Free Republic

Below is my column in the New York Post in response to the attack this week by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe. I am honestly saddened by the ad hominem attacks that have become common place with many academics like Tribe. There was a time when legal disagreements could be passionate but not personal. The use of personal insults and vulgar trash talking were avoided in our profession. Now even law deans have called Supreme Court justices “hacks” to the delight of their followers. I have always said that there are good-faith arguments on both sides of the 14th Amendment theory...

After the collapse of the Hunter Biden plea bargain, it was telling that the Biden Team seemed most insistent on one demand: the gun charge agreement was still in full effect. Many of us noted that Hunter’s placement into the pre-trial diversion program not only contradicted the position of his father and the Biden Administration on such charges, but was sharply in contradiction with similar contemporaneous cases. Perhaps for that reason, the Biden attorneys were apoplectic in maintaining that the gun charge was inked and sealed. The Justice Department just declared, however, that it is dead as Dillinger. That is...

With the new disclosures in the Biden corruption scandal, the media has, again, pivoted to avoid acknowledging the obvious. It now has a new demand before it will fully recognize or report on the scandal. Of course, after long repeating denials of Joe Biden that he ever knew about his son’s foreign business deals, the media must now recognize that Hunter was selling influence and access. So they have added yet another task: show Joe Biden actually accepting money. It is what in literature is called the “impossible task” demand like the Slavic tale of a Tsar ordering a suitor...

Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University may be a liberal, but he is an honest man. He recently appeared on the Sean Hannity show and took apart the Trump indictment piece by piece, leaving it in tatters on the floor. Turley said that it was completely understandable why the American people think we have a two-tiered justice system and called the Trump indictement an attack on free speech. Transcript via Real Clear Politics: TURLEY: This is a free speech-killing indictment. There’s no way around it. I write a great deal in academia in the free-speech area and I rarely...

there were niceties." That description by Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) of calls between President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and Hunter’s foreign business associates may, strangely, be the most accurate thing the freshman congressman has ever said. The almost-two-dozen calls — detailed by Hunter Biden's close friend and former business partner, Devon Archer, during a closed-door interview Monday with House Oversight Committee investigators — were indeed "the niceties" of influence-peddling. The calls presumably were intended to show that Hunter Biden could deliver his father and to support what Archer called "the brand." Hunter had no relevant experience or appreciable business...

Below is my column in The Messenger on what I called Biden’s “break-the-glass” option after the disaster in Delaware. After the column ran, Fox News asked White House Spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre about the possibility of a pardon. Jean-Pierre cut him off and responded unequivocally “no.” I hope that proves to be true but it would have been more assuring to come from someone who did not clearly misrepresent the President’s earlier denial just a day earlier and change his long-standing position. The President previously denied a series of facts that have been proven, including the fact that his son did...

George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley persuasively argued the Biden Justice Department was being too cute by half when prosecutors crafted a very lenient plea deal for Hunter Biden. But the judge overseeing the case would not let the deceptive gamesmanship stand. Biden was expected to plead guilty .. to two misdemeanor tax evasion charges and one illegal gun possession charge and likely do little or no jail time. The deal appeared to come together quickly in June as the GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee’s hearings into Biden’s overseas business dealings continued to heat up. However, the deal fell...

Legal expert Jonathan Turley predicted Tuesday that another indictment against former President Donald Trump may backfire unless investigators possess air-tight evidence of a crime.What is the background?On Tuesday, Trump revealed that he received a "target letter" from special counsel Jack Smith on Sunday indicating that he is a target in the Jan. 6 investigation."Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again, it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the grand Jury, which almost always...

Below is my column in The Hill on Attorney General Merrick Garland at the midpoint of his tenure at the Justice Department. For an Attorney General who said that he wanted to restore the trust of the public in his department, Garland has manifestly failed to achieve his goal. It appears that the Justice Department and FBI are now trusted less than under his predecessor, Bill Barr. A new poll shows that 55 percent of the public view the Trump indictment as “politically motivated” and 56% believe that it constitutes election interference. A similar majority wanted Trump pardoned if convicted....

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) removed the “entire investigative team” working on the Hunter Biden case at the request of President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), a whistleblower told Congress on Monday. The whistleblower has supervised the Hunter Biden investigation since 2020, the New York Post reported.

