Time to Rethink Your Never Trumpism

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

Okay, my Trump-shy friends, it’s time to put aside your fussy principles about how icky Donald Trump is. This is serious, and we need all hands on deck to throw Biden overboard before he gets a whole lot more Americans killed. I get that you don’t like Trump. Let’s agree that he’s icky for the purposes of this discussion. Let’s agree that his tweets are mean, that he’s not a conservative ideologue, that he says dumb things and gets into useless fights, and that he does many other unseemly and annoying things. Let’s agree that this is all true. Let’s concede that in normal times, one might want to forgo supporting a guy like that. But these aren’t normal times.

This is getting real. This is life and death. Not just for cops and soldiers, but maybe even for you and your family.

Now, this column isn’t directed towards the professional Never Trumper dorks, the treacherous weirdos who make a living off of going on MSNBC and selling out their former allies. This is for the Republicans who have thought about it and have a real problem with Donald Trump. I get it, even if I don’t agree. I would not particularly like voting for somebody who I don’t like. However, I like Donald Trump and will eagerly support him following his victory over my primary candidate, Ron DeSantis. But sometimes you need to do things you would rather not do. You have to let go of the anger. Even the governor got on board and endorsed the president once the primary results became clear. 

So, this is for you guys who are having difficulty making that leap and backing Trump 2.0. I’m assuming that you are susceptible to reason. Some of you might not be. Let’s face it: A little bit of ego is involved here. There’s a performative aspect to not backing Donald Trump. You dug in against him, and digging yourself out and publicly changing your mind is tough. I get it. But when facts change, choices need to change. And boy, have the facts changed.

Let’s look at where our country is right now. It’s in a hole, and our alleged president is still digging. We have a wide open border. Fentanyl is killing tens of thousands a year. Ten million illegal aliens have streamed across. We know many of them are criminals. They’re raping and murdering Americans right now. We can be relatively sure that a significant number of Chinese military infiltrators are among them. That will end badly unless we have a president who will do something about it, which Biden certainly never will. We can also surmise that a large number are active terrorists who, at some point, will launch a killing spree of the sort I wrote about in my new book, The Attack.

If Donald Trump is not elected president in November, this will continue for another four years. That is a lot of dead Americans. And you’ve got to ask yourself if protesting mean tweets worth those lives. Because that’s the choice you’re making. Even if you sit out the election, you’re effectively supporting Joe Biden by not actively supporting Donald Trump. Yes, I know you’re upset because there is a binary choice, and I know all the clichés about not wanting to choose the lesser of two evils but guess what? You’re faced with the choice between the lesser of two evils. That’s just the choice that exists. It might not be fair. You might not like it, but that’s what it is. And you’ve got to choose. Not choosing is choosing. Not choosing is choosing Joe Biden. And if you choose Joe Biden, you’re choosing a lot of deaths just because of his border betrayal.

What else are you choosing? Well, you’re choosing to abandon Israel to Hamas. That’s what Joe Biden is doing. You’re choosing to throw the Jewish state to the mercy of those psychopaths. And you’re doing it because you don’t like Donald Trump. Come on.

I’m not asking you to like Trump. I’m asking you to actively support him. Not to reward him. Not to high-five him. I’m asking you to actively support him for the sake of your country and your people. There are a lot of American soldiers out there in the line of fire who shouldn’t be but are because Joe Biden put a big target on their backs with his weakness, incompetence, and appeasement. He’s going to get even more of our troops killed. You can say what you want about Donald Trump, and you do, but he took care of our soldiers. He didn’t get them into useless fights. When he had to fight, he won – ask ISIS in Iraq. Joe Biden, on the other hand, invites attacks on our troops and refuses to retaliate when they happen properly. You have seen the pictures of those three dead soldiers that he recently killed in Jordan. You have seen photos of the 13 troops he got killed in Kabul and the Afghanistan retreat. You’ll see more if you choose to support Joe Biden by choosing not to support Donald Trump.

