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Some January 6 Defendants Being Released amid Appeal That Impacts Trump's Case

Some January 6 defendants are being released from prison on federal judges’ orders pending an appeal in the United States Supreme Court centered on interpretations of obstructing an official proceeding as oral arguments approach.

The post Some January 6 Defendants Being Released amid Appeal That Impacts Trump’s Case appeared first on Breitbart.

Military members among 3 injured in Ohio interstate crash

U.S. military members were injured in a three-vehicle crash in West Chester, Ohio, on Wednesday morning, which shut down the interstate for at least an hour.

Is mass incarceration a myth?

Some legal experts believe that many myths surrounding mass incarceration have been intentionally created by those who oppose not only incarceration, but punishment in general.

Judge Grants Donald Trump's Request to Reconsider Gag Order

An appeals court judge permitted the full Appellate Division First Department to consider relaxing a sweeping gag order against Donald Trump.

The post Judge Grants Donald Trump’s Request to Reconsider Gag Order appeared first on Breitbart.

RIP: The Death Toll of Biden’s Illegal Alien Bloodbath

Former President Donald Trump used political jujitsu to grab a left-wing anti-Trump lie and turn it against his opponent, President Joe Biden.

Trump told Ohio voters on March 16 that if he lost his comeback bid in the November election, Biden would welcome imports of Chinese-designed, Mexican-built electric vehicles. This, Trump said, would trigger an economic “bloodbath” in the auto sector.

Biden and other leftists disinformed Americans by claiming that Trump threatened to unleash a political bloodbath if Biden won. Trump did no such thing.

Trump got even in Michigan last Tuesday when he unveiled a slogan that electrifies America’s No. 1 issue: Angst over the hordes of illegal aliens who Biden welcomes daily.

“It’s a border bloodbath, and it’s destroying our country,” Trump said. “It’s going to end on the day that I take office.”

Biden’s Border Bloodbath” correctly describes the mayhem fueled by Biden’s deliberate demolition of America’s southern frontier.

Because illegal aliens often are shadowy, the problem is tough to gauge precisely. Nonetheless, Customs and Border Protection counted eight foreign-citizen criminals convicted of homicide or manslaughter from fiscal Year 2017 through fiscal 2019, under Trump. During Biden’s first three fiscal years, the CBP has tallied 151 such convictions—up 1,787.5%.

Consider these cases, thanks largely to documentation by the Federation for American Immigration Reform:

  • Brazilian illegal Everton Candido breached the border at Tecate, California, in May 2021. Police say that he drove without a license in Medford, Massachusetts, on Oct. 23, 2022, when he struck and killed Army veteran Walter Wishoski Jr., 77.
  • Biden’s Department of Homeland Security released Venezuelan illegal Eddy Jose Ortega Alvarado on May 20, 2023. The next day, he reportedly killed Honduran illegal Carmen Unilda Navas Zuniga and stole her cash in El Paso, Texas.
  • Biden’s officials released Guatemalan illegal Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez, 17, at the southwest line in January 2023. Last August, he allegedly raped and strangled Maria Gonzalez, 11, in Pasadena, Texas, then packed her into a laundry basket, and stashed her beneath his bed.
  • Biden’s agents released Haitian illegal Hermanio Joseph after he broke into America in August 2022. Police say that he crashed into a school bus in Clark County, Ohio, last Aug. 22. The bus flipped, killing Aiden Clark, 11.
  • Endrina Bracho, a Venezuelan illegal alien, reportedly struck Travis Wolfe in a head-on collision in Hazelwood, Missouri. She reportedly drove unlicensed, against traffic, at 70 mph in a 40 mph zone. That happened Dec. 20, the day before Travis’ 12th birthday, which he spent in critical condition.

“He wasn’t awake for it,” his sister, Taylor, told Fox News anchor Steve Doocy. “He didn’t get to experience anything. So, did he really actually make it to 12?

Travis was on life-support until March 6, when his catastrophic brain injuries finally killed him.

Travis Wolfe, a 12-year old Missouri boy killed by an illegal migrant. This is what an open border does. Say his name https://t.co/zjllQKRwTa

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) March 11, 2024
  • Venezuelan Jose Antonio Ibarra arrived illegally in September 2022. Authorities say that he fatally bashed the skull of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley on Feb. 22, while she jogged near campus, triggering a national uproar.

This lethal crisis began the day Biden took power. His 94 executive actions shredded Trump’s effective border-tightening initiatives.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, told Fox News on Wednesday: “Biden’s border policy is as effective as a screen door on a submarine.”

The Border Patrol has caught 7,444,297 illegal aliens on the U.S.-Mexico boundary through February, Biden’s 37th month as president. Trump’s analogous number was 2,138,696. Biden trounces Trump by 348%. These apprehensions included 351 people on the terrorist watch list during Biden’s “return to normal,” versus just 11 under Trump—up 3,090%.

Add 1.6 million gotaways (including terrorists) who The Washington Post estimates were detected, but not detained, and at least 9 million illegal aliens have cascaded through the “border” under Biden.

Trump and his supporters should remind voters constantly about the victims whom illegal aliens are killing while Biden snores. These deaths remain 100% preventable, if Biden simply keeps these killers out.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

The post RIP: The Death Toll of Biden’s Illegal Alien Bloodbath appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Report: Donald Trump to Sue Judge Juan Merchan in Gag Order Challenge

Former President Donald Trump will reportedly sue New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan in an appeals court to challenge his sweeping gag order. 

