EXCLUSIVE: A conservative legal watchdog is expected to file a brief with a Kentucky court to urge a judge against blessing a consent decree forged by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the city of Louisville and Jefferson County, Ky., that would reform police practices after the controversial 2020 death of Breonna Taylor.

The Oversight Project is placing its amicus brief on the docket of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky on Friday morning as a judge prepares a schedule to rule on activating the agreement.

Oversight Project Executive Director Mike Howell said the consent decree includes a “laundry list of BLM-type standards that have been argued for over the years since George Floyd[‘s death in 2020]” and the riots that followed.

“Louisville would be a sanctuary city for gangbangers,” Howell warned, adding he hopes Friday’s addition to the docket gives the court pause before agreeing to any accelerated timeline for approval.

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Taylor was killed in a hail of police gunfire after Louisville officers sought to serve a drug warrant at her boyfriend Kenneth Walker’s house, when her beau fired a “warning shot” through the door and struck Officer Jonathan Mattingly in the leg.

A hail of return fire followed, fatally wounding Taylor, and five officers were later involved in legal cases where one was found guilty of deprivation of rights under the color of law for reportedly firing blindly through a window amid the chaos.

Walker later alleged he mistook the police for intruders and did not hear them announce themselves. Louisville wound up paying Taylor’s family $12 million in a wrongful death settlement.

Last week, Garland announced the consent decree with Louisville, saying it will bring about needed systemic reforms to policing to prevent a repeat of what happened to Taylor.

Howell said, however, that the decree will only hamstring the police department and also defy the will of Kentucky voters who elected new Republicans on the Louisville council on the issue of law and order.

“[The decree] basically limits the ability for officers to react quickly and in a strong way. It’s very heavy on the de-escalation techniques, particularly as it relates to this category of people who they call ‘behaviorally impaired’ or something to that effect,” Howell said.

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Howell said there is concern over the spiking teenage murder rate – violence committed by suspects aged 11-17 – and that the decree wrongly imposes new standards for dealing with youth offenders as well as stop-and-frisk restrictions.

One of the most glaring issues with the agreement is the fact Louisville councilmen, Kentucky lawmakers and the general public will all be prevented from making further adjustments to policing policies for five years, if the judge signs the decree.

In a consent decree system, an official monitor appointed by the judge, and not the relevant legislature, is the arbiter of policies that fall under said agreement unless both parties that forged it agree to change them.

Howell said, in that regard, the Biden Justice Department and Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, a Democrat, appear to be rushing through the legal process to head off the likelihood a Trump Justice Department will balk at the agreement.

“The most basic responsibility of government is to keep our people safe while protecting constitutional rights and treating everyone fairly,” Greenberg said in a statement about the decree. “As mayor, I promised to uphold that responsibility, and I have.”

“The Department of Justice saw the action we’ve already taken and our commitment to aggressively implement police reform. As a result of these improvements, we have a consent decree unlike any other city in America.”

Greenberg said any decree must build on reforms made in recent years, cannot “handcuff police as they work to prevent crime” and also be financially responsible and have a clear sunset date.

“I felt comfortable signing this because our officers will have clear guidance and goals to meet, the DOJ can’t move the goalposts, and our officers can focus on good police work, not paperwork,” added Louisville Police Chief Paul Humphrey.

The Oversight Project’s amicus brief is backed by law enforcement advocacy leaders like Jason Johnson, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.

Johnson, whose group promotes constitutional policing and studies similar consent decrees, told Fox News Digital it’s clear the Biden DOJ realizes such an agreement would be “D.O.A.” when President-elect Donald Trump assumes the Oval Office. 

“Most of these police consent decrees are more of an activist wish list than effective means to remedy constitutional violations by police agencies. The Justice Department is trying to impose burdensome rules that far exceed their authority under law,” Johnson said.

He suggested that technical assistance letters, which aim to encourage reforms without imposing a judicial arbiter, are generally preferred in most cases.

“But, the activist lawyers in the Biden administration prefer to use a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. This approach has proven counterproductive time and again — hurting public safety, police morale, and police-community relations more than it helps.”

Meanwhile, Howell said he hopes the Kentucky judge will see that Greenberg and Garland are trying to “turn him into a legislature” when it comes to law enforcement practices.

Under the consent decree system, the policy changes will be untouchable by a more hawkish Trump DOJ for up to five years, rendering the new administration’s predicted actions in the law enforcement realm moot in Louisville.

