BREAKING: Biden aides found another batch of classified documents in a new location.
— Congressman Troy Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) January 11, 2023
Attorney General Merrick Garland must appoint a special counsel.
President Donald Trump
All posts tagged President Donald Trump
All I know is that if there is fraud (cheating) like 2020, whoever runs on the Democrat ticket will win!
Fraudulent ‘President Biden is widely expected to launch his reelection campaign at the start of the next year. While currently, Biden has said that he will take the holidays to consider whether he wants to run for a second term in office, there are many who would not like to see him running again. One Democratic strategist reportedly said that while he “love(s) the guy” he has doubts about whether or not Biden should run again.
Despite his age and low approval ratings, however, Biden, the White House and many in the Democratic Party have maintained that the President is completely certain that he will run for office again. These are some of the reasons that support the theory that Biden would run again.
1. No other Democratic potential candidates
Normally, when the President currently in office is not running for the next presidential election there is chatter as to who could potentially be a candidate. Usually, there are also candidates who start making visits to primary states and testing what the grounds think about them launching a campaign, however, currently there haven’t been any moves about other prospective Democratic candidates.
2. First lady Jill Biden has pointed towards Biden running again
In a conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month, the first lady reportedly said that they are ready for her husband’s reelection campaign. This could be seen as a direct admission of the plans that Biden has for the upcoming presidential election. Many consider Jill Biden to be the first person that people should look at when considering what Biden’s next move will be, which strongly signals that he will be seeking reelection.’https://www.conservativefreepress.com/2022/12/31/proof-biden-running-again-in-2024/?utm_placement=CFPnewsletter
‘‘Taking out the trash’ refers to politicians releasing bad news when it’s least likely to be noticed, such as a Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend.
Both sides of politics do it.
But now, the US mainstream media have started doing it over their suppressing reporting of the Hunter Biden laptop during the 2020 election.
Senator Ted Cruz concludes that there is a confluence of institutions – media, Democrats, bureaucrats, universities and big business – determined to deceive and lie to the people.
This US establishment has learned from Beijing how to marry ideology – communism with either Chinese or American characteristics – with the potential to reap massive wealth from corrupting government to make them all Soros-like, new-style communist billionaires.
Added to that, building on abuses matured under Obama, they have dared to undermine traditional checks and balances so essential to our system.
This is done by weaponising and politicising institutions against their opponents, institutions which in a democracy must be above the political fray. Well described in Ted Cruz’s Justice Corrupted: How the Left Weaponized Our Legal System, this involves misusing the taxation bureaucracy (IRS) and the justice system (DoJ, FBI) against enemies. And don’t think Australia is immune. Just recall what Victorian authorities and the ABC did to Cardinal Pell.
Meanwhile, in the Australian mainstream media echo chamber, hardly a day goes by when there is not some attack on Donald Trump, all the while ignoring damning evidence on the Biden family such as that released through the coming Republican-dominated House Oversight Committee.
Yet not only were Trump’s achievements remarkable, domestic and foreign, he was alone among Western leaders courageous and honest enough to walk out of the ruinous Paris Climate Accord.
The only salvation for the free world can come from the next real Republican president. Fortunately, the choice will be made by the best judges, registered Republican supporters voting as primaries stretch across that great country, albeit at an infuriatingly leisurely pace. As to the Paris Accord, while this is doomed to have zero effect on the climate, a trite application of the follow-the-money principle indicates its sole beneficiaries are, unsurprisingly, the usual assorted billionaires.
These especially include the murderous multi-billionaire gangsters in Beijing who are bleeding the Chinese people dry while profiting from their infamous sideline, the on-demand trade in human organs ripped out of the living bodies of healthy young Muslims, Christians and Falun Gong practitioners.
Meanwhile, they are laughing all the way to the bank as our leaders line up to sign up for net zero, something Alan Jones long ago warned would be a ‘national suicide note’.
This is nothing more than a betrayal of Australia, a veritable treason of the elites.
Just on that, the uninformed (especially those exposed to modern education) were no doubt scared by the recent official ‘State of the Climate Report’, which was, of course, the intention.
While its assertion of increasing temperatures was reported in the mainstream media as unquestionable fact, scientist Jo Nova points out that satellites show that, despite an increase in CO2 (which Peter Ridd points out is greening Australia), there has been no warming in Australia in the last ten years.
