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Fifth Column

Universities of hate round-up: week of 5/18

2025-05-25

College Fix: Yale students go on pro-Hamas hunger strike; administrators refuse meeting.

Harvard president rejects 'partisan' label in letter to Sec. McMahon amid clash with Trump admin

Not specific to fostering Jew-hate, but related and eminently satisfying.

[CampusReform] Harvard University President Alan Garber asserted that the Trump administration is sidestepping private institutions’ constitutional freedoms. This comes after Education Secretary Linda McMahon said that the university will no longer receive federal grants.

Prof who called Jewish Temples “Synagogues of Satan” Has Been Fired.
[ToniAiraksinen] A professor at the prestigious Berklee College of Music — often compared to The Juilliard School in Manhattan — has been fired after years of antisemitic comments have surfaced, with the African American professor now surprisingly claiming that he himself is the victim of antisemitism.

Berklee College of Music has fired their Brass Department Chair, Nicholas Payton, only months after promoting him to the position. While the school says it cannot comment on “personnel matters” to explain any details, it did confirm that Payton had been terminated. Payton, 51, considers himself a “social activist” in music. His unique commentaries on Black music, such as arguing that “jazz” is a slur and referring to it as #BlackAfricanMusic (BAM) has earned the outspoken musician spots on a number of podcasts and nearly 50,000 followers on Instagram.

US terminates additional $60 million in Harvard grants over alleged antisemitism
[IsraelTimes] The US Department of Health and Human Services says that it was terminating $60 million in federal grants to Harvard University saying the Ivy League institution failed to address antisemitic harassment and ethnic discrimination on campus. US President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen or ended federal grants and contracts for the university worth nearly $3 billion in recent weeks. The administration has accused Harvard of continuing to consider ethnicity when reviewing student applications and of allowing discrimination against Jews as a result of the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian student protest movement that roiled American campuses last year.

Bloomberg Reporter Arrested With Pro-Hamas Group That Took Over Columbia Library
[Townhall] A reporter from Bloomberg News was arrested when pro-Hamas rioters took over Columbia University’s Butler Library earlier in the month. The reporter, Jason Kao, had graduated from Columbia in 2022. He was charged with criminal trespass and was given a desk appearance ticket.

Eighty-one activists were arrested in total.

“During the unrest, rioters injured two, passed out pamphlets endorsing Hamas’s violence, vandalized and damaged the library, and renamed the building after Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian terrorist killed in a 2017 shootout with the Israel Defense Forces,” according to the Washington Free Beacon:

“Kao’s personal website is exclusively devoted to negative coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza,” the outlet continued.

“Kao was employed by Bloomberg News as of May 1, based on a social media post from a colleague,” but Bloomberg told the Free Beacon that they no longer employ Kao.

Because the man is a propagandist, not a reporter — and certainly not a journalist.

George Washington U bans student for commencement speech calling to divest from Israel
[IsraelTimes] Speaker at George Washington graduation urges alumni not to donate, decries Gaza ‘genocide’; DC school apologizes for ‘inappropriate’ speech that strayed from approved text. Cecilia Culver made the comments while addressing the school’s liberal arts college on Saturday.

Culver had to take frequent breaks for sustained applause she received during her speech, delivered at GWU’s largest graduation ceremony. According to GWU’s own communications, during Culver’s time at the school the economics and statistics dual major was a recipient of a prestigious award and received an award from the Federal Reserve as part of an internship she completed.

“Cecilia is in every way a distinguished scholar,” the school noted.

GWU’s student newspaper noted that Daiya’s profiles have since been scrubbed from the university’s websites and directory. Her LinkedIn page is also disabled.

From Million-Dollar Homes to Radical Activism—These Posh Private School Alumni Were Among the Arrested Columbia and Barnard Students
[FreeBeacon] One student won an ‘international friendship’ award before joining a mob that injured two.

Trump administration accuses Columbia of violating Jewish students’ civil rights - violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act
[IsraelTimes] US government says the university has been ‘acting with deliberate indifference’ to antisemitism on campus since Oct. 7, ‘continually failed to protect Jewish students’.

