Monday Reads: I have Questions

This drone photo of the vent area in Butler, Pennsylvania, shows the building in the upper left-hand corner where the shooter’s body was found.

Dear Sky Dancers, this is not a good day for our Republic.

Judge Cannon used this moment to distract the press from what I believe might be a staged coup attempt by Donald on Donald.  He golfed right after the shooting and had no bandages or marks to be seen. I have reached this theory of the case after spending a day and a half asking questions and reviewing materials with JJ, BB, and a friend of my friend PB from the late Fire Dog Lake site. The press is characterizing people like us as BlueAnon conspiracy theorists.  Frankly, I just have questions about things. I’m up to being proved wrong.  I’m just someone who has watched decades of Law and Order and Criminal Minds, and I’m also smarter than your average bear.

The Cannon decision was based on the bone she was thrown by corrupt Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the shocking presidential immunity case.  Human Rights Lawyer Qasim Rashid had this to say today on @Threads.

Understand what Judge Cannon did. She saw the non-stop media coverage of the shooting, used that distraction to overturn decades of legal precedent without citing a single case in her ruling’s favor, & dismissed Trump’s classified documents case. This is how republics collapse.

To be sure, Cannon’s absurd ruling is so extreme that only one of the MAGA justices supported it in his immunity decision (Thomas). Her decision will likely be reversed because it has absolutely zero basis in precedent whatsoever.But Cannon’s indefensible opinion still serves its purpose of delaying Trump’s trial long enough to prevent any form of accountability before the November election. That was the move all along. And the DOJ delayed & delayed & that helped Trump get away with this. Smh.

Judge Aileen Cannon and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images/USDC for the Southern District of Florida)

This is from Eric Tucker at the AP. “Federal judge dismisses Trump classified documents case over concerns with prosecutor’s appointment.”

The federal judge presiding over the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in Florida dismissed the prosecution on Monday, siding with defense lawyers who said the special counsel who filed the charges was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, which can be appealed and may later be overturned by a higher court, brings at least, for now, a stunning and abrupt conclusion to a criminal case that at the time it was filed was widely regarded as the most perilous of all the legal threats the Republican former president confronted.

…

It’s the latest stroke of good fortune in the four criminal cases Trump has faced. Though he was convicted in May in his New York hush money trial, the sentencing there has been postponed following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents. That opinion will result in significant delays in a separate case brought by Smith charging Trump with plotting to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Another election subversion case filed by prosecutors in Atlanta has been delayed by revelations of a romantic relationship between the district attorney and a special prosecutor.

I’ve been doing a bit of digging and found this article from Salon on May 7. “Judge Cannon’s secret right-wing getaway: Why didn’t we know about this? Federal judge in Trump’s documents trial didn’t tell us about those right-wing conferences at a Montana resort.”   It’s reported by columnist Lucian Truscott IV.

Let me ask you a question: How many all-expenses-paid vacations at luxury hunting and fishing lodges have you enjoyed over the last few years? I’m not talking about a motel in the boonies of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or a drafty log cabin on a lake in Maine or Minnesota. We’re talking about a luxury resort on 1,200 acres alongside the Yellowstone River just outside Yellowstone National Park. We’re talking about a lodge featuring rooms with stone fireplaces that go for upwards of $1,000 a night in high season, meals that include “house-cured meats from local ranches, garden-fresh produce from nearby farms, and, of course plenty of Northwest craft beers and spirits,” as the resort’s website describes the offerings.

It’s called the Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, and it’s where George Mason University sends gaggles of federal judges for a week-long “colloquium” every year or so. Paid for by the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School, the “colloquium” held at the Sage Lodge in 2021, for example, featured lectures on such subjects as “Woke Law!” – and yes, the exclamation point is part of the lecture topic — by one Todd J. Zywicki, who is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School and a senior fellow at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives of the Cato Institute. Another juicy topic covered at the Sage Lodge in 2021 was “Unprofitable Education: Student Loans, Higher Education Costs, and the Regulatory State,” also featuring a lecture by Zywicki, a topic that rings what we might call a rather different bell after the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program last year.

