The goobermint didn’t ‘spend’ that money. It’s gone into their pockets via accounting slight of hand trick. Plus they think we’re stupid.
WATCH: CBS’s Margaret Brennan laughs in Pete Buttigieg’s face when he is unable to explain why only 7 or 8 electric vehicle charging stations have been built despite the Biden admin spending $7.5 BILLION to build chargers. pic.twitter.com/BmFK17Dk5O
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 26, 2024
Totally predictable https://t.co/UIVQZQECnZ
— Patricia Heaton (@PatriciaHeaton) May 22, 2024
Former NIH Director Admits Government Was Top Source Of Covid Misinformation
Four years ago, U.S. state, local, and federal goverments pushed “social-distancing” policies separating Americans six feet away from other people everywhere they went. Now former National Institute of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins has admitted no “science or evidence” ever backed these heavy-handed, comprehensive restrictions — another key proof the left’s war on so-called “disinformation” is so dangerous.
A memo National Review obtained, from the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, details Collins’ closed-door testimony earlier this year. It reveals that Collins had not seen evidence on March 22, 2020, to support the widely obeyed federal policy when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) instituted six-foot social distancing rules.
“Do you recall science or evidence that supported the six-foot distance?” Collins was asked.
“I do not,” Collins said. “I did not see evidence, but I’m not sure I would have been shown evidence at that point.”
“Have you seen any evidence since then supporting six feet?”
“No,” Collins responded.
So Collins admits the federal government lacked any scientific basis for this massive social policy it pushed on Americans, including by colluding with Big Tech to shut down public debate about Covid-19 responses. Such debate could have revealed that many Covid policies weren’t backed by good research. Instead, numerous federal officials pressed Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to shut down skepticism and contrary information it falsely labeled “misinformation” and “disinformation,” including articles from The Federalist.
This censorship effort effectively secured an information monopoly for federal agencies, including the CDC and NIH, to spread false information. As the lawsuit Murthy v. Missouri and other investigations later revealed, these government officials then used their information monopoly gained through accusing others of “misinformation” to spread actual misinformation, including that “social distancing” was scientifically proven necessary to “save lives.”
Dem. Sponsor Of WA Gun Owner Insurance Mandate Runs For Insurance Commissioner
The Democrat Washington state Senator who earlier this year introduced legislation to require gun owners to obtain liability insurance is now running to become the next insurance commissioner.
State Sen. Patty Kuderer (D-Bellevue), who has consistently supported gun control measures as a lawmaker, said in a campaign announcement,
“As a State Senator, I have been a vocal advocate for issues such as gun safety, voting rights, and women’s health. I have also been a leading voice on healthcare issues in the State Senate, including sponsoring legislation to create a public option for healthcare in Washington. As your next Insurance Commissioner, I will work tirelessly to protect consumers and to hold insurance companies accountable for their actions. I will fight to expand access to affordable healthcare, to promote transparency and fairness in the insurance market, and to ensure that all Washingtonians have access to the coverage they need to stay healthy and secure.”
She goes on to claim she is “committed to working collaboratively with all stakeholders,” although gun owners may not be included in that definition.
But Kuderer will be facing a Senate foil, at least in the primary. State Sen. Phil Fortunato (R-Auburn), an ardent Second Amendment advocate, has also filed for the position. Neither Kuderer or Fortunato would lose their Senate seats this fall.
Kuderer’s measure, Senate Bill 5963, never made it out of committee. She had nine co-sponsors, all Democrats and all whose names are often linked to gun control legislation.
Kuderer is among four Democrats running for the insurance commissioner’s spot. The three others are identified as Chris D. Chung of Tacoma, Bill Boyd of Spokane and John Pestinger of Seattle.
Fortunato also has company from Republican Justin Murta of Snohomish. Two other candidates have filed without stating party preference, Jonathan Hendrix of Seattle and Tim Verzal of Eatonville.
But only one candidate—Kuderer—can be linked to the proposed liability insurance mandate.
Under her bill, any person who owns a firearm would have been compelled to obtain “in full force and effect,” an insurance policy “covering losses or damages resulting from the accidental or unintentional discharge of the firearm, including but not limited to, death or injury to persons who are not an insured person under the policy and property damage.”
The law would also have required the gun owner to keep valid and current written evidence of the coverage readily available where each firearm was stored.
