Jack Smith, the disgraced former special counsel, is lawyering up and lashing out.

The man often described by the media as “fearless,” “calm,” and “apolitical” during his two-year reign of terror as Merrick Garland’s handpicked lawfare goon is tipping his highly partisan and somewhat jittery hand as Republicans in Washington set their sights on him. Smith’s veil of mystery—CNN actually covered his trip to D.C. Subway shop in July 2023 as “breaking news”—has been voluntarily lifted as he faces Congressional and possible criminal investigations into his handling of numerous inquiries, which ensnared the private communications of sitting members of Congress.

A cleaned-up Smith, who typically presents a raggedy beard and pallid complexion, recently commiserated with MS-NOW’s Nicolle Wallace on a number of topics, including the (LOL) weaponization of the Department of Justice:

Jack Smith is one of the biggest losers (in terms of court rulings) in DOJ history…

The man who has been obsessed with Donald Trump for almost four years claims he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about Donald Trump…

Mr. Tough Guy…

But Smith’s victim routine isn’t fooling Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. On July 22, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Jordan sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice accusing Smith of misleading Congressional investigators when he denied that the special counsel’s office had obtained text messages belonging to members of Congress. “While testifying under oath, Mr. Smith seemingly made willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact that contradict new documents obtained by the Committee from the Department of Justice (DOJ),” Jordan wrote to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “The Committee is providing this information for the DOJ to investigate a potential violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001.”

Text Messages? What Text Messages?

At issue is Smith’s December 2025 too-cute-by-half testimony related to his subpoenas for the toll records of several Republicans lawmakers. (Toll records show cell phone activity but not the nature of conversations or content of texts.) While Smith accurately answered direct questions about obtaining text messages—texts belonging to 44 members of Congress were swept up in Smith’s collection of messages sent or received by dozens of Trump White House aides, handed over without a fight by the National Archives in 2023—the shady prosecutor failed to separately disclose that fact to investigators:

“The responses provided by Mr. Smith gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members’ privileged text messages. We now know this to be false,” Jordan wrote.

The Ohio Republican reminded Smith that he “was advised of his obligation to provide all necessary information that would make his responses truthful. The Committee specifically instructed him that he could not tell half-truths or exclude information necessary to make statements accurate, and that a deliberate failure to disclose information could constitute a false statement.”

Bring in the Fixers

Smith’s criminal defense team—which includes former Clinton fixer Lanny Breuer, who brought Smith on board as head of the DOJ’s public integrity unit in 2010 during his stint at the Obama DOJ—quickly fired back. “This referral reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law,” Smith’s attorneys wrote to Jordan and Blanche. More LOL.

While Smith, his lawyers, and their accomplices in the media want all of this to look like the latest example of Trump using the DOJ to “retaliate” or seek “retribution” against his political enemies, at least one Democrat has expressed concern over Smith’s reckless handling of investigations into his colleagues. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) conceded that Republicans are “rightly concerned about the possible breach of norms and improper access to email [sic].” Documents also revealed that Smith’s team mishandled privileged material while intentionally ignoring Speech or Debate Clause protections in the collection of members’ cell content—a pattern of misconduct demonstrated by the Special Counsel’s team in the classified documents case and the seizure of Rep. Scott Perry’s cell phone records in 2023.

Jordan’s referral now sits on Blanche’s desk. So, too, does a separate referral against Thomas Windom, Smith’s top henchman in the J6 indictment against the president, for obstruction of Congress related to his stonewalling during a deposition last year.

And while skepticism as to whether anything will happen to either one is certainly warranted—especially considering the hostile grand jury environment Trump’s DOJ faces in the nation’s capital—the fact that Smith is paying high-priced lawyers and groveling to cable news hosts is a gratifying scene for now.

Irony, to no one’s surprise, appears lost on some of the biggest perpetrators of the decade-long lawfare against President Trump, his allies, and the MAGA movement. Those same saboteurs are now attempting to block Senate confirmation of Todd Blanche, President Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, as attorney general.

For example, more than 1,200 former Department of Justice employees signed a letter earlier this month opposing Blanche’s confirmation; the president nominated Blanche, currently the acting attorney general, to permanently fill the position following the firing of Pamela Bondi in April.

The opposition’s letter—released by a group called “Justice Connection,” which, among other things, provides counseling services to recently-terminated DOJ employees—blamed Blanche for unspecified “corruption and abuses” at the department under his leadership. Accusing Blanche of the “degradation of DOJ’s apolitical career workforce” (LOL), the former employees claimed Blanche is “demonizing career employees, undermining their work, and driving them out of the department.” (As I have covered extensively, the dramatic departures of top DOJ and FBI employees over the past 18 months—either forced or voluntarily—have exposed the highly partisan nature of the establishment DOJ.)

Perhaps the most amusing, and encouraging, passage of the letter lamented the fact that roughly 16,000 of the DOJ’s 100,000+ workforce have left since the start of Trump’s term—as the old joke goes about lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, a good start. But not for the signers of the Justice Connection letter, many of whom left the DOJ more than 30 to 40 years ago. “The consequences of Blanche’s attacks on DOJ’s apolitical workforce radiate beyond the halls of Main Justice, affecting the entire country. They’ve meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done as well–leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable.” (The missive also again proves that most lawyers are terrible writers.)

Which is rich coming from individuals most responsible for torching the public’s trust in the DOJ by abusing their power in an attempt to destroy Donald Trump and everyone around him—and in the process, redirecting resources away from the real work Americans expect the DOJ and FBI to do.

A DOJ Hall of Shame

Signers of the letter included JP Cooney, Molly Gaston, and David Rody, three of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s top henchmen; Peter Carr, former spokesman for the DC US Attorney’s office and chief propagandist of J6 investigations; Greg Rosen, the former “Capitol Siege” unit chief; Mike Feinberg, a former FBI agent and BFF of disgraced FBI attorney Peter Strzok; J6 prosecutors Mike Gordon and Sara Levine; David Laufman, who helped tank Clinton email investigation and participated in Brett Kavanaugh character assassination campaign; Lisa Monaco senior counsel David Smith; Robert Mueller henchman Aaron Zelinsky; and Biden autopen pardon attorney Liz Oyer.

In fact, Oyer is scheduled to testify this week during Blanche’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee; Blanche fired Oyer in March 2025 after she refused a directive by Blanche’s office to restore the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson, who lost that privilege following a misdemeanor domestic battery plea agreement. Oyer, who only offered faint criticism of her former boss’s last minute clemency announcements, including commuting the death sentences of 37 federal inmates and reducing prison time for hundreds of violent criminals, will share her sob story on Thursday. “Through unchecked bullying, the political leaders of the department are forcing out career staff, ripping away ethical guardrails, and offering priority access to government benefits to loyalists and friends,” Oyer wrote after she was shown the door at Main Justice. “I am deeply concerned that the institution created to uphold our laws and protect our civil rights is being destroyed from within by those entrusted to protect it.”

Of course, all of these former DOJ apparatchiks had no concerns when the Biden DOJ under Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco applied the full force and weight of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency against Americans who protested at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. No qualms about “civil rights being destroyed from within” during the Biden DOJ’s unprecedented four-year crusade to round up nearly 1,600 individuals, charge them with phony crimes, and throw them in federal prison for years for exercising their 1A rights to demonstrate on public property on a Wednesday afternoon.

Gratuitous Politicking (Again) By Obama Judge

And it’s not just ex-DOJ lifers targeting Blanche. This week, in a flagrant political move intended to provide question fodder for committee Democrats, a federal judge in Florida took several shots at Blanche related to the now-dismissed settlement between the Trump Organization and the IRS for the unlawful leaking of the president’s tax returns right before the 2020 election. Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, in May took the rare step of granting a request by 35 former judges—including perpetual Trump grievance peddlers Michael Luttig and Nancy Gertner—who are not parties in the matter to reopen the case based on allegations of misconduct by the DOJ in the original settlement agreement and the now-defunct “Anti Weaponization Fund.”

