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Many things human come in pairs. Eyes, ears, hands, feet, and lungs appear in twos. Even a single nose features two nostrils. In this context, America’s new, two-track justice system might be perfectly natural: One for the Left—in which they suffer few consequences, if any, for their misdeeds—and one for the Right, in which arrests, trials, and prison sentences are routine. After the Supreme Court’s current term ends later this month, masons should spend this summer re-chiseling the marble above its columns. Out with “Equal Justice Under Law.” In with “Bipolar Justice for All!” Black Lives Matter and Antifa thugs on the Left spent the summer of 2020 yanking statues from pedestals, torching police precincts, and otherwise unleashing total mayhem. Then-Sen. Kamala Harris promoted a legal-defense fund to free arrestees. Few paid any price for the “fiery but mostly peaceful” George Floyd riots. A peaceful demonstrator shares his opinion at a Black Lives Matter march on June 14, 2020, in Los Angeles. Few, if any, of his more violent BLM compatriots suffered any legal consequences for their anything but “mostly peaceful” actions after the killing of George Floyd less than three weeks earlier. (Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images) The Jan. 6 hoodlums on the Right who shattered windows and smashed doors to breach the U.S. Capitol deserve serious prison time. But other protesters naively entered after Capitol Police waved them in. “Hey, look. It’s open house!” some might have thought. Many of these accidental tourists are in huge trouble. Arkansas’ Daniel Hatcher entered the Capitol, snapped some photos for two minutes, and walked out. The FBI arrested Hatcher in Little Rock last Feb. 13. He now faces federal charges. Left-wing Deep State functionaries John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Peter Strzok, and Andrew Weissmann advanced the Russia Hoax, which bedeviled the Trump administration and divided America for three years. Each of these men scored a book contract and a TV deal. Literally. On the Right, Russiagate ensnared Trump aides Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, Gen. Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone. All were sentenced to prison. Trump pardoned Flynn and Stone. Gates served house arrest. Manafort and Papadopoulos went to the slammer. The quintessence of these two systems involves 2016’s presidential nominees and how they separately tried to influence that election. On the Left, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign paid $175,000 to Democratic law firm Perkins Coie, which engaged opposition-research shop Fusion GPS. It hired former British spy Christopher Steele. He wrote a baseless “Dirty Dossier” that hallucinated ties between Trump and the Kremlin. Team Clinton leaked this fraudulent report, which BuzzFeed published. And the Russia Hoax was off to the races. On the Right, Trump was accused of reimbursing his then-attorney, Michael Cohen, for paying porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to clam up about an alleged affair with Trump that both of them have denied. As former Justice Department official John B. Daukas wrote in the American Spectator: “So, Hillary Clinton is found to be liable for mislabeling payments for the Steele Dossier as legal fees and gets an $8,000 civil fine; Trump has been found guilty of mislabeling nondisclosure payments as legal fees and is a convicted felon.” As Yogi Berra might have said: “Only in America.” Clinton went on to write books, deliver lectures, and whine loudly about why she lost to a real-estate magnate and TV personality on his first political campaign. Notwithstanding emotional scars, she is out a whopping eight grand. Trump, meanwhile, endured a six-week trial that kept him off the campaign trail for four days each week, cost him undisclosed millions in—not to coin a phrase—legal expenses, and added abundant stress to his already high-pressure life. He awaits sentencing on July 11 and could receive four years for each of the 34 counts on which he was convicted. Total: 136 years in the big house. But is this really so wrong? If good things come in pairs, perhaps this applies to justice. Rather than complain about two paths to justice, one Left and one Right, maybe conservatives should celebrate this development. After all, the truth about pectoral muscles also might apply to justice systems: “One is not enough, and three are too many.” We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Just One Justice System? Why Not Two? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. X has decided to petition the US Supreme Court in an ongoing legal battle between the company behind the social media platform that succeeded Twitter, and Jack Smith, special counsel in the US Department of Justice (DoJ). We obtained a copy of the petition for you here. The case concerns a warrant requested by Smith and granted by a district court in January 2023 to access private data on Twitter servers belonging to President Donald Trump, which he sent and received while he was still president. The information Smith sought – as part of his investigation into Trump’s role concerning the January 6 events – included draft posts and direct messages. And, Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court for the District of Columbia also approved a non-disclosure order, meaning that X was banned from informing anyone, Trump included, about the warrant’s existence. X attempted to avoid compliance with the warrant, citing First Amendment concerns, which resulted in a $350,000 fine – a punishment the District Court supported. The company’s petition now before the Supreme Court presented the lower court’s decisions, and its own interpretations of the consequences of those decisions, which X Corp claims to set a precedent by letting the government deny a former president the chance to assert privilege over his private communications. X also believes that this can allow the government to invade other privileges, like attorney-client or journalist-source, by means of obtaining communications data from third parties and issuing gag orders. The petition asks the Supreme Court if an electronic communications service provider “can be compelled to produce potentially privileged user communications before adjudication of the provider’s First Amendment challenge to a nondisclosure order that prohibits it from notifying the user and before the user had notice and an opportunity to assert privilege, including executive privilege.” The second question put before the court is if the First Amendment allows gag orders to be issued to a provider “in a highly public investigation.” X further wants to know if this is permitted when said investigation is taking place when the government “does not (a) demonstrate that disclosure would jeopardize the investigation’s integrity; or (b) disprove the workability of a less-restrictive alternative, such as disclosure to a representative designated by a former president to assert executive privilege on his behalf.” Although the District Court ruled that it was acceptable not to give Trump the opportunity to use executive privilege, four judges criticized the decision to approve the gag order. One of them, Naomi Rao, said at the time that Jack Smith “obscured and bypassed any assertion of executive privilege and dodged the careful balance Congress struck in the Presidential Records Act.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Elon Musk’s X Asks Supreme Court To Review Trump Warrant and Nondisclosure Order, Citing First Amendment Concerns appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has made what the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons Educational Foundation (AAPS) calls a landmark decision in a case – AAPS v. ABIM – seeking the right to proceed with a case alleging censorship. The case was previously dismissed by the District Court for the Southern District of Texas, but the appellate court took the position that AAPS did manage to support its claims with sufficient allegations. We obtained a copy of the decision for you here. AAPS, a professional association, believes that the actions of three other medical associations, and of the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, undermined the First Amendment. AAPS accuses the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM), and the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology (ABOG) of coordinating to suppress AAPS members’ speech concerning Covid issues (mask mandates, lockdowns, vaccines, criticism of Anthony Fauci), and more. This was done by the three associations named as plaintiffs threatening that AAPS-affiliated physicians would lose their board certification because of their criticism concerning medical controversies – which would have resulted in excluding them from most insurance networks and from practicing in most hospitals, the association said. MD Jane Orient, the AAPS executive director, commented on the circuit court’s opinion to say it means the group is now able “to pursue its claim against censorship by the Biden administration.” The district court’s ruling preventing AAPS from amending its complaint was also overturned in the appeals process. But the Court of Appeals accepted the District Court’s opinion that the allegations concerning Mayorkas, i.e., the DHS, are “moot” – because the agency had in the meantime dissolved the Disinformation Governance Board, that AAPS claims was an actor in the “unprecedented” censorship campaign targeting its members. In announcing the decision made by the Court of Appeals, AAPS cited one of the judges on the panel, James Ho, who stated that in the US, “We know how to disagree with one another without destroying one another. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.” The judges agreed that AAPS and similar organizations have a constitutional right to fight against censorship that affects freedom of expression at the events they organize. AAPS believes that the decision to allow the case to proceed sets a precedent and will be “cited nationwide for decades to come.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Fifth Circuit Revives First Amendment Claims by Physicians’ Group Against Fauci Criticism Censorship appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Hunter Biden Trial Day Four: This is Biden Town