Yeah, I know that’s pretty harsh, growing down the dead troops card. But dead troops is the hand we’ve been dealt. You’re an adult. You’ve got to make a choice. No choice is choosing Biden. Understand what choosing not to support Trump means. It means dead Americans.

Now, one of the criticisms of this practical and utilitarian approach to politics – that is, treated reality is real –  is that the Republican Party will never learn its lesson about nominating guys like Donald Trump unless Donald Trump loses. Well, maybe you’re some special genius who has discovered a way to lose your way to victory, but the traditional way to win is by winning. You’re not teaching the Republicans a lesson by rejecting Donald Trump. The base’s embrace of Donald Trump should be a lesson to the establishment, which created Donald Trump by its refusal to address the problems that mattered to actual voters as opposed to the problems that mattered to actual politicians. If you think you will somehow convince people to go back to the Romney era, that will not happen. Maybe Donald Trump Trump’s not your conservative, but he’s the kind of conservative who isn’t Joe Biden, and dammit, that should be enough.

It’s time to get serious and abandon the posturing. You need to support Donald Trump actively and enthusiastically. A lot is riding on it, and your pride is the least important thing riding on it. 

X22, And we Know, and more- April 11

 

Tucker Carlson Discusses FISA-702 Reauthorization

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

Within this monologue Tucker Carlson hits on some accurate points to share with his audience.  The commentary about HPSCI Chairman Mike Turner is spot on accurate.  The IC pressure meetings are also true {SEE HERE}. The analysis of Speaker Mike Johnson also appears to be widely accurate.   WATCH:

My personal experience with the IC surveillance state mirrors that described by Tucker Carlson.  As you step into the world of real data, unfiltered by the systems intended to control our perspectives, the system tends to see you as a threat.

Current research into the dollar-based Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has made the surveillance system much more visible to me.

I have a travel day tomorrow 4/11, which will hopefully culminate in an opportunity tomorrow night to explain exactly where I am likely to be (virtually guaranteed now) and how I was able to get there.  On 4/12 I will be navigating entry, and thereafter trying to reestablish communication to share events as they unfold in real time.

CNN's Zakaria tries to egg Finland's leader into blasting Trump, gets egg all over his face instead

Richard McDonough reporting for The Federalist 

In a recent discussion with Alexander Stubb, who is the president of Finland, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria apparently thought it would be a cakewalk to get the newly elected European leader to say something negative and alarming about former President Donald Trump.  

It did not go well for Fareed. 

President Stubb ended up praising Trump for doing what is right. 

Fareed, pushing a familiarly deceptive media line, asked President Stubb to comment on “what everybody is talking about,” namely that:

Donald Trump said he would tell Russia to do what you have to do, words to that effect, about NATO members if they hadn’t hit the 2% mark.  What do you do about a president of the United States, the leader of the West, the leader of NATO, if he said that, assuming Trump is elected [in 2024].

President Stubb did not take the bait. Rejecting Fareed’s attempt to stir up dissension between Trump and NATO members, Stubb said that “the starting point is that Finland will get along with whoever is elected.”  He then explained to Fareed an adult view of Trump’s remark:

We also know that former president Donald Trump is a transactionalist, and what he’s trying to do is push European states to increase their defense expenditure to 2% and I think he’s right in doing that because 20 out of 32 NATO members will have reached that by this Washington NATO summit.

That is, being rational, unlike what remains of our “news media,” Trump is a transactionalist. 

Since Trump's expertise is making deals (he wrote The Art of the Deal), Trump knows that if one wants to get something done in the real world, one has to enter into “transactions” with the relevant parties.  In those remarks about NATO, he merely let delinquent NATO members know that if they want continued U.S. military protection, they must make a transaction.  They must give something, in this case, not even very much, just the 2% of GDP they had already promised to spend towards military spending. 

President Stubb even pointed out that Trump has already been successful in this “because 20 out of 32 NATO members will have reached that by this [commitment] by the Washington NATO summit.  In other words, NATO is already safer because of Donald Trump. 

Fareed thinks this is a new scandal!?

