Dodging the Biden bullet. https://www.news.com.au/world/saudi-arabias-crown-prince-mohammad-bin-salman-dodges-blame-for-jamal-khashoggi-killing/news-story/551e7bb57098720f9b277355cdee0866
Views: 39
U.S. moves to shield Saudi crown prince in journalist killing. Cover up or kissing ass?CBS News is reporting that the administration is not interested in going after the Saudi Prince for the killing of a Journalist.
The Biden administration declared Thursday that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should be considered immune from a lawsuit over his role in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, a turnaround from Joe Biden’s passionate campaign trail denunciations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the brutal slaying.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends the Future Investment Initiative (FII) conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh on October 23, 2018. FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP via Getty Images
The administration said the senior position of the crown prince, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler and recently named prime minister as well, should shield him against a suit brought by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group Khashoggi founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.
The request is non-binding and a judge will ultimately decide whether to grant immunity. But it is bound to anger human rights activists and many U.S. lawmakers, coming as Saudi Arabia has stepped up imprisonment and other retaliation against peaceful critics at home and abroad and has cut oil production, a move seen as undercutting efforts by the U.S. and its allies to punish Russia for its war against Ukraine.
The State Department on Thursday called the administration’s call to shield the Saudi crown prince from U.S. courts in Khashoggi’s killing “purely a legal determination.”
The State Department cited what it said was longstanding precedent. Despite its recommendation to the court, the State Department said in its filing late Thursday, it “takes no view on the merits of the present suit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”
Saudi officials killed Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. They are believed to have dismembered him, although his remains have never been found. The U.S. intelligence community concluded Saudi Arabia’s crown prince had approved the killing of the widely known and respected journalist, who had written critically of Prince Moh
US President Joe Biden seems to have forgotten his promise to make Saudi Arabia a pariah. The Biden administration asked for a 45-day extension to submit suggestions on the status of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman s Sovereign Immunity. Molly Gambhir brings you the details. #Biden #SaudiPrince #WIONFineprint About Channel: WION The World …
A racial discrimination suit was filed cause the guy claims they wanted a black sign language interpreter. What? The white guy wasn’t dancing?
Keith Wann, 53, was one of at least two people forced off the production by the non-profit Theatre Development Fund – which staffs Broadway shows with American Sign Language interpreters – after the group decided it was “no longer appropriate to have white interpreters represent black characters for ASL Broadway shows.”
Wann filed a federal discrimination lawsuit on Tuesday against the organization and the director of its accessibility programs, Lisa Carling.
The Theater Development Fund declined to comment. Carling, Guy and Disney Theatrical Productions, which produced the show, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images, Mario Tama/Getty Images
Views: 22
I think we have a new odd couple. A person who blames all of black folks failures on white folks, and a person who believes that black folks can’t succeed unless a white person does it for them. The new version of Miami Vice. Holder and Hobbs.
The man who armed the drug cartels and the woman who has numerous incidents of racism against people of color.
Arizona Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs is holding a meet and greet with former Obama Administration Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday in Phoenix.
Holder has faced no accountability for the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Fast and Furious scandal, which saw thousands of guns walk to Mexico under his watch. In December 2010, some of the guns were used by members of a Mexican rip crew to murder border patrol agent Brian Terry.
Moreover, Hobbs has drawn scrutiny after one of her former employees in the Arizona State Senate, a black woman named Talonya Adams, successfully sued the legislative body for racial and sexual discrimination that she blames Hobbs for. Adams was awarded $2.75 million to Adams, but state law capped it at $300,000. Between lawyer fees and the payout, which was finally sent in September, the case has cost Arizona taxpayers $758,806.
Who can forget Hobbs high school starring role in Slave day?
Finally, last month Arizona up to 6,000 Arizona voters received faulty ballots only listing federal races under Hobbs’s watch due to a “voter registration error,” as the Associated Press reported. She stated that the error was corrected and the voters would soon receive complete ballots.
“Responding to misinformation is my day job. My night job is RUNNING ELECTIONS.” – CISA document 6/22/22. Name redacted, emphasis added.
Here is a disturbing story. It demonstrates intrigue, corruption, and disdain for American principles at the highest level.
Perhaps the saddest thing about this story is that you probably won’t be surprised. Especially if you’ve been paying attention for the past few years.
