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Stormy Daniels is testifying today in President Trump’s criminal case before crooked Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom in New York City.
The Gateway Pundit contributor Paul Ingrassia is in the courtroom today.
“Judge Merchan agrees with Bragg and Biden’s attorneys saying that Stormy Daniels has “credibility” to testify about an alleged affair, even though she’s repeatedly denied any such affair over the years and even went on record by issuing an official statement denying such an affair.”
BREAKING: Judge Merchan agrees with Bragg and Biden’s attorneys saying that Stormy Daniels has “credibility” to testify about an alleged affair, even though she’s repeatedly denied any such affair over the years and even went on record by issuing an official statement denying… pic.twitter.com/yPd1k1JBXK
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 7, 2024
Stormy Daniels wrote in 2018, “Over the past few weeks I have been asked countless times to comment on reports of an alleged sexual relationship I had with Donald Trump many, many, many years ago. The fact of the matter is that each party to this alleged affair denied its existence in 2006, 20011, 2016, 2017 and now again in 2018. 1 am not denying this affair because i was paid “hush money” as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.”
““Judge” Merchan loves to say “enjoy your lunch” to everyone once they break every day. Many of the fake news journalists and government lawyers here are getting a kick out of this sham show trial, which is a colossal waste of taxpayer money and a complete waste of everyone’s time. They have the maturity of school children breaking for recess, and treat the irreparable harm they’re doing to America’s justice system so cavalierly. Like it’s a joke for everyone. Awful! These people destroying the rule of law in real time MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE!”
“Judge” Merchan loves to say “enjoy your lunch” to everyone once they break every day.
Many of the fake news journalists and government lawyers here are getting a kick out of this sham show trial, which is a colossal waste of taxpayer money and a complete waste of everyone’s…
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 7, 2024
“Prosecutors are now asking Stormy Daniels about her recollections and impressions to the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that was released in October of 2016 The tape has absolutely no bearing on anything related to this sham trial, and Daniels’ impressions, above all, should not matter. A total miscarriage of justice!”
BREAKING: Prosecutors are now asking Stormy Daniels about her recollections and impressions to the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that was released in October of 2016
The tape has absolutely no bearing on anything related to this sham trial, and Daniels’ impressions, above…
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 7, 2024
“Daniels is audibly slurring her speech, speaking very quickly, and rubbing her hands and hair frequently on the stand.”
Daniels is audibly slurring her speech, speaking very quickly, and rubbing her hands and hair frequently on the stand.
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 7, 2024
“When asked by the prosecution today how she wanted to be addressed in a courtroom she said “Stormy Daniels.” So the “legal name” theory fails.”
When asked by the prosecution today how she wanted to be addressed in a courtroom she said “Stormy Daniels.” So the “legal name” theory fails. https://t.co/s0paCEQ38Z
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 7, 2024
“In a flagrant violation of NY’s rules of evidence and judicial ethics guidelines, the judge is allowing Stormy Daniels to “run wild” with her highly prejudicial testimony, running roughshod over the objections of Trump’s attorneys, and allowing Daniels to vividly discuss every last salacious detail about the alleged interaction she had with Trump. Prosecutors are asking how tall she is relative to Trump and whether there was a power dynamic between them. Now asking about their alleged sexual affair, the position they were in, whether they were intoxicated, “uncomfortable,” and “how they closed it off.” Completely out of line!!”
BREAKING: In a flagrant violation of NY’s rules of evidence and judicial ethics guidelines, the judge is allowing Stormy Daniels to “run wild” with her highly prejudicial testimony, running roughshod over the objections of Trump’s attorneys, and allowing Daniels to vividly…
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 7, 2024
“Bragg’s prosecutors questioning Daniels about her STD tests and preferred sex positions. What a sleazy, disgusting trial. With this political persecution, we are witnessing the execution of due process and rule of law in real time by Biden and his acolytes. What a tragedy — the damage being done to the justice system will take years to repair, and may be permanent.”
BREAKING: Bragg’s prosecutors questioning Daniels about her STD tests and preferred sex positions. What a sleazy, disgusting trial.
With this political persecution, we are witnessing the execution of due process and rule of law in real time by Biden and his acolytes.
What a…
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 7, 2024
“It’s notable how inarticulate Bragg’s Prosecutors are, which has been an issue all throughout the trial: on direct examination they struggle to clearly ask their questions, they stumble and mumble over basic words, have to repeatedly withdraw questions, requiring the witnesses to repeatedly ask for clarification. Bragg’s prosecutors are not smart people — and bad lawyers!”
BREAKING: It’s notable how inarticulate Bragg’s Prosecutors are, which has been an issue all throughout the trial: on direct examination they struggle to clearly ask their questions, they stumble and mumble over basic words, have to repeatedly withdraw questions, requiring the…
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) May 7, 2024
One user also said, “The judge is allowing the prosecutor and witness to talk about the size of “genitalia.” What a f*cking joke and disgrace to the American justice system. They are putting the future president of the United States of America through this garbage.”
The judge is allowing the prosecutor and witness to talk about the size of “genitalia.”
What a f*cking joke and disgrace to the American justice system.
They are putting the future president of the United States of America through this garbage.
— Pro Swing Trading (@Pro__Trading) May 7, 2024
The Alvin Bragg case has turned a court of law into a Jerry Springer episode. Nothing but gossip, lies and inuendo.
The judge is allowing prosecutors and witnesses to bring up things that have absolutely nothing to do with the indictment or the case.
This case has zero chance…
— Pro Swing Trading (@Pro__Trading) May 7, 2024
National Political Correspondent Alex Miller has also some updates:
Stormy Daniels called to the witness stand.
She walks in, Trump appears to look at her for a bit.
Some Jurors smile as her name is called and some start writing. She’s in all black, hair pulled back, glasses on her head.
She says she prefers being called Stormy.
Background: Grew up in Baton Rouge, LA, parents divorced at 4 YO. Very low income family. Went to a private very Christian elementary school that her dad paid for. Then entered the magnet system and went to an engineering high school.
Got a full scholarship to Texas A&M for veterinary medicine. Took a year off to make money but never went to school. Loved horses growing up, also did dancing (tap, ballet) growing up.
A friend invited her to a club to see her dance at 17. Started dancing on the weekend and made more in 2 nights didn’t miss class and made more than she did shoveling manure. She moved out at 17 bc her mom was neglectful. Said she wasn’t an addict but would disappear for days.
Says women who made the most were the ones who did adult films.
Friend offered to pay her way to CA to go with her to a shoot. Daniels was a fully clothed extra.
A director ask her to do a film & her friend said she’d be in it too. 5 days later Daniels was offered a contract.
Daniels says she became an adult film director, one of the youngest if not the youngest female adult film feature director.
Lists a ton of awards.
Was in 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, music videos including Maroon 5.
Got fired from her podcast because she didn’t want to talk about just this case and politics.
“It just kept going down this one subject line.” We’re now in 2006.
Daniels is still under contract with Wicked Pictures, as an adult film director and actress. Wicked sponsored one of the holes on the golf course.
She jokes, “Which I know is very funny an adult film company sponsoring a hole.” This is where she met Trump.
She says their meeting was a brief encounter on the course. Gave them water, posed for picture.
Says she was introduced along with other adult film actresses but also as a director.
“You direct too,” she says he told her. “You must be the smart one.”
She says she knew he was old or older than her father, knew he had done reality TV and was on Celebrity Apprentice, which she had never watched.
When she saw him later, she says he remembered her again as “the smart one.” Took a photo with Trump at the gift room.
They talked briefly, I saw him talking to his security (at the time thought it was his friend), then that man asked if she wanted to have dinner with Trump.
Prosecution just had Daniels point Trump out in the courtroom. She moves around in her chair, an indication she can’t really seem him too well from her chair. “Navy blue jacket at the table,” she says as she points.
We’re looking now at the photo of Daniels and Trump across four big screens. Each juror has a monitor to observe, Trump has one at his table.
Hard to tell if he’s looking at it.
Bodyguard Keith Schiller asked if she wanted to have dinner with Trump. She said “[expletive] no.”
Schiller asked for her phone number and she gave it to him. He messaged her and she saved his number in her phone.
She saved his number as “Keith Trump.”
She still has the number in her phone. Publicist told her to go to the dinner.
“It’ll make a great story if nothing else. What could possibly go wrong?” Publicist told her he might have good advice and maybe help with an agent.
So, Stormy messaged back and forth with Keith, to go to Trump’s hotel for dinner.
She said she was walking to the hotel and ran into a friend, who she told she was going to dinner with Trump, and then took a car the rest of the way.
Keith gave her specific instructions to take a certain elevator to get to the penthouse. He was waiting for her outside the door.
Asked her expectations, she said she didn’t really have any. She said she was told they’d meet on his floor and then they’d go down to dinner together.
She said when she entered the foyer: Trump was wearing silk/satin PJs that she immediately made fun of him for.
She said: Does Mr. Hefner know you stole his pajamas?
She says she told him to go change and he obliged. Returned in a dress shirt/pants.
She says the suite Trump was staying in was bigger and nicer than any of her apartments. Daniels says she was early, still sunlight coming through the windows.
He said we should get talking for a bit, we can go down or order up.
Daniels says she was early, there still sunlight coming through the windows. He said we should get talking for a bit, we can go down or order up.
He asked about her family, her upbringing, where she went to school. Did she have kids, was she married?
Daniels says Trump was really interested in her career. How she went from adult film actress to a writer and director.
She explained scripted adult films to him. “It’s not all — hi mr. pizza boy,” she said.
He asked about unions, residuals, health insurance, testing.
She says most people ask the salacious stuff, not a lot of biz questions. “I don’t think I’d ever been asked about unions.”
He asked about her STD status. At the time, testing was every 30 days. He asked if she ever had a “bad test.” She said no & offered to show him her history
They got to talking about wrestling and a bet that if Trump lost, he’d have to shave his head.
“Donald Trump has always been famous for his ‘do.
So I said what are you going to do if you lose? You do not have a head designed not to have hair.”
Daniels says there was a very brief description about his wife. She says he showed her pictures of Melania.
“Don’t worry about that. We don’t even sleep in the same room.”
Daniels makes an “oops” face after she says it. She says he was constantly interrupting.
Convo per Daniels: “Are you already this rude? This arrogant and pompous I was pretty nasty.”
He said “Someone should spank you. Otherwise I am leaving because that’s the only interest I have tonight.”
She spanked him on the butt.
He told her she reminded him of his daughter. “Smart, beautiful and underestimated.”
Wanted her to be on Celebrity Apprentice. Conversation ensued about whether NBC would allow it.
Trump and Daniels called one of her friends on speakerphone and invited her over. Daniels says they were hanging out for 2 hours.
Did you sense any red flags?
Daniels: No.
AM Recess is called.
Stormy Daniels walked out of the room. Counsel asked to approach.
Trump walks out of court. He looks pissed.
Merchan just told the prosecution the degree of detail they’re going into is unnecessary.
“Move it along.”
Daniels went to use the bathroom and when she came out, Trump was on the bed wearing his boxer shorts and a t-shirt.
She said she was startled. Wasn’t expecting someone to be there “especially minus a lot of clothing.”
I felt the room spin and i felt the blood leave my hands and feet like when you stand up too fast.
I just thought, “Oh my God, what did I misread to get here?”
The intention is pretty clear if someone strips down and poses on the bed waiting for you. Daniels describes Trumps positioning when she got out of the bathroom.
She leans over with her hands behind her head and legs up to the side as if she’s laying on a bed.
“The next thing I know I was on the opposite side of the bed from where we had been standing. Clothes and shoes were off. Bra was off. Missionary position.”
Objection.
Daniels says she had sex w Trump on the bed.
I was trying to think about anything other that being there. Did you touch his skin? Objection.
Was he wearing a condom? No. Was that concerning to you? Yes.
Why didn’t you say anything? I didn’t say anything at all. Was it brief? Yes.
Daniels says when it was over, her hands were shaking so much she couldn’t get her shoes on.
He said, “Let’s do it again, honey bunch. We were so fantastic together. We have to get you on the show.”
“I left as fast as I could. That was it.”
She says he didn’t ask her to keep it confidential and expressed no concern about Melania finding out.
Daniels told very few people that they had sex.
“I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it, that I didn’t say no. I thought people would make jokes about it or think I was paid, a prostitute which I wasn’t.”
Back from a brief sidebar.
Daniels says she saw Trump the next day.
She saw Trump the next day with former Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger. Says the interaction was maybe 10 minutes.
She says told her makeup artist, assistant, photographer about them having sex. Many people knew they met, but not that they slept together.
“Trump called once a week, sometimes every couple weeks. “I always put him on speakerphone. We thought it was funny. It was not a secret. He loaded the call with an update/non update about The Apprentice. He called me honey bunch. Wanted to know when he was going to be in NY.”
She never told Trump he was on speakerphone.
Daniels says Trump gave her Rhona Graff’s phone number. She was Trump’s assistant.
Daniels is looking at a photo of the contact info for Graff. The contact card says “D Trump Rona.” We see it now, too.
Trump soon invited Daniels to a vodka launch party.
She says she wanted to maintain a good relationship while Celebrity Apprentice was up in the air.
Judge Merchan asks Daniels to keep her responses short.
Stormy Daniels was introduced to Karen McDougal at the vodka launch party. Said she was there 1.5-2 hours.