But, she says, if you use thermometers in carparks, near runways, or close to incinerators, you’ll find the increase that will ensure the grants keep flowing in. Helped by lowering past readings, perhaps?
To return to the media taking out the trash, we saw a spectacular example over Thanksgiving when CBS suddenly announced they had finally authenticated the infamous Hunter Biden laptop.
But they’re still pretending there’s no evidence to show Joe Biden was the ‘Big Guy’ receiving 10 per cent from the sale of access and influence into Washington.
Two years before, on CBS’s 60 Minutes, presenter Lesley Stahl forbade President Trump from even referring to the laptop because the story ‘could not be authenticated’.
But Stahl curiously never asked for authentication when Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi cast doubt on whether the Holocaust had occurred.
Cruz says that the story about the Hunter Biden laptop and the Biden family’s corrupt dealings with foreign powers, was ‘incredibly inconvenient’ because it broke in the New York Post just before the 2020 election and could have affected the way the establishment had decided the vote should go.
So, he says, the FBI contacted ‘their buddies in big tech’ to ask them to suppress this on the tired old ground that it was ‘Russian disinformation’.
This blatant lie was conveniently supported by an open letter from more than fifty former senior ‘intelligence’ officials .
Acting in concert, Cruz says, Facebook and Twitter then took down not just the story but the New York Post.
Rather than asking Biden about the laptop, the mainstream media preferred to ask him about such important issues as the flavour of the ice cream he would so ostentatiously eat in front of them.
Now, after two years, and with the 2020 and 2022 elections safely out of the way, the mainstream media are changing their story.
For two reasons. First, Republicans have won the House and are already starting investigations to show that Joe Biden lied and was the ‘Big Guy’ raking in his 10 per cent.
Their recent first report has been almost totally ignored by the mainstream media and its Australian echo chamber. But as hearings begin in the New Year, the mainstream want to be able to say: ‘Nothing new here. We’ve already covered that.’
The second reason the mainstream media are changing direction is that the establishment have decided that their ‘useful idiot’, Biden, is in fact no longer useful. This is not only because he is being exposed as the Manchurian candidate this column warned of as long ago as 24 October 2020, but also because he is threatening to stand in 2024.
The ultimate treachery the mainstream media plans is to block Trump or any good Republican candidate from becoming President and making America great again.’https://spectator.com.au/2022/12/taking-out-the-trash/
If the 2020 election had been fair most conservatives would have accepted the fact. HOWEVER, it was not a fair election that put Basement Joe into the WH. Basement Joe is a senile demented elderly man who needs a handler for every occasion. Sad but true! Sleepy belongs in a home for seniors and NOT in the WH.
Anyway, HBO has made a documentary trying to show Sleepy as the man for the time! Let’s just trust there is a change in Congress this November!!!! A change in Congress may save America until 2024 when there just might be a FAIR election and a CONSERVATIVE American will be in the WH!!
- Our bureaucrats, it seems, have no boundaries when it comes to a former president of the United States. What a precedent to set. Let us compare that to how they treat themselves.
- When Hillary Clinton’s emails were found to contain classified information, some marked at the highest levels of classification, the FBI did not raid her home in Chappaqua, New York. They did not overturn her office or closets when classified emails turned up that she had not sent back to the government or when she wiped the data on her personal server with BleachBit, which meant the government would never know the full extent of the documents Clinton kept. Why was she treated differently by the FBI?
- Consider the case of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who lied to the Senate when he declared that the intelligence community had no mass surveillance program collecting data on Americans. Not only did he lie in his public testimony before the committee, he also refused to acknowledge his lie and instead tried to explain it away.
- [Clapper] also refused to acknowledge his lie and instead tried to explain it away. Because Clapper is a protected bureaucrat, he faced no consequences, and even joined CNN as a paid national security contributor, regularly attacking former President Trump. CNN does not note that he perjured himself before Congress — with evidence — when they put him on the air.
- Hayden also stated that the [CIA interrogation] tapes were destroyed, “only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquires.” Again, all evidence points to the contrary, and Hayden is wrong to make these clearly false assertions.
- Hayden’s efforts, however, were just another in a long line of efforts to cover up the actions of unaccountable bureaucrats, who not surprisingly, were never held legally accountable.
- My candid advice to Biden, Hayden, Clapper, and many other media commentators, is to consider your own records — and be careful what you advocate.

