Tag Archives: DOJ

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Daily Broadside | DOJ’s Case Against Trump in Jeopardy Because Jack Smith Doesn’t Have Authority To Charge Him

It’s going to be a short week. I missed yesterday because I wasn’t feeling well, and I’ll be out of town this weekend. But there’s so much material that I’ll be able to at least post some stuff that will make you want to tear your hair out.

Let’s start with the clown show that is all of the persecution by prosecution of Donald J. Trump. Besides all the inflated charges based on a thin-as-gruel layer-of-ice in the Sarhara, including Garland’s DOJ staging photos of the documents that Trump allegedly took illegally, it turns out that the man prosecuting Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith, is in fact doing so illegally because he has no constitutional authority to do so.

The liberal news media is full of false stories about how Judge Aileen Cannon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida has delayed former President Donald Trump’s trial unnecessarily for allegedly mishandling classified documents. But, in fact, the Biden Administration and its Attorney General, Merrick Garland, are themselves to blame for the current delay. Special Counsel Jack Smith claims to be an inferior officer of the United States, but in fact he holds no such office. Smith is a mere employee of the Department of Justice, and he lacks the power to initiate prosecutions. Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission, 585 U.S. __ (2018) holds that only officers of the United States can take actions that affect the life, liberty, and property of citizens.

Judge Cannon has asked for oral argument on June 21, 2024 on former President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment on the ground that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to his current job because he is not an inferior officer. Washington, D.C. super-lawyer, Gene Schaerr, has filed an amicus brief in United States v. Trump on behalf of former Attorney Generals Edwin Meese III and Michael B. Mukasey, as well as me and Professor Gary Lawson, arguing that Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to be an inferior officer, and Judge Cannon has asked Gene Schaerr to participate in the oral argument, which he has agreed to do.

The Appointment Clause of Article II, Section 2 provides that: “the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.” Jack Smith claims to be an inferior officer of the United States appointed by the Head of the Justice Department, but he is instead a mere employee.

It sure seems like Smith is unauthorized to charge “Trump with 40 felony counts, including allegedly violating the Espionage Act, making false statements to investigators and conspiracy to obstruct justice.” If it turns out that the judge agrees, Smith’s case will be dismissed and Garland will have to find someone else with the proper vetting to pursue the case. By that time, the election will be here and, God willing, Trump will have kicked this administration out on its keister.

Jack Smith, however, was a private citizen, and not a sitting U.S. Attorney, when Attorney General Merrick Garland named him to be the Special Counsel who would investigate and prosecute Donald Trump. Smith’s appointment as an inferior officer was thus unconstitutional, and therefore the cases against former President Donald Trump, which Smith is prosecuting in Florida and in Washington D.C. must be dismissed. Again, Congress has never by law vested in the Attorney General the power to appoint inferior officers.

[…]

Thank God Judge Cannon has scheduled oral argument on President Trump’s motion to dismiss Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for misuse of classified documents by a Justice Department employee who has not been nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The judge should dismiss Smith’s case, and the Eleventh Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court should affirm that dismissal.

Smith should be prosecuted and sued for illegally bringing charges, along with impeaching Merrick Garland.

LOL. That’ll never happen.

Trump did nothing to deserve what he’s getting. This lawless administration is using lawfare to drain Trump’s finances, emotionally destroy him, and keep him off the campaign trail. And it’s doing so illegally.

But Trump seems to thrive in this hostile environment. He comes out swinging and uses the press to his advantage, basically getting in-kind donations with free media coverage that reaches millions and millions of people.

The persecution of Trump in all its forms is a travesty of justice.

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Daily Broadside | The DOJ Sets Up A Soviet-Style Snitch Line

From PJ Media comes word that the feds have just announced and funded the “National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center.”

Joe Biden apparently thinks he isn’t going to make it to a second term. On Saturday, his attorney general announced a new resource program for Red Flag laws across America that will go on long after Biden is no longer in the White House.

Congressman Thomas Massie sounded the alarm, asking: “What the hell is this evil? A Federal Red Flag center; We did not authorize this. Announced, of course, just hours after the omnibus passes.”

So unelected bureaucrats are now making law and funding it out of the money Congress voted to give them? The out-of-control ring masters are planning to disarm all of the junta’s enemies. That means all white, conservative, right wing, extremist, Christian Nationalist, MAGA Republican men who object to a government that is trampling their God-given rights.

Red flag laws sound reasonable, don’t they, considering how often gun violence is preceded by the perpetrators dropping blatant warning signs of murderous intent (signs which the FBI and DHS then ignore)? But make no mistake – red flag laws, which enable authorities to disarm someone who has been deemed a potential gun violence threat by family members or others in close contact with the “suspect,” will be used to target political enemies of the Biden administration. Under the guise (as usual) of keeping Americans safe, the government will exploit these laws in totalitarian ways.

