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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Showing posts with label Post Constitution Era. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Post Constitution Era. Show all posts

Monday, March 20, 2023

It Looks as if Trump Will Be Arrested Next Week, and That’s Not Even the Worst of It (updated)

By Rich Kozlovich
 
Since I published this yesterday the number of commentaries about this outrageous corruption of law  has been significant, which I've added.  It's clear this is going to cause a national scandal.  So, I've decided to republish this piece today with all the updates. 
 
From Maverick's commanding officer in the movie Top Gun:  "You're ego is writing checks your body can't cash".   To paraphrase that: Alvin Bragg, your writing checks your intelligence can't cash.  I do believe these leftist misfits will face consequences they won't be able to handle. 
 
 mueller crime search
 
I didn't originate the title to this article, and I'm not sure from where I absconded it, but there it is, so let's move on.   This idea of arresting Donald Trump and prosecuting him is a convoluted corruption of law by a corrupt Soros prosecutor, who refuses to prosecute actual criminals, dangerous criminals, and is now attempting to go after a former President of the United States over something that's nothing being termed a felony.  None of which in any way reflective of the rule of law.  Is it possible this could only happen in New York?  A city people are fleeing as fast as they can organize their affairs.  New York, city and state, are a mess, and the Democrats own it.
 
Below are the articles I've read dealing with this, and I like this first one particularly as it demonstrates just how corrupt leftists who hold powerful position really are.  There's the old line about being careful for what you wish for, as you may get it, and the Democrats are so hot to finding something for which to prosecute Trump, anything will be acceptable to them, even if it's a lie, they're opening doors they may regret in the future. 
If this happens, and if he's convicted, this will make ex-Presidents targets for prosecution much more easily than in the past.  This will be the precedent, and even if this doesn't go forward now, could still be justification for going after both Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.  The difference is there are legitimate legal issues involving corruption by both of these men justifying making them targets for prosecution, there are none regarding Trump.   
 
How about prosecuting members of Congress?  I think that's a really good start, and start doing it now.  On what charges?  Well, since we no longer have a rule of law in this post Constitutional era, does it matter?   

As I said, I really like this first piece as the author lists all their attempts to criminalize Trump, all of which has fallen flat, and at the same time totally ignored all the blatant corruption going on in the Biden Crime Family.  Yet the drum major of the Nitwit Parade, Joy Behar, claims, If Trump Isn't Arrested This Week, ‘We Will No Longer Have a Country'. 
 
I used to believe there was a bottom to stupid, but between Joy and the rest of that nitwit parade on The View, we now know, stupid not only has no bottom, it has no boundaries.  
 
I will be updating this piece right up until this either happens or not.  
 
Arresting Donald Trump Kevin McCullough  |  Mar 19, 2023 For much of the last two months the rumors have swirled. On Saturday the former President acknowledged it. On Tuesday it may happen. As I said on That KEVIN Show this has been one of the worst kept secrets in the modern era. What happens if they do? What happens if they put handcuffs on a former President? If you’ve watched social media this weekend the reaction has ranged. Trump supporters have asserted flatly that it insures his re-ascendancy to the White House. Trump haters are mixed with some gloating “we finally got him!” Some are accusing him of attempting to start a civil war. They say this because he merely said “protest” in his post on Truth Social that went viral. Between the gloating and the accusing there appears to be a good deal of panic on the left about the outcome............
 
Professor Turley exposes the incredible weakness of the Trump indictment March 19, 2023 By Thomas Lifson -  Professor Jonathan Turley, one of the few brave honest liberals in academia, is far too nice a person to speak with utter contempt in his voice. But the substance of what he has to say about the indictment and pending arrest of former President Donald J. Trump exposes contemptible behavior on the part of the New State justice system. In two brief clips from an interview he did Saturday with Molly Line of Fox News, he exposes the flimsiness of the case against Trump and the illicit origin of the indictment. First, how Trump could end up convicted even though the charges are likely to get thrown out on appeal: 
 
Trump-hating John Bolton says an arrest could get Trump back in the White House if it doesn't go exactly as leftists would like.......
 
A two-tiered justice system and the perils of a Trump arrest,  March 19, 2023 By Rajan Laad -Last March, the Federal Election Commission fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign $8,000 and the Democratic National Committee $105,000. Their crimes were the obscuring of their funding for the infamous "Steele dossier." The Clinton campaign attempted to disguise payments to Steele as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" in campaign filings. Lawyers working for the Democrats in 2016 hired research firm Fusion GPS to ‘investigate’ Trump. The firm then paid former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his company, Orbis Business Intelligence, to conduct ‘opposition research.’ The Steele dossier was replete with spurious claims and conspiracy theories. It was passed on to politicized government agencies which used it as one of the reasons to spur the Mueller probe. The probe lasted for almost two years, cost $32 million of taxpayer funds, and hung like a sword over the Trump presidency. The vast disinformation campaign was the first step by the Democrats towards outlawing political opposition. But nobody was punished for this.................
 
4 ways to Get Trump, March 19, 2023 By Clark Wren - "The far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.," Trump wrote on Truth Social. So the Kafkaesque Ministry of Justice or the banana republic Justice Department or the weaponized legal system (whichever is the proper term here) is trying to indict President Trump in four different ways.  The law of averages means that one of these methods will likely succeed.  This Tuesday will be interesting............
 
