Finally Friday Justice Edition: New York Grand Jury Indicts Trump!
Posted: March 31, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: 30 count Felony Indictments, Defendant Donald John Trump 23 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Have you stopped Dancing yet?
We’re headed to that sweet spot of a democratic republic where no one is above the law. This is the headline from the Washington Post “Trump indicted by N.Y. grand jury, first ex-president charged with crime. Trump is expected to turn himself in and appear in court Tuesday. Specific charges have not been made public.” May Justice be served cold, quickly, and abundantly.
A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict former president Donald Trump, making him the first person in U.S. history to serve as commander-in-chief and then be charged with a crime, and setting the stage for a 2024 presidential contest unlike any other.
The indictment was sealed, which means the specific charge or charges are not publicly known. But the grand jury had been hearing evidence about money paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, allegedly to keep her from saying she’d had a sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. Trump is expected to turn himself in and appear in court on Tuesday at 2:15 p.m., said a person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that have not been publicly announced.
Trump, who is campaigning to return to the White House in 2024 and leading in most polls of Republican voters, is also the focus of criminal probes in Georgia and Washington, D.C., related to his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and his handling of classified material at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club.
Those cases have raised serious questions about national security and the basic functions of democracy. The New York case, in contrast, stems from a hush-money plan and Trump’s alleged conduct before he became president. The indictment follows weeks of speculation about whether and when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg might take such a momentous step toward a courthouse showdown with one of the most combative politicians in modern American history.
Being charged with — or found guilty of — a crime does not disqualify Trump from running for office. Still,the indictment suggests a remarkable possibility: a soon-to-be-77-year-old running for president while simultaneously seeking to beat a conviction. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and says he did not have an affair with Daniels.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney said Thursday evening that the office had contacted Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender for arraignment “on an indictment, which remains under seal.”
I’m interested in finding out if the testimony of The National Enquirer‘s David Pecker will bump this up to a conspiracy with its complicity in catching and killing other stories of infidelity. Pecker was not only asked by Trump to help deal with Stormy Daniels but was involved with shielding Trump from the publicity about his affair with model Karen McDougal. I’m not a lawyer, but from all the ones I’ve heard on TV, that would possibly lead to felony conspiracy and unreported campaign contributions.
CNN has more information on the indictment itself. This should be interesting. “Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury on more than 30 counts related to business fraud .” This lede has 4 reporters attributed to the information; , , and
Donald Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, according to two sources familiar with the case – the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.Trump is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
The indictment has been filed under seal and will be announced in the coming days. The charges are not publicly known at this time.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has been investigating the former president in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election. Grand jury proceedings are secret, but a source familiar with the case told CNN that a witness gave about 30 minutes of testimony before it voted to indict Trump.
The decision is sure to send shockwaves across the country, pushing the American political system – which has never seen one of its ex-leaders confronted with criminal charges, let alone while running again for president – into uncharted waters.
CNN also reported that Trump was shocked and caught off guard. He lit up Truth Anti-Social with all kinds of right-wing tripe. He supposedly will turn himself in. The airwaves are now filled with Republicans trying to out-racist one another.
This opinion from MSNBC is written by By
After a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict former President Donald Trump on Thursday, Republicans came out in droves to describe the charge (or charges) as unwarranted and politically motivated by a corrupt prosecutor. But a number of them did it by blowing racist dog whistles that call attention to the fact that the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is Black. The consistency of that response is yet another reminder of how the MAGA right will never forgo an opportunity to use racist innuendo to rile up its base and amplify its supporters’ persecution complex.
Shortly after news of the indictment emerged, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, tweeted: “A week ago a video circulated of a lunatic harassing a family on a New York subway. He hurled racial slurs (the family was white) and threatened them. Alvin Bragg thinks that man should walk free and Donald Trump should go to jail for a fake misdemeanor. It’s despicable.”
It’s unclear what video Vance is referring to or whether he’s even talking about somebody who was arrested — and presumably many of Vance’s hundreds of thousands of followers won’t know, either — but the intended message is clear: This Black prosecutor is letting people of color get away with attacking white people — and trying to take down our most important avatar, Donald Trump.
Vance is only the latest Republican to try to frame New York’s criminal justice system as easy on criminals (who are always presumed to be people of color in this narrative) and eager to take down someone it perceives as a political opponent. Never mind that New York doesn’t have a high crime rate by national standards, has long had a draconian criminal justice system and is being run by a tough-on-crime former cop. And never mind that Vance has no way of knowing what legal evidence is being marshaled to charge Trump with a “fake” crime. The facts are beside the point. The story he wants to tell is that white civilization is under attack and that a Black man is helping lead the movement.
Some protestors are aping these memes in Florida. I think the idea of it being a fake “misdemeanor” will go away when the indictment details are announced. Ron De Santis is milking the political possibilities like a machine.
Pence is also worming his way around MAGA voters. He’s also calling it a campaign finance misdemeanor. This is from the New York Times. “Republicans Erupt in Outrage and Rush to Defend the Defendant.”
Republican leaders in Congress lamented the moment as a sad day in the annals of United States history. Conservative news outlets issued a call to action for the party’s base. One prominent supporter of Donald J. Trump suggested that the former president’s mug shot should double as a 2024 campaign poster.
Even Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, widely viewed as Mr. Trump’s leading potential presidential primary rival, rushed to condemn the prosecutor who brought the Manhattan case that led to the historic indictment of the former president on Thursday. While not naming Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis said Florida would not play a role in extraditing him.
“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head,” Mr. DeSantis said on Twitter.
Up and down the Republican Party, anger and accusations of injustice flowed from both backers and critics of the former president, even before the charges had been revealed. Many said Mr. Trump could benefit from a wave of sympathy from across the party, with a base of supporters likely to be energized by a belief that the justice system has been weaponized against him.
“The unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage,” former Vice President Mike Pence told CNN.
In some quarters, there was a darker reaction. On Fox News, the host Tucker Carlson said the ruling showed it was “probably not the best time to give up your AR-15s.”
“The rule of law appears to be suspended tonight — not just for Trump, but for anyone who would consider voting for him,” Mr. Carlson said. One of his guests, the conservative media figure Glenn Beck, predicted that the indictment would cause chaos in the years ahead.