Daniels says Trump asked her to go back with him that night but she lied and said she had a flight.
When Daniels was in NY, she reached out to Trump (through Rhona Graff) to come to the show where she was performing.
Instead, he invited her to Trump Tower.
She said she was greeted warmly, including by Rhona in the reception area. Daniels says the meeting was brief, and describes his schedule.
When asked if he was trying to hide her, she says “Oh no, he introduced me to everyone. He’s just busy.”
He also offered tickets to the Miss USA pageant.
When he was in LA next, Trump invited her to his bungalow at the Beverly Hills hotel to discuss updates with Celebrity Apprentice.
While there, Daniels testifies Trump kept trying to make sexual advances, putting hands on her legs, scooting closer.
“I told him I was on my period.”
Daniels testifies he never asked her to keep it quiet, this was the last time she saw him.
In the next few years, she got married, had a baby, saw her career grow, became a nationally ranked equestrian.
She never spoke to Trump during this time.
Daniels said she had been talking to InTouch and then at one point, she was approached in a parking lot by a man who told her not to continue telling the Trump story.
When the article came out in 2011, Daniels said she never heard of the website/ did not talk to them. She was concerned because she had been threatened & was worried about the safety of her/her child.
“I was freaking out, crying and hyperventilating.”dirty .com
When Trump announced his candidacy, her manager Gina Rodriguez offered to sell her story.
She allowed Rodriguez to try to sell her story, but Rodriguez was not successful before the Access Hollywood tape came out.
Did you have any intention of approaching either Trump or Michael Cohen to buy your story? Daniels: My motivation wasn’t money, it was to get the story out. She said she was motivated out of fear.
She said she was okay w/ selling her story so that her boyfriend wouldn’t find out. She said she didn’t negotiate, & didn’t care about the money. Her job at the time was going well. She had gotten numerous raises, bought a house. “Instead of directing 5 movies, I directed 10.”
We’re now looking at an email between Keith Davidson and Michael Cohen. Davidson was negotiating the NDA for Daniels. Wanted this done by October 14th. Daniels said she worried she “wouldn’t be safe” and wouldn’t get paid if the election had passed.
[Lunch break]
Officially back from lunch. Stormy Daniels back on the stand. Trump tracking her as she takes her seat.
Reminder: she’s just been somewhat reprimanded not to “provide an unnecessary narrative” by the prosecution.
We’ve gone through the WSJ article and the NDA/SLA with Trump.We’ve looked at the same statements we saw Keith Davidson identify. There are two. She said one was mostly false, the other was false.
Now, we’re learning about a temporary restraining order filed by Michael Cohen.
After the TRO, Daniels hired Michael Avenatti to try to get out of her NDA.“So that I could stand up for myself,” she adds.
DA [Hoffinger]: Is Michael Avenatti still your lawyer?
Daniels: No. (makes a face)Hoffinger: Why not?
Daniels: Because I fired him. And later he was found guilty of stealing from me and several others. He was disbarred and now he’s in prison.
Daniels agreed to go on Cohen’s podcast because she wanted him to apologize to her. And he did. It was the first time the two had ever spoken.They talked all things Trump.
She went back on in 2022. “We had good rapport,” she said of Cohen. “and he wanted to talk Avenatti.”
We’re looking at a Truth Social post now from March 2023.“I did NOTHING wrong in the “Horseface” case…Never had an affair with her, just another false acquisition by a SleazeBag.”
Daniels is asked over and over again about being called “Horseface” by Trump.
Prosecution done. Defense up. Susan Necheles is doing the questioning for the first time this trial.
The post LIVE UPDATES From the Courtroom: Stormy Daniels Testifies in Sham Trump Showtrial – Told to Slow Down – Asked About Sexual Positions appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A great deal so far has been written about how President Trump will dramatically overhaul and scale back the administrative state when he becomes President again in November. Such a move, if successful, would restore a great deal of legitimacy to democratic lawmakers, particularly in Congress – and the President himself – who will be less hamstrung by the subversive ideologies and agendas of career Washington bureaucrats.
Of equal importance, though less talked about, is how a next Trump administration might restore integrity and legitimacy back to the fourth estate, legacy and corporate media institutions, which have long ago abandoned any pretext to impartiality. As most Americans know readily well, legacy media does not even attempt to pretend to be unbiased, fair, or neutral: instead, outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, and even the Wall Street Journal, simply reflexively parrot the anti-Trump, anti-America First talking points of their overlords in the Democratic Party, intelligence agencies, and military industrial complex.
Yet the legitimacy of the legacy media, and the “newspapers of record” I listed, are at historic lows. Many Americans – conservatives, especially – are turning away from these legacy outlets in droves, for alternative channels in the decentralized media space. Part of that has to do with revolutions and developments in technology in recent years. However, an even greater part of it has to do with these outfits themselves self-immolating by their failure to report the truth accurately on a whole array of topics, from the illegitimacy and vote-rigging surrounding the 2020 election, to the false “insurrection” narrative put out by the House January 6th Committee, to the failure to report accurately on the weaponized system of justice and the show trials against President Trump, to the media’s collective failure to report at all on the Biden Regime’s border catastrophe.
As legacy newspapers have turned a blind eye to these critical stories in recent years, they have also doubled down on their censorship efforts – selecting against dissident stories that challenge their received worldview. They have also actively enabled the censorship of stories and the work of brave investigative journalists, like James O’Keefe, Alex Jones, and Laura Loomer, whose careers are dedicated to exposing the corruption at the heart of Washington’s Swamp, which is enabled and abetted by both party establishments.
President Trump has proven himself to be more than just an ordinary politician. He is a visionary, a man who has achieved the pinnacle of success in both public and private life. His latest endeavor, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, which recently went public through its merger with DWAC, resulting in a multibillion-dollar windfall, is testimony to his visionary eye. The possibilities of what he can do with this latest media project are virtually endless – at his disposal is the opportunity to fundamentally remake the entire media ecosystem, top down, in the image and likeness of MAGA.
One way he might execute this vision is by purchasing one, if not all three of the newspapers of record. At one point in American history, each one of these three papers — the NY Times, Washington Post, and WSJ — were considered authorities for the topics they covered and quality of their editorial commentary. Not anymore. Nowadays, their authority has been deeply undermined by the brazen Leftist (or, at a bare minimum, RINO) propaganda they each parrot daily, and the mediocrity of their opinion pieces and reporting generally.
Journalistic standards have been reduced, if not collapsed, across the board, to accommodate the unthinking, brainwashed hivemind that increasingly characterizes the average Democratic voter. Yet, these newspapers retain their status as “authorities” for most nightly and cable news programs, which still command (to an albeit waning degree) a dominant perch atop the media ecosystem broadly speaking.
The headlines produced by the three newspapers of record nevertheless provide talking points for pundits across cable and legacy media. They remain agenda setters, in other words, because of the demographics of those who consume the most news – which remains, overwhelmingly, older Americans who remain stubbornly attached to the medium they grew up with: television. As the saying goes, the medium is the message: so long as the demographics favor traditional news media, which they will for the foreseeable future, these “newspapers of record” will command predominance as dissimulators of public opinion, for better or worse. Even the commentary on social media sites like X mostly react to the coverage and focus of cable news and legacy newspaper outfits, and thus the secondhand effects of these “newspapers of record” ongoing hegemony remain palpable.
As we have observed, especially in recent years, news media has a powerful influence over politics. Stories shape the issues that lawmakers debate, the wars that get funded, and the crises that get addressed. It is because of the nonstop, wall-to-wall coverage of the conflicts in the Ukraine and Gaza that Washington responded with hundreds of billions of dollars of aid in recent months to those regions. The George Floyd riots of the summer of 2020, which resulted in billions of more damages than the (overwhelmingly peaceful) protest at the Capitol on January 6th, and yet, incredulously, resulted in zero indictments, was largely framed as a spiritual awakening of sorts by legacy news outlets.
The legacy media’s intentionally crafted narrative in response to the George Floyd riots, engineered by all three major legacy newspapers, precipitated a sea change in American life: new holidays were created, sports teams were renamed, election procedures were rewritten, and the policies that have catalyzed the rampant lawlessness most American cities face today were enacted, in large part because of how the New York Times framed “the mostly peaceful protestors” that fateful summer.
The example above illustrates how the news, more so than even Congress or the Presidency, affects policy in terms of the issues that regular Americans talk about, and the priorities that become the focus of lawmakers in Washington. College students, many of them neither Jewish nor Muslim, are rioting now over a conflict in a distant land thousands of miles away, while ignoring their own wide-open southern border, where millions of foreign invaders are flooding their homeland – doing permanent damage to our country’s cultural and economic fabric in the process. That is entirely due to the selective coverage and preferential treatment of legacy news media.
Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is in shambles: major highways are teeming with potholes, bridges are collapsing, waterways are polluted, and yet nobody cares about these far more important matters because the news coverage is intended to distract, rather than edify, the public and divert attention from those matters which should be given the national spotlight, because they are of existential importance, and will determine the lasting fate — nay, survival — of the nation.
Donald Trump’s movement has operated like a bullhorn that cut through all the legacy media’s gaslighting, misinformation, and distractions like a knife – he, almost singlehandedly, has refocused our national agenda, for the first time in decades, to the policies and issues that would make this country better for all Americans.
Unfortunately, during his first administration, his noble efforts were partly derailed by a countervailing legacy media – driven by the NY Times, Washington Post, and to a lesser extent Wall Street Journal – which encumbered his noble vision, and introduced needless roadblocks into an agenda that most Americans would rally behind if not constantly gaslit and demonized every single day by the news. While Americans are beginning to wake up to that reality, it has been a long nine years in the works.
Americans deserve better from their newspapers of record – and President Trump, through his media company, now has a prime opportunity to restore the integrity of at least one, if not all three major newspapers, by combining them with his fledgling media company. What better way to jumpstart his second administration with the support of a friendly media apparatus, that will finally take its duty under the First Amendment seriously and give President Trump the fair and unbiased coverage he has long been denied, but so tremendously deserves, than to align the legacy media with Trump’s presidency.
By aligning the fourth estate with the second administration, the news will finally synchronize with the policies coming out of the White House – public opinion would shift, almost overnight, to a more favorable view of President Trump, because they finally will be dispelled of the constant negative coverage that severely hampered the 45th President from delivering a truly spectacular set of policies committed to improving the life of every single American citizen, regardless of race, color, or creed, on the first go-around.
Lastly, a Trump-managed New York Times or Washington Post, for instance, would thereby set the agenda for the rest of the legacy media, cable news included, setting the stage for a revival to these now failing institutions. This would also lessen the divisiveness and polarization in our country writ large, because these newspapers have arguably done more to drive a wedge between Americans, by raising the volume on identity politics, than any other organization or institution. Public trust, particularly in the media, is a necessary ingredient for good governance. A press, however, that does not respect the rights and liberties of Americans, chief of all their freedom to speak and debate without censorship, has abdicated its constitutional prerogative and thus demands to be revolutionized to restore its proper and original purpose.
Donald Trump has shown that he can restore legitimacy to government. Americans have therefore good reason to believe he can do the same to the legacy media. It would thus be a service to the press, the Constitution, and every American, if Truth Media expanded its guiding vision to acquire one or all three of the newspapers of record — representing a huge step in the direction of finally creating for the first time in generations, a fair and unbiased press.
The post It’s Time For Donald Trump’s Media Company To Consider Buying The NY Times, Washington Post, Or Wall Street Journal – And Make Fake News Fair Again! appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The following remarks on the Left’s lawfare are adapted from a keynote address I was asked to give at “A Seat at the Table,” an annual gathering of influential New Jersey conservatives, in Somerset on April 30th.
I’ve been asked to talk about how the Left has politicized and weaponized our justice system against both Donald Trump and ordinary Americans who still believe in fundamental Constitution protections, like the right to speak freely, the right to defend yourself, and perhaps most important of all, due process of law.
America is currently experiencing an all-out attack by the Left on its Constitution, institutions, and core identity. Nowadays, the Enemy is not a distant, overseas threat, like the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. It is a homegrown contagion, one that has infected virtually every aspect of modern American society.
In many ways, it has also infiltrated and subverted the Right, most of all the Republican Party, which remains anemic in the face of radical Left-wing opposition towards Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again Movement.
I have been down at the courthouse for pretty much every day since Alvin Bragg’s show trial started two weeks ago now against Donald Trump. To date, no Republican has appeared before the courthouse to protest this shameful miscarriage of justice, the worst of its kind ever in our history.
That is because never before has a major party leader in Joe Biden weaponized the justice system to persecute his biggest political adversary, who happens to be leading in every poll to become the next president, in Donald Trump. At least never in America – until now.
Very few Republicans have even condemned Bragg, Letitia James, and Judge Merchan in public statements through the media. Fewer still have gone one step further and acted – through subpoenas, investigations, congressional hearings, even filing an ethics complaint – against them.
To the extent any opposition has been demonstrated by the Right at all, it has largely been driven through the grassroots, via alternative news outlets like War Room and Laura Loomer’s on the ground investigative journalism. There is very little institutional support, in my judgment, by the Right or its mainstream outlets like Fox News and talk radio, against this mockery of the rule of law taking place in Alvin Bragg’s courtroom.
Meanwhile, President Trump has been forced off the campaign trail and into this kangaroo court. He has been gagged from being able to speak or criticize the proceedings – even though virtually every aspect about this trial is unprecedented and, if allowed to run apace, will do irreversible damage to the rule of law in this country.
