Despite their routine concern-mongering about threats to democracy, Democrats have worked hard in recent months to eliminate President Joe Biden's rival from contention ahead of the 2024 election. Some have referred to this effort to deny voters a choice and thereby decide the election by undemocratic means as "lawfare."
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) revealed Thursday that such attacks will not go unanswered.
Bailey noted on X that he would be "filing suit against the State of New York for their direct attack on our democratic process through unconstitutional lawfare against President Trump. It's time to restore the rule of law."
According to the Republican, the efforts of "rogue prosecutor" New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg to "take a presidential candidate off the campaign trail ... sabotages Missourians' right to a free and fair election."
Last week, Bailey testified before the House Judiciary Committee. He noted in his written statement that the "left has prioritized its hatred of President Trump above the rule of law."
'The prosecution was politically motivated and replete with legal error.'
"Government officials at the federal and state levels have censored President Trump, filed civil suits in order to sanction him, illegally removed him from the ballot, and perverted the law in order to prosecute him," wrote Bailey.
The Missouri AG indicated further that Bragg's prosecution of Trump, in particular, "represents one of the most morally abhorrent volleys in the left's on-going barrage of lawfare. The prosecution was politically motivated and replete with legal error."
Among the issues Bailey highlighted with Trump's prosecution in New York — which are likely to be raised in his forthcoming lawsuit — were:
Bailey further highlighted in his testimony the apparent "collusion" between the Biden Department of Justice and the New York District Attorney's Office regarding the initiative to take Trump off the board.
Bailey's office expects that lawsuit will go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court and will be titled "Missouri vs. New York," reported Fox News Digital.
Extra to announcing that Missouri would be suing New York Thursday, Bailey filed an amicus brief with 23 other red states urging the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, which is overseeing Trump's classified documents case, to reject Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's request for an "unconstitutional gag order" on Trump.
Smith asked Judge Aileen Cannon that the conditions permitting Trump to await trial outside of jail should be updated to include a gag order, prohibiting him from commenting about details of his case, particularly about the raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Trump's attorneys said in a filing last week, "Like Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Smith seeks to restrict President Trump’s campaign speech as the first presidential debate approaches at the end of this month," reported CNN.
The amicus brief filed by Bailey and other Republican attorneys general, stressed that fair and free elections "depend on candidates' ability to speak about important issues of the day."
"When agents of one candidate seek a court order to muzzle discussion on matters relating to important electoral issues, that restraint raises even more fundamental First Amendment concerns," continued the brief.
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Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is demanding that the Department of Justice turn over documents related to several of the prosecutors going after former president Donald Trump.
Bailey believes the prosecutions appear to be part of a coordinated effort by the DOJ that involved the White House.
“Everyone can see the illicit witch hunt prosecutions that are going on from Alvin Bragg’s office, from Fani Willis’ office, from Letitia James’ office, and from the Biden’s crooked Department of Justice,” Bailey tells Glenn Beck, who believes Bailey is “one of the really good AGs in the country.”
“The Biden Department of Justice has become a nerve center for a coordinated witch hunt prosecution of a political opponent, and it’s not designed to obtain a legally valid conviction. It’s designed to take anyone running against Joe Biden — in other words, president Donald Trump — off the campaign trail,” Bailey explains.
And they’re not trying to hide it.
Matthew Colangelo was the number three ranking official at Biden’s DOJ. Colangelo was a longtime DNC activist who has just now taken a job with Bragg’s office to lead prosecution at the state level in the Manhattan courtroom.
“The political motivation of the prosecutors is sufficient to call into question their judgment in these cases,” Bailey says, adding, “Couple that with the fact they brought baseless charges not supported by the facts of the law, and it will undermine the credibility of whatever illegal conviction they ultimately obtain.”
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Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, 28, gave a commencement speech last weekend at Benedictine College wherein he dared to articulate beliefs anchored in the millenniums-old moral teachings of the Catholic Church, now codified in the Catechism and followed by millions of Americans nationwide.
The three-time Super Bowl champ drew the ire of radicals in the liberal media and political establishment for doing so — for echoing the late Pope John Paul II in noting that "abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for the degenerate cultural values and media all stem from pervasiveness of disorder."
The kicker further enraged leftists by celebrating the institution of marriage, the vocation of motherhood, the link between male weakness and cultural dysfunction, the sinfulness of pride and Pride month, and by highlighting the incompatibility of President Joe Biden's professed faith and his views on abortion.
After all, the Catholic Church has made clear that abortion "is gravely contrary to the moral law"; "formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense" carrying the canonical penalty of excommunication; and Catholic political leaders have an obligation to stand up for the rights of the unborn.
Besides upsetting talking heads on cable news shows, Butker's expression of Catholic views at a Catholic school evidently enraged the person running Kansas City's social media accounts.