The Antonin Scalia Law School, by the way, was established and largely funded by the efforts of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who helped put together $30 million from conservative donors, including Leo himself, to rename the law school after the late legendary right-wing justice, who it will be remembered died of a heart attack in 2016 at another luxury hunting lodge, that one in Texas, while on a trip paid for by wealthy conservative “friends of the court,” I guess we could call them. The other major donor to the Scalia Law School was the Charles Koch Foundation, which threw in a handy $10 million.

Why are we talking about luxury hunting lodges and right-wing “colloquiums” for judges? Because one of our favorite federal judges, Aileen Cannon of Florida, currently presiding over the case against Donald Trump over the secret documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago, was a guest at that same 2021 “colloquium” at the Sage Lodge, and the one held in 2022 as well. The thing is, Cannon failed to file the form known as a Privately Funded Seminar Disclosure Report, which lists whoever paid for the judge to attend the seminar, who the speakers were and what topics were discussed. The form is supposed to be posted on the website of every federal court within 30 days of the time a judge attending such an all-expenses-paid seminar. Cannon, however, somehow forgot to do so, so anyone who might be interested in learning who was paying for Cannon’s vacations and the nature of her judicial education would have been  out of luck.

So why do we suppose Judge Cannon was so shy about who’s paying for her luxury trips and what she might have learned there? Oh, I don’t know … might it be because she didn’t want anyone to know about her links to the Leonard Leo wing of legal theory? Could it have been that she didn’t want it known that she had taken money from an organization that was in large part funded by billionaires friendly to the man whose case she was presiding over?

All these corrupt Republican Judges seem to lead right back to Leonard Leo, don’t they?  Something is very rotten here. Marcie of Empty Wheel reads the 93 pages, so we don’t need to.

Procedurally, this may actually not help Trump in the way he’d like (because DOJ has the option of appealing it or having a US Attorney charge Trump).

But it’s also hilarious, since Aileen Cannon has been treating herself like an Appellate Judge that she hasn’t been confirmed to be.

Update: One thing Cannon appears upset about is Merrick Garland’s invocation of Section 533, which appoints FBI-like figures.

Special Counsel Smith argues that Section 533(1) confers on the Attorney General the authority to appoint special counsels, specifically, constitutional officers wielding the “full power and independent authority . . . of any United States Attorney.” 28 C.F.R. § 600.6. After careful review, the Court is convinced that it does not. Congress “does not . . . hide elephants in mouseholes.” Whitman v. Am. Trucking Associations, 531 U.S. 457, 468 (2001). Special Counsel  Smith’s interpretation would shoehorn appointment authority for United States Attorney-equivalents into a statute that permits the hiring of FBI law enforcement personnel. Such a reading is unsupported by Section 533’s plain language and statutory context; inconsistent with Congress’s usual legislative practice; and threatens to undermine the “basic separation-of-powers principles” that “give life and content” to the Appointments Clause. Morrison, 487 U.S. at 715 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The Court explains below.

33 Order No. 5730-2023 (appointing David C. Weiss); Order No. 5588-2023 (appointing Robert K. Hur).

That is her only mention of Robert Hur, whose appointment would be unconstitutional under her theory as well. (I’m still trying to figure out whether Cannon will help Hunter Biden go free, too.)

Update: Okay, I’ve read the thing.

It’s hilarious.

It’s hilarious, because it doesn’t create any delay that Cannon was not pursuing anyway. Indeed, Jack Smith could immediately appeal this and try to get her tossed, so it may hasten things (unless Trump wins!).

It’s hilarious because it is unbelievably hubristic. The only credible future for Judge Cannon now is Trump’s first SCOTUS appointment in a second term.

