Memorial Day – Why We Fight



[INSIDE JW]

Judicial Watch Sues for Emails of Fauci Advisor on Non-Government
Account

[[link removed]]
In an echo of the Hillary Clinton email scandal, we filed a FOIA
lawsuit
[[link removed]]
against the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) for official
emails in the personal email account of senior advisor to Anthony
Fauci David Morens
[[link removed]]
(_Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services_
[[link removed]]
(No. 1:24-cv-01203)). Fauci was director of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, from
1984 to 2022.

We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after
the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
[[link removed]]
(NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a component of
HHS, failed to respond to an October 25, 2023, FOIA request for:
“All work-related emails sent to and from NIAID Senior Advisor David
Morens on non-government email accounts.”

The House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on April 16,
2024, issued a subpoena
[[link removed]]
to Morens, stating:

> On June 29, 2023, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus
> Pandemic … requested information pertaining to your use of
> personal e-mail. In response to that request, you voluntarily
> participated in a transcribed interview on January 18, 2024, and
> produced a portion of the requested documents on November 20, 2023.

***

> [T]he Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability has
> authorized the attached subpoena, compelling your production of
> certain documents and information by April 30, 2024.
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), chairman of the subcommittee, issued a
press release
[[link removed]]
regarding the subpoena, stating:

> Recent whistleblower allegations revealed new, additional evidence
> that Dr. Morens intentionally used his personal email to hide
> conversations about the origins of COVID-19 and subvert federal
> transparency laws. Last week, Dr. Morens’s self-proclaimed “best
> friend” — EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak —
> released four document tranches that confirmed the whistleblower’s
> allegations. Notably, Dr. Daszak is at the center of controversy
> related to his use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous
> gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
On April 19, 2024, the committee released an email
[[link removed]]
between
Morens and EcoHealth President Peter Daszak, containing
“confidential” information that Fauci had been briefed about
biosafety labs.

And, perhaps not conicidentally, congressional investigators just
released emails showing that Morens collaborated with the agency’s
“FOIA lady”
[[link removed]]
to ensure certain documents would not be disclosed to the public!

Our FOIA lawsuits and investigations have uncovered much of what the
public knows about many Covid-19 controversies:

* On April 19, 2024, we reported
[[link removed]]
that it
received records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in a
FOIA request that showed an April 2020 email exchange with several
officials in the bureau’s Newark Field Office referring to Fauci’s
NIAID grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China as
including “gain-of-function research” which “would leave no
signature of purposeful human manipulation.”

