Monday, March 18, 2024

Stunning! There Is Some Very Good News For Republicans


There’s plenty of bad news about the Republican campaign in 2024, and I’ve covered it in detail, but objectivity requires that one correctly assess what is going right too, and there’s a lot going right for Republicans right now. First and foremost, there is the massive change at the Republican National Committee with the firing of the utterly useless Ronna McDaniel and the elevation of Michael Whatley and Lara Trump.Next, Donald Trump is in a position where it looks like he is likely to win the presidency if current trends continue…that’s one heck of an if. And, finally, we also seem to be doing pretty well in the Senate races. There’s a lot of reason to be hopeful.

We’re not used to hearing it, but for the last week or so, the RNC has done everything right. The organization has totally failed for seven years under the rule of the dumbest member of the Romney family. People like RedState’s own Jennifer van Laar and superlawyer Harmeet Dhillon would point out how she was wasting tons of money on useless fluff, donors would stop giving, and she would just continue wasting tons of money on useless fluff. She studiously ignored the grassroots and imagined that her role was to go on TV and talk about policy as if anyone cared what some party bureaucrat thought. But now she’s gone, and good riddance.

Her replacements have, astonishingly, done the right things, and they have done it right away. First, they clearcut a bunch of the deadwood at the RNC, firing tons of people. Some characterize that as a purge of unbelievers, but what it really is is a purge of unachievers. Have you seen a lot of election integrity lately? People who do a bad job should be fired. This used to be basic knowledge and understood by Republicans. But apparently, some people think we ought to have a tenure system in our party apparatus. No. Party flacks and functionaries ought to live in perpetual fear that they will be canned should they fail to perform adequately. These mass firings are a great sign. The new leadership has even started to build an election integrity team.

There are more great signs. For one thing, Lara Trump has reached out to Scott Pressler. Everybody knows Scott. He’s one of the nicest guys there is, and he’s made his personal crusade to cross-cross the country registering voters. He’s a one-man grassroots tsunami. For some bizarre reason, Ronna McDaniel stubbornly refused to interact with this hero of the base, as if she knew better how to motivate voters than the guy who’s actually out there motivating voters. What the relationship between the new RNC and Scott Pressler will be remains to be seen, but the fact that Lara Trump reached out publicly is a huge indicator that the RNC is going in a different and smarter direction. The next thing the new leaders should do is publicly and, in detail, explain their legal strategy for lawfare victory to the grassroots. That’s the kind of thing that rebuilds the voters’ shattered confidence.

Donors are already taking notice of these changes and are starting to open their wallets again. I’ve written about the disastrous failure to have any kind of lawfare plan in place, and I received enormous feedback from Republicans telling me they are sitting on their hands instead of writing checks because they believe their money would be going to waste. We have much better things to do than spend our dough on Ronna McDaniel’s beauty treatments. There is a lot of cash out there on the sidelines just waiting to come in if the donors see it’s not going to be squandered by grifty mediocrities. 

Yeah, our initial response to seeing Lara Trump, the nominee’s daughter-in-law, named as one of the co-chairs was an eyeroll. Would it be more of the kind of lame nepotism that is ruining so much of our country? But Lara Trump has done everything right so far. Her relationship with the president does not disqualify her any more than it qualifies her. Actions speak louder than words, and she’s taking the right actions. We need to support people who are doing the right thing. This is good news.

And there’s good news for her father-in-law, too. You’ll look at the polls, and Trump is ahead in most of the battleground states, and the ones where he is not ahead, that crusty, perverted, senile old weirdo is only barely ahead. Sure, he’s still self-destructive, unable to control his fury at Ron DeSantis for refusing to bow down, but you can yell the enemy is scared when it presses dumb and obvious lies like the “bloodbath” thing. They need to do something because Crusty is bottoming out in the polls. 

