The Entire Premise Of Trump’s J6 Trial Is An Affront To Free Elections And Rule Of Law

OCTOBER 17, 2023

The imposition of a gag order on Trump means a judge can decide what the GOP front-runner can and cannot say in a presidential campaign.

A remarkable thing happened on Monday in former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial over his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a gag order effectively prohibiting Trump, currently the leading GOP candidate for president, from defending himself in public ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

The gag order means Trump cannot speak publicly about the trial, potential witnesses, court personnel, or Special Counsel Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who requested the gag order and characterized it as “modest” and “permissible.”

As my colleague Tristan Justice pointed out in these pages yesterday, that means Trump is barred from campaigning against his chief political opponent, which isn’t just President Joe Biden but the entire federal government, especially the Justice Department.

It also means there’s a potentially limitless number of things Trump could say on the campaign trail that would violate the gag order. Julie Kelly, who was in the courtroom Monday, noted on X (formerly Twitter) that there was an entire debate about whether it would be appropriate to allow Trump to use the phrase “Crooked Joe Biden.” A reporter for OANN relayed an exchange between Chutkan and Trump’s defense attorney about whether Trump could call Smith a “thug.” Chutkan, an Obama appointee with a long track record of politically charged Jan. 6 rulings, said she didn’t think such language was “necessary to advance a political campaign,” as if she’s any more competent to decide what sort of campaign rhetoric is necessary than she is to assess the value of Mar-a-Lago.

But set aside the insanity of a federal judge telling a leading presidential candidate — or any political candidate — what they can and cannot say on the campaign trail, as if judges are now the supreme arbiters of American political discourse. The gag order just underscores how insane and farcical this entire trial is.

Recall that Smith didn’t indict Trump on charges that he incited a riot on Jan. 6 or that he committed treason — nothing as concrete as that. He indicted Trump for expressing his opinion that the 2020 election was stolen. You might think it’s crazy that Trump thinks he won in 2020, but millions of Americans believe it — and they are free to say so thanks to the First Amendment. Trump, too, should be free to say it as often and as loudly as he likes. As Jonathan Turley said when Trump was indicted back in August, “If you take a red pen to all of the material presumptively protected by the First Amendment, you can reduce much of the indictment to haiku.”

The actual charges Trump faces are conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. What all that amounts to, though, is merely an assertion that Trump’s statements about the election were false and he knew it. But even if that were the case, so what? This is America. You’re allowed to lie in a political campaign. Joe Biden lies all the time, as does his lackey Merrick Garland at the Justice Department. Whether Trump lied is a political question to be decided by voters, not some thug like Jack Smith.

1/2

>>19772091

So what the trial comes down to is that Trump said some things about 2020 that Biden and Garland and Smith didn’t like, and they decided to prosecute him for it. That’s it. That’s the whole case. Any judge with even a passing familiarity with the First Amendment would have thrown the case out on day one.

But that didn’t happen, and now we have this garbage commie show trial unfolding in the middle of a presidential election cycle. How is Trump supposed to campaign when he’s barred from talking about the No. 1 threat to the rule of law and free elections in America? He’s not, which is the entire point of this: to keep Trump out of the White House.

Stepping back though, this isn’t only about Trump. It’s also about what the federal government thinks it can do under the guise of enforcing the law. If the Justice Department can indict Trump for speaking out about the election, it can indict any one of us for the same thing, the First Amendment be damned.

My colleague Sean Davis said Trump should reject this “Soviet insanity” and just violate the gag order to force Chutkan and the Biden administration to choose whether to dispense with the pretense of the rule of law and free elections or just go ahead and rig the election out in the open by jailing Trump in the middle of the election for the crime of calling Biden’s DOJ corrupt. “Make them do it, so we can finally dispense with the fiction that democracy actually exists in this country anymore. Make them do it out in the open for the entire world to see.”

He’s right. The entire premise of this trial should be rejected. The whole thing is illegitimate. It makes a mockery of our justice system and a mockery of our Constitution. There’s no point debating the specifics of it with Democrats, of arguing over this or that legal aspect of the trial, because to do so concedes the premise that Trump might have committed a crime by expressing his opinion about the 2020 election and that you can be prosecuted for something like that in America.

At a rally in Iowa on Monday, Trump said he was “willing to go to jail if that’s what it takes for our country to win and become a democracy again.” Let’s hope he’s serious, because the only way out of this is for Trump to press the issue, defy the illegitimate gag order, and let the chips fall where they may.

https://truthsocial.com/@realSidneyPowell/posts/111251430075254067

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/17/the-entire-premise-of-trumps-j6-trial-is-an-affront-to-free-elections-and-rule-of-law/

2/2

House Members to meet with Inspectors General in SCIF to discuss UAPs

October 19, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C., (Oct. 19, 2023) – Members of the U.S. House of Representatives will meet separately with the Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) and the Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) in classified settings to discuss Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs).