* Emails between U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and
top Facebook executives in 2021 regarding the censorship of user posts
about Covid controversies
[[link removed]]
showed
Facebook leadership seeking to “better understand the scope of what
the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.”
* Records from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) showed that a Pfizer study surveyed 23 people in 2021 to gauge
reactions to its Covid vaccine booster
[[link removed]
asking
the FDA
[[link removed]]
to
approve it.
* Records
[[link removed]]
from the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) included the initial
grant application and annual reports to the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) from EcoHealth Alliance
[[link removed]],
describing the aim of its work
with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to create mutant viruses “to
better predict the capacity of our CoVs [coronaviruses] to infect
people.”
* HHS records included
[[link removed]
[[link removed]]
of
then-Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Francis
Collins showing a British physicians’ group recommended the use of
Ivermectin to prevent and treat Covid-19.
* Heavily redacted HHS
[[link removed]
showed
[[link removed]]
that just two
days prior to FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine a
discussion was held between U.S. and UK health regulators regarding
the Covid shot and “anaphylaxis,” with the regulators emphasizing
their “mutual confidentiality agreement.”
* We obtained
[[link removed]
records
[[link removed]]
regarding data Moderna submitted to the FDA on its mRNA Covid-19
vaccine, which indicated a “statistically significant” number of
rats were born with skeletal deformities after their mothers were
injected with the vaccine. The documents also revealed Moderna elected
not to conduct a number of standard pharmacological studies on the
laboratory test animals.
* Heavily redacted
[[link removed]
[[link removed]]
from
the FDA regarding the Covid-19 booster vaccine detailed pressure on
Covid booster use and approval.
* HHS
[[link removed]
[[link removed]]
detailed
internal discussions about myocarditis and the Covid vaccine. Other
documents detailed adverse “events for which a contributory effect
of the vaccine could not be excluded.”
* We
[[link removed]
[[link removed]]
HHS records
detailing the extensive media plans for a Biden administration
propaganda campaign to push the Covid-19 vaccine.
* HHS records
[[link removed]
previously redacted
[[link removed]]
locations of Covid-19 vaccine testing facilities in Shanghai, China.
The FDA had claimed the name and location of the testing facilities
were protected by the confidential commercial information exemption of
the FOIA.
* NIH records showed an FBI “inquiry” into the
NIH’s controversial bat coronavirus grant tied to the Wuhan
Institute of Virology. The records also showed National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) officials were concerned about
“gain-of-function” research in China’s Wuhan Institute of
Virology in 2016. The Fauci agency was also concerned about
[[link removed]
Alliance’s
[[link removed]]
lack of compliance with reporting
rules and use of gain-of-function research in the NIH-funded research
involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.
* Texas Public Information Act (PIA) records showed the
former director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University
of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB),
[[link removed].
James W. Le
Duc
[[link removed]],
warned
Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology of potential
investigations into the Covid issue by Congress.
* HHS records regarding biodistribution studies and
related data for the Covid-19 vaccines showed how a key component of
the vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs),
were
[[link removed]
outside the injection site
[[link removed]],
mainly the liver, adrenal glands, spleen and ovaries of test animals,
eight to 48 hours after injection.
* Records
[[link removed]]
obtained from HHS through a FOIA lawsuit related to hydroxychloroquine
and Covid-19 revealed that a grant to EcoHealth Alliance was canceled
because of press reports that a portion of the grant was given to the
Wuhan Institute of Virology.
* HHS records revealed that from 2014 to 2019,
[[link removed]
[[link removed]]
was given to the
Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID.
* NIAID records showed that it
[[link removed]
nine
China-related grants to EcoHealth Alliance
[[link removed]]
to research
coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants
to the Wuhan lab itself. The records also included an email from the
vice director of the Wuhan Lab asking an NIH official for help finding
disinfectants for decontamination of airtight suits and indoor
surfaces.
* HHS records included an “urgent for Dr. Fauci
[[link removed]
email chain,
citing ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded
[[link removed]
Alliance
[[link removed]].
The government emails also
reported that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates worked
closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for
Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help
“raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from
China on important international counsels as high level commitment
from China.”
* Our
[[link removed]
documentary
[[link removed]]
regarding the coordinated effort by the government and Big Tech to
censor and suppress information on topics such as Hunter Biden’s
laptop, Covid-19, and election debates is available
[[link removed]
[[link removed]].

You can see that Judicial Watch is the national leader in exposing
the terrible government secrecy and misconduct tied to Covid. The
latest developments about secret emails and FOIA evasion shows our
work is not done.

JUDICIAL WATCH FILES CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT OVER REPARATIONS IN
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

Evanston, Illinois, has gotten into the reparations game, and we’re
taking steps to shut it down.

Judicial Watch filed a class action lawsuit
[[link removed]]
against the city on behalf of six individuals over the city’s use of
race as an eligibility requirement for a reparations program which
makes $25,000 payments to black residents and descendants of black
residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969.

The civil rights lawsuit challenges “on Equal Protection grounds
Defendant City of Evanston’s use of race as an eligibility
requirement for a program that makes $25,000 payments to residents and
direct descendants of residents of the city five-plus decades if not
more than a century ago. Plaintiffs seek a judgment declaring
Defendant’s use of race to be unconstitutional.

Plaintiffs also seek an injunction enjoining Defendant from continuing
to use race as a requirement for receiving payment under the program
and request that the Court award them and all class members damages in
the amount of $25,000 each.”

Through a series of resolutions, the Evanston City Council created a
program to provide $25,000 cash payments to residents who lived in
Evanston between 1919 and 1969 and their children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren.

