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Judge Juan Merchan has sentenced President-elect Donald Trump in a New York NDA case (the so-called "hush money" case). The sentence is an unconditional discharge, which in essence is a sentence in name only.AdvertisementThe Hill reports:President-elect Trump was spared any punishment for his hush money criminal conviction Friday when a New York judge sentenced him to an unconditional discharge, eschewing jail time while securing his status as the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency. Judge Juan Merchan’s decision to release Trump with no strings attached caps the first and only criminal trial of a former president,...

What, you didn’t really think The Swamp would slither away on its own, did you? In what was described by journalists as “an extraordinary turn,” New York Judge Juan M. Merchan announced today that he will move forward with the sentencing of President-elect Donald Trump on Jan. 10 — a scant 10 days before he’s inaugurated as our next president. In a highly controversial, politically charged court case that dramatically deviated from standard precedent, Trump was convicted of falsifying his business records to hide a 2016 payment to “adult actress” Stormy Daniels. Trump has adamantly denied these allegations, asserted his...

Star Wars fans might recall Obi-Wan’s Jedi mind trick in A New Hope when he tells stormtroopers, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” Were Star Wars writers wrong about the placement of the preposition “for”? Should Obi-Wan instead have said, “These aren’t the droids for which you’re looking”? The latter sounds unnatural (and much more Yoda-esque, to be honest). Situations like these have caused grammar reformers to question or outright rebel against this “rule” about not ending sentences with prepositions. Prepositions explain one noun’s relation to another, often indicating where or when. They can tell you if a cat...

A judge ripped into a Colorado county clerk for her efforts to expose vote fraud involving the county’s voting machines following the 2020 presidential race. District Judge Matthew Barrett on Thursday sentenced former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to nine years behind bars for a data-breach scheme—after earlier dressing her down for her ongoing insistence that she was acting in the public interest to fight systemic corruption.“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence.“You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” he continued. “You...

On January 6, 2021, personal friend, grandmother, and engaged civil servant in her hometown of Santa Ynez, Calif., Karen Jones was essentially, if you’ll excuse what has become a cliché, a tourist — a nonviolent, by the admission of the court, American visiting the Capitol she helps pay for via taxes. The cops, emissaries of state, even granted her permission that day to enter the building, which she mistakenly took as permission to enter the building, an error she is now going to pay for with three years of probation, thousands of dollars in fines, and other draconian terms she...

A California man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the second-longest sentence yet in hundreds of prosecutions of riot participants. David Nicholas Dempsey pleaded guilty in January to two counts of assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon, landing him a sentence only surpassed by Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio's 22-year sentence, according to a report from the Guardian. Prosecutors accused Dempsey of being one of the most violent members of the mob that stormed the Capitol in protest of Congress certifying the 2020 election for...

The White House left open the idea that President Joe Biden might commute Hunter Biden’s pending federal sentence following his gun-related conviction. There is no immediate date scheduled for Hunter’s sentencing. A two to three-month delay between conviction and sentencing is typical in the federal system. “As we all know, the sentencing hasn’t even been scheduled yet,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday. Joe Biden told ABC News last week that he would not pardon his son.

Former and potentially future President Donald Trump was found "guilty" last Thursday on 34 felony counts in a hush money "trial." It's not just Trump they're going after, though with a weaponized and politicized justice system. As we've been covering, President Joe Biden's Department of Justice (DOJ) has been quite eager to prosecute prayerful pro-life activists using the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, including an elderly grandfather. Since then, more grandparents have been sentenced, including grandmothers in poor health. Late last month, 59-year-old Heather Idoni was sentenced to 24 years in prison. She's already been incarcerated for...

<p>Chad Daybell was sentenced to death Saturday for the murders of his wife and his girlfriend’s two youngest children in Idaho.</p><p>The sentence was handed down after an Idaho jury unanimously agreed that imposing the death penalty would be a just resolution to the triple-murder case. The sentence marks the end of a grim investigation that began with a search for two missing children in 2019. The next year their bodies were found buried in Daybell’s eastern Idaho yard.</p>

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking a 40-year prison sentence for David DePape, the man convicted of attacking now-former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband in October 2022. Federal prosecutors said Friday that the sentence would “reflect the nature and circumstances of the offense,” USA Today reported on Saturday. When the initial incident happened at the Pelosi residence in San Francisco, California, police were dispatched to the scene and later said DePape attacked Pelosi’s husband, Paul, with a hammer, Breitbart News noted.

Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola sobbed in a Washington, D.C., courtroom on Friday, as he asked a federal judge for leniency in his Jan. 6 sentence and vowed to stay out of politics in the future. However, after receiving a 10-year prison sentence, Pezzola reportedly raised his fist and shouted, “Trump won,” as he left the courtroom, according to WUSA. The 46-year-old, who smashed a Capitol window with a stolen police riot shield, stood trial alongside four other members of the Proud Boys earlier this year in one of the most high-profiles cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on...

Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley says former President Trump could die in prison if convicted on just one count after being indicted by the Justice Department last week on dozens of charges related to his handling of classified documents. “The problem is, he’s got to run the table — he’s 76 years old,” Turley, a former opinion contributor for The Hill, said of Trump during an appearance on Fox News. “All the government has to do is stick the landing on one count, and he could have a terminal sentence. You’re talking about crimes that have a 10- or...

It’s not just the United States where brutal criminals are coddled.Add Scotland to the list of places where barbarism is embraced by the criminal justice system. England too, if you are a South Asian.A brutal rapist walked out of the courtroom without any prison time. Since he only raped a girl he isn’t considered much of a danger to the community.Girls don’t count for much in Scotland anyway. Unless they are transgender. Then the state will go all out for you. One must have priorities, you know.Back in 2018 Sean Hogg brutally raped a 13-year-old girl as she played in...

Former President Donald Trump could face up to 136 years if he is convicted on all 34 counts of falsification of a business record, if the judge decides — though the more likely maximum is probably four years, or less. Under New York State law, the crime with which Trump is charged is a “Class E” felony, which carries a maximum sentence of four years: § 175.10 Falsifying business records in the first degree. A person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when he commits the crime of falsifying business records in the second degree, and...

Alameda County District Attorney's Office After rejecting her in 2018, the voters of Alameda County, California selected Pamela Price as their new District Attorney last year. Price had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from George Soros for her two campaigns. That probably tells you most of what you need to know, since Soros only funds candidates who are soft on crime and willing to empty the jails as much as possible. Price quickly proved herself no exception, seeking to cut a plea deal with a killer who had been arrested for one triple murder for hire, was accused...

Just when you thought American prison systems couldn’t be any more inhumane, a ridiculous new bill has been proposed in Massachusetts that would permit prisoners to donate their organs in exchange for reduced sentences. Perhaps most shockingly, Democrats are sponsoring the legislation. The “act to establish the Massachusetts incarcerated individual bone marrow and organ donation program” is sponsored by Democratic Reps. Carlos Gonzalez of Springfield and Judith Garcia of Chelsea. The bill would give inmates anywhere from 60 days to a year off of their prison sentence as long as “the incarcerated individual has donated bone marrow or organ(s).” The...

The right-wing extremist who federal authorities say led the failed plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic has been sentenced to 16 years in prison — dodging what could have been a life sentence that federal authorities had sought in the rare domestic terrorism case. Adam Fox, 39, was convicted in August on two conspiracy charges relating to the kidnapping scheme and another to obtain and use a weapon of mass destruction related to a side plot to blow up a bridge in order to distract authorities. Federal prosecutors identified Fox as...

The latest contestant on our hit parade of January 6 riot participants being sent to prison comes to us from Tennessee. 38-year-old Matthew Bledsoe of Mississippi was found guilty this summer of one felony charge and four misdemeanors. This week he was sentenced to four years in prison. The felony charge dropped on Bledsoe was the same that prosecutors in many other cases have defaulted to: “Obstruction of an Official Proceeding.” The misdemeanors were also typical of these show trials. Of course, the only actual actions that prosecutors could pin on Bledsoe involved scaling a wall and being inside the...

Robert Keith Packer’s sister asked people not to judge him by his cover, a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt. A prosecutor said he was wearing a Nazi SS T-shirt underneath. The revelation of what Packer, a 57-year-old Virginia pipefitter, was wearing on Jan. 6, 2021, came Thursday when a federal judge sentenced him to 75 days for his role in the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. The sweatshirt, which became a symbol of the rioters’ ties to white supremacist movements, was “incredibly offensive,” U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said before handing down the sentence. “It seems to me that he wore...

Richard ‘Bigo’ Barnett, the Arkansas man photographed with his feet on a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office on Jan. 6, 2021, rejected a plea agreement offered by the Department of Justice that would have seen him spend 70 to 87 months in prison.Barnett, 61, of Gravette, Arkansas, faces three charges stemming from the U.S. Capitol breach, including knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds while armed with a dangerous weapon, violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and theft of public money, property, or records.Barnett’s attorney, Joseph McBride, rejected the plea offer, calling...