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans blocked the Democrats' “Right to Contraception” bill. The bill sought to provide more money to places like Planned Parenthood to facilitate more abortions and promote transgender surgeries on kids. Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) proposed the bill called “Right to Contraception.” Critics have more appropriately titled the bill as the “Payouts for Planned Parenthood Act.” Democrats attempted to pass the bill with the motives of securing access to contraception for individuals, but, as GOP critics pointed out, that motive was misleading. In actuality, the bill would send money directly into the wide pockets of Planned Parenthood so that it can continue aborting innocent babies. Top pro-life group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America elaborated on the motives in a letter, noting that it would “funnel money to Planned Parenthood, override conscience protections, and could mandate access to abortion drugs. It also feeds into the false narrative that states have prohibited contraceptives or family planning, or that there are federal efforts to do so,” adding that “This bill has less to do with the ability of individuals to obtain contraception and more to do with ensuring federal funding for abortion providers who also happen to provide contraceptives.” The bill strategically makes the definition of “contraception” broad so that it doesn’t just mean things like condoms, but includes things like the abortion pill, which doesn’t stop a baby from being conceived but rather kills a baby that already is. That’s not reproduction, it’s murder. Terry Shilling, president of the American Principles Project noted the following about Democrats motives according to CatholicVote:  What’s going on is nothing new.  Democrats have been hell-bent on forcing taxpayers to fund all types of ‘reproductive care,’and really what they mean is abortion, sterilization, contraception – everything that the Catholic Church stands against. We stand on the side of life, and the Democratic Party has become a death cult. Shilling also noted that the bill would also serve as a “trojan horse” for transgender surgeries on minors, something Planned Parenthood loves doing. The Senate voted 51-39 against moving forward with the bill. It would’ve needed 60 votes to proceed. The devil is in the details, and it’s a good thing this bill didn’t pass. It, like most of the left, is chock full of misinformation and has an agenda that puts innocent children at imminent risk.

ABC’s Good Morning America bid farewell Thursday to the first Hunter Biden trial (at least for now) with zero mentions during their news show ahead of what would be a critical day of testimony for the prosecution by Hunter’s former love/late brother Beau’s widow Hallie Biden. CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today, in contrast, still had full stories with the latter even conceding Biden’s only hope to evade guilty is sympathetic juror. The coverage disparity from the Trump trial only widened with 49 minutes and 14 seconds since Monday on the network morning and evening shows compared to 74 minutes and 31 seconds at this point in the Trump trial.     CBS correspondent Scott MacFarlane started with a tone of sympathy in summarizing Wednesday’s proceedings: “It was a day of deeply personal testimony as prosecutors tried to prove Hunter Biden illegally purchased and possessed this Colt .38 handgun while using drugs in late 2018 and lied on the application form.” After noting Hunter’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle testified, he brought up another one of the First Son’s former love interests: Then, Hunter Biden's former girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, took the stand. She dated Biden for much of 2018, and testified she saw him smoke crack “every 20 minutes or so”, including in late September of that year, weeks before he bought the gun. Then she said she witnessed him use drugs again in November. He previewed Hallie’s testimony by citing texts introduced earlier in the week, courtesy of Hunter’s laptop from hell (though he didn’t say that’s where they came from. “And the jurors heard from the gunshot shop owner who sold the gun to Hunter Biden. And, Nate, prosecutors held up the gun in court for the jurors to see,” he later concluded. NBC’s Today had more depth, starting with this sympathy-seeking tease from co-host Hoda Kotb (which isn’t included in the coverage tallies): Dramatic testimony. Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and former girlfriend both taking the stand in his trial on federal gun charges. What they revealed about his history of addiction and their volatile relationships, with prosecutors set to wrap up their case as soon as today. Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles remained on the trial beat with his piece largely sticking to MacFarlane’s including quoting testimony from the one-time stripper Kestan and the strategy of Hunter’s legal team (click “expand”): “He used cash for a lot of things, a good amount of it was for drugs,” said Zoe Kestan, a woman Hunter met at a strip club in New York. The pair launched a relationship filled with drugs and alcohol. Kestan testifying at one point that Hunter was “smoking crack every 20 minutes or so.” Also on the stand, Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle. She told the jury how she learned her then husband was abusing drugs. “I found a crack pipe on July 3rd, 2015,” she recalled, adding that it was on their porch. Buhle testified how his drug abuse led to the end of their marriage. When she confronted him, she said, he acknowledged smoking crack. She routinely searched his car for and found drug paraphernalia before their daughters would drive, including into 2018 when Hunter’s accused of lying on the form.  But the defense team is working hard to plant a seed of reasonable doubt with the jury. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell, pressing agent Erica Jensen about the form. “Do you know whether the defendant checked those boxes,” he said. “Not from my own observation,” she replied. “I’m not qualified as a handwriting expert.” The prosecution rebutted with Gordon Cleveland, the man who sold Hunter the gun and watched him fill out the form. “What did he write,” the prosecutor asked. Cleveland said, “he wrote, ‘no’.” Still yet to testify perhaps the most important witness, Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau Biden, Hunter’s brother, and a former romantic partner. She was involved with Hunter when he bought the gun and tried to throw it away at a grocery store. Nobles had something new to offer as he revealed Hunter’s defense team could “call Naomi Biden, who is Hunter’s daughter” (and, in something Nobles didn’t note, has lived at the Biden White House) to give “a different interpretation of the events around this time than her mother who testified yesterday.” The half-segment came with Kotb joining two former lawyers in co-host Savannah Guthrie and senior legal analyst Laura Jarrett. Guthrie summarized the defense’s Hail Mary: “So, the issue in this case, the defense is trying to say well maybe wasn’t an addict at the very moment he checked that box.” Jarrett played it straight, admitting “[t]hat’s a tough road for them” since “[t]he prosecutors really have an upper hand here because they’ve clearly established that he was using a lot of drugs before, and he was using a lot of drugs after.” “The defense’s only hope is there will be somebody on that jury who has sympathy and has a little bit of reasonable doubt because the evidence that they have for that day in particular, is only these text messages with Hallie Biden,” she added. In responding to Kotb’s question about any chance for a last-minute plea deal, Jarrett explained prosecutors have no reason to given the previous one fell apart and they have “all the embarrassing and damming evidence” on their side. Most significantly, Jarrett cautioned viewers to not think the crimes Hunter’s accused of are benign: “[H]e’s facing so much prison time for this. Guys, this is not a minor crime. We’re talking about decades behind bars if convicted.” To see the relevant transcripts from June 6, click here (for CBS) and here (for NBC).

The FBI appears to have counseled the Metro Nashville Police Department against releasing the manifesto belonging to the Covenant School killer. Officials with the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group wrote to Nashville Police Chief John Drake on May 11, 2023 — approximately six weeks after the school massacre — about the "protection of legacy tokens," referring to the writings and other documents that killers leave behind. 'For all the reasons listed above, release of legacy tokens such as this would endanger school security across the country.' The FBI "strongly discourages the public dissemination of any legacy tokens," the memo said. The memo does not specifically mention the Covenant School tragedy or the transgender perpetrator. But the timing of the memo — and its message — is not a coincidence. The FBI provided three reasons to persuade the Nashville Police from releasing "legacy tokens." First, the FBI claimed they "will contribute to future attacks." Second, the FBI said legacy tokens do not "provide the answers or comfort sought by the public and surviving victims." Third, the FBI claimed legacy tokens "facilitate false narratives and inaccurate information" — and even "conspiracy theories." The memo goes on to say: Public release of legacy tokens from all mass shootings, but school shootings in particular, will likely spark incredibly intense interest and study by potential offenders who are considering a school-based attack. For all the reasons listed above, release of legacy tokens such as this would endanger school security across the country. Experts agree that as a society we must do everything we can to prevent all mass shootings, including school shootings, from