The Democrats’ plan to frame Donald Trump and steal the election just hasn’t worked. People see the garbage these cases are. They’re a joke. Hell, the tubby moron prosecuting him in Atlanta is barely one step ahead of being disbarred and prosecuted for perjury. Someday, Trump will go on (show) trial in this joke of a New York case and probably get convicted by the 90% communist jury pool, and you know what? That’s going to earn him even more support from patriots who don’t want to see America turned into even more of a banana republic. Americans aren’t idiots  well, most of them. They understand he’s being railroaded. They understand this is a kangaroo court. They understand that the only way Joe Biden could hope to be reelected at this point is to toss his opponent in jail on trumped-up charges. And they are coming around to DJT. The disastrous reign of error of that creepy weirdo currently occupying the Oval Office has changed the election dynamic. For a long time, there was a group of people  like 53%  who just absolutely would not consider voting for Trump. Now, they’ve had to consider the alternative and, you know, Trump wasn’t quite so bad, 401(k)-speaking.

And while the House of Representatives is a real mess, with a significant chance of us losing control, the Senate is just the opposite. We’re playing on a good map and have some great candidates. We already have West Virginia in the bag. In Pennsylvania, we got the right candidate, Dave McCormick, without a primary, and he’s up against a bland Democrat who is being shamed by John Fetterman’s forthright defense of Israel’s right to exist. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown is likely to lose to any of the Republicans. The primary is Tuesday, and the recent cheesy hit on Bernie Moreno seems to be going nowhere. Over in Montana, the ridiculous Matt Rosendale dropped out and is not running for reelection to Congress either. We’ve got a good chance there. Kari Lake is facing some challenges now that Kyrsten Sinema has dropped out, but if she can project the normality and personal warmth that she does in person to the voters, as well as reach out to disaffected Republicans and effectively fight the lawfare battle against the election shenanigans, she’s got a shot in Arizona. Nevada seems to be turning hard for Trump, and the useless Dem dronette in that seat could be at risk too. Hilariously, the Democrats think that the nobody running in Texas against Ted Cruz has a shot, and they’ll waste a lot of money there, which is awesome. Chances are we take the Senate.

Everything isn’t roses. We still have some challenges with election integrity and with making sure Donald Trump doesn’t alienate the people who are now tentatively supporting him – the regime media shutting him out and him not using Twitter are probably the best things that can happen to him. We’re also way behind in the money race. But that said, we have some advantages and have to press them. That’s how you win. And we might just win in 2024.




X22, And we Know, and more- March 18

 




Trump Fraud Judgment: Ex-President Says Posting Full $454 Million Bond Is ‘Not Possible’ As Deadline Looms Mar 18, 2024

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/03/18/trump-fraud-judgment-ex-president-says-posting-full-454-million-bond-is-not-possible-as-deadline-looms/?sh=65bacca16d3c

TOPLINE

 Former President Donald Trump is unable to secure a bond for the more than $454 million he owes as part of the civil fraud case against him and his company, the ex-president’s attorneys said Monday, as Trump asks a state appeals court to pause the judgment against him days before it comes due.

KEY FACTS

Trump has been ordered to pay $454.2 million in the civil fraud case, in which he and his business associates were found liable for fraudulently misstating the value of their assets on financial statements for personal gain.

That amount continues to grow by more than $111,000 each day until it’s paid off, based on a 9% annual interest rate, and Trump is still required to either pay cash into a court-controlled account or post an appeals bond while he appeals the case.

Trump’s attorneys asked the court to pause the judgment while the case is appealed in a filing Monday, saying that securing a bond for the full amount is a “practical impossibility.”

The attorneys argued Trump has undertaken “diligent efforts” to secure a bond and negotiated with “one of the largest insurance companies in the world,” but that’s proven “‘obtaining an appeal bond in the full amount’ of the Judgment is not possible under the circumstances presented.’”

Most bonding companies won’t consider a bond as large as what Trump needs, and those that do won’t accept real estate as collateral, Trump’s lawyers said.

Given interest rates and premiums, Trump would have to turn over approximately $557 million in cash or cash equivalents (like marketable securities) to secure a bond, according to his lawyers.

