Category: The Courts

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Corruption Just my own thoughts Opinion Politics The Courts The Law Uncategorized

Why Trump shouldn’t be charged. And if he is, he walks.

Winning is so much fun.

Why Trump shouldn’t be charged. And if he is, he walks. Pence who didn’t have the power to declassify wasn’t charged. Biden will not be charged, so Trump who had the power (and did) declassify should not be charged. And that phony obstruction charge? If Trump declassified the documents, he was correct in saying he had no classified documents.

“The minute the president speaks about it to someone, he has the ability to declassify anything at any time without any process.” As long as it’s before the fact and several people were witness to the President doing just that.

Parlatore said that even if the report is true that there is a tape where Trump acknowledges the existence of a classified document in his possession connected to Iran and that it reveals the former president knew the material was classified and that he was not permitted to share it, prosecuting Trump might not be the best decision “because there are all of these other problems. Classification is not binding on the jury. You have to actually take these documents, show them to the jury, and then prove to them that it constitutes national defense information.” Former Trump attorney said.

 

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Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. The Courts

Supreme Court preview: Major decisions still to come.

Waiting for a decision. eight Amendment.
Supreme Court preview: Major decisions still to come

Zach Schonfeld, The Hill

Updated: 

(The Hill) – The Supreme Court’s decision season is in full swing.

The justices in the coming weeks will hand down major rulings on student debt relief, affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act, with opinions in 30 remaining cases expected to be released by June 30.

Here’s a preview of the major decisions.

Student Debt Relief

The fate of President Biden’s student debt relief plan rests with the justices, who are weighing two separate challenges: one from six Republican-led states, the other from two individual borrowers.

At stake is whether more than 40 million Americans will receive debt relief — as well as a major Biden campaign promise.

The plan, currently on hold, would cancel up to $20,000 in loans for Pell Grant recipients and $10,000 for other borrowers, if the individual’s income is less than $125,000. The income limit is doubled for married couples.

The conservative-majority court during February’s oral argument cast doubt that the administration had the authority to unilaterally cancel hundreds of billions of dollars worth of student debt.

It’s possible, however, that the court throws out the challenges without reaching the merits. Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett during oral argument joined the court’s three liberals in fiercely questioning the challengers on whether they had legal standing to sue in the first place.

Affirmative Action

Decades of affirmative action programs in college admissions may soon be coming to an end.

The Supreme Court is considering challenges to the admissions policies of both Harvard University’s and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The rulings will have nationwide impacts.

The justices are explicitly being asked to overturn a landmark 2003 decision that allowed race to be considered as one of many factors in college admissions.

Affirmative action survived another challenge before the justices in 2016, but the addition of former President Trump’s appointees in the years since has turned the court to the right.

It makes the twin cases now before the justices the greatest threat yet to affirmative action programs; at oral argument, the court signaled skepticism about upholding race-conscious admissions policies.

Voting Rights Act

The justices are poised to decide when states must draw minority-majority districts as the court resolves a dispute involving Alabama’s congressional map.

The opinion could further narrow the Voting Rights Act, a decade after the court disallowed another provision — which controlled which state and local governments were subject to federal preclearance before changing their voting laws — due to being unconstitutional.

In Alabama, state Republicans are asking the justices to reverse a lower ruling that found their map violated Section 2 of the law, which remains in effect.

Alabama’s map includes one majority-Black congressional district out of seven total, despite the group accounting for 27 percent of the state’s population. A three-judge panel ruled the map violated Section 2 by impermissibly packing Black voters into one district and spreading them out throughout others.

The GOP-led state argues their design was race-neutral, and that following the opposing arguments would prioritize race above traditional redistricting principles.

In a 5-4 vote last year, the court temporarily reinstated Alabama’s map as it took up the case. Several conservative justices seemed open to raising the legal bar for Voting Rights Act map challenges, but even if Alabama comes out victorious, it’s unclear exactly how broadly the court will rule.

