Lawfare

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EXCERPT:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2022, has long since worn out her welcome.

Indeed, add Justice Samuel Alito to the list of people fed up with former President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court DEI appointment.

Alito issued a scathing opinion that featured five insults rarely hurled by one justice toward another.

For context, in a landmark decision handed down on Wednesday, the Supreme Court invalidated racial gerrymandering.

In the case of Louisiana v. Callais, et al. (“Callais”), a 6-3 majority ruled that the 1965 Voting Rights Act does not require Louisiana to add a new majority-black district to its newest congressional map, and that the Voting Rights Act, in fact, prohibits such districts designed to produce electoral outcomes based on skin color.

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The leftist Supreme Court justices are facing accusations that they literally put their conservative colleagues’ lives at risk because they were so beholden to Roe v. Wade and abortion on demand.

Liberal Supreme Court justices slow-walked completion of their dissents in the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, according to a new book.

They delayed its official release for 53 days even as the five conservative justices in the majority faced death threats and assassination attempts following the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

That’s according to a new report on Mollie Hemingway’s forthcoming book.

The May 2, 2022, leak of the 98-page draft to Politico triggered protests outside the homes of conservative justices, vandalism and arson at hundreds of pregnancy centers, churches and pro-life organizations, and an assassination attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh and potentially the other conservative justices.

“Abortion supporters had an incentive to kill one or more of the justices in the majority to change the outcome,” Hemingway wrote in Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution. “Everyone knew that the leak posed a serious security risk for justices. Since decisions do not take effect until issued officially from the bench, the death of a justice before then could alter the result. The threat of assassination increased dramatically.”

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The Department of Justice awarded more than $1 million to a pro-life advocate wrongfully arrested in his home, his defense announced last week, marking a legal win for free speech and a de facto acknowledgment of federal lawfare deployed against pro-life Christians under the Biden administration. The announcement came just days before Tuesday’s release of a detailed report that further exposes the Biden DOJ’s egregious abuse of the FACE Act.

In 2022, Catholic pro-life father Mark Houck was arrested at his home in Kintnersville, Pennsylvania. Houck had been charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act after pushing away a Planned Parenthood volunteer who was harassing his 12-year-old son. Although local police and the district attorney rejected the volunteer’s attempt to bring Houck to court, and a municipal court dismissed a lawsuit against him, the Department of Justice picked up the case, threatening Houck with a maximum 11-year prison sentence. Houck agreed to turn himself in peacefully, but federal agents ignored his compliance, staging an aggressive arrest in front of his wife and seven children. In custody, Houck was chained to a table for six hours.

Sotomayor Issues Public Apology For ‘Hurtful Comments’ She Made About Kavanaugh wltreport.com
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EXCERPT:

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh successfully emerged from a contentious confirmation process during President Trump’s first term, but he has continued to face criticism from the left for his generally conservative approach to interpreting law.

At least one of those critics has been sitting on the Supreme Court bench alongside him, as Breitbart reported:

Sotomayor’s criticism of Kavanaugh came while speaking at the University of Kansas School of Law on April 7. In her comments, Sotomayor did not specifically mention Kavanaugh.

“At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate,” Sotomayor said. “I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”

During the event at the university, Sotomayor spoke about how one of her colleagues wrote that “these are only temporary stops,” Bloomberg Law reported.

“This is from a man whose parents were professionals,” Sotomayor added. “And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”

 

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A federal appeals court has halted a controversial attempt by a Democrat-aligned district judge to pursue criminal contempt proceedings against several Trump administration officials, delivering a sharp rebuke to the lower court’s actions.

In a brief, unsigned order issued April 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated an earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg.

The appeals court ordered the activist judge to terminate the contempt investigation he launched.

The dispute stems from the Trump administration’s deportation of illegal immigrants, identified as suspected gang members, to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).

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A federal judge in Massachusetts on Wednesday postponed the termination of temporary protected status for Ethiopians living in the U.S., finding the Trump administration unlawfully attempted to end it. 

In the order, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said the Trump administration terminated the designation “without regard for the process delineated by Congress.”

Under the Biden administration, thousands of Ethiopian immigrants in the country were granted the status beginning in 2022. The designation allows immigrants to temporarily live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation because of armed conflict, environmental disasters or other humanitarian emergencies in their home country. The status was extended in 2024.

The Department of Homeland Security announced in December that Ethiopia “no longer met the conditions” for the TPS designation and the protections would terminate on Feb. 13.

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James Boasberg is the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court in D.C. He’s also the nakedly activist judge who tried to get planes with gang members to turn around as the administration was deporting them to El Salvador.

In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered District Judge James Boasberg to drop his probe into whether Trump administration officials, including then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, defied his order by completing deportation flights to El Salvador. The flights in March 2025 carried over 200 Venezuelan nationals suspected of ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, authorized under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Majority judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker called the probe an abuse of discretion, citing unclear orders and separation-of-powers issues, while dissenting Judge J. Michelle Childs argued it was needed to uphold court authority. The decision bolsters executive flexibility in immigration enforcement amid ongoing partisan tensions.The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is tiring of Boasberg.

