If Necessary, Use Deadly Force? 

When JM, my ex-Navy Seal trainer told me about it, I thought it couldn’t possibly be true.

Trying to defeat your political opponent through “lawfare” is tacky enough for a first-world, wannabe democracy. (See what I said about this tactic in the May 17  issue.) But allowing (encouraging) deadly force against your political foe?

It turns out, it is mostly true.

The FBI, the Justice Department, and the Biden administration are all claiming that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s approval of the use of deadly force for the Aug. 8, 2022, raid on Mar-a-Lago was “standard operating procedure.” And if you google it, you’ll find plenty of stories from the mainstream media that supported that contention. They don’t discuss the fact that no such use of deadly force was used to seize Biden’s illegal possession of classified documents. Nor do they discuss how the FBI has acknowledged that some of the documents at Mar-a-Lago were put there by the FBI and that, after collecting them, they tampered with them before turning them over to Congress, after claiming they didn’t.

Now, as more details of the raid are becoming public, it’s looking more like this kind of authorization is “ordinary” only when they raid armed drug dealers, but it’s never been used for the seizing of documents of a public official, let alone a former president and a candidate for the next presidency.

You can see the range of reporting on this here, here, here, here and here.

Taking the Long View on Presidential Immunity 

A rare, un-politicized essay on a key question in several of Donald Trump’s many legal charges against him: Does a US president have immunity from criminal prosecution for any official acts taken while in office?

Read it here and tell me what you think.

From What River to What Sea?

In my May 9 Special Issue on “Antisemitism vs. Free Speech,” I included this short video of two anti-Israel protesters who weren’t quite sure what exactly they were protesting.

Just this morning, NF sent me another one that is even more hilarious (or disturbing).