Government Tyrants Play with Fire. By J.B. Shurk -The communist thugs controlling America's legal system have chosen to cross the Rubicon, it seems.  President Trump says he will be arrested Tuesday now that New York City's corrupt, Soros-funded district attorney has cooked up some cockamamie criminal indictment against him involving Stormy Daniels — the same political pawn who was already ordered to pay the president 300,000 dollars in legal fees as restitution in a prior case. If anyone needed further evidence that we reside under a post-constitutional Uniparty regime with utter disdain for the rule of law, add this to the long list of government crimes and usurpations committed against the American people.
 
Conservatives Rally Around Trump, Katherine HamiltonConservatives sounded the alarm following news that former President Donald Trump expects to be arrested on Tuesday based on “illegal leaks” from the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Republican lawmakers and conservative figures and commentators said the predicted arrest of Trump, who is running for president in 2024, shows how the justice system is “weaponized against all Americans” and warned that the United States is turning into a “banana republic.” Even so, many conservatives wager an arrest would only further reveal the extent of Democrat corruption, ultimately skyrocketing support for Trump’s presidential run...........
 
 
Elon Musk: ‘Trump Will Be Re-Elected in a Landslide Victory’ if Arrested, Robert Kraychik Former President Donald Trump will win reelection in a “landslide victory” if he is handcuffed and arrested next week, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter predicted in a tweet published Saturday. Musk’s tweet was in reply to David Freiheit — also known as Viva Frei, who, similarly, assessed that a Trump arrest will lead to a boon of political support for the former president.

Anybody else repelled by the legal juggernaut against Trump just as revelations roll out about the Bidens? March 18, 2023 By Monica Showalter -These days, we are learning about just how corrupt and criminal a sitting president can be, what with "the big guy" taking his cut of millions of dollars of cash from China's government-linked firms like a mafia don, as greedy famiglia members gathered around for the spoils. According to the New York Post:...........
 
Trump Attorney Says President Donald Trump Will Not Refuse to Surrender If Corrupt Manhattan DA Indicts Him in Garbage Stormy Daniels Case - Meanwhile, the Biden Crime Family was just caught with documents that show they were collecting millions from the Chinese Communists. President Trump will not refuse to surrender if corrupt Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicts him next week in the already played-out Stormy Daniels case. Almost one year ago this month the 9th Circuit Court issued a final ruling in the case brought against Trump by disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti and Stormy.............
 
Soros-Funded New York City DA Alvin Bragg Meets with NYC Law Enforcement to Discuss Logistics for Arresting President Trump on Junk Stormy Daniels Charges - Corrupt New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg received $1 million from Soros in his election for NYC DA. As a result, New York City saw a rise in crime from 2021 to 2022.  The overall index crime in New York City increased in September 2022, by 15.2% compared with September 2021. But crime can wait, DA Alvin Bragg has bigger fish to fry.  The corrupt Soros-funded DA is going after President Donald Trump.  And he is using Stormy Daniels as his means to get the former president.............
 
Trump Calls for 'Protest' to 'Take Our Country Back' If He's 'Arrested on Tuesday',  Spencer Brown - Former President Donald Trump shared a new reaction Saturday morning to reports that the Manhattan district attorney may formally indict the 45th president for alleged "hush money" payments made to Stormy Daniels back in 2016. As Leah reported on Friday afternoon, authorities in New York are preparing for a potential indictment of former President Donald Trump — as early as next week — in a move those on Trump's legal and campaign teams say would only help his 2024 bid to return to the White House. .....
 
Mad Max: Trump ‘Attempting to Organize His Domestic Terrorists’, Ian Hanchett
On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Saturday Show,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) reacted to former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post earlier in the day on reports that he will be indicted soon by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg by stating that by making the announcement himself, “it’s almost like he’s attempting to organize his domestic terrorists to show up and to resist him being arrested.” And “perhaps, he was trying to organize domestic terrorists to protest his arrest.”
 
https://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/afb042121dAPR20210421054508.jpg
I love this.  Mad Maxine, who has been shown to be an obnoxious beast over and over again, and in the past publicly called for violence against conservatives, Republicans and Trump administration employees is concerned about protests in support of Trump as domestic terrorism.

Burt Prelutsky once noted: "Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're Number One.

There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'.   The four of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words."

Democrats Accuse Trump of 'Inciting Violence,' As All Part of His 'Playbook', Sarah Arnold  March 19, 2023 - I'm sure if Democrats could, they would throw a parade in the wake of the news that former President Trump is facing potential indictment, making it a bit easier for them to keep the White House in 2024 and to push their radical agenda on Americans. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) denounced Trump's call for his supporters to protest, accusing him of inciting violence.  "The former president's announcement this morning is reckless: doing so to keep himself in the news & to foment unrest among his supporters," Pelosi tweeted. "He cannot hide from his violations of the law, disrespect for our elections, and incitements to violence. Rightfully, our legal system will decide how to hold him accountable."...........