Before Trump gets his day in court to prove his innocence, he will be sent to court to face charges. This is from William K Rashbaum and the New York Times. “This is what will happen when Trump is arrested in the coming days. Donald J. Trump will likely face standard processing when he is taken into custody, but the unprecedented arrest of a former commander-in-chief will be anything but routine.”
He will be fingerprinted. He will be photographed. He may even be handcuffed.
If he surrenders Tuesday, Donald J. Trump is expected to walk through the routine steps of felony arrest processing in New York now that a grand jury has indicted him in connection with his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star. But the unprecedented arrest of a former commander in chief will be anything but routine.
Accommodations may be made for Mr. Trump. While it is standard for defendants arrested on felony charges to be handcuffed, it is unclear whether an exception will be made for a former president. Most defendants are cuffed behind their backs, but some white-collar defendants deemed to pose less danger have their hands secured in front of them.
Mr. Trump will almost certainly be accompanied at every step — from the moment he is taken into custody until his appearance before a judge in Lower Manhattan’s imposing Criminal Courts Building — by armed agents of the U.S. Secret Service. They are required by law to protect him at all times.
Security in the courthouse is provided by state court officers, with whom the Secret Service has worked in the past. But the chief spokesman for the federal agency, Anthony J. Guglielmi, said he could not comment on measures that would be put in place for Mr. Trump.
I don’t know about you, but I cannot wait to see that perp walk. I hope they cuff him.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
I’m very well acquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I’m proud to be a glutton, and I don’t have time for sloth
I’m greedy, and I’m angry, and I don’t care who I cross
I’m Mr. Bad Example, intruder in the dirt
I like to have a good time, and I don’t care who gets hurt
I’m Mr. Bad Example, take a look at me
I’ll live to be a hundred, and go down in infamy
Mostly Monday Reads: Cyberattack down in the Reeds
Posted: March 27, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: cyberattacks, hacks, Louisiana, malware, phishing, ransomware, universities and schools 24 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Today’s topic comes from the Gret state of Lousyana, where many things are backward, including our Senators and most of our Congressional Representatives. There’s so much news that sometimes something important can sneak up and slap you and ya momma. I had no idea that Higher Education institutions worldwide were increasingly targeted for ransomware and malware attacks. This is especially true since many universities had to go exclusively online during the Covid-19 shutdowns. Now you know too!
Our first attack in this state was last November at a Historically Black College in New Orleans. Xavier is one of the premier universities in the state. The second big hit came at the beginning of March at Southeastern Louisiana University, where I taught for a few years while finishing my doctorate. Friday, the University of New Orleans got hit. The cybersecurity folks shut down everything. I lost access to my students while posting some graded items and assignments. My first thought was, why would anyone target universities in a poor state like Louisiana? Evidently, that was on the minds of a few reporters at the Times-Picayune as I talked to one of their reporters yesterday who had found my Facebook post and my frantic efforts to figure out how to return to pre-internet reality. Why HBC Southern near Shreveport and not the one here in New Orleans or over in Baton Rouge? Would we lose three weeks of everything like SELU? Michael Richmond is the director of technology services for the accounting and technology firm Postlethwaite & Netterville.
Richmond said there isn’t enough information publicly available to tell exactly what kind of attack Southeastern would be facing — whether that be someone accidentally falling for a phishing scam and causing a ransomware attack or some sort of intentional, targeted attack intended to gather specific information.
When it comes to ransomware and phishing scams, Richmond said, the attack is about gathering information valuable to the victim and holding it ransom until they’re paid off, or selling that information off. In the case of a higher education institution, that information could be personal or financial student data.
The reason I’m bringing this up is that I found out that it really is a widespread problem. There are also significant implications for every state and country if this continues. It may already be in your country or state, and only the techiest are on top of the problem.
Higher education has suffered from rising cyber attacks in recent years — the most common type being ransomware attacks, according to Forbes. These attacks cost universities an average of $112,000 in ransom payments, though experts say ransom demands can go into the millions.
Xavier University in New Orleans was hit by a cyber attack last November. The group responsible said it obtained personal data belonging to students and faculty, which it then leaked on the dark web. An email from the university sent to students and faculty after the incident said they’d notify those who might have had their data stolen.
“It can happen to anybody,” Richmond said. “It’s one of the things we see across higher ed, because the collaborative nature [of universities] and the services they provide is counterproductive from a security standpoint. It’s very difficult to walk that fine line between the collaborative nature and cybersecurity.”
A decrepit old abandoned house located in a swamp in Louisiana.
If there is one entity with documentation on everything there is to know about me, it is UNO. I imagine that’s the same for many faculty, staff, and students. But UNO is also a research university. Some of their work includes quite sensitive information, including one program that focuses on shipbuilding for the US Navy and another that partners with ATT to make progress in three-dimensional simulations.
I went down the rabbit hole, and you’re coming with me if you’d like. Cyberattacks on Universities all over the world are on the rise. The first source of documented information I found came from the UK, home to some of the most prestigious and oldest universities. “Ransomware attacks are hitting universities hard, and they are feeling the pressure. Cyber criminals are targeting universities with ransomware attacks that are costing millions of pounds, while IT departments are feeling overstretched.”
Schools and universities are facing an unprecedented level of ransomware attacks as incidents continue to severely impact the education sector.
The warning comes from Jisc, a not-for-profit organisation that provides network and IT services to higher education and research institutions. Jisc’s ‘Cyber Impact 2022’ report suggests there’s an increased threat of ransomware attacks against education.
According to the report, dozens of UK universities, colleges and schools have been hit with ransomware attacks since 2020, causing disruptions for staff and students, and costing institutions substantial amounts of money. In some incidents, Jisc says impact costs have exceeded £2 million.
And the attacks keep coming, as the report details how two universities and a further education and skills (FES) provider were hit by separate ransomware attacks during March 2022.
The institutions aren’t specified, but the report says each incident caused a significant impact as systems were taken down to prevent further spread of malware, and to safely recover and restore data. In one case, a third party was called in to help the organisation fully recover from the incident.
According to Jisc, higher education views ransomware and malware as the top cybersecurity threat, followed by phishing and social engineering.
The report suggests that one of the reasons universities have become such a common target for ransomware attacks is because of the pandemic-induced sudden shift to remote working for staff and students that inadvertently left institutions open to attack.
