What Do Law Professionals Say About New York Case?

We are now in the second week of the New York vs. Donald Trump legal battle. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is determined to put Trump in jail for a crime that has not yet been named. Numerous law professors have questioned Bragg’s motive and actions.

Chris Enloe at The Blaze reported about the latest legal professional to call out Bragg’s effort. According to Enloe, Jed Handelsman Shugerman, a law professor at Boston University, considers the prosecution of Donald Trump to be a “historic mistake.” 

Shugerman made that conclusion after witnessing opening arguments on Monday in which prosecutors alleged Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.”

In short, prosecutors claim Trump falsified business records to interfere in the 2016 election.

The problems with their thesis, Shugerman wrote in the New York Times, are obvious: an “unprecedented use of state law” and a “persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud.”

“As a reality check, it is legal for a candidate to pay for a nondisclosure agreement. Hush money is unseemly, but it is legal,” Shugerman wrote.

He continued:

“In Monday’s opening argument, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo still evaded specifics about what was illegal about influencing an election, but then he claimed, ‘It was election fraud, pure and simple.’ None of the relevant state or federal statutes refer to filing violations as fraud. Calling it ‘election fraud’ is a legal and strategic mistake, exaggerating the case and setting up the jury with high expectations that the prosecutors cannot meet.”

According to Shugerman, there are “three red flags raising concerns about selective prosecution” in the case, all three of which concern the novel legal theory prosecutors are using against Trump for which there is no precedent.

“Eight years after the alleged crime itself, it is reasonable to ask if this is more about Manhattan politics than New York law,” Shugerman wrote. “This case should serve as a cautionary tale about broader prosecutorial abuses in America.”

He added, “This case is still an embarrassment of prosecutorial ethics and apparent selective prosecution.”

Still, Shugerman said the legal process should play itself out – but predicted Trump may ultimately win.

“If Monday’s opening is a preview of exaggerated allegations, imprecise legal theories, and persistently unaddressed problems, the prosecutors might not win a conviction at all,” he said.

George Washington Law School professor Jonathan Turley has similar ideas about the case. I have heard Turley’s comments on numerous programs, and he always says that there is legal basis for the case. Enloe reported that Turley said on Monday that “he is left in ‘utter disbelief’ that Bragg chose to prosecute the case … an embarrassment.”

When Is Surrogacy An Evil Act?

There are many couples who long for a family but learn that one or both of them are infertile. A large number of infertile couples attempt other means to have a family, such as invitro treatment, adoptions, or surrogacy. When the action is blessed and a healthy child is the result, the happy couple and all their family and friends rejoice.

In most cases, the child is also blessed to be in a loving family. However, there are some cases where the child is abused, and some where the abuse is planned long before the child is born. Emma Waters reported on such a case in her article published in The Daily Signal. 

In a recent sting operation, the FBI arrested and charged a Chicago man for knowingly distributing material on child sexual assault and boasting about sexually abusing his young nieces and nephews.

The man’s arrest came less than a week before he and another man identified as his husband were set to collect their newborn son from a commercial surrogate in California.

Commercial surrogacy is a contractual agreement where someone pays a woman to gestate and birth an unrelated child for a fee. In the United States, it’s an underregulated and unaccountable practice. Unlike adoption, the intended parents are not required to undergo a background check or home visit.

Male same-sex couples or single men, who lack a womb in their fruitless arrangements, make up a large percentage of this industry’s clients. Morally, the inclusion of a third person in the package deal of marriage, sex, and procreation violates God’s “one flesh” vision.

Proponents tend to frame surrogacy as a beautiful experience in which a woman helps someone complete a chosen family. This overlooks serious concerns. Critics point out that surrogacy is effectively a form of baby-selling that exploits women who need financial assistance. Moreover, the practice flourishes when loose laws allow bad actors to create children.

