Special counsel Jack Smith&#8217;s January 6 case against former President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> fails to pass the &#8220;banana republic test,&#8221; according to Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/alan-dershowitz">Alan Dershowitz</a>.
During a discussion with Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck, Dershowitz argued that prosecutors will not be able to prove Trump acted with a &#8220;corrupt motive&#8221; as he allegedly sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election over claims that it was stolen.
Still, the inquiry is escalating as Trump is campaigning as the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/in-first-rally-since-being-hit-with-expanded-charges-trump-calls-on-gop-challengers-to-drop-out">GOP frontrunner in the 2024 race</a> for the White House, setting up a possible general election rematch with President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>, Dershowitz noted.
&#8220;This just doesn&#8217;t satisfy the banana republic test. In banana republics, presidents prosecute their political opponents and the stronger their political opponents are in the polls, the more likely they are to be prosecuted,&#8221; Dershowitz said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Alan Dershowitz tells <a href="https://twitter.com/glennbeck?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@glennbeck</a>: &quot;This doesn&#39;t satisfy the Banana Republic test. In Banana Republics, presidents prosecute their political opponents and the stronger their political opponents are in the polls, the more likely they are to be prosecuted.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/uTUnom7MPG">pic.twitter.com/uTUnom7MPG</a>
&mdash; TheBlaze (@theblaze) <a href="https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/1686808031831408679?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 2, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Dershowitz pointed to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/latest-presidential-polls-trump-desantis-in-dead-heat-with-biden">polling showing</a> Trump and Biden virtually tied in a head-to-head matchup. He said any indictment against the former president &#8220;better be the strongest indictment in American history&#8221; with &#8220;smoking gun&#8221; evidence.
The four-count indictment <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-responds-to-latest-criminal-indictment-reminiscent-of-nazi-germany">brought on Tuesday</a> is &#8220;flawed&#8221; and &#8220;filled with speculation,&#8221; Dershowitz said, adding that it does not meet the &#8220;Nixon standard&#8221; established when former President Richard Nixon&#8217;s Republican allies turned against him during the Watergate scandal.
Trump has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. He is expected to be arraigned in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Among Smith&#8217;s defenders is former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who <a href="https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1686503121470500864">told MSNBC</a> that the special counsel was &#8220;picked as an independent, career prosecutor.&#8221; He said attacks on &#8220;the Biden Justice Department&#8221; for &#8220;going after&#8221; Trump are &#8220;poppycock.&#8221;
On the other side of the argument is George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who wrote an <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/08/02/trump-indictment-2020-election-jan-6-not-legally-sound/70509753007/">op-ed published by USA Today</a> saying Smith aims to &#8220;criminalize false political claims&#8221; in a way that will &#8220;bulldoze through the First Amendment and a line of Supreme Court cases.&#8221;
Trump faces two other indictments in a documents-related case brought by Smith and a hush-money case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He may also be charged in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/georgia-prosecutor-ready-to-go-with-trump-case">2020 election inquiry in Georgia</a>. Trump has broadly denied any wrongdoing and claims he is the target of a political &#8220;witch hunt.&#8221;
Dershowitz, who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial, previously claimed to Fox Business that Smith&#8217;s documents-related case against the former president <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/alan-dershowitz-trump-indictment-pass-richard-nixon-test">failed to pass the Nixon test</a> and &#8220;may be the most dangerous indictment in political history.&#8221;

Alan Dershowitz

Dershowitz Argues Trump Case ‘Doesn’t Satisfy The Banana Republic Test’

Dershowitz Argues Trump Case 'Doesn't Satisfy The Banana Republic Test'

2020 Election

Donald Trump

Lawfare

U.S.

The Stanford Law diversity dean who helped protesters shut down a speech by a conservative judge comes from a privileged family and is following in the footsteps of her mother &#8211;who once ran training sessions that accused Buddhists of being &#8220;too white.&#8221;
The Daily Wire reported this week that Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Tirian Steinbach spoke last year at a “grieving session” for a transgender student who committed suicide and then turned the floor over to her mother, who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-stanford-laws-diversity-dean-protesters-poached-their-trans-martyr-from-federalist-society" target="_blank" rel="noopener">compared the student favorably to 9/11 hijackers</a>, claiming that neither felt listened to.
Steinbach’s mother is Sala Steinbach, who was originally Marilyn Steinbach but took the alternate name after embracing Buddhism in the 1990s, and quickly began running radical Critical Race Theory sessions that posited that western Buddhism was too white and full of racists.
The dean’s father is Alan Steinbach, a chemistry professor who held a prestigious position at the Marine Biological Laboratory just off of Martha’s Vineyard, where a pleasure boat was registered in Sala’s name, according to public records reviewed by The Daily Wire.
He inherited that position from his father, Henry Burr Steinbach, a University of Chicago professor who led the laboratory in addition to being assistant director of the National Science Foundation, director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and president of the American Society of Zoologists and the Society for General Physiologists, according to his obituary in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/24/obituaries/henry-b-steinbach-professor-of-biology-and-director-of-lab.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Times</a>.
When she was known as Marilyn, Steinbach&#8217;s mother lived a charmed live, <a href="https://academeblog.org/2018/01/14/mlk-j-b-s-call-and-the-march-for-jobs-and-freedom/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cavorting in Paris</a> as a young woman who aspired to be a dancer. In 1963, she went to a Paris cafe where she later described people “sitting around drinking café lattes and discussing the March on Washington” and decided to go back to America to listen to Martin Luther King’s speech. She went to Skidmore College and joined the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). She met her husband when he placed a call from his graduate school looking for a way to transport busloads of students to a protest of the Vietnam war, Tirien wrote in 2018.
Sala’s maritime life off of Martha’s Vineyard instilled in her a love of nature, which then led her to Buddhism.
“My spiritual home is Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. It’s a place with deep dharma practice, beautiful gardens, acres of flowers and vegetables,” she <a href="https://archive.ph/d7rOw">wrote</a> in 1996.
But there was also a problem: Like her daughter, Buddhists in America were mostly white.
“As an institution, Green Gulch is passionately involved with ecology. The people there are, with some exceptions, European Americans. I want them to care for and work for the health and beauty and safety of human diversity as passionately as they do for biodiversity,” she wrote.
<div id="attachment_537361" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-537361" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-537361" src="https://dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/alan-steinbach-300x194.png" alt="Alan Steinbach, father of Stanford Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach. Marine Biological Laboratory screenshot" width="300" height="194" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-300x194.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-891x576.png 891w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-768x496.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-1536x993.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/alan-steinbach-2048x1324.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Alan Steinbach, the father of Stanford Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach. Marine Biological Laboratory screenshot</div>
She began running hardcore Critical Race Theory exercises on San Francisco Buddhists, ordering them to stand on opposite corners of the room depending on their identity politics group, and then hurl out invectives against the others, asking questions like, “When you were a child, what were you told about the group across from you? &#8230; What are some of the names used to refer to that other group?”
She teamed up with a white Buddhist to work on an anti-racist project, before accusing that woman of being a racist. “You and I are in deep trouble… You don’t know the power of ‘Whiteness,’” Sala <a href="https://inquiringmind.com/article/1202_14_gates_alchemy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Barbara Gates, her would-be collaborator, Gates wrote. “I don’t want to be alone in these conversations in case someone—probably in all innocence—expresses unexamined racism that might be hurtful to me.”
When Dean Steinbach brought her mother to an event marking the life of a transgender student who had committed suicide, Sala drew on her Buddhist beliefs, saying a monk had told her the day after the September 11, 2001 attacks that “I don’t know what those men were thinking, but I know that no one was listening to them, or at least they felt that way,” and that the same applied to the student, according to Federalist Society chapter president Tim Rosenberg, who attended the event. The transgender student was in fact a member of the conservative group, but the dean later sided with students protesting it, purportedly for being a threat to transgender lives.
Like her mother, Dean Steinbach combined her privilege and tantial grip on an “oppressed” identity to make a career out of calling out hidden bigotry in the most unlikely of places—in her case, the elite campus of America’s top-ranked law school, in uber-liberal Palo Alto.
Despite only one of her four grandparents being fully black, the dean’s diversity job resting on a resume that included serving as vice president of the Law Students of African Descent. “In 2017, she launched the Coalition for Equity and Inclusion in Law (CCEIL), a Bay Area regional cohort of law and policy organizations dedicated to advancing greater cultural equity, inclusion, and diversity in the sector,” her Stanford <a href="https://law.stanford.edu/directory/tirien-steinbach/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">biography</a> says.
Fighting for the oppressed was lucrative work. In the year ending March 2021, she made $253,000 for working 38 hours a week as the chief program officer for the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Northern California, according to <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/940279770/202230319349301623/full" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tax filings</a>. Three months later, she took the job at Stanford, which presumably came with a pay increase.
Steinbach did not return a request for comment.
Part 1: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-stanford-laws-diversity-dean-protesters-poached-their-trans-martyr-from-federalist-society">How Stanford Law’s ‘Diversity Dean,’ Protesters Poached Their Trans Martyr From Federalist Society</a>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meet-the-seattle-schools-woke-indoctrination-czar-who-married-a-child-molester">Meet The Seattle Schools Woke Indoctrination Czar Who Married A Child Molester</a>

