Free Republic

...Powell began with a short opening statement and then responded to questions posed by the 10 active judges hearing the appeal. (Judge Gregory Katsas did not participate in the en banc proceedings.) Jeff Wall, the acting solicitor general, argued next on behalf of the government, followed by Beth Wilkinson, the private attorney retained to represent Sullivan. Powell and Wall concluded with short, two-minute rebuttals. The questions posed focused mainly on the propriety of mandamus in the Flynn case given that Sullivan has not yet ruled on the government’s motion to dismiss. Mandamus is an extremely rare remedy, appropriate only when...

Maybe Judge Luttig was right all along. I had the misgivings you’d expect back in late May, when I disagreed with J. Michael Luttig, the stellar scholar and former federal appeals court judge, regarding how the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals should handle the Flynn case. At the time, that court’s three-judge panel had not yet heard oral argument on Michael Flynn’s mandamus petition — i.e., Flynn’s request that the panel find that federal district judge Emmet Sullivan was acting lawlessly. Sullivan had not only failed to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn; he...

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said Levandowski, who was convicted on Tuesday following a March plea agreement, said Levandowski could enter custody once the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided. Alsup said a sentence short of imprisonment would have given “a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets,” comparing what Levandowski took to a “competitor’s game plan.” The 75-year-old judge, who has been involved in Silicon Valley litigation for nearly five decades, described Levandowski’s conviction as the “biggest trade secret crime I have ever seen.” “Billions [of dollars] in the future were at play, and...

The Supreme Court has allowed President Trump to defy Congress and continue to spend more than $6 billion diverted from military funds to pay for the construction of a border wall in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California.

The Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote has denied a request to halt construction of President Trump’s border wall over environmental concerns. A number of groups, including the ACLU and Sierra Club, had asked the high court to get involved again after the justices last year cleared the way for the administration to use military funds for construction while the case played out in the courts. A federal appeals court had ruled against the administration last month, but the justices, for now, have given another temporary victory to the administration.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is the major means used to transport oil produced in the Bakken region of North Dakota to an existing pipeline in Illinois which can take the oil to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier this month a judge ordered the Dakota Access Pipeline to cease operating so that a new environmental review, which could take a year or more, could be conducted. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appears for the District of Columbia has issued a stay of that ruling, at least while the appeals court reviews it.

The subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 resulted in a lot of banks getting bailed out, instead of being held responsible. In place of the banks, the Obama administration, led by Attorney General Eric Holder and then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, looked for easy, juicy targets. Mortgage brokers and real estate agents fit the mold. They were generally small, didn’t have a lot of connections with the government or the courts, and the public was looking for someone to blame for the decreasing home prices and skyrocketing foreclosures.  “Operation Stolen Dreams” was set up in various large cities to go after them. In...

BREAKING: A federal judge has ordered Michael Cohen, former attorney to President Trump, released from prison, agreeing with Cohen's lawyers that he was wrongly taken back into custody for criticizing the president. Cohen, who was serving a federal fraud sentence, was released on home confinement as prisons were emptied to the COVID-19 pandemic. A week after tweeting that he was finishing a tell-all book about Trump, a probation officer told him he would have to agree to a complete ban on speaking in public, including by publishing a book, as a condition of continued home confinement, according to court documents....

NORFOLK, Va. – A former leader of the Nine Trey Gangsters (NTG) was sentenced today to 45 years in prison for his role in a racketeering conspiracy that included the murder of 23-year-old Delante Eley.According to court documents, Rashaun Antonio Taylor, aka “Diablo,” was a local leader of the Nine Trey Gangsters (NTG), a gang affiliated with the United Blood Nation. On March 11, 2014, after a series of incidents between Delante Eley and members of Taylor’s gang, Taylor followed Eley to his grandparents’ home, where Taylor shot and killed Eley. Two days later, Taylor and other NTG members...

The Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), and the Florida GOP won a federal court victory upholding Florida’s ban on ballot harvesting. Priorities USA, a progressive advocacy group, and other Democrat plaintiffs dismissed their claims in Nielsen v. DeSantis, a lawsuit challenging Florida’s ban on ballot harvesting which also aimed to force the state to count ballots that arrived after Election Day. The plaintiffs also dropped their claim that Florida needed to provide pre-paid postage on vote-by-mail ballots. RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement on Sunday: Today’s victory is a win for Florida voters...