Williams has since used her bully bench to lob all sorts of accusations at Trump’s DOJ. Her 56-page order issued Monday gratuitously cited Blanche 30 times, even suggesting at one point he committed perjury during recent Congressional testimony. “The Court is extremely troubled by the testimony given by Acting Attorney General Blanche on May 19, 2026,” Williams wrote. “In response to why the ‘settlement agreement’ had not been submitted to this Court for review, he stated that there is no judge’ because the case had been dismissed and, therefore, there was “no mechanism” for reviewing the agreement. While temporally accurate, this answer is, at best, misleading and, at worst, disingenuous.”

HUH?

Williams then instructed the court’s clerk to send her slanderous diatribe to the New York State and DC Bar associations to review Blanche’s conduct.

Despite the onslaught of belly-whining and pearl-clutching, Blanche appears headed for confirmation. Under his leadership, the DOJ is returning to its core mission—from enforcing immigration law and catching human smugglers to combating fraud and reducing the bloated ranks of the department—and Blanche is on track to do what his predecessors in both Trump administrations failed to do: earn back lost trust in the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency and institute reforms that won’t be easily undone under a future Democratic administration.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Bon entered the U.S. during the Biden Administration in 2024 as a parolee. His parole ended in June 2025 but Bon remained in the country; that same month, Bon received a non-domiciled commercial driver’s license (CDL) by the state of Massachusetts in June 2025. “This tragedy NEVER should have happened. Our prayers are with Trooper Pahira’s family, friends, and loved ones during this time,” DHS’s social media account posted on July 6.

Video of grunting Bon being hauled into a police vehicle went viral:

The president of the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association, Stephen Polishan, issued a statement following Bon’s arrest. “This is not about politics. This is about right versus wrong. Trooper Pahira was a hero, and his family, fellow troopers and the public deserve answers. They need to know why the person accused of this senseless killing, who was in the United States illegally, had been granted a commercial driver’s license in Massachusetts. This individual should never have been driving such a dangerous vehicle on our highways. But he was, and now a good man is dead. Trooper Pahira should be alive today.”

Polishan’s sentiments echo across the country as the death toll of American citizens killed by illegal immigrants driving 80,000-pound death machines continues to rise. The Trump administration, led by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, is rolling back lax federal and state laws that allow noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to obtain non-domiciled CDLs and commercial learning permits. Last year, Duffy issued a number of reforms aimed at improving truck safety including the announcement of an emergency rule to drastically limit the categories of non-citizens eligible for such licenses. (My backgrounder on this issue is here.) But two Democratic appellate judges in D.C. put a hold on Duffy’s rule in November 2025; as I noted on X, Pahira might be alive today had the judges not intervened in the matter. (Bon’s CDL was renewed in February.)

More Young Men Dead as Blue State Authorities Turn a Blind Eye

Sadly, Pahira’s death is one in another recent spate of tragedies caused by noncitizen truck drivers. A truck driver from Uzbekistan rammed into a vehicle driven by Toby Forsythe, a 21-year-old college soccer star, in Ohio on Sunday, killing him instantly. The driver, Bekhzod Asrarov, failed an English proficiency field test; he also ripped out his dash cam and smashed three cell phones in an attempt to conceal the evidence. Asarov arrived in the U.S. under Joe Biden’s “Diversity Visa Lottery” and obtained a CDL in Ohio. He currently faced one charge of destroying evidence as the investigation continues.

Cook County (IL) sheriff’s police arrested an Indian national on June 29 for killing 23-year-old Sebastian Stone on an Illinois highway as Stone attempted to change his tire. According to news reports, Kuljeet Kang was driving recklessly before he crashed into Stone, “weaving between the second and third lane of travel” then driving on the shoulder of the busy highway where Stone was “struck by the suspect’s front passenger wheel, and dragged under the semi, before being run over by the rear trailer wheels.” Kang fled the scene, increasing his speed as he left Stone to die on the Illinois interstate. (Shocking no one, Chicago area media describes Kang as a “Palatine man.”)

Federal sources told Libs of Tik Tok that Kang’s Illinois CDL had been renewed two months ago. An audit performed by the Federal Motor Safety Carrier Administration concluded earlier this year that one-in-five non-domiciled CDLs issued by the Illinois Secretary of State’s office were done so illegally. (Some reports indicate Kang held a green card, which means he likely obtained a standard rather than a non-domiciled CDL.) However, Kang’s social media posts suggest he may not speak or understand English:

The good news, according to Border Czar Tom Homan, thousands of CDLs across the country have been revoked over the past few months:

The bad news is that hundreds of thousands of noncitizen drivers remain on America’s roads as the administration faces pushback from blue states, unions, and other pro-immigrant interests. In fact, the D.C. appellate court will hold oral arguments in September on a lawsuit seeking to overturn Duffy’s rule; given the Democratic composition and open hostility to the Trump administration on the D.C. appellate court, this fight to remove noncitizens and illegal immigrants truck drivers is not over yet.

More information here from Shannon Everett:

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a pair of rulings that represented back-to-back defeats for the federal circuit court in Washington, D.C.. In Fischer v. U.S., the Supreme Court determined nearly every D.C. district court judge and two appellate judges had unlawfully applied a corporate fraud statute to help the Biden Department of Justice turn more than 300 January 6 protesters into lifelong felons. The ruling gutted the heart of the DOJ’s J6 prosecution and threw the D.C. courthouse into immediate chaos as defendants, some in federal prison on the charge at the time, and their attorneys sought to vacate convictions and plea agreements.

A few days later, in a landmark ruling on the final day of the term, SCOTUS established a broad swath of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution; four D.C. judges—District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan and three D.C. appellate court judges—had denied all of President Trump’s immunity arguments related to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-indictment, which covered the president’s waning weeks in office. Chief Justice John Roberts took a few shots at the D.C. bench in his accompanying opinion: “Despite the unprecedented nature of this case, and the very significant constitutional questions that it raises, the lower courts rendered their decisions on a highly expedited basis,” Roberts wrote on July 1, 2024.

Deja Vu?

History, in a way, is repeating itself. A pair of SCOTUS decisions handed down in this final week of the October 2025 term again reined in judicial overreach by arguably the most powerful district court in the country.

In a 6-3 decision (the Lilith Fair cohort to no one’s surprise represented the dissent), the Court reversed D.C. Judge Ana Reyes’ halt to end temporary (emphasis added) protected status for Haitian refugees; then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem had announced Haitians’ TPS status—enacted following a devastating earthquake in 2010 and extended on numerous occasions—would expire on February 3, 2026, the last day of the most recent extension. Five Haitians immediately filed suit claiming the decision was based on “racial animus” and violated federal law. (The Haitian plaintiffs, as I noted on X, included a doctor, a software engineer, and a nurse, specialties desperately needed back in their homeland.)

They asked Reyes to prevent the administration from ending the program and initiating deportation proceedings, which the Biden appointee did in her typical inflammatory fashion. Lamenting that President Trump “expressed little regard for Haiti and Haitians,” when taking office the first time in 2017, Reyes accused the president and the administration of unfairly targeting Haitians based on race. “President Trump has made—freely, at times even boastfully—several derogatory statements about Haitians and other nonwhite foreigners,” Reyes wrote in an 83-page diatribe one day before the TPS status expired. Reyes further stated that “no one rationally could” defend the president’s “derogatory statements” about Haiti, including his description of the lawless island nation as a “shithole.”

