Manhattan Prosecutors Agree to Delay Trump’s Sentencing
Donald Trump’s lawyers want to argue that a recent Supreme Court decision giving presidents immunity for official acts should void his felony conviction for covering up hush money paid to a porn star.
War Continues on Multiple Fronts
By Sherwin Pomerantz
Eighteen Israeli soldiers were wounded, including one seriously, in a Hezbollah drone attack in northern Israel on Sunday, the IDF said. According to the IDF, several drones were launched from Lebanon on Sunday afternoon, setting off sirens in the Galilee Panhandle and northern Golan Heights. The IDF said that one explosive-laden drone struck the Merom Golan area, injuring 18 troops. One of the soldiers was seriously wounded, and Hezbollah in recent months has increasingly been deploying explosive-laden drones, alongside anti-tank guided missiles and barrages of rockets. The terror group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted an Israeli military site in the area in response to IDF strikes against it earlier in the day.
Israel has warned that it can no longer tolerate Hezbollah’s presence along its border, with tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from their homes in the north due to the rocket and drone attacks, and has warned that, should a diplomatic solution not be reached, it will turn to military action to push Hezbollah northward. While the political leadership has not yet made a decision on launching an offensive in Lebanon and turning the Gaza Strip into the secondary front, the IDF has said it continues to target Hezbollah commanders who were behind attacks on Israel.
An Israeli soldier was killed during fighting in southern Gaza’s Rafah on Monday morning, the IDF said, as Palestinian terrorists in the Strip launched at least 20 rockets at Israeli border communities, marking the largest barrage in at least seven months. Another nine soldiers of the battalion were wounded, one of them seriously, in the same incident. According to an initial military probe, the soldiers were hit by an explosion in a booby-trapped building.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group claimed responsibility for the major rocket barrage on Israeli communities bordering the Gaza Strip on Monday morning. According to the IDF, the barrage of at least 20 rockets was launched from the Khan Younis area in the southern Gaza Strip, where the military had previously operated. The Iron Dome air defense system shot down some of the rockets, while others impacted in southern Israel, the IDF said.
Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted that the IDF was close to eliminating Hamas’s military wing as the United States warned against a vacuum in the enclave, explaining that chaos is not an option according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.
“We are advancing to the end of the stage of eliminating the Hamas terrorist army; we will continue striking its remnants,” he said on Monday. Netanyahu spoke as the intense phase of fighting in Rafah was nearing its completion, but a deal that would see the release of the remaining 120 hostages in Gaza remained elusive.
US Secretary Antony Blinken said in response to such statements, “We’ve heard the Israelis talk about a significant downshift in their operations in Gaza,” noting that this “remains to be seen.” In a public interview at the Brookings Institute in Washington he said that when “this conflict ends, it cannot and must not end with a vacuum in Gaza. It has to end in a way that makes sure that there are clear, coherent, achievable plans for Gaza’s governance, for its security, and of course, to start to help [Palestinians there] build their lives that have been so decimated and destroyed,” he said. The US has told Israel that “we expected them to develop their own plans, their own ideas, and we’ve not seen enough of that from Israel,” he explained. Blinken stressed that “post-conflict plans are critical” because otherwise there is a risk of a “vacuum” which often tends to be filled by “bad things before they get filled with good things.”
According to a report in the New York Times, green Hamas flags and banners commemorating "martyrs" hang from the buildings in the Tulkarm refugee camp in the West Bank, where Palestinian fighters are displaying a growing militancy, fueled by the war in Gaza. Local resistance fighters have switched allegiances from Fatah to more radical groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
More weapons and explosives are being manufactured in the West Bank, according to both the fighters themselves and Israeli military officials. They say the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the West Bank, is losing ground to the more radical Palestinian factions, which are gaining more support from Iran in the form of cash and weapons smuggled into the territory. The PA and police no longer control these refugee camps, where the militants threaten to shoot officers if they try to enter.
Clearly Israel remains a long way from an end to the hostilities as multiple fronts are now much hotter militarily than they were at this time last year. Let’s hope that our leadership figures out some way to move an end to all of this activity sooner rather than later.