Former CIA Director Mike Hayden, shortly after the FBI raided the home of former President Donald J. Trump, responded to a tweet by Michael Beschloss in a way that, apart from disregarding any presumption of innocence, seemingly endorsed the idea that Trump was a spy who, for allegedly having taken classified documents, should be executed by the government, as the Rosenbergs were in 1953 for having passed US nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. “Sounds about right,” Hayden wrote over of photograph of the Rosenbergs on Twitter.
Full disclosure There is a bit of history between Hayden and me. I opposed his nomination to be CIA director, by saying at the time, “Bottom line: I do believe he’s the wrong person, the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Hayden’s comment reflects what many fear: that there is a real double standard for certain Americans versus protected bureaucrats, politicians, and those favored by a mainstream media that has been accused of behaving like an arm of the Democratic Party (here, here and here). When President Joe Biden stood in Philadelphia before a blood-red wall flanked by U.S. Marines whom the Commander-in-Chief used as political props, he did not condemn Hayden’s suggestion to execute the former president; instead, he attacked everyday Americans with whose politics he disagrees.
When local Democrat official Robert Telles was arrested in the alleged murder of a Las Vegas reporter who investigated him for having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, you would have been hard pressed to know he was a Democrat. The media simply left that fact out of the story or buried in later paragraphs. Similarly, there was not much coverage of the Democrat political operative who hired a hit man to kill a political opponent. Similarly, when a North Dakota teen was run over and killed, the mainstream media ignored the suspect’s claiming that he did it after a political disagreement with the teen, whom he labeled a “Republican extremist.”
President Biden, where is your condemnation of this Democrat political violence? How about the FBI agents who raided the home of former president Trump and reportedly rummaged through the former first lady’s clothes closets and took Trump’s passports? Was this not politically excessive, President Biden?
When Hillary Clinton’s emails were found to contain classified information, some marked at the highest levels of classification, the FBI did not raid her home in Chappaqua, New York. They did not overturn her office or closets when classified emails turned up that she had not sent back to the government or when she wiped the data on her personal server with BleachBit, which meant the government would never know the full extent of the documents Clinton kept. Why was she treated differently by the FBI?
Our bureaucrats, it seems, have no boundaries when it comes to a former president of the United States. What a precedent to set. Let us compare that to how they treat themselves.
As a former House Intelligence Committee chair and U.S. ambassador, I have long dealt with our intelligence and law enforcement communities and can cite chapter and verse how these bureaucrats have protected themselves. Consider the case of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who lied to the Senate when he declared that the intelligence community had no mass surveillance program collecting data on Americans. Not only did he lie in his public testimony before the committee, he also refused to acknowledge his lie and instead tried to explain it away. Because Clapper is a protected bureaucrat, he faced no consequences, and even joined CNN as a paid national security contributor, regularly attacking former President Trump. CNN does not note that he perjured himself before Congress — with evidence — when they put him on the air.
The case that is perhaps most illustrative of the double standard was the 2005 destruction by CIA of 92 video tapes, comprising hundreds of hours of material, on the agency’s enhanced interrogation program.
For those who do not remember the enhanced interrogation program, it was a CIA program that attempted to gain valuable information, intelligence from captured al-Qaeda members about the plans, intentions, and capabilities of the organization.
The enhanced interrogation program was extremely controversial when it, along with the existence of secret prisons, was leaked to the media, but Jose Rodriguez, the director of operations for the CIA at the time, staunchly defended it. The CIA claims that it provided valuable insights into al-Qaeda, including information that eventually led to the successful raid that resulted in the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Others have concluded the program was tantamount to torture, including Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who conducted a review, and the European Court on Human Rights.
As one the members of the “Gang of Eight” top congressional leaders briefed on the most sensitive intelligence, we were briefed on the “enhanced techniques” in 2004. It was difficult to imagine how they would be used or what the impact would be on a prisoner. We were told that we would be briefed on what techniques would be used on what individuals before they would be used again. We were never presented with the challenge of a review during my tenure.
As awareness of the program became public, Congress tried to get a better understanding of how it worked and how effective it was and just how far it had gone. Viewing those tapes would have been extremely helpful in making oversight determinations, but Rodriguez had ordered them destroyed.
