Day: August 2, 2023

In my usual non-lawyerly way, I want to repeat a pattern that I’ve observed over the past year or so. Every time Donald Trump increases his polling lead, the Biden administration comes storming in and slaps him with some cockamamie set of criminal charges.

I’m using the word “cockamamie” because I think it’s all political. It’s all weaponization. It’s all to try to protect Joe Biden. If you disagree with me, I respect your disagreement. I always do. Hope you know that, but I continue to believe that Joe Biden will do anything, and use any means of government power, to prevent Donald Trump from running against him.

Political geniuses in the Washington beltway think Trump is the easiest guy for Biden to beat. Something tells me Mr. Joe Biden doesn’t agree with that wisdom. In short, I believe Biden wants his minions to throw Trump in jail.

Of course, a hundred years ago, socialist Eugene V. Debs actually ran for president from jail, but that was then, and this is now. At least one well-regarded columnist believes one of the new charges against Trump could conceivably lead to the death penalty.

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I’m sure it was just a coincidence that one day after Hunter Biden’s former BFF Devon Archer fingered Joe Biden as a major-league, pay-for-play influence-peddler — just one day later, the Justice Department and Jack Smith come out with one obstruction and three conspiracy counts related to the 2020 election. Just a coincidence, right?

Just like last spring, when House Oversight Chair James Comer revealed all the Biden family suspicious accounts and payments. A couple of weeks later Alvin Bragg went after Trump. Then, in early June, when Mr. Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley unveiled the Biden-Burisma bribery FBI 1023 scandal, the very next day, Merrick Garland and Jack Smith came crashing down on the Mar-a-Lago documents indictment. Didn’t they?

Just a coincidence, mind you, and then last week, Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal fell apart in a Wilmington court, and the very next day, Jack Smith unveiled new Mar-a-Lago charges. 

I’m sure that was another coincidence. Fundamentally, this non-lawyer observes: There was no insurrection charge leveled at Donald Trump, and that would’ve been the criminal, judicial, golden ring for Jack Smith. Trump incited nothing, and all the rest of this stuff looks to me like a lot of politicized legal gobbly-gobble of obstruction and conspiracy that make no sense to me whatsoever.

In this country, with First Amendment free speech rights, you are free to be right, and you are free to be wrong, but if you say something and you’re wrong, you don’t get prosecuted. You don’t go to jail and you don’t stand up in front of a firing squad.

That’s America. What Joe Biden is doing with his Justice Department is not about America. It’s about subverting the very democratic principles that Biden sometimes talks about.

You can’t criminalize somebody over a disagreement. You may like Donald Trump, or you may not like Donald Trump, but he has a right to believe that he won the election in 2020 and he has a right to be dead wrong. By the by, drawing from the Wall Street Journal editorial page — a distinguished page that is strongly opposed to Mr. Trump — they write about how the Supreme Court has ruled that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity from damages and liability predicated on their official acts.

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One last non-lawyerly point: The Justice Department and the FBI have spent a lot of time obstructing a growing body of evidence that Joe Biden himself is in a heap of trouble — criminal trouble — with respect to influence peddling, bribery, money laundering, wire fraud and other potential charges.

These are, at the moment, allegations, but there’s also hard, cold evidence behind these allegations and in Mr. Biden’s case, it’s not about free speech or criminalizing disagreements. It’s much tougher stuff. We need to have a proper final jury decision on all of this on Nov. 5, 2024. That’s the way American democracy should work. 

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow’s opening commentary on the August 2, 2023, edition of “Kudlow.” 

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Frontier Airlines ranked as the carrier that most frequently denied passengers boardings between January and March, according to a Department of Transportation (DOT) report.

The Denver-based budget airline subjected over 2,400 travelers in the first quarter of 2023 to involuntary “bumping,” according to the DOT’s air travel consumer report published in June. That equated to an involuntary bumping rate of 3.73 per 10,000 passengers.

FOX 35 Orlando reported Monday on Frontier’s bumping, giving examples of several travelers who said they had been bumped from scheduled flights.

Compared to the same period in 2022, the number of fliers that Frontier involuntarily bumped has gone down slightly, the DOT report said. Its rate of involuntary denied boardings dropped from 4.82 per 10,000 passengers. 

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FOX Business reached out to Frontier for comment.

The DOT noted on its website that the law does not prohibit bumping, something airlines do when they sell more tickets than seats. To help avoid having seats left open by people who don’t show up, airlines often oversell. 

The second-highest rate of involuntary bumpings from January through March was 0.45 per 10,000 passengers by Envoy Air and Spirit Airlines, according to the air travel consumer report. 

When a traveler is involuntarily bumped, he is often entitled to some sort of compensation. The minimum amount of money an eligible passenger must receive from an airline for a bumping partly depends on how much later than originally scheduled it can arrange alternative transportation, according to the DOT’s website. 

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Exceptions to a passenger getting compensation include instances when a new flight is expected to land under one hour from the originally scheduled flight, when an original flight gets swapped for a smaller plane and when the bumping is due to “safety-related weight restrictions” on planes with under 60 seats, the DOT report said. 

If a passenger “fails to comply with ticketing, check-in or reconfirmation procedures,” airlines also don’t have to compensate travelers.

The DOT has said carriers must provide involuntarily bumped travelers with a “written statement describing their rights and explaining how the carrier decides who gets on an oversold flight and who doesn’t.”

In total, over 5,300 passengers with confirmed reservations on 15 U.S. airlines experienced involuntary bumping over the three-month span from January to March, the report found. It marked a 24% decrease year over year. 

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The DOT air travel consumer report also indicated Delta Air Lines, Allegiant Air, Endeavor Air and Hawaiian Airlines did not register any involuntary denied boardings in the first quarter.

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