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Tony the Fauch Video Deposition Released Publicly

Catching the Fauch in a lie. Newsmax Photo.

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Does my heart good to see the Fauch lies exposed so all can see. Thanks Newsmax for this great article.

https://youtu.be/soMUg_y3sqw

 

Fauci Emails and Covid Lab Leak Theory

By Nick Koutsobinas    

 

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) has released six video depositions taken in a federal lawsuit that sheds light on what role government actors, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, played in censoring or, as revealed in the Twitter Files, the offshoring of government requests to private social media companies or foreign actors to censor speech around COVID-19.

In his deposition for State of Missouri v. Joseph R. Biden Jr., as NCLA outlines, Fauci “testified ‘I do not recall’ 174 times, and ‘I don’t remember,’ at least 212 times.” According to NCLA, evidence from “his own emails and past statements” indicate the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) “cast substantial doubt” on his claim to a “failing memory.”

According to U.S. Right to Know, Fauci requested Wellcome Trust Director Jeremy Farrar organize a secret teleconference on Feb. 1, 2020, onstensibly to shift concerns from a lab leak to one of natural origin.

Furthermore, NCLA says, “his deposition testimony — that he genuinely believed COVID had natural origins — conflicts with emails he exchanged with scientists in early 2020, indicating that he believed the lab leak hypothesis could be accurate.”

The recent ruling by Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana denying the government defendants’ motion to dismiss has paved the way for the case to continue. The judge was unpersuaded by the defendants’ arguments.

Elvis Chan, who has been named in the Twitter Files, said in his deposition that the FBI played a prominent role in working with Big Tech to sway public opinion. In regard to the wider scope of what’s been termed the “censorship industrial complex,” Chan, on the eve of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, sent Twitter’s then-head of site integrity, Yoel Roth, 10 documents. “Within hours,” journalist Michael Shellenberger writes, “Twitter and other social media companies” began censoring the story.

Nonetheless, the recently filed Supplemental Preliminary Injunction Brief as well as the Proposed Findings of Fact reveal a damning effort by the Biden administration and federal officials’ in employing “illicit tactics” to silence voices on social media that presented views on COVID-19 that were otherwise deemed inconvenient or disfavored.

Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for NCLA, said, “These depositions further confirm what other discovery in the case has already demonstrated: Dozens of members of the federal government, including unelected bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci, orchestrated a campaign to shut down debate about COVID-19 related subjects; and they deceived the American public on issues ranging from the lab leak theory to efficacy of masks to the protection offered by naturally acquired immunity to whether the vaccines could prevent disease transmission.”

The six video depositions from NCLA are included here: “Chan, FBI supervisory special agent; Carol Crawford, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief of the digital media branch; Fauci, NIAID director and White House chief medical adviser; Daniel Kimmage, acting coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center; Brian Scully, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; and Eric Waldo, senior adviser to the surgeon general of the United States.”

Newsmax reached out for comment to the defendants named in the case, including the Department of Justice and the National Institutes of Health.

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Reprints from others. The Law WOKE

Horowitz Seeks Authority to Investigate DOJ Lawyers

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Alvin Bragg needs to do his real job: KT McFarland | John Bachman Now

Alvin Bragg needs to do his real job: KT McFarland | John Bachman Now

By Sandy Fitzgerald    

Thanks to Breitbart for this article.

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz asked members of Congress Thursday to upgrade his authority and allow him to investigate allegations of professional misconduct involving government lawyers who are involved in official investigations, providing legal advice, and conducting litigation.

He told members of the House Appropriation Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies that the IG has the jurisdiction to review allegations of misconduct by non-attorneys in the DOJ, but not the ability to investigate misconduct by department attorneys, including federal prosecutors, when they are acting as lawyers, reported The Epoch Times.

Instead, the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) must assess allegations against department lawyers, including any claims made against the most senior department lawyers, even those in leadership.

“The DOJ’s IG has long questioned this distinction between the treatment of misconduct by attorneys acting in their legal capacity and misconduct by others, a distinction not made in other federal agencies and a limitation not imposed on any other IG,” he said.

