Rafael Struve was eating dinner at his parents’ home in Houston when the mug shot flashed on his cellphone.
Wow, he thought, staring at Donald Trump’s face. This is it.
“It’s one thing to anticipate it, but to actually see it,” said Struve, 31, who works in business development and is a spokesman for Texas Young Republicans. “ … I don’t think it bodes well for our party if we keep this as the center.”
This first booking photo of an American president — of Fulton County, Ga., Inmate No. P01135809 — is proving a Rorschach test of our political moment. If we see the world not as it is, but as we are, the same appears true for what’s shaping up to be the most divisive image of the 2024 election.
Some Americans see a criminal facing 91 charges across New York, Florida, Washington, D.C. and Georgia, a man whom the law is treating like anyone else. Others see a wrongly accused champion, the likely Republican presidential nominee facing off against a biased justice system conspiring to bench him. Still others see an experienced showman working the camera….
Struve, a two-time Trump voter who now supports Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, considered the jailhouse portrait over a plate of steak with guacamole and yucca.
Trump’s scowl? Calculated, he thought — “part of the game he’s trying to play long-term, this sort of grievance politics.”
In Atlanta, Anthony Michael Kreis dismissed the image as an outdated ritual of the criminal justice system.
To Kreis, an assistant law professor at Georgia State University, mug shots have devolved from an identification tool to a vehicle for shaming. Consider the galleries of arrestees that newspapers once commonly published. Even without a conviction, such photos can haunt someone for life.
“It’s a skeevy thing we do as a society,” Kreis said.
Yet he acknowledged that it might have been just as skeevy to grant a special pass to an enormously powerful man. The mug shot has “a certain degree of symbolism,” he noted, signaling “that no person is above the law.”
Extra Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: August 26, 2023 Filed under: cat art, caturday, Crime, Criminal Justice System, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: 14th amendment, folk art, Trump mugshot, Twitter aka X, two-tier justice system 8 Comments
Miné Okubo, American artist
Happy Caturday!!
Now that Trump has been indicted and arrested repeatedly, I’m feeling a bit calmer about possibilities for the the future of democracy in America. It will still be a long fight, but the opening battles have been won by the good guys.
Trump reportedly tried to avoid having a mug shot taken, and then used it to fundraise. But, let’s face it, the man is in deep legal trouble. He’s been exposed as a common criminal–the first former president ever to be indicted. I have to believe that most Americans are not going to want to vote for an accused and/or convicted felon for president in 2024.
On the mugshot, The Washington Post looked for reactions: Hero, showman, scoundrel: What Americans see in Trump’s mug shot.
Claudia Olivos, ‘Cats in Love’
The WaPo writers managed to find one Democrat to quote in their article, which mostly focused on Trump voters.
Some 1,400 miles north, in the village of Ephraim on Wisconsin’s northeastern thumb, Monique McClean looked at her Apple watch and thought: What is that?
Without comment, her husband had texted Trump’s mug shot, which she initially mistook for some kind of illustration. “It looked like a Marvel supervillain to me,” she said.
McClean, 61, the owner of Pearl Wine Cottage on Green Bay’s shoreline, felt her mood turn gloomy when she considered the image more closely. A Democrat, she’d been horrified by the way Trump accused poll workers in Georgia of scheming against him. Two women had been forced into hiding.
“I just thought of all the lies he has told for years,” she said.
Trump is back on Twitter AKA X, but he hasn’t made much of a splash so far. At Politico, Jack Shafer argues that: Trump Can’t Go Home Again. Twitter is not the site that it used to be. And he’s not the same man.
After surrendering on Thursday at an Atlanta jail to be booked on state felony charges alleging his involvement in a criminal conspiracy to void the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump sat for a mug shot in which he scowls like a psychopath out of a Stanley Kubrick film. Trump’s next grand act of surrender was to post the picture on his Twitter account — now called X by owner Elon Musk, pedants and copy desks but by nobody who uses it — marking his first appearance there since being reinstated in November, after being booted by the service 958 days ago following the Jan. 6 riots.
Trump’s post, which garnered a healthy 1.3 million likes and 305,000 retweets, essentially concedes that his plan to build his own social media empire under the Truth Social banner is a bust. Aside from Trump’s regular posts there, Truth Social is a wasteland of brimstone and salt whose finances and corporate structure make a Rube Goldberg machine look like a Swiss watch. Except for when journalists repeat his Truth Social outbursts or report on them, that Trump account goes unnoticed. By returning to the social media outlet that helped make him “great,” Trump’s post may presage an attempt to restart the media fire of his 2016 campaign and his presidency.
Man with black cat, by Gea Zwanink
But no man ever steps in the same river twice — it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man, as the sage said. Twitter is not the same and neither is Trump, and the media watershed that allowed Trump to politically prosper doesn’t drain the way it once did. Thanks to inertia, changing technology, fickle tastes and Musk’s determination to wreck it, the site has lost its cachet. What does that mean for Trump? [….]