The post Report: Donald Trump to Sue Judge Juan Merchan in Gag Order Challenge appeared first on Breitbart.

Las Vegas police investigating shooting inside business: 'Dynamic event'

According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, multiple emergency vehicles responded to a business near Pavilion Center Drive and Charleston Boulevard around 10:04 a.m. for reports of a shooting.

Venezuelan 'Migrant Influencer' Claims 'Persecution' from Jail After Arrest

Leonel Moreno, the Venezuelan "migrant influencer" known for instructing fellow migrants on how to take advantage of American "squatter's rights," is now complaining of "persecution" as he sits in jail.

The post Venezuelan ‘Migrant Influencer’ Claims ‘Persecution’ from Jail After Arrest appeared first on Breitbart.

Russia Declares Federal Emergency over Flooding in Orenburg

MOSCOW (AP) – Russia’s government has declared the situation in flood-hit areas in the Orenburg region a federal emergency, state media reported. The floods, caused by rising water levels in the Ural River, forced over 4,000 people, including 885 children,

The post Russia Declares Federal Emergency over Flooding in Orenburg appeared first on Breitbart.

Exclusive -- Karoline Leavitt: Democrats Want Trump 'Confined to a Courtroom'

Democrats want former President Donald Trump "confined to a courtroom" instead of on the campaign trail, but that will not be the case, Karoline Leavitt, national spokeswoman for Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.

The post Exclusive — Karoline Leavitt: Democrats Want Trump ‘Confined to a Courtroom’ appeared first on Breitbart.

Jewish Synagogue Fire Bombed in German City of Oldenburg

An incendiary device was thrown at a door of a synagogue in northwestern Germany on Friday but caused only minor damage, police said.

The post Jewish Synagogue Fire Bombed in German City of Oldenburg appeared first on Breitbart.

Pregnancy Center Slams FBI For Failure to Arrest Pro-Abortion Firebombers

Staffers at a pro-life pregnancy resource center in Rochester, New York, are criticizing the FBI for failing to provide any kind of status update of investigations into pro-abortion vandals’ attacks on the pregnancy center.

Nearly two years after the initial June 2022 attack, CompassCare pregnancy medical center says that the FBI has put up billboards offering a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of the criminals who firebombed the pregnancy center.

The billboard is placed about a mile away from the center, CompassCare said in a release. The group added that the billboard appeared shortly before the sentencing of a separate pro-abortion arsonist, Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury, who in December pleaded guilty to attacking a pro-life organization in Madison, Wisconsin.

(Photo: CompassCare)

CompassCare says that the FBI won’t communicate with them about the billboard, first noticed by the organization on April 1, and won’t provide a status update on its investigation into the attack.

“Supporters have asked if CompassCare paid for this expensive billboard,” said the Rev. Jim Harden, CompassCare CEO, in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “We did not. The FBI refuses to communicate.”

“The erratic nature of [Department of Justice] and FBI behavior around cases of violence against pro-life groups appears to be PR related, bolstering their reputation when under pressure to produce results by media and congressional judiciary committees,” Harden speculated.

“Perhaps they anticipate more violence against Christian pro-lifers ahead of the next big Supreme Court ruling in June and want to make it look like they care?” he questioned.

The FBI and DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this article.

CompassCare was attacked a second time in March 2023. The Daily Signal’s Virginia Allen reported at the time that surveillance footage from the attack showed an individual wearing a hoodie walk up to the front of the pregnancy center, spray paint the word “Liars” over the CompassCare sign, then walk away back down the street. 

The radical pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge took responsibility for the June 2022 firebombing of the pro-life center. Pro-abortion activists also spray-painted the words “Jane was here” on the side of the building.  

Since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon thereafter be overturned, there have been at least 236 attacks on Catholic churches and at least 90 attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers, according to Catholic Vote trackers.

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) prohibits the intentional destruction or damage of reproductive health care facilities, theoretically protecting not only abortion clinics, but also pro-life churches and pregnancy centers.

But President Joe Biden’s DOJ charged only pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in 2022, and has since charged only five individuals with violating the FACE Act by targeting pregnancy centers.

In February, conservative leaders called on House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to pass the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2023 “as soon as possible.”

“In the aftermath of additional pro-life activists being convicted by the Biden administration under the FACE Act for peacefully protesting outside an abortion business, we respectfully urge you to take immediate legislative action to protect peaceful pro-life activists from the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Justice and an unconstitutional law,” the leaders said in a letter first obtained by The Daily Signal.

“The Biden administration has weaponized the FACE Act against peaceful pro-life sidewalk counselors and activists who want to save lives and change hearts and minds,” Advancing American Freedom Executive Director Paul Teller told The Daily Signal at the time.

Virginia Allen contributed to this report.

The post Pregnancy Center Slams FBI For Failure to Arrest Pro-Abortion Firebombers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

German Police Patrol Without Pants to Protest Uniform Shortage

German police are facing a serious uniform shortage -- the war in Ukraine is blamed -- and officers have gone trouserless to make the point. 

The post German Police Patrol Without Pants to Protest Uniform Shortage appeared first on Breitbart.

Bomb Threats See Norwegian Parliament Placed Under Lockdown

Two bomb threats led to a brief lockdown of the Norwegian parliament Wednesday, while lawmakers continued debate inside.

The post Bomb Threats See Norwegian Parliament Placed Under Lockdown appeared first on Breitbart.