BIG NUMBER

30. That’s the number of surety companies that Trump has unsuccessfully approached about his appeals bond, according to an affirmation filed in court by Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten. None were willing to accept real estate as collateral.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

It’s unclear when the appeals court could rule on Trump’s request to pause the monetary judgment. The former president has previously asked the court to let him only post a $100 million bond, if it doesn’t halt the judgment entirely. Though there’s no deadline specified in New York law on Trump posting a bond, the New York Attorney General’s office, which brought the case, is expected to start trying to enforce the judgment if he hasn’t paid by March 25. Attorney General Letitia James has previously said she plans to seize Trump’s buildings if he doesn’t pay.

FORBES VALUATION

Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth at $2.6 billion—but only $413 million is made up of cash and liquid assets, meaning the judgment against Trump is more money than he has in the bank.

HOW WILL TRUMP PAY?

It remains to be seen how Trump will pay the judgment against him or secure a bond if the appeals court rules against him, whether that’s borrowing against his properties, getting a wealthy friend to help him put up the cash or obtaining a loan. The former president’s lawyers have previously said in court filings that Trump will have to sell his properties if the court doesn’t pause the judgment. In Monday’s filing, attorneys noted that raising the money for a bond “through a ‘fire sale’ of real estate holdings would inevitably result in massive, irrecoverable losses.”

TANGENT

Trump’s scramble to secure a bond in the fraud case comes after the ex-president separately posted a $91.6 million bond earlier in March as part of writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him. That bond was underwritten by The Chubb Group, which defended its business with Trump to customers, claiming it has “nothing to do with the underlying merits or with favoring any of the parties” and that the company supports the rule of law. It is still unclear how Trump secured that bond, though Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg said it was “fully collateralized.”

KEY BACKGROUND

James sued Trump and his business associates—including his sons—for fraud in 2022, accusing them of fraudulently misstating the value of assets on financial statements more than 200 times between 2011 and 2021. 

The attorney general alleged the valuations were misstated in order to obtain more favorable business deals, and obtain a higher net worth for Trump. While the ex-president and his co-defendants have argued their valuations were correct and were subjective figures based on Trump’s real estate expertise, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled against Trump even before the trial in the case began, finding the numbers were fraudulently inflated. 

A monthslong trial then took place on other allegations, such as whether the fraud was committed knowingly, and Engoron ruled against Trump and his co-defendants in February. The judge found there was “overwhelming evidence” suggesting Trump and his sons signed off on financial statements knowing the figures were false, rejecting the defendants’ claims that the company’s accountants were responsible for any issues with the numbers. In addition to the monetary judgment against Trump, Engoron also ordered Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr. to pay approximately $4 million each and for former CFO Allen Weisselberg to pay $1 million. 

He also barred Trump and his sons from leading New York companies for three and two years, respectively, and barred Trump from obtaining loans through companies registered in New York, though an appeals court later put that part of the judgment on hold.

Why Is The NDP Unable To Recognize That Hamas Opposes Everything They Claim To Stand For?

 

The danger of viewing everything through the ‘oppressed vs oppressor’ lens.

Let’s take a moment to imagine what Canada would be like if it was run by Hamas.

Women’s rights would gone (Women in Gaza are often blocked from even being able to fight domestic abuse in court).

LGBT rights would be gone (many LGBT Palestinians flee to Israel for safety).

Speaking out for working-class people? Nope. Hamas brutally suppressed cost-of-living protests in 2019.

Diversity of thought? Nope. Hamas uses the educational system to indoctrinate people into one way of thinking, and dissenters are often jailed, tortured, and even murdered.

Political debate? Nope. Hamas has suppressed the opposition, and executed members of rival political factions.

Freedom of religion/freedom not to be religious? Nope again. Blasphemy laws are strictly enforced by Hamas, allowing for only a very narrow range of religious expression in line with what Hamas agrees with?

Academic freedom? That’s a ‘no’ there as well. Student protests have been violently put down, and academics are heavily constrained by fear and censorship.

Fighting inequality? Nope. Hamas leaders take much of the international aid sent to Gaza for themselves, and have become billionaires while much of their populace lives in poverty. Many Hamas leaders don’t even live in Gaza, preferring to live in the lap of luxury in Qatar instead.

As you can see, there is nothing – not a thing – about Hamas that is ‘progressive’.

