Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan on Monday cautioned that courts look political and forfeit legitimacy when they needlessly overturn precedent and decide more than they have to. Speaking less than three months after a five-justice conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade's constitutional guarantee of abortion access, Kagan said the public's view of the court can be damaged especially when changes in its membership lead to big changes in the law. She stressed that she was not talking about any particular decision or even a string of rulings with which she disagreed. Still, her remarks were similar to...

A federal court on Tuesday canceled a hearing over Trump election lawyer John Eastman’s attempt to reclaim his seized phone. The court canceled the hearing after the corrupt Justice Department obtained a second search warrant which undermined Eastman’s case. The judge continued, “The undersigned will take the Government at its word that the warrant was issued, and the Court’s decision will be based in part on that representation.” “With this in mind, the Court will vacate the hearing currently set for September 6, 2022, and will decide Eastman’s motion on the written submissions of parties,” the judge wrote. The hearing...

For carrying a “large wooden stick” on January 6 -- and for things the ex-officer said and believed.. Former police officer Thomas Robertson, who according to CBS News, “stormed the U.S. Capitol” on January 6, 2021, will spend more than seven years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Robertson, 49, was charged with interfering with police officers and “entering a restricted area with a dangerous weapon, a large wooden stick.” The seven-year sentence, handed down last Thursday, matches the longest prison term among the Jan. 6 cases to date. Its severity was not entirely the result of...

A man who attacked police officers with poles during the riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Tuesday to more than five years in prison, matching the longest term of imprisonment so far among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. Mark Ponder, a 56-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., said he “got caught up” in the chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, and “didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” “I wasn’t thinking that day,” Ponder told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, asking her for mercy before she sentenced him to five years and three months in prison. That...

A federal judge on Friday dismissed five former FBI officials -- including former director James Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe -- from a lawsuit that former President Donald Trump filed against them and other political opponents related to the Russia investigation. Judge Donald Middlebrooks granted the Justice Department's request to substitute itself as defendants for the former FBI officials, after finding that Trump's lawsuit covered actions that they took while acting within the scope of their government employment. This is a victory for the former FBI officials, who no longer have to battle Trump in the civil litigation, which...

<p>A former West Virginia lawmaker who livestreamed himself on Facebook storming the U.S. Capitol and cheering on what he described as a "revolution" was sentenced Wednesday to three months in prison.</p><p>Derrick Evans, 37, who pleaded guilty to a felony civil disorder charge, told the judge that he regrets his actions every day and is a "good person who unfortunately was caught up in a moment."</p>

Earlier this month we found out that voting machines can do tricky things. The results of a Democratic primary in a Georgia county were challenged after a hand count found the machines to be off by thousands. Marshall Orson, a Democratic candidate for DeKalb County Commission, requested that the local elections board not certify the results as scheduled because there were “numerous issues” in the race (Kind of sounds like what Trump asked for after the 2020 election). The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Orson asked for a formal recount of the election and an “independent review.”. “There is no rational...

Today, loyalty to the nation is again being questioned. As the Pelosi-Thompson-Cheney circus rolls on in D.C., signals are given that the Democrats, have their sights set on more than just the former President. Obviously, the primary purpose of the pseudo-hearing is twofold: Destroy Trump and keep January Sixth alive, until November. Recently retired judge Michael Luttig, said the quiet part out loud: “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are still a clear and present danger to American democracy,” The comment harkens back to the McCarthy era hearings and guilt by association. Once a communist always a communist has...

A federal judge on Monday sentenced the undocumented man acquitted of murder in the 2015 shooting death of a woman on a San Francisco pier to the seven years he's already spent in jail -- bringing to a legal close the case that ignited a national firestorm over immigration, crime and sanctuary cities.

A federal judge on Friday tossed Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block New York Attorney General Letitia James’ witch hunt investigation into the former president’s business practices. U.S. District Judge Brenda Sannes for upstate New York, an Obama appointee, issued the ruling just one day after a state appeals court ruled Trump must testify under oath. “While the New York proceeding has been ongoing since August 2020, Plaintiffs have submitted no evidence that the subpoena enforcement proceeding has been conducted in such a way as to constitute harassment,” Sannes wrote in a 43-page decision. Trump’s lawyers said they will immediately appeal...

