Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

Putting this debate in the hands of a far left news outlet like CNN without any oversight is worse than the slanted arrangements of the Presidential Debate Commission. When RNC voted to negotiate debates directly with the Democrats instead of using that commission, it should have been followed up on but wasn't. Somebody at RNC and at the Trump committee dropped the ball on just letting this sit and giving Biden the opportunity to make a "take it or leave it demand". Trump himself was distracted by the Stalin Show Trial in Manhattan during the critical period, but there were people on his campaign staff and at RNC who should have been on top of this but clearly were not.

Liberal moderators are nothing new to presidential debates, and have run them for decades, but the way this debate was crammed down, they have fewer constraints than they did under the commission. CNN, in particular, should never again be trusted with debate questions after they leaked them to Hillary before a previous debate.

I hope whoever was asleep at the switch at RNC and in Trump's campaign get their walking papers over this screwup. The idea of kicking out the debate commission was to get fairer moderators but we have gotten worse. A proper and timely move to raise the debate issue could have prevented that.

Commented: Tuesday, June 25th, 2024 @ 4:32 pm By: Steven P. Rader

You clearly know nothing about that Virginia primary, Bob. Both candidates are staunch conservatives, and there were lots of personality divisions among other GOP congressmen on who they supported. The one who got most involved in backing the challenge to Good was former Speaker McCarthy who had a vendetta against Good for being a key figure in dethroning him as Speaker. At the time of the Manhattan trial, both candidates went to court to show support for Trump. Trump ended up endorsing the challenger just days before the primary but had no other involvement. McCarthy on the other hand was heavily involved in the race, including raising money, for months. This was part of McCarthy's "revenge tour" against those who brought him down as Speaker. He tried to do the same to Nancy Mace in South Carolina, but she prevailed. Without McCarthy, the Virginia race would not have been competitive.

I do not know who is advising Trump on endorsements, but sometimes he is right on the money as to the best choice, and sometimes he isn't.

Commented: Monday, June 24th, 2024 @ 8:31 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Here is a total injustice. Biden is running millions of dollars in ads blasting Trump over a highly questionable show trial in Manhattan, while the ultra-partisan Democrat judge still has a gag order that stops Trump from responding. How downright un-American and anti-democratic can it get? Is this America or Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti or Idi Amin's Uganda?

In practicing law, I have rarely seen gag orders in cases. They are extremely rare, but when I have been aware of them, they were applied to both sides evenly. That is not what Juan Merchan did. He gagged Trump but allowed everyone of the prosecution side to have free rein in talking to the media, and the prosecution's star witness ran a podcast and went on what amounted to a media tour with his spiel. This one-sided gag order was not about judical issues. It was all about politics and it stunk to high heaven.

Even worse, the partisan Democrat judges of New York, and that now includes more than just Merchan, have kept this gag order in place AFTER the trial concluded. There is not longer any possible legitimate judicial excuse for that. I have never seen or heard of that being done before. It is all about politics. Trump will go into a debate where if Biden brings up the case, Trump can't respond or he might be jailed for contempt.

New York's tainted and politically corrupt judicial system is no better than North Korea's. I am thankful that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is going to sue them before the US Supreme Court for their outrageous election interference disguised as a court case. The rule of law no longer exists in New York.

Commented: Saturday, June 22nd, 2024 @ 7:49 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Not just anyone can file a lawsuit of this nature. Only a state can do so, and Missouri, perhaps joined by others, is on the verge of doing so. This is huge.

Commented: Friday, June 21st, 2024 @ 4:39 pm By: Steven P. Rader

This is political indoctrination just like in the old Soviet Union, where students in professional schools were required to take courses in Marxism-Leninism. The ABA is a voluntary association, and it seems that conservative and moderate attorneys should abandon it and form a rival bar association. I would also suggest that states adopt legsislation to prohibit political indoctrination courses as requirements in their state universities.

Another recent development of the politization of legal bodies came in Connecticut where their State Bar issued a warning to lawyers about adverse comments of the Trump kangaroo court case. Given that highly respected law professors like retired Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Alan Dershowitz and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley have lambasted the way the trial was conducted from the refusal of Merchan to recuse himself to his bizarre jury instructions, trying to muzzle attorneys in the state of Connecticut from their freedom of speech on the trial is an authoritarian act done for partisan political purposes. It is appalling that any state bar would make such an overt partisan political move.