The story is this: Twitter and other social media platforms have been cozy with the Department of Homeland Security to squelch what DHS calls “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “malinformation,” or “MDM,” according to an investigative report published Monday by The Intercept.
Job one for Musk was to not only fire CEO Parag Agrawal but also Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and the individual responsible for booting former President Donald Trump off the platform and for censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 election.
You probably remember a few months ago when DHS rolled out what it called its Disinformation Governance Board, designed to go after “MDM” on social media. A firestorm of bad publicity meant the Biden administration had to quickly yank it offstage.
But the concept is still around and Gadde has been part of it.
Gadde is a member of an advisory committee of the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). In June, the committee put out a report that essentially outlined a need to get around the First Amendment to stop “MDM” since it “poses a significant risk to critical functions like elections, public health, financial services and emergency response.”
Also, The Intercept reported on DHS documents saying the agency is going after “MDM” on “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”
In other words, DHS wants to push the Biden administration’s line on many of the controversies Americans might be discussing on social media, and attack or suppress other views that oppose it.
And Twitter has been right there in the middle of it.
Lee Fang, one of the authors of The Intercept article, tweeted that Gadde had met monthly with DHS to discuss censorship and, along with Facebook, Twitter “created special portals for the government to rapidly request takedowns of content.”
The emails and documents show close collaboration b/w DHS & private sector. Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde (fired by @elonmusk last week) met monthly with DHS to discuss censorship plans. Microsoft exec texted DHS: “Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t”
In March, top officials of Twitter and JPMorgan Chase met with Laura Dehmlow, section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force. Dehmlow said subversive information on the internet could undercut support for the U.S. government, according to notes of the meeting reported by The Intercept.
In a statement for The Intercept report, a Twitter representative said the company does not “coordinate with other entities when making content moderation decisions,” following, rather, its own rules in such situations.
Still, Twitter joined other tech companies in monthly meetings with the FBI, CISA and other government agencies to determine how to handle misinformation leading up to the 2020 elections, according to NBC News.
In 2018, DHS began notifying social media companies of what it described as voting disinformation appearing on their platforms. The following year, DHS developed the Foreign Influence and Interference Branch which morphed in 2020 to track communication regarding COVID-19, The Intercept said.
Varied U.S. intelligence agencies moderated social media surrounding the 2020 election and leading up to the November voting there were regular emails among officials of Twitter, DHS and the Center for Internet Security regarding takedown procedures for social media postings.
And while the Disinformation Governance Board was scrapped, DHS in August published a document titled “DHS Needs a Unified Strategy to Counter Disinformation Campaigns.”
In it, DHS intones “such campaigns may aim to erode public trust in our government and the Nation’s critical infrastructure sectors, negatively affect public discourse, or even sway elections.”
Sway elections? You think? Hasn’t that been a major aim of Silicon Valley?
Of course, DHS does not address a key foundational principle which allows for pesky ideas that the Department of Homeland Security considers “MDM.”
It’s contained in the document that proclaims, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The Founders, ever conscious of man’s corruption, knew what’s now called “MDM” would be protected by the First Amendment, but, as in other parts of the Bill of Rights, they also knew liberty was more important than government convenience.
Twitter, as The Intercept report shows, clearly has been involved in the federal government’s attempts to outsource censorship and suppression of dissent.
Musk, Twitter’s new owner, has publicly declared himself to be a “free speech absolutist.”
Clearly, something has to give.
There’s no telling where the company will go now that Musk is in charge, but he was right about one of his first major personnel moves.
America’s corrupt political class — Democrat and Republican — are looking to put the last two years of mask mandates, school closures, mandatory shots, and COVID lockdowns in the rear-view mirror. They don’t want to be voted out of office for destroying your life. That would be called accountability and there’s nothing that America’s ruling-class-pretending-to-be-public-servants dislike more than accountability.
Instead, they want a truce without counting the costs. They want an amnesty without judgment — and certainly without hearings. They want you to grant them toxic forgiveness.
That’s why the ruling class sent out its useful idiots — fourth-rate people like David French and Emily Oster — to see if, you know, the American public was in the mood toforgive them right before the next election. If you are ever asked the name of the very last person on earth to believe that the COVID vaccines work, you can tell them: it was David French.
Hey—sorry you lost your job b/c of the vax that doesn’t work and your grandmother died alone and you couldn’t have a funeral and your brother’s business was needlessly destroyed and your kids have weird heart problems—but let’s just admit we were all wrong and call a truce, eh?
