Finally Friday Reads: The American Triumvirate is Underwater

Posted: February 21, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: democracy is threatened, Diplomacy Nightmares, Elon Musk, executive orders, executive privilege, FARTUS, kakistocracy | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

“The latest retaliatory executive order.” @repeat1968 John Buss

Good Morning, Sky Dancers!

I usually check polls pretty carefully whenever they are presented by reliable pollsters.  It’s because folks generally read too much into one observation. It’s really just a snapshot of the current moment. When you start to see coverage of multiple polls or many polls that provide the same results, and the results point to black swan events and are outside the margin of error, I pay attention.  I follow the Consumer Confidence Index, an index of how folks feel about the economy and their well-being.  It’s been continually polled for some time, and the snapshots have consistently predicted whether folks will spend or hunker down.

“The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® declined by 5.4 points in January to 104.1 (1985=100). December’s reading was revised up by 4.8 points to 109.5 but was still down 3.3 points from the previous month. The Present Situation Index—based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions—fell sharply in January, dropping 9.7 points to 134.3. The Expectations Index—based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions—fell 2.6 points to 83.9, but remained above the threshold of 80 that usually signals a recession ahead. The cutoff date for preliminary results was January 20, 2025.

“Consumer confidence has been moving sideways in a relatively stable, narrow range since 2022. January was no exception. The Index weakened for a second straight month, but still remained in that range, even if in the lower part,” said Dana M. Peterson, Chief Economist at The Conference Board. “All five components of the Index deteriorated but consumers’ assessments of the present situation experienced the largest decline. Notably, views of current labor market conditions fell for the first time since September, while assessments of business conditions weakened for the second month in a row. Meanwhile, consumers were also less optimistic about future business conditions and, to a lesser extent, income. The return of pessimism about future employment prospects seen in December was confirmed in January.”

The latest numbers on Consumer Sentiment, another poll of consumer intent, were reported today by Reuters. “US consumer sentiment plunges in February on tariff worries.”  I’m glad to see that so many folks have finally figured out that tariffs are paid by the consumers.  This is another set of polling of American households.  The more these separate pollings converge, the more you can take stock of their numbers.

 U.S. consumer sentiment dropped more than expected in February to a 15-month low and inflation expectations rocketed as households worried that President Donald Trump’s plans for steep and broad-based tariffs would eat into their purchasing power.

The University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers on Friday said its Consumer Sentiment Index dropped to 64.7 from January’s revised final reading of 71.7. The reading, the lowest since November 2023, was lower than the preliminary reading of 67.8, which was also the consensus expectation among economists polled by Reuters.

Meanwhile households saw inflation over the next year surging to 4.3% – the highest since November 2023 – from 3.3% last month. That was unchanged from the preliminary reading two weeks ago.

Over the next five years households saw inflation running at 3.5% – the highest since 1995 – compared with 3.2% in January. That was up from the preliminary reading two weeks ago for 3.3%.

So, since I follow the variables that influence people, like prices or job market expectations, I can usually eke out some valuable information.  However, it’s still difficult to draw a line between the association of the variables and direct causality.  Political polls are a different animal because the poll questions are fixed and the variables defined, but there is a lot more subtlety in the responses because of hidden preferences, so they vary a lot more. However, you can see when a poll is an outlier if it’s been consistently applied over time.  The latest polls for FARTUS, Elonia, and JDank are historically bad. And yes, they’re polling for Musk because we’re basically being ruled by a Triumvirate.  So far, there’s no polling on the Shadow Minister over there in Russia.

Rachel Maddow focused on this last night. It was seriously shocking. This is from The Daily Beast.  She holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Oxford, so I know she knows polls and statistics even though the MSNBC point man on this is Steve Kornacki. “Even Rachel Maddow Is Surprised by Trump’s Historically Bad Approval Ratings. “Nobody has ever started off a presidential term this poorly in the eyes of the American people,” the MSNBC anchor explained.” So, yes, it’s special.  This summary was written by William Vaillancourt.

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow said Thursday that Donald Trump’s historically poor approval ratings for a newly inaugurated president are “sinking like a cinderblock in the ocean” due to the unpopularity of many of his policies.

