International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ in an interview aired on Jan. 1 that a third of the global economy will be in recession this year and investors must prepare for “a tough year, tougher than the year we leave behind.”

Kristalina explained recession risks are elevated “because the three big economies, US, EU, China, are all slowing down simultaneously.” She added that some countries will avoid recession, though “it would feel like a recession for hundreds of millions of people.”

“Our big worry is that with the economy slowing down globally, we are projecting global growth to go down to 2.7%, maybe even lower next year,” she said. In 2021, global growth was 6%. It slumped to 3.2% in 2022 and continues to decline as central banks worldwide unleash the most aggressive monetary policy tightening scheme in a generation to get inflation under control. 

Georgieva added the US might avoid a recession, but the situation looks bleaker in Europe, which has been hit hard by the war in Ukraine, she said. “Half of the European Union will be in recession,” she warned. 

“For the first time in 40 years, China’s growth in 2022 is likely to be at or below global growth. That has never happened before. And looking into next year for three, four, five, six months, the relaxation of COVID restrictions will mean bushfire COVID cases throughout China,” she said. 

Georgieva warned the world is “more shock-prone” than ever before. An energy crisis is plaguing the world — national security issues in Europe and Asia and liquidity issues in the banking system. The shocks of Covid are still not over though global supply chain congestion is receding.

Georgieva’s comments are alarming for investors hoping for a soft economic landing this year. The latest figures over the weekend pointed to more weakness in the Chinese economy. 

The official purchasing managers’ index for China’s factory activity shrank for the third consecutive month in December despite reopening efforts. The downturn is also visible in the purchasing managers index for manufacturing worldwide, slipping into a contraction in September. 

Besides the IMF, BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, has also warned a recession is imminent due to central banks aggressively boosting borrowing costs to tame inflation. According to a team of BlackRock strategists, their actions will ignite more market turbulence than ever before.

“Recession is foretold as central banks race to try to tame inflation. It’s the opposite of past recessions,” the team wrote in their 2023 Global Outlook, which said that the global economy has already exited a four-decade period of stable growth and inflation, and has now entered a period of heightened instability.

And when things get bad, BlackRock said, “Central bankers won’t ride to the rescue when growth slows in this new regime, contrary to what investors have come to expect. Equity valuations don’t yet reflect the damage ahead.”

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

The UK arm of Extinction Rebellion will temporarily halt its tactics of disrupting public life and transportation with roadblocks and other high-profile protests, the environmental group said on New Year’s Day.

In a statement titled “We Quit,” Extinction Rebellion said that its New Year’s Resolution “is to halt our tactics of public disruption. Instead, we call on everyone to help us disrupt our corrupt government.”  

Extinction Rebellion and another environmental group, Just Stop Oil, have staged very public protests in recent years, including blockading key ringroads in London and heavily disrupting traffic, much to the resentment of many people who were late to work.   

In 2021, Extinction Rebellion’s Money Rebellion group daubed the building of the Bank of England with fake oil, saying the stunt was “designed to expose the role of banks in the climate and ecological crisis.”

In 2022, the campaign group also threw fake oil over the Barclays building in Northampton to protest against the bank’s continued funding of fossil fuels and targeted the HSBC headquarters, too.  

In November 2022, Extinction Rebellion and other aligned groups took nonviolent action at thirteen sites across central London, targeting the offices of companies and organizations which have links to the fossil fuel industry.

“The groups sent a universal message that it’s time to ‘cut the ties’ with fossil fuels,” Extinction Rebellion said at the time.

Now the new campaign tactics of the UK unit of Extinction Rebellion will aim to garner more public support for their efforts to draw attention to the consequences of climate change, the group said.

“As we ring in the new year, we make a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic,” Extinction Rebellion said in a statement.

“This year, we prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks, as we stand together and become impossible to ignore.”  

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

Morocco has imposed an entry ban on all travelers from China due to the soaring COVID-19 infection rate in the country following Beijing’s abrupt u-turn on its strict zero-COVID policy.

Morocco’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement that the entry ban would apply to all arrivals from China, regardless of their nationality, and will take effect from Jan. 3 until further notice.