The finding was announced late Thursday by the US Health and Human Services Department. It comes hours after the Department of Homeland Security said it would revoke Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, a major escalation in the administration’s monthslong feud with higher education.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act blocks federal funding recipients from discrimination based on race, color or national origin. That final category, the press release notes, includes “discrimination against individuals that is based on their actual or perceived Israeli or Jewish identity or ancestry.”

The announcement did not include new sanctions against Columbia, which is already facing $400 million in federal cuts by the Trump administration over its response to pro-Palestinian campus protests. A spokesperson for Columbia said the university is currently in negotiations with the government about resolving its claims of antisemitism.

George Washington University Slapped With Lawsuit Alleging ‘Pervasive and Severe Antisemitic Harassment’ on Campus.
[FreeBeacon] George Washington University (GW) was sued in federal court by Jewish students on Thursday, alleging it allowed “pervasive and severe antisemitic harassment” on campus for years without any action from the school’s leaders.

Students Sabrina Soffer, Ari Shapiro, and a group of anonymous plaintiffs accused GW of failing to address a surge in hostility towards Jewish students, particularly following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claims the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by allowing a “hostile educational environment” to flourish unchecked.

The 176-page complaint details a litany of incidents that paint GW as a campus where Jewish students face relentless intimidation. According to the filing, anti-Semitic acts include physical assaults, vandalism, and verbal harassment, with university administrators allegedly turning a blind eye. The lawsuit cites specific examples, such as anti-Israel protests that escalated into violence and Jewish students’ property being defaced with anti-Semitic slurs.

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

Soros-Linked Groups Sue to Stop Trump's Migrant Child Trafficking Crackdown

2025-05-10

[Breitbart] Two left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs), both with financial ties to Alex and George Soros’s network, are suing to stop President Donald Trump’s reforms of the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program, which are intended to end trafficking of such migrant children within the United States.

In February, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued reforms to the UAC program, which resettles migrant children in American communities with adult sponsors after they arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border without parents or guardians.

Part of those reforms is banning UACs from being turned over to illegal aliens in the United States.

HHS whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas has called the UAC program a “white glove delivery service” where migrant children go from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody to HHS custody before being turned over to adult sponsors that are not their parents or relatives, in most cases.

“…we have delivered these unaccompanied children to criminals, traffickers, and members of transnational criminal organizations who are using the UAC program as a white glove delivery service of children,” Rodas said, calling out former President Joe Biden’s administration for loosening the rules around the UAC program.

This week, the National Center for Youth Law and Democracy Forward — both with financial ties to the Soros network — filed a class action lawsuit to stop Trump’s HHS from verifying the legal status of an adult sponsor before a UAC is handed over to their care.

The groups are asking a district court to find the reforms unlawful and issue a preliminary injunction stopping the administration from implementing the reforms.

Democracy Forward, which is behind a separate lawsuit trying to stop Trump from deporting illegal alien gang members, lists left-wing organizations like the Center for American Progress, National Immigration Law Center, Color of Change, UnidosUS, Common Justice, and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, among many others, as clients and partners.

The Alex Soros-chaired Open Society Foundations has funded several of Democracy Forward’s clients and partners. For example, in 2023, the Open Society Foundations awarded Color of Change a $3 million grant after giving the group nearly $1.5 million in funding in 2018 and 2019.

Similarly, and perhaps most significantly, the Open Society Foundations remains one of the largest donors to the Center for American Progress — a group that is considered the unofficial policy wing of the Democrat Party.

In 2023 alone, the Open Society Foundations gave the Center for American Progress nearly $4 million in grant funding.

Likewise, the Open Society Foundations has thrown millions to the National Immigration Law Center as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding to UnidosUS, Common Justice, and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.

The other group involved in the lawsuit, the National Center for Youth Law, received $75,000 in funding from the Open Society Foundations in 2017.

