Posted: June 22, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Donald Trump, just because, SCOTUS | Tags: Jack Smith, Lordy there are tapes, missing submersible, OceanGate, Paul Singer, Samuel Alito, sinking of migrant boat, stolen documents case, Supreme Court ethics |
Good Afternoon!!
It’s another big news day today. Here’s what’s happening.
Big media is focused on the missing submersible with billionaires on board and there’s breaking news at doesn’t sound good.
UPDATE: I just saw on CNN that the debris appears to be from the submersible.
From the Associated Press article:
The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that an underwater vessel has located a debris field near the Titanic in the search for a missing submersible with five people aboard, a potential breakthrough in an increasingly urgent around-the-clock effort.
The Coast Guard’s post on Twitter gave no details, such as whether officials believe the debris is connected to the Titan, which was on an expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic. The search passed the critical 96-hour mark Thursday when breathable air could have run out.
The Titan was estimated to have about a four-day supply of breathable air when it launched Sunday morning in the North Atlantic — but experts have emphasized that was an imprecise approximation to begin with and could be extended if passengers have taken measures to conserve breathable air. And it’s not known if they survived since the sub’s disappearance.
Rescuers have rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance. On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard said an undersea robot sent by a Canadian ship had reached the sea floor, while a French research institute said a deep-diving robot with cameras, lights and arms also joined the operation.
At the same time, another tragedy has been virtually ignored. Jill Fillipovic at CNN: Opinion: While we hope for the best for the lost Titanic-exploring submersible, let’s not forget these other victims.
It’s interesting to watch the national fascination with this story [the missing submersible], especially compared to, say, the attention paid to the sinking of another boat, this one full of desperate migrants in the Mediterranean last week; dozens were killed, and hundreds of men, women and children are still missing. Many migrants, mostly from Syria, Egypt and Pakistan, may be dead.
And the Greek Coast Guard, despite indications that the boat was in distress, did not intervene, blaming the smuggled migrants who they say didn’t want help. Widespread outrage and anguish for the hundreds of souls taking an extraordinary risk in search of a better life, and those who failed them along the way, seems much more justifiable than the frenzy over a small, lost group of hyper-niche tourists, tragic as both circumstances may turn out to be. And yet, while the migrant story is far from being ignored, it’s not receiving the same breathless moment-by-moment updates accorded the lost Titanic hunters.
But human interest, we know, does not at all run proportional to human suffering, and often has little to do with who or what is deserving of significant attention. And the story of a vessel occupied by wealthy curiosity-seekers, lost in the depths of the ocean in its search to find a vessel occupied by wealthy curiosity-seekers lost in the depths of the ocean, has all the component parts of an addictive story: irony, suspense, potential tragedy, potential glory, lifestyles of the rich, aspiration and hubris.
Read more at at the CNN link.
It’s now coming out that there were many safety issues with the submersible.
From NPR:
Experts from within and outside OceanGate raised concerns about the safety of its Titan submersible as far back as 2018, years before it went missing during a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck site.
Several of those complaints have resurfaced this week, as the frantic search for the vessel — and its five passengers — continues.
“It hasn’t surprised us,” said Will Kohnen, the chair of the Marine Technology Society’s Submarine Committee (formerly the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee), about the Titan’s disappearance. “We’ve been aware of this project for some time and have had some concerns.”
In March 2018, after one of the international industry group’s annual conferences, Kohnen drafted a letter to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush — the pilot of the missing vessel — expressing “unanimous concern” on behalf of its members about the development of the Titan and its planned Titanic expeditions.
“Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by Oceangate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” he wrote, according to a copy obtained by the New York Times….
Kohnen told Morning Edition‘s A Martínez on Wednesday that the group’s main concern was a lack of oversight and adherence to industry-accepted safety guidelines.
“Most of the companies in this industry that are building submersibles and deep submersibles follow a fairly well-established framework of certification and verification and oversight, through classification societies,” he said. “And that was at the root of OceanGate’s project, is that they were going to go solo, going without that type of official oversight, and that brought a lot of concerns.”
You can also check out this piece at TechCrunch: A whistleblower raised safety concerns about OceanGate’s submersible in 2018. Then he was fired.
The director of marine operations at OceanGate, the company whose submersible went missing Sunday on an expedition to the Titanic in the North Atlantic, was fired after raising concerns about its first-of-a-kind carbon fiber hull and other systems before its maiden voyage, according to a filing in a 2018 lawsuit first reported by Insider and New Republic.
David Lochridge was terminated in January 2018 after presenting a scathing quality control report on the vessel to OceanGate’s senior management, including founder and CEO Stockton Rush, who is on board the missing vessel.
According to a court filing by Lochridge, the preamble to his report read: “Now is the time to properly address items that may pose a safety risk to personnel. Verbal communication of the key items I have addressed in my attached document have been dismissed on several occasions, so I feel now I must make this report so there is an official record in place.”
The report detailed “numerous issues that posed serious safety concerns,” according to the filing. These included Lochridge’s worry that “visible flaws” in the carbon fiber supplied to OceanGate raised the risk of small flaws expanding into larger tears during “pressure cycling.” These are the huge pressure changes that the submersible would experience as it made its way and from the deep ocean floor. He noted that a previously tested scale model of the hull had “prevalent flaws.”
More details at the link.
Samuel Alito has temporarily taken the pressure off Clarence Thomas.
A couple of days ago, ProPublica published a story about a luxury fishing trip to that Samuel Alito took with Leonard Leo. They were accompanied by billionaire Paul Singer, who flew both men on his private plane.
From ProPublica: Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court.
In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.
Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.
In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.
Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.
Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.
“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.
ProPublica sent a series of questions to Alito before publishing the story. Instead of answering them, Alito got his pals at the Wall Street Journal to publish a whiny defense–before the ProPublica article came out.
NYT story by Adam Liptak: Justice Alito Defends Private Jet Travel to Luxury Fishing Trip.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took the unusual step late Tuesday of responding to questions about his travel with a billionaire who frequently has cases before the Supreme Court hours before an article detailing their ties had even been published.
In an extraordinary salvo in a favored forum, Justice Alito defended himself in a pre-emptive article in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal before the news organization ProPublica posted its account of a luxury fishing trip in 2008….
Justice Alito said he had spoken to Mr. [Paul] Singer [who flew Alito to Alaska on his private plane] only a handful of times, including on two occasions when Mr. Singer introduced the justice before speeches. “It was and is my judgment that these facts would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially,” Justice Alito wrote.
He added that he did not know of Mr. Singer’s connection to the cases before the court, including one in which the court issued a 7-to-1 decision in favor of one of Mr. Singer’s businesses, with Justice Alito in the majority.
But Mr. Singer’s connection to the case, Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, was widely reported. A Forbes article covering the decision bore the headline “Supreme Court Hands Billionaire Paul Singer a Victory Over Argentina.” An article in The New York Times noted that the parties to the case included “NML Capital, an affiliate of Elliott Management, the hedge fund founded by Paul Singer.”
Alito’s justification for taking the free private plane flight was ludicrous and got him mocked all day long on Twitter.
Justice Alito said he was not required to disclose the trip on Mr. Singer’s private jet in “a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.”
A federal law requires disclosures of gifts over a certain value but makes exceptions for “personal hospitality of any individual” at “the personal residence of that individual or his family or on property or facilities owned by that individual or his family.” Justice Alito wrote that a jet is such a facility, quoting from dictionary definitions.
In March, the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policymaking body for the federal courts, issued new guidelines requiring disclosure of travel by private jet and stays in commercial properties like resorts.
This morning, CNN published another embarrassing story for Alito.
CNN: Alito in the hot seat over trips to Alaska and Rome he accepted from groups and individuals who lobby the Supreme Court.
