Soros, Funders of Domestic Terrorism, Form 'Coalition' Against Fed Investigations

Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

The Soros clan, along with other family foundations of the liberal elite, Knight, MacArthur, Ford, Omidyar, and the Rockefellers, have announced that they’re teaming up to fight investigations by the Justice Department.

While Alex Soros, George’s son, bragged that he would not give in, “over my dead body”, the presidents of the MacArthur and McKnight Foundations have declared that everyone needs to dust off their “crisis plans” and put their “legal teams on speed dial” ahead of a crackdown.

What are they afraid of?

The Unite in Advance coalition was formed so quickly by the big liberal grant making groups funding radicalism to form a ‘united front’ that it didn’t even have the time to build a site.

While Unite in Advance’s joint letter mentions the Charlie Kirk assassination and subsequent investigations of Antifa and other radical groups, an initial version of this ‘unity’ push had come out back in April with over 700 leftist groups, led by the MacArthur Foundation and, despite the claims of ‘non-violence’ included signatories like the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, where a key figure supported Hezbollah, the Soros network, which has provided money to extremist and terrorist front groups, and BLM funders like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

The latest incarnation of what the radical leftist funders are billing as the ‘Freedom to Give’ complains that they are being portrayed as “contributing to those acts of violence” and accuses unnamed figures, seemingly conservatives and the Trump administration, of plotting to “silence speech, criminalize opposing viewpoints, and misrepresent and limit charitable giving.”

After decades of trying to censor, ‘debank’ and ban conservative groups, the funders of these efforts are suddenly hailing a “freedom to give” when the investigation risks turning their way.

It’s nice that the Knight Foundation, a major SPLC donor, and which also provided millions to fund ‘disinformation’ research which was used to deplatform and silence opposing groups, has suddenly come around to believing in the value of free speech. But only when it’s their speech.

But speech, on either side, isn’t a crime. Funding domestic terrorism however is.

The frantic calls for unity, the 700+ signatories of the April letter and the 200 plus and counting foundations that have signed on to the ‘Unite in Advance’ letter are rightly worried about their legal exposure to funding foreign and domestic terrorist groups, rioters and others engaged in criminal activities that, as Freedom Center Investigates has shown over the years, violates their nonprofit status.

Take the Climate Emergency Fund, a 501(c)(3), funding some of the environmental vandalism in America and around the world, which received a founding grant from the Aileen Getty Foundation. The Getty Foundation bragged about “Greta Thunberg and disruptive groups like Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion” which vandalized art masterpieces around the world.

Then there was the financial backing for the BLM movement from big nonprofit players like the Ford Foundation and W.K. Kellogg. And there’s the Soros backing for groups involved in the campus pro-Hamas riots and the more recent anti-ICE riots. Even the legal ‘non-violent’ No Kings protests can fall afoul of the tax-exempt nonprofit status of an organization depending on how they are being conducted.

Free speech is sacrosanct, but that doesn’t cover burning down neighborhoods, assaulting police officers, attacking Jewish students on campus or vandalizing art museums. Nor, for that matter, does it cover blocking roadways, shutting down Congress and other illegal activities that have been billed as ‘civil disobedience’ but that serve as grounds for loss of tax-exempt status.

The big lefty foundations assumed that they could not and would not be held accountable. Now they’re panicking because the Trump administration is moving to finally impose accountability.

The billionaire funders of leftist hate and violence have taken to pretending that they’re “charitable giving organizations” that contribute to “communities”, helping “new parents and elders, veterans and school children, hospitals and libraries.”

The reality is that the vast majority of their ‘giving’ is political.

You don’t go to George Soros if you’re hungry. The Open Society Foundations describe giving grants to “movements, coalitions, networks, collectives and even informal groups”.

Not soup kitchens.

The MacArthur Foundation lists categories such as ‘climate solutions’ and ‘criminal justice’. The first signatory to the Unite in Advance letter is the Action for Transformation Fund which announced that it’s “moving resources to trans-led organizing”.

Other signatories include the Foundation for Systemic Change that works to “highlight ongoing economic, political, social, racial, ethnic, and environmental inequities”, the Fund for Nonviolence, which ironically helped unleash a crime wave, and iF, A Foundation for Radical Possibility, which focuses on ‘systemic racism’.

None of this is charity, it’s leftist political organizing, and the refusal by the signatories to come out and say so, or to hide behind smaller local nonprofits, is dishonest and shameful.

If these big foundations had been funding soup kitchens, hospitals and libraries, rather than political organizing and radical violence, they wouldn’t need to preemptively form a ‘Unite in Advance’ front. And the heads of the MacArthur and McKnight foundations wouldn’t be urging foundations to “stand in solidarity”, organizing for mutual defense against “threats”.

They’re not afraid of being busted for feeding the poor, but for feeding violence and hate.

Now the groups that tried to shut down their political opponents are rallying to the Constitution and the First Amendment, things they never believed in and had worked to destroy, but suddenly rediscovered just in time to become born-again patriots and lovers of freedom.

But no one is buying it.

When these leftist groups had the chance, they tried to eliminate the political opposition. Now they’re terrified of having the actual laws, not imaginary laws about ‘disinformation’, but actual tax code regulations and domestic terrorism laws, being enforced against their activities.

And wouldn’t that be a shame.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

Biggest Hogwash Of The Week: Justice Department Independence From Politics

September 30, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Late Friday afternoon (September 26) the U.S. Justice Department filed an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The indictment is extremely brief — barely one page of text — and focuses only on a single statement made by Comey in sworn Congressional testimony given on September 30, 2020, which statement is alleged in the indictment to be false.

For a few reasons, I’m not going to comment here on the strength or weakness of the indictment. First, the indictment does not allege the related facts that go to whether the statement in question was actually true or false; and I don’t have access to all the facts (like documents that may be in the possession of DOJ) that may be relevant to figuring out the truth or falsity of the statement. And second, it is notable that the indictment was filed on the eve of the expiration of the statute of limitations for this piece of testimony (the five year period after the statement would have expired today), and the indictment may well be amended to add more allegations.

Note that essentially every other commentator on this subject is in the same position that I am in of not being able to make a full analysis of the merits of the indictment. That has not prevented the usual suspects from criticizing President Trump for pushing for the indictment. To some degree, I agree with these criticisms, or at least I am sympathetic to them, to the extent that they criticize the President for seeking to use the justice system to get back at his political enemies.

But then, seemingly in each case, the critics go farther, and assert that with this indictment President Trump has done something totally new and different, and has entirely broken or transformed (or maybe “trampled on”) the former longstanding and proper norms of the Justice Department of never, ever abusing the justice system to attack political opponents. These assertions are not potentially appropriate criticism, but rather are complete hogwash. Indeed they are far worse than mere hogwash, because even if you assume the worst about the indictment of Comey being nothing more than meritless retribution from a vengeful President, the level of political misuse of the Justice Department and justice system by the current administration remains a small fraction of the misuse by the prior regime.

And then there is the much longer history in this country of misuse of the justice system to attack and disable political opponents. I’ll get into some of that below.

Let me start with a few key quotes from the usual suspects. The New York Times in its Saturday (September 27) print edition gives its main front page article the headline “A President of Reprisal Tramples On Safeguards.” (The link goes to a screenshot of the print front page.). From the third paragraph:

The charges, which were filed around 7 p.m. in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., thrust the Justice Department into perilous new territory. The push for the indictment tramples over the agency’s long tradition of maintaining distance from the White House and resisting political pressure, and it raised the prospect of further arbitrary prosecutions pushed by Mr. Trump against his enemies.