The case is Immigrant Defenders Law Center v. HHS, No. 1:25-cv-01405 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Link

Government Corruption

Trump's executive order on voting blocked by federal judge amid flurry of legal setbacks

2025-04-25

[FoxNews] Judge blocks 2 provisions from Trump's March executive order on election integrity.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday blocked a portion of President Donald Trump's executive order on election integrity, specifically provisions related to providing documentary proof of citizenship before being allowed to register to vote.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handed down the order in response to lawsuits filed by three separate groups of plaintiffs over five different provisions in a March 25 Trump executive order relating to election integrity. While Kollar-Kotelly dismissed requests to block three of the provisions, requests to block two other provisions pertaining to a proof of citizenship requirement for voters were granted.

The first blocked provision sought to compel the Election Assistance Commission to amend standardized national voter registration forms to require documentary proof of citizenship. The second sought to require federal agencies offering voter registration to people on public assistance to "assess" the individual's citizenship status before doing so.

"Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States — not the President — with the authority to regulate federal elections. Consistent with that allocation of power, Congress is currently debating legislation that would effect many of the changes the President purports to order," Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton-appointee, wrote in her order. "No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order."

Kollar-Kotelly said she would not block the other provisions that the groups sought to challenge, which cover mail-in ballots and data collection on citizenship status, calling the challenges "premature" and indicating they would be best challenged at the state level.

Earlier this month, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a bill requiring proof-of-citizenship to vote in federal elections. The measure still must pass the Senate, however, before the president can sign it into law.

Meanwhile, 25 states are considering some form of proof-of-citizenship legislation, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which is tracking such legislation. In total, 15 state constitutions have explicit prohibitions against non-citizen voting.

In addition to Trump's proof-of-citizenship orders getting shot down, two other federal judges from Maryland and New Hampshire also shot down additional orders from the president related to ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in K-12 public schools on Thursday.

The rulings followed lawsuits filed by the National Education Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Maryland chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. The groups argued that making federal funding contingent on whether educators squash their DEI programs violates First Amendment rights granted by the Constitution.

Link

Government Corruption

Convicted FBI lawyer spared from prison by Boasberg far more involved in Russia probe than known

2025-04-18

Long and detailed. A taste:

[JustTheNews] The judge who has emerged as a top foe of Trump's deportation efforts previously let a well-known Trump-Russia collusion hoax proponent off the hook. But newly-declassified Crossfire Hurricane records show the FBI's Kevin Clinesmith was deeply involved in in the bogus Russiagate saga.

Convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith — whom Judge James Boasberg gave a slap on the wrist for his crimes years before becoming a public foe of President Donald Trump’s deportation policies — was more deeply involved in the deeply flawed Crossfire Hurricane investigation than previously known.

Clinesmith, who worked on both the FBI’s Hillary Clinton email investigation and on the Trump-Russia collusion inquiry, pleaded guilty to falsifying a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew FISA authority to wiretap Carter Page, who was an adviser to Trump's 2016 campaign.

Newly-declassified details about Clinesmith’s involvement include a wide swath of information about his role in the case. He was a key go-to for former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and fired FBI special agent Peter Strzok throughout the debunked collusion saga and a main driver in obtaining a FISA warrant against Page based on the infamous Steele dossier.

Clinesmith also granted his seal of approval on a document describing the FBI’s pretextual briefing of then-candidate Trump, was deeply involved in the investigation into retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, played a role in going after former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, and more. He also helped the FBI push its “Cross Wind” investigation, which Just the News can confirm related to the targeting of security expert Walid Phares, which resulted in no accusations of wrongdoing and no charges.

KNEE-DEEP IN THE MUD
Clinesmith confessed in August 2020 that he had manipulated a CIA email in 2017 to state that Carter Page was “not a source” for the CIA when that agency had actually told the bureau on multiple occasions that Page was in fact an “operational contact” for the CIA.