Last July, Alito was feted in Rome by Notre Dame’s Religious Liberty Initiative, which has in recent years joined the growing ranks of conservative legal activists who are finding new favor at the Supreme Court – and forging ties with the justices. The group’s legal clinic has filed a series of “friend-of-the-court” briefs in religious liberty cases before the Supreme Court since its founding in 2020.
After the high court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, the group paid for Alito’s trip to Rome to deliver a keynote address at a gala hosted at a palace in the heart of the city. It was his first known public appearance after the decision.
At the start of his speech, he thanked the group for the “warm hospitality” it provided to him and his wife, which, he later said, included a stay at a hotel that “looks out over the Roman Forum.”
During various parts of the address, he gleefully mocked critics of his ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion. What really “wounded” him, the conservative justice said, was when Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, “addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare ‘the decision whose name may not be spoken’ with the Russian attack on the Ukraine.”
Justices are often known for usually maintaining a low profile, and the court’s public information office in recent years has been less forthcoming about their public appearances. But the court’s ruling last year in the abortion case propelled the nine jurists and their rulings to new heights and fueled new questions about the justices’ behavior both on and off the bench.
Alito joined the majority in ruling in favor of the Religious Liberty Initiative’s position in several of the cases for which it submitted briefs, including the one that reversed Roe, which he authored, and a 2022 decision that said a high school football coach had the right to pray on the 50-yard line after games.
I wonder which right wing justice will be next? I hope some investigative journalist is looking into which billionaire(s) have given gifts to Brett Kavanaugh. It’s also notable that the introductions to the billionaire sugar daddies came from former Federalist Society head Leonard Leo. Check out this piece from Josh Marshall at TPM: Leonard Leo’s SCOTUS-FedSoc Sponsor Family Program.
There’s big news today on the Trump stolen documents case.
Last night, Jack Smith sent the first installment of discovery to Trump’s lawyers.
CNN: Trump receives first batch of evidence against him in classified documents case, including audio tapes.
Special counsel Jack Smith has begun producing evidence in the Mar-a-Lago documents case to Donald Trump, according to a Wednesday court filing that hints that investigators collected for the case multiple recordings of the former president – not just audio of an interview Trump gave at Bedminster for a forthcoming Mark Meadows memoir.
Prosecutors in the filing used the plural “interviews” to describe recordings of Trump – made with his consent – obtained by the special counsel that have now been turned over to his defense team. It is unclear what the additional recordings may be of or how relevant they will be to the Justice Department’s case against the former president, though the recordings include the Bedminster tape where Trump speaks about a secret military document to a writer and others, the prosecutors said in the filing.
he prosecutors’ update to the court on Wednesday night marks another swift move toward trial, which the Justice Department has said should happen quickly, and captures at least some of the extent of the evidence investigators secured to build their historic case against Trump.
The first batch of discovery production – made up of unclassified materials – includes transcripts of witness testimony in front of the grand juries in Washington, DC, and Florida that were probing the mishandling of government documents from Trump’s White House. It also includes materials collected via subpoenas and search warrants; memos detailing other witness interviews given through mid-May in the investigation; and copies of the surveillance footage investigators obtained in the probe.
The first batch of evidence, provided on Wednesday, “includes the grand jury testimony of witnesses who will testify for the government at the trial of this case,” the special counsel’s office wrote.
More from Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:
From The Guardian:
Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s retention of national security material were examining evidence within weeks of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago last year that he might have handled classified documents at his Bedminster club in New Jersey, according to two people close to the matter.
The indications of classified documents at Bedminster so alarmed prosecutors that they focused part of the investigation on whether Trump might have transported the materials or disclosed their contents there in addition to refusing to return them to the government, the people said….
The suspicion that Trump travelled with classified documents between Mar-a-Lago, his winter residence, and Bedminster, his summer residence, started early in the criminal investigation that intensified after the FBI search and culminated in Trump being accused of violating the Espionage Act….
Within weeks of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the justice department sought to act on the indications of classified documents at Bedminster when it told the Trump legal team that prosecutors believed the former president still possessed classified materials, the people said.
The message in the letter, which became a formal court motion filed under seal weeks later, was clear: arrange for new searches of all of the Trump properties because, as of that time, the only place that had been combed for classified documents was the Mar-a-Lago resort.
Whether to acquiesce with the request split the Trump legal team. Trump in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn and Trump lawyer Chris Kise were uneasy about being ordered around by the government, while the other Trump lawyers Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty suggested a cooperative approach.
The legal team ultimately decided on working with the justice department and, in one exchange, asked prosecutors which Trump properties and where at the Trump properties they wanted them to search.
A few more details at the link.
Trump now knows who has testified in the grand jury and what secrets they have revealed. He must be throwing ketchup around at Bedminster. He has posted several insane messages on Truth Social. Here’s a sample:
I wonder how long it will take him to reveal information he gets from the discovery. If he starts attacking Mark Meadows, we’ll have a clue.
Have a great Thursday, Sky Dancers!!
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Posted: June 20, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Brett Baier, Fox News, Hunter Biden, Judge Aileen Cannon, stolen documents case |
Good Day Sky Dancers!!
Now that the long weekend is over, there is quite a bit of news breaking. These are the three biggest stories of the day so far: a tentative date has been set for Trump’s trial in the stolen documents case; yesterday, Trump gave an interview to Brett Baier of Fox News in which he confessed to multiple crimes; and today, Hunter Biden reached an agreement with the Feds.
Kyle Cheney at Politico: Judge sets tentative trial date for Trump documents case.
Donald Trump’s criminal trial for hoarding military secrets at Mar-a-Lago has a starting date — Aug. 14 — but don’t expect it to hold.
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon bookmarked the last two weeks in August for the historic trial, part of an omnibus order setting some early ground rules and deadlines for the case. That would represent a startlingly rapid pace for a case that is expected to be complicated and require lengthy pretrial wrangling over extraordinarily sensitive classified secrets.
But a review of Cannon’s criminal cases since she took the bench in late 2020 suggests this is standard practice for the Florida-based judge. She typically sets trial dates six to eight weeks from the start of a case, only to allow weeks- or months-long delays as issues arise and the parties demand more time to prepare. While her order on Tuesday starts the clock on a slew of important pretrial matters in the Trump case, it’s not likely to resemble anything close to the timeframe that will ultimately govern the case.
Also from Kyle Cheney at Politico: Trump judge’s thin criminal trial resume comes with a twist.
Aileen Cannon, the federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s latest criminal case, has run just four, relatively routine criminal trials in her short tenure on the bench — a stark contrast to the historic and complex proceedings she’s about to undertake related to the former president.
A review of the Southern District of Florida dockets show Cannon’s criminal work has consisted almost entirely of a few categories of cases: distribution of a controlled substance, illegal reentry of people who had previously been deported, felons in possession of firearms and child pornography or trafficking. Nearly all have resulted in plea agreements, and the four that did not were handled in brief trials that lasted no more than three days apiece in court.
Those cases have featured few significant opinions or rulings of note on complex issues of law. And Cannon, 42, has almost always sided with prosecutors on routine challenges to evidence, motions to suppress evidence by defendants and efforts to dismiss various cases.
Cannon’s thin resume, combined with her surprisingly deferential rulings to Trump — who appointed her in November 2020 — in a civil lawsuit challenging the FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate last year, have raised questions about her readiness for the complexities of the first-ever federal prosecution of a former president. Prosecutors say he hoarded national military secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office and concealed them from government officials seeking to recover them.
There’s one exception, however, to Cannon’s judicial history that has largely escaped scrutiny. For nearly one-and-a-half years, she’s shepherded a complex, 10-defendant health care fraud case to the verge of trial, and in the course has litigated tangled and fraught issues of attorney-client privilege and motions to suppress — some of which could be precursors to battles in the upcoming Trump case.
