Natalie Winters
@nataliegwinters
Thank you for including me in your hardcore MAGA sizzle reel @JerryNadler!
Steve Bannon and Natalie are living rent free in Jerry Nadler’s fat head.
8:41 PM · Jun 4, 2024
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21.7K
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https://x.com/nataliegwinters/status/1798153180108177734
Nadler knows dems crossed the line and he knows how effective the war room is, attacking Natalie is quite silly. Democrats are getting more and more liberals hating them.
I think its pretty funny Nadler showing clips of the war room, because now all Republicans have heard a message they hadn’t heard before, and it might motivate them. Sure they still hate is Americans or deplorables, but they know how angry we are, with do nothing Congress.
>>20970898
Please shut up and get over it. We have a war to win!
The Volokh Conspiracy Reason
Mostly law professorsSometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
President Donald Trump's Manhattan Convictions are Unconstitutional 1/2
The first amendment protects the alleged payment of hush money to a porn star to influence an election outcome as the u.s. supreme court will eventually rule
Steven Calabresi6.1.2024 3:32 AM
President Donald Trump was convicted yesterday of allegedly altering business records to conceal his alleged payment of money to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, in order to influence the 2016 presidential election.But, altering business records under New York State law is only a crime if it is done to conceal the violation of some other law.Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleged that the documents were allegedly falsely altered to conceal a contribution of money in violation of federal campaign finance laws or in pursuance of winning the 2016 election by defrauding the voters of information they had a right to know. Neither argument passes First Amendment scrutiny.
The federal campaign finance laws were partially upheld in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976). In that case, campaign expenditure limits were ruled to be flatly unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech. Under Buckley v. Valeo, an individual like Donald Trump can spend an unlimited amount of his own money promoting his own campaign. But, the Supreme Court in Buckley did uphold contribution limits on how much an individual or a group could contribute to influence an election. Alvin Bragg argues that the Trump organization's contribution of $130,000 to pay Stormy Daniels hush money exceeded federal campaign finance limits on contributions. The federal government itself has adopted a policy of not prosecuting hush money payments as illegal campaign contributions in the wake of its embarrassing loss of such a prosecution brought against Democratic Vice Presidential contender John Edwards. Edwards had paid hush money during the 2004 presidential election to a mistress with who he had had a child out of wedlock.
In 2010, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310, the Supreme Court held 5 to 4 that the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by closely allied corporations and groups like The Trump Organization. Under Citizens United, it was perfectly legal for The Trump Organization to pay Daniels $130,000 in hush money to conceal her alleged affair with Donald Trump.
The opinion in Citizens United was written by former Justice, and liberal icon, Anthony M. Kennedy, and it was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Justice Samuel Alito all three of whom are still on the Supreme Court. Given the Court's current membership, it is highly likely that the outcome in Citizens United would prevail again today by a vote of 6 to 3. If Buckley v. Valeo was argued to be an obstacle to Trump prevailing, the Supreme Court would today, in 2024, and should today, in 2024, overrule the campaign finance contribution limits of federal election law as violations of the freedom of speech. Groups contributing to election campaigns can pay for advertising to promote candidates, and they can also pay hush money to keep bad or false stories out of the news. The effect either way is to help the candidate. You can contribute money to generate good publicity. And, you can contribute money to avoid bad publicity. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech in both cases.
Campaign finance limits prevent speech by people who want to engage in it.They have changed Congress so badly that today Members of Congress spend 70% of their time raising money rather then legislatingor meeting with their constituents because of absurdly low campaign finance limits that have not been adequately raised to match inflation since those laws were enacted in the 1970's. The post-Watergate campaign finance laws were and always have been flagrantly unconstitutional in their totality.
Federal Campaign Finance laws are an incumbent protection measure that makes it too hard for challengers to knock off incumbents who have much higher name id and who have franking privileges which allow them unlimited free correspondence with their constituents through the mail. That it is not to mention the power of incumbents to steer pork-barrel spending back to their own states and districts so that they will be endlessly re-elected…
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/06/01/president-donald-trumps-manhattan-convictions-are-unconstitutional/
2/2
The First Amendment Freedom of Speech Clause also rules out of order Alvin Bragg's argument that Trump defrauded American votersby preventing them from hearing about Trump's affair with Stormy Daniels. Theories as broad as this one is, of "defrauding voters" would end up eliminating the freedom of speech in American elections.Voters had no "right" to know about Donald Trump's sex life.He was obviously not monogamous being married to a third wife, and voters who adhere to traditional values voted for him anyway because of the kind of stellar conservative justices he went on to appoint to the Supreme Court.
