Thursday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

Thanks guys for pitching in to post news links when I was under the weather on Tuesday. I really appreciate it. My eyes are better, although they are still watery from hay fever. As usual, there is quite a bit of news today. I’ll try to hit the highlights.

Yesterday, President Biden announced his promised student loan forgiveness plan. That link goes to the White House website with a full explanation of the plan. 

The New York Times: Biden to Cancel $10,000 in Student Debt; Low-Income Students Are Eligible for More.

President Biden announced a plan on Wednesday to wipe out significant amounts of student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans, saying he would cancel $10,000 in debt for those earning less than $125,000 per year and $20,000 for those who had received Pell grants for low-income families.

The debt forgiveness, although less than what some Democrats had been pushing for, comes after months of deliberations in the White House over fairness and fears that it could exacerbate inflation before the midterm elections.

“All of this means people can start finally to climb out from under that mountain of debt,” Mr. Biden said in remarks from the White House. “To finally think about buying a home or starting a family or starting a business. And by the way, when this happens, the whole economy is better off.”

Mr. Biden also announced that a pandemic-era pause on student loan payments, which has been in effect since March 2020, would expire at the end of the year. The timing for the debt relief is uncertain; the Department of Education said it would set up an application process by the end of the year.

Across the United States, 45 million people owe $1.6 trillion for federal loans taken out for college — more than they owe on car loans, credit cards or any consumer debt other than mortgages.

Students who received Pell grants will be eligible for $20,000 in debt forgiveness on their loans. About 60 percent of borrowers have received Pell grants, and the majority come from families making less than $30,000 a year. The Education Department estimates that 27 million borrowers will qualify for up to $20,000 in relief.

Millions of other borrowers will be eligible for $10,000 in debt relief, as long as they earn less than $125,000 a year or are in households earning less than $250,000. Borrowers will be assessed based on the income they reported in 2021 or 2020.

See also this explainer at The New York Times: What You Need to Know About Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan.

Of course Republicans are complaining that the plan is unfair to people who never went to college and people who already paid off their student loans. Note that they are not concerned about the unfairness of their tax cuts for the richest Americans that must be paid for by the rest of us. Here’s how Biden responded to a press question about that:

Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri’s response to these complaints:

Stop improving things right now! Everyone must suffer as I did!

DISGUSTING! AWFUL! I have just received word that life is getting marginally better for some people, and I am white-hot with fury! This is the worst thing that could possibly happen! I did not suffer and strive and work my fingers to the bone so that anybody else could have a life that does not involve suffering and striving and the working of fingers to the bone. I demand to see only bones and no fingers!

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thrashing because I have had the nightmare again, the nightmare in which someone else is being spared a small hint of the suffering I endured. The world should not get better! The world should get worse along with me and perish along with me.

Every time anyone’s life improves at all, I personally am insulted. Any time anyone devises a labor-saving device, or passes some kind of weak, soft-hearted law that forecloses the opportunity for a new generation of children to lose fingers in dangerous machinery, I gnash my teeth. This is an affront to everyone who struggled so mightily. To avoid affronting them, we must keep everything just as bad as ever. Put those fingers back into the machines, or our suffering will have been in vain.

When I see unleaded paint or un-asbestosed homes, I froth at the mouth and start stomping up and down like Rumpelstiltskin. And who are we to think we deserve better than to die of sepsis? Why shouldn’t smallpox be out in the world for us as it once was? Are we too good for scurvy, now? Our great-grandparents made do without penicillin, did they not?

What a fallen, broken world we live in. The audacity of people trying to eat food not contaminated by waste, or increase the number of rhinos in the wild — they had better not! Clean the air? YOU STOP THAT RIGHT NOW. Inhaling thick lungfuls of coal smoke was miserable for me, and it will be miserable for you. Put the cockroaches back into the kitchen, please, and lye back into the meat!

Petri is a national treasure.

Two more articles on the student loan cancellation:

Lystra Small-Clouden at The Guardian: I’m 65 and have $300,000 in student debt. I and other older debtors are going on strike.

Joseph E. Stiglitz at The Atlantic: Actually, Canceling Student Debt Will Cut Inflation.

Hey, I’m 74 and I have no clue how much I owe at this point with all the added interest. It could very well be $300,00 at this point. I’m still happy that some young people are getting a break.