Unfortunately, as the recent FBI arrest shows, these aren’t hypothetical concerns. Here are the all-too real details:

Adam Stafford King, a well-known Chicago veterinarian and dog breeder, was intercepted by the FBI when agents seized another pedophile’s phone and gained access to his messaging accounts on Telegram and Scruff.

King openly discussed how he preferred boys in the “single digits” and planned to sexually abuse his surrogate-born son. King sent photos of his son’s sonogram and newborn outfit in anticipation of the sexual abuse.

King’s husband and extended family claim they had no knowledge of this. The surrogate-born son, who may not be related to either man, was born around March 29. Unless a court intervened, King’s husband planned to collect the newborn child and raise him at his parents’ house for the time being.

If King and his husband were a one-time experience, it would be bad enough. However, there are other times that “men with a history of sexual abuse or pedophilic behavior” gained control of a child through surrogacy. Waters told of another couple:

A few months ago, the well-known You Tuber Shane Dawson and his partner created twin boys through a surrogacy contract. Dawson has admitted to masturbating to pictures of minors and googling child pornography. Such behavior made it unlikely that Dawson and his partner could pass an adoption screening, yet a surrogacy contract was no problem.

As children’s rights activist Katy Faust details, there is a growing list of men who have a history of child sexual abuse or intend to abuse their own child gained through surrogacy. And these are just the ones we know about.

Waters shared “one final, haunting question: What about the children?” No one seems to care about “what is best for the child?” Some problems include the following: 

1) The child is likely to never know his biological mother as such cases involve “an anonymous egg donor selected from a catalog.” The baby recognizes his gestational mother’s voice, disposition, and body but is handed to someone that is unrelated. 

2) Children who are reared by male partners are “at least 11 times more likely to suffer sexual or physical abuse as unrelated men frequent the home.” 

3) The child will eventually understand that he came from the process of in vitro fertilization, where parents can “eugenically select the kind of child they want,” including the sex of the embryo. 

4) The child will be forced with realization that “he was not conceived in a loving union but purchased through a highly lucrative contract” – not much different than purchasing a child after birth.

Michigan and Minnesota are two states that have made commercial surrogacy easier. Instead of legalizing “the buying and selling of children,” state and national laws “should encourage, whenever possible, married mothers and fathers to raise their children.” The laws should not legalize ways to abuse children.

Who Is Liz Truss?

My VIP for this week is Liz Truss, former British Prime Minister. She spoke today at The Heritage Foundation about challenges faced by both the United States and the United Kingdom from the Global Left, their extremist activists, and the power they hold. In her speech, she “warned that conservatives must create a stronger infrastructure to take on the Left – which is well-funded, activist, and has many friends in high places – by recruiting more conservative activists and candidates who can fight in the trenches in the ideological war that we now face.” Some of the excerpts from her remarks are as follows as published in The Daily Signal. 

Why am I launching “Ten Years to Save the West” in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom? Well, I like to think of the United States of America as Britain’s greatest invention, albeit a slightly inadvertent invention. And if you look at our history, from Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights to the American Constitution, we have developed and perfected representative democracy.

And if you look at what is going on in our societies, first of all, the Brexit vote back in 2016 and then the election of President Donald Trump later that year, you can see the same desires of our people for change and the same desires for those conservative values and that sovereignty.

And if you look at the battle for conservatism now and the frequency with which we get new prime ministers in the United Kingdom and the frequency with which you get new speakers of the House here in the United States, we can see again that there is a battle for the heart and soul of conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic. And I think that battle is very important. Because, let’s be honest, we have not been winning against the global Left.

If you look at the history since the turn of the millennium, the Left have had the upper hand. And it’s not the old-fashioned Left who used to argue about the means of production and economic inequality. It’s the new Left who have insidious ideas that challenge our very way of life.

Whether it’s about climate extremism that doesn’t believe in economic growth, whether it’s about challenging the very idea of a man and a woman and biological sex, whether it’s about the human rights culture that’s been bedded into so much of our society that makes us unable to deal with illegal immigration – those new ideas have been promulgated by the global Left and they have been successful in infiltrating quite a large proportion of society and a large part of our institutions.