The program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment because:

> Remedying societal discrimination is not a compelling governmental
> interest. _Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co._, 488 U.S. 469, 505 (1989);
> _see also Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke_, 438 U.S. 265, 307
> ((1978) (opinion of Powell, J.) (describing “societal
> discrimination” as “an amorphous concept of injury that may be
> ageless in its reach into the past.”) Remedying discrimination
> from 55 to 105 years ago or remedying discrimination experienced at
> any time by an individual’s parents, grandparents, or great
> grandparents has not been recognized as a compelling governmental
> interest…
>
> Defendant also has not and cannot demonstrate that its use of a race
> as an eligibility requirement is narrowly tailored. Among other
> shortcomings, Defendant’s use of race as a proxy for experiencing
> discrimination between 1919 and 1969 does not limit eligibility to
> persons who actually experienced discrimination during that relevant
> time period and therefore is overinclusive. Defendant also failed
> to consider race-neutral alternatives, such as requiring prospective
> recipients to show that they or their parents, grandparents, or
> great grandparents actually experienced housing discrimination
> during the relevant time period because of an Evanston ordinance,
> policy, or procedure, as Defendant requires for the third group of
> prospective recipients. Nor did Defendant take into account
> race-neutral anti-discrimination remedies before adopting its
> race-based eligibility requirement.
The first group of persons eligible for the $25,000 payments are
current Evanston residents who identify as Black or African American
and were at least 18 years of age between 1919 and 1969. Evanston
refers to this group as “ancestors.”

The second group are individuals who identify as Black or African
American who are at least 18 years of age and have at least one
parent, grandparent, or great grandparent who identifies (or
identified) as Black or African American, lived in Evanston for any
period between 1919 and 1969, and was at least 18 at the time.
Evanston refers to this group as “direct descendants.” A “direct
descendant” is not required to be a current resident of Evanston to
receive the payment.

We argue in the lawsuit: “At no point in the application process are
persons in the first and second groups required to present evidence
that they or their ancestors experienced housing discrimination or
otherwise suffered harm because of an unlawful Evanston ordinance,
policy, or procedure or some other unlawful act or series of acts by
Evanston between 1919 and 1969. In effect, Evanston is using race as a
proxy for having experienced discrimination during this time
period.”

The city committed $20 million to the program.

We state in the lawsuit that the six plaintiffs satisfy all
eligibility requirements for participating in the program as “direct
descendants” other than the race requirement (the actual number of
individuals who are potential class members is in the tens of
thousands).

The Evanston, Illinois’ ‘reparations’ program is nothing more
than a ploy to redistribute tax dollars to individuals based on race.
This scheme unconstitutionally discriminates against anyone who does
not identify as Black or African American. This class action, civil
rights lawsuit will be a historic defense of our color-blind
Constitution.

Our lawsuits challenging unconstitutional discrimination are
extensive.

On January 29, 2024, we filed a lawsuit
[[link removed]]
on
behalf of San Francisco taxpayers over a city program that
discriminates in favor of biological black and Latino men who identify
as women in the distribution of tax money. The lawsuit was filed after
Judicial Watch earlier forced the release of records from the City of
San Francisco showing the city prioritized tax money for black and
Latino transgenders (biological men) in the Guaranteed Income for
Trans People program.

In December 2023, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the trial
court’s ruling and allowed our historic lawsuit
[[link removed]]
filed on
behalf of a Minneapolis taxpayer over a teachers’ contract that
provides discriminatory job protections to certain racial minorities
to proceed.

The City of Asheville, NC, in January 2022 settled
[[link removed]]
a Judicial Watch
federal civil rights lawsuit after agreeing to remove all racially
discriminatory provisions in a city-funded scholarship program.
Additionally, the city also agreed to remove racially discriminatory
eligibility provisions in a related program that provides grants to
educators.

In May 2022, we won
[[link removed]]
a court battle against California’s gender quota law for corporate
boards. The verdict came after a 28-day trial. The verdict followed a
similar ruling in Judicial Watch’s favor in April finding
California’s diversity mandate for corporate boards
unconstitutional.

JUDICIAL WATCH ASKS MINNESOTA SUPREME COURT TO ALLOW TAXPAYER LAWSUIT
OVER RACIALLY DISCRIMINATORY MINNEAPOLIS TEACHERS’ CONTRACT TO
PROCEED TO TRIAL

We filed a brief
[[link removed]]
in the Minnesota Supreme Court asking it to affirm a state Appeals
Court decision allowing its taxpayer lawsuit over a racially
discriminatory Minneapolis teachers’ contract to proceed to trial
(_Deborah Jane Clapp v. Rochelle Cox et al._
[[link removed]
_(No. A23-0360).

