Free Republic

Jack Smith isn’t a stupid man. A number of definitions apply to Smith, but stupid isn’t one of them. A zealot? A vainglorious, demagogic political hack who is doing the bidding of another political hack? Yes, to both. But Jack Smith isn’t dumb. Smith was the head of the public corruption unit at DOJ when, in 2014, he brought public corruption charges against sitting Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. McDonnell was charged with 14 counts. Those counts included honest services wire fraud, obtaining property under “color of official right,” and extortion under “color of official right.” Like most DOJ attorneys with...

Jack Smith was in charge of the public integrity section of the Justice Department during five of the Obama-Biden years, which was a massively corrupt administration. He must have had blinders on. He was there when Lois Lerner and the IRS corruptly targeted Obama's opponents, who wanted smaller government and lower taxes. Lerner violated their Constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of association with her targeted harassment. Then she lied to Congress and destroyed evidence. She clearly obstructed justice. Yet she, nor no one else surrounding her were ever charged and Lerner went off to retire at her beltway...

It seems the climate change hysteria crowd is having trouble convincing people that we are all going to die in a gargantuan fireball if we don’t start driving electric vehicles and eating crickets. To remedy this issue, some progressive senators have concocted a novel idea: Throw people in prison for arguing against left-wing ideas on climate change.Sure, it’s a bit authoritarian, but it would be effective, wouldn’t it?Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders led a gaggle of fellow lawmakers in writing a letter to the Justice Department demanding that it prosecute people in the fossil fuel industry for saying things about climate...

There’s being fortunate in your enemies, and then there’s having enemies who are helping you take the first step in your political comeback. Donald Trump and his adversaries want profoundly different things in the long run — Trump wants to be back in the White House; Democrats want him in an orange jumpsuit. Yet in the shorter term, they both are seeking the same thing — Trump as the Republican nominee, either so he can sweep to victory (Trump’s view) or be beaten again and pay the price for his crimes (the Democrats’ view). The serial indictments of Trump, even...

A strange puzzle piece sits between the worlds of mental health care and the criminal legal system. For the last decade, nearly every county in Washington has sent a rapidly growing number of people in jail to undergo a competency evaluation — that is, there’s a question as to whether that person can legally stand trial, often due to mental illness, substance use or an intellectual or developmental disability. Those evaluations are necessary to move a criminal case forward. People deemed incompetent are given treatment, though it’s limited — usually medication and basic legal education to help them understand the...

The Department of Justice is prepared to seek indictments against multiple figures in former president Donald Trump’s orbit and may yet bring additional charges against the ex-president in the coming weeks, The Independent has learned. According to sources familiar with the matter, the department has made preparations to bring what is known as a “superseding indictment” — a second set of charges against an already-indicted defendant that could include more serious crimes — against the ex-president in the Southern District of Florida. But prosecutors may also choose to bring additional charges against Mr Trump in a different venue, depending on...

Former President Donald Trump applauded a suburban New York prosecutor after she dropped a two-year criminal investigation into him and his company.Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah, a Democrat, said in a statement on June 15 that her office had closed the case against Trump after an investigation that was conducted “objectively, and independent of politics, party affiliation and personal or political beliefs.”Her office did not file charges against Trump or the Trump Organization.Trump applauded Rocah’s decision, writing on his Truth Social account that ending the investigation “WAS THE HONORABLE THING TO DO IN THAT I DID NOTHING WRONG.”“BUT WHERE...

Hours before Donald Trump appeared Tuesday at a Miami courthouse and pleaded not guilty to charges related to the handling of sensitive government documents, the chairman of Nevada’s Republican Party walked into the federal trial court in Washington. Michael McDonald’s presence there alongside Jim DeGraffenreid, the state GOP vice chairman, underscored advances in special counsel Jack Smith’s other federal inquiry: the one into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election. McDonald and DeGraffenreid were among the latest in a string of witnesses summoned to testify before a grand jury in that investigation, people familiar with the...

LOS ANGELES - California Governor Gavin Newsom met with Sheriff Javier Salazar of Bexar County, Texas, to "compare notes" on possible criminal charges against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Newsom made that revelation during an exclusive interview with Elex Michaelson for FOX 11 Los Angeles' political show "The Issue Is:" "I met with him to compare notes yesterday because it is exactly the playbook that DeSantis and his staff to send migrants to California," Newsom said. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sheriff Javier Salazar In September of last year, 49 migrants traveled from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard thanks to funding from DeSantis....

