Free Republic

Lawyers for Donald Trump on Thursday told the U.S. Supreme Court that the former president's criminal trial on charges of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss should be delayed because the justices will hear a separate case in the coming months that could affect two of the counts against him.

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s rush to try Donald Trump violates Justice Department rules and presents tricky issues for the Supreme Court on the immunity issue.

Michael Horowitz, the (Justice Department inspector general) who wrote the Dec. 9, 2019, Review of Four FISA Applications, recently reaffirmed his earlier statements that Trump fired two inspectors general “for doing their jobs” and called Trump’s presidency “a challenging time … particularly in the last year” during a Feb. 10 ( online discussion) hosted by Harvard Law School and moderated by Jack Goldsmith.[snip]Neither man acknowledged Trump’s early actions in shutting down travel from China on Jan. 31, 2020, nor did Horowitz exhibit any signs of disagreement with Goldsmith and Woodward, although he was clearly more careful with his wording.At one...

Right now all of us have decisions to make about how much freedom is too much freedom. On the national lockdown loosening in some states and stubbornly persisting in others, Americans are very much of two minds. For some, including most of the media, it is an inconvenience, but a righteous one that saves lives. For others, often with smaller megaphones, it is a powerfully destructive force economically and socially. But we should be able to agree that, whether justified or not, the lockdown has been a massive infringement on Americans’ basic rights. At least since women received the right...

Jonathan Turley, a liberal constitutional scholar at George Washington University, wrote Saturday that some Democrats were using the coronavirus pandemic to demand China-style restrictions on free speech. In the op-ed, published in The Hill, Turley criticized “the politicians and academics who have called for the censorship of social media and the internet,” including Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Hillary Clinton, and others: The only thing spreading faster than the coronavirus has been censorship and the loud calls for greater restrictions on free speech. The Atlantic published an article last week by Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona...

COVID-19 has emboldened American tech platforms to emerge from their defensive crouch. Before the pandemic, they were targets of public outrage over life under their dominion. Today, the platforms are proudly collaborating with one another, and following government guidance, to censor harmful information related to the coronavirus.

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., falsely labeled Attorney General William Barr a “liar.” Our colleague and former Supreme Court litigator Paul Larkin debunked that baseless epithet, as did Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith and Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal. Now House Democrats are threatening to hold Barr in contempt of Congress because he hasn’t turned over the entire Mueller report, even though he released 92 percent of the entire report to the public and more than 98 percent to Congress. What’s the 2 percent not available to congressional leaders? Grand jury information governed by Federal...

Editor’s Note: Lawfare’s Board of Directors has published a post regarding this article and our editorial standards here. In the United States, the latest Iranian protests have sparked a kind of debate in which we argue fervently about whether the U.S. should tweet its support or just shut up. At the risk of making the Trump administration look moderate, I think we can choose between more than waving our hands and sitting on them. Remember, when the Iranian regime decided it didn’t like U.S. activities in Iraq, it found considerably more direct ways to express its disapproval. It just started...

They were loyal conservatives, and Bush appointees. They fought a quiet battle to rein in the president's power in the war on terror. And they paid a price for it. A NEWSWEEK investigation. Feb. 6, 2006 issue - James Comey, a lanky, 6-foot-8 former prosecutor who looks a little like Jimmy Stewart, resigned as deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. The press and public hardly noticed. Comey's farewell speech, delivered in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, contained all the predictable, if heartfelt, appreciations. But mixed in among the platitudes was an unusual passage. Comey thanked "people...