Democrats Will Not Benefit From Their Own Republic-Destabilizing Lawfare

posted by Josh Hammer at Townhall 

Nearly 14 months after the first of four unprecedented criminal prosecutions against former President Donald Trump commenced in earnest, the Democrat-lawfare complex got its man: The Soviet show trial in "Justice" Juan Merchan's dingy New York City courtroom produced its preordained "guilty" verdict.

It is perhaps hackneyed to observe that, in convicting and seeking to incarcerate a former president and current leading presidential candidate, we have "crossed the Rubicon." Well ...

Did we not cross a Rubicon when the demonic Obama administration sued the nuns -- yes, literal nuns -- of the Little Sisters of the Poor to force them to subsidize abortifacients? Did we not cross a Rubicon when Democrats threw out 4,000-5,000 years of "innocent until proven guilty" civilizational norms to derail the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh? Did we not cross a Rubicon when then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris solicited funds to bail out anarchic Antifa-Black Lives Matter street hooligans? Did we not cross a Rubicon when the American Stasi -- sorry, the FBI -- raided Mar-a-Lago over a document dispute? Did we not cross a Rubicon when myriad Trump attorneys, including the renowned scholar John Eastman, were prosecuted for practicing the legal profession? Did we not cross a Rubicon when Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon (just now) were ordered to jail?

The Rubicon, truthfully, is a shallow, inconsequential river in Italy. That it is so shallow helps explain why Julius Caesar was able to cross it so easily. At this juncture in American history, it no longer suffices to speak of crossing a Rubicon. We are now rapidly crossing great seas -- perhaps even circumnavigating the globe. You might call President Joe Biden and the rest of the Democrat-lawfare complex our modern-day Magellans.

Ruinous or not, however, their precedent has now been set. And that raises the obvious question: For Democrats, will all of this, and especially their multifront anti-Trump lawfare, prove to be worth it?

That obvious question, in turn, has an equally obvious answer: absolutely, positively not.

First, Democrats do not seem to be getting much of a bump in the early polls after last week's verdict. In each of the two major national polls that have been conducted exclusively after the verdict, from pollsters Emerson College and Morning Consult, Trump leads by one point. As even the liberal Washington Post conceded on Thursday, "Other polls conducted before and after the verdict suggest between no change and a two-point shift toward Biden. The shifts are quite a bit smaller than pretrial polls suggested they could be."

Considering that Trump was already leading in most national horse race polling and that the Republican Party currently has a built-in Electoral College advantage wherein its presidential candidate can slightly lose the popular vote while still prevailing in the electoral vote, the Biden-Harris campaign ought to be worried. Democrats' lawfare isn't winning over many swing voters.

Second, the damage the Democrat-lawfare complex has caused to the American public's faith and trust in the justice system is simply astronomical -- and likely irreparable. Even before the onslaught of Trump indictments filed last year, many of us "deplorables" were already convinced we have a two-tier system of justice in this country: Consider the wholly disparate prosecutorial treatment of the BLM-Antifa rioters and the "J6-ers" present during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol jamboree, for instance.

But the Democrat-lawfare complex's serial overreaches have now removed any doubt as to the blatant impartiality and patent unfairness of our regnant legal order. It is impossible not to be jaded or cynical. Leviticus 19:15 commands: "You shall commit no injustice in judgment; you shall not favor a poor person or respect a great man; you shall judge your fellow with righteousness." Does anyone think this describes America today?

Third, the Right finally seems to be snapping out of its long lull and beginning to gear itself for a pitched battle against a domestic foe that wants to punish us, prosecute us, subjugate us, and remove us from the entirety of American public life. That portends poorly for leftists.

My friend John Yoo, the Bush-era Justice Department official and law professor normally a bit less pugnacious than yours truly, opined: "Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you." Megyn Kelly, the influential broadcaster who has had a complex relationship with Trump going back to the 2016 GOP presidential primary, said after the verdict: "I'm going to utter words I never thought I would utter in my life: We need Steve Bannon." The famously combative Bannon appears headed for an unjust four-month prison sentence in a few weeks, but her point stands.

Democrats have no idea what they have unleashed. Perhaps worse, they don't even care.

X22, And we Know, and more- June 7

 

The Myth That Biden Had Nothing to Do With the Prosecutions of Trump ~ VDH

posted by Victor Davis Hanson at Townhall 

The five criminal and civil prosecutions of former President Donald Trump all prompt heated denials from Democrats that President Joe Biden and Democrat operatives had a role in any of them.

