This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A federal judge has agreed to ban the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services from enforcing its private-investigator licensing requirement against anti-spam entrepreneur Jay Fink forever.
The decision comes from U.S. District Judge Rita Lin after a fight brought by the Institute for Justice on behalf of Fink.
Eventually, the state agreed with the institute's arguments and jointly petitioned the court for a ruling to that effect.
The institute said an order from the state had intended to force Fink to get a license to run his business, but the court decided the requirement was so irrational it violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
"I'm thankful that I won't have to worry about losing my livelihood anymore," said Fink. "But the state never should have shut me down in the first place."
His work involves California's anti-spam act, which lets consumers sue spammers – if they compile evidence of the spam they have to handle.
"To do that, recipients often have to wade through thousands of emails. For more than a decade, Jay has offered a solution: he and his team will scour a client's junk folder and catalog the messages that likely violate the law," the IJ said.
"But last year the state announced that it was demanding he get a license as an investigator.
"A regulator told Jay he needed a license to read through emails that might be used as evidence in a lawsuit. And because Jay didn't have a private investigator license, the state shut him down," the institute said.
The cost of that license was huge. "Aside from paying fees and passing a test, he would have had to spend 6,000 hours training in fields completely unrelated to identifying spam, like arson investigation or investigative journalism," the report said.
That all made the demand from the state unconstitutional, the report said.
After the judge said Fink likely would win his case, the state "agreed to jointly petition the court for an order that forever prohibits it from enforcing its licensure law against Jay. That means he's immediately free to get back to work."
A lawyer for the IJ earlier explained that Fink "reads and writes at his desk," specifically what the First Amendment protects.
Dylan Moore, a litigation counsel for IJ, said, "It doesn't take 6,000 hours of training to learn how to identify spam messages and put them into a PDF. Anyone who has an internet connection and email address probably already knows how to do this, and the state isn't cracking down on them. Jay just takes the hassle and frustration out of the process. Just like reporters or authors who compile information for a living, Jay is protected by the First Amendment."
A federal court upheld a Mississippi law that confers a lifetime voting ban on felons convicted of certain crimes, The Hill reported. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a decision to strike down the law.
The law states that people convicted of felonies, including arson, bigamy, bribery, embezzlement, forgery, or theft, are barred from voting for life. The plaintiffs in the case sued on the grounds that this violated the U.S. Constitution's 4th Amendment and 14th Amendment.
Thursday's 13-6 decision demonstrated that the full court disagreed. The decision stated that overturning the law "would thwart the ability of the State’s legislature and citizens to determine their voting qualifications, and would require federal courts overtly to make legislative choices that, in our federal system, belong at the State level," the majority opinion said.
“Do the hard work of persuading your fellow citizens that the law should change. The paramount lesson of the Constitution and Richardson is that the changes sought by Plaintiffs here can and must be achieved through public consensus effectuated in the legislative process, not by judicial fiat," the document went on.
The plaintiffs have argued that disenfranchising felons violates the Equal Protection Clause. "Denying broad groups of our citizens, for life, the ability to have a role in determining who governs them diminishes our society and deprives individuals of the full rights of representative government," the plaintiffs' attorney Jon Youngwood said in a written statement.
"We remain confident in this case, and our clients remain committed to ensuring that their right to vote is restored." Previously, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit had deemed it "cruel and unusual" punishment to strip voting rights.
"Mississippi stands as an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear national trend in our nation against permanent disenfranchisement," the ruling from the smaller panel had determined. The decision said that "severing former offenders from the body politic forever, Section 241 ensures that they will never be fully rehabilitated, continues to punish them beyond the term their culpability requires, and serves no protective function to society."
This portion was overruled by the opinion of the full court. "Every circuit court that has had the chance to invalidate felon disenfranchisement has rejected the opportunity," the later majority opinion said.
Mississippi has the strictest voting laws, with some 11% of the electorate deemed ineligible. While some complain about disenfranchising voters, this type of law could be a major story in the upcoming presidential election.