Commented: Thursday, June 20th, 2024 @ 12:42 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Wrong, Bob. In recent years, at least, almost all of the election fraud has been by Democrats. THe 2020 election saw lots of things done by the Democrats that tainted the election outcome, although none of them were properly investigated to get to the truth. That was all swept under the rug.

American standards of elections have failed to follow international best practices in multiple respects because the Democrats strenuously oppose those international best practices. Marc Elias ran the Democrat operation in 2020 to severely weaken safeguards on election integrity and used Covid as his excuse to do it.

Yes, I am sure you will point to the Dowless ballot harvesting operation in Bladen County in a Congressional race several years ago as a Republican election fraud, but illegal ballot harvesting has been a Democrat cottage industry in several southeastern NC counties for many years. Dowless got his training working for the Democrats in that election fraud and in one election sold his skills to one GOP candidate who foolishly accepted his "help". The fact of the matter was that in the very same election, the Democrats did much more illegal ballot harvesting in that part of the state than Dowless, but the Democrat controlled state board of elections did not want to hear about it. An investigative reporter for WBTV in Charlotte, one of the few who still do real journalism, investigated the ballot harvesting in that election and reported that Democrat did a whole lot more of it than the one operative who worked for a Republican campaign. Dowless did his thing in only Bladen County, but Democrat ballot harvesters were also active there. There was also widespread Democrat ballot harvesting in Robeson and Columbus counties. Indeed, Robeson, the largest of the counties seems to have more ballot harvesting than the other two combined and it was all for the Democrats there.

Commented: Wednesday, June 19th, 2024 @ 10:33 am By: Steven P. Rader

Best in the world? Not exactly. An international "best practice" for election integrity is photo ID requirements for voters. The US is now the only industrialized country in the world which does not enforce this practice nationally in its elections. Indeed, after years of frivolous lawsuits against it by Democrats, we just this year got it in North Carolina, and half the states do not have it yet. The UK until recently was the only other industrialized country without it, but after massive voter fraud in the Tower Hamlets district of London in a previous election, they have now implemented it nationally.

President Jimmy Carter's commission identified mail-in ballots as being particularly prone to voter fraud. Most European countries either very strictly limit their use or do not allow them at all. In the US, the Democrats, both legislatively and in sue and settle lawshits by Marc Elias have greatly expanded their use, and therefore the liklihood of fraud in the US.

THe US is the only country using that massive invitation to fraud, the unattended ballot drop box. This is another of those Marc Elias schemes to make fraud easier.

One huge red flag to me, based on my experience as a credentialed international election observer in 8 foreign elections, was on election night 2020 when about the same time, the Republican election obervers were kicked or tricked out of the counting rooms in multiple large urban counties in key swing states and counting continued without them beng allowed to observe. Only the most naive would think that a coincidence.

Our election system has gone downhill in a big way, thanks to the Democrats. We need to fight to restore the quality of our elections.

Commented: Tuesday, June 18th, 2024 @ 2:29 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Kidwell and the Freedom Caucus have been in the forefront of fighting for election integrity in North Carolina. He was personally involved in exposing voting machines containing modems, which is illegal, in voting machines in a number of counties which the Democrat controlled State Board of Elections was trying to cover up.

Kidwell has had a colid voting record on issues, including opposition to the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and leading the successful fight against Phil Berger's corrupt casino deal. Those who have a problem with Kidwell are usually those with a personality difference, not a policy problem. He is light years better than the alternative.

Commented: Monday, June 17th, 2024 @ 11:49 am By: Steven P. Rader

That is indeed a great slogan for the winning party, but the rejection of the climate alarmist agenda in that election went much deeper than that. Having looked at all of the results, voters all over the spectrum - traditional right, populist right, and even left rejected climate alarmist policy. The populist right ANO which came in first did directly reject "green madness" as well as illegal immigratoin in its very campaign slogan. The second placed party, the governing traditional conservative Civic Democrats, had a leader in its sitting prime minister who has been very vocal against the EU Green Deal and illegal immigation. In third place was a new populist right party even more strongly opposed to both the climate alarmist agenda and illegal immigration, Prisha a Motoriste, led by a retired race car driver who vowed to arrive at his first session of the EU parliament "in a car with a large carbon footprint". While the Green Party and the center left Social Democrats got smoked, the only energy on the left was in the fourth placed party, a new coalition called Enough! that also campaigned against climate alarmism and illegal immigration. Also grabbing one of the Czech Republic's 21 seats was the Freedom and Direct Democracy Party which not only strongly opposed illegal immigation and EU green policies but also called for a referendum of Czech voters on leaving the EU entirely. All in all, a pretty solid rejection of climate alarmism.

