The images in today’s post are from the Smithsonian collection of cat art.
On to today’s news:
Are NBC and MSNBC trying to compete with Fox News? Are they preparing for a Trump victory in November? The networks recently hired Ronna [Romney] McDaniel, recently deposed Chair of the Republican National Committee and proven liar and insurrectionist, as a commentator. To say this is an unpopular move with viewers is an understatement. There are reports that other networks competed to hire McDaniel, and NBC/MSNBC “won.” BTW, there have been no comments on this hire by Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes or Lawrence O’Donnell. Do they plan to have her on their shows?
NBC News has hired former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel to serve as an on-air commentator, meaning that NBC News just hired a key figure in former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, according to NBC News.
McDaniel left the RNC after losing Trump’s favor, only to be welcomed into the warmer waters of television punditry. NBC News’ Carrie Budoff Brown announced the hiring of the former RNC chair to the network, writing in a memo to staff, “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team.”
What, exactly, are NBC News and MSNBC getting with “a voice like Ronna’s?” Let’s turn to the network’s own coverage for answers.
On June 21, 2022, NBC News published a story under the headline “Trump team orchestrated ‘fake electors’ to try to overturn election, Jan. 6 committee details.” The piece described the then-latest findings of the House January 6 committee and spelled out McDaniel’s role in the scheme. As NBC News reported, Trump called McDaniel and connected her with John Eastman, one of the architects of the subversion plot.
“Essentially he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states,” McDaniel said, according to NBC News.
CNBC reported on another of McDaniel’s statements to the committee, acknowledging her and the RNC’s direct participation in the fake elector plot. McDaniel said that the RNC’s role was “helping them reach out and helping them assemble them, but my understanding is the campaign did take the lead and we just were helping them in that role.”
Or, in the words of MSNBC’s Steve Benen: “Ronna McDaniel acknowledged that the Republican National Committee helped put the slates of fake electors together.”
NBC News on Friday announced that it had hired Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chair who has repeatedly attacked the network and its journalists, assailed the news media as “fake news” and promoted false claims around the 2020 vote, as an on-air commentator ahead of the 2024 presidential election….
Benson B. Moore, born Washington, DC 1882-died Stuart, FL 1974
During her time as chair, McDaniel repeatedly attacked the press, which has become increasingly popular in Republican circles over the last several years as Donald Trump demonizes journalists and news institutions.
McDaniel echoed many such attacks, labeling the press as “fake news” and calling the media “corrupt.” At times, she even targeted NBC News and MSNBC with dishonest attacks.
In 2019, for instance, McDaniel accused Richard Engel, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, of “actively cheering for an economic downturn.”
“How can NBC let him keep his job when he’s made his bias so clear?” McDaniel asked.
McDaniel has a lengthier history attacking the progressive cable news channel MSNBC, which she will appear on in her new role. In recent years, she has repeatedly attacked the channel for “spreading lies” and blasted those she described as the network’s “primetime propagandists.”
While ex-strategists or party chairs ending up with TV deals is hardly unprecedented, Trump’s attacks on the media don’t have a parallel in modern US politics. He has called the press the “enemy of the people” and accused them of “treason.” A close ally has already signaled that Trump would use the powers of his office to crack down on critical outlets, if he wins a second term. Spending seven years running interference for a fascistic fraudster who holds the First Amendment in roughly the same terminal contempt with which he regards women and low-flow toilets is not the kind of thing that should qualify you for a new career in journalism.
But McDaniel did more than shill for the president. She played an important role in public and behind the scenes in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election—and with it, two and a half centuries of constitutional governance. That should be a clear red line for employers in the truth-telling business. In November 2020 story in Politico, just a few months before the Capitol insurrection, Tim Alberta offered a glimpse of how McDaniel abetted Trump’s lies about the election and allowed her party organization to amplify them in even more absurd ways:
McDaniel told multiple confidants that she doubted there was any scalable voter fraud in Michigan. Nevertheless, McDaniel told friends and fellow Republicans that she needed to stay the course with Trump and his legal team. This wasn’t about indulging him, she said, but rather about demonstrating a willingness to fight—even when the fight couldn’t be won.
This is why McDaniel has sanctioned her employees, beginning with top spokesperson Liz Harrington, to spread countless demonstrable falsehoods in the weeks since Election Day. It’s why the RNC, on McDaniel’s watch, tweeted out a video clip of disgraced lawyer Sidney Powell claiming Trump “won in a landslide” (when he lost by more than 6 million votes nationally) and alleging a global conspiracy to rig the election against him.
Mom and Dad, by William H. Johnson, born Florence, SC 1901-died Central Islip, NY 1970
McDaniel pushed to delay the certification of the presidential results in Michigan, and helped the Trump campaign assemble fake electors, a key part of its plot to throw the Electoral College certification into chaos. This is not standard-issue party-chair stuff. This was a historically dishonest conspiracy. And it is hardly a secret to anyone: As Media Matters noted on Friday, you can read about a lot of this at NBC News itself.
And that’s sort of the larger point here. NBC News is filled with professional journalists doing good work. Many of them have documented in exhausting (or actually quite lively and entertaining) detail the ways in which Trump and his helpers have corroded American democracy. McDaniel, on the other hand, was a major player in a political project that’s antithetical to that mission. Trump’s GOP was and is built on delegitimizing the people and institutions that might otherwise check it—Congress; the judiciary; the electorates of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Foremost among the institutions Trump wants to blow up is legacy political media, and its critical, fact-checked information stream. The goal is to erode trust in the press. I’m not sure why the suits at NBC News think it’s in anyone’s best interest to hire someone to do that work for Trump.
Republicans who get their news from nonconservative mainstream media outlets are less likely to support Donald J. Trump than those who follow conservative outlets. And sizable numbers from the first group say they think Mr. Trump acted criminally, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll.
This division could affect his standing among Republicans in the general electorate — a decidedly different group from G.O.P. primary voters. That is in line with research that shows that changing the media habits of Fox News consumers may actually change their views.
One hundred percent of the Republicans in our poll who said they got their news from Fox News or other conservative sources said they intended to support Mr. Trump in the general election. This stands in contrast to Republicans whose main media sources are outlets like CNN and major news organizations: Seventy-nine percent of them plan to vote for Mr. Trump, and 13 percent said they planned to vote for President Biden.
And across many measures, mainstream media Republicans are less supportive of Mr. Trump. They are 20 percentage points less likely than conservative media Republicans to say they are enthusiastic about Mr. Trump as the party’s nominee and more than 30 percentage points less likely to say Mr. Trump’s policies have helped them personally.
Despite the perception that most Republicans watch Fox News, the share of Republicans who said they got their news from sources like CNN and major newspapers was similar to the share who said they primarily consumed conservative media — roughly 30 percent in each case.
These Republicans differ from consumers of conservative media primarily in terms of their ideology: They were much more likely to describe themselves as politically moderate. Nikki Haley had about 30 percent support among these Republicans and 4 percent among conservative media consumers (the poll was taken before Ms. Haley dropped out of the race).
If they watch NBC/MSNBC, they will now hear from insurrectionist and propagandist Ronna McDaniel.
by Neil Leifer, born 1942
In other news, there was a massive terrorist attack in Moscow. The U.S. tried to warn Russia it was coming, but Putin ignored it.
Several camouflage-clad gunmen opened fire at a popular concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow on Friday night, killing about 60 people and wounding more than 100, Russian authorities said, making it the deadliest attack in the capital region in more than a decade.
Hours after the mayhem began, the Russian national guard said its officers were still looking for the attackers. State media agencies reported that there had been up to five perpetrators….
For many Russians, the massacre at a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow on Friday night brought to mind shootings and bombings across the country in recent decades, events that the authorities often described as terrorism.
The authorities linked many of those attacks to Russia’s wars against Chechen separatists in the 1990s and 2000s. Those conflicts helped enable the rise of Vladimir V. Putin, who over his two decades in power has sought to project an image of being tough on terrorism.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a security alert on March 7, warning that its personnel were “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts.” The statement warned Americans that an attack could take place in the next 48 hours.
The warning was related to the attack on Friday, according to people briefed on the matter. But it was not related to possible Ukrainian sabotage, American officials said, adding that the State Department would not have used the word “extremists” to warn about actions ordered from Kyiv.
Pro-Kremlin voices immediately seized on the U.S. Embassy’s warning to paint America as trying to scare Russians.
America officials are worried that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could seek to falsely blame Ukraine for the attack, putting pressure on Western governments to identify who they think may be responsible. Mr. Putin frequently twists events, even tragic ones, to fit his public narrative. And he has been quick to accuse Ukraine of acts of terrorism to justify his invasion of the country.
U.S. officials said Mr. Putin could do that again after Friday’s attack, seeking to use the loss of life to undermine support for Ukraine both domestically and around the world.