It’s “trampling” on “long traditions”; it’s taking the agency to “perilous new territory.”

Or we can look at the Wall Street Journal news pages from September 26, where we find a piece headlined “Trump Overcame Internal Dissent to Get His Case Against Comey.” From the sixth paragraph:

[Attorney General Pam] Bondi has effectively transformed the Justice Department in Trump’s second term, from an independent enforcer of the law into an extension of the White House that has pursued Trump’s foes and their associates with relish.

Were these people even alive for the past four years?

The list of Biden/Garland DOJ prosecutions of political enemies is long and disgraceful. That list is obviously not limited to mid-level functionaries like Comey, but included extensive efforts to take out the main political rival, Trump himself. They conducted a completely unnecessary and dangerous SWAT raid on Mar-a-Lago for no purpose other than to try to intimidate a political rival. The whole Florida classified documents case could never have been about more than a technicality, since Trump as President had complete authority to de-classify any documents that he wanted to take with him. 

Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021 — the subject of the other DOJ criminal prosecution against Trump — was clearly well within the bounds of protected First Amendment expression. You may well think that Trump behaved inappropriately in some respects on that day, and I would agree with you, but that does not mean that it was remotely OK to use the DOJ to prosecute him for a crime. Naming of a “special counsel” (Jack Smith) to give a patina of “independence” to these prosecutions should not fool anyone.

And DOJ’s role in persecuting Biden’s main political rival was not limited to criminal prosecutions. The Comey FBI — part of DOJ — was deeply involved in manufacturing the Russia collusion hoax and in using perjured testimony to get FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, and to continue investigating Trump even after he was President.

And then there is the list of other Trump administration officials or allies prosecuted for fake and politically-motivated reasons: Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Walt Nauta (Trump’s valet!), Carlos De Oliveira, Michael Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, and so forth. Was Michael Flynn prosecuted for any reason other than that if allowed to become National Security Advisor he was likely to uncover and blow the whistle on the Russia collusion hoax?

From what I know of American history, Biden ranks far and away as number one among Presidents for the misuse of the justice system against political rivals. But he is by no means the only one to do it. As a few examples:

• The Alien and Sedition Acts were enacted in 1798 under President John Adams. They criminalized speech that was found to be “false, scandalous and malicious” or which brought the government into “contempt or disrepute.” Some 26 people were prosecuted under these Acts from 1798 to 1801, mostly newspaper editors for the Anti-Federalist press. The most famous was James Callender, a big backer of Adams rival Thomas Jefferson. To be fair, Callender was a nasty piece of work, but that did not mean that criminal prosecution for speech was OK.
• After the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution in 1804 changed the method for presidential elections, President Thomas Jefferson ditched his VP Aaron Burr. Burr went out to the Western frontier and made efforts to set up an independent country. In 1807 Jefferson initiated a prosecution against Burr for treason — a case in which Jefferson took a major personal role. Burr was ultimately acquitted (in a trial presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall, who was a second cousin, but not a political ally, of Jefferson).
• Under President Woodrow Wilson, Congress enacted the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which criminalized speech that allegedly disparaged or undermined the war effort (World War I) in any way. Hundreds of people were arrested and prosecuted under this Act. One of those was Eugene V. Debs, a prominent labor organizer and Democrat who ended up running for President in 1920 from prison after getting convicted under the Espionage Act and sentenced to 10 years behind bars.
• And don’t forget the prosecution by FDR of Andrew Mellon, one of the leading financiers in the country, who had been Treasury Secretary throughout the administrations of Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. After Roosevelt’s election, Mellon had become a prominent critic of his economic policies. The prosecution was over technical interpretations of the income tax statute.

So no, there is no grand tradition in the Justice Department of political independence or of not misusing the justice system against political rivals of those in power.

In the case of the New York Times, I might pay at least a little attention to what they have to say today if they had ever said one critical word about the misuse of the Justice Department and the justice system under the Biden administration. If that ever occurred, I somehow missed it — and I pay rather close attention.

"Stupidest Litigation" Update

September 02, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Suppose you had decided that the most important issue facing our planet was saving it from the possibility that some trace gas in the atmosphere, currently constituting about 0.04% of the air, might increase to 0.05%, or maybe even (oh no!) to 0.06%. What’s your strategy?

If you think like an environmentalist, the answer is simple: foment a barrage of civil lawsuits by states and municipalities against major oil companies, each seeking many billions of dollars in damages. The chance that such a strategy could ever have any measurable impact on the composition of the atmosphere is zero. However, with enough lawsuits from enough deep-pocketed plaintiffs, you could form an unstoppable juggernaut. Eventually you could coerce some gigantic settlement. Riches will be yours! It’s the American way.

And thus we have the Manhattan Contrarian series on what I have called the “stupidest litigations” in the country — the civil cases brought by states and municipalities, instigated by environmental advocates, against major oil companies, seeking multi billions on the ground that all extreme weather is caused by some tiny increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. My most recent update on this issue was more than four years ago, in April 2021. In the interim, the wheels of justice have been grinding slowly.

If you have the impression that this effort to change the world by civil litigation is some small or niche initiative, that impression would be completely wrong. This is a very large and very well-funded full court press intended to bring the oil companies to their knees. The very explicit model is the tobacco litigation of the 1980s and 90s. That litigation began as individual injury claims by smokers, but over time the states sensed the potential for major recoveries, and one by one they joined in the fray. A 1998 settlement with 46 states included a monetary payment of some $365 billion.

So how has Big Tobacco 2.0 been going? After many years of stalemate, the tide has recently been moving toward the oil company defendants.

The reasons are not hard to discern. Unlike with the tobacco litigations, there are no real injured parties, and nearly all of the claimed damage are based on hypothetical model predictions about future events. Perhaps more important to the specific litigation context, most of the conduct allegedly leading to damage has taken place outside the jurisdiction of the courts where the cases have been brought.

At the time of my 2021 update, the list of claims of this type — common law claims seeking damages from oil companies based on alleged climate impacts — included cases brought by the Cities of Oakland and San Francisco and County of San Mateo, California; the State of Massachusetts; the State of Rhode Island; the State of Delaware; the County of Boulder, Colorado; and the City of Baltimore, Maryland. Since then, the number of cases has continued to mushroom. For the list of cases I am relying on the U.S. Climate Change Litigation data base maintained by Columbia University. New filings have come from: in 2021, the City of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County in Maryland; in 2022, a group of municipalities in Puerto Rico, and the State of New Jersey; in 2023, Multnomah County (Portland), Oregon; in 2024, the State of Maine, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and the City of Chicago; and just now in 2025, the State of Hawaii.

A big reason why the cases have been proceeding so slowly is that the state and municipality plaintiffs have almost all brought the cases in state courts; but the oil company defendants have sought to have the issues litigated in federal court. This leads to procedural maneuvering, where the defendants initially file a petition for “removal” in the state court, which puts the case in the federal court; but then the plaintiff moves to have the case “remanded” to the state court. Little by little, the states and municipalities have been winning the battle to have the cases proceed in the state courts. Their hope is that, once back in the state court, the case will be treated as a local matter of “nuisance” from emissions of a pollutant, without regard to the nationwide, and indeed worldwide, scope of CO2 emissions.

