Congressional Dems plot revenge for SCOTUS ruling on Trump immunity
Democratic lawmakers are already calling for congressional action to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, arguing that the decision is a blow for democracy while empowering former President Trump.
But the forceful outcry is a stark contrast to Democrats mostly downplaying concerns regarding President Biden’s chances of beating Trump in November.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has threatened to introduce articles of impeachment against the Supreme Court’s conservative justices when Congress is back in session next week.
“The Supreme Court has become consumed by a corruption crisis beyond its control. Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture,” Ocasio-Cortez said on X, formerly Twitter.
BIDEN FAMILY BLAME STAFF FOR DEBATE PERFORMANCE AS HE LAYS LOW AGAIN AT CAMP DAVID: REPORTS
Another Democrat, Rep. Joe Morelle, of New York, said he would introduce a resolution to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision.
He wrote on X after the ruling came out: “The conservative, extremist majority on the Supreme Court has decided former President Trump is above the law. Today’s decision further erodes the public’s confidence in our institutions and poses as great a threat to our democracy as the former president’s behavior.”
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Trump’s classified documents case that presidents do have immunity for official acts while in the White House, and that those acts cannot be used as evidence against them in a trial. However, it also ruled that not all of a president’s actions are official, and left it to a lower court to decide which of Trump’s actions constitute which.
Democrats argued that it gave Trump a vast legal shield over matters he should be prosecuted for. It also almost guaranteed that the ex-president will not have a federal trial in his classified documents case before November.
SOURCES CLOSE TO BIDEN REPORT ‘MARKED INCIDENCE OF COGNITIVE DECLINE’ IN LAST 6 MONTHS: BERNSTEIN
It prompted Sens. Tina Smith, D-Minn., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to renew their calls to expand the Supreme Court.
But to stand any chance of doing so, Democrats would need to win commanding victories in the House, Senate and White House – and several polls since Thursday night’s debate show Biden’s appeal slipping among general election voters.
Discussions surrounding Biden’s viability as a candidate have swirled in the media and among pundits on the left after the 81-year-old president’s poor performance in his debate against Trump last Thursday.
BIDEN CAMPAIGN SPOTLIGHTS MASSIVE JUNE FUNDRAISING HAUL IN 2024 ELECTION REMATCH WITH TRUMP
Elected Democratic officials have largely defended Biden since then, however, arguing he’s still the best candidate to beat the ex-president in November – while others have stayed silent.
A new CBS News and YouGov poll released over the weekend showed nearly three-quarters of Democratic voters believe Biden does not have the cognitive health to serve as president.
A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Monday shows Trump leading Biden 41% to 38% among nationwide voters.
But the aforementioned Democratic lawmakers did not respond to queries from Fox News Digital about whether they were concerned Biden’s performance in the debate would enable Trump, who they view as a threat to democracy, to win in November.
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Morelle said earlier this week that he “wouldn’t write Joe Biden off because of one bad performance,” according to local outlet WXXI.
He indicated, as others have, that Biden himself should decide his own viability. “I think he has to make a decision, his family and his inner circle about whether they think he feels he can still fulfill his obligations.” Morelle said.
Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez, who has publicly broken with Biden on certain issues in the past, appeared on video days after the debate urging Latin American voters watching the Copa America soccer tournament to support Biden.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will address the briefing room Tuesday for the first time since President Biden’s rocky debate performance.
In the aftermath of Thursday’s debate in Atlanta, Jean-Pierre did hold a press gaggle aboard Air Force One while en route to Queens, New York, on Friday, but Tuesday will be the first time she returns to the White House briefing room to field questions on camera. Biden returned to the White House Monday night after gathering with family at Camp David in Maryland over the weekend.
During the press gaggle with Jean-Pierre, campaign communications director Michael Tyler referenced Biden’s remarks at a Friday post-debate rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Reading from a teleprompter and addressing a live audience, in contrast with the debate, the president told cheering supporters, “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth.”