For example, the switch to remote education led to a big rise in the use of remote desktop protocol, which can provide ransomware attackers with a route into networks.
This article elucidates the top 5 sources of cyberattacks on Schools and Universities. The section on Ransomware gave me the answer to one of my questions.
Ransomware is another major challenge facing colleges and universities today. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that locates valuable data on a target system and holds it for a ransom sum. Colleges and universities hold a large amount of valuable student data, and they also conduct valuable high-level research, which is why so many hackers use ransomware to target them.
A ransomware attack can have devastating consequences for any university. Ransom sums for these attacks can be extremely high and are often financially devastating. Additionally, these attacks compromise valuable data and can even shut down your systems for an extended period of time, making it very difficult to conduct normal operations. On top of that, ransomware can negatively affect a university’s reputation for years to come.
The rougarou, the Cajun cryptid said to haunt Louisiana’s wetlands, is the mascot of a conservation effort for its traditional habitat.
So, a small state with many tight-fisted legislators that would instead do constant tax cuts than infrastructure improvement and protection is just ripe for out-of-date system protections. In our case, the state cybersecurity folks helped UNO to reopen some systems this morning. I have contact with my students now and access to my Moodle class support system and the Zoom classroom structure, which I may have to use and keep everyone at home. I’m not entirely sure if we have physical access to the internet in classrooms.
I was in contact with friend and colleague Dayne Sherman, a library professor and man of many talents like author and saddle restoration, at the start of the SELU cyberattack. I later discovered that the same type of breach impacted Michigan-based Lansing Community College and Tennessee State. He’s been quite vocal about how vulnerable the University was to this type of action and how the administration and the Louisiana University System were unprepared. Today, he announced that he’s running for SELU President. You may listen to him and, coincidentally, Phillip Bump of WAPO on political things at Talk Louisiana. He’s working to take on the political cronyism rampant at many universities in the state.
So, here’s the reporter I spoke with, Joni Hess, on “Frustration mounts, questions raised over possible cyber-security breach at five Louisiana schools”
Kathryn Huff, UNO’s finance instructor, said all her students have her personal phone number and the first thing she’ll do Monday morning is collect alternative email addresses to use while the email network is down.
Students will have to submit paper copies of their work for now, rather than uploading it to Moodle, the popular education platform used to access recorded lectures and monitor grades.
In addition to potential exposure of personal records, Huff hopes she and others quickly regain access to their research and papers loaded into the system over the years.
Nunez Community College spokesperson, Jason Browne, said classes will meet remotely Monday, but the school anticipates a return to normal operations by Tuesday.
Chemin-a-Haut State Park Cypress Cathedral Tree
I am part of this story. I can only imagine the frustration of students. There have been attempts to grab money from student debit accounts with a university or student loans using the old round-up methods devised by in-house hackers in financial institutions back in my banker days. Now, these attacks can come from anywhere.
UNO relayed the news after 6 p.m. Friday evening and said it would provide updates via social media and Privateer alerts, but the school community is raising questions about possible compromises to personal and financial information.
“I wish they’d be more direct,” said Shelby Oliver, a graduate student in the sociology department. Oliver said that although not being able to communicate with all of her instructors is worrisome, she’s mostly concerned about what type of information has been threatened to trigger the response.
State police said “more information may be forthcoming when all forensic investigative efforts are complete.”
Anyway, these kinds of things bring out Miss Marple in me. Perhaps your alma mater has been breached or will be?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: The Republican Insane Asylum and it’s a democratic republic IF we can keep it
Posted: March 24, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: Republicans Ongoing Threat to Democracy 21 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
It’s hard to read and watch the news these days without getting PTSD from the shock and awe of the meltdown of Orange Caligula and watching the incredible number of folks with Personality Disorders taking front and center in MAGGot land. It’s on the national and local headlines all over the country. The attacks on schools and libraries continue. It appears the only strategy they have to try to stop the next few generations from rejecting all that hate and stupidity. Meanwhile, the reality of gun violence, insufficient obstetric care in most of the country, and climate change reality gets shuffled to the back page. Yesterday’s post was jarring on many levels for me. Nobody can ever really prepare you for the performance of right-wing Republicans.
Marjorie Taylor Greene says outrageous and invalid things under our legal system. Yesterday, The Guardian reported that MTG announced, “Alvin Bragg must be arrested ahead of expected indictment of ‘innocent former president’ Trump.” How off-the-wall is that? And, like all Republican projections, this is a call for a Banana Republic-style political move. Lock up all your political enemies!
MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is calling for the arrest of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg amid speculation that Donald Trump will be indicted on charges relating to hush-money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Ms Greene called for the DA to be taken into custody.
“Now it’s time to arrest Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for prosecutorial misconduct after hiding hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence!” she wrote. “Bragg is on the verge of indicting an innocent former President and top Presidential candidate against the opposing ruling party.”
She then veered into a conspiracy theory, claiming the DA was “breaking the law” and “trying to incite civil unrest with his Soros funded political war.”
“Hold him accountable!” she wrote.
How do they even come up with this shit?
Yesterday’s post contained some of the most outrageous Truth Social Farts I’d seen by Trump. He called out a lynching party on the highly qualified, educated, and respected Black D.A. of Manhattan. It’s not any better today. This is from the New York Times. “Trump, Escalating Attacks, Raises Specter of Violence if He Is Charged. In an overnight post, the former president stepped up his attacks on the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and warned of “potential death and destruction” if he is indicted.”
Will law enforcement let him incite an insurrection and lynch mob again? When does calling out for this stuff become enough to lock him up?
In an overnight social media post, former President Donald J. Trump predicted that “potential death and destruction” may result if, as expected, he is charged by the Manhattan district attorney in connection with hush-money payments to a porn star made during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The comments from Mr. Trump, made between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on his social media site, Truth Social, were a stark escalation in his rhetorical attacks on the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, ahead of a likely indictment on charges that Mr. Trump said would be unfounded.
“What kind of person,” Mr. Trump wrote of Mr. Bragg, “can charge another person, in this case a former president of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting president in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a crime, when it is known by all that NO crime has been committed, & also that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our country?”
“Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely hates the USA!” the former president wrote.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an email to his staff last week, Mr. Bragg wrote that the office “will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate.”
Glenn Thrush and Alan Goldman write this analysis in the New York Times. “Trump Inquiries Present a Stress Test for Justice in a Polarized Nation. Attorney General Merrick Garland and other prosecutors have sought to demonstrate that politics should not infect the justice system. Those efforts face a steep challenge as the Trump investigations move ahead.”
Even in the absence so far of any charges against Mr. Trump, Trump, political polarization runs so deep, and mistrust of federal law enforcement is so ingrained on the right, that efforts by Mr. Garland and others to offer assurances that justice is being dispensed without regard to politics are often drowned out by powerful counterforces. Among the strongest of those forces are allies of Mr. Trump who have sought to undercut the legitimacy of the Justice Department in general and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in particular.
The Justice Department “has been a remarkable backstop,” said Lindsay M. Chervinsky, a presidential historian and senior fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “But the department is being given a role that it was never really designed to have — defending American democracy.”
In some ways, the confluence of Trump-focused inquiries is putting the criminal justice system through a public stress test unlike any in American history.
This is from emptywheel. “HAPPY CRIME-FRAUD EXCEPTION DAY, FOR THOSE WHO CELEBRATE.” You know who the criminal is when two judges find this rarely used, and usually in mob cases, crime-fraud exception for attorneys.
For the US political world, though, today marks crime-fraud exception day, the day that at least one of Trump’s attorneys will be obliged to testify about how Trump lied to his lawyers to try to get away with hoarding stolen classified documents.
Because Evan Corcoran (and possibly Georgia attorney Jennifer Little) will testify today, I thought it a good day to update the list of attorneys who were or have been witnesses or who may be subjects in one or more investigations into Trump.
Since the Stormy Daniels payment may lead to Trump’s first indictment, Michael Cohen gets pride of place at number one on this list, a reminder that for seven years, Trump lawyers have been exposing themselves to legal jeopardy to help him cover things up.
The following lawyers have all — at a minimum — appeared in subpoenas pertinent to one or another of the investigations into Donald Trump, and a surprising number have testified before grand juries, including at least three with (Executive Privilege) waivers. To be clear: Many have no legal exposure themselves, but are instead simply witnesses to the efforts made to keep Trump in line before they were replaced with lawyers who were willing to let Trump do whatever he wanted, legal or no. But some of these lawyers have had legal process served against them, and so may themselves be subjects of one or multiple investigations.
- Michael Cohen (hush payment): convicted felon whose phones were seized April 9, 2018
- Rudolph Giuliani (Ukraine, hush payment, Georgia, coup attempt): phones seized in Ukraine investigation April 28, 2021, received subpoena for billing records in fundraising investigation around December 2022
- John Eastman (Georgia, coup attempt): communications deemed crime-fraud excepted March 28, 2022; phone seized June 22, 2022
- Boris Epshteyn (stolen documents, coup attempt, Georgia): testified in Georgia grand jury; phone seized in September after which he retroactively claimed to have been doing lawyer stuff
- Sidney Powell (fraud, coup attempt, Georgia): Subpoenas sent in fraud investigation starting in September 2021; testified before Georgia grand jury; appeared in November subpoena
- Jeffrey Clark (coup attempt): May 26 warrant for cloud accounts and phone seized June 22, 2022
- Ken Klukowski (coup attempt): May 26 warrant for cloud accounts
- Victoria Toensing (Ukraine, coup attempt): Phone seized in Ukraine investigation April 28, 2021, on June and November subpoenas
- Brad Carver (Georgia and fake elector): phone contents seized June 22
- Jenna Ellis (coup attempt and Georgia): Rudy’s sidekick, censured by CO Bar for
lyingserial misrepresentations, on June and November subpoenas- Kenneth Cheesbro (fake elector, Georgia): included in June and November subpoenas
- Evan Corcoran (stolen documents): testified before grand jury in January, testifies under crime-fraud exception on March 24
- Christina Bobb (coup attempt, Georgia, stolen documents): interviewed in October 2022 and appeared before grand jury in January, belatedly asked for testimony in Georgia
- Stefan Passantino (coup attempt obstruction and financial): included in November subpoenas, alleged to have discouraged full testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson
- Tim Parlatore (stolen documents): appeared before grand jury in December 2022
- Jennifer Little (Georgia and stolen documents): ordered to testify under crime-fraud exception
- Alina Habba (stolen documents, NYS tax fraud): testified before grand jury in January
- Bruce Marks (coup attempt): included in November subpoena
- Cleta Mitchell (coup attempt and Georgia): included in November subpoenas
- Joshua Findlay (coup attempt): included in June subpoenas
- Kurt Olsen (coup attempt): included in November subpoenas
- William Olson (coup attempt): included in November subpoenas
- Lin Wood (coup attempt): included in November subpoenas
- Alex Cannon (coup attempt, financial, stolen documents)
- Eric Herschmann (coup attempt, Georgia, financial, stolen documents)
- Justin Clark (coup attempt and financial): included June and November subpoenas
- Joe DiGenova (coup attempt): included in June and November subpoenas
- Greg Jacob (coup attempt): grand jury appearances, including with Executive Privilege waiver
- Pat Cipollone (coup attempt): grand jury appearances in summer and — with Executive Privilege waiver — December 2
- Pat Philbin (coup attempt and stolen documents): grand jury appearances in summer and — with Executive Privilege waiver — December 2
- Matthew Morgan (coup attempt): included in November subpoenas
Tim Parlatore is the latest addition to this list, based off someone’s decision to reveal Parlatore’s testimony to the stolen documents grand jury in December. As ABC reported, Beryl Howell ordered him to testify after he belatedly revealed that investigators he hired had found four documents with classification marks in a box brought back to Mar-a-Lago after the August 2022 search (he emphasizes that he did so without a subpoena, but this was an effort to stave off a finding of contempt).
So read this excellent piece about All the Ex-President Lawyers. Contempt charges anyone?
And, it’s not just the MAGA/Freedom Caucus crazies that are after U.S. Democracy. They’re definitely the sideshow. This is from Sherrilyn Ifill writing at Slate. “The Republican Plan to Make Voting Irrelevant.”
