Legislative Pardons Should Correct Unfair DC Trials

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Only 5% of Washington, D.C. voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2020, reflecting how thoroughly anti-Trump the jury pool is there. It appears impossible for anyone perceived to be a Trump supporter to receive a fair jury trial in D.C.

There is a 100% conviction rate by D.C. jurors of anyone associated with Trump, while there has been a 100% acquittal rate for prominent Democrats. The jury selection process in the trial of Steve Bannon included startling revelations of how much animosity people in government-funded D.C. have for Trump and his supporters. 

In his second term as president Donald Trump would finally dismantle the Deep State, and details are already circulating of his credible plan to replace tens of thousands of federal workers to make this happen. Some jurors may fear a loss of their government job if Trump returns to power, or sooner retaliation by liberals who might post home addresses of jurors who dared to vote in favor of Trump or his supporters.

It is often said that a prosecutor can lead a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and a D.C. jury might even convict that ham sandwich if it were associated with Trump. It may be impossible to find 12 people in D.C. who would not face some kind of retaliation if they were to side with a Trump-supporting defendant in a trial.

Retirees and housewives are typically the most independent-minded jurors, but there are few of them in D.C. Nearly every family in that city is dependent on government in some way for income, which is why Trump received only 5% of their votes in the last election.

Trump could not obtain a fair trial on anything in D.C., and Democrats are salivating at the possibility of charging him before a jury there. It would be like a presidential debate before moderators and an audience that were handpicked to be stacked 95% against Trump.

Democrats plan to checkmate Trump by getting him before a D.C. jury on unprecedented charges. Trump-hater Liz Cheney (R-WY) has been doing everything she can to push criminal charges against Trump, while time is running out for her with less than 3 weeks left before her primary in Wyoming.

Fortunately, the Constitution does not permit unfair checkmates. When one or two political branches abuse their power, as we watch the Democrat-controlled House improperly collaborating with the Justice Department, then frequent elections in the House and its ability to check-and-balance other branches should block the overreach.

Republicans are predicted to retake control of the House of Representatives in January. Republicans should announce now that they will reverse all injustices inflicted by the Pelosi-picked committee that pursued its jihad against Trump.

The Republican House should rescind all of the Democrats’ votes for contempt, and also vote that the subpoena on which Bannon was prosecuted was invalid when issued. This should require reversal of his conviction, and dismissal of the similar charges against Peter Navarro.

The House should then pass resolutions of pardon for every target of the Democrat-controlled Select Committee on January 6th, including Bannon and others who exercised their constitutional rights as supporters of Trump. A pardon of Trump is not needed at this time but by pardoning Bannon and others the House would signal a willingness to protect Trump against any politically motivated prosecution.

Our Founders intended for the House of Representatives to be the preeminent governmental body in our country, to wield powers far in excess of all other branches of government. No one can become a member of the House without being directly elected by the people, and members must stand for reelection every two years.

Revenue-raising bills can originate only in the House, in further reflection of the Founders’ intent to give it the greatest authority. The Constitution also authorizes the House to act alone when it impeaches a president, which is something Democrats exploited twice against President Trump.

Whether the House may act alone, or with the Senate, in issuing a legislative pardon has never been decided by a court of law. In 1974, the Justice Department’s highly respected Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) recognized the lack of any federal precedents on this issue, and gave an opinion supporting a legislative pardon power by Congress concerning the president but not generally of others.

The OLC’s view was that a president cannot judge and pardon himself because of the inherent conflict of interest, and by the same logic a president has a conflict of interest concerning declining a pardon to his political opponent. It falls upon the upcoming Republican House to exercise its legislative pardon power for Trump supporters, thereby ending the political prosecution strategy pursued by Democrats.

Tyranny-by-prosecution happens in dictatorships. House Republicans should now announce their plan to protect Trump and his supporters against this injustice.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Trump Overcomes Boycott by Trump-Haters

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Pandering to the liberal media, the Professional Golfers’ Association last year canceled its big annual tournament that it had scheduled at a Trump golf course. This began the PGA-led boycott of Trump's top-ranked golf courses, to the delight of Trump-haters.

Golf courses are how Donald Trump earns a living. By boycotting his golf courses, the Left cuts off Trump’s income and his financial means of funding his legal defense and political work.