Boasberg, the federal judge who is blocking Trump’s efforts to deport Venezuelan gang members, also played a key and controversial role in the aftermath of the Trump-Russia collusion saga as the leader of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The judge, nominated to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by then-President Barack Obama in 2011, is currently engaged in an all-out legal battle with the Trump Justice Department.

But in his role as the head of the FISA Court he made a number of divisive decisions, including a slap on the wrist for a member of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team, the appointment of officials who had defended the FBI’s actions during the Russiagate saga, the renewal of the FBI’s FISA powers, and more.

BOASBERG DEFENDS CLINESMITH
Boasberg ruled this week that “probable cause exists” to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt after they violated his orders by continuing deportation flights. But his ruling follows the Supreme Court holding that Boasberg's court was in an improper venue for the case altogether.

Boasberg, in his role as a federal judge, denied the Justice Department’s efforts to seek up to six months behind bars for Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty in Special Counsel John Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation — instead giving Clinesmith a year of probation, 400 hours of community service, and no fine.

The remaining subheds:

Collaboration on the Carter Page FISA
Clinesmith altered docs, hid information from FISA court
Sign off on doc detailing pretextual briefing of Trump
Clinesmith Targets Flynn
Leaks and unmasking
"Out to get Trump"
Steele Dossier dissemination
Clinesmith and Papadopoulos
Strzok establishes a pattern of untruths
“Cross Wind”
Clinesmith: "Viva le resistance"
Comey arranges leaks to media
The Crossfire docs a profitable venture

Link

Home Front: Politix

Construction begins on massive New York offshore wind project, as opponents look to Trump for help

2025-04-13

[JustTheNews] Construction began without fanfare on a massive New York offshore wind project that will consist of nearly 150 turbines spanning 80,000 acres of ocean, each standing more than 1,000 feet tall. Opponents hope the Trump administration will take a closer look at this and other projects under construction.

Upon taking office, President Donald Trump issued a temporary withdrawal of all areas of the nation’s coasts for offshore wind leasing. Dozens of community groups had formed in opposition to offshore wind development during the Biden-Harris administration, concerned about the impacts on marine wildlife, the view shed and electricity rates, among other things. Though many of the activists were located in blue states and not Trump supporters, they were hopeful the Trump administration would be more responsive to their concerns.

Amy DiSibio, board member for Nantucket-based ACK For Whales, told Just the News that not everyone grasped the executive order’s limitations. "It was pretty clear what it could and couldn't do. And I think a lot of the public got all excited that it's all over,” DiSibio said.

The limitations of Trump’s moratorium became apparent recently when construction began on Empire Wind. The first phase will erect 54 turbines, each nearly 1,000-feet high, 30 miles off the south coast of Long Island, New York. When both phases are complete, the project will have nearly 150 turbines spanning across 80,000 acres of the Atlantic Ocean.

QUIET OPERATION
The developer, Norway-based Equinor, didn’t hold any ribbon-cutting ceremonies with photo opportunities for politicians from New York and New Jersey holding shovels, nor was there even a press release announcing that construction on Empire Wind was beginning.

When Vineyard Wind off the coast of Nantucket began construction and when it began delivering power, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey issued a press release, and the legacy media provided favorable coverage. The public only became aware that the initial stages of Empire’s construction had started because of an email sent over a mariner group list on March 24 stating that rock installation was beginning on the Empire Wind 1 lease area.

Trump’s moratorium orders a review of “the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases, identifying any legal bases for such removal, and submit a report with recommendations to the President.” The order does not impact existing leases in the withdrawn areas, meaning that projects that have been permitted will not be paused. Besides Empire, that includes Vineyard Wind off the coast of Nantucket and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia — both of which are still under construction.

UNDERWATER NOISE
Writing in The New York Post, Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, explains that Equinor is dumping thousands of tons of rock, which protects the installation from ocean currents. This will be followed, Brady explained, by the driving of 180-foot monopiles into the seabed floor.