Fareed, however, who does, after all, work at CNN, pushes back, asking,

But is NATO entirely a transactional organization and do you think it is appropriate for the United States not to defend, not to defend a NATO member if it’s below 2% in its defense spending.

First, since transactionality is an aspect of rationality, Fareed, unlike Trump, is apparently worried about whether NATO members are rational. 

President Stubb schooled Fareed that they are. Therefore,

“I think he [Trump’s] right in doing that [pressuring NATO members to pay their promised share].” 

Fareed does not even appear to remember what President Stubb had already, just a few minutes prior, said to him: that NATO members have already been increasing their spending to make NATO safer as a result of Trump’s “transactional” pressure.  That is, Fareed does not appear to have digested that President Stubb has just reassured him that NATO members, unlike the talking heads in U.S. “news” rooms, are quite rational and actually want to defend Europe more than they want to make high school debating points.

Indeed, President Stubb explained to Fareed that it was never in the cards, as Fareed had implied, that the United States would not defend NATO. 

President Stubb, saying at one point that Finland in such cases is always “cool, calm and collected,” made this explicit:

“I am sure that the United States would continue to do that [defend Europe if it is attacked].”  

It is difficult to see how “journalists,” who virtually never seem “cool, calm and collected,” can get so worked up about Trump doing what needs to be done to make NATO stronger and Europe safer. 

Trump understands, as, apparently, Fareed does not, that he is not participating in a high school debate about international security.  He is, rather, a businessman who must make successful transactions to prosper, and (unlike a member of the “Ivory Tower”) he is actually trying to get something done in the real world.  Trump, in those comments that “everybody is talking about” (by which he presumably means “everybody in U.S. newsrooms"), is merely haggling over money, nothing more. 

So, in fact, President Stubb gave a direct clear answer to Fareed’s question, “What do you do about a president of the United States, the leader of the West, the leader of NATO, if he said that [about the possibility of not defending NATO countries that don’t pay their pledged amount].”  His answer is quite explicit:  You say, “Thank you!” And you say that because Trump is trying to solve a real-world problem, not grandstand. 

Indeed, had Fareed wanted to frame the conversation fairly in the beginning, he would, at least, have pointed out, as Sen. Marco Rubio and others have pointed out, that Trump, in those remarks about NATO, was not even talking about what he would do in the future, in his second term! 

He was bragging about what he did in his first term. 

It is a bit hard to work oneself into a state of hysteria about a comment made about what is already baked into the cake, but our “news” media seems quite capable of doing just that.

US Navy Publicity Photo Reveals a Frightening Lack of Firearms Competence

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

What happened to ordinary competence? 

When I was in the Army, in the last years of the Cold War, we were all constantly admonished to be, at all times, technically and tactically proficient. That meant being able to use the tools we were assigned to use and to carry out the tasks we were assigned to carry out; to further the Army's ultimate purpose of closing with and destroying the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect. Much of this, of course, meant proficiency with our issue weapon, which for me at various times was either the M16A1 rifle or the 1911 or M9 pistols. Every time I drew my weapon from the armory for a field problem or a day at the range, the first thing I did — like everyone else — was to inspect it to make sure it was in working order.

This is something that U.S. Navy Commander Cameron Yast of the USS John S. McCain clearly failed to do during a recent live-fire exercise.

The commander of a US Navy warship is apparently a not-so-sharpshooter.

A commanding officer of the USS John S. McCain, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, was mocked online after he was photographed holding an assault weapon with its scope mounted backward as he took aim at a target known as a “killer tomato.”

Cmdr. Cameron Yast “observes the live-fire exercise event. The ship is in U.S. 7th Fleet conducting routine operations,” read a caption posted by Defense Visual Information Distribution Service alongside an image of him holding up the weapon with the Trijicon VCOG installed backward while pointed at a large target balloon.

Have a look:

Note that there is brass in the air. Commander Yast is actually firing the weapon while looking through an optical sight that is, embarrassingly, mounted backward. This begs the question: Has he ever even seen this sight before?