Last month, Trump again became the only elected president with an initial approval rating of under 50 percent. Additionally, his disapproval rating in January of 48 percent was 3 points higher than in the beginning of his first term.

Currently, Trump’s approval rating is 45 percent—2points below his January mark. “We probably should have seen this coming,” Maddow said.

“I didn’t necessarily believe that it was coming this far, this fast,” she added, before showing the data from Gallup.

“Nobody has ever started off a presidential term this poorly in the eyes of the American people,” Maddow emphasized. “Trump was underwater with the American public from Day One. And since then, he’s been sinking like a cinderblock in an ocean trench. I did not know to expect that.”

“To be fair, part of the reason I’d expected that that Gallup number might go up and not down is because Gallup is not the only game in town. There were other national, well-regarded quality polls that came out right at the start of Trump’s term that did show him in positive territory—not big positive territory—but still positive,” she explained.

But those other polls,like from CNN, Reuters and Washington Post/Ipsos, grew bad for Trump as well.

“And what the data shows is that almost every single thing he has done is soundly and clearly and—in some cases—wildly unpopular with the American people,” Maddow continued, citing a Quinnipiac poll from last week showing Trump underwater on foreign policy, trade, the federal workforce, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war and the economy.

Turning to Trump’s “signature issues,” or “the stuff that he thinks makes him look great,” Maddow noted he’s losing public opinion there as well.

“For those categories, the stuff he’s doing is catastrophically unpopular,” she said, pointing to Trump’s plan for the U.S. to take control of Gaza, his dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies, his institution of tariffs, and him saying he trusts Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On that last issue, the same Quinnipiac poll found that only 9 percent of registered voters held Trump’s view.

Maddow noted that other Trump administration figures like DOGE’s Elon Musk, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Vice President JD Vance don’t have positive approval ratings, either.

“All of them are underwater in the new polling,” she said. “The American public does not like any of them.”

Politico focused on the polling for Elon Musk, which was terrible. “Musk underwater in public opinion, 2 polls show. Both Quinnipiac and Pew Research Center reported a majority of voters hold an unfavorable view of Musk’s role in the Trump administration.”

Elon Musk is underwater in public opinion, according to polls published Wednesday.

The surveys by Quinnipiac University and Pew Research Center show that a majority of Americans have an unfavorable view of President Donald Trump’s senior adviser — and the richest man in the world.

Pew’s findings put Musk 12 points under, with 54 percent of respondents reporting an unfavorable view of the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, compared to 42 percent with a favorable view. More specifically, 36 percent reported a very unfavorable view of Musk, and 11% reported a very favorable opinion.

Broken down by party lines, Musk was well-regarded among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents at 73 percent favorability. But far more Democrats disapprove than Republicans, with 85 percent reporting an unfavorable view. Pew did not do a breakdown of only independent voters.

Quinnipiac’s poll results Monday paint a similar picture, but with different questions. 55 percent of voters polled believe Musk has too big a role in the government, compared to 36 percent who think he’s got just enough power and a small minority of 3 percent who said they think he has too little power. This also breaks down by party lines, with 78 percent of Republicans surveyed saying Musk’s power is just right versus 96 percent of Democrats who said they think he has too much.

Of the independent voters polled, 56 percent said they thought Musk has too much power, versus 33 percent who said he has the right amount and 4 percent who think he needs more.

“That didn’t take long. “Russia, Russia, Russia” is back!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Grassroots Republicans are actually getting mad at the Republicans who are not standing up to the Triumvirate.  Senators and Representatives are hearing from their Constituents. This is reported by Raw Story’s Matthew Chapman. “‘Stand up for us!’ Republican shouted down as he defends DOGE cuts at town hall.”

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) tried to tout massive federal spending cuts proposed by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency task force at a town hall in his heavily Republican district on Thursday evening — and attendees let him have it.

Most constituents who turned up at the packed-house event, laid out by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein in a series of posts to X, appeared angry over Musk’s takeover, and more broadly the Trump administration’s attempt to control spending powers. One woman shouted at him that Congress controls the budget, “not the president.”

“And you are doing us a disservice to set that down and not stand up for us,” she yelled.