Law Enforcement Agencies Are Preparing for Possible Trump Indictment Leah Barkoukis , By Robert Spencer March 17, 2023 -  It has been a long time coming, and now the final act appears to be in view. Donald Trump is about to be arrested, and the corrupt and politicized authorities who have brought matters to this point are preparing for the worst: the NYPD, the Secret Service, and even the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force are all busy making preparations for the big day, which indicates several things about what will happen and what they expect will happen, or want us to think they expect will happen. NBC News reported Friday that “local, state and federal law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump is indicted as early as next week, according to five senior officials familiar with the preparations.” All this talk among security agencies centers around security preparations at Manhattan Criminal Court, where Trump will face charges over alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels..............

'That's Obviously the Play Here': Matt Walsh Has an Interesting Theory on Why Trump Might Get Arrested, Scott Morefield  March 18, 2023 -The possibility of the Manhattan Criminal Court indicting former President Donald Trump on charges related to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels has led to a variety of theories around the inevitable political fallout to come. Though the charges reportedly to be brought against Trump initially don't appear to be anything that would land him in jail for even a day, the possibility of handcuffs and a perp walk for the former president has Democrats salivating and conservatives, even Trump critics, aghast that partisan politics have descended so low. This is the stuff of banana republics and Third World dictatorships, not what was not so long ago the beacon of the free world......

The Trump Arrest is the Last Gasp of 7 Years of Fake Lawfare By There’s no case here. And they know it.  Having exhausted most of the federal resources in pursuing charges they couldn’t prove, process crimes that weren’t criminal and cases that had no crimes attached to them, the ball has partly passed to the states. (Although Jack Smith’s Special Counsel investigation is the last great hope of the Mueller fanboys.) Clumsy amateurish efforts have advanced in New York and Georgia that make little effort to disguise the fact that they exist purely to bolster the political status of the local officials involved. The impending arrest comes from Alvin Bragg, a prosecutor so “progressive” that even Soros’ people emailed me to disassociate themselves from him the last time I wrote about him. (It’s pretty bad when even Soros doesn’t want his name linked to yours.) Bragg ran on a platform of not arresting criminals and he’s delivered........

The coming Trump arrest is a very dangerous power play March 19, 2023 By Andrea Widburg - My mom used a pressure cooker that was the terror of the household. It bounced around all over the counter and, unless the heat was applied and the pressure released with incredible care, it was like having a bomb in the kitchen. When I look at what the Democrats are doing in America, I am reminded of that pressure cooker. Their latest scheme is to arrest Trump even as they announce that they are doubling down on persecuting the almost entirely peaceful J6 protesters who unwittingly trespassed in the Capitol. The first action builds pressure; the second denies Americans their constitutional safety valve. I fear that this cannot end well.  Let’s think about the chronology just to make sure we understand what’s going on:......
 
Vivek Ramaswamy’s viral take on the threat to arrest Trump,  By Andrea Widburg - Vivek Ramaswamy, the businessman turned presidential candidate, has posted a not-quite-3-minute-long video in which he attacks DA Alvin Bragg’s efforts to use lawfare to kneecap Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election. Ramaswamy’s video has 3 million views on Twitter as of this post, and the numbers are going up—and no wonder. He says we what all fear: That the possible indictment of Donald Trump marks America’s official passage from a constitutional republic to a banana republic.............

In Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan, a Whole Lot More REAL Felonies Are Being Committed - Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has been very reluctant to prosecute most people for felonies, but apparently, former President Trump is different. Compare the last year before the pandemic (2019) with 2022. Under Bragg, the number of felony cases Bragg declined to prosecute increased from 828 to 1,119 — a 35% increase. That explains most of the drop in the conviction rate for felonies from 68% to 51% over that period. And while many felony cases were then handled as misdemeanors (a 33% increase over 2019), the drop in misdemeanor prosecutions was much larger, explaining why the number of misdemeanors resulting in jail sentences fell by 78%. What makes this all the more remarkable is that this huge drop occurred while the number of offenses increased.......

Trump Calls Persecutor Alvin Bragg a “Racist” in Fiery Social Posts - The ongoing saga surrounding Donald Trump and his hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels has prompted the President to issue some scathing remarks about the New York District Attorney for the case, Alvin Bragg.  I discussed it during a segment of the latest episode of The JD Rucker Show:...........

Manhattan prosecutor's office reportedly 'in chaos' March 20, 2023 By Monica Showalter -  When law is tossed out the window, is anybody surprised that chaos follows? That's apparently what we have in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where Soros-financed District Attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly presiding over a chaotic shambles in the wake of news that his men intend to indict President Trump on politicized charges............Banana republic politics, banana republic office, just like what you might find in places like Caracas or Managua.  The root of it seems to be in Bragg's stated Trump-hate, which he openly campaigned on when he ran for office in Manhattan.  That's actually illegal, but the matter was ignored by voters.............He's reduced about half the felony charges of actual violent criminals to misdemeanors, and thrown the book at the innocent, such as the hapless Bronx bodega clerk, Jose Alba, who was forced to defend himself against a poised killer during a robbery...........But as for real criminals, Bragg had other ideas and has made life in Manhattan a living hell............The entire case, as legal scholar Alan Dershowitz has noted, is based on "made up laws,".............It gets worse now that news has broken that the five-year statute of limitations expired ... two years ago.......... 
 