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the use of a sight like this — no, strike that, anyone who is even remotely familiar with any kind of optical device at all — would immediately notice something is wrong here. But Commander Yast was either painfully unfamiliar with the U.S. Military's primary service rifle, or he realized something was wrong but proceeded anyway, to the embarrassment of himself, his ship, and the United States Navy.

In 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, a ship's cook on the USS West Virginia, Doris Miller, was below decks in the ship's laundry when bombs started dropping. As the Navy at that time only employed black men as cooks and laundry attendants, he was not trained with any weapons, and yet when the attack came, he ran onto the deck, hauled ammo, and moved wounded sailors to cover until the ship's Captain was killed. Miller then, with no training, manned a .50 caliber Browning anti-aircraft gun and returned fire until he was ordered to abandon ship. Miller became the first black sailor to be awarded the Navy Cross for his work that day.

Now compare that act of heroism to an officer, a U.S. Navy Commander, being photographed for a U.S. Navy promotional photo with a sight mounted backward. This is not the sign of a serviceman who is technically and tactically proficient. Frankly, it's embarrassing.

Add this to the growling list of indicators that our military leadership needs a serious overhaul and that the services need to focus once more on their core mission: to close with and destroy the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect.

Even The Washington Post Called Joe Biden for This Second Amendment Lie

Matt Vespa reporting for Townhall 

Not that I care, but Joe Biden is wasting an inordinate amount of time on issues that won’t help his re-election. His side has lost all the landmark decisions on Second Amendment issues. It’s not close to being settled yet. We still have some things to clear up regarding the process of obtaining a concealed carry permit—may issue versus shall issue—and reciprocity agreements, but it’s getting there. After that, it’s about holding the line against anti-gun leftists. 

Still, Joe likes to trot out this utter lie about the Second Amendment: you can’t own a cannon. Oh, Joe knows—he was a professor who taught this stuff, which is even more disturbing. The president repeated this lie in an interview with Univision. Fact check: you can own cannons. And even the Washington Post called him out two years ago [emphasis mine]: 

“Everything in that statement is wrong,” said David Kopel, the research director and Second Amendment project director at the Independence Institute. After 1791, “there were no federal laws about the type of gun you could own, and no states limited the kind of gun you could own.” Not until the early 1800s were there any efforts to pass restrictions on carrying concealed weapons, he said. 

“I think what he’s saying here is that the Second Amendment was never understood to guarantee everyone the right to own all types of weapons, which I believe is true,” said Kermit Roosevelt, a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “As phrased, it sounds like the Second Amendment itself limited ownership, which is not true.” 

[…] 

In fact, you do not have to look far in the Constitution to see that private individuals could own cannons. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 gives Congress the power to declare war. But there is another element of that clause that might seem strange to modern ears — Congress also had the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” 

What’s that? These were special waivers that allowed private individuals to act as pirates on behalf of the United States against countries engaged in war with it. The “letter of marque” allowed a warship to cross into another country’s territory to take a ship, while a “letter of reprisal” gave authorization to bring the ship back to the home port of the capturer. 

Individuals who were given these waivers and owned warships obviously also obtained cannons for use in battle. 

The publication awarded him four Pinocchios and added, “Biden has already been fact-checked on this claim—and it’s been deemed false. We have no idea where he conjured up this notion about a ban on cannon ownership in the early days of the Republic, but he needs to stop making this claim.” 

Yes, he does. 

Joe is a habitual liar who appears to have been part of every major American historical event. As Stephen Miller (RedSteeze) quipped, he's the Forrest Gump of presidents, but one who can't remember when his son died but will exploit his death to the most absurd limits to scrap up some political points. 

Hollywood's Attempt to Further Normalize Anti-White Racism Falls Flat

Brandon Morse reporting for RedState 

And once again, the social justice community trips, falls, faceplants, and yet still can't figure out why it's failing. 

As I've previously talked about, the movie "The American Society of Magical Negroes" was released in theaters and greeted with rooms of empty seats and no fanfare. The film had a lot of problems going for it. It was horribly written for starters despite the premise being ripped from a hilarious Key and Peele skit. Despite its comedic overtones, the "jokes" are ultimately "clapter" lines. 