On March 19, the Russian leader called the U.S. Embassy statement “obvious blackmail” made with “the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.” But he had yet to comment directly on the attack Friday.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack at a popular concert hall complex near Moscow Friday after assailants stormed the venue with guns and incendiary devices, killing at least 60 people and injuring 145.
Still Life with Cat, by Franklin C. Watkins, born New York City 1894-died Bologna, Italy 1972an from color transparency
The terror group took responsibility for the attack in a short statement published by ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq on Telegram on Friday. It did not provide evidence to support the claim.
Video footage from the Crocus City Hall shows the vast complex, which is home to both the music hall and a shopping center, on fire with smoke billowing into the air. State-run RIA Novosti reported the armed individuals “opened fire with automatic weapons” and “threw a grenade or an incendiary bomb, which started a fire.” They then “allegedly fled in a white Renault car,” the news agency said.
State media Russia 24 reported the roof of the venue has partially collapsed.
The fire had been brought largely under control more than six hours later. “There are still some pockets of fire, but the fire has been mostly eliminated,” Moscow governor Andrey Vorobyov said on Telegram.
The deadliest terror attack on Moscow in decades, Friday’s assault came less than a week after President Vladimir Putin won a stage-managed election by an overwhelming majority to secure another term in office, tightening his grip on the country he has ruled since the turn of the century.
With attention focused on the country’s war with neighboring Ukraine, Putin had trumpeted a message of national security before Russians went to the polls.
Back in the USA, there are a couple of interesting stories involving Leonard Leo, former head of the Federalist society and staunch supporter of Donald Trump and the 2025 Project.
Huge funding from influential conservative donor networks is flowing into groups affiliated with a conservative venture aimed at creating a Republican “government-in-waiting,” including over $55 million from groups linked to conservative activist Leonard Leo and the Koch network, according to an Accountable.US review shared exclusively with NBC News.
Launched by the Heritage Foundation in April 2022, Project 2025 is a two-pronged initiative to develop staunch conservative policy recommendations and grow a roster of thousands of right-wing personnel ready to fill the next Republican administration. With former President Donald Trump now the GOP’s presumptive 2024 nominee, the effort is essentially laying the groundwork for a potential Trump transition if he wins the election in November.
With contributions from former high-level Trump administration appointees and an advisory board that has grown to over 100 conservative organizations, proponents describe Project 2025 as the most sophisticated transition effort that has existed for conservatives. The initiative includes a manifesto devising a policy agenda for every department, numerous agencies and scores of offices throughout the federal government.
Since 2021, Leo’s network and groups that have gotten funding from it have funneled over $50.7 million to the groups advising the 2025 Presidential Transition Project as part of its “Project 2025 advisory board,” according to tax documents reviewed as part of the analysis by Accountable.US, a progressive advocacy group. That sum includes donationsfrom The 85 Fund, a donor-advised nonprofit group that funnels money from wealthy financiers to other groups, and the Concord Fund, a public-facing organization, which are part of Leo’s network of organizations that seek to influence policy.
According to its 2022 annual return, the 85 Fund gave more than $2.55 million collectively to seven organizations advising Project 2025, including the Heritage Foundation, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Independent Women’s Forum.
In 2021, the 85 Fund gave $2.1 million to the same organizations, less the Heritage Foundation, while the Concord Fund collectively gave $4.32 million to nonprofit groups including Susan B. Anthony List, Independent Women’s Voice and Heritage Action for America.
Allies of Leonard Leo have mounted a monthslong offensive against the man investigating the judicial activist’s network: Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb.
Since news of the probe broke last August, the GOP chairs of powerful congressional committees launched their own investigation of Schwalb’s investigation; conservative media wrote articles criticizing Schwalb on unrelated crime issues — based on a social media post from a top Leo lieutenant; and a group of his Republican law enforcement peers sent letters warning Schwalb to stand down.
Mary Elizabeth Francis, by John F. Francis, born Philadelphia, PA 1808-died Jeffersonville, PA 1886
Leo is the Federalist Society co-chair who has been called former President Donald Trump’s “court whisperer” for helping to choose and advocate for his Supreme Court nominees. His aligned network of tax-exempt nonprofits is also a major contributor to Project 2025, an initiative seeking to create a “government in waiting” for another Trump term.
The white-hot pressure campaign targeting Schwalb attests to the growing range of Leo’s influence. Beyond its work in promoting the conservative legal movement, his billion-dollar network of nonprofits has funded conservative media, Republican attorneys general and the campaign funds of leading congressional figures….
Schwalb has been probing Leo since he received a complaint about whether Leo-aligned groups violated tax laws governing nonprofit organizations, as POLITICO reported last August. Tax-exempt groups in Leo’s network have spent millions of dollars on his for-profit consulting business, CRC Advisors.
But since news of the probe became public, its legal basis has been challenged by 12 GOP attorneys general who are current or former members of the Republican Attorneys General Association. The Concord Fund, one of the Leo network’s primary nonprofits, and its predecessor, the Judicial Crisis Network, have long been RAGA’s biggest funder, directing $20 million to it since 2014, according to annual tax filings.
Meanwhile, GOP Reps. James Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, who heads the House Oversight Committee, on Oct. 30 announced a probe of Schwalb’s Leo investigation, saying it was politically motivated. According to a federal disclosure form dated Oct. 20, the Concord Fund had hired a Virginia lobbying firm to handle issues related to “oversight” and “law enforcement,” matters over which Jordan and Comer have jurisdiction.
Speaker Mike Johnson is about to drop to a one-vote majority, as retiring Rep. Mike Gallagher has decided he will exit the House as soon as next month, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
In a statement shortly after this story published, Gallagher said he planned to leave April 19.
“I’ve worked closely with House Republican leadership on this timeline and look forward to seeing Speaker Mike Johnson appoint a new chair to carry out the important mission of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.
Wisconsin law dictates that Gallagher’s seat — in a solidly red district — will stay empty for the rest of his term. Departing before April 9 would have triggered a special election.
The Wisconsin Republican announced earlier this year that he would not seek reelection, after he received blowback for voting against impeaching Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. His allies, however, say he was long jaded by the antics of the House following the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
It’s bad timing for Johnson, who is now potentially facing a vote on his ouster in the coming weeks. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) filed the so-called motion to vacate on Friday, over Johnson working with Democrats to pass a massive spending bill, but it’s unclear when she’ll try to force the vote on the floor. At the moment, no other Republicans have said they support her motion.
“It’s tough, but it’s tough with a five-seat majority, it’s tough with a two-seat majority, one is going to be the same. We all have to work together. We’re all going to have to unite if we’re going get some things done,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said shortly after Gallagher announced his early exit.
When Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado announced his early exit, he said he knew of three more House members who were on the verge of quitting. If that happens, control of the House could switch to the Democrats.
That’s all I have for you today. What do you think? What other stories are you following?
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At the Gardner Museum, an empty frame hangs where a painting was stolen.
Before I get started on today’s political news, I wanted to note the anniversary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist on Monday. It’s a Boston story I’ve always found fascinating. I’m illustrating this post with some of the 13 missing works of art.
BOSTON — Thirty-four years ago two thieves robbed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, making off with hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen artwork. The heist has been the subject of mystery and documentaries ever since.
“I have been here for a long time looking for these, and I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t affect me. I walk by the empty frames every day,” said Anthony Amore, Director of Security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
In 1990, two men snuck into the museum disguised as police officers answering a distress call. The duo tied up to two guards and were in the museum for 81 minutes. They made off with numerous pieces of art including 13 works from famous painters like Rembrandt. The art is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
“I believe that information is going to come in, or I am going to get the stuff first, but one way or another we will get the art back,” said Amore.
Over the past year, the museum and the FBI have received hundreds of tips and emails. Amore says most are theories or conjecture, but a few are an occasional tip. He says 20 of those calls came from people who thought they spotted the works of art on the wall during house showings or on pictures from Zillow. They were just reproductions used to stage the homes for sale.
“There is a lot of these things out there, and when we do see things from Zillow, or any other real estate website, we don’t look at it and say, ‘That is our painting.’ Nevertheless, we follow it,” said Amore. “I am amazed that people notice because Zillow has millions of listings, and people go through and go, ‘That’s that missing Gardner painting.”
There is a $10 million reward for information leading to finding the paintings.
In the pre-dawn hours of March 18, 1990, following a festive St. Patrick’s Day in Boston, two men dressed as police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and walked off with an estimated $500 million in art treasures. Despite efforts by the local police, federal agents, amateur sleuths and not a few journalists, no one has found any of the 13 works lost in the largest art theft in history, including a rare Vermeer and three precious Rembrandts.
The Concert, by Johannes Vermeer
The legacy of the heist is always apparent to museum visitors who, decades later, still confront vacant frames on the gallery walls where paintings once hung. They are kept there as a reminder of loss, museum officials say, and in the hope that the works may eventually return. Last month, Richard Abath, the night watchman who mistakenly allowed in the thieves, died at 57. He was a vital figure in an investigation that remains active, but where the trails have grown cold.
Here are five oddities that make this one of the most compelling of American crimes.
