Category: Goobermint

Judicial Watch Sues for Details of Army Labeling Right to Life Groups as Terrorists

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense for details of U.S. Army training materials that designate pro-life organizations or individuals as “terrorists” (Judicial Watch Inc. v U.S. Department of Defense (No 1:24-cv-02895).

Judicial Watch filed suit in the District Court for the District of Columbia after the Department of the Army failed to respond to an August 13, 2024, FOIA request for:

  • All emails of Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo, Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, and/or Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Mingus regarding the designation of pro-life groups or individuals as “terrorists.”

Judicial Watch made a subsequent FOIA request to Special Command Operations, U.S. Army Reserve, Fort Liberty, NC, a component of the Army, for:

  • Records related to the designation of the National Right to Life Committee or any other pro-life organization as “terrorists” in anti-terrorism training materials used by Fort Liberty.
  • All emails of Garrison Commander Col. John Wilcox regarding the designation of pro-life groups as “terrorists” in Army training material.

A photo reportedly circulating on social media shows one slide from a presentation used to train soldiers. The slide, titled “Terrorist Groups,” lists several groups, including National Right to Life and Operation Rescue, and “opponents of Roe v. Wade.” The Army responded to the news report, saying the material had not been vetted correctly. 

“Let’s be blunt – the radical leftist Biden-Harris administration is trying to set our military against conservative American citizens,” Judicial Watch Tom Fitton said. “And that we have had to sue after being denied basic records about the Army’s targeting of pro-life Christians makes the scandal worse.”

In his new book Rights and Freedoms in Peril, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton details a long chain of abuses officials and politicians have made against the American people and calls readers to battle for “the soul and survival of America.” The book details how the progressive movement threatens America’s most venerable institutions, undermining the core principles that make this country a beacon of hope to the world.

 Earlier this month Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department of Defense for records regarding the U.S. Air Force Academy’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plans.

 In June 2024, Judicial Watch sued the Defense Department for records regarding the deletion of the words “Duty, Honor, Country” from the United States Military Academy at West Point’s mission statement.

 In March 2023, records obtained by Judicial Watch from the Department of Defense showed the Air Force Academy has made race and gender instruction a top priority in the training of cadets.

In July 2023, Judicial Watch exposed records from the United States Air Force Academy, a component of the United States Department of Defense, which included instructional materials and emails that address topics such as Critical Race Theory, “white privilege,” and Black Lives Matter. 

In July 2022, Judicial Watch sued the Department of Defense for  records related to the United States Naval Academy (USNA) implementing Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the training of naval recruits.

 In June, Judicial Watch received records revealing Critical Race Theory instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point One training slide contains a graphic titled “MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN THE USA.” [Emphasis in original]. 

They’ll stop at nothing to get you jabbed

ALTHOUGH we have recently published evidence of people voting with their feet with regard to covid vaccine take-up, there are few grounds for believing that the millions of words written disproving the ‘safe and effective’ mantra have influenced government establishment at all. In fact what we have seen is denial and pushback. Today we publish four articles that illustrate in their different ways how key evidence is still being determinedly censored and ignored by the Hallett Inquiry and the Scottish Government, and in the US by Joe Biden and Big Pharma.

BEEN covid vaccinated? Yes, get boosters. Had your covid boosters? Yes, get another one . . . and another one. We seem to be in the era of the fifth covid booster now. Or is it the sixth? It is hard to keep up, but rest assured that our governments and public health fanatics will not rest until we are umpteenth booster vaccinated up to our eyeballs.

It is nothing to worry about, apparently. The side-effects only include pain, redness or swelling at the injection site, feeling tired or fatigued, headache, muscle aches or joint pains, chills, dizziness, swollen lymph nodes and nausea. Oddly, no mention of stroke, cardiac arrest, pulmonary embolism (all associated with the increased likelihood of blood clots) and death. No, nothing to see here.

However, enthusiasm for covid vaccinations is waning, as figures from the US demonstrate. The way data are presented by the UK government makes it hard to ascertain what the uptake of covid vaccination boosters is but, given that the figures for care homes used to be over 80 per cent and are now only over 60 per cent indicates that, even in a captive and largely compliant population (‘covid jab with your cup of tea, dear?’) there is resistance. Sally Beck reported for TCW on Monday that NHS staff are refusing to have the jabs.