When McCormick tried to sideline the comment, saying it was being “litigated,” the crowd erupted in anger.

He received similar shout-downs while proposing “bipartisan” ideas to cut the budget, and when he doubled down on his comments from last month that teens in school should not be entitled to lunches and take jobs at McDonald’s rather than “sponge off the government.”

“We’ll have to disagree,” he said as the crowd roared.

The whole spectacle drew a wide reaction from commenters on social media.

“After getting booed for defending DOGE cuts, McCormick (a Republican from Georgia) is trying to sell the constituents at his town hall on cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” wrote Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff to Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA). “It’s going about how you’d expect.”

NEW: U.S. consumer sentiment plunges—down 10% from January over tariff and inflation fears.Most people I know think the economy is cooked thanks to Trump’s policies—designed to help the rich and screw working folks.He’s not doing shit to fix the economy or lower costs. Just broken promises.

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) 2025-02-21T15:47:44.712Z

This year’s CPAC gathering was more odious than usual.  Musk’s weirdness and substance abuse were on full display. This is from The Verge.   Sarah Jeong has the coverage.  “I cannot describe how strange Elon Musk’s CPAC appearance was. So here’s a literal transcript instead.”  I’ve chosen to clip the entrance description for you.

Schmitt: How you guys doing? Nice vibe this month, right? After the best month we’ve ever had. Nice to see you. Thanks for coming out. It’s good to see you. Let’s not kill any more time, let’s bring out Elon Musk.

Crowd goes wild. Elon Musk enters stage, pumping both fists high in the air, walking slightly unsteadily. He is wearing a black MAGA baseball cap and sunglasses that look like they were bought in a gas station in 1989. He continues to pump his fists as he makes his way in front of the beige armchairs at the front of the stage. Rob Schmitt attempts to get his attention, but he turns and waves at the crowd.

Schmitt: We’ve got one more surprise, in case this wasn’t enough.

Musk: Well, President, uh, President Milei has a gift for me.

Schmitt: [hamming at camera] Javier Milei from Argentina, you guys know who that is, right?

Milei, a friendly-looking figure who resembles Bilbo Baggins right before he Smeagolifies, enters the stage carrying a chainsaw. He presents the chainsaw to the billionaire, who then waves it around unsteadily.

Musk: This… is… the chainsaw for bureaucracy. [pumps the chainsaw in the air] CHAINSAAAW!

He takes a beat to examine the chainsaw. He is still wearing his sunglasses. He turns around and starts wandering to the other side of the stage, waving the chainsaw around.

Musk: Uwaaauwaargh!

Milei lurks awkwardly in the background, trying to wave goodbye to Musk, before Schmitt takes notice.

Bannon’s appearance was so noticeably appalling that “French leader cancels CPAC speech after Bannon’s apparent Nazi salute.” The Europeans must think the entire country is on ketamine.  This is the French leader of the Right Wing party, the National Rally. This is from Axios.

French far-right leader Jordan Bardella canceled planned remarks at CPAC Friday, after ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon made a “gesture referring to Nazi ideology,” according to a statement to French news agency Agence France-Presse.

Why it matters: Bardella’s change of plans is the strongest rebuke yet of Bannon, who, during his remarks at the annual conservative conference made a gesture that appeared to mimic a Hitlergruß, or Nazi salute.

  • Bannon did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.
  • A CPAC representative did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Driving the news: “At this forum, (Thursday), while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers allowed himself, out of provocation, a gesture referring to Nazi ideology,” Bardella said in a statement to AFP.

  • “As a result, I have taken the immediate decision to cancel my speech scheduled for this afternoon at the event.”

The big picture: TheBannon incident comes about a month after Trump-ally Elon Musk also made a hand gesture that drew comparisons to a Nazi salute.

  • Despite blowback, Musk dismissed the criticisms, writing on X: “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

Go deeper: ADL condemns Musk’s Nazi “jokes” after salute controversy

Bannon’s drug abuse must have cleared his memory of the NAZI occupation of France.  Semaphor reports that “Steve Bannon calls France’s far-right leader Jordan Bardella ‘a boy, not a man’ after CPAC cancelation.”  My personal observation is that Bannon and Musk are not even human. Paige Bruton has the details.

Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon said French far-right party leader Jordan Bardella was “unworthy to lead France” because he was “a boy, not a man,” after Bardella canceled his scheduled speech at a conservative political event in Washington.

Bardella, the president of the National Rally party, said he decided to drop out of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) after Bannon “allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology” during his speech there.

“Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers out of provocation allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology,” Bardella said in a statement. “I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon.”

Bannon denied the accusation Friday, saying the gesture was “a wave” that he regularly did at the end of his speeches “to thank the crowd,” including at a National Rally event several years prior. Speaking to a Le Point reporter, Bannon attacked Bardella for the decision to withdraw from CPAC, saying he was “wetting himself like a little child.”

The incident reflects mounting tensions between Trump allies, such as Elon Musk, and Europe’s far-right leaders, some of whom have expressed discomfort with a few of the administration’s positions.

As we appear to be a Russian asset, the big question we all have been asking is, was Trump a Russian Asset the entire time?  This is interesting. If you believe this, he was and definitely is. It is still the best explanation for Trump’s bromance with the dude.

A former Soviet intelligence officer alleges Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov.” Alnur Mussayev served in the 6th Directorate, responsible for counter-intelligence support in the economy. One key objective was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.”

— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) 2025-02-21T16:26:52.263Z

This was reported by The Daily Beast. We’ll have to wait for the fact-checking to start. 

A former Soviet intelligence officer has alleged that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987 and given the codename “Krasnov.”

Alnur Mussayev, 71, a former head of intelligence in Kazakhstan and before that a Soviet KGB officer, made the explosive claim in a Facebook post on Thursday. He claimed that he served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, which was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy. One of its key objectives, he claimed, was “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.”

The allegation revives claims of Russian collusion or even of being a Russian asset which Trump has denounced as “the Russia hoax,” and which dogged his first term in the White House. Even before he was elected, the FBI had secretly opened an investigation into whether his campaign had illegal ties to Russia, which eventually morphed into the Robert Mueller inquiry—which ended without Trump being charged.

Mussayev wrote that in 1987 “our directorate recruited Donald Trump, a 40-year-old American businessman, under the pseudonym Krasnov.” He offered no corroborating evidence, but is a well-known former senior intelligence agent. The Daily Beast has reached out to him for comment.

In his Facebook post, he said that his department specialized in recruiting spies and intelligence sources from the West, asserting once again that Trump had been brought into the fold.

He made another shocking allegation in another comment, saying: “Today, the personal file of resident ‘Krasnov’ has been removed from the FSB. It is being privately managed by one of Putin’s close associates.”

The Russian family name “Krasnov” stems from the Russian word “krasota,” which means beautiful.

The Soviet Union and its KGB fell in 1991, and Mussayev returned to his native Kazakhstan—a former Soviet republic—from Moscow and then rose to run the new nation’s intelligence apparatus. The KGB’s most direct successor was the Russian FSB which kept its Moscow files.

The timing of his intervention is intriguing, coming as Trump seeks to meet Vladimir Putin—himself a former KGB operative—to discuss a possible deal to end the Ukraine war, in the teeth of opposition from the government in Kyiv.

So, I managed to get through a post without writing about what agencies they are disassembling now.  Here are a few other interesting reads for you via Memeorandum.

And then there is this from the AP. (Points up to the Featured Funny today by John Buss.)  “Singer of Canadian anthem at 4 Nations Face-Off changes lyric to protest Trump’s 51st state remarks.”

The anthem singer who performed the Canadian anthem prior to the 4 Nations Face-Off championship game Thursday night changed a lyric in “O Canada” as a response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated remarks about making the country the 51st state.

Publicist Adam Gonshor in an email to The Associated Press confirmed Chantal Kreviazuk changed the lyric from “in all of us command” to “that only us command” and confirmed Trump’s 51st state comments were the reason why. During Canada’s 3-2 overtime victory, Kreviazuk told the AP she did it “because I believe in democracy, and a sovereign nation should not have to be defending itself against tyranny and fascism.”

“I’m somebody who grew up on music that spoke to the heart and the moment, and it shaped me as a songwriter and really as a human being,” she added. “I don’t think it would be authentic to me to be given a world stage and not express myself and be true to myself.”