“This exceptional measure in no way affects the sincere friendship between the two peoples nor the strategic partnership between the two countries to which the Kingdom remains firmly attached,” the ministry said.

The ban aims to prevent a new wave of contamination in the country, it stated, adding that Morocco “closely followed” the virus situation in China through regular and direct contact with the Chinese side.

Morocco also extended its state of emergency until Jan. 31 to allow local authorities to impose measures to tackle the virus spread. The African nation has continued to renew its state of emergency since adopting it in March 2020.

Morocco became the first nation to ban arrivals from China after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lifted its zero-COVID policy last month.

Other countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia, have only imposed entry curbs on travelers arriving from China, such as requiring them to take COVID-19 tests before departure.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Dec. 28 mandated COVID testing for all visitors flying from China to the United States, citing the Chinese regime’s failure to provide “adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data.”

The United States was among the first nations to bar entry of foreign nationals from China under the former Trump administration in January 2020 when the novel coronavirus began to emerge from China.

China’s COVID-19 Outbreak

The CCP abruptly eased its strict COVID-19 restrictions in December after historic discontent over the draconian curbs. But without adequate planning and measures for a graduated retreat from the policy, the health system was left ill-equipped for a rapid rise in cases among a population that had little natural immunity to the virus.

Frontline services in China quickly became overcrowded, pharmacy shelves stripped bare, and hospitals stretched. Law enforcement facilities and judiciary shuttered.

People wait for medical attention at the fever clinic area in Tongren Hospital in the Changning district in Shanghai, on Dec. 23, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

As many as 37 million people per day were estimated to be contracting the virus in China, according to leaked minutes from a meeting of the country’s top health body confirmed by multiple news outlets.

The cumulative number of infections in the first 20 days of December likely reached 248 million—nearly 18 percent of the population—officials said during the National Health Commission’s internal meeting on Dec. 21, only 13 days after the regime rolled back some of its toughest anti-COVID measures.

The figure is exponentially higher than the regime’s official virus tally, and if accurate, it would mean that China’s outbreak is the largest in the world.

Authored by Gilbert Doctorow via AntiWar.com,

News about the impending removal of foreign forces from Syria that you will not get…from Western mainstream, specifically news from the Middle East that has been posted by an authoritative newspaper from the region, Al-Watan, of Doha, Qatar, but seems not to have been picked up by mainstream Western media.

My knowledge of it came from the so-called Free Press (Свободная Пресса) portal in Russia. I’d have learned about it sooner from the much better known RIA Novosti news agency, which also carried a lead story on the subject, but, sadly, RIA Novosti is banned in the European Union. Brussels obviously prefers for ours to be the Dark Continent where public opinion is manipulated from the offices of the Commission.

The news in question is about the announced results of negotiations held in Moscow days ago between representatives of Russia, Syria and Turkey. That such a three-way meeting was possible was due to the recent decision of Turkish President Erdogan to finally recognize the legitimacy of the Bashar Assad government in Damascus. In this connection, it has also been reported in Russian media that a face to face meeting of Erdogan and Assad is expected to take place in the second half of 2023.

The outcome of the negotiations in Moscow was Turkey’s announcement that it is about to withdraw all of its troops from Syria. As you may know, these troops had crossed over into Syria more than a year ago partly to seal the border from infiltration by jihadists but more importantly to separate and better control the Kurdish populations on both sides.

The pending removal of the Turks, presumably in exchange for certain Russian-backed guarantees on security and tighter administration of the Kurdish population in northeast Syria, leaves only the Americans as illegitimate occupiers of Syrian soil today.

The American operations in their country were recently denounced by Damascus for their plundering the oil wells and harm done to the entire economy of southeastern Syria.

Meanwhile, for the Turks, sensitivity to the Kurdish population in Syria is a significant contributing factor to their prickly relations with NATO generally. Ankara never accepted American sponsorship of the Syrian Kurds as a tool to be used against Damascus.