These rules about allowing convicted felons could become front and center during the presidential election in November. Former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in a Manhattan court in May, the Associated Press reported.
Although he is not a resident of Mississippi, Trump's home state of Florida has similar rules that would keep him out of the voting booth. As the GOP presidential nominee, it will become fodder for his opposition if the candidate can't even vote for himself.
However, the liberal love affair with criminals may work in his favor this time. Since Trump was convicted in a New York court, where the laws are more favorable to felons, he may get to cast a ballot after all and provide a photo op that Democrats will bristle at.
"If a Floridian’s voting rights are restored in the state of conviction, they are restored under Florida law," explained Blair Bowie from the Campaign Legal Center. It remains to be seen what Trump's sentence will be in New York, but it appears the conviction is more meaningless by the day.
Felons have broken the law in a serious way, and they have to pay the price, even if it is for life. Allowing them the same rights to vote as the general public is antithetical to justice.
Washington Post columnist and Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Max Boot, also a die-hard Never-Trumper, found himself embarrassed by his wife's actions recently.
According to Red State, Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and senior fellow for Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, was recently indicted by a federal grand jury as an agent for a foreign intelligence service.
The report indicated that Terry was busted for working on behalf of the South Korean intelligence service, alleged to have acted as an "agent of influence" on its behalf.
The situation is especially egregious, as she was reportedly recruited in 2013 and received "handbags, clothing and at least $37,000 in covert payments to the think tank where she was employed."
Terry's lawyer, Lee Wolosky, issued a statement denying that his client failed to register as a foreign agent and committed conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. He claimed the U.S. government made a "mistake" by indicting her.
"Dr. Terry has not held a security clearance for over a decade, and her views on matters relating to the Korean Peninsula have been consistent over many years," Wolosky said. “In fact, she was a harsh critic of the South Korean government during times this indictment alleges that she was acting on its behalf.”
He added, "Once the facts are made clear, it will be evident the government made a significant mistake."
Max Boot, a deranged Never Trumper who spent years falsely accusing Trump of being a secret foreign agent, is married to a former CIA analyst who was just arrested for being a secret foreign agent. Amazing. https://t.co/E2crWl7RPH
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) July 17, 2024
Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, had a much different view on the matter, saying she "sold out her positions and influence."
"The charges brought should send a clear message to those in public policy who may be tempted to sell their expertise to a foreign government to think twice and ensure you are in accordance with the law," a statement from his office said.
Users across social media reacted to Terry's federal indictment.
"Not surprising they are always accusing others of what they are doing," one X user wrote.
Another X user wrote, "I'm a novelist and if 2024 was a plot I wrote, I'd scrap it for being too unbelievable even for fantasy."
Terry has been placed on unpaid administrative leave in the wake of the news of the indictment.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A ruling from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has pulled "qualified immunity" protections from officials in a school district in Massachusetts who threatened a reporter for his decision to openly film his questions in the superintendent's office.
The journalist, Inge Berge, went to the office, camera publicly visible and filming, to ask officials about their decision to limit attendance at a play involving Berge's child over COVID-19 when the state limits already had been lifted.
He filmed his questioning openly, and when he later posted the session online, the school threatened him with legal action for violating a statute that limits "secret" recordings.
The court's opinion said, "Among the many issues before us, the headline-grabbing one is this: On a motion to dismiss a case … does qualified immunity protect public officials who baselessly threatened a citizen-journalist with legal action if he did not remove a video on a matter of public concern that he made and posted on Facebook without breaking any law? We answer no."
"Yesterday's ruling is based on the same principle as IJ's victory at the Supreme Court earlier this year in Gonzalez v. Trevino, which made clear that government officials can't use state laws as cover for retaliation against free speech," explained Institute for Justice lawyer Jaba Tsitsuashvili. "Government retaliation against speech is unconstitutional, and the court of appeals made clear that qualified immunity won't shield officials who happen to retaliate in novel ways."
The appeals court overturned a lower ruling that granted school officials that qualified immunity – essentially protection from any liability for their actions.