On December 4, 2023, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled
[[link removed]]
in favor
of our historic lawsuit
[[link removed]]
filed on behalf of a Minneapolis taxpayer over the teachers’
contract, and allowed the case to proceed to trial. The contract
provides discriminatory job protections to certain racial minorities
(_Clapp v. Cox et al._
[[link removed]
_(No. 27-CV-22-12454)).

We originally filed the lawsuit
[[link removed]]
in August 2022 against the superintendent of the Minneapolis Public
Schools, the Minneapolis Public Schools, and the Minneapolis Board of
Education (together referenced as “MPS”) for violating the Equal
Protection Guarantee of the Minnesota Constitution. MPS, supported by
the teachers and other public employee unions, assert that Minnesota
taxpayers don’t have the right to challenge the illegal spending of
taxpayer money by government officials.

In our brief
[[link removed]]
to the Supreme Court, we argue:

> Minneapolis Public Schools and its _Amici_ spill a lot of ink
> complaining that a “complete stranger” has sued to prevent MPS
> from carrying out an unconstitutional provision of a contract
> between it and its teachers. Plaintiff-Respondent Deborah Clapp,
> however, is not a stranger. She is a Minneapolis taxpayer, and this
> Court, since at least 1877, has recognized taxpayers as proper
> parties to bring such actions in Minnesota courts. This Court should
> not accept MPS’s and its _Amici’s_ invitation to undermine this
> important check on government power.

***

> Clapp could not have brought a more straightforward case. She
> alleges that she lives in Minneapolis and pays property tax on the
> home she has owned since 2017…She also alleges that Minneapolis
> Public Schools is funded in part by her tax dollars…In addition,
> she alleges that MPS spends those tax dollars to carry out the
> various provisions of its contract with the teachers’
> union….Finally, she alleges that one of those provisions violates
> the Minnesota Constitution….Therefore, she alleges that her tax
> dollars are being used in an unlawful manner.
The December 2023 Appellate Court ruling
[[link removed]]
came
after the Hennepin County District Court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling
that our taxpayer client lacked standing and that her claims were not
ripe. We appealed, and the Minnesota Court of Appeals overturned the
lower court’s dismissal of the case.

The controversial contract was agreed to in March 2022 to end a 14-day
teacher strike. The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers ratified the
contract shortly after the agreement was reached. The Minneapolis
Board of Education ratified it in May 2022. The contract was
recently renewed
[[link removed]]
with the racial discrimination provisions intact.

Our initial complaint
[[link removed]]
asked the District Court to enter a judgment declaring all actions
taken to implement the racial and ethnic preference provisions of
Article 15 of the contract to be illegal. The lawsuit also asks that
the court declare illegal the use of any taxpayer dollars to implement
these provisions of the contract and that MPS be prohibited from
taking any actions to implement these racial and ethnic provisions.
Our complaint states:

> Among other things, the contract provides preferences, protections,
> and privileges for MPS teachers of certain races and ethnicities
> under a section entitled “ARTICLE 15. PROTECTIONS FOR EDUCATORS OF
> COLOR.” There is no similar provision covering educators who are
> not “of color.”
>
> Under the contract, teachers of color are exempt from Defendant
> MPS’s seniority-based layoffs and reassignments, which means, when
> layoffs or reassignments occur, the next senior teacher who is not
> “of color” would be laid off or reassigned. In addition, the
> contract mandates that Defendants reinstate teachers of color over
> more senior teachers who are not “of color.”
Under the appeals court ruling, the lawsuit was to go back to
Hennepin County District Court for further proceedings, but MPS
appealed the case to the Minnesota Supreme Court before those
proceedings could commence.

There is a leftist cadre of government and public employee union
officials in Minneapolis who want to engage in lawless woke,
anti-white discrimination – and they want to deprive taxpayers of
their rights to stop the abuse. Our lawsuit aims to shut down an
extreme leftist attack on the bedrock constitutional principle that no
one can be denied equal treatment under the law on account of race.

We are assisted in the lawsuit by Daniel N. Rosen.

Our lawsuits and FOIA requests on Critical Race Theory and other
leftist extremism are extensive.