The thieves took a really strange array of stuff.
Important paintings were taken from their frames during the heist. But other items that were stolen were not nearly of the same caliber: a nondescript Chinese metal vase; a fairly ordinary bronze eagle from atop a flagpole; and five minor sketches by Degas. The thieves walked past paintings and jade figurines worth millions, including a drawing by Michelangelo, yet they spent some of their 81 minutes inside fussing to free the vase from a tricky locking mechanism.
The handcuffed guard was later scrutinized.
Abath, one of two guards on duty, was handcuffed and gagged with duct tape. He was never named a suspect. But over the years investigators continued to review his behavior because he had, against protocol, opened the museum door to the thieves. (The second guard, who is still living, was never a focus of investigative interest.) The F.B.I. monitored Abath’s assets for decades but never saw any suspicious income. He consistently said he told investigators everything he knew, and an F.B.I. polygraph he voluntarily took was deemed “inconclusive.”
The empty frames have stayed on the walls.
The museum was once Gardner’s home and she wanted to ensure that her expansive art collection was displayed in the same manner she had arranged it. She stipulated in her will that not a thing was to be removed or rearranged, or the collection should be shipped to Paris for auction, with the money going to Harvard University. Though it’s long been reported that the empty frames are left hanging to accord with that will, the museum says that is actually a long uncorrected mistake. “We have chosen to display them,” it said in a statement “because 1.) we remain confident that the works will someday return to their rightful place in the galleries; and 2.) they are a poignant reminder of the loss to the public of these unique works.”
Read the rest at the NYT.
I wish I could spend the day reading about famous art thefts and missing or recovered paintings, but I suppose I’d better take a look at the politics news . . .
On Monday Judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon shocked legal observers with a strange order.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s proposal tips the scales so far in Trump’s direction that legal experts say the prosecutor, Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, might ask an appeals court to remove her from the case.
Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney, said the Presidential Records Act isn’t a way around rules for handling classified documents because the records are still government property, not Trump’s personal possessions.
Rembrandt von Rijn Self-Portrait
“Expect their response to be hard-hitting,” Vance said of prosecutors in a post on Substack. “The bottom line is that the Presidential Records Act doesn’t forgive Trump for violating criminal laws regarding handling of national secrets.” [….]
Cannon gave lawyers for Trump and Smith until April 2 to submit proposed jury instructions for the eventual trial. The order on Monday came after a hearing in which she didn’t resolve the dispute over whether the documents fell under the Presidential Records Act.
But her order called for lawyers on both sides to “engage” with two possible instructions she proposed.
In one, Cannon said jurors should “make a factual finding as to whether the government had proven beyond a reasonable doubt” the records are personal or presidential.
In the other, Cannon proposed telling jurors “a president has sole authority under the PRA to categorize records as personal or presidential during his/her presidency. Neither a court nor a jury is permitted to make or review such as categorization decision.”
Neither of those instructions reflects what the Presidential Records Act says.
Legal experts blasted the order as “insane” and “nuts.”
George Conway, another lawyer and frequent critic of Trump, argued Cannon shouldn’t be hearing the case and shouldn’t even be a federal judge. Cannon was appointed by Trump and has been widely criticized for decisions that have delayed the trial, including two overturned by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Vance said both proposals from Cannon “virtually direct the jury to find Trump not guilty.”
“It turns out it’s two pages of crazy stemming from the Judge’s apparent inability to tell Trump no when it comes to his argument that he turned the nation’s secrets into his personal records by designating them as such under the Presidential Records Act,” Vance said.
Read more about the Presidential Records Act at USA Today.
The MAGA-friendly federal judge who keeps siding with Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago classified records case has forced prosecutors to make a stark choice: allow jurors to see a huge trove of national secrets or let him go.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s ultimatum Monday night came as a surprise twist in what could have been a simple order; one merely asking federal prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers for proposed jury instructions at the upcoming trial.
Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, by Rembrandt van Rijn
But as she has done repeatedly, Cannon used this otherwise innocuous legal step as yet another way to swing the case wildly in favor of the man who appointed her while he was president.
Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith must now choose whether to allow jurors at the upcoming criminal trial to peruse the many classified records found at the former president’s South Florida mansion or give jurors instructions that would effectively order them to acquit him.
Alternatively, Smith could appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, where more experienced judges have already overturned Cannon and reined her in. But doing that will only further delay a trial that’s at least three months behind schedule, entirely by the judge’s own design. (She froze the investigation and tried to slow-roll document review until the appellate court forced her to stop.)
…[O]ver the last six months, a slow-moving car-crash of a case has been unfolding, with a judge who seems committed to protecting the former president at every turn of the road. In that case, Judge Aileen Cannon is adjudicating the prosecution of the former president in the classified documents case in a haphazard way at best. At worst, she is doing all she can to protect the former president from facing the classified documents case before the election, if at all.
Her recent rulings—announcing she is likely to release the names of the government’s witnesses and potentially expose them to ridicule and violence, and a highly questionable decision on how she may instruct the jury should we ever get one—do not just make special counsel Jack Smith’s case more difficult. In a perverse way, the more difficult she makes it, she might actually help Smith in the end.
Should Smith ask an appellate court to review Judge Cannon’s rulings, not only is he likely to get those decisions reversed, her actions to delay and attempt to block the effort to bring the former president to justice may end up getting her removed from the case altogether.
In many respects, we’ve been here before. Back in 2022, in a highly questionable move, Judge Cannon presided over a case challenging the FBI’s entry into Mar-a-Lago pursuant to a lawful subpoena to determine whether the former president was harboring classified documents there (he was). Her willingness to entertain such a brazen and unprecedented effort should have been laughed out of court. Instead, she intervened in that case to protect the former president.
The appeals court “roundly criticized” Trump for filing the case and Cannon for accepting Trump’s arguments and order the case dismissed.
That order to dismiss the underlying case was one filed by Trump. Here, should Smith appeal and prevail on any of the questionable decisions issued by Judge Cannon, the remedy would not include dismissal of that case.
That does not mean Smith is without recourse. Should Smith prevail, an appellate court would be well within its rights to send it back to the trial court, but unlike where it ordered Cannon to dismiss the case brought by Trump, here, it could direct that a different judge take up the matter.
And that is exactly what might happen if Judge Cannon continues to do what should seem obvious that she is doing to anyone watching this matter: she is putting her thumb on the scale in favor of the defendant over and over again.
If Judge Cannon keeps going down this road, Smith can seek an immediate appeal of any of those orders that seem to improperly hamstring his prosecution and ask the appellate court. In this instance, that would be the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the same court that previously overturned Cannon in her fool’s errand related to the search of Mar-a-Lago. Smith can ask the court to not just overturn those orders, but also re-assign the case to a different judge.
I hope this latest insanity from Cannon will convince Smith he needs to get her removed from the case.
If Mr Trump wants to continue his appeal in the case without the state seizing the fine from him, he must submit the full amount in cash or secure a bond from a private company by 25 March.
But on Monday, his lawyers said that despite their “diligent efforts” it had been “practically impossible” to find a company willing to act as a guarantor of the full sum and asked for a pause.
“We really are in a moment of serious crisis for Trump personally, as well as for his business,” said Professor Will Thomas from the University of Michigan Ross Business School.
So with the clock seemingly ticking, here’s what could happen next in the case.
If Mr Trump wants to continue his appeal in the case without the state seizing the fine from him, he must submit the full amount in cash or secure a bond from a private company by 25 March.
But on Monday, his lawyers said that despite their “diligent efforts” it had been “practically impossible” to find a company willing to act as a guarantor of the full sum and asked for a pause.
“We really are in a moment of serious crisis for Trump personally, as well as for his business,” said Professor Will Thomas from the University of Michigan Ross Business School.
So with the clock seemingly ticking, here’s what could happen next in the case….
A panel of appeals court judges will decide by 25 March whether the $464m judgement can be paused while Mr Trump appeals.
This would be a best case scenario for the former president, who is no doubt eager to avoid having to pay an estimated 16% of what Forbes reports is his $2.6bn net worth.
The fact that Mr Trump has assets in the state of New York that can be seized, however, could reassure a court that he would be able to pay the penalty if he lost the appeal, according to Mr Thomas….
“I think it is very likely that he will get some kind of stay – unless they find some other stopgap option,” he told the BBC.
I certainly hope that doesn’t happen. Trump has gotten enough special treatment. The next possibility:
Mr Trump could still find a way to secure a bond – for a fee – if his request for a stay is rejected, although according to his lawyers, this could be difficult.
The bonding company would be agreeing to pay the financial penalty if Mr Trump loses his appeal and cannot do so himself.
But his legal team said they had already approached 30 companies without success.
Read about the other possibilities at the link. Again I’m sick and tired of Trump getting special treatment.
Donald Trump and his co-defendants were in talks with insurance giant Chubb for a $464 million appeal bond in the former president’s civil fraud case, but the company backed out — days after it raised eyebrows for giving Trump a bond in a separate case, according to a Trump lawyer.