But, he said there is no “principled reason” to send such cases to the OPR, which is overseen by the attorney general or the deputy attorney general, “whose leader is appointed by them and can be removed by them,” Horowitz said. “I would venture to say that I doubt any member of Congress has ever been seen before you [the appointed head of OPR] to testify publicly.” This means there is a lack of transparency, he added.

 

“I know from speaking with prosecutors across the country, defense lawyers across the country, and various nongovernmental organizations, that their confidence in that oversight ability has been challenged over the years,” said Horowitz.

He also said, while answering a question from subcommittee Chair Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., that not having authority to investigate lawyers impedes his office’s ability to conduct oversight and creates several issues, including transparency and accountability.

“To my mind, transparency goes with accountability,” he said. “Where you have transparency … transparency is the best disinfectant. If the public knows, if the lawyers in the department know that their misconduct is going to be public, I think that helps reform behavior, and it deters other folks.”

The Inspectors General Act of 1978, signed into law by then-President Jimmy Carter, meant that the DOJ’s IG is the only one of 72 statutory IGs that cannot investigate allegations of professional misconduct.

The House has supported changes in the law, but the Senate has not, Horowitz said.

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How sick is this? Pentagon Doctors Claim 7-Year-Olds Can Consent to Puberty Blockers

A young child holds a pair of trans pride flags at a noon gathering on the steps of the Mississippi Capitol in Jackson, as they protest House Bill 1125, which bans gender-affirming care for trans children, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

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How sick is this? Pentagon Doctors Claim 7-Year-Olds Can Consent to Puberty Blockers. So now the age of reasoning is 7? Thanks to the folks at Breitbart for this article.

Pentagon doctors claimed that seven-year-olds are capable of making decisions to be injected with puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones.

Healthcare providers connected with the Department of Defense (DoD) argued in favor of the so-called “gender-affirming” model of care for children with gender dysphoria, Fox News first reported.

The providers advocated for “gender-affirming health care, such as puberty suppression and affirming hormones,” in the March edition of the American Journal of Public Health, also going on to claim that “youths … have an inherent ability and right to consent to gender-affirming therapy.”

The authors — David A. Klein, Thomas Baxter, Noelle S. Larson, and clinical psychologist, Natasha A. Schvey, PhD — called for the military to train providers with the so-called “gender-affirming” model of care. They did, however, acknowledge that 53 percent of physicians associated with the military through the DoD health system have stated that they would refuse to provide hormones.

Larson, who is a pediatric endocrinologist, works for the Department of Pediatrics at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, while Klein Schvey and Baxter work at California’s Travis Air Force Base.

The entire article can be found here.

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Former AG Whitaker to Newsmax: Bragg’s Trump Case a ‘Slippery Slope’

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Former U.S. Attorney General Matt Whitaker told Newsmax on Wednesday that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s potential criminal case against former President Donald Trump represents a “slippery slope” that will lead to further political prosecutions by both sides across the country.

“I think what’s going to happen is we’re going to go down this slippery slope where local prosecutors start to prosecute folks wearing the other team’s jersey,” Whitaker told “The Chris Salcedo Show” on Wednesday. “Conservative prosecutors in conservative jurisdictions are going to go after Democrat-leaning politicians for ‘stretch cases.'”

Whitaker said that the criminal case Bragg is trying to make in New York against the former president is such a “stretch case.”

“They have to jump over so many hurdles to ever even get it to trial,” he said. “It seems like they just want to file the charges to get the hit in and drive-by media to get their videos and their mug shots, but I think it’s going to be very challenging for our republic to sustain itself.”

Whitaker said he wanted to know where the “statesmen” on both sides of the aisle are now to speak out against this kind of “political targeting” for prosecutions.

He said that the current criminal investigations into Trump, including Bragg’s in New York, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s in Washington, D.C., and one in Atlanta, Georgia, dealing with the 2020 election, are taking place because the left wants to stop Trump from winning in 2024.

“It just seems like we’re watching something where everyone’s trying to trip up the Trump 2024 campaign,” he said. “I hope Trump’s lawyers are up for the fight. I know that the president is, but I hope he’s got people around him that are willing to do whatever it takes to win these cases and to make sure that the truth gets out.“

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DOJ School Board Memo Baseless.

