Cross-Examination

• Cartoon witness admits stealing from Trump: The Democrats’ lawfare against Donald Trump continued yesterday, as Trump’s defense team further annihilated the credibility of former Trump fixer and lying liar Michael Cohen. He admitted that he stole $30,000 from the Trump Organization, apparently because he thought he deserved it as a performance bonus. One CNN analyst noted that theft is a more serious crime than the phony bookkeeping “felonies” Trump is being charged with. Closing arguments won’t come until next week, and, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy noted this morning on Fox News, Judge Juan Merchan, a Biden donor, has let in “a ridiculous amount of improper evidence” in the case, which would certainly be grounds for an appeal if Trump is convicted. On the other hand, McCarthy expressed puzzlement over the Trump legal team’s treatment of a perfectly legal (if in this case sordid) aspect of the case: the nondisclosure agreement. “If your best defense is that the nondisclosure agreements are legal, then don’t treat them like kryptonite,” he said, referring to the Trump team’s insistence that they were entirely Cohen’s doing and Trump knew nothing about them.

• The Senate’s zombie border bill: In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will force a vote on the bipartisan border “security” bill that Republicans have already blocked once. As NBC News reports: “The legislation, negotiated by Republican and Democratic senators, is designed to reduce border crossings, raise the bar for migrants to qualify for asylum and quickly turn away those who fail to meet it. It empowers the president to shut down the border if certain triggers are met. If it becomes law, it would be the most sweeping set of migration restrictions in decades.” That, of course, is Leftmedia spin. We know better, and we’ve reported as much. As Schumer disingenuously said yesterday, “It’s been 103 days since Donald Trump and the Republicans blocked the strongest, most comprehensive border security bill in a generation.” Our question: Where was Schumer’s urgency for the first three and a half years of Biden’s open-borders presidency?

• Biden admin withholding funds over trans agenda: The Biden administration has weaponized the Department of Health and Human Services to enforce its new rule expanding anti-discrimination to include gender-bending medical procedures. In a House hearing, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra went back and forth with Representative Mary Miller (R-IL) over the new rule’s impact on religious-based hospitals that object to providing gender-bending medical procedures. Miller asked if these hospitals would be barred from receiving federal funds. Becerra answered, “If a healthcare facility is violating the law and not providing the service they're required to, they are not entitled to the resources.” CatholicVote alleges that the Biden administration is deliberately targeting religious Americans with this rule. Representative Robert Aderholt (R-AL) charged: “This administration’s push to force religious communities to get on board with their radical policies continued in [this] Education and the Workforce committee hearing. We must continue rejecting these attacks on faith-based organizations.”

• Immigration crime, Chicago style: In the 1987 film “The Untouchables,” there’s a line in which the salty old Irish cop played by Sean Connery mutters, “This town stinks like a [house of ill repute] at low tide.” That observation is as true today as it was in Al Capone’s era, as evidenced by a new scheme involving fake robberies and illegal immigrants. As CWB Chicago reports: “Federal prosecutors on Friday announced charges against five people in connection with a Chicago-based scheme that staged armed robberies so the purported victims could apply for U.S. immigration visas reserved for legitimate crime victims. … Officials believe hundreds of people, including some who traveled from out of town, posed as customers in dozens of businesses across Chicago and elsewhere, all hoping to win favorable immigration status by becoming ‘victims’ of pre-arranged ‘armed robberies.’” National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar, a Chicago native, harkens to Carl Sandburg when he calls his hometown the City of the Fraud Shoulders, adding, “I like to think of us as the Silicon Valley of crime, whether it be violent, organized, civic, or any combination of the three.”

