Free Republic

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' case against former President Donald Trump in Georgia may have been dealt a blow after the judge presiding over the matter agreed to hear pretrial motions and an appeal against Willis' ability to bring charges against one of the defendants. In August, Trump and 18 other defendants were indicted as part of Willis' probe into alleged interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. On March 28, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is expected to hear arguments from Trump's lawyers that the Georgia election interference case is intended to criminalize political speech....

Hebron, New York (WCSO) – According to Sheriff Jeffrey J. Murphy, on April 15, 2023 at approximately 9:53 PM, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of a female that had possibly been shot near Cemetery Road in the Town of Salem. As patrols responded to the scene, additional 911 calls came in reporting that shots had been fired from a residence on Patterson Hill Road in the Town of Hebron. Upon arriving at the first scene on Cemetery Road, Deputies discovered a female who had been in a vehicle and was a victim of a gunshot wound....

Flemington Borough Councilman Malik Johnston was arrested on charges of selling cocaine and methamphetamine, the Office of the Hunterdon County Prosecutor announced Friday. "On various occasions between December 2022 and February 2023 in Raritan Township, Mr. Johnston sold quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine to an undercover police officer," the statement says.

A tech entrepreneur in Texas wasn’t given ample time to drop a rifle he was carrying on his own front porch before he was fatally shot by police last month, his devastated family told NBC News.

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is planning to travel to Russia in the near future for talks aimed at finding a deal to free the detained WNBA star Brittney Griner, a source with knowledge of the proposed trip told ABC News.Richardson, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, played a role in achieving a prisoner exchange in April that saw Russia release former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed after nearly two and a half years in captivity.He is expected to go to Moscow in the next couple of weeks,...

The Biden administration is set to fund the distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts as part of its plan to advance "racial equity." The $30 million grant program, which closed applications Monday and will begin in May, will provide funds to nonprofits and local governments to help make drug use safer for addicts. Included in the grant, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, are funds for "smoking kits/supplies." A spokesman for the agency told the Washington Free Beacon that these kits will provide pipes for users to smoke crack cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, and "any...

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday endorsed Air Force veteran Anna Paulina Luna in the GOP primary for the House seat being vacated by Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla. In a statement, Trump blasted her GOP opponents in one of the most hotly contested districts on the 2022 ballot: Amanda Makki, Audrey Henson, and former Marine Matt Tito. The race also has three Democrat challengers — state Reps. Ben Diamon and Michele Rayner-Goolsbuy, and Eric Luyn, a former national security adviser in the Obama administration, Florida Politics reported. "Anna Paulina Luna is a great fighter who is running for Congress in...

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, co-founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $500,000 on Oct. 1 to Ballot Measure 110, which seeks to decriminalize possession of some hard drugs in Oregon. The measure would also establish a drug addiction treatment and recovery program. The Chan Zuckerberg donations raise Ballot Measure 110's cash contributions to $1.4 million. In contrast, the ballot's opponents have raised $12,800 in cash contributions and secured a $40,100 loan. According to the Oregon secretary of state website, this appears to be the first time the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has contributed to an Oregon...

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration is using electronic billboards on city property to honor Breonna Taylor following protests in Chicago this week in response to her fatal shooting by police in Louisville, saying the campaign on signs alongside local expressways is not politically motivated despite some aldermanic criticism.(snip) n a statement, the mayor’s office likened the Taylor messages to public service announcements the city posts on the digital billboards. “This week, the city’s social media channels and electronic billboards are honoring the life of Breonna Taylor and countless other victims of systemic injustice with the display #SayHerName,” the statement reads in...

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby dismissed almost 600 criminal cases for what she determined are minor offenses. In other words, minor crimes are allowed in crime-ridden Baltimore. The minor crimes include, among others, drug possession, paraphernalia possession, prostitution (allows for trafficking), trespassing, minor traffic offenses, open container, rogues and vagabond, and urinating/defecating in public. Isn’t that lovely? She boasted that she already filed to vacate almost 5,000 Circuit Court and District Court marijuana convictions. But Circuit Court Judge W. Michel Pierson and District Court Judge Kathleen Sweeney completely shot down Mosby’s request to erase those convictions on April 26, The...

The Spotsylvania Sheriff's Office has announced that five men from Philadelphia have been charged with first-degree murder stemming from a 2019 triple homicide in Spotsylvania. James Christopher Myers, 30, Durward Anthony Allen, 27, Jamal Kelvin Bailey, 30, Hugh Cameron Green, 30, and Montel Jaleek Wilson, 26, have been charged in the deaths of Michael Coleman, 39, Rachel Ozuna, 34, and Ozuna’s son, 14-year-old Kyrrus Ozuna, the Sheriff's Office said in a release Thursday. The release did not include any information about a suspected motive for the slayings. All of the suspects are currently in custody in various locations in Pennsylvania,...