But Biden has long let it be known that he was frustrated with his own Department of Justice's federal prosecutors for their tardiness in indicting  Trump.

Biden was upset because any delay might mean that his rival Trump would not be in federal court during the 2024 election cycle. And that would mean he could not be tagged as a "convicted felon" by the November election while being kept off the campaign trail.

Politico has long prided itself on its supposed insider knowledge of the workings of the Biden administration. Note that it was reported earlier this February that a frustrated Joe Biden "has grumbled to aides and advisers that had (Attorney General Merrick) Garland moved sooner in his investigation into former President Donald Trump's election interference, a trial may already be underway or even have concluded..."

If there was any doubt about the Biden administration's effort to force Trump into court before November, Politico further dispelled it -- even as it blamed Trump for Biden's anger at Garland: "That trial still could take place before the election and much of the delay is owed not to Garland but to deliberate resistance put up by the former president and his team."

Note in passing how a presidential candidate's legal right to oppose a politicized indictment months before an election by his opponent's federal attorneys is smeared by Politico as "deliberate resistance."

Given Politico was publicly reporting six months ago about Biden's anger at the pace of his DOJ's prosecution of Trump, does anyone believe his special counsel, Jack Smith, was not aware of such presidential displeasure and pressure?

Note Smith had petitioned and was denied an unusual request to the court to speed up the course of his Trump indictment.

And why would Biden's own Attorney General, Garland, select such an obvious partisan as Smith? Remember, in his last tenure as special counsel, Smith had previously gone after popular Republican and conservative Virginia governor Bob MacDonald.

Yet Smith's politicized persecution of the innocent McDonnell was reversed by a unanimous verdict of the U.S. Supreme Court. That rare court unanimity normally should have raised a red flag to the Biden DOJ about both Smith's partiality and his incompetence.

But then again, Smith's wife had donated to the 2020 Biden campaign fund. And she was previously known for producing a hagiographic 2020 documentary ("Becoming") about Michelle Obama.

Selecting a special counsel with a successful record of prior nonpartisan convictions was clearly not why the DOJ appointed Smith.

The White House's involvement is not limited to the Smith federal indictments.

Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis's paramour and erstwhile lead prosecutor in her indictment of Trump, Nathan Wade, met twice with the White House counsel's office. On one occasion, Wade met inside the Biden White House.

Subpoenaed records reveal that the brazen Wade actually billed the federal government for his time spent with the White House counsel's staff -- although so far no one has disclosed under oath the nature of such meetings.

Of the tens of thousands of local prosecutions each year, in how many instances does a county prosecutor consult with the White House counsel's office -- and then bill it for his knowledge?

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's just-completed felony convictions of Trump were spearheaded by former prominent federal prosecutor Matthew Colangelo. He is not just a well-known Democratic partisan who served as a political consultant to the Democratic National Committee.

Colangelo had also just left his prior position in the Biden Justice Department -- reputedly as Garland's third-ranking prosecutor -- to join the local Bragg team.

Again, among all the multitudes of annual municipal indictments nationwide, how many local prosecutors manage to enlist one of the nation's three top federal attorneys to head their case?

So, apparently, it was not enough for the shameless Bragg to campaign flagrantly on promises to go after Trump. In addition, Bragg brashly drafted a top Democratic operative and political appointee from inside Joe Biden's DOJ to head his prosecution.

Not surprisingly, it took only a few hours after the Colangelo-Bragg conviction of Trump for Biden on spec to start blasting his rival as a "convicted felon." Biden is delighted that his own former prosecutor, a left-wing judge, and a Manhattan jury may well keep Trump off the campaign trail.

So, it is past time for the media and Democrats to drop this ridiculous ruse of Biden's White House "neutrality." Instead, they should admit that they are terrified of the will of the people in November and so are conniving to silence them.

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Enter MAGA Environmentalism: To Save America this Election, No Issue is Off-Limits

 The GOP lags behind Democrats on dealing with the environment. We can flip the script and take that worry away with one word: China.

It’s almost a cliché at this point to say that this election is more important than all the ones who came before it, but this one does feel unique. Even President Trump recently stated that if he doesn’t win, he doesn’t think the country will survive. So why are Republicans running for office still trotting out the same, tired ideas? If the nation is truly on the line, we should be doing everything imaginable to turn out the conservative base and win over as many undecided voters as possible. In this election, taking the America First trade agenda and applying it to the environment is one idea so crazy it might work.