So why does the NDP continue to push for a course of action that would let Hamas stay in power, and why does the NDP relentlessly blame and demonize Israel?

Well, what we are seeing is the danger of the ‘oppressed vs oppressor’ mental framework much of the left has adopted.

Because Israel is a successful nation – having embraced individual freedom, democracy, markets, and religious freedom to a much higher degree than any other nation in the Middle East – and because Gaza is so poor – because of Hamas choosing to prioritize terrorist indoctrination, building rockets, planning genocidal attacks, and siphoning money to their leaders above the well-being of Gazans – the left has concluded that Hamas must somehow be on the ‘right side.’

There is also an element of a lack of self preservation mechanism. The same NDP politicians who promote a pro-Hamas course of action would be horrifically oppressed by Hamas if people like Hamas were in power in Canada. But somehow, they don’t see it.

And of course, let’s also remember that the NDP has revealed itself to be deeply anti-Semitic. They have let their hatred completely override what they claim to stand for.

This is a problem Canada could be dealing with for quite a while, as many Canadians have bought into the ‘oppressed vs oppressor’ narrative and are thus unwilling to see the immense threats facing our way of life.

Spencer Fernando


On Trudeau's Online Harms Act - Attwood & Musk Respond


 

Hi Ross,


My colleagues have already emailed you with some of the crazy – and, frankly, scary – details of the Online Harms Act.


What is particularly notable about this bill, though, is the number of people who have come out against it. 


What it proposes – steep penalties for wrongthink, etc – is so egregious that an eclectic mix of people from all across the political spectrum have vocalized their opposition. 


Here is what just a few of them have said:


Canada’s former chief justice Beverley McLachlin:


“Life sentences for sending out some words. That’s heavy. And it will, I suspect, be challenged … Where is the line between hateful comment, for example, and a person’s right of free speech?


The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood:


“The possibilities for revenge false accusations + thoughtcrime stuff are sooo inviting! Trudeau’s Orwellian online harms bill


Elon Musk:


“This is insane.”


Legacy media journalist Andrew Coyne:


“My initial reaction had been ‘one cheer’ for the new law. I now think there is very little in it worth saving. Better to pull the whole thing and start over.


University of Ottawa Law professor Michael Geist:


“The government seems ready yet again to gaslight its critics and claim that they have it all wrong. But the text of the law is unmistakable…”


Despite this high-profile opposition, many of Canada’s legacy outlets have glossed over these very real concerns, and published long pieces about the good intentions of the Bill.


Sadly, Ross, good intentions don’t mean much when the policy outcome is… prosecution for speech the government doesn’t like. 


Here at True North, we have felt the heavy hand of the Trudeau government.


Remember, in 2019 the Trudeau-appointed Leaders’ Debate Commission blocked True North from covering the official election debates. 


We then sued them for access – and won.


So we know, first hand: Canadians shouldn’t need to sue their own government agencies in order to exercise their basic rights!


The Government Is Not Your Daddy


It’s no secret that many Democrat voters have “daddy” issues.  They grew up in homes without strong, loving fathers and desperately seek from government what they never found in their youths: a protective authority figure and lifelong role model.

When Democrats with “daddy” issues find their way into power, they force their own psychological deficiencies upon the broader populace.  Why?  Because they try to play “father” to their constituents but have no idea how a good father is supposed to behave.  They scream and shout because they confuse insults and tantrums with masculinity.  They reimagine the ideal male leader as someone who would enjoy wearing make-up and behaving like a teenage girl.  They demand that male “allies” relinquish any say over the healthy delivery of their unborn children.  Instead of taking personal responsibility for missteps in life, they blame their problems on the nebulous “patriarchy” — or rather, the failed fathers of the past!

After punishing all the good men as stand-ins for all the weak men who never properly parented them, Democrats are left with the wimpiest, least wise leftovers of the sorry lot.  Then some angry, man-hating leftist with zero self-awareness uploads a video onto social media demanding to know where all the good men have gone.  Well, you chased them away, you trans-obsessed, insult-spewing, sniveling punk!

