Free Republic

There is something vital and profoundly disturbing missing from Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Donald Trump: police involvement. It’s possible some police officers were assigned to the prosecutor’s office, but if so, their names do not appear in the indictment (available here), nor, according to The Hill, there were no police officers among the 20 prosecution and two defense witnesses. I’ve been unable to find any evidence of police participation.Graphic: YouTube ScreenshotSo, no cops were apparently involved. So what?The police are an essential initiator of criminal charges. They’re also a multi-layered filter for false and/or political charges against the innocent. Among...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said he would “not attend” a speech given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Republican and Democrat lawmakers invited Netanyahu to speak before a “Joint Meeting of Congress.” Sanders issued a press release on Saturday describing Netanyahu as a “war criminal” and stating that he “should not be invited to address a joint meeting of Congress.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote a letter addressed to Netanyahu on Friday, inviting him to speak before a “Joint...

One of the best-known grocery chains in the Northeast announced it's closing an unspecified amount of stores. Yet another business with ties to New York is closing multiple locations. The news follows what can only be described as a landslide of abrupt closings. Retro Fitness in Yorkville ceased operations on May 22, a few days after Wheelock Rides out of Syracuse took its final bow. Not only that, Freihofer's bakery shut its doors for good after 140 years, including its Verona location. And, just yesterday, BNY Mellon announced it's shuttering its Oriskany Business Park location. These local closures come as...

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City police said Saturday that they had 34 people in custody following a pro-Palestinian protest at the Brooklyn Museum, which reported damage to some artwork and harassment to security staff by demonstrators. Hundreds of protesters marched to the museum on Friday afternoon, set up tents in the lobby and unfurled a “Free Palestine” banner from the building’s roof before police moved in to make arrests. New York City police officers tackled and punched some protesters during scuffles that broke out in the crowd outside the museum while some demonstrators hurled plastic bottles at officers...

Colorado Democrats are once again running bogus ads to promote the Republican candidate they believe is least likely to win in a general election against their progressive candidate. This time it’s the 3rd Congressional District race and the GOP candidate that Democrat candidates are supporting is Ron Hanks. The TV ad and mailers deliver backhanded insults that really aims to suggest Hanks has been endorsed by Donald Trump (he has not), and claims Hanks is just too gosh darn Republican to represent the conservative district. One of the problems Hanks is already contending with, he doesn’t actually live in the...

A Democratic congressman has publicly called on Gov. Hochul to pardon former President Donald Trump after he was found guilty this week of falsifying business records — for the sake of the nation. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) said a Trump conviction only helps his campaign. “Donald Trump is a serial liar, cheater, and philanderer, a six-time declarer of corporate bankruptcy, an instigator of insurrection, and a convicted felon who thrives on portraying himself as a victim. @GovKathyHochul should pardon him for the good of the country,” Phillips declared in a X post Friday.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) joined an anti-Israel commentator this week in blaming the Abraham Accords peace deal and the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem for Hamas’s massive terror attack on Israel on October 7. “AOC” also agreed that Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — which are not claimed by Palestinians, but were taken from Syria in a defensive war — was also “directly” responsible for October 7.

Donald Trump is wasting no time fighting to get back to the White House. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, 77, is expected to attend a UFC fight Saturday night at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ — two days after the shocking guilty verdict in his Manhattan “hush money” trial, according to the Wall Street Journal. It will be his first public appearance since he vowed that “we’re going to fight” during a fiery press conference in the atrium of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan Friday. ... He’s expected to continue his fundraising blitz next week with a series of...

Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh has named a pastor with no clinical experience to run the FDNY’s counseling services for firefighters and medics struggling with mental-health problems — an appointment that will require the department to hire another licensed supervisor at taxpayer expense to plug the gap. Kavanagh tapped Ann Kansfield, the FDNY’s first female and openly gay chaplain, as chief of the department’s Counseling Services Unit, which runs a staff of psychologists and therapists who conduct screening, assessment and treatment of job candidates and ailing first-responders. Kansfield, 48, whom Kavanagh has called her “spiritual muse” — served as one of...