In April 2024, Judicial Watch presented oral argument
[[link removed]]
to the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in the case filed on
behalf of Kari MacRae, a Massachusetts high school teacher who was
fired in retaliation for posts on social media that predated her
employment at Hanover High School.

On February 5, 2024, Judicial Watch filed a public records lawsuit
[[link removed]]
in the
Superior Court for Suffolk County, Massachusetts, against the City of
Boston after the city failed to produce records related to the
“Electeds of Color Holiday Party” hosted by Boston Mayor Michelle
Wu in December 2023.

(USAFA), a component of the United States Department of Defense, which
included instructional materials and emails that address topics such
as Critical Race Theory, “white privilege,” and Black Lives
Matter.

In March 2023, records
[[link removed]]
from
the U.S. Department of Defense showed the U.S. Air Force Academy
(USAFA) had made race and gender instruction a top priority in the
training of cadets.

We filed a California Public Records Act lawsuit
[[link removed]]
against
the Oakland Unified School District for records on a racially
segregated “playdate” held on August 26, 2023, by one of the
district’s elementary schools.

The City of Asheville, NC, in January 2022
[[link removed]
[[link removed]]
a Judicial Watch
federal civil rights lawsuit after agreeing to remove all racially
discriminatory provisions in a city-funded scholarship program.
Additionally, the city also agreed to remove racially discriminatory
eligibility provisions in a related program that provides grants to
educators.

In May 2022, we
[[link removed]
a court battle
[[link removed]]
against California’s gender quota law for corporate boards. The
verdict came after a 28-day trial. The verdict followed a
[[link removed]
ruling
[[link removed]]
in Judicial Watch’s favor in April finding California’s diversity
mandate for corporate boards unconstitutional.

TRUMP TRIAL: THE PROSECUTION RESTS, LAWFARE AT COURT, WHERE’S THE
CRIME?

We don’t have to assert that the prosecution of Donald Trump in New
York is political. The words and actions of the judge and prosecutors
are doing it for us. Micah Morrison, our chief investigative
correspondent, reports
[[link removed]]
in
_Investigative Bulletin_.

> The Trump prosecution rested its case Monday with a central question
> unanswered: where’s the crime?
>
> Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been dancing around the
> question for months. The prosecution produced a cacophony of tawdry
> testimony from a porn star (Stormy Daniels) and a former Trump aide
> turned convicted felon turned cooperating witness (Michael Cohen)
> but their claims had little to do with the allegations at the center
> of the case. Trump is charged
>
[[link removed]]
> with thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records,
> generally a low-level misdemeanor. But New York state law elevates
> the misdemeanor charge to a felony if the defendant’s “intent to
> defraud includes an intent to commit another crime,” and that’s
> where Bragg has placed his big bet.
>
> That other crime? Bragg insists he doesn’t have to name it. The
> “law does not so require,” he said at a news conference
> announcing the indictment—and in a court filing he doubled down,
> citing a legal finding
>
[[link removed]]
> that there is “no requirement” to “establish what particular
> crime was intended.” Good luck putting that one past a jury of New
> Yorkers.