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Giuliani Disbarred From the Practice of Law in New York
Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and a longtime ally of Donald Trump, was at the center of the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
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Why Are Hamas's Crimes Ignored by Western Media?
by Bassam Tawil
If you think that the Palestinian Authority (PA) or any Arab state would agree to take control of the Gaza Strip as long as the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas has not been totally destroyed and removed from power, you would be wrong.
Removing the military and governing capabilities of Hamas, however, unfortunately cannot be achieved as long as the Biden administration and Western countries keep exerting pressure on Israel to halt the war, which erupted after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack that resulted in the murder of 1,200 Israelis and the abduction of more than 240 others as hostages.
The Palestinian Authority and other Arab governments have been reminded in recent days of the reasons why entering the Gaza Strip after the war would be risky, if not impossible, unless Hamas's military capabilities are first destroyed and the terrorist group is completely ousted from power.
According to reports from the Gaza Strip, Hamas has murdered a number of Palestinians who it believed had indicated willingness to be part of a new government that would replace the terrorist group after the war
The most recent victim of Hamas's measures to prevent the emergence of new leaders in the Gaza Strip is a prominent member of the Abu Amra clan. Earlier this week, Hamas terrorists shot and killed him in the Al-Zawaida neighborhood in the center of the Gaza Strip. The man was reportedly accused of expressing readiness to "collaborate" with Israel and other countries in distributing humanitarian aid to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The Abu Amra clan retaliated by killing two Hamas terrorists. The feud between the Abu Amra clan and Hamas included shooting, and burning property, houses and cars.
Because Hamas and the PA have reportedly been stealing most of the food and medicine for their own members, it opposes other Palestinians getting engaged in the humanitarian aid distribution process. Several Palestinians, as well as aid workers, who nevertheless defied Hamas and took part in the distribution of food and medicine in the Gaza Strip were murdered or wounded by the group's terrorists.
Hamas, apparently, does not want food or medication to reach the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, particularly not via Israeli border crossings. This situation is most likely caused by Hamas's desire to prolong and aggravate the suffering of the Palestinians and create a "famine" so it can place the blame on Israel. This plan, in fact, seems to be why Hamas terrorists have been firing rockets at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
The assassination of the Abu Amra clan member and the theft of humanitarian aid are only a few of the Hamas atrocities that are often "overlooked" by the mainstream media and those in the West who describe themselves as "pro-Palestinian."
Additionally, there is almost no discussion in the media or among "pro-Palestinian" individuals and groups of Hamas's use of Palestinians as human shields in its Jihad (holy war) against Israel. Since the beginning of the war, Hamas terrorists have been firing at Israeli troops from Palestinians' rooftops, bedrooms, kitchens, backyards, balconies, schools, hospitals, kindergartens and even the displaced families' tent camps.
"Why is the media ignoring what is going on in central and southern Gaza?" asked Hamza Howidy, a Palestinian social media influencer from the Gaza Strip. "Hamas is assassinating Gazans, particularly tribe leaders, in order to deter anyone other than Hamas from delivering humanitarian relief and participating in Gaza."
Howidy's question has an easy answer: When Israel is not involved, the media turns a blind eye. Foreign journalists apparently do not care when Hamas drags Palestinians into the streets and executes them in cold blood. These journalists, it appears, do not think it is worth covering such stories because Israel is not at fault.
The most recent murder of the clan member was not the first incident of its kind. Earlier this year, Hamas terrorists beheaded the leader of the powerful Doghmush clan in the northern Gaza Strip after reports claimed that he had expressed a desire to get his family to oversee the distinction of aid to the Palestinians.
Hamas has also murdered, wounded and arrested PA security officers from the West Bank who allegedly tried to enter the Gaza Strip under cover of securing aid trucks. A senior Hamas official said that the officers belonged to the PA's General Intelligence Service, headed by Major General Majed Faraj.
Another recent Hamas crime that has gone virtually unnoticed by the international media: Hamas terrorists fired a projectile at a UNICEF humanitarian aid convoy. The aid convoy was coordinated with Israeli authorities to reunite children from the northern Gaza Strip with their families in the south. "During the coordinated activity, the Hamas terrorist organization fired a projectile at the humanitarian route near the UNICEF aid convoy and [Israeli] soldiers securing the area," the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. "There were no injuries to international aid workers or IDF soldiers in the attack."