Truss then discussed the state of economics, the immigration and human rights culture, wokery, the fluidity of gender, the non-reality of biological sex, and biological boys in girls dressing rooms. She discussed the stopping of coal-fired power stations in the U.S., discouragement of [liquefied natural gas] terminals being built, and the stopping of fracking in the United Kingdom. She continued with the imposition of electric vehicles, air-source heat pumps, extra taxes on the public, and coal-fired power stations being built in China.

Truss spoke about other reasons why the West is in trouble and why conservatives should learn better ways of defending the Constitution and the American way of life. She concluded with the following message.

But my final message is that winning in 2025 or winning in 2024 and going into government in 2025 is not enough. It’s not enough just to win. It’s not enough just to have those conservative policies. That there will be huge resistance from the administrative state and from a Left in politics that has never been more extremist or more virulent.

And that is why it will need all the resources of the American conservative movement, think tanks like Heritage, and hopefully your allies in the United Kingdom to succeed. But you must succeed because the free world needs you.

 

Why Should America Come First for U.S. Congress?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns the concept that Americans politicians should put America first. According to Simon Hankinson in an article published in The Daily Signal, a recent poll shows that 11 percent of swing-state voters believe that the funding Ukraine is more important than securing the American borders. Congress approved a bill last week to send more money to Ukraine even though we have already spent up to $113 billion.

The United States is experiencing “an unprecedented surge in illegal immigration” – more than 11 million migrants have crossed illegally into the United States during the Biden administration. Yet, the current administration continues to spend more money on Ukraine than on securing our own border.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas asked for fewer Border Patrol agents, fentanyl-detecting equipment, and detention beds than he previously argued were needed. To make matters worse, he wants a $4.7 billion “Southwest Border Contingency” slush fund that experience tells us he will spend in as many more illegal aliens as possible while he still can.

At the same time of the Mayorkas’ requests, Congress was passing a “huge supplemental foreign-aid package comprising individual funding bills for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine, plus a fourth bill with sanctions against Iran and Russia.”

Congressional leaders continue to promise legislation to close the border, but the borders are still open. The promises are empty promises. Congress and President Biden are failing America and American citizens while they are giving away the country to foreigners.

Unlike the empty promises of Congress and Biden, Donald Trump promises to put “America First.” We can believe Trump because he put America first for four years, and we had peace and prosperity – unlike the wars and rumors of war, economic damage, and foreign policy embarrassment of the Biden administration.

The Trump administration and the Biden administration show us two types of leadership. One leader put America first, and one put everyone else first. If you can see the truthfulness in this statement, I hope that you will have the fortitude to vote for Trump.

Does God Prepare the Way Before You?

 My Come Follow Me studies for this week took me to an interesting section of the Book of Mormon. The section is only eight pages long, but those eight pages cover one-third of the Book of Mormon time period, 476 years out of 1,021 years. This lesson is titled “He Worketh in Me to Do According to His Will” (Enos through Words of Mormon). It was introduced with the following information.

Although Enos went to the forest to hunt beasts to satisfy physical hunger, he ended up staying there all day and into the night because his “soul hungered.” This hunger led Enos to “raise [his] voice high that it reached the heavens.” He described this experience as a wrestle before God (see Enos 1:2-4). From Enos we learn that prayer is a sincere effort to draw near to God and seek to know His will. When you pray with this intent, you are more likely to discover, as Enos did, that God hears you and truly cares about you, your loved ones, and even your enemies (see Enos 1:4-17). When you know His will, you are better able to do His will. Like Mormon, you may “not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things …; wherefore, he worketh in [you] to do according to his will” (Words of Mormon 1:7).