“The tremendous underwater noise and vibration will harm all marine life, especially endangered species like the North Atlantic right whale,” Brady warns. The commercial fishing industry is also among the opponents of offshore wind development. The Texas Public Policy Foundation is suing the Department of Interior on behalf of six commercial fishing companies that say their livelihoods will be decimated by Vineyard Wind.

Their lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2021, argues in 33 separate claims under various laws that the approval of the project violated federal law by ignoring multiple legal protections for impacted stakeholders, including conducting environmental assessments and allowing for timely public comment.

The district court deferred to the Biden administration’s interpretation of federal law in permitting the project, and the companies filed a petition with the Supreme Court. The petition argues that following the ruling in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which overturned the doctrine of "Chevron deference," and said the lower court shouldn’t have deferred to the federal agency’s interpretation of the law.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Judge denies embattled government-funded agency's restraining order request against DOGE

2025-03-20

[FoxNews] A federal judge ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Wednesday, after a government-funded nonprofit organization filed a lawsuit protecting itself from "ongoing destruction" from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) filed a request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) on Tuesday, claiming that DOGE had committed "literal trespass and takeover by force...of the Institute’s headquarters building on Constitution Avenue."

The organization also accused the anti-waste initiative of "ongoing destruction of the Institute’s physical and electronic property."

"Defendants have been and are at this minute engaged in conduct that will cause the Institute irreparable harm that will prevent the Institute from performing any of its lawful functions and is likely to utterly destroy it," the lawsuit stated.

In a decision on Wednesday, Judge Beryl Howell motioned to deny the USIP's request for a TRO.

"I think there is confusion in the complaint that make me uncomfortable," Howell said.

"I would say I am very offended by how DOGE has operated in the Institute in treating American citizens.... but that concern about how this has gone down is not one that can sway me in the consideration of factors for TRO, which is emergency relief, which is exceptional," she continued.

Howell, who was appointed as a senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2024, also said she was "particularly concerned about plaintiffs’ likelihood of success."

Link

Home Front: Politix

DOJ agrees not to publicly out FBI agents involved in Jan. 6 cases

2025-02-09

[BIZPACREVIEW] As part of a legal settlement, the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) has agreed to not publicly out the FBI agents who'd worked on Jan. 6th cases.

Last month, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered the FBI to start compiling the names of every FBI agent who'd worked on a Jan. 6th case.

It's suspected that a LOT of FBI agents were involved in the cases:

In response, attorneys for two separate groups of FBI employees filed suit Tuesday demanding the agency stop compiling the names of Jan. 6th agents.

''Attorneys for nine of the plaintiffs [part of one group], who filed their suit anonymously in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said the compilation of the list was retaliatory and a possible precursor for unlawful firings,'' according to The Washington Post. ''Using case assignment information as a basis to terminate FBI employees would violate civil service protections, they said.''

''The lawsuit also raises concerns that Trump administration officials might make public the names of the agents who were assigned to work on the cases, exposing them and their families to retribution from now-pardoned defendants charged in the Jan. 6 attack,'' the Post's reporting continues.

The other seven plaintiffs and the FBI Agents Association, a nonprofit advocacy group, filed a similar suit.

Two days after they filed suit, a DOJ lawyer told U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb that the department wasn't interested in making the list public.

''He said the list would be used for an internal study, citing an executive order Mr. Trump issued on his first day in office demanding a Justice Department review of what the administration described as the 'weaponization' of law enforcement under President Biden,'' according to The New York Times

...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
.

Link

Government Corruption

Trump blasts DOJ for 'election interference,' calls Jack Smith case a 'scam' after judge unseals key filing

2024-10-03

[FoxNews] During an election year, DOJ often holds off on major actions during the 60 days leading up to Election Day

Former President Trump blasted the Justice Department Wednesday for having "disobeyed their own rule in favor of complete and total election interference" after a key filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election case against him was unsealed with just weeks before Americans cast their ballots.

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed Smith’s 165-page filing Wednesday afternoon. The filing lays out his case and the alleged evidence he intends to use in an eventual trial against Trump.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges brought by Smith.

