Comments by Steven P. Rader | Eastern North Carolina Now

There are lots of subtle ways a prosecutor can throw a trial, and I would suspect the Biden DOJ will be using some of them in the Hunter Biden case. Prosecutors doing that is very rare. In the many criminal trials where I have represented defendants, I have never personally seen one of our eastern NC DA's do that. However, my late former law partner John Wilkinson, who was hired as private prosecutor by the victim's family in the notorious Joann Little case, described to me how he watched our elected DA William Griffin systematically throw that case at trial once venue had been moved to Wake County.

One very subtle but effective way for a prosecutor to throw a case is in jury selection. DA's normally try to exclude prospective jurors likely to be sympathetic to defendants. By simply failing to do that, a DA can get a trial jury more likely to reach a not guilty verdict or to be a hung jury. Unless someone is a trial lawyer or a jury consultant, they would not likely even pick up on that. Reporters certainly would not. That is just one of a variety of ways a DA can throw a prosecution.

Failing to do anything about Joe Biden conferring with a prosecution witness is a big red flag that the fix is in, once again, for Hunter Biden.

Commented: Tuesday, May 28th, 2024 @ 1:06 pm By: Steven P. Rader

"Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen." - George Orwell

Orwell was right!

Washington state's passage of SB 5427 by the Democrats raises the hate speech problem of censorship here in the US. It even gives people rewards of up to $2,000 for reporting "hate speech" and tramples upon First Amendment protections. I would imagine it would be tossed out when challenged in federal court, but with Obama and Biden judges, who knows?
www.washingtonpolicy.org

Commented: Saturday, May 25th, 2024 @ 9:22 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Both of these young women political activists who are having their free speech suppressed are lawyers. That shows how far the establishment's attack on free speech goes. I would imagine that as soon as the new government in the Netherlands is installed, they will be taking some strong legislative action to protect freedom of speech there.

In the US, our First Amendment protects our freedom of speech, and at some point, those ridiculous anti-freedom charges in the Peoples Republic of Arizona will be thrown out. What is happening is really just Democrat harassment of a Republican official with a critical task between now and November.

What is really needed in Europe and the US is a good mechanism to go after officials involved in such baseless political prosecutions, either criminally, civilly, or both. Make the rogue prosecutors and / or judges pay. Freedom of speech is a key cornerstone of democracy and must be defended.

Commented: Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024 @ 8:48 pm By: Steven P. Rader

BCCC pulled a fast one to put in Marxist DEI. They took an existing position that did something else and changed its mission to DEI, then told the woman occupying the position that she had to re-apply to keep her job with its new mission, which she did not do, so they hired a new person to do DEI. When I was in state government, things like that would be fixed by eliminating the position in the budget bill. I hope our county commissioners have the backbone to do that and eliminate this position.

Commented: Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024 @ 12:10 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Wrong, Bob. You clearly have no training or experience in the law. Jonathan Turley is a respected law professor who is often quoted in the media for his opinions on cases.

Conflict of interest is something that is judged on a case by case basis. Sometimes it is put directly in front of a judge by a motion to recuse. More often, in my experience in practicing law, a judge will recognize it on his own and inform the parties that he has a conflict, cannot hear the case, and must assign it to another judge. I have seen the latter scenario go down here in eastern North Carolina quite a few times.

I am flabbergasted that, given his multiple conflicts of interest, Judge Marchan would insist on presiding over the Trump case. Maybe he is determined to strike a political blow for his cause or maybe he just craves the media spotlight. He is very different from the judges I have dealt with here in eastern North Carolina.

Another flagrant conflict of interest was the judge in the Fani Willis case hearing the motion to remove her as counsel in that case. Since both the judge and his wife were political contributors to Fani Willis' campaign, and she was at that juncture currently involved in a primary challenge for her office, he had a massive conflict of interest in hearing that motion (and arguable the entire case).

Commented: Thursday, May 16th, 2024 @ 10:00 am By: Steven P. Rader

Having spent quite a few years as a criminal defense attorney, I hate to see people charged and face trial due to someone's ulterior motives, and it does not matter what category the victim of such a malicious prosecution may fall into. It is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the charges against Trump are entirely politically motivated. That should not happen in our system. The reputation of our judicial system is being severely tarnished by those who are using it for their political vendetta against Trump, and that is outrageous.