There was thus no predicate crime that Trump could have been concealing when he allegedly altered business records at The Trump Organization. Trump's convictions in the Manhattan trial are unconstitutional because they violate the First Amendment as it was originally understood.
The U.S. Supreme Court needs to hear this case as soon as possible because of its impact on the 2024 presidential electionbetween President Trump and President Biden. Voters need to know that the Constitution protected everything Trump is alleged to have done with respect to allegedly paying hush money to Stormy Daniels. This is especially the case because the trial judge in Trump's Manhattan case wrongly allowed Stormy Daniels to testify in graphic detail about the sexual aspects of her alleged affair with Trump. This testimony tainted the jury and the 2024 national presidential electorate, impermissibly, and was irrelevant to the question of whether President Trump altered business records to conceal a crime. The federal Supreme Court needs to make clear what are the legal rules in matters of great consequence to an election to a federal office like the presidency. A highly partisan borough, Manhattan, of a highly partisan city, New York City, in a highly partisan state, like New York State, cannot be allowed to criminalize the conduct of presidential candidates in ways that violate the federal constitution.
The Roman Republic fell when politicians began criminalizing politics.I am gravely worried that we are seeing that pattern repeat itself in the present-day United States. It is quite simply wrong to criminalize political differences.
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/06/01/president-donald-trumps-manhattan-convictions-are-unconstitutional/
X Corp. asks Supreme Court to review process that led Jack Smith to obtain Trump Twitter files
The social media company argues that a district judge ran afoul of the First Amendment when she ordered the company to turn over Trump’s data.
By KYLE CHENEY
06/04/2024 02:08 PM EDT
Last year, federal courts in Washington, D.C. forced Elon Musk’s X Corp. to fork over reams of data from Donald Trump’s account to special counsel Jack Smith without telling Trump and giving him a chance to intervene.
Now the company is urging the Supreme Courtto prevent such a scenario from unfolding again, a demand that could radically alter the way criminal investigators deploy secret search warrants and subpoenas for sensitive information.
X Corp. is asking the justices to consider whether social media services can be forced to share data about their userswith government investigators while being barred from informing those users about the requests.
Trump’s material, the company noted, might have been subject to claims of executive privilege. But other users might have their own privileges to invoke, from attorneys to journalists to spouses.
In the case of Trump’s account, a federal district judge in Washington D.C., Beryl Howell, rejected X Corp.’s protestations and endorsed a so-called “nondisclosure order” that barred the company from informing Trump about Smith’s subpoena. She reasoned that prosecutors had presented evidence that informing Trump could endanger the information and cause risks to Smith’s probe.
In February 2023, Howell held the company, which Musk had recently purchased, in contempt for dragging its feet on producing the material. The judge fined the company $350,000. And she wondered aloud whether Musk was impeding Smith’s investigation to ingratiate himself to the former president. (Howell absolutely hates Trump and she is one of the Judges that allowed illegal FISA court to work in secret for IC to spy on Trump et al)
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals supported Howell’s decision, but the court’s four conservatives wrote a blistering opinioncriticizing the ruling for permitting prosecutors to evade a potential executive privilege fight.
X Corp., represented by prominent attorneys from WilmerHale, contended that theD.C. courts’ decisions failed to protect the company’s First Amendment right to communicate with its customers.
Smith has already obtained voluminous data from Trump’s account, a component of his effort to pinpoint Trump’s actions in the key weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But X Corp. says the legal issue at the heart of its Supreme Court petition is likely to recur. In fact, the company is mounting a similar battle against nondisclosure orders in an investigation that was made public earlier this year by Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who similarly ruled against the company.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/04/x-supreme-court-jack-smith-trump-twitter-files-00161521
(Axios Makes Up Gossip or Repeats it)
Behind the Curtain: MAGA's jail plan
Mike Allen, Jim VandeHei
If former President Trump wins in November, top supporters will push him to investigate, prosecute — and even try to imprison — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who won Trump's conviction in the hush-money case.
"Of course [Bragg] should be — and will be — jailed," Steve Bannon, one of the top voices of the MAGA movement, told us — saying for the record what many Trump supporters are privately plotting.
Why it matters: This column has reported extensively about all the norms Trump plans to shatter if returned to the White House. Nowhere would that be truer than at the Justice Department, which Trump wants to make his fief and retribution arm.
