Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Court Beats Back New York State From Forcing Christian Adoption Agency to Allow Same-sex Parents to Adopt Their Kids

Monday, 12 September 2022 13:00
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 12, 2022:  

The same court that originally upheld New York state in its determination to force New Hope Family Services — a privately-funded Christian adoption agency that has placed more than 1,000 children with traditional parents since its founding in 1965 — to comply with a new state law demanding placement of children with unmarried or same-sex parents was forced to reverse that decision last week.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Mae A. D’Agostino found cogent reasons to reverse her previous ruling, thanks to demands from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that she do so.

Initially she upheld the complaint of New York State’s Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) against New Hope that the Christian agency — by refusing to place children with unmarried and/or same-sex couples, according to their Christian beliefs — violated the state’s new law. She found that New Hope’s policy was “discriminatory and impermissible” under that law.

For years New York prohibited adoption by any couple other than a heterosexual, married couple. In 2010, however, the state — reflecting the continued erosion of Christian, traditional values and their consequent replacement with secular, non-Christian values — reversed. It rewrote the law, allowing — not demanding — adoption agencies to place children with unmarried or same-sex parents.

Later, that law was turned into a demand. When the agency turned its attention and its new anti-Christian-religion animus toward New Hope, demanding that the agency change its policy, the agency sued.

They lost. But on appeal, they won. With the assistance of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a nonprofit law firm focused on providing legal assistance in cases like this one, the appeals court demanded that Judge D’Agostino reverse her previous decision.

Which she did, in spades:

“‘At the heart of the First Amendment’ is the principle ‘that each person should decide for himself or herself the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence.’”…

 

“Consistent with this principle, freedom of speech means that the ‘government may not prohibit the expression of an idea,’ even one that society finds ‘offensive or disagreeable.’”…

 

“For much the same reason, [the] government also cannot tell people that there are things ‘they must say.’”…

 

“Thus, when [the] government ‘direct[ly] regulat[es] … speech’ by mandating that persons explicitly agree with government policy on a particular matter, it ‘plainly violate[s] the First Amendment.’”…

She concluded:

New Hope has demonstrated that it is entitled to a permanent injunction prohibiting the State of New York from requiring New Hope to provide adoption services to unmarried or same-sex couples.

 

First, New Hope has succeeded on the merits of its First Amendment claim against OCFS, as detailed above.

 

Second, “[t]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, even for minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.” [From Elrod v. Burns, 1976.]

As Douglass Dowty noted on Syracuse.com:

D’Agostino this week ruled in favor of New Hope after the higher court’s decision. She found that New Hope had a First Amendment right [after all] to deny adoptions to same-sex or unmarried couples.

The appeals court sending the case back to D’Agostino uncovered a “suspicion of religious animosity” by the state’s commission given the way it used the law as a bludgeon to force New Hope to violate its First Amendment rights. The court wrote:

It is plainly a serious step to order an authorized adoption agency such as New Hope — operating without complaint for 50 years, taking no government funding, successfully placing approximately 1,000 children, and with adoptions pending or being supervised — to close all its adoption operations.

ADF senior counsel Roger Brooks celebrated the legal victory:

The court’s decision is great news for children waiting to be adopted and for the parents partnering with New Hope Family Services to provide loving, stable homes.

 

New Hope is a private religious ministry that doesn’t take a dime from the government. Shutting down an adoption provider for its religious beliefs—needlessly and unconstitutionally reducing the number of agencies willing to help—benefits no one—certainly not children.

 

New Hope’s faith-guided services don’t coerce anyone and do nothing to interfere with other adoption providers who have different beliefs about family and the best interests of children.

 

The decision from the court simply allows New Hope to continue serving the community so that more kids find permanent homes, more adoptive parents welcome a new child, and more birth parents enjoy the exceptional support that New Hope has offered for decades.

 

The state’s attempt to shutter New Hope did nothing other than violate core rights protected by the First Amendment—the freedom to speak what you believe and the freedom to practice the teachings of your faith.

The victory is just one in the long, sustained, and accelerating battle between atheists and Christ and His followers. The office violating New Hope’s First Amendment rights said it was “deeply disappointed with the decision and maintains that discrimination on any basis should not be tolerated. We’re reviewing our options for next steps.”