The environment that so nurtured Trump’s nuttism has degraded since he filled our silos with his opinions and policy statements. Many journalists still use Twitter, but the site has lost its cultural and political primacy. During his vacation from Twitter, TikTok became the world’s most popular domain, and his comments on Truth Social or at rallies no longer carried instant weight now that he was an ex-president. Even since announcing his candidacy and leading the polls, Trump has often failed to make himself Topic A in the political conversation (except for during his spurt of indictments). Even Fox News, which pampered him like a pet pig during his presidency, now gives him the cold shoulder.
Read the rest at Politico.
At The Daily Beast, attorney Shan Wu writes: Trump’s Arrest in Georgia Shows a Two-Tier Justice System.
LaShawn Thompson shared something in common with former President Donald J. Trump. Both were defendants charged in Fulton County, Georgia, and booked at the Fulton County Jail—known as “Rice Street.” But that is their only shared commonality with the criminal justice system.
On Thursday, with TV cameras overhead and behind his motorcade following every moment of his journey, Trump arrived with an armed U.S. Secret Service escort, and sped through the process of paperwork and having his fingerprinting and mug shots taken like a VIP being let into a night club. It took only 24 or so minutes for him to be booked and leave the jail. His height was logged at 6-foot-3, his weight at 215 pounds, and his hair color as “blond or strawberry.”
The newly minted Inmate No. Po1135809 was back on his private jet within a matter of moments, after claiming again he had done “nothing wrong.”
Dama Con Gato, 2009, by Pescador
But LaShawn Thompson never got to leave after his booking at Rice Street. He died there at the age of 35.
Thompson died at the Fulton County Jail after being held there for three months. According to his autopsy, contributing factors to his death included dehydration, malnutrition, untreated schizophrenia, and severe insect infestation on his body from lice and bed bugs.
His family’s attorney said he “was eaten alive by insects and bedbugs.” Thompson was charged with a misdemeanor.
By contrast, Trump is charged with racketeering crimes in a 41-count felony indictment and facing a total of four different criminal cases brought by prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice, Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and now the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. But the Fulton County case is the first time that Trump will experience the normal booking procedures of fingerprinting and likely be photographed for his “mug shot.” He also has release conditions that include bail.
Food for thought. Read the rest of this sickening story at The Daily beast.
As Trump faces legal jeopardy, the fight to use the 14th Amendment to disqualify him from public office is gaining steam.
ABC News: 14th Amendment, Section 3: A new legal battle against Trump takes shape.
Separate from the criminal cases, over the past few weeks a growing body of conservative scholars have raised the constitutional argument that Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election make him ineligible to hold federal office ever again.
That disqualification argument boils down to Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which says that a public official is not eligible to assume public office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States, or had “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” unless they are granted amnesty by a two-thirds vote of Congress.
Advocacy groups have long argued that Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election fits those criteria. The argument gained new life earlier this month when two members of the conservative Federalist Society, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, endorsed it in the pages of the Pennsylvania Law Review.
“If the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of Presidency,” the article reads.
Since then, two more legal scholars — retired conservative federal judge J. Michael Luttig and Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe — made the same case in an article published in The Atlantic.
By Andrie Martens
“The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation,” they wrote. “The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.”
The argument even got raised on the Republican presidential debate stage in Milwaukee this week.
“Over a year ago, I said that Donald Trump was morally disqualified from being president again as a result of what happened on January 6th. More people are understanding the importance of that, including conservative legal scholars,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said, eliciting a mix of cheers and boos from the audience. “I’m not going to support somebody who’s been convicted of a serious felony or who is disqualified under our Constitution.”
This is from Shan Wu at The Daily Beast: Trump Can and Should Be Disqualified From Running for President Under the 14th Amendment.
The “Disqualification Clause” found in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment fits Donald J. Trump like a glove.
Or as political podcaster Allison Gill asked on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter: “if section 3 of the 14th amendment wasn’t designed for him, who was it designed for?”
The historical answer to Gill’s query is, of course, that it was designed for Confederates trying to get back into the federal government after losing the Civil War. And that very same historical context draws a direct analogy to Trump’s efforts to get back into the presidency after losing the 2020 election.
Three black cats, by Tacha, Toronto
Here’s what the Disqualification Clause says:
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
The plain language of this obviously encompasses Trump’s actions to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. These actions include but are not limited to asking the Georgia Secretary of State to find additional votes for him, conspiring to put forth slates of unelected “fake” electors for the electoral college, and his call for “wild” protests on Jan. 6 that led to the attack on the Capitol.
But while these actions have resulted in Trump being charged criminally both by the U.S. Justice Department and the State of Georgia, his disqualification does not depend upon him being convicted in either of those cases.
Yu quotes from the piece by Tribe and Luttig mentioned in the previous article along with other experts:
Tribe and Luttig are hardly outliers in their view. A forthcoming law review article written by Federalist Society conservative law professors—William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas—not only agrees that the disqualification is self-enforcing but also makes the case that numerous others who supported Trump’s efforts also may be disqualified.
Baude and Paulsen note that this could include people like former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn (who proposed a plan to seize voting machines), the “fake electors,” Jeffrey Clark of the Justice Department, and “at least one member of Congress” (that would be Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA)) who had supported Clark’s plans—and even lobbied for removal of senior DOJ officials who opposed Clark’s scheme.
Head over to The Daily Beast to read some counterarguments.
All in all, I think things are looking better for the efforts to keep Trump from getting back into power.