A big complication for the plaintiffs, as noted in my 2021 post, was that one such claimant, the City of New York, had brought a similar case, but had initiated it in federal court. This meant that the issue of whether the case could be “removed” to federal court never came up, and the case went straight to the issue of whether states had the power to regulate CO2 emissions under the rubric of common law “nuisance” in the face of the comprehensive regulatory scheme of the federal Clean Air Act. In the New York City case, the District Court dismissed the City’s claim, and the Second Circuit affirmed. This quote is from the Second Circuit’s 2021 opinion:

Such a sprawling case is simply beyond the limits of state law.  To start, a substantial damages award like the one requested by the City would effectively regulate the Producers’ behavior far beyond New York’s borders.  Since “[g]reenhouse gases once emitted ‘become well mixed in the atmosphere,’” . . . “emissions in [New York or] New Jersey may contribute no more to flooding in New York than emissions in China,” . . .   Any actions the Producers take to mitigate their liability, then, must undoubtedly take effect across every state (and country).  And all without asking what the laws of those other states (or countries) require.  Because it therefore “implicat[es] the conflicting rights of [s]tates [and] our relations with foreign nations,” this case poses the quintessential example of when federal common law is most needed. . . .

As I noted in my 2021 post, “[T]he Second Circuit has laid down a marker that every state court that gets one of these cases will now need to deal with.” 

And with that background we come to the latest updates, from two of the deepest blue states. The Superior Court of New Jersey, Mercer County, dismissed the New Jersey claims in an opinion back in February. The main precedent cited was the Second Circuit’s opinion in the New York City case:

This court’s decision is reliant upon and consistent with both federal and state courts across the country that have rejected the availability of state tort law in the climate change context. See City of New York v. Chevron Corp., 993 F.3d 81 (2d Cir. 2021) (“City of New York”). . . .

The Columbia climate change litigation data base does not provide further information as to whether that decision has been appealed.

Meanwhile, in January this year, the Circuit Court of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, dismissed the claims of Anne Arundel County and of the City of Annapolis. That court again relied substantially on the Second Circuit’s decision in the City of New York case, as well as a prior dismissal in July 2024 of the City of Baltimore case by another Maryland state court judge.

The Maryland cases are now on appeal to the Supreme Court of Maryland. This post at eidclimate.org has excerpts from amicus briefs filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and by 24 Attorneys General (of red states) supporting affirmance of the dismissal. From the DOJ amicus brief:

“Extending Maryland law to redress climate-related harms caused by activities that overwhelmingly occurred beyond state and international borders would override policy choices made by the federal government and Maryland’s sister states.” (emphasis added) 

From the amicus brief of the 24 states:

“State and local governments cannot regulate the global atmosphere…no one State can ‘enforce its own policy’ on the others.” (emphasis added)

Hard as it may be to believe, the environmental lawyers hoping for a gigantic payday from this Tobacco 2.0 effort may well come up with nothing to show for it. We’ll see how the Maryland Supreme Court rules. But then, if that court comes out the opposite way from the Second Circuit, there will likely be a trip to the Supreme Court thereafter. The unstoppable juggernaut of environmental lawfare may turn out to be not so unstoppable after all.

Operation Whirlwind Targets Democrats’ Incendiary Rhetoric

A US attorney tells elected officials they have some ‘splaining to do. 

By Graham J Noble | Feb 24, 2025 @ Liberty Nation News, Tags: Articles, Opinion, Politics

 

(Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images)

Most Americans have never heard of Ed Martin, but his name will likely be on a lot of people’s lips in the very near future. Martin is the interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia, and he has ruffled the feathers of some Democrats in the nation’s capital, as well as their stenographers in the establishment media. What is being called Operation Whirlwind – at least, that’s what Martin is calling it – is targeting elected officials who have publicly made what could reasonably be described as violent threats against political opponents.

On Monday, Feb. 17, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) received letters from Martin, inviting them to explain threats they appear to have made against public officials.

Apparent threats of physical violence or incitement of violence against President Donald Trump, his associates, anyone who served in his executive branch, and even his supporters, go back as far as 2016. Many of them were made by Democratic Party officials during rallies or other public appearances. There is no small number of them – in fact, Trump supporters could compile a coffee-table book of quotes.

During his first term in the White House, the then-45th president ignored them, and there is no indication that, as the 47th president, Trump has personally ordered Martin to launch his Operation Whirlwind. Clearly, though, someone has decided that enough is enough.

Operation Whirlwind Zeroes in on Threats

While railing against the efforts of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to uncover jaw-dropping amounts of wasted or misappropriated taxpayer dollars during a recent CNN appearance, Rep. Garcia made a statement that Martin has interpreted as an incitement to direct physical violence. “[And] what I think is really important, and what the American public want, is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for Democracy, for the future of this country,” Garcia said.

There isn’t much room for ambiguity or contextualizing when someone uses the phrase “actual weapons.” Ed Martin doesn’t appear to believe so. “At this time, I respectfully request that you clarify your comments from February 12, 2025,” Martin wrote to Garcia, citing the congressman’s words. “This sounds like a threat to Mr. Musk – an appointed representative of President Trump.” The letter adds, “We take threats against public officials seriously. I look forward to your cooperation[.]”

How did Operation Whirlwind get its name? In fact, this originated with none other than Sen. Schumer himself. In March of 2020, as the United States Supreme Court considered what became a landmark abortion case that ended the federal protections for abortion access established by Roe v. Wade, the then-Senate minority leader spoke at a pro-abortion protest in DC. “I wanna tell you, [Supreme Court Justice Neil] Gorsuch, I wanna tell you, [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you.”

One could argue that Schumer’s threat was not one of violence, but of some other undefined consequences. Still, in 2022, a man who admitted he wanted to kill Kavanaugh was detained near the Justice’s property, carrying burglary tools and at least one weapon. Was the would-be killer inspired by Schumer’s words, uttered two years earlier? It might be a stretch to say he was – but it’s certainly possible.

Kick Back and Ditch the Matrix

Following his remarks, Schumer addressed backlash from Republicans by claiming that he “didn’t intend to suggest anything other than political and public opinion consequences for the Supreme Court.” But there really aren’t any public opinion or political consequences for the Court, no matter what opinions it issues, so there is still plenty of room for some to speculate that, even if just in the heat and emotion of the moment, the senator was indeed hinting at other unspecified repercussions.

Martin asserted that Schumer directed his remarks at the justices “in a way that many found threatening” and has requested that the senator “clarify” them.

Accountability Time

The establishment media, always ready to circle the wagons around favored politicos, have gone into full outrage mode. Martin is being accused of trying to “silence criticism” of DOGE. CNN even described the US attorney as a ‘right wing activist.” However, none of the many other Democrats who have railed against Elon Musk and DOGE – but without the talk of physical confrontation (and even with such talk, in one or two instances) – have received letters from Martin. There simply is no evidence that Operation Whirlwind is about merely harassing critics. Martin’s two targets (thus far) were not merely expressing criticism.

Certain politicians on the Hill have for years used an extremely broad interpretation of “violent” rhetoric. Trump was accused of inciting an insurrection – and impeached – for telling his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, they would have to “fight like hell” to save the country. At the same time, as already mentioned, those same politicians have often used incendiary language with complete impunity. Just a month into the new administration, it seems that accountability, for a range of past wrongs, may be on the way.

~

Liberty Nation does not endorse candidates, campaigns, or legislation, and this presentation is no endorsement.