Read more details at Politico.
If you are a Twitter denizen, you may have seen some clips from Trump’s weird interview with Fox News’s Brett Baier. I can just imagine how his defense attorneys reacted. But they already know he can’t be controlled–even when it’s for his own good. Here are some media and expert reactions.
https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1670958219932442624?s=20
The New York Times: Trump Says ‘Secret’ Document He Described on Tape Referred to News Clippings.
Former President Donald J. Trump claimed to a Fox News anchor in an interview on Monday that he did not have a classified document with him in a meeting with a book publisher even though he referred during that meeting to “secret” information in his possession.
The July 2021 meeting — at Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J. — was recorded by at least two people in attendance, and a transcript describes the former president pointing to a pile of papers and then saying of Gen. Mark A. Milley, whom he had been criticizing: “Look. This was him. They presented me this — this is off the record, but — they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.”
On the recording, according to two people familiar with its contents, Mr. Trump can be heard flipping through papers as he talks to a publisher and writer working on a book by his final White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Mr. Trump and the people in the meeting do not explicitly say what document the former president is holding.
According to the transcript, Mr. Trump describes the document, which he claims shows General Milley’s desire to attack Iran, as “secret” and “like, highly confidential.” He also declares that “as president, I could have declassified it,” adding, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
But in the interview on Monday, with the Fox News anchor Bret Baier, Mr. Trump denied that he had been referring to an actual document and claimed to have simply been referring to news clippings and magazine pieces.
“There was no document,” Mr. Trump insisted. “That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
Rolling Stone: Trump All But Confesses to Mishandling Classified Docs on Fox News.
A WEEK AFTER his second post-presidential arrest, this one for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, Donald Trump turned to Fox News host Bret Baier on Monday to make the case for why he should lead the country again. But he ended up essentially confessing to the crime of which he’s accused: stealing and sharing top-secret government information.
Before that, however, Baier pressed Trump to explain why he kept the boxes of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago and refused to comply with government requests to return them, as described in his new felony indictment. In between dismissing the case as “the document hoax” or accusing other presidents of illegally hoarding their own sensitive documents, Trump offered the bizarre explanation that he couldn’t give up the boxes to authorities because they also contained… his clothes.
“Like every other president I take things out,” Trump said. “In my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry. People packed it up and left. I had clothing in there, I had all sorts of personal items in there. Much, much stuff.” After a brief digression to call his former attorney general Bill Barr a “coward,” Trump reiterated, “I have got a lot of things in there. I will go through those boxes. I have to go through those boxes. I take out personal things.” Finally, he clarified what those items were: “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things: golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things,” he said.
That really isn’t a good excuse, since government documents are not supposed to be mixed with other papers, much less clothing. More from the RS piece:
Later on in the interview, Trump and Baier got into a debate on the results of the 2020 election, with the Fox anchor trying in vain to remind the former president that he lost while Trump rambled on about fake ballots. The rest of the conversation involved Trump bashing Biden’s international diplomacy, from Ukraine to the Middle East to China, and musing about how much better things were with him in office.
Afterward, Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume said that Trump’s answers regarding matters of the law were “on the verge on incoherent,” and specifically mentioned the bizarre detail of not returning the boxes of classified documents because they hadn’t been “separated from his golf shirts or whatever he was saying.” Overall, Hume said, it sounded as if Trump was making the argument that the papers were his to do with as he liked, “which I don’t think is going to hold up in court.”
Trump also claimed he was “too busy” to go through the documents and take out his personal stuff. He claimed that justifies his having one of his lawyers certify to the Feds that there were no more documents at Mar-a-Lago, ordering Walt Nauta to move the documents around to hide them from his lawyers, and refusing to obey a subpoena.
Here is one of the best parts of the Baier interview. It doesn’t have much of Trump in it, so it’s safe to watch.
https://twitter.com/KevinTober94/status/1670923018351067137?s=20
Finally, Hunter Biden has reached a deal with the Trump-appointed prosecutor investigating his case.
The Washington Post: Hunter Biden reaches deal to plead guilty in tax, gun case.
President Biden’s son Hunter has reached a tentative agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to two minor tax crimes and admit to the facts of a gun charge under terms that would likely keep him out of jail, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
Any proposed plea deal would have to be approved by a federal judge. Both the prosecutors and the defense counsel have requested a court hearing at which Hunter Biden, 53, can enter his plea.
The agreement caps an investigation that was opened in 2018 during the Trump administration, and has generated intense interest and criticism since 2020 from Republican politicians who accused the Biden administration of reluctance to pursue the case.The terms of the proposed deal — negotiated with Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a holdover from President Donald Trump’s administration — are likely to face similar scrutiny.
The court papers indicate the younger Biden has tentatively agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay in 2017 and 2018. The combined tax liability is roughly $1.2 million over those years, according to people familiar with the plea deal, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe details of the agreement that are not yet public. Prosecutors plan to recommend a sentence of probation for those counts, these people said. Biden’s representatives have said he previously paid back the IRS what he owed.
It’s a busy news day. I’ll add a few more stories in the comment thread. Have a tremendous Tuesday everyone!
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Posted: June 15, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Donald Trump | Tags: Chris Kise, creepy dolls, Daniel Penny, Harvard Medical School morgue, Jordan Neely, Katrina MacLean, stolen body parts, Tom Fitton, Walt Nauta |
Good Afternoon!!
By now you may have heard about the weird crimes that go on here in Massachusetts. A man who used to manage the morgue at Harvard Medical School has been charged by the Feds with selling body parts.
This is from The New York Times: Harvard Medical School Morgue Manager Sold Body Parts, U.S. Says.
The manager of a morgue at Harvard Medical School has been charged with selling body parts from donated cadavers and allowing buyers to come to the morgue to choose which parts they wanted, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Prosecutors said that the manager, Cedric Lodge, 55, and his wife, Denise Lodge, 63, both of Goffstown, N.H., and three others had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania on charges of conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen goods.
Four grave robbers awaken a ghost, by Joseph Werner
A sixth person, Jeremy Pauley, 41, of Bloomsburg, Pa., was charged separately, prosecutors said. A seventh, Candace Chapman Scott, of Little Rock, Ark., was previously indicted in Arkansas, prosecutors said.
The defendants were all part of a nationwide network that bought and sold human remains stolen from Harvard Medical School and a mortuary in Little Rock where Ms. Scott worked, prosecutors said.
According to federal prosecutors, from 2018 to 2022, Mr. Lodge stole parts from cadavers that had been donated to the medical school and dissected — including heads, brains, skin and bones — before their scheduled cremations.
The Lodges then shipped remains to others, including Katrina Maclean, 44, of Salem, Mass., who owns a store called Kat’s Creepy Creations in Peabody, Mass., and Joshua Taylor, 46, of West Lawn, Pa., prosecutors said.
At times, Mr. Lodge allowed Ms. Maclean, Mr. Taylor and others into the morgue to choose which parts they wanted, prosecutors said. In October 2020, prosecutors said, Ms. Maclean agreed to buy two dissected faces from Mr. Lodge for $600.
More disgusting details about Maclean’s business, if you can handle them:
Prosecutors said that Ms. Maclean stored and sold remains at Kat’s Creepy Creations, which advertises “creepy dolls, oddities” and “bone art” on Instagram.
In June or July of 2021, she shipped human skin to Mr. Pauley and “engaged his services to tan the skin to create leather,” an indictment states.
From September 2018 to July 2021, Mr. Taylor transferred more than $37,000 in electronic payments to Ms. Lodge for body parts that had been stolen by Mr. Lodge, prosecutors said.
In one transaction, Mr. Taylor sent Ms. Lodge $1,000 with a memo that read “head number 7,” prosecutors said. As part of another payment, he sent Ms. Lodge $200 with a memo that read, “braiiiiiins,” prosecutors said.