Officials had threatened Berge with legal action.
According to the IJ, "In March 2022, Inge Berge wanted to buy tickets to attend his daughter's middle school play, but he missed out on the tickets because the school was limiting capacity due to COVID-19. Upset that he might miss his daughter's play, he went to the superintendent's office—which was open to the public—to complain about the policy and try to secure a ticket. Berge openly and recorded his visit to the superintendent's office and his discussion with the officials.
"He remained calm as he spoke with the officials, two of whom refused to talk while being recorded, and a third who said he would look into the situation. But later that day, after Berge posted the interaction on Facebook, the superintendent's office sent him a letter demanding he remove the video or face legal repercussions. This blatant effort to suppress Berge's speech was based on a statute that only prohibits 'secret' recordings—but the letter itself made clear that there was nothing secret about what Berge did," the IJ said.
Berge followed with a First Amendment lawsuit, and the school eventually rescinded its demand that the video be removed.
But the lower court applied "qualified immunity" to the school officials to protect them from Berge's claims.
The lower court's ruling dismissed "Berge's retaliation claims against the school administration. The court ruled that the officials were shielded by qualified immunity—a judicial doctrine that shields government officials from civil liability unless the unconstitutionality of their conduct was 'established'—because the facts of this case did not exactly match those of any prior case."
But the IJ explained in its friend-of-the-court brief in the case, "That is not how the qualified immunity doctrine works, even in the face of its unjustified expansions. Well-established First Amendment principles put all public officials on notice that retaliation for speech is unconstitutional. As IJ argued and as the court of appeals held, the novel circumstances of this case made the violation of those principles no less obvious."
"The school officials argued that previous case law regarding the right to publish recordings of government officials only dealt with the right to record police officers, so the unconstitutionality of other officials' retaliatory conduct was not established. But the court saw through that argument, saying: 'If the First Amendment means anything in a situation like this, it is that public officials cannot—as they did here—threaten a person with legal action under an inapt statute simply because he published speech they did not like."
Those principles protect speakers of all stripes from being retaliated against for lawfully voicing their displeasure with government action.
It was the school's human resources official, Roberta Eason, who wrote the letter to Berge, accusing him of violating the state's wiretap law. She demanded the removal of the recording.
"Turns out she was way off base in relying on the wiretap act. And that is because this law pertinently bans 'secret' recordings, which Berge's most certainly was not," the court said.
He responded with a lawsuit charging school officials with retaliating against him for his free speech.
The case now has been sent back to the lower court for further proceedings, with a note that Berge "shall recover his costs on appeal."
Jack Smith is desperate to get back on track after the judge threw out his classified documents case against President Trump.
The Biden prosecutor filed a notice of appeal on Wednesday, two days after Florida judge Aileen Cannon handed Trump a stunning victory by tossing the charges.
Cannon's ruling was a huge win for Trump, whose re-election bid has been surging as various Democrat-led prosecutions encounter obstacles.
In her bombshell ruling, Cannon found that Smith was not legally appointed. Her ruling came after Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas expressed similar doubts about Smith's authority under the Appointments Clause.
Cannon said Smith's appointment undermines the power of Congress to appoint "officers of the United States." Smith was handpicked by attorney general Merrick Garland rather than nominated by President Biden with Senate confirmation.
Smith blasted Cannon's decision, claiming it "deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue."
Smith, in a filing Wednesday, said he would appeal to the 11th Circuit.
“The United States of America hereby gives notice that it appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit from the order of the District Court entered on July 15," Smith wrote.
While Smith goes through the motions of an appeal, his chances of bringing Trump to trial before the election are effectively zero.
Smith's other prosecution of Trump, concerning the 2020 election, is also unlikely to be resolved on Smith's political timeline after the Supreme Court's historic immunity ruling.
Without saying so directly, Smith has been desperate to prosecute Trump before the presidential election, fearing he could drop his federal charges if elected.
Trump is widely seen as the favorite to win the presidency, especially after his iconic display of courage following an assassination attempt last week.