We should look to the Trump 2016 strategy as a model: no issue is off-limits, and no orthodoxy goes unchallenged. Traditional Republicans were so turned off by the alternative in Hillary Clinton that it was virtually guaranteed that Trump had their support. Now, in 2024, we have a similar situation as Biden continues to score record levels of unpopularity. However, the MAGA coalition from 2016 should not be seen as guaranteed to return in full force for down-ballot Republicans. They must go all-in on the rejection of the old-school GOP, continuing the tough-on-China trade policies designed to bring jobs home for the working-class folks who built the America First movement.

But if this election is truly as pivotal as it seems, we cannot stop there. 2016 was still far too close for comfort, and with many states having questionable election rules and processes, we need to win so convincingly that no “irregularities” can take it away from us. This is where the America First agenda on the environment comes in.

It is no secret that swing voters are often concerned that the GOP won’t prioritize the environment and will let big polluters off the hook. While voters trust Republicans more on the economy by 21 points, the party lags behind Democrats on dealing with the environment. We can flip the script and take that worry away with one word: China.

If we are talking about holding polluters accountable, we should start with the largest polluter on Earth, whose manufacturers produce three times as much pollution as American ones. To put things in perspective, In 2022, global emissions were 37.15 billion metric tons. That same year, coal use in China released 8.25 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. So, China’s fleet of approximately 1,042 coal plants alone generated 22.21% of global emissions in 2022. It’s patently insane that the Left focuses on bashing American industry while letting China off the hook entirely on the environment, and voters can see that clearly. By making this case, we can leverage voters’ trust of Republicans on economic issues by making the case that this approach grows our economy and creates jobs.

It is the perfect opportunity: tie one of the MAGA coalition’s highest priorities, addressing China’s cheating on trade, and add in the significant number of people who are fed up with the failing Biden administration but have hesitations about GOP leadership. Plus, if Republicans stop being afraid to talk about the environment, they can easily point out just how disastrous Biden’s “green” agenda has been, leading to higher energy costs and worsening inflation.

The opportunity for all of this comes at exactly the right time, too. Republicans in Congress recently introduced the PROVE IT Act, which would provide data showing just how much dirtier production from our competitors abroad is. It then went on to pass through committee in the Senate with overwhelming support, showing this isn’t some campaign-season messaging bill. Congressional Republicans are telling the CCP that they mean business and saying to the American people that the GOP will protect American jobs and the environment.

If the GOP is going to take back the Senate and expand the House majority, Republicans cannot run scared and must embrace a spirit of boldness. Biden and the Democrats may be deeply unpopular now, but voters are notoriously fickle. These kinds of low-risk, high-reward creative strategies are exactly what will be needed this November in what might be the most tightly-contested race in history. The stakes are too high to not try, and failure is unacceptable for the future of our nation.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/06/07/enter-maga-environmentalism-to-save-america-this-election-no-issue-is-off-limits/

Saul Anuzis is President of the 60 Plus Association.

Trump Campaign, Ahead of Nevada Rally, Relaunching Outreach to ‘Latino Americans’ as He Gains Ground Among Hispanics

 ‘We … want to be treated as what we are. We are already American,’ the Hispanic communications director for the Trump campaign says.

President Trump’s campaign will launch “Latino Americans for Trump” during Sunday’s rally at Las Vegas, a rebrand of its outreach effort called “Latinos for Trump.” 

The subtle shift is designed to emphasize the American element of Latinos’s identity, according to the Hispanic communications director for the Trump campaign, Jaime Florez. “It’s very important that we all understand that no matter where we’re coming from, we’re already American.”

The idea for the rebranding came through a collective effort during campaign meetings and conference calls, Mr. Florez said. 

“We as Latinos want to be treated as what we are. We are already American. This is what we are,” Mr. Florez said. “We came here to pursue our American dream,” and “we have our future in the United States.”

“Trump gave us the opportunity to feel more united with the idea of working together to make America great again,” Mr. Florez adds. 

The campaign plans to organize rallies and create digital, television, and radio advertisements in both English and Spanish. Mr. Florez has not specified the amount of money it will utilize or who will head the campaign, details which may be announced on Sunday.

The outreach campaign to target the Latino population is starting late compared to the incumbent’s campaign “Latinos with Biden” which launched in March. Trump’s trial delayed the “Latino Americans for Trump” outreach, Mr. Florez said.

