By Mike Huckabee
April 17, 2023
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Under the chairmanship of Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee has traveled to New York City to hold its first hearing today relating to the double standard of ‘justice’ in Manhattan, where District Attorney Alvin Bragg is normally the one holding court.
Bragg, as you know, found a highly questionable way to up-charge President Trump with felonies for recording reimbursement payments to his then-attorney Michael Cohen as “legal expenses.” These payments would have been misdemeanors for which the statute of limitations ran out long ago, so in order to prosecute them anyway, Bragg is saying they also violated federal election law. (Never mind that the Federal Election Commission decided to pass on this.) And while Bragg was busy going after Trump --- fulfilling the campaign promise he ran on --- real crime in Manhattan was spiraling out of control. Bragg had made it clear he simply wasn’t going to prosecute much of that crime.
Democrats are predictably having a fit about Jordan’s hearing, but, as Trey Gowdy said Sunday night on FOX NEWS, “If you’re really doing a good job, and you’re confident in your record, what’s to fear from a little field hearing?”
Gowdy spoke with Florida Rep. Laurel Lee, a former Florida judge and highly-credentialed member of the committee. She pointed out that among the crimes Bragg doesn’t prosecute are resisting arrest, robbery, and trespass, which, along with his reckless bail policies, “absolutely affect the overall safety of a community.” This will be put out there for the American people to see.
Gowdy had a great question for her: “What is the best piece of evidence that what DA Bragg is doing is rooted in politics?” She replied that this prosecutor “is taking half of the felony charges that come into his office and downgrading them to misdemeanors. But in the case of Donald Trump, he’s doing exactly the opposite. He’s digging up an allegation from 2017 that at best would be a misdemeanor and contorting it into a felony charge.” It’s also a case that has already been passed over by federal authorities, “who would clearly have a nexus for any type of investigation...”
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6325230968112
By coincidence, Mark Levin on Sunday night also spoke about the attempt by House Republicans to investigate this double standard and the resistance they’re meeting every step of the way. Seems to me that in trying to resist the investigation of that double standard, they’re actually proving how much of one we have.
The House Republicans need to protect the separation of powers and their authority under the Constitution, he said. The legal phrase for this is ‘self-preservation.’ If Congress can’t enforce its power, then it has NO power. So it has to act. It has to use its “implied or inherent” power to hold individuals and entities in contempt. Also, the FBI and the U.S. attorney general do not have the power to just ignore Congress, though from their behavior you’d think they did.
“There are extraordinarily dangerous times,” Levin said. It’s not enough to form committees and ask for witnesses. They have the power to wield the contempt charge; the House votes this up or down, and stragglers within the GOP are not acceptable, given the stakes. But if the attorney general’s office blows off Congress’s action instead of enforcing it, as happened with AG Eric Holder during the Fast & Furious scandal involving guns, drug cartels and the FBI--- what then?
According to Levin, Congress has the power to send the sergeant-at-arms to secure the subpoenaed individual --- to arrest and jail that person --- without the Executive Branch playing any role. As part of due process, the person gets an open hearing in front of, say, the Judiciary Committee, where the committee can decide to release him --- or not. It might be an unpleasant process, but it could come to that. The Republicans will be attacked by the media, he said, but the media are corrupt and can’t be allowed to call the shots. Likewise with “phony tenured professors...so ignore them, too.”
Levin said to take heart from the reform of the judiciary that’s going on in Israel right now, under Netanyahu and his majority government. Here, under Biden, we have a similar situation; Biden is “undermining representative government and unleashing criminal law enforcement against people with whom they disagree.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTlqK11VjHQ
But while we’re waiting for Congress to do whatever is necessary to conduct their oversight, Margot Cleveland has pieced together plenty that tells us Bragg’s prosecution of Trump is as political as it gets. It’s all in a new column called “Manhattan DA Enlisted a Who’s Who of Biden Admin Buddies for Trump Takedown.” And it just gets worse the farther into it you read.
Recall that attorney Mark F. Pomerantz is the one who not only very publicly resigned over the DA’s initial decision not to indict Trump on those charges but also wrote a venomous book on the subject. His actions appear to have been instrumental in getting Bragg to change his mind and throw the ‘book’ at Trump. But as Cleveland points out, Pomerantz wasn’t just an office regular. He was one of three attorneys lent out to the DA’s office by the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a New York City firm that has strong ties to Democrats and the Biden administration and is a high-dollar fundraiser for both. These three were sent over in February 2021, when Trump adversary Cyrus Vance was Manhattan DA, specifically to work on the Trump case.
According to the NEW YORK TIMES, Pomerantz had already been informally working on the Trump case for months before taking a leave of absence to serve as special assistant district attorney in the Manhattan office. The TIMES admitted that “the hiring of an outsider is a highly unusual move for a prosecutor’s office” but noted the “unusual complexity” of “the two-and-a-half-year investigation of the former President and his family business.” The same law firm also lent two other attorneys, Elyssa Abuhoff and Caroline Williamson, to be special assistant DAs.
