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If you’ve been following the Biden saga, the indictment has some neon-flashing problems for the president. All Our Opinion in Your Inbox NR Daily is delivered right to you every afternoon. No charge. There are several astonishing things about the 56-page grand-jury indictment filed with nine counts against the president’s son, Hunter Biden, by federal prosecutor David Weiss. The first is that it’s dizzying. The indictment is scathing in describing the younger Biden’s unsavory lifestyle, his deep dishonesty, and his willful decision to evade tax liabilities on millions of dollars in income and instead spend the money on escorts, drugs,...

Well, then it must be true ... apparently, we are told, Trump has no defense. He should hang it up. Accept over 100+ years in prison-time, and get it over with. Unbelievable. I wonder what Rush would say about such "insight" and "wisdom."https://t.co/O5RKeFivbR— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) June 15, 2023https://www.mediaite.com/trump/andy-mccarthy-shoots-down-trumps-top-argument-against-indictment-i-dont-think-he-has-a-defense/

Michael Bekesha, the ‘Clinton sock drawer’ lawyer, misses the distinction between agency records and presidential records. I’ve already extensively addressed why the Presidential Records Act (PRA) is not a viable defense against charges that President Trump unlawfully and willfully retained national-defense information under Section 793(e) of the federal criminal code (which, in hope of avoiding Senator Lindsey Graham’s conniptions, I’ll refrain from calling the Espionage Act). So I’ll state the main point as succinctly as I can: Agency records are not presidential records. Trump’s case is about agency records regarding the national defense — mainly, classified intelligence reporting generated by...

On Friday’s broadcast of Fox News Radio’s “Guy Benson Show,” author, National Review Contributing Editor, Fox News Contributor, and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy stated that while former President Donald Trump does have ample reason to say he’s been singled out, the indictment against him is “a devastating document. If they can prove half of it, he’s toast.” And he believes more than half of what’s in the indictment can be proven. McCarthy stated, [relevant remarks begin around 35:35] “It’s a devastating document. If they can prove half of it, he’s toast. And I sense that they can probably...

I want to get into what's happening to Donald Trump here folks, I also want to make something clear. That the story on Mark Meadows trying to cut a deal against Trump is a flat out lie. It is a flat out lie. So you are getting a lot of these leaks. Now, people are forced to testify under penalty of inprisonment and things of that sort, but in terms of him and his lawyers trying to cut a deal with the Special Counsel, that's a lie. And that's been reported and so the reporting is a lie. And I...

As Ronald Reagan might say — there they go again. The “they” this time around is the Never Trump chorus insisting that not only can’t former President Donald Trump win the 2024 election, but he shouldn’t even be trying. Whether it’s Bush-cheerleader Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, or, in the same place, Ruth R. Wisse, a professor emerita at Harvard University, or the esteemed Andrew C. McCarthy over at National Review, or more scattered over the political landscape, the Trump naysayers are out in force, predicting, of course, that the former president’s reelection bid is dead in the...

Let’s say you lied on a required federal firearms form to conceal your use of illegal drugs so you could buy a .38 caliber handgun, then you irresponsibly lost that gun across the street from a school, and then the government found video evidence of you waving that gun around while cavorting with a prostitute. If you had done all those things within a few days in 2018, do you suppose that by five years later, the government would have taken exactly zero action against you? No arrest. No indictment. No prosecution. In fact, do you think that, if it...

Andrew McCarthy notes the same thing everyone else is noticing, the absence of a violation of a criminal statute. {Direct Rumble Link}For the first time in United States history a former president has been accused of a crime and indicted, yet the person making the accusation and bringing the charge doesn’t say what crime has been committed. What criminal statute has been violated? Even the leftist media are apoplectic at the weakness of the indictment. WATCH:.

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

On Tuesday’s Mark Levin Show, all top government officials take documents home with them when leaving office, it just happens. That is why it is ridiculous to take Bill Barr and legal analysts and others in the press at face value who are out to get Trump and want him thrown in jail for this. Barack Obama, Bush, Cheney, Gore, and Hillary are uncharacteristically quiet about Biden’s current classified document scandal because they know they have documents too. The National Archives has been politicized to the point of it being a joke, and Merrick Garland and his team of Castro-like...