Graham J Noble Chief Political Correspondent & Satirist

The End Of The Eric Adams Prosecution : Holier-Than-Thou Federal Prosecutors

February 20, 2025/ Francis Menton  @ Manhattan Contrarian 15 Comments 

 

Since my post a few days ago about the demise of the Eric Adams prosecution, controversy has continued to swirl around the matter. On the side supporting the action of the Trump/Bondi Justice Department, several new voices have emerged to join what were previously the lonely cries of a handful of people like myself and Josh Blackman. These new voices include James Copland and Rafael Mangual (of the Manhattan Institute), writing in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on February 18; and Alan Dershowitz in a column in the New York Post on February 19.

On the other side of the argument, an ex-colleague of mine sends me a copy of an “open letter” dated February 17, and signed by a gigantic list of well over 1000 former federal prosecutors. This letter essentially adopts the arguments set forth in the resignation letter of ex-SDNY US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, including echoing some of her language. A fair description is that these guys adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, claiming to be wholly pure and above politics and devoted only to the “facts and law.” Here are some excerpts:

As prosecutors, we were rightly prohibited from making criminal charging decisions based on someone’s political association, activities or beliefs, or because of our personal feelings about them. We knew it was impermissible to treat a defendant more leniently just because they were powerful or well-connected, or more harshly because they were not. We were taught to pursue justice without fear or favor, and knew our decisions to investigate and charge should be based only on the facts and the law. . . . 

Against this backdrop, we have watched with alarm as these values have been tested by recent actions of the Department’s leadership. Some of you have been ordered to make charging decisions based expressly on considerations other than the facts and the law, including to serve solely political purposes.  

To all of you, we communicate this: We salute and admire the courage many of you have already exhibited, and that will guide all of you as you continue to serve the interests of justice. You have responded to ethical challenges of a type no public servant should ever be forced to confront with principle and conviction, in the finest traditions of the Department of Justice.

The bold is in the original.

Does all of that seem persuasive to you? If so, try for starters reading the Copland/Mangual and Dershowitz pieces. Both make the obvious point that achieving policy priorities of the Justice Department in return for deferring or foregoing prosecution is not just common practice, but nearly universal. Dershowitz’s piece focuses on trading leniency for testimony against others and/or wearing a wire to snare higher-ups:

[D]ropping prosecutions or reducing charges on the basis of quid pro quos is common in all prosecutorial offices. . . . I have represented numerous criminal defendants who were offered quid pro quos by the Southern District and other prosecutors. The most common offer is, “We will drop the charges against you, if you testify or wear a wire against the higher-up in your company or organization.“ 

Another common quid pro quo is: ”If you are willing to plead guilty, we will reduce the charges.” Indeed, it is fair to say that quid pro quos in the form of plea bargain offers are essential to the operation of that office, since the vast majority of prosecutions are resolved by quid pro quo plea deals. Nor are there constitutional differences between the kind of quid pro quo plea allegedly offered Adams and the more traditional quid pro quo plea bargains offered to ordinary criminal defendants.

Copland and Mangual go into a recent ubiquitous federal prosecutorial practice known as the “deferred prosecution” agreement. These are sorts of plea deals, usually involving corporations, where prosecutors threaten some entity with a charge that may be trivial to the overall business of the entity, but could be life-threatening (think Arthur Andersen). There then emerges a deal where the prosecutors agree to “defer” the prosecution (essentially the same thing that has occurred for Adams) in return for the agreement of the corporate entity to perform some actions that the prosecutors want.

How common are these deferred prosecution agreements? Copland and Mangual:

Since the turn of the century, the Justice Department has entered into 667 deferred- and nonprosecution agreements. Since 2010, one-fourth of Fortune 100 companies—the largest American businesses by revenue—have been operating under the thumb of Justice Department agreements not to prosecute.

Our thousand-plus ex-federal prosecutors claim to be outraged about a deferral of prosecution of Adams in return for an agreement for “solely political purposes.” Are we to believe that these hundreds of deferred prosecution agreements somehow avoided “political purposes”? In fact, of course, it was the opposite:

[F]ederal prosecutors have used the threat of criminal indictment as leverage to extract money for favored groups and constituencies, outside the congressional appropriations process. After the financial crisis, Obama administration officials forced many banks to underwrite new “affordable housing” developments, to give grants to “community organizers,” to direct money to legal aid groups and to fund various “housing activist” outfits.

Thank you to Copland and Mangual for at least bringing some attention to this issue; but their description just quoted does not nearly indicate the enormity of the corruption that has been endemic in these agreements. For starters, in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-09, the Obama administration used threatened prosecutions of banks and other financial institutions to have the Justice Department extort tens of billions of dollars to fund their friends on the Left. Much was written about this subject, including here at Manhattan Contrarian. For today, I’ll focus on a piece from Paul Larkin at the Heritage Foundation from October 2014. Excerpts:

The practice of identifying third-party recipients of monies that a corporation pays out in an N/DPA [Non-/Deferred Prosecution Agreement] is tantamount to dispensing taxpayer funds to whatever particular recipient the Justice Department selects. That practice raises important public policy issues that neither Congress nor the federal courts have yet addressed. . . . 

In 2014, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and other banks “have coughed up close to $50 billion for supposedly misleading investors in mortgage-backed bonds.” . . . Then there is BP’s $13 billion settlement for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Toyota’s $1.2 billion settlement over alleged faults in its automobiles, among many others. . . . 

Radical Democrat activist groups stand to collect millions from Attorney General Eric Holder’s record $17 billion deal to settle alleged mortgage abuse charges against Bank of America. Buried in the fine print of the deal, which includes $7 billion in soft-dollar consumer relief, are a raft of political payoffs to Obama constituency groups. In effect, the government has ordered the nation’s largest bank to create a massive slush fund for Democrat special interests.

The Heritage piece contains a list of some of the groups that got payouts from these agreements:

• La Raza, which pressures banks to expand their credit box to qualify more low-income Latino immigrants for home loans;
• National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Washington’s most aggressive lobbyist for the disastrous Community Reinvestment Act;
• Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, whose director calls himself a “bank terrorist;”
• Operation Hope, a South Central Los Angeles group that’s pressuring banks to make “dignity mortgages” for deadbeats.

Non-political? Completely absurd. And this list comes from just a handful of these N/DPAs. There have been 667 of them since 2000.

And now we have these thousand-plus ex-federal prosecutors suddenly in high dudgeon that some of their number have been asked to sign off on a dismissal without prejudice (essentially, the same as a deferred prosecution agreement) for Eric Adams in return for some level of cooperation in immigration enforcement. This is not remotely at the same level of either politics or corruption as the day-to-day activities of the Justice Department in crafting deferred prosecutions during Democratic administrations to benefit friendly leftist institutions.

OK, there are more than a thousand of these signatories. Can anyone out there find a single example of even one of them objecting to the Justice Department in a Democratic Administration extorting one of these completely political and completely corrupt agreements to fund leftist institutions? It’s my challenge to the readers: see if you can find it.

And while I’m at this, another one of my ex-colleagues points out that the now-famous Sassoon resignation letter is unusual not only in its length and detail, and accusations of improper conduct against her superiors, but also in appearing promptly in the press, and in disclosing confidential information that could be damaging to the further pursuit of the Adams case (should the government decide at some point to go there). Since when is it OK for a prosecutor to write a letter containing confidential information about a case and then promptly leak the letter to the press? Indeed, the letter appears to have been written for the purposes of leaking to the press.

Overall, the “courageous” federal prosecutors seem to have completely lost track of both their constitutional and ethical obligations. I guess it’s the “culture” of the Justice Department.