Own a MAGA hat or a Gadsden flag? The Biden administration sees you as a potential danger. Complain about woke schoolroom indoctrination at school board meetings? The FBI already considers you a domestic terrorist. Post support on social media for the J6 political prisoners? You’re a threat to American “democracy” (i.e. Democrat one-party hegemony). Does anyone doubt that the government will use red flag laws to neuter such “threats”?

Who decides who “poses” a threat? Who decides what constitutes a threat? They’ve already demonized whites, “MAGA” Republicans, “deplorables” and “bitter clingers,” anti-vaxxers, hoax-busters and others as the greatest threat to the country since sliced bread or something.

Red flag laws are unconstitutional because they offer no due process. Authorities can show up to take your lawfully purchased weapons based on a report from anyone, and you don’t get them back until the authorities say so.

If you have a firearm, you best be quiet about it.

The potential danger and violence that red flag laws pose is real.

These imposters in the federal government — they’re American in name only — intend to disarm the populace in the interest of “public safety.” Safety is a disingenuous head fake.

The truth is that these left-wing cultural Marxists and their enablers in the media and our formerly great institutions are the true threat to a safe and stable society.

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Daily Broadside | The DOJ Pleads Leniency By Quoting MLK for a BLM Rioter Who Killed a Man

Absolutely astonishing. And infuriating.

Here’s what the government’s sentencing memo says, in part.

Mr. Lee credibly states that he was in the streets to protest unlawful police violence against black men, and there is no basis to disbelieve this statement. Mr. Lee, appropriately, acknowledges that he “could have demonstrated in a different way,” but that he was “caught up in the fury of the mob after living as a black man watching his peers suffer at the hands of police.” As anyone watching the news world-wide knows, many other people in Minnesota were similarly caught up. There appear to have been many people in those days looking only to exploit the chaos and disorder in the interest of personal gain or random violence. There appear also to have been many people who felt angry, frustrated, and disenfranchised, and who were attempting, in many cases in an unacceptably reckless and dangerous manner, to give voice to those feelings. Mr. Lee appears to be squarely in this latter category. And even the great American advocate for non-violence and social justice, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stated in an interview with CBS’s Mike Wallace in 1966 that “we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.”

He was just caught up in the “fury after living as a black man,” you guys! He was just “giving voice” to his feelings, cuz!

Hey, I think those J6 protestors were just caught up in the moment after living as conservatives watching their country suffer at the hands of anarchists, Marxists and Democrats. The J6 protest was just “the language of the unheard.”

But noooOOOOOooo!

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the unrest on January 6th. Convicted of seditious conspiracy, Tarrio, who was not present at the Capitol, pleaded for leniency but received none.

Tarrio wasn’t even at the Captiol where the government killed at least two protestors. He gets 22 years, but a violent rioter who killed a man with five children gets ten years because he’s a black man just letting off steam and besides, didn’t you hear what Martin Luther King, Jr. said?

The DOJ is a partisan political organization with the force of law and guns behind it and this memo just underscores the fact that we no longer have equal application of the law. Federal courts need to vacate all J6 sentences produced by these show trials. The victims need to be pardoned and their records expunged.

And the DOJ needs to be shut down. Merrick Garland needs to be impeached for leading a Gestapo-like gang of enforcers for his political clients. We are barreling down a path that will not end well for anybody.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | Archer Will Testify If He Isn’t Suicided Or Arrested Before Monday

It’s hard to even pretend to be shocked by anything the Resident and his team of mobsters do these days, especially when it comes the Department of Just Us, where any reference to the rule of law and the constitution have been scrubbed when it comes to blindfolded application.

On Monday, Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer is set to testify before the House Oversight Committee to expose Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s foreign business dealings. The Biden administration is doing everything possible to prevent that from happening.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to arrest Archer on unrelated charges mere hours before his scheduled testimony. On Saturday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York issued a request to trial judge Ronnie Abrams to compel Archer to surrender to authorities.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer was asked about this development on Sunday, during an appearance on Fox News.

“I have in my hand a letter from the Department of Justice that was sent to the Southern District of New York on Saturday,” host Maria Bartiromo began. “By the way, Devon Archer is testifying on Monday — do you ever see … the DOJ send letters like this out on a Saturday?”

“Never, never,” Comer replied. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard of the Department of Justice doing anything on a Saturday.”

When it comes to protecting the Regime, Saturdays are a must. And you must respect the Regime.

“We are aware of speculation that the Department of Justice’s weekend request to have Mr. Archer report to prison is an attempt by the Biden administration to intimidate him in advance of his meeting with the House Oversight Committee,” Schwartz said in a statement, per Politico.

“To be clear, Mr. Archer does not agree with that speculation,” Schwartz added. “In any case, Mr. Archer will do what he has planned to do all along, which is to show up on Monday and to honestly answer the questions that are put to him by the Congressional investigators.”

No sense in getting Epsteined if you don’t need to. Assuming he lives to testify, what will Archer say?