But now Trump overcomes their boycott. Next week his same PGA-rejected golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, will host an LIV tournament, and many of the top players have switched from the anti-Trump PGA to the pro-Trump LIV side.

Greg Norman, a supporter of Trump, is the CEO of LIV (pronounced as in “live free”). He will also hold another tournament this year at Trump's golf course in Miami, where tickets have already sold out.

Norman has assembled a group of Trump-friendly golfers who want to Make Golf Great Again. The anti-Trump media are treating the golfers with questions as hostile as those they ask Trump.

Hanging in the balance is whether the vicious liberal boycott of Trump’s properties – akin to a military blockade – will hold against Greg Norman’s valiant effort to breach it. The golfing world has suddenly become a proxy war over Trump’s political future.

The liberal media ambush golfers who have switched to LIV with odd questions about playing on Trump’s golf courses, which was never controversial before. “Lefty” Phil Mickelson, one of the greatest ever and the biggest name to join LIV, was impertinently asked last month, “How do you feel about playing on Trump courses?”

Implicit in that question is that someone should have qualms about playing on a golf course owned by Trump. Mickelson responded, “I care more about the quality of the test of golf, the quality of the golf course, the fan experience and their ability to see and view the golf, and the challenge of what the venue provides for the players.”

Liberals do not quit, and when reporters came after Mickelson with hostility again last week at the British Open, he became blunter in his response. “Let it go, dude. … I couldn’t be happier.”

Sergio Garcia, the Spanish golfer having many fans worldwide, played at a Trump charity golfing event nearly a decade ago after other celebrities began shunning Trump. Garcia switched to LIV, and on Monday he announced that he was leaving the hostile European circuit altogether.

The Scotland Open banned players who switched to the LIV-Trump side, but then a court issued an injunction allowing them to play. The prestigious Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia, has not yet banned any of the LIV players from its event next spring.

An outspoken critic of LIV, Rory McIlroy, was leading the British Open this past weekend to the delight of anti-Trumpers. Now called the Open Championship, this major tourney was played at the historic St. Andrews course in Scotland, where the game was invented 250 years ago.

But with a record-setting flourish of birdies on the final 9 holes, a 28-year-old Aussie named Cameron Smith won a stunning upset on Sunday. The liberal media were shocked when Smith implied that he, too, might be interested in joining LIV, and thereby playing in its Trump-course tournaments.

Trump-haters were also apoplectic when the black NBA great Charles Barkley, an outspoken supporter of Democrats, emphatically responded to a question about his interest in becoming a television commentator for LIV. “So, to answer your question, yes, I’m gonna 100 percent meet with LIV.”

Liberals made the United States dependent on Saudi oil, yet suddenly opponents of Trump have a problem with golfers being paid by it. Because LIV is funded by Saudi Arabian investments, liberals pretend that Trump is turning his back on victims of Saudi Arabia, including a murdered journalist and those who died in 9/11.

But if critics of Trump consistently object to Saudi Arabia, then they should have complained louder against the pilgrimages by Obama and Biden to the Saudi king, and protest buying Saudi oil. The public wants tournaments at Trump golf courses, and Trump spoke more against Saudi misconduct than any other president.

Greg Norman is doing for professional golf what needs to be done to the NFL and other professional sports whose executives are more liberal than their fans. Norman, who succeeded as a golfer with 331 weeks as the world's #1 player, is taking the game back from the liberal tyrants and restoring it to the fans and players.

Players should be able to compete in an LIV tournament at a Trump golf course without fear of retaliation by the liberal-controlled PGA, who Trump observed on Monday is the real “disloyal” group. Last one out of the anti-Trump PGA should turn out its lights.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

How Biden Stole the Election

Ann Coulter tells how prominent Democrats have a history of not accepting election results, and writes:

The real cheating in the 2020 election — and every other election in recent memory — wasn’t that Iran, China or Chavez were manipulating our voting machines. It wasn’t the ballot harvesting allegedly exposed in Dinesh D’Souza’s movie, “2,000 Mules.” It was what liberals were doing right in front of our faces.

Democrats have what are known as “unmotivated voters.” As such, they need battalions of “Get Out the Vote” activists to track down the bored and the lazy. (Yes, the same marginalized people whom liberals claim are having their lifelong dreams of voting dashed by GOP “voter suppression” schemes can’t be bothered to get out of bed on Election Day.)

