Free Republic

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton got a chilly reception at the nation’s highest court this month, when his office argued against Texas ranchers who were seeking compensation from the state over a Fifth Amendment takings clause issue. The Institute for Justice (IJ), a nonprofit public interest law firm, represented rancher Richie DeVillier in the litigation, who sued after his ranch was repeatedly flooded by a new median wall built by Texas officials along a highway just to the south of his property, which ended up functioning like a dam during hurricanes and other periods of heavy rain. The Fifth Amendment...

Republican strategist Karl Rove urged Democrats to “go hard” at former President Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, calling the former president’s pledge to free imprisoned rioters a “critical mistake.” “If they were smart, they’d take the January 6 and go hard at it. And they would say, ‘He wants to pardon these people who attacked our Capitol,'” Rove said told MSNBC’s Ari Melber. “One of the critical mistakes made in this campaign is that Donald Trump has now said ‘I’m going to pardon those people because they’re hostages,'” Rove said in the interview, which...

Special counsel Jack Smith has reached agreements with at least two fake GOP electors to provide them limited immunity in exchange for testifying before a grand jury investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, CNN reported Friday. People familiar with the situation told the outlet that federal prosecutors have been trying to quickly confirm evidence on the record recently and have refused to grant extensions to subpoenas for testimony for some witnesses. They also said Smith’s office was prepared to compel testimony from witnesses who were given immunity but indicated they would refuse to answer questions under their Fifth...

‘Life, Liberty & Levin’ host Mark Levin says nondisclosure agreements are not ‘hush money,’ and says Democrats are setting a ‘dangerous precedent.’

Two new lawsuits over the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) controversial pistol brace rule were filed yesterday, with over half the states and the country joining in suits challenging the ATF’s rule. Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, and the state of Texas teamed up to sue the ATF. over what they see as an unconstitutional rule that violated the American Procedures Act (APA). The lawsuit highlights that both pistols and short-barreled rifles (SBR) are protected arms. It points out that SBRs are also no more dangerous than any other firearm and that the length doesn’t...

This week Hunter Biden broke from the Democrat Party line asserting that his laptop was Russian disinformation and acknowledged that the infamous computer device was, indeed, his. Now he wants justice for "the invasion of my privacy leading to my involuntary disclosure of incriminating evidence against myself. This violates my Fifth Amendment rights." Biden's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, demanded that "computer repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac must be prosecuted and the evidence of our client's criminal activities be thrown out under the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' doctrine. Hunter Biden never gave consent to the examination of his laptop....

Justice Department lawyers asked Judge Aileen Cannon to force Trump to confirm documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in a sworn affidavit. The Justice Department asked Judge Cannon to compel Trump to affirm or dispute the records seized under penalty of perjury in a 20-page unsealed filing on Monday dated November 8. "The Special Master has received an affidavit of accuracy from the government. Since the Court appointed the Special Master to ensure fairness, integrity, and even-handedness in the review process […], Plaintiff should be required to verify or correct the property inventory just as the government has done,” the Justice Department’s...

The three jurors who voted against the death penalty for Parkland killer Nikolas Cruz did so based on “mitigating circumstances” from Cruz’s life. They made the wrong call, but their rationale is superior to the reason many will agree with the sentence: a blanket opposition to the death penalty. Public support for capital punishment has slid over the last 30 years, remaining a majority opinion but barely so. Those who oppose death as a punishment often have kind, even noble intentions. Yet their well-meaning beliefs do not translate into justice or the common good. The death penalty is consistent with...

(Text for the vide from this link: https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/2022/08/05/police-harass-innocent-citizens-on-their-porch-lawsuit-filed-today/ ) Police Harass Innocent Citizens on Their Porch – Lawsuit Filed Today Posted on August 5, 2022 What you’re about to see here is outrageous body cam footage that has never before been seen by anyone, other than law enforcement. It shows what happened to my clients, Jason Tartt, the property owner and landlord, as well as Donnie and Ventriss Hairston, his innocent and mistreated tenants, on August 7, 2020, when they were subjected to civil rights violations by two deputies with the McDowell County Sheriff’s Office, Dalton Martin and Jordan Horn....

