Mostly Monday Reads: Unravelling the Graft and Threat of Donald’s Campaign

“Meanwhile… at Mar-a-Lardo, debate prep is in full swing for the convicted felon and presumptive Republican presidential candidate.”  John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The media might finally be waking up to the threat to democracy and our country that Donald, his thralls, his plan, and the people who have planted themselves around him pose.  Perhaps their short attention spans have turned toward the Thursday Presidential Debate. It’s also possible that the more you know about Project 2025, the more you realize how dangerous these people are.  More news outlets are beginning to report on it.

The AP is reporting today that a “Conservative-backed group is creating a list of federal workers it suspects could resist Trump plans.” This shows how seriously the MAGA crowd is taking it.  They’re already doing the necessary research to implement it. There will be no guardrails if Donald gets back into the White House.

From his home office in small-town Kentucky, a seasoned political operative is quietly investigating scores of federal employees suspected of being hostile to the policies of Republican Donald Trump, a highly unusual and potentially chilling effort that dovetails with broader conservative preparations for a new White House.

Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security. They’re relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers. In a move that alarms some, they’re preparing to publish the findings online.

With a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda — and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings.

Today, Donald will be in Sleazy Steve Scalise’s district for fundraising. I can only imagine which of the outstate Republicans will come to lay out his trough. This is reported by nola.com, the remnants of the once-great Times-Picayune.  “Donald Trump to visit New Orleans on Monday to raise cash for his presidential campaign.” I imagine our new D’ohvenor will be there to take the knee.  The Oil and Gas Companies down here will shovel cash in his direction, and there will be White Christian Nationalists to encourage his angry, hateful, bigoted tirades.

Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit New Orleans on Monday for a fundraiser, less than a month after he was convicted on 34 felony charges in a New York courtroom.

The first criminal conviction of a U.S. president seems to have only cleaved supporters to him even closer.

Business owner Boysie Bollinger, who is hosting Trump at his Uptown New Orleans home, said organizers were originally hoping to raise $2 million but now believe they’ll collect $5 million.

“The obvious abuse by the (legal) system has got people upset,” Bollinger said. “It’s empowered people and made them feel stronger about him having a viable chance to run a good race.”

U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, whose district includes the slice around Tulane University that includes Bollinger’s home, will be the special guest at the event.

“The stakes have never been higher,” said Scalise, the number two Republican in the U.S. House. “The Democratic Party has moved so far to the left under Biden that Barack Obama looks like a moderate.”

Trump’s visit takes place only three days before he and President Joe Biden engage in the first televised debate of the 2024 campaign. Tens of millions of people are expected to watch the 90-minute telecast on CNN.

There’s some good news on the polling front, at least.  However, it’s still too early to count on anything.  This is from Politico, as reported by Adam Wren.  “Trump is on a fundraising blitz. But there are other warning signs for Republicans. For the first time this year, the Fox News poll had Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by two points, within the poll’s margin of error.”

For Republicans who spent much of the year crowing about Joe Biden’s weaknesses, Donald Trump’s massive fundraising haul looked like an affirmation, with the former president erasing Joe Biden’s longstanding cash advantage.

But outside of the money race, a series of other developments in recent days have left even Republicans with the impression that November may not be quite as good for the GOP as it once seemed.

First came the GOP’s underperformance in a special House race in a deep-red swath of Ohio that included a swing county. Then, after Republicans over the weekend nominated a far-right candidate for lieutenant governor in Indiana, a top national GOP lawyer predicted a “serious” threat to the top of the ticket even in the heart of MAGA country.

Now, new polling from Fox News shows an 11-point swing in President Joe Biden’s favorability among independents: They prefer Biden by 9 points, a reversal from May, when they favored Trump by 2 points.

For the first time this year, the poll has Biden leading Trump by two points, 50-48, within the margin of error.

Trump may be raking in donations. But across the country, the mood of Republicans has dimmed, according to nearly a dozen Republican operatives, county chairs and current and former GOP officials. It comes amid ongoing concerns about the effect of abortion on Republican candidates. And it follows defections from Trump in the primaries and, most recently, polling that has found Trump’s conviction in his New York hush-money trial hurting him with independents.

There’s also evidence that young voters back Biden/Harris in another poll reported by The Hill. “Young voters backing Biden over Trump by 23-point margin: Poll.”  However, this news is no reason to be complacent about anything.  Back to Project 2025.  The Guardian Explainer is one source to get basic information. “What is Project 2025, and what does it have to do with a second Trump term? Conservatives have created a guide for how Trump and allies could dismantle the US government if he wins the election.”  This is from May of this year.  Remember, the AP is already reporting they’re preparing to implement the plan.

The June edition of The Nation also provided a primer on what the plans will do. “Why Trump’s Second Victory Would Be Worse. There’s now a real, organized effort to transform his resentments and impulses into policy. It’s called Project 2025.”  This effort was organized by Robert L. Borosage.

How far might Donald Trump go, if given a second chance? The estimates range from dictatorship to a rerun of his first term, when indolence, ignorance, and incompetence mitigated his menace.

But this time promises to be different—and far worse. Trump’s tempestuous stump performances, which meld vaudeville with venom, provide a clue. He has repeatedly promised to round up and deport millions of immigrants, pardon the January 6 offenders, prosecute his persecutors, impose tariffs on all imports—perhaps higher than 60 percent on goods from China—and “Drill, baby, drill!”