How does that happen? When Congresswoman Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee at the time, first learned of the tapes in2003, she warned the CIA in writing not to destroy them. White House Counsel Harriet Miers also urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes. Additionally, in May of 2005, Senator Jay Rockefeller requested documents about interrogation on behalf of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In addition, lawyers for 9/11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui requested the videos for the defense of their client, and Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema requested information on the interrogation program for court proceedings involving another detainee.
Despite congressional pressure, directives from White House lawyers, and federal legal proceedings, Rodriguez made the call to destroy the tapes in a secret cable written by Gina Haspel, who would go on to become CIA director under President Trump.
No one was ever charged for destroying the tapes. As far as I know, no homes or offices were ever raided to uncover evidence. But because these unaccountable bureaucrats took this action, the American people, Congress, and the courts will never know what really happened during this controversial period of American history.
What of Michael Hayden’s role in all of this? After The New York Times advised the Bush White House that it would be running a story on the destruction of the tapes, Hayden wrote to the CIA staff that congressional leaders had been briefed on the existence of the tapes and their planned destruction. Wrong. I had not been briefed on the existence or destruction of the tapes when I became chairman in 2004 and Jane Harman had earlier objected to the tape destruction in 2003.
Hayden also stated that the tapes were destroyed, “only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquires.” Again, all evidence points to the contrary, and Hayden is wrong to make these clearly false assertions.
Hayden’s efforts appear to be just another in a long line of efforts to cover up the actions of unaccountable bureaucrats, who not surprisingly, were never held legally accountable.
My candid advice to Biden, Hayden, Clapper, and many other media commentators, is to consider your own records — and be careful what you advocate.’https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18965/washington-double-legal-standards
Will there ever be another honest Presidential election in the USA? The last one was stolen and anyone that says it wasn’t is either “stupid” or dead! While the present guy sitting in the Oval Office stumbles physically and mentally the former President is as flexible as a much younger man!
The following is adapted from a speech delivered on September 16, 2022, in Washington, D.C., at Hillsdale College’s Constitution Day Celebration.
‘The seal of the U.S. Department of Justice reads, “Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur”—“Who prosecutes for Lady Justice.” Depictions of Lady Justice are as familiar as they are instructive: she stands blindfolded while holding the scales of justice, representing her unyielding devotion to equal justice under the law. Contrary to this ideal, the DOJ today appears to be increasingly motivated by partisanship. Compounding the problem, it has access to the powers of the modern surveillance state. As someone passionate about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, I believe there is no higher priority than addressing this danger.
The tragic events of 9/11 marked a turning point in our nation’s recent civil rights history. First the terrorists attacked us—and then, in the name of national security, we began to attack ourselves. It has become almost cliché to say that we live in a surveillance state, but we do. Ever since Congress, on a fully bipartisan basis, enacted the Patriot Act six weeks after the attacks on 9/11, the ever-present eye of the government has been searching for new and creative ways to spy on American citizens. The government has the technology to monitor all of our electronic devices, listen to our phone calls, and read our emails and text messages—all under the auspices of national security.
This special law designed for an emergency has become a permanent addition to the government’s investigatory toolbox. The unfortunate reality is that the bulk of the actions taken by law enforcement under the Patriot Act have almost nothing to do with combating terrorism. Once-rare applications for surveillance warrants to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have multiplied many times in relative peacetime. Most of the spying conducted under the Patriot Act is for run-of-the-mill crimes that we’ve long expected law enforcement to address without special surveillance authority.
Now, it is bad enough to have a politically-neutral surveillance state controlled by the national security crowd and their DOJ cousins. But take that panopticon and put it in the hands of an executive branch willing to weaponize its reams of information against its perceived political enemies, and we’ve got a frightening problem on our hands.
Laws such as the Patriot Act were designed to fight the unique problem of terrorism. But they quickly morphed into a mechanism by which the government keeps constant tabs on law-abiding Americans and threatens to disrupt their lives if they dare act contrary to those in power. And it’s within this world of omnipotent oversight and control that the U.S. Department of Justice now operates. They have all the tools of the surveillance state at their disposal, and the only thing standing in their way is an independent judiciary willing to enforce our constitutional rights. But we all saw how easy it is to spy on Americans—with virtually no judicial oversight—from the disgraceful episodes of broad surveillance applications, on flimsy and sometimes falsified pretexts, against citizens such as Carter Page.