Usually, for a criminal trial, the prosecution asserts some crime, and it is required to prove the elements of the crime in court before a jury of the defendants’ peers. This has not happened. First, the jury pool comes from uber liberal Manhattan, which voted for Biden over Trump 9 to 1. Second, to date Bragg’s prosecutors have not only failed to prove a crime, but they have also not even been able to come up with an alleged crime in the courtroom.
Does anyone here even know what is being prosecuted in the courthouse? The news media would have you think it’s some sort of election fraud based on a hush money payment about Stormy Daniels. But none of that has been true. Bragg and his prosecutors have not even made reference to a statute or law, criminal or civil, on which to ground his theory of fraud.
Indeed, Bragg has not said there was fraud in the first place. He won’t even go there, even though his prosecutors have created the impression in the minds of jurors, and the public, that somewhere, somehow, at some point fraud was committed. His prosecutors haven’t yet even talked about Stormy Daniels. They have been talking about Karen McDougall! Why? To create doubt and confusion in the minds of jurors – even though basic rules of evidence should prohibit the prosecution from doing just that!
Bragg hides the ball and thus leaves the rest of us scratching our heads to answer the who, what, when, where, and why the fraud occurred. His prosecutors can create rules on the fly because they receive absolutely no pushback. Not from any Republican in the New York State delegation. Not from any Republican in Congress; not from anyone, really, in a meaningful position of power, other than President Trump and his supporters.
The main reason for this is that hush money payments, under both federal and state law, no matter how salacious, are perfectly legal. Always has been, always will be. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that they are not lawful. In order to prove fraud, the prosecutor would still have to show a lie was committed against the public – and resulting damages.
Again, no fraud alleged. No statute cited. No crime asserted. They have repeatedly mentioned election fraud, but that’s a federal crime, and this is state court. Even so, however, the falsified documents that have so far been discussed on direct and cross examination were signed in 2017 and 2018, well after the 2016 presidential election took place! After Donald Trump had won already! So how, tell me, can election fraud take place after a presidential election?
Let’s just assume, to play devil’s advocate, that their theory of fraud somehow makes sense. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. What are the damages? To plead fraud, successfully, you must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the highest evidentiary standard (since this is after all, allegedly a criminal trial), that damages occurred.
It would seem, reading between the lines, that Alvin Bragg and Letitia James’ theory of damages is that President Trump won the 2016 election. They are still upset over that victory and have surmised that Trump winning constitutes damages because they are whiney and jealous crybabies.
What I just spelled out here, and there is much more to this case that I have omitted, is how the rule of law is being destroyed in real time. The prosecution accuses you of a crime you did not commit; they force you into court and browbeat the jury into believing that something must have happened – after all, why else would you be in court?
Never mind the fact that the facts don’t add up, nor is there any law on the books that can be cited for a crime. What is being done in Letitia James’ courtroom makes the Soviet show trials look legitimate by comparison.
If the rule of law is destroyed, if the Constitution no longer applies, we are a nation in ruin. Total anarchy and disorder. If you’ve been to Manhattan in recent months, you can see that anarchy playing out on the streets: our legitimate President is being politically persecuted, against his will, in a courthouse – at the behest of a rogue district attorney, attorney general, and prosecutor’s office that is ultimately receiving its marching orders from Joe Biden and Merrick Garland.
Riots at college campuses, including Columbia and NYU, which, by the way, are home to two of the most prestigious law schools in the country – in other words, the incubators of our future lawyers, judges, district attorneys, and politicians – have been ransacked by anti-American agitators with loyalties to other countries, not the United States or our Constitution.
In fact, the students – and their professors – hate everything this country stands for: they don’t understand the country, for one; but they also don’t even care to understand our traditions and values in the first place.
Instead, they demonize our history in one fell swoop. They call our Founding Fathers racist, and blanket label all white people – especially white men – as evil racists, who have committed the greatest injustices in human history. We have an obligation to take those words seriously.
One, because those are the values of our future leaders – and those values will continue to infiltrate every institution in our society – including how laws are written and applied – unless put to brutal and resounding stop. Two, because they really believe it – and words, beliefs, equate to real world action. Not just in the realm of politics, but in every aspect of public life.
Why have Americans allowed this to occur? It’s one thing to be conquered by an enemy. But it’s another thing entirely to be conquered by an enemy without doing anything to prevent it from happening. Conservatives in this country have in large part been kowtowed into silence. Many of them are deeply, deeply confused about their priorities and convictions.
Their inability to speak up in support of President Trump and recognize the much greater significance his political movement represents – for the future of this country, and Western civilization, more broadly – speaks to a total lack of conviction and failure to grasp the stark realities of our present crisis.
Anyone who fails to grasp these basic facts is patently unqualified for any position of authority in society today. Period. That includes everything from local school boards all the way up to President of the United States. It is not an exaggeration to say the fate of Western civilization hinges on the outcome of this November’s election.
What does Western civilization mean? It means preserving our Anglo-American heritage; it means preserving Christianity and the Church as the moral bedrock of our society. Morality must come from somewhere. If it doesn’t come from the Church or the Bible, it will relapse to where it came from in pre-civilized times: brute force.
This is how the Left operates now, and it permeates also how they govern, how they adjudicate criminal trials, and how they assemble on the streets.
Get in line or get rolled over. That axiom governs Left wing politics today. The Right must be a strong counterforce against that moral code. That means getting onto their level, and meeting them with an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If they prosecute our leaders, we prosecute their leaders. If they impeach and indict our President, we must do the same.
Better yet, we should be several steps ahead of the curve – and browbeat them into submission, before they drive us – and our society – off the cliff. If we don’t act, at some point the government will come to your door and force you to house illegal aliens against your will, or be placed on a public registrar for owning a firearm, waving the American flag, or refusing a vaccine. That is already happening.
You won’t even get to own your property anymore, including your house. If you negotiated your mortgage with a lending company, you are now on the hook for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars – depending on how some vindictive attorney general or judge evaluates your assets if they don’t like your politics.
That might sound crazy, but that is exactly the precedent being set in New York by Letitia James. Unless you are prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire lawyers to defend yourself in court, your property rights are no longer guaranteed. You don’t own what you think you possess if you have views that go against the Regime.
And silence isn’t good enough either, because in the Left’s moral framework, silence is violence. So, you can’t just remain silent anymore about your support for President Trump, that itself would be considered suspect. You must actively preach your religious devotion to Black Lives Matter and the cult of LGBTism – and your piety will be judged accordingly based on whether someone like Letitia James thinks you’re being sincere.
But if you’re white, no matter how liberal, you probably will be screwed, regardless of all the virtue signaling you proclaim – real or feigned. Since that is the price you must pay for the sins of your ancestors. For the woke Left, nothing short of a complete and total overthrow of Western society – our Constitutional government, rule of law, and every tradition we hold dear – will satisfy their jealous rage.
What is the solution to this madness? As a society, we must reclaim the conviction that comes with the moral certitude of knowing we’re right and our political enemies are wrong. That conviction ultimately traces its origins to God. Full stop.
But if we lack the conviction to stand up for our heritage – if we allow the Left to take down statues of men like Christopher Columbus and Thomas Jefferson with impunity and capitulate to the Left’s moral framing that our Constitutional form of government was founded by racist slaveholders, then we will have lost the game. If we believe, as they do, that the men who designed our Constitution were gravely immoral, what authority do we have to defend the fruits of their creation – property rights, due process of law, individual freedoms – which, no matter how noble, can never be defended against the injustice of their daily practices?
Even more relevant, if we cannot stand behind President Trump as he faces political persecution by a weaponized justice department in the courthouses, we will have abandoned every claim we have to preserve our country and our freedom.
At no other point in American history has the outcome of a presidential election been so pivotal for determining the fate of not just America, but the world. Not in 1980 at the height of the Cold War with Ronald Reagan; not in 1940 at the peak of World War II with Franklin Roosevelt; not even in 1860, at the outbreak of the Civil War, with Abraham Lincoln.
The silver lining of all this is that the momentum is behind Trump, and he is poised to win – in a big, big way this election cycle. We cannot accept defeat; victory is our only choice. We must take back our country from the Left that is cannibalizing it by the day with their policies and toxic creeds.
But even with Trump’s victory – and we still have a long way to go before securing that victory – our work will have only just begun. It is thus incumbent upon each and every one of us to continue this fight, day in and day out, knocking on doors, spreading the message, showing our support in public, vetting elected officials who truly align with our America First values.
That is the duty of every single one of us in this room – for that is the only way true justice will return in this country; not in the law courts, which have been sabotaged by radical Left wing judges and juries, but in the court of public opinion – where reasonable people still exist, which will once again elevate President Trump to his rightful place in the Oval Office this November. Only then will the rebirth of justice – and freedom – become a possibility again. And then we can begin the first steps of the arduous work needed to restore America back to its former greatness.
The post How Donald Trump’s Manhattan Criminal Trial Epitomizes The Left’s War On The Constitution – And America appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
JOIN CARA CASTRONUOVA’S X SPACE, HOSTED BY FORMER CONGRESSMAN GEORGE SANTOS HERE.
— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) April 27, 2024
Cara Castronuova, the former kickboxer and investigative journalist, who has waged a campaign for Senate in New York against the Uniparty, will be going to court on Monday again to contest New York’s signature requirement procedures. Castronuova’s case raises serious equal protection and due process issues about the integrity of the electoral process.
In a case that parallels President Trump’s own criminal trial currently underway in lower Manhattan, a political persecution carried out by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, Castronuova’s case implicates similar issues and many of the same key players.
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
There is nothing the establishment uniparty fears more than candidates they cannot control. Candidates that have their own moral compass.
If the party did not nominate & back you, you owe them nothing and they know it.… pic.twitter.com/xXsqcTPhR2
— Cara Castronuova (@CaraCastronuova) April 26, 2024
Of course, much like with Trump’s case, “Big Tish” James is actively working in the background – aided and abetted by State GOP Chairman, Ed Cox, who serves as controlled opposition for James’ weaponized system of justice scheme. Cox, nor any of his lackeys in the New York State Republican delegation in Congress, have yet rallied in support of President Trump by appearing in person at the courthouse to condemn the injustices committed there at the behest of the State Uniparty.
Castronuova, by sharp contrast, showed her face and helped rally Trump supporters on the ground last week at the commencement of the trial right outside the courthouse. She has unabashedly stood in the 45th President’s corner since day one and continues to do so – putting virtually everything on the line, including her livelihood and reputation, to stand on principle.
Her support for President Trump and the political persecution being waged against him is emboldened by her own court proceedings and lawsuits against the State Uniparty, which are as hostile if not even more so, against her for shining a light on their corruption – and taking their archaic ways to task.
In New York, the Party controls the entire candidate selection process. They handpick a Uniparty shill, like Mike Sapraicone, who does not have to waste time, energy, or money to collect signatures himself. They bully county party chairs to get everyone in line with the party agenda at a closed-door convention. What happens at the party convention is not made public.
They do everything behind the scenes, stealthily operating like the corrupt party bosses at the height of the Tammany Hall days of yore, making deals in proverbial “smoke filled rooms.” They actively select against candidates, like Cara, who are America First in disposition, and unwaveringly loyal to President Trump – and unafraid to advocate for the hot-button issues, like election integrity and the weaponized system of justice, that galvanize his base.
New York State is quickly being driven to hell – by policies endorsed by far-left Democrats in Albany, which drives the party leftward, as Republicans are kowtowed into submission. The State’s only chance of reversing these trends is by electing bold leaders like Castronuova, who follow in President Trump’s footsteps by not just pledging to drain the swamp on the campaign trail but putting real skin in the game to prove their bona-fides.
A natural born fighter who has overcome great challenges in life – she lost both her parents at a very young age – Castronuova is no stranger to adversity. She understands what it takes to go against the tide and take on trenchant power structures directly.
While she faces a mountain of opposition, she has also galvanized the MAGA grassroots across the State – a noble message that has resonated with Republican leaders in Albany. She has received the support from Mayor Giuliani and former Congressman Santos, who both have in their own ways butted heads with the Uniparty and faced very real personal and financial costs for doing so.
She has also electrified hundreds of thousands of disenchanted New Yorkers, of all ideological and partisan affiliations – belonging to every demographic, across all regions of the State.
In her cause they see their own plight and disenfranchisement – and her campaign, above anyone else’s in recent decades, has rekindled some hope for turning New York State around.
https://twitter.com/mrsantosny/status/1784315984217538723?s=46&t=vDPGUyj2anPJIRU1RvXGbQ
President Trump believes New York can be in play this November, a bold prediction that has been roused by his court appearances and recent public events across the city in recent weeks.
His pathway to victory would be made much easier, however, if he were supported on the ballot by true America First candidates like Cara Castronuova, who have been unreservedly loyal to President Trump since the moment he descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in 2015.
Only those with real skin in the game can best take on the Uniparty – Albany is as corrupt as Washington, and its swamp needs to be drained just as badly.
That is why Castronuova’s lawsuit is so important – it is a cause that is much bigger than her own bid for the Senate. It represents perhaps the last chance of reversing the fortune of New York, once the greatest state in the union, which in recent years has been under siege by subversive, radical left wing forces – and a weak Republican opposition party, that has enabled those radical policies to take place.