US_Navy_040221-N-2899A-003_Rear_Adm._Ann_E._Rondeau_salutes_the_National_Ensign_after_presenting_it_to_Sala_Marilyn_Steinbach,_daughter_of_William_Sylvester_White

Stanford Law’s ‘Diversity Dean’ Who Lectured Judge Grew Up In Wealth, Privilege

Stanford Law's 'Diversity Dean' Who Lectured Judge Grew Up In Wealth, Privilege

California

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Readers Pass

Stanford University

When Stanford Law <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-traumatized-students-can-seek-mental-health-support-from-dean-who-ruined-judges-visit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">protesters</a> accused the school&#8217;s Federalist Society chapter last month of putting LGBTQ lives in danger by inviting a conservative judge to speak, they cited the suicide of a transgender classmate last year. What they didn&#8217;t mention was that the student they held up as a martyr was a member of the conservative group and counted many fellow members as friends.
Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach infamously took protesters’ side, telling Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan that he posed “harm” to trans people. But Steinbach was well aware that Dylan Simmons, Stanford’s most visible, and now deceased, transgender law student, had been a member of the conservative group she demonized, the law school&#8217;s Federalist Society President Tim Rosenberger told The Daily Wire.
Simmons <a href="https://law.stanford.edu/stanford-lawyer/articles/dylan-simmons-js-22-ba-ma-17-1994-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">died</a> January 20, 2022 after becoming isolated and depressed during coronavirus lockdowns, Rosenberger said. Born a female in China and then adopted by a family in Texas, Simmons began identifying as a male at age 20 and majored in gender studies. As a law student, Simmons was active in identity politics groups, but also held conservative views.
After Simmons&#8217; death, Steinbach &#8220;was the main driver&#8221; in planning a “grieving session” that devolved into a left-wing rally in which Steinbach’s mother likened the dead student to the September 11 hijackers, Rosenberger said.
More than a year later, during the March 9 Federalist Society event with Duncan, leftist students attacked conservative jurisprudence as a threat to LGBTQ people and brandished signs accusing the society of causing trans suicide. To people outside of Stanford, it was a standard accusation of “transphobia” made against conservatives. But to Simmons&#8217; Federalist Society friends, it took on a sinister brazenness.
“Certainly the implication was that we were responsible” for their member&#8217;s death, said Rosenberger, who himself is openly gay.
On April 9, a month after the protest, OutLaw—a group of radical gender activists at the law school—released a statement attempting to justify its disruption of the event.
“We must say aloud what so many have failed to recognize: Our community is still healing from the loss of Dylan Simmons, one of our most beloved and most visible trans members, last year,&#8221; the statement read. &#8220;This grief runs deep. Healing is not linear. And our wounds are opened again and again as our community weathers relentless attacks on our lives.”
Members of OutLaw may not have known much about Simmons, who once gifted the Federalist Society chapter an autographed copy of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s autobiography. Records provided to The Daily Wire by the national Federalist Society group show that Simmons paid dues on January 7, 2021.
But Steinbach was very familiar with Simmons&#8217; sad saga. Although she had only been working at the law school for <a href="https://law.stanford.edu/press/tirien-angela-steinbach-joins-stanford-law-school-as-associate-dean-for-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">about 6 months </a>when Simmons died, she played a key role in planning the “grieving session” for Simmons, Rosenberger said.  The session was initially to take place during a meeting of the Federalist Society, prompting Rosenberger to ask that it be rescheduled.
Steinbach claimed to have been close to Simmons—though she also seemed to know little about the student&#8217;s religious or political views, Rosenberger said. The service she planned took several bizarre twists, some which seemed to underscore that its real purpose was to push leftist politics, not mark a life lost.
Rosenberger recalled a black preacher who was invited to give Simmons&#8217; eulogy telling mourners that &#8220;we don&#8217;t know&#8221; what Simmons thought of the afterlife, then recommending they read a book called &#8220;Grieving While Black&#8221;&#8211;even though none of the students in attendance were black.
“Dylan was a confirmed member of the Methodist church. What he thought of the afterlife wasn’t some unknowable fact,” Rosenberger said.
The strangest moment, according to Rosenberger, came when Steinbach told the gathering she was &#8220;so overcome with grief that I can barely function, so I asked my mom to come with me and say a few words.&#8221;
Steinbach’s mother acknowledged never having met Simmons, but said that, &#8220;I feel like I knew him because my daughter was so close to him,&#8221; Rosenberger said.
She said she had been thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who was exiled from Vietnam after refusing to choose sides in the war against communism and who went on to found monasteries and retreats in the West, including in Berkeley, California. According to Rosenberg, she said she spoke to Hanh on September 12, 2001, the day after terrorists killed 3,000 Americans, “and he said ‘I don’t know what those men were thinking, but I know that no one was listening to them, or at least they felt that way.’”
The session did not lessen Rosenberger’s grief.
“So she’s comparing Dylan to the 9/11 hijackers? And favorably?” he said. “Now I was sort of pissed off.”
Neither Steinbach nor her mother returned requests for comment.
The fact that Simmons, who at the time may have been Stanford Law’s only openly transgender student, was a member of the conservative group “was sort of scrubbed” to advance identity politics, he said.
<div id="attachment_537405" style="width: 236px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-537405" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-537405" src="https://dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/fedsoc-flier-226x300.png" alt="A flier posted on Stanford Law's campus by the group Outlaw. Courtesy the Federalist Society" width="226" height="300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/fedsoc-flier-226x300.png 226w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/fedsoc-flier-435x576.png 435w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/fedsoc-flier-768x1018.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/04/fedsoc-flier.png 1026w" sizes="(max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px" />A flier posted on Stanford Law&#8217;s campus by the group Outlaw. Courtesy the Federalist Society</div>
Last month&#8217;s incident involving Judge Duncan catapulted Steinbach into international headlines. Stanford’s president and law school dean later <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-president-law-school-dean-apologize-to-judge-after-verbal-assault-on-campus" target="_blank" rel="noopener">apologized</a> to Duncan and placed Steinbach on leave, but Steinbach penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal without permission that doubled down on her rhetoric.
In the April 9 statement from OutLaw, the radical activist group expressed &#8220;our profound gratitude for a community leader who has done more than any other to make this place safe and accepting: Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach.&#8221;
Read Part 2,<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-laws-diversity-dean-who-lectured-judge-grew-up-in-wealth-privilege"> Stanford Law&#8217;s &#8216;Diversity Dean&#8217; Who Lectured Judge Grew Up In Wealth, Privilege,</a> to hear how in between boating off Martha&#8217;s Vineyard, the dean’s mom ran struggle sessions accusing Buddhism of being too white.

Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Tirian Steinbach. Center for Ethics and Public Policy screenshot

How Stanford Law’s ‘Diversity Dean,’ Protesters Poached Their Trans Martyr From Federalist Society

How Stanford Law's 'Diversity Dean,' Protesters Poached Their Trans Martyr From Federalist Society

Censorship

We in the pro-Israel community are certainly accustomed, by now, to the myriad of pro-Palestinian activists and political leftists who engage in rank hypocrisy when it comes to the Jewish state. In fact, the U.S. State Department&#8217;s <a href="https://www.state.gov/defining-anti-semitism/">working definition of anti-Semitism</a> actually includes such hypocrisy as one example of anti-Semitic behavior: &#8220;Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.&#8221;
Alas, someone ought to notify the folks at far-left <a href="https://www.hrw.org">Human Rights Watch</a>.
<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-selective-opponent-of-settlers-11579046287?mod=opinion_lead_pos9">Writing today</a> at The Wall Street Journal, international law expert and law professor Eugene Kontorovich — scholar at the Kohelet Policy Forum in Jerusalem, professor at George Mason University’s Scalia Law School, and director of that law school&#8217;s new <a href="https://cilme.gmu.edu">Center for International Law in the Middle East</a> — opines that Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, &#8220;promot[es] boycotts and international prosecution [of Israel] for the supposed crimes of occupation and settlement,&#8221; but &#8220;elsewhere &#8230; strongly supports settlements in occupied territories.&#8221;
&#8220;The settlements Ms. Whitson supports are in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area that was within the borders of post-Soviet Azerbaijan until 1994, when Armenia occupied the region after a protracted war,&#8221; the international law scholar continued. &#8220;Since then, the Armenian leadership in Yerevan has actively encouraged the movement of settlers into the area. Many Armenians regard Karabakh as their historic homeland. But the United Nations, international courts and the U.S. all consider it occupied Azeri territory.&#8221;
Kontorovich then unraveled the precise nature of Whitson&#8217;s hypocrisy. In response to Kontorovich asking Whitson about her work with Armenian National Committee of America, which Kontorovich labels a &#8220;pro-settler charity,&#8221; Whitson responded to the professor: &#8220;My personal support for Armenian diaspora organizations pertains to their charitable and educational work in Armenia and their efforts to advocate for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.&#8221;
But having none of it, Kontorovich then ripped Whitson for trying to have it both ways.
&#8220;This explanation is at odds with [Human Rights Watch&#8217;s] approach to Israel, where the group calls for boycotts of entire companies — including unrelated divisions — because some of their work is in settlements,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;It is also at odds with the record: Ms. Whitson’s fundraising appeals for pro-settlement groups are in no way limited to educational issues. She has celebrated the work of the Armenian General Benevolent Union, which supports new settlement construction to encourage &#8216;young families to set down their roots.&#8217; She specifically <a href="https://agbu.org/news-item/sarah-leah-whitson/?mod=article_inline" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="15">praised the group for helping Syrian Armenians who have &#8216;resettled in Armenia&#8217;</a>; many or most such refugees have been resettled in the occupied territory.&#8221;
&#8220;If [Human Rights Watch] were serious about its opposition to &#8216;settlers&#8217; and &#8216;occupation,&#8217; it wouldn’t have a supporter of them heading its Middle East division,&#8221; the professor continued.
Reached by The Daily Wire for exclusive comment, Kontorovich elaborated on leftist hypocrisy on the nexus of Israel, international law, and the law of &#8220;occupation.&#8221;
&#8220;It is not news that progressives, in the name of international law, target Israeli obsessively and exclusively for boycotts and delegitimization,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire. &#8220;But they dismiss such observation as &#8216;whataboutism,&#8217; saying their efforts to enforce international law must start somewhere.&#8221;
&#8220;My revelations show that Rashida Tlaib [who is co-sponsoring a bill to normalize relations with Armenian settlements], Sarah Leah Whitson, and others are not simply ignoring situations of occupation around the world — they are promoting them, without having their progressive bona fides revoked. All of their talk about enforcing international law is just a euphemism for creating a Judenrein zone in Judea and Samaria.&#8221;
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-trump-administration-is-absolutely-correct-to-call-israeli-settlements-legal">The Trump Administration Is Absolutely Correct To Call Israeli &#8216;Settlements&#8217; Legal.</a>

Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW

HYPOCRISY: Human Rights Watch Opposes Israeli ‘Settlements,’ Supports Settlements Elsewhere

Foreign Policy

Israel

Middle East

Palestinians

Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, who is a constitutional attorney by training, has the following op-ed today at the <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/29/the-icc-has-some-nerve-to-target-israel/">New York Post</a>.
Among the institutions of the so-called international community, anti-Israel bias is so prevalent and obvious, it’s taken for granted and almost funny. The year-end statistics from the U.N. General Assembly tell nearly the whole story: Of the 25 condemnatory resolutions passed this year, 18 targeted the world’s sole Jewish state.
As I said, almost funny.
But now a more serious threat looms. The United Nations, for all its institutionalized anti-Semitism, remains a toothless body. Not so the Hague-based International Criminal Court, whose judgments can make life miserable for Israeli leaders and soldiers, rendering them vulnerable to arrest abroad.
On Dec. 20, Fatou Bensouda, a Gambian who has served as the ICC’s chief prosecutor since 2012, announced her intention to formally investigate the “situation in Palestine” and alleged Israeli war crimes that “have been or are being committed there.”
Bensouda served as a prosecutor and later justice minister under Gambia’s iron-fisted former dictator Yahya Jammeh. Speaking ­before a Gambian truth-and-reconciliation commission, one dissident accused her of “masterminding” the torture he suffered. (Bensouda has denied knowledge of this torture.)
No wonder she is bent on making a scapegoat of Jews. Specifically, she wants to probe Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip during the last full-scale war against Hamas, in 2014. She also plans to investigate the Jewish state’s response to Hamas’ attempt last year to infiltrate the border fence that separates Israel from the terrorist-run territory.
Bensouda’s prosecution is utterly lawless. As a political matter, the West must push back against this encroachment on the sovereignty of a democratic nation-state.
For starters, the ICC is structurally biased against Israel. As international-law expert Eugene Kontorovich noted when the Palestinian Authority sought formal ICC membership in 2015, the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, included language at the behest of the Arab states specifically designed to ­demonize Israeli “settlement” activity in the West Bank.
That should have given away the ICC game. But even under the ICC’s own terms, Bensouda’s attempted prosecution doesn’t pass muster. It lacks jurisdiction.
Under the Rome Statute, the ICC can go ahead with a prosecution in a country only if the state has delegated jurisdiction to the ­international court. But which state could delegate jurisdiction to the ICC in the case of the Palestinian territories? Certainly not the fictional “State of Palestine,” which even the United Nations doesn’t formally recognize as a state.
Plus, if Israel is a nefarious “occupier” of Palestine, as Palestinian propaganda constantly claims, then it means that the “State of Palestine” isn’t sovereign over its own claimed territory and therefore can’t delegate jurisdiction to the ICC.
An ICC prosecution, moreover, would flout the Oslo Accords, which call for direct negotiations between the parties to reach a final political settlement and under which Israel ­retains full civil and military control over the majority of the West Bank territory
<a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/29/the-icc-has-some-nerve-to-target-israel/">Read the rest of the piece here.</a>
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-vox-lies-about-israel-again">Vox Lies About Israel. AGAIN.</a>