WASHINGTON—Testimony that suggested the Donald Trump-Russia claims given to the FBI by a Hillary Clinton lawyer may have been fabricated will be struck from the record, along with mention of the email that triggered the testimony, a judge has ruled. On Tuesday, FBI agent Curtis Heide was presented with an email sent by Rodney Joffe to researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology dated Sept. 14, 2016. Joffe discussed one of the white papers Michael Sussmann, a lawyer representing both Joffe and the Clinton campaign, later handed over to the FBI alleging a secret link between Trump and a Russian...

A federal judge is standing by a previous ruling that an Indiana transgender student must be allowed to use the boys restroom. Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, an Obama appointee, has denied a motion from the Metropolitan School District of Martinsville to put on hold a previous injunction forcing John R. Wooden Middle School to allow the transgender student to use the boys bathroom, WTHR-TV reported. Pratt ruled the district failed to show evidence that proved it would suffer "irreparable harm" if the student was allowed to use the boys restroom. "In addition, the School District has not presented any new...

As the trial against Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann begins, questions have emerged over the judge’s apparent conflicts of interest.,/A>Judge Christopher “Casey” CooperIn additional to having been “professional acquaintances” with the defendant, US District Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper, an Obama appointee (who was on Obama’s transition team), is married to lawyer Amy Jeffress who’s representing key ‘Russiagate’ figure Lisa Page in her lawsuit against the FBI. Jeffress also served as a top aide to former Attorney General Eric Holder, while current Attorney General Merrick Garland presided over the 1999 wedding of Cooper and Jeffress. Amy JeffressIn a Wednesday Zoom call,...

Earlier this week New York Judge Arthur Engoron held Donald Trump in contempt and ordered a fine of $10,000 per day that he refuses to turn over documents to New York Attorney General Letitia James. During a hearing on Monday, the judge considered James’ contempt request. “Mr. Trump, I know you take your business seriously, and I take mine seriously, I hereby hold you in civil contempt and fine you $10,000 a day,” Engoron ruled. The documents that James is requesting relate to the Trump Organization’s business dealings. She claims that the organization manipulated property values for tax purposes. Trump...

A retired federal judge appointed by former President George H.W. Bush warned in an opinion piece published by CNN on Wednesday that Republicans are “already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.” In his essay, J. Michael Luttig broke down what he called the “Republican blueprint” to steal the 2024 election ― the cornerstone of which, he said, was the Supreme Court’s embrace of the “independent state legislature” doctrine. The 2020 election fraud lies peddled by former President Donald Trump and his allies are just “the...

Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) asked Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, who is the nominee to serve as a U.S. district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, during a hearing about a previous comment she made claiming police kill unarmed black men every single day while at Princeton. "This is a really simple question, counselor. Do you believe that cops kill unarmed black men in America every single day? You said it at Princeton," he asked. "Senator, I said it in my role as an advocate," said Choudhury. "Oh, okay. You didn’t mean it," Kennedy replied....

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked a Kentucky law that effectively eliminated abortions in the commonwealth, where the only two clinics said they couldn't meet its requirements. The decision by U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings was a victory for abortion rights advocates and a setback for the Republican-led legislature, which passed the law in March. Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, had vetoed the measure, but the legislature overrode him last week to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and require women to be examined by a doctor before receiving abortion pills. Both of Kentucky's clinics said that...

L. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge and leading conservative who advised Vice President Mike Pence ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, told CBS News on Tuesday that he is willing to publicly testify about that experience and his alarm over Republican attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. "If invited by the Congress, I would of course be glad to testify," Luttig said in a statement. Luttig played a pivotal role in helping Pence and his chief counsel in the vice president's office, Greg Jacob, and outside lawyer Richard Cullen, to forge a legal and...

In a landmark ruling, a federal district court has ordered the U.S. Department of Defense to end a longstanding Pentagon policy forbidding enlisted military service members from deploying in active duty outside the continental United States and being commissioned as officers if they have HIV. Supporters hailed it as overdue legal affirmation that people receiving effective antiretroviral treatment for HIV are essentially healthy and pose no risk to others. The judgment topples one of the nation’s last major pillars of HIV-related employment discrimination. Federal law has for decades barred employers from discriminating against people with HIV under the Americans with...

NEW ORLEANS -- President Joe Biden’s requirement that all federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 was upheld Thursday by a federal appeals court. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court and ordered dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the mandate. The ruling, a rare win for the administration at the New Orleans-based appellate court, said that the federal judge didn’t have jurisdiction in the case and those challenging the requirement could have pursued administrative remedies under Civil Service law. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court...