It’s hilarious because the way she did this, if it were upheld (not an impossibility given how nutty SCOTUS has gotten), it would be even more useful for Hunter Biden than Donald Trump (especially if Trump didn’t win reelection), because the statutes of limitation on Hunter’s alleged crimes have started to expire.

So, back to Donald and his surprising recovery from a shooting that killed one and critically injured two. So my Nancy Drew senses started tingling when I saw how composed Donald was after the shooting; he was more worried about getting his shoes than leaving the scene. Posing for pictures all along the way.  PB first contacted me with this bit.

Talked to a friend who’s a Psych and body language expert. 100% staged. Look at their unified messaging.

All I could remember where all the times Trump on the last two campaign trails and seemed afraid of everything. This is from Chris Cizzilla and CNN from April 28, 2022.  “Donald Trump lived in fear of being hit by, um, ‘dangerous’ fruit.”

Donald Trump feared being killed by thrown fruit.

Yes, you read that right.

In a recently released transcript of a deposition as part of a lawsuit filed by a group of protesters who alleged they were assaulted by Trump’s security guards at a 2015 campaign rally, the subject of fruit – and fruit being flung, in particular – came up.

Here’s the full – and fully epic – back-and-forth between Trump and Benjamin Dictor, an attorney representing the protestors.

Dictor: Okay. And you said that, ‘If you see someone getting ready to throw a tomato, just knock the crap out of them would you.’ That was your statement?

Trump: Oh, yeah. It was very dangerous.

Dictor: What was very dangerous?

Trump: We were threatened.

Dictor: With what?

Trump: They were going to throw fruit. We were threatened. We had a threat.

Dictor: How did you become aware that there was a threat that people were going to throw fruit?

Trump: We were told. I thought Secret Service was involved in that, actually. And you get hit with fruit, it’s – no – it’s very violent stuff. We were on alert for that.

Trump attorney Jeffrey Goldman: A tomato is a fruit after all, I guess. … It has seeds.

Just enough time for a NAZI salute also, which is being used by the Press right now. They’re using the fist bumps. The campaign is now using for fundraising and political materials.

And where did Donald get the idea to lead an assassination attempt on himself?  This is from Newsweek, May 3, 2023.  “Russia Staged Putin ‘Assassination’ to Justify Mass Mobilization: ISW” I know now about self-coups and staged assassination attempts as political tools of fascists. What a world!  Funny how Donald has disappeared from the campaign trail for a few weeks but suddenly was paling around with Viktor Orban last week, too.

The alleged attempt to “assassinate” Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely staged by the Kremlin to justify a future effort to mobilize troops for the war in Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The Russian government on Wednesday issued a statement alleging that two Ukrainian drones had been destroyed near Putin’s official residence in Moscow. The Kremlin said that the drones were attempting to carry out “a planned terrorist attack” by assassinating Putin just before “Victory Day” celebrations on May 9. Ukraine has denied any involvement.

While video of the drones dramatically exploding over Kremlin grounds appeared online soon after the purported attack occurred, the incident immediately raised eyebrows, with a number of experts and commentators suggesting that it may have been a staged “propaganda” event intended to drum up Russian support for the war.

ISW, the U.S.-based think tank, said in a report published on Wednesday night that the Russian government “likely staged” the purported assassination attempt “to bring the war home to a Russian domestic audience and set conditions for a wider societal mobilization.”

And then there’s good old Alex Jones, the father of seeing everything as staged with crisis actors.  Listen to this. It’s from Patriot Takes.  This is a conversation with Ivan Raiklin, who calls himself Trump’s Secretary of Retribution.  Check him out on TNR: “Trump Ally Exposed for Horrific Hit List of Political Enemies. Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed “secretary of retribution” is even more bloodthirsty than the former president.” He’s an absolute skinhead. Both BB and I have posted on him before. Please follow the link to Patriot Takes and watch him talk. It’s bone-chilling.  BB found this one.

