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A man targeted by right-wing conspiracy theories about the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for joining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters. Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who was driven into hiding by death threats, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time, and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service. He appeared remotely by video conference and wasn't in the Washington, D.C., courtroom when...

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa. Has been ordered to give federal prosecutors more than 1,600 text messages, emails, and other communications related to the investigation of Donald Trump’s alleged alleged attempt to alter the results of the 2020 election. On Tuesday, Politico reported that Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled most of Perry’s messages could not be withheld from prosecutors due to protections afforded to members of Congress. Boasberg concluded that the 1,659 communications were not subject to the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause. The clause prohibits prosecutors and courts from looking into official congressional business. The court documents allege...

As noted in Politico describing President Trump’s court appearance yesterday, “Minutes before Trump entered the pin-drop silent room, several federal judges — who have been processing the carnage of Jan. 6, 2021 for more than two years — filed into the public gallery, turning themselves into spectators in a building they typically rule. Chief Judge James Boasberg, who presided over several of the secret grand jury battles that preceded the charges against Trump, was among those marking the moment.”[…] “Boasberg’s presence in the courtroom was a statement in itself. Alongside him was Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has in her...

I want to get into what's happening to Donald Trump here folks, I also want to make something clear. That the story on Mark Meadows trying to cut a deal against Trump is a flat out lie. It is a flat out lie. So you are getting a lot of these leaks. Now, people are forced to testify under penalty of inprisonment and things of that sort, but in terms of him and his lawyers trying to cut a deal with the Special Counsel, that's a lie. And that's been reported and so the reporting is a lie. And I...

Attorneys for former President Donald Trump are trying to block ex-Vice President Mike Pence from testifying in a special counsel investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, NBC News reported Monday. The latest move in the sealed court proceedings came less than a week after Pence said he would not fight a judge’s order for his testimony before the federal grand jury involved in the probe. Trump’s legal team has appealed that order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., NBC reported, citing a source familiar with the litigation. The notice to the U.S. Court of...

President Donald Trump scored another legal victory after a federal judge moved to drop a lawsuit brought by retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman against Trump administration officials. Vindman, a former National Security Council aide who helped spark the political witch hunt of President Trump in 2019, suffered a major loss after U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg dismissed his lawsuit in a 29-page opinion last week, Politico reported. Named on Vindman’s suit were President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., and several Trump allies, including Rudy Giuliani, former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, and former Deputy White House Communications Director...

A federal judge for the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., dismissed a lawsuit brought by retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman that accused Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., attorney Rudy Giuliani, and others of witness intimidation and retaliation in connection to Vindman's congressional testimony against the former president. Judge James Boasber, an Obama appointee, wrote that Vindman's complaint did not meet the necessary standards to prove the defendants conspired "to intimidate and unlawfully retaliate against him," according to the 29-page ruling. "Plaintiff’s pled facts, taken as true, certainly suggest that Defendants leveled harsh, meanspirited, and at times misleading...

Here we go… It was only a matter of time before the DOJ-NSD architects of the Trump targeting operation came out from the shadows. This is the moment long-time readers of CTH should have been waiting for. For the past five years Mary McCord has been one of a small and select lawfare group organizing the targeting of President Trump. Mary McCord led the support team who created the Carter Page FISA warrant using the Steele Dossier to replace the required ‘Wood’s file’. McCord was the DOJ-NSD official who traveled with DOJ Deputy AG Sally Yates to talk to former...

Prosecutors are asking a judge to bar a Capitol rioter from arguing that former President Donald Trump authorized him to attack the Capitol on January 6. Aaron Mostofsky, the son of a New York City judge, was photographed inside the Capitol wearing fur pelts, what appeared to be a police officer's bullet-proof vest and carrying a police officers' riot shield. Mostofsky's trial is set to begin in January and prosecutors are hoping to block him from using the "blame Trump" defense ... ..."The defendant will be unable to identify any remarks made by former President Trump that authorized that illegal...

WASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) asked a judge on Monday to dismiss the U.S. government's revised antitrust case that seeks to force the social media giant to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook said in a court filing that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had failed to provide a "plausible factual basis for branding Facebook an unlawful monopolist." The company added it appears the FTC "had no basis for its naked allegation that Facebook has or had a monopoly." The social media giant asked that the lawsuit be dismissed with prejudice, which would make it harder for the...