(Hollywood Can't Get It Through Its Head That Racism Doesn't Sell)

The movie is now being pulled from theaters after only three weeks. As Culture Crave notes, the film amassed only $2.4 million box office and garnered a 28 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. The budget for the movie was $15 million, marking this as a big loss. 

As I said in my original article, this overtly anti-white racist film's failure was a condemnation on several levels: 

And from this, we can actually deduce some things.

America isn't the racist country it's being sold as by the social justice left, and that's not just because people aren't lining up to see it generally. It's because black people aren't lining up to see it either. If that film resonated with the black community, there'd be a lot more fervor about it, not just from the black community itself but from the media. 

It's also a rebuke against bad cinema. 

If you're really going to make a movie that condemns racism and highlights the absurdity of it, then I'll refer you to probably the best condemnation of racism Hollywood ever produced; "Blazing Saddles."

Racism is a plague but it's one that's primarily infested places like Hollywood and heavily leftist areas like it. The idea is that finger-wagging and white people and obsessing about racism make you a good person because you're addressing a major societal sin. Yes, racism is bad, but the left has swung so far into its obsession with racism against a specific group that it's become racist against another. 

The box office numbers show that this kind of "America is racist" narrative just isn't selling. It's not guilting any white people into theaters for "educational" purposes, and it's not bringing in the black community for the purposes of reveling in self-victimhood. 

Racism just doesn't sell in America. This is not a racist country. 

Yet, we have leftists convincing themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt that racial animus infects every aspect of our society so deeply that it's undeniable. They're partly correct. Racism is an issue...and the left needs to address their problem with it, especially the bubbled left in Hollywood. 

Once the left conquers their own racism, maybe we could truly start moving forward as a country.

Not that this will happen anytime soon. Racism is one of the left's biggest grifts. Where would they be without it? 

...well, probably making better movies. 

DOJ Finds 'Inconsistencies' in Fani Willis' Use of Federal Grant Funds Amid Congressional Probe

Brittany Sheehan reporting for RedState 

The Department of Justice has found "inconsistencies" regarding the appropriation of federal grant funds used by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' office, according to the Washington Free Beacon. 

On Friday, a DOJ spokesperson told the Beacon,

During our review of the award to respond to this inquiry, we have noticed some inconsistencies in what Fulton County has reported to [the Federal Subaward Reporting System] and we are working with them to update their reporting accordingly.

The shocking revelations come to light two years after Willis terminated a whistleblower who had warned Wills that her office was attempting to misuse nearly half a million dollars awarded in a federal grant for a youth gang prevention initiative to instead pay for, "swag," Mac Book computers, and travel. Amanda Timpson, who was listed as the grant director, said she was abruptly fired by Willis less than two months after reporting the intended misuse of funds to Willis. Timpson claims that she was escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators. She later filed a whistleblower complaint that alleged wrongful termination.

The grant was intended to be used for the creation of a Center for Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention in Atlanta, but while the grant ended in September 2023, the center was never opened.

The $488,000 federal grant that Timpson warned Willis about is now indicated by DOJ's Office of Justice Programs as plagued with reporting discrepancies from Willis’ office. These errors were only disclosed by federal authorities after initially providing contradictory statements regarding the allocation of the grants by Willis' office. 

The DOJ says that it is working with Willis’ office to fix the grant reporting "inconsistencies," while there is an ongoing House Judiciary Committee probe looking into Willis’ use of federal grant funds. Willis was subpoenaed in early February by Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) requesting that she provide records related to the grant and the whistleblower allegations made by Timpson. 

Rep. Jordan threatened to hold Willis in contempt of Congress after her response to the subpoena only offered a "narrow set of documents," according to Rep. Jordan, that didn't include any of the relevant information related to the Timpson allegations. 

In response to Jordan's letter, Willis wrote that Jordan’s demands were,

unreasonable and uncustomary and would require this government office to divert resources from our primary purpose of prosecuting crime.