American Indian adoptions

The Supreme Court may soon prompt a major shift in how foster care placements and adoptions are handled for thousands of American Indian children.

The justices are hearing a constitutional challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which Congress enacted in 1978 to combat the common practice of separating Native children from their family and tribe.

The ICWA imposes minimum standards for removing Native children and establishes default preferences for their adoption and foster care placements.

Several couples that sought to adopt or foster Native children are suing over the law, contending it institutes racial classifications that violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

They are joined by Texas and a parent whose Native biological child was adopted by one of the couples. The parties further argue that Congress exceeded its authority in enacting the law.

Several tribes and the Biden administration defended the ICWA before the justices, insisting the law’s references to “Indian child” and tribes are political-based distinctions, not race-based ones.

LGBTQ protections

First came the cake baker. Now comes the website designer

Various wedding vendors who oppose same-sex marriage and say their products amount to pure speech have challenged public accommodation laws that require them to provide equal services regardless of a customer’s sexual orientation.

Taking up a challenge to Colorado’s law, the high court may put its thumb on the scale this term.

In 2018, the court avoided weighing in on the hot-button issue by resolving cake shop owner Jack Phillips’s challenge to Colorado’s law on narrow grounds.

A few miles away from Phillips’s shop, website designer Lorie Smith wants to create wedding websites. But Colorado’s law would require Smith to offer those services to same-sex couples.

She’s asked the justices to decide the question they never reached five years ago. At oral argument, the court’s conservatives signaled support for Smith.

Independent State Legislature Theory

An appeal from North Carolina Republican state lawmakers may upend legal challenges to congressional maps and other federal election rules. It could also be a dud.

The case involves the so-called “independent state legislature” theory, which contends that the Constitution gives state legislatures near-total authority to regulate federal elections, removing all other state-level bodies from the process.

Following that argument would prevent state courts and state constitutions from hearing claims such as partisan gerrymandering in congressional redistricting.

Last year, Democratic-majority North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the state’s Republican-drawn congressional map. It prompted the state lawmakers to appeal to the nation’s highest court and argue that the state court had no authority, urging the justices to adopt the theory.

The justices appeared to search for a middle path during oral argument in December. But now, they might not need to reach the merits at all.

After Republicans regained control of the North Carolina Supreme Court in the midterms, the new majority granted a rare rehearing of the case and overturned the earlier decision.

The justices in Washington have since questioned whether they still have authority to move ahead, since they are hearing an appeal of a ruling that effectively no longer exists.

Dismissing the case could also punt the issue to the 2024 election cycle.

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Leftist Virtue(!) Media Woke Racism The Courts WOKE

This Supreme Court case could spell the beginning of the end for affirmative action. DEI-ers are bracing for a crisis.

This article appears in the June/July 2023 issue of Fortune with the headline, “The end of affirmative action?”https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3JgZEG_0mfat9pt00

**Fortune Magazine is a woke-promoting organization. Notice the blatant propaganda in their choice of the picture above**
Somewhere along the way, “Diversity and Inclusion” added “Equity” — which is the left’s code word for “preferential treatment” — TPR

Why diversity advocates see a Supreme Court case on college admissions as a looming crisis for corporate America.

It may seem like a harsh assessment of human nature, but people don’t generally do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do, says Natalie Gillard, who has worked in diversity, equity, and inclusion for over a decade. That’s why laws and mandates exist.

And that’s why Gillard has been anxiously watching the Supreme Court. While the ruling had not come down when this issue went to press, court watchers say the conservative majority is very likely to strike down or severely restrict race-based college admissions programs in June. Many fear that prohibiting the use of race as a factor in college admissions will unleash a legal dismantling of over half a century’s worth of laws and rulings aimed at remedying the systemic inequities racial minorities face in the U.S.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in October in the case brought by Students for Fair Admissions, an organization founded by the anti-affirmative-action legal activist Edward Blum, against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, accusing the institutions of discriminating against Asian American and white applicants.