It’s too bad we shut the entire economy down & took on tyrannical powers that have never been used before in this country—looking back, you should have been able to go to church and use public parks while we let people riot in the streets—but it was a confusing time for everyone.
Hey, I’m sorry we scared the hell out of you & lied for years & persecuted & censored anyone who disagreed but there was an election going on & we really wanted to beat Donald Trump so it was important to radically politicize the science even if it destroyed your children’s lives.
OK, yes we said unvaccinated people should die & not get healthcare while never questioning Big Pharma once but we are compassionate people which is why even though we shut down the entire economy we also bankrupted the nation & caused inflation. You’re welcome! Let’s be friends.
Needless to say, our politicians and public health officials really want you to forget that they took America right to the edge of the abyss.
In fact, they have turned America into the Banana Republic of Biden — where your civil rights might exist depending on which judge you get in your state, and what you last posted on your social media accounts.
It’s no surprise that these pleas for amnesty have been published after the midterm polls showed a “red wave” forming. If the polls had gone the other way, Biden’s FBI would probably be wrangling you onto a boxcar right now headed for a FEMA camp — and you know it.
It’s hilarious when Liberal tactics backfire on them. This includes RINOs as well. McConnel has withdrawn funding of candidates in close races where they’ve criticized him. Seems like he’s shooting his (nominal) party in the foot.
DeSantis pointed out that Crist hadn’t been much interested in attending the meetings the last time he was in a legislative office. Like Fetterman, Crist made a fool of himself during the debate.
If Liberals can’t lie and cheat they can’t win.
Florida has not sold its soul to the devil. The Sunshine State still has free and fair elections, and the Democrat fraud in the state — that is still very real — cannot top the Republican vote in the state.
Florida, like Iowa and Ohio, was once a swing state. Today all three bellwether states are reliable Republican strongholds. The Democrats were not able to steal these important states.
On Thursday, Politico broke the news that Democrats are pulling out of Florida. The state is lost. They will put their money elsewhere.
Via Politico. (And you know it’s bad when Politico reports like this:)
National organizations and donors have all but abandoned their candidates — setting off fears that Florida is no longer viewed as competitive. That would have dire implications for the next presidential election.
Florida Democrats are bracing for a very bad night on Nov. 8.
Less than two weeks before the election, Democrats are signaling that key races are slipping away from them. They point to ominous signs and missed opportunities, including the party’s message on abortion rights and gun control that isn’t resonating and a lack of coordination between the campaigns of Rep. Val Demings, who is vying to unseat Sen. Marco Rubio, and Charlie Crist, who is challenging Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Most worrisome for Democrats, national organizations and donors have all but abandoned their candidates — setting off fears that Florida is no longer viewed as competitive.
That would have dire implications for the next presidential election.
And, of course, the democratic acting S-O-S of Pennsylvania is warning that:
Hmm. I wonder why? Do they need time to figure out how many votes they need to manufacture to install Hell’s Angels’ poster boy Fetterman as a Senator? Or (not Ben) Shapiro as Governor? After all, they’ve acknowledged they’ve lost Florida; they won’t be able to unseat DeSantis or Sen. Marco Rubio. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
And look at how the DSCC is whining on their ActBlue donations page:
If Republicans flip even ONE seat, they’ll win back the majority — donate before 11:59 P.M. to make sure this doesn’t happen.
Democrats fought hard and won back the Senate majority — but all of our wins depend on defending and expanding that majority this year. Everyone who cares about blocking the worst of the GOP agenda and making real Democratic change has to start the midterm fight now. If Republicans flip even ONE seat, they win back the majority and Mitch McConnell wins back his power, and right now, we’re already $7,289 short of our monthly goal and don’t have any room for error. Please, will you donate $25 right now to defend and expand the Democratic Senate majority?
We can’t allow Mitch McConnell and the GOP to run our country again.
New York – In Richmond County Supreme Court, Judge Ralph Porzio, has ruled that the vaccine mandates issued by the New York City Health Commissioner are unconstitutional and violate the separation of powers.
The ruling permits city employees to return to work effective immediately and orders back pay.
According to attorney Chad Laveglia, the judge ruled “the commissioner’s order mandating private and public employees get vaccinated was arbitrary and capricious.”
“Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19,” the judge stated.
