Free Republic

If you remember, one of the J6 protesters, Adam Johnson, carried Nancy Pelosi’s lectern across the chamber and then put it down. Mr. Johnson spent only minutes in the Capitol. As a joke, he had his picture taken with Nancy Pelosi’s lectern. It was a joke! For that, he was treated worse than a NY felon, given a 75-day prison sentence, followed by a year-long supervised release. He also had to pay a $5,000 fine and complete 200 hours of community service. He also had to abide by a curfew. Recently, the prosecutor, who gave him this extreme sentence went...

This is Patrick Douglas Scruggs. Patrick is a federal prosecutor who helped put Capitol trespassers in prison, and perpetrated the narrative that these people were grave threats to society. In September, 2023, a driver on a bridge hit Mr. Scrugg’s car. Mr. Scruggs got out of his car, broke the driver’s window, and proceeded to stab him over and over again with a knife. A couple got out of their car and tried to help the stabbing victim, then Mr. Scruggs tried to stab the couple. Scrugg’s attorney stated that his client is innocent until proven guilty, and has asked...

former U.S. prosecutor from Tampa who helped the federal government indict Florida residents accused of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol is about to stand trial himself. According to court records, Patrick Douglas Scruggs is expected at the Pinellas County Justice Center on May 3 at 8:30 a.m. for a pre-trial hearing on allegations that he stabbed a 35-year-old man with a pocket knife during a road rage incident last year. Mr. Scruggs, 38, who has been released on bond, was arrested last September and faces three felony counts of armed burglary, aggravated battery and...

Out of all the topics the Joe Biden White House didn’t want to see in Sunday’s Washington Post, this had to be up there on the list. The capital city’s newspaper of record published recordings Sunday of President Joe Biden’s brother, James, engaged in scoring off his famous last name during the late 1990s. The fact that the recordings were made by FBI investigators couldn’t have made things easier in the Biden household either. The Post article was headlined “James Biden’s dealmaking caught on FBI tapes in unrelated bribery probe,” and just the words alone had to be unsettling at...

The House Oversight investigation into President Joe Biden and his family's influence-peddling schemes digs all the way back to ties to the late-’90s big tobacco settlement, including James Biden's deal-working caught on FBI tapes in an unrelated 2008 bribery scheme. James Biden's deal-making getting picked up on FBI tapes in 2008, as The Washington Post reported Sunday, are resurfacing amid the House Oversight investigation and the official impeachment inquiry. Mississippi trial attorney Richard Scruggs admitted to paying James and Sara Biden's "consulting firm" $100,000 to help grease the wheels for the Senate to pass a 1997 big tobacco law that...

A former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted U.S. Capitol rioters got better bail than some of the accused in the January 6 case after he allegedly stabbed a driver in a fit of road rage on Tuesday. Meanwhile, former assistant U.S. attorney Patrick Scruggs—who prosecuted some of those accused of storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—has been charged with aggravated battery, aggravated assault and armed burglary. Scruggs, who spent 10 years with the U.S. Attorney's Office, posted $65,000 bail the same day he was arrested in Tampa, Florida. Scruggs was released from the Pinellas County Jail on Tuesday...

Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Scruggs will have his day in court, but no single case will restore the equilibrium razed by J6 prosecutors.By way of introduction, my name is Adam Johnson — but most people know me as “the Lectern Guy.” On Jan. 6, 2021, I kind of broke the internet after I was photographed smiling and waving as I was carrying then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s podium through the Capitol rotunda. Suffice it to say, the authorities did not look kindly on what I did, and I was later arrested.Eventually, I was transferred to a courtroom after four...

When someone calls you a bald face liar. What type of lie is that? Is it a war accusation, Scruggs off, ignore … Imagine it was your wife.

The controversy surrounding Richard Jewell is heating up. Warner Bros. has released a statement responding to the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s demand for a disclaimer saying the late journalist Kathy Scruggs (portrayed in the film by Olivia Wilde) did not sleep with an FBI source for information in real life. “The film is based on a wide range of highly credible source material,” the studio’s statement, obtained by EW, says. “There is no disputing that Richard Jewell was an innocent man whose reputation and life were shredded by a miscarriage of justice. It is unfortunate and the ultimate irony that the...

Clint Eastwood’s new film Richard Jewell has been criticised for its portrayal of one of the key journalists involved in reporting on the 1996 Atlanta bombing case on which the film is based. Jewell was a security guard who discovered the bomb and led bystanders away; he was investigated by the FBI for several weeks but never charged. After two further bombings, Eric Robert Rudolph was identified as a suspect, and convicted in 2005. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution controversially named him three days later. Kevin G Riley, editor in chief of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said in a letter to the Wrap...