Chubb was one of more than 30 companies that refused to craft a bond that would put the massive business fraud judgment on pause, attorneys for Trump said in a New York appeals court filing Monday.
The attorneys in that filing asked the appeals court to “put the brakes” on the judgment before New York Attorney General Letitia James can start to collect on it — a process that could begin as soon as next week. James has said she will seize Trump’s assets if he cannot pay the judgment.
A panel of judges on that court has yet to rule on Trump’s request to pause the judgment without him having to post a fully secured bond.
Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said in that filing that Chubb was the only company willing to consider underwriting an appeal bond secured by a blend of liquid assets and real property.
The other companies — which included Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Liberty Mutual, Allianz, and Travelers — wanted only cash or other liquid assets.
More details at the link.
In other news . . .
Yesterday the Supreme Court gave Texas the go-ahead to enforce a new law allowing police to arrest people they suspect of being undocumented immigrants. An appeals court quickly blocked the law again, according to the Texas Tribune. Texas’ new immigration law is blocked again.
A federal appeals court late Tuesday night stopped a state law allowing Texas police to arrest people suspected of illegally crossing the Texas-Mexico border — hours after the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed it to go into effect.
Earlier in the day, the high court had allowed the law to go into effect after it sent the case back to the appeals court, urging it to issue a ruling promptly. The appeals court soon scheduled a hearing for Wednesday morning. And on the night before hearing oral arguments the appeals court issued an order to let a lower court’s earlier injunction stopping Senate Bill 4 stand, according to a filing.
Edgar Degas, La Sortie de Pesage
The Supreme Court earlier Tuesday let SB 4 go into effect but stopped short of ruling on the law’s constitutionality, which has been challenged by the Biden administration.
Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas at Austin law professor, said the back-and-forth is “indefensibly chaotic.”
“Even if that means SB 4 remains paused indefinitely, hopefully everyone can agree that this kind of judicial whiplash is bad for everyone,” he said.
SB 4 seeks to make illegally crossing the border a Class B misdemeanor, carrying a punishment of up to six months in jail. Repeat offenders could face a second-degree felony with a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.
The law also requires state judges to order migrants returned to Mexico if they are convicted; local law enforcement would be responsible for transporting migrants to the border. A judge could drop the charges if a migrant agrees to return to Mexico voluntarily.
Mexico will not accept deportations made by Texas “under any circumstances,” the country’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow Texas to arrest migrants who cross into the state without authorization.
The ministry condemned the state law, known as Senate Bill 4, saying it would separate families, violate the human rights of migrants and generate “hostile environments” for the more than 10 million people of Mexican origin living in Texas.
Mexico’s top diplomat for North America, Roberto Velasco Álvarez, rejected the ruling on the social media on Tuesday, saying that immigration policy was something to be negotiated between federal governments.
The Mexican government has severely criticized the measure since last year, and rejected the idea of local or state agencies, rather than federal authorities, detaining and returning migrants and asylum seekers to Mexican territory.
More details at the NYT link.
Those are the biggest stories today, as I see it. What do you think? What else is happening?
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The outrageous speech given by Trump in Dayton, Ohio, over the weekend, has grabbed the attention of the media. Despite Republican damage control, few believe that his use of the term “bloodbath” meant anything but calling the deplorables back to riot and insurgency if he doesn’t get his way. He has a lot of bad news this week, so be prepared for more rhetorical evil like this. Aaron Blake writes this at the Washington Post.“‘Bloodbath’ aside, Trump’s violent rhetoric is unambiguous. Trump has already warned of “riots,” “violence in the streets” and “death & destruction” if he’s wronged. All of that context is vital.”
In an interview with Donald Trump that aired over the weekend, Fox News host Howard Kurtz presented Trump with a not-exactly-novel theory: that Trump uses “over the top, sometimes inflammatory language” to draw attention.
Trump conceded that “if you don’t use certain words, that maybe are not very nice words, nothing will happen.”
The weekend provided ample evidence of that dynamic, particularly whenTrump invited yet another tempest with his violent rhetoric. This time, he warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses in November. Trump’s allies claim he’s being taken out of context and unfairly attacked.
To recap: Appearing at a rally in Ohio, Trump riffed on his proposal for a 100 percent tariff on Chinese-made cars to protect the U.S. auto industry.
“Now, if I don’t get elected,” he continued, “it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
Here’s what we can say: Trump might indeed have been speaking metaphorically in this case. But the broader context here is vital. And that context is that Trump has repeatedly invoked the prospect of actual violence by his supporters while speaking about similar circumstances — his losing or facing criminal accountability, for example. We also saw a pronounced example of his supporters seizing on his rhetoric when they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Which makes it much more difficult to dismiss the “bloodbath” comment as overheated rhetoric. Trump is, at the very least, deliberately playing with fire. And this is merely the most recent example.
Trump backers and even some conservative Trump critics dismissed the comment as, more or less, standard-issue political rhetoric. Some suggested that Trump was merely talking about a “bloodbath” for the auto industry (even though he was clearly saying the “bloodbath” would extend beyond that industry).
I have no idea why anyone would give him any wiggle room on this unless they are scared of his rabid and well-armed idiots. We see more of his usual contempt for law and democracy in a new headline today in The Guardian. “Trump calls for Liz Cheney to be jailed for investigating him over Capitol attack. “Adam Gabbat reports the story.
Donald Trump has renewed calls for Liz Cheney – his most prominent Republican critic – to be jailed for her role in investigating his actions during the January 6 Capitol attack launched by his supporters in 2021, a move that is bound to raise further fears that the former president could persecute his political opponents if given another White House term.
In posts on Sunday on his Truth Social platform, Trump said other members of the congressional committee that investigated the Capitol attack – and concluded he had plotted to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat to Joe Biden – should be imprisoned.
Those statements followed Trump’s previous comments that he would act like a “dictator” on the first day of a second presidency if given one by voters.
Cheney, who served as vice-chair of the January 6 committee and was one of two Republicans on the panel, lost her seat in the House of Representatives to a Trump-backed challenger, Harriet Hageman, in 2022. She responded later on Sunday, saying her fellow Republican Trump was “afraid of the truth”.
Trump has been charged with four felonies in relation to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. The US supreme court is considering Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity from prosecution in the case because he served as president from 2017 to 2021.
Elizabeth Crisp of The Hillreports on what one Trump primary challenger has faced recently. “Hutchinson says decision not to endorse Trump’ costly and difficult’.”
Hutchinson says in the piece that he voted for Trump twice, but that insight gleaned from former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wy.) and the Department of Justice on the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol changed his mind.
“In terms of history, we all witnessed the violent attack on our national Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by those wishing to overturn the last election,” he writes. “This was not an act of patriots as Trump likes to say, but it was a real threat to democracy.”
Nearly 400 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees during the riot, including more than 100 people who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.
“With Donald Trump’s domination of the GOP primaries and the elimination of all primary opponents, including the party leadership and Republican elected officials are clicking their heels in obedience to the victor and presumptive nominee. I have not endorsed Donald Trump for president, and I will not do so,” he writes.
“A bloodbath.” What would you say if you saw this in another country? https://t.co/aUnNAoAWfE
I know what friends in other countries are saying about us and Trump’s befuddled lies and ugliness. They can’t believe we would let this happen, and I can’t either. Another headline in today’s Washington Post lets us know that we cannot ignore the Trump push to replace democracy with a MAGAtrocity. “Pro-Trump disruptions in Arizona county elevate fears for the 2024 vote. A meeting in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, ended chaotically last month, raising concern that the former president’s supporters could try to undercut the election.” They’re trying to make our elections mirror those of Putin.
As the board of supervisors for Arizona’s largest county abruptly ended a meeting late last month, a swarm of people rushed toward the dais, shouting that the members were illegitimate.
The Maricopa County leaders made a beeline for a side door and were swiftly escorted out of the chamber by security guards, who called for backup from the sheriff’s office. After the meeting’s live-feed went dead, a member of the crowd yelled that a “revolution” was underway.
“I’m here today to put you on public notice and to inform you that you are not our elected officials,” said Michelle Klann, co-founder of a pro-Trump group, from a podium she had commandeered. “This is an act of insurrection. Due to all the voter fraud, you have never been formally voted in.”
The scene at the Feb. 28 meeting terrified many Maricopa employees and others who were reminded of what happened after Joe Biden won the county — and, with it, Arizona — in the 2020 presidential race. Back then,Trump supporters used baseless fraud claims to try to pressure or scare elected leaders into changing the results for the metro Phoenix county, which is home to more than half of Arizona’s residents.
Louisiana has become the latest state to be taken over by White Christian Fascists. Big John Stanton writes about the latest shady moves through special sessions that throw our state back into the Dark Ages. “One Landry to Bind Them All: Under the watchful eye of Gov. Jeff Landry, Republicans push a regressive legislative agenda.”