BIDEN FAMILY BLAME STAFF FOR DEBATE PERFORMANCE AS HE LAYS LOW AGAIN AT CAMP DAVID: REPORTS
“Obviously, I think the president said himself he’s not as good as a debater as he used to be. He doesn’t walk or talk as smoothly as he used to. But he knows how to fight like hell. And I think he showed that today in North Carolina,” Tyler said. “And so, that’s what the American people are going to continue to see day in and day out for the remainder of this campaign: a president in Joe Biden who understands he’s never going to stop fighting for the American people, and he’s never going to stop contrasting that against Donald Trump, who every single day is clearly fighting for himself.
“So, I think the President is honest about his own performance. But as far as what last night’s debate actually provided for the American people, it — it crystallized the threat — it begins to crystallize the threat that Donald Trump poses,” he added.
After a string of campaign events in New York and New Jersey on Saturday, first lady Jill Biden and the president’s children and grandchildren gathered at Camp David reportedly to encourage the president to stay in the race despite uproar within the Democratic Party questioning whether the current commander-in-chief is a viable candidate to nominate for a second term.
Reports said Biden’s family on Sunday blamed campaign staffers, arguing they did not adequately prepare the president for the CNN debate against former President Trump.
BIDEN STAFF ‘SCARED S—LESS’ OF HIM, SENIOR ADMIN OFFICIAL SAYS; WH HITS BACK
According to a new report by Politico on Tuesday, a senior administration official claimed that some of President Biden’s top officials are “scared s—less” of displeasing him in daily briefings.
“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” a senior administration official told Politico on background. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared [s—less] of him.”
The official told Politico that Biden is unwilling to take advice from outside his small inner circle, becoming increasingly isolated from wider public opinion and input.
“He doesn’t take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it,” the official reportedly told Politico.
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White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates pushed back on the Politico report’s claim that staff are afraid of the president, telling Fox News Digital, “That’s simply not who [Biden] is.”
Jeane-Pierre’s White House press briefing is scheduled to start Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. ET.
‘Disc-shaped craft’ hovers over concert venue, employees say: ‘It knew it was being watched’
A dozen employees said they watched a “large, disc-shaped craft” hover above a Colorado concert venue and then vanish.
“What’s even crazier is that as soon as we all started noticing it and stopped what we were doing to pay attention to it, the craft tipped at an angle and slowly started moving belly-first to the east,” an employee reported to the National UFO Reporting Center about the June 5 sighting at the Red Rocks Ampitheatre in Morrison.
“Then it started fading away until it was invisible. It didn’t shoot off into the distance. It simply dissolved into the ether. We all watched it vanish.”
The “silent” hovering object was long – about the size of a “three-story office building” – with three levels of windows and lights, according to the National UFO Reporting Center.
ALIEN VIDEO SHOWS AT LEAST 2 ‘BEINGS’ USING ‘CLOAKING’ DEVICE: ‘I’M OPENING IT UP TO PEER REVIEW’
“One of our coworkers suddenly said to us, ‘Hey, what is that over there? It looks like a spaceship,’” the anonymous reporting employee wrote.
ALIENS ‘TRY TO STAVE OFF PESKY HUMANS’ IN WILD VIDEO: ‘WHAT ARE THEY DOING HERE?’
“We all turned to look in the direction he was pointing and sure enough, there was a UFO hovering about half a mile to a mile north of Red Rocks.”
They all turned their attention to the strange object in the sky, and it suddenly “fade(d) into nothing as soon as it knew it was being watched,” according to the National UFO Reporting Center post.
That’s when it “simply dissolved into the ether.”
“A dozen of us saw it. We all kept asking each other, ‘Are you seeing this too?’ It was a resounding, ‘Yes,’ from everyone in the group,” the worker wrote in the post.
