Donald Trump accused President Joe Biden of overseeing a Soviet-style persecution of Catholics and claimed FBI undercover spies are about to infiltrate the churches.
Biden has described himself as a “practicing Catholic,” and is just the second Catholic president after JFK. But that didn’t stop the GOP front-runner from launching dubious allegations at his probable adversary in the 2024 election.
“Under Crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before,” Trump said in the video posted to Truth Social on Thursday.
“Catholics in particular are being targeted and evangelicals are surely on the watch list as well. Over the past three years, the Biden administration has sent SWAT teams to arrest pro-life activists. The FBI has been caught profiling devout Catholics as possible domestic terrorists and planning to send undercover spies into Catholic churches, just like in the old days of the Soviet Union.”
A leaked FBI memo titled “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities” was interpreted by some conservatives to mean that the Justice Department was generally targeting Catholics as domestic terrorists. Attorney General Merrick Garland called the accusation “outrageous” and said he was appalled by the memo. “Any characterization that the FBI is targeting Catholics is false,” the bureau said to Newsweek on Friday.
As for arrests of pro-life activists that Trump referred to, he may have been referring to action against alleged extremists that conservatives seemed to spin into a false narrative about a war against the religious right, as HuffPost reported in 2022.
One of the suspects, Mark Houck, was acquitted of federal charges in January 2023.
In his new video plea, Trump also urged Catholics not to vote for Biden or any other Democrat and promised to form a task force against “anti-Christian bias.” The task force would also “look at government agencies, universities, and major corporations that have adopted anti-Christian diversity, equity and inclusion programs.”
In comments made in 2021 nearly a year after his 2020 defeat to Biden, Trump complained about losing ungrateful Catholic supporters for that election. “I did a lot for the Catholics. I’m a little bit surprised that we didn’t do better with the Catholic vote,” Trump said. He added at one point he was “very optimistic that we’re going to be back.”
European intelligence suggests that Russia may launch an attack on Europe during the winter of 2024-2025 if the United States finds itself “without a leader” following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the German tabloid Bild reported on Dec. 23, citing an anonymous European intelligence source.
The intelligence service source contends that a potential Russian strike on Europe could occur within the presidential transitionary period, contingent on President Joe Biden not securing re-election in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. This transition period spans three months, from the November 2024 U.S. presidential election to the subsequent inauguration in January 2025.
According to the intelligence source, Russia may aim to launch an attack on Europe during this transition, especially if the leading Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, is re-elected. Assistance to European countries is anticipated to follow, albeit with some delay.
Throughout his campaign for the presidency, former President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the level of aid President Joe Biden’s administration provides to Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelensky has also previously warned that the result of the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election can “very strongly” influence the course of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The German think tank DGAP has issued prior warnings to Western nations, suggesting that Russia might launch a direct attack against NATO in “as little as six to 10 years.” While Poland’s national security agency has expressed a more urgent concern, estimating that Russia could potentially attack NATO in less than 36 months.
Polish officials have previously suggested that Russia might target a NATO alliance member in Eastern Europe, including countries such as Poland, Estonia, Romania, and Lithuania.
Donald Trump has asked an appeals court in Washington DC to throw out charges that he sought to subvert the 2020 election, in the latest of a series of high-stakes legal maneuvers between the former president’s lawyers and the US department of justice.
In a filing late on Saturday lawyers for Trump argued to the DC circuit court of appeals that he is legally cloaked from liability for actions he took while serving as president.
The move came a day after the US supreme court declined to expedite a request by the special counsel Jack Smith to consider the question of presidential immunity from prosecution.
The latest filing is an incremental advance on the long-running legal duels between Trump and the special counsel, who may not now be able to bring the election interference complaint, one of four separate criminal cases against Trump, before a jury ahead of the next year’s election.
If the election interference case is delayed, and Trump wins the election as current polls suggest he could, the former president could simply order all federal charges against him to be dropped.
In Saturday’s 55-page brief to the appeals court, Trump’s lawyer D John Sauer argued in essence that under the US constitution one branch of government cannot assert judgement over another.
“Under our system of separated powers, the judicial branch cannot sit in judgment over a president’s official acts,” Sauer wrote. “That doctrine is not controversial,” he added.
The filing repeats what Trump’s lawyers have consistently said: that he was acting in an official capacity to ensure election integrity, and therefore under immunity because presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for “official acts”.
Under the constitution, only the Senate can impeach and convict a president – and that effort failed.
In the filing, Sauer argued that executive immunity must exist because no president or former president has previously been charged with a crime.
“The unbroken tradition of not exercising the supposed formidable power of criminally prosecuting a president for official acts – despite ample motive and opportunity to do so, over centuries – implies that the power does not exist,” he wrote.
He also said that Tanya Chutkan, the judge due to hear case against Trump, was mistaken in her interpretation of limited presidential immunity when she wrote that Trump should still be “subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office”.
The interplay of legislative, executive and judicial power now lie at the center of the 2024 election. Last week, Colorado’s supreme court ruled that Trump was ineligible to be on the ballot in that state because of his alleged actions to resist certification of the popular vote in 2020.
But the implementation of the ruling was delayed until next month when the US supreme court may look at it.
On Saturday evening, before heading to Camp David for the holiday break, Joe Biden said he “can’t think of one” reason presidents should receive absolute immunity from prosecution, as the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has claimed.