NY State Supreme Court reinstates all fired unvaccinated employees, orders backpay, says the state violated rights, acted arbitrary & capricious, notes:“Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19.”https://t.co/nvOsWfa56Spic.twitter.com/WhH4wje2bQ
While Laveglia was representing members of the Dept. of Sanitation in New York (DSNY), this ruling will impact the FDNY, NYPD, Dept. of Corrections and all other city employees who were shut down and forced to resign for refusing to cave in to an experimental emergency use vaccine. The Gateway Pundit has previously reported on closures of firehouses in New York City that couldn’t remain open due to personnel shortages. The Gateway Pundit also reported on a mass exodus of NYPD officers; although this was not exclusively related to the vaccine, it does pose a serious problem when the department’s numbers were already impacted greatly by the forced resignations earlier on.
The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance.
The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance.
The defendants, of course, filed a Notice of Appeal. In New York, there are 62 courts, one for each county, representing the Supreme Court. Despite the name, the Supreme Court in New York is not the highest court. That position reigns with the New York Court of Appeals. It appears as though there is still the possibility of one last battle for the DSNY employees and Mr. Laveglia.
The City of New York is represented by the New York City Law Department. This means that the tax-payers of New York City are funding the fight to take away their own rights to work despite their personal decisions not to take an experimental vaccine that has numerous documented health implications in comparison to all other vaccines since the VAERS system began tracking adverse events.
“Did Supreme Court err in granting the petition, granting declaratory relief, and denying respondents’ cross-motion to dismiss, where, among other things, the petition is time-barred and the underlying employee vaccination requirements are entirely lawful and rational, as multiple courts have held”
In the decision from the Richmond Supreme Court, Judge Porizio writes:
“An administrative agency usurps the authority of the legislative branch when it promulgates a rule that the legislature did not delegate it the authority to make in the first instance“
As you read the following, specifically the bold print, remember that the New York City Law Department is expending tax payer dollars to appeal this decision while costing the DSNY employees exorbitant legal fees to fight the appeal. New York is no longer under a state of emergency, Joe Biden declared the pandemic over, and CDC guidelines for vaxxed vs unvaxxed are the same.
“It is clear that the Health Commissioner has the authority to issue public health mandates. No one is refuting that authority.
However, the Health Commissioner cannot create a new condition of employment for City employees. The Health Commissioner cannot prohibit an employee from reporting to work. The Health Commissioner cannot terminate employees. The Mayor cannot exempt certain employees from these orders. Executive Order No. 62 renders all of these vaccine mandates arbitrary and capricious. Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid19.
As of the day of this Decision, CDC guidelines regarding quarantine and isolation are the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The Petitioners should not have been terminated for choosing not to protect themselves. We have learned through the course of the pandemic that the vaccine against Covid-19 is not absolute. Breakthrough cases occur, even for those who have been vaccinated and boosted. President Joseph Biden has said that the pandemic is over. The State of New York ended the Covid-19 state of emergency over a month ago.
As this Court stated in its decision in the Rivicci matter, this is not a commentary on the efficacy of vaccination, but about how we are treating our first responders, the ones who worked day-to-day through the height of the pandemic.They worked without protective gear. They were infected with Covid-19, creating natural immunity. They continued working full duty while their exemption requests were pending. They were terminated and are willing to come back to work for the City that cast them aside.
The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance. If it was about safety and public health, unvaccinated workers would have been placed on leave the moment the order was issued. If it was about safety and public health, the Health Commissioner would have issued city-wide mandates for vaccination for all residents. In a City with a nearly 80% vaccination rate, we shouldn’t be penalizing the people who showed up to work, at great risk to themselves and their families, while we were locked down.
The San Francisco Police Department says people should stay away from Dolores Park.
Views: 46
SF crime wave — mapped in 3D
Another company is calling it quits in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home city.
Outdoor active-wear brand Cotopaxi is closing its San Francisco store after only a year following rampant theft that left the store’s staff “terrified.”
The company’s founder, Davis Smith, announced the closing in a LinkedIn post Tuesday.
“It’s sad, but San Francisco appears to have descended into a city of chaos,” he wrote. “Many streets and parks are overrun with drugs, criminals, and homelessness, and local leadership and law enforcement enable it through inaction.
“One of the most beautiful and amazing cities in the world is now a place where many no longer feel safe visiting or living.”
