Supreme Court’s weakening of public corruption safeguards sparks alarm

 https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4754860-supreme-court-decision-bribery-law-corruption/

Ethics and legal experts warn that the Supreme Court has struck a serious blow to prosecutors’ ability to crack down on the abuse of power and public corruption.

And that’s ringing alarm bells when Donald Trump, who was convicted in May by a Manhattan jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and who was hit with a $355 million penalty in a civil fraud trial in February, is leading in the presidential race.

A New Report Adds Evidence That Trump Was a Russian Asset

 https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/03/trump-russian-asset-election-intelligence-community-report.html

Donald Trump was a tool in a long-running Russian campaign to weaken the United States. That’s been documented in Republican-led investigative reports, and now it has been updated with new evidence, thanks to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment of the 2020 election. The report, drafted by the CIA, the FBI, and several other agencies, was released in unclassified form on Tuesday, but it was presented in classified form on Jan. 7. In other words, it was compiled, written, and edited during Trump’s administration. It destroys his lies about the election, and it exposes him as a Russian asset.

Senate Russia report proves Trump collusion was very real. But do voters care?

 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/senate-russia-report-proves-trump-was-wrong-mueller-was-right-ncna1237743

Far from a hoax, as the president so often claimed, the report reveals how the Trump campaign willingly engaged with Russian operatives implementing the influence effort. For instance, the report exposes interactions and information exchanged between Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. According to the report, campaign figures “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities.” (Manafort was later convicted of tax and bank fraud.)

All of Trump’s Russia Ties, in 7 Charts

 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-trump-putin-russia-ties-chart-flynn-page-manafort-sessions-214868/

These charts illustrate dozens of those links, including meetings between Russian officials and members of Trump’s campaign and administration; his daughter’s ties to Putin’s friends; Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant; and his short-lived mixed martial arts venture with one of Putin’s favorite athletes. The solid lines mark established facts, while dotted ones represent speculative or unproven connections.

Links between Trump associates and Russian officials

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials

By April 19, 2019, The New York Times had documented that "Donald J. Trump and 18 of his associates had at least 140 contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition."[16]

Segula- Rav Moshe Shapiro

 From  Looking into the Sun by Rabbi Menachem Nissel published by Feldheim

 Rav Moshe explained that segulos are not a magical shortcut. The avodah (hard work)  for parnassa includes tefillah, maasim tovim, and working on emunah. If you've worked on these things, the heavenly shefa can come pouring down. 1he segulah can then be a vessel to contain them.

Rav Shlomo pressed on. "What did Rav Moshe think of the new custom where Ashkenazic men do pesichah (opening the Ark)when their wives are in their ninth month?" Rav Shlomo's greatgrandfather,Rav Shimon Schwab, did not approve of the custom. (Note: The custom is mentioned in the Chida, Avodas Hakodesh 1:90.)

Rav Moshe replied that pesichah all year round unleashes rachamim min haShamayim. However, to do so without kavanah and tefillah is a maaseh kof b'alma, nothing more than the actions of a monkey.

Not all my friends received such positive responses. When asked about the Yerushalmi segulah of going to the Kosel for forty days, Rav Moshe responded with, "Why can't you just daven?" When a close talmid suggested a certain segulah, Rav Moshe gave him a piercing look and said, "Why don't you just hang up a horseshoe?"

Trump wasn’t exonerated by the presidential immunity ruling, even though he says he was

 https://www.gazettextra.com/news/nation_world/fact-focus-trump-wasn-t-exonerated-by-the-presidential-immunity-ruling-even-though-he-says/article_8f29c850-dc3a-5cd2-ad84-6a017b3583a3.html

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday misrepresented in a social media post what the U.S. Supreme Court’s Monday ruling on presidential immunity means for his civil and criminal cases.

“TOTAL EXONERATION!” he wrote in the post on his Truth Social platform. “It is clear that the Supreme Court’s Brilliantly Written and Historic Decision ENDS all of Crooked Joe Biden’s Witch Hunts against me, including the WHITE HOUSE AND DOJ INSPIRED CIVIL HOAXES in New York.”