Licensed gun owner Donald Trump will have to turn over all of his firearms in the coming weeks now that he has been found guilty of felonies in the Manhattan “hush money” case. Under New York state and federal law, convicted felons are banned from possessing any type of firearm, and the former president must have his weapons legally passed off to another person or surrendered to authorities by his July 11 sentencing, criminal defense attorney Peter Tilem said. “There is no grace period,” Tilem told The Post. “You are federally prohibited once you are convicted.”…

Prominent business executives have warned that more New York enterprises and their leaders may fall victim to "no rule of law" in the wake of Donald Trump’s guilty verdict. "If they can do this to a business person like Donald Trump, they could do it to anybody in New York and a lot of businesses. A lot of people are concerned that there is no rule of law," billionaire CEO John Catsimatidis said Friday on "Mornings with Maria." ... Cardone recently pulled his business out of the Empire State and cautioned that Trump’s legal troubles — including a previous $355...

<p>Authorities in the city of Auburn have arrested a Mexican citizen following an investigation into course of sexual conduct with a minor.</p><p>According to law enforcement, the victim was under 11 years old, and the suspect, identified as Santiago Hernandez Huerta, was taken into custody on May 30.</p>

Whatever Trump did after the 2016 presidential election, it seems safe to say that it did not retroactively promote his victory.Last January, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg summed up his case against Donald Trump this way: "We allege falsification of business records to the end of keeping information away from the electorate. It's an election interference case." That gloss made no sense, because the records at the center of the case—11 invoices, 11 checks, and 12 ledger entries that allegedly were aimed at disguising a hush-money reimbursement as payment for legal services—were produced after the 2016 presidential election. At that...

Noted attorney Alan Dershowitz said on Thursday that he doubts a New York appellate court will overturn former President Donald Trump’s conviction in his Manhattan trial. …he believes appellate judges will be reluctant to overturn the jury’s decision because they might be biased against the former president. I don’t think it would be reversed by the appellate division,” Dershowitz continued. “These are judges who are terrified of being perceived of as helping Trump in any way. Don’t know whether or not the New York Court of Appeals in Albany will have the ability to not consider the impact it will...

Donald Trump was in “very high spirits” at a dinner with top supporters shortly after he was convicted on all counts in his New York City hush money trial, Gristedes CEO and Trump camp insider John Catsimatidis said. “It was a wonderful dinner,” Catsimatidis told 77 WABC’s Rita Cosby of the “triple A-list” gathering on Thursday evening. The intimate roundtable was attended by about “15 people, plus staff,” including Trump’s son Eric, the grocery billionaire explained. Trump, 77, “was in very high spirits” despite being fresh off his historic felony conviction, Catsimatidis recalled. “Everybody in that room believes that if...

Randi Weingarten's American Federation of Teachers defends pro-Hamas campus occupations as 'peacefully demonstrating' The American Federation of Teachers led by Randi Weingarten claimed that anti-Israel protesters on college campuses were simply "peacefully demonstrating." The American Federation of Teachers led by Randi Weingarten claimed that anti-Israel protesters on college campuses were simply “peacefully demonstrating.” The Tuesday statement from the AFT came in response to a hearing last week from the House Education and the Workforce Committee where leaders of Northwestern University, Rutgers University, and the University of California, Los Angeles, were grilled regarding their response to campus anti-Israel encampments. ”AFT members...

“Independent voters in New York who traditionally vote for Democrats, according to exit polling, have flipped to lean toward Trump by a margin of 10 points, 43% to 33%,” Kimball said in a statement. A Republican presidential candidate hasn’t won New York in the general election since 1984, when President Ronald Reagan beat former Vice President Walter Mondale by an 8-point margin. In 2016, Trump lost the Empire State to Hillary Clinton by a 22.5-point margin, and in 2020, Biden defeated the former president by 23.2 points in New York.

President Biden is leading former President Trump in New York — but only by single digits in the largely blue state, according to a poll released Thursday. An Emerson College Polling/The Hill/PIX11 survey found Biden leading Trump 48 percent to 41 percent, with 12 percent undecided. When undecided voters are factored in, the incumbent’s lead stretches to 10 points, 55 percent to 45 percent. Biden also holds a single-digit lead over Trump when independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and several other long-shot candidates — Jill Stein and Cornel West — are factored in the survey: Biden is at 44 percent,...

Verdict in.

If the five-woman, seven-man jury doesn't find Donald Trump guilty of the alleged bookkeeping mistakes, it will be a miracle. This is because the 55-page final jury instructions that attorneys saw only moments before the judge read them in court on Wednesday is a "directed verdict" to Trump's guilt. That's it. That's why an uncharacteristically somber Trump announced that even "Mother Teresa couldn't beat these charges." See his comments below. The "fix is in," as one notable former U.S. attorney decreed. "This is most corrupt judicial proceeding in the history of the United States," former District of Columbia U.S. Attorney...