But Trump blasted the Justice Department Wednesday evening.

"For 60 days prior to an election, the Department of Injustice is supposed to do absolutely nothing that would taint or interfere with a case," Trump posted in all capital letters to his Truth Social. "They disobeyed their own rule in favor of complete and total election interference."

DOJ practice during an election year has often been to hold off on major actions in cases that could impact elections during the 60 days leading up to Election Day, an unwritten policy commonly referred to as the "60-day rule." The "rule," which is really more of a tradition because it is not an actual rule, has been cited many times in recent years.

"The case is a scam, just like all of the others, including the documents case, which was dismissed!"

Trump was pointing to the other case Smith brought against him related to classified records. The case was tossed out by a federal judge in Florida who ruled that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel.

Trump’s comments came in response to Smith's newly-unsealed filing, in which he alleges Trump "resorted to crimes to try to stay in office" after losing the 2020 presidential election.

"With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin," Smith wrote.

"His efforts included lying to state officials in order to induce them to ignore true vote counts; manufacturing fraudulent electoral votes in the targeted states; attempting to enlist Vice President Michael R. Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to obstruct Congress’s certification of the election by using the defendant’s fraudulent electoral votes; and when all else had failed, on January 6, 2021, directing an angry crowd of supporters to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification."

Smith claims that the "throughline of these efforts was deceit," claiming Trump and co-conspirators engaged in a conspiracy to interfere with the federal government function by which the nation collects and counts election results, which is set forth in the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act (ECA); a conspiracy to obstruct the official proceeding in which Congress certifies the legitimate results of the presidential election; and a conspiracy against the rights of millions of Americans to vote and have their votes counted."

The Supreme Court earlier this year ruled that a president is immune from prosecution for official acts.

Smith was then required to file another indictment against Trump, revising the charges in an effort to navigate the Supreme Court ruling. The new indictment kept the prior criminal charges but narrowed and reframed allegations against Trump after the high court’s ruling that gave broad immunity to former presidents.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in the new indictment as well.

Last month, Chutkan said she would not hold the trial for Trump on charges stemming from Smith's Jan. 6 investigation until after the 2024 presidential election. She set deadlines for replies and paperwork from federal prosecutors and Trump's legal team for Nov. 7 — after Election Day.

Link

Government Corruption

Trump trial stemming from Jack Smith's probe delayed past Election Day

2024-09-06

[FoxNews] Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan will not hold the trial for former President Trump on charges stemming from Special Counsel Jack Smith's Jan. 6 investigation until after the 2024 presidential election.

Chutkan held a status hearing Thursday morning in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in which lawyers for Trump pleaded not guilty on his behalf related to charges from Smith’s new indictment after the Supreme Court ruled a president is immune from prosecution for official acts in office.

In an order Thursday afternoon, Chutkan set deadlines for replies and paperwork from federal prosecutors and Trump's legal team for Nov. 7 — after Election Day.

Trump did not appear in court Thursday. His lawyers pleaded not guilty on his behalf. Smith was in court Thursday morning.

The case pertains to Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Last week, the former president was indicted and issued revised criminal charges by Smith, who alleges Trump pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes, in addition to mounting fake electors in key states that went to President Biden and to attest to Trump's electoral victory.

The new indictment keeps the prior criminal charges but narrows and reframes the allegations against the Republican presidential nominee after a Supreme Court ruling that conferred broad immunity on former presidents.

Specifically, the indictment has been changed to remove allegations involving Department of Justice officials and other government officials. It clarifies Trump's role as a candidate and makes clear the allegations regarding his conversations with then-Vice President Pence in his ceremonial role as president of the Senate.

The new indictment removes a section of the previous indictment that had accused Trump of trying to use the Justice Department to undo his 2020 loss. The Supreme Court recently ruled in a 6-3 decision that Trump was immune from prosecution for official White House acts.

Trump has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights. Those charges, to which Trump pleaded not guilty, remain.

Smith alleges Trump participated in an effort to enlist slates of fake electors in key states won by Biden to attest that Trump had in fact won and that Trump pressured Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes.