Source in Damascus on the Syrian-Turkish-Russian meeting:

-Erdogan’s media prepared to rapprochement
– Turkey agrees to a complete withdrawal from Syria
– Opening Aleppo-Latakia
– PKK militias are agents of America and Israel, and the greatest danger to Syria and Turkey. pic.twitter.com/3pSLxy0rvv

— Ibrahim Hamidi ابراهيم حميدي (@ibrahimhamidi) December 30, 2022

In the past few days there have been missile strikes against American forces in Syria from unidentified sources. In light of the new agreements between Turkey, Syria and Russia, we may assume that the military pressure on the Americans to evacuate will only increase in the weeks and months to come.

Authored by Anne Zhang and Lynn Xu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In December, 19 experts of China’s top academies, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), died of unspecified “illness,” a statistic that is six times higher than the average number of deaths in the past years.

Official reports avoid mentioning the cause of these deaths, in what appears to be an attempt to cover up deaths  caused by COVID-19.

But Airfinity, a UK-based Health Data Agency, updated data on Dec. 30, saying that roughly 11,000 people in China are dying every day from COVID, bringing the total number of deaths from the disease to 110,000 in December.

According to obituaries published by China’s official media, in the 12 days from Dec.15 to Dec.26, 13 members of CAE passed away due to “illness.” They are fiber optic communication expert Zhao Zisen (91), environmental engineering and environmental water quality expert Tang Hongxiao (91), rare earth metal smelting and separation expert Zhang Guocheng (91), laser technology expert Zhao Yijun (92),  inorganic non-metallic materials expert Gu Zhenan (86), civil engineering and structural mechanics expert Long Yuqiu (96), ecologists and foresters Li Wenhua (90), wildlife scientist Ma Jianzhang (86), pediatric surgery specialist Zhang Jinzhe (102), thermal impeller machinery expert Wang Zhongqi (90), architect and professor at Tsinghua University Guan Zhaoye (93), welding specialist for aerospace manufacturing engineering Guan Qiao (87), and petroleum engineering expert Li Qingzhong (92).

A total of six CAS members passed away on Dec. 6, 23, and 25, including Lu Qiang (86), a Chinese expert in automatic control and dynamics of electrical systems and professor at Tsinghua University; Zhang Youshang (97), a Chinese biochemist and molecular biologist; Jiang Hualiang (57), a former director of the Shanghai Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences; Wu Chengkang (93), a high-temperature gas dynamist; Tong Tanjun (88), a medical scientist; and Huang Kezhi (95), a physicist and a professor at Tsinghua University.

Most of the deceased were CCP members, and some were from the minority parties, such as the Democratic League and the Jiu San Society, which were recognized as existing because they explicitly supported the CCP and recognized its leadership.

Political Factors Introduced to the Selection of Academicians

In 2022, at least 53 members of the CAS and CAE passed away according to incomplete statistics.

CAS and CAE, known as the Two Academies, accumulate scientists and experts that can serve the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and enjoy the privilege of lifetime membership. The selection system for academics inevitably reflects political factors.

Xie Yong, deputy editor-in-chief of Huanghe magazine in north China’s Shanxi Province, published an article in Modern China Study, an international journal, in 2022 discussing the differences between academician systems under CCP rule and under the Republic of China.

In 1948, before the CCP took power, the Republic of China’s way to select members of the Academia Sinica, the current national academy, was based on the sole principle of academic achievement.

Academicians were nominated by major universities, research institutions, professional societies, and respected celebrities of the academic community. Hence, the candidates were all first-class scholars at that time. Even Guo Moruo and Ma Yinchu, who were both pro-Communist in their political stance, were also elected as academicians, Xie said.

In contrast, CAS selecting methods in 1955, by then controlled by the CCP, included political considerations to the selection criteria. For academicians of Social Sciences, candidates were required to uphold socialism and the Communist Party.

At that time, all former members of the Academia Sinica who had not left the mainland in 1949, the year the CCP seized power, basically became members of CAS.

However, Hu Xianfu, a famous biologist at that time, was taken off the list because the CCP authorities thought that his academic views were anti-Soviet.

Hu then suffered physically and mentally during the Cultural Revolution, and finally passed away in 1968 at the age of 75 in a 10-square-meter (about 108 square feet) room.