What’s different this time, as this special issue details, is that there is now an organized effort to transform Trump’s resentments and impulses into policy. Trump’s MAGA acolytes have not only dethroned the Republican establishment in Congress and red-state legislatures; they have taken over the party’s think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, once the bastion of Reagan conservatism.

Now these MAGA operatives are, in the words of Heritage president Kevin D. Roberts, intent on “institutionalizing Trumpism.” The foundation’s Project 2025 includes a 900-page book, Mandate for Leadership, that lays out a Trumpist agenda for every corner of the government; a still-secret 180-day Transition Playbook for the first six months in office; a right-wing version of LinkedIn to recruit and vet candidates for political appointment; and a Presidential Academy to train them.

The essays in this issue describe core aspects of what is more assault than agenda, revealing how Project 2025 turns Trump’s insults and grievances into policy predicates. The result is a chilling guidebook to a second Trump term.

Please check it out.  Donald and his minions and thralls are always up to something.  BB pointed me to Emptywheel, where Marcy writes this.  With Putin reportedly learning Mandarin, this paints a very unpleasant landscape. “AN EGYPTIAN BANK CLAIMED DETAILS OF A SUSPECTED $10 MILLION PAYMENT TO TRUMP MIGHT BE IN CHINA.”

Back on September 19, 2018, then DC Chief Judge Beryl Howell denied a motion brought by an Egyptian bank to quash a subpoena for information on a suspected $10 million payment made to then-candidate Trump in fall 2016. That set off litigation that continued, at the District, Circuit, and Supreme Courts, for at least nine months.

As CNN described in 2020, not long after the investigation got shut down under Bill Barr, investigators had been trying to see whether Egypt (or some entity for which Egypt served as go-between) provided the money that Trump spent on his campaign weeks before the election.

For more than three years, federal prosecutors investigated whether money flowing through an Egyptian state-owned bank could have backed millions of dollars Donald Trump donated to his own campaign days before he won the 2016 election, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN.

The investigation, which both predated and outlasted special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, examined whether there was an illegal foreign campaign contribution. It represents one of the most prolonged efforts by federal investigators to understand the President’s foreign financial ties, and became a significant but hidden part of the special counsel’s pursuits.

The investigation was kept so secret that at one point investigators locked down an entire floor of a federal courthouse in Washington, DC, so Mueller’s team could fight for the Egyptian bank’s records in closed-door court proceedings following a grand jury subpoena. The probe, which closed this summer with no charges filed, has never before been described publicly.

Prosecutors suspected there could be a link between the Egyptian bank and Trump’s campaign contribution, according to several of the sources, but they could never prove a connection.

It took months of legal fight after Judge Howell denied that motion to quash before the Egyptian bank in question complied, and once they got subpoena returns, prosecutors repeatedly complained that the bank was still withholding information, which led prosecutors to reopen the investigation with a new grand jury.

That much we know from documentation unsealed back in 2019 (part one, part two, part three), in response to a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press request for unsealing.

On August 17, 2023, while she was still Chief Judge, Beryl Howell ordered the government to post newly unsealed sets of some of the orders she issued during the litigation. On Thursday, Chief Judge Boasberg ordered that newly redacted set of opinions to be released. While Howell released six opinions in June 2019 along with the other materials from the case — with redactions done digitally, thereby hiding the length of redactions — just three new versions of her orders got released last week:

• September 19, 2018 memorandum denying motion to quash
• January 15, 2019 memorandum regarding sanctions
• January 30, 2019 memorandum limiting ability to refer to proceedings

These may be limited to orders incorporated as appendices in prior appeals, which might also explain why the first two appear twice in the newly-released materials.

Much of the newly unsealed material pertains to a fight over how much Alston & Bird, the law firm representing the Egyptian bank, could say about the litigation publicly

Feeling any better?  So, not only Russia but also China was actively backing Trump in the 2016 election.  ABC News has some more background on the Documents case, which is languishing in Loose Cannon’s court.  “Special counsel probed Trump Mar-a-Lago trip that aides ‘kept quiet’ weeks before FBI search: Sources. One witness was told Trump was “checking on the boxes,” sources said.”  

A trip to Mar-a-Lago taken by former President Donald Trump that aides allegedly “kept quiet” just weeks before FBI agents searched the property for classified materials in his possession raised suspicions among special counsel Jack Smith’s team as a potential additional effort to obstruct the government’s classified documents investigation, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

The previously unreported visit, which allegedly took place July 10-12 in the summer of 2022, was raised in several interviews with witnesses, sources familiar with the matter said, as investigators sought to determine whether it was part of Trump’s broader alleged effort to withhold the documents after receiving a subpoena demanding their return.

At least one witness who worked closely with the former president recalled being told at the time of the trip that Trump was there “checking on the boxes,” according to sources familiar with what the witness told investigators.

Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 40 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get them back. His longtime aide, Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira pleaded not guilty to related charges.

I’m glad more details on the Crime Spree, which is the Trump Campaign, are coming out.  It may not impact the red state thralls, but it sure would play well with Independents and young voters if the Biden/Harris campaign can motivate them to turn out.

Anyway, Happy Monday!  We’ll have a live thread on the night of the debate. However, WordPress has had endless problems lately since they made changes involving Jet Pack. It’s getting impossible for me to even comment on my post. I’ll try to call them on Wednesday, which is a day off from student time for me.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?