 Cowardice is not an option in reacting to a possible Trump arrest March 20, 2023 By Rajan Laad - If the buzz in the news media is to be believed, it seems likely that President Trump could be indicted this week. President Trump also seems to believe he could face arrest this week.Following the gratuitous raid on Mar-A-Lago, this would be another draconian move by the Democrats to target their primary political opponent.  So how should citizens react if President Trump is indeed arrested?What happens if citizens engage in protests by assembling peacefully and shouting slogans?  Democrat-sponsored rioters could infiltrate these peaceful demonstrations and engage in violence. ............
 
McCarthy: Manhattan DA ‘Abusing His Office to Target Trump’,  Jacob Bliss - House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Sunday said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is “abusing his office” by going after former President Donald Trump, while Democrats, including Bragg, are allowing crime to run rampant. “Alvin Bragg is abusing his office to target President Trump while he’s reduced a majority of felonies, including violent crimes, to misdemeanors. He has different rules for political opponents,” McCarthy said on Twitter following Trump saying on his Truth Social that he believes he will be arrested this coming week after “illegal leaks.”.....
 
Fury at Manhattan’s Bragg over Looming Trump Charges Dominates House GOP Retreat: ‘Stop Going After People Because You Have Political Differences’, Matthew Boyle U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy lit into leftist Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg at a press conference as House Republicans gathered to discuss and formulate their 2023 agenda plans, with looming likely charges from Bragg against former President Donald Trump coming this week.............“Everyone in this country — Republican, Democrat, and others — should be outraged that people will actually use our justice system against their political adversaries,” Emmer said. “That’s not what this country is based on and that’s — it’s wrong and I disagree with it.”.......
 
The Legally and Morally Flawed Case Against Trump, Philip Holloway  Mar 20, 2023- Although we don’t yet know entirely how it will be structured, enough of the Manhattan District Attorney’s case against Trump has found its way into the public domain so that we know the general parameters. The centerpiece of the case is a misdemeanor charge under Section 175 for supposedly falsifying his business records. The theory is that Trump paid his former lawyer $130,000.00 in a series of reimbursements to Cohen and labeled them as legal expenses to conceal that the money was really to pay Adult Film Actress, Stormy Daniels for a nondisclosure agreement and that somehow this scheme violated federal election laws. From a legal perspective, this bizarre wielding of State prosecutorial power in pursuit of what is essentially an alleged federal crime is seriously flawed..............
 
A Cynical and Political Looming Prosecution, Guy Benso  March 20, 2023 - Former President Trump announced over the weekend that he expected to be arrested this coming Tuesday, calling on his supporters to protest the development and "take our nation back." His office later clarified that Trump didn't have any specific knowledge about the timing of any imminent arrest, claiming that his Truth Social posts were simply "rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system." An indictment is widely expected, however, and former prosecutors I've spoken to tell me the fact pattern playing out strongly suggests that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office is, indeed, moving in that direction. The editors of the Wall Street Journal made some salient points on this front last week:.......
 
Empire State Shilling: Manhattan DA’s Office is Exporting Prosecutors for Jan 6 Cases —MORE POLITICAL TROPHY HUNTING, Kelly Wilde The same Manhattan DA’s office threatening to upend the republic this week with a bogus indictment of President Trump is exporting activists to prosecute the January 6 defendants in Washington DC.  Carolina Nevin —a backbencher from Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan District Attorney’s office —has been exclusively prosecuting J6 defendants since arriving at the US Attorney’s office in September 2022. (Her only publicity after nine years in New York came from prosecuting NYPD officers while violent crime surged in the city.)  Nevin’s true tutelage was under former Manhattan DA Cy Vance, whose controversy-plagued office made a reputation of giving a pass to the rich and famous —downplaying Jeffrey Epstein’s well-documented depravity, and sweeping Harvey Weinstein rape claims under the rug after receiving more than $20,000 in campaign donations from Weinstein’s defense attorneys, among other scandals...........


Sunday, March 19, 2023

It Looks as if Trump Will Be Arrested Next Week, and That’s Not Even the Worst of It

By Rich Kozlovich
 
 mueller crime search
 
I didn't originate the title to this article, and I'm not sure from where I absconded it, but there it is, so let's move on.   This idea of arresting Donald Trump and prosecuting him is a convoluted corruption of law by a corrupt Soros prosecutor, who refuses to prosecute actual criminals, dangerous criminals, and is now attempting to go after a former President of the United States over something that's nothing being termed a felony.  None of which in any way reflective of the rule of law.  Is it possible this could only happen in New York?  A city people are fleeing as fast as they can organize their affairs.  New York, city and state, are a mess, and the Democrats own it.
 
Below are the articles I've read dealing with this, and I like this first one particularly as it demonstrates just how corrupt leftists who hold powerful position really are.  There's the old line about being careful for what you wish for, as you may get it, and the Democrats are so hot to finding something for which to prosecute Trump, anything will be acceptable to them, even if it's a lie, they're opening doors they may regret in the future. 
If this happens, and if he's convicted, this will make ex-Presidents targets for prosecution much more easily than in the past.  This will be the precedent, and even if this doesn't go forward now, could still be justification for going after both Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.  The difference is there are legitimate legal issues involving corruption by both of these men justifying making them targets for prosecution, there are none regarding Trump.   
 