Greg Gutfeld made this point on a recent episode of The Fivewhen discussing the exodus of black and Hispanic voters from the Democrat party: “They’ve alienated men in order to please miserable activists, and men are like, ‘Hey, we know when we are not wanted.  We will see ourselves out.  We know what a woman is, right?  We know what is best for our kids.  We know what it takes to protect our cities and our families, and we are tired of apologizing for laughing at funny jokes and having natural testosterone.’”  Because the Democrat party is filled with fake men and phony fathers, it continues to shove real men and fathers away.  Then, when Democrat voters find that their trusted “authority figures” have squishy backbones, too, their “daddy” issues spiral out of control.  They need more laws, more mask mandates, more punishments; they become desperate for some governmental “daddy” to tell them what they can and cannot do.

This hits at a major distinction separating Democrats from the liberty-loving conservatives whom leftists naturally resent.  Liberty-lovers do not confuse the government for their own parents.  Government is, at best, a nuisance and, at worst, a thuggish bully.  It does not exist to keep you safe at night, to put food on the kitchen table, to teach you right from wrong, or to furnish you with love.  Government is a bureaucratic machine that specializes in using the threat of force and the application of actual violence to coerce strangers into doing exactly what the State wishes them to do.  Depending on the government to behave like a loving parent is like depending on one of James Cameron’s cybernetic Terminators for a soothing hug.  Both have the kind of uncaring programming that makes most embraces fatal.  Still, for Democrats with “daddy” issues, those bureaucratic Terminators are the closest things to family that they’ve got.  They’d gladly put their trust in a brutal and dogmatic State that occasionally pats them on the head and promises to take care of them.  It’s psychological abuse disguised as “caring government.”

This fraudulent parent-child construct produces nothing but servile citizenry.  In a healthy family, parents nurture their children until they become competent, self-sufficient adults.  Good parents supervise what their children learn, keep them from harm, and guide them along their journey to adulthood.  The love and respect between a parent and child never go away, but the relationship is not meant to produce lifelong juveniles stuck in a permanent state of dependency.  Children grow to become capable adults; those adults have children of their own; and the cycle promotes a strong, healthy society.

When governments act as false parents, however, they are not interested in transforming juveniles into adults.  They do not seek to create competent citizens who are capable of taking care of themselves.  They do not want to produce a population strong enough to think for itself.  Because a citizen’s self-sufficiency eliminates his dependency on government, bureaucrats must infantilize grown adults for the rest of their lives.  The State is not equipped to be a parent, but it is an ideal machine for mass-producing slaves.

I suspect that part of President Trump’s popular appeal comes from his refusal to treat adults as if they were still children. 

Parents sometimes have to “pretend” around their young children.  To keep them safe from the terrors of an often dark world, they “bend the truth” here and there.  When a family seeks shelter during a tornado, or a parent is laid off from work, or a relative is diagnosed with a scary illness, parents will look into their children’s eyes and say, “Everything will be all right.”  That’s what good parents do when the best that they can do for their children is to soothe their worries with fearless love and steady support.

Adults, on the other hand, should be able to speak bluntly to each other without concern that an unvarnished truth will “trigger” another adult to melt into a trembling, catatonic puddle of tears.  Trump told NATO countries that they should pay their full financial commitments to the alliance if they really fear for their own security, and the fainting class screeched, “How dare he tell the truth so publicly?”  Trump (allegedly!) pinpointed Haiti and other unstable nations as “S-hole countries,” and celebrities came out of their mansions to pretend Haiti is just as luxurious as Hollywood.  Trump told Americans there is a dangerous invasion of foreign nationals crossing our open borders, and the corporate news propagandists denounced his accurate assessment as intolerably “racist.”

Time and again, the pundit class has insisted on treating American adults as if they were children too young to understand harsh realities.  President Trump is the first national leader in most Americans’ lives to show them respect by plainly speaking the truth.