Trump Posts $175 Million Bond to Prevent New York from Seizing Assets

Former President Donald Trump posted a $175 million bond on Monday to prevent New York from seizing assets like Trump Tower as he appeals the recent civil fraud case that ruled he cheated business partners to increase his company's profits.

The post Trump Posts $175 Million Bond to Prevent New York from Seizing Assets appeared first on Breitbart.

Willfully yours

(Scott Johnson)

Special Counsel Robert Hur found that President Biden willfully mishandled documents subject to the Espionage Act provision set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 793(e). However, Hur clouded the “willfulness” element of the offense by resting his non-prosecution recommendation in part on Biden’s present senility. Hur presents his analysis of the element of “willfulness” under section 793 in Chapter Nine of his report.

The relevant question is whether Biden committed the acts “willfully” at the relevant time. Hur had a smoking gun or two to prove the “willfulness” element of the offense. Among other things, however, he suggested that a jury would be reluctant to convict someone as out of it as Biden is and imputed the jury’s likely reluctance to Biden’s present inability to act “willfully” beyond a reasonable doubt. See, for example, Chapters Eleven and Twelve of the report.

Just to give an idea of the evidence Hur compiled, the Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman highlights a few passages from Hur’s report. Freeman quotes this from Chapter Twelve:

As with the classified Afghanistan documents [discussed in Chapter Eleven], there is evidence that Mr. Biden kept his notebooks after his vice presidency knowing they were classified and he was not allowed to have them.

The evidence shows convincingly that Mr. Biden knew the notebooks, as a whole, contained classified information. For eight years, he wrote in his notebooks about classified information during classified meetings in the White House Situation Room and elsewhere. He was familiar with the notebooks’ contents, which included obviously classified information. When reviewing the notebooks with [Biden ghostwriter Mark] Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden sometimes read aloud classified notes verbatim, but he also sometimes appeared to skip over classified information, and he warned Zwonitzer that the material in the notebooks could be classified. Mr. Biden also stored the notebooks in a classified safe in the White House for a time as vice president because the notebooks were classified.

In Mr. Biden’s written answers to questions from our office, he called into question whether he knew the information in his notebooks was classified. In those answers, Mr. Biden explained that when he described material in his notebooks to Zwonitzer as “classified’’ he did not actually mean “classified.” According to Mr. Biden, “I may have used the word ‘classified’ with Mr. Zwonitzer in a generic sense, to refer not to the formal classification of national security information, but to sensitive or private topics to ensure that Mr. Zwonitzer would not write about them.” Mr. Biden qualified this answer by explaining, “I do not recall the specific conversations you reference with Mr. Zwonitzer, which took place more than six years ago.”

This explanation-that “classified” does not mean “classified”-is not credible. At the time Mr. Biden met with Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden had nearly fifty years of experience dealing with classified information, including as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a member and Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, a member and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Vice President of the United States. It is not plausible that a person of his knowledge and experience used the term “classified” in this context as a euphemism for “private.”

Hur discusses the existence of grounds for reasonable doubt regarding Biden’s willfulness at the time of the acts (i.e., evidence that Biden thought the notebooks were his personal property), but falls back on Biden’s subsequent incompetence (my word, not Hur’s). If Biden thought they were his personal property, why did he lie about the meaning of “classified”? As I wrote yesterday, Hur’s analysis has the quality of a student working backward from the known answer to a question. Hur thus concludes Chapter Twelve:

Given the intelligence and military officials present and the topics discussed at the meetings Mr. Biden recounted for Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden should have realized that his notes did or were likely to contain classified information. But taken as a whole, the evidence will likely leave jurors with reasonable doubts about whether Mr. Biden knew he was sharing classified information with Zwonitzer and intended to do so. For these jurors, Mr. Biden’s apparent lapses and failures in February and April 2017 will likely appear consistent with the diminished faculties and faulty memory he showed in Zwonitzer’s interview recordings and in our interview of him. Therefore, we conclude that the evidence does not establish that Mr. Biden willfully disclosed national defense information to Zwonitzer.

I thought someone would press Hur on the “willfulness” issue at the hearing. Rep. Ken Buck, who declared he’s outta here next week, came the closest to getting at it toward the tail end of the five-hour hearing (video below). Even within the five-minutes limiting each round of questions — Buck could have omitted his introductory remarks and gotten to the point — Buck almost got there, but this ain’t horseshoes.

Hymn to Hur

(Scott Johnson)

Special Counsel Robert Hur testified for some five hours before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday on his investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents over his too long career in public life. I have posted the Washington Post’s YouTube video of the hearing at the bottom. At the same time, transcripts of Hur’s interview of Biden in the investigation were released: October 8 (99 pages) and October 9 (157 pages).

Mr. Techno Fog provided his hot take on the transcripts here (“confusion, evasion, and outright lies”). David Harsanyi cut to the chase in the Federalist column “Turns out Biden lied.” The Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr reviews both Hur’s testimony and the Biden transcripts in “Interview Transcript, Congressional Testimony Shed Light on Biden’s Memory Lapses During Classified Doc Investigation.”

Hur confined his testimony to the four corners of the lengthy report he submitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Whenever he was asked about the facts of the case, he referred to the report’s findings. He demonstrated perfect poise and complete mastery of the case as set forth in his report.

