Jack Smith’s Use of Obstruction Law Limited by Supreme Court ‘Fatally Undermines’ Case, Trump Attorneys Argue

Supreme Court

Special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case falls apart under recent Supreme Court precedent, former President Donald Trump’s attorneys said Thursday.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Fischer v. United States, which scaled back the Biden-Harris Department of Justice’s (DOJ) overbroad use of an obstruction statute designed to target corporate document shredding against Jan. 6 defendants, “fatally undermines” two counts and requires dismissing two others, Trump’s attorneys wrote.

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Jack Smith Argues Trump Isn’t Immune to Charges in D.C. Election Case

Special counsel Jack Smith on Wednesday submitted a new filing in his DC election case against former President Donald Trump, arguing that he is not immune from prosecution in light of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. Smith originally charged Trump with four counts related to his efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election. Trump had argued he was immune form prosecution due to presidential immunity. The Supreme Court, earlier this year, found that the president enjoys immunity for constitutional acts and presumptive immunity for official acts. Smith subsequently filed a revised indictment and has asked the court to determine that Trump’s alleged conduct does not fall within the scope of presidential immunity.

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Alaska Man Arrested for Threatening to Murder Six Supreme Court Justices

Supreme Court Justices

An Alaska man was arrested Wednesday for threatening to murder six Supreme Court justices, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Panos Anastasio sent over 465 messages intended for the justices through the Supreme Court’s website between March 2023 and July 2024, which allegedly became threatening after Jan. 4 and included “violent, racist, and homophobic rhetoric coupled with threats of assassination via torture, hanging, and firearms,” according to the indictment. Anastasio, who will come before Judge Kyle Reardon Thursday for a detention hearing, has been temporarily detained, according to court records.

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Commentary: Kamala Harris’ Record as a Prosecutor Is Scary

Kamala Harris

The American people deserve to hear from Vice President Kamala Harris about how she plans to rectify the failures of her past decisions.

Does she still stand by her defiance of the court orders that worsened California’s public safety crisis? Or will she acknowledge that her actions contributed to the very injustices she claims to fight against?

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Biden DOJ Dropped Nearly Half of Pending Obstruction Charges for January 6 Defendants After Supreme Court Ruling

January Six

The Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped nearly half of pending obstruction charges against Jan. 6 defendants since the Supreme Court issued a major ruling in June, according to recent data.

The Supreme Court ruled in June that in charging Jan. 6 defendants, the DOJ had interpreted too broadly a statute that carries up to 20 years in prison for anyone who corruptly “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding.” Since the Fischer v. United States ruling, around 60 of 126 defendants had the pending obstruction charges dropped, DOJ data from Sept. 6 shows.

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23 States Ask Supreme Court to Reverse Energy-Related Decision

LA AG

Twenty-three states are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that the attorneys general say could be a threat to the energy industry.

A brief filed this week by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and 22 other attorneys general wants the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the decision, saying that it is as much about “federalism and state sovereignty as it is about environmental law.”

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Justice Jackson Says ‘Prepared as Anyone Can Be’ for Supreme Court to Respond to 2024 Election

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson says she is prepared “as anyone can be” for this year’s presidential election ending up before the high court .

In an interview with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell aired on Tuesday, the Biden-appointed judge was asked whether she is prepared for this election to end up before the Supreme Court.

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ACLU Struggles to Explain Why California’s Conversion Therapy Ban Doesn’t Protect Idaho’s Trans Ban

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld California outlawing talk therapy for minors with unwanted same-sex attraction, it must likewise uphold Idaho’s ban on invasive and potentially irreversible medical treatments to make gender-confused minors resemble the opposite sex, the Gem State’s outside lawyer told a three-judge panel Thursday.

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Judge Finds RFK Jr. Can Bring Censorship Lawsuit Against Biden Admin After Supreme Court Rejects States’ Challenge

RFK Jr. in a courtroom (composite image)

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can continue to pursue his censorship lawsuit against the Biden administration.

