12/30/20

Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys Suing Their Boss, DA Gascón

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Primer – Officers of the Court: any person who has an obligation to promote justice and effective operation of the judicial system, including judges, the attorneys who appear in court, bailiffs, clerks, and other personnel. As officers of the court lawyers have an absolute ethical duty to tell judges the truth, including avoiding dishonesty or evasion about reasons the attorney or his/her client is not appearing, the location of documents, and other matters related to the conduct of the courts.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón Resigns | KQED

DA George Gascon is and was supported by BLM. More than $19 million has been pumped into the contentious Los Angeles County district attorney race, with donors lining up on opposing sides of a stark ideological divide between incumbent Jackie Lacey and challenger George Gascón.

Spending in the race intensified a few weeks before Election Day when New York billionaire George Soros and Bay Area philanthropist Patty Quillin combined to put millions of dollars behind Gascón. Quillin’s husband, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, has also helped Gascón maintain a commanding fundraising lead over Lacey, who has support from law enforcement unions up and down the state.

In the weeks before the general election, donations from Gascón’s supporters – including $3.4 million from the criminal justice reform group Color Of Change – helped the challenger take a large fundraising lead.

LATimes: The union representing Los Angeles County deputy district attorneys on Wednesday sued Dist. Atty. George Gascón, alleging that the dramatic changes he has brought to the nation’s largest prosecutorial office have defied state law and forced rank-and-file prosecutors to violate their oaths of office.

The lawsuit is the most public expression yet of the pushback Gascón has fielded from within his own office since being sworn in Dec. 7. It focuses on his so-called special directives that ordered his deputies to forgo sentencing enhancements.

The union, which represents about 800 prosecutors, is seeking a court order that would compel Gascón to rescind the directives and declare them “invalid and illegal,” as well as a temporary restraining order that would bar Gascón and his administration from enforcing the directives.

Gascón’s policies have “placed line prosecutors in an ethical dilemma — follow the law, their oath, and their ethical obligations, or follow their superior’s orders,” wrote the union’s lawyer, Eric M. George.A spokesman for Gascón had no immediate comment on the lawsuit.

On his first day in office, Gascón announced his deputies would no longer seek enhancements that — if proved — lengthen defendants’ prison sentences under certain circumstances, such as if they committed a crime to a gang’s benefit or if they had a criminal history.

Initially, the prohibition extended to enhancements for hate crimes, sex trafficking, financial crimes and elder and child abuse, but Gascón has since modified his directives to allow such enhancements. His deputies are still barred from seeking enhancements for prior strikes, committing a crime that benefits a gang, using a firearm and any special circumstance allegation that would send a defendant to prison for life without parole.

The union argues that prosecutors should pursue or forgo sentencing enhancements using “case-by-case discretion,” basing their decisions on the circumstances of a crime and a defendant, not “rubber stamp blanket prosecutorial policies barring the wholesale enforcement of criminal laws.”

The union asserts that Gascón’s prohibition on enhancements for prior strikes violates the state’s three strikes law, which, in the union’s view, requires prosecutors to seek longer sentences for defendants with previous convictions. Gascón “enjoys wide — but not limitless — discretion,” George wrote; he may believe such enhancements do not protect public safety, but he has no authority to circumvent lawmakers and legislate “by fiat,” the lawsuit says.

Gascón has said he was elected with a mandate to overhaul an outdated, heavy-handed approach to law and order that hasn’t proved effective in protecting the public. He promised during the campaign to no longer charge gang enhancements, which have come under scrutiny after several Los Angeles Police Department officers were charged over the summer with falsifying records that misrepresented people they had stopped as gang members and associates.

In a statement released by Stanford’s Three Strikes Project, the program’s director, Michael Romano, and two other law professors said the California Supreme Court has held that district attorneys have “complete authority” to enforce state laws within their jurisdiction.

Romano, Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Berkeley Law School, and David Mills, a professor at Stanford Law School, said in the statement that Gascón’s policies will make Los Angeles safer and reduce “epidemic” levels of incarceration. The union’s lawsuit, they added, “is more reflective of their longstanding opposition to reform and the will of millions of Angelenos than it is the legality of DA Gascón’s directives.”

