A WordPress Blog-THE CHURCH MILITANT Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse. ALL CONTENT FROM HTTPS://RATHEREXPOSETHEM.BLOGSPOT.COM MOVED TO THIS NEW BLOG, MAY 2020
Senate Judiciary Committee member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, joins ‘Hannity’ and predicts that Attorney General Merrick Garland will indict Donald Trump because he ‘hates him,’ not over a crime.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, wrote an opinion declaring that Tennessee’s effort to place strict legal limits on drag shows was unconstitutional.
The law is both “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad” and encouraged “discriminatory enforcement,” according to the ruling. Indeed, since drag shows fall under First Amendment protections, legislatures in states that are considering passage of anti-drag legislation need to tread carefully and draw specific lines that can be enforced without bias or discrimination.
“There is no question that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. But there is a difference between material that is ‘obscene’ in the vernacular, and material that is ‘obscene’ under the law,” Parker said.
The bill says, “This amendment defines ‘adult cabaret entertainment’ as adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors, as such term is defined under present law; feature go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators, or similar entertainers; and include a single performance or multiple performances by an entertainer. An ‘entertainer’ means a person who provides.”
“It is a space where people explore their identities,” said Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, a professor of culture and gender studies at the University of Michigan, who has done drag himself. “But it is also a place where people simply make a living. Drag is a job. Drag is a legitimate artistic expression that brings people together, entertains, allows certain individuals to explore who they are, and allows all of us to have a very nice time. So it makes literally no sense for legislators, for people in government, to try to ban drag.”
It makes sense if children are the audience or the target of the performance. “Explicitly sexual and profane language is common in drag performances, but such content is avoided when children are the target audience,” reports AP. That simply isn’t universally true.
None of this should be interpreted as appropriate for children — even if it’s “Drag Queen Story Hour.” There has been enough anecdotal evidence that some drag queen story hours feature overt sexualization and inappropriate jokes, not to mention twerking and other sexually suggestive dancing in front of children.
“A lot of parents are wondering why is an adult male putting on women’s clothing and dancing and talking about sexual themes with other people’s children, not only in libraries but also in schools and other public institutions,” said Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo.
The drag queen might appear as a comic figure, but he carries an utterly serious message: the deconstruction of sex, the reconstruction of child sexuality, and the subversion of middle-class family life. The ideology that drives this movement was born in the sex dungeons of San Francisco and incubated in the academy. It is now being transmitted, with official state support, in a number of public libraries and schools across the United States. By excavating the foundations of this ideology and sifting through the literature of its activists, parents and citizens can finally understand the new sexual politics and formulate a strategy for resisting it.
The drag/queer movement likes to point out that 1950s comedy icon and early TV pioneer Milton Berle appeared in drag often. But everyone on planet Earth at the time knew that Berle wasn’t “making a statement” or pushing any kind of political agenda. Berle was doing straight-up comedy and wanted audiences to laugh at him, not buy into any gender-queer ideology. To use Berle as a queer drag-queen icon would have tickled the notorious womanizer, whose sexual appetite was legendary. Berle was loathe to use his comic genius for anything political.
Not-so-modern drag queens who believe they’re on a mission to change children’s consciousness and show them the “new normal” regarding gender fluidity, on the other hand, are truly political.
What drag queens want to do in front of consenting adults is none of my business. But for God’s sake, leave the children alone and allow them to grow up a little before you begin to sexualize them.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Back on his feet after a harrowing ordeal, now Chris Nemeth is fighting for justice. Once a healthy 45-year-old, he became wheelchair-bound after developing a chronic neurological disorder. He says symptoms began two weeks after having his first AstraZeneca [COVID-19] vaccination in 2021. They included headaches, tingling fingers, facial palsy, and stolid mobility. He is still unwell and claiming millions of dollars in compensation under a federal government COVID-19 vaccine claims scheme. He’s one of more than 3,000 unlucky Australians maintaining the COVID vaccine made him ill.
On Tuesday's "Wake Up America," Jessica Hart Steinmann, General Counsel of the America First Policy Institute, discusses the lawsuit against the schools that encouraged the girls to join a "secret" LGBTQ club meeting and not tell their parents.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
On March 27, 2023, Judge Richard G. Andrews of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware issued an opinion that denied the request for a preliminary injunction to stop enforcement of the State of Delaware’s unconstitutional ban on some semi-automatic rifles and standard capacity magazines.
Judge Andrews dug deeply into his interpretive consideration to find a way to deny the request for a preliminary injunction.
With the clear guidance given by the Supreme Court in the Bruen decision to clarify the Heller decision on the Second Amendment, Judge Andrews performed some mental gymnastics.
The Bruen decision told lower courts to stop using the convoluted “two-step” framework to decide Second Amendment cases. The “two-step” frame was widely criticized as a way for the lower courts to treat the Second Amendment as a “second-class right” in the Bill of Rights.
Under Bruen, the decision is to be precise. First, does an individual’s conduct fall under the protection of the text of the Second Amendment? From Bruen p. 14:
Today, we decline to adopt that two part approach. In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.
Suppose the government claims to be allowed to regulate protected conduct. In that case, the government has the burden of showing their regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. From Bruen, p. 4:
The burden then falls on respondents to show that New York’s proper-cause requirement is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The most relevant time would be near the time of the ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791. The next most relevant time period would be, to a lesser degree, at the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, in 1868, then to an even less extent, up to 1900. Nothing after 1900 is considered relevant.
In this case, the State of Delaware attempts to justify its infringements with several suspect claims.
They claim that semi-auto rifles (and some pistols) are not in common use for self-defense.
They claim common use only applies to actually being fired in self-defense.
They claim semi-auto rifles are unusual and dangerous.
They claim magazines with a capacity of more than 17 rounds are unusual and dangerous.
They claim magazines with a capacity of more than 17 rounds are not in common use for self-defense.
In an interesting twist, Judge Andrews rejects all of those claims. He finds the semi-auto rifles and magazines which hold more than 17 rounds are NOT unusual and dangerous, and they are in common use for self-defense.