Enos is the first of numerous writers for this portion of the Book of Mormon, and Mormon is the final writer of it. The principle that I feel prompted to discuss comes from Words of Mormon 1:1-8: “God will work through me as I follow His guidance.”

Mormon was in the process of abridging hundreds of years of ancient history when he came upon a few pages now known as the Small Plates of Nephi. These plates contain the material found in the current Book of Mormon books of First Nephi, Second Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Jarom, Omni, and Words of Mormon.

Mormon took the Small Plates of Nephi and placed them behind his abridgment from the Large Plates of Nephi of the same period of time. Here is the story in Mormon’s own words (Words of Mormon 1:3-7:

3 And now, I speak somewhat concerning that which I have written; for after I had made an abridgment from the plates of Nephi, down to the reign of this king Benjamin, of whom Amaleki spake, I searched among the records which had been delivered into my hands, and I found these plates, which contained this small account of the prophets, from Jacob down to the reign of this king Benjamin, and also many of the words of Nephi.

4 And the things which are upon these plates pleasing me, because of the prophecies of the coming of Christ; and my fathers knowing that many of them have bene fulfilled; yea, and I also know that as many things as have been prophesied concerning us down to this day have been fulfilled, and as many as go beyond this day must surely come to pass—

5 Wherefore, I chose these things, to finish my record upon them, which remainder of my record I shall take from the plates of Nephi; and I cannot write the hundredth part of the things of my people.

6 But behold, I shall take these plates, which contain these prophesyings and revelations, and put them with the remainder of my record, for they are choice unto me; and I know they will be choice unto my brethren.

7 And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, he worketh in me to do according to his will.

One reason the Lord inspired Mormon to include the small plates of Nephi in the Book of Mormon was because He knew that the first 116 translated pages would be lost (see Doctrine and Covenants 10; Saints, volume 1, chapter 5). Without Mormon’s obedience to the prompting to include the Small Plates, the Book of Mormon would be missing its first 144 pages.

Heavenly Father knows what happened in the past, what happens in the present day, and what will happen in the future. He prepared the way for us to have the rich lessons of Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob as well as strong testimonies of other writers. God knew that we would need those lessons and acted to protect them.

God has the power to use either good people or evil people to bring about His will. In this case, He worked through His prophet. Have you seen the hand of God working through you or someone that you know?

 

 

Does Identity Change Between Premortal, Mortal, and Eternal Worlds?

Families, communities, and nations are stronger when boys are allowed to be boys and girls are allowed to be girls without compulsion or influence to feel that they are the opposite sex. Gender issues are much in the news and have been for a few years. That could be one of the reasons why the prophets and apostles of God made a clear statement about gender in 1995. The first two paragraphs of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” are as follows: 

We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

All human beings – male and female – are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

According to modern-day prophets and apostles, the word of the Lord states that our gender was essential in our premortal identity, is essential to our mortal identity, and will be essential to our eternal identity. It does not make sense that our identity changes from premortal to mortal and will change from mortal to eternal. It does make sense that a female in the premortal life will be born a female into the mortal life and pass through the veil to eternity as a female.

I suppose that a “quirk of nature” could happen once in a million or a billion cases. However, we now have hundreds, thousands of people believing that they were born with the wrong gender. I do not believe that there is room for that many “quirks of nature.”

According to Katelynn Richardson, there is a recent report published with the results of a four-year review about prescribing puberty blockers to children with gender dysphoria. The National Health Service England commissioned the review, and the review undermined the recommendations of major medical associations about the matter. 

The report is known as The Cass Report and was conducted by Dr. Hilary Cass, a pediatrician and former president of the U.K.’s Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. Dr. Cass’s review “found only ‘weak evidence’ for offering puberty blockers to children.”

Cass concluded that her findings, released April 10, “raise questions about the quality of currently available guidelines” offered by associations such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and Endocrine Society, yet neither organization has committed to reviewing their guidelines.

The review recommends against treating children with puberty blockers outside of a research setting. It also urged “extreme caution” for providing cross-sex hormones to minors under 18 and stressed the need for a “clear clinical rationale.”