The law would also have required insurers to ask whether anyone named on the policy owned a firearm and whether it was securely stored.
When Kuderer introduced her bill in January, she was quoted by MyNorthwest.com stating, “This …requirement does not regulate, limit or control the manner or method in which people may keep or bear arms. Instead, it simply says you must have liability insurance.”
KTTH conservative commentator Jason Rantz countered at the time, “This is astonishing. The bill literally regulates and controls both the manner and method in which we may keep and bear arms.”
Sometimes, you wonder if corrupt crap like this isn’t done on purpose, simply to test the opposition’s mental acuity.
Judge Aileen Cannon is a Heroine
She is scheduled on June 21st to hear oral argument on whether special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed
The liberal news media is full of false stories about how Judge Aileen Cannon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida has delayed former President Donald Trump’s trial unnecessarily for allegedly mishandling classified documents. But, in fact, the Biden Administration and its Attorney General, Merrick Garland, are themselves to blame for the current delay. Special Counsel Jack Smith claims to be an inferior officer of the United States, but in fact he holds no such office. Smith is a mere employee of the Department of Justice, and he lacks the power to initiate prosecutions. Lucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission, 585 U.S. __ (2018) holds that only officers of the United States can take actions that affect the life, liberty, and property of citizens.
Judge Cannon has asked for oral argument on June 21, 2024 on former President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment on the ground that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to his current job because he is not an inferior officer. Washington, D.C. super-lawyer, Gene Schaerr, has filed an amicus brief in United States v. Trump on behalf of former Attorney Generals Edwin Meese III and Michael B. Mukasey, as well as me and Professor Gary Lawson, arguing that Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to be an inferior officer, and Judge Cannon has asked Gene Schaerr to participate in the oral argument, which he has agreed to do.
The Appointment Clause of Article II, Section 2 provides that: “the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.” Jack Smith claims to be an inferior officer of the United States appointed by the Head of the Justice Department, but he is instead a mere employee.
We argue in our amicus brief that Congress has never by law vested in the Attorney General as the Head of a Department the power to appoint inferior officers even though Congress has explicitly vested that power in the Heads of the Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Agriculture. The only power, which Congress has given to the Attorney General is the power to make a sitting U.S. Attorney a Special Counsel with jurisdiction to prosecute cases nationwide and outside his or her home district. Thus, the Delaware U.S. Attorney, David C. Weiss, currently has nationwide jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute Hunter Biden as a Special Counsel, and this appointment is completely constitutional. Similarly, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, was quite legitimately given nationwide jurisdiction to prosecute former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, in Washington, D.C. Fitzgerald got Libby convicted and sentenced to time in jail.
Jack Smith, however, was a private citizen, and not a sitting U.S. Attorney, when Attorney General Merrick Garland named him to be the Special Counsel who would investigate and prosecute Donald Trump. Smith’s appointment as an inferior officer was thus unconstitutional, and therefore the cases against former President Donald Trump, which Smith is prosecuting in Florida and in Washington D.C. must be dismissed. Again, Congress has never by law vested in the Attorney General the power to appoint inferior officers
What??!!!! https://t.co/dPCGYSdFYs
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) May 10, 2024
Trump Classified Docs Trial Postponed Indefinitely.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed Trump’s classified documents trial.
“The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury,” Judge Cannon wrote.
“The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice.”
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against former President Donald Trump has been on shaky ground lately. On Friday, Smith’s team admitted to misleading Cannon and tampering with the evidence that had been used as the basis for his case against Trump.
Last month, Cannon unsealed a trove of new documents in the case that also revealed that an FBI agent had testified that the General Services Administration (GSA) was in possession of Trump’s boxes in Virginia before ordering Trump’s team to come get them. The same boxes that the GSA had been holding and ordered Trump’s team to retrieve ended up being the boxes that contained classified markings, raising questions about whether the Biden administration had set up Trump.
“So an entire pallet full of boxes that had been held by GSA somewhere outside of DC is dumped at Mar-a-Lago,” independent journalist Julie Kelly noted. “Apparently these are the boxes that ended up containing papers with ‘classified markings.'”
The Supreme Court also heard oral arguments over Trump’s claims to presidential immunity, which may affect this cause.