Smith’s LinkedIn post featured two photos of broken and boarded-up windows.
Smith further outlined a pattern of property crimes, theft, and burglaries affecting his company’s San Francisco location in a Thursday interview with KABC-TV.
According to San Francisco Police Department data, overall crime in San Francisco is up 7.4 percent so far this year compared to the same period last year. But that number tells only part of the story.
In some districts of the city, crime was up over 20 percent. The data also includes only those crimes reported to the police; one would expect that as crime increases and law enforcement shows a general unwillingness or inability to act, reporting would die off even though crime is alive and well.
Moreover, the SFPD uses a “hierarchy rule,” so that in incidents involving multiple reported offenses, “only the highest offense is represented in the dataset.”
In other words, the only thing we can say for sure about crime in San Francisco is that the SFPD database doesn’t capture it all.
Smith’s post not only lamented the crime but the refusal of local officials to address it.
Smith is blaming city authorities and local law enforcement for inaction in the face of the neighborhood’s condition and is closing the store until the situation improves.
“Many streets and parks are overrun with drugs, criminals, and homelessness, and local leadership and law enforcement enable it through inaction,” Smith continued.
“We opened a retail store a year ago on Hayes Street, the charming shopping district just blocks away from the famous Full House home,” he wrote. “Our first week there, our windows were smashed and thousands of dollars of product was stolen. We replaced the window, and it immediately happened again (four times). We replaced with window with plywood as we waited for a month+ to get a metal security gate installed (demand for those gates is creating huge delays).”
As a result, he said, the company was left with no choice but to shutter the location, one of 10 that had been operated by Cotopaxi. The company website lists the location as “temporarily closed,” but Smith didn’t sound optimistic about the chances that it would re-open any time soon.
Security guards don’t help because these theft rings know that security guards won’t/can’t stop them.
“As of today, we are closing the store due to rampant organized theft and lack of safety for our team. Our store is hit by organized theft rings several times per week.They brazenly enter the store and grab thousands of dollars of product and walk out. We started keeping the door locked and opening it only for customers, but even then, they’ll have a woman go to the door, and then hiding individuals rush into the store as soon as the door opens.
“Our team is terrified. They feel unsafe. Security guards don’t help because these theft rings know that security guards won’t/can’t stop them.”
The rule of law is fundamental to human flourishing. Without governmental authorities bearing their sword to the terror of bad actors, chaos ensues.
“For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad,” Paul tells us in Romans. “Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
That’s why, he says, we pay taxes — a point not lost on Smith.
“It’s impossible for a retail store to operate in these circumstances, especially when cities refuse to take any action (despite us paying taxes well above any other state we operate in),” he wrote. “The city recently announced a reduction of police presence in this neighborhood, despite mass-scale crime.”
Smith expressed his sorrow at closing a shop in a city he is fond of — but that’s when he made his most striking point:
“I grew up in Latin America and spent much of my adult life there, and I never felt this unsafe there. Something has to change in San Francisco.”
This comes from two separate articles in The Western Journal.
The Democratic Politicians are facing a potential shellacking in November and they know it. They are desperate to come up with a winning narrative to try and stem their potential losses.
So what is Obama proposing to help Democrats do this? He’s telling them to stop focusing on woke issues so much because they are alienating people and hurting them politically
In a podcast, Obama is literally telling Democrats to stop focusing on identity politics because people are tired of getting lectured that they are the bad guy, and it’s causing them ‘difficulties’:
I think where we get into trouble sometimes is when we try to suggest that because some groups historically have been victimized more, that somehow they have a status that’s different than other people, and we’re going around scolding folks if they don’t use exactly the right phrase; that identity politics becomes the principle lens through which we view our various political challenges.
To me, I think that for a lot of average folks that ends up feeling as if you’re not speaking to me and my concerns…
The less we’re leaning into an argument that says ‘we’re deserving of consideration and you guys are the problem’ – however you want to frame ‘you guys’ – yeah I think most people don’t want to be lectured to in that way and I think that can cause us some difficulties.
Democrats really turned on the woke-ism in the 2020 election and they haven’t looked back since.
But now that they are about to lose hold of their power in Congress, the prevailing wisdom is to dial it back so they can win elections again.
That may sound like a good strategy but I’m afraid that rabbit is out of the hat and it ain’t going back in. Democrat higher-ups are far too entrenched in wokeism to go back now. It would probably split the Democrat party if they tried.
