Happy New Year!



[INSIDE JW]

Trump Wins the Lawfare War

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The Left hasn’t caught on yet that Donald Trump is a fighter who
doesn’t fold easily. As our chief investigative reporter, Micah
Morrison, reports
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Trump’s win
at the polls helped lead to wins in the courts.

> Pundits and historians will be a long time sorting out the magnitude
> of Donald Trump’s electoral victory but one thing already is
> clear: Trump not only triumphed in the presidential contest, he also
> won the lawfare war. The latter—a victory for the constitutional
> foundation of the country —may prove as consequential as the
> former.
>
> “Lawfare” is a political war fought by other means: partisan
> warfare conducted in the courts and the media. Trump spent the
> entire Biden presidency battling lawfare cases brought by
> Democrat-allied prosecutors and judges—by Justice Department
> Special Counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg,
> Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, New York State Attorney
> General Letitia James, New York judges Juan Merchan and Arthur
> Engoron, and others.
>
> Trump fought back in the courts and in the court of public opinion.
> His election win not only deals death blows to the Democrat-aligned
> lawfare cases, but possibly to the practice of lawfare itself.
> Let’s take a moment to survey the legal landscape:
>
> _Jack Smith Goes Down_
>
> In November 2022, President Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick
> Garland, appointed prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel for two
> Justice Department investigations: the January 6, 2021, events at
> the U.S. Capitol, and separately, alleged Trump mishandling of
> classified documents. It was a particularly brazen lawfare move
> because by that time, the outline of the 2024 presidential contest
> was clear: Donald Trump was the frontrunner for the GOP presidential
> nomination and Joe Biden was signaling that he would run for
> re-election. The Biden Justice Department investigating the GOP
> presidential candidate seemed an outlandish and illegal proposition
>
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> but Garland and Smith pressed on. In July, Judge Aileen Cannon had
> seen enough and dismissed
>
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> the classified documents case on the grounds that the special
> counsel was unlawfully appointed. In November, after the election,
> the Justice Department threw in the towel, moving to drop all
> January 6 charges against Trump on the grounds that a sitting
> president cannot be charged with a crime. Trump rightfully claimed
> victory. “I persevered, against all odds, and WON,” he wrote on
> Truth Social. He added, “These cases, like all of the other cases
> I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should
> never have been brought,”
>
> _Bragg’s New York Criminal Case in Death Spiral _
>
> Deep blue New York produced a cadre of lawfare warriors in pursuit
> of the once and future Republican president. One of its chief
> combatants was Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg
>
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who campaigned
> for office on an anti-Trump platform, reminding voters that he had
> “sued Trump more than a hundred times.” Before charging Trump in
> April 2023 with thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business
> records—generally a low-level misdemeanor—Bragg had led a civil
> lawsuit against the Trump Foundation and criminal cases against the
> Trump Organization and its chief financial officer. Trump was
> convicted in May on the business records charges, but his lawyers
> are asking that the case be thrown out on numerous grounds,
> including that any sentencing would unconstitutionally interfere
> with Trump’s conduct of a second term in the presidency. Bragg
> recently petitioned the court to put the case on ice for the
> entirety of Trump’s second presidential term—a move the Trump
> team ridiculed as “a total failure of the prosecution” signaling
> that the case is “effectively over
>
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>
> _Lawfare Judges Under Pressure_
>
> Presiding over the flurry of appeals
>
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> in the business-records case is Justice Juan Merchan, another New
> Yorker with a lawfare pedigree. Earlier this month, Merchan threw
> out
>
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> Trump’s appeal to dismiss the case on the basis of presidential
> immunity. Like most New York judges, Merchan rose through the ranks
> of the Democratic Party’s political machine, which plays a
> significant role in state judicial appointments. Before becoming a
> judge, Merchan served as a prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office
> and worked for the New York attorney general. In 2006, Mayor Michael
> Bloomberg appointed him to a family court judgeship, and he was
> elevated to criminal court in 2009. In July, Merchan received a
> “caution letter
>
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from the New
> York Commission of Judicial Conduct warning him about donations to
> Joe Biden and other Democratic causes. Merchan’s daughter, Loren,
> is president of the left-wing digital advertising firm, Authentic
> Campaigns. Juan Merchan will have plenty of power over the Trump
> appeals in the coming months, but he will not have the final word.
> Trump can appeal to higher New York courts and, ultimately, the U.S.
> Supreme Court.
>
> Trump also faced a high-stakes legal assault from New York State
> Attorney General Letitia James in a civil fraud case presided over
> by Justice Arthur Engoron. James and Engoron both came up through
> the progressive ranks of the New York Democratic Party. Like Alvin
> Bragg, James used Trump as a punching bag in her campaign for
> political office. She denounced
>
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> Trump as an “illegitimate president” and vowed to “shine a
> bright light into every corner of his real estate dealings.”
> Engoron, a longtime Democrat, protested the Vietnam War at Columbia
> University and has been a member of the ACLU for three decades.
> Engoron presided over a non-jury civil fraud trial related to
> real-estate valuations by the Trump Organization and stunned legal
> observers on both sides of the political aisle in February with a
> guilty verdict
>
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> ordering Trump to pay a staggering $335 million penalty—plus
> rapidly growing interest and additional fines. Trump immediately
> vowed an appeal and at a September hearing, New York appellate
> judges signaled skepticism
>
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> about the Engoron ruling.
>
> _The Georgia Case Collapses_
>
> Meanwhile, in Georgia, Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s case against
> Trump for allegedly conspiring to change the outcome of the 2020
> election has collapsed. A state appeals court removed Willis and her
> entire office
>
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> from the Trump prosecution over a conflict of interest involving a
> romantic relationship between Willis and another member of her team.
> The Georgia Court of Appeals panel said the “appearance of
> impropriety” was so powerful that “this is the rare case in
> which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice
> to restore public confidence in the integrity of these
> proceedings.” Willis, a longtime Democrat, can appeal to the
> Georgia Supreme Court, but the legal tides are running against her.
> Trump’s Georgia lawyer issued a statement saying that the decision
> “puts an end to a politically motivated persecution of the next
> President of the United States.”
>
> Judicial Watch has been investigating the lawfare against Trump for
> years. Our own Tom Fitton was dragged into a Jack Smith grand jury
> for, as he noted on X
>
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“four hours
> of harassing questions about First Amendment-protected activity and
> debates about electors, tweets, what I ate for lunch at the White
> House, and whether I watched Trump’s election night speech. It was
> all about politics.”
>
> At Judicial Watch, we continue to closely track lawfare
> developments, push for more accountability, and report to the
> public. Among our recent moves, we’re seeking a special master
>
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> in our lawsuit for Fani Willis’s communication with lawfare
> warriors Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee; earlier this
> month, Willis admitted communicating with the January 6 Committee,
> but released only one already public letter. In February, we
> protested
>
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a
> Biden Administration move to keep secret the names of top Jack Smith
> staff. In 2023, we sued
>
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> the Justice Department for records of funding and assistance between
> Smith’s office and Willis’s office, and we obtained information
>
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> showing Manhattan DA Bragg hiring high-priced lawyers to beat back
> Congressional inquiries into his Trump prosecutions.
>
> There’s more to come. Stay tuned.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
_‘Get going. Move forward. Aim high.’_
This quote, attributed to President-elect Donald Trump, certainly
describes his activity since the election.