---

Fani Willis Throws a Tantrum in Response to Jim Jordan's Threat of Contempt for Failure to Produce Docs

More Trouble for Fani Willis as Another Hammer Is Set to Drop From the House Judiciary Committee

---

Inquires from the Beacon to the DOJ centered around discrepancies in payments Willis' office may have made to the Offender Alumni Association, an Alabama-based charity staffed by former inmates. While Fulton County records show that Willis’ office transferred $88,900 from the federal grant to the Offender Alumni Association, the group’s administrative director, Toni Barnett, reported having no understanding of why the county would make those reports. 

On March 15, Barret told the Beacon, "I have no idea where that information is coming from." 

On March 27, a DOJ spokeswoman told the Beacon that federal authorities had no records on any subgrant payments from Willis’ office to the Offender Alumni Association, only to later contradict this statement on April 1, writing,

Upon further research, we found that the Offender Alumni Association is included as a Fulton County subgrantee in subsequent documents. We apologize for this initial error.

Thus far, the DOJ has refused to provide documents detailing these payments, and Willis' office has offered no comment to the Beacon.

Of course, this is not the first time Fani Willis has been scrutinized for the use of public funding. In the high-profile RICO trial her office brought against former President Donald Trump, defendants challenged her use of public monies to hire Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor, after a romantic relationship between the pair came to light.

In March, Fulton County Superior Court judge Scott McAfee wrote in an order that an "odor of mendacity remains" after weeks of public hearings over Willis’s relationship with Wade. The ruling suggested that Willis could remain on the case if Wade withdrew, and Wade subsequently provided Willis with his resignation.

McAfee wrote,

The trial court then went further, characterizing it is a ‘financial cloud of impropriety’.“Stopping just short of calling their testimony regarding these alleged cash payments an outright fabrication, the trial court half-heartedly said that her testimony on this issue was ‘not so incredible as to be inherently unbelievable.'

Between the outrageous public testimony Willis gave regarding how the paper currency known as cash is a "black thing," McAfee's rulings that note a "financial cloud of impropriety", her less-than-substantive response to Congressional subpoenas, and the contradictory versions of the use of federal grants in her office, one thing does remain clear: Fani runs a fuzzy fiduciary franchise in Fulton County. 

Senate Republicans Raise Some Important Questions About the DOJ Indictment Against Alexander Smirnov

Jeff Charles reporting for RedState 

Republican Senators Chuck Grassley (R-ID) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) are seeking answers from the FBI regarding the Justice Department’s indictment against former informant Alexander Smirnov, who originally brought to light allegations that President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, received bribes from a Ukrainian energy company in exchange for favors.

The senators sent a letter to officials in the Justice Department demanding that they allow Congress to interview some of the agents who worked with Smirnov, according to a Fox News Digital exclusive.

Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson are demanding the FBI make Alexander Smirnov’s handling agent and his superiors available for interviews as they investigate what steps the bureau and the Justice Department took to investigate the now-infamous FD-1023 form alleging a criminal bribery scheme involving Joe Biden and Ukraine.

Fox News Digital obtained a letter Grassley, R-Iowa, and Johnson, R-Wis., sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Special Counsel David Weiss late Tuesday.

“Since October 13, 2022, Congress has requested from the Justice Department and FBI information and records relating to the FD-1023 to better understand what steps, if any, the Justice Department took to investigate the document,” Grassley and Johnson wrote.

In February, the indictment against Smirnov was announced after he was arrested at an airport in Las Vegas. The authorities claim that the former informant fabricated the bribery scandal.

In essence, the Justice Department is accusing Smirnov of falsely describing phone calls in which a Burisma executive said he was compelled to pay Joe and Hunter in exchange for favors.

The Defendant also reported two purported phone calls between himself and Burisma Official 1 wherein Burisma Official 1 stated that he had been forced to pay Public Official 1 and Businessperson 1 and that it would take investigators 10 years to find records of illicit payments to Public Official 1.

As alleged herein, the events the Defendant first reported to the Handler in June 2020 were fabrications. In truth and fact, the Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the thenUkrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when Public Official 1 had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office. In short, the Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1, the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his candidacy.