The board of directors of the National School Boards Association has rejected a letter from two of its top officials to President Biden, which has upset the attorney general. Merck Garland’s order to the FBI Investigate complaints of threats from parents to school authorities.

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DOJ School Board Memo Baseless.

House Republicans say there was “no legitimate basis” for Attorney General Merrick Garland’s directive instructing Justice Department divisions to coordinate with local law enforcement to probe school board threats.

“The Justice Department’s own documents demonstrate that there was no compelling nationwide law-enforcement justification for the Attorney General’s directive or the Department components’ execution thereof,” a Tuesday report by the Committee on the Judiciary read.

“After surveying local law enforcement, U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country reported back to Main Justice that there was no legitimate law-enforcement basis for the Attorney General’s directive to use federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism resources to investigate school board-related threats.”

Garland’s memo, issued in October 2021, came than a week after the National School Board Association wrote the Biden administration about the threats to school officials and asked for help. Some school board meetings have devolved into shouting contests over issues such as how racial issues are taught, masks in schools, and COVID-19 vaccines and testing requirements.

In his memo, Garland said there had been “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.”

Republicans say Garland went too far in issuing the directive and insisted he rescind it.

The Committee on the Judiciary is investigating the Biden administration’s use of law enforcement resources on local parents.

The report issued Tuesday also said a local attorney’s office reported that Garland’s directive was “very poorly received” and found it to be a “manufactured issue.”

“No one I spoke with in law enforcement seemed to think that there is a serious national threat directed at school boards, which gave the impression that our priorities are misapplied,” a local attorney’s office stated.

The FBI opened 25 probes into “school board threats,” none of which resulted in federal charges or arrests, the report said.

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An actual scientist. Biologist Defends JK Rowling: ‘Only Two Sexes’

Left denying science. Twitter link.

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An actual scientist. Biologist Defends JK Rowling: ‘Only Two Sexes’

The Left Celebrates Biological Men for Women’s History Month

Richard Dawkins, a prominent British evolutionary biologist, defended author J.K. Rowling on Monday amid backlash for her feminist critique of the transgender movement.

Joining “Piers Morgan Uncensored” on TalkTV, Dawkins accused leftists of bullying Rowling, who created Harry Potter, and lesbian philosopher Kathleen Stock for speaking out about gender.

“It’s bullying,” Dawkins said. “We’ve seen the way J.K. Rowling has been bullied, Kathleen Stock has been bullied. They’ve stood up to it, but it’s very upsetting the way this tiny minority of people has managed to capture the discourse to talk errant nonsense.”

Dawkins, a notable atheist activist, also said he was uninterested in talks about an undetermined number of genders.

“As a biologist, there are two sexes, and that’s all there is to it,” he said, while acknowledging that a debate can still be had about sex and gender being different concepts.

Dawkins later commented on the state of Western universities and colleges, saying that “they have bought into the idea that if you don’t like what you think you’re going to hear from someone, you should shut them up.”

“They want to feel safe, and university is the one place you should not feel safe,” Dawkins said. “You want to be physically safe, but intellectually, you should be challenged.”

Dawkins’ comments came amid ongoing public backlash to Rowling, Stock, and other similar feminists who have been skeptical of the LGBTQ movement’s intrusion into women’s spaces.

“If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives,” Rowling tweeted in 2020. “It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

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Geraldo Rivera Told Conservatives to ‘Put Up or Shut Up’ on Hunter Biden – Boy, Did They Ever Put Up

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By Joe Saunders for The Western Journal with additional quotes from Twitter

This is the hill big-mouthed Geraldo picks to die on?

With Republicans on the House Oversight Committee bearing down -on first son Hunter Biden’s financial records, the knee-jerk liberal at Fox News decided that Tuesday would be a good time to issue a Twitter challenge to Hunter’s legion of critics to “put up or shut up” when it came to law-breaking activity.

Unfortunately for both Hunter and Geraldo, he had plenty of takers.