She did, however, offer a full-throated defense of those who have overstayed their welcome. “The Government does not cite any reason termination must occur post haste. Secretary Noem complains of strains unlawful immigrants place on our immigration-enforcement system. Her answer? Turn 352,959 lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants overnight. She complains of strains to our economy. Her answer? Turn employed lawful immigrants who contribute billions in taxes into the legally unemployable. She complains of strains to our healthcare system. Her answer? Turn the insured into the uninsured. This approach is many things—in the public interest is not one of them.”

A 2-1 panel of the D.C. appellate court quickly backed Reyes’ decision; two Biden appointees echoed Reyes’ sentiments in the matter, claiming “the termination of TPS would have ‘devastating’ consequences for the plaintiffs, including risk of detention and deportation, separation from family members, and loss of work authorization.” Trump appointee Justin Walker dissented, noting the statute prohibits “judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.”

Last week, SCOTUS agreed with Walker. Not only did Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the opinion, acknowledge the “judicial-review bar” on such executive branch determinations, he concluded that “[none] of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all ex pressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications.” (Full opinion, including Lilith Fair dissent, is here.) The case now goes back to Reyes, who must reconsider the lawsuit outside of the scope of judicial review or equal protection arguments.

A couple of washed up and washed out Ohio Republicans took great umbrage:

Good Riddance to Bad Case Law

On Monday, SCOTUS handed the D.C. court another L—and in the process, the high court finally inflicted a death blow to Humphrey’s Executor, the SCOTUS decision that recently has been cited, unsuccessfully, by multiple presidential appointees fired by President Trump. (Brief explainer here.) In doing so, the justices re-established executive authority and disabused those who envision a non-existent fourth branch of government that operates “independently” of the Constitutionally-established three.

After the president removed her from the Federal Trade Commission last year, Biden-appointee Rebecca Slaughter filed a lawsuit to keep her position for the remaining six years of her term. Slaughter had argued the president did not follow Humphrey’s Executor guidance by failing to explain any “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” that prompted her firing.

In July 2025, D.C. Judge Loren AliKhan, another Biden appointee, reinstated Slaughter to the FTC, describing the commission as a “specially crafted independent agency.” (Her opinion is here.) Another 2-1 panel of majority Obama-appointed judges endorsed AliKhan’s view and denied the administration’s request to put a hold on her order. “The government has no likelihood of success on appeal given controlling and directly on point Supreme Court precedent,” Judges Patricia Millett and Cornelia Pillard wrote in July 2025. “Specifically, ninety years ago, a unanimous Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s for-cause removal protection for Federal Trade Commissioners,” referring to Humphrey’s Executor.

Millett and Pillard were once again wrong. In another 6-3 decision, SCOTUS reversed the Democratic judges: “Although it is up to the Senate to decide whether to confirm those with whom the President would prefer to work, neither Congress nor the courts may saddle him with those with whom he cannot work,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.” He continued. “If anything more is left of Humphrey’s, we overrule it. Humphrey’s has for decades been a result in search of a rationale.”

Sort of like the D.C. court system.

So, how many of these wrongheaded decisions will it take before Republicans act? The encroachment by the judiciary onto executive branch authority is most prevalent in Washington courtrooms; their decisions have drastically stymied the president’s agenda on a number of fronts including immigration, the federal workforce, the military, entitlement programs, and foreign affairs.

And no amount of SCOTUS reversals can get that stolen time back.

Schiltz order:

Read more

Apparently the Southern Poverty Law Center isn’t just the most influential and well-funded (for now) AstroTurfed “racial justice” racket in the country, it’s a great place to meet one’s potential soulmate.

According to a bombshell report in the New York Post this week, a top SPLC official hooked up with one of the organization’s “sources” who was tied to a neo-Nazi group that the SPLC claimed to “monitor” and used to raise donations. The unidentified source—essentially an informant—earned $1.2 million from the SPLC over a 20-year period; at least $140,000 of that donor money ended up in a joint account held by the source and Heidi Beirich, the SPLC’s intelligence director from 2012 to 2019.

The lovebirds shared a home and two bank accounts at the same time “the unnamed informant was also raising money for the National Alliance and helping to ‘carry out its extremist activities,’” the Post reported.

Beirich was front and center in promoting the alleged scourge of “black hate” during her tenure at the SPLC. (She was ousted during an organizational shakeup; Beirich then co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which offered assistance to the January 6 Select Committee related to the “extremism” posed by groups such as the Proud Boys.)

The juicy tidbits related to the Beirich/neo-Nazi coupling were disclosed in a superseding federal indictment—the Department of Justice first brought charges against the SPLC in April—handed down earlier this month in the middle district of Alabama, where the nonprofit is based. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the initial set of charges, accusing the SPLC of opening fake entities that acted as conduits to funnel donor funds to the “sources,” who in turn helped bolster the group’s claims of a persistent “white supremacy” threat in the country. “The SPLC’s paid informants (“field sources”) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website,” the indictment alleged.

But the latest indictment reveals even more details as to how the SPLC—whose work is frequently cited in the media, Congressional reports, and even federal indictments as the “expert” in all things race-related—uses paid informants to ratchet up its bogus warnings about white supremacy and stoke fear among the public. For example, the SPLC currently claims there are 152 active “white supremacy” groups and 1,263 active “hate” groups, whatever that means, in America right now.

The ‘Hard Right’ Responsible for One of the Most Unsafe Years Ever, Says SPLC

The sources/informants, however, are key in propping up the SPLC’s nearly $1 billion race-baiting operation, which in reality is nothing more than a vile smear campaign against the political Right and President Trump in particular.

The year 2025, according to the SPLC’s annual report on “hate and extremism,” was one of the worst years on record. “Ultimately, 2025 was the year that the hard right powerfully brought its agenda to life through our institutions at the expense of Black and Brown people, immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, families with low incomes and everyone who benefits from an inclusive democracy,” the group’s director, Rachel Carroll Rivas, wrote in a June 3 post. “2025 was a turbulent year marked by injustice, social upheaval and stark new threats from a hard-right movement rapidly establishing its power across institutions. The hard right effectively seized the power of government as a messenger for extremist rhetoric and a tool to dictate policies affecting the everyday lives of millions of people.”

The “stark new threats” appear to be coming from inside the house, according to the latest indictment. In addition to the Beirich/neo-Nazi affair, the indictment describes the activity of eight SPLC informants, some of whom received six-figure payouts via the fake entities created by the SPLC to conceal the compensation.

For example:

• The SPLC source recruited by an unnamed SPLC employee to instigate the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville received more than $300,000 in donor money between 2014 and 2023. The individual, identified as “F-37”—the SPLC used the letter “F” to denote “field” source (LOL) and added a number—led rally leadership chats, promoted the event extensively on social media, and drove participants to the August 2017 protest. The event resulted in a firestorm of controversy for the Trump administration and produced one of the most infamous, and inaccurate, quotes of the president’s first term in office—the “very fine people on both sides” quip still cherry-picked to this day to suggest the president supported the more violent protesters who clashed with police and counter protesters over that fateful weekend. The public may never know whether “F-37” was directly involved in fueling any of the violence, which resulted in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

• Two sources, F-30 (a member of both the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations) and F-42 (former chairman of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization) were paid by the SPLC to add to their ranks of racists so SPLC could flag the groups on its “Extremist File” to use as fundraising tools. F-30, paid at least $70,000, “publish[ed] racist and extremist material for the purpose of recruiting new members, both inside and outside prison, and create racist paraphernalia to sell at rallies to raise more money for his extremist organization.” (In a humorous twist, F-30 complained that the SPLC’s harsh description of his group scared off potential members so the SPLC toned down the language.) F-42 received $155,000 between 2016 and 2023.

• When two members of the Ku Klux Klan sought help from the SPLC to exit the group, SPLC officials instead encouraged the pair to remain in the movement. Not only did they receive monthly compensation, the sources, identified as F-31 and F-32, were reimbursed for purchasing material to make KKK garments and “for all expenses incurred for cross-burning events to include the wood and fuel used.”