That’s it for me today. Have a nice weekend everyone!
Tuesday Reads: The Latest Trumpy Legal News
Posted: August 22, 2023 Filed under: Crime, Criminal Justice System, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Georgia election interference case, Jack Smith, January 6 case, Jeff Clark, John Eastman, Judge Tanya Chutkan, Mark Meadows 9 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Now that Trump has been indicted and arrested 3 times, the 4th arrest on Thursday seems sort of old hat. Ho hum . . . Trump will surrender at Fulton County Jail in Georgia on Thursday; his bail has been set at $200,000.
Associated Press: Trump says he will surrender Thursday on Georgia charges tied to efforts to overturn 2020 election.
Former President Donald Trump says he will surrender to authorities in Georgia on Thursday to face charges in the case accusing him of illegally scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.
“Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED,” Trump wrote on his social media network Monday night, hours after his bond was set at $200,000.
It will be Trump’s fourth arrest since April, when he became the first former president in U.S. history to face indictment. Since then, Trump, who remains the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has had what has seemed like an endless procession of bookings and arraignments in jurisdictions across the country. His appearances in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C., have drawn enormous media attention, with news helicopters tracking his every move.
Trump’s announcement came hours after his attorneys met with prosecutors in Atlanta to discuss the details of his release on bond. The former president is barred from intimidating co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the case — including on social media — according to the bond agreement signed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump’s defense attorneys and the judge. It explicitly includes “posts on social media or reposts of posts” made by others.
This morning, two of Trump’s co-defendants surrendered in the Georgia election interference case.
Atlantic News First, via NBC29 VA:
ATLANTA (Atlanta News First/Gray News): First co-defendants in Trump indictment surrender at Fulton County jail.
The first co-defendants in a sweeping indictment out of Fulton County, Georgia, has surrendered to the jail.
Shortly before 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, former President Donald Trump’s attorney John Eastman turned himself in. A bond agreement for $100,000 was reached Monday in his case.
Eastman, prosecutors say, was deeply involved in some of his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election. He wrote a memo arguing that Trump could remain in power if then-Vice President Mike Pence overturned the results of the election during a joint session of Congress where electoral votes would be counted. That plan included putting in place a slate of “alternate” electors in seven battleground states, including Georgia, who would falsely certify that Trump had won their states.
In a social media statement, Eastman said he was surrendering “to an indictment that should never have been brought.”
“It represents a crossing of the Rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances,” Eastman said. “As troubling, it targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide and which was attempting here by ‘formally challeng[ing] the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.’ An opportunity never afforded them in the Fulton County Superior Court.”
A $10,000 bond agreement was reached Monday for Scott Hall, the Atlanta-area bail bondsman who was allegedly involved in commandeering voting information that was the property of Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County in south Georgia.
On Tuesday, just before 9 a.m., Hall surrendered to authorities, and was booked and processed on charges that include conspiracy to commit a felony, conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to defraud the state of political subdivision, and violation of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced And Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Jeff Clark, the DOJ official who wanted to send letters to the swing states saying that the DOJ believed there was significant voter fraud in their states, is trying to avoid going to Atlanta to be booked.
https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1694008924863602918?s=20
Jeff Clark on the morning his house was searched by the FBI:
This is going to enrage Trump. The New York Times just posted an article on Mark Meadows, another of Trump’s co-defendants in Georgia: How Mark Meadows Pursued a High-Wire Legal Strategy in Trump Inquiries.
This winter, after receiving a subpoena from a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Mark Meadows commenced a delicate dance with federal prosecutors.
He had no choice but to show up and, eventually, to testify. Yet Mr. Meadows — Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff — initially declined to answer certain questions, sticking to his former boss’s position that they were shielded by executive privilege.
But when prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, challenged Mr. Trump’s executive privilege claims before a judge, Mr. Meadows pivoted. Even though he risked enraging Mr. Trump, he decided to trust Mr. Smith’s team, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Meadows quietly arranged to talk with them not only about the steps the former president took to stay in office, but also about his handling of classified documents after he left.
The episode illustrated the wary steps Mr. Meadows took to navigate legal and political peril as prosecutors in Washington and Georgia closed in on Mr. Trump, seeking to avoid being charged himself while also sidestepping the career risks of being seen as cooperating with what his Republican allies had cast as partisan persecution of the former president.
His high-wire legal act hit a new challenge this month. While Mr. Meadows’s strategy of targeted assistance to federal prosecutors and sphinxlike public silence largely kept him out of the 45-page election interference indictment that Mr. Smith filed against Mr. Trump in Washington, it did not help him avoid similar charges in Fulton County, Ga. Mr. Meadows was named last week as one of Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in a sprawling racketeering indictment filed by the local district attorney in Georgia.
Interviews and a review of the cases show how Mr. Meadows’s tactics reflected to some degree his tendency to avoid conflict and leave different people believing that he agreed with them. They were also dictated by his unique position in Mr. Trump’s world and the legal jeopardy this presented.
Read all the juicy, gossipy details at the NYT link.
There’s also news about the January 6 case against Trump in DC.
The Washington Post: Justice Dept. pushes back against Trump’s bid for a 2026 trial in D.C.