Another big story from yesterday: the secret memo that Bill Barr used to absolve Trump of obstruction of the Mueller investigation was released thanks to a lawsuit by Citizens for Ethics.

This is from The Washington Post: Justice Dept. memo to not charge Trump in Russia probe released.

From the Rolling Stone article:

IN THE WEEKS after the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, former President Donald Trump repeatedly made a simple-sounding but extraordinary ask: he wanted his lawyers to get “my documents” back from federal law enforcement.

Trump wasn’t merely referring to the alleged trove of attorney-client material that he insists was scooped up by the feds during the raid, two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The ex-president has been demanding that his team find a way to recover “all” of the official documents that Trump has long referred to as “mine” — including the highly sensitive and top secret ones.   

Sources close to Trump agree with outside legal experts that such a sweeping legal maneuver would be a long-shot, at best.  “I hate to break it to the [former] president, but I do not think he is going to get all [the] top-secret documents back,” says one Trump adviser. “That ship has probably sailed.”

Further, several longtime Trump advisers say they want absolutely nothing to do with the now-infamous boxes of documents, fearing that any knowledge of them could invite an unwanted knock on the door from the feds. “Who would want any of that back? … If it is what they say it is, keep them the hell away,” a second adviser says.

Still, the former president’s legal team appears to be working to retrieve at least some of the papers seized during the Aug. 8 federal search. In recent days, the Trump team — led by former federal prosecutor Evan Corcoran — has been quietly prepping additional legal arguments and strategies to try to pry back material that the feds removed from the ex-president’s Florida abode and club, the sources say. Those measures include drafting a so-called “Rule 41(g) motion,” which allows  “a person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure of property” to “move for the property’s return,” according to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Good luck with that. Trump is even more delusional than I thought.

The Washington Post: Archives asked for records in 2021 after Trump lawyer agreed they should be returned, email says.

About two dozen boxes of presidential records stored in then-President Donald Trump’s White House residence were not returned to the National Archives and Records Administration in the final days of his term even after Archives officials were told by a Trump lawyer that the documents should be given back, according to an email from the top lawyer at the record-keeping agency.

“It is also our understanding that roughly two dozen boxes of original presidential records were kept in the Residence of the White House over the course of President Trump’s last year in office and have not been transferred to NARA, despite a determination by Pat Cipollone in the final days of the administration that they need to be,” wrote Gary Stern, the agency’s chief counsel, in an email to Trump lawyers in May 2021, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post.

The email shows NARA officials were concerned about Trump keeping dozens of boxes of official records even before he left the White House — concerns that only grew in the coming months as Trump repeatedly declined to return the records. It also showed that Trump’s lawyers had concerns about Trump taking the documents and agreed that the boxes should be returned — at least according to the top Archives officials — while Trump kept the documents.

The previously unreported email — sent about 100 days after the former president left office with the subject line “Need for Assistance re Presidential Records” — also illustrates the myriad efforts Archives officials made to have documents including classified material returned over an 18-month period, culminating with an FBI raid this month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida….

Stern does not say in the email how he determined that the boxes were in Trump’s possession. He wrote that he also had consulted another Trump lawyer during the final days of Trump’s presidency — without any luck. “I had also raised this concern with Scott in the final weeks,” Stern writes in the email, referring to Trump lawyer Scott Gast, who is also copied on the email.

In the email, Stern again asks for the documents to be returned.

So Trump knew he would be committing a crime if he kept those documents and took them with him when he left the White House. Read more at the WaPo link.

One more before I wrap this up. This new today.

The New York Times: Justice Dept. to Submit Redacted Affidavit Used in Trump Search Warrant.

The Justice Department on Thursday is expected to propose extensive redactions to the affidavit used to obtain a search warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence in an effort to shield witnesses from intimidation or retribution if it is made public, officials said.

Despite a federal judge’s demand that the government submit its request under seal by noon, it is unlikely to lead to the immediate release of the affidavit. In its most complete form, the document would disclose important, and potentially revelatory, details about the government’s justification for taking the extraordinary step of searching Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8.