The Supreme Court ruled in June that state and individual plaintiffs who alleged the Biden administration violated their First Amendment rights when it pressured social media companies to suppress speech did not have standing to sue. District Court Judge Terry Doughty found Kennedy meets the standard set by the Supreme Court because there is “ample evidence” to show he has been censored in the past at the direction of government actors and “substantial risk” that the censorship will continue.

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SCOTUS Refused to Ban Federal Censorship Pressure; It Could Make Churches Complicit in Abortion

United States Supreme Court

When the Supreme Court reversed a preliminary injunction against several federal agencies and officials in June for “coerc[ing] or significantly encourag[ing]” tech platforms to suppress content, Washington state saw a new way to protect its mandatory abortion coverage in maternity healthcare plans from religious freedom challenges.

Five years into a lawsuit by Cedar Park Assembly of God against SB 6219, which includes criminal penalties up to prison, the Evergreen State argues that insurers won’t necessarily offer abortion-free plans if the court permanently bars it from enforcing surgical- and chemical-abortion coverage against such religious ministries that are opposed to abortion.

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Alvin Bragg’s Office Leaves Door Open for Delaying Trump’s Sentencing

Alvin Bragg and Donald Trump in a courtroom (composite image)

Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is not taking a position on former President Donald Trump’s request to delay his sentencing date in New York, according to a filing sent Friday.

Trump’s attorneys asked Judge Juan Merchan last week to push his sentencing, currently set for Sept. 18, until after the November election. In a filing, Bragg’s office said it would “defer to the Court” on whether a delay is necessary to “allow for orderly appellate litigation,” writing they are “prepared to appear for sentencing on any future date the Court sets.”

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Grandmas in Chains: Harris Legacy of Pursuing Pro-Life Activists Set Stage for Wider Legal Fight

Heather Idoni

Defending the abortion industry helped define Vice President Kamala Harris as California attorney general, especially a controversial 2016 raid on pro-life activist David Daleiden to seize and suppress undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials who thought they were talking to “laboratory wholesalers” in Daleiden’s sting.

Some of those videos, released years later at a congressional proceeding, show Planned Parenthood tried to preserve fetal tissue to sell for research and avoid prosecution by detaching extremities.

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Biden Didn’t Disclose Allegedly Free Vacations, yet Pushes for Supreme Court Reform Following Gifts

President Joe Biden has allegedly taken multiple free vacations at the homes of billionaire donors and wealthy businessmen without disclosing them over the years, yet has called for Supreme Court reform after justices have taken trips without reporting them.

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Jack Smith Requests Delay in Trump Case to Assess Impact of Supreme Court’s Presidential Immunity Ruling

Special counsel Jack Smith requested a delay Thursday night in former president Donald Trump’s election interference case.

Prosecutors wrote in a filing that the government is still assessing the impact of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling and asked for the timeline to be pushed back several weeks. Judge Tanya Chutkan previously scheduled a hearing for Aug. 16, but Smith requested permission to instead file a proposed schedule for pretrial proceedings by the end of the month, effectively delaying any action until September.

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Commentary: Left Lets Mask Slip on Plans to Demolish the Supreme Court

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz at a rally

The Left has let the mask slip and made clear that it intends to pack or otherwise decimate the Supreme Court.

President Joe Biden announced last week in a Washington Post op-ed that he would promote a “reform” of the nation’s highest court that would include term limits and new “ethics” rules for justices.

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Federal Judge Rules That New Jersey’s AR-15 Ban Is Unconstitutional

AR-15

On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that the state of New Jersey’s ban on AR-15 rifles is unconstitutional.

ABC News reports that U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan’s ruling was directly influenced by the precedent set by the Supreme Court in its landmark ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen in 2022. In that case, the Supreme Court determined that Americans do not have to show “proper cause” when seeking to obtain a concealed-carry permit, overturning a 100-year-old state law in New York.

