Important Takeaways:
- Jack Smith’s Charges Against Trump Include Potential Death Penalty
- 18 U.S.C § 241, “Conspiracy Against Rights,” includes a penalty of up to 10 years in federal prison. But it adds that if death results from the actions covered under this provision, the offender may be executed:
- If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
- If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
- They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
- One person — Ashli Babbitt, a rioter shot by a law enforcement officer — died as a result of the Capitol riot on January 6, which Smith said Tuesday was the result of Trump’s claims about the election. But Democrats have blamed Trump for the unrelated deaths of several protesters and Capitol Police officers.
- Democrats — and some of Trump’s Republican opponents — have also tried to blame him for apparent efforts by some of the rioters to kidnap then-Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Smith could try to argue the same.
- The other alleged crimes in the January 6 indictment against Trump include lengthy prison terms as penalties as well:
- 18 U.S.C. § 371 – Conspiracy to Defraud the United States
- 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (k) – Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding
- 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (c) – Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding
- If Trump is convicted of all four charges, and receives the maximum non-lethal penalty, he could be imprisoned for 55 years, if the sentences are set to run consecutively. That, in addition to the possible 460 years in prison in the “documents” case that Smith is prosecuting in federal court in Miami, brings Trump’s maximum federal prison term to 515 years, over half a millennium.
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Important Takeaways:
- Pence, key Jan. 6 witness, takes aim at Trump over indictment
- “Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Trump’s former vice president said in a statement that also emphasized that the ex-president was entitled to a presumption of innocence.
- Pence addressed this point in his statement Tuesday, saying: “On January 6th, former President Trump demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution, and I always will.”
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Ecclesiastes 5:8 If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still
Important Takeaways:
- Special counsel Jack Smith tallied about $5.4 million in personnel, rent and other expenses on his own budget and prompted about $3.8 million in spending by other Justice Department agencies in the roughly four months after he was tapped by Attorney General Merrick Garland last November to lead the classified documents probe as well investigations related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, according to figures DOJ released Friday.
- Those figures may dramatically underestimate Smith’s total spending since they only account for his activities through the end of March
- The report also highlights the unusual nature of Smith’s investigations and the strong reactions they have generated.
- The new report doesn’t indicate how much the Justice Department spent on the related investigations in the months before Smith, a former head of DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, agreed to leave his job as a war-crimes prosecutor in Europe and return to Washington to take over the politically sensitive Trump probes.
- By contrast, a special counsel appointed in January to look into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents discovered in his Delaware home spent $615,000 through March and led other parts of DOJ to incur about $572,000 in expenses
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Mathew 24:12 And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold
Important Takeaways:
- Democrat slammed after accidentally saying Trump ‘needs to be shot’ before quickly correcting herself
- Democrat Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett was criticizing Trump’s handling of classified documents during a live segment on MSNBC Sunday when she made the perplexing comment.
- “Having Trump not only having the codes but now having the classified information for Americans and being able to put that out and share it in his resort with anyone and everything who comes through should be terrifying to all Americans,” Plaskett told MSNBC.
- “He needs to be shot,” she said, before quickly attempting to correct herself by adding “stopped.”
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Ecclesiastes 5:8 If you see the extortion[a] of the poor, or the perversion[b] of justice and fairness in the government, [c] do not be astonished by the matter. For the high official is watched by a higher official, [d] and there are higher ones over them! [e]
Important Takeaways:
- There are disturbing suggestions that among the reasons lawyers are declining the case is because they fear legal and career reprisals.
- There is a nefarious group that calls itself The 65 Project that has as its goal to intimidate lawyers into not representing Trump or anyone associated with him. They have threatened to file bar charges against any such lawyers.
- I wrote an op-ed offering to defend pro bono any lawyers that The 65 Project goes after. So The 65 Project immediately went after me, and contrived a charge based on a case in which I was a constitutional consultant, but designed to send a message to potential Trump lawyers: If you defend Trump or anyone associated with him, we will target you and find something to charge you with. The lawyers to whom I spoke are fully aware of this threat — and they are taking it seriously…. It may even be worse today….