Criminals will likely endorse the decree, he said, as they will use the encyclopedia of new policing standards to their benefit.

Georgia attorney Ashleigh Merchant reacted to news that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had been disqualified from her “weak” election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday.

A Georgia court of appeals filing declared that the “appearance of impropriety” stemming from an affair Willis had with Nathan Wade prior to hiring him to prosecute the case required her disqualification from the case.

Merchant, who exposed the improper affair months ago, told “Fox & Friends” on Friday that she believed Willis stuck to the case despite the scandal because she didn’t want anyone else to know how “weak” the case was.

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“She could have done the right thing early on, whenever we brought this to everyone’s attention, and said, ‘Hey, let’s have a neutral prosecutor handle this case. Let’s have someone else look at it.’ But I think she was terrified because her case was so weak, she didn’t want someone else to look at it,” Merchant told Fox News Channel’s Steve Doocy.

Based on Merchant’s uncovering of Willis’ relationship with Wade, Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that Willis must either withdraw herself and her team from the 2020 election interference case or remove Wade as special prosecutor. Following the decision, Wade resigned from his position in the case, leaving Willis to continue it.

At the time, Merchant expressed her desire to have seen Willis removed from the case entirely, writing in a statement, “While we believe the court should have disqualified Willis’ office entirely, this opinion is a vindication that everything put forth by the defense was true, accurate and relevant to the issues surrounding our client’s right to a fair trial.”

Merchant’s goal to see Willis ousted happened months later on Thursday, after the state appeals court declared that Willis’ “appearance of impropriety” constitutes “the rare case in which disqualification is mandated, and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.”

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Fulton County DA Fani Willis testified in a hearing earlier this year regarding allegations that she engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a prosecutor she had hired to work on her case against former President Trump. (Getty Images)

Merchant characterized it as an obvious decision, telling Doocy that Willis’ impropriety was “something that you couldn’t turn your eye away from, and I think that’s something the court of appeals said.”

“It’s one of those things that you know it when you see it,” Merchant continued. “It’s the appearance of impropriety. It is so great that it had to be enough to kick them off the case.”

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After speculating that Willis wouldn’t willingly leave the case because of its weakness, Merchant expressed her belief that if a more “neutral prosecutor” got hold of the case, they would have it dismissed.

“I’ve always thought, if a neutral prosecutor – someone who didn’t have a financial interest in this case and a political interest in this case – looked at it, that they would see things differently. And they would decide that the taxpayers, the courts, the people who are charging the case, they deserve this case to be dismissed.”

Three months ago, Hurricane Helene touched down in western North Carolina, leaving in its wake $53 billion in destruction. By some estimates, 40% of the housing stock was damaged. An untold number of roads, driveways and rural lanes were demolished. But the real toll was human. More than one hundred people died, 103 to be exact, swept up by rivers of mud and debris. Many people are still unaccounted for, though the exact number is hard to come by.

That Biden’s administration has done less than it could to alleviate the destruction in the wake of Helene is accepted wisdom. And, you know it’s true when you hear uncomplaining North Carolinians praise the private efforts by church groups and charitable organizations like Samaritan’s Purse, while they remain silent on whether the federal government has done enough. The unspoken criticism should sting Congress, but, of course, they are deaf to such tame censure.

I’ve followed this story closely. My family is from a small town called Spruce Pine located fifty miles northeast of Asheville perched on a mountain top along the Blue Ridge Parkway. It is just one of scores of communities in the region, but the cost of restoring just this small town of 2,400 people will be hundreds of millions of dollars. The biggest cost, an estimated $100 million, will be required to replace the town’s water treatment plant which was covered by a blanket of mud during the storm and is unreclaimable.

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Ironically, all of the developed world is dependent on this tiny, closeknit town because it is here that a rare super pure quartz is mined that is essential to the manufacture of semiconductor chips, solar panels and fiber-optic cables. Without Spruce Pine, much of modern life would be impossible. 

My 89-year-old mother, Betty Jean, and my sister, Frankie, were both living in Spruce Pine at the time of the storm. I had warned my sister that a hurricane-force storm was coming and that they should take precautions, but she discounted the warning just like almost everyone there did. No one had ever seen a hurricane breach the formidable wall of the Blue Ridge Mountains. That is until September 24th, when Helene doused the region with 20 inches of rain and battered it with high-force winds. I am lucky my brother rescued my sister and mother and their property was little damaged. 