The submission by the Justice Department is a significant legal milepost in an investigation that has swiftly emerged as a major threat to Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have offered a confused and at times stumbling response. But it is also an inflection point for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who is trying to balance protecting the prosecutorial process by keeping secret details of the investigation, and providing enough information to defend his decision to request a search unlike any other in history….

Last week, Bruce E. Reinhart, a federal magistrate judge in Florida, surprised prosecutors by saying he was inclined to release portions of the affidavit at the request of news organizations, including The New York Times, after the government proposed redactions.

Disclosing even a partial version of the affidavit would be highly unusual: Such documents, which typically include evidence gathered to justify the search, like information provided by witnesses, are almost never unsealed before the government files criminal charges. There is no indication the Justice Department plans to file charges anytime soon.

We should hear more about this later today.

That’s all I have for you today. Have a great Thursday!

Tuesday Open Thread

Good Morning!!

I can’t write a post, because my eyes are very irritated from allergies this morning and it’s difficult for me to see on the computer. It’s frustrating, because today is an important news day. It turns out that Trump had hundreds of highly classied documents squireled away at Mar-a-Lago. Who knows what secrets he gave away to Putin or other foreign enemies?

Please post freely in the comment thread on this and any other topic that interests you. I will check in later on my tablet.

Have a nice Tuesday.

Thursday Reads

Good Morning!!

Today at 1PM, Judge Bruce Reinhart will hold a hearing about whether he should release the FBI affidavit he consulted in his decision to approve the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. A number of media organization are arguing for the release, while the DOJ opposes it because it could discourage witnesses from coming forward to help in their investigation.

In addition, ABC News has a scoop about Kash Patel’s plans for White House documents before the FBI Search and Maggie Haberman attempted to Whitewash Trump’s motives for stealing highly classified documents.

There is also news in the case against Trump’s companies in New York. Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg has agreed to a plea deal that requires him to testify against The Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation when they go to trial in October. He will not have to implicate Trump or his family directly.

Finally, news from the January 6 grand jury and some Secret Service news.

The hearing on release of the FBI affidavit

Tierney Sneed at CNN: Here’s why CNN and other news outlets asked the court to unseal the entire record related to Mar-a-Lago search.

CNN, joined by The Washington Post, NBC News and Scripps, asked a court last week to unseal documents connected to the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence  — including documents not covered by the Justice Department’s own bid to unseal a selection of the warrant materials.

Specifically, CNN and the other outlets are asking for the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida to unseal the entire record filed with the court, including all probable cause affidavits filed in support of the search warrant. These lay out why investigators believe that there is probable cause that a crime was committed and the evidence of that crime existed in recent days at the site where the search was sought.

The request was filed after the Justice Department submitted its own request with the federal court to unseal certain warrant materials. In remarks announcing the request, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is seeking the release of the “search warrant and property receipt” from the FBI’s search.

In the unsealing filing by CNN and the other outlets with the court, they pointed to “the historic importance of these events.”

“Before the events of this week, not since the Nixon Administration had the federal government wielded its power to seize records from a former President in such a public fashion,” the outlets said in the filing.

The filing said that “tremendous public interest in these records in particular outweighs any purported interest in keeping them secret.”

The Guardian: Judge to hear Trump’s arguments for releasing Mar-a-Lago search affidavit – live.

The affidavit for the FBI’s August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago would shine more light on what brought federal agents to the Florida property, and the justice department has already said it’s not comfortable with it being made public.

“The affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course,” prosecutors argued earlier this week, adding, “Disclosure of the government’s affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations.”

Trump meanwhile asked for it to be made public, writing on his Truth Social platform, “There is no way to justify the unannounced RAID of Mar-a-Lago”.

“I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit pertaining to this horrible and shocking BREAK-IN,” he said.

But making the document public may not be the best move for him. A former senior justice department official told the Washington Post these types of affidavits usually reflect poorly on whomever’s property is being searched. “There’s no exculpatory information. It’s never a good story for the defendant,” the person said.

Kash Patel’s plans for documents from the National Archives

ABC News: Weeks before Mar-a-Lago search, ex-Trump DOD official vowed to publish classified documents from National Archives.

In June of this year, seven weeks before the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in search of classified materials, former Defense Department appointee and outspoken Trump loyalist Kash Patel vowed to retrieve classified documents from the National Archives and publish them on his website.