happening in the future. A clear step we can take is limiting the availability of legacy tokens for ideation, study, and inspiration by those considering an attack. The Tennessee Star first reported the memo. On Tuesday, the Metro Nashville Police Department confirmed the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit has been assisting in the Covenant School investigation. "As has been publicly acknowledged, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit has assisted in this Homicide investigation," MNPD public affairs director Don Aaron confirmed to the Tennessee Star. "Any material related to that assistance that is part of the open case file is protected. As I referenced earlier today, our Homicide team is working to bring this matter to a conclusion." The killer's manifesto has been the subject of contentious legal drama.A Tennessee judge recently heard arguments about releasing the manifesto. The media and some officials believe there is a public interest in the manifesto, while some parents of the victims have fought to block its release.There has been no decision on when — or if — the memo will be made public.Last November, several pages of the manifesto were leaked, showing the transgender perpetrator hoped to have a "high death count" by killing "all" of the "little crackers" at the school.Despite investigating, Nashville police never identified the source of the leak.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

For years, the WNBA has functioned as a de facto charity project of the NBA. The league by all accounts has been a money loser since its inception, relying on subsidies from the NBA to pay its bills. Then-NBA commissioner David Stern even noted at the league's inception that the point of the league was not to make money but rather to widen the NBA's audience and to "encourage more girls to play basketball."For years, interest in the league lagged so low that owners literally encouraged fans to buy tickets to WNBA games out of a sense of civic duty. Interest in the on-court product simply did not exist. Now, for the first time since the league's inception, the WNBA is gaining attention on its own merit. The league has been blessed by the simultaneous entry of the two biggest collegiate female basketball stars in recent memory in Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. Their rivalry, which seems to have carried over from their college careers to their professional ones, has caused the league to shatter previous attendance and television ratings records. It's difficult for younger sports fans to appreciate, but prior to 1980, the NBA itself was a pretty moribund state as a sports league — playing a distant third fiddle to baseball and football. The fact that the upstart ABA had been able to force a merger just four years earlier is an indication that the strength of the league was not great, at least until the NBA was fortuitously gifted a similar pair of emerging collegiate stars in Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. The WNBA's greatest hope is that Clark and Reese will replicate the success of Bird and Johnson in turning their product into an attractive national television sport. The WNBA has been asking for attention for decades. The league finally has it. But the price of attention is scrutiny. The more people actually care about a sport, the more people who watch it and pay money for tickets, the more every utterance and minute action of its star athletes come under a microscope and serve as grist for the sports-talk mill. This scrutiny will and should extend to everyone involved with the league. The players were likely served a wakeup call when Chicago Sky forward Chennedy Carter's hard foul on Caitlin Clark prompted a cavalcade of condemnation likely never seen before in the history of the WNBA. At the height of its absurdity, an actual member of Congress sent a letter to the WNBA asking what the league was going to do about the incident. Not to be outdone, the Chicago Tribune's editorial board promptly compared the shoulder check to an assault. The scrutiny also extends to the league's referees, who might do well to call Bennett Salvatore for guidance on how to deal with suddenly becoming a household name. WNBA referee Charles Watson suddenly found himself the talk of the sports world this week when he ejected Angel Reese for waving her hand at him in dismissal. Overall, the league's response to this scrutiny thus far has been a pretty mixed bag. Watson's second technical against Reese was ultimately rescinded, which seems like the right choice, but this action only served to highlight the ridiculous dichotomy involved in acting magnanimous by returning a fine that was reported to be a paltry $400. The league has stayed fairly low key about the shoulder check heard round the world, which is probably also the right call, but it might be worth reminding fans of sport that Carter's foul on Clark was a good deal milder than, say, Dennis Rodman's infamous foul on Scottie Pippen during the 1991 Eastern Conference finals, or virtually any foul committed by any NBA player in the 