Smirnov reached out to Grassley in 2022 to inform him about the FD-1023 document, which detailed the alleged bribery scheme.

The FD-1023 document includes Smirnov’s claims that Burisma executives paid $5 million to Joe Biden and $5 million to Hunter Biden, while Joe Biden was still in office as vice president. Smirnov also claims that the Bidens were paid so that Joe Biden could help to quash criminal investigation into Burisma being conducted by then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

The letter notes that the indictment “leaves many questions unanswered,” which includes, 

“how the Justice Department and FBI could use this Confidential Human Source for approximately 14 years, pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars, use this information in investigations and prosecutions, and the ultimately determine he’s a liar.”

That particular question will likely play an important role in the trial and public opinion about the bribery scandal. We'll keep you posted.

European Parliament approves controversial migration pact, sparking uproar from nationalists who vow to bring it down after EU election

 

The European Parliament has approved the controversial EU Asylum and Migration Pact, which will see countries forced to accept their fair share of new arrivals into the bloc or pay a fine for every migrant they reject.

The new asylum and migration package was passed largely with votes from lawmakers affiliated with the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and Renew Europe, with MEPs being urged to swallow their criticisms of the scheme and vote for the compromise legislation.

“History made,” tweeted European Parliament President Roberta Metsola as she praised what she described as a “robust legislative framework on how to deal with migration and asylum,” noting it had been “10 years in the making” but the EU had kept its word.

Some MEPs on both the left and the center-right revealed they voted through the pact despite its many flaws.

“The new legislation is not perfect but we can only make migration manageable and humane with one European solution,” said Hilde Vautmans, foreign affairs coordinator for Renew Europe.

Nationalist politicians across Europe expressed their anger at the passing of the pact, which they claim cedes sovereignty to an ever-centralized European Union.

“The Migration Pact organizes the tutelage and control of nations, the legal impunity of NGOs complicit with smugglers,” tweeted Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally. She further vowed to “put an end to the accelerated pursuit of policies to encourage and organize mass immigration,” on June 9 at the EU elections in which her party is expected to win the most French seats.  

“Countries will be forced to welcome thousands of migrants into their towns and villages or pay dearly to be spared!” Bardella told the chamber, warning that Brussels wants to redistribute new arrivals while nationalist politicians want to “send them back.”

After the vote, Bardella took to social media to denounce the “terrible European Migration Pact” that seeks to “impose the distribution of migrants in our municipalities under penalty of financial sanctions.”

Voting was briefly suspended on Wednesday evening due to a protest from inside the chamber from left-wing activists who urged those of their political persuasion to vote down the bill on humanitarian grounds.

“This Pact kills, vote ‘No!'” they chanted from the observation rooms as they threw paper airplanes down into the auditorium.  

The Hungarian government reiterated its opposition to the pact following the vote with spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs citing Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó who “declared that regardless of any migration pact adopted by the European Parliament, Hungary will maintain its legal and physical border barriers and will not allow illegal immigrants entry, opposing the pro-war and pro-migration stance of Brussels’ leadership.”

The majority of lawmakers who passed through the pact were lukewarm on its contents but considered it to be a compromise to end the status quo existing in a Europe plagued by illegal immigration. The argument on the left is that it goes too far in targeting illegal migrants, while those on the right consider it to be yet another sovereignty   

https://www.rmx.news/migration/european-parliament-approves-controversial-migration-pact-sparking-uproar-from-nationalists-who-vow-to-bring-it-down-after-eu-election/   

♦️𝐖³𝐏 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝

 

W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

posted by DarkGoldenMan

Welcome to the W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

Post whatever you got in the comments section below.

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Jack Smith Signals He’ll Try To Circumvent SCOTUS If It Says Obstruction Charges Aren’t Real Crimes

Smith is trying to stretch Section 1512 in hopes of bypassing a potential ruling deeming the government’s abuse of the law illegal.

Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist

Democrat hacks have claimed that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictments against Donald Trump over the former president’s challenging of the 2020 election are legally sound. So why is Smith grasping at legal straws in his latest court filing?