***
Let me discuss three recent examples that illustrate the threats we face from a politicized DOJ: the DOJ raid on Project Veritas journalists, the DOJ raid on Mar-a-Lago, and the DOJ’s efforts to undermine election integrity and chill free speech.
Project Veritas Raid
In July 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo forbidding federal prosecutors from seizing journalists’ records. He did this with much fanfare, hauteur, and virtue signaling. But even as Mr. Garland was decrying the seizure of journalists’ records as a “wrong” his department would “not let . . . happen,” the DOJ was in the midst of a year-long campaign of spying on Project Veritas—a campaign that involved no fewer than 19 clandestine subpoenas, orders, and warrants obtained from nine magistrate judges. The secrecy of this spying campaign was maintained through the use of wide-ranging gag orders, including at least two that were obtained without notice to the judge overseeing the Project Veritas case. Through this spying campaign, we now know that the DOJ obtained approximately 200,000 Project Veritas emails from Microsoft and countless text messages (and heaven knows what else) from Apple, Google, Uber, and other still unknown companies.
Only six months after Mr. Garland’s memo was issued, the DOJ raided the homes of three Project Veritas journalists, seizing 47 electronic devices. And how did the world learn about this? Conveniently, someone leaked information about the raids to The New York Times—which Project Veritas happens to be suing. Indeed, The New York Times called Project Veritas for comment as the raids were still in progress.
What was the pretext for the raids? In the fall of 2020, confidential sources had approached Project Veritas journalists with a diary and other materials supposedly belonging to Ashley Biden, the President’s daughter. The sources said that the materials had been in their possession prior to contacting Project Veritas. The Project Veritas journalists proceeded to investigate whether the materials were authentic and whether the allegations they contained against Joe Biden were true. Ultimately, Project Veritas decided it could not sufficiently verify the allegations and that it would not publish the diary’s contents. It then turned the items over to local law enforcement in Florida.
The DOJ claims that Ashley Biden’s belongings were stolen. Project Veritas was told they weren’t, but even this is legally irrelevant. In the 2001 case Bartnicki v. Vopper, the U.S. Supreme Court held unequivocally that as long as journalists did not commit an alleged theft themselves, they were entitled to receive, investigate, and publish (or not publish) supposedly stolen materials. In the more recent case DNC v. Russian Federation, a federal court made it clear that the reporter could even ask for the stolen materials. This is not a crime—it’s called journalism.
Compare the DOJ’s treatment of Project Veritas to the DOJ’s inaction earlier this year when a Politico reporter was given a U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. The Politico reporter behaved precisely with this purloined document as the Project Veritas reporters had behaved with the diary, except that the Politico reporter did decide to publish the draft opinion. The different reactions on the part of the DOJ seemed to hinge entirely on whose ox was being gored.
But to repeat, the Garland Justice Department was rifling through the emails and phone messages of Project Veritas journalists before Project Veritas even knew of Ashley Biden’s diary. These documents contain donor information, source communications—including communications from whistleblowers within the federal government—and attorney-client communications. In its actions, the DOJ was not only ignoring court decisions and its own policies, it was violating the Privacy Protection Act, the common law Reporter’s Privilege, and the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution.
The Project Veritas matter is ongoing. Thanks to the DOJ’s leaks to The New York Times, which themselves violate federal law, Judge Analisa Torres overruled the DOJ’s objections and ordered the appointment of a special master to review the seized materials for various privileges. It’s a hollow victory, because Project Veritas has to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege, so to speak, of being able to protect its own privileged documents.
Mar-a-Lago Raid
Although I have represented and continue to represent President Trump in several matters, I do not represent him on the matter of the DOJ’s raid on his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. But that raid is significant and worth some attention.
Consider first the raid’s timing. President Biden’s approval ratings have been abysmal, and it is a mid-term election year. Bloomberg reports that the DOJ will likely delay “charging” Trump with anything arising from the raid on his home until after the mid-terms. The effect of this is to create a cloud of perceived guilt running up to November 8, and use that as a political tool to smear pro-Trump voters and candidates. The DOJ hides behind its longstanding policy of not taking politically portentous actions close to an election—but how could the raid itself be construed as anything but such a portentous action?
President Trump and his lawyers were engaged in a cooperative dialogue with both the DOJ and National Archives representatives on the issue of storing and archiving confidential documents. He went as far as to invite the DOJ to survey the documents he had on his property, and the DOJ seemed to have expressed little urgency in pursuing the matter.
