January 13, 2025
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“President Trump is a felon without a punishment.”
That was the 11AM Friday top-of-the-hour lead radio news headline on WBAP Radio in Dallas, the same station that runs conservative programming such as Dan Bongino and Mark Levin.
If Attorney General Merrick Garland and “Special Counsel” Jack Smith (and, come to think of it, presiding Judge Juan Merchan, who also acted as a de facto prosecutor) were listening to this, they must have thought, “Mission accomplished.”
Famed civil rights Attorney Alan Dershowitz will remember this as perhaps the low point for both our “justice” system and our media. As we discussed last week, he said he would forever refuse to call President Trump a “convicted felon,” noting that the President’s constitutional rights were thoroughly trashed and also that he is simply not guilty. Trump didn’t DO anything criminal.
And Dershowitz is joined by millions of other Americans who are horrified at what the legal system can do to an individual of their choosing. If they can do this to a billionaire President of the United States, we know they can destroy us. They can treat anyone in America as callously and even hatefully as they have treated Rudy Giuliani. Even if such a case is eventually reversed on appeal, as we expect Trump’s to be, “the process” is something they can turn on you to ruin your life. This is reminiscent of what Sen. Chuck Schumer famously said about the intel community, that they have “six ways from Sunday” for getting back at you. (The IRS does, too --- a story for another day.)
But in doing this to the incoming President of the United States, the weaponized legal system has shown itself utterly for what it is. “This convicted felon strategy is going to blow up in their faces, Wile. E. Coyote-style,” Bongino’s guest host “Producer Jim” said on Friday’s show about 15 minutes after the startling WBAP bulletin.
Judge Merchan said something almost beyond belief during Trump’s “sentencing” hearing last week, admitting that the case was “unique and remarkable” but that “once the courtroom doors were closed, the trial itself was no more special, unique and extraordinary than the other 32 cases in this courthouse.”
Oh, really? As Jonathan Turley said in his most recent column, “If so, that is a chilling indictment of the entire New York court system.”
Turley once described this case as “based on a ridiculous legal theory,” “more inflated than the Goodyear blimp” and also a “legal Frankenstein,” meaning that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg unearthed a case from 2016 and “combining parts from both state and federal codes,” brought it back to life. And Merchan allowed a jury to convict without even having to agree on what had occurred in the case. (We’ll never know what their reasoning was on the “underlying crime.”)
As we discussed last week, civil rights attorney Alan Dershowitz has slammed the case and said he’d never call Trump “a convicted felon,” as he did nothing wrong. It is the New York legal system that is GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY.
“While heralded in court by Bragg’s office as the triumph of legal process, it is in fact the rawest and most grotesque form of lawfare,” Turley wrote. “Many will be blamed as the creators of this monster but few will escape that blame, including Merchan himself.”
And yet the Supreme Court let Judge Merchan go forward with the sentencing (actually the non-sentencing). One might be tempted to think this isn’t so bad, as it does allow Trump to go forward with his appeal. But there were major issues overlooked, as Mark Levin pointed out in his monologue Sunday night, such as who has jurisdiction in cases like this, the federal government or the state?
https://www.foxnews.com/video/
The guest who followed, UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo, concurred with Levin’s keen disappointment in the Supreme Court, saying, “You have a state here, attacking someone who’s the President-elect...The Supremacy Clause is supposed to stop states from interfering with the valid operations of the federal government. It’s almost as if Lincoln, after he was elected, tried to get to Washington DC, and Maryland decided to arrest him on his way to the Capitol.”
“...You’ve [also] got a state trying to take over the federal government’s authority to enforce the election laws,” he said. At the federal level, the DOJ and Federal Election Commission both looked at this case and decided not to prosecute. (Our thought: So, why didn’t the Biden DOJ tell Bragg, “Hey, this is our beat! Your state shouldn’t be hijacking it!” Instead, it was more of a collaboration, as a member of Biden’s DOJ actually took what in effect was a career demotion to infiltrate the state-level prosecution of Trump in New York.)