It wasn’t until Judy and Dennis Shepard were sitting on the plane, leaving their home state of Wyoming for the nation’s capital, carrying their son’s ashes, that the feeling sank in. “Matt’s moving away now,” Judy Shepard, 66, recalled thinking as the flight took off earlier this week. Twenty years after their son, Matthew Shepard, was brutally pistol-whipped and left to die on a buck-rail fence in a cold Wyoming prairie, making him a lasting symbol of the gay rights movement, his parents were on their way to lay his remains to rest — in a crypt in Washington National...

Mexico was an unfamiliar place for 19-year-old Manuel Antonio Cano-Pacheco. He was only three years old when his parents brought him to the United States – without a visa. In 2015, as a teenager in Des Moines, Iowa, he qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, the initiative spearheaded by President Barack Obama to give temporary protection to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. Cano-Pacheco gained DACA status and with it, a work permit, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But then he was arrested and convicted on two misdemeanor drug charges.

A US Army veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan has been deported to Mexico, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. The deportation follows an earlier decision by US authorities to deny Miguel Perez's citizenship application because of a felony drug conviction, despite his service and the PTSD he says it caused. Perez, 39, was escorted across the US-Mexico border from Texas and handed over to Mexican authorities Friday, ICE said in a statement.

Why Did the Judge Acquit a St. Louis Police Officer of Killing a Black Man? Bob Adelmann The decision on Friday to acquit a white St. Louis police officer in the fatal shooting of a black man back in December 2011 predictably set off rioting in the city. It didn’t occur to the rioters that, according to the evidence in the case, Officer Jason Stockley’s use of force was reasonable, to defend his own life against a potentially lethal threat exhibited by Anthony Lamar Smith. It didn’t matter that the judge found that the state failed to prove its allegation...

Texans rookie running back D'Onta Foreman, the third-round pick from the University of Texas, was arrested early Sunday morning in Austin on possession of marijuana and unlawful weapon charges. The Austin American-Statesman reported that Foreman, who rushed for 2,028 yards as a junior last season, was arrested at 3 a.m. Sunday by the campus police department. The Texans said today they are investigating. The American-Statesman was issued a statement from the University of Texas Police Department that said officers responded to a call at 12:24 a.m. (Police) "responded to a report of the smell of marijuana coming from three occupied...

Two weeks after a Georgia restaurant owner and her teenage daughter were beaten by a couple unhappy with their chicken order, the alleged assailants today turned themselves in to police. Nathaniel Smith, 45, and LaTasha Smith, 28, surrendered to face felony charges in connection with the June 22 incident at the Qwik Chik takeout stand in Baxley, a city about 90 miles west of Savannah. The Smiths were the target of a law enforcement dragnet that included police and federal marshals. According to investigators, the Smiths (seen below) complained to eatery owner Jeanette Norris that their chicken was cold and...

A drug dealer whose sentence was commuted by Barack Obama is back behind bars on drug charges, the San Antonio Express-News reports. Robert M. Gil, 68, was caught with more than two pounds of cocaine last Thursday following a high-speed chase in Texas. He allegedly crashed his car into another driver and undercover police cars while fleeing from a drug deal, reports the Express-News. Gil was one of 1,385 federal inmates whose sentences were commuted by Obama – he was released in 2015 and lived in a halfway house before settling into a place of his own. He now faces...

An attorney with the Internal Revenue Service’s professional standards office in Washington has been charged with conspiring to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine, U.S. prosecutors said. Jack Vitayanon, 41, an IRS attorney since 2012 allegedly participated in a meth ring with others in Arizona and on Long Island between about September 2014 and January, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday. Public records show Vitayanon living in the U Street corridor. In the criminal complaint, prosecutors noted that during one alleged transaction, Vitayanon directed a buyer to make a cash deposit of $1,650 to...

A man who lives across the street from a prominent drug treatment program was arrested Tuesday night on charges involving almost 1,900 packets of heroin, according to authorities. The suspect, 24-year-old Lirse Jones, was wearing an ankle bracelet because he is on probation stemming from a previous drug conviction, according to Passaic County Sheriff Richard Berdnik. Narcotics detectives spotted Jones pacing back and forth near the corner of Straight Street and 20th Avenue while on his cell phone, the sheriff said. Shortly after that, a man driving a black Range Rover pulled up to the curb and made an exchange...