Patel put it in stark terms:

Instigators, Not Informants

Much of this is reminiscent of tactics used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in recent years to substantiate former FBI Director Chris Wray’s unsubstantiated warnings about “domestic violent extremism,” i.e., Trump supporters. As I covered for years, the FBI used several informants and at least three undercover FBI agents to concoct the Whitmer fednapping hoax (a thorough report by yours truly here) to make it appear that “white supremacist” supporters of Donald Trump plotted to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer right before the 2020 presidential election.

At least three informants were paid handsomely (in cash, per FBI policy) for luring the men into the trap. The main informant, Dan Chappel, received at least $60,000 in cash and gifts over a ten-month period; perhaps he can hook up with the SPLC to keep his profitable gig going?

Court proceedings in the trials of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters related to the events of January 6 revealed the presence of numerous FBI informants in each group before and on that day. FBI informants were caught doing the same thing as SPLC informants; talking smack in group chats, organizing and attending rallies, and participating in the January 6 protest.

All told, the collaboration between the government and nonprofits such as SPLC represent a massive campaign of deception to drastically inflate the danger of “white supremacy” and attach the imaginary threat to Trump and the MAGA movement as a whole. (Last year, Patel formally cut ties between the FBI and SPLC, accurately calling it a “partisan smear machine.”) And while the SPLC now insists it is the victim of a “vindictive” prosecution, the reality is that the SPLC is the vindictive party, shamefully stoking the flames of racial and political discord to boost its bottom line.

Nothing more hateful than that.

The latest wave of “RESIST” yard signs appearing in neighborhoods across America reflects more than ordinary political disagreement. As the above photograph illustrates, the signs are often displayed alongside slogans such as “No ICE” and “Resist Fascism,” suggesting that opposition to immigration enforcement has become a defining rallying cry of the political left.

Yet the message raises an important question: What exactly is being resisted?

The “RESIST” signs are the grassroots counterpart of the broader “Resistance” movement that organized nationwide “No Kings” demonstrations and counter-events to the recent White House UFC celebration, all premised on the notion that President Trump’s exercise of authority is somehow inherently illegitimate.

Yet Trump was elected after making immigration enforcement one of the central themes of his campaign. Voters were not left guessing about his intentions. He promised stricter border security, increased deportations of individuals unlawfully present in the country, and renewed enforcement of existing immigration laws. Whether one agrees with those policies or not, they were presented to the electorate openly and repeatedly.

In a constitutional republic, elections have consequences. Citizens debate competing visions, cast their ballots, and then accept the outcome—even when their preferred candidates lose. That principle lies at the heart of democratic self-government.

The “Resist” movement appears to reject that understanding. Rather than accepting the legitimacy of policies enacted through democratic processes, its adherents often portray enforcement of duly enacted immigration laws as inherently illegitimate. The implication is that a president elected on a promise to enforce those laws should nevertheless be prevented from doing so.

That position is difficult to reconcile with the traditional democratic principle that policy disputes should be resolved at the ballot box. If voters disagree with immigration enforcement, they are free to elect different representatives and a different president. What they are not entitled to do is treat the outcome of a lawful election as presumptively illegitimate simply because it produced policies they dislike.

Who are the Real Fascists?

The rhetoric surrounding the movement also reveals a striking irony. The signs frequently invoke “fascism,” accusing immigration authorities and the Trump administration of authoritarian behavior. But the accusation often amounts to a projection of tactics historically associated with authoritarian movements.

Fascism was characterized not merely by strong government action, but by the refusal to accept political opposition as legitimate. Fascist movements sought to delegitimize elections they lost, suppress dissenting viewpoints, and mobilize extra-political pressure to prevent opponents from governing. They treated political adversaries not as fellow citizens with differing views, but as existential threats whose exercise of lawful authority could not be tolerated.

Take, for example, this little ditty by the once great Bette Midler. Her performance was part of a “resistance” event last weekend to counter the president’s UFC extravaganza at the White House:

What in the world?

By contrast, enforcing immigration laws enacted by Congress and signed by elected presidents is a routine function of constitutional government. Immigration officers carrying out statutory duties are not acting outside the law; they are executing it. Courts remain available to review unlawful actions, Congress retains authority to amend the law, and voters remain free to change course at the next election.

The distinction matters. A constitutional democracy depends on citizens recognizing the difference between opposition to a policy and opposition to the legitimacy of the political system itself. The former is healthy and necessary. The latter can become corrosive.

Ten Years of Resistance and All I Got Was This Lousy Ensemble

None of this means Americans must support President Trump’s immigration policies. Vigorous debate over border security, deportation priorities, asylum procedures, and immigration levels is entirely appropriate. But debate is different from resistance to the lawful operation of government.

The image of “RESIST” signs planted in front yards may be intended as a declaration of civic virtue. Yet it also conveys something deeper: an unwillingness to accept that millions of fellow Americans voted for a different set of policies and expected those policies to be implemented.

More from the “Riseupsingout” spectacle:

The impulse behind the modern “Resist” movement bears an uncomfortable resemblance to South Carolina’s reaction to Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860. South Carolina did not merely oppose Lincoln’s policies; it rejected the legitimacy of allowing those policies to be implemented after a lawful election. Today’s immigration “resisters” similarly insist that policies openly promised during a presidential campaign should not be carried out even after voters endorsed them at the ballot box. The stakes and circumstances are obviously different, but the underlying principle is the same: a refusal to accept that electoral defeat carries political consequences.

Democracy requires more than winning elections. It also requires accepting the results when one loses a lawfully-conducted free and fair election. A movement dedicated to perpetual “resistance” against policies endorsed by voters risks undermining that principle. And when its participants label ordinary law enforcement as “fascism,” they may be obscuring rather than illuminating the real lessons of history.

The challenge for a free society is not to resist democratic outcomes. It is to persuade fellow citizens, win the next election, and govern in turn. That is how constitutional self-government works—and always has. The Left’s latest “Resist” propaganda campaign risks destroying that vital principle.

Meanwhile, here is Julia Roberts from the same event:

Dr. John Eastman is a Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute, and former professor of constitutional law and law school Dean. He represented President Trump in several challenges to illegality in the conduct of the 2020 election.

The start of meteorological summer is well underway—a time when many normal Americans clock off early on Fridays to make the most of what seems like a shorter and shorter summer season each year (this could be my age, of course.)

As families headed to lake houses or prepared for weekend barbecues or tuned into the World Cup action, the anti-Trump establishment instead fixated on a building situated on the Potomac River in the nation’s capital: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In response to a court order issued last month by D.C. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, who called the Center “a living memorial” to Kennedy, the current president’s name was set to stripped from the front of the iconic building on Friday afternoon. A Trump-appointed board last December voted to add the president’s name to the center; his name was placed before that of the 35th president’s name.

An ex-officio board member immediately filed a lawsuit to remove Trump’s name, arguing the institution had been created by statute and adding the current president’s name represented a violation of the law. (The lawsuit, filed by Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, the ex-officio board member, also sought to halt the temporary closure of the building during much-needed repairs and renovations, which even Cooper admitted were necessary and consistent with recent Congressional funding.)

In a last-ditch effort, the Department of Justice asked Cooper on Thursday to delay his order pending the outcome of an emergency appeal before the D.C. Circuit court. Cooper quickly denied the motion—so Trump haters and reporters (I repeat myself) stood watch. Former CNN reporter Jim Acosta started his disheveled coverage this morning:

Others did the same. MS-NOW covered the event LIVE as if reporting on the ground from the beaches of Normandy:

Work paused temporarily due to inclement weather—but the skies cleared around the same time the D.C. Circuit court on Friday evening denied the administration’s emergency request, permitting the removal of Trump’s name to proceed for now.