Cannon’s decision is a major win for President Trump, who has repeatedly sought to delay the case until after the presidential election in November. In early April, Cannon rejected Trump’s previous attempt to dismiss the case, which he based on the argument that the documents found at his estate were personal records. Trump had filed multiple motions for dismissal back in February, employing various arguments, such as asserting presidential immunity and questioning the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden had classified information that he was never entitled to have stored in boxes in his garage for years but was not charged. In February Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report concluded that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen” and that his actions “present[ed] serious risks to national security.” However, Hur wouldn’t bring charges against him because Biden “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Because of this, Hur concluded it would be “difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him […] of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” Hur found that Biden’s memory was “significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017 and in his interview with our office in 2023” and that he couldn’t remember the years he was vice president or when his son Beau died.
THIS IS JUDGE ANDREA JARMON IN SEATTLE.
She just dismissed ALL criminal trespass charges against half of the pro-Palestine activists who blocked the I-5 for 4 hours.
ANDREA JARMON SAYS, "I am Muslim. I am African American. I am a cisgender female. I am a single parent. I am a… pic.twitter.com/SJsPIrzwzO
— BelannF (@BelannF) May 3, 2024
If the prosecution lied about this, what else did they lie about?
Trump Whodunnit: Prosecutors admit key evidence in document case has been tampered with
Legal experts call revelation a “serious violation” as Jack Smith’s team admits it also misled court.
In a stunning admission, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team is admitting that key evidence in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents criminal case was altered or manipulated since it was seized by the FBI, and that prosecutors misled the court about it for a period of time.
Legal experts told Just the News the revelation could prove to be a serious problem for prosecutors and a violation of court rules to preserve evidence in the state it was seized.
In a new filing Friday, Smith’s team said that the order of documents in some of the boxes of memos that were seized by the FBI from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was altered or jumbled, leaving two different chronologies: one that was digitally scanned and another the physical order in the boxes.
“Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants’ review of the boxes,” Smith’s team wrote in a new court filing to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the prosecutors wrote.
Smith’s team in a footnote also conceded it had misled the court about the problem by previously declaring that the evidence had remained in the exact state it had been seized.
“The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the footnote said.
You can read the filing here:
The organization of the documents in storage boxes at Mar-a-Lago is likely to be an important part of Trump‘s defense. His team is expected to argue the documents were stored in the White House in chronological order on the days that Trump received them, and that staff simply boxed them up and sent them to his home without him accessing them or knowing they contained classified information.
Smith’s team tried to downplay the problem and argued it’s not a reason for a delay in Trump’s case.
Biden Defense Official Says ‘Take All the Guns’, Use National Guard
In a recent undercover video released by James O’Keefe, a Department of Defense (DoD) employee, Jason Beck, was recorded discussing the potential use of the National Guard for gun confiscation.
Beck’s assertion that the National Guard would follow orders to confiscate guns prompts questions about the military’s obligation to uphold the Constitution. The tension between obeying lawful orders and respecting individual rights underscores the complexities of military service in a democratic society.
NY Judge: The Second Amendment Doesn’t Exist Here
There’s been a case in New York that I should have been following more closely. Dexter Taylor was a hobby gunsmith. He liked the nature of putting together guns from lawfully purchased parts.
However, the state of New York disapproved of this pastime. They arrested Taylor and, on Monday, he was convicted.
My friend Jeff Charles over at our sister site RedState has been covering this case pretty much from the jump, and in his story from Monday about the sentencing, there was something we had to talk about.
You see, the judge in the case has decided that a certain right of interest to Bearing Arms readers doesn’t actually exist in her state.
From the beginning of Taylor’s trial, it was evident that the court would be biased against the defendant, according to [Taylor’s attorney, Vinoo] Varghese, who explained that two judges presided over his case before the current official, Judge Abena Darkeh, took over.
The judge disrupted Varghese’s opening statement multiple times as he tried to set the stage for Taylor’s defense. Even further, she admonished the defense to refrain from mentioning the Second Amendment during the trial. Varghese told RedState:
She told us, ‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.’
Varghese said he had filed the appropriate paperwork to “preserve these arguments for appeal” but that the judge “rejected these arguments, and she went out of her way to limit me.”
The Second Amendment doesn’t exist there? Excuse the hell out of me?
“This is New York?”
This just smacks of “the Aloha spirit” nonsense where some parties seem to think that the Constitution doesn’t actually apply because they really, really don’t like it.