ALIEN VIDEO SHOWS AT LEAST 2 ‘BEINGS’ USING ‘CLOAKING’ DEVICE: ‘I’M OPENING IT UP TO PEER REVIEW’
“This was not a plane. It wasn’t a satellite, a drone, or anything like that. There was no mistaking what this was.”
The way it appeared to “simply dissolve into the ether” is similar to a potential alien encounter reported last April in Las Vegas, when “beings” seemingly vanished.
Scott Roder, a veteran crime scene reconstruction analyst, broke down the Las Vegas witnesses’ video and outlined two “smokey filters” that didn’t match the background.
He theorized that “the beings” used some sort of “cloaking mechanism” to “shield” themselves from the curious family and, later, responding police officers.
UNDERWATER UFOS DISPLAY CAPABILITY THAT ‘JEOPARDIZE MARITIME SECURITY’, EX-NAVY OFFICER SAYS
WATCH: CRIME SCENE RECREATION ANALYST BREAKS DOWN REPORTED ALIEN SIGHTING
In one second of real time, there are 30 frames that show a “head… with smoke around it,” which Roder called “some sort of cloaking device,” moving into the top right corner of the video and peering over the fence.
“I applied the same principles that I would apply to any kind of homicide investigation,” said Roder, who testified in cases like Oscar Pistorious’ murder trial.
“At this particular time, with what we’ve seen here, is proof of a couple of things. That these entities… are real. They’re there. This is not fake. This is not a fraud.”
There are believers, skeptics and people on the fence about extraterrestrial life, but there’s a growing interest in UFOs, or UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena), as they’re referred to today.
Roder worked with Jim Quirk, a reporter who runs the Extraterrestrial Reality podcast and who shared videos and images with Fox News Digital, to recreate the scene in the Las Vegas backyard on April 30, 2023.
Roder wants to open it up to “peer review.”
“Bring it on,” he said.
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“I want to open this up. Everything that we’ve done. I’m opening it up for peer review… I’m willing to hear what professionals in my field have to say about this and open it up. And if I’m wrong, you know, I’ll admit it,” Roder said, although he’s certain he’s right.
These two items, these two beings, are in the real world environment with the Kenmore family. That’s a fact,” Roder said. “Now the question is, Who are they? Where are they from and what do they want? That’s where the conversation goes.”
How potential replacements on the Dem ticket stack up against Trump
The panic following last week’s disastrous debate performance by President Biden has shifted the spotlight to potential replacements for the president at the top of the Democratic ticket, though most would still likely be underdogs against former President Trump.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are two names that have emerged as potential replacements for Biden if he were to leave the race, but both have trailed behind Trump in polling of a hypothetical matchup.
Whitmer would fare the best in a matchup with Trump, with a Fox News poll from November showing the Democratic governor within the margin of error of the former president, garnering 46% of the support of registered voters compared to 48% for Trump.
The two-term governor of the crucial Midwestern swing state could be an attractive option for Democrats, though Whitmer has reportedly expressed annoyance that her name is being mixed in as a potential replacement for Biden. Responding to a recent Politico report that the Michigan governor warned the Biden campaign the president no longer had a shot at winning her home state following the debate, Whitmer took to social media and argued anyone who thinks she would make such a claim is “full of s—.”
BIDEN’S INNER CIRCLE SILENT AS PARTY REELS FOLLOWING ‘EMBARRASSING’ DEBATE PERFORMANCE
If Whitmer were unwilling to step up for Biden, Newsom, who has been one of the more visible Democrats supporting Biden, would make a natural choice to replace the president if he were to end his campaign.
California’s Democratic governor ran slightly worse against Trump in the November poll, garnering 45% of the support of registered voters compared to 49% for the former president.
Like Whitmer, Newsom has distanced himself from the idea that he would replace Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
“I would never turn my back on President Biden. Never turn my back on President Biden. I don’t know a Democrat in my party that would do so. And especially after tonight, we have his back,” Newsom said shortly after Biden’s debate performance. “We run, not the 90-yard dash. We are all in. We’re going to double down in the next few months. We’re going to win this election.”