Legendary banjo picker Earl Scruggs, one of the pioneering figures of bluegrass music, has died at 88. "The Essential Earl Scruggs"Scruggs reached his highest level of fame in the 1960s when he and partner Lester Flatt recording the theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies, which became a beloved weekly staple in living rooms that wouldn't think of ever putting on a bluegrass record, as well as a No. 1 smash on the not usually so rootsy Billboard country chart. But his stardom continued to give him a healthy touring career to the very end, especially at roots-music gatherings like the...

Country and bluegrass pioneer Earl Scruggs has passed away in a Nashville hospital at the age of 88. Scruggs was born in Shelby, NC and started playing the banjo at the age of four, an instrument that would fill his days during the depression and after his father died. Originally, he played using two fingers but, by the age of ten, he had evolved to a three-finger style that would eventually revolutionize bluegrass music and become known as "Scruggs Style Picking." Scruggs started his professional career in 1945 with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys but, in 1948, he left Monroe's...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Bluegrass legend and banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs, who teamed helped profoundly change country music with Bill Monroe and later with guitarist Lester Flatt, has died. He was 88. Scruggs' son Gary said his father passed away Wednesday morning at a Nashville, Tenn., hospital. Gary Scruggs said his father died of natural causes. The elder Scruggs was an innovator who pioneered modern banjo sound. His use of three fingers rather than the clawhammer style elevated the banjo from a part of the rhythm section — or a comedian's prop — to a lead instrument.

War is never a lukewarm topic of discussion – most are either for it or against it, none lacking opinions. War may be between countries, but in the trenches it is about the people: troops on the ground, in the air, on the sea. It is people who fight, people who are wounded, people who come home to loved ones – or not. Such casualties are not forgotten, but live on in memories others cherish as the bodies rest in graves. Birthdays are remembered and anniversaries marked in a myriad of ways as families honor those who served. The U.S....

JACKSON, Miss. -- A federal appeals court has thrown out a $70 million settlement brokered by convicted former lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. The settlement involved a dispute between the Republic of Venezuela and Northrop Grumman Ship Systems. Scruggs, a chief architect of the multibillion-dollar tobacco settlements of the 1990s, is serving a seven-year prison sentence for conspiracy in one bribery case and mail fraud in another. In a July 9 ruling, a three-member panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that a district court in Mississippi erred when it declined Venezuela's appeal of the...

The huge fees that Weiss and Scruggs were able to pocket stemmed from their technique of gathering very large groups of plaintiffs to sue corporations for damages. Weiss's genius was getting in the door first as lead counsel, using a ready-made stable of clients who, it turned out, were receiving kickbacks in what a federal judge described this week as a "nationwide conspiracy that continued for decades." Scruggs was also adept at enrolling long lists of plaintiffs -- whose damage claims were so sizable that corporations often settled rather than run the risk of multibillion-dollar payouts and possible bankruptcy. Scruggs's...

Scruggs Was Charged With Conspiring to Pay a State Judge $40,000 in Cash in Exchange for a Favorable Ruling Attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, famous for winning billions of dollars from the big tobacco companies, has pleaded guilty to charges of trying to bribe a Mississippi judge, according the Associated Press.

Federal agents are investigating whether former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott knowingly played a role in an alleged conspiracy in 2006 to influence a Mississippi judge presiding over a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against famed plaintiff attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, according to people familiar with the situation. Mr. Scruggs and several associates are scheduled to stand trial March 31 on charges that they offered $40,000 in bribes to State Court Judge Henry L. Lackey in return for a favorable ruling in a lawsuit against Mr. Scruggs over $26.5 million in legal fees. Mr. Lott, who is a brother-in-law to Mr. Scruggs, unexpectedly...

The Dickie Scruggs bribery case keeps getting curiouser, with yesterday's news that even the tort baron's former defense attorney has copped a federal plea. Mr. Scruggs was indicted in November along with his son and three other lawyers for conspiring to bribe Mississippi Judge Henry Lackey. Two of the defendants have already pled guilty and are cooperating with the feds. And according to court papers released yesterday, Joey Langston, who had until recently represented Mr. Scruggs, has now pled guilty to conspiring with Mr. Scruggs in a scheme to influence a different judge in a separate case. * * *...

BILOXI, Miss. -- Court records showed through ties to attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, P.L. Blake will earn $50 million. The Sun Herald reported Blake is earning that money for clipping newspaper articles and alerting Scruggs to maneuvering in political "cloakrooms," as Scruggs put it, from Mississippi to Washington. Scruggs has said that Blake will earn $50 million in fees over 20 years from Scruggs' share of tobacco settlements. Mike Moore, who as Mississippi's attorney general guided the tobacco litigation, has said he was unaware Scruggs is paying Blake such a large sum. Accounts of how Blake earned the money are...