Free Republic

Conviction and condemnation can feel similar for a Christian. Conviction is from God and is necessary for joy. It should be cultivated. Condemnation is from Satan. It is a lie and should be resisted and thrown off. How do we tell the difference in our own lives? How do we help students discern the distinction in their hearts as well? An Example The night Christ was arrested, Peter and Judas both committed big sins. (This example isn’t perfect because Judas wasn’t a true Christian, but he was a professing believer and a member of Christ’s discipleship group. There’s much we...

Former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison for trading bribes for political favors. Federal prosecutors levied allegations of bribery, extortion and acting as a foreign agent against Menendez, then-chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in fall 2023. Last summer, he became the first public official ever convicted of acting as a foreign agent while in office. A New York jury found the senator and his wife, Nadine, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars and luxury cars from three New Jersey businessmen. In exchange, Menendez protected the halal meat...

Lawyers for former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez are urging a judge to be lenient at his sentencing later this month for his conviction on bribery charges, saying the ordeal has made him a “national punchline” despite a lifetime of good deeds that have saved lives. Late Thursday, the lawyers wrote to the judge who will sentence him to say that the Democrat’s positive actions through an unusual life spent overcoming hardships should weigh in his favor. Sentencing is scheduled for July 29. The 71-year-old Menendez was convicted in July of 16 corruption charges brought by prosecutors who asserted that...

Former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) has asked a federal judge to throw out his corruption conviction and grant a new trial after it was revealed that jurors were accidentally shown improper evidence while deliberating. Menendez’s attorney Adam Fee wrote in court filings that the “serious breach” makes a new trial “unavoidable.” “Without doubting that the error was unintentional, the responsibility for it lies exclusively with the government, and the government must accept its consequences,” Fee wrote.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg will decide Tuesday whether to delay sentencing Donald Trump after his conviction on charges related to hush money paid to a porn star — or even to toss the case — now that Trump is preparing to re-enter the White House. The prosecutor could move to pause Trump’s Nov. 26 sentencing date on his conviction for concealing a payoff that hid a sex scandal from voters before the 2016 presidential election. Bragg could also push to dismiss the case entirely. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan would have to approve prosecutors’ plan before it goes...

BERLIN (AP) – A German court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by a 99-year-old woman who was convicted of being an accessory to more than 10,000 murders for her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis’ Stutthof concentration camp during World War II. The Federal Court of Justice upheld the conviction of Irmgard Furchner, who was given a two-year suspended sentence in December 2022 by a state court in Itzehoe in northern Germany. She was accused of being part of the apparatus that helped the camp near Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk, function. She...

There are likely many who have stories about how Vice President Kamala Harris’ approach to criminal justice has caused great harm. The story of actor Jamal Trulove, however, presents a particularly glaring example that Democrats would rather remain hidden.Trulove’s story presents a striking example of a wrongful conviction brought about by police misconduct and a flawed prosecution. The actor was convicted of the 2007 murder of his friend Seu Kuka in San Francisco. The case against him relied heavily on the testimony of a single eyewitness who later admitted to being coerced by law enforcement.During his trial, then-San Francisco District...

Hunter Biden is using a pair of judicial opinions that were favorable to his father's political rival to argue his conviction on gun charges should be tossed out. In federal court papers filed in Delaware, Hunter Biden’s attorneys asked the judge who oversaw his gun trial to dismiss the case against him because of a federal court ruling in Florida dismissing the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump. In the ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Jack Smith’s criminal case against Trump on the grounds that the appointment of and funding for the special counsel were...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) to resign from the Senate after a jury in New York convicted him on 16 counts of bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud. “In light of this guilty verdict, Sen. Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” Schumer said in a statement. The Democratic leader, however, stopped short of threatening to bring an expulsion resolution to the Senate floor, which could pass with an overwhelming majority given the severity of the crimes. Menendez is expected to appeal...

The corruption of the law in the Manhattan case against President Donald J. Trump should shock every American, and the devil is in the details of the law, the prosecution, the judge, the jury, and the conviction. There were two financial accounts referred to in the prosecution. The first is a revocable trust fund for Donald J. Trump which was created just after he became president, and the second is the personal account of Donald J. Trump. The indictment indicates that Trump received invoices from Michael Cohen where each invoice was then added to the general accounting ledger with a...