"The View" co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin declared the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center was a "huge win" for Donald Trump and said it "kills" the Mar-a-Lago case. "Absolutely no one's going to like this take, but I'm going to go there anyway," Farah Griffin, a former Trump administration aide, began. "I want to be clear the facts are different then the Trump case, however I think this is a huge win for Trump. Because if you're Merrick Garland, who is already extremely cautious and doesn't want to break the longstanding precedent of not indicting a president,...

It’s with regret and some trepidation that I take issue on a legal matter with someone whom I like and respect as much as I do Andy McCarthy, the prominent legal affairs commentator and contributor to many publications, websites, and television programs. But like many other intelligent and otherwise convivial people I know, he’s unfortunately incapable of speaking or writing rationally about Donald Trump. McCarthy has a particularly baneful influence on the discussion of Trump-related issues because he naturally brings to it the gravitas of his legal expertise and apparently authoritative articulation. But this is the same McCarthy who wrote...

Why is the White House leaking information to the Washington Post? Why hasn’t Garland recused himself? Wait—isn’t Trump being indicted for his Federal tax returns? Or was it the emoluments clause? No, no—January 6th. Guess what folks, it’s all a scam and a cover up.

I had a column on Monday analyzing Judge Aileen Cannon’s order, earlier in the day, granting former president Trump’s petition for a special master to review materials the government seized from Mar-a-Lago last month pursuant to a search warrant. That analysis focuses on what I believe is the main issue raised by Judge Cannon’s decision: the possibility that Trump, as a former president, retains not only some measure of executive privilege but also the authority to invoke that privilege against the executive branch of the incumbent administration. In this post, I want to focus on a couple of other aspects...

Former president Trump is likely to be charged with obstruction of justice and causing false statements to be made to investigators. [cut] Trump apologists would surely counter that a not-so-average person named Hillary Clinton was not indicted for recklessly mishandling classified information, actually destroying thousands of government records, and making misleading statements (such as the laughable claim that she did not understand classified markings) in her FBI interview. Of course, the Biden Justice Department would not be very sympathetic to that analogy, and Trump would not exactly be arguing from a position of strength if his best defense were that...

The court-authorized search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is another unmistakable signal that the Justice Department is trying to build a criminal case against him arising out of the Capitol riot. Ostensibly, the search relates to a long simmering dispute between the former president and the government over Trump’s potentially illegal retention and mishandling of classified information. But don’t be deceived. National Archives officials alerted the Justice Department months ago regarding missing records and possible classified information violations. That owes to the chaotic atmosphere in which the Trump family decamped to Florida from the White House following the...

It seems to me that the Secret Service and the commentariat are misfiring in their claimed contradictions of Cassidy Hutchinson. If there is a proper target of criticism (and that’s not clear at this point), it is the House January 6 committee, not the witness. In the course of her riveting testimony Tuesday (which I described in a column posted last night), [cut] We shouldn’t leap to the conclusion that anyone is lying. But we should be provided with all of the relevant testimony. And, contrary to the committee’s practice, there should be probing cross-examination so we can get to...

“I’ve covered politics a long time,” Bret Baier said on the air. “I don’t think there has been testimony like this — that is kind of jaw-dropping, in a way — on the inside workings of a White House in crisis after, you know, at this moment, Jan. 6, that we have seen since Watergate.” < snip > Baier continued to comment on Hutchinson’s testimony. “Bottom line though, this testimony is stunning … I think this — it does move the ball in this hearing,” he said.

Things will not be the same after this. Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, provided compelling testimony Tuesday that former president Donald Trump is singularly culpable for the Capitol riot. [cut] Instead of trying to stop it, he willfully exacerbated the problem — and would apparently have made it worse still if the Secret Service had not been courageously insubordinate. That’s what we learned today. Things will not be the same after this. Note: The original version of this column incorrectly stated that, on January 6, 2021, President Trump and his Secret...

I would oppose Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson because of her judicial philosophy, for the reasons outlined by Ed Whelan last week. I address that in a separate post. For now, I want to discuss the claim by Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) that Judge Jackson is appallingly soft on child-pornography offenders. The allegation appears meritless to the point of demagoguery. Senator Hawley is a bright guy, but if he ever handled a child-pornography case in the brief time he spent as a practicing lawyer before he sought public office, that is not apparent. Nor does it appear, from the admittedly...