On Tuesday, it was reported by NBC News that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to recover at a rehabilitation center after his fall at a restaurant in Washington earlier this month. McConnell spoke with fellow Republican Senators over the phone from the facility and “sounded like Mitch,” according to Senate Minority Whip John Thune.
The news brought to mind McConnell’s exceptional instincts as a political calculator, and in particular his past cynical and perhaps prescient deliberations concerning his own health. In 2020, amid reports that McConnell had visited Johns Hopkins in Baltimore after concerning photos were published showing intense bruising on one of his hands, the Kentucky Republican began a campaign to pressure the GOP-controlled Kentucky Legislature to change that state’s law to remove from the governor—who is a Democrat—the authority to select a candidate to fill the unexpired term of a departing U.S. senator. The ability of the governor to appoint a nominee to fill the unexpired term of a senator without restrictions is the law in 35 states.
But McConnell urged, and the Kentucky Legislature took the step of changing that state’s law—overriding the veto of the governor to do so—in a way that assured that Republicans would maintain control of McConnell’s seat should it become vacant.
This effort—to remove powers from elected representatives who are Democrats—has become the new method of disenfranchising voters and maintaining perpetual Republican political power. And it is being undertaken with alarming frequency and speed across the country. This may be the most dangerous and efficient structural attack on our democracy. Its threat, and pernicious ingenuity, lies in its ability to make voting itself irrelevant. Voters may turn out in high numbers and elect their candidates of choice, but if the official is not one whose views align with those of the Republican Party, they may find that their powers of office are removed by antagonistic GOP-controlled legislatures.
We have seen this phenomenon most readily applied to so-called progressive prosecutors who have run successfully on platforms of criminal justice reform across the country. Progressive prosecutors have refused to prosecute low-level marijuana possession crimes, have embraced diversion programs, have opened conviction integrity units to review prior prosecutions for violations of law, and have prosecuted police officers for brutality. For embracing these and other reforms, progressive prosecutors have been confronted with an array of efforts to remove their power. Prosecutors who prosecute or investigate the wrong kinds of criminal suspects in the eyes of Republican legislators have also received this treatment.
Aramis Ayala became the first Black elected prosecutor in the state of Florida when she was elected in 2016 as state’s attorney for Orange and Osceola counties. One of her early announcements was that she would no longer pursue death sentences in capital cases. She argued that seeking the death penalty in homicide cases was draining the coffers of the county, in addition to many other flaws. Indeed, one study found that Osceola County had more prisoners on death row than over 99 percent of U.S. counties. The Republican attorney general of Florida and, subsequently, Republican Gov. Rick Scott and then Gov. Ron DeSantis removed from Ayala all first-degree murder cases and transferred them to a prosecutor in a different circuit.
Go read this piece. MTG and her antics should not detract us from the real danger Republicans still pose.
One more from Slate. Never in my lifetime did I expect to see any school official fired because three prudish parents couldn’t handle their kids seeing Michelangelo’s David. “An Interview With the School Board Chair Who Forced Out a Principal After Michelangelo’s David Was Shown in Class.” WTAF?
On Thursday, the Tallahassee Democrat reported that the principal of a local charter school, the Tallahassee Classical School, was forced to resign after three parents complained about an art teacher showing a picture of Michelangelo’s 16th-century sculpture of David. “Parental rights are supreme, and that means protecting the interests of all parents, whether it’s one, 10, 20 or 50,” the chair of the school’s board, Barney Bishop III, told the paper. To figure out exactly how this happened, I called Bishop, who is also, according to his biography, a consultant, a lobbyist, an “outspoken advocate for the free enterprise system,” and an Eagle Scout. Our conversation has been edited for clarity.
Dan Kois: Why did the board make the decision to remove the principal of the school?
Barney Bishop III: Well, like all the reporters I’ve talked to today, the premise that you’re operating from is incorrect. We didn’t remove her. She resigned. She’s an at-will employee by contract, as are all our teachers. I went to her last week and offered her two letters. One was a voluntary resignation, and another a letter that said if she decided not to resign, I was going to ask the board to terminate her without cause. Without cause. We have the right to do that under the contract.
So it’s safe to say she resigned under pressure from the board.
No question.
As I said in the Tallahassee Democrat, based on counsel from our employment lawyer, I’m not going to get into the reasons. But this wasn’t about that one issue. That’s not the entire truth, and she knows it. The fact is, I have been working with her since she became principal, and I have supported her as principal. But as I saw how things were going, how decisions were being made, I made the decision this was the best thing for the school.
Believe me, this many of them hammering on Abortion rights kept at it for nearly 50 years, and look where we are today. They won’t stop. They’ve been at “multiculturalism” and are now decrying a weird take on “woke,” which means we don’t want anything that is WHYTE CHRISTIANIST NATIONALISM.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
I’m gonna fight ’em all
A seven nation army couldn’t hold me back
They’re gonna rip it off
Taking their time right behind my back
And I’m talking to myself at night
Because I can’t forget
Back and forth through my mind
Behind a cigarette
And the message coming from my eyes
Says, “Leave it alone”
Don’t wanna hear about it
Every single one’s got a story to tell
Everyone knows about it
From the Queen of England to the Hounds of Hell
And if I catch it coming back my way
I’m gonna serve it to you
And that ain’t what you want to hear
But that’s what I’ll do
And the feeling coming from my bones
Says, “Find a home”
Monday Reads: Indictments Watch Edition
Posted: March 20, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: District Attorney Fani Willis, Fulton County, Ga., Indictment Watch, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Prison Grove, Prisoner Donald J Trump Jr., Stormy Daniels, Trump Traitors, Weaponized "reverse racism" 16 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I think most of the nation is waiting to see precisely which level of the Justice System will finally bring Trump to account. It’s Indictment Countdown Week! The most ironic thing about all of this is that it seems that Republican Politicians have finally discovered a two-tiered justice system in America. As usual, it comes from Wrong-Way Pence’s take on a rich, powerful white guy finally staring down a system the rest of us face.
“The American people have a constitutional right to peacefully assemble,” Pence said, adding, “The frustration the American people feel about what they sense is a two-tiered justice system in this country, I think is well founded. But I believe that people understand that if they give voice to this – if this occurs on Tuesday, that they need to do so peaceful and in a lawful manner.”
