Free Republic

Former President Donald Trump lost three major legal challenges in the past week, including his efforts to dismiss a racketeering case on First Amendment grounds. Here is a look at the rulings in three separate cases this week in Georgia, Florida, and New York. New York judge denies Trump’s attempt to delay hush money trialNew York Judge Juan Merchan denied the former president’s attempt to delay his criminal hush money trial on Wednesday, after Trump claimed he was protected under presidential immunity. Merchan said that Trump had plenty of opportunity before March to claim presidential immunity in the case. Trump...

The once relevant political consultant Karl Rove made a bid to gain attention Wednesday by scolding former President Donald Trump for his vow to pardon January 6 defendants. “One of the critical mistakes made in this campaign is that Donald Trump has now said, ‘I’m going to pardon those people because they’re hostages,'” Rove said in an interview on MSNBC. “No, they’re not. They’re thugs.” Having watched countless hours of January 6 footage in researching my forthcoming book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, I feel safe to say that Rove has no idea what he...

A Roman Catholic diocese based in California has announced that it is filing for bankruptcy due to the expenses related to numerous lawsuits centered on priest abuse. The Diocese of Sacramento released a statement on Monday confirming that Bishop Jaime Soto had “filed for reorganization of the Diocese of Sacramento’s debts in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.” The filing comes as the diocese faced over 250 lawsuits related to sex abuse of minors by clergy and lay employees, stemming from incidents that go as far back as the 1950s. “This wave of new claims followed a 2019 law allowing victim-survivors to file...

When citizens expose vote fraud, you can bet that Democrat prosecutors and juries will convict them hard. Democrats don’t discriminate. They want to convict all “election deniers,” whether they are white, black, men, women, young, or old. This week, 47-year-old Kimberly Zapata learned that she may spend years in prison for exposing weaknesses in Wisconsin’s election system. Zapata was the deputy director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, and she saw a major vulnerability in the system: anyone in Wisconsin could easily obtain military absentee ballots — real ones — simply by requesting them. And once people acquired those ballots, they...

**SNIP** That nod from Willis regarding any future guilty pleas comes with "the obvious implication" that the "'price' of a plea deal has gone up for defendants who sought to disqualify" her, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said on X. Fleischman noted that remark in particular appears to butt up against a Georgia prosecutorial ethics rule that forbids prosecutors from "making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused." "Saying that the 'train is coming' and implying that the defendants will now get less favorable plea deals because of a motion that was filed...

California just filed its 2021-2022 audited financial statement, 350 days past the filing deadline. In its filing, the state admits that COVID-era unemployment fraud cost the state $29 billion that must be paid back to the federal government, and that in 2022, the state had $256 billion more in liabilities than it had in unrestricted resources. After accounting for restricted resources, such as purpose-specific state trust funds and bonds, the state still owed $55 billion more than it had. With massive stock market gains and unprecedented job growth in the high-earning tech field amid a post-pandemic recovery, 2022 was a...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was mocked online after she claimed “RICO is not a crime” during a heated exchange Wednesday with President Biden impeachment hearing witness Tony Bobulinski. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) asked Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, whether he witnessed “the president commit a crime,” seeking to rebuff GOP narratives about the Biden family during the second public impeachment probe hearing. “How much time do I have to go through it,” Bobulinski shot back before listing off several items such as “corruption statutes, RICO and conspiracy, [Foreign Agents Registration Act].” “What is the crime sir, specifically,” the progressive darling...

During Wednesday's House Oversight Committee hearing on "Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office," witness Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden was bombarded with questions by Democratic witnesses. Even before that, he had been interrupted by Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) in his opening statements, after Bobulinski called him out for lying. Bobulinski faced another interruption from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), despite how the congresswoman asked the witness a direct question. As she ranted against the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden from House Republicans, AOC asked Bobulinski what crimes he had seen Biden commit....

The federal government pays more than $100 million a year to employees who aren’t doing their actual government jobs, but rather working for unions representing government employees against management — with taxpayers essentially funding both sides of the bargaining table. For decades, the government has tracked and reported those figures, but the Biden administration has removed the reports. Under the policy known as “official time,” hundreds of nominal government employees haven’t done anything but full-time union work in years, yet remain on the federal payroll. Not only is the policy expensive to taxpayers, but it also props up the power...