Hunter Biden would dial in his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, on speakerphone into meetings with his overseas business partners, according to testimony expected before Congress this week from Devon Archer, the first son’s former best friend. 

Archer, 48, who is facing jail for his role in a $60 million bond fraud, is scheduled to testify to the House Oversight Committee about meetings he witnessed that were attended by Joe Biden either in person or via speakerphone when Hunter would call his father and introduce him to foreign business partners or prospective investors. 

“We are looking forward very much to hearing from Devon Archer about all the times he has witnessed Joe Biden meeting with Hunter Biden’s overseas business partners when he was vice president, including on speakerphone,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the committee chairman. 

Trying to have a hostile witness arrested and jailed before testifying is sheer intimidation tactics used by communist governments the world over. And now by our government here, in the former United States of America. I don’t know what it is now, but it’s not the America that I grew up in.

The walls may be closing in on Brandon, but I’m not confident that he’ll suffer any consequences. As John Kass, the former Chicago Tribune columnist put it,

Remember that for years the Democrats and their media lickspittles have insisted–and Joe Biden has himself stated emphatically and publicly before the last presidential election, that he knew nothing of his son Hunter’s shady overseas business deals. Of course he knew.

He was the muscle. And Hunter, like his Uncle Jim before him, was the bagman. The guy who carried the treasure to “The Big Guy” or “President Ten Percent.”

Those of you who know Chicago know how this works–The Delaware Way is the American Way is the Chicago Way. And how do you keep the suckers from ‘beefing’ or ‘complaining?’ You control the media to suppress problematic facts. And do they ever control it.

Now you understand why the Democrat Media Complex was so furious with voters after the mid-term elections. They would be exposed. All the rocks would be turned over. There were no moist corners in which to hide.

The great heavyweight champion Joe Louis had a saying, “They can run but they can’t hide.” Eventually they’d be trapped and take a public beating.

I’d like to think that  is true, but the difference being that there is a great political machine between Biden and his opposition. They protect Biden and take the punches for him and then counter-attack with deadly vengeance, and as long as there are low-information voters out there (i.e. stupid, easily manipulated voters) who don’t read and don’t pay attention. These are the true chumbolones who steadily consume corrupt media the way diabetics guzzle soda-pop. And it is through this stupidity–most of it demonstrated by Democrats during big-city elections, that guys like Joe and Hunter Biden are protected and saved.

A thoroughly corrupt “president” presiding over a thoroughly corrupt administrative state, with a thoroughly corrupt son who took money to fuel his drug and whoring habits with “ten percent to the Big Guy.”

They deserve to be taken down, and hard.

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Daily Broadside | The Administrative State Will Be The Death of Us

I long ago came to the conclusion that the alphabet agencies populating the federal government are unconstitutional and should be defunded, decommissioned, razed and salted over — permanently abolished, never to be formed again. The federal government was supposed to be small with powers restricted to those enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.

Jefferson also felt that the central government should be “rigorously frugal and simple.” As president he reduced the size and scope of the federal government by ending internal taxes, reducing the size of the army and navy, and paying off the government’s debt. Limiting the federal government flowed from his strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Offices with the powers of the IRS, the EPA, the DOE, the HHS, the DOJ, FBI and on ad infinitum, were never envisioned by the founders.

Under that system of a separation of powers each branch of the Federal Government was expected to protect its own Constitutional powers such that no single branch accrued power it was not allocated by the Constitution. The Founders understood that individuals were free in direct proportion to each branch of the Federal Government staying strictly within its own bounds, and the most important lane was the legislative lane; a narrow road of strictly enumerated powers written by a Congress consisted of duly elected representatives; with the House of Representatives the body most regularly elected, and with special powers over the origination of revenue bills in the driver’s seat.

But today many legislative and budget powers have been ceded to Presidents and the executive branch through statutes delegating legislative responsibility to Federal regulatory agencies composed of unelected people; and statutes mandating automatic and increased spending on certain programs administered by the executive branch.

That bolded text is the crux of the issue: Congress has delegated its own authority to unelected bureaucracies which issue regulations and rules that have the practical effect of law. Constitutionally, however, only Congress has the power to make law — it’s the legislative branch of the government, for Pete’s sake! — and only the House has the ability to appropriate funds, the lifeblood of these agencies and extra-constitutional organizations.

Yet the pressures of keeping a seat in the House or the Senate means that outsourcing their responsibility to unelected bureaucrats is a convenient way of avoiding responsibility for the onerous administrative state that Americans suffer under.

At first Congress had the upper hand; Congress had been creating the bureaucracy to carry out its wishes. But the more Congress gave away its powers in the form of broad regulatory authority, the more bureaucrats effectively became the lawmakers. The rise of the new imperial Presidency, and it should be shocking but no surprise, as Congress has expanded the bureaucracy creating programs, delegating authority, neglecting budgeting; the executive has attained unprecedented levels of authority. Our executives can command the bureaucracy to implement new procedures and policies without the cooperation of Congress by abusing executive discretion, by exploiting the vagaries of poorly written laws, and now by willfully neglecting and disregarding the laws which indeed are clear.