I’m a horror movie fan, but I don’t want things like this to happen in real life.
From local news source MassLive: Salem artist accused of selling body parts posted about ‘real human skull’ on Instagram.
An artist from Salem who has been accused of buying and selling stolen body parts had posted on Instagram about having a “real human skull” and offering to sell human body parts to the public, in a picture with one of her creations from February 2020.
Katrina MacLean, the bone art, doll-creating and oddity-collecting artist behind Kat’s Creepy Creations, was named in an indictment against Cedric Lodge, who officials said supplied MacLean and others with the body parts, according to court documents….
MacLean was vocal about her artwork on social media and especially on Instagram, where she routinely sold the baby dolls she reworked, according to a comment she responded to on her account.
The Salem artist also sold her art at “oddities markets and expos,” she had said, and had “two cases at Witch City Consignment and Thrift” in the city. Additionally, she is the curator of Freaks Antiques Uniques, a pop-up dark art and oddities market located in Salem, according to her account.
One of MacLean’s creepy dolls
MacLean often posted before-and-after images depicting dolls repainted and dressed in various ways, including with dark coloring around their eyes, blood streaked on their bodies, those made to look dead, clown-style makeup and chilling expressions.
In a post on Feb. 9, 2020, during the time MacLean was believed by officials to be receiving and selling human body parts from Lodge, the Salem woman posted an image of a reworked, “killer clown”-style doll with a skull between its fingers.
The caption on her post read, “Throwback to the set of Hubie Halloween. This doll has been sold and yes that is a real human skull. If you’re in the market for human bones hit me up!”
Even after the FBI searched MacLean’s home in March, according to multiple reports, MacLean continued to post on her Instagram about her reworked dolls and bone art with no apparent signs of issues happening in her personal life. Her most recent post was May 28.
What a weirdo! At one point MacLean revealed more about herself to her readers:
From a March 23, 2020 post, MacLean said, “Meet the maker! I’m Kat, I like to turn regular porcelain dolls into nightmare fuel. I started painting horror dolls back in September of 2018 in an attempt to decorate the store windows @witchcitythrift.
“Everyone wanted to buy the dolls so I began selling them….. I have sold 239 dolls since then! I also make dark art, bone art, human bone jewelry and shadowboxes,” the post went on.
“I joke with my friends and say that my super power is ‘the ability to creepify’ Art and creating is my passion and my therapy. I am also the curator of Freaks Antiques and Uniques dark art and oddity market in Salem MA. Please give my page a follow @freaksantiquesuniques to check out our talented crafters, vendors, artists and creators,” MacLean said.
“Thanks for supporting my twisted creations and I look forward to meeting more of you at upcoming events! Thanks for reading, please share my page with your friends!” the post stated.
A couple of famous attorneys comments on the case:
In other news, Daniel Penny, the man who killed Jordan Neely in a New York subway car has been charged with manslaughter.
CNN: Grand jury votes to indict Marine veteran who held homeless man in fatal chokehold on NYC subway.
Penny, 24, was indicted on second-degree manslaughter charges. The Manhattan District Attorney is expected to formally announce the grand jury’s indictment, which is under seal, on Thursday.
Jordan Neely in 2009. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Penny surrendered to police last month to face a second-degree manslaughter charge. He has since been out on a $100,000 bond.
Penny held Neely, an unhoused Black man and street artist, in a chokehold on the subway train May 1 after Neely began shouting at passengers that he was hungry and thirsty and didn’t care whether he died. Penny forced 30-year-old Neely to the train floor and restrained him in a chokehold until he stopped breathing. A medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide.
In May, Penny told the New York Post he was “deeply saddened by the loss of life,” amid what has become a contentious homicide case that has highlighted the city’s handling of unhoused people.
Neely was on a New York City Department of Homeless Services list of the city’s homeless with acute needs – sometimes referred to internally as the “Top 50” list – because people on the list tend to disappear, a source told CNN.
Some Trump investigation news:
The Washington Post: Trump rejected lawyers’ efforts to avoid classified documents indictment.
One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department.
The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents.
But Trump was not interested after listening to other lawyers who urged a more pugilistic approach, so Kise never approached prosecutors, three people briefed on the matter said. A special counsel was appointed months later.
Kise, a former solicitor general of Florida who was paid $3 million upfront to join Trump’s team last year, declined to comment.
That quiet entreaty last fall was one of many occasions when lawyers and advisers sought to get Trump to take a more cooperative stance in a bid to avoid what happened Friday. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment including more than three dozen criminal counts against Trump for allegedly keeping and hiding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
Attorney Chris Kise
Instead of listening to his attorneys, Trump was seeking advice from Tom Fitton, head of the right wing organization Judicial Watch. Fitton is not a lawyer.
“It was a totally unforced error,” said one person close to Trump who has been part of dozens of discussions about the documents. “We didn’t have to be here.”
Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said. Trump would often cite Fitton to others, and Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the documents, even as they disagreed, the advisers said….
Fitton, who appeared before the grand jury and was questioned about his role in both the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, acknowledged he gave the advice to Trump but declined to discuss the details of their conversations. He added that he read the indictment and did not believe it laid out illegal or obstructive conduct. Multiple witnesses said they were asked about Fitton in front of a grand jury and the role he played in Trump’s decisions.
Also from The Washington Post: Will Walt Nauta flip? Trump keeps valet close as question hovers over the case.
The 40-year-old body man from Guam now faces 20 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him. Sporting a wide scarlet tie a few shades deeper than his boss’s candy red one, Nauta, once a Navy sailor, made his first appearance in a Miami federal courthouse Tuesday to face charges that he obstructed justice, withheld and concealed a document from the government, and lied to FBI agents.
A key question hovering over the case now is whether Nauta will cooperate with prosecutors against Trump in hopes of a lesser sentence.
Nauta — who spent Tuesday bizarrely toggling between the roles of co-defendant, equal under the law to Trump, and dutiful “body man,” subservient to the former president — has showed no signs that his loyalty to Trump is waning.
Trump’s lawyers and advisers do not see Nauta as a threat to turn, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the criminal case.
Walt Nauta helping his ancient and frail boss
I have to believe that will change as Nauta begins to realize the jeopardy he is in. He’s a young man, and could end up spending many years in prison.
According to the indictment, Nauta helped bring boxes to Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago for his review before Trump returned 15 boxes of documents to the National Archives in January 2022. When interviewed by the FBI in May 2022, however, prosecutors allege Nauta falsely said he had no knowledge of the boxes being taken to Trump’s suite.
He then could be seen on surveillance video removing 64 boxes from the club’s ground floor storage room after Trump received a grand jury subpoena seeking classified records in May 2022. According to the indictment, he was spotted returning only 30 boxes to the room, just before a lawyer for Trump searched the room for documents to turn over to the government in response to the subpoena.
Trump and Nauta spoke repeatedly by phone before Nauta moved the boxes, the indictment alleges. The indictment does not detail what the two discussed. If Nauta chose to cooperate, he could presumably explain what Trump told him on those calls — and offer evidence about whether Trump instructed him to lie to the FBI.
People familiar with the case say that while Nauta spoke more than once with federal investigators, the conversations turned contentious last year when a senior Justice Department lawyer suggested the valet was in legal trouble for some of his statements. Nauta’s lawyers reacted angrily to that suggestion and the relationship never recovered.
CNN reporters figured out a clever way to get the news out of the Miami courthouse on Tuesday, even though electronics–even phones–were not allowed.
Oliver Darcy at CNN: How CNN broke the news from Trump’s arraignment despite a courtroom ban on electronics.
After surveying the courthouse on Monday, CNN’s team hatched a plan — one that ultimately led the news network to become the first to report that Trump was in custody and had entered a not guilty plea on 37 counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified intelligence documents.
