In the case of Eric Adams, the Trump Justice Department had at its disposal “prudent and imprudent ways to achieve similar ends,” our editors write. President Trump could have pardoned Adams or instructed prosecutors to drop the case against him because it was weak.
Instead, Justice Department brass conceded in a memo that its order to drop the case had nothing to do with “the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based.”
The memo, authored by acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, “ordered the charges against Adams dismissed without prejudice, allowing the Justice Department to bring them again at a later date if it so chooses—and granting the department leverage over Adams” if he fails to help them enforce immigration laws in New York City. It came around the same time the department launched its “Weaponization Working Group.” The deal, according to our editors, gets that “righteous endeavor off on the wrong foot and risks undermining it completely.”
That seems to be what Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was getting at when she told Bove in her resignation letter that she could not “credibly represent the Government before the courts” if she sought to “dismiss the Adams case on this record.”
She has been pilloried by some on the right not on the merits of her decision but as an aspiring #Resistance figure whose seemingly conservative credentials—clerkships for Judge Harvie Wilkinson and Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia—are a mirage masking an inner trans activist. Yet, unlike some of the #Resistance celebrities—say, a certain cohost of The View or a former Pence aide turned featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention—Sassoon hasn’t done a single interview since she resigned last week. We’re guessing that’s not because the press hasn’t been calling.
We think the record shows she would have been a powerful ally for the president, as would her colleague Hagan Scotten, who followed her out the door. Success, for this administration, will depend in part on not setting its most capable allies up to fail.
Read the full editorial here.
For nearly 500 days, the International Committee of the Red Cross failed its duty to visit the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7. It failed its duty to protest the lack of access. And then, when some of the hostages were returned, ICRC officials Nour Khadam and Stephanie Eller participated in a Hamas propaganda ritual that preceded the hostages’ release.
Republicans on Capitol Hill took notice of those scenes. In the Senate, they’re reassessing America’s status as the ICRC’s top funder and advancing legislation that could open the committee up to lawsuits from American terror victims, the Free Beacon‘s Adam Kredo reports.
Right now, the Red Cross and other international NGOs enjoy a protected legal status that shields them from such suits. Ted Cruz has proposed legislation that would strip it. Though his bill “was primarily aimed at UNRWA and the World Health Organization,” writes Kredo, “it is broadly written and could allow for other nonprofits like the Red Cross to be held accountable in court.”
There seems to be an appetite among Senate Republicans to do just that. “Where was the Red Cross’s increasing concern for the safety and well-being of the hostages these last 493 days?” North Carolina’s Ted Budd (R.) asked. “Participating in Hamas’s propaganda ceremonies definitely calls into question their supposed neutrality. Seems like the ICRC is more concerned about their public image than actually fulfilling their mission to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict.”
Read more here.
It’s a tough time to be a part of the legacy media, especially at CBS News. The network is dealing with the humiliating fallout from top anchor Margaret Brennan’s insistence that Nazi Germany exterminated millions of Jews by weaponizing free speech. It’s also working to fend off Donald Trump’s lawsuit over a hackish edit of Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes sitdown.
It remains to be seen what will happen to Brennan, who responded to the controversy on Tuesday by firing off resistance retweets. But the lawsuit is proceeding in ways that threaten CBS.
In roughly 20 days, the FCC will release to Trump’s team a batch of internal documents related to a Biden-era 60 Minutes complaint that the commission’s previous leader dismissed. Trump asked for an expedited review of all complaint-related communications between the FCC, CBS, and the Harris campaign. Late last week, the FCC approved it, our Chuck Ross scoops.
Trump’s attorneys “sought the records to bolster Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News over the Harris interview, which appeared on 60 Minutes on Oct. 7,” writes Ross. “In the Oct. 31 lawsuit, Trump accused CBS News of a ‘brazen attempt to interfere’ in the election by doctoring Harris’s rambling response to a question about the Israel-Hamas war.”
Away from the Beacon:
- The New Yorker‘s Jane Mayer won a journo award for her shoddy Pete Hegseth reporting, which was driven by a disgruntled former employee of a veterans organization the defense secretary once led. We’re all trying to figure out why American trust in media remains at record lows.
- Kamala Harris is back with CAA, the Hollywood “talent” agency that represented her before she became VP and has since signed Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Upcoming creative projects may or may not include a luxury cookware shopping show.
- Anti-Israel radicals tried to protest in New York City’s Borough Park neighborhood and were quickly pushed back by a group of Israeli flag-toting Jews. Am Yisrael Chai.
This article was originally published at freebeacon.com
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