The review further suggested a “full programme of research be established” to “look at the characteristics, interventions, and outcomes of every young person presenting to the NHS [National Health Service] gender services.”

Although a diagnosis of gender dysphoria has been seen as necessary for initiating medical treatment, it is not reliably predictive of whether that young person will have longstanding gender incongruence in the future, or whether medical intervention will be the best option for them,” The Cass Report noted.

The American Medical Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Endocrine Society did not respond to multiple inquiries over the past week from the Daily Caller News Foundation asking whether they had concerns with the report’s findings or intended to conduct their own review.

Aside from WPATH, these organizations largely have failed to address the report publicly. In a written statement, the transgender health organization said it “supports policies that increase access to high-quality ethical care for transgender youth” and claimed that the report is rooted in a “false premise.”

Because American health and medical associations have not made public statement, pressure should be put on them to do their own reviews to determine the truth about the gender situation.

Meanwhile, American parents and children should be wise enough to pay some attention to the information in The Cass Report. Since gender is essential to our mortal and eternal identities, families, communities, and nations are stronger when adults and children know their own identities.

 

Should Haitians Be Allowed to Immigrate into America?

The Biden administration is not content to destroy the United States by allowing illegal immigrants to invade our nation. It is also pushing President Luis Abinader of the tiny nation of Dominican Republic “to accept 3 million Haitians.”

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) wrote that foreign officials tell him that their perception of the Biden administration is that “It’s better to be the United States’ enemy than its friend.” He wrote in his article published in The Daily Signal the “bad foreign policy” of the Biden administration encourages “chaos in our own region of the world.” He continued: 

Just look at what’s happening in the Dominican Republic. The Caribbean nation is facing extraordinary migratory pressure from neighboring Haiti, which has all but collapsed into anarchy. President Luis Abinader has made it clear he will protect Dominican sovereignty by enforcing deportations.

Yet the Biden administration, influenced by radical left-wing groups like Amnesty International, is pushing Abinader to accept 3 million Haitians at any moment. This is unfair to the Dominican Republic, a developing nation with limited resources that is already bearing significant burdens on Haiti’s behalf. Anyone who doubts this should consider the fact that more than a third of all births in the Dominican Republic are currently to Haitian citizens.

But encouraging illegal mass migration is also unfair to our country. The Biden administration seems unaware that many Haitians view the Dominican Republic as a steppingstone to Puerto Rico – and that a well-established smuggling ring to facilitate that journey already exists. Because our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico have their own fiscal constraints, illegal migrants who reach the U.S. territory would likely move on to the continental United States.

Like most Americans, I recognize that what is happening in Haiti is horrible and tragic. The breakdown of law and order, the displacement of more than 300,000 people, and the need of roughly 5 million for some form of aid – all of these are matters of grave concern.

Rubio showed his concern in several ways: (1) supported “the international peacekeeping mission that Kenya proposes to lead once Haiti has established a provisional government.

(2) “reintroduced legislation to preserve U.S. trade benefits for Haitian manufacturers, which could prove a lifeline to legitimate Haitian businesses in this time of crisis.” He then continued with his article.

But, like most Americans, I also recognize that no country should experience illegal mass migration – not the Dominican Republic, and not the United States. Illegal mass migration does no good for the nation people are migrating from.

When all able-bodied, law-abiding citizens leave their homeland, there is no one left to defend it from criminals and tyrants – and no one left to provide for the vulnerable who remain there. On a more fundamental level, though, I cannot support illegal mass migration because the job of elected officials is to protect their citizens first, not anyone else’s.

This is why I have asked the State Department to prioritize U.S. citizens trapped in Haiti, as well as their adopted Haitian children. Moreover, it’s why we cannot allow Haitian citizens to surge across our borders….

The tragedy in Haiti is great, but it’s no excuse for letting these threats increase.