1980s. The biggest adjustment the WNBA needs to make, though, pertains to its players, who are visibly grating against the attention paid to Clark in ways that are unhelpful to the growth of the league. The impulse toward jealousy is an understandable one, particularly for WNBA lifers who have long felt that they were not getting their due. But the extent to which that jealousy has been displayed publicly — and often tied to complaints about Clark's attention being due to her race — only serve to turn off fans who are tuning in to the WNBA for the first time to see Clark play. Some would interject that Michael Jordan infamously endured brutal treatment from the Detroit Pistons in particular, and there is no reason Clark should have it any different. This history, however, is slightly revisionist. The league (led by the Pistons) took an overtly physical approach with Jordan only when it became clear that it was not possible to stop him from winning a championship without taking that approach. Jordan was not put through the meat grinder until his team started succeeding in the playoffs — and Clark's Fever appear to be in no danger of winning any championships any time soon. Worse, some of the players appear to be handling even a modest increase in attention quite poorly. Just this morning, a number of Angel Reese's teammates took to X to complain loudly about a "harassment" incident at the team hotel. The "harassment" in question appears to have consisted of a single person with a camera calmly asking Chennedy Carter if she had contacted Caitlin Clark after the shoulder check incident. Listen, I am sure it is probably annoying for the players to be approached by people asking questions at their hotel (the video actually appears to be taken outside their hotel, in point of fact). I am sure they are probably sick of hearing about the Caitlin Clark foul. But if they think what is happening now is some sort of gross invasion of their privacy, I would encourage them to watch ESPN's tremendous "The Final Dance" documentary and observe the humongous throng that mobbed Michael Jordan literally everywhere he went, including the lobbies of hotels where his team stayed. It isn't great, and it would probably be desirable if fans left athletes alone to live their lives, but under no circumstances is anything that has happened to WNBA players yet even a fraction of what NBA stars deal with on a daily basis. Every person who has been a celebrity understands that there's bad that comes with the good, and you can't have one without the other. The players will ultimately need to decide whether the increased money and fame they have long said they desire is something they actually want. Either way, everyone in the WNBA — including owners, coaches, referees, players, and general managers — should prepare themselves for this reality: As more people care about what the WNBA does, more people will be examining every detail and every action under a microscope. Every word in every press conference and every on-court facial expression will have meaning. That's the reality of what being a sports celebrity means. And the way the WNBA handles this pressure will determine whether this is the start of the league's ascent into an independent league, or a flash in the pan that no one will remember five years from now. The WNBA has always said it wanted more attention. Now, we will find out if the league meant it.

A federal judge has ordered former Trump advisor and "War Room" host Stephen K. Bannon to report to jail by July 1. Bannon told reporters outside the courthouse Thursday that "all of this is about one thing. This is about shutting down the MAGA movement, shutting down grassroots conservatives, shutting down President Trump." "Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, the entire Justice Department — they're not going to shut up Trump. They're not going to shut up Navarro. They're not going to shut up Bannon. And they're certainly not going to shut up MAGA!" added Bannon. Background While it is apparently acceptable for Democrats and elements of the Biden Department of Justice to ignore subpoenas by House Republicans, that tolerance is evidently not universal. Bannon was convicted in July 2022 of two charges of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas from the Democrat-controlled House Select committee investigating the Jan. 6 protests. He was subsequently sentenced to four months in prison. 'Can I ask you what American justice even means anymore?' In response to the ruling, Bannon said, "We're gonna win at the Supreme Court," reported the National Pulse. "There's not a jail built, not a prison built that can shut me up." Around the time of Bannon's sentencing, Blaze Media cofounder and nationally syndicated radio host Glenn Beck said in a special, "Do you recognize your country anymore? We used to be a nation of fundamental rights granted to us by God, and we lived under a system of laws that promised justice. Not social justice, but justice justice. Can I ask you what American justice even means anymore?" "Was it justice when Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress? We've seen people defy Congress for decades, but no one ever goes to jail," continued Beck. "The last time someone went to jail for this was back in 1961. Before that ... 