (of the evening) acknowledged, “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office.”
Soon after the Manhattan D.A. hired Pomerantz, two of his colleagues, Elyssa Abuhoff and Caroline Williamson, also took leaves of absence from Paul, Weiss to serve as special assistant district attorneys on the Trump investigation. “For a law firm to lend not one but three lawyers to the Manhattan D.A.’s office seems rather magnanimous, until you consider Paul, Weiss’s previous generosity to Joe Biden.”
As I previously reported, during Biden’s first run for the White House, “the law firm hosted a $2,800-per-plate fundraiser for about 100 guests.” Brad Karp, the chair of Paul, Weiss, also topped the list of Biden fundraisers, bundling at least $100,000 for the then-candidate. At the time, Karp wrote in an email: “As someone who cares passionately about preserving the rule of law, safeguarding our democracy and protecting fundamental liberties, I’ve been delighted to do everything I possibly can to support the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket.”
Jonathan Turley Explains Why the Trump Verdict Is Ripe for Appeal
MATT MARGOLIS | 9:52 AM ON JUNE 02, 2024
While the radical left is celebrating a guilty verdict for Trump for a non-crime, George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley is throwing cold water on their celebrations because, as he points out, the Trump trial was "a target-rich environment for an appeal, with multiple layers of reversible error."
"The problem was not the jury,” he insists, "but the prosecutors and the judge."
According to Turley, "the most compelling problems” are the judge, the charges, the evidence, and the instructions.
First, there’s Judge Juan Merchan, who was specifically chosen for this case, continuing a pattern of tough rulings against Trump and his organization. Merchan, as we’ve noted before, has not only donated to Joe Biden’s campaign, but to anti-Trump and anti-GOP groups. His bias has long been established. His daughter is a Democratic organizer who raises funds against Trump and the GOP. Legal experts repeatedly observed that Merchan's rulings were pro-prosecution. Turley, who got to observe Merchan in court, noted that his decisions often seemed incomprehensible and conflicted.
Of course, the next problem was the charges."The Justice Department declined any criminal charges against Trump under federal election law over the alleged 'hush money’ payments,” Turley writes. "The Federal Election Commission likewise found no basis for a civil fine. With no federal prosecution, Bragg decided to use an unprecedented criminal theory not only to zap a dead misdemeanor into life (after the expiration of the statute of limitation) but to allow him to try violations of not only federal election law but also federal taxation violations."
Even the charges themselves were confusing to experts because the actual crime Bragg was alleging wasn’t clear. "The indictment claimed a violation under New York’s election law 17-152 that the falsification of business records were committed to further another crime as an unlawful means to influence the election,” he points out. "However, in a maddeningly circular theory, that other crime could be the falsification of business records. It could also be violations of federal election and taxation laws, which Trump was never charged with, let alone convicted of."
And then there’s the problem with the evidence.
“Judge Merchan allowed a torrent of immaterial and prejudicial evidence to be introduced into the trial by the prosecution. That included testimony from porn actress Stormy Daniels that went into details about having sex with Trump,” Turley writes. "She included a clear suggestion that Trump raped her. After this utterly disgraceful testimony, Merchan expressed regret but actually blamed the defense counsel, despite their prior objections to the testimony."
Turley pointed out that Merchan had previously scolded the defense for making repeated objections, but now he was criticizing them for not making an objection. He also said that Merchan's decisions were “conflicted."
Essential Information For Understanding Why Trump’s Appeal Will Succeed
By Ted Noel June 3, 2024
Donald Trump has been convicted by a jury in Manhattan. “I was convicted. I’m appealing!” Most of us have a TV legal drama perspective. I rise to shine light on this process so that we can properly understand how a guilty verdict was reached in a case where Donald Trump did nothing illegal, immoral, or fattening.
A prosecution must satisfy conditions laid out in the Constitution, which is, should anyone forget, the highest law of the land. It specifies safeguards for the legal process. In the 5th Amendment, we find “No person… shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law…” That due process is further defined in the 6th Amendment.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. (Emphasis added)
The prosecuting attorney is an officer of the court and is duty-bound to guard these steps carefully. DA Alvin Bragg ran roughshod over them. The judge is the referee in the court and is obligated at all times to ensure that the defendant’s constitutional rights are fully safeguarded. Under the rule of lenity, when there is a dispute about the law, his only proper option is to rule in favor of the defendant. This is part of what “due process of law” (5th Amendment) means.