In his testimony before the 2016 Task Force for Executive Overreach Judiciary Committee (in the same linked document), Dr. Matthew Spalding of Hillsdale College, wrote:

This transfer of lawmaking power away from Congress to an oligarchy of unelected experts who rule through executive decree and judicial edict over virtually every aspect of our daily lives, under the guise of merely implementing the technical details of law, constitutes nothing less than a revolution against our constitutional order. The significance of this revolution cannot be overstated. It threatens to undo the development of the rule of law and constitutional government, the most significant and influential accomplishment of the long history of human liberty.

This revolution has created an increasingly unbalanced structural relationship between an ever more powerful, aggressive and bureaucratic executive branch and a weakening legislative branch unwilling to exercise its atrophied constitutional muscles to check the executive or rein in a metastasizing bureaucracy. If the executive-bureaucratic rule now threatening to overwhelm American society becomes the undisputed norm — accepted not only among the academic and political elites, but also by the American people, as the defining characteristic of the modern state — it could well mark the end of our great experiment in self-government.

Against that background, Michael Walsh’s latest column takes on more urgency.

Bureaucratic parasitism has only accelerated since start of the Nixon administration … as demands for D.C. to “do something” about pretty much everything grew and grew. Having won the war in Europe with Soviet and British help, and defeated the Japanese Empire practically by themselves, Americans felt there was no task too big to tackle. On Nixon’s watch —Tricky Dick’s fatal flaw, like Donald Trump’s, was the fool’s errand of trying to get his enemies (who detested him) to like him—the regulatory agencies were summoned into being, dark golems bent on destroying the Constitution in the guise of trying to Save the Earth.

One of the first up was the Environmental Protection Agency, the demon spawn of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, which mandated (what an ugly word for a democracy to employ) “environmental impact” statements for future federal projects. Nixon put teeth in the law with the creation by executive order of the Environmental Protection Agency at the end of that same year. Then the unelected bureaucrats took over, and turned what had been sold as benign into a ravenous, uncontrollable, punitive beast. And now here we are:

The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, according to two people familiar with the matter. That would represent a quantum leap for the United States — where just 5.8 percent of vehicles sold last year were all-electric — and would exceed President Biden’s earlier ambitions to have all-electric cars account for half of those sold in the country by 2030.

It would be the federal government’s most aggressive climate regulation and would propel the United States to the front of the global effort to slash the greenhouse gases generated by cars, a major driver of climate change.

Death by a thousand cuts as the administrative state piles rule upon rule on top of our backs. Today’s Washington D.C. is a sinister, grotesque Gordian knot not unlike a cancerous tumor that has wrapped itself around the brain stem of its victim. Not doing anything will allow it to eventually kill any semblance of representative government — something I believe we are fast approaching.

Yet the alternative is an aggressive, unsparing treatment that cuts it out before it can do any more damage, and one of those agencies — the DOJ — has already demonized anyone who dares raise an objection to the administrative state as a “domestic terrorist.”

This is why I’ve warned that we’re heading for a significant conflict that can only be described as a civil war. That’s the trajectory we’re on, which is underscored by the literal movement of Americans out of blue zones across the fruited plain.

What we found was striking: There has been a vast migration out of counties that voted for Joe Biden into those counties that voted to reelect Donald Trump.

Census data show a net internal migration of almost 2.6 million (2,562,937 to be exact) from blue counties to red since Biden was elected. (These figures don’t count immigrants or births or deaths, just those Americans moving from one location to another.)

More than 61% of the counties that voted for Biden in 2020 lost population, while 65% of Trump-supporting counties gained population.

Some highlights:

  • Of the 555 counties Biden won, 335 (or 61%) lost population due to internal migration, our analysis found. Of the 2,589 counties that Trump won, 1,675 (or 65%) gained population.
  • Two Biden-voting counties that lost the most from net migration were Los Angeles County, which was down 363,760, and Cook County, Illinois, down 200,718. While many of the blue counties that lost population were urbanized, the exodus was widespread and nationwide, including many far more sparsely populated liberal areas.
  • In contrast, the biggest loss in any red county was Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, down just 18,470.
  • In 13 states that had a net loss of population, red counties nevertheless showed gains. In California, which saw a massive net outflow of 871,127 people in just the past two years, counties that backed Trump had a net gain of 8,412. New Jersey suffered a loss of 107,749 over the past two years, but counties in the Garden State that voted for Trump gained 22,507. Michigan lost 43,188 overall, but its red counties had a net gain of 28,091.
  • On the other hand, blue counties lost population in states that saw overall gains. For example, Florida had a net gain of 622,476 over the past two years. But counties that backed Biden nevertheless lost 3,374. Georgia had a large gain of 128,089, but blue counties still had a net loss of 28,178. Tennessee saw an increase of 146,403 people, but counties that voted for Biden saw a decline of 37,306.