Over the years, Democrats have lured their voters to the polls with a free ride, a box lunch and walking-around money — even a gurney, if that’s what it takes. Volunteers give the voters detailed, childlike instructions on exactly how to fill out their ballots. Luckily, unionized government workers have plenty of time on their hands to “organize” voters.

Without these sorts of military-style operations, the day after the election, Democrats will find out half their voters overslept and forgot to vote.

Consequently, COVID was like manna from heaven for the left. It provided the perfect excuse to demand even more time for volunteers to round up the uninterested. No-excuse absentee ballots, mail-in ballots, drop boxes, months of early voting — all of it: Advantage Democrats.

Until Republicans stop being pushovers and shut down all mail-in balloting, all early voting, all drop boxes, and pass a federal law requiring ONE DAY, a NATIONAL HOLIDAY, to vote (which is fully within Congress’ constitutional authority), Democrats have a gigantic, unfair advantage. That’s not cheating. It’s being smarter than Mitch McConnell.

Time’s Running Out for Democrats

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Joe Biden’s approval has continued to fall, despite the Democrats’ efforts to prop him up. In the latest New York Times/Siena poll, Biden’s approval rating is down to only 33%, which is far too low for Democrats to retain control of Congress or the White House.

Early voting for the midterm elections begins in less than 3 months, with the vacation month of August in between. Time has nearly run out for Democrats to save their sinking ship.

With both Houses under Democrat control, public confidence in Congress has fallen to only 7%, as measured by Gallup. Confidence in the mostly liberal television news networks has fallen to only 11%.

Democrats had been counting on televised congressional hearings about the pro-Trump rally at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to be the game-changer they need to retain power, but their strategy hasn’t worked. According to a new Harvard/Harris poll, 53% consider the hearings biased, 63% feel Congress should be working on more important matters, and 67% say the hearings are dividing our country.

The fizzling of implausible testimony against Trump has boomeranged against the J6 Committee. The nonpartisan Secret Service disavowed the accusations by the surprise witness Cassidy Hutchinson, whose bizarre hearsay testimony would not be allowed in a real court.

The much-ballyhooed testimony by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone was another nothing-burger. He testified that he thought Trump should have conceded the election, but Cipollone is no expert on election procedure and his uninformed opinion is irrelevant.

In December 2020, Trump supporter Patrick Byrne lambasted Cipollone, calling him a “leaker.” “Trump is lied to by his own advisers,” Byrne said then about Cipollone and others, after a meeting with them and Trump.

Flailing away, Democrats have since turned to a harmless Tweet sent out by Trump a half-month before January 6. After wasting many millions of taxpayer dollars and a year-and-a-half on this witch-hunt, anti-Trumpers resort to what was public on Trump’s own Twitter account all along.

Trump merely invited supporters to attend his own rally on January 6, which is not a crime. The harsh punishment of Trump supporters who participated in that peaceful assembly does not help Democrats.

New signs emerge that Democrats are turning against their own president. A startlingly negative assessment of Biden in Saturday’s New York Times, followed by a column there on Monday saying that he is too old to run again, suggest that Biden may become a scapegoat for liberals.

In fact, Biden is several years younger than Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and Pelosi is younger than her own heir apparent, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD). Election fraud, not Biden’s age, may be why people overwhelmingly reject him now.

Biden was placed in the White House through rampant ballot harvesting and the use of unattended ballot drop boxes, which were just declared illegal by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. These ballot dumps, often in the middle of the night, were done by hired Democrat ballot harvesters in battleground states.

Attorney General Bill Barr refused to investigate or challenge these and other unlawful election procedures, but instead quit and thereby left his office vacant at a crucial time. During his recent book tour, Barr had the gall to blame Trump for not spending $20-30 million of his own money to do the job that Barr should have done at the Department of Justice.

As a result of his unjustified carping against Trump, Barr was subpoenaed by Dominion in its lawsuit against Fox News. Barr will be required to answer under oath whether he had personal knowledge about voting procedures exploited by Democrats in 2020, and he can explain under oath how he did nothing to investigate anomalous results.

Election integrity is an issue that too many Republican officials have run away from for far too long. Last week’s ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court vindicates Trump’s position that the 2020 election was conducted improperly.

The collapse in Biden’s ratings is not due to low unemployment or any desire for gun control, which Biden signed into law amid much fanfare a few weeks ago. His low approval rating may not even be due to his age.