A lot of people did not quite understand how long their government had been treating them like toddlers until Donald Trump’s frank speech jolted them awake.  He questioned the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, excoriated globalism’s destruction of America’s middle class, and refused to search for the constantly shifting line denoting what is “politically correct” to say out loud.  He called out “journalists” for spreading fake news, criticized monetary policies that have transferred Americans’ wealth to foreign adversaries, and rebuked “allies” that facilitate illegal immigration into the United States.  When threatened by foreign regimes, he threatened them back in direct and unequivocal terms.  When speaking of rising crime in the United States, he did not worry about the criminals’ feelings.  When his enemies used the Intelligence Community, Department of Justice, and politically partisan judges to threaten his freedom, he never hesitated to call out the abuse and corruption taking place.  At first, a lot of Americans thought, “He can’t say that!”  Over time, however, a lot of those same Americans wondered, “Why shouldn’t he be able to say that?”  Why must we censor our own speech and pretend that untrue things are true simply to avoid the possibility of feeling uncomfortable?  Are we not all adults?  Are we not capable of speaking to one another candidly?

One of the most important things President Trump has done for our country is to stop pretending that things are fine when they clearly are not.  Pretending is for young children.  Facing hard truths head-on is for adults.  Childish Americans must grow up because the government can never be their “daddy.”



The Odor of Mendacity: 2024 Could Turn on Smell of Selective Prosecution from Georgia to New York

Res ipsa loquitur – The thing itself speaks - Johnathan Turley

Below is my column in the Hill on the recent decision in Georgia and the “odor of mendacity” rising out of various courtrooms across the country.  It is the smell of not just selective prosecution but political bias in our legal system. It is becoming harder to deny the existence of a two-track system of justice in the country as commentators and even a few courts raise concerns over the role of politics in prosecutions.

Here is the column:

The removal of lead special prosecutor Nathan Wade from Donald Trump’s prosecution had the feel of a Southern Gothic.

Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis had described Wade as “a Southern gentleman. Me, not so much.” For weeks, the public has been enthralled by accounts of Wade’s illicit affair with Willis. Then there was the roughly three-quarters of a million dollars paid to Wade before he was booted from the case this week.

Channeling Tennessee Williams in his play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Judge Scott McAfee wrote that, after their testimony, there remained “an odor of mendacity.”

That odor was particularly strong after the hearings indicated that Wade may have committed perjury in his earlier divorce case, and that both Willis and Wade were credibly accused of lying on the stand about when their relationship began.

They are prosecuting defendants in the Trump case accused of the same underlying conduct, including  19 individual counts of false statements, false filings or perjury.

Yet, that distinct odor noted by Judge McAfee goes beyond the sordid affairs of Willis and Wade.

For many citizens, mendacity, or dishonesty, is wafting from various courtrooms around the country. The odor is becoming intolerable for many Americans as selective prosecution is being raised in a wide array of cases.

The problem is that courts have made it virtually impossible to use this claim to dismiss counts. Yet there is a disturbing level of merit to some of these underlying objections.

For years, conservatives have objected that there is a two-tier system of justice in this country. I have long resisted such claims, but it has become increasingly difficult to deny the obvious selective prosecution in a variety of recent cases and opinions.

I have long stated that the charges against Trump over documents at Mar-a-Lago are strong and based on established precedent. However, the recent decision of Special Counsel Robert Hur not to bring criminal charges against President Joe Biden has undermined even that case.

Hur described four decades of Biden serially violating laws governing classified documents. The evidence included Biden telling a third party that he had classified material in his house and actually reading from a classified document to his non-cleared ghostwriter. There is evidence of an effort to destroy evidence and later an effort of the White House to change the report. There is also Biden’s repeated denial of any knowledge or memory of the documents found in nine locations where he worked or lived.

Hur ultimately had to justify the lack of charges based on a belief that he could not secure a conviction from a D.C. jury with an elderly defendant with diminished mental faculties.

Although Special Counsel Jack Smith could still proceed on obstruction counts, his prosecution of Trump for the retention and mishandling of national security documents is absurdly in conflict with the treatment Biden is receiving.

In New York, the legislature changed the statute of limitations to allow Trump to be sued while New York Attorney General Letitia James effectively ran on a pledge of selectively prosecuting him. She never specified any particular crime, just promising to bag Trump.