Is the judge in this case, Judge Abena Darkeh, suggesting that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply anywhere she doesn’t approve? What other rights don’t exist in New York under Judge Darkeh’s paradigm? Do defendants not have the right to representation? Is free speech non-existent?
Oh, one might make the case that I’m being ridiculous, but I don’t think I am. Not based on Darkeh’s other actions.
Varghese also tries to take a jury nullification approach. Jury nullification basically means you convince the jury that while a crime might have occurred, the law in question is the real problem. It’s rare, but it’s still a thing. Judges aren’t supposed to encourage it, but they’re not supposed to stop it.
Yet Judge Darkeh did just that. She reportedly warned jurors in such a way as to suggest they could face consequences if they didn’t vote to convict.
So, basically, it feels like Taylor got railroaded and that Darkeh doesn’t actually think people have rights unless she, personally, approves of them.
Yet that’s not how rights work. They exist even if they’re inconvenient. They exist even if you don’t approve of how they’re used.
Varghese says he tried to preserve Darkeh’s comments for appeal and was stymied. However, her comments should still be on the record somewhere. If not, her attitude should be clear from the transcripts.
But either way, Darkeh makes it clear that at least some jurists in New York really don’t think the Second Amendment applies in either their courtroom or the state as a whole.
It’s time they’re disabused of that notion by higher courts.
Police Website Reveals CDC Suppressing Defensive Gun Use Data
According to a report from Law Enforcement Today, recent revelations have exposed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for allegedly suppressing data on defensive gun use (DGU). This action has ignited debates over the transparency and potential politicization of the agency’s research on gun policy and public health.
The CDC, which studies various factors contributing to injury and mortality including firearm incidents, has been criticized for omitting defensive gun use statistics from its public communications. Despite commissioning a study from The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, which recognized DGUs as a “common occurrence,” the CDC chose to exclude these statistics following pressure from gun-control advocates.
Documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests revealed that individuals such as Mark Bryant of the Gun Violence Archive, Devin Hughes of GVPedia, and Po Murray engaged with top CDC officials. They were introduced by the White House and Senator Dick Durbin’s office and pressed the CDC to downplay DGU frequencies, which range from estimates of 60,000 to 2.5 million annually in the U.S.
Mark Bryant was particularly outspoken, vehemently opposing the highest estimates of DGU. He was quoted in correspondence saying, “that statistic needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again. It is highly misleading, used out of context, and holds zero value even as an outlier in honest discussions surrounding DGUs.”
Despite initial reluctance, the CDC ultimately removed references to DGUs from its publications, a move that has been perceived as aligning the agency more with gun-control advocacy groups than with unbiased scientific inquiry. This has raised concerns about the CDC’s commitment to providing comprehensive and unbiased data.
Gary Kleck, professor emeritus at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice and a long-time researcher of DGUs, criticized the CDC’s actions, suggesting they indicate the agency is a tool of gun-control advocates rather than a neutral body. Kleck, whose research supports at least 760,000 DGUs annually, emphasized the importance of rigorous methodology and empirical evidence in academic research.
This situation highlights the ongoing tension between scientific research and political influence, particularly in the contentious arena of gun policy. Critics argue that the CDC’s actions compromise its credibility as an evidence-based institution and call for greater transparency and accountability in its research practices.
“CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-control advocacy groups. It’s just saying: ‘we are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do,” Kleck told Eddie Killian, the author of the Law Enforcement Today article.
Progressive Oakland District Attorney Pamela Price is set to face a recall after just 15 months, with a mass movement to get rid of her getting enough signatures over the soaring crime rate in the area.
Alameda County DA Price has been under pressure over the soaring levels of crime in the Bay Area city, with a recall effort she has claimed is ‘financed by billionaires’ and based in ‘hatred and racism’ gaining momentum.
Price herself has taken over $1 million from three political action committees funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros, according to the Washington Times. Continue reading “”
LEFT: Attack women, get released with no bail, out on the streets immediately to brutally attack a little girl.
RIGHT: Don’t attend your son’s graduation or we will lock you up.
NYC Justice. pic.twitter.com/ppwkNxQMsY
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 15, 2024
JUST IN: Reporter Catherine Herridge testifies that CBS News locked her out of the building and seized all her files, says she was working with sources to "expose government corruption."
Nothing at all going on here, folks.