Jan Jekielek at the Epoch Times held an exceptional interview with General Michael Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell a week ago where Powell’s entire timeline in regards to the government’s sham case against General Flynn was discussed.  This powerful interview is worth your time because it outlines the massive corruption surrounding the Flynn case that goes on to this day. We asked a week ago – What is Judge Emmet Sullivan waiting for?General Michael Flynn was lied to, set up multiple times before and after the Trump inauguration, excessively and to the point of illegally unmasked, targeted, ambushed in the White House,...

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the Trump administration cannot withhold federal grants from California sanctuary cities, affirming previous rulings in the state. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco said its ruling that the Justice Department cannot block police funds from cities not enforcing immigration laws does not extend nationally, Bloomberg News reported. The decision follows rulings from three other regional federal appeals courts against the administration. But a New York court unanimously ruled in February that the department had the authority to withhold funds from the cities that do not comply with federal authorities' enforcement of...

Judge Emmet Sullivan filed an appeal Thursday of the 2-1 writ of mandamus ruling last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to dismiss the Justice Department case against former Trump National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (US Army Ret.) Sullivan is asking for an en banc hearing by the entire eleven judges on the appeals court. The main argument by Sullivan and Wilkinson seems to be, “Get off my yard!”: “The panel’s decision threatens to turn ordinary judicial process upside down. It is the district court’s job to consider and rule on pending...

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, through his counsel Beth Wilkinson, has asked for U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to rehear his case against the immediate dismissal of the Michael Flynn prosecution. The Thursday petition for rehearing comes after a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit granted Flynn’s petition for writ a mandamus on June 24, directing Sullivan to dismiss the case. “The panel majority granted the extraordinary writ of mandamus to prevent the district court from receiving adversarial briefing and argument on a pending motion. The opinion is couched as a fact-bound ruling based on...

The judge in Michael Flynn’s criminal case asked a federal appeals court Thursday to reconsider its ruling last month ordering him to dismiss the prosecution of the former national security advisor to President Donald Trump. Judge Emmet Sullivan’s lawyer asked for a so-called en banc review of the decision of the appeals court, which would involve all active judges on the court to re-hear the case.

Jan Jekielek at the Epoch Times held an exceptional interview with General Michael Flynn’s attorney Sidney Powell a week ago where Powell’s entire timeline in regards to the government’s sham case against General Flynn was discussed.  This powerful interview is worth your time because it outlines the massive corruption surrounding the Flynn case that goes on to this day. We asked a week ago – What is Judge Emmet Sullivan waiting for?General Michael Flynn was lied to, set up multiple times before and after the Trump inauguration, excessively and to the point of illegally unmasked, targeted, ambushed in the White House,...

General Michael Flynn administers "Q-Anon Oath" to family members. By way of a post to 8kun last month, the anonymous poster known as Q-Anon requested followers to take the following oath: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter:...

A federal appeals court decided 2-1 Friday that the Trump administration violated the law when it used military funds to build a wall on the Mexican border. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the power of the purse belongs to Congress, and the administration lacked constitutional authority to transfer the military money. Two Democratic appointees were in the majority. A Trump appointee dissented.

A New York judge ruled on Friday that a letter sent by Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred to the Yankees addressing the findings of a 2017 investigation into the team should be unsealed. MLB and the Yankees may submit a minimally redacted version of the letter “to protect the identity of the individuals mentioned” by noon ET on Monday, as part of the proceedings in a lawsuit brought against the league by daily fantasy sports contestants in the wake of the sign-stealing scandals in Houston and Boston. The Yankees argue the letter would cause “significant reputational injury,” Judge Jed...

John Gleeson is the former judge tasked by Emmet Sullivan, the judge in the Michael Flynn case, with talking him into sentencing Flynn in a case that the prosecution has moved to dismiss. One wonders whether any such “talking” is required, other than for the sake of appearances. In any event, Gleeson today filed his brief. He argues that Judge Sullivan should reject the government’s motion and continue the prosecution to sentencing, notwithstanding the prosecutor’s desire to stand down. Gleeson had sketched out this argument in a Washington Post op-ed before Sullivan appointed him to brief the matter. Thus, the...