Tuesday, during an appearance on FNC’s “America’s Newsroom” after the announcement of the plea deal for Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, Fox News legal analyst and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley warned the perception of the agreement would not be well received by many. According to Turley, given the avoidance of jail and the lack of a mention of serious charges, the deal would reinforce the belief that there is a double standard within federal law enforcement.

On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Fox News Contributor and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley stated that if the Department of Justice charges former President Donald Trump with mishandling classified information, “it’s going to make it difficult not to charge Vice President Biden with the same crime.” But if they don’t, then it’ll seem like they crafted the indictment of Trump in a way to avoid having to charge Biden. Turley said, “[W]e have to see what’s in this indictment. There are a couple of things that we’ll be looking for: Obviously, the...

Below is my column in the New York Post on the most recent whistleblower coming forward to publicly accuse the Biden Administration of “slow walking” the investigation of Hunter Biden. The source of the interference with the IRS investigation, according to Gary Shapley, was the Department of Justice. It is the latest chapter in the story of “The Incredibly Shrinking Merrick Garland.” Here is the column: “I don’t want to do any of this.” Those words from 14-year IRS veteran Gary Shapley may be the most important line in his CBS News interview this week. After weeks of Democrats dismissing...

Below is a slightly modified version of my column in The Hill on the call of Democrat members for Joe Biden to circumvent Congress and simply raise the debt limit unilaterally. It is more than a flawed constitutional theory. It is an abandonment of the core premise of our constitutional system that each branch would jealously protect its own institutional interests and powers. It is reminiscent of when Democrats applauded wildly when Barack Obama told them that he was going to circumvent Congress entirely after it refused to approve his immigration and environmental legislation. They were applauding their own institutional...

Below is my column in the New York Post, which turned out to be the theme for the cover. The Durham Report highlighted two scandals. First, there was a comprehensive effort of the political and media establishments to perpetrate one of the great hoaxes in history — a political hit job that ultimately derailed an American presidency. Second, there was no real accountability for that effort for the main players from Clinton to Comey to Congress. It was much like The Murder on the Orient Express. The question is not “whodunit” but who didn’t. Spoiler alert: they all did it...

Below is my column in The Hill on the continued media blackout on evidence of influence peddling and corrupt practices by the Biden family. The coverage of the recent disclosure of dozens of LLCs and bank accounts used to funnel up to $10 million to Biden family members captured the growing concerns over a de facto state media in the United States. Under the current approach to journalism, it is the New York Times that receives a Pulitzer for a now debunked Russian collusion story rather than the New York Post for a now proven Hunter Biden laptop story. Here...

Northwestern University has long been a school hostile to free speech. My alma mater was ranked 197 out of 203 universities for free speech in a major survey by FIRE. (Fortunately, my other alma mater, the University of Chicago, was ranked number one for free speech). This month showed why Northwestern developed a reputation for speech intolerance and a lack of ideological diversity. Northwestern University’s Associated Student Government suspended the funding for the College Republicans due to objections to posters for an event featuring writer and critical race theory critic James Lindsay. The justification was a poster featuring a skull...

Thousands cheered King Charles III with ‘God Save The King” as his gilded carriage passed through London. The coronation had all of the pomp and circumstance that people expected from the fifth longest monarchy in history (Japan is the longest). The ceremony included one time-honored tradition that some of us could have done without: the arrest of peaceful protesters. It was all part of “Operation Golden Orb” and follows a long, unbroken British tradition of quashing free speech. London’s Metropolitan Police made 52 arrests during the coronation, including many anti-monarchy protesters who were wearing yellow T-shirts and shouting “Not My...

This week, history and civics scores across the nation plummeted to record lows among eighth graders. Just 13% of students performed at or above the “proficient” level in U.S. history. It is the latest appalling report on our declining educational system — a matter that should be treated as a national crisis of literally historic proportions. As discussed in prior columns, we are graduating students from high school who cannot proficiently read or do math. School districts have responded by solving the problem by simply lowering standards and eliminating gifted programs. Now we are producing citizens who know little about...

Below is my column in the Hill on the Tennessee controversy over the expulsion of two Tennessee legislators. Liberal members and pundits have lionized the two legislators who shutdown the proceedings while declaring the GOP “fascists.” The controversy perfectly captured our increasingly amplified age of rage. Here is the column: Nobel Laureate Albert Camus once said, “Insurrection is certainly not the sum total of human experience but … it is our historic reality.” Those words came to mind this week when Tennessee’s House of Representatives expelled two members accused of disrupting legislative proceedings in what some called an “insurrection” or...