"CBS News’ decision to seize my reporting records… pic.twitter.com/XDuQEjyHcd
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 11, 2024
it’s called getting caught grifting
David Hogg Group Hit With Allegations Over Spending Practices and Policies
Gun control activist David Hogg has been hit with allegations over the spending practices of his group Leaders We Deserve PAC. Conservative outlets are reporting that the group spent comparably little on actual candidates as opposed to travel and expenses. His prior counsel is a familiar name in such controversies in Washington: former Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias.
Hogg created a group in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections to elect Generation Z politicians to offices throughout the country. The group was given favorable national coverage in major media outlets. He explained that contributions would be used to elect young Democrat candidates:
“[We’re] trying to pick them and say, you know, we would like to help you run for office, we’ll supply you with all of the resources that you need and help basically coach you and hold your hand to get there, which is kind of the gap that’s in the space right now, for at least young people at the state legislative level.”
Federal filings reportedly show that year-end 2023, Leaders We Deserve raised over $3 million. That is impressive for its first year in operation.
The conservative sites allege that the group spent “only about $263,000 on its stated mission of electing candidates from Generation Z to office combined with donations to other Democrat Party committees and groups—and instead spent more than $1.4 million on disbursements to themselves for payroll and to political consulting firms and legal fees, in addition to travel and entertainment expenses like hotels, flights, and meals.”
However, it reportedly spent more than $1,314,000 on travel and related expenses while giving $80,000 to the Elias Law Group.
Proof eco-extremists don’t want to fix the problem, they want to tear down society.
This week, Harvard University has shut down a Bill Gates-funded geoengineering experiment. The controversial Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment, or SCoPEx, run by professors David Keith and Frank Keutsch, aimed to study the potential future implementation of geoengineering by crop dusting sulphuric acid into our stratosphere. Nice.
Even if you put aside the almost instant validity such an experiment would give to conspiracy theories like chemtrails and HAARP, it still sounds a bit too much, playing with our thin air like that — in an unprecedented, and potentially catastrophic, manner, too.
But let’s not kid ourselves. The plug wasn’t pulled over fears of playing fast and loose with the venusformation of Earth’s atmosphere.
Nor was it due to the Harvard faculty’s occasional (yet frequent) dalliance with plagiarism or concerns over the lack of diversity within the ivory tower.
No, according to the MIT Technology Review, it was something else entirely: “Even studying the possibility of solar geoengineering eases the societal pressure to cut greenhouse gas emissions,” it clarified.
The Harvard Crimson picked up the scent too, noting that “a vocal minority of scientists have voiced concern that [the experiment’s] technology may provide an excuse to reduce pressure to cut emissions.”
And that’s the irony. Fixing “climate change” without destroying capitalism and everything the West stands for does nothing for the revolution.
What a waste of a good crisis!
It turns out, the climate change business thrives on more climate change alarmism. Whodathunk?
An Irish society, an unpaid loan and the hypocrisy of Letitia James
To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, here is a tale of financial shenanigans at the American Irish Historical Society, in which Trump-deranged New York Attorney General Letitia James is hoist by her own petard.
It involves a grand old building on Fifth Avenue, an unpaid loan, a fading family dynasty, a James Joyce theatrical production which almost ended in fisticuffs, and hypocrisy from the AG as obvious as a glass of green beer.
It all began when James Doyle, a wealthy Georgia businessman with a love of his Irish roots, joined the board of the nonprofit society, whose crown jewel is a rare Gilded Age mansion at 991 Fifth Ave., right across from Central Park and the Met.
Over the years, financial mismanagement and misfortune had befallen the society, and it was facing foreclosure. So in 2017, the board turned to Doyle for a $3 million loan, structured like a private mortgage. He was told that the Beaux-Arts townhouse was worth $80 million that included valuable air rights.
However, the society only made a few payments and Doyle soon found things weren’t quite as they seemed.
Cahill, a tropical disease specialist said to have treated Pope John Paul II after he was shot, reportedly raised the money to renovate the mansion to its former glory when he took over in the 1970s. A stocky man with bushy white eyebrows, he would dress each year in morning coat and Irish tri-color sash to preside over the St. Patrick’s Day parade from its Fifth Avenue balcony. He held a grand annual gala where he would hand out gold medals to the great and the good.
“I’m going to kill you, Ciaran!” yelled Christopher, while lunging at the director after the performance, according to the Times.
The society’s financial woes and dysfunction had reached a crisis point by 2021, when Cahill tried to sell the building for $52 million (later reduced to $44 million).