But in Boston, this happened during the Hockey Finals via NewsWeek. “Video Shows Canadian National Anthem Being Booed in Hockey Final Against US.”

Before the puck was dropped for Thursday’s title game, the announcer prefaced the opening ceremony: “In the spirit of the game, we kindly ask that you respect the national anthems and the players that represent each country.”

Still, some boos and jeers rippled across TD Garden in Boston during the rendition of “O Canada.”

The jeering came days after fans in Montreal loudly booed “The Star-Spangled Banner” during the weekend’s testy matchup between the two teams, which the U.S. won 3-1. Days earlier, hockey fans similarly booed the U.S. national anthem when the American squad played Finland in Montreal.

Trump alluded to his gripes with Canada in a Truth Social post earlier Thursday, saying he would “be calling our GREAT American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State.”

This is crazy.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads

Posted: September 23, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: campaign financing, corporate money, corruption, court rulings, executive privilege, misogyny, Republican politics, Treason and Sedition Republican Style, tRump crimes against humanity, War on Women | 22 Comments

Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea, c. 1809,

Good Day Sky Dancers!

The headlines are filled with Republican Shenanigans. Holding them accountable for illegal actions appears difficult.  This highlights the difference in treatment for everyone else and white men.

The case against Rep. Matt Gaetz has now been considered too difficult to prosecute because all of the witnesses are not upstanding citizens.  What do you expect from a gang of sex traffickers of underage women?  Devlin Barret, writing for The Washington Post, states: “Career prosecutors recommend no charges for Gaetz in the sex-trafficking probe. Investigators see credibility challenges for two of the main witnesses in the probe of the congressman’s past dealings with a 17-year-old.”

Career prosecutors have recommended against charging Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in a long-running sex-trafficking investigation — telling Justice Department superiors that a conviction is unlikely in part because of credibility questions with the two central witnesses, according to people familiar with the matter.

Senior department officials have not made a final decision on whether to charge Gaetz, but it is rare for such advice to be rejected, these people told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. They added that it is always possible additional evidence emerges that could alter prosecutors’ understanding of the case.

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that federal authorities will charge Gaetz with a crime in an investigation that started in late 2020 and focused on his alleged involvement with a 17-year-old girlseveral years earlier. Gaetz,40, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, saying he has never paid for sex. He has also said the only time he had sex with a 17-year-old was when he was also 17.

Chase William Merritt, Idle Hours .1894

The congressman is likely a role model for these guys.  Again, this is from The Washington Post, written by Taylor Lorenz. “The online incel movement is getting more violent and extreme, report says. The Center for Countering Digital Hate analyzed more than 1 million posts showing a rise in advocacy of rape, mass killings.”

The most prominent forum for men who consider themselves involuntarily celibate or “incels” has become significantly more radicalized over the past year and a half and is seeking to normalize child rape, a new report says.

The report, by the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s new Quant Lab, is the culmination of an investigation that analyzed more than 1 million posts on the site. It found a marked spike in conversations about mass murder and growing approval of sexually assaulting prepubescent girls.

The report also says that platforms including YouTube and Google, as well as internet infrastructure companies like Cloudflare are facilitating the growth of the forum, which the report said is visited by 2.6 million people every month. “These businesses should make a principled decision to withdraw their services from sites causing such significant harm,” the report says.

“This is a novel, new violent extremist movement born in the internet age, which defies the usual characteristics of violent extremist movements that law enforcement and the intelligence community are usually used to,” said Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of CCDH, a US-based nonprofit. “Our study shows that it is organized, has a cogent ideology and has clearly concluded that raping women, killing women, and raping children is a clear part of the practice of their ideology.”

Incels blame women for their failings in life. The term originated decades ago, and while the first incel forum was founded by a woman in the mid 1990s, incel communities have since become almost exclusively male. Incel ideology has been linked to dozens of murders and assaults over the past decade, the most prominent one involving Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old self-described incel who murdered six people in a stabbing and shooting rampage in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2014. Before killing himself, he posted a long manifesto and YouTube videos promoting incel ideology.

In March, the U.S. Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center released a report warning that anti-woman violence was a growing terrorism threat.