The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has had to rebuke him for a third time over the chief judge’s obstinacy in pursuing contempt charges against the Trump administration. And Judge Naomi Rao’s frustration has begun to seep through the legal lingo of her ruling. For at least the third time, the circuit court has called an end to Boasberg’s attempts to run the ICE and Border Patrol. Rao flat-out ruled that Boasberg has committed an ongoing “abuse of discretion” with his threats of criminal contempt citations (Hot Air).

Washington Times: Circuit Judge Neomi Rao said Judge Boasberg has crossed too many lines, risking damage to the separation of powers between the president and the courts, and must end his pursuit of the president and his team. “As these shifting and expanding proceedings demonstrate, the district court has assumed an improper jurisdiction antagonistic to the Executive Branch,” Judge Rao, a Trump appointee, wrote in the majority opinion for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (Washington Times).

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The House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in December 2019 over a phone call he had months earlier with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

While the U.S. Senate ultimately acquitted Trump by a vote of 57-43 in early 2020, the stitch-up had by that stage sufficiently muddied the waters and buoyed Democrats’ false narrative in an especially heated election year.

‘It is always worse than we thought.’

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents on Monday revealing that hearsay and erroneous claims from a few politicized bad actors who lacked any firsthand knowledge of the phone call were used as the basis to impeach Trump and that elements of the intelligence community were not only aware but happy to advance the false narrative.

The documents — investigative materials used by former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who got the ball rolling on impeachment, and transcripts of his testimony released as the result of a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence vote last month — show that Atkinson skirted standard IG procedures and, embracing a kind of strategic myopia, leaned entirely on what the ODNI described as “politicized, manufactured narratives” without ever once bothering to access the transcript of Trump’s call.

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Former Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Michael Atkinson admitted under oath that he personally ordered a secret rewrite of the whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 that was used as the basis for a phony impeachment operation against President Donald Trump, going so far as to admit changing the form looked  “suspicious.”

Newly unveiled testimony from October of 2019 shows that Atkinson conceded the change he ordered to the whistleblower complaint form “looks suspicious” but said the timing was merely “unfortunate.”

“So the timing is unfortunate. It looks suspicious, I get that,” Atkinson testified. Atkinson said that after several media inquiries highlighted that the then-current form required first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing in order for a complaint to meet the urgency threshold to be sent to Congress, he ordered his staff to secretly change the rules so that second-hand hearsay complaints could be a legitimate basis for expedited processing.

“What I should have done was I should have explained when we changed the form why we were changing it,” he said. “I should have been more transparent about the reasons and the motivations for the change in the forms.”

Key Source of 2019 Trump Impeachment Was an Admitted Lefty Liar – PJ Media pjmedia.com
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EXCERPT:

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has newly declassified documents revealing that the 2019 Donald Trump impeachment scam was based on the testimony of a Democrat liar.

A former inspector general fast-tracked an alleged whistleblower complaint that turned into the first Trump impeachment. The issue? That “whistleblower” met with top congressional Democrat Adam Schiff’s office before submitting his complaint and refused to disclose his contacts, according to RealClearInvestigations. As the cherry on top, the “whistleblower” was a registered Democrat, and yet Inspector General Michael Atkinson didn’t even question, let alone rigorously assess, either the honesty or motivations of the “whistleblower,” whom RCI named as Intel analyst Eric Ciaramella.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford released the newly declassified documents and commented in an April 13 press release, “There have been many questions and concerns about these Atkinson transcripts, which have been withheld from the American public for far too long.”

He added, “I hope that the release of these transcripts allows the American people to make their own determinations about their content. Thank you to Director Gabbard and her team for moving these so quickly through the declassification process and helping the Committee get them to the American people. I remain committed to executing on the Committee’s continued effort to balance the transparency the American people deserve and the need to protect sensitive national security information.”

Trump-Impeaching GOP Senator Reportedly Melted Down Over Not Getting Enough Money www.westernjournal.com
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EXCERPT:

A GOP senator who voted to convict President Donald Trump accused the Republican establishment of not pouring enough money into his already cash-rich reelection campaign, Punchbowl News reported Friday.

Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy is set to face voters for the first time since his vote following Trump’s second impeachment, as he competes against Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming in a brutal May 16 GOP primary.

Despite spending millions of dollars in his bid for a third term, Cassidy lashed out at the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) in a phone call, accusing the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm of not sufficiently funding his campaign, according to Punchbowl News.

NRSC Executive Director Jennifer DeCasper gave a profanity-laced response to the embattled senator, stating that he should not have joined Democrats and six other GOP senators in convicting Trump in January 2021, the outlet reported, citing multiple anonymous sources.

Blurb:

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte has referred New York’s anti-Trump Democrat Attorney General Letitia James to federal prosecutors over two cases involving possible homeowner’s insurance fraud, according to a report.

