Free Republic

FORT PIERCE, Florida, March 14 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday denied former U.S. President Donald Trump's request to dismiss a criminal case that charges him with illegally holding onto classified documents after leaving the White House. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida came just hours after a hearing in which his lawyers argued that the central charge in the case is improperly vague. Cannon, who was appointed to her post by Trump, ruled that question "warrants serious consideration" but should not be decided at this point. Trump, the Republican challenger to President Joe Biden...

Democrat Tom Suozzi has won the New York special election to the U.S. House, according to an AP race call. Suozzi will serve out the remainder of the term for former GOP Rep. George Santos, who was expelled from the House last year. The victory further narrows the already razor-thin majority for Republicans in the House. The race was seen as a test of Democrats' ability to overcome attacks over President Biden's handling of the U.S. border with Mexico and convince voters that Republicans are unable to legislate in Washington. Immigration politics have dominated the contest in a congressional district...

MINNEAPOLIS -- MyPillow chief executive and prominent election denier Mike Lindell said Friday that Fox News has stopped running his company's commercials, disputing the network's assertion that it is simply because he hasn't paid his bills. Lindell went public by tweeting that Fox, which had been one of MyPillow's biggest advertising outlets, had canceled him. He said in his tweet that he didn't know why but that he suspected that the network was trying to silence him. Fox denied that. Losing Fox was just the latest in a series of financial and legal setbacks for Minnesota-based MyPillow and Lindell, who...

The liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned Republican-drawn legislative maps on Friday and ordered that new district boundary lines be drawn, siding with Democrats in a redistricting case that they hope will weaken GOP majorities. The ruling comes less than a year before the 2024 election in a battleground state where four of the six past presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes, and Republicans have built large majorities in the Legislature under maps they drew over a decade ago. The court ruled 4-3 in favor of Democrats who argued that the legislative maps are unconstitutional because districts...

Washington — A federal appeals court rejected a bid by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to move the state election interference charges against him in Georgia to federal court. A three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by a district judge in September who said Meadows must fight the charges in state court because he did not demonstrate that his alleged conduct was related to his official duties in the Trump administration. Writing for the court, Chief Judge William Pryor said in a 35-page opinion Monday that a statute allowing federal officials...

Final total 311-114.

An unsealed indictment on Monday revealed a federal grand jury indicted an Alabama man because he threatened Fulton County, Georgia’s district attorney and sheriff over President Donald Trump’s legal case, according to The Hill. The individual allegedly responsible for the threats is 59-year-old Arthur Ray Hanson II. He is charged with two counts of transmitting interstate threats. Hanson threatened both Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat in separate voicemails on Aug. 6. According to the indictment, Hanson threatened Willis because she intended to charge Trump with his fourth criminal indictment. And Labat was threatened...

Kenneth Chesebro, a co-defendant in former President Donald Trump's Georgia election interference case, has taken a last-minute plea deal in the case. The deal comes after the jury selection process had gotten underway Friday. Chesebro, an attorney, was facing seven counts after prosecutors said he drafted a strategy to use so-called "alternate electors" to prevent Joe Biden from receiving 270 electoral votes in the 2020 election, according to the Fulton County DA's indictment. The plea comes a day after former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell took a plea deal in which she received probation in exchange for agreeing to testify...

BREAKING NEWS: Kenneth Chesebro, alleged architect of the “fake electors” plot, has struck a plea deal with prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, per source familiar with the arrangement. Chesebro is set to plead guilty to at least one felony charge as a part of the deal, the source told @lawfare. Watch live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoNO945_vk0

One of the pro-Donald Trump fake electors charged in Michigan has agreed to cooperate with state prosecutors in exchange for getting his case dismissed. James Renner, 76, is the first defendant to strike a deal with prosecutors. Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, charged the group of 16 fake electors earlier this year. This is the most significant development in the case since Nessel filed the charges in July. She was the first prosecutor in the nation to charge anyone in connection with the Trump-backed fake elector scheme. As part of the deal, Renner agreed to provide “complete and truthful...