Kansas City's X account posted, "Just a reminder that Harrision Butker lives in ...," then provided the location where the kicker could be found.
This tweet, which was posted at 7:41 p.m. on Wednesday, qualifies as textbook "doxxing," defined as the public identification or publication "of private information about (someone) especially as a form of punishment or revenge."
There was a swift backlash against the city online as it was widely understood this tweet amounted to an effort to punish and possibly endanger Butker over his opinions.
'Use of government social media to retaliate against an individual based on their religious beliefs amounts to discriminatory behavior that is not tolerated under our Constitution or Missouri statute.'
Matthew Peterson, editor in chief at Blaze News, noted, "If our cities are revealing private information about the residents they are supposed to be serving simply because local government officials disagree with their political views and statements, that's a call to action. Solving this problem will take a lot more than complaining on the internet. Americans need to band together and work locally to hold their local governments accountable."
Just hours later, at 9:21 p.m., the Kansas City account posted, "We apologies [sic] for our previous tweet. It was shared in error."
That tweet ostensibly served to draw further attention to the now-deleted doxxing effort, prompting even more outrage.
Catholic conservative commentator Michael Knowles wrote, "@KansasCity: not only criminal but also illiterate."
Some social media users have suggested that the author of the tweet may have been Andrea Watts, whose LinkedIn profile similarly contained a rather glaring spelling error — "Social Media Mangement [sic]" — and was recently been deactivated.
Michael Caputo, a former Department of Health and Human Services official in the Trump administration, said, "The City of Kansas City, MO must fire its entire social media team immediately."
Twenty minutes after the initial apology, Mayor Quinton Lucas joined in the damage-control effort, writing, "A message appeared earlier this evening from a City public account. The message was clearly inappropriate for a public account. The City has correctly apologized for the error, will review account access, and ensure nothing like it is shared in the future from public channels."
Lucas' response was also met with ridicule.
'Your office apparently believes it is appropriate to denigrate a devout Catholic for comments he made about his own faith at a religious college.'
Garrett Henson, chairman of the Kansas Federation of College Republicans, mocked the mayor's response, writing, "'We now realize that it's bad to dox people with the Kansas City X account. Rest assured that there will be no consequences for this action moving forward.'"
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey was not impressed by the city's apparent effort to intimidate a Christian over his deeply held beliefs — and he didn't need a tweet to know where to direct his ire.
Bailey indicated on Thursday, "My office is demanding accountability after @KansasCity doxxed @buttkicker7 last night for daring to express his religious beliefs. I will enforce the Missouri Human Rights Act to ensure Missourians are not targeted for their free exercise of religion. Stay tuned."
Bailey subsequently penned a letter to Mayor Lucas noting, "It has been reported that the city of Kansas City has retaliated against a well-respected local resident and member of the Kansas City Chiefs after he spoke about his religious views."
"Your office's X account likely publicly released residential location information on a private citizen, Harrison Butker, in an attempt to retaliate against him for expressing his sincerely held religious beliefs at a religious college's commencement ceremony — to an audience that largely shares his views," continued Bailey. "Use of government social media to retaliate against an individual based on their religious beliefs amounts to discriminatory behavior that is not tolerated under our Constitution or Missouri statute."
The AG underscored that America is founded upon a commitment to the free exercise of religion and that Missouri law "specifically prohibits faith-based discrimination against Missouri residents."
Bailey added, "Your office apparently believes it is appropriate to denigrate a devout Catholic for comments he made about his own faith at a religious college."
Extra to indicating the city may have violated state law, Bailey made abundantly clear to the NFL, without naming it outright: "I assure you that I am prepared to use the authority provided in statute to defend the principle of free religious expression."
"Mr. Butker was well within his rights to discuss his religious views — views which are shared by millions of members of his faith tradition," wrote Bailey. "Sadly, history is filled with examples of people of religious faith being targeted for their beliefs by government officials."
Radicals have targeted Butker, and the NFL has reportedly hung him out to dry. On the flip side, Butker's jersey is now reportedly among the most popular in the league.
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Seven more states filed another lawsuit on Tuesday againt the Biden administration over its continued attempts to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling against sweeping federal student loan debt handouts, Fox Business reported.
So far, 18 states have sued Biden for passing billions of dollars in student loan debt on to taxpayers.
The latest lawsuit, led by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, claims that Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education Plan, also referred to as SAVE, is illegal.
According to the administration, SAVE is a new income-driven repayment plan that uses borrowers’ income to calculate a monthly payment. The program has “unique benefits that will lower payments for many borrowers.”
The White House has used the plan to roll out so-called debt cancellation for roughly 1 million Americans with at least $45.6 billion of debt.
The Supreme Court previously rejected the Biden administration’s plan to enact unilateral debt cancellations. The federal government has since announced many smaller, similar programs despite the court's decision.