The closing of GOP outreach offices designed for the Latino community adds another complication to the campaign. A number of leases for those centers had expired, explains Mr. Florez.

Nonetheless, Trump is gaining ground among Latino voters with 32 percent viewing him favorably, according to the latest Axios/Ipsos polling. 

President Biden’s numbers have fallen. Just 41 percent of Latinos now view him favorably, according to Axios/Ipsos. His approval rating among Latinos is even lower, down to 32 percent, according to Pew Research Center polling data.

“I need you back,” Mr. Biden told Latino voters in March at a Mexican restaurant at Phoenix. “I plan on working like the devil to earn your support,” he added in an interview on Univision Radio.

The polling data suggests Mr. Biden has not gotten them back. Under Trump, Latinos “had our great hour, our income was better,” Mr. Florez says.

Trump’s unscripted style adds another appeal to Latino voters, adds Mr. Florez. “He doesn’t speak our language, but he says what he thinks.”

The Las Vegas rally comes as Trump holds a 45 percent to 44 percent lead over Mr. Biden in a head-to-head matchup in Nevada, according to recent polling. The lead stretches further in Trump’s favor when independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is included on the ballot.

https://www.nysun.com/article/trump-campaign-ahead-of-nevada-rally-relaunching-outreach-to-latino-americans-as-he-gains-ground-among-hispanics

GABRIEL DIAMOND

Mr. Diamond is a fellow at the Yorktown Institute. He has written for, among other papers, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Hill, National Review, and the Boston Globe.

Tucker Interviews El Salvador President Nayib Bukele – “Western Civilization is Failing”

Tucker Carlson traveled to El Salvador to interview President Nayib Bukele about his ongoing efforts to eliminate corruption, crime, criminal gang activity and get rid of MS-13 gangs.

President Bukele initially used nationalized military to target criminal gangs and remove them from the streets. The social change, the outcome within the country, was stunning and fast. What was once the most violent crime ridden country, literally the murder capital of the world, changed in a few months and peace returned. President Bukele easily won reelection and Tucker traveled to hear his story. WATCH:

Chapters of Video:
0:00:00 Intro
0:04:47 Bukele’s Formula to Save El Salvador
0:09:50 The Satanic Side of MS-13
0:16:28 Bukele’s 3-Point Economic Plan
0:28:41 Is Western Civilization Dying?
0:50:10 Will Donald Trump Get Elected?
0:56:09 Bukele’s Advice to Trump
1:00:03 Americans Moving to El Salvador

From Lawfare To Bidenbucks, Democrats’ 2024 Election Rigging Is Already Worse Than 2020

Republicans can’t win until they understand the threats this election faces as a whole new host of rigging tactics play out.

Brianna Lyman reporting for The Federalist

The issues that plagued the 2020 election haven’t gone away — in fact, Democrats have spent the past four years vigorously working to double down on those efforts while employing an entirely new set of tactics to rig the 2024 election. Republicans can’t win until they understand the threats this election faces as a whole new host of rigging tactics play out, not the least of which is Democrats’ attempt to jail their political opponent.

The “Zuckbucks” schemes of 2020 pale in comparison to Biden’s mobilization of the federal government to drive voter turnout in ways that help Democrats. And as damaging as the Russia-collusion hoax was for the country, Democrats have topped it by attempting to throw their top political opponent in jail.

As my colleague John Daniel Davidson put it: “Much like the 2020 election, which wasn’t stolen so much as rigged months in advance to give Joe Biden an advantage that all but guaranteed his victory, the 2024 election is being rigged to ensure that Trump either cannot run or, if he does run, cannot win.”

What’s New?

In a move that will define this new American era, Democrats are trying to throw their chief political rival in jail.

A Soros-funded Manhattan district attorney cooked up charges that no one can properly articulate before presenting it to a jury selected from a pool that voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020. A Biden donor then oversaw the show trial against Trump that was nothing more than an extension of Democrats’ 2016 election denialism.

At this point, we can’t assume the left-wing judge won’t sentence Trump to actual jail time. Trump also faces three other criminal lawfare cases that seem unlikely to make it to trial by November, including one case in which Biden’s DOJ authorized an unprecedented raid on Mar-a-Lago — during which agents were authorized to use deadly force — to find documents that government prosecutors later admitted they tampered with.

