SMITH GOES TO SCOTUS
Preempting Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith has asked the Supreme Court to review the former president’s claims that his actions surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, fell within the purview of presidential immunity.
Hours after Smith’s filing, the Supreme Court agreed to expedite consideration of the petition and gave Trump a Dec. 20 deadline to file a response.
Trump’s legal team had appealed D.C. Judge Tanya Chutkan’s rejection of Trump’s motion to dismiss on presidential immunity grounds. That appeal was directed toward the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit but would have likely headed to the Supreme Court depending on how the appellate judges ruled.
March 4, 2024, is the currently scheduled start date for the trial but that could be delayed if Trump’s attorneys are successful. In addition to repealing Chutkan’s decision, his legal team asked for a stay of proceedings pending resolution of the presidential immunity issue.
Smith’s team is asking for a quick ruling by the Supreme Court.
“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” its petition for writ of certiorari read. The special counsel added that “only this Court can definitively resolve” the issue.
Trump’s spokesperson responded by saying, “There is absolutely no reason to rush this sham to trial except to injure President Trump and tens of millions of his supporters.
The spokesperson also referenced the Supreme Court’s 8-0 decision in McDonnell v. United States. In that case, the justices vacated former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s conviction, which came from a case brought by Smith.
It’s just one of several legal questions in Trump’s D.C. case that could reach the nation’s highest court. Trump’s team filed several motions to dismiss and has been fighting Chutkan’s gag order in court. An appellate panel in the D.C. Circuit recently narrowed that order.
—Sam DormanZELENSKYY’S BACK IN TOWN
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy makes his third appearance in Washington today as Ukraine supporters pull out all the stops to gain approval for another $60 billion in aid for the war-torn country.
Zelenskyy will meet with the Senate plus have face-to-face meetings with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and President Joe Biden, who asked Congress for the supplemental funding.
Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young warned Johnson last week that current funding for Ukraine would run out by the end of the month. “We are out of money—and nearly out of time,” Young wrote on Dec. 4.
House Republicans have been skeptical of spending more on a war that lacks a clear exit strategy. Zelenskyy will likely continue to make his case that Ukraine can prevail if they have the arms and ammo to keep fighting.
Johnson and the GOP are now trying to muscle the Senate into approving a slate of border security provisions in exchange for additional aid to Ukraine.
It’s not working. Talks appeared to break down in the Senate last week, and Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) both indicated on Sunday talk shows that there was no progress over the weekend.
While America-first Republicans are laser-focused on securing the southern border, defense hawks in both parties see Ukraine as a tripwire on the eastern frontier.
Let Vladimir Putin blow past it, the thinking goes, and the dominoes will begin to fall in Europe. Worse, the contagion could spread to Asia if Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping gets the idea the United States won’t intervene.
Then there’s Israel. House Republicans approved over $14 billion for Israel but want to pay for it by cutting or clawing back spending in other areas.
That’s a hard no for Senate Dems. They want a single up-or-down vote on aid for both countries plus other foreign aid and some additional border security funding Biden asked for.
We’re not expecting any movement on Ukraine, Israel, or the border before Congress takes off for the holidays on Friday.
—Lawrence Wilson
GOING ON THE OFFENSIVE AGAINST THE CCP
For years, the Chinese Communist Party has been locked in a “battle of narratives” with the United States, but a lawmaker and a group of China experts want to turn it around.
A major theme that the Chinese regime has been successfully spreading, both in China and around the world, is that China’s rise under the CCP is inevitable and that the Party is “undeterrable,” John Lee, senior fellow at Hudson Institute, said at a Dec. 11 panel hosted by the think tank.
“If you absorb those narratives, you may hate what China does in the world, but you feel powerless to actually do anything about it,” he said at the event, calling it “the one area where we do need to go on the offensive.”
One case in point for Lee is the recent U.S.-China summit, where Biden again referred to the communist Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a “dictator” shortly after their talk.
“Now that doesn’t hurt Xi Jinping. But what would hurt Xi Jinping is Joe Biden had said Xi Jinping is an incompetent and corrupt dictator.”
“Because if the CCP is believed to be competent, orderly, and doing what it does for the benefit of the Chinese people, which is what it tells its own country, it doesn’t matter that Xi Jinping is a dictator,” he said.
“So what we need to do is expose that facade that he’s a successful and corrupt-free dictator.”
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), the moderator during the Hudson event, agreed, telling The Epoch Times “This is going to be a war of ideas.”
“Chairman Xi certainly talks about the decline of democracy in the West, and we should talk about the fact that dictatorships and socialism have never been successful, are not successful, and never will be successful going forward,” he said.
“Democracy may have its flaws, but it is by far and away the best system of government in the world,” he said, adding that the United States can’t have its key resources: pharmaceuticals, manufacturing supply chain, held hostage by China, and it “shouldn’t be shy about pointing out” the abuses the regime is carrying out against the Chinese people.
Washington wants the relationship with China to improve. But reducing “harshness” toward China will not work, according to Miles Yu, China policy advisor to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“Every single time the U.S.-China relationship gets worse, it’s always the Chinese Communist Party’s policy, their words, their actions, at fault.”
While the CCP might characterize engagement with the U.S. as a “win-win” scenario, the regime doesn’t actually believe it to be so, he said.
“The Chinese Communist Party would never—never— accept the fact that they might be losing,” he said, because if that happens, “that means the regime will be gone too.”
—Eva Fu
WHAT’S HAPPENING
- The House Rules Committee considers a vote to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry into Biden.
- Biden hosts Zelenskyy at the White House. Zelensky visits Congress earlier in the day.
- The House votes on two competing bills, one from the House Intelligence Committee and the other from the House Judiciary Committee, to reform and reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
BOOKMARKS
More than 265,000 Israelis have applied for firearms licenses since the Oct. 7 attacks by terror group Hamas left some 1,200 of their countrymen dead. Dan M. Berger of The Epoch Times details the changing attitudes there and the expedited process for obtaining a firearm. Meanwhile, the United States had stalled on sending rifles to Israel over concerns that they’ll end up in the wrong hands, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Trump holds a commanding lead in the latest Iowa poll, Austin Alonzo of The Epoch Times reports. Trump leads Biden in Michigan and Georgia, two hotly contested states in 2020. CNN breaks down that lead and names the primary reason for it.
Another presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., got bad news from the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied his petition to intervene in a case related to COVID-19 vaccines, according to Zachary Stieber of The Epoch Times. Kennedy recently doubled down on his vaccine skepticism by making a sweeping campaign promise regarding the National Institutes of Health, NBC News reports.
The CCP has adopted a new strategy for dealing with dissidents: collective punishment. The Epoch Times’s Frank Fang, details this practice and how it’s affecting Chinese families. Meanwhile, Fox News details new sanctions the U.S. Treasury imposed against the CCP and other human rights violators.
A pair of new UN reports on climate change are conspicuous for what they don’t say. Neither statement calls on advanced countries to reduce meat consumption to meet global climate objectives, Austin Alonzo of The Epoch Times reports. That’s despite multiple reports like this one from the Guardian making the case that methane emissions, produced by the livestock industry, contribute to climate change.
Tucker Carlson is launching a streaming service. The Epoch Times’s Jack Phillips gives the details—and reveals Carlson’s response to speculation that he’ll be Trump’s VP pick.