BIDEN DEBATE DEBACLE: 10 EYE-OPENING MEDIA RESPONSES, FROM MSNBC PANIC TO ‘THE VIEW’ CALLING FOR REPLACEMENT
Notably, both Newsom and Whitmer performed better in the poll than Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris, who has also been floated as a potential replacement for Biden, trailed Trump by five points in the poll, garnering 45% support compared to Trump’s 50%. The two Democratic governors also compared favorably to Biden’s number, who the poll found losing the race to Trump by four points, with Newsom tying that mark and Whitmer besting it by two points.
Another option is Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who has proved popular in typically red Kentucky.
While the Fox News poll did not feature Beshear in a hypothetical matchup with Trump, the Democratic governor’s ability to win over Trump voters in two elections could appeal to Democrats looking to defeat the former president in November.
In one example highlighted in a Politico report, Beshear was able to flip Kentucky’s deeply red Perry County during his 2023 re-election bid, a county that supported Trump over Biden by a resounding 77-22 margin in 2020. Just three years later, Beshear was able to carry the country with a 56-44 margin, a dramatic 65- point swing.
According to a Morning Consult poll conducted in April, Beshear enjoys a 65% approval rating in typically-red Kentucky, making him the most popular Democratic governor in the country and the fourth most popular governor overall.
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In comments to reporters Monday, Beshear acknowledged that Biden had a “rough” debate performance, but also said he had no desire to replace the president at the top of the ticket.
“Well, the debate performance was rough. It was a very bad night for the president,” the Kentucky governor said. “But he is still the candidate. Only he can make decisions about his future candidacy, so as long as he continues to be in the race, that’s important.”
New details on execution of two police officers in horrific ambush
WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO
A Connecticut man fatally shot two police officers in a horrific 2022 ambush while in the grip of a spiral fueled by personal failures and drug and alcohol abuse, according to a report released by the state’s Inspector General.
Nicholas Brutcher shot Bristol police Sgt. Dustin DeMonte and Officer Alex Hamzy dead in the driveway of his home after luring them there by placing a 911 call.
He was angered over a traffic stop that occurred hours earlier and a subsequent dressing down at the hands of his mother over the police encounter.
A third officer who fatally shot Brutcher at the scene was also struck in the hail of bullets.
BRISTOL, CONNECTICUT POLICE AMBUSH SUSPECT WAS FACEBOOK FRIENDS WITH OFFICER HE’S ACCUSED OF KILLING
Inspector General Robert Devlin’s report – required in deadly force cases – found that Brutcher was plagued by personal problems at the time of the incident, including the impregnation of his ex-wife by a former friend.
“It must be emphasized that Brutcher is the murderer here,” the report stated. “It would be wrong to place any blame for the attack on the traffic stop officers or others in Nicholas Brutcher’s life.”
Brutcher and his brother were pulled over by police after an Oct. 12, 2022, bar fight. The killer engaged in a war of words with officers at the scene before he was let go.
Some time later, he called 911 to report that his sibling was acting aggressively and that he needed help.
CONNECTICUT POLICE OFFICERS’ FUNERAL DRAWS THOUSANDS TO STADIUM FOR HEARTWRENCHING CEREMONY
As DeMonte, Hamzy, and Officer Alec Iurato approached his door, Brutcher opened fire with an AR-15 while crouching in some nearby bushes.
As his stunned parents, Joseph and Catrina Brutcher, looked on, he stood over his victims and continued to fire.
“How proud are you of me? How proud?” Brutcher said as he pulled the trigger, according to the report. Hamzy was hit a total of 24 times.
“I don’t think I ever screamed like that before in my life,” Catrina Brutcher told investigators. “My son walked over to one of the officers that was down and just shot him point blank in his head. I was just screaming at him to stop.”