Once the majority of moves have been completed, the red and blue state boundaries will harden and then there won’t be anywhere else to run to. As the federal government favors blue states over red, red states will either file for divorce or have to fight to leave the union.

We’re in for a long slog.

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Daily Broadside | Garland Owns Raid Decision, FBI Too Corrupt to Exist Any Longer

Daily Verse | Isaiah 66:2
“These is the one I esteem:
    he who is humble and contrite in spirit,
    and trembles at my word.”

Friday’s Reading: Jeremiah 1-3
Saturday’s Reading: Jeremiah 4-6

Friday and we’re already hitting the middle of August. The days are hurtling by on the road to November and our last chance to right the ship before 2024.

So Attorney General Merrick Garland made a rare statement yesterday and took responsibility for approving the raid on President Trump’s personal residence on Monday.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he “personally approved” the decision to seek a search warrant for former President Trump’s private residence at Mar-a-Lago, saying the Justice Department has filed a motion to unseal the search warrant and property receipt from the FBI’s raid, amid “substantial public interest” in the matter, while defending the “integrity” of law enforcement officials.

The raid was outrageous not just for its brazen disregard of historical precedent, or for the reported purpose of recovering potentially “classified” materials that Trump had (even though the FBI had already seen everything that he had), or even for the overkill of sending 40 agents to swarm Trump’s home.

No, the real outrage is in the selective application of enforcement and the absolutely appalling corruption that exists in agencies like the FBI, putting the lie to Garland’s defense of the “integrity” of the agency. The FBI in particular and our law enforcement institutions in general have become much too large, much to unaccountable, and much too smug.

They are a danger to the republic.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, once so popular it had its own TV show solely dedicated to its heroics, has become a hyper-politicized, jackbooted bully that no longer serves the American people or the U.S. Constitution, which its employees are sworn to protect. It has become, instead, the intelligence arm and domestic enforcer of the far left.

Did we say defund? Yes. But we don’t mean simply to cut its funding, as leftists have disastrously proposed for police forces across the country. We mean tear down the entire rotting edifice of the FBI and replacing it with a new agency that respects the Constitution and holds itself accountable to all Americans, not just the woke far left.

The Editorial Board of Issues & Insights isn’t the only group calling for a complete dismantling of the FBI. See Kyle Shideler’s recent essay at American Greatness, “For the Rule of Law to Reign, the Bureau Must Be Destroyed.”

Nevertheless, the FBI must be abolished.

The solution to the abuses we now endure is not just to subject the FBI to another fruitless inspector general investigation but to dismantle it completely. The bureau cannot be the focus of yet another congressional hearing. FBI Director Christopher Wray, like his predecessors, is more than happy to sit smirking while a handful of grandstanding congressmen and senators pound the table and yell on C-SPAN. Then he’ll jet off for a holiday vacation on a taxpayer-funded private jet while the same congressmen vote to increase his budget. Again.

No, the FBI must be rendered into component parts and distributed to the four winds…

…The FBI’s actions over the past six years make perfectly clear that the FBI is more than willing to serve as the enforcement arm of the Democratic Party. It serves as its patron’s shield in matters large and small. It exonerated Hillary Clinton for her illicit server. It raided James O’Keefe and Project Veritas when Joe Biden’s daughter lost her diary. It eliminated investigation into Black Lives Matter and other black identity extremists because those pursuits annoyed the Democrats’ Congressional Black Caucus. It refuses even to utter the word “Antifa” while churches and pregnancy centers are fire-bombed. It continues to cover up for Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings with enemy nations, along with his indulgence in criminal prostitution and drug abuse.

But the FBI has also served as the Democrats’ sword as well. It knowingly laundered the Russian collusion hoax, lying in order to secure FISA warrants. It ambushed the president’s sitting national security advisor in a nonsense perjury trap. The FBI hunts down January 6 protesters while dodging congressional inquiries about the role of federal agents in provoking the incident. The FBI ginned up a fake kidnapping plot in Michigan to instill fear of right-wing terrorism, manhandled the former president’s lawyer, and shackled one of his former high-level aides.

And it has now raided the former president’s home under a mere pretext, while the Democrats openly crow on cable news about using a political prosecution to prevent Trump from ever again being able to serve in office.

That’s what makes the raid on Trump so impossibly outrageous: the flagrant double standard the FBI and any number of other agencies flaunt in our faces. They don’t even pretend to be impartial and even-handed. In fact, they seem to revel in the fact that they’re only serving one team.

It’s been going on for years.

Did former president Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, who stuffed documents down his pants and in his socks, walked out of the National Archives with them, and lied about doing so, get raided by the FBI to recover any other potentially “classified” materials? No, he got fined and two years’ probation after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material.

Unlike Berger, Trump was the president, the chief executive and, as such, could declassify any documents he wanted. But the FBI decides to raid his home.