The defendants also claim that the semi-auto rifles and pistols, and magazines with a capacity of more than 17 rounds implicate unprecedented societal concerns and dramatic technological changes. From the opinion, p. 20:
Defendants argue that the instant regulations implicate “unprecedented societal concerns” and “dramatic technological changes.”
This is what Judge Andrews hangs his decision on. He conflates the regulation of fully automatic firearms with semi-automatic firearms. He uses history from after 1900. He finds restrictions on concealed carry of Bowie knives to be similar to a ban on the ownership of semi-automatic rifles and pistols.
Then Judge Andrews states any deprivation of Second Amendment rights is not irreparable harm, as it is in First Amendment cases.
Analysis:
Judge Andrew is finding another way to institute an interest-balancing means-ends analysis, which the Supreme Court, in Bruen, declared improper.
The case will likely be appealed. It is not clear if the denial of a preliminary injunction is being appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The Third Circuit includes Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association, Inc; Et Al Plaintiffs, V. Delaware Department Of Safety
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30-year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Earlier this year I noted that the mainstream acceptance of transgenderism would be the precursor to the normalization of pedophilia. The evidence to support this was quite clear. And I’m sorry to say that I was right. The Minnesota legislature is in the process of changing the legal definition of “sexual orientation” which literally opens the door to mainstreaming pedophilia.
Here’s how it’s being done. The bill modifies the existing Minnesota law that designates sexual orientation as a protected category, making it unlawful to discriminate based on sexual orientation within the state.
The first thing it does is adds a definition for gender identity:
Section 1. Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 363A.03, is amended by adding a subdivision to read:
Subd. 50. Gender identity. “Gender identity” means a person’s inherent sense of being a man, woman, both, or neither. A person’s gender identity may or may not correspond to their assigned sex at birth or to their primary or secondary sex characteristics. A person’s gender identity is not necessarily visible to others.
But this is not even the most disturbing part of the legislation. The legislation amends Sec. 2. Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 363A.03, subdivision 44, to read as follows:
Subd. 44. Sexual orientation. “Sexual orientation” means having or being perceived as having an emotional, physical, or sexual attachment to another person without regard to the sex of that person or having or being perceived as having an orientation for such attachment, or having or being perceived as having a self-image or identity not traditionally associated with one’s biological maleness or femaleness. “Sexual orientation” does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult.
That portion striking out the part that reads, “‘Sexual orientation’ does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult,” is not a mistake. The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has made the decision to eliminate a clause that explicitly excluded pedophilia from being considered a valid sexual orientation.
This doesn’t mean that pedophilia will be legalized in Minnesota… yet… but by specifically removing the clause excluding pedophilia as a protected sexual orientation, pedophiles will become a protected class, subject to the same legal protections against discrimination currently enjoyed by gays, lesbians, transgenders, etc.
Do you think it’s an accident that this clause is being removed at the same time “gender identity” is being added? Of course, it isn’t. I told you that the transgender movement would be the catalyst for normalizing pedophilia, and here’s your proof. Minnesota Democrats clamoring to co-author this bill, and if this comes up for a vote, they’ll vote for this because none of them will want to go on record opposing adding gender identity as a protected class.
Make no mistake about it. This is only the first step.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows a reckless disregard for truth and for the well-being of anyone it can use to buttress its “Islamophobia” narrative.
“Fencer and CAIR ‘Clearly Don’t Care About the Truth’ Asserts N.J. Teacher in New Court Filing,” by Steven Emerson, IPT News, April 14, 2023:
Ibtihaj Muhammad made history as the first hijab-clad athlete on the U.S. Olympic team. The bronze medal winning fencer from the 2016 summer games was featured on magazine covers, spawned a line of sportswear and even a Barbie doll.
But in court papers filed late Tuesday, a New Jersey elementary school teacher says Muhammad deserves a different reputation: Liar.
In October 2021 social media posts, Muhammad accused veteran schoolteacher Tamar Herman of abusing a 7-year-old Muslim student by “forcibly” pulling off her hijab as “the young student resisted.” After exposing the girl’s hair to the class, Herman then told her that “her hair was beautiful and she did not have to wear hijab to school anymore,” Muhammad wrote.
Herman insists that didn’t happen and contacted Muhammad to offer her side of the story. But when Herman, who had Muhammad’s cell phone number, texted to say her post was “completely false and terribly damaging,” Muhammad ignored her. Now, Muhammad says she had no idea who Herman was.
Muhammad’s claims, filed last month, “are outright falsehoods,” Herman says. And they are “further evidence [of] her actual malice, i.e. reckless disregard for the truth.”
CAIR Blows Up Incident into National Story
The issue generated national attention when the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its New Jersey chapter called for Herman’s firing.
“Our children must be protected from anti-Muslim bigotry and abuse at school,” CAIR’s national office wrote. “The teacher who pulled a second grader’s hijab off in class must be fired immediately.”
“Anything less,” CAIR’s New Jersey chapter added, “is an insult to the students and parents…”
School administrators were overwhelmed by the public response. IPT has seen dozens of social media posts that not only called for Herman’s firing but threatened her safety as well.
Herman hasn’t been allowed back in the classroom since.
Last October, she filed suit in federal court against the South Orange Maplewood school district and a consultant it worked with for their roles in a “malicious and antisemitic campaign” and for violating her due process rights. She also sued Muhammad, CAIR, its New Jersey chapter and its director, Selaedin Maksut, in state court alleging defamation. CAIR moved to dismiss the case in February, saying their statements largely were accurate and, therefore, not defamatory. Muhammad and Maksut embraced CAIR’s filing.
In her response filed Tuesday, Herman argues that none of the parties made any effort to determine if the accusation was true.
“Muhammad, despite her claims to the contrary in support of her motions, knew Herman well and had the ability and opportunity to communicate with Herman about the allegations, yet inexplicably declined to do so,” attorney Erick Dykema writes. “Maksut, CAIR, and CAIR NJ, for their part, clearly didn’t care about the truth—they simply parroted Muhammad’s false accusations without any concern for their accuracy.”