Pulte sent referral letters on Wednesday to federal prosecutors in Florida and Illinois.

The referral alleges that James made false statements on insurance-related applications tied to properties in those states.

Blurb:

WASHINGTON, April 6 (Reuters)—The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for the Justice Department to move forward with dismissing a criminal case in which Steve Bannon, an influential ally of President Donald Trump, was convicted after defying a congressional subpoena.

Bannon was convicted by a jury in Washington in 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress for failing to provide documents or testimony to a Democratic-led House of Representatives panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lower court’s decision to uphold Bannon’s conviction.

Blurb:

President Donald Trump on Thursday slammed the Supreme Court and federal court judges after they ruled against his effort to freeze $10 billion in funding to blue states.

The president in December announced that his administration was freezing funding to Minnesota after widespread welfare fraud was exposed in the state. In early January, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent letters to five blue states announcing a temporary freeze on funding for child care and social service funding.

During a cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump told reporters about how people discovered the rampant waste and fraud occurring in Minnesota.  “I just saw something that the nursing home business and the daycare centers in particular, they went out and inspected them in Minnesota, and they didn’t exist,” he said. “They’re knocking on door, happens to be a young man, Nick [Shirley], nice young man. He’s done a very good job. They’re knocking on doors. It’s like homes. And they’re getting hundreds of thousands…they didn’t exist.”

And in California, it’s worse. It’s even worse. And I spoke with Russell Vought. I said, ‘Russell, don’t send him any money.’ He said, ‘but we have a court order that we have.’ Can you believe it? A judge. The judges are really hurting this country. Our judges. Justice Roberts doesn’t like when I say it, but the judges are really hurting this country. And frankly, the justices, the Supreme Court has really hurt our country, too.

 

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Key Takeaways

  • San Jose State University is suing the federal government over a Title IX ruling that found it violated regulations by allowing a trans-identifying male player to participate on its women’s volleyball team, prompting claims of unfairness and safety concerns from female players.
  • The U.S. Department of Education ordered SJSU to apologize to affected female athletes, restore awards, and implement changes to comply with Title IX, but SJSU is contesting these demands, arguing that the findings are unfounded.
  • SJSU’s leadership asserts it has acted lawfully and is dedicated to fostering an ‘inclusive’ environment, though critics accuse it of neglecting the well-being of female athletes in their policies.

Blurb:

After a yearslong legal battle, the Supreme Court vindicated a Colorado Christian baker hounded by a “Civil Rights Commission” for the sin of refusing to craft a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding. A woman by the name of Kristen Clarke found that ruling “devastating.”

Clarke, who would go on to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Joe Biden, arguably grew to embody the weaponization of civil rights law against conservatives. Yet on Wednesday, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People hailed Clarke as a “civil rights giant” in announcing her new position as NAACP general counsel.

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The following is the prepared testimony of The Federalist’s Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland for a March 24 hearing titled “Arctic Frost: A Modern Watergatebefore the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights.

Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Whitehouse, and Members of the Subcommittee,

Thank you for the opportunity to testify concerning the grave constitutional violations inflicted as part of the Arctic Frost investigation.

After the 2020 election, an anti-Trump FBI agent named Tim Thibault attempted to use the justice department to destroy the President. Thibault’s efforts led to the launch of Arctic Frost. Soon after, Merrick Garland tapped Jack Smith, a “hyper-aggressive prosecutor,” known to “overstretch the meaning and intent of the law,” to serve as Special Counsel.

Smith proved himself true to form, indicting Trump for allegedly violating a statute enacted in the aftermath of Enron, based in part on a theory of criminal liability the Supreme Court would later hold invalid. The Supreme Court would later halt Smith’s efforts to prosecute Trump for actions that fell within the President’s official duties.

Blurb:

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s targeting of Kash Patel and numerous congressional Republicans as part of his lawfare against Donald Trump was worse than originally thought, new records show.

Released Tuesday by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the new documents demonstrate that Smith and his team’s efforts to acquire Patel’s phone records during his time as a private citizen were far more extensive than previously reported. The bid to acquire such information came as part of Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation, which ultimately became his elector lawfare against Trump.

Now-FBI Director Patel originally told Reuters last month that the Biden FBI had subpoenaed his phone records, as well as those of then-Trump confidant and now-White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. The subpoenas covered phone calls from 2022 and 2023, with Patel claiming that Smith’s collection of Wiles’ phone records “extended into [her] time as Trump’s co-campaign manager, though he did not say when exactly the record collection began or ended,” according to the outlet.

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Just days after the Trump Justice Department proposed a rule to combat the left’s use of “barfare” to destroy conservative lawyers, the legal disciplinary authority in the Department’s own backyard may have vindicated its effort by launching an attack on U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin.

On March 6, the Washington, D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel filed charges and initiated disciplinary proceedings against the MAGA stalwart in a case that could drag on for months or longer, waste precious taxpayer resources, and result in sanctions up to and including disbarment.