> Bragg has offered several theories of “another crime.”
>
> “The primary crime we have alleged is New York state election law
> section 17-152
>
[[link removed]
> a Bragg prosecutor told the court in the opening days of the trial.
> “The entire case is predicated on the idea that there was a
> conspiracy to influence the election in 2016.”
>
> But Trump is not charged with an election law violation, and Bragg
> is on shaky legal ground with a 17-152 prosecution. A Washington
> Post search
>
[[link removed]]
> revealed only three prosecutions in forty-five years for violation
> of the statute. In one case, the defendant was acquitted; in the two
> others, charges were dropped.
>
> Bragg also has suggested Trump violated federal campaign finance
> laws. In a court filing
>
[[link removed]],
> Bragg alleged that Trump violated the federal Election Campaign Act
> by purchasing and suppressing “damaging information” from porn
> star Stormy Daniels. Other prosecutors have looked at this attempt
> to stretch a _state charge_ to include a _federal crime_ with
> skepticism. Both Bragg’s predecessor as Manhattan DA, Cy Vance,
> and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York declined
> to charge Trump in the case.
>
> Mark Pomerantz, a senior Vance prosecutor who resigned after
> differences with Bragg on Trump prosecutions, is dismissive of the
> state-federal gambit. In his book, “People vs. Donald Trump,”
> Pomerantz writes that the DA’s office spent a lot of time on the
> “gnarly legal question” of whether the “other crime” clause
> on the New York state books could be expanded to cover a federal
> crime. The issue has “never been litigated,” Pomerantz notes,
> and “no one could predict with certainty how an appellate court
> might eventually rule.”
>
> Bragg’s third “another crime” gambit is perhaps the strangest:
> tax fraud. In a “Statement of Facts”
>
[[link removed]]
> accompanying the Trump indictment, Bragg suggests that Trump
> violated New York tax laws by conspiring with Michael Cohen to file
> a fraudulent tax return “that mischaracterized, for tax purposes,
> the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme”
> to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels. Cohen, according to Bragg,
> paid Stormy Daniels $130,000. But Trump repaid Cohen $420,000. Why?
> According to the DA, so Cohen could then “characterize the payment
> as income on his tax returns, instead of a reimbursement,” leaving
> Cohen with a tidy $180,000 profit.
>
> Jacob Sullum notes
>
[[link removed]]
> in _Reason_: if “Cohen mischaracterized a reimbursement as income
> on state or city tax forms, that would be a peculiar sort of fraud,
> since the effect would be to _increase_ his tax liability. This
> theory of ‘another crime’ requires jurors to accept the
> proposition that tax fraud can entail paying the government _more_
> than was actually owed.”
>
> Cohen admitted in court Monday to stealing money from the Trump
> Organization, an admission that damages the prosecution’s key
> witness
>
[[link removed]].
>
> Can Bragg overcome Cohen’s credibility problems
>
[[link removed]]
and sway
> the jury? The cards are stacked in Bragg’s favor. The DA, his top
> prosecutor, and the judge all have close ties to a Democratic Party
> that apparently will stop at nothing to inflict damage on the
> Republican presidential frontrunner.
>
> Judicial Watch has reported
>
[[link removed]]
on Bragg’s
> strong ties to New York progressive politics. As New York state’s
> chief deputy attorney general, he helped lead a lawsuit against the
> Trump Foundation that resulted in its closure and a $2 million fine.
> In August 2022, he convicted Trump Organization chief financial
> officer Allan Weisselberg on charges of tax fraud and falsifying
> business records. In December 2022, he convicted the Trump
> Organization on charges related to off-the-books payments to
> Weisselberg and others. Bragg makes no secret of his anti-Trump
> bias. “I’ve sued Trump more than a hundred times,” he’s
> proudly
>
[[link removed]]
> noted
>
[[link removed]].
>
> In December 2022, Bragg recruited senior Justice Department official
> Matthew Colangelo—the lead prosecutor in the current trial—for
> the Trump prosecution team. In the Biden Administration, Colangelo
> served as acting associate attorney general and principal associate
> attorney general. Prior to going to Washington, Colangelo worked on
> the New York state attorney general’s investigation of the Trump
> Foundation. In 2018, Colangelo was paid $12,000
>
[[link removed]]
> for “political consulting” by the Democratic National Committee.
> In the Obama White House years, he served as deputy director of the
> National Economic Council, chief of staff at the Labor Department,
> and deputy associate attorney general in the Justice Department’s
> Civil Rights Division.
>
> The presiding judge at the Trump trial, Juan Merchan, found himself
> in hot water earlier this year when news emerged that his daughter,
> Loren Merchan
>
[[link removed]],
> was president of a left-wing digital advertising firm, Authentic
> Campaigns. The firm has close ties to high-profile Democrats,
> including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Adam Schiff. Trump
> vigorously protested and Merchan responded with a gag order
>
[[link removed]].
> His daughter aside, Merchan himself is worth a closer look. Like
> virtually all New York judges, he came up through the ranks of the
> Democratic Party’s political machine. Though considerably weakened
> by decades of fitful corruption reform, machine politics still plays
> a big role in the state’s judicial appointments. Merchan began his
> career as a prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office, moved on to
> the state attorney general’s office, and was appointed a family
> court judge by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2006. In 2009, he was
> appointed to his current position at criminal court. In July,
> Merchan received a “caution” letter
>
[[link removed]]
from the New
> York Commission of Judicial Conduct warning him about donations to
> Joe Biden and other Democratic causes.
>
> Will any of this matter when the Trump case goes to the jury? Judges
> and prosecutors have many ways of putting a thumb on the scale of
> justice. But juries famously often surprise, and no-nonsense New
> Yorkers—even those from deep blue Manhattan—may look with
> considerable skepticism at a courtroom that appears to be piling on
> a famous defendant and a prosecutor who won’t even name the crime
> at the heart of the case.