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Stacey Abrams Looking to Lose to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, Again

Thursday, 08 September 2022 13:40
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, September 8, 2022:  

Stacey Abrams, the far-left Democrat who lost to Brian Kemp in the race for Georgia governor in 2018 by 55,000 votes, is poised to lose again. Only this time, the margin is likely to be vastly larger, perhaps by 200,000 votes or more.

She claimed in 2018 that she lost due to voter fraud, and to this date has refused to concede that race.

In every poll since January, however, she has trailed her Republican rival by anywhere between one and seven points (with the exception of a single “tie” by Quinnipiac in June). Even FiveThirtyEight, a licensed pollster with The New York Times, shows Abrams trailing Kemp by five percentage points.

This late in the game, that amounts to an insurmountable gap for Abrams to overcome in the next two months.

Funded mostly with out-of-state money, Abrams (who has raised $18 million more than her Republican opponent) has tried everything, including the get-out-the-vote campaign that narrowed the gap in 2018. But the black vote is going against her. She has played the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision card, hoping that the high court’s decision in Dobbs would galvanize her liberal pro-abortion base.

But nothing has worked, and now the national media has virtually surrendered to the political reality. The New York Times and other mainstream media are seriously questioning whether she can pull off a political miracle (or fraud sufficient to overcome the gap). Newsweek, for example, complained that “the New York Times and others are questioning whether Abrams risks falling flat in a second matchup against Brian Kemp in a race many observers believed winnable for Democrats.”

In trying to explain away the reason for Abrams’ impending second defeat in November, the media is blaming “sexism” — the fact that she is a female, and — if by some miracle she pulled out a victory in November — would be the first woman governor in Georgia history. As the Times suggested, “She is running in the Deep South for an office that has long been elusive to women and candidates of color.”

The real reason likely has nothing to do with color (she is black) or sex (she is female). It’s much more likely that her far-left political positions on issues voters care about are increasingly making her candidacy less and less attractive.

According to Discover the Networks and other sources, Abrams’ positions include:

  • Disparaging the free market private capitalist system that created the highest standard of living of any country in history;
  • Opposing the Second Amendment that continues to be the main bulwark against tyranny in the United States;
  • Supporting, through her board membership in the Marguerite Casey Foundation, efforts to defund the police;
  • Supporting red flag laws that would disarm law-abiding gun owners;
  • Supporting noncitizen voting;
  • Supporting reparations for slavery;
  • Supporting lowering the voting age to 16;
  • Abolishing the Electoral College;
  • Condemning America for its alleged “systemic racism”; and
  • Declaring that Donald Trump is a racist.

With a record like that, one wonders why the five-to-seven-point gap is so small.

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Judge: Fauci, WH Press Secretary Must Turn Over All Emails Pertaining to Government-media Collusion

Wednesday, 07 September 2022 17:14
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, September 7, 2022:  

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty demanded on Tuesday that additional documentation be provided to the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana in their lawsuit.

That lawsuit, filed back in May, contended that after

having threatened and cajoled social-media platforms [i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Google] for years to censor viewpoints and speakers disfavored by the left, senior government officials in the Executive Branch have moved into a phase of open collusion [with those platforms] under the Orwellian guise of halting so-called “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and “malinformation.”

Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana accused the Biden administration of suppressing the First Amendment-protected right to free speech on topics ranging from Covid lockdowns, vaccines, and masking to Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell.”

The court ruled that the plaintiffs Schmitt and Landry did have a case but limited discovery — the process that takes place after a lawsuit has been filed and before trial that provides information to lawyers to prepare for that trial — to just a few administration officials.

According to Doughty,

Plaintiffs allege they have, through expedited discovery, obtained information that federal officials and agencies not named in Plaintiffs’ Complaint and Amended Complaint, have also engaged in communications with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and censorship of disfavored speech.

 

These allegedly include the State Department, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), the Census Bureau, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the U.S. Treasury Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations [sic] (“FBI”).

He allowed those additional federal officials and agencies to be added to the original lawsuit, holding that

the requested information is obviously very relevant to Plaintiffs’ claims.

 

Dr. Fauci’s communications would be relevant to Plaintiffs’ allegations in reference to alleged suppression of speech relating to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin, and to alleged suppression of speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is included as well in the broadened discovery process:

This Court believes Plaintiffs are entitled to external communications by Jean-Pierre and Dr. Fauci in their capacities as White House Press Secretary and Chief Medical Advisor to the President to third-party social media platforms.