And the news made the anti-Trump establishment as buzzed as the first sip of a pinot grigio on a perfect Friday summer eve in Georgetown. “Breaking news,” CNN declared on Friday evening, along with an X post by Kaitlin Collins.

People with apparently nothing better to do on a lovely summer weekend night gathered round to watch the event:

Observers noted a RAINBOW appeared as the work resumed, as if Mother Nature herself (sorry, itself) consented to the shedding of Trump’s name, symbolizing something much, much bigger ahead!

And no one was happier over that development than Scott MacFarlane, the oleaginous reporter now with the MeidasTouch website. (MacFarlane sashayed through the hallways of the D.C. courthouse for years covering J6 cases for CBS News.) He’s been bleating about this for days.

Democratic members of Congress acted as if the removal of the president’s name meant something more than…the temporary removal of his name on a building.

Beatty relished in her 15 minutes of fame:

Litigation will continue; as far as Cooper is concerned, he is the subject of a misconduct complaint for handling the case despite his wife’s representation of anti-Trump clients including Joe Biden in his recent attempt to prevent the release of recordings between himself and his ghostwriter. (Complaint is here.) As I urged for years, Cooper should have recused from all Trump-related cases, including the dozens of J6 cases he handled, due to his wife’s participation in the lawfare against the president. (Cooper and his wife, Amy Jeffress, were married by former Attorney General Merrick Garland. She also represented former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.)

As this matter moves through the D.C. appellate court—just be glad you have better things to do on a summer Friday than wait for letters to be hammered off a public building.

Last year, the international sports world sat on edge for weeks waiting for Alexander Ovechkin, captain of the Washington Nationals professional hockey team, to surpass the all-time scoring record held for 26 years by Wayne Gretzky, nicknamed “The Great One.” When Ovechkin scored his 895th goal on April 6, 2025, hockey fans and sports enthusiasts around the world cheered the Russian’s history-making achievement; the National Hockey League proclaimed in a social media post the “passing of the torch” from Ovechkin to Gretzky, a consummate gentleman and sportsman who had attended the game to watch the moment in real time.

Commentators did not question whether Ovechkin should have received such glowing accolades as his homeland continued to attack Ukraine in a conflict Russia initiated in 2022. Competitors and teammates did not refuse to shake his hand over the war—or over his personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he calls “my president.” (Ovechkin’s Instagram profile photo is of himself and Putin.) To the contrary, athletes and celebrities fawned over Ovechkin’s feat in a video montage. “I’m very happy for you,” said tennis great Roger Federer, who won the men’s Roland Garros title in 2009. “I hope you can hold the record forever.”

There is no indication, however, that Federer has offered a word of congratulations to Mirra Andreeva, the Russian teenager who won the women’s title at Roland Garros last weekend. Not only was Andreeva, 19, denied anything close to the Ovechkin treatment by her colleagues, celebrities, and the sports media, she was snubbed by her Ukrainian competitors and tournament organizers in general.

Sniping over the war proved as problematic for the prestigious two-week tournament, considered one of the four “Grand Slams” in tennis, as the withdrawal of fan favorite Carlos Alcarez and the early exit by top-ranked men’s player Jannik Sinner—and the tension appears contained to the women’s side since seven of the top 20 women’s players are of either Russian or Ukrainian descent. (I can’t find any evidence of men tennis players refusing to shake the hand of Russia’s Danill Medvedev, the 8th ranked men’s player in the world.)

It represents an ongoing cat fight that has no place in professional sports.

And How Exactly Will This End the War?

Following a policy enacted by each professional tennis organization shortly after the start of the war in 2022, the Russian flag could not be displayed next to the name of Russian players, including Belarus-born Aryna Sabalenka, the world’s number one women’s player, during any Roland Garros broadcast. (This is true of every televised tennis tournament.) Displaying the Russian flag is verboten on professional tennis websites; during Andreeva’s trophy-winning match at Court Philippe-Chatrier in Paris on Saturday, stadium officials seized Russian flags being waved by a few spectators.

After her decisive victory, the French Tennis Federation refused to play Andreeva’s national anthem, a tradition at Roland Garros, to honor the Russian’s achievement. (She is the first teen to win the tournament since Monica Seles in 1992.) And so far, Novak Djokovic and Maria Sharapova are the only tennis greats on record praising Andreeva’s win.

Unfortunately, antics by Ukrainian players continue to threaten the watchability of what is currently one of the most exciting periods in the sport, especially for women players. There is nothing wrong—in fact, it’s entirely appropriate—for an athlete to use his or her stardom to advance a political viewpoint or defend their homeland off the court: donate their winnings, meet with officials in their own government, visit front-line fighters, produce ads blasting the bad guys, plead for peace. All good.

What’s wholly inappropriate is an athlete personally attacking competitors whose only tie to the war is their place of birth. Take, for example, comments made on May 27 by Oleksandra Oliynykova, who suggested Russian-born players are Putin propagandists. (She sounds like a Democratic member of Congress!):

Time for a Warning From the Chair for Unsportsmanlike Conduct

One of the worst offenders is Marta Kostyuk, the Ukrainian-born world ranked #12 who currently lives in Monte Carlo. Similar to Oliynkova, Kostyuk just accused Russian players of aiding the war:

She refuses to shake the hand, another tennis tradition, of any player tied to Russia after a match. After Andreeva beat her in the Roland Garros semi-finals on June 4, Kostyuk walked off the court without acknowledging her opponent.

Kostyuk did the same in Brisbane earlier this year after she beat Andreeva.

In 2022, shortly after the war began, Kostyuk suggested she wanted to “physically” harm her Russian competitors:

The current eight-ranked women’s player in the world, Elina Svitolina, also of Ukraine, is helping fuel the controversy. Svitolina, who also refuses to shake the hands of her Russian opponents, had this to say:

All the drama recently forced Sabalenka, perhaps the most popular player on the tour, to defend herself:

So, what gives? The generous explanation is that Ukrainian (women) players truly want to use their platform to denounce a war with no end in sight. The more sinister explanation is these same players are using the conflict to get into the heads of their fiercest competitors, put Russian players (and others) on the defensive, and poison public sentiment against popular players.

Whatever the case—each tennis organization and tournament should put an end to such antics before the general public switches off. At least the women’s matches.

President Trump ended a testy (is there any other type?) interview this weekend with Kristen Welker, the host of NBC News’ '“Meet the Press.” The pair clashed over the prosecution of January 6 protesters and whether any or all are entitled to some form of restitution for being politically targeted by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for four years. Last week, Senate leaders again reiterated their opposition to the “anti-weaponization” fund announced by the administration in May; Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters the fund is “off the table.”

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Sympathy poured in from all corners of the press and social media Thursday on behalf of E. Jean Carroll, the crazy woman who accused the president of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. (I won’t get into the details of her alleged account or her successful lawsuits but plenty on the public record for those interested or uninformed.)

Last night, CNN posted an “exclusive” report claiming Carroll is the subject of a Department of Justice investigation based out of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois (Chicago) office. “The investigation is focused on whether Carroll committed perjury in testimony tied to her two civil lawsuits against the president,” three CNN reporters wrote in a May 27 article. “Prosecutors’ theory hinges on a 2022 deposition statement by Carroll, 82, that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, though it was later revealed that billionaire Reid Hoffman had paid some legal fees and expenses.” The reporters further claimed that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche recused himself from the matter since he had handled appeals related to the Carroll case.