I’m the founder of MeWe, the ad-free social network with data privacy and no content amplification or newsfeed manipulation. MeWe competes directly with Facebook. On June 27, 2019, I wrote an op-ed in this newspaper headlined “I Compete With Facebook, and It’s No Monopoly.” I’ve changed my mind. MeWe continues to succeed, albeit on a modest scale. Two years ago the platform had five million users and no revenue. Today it has nearly 20 million users and is breaking even with millions of dollars in revenue. Yet despite MeWe’s growth, Facebook’s troubling actions over the last two years have caused...

The January 6 Capitol clash may be the gift that keeps on giving to cynics everywhere. In the coming months, Americans will likely see jaw-dropping bureaucratic debacles, stunning abuses by federal prosecutors, and appalling bloodlust by angry Biden supporters. Perhaps the least likely outcome is that the coming train wreck will restore faith in American democracy. The Justice Department declared last week, “The investigation and prosecution of the Capitol Breach will be the largest in American history, both in terms of the number of defendants prosecuted and the nature and volume of the evidence.” The feds are sorting through “237,000...

A pair of Brooklyn-based far-left attorneys who firebombed the NYPD during last year’s deadly Black Lives Matter riots can still practice law in the State of New York, while former New York City Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani cannot, with his law license suspended for the crime of questioning the 2020 Presidential Election. Colinford Mattis, who works as a corporate lawyer, and his co-conspirator Urooj Rahman, a so-called human rights attorney, both face federal charges related to the firebombing of an NYPD police cruiser and could face sentences of at least 45 years in prison. Despite the extremely violent...

In August, FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to a felony count of making a false statement while working to secure FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) surveillance on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. In the early days of the Russian probe, an FBI official had asked if Page had served as a source for the government, as Page maintained; Clinesmith falsely altered a document by adding "not a source" in a fourth FISA application. Skip Clinesmith's punishment for making a false statement? Prosecutors recommended three to six months, according to Politico. Federal Judge James Boasberg instead sentenced Clinesmith...

The government and 48 states and districts sued Facebook in December 2020 They accused Facebook of abusing its market share to crush competitors The suit potentially sought the forced sale of Instagram and WhatsApp A US district judge on Monday ruled that the lawsuits were 'legally insufficient' He said they did not provide enough evidence that Facebook was a monopoly These allegations - which do not even provide an estimated actual figure or range for Facebook's market share at any point over the past ten years - ultimately fall short of plausibly establishing that Facebook holds market power,' he said....

The FISA Court is CompromisedI hate to write this, but there is just no good way to look at this. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, specifically Presiding Judge James Boasberg, has hired former DOJ National Security Division head, Mary McCord, as amici curiae advisor to the court. [LINK] The placement was first noted by an announcement from Georgetown Law ICAP. Presiding Judge James Boasberg, is the decision-maker in the appointment of Amici Curiae to the FISA court. There is no way, NO WAY, Judge Boasberg does not know Mary McCord was at the epicenter of the fraudulent FISA application used...

Christopher Wray will spearhead Dems’ offensive against Trump supporters in the wake of January 6. “We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribed to Antifa in connection with the sixth. That doesn’t mean we’re not looking, and we’ll continue to look, but at the moment we have not seen that.” That was FBI boss Christopher Wray testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Wray claimed the FBI doesn’t care about ideology, but he left more than a reasonable doubt about how hard the FBI had been looking. According to a January 13...

Several prominent Republican lawmakers strongly criticized a judge's sentence Friday that resulted in probation and no prison time for the only person charged in the Justice Department's investigation into the origins of alleged Trump-Russia collusion. Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith received a sentence of 12 months probation and 400 hours community service from U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg during a video hearing. Clinesmith pleaded guilty to altering an CIA email used to support a government wiretap of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Boasberg, who also is on the FISA court, denied special counsel John Durham's recommendation of up...

Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to 12 months probation and 400 hours of community service

FBI Attorney Admits Altering Email Used for FISA Application During "Crossfire Hurricane" Investigation Former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, 38, pleaded guilty today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to a false statement offense stemming from his altering of an email in connection with the submission of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) application, announced John H. Durham, Special Attorney to the Attorney General. Pursuant to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), the guilty plea proceeding occurred via videoconference before U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg. According to court documents and statements made...