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Julie Kelly Commentary: A Lifeline for Jack Smith in the J6 Case Against Donald Trump

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan

Following humiliating losses at the Supreme Court and the shocking dismissal of the so-called classified documents case in Florida, Special Counsel Jack Smith appeared down for the count in his floundering attempt to ever get Donald Trump behind bars, let alone before Election Day.

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Commentary: The DEI Trap

Kamala Harris and KBJ

Kamala Harris’s sudden ascendancy within the Democrat Party, with nary a peep from other ambitious Democrats, spotlights the uncomfortable contradictions of identity politics and the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement. 

Americans universally believe that everyone should have a fair shot at opportunities regardless of sex or race, which is why the kind of racism and sexism that was once so prevalent is so rare today.

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Commentary: Biden’s Attempt to Control the Supreme Court Is Unconstitutional

Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Ketanji Brown Jackson

President Joe Biden must like campaigning. He ended his own re-election bid but has joined the Left’s campaign to control the Supreme Court by any means necessary. He has endorsed old ideas like term limits and an “enforceable ethics code,” abandoning his past support for an independent judiciary. He now considers that independence an obstacle to be overcome rather than a principle to be defended.

Biden’s Washington Post piece on Monday misleads the American people in three ways. First, simply because the Constitution limits the terms of presidents does not mean the Supreme Court must follow suit. He makes no such proposal for the Senate, where he boasts that he served for 36 years.

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Commentary: So Much for Democracy

Joe Biden

It’s been a crazy few weeks. Joe Biden finally quit the presidential race. We heard it first through a tweet using a suspiciously unofficial letterhead, and then he disappeared for a week. It was weird.

I don’t know where they had him or what was going on, but when he appeared, his Oval Office speech was mediocre at best, full of sentimentality and short on explanations for why exactly he was quitting after saying just a few days earlier he would stay. Word is Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer threatened him with removal under the 25th Amendment, which is eminently plausible.

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Commentary: With Chevron Dead, It’s Time to Challenge the Feres Doctrine

Supreme Court

Last month the Supreme Court ended the 40-year precedent known as the Chevron Doctrine. When the Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council ruling was handed down in 1984 there was nil understanding that it would enable the burgeoning 20th Century administrative state to dig its foundation down to societal bedrock. This legal precedent tied the hands of lower courts over the next 40 years, forcing them to defer to administrative agencies on how to interpret the law in areas that congress did not offer crystal clarity.

Chevron opened the door for succeeding precedents like the 2005 ruling in the National Cable & Telecommunications Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Services case, which enabled governmental agencies to “override judicial constructions of ambiguous federal laws by promulgating their own conflicting, yet authoritative, interpretations.” In 2020, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the Brand X opinion, lamented the ruling, rightly noting that it further ensconced judicial doctrine to the point of “administrative absolutism.” In essence, Chevron, and subsequent precedent under its umbrella, allowed presidential administrations to legislate around congress through cabinet agency directors.

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Commentary: Racism and Sexism Are the Campaign Theme of the Harris-Whoever Ticket

Kamala Harris Speaking

Is Kamala Harris the quintessential DEI hire? It’s a legitimate question, given that Joe Biden made it clear during his 2020 election-year campaign that he would only consider a black woman for his VP slot. As president, he also claimed that the choice of Supreme Court Justice replacement for Stephen Breyer would be limited to a black woman. Not even the most qualified black woman, just someone possessing dark skin and lady parts.

Biden could have simply told the country that he was going to choose the most qualified person for either position. Instead, he said that his choice was going to be based primarily on skin color and gender.

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New York Requests That the Supreme Court Dismiss Missouri’s Lawsuit Over Trump ‘Lawfare’

New York District Attorney Letitia James on Wednesday urged the Supreme Court to block a lawsuit from Missouri that is attempting to stop former President Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case.

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Censorship Noose Tightens Across West with Biden White House, Trudeau’s Canada, EU Bureaucrat Moves

Joe Biden

When the Supreme Court reversed a preliminary injunction against several federal agencies and officials for “coerc[ing] or significantly encourag[ing] a platform’s content-moderation decisions,” the ideologically hybrid majority concluded that well-documented federal pressure to censor government-disfavored narratives was unlikely to recur.

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, scolded his colleagues for their perceived credulity. The high court just provided “an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think,” he wrote.

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Liberal Nonprofit Spins Up Multi-Million Dollar Campaign to Scare Moms into Backing Biden

Demand Justice

A liberal nonprofit will spend millions feeding information about the Supreme Court to swing state moms in an effort to turn them against former President Donald Trump, The Washington Post reported.

Demand Justice, an organization founded to oppose Trump’s judicial nominations, will spend $2 million on mobilization efforts and advertisements in Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Ohio, Montana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin aimed at convincing mothers not to support the former president, the Post reported. The campaign will focus on how a Supreme Court made up of Trump appointees could impact issues related to abortion, firearms and healthcare in the coming years.

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Commentary: Republicans Must Stop Retreating on Abortion

While President Joe Biden’s halting performance in the first 2024 presidential debate generated the most significant commentary, it was some of former President Donald Trump’s remarks that raised concerns for pro-life voters. Those remarks ended up foreshadowing the recently proposed Republican platform’s surrender on the abortion issue.

Trump’s first misstep was his contention that “everybody” wanted abortion regulated at the state level. “Fifty-one years ago you had Roe v. Wade,” Trump argued, “and everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. Everybody wanted it back… Ronald Reagan wanted it brought back” (emphasis added).

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Oklahoma Becomes Latest State in Court over Illegal Immigration, Arguing It’s a State Issue

Oklahoma Atty Gen. Gentner Drummond

Oklahoma is the most recent state facing a legal battle with the Biden administration on the issue of illegal immigration, with a federal judge blocking legislation that would make entering the country illegally a state crime. 

Oklahoma’s House Bill 4156 makes it a crime to be in Oklahoma without legal status. The legislation was signed into law on April 30, but was blocked by a federal judge in June after the Biden administration filed a lawsuit against the state. 

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Commentary: Supreme Court’s Immunity Decision Has Democrats in Hysterics, Again

Trump and Supreme Court

Reasonable constitutional scholars and jurists could quibble about the details and impact of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision in Trump v. United States, but the hysteria coming from the left, including President Joe Biden and dissenting Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown-Jackson, is beyond rational discourse. An inability to control emotions and anger has become commonplace for progressives who don’t get their way.

Writing for a 6-3 majority, split on ideological lines, Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion laid out a three tiered approach to presidential immunity premised on the Constitution’s vesting of the complete executive power in one individual, giving him duties and power of “unrivaled gravity and breadth” and making that individual a full and equal branch of the United States government, alongside the Congress and courts. Roberts observed that the president’s constitutional powers are often “conclusive and preclusive” and those powers may not be subject to review by Congress or the courts.

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Far-Left Group to Spend $10 Million on Anti-Supreme Court Campaign

Skye Perryman

The far-left advocacy group Demand Justice announced its intentions to spend as much as $10 million on a messaging campaign smearing the Supreme Court after its ruling in favor of President Donald Trump on the question of presidential immunity.

According to Politico, Demand Justice’s goals for the $10 million spending spree include opposition research on potential future Supreme Court justices and suggestions for ethics reforms within the court. The group also plans to target such demographics as women and younger voters, falsely claiming that these groups have been “attacked” by the Supreme Court’s recent rulings. Demand Justice also intends to attack right-wing judicial groups that played a role in shaping the court’s conservative majority under the Trump Administration.

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Biden Admin Tells ER Doctors They Must Perform Emergency Abortions After SCOTUS Ruling

Emergency Room

The letter comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 opinion permitting emergency abortions to continue in Idaho.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday informed hospital and doctor associations that they must perform emergency abortions to save a woman’s health.

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Commentary: Murthy v. Missouri Goes Down as One of Supreme Court’s Worst Speech Decision

Supreme Court

Last week, in Murthy v. Missouri, the Supreme Court hammered home the distressing conclusion that, under the court’s doctrines, the First Amendment is, for all practical purposes, unenforceable against large-scale government censorship. The decision is a strong contender to be the worst speech decision in the court’s history.

(I must confess a personal interest in all of this: My civil rights organization, the New Civil Liberties Alliance, represented individual plaintiffs in Murthy.)

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Alvin Bragg’s Team Agrees to Delay Sentencing in Trump Trial Following SCOTUS Immunity Ruling

Alvin Bragg

Prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office agreed on Tuesday to delay former President Donald Trump’s sentencing, The New York Times reported.

A Manhattan jury convicted Trump May 30 on 34 felony counts of falsification of business records. Bragg’s office agreed to a request to delay the sentencing in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that found presidents have immunity from prosecution for “official acts” taken in office, but called the motion by Trump’s attorneys meritless, according to the NYT.

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Supreme Court Rules Trump has absolute immunity for some Official Acts, But Not Unofficial Ones

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that former President Donald Trump is immune from federal prosecution for official acts he took while in office in split 6-3 ruling. However, the court ruled that there is no immunity for unofficial acts.

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Commentary: Supreme Court Overturns DOJ’s Use of Key January 6 Felony Court

January Six

In a devastating but well-deserved blow to the Department of Justice’s criminal prosecution of January 6 protesters, the U.S. Supreme Court today overturned the DOJ’s use of 18 USC 1512(c)(2), the most prevalent felony in J6 cases.

The statute, commonly referred to as “obstruction of an official proceeding,” has been applied in roughly 350 J6 cases; it also represents two of four counts in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s J6-related criminal indictment of Donald Trump in Washington.

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DOJ Tries to Shut Down Case That Exposed Biden Admin Colluded on Medical Standards Used to Justify Child Sex Changes

Merrick Garland

The Department of Justice (DOJ) moved Monday to shut down a lawsuit that exposed the Biden administration’s collusion with a transgender medical organization to develop the very standards it is now using to defend child sex changes at the Supreme Court.

After the Supreme Court agreed to take up the Biden administration’s challenge to Tennessee’s ban on child sex changes, the DOJ asked a lower court to put another case challenging a similar Alabama ban on hold pending the high court’s decision. While the DOJ requested a halt on the Alabama case to “avoid the prospect of re-litigation of the claims” after the Supreme Court issues its ruling, the defendants argued the government likely has another motive: shielding information about the administration’s involvement in developing the standards it heavily relies on from the Supreme Court.

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Key House Chairman Intervenes in Bannon Case, Tells Supreme Court Democrat January 6 Contempt Was ‘Invalid’

The House subcommittee chairman investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot’s intelligence and security failures made an extraordinary intervention Wednesday at the Supreme Court, telling the justices he believes an earlier Democrat-led investigation into the tragedy was “factually and procedurally invalid” and therefore could not lawfully hold ex-Trump adviser Stephen Bannon in contempt.

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Commentary: Missouri Set to Sue New York for Election Interference as Trump’s July 11 Sentencing Date Looms

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey

After almost a month following former President Donald Trump’s conviction by a New York City jury on May 30, Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced on June 20 that his state is suing New York for its “direct attack on our democratic process through unconstitutional lawfare against President Trump”.

That’s good — better late than never — as Bailey stands as the first Republican Attorney General to actually announce such a lawsuit, with not much time before Trump’s scheduled sentencing on July 11, which could imprison to presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

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Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Trump-Era Tax

United States Supreme Court

The Supreme Court rejected Thursday a challenge to a 2017 tax law passed by Congress.

The case, Moore v. United States, considers whether the 16th Amendment permits taxing unrealized gains. Kathleen and Charles Moore sued for a refund in 2019 after they were hit with a $14,729 tax bill for their investment in an overseas company, though they never received any payment in earnings from the company.

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