After Cannon's ruling - and in a spirit of unity following his near death - Trump has called on Democrats to end all "lawfare" against him.
"The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden's Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
While Smith is clearly losing this battle, he is reportedly determined to keep prosecuting Trump until Inauguration Day.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A judge in Rhode Island has determined that the state is not allowed to simply change a law and take away beach property belonging to homeowners with waterfront properties.
The state earlier had simply changed its law and moved the demarcation line between public beach and private land 10 feet further inland.
That meant that that land was being taken away from homeowners without compensation even as they were required to continue to pay taxes on it.
That scheme apparently now is at an end.
The Pacific Legal Foundation revealed Superior Court Judge Sarah Taft-Carter said that state's "novel" beach access law violates the property rights of homeowners.
It's being called a major victory for those landowners.
The foundation explained, "In an order denying the state's motion for summary judgment, Judge Taft-Carter wrote that the law results in an unconstitutional taking of private property."
"Our clients are gratified that the court agreed with what they have said from the start—the beach access law violates their rights," explained foundation lawyer J. David Breemer. "As the court recognized, the beach access law infringed on our client's property rights by moving the existing public beach boundary line 10 feet landward, effectively confiscating our client's property, which is an unconstitutional taking."
The judge, whose final order will come later, said, "The act reduced the plaintiff's 'bundle of rights' inherent in the ownership of property by expanding the preexisting boundary line to 10 feet landward of the recognizable high tide line and confiscated the plaintiff's property resulting in an unconstitutional taking."
WND reported when the case was developing it was launched on behalf of the Rhode Island Association of Coastal Taxpayers.
Lawmakers simply voted to move the demarcation line for "public beach" property inland 10 feet, confiscating that same land from landowners in the state.
"Historically, the 'mean high tide line' served as the boundary between the public beach area and private property in Rhode Island," the legal team explained. The new law simply by fiat changes that by 10 feet, "giving the public an extra strip of land at the expense of private property owners."
The case accused the state of violating the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
An appeals court has blocked the implementation of President Joe Biden's SAVE student loan forgiveness plan while it considers the merits of a lawsuit by conservative states against the initiative.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals was responding to a lawsuit against SAVE by Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma.
The suit argued that the Biden administration was "trying to impose an extraordinarily expensive and controversial policy" with the loan forgiveness and income-driven repayment options.
Federal judges in Kansas and Missouri had already blocked parts of the plan temporarily in June as other suits take place.
A total of $168.5 billion has so far been forgiven for 4.76 million borrowers.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told Axios in an emailed statement on Thursday that the borrowers impacted by the block would have their loans placed on an interest-free forbearance until the courts make a final decision on the plan.
Borrowers will be notified of the change, he said.
"Our administration will continue to aggressively defend the SAVE Plan," a spokesperson for the administration said.
On the same day the injunction was handed down, Biden canceled another $1.2 billion in loan debt for 35,000 public service workers using the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which it overhauled.
The program allows firefighters, teachers, police, and employees of nonprofits to get their loans forgiven after making 10 years of payments.
Before this addition, 946,000 borrowers have had $69.2 billion forgiven through the program.
Prior to Biden's election, only 7,000 borrowers had received forgiveness in the 13 years the program was in place.
Republicans have accused Biden of buying votes with student loan forgiveness programs, and have criticized them for shifting the student loan costs to taxpayers, some of whom have not attended college, had not taken student loans, or had paid off their balances before debt forgiveness was available.
A Wall Street Journal editorial in April noted that "the best way to buy votes is with other people's money," and the Biden administration is doing exactly that with the money you and I pay in taxes.
Just days after he survived an assassination attempt by a few inches, Donald Trump had one of his four criminal cases thrown out by a federal judge.
With the amazing luck he has had lately, many are beginning to think Trump is unbeatable, or even favored by God.
Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the charges in the classified documents case on Monday, finding prosecutor Jack Smith was not legally appointed under the Constitution to serve as Special Counsel.
The decision was a shocking blow to Democrats and their hopes of damaging Trump's surging re-election bid with lawfare.