The union also contends that Gascón, a local executive branch official, is encroaching on the authority of the courts in ordering his deputies to move to withdraw enhancement allegations. If a judge refuses those motions — as several have in recent weeks — line prosecutors have been instructed to file new charging documents without the enhancements. In doing so, the union argues, the district attorney’s office is making an end-run around the courts’ authority.

This scenario played out in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Monday. A deputy district attorney, reading from a script, said he was seeking to dismiss enhancement allegations in a murder case against a defendant for belonging to a gang and using a firearm. When the judge denied the motion, the prosecutor said he would file new charges without the enhancements.

“I’m not going to accept an amended information,” Judge Mark S. Arnold said. “Legally, there’s no justification. There’s no defect.”

12/30/20

Have You Met the Freedom Force?

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Several newly-elected Republican House members, including New York’s Nicole Malliotakis, have banded together to create a group they’ve dubbed the “Freedom Force” — to oppose “The Squad” of progressive Democratic congresswomen.“This group will give a contrast to the hard left,” Utah Rep.-elect and former NFL player Burgess Owens said. Owens pledged that the new GOP band, made up of women and people of color, will work to protect small business owners. At least eight incoming Republican lawmakers are in the group, including Reps.-elect Malliotakis; Michelle Steel of California; Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma; Victoria Spartz of Indiana; and Carlos Gimenez, Maria Elvira Salazar, and Byron Donalds of Florida.

“We have different cultures, backgrounds, colors. But what we have in common is that we have a love for our country… and we’re going to make sure we stay free,” Owens said of the coalition.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, Malliotakis mentioned “a natural alliance” was occurring between members of the freshman class.

“I think what you’re going to see is a group of individuals who are going to serve as a counterbalance to the values of the socialist squad,” Malliotakis said.

“We don’t believe we should be dismantling the economy. We don’t believe we should be destroying free-market principles. We don’t believe in the Green New Deal. We don’t believe in packing the courts.” More here.

GOP 'Freedom Force' Vows to Fight Socialism, Counter 'The Squad' in House

In part from WSJ: A quarter-century apart in age, Nicole Malliotakis, and Michelle Steel are classmates. They’re both freshmen, Republicans who’ve won election to the House of Representatives for the first time. Each ousted an incumbent Democrat in a resolutely blue state—New York and California, respectively—where Joe Biden romped home in November. And each woman has a scathing view of the politics of the other’s state as well as of her own. They’re ready to scorn Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom. As for Mayor Bill de Blasio, Ms. Malliotakis, a state assemblywoman from New York City, practically combusts at the mention of his name.

“I think our leaderships are competing with each other to be the most radical. They keep getting bad ideas from each other,” says Ms. Malliotakis, 40, who will represent New York’s 11th Congressional District, comprised of the borough of Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.

“The leadership is trying to make these states into Third World countries,” Ms. Steel, 65, responds. She is a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, a local legislative body, and representative-elect from California’s 48th District, a beachy slice of the county. In Washington for a freshman orientation, including a lottery for office space, the two talk to me by Zoom from their hotel rooms near the Capitol.

Both are robust proponents of low taxes and limited government. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Ms. Malliotakis says: “The government should provide an environment for that—and then get out of the way.” Ms. Steel—who was born in South Korea and came to the U.S. at 19—confesses to drawing her earliest political beliefs from her mother’s experience as a clothing-store owner in Los Angeles. “I saw that my mom was harassed—really harassed—by a tax agency, the State Board of Equalization,” she says. “And you know what? I decided that the Republican Party’s ideology is much better for small-business owners. They need less regulation and smaller taxes.” Her first foray into elective politics was a successful run for the Board of Equalization in 2007.

Both say the Democratic Party made a special effort to hobble Republican candidates who were women or minorities. “Speaking with some of the other new members of the House,” Ms. Malliotakis says, “I think Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats really, really went after us. They didn’t want the Republicans to have representation.” They wanted, she says, “to monopolize women and minorities.” Ms. Steel recounts that her opponent insinuated—“because I have an accent”—that she was “a communist agent related to China.” Suppressing a giggle, she notes that her parents fled communist North Korea to the south during the Korean War. “I don’t even speak Chinese,” she adds. “I speak Japanese and Korean.”