Justices claim immunity ruling allows presidents to poison staff, have Navy SEALs kill political rivals

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/justices-claim-immunity-ruling-allows-presidents-poison-staffers-have-navy-seals-kill-political-rivals

But although the majority opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly stated that the president "is not above the law" and immunity is only a factor when it involves an "official act" — the justices sent the case back to lower courts to determine if the acts at the center of Trump's case were "official" — the ruling raised a series of frightening possibilities, according to the trio of dissenting justices.

Trump immunity decision shows that conservative ‘originalism’ is a farce

 https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4751056-trump-immunity-decision-shows-that-conservative-originalism-is-a-farce/

Writing for a 6-3 majority, Chief Justice Roberts announced that presidents have a presumption of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. He identified a handful of obvious official acts that underpin Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment of Donald Trump for his actions relating to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which must therefore now be excised from the case — while at the same time refusing to draw any lines for unofficial acts, instead punting that question to the lower courts for the justices to resolve in an inevitable appeal another day

Trump’s attorney argues that fake elector scheme falls under 'official acts' of president

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/02/trump-fake-elector-scheme-official-acts/74278205007/

In an interview with CNN, the attorney, Will Scharf, also argued that Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election qualify as official acts, which would shield the former president from prosecution. 

Trump's Lawyers Claim paying Hush Money to PornStar in White House is Core Presidential duty

 https://nypost.com/2024/07/03/us-news/can-trump-get-hush-money-conviction-overturned-with-scotus-immunity-ruling/

Trump’s lawyers say jurors should not have heard the Hicks testimony, and other evidence from the ex-president’s stint in the White House that they claim unfairly influenced the jury.

What is an ‘official’ act, and how will a judge interpret Trump’s immunity?

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/07/02/official-act-trump-immunity-trial-judge/

The Supreme Court sent Trump’s federal Jan. 6 case back to a trial judge to decide three questions: Which alleged acts by Trump charged by special counsel Jack Smith fall under the executive branch’s exclusive constitutional authority and are therefore immune from prosecution? Which are official acts but prosecutable because they pose no danger of intruding on the power or function of the presidency? And what acts can be prosecuted because they involve private conduct, such as actions taken by Trump as a candidate, not as an officeholder?

Garnel disagrees with this

Garnel IronheartJuly 4, 2024 at 5:28 PM

The Constitution defines what official acts are available to the President. He cannot push someone into traffic and claim it's an official act. Kal v'chomer activating a SEAL team to go and assassinate an American citizen who is no objective threat to the country.

The hysteria surrounding this ruling is not unlike claiming Jews poisoned the local well.

Project 2025 Leader Unveils Plan for Life After Second American Revolution

 https://www.newsweek.com/project-2025-heritage-foundation-republicans-american-revolution-1920870

In a statement to Newsweek, Roberts echoed the remarks he made on X and said, "Unfortunately, it's the Left that has a long history of violence, so it's up to them to allow a peaceful transfer of power. As we saw in 2020, organized groups on the Left have the capacity to carry out violent riots, take over cities, and weaponize taxpayer-funded agencies to target their political opponents."

Roberts outlined how the ruling might help transform the federal government with conservative policy proposals, should Donald Trump win the White House in November and adopt Project 2025. The Project 2025 website states that it is a presidential transition project seeking to "build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative administration: a policy agenda, personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook."

Can the President Send SEAL Team Six to Assassinate His Rival? After Monday, Yes.

 https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/supreme-court-trump-immunity-president-seal-team-six-assassinate-rival.html

But as Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained in her dissent, the lesson from Nixon is that when presidents use their power to commit official acts in pursuit of a criminal scheme, that is when we should be most concerned about their conduct and most eager for them to face accountability. Because that is when their criminal conduct poses the most heightened threat to democracy. If the president can take this immense power we entrust him with and manipulate it for corrupt ends—knowing he will never face accountability—then we have fundamentally changed the nature of what the presidency is. He is no longer a person who is elected by the people to represent them for four years. He is an emperor who walks into office, surveys his new powers, and gets to decide how to use them for his own corrupt advantage—to enrich himself, to entrench his authority, to prevent the peaceful transition to power, to even execute his rivals. I just think that is exactly the opposite of how the executive power had been understood until Monday morning. And I find myself baffled that six justices would say that presidential accountability is now constitutionally prohibited rather than constitutionally required