But Smith isn't giving up. In a filing Wednesday, he notified the 11th Circuit Appeals Court that he would challenge Cannon's decision.
Cannon's dismissal came after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had cast doubt on the legality of Smith's appointment in a separate opinion attached to the high court's historic immunity ruling.
In her ruling dismissing the case, Cannon found that Smith's appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland stepped on the power given to Congress over appointments.
“The Special Counsel’s position effectively usurps that important legislative authority, transferring it to a Head of Department, and in the process threatening the structural liberty inherent in the separation of powers.”
Smith was already facing significant obstacles before Cannon's dramatic dismissal. The Supreme Court had derailed Smith's prosecution of Trump over January 6th with its ruling on presidential immunity, making a trial before the 2024 election unlikely.
In the wake of the assassination attempt and Cannon's dramatic ruling, Trump has called for an end to all politically motivated prosecutions in the name of national unity.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung reacted to Smith's notice of appeal, saying, "As we move forward in uniting our nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the lawless indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL of the Witch Hunts."
"The Democrat-led Justice Department should drop these politically motivated, election interference efforts against President Trump immediately. Let us come together to END the weaponization of our justice system and Make America Great Again!" he said.
Smith has already signaled he plans to keep prosecuting Trump for as long as he can, even until the moment he is inaugurated, if it comes to that.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A leftist judge in California has issued a stunning ruling that children are too young for First Amendment rights, so teachers were right to punish a 7-year-old for expanding the Black Lives Matter mantra to include others.
Details of the startling conclusion by District Judge David Carter were documented by the Daily Mail.
The report describes how the little girl was punished, banned from recess and ordered not to draw pictures at Viejo Elementary in Orange.
The judge endorsed the punishment as she's "too young to have First Amendment rights."
"The girl's family filed a lawsuit last year against the Capistrano Unified School District, claiming her First Amendment Rights were violated during the 2021 incident," the report explained. But Carter now has claimed, "Students have the right to be free from speech that denigrates their race while at school" and that the girl was not protected by the First Amendment because of her age.
Carter claimed, "An elementary school … is not a marketplace of ideas… Thus, the downsides of regulating speech there is not as significant as it is in high schools, where students are approaching voting age and controversial speech could spark conducive conversation."
The judge tried to explain, "Undoubtedly, B.B.'s [the student] intentions were innocent… B.B. testified that she gifted the Drawing to M.C. to make her feel comfortable after her class learned about Martin Luther King Jr."
But the friend, M.C., took the image home and her parents "found it offensive" and demanded the school take action.
The report documented: "This prompted principal Jesus Becerra to tell B.B. the drawing was inappropriate and racist. He then punished B.B. by making her publicly apologize on the playground to her classmates and teachers. B.B. was also banned from recess and from drawing pictures for two weeks."
B.B.'s mother brought the action because her daughter did no wrong.
The case now goes to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to consider what observers are describing as a dangerous precedent depriving elementary students of constitutional rights.
Lawyer Caleb Trotter said, "If that view is allowed to survive and spread, the speech rights of countless elementary students around the country could be at risk. That was what really concerned me."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
WASHINGTON – The turn of a few key events may change the fate of the Jan. 6 political prisoners now staring down the dark tunnel of a decade or more in prison for seditious conspiracy.
While the re-election of Donald Trump in November would almost guarantee the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers a presidential pardon, a series of recent Supreme Court rulings may likewise end up cutting time off the lengthy prison sentences they were handed for what many consider no greater crime than "wrongthink."
On June 28, SCOTUS ruled the Justice Department’s use of 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), in conjunction with the most serious criminal charges leveled against former President Donald Trump and an ever-growing number of Jan. 6 defendants, is unconstitutional.
The statute says an offender who "(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object's integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or (2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both."
The trouble is, in all of American history the DoJ had never used this statute to prosecute demonstrators, even when protests descended into skirmishes, riots, arson, assault, death or worse. Prosecutors, in effect, invented previously non-existent crimes, as if they were the U.S. Congress.