It is too soon for the court to consider the defense motions, Dykema writes. The basic facts are in dispute, and no discovery has taken place which would help determine what is true.
Herman has been teaching for 30 years “with a stellar reputation.”
She insists the entire episode was a misunderstanding. The 7-year-old girl normally wore a form-fitting hijab to class, but on the day in question, she had on a sweatshirt, with the hood covering her eyes during a lesson. Herman asked the girl to pull it back, thinking the hijab was underneath. But when the girl didn’t respond, Herman says she gently brushed the hood back.
When she saw no hijab, Herman says she quickly pulled the hood back into place, covering the child’s hair, and apologized.
Herman would have told this account to Muhammad or CAIR. But she never was given the chance.
“The evidence of actual malice—reckless disregard for the truth—is overwhelming,” Dykema writes. “… Muhammad based her social media posts on a thirdhand account of events emanating from a most unreliable source, that being a young child.”
Raw Antisemitism
The girl’s parents, Cassandra and Joseph Wyatt, each have made antisemitic statements about Herman and the incident involving their daughter.
Jews “monopolize a lot of stuff for money,” Joseph Wyatt told the Washington Post. “The Jews — the Semitics — they run Hollywood. They run a lot of stuff. It’s all Jewish names.”
Whatever happened between his daughter and Tamar Herman was about religion, “no doubt,” he said. “There’s always been a conflict with the Muslims and the Jews … That’s why they are fighting in Palestine.”
The teacher may say it was a mistake, he said, but “it was no mistake to her.”
The child’s mother, Cassandra Wyatt, has changed her story and made her own social media posts admitting that her reaction changed once she learned Herman is Jewish. According to Herman’s lawsuit, the girl’s mother initially told the principal that she understood the incident was a misunderstanding. But she quickly changed tone upon learning Herman is Jewish.
” “I JUST FOUND OUT THE TEACHER IS JEWISHHHHHHHHHH ������������� . . . that’s why I believe she did it now I’m furious,” Wyatt wrote.
“A JEWSIH (sic) TEACHER THAT TAUGHT AT A JEWISH SCHOOL & A PUBLIC SCHOOL FOR 30 YEARS PULLED MY MUSLIM 7 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER HIJAB OFF HER HEAD CLAIMING IT WAS A HOODIES” “SHES JEWISH!”
For all of CAIR’s public claims to stand against antisemitism, as we have noted, the fact that it has not said a word about the Wyatts’ demonstrable antisemitism speaks volumes about CAIR’s true views on Jews….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
There’s been an interesting development in the prosecution of the January 6 rioters. A three-judge appeals court has ruled 2-1 that the Justice Department can proceed with several hundred cases where defendants are charged with obstructing an official proceeding — for the time being.
What’s still to be decided is whether or not about 300 rioters acted with “corrupt intent” in invading the Capitol building during an official proceeding. And all three appeals court judges questioned whether the prosecution had interpreted “corrupt intent” on the part of the rioters correctly.
What seems esoteric in nature is actually crucial to the defense of hundreds of January 6 rioters. The “corrupt intent” standard does not apply to those rioters who are also charged with assaulting police. But for those defendants who are charged only with obstructing Congress, how that term is defined could mean liberty or 20 years in prison.
At the heart of the conflict is how to measure whether Jan. 6 rioters acted with “corrupt intent,” a central element in the crime of obstructing an official proceeding. The judges noted that the requirement of “corrupt intent” was meant to avoid inadvertently criminalizing traditional protest or lobbying activities that have been a feature of civic engagement throughout American history. Any decision on the meaning of corrupt intent would have to separate those legitimate activities from potential criminal conduct.
But Judge Florence Pan, who wrote the majority opinion, said it was the wrong time to decide that broad question because the three defendants whose cases were before the court were all also charged with assaulting police. There’s little question that those who assaulted police that day acted with “corrupt intent.” But in Jan. 6 obstruction cases that don’t involve assault, determining “corrupt intent” is much more complicated, she said.
“It is more prudent to delay addressing the meaning of ‘corrupt’ intent until that issue is properly presented to the court,” the Biden-appointed judge wrote.
The immediate effect of the ruling was a reversal of a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols, who determined that obstruction charges were being improperly applied to the January 6 defendants. The appeals court disagreed only because the corrupt intent standard had not been defined.
The stakes for the Justice Department and many January 6 defendants are enormous. In fact, the entire theory the DOJ has been using to prosecute all but a handful of defendants may be blown up by a different interpretation of corrupt intent.
Pan noted that prior cases have defined corrupt intent in multiple ways. The Supreme Court has previously described acting “corruptly” as doing something “wrongful, immoral, depraved, or evil.” The late Justice Antonin Scalia defined “corrupt” acts as those done “to bring about either an unlawful result or a lawful result by some unlawful method, with a hope or expectation of either financial gain or other benefit to oneself or a benefit of another person.”
A second judge, Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, agreed with Pan’s conclusion but adopted a narrower standard for corrupt intent.
“A defendant must intend to obtain a benefit that he knows is unlawful,” Walker concluded.
Defense attorneys for Jan. 6 defendants are already poring over Walker’s analysis. Nicholas Smith, who argued the case on behalf of three Jan. 6 defendants before the appeals court panel in December, said that if Walker’s contention is correct, his narrow definition of “corrupt intent” is already the binding opinion of the court.
This is a problem of the Justice Department’s own making. They wanted to use the obstruction charge as a sword hanging over the head of January 6 rioters to get them to plead down. Facing 20 years in prison, most of the January 6 defendants took their deal.
If hundreds of rioters are freed, DoJ and the Biden administration will be facing a nearly unprecedented backlash. As they say in politics, “very bad optics.”
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is yet again fighting for the expansion of the Islamic presence in a prison. It has just “sued the Virginia Department of Corrections and officials at a correctional facility for their refusal to provide Ramadan accommodations to a Muslim inmate.” The prison already provides special accommodations to Muslims on Ramadan, but that isn’t enough for CAIR. They want the rules bent. Prison officials reportedly refuse to accommodate new convert Alexander Crichlow because he converted to Islam after the deadline to sign up for Ramadan accommodations, and given the vigor of new converts, it is very important to CAIR that Crichlow be accommodated expeditiously.
