News of the World

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Grand Jury Votes to Indict Former President Donald Trump

A grand jury in New York City has voted to indict former President Donald Trump.
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A spokesperson for the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said it is now coordinating with Trump’s attorneys his “surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment.”

The indictment currently remains under seal.
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“President Donald J. Trump is a victim of a corrupt and distorted version of the American justice system and history,” Alina Habba, an attorney for Trump, said in a statement. “He will be vindicated.”

The vote on the indictment came after weekslong proceedings where the grand jury heard testimony from former Trump associates, including Cohen and Cohen’s former attorney Robert Costello.

While the indictment remains sealed, it’s believed the case heavily relies on Cohen’s testimony. Cohen pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance laws in 2018 by arranging payments to Daniels and another woman who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. In his plea agreement, the attorney claimed to have done so at Trump’s direction and that he was reimbursed by the Trump Organization through routine legal expenses, despite his earlier claims that he paid the money out of his own pocket.

Trump, the leading announced candidate for the 2024 presidential election, has denied any wrongdoing, saying that he’s a victim of extortion.
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The former president also wrote on Truth Social that “they know that I cannot get a fair trial in New York.”

GOP Lawmakers Outraged Over Trump Indictment,
Decry ‘Weaponization of Justice System’

A bevy of Republican lawmakers responded to the news of former President Donald Trump’s indictment, largely offering support for the former party leader following news that he is the first former president to be indicted after leaving office.

Republicans and Trump have characterized the prosecution by the Manhattan district attorney’s office as a partisan witch hunt.
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Cohen claims that he was directed to make the payment by Trump and was later reimbursed by the Trump organization under routine legal expenses. Trump has denied all wrongdoing in the matter.

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) described the indictment as a “dark day for America.”

“The unprecedented election interference from corrupt socialist District Attorney Alvin Bragg is a political witch-hunt and a dark day for America,” she said in a statement. “The radical Far Left will stop at nothing to persecute Joe Biden’s chief political opponent ahead of the 2024 presidential election to suppress the will and voice of the American people.”

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Twitter called the indictment a “sham” and “one of the clearest examples of extremist Democrats weaponizing government to attack their political opponents.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a longtime Trump ally, said the former president “is innocent and the only one standing in the way of these modern day tyrants, just like our founding fathers did, to protect each of us from evil.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said the indictment was not about the law, but “raw power.”

 Seriously, America's enemies gotta be laughing at how low the US justice system has fallen in such a short period of time, namely, ever since Obiden and Hillarious Clinton made up the Russia Collusion charges against Trump. And it was Hunter Biden who had a job in Burisma (an Ukranian company) at the time...

DeSantis Denounces Trump Indictment,
Says Florida ‘Will Not Assist in an Extradition Request’

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) blasted the indictment of former President Donald Trump.
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In a Twitter post, in addition to slamming the indictment, DeSantis, who is expected to announce his candidacy for the White House soon, said Florida will not help extradite Trump to New York. However, extradition is out of the governor’s control.

“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head.

“It is un-American.

“The Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney [Alvin Bragg] has consistently bent the law to downgrade felonies and to excuse criminal misconduct. Yet, now he is stretching the law to target a political opponent.

“Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda.”

However, as Trump defense attorney Joe Tacopina told CNN, the former president is expected to go to New York early next week.

‘Worst Case of Prosecutorial Abuse’:
Alan Dershowitz Reacts to Trump Indictment

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz harshly criticized the indictment of former President Donald Trump, describing it as an extreme case of prosecutorial misconduct.

“In 60 years of practice, this is the worst case of prosecutorial abuse I have ever seen,” Dershowitz told The Epoch Times on March 30. “What’s really unprecedented is not the indictment of a past president, but the indictment of a potential future president who was running against the head of the party of the man who indicted him.”

“It’s very dangerous—it means that district attorneys can indict their own political enemies,” the scholar said. “It really endangers the rule of law for all Americans. Today, it’s Trump; tomorrow, it’s a Democrat. The day after tomorrow, it’s your uncle Charlie, or your niece, or your nephew.”
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While no charges have been announced, Dershowitz said Bragg likely relied on elevating a charge of falsifying business records involving the payment to Daniels—a misdemeanor—to a felony by tying it to a federal charge of campaign finance violation.