During the Cultural Revolution, many academicians were branded as reactionary academic authorities and were severely criticized and even persecuted to death.

Other scholars and experts have not escaped various political campaigns and purges by the CCP. After the anti-rightist movement and the Great Leap Forward, 11 academicians were ranked as rightists and stripped of their titles as academic members.

A peer-reviewed study published by National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers in the eBioMedicine journal on Monday reveals that adequately hydrated individuals could live longer and develop fewer age-related chronic diseases. 

“The results suggest that proper hydration may slow down aging and prolong a disease-free life,” Natalia Dmitrieva, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and researcher in the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of NIH, said in a statement. 

Dmitrieva and her team used health data spanning three decades of 11,255 adults and analyzed their serum sodium levels which fluctuate with fluid intake. Consuming more fluid will lower serum sodium levels. They found that adults with higher sodium levels were more prone to develop chronic illnesses and show signs of advanced biological aging than those with lower sodium levels. Adults with higher sodium levels were more susceptible to death at a younger age. 

Serum sodium levels above 142 mEq/L increased the risk of chronic diseases like heart failure, stroke, atrial fibrillation, peripheral artery disease, chronic lung disease, diabetes, and dementia by up to 64%. But adults with serum sodium levels between 138-140 mEq/L had a much lower risk of such fatal diseases. 

“People whose serum sodium is 142 mEq/L or higher would benefit from evaluation of their fluid intake,” Dmitrieva said. She added that most people could increase their fluid intake to reduce sodium levels. 

According to the National Academy of Medicine, men should ingest 125 ounces of water daily, and women consume 91 ounces. 

Dmitrieva said her findings don’t prove a causal effect, and randomized, controlled clinical trials are needed to understand if proper hydration can promote healthy aging, prevent diseases, and lead to a longer life. 

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

After a difficult 2022 at the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts said in an annual report that the personal security of judges needs to be a priority.

“The law requires every judge to swear an oath to perform his or her work without fear or favor, but we must support judges by ensuring their safety,” Roberts wrote (pdf) in the “2022 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary,” which was made public late Dec. 31.

“A judicial system cannot and should not live in fear,” he added.

In the report, Roberts paid tribute to federal Judge Ronald N. Davies, who in 1957 ruled in favor of black students in Little Rock, Arkansas, who had been barred from attending a local high school despite the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in 1954 striking down school desegregation on constitutional grounds.

Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus, a Democrat, ordered the state’s National Guard to block the students but “when it came time to rule in the school desegregation litigation, Davies did not flinch,” Roberts wrote.

Angry crowds resisted the desegregation effort and Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower directed the 101st Airborne to make sure the black students could attend the school.

In his role as Chief Justice of the United States, Roberts, appointed in 2005 by President George W. Bush, both presides over the Supreme Court and oversees the federal judiciary.

The report does not reference the unprecedented leak in May 2022 of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent that legalized abortion nationwide.

The Supreme Court is said to be investigating the leak, but the identity of the leaker or leakers is still unknown. Various justices have said publicly and repeatedly in recent months that the public would be updated on the progress of the investigation but no updates have been issued.

The report also does not reference the raucous protests at the homes of the conservative justices in Maryland and Virginia, nor the attacks on justices such as Brett Kavanaugh who was the target of a foiled assassination attempt and of flash-mob harassment in public outings by left-wing activists.

Roberts defended the right of Americans to disagree with court rulings.

“Judicial opinions speak for themselves, and there is no obligation in our free country to agree with them. Indeed, we judges frequently dissent—sometimes  strongly—from our colleagues’ opinions, and we explain why in public writings about the cases before us.”

Roberts said recent security legislation was a step in the right direction.

Roberts acknowledged that last month Congress passed the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act to help protect judges and their families. The measure was named after the son of federal Judge Esther Salas of New Jersey, who was killed by an assailant when he answered the door to his mother’s home.

Roberts did not mention that on June 16, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Supreme Court Police Parity Act into law. The measure gives Supreme Court officials greater authority to protect the court, members of the justices’ immediate families, and other court employees.