Commented: Tuesday, May 14th, 2024 @ 10:09 pm By: Steven P. Rader

You ignore the massive political factors in this VERY political prosecution, including a far left Soros prosecutor whose chief assistant in this case was sent in from Biden's DOJ, a judge who is a political contributor to Trump's political opponent and who has other family ties to Trump's opponent, and a jury pool from a place that voted overwhelmingly against Trump. No wonder the majority of Americans tell pollsters that they do not believe Trump can get a fair trial in Manhattan. There are remedies in our judicial system for those factors such as recusal of a judge or change of venue, but Trump was denied those.

Commented: Tuesday, May 14th, 2024 @ 1:04 pm By: Steven P. Rader

When you have a witness like Stormy Daniels who has told a variety of different stories about an alleged event, none of her statements, including the one under oath, has any real credibility.

The only actual confirmation I see is the one from Biden's daughter confirming the diary is real. Was Ashley Biden engaging in "dirty politics" when she wrote that passage in her diary about her own father, Joe Biden? Ashley Biden has never denied the authenticity of her diary from what I have read, only refsued to comment. Now she has commented and says it is authentic.

The only "dirty politics" I see are these bogus political prosecutions of Donald Trump.

Commented: Monday, May 13th, 2024 @ 2:36 pm By: Steven P. Rader

What this woman needs is an attorney rather than talking to commisioners, the Social Services board or the school board.

That said, to give an idea of the sort of things I have seen with DSS Child Protective Services, the circumstances of the first such case I handled back in the late 1970a is a good example. The parents were relious folk and fairly strict with their two daughters. The older daughter started to rebel a little and her parents made the mistake of seeking counseling through DSS. The first counsellor was actually helpful and made some progress working through the issues, however she went out on maternity leave and her replacement started filling the child's head with things like her parents being backward and things shouldn't be done the way they wanted any more, and such. The result was the child ran away from home. DSS then took both daughters away from the family and put them in a foster home. The older daughter was put on birth control. While in DSS care, the older daughter was seen on several occaisions at Whichards Beach so drunk she could barely walk. In spite of the birth control, the older daughter got pregnant under DSS care. That is the point when their church hired me to get into the case. I filed a motion for a new hearing in court and DSS folded and gave the kids back, but meanwhile they had done a lot of damage to this family and to the two young girls.

I have seen too many more cases like it where the children were placed in a worse position because of DSS involvment. I found DSS workers to be a mixed bag, some pretty straightforward and some busybodies.

Commented: Thursday, May 9th, 2024 @ 4:27 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The Biden Democrats are trying to do the very same thing here in the US to thwart our First Amendment right of free speech. They tried to set up a government run "Ministry of Truth" when Biden set up a "disinformation board" but a public outcry forced them to back down. The Biden Democrats have connived with Big Tech to censor the free speech of Americans and that issue is now before the Supreme Court in a lawsuit filed by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana. One of Biden's SCOTUS appointees in that case stated she was worried about the First Amendment hamstringing the government, but apparently did not comprehend that is exactly what it was intended to do.

The problem is not just at the federal level, as there are attempts in some heavily Democrat states to crush free speech with "hate speech" laws. This always comes from the Democrats, not the Republicans.

The Trump administration had a very good record on free speech, and the Biden administration a bad one.

Commented: Tuesday, May 7th, 2024 @ 3:57 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The two tier justice system is not an "excuse". It is a mortal danger to our democratic basis of our Constitutinal republic. Having practiced criminal law myself for decades, it appalls me to watch the shameful abuse of our justice system for political purposes.

Commented: Monday, May 6th, 2024 @ 9:51 am By: Steven P. Rader

Having myself practiced criminal law for decades, a number of oddities have struck me about this trial.

First was the gag order. Gag orders in trials are quite rare in the first place, but every other one I have ever seen or heard of applied to both sides of a case. In this case, Judge Merchan hit Trump with a gag order but did nothing to prevent the other side from any contact with the media or the public. As a result, there were witnesses for Bragg that were almost doing media tours while Trump was unable to respond. That double standard stuck out like a sore thumb and does not reflect favorably on the judge's objectivity or neutrality.

The other was what seemed to be a very rushed jury selection. I have been in much less high profile trials where jury selection took a couple of weeks. The higher the profile of a case, the longer the jury selection normally takes. I remember one capital murder trial in Martin County where I was lead counsel, where it took us two weeks to select only seven jurors, and at that point, the trial judge after hearing the prospective jurors answers for two weeks, on his own motion declared a mistrial and changed venue to a different county.