The purpose of these trials is at least twofold. First, they are meant to drain Trump’s resources and interfere with his ability to hit the campaign trail and interact with voters. Second, as evidenced by Democrats’ immediate use of the term “convicted felon” to describe the former president, the trials are designed to assassinate his character and make him appear a less appealing alternative than Biden, whom many voters have soured on.

Democrats also sought to keep Trump out of the White House by simply removing him from the ballot under the auspices of an obscure legal theory that the Supreme Court unanimously rejected.

And if lawfare can’t kneecap Trump in time for Nov. 5, certainly the weaponization of federal agencies to target Democrat-leaning voters will give Republicans a run for their money.

Upon taking office, Biden issued Executive Order 14019 which essentially directs federal agencies to use taxpayer funds to interfere in elections. One agency by which this is being done is the Department of Education (DOE), for example. The DOE issued a memo in February announcing Federal Work-Study funds could now be used to employ students at government agencies to register voters or serve as poll workers. College-aged students and recent graduates are statistically far more likely to be Democrats.

In addition to the DOJ’s role in the get-Trump lawfare, Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland has declared the department would challenge state laws related to voter ID requirements or safeguards put in place for mail-in ballots and the use of drop boxes.

Meanwhile, even individual states are taking steps to rig the election in Democrats’ favor. Pennsylvania, for example, has partnered with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — which has been described as the “nerve center” of government censorship — to target speech it deems a “threat” ahead of the election. Nevada’s legislature passed a law in 2021 that closely mirrored a temporary pandemic-related measure that extended the mail-in ballot deadline during the 2020 election. Republicans have challenged the new law.

What Did Democrats Do in 2020?

As Democrats ramp up efforts to rig the 2024 election, many of the tactics deployed in 2020 haven’t disappeared. The 2020 election was marred by both maladministration of election laws and flat-out sidestepping of said laws.

Take Wisconsin for example, where Trump lost by roughly 20,000 votes, and where unelected officials expanded the use of ballot drop boxes during the 2020 election. Two years after the election, the state Supreme Court ruled those officials lacked the authority to usurp the legislature when it issued guidance permitting the expansion in direct contradiction to state law. Left-leaning cities like Milwaukee had more than a dozen of these illegal ballot drop boxes. Biden beat Trump by more than 100,000 votes in Milwaukee alone.

Then there was Pennsylvania, where election officials unlawfully permitted the counting of ballots that were either missing a date or were incorrectly marked. “Thousands” of such ballots were received in both the 2020 presidential election as well as the 2022 midterms, according to a ruling from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2020, many of these ballots were counted.

But it wasn’t just overt manipulation of election laws that tilted the outcome of 2020. Big Tech also played a part, largely through its censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story and other stories that damaged Democrats. The New York Post first broke the laptop story weeks before the election, prompting Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to throttle users’ ability to share the story that had been falsely tagged as “disinformation.” Meanwhile, corporate media outlets like NPR flatly refused to cover the story.

The FBI was aware of the laptop’s authenticity in 2019 but still worked with Big Tech to cast a shadow of doubt on its legitimacy. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcast host Joe Rogan that federal authorities warned Facebook to “be on high alert” due to a potential “dump” of “Russian propaganda.” Zuckerberg said Facebook then approached the laptop story as “potentially misinformation, important misinformation” and subdued its reach.

But Zuckerberg’s impact on the 2020 election extends far past his tech platform’s censorship of factual information. Zuckerberg and his wife dumped more than $400 million into the 2020 election — dubbed “Zuckbucks” — that went disproportionately to blue areas of battleground states via left-wing nonprofits under the auspices of so-called “safe election” grants. As my colleague M.D. Kittle reported, “in many cases the grant program was a privately funded get-out-the-vote campaign to drive swing-state Democrat voters.”

At least 28 states — mostly red states but including swing states like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania — have banned such private cash infusions from infiltrating their elections. But even without “Zuckbucks,” other Democrat-aligned groups, like the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, are working to interfere in local election administration. The Center for Tech and Civic Life — which partnered with Zuckerberg in 2020 to upend local election administration — is now working with the Alliance in their efforts.

As my colleague Shawn Fleetwood explained, “existing Zuckbucks bans wouldn’t necessarily prevent local election departments from contracting with the Alliance” to get legal or political consulting or guidance on recruitment and training.

Most of the tactics that were deployed in 2020 — or new versions of them — are still in effect. But now, they’re coupled with blatant lawfare and the deployment of federal agencies to turn out votes for Biden.