Ultimately, James used a law in an unprecedented way to secure an absurd penalty of roughly half a billion dollars, even though no one lost a dime because of the Trump loans.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has also come up with an unprecedented way of using a state law to effectively prosecute Trump for a federal offense that the Justice Department has already rejected.

The same odor has been lingering in the Hunter Biden cases. The Justice Department had reached a ridiculous plea agreement with Hunter Biden that would have allowed for no jail time and a sweeping immunity agreement that would have protected him from all of his other alleged crimes.

As the plea agreement fell apart in court, the prosecutor admitted that he had never seen a defendant given such a deal over his long career. This came after the Justice Department had allowed the statute of limitations to run out on major felonies and scuttled efforts to conduct searches and interviews. Even after that embarrassing hearing, the Justice Department was still trying to preserve the agreement.

It is not just the Trump and Biden cases where there is a stench of selective prosecution. Consider a few other recent cases.

In California, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney issued an opinion that found such evidence of selective prosecution against conservative groups. In considering a far-right group, Carney noted that the Justice Department has had sharply different approaches based on the political views of the defendants. Antifa and other leftist groups often see charges dropped, whereas federal prosecutors seek draconian sentences against conservative defendants.

“Such selective prosecution leaves the troubling impression that the government believes speech on the left more deserving of protection than speech on the right. The government remains free to prosecute those, like Defendants, who allegedly use violence to suppress First Amendment rights. But it cannot ignore others, equally culpable, because Defendants’ speech and beliefs are more offensive. The Constitution forbids such selective prosecution,” Carney noted.

That treatment was equally glaring when federal prosecutors convicted an Antifa supporter who took an ax to the door of Sen. John Hoeven’s office in Fargo. He was given no jail time, and the FBI even returned his ax.

He later mocked the government by posting on social media “Look what the FBI were kind enough to give back to me!

Likewise, this week, former U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins was disbarred after being found to have lied to investigators about leaking material to the press for political purposes. Rollins had allegedly made a clear and knowingly false statement to federal investigators, but the Justice Department just shrugged it off and refused to indict.

FBI Director James Comey received similar gentle treatment after removing FBI material and arranging for information to be leaked to the media. Meanwhile, defendants such as Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Flynn were pursued relentlessly for making false statements to investigators under Comey’s watch.

These and other cases have fulfilled Trump’s narrative about a politically weaponized legal system. The fact is that many in cities like New York are thrilled by selective prosecution and biased sentencing decisions directed at locally unpopular figures.

The rest of us are left in courtrooms, from Georgia to Washington to New York, asking the same question of Tennessee Williams’ “Big Daddy” Pollitt: “What’s that smell in this room? …Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity.”

Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.

 

The Feminization of the Army


I read The Feminization of America a few weeks ago, and that theme has been bouncing around my cranial cavity ever since.

We may be headed for a significant war shortly, one that will require rapid expansion of our forces. The Army can only do that through the draft. Now that women can serve in ground maneuver units, will we draft women?

There needs to be a national discussion on this issue. When then Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, faced with an impending lawsuit concerning women in combat, signed off on opening combat arms to women, it was a bureaucratic action done without congressional approval or national discourse. The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) has ramrodded this agenda.

The considerations surrounding this are immensely complex. While equality and equity are undoubtedly important, so are biological necessities. The United Kingdom’s “Lost Generation” deeply affected its culture and future. This author is the result of the loss of German men during World War II, as my German mother met my American father when he was stationed there in the early 1950s. Combat and strategic bombings killed most of her male contemporaries.

Can a nation survive if it takes catastrophic losses of women during their vital child-bearing ages? This is a question of biological necessity: who will populate the next war’s boomer generation?

If we now allow women to serve in the maneuver combat arms, equality and equity demand that young women sign up for the draft as do their male counterparts. As the father of a daughter, I am a firm “no” on this issue, yet my daughter is a serving Navy surface warfare officer of whom I am immensely proud. Talk about being conflicted on this issue.

Further compounding this topic is the physiological difference highlighted by current discussions of whether transwomen should participate in women’s sports? Biological male differences give greater strength and speed to transwomen (XY) than their competition, whose genetic makeup is XX.