The Supreme Court's ruling should put a precipitous halt to the government's over-prosecutorial adventurism of nonviolent offenders whose only crime amounts to misdemeanor trespassing, and consequently vacating the convictions of possibly more than a hundred J6ers.
But as criminal defense and civil rights attorney Norm Pattis drafts the appeal for the Proud Boys who were handed the lengthiest prison sentences of all the J6 protesters, he is preparing to face defiant federal prosecutors who remain hellbent on circumventing the Constitution and the Supreme Court so they can bury their political opposition when they return to the courtroom.
"It appears the Justice Department is just digging in, pretending nothing ever happened, and baiting the defendants to raise the 1512 Obstruction issues on appeal on the theory that the DOJ may be able to salvage those convictions," Pattis told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview.
Pattis represents J6 political prisoners Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl, Infowars founder Alex Jones and Infowars host Owen Shroyer, all of whom are high-profile targets at the center of the DOJ's war on what it labels "domestic terrorism."
"I am still trying to understand it – I don't think anybody understands it yet," Pattis told WND. "I'm expecting to raise the 1512 issue on appeal on behalf of Biggs and Rehl and I expect the government will contend that their conduct that day made it impossible to count votes, and therefore 1512 applies even under the Supreme Court's new ruling."
He added, "The Justice Department [has gone] haywire in the J6 case, especially the Proud Boys' case – the use of 1512, the use of the terrorism enhancement."
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly used the government's now-discredited claim of 1512 "obstruction" to add terror enhancements to the Proud Boys' convictions – for pushing over flimsy gated bike racks surrounding the Capitol building during the first breach, with a crowd of approximately 300 people.
However, examination of footage of the first breach event shows that neither Biggs, Rehl nor their co-defendants ever physically touched the gate.
"These guys were declared terrorists for destroying a $34,000 fence – pushing over the 40 or so bike racks. As far as any of their offenses that remotely serve as predicates for the terrorism enhancement, that's the only one that was so committed. Others who have been handed terror enhancements before Jan. 6 had hijacked airplanes and assassinated people," Pattis told WND.
Having participated in hundreds of criminal trials since 1993, Pattis contends the government's prosecution of the Proud Boys is "the most chilling case for criminalizing protected speech in United States history."
In all the thousands of hours of Jan. 6 footage that Congress withheld from the American public for years, neither Biggs, an Army veteran who earned two purple hearts in combat and later became an Infowars reporter, nor Marine Corps veteran Zachary Rehl are seen committing a violent crime.
Alongside their co-defendant Ethan Nordean, who likewise committed no violent crimes, they roamed around "The People's House" for approximately 15 minutes and exited the restricted premises.
The U.S. government designated Enrique Tarrio, the iconic Proud Boys national chairman who was not even present in Washington, D.C., during the Capitol riot, the mastermind of the "terror attack."
Last September, Judge Kelly sentenced Tarrio to 22 years in prison, the lengthiest sentence handed to any Jan. 6 defendant to date; Nordean to 18 years; Biggs to 17 years; Rehl to 15 years. Pezzola, who is now grappling with esophageal cancer while incarcerated, was not found guilty of seditious conspiracy but was sentenced to 10 years.
Kelly added terror enhancements to all of their sentences for anti-Biden sentiments they had expressed in interviews with news media. After they were sentenced, prosecutors appealed for even longer prison sentences – still seeking life in prison for Biggs and 30 years for Rehl, following their decision to stroll through the Capitol building for approximately 15 minutes.
The barbaric political persecution of his clients, contends Pattis, serves one main purpose for the enemies of America.
"There's a systematic effort to scare the hell out of people to make sure they stay home in 2024 and are afraid to ever attend a rally again. It's a terrifying precedent," he told WND. "There has never been, in my view, a set of prosecutions in the United States like the Jan. 6 cases. We had a riot that lasted for several hours on Jan. 6, 2021, and we're still making arrests three-and-a-half years later, and people are still going to jail over their participation in a riot.