It is time for a revival, and that is why it is imperative that Castronuova gets placed on the ballot. She is the only one who can expose the Uniparty, take down their hand-selected puppet candidate in Mike Sapraicone, and have a chance of sending a Republican to the Senate for the first time in decades this November – when she goes against Kirsten Gillibrand.
The post X SPACE HAPPENING NOW: New York GOP Senate Candidate Taking The Charge To Uniparty This Week In Court – And Needs Your Help! appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
A lesser man staring down a criminal conviction, even on utterly bogus charges, might break under the stress of the event, or succumb to doubt and despair. But Donald Trump, as the saying goes, is made of sterner stuff. This stuff was readily on display Thursday morning in Midtown when he was greeted to a hero’s welcome before a litany of construction workers, representing the Steamfitters Union 638. Close to a thousand union workers, many of them still registered Democrats, arrived at the crack of dawn – before the President’s scheduled court proceeding – to serenade the President with a traditional New York homecoming.
What was especially remarkable about the event, which was spearheaded by the New York Young Republican Club, was not so much the enthusiasm among this traditionally Left-leaning voter bloc. Nor even was the fact that legions of them braved unseasonably chilly temperatures to come out at the crack of dawn, deep in the belly of the beast of liberal Manhattan, to showcase their support for President Trump (of note: their leader, Bob Bartels, said that “President Trump is leading Joe Biden three to one” of their 9,000-member union).
Nay, what was truly remarkable about the largely impromptu meetup was how organic it felt, and how strong President Trump’s support remains, even as he is hamstrung by an illegitimate court proceeding that in large part is preventing him from campaigning in this crucial election year in more important battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia. Nevertheless, only Donald Trump can make a tour de force out of what was really just a cobbled together side act for a campaign that has been slowed down by a weaponized justice system. Even so, the turnout, media presence, and optics of the union workers event would be envied by many other presidential campaigns (especially Joe Biden) — which would consider an event of this notoriety a main act.
Indeed, since his criminal trial began in New York City, President Trump has utilized the opportunity to experiment with more grassroots-style campaigning methods – making lemonade out of lemons. Last week he strode into a Bodega in Spanish Harlem, to tremendous acclaim, in a neighborhood that was mostly Hispanic and Democratic-leaning. This week he met with Union Workers in the heart of Manhattan. In the coming weeks, he has teased rallies in the South Bronx and Madison Square Garden (and perhaps other locations in New York, too), and will also be campaigning in neighboring New Jersey, where he is already scheduled to appear for a May 11th rally in Wildwood. New Jersey, much like New York, is another deep blue state. And yet, several reputable polls have placed him within a 5-point reach of Biden there, which is even closer than New York, where the President has also significantly narrowed the gap to within single digits in recent months.
In fact, President Trump has been so successful with these less structured campaign events that some pundits have characterized them as more powerful, and effective, methods of outreach than even his now world-famous rallies, which have become a staple of the 45th President’s political brand. However, by taking his message directly to the people, particularly in areas that have suffered true blight at the hand of the Biden regime’s destructive policies – whether through their unwillingness to crack down on crime, or their refusal to manage the border crisis, or their stripping away Americans’ right to defend themselves with a firearm – the message has been a powerful one, activating voter blocs in the process that would otherwise not normally vote for a Republican presidential candidate.
The bottom line is that virtually all Americans are worse – far worse – now than they were four years ago when President Trump was still in office, even during the height of covid. Our economy has been brought to a crawl, weighed down by lingering inflation (which has almost completely eroded the value of the dollar), stagnant wages, enervated supply chains, mediocre growth, crushing debt, and offshoring of industry.
Our border crisis has reached a catastrophic level: illegals flood cities like New York like never before, and government officials are clueless about how to handle it, afraid of being politically incorrect and doing what is necessary – a wholesale deportation – to undo the great damage wrought to our society by the Biden Regime’s suicidal policies.
Our system of justice has been weaponized beyond repair – and Americans feel these effects viscerally, not just vicariously through the political persecution of Donald Trump. Faithful Catholics are being added to FBI lists, while parents who dare so criticize woke public school curricula are treated as domestic terrorists by the Biden Regime’s Department of Injustice — and imposed heavy-handed legal penalties.
Legions of January 6th defendants, whom President Trump rightly terms “political hostages” — are being held in detention, so many of their due process rights denied without even being charged with a crime. Countless more face lengthy prison sentences, all for committing at worst a misdemeanor. They languish in solitary confinement, at the directive of our government, for sometimes months on end in inhumane conditions that we would be ashamed to keep ISIS terrorists or MS-13 gang members, whose crimes cannot even be placed in the same universe as those Americans who peacefully demonstrated at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
For these reasons, and many more, once insurmountable Democratic havens like New York and New Jersey are beginning to show cracks. The blue wall that President Trump pierced in the Midwest in 2016 is beginning to trickle over to the northeast, and the west, and other regions of the country that Democrats in the not-too-distant past once retained a formidable grip on. President Trump’s gains are bolstered by his uncanny appeal to working class people, legacy Americans who do not want their fundamental liberties and rights denied by their government – or their way of life outsourced to China, South America, or the Middle East.
The invasion at our southern border is emblematic of a much larger invasion – and subversion – to our national identity, being carried out with impunity by a political elite that includes members of both party establishments, which remains utterly and dogmatically committed to selling America out to the world. President Trump offers the only antidote to preserve our time-honored traditions, those things that made America special and unique for over two centuries, but now is on the precipice of being lost forever – notwithstanding a dramatic course correction.
That course correction can only be accomplished through the movement President Trump first launched in 2016, when he descended the fateful Trump Tower escalator. Make America Great Again gave the President two electoral victories in 2016 and 2020 and will do so again – with even more zeal this time around – because the stakes are that much higher, and millions more Americans have been awakened — and galvanized — to these harsh realities, which affect each and every one of us – regardless of race, religion, creed, or ideology.
It is for this reason, ultimately, that best explains why President Trump has catapulted in the polls and will carry this momentum all the way to victory come November, so long as we the people do our part to help get him there.
The post New York Is Trump Country appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Between judicially disqualifying conflicts of interests to overbroad gag orders that outrageously violate President Trump’s First Amendment rights as a criminal defendant, the President’s lawyers have multiple grounds on which to appeal this present show trial, which makes a mockery of the rule of law currently underway in lower Manhattan. One would have to scour the annals of American legal history to find another case quite like the one brought by Alvin Bragg and aided and abetted by Matthew Colangelo, a former top-level official of Joe Biden’s Justice Department, and prosecuted with inglorious vengeance by the highly conflicted Judge Merchan. The fact that Bragg’s kangaroo show trial is being prosecuted against Donald Trump at all, shamelessly denying him the respect and decorum the office of the President deserves, even in the courtroom, is bad enough. But that it is being waged against the leading candidate, by most leading polls, to become the 47th President of the United States, and leader of the free world, is many steps beyond the pale. Worse yet, that leading candidate has been so unceremoniously stripped of the traditional formalities of the presidential office – a laundry list of indiscretions that includes proper respect in the courtroom, protection of his fundamental due process rights, the right to speak and protest the trial proceeding where necessary. These indiscretions collectively prove that Judge Merchan condemned President Trump before his trial has even really commenced, depriving him of the most important pillar of the Anglo-American legal system: the presumption of innocence.
On these grounds, President Trump’s attorneys must request intervention by a higher tribunal, to either stay the proceeding, or better yet, put an end to this sham kangaroo trial that epitomizes what so many Americans realize as clear as day: a flagrant case of election interference.
The judicial system fortunately provides the defendant tools to appeal an utterly conflicted and corrupt proceeding. All President Trump’s attorneys would need to do is file a motion with the court requesting the judge recuse himself. If the judge refuses to recuse himself, despite being so troublingly conflicted, President Trump’s attorneys will then have the option to appeal the order the court must thereupon issue.
There are several ways to appeal a court order of this kind. The first, more conservative approach, would be a kind of collateral attack on the proceeding – which challenges the case on grounds other than the underlying merits of the claim – through what is called an Article 78 filing under New York law. In New York, lawyers have the option to appeal via an Article 78 proceeding to challenge the conduct of judges, including state criminal court judges whose offices are created by statute. There are two reasons why an Article 78 appeal might be easier, and more advisable, than a direct interlocutory appeal to federal court. The first reason is that Article 78 appeals would help streamline the process, given that President Trump’s case was brought in state court already, where such appeals are commonplace. It is much more complicated to appeal a criminal case, especially one implicating the thorny and often confused legal issues controlling the proceeding here, to federal court than by way of an Article 78 proceeding, which arises under state law and is thereby governed by much similar rules and principles than those which govern federal court.
The second, perhaps even more compelling, reason favoring an Article 78 appeal, rather than an appeal to federal court, is that under the New York State Constitution, parties have even more expansive First Amendment rights than those that would typically arise under the First Amendment. In the seminal 1988 decision, O’Neill v Oakgrove Construction, the Second Appellate Division of New York held that the “protection afforded by the guarantees of free press and speech in the New York State Constitution is often broader than the minimum required by [the Federal Constitution].” Thus, if the gag order serves as the basis for the Article 78 collateral attack, at least on paper, President Trump has reason to be optimistic because of how speech rights are traditionally protected in New York State, which heavily disfavors any infringements whatever on speech – more so than what would give rise to a valid challenge under First Amendment grounds alone.
Accordingly, President Trump’s lawyers have strong grounds to make an Article 78 appeal on the basis of the unconstitutional scope of the gag order that Judge Merchan arbitrarily imposed upon him, which fails to meet normal strict scrutiny analysis under federal law, as I have previously detailed at length. Therefore, if the gag order fails to pass muster under the Supreme Court’s own precedent from Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which governs when courts may prohibit speech in exceptional cases, surely the gag order here would likewise fail to meet the even more rigorous standard for speech prohibitions that arise under New York State’s Constitution.
Another issue that might be included in an Article 78 appeal is the issue of judicial misconduct: in other words, the conflict of interest serving as the basis for the appeal. Again, New York law is arguably more rigorous than federal law on this issue. Under New York law, “[a] judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned…”. An important ground for dismissal is when “the judge knows that the judge or the judge’s spouse, or a person known by the judge to be within the sixth degree of relationship to either of them, or the spouse of such a person … has an interest that could be substantially affected by the proceeding.”
One such interest that can be substantially affected by the proceeding is an economic interest. Namely, the economic interest of Loren Merchan, Judge Merchan’s daughter, who happens to fall “within the sixth degree of relationship” stipulated under the rule. As exhaustively discussed elsewhere, Loren Merchan works as a senior officer and fundraiser for a political consulting firm, Authentic Campaigns, whose “featured clients” include none other than the Biden-Harris campaign and various far-left lawmakers, including Adam Schiff and Kathy Hochul, with interests that would, to say the least, create a strong impression of impropriety that severely undermines Judge Merchan’s ability to rule fairly and impartially. Moreover, as also reported previously, Judge Merchan’s own wife allegedly works for Attorney General Letitia James’ office, who campaigned on “getting” President Trump and whose office put strong political pressures on both Merchan and Bragg to prosecute the 45th President in this criminal trial – to say nothing of presiding over President Trump’s concurrent civil cases taking place in New York State. Furthermore, reputable sources have reported that Loren Merchan’s firm profited, to the tune of at least $93 million, off the political persecution of Donald Trump happening in lower Manhattan.
Under the federal canons of judicial conduct, a judge must recuse himself whenever the judge, his spouse, or a relative “within the third degree of relationship” of the judge is “a person who has more than a de minimis interest that could be substantially affected by the proceeding.” Reading these two rules together, it is notable, first, that the state ethics code encompasses relatives to “the sixth degree of relationship,” giving strong reason to believe that, much like speech law, the standard for impropriety under New York State laws governing judicial misconduct is even more rigorous than federal law.
Second, a daughter presiding over a business that raises tens of millions of dollars for political candidates and campaigns, and stands to – with very good reason – earn a windfall if her father happens to prosecute and convict the man poised to be her firm’s client’s political opponent in the upcoming presidential race, would, I conjecture, qualify as an example (if not textbook example) of “more than a de minimis interest in the case.” Ditto too is Judge Merchan’s wife, Lara Merchan, if the reports alleging an employment connection, as special assistant to Letitia James, between her and Letitia James’ office prove true, given how much James’ political career rests on “getting” President Trump, which she irrefutably made the central issue of her statewide race for Attorney General, and short-lived race for Governor.
Beyond these damning revelations, the fact that Judge Merchan himself is a noted and long-term donor – directly via donations, and indirectly via PAC monetary contributions – and friend of Joe Biden should, even if the facts brought about the daughter and wife did not come to light, alone be sufficient grounds for a recusal. In a case involving a presidential candidate taking place just months before Election Day, politics are necessarily all-controlling. There is no getting around it. Hence, to any reasonable observer, the courtroom drama in lower Manhattan cannot be understood other than as a brazen act of election interference by the incumbent president in Biden against his likeliest successor in Trump.
Otherwise, what else explains the seven-plus years of delays in which this case was kicked down the road from the DOJ to the FEC to Bragg’s office, not once, but twice, only to finally be prosecuted at a politically convenient hour: the moment when Donald Trump became, for the third time in as many cycles, the presumptive Republican nominee. There were also various changes in the law (all of which in hindsight look like strategic meddling by Democrats in the New York state legislature making preparations to jury-rig the legal system in advance to prosecute Donald Trump) made over the years. These include a change in the statute of limitations that allowed Bragg to prosecute this case well beyond the original limitations period. In addition, there was a 2018 change in tax law that made hush money write-offs for sexual indiscretions unlawful.