How about prosecuting members of Congress?  I think that's a really good start, and start doing it now.  On what charges?  Well, since we no longer have a rule of law in this post Constitutional era, does it matter?   

As I said, I really like this first piece as the author lists all their attempts to criminalize Trump, all of which has fallen flat, and at the same time totally ignored all the blatant corruption going on in the Biden Crime Family.  Yet the drum major of the Nitwit Parade, Joy Behar, claims, If Trump Isn't Arrested This Week, ‘We Will No Longer Have a Country'. 
 
I used to believe there was a bottom to stupid, but between Joy and the rest of that nitwit parade on The View, we now know, stupid not only has no bottom, it has no boundaries.  
 
I will be updating this piece right up until this either happens or not.  
 
Arresting Donald Trump Kevin McCullough  |  Mar 19, 2023 For much of the last two months the rumors have swirled. On Saturday the former President acknowledged it. On Tuesday it may happen. As I said on That KEVIN Show this has been one of the worst kept secrets in the modern era. What happens if they do? What happens if they put handcuffs on a former President? If you’ve watched social media this weekend the reaction has ranged. Trump supporters have asserted flatly that it insures his re-ascendancy to the White House. Trump haters are mixed with some gloating “we finally got him!” Some are accusing him of attempting to start a civil war. They say this because he merely said “protest” in his post on Truth Social that went viral. Between the gloating and the accusing there appears to be a good deal of panic on the left about the outcome............
 
Professor Turley exposes the incredible weakness of the Trump indictment March 19, 2023 By Thomas Lifson -  Professor Jonathan Turley, one of the few brave honest liberals in academia, is far too nice a person to speak with utter contempt in his voice. But the substance of what he has to say about the indictment and pending arrest of former President Donald J. Trump exposes contemptible behavior on the part of the New State justice system. In two brief clips from an interview he did Saturday with Molly Line of Fox News, he exposes the flimsiness of the case against Trump and the illicit origin of the indictment. First, how Trump could end up convicted even though the charges are likely to get thrown out on appeal: 
 
Trump-hating John Bolton says an arrest could get Trump back in the White House if it doesn't go exactly as leftists would like.......
 
A two-tiered justice system and the perils of a Trump arrest,  March 19, 2023 By Rajan Laad -Last March, the Federal Election Commission fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign $8,000 and the Democratic National Committee $105,000. Their crimes were the obscuring of their funding for the infamous "Steele dossier." The Clinton campaign attempted to disguise payments to Steele as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" in campaign filings. Lawyers working for the Democrats in 2016 hired research firm Fusion GPS to ‘investigate’ Trump. The firm then paid former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his company, Orbis Business Intelligence, to conduct ‘opposition research.’ The Steele dossier was replete with spurious claims and conspiracy theories. It was passed on to politicized government agencies which used it as one of the reasons to spur the Mueller probe. The probe lasted for almost two years, cost $32 million of taxpayer funds, and hung like a sword over the Trump presidency. The vast disinformation campaign was the first step by the Democrats towards outlawing political opposition. But nobody was punished for this.................
 
4 ways to Get Trump, March 19, 2023 By Clark Wren - "The far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.," Trump wrote on Truth Social. So the Kafkaesque Ministry of Justice or the banana republic Justice Department or the weaponized legal system (whichever is the proper term here) is trying to indict President Trump in four different ways.  The law of averages means that one of these methods will likely succeed.  This Tuesday will be interesting............
 
Government Tyrants Play with Fire. By J.B. Shurk -The communist thugs controlling America's legal system have chosen to cross the Rubicon, it seems.  President Trump says he will be arrested Tuesday now that New York City's corrupt, Soros-funded district attorney has cooked up some cockamamie criminal indictment against him involving Stormy Daniels — the same political pawn who was already ordered to pay the president 300,000 dollars in legal fees as restitution in a prior case. If anyone needed further evidence that we reside under a post-constitutional Uniparty regime with utter disdain for the rule of law, add this to the long list of government crimes and usurpations committed against the American people.
 
Conservatives Rally Around Trump, Katherine HamiltonConservatives sounded the alarm following news that former President Donald Trump expects to be arrested on Tuesday based on “illegal leaks” from the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Republican lawmakers and conservative figures and commentators said the predicted arrest of Trump, who is running for president in 2024, shows how the justice system is “weaponized against all Americans” and warned that the United States is turning into a “banana republic.” Even so, many conservatives wager an arrest would only further reveal the extent of Democrat corruption, ultimately skyrocketing support for Trump’s presidential run...........
 
 
Elon Musk: ‘Trump Will Be Re-Elected in a Landslide Victory’ if Arrested, Robert Kraychik Former President Donald Trump will win reelection in a “landslide victory” if he is handcuffed and arrested next week, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and Twitter predicted in a tweet published Saturday. Musk’s tweet was in reply to David Freiheit — also known as Viva Frei, who, similarly, assessed that a Trump arrest will lead to a boon of political support for the former president.

Anybody else repelled by the legal juggernaut against Trump just as revelations roll out about the Bidens? March 18, 2023 By Monica Showalter -These days, we are learning about just how corrupt and criminal a sitting president can be, what with "the big guy" taking his cut of millions of dollars of cash from China's government-linked firms like a mafia don, as greedy famiglia members gathered around for the spoils. According to the New York Post:...........
 