The regular session of the state legislature has only just begun, but Republicans have already notched scores of key legislative victories thanks to two special sessions and a series of executive orders remaking the state government in Gov. Jeff Landry’s image.
The breakneck pace at which Republicans have dismantled the modest criminal justice reforms of the past decade has been nothing short of breathtaking. In less than two weeks last month, they not only undid decades of hard work to modernize the state’s justice system but instituted new punitive policies, including eliminating parole and authorizing new, inhumane forms of capital punishment.
And they’re not done. Lawmakers are proposing a number of additional criminal justice bills increasing prison sentences for some convictions to legalizing vehicular homicides under certain circumstances.
But those changes during the second special session are likely only the beginning of a broad push to impose a host of often cruel conservative policy positions. Lawmakers in the House and Senate are once again targeting the LGBTQ community — particularly transgender and gender nonconforming people — with a series of bills legislating their very identities.
Republicans and business interests also are gunning for what remains of Louisiana’s already weak labor protections, ranging from eliminating key child labor rules to banning public sector unions.
The rights of young people are also under assault in a host of areas, including proposals to require the Ten Commandments be posted in public schools, ban their ability to freely use social media, limit the types of books they can find in libraries and further restrict their ability to make health care decisions.
Even bar owners find themselves in the GOP’s sights this year, with bills to raise the age of bartenders, make concealed carry legal in their establishments and even put them on the hook for liability if someone underage is served and is involved in a DUI.
His latest move on education is frightening. It adds to the data that we live in a police state here.
The more Jeff Landry robs public schools to fund private corporations, the more crime will increase pic.twitter.com/0XPZACxaoG
States that adopt the MAGAtrocity agenda move back to the Dark Ages Quickly.
"[Idaho] has lost 22 percent of its practicing OGBYNs in the 15 months following Dobbs… 55 percent of the state’s high-risk OB-GYNs have left the state, leaving less than five in the entire state to treat patients." https://t.co/LNvjquMGsR
Former President Donald Trump has not been able to get a bond to secure the $464 million civil fraud judgment against him, his lawyers said in a court filing Monday.
Trump and his company need to post a bond for the full amount by next week in order to stop New York Attorney General Letitia James from being able to collect while he appeals. They’ve asked an appeals court to step in in the meantime and said Monday that they have not had any success getting a bond.
“Defendants’ ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment’s full amount is ‘a practical impossibility,'” the filing said. “These diligent efforts have included approaching about 30 surety companies through 4 separate brokers.”
Their efforts, including “countless hours negotiating with one of the largest insurance companies in the world,” have proven that “obtaining an appeal bond in the full amount” of the judgment “is not possible under the circumstances presented,” the filing said.
The other bond companies will not “accept hard assets such as real estate as collateral,” but “will only accept cash or cash equivalents (such as marketable securities),” the filing said. The lawyers also noted those companies typically “require collateral of approximately 120% of the amount of the judgment” — which would total about $557 million.
“In addition, sureties would likely charge bond premiums of approximately 2 percent per year with two years in advance—an upfront cost over $18 million,” the filing said. That $18 million would not be recoverable even if Trump wins his appeal.
Karma is a bitch, Don the Con! #TrumpIsBroke is trending on X. Susan B Glasser continues her narrative on how to cover this pariah of a politician in a system and media set-up that just doesn’t seem to get it. “Susan Glasser Slams ABC Panel: Take Trump’s Words As Fact. The New Yorker reporter reminded her panel members that Trump is “peddling an alternate reality vision of America that is built on lies.” I wrote about her article on Monday. This is from Crooks & Liars.
Glasser joined ABC’s This Week and, during a panel discussion, laid out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Trump’s words and lies.
“Yes. I mean, look, Donald Trump, it seems to me, it’s very hard, eight years into this, we still struggle with how to cover him as journalists. But in a way, the unhinged, rambling rants that you see from the former president of United States are baked in. And I think in a way, we are all desensitized and endured to the extraordinarily remarkable and very at times un-American and threatening things that the former president is saying.
I’m not saying it’s easy to understand how to cover it. I think we have to cover it when the former president, who’s already incited violence among his followers, says that there’s going to be a bloodbath. What? After the election, if he does not win, he is telling us what he is going to do.”
Too many journalists and his right-wing allies ignore Trump’s violent rhetoric and Hitler-like catcalls and instead sugarcoat and re-imagine what he’s actually saying.
After two other talking heads downplayed Trump’s behavior, and tried to pretend “we don’t know what a second Trump administration will be like,” Glasser came back with even more fire in her belly.
“I’m sorry, I just have to say something. Like Donald Trump is attacking, in a broad-brush sense, the basic pillars of American democracy, period, full stop. If that’s not news to you. It’s not about tariffs. That’s not the reason why millions of Americans are supporting Donald Trump. Let’s be real about that. You have a Republican congressman who came on here today, and he can’t even condemn in forthright, straightforward, honest terms, that ransacking of the United States Capitol by thousands of Trump supporters.
He says, well, you know, maybe there’s some problems with that. Donald Trump opens his campaign rally, Sarah, by saying, these are martyrs. These are victims. These are heroes. His whole campaign now is being built around an alternate reality, by the way, constructed on an enormous number of lie after lie after lie. That’s what he’s peddling to the American people. Not tariff policy. He’s peddling an alternate reality vision of America that is built on lies.”
No one should sit this election out. No one should make up excuses for what’s going on or shake off the danger. I left the Republican Party 30 years ago because it left me and it left well-researched effective policies in the trash heap. Liz Cheney is the only one who makes sense these days and look what is happening to her. My sister bailed in 2015 and did what I did then. Register as an independent if you have to and vote like your entire life depends on it because it does. Also, purity progressives need to drop the whining and suck up and vote like adults. We’re all in this. Not one of us will have an input into policy decisions if Trump gets back in. He didn’t casually mention detention camps; they’re suitable for many more people than you’d like to think.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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It’s another busy news week and Friday. The most consequential headline this morning is on the decision of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee on the “appearance of impropriety” brought about by Willis’ romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. This analysis is from NBC News.
A Georgia judge ruled Fridaythat Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should not be disqualified from prosecuting the racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and several co-defendants — with one major condition.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found the “appearance of impropriety” brought about by Willis’ romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade should result in either Willis and her office leaving the case — or just Wade, whom she’d appointed to head the case.
The choice is likely to be an easy one: If Willis were to remove herself, the case would come to a halt, but having Wade leave will ensure the case continues without further delay.
The judge said the prosecution “cannot proceed” until Willis makes a decision.
Trump attorney Steve Sadow said in a statement that, “While respecting the Court’s decision, we believe that the Court did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade.”
“We will use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place,” he added.
Willis’s office did not immediately comment on the ruling.The judge found there was no “actual conflict” brought about by the relationship, a finding that would have required Willis to be disqualified. “Without sufficient evidence that the District Attorney acquired a personal stake in the prosecution, or that her financial arrangements had any impact on the case, the Defendants’ claims of an actual conflict must be denied,” the judge wrote.
“This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment or the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing. Rather, it is the undersigned’s opinion that Georgia law does not permit the finding of an actual conflict for simply making bad choices — even repeatedly — and it is the trial court’s duty to confine itself to the relevant issues and applicable law properly brought before it,” he added.
The judge did, however, also find “the prosecution is encumbered by an appearance of impropriety.”
“As the case moves forward, reasonable members of the public could easily be left to wonder whether the financial exchanges have continued resulting in some form of benefit to the District Attorney, or even whether the romantic relationship has resumed,” he wrote. “As long as Wade remains on the case, this unnecessary perception will persist.”
The Manhattan D.A. has joined the list of Judiciary officials letting Trump delay trials on frivolous and specious arguments. This is from the New York Times. “As Trump Seeks Trial Delay, N.Y. Prosecutors Offer 30-Day Postponement. The Manhattan district attorney’s proposal came in response to Donald J. Trump’s request for a 90-day delay to allow his lawyers time to review a new batch of records.”
Less than two weeks before Donald J. Trump is set to go on trial on criminal charges in Manhattan, the prosecutors who brought the case proposed a delay of up to 30 days, a startling development in the first prosecution of a former American president.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which accused Mr. Trump of covering up a sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, said the delay would give Mr. Trump’s lawyers time to review a new batch of records. The office sought the records more than a year ago, but only recently received them from federal prosecutors, who years ago investigated the hush-money payments at the center of the case.
In response to the records — tens of thousands of pages of them — Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested that the trial be delayed 90 days. Although the former president frequently requests such delays, prosecutors consenting to any postponement makes one far more likely.
Mr. Trump, who clinched the Republican presidential nomination for the third time this week, faces four criminal trials and several civil lawsuits. The Manhattan case had been the only one of the four criminal cases not mired in delays.
“Mired in delays” is the understatement of the year-to-date. Meanwhile, Trump gets more incoherent by the day. His appearance is more startling than usual. Susan B. Glasser of The New Yorker has this analysis. “I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You. The ex-President is building a whole new edifice of lies for 2024.”