A lot of damning evidence has already surfaced, thanks to the discovery process and prior investigations into the government-media collusion. For example, in a May 5, 2021, press conference, Biden’s previous press secretary, Jen Psaki, flatly stated: “The President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation.”

During a July 15, 2021, press conference, Psaki admitted that “we are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff.” She added, “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread misinformation.”

Facebook admitted that, based on communication with Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the media platform has taken “aggressive action against misinformation about COVID-19.”

That “aggressive action” included pulling down disfavored posts and banning those behind the posts from using the platform.

Schmitt has learned from the information already obtained that the government-media information collusion is vastly larger and deeper:

The limited discovery produced so far provides a tantalizing snapshot into a massive, sprawling federal “Censorship Enterprise,” which includes dozens of federal officials across at least eleven federal agencies and components identified so far.

 

[These officials] communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media — all with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor.

The initial tranche of information resulting from the lawsuit so far revealed that more than 50 government officials across a dozen government agencies were involved in the collusion. But some of them, specifically Dr. Fauci, refused to answer, or gave incomplete answers. Doughty corrected that by ordering Fauci and Jean-Pierre to comply. And they have 21 days to do so.

The plaintiffs’ New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) lawyer Jenin Younes stated:

We know from the previous round of discovery that efforts to censor the speech of those who disagree with the government on covid policy have come from the top.

 

Americans deserve to know Anthony Fauci’s participation in this enterprise, especially since he has publicly demanded that specific individuals, including two of our clients, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, be censored on social media.

In response to yesterday’s ruling, a spokesman for the Biden administration doubled down on the government’s perceived role as Big Censor:

We believe in and we support freedom of speech, and we also believe it is important for all media platforms, including social media, to represent factual scientific information and combat misinformation and disinformation that can cost lives.

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Court Gives Trump a Partial Victory in Mar-a-Lago Documents case

Tuesday, 06 September 2022 15:03
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, September 6, 2022:  

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled on Monday on Donald Trump’s motion to appoint a “special master” (typically a retired judge or lawyer) to review all of the documents seized by the FBI from his home in Palm Beach, Florida on August 8.

In her statement, she declared that:

Pursuant to the Court’s equitable jurisdiction and inherent supervisory authority, and mindful of the need to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity under the extraordinary circumstances presented, Plaintiff’s Motion … is GRANTED IN PART.

What does “to ensure at least the appearance of fairness and integrity” mean? Is this a disclaimer that the entire incident is fraught with intrigue, illegality, and falsehoods? Is it a warning to the FBI and the Department of Justice that she will brook no further outrageous behavior going forward?

She approved Trump’s demand for a special master:

The Court hereby authorizes the appointment of a special master to review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney-client and/or executive privilege.

That covers the more than 33 boxes the FBI seized which, it was later learned, contained more than 11,000 documents.

It also prevents the DOJ and its FBI from “reviewing” the seized documents, despite the fact that the government had informed her that they had already completed their “review”:

Furthermore, in natural conjunction with that appointment, and consistent with the value and sequence of special master procedures, the Court also temporarily enjoins the Government from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes pending completion of the special master’s review or further Court order.

So, while the government agencies have completed their “review” of all of those 11,000-plus documents, she ordered them not to use them for “investigative purposes,” whatever that means.

But the separate investigation being performed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) will be allowed to continue unimpeded:

This Order shall not impede the classification review and/or intelligence assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The present DNI, Avril Haines, is likely no fan of Donald Trump, having served as assistant to the president during the Obama administration.

According to the enhanced listing of documents reluctantly and belatedly provided by the FBI, its two dozen agents, over a nine-hour period on August 8, seized 11,385 documents, but only 103 of them were marked “classified.”

Small matter: The search warrant issued by the notoriously anti-Trump magistrate was written so broadly that the agents raided the entire facility, including Melania’s closet and underwear drawer along with, it is now revealed, Trump’s son Barron’s bedroom. Trump should be happy they didn’t take the furniture and his grand piano.

Trump asked the court to return everything that wasn’t classified. The judge said no — not until the soon-to-be-named special master has completed his/her “review” of all those documents. The judge also failed to suppress any “evidence” that the FBI might have already uncovered as part of its investigation.

As Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich declared, “This unprecedented and unnecessary raid of President Trump’s home was not some surgical, confined search and retrieval that the Biden administration claims. It was a SMASH AND GRAB!”

In light of all that has been revealed so far, many believe the raid was conducted nefarious purposes: 1) to keep Trump so preoccupied with the legal wrangling that is likely to go on for years (a la the Mueller investigation) that he’ll be unable to focus all of his time and attention on supporting candidates and holding rallies; and 2) to continue to sully his name in the public eye and make it so toxic that candidates being supported by him or claiming to support him and his policies will lose support from voters come November.

The special master will be named on Friday. So far, the first list that appeared with potential candidates contains at least one with a history of virulent hatred of Trump.

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CNN’s White House Correspondent John Harwood Just the Latest to Exit the Liberal Network

Monday, 05 September 2022 15:42
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 5, 2022:  

Friday’s exit of CNN’s longtime White House correspondent John Harwood should have caught no one by surprise. He is just the latest, with many more to come.

On Friday, at the end of his last show, Harwood said:

Personal news: today’s my last day at CNN. Proud of the work. Thanks to my colleagues. I’ve been lucky to serve the best in American media — St. Petersburg Times, WSJ [Wall Street Journal], NYT [New York Times], the NBC family, CNN. Look forward to figuring out what’s next.

The exit of key CNN personnel began even before the influence of John Malone, the network’s new head, began to be felt. Last December the network’s “evening star,” Chris Cuomo, was fired for his involvement in his brother Andrew’s sexual harassment scandal that cost him his job as governor of New York.

Following the merger of AT&T with Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this year, Malone’s influence as a board member began to be felt. At the time of the merger, which brought CNN under Discovery control, Malone made his displeasure about CNN’s left-leaning profile known. In an interview on CNBC following the merger, he said:

I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.

In February, after the merger, CNN’s president Jeff Zucker was shown the door and replaced by Chris Licht.

A few months later CNN’s heavily promoted streaming service, CNN+, was shuttered after the $300 million investment resulted in just 10,000 subscribers in its first month of operation.

And last month, Brian Stelter and his program, Reliable Sources, were terminated, followed by CNN’s longtime legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Licht, whose background includes stints at MSNBC and CBS, informed CNN staffers that there was a new sheriff in town, and to get used to it:

Sadly, too many people have lost trust in the news media.

 

I think we can be a beacon in regaining that trust by being an organization that exemplifies the best characteristics in journalism: fearlessly speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo, questioning “group-think” and educating viewers and readers with straightforward facts and insightful commentary, while always being respectful of differing viewpoints.

 

First and foremost, we should, and we will be advocates for truth.

How, exactly, Licht plans to do this is unclear, given his liberal bias that has catapulted him to the very top of the mainstream media. Jon Nicosia, a former managing editor at Mediaite and a former breaking news editor at DCExaminer, predicts that the first thing Licht will do is continue to excise far-left liberals from top positions. In a series of tweets, Nicosia spelled out who’s next to leave CNN:

Once the coming shakeup at CNN is done, don’t expect John Berman, Alisyn Camerota, Jim Acosta, Brianna Keilar, Jake Tapper, John King, and Don Lemon to still be at the network OR have their current show assignments….

 

The final “stay or go” has not been finalized and more names will be added….

 

Stelter was a “go” because [quoting one of his CNN sources] “he was seen as working against current management’s goals. Leaking, stirring dissatisfaction internally … he started believing he was the only thing between ‘democracy’ and anarchy.”

Malone is described as a libertarian, serves on the board of the conservative Cato Institute, and donated $250,000 (he’s reportedly worth $9 billion) to help fund Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. Hiring a liberal to drain the liberal swamp at CNN may not be the best answer, but ridding CNN of the worst of the voices there (who steadfastly continue to call themselves journalists and not propagandists for the Left) is a good start.

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Biden Attacks Trump and His Supporters in “Non-political” Speech

Friday, 02 September 2022 15:15
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, September 2, 2022:  

In a speech billed as “non-political” by the White House, Joe Biden seized the opportunity in Philadelphia last night to reveal his true colors. His 24-minute speech was filled with what many see as outrageous misstatements, falsehoods, innuendoes, and hatred of traditional Americans and traditional American.