It should go without saying that Hur knew his case, but contrast Hur’s grasp of the case with Robert Mueller’s failure to launch at the comparable hearing held following his Russiagate investigation. To put it charitably, Mueller appeared to be a figurehead who performed at best as an innocent bystander to an investigation run and conducted by others (e.g., Andrew Weissmann). Trump fans who harbor lingering animosity against Attorney General William Barr don’t understand that Mueller’s investigation would still be alive if it weren’t for Barr.

The House Democrats sought to impute a finding of “complete exoneration” of Biden to Hur. Hur begged to disagree. Hur was admirably noncompliant in the face of the Democrats’ efforts to put words in his mouth. The Free Beacon’s video of highlights (below) shows that “complete exoneration” misses the mark. As Hur put it in his opening statement, Hur “identified evidence that the President willfully retained classified materials after the end of his vice presidency, when he was a private citizen.” This evidence contradicted everything Biden himself has said in public about the case, although lying to the public is not a crime. It is standard operating procedure.

Hur was criticized for resting his recommendation of non-prosecution on Biden’s senility. Hur explained that he was required to “show [his] work” supporting his recommendation of non-prosecution. Hur reminded me of how I showed my work in solving high school physics problems. I began with the answer and worked back from there.

In Hur’s case, the answer was non-prosecution. A voice in his head from the film Network must have counseled caution: “Don’t do it, buddy! You’re a young man! You got your whole life ahead of you!” Hur’s explanation of the difficulty of obtaining a guilty verdict in the case was little more than absurd (as was his distinction of the Biden case from the Trump case).

In the course of his overlong political career, Biden has been a serial violator of the national security law. He is heedless to it. His misconduct is egregious. And he is a senescent dolt with the possible reservation that in some instances he may be senile like a fox. I don’t recall when “I don’t recall” was ever so plausible.

I would like to include one positive observation in these remarks. I was impressed by the demeanor of two congressmen whose names I had not even heard before. I don’t know anything else about them except what I saw yesterday. I am referring to Republican Ben Cline of Virginia and Democrat Glenn Ivey of Maryland.

However, yesterday’s hearing was incredibly depressing. It represents the dire condition of our politics. We have clownish Democrats volubly insisting on the things which are not. We have the exhibition of the two-tiered system of justice that Democrats have fashioned to resolve the problem of Donald Trump and other annoyances. We have the continuing exposure of the mental incompetence of the president of the United States. We have the mainstream press acting as the Democrats’ public relations arm.

Him or Hur?

(Scott Johnson)

Politico Playbook previews the testimony later this morning of Special Counsel Robert Hur before the House Judiciary Committee. Hur is to testify on the report of his investigation of Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents (i.e., the report submitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland). The Playbookers have obtained and posted Hur’s opening statement here. These are the operative paragraphs:

My report reflects my best effort to explain why I declined to recommend charging President Biden. I analyzed the evidence as prosecutors routinely do: by assessing its strengths and weaknesses, including by anticipating the ways in which the President’s defense lawyers might poke holes in the government’s case if there were a trial and seek to persuade jurors that the government could not prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

There has been a lot of attention paid to language in the report about the President’s memory, so let me say a few words about that. My task was to determine whether the President retained or disclosed national defense information “willfully”—meaning, knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids.

I could not make that determination without assessing the President’s state of mind. For that reason, I had to consider the President’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial. These are the types of issues prosecutors analyze every day. And because these issues were important to my ultimate decision, I had to include a discussion of them in my report to the Attorney General.

The evidence and the President himself put his memory squarely at issue. We interviewed the President and asked him about his recorded statement, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” He told us that he didn’t remember saying that to his ghostwriter. He also said he didn’t remember finding any classified material in his home after his vice presidency. And he didn’t remember anything about how classified documents about Afghanistan made their way into his garage.

My assessment in the report about the relevance of the President’s memory was necessary and accurate and fair. Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly. I explained to the Attorney General my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do.

This is confused and confusing. Did Hur base his non-prosecution decision on his putative inability to prove the mental element of the possible offenses? Hur implies it is “willfulness,” although “gross negligence” would have sufficed to prove the offense under 28 U.S.C § 793. Or did he base his non-prosecution decision on a jury’s anticipated pity for a senile dolt? I trust that some members of the committee will home in on this issue this morning.

Get a Load of Fani

(John Hinderaker)

Fani Willis’s prosecution of Donald Trump has descended into comedy, currently of the bedroom farce variety. As all the world now knows, Willis carried on a torrid affair with Nathan Wade, whom she hired to lead the Trump prosecution and to whom she paid an extraordinary amount of taxpayer money, and then helped him spend it. That is corruption of the most old-fashioned sort. Willis and Wade have claimed that their affair did not begin until 2022, some time after she hired him to prosecute Trump.

Which turns out to be a lie:

Phone records, recently unveiled in new court documents obtained by The Post, indicate a pattern of late-night visits by Wade to Willis’s apartment, raising questions about the timeline of their relationship.

According to the cellphone data presented in court, Wade frequented the vicinity of Fulton County District Attorney Willis’s condo in Hapeville at least 35 times before their confessed affair.
***
[Investigator Charles] Mittelstadt highlighted times that refuted both Wade’s and Willis’s testimony that they had not begun a relationship prior to November 2021, and that he had only visited the apartment on occasion to discuss business.

“I was directed into a deeper analysis on two specific dates: September 11-12, 2021 (before I understand Mr Wade was hired) and November 29-30 (prior to what I understand was the in-court testimony that the romantic relationship began in 2022).