In 2018, CAIR sued Riverside Regional Jail in North Prince George, Virginia, for allowing a Christian space, and filed an injunction demanding “Islamic programming” and “pork-free meals.” The lawsuit filed by CAIR actually called for the dismantling of the Christian “God Pod.” CAIR’s claims had nothing to do with religious rights and everything to do with prioritizing Islam. There is a stark contrast between peaceful Christian “God-pods” and Christian prison fellowships (which have been long established in institutions) and the record of Islam in prisons. Jihad recruitment is rampant in prisons, with little effort to curb it. In 2020, Al Qaeda-trained jihadist Mohamed Ibrahim was sentenced in the Eastern District of Texas for recruiting other inmates to join the Islamic State. Fox ran a report some years ago warning that federal prisons are a “breeding ground” for terrorists, and that “if we continue to downplay the threat, we do so at our own peril.”
Other Islamic organizations also aid the cause of Islamic expansion in jails. The Seerah Foundation proudly proclaims its mission as “spreading Islam and supporting Dawah projects” in prison, and the National Islamic Prison Foundation’s (NIPF) outreach program is also dedicated to converting inmates in America to Islam. The NIPF is heavily funded by Saudi Arabia. Its clerics are “responsible for indoctrinating inmates,” and are “mostly Saudi-trained clerics who preached the tenets of Wahhabism, an extremist form of Islam that is associated with passionately anti-Semitic and anti-Western worldviews.”
The more Islamized prisons become, the more dangerous they will be for infidel inmates. That danger will spread to the general population once these jihadis are released. In February 2022, the UK set a precedent and decided to segregate imprisoned jihad terrorists, as UK prisons had become dubbed “jihadi training camps.” Muslim prison gangs were also reportedly beating prisoners who wouldn’t convert to Islam.
Read more about the relentless, disturbing record of Hamas-linked CAIR HERE.
“US Muslim group sues prison for denying Ramadan accommodations to an inmate,” by Servet Günerigök, Anadolu Agency, April 5, 2023:
WASHINGTON – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said it sued the Virginia Department of Corrections and officials at a correctional facility for their refusal to provide Ramadan accommodations to a Muslim inmate.
The Green Rock Correctional Center in Chatham has denied accommodations to Alexander Crichlow during the month-long religious observance, CAIR said Monday.
Crichlow, a Muslim who converted to Islam in January, fasts from before dawn until sunset during Ramadan.
Since January, he has repeatedly asked prison officials to provide him with the same Ramadan accommodations as dozens of Muslims at Green Rock, including receiving breakfast before dawn, a double serving of dinner at sunset and permission to gather daily for evening prayers with other Muslims.
“But prison officials reportedly refuse to accommodate Critchlow because he converted to Islam after their arbitrary deadline to sign up for Ramadan accommodations, which fell on Nov. 18, 2022—over four months before Ramadan,” CAIR said in a statement. “According to them, an exception-free statewide policy refuses Ramadan accommodation to any incarceree who converted to Islam after Nov. 18, 2022.”
The group said that “there is nothing difficult about prison officials providing Crichlow exactly what they already provide to dozens of other Muslims.”….
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Back in the days when there was equal justice for all in the United States, there was this concept known as “conflict of interest”: if someone involved in, say, a legal case had shown clear evidence of favoring one side or another, that was considered to be a disqualifying factor. Now, however, in these exhilarating days of justice of the woke, by the woke, and for the woke, the old rules just don’t apply. If a presidential candidate opposes the regime, he is liable to be arrested for old misdemeanor charges that are suddenly new again and are now turbocharged felonies. If the judge in the case is obviously biased against him, so much the better.
The judge in Donald Trump’s case is Acting New York County Supreme Court Justice Juan Manuel Merchan, about whom our Townhall colleague Mia Cathell has made some interesting discoveries:
Does all this mean that Merchan won’t be able to judge Trump fairly? Not necessarily. But it certainly makes it less likely.
But wait, there’s more. Breitbart reported Tuesday that Judge Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is “president and partner of Authentic Campaigns, a company that runs digital campaigns for Democrat candidates, according to Merchan’s archived LinkedIn account.” Loren Merchan “worked as the ‘Director of Digital Persuasion’ for ‘Kamala Harris For The People’ from February 2019 through December 2019 — which was during the 2020 presidential election. And according to the company’s website, the ‘Biden-Harris’ campaign was also a client.” So were the campaigns of Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker, Gavin Newsom, and a host of other Leftists.
It’s clear that, for the Trump trial, Merchan’s deep involvement with the Leftist elites is not a bug but a feature. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s case couldn’t possibly be thinner. As Andy McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney, stated, “This indictment, even before you get to the statute of limitations and whether he’s got jurisdiction to enforce federal law, I would dismiss it on its face because it fails to state a crime… This is the heart of the case. It’s not a felony unless he was trying to conceal another crime and if you don’t tell them what the crime is, how does that put him on notice and allow him to prepare his defense?”
The perfect judge for such a Kafkaesque case would be one who is so ferociously partisan that the weakness of the case hardly matters because the outcome has been predetermined.
Is Judge Merchan that judge? He may end up being as impartial as the day is long, but if Bragg and his henchmen wanted to make sure that the judge, in this case, was as sympathetic to the prosecution as possible, Merchan’s donation history and daughter’s activities certainly made him an appealing candidate for the job.
So could Trump be convicted? It’s a real possibility. Patriotic observers are concentrating on the weakness of Bragg’s case and the legal legerdemain involved in it, but all that is ultimately beside the point if Merchan turns out to be as desperate to get Trump as Bragg obviously is. Those who have accordingly argued that the case should be moved out of New York City have a point; in Manhattan, it will be easy for Bragg to find a jury of twelve people who hate Trump even more than he himself does, and the former president’s chances of a fair trial will be reduced even more.