This latest episode of G-men gone wild is not all that different from the FBI strategy before and after Trump’s election in 2016, when the FBI was weaponized to investigate claims of Russian collusion that ultimately proved to have been made up by Democrat operatives. But more importantly, the raid raises serious constitutional objections.
The Fourth Amendment provides that the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The American Founders were intensely concerned about government intrusion. Breaking into the homes of political opponents and depriving them of their possessions was common practice under the rule of the British king in colonial America. The use of general warrants and writs of assistance by the Crown was the ultimate interference with the colonists’ right to political and personal autonomy. Such invasions were so pervasive, and so universally despised, that the Founders saw fit to ensure that the Constitution expressly forbids such practices.
For over 180 years after the Founding, the Supreme Court applied the Fourth Amendment’s protections largely to places and things. Unsurprisingly, this meant that dwellings were given a heightened sense of protection against government intrusion. The Supreme Court has reiterated, in the 1980 case Payton v. New York, that “the physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”
In addition to where and what receives Fourth Amendment protection is the question of how the government can conduct searches and seizures without offending the Constitution. Searches are only permitted if they are “reasonable,” and a search is generally considered “reasonable” only when the government first obtains a properly issued warrant. “Properly issued” means the warrant must describe with specificity the places to be searched and the things to be seized, must be supported by probable cause, and must be issued by a “neutral and detached magistrate.” Taken together, this is colloquially known as the “warrant requirement”—and it is central to any honest analysis of the Mar-a-Lago raid.
At its core, the problem with the FBI’s search of President Trump’s home is its inconsistency with the letter and the spirit of the Fourth Amendment. The shroud of secrecy surrounding the probable-cause affidavit used by the FBI to obtain the warrant prevents the public from judging whether the government had a valid reason for this unprecedented search. Even more, the list of places to be searched and things to be seized contained in the warrant application comprised a blanket sweep of the former president’s entire private residence and offices, targeting “any evidence” supporting a potential violation of a handful of federal statutes that are the usual suspects when it comes to politicized prosecutions.
While this alone doesn’t make the warrant defective, the Justice Department’s “just trust us” approach to support the raid makes it nearly impossible to determine the legitimacy of the government’s unprecedented actions. This leaves us no choice but to speculate. And based on the information publicly available, the DOJ’s actions have all the trappings and appearances of a vindictive and politically-motivated fishing expedition.
As in the Project Veritas case, the judge in the Mar-a-Lago case has issued an order appointing a special master. In doing so, the judge pointedly observed that some of the resultant delay the government complains of is caused by the government’s cutting corners, suggesting implicitly that the government abused the warrant process.
Election Integrity and Free Speech
As has been widely reported, the DOJ is currently issuing subpoenas to individuals who have dared to question the 2020 election results. This is occurring against the backdrop of President Biden’s vendetta against what he calls “ultra MAGA Republicans.” This is the type of behavior you’d expect in a third-world dictatorship.
Included in the DOJ’s crosshairs are those who participated in the political process as alternate electors; those in Congress who voted against certifying the election results; those who organized or peacefully attended a permitted rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, even if they had nothing to do with the activities at the Capitol on that day; and those who have raised funds from donors with a promise to investigate and challenge election fraud.
All of these activities have long historical precedents in our country and are protected by the First Amendment. Indeed, it was Democrats who challenged the presidential election results in 2000, 2004, and 2016. Let’s review the evidence.
In 2000, 15 House Democrats objected to counting Florida’s electoral votes. Several members of Congress called the 2000 election “fraudulent,” and Texas Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson vowed that there would be “no peace” because of the allegedly stolen election.
In 2004, Democrats in Congress forced a vote to recess the joint session of Congress counting electoral votes in order to debate perceived election irregularities in Ohio. Thirty-one House Democrats voted to reject Ohio’s electoral votes and were applauded for doing so by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, among others.
In 2016, several Democrats objected to the certification of Trump electors based on “overwhelming evidence of Russian interference” in the election. Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin objected to ten of Florida’s electors based on a Florida statute that prohibits state legislators from being electors. Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee proclaimed, “If in that voting, you have glaring matters that speak to the failure of the electoral system, then it should be challenged.”
No DOJ action was taken in any of these previous years. What has changed, if not the politicization of the Justice Department?