Trump Attorney Says President Donald Trump Will Not Refuse to Surrender If Corrupt Manhattan DA Indicts Him in Garbage Stormy Daniels Case - Meanwhile, the Biden Crime Family was just caught with documents that show they were collecting millions from the Chinese Communists. President Trump will not refuse to surrender if corrupt Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicts him next week in the already played-out Stormy Daniels case. Almost one year ago this month the 9th Circuit Court issued a final ruling in the case brought against Trump by disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti and Stormy.............
 
Soros-Funded New York City DA Alvin Bragg Meets with NYC Law Enforcement to Discuss Logistics for Arresting President Trump on Junk Stormy Daniels Charges - Corrupt New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg received $1 million from Soros in his election for NYC DA. As a result, New York City saw a rise in crime from 2021 to 2022.  The overall index crime in New York City increased in September 2022, by 15.2% compared with September 2021. But crime can wait, DA Alvin Bragg has bigger fish to fry.  The corrupt Soros-funded DA is going after President Donald Trump.  And he is using Stormy Daniels as his means to get the former president.............
 
Trump Calls for 'Protest' to 'Take Our Country Back' If He's 'Arrested on Tuesday',  Spencer Brown - Former President Donald Trump shared a new reaction Saturday morning to reports that the Manhattan district attorney may formally indict the 45th president for alleged "hush money" payments made to Stormy Daniels back in 2016. As Leah reported on Friday afternoon, authorities in New York are preparing for a potential indictment of former President Donald Trump — as early as next week — in a move those on Trump's legal and campaign teams say would only help his 2024 bid to return to the White House. .....
 
Mad Max: Trump ‘Attempting to Organize His Domestic Terrorists’, Ian Hanchett
On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Saturday Show,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) reacted to former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post earlier in the day on reports that he will be indicted soon by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg by stating that by making the announcement himself, “it’s almost like he’s attempting to organize his domestic terrorists to show up and to resist him being arrested.” And “perhaps, he was trying to organize domestic terrorists to protest his arrest.”
 
https://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/afb042121dAPR20210421054508.jpg
I love this.  Mad Maxine, who has been shown to be an obnoxious beast over and over again, and in the past publicly called for violence against conservatives, Republicans and Trump administration employees is concerned about protests in support of Trump as domestic terrorism.

Burt Prelutsky once noted: "Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're Number One.

There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'.   The four of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words."

Democrats Accuse Trump of 'Inciting Violence,' As All Part of His 'Playbook', Sarah Arnold  March 19, 2023 - I'm sure if Democrats could, they would throw a parade in the wake of the news that former President Trump is facing potential indictment, making it a bit easier for them to keep the White House in 2024 and to push their radical agenda on Americans. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) denounced Trump's call for his supporters to protest, accusing him of inciting violence.  "The former president's announcement this morning is reckless: doing so to keep himself in the news & to foment unrest among his supporters," Pelosi tweeted. "He cannot hide from his violations of the law, disrespect for our elections, and incitements to violence. Rightfully, our legal system will decide how to hold him accountable."...........

Law Enforcement Agencies Are Preparing for Possible Trump Indictment Leah Barkoukis , By Robert Spencer March 17, 2023 -  It has been a long time coming, and now the final act appears to be in view. Donald Trump is about to be arrested, and the corrupt and politicized authorities who have brought matters to this point are preparing for the worst: the NYPD, the Secret Service, and even the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force are all busy making preparations for the big day, which indicates several things about what will happen and what they expect will happen, or want us to think they expect will happen. NBC News reported Friday that “local, state and federal law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump is indicted as early as next week, according to five senior officials familiar with the preparations.” All this talk among security agencies centers around security preparations at Manhattan Criminal Court, where Trump will face charges over alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels..............

'That's Obviously the Play Here': Matt Walsh Has an Interesting Theory on Why Trump Might Get Arrested, Scott Morefield  March 18, 2023 -The possibility of the Manhattan Criminal Court indicting former President Donald Trump on charges related to hush money payments to Stormy Daniels has led to a variety of theories around the inevitable political fallout to come. Though the charges reportedly to be brought against Trump initially don't appear to be anything that would land him in jail for even a day, the possibility of handcuffs and a perp walk for the former president has Democrats salivating and conservatives, even Trump critics, aghast that partisan politics have descended so low. This is the stuff of banana republics and Third World dictatorships, not what was not so long ago the beacon of the free world......

The Trump Arrest is the Last Gasp of 7 Years of Fake Lawfare By There’s no case here. And they know it.  Having exhausted most of the federal resources in pursuing charges they couldn’t prove, process crimes that weren’t criminal and cases that had no crimes attached to them, the ball has partly passed to the states. (Although Jack Smith’s Special Counsel investigation is the last great hope of the Mueller fanboys.) Clumsy amateurish efforts have advanced in New York and Georgia that make little effort to disguise the fact that they exist purely to bolster the political status of the local officials involved. The impending arrest comes from Alvin Bragg, a prosecutor so “progressive” that even Soros’ people emailed me to disassociate themselves from him the last time I wrote about him. (It’s pretty bad when even Soros doesn’t want his name linked to yours.) Bragg ran on a platform of not arresting criminals and he’s delivered........