Fatou Bensouda, Prosecutor of the International Criminal

Hammer At The ‘New York Post’: The ICC Has Some Nerve To Target Israel

Africa

Human Rights

Judiciary

Lawsuit

In a move that will only further buttress the Trump administration&#8217;s well-deserved claim to being the most pro-Israel American presidency since the 1948 founding of the Jewish state, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-administration-announces-major-policy-shift-toward-israel-no-longer-views-israels-west-bank-settlements-as-violation-of-international-law">announced</a> today that it shall henceforth be the policy of the United States that Israeli &#8220;settlements&#8221; — Jews living in the biblical Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria — do not, by their very existence, violate international law.
&#8220;After carefully studying all sides of the legal debate, this [a]dministration agrees with President Reagan [that] [t]he establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law,&#8221; Pompeo said. Former top Trump administration Middle East peace negotiator <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-trump-administration-right-un-can-never-josh-hammer">Jason Greenblatt</a> further broke down the administration&#8217;s move on <a href="https://images1.ynet.co.il/static/video/vpreview.html?m3u8=https://besttv227-hls-video-ynet.cdn.it.best-tv.com/1119/16c995093f4d46ed55f7bffed4c648f4/master.m3u8&amp;hd1080=0">Israeli television</a>: &#8220;The right [legal] result &#8230; is that Israeli settlements are not per se illegal,&#8221; he explained.
This is a <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1196495392466231296">paradigm-altering</a> and inspired decision for which the Trump administration deserves effusive praise. It is manifestly correct on the black-letter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AYZBjoeeehg?autoplay=0">international law merits</a>, symbolic in its courageous defiance of the sclerotic groupthink of the ubiquitously anti-Semitic &#8220;international community,&#8221; and stakes out a bold moral starting point in the longstanding fight for Judea and Samaria — which is ground zero in the fight for Western civilization itself.
In many academic, legal, and political circles the world over, it is taken as something of an unassailable given that Israeli &#8220;settlements&#8221; built over the 1967 armistice line are illegal under well-established principles of international law. In reality, nothing could be further from the case. As legal academic Eugene Kontorovich has painstakingly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYZBjoeeehg">pressed for years</a> and as Elliott Hamilton once <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-down-israeli-occupation-myth-elliott-hamilton">argued</a> here at The Daily Wire, it is Israel that actually has the preeminent modern-day legal claim to the biblical Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria — a.k.a the &#8220;West Bank.&#8221;
Israel&#8217;s claim is based on the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations&#8217; 1922 Mandate for Palestine, the San Remo Conference, <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2011/09/22/article-80-and-the-un-recognition-of-a-“palestinian-state”/">U.N. Charter Article 80</a>, the Arabs&#8217; decision to refuse the U.N.&#8217;s November 1947 partition plan in lieu of attempting to commit genocidal jihad against the Jews, and Israel&#8217;s subsequent victories in the defensive wars against invading Arab foes in both 1967 and 1973. The lands that today constitute Judea and Samaria were never, ever in their entire history part of a sovereign state called &#8220;Palestine&#8221;; on the contrary, they were merely <a href="http://www.sixdaywar.org/content/jordanianocuupationjerusalem.asp">illegally occupied</a> by the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan between Israel&#8217;s independence in 1948 and Israel&#8217;s miraculous victory in the Six Day War of 1967. Watch Kontorovich&#8217;s fuller explication of Israel&#8217;s clearly superior legal claim to Judea and Samaria:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Disputing Occupation: Israel&#039;s Borders and Settlements in International Law" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AYZBjoeeehg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Yet for all its black-letter legal correctness, the Trump administration&#8217;s decision is arguably even more indispensable for its pure symbolism. In reversing Obama presidency-era legal precedent and re-asserting the Reagan presidency-era belief that Israeli &#8220;settlements&#8221; are not legally problematic, the Trump administration has flipped two delectably brazen middle fingers at one of the most deeply held shibboleths of the leftist, <a href="https://theresurgent.com/2016/12/27/destroy-the-united-nations/">Jew-hating</a> &#8220;international community.&#8221; In left-leaning legal and political science academe circles, there is perhaps no more agreed-upon &#8220;truth&#8221; than the notion that Israel is an illegal &#8220;occupier&#8221; that flagrantly tramples all over Palestinian-Arabs&#8217; rights to sovereignty and self-determination. The Trump administration has just taken a jackhammer to that golden calf of ivory tower idolatry — and it has done so less than a week after the European Union&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kalev-european-political-opposition-to-the-jewish-state-should-not-be-taken-lightly">anti-Semitic decision</a> to specifically label certain Israeli products made by Jews living in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria. Bravo — truly.
Finally, though it would not — and, indeed, does not — admit it, the Trump administration has also just staked out a morally righteous starting point in the final political resolution of the dispute between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over Judea and Samaria. Secretary Pompeo today was careful today to emphasize that the Trump administration&#8217;s legal proclamation bears no relationship to the ultimate political adjudication of Judea and Samaria&#8217;s status, and we ought to take him at his word that the administration did not intend to put its political or moral thumb on the scale. Indeed, given that the administration&#8217;s unveiling of its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fleisher-clash-american-liberal-jewry-and-israeli-yishai-fleisher">&#8220;Deal of the Century&#8221;</a> peace plan is still awaiting Israel durably securing a new parliamentary coalition, perhaps it would even be politically imprudent for the administration to do so.
But, at least indirectly, it seems to have done so nonetheless. By refusing to pay lip service to demonstrably erroneous legal fictions pertaining to Israel&#8217;s allegedly illegal &#8220;occupation&#8221; in Judea and Samaria, the Trump administration has — at least inadvertently — emboldened Israel&#8217;s political negotiating position. How could Israel not feel empowered to more adamantly push its political position vis-à-vis Judea and Samaria if it knows that the world&#8217;s greatest superpower and its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-pro-israel-case-against-u-s-military-aid-to-israel">chief foreign aid</a> provider does not, in fact, view its purportedly most infamous illegality as not actually being illegal? Israel should feel more secure in its pushing for increased sovereignty over the ground zero battleground between liberalized Western civilization and barbaric jihad that is Judea and Samaria.
The Trump administration has, once again, shown its unmistakable and remarkable commitment to the irreplaceable American ally that is Israel. Thank you, President Trump.

Ariel, Israel

HAMMER: The Trump Administration Is Absolutely Correct To Call Israeli ‘Settlements’ Legal

Mike Pompeo

State Department

Trump Administration

In a decision that likely shocked even the White House, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling and temporarily approved a potential Trump administration policy that would see asylum seekers who arrive at the United States-Mexico border forced to remain in Mexico, rather than the U.S., while their claims are being processed.
A San Francisco judge denied the Trump administration the ability to institute the policy while the full policy is under litigation. On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit, which had issued a stay on the policy back in April, continuing the San Francisco court&#8217;s response, lifted the stay, determining that the Trump administration could go forward with the policy while the full case matures, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/appeals-court-allows-trump-administration-to-send-back-asylum-seekers-to-mexico-to-wait-out-court-process">Fox News reports</a>.
That means that the &#8220;case must still be considered on its merits at a lower court in San Francisco,&#8221; but that the Trump administration is not prohibited from instituting the policy while they wait.
Opponents of the &#8220;remain in Mexico&#8221; policy, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the recently disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center, contend that the policy should be temporarily halted because asylum seekers will suffer undue harm if they are not allowed to remain in the United States for the four to six months it now takes to process an asylum claim.
&#8220;The lawsuit on behalf of 11 asylum seekers from Central America and legal advocacy groups says the Trump administration is violating U.S. law by failing to adequately evaluate the dangers that migrants face in Mexico,&#8221; according to Fox News.
The ACLU and SPLC also claim that the &#8220;return to Mexico&#8221; policy is a deterrent to migrants seeking asylum in violation of their legal right to apply for safe refuge in the United States, because migrants seeking asylum want immediate assistance.
The Trump administration, through the Department of Homeland Security, formulated the policy in response to a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers presenting themselves at official border crossings in the final quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019. Knowing that U.S. Customs and Border Protection are overwhelmed, most asylum seekers now assume &#8212; or are told &#8212; that they will be given a court date for their asylum hearing and then released into the United States pending that hearing, a process known as &#8220;catch and release.&#8221;
The Trump administration discontinued the &#8220;catch and release&#8221; program, but then immediately ran into difficulty. Asylum seekers with minor children cannot be kept in CBP custody more than three weeks, and separating families (as a way around that policy), resulted in a nationwide backlash. CBP now tries to hold asylum seekers as long as possible, but border patrol facilities are made for several thousand detainees, not several hundred thousand.
The &#8220;remain in Mexico&#8221; policy isn&#8217;t popular with Mexican authorities, who say their border towns are now also overrun with asylum seekers and members of &#8220;migrant caravans&#8221; that have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Many of those migrants also rebuff Mexican offers of asylum, temporary work permits, or a ride back to their home country, clearly preferring to declare asylum in the United States.
The full &#8220;remain in Mexico&#8221; case is expected to begin litigation this summer.