MEMORIAL DAY – ‘I WILL NOT FAIL THEE NOR FORSAKE THEE’

Memorial Day helps us ponder the ultimate sacrifice of untold numbers
of fellow American patriots who gave their lives to preserve and
defend our God-given freedoms and our constitutional republic.

As we honor those heroes next week, I thought it would be appropriate
to honor them while looking forward to the 80th Anniversary of
D-Day. I reproduce below President Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984
speech (on the 40th Anniversary), honoring the “Boys of Pointe du
Hoc”:

> We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies
> joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long
> years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations
> had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for
> liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its
> rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and
> fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human
> history.
>
> We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of
> France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air
> was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled
> with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the
> morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British
> landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission
> was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb
> these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The
> Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were
> here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied
> advance.
>
> The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers—the edge of the
> cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing
> grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope
> ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves
> up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one
> rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again.
> They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one,
> the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm
> land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the
> continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2
> days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.
>
> Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were
> thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who
> put them there.
>
> These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the
> cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These
> are the heroes who helped end a war.
>
> Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen
> Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for
> life… and left the vivid air signed with your honor.”
>
> I think I know what you may be thinking right now—thinking “we
> were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.”
> Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the
> 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned
> down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they
> heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming.
> Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his
> bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the
> bullets into the ground around him.
>
> Lord Lovat was with him—Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly
> announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry I’m a few minutes
> late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth
> he’d just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he
> and his men had just taken.
>
> There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves
> between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold,
> and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen
> the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there,
> but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they
> never looked back.
>
> All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that
> spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal
> Winnipeg Rifles, Poland’s 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers,
> the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England’s armored divisions,
> the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard’s “Matchbox Fleet”
> and you, the American Rangers.
>
> Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You
> were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly
> more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you
> risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to
> put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to
> take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met
> here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith
> and belief; it was loyalty and love.
>
> The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right,
> faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would
> grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep
> knowledge—and pray God we have not lost it—that there is a
> profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation
> and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to
> conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And
> you were right not to doubt.
>
> You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country
> is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s
> the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.
> All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny,
> and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.
>
> The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion
> was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought—or felt
> in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in
> Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they
> were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they
> were ringing the Liberty Bell.
>
> Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rockhard belief that
> Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold
> here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night
> before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute
> troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your
> heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what
> we’re about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his
> cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua:
> “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”
>
> These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that
> shaped the unity of the Allies.
>
> When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and
> governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be
> reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were
> huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the
> faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They
> rebuilt a new Europe together.
>
> There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been
> enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did
> its part, creating the Marshall plan to help rebuild our allies and
> our former enemies. The Marshall plan led to the Atlantic
> alliance—a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield
> for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.
>
> In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed
> the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries
> were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own
> time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet
> troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when
> peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding,
> almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still
> stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here
> for only one purpose—to protect and defend democracy. The only
> territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where
> our heroes rest.
>
> We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is
> better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind
> shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is
> lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be
> an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an
> expansionist intent.
>
> But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter
> aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes,
> prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In
> truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a
> reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen
> the risks of war, now and forever.
>
> It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by
> the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a
> terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of
> ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do
> not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the
> terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we
> are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the
> Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share
> our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways
> of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to
> turn our hope into action.
>
> We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for
> now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our
> commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that
> protects it.
>
> We are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same
> loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We’re bound by reality. The
> strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and
> the American security guarantee is essential to the continued
> freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we are
> with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our
> destiny.
>
> Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow
> to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what
> they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which
> Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake
> thee.”
>
> Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value [valor], and
> borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for
> which they lived and died.
>
> Thank you very much, and God bless you all.
I wish you a safe and blessed Memorial Day.

Until next week,



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