To date, not one of Merchan, Bragg, Colangelo, James, or Biden’s DOJ could explain why it is imperative to commence a six-week trial right here and now, rather than postpone it – for just another seven months – until after election day. To channel our eloquent Commander-in-Chief: For God’s sake it’s been seven years already, what the hell is another seven months going to make a difference! The choice to prosecute President Trump now, perhaps at the summit of his political clout, where most reputable polls have him trouncing Biden in the upcoming general election, just reeks of improprieties – and indeed, election interference – of the worst possible variety.
Separately from the Article 78 proceeding, President Trump’s lawyers also have the option of making an interlocutory appeal directly to federal court – either to the Second Circuit or, better, Supreme Court. Under well-settled federal law, the Supreme Court has permitted interlocutory appeals from state to federal court, in the decision Lauro Lines S.R.L. v. Chasser (1989), if the appeal satisfies the three-prong test of what the High Court called “the collateral order doctrine.”
The collateral order doctrine says that appeals are permitted as long as the following elements are met:
1. The outcome of the case would be conclusively determined by the issue;
2. The matter appealed was collateral on the merits;
3. The matter was effectively unreviewable if immediate appeal were not allowed.
In President Trump’s criminal proceeding, all three elements are easily met. The matter appealed – the recusal order – would conclusively determine the outcome of the case because if the Judge is found conflicted under New York or ABA canons regulating judicial ethics, there would be strong grounds for a mistrial. Even if President Trump’s attorneys appealed just on the gag order issue, that still would likely satisfy the collateral order doctrine – because President Trump’s ability to speak about, and expose, the conflicts of interest implicating Judge Merchan and his family would reveal a disqualifying economic interest in the case that goes directly to the reason why it was brought in the first place. If it can be shown that Judge Merchan had a judicially disqualifying economic stake in the case, which should be easy here because he incontestably does, the entire case would have to be dismissed on grounds of unfair prejudice to the defendant and his constitutional rights. Indeed, there is strong reason to believe that there would be no case without Judge Merchan – in other words, a recusal alone would not mitigate the prejudice to President Trump here, because that prejudice runs to the heart of the proceeding itself, regardless of the identity of the judge presiding over the case.
At the bare minimum, however, the judge’s myriad conflicts of interest serve as more than sufficient grounds for an order for recusal – there is absolutely no way President Trump’s due process rights can be guaranteed so long as Judge Merchan remains on the case. If a recusal order is successfully appealed, given how damaging Judge Merchan’s conflict was in the case at bar, the court will likely have to stay this proceeding until after the election, in order to avoid a repeat of the same dangers here that severely harmed President Trump’s fundamental rights – which stand as a grievous indictment of New York’s judicial system.
The other two elements are also easily met. The matter appealed, whether on the gag order or recusal issue, is collateral to the merits of the underlying legal claim: which involves an alleged fraudulent business records scheme. What is more, if Judge Merchan is not recused, the matter cannot be reviewed unless on appeal. Put differently, the only way President Trump can request relief here is by appealing any ruling Judge Merchan might issue on a recusal order. Given the probability that Judge Merchan will deny any order filed by his attorneys for his recusal, there will be a basis for an interlocutory appeal to either state or federal court.
Why else might a direct interlocutory appeal to federal court, rather than to state court via the aforementioned Article 78 proceeding, be more desirable? Well, for one thing: the legal basis for it should not be that hard given that federal questions run amok all throughout this case. Whether dealing with President Trump’s First Amendment rights, or denial of his due process rights – or even the alleged FEC violations at issue here – there are more than sufficient grounds, as a matter of procedure, to kick this case into federal court for appeal. Of course, federal crimes require federal jurisdiction: but there are likely jurisprudential grounds, not the least of which has to do with the issues controlling here, especially with the FEC, that implicate the interstate commerce clause, that would create the nexus to make the underlying issue a federal question.
I mean, this is the President of the United States, we are talking about, who also happens to be an out-of-state resident! So, the question to be raised: why is this a state court matter at all seems so obvious – and yet has bizarrely not been talked about enough, despite being a central and unaddressed issue, either by the legal pundits or the prosecution.
Bragg has hidden the ball so much with regard to his theory of criminal liability here, which can only be attributed to one of two reasons: 1) he has no basis for bringing this case in state court because has no idea what on earth he is doing, or 2) he realizes that to the extent a crime is ascertainable at all amid Bragg’s legal muddying of the waters, it is emphatically one that warrants prosecution in federal court, not state court, ergo explaining the lack of transparency on his end. Given the fact that Bragg is so heavily relying on a federal prosecutor from Biden’s DOJ, Matthew Colangelo, to help him contrive a theory of criminal liability here, is all the more reason to believe that this matter belongs in federal court, not state court.
That being said, I discussed advantages for collaterally attacking this matter via an Article 78 proceeding rather than making a direct interlocutory appeal to federal court. The first reason is that Article 78 proceedings might be easier: similar rules and legal principles would apply for both the criminal proceeding and Article 78 appeal. The second reason is that New York State Law, at least in theory, is even more protective of both President Trump’s speech rights and offers an even more rigorous standard for judicial ethics than what is observed by the ABA.
But the advantages to a state court proceeding should be placed alongside the advantages of a direct interlocutory appeal to federal court. These advantages may be described as follows: 1) even though state law is supposed to apply more generous speech protections, considering the current cast of characters in charge of New York’s law enforcement – from Hochul to James to Bragg to Merchan – it is improbable that President Trump’s state constitutional rights would be adequately protected. It would thus be incumbent upon federal actors, either judges or prosecutors, to apply New York law faithfully – or, in the alternative, use the federal standard to exonerate President Trump from the endless indignities of New York’s corrupted judicial system. 2) The second reason favoring federal appeal is that federal courts – and the Supreme Court, above all – has the greatest means to establish a national standard for the ongoing criminal (and potential other) proceedings against President Trump.
Now that Donald Trump is officially the presumptive Republican nominee, it would be much easier for the Supreme Court to simply issue a stay on all proceedings against him until after November 5th. That, the Highest Court of the Land has the power to do – and should do, if it truly cares about the rule of law, the protection of individual rights, and safeguarding the republic from nefarious and gratuitous political prosecutions, particularly during a hotly contested election year. An emergency interlocutory appeal to the Supreme Court would be the best way to preserve our democracy from the subversive forces, acting at the behest of Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice, working actively to expel President Trump from the political arena. Granted, it may be a difficult feat to pull off, given all the time constraints and political hurdles, but President Trump’s attorneys should treat the persecution against him as a serious act of legal warfare, one that must be responded to in kind – using every tool in the arsenal – or risk defeat by our enemies, hellbent on bringing down the remaining morsels of the American republic for all time.
The post Alvin Bragg’s Legal Assault On President Trump Is Lawfare Of The Worst Kind: Strategizing A Legal Counterattack appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The current House Speaker is cut from the same cloth as Mike Pence: a tergiversating weakling who always fails to stand for America First when push comes to shove.
Mike Johnson is at a crossroads: continue to appease the RINOs and Democrats in the House, thus maybe preserving his House seat through the November election, at which point it seems increasingly likely, regardless of the lower chamber’s composition, that he will be replaced with someone else.
Or he can stand with the American people and Donald Trump by denying Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan an endless stream of blank checks and instead focus on the two most pressing matters at hand: securing the border and securing our election system to ensure President Trump’s victory.
Unfortunately, given the results of the past week, which observed the House pass yet another nearly $100 billion package for the Ukraine, adding to the billion dollars plus spent on all foreign expenditures that was part of the resolution, Johnson appears to be following Kevin McCarthy’s footsteps in siding with the Uniparty over MAGA.
Johnson is hardly the paradigm of a strong man, but last week’s decision – in which reports expressed that he was kowtowed by none other than Democratic minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, “to do the right thing” clearly shows that the current Speaker is cut from the same cloth as Mike Pence: a weakling who cannot stand on principle.
The outrageous display of House Democrats brandishing the Ukrainian flag, amid chants of “Slava Ukraini,” where Johnson only meekly responded with “we should wave only one flag on the … House floor” struck the pathetic image of a man in dire straits.
Perhaps resigned to his fate as a lame duck Speaker in this dismal interim period of American history, as the country waits in almost a catatonic state for the next administration, Johnson appeared worn out, exhausted, helpless — terrible descriptors for the supposed leader of the opposition party.
Johnson has received threats from members to his right to be ousted from office. This past week, in response to his signing off on the Ukrainian aid bill, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who first threatened to vacate the Speaker’s chair a few weeks ago, was joined by other House members, including Paul Gosar and Thomas Massie.
All three of them perceive in Johnson a leader who, as soon as he was given the Speaker’s gavel, quickly rolled over and capitulated to the Uniparty – including, worst of all, the Democrats, who now pretend to be his buddy as members from his own Party, frustrated by his performance, agitate for his removal.
Johnson of course in choosing to side with the Uniparty on foreign spending not only bucked the right flank of his party in the halls of Congress, but also the urgings of Donald Trump, who is currently going through a criminal trial in New York City, forcing him off the campaign trail, on groundless charges brought forth by Joe Biden’s weaponized justice system. President Trump made known his position on the Ukrainian package, asking why Europe was not footing the bill for Ukraine, rather than us.
President Trump made known his position on the Ukrainian package, asking why Europe was not footing the bill for Ukraine, rather than us.
Everyday Americans are still reeling from the decades-high inflation rates that have made the cost of living unmanageable, especially for a middle class that has already been largely offshored to China and other places by Washington’s Uniparty consensus.
Thus, Johnson, knowing how badly hundreds of millions of his fellow countrymen are suffering, should never have ratified more spending on a foreign conflict taking place in a country most Americans — and probably even most lawmakers — cannot even identify on a map.
This would be true in any time, but especially now, when an estimated seven million foreign invaders, at least, will cross the border under the four years of Joe Biden’s term: a literal invasion, in every sense of the word, which will have devastating effects on our economy, culture, and demographics, for potentially decades to come.
Moreover, as Johnson obsesses about what is already a losing battle thousands of miles away, the current presidential frontrunner has been forced off the campaign trail and into a dank courtroom, his constitutional rights brazenly stripped in the process by a rogue judge, district attorney, and attorney general, at the behest of a weaponized Department of Justice.
This should be Johnson’s foremost priority – every day he should be asking himself the question: what can I be doing to fight against the relentless lawfare of Biden’s DOJ? And yet, so far, there have been crickets.
Rather than allocate another six hundred million dollars (at least) to the FBI to build a fancy new building, Johnson should be mobilizing House Republicans to defund these agencies – or at the bare minimum, begin the preliminary talks for a game plan that will help Donald Trump’s next administration hit the ground running from day one.
There are ample opportunities at this juncture, none of which have been pursued yet, to mitigate at least some of the worst excesses of Biden Regime-orchestrated lawfare against President Trump and his supporters.
The first and most obvious solution would be to release the remaining J6 footage to help further debunk the “insurrection” narrative that was propagated by the illegitimate January 6th House Select Committee for years on end.
The second item on the agenda would be to issue congressional subpoenas for Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, Letitia James, and Fani Willis. Make these prosecutors appear before a House Committee and answer for what they are doing to President Trump on television the American people.
There is no reason on earth why these prosecutors should be allowed to hijack an election year – by whisking President Trump off the campaign trail for weeks on end – without accountability. This is the clearest example of election interference in American history, and nothing else comes even close. This is something that every Republican lawmaker, who cares about the needs of their constituents, should not simply agree to, but make their number one priority.
If Johnson is so concerned about appeasing Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries, he should have no problem at all subpoenaing Bragg and Willis, given how distasteful these characters are to the vast majority of Republicans.
Additionally, there is no reason on earth why Johnson should not pursue articles of impeachment against Biden, for pay to play schemes involving his son, Hunter, that have become an object of scandal — and national humiliation — over the course of the nearly four years he has served in office.
Finally – and perhaps most importantly – Johnson must do everything in his power to prevent the continued bloodletting of Republican House members, through resignations and early retirements, that have only further eroded the Republican Party’s already razor thin majority.
This is the ultimate test because if Johnson is unwilling or incapable of stopping the bleeding now, it will not matter whether there is a motion to vacate or not.
The House will have turned over control to the Democrats before Election Day, likely sabotaging President Trump’s hopes of re-election because it would mean that Democrats would have full control of the legislative process, and could then pass a bill that might remove him from the ballot, however unconstitutional that might otherwise be, with virtual impunity.
It is incumbent upon Johnson to present a clear path forward – or else be vacated from his post for someone more competent, capable, and loyal to President Trump and his voters.
Johnson has already displayed an unnerving propensity to make pacts with the devil; if he should continue down that route, he will have sold out his countrymen for the Biblical equivalent of thirty pieces of silver – and no amount of sanctimonious excuses to his Christian faith as the putative reason for why he did so will ever convince the American public that he is anything but a weak and feckless traitor, who should never have taken up the awesome post he now occupies, for having shown himself utterly incapable of wielding power like a true statesman.