2 BRISTOL POLICE OFFICERS KILLED, ONE SEVERELY INJURED IN PRE-PLANNED AMBUSH
Although Iurato was shot in the leg, he was able to take cover behind a car and take out Brutcher with a single shot.
Brutcher’s friends and relatives told investigators that he had become suicidal in the months leading up to the killings.
On the night of the incident, police pulled Brutcher and his brother over after they brawled at a bar. Police called their mother to pick them up, and she berated him at the scene.
“I was embarrassed and I told him that,” Catrina Brutcher said. “I said, `Nick you’re embarrassing your family; you’re embarrassing our name.’”
An analysis of Brutcher’s phone suggested that a former partner thought she was pregnant, and that he believed he too was to soon become a father.
He had also repeatedly installed and uninstalled Grindr, a dating app for the LGBTQ community, and appeared to want to “keep this aspect of his life secret.”
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“The analysis of Nicholas Brutcher’s phone, interviews of family/friends, and a comprehensive review of all collected evidence provided insight into the stressors of Nicholas Brutcher’s life that likely contributed to the ambush attack on officers,” the report said.
Trans non-binary runner is headed to Olympics after breaking record at trials
Nikki Hiltz, a biological female who identifies as transgender non-binary, qualified for the U.S. Olympic team on Sunday after winning the women’s 1,500-meter race at the trials over the weekend.
Hiltz set the meet record with their run. Hiltz clocked in at 3 minutes and 55.53 seconds, breaking the mark set by Elle St. Pierre in 2021. Hiltz also won the 1,500-meter race at the 2023 U.S. Championships.
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“I told myself, I’m not going to think about all the love and support (I have) until 100 meters to go,’” Hiltz said, via Runner’s World. “And then, at that moment, you can let it all fill you up and push you to the finish line.’ That’s exactly what I did, and I think that’s what brought me home.”
Hiltz also noted that it was the last day of Pride month.
QUINCY WILSON, 16, BECOMES YOUNGEST MALE TRACK ATHLETE TO REPRESENT US IN OLYMPICS
“I literally can’t believe it. I mean, this is bigger than me,” Hiltz said in an interview with NBC Sports. “It’s the last day of Pride month. I wanted to run this one for my community, and yeah, all the LGBTQ folks. You guys brought me home that last hundred [meters]. I could just feel the love and support.”
Hiltz continued their celebration on Monday.
“Woke up an Olympian,” they said.
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Hiltz raced collegiately at Oregon and Arkansas in the mid-2000 and was an All-American in 2018. Hiltz won a silver medal in the 2024 World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, and a gold in the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru.
Americans warned to stop shopping on fast-fashion site that’s booming in popularity
You know the saying that when a store’s prices are unbeatable, they’re likely unbelievable?
That’s the same warning Arkansas’ attorney general is giving to Americans who shop on Chinese-based Temu, alleging “it’s a theft business.”
“The threat from China is not new, and it is real,” AG Jim Griffin said on “Varney & Co.” Tuesday. “Temu is not an online marketplace like Amazon or Walmart. It’s a data theft business that sells goods as a means to an end. So it is common for an online marketplace like Amazon, like Walmart, to collect certain consumer data as part of the normal course of business. I think we all know that that’s not what’s going on here.”
Last week, Griffin took legal action against the Chinese fast-fashion retailer Temu over what he alleges are the company’s “deceptive tactics” that are harming consumers.
AMAZON LAUNCHING SHEIN, TEMU COMPETITOR WITH DIRECT SHIPPING FROM CHINA
Arkansas’ lawsuit targets Temu’s parent company, PDD Holdings. Shaun Rein, founder of the China Market Research Group, has described PDD Holdings as a “monster in Chinese e-commerce.”
Griffin alleged that the company is using spyware and malware on its app to get more than just Americans’ consumer data.