CNN’s claims immediately spread like a Karen Bass-style California wildfire on X-verse and cable news. Roger Parloff, a legal analyst for Lawfare blog, run by Trump hater and James Comey whisperer Ben Wittes, lamented the cruelty of it all. “Doesn’t get worse than this. DOJ probes 82 yo who is enemy & adjudicated victim of Trump,” Parloff posted on Thursday morning. Never mind that President Trump was indicted twice at age 77 by the Biden DOJ and, had Parloff gotten his way and the president had lost the election, he very well could have been imprisoned at age 80 on Jack Smith’s J6 indictment.

Every major news organization followed hot on CNN’s trail. The New York Times described the investigation into Carroll as “the latest chapter in Mr. Trump’s retribution campaign, which has been carried out by Justice Department officials.” ABC News, Reuters, Time magazine (yes, it’s still around), the Associated Press, “Good Morning America,” and local Chicago press diligently regurgitated the reporting. Democratic lawmakers and their influencers pack piled on:

The most gullible and eager NeverTrumper also preached about the injustice of it all:

Even Mark Zaid, the Disney-loving attorney who imagines a crime in every Trump move, defended Carroll:

You get the drift.

But on Thursday evening, U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros shot down those claims:

Boutros, a Trump appointee, made for an easy target of the anti-Trump machine. He has been the subject of recent media fire for his office’s handling of the so-called “Broadview Six” case brought against several anti-ICE protesters last year. Although the investigation was apparently mishandled by a longtime DOJ prosecutor who quickly left the office post-indictment and then detailed to the Democratic side of the Senate Judiciary Committee (and just fired for her role in the questionable grand jury proceedings called out by a Chicago judge as I posted here), the media is making Boutros the fall guy. (In response to what he’s uncovered at his office, Boutros this week announced a series of reforms.)

After Boutros’ statement, the media backtracked. Turns out, the investigation is targeting longtime Trump nemesis Reid Hoffman—the billionaire founder of LinkedIn and funder of several anti-Trump causes—who bankrolled Carroll’s lawsuits to the tune of $7 million. His “nonprofit,” as the media generously describes it, is based in Chicago. CNBC reported Hoffman is the subject of a money-laundering operation.

CBS News best demonstrated the change in tone of the inquiry, as I posted here:

‘Some” of her legal expenses?? Hoffman has boasted about his funding of the case:

And Carroll, once again, blamed her faulty memory for the “oversight” of Hoffman’s financial backing:

So what to make of this media op? A set up by the DOJ to smoke out leakers? A coordinated effort to redirect attention away from Hoffman, a generous benefactor to the lawfare against the president, and immediately discredit the investigation by claiming it’s aimed at one of Trump’s “perceived enemies?” Just another example of a dangerous and dishonest echo chamber not just to damage the DOJ but contribute to what we know is ongoing jury nullification in big cities?

Further, this is not to say Carroll’s false statements are not under review by another jurisdiction. Even an all-Democratic appellate panel in 2024 acknowledged her “misstatements” but determined they were irrelevant. (Opinion here.)

As we await more developments, this onslaught is yet another example of the media’s complicity and corruption.

As usual, it took less than a hot minute before some of the biggest promoters of the January 6 “insurrection” narrative began blowharding about the newly-created “anti-weaponization fund” for victims of government abuses, including hundreds of January 6 defendants.

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This week Democrats and their conjugal media chorus are loudly criticizing President Donald J. Trump’s plan for a $1.7 billion fund to compensate victims of Biden-era lawfare. They’re calling it a “vast political slush fund” in reliably liberal outrage organs like the New York Times.

Full disclosure: Our family is first in line:

(https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5887557-anti-weaponization-fund-criticized/amp/)

But let me get this straight. When the U.S. Department of Treasury quietly cut big checks from the federal Judgment Fund to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two FBI bureaucrats who conspired to destroy an elected president by working a hoax they knew was false, that was fine. Strzok and his mistress strolled away with a combined two million taxpayer dollars in settlement.

This was not unique. President Obama paid Iran’s ayatollahs $1.7 billion in cash out of the same Fund and paved their path to The Bomb. Washington won’t even tell taxpayers how much President Biden paid Dr. Rick Bright, a disgruntled HHS employee who undermined the Trump team’s Covid response, constantly leaked to the press, then cried retaliation when he was fired for it.

But when actual victims - Trump supporters whose lives were torched by Strzok, Page and other weaponized feds - might finally see a dime, suddenly it’s an ethical crisis? I am physically incapable of rolling my eyes enough.

The loudest faultfinders are the same geniuses who shrugged while families lost homes, savings were sacrificed to lawyers, kids got bullied out of school, and divorces and suicide attempts and stress-triggered cancers ravaged people who dared support Donald Trump. Some of the critics hilariously identify as journalists.

My Racket News piece from December 2024 laid it out: careers ruined, businesses destroyed, families ruined, one colleague dead from the “Crossfire Hurricane plague.” That wasn’t a conspiracy theory; that was reality for hundreds of us.

Sure, Strzok and Page spent their time playing hide the salami at work in the FBI headquarters, just betraying their spouses. But they also met regularly with other politically weaponized demons in Director Robert Mueller’s seventh floor conference room to plot the ruin of innocent souls - betraying their country.

Now the media howls because President Trump wants to use the same Judgment Fund the Biden administration tapped for its own payouts to cheaters and coup plotters. Suddenly that permanent pot of money is sacred. Funny how that works.

Their hand-wringing gets even more outrageous when you remember the scale. Thousands of Trump supporters - January 6 cases, Mar-a-Lago raid victims, Russiagate targets, public health officials, and more - all destroyed by a bureaucracy clearly weaponized by Democrats. Yet when President Trump suggests maybe, just maybe, some restitution is in order, the same pols and scribes who cheered every leak and every indictment scream “self-dealing!”

This is weak spin, at best. The President himself will not get paid a dime in this scenario. The IRS must issue a public apology for letting a rogue contractor leak his taxes to friendly media. That’s not a slush fund. That’s basic accountability - something the previous administration treated as optional.

The constant critics’ real panic isn’t about taxpayer money, it’s about the possible precedents set here. For one, this ends the bogus Russia Hoax. Once the federal government officially admits the weaponization happened and starts making victims whole, the entire Democrat narrative collapses. You can’t keep pretending Russiagate was legit while writing checks to its casualties.

But here’s an idea to help bring Democrats and their media along with normal Americans on the President’s path of mercy and healing: use this same compensation process to fund desperately needed mental health care for those still suffering from advanced Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now that frequent document releases expose their lying plots and the Trump haters are completely defeated, they deserve mercy, too - and probably heavy medication.

For nine years, across two politically weaponized FBI investigations, our family was destroyed. The details of these attacks are important to us, but a decade into this my girls and I want to focus on the thousands of other families destroyed by criminal Democrats and their conjugal media.

Our message to these families, torn up and alone, survivors of political weaponization: President Trump has real mercy in store, and you and your children are not alone. Join us, apply for restitution and reimbursement today.

A longtime advisor to President Trump, Michael R. Caputo served on the 2016 and 2024 Trump campaigns and as an HHS Assistant Secretary during the COVID response. A recent cancer survivor, he was an original Russiagate target in 2015. The FBI was forced to finally end its investigation of his family in December 2025. They found nothing.

TGIF!

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https://open.substack.com/pub/juliekelly/p/reparations-set-for-j6ers?r=4yy1i&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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Are J6ers on the verge of finally receiving some measure of compensation for enduring years of torment by the Biden Department of Justice? It appears an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service just laid the groundwork to establish restitution fund to make J6ers and others at least partially whole for the life-destroying abuses inflicted by the federal government.

On Monday, the president’s attorneys filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit against the IRS for the unlawful disclosure of Trump’s tax documents to the New York Times in 2019, which resulted in a bombshell Times article just weeks before the 2020 election that claimed the president was a tax scofflaw. An IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was indicted on minor charges in 2023 for stealing and sharing thousands of IRS files to the Times and ProPublica; he was sentenced to five years in prison.