On The Sudden End Of The Eric Adams Prosecution

February 17, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Back in September, DOJ prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted Mayor Eric Adams on corruption charges. The indictment came shortly before the election, and at a time when Adams was making noises that he would cooperate with a new President Trump’s efforts to step up enforcement of the immigration laws. At the time I had two posts on the subject, one on September 26 titled “Who Is More Corrupt, Eric Adams or the Biden/Harris DOJ/FBI?”, and the second on September 27 titled “More On The Adams Indictment.” My general comment then was that the indictment was “shockingly thin,” and I concluded (in the September 26 post):

At this point, it is a safe bet that anything the DOJ/FBI is doing in the political sphere is corrupt. Adams may well also be a little corrupt, but nothing remotely at their level.

A few days ago, on February 11, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove instructed the SDNY to dismiss the Adams indictment. The next day, February 12, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, one Danielle Sassoon, responded with a rather extraordinary 8 page single-spaced letter of resignation, addressed to new Attorney General Pam Bondi. Sassoon’s letter speaks from a self-proclaimed pinnacle of righteous indignation. The letter came somewhat as a surprise because Sassoon was not some Biden holdover, but rather had been newly designated by Trump to hold the position while awaiting confirmation of his recent nominee (Jay Clayton); and she came with seemingly impeccable conservative credentials.

Sassoon’s resignation letter was promptly followed by extensive commentary from conservative and centrist outlets supporting her position. As examples, see the Wall Street Journal editorial page here (“the real story speaks well of the prosecutors but sends a rotten message to any lawyer who might want to join the Trump Administration”); the editors of the Free Press here (“The scope and nature of the interventions of the Trump Justice Department are shocking. . . .”); David Post at the Volokh Conspiracy here (“the odious and reprehensible Eric Adams deal”); and Ed Whalen at National Review here (“In an act of courage and integrity, Danielle Sassoon, Donald Trump’s own hand-picked interim United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned yesterday. . . .”).

One of the only commenters I have found standing up for the position of the Trump DOJ on this dispute is Josh Blackman, also writing at the Volokh Conspiracy. He has had three posts there on the subject, here on February 13, here on the 14th, and here on the 15th.

On this one, I come down strongly on the side of Blackman and of the Trump DOJ. The issues are important, and reflect a fundamental difference of views about the Constitution and about the role of criminal prosecutions in the political process. I also want to make a few points that go beyond what Blackman has already said.

But let’s start with Sassoon’s letter. Basically her position is that here in the Southern District of New York, we are a-political, and we make completely impartial charging decisions based on nothing more than the law and the facts:

When I took my oath of office . . . I vowed to well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I was about to enter. In carrying out that responsibility, I am guided by, among other things, the Principles of Federal Prosecution . . . and your recent memoranda instructing attorneys for the Department of Justice . . . not to use the criminal enforcement authority of the United States to achieve political objectives. . . .

The Adams indictment, according to Sassoon, had nothing to do with politics, and is well-supported in fact and law. And therefore it follows, according to Sassoon, that she cannot in good faith seek its dismissal:

The Government Does Not Have a Valid Basis To Seek Dismissal. . . . Mr. Bove’s memorandum identifies two grounds for the contemplated dismissal. I cannot advance either argument in good faith.

Well, Ms. Sassoon, have you thought about this as a justification for dismissal?: The President — and through him, the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General — hold the power of what is called “prosecutorial discretion” under the Constitution. They can decline to prosecute any matter that in their judgment is not worth the resources devoted to it or does not on balance and in their judgment advance the public good. And they have exercised that judgment. QED.

Here is Blackman’s articulation of the dispute, from his February 14 post:

What we have here are two very different conceptions of the federal criminal justice system. On the one hand, Sassoon and her colleagues defend the traditional notion that "independent" prosecutors have the power to define what is in the public good. They can define when public officials abuse their power, and can punish those actions with criminal sanctions. . . . Those defending Sassoon are invested in the DOJ club, and the continuation of its longstanding practices. President Trump, through Bove, articulate[s] a different perspective. The President, as head of the executive branch, can make his own determination of what is in the public good, and determine when public officials are abusing their power. Trump, perhaps more than any living person, is uniquely situated to make this sort of judgment.

Blackman’s February 13 post continues with a long list of the recent disasters that have befallen the so-called “Public Integrity Section” of the Justice Department in its efforts to bring perfect justice and fairness and honesty to the world of politics. The Public Integrity Section is that part of Justice that was headed by none other than Jack Smith from 2010 to 2015. Blackman’s list of disasters begins chronologically with the prosecution of John Edwards, that ended in 2012 with a hung jury. 

The prosecutor was none other than Jack Smith. Next we have the prosecution of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, again with Jack Smith as lead prosecutor. McDonnell was convicted by a jury, but that conviction was reversed by the Supreme Court in 2016 — unanimously. 

Then there was the so-called “Bridgegate” prosecution of members of the Chris Christie administration, Kelly v. U.S., reversed by the Supreme Court in 2020, again unanimously. 

Two members of the Andrew Cuomo administration in New York, Percoco and Ciminelli, got prosecuted and convicted by Justice in connection with a scandal involving a stadium for the Buffalo Bills; the Supreme Court reversed unanimously in 2023. The Supreme Court has taken another DOJ public corruption matter this term — Koussis v. U.S. — and Blackman predicts another reversal.

Blackman makes some excellent points. But there are many more. Here are a few:

• Where did the federal DOJ get the idea that its mission includes policing political corruption among state and local officeholders? That certainly is not among the enumerated powers of the federal government to be found in the Constitution. If you think that DOJ meddling in state and local affairs on this subject goes back to the beginning of the Republic, you would be wrong.  In fact, the federal government only got into this business in any significant way in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a U.S. Attorney for New Jersey named Herbert Stern prosecuted several state officials under old statutes not previously used for this purpose, and the Third Circuit upheld him. See a Wikipedia summary on this subject here. Meanwhile, all the states have anti-bribery statutes, and they have prosecutors and courts and juries.  Maybe there is an argument for the feds to step in in some truly extraordinary case, where the entire state and local infrastructure had been compromised by vast corruption, but that is not the Adams case at all. Why is DOJ so concerned if Alvin Bragg can’t be bothered? How is it that nobody in the federal DOJ even gives a moment’s thought to whether it is appropriate to use federal power against a co-sovereign official on a relatively minor allegation of corruption. Why should this not be left to the local authorities?
• Then there is the question of the vast distinction between exercise of prosecutorial discretion to bring a case, versus exercise of discretion not to bring a case. The most important single fact about the world of criminal prosecution is that 99.9% (or more) of crimes never get prosecuted. That fact arises from the combination that there are way too many things that have been made crimes (many thousands at the federal level — you are almost certainly a federal criminal), and that most crimes are insignificant or trivial (even though some statute may impose a draconian penalty after conviction). Because of this fundamental disparity, the decision not to bring a case is almost always not an important decision, while the decision to bring a case is always an important decision.
• Ms. Sassoon asserts the proposition that the Adams charges came up through a completely fair and a-political process. (“[T]he charges in this case were recommended or approved by four experienced career prosecutors, the Chiefs of the SDNY Public Corruption Unit, and career prosecutors at the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department.”). How dumb is she? Assume that that is all true, and that all of the people she mentions are completely above politics. The fact remains that if Adams was acting as a Democratic Party/Biden Administration team player, the charges likely would never have gone anywhere. Clearly, somebody high up made a decision at some point that these charges were sufficiently important to warrant assigning four career prosecutors to investigate and prepare charges. If Adams had been in favor with the right people, those people never would have been assigned, and charges would never happen. And if he had been a team player, any charges that did get off the ground could still have been quietly scuttled at the top levels of the Department before indictment.
• And then there’s the question of all the other charges that never get brought. How is it that nobody at DOJ has ever been interested in Biden family corruption, or Clinton corruption? (The cases actually brought against Hunter Biden involved taxes and lying on a gun application, not corruption or bribery. Even if you assume that a prosecution against Joe while he was out of office would have been wrong politically, bribery charges against Hunter and Jim and other Bidens were open and obvious and were allowed to have their statutes of limitations quietly expire.). Did Ms. Sassoon ever speak up about this? Did any other lawyer at DOJ speak up or object? I mean, the FBI was thoroughly corrupt, but at least they had a handful of whistleblowers over there. Among the DOJ lawyers, none that I know of.

