A House staffer for Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) has been arrested for bringing ammunition into the Cannon House Office Building, FOX News reports. The staffer, 38-year-old Michael Hopkins, was arrested Monday by U.S. Capitol Police. According to Fox News, Security found four ammunition magazines and 11 rounds in his bag during screening. These high-capacity magazines […] The post Dem House Staffer Arrested with Ammo In Cannon Building appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Special Counsel David C. Weiss said in a Monday court filing that he’s opposed to Hunter Biden’s request to dismiss his criminal cases after receiving a presidential pardon from his father. “The defendant’s motion should be denied because there is no binding authority which requires dismissal of an indictment after a defendant receives a pardon,” Weiss wrote to the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, where Hunter was found guilty of gun crimes. President Biden, in announcing the pardon, said Hunter was the victim of a political prosecution, but Weiss wrote that the claim was “nonsensical” and when Hunter made the same claims in appeals, 10 judges appointed by six presidents rejected them. Weiss said that even if Hunter is pardoned, the indictment is still valid, and claims that it was unfair or meritless are “nonsensical,” and that the judge had found that they were supported by “no evidence.” In California, where Hunter pleaded guilty to tax charges, Weiss filed a similar motion. “If media reports are accurate, the Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred. It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive. No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district,” it said. Even before the pardon was received by prosecutors, Hunter’s lawyers had filed a motion arguing that it required the dismissal of the charges.  Weiss argued that the Department of Justice took a less charitable tact after Donald Trump pardoned Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn. In those cases, a note was added to the file saying the defendant was pardoned, without the government formally dropping the case, which could suggest that the crimes were real, he wrote. He proposed doing the same for Hunter, and criticized suggestions — echoed by the president as justification for an unconditional pardon of his son–that the prosecution was biased or illegitimate. Trump pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn after losing the 2020 election, and former chief strategist Steve Bannon on his last day in office. Weiss said when it came to following through with the pardons, the DOJ was not eager to wipe the slate clean, and that the cases form a template for how the analogous Hunter case should be handled. In the case against Flynn, where a judge had taken highly unusual steps to continue to prosecute the former general even after the Trump DOJ said it did not want to, an appeals court laid out a legal basis for treating pardons in the least favorable way to the defendant. “A ‘pardon is an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed, from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed.’  In other words, ‘a pardon does not blot out guilt or expunge a judgment of conviction.’ Furthermore, a pardon cannot ‘erase a judgment of conviction, or its underlying legal and factual findings,’” the panel wrote. In the Bannon case, prosecutors wrote that “The Government does not dispute that the pardon … ends the prosecution as to Bannon under Indictment 20 Cr. 412. However, the Government respectfully submits that there is neither a need for an order dismissing the Indictment nor any authority mandating such an outcome on these facts. Instead, the Government submits that the Court can and should direct the Clerk of Court to terminate Bannon as a defendant in this case and have the docket sheet reflect the pardon as the disposition of his charges.” The judge overseeing the Bannon case said that neither side had shown that its preferred outcome was binding on the court, and that courts had gone both ways. That judge elected to dismiss Bannon’s indictment.

The Biden administration announced on Monday that it would be sending another $725 million to Ukraine as it ramps up military aid to the country before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The State Department said that it would be giving Ukraine a variety of military equipment including Stinger missiles, ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, artillery ammunition, drones, tube-launched, optically guided, wire-tracked missiles, small arms and ammunition, and other military supplies.  “As part of the surge in security assistance that President Biden announced on September 26, the United States is providing another significant package of urgently needed weapons and equipment to our Ukrainian partners as they defend against Russia’s ongoing attacks,” the State Department said. “The United States and more than 50 nations stand united to ensure Ukraine has the capabilities it needs to defend itself against Russian aggression.” The aid was supplied in addition to another $275 million in military aid the Biden administration committed to on November 20.  The aid comes as Biden enters the final month of his presidency and just after he made a major policy change to authorize Ukraine to launch long-range American-supplied missiles into Russia. Donald Trump Jr. accused the Biden administration of trying to start a world war before his father’s inauguration in January. “The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives. Gotta lock in those $Trillions. Life be damned!!! Imbeciles!” he posted on X in response.   The policy change was met with mixed reactions from Republicans who asked why Biden was making the change now.  CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asserted last week that the war could end if the country became part of NATO.   “If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. That’s what we need to do, fast. And then Ukraine can get back the other part of its territory diplomatically,” he said. Trump has promised to bring a quick end to the war, saying that he will negotiate peace.  “We’re going to work very hard on Russia and Ukraine. It’s got to stop. Russia and Ukraine’s gotta stop,” he said in November.