While this decision on affirmative action will most directly affect higher education admissions, legal analysts say it could open the floodgates to upending diversity initiatives in other areas, including the corporate landscape.

And Gillard and her colleagues in DEI are bracing for a crisis. Gillard created Factuality, a 90-minute interactive game and “crash course” in structural inequality that has been used as an employee-training tool at companies such as Google, Nike, and American Express, as well as at Yale University, among others. Factuality has seen an uptick in demand in recent years, but Gillard is under no illusions about why companies hire her: “I really feel that there are people who participate in these programs and initiatives because it’s required and mandatory,” she tells Fortune, “and that with this decision they’re just emboldened to stop.”

Last year the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, had a transformative cultural and legal effect—leading to a cascade of states passing near-total abortion bans and restrictions on reproductive rights. The affirmative action ruling may not be as far-reaching, but it is a bellwether for a shift in the conversation about race and racism broadly, says Richard Leong, a senior strategist at Collective, a DEI consultancy headquartered in Brooklyn.

“I think it really begins to throw into jeopardy whether or not we can continue to use race and ethnicity as a demographic identifier,” Leong says, adding, “The DEI industry as it is today is already under fire.”

Indeed, DEI initiatives at public universities have been challenged in Florida and Texas this year. Corporate DEI programs have been the target of rage and ridicule in op-eds from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal. And amid a wave of layoffs, many tech companies are rolling back their diversity pledges, cutting DEI roles at disproportionate rates.

Gillard says she has already seen the effects in her business: She used to collaborate often with companies and organizations in Texas and Florida, she tells Fortune, but she no longer works in those states because organizations are unsure about what they can and cannot do, and fearful of causing controversy.

“I’m concerned the decision will only further curtail our efforts,” Gillard says. “After this you’ll really be able to identify who has always been on board and who never really was.”

A ripple effect

Legal experts say that if the Supreme Court decision goes as expected, it could have a ripple effect on corporate diversity programs. The decision could “augur where the court might go with respect to certain programs for private employers,” says Kevin Cloutier, a partner in the law firm Sheppard Mullin’s labor and employment and business trial practice groups. The courts may rule to strike down affirmative action programs for federal contractors, or be more receptive to reverse discrimination claims against private companies

The most direct impact of the Supreme Court prohibiting race-based admissions decisions is that universities will very likely become less diverse over time—as has happened in public university systems in states where affirmative action is already banned. If so, companies will be left with a more homogenous talent pool to recruit from.

And there are likely to be knock-on effects for companies, says Camille Bryant, an attorney and member of the labor and employment practice group at McGlinchey Stafford. It may be harder to live up to the ESG commitments that companies have made to investors, for example. And less diverse workforces may turn off customers, who increasingly expect brands to be inclusive. More homogenous workplaces are also less appealing to millennial and Gen Z workers, who have high expectations of workforce diversity.

“After this you’ll really be able to identify who has always been on board and who never really was.”

Natalie Gillard, creator, Factuality

Less diverse talent pipelines could have a substantial effect on outcomes at some organizations. A recent study found, for example, that a higher prevalence of Black doctors led to lower mortality rates among Black residents in those counties. But with less diverse medical programs, hospitals will likely employ fewer Black doctors, negatively impacting patient care.

Backlash to the backlash

The Supreme Court case comes at a critical time for the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion. It has been three years since the murder of George Floyd brought about a reckoning on racism in the summer of 2020, and many Black and brown workers remain skeptical of their companies’ lip service to the ideals of diversity, dismissing them as “performative allyship.”

“DEI is a journey, not a destination,” says Ericka Brownlee-Keller, DEI head at a renewable energy company. “It really depends on the fabric and culture of the company you’re in.”

BlackRock is one company that decided to take a hard look at its own record, and the results were revealing. In March 2022, the asset management firm hired a third-party law firm to audit the progress it had and hadn’t made on its multiyear racial equity plans, launched in 2021. The audit found that BlackRock was adhering to the letter of its diversity goals—increasing Black and Latinx hires by 30% and improving representation at senior levels—but was failing in some respects when it comes to the spirit of those goals. It has struggled, for example, to retain its Black and brown employees.