Attorneys for Donald Trump have notified a Fulton County court that the former president will not seek to have his Georgia election interference case removed to federal court. The move comes three weeks after a judge denied a bid by co-defendant Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, to have his case moved. Meadows had sought the move to federal court on the basis that his alleged actions were all performed while he was acting "under color" of his role as chief of staff. Trump, Meadows, and 17 others have pleaded not guilty to all charges in a sweeping racketeering...

Former President Donald Trump has decided not to seek to move his election interference trial from Fulton County to federal court, his lawyer said Thursday. In a surprise, two-page notice filed in Fulton Superior Court, attorneys Steve Sadow and Jennifer Little said Trump based the decision “on his well-founded confidence that this Honorable Court intends to fully and completely protect his constitutional right to a fair trial.” In order to move his case, Trump would have had to show he was operating as a federal official — rather than a political candidate — as he attempted to overturn the results...

One of the most visible purveyors of conspiracy theories that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election due to massive fraud has become one of the "witnesses for the state" in the former president's Georgia racketeering case, Fulton County prosecutors revealed on Wednesday. A once-celebrated defamation lawyer, attorney L. Lin Wood represented the parents of slain child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey and helped secure the vindication of Richard Jewell, the security guard falsely accused of plotting to set off pipe bombs at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. His efforts to help Trump overturn his electoral defeat have put him on...

WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - A former chairman of the right-wing Proud Boys group was sentenced on Tuesday to 22 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump trying to overturn the former president's election defeat. Enrique Tarrio was convicted of charges, including seditious conspiracy, for his role in planning the storming of the Capitol, when thousands of supporters of the Republican then-U.S. president violently tried to stop Congress from certifying the results of an election that Trump falsely claimed had widespread fraud. Federal prosecutors had asked...

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - A $200,000 bond agreement has been reached for former President Donald Trump as part of last week’s sweeping Fulton County indictment. Also on Monday, a $100,000 bond agreement was reached for John Eastman, one of Trump’s attorneys. A $10,000 bond agreement was also reached Monday for Scott Graham Hall, the Atlanta-area bail bondsman who was allegedly involved in commandeering voting information that was the property of Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County in south Georgia. On Monday afternoon, Drew Findling, one of Trump’s Atlanta-based attorneys, was seen walking into the Fulton County courthouse. A...

Save America, the political action committee financing former President Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, spent over $40 million on legal fees in the first half of 2023. These expenses reflect the ballooning costs of defending the embattled former president as he faces a growing list of legal challenges. (snip) Even where the charges against Trump are contrived (Alvin Bragg Slowly Realizes His Trump Indictment Is Going to Backfire, and He’s Getting Desperate), he has to spend a lot of money protecting his interests until the case is closed. Should he prevail in all the cases, the final legal bill will dwarf...

On Friday night, a judge dismissed former President Donald Trump's lawsuit against CNN in which the current 2024 front-runner for the Republican nomination claimed CNN’s coverage of his election lies equated him to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Judge Raag Singhal, a Trump-appointed judge, ruled that CNN referring to Trump’s claims about the election being stolen as “The Big Lie” did not meet the criteria for defamation despite Trump’s belief to the contrary. "There is no question that the statements made by CNN meet the publication requirement for defamation under Florida law," Singhal wrote. "The next question is whether the...

This is just breaking now. Posting for reference. This follows on the heels of Giuliani’s extensive 8-hour proffer interview with DOJ recently, indicating perhaps increasing cooperation with Special Counsel..

WASHINGTON — A Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol wearing a “Make Space Great Again” hat had two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his van when he was arrested Thursday near former President Barack Obama’s home, federal authorities said Friday. A federal prosecutor said in court Friday that Taylor Taranto, a 37-year-old man first identified by online sleuths in August 2021, also had a machete in the van he appeared to be living in. Taranto's van has been parked near the D.C. jail in recent weeks and he has appeared at protests in support of other Jan. 6...

Washington — A California man who prosecutors described as "one of the most violent defendants on January 6, 2021" was sentenced to 151 months — about 12 ½ years — in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to violent and obstructive conduct during the Capitol riot. Daniel "DJ" Rodriguez admitted as part of a plea agreement in February that he attacked former Washington, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone with a taser, causing him to lose consciousness, and that he worked to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Rodriguez will also have to pay $96,000 to cover...