Here yet again, we are in uncharted territory. Many have observed that the indictment and arrest of Trump take us into banana republic territory, and it is precisely for that reason that supporters of Trump, and those who aren’t so fond of Trump but realize how dangerous this whole affair is, should not be so sure that the whole case will eventually founder. Stalin didn’t put his enemies on trial just to see them acquitted. Old Joe Biden’s handlers and their allies aren’t likely to do so, either.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
We are living in an Orwellian era when the formerly most powerful man in the world, who remains very powerful, is being prosecuted in order to stop him from becoming president again. If they can take him down, they can take down any conservative. The left has weaponized lawfare, which started with merely civil lawsuits but has now progressed into disbarringattorneys and prosecution. Once they’ve gone after Trump through prosecution — even if unsuccessful — it will be easier to go after him again on other charges, and easier to go after any other conservative. And they won’t stop there, they’ll go after RINOs and those on the left who side with the right against the abuse of the legal system next.
Left-wing billionaire George Soros contributed $1 million to Color of Change’s PAC, which then spent over $500,000 to support the campaign of Alvin Bragg, the New York DA prosecuting Trump. Soros has been contributing millions to defeat conservative prosecutors and sheriffs around the country in recent years. When Bragg ran for office, he gloatedabout how he went after the Trump Foundation while serving as New York State’s chief deputy attorney general from 2017 to 2018. His primary opponent Tali Farhadian Weinstein accused Bragg of going after Trump “for political advantage every chance he gets.”
It’s an ethical violation for prosecutors to run for office on a platform of getting someone on the possibility they might find new crimes. The ruleregarding trial publicity, which states have adopted, prohibits attorneys “from making an extrajudicial statement that the attorney knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding.”
Everyone knows the old saying, a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. That’s because the grand jury doesn’t get to see any arguments from the defense, they are only shown the prosecution’s case.
After five years of a fishing expedition, the indictment is expected to result in charges that Trump falsified business records on a payment his former attorney Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels, allegedly disguising the payoff as routine legal fees.
Daniels is now saying she was paid to keep quiet about an alleged affair she had with Trump. Hush money payments aren’t illegal. Falsifying records is a misdemeanor, but claiming it benefited him in the election, to cover up another crime, can turn into a felony. However, Trump is required to have known he was committing a crime. Trump denies he had the affair. And the statute of limitations for prosecuting him over the 2016 payment may have run.
Both Daniels and Cohen are not credible witnesses, having made previous contradictory statements. When a witness has conflicting statements, they can be “impeached” when testifying, rendering their trial testimony invalid.
Daniels issued a statementin 2018 that said, “I am not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas-owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.
A letterCohen’s attorney Stephen Ryan sent to the FEC in 2018 states that Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels, Trump was not a party to the deal, and he never reimbursed Cohen. Ryan asked the FEC to dismiss the complaint.
Cohen changedhis story a little over six months later as part of a plea agreement, pleading guilty to making an excessive campaign contribution to Trump with the payment to Daniels.
Even if it was a campaign finance violation due to not reporting the payments as campaign contributions, politicians are frequently allowed to modify their campaign finance reports after they’re due with amendments to add omitted contributions or expenses. Look at any campaign’s finance reports online and you’ll almost always see amended reports, it’s routinely done. Unless you’re a juicy targetof the left like conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, most quietly amend their reports.
When prosecutors tried to charge former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards with a similar crime in 2008, he argued that he was trying to hide the affair from his wife, not from the voters. The jury acquitted him on one charge and hung on the others, and the Justice Department dismissed the charges.
Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas pointed out that when President Bill Clinton got caught having an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, the RINO special prosecutor “refusedto prosecute Clinton for perjury, fraud or anything else,” even though Clinton helped herline up blue-chip job interviews.
Clinton paid off Paula Jones after sexually harassing her. After Jones filed a lawsuit against him, alleging that he exposed himself to her in a hotel room, he agreed to settle it for $850,000 to make it go away. He was never prosecuted.
Daniels losther defamation lawsuit against Trump and must pay him $300,000 in legal fees. Her former lawyer Michael Avenatti is sitting in prison. Daniels had sued Trump over a tweet he made dismissive of her claim that a man threatened to hurt her daughter if she didn’t keep quiet about the sex allegation. His tweet said, “A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”
The left is throwing everything it can at Trump in order to stop him from becoming president again. They brought impeachment charges against him twice. The FBI was sent to search his home. More indictments by other prosecutors are expected.
The U.S. is turning into a banana republic with this deterioration of the legal system combined with election fraud determining elections. As Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria famously said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” Similarly, criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate wrote a book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” which explains how there are so many vague and broad laws now the average person commits three felonies a day and doesn’t know it. If they want to get you, they’ll figure out a way.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
On Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump was formally arraigned on 34 charges in what many believe to be a politically motivated prosecution by a George Soros-funded district attorney who campaigned on the promise that he would get Trump.
Though he was expected to speak to the media at the courthouse, Trump entered and exited quietly, saving his first public comments for an address at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday evening. During his speech, which included elements of his standard campaign stump speech, he discussed the events that led up to his arraignment.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” he began. “I never thought it could happen. The only crime that I’ve committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”
He then recalled how Democrats spied on his campaign and launched fraudulent investigations against him, including the Russian collusion investigation and two partisan impeachment trials. He also accused the FBI and DOJ of relentlessly pursuing Republicans, while protecting Hunter Biden.
“And now this massive election interference at a scale never seen before in our country,” he continued. “Beginning with the radical left to George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg of New York, who campaigned on the fact that he would get President Trump, ‘I gotta get him. I’m gonna get him.'”
Trump noted how experts on both sides of the aisle “say there is no crime and that [the indictment] should never have been brought.”
“Everybody—even people that aren’t big fans—have said that this is not the right thing to do. It’s an insult to our country as the world is already laughing at us.”
He’s right. We’ve covered this many times here at PJ Media, and we’ll continue to do so with your help. You can support us by becoming a PJ Media VIP member and helping us uncover the left’s abuse of the justice system to target Trump. Use the promo code WITCHHUNT to take advantage of a 50% discount on your membership.