Well, even if a disgraceful history of drug abuse, adultery, and child abandonment were all there was to the Hunter Biden story, River’s glib “aside from fact he’s been a junkie dirtbag” would rank right up there with “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” as a masterwork of sliding (aka “omitting” – TPR ) the obvious.

But as anyone who’s followed Hunter’s saga with even a half-open eye knows, there’s a lot more to Hunter’s perfidy than personal transgression.

Mollie Hemingway, top-selling author, editor-in-chief of conservative website The Federalist, and Fox News contributor, has both eyes more than half open. And she let Rivera know it in a response bristling with mockery.

That puts it succinctly.

It’s undisputed public knowledge that Hunter Biden lied on a background check form while purchasing a gun in 2018. He’s written a whole book about using illegal drugs. He has a documented history of what are euphemistically called “tax issues.”

Hunter himself has effectively admitted that his lucrative job as a board member of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma was a result of his last name.

The kid-glove treatment of Hunter Biden by the Department of Justice and the FBI Hemingway referred to is a parody of privilege and power.

The FBI, remember, had the Hunter Biden laptop for almost a year before the public became aware of it and its incendiary, incriminating contents thanks to the New York Post’s reporting in 2020 — reporting that was squelched by the lords of social media at the instigation of the FBI.

Plenty of Hemingway’s followers on Twitter chimed in with their own answers to the Rivera challenge:

As one Twitter user put it, “last I knew being called a junkie would require the possession of some kind of illegal drug. Geraldo never disappoints.”

“Dropping your famous-person-dad’s name as part of your con to impress people =/= pay-to-play,” another wrote.

And this one nailed it:

“That Hunter hasn’t been arrested for the myriad crimes for which there is ample evidence on the laptop isn’t an indication of his innocence. It’s proof of the type of corruption we typically see in 3rd world countries.”

Meanwhile, Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, announced on Tuesday that his committee has managed to get through stonewalling by the Treasury Department to get access to records that indicated “suspicious activity” when it came to the Biden family’s finances.

“After two months of dragging their feet, the Treasury Department is finally providing us with access to the suspicious activity reports for the Biden family and their associates’ business transactions,” the Kentucky Republican said in a statement on the Oversight Committee’s website.

“It should never have taken us threatening to hold a hearing and conduct a transcribed interview with an official under the penalty of perjury for Treasury to finally accommodate part of our request.”

The Treasury records Comer is getting are called “suspicious activity reports,” and are generated required from banks and other financial institutions when transactions involve large amounts of money that are suspected of being involved in money laundering, according to a Reuters report explaining the process.

The more the country learns about Hunter Biden’s dealings with foreign companies and governments — including China and its communist dictatorship — the more the country should be worried that the president himself has been compromised by his own past.

As Comer’s statement on the committee’s website made clear, there is more at stake than Hunter Biden or even the whole Biden family.

“According to bank documents we’ve already obtained, we know one company owned by a Biden associate received a $3 million dollar wire from a Chinese energy company two months after Joe Biden left the vice presidency. Soon after, hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts went to members of the Biden family.

“We are going to continue to use bank documents and suspicious activity reports to follow the money trail to determine the extent of the Biden family’s business schemes, if Joe Biden is compromised by these deals, and if there is a national security threat. If Treasury tries to stonewall our investigation again, we will continue to use tools at our disposal to compel compliance.”

To a normal person, that’s a big deal. To a patriotic American, that should be a very big deal.

But to a card-carrying member of the establishment media like Geraldo, Hunter Biden is simply a “junkie dirtbag,” not admirable, but evidently no more guilty — and no more worthy of attention — than any of the countless millions of others who’ve struggled with addiction.

But there’s much more to Hunter Biden than that — dangerously much more.

Mollie Hemingway knows it. Honest Americans who follow the news know it.

Geraldo, either overconfidently corrupt himself or crippled by the willful blindness of the rest of the establishment media when it comes to Biden’s corruption allegations, issued a challenge about the wrong person at the wrong time.

And, boy, did he get an answer.

And, in case you never saw them:

 

This redacted photo shows an underage girl sharing Hunter’s bed. It is rumored to be his dead brother’s daughter, Natalie.