Trump had just issued a letter instructing the National Archives to grant Patel and conservative journalist John Solomon access to nonpublic administration records, according to reporting at the time.

Patel, who under Trump had been the chief of staff for the acting defense secretary, claimed in a string of interviews that Trump had declassified a trove of “Russiagate documents” in the final days of his administration. But Patel claimed Trump’s White House counsel had blocked the release of those documents, and instead had them delivered to the National Archives.

“I’ve never told anyone this because it just happened,” Patel said in an interview on a pro-Trump podcast on June 22. “I’m going to identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified at the National Archives, and we’re going to start putting that information out next week.”

Patel did not provide a clear explanation of how he would legally or practically obtain the documents.

Maggie Haberman soft pedals Trump’s document thefts

Haberman writes at The New York Times: Another Trump Mystery: Why Did He Resist Returning the Government’s Documents?

For four years, former President Donald J. Trump treated the federal government and the political apparatus operating in his name as an extension of his private real estate company.

It all belonged to him, he felt, melded together into a Trump brand that he had been nurturing for decades.

“My generals,” he repeatedly said of the active-duty and retired military leaders who filled his government. “My money,” he often called the cash he raised through his campaign or for the Republican National Committee. “My Kevin,” he said of Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader.

And White House documents?

“They’re mine,” three of Mr. Trump’s advisers said that he stated repeatedly when he was urged to return boxes of documents, some of them highly classified, that the National Archives sought after Mr. Trump took them with him to Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., in January 2021. A nearly 18-month back-and-forth between the government and Mr. Trump ended in an extraordinary F.B.I. search for the documents at Mar-a-Lago last week.

The question, as with so much else around Mr. Trump, is why? Why did he insist on refusing to turn over government papers that by law did not belong to him, igniting another legal conflagration? As with so much else related to Mr. Trump, there is not one easy answer.

These are the possible reasons Haberman suggests:

1. Exciting documents: The documents were exciting to Trump, who has always been a “pack rat.”

2. ‘L’état, c’est moi’: He thought he was king and could do whatever he wanted.

3. Ripping up paper: Trump couldn’t have cared less about carefully handling documents. He did whatever he wanted and ignored norms and rules.
4. Personal information: Trump may have wanted to keep documents “because they contained details about people he knew,” like the ones that referred to French president Emmanuel Macron.

Missing from the list? The possibility that Trump wanted to sell documents to foreign leaders or use them as blackmail.

Allen Weisselberg to testify against Trump’s companies

Rolling Stone: Trump’s CFO Allen Weisselberg Will Implicate Trump Companies in Guilty Plea.

ALLEN WEISSELBERG, THE Trump Organization’s finance chief, will say in Manhattan court Thursday that he conspired with several of the ex-president’s companies when he pleads guilty to state tax crimes, two sources familiar with the case tell Rolling Stone.

As part of Weisselberg’s plea deal, he has agreed to testify against The Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation at trial, which is scheduled for October.

If called to the witness stand during trial, Weisselberg will provide testimony that is the same as what he admits to in court this week, the source said. One of the sources said that while Weisselberg is agreeing to testify, that does not mean he necessarily will; it depends on whether prosecutors decide to call him. The New York Times first reported that Weisselberg was expected to plead guilty, and CNN reported he would testify if called.

Weisselberg will not go beyond his testimony to help the criminal probe, one of the sources said. Still, his potential testimony could pose a severe threat to Trump’s companies. This possible testimony, which allegedly implicates Trump’s businesses, could be key to prosecutors’ securing a guilty verdict against these companies. When a company is found to have engaged in criminal conduct, significant fines can pile up quickly — potentially leading to its demise.

Weisselberg’s expected guilty plea stems from an indictment last year from the Manhattan district attorney’s office accusing him and several of Trump’s companies of tax crimes in a “sweeping and audacious illegal payment scheme.” These financial offenses related to the lavish perks that came with being CFO of Donald Trump’s real estate empire. (The Trump Organization has maintained its not guilty plea, so his namesake business, and several related entities, remain under indictment.)

The New York Times: Plea Deal Requires Weisselberg to Testify at Trump Organization Trial.

Allen H. Weisselberg, for decades one of Donald J. Trump’s most trusted executives, has reached a deal to plead guilty on Thursday and admit to participating in a long-running tax scheme at the former president’s family business — a serious blow to the company that could heighten its risk in an upcoming trial on related charges.