The coming Trump arrest is a very dangerous power play March 19, 2023 By Andrea Widburg - My mom used a pressure cooker that was the terror of the household. It bounced around all over the counter and, unless the heat was applied and the pressure released with incredible care, it was like having a bomb in the kitchen. When I look at what the Democrats are doing in America, I am reminded of that pressure cooker. Their latest scheme is to arrest Trump even as they announce that they are doubling down on persecuting the almost entirely peaceful J6 protesters who unwittingly trespassed in the Capitol. The first action builds pressure; the second denies Americans their constitutional safety valve. I fear that this cannot end well.  Let’s think about the chronology just to make sure we understand what’s going on:......
 
Vivek Ramaswamy’s viral take on the threat to arrest Trump,  By Andrea Widburg - Vivek Ramaswamy, the businessman turned presidential candidate, has posted a not-quite-3-minute-long video in which he attacks DA Alvin Bragg’s efforts to use lawfare to kneecap Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election. Ramaswamy’s video has 3 million views on Twitter as of this post, and the numbers are going up—and no wonder. He says we what all fear: That the possible indictment of Donald Trump marks America’s official passage from a constitutional republic to a banana republic.............

In Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan, a Whole Lot More REAL Felonies Are Being Committed - Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has been very reluctant to prosecute most people for felonies, but apparently, former President Trump is different. Compare the last year before the pandemic (2019) with 2022. Under Bragg, the number of felony cases Bragg declined to prosecute increased from 828 to 1,119 — a 35% increase. That explains most of the drop in the conviction rate for felonies from 68% to 51% over that period. And while many felony cases were then handled as misdemeanors (a 33% increase over 2019), the drop in misdemeanor prosecutions was much larger, explaining why the number of misdemeanors resulting in jail sentences fell by 78%. What makes this all the more remarkable is that this huge drop occurred while the number of offenses increased.......

Trump Calls Persecutor Alvin Bragg a “Racist” in Fiery Social Posts - The ongoing saga surrounding Donald Trump and his hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels has prompted the President to issue some scathing remarks about the New York District Attorney for the case, Alvin Bragg.  I discussed it during a segment of the latest episode of The JD Rucker Show:...........

Manhattan prosecutor's office reportedly 'in chaos' March 20, 2023 By Monica Showalter -  When law is tossed out the window, is anybody surprised that chaos follows? That's apparently what we have in the Manhattan district attorney's office, where Soros-financed District Attorney Alvin Bragg is reportedly presiding over a chaotic shambles in the wake of news that his men intend to indict President Trump on politicized charges............Banana republic politics, banana republic office, just like what you might find in places like Caracas or Managua.  The root of it seems to be in Bragg's stated Trump-hate, which he openly campaigned on when he ran for office in Manhattan.  That's actually illegal, but the matter was ignored by voters.............He's reduced about half the felony charges of actual violent criminals to misdemeanors, and thrown the book at the innocent, such as the hapless Bronx bodega clerk, Jose Alba, who was forced to defend himself against a poised killer during a robbery...........But as for real criminals, Bragg had other ideas and has made life in Manhattan a living hell............The entire case, as legal scholar Alan Dershowitz has noted, is based on "made up laws,".............It gets worse now that news has broken that the five-year statute of limitations expired ... two years ago..........


Monday, June 7, 2021

The Public Interest and the Constitutional Order

Ethan Yang Ethan Yang  – June 6, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research 

n Ayn Rand’s fictional novel, Atlas Shrugged, there is a famous scene in which Hank Rearden is on trial. The following exchange occurs between Rearden and the judges,

“Mr. Rearden, the law which you are denouncing is based on the highest principle – the principle of the public good.”

“Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that ‘the good’ was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another.”

Rand likely included this line as a reference to the arbitrary foundations of many authoritarian government policies, such as the ones that she escaped from in the Soviet Union. In regimes such as Communist China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Nazi Germany, vague justifications such as the public good, the people’s will, the good of the nation, and other warm sounding phrases are used to preempt gross abuses of power. If the only threshold for exercising state power is vague terms like the public good, then there really are no limits to power. 

One important feature of modernity and a society with enlightenment values is the idea that individuals own their own bodies, which logically leads to the idea that individuals have rights that ought to be respected. People are not the property of the state and the government can’t simply tread all over its citizens’ rights without a clear justification often enumerated by established codes of conduct. That is why free societies have constitutions that explicitly outline what the government can and cannot do. The population, generally speaking, consents to be governed with the understanding that the government will not only protect their rights but act within its established boundaries. A government without clearly established powers and restrictions is a very scary thing. Such defined boundaries also give it some level of legitimacy and separate it from other organizations such as the mafia and crackpot dictatorships. 

We call this system where everybody, even the government, is held accountable to basic and explicit standards of just conduct, the rule of law. 

The Tyranny of the Public Interest 

The trial of Hank Rearden would come off as satirically amusing if it wasn’t so real. In the United States, vague doctrines like the public interest play a key role in deciding whether or not certain uses of government power are permissible. In an original understanding of the Constitution, the government is bound by explicit text and intent with very few exceptions. However, over the past hundred years or more, the Constitution has increasingly taken a deferential backseat to the will of the government, often through the Executive Branch and the administrative state. 