SHOCK: Ninth Circuit Approves Trump Admin’s ‘Wait In Mexico’ Asylum Policy

Illegal Immigration

Immigrants

Immigration

Southern Border

The two Nigerian-American brothers who helped &#8220;Empire&#8221; actor Jussie Smollett carry out his alleged &#8220;hate hoax&#8221; attack have sued Smollett&#8217;s Hollywood-based attorneys in federal court alleging defamation.
<a href="https://www.cwbchicago.com/2019/04/nigerian-brothers-sue-smollett.html">CWB Chicago reports</a> that &#8220;[t]he complaint filed this morning in Chicago&#8217;s federal courthouse seeks more than $75,000 each for Olabinjo &#8216;Ola&#8217; Osundairo and Abimbola &#8216;Bola&#8217; Osundairo from attorneys Mark Geragos and Tina Glandian as well as the Geragos &amp; Geragos Law Firm.&#8221;
The lawsuit not only accuses Smollett&#8217;s attorneys of making defamatory claims that they believe went above and beyond merely advocating for their client in the public square, but outlines, in a signed and sworn document, how they helped Smollett carry out the alleged &#8220;hate hoax,&#8221; which, they say, was entirely orchestrated by Smollett himself.
The two brothers allege that Smollett paid them &#8220;a sum of money to stage the attack to benefit himself&#8221; and then &#8220;directed every aspect of the attack, including the location and the noose.&#8221;
The pair of brothers, who work as amateur personal trainers and nutritionists in Chicago, and took bit parts in local television shows, including &#8220;Empire,&#8221; where they first connected with Smollett, contend they were cowed into the deal: &#8220;Mr. Smollett used his clout as a wealthy actor to influence Plaintiffs, who were in a subordinate relationship to him and were aspiring to &#8216;make it&#8217; in Hollywood.&#8221;
&#8220;Mr. Smollett&#8217;s motivation was simple. He wanted his employer and the public to notice and appreciate him as a successful black, openly gay actor. So, Mr. Smollett directed every aspect of the attack, including the location and the noose,&#8221; the lawsuit says.
After weeks of a Chicago Police Department investigation into what Smollett said was racist and homophobic attack, that took place outside of his apartment building in the tony downtown Chicago neighborhood of Streeterville, detectives determined that Smollett himself was responsible for orchestrating the attack. The actor was arrested and charged with 17 criminal counts, most relating to filing a false police report with CPD.
In a controversial move, the Cook County State&#8217;s Attorney&#8217;s office dropped the charges against Smollett in exchange for $10,000 and 16 hours of community service, but no admission of guilt on Smollett&#8217;s part. The brothers say that Smollett took that deal as evidence of his innocence, but that Smollett&#8217;s lawyers &#8220;continued to maintain in media appearances that the brothers were responsible for the attack, with [Smollett attorney Tina] Glandian going so far to suggest the two men may have been wearing &#8216;whiteface&#8217; to disguise their identities during the attack.&#8221;
In a press conference held Tuesday, the brothers&#8217; attorney, Gloria Schmidt, said the continued attention has hurt the brothers&#8217; respective businesses, and caused them untold emotional pain.
&#8220;Attorneys Mark Geragos and Tina Glandian, through their continued false statements and hateful rhetoric, have only deepened the damage that was cause by the very first out of 16 counts of lies that were told to the police that started this whole situation,&#8221; Glandian said. &#8220;They were asked to do something by a friend whom they trusted and at the end of the day that trust was betrayed.&#8221;
In their own statement, the two brothers justified their lawsuit: &#8220;We have sat back and watched lie after lie being fabricated about us in the media only so one big lie can continue to have light. These lies are destroying our character and reputation and personal life&#8230;Those who know us personally know we don&#8217;t have hate for anyone. That is not who we are. We try to spread love and positivity. We will no longer sit back and allow these lies to continue.&#8221;
The lawsuit also lists a handful of other, secondary statements the Osundairo brothers say contributed to their problems. The two allege that Smollett attorney Mark Geragos accused the pair of criminally battering Smollett, that Glandin accused the pair of engaging in an illegal Nigerian drug trafficking scam, and that Glandian suggested one of the brothers had been in a homosexual relationship with Smollett. That brother says he is straight and in a relationship with a woman.
&#8220;The Plaintiffs feel unsafe and alienated in their local Chicago community. This is because Mr. Geragos, a very famous attorney, falsely &amp; publicly stated they have committed a heinous, racially, and homophobically motivated hate crime, that they lied under oath, and that lied to the Chicago Police Department.&#8221;
The two brothers have asked for a jury trial. No date has yet been set.

Brothers Who Helped Carry Out Alleged ‘Hate Hoax’ SUE Jussie Smollett’s Attorneys For Defamation