Commented: Saturday, April 27th, 2024 @ 10:45 am By: Steven P. Rader

That video in the original post from famous retired Constitutional Law Professor Alan Dershowitz clearly describes how this is a thrown together nothingburger of a case, but given the biased judge and the slanted jury pool still carries a real danger of a conviction. That is the real danger to our Constitutional republic.

As someone who spent decades practicing criminal law, the refusal of Judge Merchan to recuse himself appalls me as his conflict of interest is evident. Trump's lawyers followed up their motion to recuse with a motion for change of venue, which also would have taken Merchan off the case in addition to getting it moved to somewhere that a fair jury pool would have been possible. I did not see them follow that with a motion for a special venire, which would have kept the case in Manhattan but brought in jurors from elsewhere. Jurors from, say, Staten Island would have given a much fairer jury pool.

ONe thing that was a big red flag on jury bias was the answers reported on where jurors got their news. New York City has three high circulation newspapers, the very liberal New York Tiimes, right-leaning New York Post, and the not too political New York Daily News. Not a single one was reported as using the New York Post or New York Daily News as their news source, but most of them reported getting their news from the Trump hating New York Times.

I also have never seen a case where jurors names were kept secret. That gives a shady appearance to our judicial system.

Commented: Saturday, April 20th, 2024 @ 7:04 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Having been certified as an International Election Observer is eight foreign elections, one of the big red flags that election fraud is happening is one side kicking out the election observers of opponents. With no valid reason to do that, it is usually a very strong signal that fraud is going on and this is an effort to try to cover it up.

In the 2020 election in the US, there were multiple swing states where Republican election obervers were either kicked out of the vote counting rooms or as in Fulton County, Georgia, tricked out of them, while vote counting continued. This happened in multiple places about the same time, always in major urban counties in swing states. Some may believe in coincidence theories, but as an experienced election observer, that was a huge red flag that fraud was occuring and a very thorough examination needs to be done in those places. If I were an election observer of the 2020 US election, there is no way in hell I would have certified it as free and fair until such a thorough examination of what happened in those counties was conducted. Of course, no such examintations occurred. In one major urban county, not only were the Republican election observers kicked out, but the election officials then taped paper over the windows so no one could look in.

Commented: Monday, April 15th, 2024 @ 12:21 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The real problem is the "administrative state" and its abuse by this administration. Congress delegates way too much rulemaking authority to bureaucrats, and when big government types like the Biden crowd get in power, they stretch it far beyond what was intended. The executive branch in a Constitutional republic was never intended to make laws, just carry them out, but don't tell that to Biden and the Democrats. A Constitutional republic is not their model of governance. An all powerful centralized state is what they are after.

Once we get Republicans in control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, a key issue will be cutting the administrative state down to size by putting significant restrictions on rulemaking powers. Economic impact studies should be required for all rulemaking and those studies should have to be approved by the Congressional Budget Office. Actions that have an economic impact over a set level should require Congressional concurrence before it takes effect. There should also be an easy method for Congress to step in and take charge on any rulemaking. For example, statutes could provide that on a petition of one third of the members of the House or Senate, a rule would be paused until voted on and passed by both House and Senate.

The bureaucratic deep state in government needs to be neutered and power returned to our elected legislative branch where it belongs in a Constitutional republic.

Commented: Friday, April 12th, 2024 @ 6:16 pm By: Steven P. Rader

Wrapping this referendum in the "sustainability" mantra of the globalists and the environmentalists is a very clever political touch. There are clearly some smart strategists at the swiss Peoples Party.

Commented: Sunday, April 7th, 2024 @ 1:08 pm By: Steven P. Rader

In a true Constitutional republic, decisions like this should be made by an elected legislative body like Congress, not by unelected, politically appointed bureaucrats like EPA. The process here is undemocratic in the extreme. At the very minimum, there should be an easy process for Congress to freeze such far reaching policies until they can at least review them and approve or disapprove them.

One has to remember how Hitler built his dictatorship, by having the Reichstag vote to confer upon him the power to make laws by decree. We are seeing the same thing happen in slow motion here in the US, rather than all at once like Germany. Biden seems to be hellbent on expanding this rule by decree process. It is time to slam on the brakes on this undemocratic process and throw it into reverse if we want to preserve democracy.

If Biden stays in office, democracy is probably done in America forever.

Commented: Friday, April 5th, 2024 @ 11:18 am By: Steven P. Rader