'Facing charges for unlawful possession'

'It looked to me like she could have been high'

'We need to keep divisive and unnecessary provisions out of any government funding extension'

2024 presidential election

The presidential pardon of Hunter Biden underscores the corruption of the Biden-Harris Justice Department and leaves unanswered questions about the depth of the president’s son’s crimes, Republican members of Congress say. “While the FBI intentionally covered up 17 audio recordings of Joe and Hunter Biden to shield them from accountability, it showed no remorse in weaponizing law enforcement against Catholic Americans or those who are pro-life and pro-family,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told The Daily Signal. “This is blatant corruption.” President Joe Biden issued a pardon to his son, Hunter Biden, the White House announced Sunday evening. The president claimed that the charges against his son were brought selectively and unfairly. “President Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, proves there are two tiers of justice in Biden’s America, and it doesn’t change the fact that the American people deserve to know if the sitting president was involved in his son’s crimes—including the Biden-Burisma bribery scandal,” Blackburn said. Hunter Biden allegedly used his father’s vice presidency to secure deals in Ukraine while on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, despite his lack of relevant experience in the energy industry. A Delaware jury convicted Hunter Biden of three felony gun charges in June, and in September, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to nine tax offenses in Los Angeles federal court. But Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, thinks Hunter’s crimes are more serious than those, Lee’s communications director, Billy Gribbin, told The Daily Signal. “Joe Biden’s outrageous 11-year pardon for all of Hunter’s possible crimes shows he’s worried that his family’s foreign influence-peddling for ’the big guy’ could come back to bite him,” Gribbin said. “Sen. Lee believes the American people deserve the truth about this entire situation, whatever it may be, and looks forward to Hunter Biden answering questions about it, now that he is immune from prosecution.” “This goes far deeper than Hunter’s drug and gun crimes, and everyone knows it,” Gribbin added. Biden and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on several occasions that the president would not pardon Hunter before announcing that he had reversed his position. Here's Karine Jean-Pierre saying over an over again that Joe Biden will absolutely not pardon his son Hunter…She claimed he wouldn't on at least 4 separate occasions. It's the supercut you didn't know you needed. pic.twitter.com/3lwBVrzzK3— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) December 2, 2024 Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said while he too would have pardoned his son, it was wrong for the president to lie about it. “Don’t lie to the American people because it’s not becoming to the president of the United States,” Tuberville said. “This has been a tough time for our country, having a family like this involved in all things they’ve been involved in,” the Alabama lawmaker said, adding that more will come out “that’s gonna be very unbecoming to this administration” in the near future. “Despite repeated promises that he would not pardon Hunter Biden, President Biden issued an 11-year blanket pardon that was stunning in its scope,” Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Michigan, told The Daily Signal. “This action sadly exposes the two-tiered justice system created by the Biden administration for all of America to see,” Huizenga added. “If you are politically connected or aligned with the ‘Biden Brand,’ there is a different set of rules than [for] the rest of Americans.” Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, said the Biden administration has unequally applied the law to friends and enemies. “Joe Biden has continued to weaponize the justice system in favor of his allies, family, and those who kowtow to the regime,” Cloud said. “However, those who disagree with him politically—like President Trump, pro-lifers, and people of faith—have faced the wrath of this weaponized system of justice.” The post GOP Lawmakers Blast Hunter Biden’s Pardon as Evidence of DOJ’s ‘Blatant Corruption’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The steady flow of Cabinet picks from Mar-a-Lago signals that President-elect Donald Trump, fresh off his election victory, is wasting no time. And for good reason: Trump’s team will inherit a mountain of to-dos on Day One. The Biden-Harris administration aggressively pursued policies that threatened our fundamental liberties: religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, the right to life, and equal opportunities for women and girls. Alliance Defending Freedom had a front-row seat to this assault. We faced off regularly against the Biden-Harris administration and its allies in courtrooms and legislatures nationwide.  