Chicago

Jussie Smollett

Racism

President Donald Trump and the Trump Corporation filed suit Monday against House Democrats, led by House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD), to prevent the committee from issuing subpoenas seeking the president&#8217;s financial records, both from his companies and from an accounting firm hired to handle Trump finances.
<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/22/trump-sues-to-block-subpoena-from-house-democrats-seeking-information-on-his-finances.html">NBC News reports</a> the filings accuse Democrats of having &#8220;declared all-out political war&#8221; on the president, and that Democrats&#8217; subpoenas are less a legal device and more a &#8220;weapon of choice&#8221; for members of the House Oversight Committee and the House Ethics Committee.
Democrats pledged, immediately upon taking over the House in January, that they would begin a number of investigations into the president, including probes into the Trump campaign, whether Trump&#8217;s continued &#8212; yet hands off &#8212; ownership of the Trump Corporation violated government financial regulations, and whether Trump is profiting off his position in violation of the Constitution&#8217;s Emoluments Clause.
After the Mueller report was released last week, showing no signs of collusion between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russian officials looking to sway the results of the 2016 presidential election, Democrats have also pledged to investigate the investigators. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and others have said they will call Special Counsel Robert Mueller and members of his team to testify in front of various House committees to explain how they found no evidence of collusion despite a nearly two year-long investigation.
Last week, Cummings issued several subpoenas to various arms of the Trump organization, including a company called Mazars, which NBC News describes as &#8220;an accounting firm that Trump had used to prepare several years of financial statements.&#8221;
&#8220;The subpoena requested a slew of financial documents and related materials from Trump, his trust, the Trump Organization, the Trump Corporation, Trump&#8217;s holdings company, the Trump Foundation and the Trump International Hotel in Washington,&#8221; the outlet says.
Mazars informed Cummings that they would not give over the documents willingly, and that a subpoena would probably be required to obtain all the information Cummings and his committee want.
Democrats say the information is vitally necessary to piecing together how Trump plans to make money from his various enterprises while he&#8217;s in office, and in a statement, Cummings claimed that their subpoenas are legitimate and that the White House is merely &#8220;stonewalling on all fronts,&#8221; having &#8220;refused to produce a single document or witness to the Oversight Committee during this entire year.&#8221;
Trump and his lawyers see it differently, calling the flurry of subpoenas &#8220;presidential harassment&#8221; and a useless effort to &#8220;obtain years&#8217; worth of confidential information from their accountants.&#8221; The Democrats plan, Trump&#8217;s lawyers added, &#8220;lacks any legitimate legislative purpose, is an abuse of power, and is just another example of overreach by the president&#8217;s political opponents.&#8221;
Axios also reports that Trump&#8217;s lawyers referenced the Mueller report and the Mueller investigation specifically, claiming that House Democrats are looking to assume &#8220;the powers of the Department of Justice, investigating (dubious and partisan) allegations of illegal conduct by private individuals outside of government.&#8221;
This is likely the first of dozens of legal battles between Trump, his companies, and House Democrats. So far, the Dems have <a href="https://www.axios.com/2018-midterm-elections-house-democrats-investigations-6bcfabb1-f1b2-49ce-8014-3e9b0c30db6c.html">at least 85 separate investigation targets</a> listed on their agenda, and that doesn&#8217;t count their adjacent investigations into various Trump administration endeavors or &#8220;potential Trump investigations&#8221; that might result from future appointments and policy decisions.

President Trump SUES House Democrats To Halt Demands For His Financial Records

Democratic Party

Elijah Cummings

White House

Last week, The Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel legal group about whom The Daily Wire has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44739/about-time-pro-israel-lawyers-question-josh-hammer">previously reported</a> and which <a href="https://www.thelawfareproject.org/who-we-are">describes itself</a> as &#8220;a global network of legal professionals that contribute our skills, time and expertise to defending the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and pro-Israel community, and fighting discrimination wherever we see it,&#8221; published a <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/um6pn49gvpx0zb8/LP_BDS_Memo_April_2019.pdf?dl=0">full-length memorandum</a> entitled, &#8220;Laws in Various Domestic and International Jurisdictions Deplore and Attach Liability for Discriminatory Commercial Conduct Related to the Boycott of, or Divestment From, the State of Israel.&#8221;
The memorandum was produced in response to a campaign led primarily by Amnesty International UK&#8217;s pernicious and inherently anti-Semitic &#8220;boycott, divestment, and sanctions&#8221; (BDS) campaign against Israel, about which The Daily Wire has also reported. In late January, The Daily Wire&#8217;s Hank Berrien <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/42813/report-amnesty-international-conducting-open-hank-berrien">reported</a> the following:
<blockquote>
On Wednesday, Amnesty International, which supports the BDS movement against Israel, will publish an anti-Semitic report that is intended to cripple tourism to Israel, according to NGO Monitor, which states that the Amnesty International report alleges, &#8220;the Israeli government has political and ideological reasons for developing a tourism industry in occupied East Jerusalem and Area C of the West Bank &#8230; Israel has constructed many of its settlements close to archaeological sites &#8230; [as] part of an active campaign to normalize and legitimize Israel&#8217;s increasing control of the [West Bank].&#8221;
Just as the United Nations passed a resolution in the twilight of Barack Obama&#8217;s presidency that rejected Jewish claims to the holiest places in Judaism, including the Temple Mount and Jerusalem, the Amnesty International report, titled, &#8220;The Tourism Industry and Israeli Settlements,&#8221; apparently attempts to paint tourism to Israel as connected to the expansion of Jewish settlements, in the process making it seem as if Jewish holy sites are not of tremendous historical significance for visitors.
</blockquote>
The Lawfare Project sent its memorandum to 350 companies and 100 law firms and, according to its press release, &#8220;outlines legal ramifications and anti-Semitic underpinnings of the BDS movement.&#8221;
Here is more from the press release:
<blockquote>
The memorandum follows a campaign led by certain offices of Amnesty International, among other entities, to pressure major companies and law firms into engaging in targeted boycotts of individuals and enterprises residing or operating in the Jewish communities located in the disputed territories. 
A March 13 letter from Director of Amnesty International UK Kate Allen warned companies of the &#8220;significant risk&#8221; of conducting commerce with &#8220;Israeli businesses in Occupied Palestinian Territories.&#8221; The letter failed to disclose both the legal risks associated with participating in boycotts of Israel and the anti-Semitic nature of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Boycotts of Israel fit the U.S. State Department&#8217;s definition of anti-Semitism through &#8220;applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.&#8221;
Amnesty International UK&#8217;s letter aligns with the position of the Amnesty International organization as a whole, as Amnesty&#8217;s central website hosts a petition which asks users to sign their name in order to take actions in support of BDS. 
After learning about Amnesty International UK&#8217;s anti-Israel boycott campaign, The Lawfare Project immediately began updating the memorandum, first produced in 2017, which provides executives with the full legal context and anti-Semitic underpinnings of the boycott movement in order to inform their decisions on doing business with Israel. Corporate leaders have already expressed gratitude for how the memorandum has protected them from complicity in illegal and immoral boycotts. 
</blockquote>
The press release concludes by quoting Lawfare Project Executive Director Brooke Goldstein: &#8220;BDS has a well-documented history of fostering anti-Semitism and illegal discrimination on the basis of national origin. It has no place in commerce. We will continue to make companies aware of the legal and moral ramifications of engaging in boycott activity.&#8221;
The Lawfare Project&#8217;s memorandum likely serves as the definitive legal document, published to-date, that apprises business leaders of the destructive nature of BDS.