He died the following year, and in stepped the New York attorney general, citing a petition she had received opposing the sale.
She announced that, by state law, any sale of a nonprofit asset had to be approved by her, effectively kiboshing the plan.
“It’s an amazing place,” James gushed to the Irish Voice. “We had to save it, had to save it … One day people can come in there and enjoy it again.”
Which was all very well, but Doyle still was owed $3 million.
The AG appointed an interim board of directors and Doyle was persuaded not to try to collect his money or foreclose on the mortgage before July 2023.
But by August 2023, he still hadn’t been repaid, so he initiated foreclosure proceedings — and promptly was blocked by the AG, who claimed the mortgage was invalid because he was a board member.
On Friday, Doyle launched a lawsuit against the society and requested a subpoena be issued against James requiring her to produce a raft of documents, including anything relating to campaign events hosted at the townhouse or any contributions to her political campaigns from the society or any of its members or directors.
Doyle’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, alleges that James’ enthusiastic involvement in the Doyle case may be driven by “connections with the Defendant.”
And he points out the uncanny similarities between his client’s predicament and the notorious case James brought against Donald Trump for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get a better mortgage, “although her office is now taking a polar opposite position.”
The lawsuit alleges that Doyle was given “fraudulently inflated valuations” of the townhouse, putting its market value at over $80 million. Cahill and the society’s current president-general, James Normile, “made representations to [Doyle] that the building had ‘air rights’ and could be built, or rebuilt, higher than its current height.
“In reality, there were no ‘air rights’ and the actual value is closer to $20 million. [The society] made a gross over-valuation” of the townhouse, which induced Doyle to make the $3 million loan.
“Tish James said, ‘Nobody is above the law,’ which should include Tish James, who seems to have actively aided and abetted in the art of the steal,” Parlatore told The Post.
“This organization fraudulently inflated the value of their building to induce my client into giving them a mortgage which Tish James is now trying to help these fraudsters avoid having to repay.
“The theory of fraud Tish James accused the Trump Organization of engaging in is identical to the fraud she is aiding and abetting here.”
James has come down on the side of the society against its lender, Doyle. And yet, in her signature case of People v. Trump, she took the opposite position, holding that “where an organization inflates the value of a property to obtain a loan, that is fraud, even where the lender was aware of the actual value and was paid in full,” Doyle’s lawsuit says.
Trump was punished with a $355 million fine. So delighted was James by the verdict last month that she started live-tweeting Trump’s daily interest bill: “+$114,553.04.”
Parlatore points out that the society inflated the value of its property to obtain a loan, just like Trump was accused of doing, but the difference was that Doyle could not conduct the sort of “sophisticated due diligence” that Deutsche Bank did. Therefore, unlike Trump’s lenders, Doyle didn’t know the true value of the townhouse.
An even more important difference is that Trump paid back every penny he owed, but the society never paid back Doyle.
As the old Irish proverb says, forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s paid.
Former NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre Has Cost the Gun Rights Movement North Of A Billion Dollars
Former CEO of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, has finally admitted virtually everything that he’s been accused of over the past five years, and a jury has found him liable for padding his own pockets to the tune of $5.5 million.
Now, New York Acting Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen has the difficult task of deciding how best to remedy the situation. Unfortunately, there’s an important absence in Justice Cohen’s courtroom: the members of the NRA!
On one side of the table is Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, who, during her election campaign, pledged to destroy the NRA and called it a terrorist organization.
On the other side of the table is the ridiculously overpriced lawyer William Brewer for the NRA (the Board), whose firm has been paid approximately $2 million per month – every month – for the past 5 years.
Every move William Brewer has made in that time has done nothing but dig the NRA’s hole deeper.
AG James and her office have a legal obligation to represent and protect the interests of the members of the NRA. Does anyone believe that she is, or has any interest in living up to that legal obligation? Is the interest of the NRA membership her primary motivation – or any part of her motivation – in this action?
William Brewer, III, the New York lawyer who claims residence in Dallas (and who was a big contributor to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and “Beto” O’Rourke (Seriously!), is supposedly representing the NRA. You’d think that his obligation would be to the NRA members, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. He was initially hired by Wayne LaPierre and has spent almost all of his efforts over the past 5 years making terrible legal moves that gave every appearance of protecting LaPierre at NRA members’ expense. Then, right before the trial started last month, LaPierre stepped down for “health reasons.”