It is clear, on both sides of the Atlantic, that regarding covid vaccination, we have now entered ‘who gives a damn?’ territory. The harbingers of doom regarding the devastation of the population by covid, the ‘everyone is at risk’ message and the purportedly protective effects of the covid vaccines have been proved to be false. That is not to mention the accumulating evidence of potential and actual harms associated with the covid vaccines.

However there is one group of people who have not lost their faith, and they are our old friends at Global Health Now (GHN), possibly the most reliable source of misinformation about all things covid, at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The GHN issue of 11 December linked an article from the equally unreliable NPR Goats and Soda which posed the question in its title: ‘I didn’t get the latest covid vaccine. Should I? And if so, when?’ Exploiting the forthcoming holiday season, it further asked: ‘When should I get it for maximum holiday protection when travelling and partying?’

I think you can guess the answer.

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The day after Patel is confirmed as FBI Director should be ‘epic’.

BLUF
He fears Patel will trample over civil liberties? That’s rich, Patel points out, as it was “gangster” McCabe who signed one of the illegal FISA warrants to spy on Page.

Report reveals that FBI spied on its likely new director, Kash Patel.

It’s going to be awkward at FBI headquarters next month when President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the bureau likely takes over.

According to a new government watchdog report, the FBI spied on its prospective new boss, Kash Patel.

Patel has promised to “clean house” at the Hoover Building, and hold all those who “abused their power” during the Russiagate “witch hunt” accountable.

Kash Patel, U.S. President-elect Donald Trumpâs nominee for director of the FBI, speaks to reporters before a meeting with U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 12, 2024.
Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for director of the FBI, speaks to reporters before a meeting with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 12, 2024.REUTERS

He might start with the officials and agents who secretly vacuumed up his phone records and emails starting in late 2017, when he led a House Intelligence Committee investigation into the FBI’s reliance on Hillary Clinton’s false opposition research to surveil a Trump campaign official as a supposed “Russian agent.”

According to a nearly 100-page report by the Justice Department’s inspector general, the FBI subpoenaed the records as part of an investigation it opened to find out whether congressional staffers leaked classified information about its Trump-Russia “collusion” case to the Washington Post and other media.

Working with career prosecutors at Justice, the FBI compelled Google and Apple to turn over the sensitive private information of subjects the FBI identified “between September 2017 and March 2018,” a period when Andrew McCabe was the acting FBI director. (Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions was out of the loop, the report said, having recused himself from the Russia probe.)

The court orders gagged the service providers from notifying Patel and other customers of the intrusion.

As chief counsel, Patel had no idea that the subject of his investigation — the FBI — was collecting his data and increasing the visibility of witnesses he was communicating with, including whistleblowers.

At the time, Patel was demanding to see FBI documents and depose FBI witnesses to find out if the bureau had abused its power in obtaining a FISA warrant to spy on Trump aide Carter Page.

But Patel remained in the dark until 2022, when Google finally was cleared to send him a copy of the subpoena. Outraged, he told me at the time: “The FBI and DOJ subpoenaed my personal records while I caught them doing this to Page back in 2017.”

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Daniel Penny’s Legal Battle Takes Shocking Turn—Plans Malicious Prosecution Lawsuit Against DA Alvin Bragg Rock Social Media

Daniel Penny, a former U.S. Marine, is reportedly considering filing a malicious prosecution lawsuit against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The potential legal action stems from Bragg’s decision to bring charges against Penny for the May 2023 subway chokehold death of Jordan Neely.

According to Fox News, Penny’s legal team is exploring whether Bragg’s office overstepped its bounds in prosecuting him for manslaughter. Penny was captured on video subduing Neely in a New York City subway after the latter reportedly acted aggressively toward other passengers. The incident sparked nationwide debates on self-defense, mental health, and the criminal justice system.

While Penny maintains that his actions were meant to protect passengers, Bragg’s office contends that Neely’s death was preventable. The charges against Penny were filed following an outcry from activists and political leaders, who labeled the incident a racial injustice. Penny, however, insists that the charges were politically motivated and now appears ready to challenge Bragg in court.

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In the day of the internet, which records and keeps everything, these moron politicians still think they can gaslight people

Tony Blinken Tells Congress ‘No One Anticipated’ Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before Congress on the Biden administration’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in a long-awaited hearing that was originally scheduled for September. Though he claimed that “no one” in the Biden State Department anticipated the Afghan government’s swift collapse, a group of diplomats warned Blinken of that very prospect roughly one month before the Taliban captured Kabul.