We’re about to see a big test of is it really liberty and justice for all? If you talk to Black Americans, women with functional reproductive systems, poor people, religious minorities, and the GLBTQ+ Community, we have one justice system, and rich old white men have another. Ours treats us like property with a lower value than actual physical junk.
Is Tuesday really the day, and will Trumpsters strumpet themselves into an insurrectional frenzy again?
Philip Bump of the Washington Post has this analysis. “Trump’s brute-force strategy to make his indictment threat universal.”
Over the weekend, Trump declared on social media that he expected to be indicted this week by a grand jury empaneled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He’s been attacking Bragg for some time now, but the idea that things were coming to a head triggered a new round of scattershot protests from the former president.
At the platform he helped launch, Trump posted a lengthy, all-caps attack on Bragg, accusing the D.A. of letting murderers “walk free” and insisting that Bragg had “presided over the biggest violent crime wave” in the city’s history, which is not even close to true. But he led with his core frustration: that Bragg is a “racist, [George] Soros backed D.A.”
This “Soros-backed” claim is not a new one from Trump or others on the right. Soros, a left-wing philanthropist, is a frequent target of the right in part because of his willingness to spend to influence politics and, in some quarters, because he is Jewish. The link to Bragg is by no means direct: Soros has backed a nonprofit called Color of Change that includes a political action committee committed to electing Black candidates. Bragg, who is Black, received the group’s backing.
Bragg being Black is also why Trump accuses him of being “racist.” Trump has done this before; he has accused New York Attorney General Letitia James of being racist, as well as Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis. The two characteristics all of those prosecutors have in common are that they are Black and are involved in investigations into Trump.
Now we lumber into familiar territory when we’re talking about Trump. Does he actually think they are racist against him, echoing concerns about discrimination against Whites that is common among White Republicans, or is he simply being opportunistic? The answer, as it usually is, is that it’s probably a mix of both. Trump is both a driver and consumer of right-wing rhetoric, and it’s hard to disentangle what he believes from what he believes to be useful.
The effect is the same. Trump is not simply hoping that his supporters view him as a victim of an overzealous prosecutorial effort, as he hoped they might during the Russia travails. He is, instead, amplifying the idea that these Black prosecutors are coming after him because he’s White. While most Trump supporters were not likely to face a probe by the FBI’s counterintelligence infrastructure, most are White. And many of them think that Whites are targets of discrimination as often as Black or Hispanic Americans.
Trump has weaponized the notion of “reverse racism.” Dean Obeidallah argues that “Trump is preparing his base for violence if he’s arrested–and over 50% of them are ready. Today’s GOP is what FASCISM looks like.” We’re on indictment and insurrection (once again) watch, and law enforcement around the country knows it. Check out the poll cited in this think piece.
… Trump and a majority of the GOP base see violence as an acceptable tool to acquire and retain political power. That is the essence of fascism. As Madeline Albright stated when discussing her book “Fascism: A Warning,” “Whatever else it is, fascism involves the endorsement and use of violence to achieve political goals and stay in power.”
This also means Trump’s efforts calls to his base to commit violence if he’s arrested will alarmingly find traction in an already radicalized GOP base. And Trump knows this. Indeed, no one knows Trump’s base better than him.
That is why Trump has been preparing his base to commit violence to avenge him if he’s charged with a crime for well over a year. In psychological terms, what Trump has been doing is called “priming,” which is defined as exposing a person to a stimulus—like words, images, etc.–that influences their behavior at a later date. In general, the person is unaware that have been guided or primed to this point. As experts note, “Priming can be used maliciously or to be manipulative.”
Trump began priming his base for such violence back in January 2022 when he told his supporters to take to the streets if any prosecutor, anywhere charges with him with a crime—not just the Manhattan District Attorney. That is when Trump told his fans at a rally in Texas: “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere.”
In September, Trump was on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show where he again repeated this message—but even more ominously. He told Hewitt that if he’s charged with crimes, “I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.” When asked by Hewitt what he meant by “problems,” Trump responded, “I think they’d have big problems. Big problems.”
Part of Trump’s “priming” of his base to commit violence when called upon was made more persuasive by Trump’s repeated promise to pardon the Jan 6 terrorists. It’s not a coincidence that the first time Trump publicly floated the idea of pardoning these traitors was in the same speech in January 2022 where he called on supporters to engage in massive protests. That is when Trump stated, “If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly — we will treat them fairly.” He added, “And if it requires pardons, then we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
I want to remind you that Republicans have been doing this since the Southern Strategy. I’d also like to remind everyone that Ronald Reagan’s justice department routinely used fascist pogroms and memes. It’s the master class in what’s going on now. Here’s a clip, and more if you follow the thread, from Frank Zappa on Cross-Fire in 1986 talking about the same playbook Republicans follow today. Donald Trump has just up-armored it. They bring military-style weapons to “peaceful demonstrations” now, which likely would include their MAGA congress goose-steppers too.
As far as we know, the Grand Jury in The Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case still hears from witnesses today. This is from the New York Times. “Trump Grand Jury Could Hear From Critic of Prosecution’s Star Witness. The grand jury considering the hush-money case against Mr. Trump might hear the testimony of lawyer Robert J. Costello, a critic of the ex-president’s fixer.”
A Manhattan grand jury that is expected to vote soon on whether to indict Donald J. Trump may hear testimony Monday attacking the prosecution’s star witness, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The testimony would come from a lawyer, Robert J. Costello, who would appear at the request of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the people said. Mr. Costello was once a legal adviser to Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, who has been a key witness for the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Mr. Costello and Mr. Cohen had a falling out, and Mr. Costello would appear solely to undermine Mr. Cohen’s credibility, the people said.
Under New York law, a person who is expected to be indicted can request that a witness appear on his or her behalf. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have asked that Mr. Costello testify, but the final decision rests with the grand jury; it is unclear whether they have made a decision. The grand jury has been hearing evidence about the former president’s involvement in a hush money payment to a porn star.
Mr. Costello’s appearance would come soon after Mr. Cohen concluded his own grand jury testimony. If Mr. Costello testifies, there is also a chance that Mr. Cohen will be asked to return to rebut some of Mr. Costello’s assertions.
A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment, as did Mr. Costello. A lawyer for Mr. Cohen, Lanny J. Davis, declined to comment.