Should the judge fail in his duty, the trial court will no longer be a lawful trier of law. Such failures constitute “reversible error,” and that’s what appellate courts consider. They assume, too, that the jury properly considered the facts presented to it. (See the 7th Amendment) Let’s break this down.
The prosecution and the defense will bring in their witnesses and exhibits. If there are objections by one side that the other side is doing something improper, the judge must rule on the legal propriety of what’s happening. Ultimately, everything that the judge lets through becomes the sole basis for the jury’s verdict. (Spoiler alert!)
Fauci to face House Covid investigators amid growing concern about handling of virus research
Republicans and Democrats have condemned a longtime Fauci adviser and a scientist who received millions from his agency.
By CARMEN PAUN 06/02/2024 12:00 PM EDT
Democrats vigorously defended the public health bureaucracy — and especially its leader, Anthony Fauci — when Republicans sought to tear it down during the pandemic.
But now, in an unexpected twist, Democrats on a House investigative panel are starting to join their GOP colleagues in questioning whether government-backed scientists were fully transparent about controversial virus research and whether a longtime adviser to Fauci skirted public records requests.
This newfound Democratic skepticism will be put to the test on Monday when Fauci will testify about whether he was honest about government involvement in risky virus experiments. The testimony, Fauci’s first public appearance on Capitol Hill since he left government at the end of 2022, comes amid a broader reassessment by Americans about how the government handled the pandemic and the debate over the disease’s origin.
“I don’t think that they could go in any other direction,” Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), the subcommittee chair, said of Democrats’ shift.
Democrats canonized Fauci during the pandemic, while Republicans vilified him.
But on May 1, Democrats on the Covid panel sided with the GOP in condemning Peter Daszak, a British zoologist who has received millions in federal research funding, for failing to comply with government rules governing his work with the Chinese lab at the center of the theory that Covid is man-made, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Less than two weeks ago, they again joined Republicans in blasting David Morens, an infectious disease expert who advised Fauci for nearly a quarter-century, for his cozy rapport with Daszak and his use of Gmail to conduct official business.
“What we all want are facts. There was evidence of things that were not right,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), a member of the panel.
K–12 Student Walkouts: A Legislative Remedy
Students at Highlands Ranch High School walk out in protest of a conservative majority school board in Douglas County which voted to fire the district's superintendent without cause, in Highlands Ranch, Colo., February 7, 2022.(Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)
By STANLEY KURTZ June 3, 2024 6:30 AM
America’s K–16 students have been swept up in successive waves of disorder and lawlessness for about a decade now. In late 2015 and early 2016, set off by claims of racism at the University of Missouri, campus protests punctuated by shout-downs and meeting takeovers spread across the country. Then, in 2017, triggered by the election of President Donald Trump, a wave of shout-downs drove conservative speakers off America’s college campuses, a situation unremedied to this day. Less noticed, but of real importance, in the months following President Trump’s 2016 election victory and well into the next year, anti-Trump high-school walkouts spread across more than half the states. While schools and colleges were largely shut down by the response to Covid during the George Floyd incident of 2020, that year saw America’s youth swept up in riotous demonstrations, statue desecrations, and attempts to intimidate conservatives. And this year, pro-Hamas demonstrators set up illegal encampments at colleges nationwide, took over buildings, and intimidated Jewish students, in some cases driving them off campus. Meanwhile, high schools in blue cities and suburbs have seen a rash of anti-Israel K–12 walkouts, many in coordination with college encampments.
Missing in all this has been any trace of accountability. Speaker shout-downs, college encampments, and high-school walkouts violate school policies and in many cases the law. Yet discipline is rare. On the contrary, campus shout-downs and quad takeovers are sometimes encouraged by faculty and administrators. More disturbing, K–12 student walkouts are often praised and in many cases directly authorized by schools as a form of “civic engagement.” Few Americans are aware of the extent to which civic education has been co-opted and converted into a pretext for political activism under names like “civic engagement” or “action civics.”
Sometimes K–12 “action civics” entails protesting or lobbying after school for course credit. At other times, however, it means walking out of school to protest. Those political walkouts may not count for course credit, but they do generally go undisciplined. Instead of discouraging walkouts by treating them as the unexcused absences they are, schools often exempt them from punishment. And increasingly, blue states and school districts are devising permission systems meant to allow and even encourage mass student walkouts for political purposes.
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