Mr. Weisselberg will have to admit to all 15 felonies that prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office accused him of, according to people with knowledge of the matter. And if he is called as a witness at the company’s trial in October, he will have to testify about his role in the scheme to avoid paying taxes on lavish corporate perks, the people said.

But Mr. Weisselberg will not implicate Mr. Trump or his family if he takes the stand in that trial, the people said, and he has refused to cooperate with prosecutors in their broader investigation into Mr. Trump, who has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Even so, his potential testimony will put the Trump Organization at a disadvantage and is likely to make Mr. Weisselberg a central witness at the October trial, where the company will face many of the same charges.

On cross-examination, the Trump Organization’s lawyers could accuse Mr. Weisselberg of pleading guilty only to spare himself a harsher sentence; under the terms of the plea deal, Mr. Weisselberg, who was facing up to 15 years in prison, will spend as little as 100 days behind bars. They might also argue that it would be unfair to hold the Trump Organization accountable for a crime that was not committed by the Trump family, who control the company.

Tuesday Reads: A Sense of Unreality

Good Afternoon!!

Unreality Visible, Sigfrido Duarte

I woke up today with a sense of unreality. It’s not quite clinical derealization, just a feeling that everything is out of kilter. I’ve had this feeling at times during the years we’ve been dealing as a country with Trump and then having a pandemic superimposed on top of the Trump insanity. Right now I think the feeling is triggered by the rapidly breaking news over the past week or so and the amazing possibility that Trump could actually be indicted along with the real possibility that his cult followers could explode into mass violence.

Yesterday we learned that New York prosecutors are close to a plea deal with Trump Organization CFO.  Alan Weisselberg. Experts are saying that a conviction of Weisselberg would basically be the end for Trump’s company. Weisselberg says he absolutely won’t testify against Trump, and I assumed that meant the deal would permit him to stay clammed up. I actually argued with Dakinikat about this yesterday, but she was right. Weisselberg could still be forced testify to a grand jury. And he wouldn’t be able to take the fifth, since he already admitted guilt.

Read the story at the New York Times: Trump Executive Nears Plea Deal With Manhattan Prosecutors.

We also learned that Eric Herschmann, who appeared prominently in the January 6 Committee testimony, has received a subpoena to testify to a Trump grand jury in Washington DC. Politico: Justice Department subpoenas Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann. Herschmann was at the White House on January 6, 2021, and he seems to know where all the bodies are buried.

A federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack has subpoenaed Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann for documents and testimony, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Herschmann represented Donald Trump in the former president’s first impeachment trial and later joined the White House as a senior adviser. He did not work in the White House counsel’s office, but did provide Trump with legal advice. Because of that responsibility, there will likely be litigation over the scope of the subpoena and over how executive and attorney-client privileges may limit Herschmann’s ability to comply….

During the tumultuous final weeks of Trump’s term, Herschmann clashed with other aides and advisers who pushed the defeated president to fight the election results. He was also present for many of the most consequential meetings in that period of time. Among them was a high-stakes meeting where most of the Trump Justice Department’s top brass threatened to resign rather than work under a colleague who wanted to advance spurious claims of widespread voter fraud.

Herschmann also sparred with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn when they urged Trump to have the military seize voting machines. The Jan. 6 select committee has aired numerous portions of his testimony to their panel, which is blunt and sometimes darkly amusing.

The Washington Post broke this startling news yesterday afternoon: Trump-allied lawyers pursued voting machine data in multiple states, records reveal.

A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported, according to emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post.

Surrealist Wardrobe, Marcel Jean, 1941

As they worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat, the lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states, according to the documents and interviews. The firm charged an upfront retainer fee for each job, which in one case was $26,000.

Attorney Sidney Powell sent the team to Michigan to copy a rural county’s election data and later helped arrange for it to do the same in the Detroit area, according to the records. A Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada. And the day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol the team was in southern Georgia, copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County.

The emails and other records were collected through a subpoena issued to the forensics firm, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, by plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit in federal court over the security of Georgia’s voting systems. The documents provide the first confirmation that data from Georgia’s election system was copied. Indications of a breach there were first raised by plaintiffs in the case in February, and state officials have said they are investigating.