“What Temu is doing is selling goods at a rock bottom price, not to make a profit off of those, but as a way to get into your phone, your device, and to collect your data,” Griffin said. “Not just traditional consumer data, but using malware spyware to have complete access to your information. And [taking it] one step further, their code is written in such a way to evade detection.”
These actions violate “several” of Arkansas’ state laws, according to the attorney general.
“We’ve got a violation of the Arkansas Personal Information Protection Act, and we have a violation of the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act,” he noted.
“All of this against the backdrop of who owns the company, who operates the company, which are former Chinese communist officials,” Griffin continued. “So there’s a lot to unpack here that goes beyond a traditional online marketplace.”
A spokesperson for Temu told FOX Business the company was “surprised and disappointed” by the lawsuit. The company accused the attorney general of filing the lawsuit “without any independent fact-finding.”
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“The allegations in the lawsuit are based on misinformation circulated online, primarily from a short-seller, and are totally unfounded. We categorically deny the allegations and will vigorously defend ourselves,” the Temu spokesperson said.
Temu rose to household fame after spending nearly $3 billion on multiple Super Bowl ads in February, which cost roughly $7 million each – the going rate for 30-second ads during this year’s big game.
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Dem mayor needs to stop this shucking-and-jiving act and start living in reality
I have questions for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who is proposing a reparations task force: where are the reparations for all Blacks killed in shootings in my neighborhood and elsewhere in the city?
Where are the reparations for the city’s failure to produce adequate protection for its residents? Where are the reparations for the city’s failure to provide adequate schooling to inspire kids toward the American Dream instead of nihilistic violence? And where are the reparations for the city’s woke legal system that puts the interest of violent criminals above the interests of the city’s hardworking citizens?
Most of all, why has he consistently ignored the efforts of Chicagoans like myself to better our neighborhoods through tried and true American principles — his administration refuses to support the massive Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center that I’m building on the South Side.
CHICAGO MAYOR BRANDON JOHNSON ANNOUNCES REPARATIONS TASK FORCE, BLASTS ‘SYSTEMIC RACISM’ IN JUNETEENTH SPEECH
These questions entered my mind as I read the recent news that Mayor Johnson committed $500,000 toward a “Reparations Task Force to develop a Black Reparations Agenda.” His executive order states that the nation and city “perpetuated, condoned, profited and benefited” from slavery and Jim Crow policies from 1877 to 1963. He blamed these polices for racial disparities in “life expectancy, unemployment, homeownership rates, home value, incarceration, and more.”
What he conveniently left out were all the liberal policies that have devastated my neighborhood since the 1960s. People laughed recently when Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said there were more intact Black families under Jim Crow. But he was absolutely correct.
Will these same people laugh when I say my South Side neighborhood was better off in the 1960s? Look no further than former first lady Michelle Obama for evidence. Her first home was the Parkway Gardens, a massive living community next to my church. Back then, it was a working class community. Today, it is the projects.
IF DEMOCRATS SAY THEY STAND WITH MY COMMUNITY, WHY ARE SO MANY STILL FAILING TO LEARN HOW TO READ?
These liberal policies disincentivized marriage, steered us toward dependency on the government instead of upward mobility, and undermined the virtues of personal responsibility and agency. To our shame, we allowed these policies to make us a shadow of ourselves.
This reparations argument is not about slavery or segregation. Those past evils are being weaponized to cover up the fact that liberalism was so devastating to our communities. I’ve lived this reality for more than twenty years. I’ve delivered the eulogy at the funerals of young men and women gunned down in the prime of their lives. I have had to provide academic support and tutoring services for the kids that go to the nearby school where so few students are performing at grade level. And I’ve personally witnessed violence by criminals let out of prison early in the name of racial justice and criminal justice reform.
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It’s almost like the last 60 years did not exist for Brandon Johnson. But they did for us.
The best decision I ever made was to hop off this train of liberalism that was fast going nowhere — I did that, so I could live in reality. The reality is that I know the American principles work.