One of the “underage obsessions appears to be a niece,

“800 pages of text messages sent or received by Hunter Biden from 2018 and 2019 repeatedly reveals that his former love interest Hallie, the widow of the late Beau Biden, claimed he behaved in a “sexually inappropriate” way around a minor family member.
Hunter Biden told his sister Ashley Biden that Hallie described him as being “sexually inappropriate” with a minor female family member.
The texts reveal that most members of Hunter Biden’s family seemed to know about these allegations. Among these family members are Hunter’s parents Joe Biden and Jill Biden, his sister Ashley Biden, and Jim Biden, the brother of Joe Biden. In some cases, family members decided to take Hunter’s “side” of the apparent family argument over the allegations, choosing to believe him over Hallie Biden.
Previous reporting pertaining to the situation, including comments by prominent pundit Candace Owens and Rep. Lauren Boebert, have claimed that the teenage relative in question is Natalie Biden.”
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What’s making the news.

Todays news. WSJ Photo

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What’s making the news.

Good morning. This day could go down in history. Former President Donald Trump said that he expects to be arrested over an investigation into a hush-money payment today. And yesterday afternoon, the NYPD began installing steel barricades around Manhattan’s Criminal Court.

It’s still not a sure thing, but if Trump is indicted and arrested, he’d be the first former president to face criminal charges. His lawyers have said that if it happens, he’ll follow standard arrest procedures, including getting fingerprinted and having a mugshot taken. Should be an interesting day.

—Sam Klebanov, Jamie Wilde, Neal Freyman, Abby Rubenstein

  • Markets: Regulators in Switzerland seem to have given US markets a boost by calming investors’ fears of a banking crisis (at least for now). Stocks closed higher yesterday, and regional US banks started gaining again, with PacWest jumping up the most. But not all regional banks—First Republic’s shares plummeted once more, and Jamie Dimon is reportedly trying to engineer another fix for the struggling lender.

  • Amazon will lay off another 9,000 staffers. The e-commerce giant recently finished letting go of 18,000 employees, but it’s already announcing another round of job cuts to reduce spending. The layoffs will take place over the next few weeks and will include workers in its cloud computing, Twitch, advertising, and human resources divisions. The reductions come after Amazon’s ranks swelled to help the company meet surging demand when nobody could go to stores during the pandemic.

    Xi Jinping is visiting “dear friend” Vladimir Putin. China’s leader began a three-day visit to Russia yesterday, meeting with Putin even as the West tries to keep Russia isolated because of its invasion of Ukraine. China has called the trip a “journey of friendship, cooperation, and peace,” while the US has derided it as “diplomatic cover” for alleged Russian war crimes. The US is concerned China may try to sell weapons to Russia or push a peace deal that leaves Russian troops in Ukraine.

    CDC issues warning on fungus. In a possible inspiration for future seasons of The Last of Us, the CDC said yesterday that a fungal threat to human health is growing at “an alarming rate” in health facilities across the US. Candida auris, a drug-resistant and sometimes deadly fungus that grows as a yeast, has now been detected in more than half of all states after first being found in the US in 2016. The fungus can cause infections and is especially dangerous for older people and people with weakened immune systems.

    How funny is this? Junk Science.

    If humanity wants to avoid a Mad Max-like future, the world needs to act now to rein in climate change, a new UN-backed report stressed. “The climate time-bomb is ticking,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. “Humanity is on thin ice—and that ice is melting fast,” he added for dramatic effect.

    Hundreds of scientists from around the world worked together to create the report. One finding the panel has “very high confidence” in? “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” Cue Lloyd Christmas saying, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”

    It’ll take some elbow grease—err, biofuel—to claw back climate change

    Greenhouse gases need to be reduced by 50% by 2030 to keep climate change within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels—and so far, the world’s on track to miss this target. By the early 2050s, we’d need to reach net zero CO2 emissions to stick to the goal.

