Free Republic

On Tuesday, oral arguments commenced in the case of Fischer vs. United States, scrutinizing the legitimacy of felony charges of obstructing an official proceeding against individuals involved in the January 6 United States Capitol riot. The court's ruling will carry significant weight, as it could potentially influence the fate of hundreds of defendants from the January 6 riot and potentially undermine certain federal charges against Donald Trump. Currently, the conservative wing of the court has expressed doubt regarding the government's case, which U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar is making. Notably, Justice Neil Gorsuch posed a question that was epic, to...

Conservative justices seem skeptical Tuesday about Justice Department arguments before the high court on the agency having used felony obstruction charges on over 300 people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The case is titled Fischer v. United States. The plaintiff is Joseph Fischer who has been charged with "obstructing" an official proceeding – Congress' certification of the 2020 election results. Justice Clarence Thomas questioned the department attorney on whether the use of such charges have been applied in other protests, according to CNN. "There have been many violent protests that have interfered with proceedings," Thomas reportedly said....

The Supreme Court spent about an hour and a half on Tuesday morning arguing over whether to make it much harder for the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people who joined the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. It appears, after Tuesday’s arguments, that a majority of the justices will side with the insurrectionists — though it is far from clear how those justices will justify such an outcome. The case, known as Fischer v. United States, involved a federal law which provides that anyone who “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do...

The Supreme Court's conservative majority appeared skeptical of a charge federal prosecutors have lodged against hundreds of people who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. While the court’s three-justice liberal wing signaled support for the charge, the conservative majority raised a series of skeptical questions about its potential scope and whether it would criminalize other conduct, such as protests. A decision against the government could reopen some 350 cases in which defendants have been charged with “obstructing” an official proceeding by pushing their way into the Capitol in 2021. The charge can tack up to 20 years onto...

Smith is trying to stretch Section 1512 in hopes of bypassing a potential ruling deeming the government’s abuse of the law illegal.Democrat hacks have claimed that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictments against Donald Trump over the former president’s challenging of the 2020 election are legally sound. So why is Smith grasping at legal straws in his latest court filing?On Monday, Smith filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging the nation’s highest judicial body to dismiss Trump’s presidential immunity claims. Citing the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the special counsel indicted Trump in August over his...

Josef Stalin set the example for the world as the most ruthless practitioner of the art of using a thoroughly corrupt and subservient “justice system” to eliminate all political opposition. Many, many others have since followed Stalin’s lead. Current notable examples include the recent murder of Alexei Navalny in prison in Russia; Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who fled that country in late 2023 after his arrest was threatened by the Maduro regime; and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister and current opposition leader Imran Khan, convicted in January 2024 of “disclosing a state secret” and sentenced to 10 years in jail....

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) and Boyden Gray PLLC filed a brief in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of Senator Tom Cotton, Representative Jim Jordan, and 21 other Members of Congress in support of Joseph W. Fischer, an American who was subjected to a weaponized criminal prosecution by the Biden Administration for an alleged violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2). Mr. Fischer was indicted for his alleged participation in events around the entrance of the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and charged with a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2)–a statute...

Suspects were 'holdovers' from Obama administration.. The federal government is being sued for the details of an alleged CIA scheme to "get rid" of President Trump. Officials with government watchdog Judicial Watch confirmed in a statement they are pursuing a Freedom of Information Act case against the Defense Department over reports from a military officer "to his superiors regarding an alleged conversation." That reportedly happened around January 2017 and involved CIA analysts Eric Ciaramella and Sean Misko. And it concerned a plan to "get rid" of then-President Trump. ... seeking access to "any and all reports submitted by a U.S....

Where is Hunter Biden? That’s the burning question at the moment, especially after his bizarre press conference where he declined to testify before Congress. Now, it’s likely he’ll be held in contempt. After all, Democrats have consistently maintained that ignoring a Congressional subpoena is an offense worthy of jail time. ... The good news, courtesy of Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, is that we now know Hunter Biden’s whereabouts: he’s at the White House. This revelation should make it easier for Republicans to have him arrested. Could we see the feds raiding the White House to apprehend an actual criminal,...

Congress is often a theater of the absurd, from Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) pulling a fire alarm before a major vote to.. none of that compares to what unfolded on Wednesday as Hunter Biden stood outside Congress and defied a subpoena as being "beyond the absurd." What happens next could be even more bizarre. Hunter was under a subpoena from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to appear for testimony. As I previously wrote, he had two choices: He could appear and either testify or invoke his right to remain silent. The only thing that he could not do...