Donald Trump’s onetime Attorney General William Barr said Sunday the former president is “toast” after being indicted by the federal government for mishandling classified documents. “The government acted responsibly. It was Donald J. Trump who acted irresponsibly,” Barr said on “Fox News Sunday” of the 37-count indictment against Trump, 76, unsealed Friday. “They’re solid counts,” Barr said. “Even if half of this is true he’s toast.” Barr noted he believed that Trump was treated unfairly by the FBI in the “Russiagate” collusion probe and with the indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the Stormy Daniels hush money...

The prosecution of Kevin Mackie is the latest in a string of cases where people in blue areas face charges for defending themselves from violent leftists.By now, most Americans have heard of Daniel Penny, the Marine Corps veteran being charged by Manhattan’s Democrat district attorney for defending his fellow citizens from an erratic Jordan Neely on the New York City subway. There’s also a good chance they’ve heard of Daniel Perry, the Army sergeant recently convicted in Austin, Texas, for protecting himself from an armed Black Lives Matter demonstrator.On their own merits, both cases represent a seemingly growing trend of...

If it is indeed ending democracy to jail political opponents, let’s be clear about which party is dragging the nation down that route.Bill and Hillary Clinton’s long, crooked political careers have been marked by multiple well-established high crimes and misdemeanors. Not the least of these was Hillary’s decision to commit what amounts to multiple felonies by using an insecure private email system to conduct top-secret public business while U.S. secretary of state under Barack Obama. This criminal behavior that so-called U.S. justice systems openly and repeatedly refused to punish was undertaken to hide treasonous actions. Those include selling political access...

The radical left finally did it – they indicted President Donald Trump. Corrupt Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has decided to abuse the nation's justice and legal system to persecute the Democrats' top political opponent. This corrupt, Soros-backed DA, who was hell-bent on indicting President Trump over some made-up "charges," used their usual strategy...pick a target, then find a "crime." Is America officially a banana republic? Americans are seeing the weaponization of the legal system before their very eyes. This is what happens in third-world countries, not here. The party in power, for the first time in the nation's history, has...

Douglass Mackey, who went by the alias Ricky Vaughn on social media, was convicted by a federal jury on Friday for a “scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” according to a statement from the Justice Department. Mackey was charged one week after President Joe Biden assumed office and roughly four years after his purported offenses. The Justice Department claimed that Mackey had conspired to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” people from exercising their right to vote. “Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred...

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is melting down now that House Committees are asking questions, demanding documents, and interviews into what looks like the political targeting of President Donald Trump. Bragg is presently pursuing an indictment against Trump but, as we noted, there are a lot of problems in the case including the lies of the chief witness in the case, Michael Cohen. The grand jury proceedings were again postponed on Thursday, so they won’t have any further action on the matter until at least next week.Bragg was responding in part to the following letters from the House Judiciary Committee calling...

Former Vice President Mike Pence said the potential arrest of ex-President Donald Trump by the Manhattan district attorney would be a “politically charged prosecution.” In a interview that aired Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week,” Pence said he was “taken aback the idea of indicting a former president of the United States, at a time when there’s a crime wave in New York City.” “The fact that the Manhattan DA thinks that indicting President Trump is his top priority, I think … just tells you everything you need to know about the radical left in this country,” the former veep...

The Senate of Georgia passed a bill last week that aims to toughen up oversight measures on the state’s prosecutors, after a special purpose grand jury counsel wrapped up investigations into alleged election interference by former President Donald Trump and his allies.The Georgia State Capitol building in Atlanta, ornamented with gold leaf from Dahlonega, Ga. (Mary Silver/The Epoch Times)The bill, SB 92 (pdf), would create a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, which would “have the power to discipline, remove, and cause involuntary retirement of appointed or elected district attorneys or solicitors-general.” The Republican-majority Senate passed the bill in a 32 to...

According to the NY Times, Manhattan’s DA has warned Trump’s legal team that charges could be coming over his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter…The Manhattan inquiry, which has spanned nearly five years, centers on a $130,000 payment to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she...

The Justice Department has reached a milestone in its prosecution of the U.S. Capitol attack, confirming it has arrested at least 1,000 people in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, nearly half of whom still face the prospect of trials or plea agreements. A new wave of cases, many of which involve higher-level charges of assaults against police, continues to expand a prosecution that is already the largest in American history. Twenty-six months into the criminal investigation, the newest cases continue to reveal new details and evidence about alleged criminal activity amid the riotous mob. Slightly...

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Tuesday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that running for president would not “immunize” former President Donald Trump from being prosecuted. Cooper asked, “You’ve been uniquely positioned over the past several years as someone who understands the legal and constitutional issues swirling around the former president. If he is making this announcement in part believing that this will somehow protect him from investigations or indictments, is that accurate, do you think?”