Trial to Remove Trump from Ballot Begins - Guess Who Appointed Judge Hearing the Case?

On Monday, hearings began that could take former President Donald Trump off of the ballot in what may be a swing state. And, surprise, surprise, the judge hearing the legal challenge was appointed by the state’s Democratic governor.

According to Colorado Newsline, the proceedings began in a courtroom in Denver under the watchful eye of Judge Sarah Wallace, an appointment of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

She was appointed in August 2022.

The case is the latest in a series of legal actions targeting Trump and Trump-allied Republicans who dared to urge that the 2020 election not receive the rubber stamp of certification of Congress.

Democratic politicians have done this in every election this century that they’ve lost, mind you, but the Capitol incursion helped the media forget about this.

Trending:
Lake: Don't Be Surprised When Biden Is Replaced - 'Pretty Obvious if You're Watching'

Now, yet another group says the GOP’s leading 2024 presidential candidate shouldn’t be on the ballot because of an obscure, vestigial part of the 14th Amendment that dates to the Civil War and bars anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” (read: joined with the Confederates) from holding federal office.

However, the six Colorado voters and the watchdog group that joined them, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, claim the amendment is pliable enough to apply to Trump.

“Donald Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election,” reads the legal complaint, which was filed on Sept. 6.

“His efforts culminated on January 6, 2021, when he incited, exacerbated, and otherwise engaged in a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol by a mob who believed they were following his orders, and refused to protect the Capitol or call off the mob for nearly three hours as the attack unfolded,” it says.

These cases have been tried before — and failed to get traction. However, this one could be different.

As Colorado Newsline noted, “the Colorado case — the first to be filed by CREW, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., and the first to go to trial — represents the most substantial test for such efforts to date.”

“CREW represented plaintiffs who cited the 14th Amendment in a successful suit to remove from office Couy Griffin, a county commissioner in Otero County, New Mexico, who had participated in the Jan. 6 attack,” the outlet said.

A small-potatoes politician who actively participated in the incursion is different from the current GOP frontrunner for president, however — and one would be a fool not to notice.

“After the 2020 election cycle, President Trump made various statements and took various legal actions questioning the fairness or accuracy of the announced results,” Trump’s attorney said in a motion to dismiss on Sept. 29.

Related:
Trump Jr.: This 2024 Presidential Candidate Is a 'Democrat Plant'

“But he is hardly the first politician to do that — and Petitioners identify no facts that could convert this political controversy into an insurrection against the government.”

Opening arguments in the case began Monday.

According to poll/stat wonk website FiveThirtyEight, President Joe Biden holds a consistent but not substantial lead in a hypothetical head-to-head presidential matchup against Trump in Colorado, which tends blue but can surprise on occasion. The last poll listed by the site, an Emerson College survey taken Oct. 1-4, showed Biden with a 4-point advantage, 42 percent to 38 percent.

For her part, Wallace had said she would not respond to arguments made by Trump’s lawyers contesting “whether President Trump engaged in an insurrection.”

“This is an issue that will be addressed at the hearing set to begin October 30, 2023,” she wrote.

Given who appointed her, that could be a very ominous sign indeed — especially since this could make it all the way to the Supreme Court if a Democrat-appointed judge kicks the political opposition off the ballot.

https://www.westernjournal.com/trial-remove-trump-ballot-begins-guess-appointed-judge-hearing-case/

FBI Director Chris Wray Issues Warning that Hamas and Terrorist Organizations May “Conduct Attacks Here on Our Own Soil”

FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a dire warning on Tuesday during his “Threats to the Homeland” Senate testimony, warning that Hamas and other foreign terrorist organizations could use the ongoing turmoil in Israel as a pretext to “conduct attacks here on our own soil.”

Wray’s statement, part of a larger hearing that also involved Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and NCTC Director Christine Abizai, places a glaring spotlight on the escalating threat landscape in the United States.

During his opening statement, aside from domestic threats, which the corrupt FBI identifies as violent extremists and domestic violent extremists, including Trump-MAGA supporters, Christians, and parents who have vocally participated at school board meetings, Wray emphasized the urgency of addressing the threat from foreign terrorist entities.

“As I said a few moments ago, on top of the homegrown violent extremists and domestic violent extremist threat, we also cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or another foreign terrorist organization may exploit the current conflict to conduct attacks here on our own soil. We have kept our sights on Hamas and have multiple ongoing investigations into individuals affiliated with that foreign terrorist organization,” said Wray.