My cousin, James, also a resident of Spruce Pine, moved his family to safer ground in Raleigh as soon as he could, and then, turned around, filling up his truck with supplies and headed right back into the carnage. Like so many, he just wanted to help. Paved roads fell off the sides of mountains, making travel nearly impossible. There was no water, no cell service for days.  When I finally reached James to find out how it was going, he said, “They’re picking bodies out of trees.” I tried to imagine what that was like.

The emotional scars left by this loss to long-time residents are inestimable. My mother, relocated to my brother’s home, says she still feels a deep sadness as if she was “betrayed by someone she loved.” She misses her friends, her church, her view of the mountains from her porch and the sense of security she had there. 

My sister, though, said it is the damage to the land itself that is most disturbing. She was shocked to see hundreds of acres of forest felled, mowed down by a wall of mud. I understand her reaction. More than fancy clothes or cars, land is the ultimate measure of wealth in western North Carolina. Everyone there wants an acre, or better yet, two or three or more. 

I still remember riding shotgun with my grandfather on a narrow and winding mountain road years ago, his Jeep barely clinging to the berm on the steepest corners. His lead foot turned the whole adventure into a roller-coaster ride. Too young to understand the possible consequences of falling from a Jeep down a mountainside, I giggled. He jammed the brakes, stopping at one particularly lovely vantage point, where he declared, “We own this land from here to that ridge over there.” I looked out over the view, stunning and still, just making out the far ridge in the summer haze. I remember being flattered hearing him say that “we” owned it. I had never thought about being a landowner as a child of nine but I was sure willing to start.

Our family’s roots in western North Carolina go back at least seven generations. My sister’s research on Ancestry.com turned up a fact I could never had guessed at: We settled in the area after the Revolutionary War, the land given to us as payment for military service. 

These memories crowded in on me as I watched our coverage of the aftermath of the storm. Our own Fox Weather network doggedly reported on the storm, the damage and the efforts to rescue those impacted and rebuild. Listening to our reporters say the names of the tiny towns I had known all of my life – Swannanoa, Burnsville, Blowing Rock – was heart-rending. 

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But it is Spruce Pine that I continue to think about especially at Christmas time. Business owners, elected officials, friends and family continue to reach out to share the latest on efforts at recovery there. David Niven is owner of DT’s Blue Ridge Java, an anchor of the downtown, which was demolished when the Toe River jumped its banks during the storm. He is praying that he and his wife, Tricia, can reopen in May, but he’s got a long way to go. 

His losses total more than $600,000 and getting a large enough, low-cost loan seems impossible to him. The Small Business Administration is out of loan money. Six-thousand applicants tried to get a handful of loans from the Chamber of Commerce. Winners were chosen by lottery. Niven wasn’t one of them. Meanwhile, the water plant has not been replaced, though temporary solutions have been found. The water has been deemed safe to drink, but many folks continue to sip bottled water anyway. 

“For western North Carolina to recover, it’s going to take free money,” Niven says.

State officials have anticipated this and on December 10, a delegation of state elected representatives went to Washington to ask for $25 billion to fund recovery and rebuilding. They arrived just as both the House and Senate were focused on averting a government shutdown. The package approved by both houses funds the government through March 14 and provides disaster aid for six states struck by Helene. That’ll be a start, but not enough to bail out North Carolina’s deep need. Whether Congress picks up the request for more funds is an open question as spending cuts become a bipartisan goal.

As temperatures drop, reports of people in western North Carolina living in tents continue to crop up, though officials say the reports are inaccurate. Still, housing is critical. North Carolina State Rep. Dudley Greene was one of the representatives who went to Washington to ask for money. “We have transitioned from the immediate need of food and water, and moved more toward housing. That is a big concern. A week before we had a six-degree night,” he said. And, as always, it’s the practical issues that make need more acute. Greene says FEMA’s hotel voucher program is only so helpful since there are few nearby hotels open, and the ones available are simply too far away for people with jobs in the area.

The question though, of course, is what will the next administration do? Vice President-elect J.D. Vance visited Fairview, N.C., early in December (Dec. 6), promising help. “We haven’t forgotten you,” he said. 

We can only hope he keeps his promise and pray that this Christmas will be followed by a 2025 in which the region gets the assistance it so desperately deserves.