BlackRock is also an early case study of a trend DEI professionals say is growing, and the Supreme Court decision could accelerate: backlash to perceived “wokeness.”

21%

Percentage of companies that have a senior role fully dedicated to DEI. Source: Paradigm’s State of Data-Driven DEO, 2022

In April, the conservative group America First Legal (founded by former Trump administration official Stephen Miller) said it had filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requesting a civil rights investigation into whether the BlackRock Founders Scholarship, an internship for minority students, discriminates against students who don’t qualify as minorities.

Incidents like that are why DEI professionals Fortune spoke with don’t believe it’s overblown to see the looming Supreme Court decision as a time bomb. They’ve kept tabs on the responses to the court overturning Roe v. Wade last year, and watched as state legislators quickly moved to severely restrict or ban abortions in the wake of the decision. They’ve braced themselves as anti-LGBTQ cultural narratives have gathered steam in recent years, leading to new state laws restricting access to gender-affirming care and accommodations. And they’ve watched as bans have throttled discussion of sexual orientation and Black history in schools.

“What we’re seeing is in a lot of ways a backlash to us being able to have made so much progress,” says Brownlee-Keller. “We often talk about ‘When’s the other shoe gonna drop?’ A lot of this is people’s fears being realized.”

Some argue that diversity initiatives won’t completely crumble on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision, that the field has come too far and the people doing the work are too committed. “This might hinder the progress we’ve made in DEI, but I think we’ll find other avenues,” Brownlee-Keller says. “People in these roles are resilient.”

Strategize now

Many DEI professionals are coming up with lists of actions for employers to consider, no matter how the Supreme Court rules. The first is to review DEI programs and ensure the company has a robust and evidence-based case for these initiatives, says Evelyn Carter, a social psychologist and president of the diversity and inclusion consulting firm Paradigm.

For example, a company may discover that the promotion pipeline for Black leaders falls off at a specific ranking, based on 10 years of company data. If the company determines that it has failed to support this talent for promotions, it might implement a program to address the problem. Using data to explain these moves helps ensure that company initiatives are not “misconstrued as things that are being done because Black folks or folks of color are deficient,” says Carter, “but rather recognizing it as what it is: righting systemic inequities.” It could also help ensure that the program would survive a legal challenge.

It’s crucial, too, for companies to diligently vet public statements related to diversity initiatives. For example, in today’s climate, making public promises that a company’s board will be 25% female could create a legal vulnerability, Bryant, the McGlinchey Stafford lawyer, says. “Sometimes messages that are very well intended can get an organization in hot water if it’s not necessarily done and crafted in the right way.”

75%

Percentage of employees who don’t think their organization’s racial equity policies are genuine. Source: Catalyst Survey, 2022

That’s a lesson several of Carter’s clients learned last year after announcing plans to pay for employees’ travel costs if they have to cross state lines to get abortions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Instead of just applause, they faced controversy and complaints.

“There were employees who said, ‘This goes against my values, and I am upset that you would be seen as a company supporting abortion,’ ” Carter says. “A lot of clients said, ‘We thought we did the right thing. But now these people are upset.’ ” Developing internal FAQs to respond to questions or complaints from employees will help managers and human resources teams avoid being caught off guard if and when such a controversy erupts.

Creating new pathways for diverse recruitment will also be key, and might include doubling down on partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities and other minority institutions and on sponsorship and mentorship programs, as well as more actively developing the pipeline for diverse talent.

“This is the time to help your DEI team.”

Evelyn Carter, president, Paradigm

Most important, company leaders should ask what their DEI teams need. These often small and under-resourced teams may soon have to respond to an influx of reverse discrimination claims and handle a slew of complex internal and external communications. That might involve training managers to see and address bias and harassment and training HR to understand how discrimination impacts employee performance.