“Specifically, on September 11, 2021, Mr Wade’s phone left the Doraville area and arrived within the geoface located on the Dogwood address [Willis’s condominium] at 10.45pm,” Mittelstadt said.

“The phone remained there until September 12 at 3.28am at which time the phone traveled directly to towers located in East Cobb consistent with his routine pinging at his residence in the area. The phone arrived in East Cobb at approximately 4.05am, and records demonstrate he sent a text at 4.20am to Ms Willis.

“Additionally, on November 29, 2021, Mr Wade’s phone was pinging on the East Cobb towers near his residence and, following a call from Ms Willis at 11.32pm, while the call continued, his phone left the East Cobb area just after midnight and arrived within the geofence located on the Dogwood address at 12.43am on November 30, 2021. The phone remained there until 4.55am,” he added.

Willis and Wade are the most famous illicit couple since Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Like Strzok and Page, Willis and Wade appear to have made texting and phoning one another a full-time job:

Mittelstadt’s report also showed Wade and Willis had made more than 2,000 voice calls to each other and exchanged just less than 12,000 text messages over an 11-month period in 2021.

It makes you wonder when Wade found time to rack up all those billable hours.

I don’t know what the future holds for Donald Trump, but I think we can confidently predict that the Sun soon will set on Fani Willis’s political career.

Canada brings back four Islamic State brides and their ten children from Syria

Canada brings back four Islamic State brides and their ten children from Syria
What could possibly go wrong? Well, many of these Islamic State women were just as convinced jihadis as their husbands. Many shared in their crimes. Do woke Canadian authorities have any idea what to look for in trying to determine if any of the people they’re bringing back are jihadis or will raise their children […]

UK: Anglican cathedral to host Ramadan iftar during Easter season

UK: Anglican cathedral to host Ramadan iftar during Easter season
Once again, do these Christians really think that this will change what the Qur’an teaches about Christ and Christianity? Qur’an 98:4-6: “Nor were the people of the book divided until after the clear proof came to them. And they are not ordered to do anything else but serve Allah, keeping religion pure for him, as […]

Pamela Geller, American Thinker: After Ten Years, Court Strikes Down Ruling Banning Ads Offering Help to Those Leaving Islam

Background: In 2008, I was in Florida covering Rifqa Bary’s court hearings to return her to her devout family who promised to kill to her because the teen had left Islam and converted to Christianity.

I was waiting on my ride to the courthouse when I saw this ad on a bus:

Thus began the very first of my many bus ad campaigns. I responded with this ad and the greatest putsch against free speech commenced:

 

Check out my latest at The Thinker:

After Ten Years, Court Strikes Down Ruling Banning Ads Offering Help to Those Leaving Islam

It took nearly twelve years, but we did it.  My organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has just won an important victory for the freedom of speech.

Back in 2009, the Detroit area’s SMART transit refused to run our AFDI ads offering help to people who were in fear for their lives for wanting to leave Islam or having left it.  After an incredibly protracted court battle, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals just stood up for the First Amendment and completely reversed the judgment banning our ads.  It’s a total victory for freedom: we won our free speech lawsuit in Detroit by a unanimous decision.

Our ad read: “Leaving Islam?  Fatwa on your head?  Is your family or community threatening you?  Got Questions?  Get Answers! RefugefromIslam.com.”  That’s all it said.  It offered a life-saver for those who were completely and utterly alone with no system of support or help.

Islamic law mandates death for those who leave Islam; even in the United States, those who leave the religion live in fear that a devout Muslim might decide to apply this penalty.  So we were offering help.  That is all.  But as Eugene Volokh explains at The Volokh Conspiracy, “Michigan’s Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) rejected this ad under two of its speech restrictions.  The first prohibits ‘political’ ads; the second prohibits ads that would hold up a group of people to ‘scorn or ridicule.'”

Our ad was not political and didn’t scorn or ridicule anyone.  It’s ridiculous to say saving lives is a political act, and so of course we won the initial case.  The first judge who ruled on this case, Judge Denise Page Hood, understood the law and so ruled in favor of our free speech rights.  She understood the First Amendment.  Therefore, although she was clearly not sympathetic to us, she had to rule for us.

But then SMART appealed.  SMART adamantly refused to run outreach ads that might have helped Muslims living in dangerous households and appealed to the notoriously leftist Sixth Circuit.  You might have thought the Muslim Brotherhood was running SMART.  It was astounding.  And consider the fact that Detroit was bankrupt around this same time.  Sharia adherence was still more important to the broken city’s failed leaders than were the freedom of speech and fiscal responsibility.

And so SMART continued to refuse our ads and appealed in the notoriously leftist Sixth Circuit.  The court called our religious ads political and created a new narrative out of whole cloth.  Our ads were never actually rejected on political grounds.  Individually and in her official capacity, Beth Gibbons, marketing program manager of SMART, said our ads were rejected because they were controversial — not because they were political.  It was always understood that these were religious ads.  Gibbons testified that she saw “nothing about [the advertisement] itself that was political[.] … I knew that [the fatwa advertisement] was of concern in that there is controversy on both sides of the issue on whether they should be posted.”  That was the position of SMART.  In fact, that was the agency’s official testimony.

We in turn appealed.  In 2013, I was deposed and harassed for six hours by a small, profane blowhard attorney — all billable hours to fight an ad created to help Muslim girls escape honor violence.  And the deposition was so hostile that you would think I had committed a heinous crime.  Apparently, blasphemy in America is.