The Biden administration reported that nearly 8 million borrowers are enrolled in the president’s SAVE plan, and 4.5 million now “have a monthly payment of $0.”
AG Bailey told Fox Business, “With the stroke of his pen, Joe Biden is attempting to saddle working Missourians with a half-trillion dollars in debt. The United States Constitution makes clear that the president lacks the authority to unilaterally ‘cancel’ student loan debt for millions of Americans without express permission from Congress.”
“The president does not get to thwart the Constitution when it suits his political agenda,” he continued. “I’m filing suit to halt his embarrassing attempt to buy the 2024 election in direct violation of the law. The Constitution will continue to mean something as long as I’m attorney general.”
“We beat his unlawful student loan plan in court last summer, so he quickly rolled out Plan B. Now that we’re challenging that, he’s panicked and is rolling out a Plan C. We will continue to watch him closely and take action whenever he’s overstepped his authority,” Bailey told Fox Business.
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma joined Missouri in the newest lawsuit.
The complaint argued that the SAVE plan demonstrates “a long but troubling pattern of the President relying on innocuous language from decades-old statutes to impose drastic, costly policy changes on the American people without their consent.”
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin told the news outlet, “President Biden has already lost on this question once, and he is refusing to follow the law. The Supreme Court could not have been clearer: President Biden cannot unilaterally cancel student debt and force taxpayers to bear the multibillion-dollar cost.”
Late last month, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and 10 other states filed a similar lawsuit against the Biden administration, challenging its efforts to wipe out federal student loan debt, Blaze News previously reported.
“Not since the Civil War has a president told the Supreme Court, ‘Yeah you blocked me, but I’m gonna do it anyway,’” Kobach told Fox News Digital. “Biden is trying to twist federal law once again, and his new plan is just as illegal as the old plan.”
The Education Department responded to the initial lawsuit, telling the news outlet, “The Department does not comment on pending litigation. However, Congress gave the U.S. Department of Education the authority to define the terms of income-driven repayment plans in 1993, and the SAVE plan is the fourth time the Department has used that authority.”
“The Biden-Harris Administration won’t stop fighting to provide support and relief to borrowers across the country – no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us,” the department added.
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Eleven states, led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R), filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the Biden administration after the White House announced last week yet another round of federal student loan debt “forgiveness,” Fox Business reported.
The lawsuit reads, “A coalition of States sues Defendant Biden, as well as co-defendants the Department of Education and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, to stop a second attempt to avoid Congress and pass an illegal student debt forgiveness. Last time Defendants tried this the Supreme Court said that this action was illegal. Nothing since then has changed.”
Since the Supreme Court’s June decision to strike down the Biden administration’s plan to enact sweeping, unilateral debt cancellations, the White House has ultimately ignored the court’s ruling and unveiled numerous smaller programs that meet the same ends. Biden’s original failed cancellation program would have eliminated $10,000 of federal student loan debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 per year and married couples earning less than $250,000 per year. If the program had been allowed to move forward, the administration would have laid approximately $430 billion of unpaid student loan debt at the feet of American taxpayers.
The Biden administration has bragged about his new plan to cancel debt for 4 million Americans totaling at least $143.6 billion.
“In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on my Administration’s original student debt relief plan, we are continuing to pursue an alternative path to deliver student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible,” Biden stated.
Last week, the White House announced that student loan borrowers working in the public service sector, including teachers, nurses, and firefighters, will see $6 billion of student loan debt canceled.
Kansas AG Kobach, along with Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah, sued Biden for rolling out the so-called debt forgiveness programs.
Kobach told Fox News Digital, “Not since the Civil War has a president told the Supreme Court, ‘Yeah you blocked me, but I’m gonna do it anyway.’”
“Biden is trying to twist federal law once again, and his new plan is just as illegal as the old plan,” he declared.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said that the state also intends to sue the administration for the debt cancellations, noting that Arkansas would join as well.
“Between our two coalitions of states, we will get this matter in front of a judge even more quickly to deliver a win for the American people. The Supreme Court sided with Missouri on this matter the first time. I look forward to bringing home yet another win for the Constitution and the rule of law,” Bailey stated.
The White House did not respond to Fox Business' request for comment.
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If the law were unconstitutional, the judge wrote, '[a]ny person — including a minor — would be able to obtain anything from meth, to ecstasy, to abortion so long as a single medical professional were willing to recommend it.'
A federal court just neutered much of the authority states have to check unconstitutional federal laws. Its decision must be overturned.
The Democrats' proxy organizations have gotten off scot-free for far too long, Republican attorneys general need to change that.
'When the new guy came in, he just basically stopped working on it,' a source with detailed knowledge of the investigation told The Federalist.
'The American people ought to be able to participate in a Presidential election free from New York's interference,' the suit claims.
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