Below we quote extensively from the White House transcript of the screed:

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic….

 

But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country….

 

MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.

 

They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.

 

MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.

 

They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.

 

They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.

 

And they see their MAGA failure to stop a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election as preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

 

They tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people. This time, they’re determined to succeed in thwarting the will of the people.

 

That’s why respected conservatives, like Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig, has called Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans, quote, a “clear and present danger” to our democracy….

 

And now America must choose to move forward or to move backwards. To build the future or obsess about the past. To be a nation of hope and unity and optimism, or a nation of fear, division, and of darkness.

 

MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies….

 

Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans: We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy….

 

Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated. And that’s where MAGA Republicans are today….

 

MAGA Republicans look at America and see carnage and darkness and despair. They spread fear and lies — lies told for profit and power….

 

The MAGA Republicans believe that for them to succeed, everyone else has to fail.

The speech was interrupted frequently by avid Biden supporters when he reiterated a statement with which they agreed.

Very few people actually watched the speech. That was likely because of a local college football game going on simultaneously, and because only CNN among the major networks covered it from start to finish. Other networks, including ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox News didn’t cover it live.

There was a very clear ominous militaristic theme to the speech, with Marines standing behind Biden, backlighted in 1930’s Hitler-style red. Erick Erickson called the presentation reminiscent of Hitler’s Third Reich, with Biden “flanked by Marines and backlit by mid-1930s German red mood lighting.”

In addition, Biden revealed either his ignorance or his deliberate misunderstanding of the word “democracy,” which he used dozens of times to describe what the Founders actually created: a constitutional republic. Those Founders knew the dangers of democracy as being just one short step toward mobocracy and then tyranny.

This follows Lenin’s instruction, “First confuse the vocabulary.” As Founding Father James Madison wrote in The Federalist, No. 10:

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

Biden implied the use of force to correct the errors of his enemies:

I have come to this place … to speak as plainly as I can … about the power we have in our own hands to meet these threats….

 

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic….

 

There is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country….

 

It is within our power, it’s in our hands — yours and mine — to stop the assault on American democracy.

He said nothing about the FBI raid on Trump’s private residence. He didn’t have to. There, in full public view, is precisely how Biden will use agencies such as the FBI to “stop the assault on American democracy.”

He said nothing about the failures of his administration: inflation, invasion, military disaster, and loss of respect abroad. Instead, he claimed that his policies are working to improve the economy, while the economy itself is poised on the brink of recession.

Biden is guilty, after all is said and done, of projecting onto his enemies the very charges that are rightly applied to him and his administration. By offending the 70-plus million people who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, Biden has sown the seeds of his own demise.

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Pressure Mounts on FBI as Agents Claim Director Wray Has “Lost Control” of the Agency

Thursday, 01 September 2022 12:06
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, September 1, 2022:  

A former FBI agent who now represents several current FBI “whistleblowers” has just added another log onto the fire that is burning the FBI. Kurt Siuzdak, a lawyer and former FBI agent, told The Washington Times on Wednesday that “they’re saying, ‘How does this guy [Christopher Wray] survive? … He’s got to leave.’”

Siuzdak, a 25-year veteran of the agency, left in March due to what he perceived to be a strong partisan political bias at the very top of the FBI.

At the “very top” sits a Trump appointee, Christopher Wray, who replaced Jim Comey as head of the agency after Trump fired him in May 2017. As Wray is a Yale law graduate and a member of the prestigious Federalist Society, with a long history in both public service and private practice, Trump thought he was appointing someone who would clean house.

Instead, the man he chose turns out to be part of the problem instead of the solution.

Thanks to numerous FBI whistleblowers — agents inside the agency seeing firsthand how political bias is playing out against Trump and for Biden — Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley has brought the situation to light. Serving as the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has been privy to numerous agents’ complaints about that bias and has written repeatedly to Wray asking for explanations.

In his letters, dating back to May of this year, Grassley wrote of his concerns:

In light of these allegations [by FBI whistleblowers], I remain very concerned that political bias by a select group of Justice department and FBI officials has infected the Justice Department and FBI’s usual process and procedure to open and pursue high-profile and politically charged investigations.

There is a blatant double standard at play in the agency:

The double standard in the application of Justice Department and FBI policies has resulted in investigations opened in a manner appearing to benefit the political aims and objectives of a select few Justice Department and FBI officials.