The Justice Department pushed back Monday on former president Donald Trump’s claims that he cannot be ready to go to trial in January on charges that he illegally sought to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
That’s it for me today. I guess I’m still mainly obsessed with seeing Trump tried, convicted, and imprisoned. I’ll add more links in the comment thread.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: August 19, 2023 Filed under: 2020 Elections, 2021 Insurrection, Afternoon Reads, Cats, caturday | Tags: China, Christopher Worrell, Enrique Tarrio, fake electors, FBI, foreign policy, Georgia election interference case, January 6 insurrection, January 6 prosecutions, Japan, Joe Biden, Joe Biggs, Kenneth Chesebro, Proud Boys, South Korea, Vietnam 5 Comments
Happy Caturday!!
It’s difficult for me to focus on anything except the legal news about Trump’s crimes; but before I get to the latest on that, I want to call attention to Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy efforts. I admit I really that I originally was not at all enthused about a Biden presidency, but he has turned out to be very good at his job. His age and experience have prepared him for this moment in history.
Reuters: US, South Korea and Japan condemn China, agree to deepen military ties.
CAMP DAVID, Maryland, Aug 18 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed at Camp David on Friday to deepen military and economic cooperation and made their strongest joint condemnation yet of “dangerous and aggressive behavior” by China in the South China Sea.
The Biden administration held the summit with the leaders of the main U.S. allies in Asia, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in a bid to project unity in the face of China’s growing power and nuclear threats from North Korea.
In a summit statement the three countries committed to consult promptly with each other during crises and to coordinate responses to regional challenges, provocations and threats affecting common interests.
They also agreed to hold military training exercises annually and to share real-time information on North Korean missile launches by the end of 2023. The countries promised to hold trilateral summits annually.
While the political commitments fall short of a formal three-way alliance, they represent a bold move for Seoul and Tokyo, which have a long history of mutual acrimony stemming from Japan’s harsh 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.
The summit at the Maryland presidential retreat was the first standalone meeting between the U.S. and Japan and South Korea and came about thanks to a rapprochement launched by Yoon and driven by shared perceptions of threats posed by China and North Korea, as well as Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
The leaders’ language on China stood out as stronger than expected, and is likely to provoke a response from Beijing, which is a vital trading partner for both South Korea and Japan.
“Regarding the dangerous and aggressive behavior supporting unlawful maritime claims that we have recently witnessed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the South China Sea, we strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific,” the statement said.
Next Biden plans to build closer ties with Vietnam. Politico: Biden to sign strategic partnership deal with Vietnam in latest bid to counter China in the region.
President Joe Biden will chalk up a fresh victory in his campaign to boost U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific by sealing a deal with Vietnam next month aimed to draw Hanoi closer to Washington at a time of rising tensions with Beijing.
Biden will sign a strategic partnership agreement with Vietnam during a state visit to the Southeast Asian country in mid-September, according to three people with knowledge of the deal’s planning. They were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record about the agreement.
The agreement will allow for new bilateral collaboration that will boost Vietnam’s efforts to develop its high technology sector in areas including semiconductor production and artificial intelligence….
The deal adds to Biden’s string of successful diplomatic initiatives aimed to reassert U.S. influence in Asia in the face of China’s growing economic, diplomatic and military muscle in the region. They include a historic Camp David summit Friday with Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol — aimed at addressing regional threats from North Korea and China.
The Vietnam agreement coincides with an uptick in tension between Hanoi and Beijing over long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Vietnam — along with the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei — has long protested Beijing’s claim of authority over parts of the South China Sea that extend 1,200 miles from China’s coastline. Hanoi banned the Barbie movie last month due to a scene that appeared to reference the nine-dash line Beijing says marks its territorial waters. Satellite imagery released this week indicates China is building an airfield on an island that Hanoi says is Vietnamese territory.
But the agreement doesn’t necessarily signal that Vietnam is moving away from its giant neighbor China in favor of better ties with Washington.
“Vietnam is not aligning with the U.S. against China. … They’re happy to improve relations with the U.S., but it doesn’t mean they’re moving against China — they’re going to continue to calibrate very carefully,” said Scot Marciel, a former principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department who opened the first State Department office in Hanoi in 1993.
Now some legal news.
In the January 6th prosecutions, the DOJ has asked for 33 years in prison for Proud Boy leaders Enrique Tarrio and Joe Biggs. Kyle Cheney at Politico: Prosecutors seek 30-year sentences for Proud Boys leaders in Jan. 6 case.
Prosecutors are seeking 33-year prison sentences for former Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and his ally Joe Biggs, who they say aimed to foment a revolution on Jan. 6 to keep former President Donald Trump in power.
The proposed jail sentences would nearly double the lengthiest Jan. 6 sentence handed down to date — 18 years for Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes — a decision prosecutors say reflects the pivotal role that Proud Boys leaders played in stoking and exacerbating the violence at the Capitol that day.
“The defendants understood the stakes, and they embraced their role in bringing about a ‘revolution,’” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo released Thursday night. “They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election. The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”
Both Tarrio and Biggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy in May by a jury who also found allies Philadelphia Proud Boy leader Zachary Rehl and Seattle Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean guilty of the grave offense. Prosecutors are seeking 30 years for Rehl and 27 years for Nordean.