According to the Homeland Threat Assessment released by DHS, at least 172 individuals on the terror watchlist were apprehended trying to cross into the U.S. illegally in Fiscal Year 2023. This figure is higher than the total number of similar encounters over the previous six years combined.

WATCH:

Wray also revealed that Iran has made assassination attempts against “high-ranking current and former U.S. government officials” in US soil.

“The Iranians, for instance, have directly or by hiring criminals, mounted assassination attempts against dissidents and high-ranking current and former U.S. government officials, including right here on American soil,” Wray cautioned. He further noted that Hezbollah, Iran’s primary strategic partner, has had a history of establishing operations in the United States, including espionage, fundraising, and obtaining weapons.

According to RNC Research, “Biden has enriched the Iranian regime to the tune of $100 billion since taking office.”

WATCH:

This is not the first time that Chris Wray issued a warning of terror attacks on American soil.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that during an address to the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in San Diego, California, this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a dire warning about the rise of violent extremism, both domestic and international.

“History has been witness to antisemitic and other forms of violent extremism for far too long. Whether that be from foreign terrorist organizations, or those inspired by them, or domestic violent extremists motivated by their own racial animus, the targeting of a community because of their faith is totally unacceptable,” Wray said.

“We remain committed to continue confronting those threats—both here in the United States and overseas.”

“In this heightened environment, there’s no question we’re seeing an increase in reported threats, and we’ve got to be on the lookout, especially for lone actors who may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own.

“So I encourage you to stay vigilant, because as the first line of defense in protecting our communities, you’re often the first to see the signs that someone may be mobilizing to violence. And I’d also ask you to continue sharing any intelligence or observations you may have. And on our end, we’re committed to doing the same, so that together, we can safeguard our communities,” he added.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/fbi-director-chris-wray-issues-warning-that-hamas/

 

Zelensky Advisor Admits Gov’t Officials ‘Stealing Like No Tomorrow’ as Biden Pushes for Billions More to Ukraine

A top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reportedly admitted that corruption is so rampant in the war-torn former Soviet state that officials are “stealing like there’s no tomorrow”.

Speaking anonymously to Time magazine, what is alleged to be a top presidential advisor to Zelensky said that the Ukrainian government’s efforts to stamp out corruption have proved fruitless, given that they were implemented too late to have any impact, including the firing of Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov.

“People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow,” the top advisor is said to have told the publication, saying that officials do not “feel any fear” of engaging in corruption because the firing of Reznikov and others took over six months after Zelenksy was warned that the Defence Ministry was drowning in graft.

Another advisor is reported to have told the magazine that by the time Zelesnky acted “it was too late” and that the corruption scandal had not only become known in Western capitals but also among soldiers on the frontline, where troops reportedly began making lewd jokes about “Reznikov’s eggs” — a reference to the accusation that the Defence Ministry had vastly overpaid for basic items such as eggs and coats for soldiers.

The report notes claims by officials that Zelensky’s office has worked to stop giving the impression, at least, of corruption. Working under what are described as strict directives to “avoid the slightest perception of self-enrichment…Don’t buy anything. Don’t take any vacations. Just sit at your desk, be quiet, and work”, members of his staff are claimed to be paid just $1,000 per month and sleep in bunker rooms the size of prison cells.

The issue of corruption in Ukraine, which has been ranked by Transparency International as the most corrupt European country except Russia, is becoming a major issue in Washington D.C. as President Biden continues to push for more American taxpayer dollars to be sent to the former Soviet state.

In addition to the $113 billion already committed to Kyiv, the Biden administration is attempting to convince Congress to send another $61.4 billion to Ukraine by tying the funding to emergency funding for Israel and the U.S. border crisis.

Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), a leading opponent of continuing to fund the proxy war against Russia, said on Monday: “I’ve sat in a lot of briefings where I was promised Ukraine doesn’t have a corruption problem.”

“The Biden admin has lied to us. Not one more penny to Ukraine.”

The Republican-led Oversight Committee in the House of Representatives has claimed that “Ukrainian government officials allegedly engaged in bribery, used government vehicles for personal use, and purchased inflated food supplies for Ukrainian forces.”

Even the legacy media, which has been a proponent of perpetuating the proxy war in Ukraine, has begun to slowly admit that corruption is a major issue in the country, with the New York Times reporting last month that Ukrainian officials acknowledged that money intended for military contracts “failed to produce weaponry or ammunition and that some money has vanished.”

For his part, in an interview with Time, President Zelensky has claimed that battling corruption is one of his chief aims but asserted that the issue is being weaponised to cut off funding.

“It’s not right for them to cover up their failure to help Ukraine by tossing out these accusations,” he said.

A top official told the magazine that Zelensky has begun to feel betrayed by his backers in the West for merely providing enough assistance to survive rather than sufficient weaponry to win the war against Russia.

However, another said that Zelensy “deludes himself,” adding: “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

The publication went on to claim that officials in Kyiv are beginning to believe that due to heavy casualties over the past year and a half, there may no longer be enough soldiers left to win the war.

Even if the United States were to supply all the weaponry needed, one aide said: “We don’t have the men to use them.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/10/31/zelensky-advisor-admits-govt-officials-stealing-like-no-tomorrow-as-biden-pushes-for-billions-more-to-ukraine/

Socialist Regime Suspends Opposition Leader’s Victory Days After Striking Democracy-For-Oil Deal With Biden

• Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s socialist regime has suspended the results of an opposition leader’s primary election victory, weeks after agreeing to a Biden administration-brokered deal to ensure fair and free elections in exchange for oil sanctions relief.
• The State Department has indicated that it could effectively terminate the deal and snap sanctions back into place if the Maduro regime does not follow through on its commitments, though it is presently unclear whether this development meets the threshold to do so.
• One of the key points of the oil sanctions relief deal is “the promotion of a public discourse and a political and social climate favorable to carrying out a peaceful and participatory electoral process,” a State Department official told reporters on a background call following the announcement of the deal earlier in October.

The Venezuelan socialist regime suspended an opposition leader’s victory weeks after striking an oil sanctions relief deal brokered by the Biden administration, which seeks democratic reforms in the country.

Venezuela’s top court suspended the results of opposition leader María Corina Machado’s victory in last week’s primary election, citing the need to do so while information is collected for an investigation into the primary organizers’ alleged identity theft, money laundering and conspiracy, Axios reported. The suspension follows a Biden administration-brokered deal between the Venezuelan opposition and the regime of Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro, in which the U.S. agreed on Oct. 18 to provide oil sanctions relief in exchange for the Maduro regime’s promise that next year’s presidential elections would be free, fair and monitored by international observers, State Department officials told reporters on a background call after the deal was finalized.

Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab, who is a member of Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has said that his office will spearhead the investigations into the opposition, while Machado and other opposition political figures have stated that the now-suspended results are fair and legitimate, according to Axios. The Maduro regime likely sees Machado’s opposition as a significant threat to its grip on power, and it could be implementing a strategy to provoke the opposition into boycotting the election or simply trying to muscle them out of the way, Phil Gunson, senior analyst for the Andean region at Crisis Group International, told Axios. (RELATED: ‘Stop Negotiating With Terrorists And A Dictator’: GOP Lawmakers Rip Biden’s Move To Ease Venezuela Oil Sanctions)

“The agreement that he signed says that there will be a path to authorize all candidates, and the clear understanding and the context of the negotiations has been that the Maduro authorities will act expeditiously to authorize all candidates, and that’s certainly our understanding of the way forward,” a State Department official told reporters on the background call. “The Maduro authorities don’t have a role in the primary process that will take place… so it’s not required for that,” the official continued, adding that “for the general election, obviously, all the candidates need to have a path to authorization and an expeditious one.”

The deal, signed by Maduro’s regime and the opposition and brokered by the Biden administration, stipulates that Maduro would have to agree to a process to eliminate bans against opposition candidates that could run against him, in addition to allowing international election observers to oversee the presidential election, State Department officials told reporters on the background call. In exchange for meeting these conditions, the U.S. would relieve sanctions on the economically crucial Venezuelan oil industry, which once made Venezuela the wealthiest country in South America before the rise of socialism.

Upon taking and consolidating power, Chavez staffed the state-owned oil company with loyalists, according to Forbes, after which the industry’s output fell by 50%, according to another Forbes article. Machado has pledged to privatize the industry if she becomes president, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.

One of the key conditions of the sanctions relief deal is “the promotion of a public discourse and a political and social climate favorable to carrying out a peaceful and participatory electoral process,” another State Department official told reporters on the background call. It is unclear whether or not this specific development will meet the Biden administration’s thresholds for scrapping the deal and effectively reinstating the oil sanctions, which the administration reserves the right to do if it determines that the Maduro regime is not following through on its end of the agreement.

“The U.S. government will take action if Maduro and his representatives do not meet their commitments under the electoral roadmap,” a State Department official told S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Former President Donald Trump imposed stringent sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil corporation in 2019 to pressure Maduro into stepping down in the wake of the reportedly fraudulent presidential election the year prior. The Trump administration recognized Juan Guaido, who has since left Venezuela, as the rightful winner of that election, and Saab issued a warrant for his arrest earlier in October on the grounds that Guaido committed treason, according to EFE News.

Maduro was a staunch loyalist of the late Hugo Chavez, and, like Chavez, Maduro’s regime has been known to violently weaponize the country’s legal system against political dissent and opposition leaders, according to Amnesty International.

The White House referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to the State Department, which told the DCNF that the topic is likely to be discussed at a press briefing later on Tuesday.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/10/31/socialist-maduro-suspends-opposition-leaders-victory-democracy-oil-deal-biden-venezuela/

We Will Defend Ourselves

 This is a good, well-written article on Israel and Hamas.

We did not think we would ever see such sights in Israel. Helpless Jews—women, children, the elderly—tormented, raped, torched alive, beheaded, and mutilated. There is much that has not yet been made public, and may only reach few, because the gore is not just incomprehensible, but actually traumatising. In some of the worst footage the victims are recognisable, and so they have to be kept away from the public eye lest the victims’ families witness their loved ones tortured and killed. We are faced with Nazi-scale atrocities—inhuman barbarism.

It goes without saying that any civilised person would be deeply shocked. But that does not even begin to describe how this horror played on the collective Israeli psyche, indeed the Jewish psyche in general.

For two millennia, Jews have been helpless. When anti-Semitism swelled and rose around them, they could only try to flee or beg for mercy. They rarely had the chance or the means to organise and resist. Jewish history since the fall of the Second Temple reads like a string of expulsions and pogroms culminating with the Holocaust. The promise of Zionism, the promise of Israel, was therefore Never Again.

By Never Again, Zionism did not mean that Jews would be spared hate, or wars, or even violent death. Rather Zionism meant that we will defend ourselves or die trying. This is so deeply ingrained in the spirit of anyone who grew up under the influence of Zionism that it is an instinct, an existential orientation towards life and death, more than it is a thought or an ideology.

The late Hebrew University professor of history Zeev Sternhell was a child in a ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland. From a hiding place, in a hole in the ground, he saw Jews hunted like animals in the streets, men and women fleeing and shot in the back, shot children falling from treetops where they tried to hide. He survived, migrated to Israel and later served in the Israel Defense Forces. In an interview he gave to journalist Ari Shavit in 2008 in Haaretz he said that when he saw friends and men under his command die in battle, he thought that:

at least they died like human beings. They didn’t die being hunted on the streets. For me the state of Israel is not a political affair. It is something far more fundamental. Far more basic. It is a return to being human. A return to living like a human being. Because there, in the ghetto, there was a loss … of your human identity. You ceased to be a person altogether.

Sternhell’s politics were on the far Left, and as a scholar and pundit he tended to see veiled fascism in every expression of nationalism and patriotism. He believed that Zionism betrayed its leftist promise, because it clung to its nationalism at the expense of its original socialist promise. Still, he insisted he was a Zionist. “I’m not just a Zionist,” he said in that interview, “I’m a super-Zionist. For me Zionism was and still is the right of Jews to control their destiny and future.” Politically it is difficult to make sense of Sternhell’s anti-national yet Zionist stance, since Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jews. Sternhell seemed to support the principle of self-determination for all peoples but reject its concrete realisation in nation-states, or at least he often come close to rejecting it.

But emotionally, his position was easily understood by any Zionist, including those who, like me, sharply disagreed with his politics: Never Again.

At the heart of Israel’s declaration of indepen­dence there is a single-sentence paragraph, the shortest one in the parchment. This is the heart of the text, the line that separates the section that talks about the past from the section that discusses the future. It says: “It is the natural right of the Jewish people, to be like all peoples, master of their own fate, in their own sovereign state.”

You can—indeed you should—read this statement politically. But you can also read it emotionally. And we all do. It means for Israeli Jews, and for many Jews outside Israel, that henceforth Jews will not be hunted in the streets, slaughtered while trying to hide in basements, or shot off treetops. They will die, if they must, on their feet, a weapon in their hand. Or, to use Sternhell’s harsher terms, they will not die like hunted animals but like human beings.

The horrors of October 7 reminded us that the existential condition of Zionism is not a given and cannot be taken for granted. It is something that we willed and carved out of history against all odds. It is something we must constantly protect and uphold, because it can be lost.