Trump also spoke of the other efforts by Democrats to target him, including the “racist Democrat district attorney” in Atlanta [Fani Willis], who he said is “doing everything in her power to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call—even more perfect than the one I made with the president of Ukraine.”
He also spoke of the ongoing case regarding the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, noting that “there is no criminality under the Presidential Records Act.” Yet Biden took classified documents as vice president when he had no power to declassify them.
Biden “doesn’t come under the non-criminal Presidential Records Act,” Trump pointed out. “He comes under the very criminal Federal Records Act, unfortunately for him. But it’s not going to matter because they don’t follow the law, which has very severe penalties. He had classified documents that he took while he was a senator, which is absolutely inexcusable, and other senators, including Democrats, are outraged.”
“But he’s not being harassed and hounded like the people who work for me are,” Trump pointed out. “In fact, they seem to have forgotten about his documents entirely.”
When he pivoted back to Bragg’s case, he noted the many experts who agree there is no case. “They kept saying there’s no case—virtually everyone, but it’s far worse than that because he knew there was no case. That’s why last week he delayed for a month and then immediately took that back and threw this ridiculous indictment together, which came out today. Everybody said this is not really an indictment. There’s nothing here. I learned this came to me and they said, ‘There’s nothing here. They’re not even saying what you did.’ The criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked massive amounts of grand jury information for which he should be prosecuted, or at a minimum, he should resign.”
Toward the end of the speech, Trump spoke of how the United States is declining rapidly under Joe Biden.
“If you took the five worst presidents in the history of the United States and added them up, they would not have done near the destruction to our country as Joe Biden and the Biden administration have done.”
“Incredibly, we are now a failing nation. We are a nation in decline. And now these radical-left lunatics want to interfere with our elections by using law enforcement. We can’t let that happen. With all of this being said, and with a very dark cloud over our beloved country, I have no doubt, nevertheless, that we will make America great again.”
However you feel about Trump, this is a historic time and a watershed moment in our country. The radical left, thanks to Bragg, is now further emboldened to use the justice system to target political enemies. The witch hunt against Republicans will not stop with Trump. If they can go after him, they can go after you.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Ever since the news broke about his indictment, Donald Trump has been rising in the polls and getting a big boost in campaign donations, demonstrating that the whole banana-republic endeavor is backfiring spectacularly on the Leftist establishment that is determined to find something, anything, it can use to destroy Trump. So now a federal judge is moving to put an end to the Trump momentum by slapping a gag order on the candidate ahead of his anticipated arrest on Tuesday. Is a silent Trump a neutralized Trump? We shall see. And is such a gag order even legal? What do the Leftist elites care about that anymore, if they ever did?
The UK’s Daily Mail on Sunday quoted an anonymous source saying: “The Trump legal team now thinks that the Manhattan judge will take the unprecedented step of silencing the presidential frontrunner with an unconstitutional gag order tomorrow.” Trump’s team is not taking this lying down: “The Trump legal team is considering adding a First Amendment lawyer to the effort to combat this and will fight it all the way.” If the gag order is put in place, Trump could incur a fine and a prison sentence of up to a month for violating it.
The gag order looms after Trump has made numerous comments about the case against him, including this one: “The Corrupt D.A. has no case. What he does have is a venue where it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to get a Fair Trial (it must be changed!), and a Trump-Hating Judge, hand selected by the Soros backed D.A. (he must be changed!). Also has the DOJ working in the D.A.’s Office – Unprecedented!”
And: “I want to thank everybody for the tremendous support you have given me against this assault on our Nation. Our once beautiful USA is now a Nation in Decline. Radical Left Thugs & Insurrectionists have taken over our Country, & are rapidly destroying it. They are using the levers of Law Enforcement, and have completely Weaponized the FBI & DOJ to Interfere with, Rigg, and Steal our once SACRED ELECTIONS. We are now living in a THIRD WORLD COUNTRY, but we will Come Back & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Why, we can’t have the man going on about how the FBI and the “Justice” Department have been weaponized against America-First patriots, can we? Gag him!
Most recently, Trump wrote simply, and in all caps: “ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!” This sort of thing will never do: exposing the Left’s hypocrisy about elections in the context of commenting on the political persecution of the chief opposition candidate. This man must be silenced, pronto, or people are going to start to get the idea that everything is not on the up-and-up with the Leftist establishment!
Trump has also noted the bias of the judge who is now poised to slap the gag order upon him: “The Judge ‘assigned’ to my Witch Hunt Case, a ‘Case’ that has NEVER BEEN CHARGED BEFORE, HATES ME. His name is Juan Manuel Marchan, was hand-picked by Bragg & the Prosecutors, & is the same person who ‘railroaded’ my 75-year-old former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, to take a ‘plea’ deal (Plead GUILTY, even if you are not, 90 DAYS, fight us in Court, 10 years (life!) in jail. He strong-armed Allen, which a judge is not allowed to do, & treated my companies, which didn’t ‘plead,’ VICIOUSLY. APPEALING!” Like all Leftists, Marchan clearly hates criticism and dissent. Hence the gag order. Only the point of view of Marchan and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg should be heard.
The Daily Mail added that “Trump’s campaign announced that the former president would make a speech at his Mar-a-Lago home on Tuesday evening after returning from New York. That could now be in doubt.” He is going to New York to be arrested, as he himself noted: “I will be leaving Mar-a-Lago on Monday at 12 noon, heading to Trump Tower in New York. On Tuesday morning I will be going to, believe it or not, the Courthouse. America was not supposed to be this way!” That’s right, but that’s what America is now, and even if Trump’s case is quickly dismissed, as his lawyers are working to bring about, a dangerous precedent has been set.