“Even the U.S. government’s most pessimistic assessments did not anticipate that the Afghan government and security forces would collapse so rapidly in the face of Taliban advances,” Blinken told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Twenty-six diplomats, however, sent Blinken a dissent cable in mid-July 2021—one month before the fall of Kabul and six weeks before a suicide bombing attack killed 13 American servicemembers—warning of Afghanistan’s rapid deterioration. Asked why he ignored that cable, Blinken responded, “Very simply because no one anticipated the government and Afghan forces would collapse as quickly as they did.”

Blinken’s appearance comes nearly two months after the Biden official was set to testify before the House committee in late September. But Blinken failed to attend the hearing, defying a subpoena in the process, and only agreed to testify after the November presidential election. Blinken also missed a May deadline to turn over withdrawal-related internal documents, which were requested under subpoena.

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Trump Assassination Attempt Task Force Determines ‘Failures’ with Secret Service Leadership

On Tuesday, the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump released its final official report, determining that there were “failures in the planning, execution, and leadership” of the United States Secret Service (USSS) leading up to both attempts on the President-elect’s life.

As reported by Breitbart, the task force’s five-month investigation focused on both the attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13th and the second attempt in West Palm Beach, Florida on September 15th. In the former attempt, President-elect Trump was wounded by gunfire in his right ear, while one rallygoer was killed and two others were critically injured, before the gunman was killed by the Secret Service. In the second attempt, the gunman was spotted by Secret Service and fled before firing a shot, and was arrested later the same day.

“The report text, unanimously approved by the Task Force on December 5, highlights significant failures in the planning, execution, and leadership of the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners,” the task force declared in a press release summarizing its findings. “The Task Force-approved report also proposes 37 actionable recommendations related both to the security failures on July 13 and to overarching structural changes that the Secret Service and Congress must consider to strengthen security measures and prevent similar security failures in the future.”

With regards to the July 13th attempt, the task force’s report noted that, rather than any one singular moment that allowed the gunman to nearly assassinate the then-former president, there had instead been “various failures in planning, execution, and leadership” which created “an environment in which the former President” and the audience at the rally were “exposed to grave danger.”

Almost immediately after the first attempt, the Secret Service faced widespread and bipartisan condemnation for the obvious security failures that allowed the 22-year-old gunman to gain access to a nearby rooftop with an entire rifle in hand. Multiple civilians spotted the armed and suspicious-looking man and tried to point him out to law enforcement, who apparently did nothing in response to these warnings. His motives remain unknown.

By contrast, the response to the second attempt in Florida was much swifter. An agent noticed the barrel of the gunman’s rifle protruding from the bushes at the Trump International Golf Course, where then-candidate Trump was playing a round of golf. The Secret Service opened fire, scaring the gunman away, before he was apprehended later by local law enforcement. The second would-be assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh, had become a fanatical supporter of Ukraine since the start of their war against Russia, and was apparently motivated by what he perceived as insufficient support for Ukraine by former President Trump.

FOIA Shows the Extent of ATF Monitoring Americans Through FBI’s NICS System

In April of 2021, AmmoLand News learned from a source inside the FBI that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was using the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to monitor Americans’ gun purchases.

These Americans were not prohibited people and were not guilty of any crime. Many of the subjects were not even suspected of a crime. The ATF monitored people for their associations and the feeling that the target might commit a crime in the future. The NICS monitoring program was open to all ATF agents and departments that wanted to monitor someone. The subjects of the surveillance were never notified by either the ATF or FBI.

After the story went public, the FBI admitted that the program did exist but spun it as a key tool for law enforcement to prevent straw purchases. Most privacy advocates pushed back and believed that it was an overreaching government hellbent on violating the gun buyers’ privacy. One unknown thing was the exact number of people the FBI was monitoring for the ATF.

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Pam Bondi is the one that picked him. Trump, out of loyalty to one who defended him at his first impeachment trial, went along without further thought to nominating a jerk who, like Bondi, clearly doesn’t have much respect for individual rights.

Trump’s continuing weak spot is his apparent blind trust is those he considers loyal to him, yet who have shown to have their own agendas at his expense. (And don’t think for a minute that even Musk doesn’t have a personal agenda)

One would have thought by now that he had finally gotten it through his thick skull, that while in commercial business, you can -usually- buy loyalty with a large enough paycheck, in politics, loyalty is based on: ‘and what have you done for me lately?’