1948! It's rare, even though we've seen people openly defy Congress time after time." "Selectively deciding whether or not they'll decide to enforce the law isn't justice," added Beck. "[Bannon will do] four months in jail, but in January 2021, the former FBI lawyer that got caught falsifying evidence to spy on a member of President Trump's staff was spared prison and given a minor slap on the wrist." Bannon was not the only Trump advisor subjected to selective justice. The following September, Trump's former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro was also convicted of contempt of Congress. Navarro's lawyers wrote to the Supreme Court saying that the "prosecution of a senior presidential advisor asserting executive privilege conflicts with the constitutional independence required by the doctrine of separation of powers." "Not once before Dr. Navarro's prosecution has the Department of Justice concluded a senior presidential advisor may be prosecuted for contempt of congress following an assertion of executive privilege," added his lawyers. Having been unsuccessful in his appeal, Navarro reported to prison in March. Bannon to prison Carl Nichols, the Trump-nominated judge overseeing Bannon's case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, initially paused his sentence while the "War Room" host appealed his conviction, reported CNN. However, a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously tossed Bannon's challenges. Partisan prosecutors then asked Nichols to send Bannon packing to prison. The judge indicated Thursday that he no longer felt there was cause to pause Bannon's sentence "any longer." 'Biden and his aides are taking off the political battlefield two of Trump's top surrogates before the 2024 presidential election.' Bannon's defense attorneys reportedly argued ahead of Thursday's hearing that the judge lacked the authority to toss him in prison before he exhausted his options to appeal, including to a full panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court as Navarro had attempted. Outside the court, one of Bannon's attorneys said, "This case raises a dynamic separation of powers issue. We know from years and decades of case law that the president and a former president has the authority to invoke executive privilege. ... It's his prerogative to invoke and it's presumptively valid when invoked. It's not for Congress to determine whether it was an appropriate invocation or otherwise, and Congress cannot be the arbiter of how to respond to that. Only a court can be." — (@) Reactions Christopher Bedford, senior editor for politics and Washington correspondent for Blaze Media, said, "It paints a pretty clear picture of the DOJ's priorities that you're seeing Steve Bannon actually go to prison for contempt of Congress while so many others have slipped by." "I would like to say that it sets a precedent that Republicans ought to use in their own investigations. For example, the Republican leaders of the House Oversight and Accountability, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees referred Hunter Biden for arrest for contempt for lying to Congress. But that's not going to be enforced," said Bedford. "And it's not going to set a precedent because Republicans aren't going to take the same tack that Democrats have, unfortunately." Mike Davis of the Article III Project noted in a statement, "We have had constitutional executive privilege for 250 years — going back to George Washington — so the President of the United States can receive candid, confidential advice from his advisors without fear their advice will get publicly aired before courts or Congress." "President Biden and his Attorney General Merrick Garland have shamefully destroyed this, in their partisan quest to politicize and weaponize the Biden Justice Department to go after President Trump and his top aides," said Davis. "Biden and his aides are taking off the political battlefield two of Trump's top surrogates before the 2024 presidential election." Davis added that this was all part of "a broader criminal conspiracy by Biden, his aides, and his allies to politicize and weaponize law enforcement and intel agencies to violate the constitutional rights of Trump, his aides, and his allies for the purposes of partisan lawfare and election interference." Jack Posobiec, senior editor at Human Events and frequent guest on Bannon's "War Room," highlighted the nominal Republicans who voted to hold Bannon in contempt and effectively sealed his fate. — (@) Natalie Winters, cohost of "War Room," tweeted, "F*** Merrick Garland," then "War Room isn't going anywhere." Former Trump White House official Darren Beattie noted that when the Democrats are no longer "able to force social media companies to censor, they resort to simply jailing their critics. Prison is the second stage of deplatforming." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!