These next four years will provide a strategic opportunity to reclaim lost ground and forge new paths to protect our fundamental freedoms. ADF encourages the new Trump-Vance administration to focus on three critical areas.  First, reject censorship and protect free speech from all threats, foreign and domestic. From pressuring social media companies to deplatform individuals to weaponizing the government against parents who oppose gender ideology in schools, the Biden-Harris administration repeatedly used censorship to punish and silence dissent. Free speech is the most basic test of any free society. It allows us to debate ideas, seek truth, expose lies, and ultimately prevent tyranny. It’s a global imperative that the United States protect this God-given right. There are already positive signs the new Trump administration plans to tackle censorship head-on.  Trump said recently that he plans to dismantle the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” or CIC—a network of government, nonprofit, for-profit, and media entities that collude to censor vast swaths of speech under the guise of fighting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”  The Republican Party also trained its sights on the CIC in its official platform, stating: “We will ban the Federal Government from colluding with anyone to censor Lawful Speech, defund institutions engaged in censorship, and hold accountable all bureaucrats involved with illegal censoring. We will protect Free Speech online.” Fulfilling this pledge would push back the tide of authoritarianism both here and abroad. Second, uproot dangerous gender ideology from public policy, protecting women, children, and parental rights. The Biden-Harris administration’s infusion of gender ideology into federal policy threatened the well-being of women and girls. Its Title IX rule, which sought to open up girls’ spaces to boys in public schools, sparked a national outcry. No political agenda can alter truth. We are immutably created male and female. Denying this reality has caused immeasurable harm, but embracing it is the surest path to restoring equality and respect for all people. Trump can rescind the current administration’s Title IX rule and adopt the new Trump administration’s own rule restoring protections for women and girls.   We’ve seen encouraging signs that the next administration has made this a priority, with Trump saying recently in response to a question about males playing in women’s sports: “It’s such an easy question . . . We’re not going to let it happen.” The president-elect also has vowed to go after medical providers that perform irreversible “transition” surgeries on minors and has called for a national ban on these barbaric procedures. Third and finally, fortify the rule of law, protect the integrity of our judiciary, and shrink the bloated administrative state. Far from defending democracy, the Biden-Harris administration continually undermined core principles of the Constitution such as federalism and the separation of powers. It even entertained the radical notion of packing the Supreme Court. Thankfully, we’ve been given at least four years to block this power grab and return power to states, communities, and families.  The Supreme Court, in its June 28 ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, struck a necessary blow against the administrative state, placing a greater burden on agencies to justify their rulemaking. But there is more work to be done. Let’s hope the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, co-led by entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, implements the kind of innovative thinking we need to tame Leviathan.  For our part, Alliance Defending Freedom will continue advocating for every person’s God-given rights in courtrooms, legislatures, and the public square as we enter this new season. But the work of “keeping our republic” ultimately falls to all Americans.  That work takes place when we insist on a limited government that protects our freedoms. And it takes place at our kitchen tables as we raise the next generation to understand what true freedom is, what it costs, and why it matters.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post A 4-Year Vision for Generational Change appeared first on The Daily Signal.