Victor Davis Hanson, one of my favorite essayists, puts it just as bluntly as the others:

The FBI is dissolving before our eyes into a rogue security service akin to those in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.  

Take the FBI’s deliberately asymmetrical application of the law. This week the bureau surprise-raided the home of former President Donald Trump—an historical first. 

A massive phalanx of FBI agents swooped into the Trump residence while he was not home, to confiscate his personal property, safe, and records. All of this was over an archival dispute of presidential papers common to many former presidents. Agents swarmed the entire house, including the wardrobe closet of the former first lady. 

Note we are less than 90 days out from a midterm election, and this was not just a raid, but a political act. 

An October surprise in August. I wonder what they have planned for October?

The FBI interferes with and warps national elections. It hires complete frauds as informants who are far worse than its targets. It humiliates or exempts government and elected officials based on their politics. It violates the civil liberties of individual American citizens. 

The FBI’s highest officials now routinely mislead Congress. They have erased or altered court and subpoenaed evidence. They illegally leak confidential material to the media. And they have lied under oath to federal investigators.

It’s time to dismantle the FBI, tear out the studs, dig up the foundation and salt the earth where it once stood. There is no reforming it.

And Trump may be just the guy to do it because, well … this, which he and his team released the day after the raid.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | There’s A Lot About the Raid That Really Doesn’t Make Sense

Daily Verse | Isaiah 62:12
They will be called the Holy People,
    the Redeemed of the Lord;
and you will be called Sought After,
    the City No Longer Deserted.

Thursday’s Reading: Isaiah 63-66

Thursday and the FBI’s panty raid on Trump’s personal residence keeps getting weirder and weirder. As disturbing as it is, Very Important People are disavowing any foreknowledge of the event and the pretext for the raid itself is beginning to look shaky.

The first black LBGTQ+ spokespyrson insists that Brandon only learned about the raid from the newspapers (just like Barack Hussein Obama did with many of his scandals, including the Fast & Furious gun-running operation).

If that’s true, then heads should roll, don’t you think? I mean, they didn’t give the current Resident a heads up that they were going to raid his predecessor’s—and likely future opponent’s—home?!? For the first time in American history? Breaking with 250 years of precedent?

No?

Oh, and even Merrick Garland supposedly didn’t know about the raid. “Garland had no prior knowledge of the date and time of the specific raid, nor was he asked to approve it.“

Here’s the rest of the stuff that is looking hinky at this point.

  1. The judge who approved the warrant, Bruce E. Reinhart, is a former US Attorney who went to work for Jeffrey Epstein in the middle of the investigation, donated $2,000 to Barack Hussein Obama’s presidential campaign and PAC, and was appointed a Federal Magistrate. Nothing here that would suggest bias!
  2. The FBI was ostensibly looking for classified materials that Trump took with him after leaving office. Sources also said National Archives and Records Administration referred the case to the Justice Department, which recovered 15 boxes of classified materials from the home.  But the FBI had already looked through the boxes back in May and had not taken anything then.
  3. I they were looking for classified documents, then they were looking in the wrong place because “we’ve known for months now that the documents in question were already declassified by then-President Trump,” according to Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official.
  4. That Trump had the documents may have been the result of an administrative error outside of his team. “A legal source said that the boxes had been packed up by the General Services Administration and shipped to Mar-a-Lago when Trump left office in January 2020.”

In the same Newsweek article above that distances Garland from the raid:

The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI’s deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump’s Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away.

FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.

The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. “What a spectacular backfire,” says the Justice official.

The article goes on to say, “some 10-15 boxes of documents were removed from the premises. Donald Trump said in a statement that the FBI opened his personal safe as part of their search. Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan, who was present during the multi-hour search, says that the FBI targeted three rooms—a bedroom, an office and a storage room. That suggests that the FBI knew specifically where to look.”

They fail to mention that they also went through Melania’s wardrobe, which apparently wasn’t targeted, yet they specifically looked there.

Perverts.

The FBI needs to be disbanded and defunded. As does the DOJ and the IRS because what we’re witnessing is the centralization and consolidation of power in the hands of an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy—exactly what the separation of powers that our Founders so wisely created was intended to prevent.

I’ll say it again: America as founded is dead. There isn’t any going back; you can’t undo what has now been done. The Democrats are the enemy of the people and must be destroyed at the voting booth. As I wrote yesterday, it’s important that the Right doesn’t respond violently to the provocation.

If New York Times reporting is right — and they never err on the side of being soft on Trump — then this raid was over documents the National Archives thinks Trump should not have, or perhaps classified documents in his possession. That is not something the FBI raids major political candidates over — See, In Re Hillary Rodham Clinton.

This is a provocation. They are trying to get a reaction that allows a further crackdown. See, In Re J6.

It’s a distressing time to be a patriot but be patriots we must.