The report also states that caseloads for the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, fell over the past year.

In the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022, the number of cases docketed by the Supreme Court dropped by 8 percent compared to the previous 12-month period. Similar declines were seen in federal courts of appeals, district courts, and bankruptcy courts.

The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice for comment but did not receive an immediate reply.

Former President Trump has last week hinted that he’ll hand-grenade the 2024 presidential election for Republicans by running as a third-party candidate.

Trump shared an American Greatness article by Dan Gelernter which suggests that establishment Republicans would do everything in their power to prevent Trump from winning again, and that voters like Gelernter would rather vote for Trump on a third-party ticket even if it means losing the election.

“They’d rather lose an election to the Democrats, their brothers in crime, than win with Trump,” Gelernter wrote of establishment GOP.

…despite the obvious differences, we’re heading for a 1912-repeat, in which the Republican Party ignores its own voters. The Republican machine has no intention of letting us choose Trump again: He is not a uniparty team player. They’d rather lose an election to the Democrats, their brothers in crime, than win with Trump.

That leads us to the inevitable question: What should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can’t have him? Do we knuckle under and vote for Ron DeSantis because he would be vastly better than any Democrat?

I say no, we don’t knuckle under. And I like DeSantis. I’d vote for him after Trump’s second term. But not before. –American Greatness

“Do I think Trump can win as a third-party candidate? No,” Gelernter added. “Would I vote for him as a third-party candidate? Yes, because I’m not interested in propping up this corrupt gravy-train any longer.”

In 2021, Trump told RNC Chairwoman Rona McDaniel that he was “done” with the party after receiving virtually no support over his claims that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election.

“You cannot do that. If you do, we will lose forever,” McDaniel reportedly told Trump regarding a 3rd party run, according to a book by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl. “Exactly – you will lose forever without me. I don’t care. This is what Republicans deserve for not sticking up for me,” Trump allegedly shot back.

That said, DeSantis has been shooting up in the polls – and even received his own hit piece in Vanity Fair on Monday.

New Hitler just dropped. https://t.co/byESQjVJp0

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) January 2, 2023

Authored by Bill King via RealClear Wire,

I fear that the investigations Republicans have promised in the House next year will be little more than another round of toxic partisan gamesmanship. But there is one investigation Congress should undertake, and that is into so-called “gain-of-function” research.

Before the pandemic, I suspect that most of you, like me, had never heard of gain-of-function research. What we learned during the pandemic is that scientists around the world routinely tinker with the genome of viruses to see how the induced changes will affect replication of the virus (contagiousness) and the effects it has on its host (lethality). Such research has apparently been going on for decades and is routinely funded by governments, including ours.

Within weeks of the COVID-19 virus emerging in China near the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), many began to question whether the virus had been created by gain-of-function research and somehow escaped from WIV’s labs. Recently analyzed Chinese documents from early in the pandemic seem to suggest the virus might have come from WIV. To many, the proposition that the novel coronavirus just happened to naturally occur a few hundred yards from the WIV facility seemed too much of a coincidence.

But in February 2020, barely three months after the virus’s genome had been sequenced, 27 scientists signed a statement in the medical journal The Lancet, unequivocally declaring that the virus had occurred naturally and that any suggestion to the contrary was quackery and a conspiracy theory. Their statement quickly became the accepted orthodoxy for much of the world’s scientific community and virtually all the mainstream media.

However, as time wore on, circumstances regarding the origin of that statement came under scrutiny. In a 2021 Vanity Fair article, investigative journalist Katherine Eban revealed that the statement was organized by a scientist named Peter Daszak. That statement concluded with a declaration from the scientists who signed it that “we have no competing interests.” However, Eban reported in a follow-up article that Daszak was the director of EcoHealth Alliance, which in 2014 had received a $3.7 million grant from the NIH for gain-of-function research and made a sub-grant for $600,000 – to the WIV.

I wrote to the email address reserved for the statement in the Lancet post, posing a number of questions about the circumstances around the creation of the letter and the “competing interests” statement. I also reached out to two of the scientists who signed the letter asking for an interview regarding the statement. I received no responses.