"[The attack on the] UN aid workers and the assassination of the Abu Amra tribe leader by members of Al-Qassam [Hamas's armed wing] demonstrate that Hamas is determined to destroy the humanitarian situation in Gaza and is willing to sacrifice thousands of lives in order to pressure Israel to end the war so they can survive," remarked Howidy.
Until the international community – and particularly the Biden administration – fully support Israel's efforts to destroy Hamas, unfortunately there can be no real discussion of "the day after" in the Gaza Strip.
Israel, however, will not be the only party to benefit from Hamas's demise. A large number of Arabs and Muslims who oppose Hamas and other Iran-backed Islamist groups will also benefit, even though it is "politically incorrect" and immensely dangerous to say so.
In reality, those advocating for a "ceasefire" are asking for Hamas to be allowed to continue ruling the Gaza Strip, rearming, and gearing up to attack Israel -- in their words, "again and again."
A ceasefire will only ignite an immediate increase in terrorist attacks against Israel. Worse, Islamists worldwide will be incentivized to launch attacks not only against Israel but also against Europe (see here, here and here). Islamists have already attacked US troops in the Middle East more than 150 times in the region since Oct 7.
By exposing the crimes of Hamas against its own people and raising awareness of these threats -- instead of helping the terrorists cover them up -- the international media can actually help to protect their own countries against steadily increasing terrorism. At the moment, terrorists over the world can only see their efforts as victorious, glorified and rewarded.
Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East. The work of Bassam Tawil is made possible through the generous donation of a couple of donors who wished to remain anonymous. Gatestone is most grateful.
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The Democrats Deserve Biden, Even if the Country Doesn’t - WSJ
Finally—or at least we thought it was final, given his already advanced age—in the ultimate act of partisan servility, he became Barack Obama’s vice president, the summit achievement for the incapable but loyal, the apex position for the consummate yes man. His only roles were to offer his signature eloquence on the boss’s achievements (“This is a big f— deal”) or provide advice that could safely be ignored (“Don’t kill Osama bin Laden”).
But then, just as he was ready to drift into a comfortable and well-deserved obscurity, his party needed a front man—a familiar and innocuous face to take down an unpopular president. They sought a loyal and reliable figurehead, a flag of convenience under which they could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life—on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery. There was no more loyal and convenient vehicle than Joe.
But now, 42 months (and 81 years) in, it is going horribly wrong. Much of his party has no use for him anymore. They are trying desperately to jettison him and, in a remarkably cynical act of bait-and-switch, swap him out for someone more useful to their cause.
Part of me thinks they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. I find myself in the odd position of wanting to root for poor mumbling Joe in those intense—and presumably somewhat one-sided—conversations that must be going on this week at Camp David and in the White House.
It’s tempting to say to the Democratic machine frantically mobilizing against him: You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years about how this man was both brilliantly competent at the job and a healing force for national unity, and now tell us, when your deception is uncovered, that it’s bedtime for Bonzo, thanks for your service, and let’s move on.
It should be we the voters who get to deliver the verdict on the last four years, not a bunch of has-beens, time-servers and fat donors. We should have the opportunity to say what we think about a party and a president who, even as they lectured us for four years about the importance of honesty and the sanctity of democracy, were engaged in an extended act of deceit that itself represents pure contempt for the democratic process.
That is what is so galling about the spectacle we have witnessed since the Democrats’ sham exercise collapsed of its own shame in an Atlanta television studio Thursday.
Until the world saw the truth that they had been insisting was “misinformation,” they evidently thought they could get away with promoting the fiction of Mr. Biden’s competence. In perpetuating that fiction they were also revealing their contempt for the voters and for democracy itself.
How democratic is it to ask us to vote for a man they know is unable to finish a sentence, let alone another four years? What exactly will we be electing in November if we vote for Mr. Biden? A year or two of an administration in which unelected advisers, party hacks, scheming family members and random hangers-on make critical daily decisions about war, peace, the composition of the judiciary and the boundaries of state authority—followed by President Kamala Harris, who has the ineptitude without the excuse of senescence?
The contempt all this reveals for the democratic process is almost on par with that represented in trying to overturn an election. So much for the moral high ground Democrats have claimed to occupy. The events of the past week have exposed the depth of the Democrats’ deception and disregard for democracy. In inadvertently revealing its hypocrisy, Mr. Biden has improbably done his party one final service, one they don’t want but the country urgently needs.