Employees may also have to navigate more internal strife, microaggressions, and harassment, so companies might consider increasing access to mental health resources such as therapy services and warmlines for employees—free, confidential lines where employees can seek guidance, support or a listening ear.

“That’s a lot. So this is the time to help your DEI team,” Carter says. “Ask your team what they need, and then deliver on it.”

 

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Corruption Links from other news sources. The Courts

Race Baiters and White Progressives complain about Thomas and Roberts. What about Sotomayor?

Took thre million from a book publisher who had cases before the court.

Race Baiters and White Progressives complain about Thomas and Roberts. What about Sotomayor? Recently we’ve been hearing about Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas. Especially about Thomas having a rich friend. A friend who hasn’t had any cases before the court. But what about one of the race baiting Justices?

Sotomayor did not recuse herself when her publisher had cases before the court. But look what I found. In 2013, Sotomayor voted in a decision on whether the court should hear a case against the publisher called Aaron Greenspan v. Random House. Now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer, who had received money from the book publisher, recused himself in that case.

What say you?

Joe Scarborough responds to the latest Clarence Thomas non-scandal by saying “imagine what would happen if it were Justice Sotomayor” and “everybody at this table would be shocked and outrage and had be critical if this were a liberal justice” Who wants to tell him? pic.twitter.com/EsBrzPF8uL

— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) May 4, 2023

 

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Links from other news sources. Reprints from others. The Courts

Clarence Thomas is taking one for the team. The controversy over his gifts is another tempest to fill the dead space between Orange Man Bad stories

An African American Hero. Associate US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas poses for the official photo at the Supreme Court (Getty)

Clarence Thomas is taking one for the team.

Did Clarence Thomas do anything wrong in accepting gifts from a wealthy Republican? Or is he the victim of years of pent-up anger at the Supreme Court by Democrats?

Yes.

According to an investigation by ProPublica, for more than twenty years, Justice Thomas received lavish and expensive gifts, including trips on a private yacht and a private jet, from Harlan Crow, a Texas billionaire and real estate developer with a long record of support for Republican politicians. Under the ethics regulations that guide Supreme Court justices, it is not clear that Thomas had to report any of this. (Thomas says the guidance he received affirmed he did not need to report any of the gifts as his angel, Crow, had no business before the Court and the trips were “personal hospitality” — a gift from a friend.)

ProPublica asserts that the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 required Thomas to report these gifts. This is probably untrue. People do not report “personal hospitality,” such as Thomas’s vacations. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that the Judicial Conference issued new guidelines saying free trips and air travel must now be reported. This was announced as a change in policy, meaning disclosure was not required in the past but would be in the future. It is as simple as that.

So it appears that while Thomas did not break the letter of these regulations, he certainly skirted the edge of what we’ll call propriety — the appearance of being on Harlan Crow’s extended payroll. For a guy who has lived so long in Democratic crosshairs. it seemed an unwise thing for Thomas to do, even if it was legal. One theme of government ethics classes is you don’t just have to demonstrate actual impropriety; you must avoid even the possible appearance of impropriety. Accepting lavish travel perks (or operating your own email server) is just not what regular feds do.

Thomas’s long war with the left started with his confirmation hearings in 1991 after his nomination by President George H.W. Bush. Anita Hill, who worked for Thomas at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Thomas had sexually harassed her. Her testimony ignited a national conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace and the treatment of women in the legal profession. It introduced many Americans to the vocabulary of pornography long before Bill Clinton soiled the waters (small world: Senator Joe Biden was then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversaw the confirmation process. Biden has faced criticism for his sexist handling of Hill’s testimony and for not allowing three other female witnesses to testify.)

