Category: Reporting

Trump Will Be Sentenced to Prison on Sept. 18, 2024~Trump takes extended Q&A from reporters after news conference at Bedminster, N.J.

Another body blow to the idea that America is a free republic.

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SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/trump-will-be-sentenced-to-prison-on-sept-18/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

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Donald Trump is going to be sentenced to prison. It’s absurd, it’s unjust, and it’s another body blow to the idea that America is a free republic where dissent is not just tolerated, but welcomed, and any man can get justice, no matter the color of his skin, contents of his wallet, or nature of his political opinions. All that is dead now, or dying, and even though Trump is unlikely to serve time, the sentence is coming as inevitably as fall follows summer.

This is because Juan M. Merchan, the unassailable source of impartial justice, on Wednesday denied Trump’s third request to recuse himself from the Stalinist show trial he is overseeing in Manhattan. Trump, convicted of thirty-four felonies that are misdemeanors when anyone else commits them, pointed out that Merchan, whose brazen unfairness and rabid partisanship have been obvious since the beginning of these proceedings, has ties to Kamala Harris. Merchan, however, dismisses these as “stale and unsubstantiated claims,” and that’s that. No one else’s opinion was solicited or necessary. And that means that in a few weeks, Trump’s prison sentence will come.

The sentencing is set to come on Sept. 18. Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out that Sept. 18 is “two days after early voting in the 2024 election begins in Pennsylvania.” Merchan’s goal, according to McCarthy, is “to enable Vice President Harris and the media-Democratic complex to label Trump ‘a convicted felon sentenced to prison’ just weeks before Election Day, at a time when Americans will already have started voting in many states, not least the potentially decisive Pennsylvania battleground.” Hey, it’s easier than lining up the record of the Trump administration and the Biden regime and showing that it was a grand thing that Old Joe started pretending to be president on Jan. 20, 2021.

The whole idea is just to give the Harris campaign a powerful talking point when it’s crunch time. “The New York prosecution of Trump,” McCarthy points out, “was politics, not justice." That’s why we call it ‘lawfare.’ The prosecutors and judge are not concerned about whether convictions ultimately get thrown out on appeal.” It’s all just a stunt, put on from start to finish for political purposes.

And so Merchan will sentence Trump to prison. The former president doesn’t have to be apprehended and forced behind bars for the gambit to work. McCarthy explains, “And it’s not like Merchan is actually going to put Trump in prison; it is virtually certain that Trump will get bail pending appeal, so Merchan can appear to impose a stiff incarceration sentence without any real incarceration — at least for now, and probably ever.” We can hope for the sake of what remains of the concept of impartial justice in the United States that McCarthy is right about this, but many analysts were saying that Trump would never be subjected to the indignity of a mugshot as well. It is entirely possible, given the authoritarian bent of the Biden-Harris regime and its incandescent hatred for Trump, that he will indeed go to prison.

Trump behind bars may be the left’s last resort, short of another assassination attempt. They’ve tried framing him for crimes, including a bogus “insurrection.” They impeached him twice. They’ve convicted him in court on charges that were concocted to give them a pretext to say that a court had found him guilty of wrongdoing. The prison card could be the last one they’re holding.

If Trump were in prison, leftists could say that this convicted and imprisoned felon could not possibly become the nation’s Chief Executive. How could he carry out acts of state? Would he conduct affairs of state from a prison cell? Would visiting heads of state have to be escorted into a penitentiary in order to meet with the president of the United States? Why, it would make a mockery of the nation in the eyes of the world! Never mind that old Joe Biden has been bumbling around on the global stage for three and a half years now, demonstrating the depth of his dementia and the endless credulity of a sizable segment of the American electorate. We’ll be told that as prisoners, Trump cannot possibly serve as president. There would even be calls for the Republicans to replace him with someone acceptable to the political establishment — say, Nikki Haley.

And so Merchan, according to McCarthy, “admonished the parties to prepare for the court to move ahead with the imposition of sentence on Sept. 18.… If we may read the tea leaves, Merchan has already decided that he will deny Trump’s immunity motion. There is, moreover, a high likelihood that he will impose a prison sentence against Trump right after that.” And then watch for the calls that, in the name of supposedly impartial justice, the left’s Emmanuel Goldstein must serve his time behind bars.