It started with hiring a group of local high school students to work as production assistants for the day. Noah Gray, CNN’s senior coordinating producer for special events, had grown up in the Miami area and attended Palmetto Senior High School. He contacted his former teacher, who heads the school’s television production program, and said that CNN wanted to quickly hire some of her students to help with its reporting effort.
On Tuesday, several of the hired students were brought into the courthouse and seated in an overflow room with reporters Tierney Sneed and Hannah Rabinowitz. As the hearing unfolded and developments transpired, Sneed and Rabinowitz jotted down their reporting on notepads, tearing off sheets with urgent news, and handing it to one of the students. The students then ran the reporting to one of their classmates who was standing by at one of the courthouse’s only two pay phones.
But there was a twist: the pay phones at the courthouse could only dial local telephone numbers. To overcome the final obstacle, CNN’s staff devised a plan to have the production assistant dial his own personal cell phone, which was located in a nearby RV that the network was using as a mobile headquarters.
Brad Parks, a CNN regional newsgathering director stationed inside the RV, then picked up the phone, typed up the reporting and relayed the information to the outlet’s Washington, D.C. bureau. Once the reporting was cleared for air by senior leaders in Washington, it was then transmitted to the control room and the network at large. And, from there, it was finally communicated to CNN’s anchors, who delivered the news to viewers across the world.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all have a terrific Thursday!
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Posted: June 13, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2024 Elections, Donald Trump | Tags: classified information, DOJ, Jack Smith, Judge Aileen Cannon, top secret clearances, Trump arraignment in Miami, Trump attorneys |
Happy Arraignment Day!!
There will be lots of cable news talk today and tonight, but there probably won’t be much excitement at Trump’s arraignment. There are pro- and anti- Trump people demonstrating outside, but we’re unlikely to see another January 6.
Odette Yusef at NPR: Trump is calling for support for his court appearance. The far right may stay away.
When former President Donald Trump posted to his Truth Social platform on Friday, “SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY!!!,” the call eerily echoed the tweets with which he summoned his supporters to Washington, D.C., in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021. Then, Trump’s tweet helped to draw tens of thousands to the nation’s capital.
For some, it was interpreted as an invitation to plan and engage in collective violence. But extremism researchers say that this time around, they are not seeing signs of similar, large-scale and detailed planning around Trump’s expected courthouse appearance.
“One of the most striking things that stuck out about January 6 that we’re not seeing now are logistical and tactical maps of buildings, facilities, areas, exit routes,” said Benjamin Decker, CEO of Memetica, a threat intelligence group.
Decker said violent rhetoric on fringe platforms such as far-right Telegram channels, 4chan, Gab, Truth Social, Gettr and Patriots.win has spiked since Trump’s indictment last week. He said it has been particularly concerning to see some of this language targeting Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith. But he said the appetite to participate in a mass, in-person event is muted.
“There is a lot of paranoia among Trump supporters about getting arrested,” he said. “And the cost of arrest and potential jail time, that’s still going to deter people … who may be on the fence about being there to exercise their First Amendment rights or being there to participate in mob violence.”
On Monday, a rally in Miami organized by former Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomer seemed to attract more reporters than participants.
Jared Holt, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said a handful of other groups appeared to be organizing rallies for Tuesday at the courthouse. But he noted they were attracting skepticism from doubters who accuse the organizers of setting up a “false flag” or federal honeypot trap intended to arrest Trump supporters.
So if there is any violence this afternoon, it will probably be from lone wolves, not organized groups. Let’s hope things stay peaceful.
This is from David Kurtz’s Morning Memo at TPM.
I wonder who is televising the speech? I’m going to give that a miss and just look at the clips on Twitter.
Also from the Morning Memo, a discussion of how Trump is reacting to getting his comeuppance: fantasizing about revenge.
The organizing principle of Trump’s re-election campaign first became apparent back in March with his chilling “I am your retribution” speech at CPAC.
I keep coming back to this theme because it animates so much of his rhetoric and has been adopted in both obvious and subtle ways by his closest adherents, and because it poses perhaps the most dire threat to the rule of law if Trump is re-elected.
I bring it back up today because his revenge fantasy is ripening and deepening in alarming ways.
In the immediate aftermath of his indictment in the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump has returned it to the forefront of his own rhetoric, and it’s being picked up again by his boosters. A few of the most egregious examples:
— Trump warned Monday that if re-elected he will name a special prosecutor to “go after” Joe Biden and his family.
“I WILL APPOINT A REAL SPECIAL “PROSECUTOR” TO GO AFTER THE MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE USA, JOE BIDEN, THE ENTIRE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY, & ALL OTHERS INVOLVED WITH THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR ELECTIONS, BORDERS, & COUNTRY ITSELF!”
— Trump has targeted Special Counsel Jack Smith’s wife, an echo of what he previously did to deputy FBI Director Andrew McCable’s wife….
By this point, I feel sure you know the many levels these attacks play at: They effectively cow investigators and prosecutors by raising the price and the pain of enforcing the law against him; they keep everyone involved in holding him accountable looking over their shoulders at what happens if Trump wins in 2024; they unleash the less stable and more deranged among us against Trump’s perceived enemies; they are the rallying cry not just for his supporters at election time but for his appointees and subordinates and acolytes throughout government at the local, state and federal level.
Trump’s revenge fantasy – his stated desire to abuse the powers of the office to inflict pain on those who oppose him – is now more toxic, pervasive, and sinister than at any point in his presidency. It is the rocket fuel to his quickening lurch toward fascism, not only because it appeals to his strongman tendencies, but because now as he faces criminal charges on multiple fronts it is inextricably a part of protecting and preserving his own liberty.
Trump is an increasingly desperate man, and he’s telling us exactly what he will do.
In other words, it’s going to get really ugly.
As Dakinikat posted yesterday, pro-Trump Judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon is still assigned to the trial, even though she’s not handling the arraignment. The New York Times’ Charlie Savage has a piece on how Cannon cold screw things up for the DOJ: How a Trump-Appointed Judge Could Influence His Documents Case.
Jack Smith, the special counsel handling the documents investigation into former President Donald J. Trump, vowed to seek “a speedy trial.” But that will be up to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who will wield considerable power over its calendar, evidence and jury.
Last year, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, briefly disrupted the documents investigation by issuing rulings favorable to him when he challenged the F.B.I.’s search of his Florida club and estate, Mar-a-Lago, before a conservative appeals court ruled that she never had legal authority to intervene.
It remains to be seen how she will handle her second turn in the spotlight. The scope of her role before the trial also is unclear: She is not presiding over Mr. Trump’s initial hearing on Tuesday, and could refer some pretrial motions to a magistrate judge who works under her. But here is a closer look at how her decisions as the judge presiding over the trial — like on what can be included and excluded — could affect the case.
First, she could slow the case down by supporting Trump’s pointless motions. Another problem will be how she handles the classified documents:
Before the trial begins, there is almost certain to be extensive fights behind closed doors over the use of classified evidence, a matter governed by the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA. The law was intended to reduce the opportunities for so-called graymail in criminal cases involving national security, in which defendants threaten to expose sensitive secrets unless prosecutors drop charges against them.
One potential issue: whether the government has to publicly expose all 31 classified documents that are the basis of the 31 counts against Mr. Trump for illegally retaining national-security secrets. Their contents are key evidence for whether they qualify as the type of information protected by the Espionage Act.
CIPA establishes court procedures to sometimes shield sensitive information from the public, including by redacting some documents or substituting summaries. But defense lawyers can argue that they need to discuss their full contents in open court for the trial to be fair.