And yet, like so much about Trump’s 2024 campaign, this insane oration was largely overlooked and under-covered, the flood of lies and B.S. seen as old news from a candidate whose greatest political success has been to acclimate a large swath of the population to his ever more dangerous alternate reality. No wonder Biden, trapped in a real world of real problems that defy easy solutions, is struggling to defeat him.
This is partly a category error. Though we persist in treating the 2024 election as a race between an incumbent and a challenger, it is not that so much as a contest between two incumbents: Biden, the actual President, and Trump, the forever-President of Red America’s fever dreams. But Trump, while he presents himself as the country’s rightful leader, gets nothing like the intense scrutiny for his speeches that is now focussed on the current occupant of the Oval Office. The norms and traditions that Trump is intent on smashing are, once again, benefitting him.
Consider the enormous buildup before, and wall-to-wall coverage of, Biden’s annual address to Congress. It was big news when the President called out his opponent in unusually scathing terms, referring thirteen times in his prepared text to “my predecessor” in what was, understandably, seen as a break with tradition. Republican commentators grumbled about the sharply partisan tone of the President’s remarks and the loud decibel in which he delivered them; Democrats essentially celebrated those same qualities.
Imagine if, instead, the two speeches had been covered side by side. Biden’s barbed references to Trump were all about the former President’s offenses to American democracy. He called out Trump’s 2024 campaign of “resentment, revenge, and retribution” and the “chaos” unleashed by the Trump-majority Supreme Court when it threw out the decades-old precedent of Roe v. Wade. In reference to a recent quote from the former President, in which Trump suggested that Americans should just “get over it” when it comes to gun violence, Biden retorted, “I say: Stop it, stop it, stop it!” His sharpest words for Trump came in response to the ex-President’s public invitation to Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to nato countries that don’t spend what Trump wants them to on defense—a line that Biden condemned as “outrageous,” “dangerous,” and “unacceptable.”
Trump’s speech made little effort to draw substantive contrasts with Biden. Instead, the Washington Post counted nearly five dozen references to Biden in the course of the Georgia rally, almost all of them epithets drawn from the Trump marketing playbook for how to rip down an opponent—words like “angry,” “corrupt,” “crooked,” “flailing,” “incompetent,” “stupid,” and “weak.” Trump is, always and forever, a puerile bully, stuck perpetually on the fifth-grade playground. But the politics of personal insult has worked so well for Trump that he is, naturally, doubling down on it in 2024. In fact, one of the clips from Trump’s speech on Saturday which got the most coverage was his mockery of Biden’s stutter: a churlish—and, no doubt, premeditated—slur.
Trump still is unhinged when it comes to Hillary Clinton. This analysis was written by Phillip Bump for the Washington Post. “Trump goes on a weird riff about acid — again. The former president claimed that Hillary Clinton destroyed some emails with acid, an assertion that is not only untrue but has been debunked countless times.”
For his interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly, Donald Trump didn’t stray far from home. The two sat down in uncomfortable-looking, formal chairs in one of Mar-a-Lago’s self-consciously ornate rooms for a discussion about how inept President Biden is.
“We have a man that can’t talk,” Trump said of Biden. “He can’t negotiate. He doesn’t know he’s alive.” As a result, the former president concluded, “this is a very dangerous time for our country.”
All of this came shortly after Trump claimed that Hillary Clinton had destroyed some emails with acid — an assertion that is not only untrue but has also been debunked countless times over the past eight years. But it’s still lodged in his brain, somehow, and he is unable or unwilling to dislodge it.
Because this claim is so old and because it has been debunked so many times (for example), we’ll just run through this quickly. In August 2016, after House Republicans investigating Clinton had stumbled onto her use of a private email server, former South Carolina congressman (and current Fox News host) Trey Gowdy announced that Clinton’s team had used free software called BleachBit to erase a hard drive that once contained her emails. (Messages determined by her attorneys to pertain to her government work had already been turned over.)
…
In his most recent telling, the claim is very specific. Clinton used “acid testing,” or, I guess, “essentially acid that will destroy everything within 10 miles.” This is very Trumpian, the effort to take a minor detail and inflate it to apocalyptic proportions. Not only has debunking this claim not had an apparent effect, he is now so used to making this nonsensical assertion that he feels like the baseline misinformation isn’t enough for his audience.
This is common behavior from Trump, certainly, in the abstract and the specific example. But it is more fraught now than it used to be, given the extent to which Trump and his allies have focused on mental sharpness as a necessary qualification for the presidency. Americans are asked — as Trump endeavors in his conversation with Kelly — to view Biden as muddled and addled.
That has triggered some blowback, including from Biden’s campaign team, focused on elevating moments in which Trump himself seems to be confused. Just this week, Democratic lawmakers responded to criticism of Biden’s memory by compiling clips showing Trump misspeaking or misidentifying people.
Meanwhile, the TikTok and social media battle continues. We have a Supreme Court Decision plus an interest by MAGA cultists to buy TikTok to use as a propaganda tool. NBC Newsreports on the latest SCOTUS foray into social media control. “In shadow of Trump tweets, Supreme Court outlines when officials can be sued for social media use. Former President Donald Trump’s frequent use of Twitter lurked in the background as the justices weighed whether an official’s online activities can constitute government action.” This analysis is written by Lawrence Hurley.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that members of the public in some circumstances can sue public officials for blocking them on social media platforms, deciding a pair of cases against the backdrop of former President Donald Trump’s contentious and colorful use of Twitter.
The court ruled unanimously that officials can be deemed “state actors” when making use of social media and can therefore face litigation if they block or mute a member of the public.
In the two cases before the justices, they ruled that disputes involving a school board member in Southern California and a city manager in Michigan should be sent back to lower courts for the new legal test to be applied.
In a ruling written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court acknowledged that it “can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private” because of how social media accounts are used.
The court held that conduct on social media can be viewed as a state action when the official in question “possessed actual authority to speak on the state’s behalf” and “purported to exercise that authority.”
While the officials in both cases have low profiles, the ruling will apply to all public officials who use social media to engage with the public.
During October’s oral argument, Trump’s use of Twitter — before it was renamed X — was frequently mentioned as the justices considered the practical implications.
The cases raised the question of whether public officials’ posts and other social media activity constitute part of their governmental functions. In ruling that it can, the court found that blocking someone from following an official constitutes a government action that could give rise to a constitutional claim.
But the court made it clear that conditions have to be met for a claim to move forward, with Barrett noting that government officials are also “private citizens with their own constitutional rights.”
Determining whether a claim can move forward is not based simply on whether the person is a government official, but on the substance of the conduct in question, she added.
Factors such as whether the account is marked as official and the official is invoking his or her legal authority in making a formal announcement can be taken into account, Barrett said.
“In some circumstances, the post’s content and function might make the plaintiff’s argument a slam dunk,” she added
The TikTok story just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
It appears MAGA billionaires want to buy it and turn it into a propaganda outlet. https://t.co/XLRDatcYof
— Dr. Kat PhD. … not your kiddo, buddy🇺🇦🌻 (@Dakinikat) March 15, 2024
The Washington Examiner had this screaming Op-Ed today by someone named Jeremiah Poff. “TikTok needs a conservative US buyer.” Yup, just what we need; more Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk to create a more violent and unhinged right wing.
The prospect of TikTok needing a U.S. buyer increased this week after the House of Representatives passed a bill that would require the social media app’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app or face a ban.
On a 352-65 vote on Wednesday, the House showed unusual bipartisanship and passed a bill that would force the app to decouple from China or be banned in the United States. The app’s connection to the Chinese Communist Party has raised serious national security concerns that have motivated the legislative action.
While the bill’s fate is uncertain in the Senate despite President Joe Biden pledging to sign it, there needs to be some consideration about what will happen to the app if the bill becomes law and TikTok is sold to a U.S. investor.
Social media companies such as Meta and Google are dominated by the Left. As was evidenced by the 2020 election, they have a sizable influence on what content people see and their political perceptions. A similar concern was obvious with Twitter until it was bought by Elon Musk and rebranded as X.
TikTok has an enormous user base of 170 million in the U.S. Its potential for influencing the population at large is vast, which means Silicon Valley tech companies with an overrepresentation of left-wing views must not be allowed to buy it, lest censorship and liberal propaganda replace Chinese government propaganda.
So, that last sentence is why we don’t need right-wing hysterical and culturally nasty propaganda replacing Chinese government propaganda. You heard it from me first.
My last word is, please remember where and who we were four years ago with President (sic) Trump and his bumbling management of Covid-19. I think it’s an excellent answer to Stefank’s question with a loud YES. The media should remind us how awful it was. Refrigerator trucks with dead bodies and no toilet paper are just two reminders. This is from Mediaite. “Hannity Claims Democrats’ Cannot Run on, Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?” Michael Luciano has the lede. Hannity is still carrying Trump’s diseased water.