Prominent Pro-Israel Group Sends Key Memorandum To Firms Outlining Anti-Semitic Nature Of BDS

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) lost his battle against a medical device manufacturer this week, and failed to recover from injuries he says he sustained when an exercise band snapped back at him during a workout.
<a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/harry-reid-finishes-testimony-in-trial-over-exercise-band-injuries-1629248/">The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports</a> that it took jurors only an hour to decide that Reid didn&#8217;t deserve the $50,000 he was demanding from Ohio-based Hygenic Intangible Property Holding Co., The Hygenic Corp. and Performance Health LLC, who make the &#8220;TheraBand,&#8221; a large, physical therapy rubber band used, in Reid&#8217;s case, to strengthen arm muscles.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45267/harry-reid-suing-makers-theraband-over-his-eye-emily-zanotti">The Daily Wire reported</a> on the case last month. Reid was claiming that he was using the band as directed, looped around a doorknob in his bathroom, when the band slipped from his grasp and he fell on a marble floor, sustaining &#8220;a concussion, broken orbital bones, severe disfigurement to his face, bruising and lacerations on his face, hand injuries, scarring and broken ribs.&#8221;
The accident left him nearly blind in his right eye, and, according to Reid, was the impetus behind his retirement from the Senate at age 75.
But Reid&#8217;s case wasn&#8217;t even out of opening statements before things started to turn sour for the career Democrat. Opposing counsel repeatedly reiterated that Reid had been instructed by congressional physical trainers to &#8220;improve his foot stance, balance and technique while using the resistance bands at his doctors&#8217; recommendation,&#8221; but hadn&#8217;t followed orders, and that Reid had thrown out the band that had snapped, so he couldn&#8217;t even be sure it was TheraBand brand.
But the real trouble for Reid seemed to be, as the defendant&#8217;s attorney put it, that he couldn&#8217;t keep his stories straight, even under oath: &#8220;The one thing we do know,&#8221; she said, &#8220;is he struggles with telling the truth.&#8221;
There were two problems with Reid&#8217;s story, it seems. One, that he blamed the injuries he sustained from the broken band for ending his career in the Senate, and two, that he told two different stories about how he was using the band when it snapped.
<a href="https://www.apnews.com/7bb982641b354dbea3899629d7ded61f">The Associated Press reports</a> that the defendant&#8217;s attorney hammered home the part about the Senate.
&#8220;Reid testified last week his injuries were &#8216;the main factor&#8217; why he decided not to seek a sixth Senate term in 2016. [The defense attorney], however, showed the jury a 2015 video news release in which Reid said his decision not to run had &#8216;absolutely nothing to do with my injury,'&#8221; the outlet reported.
Reid was 75 years old when he retired from the Senate in 2015, and, at the time, there was no guarantee that he would emerge victorious from another campaign. Democrats were seeking fresh blood in the Senate and, at the time, it was largely considered a safe seat for the Democratic Party, so Reid retired to his home in Searchlight, Nevada. Since then, he&#8217;s been mostly absent from politics, except for the occasional comment on the current state of Democratic leadership.
Reid also, according to the AP, couldn&#8217;t quite remember whether he&#8217;d hooked the band to a metal hook in his bathroom, or through the handle of his shower door, and testified to both.
&#8220;He noted that Reid at first said the band broke, not that it slipped his grasp, and that it had been attached to a metal hook in the wall of the bathroom in his suburban Las Vegas home,&#8221; the AP said. &#8220;On the witness stand, Reid testified he looped a band through a shower door handle, not a hook, and that he spun around and fell face-first against hard-edged bathroom cabinets.&#8221;
Reid blamed the confusion on his &#8220;concussion state,&#8221; <a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/harry-reid-finishes-testimony-in-trial-over-exercise-band-injuries-1629248/">according to the Review-Journal</a>.

Harry Reid Loses Battle Against TheraBand, Accused Of Struggling To Tell The Truth

Harry Reid

Nevada

Former Senator Harry Reid is in a Nevada court this week, suing the makers of TheraBand, a stretchy physical therapy resistance band that he says robbed him of sight in his right eye.
<a href="https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/jurors-hear-opening-statements-in-harry-reids-exercise-injury-trial-video-1626580/">The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports</a> that Reid is suing Ohio-based Hygenic Intangible Property Holding Co., The Hygenic Corp. and Performance Health LLC, for $50,000, claiming that their faulty product caused him to suffer &#8220;a concussion, broken orbital bones, severe disfigurement to his face, bruising and lacerations on his face, hand injuries, scarring and broken ribs.&#8221;
Reid claims that he was doing physical therapy exercises with the TheraBand in his bathroom on New Years Day 2015 when the band slipped from his grasp, and he fell, sustaining major injuries. Two months later, because he was still contending with blindness in his right eye, he says he was forced to retire from his job in the Senate (at age 75).
Reid, now 79 and suffering from pancreatic cancer, has appeared in court, but it&#8217;s not clear whether he will testify; so far, only a few days into the trial, things don&#8217;t seem to be going Reid&#8217;s way.
According to the Associated Press, the lawyer for Hygenic &#8216;told a civil trial jury that congressional exercise advisers tried for months to teach Reid to improve his foot stance, balance and technique while using the resistance bands at his doctors&#8217; recommendation,&#8221; and that Reid was using the band &#8220;improperly&#8221; when he tied it to his shower door.
Reid claimed at the time that the band broke, which is what caused him to fall forward and smash his face on a hard surface, but his lawyers, in their opening statement, agreed with the defendant that Reid was holding the band in his hand when he lost his grip.
&#8220;The evidence will show that he was using a band &#8230; it slipped from the hand, he spun to the right &#8230; and landed right on the eye,&#8221; his attorney said, adding that Reid&#8217;s bathroom was almost entirely clad in marble and granite &#8212; two very unforgiving surfaces.
Worse still, it seems Reid threw the band out after the incident, meaning that no one involved in the lawsuit has the exact item Reid was using, and it&#8217;s not immediately clear that the product was an actual TheraBand manufactured or sold by Hygenic.
Harry Reid has been mostly absent from politics since leaving Congress in 2015, though he has popped in from time to time to comment on President Donald Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s now-concluded investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials to impact the 2016 elections.
Just a few days ago, Reid took credit for kicking off concerns about Russian election interference, claiming that he wrote a letter to the FBI in August 2016 trying to force then-FBI director James Comey to take note of Russian interference in American elections.
&#8220;I wrote a letter in August [2016] to the Director of the FBI Comey and said Russia is messing with our elections and you need to do something about that. And by October he had done nothing,&#8221; Reid said, <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/harry-reid-rips-james-comey-for-doing-nothing-about-russian-election-meddling">according to the Washington Examiner</a>. &#8220;We now know he should have done something.&#8221;
Reid claims Comey didn&#8217;t get involved because everyone in Washington, D.C. was under the assumption that Hillary Clinton would sail to an easy victory.

Harry Reid Is Suing The Makers Of TheraBand Over His Eye Injury And It’s Not Going Very Well

Hillary Clinton

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