“Today’s event was a despicable charade. Now that it is over we will appeal this hoax, which has no merit, and restore the trust of Americans in our once great system of justice. Make America Great Again.“
-President Donald J. Trump on Judge Merchan Soviet Style Trial
“This is not a criminal case, in my view, because there is no underlying crime. Bragg took a dead misdemeanour, zapped it back into life as this pile of felonies… and he was only able to do that by this enabling judge.”
-Legal Scholar Jonathan Turley
“Elon Musk is not a threat to democracy, George Soros is.”
-Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”
-Thomas Sowell
“This may not close the border, but by gosh, it sure will get some of these people off the street…“
-Georgia Congressman Mike Collins on the Laken Riley Act
Soviet Style Prosecution Ends with Unconditional Discharge: Judge Juan Merchan sentenced President Trump to an “unconditional discharge” in the hush-money Soviet style witch hunt.
A complete waste of everyone’s time, except for political expedience. They just wanted the headline: “Trump Sentenced!” However, what it really means is that the court/judge “is of the opinion that no proper purpose would be served by imposing any condition upon the defendant’s release.”
All politics… No conditions. No prison time. No probation time. No fine or punishment. This travesty of justice was overt political lawfare, election interference, and a complete waste of time & money.
President Trump will appeal and get the conviction overturned.
Success, in the words of Democrat NY prosecutor Joshua Steinglass, he summarizes by saying sentencing of Trump is to “cement his status as a convicted felon.“
Democrats should be embarrassed and ashamed. Never before and hopefully never again!
Trump’s Team Coming Together: Once again, the President is picking top-notch leaders from across the country to put together his Cabinet and team.
Confirmation hearings will be starting soon and the expectation is that ultimately almost all will be confirmed. There is so much to do; they have to get started ASAP!
Change and normalcy when it comes to policy couldn’t come soon enough!
Read more below and follow me on X & GETTR – @sanuzis
–Saul Anuzis
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Saul’s News Weekly Rewind Video
This Week: Biden claims he could have beaten Trump in the election, Nancy Pelosi is a stock market wizard, and Senator Rick Scott introduces bill to make DST permanent!
Trump’s trial shows NY couldn’t handle the truth. Sentence rams that home
Trump NY trial was a case based on a non-crime. DA Bragg took a long-dead misdemeanor and zapped it back into life with a novel and unfounded theory
With the sentencing of Donald Trump on Friday, the final verdict on the New York criminal trial of the president-elect is in. The verdict is not the one that led to no jail or probation for the incoming president. Acting Justice Juan Merchan has brought down the gavel on the New York legal system as a whole.
Once considered the premier legal system in the country, figures like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Justices Arthur F. Engoron and Juan Merchan have caused the system to be weaponized for political purposes. Trump will walk away from this trial and into the White House in less than two weeks, but the New York system will walk into infamy after this day.
The case has long been denounced by objective legal observers, including intense Trump critics, as a legal absurdity. Even CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig denounced the case as legally flawed and unprecedented while Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., simply called it total “b—s–t.”
It is a case based on a non-crime. Bragg took a long-dead misdemeanor and zapped it back into life with a novel and unfounded theory. By using federal violations that were never charged, let alone tried, Bragg turned a misdemeanor into dozens of felonies and essentially tried Trump for federal offenses.
Trump’s real punishment
President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced on Friday in the bookkeeping case brought against him by Alvin Bragg, the elected Democratic district attorney of Manhattan. The sentence was effectively nothing. Although Trump had been convicted of 34 felonies, Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to what is called “unconditional discharge,” which means no jail time, no probation, and no fine or other punishment.
The reason was practical. Merchan and Bragg would have been happy to send Trump to jail, but the fact that in 10 days the defendant will become president of the United States put Merchan and the prosecutors in a bind. They’re a county judge and county prosecutors. They had no authority to imprison the president, to put the president on probation, or to force the president to perform community service.
But the sentence of unconditional discharge did accomplish one thing. It formalized Trump’s guilty verdict, meaning that Trump is now officially a convicted felon. “This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of judgment of conviction without encroaching on the highest office of the land is an unconditional discharge,” Merchan said.
A Who’s Who Of All Trump’s Cabinet-Level Nominees
Coming from diverse backgrounds, the president-elect’s Cabinet selections bring a variety of skills to the new government.
After sweeping all seven battleground states this year and becoming the first Republican to win the national popular vote in 20 years, President-elect Donald Trump has assembled a team to lead his next administration.
The Cabinet mainly consists of the vice president, the leaders of 15 executive departments, and several other top positions. Most, but not all, of these appointments require confirmation by the Senate. Trump’s selections come from diverse backgrounds, with many hailing from the business world outside Washington politics. Two of the nominees also come from across the political aisle.