The special counsel's office said the updated indictment, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., was issued by a grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in the case. The new grand jury has only heard this new information.

Sources familiar with the matter tell Fox News that discussions surrounding the superseding indictment will likely not speed things up, and it is unlikely it will go to trial before the November election.

Link

-Land of the Free

Texas AG Paxton wins against Big Tech, takes on General Motors, CenterPoint

2024-08-17

[JustTheNews] Paxton sued GM for its alleged "false, deceptive, and misleading” practices related to its unlawful sale of over 1.5 million Texans’ private driving data.

In addition to suing the Biden administration on a range of issues from transgender policies to lizards in west Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken on big tech and won, and is now taking on General Motors and CenterPoint Energy.

In the past two weeks, his office has sent out a flurry of announcements touting Texas’ ongoing commitment to challenge monopolies, invasive technologies, waste and misuse of taxpayer money and the “weaponization” of Biden administration policies.

This week, Paxton sued General Motors for its alleged "false, deceptive, and misleading business practices related to its unlawful collection and sale of over 1.5 million Texans’ private driving data to insurance companies without their knowledge or consent.”

The lawsuit was filed in the District Court of Montgomery County against General Motors LLC and ONSTAR LLC. It follows a broad data privacy and security investigation his office launched in June to determine if companies were violating privacy protection laws. The investigation was launched into several car manufacturers in response to allegations that massive amounts of driver data was being collected and sold to third parties.

“Our investigation revealed that General Motors has engaged in egregious business practices that violated Texans’ privacy and broke the law. We will hold them accountable,” Paxton said. “Companies are using invasive technology to violate the rights of our citizens in unthinkable ways. Millions of American drivers wanted to buy a car, not a comprehensive surveillance system that unlawfully records information about every drive they take and sells their data to any company willing to pay for it.”

According to the complaint, General Motors installed technology in most 2015 model year or newer vehicles in order “to collect, record, analyze, and transmit highly detailed driving data about each time a driver used their vehicle” and then sold the information to at least two companies. The data was then used to generate “Driving Scores” about GM customers that was sold to insurance companies.

When purchasing the vehicles, buyers were reportedly compelled to enroll in products like OnStar Smart Driver and told if they didn’t their vehicle’s safety features would be deactivated. By doing so, “General Motors deceived many of its customers,” Paxton said. Customers were never told that when enrolling in GM products that data about them and their vehicle was being collected and sold without their knowledge or explicit consent.

Paxton also recently announced major wins in lawsuits that Texas launched against tech giants Google and Meta.

In 2020, former President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and 11 state attorneys general sued Google alleging it was engaging in anticompetitive and exclusionary practices that eliminate competition for internet searches and search advertising. “Google’s illegal conduct has allowed it to dominate the search industry by requiring exclusivity from business partners and avoiding competition on the merits while shielding itself from competitors who might threaten its market share,” Paxton said. At the time, Google controlled nearly 90% of all search queries in the U.S. and nearly 95% on mobile devices.

Four years later, Google lost, delivering “another major win against Big Tech,” Paxton said. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled earlier this month that Google’s anticompetitive business practices and monopoly violated the Sherman Act. The court ruled that Google engaged in illegal conduct to dominate the online search services industry and facilitated anticompetitive practices like requiring exclusive distribution agreements designed to undermine competition and solidify its monopoly.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act,” the court held.

This was not Texas’ only win against Big Tech. Paxton also defeated Meta in a lawsuit alleging it captured personal biometric data of millions of Texans without their permission. Texas and Meta entered into a $1.4 billion settlement agreement, representing the largest settlement ever obtained by an action brought by a state.

It’s also the largest privacy settlement an attorney general has ever obtained, dwarfing a $390 million settlement 40 states reached with Google in 2022.

The Meta lawsuit was the first filed and the first settlement reached after a new state law, the Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, went into effect. The historic settlement “serves as a warning to any companies engaged in practices that violate Texans’ privacy rights,” Paxton said.