The case dragged on and on.  But now, in American Freedom Defensive Initiative v. Suburban Mobility Auth. for Regional Transp. (6th Cir.), the court makes the correct ruling, noting that “the Free Speech Clause limits the government’s power to regulate speech on public property.  The government has little leeway to restrict speech in ‘public forums.'”  Accordingly, “SMART’s ban on ‘political’ ads is unreasonable for the same reason that a state’s ban on ‘political’ apparel at polling places is unreasonable: SMART offers no ‘sensible basis for distinguishing what may come in from what must stay out.’  Likewise, SMART’s ban on ads that engage in ‘scorn or ridicule’ is not viewpoint neutral for the same reason that a ban on trademarks that disparage people is not viewpoint neutral: For any group, ‘an applicant may [display] a positive or benign [ad] but not a derogatory one.'”  Consequently, the court declared: “We thus reverse the district court’s decision rejecting the First Amendment challenge to these two restrictions.”

This is all common-sensical and clear even to those with no legal training or experience, but it has taken an incredibly long time to get here.  The American Freedom Law Center, whose ace lawyers David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise fought long and hard to win this case, noted: “AFDI’s religious freedom advertisement was rejected even though SMART had no problem accepting and running an anti-religion ad sponsored by an atheist organization.  That approved ad stated, ‘Don’t Believe in God?  You are not alone.'”  However, now “the Sixth Circuit ruled unanimously in favor of AFLC, finding that SMART’s rejection of the ad was unreasonable and [a] viewpoint based in violation of the First Amendment.  This is a final ruling.”

Bottom line: Everyone has the same right to a free life.  The Sixth Circuit agreed.

If you weren’t reading this, you would likely never know that it had happened at all.  No media covered it.  If we had lost, then you would have heard about it, because the media would have been popping open bottles of champagne and running huge pieces on how sharia restrictions on speech are altogether reasonable — as heads roll (literally).

Jessica Mokdad, an honor killing victim living in that area at the time, might have been saved.  We know that the ads have helped Muslims — they told us.  The ads save lives.  Contribute here.

Pamela Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report, and author of the bestselling book FATWA: Hunted in America as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.  Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

BREITBART NEWS: Seattle Imposes Ad Ban to Annul Pamela Geller’s Free Speech Lawsuit Victory

Another city bans free speech. Chilling. Read this.

Related:

Seattle Imposes Ad Ban to Annul Pamela Geller’s Free Speech Lawsuit Victory

Officials who oversee Seattle’s transit system moved to ban political, religious, and other ads from its facilities and public transportation vehicles soon after Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) prevailed in a freedom of speech lawsuit against the city, earning the right to run FBI’s Most Wanted terrorist posters, Breitbart News has learned.

By: Edwin Mora, Breitbart, April 16, 2019:

“People should realize that this is a struggle for the very foundation of any free society: the freedom of speech. If there is a group you can’t criticize, then that group can impose tyranny over you. If we lose this free speech battle, all our other freedoms are lost” Geller recently told Breitbart News via email.

She argued the advertisement ban sidestepped the September 2018 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling in AFDI’s favor, which allowed the group to advertise the Most Wanted terrorist list in Seattle.

However, the new restrictions, dubbed the “Geller ban” and instituted in December 2018 by the King County Department of Transportation’s Transit Division that oversees Seattle’s public transportation system, have ended up preventing AFDI from running the terrorist wanted ads, Geller pointed out, noting that her free speech lawsuit victory was bittersweet.

Before the appeal court’s ruling, judges had denied AFDI the right to place public service ads featuring images of the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists on Seattle’s public transportation system, due to a perceived disparagement of Islam.

The city’s rejection prompted AFDI to sue the King County Metro system for its suppression of free speech.

“We won the right to run the FBI wanted terrorist poster that Seattle prevailed upon the FBI to withdraw [ in 2013]. And as soon as we triumphed, Seattle transit imposed the infamous Geller ban, banning political, religious and cause-related ads in Seattle (following NY, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, etc),” Geller told Breitbart News in the email.

In a document outlining the transit agency’s advertising restrictions, King County officials noted that the policy bans advertising on transit facilities and vehicles that fall within the categories of political, religious, government (except for the county’s), and other forms of “speech.”

“They banned all political ads, as that was the only course of action they could possibly take in order to continue to avoid running my ads,” Geller said. “They’re so determined to continue whitewashing Islam and denying and obfuscating the roots of jihad terror that they are willing to lose immense amounts of revenue from all political advertising.”

Transit agency officials argued that their “viewpoint neutral” ban seeks to prohibit “advertisements that interfere with and divert resources from transit operations, that detract from transit purposes by creating substantial controversy, and/or that pose significant risks of harm, inconvenience, or annoyance to transit passengers, operators, and vehicles.”

“Such advertisements create an environment that is not conducive to achieving increased revenue for the benefit of the transit system or to preserving and enhancing the security, safety, comfort, and convenience of its operations,” the officials added.

Responding to the agency’s argument Geller noted, “I see ads that annoy me all the time. If that is the criterion [for the ban], whose annoyance counts, and whose doesn’t, and why?”

She told Breitbart News that King County’s decision to ban FBI wanted posters featuring some jihadis amounts to the “enforcement of Sharia blasphemy law in another American city.”

King County officials described the transit agency’s advertising ban as“restrictions” that “foster the maintenance of a professional advertising environment that maximizes advertising, revenue, and protects the interests of the captive audience that uses Metro’s transit services.”

