Courts Set to Slam Trump & Fox News

It’s not in southeast Turkey and Syria, or on the battlefields of Ukraine, but it’s in the courtrooms of the U.S. where the most seismic events are occurring this week. With sincerest apologies for all who’ve suffered and died from the great earthquakes and military/civilian casualties of the resistance to Putin’s brutal military offensive. Nonetheless we have to assert that it is the U.S. justice system that is poised to inflict the greatest blow of all this week – longawaited and past due blows against the crimes of the deceitful Donald Trump and Fox News.

The words from the jury foreman of the special grand jury in Georgia made in TV interviews this week suggest that no less than Trump himself, and a dozen or so of his cohorts, are facing imminent and severe criminal indictments for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in that state. Criminal indictments against Trump at long last.

The other big news of near equal import comes from court documents just released in the Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News. Transcripts released from that trial of internal Fox News documents show that highest level Fox executives and mouthpieces, alike, admit that their coverage of the 2020 election results engaged in patent lying when they claimed the result of that election, of President Biden’s clear victory. was in doubt.

In addition, it is in the context of such revelations that the leadership of the entire Republican Party is also seriously called into question now, since news has come out that Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy handed over more than 41 hours worth of video tapes of the January 6, 2021, riot in the U.S. Capitol to none other than Fox News’ premiere liar and dissembler, Tucker Carlson.

Stated the highly respected Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe in an interview with The Guardian, the Dominion brief and request for summary judgment made public this week is “likely to succeed and likely to be a landmark in the history of free speech and freedom of the press.”

Tribe said, “I have never seen a defamation case with such overwhelming proof that the defendant (Fox) admitted in writing that it was making up false information in order to increase its viewership and revenues,”Tribe told the Guardian. “Fox and its producers and performers were lying as part of their business model.” As The Guardian pointed out, “The case concerns Fox News’ repetition of Donald Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud, including claims about Dominion voting machines.”

Tribe said the filing establishes that Fox producers, owners and personalities from Rupert Murdoch down “were deliberately lying and knew they were lying.”

Consider how much suffering and pain these Fox lies have caused, even to this very day, when sadly it can be expected that millions of Americans will go on believing those lies and plotting against American democracy.

1. Keep the news clean and fair

2. Play no favorites, never mix business and editorial policy

3. Do not let the news columns reflect editorial content

4. Publish the news that is public property without fear or favor of friend or foe.

5. Accept no charity and ask no favors.

6. Give ‘value received’ for every dollar you take in.

7. Make the paper show a profit if you can, but above all keep it clean, fearless and fair.

Editor,

In the Feb 16 issue, in a frontpage article on the T-Zone updates, it says that instead of the City-Council recommended 10% of all new homes being affordable or workforce housing, the Planning Commission is recommending removing the requirement in favor of “earmarking” new tax revenue for development of affordable housing.

Who are we kidding? We have a 2-square mile municipality. I’ve lived here as a renter for over 20 years. Every time there is an initiative to add affordable housing, it gets shot down by homeowners, including affordable housing for seniors. It’s amazing that the Flower Building ever got approved for workforce housing.

And given all the recent development, where exactly would that new affordable housing go? Bethesda made such a deal with developers there 20 years ago. Guess how much affordable housing got built? Next to none.

Stick to what the City Council recommended: 10% of the new homes priced for those making no more than 60% of median income in Falls Church. If that’s politically unpalatable, then earmark new tax revenues to greatly expand the housing voucher program. But let’s not pretend that the Planning Commission’s recommendation makes sense.

Let’s try to make the City more inclusive, even for folks of modest means.

Ms. Chris Raymond Editor,

Charlie Clark’s attacks on Gov. Youngkin’s overdue education reforms contains too many inaccuracies or half truths to cite in this space, but to recap some of the more egregious examples:

Clark labels Youngkin’s proposed standard as “controversial,” forgetting that controversy regarding his predecessor’s performance on education is what put our popular governor into his current position

He allows Atif Qarni to level the charges of “Whitewashed. It pretty much wiped away black and brown voices” and that Youngkin “ignores history and leaves students feeling unseen “without any evidence to support it. Qarni’s words suggest that all mention of black Americans has been erased, without any challenge to his claims.

“Terrell Fleming, supervisor of social studies for the Office of Academics, said Arlington high school students will pilot the new College Board Advanced Placement unit on black history just rejected by conservatives in Florida.” Some mention of the main reasons for the rejection would have been useful, as apparently Queer Theory is a major component black history.

I understand that Clark writes on the editorial page, but it would be nice to see some actual journalism to back his opinions

Jeff Walyus Editor,

In the article “Racist F.C. Past Unveiled In Land Covenants,” reporter Charlie Clark opens with an accusation regarding an “omission” in the recorded history of Falls Church City. I am concerned about the omission that Mr. Clark himself makes when he targets the 700 block of Fulton Avenue and interviews two residents.

Certainly the covenants existed and were an unfortunate part of our area’s past. As a property owner in the City, I want to assuage residents who may think that they are going to bed at night in homes once inhabited by white supremacists.

Mr. Clark begins by stating the News-Press had to go outside of City limits to examine property deeds, implying the City is concealing its past. When I examined the Real Estate Assessment Information Database, I discovered that not a single house in the 700 block existed at the time of the covenants, which were deemed illegal by the Supreme Court in 1917. In fact, both of the quoted residents in this block live in houses that date to the 1940s. From the readily available records I could find, only one house remains on all of Fulton Avenue that dates back to the period of the covenants.

Mr. Clark’s article seems intentionally misleading and unnecessarily inflammatory at a time when there is already too much divisiveness in the media.

Carolyn Wixson McBride

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