A fifth Proud Boy tried alongside the others, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other serious offenses. Pezzola may be the best known of the group, however. He shattered a Senate-wing window with a stolen police riot shield, triggering the breach of the Capitol itself. Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year jail term for him.
Read more details at the Politico link.
Marcy Wheeler has an interesting story about Proud Boy Joe Biggs, who used to be an informant for the FBI. If you’ve wondered why the FBI failed to warn people about the terrorists who were working to overthrow the government on January 6, here’s one answer. Emptywheel: “They Spoke Often:” It Took the Fash-Friendly FBI Over Two Months to Document the Lies their Informant, Joe Biggs, Told Them.
I always have a hard time excerpting Marcy’s posts, but I hope you’ll go read it at the link. The gist is that the FBI used Biggs to target “Antifa.” They were focused on radical left groups and ignored the violent extremist on the right. Here’s the summary at the end of the post:
The FBI claims it had no notice of the terrorist attack on the nation’s Capitol, not even with an FBI agent “speaking often” with one of its leaders and an DC intelligence cop speaking often with the other one.
So now, DOJ wants to hold Joe Biggs accountable for the lies he told to the FBI agent who thought a key leader of the Proud Boys would make an appropriate informant targeting Antifa. But thus far, his handler has not been held accountable for missing the planning of a terrorist attack in DC when while speaking “often” with one of its key leaders.
Notably, the Daytona FBI office is the same one where, after fake whistleblower Stephen Friend refused to participate in a SWAT arrest of a Three Percenter known to own an assault rifle, his supervisor said “he wished I just ‘called in sick’ for this warrant,” before taking disciplinary action against him (though Friend didn’t start in Daytona Beach until after Biggs had already been arrested).
The second of these interviews (but not the first) interview was mentioned in Biggs’ arrest affidavit. It’s possible that investigating agents didn’t even know about what occurred in the first one.
Indeed, it’s really hard to credit the reliability of a 302 written two days after Biggs described his chummy relationship but not this interview in an attempt to stay out of jail.
This is why the FBI didn’t warn against January 6. Because these terrorists were the FBI’s people.
Another Proud Boy, Christopher Worrell, was supposed to be sentenced soon, but yesterday, news broke that he has disappeared. Associated Press: Proud Boy on house arrest in Jan. 6 case disappears ahead of sentencing.
Authorities are searching for a member of the Proud Boys extremist group who disappeared days before his sentencing in a U.S. Capitol riot case, where prosecutors are seeking more than a decade in prison, according to a warrant made public Friday.
Christopher Worrell, 52, of Naples, Florida, was supposed to be sentenced Friday after being found guilty of spraying pepper spray gel on police officers, as part of the mob storming the Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors had asked a judge to sentence him to 14 years.
The sentencing was canceled and a bench warrant for his arrest issued under seal on Tuesday, according to court records. The U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., encouraged the public to share any information about his whereabouts.
Worrell had been on house arrest in Florida since his release from jail in Washington in November 2021, less than a month after a judge substantiated his civil-rights complaints about his treatment in the jail.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth found Worrell’s medical care for a broken hand had been delayed, and held D.C. jail officials in contempt of court.
The big topic of conversation in the media and Twitter yesterday was a Trump ally who has previously passed under the radar–Kenneth Chesebro, who appears to be one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the Georgia election interference case. It turns out this guy was integral to what happened on January 6. Chesboro was also the originator of the scheme to use “fake electors” to overthrow the 2020 election.
When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red “Trump 2020” hat conspicuously tagged along.
Videos and photographs reviewed by CNN show the man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters eventually broke in.
While the man’s actions outside the Capitol that day have drawn little scrutiny, his alleged connections to a plot to overthrow the 2020 election have recently come into sharp focus: He is attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme to subvert the 2020 Electoral College process by using fake GOP electors in multiple states.
When asked by the House select committee where he was the first week of January 2021 and on January 6, Chesebro invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. But a CNN investigation has placed him outside of the Capitol at the same time as his alleged plot to keep Trump in office unraveled inside it.
There is no indication Chesebro entered the Capitol Building or was violent. Jones did not enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or engage in violence, but he had warned of a coming battle the day before and urged his supporters to converge on the Capitol.
Chesebro is the only one of the unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s recent federal indictment and only member of Trump’s legal efforts who is now known to have been on the Capitol grounds on January 6.
CNN was able to place Chesebro at the protest through publicly available databases with photos and videos from that day. Interviews with his acquaintances also confirmed his identity. Chesebro declined CNN’s requests for comment, citing ongoing litigation.
It was unclear why Chesebro was following Jones on January 6.
“Even if Chesebro is simply a diehard Infowars fan, I think that would further illustrate how thin the line was between the serious, credentialed people who sought to undermine election results and the extremist figures who sought to unleash havoc was in that period, to the extent it meaningfully existed at all,” said Jared Holt, an expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue which investigates extremism, hate and disinformation.
Read the rest at CNN.
More on Cheseboro from The Washington Post: The ‘brains’ behind fake Trump electors was once a liberal Democrat.