People in the mayor’s office call these principles white supremacist values, but that just gaslighting. I know these principles work because they are universal and belong to no color. They worked for me, a true country boy from Indiana. And they work for the youths on these tough streets.
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That is why I spent the last 12 years working to build a community center — so it could be a place for these American principles to take hold and allow my people to flourish.
The last thing we need is more liberal gaslighting from Mayor Johnson that will only extend the misery of Black people. We need to stop this shucking-and-jiving act for liberals and begin to live in reality. It is only then that we Blacks will begin to make true and everlasting progress.
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‘Rust’ armorer serving sentence makes ‘bombshell’ accusation before Alec Baldwin trial
Hannah Gutierrez Reed is requesting immediate release from prison as the “Rust” armorer prepares to seek a new trial.
Gutierrez Reed’s lawyer accused the prosecution of withholding “bombshell exculpatory evidence,” which would have led to a “fundamentally different trial and likely a different outcome,” according to court documents filed June 27 and obtained by Fox News Digital.
The armorer’s team claimed the state did not disclose a report that found “unexplained toolmarks on critical surfaces of the trigger and sear” of the Pietta 45 Colt revolver replica used on the Western film set. Gutierrez Reed’s attorney, Jason Bowles, pointed out that the marks were not “the result of the damage incurred during the FBI’s impact testing.” The marks also “do not appear to be original manufacturing marks or use and abuse toolmarks based on [their] irregular orientation,” according to the report.
The state “buried this information” and it was “never disclosed” to Gutierrez Reed or her legal team, Bowles wrote.
ALEC BALDWIN’S ‘RUST’ ARMORER SENTENCED TO MAXIMUM TIME IN FATAL ON-SET SHOOTING
Additionally, Bowles claimed the state then “called the expert at trial and sat idly by as he perjured himself during cross-examination.”
The report showing the “unexplained” toolmarks would likely have “bolstered” Gutierrez Reed’s defense, according to the court documents.
“Ms. Gutierrez Reed’s principal defense theory was that no one had committed a crime and that this was a tragic accident, and if there was any negligence, it was on the part of producers, as found by OSHA,” court docs read. “This defense would have been imminently bolstered by a legally unforeseeable intervening cause – such as a firearm malfunction – that caused Ms. Hutchins’ death.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to special prosecutors in the case for comment.
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Gutierrez Reed was responsible for the firearms on the Western film set where cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on Oct. 21, 2021. Hutchins had been preparing a close-up shot when a gun Alec Baldwin was holding discharged.
Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer sentenced Gutierrez Reed to 18 months in prison after she was convicted in March.
“I find that what you did constitutes a serious, violent offense,” Sommer said after handing down the sentence. “It was committed in a physically violent manner. A fatal gunshot done with your recklessness in the face of knowledge that your acts were reasonably likely to result in serious harm.”
“You were the armorer, the one that’s to be between a safe weapon and a weapon that could kill someone. You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon. But for you, Mrs. Hutchins would be alive, a husband would have his partner and a little boy would have his mother. Please take her.”
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Gutierrez Reed’s trial, which began Feb. 21, saw testimony from weapons experts, FBI and Santa Fe County authorities, and crew members who witnessed the fatal shooting. The prosecution largely focused on Gutierrez Reed’s behavior as an armorer, alleging she didn’t do her job correctly.
“Hannah Gutierrez knew that Baldwin was loose. She knew it,” special prosecutor Kari Morrissey said during closing arguments. “She didn’t do anything about it, even though it was her job. It was her job. It is her job to say to an A-list actor, if, in fact, that’s what you want to call him, ‘Hey, you can’t behave that way with those firearms.’ That is her job. That is what they pay her for. That is the job that she applied for. That is the job that she accepted.”
Gutierrez Reed’s legal team had told the jury that the prosecution hadn’t presented enough evidence to convict the armorer of involuntary manslaughter.
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