As a jurist, criticism of Thomas has focused on three points. Many liberals disagree with his conservative judicial philosophy, which emphasizes originalism and strict interpretation of the Constitution. They argue that this approach leads to narrow interpretations of individual rights and protections, particularly for marginalized groups. Similarly, liberals criticize Justice Thomas for his opposition to affirmative action and other civil rights policies. They argue that his views on these issues are harmful to communities of color. Lastly, Thomas is known for being one of the least vocal members of the Supreme Court, rarely asking questions during oral arguments or engaging in public discourse about his opinions. Some liberals argue that this makes it difficult to understand his reasoning. There are accusations that he often makes up his mind along ideological lines before even hearing a case.

Thomas has more recently become a lightning rod for everything Democrats have come to hate about the Supreme Court, as the Court has shifted rightward and Roe v. Wade was overturned. They see Thomas’s “corruption” as emblematic of the Court’s outsize power due to lifetime appointments, isolation from traditional constitutional checks and balances, and virtual immunity from public pressure, making it a magnet for corruption and influence-peddling. They see Harlan Crow as having purchased direct access to one of the most influential and powerful men in America and argue that while Crow may not have a specific issue in front of the Court, he holds a generic interest in right-wing causes and thus has bought himself a sympathetic judge for his broader conservative agenda.

Things only got worse when it was discovered that Thomas’s spouse Ginni donated to Republican causes and sent texts cheering on the protests of January 6. A woman with political thoughts of her own!

The only real check and balance on Supreme Court justices is formal impeachment and removal from the bench, so it’s not surprising that at the first sign of impropriety Democrats like AOC immediately called for Thomas to be impeached. It won’t happen: the standards for impeachment are high, whether what Thomas did actually qualifies is far from clear, and a partisan Congress will never go along with it. Only one Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached: Samuel Chase, in 1804, for alleged political bias in his judicial conduct. The Senate held a trial, but ultimately acquitted Chase of all charges. In addition, Justice Abe Fortas did resign more than fifty years ago over money issues, ahead of a likely try at impeachment.

Some have already gone further than the expected calls for hearings and investigations. The New Republic writes, “The Democrats need to destroy Clarence Thomas’s reputation. They’ll never successfully impeach him. But so what? Make him a metaphor for every insidious thing the far right has done to this country.” The magazine went on to call him the “single worst Supreme Court justice of all time. Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment to the Supreme Court and the country, and the worship of this man on the right is one of the greatest symbols of their contempt for standards, the law, precedent, and democracy.”

The hyperbole gives it away — this is another tempest to fill the dead space between Orange Man Bad stories. Thomas should not be proud of his actions, but nor should he face impeachment, never mind some sort of public drawing and quartering of his reputation. Clarence Thomas is taking one for the team.

By

Peter Van Buren

Peter Van Buren is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.

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Just my own thoughts The Courts The Law

What a crybaby.

Note that the picture Oberman uses clearly shows that the thing is a link to Nationalfile.com.

What a crybaby. So the local yokel from NYC is now begging the Federal courts  to bail his butt out of having to explain why he would use federal charges in a state court.

He created these phony 34 charges and now wants a federal judge to help him out of this mess. Well he used Federal charges and spent Federal dollars on this, so yes Congress has a right to call him out.

He’s outright lying claiming that Congress wants him to reveal his strategy. They are only asking him to explain how he came up with his charges since he’s a local yokel trying to use big boy charges.

 

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Links from other news sources. The Courts

U.S. Circuit Court Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch have decided they will no longer hire students from the woke law school.

Not hiring Stanford Students.

U.S. Circuit Court Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch have decided they will no longer hire students from the woke law school.

 

This from The Free Beacon.

Ho’s announcement is the latest and most dramatic effort to hold Stanford accountable for its treatment of Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan, who was shouted down by hundreds of students—and berated by Stanford diversity dean Tirien Steinbach—when he spoke at the law school last month. The students called Duncan “scum,” asked why he couldn’t “find the cl*t,” and screamed, “We hope your daughters get raped.”

Though Steinbach is on leave, Stanford has ruled out disciplining the hecklers, who by Stanford’s own admission violated the school’s free speech policy.

“Rules aren’t rules without consequences,” Ho said. “And students who practice intolerance don’t belong in the legal profession.”