Sean Hannity said President Joe Biden and Democrats will be unable to make the case that Americans are better off in 2024 than they were four years ago.
Biden is seeking a second term and will face former President Donald Trump as congressional Democrats try to retake the House of Representatives and undertake the tall order of holding the Senate.
“They spread fear, hysteria, all things hate Trump, hate Trump 24/7,” Hannity said of Democrats during his opening monologue Thursday on Fox News. “And of course, Democrats will call Republicans racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic that want dirty air and water. In other words, Democrats are using fear and division to mask what has been a terrible four years under Biden.”
Hannity then invoked an election refrain made famous by Ronald Reagan during a 1980 debate with then-President Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”
“I repeat, they cannot run on, ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’” Hannity said. “This is all they have left.”
Some quick, back-of-the-napkin math indicates that four years ago, the year was 2020. History buffs may recall that this period in time was marred by a once-in-a-century global pandemic that wound up killing more than one million Americans and torpedoed the economy. Trump’s handling of the country’s pandemic response arguably cost him reelection.
In the early days of the pandemic, Trump sought to downplay the threat posed by Covid-19. In February 2020, he reacted to the news that a handful of Americans had been diagnosed with the virus by saying, “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
This headline made me giggle. It’s from Raw Story. It’s written by Kathleen Culliton. “‘Freudian slip?’ RNC chair says America is better off under Biden than Trump:” It takes a lot of energy to keep lies going in the face of obvious truth.
The Republican National Committee’s new chair Friday gave a resounding “No” to a question he asked himself on nationally broadcast television: Was the nation better off under former President Donald Trump?
Whoops.
Michael Whatley appeared on Fox News to promote the presumptive Republican nominee and the RNC’s co-chair Lara Trump’s father-in-law in his bid to reclaim the White House in 2024.
Have a great weekend! We’re about to get a rainstorm, and I’m getting ready to make a good-sized meatloaf and potatoes, which was basically my mother’s weekly recipe.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Yesterday Robert Hur testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Before his appearance, Hur resigned from the Department of Justice and reportedly worked with Republicans in preparing his testimony. Hur and his Republican pals made every effort to make Biden look bad, but Democrats were well prepared to counter those efforts. And, unfortunately for Hur, the transcript of his interviews with Biden was also released yesterday.
You probably recall that Hur’s final report included gratuitous claims about President Biden’s age and cognitive abilities. Some observers have compared Hur’s behavior with that of James Comey’s attack on Hillary Clinton just before the 2016 election. Fortunately, we are months away from the 2024 vote.
“Don’t be silly,” said my friend, who I suspect later voted for Trump. The New York Times had the story on the front page: “Emails in Anthony Weiner Inquiry Jolt Hillary Clinton’s Campaign.” On Nov. 8, 2016, Clinton lost the election to Trump 304 to 227. The Comey letter had created just enough muddiness to make it seem like both candidates were ethically challenged. It was the false equivalence that Trump was able to ride to the White House. Data guru Nate Silver wrote that the Comey letter “was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.” Not only did Comey make Trump president but then he wrote numerous very tedious books. He became a resistance hero, riding his regret all the way to the bank.
Fast-forward to Feb. 8, 2024, when Republican special counsel Robert Hur released his 345-page report. The report is being seen by some as an exoneration, saying that no criminal charges are warranted in the classified documents case against President Joe Biden. But Hur, who used to work for the Trump administration, couldn’t let Biden off the hook entirely, especially 269 days before an election. Hur, a member of a Republican Party that now largely works as a campaign arm for the former president, delivered the goods for his party. Sure, he found no legal basis to charge Biden, but but but… Hur proceeded to editorialize ad nauseam about Biden’s mental acuity, delivering right-wing talking points up on a platter. He wrote, “[At] trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Saying you don’t remember stuff in a deposition is pretty much standard. For example, Dr. Anthony Fauci said “I don’t recall” 174 times during a deposition about alleged collusion between the Biden administration and social media platforms — but because there isn’t a narrative about Fauci’s age crafted by Trump World, no one thought this had anything to do with his mental acuity….
Lies, by Edel Rodriguez
Hur’s report was a partisan hit job, but it didn’t matter, as former Obama chief of staff Jim Messina tweeted: “Let’s be clear — the special counsel isn’t a dummy and we should be very careful not to take the bait after Comey pulled this in 2016. Hur, a lifelong Republican and creature of DC, didn’t have a case against Biden, but he knew exactly how his swipes could hurt Biden politically.”
Joe Scarborough put it even more succinctly: “He couldn’t indict Biden legally, so he tried to indict Biden politically.” Yet again, a Republican special counsel had put his finger on the scale, just like Comey did in 2016. Hur isn’t a neurologist; he has no idea what Biden’s mental acuity is. Former attorney general Eric Holder condemned the report: “Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing DOJ traditions,” he posted on X, adding: “Had this report been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.” Shame on Attorney General Merrick Garland for letting this partisan hit job be released.
The special counsel who impugned the president’s age and competence in his report on how Joe Biden handled classified documents will himself be up for questioning this week.
Some Biden aides and allies have suggested that Hur, a Republican appointed to his role as U.S. attorney by Donald Trump, is a political partisan. Hur’s defenders say he has shown throughout his career that his work is guided by only facts and the law — not politics.
A review of Hur’s professional life shows he’s no stranger to politically charged investigations. He prosecuted former elected officials as Maryland’s chief federal law enforcement officer. And as a Justice Department official, he helped monitor special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election….
The Naked Truth and the Masked Lies, by Rosita Allinckx
Hur held one of the most powerful jobs in the Justice Department during a tumultuous time in the Trump administration, serving as the top aide to [Rod] Rosenstein, the department’s second-in-command.
As the principal associate deputy attorney general, Hur helped run day-to-day operations of the department in 2017 and early 2018. He also helped Rosenstein stay on top of Mueller’s progress in the Russia investigation. Hur held bi-weekly meetings with the special counsel’s team and reported back to Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general said in an interview.
Rosenstein said he hired Hur because he knew he would maintain a calm and steady demeanor and “approach cases in a nonpartisan way.”
Um . . . Sure, Jan. Read more background at the link.
Why did Hur resign from the DOJ before testifying? Doesn’t that seem suspicious?
Hur, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who was tapped to lead the Biden probe by Attorney General Merrick Garland, formally stepped down one day before his Tuesday appearance at the request of Republicans led by Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. He drew criticism from Biden and the Democrats for criticizing the president’s memory in the report even as he declined to charge him.
Former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained that the Justice Department “cannot give instructions” to a former employee about what he “can and cannot testify to.”
“That makes it even more problematic from our perspective … if he was still a federal employee, DOJ would have to approve his testimony and they’d be involved in his appearance tomorrow,” a Democratic Judiciary Committee source told The Independent.
“It’s hard not to anticipate some real ugliness with Robert Hur’s testimony,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman. “He already showed his partisan colors in the inappropriate parts of his report. And he and the [Republicans] obviously contemplate he can vilify Biden now that he’s testifying as a ‘private citizen.’”
So it appears Hur’s motivation was to have the freedom to attack Biden without any DOJ influence on what he would say. Before I get to the testimony, here are some stories about Hur’s final report:
“First impressions stick,” writes Serwer. No matter that clarifications follow–it’s what people hear first that stays with them.
Five years ago, a partisan political operative with the credibility of a long career in government service misled the public about official documents in order to get Donald Trump the positive spin he wanted in the press. The play worked so well that a special counsel appointed to examine President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, Robert Hur, ran it again.
In 2019, then–Attorney General Bill Barr—who would later resign amid Trump’s attempts to suborn the Justice Department into backing his effort to seize power after losing reelection—announced that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had not found sufficient evidence to indict Trump on allegations that he had assisted in a Russian effort to sway the 2016 election and had obstructed an investigation into that effort. Mueller’s investigation led to indictments of several Trump associates, but he later testified that Justice Department policy barred prosecuting a sitting president, and so indicting Trump was not an option. Barr’s summary—which suggested that Trump had been absolved of any crimes—was so misleading that it drew a rebuke not only from Mueller himself but from a federal judge in a public-records lawsuit over material related to the investigation. That judge, Reggie Walton, wrote in 2020 that the discrepancies “cause the court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller report to the contrary.”
Truth and Lies, by Louise Fletcher
As my colleague David Graham wrote at the time, the ploy worked. Trump claimed “total exoneration,” and mainstream outlets blared his innocence in towering headlines. Only later did the public learn that Mueller’s report had found “no criminal conspiracy but considerable links between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia, and strongly suggested that Trump had obstructed justice.”
Now this same pattern has emerged once again, only instead of working in the president’s favor, it has undermined him. Hur, a former U.S. attorney in the Trump administration, was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden for potential criminal wrongdoing after classified documents were found at his home. (Trump has been indicted on charges that he deliberately mishandled classified documents after storing such documents at his home in Florida and deliberately showing them off to visitors as “highly confidential” and “secret information.”)