Ms. Malliotakis’s mother also fled communism—Cuba in 1959, when she was 16. After a brief spell in Spain, she came to the U.S., where she met and married a man who ran a Greek restaurant in Manhattan. This imprint of her mother’s flight is part of the reason she is a “passionate opponent” of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow outer-borough New Yorker and self-described socialist. In opposition to “the Squad”—the nom de guerre of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s far-left cohort—Ms. Malliotakis started her own small group of congressional freshmen, the “Freedom Force.”

‘There’s four of us,” she says, “who on the first day bonded very quickly because we shared very similar circumstances.” She names the others: Carlos Gimenez, Cuban-born, and Maria Salazar, the daughter of Cuban-refugee parents, both from Florida; and Victoria Spartz from Indiana, born in Ukraine, who came to the U.S. at 22. “I guess you could say,” Ms. Malliotakis says, “that we’re the founding members.” But she’s certain that “others within the freshman class who are supportive of freedoms and liberties” will join them.

Ms. Steel adds promptly that she’s “going to work with them.” The Squad, Ms. Steel says, “including AOC, are totally out of line. I want to conserve what we have in this country for future generations. I have a grandson who is 15 months old.”

Ms. Malliotakis concurs. “For me, socialism is personal. We’re going to fight back vehemently when we see policies being proposed that will fundamentally change our nation.” She adds that Mrs. Pelosi faces a choice: “Is she going to work with us in a bipartisan way, to accomplish things? Or will she empower the socialist Squad and kowtow to them?”

12/30/20

Article IV, §4, US Constitution REQUIRES Congress, the Supreme Court, and the President to Stop the Steal!

By: Publius Huldah

Here is the interview Alex Newman of The New American Magazine and I did on December 23.

The Supreme Court’s Dereliction of Duty

The Pennsylvania Lawsuit

As pointed out in the interview [and previously here], Art. I, §4, cl. 1, US Constitution, delegates to state and federal legislatures alone the power to make the laws addressing the “times, places and manner” of conducting federal elections. In addition, Art. II, §1, cl. 2 provides that the State Legislatures are to decide how the Presidential Electors for their State are to be appointed.

But in Pennsylvania (and other States), Judges and State Executive Branch officials changed the laws made by their State Legislature in order to permit fraud of such a massive scale as would enable the theft of the election for the Biden/Harris ticket. Accordingly, during late September, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit challenging the unconstitutional changes to the State election laws. They lost in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and asked the US Supreme Court to review it.

But the Supreme Court dragged its feet. So on October 28, Justice Alito (who is the “go-to” Justice for the US Circuit in which Pennsylvania is located), issued a statement [link] where he identified violations of Art. I, §4, cl. 1 and Art. II, §1, cl. 2 as an issue of “national importance” which “calls out for review” by the Supreme Court; and that the Court should decide this issue BEFORE the election. He warned that the Supreme Court’s inaction on the “important constitutional issue” raised in the lawsuit has created conditions that could lead to “serious post-election problems.”

Justices Thomas and Gorsuch joined Justice Alito in his Statement – but nobody else.

The Supreme Court still hasn’t announced whether they will review the decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. They set this case for conference (among themselves) on January 8 [link] – which is two days after Congress meets to count the votes.

The Texas Lawsuit

The Supreme Court’s handling of the Texas lawsuit was equally egregious. The Texas case alleged that using COVID-19 as an excuse, state government officials in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin usurped their State Legislature’s authority and unconstitutionally revised their State’s election statutes. These changes made massive election fraud possible. The Complaint sets forth compelling facts alleging the massive and coordinated fraud used to steal the November 3 election.