“The breach is way beyond what we thought,” said David D. Cross, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, who include voting-security activists and Georgia voters. “The scope of it is mind-blowing.”

We also found out yesterday that the DOJ doesn’t want to reveal the information in the affidavit they used to convince a judge to approve a search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property because that could interfere with active criminal investigations: Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Justice department asks not to disclose affidavit behind Mar-a-Lago search.

The US Department of Justice has asked a judge not to release the affidavit that gave the FBI probable cause to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, worsening distrust among top Trump aides casting about for any insight into the intensifying criminal investigation surrounding the former president.

The affidavit should not be unsealed because that could reveal the scope of the investigation into Trump’s unauthorized retention of government secrets, the justice department argued, days after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant showed it referenced potential violations of three criminal statutes….

Jonni Cheatwood, Visual Atelier

“The affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course,” the justice department said, adding that it did not oppose unsealing both a cover page and a sealing order that wouldn’t harm the criminal investigation.

In arguing against unsealing the affidavit, the justice department also said that the disclosure could harm its ability to gain cooperation from witnesses not only in the Mar-a-Lago investigation but also additional ones that would appear to touch on the former president.

“Disclosure of the government’s affidavit at this stage would also likely chill future cooperation by witnesses whose assistance may be sought as this investigation progresses, as well as in other high-profile investigations,” prosecutors added.

Yikes!

On the threats of violence, this is from Rolling Stone’s Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng: Trump’s Site Is Being Weaponized Against the FBI — and Their Families.

Former President Donald Trump claims that he “will do whatever” he can to bring down “the temperature” following last week’s FBI’s raid of his Florida home and club, Mar-a-Lago. But even a glimpse of Truth Social — Trump’s social media company — shows that the MAGA website has been a haven for private, doxxed information not only about authorities involved in the federal raid, but also of their families.

A review of Truth Social postings by Rolling Stone shows Trump supporters have spent the past week doxxing both Judge Bruce Reinhart, the magistrate judge who approved the Mar-a-Lago warrant, and an FBI agent involved in preparing the request, as well as their families. The information includes their purported home addresses, phone numbers, places of worship, private offices, and similar information about the men’s families and junior employees….

Former Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler posted the name of an FBI agent involved in the preparation of the warrant on Truth Social, as well as the names of his wife and child, their social media accounts, and the school the child attends. Truth Social removed the post by Ziegeler but the verbatim text of the post, complete with contact information for the agent and his family, have spread across Trump’s social media in a series of posts with no apparent attempts at moderation by the company. 

When a federal court unsealed the search warrant, the court redacted the names of FBI agents involved. But the names became public when the pro-Trump outlet Breitbart obtained a leaked copy of the warrant and posted an article highlighting the agents’ names. In a move that added fuel to the MAGA doxxing push, Truth Social subsequently issued a push notification to its users that linked out to a third-party news article listing the agents’ names, according to CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan. 

Truth Social fans have similarly targeted Judge Reinhart. Immediately after news of the warrant broke, Truth Social filled with calls to doxx the judge. “I bet he didn’t think anybody would leak  his name, be nice if we had his address and phone number,” one user wrote. “BRUCE REINHART MAKE HOM [sic] FAMOUS WHATS HIS ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER?” bayed another.

Within a day, Truth Social users had already arrived at and posted what they believed to be personal information of both Reinhart and his wife, including posts with addresses and a personal phone number for him. “Office maybe or home,” one Truth Social user wrote next to a south Florida address, adding “GO GET HIM, FLORIDA.”  

The Menaced Assassin, Rene Magritte

From Tom Nichols at The Atlantic: The New Era of Political Violence Is Here. The danger is not organized civil war but individual Americans with deep resentments and delusions.

Civil war is among the many terms we now use too easily. The American Civil War was a bloodbath driven by the inevitable confrontation between the Union and the organized forces of sedition and slavery. But at least the Civil War, as I said Friday on Morning Joe during a panel on political violence in America, was about something. Compared with the bizarre ideas and half-baked wackiness that now infest American political life, the arguments between the North and the South look like a deep treatise on government.