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America Depends on Presidential Immunity
Rejecting Trump’s claim would have meant a weaker government and a more politicized justice system.
The Supreme Court on Monday rendered the most important defense of separation of powers in its history. Trump v. U.S. concluded that the Constitution requires immunity from criminal prosecution for official presidential acts. The decision isn’t about Donald Trump so much as it is about protecting the presidency itself; future occupants of that office, including President Biden; and the ability of the government to function
In Federalist No. 70, Alexander Hamilton explained that the executive branch is embodied in a single person, the president, to avoid the “habitual feebleness and dilatoriness” inherent in multimember bodies like Congress. A unitary president ensures vigor in the exercise of executive power for the benefit of the nation. “A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.”
The Trump opinion acknowledged these truths and built on Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982), which recognized presidential immunity from civil lawsuits predicated on official acts. In that case, Justice Lewis Powell wrote that such immunity is mandated by the president’s “unique position” and “rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers.” Lawsuits “could distract a President from his public duties, to the detriment of not only the President and his office but also the Nation that the Presidency was designed to serve.”
As Chief Justice John Roberts noted in Trump, that’s even more true of criminal charges. Given “the peculiar public opprobrium that attaches to criminal proceedings,” they “are plainly more likely to distort Presidential decision making than the potential payment of civil damages.” Without immunity, “a President inclined to take one course of action based on the public interest may instead opt for another, apprehensive that criminal penalties may befall him upon his departure from office.” Immunity is therefore crucial to protect the independence of the executive branch. But the immunity the court recognized isn’t without limit.
The president enjoys absolute immunity for acts undertaken within his exclusive power, as granted by the Constitution. “Once it is determined that the President acted within the scope of his exclusive authority,” the court declared, “his discretion in exercising such authority cannot be subject to further judicial examination.” One of the allegations against Mr. Trump is that he attempted to convince the Justice Department to investigate election fraud. Because the president has ultimate authority over the Justice Department, the high court held that Mr. Trump is absolutely immune from charges relating to his interactions with it.
For acts “within the outer perimeter” of the president’s official responsibility, the justices held, there is “at least a presumptive immunity.” The president has a broad array of “discretionary responsibilities” that aren’t exclusively his. “At a minimum,” the court held, “the President must . . . be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose ‘no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.’ ”
Applying that standard, the court concluded that allegations relating to Mr. Trump’s efforts to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to take certain actions during Congress’s certification of electors “involve official conduct,” but left it to the trial judge to determine whether prosecution “would pose any dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” The court took the same approach to allegations regarding Mr. Trump’s interactions with state officials, private parties and the public. Whether these were “official acts” requires “close analysis” by the trial court, “with the benefit of briefing” by the parties, the justices said. All these questions will be litigated and could again come before the high court.
At the same time, the justices made clear that the president has no immunity from prosecution for private acts. That’s consistent with Clinton v. Jones (1997), which denied Bill Clinton’s claim of immunity in a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment during his time as Arkansas governor. Presidents aren’t “above the law”; they are immune from civil lawsuit or criminal prosecution only for actions undertaken pursuant to the highest law, the Constitution.
The court also wisely rejected special counsel Jack Smith’s argument that determining whether acts are official and therefore immune can wait until after the trial. Presidential immunity “must be addressed at the outset of a proceeding,” the court held, because the mere “possibility of an extended proceeding” may reduce the presidency’s vigor. The justices observed that “we do not ordinarily decline to decide significant constitutional questions based on the Government’s promises of good faith.”
Without immunity and prompt pretrial determination thereof, former presidents could face years of court proceedings fighting novel charges predicated on public speeches; negotiations with state, foreign or congressional leaders; or executive orders lacking clear statutory authorization such as vaccine mandates, eviction moratoriums or actions opening the border. Clever prosecutors could conjure up indictments based on opaque criminal statutes such as conspiracy against rights, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., obstruction of justice, mail or wire fraud, racketeering, and false statements or misrepresentations.
The wisdom of the court’s decision is illustrated by charges Mr. Smith levied against Mr. Trump. The Court concluded that many of them were based on official acts and thus constitutionally inappropriate. Other charges were so poorly developed that they must be decided on remand, necessitating even more litigation.