I think the Israeli public, emerging gradually from the initial shock, senses this already, though politics has not yet adjusted. It seems that our politicians have not yet realised that the ground has shifted under their feet and they still think in terms of yesterday, as if this is just another round in a continuing war. It is not. It is going to change Israel in fundamental ways, which we may not yet fully comprehend.

What Hamas has now done has not just buried the two-state solution and killed all hopes for peace in our lifetime, or in our children’s lifetime. It has also tripped the wire that triggers the deepest of Jewish fears, the fears that run so deep that they precede reflection or even verbalisation. That is why you hear from most of the Left what you would normally hear only from the Right: calls to see this all the way through to the complete destruction of Hamas as a functioning organisation.

Modern anti-Semitism has learned to hide in its moral opposite: the language of human rights. Old blood libels claimed Jews kill Christian children to use their blood for the baking of matzot, the Passover bread. Contemporary blood libels claim the IDF is uniquely murderous and deliberately kills Palestinian children to satisfy its bloodlust. The form is new, but the content is not.

The contemporary versions are peddled by organisations claiming to uphold human rights, while undermining the universality of that principle, which is its very essence. They do this by applying one standard to the Jewish state, and another to all others, especially those belonging to groups with a postmodern moral badge of official victimhood, which supposedly grants them a waiver from moral imperatives.

This corruption of morality relies on marginalising the evidence of the actual behaviour of such groups towards their own members (especially gays, women and non-believers), towards minorities in their midst (such as Jews and Christians) as well the outside world.

This application of double standards has caused Israel to voluntarily impose on its army a stricter code than any other army does, a task made all the more difficult by the increasing sophistication of its enemies in manipulating these very vulnerabilities. As Benjamin Netanyahu succinctly put it: we use rockets to protect our women and children. They use women and children to protect their rockets.

Israel should be done with this game. It is an immoral one, and it has enabled our murderous enemies to escape responsibility. It has led to the sacrifice of our own men to save the lives of those who would turn their own children into cannon fodder. Israel should insist that those who have tied together Jewish children with rope then burned them alive, will not manipulate us in the name of human rights. It should insist that only those who put their own children in harm’s way to protect the weapons they use against our innocent civilians, are responsible for their safety. It should insist that Hamas has committed crimes against humanity and we will not sustain its rule under the guise of “humanitarian aid”. International law prescribes that if the enemy does not separate civilians from combatants it alone bears responsibility for the lives of the innocent. Israel should insist on that rule and not flinch.

This is a chance to begin restoring moral clarity, and the gore from this attack, much of which was recorded by Hamas’s sadistic anti-Semitic terrorists, should serve to remind us of this.

Those who have not lost their conscience to the auto-immune disease of wokeism, to conformity and cowardice, would do well to leverage the horror that befell Israel to clean their own house too. It is, perhaps, not yet too late to save the Judeo-Christian tradition from the self-inflicted destruction of postmodern pseudo-morality.

We Will Defend Ourselves - Quadrant Online

Judge Orders Biden Admin To Stop Cutting Razor Wire on Border

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the Biden administration from cutting razor wire installed by Texas on the border with Mexico.

"The Court grants the motion for a temporary restraining order until the parties have an opportunity to present evidence at a preliminary injunction hearing before the Court," wrote U.S. District Judge Alia Moses in her ruling. She did, however, allow an exception that permits federal agents to cut the wire in the case of a medical emergency. The order will last until Nov. 13, barring any extension, and the parties will have a hearing on the case on Nov. 7.

Texas officials sued the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies last week for removing the razor wire, arguing that the Lone Star State has "the sovereign right to construct border barriers to prevent the entry of illegal aliens."

Federal officials have said that they sometimes must cut the wire to provide medical assistance or process migrants who have illegally entered American soil, which begins in the middle of the Rio Grande on Texas's border with Mexico, according to CBS News.

DHS told CBS that it would not comment on the specifics of the case but said the department would comply with ruling. A spokesman added that Border Patrol agents "have a responsibility under federal law to take those who have crossed onto U.S. soil without authorization into custody for processing, as well as to act when there are conditions that put our workforce or migrants at risk."

Texas governor Greg Abbott (R.) has feuded with the administration over several barriers he has set up along his state's border with Mexico. The Biden adminsitration sued Texas for its placement of buoy barriers in the middle of the Rio Grande.

In early September, a district judge ordered Texas to remove the buoys by the middle of the month, but an appeals court ruled two days later that the state could keep them in place while the state and the administration battle in court over their legality.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/judge-orders-biden-admin-to-stop-cutting-razor-wire-on-border/