VEGA ALTA, Puerto Rico — The blinds were drawn at a handsome villa in an oceanfront gated community on the northern coast of this Caribbean island. Inside, a woman’s voice could be heard calling out “Ken” — but no one answered the door.
That’s all I have for you today. Have a nice Caturday!
Thursday Reads: What Might Have Been vs. Reality
Posted: August 17, 2023 Filed under: just because 9 CommentsGood Day!!
Another day of Trump news. I’m so sick of it. On Monday, Hillary Clinton was on Rachel Maddow’s show. She looks great, she’s as mentally sharp as ever, she’s dignified, and she’s a true patriot. She could have been president today if Trump hadn’t gotten help from Vladimir Putin in 2016. Imagine how different things could have been. Instead, we had to deal with four years of chaos and crime with a would-be dictator supposedly in charge, but actually just enriching himself in every corrupt way he could dream up.
If only . . .
From The New York Times the following day: Hillary Clinton Says ‘I Don’t Feel Any Satisfaction’ From Trump Indictments.
Less than an hour after a grand jury in Atlanta returned indictments in the 2020 election interference case in Georgia, Hillary Clinton on Monday called the developments “a terrible moment for our country.”
The indictment, released late on Monday evening, charges former President Donald J. Trump in a sprawling case. Before the charges were made public, Mrs. Clinton gave a previously scheduled late-night interview on MSNBC. She said that she felt “great profound sadness” that the former president had already been indicted on so many other charges that “went right to the heart of whether or not our democracy would survive.”
“Do you feel satisfaction in that you warned the country, essentially, that he was going to try to end democracy?” the anchor, Rachel Maddow, asked Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state and former first lady.
“I don’t feel any satisfaction,” Mrs. Clinton responded, adding that she did not know whether “anybody should be satisfied.” “The only satisfaction may be that the system is working, that all of the efforts by Donald Trump, his allies and his enablers to try to silence the truth, to try to undermine democracy have been brought into the light.”
Meanwhile Trump and his crazy cult are still dominating the headlines.
Politico: Texas woman accused of threatening to kill judge overseeing Trump election case and a congresswoman.
HOUSTON — A Texas woman was arrested and has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Washington and a member of Congress.
Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington and left the threatening message — using a racist term for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — on Aug. 5, court records show. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.
In the call, Shry told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” the documents said. Prosecutors allege Shry also said, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you,” and she threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat running for mayor of Houston, according to court documents.
A judge earlier this week ordered Shry jailed. Court records show Shry is represented by the Houston public defender’s office, which did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday.
Trump has publicly assailed Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, calling her “highly partisan” and “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!” because of her past comments in a separate case overseeing the sentencing of one of the defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
More details from The Daily Beast: Woman Charged After Racist Tirade Threatening to Kill D.C. Trump Judge.
A Texas woman is facing federal charges after allegedly threatening to kill the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington, D.C., in which he’s accused of conspiring to reverse his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
A criminal complaint filed Friday outlines how Abigail Jo Shry, 48, called U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s chambers on Aug. 5, leaving “a threatening voicemail message.”
The caller began: “Hey, you stupid slave n—–,” according to the complaint. They then went on to threaten the lives of “anyone who went after former President Trump,” name-dropping ” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), “all Democrats in Washington, D.C.,” and “all people” in the LGBTQ+ community.
To Chutkan, the caller continued, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” and “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch,” the complaint alleges. They threatened to target her “personally, publicly, your family, all of it.”
Investigators quickly traced the cell phone used to Shry. When Department of Homeland Security agents knocked on her door in Alvin, Texas, three days later, Shry admitted that she’d made the call to Chutkan. She told the agents that she had no plans to go to D.C. or carry out any of her threats, but added ominously that “if Sheila Jackson Lee comes to Alvin, then we need to worry,” the complaint states.
Shry is charged with transmitting a communication containing a threat to injure the person of another–a felony with a maximum prison term of up to five years.
NBC News: Trump supporters post names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors online.
ATLANTA — The purported names and addresses of members of the grand jury that indicted Donald Trump and 18 of his co-defendants on state racketeering charges this week have been posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric, NBC News has learned.
NBC News is choosing not to name the website featuring the addresses to avoid further spreading the information.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment. District Attorney Fani Willis faced racist threats ahead of the return of the indictment, and additional security measures were put in place, with some employees being allowed to work from home.
The grand jurors’ purported addresses were spotted by Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan research group founded by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI investigator and staffer for the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
“It’s becoming all too commonplace to see everyday citizens performing necessary functions for our democracy being targeted with violent threats by Trump-supporting extremists,” Jones said. “The lack of political leadership on the right to denounce these threats — which serve to inspire real-world political violence — is shameful.”
Advance Democracy also noted that users were posting the names and images of people believed to have been grand jurors on other social media sites. The posts asserted that the jurors had posted on social media in support of Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., former President Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.
The indictment issued Monday lists the names of the grand jury members but not their addresses or other personal information.
If she sounds crazy, what about Jeffrey Clark, who served in Trump’s DOJ? Check this out from HuffPost: Indicted Ex-Trump Official’s Weird ‘Witches’ Gripe Gets The Treatment Online.
Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official under Donald Trump, is posting online about supernatural beings in the wake of his racketeering indictment in Georgia, and everybody’s confused.
“Today witches, spiritists, mediums, those with spirit animals, and Ukrainian NPCs resumed their attacks on me,” Clark wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.
Clark was indicted along with Trump and 17 others on Monday on racketeering and conspiracy charges in an alleged scheme to change Georgia’s 2020 election results following Trump’s loss.
Clark served in the Trump administration as an assistant attorney general in the environment and natural resources division, and then as acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division.
He became a key figure championing the former president’s push to overturn the 2020 election. According to former administration officials, Trump at one point considered elevating him to acting attorney general following the departure of William Barr, who resigned after refusing to back Trump’s voter fraud claims.
X users weren’t sure what to make of Clark’s paranormal paranoia ― but of course they had jokes:
One more from Trump himself. He was supposedly planning a “major announcement” at Bedminster on Monday, but his lawyers are trying to talk him out of it.
ABC News: Trump’s legal advisers urge him to cancel press conference to refute Georgia allegations: Sources.
Former President Donald Trump’s promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office is now very much in doubt, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
Sources tell ABC News that Trump’s legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.
Trump announced the planned press conference with a social media post shortly after he and 18 co-defendants were indicted late Monday in Georgia. He said he would present, “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.”
Georgia’s Republican governor responded to that with his own social media post declaring, “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and prove anything in a court of law.”
What a moron Trump is. If only he would STFU.
You probably heard about this horrible story yesterday. The Washington Post: Appeals court embraces abortion-pill limits, sets up Supreme Court review.
A federal appeals court said Wednesday that it would restrict access to a widely used abortion medication after finding that the federal government did not follow the proper process when it loosened regulations in 2016 to make the pill more easily available.
Food and Drug Administration decisions to allow the drug mifepristone to be taken later in pregnancy, be mailed directly to patients and be prescribed by a medical professional other than a doctor were not lawful, a three-judge panel of the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled.
Mifepristone will remain available for now under existing regulations while the litigation continues, in accordance with a Supreme Court order this spring. The Justice Department said it will go backto the Supreme Court to appeal Wednesday’s decision, which only partially upheld a lower-court judge’s ruling in favor of a coalition of antiabortion challengers.
If the Supreme Court allows the appeals court’s ruling to stand, the abortion pill would still be available in the United States, but it would be more difficult for patients to get it.
I’m going to end there for now. I’ll add more reads in the comment thread. Take care everyone!
Tuesday Reads: Trump Indictment #4
Posted: August 15, 2023 Filed under: 2020 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, Crime, Criminal Justice System, Donald Trump | Tags: conspiracy, Fani Willis, Georgia grand jury, Mark Meadows, racketeering, RICO laws, Trump 4th indictment 7 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
As you know, the Georgia grand jury handed down multiple indictments of Trump and many of his cronies for a conspiracy to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election. He has now been indicted 4 times for a total of 91 criminal charges. I tried to stay up until the bitter end last night, but I fell asleep before Fani Willis finally made her announcement.
David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo: Fani Willis Lowers The Boom On Donald Trump In Massive Indictment.
After a marathon session Monday, a Georgia grand jury returned a monster 41-felony-count, 97-page indictment against a total of 19 defendants, including former President Donald Trump; Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jenna Ellis; and Trump DOJ official Jeff Clark.
It was a strange day of uncertainty and expectation, with moment-by-moment reporting from the Fulton County courthouse. The duty judge would poke his head into the courtroom of waiting reporters to do check-ins. Grand jury witnesses scheduled to testify today made public that they had been called in a day early and offered regular updates as to where they stood in the line of witnesses paraded before the grand jury. The presentation of the indictment to the duty judge was televised live. Reporters were taking photographs from the inside of the clerk of court’s office as they waited an agonizing couple of hours for the paperwork to be processed and the indictment made public.
The day was punctuated by what appeared to be the accidental posting then quick takedown from the clerk’s website of a document seemingly related to the case that listed Trump as a defendant. That sparked an initial round of excitement and panic, then confusion. The clerk’s office later issued a statement calling the document “fictitious.” But it remained unclear exactly what had happened and why.
As the drama stretched deep into the evening, it became increasingly clear that District Attorney Fani Will was pushing to finish the indictment the same day. The duty judge kept the courtroom open late to accept the indictment, should it come. It finally did, just before 9 p.m. ET. The indictment became public just before 11 p.m. ET.
Read more of the basic facts at the TPM link.
From Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice, Lisa Needham breaks down the charges: Trump’s Fulton County indictment, unpacked.
The latest Trump indictment is out, and it’s a blockbuster. Let’s start with the numbers, shall we? A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, returned an indictment that has:
- 19 defendants, including the former president of the United States and 6 lawyers in his orbit
- 41 criminal counts across all defendants
- 13 criminal counts against the former president himself
- 8 types of manners and methods used to further a criminal enterprise
- 161 overt acts of racketeering activity
Many of the defendants are already familiar. Rudy Guiliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Sidney Powell are all attorneys who are likely some of the unindicted co-conspirators in the federal January 6 case. Others are people whose names have surfaced repeatedly during the various 2020 election investigations, such as Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, and attorney Ken Chesebro, who wrote the first memo suggesting the fake elector scheme. Others, like fake electors Shawn Still and David Shafer, aren’t household names….