According to the CCDH analysis, members of the forum post about rape every 29 minutes, and more than 89 percent of posters support rape and say it’s acceptable. The CCDH analysis also found that posters on the forum are seeking to normalize child rape. More than a quarter of members of the forum have posted pedophilia keywords, the analysis found, and more than half of the members of the forum support pedophilia.

I don’t believe this is necessarily a new thing.  This is the problem with the internet.  It lets the worst of society hang together and leads to an evil gestalt.  These men gain confidence and ideas from their online cult.  Also, they can see how easy it is for certain types of men to avoid legal entanglements.

This is written by Brian Bennet.   Steal food or smoke a joint, and you wind up in jail for years. This is especially true if you’re a minority or a poor person.  Steal millions via government grants; they ignore you.  Like in sports, Colin Kaepernick and Michael Vick get demonized for their behaviors and dumped. Brett Favre steals millions for welfare recipients in Mississippi and crickets.

On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James compounded Trump’s legal woes, announcing that the state was suing Trump, his three adult children, the Trump Organization, and senior management in the company, alleging business fraud involving the value of assets to banks, insurance companies and the state tax authorities.

The sheer number of investigations and the increasingly tangled defenses his legal team is having to put on paper and argue in court amount to a stress test of Trump’s standard strategy to deny, deflect, delay, and not put anything in writing.

“I don’t think there’s any other president who was in a similar legal jeopardy” after leaving office, says Timothy Naftali, a historian at New York University and former director of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Warren Harding was investigated by his own vice president and successor, Calvin Coolidge. Nixon would have been the target of investigations for years if Gerald Ford had not pardoned him in September 1974, a month after Nixon resigned from office.

“Even Nixon pales by comparison,” says Norman Eisen, an anti-corruption expert at Brookings Institution and the former special counsel to the Democrat’s House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020 during Trump’s first impeachment. “Nixon just had one Watergate scandal. Trump has had a succession of them, each one more concerning than the last.”

In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is looking into how Trump pressured election officials to swing the 2020 presidential election in his direction. The House Jan. 6 Committee and the Department of Justice are both looking at what role Trump played in the lead up to the deadly attack on the Capitol Building to stop the lawful counting of electoral college votes. Federal prosecutors have an active criminal investigation into how and why Trump took thousands of government documents—many containing state secrets—to his residence at Mar-a-Lago and why he refused repeated requests to return them.

And New York’s civil lawsuit announced by James on Wednesday is on top of a separate criminal investigation out of the Manhattan District Attorneys’ Office into the Trump Organization that is set to go to trial in October.

In all of the ongoing cases, Trump is employing the tried-and-true playbook he first learned all those years ago from Cohn for staying out of prison and staying in business, according to Jennifer Taub, a professor at Western New England University School of Law who has tracked the ways that Trump had evaded accountability for decades.

Beach in Pourville, Claude Monet, 1882

This exclusive headline from CNN really is fascinating.  I imagine the move is to stop the prosecutors from being able to find and flip associates.  “Exclusive: Trump’s secret court fight to stop grand jury from getting information from his inner circle.”

Former President Donald Trump‘s attorneys are fighting a secret court battle to block a federal grand jury from gathering information from an expanding circle of close Trump aides about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

The high-stakes legal dispute — which included the appearance of three attorneys representing Trump at the Washington, DC, federal courthouse on Thursday afternoon — is the most aggressive step taken by the former President to assert executive and attorney-client privileges in order to prevent some witnesses from sharing information in the criminal investigation events surrounding January 6, 2021.

The court fight over privilege, which has not been previously reported and is under seal, is a turning point for Trump’s post-presidency legal woes.

How the fight is resolved could determine whether prosecutors can tear down the firewall Trump has tried to keep around his conversations in the West Wing and with attorneys he spoke to as he sought to overturn the 2020 election and they worked to help him hold onto the presidency.

This dispute came to light as former Trump White House adviser and lawyer Eric Herschmann received a grand jury subpoena seeking testimony, the people briefed said.

Other former senior Trump White House officials, including former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin, appeared before the grand jury in recent weeks, after negotiating specific subjects they would decline to answer question about, because of Trump’s privilege claims.

