On Wednesday, the latest edition of The Economist/YouGov poll came out, and the takeaways include some rather bad news for pro-Hamas agitators on college campuses, or, as the poll puts it, "pro-Palestinian." There are also quite the telling findings about how those who plan to vote for President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats feel about the conflict and our ally in the Middle East.

Close to a majority of voters, at 49 percent, have heard "a lot" about the arrest of pro-Hamas agitators on college campuses, so they're at least staying informed on the issue. A majority of overall respondents and voters50 percent and 55 percent, respectivelyoppose the protests.

The only demographic where a majority say they support the protests is the 55 percent of liberals who do so. A plurality of 18- to 29-year-olds (42 percent), those who intend to vote for Biden (47 percent), Democrats (43 percent), and Lean Democrats (45 percent) support them, though.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2024/05/09/poll-on-pro-palestinian-campus-protests-n2638801

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has just admitted that he and other DOJ and FBI minions manipulated documentary evidence underlying the Mar-a-Lago case against Donald Trump. Everybody from Judge Aileen Cannon on down realizes this is bad. Still, I wonder how many people have noticed that Smith has admitted to doing what the J6 defendants are accused and have been convicted of doing: Violating 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2). The statutory charges against the J6 defendants are a specious abuse of the law but they perfectly fit Smith’s admitted conduct.

One of the main tools in the DOJ arsenal against anyone near the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is § 1512(c)(2), which the DOJ claims means imprisonment for a person who “corruptly…obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding…” That is what the DOJ claims happened when ordinary Americans (a) exercised their rights of free speech and (b) usually inadvertently, entered onto Capitol land after masked agitators had removed “no trespassing” signage and fencing and after the Capitol police had opened the building’s doors. The penalty is fines and/or imprisonment, with the latter potentially as long as 20 years.

The Supreme Court, though, is hearing Fischer v. United States, which sees one of the DOJ’s victims contesting the DOJ’s assertion about § 1512(c)(2)’s applicability to the J6. The argument is that § 1512(c)(2) manifestly applies to a very narrow fact set; namely, corruptly interfering with evidence in an official investigation. Heck, it’s in the statute’s title: “Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant.” Every section of the statute manifestly deals solely with efforts to destroy or otherwise manipulate evidence in a matter intended to lead to a criminal indictment.

Nevertheless, to imprison ordinary Americans, the DOJ came down hard on subsection (c)(2) of the statute because it contains the phrase “official proceeding.”

(c) Whoever corruptly—

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

But while the DOJ is focusing everyone’s attention on subsection (2), they’re ignoring subsection (1):

(c) Whoever corruptly—

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding…

Does that remind you of anything? It certainly does me.

It reminds me of Smith’s admission to Judge Aileen Cannon about his and his minions’ handling of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, documents that then served as the basis for his decision to indict Donald Trump. (Ignore, for now, the fact that Trump, as president of the United States, had plenary power to do as he would with national security information, unhindered either by prior Executive Orders, administrative regulations, or legislation. But back to Smith’s admission:

Prosecutors admitted in a court filing on Friday that “there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” The prosecutors had previously told the court that the documents were “in their original, intact form as seized.”

As any litigator knows, maintaining documents in the order in which they’re seized or produced is enormously important. That’s because order itself provides important information about the chronology of events or a person’s intent or innocence. It’s also of particular concern in this case because these documents were apparently packed by the General Services Administration, which then told Trump to pick them up.

In addition, it’s now beyond question that the DOJ doctored the crime scene photos it publicized to the world to “prove” that Donald Trump had allegedly violated national security laws.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/jack_smith_has_admitted_to_violating_the_same_law_used_against_j6_defendants.html

>>20842604

On May 7, Florida Judge Aileen Cannon postponed former President Donald Trump’s classified documents trial after explosive information dropped late Friday afternoon. Several new pieces of evidence indicate it’s even possible federal employees planted classified documents to frame Trump.

Even if what happened isn’t that nefarious — although exactly that scenario has already been deployed against Trump several times — not only could the case be thrown out of court, but some federal lawyers may have risked their licenses for mishandling evidence.

As time goes on, the lawfare cases are looking increasingly like coverups of government attempts to imprison Democrats’ top political opponent by framing him with crimes he didn’t do. It’s yet another indication the federal government is using the U.S. legal system to serve extremist partisans instead of justice, destroying equality before the law.

Recent court disclosures give two indications that federal employees could have planted the classified documents used to mire Trump and several aides into a sprawling investigation and an election-interfering court case. The first is the explosive evidence revealed Friday: For 11 months, the special counsel’s office hid that it misplaced some — we don’t know how many or which — of the same allegedly classified documents it claims Trump criminally possessed at Mar-a-Lago.

In that news-dump-timed filing Friday afternoon, the special counsel’s office revealed that when federal agents took boxes of papers from Trump’s home in an unprecedented FBI raid, they took out what they thought might be classified documents the president allegedly was not allowed to possess. They say they marked these documents’ original location in the boxes with “placeholder” sheets of paper marked for an inventory.

Yet after these boxes were removed to the FBI’s Washington field office for further inspection, the special counsel says, they discovered the boxes were not in the same state as when they were seized at Mar-a-Lago. When attempting to piece the boxes back together, the special counsel’s office said, “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet” (emphasis added).

The filing also says the FBI “generally” inserted the “handwritten sheets,” indicating there were exceptions to its use of placeholders to indicate the allegedly original locations of allegedly classified documents Trump allegedly criminally possessed. In a footnote, the special counsel writes that this situation is “inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court.” In other words, the special counsel has been lying to the court, the public, and the Trump legal team this whole time about the evidence grounding its entire case.

If they didn’t always use placeholders to mark moved documents and don’t know what documents some placeholders correspond to, some documents could be missing — or added. If there is no reliable and provable inventory of the seized document boxes, how can anyone trust the boxes accurately represent what Trump had? The DOJ admits the boxes were tampered with and are not in their original condition!

Second, there’s the also newly uncovered fact that a federal agency sent “two pallets” of documents to Mar-a-Lago while the National Archives and Records Administration was setting up this documents case. It’s unknown who all had access to these document boxes during their packing, temporary storage in Virginia, and transit to Trump’s home. Were those boxes a setup too? Imagine if some boxes the feds sent amid NARA’s dispute with Trump were also boxes the DOJ can’t verify as being in their original state.

In a May 4 letter, Trump’s defense argues the document-tampering corrupts the special counsel’s entire case: “[I]t was our understanding that most, and potentially all, of the charged documents were buried within the boxes and located next to other items that provided favorable context.” Corrupting any allegedly classified documents at issue in this case, they say, eliminates legal defense possibilities, making this case moot.

“The theory behind spoliation inference is that when a party has destroyed evidence, it shows that the party had consciousness of guilt or other reasons to avoid evidence. Hence, the court will conclude that the evidence was not in spoliator’s favor,” says USlegal.com.

Spoilation is not only a federal crime, but it risks the licenses of any lawyers who do it, as it violates the American Bar Association’s codes of conduct. Sanctions for spoilation include lawsuits against those alleged to have committed it and dismissing affected cases. That would be especially appropriate here, as the entire case rests on documents the DOJ has admittedly tampered with.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/09/did-federal-agencies-plant-classified-documents-to-frame-trump/