- Good lawyers… generally welcome challenges, especially in high-profile cases. This case is different: the threats to the lawyers are greater than at any time since McCarthyism. Nor is the comparison to McCarthyism a stretch. I recall during the 1950s how civil liberties lawyers, many of whom despised communism, were cancelled, and attacked if they dared to represent people accused of being communists.
- Our system of justice is based on the John Adams standard: he too was attacked for defending the British soldiers accused of the Boston Massacre, but his representation of these accused killers now serves as a symbol of the 6th Amendment right to counsel. That symbol has now been endangered….
- Trump’s lawyers have now alleged that one of the prosecutors has suggested to Stanley Woodward, the lawyer for Waltine Nauta, Trump’s co-defendant, that his application for judgeship may be negatively affected if he persists in defending Nauta vigorously rather than encouraging him to cooperate against Trump. If that is true – and I have not seen the evidence to support it – then it represents a direct attack on the 6th Amendment.
- Whatever one may think of Trump or the charges against him, all Americans must stand united against efforts to intimidate lawyers and chill them from defending unpopular clients pursuant to the 6th Amendment. Bar associations must look into the threats and actions of The 65 Project and of prosecutors who try… to influence the representation of clients by threats to their careers or other means.
- Hard cases may make bad law but partisan cases endanger constitutional rights. We must do everything to assure that all defendants, including Donald Trump, get the zealous representation to which the Constitution entitled all Americans.
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Ecclesiastes 5:8 If you see the extortion[a] of the poor, or the perversion[b] of justice and fairness in the government, [c] do not be astonished by the matter. For the high official is watched by a higher official, [d] and there are higher ones over them! [e]
Important Takeaways:
- Trump: ‘No Coincidence’ DOJ Indicted Me ‘Same Day’ FBI Turns over Doc Alleging Biden Bribery Scheme
- Trump spoke at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club following his arraignment at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on 37 federal counts relating to the documents case. He pointed to the FD-1023 document that Republicans on the House Oversight Committee obtained and reviewed on Thursday that allegedly links Biden to a bribery scheme involving Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
- “It’s also no coincidence these charges against me came down the very same day evidence revealed Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe from Ukraine,” he said.
- “But the FBI and the Justice Department don’t want to talk about it,” he added. “They showed something on television tonight. It had zero time on three major networks, but my impeachment had almost all the time. I think I had 351 minutes, they had no minutes.”
- On Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley “said an FBI informant document possesses redacted references to a foreign national possessing 15 audio recordings of phone calls between himself and Hunter Biden and two audio recordings of phone calls between himself and then-Vice President Joe Biden,” as Breitbart News’s Wendell Husebø noted.
- Trump also called on Republicans to “get tougher.”
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Ecclesiastes 5:8 If you see the extortion[a] of the poor, or the perversion[b] of justice and fairness in the government, [c] do not be astonished by the matter. For the high official is watched by a higher official, [d] and there are higher ones over them! [e]
Important Takeaways:
- Josh Hawley on Trump Indictment: ‘We Don’t Have a Republic Anymore’ If You Can Jail Political Opponents
- The Missouri senator, who previously served as Missouri’s attorney general, chastised President Joe Biden for being the first president in American history to indict his political opponent, Donald Trump.
- “All I can say about it this, if the people in power can put in jail their political opponents, we don’t have a republic anymore, that’s the danger we’re in,” Hawley charged.
- Hawley also said during his speech at the summit that the left wants to remove faith from the public square and replace it with the “state religion of wokeism.”
- The senator called for a “powerful, strong conservative” movement that will stand against “cultural Marxism” and will stand up for “God, for nation, and will not be apologetic about it.”
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Revelations 13:14 “…by the signs that it is allowed to work in the presence of the beast it deceives those who dwell on earth…”
Important Takeaways:
- Deepfakes showing arrest of Donald Trump go viral ahead of possible indictment
- Deepfakes of former United States president Donald Trump being arrested and imprisoned have flooded Twitter as a New York Grand Jury decides whether to press charges over hush money payments made to a porn star in 2016.