The post Mike Johnson’s Faustian Bargain appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Judge Merchan’s emotionally deranged and irresponsibly overbroad gag order, issued in two separate installments, the second building off the first, is both dangerous and unprecedented for its sweeping scope. It severely infringes on President Trump’s fundamental rights protected under the First Amendment to speak, and, wherever appropriate, criticize the trial proceeding as he sees fit. It is well-settled law that prior restraints on speech, of which gag orders are the textbook example, are – in the overwhelming majority of cases – unconstitutional as a form of government censorship.
Only in the rarest of cases has the Supreme Court upheld prior restraints on speech. In the few cases where the Court has upheld gag orders, a form of prior restraint, the order was necessary to achieve a compelling state interest. In other words, the Supreme Court has only permitted gag orders that satisfied the extremely high burden of strict scrutiny analysis. Where gag orders are at issue, strict scrutiny compels courts to limit the scope of the order to an articulable set of facts – the facts encompassing the order must be extremely particularized and limited in scope, and only considered as a final option if and when all other alternatives to help ensure a fair trial have been totally exhausted.
Thus, gag orders are only ever to be used as a last resort option, and only in the most exceptional cases when the right to a fair trial would otherwise be severely jeopardized without it. In the rare cases where a gag order would be appropriate, again the court must take great pains to ensure that it is structured in such a way as to be particularized to a highly limited set of facts that have a direct bearing on the integrity of the proceeding – and go no further. The gag order should always be temporary, with a definitive start time and expiration date, terminating whenever the danger that resulted in its issuance in the first place subsides, or immediately once alternative, less constraining methods that would ensure a fair proceeding become available, whichever comes first.
Regrettably, Judge Merchan has run roughshod over those fundamental principles that would otherwise prevent gag orders from unduly violating the speech rights of the defendant, Donald Trump. To reiterate, gag orders are the archetypal example of a prior restraint on speech. The general rule is that prior restraints on speech are presumptively unconstitutional. Courts only uphold them in the rarest of cases where all other options are unavailable to ensure a fair trial, and only after assurances that the order has been narrowly tailored in its scope — and necessary to achieve — a compelling state interest – that is to say, an interest of monumental urgency that would imperil the proceeding without it.
In a criminal proceeding involving a President of the United States, the normal checks that create a presumption against issuance of a gag order should receive heightened scrutiny. Indeed, because of the political notoriety of the defendant, in addition to the well-established list of factors that create a reasonable presumption against Judge Merchan’s trial being anything but fair, the normal strict scrutiny analysis applicable should be counterbalanced by the overriding public interests at play here that strongly disfavor any sort of infringement on speech and press rights whatsoever.
These precautions should even be observed if strict scrutiny analysis would, under normal circumstances, dictate permitting a limited gag order. This is because the case involves the leading presidential candidate, just months before what many pundits believe will be one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in American history, where the stakes of the election could not possibly be higher. Moreover, no fair-minded observer would say that Donald Trump could possibly get a fair trial in lower Manhattan, before a Democratic judge, wherein a jury pool was drawn from a borough of which nearly 90% of residents voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020.
Accordingly, based on an objective assessment of all the facts here, if the court is to consider issuing any encroachments on anybody’s First Amendment rights, the operative principle must be that such limitations be subject to the highest possible scrutiny. Normal strict scrutiny analysis should set the floor, and really, the court should be held to a theoretically higher level of scrutiny for imposing any limitations in light of additional factors at play here that make this proceeding extraordinary: 1) the defendant is the frontrunner to be the next president; 2) the public has a strong political interest in the outcome of the case because a criminal conviction would deny tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Americans their voting rights; and 3) the trial itself is already compromised by the myriad conflicts of interest, detailed throughout this article, and the lack of transparency in the process – both of which facially pose serious due process problems.
In a normal criminal trial, typically the defendant receives certain constitutional protections, including an implicit right to anonymity, that mitigate against creating unfair prejudices in the minds of jurors. These guardrails, which are patently missing in President Trump’s case, are of critical importance to preserving the integrity and fairness of a proper criminal proceeding overall.
In a criminal trial especially, courts have traditionally taken great pains to ensure the jury pool does not bring their preconceived biases about the defendant that could prejudicially color the ultimate verdict. Usually if a juror even knows anything about a criminal defendant – good, bad, or indifferent – before the trial, that juror is struck. This is especially true for a highly publicized trial because those preconceived biases are rightly seen as compromising to the defendant’s presumption of innocence. No matter how impartial a juror might insist he or she is, as a practical matter it is virtually impossible to set aside the impressions one might already have about the defendant from one’s judgment about the defendant’s guilt or innocence.
In a case involving Donald Trump, arguably the most famous individual in the world, of which nearly all Americans have an opinion, the baked-in protections that generally help foster a presumption of innocence for ordinary criminal defendants are entirely absent here. The court, in short, cannot pretend to be agnostic to the stark political realities of this case, which necessarily redound to – and are inextricably linked with – the defendant’s identity. There is no possible way to divorce the defendant from the political passions of the jury pool – to pretend otherwise, as Alvin Bragg and Judge Merchan do, poses a grave injustice to both Donald Trump’s rights and to the public interest.
This injustice encompasses President Trump’s tens (if not hundreds) of millions of would-be voters, who are also deeply affected – both politically and emotionally – by this criminal proceeding and have an indispensable interest in its outcome. The public has an overriding interest in this case – and the public interest necessarily entails maximum transparency on part of the court. Furthermore, because cameras are not permitted in Judge Merchan’s courtroom, the judge has an additional responsibility to ensure that both the defendant and the public’s constitutional rights and interests are not anymore unduly limited via issuance of unconstitutional prior constraints like gag orders, or anything of that sort, over the course of the proceeding.
Alas, the public has great cause for concern to believe that Judge Merchan has so far ignored their interest (to say nothing of brazenly ignoring President Trump’s constitutional rights), completely disregarding constitutional considerations of the highest importance in the process. For one, the fact that Merchan issued a first gag order on March 26th, with no stated end date, and with only sporadic citations to law, was bad enough. Even worse, however, was that Merchan went so far as to issue a second order, fewer than one week later, on April 1st, expanding the already overbroad March 26th gag order to also capture any speech by the defendant directed at the family of Judge Merchan or Alvin Bragg, is multiple bridges too far.
Judge Merchan’s second gag order reads like a child throwing a temper tantrum, an emotionally charged rant that somehow manages to insult President Trump, his supporters, and the entire public, in the process. At its most histrionic point, Judge Merchan’s emotively rages “It is no longer just a mere possibility or a reasonable likelihood that there exists a threat to the integrity of the judicial proceedings. The threat is very real. Admonitions are not enough, nor is reliance on self-restraint. The average observer, must now, after hearing Defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves, but for their loved ones as well.” [Emphasis in the original.]
Judge Merchan’s theatrical diatribe – notably heavy on emotion, light on substance – was so clearly issued as a desperate, last-ditch act to prevent President Trump from exposing the very grave conflicts of interest implicating the judge and his immediate family members, including Merchan’s own daughter and wife, that make virtually impossible a fair trial from the start.
Judge Merchan is a known Democratic donor. For years, he has been a serial contributor to Democratic politicians, including, as recently as 2020, a direct contributor to Joe Biden, Donald Trump’s likely opponent in the 2020 general election. He has also made contributions through various political action committees that support Democratic politicians in general. Maybe even more damning, Judge Merchan’s daughter, Loren, serves as President of a political advocacy group, Authentic, whose clients include none other than the Biden-Harris campaign, Adam Schiff, Kathy Hochul, Gavin Newsom, Ilhan Omar, and many other high-profile, far left progressive Democratic politicians. Finally, Judge Merchan’s own wife reportedly works directly for New York State Attorney General Letitia James, who made the central point of her campaign for AG to “get” Donald Trump. Of course, when she was on the campaign trail James could not cite any legitimate legal rationale to “get” her biggest political adversary in Trump, other than being obviously driven by envy and spite, the ugly sentiments that seem to animate her entire career in public office.
Judge Merchan’s claim that issuance of the gag order was necessary to prevent “attacks” on his family are utterly groundless. President Trump never “attacked” Judge Merchan or any of his relatives. The definition of attack is to take “an aggressive and violent action against a person or place.” Under the law, attacks are equivalent to threats. In First Amendment jurisprudence, under the well-settled precedent from Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), speech may be prohibited only if it is (1) “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” and (2) such speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.” The classic example: a party that raises his fist and says, “I’m going to punch you in the nose” will likely have engaged in punishable speech under Brandenburg; a party that says, “I am going to punch you in the nose the next time I see you,” has not.
A party that says, “You should be recused because your daughter has, as a client to her firm, the man I am going to likely face in the upcoming presidential election,” is neither inciting nor threatening nor imminent nor lawless. That is constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment; not an “attack,” as Judge Merchan complains, and surely, not grounds for a gag order – which, here, applying this analysis, renders it as an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech.
Even if President Trump had called upon his supporters – which, let me be emphatically clear, he never did nor would do – to verbally harass Loren Merchan, Judge Merchan’s daughter, via a phone call or letter or email-writing campaign, that speech would still pass muster as constitutionally protected under a faithful application of the Brandenburg precedent, which establishes the rule for lawfully prohibiting speech. What President Trump did, via his Truth Social platform, comes nowhere close to even the latter hypothetical. Thus, the Judge’s knee jerk reaction to impede the President’s First Amendment right to criticize the unfairness of his trial, and point out what many legal commentators, experienced political experts, and observers have called a judicially disqualifying conflict of interest – under both New York’s Rules Governing Judicial Conflict as well as the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct – flagrantly violates the Constitution, makes a mockery of the rule of law, and should not stand.
Under no circumstances should this trial be allowed to carry on without, at the bare, bare minimum, Judge Merchan’s recusal. President Trump’s lawyers have every right in the world to call for a mistrial. Any court worth its salt – and committed to the Constitution – would grant a mistrial without second thought because there is no possible way President Trump’s fundamental rights can be preserved, as a criminal defendant, in Judge Merchan’s proceeding, where conflicts, venue, and grievous First Amendment rights violations, in addition to a litany of other factors, have already prejudiced this trial beyond repair.
The post Judge Merchan’s Gag Order Against President Trump Is The Textbook Case Of An Unconstitutional Prior Restraint On His First Amendment Rights: A Legal Commentary On Why It Must Be Removed appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The weaponization of the rule of law has reached a point beyond repair in New York State, with the ongoing trial being waged by District Attorney Alvin Bragg against President Donald Trump. Even at this late hour, the State has failed to prove 1) how President Trump falsified business records; 2) how the alleged falsification of the business records scheme was criminal; and 3) why that alleged crime should be prosecuted as a felony, rather than a misdemeanor, which is the typical charge for falsification schemes under New York State Law.
Given that President Trump’s alleged wrongdoing is being treated as criminal misconduct, the burden of proof is for the State to prove that Donald Trump is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for every single element of the asserted crime. The legal burden of proof of “beyond a reasonable doubt” means that the prosecution must convince the jury that “there is no other reasonable explanation that can come from the evidence presented at trial.” That incredibly high evidentiary threshold must be established for every single element of the crime alleged. What is more, criminal trials require unanimity on part of the jury; a hung jury will result in a mistrial, ultimately pushing the case back until after the November election, which is not what Bragg wants.
Obviously, the goal of Alvin Bragg and Letitia James is to prosecute – and put President Trump behind bars – as soon as possible (before election day ideally) to sabotage his chances of winning re-election. President Trump’s re-election appears increasingly like a foregone conclusion with the latest polls consistently putting him in a significant lead over Joe Biden.
President Trump is currently being tried under New York Penal Law 175.05. The law ordinarily makes it a misdemeanor, not a felony, to falsify business records with “intent to defraud.” The law permits, however, the District Attorney to upgrade what ordinarily would be considered a misdemeanor to a Class E felony if the intent to defraud is combined with an intent to commit another crime.
Of course, the State has a heavy burden of proof to show that President Trump intended to defraud in the first place, let alone defraud with an intent to commit some other yet undefinable crime. Paying off an adult film actress, if that even occurred, is not a crime under New York law. The idea, then, that a fraud was intended, let alone committed, by what is widely recognized to be, at worst, a mere “clerical error” in how the President’s accountant reported the alleged payment to the tax collector, is absurd.
Nobody seems to be asking who was lied to in this case – was it the public? The IRS? The FEC? Moreover, even if a reporting error constitutes a lie, the lie must have been done with the requisite intent to be considered a fraud under law. Errors in and of themselves hardly make a lie, let alone impute criminal fraud upon the one making the error.
If the State is attempting to argue, for instance, that President Trump’s accountant, lawyer, or (so the State’s theory goes) whoever intentionally misrepresented the hush money payment to defraud the public, the onus is still on Bragg and his team (which conveniently includes the Biden-DOJ political appointee, Matthew Colangelo) to show on what basis the injured party — here, “the people,” or public — would have relied on such fraud, resulting in a specified damage to them.
Under New York law, in order to prove fraud, the State must show, by clear and convincing evidence, each and every one of the following elements:
(1) a material misrepresentation or omission of fact;
(2) made by defendant with knowledge of its falsity;
(3) and intent to defraud;
(4) reasonable reliance on the part of the plaintiff; and
(5) resulting damage to the plaintiff.