    Some key tools in the world’s “survival guide,” per the report, which…are all somewhat “duh”:

    • Increase solar and wind power
    • Make cities more bikeable and walkable
    • Cut back on agricultural pollution and limit food waste

    Looking ahead…Guterres is putting the onus on high-income nations (ahem, US) to use their resources to limit their CO2 emissions by 2040—ten years before the rest of the world.—JW

    What else is brewing
    • France’s government narrowly survived no-confidence votes, paving the way for President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the retirement age to take effect.
    • The new CEO of Starbucks, Laxman Narasimhan, took over from founder Howard Schultz two weeks earlier than planned.
    • Eggs have gotten so expensive that Dollar Tree can no longer make a profit selling them.
    • Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old executive chairman of News Corp, is engaged to be married for the fifth time.
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Winning. Sanders Signs Bill to Build Monument to Babies Aborted Under Roe v. Wade

FILE - Then-Arkansas Gov.-elect Sarah Huckabee Sanders answers a question during a Republican Governors Association conference on Nov. 16, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. Gov. Huckabee Sanders has signed a new law that will allow an anti-abortion monument to be built near the state Capitol. Sanders' office said Friday, March 17, 2023 that the Republican governor signed the bill allowing the creation of a privately funded “monument to the unborn” on the Capitol grounds.(AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)

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Sanders Signs Bill to Build Monument to Babies Aborted Under Roe v. Wade

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed a bill into law late last week authorizing the building of a monument on State Capitol grounds to babies aborted during the era of Roe v. Wade, ABC News reported.

The “Monument to Unborn Children Display Act” creates a private fund to cover the cost of the monument, and the Capitol Arts and Grounds Commission will oversee the design of the monument, with the secretary of state having final say over the monument’s design and placement.

The bill, also called Senate Bill 307, details how Arkansas, which now fully bans abortion except to save the life of the mother, was “prevented from protecting the life of unborn children” because of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which declared a constitutional “right” to abortion.

“During the period from 1973 to 2022, approximately at least 236,243 elective abortions were performed in this State,” the bill reads.

It continues:

As a memorial to the lives lost from 1973 to 2022 due to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, and as a constant reminder of our duty to protect the life of every innocent human person, no matter how young or old, or how helpless and vulnerable that person may be, it is the intent of the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas to enact the Monument to Unborn Children Display Act and the Monument to Unborn Children Display Fund.

One of the bill’s sponsors, Arkansas State Rep. Mary Bentley (R), previously said the legislation would allow the state to raise private money for a memorial to “remember those children we were not able to protect and we will not be able to forget,” according to the Associated Press.

“Every single year after Roe was set in 1973, we’ve had a March for Life here because we did not forget,” Bentley said.

Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, bemoaned the bill’s passing, calling the building of a pro-life monument a “performative political stunt.”

Dickson said in a statement to ABC News:

Arkansas is ranked as one of the worst states in the nation for overall child well-being, maternal health, and the life expectancy among adults, yet the legislature has enacted dangerous limits and bans on reproductive healthcare. Lawmakers should be working to protect Arkansans with real solutions instead of this type of performative political stunt.
The Arkansas House previously passed the measure 60-19, with ten Republicans and one Democrat voting “present.” The legislation does not detail where exactly the monument will be placed on Capitol grounds, though the grounds are the site of  “several other monuments, including one honoring the nine Black students who desegregated Little Rock Central High School” and a “Ten Commandments monument that was installed in 2018,” according to the Associated Press.
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Get ready for Manhattan DA’s made-for-TV Trump prosecution.

Witch-hunts continue. Screenshot, Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP, AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

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Thanks to The Hill for this article. Another view on the Witch Hunt.

Get ready for Manhattan DA’s made-for-TV Trump prosecution.

“The moment that we are waiting for, we made it to the finale together” — those familiar words from “America’s Got Talent” — could well be the opening line for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg next week, when he is expected to unveil an indictment of former President Trump. With Trump’s reported announcement that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday, it would be a fitting curtain raiser for a case that has developed more like a television production than a criminal prosecution. Indeed, this indictment was repeatedly rejected only to be brought back by popular demand.

Trump faces serious legal threats in the ongoing Mar-a-Lago investigation. But the New York case would be easily dismissed outside of a jurisdiction like New York, where Bragg can count on highly motivated judges and jurors.