The United States now faces a different kind of violence, from people who believe in nothing—or at least, in nothing real. We do not risk the creation of organized armies and militias in Virginia or Louisiana or Alabama marching on federal institutions. Instead, all of us face random threats and unpredictable dangers from people among us who spend too much time watching television and plunging down internet rabbit holes. These people, acting individually or in small groups, will be led not by rebel generals but by narcissistic wannabe heroes, and they will be egged on by cowards and instigators who will inflame them from the safety of a television or radio studio—or from behind the shield of elected office. Occasionally, they will congeal into a mob, as they did on January 6, 2021.

There is no single principle that unites these Americans in their violence against their fellow citizens. They will tell you that they are for “liberty” and “freedom,” but these are merely code words for personal grudges, racial and class resentments, and a generalized paranoia that dark forces are manipulating their lives. These are not people who are going to take up the flag of a state or of a deeper cause; they have already taken up the flag of a failed president, and their causes are a farrago of conspiracy theories and pulpy science-fiction plots.

More stories to check out:

Defense One: You Don’t Have to Be a Spy to Violate the Espionage Act.

Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark: Would the GOP Nominate An Indicted Trump? Of course they would.

So that’s yesterday’s news. Today most of the talk is about the primaries in Wyoming and Alaska, where two women who have opposed Trump are up for reelection and another woman who supports Trump is running for the House.

ABC News: In Alaska and Wyoming primaries, 2 Trump critics could meet different fates as Palin eyes a comeback.

Tuesday’s primaries in Alaska and Wyoming will spotlight two big Republican detractors of former President Donald Trump — and now two big targets of his revenge tour this election cycle.

The incumbents, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Liz Cheney, may also see two diverging results at the ballot box.

Wassily Kandinsky

Polls close in Alaska at 1 a.m. ET on Wednesday and in Wyoming at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday….

Cheney, Wyoming’s lone member of the House, has…cemented herself as the one of the most vocal anti-Trump members of Congress.

She earned the ire of Trump, his ardent supporters and many of her fellow Republican lawmakers after she crossed party lines — with nine other House Republicans — to impeach him after the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year.

She was censured one month later by the Wyoming Republican Party and, though she initially survived a leadership vote among the House GOP caucus, she was subsequently booted from her position as the No. 3 House Republican.

Legislatively, Cheney and Trump were not political foes: As noted by FiveThirtyEight, Cheney voted with him on the issues 92.9% of the time.

But she has broken with Trump on what she calls the greatest issue of all: His continued, baseless attacks on elections. As vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, she has taken a major role in a year-long investigation into Trump’s conduct before, during and after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Here’s something I never expected to see–Robert Reich defending Liz Cheney. The Guardian: In praise of Liz Cheney. May we have more politicians like her.

On Tuesday, Wyoming Republicans determine the fate of Representative Liz Cheney, the putative leader of the anti-Trump forces in the Republican party.

Six days after the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol – when no other Republican in the House or Senate was willing to rebuke Trump – Cheney charged on the House floor that “the president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.”

The next day, Cheney joined nine other House Republicans and 222 Democrats in voting to impeach Trump.

So far, three of these 10 principled Republican lawmakers have lost their primaries. Two have won them. The remaining four are retiring.

As vice-chair of the House of Representatives’ January 6 committee investigating the causes of that attack, Cheney has ceaselessly and tirelessly helped lay out the case against Trump during eight public hearings held in June and July, with more to come.

In response, Trump has done everything possible to end Cheney’s career. He made sure House Republicans revoked her status as the third highest-ranking leader of the Republican caucus, and that Wyoming Republicans censured her.

Trump also selected Cheney’s opponent in Tuesday’s Republican primary, Harriet Hageman – who has rallied behind Trump and amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Read more at The Guardian.

More election stories:

The New York Times: What to Watch in Tuesday’s Primaries.

The Washington Post: Election deniers march toward power in key 2024 battlegrounds.

The New York Times Editorial Board: Why Political Bravery Is in Such Short Supply in America.

NBC News: Liz Cheney is the last stop on Trump’s impeachment revenge tour. But he is the key to her future.

The New York Times: Senate G.O.P. Campaign Arm Slashes TV Ad Buys in Three States.

So that’s what’s happening as I see it. No wonder I feel overwhelmed. What are your thoughts? Is anyone else having a sense of unreality?