In other words, the county’s transportation department believes that banning certain ads will allow the county to generate more revenue.

“The ban will, obviously, drastically curtail their ad revenues. To argue otherwise is plain deception” Geller noted.

Nevertheless, the county asserted that the advertising policy intends to fulfill the following goals:

Maximizing advertising revenue; maintaining a position of neutrality and preventing the appearance of favoritism or endorsement by the county; preventing the risk of imposing objectionable, inappropriate or harmful view on a captive audience; preserving the value of the advertising space; maximizing ridership and maintaining a safe environment for transit customers and other members of the public; avoiding claims of discrimination and maintaining a non-discriminatory environment for riders; preventing any harm or abuse that may result from running objectionable, inappropriate, or harmful advertisements; [and] reducing the diversion of resources from transit operations that is caused by objectionable, inappropriate or harmful advertisements.

Geller vowed to keep fighting for free speech all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary to ensure Seattle upholds the appeal court’s ruling.

Pamela Geller, American Thinker: After Ten Years, Court Strikes Down Ruling Banning Ads Offering Help to Those Leaving Islam

Background: In 2008, I was in Florida covering Rifqa Bary’s court hearings to return her to her devout family who promised to kill to her because the teen had left Islam and converted to Christianity.

I was waiting on my ride to the courthouse when I saw this ad on a bus:

Thus began the very first of my many bus ad campaigns. I responded with this ad and the greatest putsch against free speech commenced:

 

Check out my latest at The Thinker:

After Ten Years, Court Strikes Down Ruling Banning Ads Offering Help to Those Leaving Islam

It took nearly twelve years, but we did it.  My organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has just won an important victory for the freedom of speech.

Back in 2009, the Detroit area’s SMART transit refused to run our AFDI ads offering help to people who were in fear for their lives for wanting to leave Islam or having left it.  After an incredibly protracted court battle, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals just stood up for the First Amendment and completely reversed the judgment banning our ads.  It’s a total victory for freedom: we won our free speech lawsuit in Detroit by a unanimous decision.

Our ad read: “Leaving Islam?  Fatwa on your head?  Is your family or community threatening you?  Got Questions?  Get Answers! RefugefromIslam.com.”  That’s all it said.  It offered a life-saver for those who were completely and utterly alone with no system of support or help.

Islamic law mandates death for those who leave Islam; even in the United States, those who leave the religion live in fear that a devout Muslim might decide to apply this penalty.  So we were offering help.  That is all.  But as Eugene Volokh explains at The Volokh Conspiracy, “Michigan’s Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) rejected this ad under two of its speech restrictions.  The first prohibits ‘political’ ads; the second prohibits ads that would hold up a group of people to ‘scorn or ridicule.'”

Our ad was not political and didn’t scorn or ridicule anyone.  It’s ridiculous to say saving lives is a political act, and so of course we won the initial case.  The first judge who ruled on this case, Judge Denise Page Hood, understood the law and so ruled in favor of our free speech rights.  She understood the First Amendment.  Therefore, although she was clearly not sympathetic to us, she had to rule for us.

But then SMART appealed.  SMART adamantly refused to run outreach ads that might have helped Muslims living in dangerous households and appealed to the notoriously leftist Sixth Circuit.  You might have thought the Muslim Brotherhood was running SMART.  It was astounding.  And consider the fact that Detroit was bankrupt around this same time.  Sharia adherence was still more important to the broken city’s failed leaders than were the freedom of speech and fiscal responsibility.

And so SMART continued to refuse our ads and appealed in the notoriously leftist Sixth Circuit.  The court called our religious ads political and created a new narrative out of whole cloth.  Our ads were never actually rejected on political grounds.  Individually and in her official capacity, Beth Gibbons, marketing program manager of SMART, said our ads were rejected because they were controversial — not because they were political.  It was always understood that these were religious ads.  Gibbons testified that she saw “nothing about [the advertisement] itself that was political[.] … I knew that [the fatwa advertisement] was of concern in that there is controversy on both sides of the issue on whether they should be posted.”  That was the position of SMART.  In fact, that was the agency’s official testimony.

We in turn appealed.  In 2013, I was deposed and harassed for six hours by a small, profane blowhard attorney — all billable hours to fight an ad created to help Muslim girls escape honor violence.  And the deposition was so hostile that you would think I had committed a heinous crime.  Apparently, blasphemy in America is.

The case dragged on and on.  But now, in American Freedom Defensive Initiative v. Suburban Mobility Auth. for Regional Transp. (6th Cir.), the court makes the correct ruling, noting that “the Free Speech Clause limits the government’s power to regulate speech on public property.  The government has little leeway to restrict speech in ‘public forums.'”  Accordingly, “SMART’s ban on ‘political’ ads is unreasonable for the same reason that a state’s ban on ‘political’ apparel at polling places is unreasonable: SMART offers no ‘sensible basis for distinguishing what may come in from what must stay out.’  Likewise, SMART’s ban on ads that engage in ‘scorn or ridicule’ is not viewpoint neutral for the same reason that a ban on trademarks that disparage people is not viewpoint neutral: For any group, ‘an applicant may [display] a positive or benign [ad] but not a derogatory one.'”  Consequently, the court declared: “We thus reverse the district court’s decision rejecting the First Amendment challenge to these two restrictions.”