Any prosecution of a president based on his official acts harms the presidency’s effectiveness. The court has sent a clear message to prosecutors like Mr. Smith: You’d better have a strong case, because presidents have immunity for official acts, and they are entitled to prompt judicial determination thereof. If the justices had decided otherwise, our nation would have descended into a destructive cycle of perpetual lawfare, weakening all presidents—including Mr. Biden—and further politicizing the justice system.
Mr. Rivkin served at the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations. Ms. Foley is a professor of constitutional law at Florida International University College of Law. Both practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington.
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Market commentary
Earning comparisons should be favorable. Hurricane should cause energy prices to rise temporarily, and, now that Trump appears a shoe in, certainty is something the market likes.
I am bemused by the emotional knee jerk reaction by progressives to the SCOTUS decisions which, to this law school graduate, strengthen the Constitution, are logical and, over time, will prove that when you refer to the Democrat Party you are in synch with reality. The party walked of the democratic rails after Wilson became president and continues with Biden.
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Talk about a monarchist president who is destroying democracy.
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The Administrative State Loses Again
The Supreme Court lets a new business challenge an old regulation.
The little guy has scored another big victory at the Supreme Court against the administrative state. A 6-3 majority on Monday ruled that the shot clock for challenging agency regulations begins only when a party is first harmed, not when the rules become final (Corner Post v. Board of Governors, Federal Reserve).
At issue was a 2011 Fed rule that capped debit-card interchange fees. Corner Post, a North Dakota truck stop that opened in 2018, challenged the regulation in 2021 under the Administrative Procedure Act. That’s the 1946 law that sets the process federal agencies must follow to issue rules.
But lawsuits against the U.S. must generally be filed “six years after the right of action first accrues.” The government argued that for regulations this means the clock starts ticking as soon as the rules are finalized. In other words, to challenge the Fed’s 2011 rule, Corner Post would have needed to sue before it came into existence. Tough luck.
Fortunately, the six conservative Justices disagreed. “A right of action ‘accrues’ when the plaintiff has a ‘complete and present cause of action,’” Justice Amy Coney Barrett writes for the majority. She says the meaning of the word “accrue” is well settled, citing a precedent holding that a right “accrues when it comes into existence.’”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting for the three liberals, worries about a coming “tsunami” of lawsuits. “Allowing every new commercial entity to bring fresh facial challenges to long-existing regulations is profoundly destabilizing for both Government and businesses,” she says. “It also allows well-heeled litigants to game the system by creating new entities or finding new plaintiffs.”
But as Justice Barrett notes, parties can always challenge regulations if enforcement actions are brought against them. The Court’s ruling means parties won’t have to wait to get smacked to fight back, and maybe more regulators will follow the law to begin with.
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Courts Rule, Biden Says Who Cares?
After its SAVE plan is blocked, the Department of Education pauses interest payments.
Two federal judges last week blocked much of President Biden’s latest student loan forgiveness scheme. His Administration’s response? Wave away borrower payments. Heads or tails in court, taxpayers lose.
Some eight million borrowers enrolled in Mr. Biden’s SAVE student loan plans before the two courts enjoined most provisions. The plans cap monthly payments at 5% of discretionary income—defined as exceeding 225% of the poverty level—and cancel remaining balances after 10 to 20 years. Accrued unpaid interest is also waived.
The Education Department already implemented a provision that eliminated payments for 4.5 million borrowers. Courts didn’t block this provision since it was already in effect. But as a result of their rulings, more than three million other borrowers won’t see their payments cut in half as the Administration promised. Many also won’t get their debt discharged.
What a bait-and-switch. The Administration encouraged borrowers to sign up for dubious loan-forgiveness plans that it should have known were unlawful in order to buy their votes. To make it up to snookered borrowers, the Education Department on Friday said it would pause their payments and suspend interest accrual. It didn’t say for how long.
The department also said it would continue accepting applications for the SAVE plans despite the court rulings. Borrowers who enroll going forward will also benefit from the payment pause. So the Administration is using the legal defeats as an excuse to provide more debt relief by other means. Where are the folks who fret that Donald Trump won’t respect court orders?
We told you last week about the department’s new plan to expand a public-service loan forgiveness program to child-care workers. Courts are playing whack-a-mole with the Administration’s schemes to write off student debt. The Administration is giving taxpayers no choice other than voting out Mr. Biden if they want to stop this lawlessness.
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