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Daily Broadside | Our Only Option is to Go Scorched Earth on the Democrats in 2022 and 2024

Daily Verse | Isaiah 58:4
You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Wednesday’s Reading: Isaiah 60-62

Wednesday and the audacious attack on Trump under the flimsiest of legal cover in our multi-tiered system of justice continues to astound and shock. Any illusions that America as founded still exists was shattered with this latest in-your-face jackbooted stomping of precedent and the rule of law.

How anyone can still believe we’re not at least approaching DEFCON 3 is beyond me. If sabotaging 2016’s election results with the Russia! Russia! Russia! collusion hoax, the two counterfeit impeachment trials, the rigged and stolen election of 2020, the January 6 Reichstag fire and illegal sham trials haven’t convinced you that unconstitutional covert operations designed to short-circuit our liberties are being run out of formerly trusted institutions, I’m not sure what will.

What makes this even worse is who hasn’t been raided by the DOJ and its mini me, the FBI.

Hunter Biden and Joe Biden: The FBI has been in possession of Hunter’s laptop since 2019, which contains evidence that Hunter used Joe’s position to conduct lucrative foreign business. He also cut his dad into deals and commingled their funds.

Hillary Clinton: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on a private server she likely used to hide efforts to use her office to raise money for her family’s foundation. She was infamously excused by the FBI…

Black Lives Matter: Amid evidence that the left-wing group has been abusing its charitable status, even liberal states issued warnings to the group. But though the movement’s scope is nationwide, the FBI or DOJ have yet to do anything about it…

By contrast, Trump allies past and present — such as Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Peter Navarro, and others — have been subjected to spectacular raids, often leaked to friendly media ahead of time, over relatively minor or unrelated allegations.

I’ve warned for years now that we were heading toward Civil War 2.0. The unprecedented invasion of a former president’s and most likely future presidential candidate’s and current private citizen’s home on the pretext of searching for “classified” documents from his time as president pushes us a great deal further toward that eventuality.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that was part of the calculus involved in planning the raid. The great danger is that some far-right activists or MEAL Team 6-types will take the provocation as permission to plot a counterattack. But as one of my favorite bloggers and pastors, Douglas Wilson, wrote in a discussion about this very thing,

“And so the takeaway lesson for conservatives is: don’t take the bait. Under no circumstances should we take the bait. I think I may have mentioned before that we should not take the bait.”

You should read the whole thing and you should also not take the bait. So should the extremes on the Right.

What we can do is really the only thing legally permissible right now, and that is to vote out the grifting ankle-biting dead weights who are part of the problem, who say they’re Republicans but act like Democrats. People like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, and any of the 14 House Republicans and 15 Senate Republicans who voted to interfere with our Second Amendment right to bear arms because teenage criminals don’t obey our laws.

Fortunately, voting them out that seems to be happening, especially in races with Trump-endorsed candidates.

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.), one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump last year, has conceded in her tough primary contest against Joe Kent. Kent is a Green Beret endorsed by the former president and is expected to advance in Washington state’s all-party primary…

Herrera Beutler, who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, would be the third such House Republican to lose in a primary this year, joining Rep. Peter Meijer (Mich.), who was defeated last week and, Rep. Tom Rice (S.C.), who lost last month. Two Republicans have advanced — both from all-party primaries: Rep. Dan Newhouse (Wash.) and Rep. David G. Valadao (Calif.). Four others decided not to seek reelection.

The final House Republican to face a primary is Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), who will go before voters Aug. 16. She faces a challenger running to her right who is backed by Trump.

I don’t believe that we can simply vote our way out of this but, apart from the unmentionable, it’s the only option we have right now. To some degree, it’s being effective. And at least one observer thinks the Deep State’s days are numbered:

But even if the Deep State were to succeed, they have already burnt their bridges by creating this precedent. The path is now wide open for either a returning President Trump or a newly minted President DeSantis to investigate Joe “The Big Guy” Biden and his possible history of pay for play. What a rich target, given Hunter’s lack of discretion about how the family became so wealthy on a government salary. Ditto for Nancy “I Rip Up State of the Union Addresses” Pelosi, the most amazing investor in stock market history. And what about those sexual harassment charges against old Joe?  No more “let the defeated opposition party leave town in peace” after they lose an election. When you play this high-stakes game, you had better come with very clean hands. While Trump may have been too much of a Mr. Nice Guy when it came to prosecuting his opponents, Gov. DeSantis can play hardball with the best of them.

Couple that with the ascendancy of conservative lawmakers and you have the makings of a tool that can be used to pry the shadow government out of its hole. And then whack it over the head.

The Democrats have demonized half the country’s voters for the last decade or more, with Barack Hussein Obama starting the practice with his “bitter clingers” epithet, followed by Hillary’s “deplorables” comment, and Brandon’s “dregs of society” insult. We’ve suffered their slights with patience, believing (perhaps naively) that we’d eventually have our say.

It could be coming, starting with the mid-terms and following it up with a strong showing in 2024. But the victories must be decisive and overwhelming. They must absolutely wreck the Democrat Party of Soviet Suck-ups. And we must put people in place who are willing to go scorched earth on those players and organizations that have acted like the tyrants they are.