Commented: Friday, June 14th, 2024 @ 9:26 am By: Steven P. Rader

If Trump had the same professional and fair judge, the same professional rather than highly political prosecutor, and a similar less politically stacked jury pool that Hunter Biden had in Delaware, there is no doubt in my mind he would have been found not guilty. Politics ruled the day in Manhattan and people around the world know it. That puts a big black mark on our entire legal system, although few states in reality have as corrupt a legal system as New York

Commented: Wednesday, June 12th, 2024 @ 12:09 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The situation with the UK's Conservative Party is really sad. Boris Johnson, a "small c" conservative, led them to a landslide victory in the last election. When a minor scandal erupted over Covid policies within the prime minister's residence, he seemed to be about to weather that storm when he was suddenly stabbed in the back by his number two in government, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and a couple of his allies, leading to Johnson's resignation. Sunak wanted the prime minister's job for himself. Under Conservative Party procedures, the Conservative members of parliament narrowed the choice for prime minister down to two and those two were submitted for vote by individual party members. Sunak was the top choice in parliament, but small "c" conservative Liz Truss easily defeated Sunak among the rank and file and became prime minister. Some big financial operators, who happened to be buddies of Sunak then went after the British pound financially, and the Bank of England, whose governor was a close Sunak ally refused to intervene. Truss resigned. This time in choosing a new prime minister, it was left just to parliament and the grassroots party members were not allowed to vote. "Fishy Rishi" Sunak then became the prime minister. Party polling under Sunak has been terrible, and backbenchers in parliament have been manuevering to try to replace Sunak with someone more electable, one possibility mentioned being a return of Boris Johnson. To protect his own flank, Sunak then called this election early.

This election is likely to be a low water mark of the Conservative Party, given the dislike of Sunak among grassroots Conservative voters, the strong appeal of Nigel Farage, and the fact that the right of center vote will be divided. Sunak has badly blown Johnson's landslide, and has set the stage for an almost certain Labour majority.

Commented: Monday, June 10th, 2024 @ 9:49 am By: Steven P. Rader

Any attorney will tell you that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if the DA asked it to. A trial jury in a highly political trial in a jurisdiction where the target politician only got 5% of the vote is also likely to convict a ham sandwich if the name Donald Trump is on it. Add a highly unconstitutional jury charge from a politically biased judge and unconscionable restrictions on evidence the defense was allowed to present, and you have a witch's brew of reversible error. There were two remedies to get an honest and unbiased jury pool, a change of venue or a special venire, but this political judge refused. They would not have had to go that far to find a more honest and unbiased jury. Staten Island would probably have been fine.

The article above sets out solid evidence that Biden, or at least Biden's handlers WERE involved in this witch hunt against Trump.

Commented: Thursday, June 6th, 2024 @ 4:45 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Sorry, bud, but level of wealth is an irrelevant factor in political prosecutions in politicized courts. One of the first targets of Putin's political prosecutions was a billionaire oil company oligarch who also owned some key TV stations that were not Putin-friendly. Putin had some fake charges trumped up, the oil billionaire jailed, and took away his TV stations and oil company through political prosecution. Biden has clearly learned a trick from Putin.

Here is a good article - "The Day the Democrats Putinized America"
europeanconservative.com

Commented: Thursday, June 6th, 2024 @ 12:32 pm By: Steven P. Rader

As a lawyer, let me correct Bob's gross misunderstanding of the law. In North Carolina, as in New York, if there are factors where a party cannot get a fair trial in the jurisdiction where charges are pending due to a tainted jury pool, there are two remedies. One is a change of venue, where the entire trial is moved to another jurisdiction with a fairer jury pool. The other is a special venire, where the trial itself is not moved, but jurors are brought in from another jurisdiction where there is a fairer jury pool.

Three times while I was actively practicing law I was involved in cases where the venue was changed. One was a capital murder case in Martin County. The trial judge initially denied our motion to change venue, but after a week of trying to seat a jury, he finally understood the issues we had raised in our motion, took up our motion again and changed venue to Pitt County. Another was a drug smuggling case in Hyde County, where a Wilmington attorney for a different defendant got in the case early and moved for a change of venue and it was moved to Martin County. When other defendants got local attorneys, we all considered that a very bad move, and we all moved to have venue returned to Hyde County, which the court did. The third was a civil case originally filed in Duplin County, on which venue was changed on my motion to Beaufort County.