UPDATE: (Aug. 12, 2022, 3:13 p.m. ET): NBC News on Friday obtained a copy of the warrant used in the FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, as well as the related property receipt. The FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents in the search, according to the documents. This week, in addition to having his private residence searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, former President Donald Trump was deposed in an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office. There he apparently didn’t say much other than that he was asserting his Fifth Amendment...

A former federal prosecutor triggered bipartisan backlash on Wednesday for suggesting that invoking Fifth Amendment rights implies guilt. What is the background? On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump invoked his constitutional rights against self-incrimination, declining to answer questions at a deposition for New York Attorney General Letitia James (D). Trump announced he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights after arriving to the deposition. The statement explained: I once asked, "If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?" Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become...

Former President Trump said Wednesday that he refused to answer any questions from New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) in the civil investigation over his business. Why it matters: The deposition comes as Trump has faced a new level of legal scrutiny and just days after the FBI executed a search warrant at the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in an unrelated investigation. What he's saying: "Under the advice of my counsel, ... I declined to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States Constitution," Trump said in a post on his...

Trump just posted on Truth that he took the 5th

The federal government prosecuted Merle Denezpi twice for the same crime. It also punished him twice: the first time with 140 days in a federal detention center, the second time with a prison sentence more than 70 times as long.Although that may seem like an obvious violation of the Fifth Amendment's ban on double jeopardy, the Supreme Court last week ruled that it wasn't. As the six justices in the majority saw it, that puzzling conclusion was the logical result of the Court's counterintuitive precedents on this subject. The Fifth Amendment says no person shall "be subject for the same...

Special Counsel John Durham continues to drop bombshells in filings in the prosecution of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. Just last week, Durham defeated an effort by Sussmann to dismiss the charges. He is now moving to give immunity to a key witness while revealing that the claims made by the Clinton campaign were viewed by the CIA as “not technically plausible” and “user created.” He also revealed that at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to cooperate in fear that they might incriminate themselves in criminal conduct. Finally, Durham...

'Russia collusion' investigation continues to rock Washington with 'bombshells'. Special Counsel John Durham's investigation into the origins of the "Russia collusion" conspiracy theory that Democrats projected on the 2016 Trump campaign – for years – continues to be rocked by bombshells. Among the latest, according to constitutional expert and popular commentator Jonathan Turley, is that so far "at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment," refusing to cooperate "in fear that they might incriminate themselves."

Five associates of Hillary Clinton and her campaign are invoking their Fifth Amendment rights and refusing to cooperate with Special Counsel John H. Durham, according a filing in federal court revealed later Friday in Washington, DC. The revelation emerged in a motion filed by Durham to oppose the efforts of defendant Michael Sussmann and the Clinton campaign to withhold some documents from evidence by asserting attorney-client privilege. Sussmann is charged with lying to the FBI in 2016 when he informed the FBI about a fraudulent link between then-candidate Donald Trump and the Russian government via Alfa Bank. Sussmann allegedly presented...

Roger Stone called Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, a "buffoon" for equating a Fifth Amendment plea to a confirmation of guilt.Thompson told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow several weeks ago that if "you want to assert the Fifth Amendment in terms of self-prosecution, it says that you have something to hide."When a person asks to plead the Fifth, refusing to answer questions to avoid self-incrimination, that "in some instances, that says you are part and parcel guilty to what occurred," Thompson also claimed."That shows you how ignorant this buffoon is,"...

It’s rare when lawyers — as opposed to their clients — take the Fifth Amendment. But Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who reportedly tried to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election, is now claiming the privilege against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He has just been joined in that posture by one of Trump’s main outside legal advisers, John Eastman. Their fear of incrimination could well be justified: There can be serious state and federal criminal consequences for trying to fraudulently interfere with an election....