Instead, Biden’s problem may be that many of the votes supposedly “cast” for him in 2020 were the result of paid ballot harvesters dumping ballots into illegal absentee drop boxes. Those ballots could have been filled in for “voters” who never felt any allegiance to Biden.

If more than 80 million Americans earnestly voted for Biden less than two years ago, then Biden would have more support today. If millions of ballots were filled in by paid ballot harvesters, Biden's low approval today is partly the result of too few people wanting him in the first place.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

How Biden Stole the Election in WIsconsin

Slate complains:

On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Republican majority outlawed ballot drop boxes by a 4–3 vote, abolishing a reform that had made voting easier and more accessible in the state. The lead opinion—authored by the notorious fringe-right reactionary Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley — contains alarming language casting doubt on the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. It also grants credence to the GOP’s collapsing “investigation” to prove that illegal votes put Biden over the top in Wisconsin. Without a shred of evidence, the court has thrown its weight behind a dangerous conspiracy theory that helped to fuel the Jan. 6 insurrection. ...

In her opinion for the court in Teigen, Justice Grassl Bradley declared that every single drop box was illegal, and every citizen who used this method cast a ballot illegally.

The court determined that Wisconsin law required voters to deliver their votes in person to the clerk. The votes cannot be collected by bundlers, or put in drop boxes.

The law is a good law, because the bundlers and drop boxes are not authenticated.

In other words, Biden stole the election in Winsocsin, and the Democrats were about to steal another. Pennsylvania and other states also used illegal vote collection methods.

Okay, you may say, didn't the J6 committee find that AG Bill Barr advised Trump that he had insufficient proof of fraud to reverse the official vote counts?\

Yes, he said that, but the WSJ just reported his explanation:

Former Attorney General Bill Barr told a podcast recently that Mr. Trump was duly warned to get solid lawyers working to defend business-as-usual voting processes. “One of his aides went in and said, look, you need to set up a fund of $20-30 million in escrow, because lawyers don’t trust you to pay their bills, and you need to get a top-flight firm in here,” Mr. Barr said. “He ignored that advice. He did not have a legal team prepared to go and fight around the country. So a lot of these, bending of the playing field, were his own fault.”

Got that? Barr was in charge of the US DoJ, and knew that the states were violating election law. But instead of using the DoJ to enforce election law, he told Trump to use his campaign money on a team of lawyers to privately enforce election law!

In retrospect, Trump should have filed a bunch of lawsuits before the election to enforce election law. He probably thought that it was unnecessary, and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would surely obey their own election law, and Republicans in those states were better positioned to see to it.

Back to Slate:

Electoral outcomes obtained by unlawful procedures corrupt the institution of voting” and “pollutes the integrity of the results.” Bradley complained that “hundreds of ballot drop boxes have been set up in past elections” and “thousands of votes have been cast via this unlawful method.” The alleged “illegality of these drop boxes weakens the people’s faith” in the election and calls “the results in question.”

She then went further: “If elections are conducted outside of the law,” she asserted, “the people have not conferred their consent on the government. Such elections are unlawful and their results are illegitimate.” The implication here could not be more obvious: The 2020 election was “unlawful,” so the results—and, specifically, Biden’s victory—are “illegitimate.”

Then Bradley drew a comparison between Wisconsin’s 2020 election and undemocratic, rigged contests in authoritarian nations. “Throughout history, tyrants have claimed electoral victory via elections conducted in violation of governing law,” she wrote, continuing:

For example, Saddam Hussein was reportedly elected in 2002 by a unanimous vote of all eligible voters in Iraq (11,445,638 people). Examples of such corruption are replete in history. In the 21st century, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was elected in 2014 with 100% of the vote while his father, Kim Jong-il, previously won 99.9% of the vote. Former President of Cuba, Raul Castro, won 99.4% of the vote in 2008 while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was elected with 97.6% of the vote in 2007. Even if citizens of such nations are allowed to check a box on a ballot, they possess only a hollow right. Their rulers derive their power from force and fraud, not the people’s consent.

This is correct. Even if you favor bundlers and drop boxes as legitimate ways to get more voters, they were not clearly auth orized by law, and they are not accepted by the public as being free and fair.

Liberal World Order: “As Long as it Takes”?