• Fat Leonard might get away with it: The Justice Department will ask U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino to dismiss its bribery and conspiracy case against former Navy Captain Steve Shedd today. This request comes even though Shedd admitted on the witness stand in a related trial that he repeatedly lied to federal agents and that he is a “traitor to the United States” who “deserves prison.” So why is the DOJ asking for the case to be dropped? The answer is tied to the DOJ’s mishandling of several cases related to a 350-pound Malaysian defense contractor named Leonard Glenn Francis, who has been dubbed “Fat Leonard.” To prosecute Leonard for a bribery scheme to secure lucrative contracts, the DOJ engaged in prosecutorial misconduct both in withholding information favorable to the defense and in introducing flawed evidence. Therefore, despite Shedd and three other retired Navy officers having pleaded guilty to taking bribes from Leonard, the cases against them are falling apart due to “flagrant and outrageous” misconduct by DOJ prosecutors.

• Gas rollbacks: Remember the good old days just four years ago, when gas prices were under $3 a gallon? Well, to remind Americans what the price of gas was before Joe Biden took office, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is hosting a gas price rollback. For one week, 20 gas stations across the country will temporarily drop their gas prices down to as low as $2.38 per gallon, which was the average price at the pump the day Biden moved into the White House. As AFP Vice President of Government Affairs Akash Chougule explained: “From shutting down the Keystone Pipeline to banning energy leases on federal land, Joe Biden’s top-down policies have stifled our country’s energy resources and made even the things like a family road trip more expensive. This week, we are spotlighting what gas prices could be with policies that unleash our country’s energy potential.”

• Time’s pronoun confusion: We’re old enough to remember when Time magazine was a serious news weekly, but those days are loooong gone. Today, Time is reduced to reporting on stories with headlines such as this: “His Pregnancy Came as a Shock. Florida’s Abortion Law Made It Harder.” We wish it were satire, but it isn’t. “Jasper never considered he might be pregnant,” writes Time’s Shefali Luthra. “Despite the nausea, the stomach pain, the fatigue, the possibility never crossed his mind. He was about six months into testosterone therapy, a form of gender-affirming care.” Luthra continues: “It had taken ages to get his father and stepmother on board — though 18 years old at the time, Jasper lived with and relied on them for support. … Feeling the peach fuzz grow on his face, hearing his voice deepen, noticing as his jawline shifted and his eyebrows darkened — it was the first time in his life that Jasper felt truly at home in his body.” Luthra keeps using the words “he” and “his.” But we don’t think those words mean what she thinks they mean.

• Good news: Judge blocks ATF’s new 2A-infringing rule: U.S. District Court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk has put a temporary restraining order on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives from enforcing its new expanded background check and firearms dealer rule in Texas. The new rule effectively turns anyone who sells a firearm into a gun dealer, thus expanding background checks to effectively include all firearm sales. Gun Owners of America Senior Vice President Erich Pratt praised the ruling, stating, “This ruling is a compelling rebuke of [Biden and company’s] tyrannical and unconstitutional actions that purposely misinterpreted federal law to ensure their preferred policy outcome.” Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association elected former Georgia Representative Bob Barr as its new president on Monday. Barr beat out Owen Mills, receiving 37 votes to Mills’s 30. Barr will have the unenviable task of righting the NRA ship following scandals that forced former CEO Wayne LaPierre to resign. The Second Amendment organization has bled a significant number of members over the last few years, seeing a 52% drop in revenue in 2022.

Headlines

• United Nations council, including U.S. ambassador, holds moment of silence for “Butcher of Tehran” (Not the Bee)

• Biden slams ICC over “outrageous” Netanyahu arrest warrant (National Review) | Netanyahu: ICC will not stop us from destroying Hamas (Daily Wire)

• Rashida Tlaib has paid $435,000 to firm of anti-Israel activist for terrorism-tied groups (Washington Examiner)

• EPA warns of cyberattacks on nation’s drinking water systems (Daily Wire)

• Newsom said he wouldn’t raise taxes to fix California’s deficit; his budget proposal includes $18 billion in tax hikes for businesses (Washington Free Beacon)

• DeSantis signs bill wiping climate change references from Florida law (Axios)

• World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab steps back from executive post (Semafor)

• Policy: End the International Criminal Court (National Review)

• Humor: Harrison Butker late for practice again after spending morning enslaving women and forcing them to wear “Handmaid’s Tale” uniforms (Babylon Bee)

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