 

Further, it is my understanding from whistleblowers that when FBI agents sought a uniform and consistent application of these standards, their concerns were marginalized or otherwise not acted upon.

Grassley noted specifically the actions of FBI Assistant Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault, noting that he exhibited a “pattern of active public partisanship” and requesting an investigation into that “pattern.” Thibault exhibited his bias against Donald Trump in a series of social media posts which, when Grassley’s letter became public, were deleted.

Thibault also had a hand in dismissing demands that Hunter Biden’s laptop information be investigated, calling any such evidence “disinformation.” Grassley wrote that the whistleblower information available to him “involves concerns about the FBI’s receipt and use of derogatory information related to Hunter Biden, and the FBI’s false portrayal of [that] evidence as disinformation.”

Grassley noted:

In fact, the information I have received reveals that Thibault’s political partisanship went much deeper than the inappropriate social media posts. Instead, it impacted his official decision-making on sensitive public corruption investigations.

 

Equally concerning is that, based on Justice Department and FBI policies, Thibault’s partisanship likely affected investigations briefed to, and approved by, senior Justice Department and FBI officials.

Thibault was put on temporary leave following Grassley’s claims, and that temporary leave became permanent this weekend when Thibault announced his retirement from the agency. His lawyer, not surprisingly, said that his client’s retirement from the agency had nothing whatsoever to do with Hunter Biden “misinformation” or his political bias exposed in those deleted social media posts.

Sending Thibault off into retirement isn’t going to end the corruption at the very top of the FBI, though. Hopefully he will serve not as the scapegoat, but as the first of many at the top to be exposed. Wrote Grassley:

Starting on May 31, 2022, I’ve written three letters to you [Director Wray] regarding political bias that has infected the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

 

Two of those letters provided specific and credible allegations based on numerous whistleblowers that have approached my office with information that one can only conclude is indicative of a deeply rooted political infection that has spread to investigative activity into former President Trump and Hunter Biden.

So far, the only response to Grassley’s demands has been the canning of a minor player in the agency’s grand scheme to sully Trump and protect Biden. If Republicans regain control of the Senate in November, then one may reasonably expect Grassley’s demands will be taken much more seriously.

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Articles of Impeachment of Biden Filed by Republicans on Tuesday

Wednesday, 31 August 2022 20:01
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 31, 2022:  

Several members of the House of Representatives filed articles of impeachment on Tuesday declaring that Joe Biden’s conduct “warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”

Those House members feel that there are plenty of reasons why the current occupant of the Oval Office should be impeached, including:

  • The lack of border enforcement that has let millions of illegals, including many criminals, into the U.S.;
  • The handling of the coronavirus pandemic;
  • The dreadfully mismanaged and damaging withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan;
  • The unilateral and illegal cancellation of student loan debts;
  • The eviction moratorium prohibiting property owners from evicting renters who violate their leases by not paying rent; and
  • The “Hunter Biden issue” that the mainstream media continue to ignore.

Said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.):

I have consistently said President Biden should be impeached for intentionally opening our border and making Americans less safe.

 

Congress has a duty to hold the President accountable for this and any other failures of his Constitutional responsibilities, so a new Republican majority must be prepared to aggressively conduct oversight on day one.

Previous articles of impeachment, including one filed by conservative firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) the day after Biden was sworn into office, addressed most of these.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) thinks Biden isn’t the only legitimate target for impeachment:

Mayorkas and Garland have purposefully made our country less safe, politicized their departments, and violated the rule of law. In some instances, they have instructed their subordinates to disobey our laws. That is unacceptable.

 

Next January I expect the House to pursue my impeachment articles against Mayorkas as well as Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s impeachment articles that I co-sponsored against Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former advisor, expressed his confidence in January 2022 that Republicans would impeach Biden once they took control of the House starting next January:

You have stood down ICE and you’ve stood down Border Patrol, and guess what? That’s the impeachment hearing I want to hear!

 

You’re going to sit there for day after day and week after week and we’re going to bring the witnesses. We’re going to bring the witnesses of what you did to this country and what you did on the southern border….

 

This November is about one thing: it’s about impeaching Joe Biden to stop this madness and to stop this illegitimate regime from destroying our nation.