Elections are the engine of our republic. They ensure the peaceful transfer of power and are the primary method for the people to influence their government. And our Constitution’s elections clause—Article I, Section 4, Clause 1—gives states the primary duty of regulating the time, places, and manner of elections for federal office. The DOJ’s role is very limited in this regard. It has the power to administer the Voting Rights Act, a power that was once necessary to push back on Jim Crow laws. But the era of Jim Crow is long gone, and it shouldn’t be up to a politicized DOJ to dictate what election integrity looks like.
The 2020 election was rampant with reports of irregularities. Some of these reports were more accurate than others. But states were right to take appropriate steps to increase the security of their elections in the wake of such reports. And yet, from its first days, the Biden administration has been bent on waging an intimidation campaign against states attempting to bolster election integrity.
Consider Georgia. The midnight ballot dump that pushed Biden ahead of Trump had all the appearances of manipulative ballot stuffing. That was followed by days of uncertainty about who won. Reports soon surfaced of massive ballot harvesting—illegal in Georgia—as well as deeply concerning evidence that Mark Zuckerberg-funded nonprofits had placed personnel in election operations in blue counties with the effect of decreasing signature-matching efforts.
Given the backdrop in which the 2020 election took place—with new and expansive vote-by-mail procedures—it’s not surprising that alarms went off and that many citizens questioned the final vote tally. So rather than allow this scenario to repeat itself in future elections, Georgia’s legislature took action, enacting a package of election-reform legislation designed to bolster ballot security.
President Biden denounced these reforms—which, as many commentators noted, made voting easier than in Biden’s home state of Delaware—as “Jim Crow 2.0.” The DOJ sued Georgia to block the new law and issued two new guidance documents intended to put states including Georgia on notice of potential violations of federal election laws. It has used similar tactics in Arizona and Texas.
It is not just political activists who are subject to DOJ intimidation. Attorney General Garland recently issued a guidance document prohibiting DOJ employees from speaking directly to members of Congress. This was plainly in response to at least 14 FBI whistleblowers reaching out to members of Congress—including Ohio Representative Jim Jordan and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley—about misconduct within the DOJ. Garland’s action was highly improper, but it pales in comparison to the intimidation of concerned parents at local school board meetings.
On October 4, 2021, Garland issued a memorandum directing the FBI to address “threats” at local school board meetings. This was in response to a request from the National School Boards Association that the DOJ leverage the Patriot Act and other counterterrorism tools to investigate moms and dads who were voicing their displeasure with school policies at local school board meetings.
Despite Garland’s sworn testimony denying the use of counterterrorism tools to investigate concerned parents, whistleblower evidence tells a different story.
On October 20, 2021, Carlton Peeples, the Deputy Assistant Director for the FBI’s Criminal Investigation Division, sent an email directing FBI personnel to use the tag “EDUOFFICIALS” for all school board-related investigations. Whistleblowers say that the FBI opened investigations into parents in every region of the country. These included an investigation of a “right-wing mom” based on her participation in a “Moms for Liberty” group and personal ownership of a gun. Another investigation was opened when a dad was deemed to “fit the profile of an insurrectionist” after complaining about school mask mandates.
It is time to wake up to the danger.
On November 11, 1762, King George’s men had a warrant when they stormed and raided the home of pamphleteer John Entick. They broke open locked doors, boxes, chests, and drawers and seized his private papers and books—all because the Crown suspected Entick of fomenting political opposition against the King. If the FBI’s raid on Project Veritas journalists’ homes or President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago teaches us anything, it’s that the political oppression of the eighteenth century remains a threat today. But today, in addition to brute force, our government has the power of the modern surveillance state.
As a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, I would be remiss in speaking about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights without quoting Thomas Jefferson, who wrote: “the most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.” We must find a way to return our Department of Justice to that central principle of American constitutionalism, as it carries out its duties in the name of Lady Liberty. ‘https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-politicization-of-the-department-of-justice/?_hsmi=227123272&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–T2iK8jNJVoO9LMAM24A5LKAN7A7w5RLXohQbTPOcsH7MfRVinIiPlhRUSyxZpe8zqTgwbzYqqGCVnhDQ4hZtslwo3gg
The LEFT have taken over the West via the ballot box. Elections are either fraudulent like 2020 was or like it is here in Australia where we have a Federal government that received only 32 percent of the vote!