Although it may be politically popular, the case is legally pathetic. Bragg is struggling to twist state laws to effectively prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump over his payment of “hush money” to former stripper Stormy Daniels. In 2018 (yes, that is how long this theory has been around), I wrote how difficult such a federal case would be under existing election laws. Now, six years later, the same theory may be shoehorned into a state claim.

It is extremely difficult to show that paying money to cover up an embarrassing affair was done for election purposes as opposed to an array of obvious other reasons, from protecting a celebrity’s reputation to preserving a marriage. That was demonstrated by the failed federal prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards on a much stronger charge of using campaign funds to cover up an affair.

In this case, Trump reportedly paid Daniels $130,000 in the fall of 2016 to cut off or at least reduce any public scandal. The Southern District of New York’s U.S. Attorney’s office had no love lost for Trump, pursuing him and his associates in myriad investigations, but it ultimately rejected a prosecution based on the election law violations. It was not alone: The Federal Election Commission (FEC) chair also expressed doubts about the theory.

Prosecutors working under Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., also reportedly rejected the viability of using a New York law to effectively charge a federal offense.

More importantly, Bragg himself previously expressed doubts about the case, effectively shutting it down soon after he took office. The two lead prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned in protest. Pomerantz launched a very public campaign against Bragg’s decision, including commenting on a still-pending investigation. He made it clear that Trump was guilty in his mind, even though his former office was still undecided and the grand jury investigation was ongoing.

Pomerantz then did something that shocked many of us as highly unprofessional and improper: Over Bragg’s objection that he was undermining any possible prosecution, Pomerantz published a book detailing the case against an individual who was not charged, let alone convicted.

He was, of course, an instant success in the media that have spent years highlighting a dozen different criminal theories that were never charged against Trump. Pomerantz followed the time-tested combination for success — link Donald Trump to any alleged crime and convey absolute certainty of guilt. For cable TV shows, it was like a heroin hit for an audience in a long agonizing withdrawal.

And the campaign worked. Bragg caved, and “America’s Got Trump” apparently will air after all.

However, before 12 jurors can vote, Bragg still has to get beyond a series of glaring problems which could raise serious appellate challenges later.

While we still do not know the specific state charges in the anticipated indictment, the most-discussed would fall under Section 175 for falsifying business records, based on the claim that Trump used legal expenses to conceal the alleged hush-payments that were supposedly used to violate federal election laws. While some legal experts have insisted such concealment is clearly a criminal matter that must be charged, they were conspicuously silent when Hillary Clinton faced a not-dissimilar campaign-finance allegation.

Last year, the Federal Election Commission fined the Clinton campaign for funding the Steele dossier as a legal expense. The campaign had previously denied funding the dossier, which was used to push false Russia collusion claims against Trump in 2016, and it buried the funding in the campaign’s legal budget. Yet, there was no hue and cry for this type of prosecution in Washington or New York.

A Section 175 charge would normally be a misdemeanor. The only way to convert it into a Class E felony requires a showing that the “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.” That other crime would appear to be the federal election violations which the Justice Department previously declined to charge.

The linkage to a federal offense is critical for another reason: Bragg’s office ran out of time to prosecute this as a misdemeanor years ago; the statute of limitations is two years. Even if he shows this is a viable felony charge, the longer five-year limitation could be hard to establish.

Of course, none of these legalistic problems will be relevant in the coming frenzy. It will be a case that is nothing if not entertaining, one to which you can bring your popcorn — so long as you leave your principles behind.

Indeed, some will view it as poetic justice for this former reality-TV host to be tried like a televised talent show. However, the damage to the legal system is immense whenever political pressure overwhelms prosecutorial judgment. The criminal justice system can be a terrible weapon when used for political purposes, an all-too-familiar spectacle in countries where political foes can be targeted by the party in power.

None of this means Trump is blameless or should not be charged in other cases. However, we seem to be on the verge of watching a prosecution by plebiscite in this case. The season opener of “America’s Got Trump” might be a guaranteed hit with its New York audience — but it should be a flop as a prosecution.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at The George Washington University.

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