But the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, claiming that Texas “lacked standing” to bring the action. They were dead wrong. Here’s why:

Article IV, §4, US Constitution, says:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”

The essence of a “Republic” is that sovereign power is exercised by representatives elected by The People.¹ Accordingly, the violations of Art. I, §4, cl. 1 and Art. II, §1, cl. 2 – which made the massive election fraud possible – strike at the heart of our Constitutional Republic.

Obviously, when an election is stolen by corrupt politicians and political parties – with the connivance of Judges and State election officials – the Right of The People to choose their Representatives is taken away from them.

And this is why the State of Texas has “standing” to bring the lawsuit: Art. IV, §4, is for the benefit of the States who comprise this Union. The States created the federal government when they ratified the Constitution. The Supreme Court is merely the “creature” of that Constitution, and they may not lawfully act in contravention of the Document under which they hold their existence.

The US Supreme Court is required to act so as to preserve the Republican Form of Government for Texas and all other States. They shirked their Duty. Shame on the Supreme Court!

Attorney General William Barr’s Dereliction of Duty

Article IV, §4 also imposes on the US Attorney General – as part of the Executive Branch of the federal government – the Duty “to guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”

Accordingly, the Attorney General has the Duty to prosecute persons engaged in federal election fraud; and he has the Duty to file civil actions addressing the election fraud – such as suggested by constitutional litigators William J. Olson & Patrick M. McSweeney in their Christmas Eve article here.

But not only did Barr not lift a finger to fight the fraud – he denied there was any fraud. He too shirked his constitutional Duty. Shame on William Barr!

Will Congress also shirk their Constitutional Duty?

Article IV, §4 also imposes on Congress the Duty to guarantee to the States a Republican Form of Government.

Section 3 of the 20^th Amendment imposes on Congress the additional Duty of determining whether the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect have “qualified” for office [respecting that, this short post will help you].

Congress has the ability to perform its sacred Duty under Art. IV, §4, by disqualifying Biden and Harris on the basis that their election was procured by changes to State election laws made in violation of Art. I, §4, cl. 1 and Art. II, §1, cl. 2, which made possible the brazen fraud which resulted in the theft of the election for Biden and Harris.

Kamala Harris should be disqualified on the additional ground that she is not a “natural born citizen” as required by Art. II, §1, cl. 5 and the 12^th Amendment [link].

But shockingly, it appears that some Republicans in Congress intend to go along with the fraud, and will use as an excuse the silly claim that presidential elections are up to the States and Congress shouldn’t bully the States!

But that would constitute aiding and abetting of election fraud, and a shirking of Constitutional Duties. Congress! Do not strip The American People of their right to honest federal elections!

The Fraudulent Election is an Act of War against the People of the United States

This was not just another election. This was a planned and coordinated attack on the People of the United States. If we don’t defeat the fraud, the People of the United States will have been stripped of their sovereign power to choose their own Representatives. ²

This is an Insurrection against the sovereign power of WE THE PEOPLE. Traitors within our local, state, and federal governments have conspired with one another – and apparently foreign agents – to take our sovereign power away from us. And cowards are going along with it.

President Trump has constitutional and statutory authority to carry out the duty imposed on him by Art. IV, §4

If, when it meets on January 6, Congress too shirks its constitutional Duty to guarantee honest federal elections and refuses to disqualify Biden & Harris; then the President is our last hope (within the purview of the Constitution). ³ Not only does Art. IV, §4 impose this duty on the President; he is also bound by his Oath of Office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” (Art. II, §1, last clause); and, by Art. II, §3, to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. These three provisions impose upon him the duty to act so as to preserve the Federal Constitutional Republic created by our Constitution of 1787.

And he has the constitutional and statutory authority to carry out his Duty:

Call up the Militia!

Article I, §8, cl. 15 authorizes Congress

…“to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;” [italics added]

Congress “provided for” calling forth the Militia by delegating to the President the authority to use his own judgment respecting whether to send the Militia into any State:

To enforce the Laws of the United States [10 USC §252];
To suppress uprisings which deprive the people of the rights, privileges, and immunities, and protections recognized in the Constitution and secured by law, and the State government isn’t protecting those rights [10 USC §253]; and
To suppress uprisings that oppose or obstruct the execution of the laws of the United States or impede the course of justice under those laws [10 USC §253].