The underlying assumption that appears to be working in the background and driving Bragg’s bogus fraud theory is that the public somehow would be damaged by the allegations of an extramarital affair implicating Donald Trump. But it is difficult to see just exactly what those damages are. Sure, one could, I suppose, entertain the view that a portion of President Trump’s voter base might have been alienated from voting for him if revelations of an affair came to light, but that is a rather incredulous sell. Moreover, a scandalized portion of President Trump’s voter base would only be indirectly related to this case, which, again, is not based on a hush money payment, but an alleged falsified business records scheme implicating a hush money payment that, on its own terms, has no legal significance, much less something that could impute criminality (let alone a felony) upon the perpetrator.
This is especially so, given how much we already know about President Trump’s personal life, his marriages, divorces, etc., etc., etc., which are thoroughly documented, and have long been part of the national conversation – and in the public record – decades before President Trump ever thought of descending that escalator and stepping foot into the political arena.
There is no such thing, really, in criminal law as “moral” damages – or damages afflicting one’s conscience because of moral scandal resulting from an illicit affair. But to the extent any damages at all stemming from the fraud perpetrated here exist, that would be it (what else could there possibly be?). The State cannot prosecute President Trump on economic damages resulting from the State being denied taxable money because of how the law was structured before the 2018 change in the law. At the time of President Trump’s tax filing, it was perfectly legal to write-off hush money payments for an affair – trying him now, on a theory of damages, based on the changed law encounters serious ex post facto and double jeopardy problems, both of which are obviously unconstitutional.
Should the State try to contend that moral damages resulted from the cover up, that argument would be even more ridiculous than believing that portions of President Trump’s voting base would not have supported him but for revelations of the fraud. The law already permits hush money payments for the type of conduct alleged in this case. Thus, the law patently does not track moral improprieties arising from extramarital affairs.
But let us assume, to play devil’s advocate, that the law did indict such misconduct. That would necessarily trigger at least two thorny, and as yet unresolved, legal questions – on what grounds do those alleged improprieties rise to the level of criminality? (A derivative of that first question is: does our society want to impute criminality – and potentially felonious criminality – upon extramarital sexual acts?)
The second question raised: what moral system is animating the asserted improprieties on which the criminality imputed in the law is based? If the moral system is deemed antiquated or no longer relevant in the eyes of public opinion, should not the law be considered illegitimate, and hence no longer operative?
In layman’s terms, it would be quite a riot to see Alvin Bragg condemn as criminal, and indeed a felony, extramarital conduct under the law. If so, Bragg would be acting with all the moral fervor of a pope during the Middle Ages!
Such self-righteous behavior is made even more laughable when placed against what is now happening to Bragg’s good buddies in Georgia, with Fani Willis and Nathan Wade, who were sleeping with one another, raising a massive and disqualifying conflict of interest, all the while their own prosecution against President Trump was taking place!
If what President Trump did regarding an alleged hush money payment is criminal conduct, under Bragg’s revanchist and morally hard-charged legal theory, then both Willis and her special counsel, Nathan Wade – and indeed, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, by extension – should all be similarly prosecuted under Bragg’s construction for their own, far graver, moral transgressions and many sexual improprieties committed!
Another salient legal issue that Bragg appears to have just blithely swept under the rug with this case is why, exactly, should President Trump be held vicariously criminally liable for an alleged clerical error committed by his accountant or his attorney, Michael Cohen, or whoever might have been overseeing his tax filings at the time the write-off was made? If, as President Trump has said, that it was Michael Cohen, not him, who decided pay off Stormy Daniels, Bragg should be investigating Cohen and forcing him into court, not President Trump.
Bragg has also failed to establish how the alleged fraud rises to a felony. The District Attorney claims that President Trump somehow committed a felony – again, despite not having committed a fraud in the first place, for one, and not being the one to file his tax returns, for two – even though the black letter law (again, §175.05) incontrovertibly treats the alleged misconduct here as a misdemeanor, not a felony!
Under the relevant law, crimes brought under Penal Law 175.05 may arise to a felony if and only if the District Attorney can prove that the alleged misdemeanor occurred to perpetuate or cover up another crime. Bragg plainly states that another crime was committed concomitantly with the clerical error that he is calling a misdemeanor here. But what crime, pray tell, he interestingly, incredulously, does not say!
The reason he does not state the crime is that he is relying, ultimately, on the sensationalized aspect of a hush money payment to engender the public perception that adulterous activity, though immoral, constitutes a felony under the law, even though that is patently not the case! The idea is to exploit and manipulate public opinion, naturally recalcitrant (though perhaps less so nowadays than in years past) to the concept of extramarital affairs — and then conflate those received public biases and strong emotions with tangled legal theories of criminality, distorting the law and sowing both legal and moral confusion in the process.
If it were truly the case that extramarital conduct should be imputed with legal significance, then hush money payments, which necessarily run downstream from such misconduct, would likewise be treated as unlawful. But hush money payments are permissible under law, and have been permissible for ages. Because hush money payments are lawful, Bragg’s legal theory is dead in the water.
But, for Bragg, et al., it does not matter what the law actually says. For Bragg, all he has to rely upon is how the public feels about certain allegations – which he is hoping will be enough of a foundation to prosecute the President’s alleged misdemeanor as a felony, and therefore put him behind bars, even though there is absolutely no basis for any of his hogwash theory whatsoever in either fact or law!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news to Mr. Bragg, but public sentiment — good, bad, or indifferent — is rarely ever a barometer for whether the law should treat a particular act as criminal. Here, public sentiment has no bearing on the legality of any of the facts alleged. The problem for New York’s embattled District Attorney is that he is both logically inconsistent, to an egregious degree, and morally hypocritical in his selective use (ah! one might call, ‘weaponization’) of the law, as a sword, against President Trump.
This ultimately is reason why a critical percentage of the public, including many Independents and Democrats, see Bragg’s prosecution for what it is: an out-and-out persecution against his greatest political adversary.
There is no rhyme or reason to Bragg’s theory of the case, he is merely operating as a political apparatchik for the Biden Regime where he must get off on roleplaying as a tin-pot dictator to bring down Orange Hitler.
The whole thing is a sham, a farce, a scam, and a political scandal of an order of magnitude never seen before in American history. The case should be tossed out, and the public should treat Bragg, James, Judge Merchan, and the entire charade backing President Trump’s latest political persecution for the clown show it is – a flagrant abuse of the rule of law. A case that one never, ever should take seriously, because those bad-faith actors currently executing the Regime’s marching orders are every bit as bad and makeshift as the phony legal theories they espouse, certain in no time to be relegated to at most a forgotten footnote in this dark, dreary, dismal chapter of American history.
The post Ingrassia: Alvin Bragg’s Case Against President Trump Is A Total Scam With No Basis In Law, Fact, Or Reality appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
This week, President Trump faces a political prosecution in New York State, forcing him into the courtroom and off the campaign trail. Every single day President Trump, who now leads in most state polls as the frontrunner for the 2024 general election, is hamstrung from campaigning is another day Biden and his regime apparatchiks get an unfair advantage. The strategy of what President Trump’s enemies are doing is readily on display: Biden has deliberately rigged the playing field to give his team, which languishes in countless self-inflicted crises, every opportunity it could get to make up lost ground.
The Biden Regime, of course, already has allies in the administrative (or deep) state, the mainstream media, Big Tech, the judicial system, and hundreds of lawmakers working on both sides of the aisle that carry out the marching orders of the Uniparty with abandon. Thus, to achieve yet another advantage, in abusing the levers of power to attack his foremost political opponent, would seem almost wantonly gratuitous.
And yet, Biden and his henchmen get away with such brazen abuses of power time and again. In large part, this is because they have internalized a timeless lesson of politics: when you have power, use it to benefit friends and punish enemies. This, Biden and the Uniparty that backs him does with impunity.
Many Republicans remain controlled opposition. Many more are simply kowtowed into staying silent to carry out the policies of the regnant political class in Washington DC – open borders, corrupted elections, millions of dollars of aid wasted on Ukraine, Israel, and China – all of which harm hundreds of millions of Americans.
Indeed, many Americans have died, literally, as a result of the Biden Regime’s suicidal policies. The border policy, being perhaps the most destructive, has unleashed upwards of 7.2 million illegals upon the homeland, a catastrophe that will permanently rupture the cultural and economic fabric of this country, save mass deportations of a historic scale, to rectify the crisis. Many Americans have been killed by illegal aliens – either the victims of homicide from dangerous gangs like MS-13, or casualties of a drunk driver – who may or may not have a license depending on how sadistic the Governor of the state in which the DUI-caused homicide occurred is. (The latter issue memorably achieved national prominence in President Trump’s first term when he personally highlighted the tragic stories of “Angel Moms” at rallies and other public events, an advocacy group composed of mothers and relatives of Americans dedicated to raising awareness of the now unmanageable illegal alien crisis.)
Countless other Americans have suffered from the devastating indirect effects of an open border. Upwards of a quarter million Americans have died from Fentanyl overdoses since 2018. Fentanyl is a highly lethal Schedule II controlled substance that is widely accessible on the black market. Fentanyl dealers obtain the lethal drug from countries like Mexico and China, two of the most prominent beneficiaries of our reckless, open border policies — and two of our greatest adversaries.
And yet, as the United States is being driven to the ground by open borders policies that shake every aspect of our society – culturally, economically, linguistically – Republican lawmakers largely remain indifferent to or downright afraid of challenging the status quo.
Perhaps no one better embodies this pitiful state of affairs than current House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was disgraced former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s replacement. McCarthy, who served as Speaker for just eight months, had arguably the most turbulent and ineffective Speakership in all of American history. His Speakership was contested from the moment he announced his candidacy for the office, having nearly gone down in defeat before it began — but for a highly contested, multi-day vote last January that culminated in an eleventh hour switch on the part of some holdouts, landing the Californian the vaunted position on the fifteenth ballot. That drawn out vote nevertheless set the tone for the next eight months, a period marred by unkept promises and myriad disappointments, as McCarthy repeatedly failed to make good on several key promises – such as the disclosure of exonerating J6 footage – that resulted in the motion to vacate his chair, initiated by Congressman Gaetz, putting the nail in the coffin to his political career.
Johnson, who stepped into McCarthy’s shoes as the next House Speaker, had a perfect model of what not to do in that office. One was to leave in play the omnibus spending bills that funded agencies like the FBI and IRS, which have now been weaponized against political dissidents of the Biden Regime — and stop giving more aid to faraway places like the Ukraine and Middle East, which, in peacetime, offer few if any geopolitical benefits at all to the United States.
In deranged, war-spiraling times like ours — defined by a weaponized DOJ, crumbling infrastructure, and wide-open borders – it gives every reason on earth to shift our priorities inward, refocusing attention on cleaning up our own house before searching abroad for monsters to destroy. Thus, continuation of those reckless policies can only be chalked up to a ruling class-wide suicide pact for the country. Short of that explanation, pursuing those same failed policies is simply inexplicable.
And yet, the current Speaker still fails to grasp the magnitude of these calamities. On his recent visit to Mar-a-Lago, he only begrudgingly spoke of systemic voter fraud – all byproducts of the Biden Regime – when directly confronted with the issue by none other than President Trump himself, who unsurprisingly minced no words in discussing the lingering problem.
Ditto also the FISA court issue – and the reauthorization and expansion of our spying laws in general. Of course, these illegitimate “courts” should not be given another penny, given the appalling rights violations they have committed, over decades, against the American public. The fact that FISA court-spending, rather than, say, securing the border or holding those rogue district attorneys presently waging lawfare against President Trump and his supporters accountable, was an important agenda item for Johnson, again, exemplifies a rank failure of leadership of the highest possible order.
Johnson has a major crisis on his hands – and the more strident members of his caucus, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, detect his weakness. That is why they recently proposed a second motion to vacate the Speaker’s Chair – in large part owing to Johnson’s own failures to display strength, rather than lead from behind, a plague that affected every single one of his recent Republican predecessors. One would think, given just how bad the examples of his predecessors were, that Johnson would have every incentive to take a dramatic course correction – for he has at his immediate disposal the playbook of exactly what not to do.
And yet, alas, Johnson appears afflicted by that same curse – incredulously reverting to the tired policies that made McCarthy, and before him, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, so woefully unpopular — including continuation of the omnibus bills to avoid a government shutdown, which many conservatives would more than welcome – particularly among the grassroots and MAGA base of the party.
Of all the challenges Johnson currently faces, however, perhaps none is more pressing — and sure to determine Johnson’s political fate — than his ability to retain his quickly dwindling House majority through the November presidential election. If Johnson somehow loses his majority, a problem that becomes more urgent by the day with the slew of Republicans who have recently announced early retirements, like Mike Gallagher, he will be toast.
The Gallagher example is particularly illustrative: Gallagher announced that he will be stepping down later this month, adding to a mounting list of House departures. This vacancy will now last through November’s election, because Gallagher decided to hold off retirement until after Wisconsin Election Law’s special election deadline. The deadline set under Wisconsin law “requires a special election to fill a vacancy if it occurs before the first Tuesday in April of an election year.” Johnson had the ability, as House Speaker, to exert political pressure on Gallagher to get him to step down early, before the deadline, allowing for a special election that could have potentially stopped the bloodletting – allowing a Republican to replace Gallagher, padding their razor thin majority from getting more slim. Instead, he fumbled and remained silent – or simply failed to come up with a counter-strategy to force Gallagher’s early leave, for reasons unbeknownst to the public. Johnson had a prime opportunity to expose Gallagher in his tracks — and yet he dropped the ball. Now the clock has run out, and Johnson will have to deal with an even slimmer House majority as a result of his inaction.