Under the Constitution, only the House can consider impeachment charges, and the Senate has the power to try any impeachments passed by the House. Article I, Section 3, Clauses 6-7 make it clear that

No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the [Senate] Members present … and shall not extend further than to removal from office.

The pending “red wave” expected in November won’t be sufficient to give Republicans anywhere close to that two-thirds vote required to remove Biden. But if the House does make impeaching the present occupant a priority, it will further enlighten an already-awakening body politic as to the gross violations the present administration has committed and permitted, and set the stage for the presidential election in 2024.

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Former FBI Official Declares Government Has “No Case” Against Trump in Mar-a-Lago Raid

Monday, 29 August 2022 12:50
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 29, 2022:  

In its attempt to justify the illegal, unconstitutional, and outrageous raid by FBI agents on Donald Trump’s home in Florida three weeks ago, CNBC claimed that “the FBI had probable cause to believe that records containing classified national defense information would be found” at his home.

CNBC quoted from an unredacted portion of the affidavit, written by an FBI agent (whose name was blacked out):

Based upon this investigation, I do not believe that any spaces within the PREMISES have been authorized for the storage of classified information at least since the end of FPOTUS’s [former president of the United States] Presidential Administration on January 20, 2021.

That’s all that the biased left-wing media outlet could find to justify the raid: a single, unnamed FBI agent, charged with creating the document used to justify the issuance of the warrant that led to the raid, concluded that Trump’s home hadn’t “been authorized” for the storage of the documents the FBI seized in the raid.

That the mere statement made by the unnamed agent justified the raid is laughable on its face. So says Kevin R. Brock, a former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI. After reviewing the 11 pages of that 32-page document that weren’t blacked out, Brock stated:

I don’t believe the affidavit articulates how a federal law was or is being broken. For those [on the left] who hold out hope that the affidavit’s redacted sections fill that gap, there is almost no chance that they do.

Brock points out that the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures was breached by the agent who authored the affidavit:

A criminal violation of [federal] statutes only exists if it can be established that the person being investigated was not authorized [to store the documents].

But the agent/author failed:

The unredacted parts of the affidavit make no attempt to articulate cause that Trump was not authorized to have these documents in his home.

 

The reason is that, as president, he had broad, legally intimidating authority, established by law and court determinations, to declassify any and all documents and to determine what is and is not a presidential record.

In the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of the Navy v. Egan, the majority opinion included this:

The President, after all, is the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” U.S. Const., Art. II, 2.

 

His authority to classify and control access to information … flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.

This was reiterated by Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law: “There’s no question that the president has broad authority to declassify almost anything at any time without any process….”

Any attempt to find Trump guilty under U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2017, is also without merit. On the surface, that section appears to apply to Trump, and, according to anti-Trump lawyer Marc Elias, a conviction would keep him from ever holding office again:

Whoever, having the custody of any such record [filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office, or with any judicial or public officer of the United States], proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. [Emphasis added.]

But Hillary Clinton escaped prosecution under this identical law when she destroyed those thousands of emails.

So, one is left with only one conclusion: the raid was a political hit, without substance in law, precedent, or history. Concluded Brock:

The situation does not look good for the government.

 

The Ivy League-educated attorneys of the DOJ had to know this adventure had little chance of an eventual successful prosecution.

 

The use, therefore, of a highly intrusive search of a home simply as a forcing function to retrieve documents for the National Archives — and then not follow through with actual charges — spikes the potential abuse needle dramatically and will not help quiet the growing suspicion that this was more of a political [hit job] to take Trump off the chessboard than it was the pursuit of blind justice.

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Smith & Wesson CEO Fires Back Against Anti-gun Democrats

Friday, 26 August 2022 11:38
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, August 26, 2022:  

Mark Smith, the CEO of Smith & Wesson, the 170-year-old iconic firearms manufacturer, finally had enough. After being bullied, harassed, and excoriated by the anti-gun Democrat-laden House Committee on Oversight and Reform over his unwillingness to be subjected to the committee’s intended effort to sully the gun maker’s reputation, his company published a letter in response.

Smith did not hold back:

A number of politicians and their lobbying partners in the media have recently sought to disparage Smith & Wesson.

 

Some have had the audacity to suggest that after they have vilified, undermined and defunded law enforcement for years, supported prosecutors who refuse to hold criminals accountable for their actions, overseen the decay of our country’s mental health infrastructure, and generally promoted a culture of lawlessness, Smith & Wesson and other firearm manufacturers are somehow responsible for the crime wave that has predictably resulted from these destructive policies.