Calling the disruption an act of “intellectual terrorism,” Ho argued that Duncan’s treatment reflects “rampant” viewpoint discrimination at elite law schools, some of which do not employ a single center-right professor.

If they could get the names, maybe pass that to all the judges nationwide

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Corruption Elections Leftist Virtue(!) Politics The Courts The Law

Fact Check: George Soros Responds to Trump Indictment by Claiming He Didn’t Fund Alvin Bragg – Is That True?

Billionaire George Soros, left, denied funding Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s campaign, but there’s more to the story. (Sean Gallup / Getty Images; Ed Jones – AFP / Getty Images )

 By Richard Moorhead for The Western Journal  March 31, 2023, at 4:37pm

Leftist oligarch George Soros is claiming that he hasn’t funded Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor behind the indictment of former President Donald Trump.

Soros claimed as much in a Friday text sent to Semafor’s Steve Clemons.

The Hungarian-born billionaire emphasized that he doesn’t know Bragg personally.

“As for Alvin Bragg … I did not contribute to his campaign and I don’t know him,” he wrote.

“I think some on the right would rather focus on far-fetched conspiracy theories than on the serious charges against the former President.”

However, there’s more to the story than Soros’ partial denial.

The leftist megadonor is the biggest individual contributor to Color of Change, a Super PAC that heavily supported Bragg in his campaign for office in 2021.

Color of Change ended up spending about $500,000 in support of Bragg, according to The New York Times.

Campaign finance law forbids direct donations to campaigns in excess of $3,300, a figure that’s increased since Bragg’s 2021 campaign.

Soros highlighted that he hadn’t contributed directly to Bragg’s campaign in a Friday tweet — without addressing his funding of a PAC that supported him.

Soros donated $1 million to the group just days after it endorsed Bragg in 2021, with the likely knowledge that his contributions would be used to assist in Bragg’s election.

Soros is widely known for his targeted focus on the elections of local prosecutors, bragging about his backing of “reform” candidates in a 2022 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Those who call Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump a targeted political prosecution point to his financial connection to Soros — a multi-billionaire who has established himself as one of the premier financiers of progressive politics in the United States.

As a prosecutor, Bragg has downgraded and eschewed filing criminal charges against those accused of violent crimes — while seemingly emphasizing a politically charged inquiry targeting the former Republican president.

https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1637089879732506624?s=20

Trump is slated to appear in a Manhattan courtroom for arraignment proceedings on Tuesday, according to CNN.

Nothing like a good ole non-denial denial to set the peasants straight!

Categories
Back Door Power Grab Corruption How sick is this? Leftist Virtue(!) Politics The Courts The Law

Pelosi: ‘We Have To Convict Trump On The Charges To Find Out What Is In Them’

Affirmative action can't help you now brother.

This is from the Babylon Bee but is too close to reality for comfort.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democrat Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is calling for a quick conviction of Trump so that we can all see what he’s being charged with.

“Just like we do with our spending bills, we should convict Donald Trump of these charges right away so that we can see what’s in them,” said Pelosi. “Trump has many pages of charges that are probably horrible and we just don’t have time to read them all. Doing it this way is much more efficient!” Pelosi’s statement was then interrupted by her teeth getting stuck in an ice cream bar she was eating.

Sources speculate the list of charges against Trump includes paying hush money to a stripper, colluding with Russia to overthrow the United States government and usher in 1000 years of darkness, and being really yucky and Trump-like. “We don’t need a list of charges to know that Trump is guilty of being Trump,” said Pelosi. “Let’s get this over with already.”

At publishing time Manhattan’s DA had announced 3,000 additional pages of charges were brought in at 1 AM in the morning.

Look, anyone with more than two functioning brain cells can see this for what it is. Although I suppose that the Severe Trump Derangement Syndrome case hotspots in liberal cities like NYC may render even that generous definition moot.

 

 

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Corruption Crime Leftist Virtue(!) Reprints from others. The Courts The Law

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

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.“