My late law partner John Wilkinson was hired by the victim's family as a private prosecutor in the notorious Joan Little murder case here in Beaufort County. As private prosecutor, he could only consult and advise the District Attorney's office. In that case, venue was changed on the defendant's motion to Wake County. That was very adverse to the prosecution, but our local Democrat DA, William Griffin went along with it for political reasons. The laws on change of venue required the case be sent to either another county in the same judicial district or a district that bordered our district. Wake County did not qualify as a county to which venue should have been changed.

Probably the most famous trial that ever happened in Beaufort County, the George Washington Carawan murder case involved a crime that actually happened in Hyde County. The venue was changed to Beaufort County because of fears he could not get a fair trial in Hyde where the murder happened.

I do not think I have ever seen a case where justice cried out for a change of venue or special venire more than the Manhattan case against Trump.

Commented: Wednesday, June 5th, 2024 @ 2:55 pm By: Steven P. Rader

What is particularly impressive, in addition to the overall total, is that 30% of contributions to Trump were from people who had never contributed to a political candidate before. Spontaneous contributions of that volume from non-political people show the profound concern that the American people have over the political witch hunt and abuse of our judicial system against Trump. The Democrats have opened a pandora's box that is a huge threat to our democratic heritage and the Rule of Law.

Commented: Monday, June 3rd, 2024 @ 5:08 pm By: Steven P. Rader

According to the polls, the American people from the beginning knew that Trump could not get a fair trial in Manhattan, given the heavily Democrat jury pool and the Soros-tainted DA. Throw is a judge who is a Joe Biden political contributor who has a daughter who is a political consultant for Biden's running mate Kamala Harris, and all the incredients were there for the kangaroo court that developed.

In the decades where I practiced law as a criminal defense attorney, I encountered a few judges who were ex-prosecutors and were still mentally prosecutors. Defense attorneys considered we faced two prosecutors, one behind the prosecution table and the other on the bench holding a gavel. Those judges were fortunately rare but they did exist. But Judge Juan Merchan went way beyond that. Most such judges did their rulings for the prosecution within grey areas where they did not think they would get overturned on appeal. Judges with integrity were always concerned about being reversed on appeal, even if they took every opportunity they thought they could get away with to side with the prosecution. With Merchan, on the other hand, it was one blatantly reversible error after another. He did not seem to care if the case got tossed on appeal, as he was hell bent on getting a conviction on these bogus charges in the short term whatever that took.

There is an old saying that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if the DA asked it to, but in this case, the trial jury was one that would convict a ham sandwich, if its name was Donald Trump. That was clear to me from the time the jury was picked. If you look at their "sources of news" only one mentioned the center-right New York Post, the third largest circulation newspaper in the United States and with most of that circulation local to New York City, but almost all mentioned the ultra-liberal New York Times. One even said he listened to Michael Cohen's podcasts but he remained on the jury. A defense attorney has a limited number of preemptory challenges to jurors which allow removing a juror for any reason, and sometimes with an adverse jury pool, as this one was, decline to exercise challenges for fear of running out of them and being stuck with jurors that are even worse.

One thing stuck out immediately about the jury from the beginning, the fact that there were two lawyers on it. Most attorneys on either side of a case take lawyers off of juries because they tend to have an inordinant influence on their fellow jurors. I have never seen a case, civil or criminal, when I was actively practicing law where one lawyer was allowed to stay on a jury, much less two. The only exception would be if you know enough about the attorney that his attitudes on matters connected with the case would be favorable to your side. The fact that the DA, who had first crack at the jury, let them stay on the jury was a sign that they knew something about them, perhaps political. I was surprised that Trump's team did not challenge both of them.

This is a sad day for the rule of law and for democracy. Clearly, the rule of law does not exist in Manhatten any more than it does in North Korea. Democracy is being seriously challenged in the United States.

Commented: Thursday, May 30th, 2024 @ 8:29 pm By: Steven P. Rader

There are two parts to presidential immunity. The first is that a president cannot be prosecuted while in office. That is very well established and, for now, protects Biden from his corruption history even though much of that happened before he was president. Biden, however, may be open for prosecution of matters prior to his presidency after he leaves office.

The second, which is less well established and is now before the Supreme Court is permanent presidential immunity for actions taken while president. Most legal scholars beleive that such immunity exists at least to some degree but the issue is whether it covers all actions or just particular types of actions, and that is what the SCOTUS must now decide.

Commented: Wednesday, May 29th, 2024 @ 8:50 am By: Steven P. Rader