President Biden has blamed politics for his son Hunter’s conviction Tuesday on federal gun charges — ignoring that his offspring’s defense attorneys helped scuttle a sweetheart plea bargain last summer that would have staved off the criminal case. “If I weren’t running for re-election, he would have gotten the plea deal,” the elder Biden, 81, told one of his confidants earlier this month, according to Politico. The reported remark recalls former President Donald Trump’s claim that prosecutors have engaged in “election interference” by pursuing criminal cases against him. Biden, in response, has called such claims by his great rival “reckless,”...

In a speech Tuesday afternoon to activists at a gun control event, President Biden asked, “Who in God’s name needs a magazine that holds 200 shells?” He asked this question during a speech given just hours after his son, Hunter, was convicted on three gun charges. During his speech, Biden continued his push for an “assault weapons” ban, then asked, “Who in God’s Name Needs a Magazine That Holds 200 Shells?” The crowd answered by screaming, “Nobody!” Biden responded, “Nobody, that’s right.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) called Hunter Biden’s conviction on federal gun charges “kinda dumb” in a post on the social platform X, minutes after the verdict was announced. Hunter Biden — the second-oldest son of President Biden — was convicted Tuesday afternoon on three federal gun charges. The felony charges alleged President Biden’s son lied about his sobriety when obtaining a gun in 2018, and illegally possessed the gun for 11 days. Hunter Biden’s verdict comes just two weeks after former President Trump was found guilty on all 34 felony counts in his New York hush money trial. Gaetz called...

Former President Donald Trump is within striking distance of President Joe Biden in blue Minnesota, according to a poll taken after his conviction in the Manhattan business records trial. The Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 poll, published Monday, finds that Biden leads with 45 percent of support among likely voters in a three-way race with Trump and independent Robert Kennedy Jr. Trump garners 41 percent of the response, followed by Kennedy Jr. at 6 percent. Biden’s edge on Trump falls just outside the ± 3.5 percentage point margin of error. New: President Joe Biden holds a 45-41% lead over former President...

A week after a New York jury found former President Trump guilty of falsifying business records, Democrats are torn over whether the conviction will help President Biden in November. Trump’s campaign announced a $35 million fundraising haul after the guilty verdict and more than $140 million raised in May. Establishment Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are coming to his defense, supercharging the GOP support for him. Biden and his party are trying to use the conviction to rally Democrats and turn voters against Trump. Biden himself tested out calling Trump a convicted felon this week.

Former President Donald Trump’s conviction just might have been the missing key in his securing the 2024 election against President Joe Biden. According to a new Quinnipiac University Georgia poll, Trump holds an advantage over Biden (49 - 44 percent) in a head-to-head matchup in the crucial battleground state. Despite the unprecedented move, the conviction against Trump seems to working in his favor— a stark contrast from what the Democratic Party was hoping for when bringing politically motivated charges against him. The survey also revealed that in a six-way hypothetical race that includes other candidates, Trump still leads with 43...

Francesca Fiorentini has appeared on MSNBC and has hosted shows on The Young Turks. She was included on a panel on an episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored. And she should have declined to appear. She got roasted. Poor Francesca tried to go toe-to-toe with some actual knowledgeable people and got destroyed.

Former President Donald Trump is neck-and-neck with President Joe Biden in key swing states post-conviction, according to the latest FAUPolitical Communication and Public Opinion Research Lab/Mainstreet Research survey, released Tuesday. The survey was fielded May 30-31, 2024. Notably, news of the Manhattan jury finding Trump guilty on all 34 counts in his business records trial came out Thursday afternoon, on May 30, meaning at least half of the survey was fielded after the determination. The survey found Trump edging out Biden in two key swing states head-to-head — Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, Trump leads Biden by one percentage point...

A new poll shows that a sizable plurality of the American people believe that the New York trial of former President Donald Trump was a politically-motivated show trial.As the Daily Caller reports, the ABC News/Ipsos poll shows that 47% of Americans believe the trial was indeed a political hit job, while 38% say that the trial was legitimate and fair.On the question of the “guilty” verdict, 50% of respondents believe the verdict was correct; by contrast, just 27% believe the verdict was wrong, while the remaining 23% said they “don’t know” what to believe with regards to the verdict.Among those...

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos clashed with former President Trump’s attorney, Will Scharf, in a Sunday interview, over the former president’s unsubstantiated claims that President Biden played a role in bringing the hush money criminal case against Trump in New York. In an interview on “This Week,” Scharf repeatedly echoed claims of the former president, arguing the hush money criminal trial — which ended in a guilty conviction against Trump on 34 felony counts — was “exhibit A” in terms of the “politicization of the legal system.” “It’s absolutely unprecedented in American history. It’s not the way that our campaigns...