“In order to turn the state statute into a felony, you have to borrow a federal statute,” Dershowitz told The Epoch Times in an interview earlier in March. He said that this combining of laws “seems to raise real serious legal questions.”

“Nobody should ever be arrested based on made-up laws or combining a federal and state statute,” Dershowitz told The Epoch Times in an interview on March 18. “I taught criminal law for 50 years at Harvard, and the one rule was, no creativity is permitted by prosecutors. The law has to be clear.”

“In Bragg’s case, what they’re trying to do is add one and one, and come up with 11. No rational person would look at these two statutes and say that Trump violated them,” Dershowitz said. “Thomas Jefferson once put it very nicely: For a criminal statute to be constitutional, the average person has to be able to understand it if he reads it while running.”

The case pursued by Bragg, a Democrat, is politically motivated, Dershowitz says.
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“It’s not a righteous prosecution. It’s not a just prosecution. And I think every libertarian, whether you’re conservative, or liberal, should be opposed to it,” he said. “There seem to be two systems of justice in America—one for the rest of us, and the other for Trump—and that’s the thesis of my book, ‘Get Trump.’ There is a special system of targeted injustice against Trump, and this is coming from a liberal Democrat who voted against him twice.

Dershowitz dismissed the idea that these cases would exert a material impact on Trump’s candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.

“He’s not going to get prison. Nonetheless, he can run as a convicted defendant,” Dershowitz said, referring to the 2024 election. “He can run from prison.”

US Argues for Immunity in
MK-ULTRA Mind-Control Case
Before Quebec Court of Appeal

A lawyer for the United States government told Quebec’s highest court today that the country should be immune from prosecution for the infamous brainwashing experiments at McGill University from the 1940s to the 1960s.

The U.S. government says it cannot be sued for the project known as MK-ULTRA—allegedly funded by the Canadian government and the CIA—because foreign states had absolute immunity from lawsuits in Canada during that period.

The court case stems from a class-action lawsuit filed against McGill University, Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital and the Canadian and U.S. governments after Montrealers were allegedly given experimental drugs, rounds of electroshocks, and deprived of sleep for weeks.

Last August, the Quebec Superior Court granted a request from the United States government to be dismissed from the case, and survivors and their families appealed that decision.

Class-action lawyer Jeff Orenstein says he believes Canada’s 1982 State Immunity Act, which outlines how foreign states can be sued in the country, is retroactive and can apply in this case.

The class action alleges that the government of Canada funded psychiatric treatments by Dr. Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute between 1948 and 1964 that were allegedly part of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program of covert mind-control.

White House Warns Americans Not to Travel to Russia After Arrest of WSJ Reporter

The Biden administration has condemned the detention of a Wall Street Journal reporter by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).

National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on March 30 that the targeting of American citizens by the Russian government is unacceptable and that the United States strongly condemns the detention of reporter Evan Gershkovich.

Kirby went on to say that President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation and has spoken with Gershkovich’s family and employer. He also told reporters that the U.S. embassy in Moscow is seeking consular access to the detainee.

The FSB, the main internal security and counterintelligence organization that succeeded the Soviet-era KGB, said on March 29 that it had detained the journalist stationed in Moscow, in the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains, around 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) east of Moscow.

Kirby also said the United States government continues to condemn the Russian government’s targeting and repression of journalists and American citizens.
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State Department Spokesperson Vedant Patel said during a March 30 press briefing that the U.S. Embassy has requested notification of arrest. He said it will likely be several days before they receive access to the journalist to offer consular services, but they will not speculate about or preview actions their department might take.

The spokesperson declined to speculate about whether they believe the journalist will be used in a prisoner swap but said the department is working “around the clock,” to try to gain access to and offer consular services to Gershkovich.

Russia’s security service announced the journalist’s apprehension, saying in a statement translated by state-run TASS that it had “thwarted the illegal activities of Evan Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen born in 1991, a correspondent of the Moscow bureau of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, who is suspected of spying in the interests of the American government.