Brewer then declared that the NRA’s position has always been that the Association was the victim of “unscrupulous vendors and insiders,” and, with LaPierre’s departure, the NRA has fixed all of the problems that allowed that victimization…
Sitting next to Brewer at the table isNRA Board President Charles Cotton and the NRA Board of Directors. Like AG James and attorney Brewer, Cotton and the Board have a legal, ethical, and moral duty to act in the best interest of the National Rifle Association – its members.
Not only did they sit by and allow LaPierre, Phillips, and those “unscrupulous vendors” [read friends of Wayne] to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars out of NRA accounts over at least two decades, when the evidence of the corruption came to light in 2019, they rallied around LaPierre, loudly pronounced him innocent of any wrongdoing, and shunned, defamed, and denounced anyone who dared to even ask questions or suggest an investigation.
Rather than demanding an accounting and miscreants’ heads on pikes, Cotton and the assembled Board took every action to cover Wayne’s increasingly exposed backside.
Even as LaPierre’s story shifted over time, with new lies replacing old lies and newer lies replacing the previous lies, Cotton was at the forefront, repeating the lies – and adding in a few of his own – while defending LaPierre at every turn with the docile Board meekly “believing” and parroting each and every iteration as gospel.
He certainly can’t have any confidence that AG James, Attorney Brewer, or the officers or directors of the NRA truly represent the interests of rank-and-file NRA members. With this menagerie of conflicted and self-serving individuals, how is the judge supposed to determine what’s best for the NRA and its members? He should realize that the majority of NRA members who vote in Board elections and keep reelecting the same people to the Board, don’t trust the legacy media at all and get almost all of their trusted information about the NRA from NRA publications, which are controlled by the current regime. If he removes the obviously complicit Board members, how many would be left, and how many of those are incompetent and/or cowardly?
It would be pretty arrogant and presumptuous to suggest that the four of us who are running as reform candidates for NRA Board seats in the current 2024 election (Phil Journey, Rocky Marshall, Dennis Fusaro, and me, Jeff Knox) could speak for all NRA members. We do think we understand most members’ interests better than any of the previously mentioned characters, but who could possibly fairly represent three to four million others, and how is the judge supposed to find those representatives?
As you might have guessed, I have a few ideas on this topic.
From local state Friends of NRA committees, to Volunteer election Coordinators, to coaches, Range Safety Officers, match coordinators, Hunter Safety Education instructors, gun club officers, state association leaders, and more. Most of those volunteers, though not all of them, work through or under their local state association. The state associations are the natural heirs and beneficiaries of NRA’s assets, and they actively work to serve the needs of the NRA members in their state. While not all NRA members in a state are members of the state association, all members of the state associations are NRA members, and they are typically the most active and involved NRA members in the state.
Judge Cohen needs ready access to people who can authoritatively speak for NRA members. State associations and other NRA state affiliates are in the best position to provide him with that access.
It is my hope that the judge will remove all officers and directors who have failed in their fiduciary obligations to NRA members, appoint a Special Master or Receiver to oversee a thorough housecleaning and reorganization of the Association, and appoint a Members’ Committee, made up of candidates recommended by the various state associations, to help guide and direct that reorganization.
It all sounds simple on paper, but there’s a lot to do in a very short time.
The key to all of this is the involvement of state association leaders, and the key to getting those leaders involved is your advocacy. This can only happen if large numbers of NRA members begin pushing the idea at their local gun clubs and directly petition their state associations. Begin by sharing this article with your gun-owning friends and the leadership of your local clubs, Friends of NRA committees, and state association leaders. Follow that with calls and emails asking those leaders to take immediate action.
The NRA is literally on the verge of insolvency. The Association’s future is about to be decided by a New York judge who has limited knowledge or experience with the NRA or NRA members, and his only points of reference are the NRA-hating Attorney General, legacy media, and the self-serving NRA “leaders” who got the Association into this mess in the first place. The judge needs an alternative source of information. He needs to give NRA members a voice in the future of their organization, and a Members’ Committee nominated by state associations could provide that voice.
I truly believe Judge Cohen wants to do the right thing. He’s been very fair and reasonable throughout this whole long, drawn-out process. Let’s get the judge what he needs to make good decisions about the future of our organization. Let’s get our state associations to intervene in this case and give our members a real voice in the upcoming trial and the Association’s future.