Questions about gain-of-function research predate COVID. In fact, there has been a robust debate over the potential risks and benefits that dates to, at least, 2011. In 2014, a group of 300 prominent scientists, led by Harvard’s highly regarded epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, signed a statement raising alarms about risks associated with gain-of-function research.

The academic controversy caused the Obama administration to issue a moratorium on gain-of-function research, but it included a general exception for studies “urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security.” According to Eban’s reporting, the exception quickly became a glaring loophole that essentially rendered the rule useless: the controversial research mostly continued unabated.

The Trump administration scrapped the moratorium in favor of a complex review process. But that process was mostly conducted outside of the public’s view or even significant peer review, leaving many of the critics, including Lipsitch, still wary.

The debate over the origins of COVID still rages today and unfortunately has become politicized, with Democrats and Republicans generally lining up behind the natural and lab-leak theories, respectively. In August 2021, the National Intelligence Council issued an unclassified report in response to an order from President Biden to review the origin of the virus. The report stated that the intelligence community had not been able to reach a conclusion and that the origin would likely never be known without more cooperation from the Chinese government. Of course, the more time that passes the less likely it is that the mystery will ever be solved.

While we would all like to know how the pandemic started, the mere fact that it might have originated from gain-of-function research gone awry makes it imperative to conduct a detailed investigation of the risks and potential benefits of this kind of research. Of all the things we regulate, surely tinkering with viruses to make them more contagious and more lethal should be right at the top of the list. Congress needs to pass laws closely regulating what Rutgers professor Richard Ebright described to Katherine Eban as “looking for a gas leak with a lighted match” and not leave this up to executive orders.

Congress should also investigate what appears to have been a coordinated attempt to squelch any inquiry into the legitimate questions over COVID’s origins in the early days of the pandemic. For example, the signers of the Lancet statement should be subpoenaed and questioned about what was almost certainly a false certification of “no competing interests” by at least one of the signers. (The criticism regarding potential conflicts of interest is not just coming from the right: The uber-progressive Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs disbanded a group he had established to study the origins of COVID, citing conflicts of interest. Interestingly, Daszak was part of the group Sachs disbanded.)

I don’t know whether House Republicans can conduct such hearings without turning them into a carnival sideshow. But hopefully they will rise above partisan instincts and deliver much-needed answers for the American people.

Bill King is a businessman and lawyer, and is a former opinion columnist and editorial board member at the Houston Chronicle. He has served in a number of appointed and elected positions, including mayor of his hometown. He writes on a wide range of public policy and political issues. Bill is the author of “Unapologetically Moderate” and currently serves as the co-chair of the Forward Party of Texas.

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

St. Louis lawyer Mark McCloskey will not have his guns or the fines he paid returned to him even though he received a governor’s pardon in 2021, a Missouri judge has ruled.

McCloskey and his wife, Patricia McCloskey, both personal injury lawyers, pleaded guilty in June 2021 to misdemeanor charges for assault and harassment, respectively, over an incident in 2020 where they wielded guns as self-defense measures at their property while watching Black Lives Matter protesters walk through their private, gated neighborhood.

They were required to pay maximum fines totaling $2,750. As part of the plea agreement, the two also surrendered the guns they wielded—a Colt AR-15 rifle and a Bryco pistol.

After their convictions, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, on July 30, 2021, pardoned the couple and shortly following the move, McCloskey filed a lawsuit in St. Louis City Circuit Court seeking to have the guns returned and the fines paid back to him and his wife.

Circuit Judge Joan Moriarty rejected the request on Dec. 28, saying that the governor’s pardon doesn’t have any impact on the plea agreement the couple had agreed to.

McCloskey said he plans to appeal, the outlet reported.

Law Licenses Suspended

In February 2022, the Missouri Supreme Court indefinitely suspended the McCloskeys’ law licenses. The court also stayed the suspension and put the two attorneys on probation for a year, which means they can still practice law, but the suspension would kick in if they violate their probation by not following the “Rules of Professional Conduct.”

Read more here…