The Epoch Times’ Jacob Burg and Jackson Richman provide below a brief overview of what Trump’s nominees will bring to the table in his second administration…
Trump’s 100 executive orders
President-elect Trump and top advisers previewed ambitious plans for 100 executive orders during a meeting with Senate Republicans on Wednesday night, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: While Congress debates the next moves on their own aggressive legislative plans, Trump let them know he is ready to roll — especially on immigration.
Senators were given previews of some of what they were told would be 100 executive orders, two sources who were in the room told Axios.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s longtime immigration adviser, dove into how they intend to use executive power to address the border and immigration starting Day 1.
It’s unclear if all will be technical executive orders, or more broadly executive actions taken by Trump or federal agencies.
Rep. Van Orden to Newsmax: No Time for Republicans to ‘Showboat’
House Republicans will make themselves “absolutely irrelevant” if they do not remain united behind President-elect Donald Trump and his agenda, Rep. Derrick Van Orden said on Newsmax Saturday, one day after House Speaker Mike Johnson’s dramatic reelection.
“We do not have any time for anybody to showboat at all,” the Wisconsin Republican said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America Weekend.” “There is no time for somebody standing up and just talking to hear the sound of their voice.”
“What we need to do is have a very deliberative legislative process and follow the agenda that is laid out by President Donald J. Trump and get the country back on track,” Van Orden added.
He pointed out that the country remains in a “downward spiral” after four years of President Joe Biden in office, including a border that is still open and “rampant crime” that includes the attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas on New Year’s Day.
“People are still having difficulty buying gas and groceries on the same day, and we’re deeply concerned about the future for our children,” said Van Orden. “I have confidence that the members of the Republican Conference understand that now, and they will act on it.”
But GOP lawmakers who slow down Trump’s agenda will be “held accountable,” he warned.
Biden Is Going To Destroy As Much As Possible On His Way Out The Door
Ever see a drunk asked to leave a nice restaurant? It doesn’t have to have been in person, you’ve likely seen it in a movie or a TV show; something where the person is asked nicely, but forcefully, to leave and they cause a huge scene as they walk to the door – knocking over drinks, bumping into people, being very loud, etc. That guy is Joe Biden. The current President of the United States and his administration are going to go out like a destructive drunk and it should lead not only to the destruction of his legacy, but a dramatic change of the transition period in the future.
Remember when the Obama administration was ending and there were a whole bunch of political appointees – people whose jobs should have ended on January 20, 2017 – who moved to non-political jobs so they could stay in various departments and undermine the incoming Trump administration?
The Biden administration appears to be trying to do that with ideas, bad ideas. “The State Department has crafted plans to distribute staffers from a shuttered office accused of censoring conservatives to a new internal ‘hub’ that will coordinate its activities,” reports the Washington Examiner. “The Global Engagement Center, the office that Republicans accused of working with groups aiming to demonetize right-leaning media outlets in the United States, shut down in late 2024 upon lawmakers agreeing to no longer fund it. However, in a non-public letter to members of Congress on Dec. 6, the State Department outlined its plans to “realign” more than 50 GEC officials and tens of millions of dollars in funding to a hub purporting to counter foreign interference, documents show.”
Biden’s Infrastructure Bills Leave a Legacy of Big Spending and Little Payoff
The outgoing president’s signature legislative achievements spent tens of billions of dollars with little to show.
When President Joe Biden vacates the White House later this month, talk will turn to his legacy: What did he accomplish in office? Which among his achievements will outlast him? Even though Biden came into office with ambitious promises, his scorecard looks unimpressive.
The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act apportioned more than $1 trillion to a wide variety of projects deemed “infrastructure,” including $550 billion toward “‘new’ investments and programs.” Among its line items, the law included $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle (E.V.) chargers across the country.
The rollout was uninspiring. Under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which controls $5 billion of the $7.5 billion total, only 183 chargers have come online at 44 stations across the country, more than three years after Biden signed the bill into law. (Under federal rules, each station funded by the law is required to have at least four charging ports.)
In fairness, not all of the cash has been spent: The NEVI has only allocated $2.4 billion and awarded $520 million, as of press time.
Still, it’s a dispiriting result from an administration that came into office with big promises to “build a national network of 500,000 charging stations.”
New Biden water heater ban will drive up energy prices for poor, seniors: expert
The Department of Energy is banning non-condensing water heaters
The Biden administration is banning certain natural gas water heaters from the market as part of its climate change agenda, a move critics say will jack up energy costs for low-income and senior households.
The move in the final days of the administration will take non-condensing, natural gas-fired water heaters off the shelves by 2029 in a bid to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which climate change advocates and President Biden say cause global warming.
The new rules will require new tankless gas water heaters to use about 13% less energy than today’s least efficient tankless models.
The rules apply to both non-condensing and condensing gas water heaters, but the rules hike efficiency requirements to a threshold that only condensing models can meet, effectively banning the cheaper but less efficient non-condensing models, according to The Washington Free Beacon. Condensing technology wastes less heat.