Video at thread. Benson (SOS of Michigan) admits coordination collusion with "battleground" states.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey today announced a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood after an expose’ video showed officials discussing how they take teen girls out of state for secret abortions. As LifeNews previously reported, Project Veritas conducted an investigation just before Christmas this past year in which a journalist entered a Kansas City, Mo. clinic asking how to get an abortion for a 13-year-old. The male reporter was met with certainty and confidence from the staff that although the procedure is illegal in Missouri, the minor could be sent to Kansas for the procedure, and no one would need to...

"I don’t think there is any scenario where this [isn't] a bad situation for the prosecutor. At the minimum, it will distract from the core information of the case and delay the trial," Scott Cummings, the Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics at the UCLA School of Law, told ABC News.

Three separate prosecutors reportedly met with White House aides before indicting former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden’s political opponent. The reported meetings suggest a coordinated attack against Biden’s 2024 rival. If coordination occurred, it lends credence to Trump’s belief that the indictments are election interference. The timing of the indictments are peculiar. After Trump announced a reelection bid against Biden, four indictments hit Trump in four separate jurisdictions, each following revelations about the Biden family business.

Soros-funded Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now at the center of a scandal involving her campaign finances. A new complaint filed alleges that nearly half of Willis’ campaign contributions, amounting to approximately $168,000, are linked to illegal activity, including money laundering and identity theft. The Gateway Pundit first reported Fani Willis’ money laundering network back in September 2023. A bombshell investigation has uncovered jaw-dropping connections between Fani Willis and a sprawling web of election fraud and money laundering activities. The investigation, which spans across multiple states and multiple jurisdictions, has revealed a complex network of illicit operations aimed...

[Catholic Caucus] BREAKING: Jesuits Appoint Director for LGBT ActivismJohn Zmirak and I have been warning you for years. . . . New Executive Director at OutreachThe implementation phase of the LGBT synod is accelerating rapidly. The LGBT media ministry, Outreach, which was founded by Fr. James Martin, has just announced the appointment of its first executive director. His name is Michael O’Loughlin, a former reporter for the Boston Globe and the Jesuit magazine, America. Based on his comments to the media, it is obvious that his new job is to organize a national movement of LGBT enforcement at all Catholic...

NEW YORK (AP) — Even as Catholic dogma continues to repudiate same-sex marriage and gender transition, one of the most prominent religious orders in the United States — the Jesuits — is strengthening a unique outreach program for LGBTQ+ Catholics. The initiative — fittingly called Outreach — was founded two years ago by the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit who is one of the country’s most prominent advocates for greater LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic Church. Outreach, a ministry of the Jesuit magazine America, sponsored conferences in New York City in 2022 and 2023, and last year launched a multifaceted...

State lawmakers in Georgia on Wednesday introduced legislation to void the racketeering charges former President Donald Trump is facing in the state. The lawmakers say they seek to prevent "current and future politically-motivated prosecutions commenced" in Georgia.

On Thursday, the Georgia State Senate passed a sweeping bill that places new restrictions on charitable groups involved with bailing out riot-related suspects. The bill will also expand the cash bail system, hindering repeat offender's chances of being bailed out of jail. This legislation is partly in response to the dozens of criminal riot arrestees who have been hit with RICO and terrorism charges over crimes committed during the ongoing Antifa-backed "Stop Cop City" demonstrations. The bill, which is listed under SB 63, passed in the Georgia Senate by a 30-17 margin on Thursday and will move to the House...

Michael Roman, one of the co-defendants of former President Donald Trump in the RICO case brought against Trump and 18 members of his 2020 campaign and legal teams by DA Fani Willis, just escalated his fight with DA Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade. He did so in a subpoena of Wade and Willis, among others, that was recently filed with the court. As background, Roman is the member of the Trump 2020 Campaign who alleged in early January that Willis was having a romantic affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. In that filing, Roman’s legal team wrote that “Mr....

FBI Overstepped in Search of Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes, Court RulesThe 9th Circuit compared the searches to the “abuses of power” that “led to adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.”The FBI overstepped its constitutional authority when agents searched hundreds of safe deposit boxes without warrants in 2021, a federal appeals court ruled. The court compared the FBI’s tactics to the kind of indiscriminate searches that led to the enactment of the Bill of Rights in the first place.In March 2021, the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults, a safe deposit box company in Beverly Hills, California. The...