The use of the phrase public interest famously arises in Munn v Illinois, a Supreme Court Case decided in 1877 regarding government regulation of prices set by privately held companies. The companies being targeted with regulation argued that they were protected by the Constitution via the 14th Amendment which outlines due process and equal protection. A similar argument would apply to businesses today that were targeted by the litany of arbitrary lockdown regulations such as nonessential business closures. However, as we know, the Court did not rule in the business’s favor, setting precedent for the virtually nonexistent economic protections we have today. (A later court case, Nebbia v New York, would drop the standard even lower to a rational basis, not a public interest) A summary provided by Oyez notes,

“(Justice) Waite, for the Court, took a broad view of the state’s police power. He argued that the states may regulate the use of private property “when such regulation becomes necessary for the public good.” Waite resurrected an ancient legal doctrine to support his view: “When property is affected with a public interest, it ceases to be juris privati only.”

Under this understanding, the government could exercise power over anything it wishes provided that it can find a reason why it would be in the public interest. This means law-abiding citizens and their private property be it a business or an intimate possession are never safe from the ambitions of the state. That is because it has no real meaning and it is impossible to truly understand. Associate Professor of Communications at the University of Queensland Jane Johnston writes,

“The public interest is such a complex and tricky concept to navigate because it has intentionally evolved as ambiguous and mutable. It has no overarching definition because it is contextually determined in scope and purpose.”

Public interest legal scholar Edwin Rekosh gives a far more telling definition of what the public interest really entails by writing,

“At least in Justice Marshall’s understanding of public interest law, enlarging and strengthening the public sphere is an important public interest law objective in the United States as well.” 

He also notes that Justice Louis Brandeis also took a similar view of the public interest. In fact, before being appointed to the Supreme Court by Woodrow Wilson, Professor Peter Dreier explains that Brandeis

“Served as one of President Wilson’s key economic advisers, persuading the president to create the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Trade Commission and to push for the Clayton Antitrust Act and the Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, which allowed Congress to levy an income tax.”

This brings us to the administrative state, which has since exploded in its power and scale in recent decades but is most commonly associated with the ambitions of Wilson, who viewed constitutional limits on power with disdain. In his eyes, and in the eyes of many who believe they represent the public interest, government power and expertise are the solutions to society’s ills. 

This idea has certainly been represented by the jurisprudence of Progressive judges and the attitudes of Progressive intellectuals who, much like Wilson, view the public interest much like they view the Constitution. That is that it ought to be malleable and change with the times, but in practice simply change to the behest of those in power. Law Professor David Upham explains this when he notes,

“Times change. Rights change—whether by addition, subtraction, or otherwise. The job of the progressive jurist is to facilitate and, if necessary, initiate this redefinition.”

In his book, Justice Neil Gorsuch offers a stinging critique of the Progressive view of Constitutional rights by citing the infamous Supreme Court case Korematsu v United States, where the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was found to be constitutional. He contends that it was precisely because of this fluid view of the Constitution and the rights it protects that led the Court to rule that such egregious government policies should be allowed to stand because they believed that the war effort shouldn’t be impeded. A more originalist understanding of the Constitution would have held that the government still needs to follow the text of the document regardless of how fashionable its policies may seem. 

Today we certainly live under the consequences of such a fluid way of thinking about individual rights and the Constitution. That the government, often through the unaccountable administrative state, may exercise vast power over society and the lives of individual citizens. Power conceived not from clearly outlined rules, but under the pretense that it believes what it is doing has a rational basis and that it is serving what it defines as the public interest. A definition that has encompassed everything from constructing a regulatory apparatus that not only intrudes on economic and civic freedom but costs trillions of dollars a year in compliance fees to an outright assault on the Constitution like the PATRIOT Act in response to 9/11. Clearly, the pursuit of the public interest has resulted in anything but. 

Key Takeaways

The public interest and other phrases like it have far too much importance in the functions of our government. No honest person could ever look at the Constitution and suggest that it can exist harmoniously with the many exceptions that have been carved out over time in the name of the public interest. Much like every other vague objective put out by those in power, equality and equity being two vogue phrases, its doctrine of application is fundamentally opposed to the idea of limited government and individual liberty. The principle of self-ownership and basic inalienable rights cannot exist in a world where the exercise of power is not governed by explicit restrictions but by nebulous doctrines such as the public interest. In theory, the public interest and other vague objectives like it have no discrete meaning. In practice, they simply represent the ambitions and goals of those in power.

Ethan Yang

Ethan Yang

Ethan Yang is an Adjunct Research Fellow at AIER as well as the host of the AIER Authors Corner Podcast.

He holds a BA in Political Science with a concentration in International Relations with minors in legal studies and formal organizations from Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut. He is currently pursuing a JD from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University.

Ethan also serves as the director of the Mark Twain Center for the Study of Human Freedom at Trinity College and is also involved with Students for Liberty. He has also held research positions at the Cato Institute, the Connecticut State Senate, Cause of Action Institute and other organizations.

Ethan is currently based in Washington D.C and is a recipient of the 13th Annual International Vernon Smith Prize from the European Center of Austrian Economics Foundation. His work has been featured and cited in a variety of outlets from online media to radio broadcast.

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