Yoo, who clerked for Justice Thomas, also wondered how future Presidents might think about their time in office, “knowing that there might be a Juan Merchan out there, an Alvin Bragg out there, going to twist state laws, try to attack them both before they’re in office and then, as they’ve been saying openly, once Donald Trump leaves office…”
Yoo pointed to the Court’s inconsistency, as they previously said the President had immunity for acts he takes as part of his official duties, even criticizing at length the prosecution’s use of information pertaining to these acts --- “privileged” information --- in their case against him. But then, months later, they let the sentencing go forward anyway.
Yoo’s concerned that the left has no plans to give up on lawfare; he sees this in Merchan’s behavior at the end of his case and also Jack Smith’s insistence on releasing a final report, even though his cases were dismissed. “What’s gonna stop, every four years, some DA, some state attorney general, from launching similar investigations of all the major Republican political candidates?” They’ve “crossed the constitutional Rubicon” and have seen the Supreme Court isn’t likely to intervene.
In a related point, Yoo suggested that the new DOJ, under Attorney General Pam Bondi, launch a civil rights investigation “into what’s going on in New York State, and...New York City,” referring to the prosecution of heroes such as Daniel Penny while “giving a pass to hundreds if not thousands of violent felons.” They might even consider cutting off funds, if that’s what it takes to fix the problem.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/
Four treasured originalists on the Court --- Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch --- see the need to take a look at the case because it’s an infringement on federal jurisdiction. (Heck, the whole case was taken on to interfere with a federal election.) The other justices seem to be missing this.
A video clip from back in May featuring Kash Patel --- now Trump’s nominee for FBI director --- has gone newly viral, as he’s discussing the highly conflicted Judge Merchan and his politically-connected daughter. In this brief clip with FOX NEWS’ Trace Gallagher, which also happens to include Trump’s AG nominee Pam Bondi, Patel calls for subpoenas to be issued to Merchan’s daughter and others at her company, “who made $15+ million from the illicit information pouring out of her father’s courtroom” during Trump’s trial. He wants to see bank records, “because money doesn’t lie.” No, it’s about the only thing that doesn’t lie in DC. We can’t wait to see some truth.
Moving on to “Special Counsel” Jack Smith, of course you know he’s been planning to resign and return to the International Criminal Court --- “The Hague” --- in The Netherlands. And, yes, according to a footnote in a filing by Judge Aileen Cannon Saturday, he did resign on Friday, after concluding his investigations of Trump and turning in Volumes 1 and 2 of his “final report” to the DOJ on Tuesday.
Aside: Speaking of The Hague, did you know that’s the same rogue international criminal court that indicted and issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes? Any ICC-member country --- which we are NOT, of course --- is obligated to pick up Netanyahu if he travels there and jail him, pending trial. Not kidding --- this could happen to Netanyahu if he travels to Britain or France.
According to Ben Shapiro, this court (ridiculously) claims jurisdiction even over countries that are not signatories. Jack Smith surely fits right in at the ICC.
More discussion, with Mark Levin, here. (It might seem as though we’re oversampling Levin today, but it all fits our discussion to a “T.”)
https://www.foxnews.com/video/
So, the public release of Volume 1 of the report, the one about the Mar-A-Lago “classified documents” case, has been delayed indefinitely by the DOJ, as Trump’s co-defendants are still in litigation. Judge Cannon had already put a three-day delay on releasing either volume, so Sunday would have been the first permissible day to see Smith’s J6 volume. But as of this writing early Monday, the J6 volume has not been released.
When it is, keep in mind that Smith can and will say ANYTHING HE WANTS in this report, and he’ll leave out anything he wants, too. The idea is to be as unflattering as possible to President Trump. And since such attempts in the past have still not deprived Trump of a second term in the White House, this one might be the nastiest yet.
https://dailycaller.com/2025/
As investigative reporter Julie Kelly writes, Trump’s attorneys learned of Smith’s final report only through stories in the media. When they were finally allowed to read the document, they immediately sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland outlining their objections to its release.
There now appear to be some complications even with releasing the “J6” volume, as it also makes reference to the “classified documents” case. As Kelly says, oops. Our guess is that this is why the “J6” volume didn’t come out on Sunday.
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