Earlier this year, the president—in addition to Eric Trump and the Trump organization—sued the IRS for $10 billion in damages related to the disclosures. “Mr. Littlejohn’s unlawful disclosure of Plaintiffs’ tax returns and related information to The New York Times and ProPublica caused reputational and financial harm to Plaintiffs and adversely impacted President Trump’s support among voters in the 2020 presidential election,” his attorneys wrote in the lawsuit. They also cited prosecutors in the Littlejohn case, who accused the IRS worker of “[seeking] to influence an election and to reshape our nation’s political discourse and political process.”

Shortly after filing the dismissal notice—since the president in effect represents both the plaintiff and the defendant, no action is needed by the judge according to a footnote in today’s filing—Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the creation of an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” in the amount of $1,766,000,000 in honor of the country’s founding in 1776. “The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Blanche said in a press release. “As part of this settlement, we are setting up a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” As part of the agreement, the president also will drop administrative claims against the DOJ for damages related to the Russiagate hoax and the 2022 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.

According to ABC News, a five-member commission will handle claims filed by weaponization victims; four members will be appointed by Blanche. Money will be held in the government’s existing judgement fund.

Relief Finally on the Way, Unprecedented Abuses to be Exposed

The four-year targeting of Americans who protested at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by Joe Biden and his DOJ represented the largest criminal investigation and prosecution in U.S. history. Nearly 1,600 individuals were hunted down by the FBI, mostly on petty misdemeanor charges. The DOJ’s unprecedented use of a post-Enron accounting fraud statute, 18 USC 1512(c)(2) resulted in felony indictments for more than 300 J6s in June 2024, the Supreme Court ruled the statue had been applied illegally.

Matthew Graves, the Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, charged on average one J6er per day during his reign of terror at the most powerful U.S. Attorney’s office. His prosecutors not only piled on charges against Trump supporters but then sought excessive prison sentences; in fact, their abuses were so brazen that the D.C. appellate court twice overturned sentencing practices pursued by prosecutors related to misdemeanor cases and a sentencing enhancement for those convicted of the unlawful 1512(c)(2) charge.

Judges in Washington worked in lockstep with the Biden DOJ to inflict maximum damage to J6ers and their families. Several nonviolent offenders were nonetheless denied release and held in a special prison in the nation’s capital. Many judges adopted the false language of the Biden DOJ, referring to the events of January 6 as an “insurrection” and imposing terror enhancements usually reserved for legit terrorists not U.S. political protesters. Several judges claimed police officers had been killed that day and insisted protesters attempted to “overthrow democracy” on January 6.

Hundreds of J6ers were sent to federal prisons even on low-level misdemeanors. At least four J6ers committed suicide rather than continue to endure the torture inflicted by the government and the news media.

Never before has the full force of the three branches of government—the January 6 Select Committee played a key role in demonizing J6ers and influencing the jury pool in Washington—collaborated in such an unconstitutional, unlawful, and inhumane way to destroy the lives of so many American citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights.

The president took the first step in attempting to undue the damage by pardoning all but a handful of J6er on his first day in office.

J6ers Applaud the President

“Having lived through political prosecution, persecution, punishment, public vilification, and efforts to silence dissent, I understand firsthand what happens when the weight of government, media narratives, and political hostility converge against ordinary Americans,” Christopher Kuehne, a retired Marine Corps captain and Purple Heart recipient, told me following the announcement of the fund. Kuehne was subjected to an armed FBI raid in February 2021 for his minor participation in Jan. 6; the trauma of the raid caused his pregnant wife, Annette, to miscarry the next day.

“Families were torn apart. Reputations were destroyed. Livelihoods were threatened. The proposed $1.7 billion weaponization fund represents, at a minimum, a start in the right direction toward restoring faith for those who were politically targeted, persecuted, or unfairly punished. This is not about revenge. It is about restoring trust, accountability, and the principles that separate a constitutional republic from systems driven by fear, selective enforcement, and political retaliation.”

Sharon Caldwell, the wife of Thomas Caldwell, another decorated military veteran subjected to a dangerous FBI raid then indicted on nonviolent offenses, told me they are “grateful” to the president for creating the fund. “It could be a creative way to compensate weaponization victims for what they suffered. But, it’s nowhere near enough money to fairly compensate just the J6ers alone for their losses. So many lost everything: savings, homes, businesses, marriages, lives & more. It’s a good start, but more is needed.”

One of two men falsely accused of trying to kill Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick told me that clearing his name in the incident is the most important thing to him.

“I was framed by the FBI from start to finish,” George Tanios, who was held in the D.C. gulag for five months related to the “attack” on Sicknick before the D.C. appellate court overturned Judge Thomas Hogan’s detention order in 2021, told me today. Tanios eventually pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in 2022. “The Biden Administration and the judges that oversaw our cases threw every norm out the window and came at J6er with a heavy hand. It broke just about all of us and killed some. It’s time to remedy this great injustice that was done to so many great Americans. God Bless President Trump and this great Nation.”

FBI raid of Kuehne home:

Perpetrators of the decade-long lawfare against President Trump and the Deep State saboteurs of the current administration are taking their latest sob stories to sympathetic cable news anchors in an orchestrated attempt to accelerate the smear campaign against the Department of Justice, now under the leadership of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

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A political earthquake is hitting California right now—and considering the reaction by both Republicans and Democrats, this tremor lands somewhere near the top of a figurative Richter scale.

Spencer Pratt, whose family lost their home in the Palisades inferno last year, is seeking to unseat first-term Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat with more than 20 years in elective office including in Congress; his sudden ascendancy has shaken Democrats from coast to coast and prompted the GOP to contemplate the earth-shattering prospect of an avowed Republican winning the mayorship of the nation’s second largest city.

Best known for his role in an early 2000s reality TV show where he met wife Heidi Montag, Pratt is using inventive ways to portray the cruel reality faced by most Angelenos on a daily basis. Pratt’s trope-free messaging brings a breath of fresh air to the at least 17,000 homeowners still smoked out by the unprecedented fires and others choking on Los Angeles’ drug, homelessness, and mental health crises. “I’m not a politician,” Pratt wrote on his campaign website. “I’m a husband and father who watched my home burn because the system failed us. We don’t need more government programs. We need common sense, accountability, and a Mayor that shows up for everyone.” He’s even going after massive fraud in the city and the open abuse of animals.

The campaign’s AI-generated advertisements, which immediately go viral, not only represent the stark 30-year age difference and elitism gap between Pratt and Bass but also are the envy of the political world, with copycats undoubtedly studying how to use similar creativity in upcoming national elections. The ads reflect Pratt’s all-or-nothing approach to winning the June 2 non-partisan primary, a strategy that must be embraced by other common sense candidates on the political right if they want to prevail over radical progressives turning many of the country’s biggest cities into disaster zones.

Here are just a few:

Beyond Good Campaign Ads

Pratt is even more candid—and refreshing—on the stump. He speaks like the native Angeleno and father of two young boys that he is, someone heartbroken and fed up with the escalating disintegration of the city he loves. “When people have passion and they care and they have common sense and they have humility to know ‘I don’t know everything,’ but what I do know is all these very smart, successful people in Los Angeles want to get around me, get behind me, and make sure that LA is the number-one city in the world,” Pratt said during a recent CBS News interview. (I posted the interview in full at the end of this piece. After Pratt publicly accused CBS executives of dramatically editing his one-hour interview at Bass’ behest, the network aired the whole thing.)

His Substack offers more detailed criticism of the Bass administration and proposals to undo the damage.

What’s even more enviable, and equally as dangerous to the political establishment’s thinking on both sides of the political aisle that cautions white male candidates on being too tough on women of color, Pratt is pulling no punches against Bass, who is black, and his other top opponent, Nithya Raman, a city councilwoman and self-described democratic socialist of Indian descent who is attacking Bass from the Left.