The Left is avid to crush dissent and make America a one-party state or a two-party state in which its opposition is made up of good and faithful servants of the Left such as Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger. Trump is standing in the way. Trying to force him to be silent is completely consistent with everything else the Left is doing to him and to the rest of us.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Kahf is the former Board Chairwoman of Hamas-linked CAIR in New Jersey and the current Chairwoman of a Muslim Brotherhood-founded mosque led by an Imam who was arrested and convicted of being a member of Hamas.
Following her Superior Court of New Jersey appointment on March 23, 2023, Islamic supremacist attorney Nadia Kahf became the first hijab-wearing judge in the United States. Kahf, a Syrian-origin family and immigration attorney, took the oath of office on Thursday with her hand on a copy of the Quran – a book that teaches supremacy, hatred, and hostility. Furthermore, it dehumanizes and stigmatizes non-believers.
Islamic governments across the world celebrated Kahf’s appointment. Islamic news sites in Morocco, India, and Turkey. “Nadia Kahf becomes New Jersey’s first hijabi judge,” wrote Sinar Daily, a news site in Malaysia. The Turkish government gleefully highlighted on their English news station:
Kahf has a background serving as a leader in a radicalized and terror-tied organization and an Islamic center founded by the Muslim Brotherhood that wants to overthrow our Constitutional republican form of government and replace it with Sharia.
She will serve as a Passaic County Superior Court judge after New Jersey’s left-wing Governor, Phil Murphy, nominated her last year. Governor Murphy has a long history of working with Islamic terror-tied groups and individuals to harm the state he was elected to protect. The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in New Jersey has continuously praised Murphy’s work.
This relationship between Governor Phil Murphy and Islamic supremacists is known as the Marxist Red and Islamic Green axis. The radical pairing has a long history of uniting to destroy their common enemy: those who believe in national sovereignty and individual freedom. Then, to achieve their own goals, they use one another until their goals are achieved, and only at that time will they turn on one another and, in the end, fight to destroy the other.
Terror Connections
Sharia-compliant Kahf is a former Board Chairwomanof CAIR in New Jersey. She has been a CAIR-NJ board member since 2003. So it is not surprising that Governor Phil Murphy, who is in bed with CAIR, nominated Kahf for the Superior Court judicial role.
Unsurprisingly, Kahf chose to take her oath on the Qur’an. CAIR’s Founder and Chairman Emeritus Omar Ahmad had made his terror-tied organization’s goals clear when he said,
Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant…The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
While CAIR bills itself as a “Muslim civil rights” organization, the evidence shows it is a Muslim Brotherhood organization operating on behalf of the designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Hamas.
Hamas’ charter states:
“The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).’
CAIR has also received funds from other Hamas entities and organizations affiliated with Al Qaeda. In addition, a document retrieved from CAIR headquarters reveals internal discussions at CAIR to support Osama bin Laden.
The day before Kahf was sworn in as an NJ Superior court judge, CAIR-NJ Executive Director Selaedin Maksut warned, “Nadia may be the first to wear a hijab on the Superior Court bench in New Jersey, but she certainly won’t be the last, Insha Allah.”
Nadia Kahf is the leader of a controversial mosque
“Mohammad El-Mezain was one of the founders in August 1989 and the first imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in New Jersey. El-Mezain was convicted of funneling money to Hamas in November 2008, along with four others in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF)-Hamas financing trial in Dallas. El-Mezain reportedly stated in a 1994 speech at the ICPC that he raised $1,800,000 inside the United States for Hamas activities,” reports the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Dr. Mohammad Qatanani
The now senior imam at the center, Mohammad Qatanani, is accused of lying on his immigration documents by failing to disclose his arrest and conviction in Israel when he confessed that he was a member of Hamas and provided support to the terrorist group. Qatanani is also related by marriage to a leading Hamas operative in the West Bank.
Investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield questioned why Qatanani has yet to be deported despite lying about his terrorist past. The journalist reported, “Imam Mohammed Qatanani, who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that is behind both al-Qaeda and Hamas, despite his own guilty plea to being a member of Hamas, and despite the fact that even in the United States, he had defended a charity that provided funds to children of suicide bombers (this is done as an incentive to reassure terrorists that if they die, their families will be taken care of), was not deported.” Instead, he is now the leader of a mosque, that the new Passaic County Superior Court judge leads as Chairwoman.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a global religious and political movement that seeks to spread Islamic law. In a 1991 document, a member of the American branch explained that the group’s goal was ” a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
The antisemitic and anti-Christian Imam Qatanani has given many radical sermons at the center and participated in rallies and programs. In addition, he has voiced his support of terrorists, their organizations, Islamic jihad, and Islamic law (Sharia). See Qatanani’s troubling quotes regarding HLF, Palestine, jihad, and Hamas here.
Shaykh Osamah Salhia
Another of the mosque’s imams, Shaykh Osamah Salhia, spent eight years abroad studying Islamic Law (Sharia) at Al-Azhar University- Faculty of Shari’ah in Cairo, Egypt. He also went on to teach numerous classes on Sharia (Islamic law).
This university is considered the most prestigious institution in all of Sunni Islam. However, it is also infamous for encouraging extremism and terror, along with teachings that include unrelenting jihad and hatred for non-Muslims. For example, one professor female professor at the school teaches that Allah allows Muslims to rape non-Muslim women.
The school’s troubling curriculum also addresses degrading dhimmis [Non-Muslims Living in Muslims Countries], conquering a country through emigration, and how to deal with non-Muslim residents once the land has been taken over.
Imam Baker
In a February 22, 2019, sermon at the Islamic Center, visiting Imam Baker falsely claimed that the IDF Chief Rabbi called to rape Palestinian women to boost soldier morale. He also said that homosexuality would never be accepted in Islam,but “we [Muslims] are not kicking anybody off the Empire State Building since Muslims live in a non-Muslim country that does not follow shari’a law.”
Why is the United States knowingly allowing a dangerous imam and a terror-tied New Jersey Superior Court judge to operate, recruit and train soldiers, including young children, in their Mosque? This Imam and judge are supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups who wish to see the United States governed by Sharia or Islamic law.
Furthermore, why are well allowing Governor Phil Murphy to appoint Nadia Kahf to the Passaic County Superior Court when she has shown her allegiance to Sharia and terrorists trying to overthrow our constitutional federal republic form of government?