Overall, I’m not saying that the dropping of the Adams prosecution was perfect. I would have preferred if Mr. Bove had said something more like “The prosecution of Eric Adams is not worth federal prosecutorial resources, and you are directed to drop it. The state and local authorities may further pursue it if they see fit.” However, on balance, the Trump Justice Department has by far the better side of this matter.

DOGE, Trump, and the Destruction of the Pillars of Civilization, Part II

“There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen,” Vladimir Lenin

 By Rich Kozlovich, Tags: Part I

   

Now that's what I call pest control!

Well, Donald Trump is President of the United States and the Deep State is in trouble, and the Democrat party is now facing a far more formidable foe than they've ever faced in their history since Abraham Lincoln.  He's determined to crush the Deep State and after crushing USAID, he's going after the Department of Education, and with Pam Bondi confirmed as Attorney General, Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, along with Kash Patel sure to be confirmed as Director of the FBI, and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence life in Washington DC is going to become frightening for the Deep State.   Entertaining for the rest of us though as this will be a schadenfreude moment in time. 

 

I think we can reasonably conclude it's perp walk time in America.  The Democrats and their myrmidons in the Pravda media loved their corrupt perp walk reality shows in the past.  I'm betting they won't like them in the future, and I'm betting a lot of higher echelon leftists are sweating now. 

Before he was elected the question was asked, Who Can Donald Trump Count On?, as we know he was stabbed in the back by everyone, including the Republican party, the CIA, the Secret Service, the FBI, the DOJ, all myrmidons of the Democrat party, but that's about to change.   

 

The fact is the Deep State is at war with ‘America and the American People’.  General Michael Flynn who was a target of the Deep State in his documentary film Flynn: Deliver the Truth. Whatever the Cost, says:

“In order to get Trump they had to get Flynn, and we now have all this incredible levels of evidence that has been exposed principally through my case. So my case fighting back, doing the things we do despite all the crazy people out there that, you know, that name-call you, and other media outlets that still do that to this day. Everybody knows the truth. And what I know is, I know a little bit more of the truth, and what I’m going to do with this film, flynnmovie.com, is I’m going to expose some of that truth,”.......

What we've found out now is the Deep State is deeper than we thought, and is filed with enemies of the American Constitution. 

The uniparty and the Deep State conspired to destroy Trump, and has been doing so for over eight years, and he's survived.  The "Get Trump" playbook involved the media, RINO'S,  Hollywood, CIA, FBI, DOJ, National Security Council, the Mueller "Inquisition", the corruption of the rule of law and corrupt prosecutions by corrupt prosecutors and judges.  Not to mention the corrupt media and their charges of racism, fascism, and misogyny, so now we're seeing successes from Trump as no one has ever seen before.  

This time he's not walking in without a support team that's totally on his side, and will do everything they can do destroy the corruption that permeates the federal government, and at all levels.  He's shining a massive spotlight on that corruption and America is outraged.  It wasn't "conspiracy theories" after all, it was reality!

The history of the democratic doctrine furnishes a striking example of an intellectual system blown about by the social wind. Conceived as the foundation of liberty, it paves the way for tyranny. Born for the purpose of standing as a bulwark against Power, it ends by providing Power with the finest soil it has ever had in which to spread itself over the social field. - Bertrand de Jouvenel

The Wokey World of Politics, Enemy, and Power - Isn’t it special how Harvard has been negotiating with the peaceful protestors camping in Harvard Yard and has agreed to look into a Center for Palestine Studies at Harvard?  Let us imagine, for a moment, anti-abortion activists standing silently outside one of the leading abortion clinics protesting about the lack of babies born to Ivy League women university presidents? I wonder how many pregnancy termination reductions the folks at Planned Parenthood would negotiate............If the United States can indict the former President of the United States for a ham sandwich… Well, you get the picture.  Can you spell I-N-J-U-S-T-I-C-E?

 Progressives’ Cunning Blueprint to Possess the Levers of State Power  - Illinois public-sector unions are perfecting and promulgating a model for subjugating Americans to union interests. Their model has three steps: control the kids, control politicians and control the law. It’s highly effective, and toxic to the future of any state that embraces it.  Kids are at the heart of Illinois unions’ domination strategy. After all, in Animal Farm, Napoleon the pig (representing Josef Stalin) says, “education of the young was more important than anything that could be done for those who were already grown up.”...........

Liberals Back Proposed Rule to Fortify Career Bureaucrats Against a Change in the White House - Liberal advocacy organizations are throwing support behind a proposed federal rule that would make firing bureaucrats more difficult amid polling suggesting that former President Donald Trump may win November’s presidential election.  The proposed Office of Personnel Management (OPM) rule would make it more difficult for civil servants to be reclassified as Schedule F employees, who can be fired at will by the president, according to the federal register. Liberal organizations like Democracy Forward and Protect Democracy, which are involved in efforts to obstruct a potential second Trump term, have voiced support for the rule....

Democrats: Trashing the past, ruining the present, stealing our future - It is all working out as planned for the progressives. They divide us, break us up, atomize us, make us hate each other, drive us all crazy. And then the shootings occur. And then they have us scared. And then they can control us, disarm us, and lock us down ”for our own good.”  Meaning, their ever-growing, eternal power...... because they know they can use them to their advantage -- in both the short and the long term. That is the true nature of the evil we are facing. And it is an evil that cannot be defeated unless we are willing to make it so, no matter the cost. The cost of not doing so is unimaginable......

Victor Davis Hanson in his Nov 24, 2021 article, Losing Confidence in the Pillars of Our Civilization, states:

Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America. Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation's traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies - especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks.  Not so much anymore. For the first time in memory, conservatives now connect the FBI hierarchy with bureaucratic bloat, political bias, and even illegality........Never has the proper advisory role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff been so brazenly usurped and contorted..........Few reporters have yet offered apologies for helping hatch and spread the Russian collusion hoax that paralyzed the country for three years.......

Few reporters suggested that federal health agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases might be disseminating contradictory or even inaccurate information about the pandemic. To believe this was happening instead earned condemnation in the media as if one were some conspiracy theorist or nut............District attorneys in several major cities - Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and St. Louis - have often predicated prosecuting crimes on the basis of ideology, race, and careerism.

I think a valid argument can be made that the regulatory code is unconstitutional, all 200,000 pages of it.  Since the SCOTUS Loper Bright decision overturning the Chevron Doctrine finally put to rest the idea a self directed bureaucracy has no Constitutional basis, making it clear the Constitution invests the legislative functions of the United States solely in the hands of Congress, and not unelected tyrannical bureaucrats.

As for the bureaucracy; that can be dealt with as a budgetary issue. Since Chevron was overturned, it's going to be difficult to justify having all these mini dictators on the payroll, starting with the EPA.