Bannon told us Bragg could be targeted using the 14th Amendment (equal protection) and Fourth Amendment (outlawing unreasonable searches and seizures by the government) "plus scores of other" laws.
Bannon told us he wants "investigations to include [Democrats'] media allies."
Another Trump insider pointed to a federal civil rights statute, "Conspiracy Against Rights."
Asked about how much more aggressive a second Trump term would be, Bannon pointed to "the evolution of any war — the Revolution," the Civil War, and World Wars I and II: "They only get nastier over time."
Reality check: Bragg, who's also prosecuting Bannon in a separate casescheduled to go to trial in September, is a state official who operates independently of the Justice Department and the federal courts.
The big picture: With Trump's conviction, "lawfare" — political warfare involving the courts — is one of the top issues animating the Trump faithful.
Asked about the signature cry of "lock her up" from Trump rallies in 2016, the former president said in a post-conviction interview on "Fox & Friends Weekend": "I could have done it. But I felt it would have been a terrible thing. And then this happened to me. And, so I may feel differently about it."
Last year, Trump vowed on his Truth Social platform to "APPOINT A REAL SPECIAL 'PROSECUTOR' TO GO AFTER THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE USA, JOE BIDEN."
What we're hearing: Of all the slots in a prospective Trump Cabinet, attorney general is where we've been told to watch for an aggressive, MAGA-diehard nomination.
"If you get the right person, it's like magic," Trump said on "Fox & Friends Weekend," while discussing the attorney general and other top officials in an administration.
"It's like in real estate: You know, you put a good super in a building, the building runs well. You put a bad one in, it doesn't. It's the same thing [on] a little bit — slightly larger scale."
What's next: Even before the election, House Republicans want to go after Bragg.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday told Fox News Digital he's preparing an appropriations package that would "defund the lawfare activities" of state and federal prosecutors leading "politically sensitive investigations," including Bragg, special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis.
Jordan called last week for Bragg and one of his courtroom prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, to testify June 13before Jordan's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The topic: "the unprecedented political prosecution of President Trump."
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said this weekend on "Fox News Sunday" that the hearing's purpose "is to investigate what these prosecutors are doing at the state and federal level to use … political retribution in the court system to go after political opponents, federal officials like Donald Trump."
"And we're going to look at Special Counsel Jack Smith," Johnson added, referring to the Justice Department official leading two federal probes of Trump. "We have the funding streams. We have mechanisms to try to get control of that."
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/05/trump-alvin-bragg-election-2024-jail
(The left always freak out when Conservatives do exactly what Leftists do. Fair is Fair!)
5 Jun, 2024 14:59
Enlist more women to free up men for front line – Ukrainian deputy PM
Kiev is struggling to mobilize enough soldiers to keep fighting against Russia
Placing more women in charge of military mobilization in Ukraine would free up men for combat roles, Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk has suggested.
Kiev has recently overhauled its mobilization system in an attempt to boost conscription rates and deploy more troops in the conflict with Russia. Reforms have included the introduction of an online service, which fighting-age men can use for an obligatory update of their personal data.
Unlike Ukrainian men, women are not subject to forced conscription, but can serve in the military and can also volunteer their details. Commenting on claims by the Defense Ministry on Tuesday that over 180,000 women had done so, Vereshchuk described the female population as “a great pool of personnel for the system of conscription centers, including managerial positions.”
“By boosting the enrollment of women to work in conscription, men could be freed up for combat units,”the senior official suggested on social media.
Draft avoidance has emerged as a major problem for Ukraine as its frontline casualties pile up. Some men are even willing to risk their lives to escape the country. Last week, the Ukrainian Border Guard reported that it had recovered the bodies of 45 people who had drowned while attempting to cross the Tisza river, which runs along the frontier with Hungary and Romania.
Officials are attempting to address manpower shortages by turning to reserves previously considered inadequate for military service, such as prison inmates and people with milder medical conditions. Kiev also reportedly intends to put deserters back into action if they change their minds and volunteer for frontline duty.
Meanwhile, the government has been nudging women to join the armed forces,using the language of female empowerment as an argument. Economy Minister Yulia Sviridenko said in April that gender equality demands greater female participation in demining efforts.
“At this moment we have noticeable results. The average women inclusion rate… has reached some 30%,” she reported, noting that this aligns with NATO levels.
Last week, Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov estimated Ukrainian military losses at over 35,000 in May alone.
(Forced conscription is pretty violent, can women fight a man, that fights back. Desperation)
https://www.rt.com/russia/598800-vereshchuk-enroll-women-military-mobilization/