After the raid at his home, Trump posted a video that captures what a majority of us are probably feeling.

I’ll leave Paula Bolyard with the final word.

Now that we see clearly what the problem is, where do we go from here? Sure, we can peacefully protest, send angry emails, or post diatribes on social media, but that’s not going to fix the problems that are eating away at our republic. The answer lies in winning elections. Decisively. First the midterms and then the White House in 2024. As I wrote last week, Trump did the country a great service by exposing the deep state and making Americans aware of the corruption within our government. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to drain the swamp — in part because it was constantly investigating him. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week dropped a political bomb on the ruling class by suspending woke Hillsborough County state attorney Andrew Warren, who had announced he would refuse to enforce Florida laws he didn’t like. Once we regain control of the White House and Congress, this should be our template going forward.

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Daily Broadside | FBI Goes Full KGB in Raid on Trump Mar-a-Lago Home

Daily Verse | Isaiah 57:21
“There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

Tuesday’s Reading: Isaiah 58-59

It’s Tuesday and Monday, August 8, may very well go down in history as the defining moment that irreversibly destroyed our nation.

The unprecedented, unannounced raid on President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home by our politicized law enforcement agencies drives home the reality that we no longer live in a country governed by equality under the law, but in a tin-pot dictatorship led by a corrupt cabal of powerful elitists who rule by selective intimidation and force.

There is no difference between what happened yesterday and the activities of the KGB in the former Soviet Union. This is all about destroying the political enemies of those in power.

Are our Norms now restored? Are the Adults back in charge? Are we happy with our current State of Affairs?

Here’s the Trumped-Up Charges that the FBI is angling to stick Trump with (my emphasis):

Early reports that the F.B.I. search of former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida related to an investigation into whether he had unlawfully taken government files when he left the White House focused attention on an obscure criminal law barring removal of official records. The penalties for breaking that law include disqualification from holding any federal office.

Because Mr. Trump is widely believed to be preparing to run for president again in 2024, that unusual penalty raised the prospect that he might be legally barred from returning to the White House.

Specifically, the law in question — Section 2071 of Title 18 of the United States Code — makes it a crime if someone who has custody of government documents or records “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys” them.

If convicted, defendants can be fined or sentenced to prison for up to three years. In addition, the statute says, if they are currently in a federal office, they “shall forfeit” that office, and they shall “be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”

On its face, then, if Mr. Trump were to be charged and convicted of removing, concealing or destroying government records under that law, he would seem to be ineligible to become president again.

This is today’s FBI: find some obscure law and conduct an illegal daylight raid to accuse a political opponent of a crime that would put them in prison for three years and disqualify them from ever holding any office in the United States.

How conVEEEEnient!

Funny how political persecution seems to only go one way in this country: against conservatives and Republicans.

This event will please the progressive Left and anger the conservative and, perhaps moderate, Right. This seems like a violation of decency and precedent. Donald J. Trump, while he has his faults, has endured more political persecution for the last 7 years than any other president. And he’s not even in office anymore, for peetsake!

Still, they persisted.

The forces arrayed against him include the unelected bureaucrats in the U.S. government, the Deep State operatives that infest our unelected alphabet agencies, the Democrat mouthpieces known as the Lame Stream Media, and any number of institutions that are saturated by cultural Marxists. In fact, they all worked together to “fortify” the 2020 presidential election against DJT and literally bragged about it in a national magazine.

Trump is, as usual, unbowed (Truth Social account necessary).

Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America

These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024, especially based on recent polls, and who will likewise do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming Midterm Elections. Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries, corrupt at a level not seen before. They even broke into my safe! What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democrat National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.

The political persecution of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years, with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends. It is political targeting at the highest level!

Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 E-mails AFTER they were subpoenaed by Congress. Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable. She even took antique furniture, and other items from the White House.

I stood up to America’s bureaucratic corruption, I restored power to the people, and truly delivered for our Country, like we have never seen before. The establishment hated it. Now, as they watch my endorsed candidates win big victories, and see my dominance in all polls, they are trying to stop me, and the Republican Party, once more. The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt must be exposed and stopped.

I will continue to fight for the Great American People!

What makes this so maddening is the clear double-standards that are in place. Hillary Clinton, James Comey, John Brennan, Lois Lerner, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and dozens more hive scum in Washington D.C. break laws and skate all the time.

We all see it. The risk here is that this (intentional) provocation could send the Deplorables over the edge and we could have another January 6 event, which would give the bastards the justification to crack down even more. (Although, the way it’s going, I’ll bet in the not-too-distant future they won’t even search for a justification—they’ll just crack down to “prevent” some made-up crisis they tell us they’re averting.)

Don’t react.

Instead, stay calm.

And keep your powder dry.

Then vote for Donald J. Trump in 2024 as a giant rebuke to the out-of-control government leviathan.