So the Militia may be called forth:

To enforce I, §4, cl.1 (which requires that only state and federal Legislatures may make laws respecting the times, places, and manner of holding federal elections);
To enforce II, §1, cl.2 (which provides that the State Legislatures are to decide how the Presidential Electors for their State are to be appointed);
To enforce IV, §4 (which requires the United States to guarantee to the States a Republican Form of Government); and
To suppress the Insurrection which is right now going on in our Country.

A Brief History of the Militia

The term, “Militia”, refers to the armed and trained male Citizens. The Militia Act of 1792 provided for the arming and training of these male Citizens [link]. Our Framers did not want a standing professional Army – that’s why appropriations for the regular Army were limited to two years (Art. I, §8, cl. 12). Enforcement of federal laws, suppression of Insurrections, and much of the national defense were to be the responsibility of the Militia. When the federal gov’t needs to enforce its laws, it is to call forth the Militia – the armed and trained Citizens – to do the enforcing! During the Washington Administration, the federal gov’t called forth the Militia to enforce the federal excise tax on whiskey. Federal law enforcement is thus the province of the Citizens – the Militia! ⁴

But with the Dick Act of 1903, the organized Militia was converted into the National Guard – which is an adjunct of the federal military. And with 10 USC § 246, Congress redefined “Militia” to consist of two classes:

“(b) The classes of the militia are—

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.”

Earlier this year, in response to the violent Insurrections in the cities, Edwin Vieira, JD., Ph.D. (our Country’s foremost authority on the Militia) showed here how President Trump has the authority to send the Militia into the cities to suppress the Insurrections. But as discussed here [at endnote 11], President Trump’s two previous Secretaries of Defense apparently indicated that they would not obey orders to send the National Guard into the cities. Will Chris Miller, the present acting Secretary of Defense, be any better?

But if President Trump calls up “the unorganized militia” – which remains in existence as recognized by 10 USC §246 and which has his back – to enforce Art. I, §4, cl.1; Art. II, §1, cl.2, and Art. IV, §4 – he doesn’t need the cooperation of any deep state Secretaries of Defense.

Calling up the Militia is not equivalent to imposing “martial law”!

I implore Patriots to become precise in their use of terminology. Calling up the Militia for the purposes at Art. I, §8, cl. 15 is not “imposing martial law” [and it’s not “Marshall law”]! Martial Law is typically imposed during wartime when invading military forces disband civilian governments [including the courts] in the occupied country and replace the civilian government with direct military control of civilian populations.

What is “the rule of law”?

The “rule of law” is a term which politicians and Attorneys General, who have no idea what it means, love to sling around: In his recent address to students at Hillsdale College, former Attorney General Barr said the “rule of law” means “treating everyone the same”. That’s not even close.

Law comes from a higher source than the civil authorities. The “Rule of Law” prevails when the civil authorities obey that higher Law – be it God’s Law or our Constitution. The Bible shows that Kings governed justly only when they governed in accordance with the Law of God. In our country, the civil authorities govern justly only when they obey our Constitution. See: Lex, Rex, by Rev. Samuel Rutherford (1644) and here under the subheading, “1. The Civil Authorities are under the Law.”

This isn’t about Trump – it’s about defending our Constitutional Republic from enemy attack

It doesn’t matter what you or I think of President Trump: there is much to criticize about his policies. This fight is about whether our Republican Form of Government, with honest & verifiable elections, is to be restored; or whether our Right to choose our Representatives is to be stripped from us forever.

Endnotes:

¹ Federalist No. 10 (J. Madison) [link]: “A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, … *** … The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; …”

² “…The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow immediately from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.” Federalist No. 22, last para (A. Hamilton). This is what we will lose if Congress and the President permit the cheats and subversives to get away with the election fraud.

³If Congress and the President both shirk their Constitutional duties and “betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense …” Federalist No. 28 (A. Hamilton). Much blood will be on the hands of those who acquiesced in the fraud.

⁴ Not armed thugs from federal executive agencies such as the FBI, BATF, etc., etc., etc.!