Trump takes extended Q&A from reporters after news conference at Bedminster

Donald Trump answered questions from reporters at his news conference on the economy and inflation Thursday. The news conference was held at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

 

 

White House releases Biden doctor letter after Parkinson’s report

The White House released a letter Monday night from President Biden's physician explaining why a Parkinson’s disease specialist had visited the White House several times. It came hours after Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre sparred with reporters about Biden's health. In the letter, Dr. Kevin O'Connor said Kevin Cannard "was the neurological specialist that examined President Biden for each of his annual physicals ... President Biden has not seen a neurologist outside of his annual physical.” Widespread concerns from fellow Democrats over Biden's health and cognitive abilities have been magnified since his performance in last month's debate against former President Trump.

 

Congress Tightens Up Reporting Requirements on Foreign Funding of Universities

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REPUBLISHED, SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/12/congress-tightens-up-reporting-requirements-on-foreign-funding-of-universities

The scandal of certain foreign governments funding programs at American universities that further the interests of their often unsavory regimes is at long last being addressed by Congress. The House has just passed a bill — which will soon be voted on in the Senate — to tighten the reporting requirements for major foreign gifts (above $250,000) and to require greater oversight by universities of the programs being funded. More on this legislation, which is sure to become law, can be found here: “U.S. House Approves Reporting on Foreign Funds to Universities; Includes Key MEF Priorities,” Middle East Forum, December 8, 2023:

American universities will no longer be able to count on a complacent federal bureaucracy and weak legislation to avoid disclosing foreign gifts and contracts, if a House vote two days ago becomes law.

The Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act – the DETERRENT Act (H.R. 5933) – passed the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday in a bipartisan vote of 246 to 170. Introduced by Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA) and co-sponsored by Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and 25 other members, the bill significantly strengthens key provision of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.

For decades, many universities have ignored requirements to report foreign gifts or contracts of over $250,000. Legislation lacked the teeth to hold academe accountable, allowing parts of the education bureaucracy to ignore violations of the law. Even if universities complied, they did not need to disclose the purposes for which the funds would be used – a loophole that allowed foreign states such as Qatar and China quietly to fund potentially disreputable projects or individuals….

Particularly worrisome are the large sums provided by rich Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to fund a vast expansion of Middle Eastern Studies, and Islamic Studies Departments, providing for greater numbers of faculty with endowed chairs; these faculty members not surprisingly turn out to share the world views of the states that fund them, including their anti-Israel animus and deep sympathy for the “Palestinians.” Saudi Arabia, and individual Saudis, provide large sums not just to endow individual chairs, but also to set up entire centers for Islamic studies, whose members are not unbiased scholars, but promoters and defenders of Islam. One example is the infamous apologist for Islam, John Esposito, who was the founding director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, which got its start with a $20 million gift from Prince Alwaleed himself. Qatar, which has supported Hamas for decades, including providing refuge for the leaders of its political wing, has funded chairs in Islamic law, as has Saudi Arabia. The amounts provided by Arab states to American universities has been staggering. Qatar has given American universities $4.3 billion over 35 years, between 1986 and 2021, according to a 2021 report by the Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Dr. Mitchell Bard. By December 2023, that amount has risen above $4.5 billion. That buys a lot of goodwill in American universities, and a desire on the part of both faculty members and administrators to please such a funder, in the hope that such sums will continue to roll in from deep-pocketed Doha.

Overall, between 1986 and 2021, American colleges and universities received nearly $8.5 billion from all Arab sources.” That buys the Arabs many friends on campuses, which may help explain why universities have been so lax in policing the antisemitic and anti-Israel student groups that have convulsed so many schools in the last year, and especially after October 7, when the IDF entered Gaza to ensure that Hamas never again poses a military threat to Israel.

The public, the media, and the political class will now see just where all that Arab money is going to in our universities, and for what purposes. How much influence have the Arab states bought, in supporting programs on Middle Eastern Studies and on Islam, that furthers pro-Arab and anti-Israel views? How have faculty members been chosen for these programs? Is there a politically correct test that is being quietly imposed so that, for example, no one sympathetic to Israel will be hired by a Middle East Studies department? Are students taking courses in departments subsidized by Arab money being instructed, or indoctrinated? Thanks to the new requirements for universities to report all foreign money received, and how it will be spent, it will be much harder to hide from the government, and the public, what these vast sums from Arab governments and individuals are meant, and largely have managed until now, to accomplish.