"Why are we still criminalizing misdemeanors? Why are they still looking to lock people up? After the United States Civil War, in which 600,000 people lost their lives in a conflict, we've repatriated almost everybody within two or three years. This doesn't make any sense to me at all. When people talk about 'politicization of justice,' this is what they mean."
All others who have been convicted of sedition in American history committed crimes that resulted in mass casualties. The only casualties during the Capitol riot were those killed by the government.
Even more outrageous than the obstruction charge against Jan. 6 defendants, Pattis added, are the sedition convictions that amount to nothing more than criminalizing thought.
"I defy anyone to show me proof of a plan for insurrection on Jan. 6. In the Proud Boys trial, AUSA Connor Mulroe proceeded on the basis that an 'implicit conspiracy' to violently overthrow the United States government formed the moment the crowd overreacted," he said.
"In other words, that people standing around at the Capitol on Jan. 6 got the idea in mind, all at the same time, to engage in the use of force against the government.
"This prosecution never proved there was a plan, as proof of the state of mind of the co-conspirators. They used protected political speech as their sole evidence, speech which, if uttered in any other context, would be protected. They criminalized protected speech in a very thin and unusual conspiracy theory to prove criminal intent in a case where there really was no plan for a riot or for an insurrection. It sets a very dangerous precedent for what may happen at future political events across the country."
Not only are Pattis' clients at risk of losing their freedom and facing additional financial penalties for what are essentially "thought crimes" – saying things that offend deep-state gatekeepers – the task of defending "political hostages" amid unprecedented lawfare and creative prosecution has been "catastrophic" for the veteran attorney.
"You're walking into these new rules, this misuse of law by the government that is really historic, really unprecedented," he said. "The most chilling thing is the need to be careful about where you speak and what you say, and who you say it to."
The Jan. 6 trials, in which the government and judges are getting away with what many knowledgeable legal minds regard as pillaging the U.S Constitution, are taking place in the dark. That is, no recording devices are allowed in the courtroom. Transcripts cost roughly $500 for the defense, but are free for the government. The judges are intent on keeping the trials as secret as possible.
Pattis described more peculiarities that have transpired in the courtroom, demonstrating how the judges are acting essentially as arms of a radically weaponized Department of Justice.
"Judge Kelly is not a friend of the First Amendment," Pattis told WorldNetDaily. "The number of times that the public was thrown out of the courtroom was shocking to me. The public didn't hear the full story about confidential human sources and, as a court officer, I'm ordered not to tell it.
"There was an occasion where national security interest data was mistakenly leaked into the courtroom. The public was thrown out, and they'll never know about that. There was an issue with a juror and the public was thrown out. The Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant a public and speedy trial. The court made a lot of factual findings that kept things from the public in violation of the Proud Boys' rights."
"The combination of my potential suspension over the Alex Jones' case and the Proud Boys case has made this probably the two worst years of my life. I'm still fighting my suspension in the appellate courts, and I remain optimistic.
"But the combination of being suspended for defending Alex Jones and going without compensation for six months while I defended the Proud Boys put me to the test, and that is, how much did I care about these issues? And the answer is, a lot."
As WND exclusively reported, the Veterans Department and U.S Treasury Department is demanding Rehl repay the military benefits he received following Capitol riot to the tune of $100,000 with interest. He and Biggs were revoked of their military pensions when they were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The DOJ's misuse of law has also left Pattis in financial ruin.
"My involvement with the Jan. 6 cases has been catastrophic. I was given assurances that there would be crowdsourced legal resources in their work. It was a deep disappointment that the community walked away from them. A lot of people talked a lot of committed talk about 'being there for them.' In the end, maybe they are, but as far as the legal fees are concerned, we've been left with about a half-a-million-dollar hole."
"There's no place I would have rather been during those five-and-a-half months than in that courtroom. I'm proud of my participation in both cases. If I would do it all over again, I would have taken greater care to be paid on behalf of the Proud Boys. If there are folks out there that are inclined to help, we are appealing for their help."