Florida Sheriff Chad Chronister withdraws as Trump’s nominee to lead DEA

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister withdrew his name for consideration as President-elect Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

“To have been nominated by President-Elect @realDonaldTrump to serve as Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration is the honor of a lifetime,” Chronister wrote in a post on X.

“Over the past several days, as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration. There is more work to be done for the citizens of Hillsborough County and a lot of initiatives I am committed to fulfilling,” Chronister continued.

He said he appreciated the nomination and support from the American people and that he’s looking forward to continuing his work as sheriff.

District 1 County Commissioner of Lake County Anthony Sabatini called Chronister stepping down a “huge win for liberty.”

“This sheriff ordered the arrest of a pastor for holding services during the COVID panic. He was tapped by Trump to head the DEA. Glad to see him withdraw from consideration. Next time politicians lose their ever-lovin minds, he can redeem himself by following the Constitution,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote in a post on X after the sheriff’s announcement.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., spoke to Fox News after Chronister’s withdrawal and defended the sheriff.

“What disqualifies somebody? We all make mistakes throughout life, right? I haven’t talked any details on that yet. But as far as someone making a mistake in their past, give us an example of anybody that hasn’t made a mistake in the past,” Mullin said.

Chronister faced backlash from multiple conservative figures for arresting a pastor for violating COVID rules.

The Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne was arrested in March 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

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A President has plenary power to pardon anyone he wants for any federal crime. That being said, the Bidens are just another crime family that managed to amass enough political power to insulate themselves from the legal consequences any normal citizen would be subject to.

Biden pardons his son Hunter despite previous pledges not to.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, on Sunday night, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency for the benefit of his family members.

The Democratic president had previously said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence after his convictions in the two cases in Delaware and California. The move comes weeks before Hunter Biden was set to receive his punishment after his trial conviction in the gun case and guilty plea on tax charges, and less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House.

It caps a long-running legal saga for the younger Biden, who publicly disclosed he was under federal investigation in December 2020 — a month after his father’s 2020 victory — and casts a pall over the elder Biden’s legacy. Biden, who time and again pledged to Americans that he would restore norms and respect for the rule of law after Trump’s first term in office, ultimately used his position to help his son, breaking his public pledge to Americans that he would do no such thing.

In June, Biden categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters as his son faced trial in the Delaware gun case, “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”

As recently as Nov. 8, days after Trump’s victory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying, “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no.”

Biden’s FBI Reportedly Altering Murder Data to Suit Gun Violence Narrative.

In October, Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) broke the news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had stealth-revised its reported violent crime data for 2022 to show a 4.5% increase, rather than the originally reported 2.1% decrease, for that year. Among other things, that adjustment added 1,699 more murders for 2022. Given that the vast majority of murder crimes are reported, Lott asks, “How do you miss 1,699 murders?”

Now, another source, Just Facts Daily (JFD), a “research institute dedicated to publishing facts about public policies,” has done a dive into homicide reporting and uncovered what appears to be an unusually large number of “homicides recorded on death certificates that are not reported as murders by Biden’s FBI.”

As context, the federal Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics explains that the United States relies on “two national data collection systems to track detailed information on homicides: the [FBI’s] Supplementary Homicide Reports and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Fatal Injury Reports.” The Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) are part of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, while the Fatal Injury Reports are developed from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), a public health-based resource maintained at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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How We Know Guns Aren’t Albuquerque’s Problem

When New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham took her animosity toward the Second Amendment and ramped it up to 11, trying to ban all lawful carry in Albuquerque, she said it was in response to the rampant violent crime in the city. She called it a public health crisis and used the draconian restrictions we saw during COVID-19 to justify this particular draconian measure.

And, of course, she got slapped down over it.

But it’s clear that she never got the message regarding the right to keep and bear arms nor the fact that while the city does have a problem, it’s not guns that are causing it.

In fact, it’s probably something else fueling a lot of the problems.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office seized 65,000 fentanyl pills and three guns on Tuesday during a search of an apartment off East Central.

Richard Cortez, 44, who authorities say lived in the apartment, is charged with drug trafficking and three counts of possession of a firearm by a felon.

Michael Herrera, 18, who was inside the apartment at the time of the raid, is charged with resisting, evading or obstructing an officer for not surrendering “for over 30 minutes.”

Both men were booked into the Metropolitan Detention Center. Neither man had an attorney listed in online court records.

Court records show Cortez was sentenced to prison for drug trafficking in 2010 and for years afterward bounced between prison and probation after repeated violations.

In 2016, a BCSO deputy arrested Cortez on felony drug possession, according to court records. Cortez faced another potential prison stretch, but the case was dismissed, and Cortez was set free after the deputy didn’t show up for court.

Prosecutors filed a motion to detain Cortez until trial following Tuesday’s seizure, calling him “dangerous.”

“The defendant is a major dealer of fentanyl in the Albuquerque area,” according to the motion. “He had three firearms ready for use.”

How could he possibly have gotten guns? Gun control laws are in place to prevent people like this from getting guns, after all.

Then again, there are laws intended to prevent people from getting 65,000 fentanyl pills, too, and we see how well they worked.

See, the issue with most violent crime is that the violence is often ancillary to something else. In the 1990s, when the homicide rate was so ridiculous, it was gangs and drugs. To some degree, that’s still the case. Convicted felons aren’t reformed, they’re just put back on the streets where they seek out ways to continue with their previous criminal endeavors.

In this case, Cortez was a known felon with a long and prodigious history as a criminal, only to be able to become a “major dealer of fentanyl in the Albuquerque area.”

It looks to me like putting him right back on the streets time and time again wasn’t really doing all that much, and knowing a deputy didn’t show up for court in 2016, which got his case dismissed makes it that much worse.

Let’s remember something, folks. If fentanyl is so heavily controlled–and yes, it is–and people like this jackwagon can get it, why does anyone believe you can keep someone like this disarmed? What makes them think that suddenly a law will be passed that will make it so he can’t get firearms from any source?

It’s insane.

Then again, what about gun control isn’t?

And This Is Why the Public Doesn’t Trust the DOJ

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has released its annual report identifying the top management and performance challenges currently facing the federal agency.

Among the OIG’s findings, a lack of public trust in the DOJ remains a “longstanding” problem, Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz announced Monday, and strengthening such trust poses “a significant challenge.”

However, in its 59-page report highlighting incidents that have contributed to the department’s confidence crisis, the DOJ watchdog largely overlooked transgressions under the Biden-Harris administration, which still reigns. Instead, the OIG looked farther back to Trump’s time in office, his first term, as we head into the president-elect’s second.

Based on the OIG’s oversight work, the inspector general’s office blames a medley of Trump-era episodes as reasons why public trust in the institution has eroded over time.

First, the OIG report points to public statements that former federal prosecutor David Freed, a Trump-nominated U.S. attorney, made about an ongoing criminal probe into alleged ballot tampering during the 2020 presidential election.

Freed had said several mail-in military ballots, mostly cast for Donald Trump, were discarded (tossed into the trash) at a Pennsylvania election office in pro-Trump Luzerne County.

Ultimately, the OIG concluded that Freed’s comments “unnecessarily inserted partisanship into the investigation” and “created a false impression” that the incident was “much more serious than DOJ leadership knew it to be.”

The report also calls attention to another OIG inquiry into claims that senior DOJ appointees placed “political pressure” on the trial team prosecuting Roger Stone, a close confidant of Trump, so that they lowered their sentencing recommendations.

While the OIG did not find evidence that the prosecution’s revision was the result of “improper political considerations,” the report chastises the “unusual substantive involvement,” though not prohibited by law or policy, of then-Attorney General Bill Barr and other high-level DOJ officials in the second sentencing recommendation’s preparation and filing.

Their embroilment in the case against the president’s political ally “affected the public’s perception of the Department’s integrity, independence, and objectivity,” the OIG says.

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All this was, was political shenanigans to try and shame Trump’s political support into running away, so he’d drop out of running for reelection. If Trump would drop, he’d be way too old to run in 2028, so he’d be done. Trump apparently figured it out, and here we are.

Jack Smith’s End Of Lawfare Charges Against Trump Proves It Was A Political Witch Hunt.

Special Counsel Jack Smith said on Monday that the evidence against now President-elect Donald Trump in the 2020 election case is rock-solid and that no one is “above the law” — but that he’d nonetheless drop the charges against Trump.

But if that’s the case, why bail out now? Surely if Trump is really the criminal mastermind Smith alleges he is, there’s no conscionable way he could drop the charges. The reality is that Smith knows this was never about the law. It was about leftists using lawfare to prosecute and ideally jail their political opponent.

“After careful consideration, the Department has determined that OLC’s [Office of Legal Counsel] prior opinions concerning the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated,” Smith’s filing stated.

Smith still made sure to add a throw-away-line that the decision to drop the case did not “turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind.” But, Smith added, the Department of Justice concluded that pursuing the case would hinder Trump’s ability to lead.

Trump was indicted by Smith for questioning the administration of the 2020 election. The Supreme Court torpedoed Smith’s efforts in July when it ruled 6-3 that a president has “absolute immunity” for “actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority” and “at least presumptive immunity” for all “official acts.” The court sent several questions pertaining to the charges against Trump back to the lower court to determine whether his actions constituted an official act. Smith then filed a superseding indictment against Trump, refusing to let the case go when he thought it would hurt Trump’s chances of winning the election.

The Trump-Vance transition team celebrated the decision in a statement.

“Today’s decision by the DOJ ends the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump, and is a major victory for the rule of law,” Trump communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement. “The American People and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.”

Smith isn’t the only Democrat to admit that the lawfare was purely political.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreed on Tuesday to indefinitely delay Trump’s sentencing in the case regarding Trump’s alleged payments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen was purportedly instructed to pay pornographer Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about an alleged affair (which is not illegal). But Bragg claimed that Trump’s payments to Cohen (which were classified as legal payments) should have been classified as campaign expenses, alleging that the payments were made to influence the 2016 election. Cohen, however, testified that Trump was concerned that the allegations would negatively affect his family after they first surfaced in 2011.

Where Does Pam Bondi Stand on Gun Control?

Donald Trump’s second choice for Attorney General is likely to find a warmer reception in the Senate than Matt Gaetz did, but she could face some hostility from Second Amendment organizations over some of her previous positions on guns and gun control.

Pam Bondi served as Florida’s attorney general for eight years, and was in office when the legislature crafted its response to the 2018 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

“In a time of crisis, it’s about finding common ground, and that’s what Gov. Scott has done,” Bondi told Fox Business host Stuart Varney in March of that year, as the Florida legislature was in the midst of passing legislation that, among other things, raised the age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21 and established a “red flag” law in the state.

During that same interview, Bondi praised Trump’s response to the Parkland shootings and expressed her hope that he could be a “mediator” with federal lawmakers.

“Hopefully Congress will follow Florida’s lead and what Gov. Scott has been doing here in Florida and all of us working so well together,” she told Varney as the interview concluded.

Even before Bondi tacitly embraced “red flag” laws and prohibiting young adults from purchasing firearms at retail, some 2A activists in Florida weren’t big fans of Bondi’s tenure as AG. Florida Carry’s general counsel Eric Friday expressed relief when current AG Ashley Moody took over the position in 2019.

“Ms. Bondi made numerous anti-gun decisions,” Friday said.

Bondi opposed a semiautomatic weapon ban in Connecticut after the Sandy Hook shooting and defended Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law. But she also argued that stand your ground shouldn’t be used by police officers to defend their shootings.

In 2013, Bondi also defended the state’s law that prohibits people from openly carrying weapons, pitting her against Friday’s organization. Her handling of it prompted Hammer to reassure NRA members that Bondi was “a friend of our organizations.”

Bondi also defended the Legislature’s gun-control measures passed in the wake of the Parkland shooting, including a provision that outlawed anyone younger than 21 from buying a rifle or shotgun.

The NRA challenged the law and asked that a 19-year-old plaintiff be allowed to remain anonymous in the case so she could avoid potential harassment. After Bondi fought it, Hammer accused her of “bullying.”

Moody, it should be noted, has continued to defend the post-Parkland gun controls adopted by the Florida legislature and Scott. The NRA’s lawsuit challenging the age-based gun ban is currently pending in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, with oral arguments taking place last month.

Bondi is not an out-and-proud gun grabber, but she does come with some gun control baggage that’s likely to come up during her meet-and-greets with senators as well as her confirmation hearings. Would she, for instance, wholeheartedly defend the federal prohibition on handgun sales for adults younger than 21? Does she continue to believe that Congress should implement a federal gun violence restraining order like the one adopted in Florida six years ago? Would she side with the plaintiffs challenging semi-auto bans in Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey, California, and a handful of other states? And where does Bondi come down on the issue of restoring Second Amendment rights to those convicted of non-violent felony offenses?

So far none of the major 2A groups have commented on Bondi’s selection on social media, either in support or opposition to her nomination. Whether she’ll face any formal objections from Second Amendment organizations remains to be seen, and they may very well be holding off until they hear what Bondi herself has to say about the right to keep and bear arms as the confirmation process plays out.