If biologically, men are stronger and faster than women, wouldn’t placing women on the physically arduous ground gaining combat arms (infantry and armor) units be counterproductive? Further impacting this issue is the quota system that the Army euphemistically clouds as “goals” of requiring at least two female officers or noncommissioned officers into each combat arms company.

Studies were conducted on the effects of placing women in these units. Perhaps the most reliable were those undertaken by the Marine Corps, which found that “[T]eams with female members performed at lower overall levels, completed tasks more slowly, and fired weapons with less accuracy than their all-male counterparts. In addition, they sustained significantly higher injury rates and demonstrated lower levels of performance capacity overall.”

Elaine Donnelly, in an interview with the Washington Times, stated: “Double risks of injury among women, combined with expected absences due to pregnancy and other gender-related issues, would be even more problematic in small combat units with four to 12 members, such as M1 tank crews, infantry rifle squads, or cannon artillery gun crews. The absence of female team members would compromise missions and put everyone’s lives at greater risk.”

I would add that small units do not need the sexual tensions of a coed team at the height of their sexual prowess injected into the mix of an already challenging situation.

Captain Katie Petronio, a hard-charging female Marine officer and former collegiate athlete, had this to say:

The physical strain of enduring combat operations and the stress of being responsible for the lives and the well-being of such a young group in an extremely kinetic environment were compounded by lack of sleep, which ultimately took a physical toll on my body that I couldn’t have foreseen.

By the fifth month into the deployment, I had muscle atrophy in my thighs that was causing me to constantly trip and my legs to buckle with the slightest grade change. My agility during firefights and mobility on and off vehicles and perimeter walls was seriously hindering my response time and overall capability. It was evident that stress and muscular deterioration was affecting everyone regardless of gender; the rate of my deterioration was noticeably faster than that of male Marines and compounded by gender-specific medical conditions.

The Army’s failed attempt to develop a gender-neutral physical fitness standard underscores Captain Petronio’s personal experience. The fact that males are held to a higher standard is acceptable in competition, but when replacing first and second place with “life or death,” the stakes have more meaning.

But what about the first Army female Rangers? Doesn’t that prove women can perform in combat units? Interestingly, the Maneuver Center of Excellence commanding general, a West Point graduate, predicted that during his term, “A woman will graduate Ranger School.” The fix was in. Of note was that the first two women graduates were also West Point alumni.

I have observed firsthand the early integration efforts of women into a combat brigade. It was rather comical to hear one plan was to ring the outer walls of a building’s third floor with rolls of concertina wire (barbed or razor wire) to isolate the female rooms as if the male soldiers would “storm the castle” so to speak in seeking sexual favors.

Nearly all the changes the Army has instituted go only one way during this integration process. Running chants have been cleaned up from their ribald and sometimes lewd lyrics at the behest of females shocked after entering “In the Men’s House.” Grooming standards (hairstyles, jewelry, etc.) have been relaxed. These changes always seem one-sided.

If female soldiers can wear long hair, why can’t the men? I was surprised to see a female Armor lieutenant wearing long pigtails, nearly to her waist, thinking, what if they get caught in the many moving parts of the cannon, the turret, and the engine compartment?

These changes, along with the seeming glorification of LGBTQ+ behavior, are having a detrimental effect on Army recruiting. The clueless leadership is “baffled” by white males eschewing military service. They seem oblivious to the connection between the social justice crusade and its “wokeness” in turning off an essential recruiting demographic, rural southern white males. As the great-grandson of a Confederate infantryman, I can understand why in the aftermath of purging all traces of that portion of U.S. history.

“This isn’t your father’s Army,” Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy, the Army’s first female three-star, told Military Academy cadets in 1997. She’s got that right. My father, his three brothers, and his future brother-in-law were part of the forces that decisively defeated the Axis powers of Germany and Japan in World War II. What have we won since? The Gulf War, perhaps, but we were back in Iraq about 12 years later.

We should focus on winning and recovering from the next war, not some feel-good gender equality/equity goals. Or our next choice is to learn Mandarin or Cantonese.