This is all common-sensical and clear even to those with no legal training or experience, but it has taken an incredibly long time to get here.  The American Freedom Law Center, whose ace lawyers David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise fought long and hard to win this case, noted: “AFDI’s religious freedom advertisement was rejected even though SMART had no problem accepting and running an anti-religion ad sponsored by an atheist organization.  That approved ad stated, ‘Don’t Believe in God?  You are not alone.'”  However, now “the Sixth Circuit ruled unanimously in favor of AFLC, finding that SMART’s rejection of the ad was unreasonable and [a] viewpoint based in violation of the First Amendment.  This is a final ruling.”

Bottom line: Everyone has the same right to a free life.  The Sixth Circuit agreed.

If you weren’t reading this, you would likely never know that it had happened at all.  No media covered it.  If we had lost, then you would have heard about it, because the media would have been popping open bottles of champagne and running huge pieces on how sharia restrictions on speech are altogether reasonable — as heads roll (literally).

Jessica Mokdad, an honor killing victim living in that area at the time, might have been saved.  We know that the ads have helped Muslims — they told us.  The ads save lives.  Contribute here.

Pamela Geller is the president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report, and author of the bestselling book FATWA: Hunted in America as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.  Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

BREITBART NEWS: Seattle Imposes Ad Ban to Annul Pamela Geller’s Free Speech Lawsuit Victory

Another city bans free speech. Chilling. Read this.

Related:

Seattle Imposes Ad Ban to Annul Pamela Geller’s Free Speech Lawsuit Victory

Officials who oversee Seattle’s transit system moved to ban political, religious, and other ads from its facilities and public transportation vehicles soon after Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) prevailed in a freedom of speech lawsuit against the city, earning the right to run FBI’s Most Wanted terrorist posters, Breitbart News has learned.

By: Edwin Mora, Breitbart, April 16, 2019:

“People should realize that this is a struggle for the very foundation of any free society: the freedom of speech. If there is a group you can’t criticize, then that group can impose tyranny over you. If we lose this free speech battle, all our other freedoms are lost” Geller recently told Breitbart News via email.

She argued the advertisement ban sidestepped the September 2018 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling in AFDI’s favor, which allowed the group to advertise the Most Wanted terrorist list in Seattle.

However, the new restrictions, dubbed the “Geller ban” and instituted in December 2018 by the King County Department of Transportation’s Transit Division that oversees Seattle’s public transportation system, have ended up preventing AFDI from running the terrorist wanted ads, Geller pointed out, noting that her free speech lawsuit victory was bittersweet.

Before the appeal court’s ruling, judges had denied AFDI the right to place public service ads featuring images of the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists on Seattle’s public transportation system, due to a perceived disparagement of Islam.

The city’s rejection prompted AFDI to sue the King County Metro system for its suppression of free speech.

“We won the right to run the FBI wanted terrorist poster that Seattle prevailed upon the FBI to withdraw [ in 2013]. And as soon as we triumphed, Seattle transit imposed the infamous Geller ban, banning political, religious and cause-related ads in Seattle (following NY, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, etc),” Geller told Breitbart News in the email.

In a document outlining the transit agency’s advertising restrictions, King County officials noted that the policy bans advertising on transit facilities and vehicles that fall within the categories of political, religious, government (except for the county’s), and other forms of “speech.”

“They banned all political ads, as that was the only course of action they could possibly take in order to continue to avoid running my ads,” Geller said. “They’re so determined to continue whitewashing Islam and denying and obfuscating the roots of jihad terror that they are willing to lose immense amounts of revenue from all political advertising.”

Transit agency officials argued that their “viewpoint neutral” ban seeks to prohibit “advertisements that interfere with and divert resources from transit operations, that detract from transit purposes by creating substantial controversy, and/or that pose significant risks of harm, inconvenience, or annoyance to transit passengers, operators, and vehicles.”

“Such advertisements create an environment that is not conducive to achieving increased revenue for the benefit of the transit system or to preserving and enhancing the security, safety, comfort, and convenience of its operations,” the officials added.

Responding to the agency’s argument Geller noted, “I see ads that annoy me all the time. If that is the criterion [for the ban], whose annoyance counts, and whose doesn’t, and why?”

She told Breitbart News that King County’s decision to ban FBI wanted posters featuring some jihadis amounts to the “enforcement of Sharia blasphemy law in another American city.”

King County officials described the transit agency’s advertising ban as“restrictions” that “foster the maintenance of a professional advertising environment that maximizes advertising, revenue, and protects the interests of the captive audience that uses Metro’s transit services.”

In other words, the county’s transportation department believes that banning certain ads will allow the county to generate more revenue.

“The ban will, obviously, drastically curtail their ad revenues. To argue otherwise is plain deception” Geller noted.

Nevertheless, the county asserted that the advertising policy intends to fulfill the following goals:

Maximizing advertising revenue; maintaining a position of neutrality and preventing the appearance of favoritism or endorsement by the county; preventing the risk of imposing objectionable, inappropriate or harmful view on a captive audience; preserving the value of the advertising space; maximizing ridership and maintaining a safe environment for transit customers and other members of the public; avoiding claims of discrimination and maintaining a non-discriminatory environment for riders; preventing any harm or abuse that may result from running objectionable, inappropriate, or harmful advertisements; [and] reducing the diversion of resources from transit operations that is caused by objectionable, inappropriate or harmful advertisements.

Geller vowed to keep fighting for free speech all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary to ensure Seattle upholds the appeal court’s ruling.

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