5 months ago, Alex Jones and InfoWars guest Ivan Raiklin discussed how assassinating Trump would be beneficial, according to them, because it would lead to retaliatory “in kind” assassinations of a “deep state” list which includes President Joe Biden.

Ivan Raiklin: “If they [assassinate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much better for us and so much worse them.”

Alex Jones: “I was about as to say, If they kill him, that’s best case scenario from a sick level. From a sick level medium, ‘Oh, please kill him.’ I mean, it’s so good after that.”

Raiklin: “Oh, it’s going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I guaran—, I access, with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence, that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them.”

There’s no way to blame Biden for the shooter, given his personal history as a gun-toting right-wing Republican, either. “FBI probing motives, the background of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Western Pa. gunman behind Donald Trump assassination attempt. Former classmates described Crooks as politically conservative and a “loner.” Authorities believe the AR-15-style rifle he used belonged to his father.” This is from the Philadelphia Inquirer,

Authorities released few updates Sunday on the progress of their investigation into Trump’s would-be assassin, but a portrait of Crooks — a 2022 graduate of Bethel Park High School who worked as a dietary aide at a local nursing and rehabilitation center — began to emerge.

He had no criminal history, almost no presence on social media, and lived in a middle-class suburb about an hour away from the site of the shooting.

His political leanings were not immediately apparent. Though he was registered as a Republican, according to state voter rolls — and this year’s election would have been the first in which he was eligible to cast a ballot for president — campaign finance reports show a man with the same name gave $15 to a progressive political action committee in January 2021, on the day Biden was sworn into office.***

Crooks’ father, Matthew, reached by CNN late Saturday, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell [was] going on” and declined to comment further until he had spoken with authorities. Attempts to reach other family members were unsuccessful Sunday.

Kevin Rojek, head of the FBI’s field office in Pittsburgh, told reporters Sunday that agents recovered bomb-making material from inside Crooks’ car and his residence. The rifle he used in the attack, which was believed to have been purchased at least six months earlier by his father, as well as Crooks’ cell phone and other evidence had been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., “for processing and exploitation,” Rojek said.

Meanwhile, several former classmates offered conflicting characterizations of Crooks. Some described him as a loner who had been bullied during his high school years. Jason Kohler, who graduated alongside Crooks, told reporters that students had harassed him “almost every day” and that he often wore “hunting” outfits to class.

“He was just an outcast,” Kohler said.

*** Author note: There’s some evidence this was not the shooter but a 69-year-old man with the same name from Pittsburg.

Here are some additional things I have questions about.  Most of these are based on photography at the scene.  For example, Kim Wexler’s Ponytail shows this TikTok of a New Angle of Trump at Rally shooting.  It basically shows either Donald’s bodyguards or the Secret Service moving photographers close to the stairs. Perhaps for a better shot of the exit act? The TikTok comes from

Why was there such lackluster Security at the Rally?

I had a lot of weird things from early on that I thought were just not right. One was the interview by an MSNBC reporter of a man who was supposed to be standing next to Donald at the podium from the onset. He told the reporter something to the effect that he got up there, introduced himself, and was then told by Donald to go ahead and come up to the podium, only to be quickly told, wait, let’s do that later, and shuffled him off to sit somewhere else.  I cannot find that clip by my neighbor across the street, who I had been with earlier for cocktails, who told me that she had seen it, too.

I also heard Frank Figluzzi discuss the fact that it was odd that the roof wasn’t in the area where the check-for-weapons zone was.   He also said that on the other side was where the protestors were allowed to gather and even march.  My thought was, wow!  Sounds like a setup to blame a protestor and let the guy onto the roof. The fact that he was a right-wing Republican gun nut just really puts that on display as planning.