Let’s look at the law firm that sent over three attorneys to work exclusively on prosecuting President Trump. First, the Biden fundraising: During Biden’s 2020 run, they hosted a $2,800-a-plate fundraiser for about 100 guests. Ironically, Biden spoke at that fundraiser about the unfairness of the “wealth gap.”
https://nypost.com/2019/06/18/joe-biden-is-in-new-york-to-fundraise-for-his-2020-campaign/
Brad Karp, chairman of Paul, Weiss, topped the list of Biden fundraisers in 2020, bundling at least $100,000 for his campaign. The Biden campaign was heavily funded by Big Law.
https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2020/11/02/biden-taps-big-law-for-fundraising-haul/
And this might be the kicker: Karp’s partner at Paul, Weiss happens to be Robert Schumer, brother of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. These are the people supplying attorneys to Bragg for Trump’s prosecution.
Biden has other connections to the firm as well. Jeh Johnson, head of Homeland Security under Obama-Biden, is from there. Biden’s own top antitrust enforcement official at the DOJ, Jonathan Kanter, is a former partner of Paul, Weiss. BLOOMBERG reported that Paul, Weiss had emerged as a “Biden-era New York power center.”
When Pomerantz left the DA’s office, he went back to Paul, Weiss. That’s when he wrote his book about the Trump investigation.
Cleveland notes that in Pomerantz’ resignation letter, he failed to mention that “at least three career prosecutors asked to be moved off the investigation,” reportedly “concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges.” Funny, we didn’t hear much media coverage about THAT.
With the help of the two remaining Paul, Weiss attorneys, the DA’s office continued its investigation and prosecution of the Trump Corporation, and yet another outside lawyer was brought in. This one, Gary T. Fishman, was supplied by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, another Trump adversary who had campaigned on using the legal system to “get” him and who boasts of having sued him over 100 times.
When the Trump Corporation case was over, Abuhoff and Williamson went back to Paul, Weiss but returned to Bragg’s office in just a couple of months, this time as full staff members. Paul, Weiss did not respond to questions about whether they paid these attorneys while they were on loan to the DA’s office. Or were they compensated by the generous New York taxpayers? Federal funds, perhaps? Inquiring minds want to know, and this is something the Judiciary Committee is surely looking into.
Of course, we already knew that last December, Bragg hired the third-in-command at the DOJ, Matthew Colangelo, to be in charge of his office’s revived investigation of Trump. Biden had appointed him to serve in the ‘Justice’ Department directly under Lisa Monaco, so one can imagine how much trust Biden puts in him. Both Colangelo and Fishman had worked in Letitia James’ office, where they (what else?) investigated Trump. These people have built careers on investigating Trump.
This all stinks so bad we can smell it from many states away. Cleveland calls it horrifying, saying, in variation of the famous quote attributed to Stalin: “Lend me your top attorneys and I’ll show you a crime.” Trump is indeed a victim of the New York Democrat political machine.
RELATED READING: Here’s last week’s press release from AMERICA FIRST LEGAL announcing that they’ve filed a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents relating to the “special access request” from the White House to the DOJ that provided Biden a handy pretext for the Mar-A-Lago raid.
https://aflegal.org/america-first-legals-investigation-reveals-the-biden-white-house-was-involved-with-the-mar-a-lago-raid-and-that-nara-misled-congress-afl-launches-additional-investigation/
Here’s a report tying the longtime sexual harassment lawsuit against Trump with the Democrat mega-donor Reid Hoffman. Turns out, he’s bankrolling it. And he can afford to; he’s the billionaire who started LinkedIn. The source of the money was kept secret until a few days ago, with the woman pressing charges apparently lying under oath to deny receiving outside funding.
As Bonchie at REDSTATE says, “Hoffman doesn’t get involved in anything that isn’t highly political, and this likely is no different.”
The WASHINGTON EXAMINER has an excellent piece about how the weaponization of our ‘justice’ system to go after Trump makes us look on the world stage. Let’s just say we’re no longer that shining city on a hill.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/courage-strength-optimism/the-world-is-watching-as-democrats-undermine-america-from-within
A new book is coming out called THE FALL OF THE FBI, by longtime FBI agent Thomas Baker, and it promises to be an engaging read about true-life crimefighting but also a scathing take-down. Baker says the culture of the FBI has been in “sad decline” ever since 9/11, when its mission turned from nonpolitical law enforcement to spying on Americans. And it’s an especially unflattering portrait of James Comey, whose mission was to “get Trump.” We haven’t read the book yet, but this review by Glenn K. Beaton is GREAT.
https://glennkbeaton.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-the-fbi-takes-james-comey
https://www.amazon.com/Fall-FBI-Agency-Became-Democracy-ebook/dp/B0B89DMYRN?ref_=ast_author_dp
And today, let’s give Trump the last word. He’s releasing a video in which he breaks down what he plans to do to reform the weaponized ‘justice’ system in America. DAILY CALLER has a preview and transcript.
“As President, it will be my personal mission to restore the scales of justice in America,” he says. You better believe he means it, and it can’t come too soon.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/13/exclusive-trump-video-weaponization-us-justice-system
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