Paxton also announced this week that his office launched an investigation into CenterPoint Energy after a state Senate hearing uncovered numerous failures and potential fraud or misuse of taxpayer funds related to CenterPoint’s preparation or response to Hurricane Beryl. The Category 1 storm left Houston area residents without power for nearly two weeks, resulting in multiple lawsuits alleging negligence.

Lawmakers also said extended power outages were preventable and unacceptable. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick directed the Public Utility Commission to require the energy giant to repay $800 million for unused generators that were billed to ratepayers. Abbott instructed CenterPoint to implement a range of changes, resulting in it reversing a request to increase consumer rates to cover its costs associated with its failed response.

The OAG is looking into potential violations of Texas law in response to allegations that CenterPoint may have caused “significant harm to Houston residents, including rate increases, outages, and lengthy delays in restoring power” as well as allegations of “fraud, waste, and improper use of taxpayer-provided funds.”

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Government Corruption

Judge won't dismiss Trump election case over 'selective prosecution'

2024-08-05

[JustTheNews] The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's federal election subversion case denied a motion to dismiss the case, which Trump's motion described as vindictive "selective prosecution." The denial, issued on Saturday, came in a 16-page order.

The presiding judge, Tanya Chutkan,

… U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Obama appointee. Another of his crowd of Africa-descended immigrants instead of native African-Americans— in her case Papa is Indo-Jamaican and Mama is Afro-Jamaican. Hard working and intelligent, all (even VP Kamala Harris is reasonably intelligent under all the vapid verbal flimflam), but their life experience is very, very far from the American ghetto…

wrote that dismissal was inappropriate because Trump failed to provide "evidence demonstrating a likelihood of vindictiveness," The Hill reported.

Trump "claimed that the charges against him were the result of [President Joe Biden]'s pledge to ensure Trump would not be president again."

Chutkan found "no indication" Biden pressured AG Merrick Garland to engage in "politically motivated action" by prosecuting Trump.

What need for pressure, when the two are completely aligned on the objective?

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Government Corruption

House Judiciary sues Garland for Biden audio that Hur says shows him as 'elderly man with a poor memory'

2024-07-02

[FoxNews] Lawsuit comes amid chaos in the Democratic Party as leaders consider whether President Biden should continue with his re-election campaign

The House Judiciary Committee is suing Attorney General Merrick Garland to obtain recordings of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

The committee, as part of the lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, stressed the importance of the "verbal and nonverbal context" of Biden's answers that could be provided by the audio recordings – especially considering that Hur opted against charging Biden after the interview, in part, because he was viewed as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

The lawsuit comes amid chaos in the Democratic Party as leaders consider whether Biden should continue with his re-election campaign after the president’s widely panned debate performance last week.

The committee, in its lawsuit, says the president’s invocation of executive privilege over the materials "lacks any merit," and it asks the court to overrule that assertion of privilege.

"This dispute is about a frivolous assertion of executive privilege," the lawsuit states.

As part of the House impeachment inquiry against the president, the committee issued a subpoena to Garland to obtain records related to Hur’s investigation of Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified records. The committee sought materials related to Hur’s interviews with Biden and Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter of Biden’s 2017 memoir.

The Justice Department has provided the committee with transcripts of those interviews, but Garland "has refused to produce the audio recordings of the Special Counsel’s interviews with President Biden and Mr. Zwonitzer."

"Instead, Attorney General Garland asked that President Biden assert executive privilege over those recordings, and President Biden complied with that request," the lawsuit states.

The committee argues that audio recordings "are better evidence than transcripts of what happened during the Special Counsel’s interviews with President Biden and Mr. Zwonitzer."

"For example, they contain verbal and nonverbal context that is missing from a cold transcript," the committee states. "That verbal and nonverbal context is quite important here because the Special Counsel relied on the way that President Biden presented himself during their interview – ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’ – when ultimately recommending that President Biden should not be prosecuted for unlawfully retaining and disclosing classified information."

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