One of the most questionable things is that photos of Trump show him looking in the direction of the building where the shooter was.  This is precisely when he turned his head to point to his whiteboard.   At that point, local police went to the roof, saw him, and went back down the stairs. There was also a hesitation by the Secret Service Sniper to shoot him. Acyn, the Senior Digital Editor for MeidasTouch.com, captured this on CSPN.  He’s looking directly at the shooter and then angling towards the White Board.  The shooter was only about 165ish feet away from Donald.  That’s definitely a distance that a good sniper could handle.

So, several things I noticed from this bit.  First, when you speak to a large audience, you look straight ahead. You do not fixate on a spot to your right. Nowadays, politicians use teleprompters, but the ones that are guarded by the Secret Service have bulletproof shields.  Do you see one?

I had another conversation with a neighbor this morning who has friends who have been military snipers, and their hypothesis on this I would put under the conspiracy theory.  They’re saying they think the Republican Party mainstream was working with the Secret Service to take him out. That’s pure speculation. It’s obvious, though, that there’s something wrong with the security there.

This is from NPR. “The Secret Service is investigating how the man who shot Trump got as close as he did.”   House leaders have already ordered a full investigation and demanded the head of the Secret Service testify before them while they have already had a briefing.  It is already a bit of the usual zoo since Jim Comer is likely to lead the investigation.

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a gunman armed with an AR-style rifle was able to get close enough to shoot and injure former President Donald Trump at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, a monumental failure of one the agency’s core duties.

The gunman, who was killed by Secret Service personnel, fired multiple shots at the stage from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue,” the agency said.

An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows the body of a man wearing gray camouflage lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, where Trump’s rally was held.

The roof was less than 150 meters (yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M16 assault rifle in basic training. The AR-15, like the shooter at the Trump rally had, is the semi-automatic civilian version of the military M16.

Some of the weirdest Republican attacks have been on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who is a 27-year-old veteran of the force. She is being called a DEI hire by really nasty Republican pols. She is the second woman to have the office.  Of course, these black faces and the woman who heads the agency are suspected of being in a “deep state.” I won’t go deeper into any of these cringeworthy moments.

On Monday, Cheatle said in a statement: “Since the shooting, I have been in constant contact with Secret Service personnel in Pennsylvania who worked to maintain the integrity of the crime scene until the FBI assumed its role as the lead investigating agency into the assassination attempt.”

She added that the Secret Service is working with other law enforcement agencies to “understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again. … We will also work with the appropriate Congressional committees on any oversight action.”

Neither Cheatle or the Secret Service’s communications office have weighed in on criticism of women in the agency more broadly.

I have a few more weird angles from various drones and photogs that make me even more suspicious, but according to White Christian Nationalists, it’s all just a miracle.  I’m sticking with a staged attempt ala Putin because that seems more in line with Trump’s lack of anything decent.

So, I’m open to comments and criticism, but this is my case so far.  I’m likely not going to leave this rabbit hole for a while.  Keep an eye on the things Republicans don’t want you to know.  And please, don’t take in any of the stupidity of the Republican Convention.  This one is going to be insane.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Preview of the Republican Convention

More Questions from Friends

I have an update from the FBI.

Update on the FBI Investigation of the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump
Update: July 15, 2024, 3:05 p.m. EDT:

The FBI continues to investigate the shooting incident at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and as potential domestic terrorism. The investigation is still in the early stages, and the FBI is providing the following updates:

• FBI technical specialists successfully gained access to Thomas Matthew Crooks’ phone, and they continue to analyze his electronic devices.

• The search of the subject’s residence and vehicle are complete.

• The FBI has conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement personnel, event attendees, and other witnesses. That work continues.

• The FBI has received hundreds of digital media tips which include photos and videos taken at the scene, and we continue to review incoming tips. We encourage anyone with information that may assist with the ongoing investigation to continue to submit it online at tips.fbi.gov or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.

• While the investigative work continues, FBI victim services personnel have offered assistance to the victims of Saturday’s incident.