On October 26, 2023, members will meet with the DOD IG to discuss the office’s recent evaluation on how the administration analyzes and tracks UAPs.

On November 16, 2023, members will meet with IC IG to discuss the office’s ongoing work on evaluating UAPs and its role in investigating UAP and retaliatory claims by personnel in the intelligence community.

Each meeting will be held in a sensitive compartmented information facility known as a SCIF.

https://twitter.com/RepTimBurchett/status/1715053620574474633

https://burchett.house.gov/media/press-releases/house-members-meet-inspectors-general-scif-discuss-uaps

'Galactic 05' Research Mission To Become Virgin Galactic's Sixth Flight In Six Months

OCTOBER, 18, 2023

Flight Window Opens November 2, 2023

Scientist Dr. Alan Stern and Researcher Kellie Gerardi Plan To Conduct Five Scientific Research Experiments

ORANGE COUNTY, Calif.(BUSINESS WIRE) Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) today announced the ‘Galactic 05’ flight window will open November 2, 2023. This would be the Company’s sixth spaceflight this year and tenth to date. The ‘Galactic 05’ mission would once again see Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship converted into a suborbital space lab for space-based research. This research mission reaffirms Virgin Galactic’s commitment to providing unprecedented access to space by reducing the historical barriers of time and cost associated with innovative microgravity and space-based research.

“The pursuit of scientific discovery has driven Virgin Galactic from the beginning, and we’re thrilled to offer a wide breadth of high-quality and reliable access to space-based research,” said Michael Colglazier, CEO of Virgin Galactic. “With six flights in six months, our teams have delivered on our turn time objectives for our initial spaceship, VSS Unity. ‘Galactic 05’ will be our second commercial human-tended research mission, and insights from this flight will be used to enhance and refine the research capabilities of our future Delta fleet.”

The dynamic crew of the ‘Galactic 05’ mission will include:

Astronaut 020 - Dr. Alan Stern, U.S. Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President in Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) Space Sector

Astronaut 021 - Kellie Gerardi, U.S. Payload Specialist and Bioastronautics Researcher for the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS)

Astronaut 022 - Private Astronaut – Franco-Italian nationality

‘Galactic 05’ is set to become Galactic’s sixth space research mission and its second this year. Alan and Kellie are experienced researchers who plan to conduct human-tended research during the suborbital spaceflight. As a former NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, Alan is a long-time advocate for commercial suborbital research platforms. Sponsored by SwRI, Alan’s mission is planned to be a training flight for a future suborbital spaceflight as part of NASA’s Flight Opportunities program. During ‘Galactic 05’, Alan will fly a biomedical harness to collect physiological data related to human spaceflight and conduct practice activities for an astronomical experiment on the NASA flight.

Kellie, sponsored by IIAS, plans to fly three payloads, two of which will evaluate novel healthcare technologies in microgravity conditions through the collection of biometric data with the Astroskin biomonitoring device, and examine how confined fluid behaves to inform future healthcare technologies in space. Her research has been developed through extensive reduced gravity flight campaigns with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and would now be advanced through a suborbital flight.

Learn more about the ‘Galactic 05’ research experiments HERE.

“After years of sending machines to conduct research on my behalf, I'm thrilled to be making this maiden spaceflight,” said Dr. Alan Stern, on behalf of SwRI. “What sets this flight apart from others, and which likely represents a new kind of space activity, is that more than anything else I will be training – in space – for future space experiments I will be performing with NASA funding. Virgin’s suborbital costs are low enough to open up space training actually in space as a viable opportunity, and that is a game changer."

“This mission represents the beginning of a new era of access to space for the research community, and the culmination of a personal lifelong dream. I’m grateful for the support and confidence that IIAS continues to place in me, and I’m looking forward to paving the way for our many talented researchers who will follow, using space as a laboratory to benefit humanity,” said Kellie Gerardi, on behalf of IIAS.

The Virgin Galactic crew includes VSS Unity Commander Mike Masucci and Pilot Kelly Latimer, VMS Eve Commander Jameel Janjua and Pilot Andy Edgell, and Astronaut Instructor Colin Bennett. Colin’s work on ‘Galactic 05’ will complete the in-flight Astronaut Instructor training assessments, and the fourth cabin seat on VSS Unity will be used for additional revenue generation on future flights.

The ‘Galactic 06’ mission is expected to take place in January 2024 to allow time for routine, planned annual vehicle inspections before re-commencing with standard pre-flight readiness procedures. The ‘Galactic 06’ mission will be planned to carry four private astronauts to space.

https://investors.virgingalactic.com/news/news-details/2023/Galactic-05-Research-Mission-Set-to-Become-Virgin-Galactics-Sixth-Flight-in-Six-Months/default.aspx

>>19772216

>America and her citizens are in freefall

Controlled demolition