Have you ever seen anyone claim privilege this many times?  Nixon didn’t get away with it, so what’s the deal with the Trump claims?  This Trumper candidate seems pretty audacious with the lies too.  Uh, that’s not how this works JR, this is not how any of this works.

But these folks will be bankrolled!  Check out these links!

Alex Isenstadt / Politico:  Trump to unleash millions in the midterms in possible prelude to 2024

 Peter Stone / The Guardian: Alarm as Koch bankrolls dozens of election denier candidates

Former Justice Stephan Breyer warns the current Supreme Court Cartel not to take its backward-facing privilege too seriously.  This is also from CNN, and then I am done with all these bad boys.  “Breyer warns justices that some opinions could ‘bite you in the back’ in exclusive interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace.”

Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is warning his colleagues against “writing too rigidly” in their opinions, saying that such decisions could “bite you in the back” in a world that is constantly changing.

In a wide-ranging interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which debuted Friday on HBOMax and airs Sunday night on CNN, Breyer also bemoaned his position in the court’s minority liberal bloc during his final year on the bench, addressed the court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and spoke about the ongoing controversy regarding Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.

Breyer said it was a “very frustrating” spot to be in as he found himself in dissent in a number of historically consequential cases where he said the majority side (conservatives — although the retired justice did not use that description) was unwilling to bend.

“You start writing too rigidly and you will see, the world will come around and bite you in the back,” Breyer said in his first televised interview since leaving the bench earlier this year. “Because you will find something you see just doesn’t work at all. And the Supreme Court, somewhat to the difference of others, has that kind of problem in spades.”

“Life is complex, life changes,” Breyer added. “And we want to maintain insofar as we can — everybody does — certain key moral political values: democracy, human rights, equality, rule of law, etc. To try to do that in an ever-changing world. If you think you can do that by writing 16 computer programs — I just disagree.

The comments from Breyer come days before the Supreme Court begins its first term without him in nearly 30 years. In the new term, the justices will consider issues including voting rights, immigration, affirmative action, environmental regulations and religious liberty — areas where the solid conservative majority can easily control the outcomes.

Okay, that’s “all I can stands and I can’t stands no more.”  (To quote my childhood hero.)

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

The great nations of Europe were standing on the shore.
They’d conquered what was behind them
And now they wanted more
So they looked to the mighty ocean
And took to the Western sea
The great nations of Europe in the 16th century

Hide your wives and daughters, hide the groceries too
The great nations of Europe comin’ through

 

 

Labor Day Reads: Judge shopping Pays Off

Posted: September 5, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: executive privilege, Judge Shopping, Labor Day, special master | 25 Comments

Card Players, Hal Woodruff, 1958

Happy Labor Day, Sky Dancers!

A Trump-appointed Federalist Society Judge took a radical view toward the law regarding Presidential Documents and ordered a Special Master to review the documents seized during the search of his Mar-a-Lago country club. This is from NBC: “Judge grants Trump’s special master request, delays parts of a criminal probe. The Trump-appointed judge dismantled Justice Department arguments and said the unique case called for a neutral review of documents the FBI seized at Mar-a-Lago”.

In a major blow for the government, a federal judge approved former President Donald Trump’s request for a special master to oversee all the evidence the FBI seized last month from his Mar-a-Lago estate and temporarily blocked parts of the Justice Department’s investigation.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee — said in her ruling Monday that the special master should be able to review the documents seized to address both questions of attorney-client privilege and also to litigate claims of executive privilege.

Government employees screening the documents had only set aside ones that may have been protected by attorney-client privilege and argued that executive privilege was not at play here.

“In addition to being deprived of potentially significant personal documents, which alone creates a real harm, Plaintiff faces an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public,” she wrote.

Trump had requested that a special master, a third party attorney, review the material seized on Aug. 8 to assess for potential attorney-client or executive privilege issues.

Trump’s attorneys argued in a recent court filing that “left unchecked, the DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation with no recourse for [Trump] but to somehow trust the self-restraint of currently unchecked investigators.

The Justice Department had argued against the special master request, saying that a special master “is unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.” In a statement on Monday, DOJ Spokesman Anthony Coley said, “The United States is examining the opinion and will consider appropriate next steps in the ongoing litigation.”

Cannon allowed a national security review of the records to continue but temporarily blocked the government from reviewing and using them for its “investigative purposes.” She systematically rejected the DOJ’s arguments that Trump’s special-master request was filed too late, was superfluous and that Trump had no right for review because he didn’t own the documents in question that were seized.

Cannon did not immediately grant Trump’s request to get back more of his property more quickly.

Legal analysis by lawyers and scholars has not been kind to the judge. Just so you know, there is no such thing in law as a “special master” to review “executive privilege”.

This is astounding. How does he get away with this?

Many lawyers online Lawyers question how a former President can claim executive privilege against the Justice Department since it is part of the executive branch.

Explanations provided by the judge do not appear based on law or precedent. This is from Rolling Stone: “Trump Is Getting the ‘Special Master’ He Asked for in the FBI Mar-a-Lago Case. Florida Judge Aileen Cannon has granted former President Donald Trump’s request for a “special master” to review seized documents.” This is written by Nikki McCann Ramirez.

But Monday’s ruling does in part grant the late request from Trump’s lawyers to stop the DOJ from reviewing documents collected in the department’s investigation of Trump’s retaining and handling of classified materials.

In the ruling Cannon, cited concerns over the potential damage to Trump should materials in the custody of the DOJ be leaked to the public. “In addition to being deprived of potentially significant personal documents, which alone creates a real harm,” wrote Cannon, “Plaintiff faces an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public.”

While ruling may temporarily delay proceedings, the DOJ has already had a chance to conduct their own review of materials seized in the raid, and will have a chance to influence the selection of the “special master.” Judge Cannon has ordered both camps to submit their proposed candidates by September 9th.

What about the damage done to our national security, our nation, and our allies by Trump?

Cannon appears to have created an executive privilege component out of thin air.

Picking Cotton, Hale Woodruff, 1936

This is from Perry Stein writing for The Washington Post: “Judge grants Trump request for special master to review Mar-a-Lago documents. Rulings says prosecutors can’t use seized documents in criminal probe until they are examined by outside expert” The man stole them. They weren’t his. WTF?

In opposing the appointment of a special master, Justice Department lawyers told Cannon they had already sorted through the documents, using a “filter team” to separate out more than 500 pages of potentially privileged documents. That arrangement was approved by a U.S. magistrate judge who authorized the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. Prosecutors said appointing a special master would be pointless, given the previous filter team review — but Cannon disagreed. They also said that there was no legal basis to appoint a special master in this case and that Trump had no rights to possess White House documents once he left office.

On Friday, Cannon unsealed a detailed inventory list of items seized from Mar-A-Lago. It showed that Trump intermingled classified and unclassified materials in boxes at Mar-A-Lago and had dozens of empty folders that bore a “classification” marking.

Georgia Landscape, by Hale Woodruff, circa 1934-1935

This is from the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money: “LAME DUCK CONFIRMATION OF REPUBLICAN “JUDGE” PROVIDES IMMEDIATE PAYOFF FOR TRUMP”. This is written by Scott Lemieux.

I’ve always liked this blog because they don’t pull punches ever.

On November 12 2020, after Donald Trump had already been defeated, the Senate was able to ram through the confirmation of 39-year-old Federalist Society hack Aileen Cannon to the District Court of Southern Florida. The political payoff for Trump has been swift:

his refers to this particular thread provided by lawyer, teacher, and law analyst Steve Vladeck followed by the Ashey Rangappa tweet I posted above.

Needless to say, this kind of lawlessness, designed to try to run out the clock and make it harder to indict Trump as 2024 gets closer, would mean a lot less were 11CA and the Supreme Court not also controlled by Republican hacks willing to wink at the law to help out Daddy Trump.

Here’s the thread by Vladeck.

The artwork today is by Hale Woodruff whose many wonderful paintings are featured at The Smithsonian. His most famous work are Murals featured at Talladega University which is the first HBC in the United States. One of these mural is posted above. I thought that this labor day I would feature this great Black American Artist since so many of his works feature black workers. Remember, African American Slaves and their descendents built much of this country.

Happy Labor Day!

What’s on your blogging and reading list today?