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer on Tuesday accused the Biden administration of obstructing his impeachment inquiry, revealing it has turned over to congressional investigators just 14 of the 82,000 pages of emails that the National Archives located from Joe Biden's private pseudonym email accounts. Comer vowed to escalate his efforts to gain access to the emails in a statement just one day after Just the News reported that the National Archives had identified in a court filing a massive trove of private emails from Joe Biden's vice presidency. “The National Archives has identified 82,000 pages of emails where then-Vice...

A mere 16 days after Joe Biden assumed the presidency, top officials in his Justice Department raised suspicion among career IRS agents by demanding a briefing on the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, according to evidence turned over to Congress that raises new questions about Attorney General Merrick Garland's claims of an interference-free probe. The Feb. 5, 2021 meeting between U.S. Attorney David Weiss' office in Delaware and a some of Biden's new assistant attorneys general in DOJ's Washington headquarters was chronicled in email exchanges between federal prosecutors and IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. Weiss was leading the...

The evidence-tampering statute being used by the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants is unconstitutionally broad, interferes with First Amendment free speech, and has left prosecutors with “unbridled, standardless discretion to effectively make up their own law,” a new Supreme Court filing argues. The High Court is considering whether to take up a challenge to the use of the law (pdf) brought by Jan. 6 defendant Edward Jacob Lang, 28, of New York. Mr. Lang, at least 317 other defendants, and former President Donald Trump have been charged with corruptly obstructing an official proceeding: the...

The Biden administration has been blasted over plans to send out a letter to many of the major news organizations across the country demanding they probe the 'lies' of the House GOP's impeachment inquiry. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an official impeachment inquiry on Tuesday over allegations of corruption and involvement in son Hunter's business dealings, setting off fiery reactions from Democrats. Ian Sams, a special assistant to the president and senior advisor to the White House Counsel's Office, penned a letter to both conservative and liberal-leaning outlets, slated to be distributed Wednesday in an apparent attempt to influence their...

The Bidens have always maintained they did not coordinate, mix or discuss personal and government business activities, but evidence in the Archives conflicts with that claim. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer pressed Wednesday for deeper access to records in the Biden family probe held by the National Archives, while pointedly warning that America's historical agency is threatening to withhold some evidence as "personal." Comer made the revelation in a letter to Archivist Colleen Shogan that requested unrestricted access to a collection of memos the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has released in redacted form titled “Records...

The need for more public scrutiny of the Justice Department’s improper handling of the Hunter Biden case was already high following whistleblower revelations, the collapse of the sweetheart plea deal, and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss as “special counsel.” Now, the Biden legal team has apparently released a trove of its emails with prosecutors to friendly press. These new revelations about Justice Department collusion with Biden family lawyers make it clear the two sides acted essentially as allies to kill the case, and it almost worked.It is now more important than ever that Congress...

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) officials negotiating with President Joe Biden's legal team over his retention of classified materials appear to have abruptly changed course on the eve of the 2022 midterms and informed the president's attorney that the agency would need to seize the materials he had discovered at the Penn-Biden Center in Washington, D.C. "Pat, I believe that Gary will be reaching out to you and/or Bob. Based on some discussions this evening, we need to change our approach," reads a Nov. 7, 2022, email from NARA's William (Jay) Bosanko and Biden attorney Patrick Moore. "I believe...

The U.S. Secret Service has responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by refusing to hand over details of its investigation into the cocaine found in the White House. The FOIA request, for a list of people possibly involved in the White House cocaine incident, was filed by the Heritage Foundation. The Secret Service rejected the request by claiming that such records are outside its authority. The Heritage Foundation filed a FOIA request after the Secret Service found “no suspects” and closed the investigation into the cocaine discovery in mid-July. The FOIA request seeks the list of hundreds...

A letter from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has surfaced, revealing that the agency advised a supervisory agent involved in the investigation of Hunter Biden to “decline to respond” to questions from the House Oversight Committee about the ongoing case. The letter obtained by the New York Post was sent by FBI general counsel Jason Jones just hours before the agent was due to testify. The House Committee was seeking information about the ongoing criminal investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden. The FBI’s letter emphasized that the Department of Justice (DOJ) expected the agent to refrain from disclosing non-public...

A former FBI supervisory special agent assigned to the Hunter Biden criminal investigation has confirmed several key aspects of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower testimony from June, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer announced Monday. The former agent said that the Biden family and the Secret Service were tipped off about an interview the FBI planned to have with Hunter Biden in December 2020, according to a transcribed interview conducted by the House Oversight Committee on Monday. Biden entered a plea deal in late June after he was charged with two misdemeanor tax offenses and illegal possession of a...