The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, is expected to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump as soon as this week. There have been several signals that charges may be imminent: The prosecutors gave Mr. Trump an opportunity to testify, a right given to people who will soon face indictment. They have now questioned nearly every major player in the hush money saga in front of the grand jury.
Still, Trump is worried. This is from The Guardian. It was written by Hugo Lowell. “Trump in panic mode as he braces for likely charges in Stormy Daniels case. Manhattan district attorney expected to file criminal charges against ex-president for payment to adult film star in 2016.”
Donald Trump is bracing for his most legally perilous week since he left the White House, with the Manhattan district attorney likely to bring criminal charges against him over his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as he huddled this weekend to strategize his legal and political responses.
The former US president has posted in all-caps on his Truth Social platform that he expected to be “ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK” and called for his supporters to engage in protests – an ominous echo of his tweets urging protests in the lead-up to the January 6 US Capitol attack.
Trump’s post was nothing more than guesswork about when Alvin Bragg might bring charges, sources close to Trump said, after he saw media reporting that the district attorney’s office had contacted the US Secret Service about security in the event of an indictment.
The grand jury in New York hearing evidence in the resurrected 2016 hush money case is now expected to hear from one more witness on Monday, making it unlikely that an arrest would come the following day because it could take additional hours to draft charging papers.
Have Trumpsters responded to these invitations to an insurrection as much as the last one? The AP reports “Trump’s call for protests gets muted reaction by supporters.”
Former President Donald Trump’s calls for protests ahead of his anticipated indictment in New York have generated mostly muted reactions from supporters, with even some of his most ardent loyalists dismissing the idea as a waste of time or a law enforcement trap.
The ambivalence raises questions about whether Trump, though a leading Republican contender in the 2024 presidential race who retains a devoted following, still has the power to mobilize far-right supporters the way he did more than two years ago before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It also suggests that the hundreds of arrests that followed the Capitol riot, not to mention the convictions and long prison sentences, may have dampened the desire for repeat mass unrest.
Still, law enforcement in New York is continuing to closely monitor online chatter warning of protests and violence if Trump is arrested, with threats varying in specificity and credibility, four officials told The Associated Press. Mainly posted online and in chat groups, the messages have included calls for armed protesters to block law enforcement officers and attempt to stop any potential arrest, the officials said.
Around the time the Manhattan courthouse complex opened Monday morning, a New York Police Department truck began dropping off dozens of portable metal barricades that could be used to block off streets or sidewalks.
Meanwhile, down in Georgia …
Here’s the link: “BREAKING: Trump’s lawyers move to quash Ga. special grand jury report.”
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Monday moved to quash the final report of the special purpose grand jury that is recommending indictments for those who meddled with Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
The court filing also seeks to prevent the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office from using any evidence derived from the special grand jury investigation, and it seeks to recuse the DA’s office from further pursuing the case.
“The whole world has watched the process of the (special purpose grand jury) unfold and what they have witnessed was a process that was confusing, flawed and, at times, unconstitutional,” said the 51-page filing, which includes 433 more pages of exhibits. “Given the scrutiny and gravity of the investigation and those individuals involved — namely, the movant President Donald J. Trump, this process should have been handled correctly, fairly and with deference to the law and the highest ethical standards.”
The motion requests that any evidence derived from the special grand jury report be “suppressed as unconstitutionally derived and any prosecuting body be prevented from its use.”
Trump’s lawyers are also asking for a hearing on the motion and that it be heard by Chief Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville or another Superior Court judge, not Judge Robert McBurney who presided over the special grand jury probe. McBurney, the filing argued, violated the rights of parties impacted by the investigation.
The motion takes aim at public comments made by special grand jury forewoman Emily Kohrs as well as five other grand jurors who recently sat down for an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.The five jurors spoke on the condition of not being named because of concerns about their safety and privacy.
Well, they certainly can try. It’s such a Trump stall tactic that you’d think any judge would just snort and say “move along, nothing to see here.”
So, stay tuned. It should be an exciting week!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
It seems there’s a Warren Zevon song for everything!
An icy wind burns and scarsRushes in like a fallen starThrough the narrow space between these barsLooking down on Prison Grove
Finally Friday Reads: Resplendent with Breaking News Edition
Posted: March 17, 2023 Filed under: Breaking News, just because | Tags: #IndictmentsAreComing, Finland, NATO, Putin: International Man of Crime, Trump Grift, Trump lies, Trump Theft, Trump Traitor 14 Comments
John Constable,
Seascape Study with Rain Cloud (c.1824-1828)
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Wow, is it hard to keep up with the headlines this week! Just this morning, we learned that the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is from NBC News. “International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant for Putin over alleged Ukraine war crimes. The court said Friday that the Russian leader is responsible for overseeing the forced deportation of children. The Kremlin has previously denied the accusation.” It’s reported by Henry Austin.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant Friday for Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of being responsible for war crimes in Ukraine.
Putin committed the “war crime” of overseeing the unlawful abduction and deportation of childrenfrom Ukraine to Russia, the court said in a news release.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes,” the court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, said its pre-trial judges had assessed.
It added that Putin had failed to “exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or allowed for their commission, and who were under his effective authority and control.”
Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Putin’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, is also alleged to have committed similar crimes, the ICC said.
While warrants are often issued in secret “to protect victims and witnesses and also to safeguard the investigation,” the release said that the court was “mindful that the conduct addressed in the present situation is allegedly ongoing, and that the public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes.”
From the early days of the invasion last February, Kyiv has accused Russia of forcibly transferring children and adults.
Franz Marc-In the Rain(Im Regen) (1912)
Turkey is backing Finland’s entrance into NATO. The NATO expansion may also give the Russian people some reason to feel less safe with Putin in charge. Hungary has also agreed to the deal. This is from Bloomberg News.
Turkey and Hungary both signaled they plan to ratify Finland’s entry into NATO, bringing the military alliance a step closer to welcoming its 31st member as the ripples from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spread across the European security landscape.
“We’ve decided to start the process for the approval of Finland’s membership in our parliament,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a news conference Friday together with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto in Ankara. He added he hoped to complete the approval process for Finland by May 14 elections due in Turkey.
Meanwhile, Hungary plans to approve the Finnish entry March 27, Fidesz parliamentary leader Mate Kocsis said in a Facebook post. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has continually delayed a parliamentary vote in contrast with his statements of support for NATO’s enlargement.
The stance taken by Turkey and Hungary decouples the Nordic countries’ bids to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, filed in May to deter any Russian aggression following its invasion of Ukraine. The comments cast further doubt on the timeline for Sweden’s accession.
“Progress on Sweden’s bid depends on steps it will take,” Erdogan said. Hungary also said it will decide on Sweden’s membership at a later date.
In The Rain, 1882, Vincent van Gogh
I vividly remember someone trying to leave with the Abraham Lincoln bust during Trump’s removal from the White House. It seems more stuff went missing. This is from the Washington Post. “Two gifts to Trump family from foreign nations are missing, report says. More than 100 gifts worth nearly $300,000 were not properly reported to the government, a new report finds.”
Federal officials cannot find two gifts received by President Donald Trump and his family from foreign nations, including a life-size painting of Trump from the president of El Salvador and golf clubs from the Japanese prime minister, according to a new report from House Democrats.
The gifts are among more than 100 foreign gifts — with a total value of nearly $300,000 — that Trump and his family failed to report to the State Department in violation of federal law, according to the report, which cites government records and emails.
The 15-page report, a result of ayear-long investigation by the House Oversight Committeeinto Trump’s failure to disclose gifts from foreign government officials while in office, revealed that the Trump family did not disclose dozens of gifts from countries that are not U.S. allies or have a complicated relationship with Washington. That includes 16 gifts from Saudi Arabia worth more than $48,000, 17 gifts from India worth over $17,000, and at least 5 gifts from China. Trump reported zero gifts entirely the final year of his presidency, according to the report, while he reported some of the gifts received in previous years.
Trump repeatedly told advisers that gifts given to him during the presidency were hisand did not belong to the federal government, former chief of staff John F. Kelly and other aides have previously told The Washington Post.
Investigators are continuing to search for the large portrait of Trump gifted to him ahead of the 2020 election by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and the golf clubs worth more than $7,000 thatTrump received from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during visits to the Trump International Golf Club and Kasumigaeski Country Club in 2017 and 2018, the report says.
Vasily Kandinsky Landscape with rain Guggenheim, c 1944
Count the silverware before and after anywhere this family travels. They’ll take anything! Meanwhile, court watch continues, and bets on Trump’s indictment are that both Manhattan and Georgia will come for him next week. Lock him up!
I’m beginning to wonder if Charlie Sykes reads us. Who besides me penned Orange Caligula? This is from the Bulwark. “Trump Picks an Enemy: Us. The Orange Caligula sides with Russia.” Of course, he does. I bet he heads there if those indictments come through too.
Because on Earth 2.0, this would be the stuff of endless news cycles and nightmares.
Here is Donald Trump channeling Kremlin propaganda, siding with Russia, even as he declares that our real enemy is . . . other Americans.
Despite the wishcasting punditry, the magical thinking of his rivals, and the fervent hopes of the Hollow Men of the GOP, this man is the presumptive nominee of the Republican party, and therefore possibly the next president of the United States. (The DeSantis bubble hasn’t burst. But it’s leaking.)
I don’t mean to alarm you. You should be alarmed.
Let’s break this down:
*The Purge
TRUMP: The State Department, the defense bureaucracy, the intelligence services, and all of the rest need to be completely overhauled and reconstituted to fire the Deep Staters and put America first.
We have to put America first.
At a time of growing international tension, the former president is threatening a massive purge of the nation’s defense infrastructure. He proposes dismantling — and completely overhauling — the Defense Department, the nation’s intelligence agencies (our eyes and ears), and the country’s foreign policy capabilities.
Mass firings, the loss of centuries of experience. A purge of independent, adult voices, and anyone else who might tell the new president “no.”
More important though, after the purge of the “Deep Staters,” he would “reconstitute” the country’s destroyed defenses, presumably by stacking the agencies with his own loyalists.
All while Russia advances, China rattles sabers, and the Middle East boils.
You can read the rundown that includes dumping NATO. We just found out Hungary and Turkey aren’t even up for that.
Nixen (Silberfische). Nymphs, Gustav Klimt, cc 1899,
When Donald Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, in a now-infamous bid to overturn the 2020 election, he alleged that thousands of dead people had voted in the state.
“So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters,” he said, without citing his study.
But a report commissioned by his own campaign dated one day prior told a different story: Researchers paid by Trump’s team had “high confidence” of only nine dead voters in Fulton County, defined as ballots that may have been cast by someone else in the name of a deceased person. They believed there was a “potential statewide exposure” of 23 such votes across the Peach State — or 4,977 fewer than the “minimum” Trump claimed.
In a separate failed bid to overturn the results in Nevada, Trump’s lawyers said in a court filing that 1,506 ballots were cast in the names of dead people and 42,284 voted twice. Trump lost the Silver State by about 33,000 votes.
The researchers paid by Trump’s team had “high confidence” that 12 ballots were cast in the names of deceased people in Clark County, Nev., and believed the “high end potential exposure” was 20 voters statewide — some 1,486 fewer than Trump’s lawyers said.
According to their research, the “low end potential exposure” of double voters was 45, while the “high end potential exposure” was 9,063. The judge tossed the Nevada case even as Trump continued to claim he won the state.
The “Project 2020” report conducted by the Berkeley Research Group has now been obtained by prosecutors investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. A copy was reviewed by The Washington Post, and it shows that Trump’s own campaign paid more than $600,000 for research that undercut many of his most explosive claims. The research was never made public.
The Justice Department has sought and obtained multiple reports, emails and interviews from witnesses that show campaign officials analyzing, and often discrediting, claims that Trump was making publicly, according to several people involved in the investigation, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal details. The Berkeley report was provided to the Justice Department earlier this month, one of the people said, after some people involved in its crafting received a subpoena.
Why do people believe this idiot? Nothing he says is true.
Anyway, I’m cold and achy. It’s raining like crazy and has gone into the 40s. It’s the second coming of Winter. I have to dig out clothes I just boxed up, and I’m ready to sleep for some time. Between this and the time change, I feel like a slug.
Have a good weekend! Indictments are coming!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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