Even if, as conventional wisdom in DC would hold, that Johnson or those groups who exert pressure on him are being artificially handcuffed by deterrents, including potentially blackmail, that still is no excuse for inaction. If it is scandal Johnson fears, at this point most of the public has been desensitized to it. The country is on life support. The greatest scandal that Congressional Republicans could thus commit at this late hour is not doing enough to salvage their majority, back President Trump, and do everything they can to make his pathway back to the Oval Office all the more easy in November.
Despite the fecklessness he has thus far exhibited, Speaker Johnson, for better or worse, remains in a powerful office – third in line to the presidency. He is the most powerful elected Republican officeholder in the country. He has political capital – and a bully pulpit to boot – to exert strong pressures on his party to do more on behalf of the broader MAGA movement.
An issue that really should be front and center for him, which Johnson could easily advocate for, is subpoenaing Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, Fani Willis, and other rogue prosecutors, district attorneys, and attorneys general throughout the country, who have weaponized the Department of Justice to try to sabotage the 2024 race and imperil the American people in the process. Even easier: encourage the Republicans that have still not endorsed President Trump to do so, or face sanctions.
The Constitution of this country hangs by a thread; our rights and liberties are being viciously attacked by a Regime and its various apparatchiks that seek to put asunder what remnants of the Founding Fathers’ original handiwork still exists, for all time.
The stakes are in fact that high. Yet, Johnson continues to waffle and waver. Disclosure of the remaining J6 tapes should not even be a point of discussion – it should have been done already without a second thought.
Nor should the gratuitous spending on Eastern European and Middle Eastern conflicts, all products of the Military Industrial Complex, operating at the behest of the Biden Regime, and paid for by the American taxpayer. Johnson and his colleagues in leadership positions in the House, particularly those on the House Judiciary Committee, must realize that governing involves both hard and soft powers – official powers are offset, more today than ever, by unofficial ones, including shaping narratives and mobilizing public opinions through various media.
That Johnson does not go on Fox News – or any media outlet – day in and day out, encouraging his colleagues to join him in filing ethics complaints, drafting legal motions in pursuit of a counter-lawfare strategy, and, indeed, waging all-out lawfare themselves on the Biden Regime’s weaponized Department of (in)Justice is an affront to every law-abiding American so despondent over the destruction of the rule of law happening in real time.
All it requires is some collective action on part of Congressional leadership. Johnson, being House Speaker, is in prime position to take the lead.
As I have said from the beginning, so much of the Left’s egregious, unprecedented, and shameless abuse of our justice system to persecute their political opponents is the result of Republican incompetence. No cosmic law exists in the universe that dictates Republicans not take action, or at the bare minimum, at least speak publicly about what needs to be done in order to mitigate the excesses of a rogue and tyrannical government that has persecuted, so far with impunity, everyone from the leading candidate to be the next president, all the way down to Bible-reading grandmas who just so happened to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time, on January 6th, 2021.
The corruption of the Biden Regime must be put to an end. There is no second option. Time is of the essence. President Trump has his hands tied with groundless lawsuit after lawsuit. Johnson, as the most powerful Republican officeholder in the United States, has a prerogative — constitutionally and morally — to take dramatic actions to keep his slim House majority, mitigate the weaponized justice system’s assaults, and pave the way for President Trump’s reelection come November.
That should be his chief priority, and he should work around the clock from now until at least November to do everything possible to make that happen.
So far, the man some pundits used to jokingly refer to as “MAGA Mike” has not displayed a capacity to do what is necessary. If that is truly the case, the second motion should indeed be exercised. And Johnson, like his three Republican predecessors, must be ousted for someone more worthy of the office, willing to do the critical job to offset the diabolical programs of Biden, before it really is too late.
The post Ingrassia: Mike Johnson Must Exhibit Stronger Leadership Over The House As President Trump Endures Political Persecution appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
President Trump is being whisked into Judge Merchan’s courthouse, beginning early Monday morning, before what is sure to be an unfair and biased proceeding implicating the presidential frontrunner.
First, the venue – perhaps behind only Washington, DC — New York City boasts one of the most hostile jury pools in the nation to conservatives in general, and Trump supporters in particular.
If we were operating under a normal system of justice that upheld traditional standards of judicial ethics, no jury would be allowed to draw its members from Manhattan, the most left-wing of the five boroughs in which over three in four residents voted for Biden over Trump in 2020.
If preserving the integrity of New York’s now deeply tarnished judicial system were an actual concern, Donald Trump’s counsel would have the ability to transfer venue to a district, such as upstate New York or Long Island (or out of state altogether), that would select from a more ideologically diverse pool of jurors – allowing him at least a fighting shot to convince them of his innocence in court.
(Of course, if integrity were truly the driving consideration, this case would have been dead on arrival.) This would be preferable to being damned by a system overseen by bad-faith, Soros-funded actors, like Letitia James and Alvin Bragg, who predetermined the 45th President’s guilty before he ever stepped foot in the courtroom.
Second, the judge. Judge Merchan is conflicted beyond repair. In a case that rivals, maybe even surpasses, the improprieties of the Fani Willis debacle, Judge Merchan, through his immediate family connections, has proven himself incapable of presiding over a fair trial – even if he tried – because of the conflict of interest that exists between him, his court, and the Biden Regime.
For one, Biden’s Justice Department tapped Matthew Colangelo, a senior level political appointee, to work closely alongside far-left District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, to investigate Michael Cohen’s alleged payment to Stormy Daniels, the basis for the underlying indictment.
Colangelo’s insertion into the investigation reeks of banana republic justice – and not just because of his direct ties to the Biden Regime, which is bad enough.
But, worse, his appointment came years after a series of district attorneys (including Bragg’s immediate predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr.), special counsels, government agencies, and justice department officials evaluated the case, determined there was nothing to prosecute, and passed it over.
Stormy Daniels is not a new face – the public is already keenly aware of who she is, and all the major players (Michael Cohen and Michael Avenatti) involved. News of the alleged hush money payment is ancient history.
Both Cohen and Avenatti have been proven time and again to be fraudsters: Cohen was sentenced to federal prison for lying to Congress, and Avenatti is currently serving a ten-plus year federal prison sentence for extortion.
In 2018, Daniels penned a letter which stated, “each party to this alleged affair denied its existence in 2006, 2011, 2016, 2017, and now again in 2018,” and that “I am denying this affair because it never happened.”
Only once Biden came to power and his goons were ordered to encourage the far-left Bragg, who himself was even long diffident about prosecuting the case – even going so far as to place the case on hold after telling the New York Times that “he had doubts about moving forward with a case” against President Trump, did the case get a lifeline.
This prompted the two radical far-left prosecutors in Bragg’s office: Cary Dunne and Mark Pomerantz (who also is permanently conflicted with major ties to Hillary Clinton), to resign in protest.
Though a leftwing commie himself, Bragg has clearly been getting additional pressure from Clinton and Biden proxies to move forward with this prosecution – as bald-faced a political prosecution as there is, which has ratcheted up in recent weeks especially now that President Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee with poll numbers that consistently eclipse Biden’s in a general election matchup.
Then, there is the scandal involving Merchan’s daughter. As brilliantly exposed by Laura Loomer, Merchan’s impartiality has been irreparably muddied by reports that his daughter, Loren, serves as President of an organization called “Authentic,” which describes itself as a “digital agency” that “partner[s] with clients to build award-winning programs for progressive causes and campaigns.”
The organization proudly boasts Kamala Harris and Adam Schiff, who pushed the debunked Steele dossier claiming Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as two of its most valued clients.
Other clients featured on the organization’s website are the Biden Harris Campaign, Governor Gavin Newsom, Governor Kathy Hochul, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, among countless other far-left progressive Democrats.
To occupy such a high leadership role in a group whose client is, incredulously, the “Biden Harris campaign” is the paradigmatic example of a conflict of interest. And not that further evidence to support a conflict would be needed, but Loomer’s research also uncovered that, per FEC public filings, Loren donated thousands of dollars directly to Democratic politicians.
Thus, there is no chance that impartiality could be established for Judge Merchan’s courtroom – even the appearance of impropriety is sufficient, under the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct, to disqualify a Judge because of a conflict.
Clients of the Far Left activist group, Authentic, on which Judge Merchan’s daughter, Loren, based on myriad reports, serves as a Senior Executive.
Judge Merchan should be forced to recuse himself. The venue situation alone would otherwise qualify as sufficient grounds, in conformance with the letter and spirit of the canons governing proper ethical behavior for judges.
The fact that Judge Merchan’s own personal and familial biases is compounded by his own daughter’s direct ties to a group supporting the Biden campaign, puts this conflict in a league of its own, without precedent for how grave it is. Again, even the appearance of impropriety is sufficient grounds to disqualify judges from taking on cases.
Judge Merchan shatters that standard by leaps and bounds. His so-called “case” against President Trump is as blatant an act of election interference as one could possibly get. He is teeing up a potentially 6–8-week trial smack dab in the middle of a critical election year, forcing President Trump to remain in a (relatively speaking) nonimportant state, just as the campaign season really shifts into high gear.
The fact pattern on which Merchan’s prosecution is based has long been known to the public – its major purveyors, like Avenatti and Cohen — have been long discredited and prosecuted – and served prison time – for fraud, perjury, and all sorts of ethical and criminal breaches.
Furthermore, Merchan’s criminal case comes on the heels of two ludicrous civil cases, all based out of New York State, all attempts to bring down President Trump by weaponizing the levers of judicial power – in which President Trump has been handed the corporate death knell for run-of-the-mill business practices originally upwards of half a billion dollars.
Along the way, President Trump has been ignominiously stripped of foundational constitutional rights, as here with Merchan’s latest gag order, which denied him of his First Amendment rights to speak and criticize a deeply rigged judicial process.
President Trump would not otherwise have to plead his case so vigorously in the court of public opinion if he were given his constitutional right to a fair trial. However, the judicial actors that have predatorily targeted him denied him that opportunity from the get-go.
Thus, the need to plead his case to the public, which is the only “court” that allows him something of a fair hearing, becomes even more necessary.
The gag order lodged against President Trump by Merchan epitomizes the recurrent breaches of judicial propriety – and longstanding norms — that have dogged President Trump in every criminal and civil case, since he was unceremoniously ousted from office.
Its scope is arbitrarily large and unduly burdensome – further depriving the 45th President fundamental due process rights. Moreover, that a President of the United States, someone who should be accorded a baseline level of respect for the office he occupied, is being subject to such grave indignities flouts every single custom and precedent for judicial conduct.
President Trump did not, as the court duplicitously alleged, “attack” the members of Judge Merchan’s family – merely expose them for their biases that raises an extremely problematic conflict from a member of the Judge’s immediate family and President Trump’s likeliest opponent in the election being held a few short months down the line.
President Trump’s ability to speak freely about Judge Merchan’s daughter’s conflict is a very important distinction from an “attack,” a ridiculous assertion.
Furthermore, it bespeaks an unfortunate reality as well that President Trump must be his own advocate, for the mainstream media – including conservative media – is too often derelict in carrying out the kind of investigative reporting necessary to portray the proceeding in a fair and impartial light, one that is favorable to President Trump’s case, or at the bare minimum, does not needlessly impugn his case with preconceived biases, political narratives, propaganda, or gaslighting.
The bottom line is that President Trump, yet again, is being thrust into a New York courtroom – when he should be on the campaign trail, like any presidential candidate (let alone the frontrunner) pleading his case to the American people.
These tragic circumstances more deeply reflect a society in thrall to forces that would unwind the great handiwork of the Anglo-American legal system, one that once exalted the rule of law, due process, judicial impartiality, and the presumption of innocence — and destroy all that remains of the possibility of freedom in its wake.
Even in the most likely scenario that President Trump prevails in the courthouse, doubtlessly guided by the hand of Providence, his trials will have been a massive distraction from focus on more productive, constructive policies.
Whereas focus at this juncture should be on putting together an administration of high quality, loyal, and competent staffers, who are prepared to tackle the gargantuan challenges, that seeming worsen by the day, instead our society’s attention is preoccupied by a senseless trial that is a colossal waste of time, energy, and resources.
The latter fact is an egregious disservice to the American people, who deserve competent governance, rather the kind of government we now face – childish, dumb, and petty – a government that prefers to attack political opponents instead of proposing and resolving the mounting crises at hand.
From the border to inflation to a degenerating international order, the current Regime has engineered crisis upon crisis – all dangers that can and will bring down this republic for good if not swiftly put to rest with a dramatic course correction by a second Trump presidency.
Those, simply put, are the uber high stakes of this election. The responsibility to prevent further damage falls upon each and every one of us, to come together and expose the corruption and shine a light on the truth, or else, we face a grave risk of most assuredly, hanging separately – the same risk our Founding Fathers faced on the eve of the Revolution.
ATTENTION: I will be covering President Trump’s trial in lower Manhattan all day, and all throughout the week, on the Pro America Report with Ed Martin on Rumble. I will feature in my live reporting highlights from the scene and key interviews with major Trump surrogates from the ground. Join me all week long on the live Rumble broadcast at: https://rumble.com/c/ProAmericaReport.
The post Paul Ingrassia: Justice On Trial – Trump Will Be Whisked into Merchan’s Courthouse This Morning For What Is Sure to be an Unfair and Biased Proceeding appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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Laura Loomer, Paul Ingrassia, Cara Castronuova and fellow trump supporters outside NYC courthouse on Monday.
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Vaunce News 