 

But they are the ones to blame for the surge in violence and lawlessness, and they seek to avoid any responsibility for the crisis of violence they have created by attempting to shift the blame to Smith & Wesson, other firearm manufacturers and law-abiding gun owners.

 

It is no surprise that the cities suffering most from violent crime are the very same cities that have promoted irresponsible, soft-on-crime policies that often treat criminals as victims and victims as criminals.

 

Many of these same cities also maintain the strictest gun laws in the nation. But rather than confront the failure of their policies, certain politicians have sought more laws restricting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, while simultaneously continuing to undermine our institutions of law and order.

 

And to suppress the truth, some now seek to prohibit firearm manufacturers and supporters of the Second Amendment from advertising products in a manner designed to remind law-abiding citizens that they have a Constitutional right to bear arms in defense of themselves and their families.

A firearm, adds, Smith, never committed a crime:

To be clear, a Smith & Wesson firearm has never broken into a home, a Smith & Wesson firearm has never assaulted a woman out for a late-night run in the city, a Smith & Wesson firearm has never carjacked an unsuspecting driver stopped at a traffic light.

Without saying as much, it’s clear he isn’t going to appear before the committee to be attacked, intimidated, and sullied. On that heavily weighted Democrat committee are such notorious anti-gunners as Carolyn Maloney, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush.

That committee successfully attacked the CEOs of two other gun makers who agreed to submit to its harassment. Smith originally agreed to join them, but when it was clear that their motives were strictly political, he told them he wouldn’t “be available” to be subjected to their inquisition.

In response, Maloney, who for the moment (she just lost her primary) chairs the committee, notified Smith that her committee has issued a subpoena to obtain various documents that the committee would use to build a case for more infringements on rightful gun owners.

In her committee’s initial demand for his attendance, she made clear exactly how the inquisition would operate:

As the chief executive officer of a major firearms manufacturer that sells millions of assault weapons, your testimony is crucial to understand why your company continues to sell and market these weapons to civilians, what steps your company plans to take to protect the public, and what additional reforms are needed to prevent further deaths from your products.

In other words, Maloney and her anti-gun majority had already declared Smith & Wesson guilty, and Smith would be given the privilege of attempting to defend himself and his company.

He saw the ruse, and politely bowed out.

The committee tried to reschedule, and again Smith refused.

Maloney ran out of patience, and on August 1 announced that her committee is issuing a subpoena:

I am writing to notify you that I have issued a subpoena to Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. (“Smith & Wesson”) for documents related to your company’s manufacture and sale of AR-15- style firearms.

 

Your company collects hundreds of millions of dollars selling assault weapons that are used in mass shootings, including the horrific murder of seven Americans and the wounding of dozens more during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois.

 

This subpoena was necessitated by your unwillingness to voluntarily comply with the Committee’s investigation, including your refusal to testify about your company’s troubling business practices at the Committee’s July 27, 2022, hearing, and your refusal to voluntarily produce key information about your company’s sale of assault weapons to civilians.

Time is working against Maloney and her anti-gun committee, and both she and Smith know it. Come January she will no longer chair the committee or even be in the 118th Congress.

The momentum for the private ownership of firearms continues to build. On April 1, the National Rifle Association celebrated the 25th state — Georgia — to pass constitutional-carry laws. As the NRA noted:

The NRA paved the way for constitutional carry by first leading the charge for right-to-carry nearly 40 years ago.

 

Today, every state, and the District of Columbia, provides for the carrying of a firearm for self-defense outside the home in some form, and half the nation recognizes [that] the Second Amendment protects law-abiding citizens’ right to self-defense as an inherent and inalienable right.

So, Smith ended his letter making clear that he would be happy to participate in future discussions with honest and honorable members of Congress seeking information, and not harassment and humiliation:

We will continue to work alongside law enforcement, community leaders and lawmakers who are genuinely interested in creating safe neighborhoods. We will engage those who genuinely seek productive discussions, not a means of scoring political points.

As for his company’s customers, Smith added:

We will continue informing law-abiding citizens that they have a Constitutionally-protected right to defend themselves and their families. We will never back down in our defense of the 2nd Amendment.

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Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann