By Mike Huckabee
April 5, 2023
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BY MIKE HUCKABEE
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With gratitude,
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9 NIV
Trump arraigned; indictment unsealed: Much ado about...THIS??
Before we get to the laughably flimsy contents of DA Bragg’s indictment and what a sad joke Tuesday was, I’d like to talk about something that really is concerning.
While FOX NEWS commentators were filling air time before Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday afternoon, law professor Jonathan Turley mentioned that a new attorney, Todd Blanche, just brought in to head Trump’s legal team, had left his law firm to do it.
“It’s a very sad moment,” Turley said, “if he left his law firm because the firm did not want to have a partner representing a former President of the United States. We’ve seen a great backlash against firms that have represented Republicans or represented Donald Trump. And that itself really slaps at the underlying principles of our legal system. You know, he should not have to resign from a firm to represent a former President of the United States. But that’s the Age of Rage that we live in.”
We’ve been trying to piece together the backstory. Did Blanche HAVE to resign his firm --- Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, the oldest law firm in New York City --- to represent Trump or did he have personal reasons for doing so? An internal memo obtained by POLITICO offers a clue:
“I have been asked to represent Trump in the recently charged DA case,” he wrote, “and after much thought/consideration, I have decided it is the best thing for me to do and an opportunity I should not pass up. OBVIOUSLY DOING THIS AS A PARTNER AT CADWALADER WAS NOT AN OPTION [emphasis ours], so I have had to make the difficult choice to leave the firm.”
In the past, Blanche has defended Trump associates. As reported at LAW360, he successfully defended Paul Manafort against charges of residential mortgage fraud by the Manhattan DA. (Cyrus Vance?) He won the case on double jeopardy grounds, and it was upheld on appeal. He also represented Igor Fruman in another white collar case; Fruman is described as a “former associate” of Rudy Giuliani.
So, even after defending Manafort, Blanche knows he “obviously” can’t remain a partner at his firm if he’s going to defend President Trump. What does that say about his firm --- and the legal profession in 2023?
……
We like what Eric Trump messaged to FOX NEWS reporter Bill Hemmer (now also posted on Twitter) just as the arraignment was getting underway. “Alvin Bragg has shut down the entire city, called up 38,000 NYPD police officers, closed down the FDR [major highway], and (is) spending an estimated $200 million of city funds for a $130,000 NDA [non-disclosure agreement]. I never thought I would see this political corruption in our country.”
No member of Trump’s family attended the hearing. A somber Trump made no statement either before or after the proceedings, but of course we know he pleaded not guilty to all charges. As we watched overhead video of the Trump motorcade leaving the courthouse for LaGuardia, former Trump AG Bill Barr said one reason Blanche might have decided to take the case is that he saw it as, ultimately, “a winner.” Barr’s rationale: “At some point, someone who isn’t infected by the craziness of our age is gonna come in and straighten this thing out, at some level of the judiciary --- even if it goes into the federal appellate system, as it all turns on a federal statute. I think it would ultimately come to that. So at some point, some judge is gonna stand up and do what’s right.”
But even if this case ends technically in a win for Trump, Barr regrets what has happened to the Office of the Presidency with this relentless lawfare. “The powers of the presidency have been eroded,” he said, “by these cases of the last few years.” And of course, it goes on and on. And with Trump associates being called to testify, “there’s a tremendous chilling effect on robust conversation and give-and-take debates within the Executive Branch,” he said. “That’ll lead to worse government.”
Kira Davis at REDSTATE has a similar observation, saying that this is “the genesis of a political tit-for-tat that can now have no ending.”
https://redstate.com/kiradavis/2023/04/04/mark-this-day-n726486
Something else happened Tuesday while we waited outside the courtroom: Eric Trump announced that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had just awarded his father $121,000 in attorneys’ fees from Stormy Daniels. This is in addition to the $500,000 she already owes him. What a sad irony on this day. (Incidentally, this day was also the best time to bury it under all the other Trump news.) I’d say that since Daniels is raking in so much money right now selling “Stormy” T-shirts and mugs, she should have no trouble paying Trump back.
Judge Juan Merchan did not impose a gag order but said to Trump and his team that he didn’t want to see any more of “this,” a reference to tweeting-pictures-of-Trump-holding-bat-next-to-photo-of-Bragg’s head. (The prosecutors had reportedly brought it into court to argue for a gag order, saying Trump had incited violence.) If the judge saw any more of it, he said, he might reconsider the gag order. But Trump’s defense made a convincing argument that Trump, in the face of selective leaks, has the right to defend himself.
The FOX NEWS reporter who was in the courtroom, Jay Gibson, said the prosecutors cited a potential conflict of interest with attorney Joe Tacopina serving on Trump’s team, stemming from communications they said he’d had with Daniels. Tacopina denied ever meeting with her or speaking with her, saying she’d called his office looking to hire him and spoke only to a paralegal.
Also, we learned that prosecutors want this to go to trial in January 2024, which oh-so-coincidentally ties up Trump during major primary season for the ‘24 presidential election. The defense team want to push it to later. On December 4 of this year, there will be another in-person hearing with Judge Merchan, during which he’ll give his decisions on these motions. Merchan, incredibly, insists that Trump be there --- oh, no! Not another $200 million production.
Change of venue was apparently not yet brought up. Presumably they’re working on getting the case dismissed first.
Trump was the last one to walk into the hearing room, we’re told, and it was “pretty intense,” though the judge seemed “very measured.” There were law enforcement officials standing at the both ends of each row of seats. On his way out of the room, Trump “definitely glared” at DA Bragg.
The indictment itself held no surprises; it’s just what we expected after the illegal leaks from Bragg’s office. FOX NEWS contributor Harold Ford, a Democrat, did say later that “it reads like a daytime soap opera. As one former Brooklyn prosecutor told the NEW YORK POST, “The full statement that they are trying to make is that he [Trump] used these underhanded tactics to kill negative press but there is no crime in that. Instead, they are charging him for the business records...he’s being charged with really bad accounting.”
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/trumps-34-felony-charges-carry-a-136-year-maximum-sentence
Bragg has broken it down into 34 counts of creating a false record, one for each reimbursement payment to Michael Cohen --- for payments made by Cohen that, according to attorney Joe Costello, had no involvement from Trump --- to make it look more substantial (a lawyers’ trick to bulk-up thin cases called “stacking”). Media hacks were eager to play along with the illusion.
The indictment says that records were kept this way with intent to conceal another crime, but doesn’t even specify what that crime was.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/trumps-34-felony-charges-carry-a-136-year-maximum-sentence
We can only assume they’re talking about the alleged violation of federal election law. Andrew McCarthy notes that if the prosecution has withheld the crime that he’s alleged to have concealed, “then they haven’t laid out what the charge is.” He suspects they might have done this because they know they don’t have jurisdiction to enforce federal law, and thinks that this fact alone “would be fatal to the prosecution,” he says. It would certainly be the basis of a motion to dismiss.
(Later in the day, McCarthy noted that the faulty recording of those payments couldn’t be tied to the 2016 election because they weren’t even put on the books until 2017!)
Tacopina put it this way after the hearing: “A state prosecutor is prosecuting a federal election law violation that doesn’t exist according to the federal election law officials. It’s as simple as that.”
As it turns out, Bragg has nothing more than we thought he had, and he’s having to stretch the law even farther than we thought he’d have to.
When DA Bragg came out afterwards for his press briefing (complete with nifty flowchart), he was asked about the lack of specificity on the ‘other’ crime. Bragg said, “The indictment doesn’t specify because the law does not so require.” WHAT??
Well, we know Bragg doesn’t have much experience charging anyone with a felony, but this is ridiculous. In his attempted explanation of this major deficiency, Bragg has proved once again that Trump Derangement Syndrome is a brain-eating disease. Alvin Bragg is a laughingstock.
Here are some of the withering comments from legal experts...
And here are more exasperated experts, piling on at LEGAL INSURRECTION. A must-read…
Incredibly, even the pundits at CNN were unimpressed…
Nick Arama at REDSTATE dissected the indictment and had the same view as many others quoted here. She says it’s “the turkey we thought it was”…
Here, she focuses on the illegal leaks from Bragg’s office…
McCarthy said that “if the judge does his job right, the case should be dismissed, and it actually should be dismissed quickly.” He said “this is actually worse than what we anticipated.” They need to show that Trump had these false business records to conceal another crime, but they haven’t showed in the indictment what that crime even was, so the defendant can’t defend himself against it, nor can he protect himself later from double jeopardy. “I would dismiss it on its face,” he said, “because it fails to state a crime.”
Judge Jeanine Pirro later agreed, calling it “garbage.” Former U. S. Attorney Brett Tolman said, “I’ve never seen an indictment like this,” adding that it took him a while to figure out what the real crime is. It’s “being Donald Trump.”
Attorney Adam Mill at American Greatness also wrote a must-read analysis that breaks down Bragg’s flimsy case, showing how it fails to prove or even state any crime that Trump committed, and with its circular arguments, “begins to eat its own tail.”
Here’s what Trump’s attorneys had to say after the arraignment…
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/donald-trumps-lawyers-blast-indictment-after-arraignment
The NEW YORK POST is continuing to do live updates on this story
https://nypost.com/2023/04/03/donald-trump-indictment-news-live-updates
We’ll let Trump himself close out this discussion. Here’s what he told supporters after he got back to Mar-A-Lago later on Tuesday. He put it bluntly: “Our country is going to hell.” (Full speech at end.)
………..
BIG RELATED NEWS: On Tuesday, Biden said nothing --- only grinned inscrutably--- when asked about Trump’s arraignment and what it might be doing to the country. But Mike Davis, founder and president of Article III, alleges a direct connection between the White House, DOJ and Bragg’s office, by way of a liaison named Matt Colangelo. He went on Jesse Watters’ FOX NEWS show Tuesday night to talk about the man who appears to be the driving force behind getting this case prosecuted.
THE GATEWAY PUNDIT had reported on Davis’ allegations Monday. Davis says attorney Colangelo is the “point man” responsible for the get-Trump radicals in New York law enforcement. He has quite a resume: he worked at the Obama White House as an economic adviser (while the Trump campaign was being spied on), at the ‘Justice’ Department under Eric Holder and later under Biden, at the Labor Department under Tom Perez (who went on to chair the DNC), and just a few months ago was hired by DA Bragg, who’d taken a lot of heat from the left for not indicting Trump. Colangelo “appears to have been brought in to indict President Trump on whatever he could come up with.”
According to Davis, “they essentially created a job for him, to ‘get Trump.’” They looked into everything they possibly could, and sued the Trump organization “constantly.” Colangelo also signed off on the raid at Mar-A-Lago. Davis says this criminal charge by the DA’s office was “a political hit to take out Trump.” The timing of it might have something to do with the “smoking gun” evidence that Joe, James and Hunter Biden took millions of dollars from Chinese and Ukrainian oligarchs.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/jesse-watters-trump-probe-such-hit-job
This is a developing story --- more soon.
New Twitter, Better Than Old Twitter
I’m liking this new version of Twitter, where users get to fact-check the “fact-checkers.” Turns out they are a lot better at it, which is why they didn’t let Washington Post “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler get away with accusing Donald Trump’s sons of trying to intimidate the judge in his case by posting a photo of his daughter. What they actually posted was a link to an article pointing out the judge's obvious conflicts of interest, like his donations to Biden and a “Resist Trump” group and the fact that his daughter worked for the Biden campaign. The photo of her only appeared because it was in the linked article, not because the Trump sons posted it.
On the new Twitter, attempts by establishment news outlets to twist the news and censor voices that contradict their false narratives end up not only failing, but drawing more attention to the original story. I like that. But then, unlike leftists, I have nothing to fear from as many people as possible learning the truth about current events.
Related: On Tuesday, Twitter officially labeled NPR as “US state media.” “State-affiliated media” means media outlets in which the government “exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.” The reaction on the left was the predictable outrage. The reaction from me was, “Sounds about right.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/
Besides, NPR has bigger problems to worry about, now that it’s been accused of being a hotbed of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia.
https://hotair.com/david-
Facing a $30 million sponsorship shortfall, NPR laid off 84 employees and canceled four podcasts. Some of the workers affected, being the type of people who would work for NPR, immediately claimed that they were targeted for being queer, people of color, etc. When CEO John Lansing urged them to “turn down the rhetoric” and not attack executives by name in a meeting with hundreds of attendees, he was accused of offensive “tone-policing,” and the critics pulled up an all-too-typical NPR radio segment titled, “When Civility Is Used As A Cudgel Against People Of Color.”
Some of the loudest critics, from the canceled but accurately-named podcast “Louder Than A Riot,” backed down after it was pointed out the layoffs resulted in no change to NPR’s identity group breakdown of 42% people of color and 58% women (so they’re anti-men!)
Or maybe they realized that since their podcast was self-described as being “about misogynoir queer, trans, Black women face in hip-hop,” it might've been canceled because literally nobody listened to it.
Bad News: Two elections reveal a dark future for the nation
The Trump indictment wasn’t the only blow to the foundations of America that came on Tuesday. There were also a couple of elections that bode very badly for the future of the nation.
First, there was the Chicago mayoral runoff election. Chicagoans threw out Lori Lightfoot after just one term, despite her checking an impressive three identity group boxes (black, female, lesbian – but sadly, not “competent.”) And you have to hand it to Chicago voters. It can’t have been easy, but they actually found a replacement who might be even worse.
Chicago voters faced a choice between two Democrats (Chicago hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1931, obviously): moderate Paul Vallas, who was backed by business groups and the police union; and “progressive” (some say “socialist” or even “Marxist”) Brandon Johnson, a radical, race-baiting, pro-abortion teacher’s union advocate who wants to take millions “wasted on policing and incarceration” and redirect it to public services. The voters said, “Hold muh beer!” and narrowly elected Johnson. Johnson said he would be a “voice for the working people,” who will need someone to talk for them since so many of them are being shot dead.
At this point, it appears that the only hope for Chicago is if the counting of mail-in and absentee ballots helps Vallas overcome Johnson’s 16,000-vote lead, but don’t count on it.
I wish anyone in Chicago (and why are you still there?) good luck in selling your home or business, since the conditions you thought couldn’t possibly get worse than they were under Lightfoot are likely about to get worse. And how bad can that be? Consider this:
In 1929, a gang mass slaying in Chicago became known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. It was so shocking, it’s still used as a synonym for any horrific act of mass murder. But do you know how many people were killed in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre? Seven.
Here’s a site that tracks violent crime in Chicago today.
Seven shootings would be a relatively quiet Sunday night in Chicago these days. So far this year, there have been 453 people shot and wounded and another 122 shot and killed, and it’s only April 5th. I pray I’m wrong, but I fear that soon, the only good thing we’ll be able to say about Chicago under Johnson is that every day is like Valentine’s Day…of 1929.
The other election that bodes very badly for America, and the 2024 election in particular, came in Wisconsin, which elects its Supreme Court justices. The court had a 4-3 conservative majority, but the retirement of conservative Justice Patience Roggensack led to a fierce contest that sparked a record of nearly $29 million spent on this race, much of it in the form of vicious attack ads. In the end, Democrat-backed Janet Protasiewicz defeated conservative Daniel Kelly, swinging the state Supreme Court to a 4-3 liberal majority.
Protasiewicz was, of course, backed by Planned Parenthood and out-of-state leftist billionaires including (wait for it) George Soros. So pro-life groups will also be big losers of this election while, as one pro-life activist put it, innocent pre-born babies “will face a death penalty.”
To give you an idea of how dirty her campaign was, the loser, especially in a judicial race, generally concedes gracefully. But Kelly said, “I wish in circumstances like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent, but I do not have a worthy opponent,” and he blasted Protasiewicz’s campaign as “beneath contempt” for launching “rancid slanders” against him.
This is very bad news for Republicans for 2024 because it means attempts to impose election integrity measures will likely no longer be upheld by the high court, which had previously banned most ballot drop boxes (not that those are EVER used for vote fraud; why, perish the thought, you Big Liar!) Expect challenges, likely successful, to voter ID and other laws designed to prevent vote fraud in Wisconsin, a vital swing state.
If you are a Republican in Wisconsin, I don’t want to hear any excuses for not voting in 2024. We will need turnout of every last voter. And I’m sure by then, voting will be incredibly easy for literally anyone.
Good news: A Party switch in North Carolina
Since I hate to be a complete Debbie Downer today, I do have some good news for you. North Carolina state Rep. Tricia Cotham has switched parties from Democrat to Republican.
As this article explains, this is a big deal because while the Republicans enjoy large majorities, so it won’t change the balance of power, it will give the GOP a veto-proof majority over Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper, who has repeatedly vetoed Republican legislation.
And more good news: that article reports that there are other Democrats also considering switching. And these aren’t just opportunistic political maneuvers. Cotham is a lifelong Democrat and second-generation Democrat office holder from a blue district. But she, like many of her fellow moderate Democrats, was pushed to make this move by the vicious treatment they receive from the party’s radical base whenever they fail to toe the far-left line. She says she’s been called names on Twitter, her family has been attacked, and a woman cursed her in a store when she was shopping with her son. The last straw came when she was attacked just for putting American flag and praying hands symbols on her car and social media.
Rep. Cotham said the “modern-day Democratic party has become unrecognizable to me and others across the state,” and “I will not be controlled by anyone.”
These Democrats aren’t leaving the Party, they’re being driven away by the far left’s nasty, threatening behavior, rabid anti-Americanism and blatant intolerance. They’re following the path Ronald Reagan took when he said he used to be a Democrat, but he didn’t leave the party, it left him.
The Three Cs That Made America Great: Christianity, Capitalism and the Constitution
America faces a war of values that will determine its future and likely decide if it will continue as a great nation on the world stage. Mike Huckabee and Steve Feazel sound a needed alarm to Christians and conservatives to answer the call to action and push back against the forces that desire to move America from its heritage and founding principles. It is time for God's people to take an active role in the political arena, not with violence, but with votes and voices that proclaim and defend the values that made our nation the brightest light of freedom the world has ever known.
Learn more about my book: The Three Cs That Made America Great: Christianity, Capitalism and the Constitution - Mike Huckabee
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