On Monday, Smith filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the nation’s highest judicial body to dismiss Trump’s presidential immunity claims. Citing the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the special counsel indicted Trump in August over his speech questioning the administration of the 2020 election. This prompted the former president’s legal team to file a motion essentially arguing that Trump “should be immune from prosecution because the conduct he is accused of constituted official acts of the president,” as Fox News summarized.

“The President’s constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed does not entail a general right to violate them,” Smith claimed.

As legacy media rushed to elevate the special counsel’s arguments against Trump’s immunity claims, they ignored a footnote in Monday’s filing that telegraphs how Smith will attempt to have the former president convicted on several counts — even if those same charges are effectively dismissed in a separate case by SCOTUS.

[6 Ways Jack Smith’s Latest Indictment Is Legally Flawed And Politically Shady]

The footnote in question pertains to 18 U.S. Code § 1512(c), which carries up to a 20-year prison sentence for anyone who “corruptly”:

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.

Two of the four charges Smith filed against Trump are based on 1512(c). Smith’s preferred reading of the statute would allow the DOJ to interpret subsection (2) incredibly broadly. As my colleague Tristan Justice previously reported, the statute’s “obstruction of an official proceeding” provision has also been used by federal authorities “to charge so far more than 300 [Jan. 6] defendants with felonies in the [past] three years.”

“It’s the most frequently charged Jan. 6 felony, and the basis for keeping many protesters in jail without bond for months or even years before they reached trial,” Justice noted. “It’s never before been used in the way the DOJ has applied it to Jan. 6 protesters.”

A lawsuit challenging the Justice Department’s abuse of the statute is currently being considered by the Supreme Court, with oral arguments in Fischer v. United States to be heard on April 16. Joseph Fischer, a Jan. 6 defendant, argues the second half of the statute isn’t a license to prosecute anything that “otherwise” impeded a proceeding but rather should be interpreted as a modifier to the first half of the statute. In other words, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland explained, the argument is that “the statute only criminalized conduct that rendered evidence unavailable to an ‘official proceeding.’”

A decision in Fischer’s favor would seemingly negate the two 1512(c)-related charges against Trump and “upend hundreds of charges filed by federal prosecutors against those present at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot,” according to Justice.

In an apparent attempt to sidestep such a ruling, however, Smith argued in his Monday brief that even if SCOTUS deems the DOJ’s use of 1512(c)(2) unlawful, the related charges filed against Trump should still stand because Trump somehow impaired evidence for use in an official proceeding.

“Petitioner asserts … that the grant of review in Fischer v. United States … suggests that the Section 1512(c)(2) charges here impermissibly stretch the statute. But whether the Court interprets Section 1512(c)(2) consistently with a natural reading of its text or adopts the evidence-impairment gloss urged by the petitioner in Fischer, the Section 1512 charges in this case are valid,” Smith wrote, additionally claiming that “the use of falsehoods or creation of ‘false’ documents satisfies an evidence-impairment interpretation.”

As investigative reporter Julie Kelly explained, Smith is essentially contending that “the alternative electoral certificates” supported by Trump and his election team and submitted to Congress “represent ‘documents’ that were fraudulently used in an ‘official proceeding.'” By arguing this, Smith is attempting to preserve his ability to go after Trump based on subsection (1) of the statute even if his ability to prosecute based on subsection (2) is nullified.

This argument requires Smith to make the case that “Pieces of paper signed and sent by other Americans to protest of a rigged election are now equal to accounting records destroyed in service of covering up a crime,” Kelly explained. It’s worth noting that contingent electors casting votes for their presidential candidate is neither illegal nor unprecedented. 

[Why SCOTUS Will Likely Smack Down Two Of Jack Smith’s Get-Trump Charges As Non-Crimes]

Smith is desperately trying to stretch the 1512(c) statute in the hopes that he can bypass a potential ruling from SCOTUS deeming the government’s abuse of the law illegal. Such a slimy maneuver seeks to give federal prosecutors with Joe Biden’s DOJ the power to continue their lawfare against Trump ahead of the 2024 election.