This article was cross-posted with permission from the RAIR Foundation.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
For quite some time now, it has been clear that the radical left has been hell-bent on taking down Trump by any means necessary. Its efforts to impeach him began even before he assumed office and despite two failed attempts, it remains unyielding in its quest. With an unwavering focus on using the justice system to achieve its nefarious goals, it was only a matter of time before it found a left-leaning district attorney in a leftist stronghold willing to concoct flimsy charges against Trump.
In fact, PJM’s Athena Thorne predicted this would happen last August. “If you haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that vile, power-abusing, Left-wing goblins are going to arrest former President Donald Trump, you’ve got your head in the sand.” Honestly, I didn’t want to believe it then.
It’s helping Trump in other ways too. Trump’s supporters are now drawing parallels between his indictment and the methods utilized by tyrants and dictators to muzzle their adversaries and are growing increasingly concerned that the United States is morphing into an oppressive regime under the control of the left. Just consider how DA Alvin Bragg is notoriously soft on crime and has an established record of downgrading felonies to misdemeanors, yet took an alleged misdemeanor campaign finance violation — normally resolved with a fine — and treated it like a felony meriting potential jail time.
This has galvanized his supporters and resulted in a surge of donations. When Trump posted that he would face potential arrest, Trump raised about $1.5 million in just a few days. According to reports, in the 48 hours following the announcement of his indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Trump has amassed more than $5 million in donations — and 80% of those donations, $4 million, were in the first 24 hours. Sources within Trump’s team have verified that a substantial influx of contributions has poured into his re-election campaign fund, with approximately 25% of the funds originating from first-time donors.
“This is someone who has run twice for president of the United States,” said Jason Miller, a senior campaign adviser for Trump. “There’s a whole new group of Trump supporters who are angered by what they see as this political persecution.”
To these supporters, Trump represents an outsider who is uniquely qualified to cleanse the corruption that has plagued Washington for years, especially under the Biden administration. By harnessing this populist sentiment, Trump is tapping into a deep-seated frustration among a sizeable portion of the American populace, which has grown increasingly disillusioned with traditional political elites and institutions.
The Democrats’ relentless pursuit of Donald Trump has caused them to overlook the fact that their actions are ultimately helping him. By indicting him on what many view as weak charges, they have managed to rally Trump’s supporters around him, creating a new wave of financial contributions and political momentum that will undoubtedly benefit him in the long run.
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
With his indictment of Donald Trump, Alvin Bragg has secured his place in history. He could end up being remembered as the rogue, rabidly partisan prosecutor who administered the coup de grace to America’s staggering republic by indicting the chief opponent of the ruling regime on the flimsiest of charges. Even if he had never indicted Trump, however, Bragg has distinguished himself for aiding and abetting the decline of New York City from a drug-ravaged, crime-ridden hellhole that retained some of its former elegance to an even more drug-ravaged, crime-ridden hellhole with no elegance at all. Alvin Bragg is a quintessential example of the hard Left in power. It’s not pretty. The latest example of his misrule in Gotham is his charge of attempted murder against a man who was simply defending himself against the crime Bragg has unleashed.
The New York Postreported Saturday that a parking garage attendant in Manhattan, Moussa Diarra, has been charged with attempted murder, assault, and criminal possession of a weapon after confronting a thief in the garage where he worked on West 31st Street. Diarra, according to the Post, “saw a man peering into cars” in the garage. “Believing the man was stealing, the attendant brought him outside and asked what was inside his bag.” As it turned out, the man had a gun. “Diarra tried to grab for the weapon, and it went off — leaving him shot in the stomach and grazed in the ear by a bullet before he turned the firearm on the would-be thief and shot him in the chest.”
Bragg’s office is not entirely insane: it levied the same charges against the man who was apparently casing cars and looking for one to break into: attempted murder, assault, and criminal possession of a weapon and added on burglary as well. The similarity of the charges against Diarra and the man who attacked him is striking. In Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan, apparently, a criminal and a man who attempts to defend himself from a criminal are equivalent. In light of the fact that Bragg’s spurious indictment of Trump was itself an essentially criminal act against the rule of law in the United States, there is a certain bizarre appropriateness in this.
Mariame Diarra, whom the Post identifies as a “family friend” who is “not related to the attendant,” was outraged at the charges against Moussa Diarra, saying, “That’s self-defense. The guy tried to rob his business. He’s there for security. That’s literally his job, to defend his business… He takes his job seriously… An attempted murder charge has no place there.” Mariame Diarra added that the attempted robber “came to find him at his job with his gun, he has to defend himself.”
Another man who works near Diarra’s garage agreed, saying of the charges against Diarra, “You are kidding. That’s an April Fool [sic] Day joke, right? How can a hardworking man get arrested for defending himself?” That’s a good question for Alvin Bragg. One NYPD cop stated it succinctly: “People like Alvin Bragg have made this city unsafe, and this worker is a victim defending himself.” Indeed. But Bragg didn’t run for DA in the first place in order to make New York safe. He ran to get Trump.
Back in Dec. 2021, just before he took office, Bragg said, according to CNN, that he planned “to personally focus on the high-profile probe into former President Donald Trump’s business practices and may expand the investigative team while keeping at least one senior prosecutor on the case.” Bragg explained: “This is obviously a consequential case, one that merits the attention of the DA personally.” Now Bragg’s focus has borne fruit.
The case against Moussa Diarra, as well as the earlier case against Jose Alba, a corner grocery clerk whom Bragg also charged for defending himself before dropping the charges amid a public outcry, suggests that the safety and stability of New York City is a low priority for Bragg. Maybe he even wants to see the city destabilized so as to justify authoritarian measures to restore order. That would certainly be in keeping with his indictment of Trump, which is clearly designed to stop a presidential candidate whom it may not prove possible to stop at the ballot box. That is the sort of thing authoritarian regimes do. It seems that among the apparatchiks of any such regime, Alvin Bragg would fit right in.