Read more about this aspect at the link. Another issue could be the attorney-client privilege decisions that have already been decided by a federal judge:
During the investigation, Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the exception applied, forcing Mr. Trump’s lawyers to provide information to the grand jury. But Judge Cannon is not bound by Judge Howell’s decisions when it comes to what information should be presented to a jury.
During pretrial motions, if Mr. Trump’s lawyers ask Judge Cannon to suppress the evidence to protect attorney-client privilege and she does so, prosecutors could appeal — but that would further delay the case.
Other issues discussed in the article: Trump team claims of “prosecutorial misconduct,” jury selection decisions, ‘Rule 29’ Motions to Acquit, and the possibility of a hung jury. Read more details at the NYT link.
Judge Cannon could still recuse herself, but that’s probably unlikely. It will be interesting to see how the DOJ deals with her.
One serious problem for Trump is that he is having a hard time finding lawyers to defend him. Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Trump finds no new lawyers for court appearance in Mar-a-Lago case.
Donald Trump is expected to be represented at his first court appearance to face federal criminal charges for retaining national security materials and obstruction of justice by two of his existing lawyers, despite trying to recruit a local Florida lawyer willing to join his legal defense team.
The lawyers making an appearance with Trump on Tuesday will be the top former federal prosecutor Todd Blanche and the former Florida solicitor general Chris Kise, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump’s co-defendant, his valet Walt Nauta, will be represented by Stanley Woodward.
Trump and his legal team spent the afternoon before his arraignment interviewing potential lawyers but the interviews did not result in any joining the team in time for Trump’s initial court appearance scheduled for 3pm ET on Tuesday after several attorneys declined to take him as a client.
Trump has also seemingly been unable to find a specialist national security lawyer, eligible to possess a security clearance, to help him navigate the Espionage Act charges….
After interviewing a slate of potential lawyers at his Trump Doral resort, the former president settled on having Kise appearing as the local counsel admitted to the southern district of Florida as a one-off, with Blanche being sponsored by him to appear pro hac vice, one of the people said.
Here are the attorneys who turned Trump down.
Among the Florida lawyers who turned down Trump was Howard Srebnick, who had expressed an interest in representing the former president at trial as early as last week in part due to the high fees involved, but ultimately was not allowed to after conferring with his law partners, the person said.
The other prominent lawyer who declined to work with Trump was David Markus, who recently defended the Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum against charges that he lied to the FBI and funnelled campaign contributions into his personal accounts, the person said.
Trump and his team have interviewed the corruption attorney Benedict Kuehne, who was indicted in 2008 for money laundering before the charges were dropped, the person said. But he has his own baggage as he faces disbarment for contempt of court in a recent civil suit he lost.
The other interviews are understood to have been with William Barzee, as well as Bruce Zimet, the former chief assistant US attorney in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.
Hugo Lowell notes that lawyers are concerned about his reputation for being a nightmare client and their concerns that defending Trump could damage their own reputations. They also have to be aware that Trump has lied to and manipulated his attorneys.
Trump is said to still be searching for a lawyer in the mold of Roy Cohn, the ruthless New York fixer who defended and mentored him before he was later disbarred – and the fear of potentially being asked to take similar actions has been a persistent issue.
That fear has loomed large for numerous lawyers Trump’s advisers have contacted, the people said, in particular after Trump might have made Evan Corcoran, another former lawyer who withdrew from his defense in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation, into a witness against him.
Marcy Wheeler has a post at Emptywheel about Trump’s need for a lawyer who has or would be able to obtain top secret clearance: Trump Needs Cleared Lawyers, Not Just Any Lawyers.
Trump needs cleared attorneys, and he should (finally) have the lawyers with Espionage Act experience that might have minimized some of the risk he currently faces.
When courts deal with classified documents like this one will, the judge does not need clearance. (This is a separation of powers issue; members of Congress similarly don’t need clearance.) But the lawyers do. At least one and preferably three of Trump’s lawyers will need to be cleared at the elevated levels the FBI Agents who did the search of Mar-a-Lago had to be read into to even conduct the search. As it was, Trusty was Trump’s only attorney with clearance, and he just split.
Not all lawyers want to go through the trouble of getting clearance. Some — possibly including Chris Kise, was a registered agent for Venezuela in recent years — may not be able to get cleared at that level.
Donald Trump’s trouble finding legal representation is no longer simply the comedy of self-destructiveness it has been for years. Starting today (or shortly thereafter), there will be new obligations and exposures for lawyers representing him.
Trump’s search for a lawyer is not just about finding people who are members of the bar in SDFL. He also needs to find lawyers who are willing to put their security clearance and their reputations at risk on a case where Trump has already been wildly misleading his attorneys.
In this post, Marcy also addresses in detail the ways in which he has lost lawyers by misleading and lying to them, as well as asking them to do illegal things. Read all about it at the link.
More interesting stories to check out
Sam Brodey at The Daily Beast: Dems Have a Trump Indictment Strategy: Shut Your Damn Mouth.
The New York Times: How Trump Plans to Beat His Indictment, Politically.
Barbara McQuade at MSNBC: New indictment proves Trump is a triple threat to national security.
Eric Levitz at New York Magazine: The DOJ Went Easy on Trump for Political Reasons.
Geraldine DeRuiter at The Washington Post: We need to talk about Trump’s bathroom chandelier.
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Posted: June 10, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump | Tags: Civil War, DOJ, Indictments of Trump and Nauta, MAGA crazies, national security, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Walt Nauta |
Happy Caturday!!
Greek Kitties, by Timothy Adam Matthews
Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin today. What is happening in U.S. politics right now is beyond anything we have ever experienced as a country, with the exception of the Civil War.
A former president of the U.S. tried to overthrow his own government in order to prevent a transition to a new president after he lost an election. He incited an attempted coup; and when that failed, he tried to overthrow the results of presidential votes in several states.
Finally, when all that failed to keep him in office, he stole hundreds of government documents and stored them in his private club in locations in which all kinds of people could have access to them. He displayed some of the documents to people without clearance to see them and, for all we know, could have given classified information to other countries.
It’s simply breathtaking.
Now the former president has been indicted for serious crimes, and his political party is still supporting him and vowing revenge on our most important institutions. Could it get any worse? The answer is yes, of course it could. He could end up winning his party’s 2024 nomination and being elected president again, even if he is in prison by that time.
So that’s where we stand right now. I’ll share some reads, but there is no way I have the time or space to include everything that’s out there.
First, here is a pdf of the indictment, if you’d like to read it. And here is an annotated version by Charlie Savage at the New York Times: The Trump Classified Documents Indictment, Annotated.
I think this description of the situation we are in by Tom Nichols at The Atlantic is very good. I could only read it in my email, because I’m not a subscriber. The title: Trump’s Indictment Reveals a National-Security Nightmare.
The charges—38 of them—are a big deal. And before the GOP gaslighting reaches supernova levels, let’s also bear in mind that what Trump actually did is a big deal too. He claimed that he declassified, by fiat, boxes of classified information, and then appears to have left all of that material sitting in ballrooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms. To this day, he insists that he had every right to do whatever he wanted with America’s secrets. Fortunately, the court has unsealed the indictment, because Americans need to know, and care, about the magnitude of Trump’s alleged offenses.
To understand the severity of the charges against Trump, consider a thought experiment: Imagine that Vladimir Putin is one day driven from the Kremlin, perhaps in a coup or in the face of a popular revolt. He jumps into his limousine and heads for self-imposed exile in a remote dacha. His trunk is full of secret documents that he decided belong to him, including details of the Russian nuclear deterrent and Russia’s military weaknesses.
Now imagine how valuable those boxes would be to any intelligence organization in the world. I spent the early years of my career analyzing Soviet and Russian documents as an academic Sovietologist, and I would have loved to see such materials. Small, seemingly trivial details—something as innocuous as a desk calendar or a notepad—might not mean much to a layperson, but to a professional, they could be pure gold. To get even a peek at such Russian materials would be an intelligence triumph.
By Timothy Adams Matthews
But of course, I would never have been able to lay my hands on them, because a cache of such immense importance, if U.S. operatives spirited any of it out of Russia, would have been secured in a vault somewhere deep in the CIA. Trump, meanwhile, left highly sensitive American documents lying around at a golf resort like practice balls on the driving range. According to the indictment:
“The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP’s presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club—including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.”
Actually, it might be harder to steal practice balls. “The Storage Room,” the indictment notes, “was near the liquor supply closet, linen room, lock shop, and various other rooms.” These are not exactly low-traffic areas. Worse yet, the indictment asserts that Trump had some of these documents at his club in New Jersey, where he showed files to people who had no business seeing them. (One of them, according to the indictment, was something Trump claimed was a plan of attack on a foreign country prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official.)
If you can access The Atlantic website, you can read more, but I think that is a good summary of the seriousness of what this country is facing.
Here are a some long reads that address various aspects of the Trump indictment and it’s possible effects on U.S. politics and national security.
For more details on the national security situation, read this piece at Just Security: National Security Implications of Trump’s Indictment: A Damage Assessment.
At The Washington Post, Rachael Weiner writes about the specific charges: Here are the 37 charges against Trump and what they mean.
One of my least favorite New York Times writers, Peter Baker, evaluates what the indictment means for President Biden and the U.S. justice system: Trump’s Case Puts the Justice System on Trial, in a Test of Public Credibility. Why am I not surprised that this is what Baker chose to write about? Still, it’s worth considering.
More helpful reads, with excerpts:
John Gerstein at Politico: The startling, damning details in the Trump indictment.
Classified documents found in a shower. A clumsy effort to move boxes and hide them from the FBI. A damaging admission, caught on tape. And Donald Trump’s own public statements, used against him.
Those are some of the details in the indictment charging Trump and a longtime aide with an extraordinary scheme to hoard national secrets that Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving the White House.
Here are some of the most notable revelations.
By Timothy Adam Matthews
Showing off military plans
On at least two occasions after leaving office, Trump displayed classified documents to others visiting him at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, the indictment alleges. In July 2021, Trump showed a writer, a publisher and two staff members a “plan of attack” that he said had been prepared for him by the U.S. military, the charges say. The audio-recorded meeting reportedly involved a document that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley drafted about Iran.
Trump allegedly made a potentially damning admission at that session, saying he could have declassified the document while he was president but “now I can’t.”
A longtime aide turned co-conspirator
Trump isn’t the only person facing criminal charges over the classified documents fiasco: His longtime aide and “body man,” Walt Nauta, was also hit with six felony counts including obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI. The indictment says Trump instructed Nauta to move boxes containing classified documents in order to conceal them from both Trump’s own lawyers and the FBI.
Prosecutors accused Nauta of lying months ago and pressured him to cooperate in the investigation, a source familiar with the situation told POLITICO, but the charges unsealed Friday indicate that he and prosecutors didn’t come to terms on a deal – at least not yet.
Classified docs in a bathroom
The indictment says that Mar-a-Lago was a particularly vulnerable location for the classified documents because it’s “an active social club [that] hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests” – a far cry from the closely guarded “sensitive compartmented information facility,” or SCIF, that is typically used to store the most sensitive national security secrets.
Trump has railed at the FBI for spreading classified documents across the floor of a closet during a search of Mar-a-Lago last August. But prosecutors say Trump’s own storage of the documents was just as sloppy. The indictment says some of the classified records at Mar-a-Lago were stored in “a ballroom, a bathroom and shower [and] his bedroom.”
Spilling secrets, literally
Other details from the indictment emphasize the haphazard nature with which sensitive government documents were strewn around the estate. The indictment alleges that, on at least one occasion in December 2021, boxes containing a mix of classified and unclassified records “spilled onto the floor” of a storage room. Helpfully for prosecutors, Nauta allegedly texted a photo of the scene to another Trump aide.
One of the documents, classified “Secret” and marked for release only to U.S. officials and close allies, discussed “military capabilities of a foreign country,” the indictment says.
More at the link
The Daily Beast: Photographic Proof: Feds Found Boxes of Classified Docs All Over Mar-a-Lago.
The 37-count indictment accusing Donald Trump of illegally hoarding classified documents used a wealth of surveillance footage, private conversations, employees’ text messages, audio-taped meetings, and witness statements to make a damning case.
But the 44-page document also included a half-dozen images of the documents themselves, stacked in boxes next to a toilet, spilling out onto the floor of a storage room, and piled up in rows on the stage of a ballroom at Trump’s resort in South Florida….
In one exchange outlined in the indictment and backed up with a photograph, Trump employees discussed moving some of Trump’s boxes of documents out of a Mar-a-Lago business center and into a bathroom instead so staff could use the business center as an office.
“Woah!! Ok so potus specifically asked Walt for those boxes to be in the business center because they are his ‘papers,’” one Trump employee texted to another, referencing Walt Nauta.
The two employees then went back and forth discussing what they could move to storage. “There is still a little room in the shower where his other stuff is,” one employee texted. “Is it only his papers he cares about? Theres some other stuff in there that are not papers. Could that go to storage? Or does he want everything in there on property.”
“Yes,” the second employee responds. “Anything that’s not the beautiful mind paper boxes can definitely go to storage.”
In another instance in May 2021, Trump told staff to move some of his boxes to a storage room, the indictment says. Images show the boxes stacked up in the storage room as well as a hallway leading to the room that prosecutors say could easily be reached from Mar-a-Lago’s pool patio. The storage room was right next to a liquor supply closet and a linen room.
In December 2021, Trump’s personal aide, Walt Nauta, found that some of those 80 boxes had fallen over and their contents spilled out on the floor.
Among the papers scattered around the storage room were, according to the indictment, a document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA//FVEY” which denoted information releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
You might want to read what Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel has to say about the indictment: The Mar-a-Lago Indictment is a Tactical Nuke.
I’ve become convinced that what I will call the Mar-a-Lago indictment — because I doubt this will be the only stolen documents one — is a tactical nuke: A massive tool, but simply a tactical one.
As I’ve laid out, it charges 31 counts of Espionage Act violations, each carrying a 10-year sentence and most sure to get enhancements for how sensitive the stolen documents are, as well as seven obstruction-related charges, four of which carry 20-year sentences. The obstruction-related charges would group at sentencing (meaning they’d really carry 20 year sentence total), but Espionage Act charges often don’t and could draw consecutive sentences: meaning Trump could be facing a max sentence of 330 years. Walt Nauta is really facing 20 years max — though probably around three or four years.
New York Kitty, by Timothy Adam Matthews
Obviously, Trump won’t serve a 330 year sentence, not least because Trump is mortal, already 76, and has eaten far too many burgers in his life.
For his part, Nauta should look on the bright side! He has not, yet, been charged with 18 USC 793(g), conspiring with Trump to hoard all those classified documents, though the overt acts in count 32, the conspiracy to obstruct count, would certainly fulfill the elements of offense of a conspiracy to hoard classified documents. If Nauta were to be charged under 793(g), he too would be facing a veritable life sentence, all for helping his boss steal the nation’s secrets. And for Nauta, who is in his 40s and healthy enough to lug dozens of boxes around Trump’s beach resort, that life sentence would last a lot longer than it would for Trump.
And that’s something to help understand how this is tactical.
I first started thinking that might be true when I saw Jack Smith’s statement.
He emphasized:
- A grand jury in Florida voted out the indictment
- The gravity of the crimes
- The talent and ethics of his prosecutors
- That Trump and Walt Nauta are presumed innocent
- He will seek a Speedy Trial
- A Florida jury will hear this case
- The dedication of FBI Agents
He packed a lot in fewer than three minutes, but the thing that surprised me was his promise for a Speedy Trial. He effectively said he wants to try this case, charging 31 counts of the Espionage Act, within 70 days.
That means the trial would start around August 20, and last — per one of the filings in the docket — 21 days, through mid-September. While all the other GOP candidates were on a debate stage, Trump would be in South Florida, watching as his closest aides described how he venally refused to give boxes and boxes of the nation’s secrets back.
There’s not a chance in hell that will happen, certainly not for Trump. Even if Trump already had at least three cleared attorneys with experience defending Espionage Act cases, that wouldn’t happen, because the CIPA process for this case, the fight over what classified evidence would be available and how it would be presented at trial, would last at least six months. And as of yesterday, he has just one lawyer on this case, Todd Blanche, who is also defending Trump in the New York State case.
There’s much more to read and think about at the link. Her main point seems to be that Smith wants to convince Walt Nauta to testify against Trump.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman: Who Is Walt Nauta, the Other Person Indicted Along With Trump?
Walt Nauta, the only other person indicted along with former President Donald J. Trump, has been serving as his personal aide after previously working for him in the White House.
A native of Guam, Mr. Nauta enlisted in the military at some point and was a military aide working as a White House valet while Mr. Trump was president.
The valets in the White House have unusual proximity to the commander in chief, encountering them at moments of vulnerability, including at meals and on foreign trips.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta forged a bond during the Trump administration, and when the term ended, Mr. Nauta retired and went to go work for Mr. Trump personally.
A Closer Look, by Timothy Adam Matthews
He was one of the very few members of Mr. Trump’s post-presidential office when Mr. Trump first returned to private life at his club, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla. There, Mr. Nauta resumed the kind of personal chores that he had helped Mr. Trump with while he was president.
Mr. Nauta has been seen as deeply loyal to Mr. Trump by other aides.
But he attracted the attention of the government for his appearance on security camera footage from the club, which was subpoenaed by prosecutors, moving boxes in and out of a basement storage room after a grand jury subpoena.
In interviews with government officials, according to the indictment, he gave false testimony about whether he had moved boxes to Mr. Trump’s residence earlier in the year. In reality, according to the indictment, Mr. Nauta brought several boxes to Mr. Trump’s residence from the storage room at a time when National Archives officials were seeking the return of presidential material, but he told investigators he didn’t.
Read the rest at the NYT.
As I’m sure you know, Republicans in the House are vociferously defending Trump. For example:
Insider: Trump’s defenders have launched a plan months in the making that ignores the substance of the indictment while attacking the credibility of federal prosecutors.
Former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges of mishandling classified documents is set to play out in a federal court in Florida. But hundreds of miles away, part of Trump’s defense is well underway in a different venue — the halls of Congress, where Republicans have been preparing for months to wage an aggressive counter-offensive against the Justice Department.
The federal indictment against Trump, unsealed Friday, includes 37 counts, including allegations that the former president intentionally possessed classified documents, showed them off to visitors, willfully defied Justice Department demands to return them and made false statements to federal authorities about them. The evidence details Trump’s own words and actions as recounted by lawyers, close aides and other witnesses.
The Republican campaign to discredit federal prosecutors skims over the substance of those charges, which were brought by a grand jury in Florida. GOP lawmakers are instead working, as they have for several years, to foster a broader argument that law enforcement — and President Joe Biden — are conspiring against the former president and possible Republican nominee for president in 2024.
“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America,” tweeted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, soon after Trump said on his social media platform Thursday night that an indictment was coming. McCarthy blamed Biden, who has declined to comment on the case and said he is not at all involved in the Justice Department’s decisions.
Republicans “will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”
Republican lawmakers in the House have already laid extensive groundwork for the effort to defend Trump since taking the majority in January. A near constant string of hearings featuring former FBI agents, Twitter executives and federal officials have sought to paint the narrative of a corrupt government using its powers against Trump and the right. A GOP-led House subcommittee on the “weaponization” of government is probing the Justice Department and other government agencies, while at the same time Republicans are investigating Biden’s son Hunter Biden.
“It’s a sad day for America,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, a leading Trump defender and ally in the House, said in a statement on Thursday evening. “God bless President Trump.”
And of course, the MAGA crazies are calling for civil war.
Tim Dickenson at Rolling Stone: Trump Extremists Demand Civil War, Mass Murder After New Indictment.
EXTREME SUPPORTERS OF Donald Trump have met news of his federal indictment with visions of violence and retribution.
At The Donald, a forum for ultra-MAGA Trump supporters, users demanded public executions and other forms of lynching to avenge the federal prosecution of Trump, for the alleged mishandling of state secrets at Mar a Lago after he was no longer president.
By Timothy Adam Matthews
The calls for violence appeared in comment threads, responding to posts on the front page of the forum Thursday night, after news broke of Trump’s latest legal troubles. The most extreme comments were written in response to a fanciful post insisting “the only solution” to DOJ’s efforts to lock up Trump would be to vote him back into the presidency, so Trump could “pardon himself and begin arresting those guilty of insurrection and sedition.”
A user named “Belac186” offered a far deadlier fix: “The only way this country ever becomes anything like the Constitution says this country should be is if thousands of traitorous rats are publicly executed.” Commenter “DogFaceKilla” quickly chimed in to offer supplies: “I got some rope somewhere in the garage…” And “Heavy_Metal_Patriot” added: “Hans says we can borrow the flammenwerfer” — a reference to a battlefield flame thrower used to by German soldiers in World War II.
The proposal for mass killing struck user “BlackPilledMAGA” as going too far: “Doesn’t have to be thousands, just a few dozen would do. Shit would STOP immediately.” But user “Nerdrem1” insisted taking out a few elites wouldn’t make the difference, suggesting the number of dead required was on a genocidal scale: “Millions. The real problem is the people that vote for them, as long as they exist the problem can’t be solved.” A user named “Heavy_Metal_Patriot” concurred: “Correct.”
It might be tempting to dismiss these calls for mass murder as loose talk among angry MAGAdonians. Yet there is dark history here. In a previous iteration, The Donald was used to help plot and promote the violence at the Capitol in 2021, as detailed in the final report of the House Jan. 6 Committee, including by users who “openly discussed surrounding and occupying the U.S. Capitol.”
More insanity at the link.
Daniel Gilbert at Vice: ‘We Need to Start Killing’: Trump’s Far-Right Supporters Are Threatening Civil War.
In what is becoming a now all-too-familiar trend, former President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters have threatened civil war after news broke Thursday that the former president was indicted for allegedly taking classified documents from the White House without permission.
“We need to start killing these traitorous fuckstains,” wrote one Trump supporter on The Donald, a rabidly pro-Trump message board that played a key role in planning the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Another user added: “It’s not gonna stop until bodies start stacking up. We are not civilly represented anymore and they’ll come for us next. Some of us, they already have.” [….]
Trump supporters are making specific threats too. In one post on The Donald titled, “A little bit about Merrick Garland, his wife, his daughters,” a user shared a link to an article about the attorney general’s children.
Under the post, another user replied: “His children are fair game as far as I’m concerned.”
In a post about the special counsel conducting the probe, one user on The Donald wrote: “Jack Smith should be arrested the minute he steps foot in the red state of Florida.”
In addition to threats of violence against lawmakers and politicians, many were also calling for a civil war.
“Perhaps it’s time for that Civil War that the damn DemoKKKrats have been trying to start for years now,” a member of The Donald wrote. Another, referencing former President Barack Obama and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said: “FACT: OUR FOREFATHERS WOULD HAVE HUNG THESE TWO FOR TREASON…”
More crazy at the link.
That’s just a sampling of what’s out there in the media today. What do you think? What stories have caught your attention?
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