If you’ve ever watched a mob movie set after 1970, when the law was first passed, you’ve probably heard of the federal RICO Act. It was designed to charge people for acting in concert with one another in furtherance of a criminal act. This was a big breakthrough because in sprawling criminal enterprises, people at the top — gang leaders, mob capos, etc. — could insulate themselves from criminal liability by having other people do their dirty work. But the advent of RICO meant that if you helped mastermind the heist but didn’t do the burglary, for example, you could still be held liable. The law isn’t just used against the Mafia but has also formed the basis for prosecuting people who run Ponzi schemes and gangs, among other things….
According to the indictment, Trump and his co-defendants used at least eight methods to try to undermine the election: (1) Making false statements to members of state legislatures, including Florida, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia; (2) Making false statements to high-ranking state officials in Georgia, such as the secretary of state and the governor; (3) creating a slate of fake electoral voters; (4) harassing and intimidating a Fulton County election worker; (5) soliciting high-ranking members of the United States Department of Justice to make false statements to government officials in Georgia; (6) soliciting Mike Pence to reject electoral college votes properly cast by Georgia’s electors; (7) unlawfully accessing voter equipment and voter data; and (8) making false statements and committing perjury to cover up the conspiracy.
The first public act in furtherance of the conspiracy started the day after the election when Trump gave a speech falsely declaring victory. Trump had discussed a draft speech to that effect three days before the election, in which he planned to declare victory and claim voter fraud. In other words, Trump was already prepared to attempt to overturn the election before election night even happened.
Read the rest at Public Notice. It’s a very good summary of the case.
For a quick summary of the various kinds of charges in the indictment, check out this uncharacteristically short post by Marcy Wheeler at Emptywheel: The Various Kinds of Georgia Crimes in the RICO indictment.
I was very happy to see that Mark Meadows was among the Trump allies who were indicted. Insider: Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, will face his first post-2020 election-related indictment in Georgia.
Mark Meadows, a Freedom Caucus conservative who rose to become Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, will face a criminal indictment in Georgia alongside former president.
Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis unveiled her sprawling indictment late Monday evening, ending Meadows’ run thus far of successfully ducking some of the legal serious legal liability that others in Trump’s orbit have faced stemming from their actions that took place during the waning weeks of his presidency.
It means Meadows may soon join HR Haldeman, Nixon’s self-dubbed “son of a bitch,” in infamy among those who held one of the most powerful posts in the federal government, Chief of Staff. Haldeman, of course, faced prison time over his role in trying to cover up the Watergate break-in.
According to the indictment, Meadows, like each one of his fellow co-defendants, is facing a violation of Georgia’s RICO law. He is also facing an additional count related to his participation in Trump’s January 2, 2021 call with George Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during which Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find” enough votes so he could win.
Meadows’ other conduct is mentioned throughout the indictment. In particular, Willis zeroed in on Meadows’ efforts to reach state lawmakers in Pennsylvania. Willis later told reporters that the grand jury believed conduct outside of her jurisdiction helped furthered the conspiracy she alleged.
Meadows was not one of the unindicted co-conspirators in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment related to conduct after the election, leading to speculation that the former chief of staff could be assisting the federal investigation.
Of course, Trump can’t keep his big mouth shut. He announced on Truth Social that he has proof of election fraud in Georgia which he will announce next Monday.
It’s not clear why he didn’t reveal this information before he was indicted.
One more article on Trump’s obvious first delay tactic in the Georgia case:
Kyle Cheney at Politico: An early test for Georgia prosecutors: Trump’s likely bid to take the case to federal court.
One of the first big battles in the new racketeering case against Donald Trump is likely imminent: Should the former president face a jury in state or federal court?
Although the charges were filed in state court in Fulton County, Ga., Trump is sure to attempt to “remove” the case to federal court, where he would potentially have a friendlier jury pool and the chance of drawing a judge whom he appointed to the bench.
To try to get the case into federal court, Trump is expected to argue that much of the conduct he’s been charged with was undertaken in his capacity as an officer of the federal government, because he was still president during the critical period when he and his allies attempted to subvert the 2020 election results. A federal law, known as a “removal statute,” generally allows any “officer of the United States” who is prosecuted or sued in state court to transfer the case to federal court if the case stems from the officer’s governmental duties.
Trump has already attempted to make this move in New York, where he’s facing state charges for falsifying business records to cover up an affair with a porn star. A federal judge there rejected the effort and directed the case back to state court, noting that the charges there didn’t really implicate Trump’s powers as president.
“There is an ‘outer perimeter’ to a President’s authority and responsibilities beyond which he engages in private conduct,” U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled, sending the case back to New York state court. Trump is appealing the ruling.
But Georgia could be different: Most of the charges Trump is facing — sweeping allegations of using his office to corrupt the 2020 election — involve his presidential authorities and his efforts to manipulate the federal processes he was charged with overseeing. That makes removal a more viable option in Georgia than New York.
The judge in the case has even less experience than Aileen Cannon.
Those are the basics on the Georgia indictments. We will learn much more in the days ahead.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments