This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Supreme Court is considering a case now that could force cops to be deadly less often.
That would mean, probably, shooting and killing fewer people.
It's all about holding officers who inflict unnecessary and excessive deadly force accountable.
The Rutherford Institute explains the court already has agreed to hear the dispute, and the legal team has submitted a friend-of-the-court brief that urges the justices to overturn the existing standard for moment-of-threat actions.
"The 'moment-of-threat doctrine' not only violates established Fourth Amendment principles for determining what constitutes a reasonable use of force, but it also encourages police to act recklessly with impunity," said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of "Battlefield America: The War on the American People."
"Unfortunately, this mindset that any challenge to police authority is a threat that needs to be 'neutralized' is a dangerous one that is part of a greater nationwide trend that sets law enforcement officers beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment," he said.
The legal team explained the circumstances that prompted the fight in the courts:
In the afternoon of April 28, 2016, Harris County Texas Officer Roberto Felix initiated a traffic stop of Ashtian Barnes due to a report by the Toll Road Authority that the license plate number on his vehicle had outstanding toll violations. When asked for proof of insurance, Barnes explained that the car had been rented a week earlier by his girlfriend and the documentation might be in the trunk. The officer claimed he smelled marijuana and ordered Barnes to open the trunk. A few seconds after Barnes opened the trunk, the car's blinker toward the side of the Tollway to which Barnes pulled over turned off for about ten seconds. Once the same blinker turned back on, Felix shouted at Barnes not to move, stepped onto the door sill where the driver-side door was open, and shoved his gun into Barnes's head. At that point, the car started to move, and Officer Felix fired two shots into the car, killing Barnes.
The legal team explained Barnes' parents filed a lawsuit because he posed no threat to law enforcement and there was no justification for the use of deadly force, especially since the officer "jumped onto the car."
Lower courts then handed the police protection, calling the decision to shoot and kill "presumptively reasonable."
Rutherford argues that the reins need to be pulled on police violence, especially that which comes from relatively minor confrontations but escalates quickly and then results in police shooting unarmed citizens.
"For instance, an Illinois sheriff's deputy was charged with first-degree murder for shooting and killing Sonya Massey after she called 911 for help at her home. A year earlier in Ohio, a pregnant mother was killed by a police officer in a grocery store parking lot. And in August 2024, police officers in Arizona jumped out of their car at Tyron McAlpin, who is deaf and has cerebral palsy, and repeatedly punched and tasered McAlpin due to his startled response," the legal team explained.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to reverse the firing of a fire chief who lost his job in Stockton, California, because he attended an assigned leadership conference.
City officials apparently were enraged because the conference was in a church building.
First Liberty Institute has announced it, and others, have joined to ask the Supreme Court for a review of the case involving fire chief Ron Hittle.
"It is a tragic day for religious liberty in America when someone can be fired because they attend an event that includes religious perspectives," said Stephanie Taub, a lawyer for First Liberty Institute.
"The city showed extreme anti-religious bias and broke the law when it fired Chief Hittle. We are asking the Supreme Court to reverse the lower court's decision and uphold the clear meaning of Title VII to protect all Americans in the workplace."
Aaron Streett, a lawyer with Baker Botts, which also is working on the case, said, "City of Stockton officials were completely intolerant of Chief Hittle's religious beliefs. Federal law protects the freedom of every American to live without fear of being fired simply because of their beliefs."
The institute explained that Stockton officials fired Hittle after 24 years of service "because he attended a leadership conference hosted at a church. Although the city requested Chief Hittle attend a leadership training course of his choice, it later opened an investigation after he attended Willow Creek Church's Global Leadership Summit, a world-class conference with speakers from a variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds."
Speakers at that conference historically have included Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Bill Clinton.
"The city listed Chief Hittle's attendance at a 'religious event' while on duty as the primary reason for his termination," the legal team explained.
He sued but a district court took the city's side.
Alan Reinach is with Church State Council, which also is helping with the case.
He said, "Chief Ron Hittle was an exemplary leader of the Stockton Fire Department who was fired because of his Christian faith. But to make matters worse, the courts reversed the evidentiary assumptions and chose to believe Stockton's denial that it did not discriminate, instead of focusing on the abundant evidence Chief Hittle supplied."
The petition notes, "When plaintiffs have presented evidence that creates a fact issue regarding whether they were discriminated against, they should be permitted to try their case to a jury, period. That is how it works in virtually every other context. There is no reason that plaintiffs in Title VII cases should face the added burden of disproving the employer's proffered reason for the adverse employment decision.
"Yet that errant and nontextual view holds sway in nearly half the country and is causing demonstrable injustices for worthy plaintiffs," the petition states.
The city, faced with the dispute, assembled a long list of allegations against the fire chief in order to fire him, claiming he wasn't able to implement city goals, used city resources to attend a "religious" event, the conference that the city gave him the option of choosing, didn't talk about his knowing a contractor to the department, and how he owned part of a cabin and didn't announce that.
The appeal points out that the lower court judge made decisions about disputes that only a jury should have resolved.
One lower court judge, on the fight, said, "The City of Stockton's management frequently parroted derogatory and insulting terms coined by others to criticize Chief Hittle's Christian faith. Although they now say they did so under the guise of 'show[ing] concerns about other persons' perceptions.' The Supreme Court has already rejected "a 'modified heckler's veto, in which … religious activity can be proscribed' based on 'perceptions' or 'discomfort.'"
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The American Center for Law and Justice is urging the Supreme Court to take up a specific case, and rule that Jewish professors in New York do not have to accept the anti-Semitic representation of a union as their "exclusive agent."
The ACLJ has confirmed it has filed a friend-of-the-court brief at the Supreme Court, "urging the court to protect the First Amendment rights of Jewish professors who refuse to be represented by anti-Semitic unions."
The case is called Goldstein v. Professional Staff Congress/CUNY (PSC) and, the legal team explained, "presents a critical opportunity to defend academic freedom and protect the fundamental right to free speech on our college campuses. It is about resisting a culture of intimidation and coercion that seeks to silence dissenting voices and restrict religious and ideological diversity within higher education."
It developed because of number of Jewish professors City University New York expressed concerns over the surging political bias within the Professional Staff Congress union.
That group is supposed to represent faculty and staff members but "began acting contrary to their interests in a variety of ways, taking an increasingly partisan stance on social and political matters," the ACLJ reported.
"The union's leadership, which claims to advocate for all its members, instead created an environment that punishes those who do not align with its ideological agenda. Most strikingly, the union adopted a resolution supporting the anti-Semitic BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement. As a result of PSC's resolution and subsequent conduct, Jewish professors have been ostracized on campus based on their identities, religious beliefs, and support for Israel," the report explains.
The problem is that they are not allowed the boycott, because state law bans them from leaving the political organization.
"They are compelled to continue to accept PSC as their exclusive agent and spokesman, regardless of how strongly they disagree with their union's conduct or how counter to their fundamental identity the speech of the union may be," the ACLJ said.
State courts there so far have taken the union's side, but the fight now is being moved up to the Supreme Court.
The ACLJ said its contribution to the legal discussion is that at stake are government employees' rights that are protected by the First Amendment.
"The threats of compelled speech are always serious, but they are particularly dangerous and egregious when union members are compelled to have a representative who speaks counter to those members' consciences," the ACLJ said.
"Unions function as political activity groups and de facto auxiliaries of a political party and should be treated as such. No one should be forced to participate in such public advocacy against their will, the group informed the court.
And, it pointed out, "The implications of Goldstein v. PSC extend far beyond one professor's individual rights. Unions like the PSC often claim to defend the interests of their members, yet their actions sometimes reveal a disturbing willingness to stifle internal dissent and push a singular agenda. This is not just a betrayal of their members – it's an assault on the fundamental principles of free speech and association that form the bedrock of our democracy."
Judge Tanya Chutkan has unsealed significant portions of an evidence dump brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against former President Donald Trump.
Smith's presentation of this evidence dump to Judge Chutkan is seen as his last act in the indictment against Trump. As the case has ground to a halt and Trump is likely to win the election, there is little chance Smith's indictment will go to trial.
The nearly 1,900 pages of documents collected by Smith’s team were filed under seal to help Judge Chutkan decide what allegations can proceed to trial following the Supreme Court's presidential immunity decision that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts.
This filing also served as political ammunition for Democrats who are desperate to talk about Trump's indictment in light of Vice President Kamala Harris's faltering presidential campaign.
The evidence that Smith presented against Trump has been either largely inconsequential or was already available to the public.
Some of the evidence in Smith's filing was comprised of screenshots of Trump's social media posts about the 2020 election.
Smith had also filed a transcript of the video statement Trump made on Jan. 6, 2021, telling protestors at the Capitol on Jan. 6th to go home, but added: “We love you” and “You’re very special.”
This evidence actually further exonerates Trump as it in no way indicates that Trump was encouraging or inciting an insurrection but rather was encouraging peaceful protest.
Aside from the redacted grand jury transcripts which will remain redacted due to secrecy rules, much of Smith's evidence is the same stuff that Democrats have been talking about for the past four years which indicates just how weak Smith's case really is.
Many people were expecting bombshell revelations that could significantly affect Trump's presidential campaign, or an "October Surprise" of sorts.
However, Smith's filing was anything but that and appears to be a last-gasp effort to hit Trump after a years-long investigation that Democrats would kill any chance of Trump making a political return after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump's campaign is on a roll and his momentum has only continued to grow as Kamala Harris falters. After Harris replaced Biden on the Democrat presidential ticket, she received a surge of support but that has since faded.
A concerted media campaign designed to boost Harris could only carry her so far and Harris has wasted that momentum with disastrous public appearances.
Harris is having to campaign on the policies of her predecessor, President Joe Biden, while simultaneously trying to distance herself from those policies. This has created a chaotic and fractured campaign that is completely ineffectual.
Democrats were counting on Jack Smith to put together a criminal case that would sink Trump's campaign because without it he is likely to steamroll Harris in November.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
An organization that promotes the LGBT ideology in Scotland is being sued for refusing to protect an abuse victim.
A report from the Christian Institute explains the case has been brought against an organization called LGBT Youth Scotland on behalf of a man who alleges the trans activist group failed to protect him from harm.
The case has been confirmed, but the plaintiff is being kept anonymous in court documents. Details of the claims, also, are not being released.
The institute pointed out that the organization has a history of failures: In 2009, its former chief executive, James Rennie, was sentenced to life in prison for child sex offenses, and more recently, just months ago, "a co-author of one of the group's publications for gender-confused children was convicted of grooming and sharing indecent images."
It was Andrew Easton who had contributed to "coming out" propaganda for children as young as 13, in which it was claimed, "Transgender people are people whose gender identity – who they are internally or their 'innate' gender – is different to their physical body or the gender they were assigned at birth."
At that time Scottish Conservative MSP Meghan Gallacher said, "This is a deeply disturbing situation. It is long overdue that we audit just how much public money this organization receives and seek assurances over what safeguarding assessments are in place."
The activists during 2022-23 got more than $500,000 in grants from the Scottish government, and about the same from local authorities and National Health Service groups.
The Daily Mail confirmed a spokesman for the group declined to comment, explaining that would be "inappropriate."
The Daily Mail, itself, reported on an investigation of the group that revealed failures by the group, including Rennie's case, which it described as involving "horrific child sex assaults."
Then the Easton case arose, the report said.
"He was snared by officers over internet chats with someone he believed to be a vulnerable 13-year-old he called 'baby boy,'" the report said.
The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $100,000.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The U.S. Supreme Court has resurrected a fight against a Texas police department that jailed a journalist for asking questions.
According to a report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is representing journalist Priscilla Villarreal, the high court ordered the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to deal again with the case – taking into consideration the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Gonzalez v. Trevino.
That decision authorized a lawsuit by Sylvia Gonzalez, a former councilwoman in Castle Hills, Texas, a critic of the city manager, who was arrested for misplacing a petition to oust that manager.
She was convicted, but the high court said that the lower court's ruling was too rigid and the case must be reviewed again, considering that, court submissions argued, "when an arrest is a premeditated attempt to punish someone for speech protected by the First Amendment, then the arrest is an unconstitutional 'retaliation.'"
The new ruling involves Villarreal, who left local officials enraged because of her reporting.
"The district attorney even took her behind closed doors to chastise her for her reporting," FIRE confirmed.
Described by The New York Times as 'arguably the most influential journalist in Laredo,'" she covers crime, traffic and other topics for 200,000 Facebook followers.
"Like all good journalists, she's not shy about criticizing government officials. That's why she's been repeatedly targeted by them," FIRE explained.
"In 2017, police dusted off a decades-old statute local officials had never used before to criminalize Priscilla's journalism. The alleged crime? She asked a Laredo police officer to confirm facts about a high-profile suicide and a fatal car accident, facts the officer freely shared and Villarreal published to her hundreds of thousands of readers," the report revealed.
She sued the police and prosecutors after her arrest for violations of the First and Fourth Amendments.
A 5th Circuit panel ruled in her favor but then was reversed by the full court.
The organization reported, "Villarreal's case has deep implications for free speech, a free press, and government accountability. Americans shouldn't be jailed for asking public officials a question, and government officials shouldn't get a free pass when they violate our fundamental rights."
"It has been a challenging seven years since Laredo officials attempted to silence me, and this marks a significant step toward rectifying the wrongs I have faced," she said.
The Supreme Court's decision vacated the 5th Circuit's ruling against her and sent the case back for the lower court to reconsider her claims in light of the Gonzalez ruling.
"We're thrilled over today's decision, and look forward to helping Priscilla continue her fight," said FIRE attorney JT Morris. "This case is vital for free speech, a free press, and ensuring officials are accountable when they trample the First Amendment."
The never-before-used law made it a crime to ask for "non-public" information "if the person asking could benefit from that.
Officials claimed she benefited from reporting on a high-profile suicide and a fatal car accident because she would "gain popularity on Facebook."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A court filing from the state of Texas, which accuses a physician of illegally supplying sex "change" chemicals to underage patients, states bluntly, "The debate in Texas on the legality of dangerous and experimental medical procedures seeking to transition or affirm a child's belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex is over. Texas law prohibits surgeries, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones for the purposes of transitioning a child's biological sex or affirming a child's belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex."
Further, it states, "The Supreme Court of Texas held that the law was constitutional."
That document goes on to outline allegations against a physician for doing exactly that, and seeks fines of up to $10,000 for each count alleged.
The physician, May C. Lau, is accused of deceiving pharmacies and insurance providers both in an agenda to give prescriptions of testosterone to a girl, who portrays herself as a boy.
"These acts, if found to be true, violate the state's Health and Safety Code as well as the Business and Commerce Code, carrying tens of thousands of dollars in civil penalties," the report said.
It is Senate Bill 14, adopted as law last year, that bars doctors from doing those drug deliveries or body mutilating surgeries on minors who have gender dysphoria.
That's the confusion over a person's gender, being male or female. Studies show that overwhelming numbers of those youth, left alone or given nothing more than counseling, eventually resolved themselves to be the sex they were born.
Attorney General Ken Paxton said the law was adopted to "protect children from these dangerous unscientific medical interventions…"
"Doctors who continue to provide these harmful 'gender transition' drugs and treatments will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,'" he explained.
Lau has worked in adolescent medicine at Children's Health Center in Dallas.
The filing, in district court in Collin County, explained, "Today, enforcement begins against those who have violated the law by providing, prescribing, administering, or dispensing cross-sex hormones to minors for the purposes of transitioning their biological sex or affirming the child's belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex."
The charges in the filing cite "deceptive trade practices, including by misleading pharmacies, insurance providers and/or patients by falsifying medical records, prescriptions, and billing records to represent that her testosterone prescriptions are for something other than transitioning a child's biological sex or affirming a child's belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex."
The filing charged, "Lau is a scofflaw who is putting the health and safety of minors at risk by prescribing testosterone, a controlled substance, to biological female minors for the purposes of transitioning their biological sex or affirming their belief that their gender identity is inconsistent with their biological sex in violation of Tex. Health & Safety Code."
Each of the counts is sufficient to trigger the revocation of Lau's license, the filing said.
Courthouse News explained, "The state identified 22 patients between the ages of 14 and 17 who were provided with prescriptions of testosterone. Some of the patients had received the prescriptions before Sept. 1 when SB 14 went into effect, but Lau is said to have continued providing access to the drugs throughout the remainder of last year and into the following year."
Then Lau tried to hide her violations.
"An example of this was in the case of patient 22. The state says that the patient's insurance company was falsely billed for an unspecified endocrine disorder while in actuality, the doctor used puberty blockers to aid in the patient's transition from male to female," the report said.
While the promoters of the transgender ideology call their treatments "gender-affirming," the result often is patients who have been sterilized, had mutilations on their bodies, and are left depending on drugs for a lifetime.
Far left organizations like the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association have pushed the ideology.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A judge in Florida has ruled that statements about a proposed abortion scheme, even if wrong, cannot arbitrarily be censored by government officials who don't want that misinformation, or disinformation, or malinformation, from spreading.
And the ruling, which right now is only at the level of a judge in Florida, if affirmed up the chain of appellate review, could spell disaster for the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris regime's demand for widespread censorship of what they and their party say is wrong.
A report from Fox News explains the Florida district judge has released a temporary restraining order preventing the state government from pursuing action against television stations that have been running ads promoting a vast expansion of the lucrative abortion industry in the state.
"While Defendant Ladapo refuses to even agree with this simple fact, Plaintiff's political advertisement is political speech—speech at the core of the First Amendment," District Judge Mark E. Walker stated. "The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is 'false.' 'The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion,'" Walker quoted from the U.S. Supreme Court.
At issue were promotions for the abortion industry that were being aired by stations being paid by Floridians Protecting Freedom, which is pushing a huge expansion of the abortion industry in the state.
The group sued Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and former general counsel to the Florida Department of Health John Wilson when they warned stations not to air the false information in the ads.
The pro-abortion activists said such a move violated their First Amendment right to run political ads.
The ads were condemned by Jae Williams, of the state health department, for being "unequivocally false and detrimental to public health in Florida."
A spokesman for Gov. Ron DeSantis said, "Surprise, surprise, the most overturned judge on the district court issued another order that excites the press, but these current stories all look past the core issue – the ads are unequivocally false and put the lives and health of pregnant women at risk. Florida's heartbeat protection law always protects the life of a mother and includes exceptions for victims of rape, incest and human trafficking."
The issue that could unsettled the Biden-Harris censorship is the fact the use of the ads apparently is not dependent on their truthfulness.
Leftists long have insisted that whatever they do not accept as true obviously is misinformation or disinformation and must be suppressed. Democrats long have worked with social and other media outlets to suppress all information they dislike.
It's appeared most often during election seasons.
A primary example of that censorship and suppression came during the 2020 presidential election. In that case the information actually was true, but was suppressed widely across the nation by a long list of activist media outlets.
That was the claim, false, that the Biden family scandal details in Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop computer were Russian disinformation.
In fact, all the scandal details were true, but the information was suppressed during the election season, especially after the FBI interfered in the election results and told media outlets to censor that information.
In fact, it was true, and a subsequent polling showed that had those details been reported ordinarily, Joe Biden probably would have lost the election.
John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute recently commented on the issue, which has been brought up over and over even in this election by Hillary Clinton, who has insisted that Democrats must control the media and its messages.
"In a perfect example of the Nanny State mindset at work, Hillary Clinton insists that the powers-that-be need 'total control' in order to make the internet a safer place for users and protect us from harm. Clinton is not alone in her distaste for unregulated, free speech online," Whitehead said.
He said the fight is over "where censorship (corporate and government) begins and free speech ends."
He said the pertinent point is that "government will use any excuse to suppress dissent and control the narrative."
In recent years, it's been the power brokers behind media, publishing, the web's social programs and more, that have insisted that conservative thought be suppressed.
"On the internet, falsehoods and lies abound, misdirection and misinformation dominate, and conspiracy theories go viral," he said. "This is to be expected, and the response should be more speech, not less."
However, to America's government, "these forms of 'disinformation' rank right up there with terrorism, drugs, violence, and disease: societal evils so threatening that 'we the people' should be willing to relinquish a little of our freedoms for the sake of national security."
Now there's a court ruling that even if information is said by the government to be false, it cannot be targeted with censorship, outside of the accept standards that one cannot make threats or injure another person.
He said, "Disinformation isn't the problem. Government coverups and censorship are the problem. Unfortunately, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government's many injustices. Every day in this country, those who dare to speak their truth to the powers-that-be find themselves censored, silenced or fired."
He said the "control" demanded by Clinton already is far too close.
"In New York City, for example, you could find yourself forcibly hospitalized for suspected mental illness if you carry 'firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas,' exhibit a 'willingness to engage in meaningful discussion,' have 'excessive fears of specific stimuli,' or refuse 'voluntary treatment recommendations," he wrote.
Slate explained that DeSantis wanted the pro-abortion promotions to end because while pro-abortion advocates claimed their ads were true the state health department disagreed, creating the conflict.
The judge, appointed by Barack Obama, essentially concluded that the government cannot censor messages because it believes the information is wrong.
The ruling, in fact, cited a Supreme Court decision that said the government can't coerce third parties into censoring speech it doesn't like.
The judge, in a statement that easily could hit hard at the Biden-Harris censorship agenda, stated, "The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is 'false.'"
Meanwhile, an investigation is under way whether the signatures putting the amendment on the ballot were obtained fraudulently.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis petitioned an appeals court to reinstate six charges against former President Donald Trump, The Hill reported. Willis charges Judge Scott McAfee "erred" in throwing out the charge.
Willis has pursued the charges related to Trump's supposed effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the Peach State. The case involves Trump and a number of his associates at the time.
McAfee threw out several charges in March because they were filed too broadly. The judge wrote in his ruling that while the district attorney's filing proved "essential" information pointing to the underlying crime, the charges weren't specific enough.
"The Court’s concern is less that the State has failed to allege sufficient conduct of the Defendants – in fact it has alleged an abundance. However, the lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned’s opinion, fatal," McAfee wrote.
Willis' office countered in its 38-page filing, claiming that McAfee "erred" in the decision to dismiss. "The indictment more than sufficiently placed Cross-Appellees on notice of the conduct at issue and allowed them to prepare an intelligent defense to the charges," argued Assistant District Attorney Alex Bernick in the appeal.
The most significant charge concerns a phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021, just months after the election. Trump supposedly implored the Republican official to "find" the 11,779 votes needed to award the state to him instead of Joe Biden.
According to the New York Times, eight charges are all that remain of the 13 that were originally filed. Besides Trump, the others who benefitted from the judge's decision to quash include Trump's former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Attorneys associated with Trump, including Ray Smith III, Robert Cheeley, and John Eastman, are also off the hook. The case is unlikely to move forward any time soon as other legal issues are hashed out.
The main concern about Willis' ability to remain on case involve a possible inappropriate relationship. Willis carried on an affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired to help build the case against Trump, but insists that it began after he was hired.
CNN reported that in February 2024, Willis was ordered to answer for her relationship with Wade at a hearing with attorneys for Trump and the co-defendants. She was belligerent and indignant as she was questioned about the timing of their relationship and official expenditures for the two of them.
The timing of their relationship is key to determining whether there was any impropriety. If they were already dating and she hired him as a way to finance their travel and other goodies, it would seriously undermine her ability to do her job.
It was clear Willis did not like being questioned and made quite a show of her emotions while giving her answers. "You think I’m on trial," Willis snapped back at one point.
"These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020," she said, gesturing to the attorneys representing Trump and the defendants. "I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial."
Willis went after Trump like an attack dog and, in the process, possibly used it as a scheme to help herself and her love. The problem with politically motivated cases is that they're, by definition, run by people without scruples.
A justice on New Hampshire's Supreme Court has been indicted for allegedly interfering with an investigation into her husband.
The state's Republican attorney general announced charges Wednesday against Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi - just a day before her husband, Geno Marconi, was separately indicted.
The charges against the judge were unveiled by New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella, a Republican. Marconi was appointed to the court by Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican.
The indictment against Justice Marconi accuses her of pressuring Sununu to drop the probe into her husband.
She was charged with two class B felonies - one count of attempt to commit improper influence and one count of criminal solicitation of improper influence - and five misdemeanors.
Marconi allegedly dismissed the probe of her husband as "petty" and "political," and said the investigation needed to end fast because she was recused from important cases.
The details of the indictment are limited, but Formella said the probe is finished and no other person is suspected of wrongdoing.
“No person is above the law, and the evidence in this case required investigation and presentation to the grand jury,” said Attorney General Formella. “The decision to charge a sitting Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court was not made lightly, and it comes after careful and thoughtful deliberation. It is my hope that the public will be reassured that all individuals, including public officials, are treated equally under the law.”
A separate indictment filed against Marconi's husband, Geno Marconi, accused him of tampering with witnesses and falsifying evidence, both class B felonies.
"It's incredibly serious," Governor Sununu said. "I mean, you're talking about an independent grand jury indicting a very high-level public official like that and public servant. I really, first and foremost, really appreciate the attorney general. He's done a phenomenal job."
Justice Marconi has been on administrative leave since July. Her husband has also been on leave at his job.
In August, a friend of Geno Marconi's told InDepthNH.org that he believes Governor Sununu is behind an effort to pressure Geno Marconi to resign.
A lawyer for Justice Marconi said she would fight the charges all the way.
“We will fight the charges to the fullest extent permitted by the law, starting with motions to dismiss the case which we anticipate filing soon,” Justice Marconi's lawyers said in a statement. “We intend to fight these wrongful accusations in court, where the fight should occur, and not in the media.”