- Eliot Higgins, founder of open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat, created the images with an AI art generator and posted them in a thread which went viral on Wednesday.
- The fake pictures, which show Mr Trump fighting off police and the reactions of his son and wife, have been viewed more than four million times.
- Other images created by Mr Higgins show the former President fleeing from officers, breaking down in tears and donning an orange jumpsuit as he is put behind bars.
- He captioned the thread: “Making pictures of Trump getting arrested while waiting for Trump’s arrest.”
- As the deepfakes spread across social media some users suggested the images were real, fueling concerns about the use of AI in spreading potentially harmful misinformation.
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Isaiah 56:10-12 His watchmen are blind, They are all ignorant; They are all dumb dogs, They cannot bark; [a]Sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. 11 Yes, they are greedy[b] dogs Which never[c] have enough. And they are shepherds Who cannot understand; They all look to their own way, Every one for his own gain, From his own territory. 12 “Come,” one says, “I will bring wine, And we will fill ourselves with intoxicating drink; Tomorrow will be as today, And much more abundant.”
Important Takeaways:
- The Trump Trials: Changing the Subject
- Red lights have to be flashing for the current administration and its supporters: “danger ahead.”
- Inflation continues threatening to turn into a crushing recession. Iran is reportedly days away from a nuclear-weapons breakout. A Chinese spy balloon just spent a week doing figure-eight’s over America’s most sensitive nuclear sights while transmitting information back to Beijing in real time. Communist Chinese President Xi Jinping is telling his people to prepare for war. And the House Oversight Committee keeps finding more bank evidence that the Biden family appears compromised by foreign payments.
- What do the current administration and its supporters do, then? Revert to the tried-and-true playbook of the Trump era and launch the latest “Trump trial” to distract from the administration’s challenges. The pattern has been consistent – create a false narrative that is more favorable to themselves and more problematic for whoever is challenging them.
- After seeing multiple high-level Democrat operatives from candidate Hillary Clinton herself approving a disinformation operation against then-candidate Trump, her campaign and the DNC reportedly financing the Steele dossier, DNI James Clapper reportedly leaking info on the Steel dossier to the media, Adam Schiff misleading his colleagues about information leading to the first Trump impeachment, and 51 former intelligence officials signing a bogus letter about the Hunter Biden laptop, there should be little surprise that New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg — whose campaign was indirectly supported by a million dollars from George Soros while Bragg “promised to put Trump behind bars” — decided to move forward with what ended up a totally fabricated, politically-motivated indictment of Trump. It did not even fulfill the constitutional requirement for Trump “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation” – meaning: Bragg did not even name the supposed federal crime.
- The bottom line is that every Republican potential candidate will have to address the “Trump issue,” probably multiple times during the upcoming weeks and months, rather than discussing their solutions and proposals to address the economic and national security concerns gripping Americans today. For the current administration, that is “mission accomplished.”
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Isiah 3:3-5 “the commander of fifty and the dignitary, the counselor, the cunning magician, and the clever enchanter. 4“I will make mere lads their leaders, and children will rule over them.” 5The people will oppress one another, man against man, neighbor against neighbor; the young will rise up against the old, and the base against the honorable.
Important Takeaways:
- Trump Bashes Bragg for ‘Illegally’ Leaking Points of Indictment to Media: ‘Should Resign Now’
- An exclusive report from Yahoo News on Monday said that the former president “has been charged with 34 felony counts for falsification of business records, according to a source who has been briefed on the procedures for the arraignment of the former president”
- Shortly after the report went live, the former president posted on his Truth Social account that Bragg “illegally” leaked the indictment and should resign.
- “Wow! District Attorney Bragg just illegally LEAKED the various points, and complete information, on the pathetic Indictment against me. I know the reporter and so, unfortunately, does he,” the former president wrote. “This means that he MUST BE IMMEDIATELY INDICTED. Now, if he wants to really clean up his reputation, he will do the honorable thing and, as District Attorney, INDICT HIMSELF. He will go down in Judicial history, and his Trump Hating wife will be, I am sure, very proud of him!”
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