Then simply ignore their schemes and hire and fire as necessary and let them sue. Just like Obama and Biden have done when federal law stands in opposition to their ideological schemes, immigration being the best example of that.

One more thing. Conservatives need to make overturning Sullivan a top priority. Once these lying media trash start getting sued for libel, things will start to go much smoother.

Imagine What It Means to be American - If we were to catalog the attributes of our Founders vital to the creation of our nation, love of liberty and courage would likely top that list. Close behind would be a more subtle quality empowered by liberty, that of imagination. It is imagination and its implicit sense of wonder that drives our quest for knowledge and ultimately human progress. Our Founding Fathers had no template for creating our government; they had to imagine it based on the imperfect experiences of prior republics. Imagination is the seed of discovery, the spark that ignites our hunger for the knowledge that was once a common American cause.

 

How did we get where we are now? Because we no longer truthfully teach who we were, we don't know who we are, and haven't a clue who we should be. But that was the goal of the left in public education since the late 19th century. As I read this I thought of this article, "A Stranger in Town", 1943, explaining who we need to be!

Both self confident people and arrogant people want to be right. The difference is self confident people are willing to accept correction in order to be right. Arrogant people will accept no correction, and all of these leftist halfwits are arrogant.   Compile arrogance with ignorance, and you get Woke, and the sooner they get crushed the better. 

The World as I See It!

By Rich Kozlovich 

One thing is clear, no President has ever moved faster, more definitively, or more successfully in his first week than has Trump, and has the entire left on their heels clueless what to do, other than claim everything he's doing is illegal and suing him.  That's been tried before, and that got him the Presidency.  As Kurt Schlichter says, Trump’s Winning Streak Is Totally Discombobulating The Democrats, saying:

Donald Trump has not only gotten inside their OODA Loop – observe, orient, decide, and act – but he’s taking their loop and is running around with it like one of those old-timey kids rolling a hoop with a stick. This is amazing. This is glorious. Summon a surgeon – it’s been a little over a week and you’re supposed to call the doctor after just four hours.......

Carole Hornsby Haynes asks if Trump knows what he's doing by going to war with the gender identity crowd saying:

Trump’s ban has triggered a meltdown from liberals, proclaiming the end of “our democracy” (we have a constitutional republic, not a democracy).  The real reason for their hissy fits is that they know they have lost control and have no idea how to regain it. There is more to the liberal rage.  The ban on gender ideology will likely collapse the vast financial empire spawned by the transgender movement in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), the pharmaceutical industry, and the medical “profession.”

Have you've ever wondered how this became such a big thing?  Well.... she follows the money making it clear these vermin are willing to destroy an untold number of children's lives for profit.   What's worse, they had the support of the Merritt Garland's Department of Justice  which was:

...... fiercely determined to support the surgical and chemical mutilation of children in the name of “gender affirming care.” Woe betide any who got in their way, like Dr. Eithan Haim, an honest man who had the misfortune to do part of his residency at Houston’s Texas Children’s Hospital.  ...............This enraged the DOJ, who immediately charged Haim with violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) by releasing information about children still being abused by the hospital. 

It’s legal to disclose protected information to stop serious medical misconduct, but that was of no concern to the DOJ. It was quickly discovered that the information Haim provided fully redacted the names and other identifying information of the children. There was no way to know who the children or their parents were. He didn’t violate HIPAA. That didn’t matter to the DOJ...............Sane Americans would consider exposing physicians and others doing permanent harm to mentally confused kids a good and necessary thing, but not the Garland DOJ. As Americans have come to expect, there were further irregularities in the DOJ’s lunatic pursuit of Dr. Haim........

I so often hear the left declare we have to embrace some scheme or other because "it's for the children".  Hogwash, mostly what they promote is "to the children", and it's destroying civilization, and that's their goal.  John M. Grondelski's article, Democrats for Infanticide,  

Big Abortion plays word games because it knows that if the unvarnished truth was spoken, Americans would be revulsed by the whole sordid business.  The U.S. Senate took up S.6, the “Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act.” The vote was 52-47, a majority but not the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. So, the bill failed.

The Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act required that if a baby is born alive during a third-trimester abortion (i.e., in months 6-9 of pregnancy), that baby should be provided medical care and allowed to live. Every Senate Democrat said “no.”

Abortion, especially in states that have “codified” Roe, allow third trimester abortions for any reason. Don’t let the propagandists say they are “rare” and sought only in medical distress. They occur and often occur for the same reasons abortions are procured at other stages of pregnancy: because the child interferes with the mother’s social or economic condition, not her life or the result of criminal assault.

 If a child is born alive it's an American citizen with Constitutionally "guaranteed" protection for life, liberty, pursuit of happiness...unless these vile Democrats and murdering leftist abortionist don't like that idea.  When they murder these live births someone needs to make it a criminal case, and drive it all the way to SCOTUS. 

This is a war, and the backbone of the left has been the media, but that's changing, and conservative publishing is making a comeback, and while this deals with books, that's true over the broad range of published material, especially the media, which is going through a metamorphosis from the old myrmidons of the left to new champions of "truth, justice, and the American way", just like Superman, at least the Superman of the 50's.  

The White House is taking control of the Press Briefing Room making changes that will be detrimental to the Pravda media now having received more than 7000 applications for "new media" seats.  Things are going to change. 

Do you think lawfare is done?  Think again, and it will take a massive effort by Trump's new Department of Justice to bring these miscreants under control, and hopefully some of them to prison.   

 Mike McDaniel asks, Will California succeed in secession?   He goes on to say say California is so delusional they think they can go it alone.  He then goes on to show just how stupid these nitwits are.  Well, I have an idea, how about this?  Let them secede, and take Oregon and Washington with them.  Then declare war on them, conquer them, turn them into territories with no Congressional representation, or the right to vote, and a Territorial Governor appointed by the President enforcing martial law.  Sounds like a winner to me, waddayathink?

Amy Wax and her lawsuit against Penn is back in the news, and Mike McDaniel says Penn's antisemitism is going to cost them.  I've followed and posted pieces about this from the beginning, and it was clear from the beginning Amy Wax was not a person to the trifled with. She won't give up, and she won't compromise, and Penn is in my opinion, like most of the big name universities, filled with academic sewer trout.  Here's my article on this, Amy Wax Is the Rock in the Current!

Much of this antisemitism is the result of so many Muslim students causing problems at these universities, and the money being thrown at the universities by rich Muslim nations.  Trump isn't going to allow this as Dershowitz says, "it's good to see Trump acting on these antisemites abusing their visas....they're not "entitled" to be here", and they have no "right" to be here.  

As for the deportation of illegal aliens destroying our economy, because there'll be no one to pick the berries, I gotta ask....Do they really believe that?  Well, that's an old failed argument, after all, if slaves were freed who would pick the cotton? 

Finally, France is going to send troops to Greenland, which is interesting since the French keep throwing out their governments on a monthly basis, and they've just been kicked out of all their former African colonies, so now they're going to declare war on the United States? And Denmark is going to defend against America with dog sleds.  Laughing rolling on the ground emoji here.

When Katz’s Met the DOJ

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

 

In 1888, Katz’s Deli opened on New York City’s Lower East Side. A century after it adopted its current name, the Obama administration began investigating it and other popular restaurants.

Most people know Katz’s from a memorable scene in When Harry Met Sally, but earlier generations on the Lower East Side knew it for its ‘Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army’ campaign during WWII when the owner’s three sons were all serving on the front lines. Presidents, from FDR to JFK to Reagan, members of Congress and all sorts of politicians stopped by for a snack and to get a photo at an authentic Jewish deli for their campaigns.