Pratt confronted both women on their leadership failures and empty promises during a debate last week:

Debate viewers overwhelmingly selected Pratt as the winner, prompting Bass to back out of a mayoral forum hosted later this week by the League of Women Voters. (Oh, the irony!)

Laying Bare California’s ‘Dysfunction’ at the Hands of Progressive Leaders Could Impact Future Races

Pratt’s surge could not come at a more inconvenient time for California Democrats, who are fending off a tough Republican gubernatorial candidate in former TV personality Steve Hilton. As Axios noted post-debate, “[the] two most consequential races in California have devolved into twin spectacles, with years of visible dysfunction hollowing out Democrats’ case for competent leadership.” California, reporter Zachary Basu continued, should represent “the Democratic Party’s proof of concept — a diverse, economically dominant liberal stronghold designed to prove progressive governance could deliver at scale. That vision has unraveled, ground down by an affordability crisis, homelessness, bureaucratic paralysis and a botched response to the worst wildfires in California history.”

If Pratt reaches a run-off—the top two candidates advance to the November general election if no one earns 50 percent of the primary vote—the reverberations will be felt nationwide. Donations will pour into Pratt’s coffers from around the world, likely leading to his position as the immediate front-runner with potential ramifications for both the gubernatorial election and key Congressional races in the Golden State.

And a Pratt victory could impact mayoral races in other blue cities next year. Democratic incumbents are up for re-election in Chicago, San Antonio, Jacksonville, Columbus, and Denver. With the exception of Chicago, few other cities are in worse shape than Los Angeles, however, a straightforward message by an authentic outsider could turn the heads of even the most diehard Democratic voter.

Polymarket now has Pratt with a 30 percent chance of winning, nearly double his standing when he announced in January. Bass is still the odds-on favorite but with Pratt surging and early voting underway, her hold on the lead appears tenuous. A union labor ad, intended to bolster Bass’ fledging campaign, actually amplified Pratt’s message about inefficiency and government corruption in the city, prompting social media mockery.

Desperate to stop Pratt’s momentum, Bass and Raman are of course attempting to demonize him as a Trump sycophant. In mocking Pratt’s description of Los Angeles as a drug-riddled, dirty, and dangerous metropolis, Raman said “this is a MAGA Republican’s idea of what Los Angeles looks like” in the May 7 debate. Those attacks are expected to escalate as Democrats seek a wedge between Pratt and residents of a city that voted for Kamala Harris by a more than 2-1 margin in 2024. (Pratt, for his part, is not shying away from Trump comparisons, even promising to bring back the “golden age” of Los Angeles and demonstrating Trump-like personality traits on the debate stage and in interviews.)

Will it work? Angelenos—and the rest of the anxious political world—will know in about three weeks from now.

CBS News Interview

All-In Podcast Interview

Dr. Eastman, himself a target of lawfare since his representation of President Trump challenging illegality in the 2020 election, is a senior fellow at The Claremont Institute and a former, long-time professor of constitutional law.

The Racketeer Influences and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly known as “RICO,” was passed by Congress in 1970, part of that year’s Organized Crime Control Act. It was designed to reach not just the foot soldiers of organized crime organizations, but the crime bosses themselves.

Although it did that directly by allowing charges to be brought against the leaders of “criminal enterprises,” it also did so indirectly by allowing prosecutors to go after low-level criminals and even drivers, doormen, etc. with threats of hefty, 20-year felony sentences and offers of reduced-sentence plea deals in exchange for turning state’s evidence against the mob bosses.

Such tactics work. Faced with the potential of decades in prison, many “loyal” foot soldiers – particularly those who merely observed rather than engaged in crime – find that the price of continued loyalty is simply too steep. So they sing. They implicate mid-level mobsters, who then sing even more loudly to implicate the bosses. The most famous example of this is the Five Families case in New York in the 1980s, prosecuted by then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani, which led to the conviction and imprisonment of several top Mafia bosses.

The mob bosses didn’t take too kindly to foot soldiers who sang, however, and many of those who auditioned by singing for reduced sentences ended up “swimming with the fishes.” So in 1982, a new statute was passed, imposing severe, 20- or 30-year criminal penalties for witness intimidation. That statute is codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1512. Following the Enron scandal, the statute was amended in 2002, adding subsection (c), which imposes criminal liability on “whoever corruptly … alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding.” The crimes covered by subsection (c) carry the same 20-year prison sentence that is applicable to the witness intimidation prohibited in the prior subsections of the statute.

Twenty years is a hefty sentence, and it should provide prosecutors with ample leverage to apply to get a lot of low-level operatives of nationwide conspiracies to start singing and exposing the leaders of the conspiracies. Moreover, unlike RICO, ex ante proof of a criminal enterprise would not be required.

Unlike Biden DOJ’s (Unlawful) Use of 1512, Trump DOJ Has Plenty of Evidence to Support 1512 Charges

Think about how 1512(c) might have been (and still might be) used against the “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax scandal from the 2016 election. Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to one count of making a false statement and received a sentence of only one year probation and no prison time. But his false statement was based on his altering a document that was used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page, an advisor to the Trump campaign that year. In other words, he “corruptly… alter[ed] … a … document … with the intent to impair the [document’s] integrity or availability for use in [the] official proceeding” before the FISA Court. 1512(c) is directly applicable, and one can only imagine how willing Mr. Clinesmith might have been to trade a potential 20-year felony sentence for exposing the scope of the conspiracy that is only now getting exposed.

Or how about using 1512(c) to target whomever was responsible for hiding classified and sensitive investigative records from Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s efforts to target President Trump in burn bags which were then placed in obscure rooms, apparently to prevent their discovery, as the House Judiciary Committee recently disclosed. “Corruptly … concealed,” seems to be the case. Indict for that 20-year felony, and whoever concealed those documents will likely have a lot to say about why that was done, and at who’s request.

Then there is the 2020 election controversy itself, and lots of potential uses of 1512(c) to begin rolling up the chorus of singers in that case such as files deleted in Georgia that would expose the duplication and counting of ballots. Software upgrades in Colorado that destroyed election records in that state long before federal law permitted (and the exposing of which Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was convicted and egregiously sentenced to nine years in prison despite being a whistleblower for that federal crime).

Or just recently, the disclosure by investigative reporter John Solomon that the 20,000 or so phony, Chinese-made driver’s licenses seized upon entering the country at O’Hare airport have been destroyed, likely in an attempt to prevent that documentary evidence from being used to charge the document destroyers with a 20-year felony—a huge inducement to squeal about the election fraud purpose of those phony drivers licenses and who orchestrated it.

Another recent scam likely fits under the 1512(c) umbrella as well. Just last week, Senator Joni Ernst exposed internal documents from the Small Business Administration depicting that SBA employees allegedly used a code word—Benghazi—to hide the fact that the SBA was illegally providing Covid Paycheck Protection Program grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates who were ineligible to receive such funds. In other words, “corruptly … concealed” the true recipients of the grants.

The common thread for all of these examples is just that – a thread. A proverbial loose thread that, if pulled, can unravel the entire sweater or, in these cases, the entire conspiracy.

The Department of Justice and its U.S. Attorneys across the nation should start with the low-level folks who altered, destroyed, or concealed the relevant documents. Indict them under 1512(c) and its potential 20-year prison sentence, and then be ready for all the information that they will undoubtedly and quickly be willing to offer up, implicating the more senior culprits in the several criminal conspiracies. That’s how Rudy Giuliani successfully prosecuted those mob bosses in New York nearly half a century ago using RICO. Section 1512(c) is the new RICO. Time to deploy it against the lawfare, election illegality, and other nationwide conspiracies that have targeted President Trump and his supporters in their efforts to Make American Great Again.