He has wasted no time in naming his cabinet and announcing his goals
for border control, health policy and environmental regulations. In
fact, given our current absentee White House occupant, Trump is now
our de-facto president.

As he wrote in his book, The Art of the Deal, “I like thinking big.
I always have. To me, it’s very simple: if you’re going to be
thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”

Here at Judicial Watch, we are equally resolute as we enter the new
year. Just this month we:

● Asked
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a
court to appoint a special master to oversee District Attorney Fani
Willis’ search for records in our lawsuit for communications she had
with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee.

● Sued
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the Department of Homeland Security for records on former Rep. Tulsi
Gabbard being targeted for surveillance under the Transportation
Security Administration terrorist watch program.

● Appeared
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in court on behalf of Palatine, Illinois, tenured high school teacher
Jeanne Hedgepeth, who was fired after posting comments on Facebook
criticizing the riots, violence, and lootings in Chicago in the
aftermath of the May 25, 2020, killing of George Floyd.

These are a small portion of our growing portfolio of cases –
currently at 172 – aimed at ensuring clean elections, secure
borders, and transparency in government – as well as protection
against the Left’s attack on our constitutional republic, the
freedoms it protects, censorship of free speech, and abuse of power.
We appreciate your support in 2020.

4 as we have pursued these lawsuits and pledge to fight aggressively
on your behalf in 2025. As we close the year, I encourage you to renew
(or begin!) your support
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of Judicial
Watch!

Happy New Year!

Until next week,





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