But the Justice Department’s targeting of Katz’s Deli not only lasted longer than When Harry Met Sally, but it also lasted longer than WWI and WWII combined, and no amount of salami could get rid of the greedy government lawyers who made for a much less romantic couple than Bill Crystal and Meg Ryan, and offered a much less happy ending than the classic movie.

While China, Iran and Russia hacked us, cartel members crossed the border, and terrorists carried out attacks, the Justice Department single-mindedly dedicated itself to the much more vital task of conducting inspections of Katz’s Deli bathrooms in 2011, 2018, 2020 and 2024.

Katz’s Deli is only 18 years younger than the United States Justice Department, but its claim to fame is serving pastrami sandwiches while the federal government’s skill is destroying all that it touches. The old school deli has hosted plenty of episodes of Law and Order, but under Obama, the law showed up not to have a sandwich in between takes, but to drag the deli into court.

And finally extracted its pound of fresh hand-cut meat from the neighborhood’s last survivor.

After 13 years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which had also taken the lead in spurious investigations of Trump, celebrated New Year’s Eve with a settlement and a $20,000 penalty because the iconic deli, which has been around in one form or another for 136 years, had not sufficiently adapted itself to the 2010 version of ADA disability regulations

No disabled people had actually complained about Katz’s. While some eateries, especially on the other side of the country in California, have been plagued by serial ADA litigants, the only ones to object to Katz’s entrance, tables and bathroom were Justice Department lawyers.

And being a government toilet lawyer is only a moral disability, not an actual physical disability.

Katz’s real problem was that it had been listed as a recommended restaurant by the 2011 Zagat Guide, and some bright suit at the Southern District of New York decided to use it as a guide for finding restaurants for the government to sue. This grand project, announced as the Manhattan Restaurants ADA Compliance Initiative, had DOJ employees going to restaurants at taxpayer expense and then, instead of leaving a tip, suing the restaurant for non-compliance.

The targets were multicultural and iconic, including Carmine’s Italian restaurants in the Theater District, Rosa Mexicano, and Katz’s. Rosa was shaken down by the DOJ’s best for $30,000, Carmine’s for ten big ones and now Katz’s for $20,000. The DOJ’s boastful press release notes that, “a handful of restaurants closed before the accessibility review could be completed.”

That $60,000 would have been a fraction of the cost of the destructive project to taxpayers. The price of 13 years of federal litigation would likely be in the hundreds of thousands or millions.

And you can buy a lot of turkey sandwiches and matzo ball soup for that kind of bread.

But, as a certain New York Times journalist opined about big government in the USSR, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.” And you can’t have big government in the U.S. without closing a bunch of restaurants and dragging the rest through endless litigation.

The Americans With Disabilities Act, one of the worst legacies of the first Bush administration, allows the DOJ to go after restaurants “even if no one has complained about or has been injured” which turned the ADA into the Evil Power-Hungry Lawyers With No Disabilities Act.

The restaurants first realized they were targeted when the government sent them a 17-page ‘survey’. The DOJ “inspected” some locations in the style of old Mafia goons and crooked cops.

Those that did not go along were quickly sued by the Justice Department.

The Southern District of New York’s project to destroy restaurants was associated with the era of Preet Bharara, one of the worst ambulance chasers and worst men to ever occupy a role as a federal prosecutor, whose accomplishments included setting off an international crisis with India by arresting one of its diplomats, investigating internet comments on a conservative site and indicting politicians for bragging rights in cases that would later be thrown out.

When Bharara was fired by the Trump administration, it cleaned some of the stench out of the SDNY office, and put an end to Bharara’s ambitions to clamber to public office on a trail of bodies, but the evil that federal prosecutors do lives on after them, and even with Bharara consigned to podcasting and media appearances, the DOJ’s war on a deli dragged on.

Katz’s Deli had survived two world wars and the gentrification that eliminated most other old family businesses across that stretch of Houston Street leaving behind brick, glass and steel condos where studio apartments cost millions. Katz’s also survived a surge in meat prices, the pandemic and the neighborhood deli has now endured a record 13-year federal investigation.

Not for mob ties or racketeering, but for the size of its old-fashioned doors, tables and toilets.

Katz’s is one of the last survivors of generations of Jewish delis and Yiddish theaters at nearby Second Avenue. But those delis, like the more locally famous 2nd Ave Deli, had to battle crime, blight and an influx of housing projects in the sixties and seventies: Katz’s had to fight the DOJ.

According to the DOJ, Katz’s old school double doors are not an “accessible” entrance. In reality the double doors are wide, inside is a gentle slope leading upward past a golden rail to where the counters are, and it’s hard to imagine anyone having trouble making it inside. Everything looks much the way that it would have in the 1950s and hasn’t changed much since those days.

But according to the DOJ, the distance between sidewalk and the entrance is half an inch too much and that half an inch makes all the difference. Worse still, the opening width of the doors is 29.5 inches, which falls short of the 32 inch requirement by a whole two and a half inches.

The same year that the federal authorities found Katz’s wanting by half an inch, the federal budget deficit exceeded $1.3 trillion. If you are half an inch short of federal requirements, you have a major problem, but if the feds spend $1.3 trillion in money they don’t have, that’s fine.

A half inch for us is a major crime, a trillion too much for the feds is a rounding error.

Speaking of money, the DOJ complains that “Katz’s Delicatessen utilizes an uncommon method of payment at the restaurant; when patrons enter, they are handed a blank ticket, on which restaurant staff list the prices of the items ordered. Patrons pay for their meal as listed on the ticket, before exiting through a turnstile, which a patron must pass through to exit the building.”

The method, like the deli, is uncommon today, and is part of the nostalgia of the eatery. The nostalgia comes from inhabiting a world in which the federal government’s inspectors could not randomly show up anywhere on an unconstitutional authority dreamed up by a Kafka novel.

The Justice Department also took issue with the tables which supposedly have “insufficient dining surfaces for persons with disabilities”. The tables, like everything else, look much the same that they did 80 years ago and at the delis of generations past. They can be pulled in and out. There are chairs next to them. And the lines of people crowding outside like it that way.

During the pandemic, Katz’s Deli had to introduce outdoor dining for the first time in 130 years, leaving the interior a strange ghostly assortment of empty tables with no one sitting at them.

The DOJ also poked around the bathrooms and complained that the hand dryers protrude 2 inches too far, the side grab bar is 1.5 inches too short, and, in a masterpiece of legal legerdemain, “the mirror in both toilet rooms is 45.5 inches above the floor, exceeding the maximum height requirement” in violation of the ADA’s 2010 bathroom mirror measuring code standards as determined by the DOJ’s top toilet measuring experts.

American cities, including New York City, may be overrun by criminals and illegal aliens who burn people alive on subway trains, but at least the bathroom mirrors will be at the right height.

Apart from the $20,000 fine, Katz’s will now be obligated to make all sorts of changes, including the old-fashioned ticket payment system that the DOJ’s lawyers objected to, and that will irreversibly alter the look and feel of one of the last remaining Jewish delis in the area.

That will be one more accomplishment of Barack Obama and the Justice Department.

The consent decree also allows the Justice Department to return at any time to inspect the deli. So if you’re ever at Katz’s and see people in suits and tape measures crawling around on the floor and inspecting the toilets, you know that they’re hard at work for the government.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left tells the untold story of the Left's 200-Year War against America And readers love it.