Consumers will be forced to buy more expensive models or cheaper non-instantaneous storage tank water heaters, which are less efficient than the models being banned by the DOE.
In The Jan 6 Killing Of Ashli Babbitt, A Leftist Double-Standard On Cop Misconduct
Contrary to exaggerated, partisan rhetoric that frames the Jan 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot as a “deadly insurrection,” the truth is that only one homicide occurred that day. The victim, an unarmed Trump supporter, was shot and killed by a police officer with a history of irresponsible handling of firearms, who opted against a nonlethal response to an act of trespassing, and who fired his weapon in the absence of any imminent threat of death or serious injury to himself or others in his vicinity.
US Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Michael Byrd’s killing of Ashli Babbitt came just six months after George Floyd’s death under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, an incident that sparked outrage, widespread calls for police reform, and nationwide rioting. In the case of Babbitt’s killing, however, the collective reaction from the American left and major media at best amounted to an indifferent shrug. Worse, many reflexively heralded Byrd as a hero and viewed Babbitt as a deserving recipient of the bullet that perforated her trachea and lung.
The contrast illustrates how partisan framing short-circuits people’s ability to uniformly and objectively apply principles to the facts before them. Put another way, an intellectually honest person can reject Babbitt’s politics, condemn her unlawful conduct on Jan. 6 and rightly conclude that she was the victim of an unjustified police shooting.
Wow, Democrats Lost the Capitol Riot Narrative Big Time
In the four years since the Capitol riot, Democrats have tried incessantly to turn it into a national tragedy akin to 9/11 and/or the Pearl Harbor attack. With the goal of preventing Trump from being able to seek the presidency again, they even called it an insurrection (it wasn’t) and accused Trump of inciting it (he didn’t).
Their efforts failed, and Trump was reelected on November 5, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win the national popular vote since George W. Bush. Oh, what a sweet victory it was. On Monday, Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris was certified, and once again, Democrats proved they just can’t let their phony baloney narrative go.
I won’t bother posting all the tweets from Democrats waxing philosophical about the difference between January 6, 2025, and January 6, 2021, but I will show you this cringy post from Sen. Chuck Schumer and some silly “moment of prayer” he and a few other January Sixth-copalians held on Monday.
They’re really trying hard, aren’t they?
The problem for them is that it’s not working. Despite all their efforts, that day didn’t leave the lasting political scar on the public Democrats had hoped for. Despite the massive media coverage, congressional hearings, and the general pushing of the narrative that the riot was an “insurrection,” most Americans have moved on.
Donald Trump Is Right: The Panama Canal Should Be American
On this strategic question, the president-elect and Ronald Reagan are in agreement.
President-elect Donald Trump’s recent lament that the United States ceded control of the Panama Canal to Panama under the Carter administration is both strategically sound and historically resonant. Trump, the most consequential conservative president since Ronald Reagan, shares with the Gipper both an instinctual understanding of U.S. national interests and, more specifically, a healthy skepticism about the logic of ceding the American-built canal.
Trump’s recent comments echo closely those of Reagan during the 1978 debate over the ratification of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties that ended U.S. sovereignty over the canal. Reagan, preparing to challenge Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election, said he would “talk as long and as loud as I can against it” and warned presciently that “I think that basically the world is not going to see this [giving away the canal] as a magnanimous gesture on our part, as the White House would have us believe.”
Like many of Trump’s foreign policy initiatives, Reagan’s persistent opposition to the cession of the canal earned him the derision of the foreign policy cognoscenti of his day. Even William F. Buckley, Jr., the patron saint of the modern conservative movement, broke with Reagan and supported returning the canal to Panama. Yet Reagan, like Trump, understood the American interest in the canal went beyond U.S. relations with the Panamanians or the potential for gaining an amorphous quantum of “goodwill” from the Third World (today, often called the “Global South”) by granting local control.
Rep. Richard Hudson Answers the Call: Introduces National Concealed Carry Reciprocity
On Wednesday, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) put forward national concealed carry reciprocity legislation, which is something President-elect Donald Trump supports.
On November 11, 2024, less than a week after defeating Kamala Harris in the presidential election, Breitbart News pointed to Trump’s push for national concealed carry reciprocity, which would make the concealed permit of any one state valid in the other 49.
Donald Trump Jr. reacted to his father’s desire for concealed carry reciprocity via a post to Instagram, where he wrote, “Boom! My father just announced concealed carry reciprocity. The Second Amendment will stay and remain protected.”
On January 8, 2025, Rep. Hudson answered the call with H.R. 38:
The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act has the support of more than 120 of Hudson’s House colleagues. It also has the support of Gun Owners of America (GOA), the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, and the U.S. Concealed Carry Association (USCCA).