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

“This is about the future of the liberal world order and we have to stand firm,” declared Biden Administration official Brian Deese. “Liberal world order” is apparently what globalists meant all along when they spoke of a “new world order” and a “new normal.”

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, uses the “Great Reset” to refer to the globalist vision for the future. The elite met there again in May to reassert their control over politics worldwide.

Expanding bloated NATO remains atop their agenda, by adding Sweden and Finland to its membership. This begins a process by which the United States promises to send troops to those countries if they are ever attacked, further entangling our country in the intractable conflicts of Europe.

Also called the "liberal international order," globalists insist on a system in which all the important decisions are made by phony experts who set norms of conduct without input or rejection by citizens of individual nation-states. The views of American voters are irrelevant under this scheme, as voters are then told we are bound by treaties and must participate in foreign wars.

“For as long as it takes” was the talking point chanted by Joe Biden to the press who followed him all the way to Madrid, Spain, to cover the NATO Summit to ask Biden questions he’s been avoiding. Ignoring Peter Doocy of Fox News, Biden referred to his cheat sheet and revealed that “I’m supposed to go down the list here.”

The first name on Biden’s list was an Associated Press reporter, who asked Biden about the recent pledge by the democratic G7 leaders to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” The AP reporter asked, “I’m wondering if you would explain what that means to the American people, ‘for as long as it takes’?”

“We are going to support Ukraine as long as it takes,” Biden responded, without directly answering the question. “We are going to stick with Ukraine as long as it takes to make sure that they are not defeated by Russia.”

Next on Biden’s list was a reporter from the Democrat-friendly New York Times, who asked Biden how his plan to cap Russian exports would affect the high price of gasoline in the United States. “Are you confident that that cap would bring down prices for American drivers?”

“How long is it fair to expect American drivers to pay a premium because of this war?” Biden apparently did not understand this simple question, so the reporter had to repeat it. “The war has pushed prices up,” the Times reporter continued, although gas prices were already rising before the war began. “How long is it fair to expect American drivers to pay that premium for this war?”

“As long as it takes,” Biden chanted again like a trained parrot, “so Russia cannot defeat Ukraine. This is a critical position for the world. Why do we have NATO?” Let’s hope no one asks Putin or Biden why he has nuclear missiles.

With that circular reasoning based on the mere existence of the unproductive NATO expanded more than it should be, Biden declared “I’m outta here.” He then ignored a roomful of reporters including Fox's Doocy who shouted questions as he left the stage.

NATO’s original purpose was to protect Western Europe from invasion by the Soviet Union, but that Communist nation disintegrated 30 years ago. Originally consisting of 12 countries, NATO membership increases to an unmanageable 32 with the addition of Sweden and Finland, and their admission doubles the length of the tense land border between NATO and Russia from 754 miles to 1,584 miles.

Biden will not defend our southern border, so he should not be committing Americans to defend a long border with Russia that is being doubled in length. “There’s going to be a new world order out there,” Biden told CEOs at the Business Roundtable on March 21, “and we’ve got to lead it,” though he never explained why.

Standing firm for the “liberal world order” is the defense asserted by the Biden Administration to $5 per gallon in gas. That was its response to a good question posed by CNN, “What do you say to those families who say, ‘Listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years. This is just not sustainable’?”

Conservative Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), fresh from her landslide primary victory against an all-out attempt by liberals to unseat her, criticized Democrats for imposing higher gas prices to prop up a liberal world order. “The White House openly stated that you’re just going to have to pay more in gas so that they can hold the ‘liberal world order,’” Boebert tweeted.

The cat is out of the bag: higher gas prices are due to Democrats’ insistence on a liberal world order. No thanks to that.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on PhyllisSchlafly.com, pseagles.com, and Townhall.com.

Not a Muscular States-Rights Federalism

The NY Times reports:

The tearing at the seams has been accelerated by the six-vote conservative majority in the Supreme Court, which has embraced a muscular states-rights federalism. In the past 10 days the court has erased the constitutional right to an abortion, narrowed the federal government’s ability to regulate climate-warming pollution and blocked liberal states and cities from barring most of their citizens from carrying concealed guns outside of their homes.

None of these decisions have anything to do with states-rights, or a muscular states-rights federalism.

Wikipedia says:

Since the 1940s, the term "states' rights" has often been considered a loaded term or dog whistle

It explains that it is a code word used by racist Democrats.