But even so, it’s amazing that this is what their most popular leader in modern times is telling them to do, especially when he pushed them all in this direction.
A video of former US President Donald Trump is played on a screen during a hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Oct. 13.Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
The congressional committee investigating the Capitol riot moved Thursday to force a showdown with Donald Trump, voting to subpoena the former president to testify and turn over documents about his efforts to undermine the 2020 election results.
Legal experts say they expect Trump to refuse to comply, and that there’s little the committee can do about it. Lisa Kern Griffin, a professor at Duke University School of Law, described the vote as “symbolic.”
“It is understandable that they would make that move, and it underscores their point that he was the driver behind the violence and aware of all of the efforts to overturn the election,” said Griffin, who has taught on the presidency and criminal probes. “But subpoenaing him is a gesture. It will not result in any testimony from the former president.”
If Trump challenges the subpoena in court, or if the committee sues to enforce it, the legal fight could take years by raising largely untested questions about immunity for presidents in and out of office. The US Justice Department brought contempt charges against two witnesses who defied Jan. 6 subpoenas, but chose to not prosecute others, so Trump also could take his chances by simply not showing up.
Any subpoena issued by the committee will expire at the end of the congressional term. And if Republicans take control of the House in the midterm elections next month, GOP leaders are expected to end the committee’s work, likely making any subpoena fight moot.
The Jan. 6 committee hasn’t set a date for Trump to testify or produce documents. Representative Jamie Raskin, a California Democrat, told CNN members hadn’t discussed what they would do if Trump refused to comply.
The former president didn’t take long to respond.
“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago?” Trump wrote in the post on his Truth Social platform Thursday. “Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting? Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST’ that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly – A laughing stock all over the World?”
Multiple former Trump administration officials and allies have spent months in federal court fighting the committee’s efforts to gather emails and phone records, arguing that they can’t be forced to testify.
A challenge by Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been pending for nearly a year. A judge heard arguments in September but has yet to rule. Even if a decision comes before the end of the year, it could be appealed and ultimately got to the US Supreme Court, adding months or even years to the litigation.
If Trump seeks to resist the subpoena in court, he’d likely invoke longstanding Justice Department policies that protect presidents — even after they leave office — from being forced to testify, said Jonathan Shaub, a professor at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law and former attorney-adviser in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
In a 2007 memo, the Office of Legal Counsel pointed to the example of former President Harry Truman, who refused to comply with a subpoena from the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Truman wrote in a letter at the time that, “if the doctrine of separation of powers and the independence of the Presidency is to have any validity at all, it must be equally applicable to a President after his term of office has expired when he is sought to be examined with respect to any acts occurring while he is President.”
On Page one of the link to the PDF, President Truman gives his response.
In layman’s terms, separation of powers.
Justice Department policy isn’t binding on judges and there are no past court cases to point to as legal precedent for a former president refusing a congressional subpoena to testify.
Risk of Prosecution
Still, longtime Trump ally and adviser Steve Bannon was successfully prosecuted for contempt of Congress when he refused to comply with a Jan. 6 committee subpoena. Prosecutors also are pursuing a case against former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.
But former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former top White House communications deputy Dan Scavino didn’t face prosecution for their refusal to honor subpoenas, even after the committee made criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
“I don’t think he’s really afraid of contempt,” Shaub said of Trump.
The former president has lost several legal fights with Congress over demands for documents, but this is the first time he’s faced a direct subpoena to testify.
Earlier Supreme Court rulings involving Trump-related investigations — including a congressional demand for information about his finances and a grand jury subpoena out of New York — took account of his status as a sitting president, which he no longer holds.
A years-long fight over Congress’ efforts to subpoena testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn ended last year with a voluntary agreement by McGahn to testify, which left no definitive precedent for how to resolve such conflicts in the future.
If Trump should unexpectedly decide to appear before the committee, there’s a good chance his lawyers would advise him to invoke the Fifth Amendment’s protections against self-incrimination, Kimberly Wehle, a visiting professor at American University Washington College of Law, wrote in an email.
“It’s being done more for the record and for the American people — for the history books — because it’s highly unlikely it will actually produce testimony by the former President,” Wehle said.
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The Democratic Politicians are facing a potential shellacking in November and they know it. They are desperate to come up with a winning narrative to try and stem their potential losses.