In Hur’s own summary of his investigation, he concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” even absent DOJ policy barring prosecution of a sitting president. But that part was not what caught the media’s attention. Rather it was Hur’s characterization of Biden as having memory problems, validating conservative attacks on the president as too old to do the job. The transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden, released yesterday by House Democrats, suggest that characterization—politically convenient for Republicans and the Trump campaign—was misleading.
When special counsel Robert Hur released his report last month explaining why he wouldn’t charge President Joe Biden with mishandling classified documents, his claim that Biden displayed a “poor memory” and “diminished faculties” in their interview received enormous attention.
But now, the full transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden have been released — and they make Hur’s claims about Biden’s memory appear cherry-picked and exaggerated.
Biden sat for more than five hours with Hur’s team over two days. In that time, he said he did not recall specifics about how particular boxes ended up in his residences or offices after his vice presidency. But he engaged at length about his process for handling classified information and many other topics.
Hur’s claim that Biden had demonstrated some sort of general “poor memory” hangs almost entirely on mix-ups by Biden about in what specific year several years-old events occurred. The transcript makes clear Biden remembers all those events. But it seems Biden just doesn’t pay a lot of attention to which specific year stuff happened in.
So why did Hur hype this up so much?
His report and his House testimony Tuesday suggest one reason. Hur proposed a theory, outlined in the report, about Biden’s deliberate wrongdoing — that Biden kept classified documents about Afghanistan policy deliberations to help burnish his reputation and legacy.
However, Hur couldn’t prove this theory, in part because Biden said he couldn’t recall why these documents were in his garage. Hence, the special counsel bashed Biden for his “poor memory” — knowing full well how that would play when the report became public.
Truth Hidden Between the Lies, by Jeff Klena
This is a good article, and it also deals with Hur’s testimony and how Democrats’ countered his claims. After breaking down problems with Hur’s report, Prokop quotes Adam Schiff:
Hur’s report looks less like a smoking gun proving Biden’s supposed age-related decline, and more like dirty pool, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) argued.
“You know this, I know this, there is nothing more common with a witness of any age, when asked about events that are years old, than to say ‘I do not recall.’ Indeed, they’re instructed by their attorney to do that, if they have any question about it,” Schiff said.
Hur argued back that his consideration of Biden’s memory was relevant to his charging decisions, and that he was perfectly willing, indeed required, to explain his thinking on that topic in his report to the attorney general.
Schiff disputed this. “What is in the rules is, you don’t gratuitously do things to prejudice the subject of an investigation when you’re declining to prosecute. You don’t gratuitously add language that you know will be useful in a political campaign.”
“You were not born yesterday,” Schiff added. “You understood exactly what you were doing. It was a choice.”
Why on earth did Merrick Garland appoint this guy?
The White House knew it had a political problem on its hands when a special counsel report questioned President Joe Biden’s memory last month, but Biden saw a much more personal affront as well.
Robert Hur, who had been appointed to investigate whether Biden mishandled classified documents, wrote that the president couldn’t recall in an interview with prosecutors the date when his adult son, Beau, died of cancer. It was a shocking contention about a keystone event in Biden’s life, and it fed into questions about whether the 81-year-old president is fit to serve another term….
Hur didn’t ask the president about his son’s death; Biden brought it up himself during a discussion about how he stored documents at a rental home in Virginia after leaving the vice president’s office in 2017.
And Biden recalled the specific date that Beau died, although he briefly wondered aloud about the year as the conversation toggled between various events.
“What month did Beau die?” Biden mused. “Oh, God, May 30th.”
A White House lawyer interjected by saying, “2015.”
“Was it 2015 he had died?” Biden asked. When someone responded affirmatively, the president added, “It was 2015.” [….]
Hur, in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, said his report’s discussion of Biden’s memory was “necessary and accurate and fair” because his state of mind was an important part of evaluating whether he committed a crime.
“I did not sanitize my explanation nor did I disparage the president unfairly,” he said.
What an asshole! As Adam Serwer wrote, Hur made sure that the first impression he gave of Biden’s interviews was on of a doddering old man with cognitive issues.
Although special counsel Robert Hur impugned Joe Biden’s memory in his investigation over whether the president mishandled classified documents, he actually told Biden that he appeared “to have a photographic understanding and recall.”
The comment, which appears in transcripts of Hur’s interviews with Biden, did not make it into Hur’s final report. Hur concluded in the report that Biden should not be charged over the documents, but made sure to mention his doubts about the president’s memory.
The California Democrat asked Hur about a comment that appears on “Day 1, Page 47” of the transcript.
“You said to President Biden, ‘You appear to have a photographic understanding and recall of the House,’” Swalwell said. “Did you say that to President Biden?”
Hur conceded that “those words do appear on Page 47 of the transcript.”
Swalwell pressed further.
“‘Photographic’ is what you said, is that right?” he asked.
“That word does appear on Page 47 of the transcript,” Hur responded.
“Never appeared in your report, though. Is that correct? The word ‘photographic’?” Swalwell asked.
The Special Counsel Robert Hur report has been grossly mischaracterized by the press. The report finds that the evidence of a knowing, willful violation of the criminal laws is wanting. Indeed, the report, on page 6, notes that there are “innocent explanations” that Hur “cannot refute.” That is but one of myriad examples we outline in great detail below of the report repeatedly finding a lack of proof. And those findings mean, in DOJ-speak, there is simply no case. Unrefuted innocent explanations is the sine qua non of not just a case that does not meet the standard for criminal prosecution – it means innocence. Or as former Attorney General Bill Barr and his former boss would have put it, a total vindication (but here, for real).
But even without the prompting of a misleading “summary” by Barr, the press has gotten the lede wrong. This may be because of a poorly worded (we’re being charitable) thesis sentence on page 1 of Hur’s executive summary. Hur writes at the outset: “Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” You have to wait for the later statements that what the report actually says is there is insufficient evidence of criminality, innocent explanations for the conduct, and affirmative evidence that Biden did not willfully withhold classified documents. Put another way, that same sentence about “our investigation uncovered evidence” could equally apply to Mike Pence, who had classified documents at his home, which is similarly some “evidence” of a crime, but also plainly insufficient to remotely establish criminality.
The press incorrectly and repeatedly blast out that the Hur report found Biden willfully retained classified documents, in other words, that Biden committed a felony; with some in the news media further trumpeting that the Special Counsel decided only as a matter of discretion not to recommend charges.
Read a details analysis of the report at the link.
Former special counsel Robert Hur appeared before Congress on Tuesday to explain his investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents – which led to no charges against the president but plenty of consternation among Democrats when Hur described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in his report.
While Hur came ready to defend his investigation, outlining a specific, legal case — or lack thereof – the members of the House Judiciary Committee were fighting a battle over the much more subjective political consequences to Hur’s report just months before the 2024 presidential election.
Truth Lies at the Bottom of the Well, by Frances MacDonald
Republicans attacked Biden as they pressed Hur on his decision not to prosecute the president, while Democrats criticized Hur for his comments about Biden’s memory – while also focusing much of their attention on former President Donald Trump and the differences in the former president’s classified documents case, which led to an indictment last year.
Hur tried his best to stick to what was in his report, even as he was pushed to go further either to criticize Biden – or to declare his innocence.
Hur was clear on Tuesday that he did not want to play ball with Republicans on whether Biden is “senile,” given the former special counsel’s decision to describe Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” in his investigative report.
“Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘senile’ as exhibiting a decline of cognitive ability, such as memory, associated with old age,” Republican Rep. Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin said. “Mr. Hur, based on your report, did you find that the president was senile?”
“I did not. That conclusion does not appear in my report,” Hur replied emphatically.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state Democrat, tussled with Hur over his conclusions, claiming Hur “exonerated” Biden. But Hur immediately took issue with the term during a tense exchange in which they both repeatedly cut each other off.
“This lengthy, expensive an independent investigation resulted in a complete exoneration of President Joe Biden for every document you discussed in your report, you found insufficient evidence that the president violated any laws about possession or retention of classified materials,” Jayapal said.
“I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration,’” Hur said. “That is not a word that is used in my report and that is not a part of my task as a prosecutor.”
“You exonerated him,” Jayapal retorted.
“I did not exonerate him,” Hur said. “That word does not appear in the report.”
Okay then. But he didn’t charge him either. What can I say. Hur is just an asshole. Also, please note that Hur was question about whether he would accept a role in a second Trump administration, and he refused to answer. We can only hope that this controversy will be forgotten by the time we get to November.
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
I have no idea why anyone would give him any wiggle room on this unless they are scared of his rabid and well-armed idiots. We see more of his usual contempt for law and democracy in a new headline today in The Guardian. “
Elizabeth Crisp of The Hill 
Louisiana has become the latest state to be taken over by White Christian Fascists. Big John Stanton writes about the latest shady moves through special sessions that throw our state back into the Dark Ages. “One Landry to Bind Them All: Under the watchful eye of Gov. Jeff Landry, Republicans push a regressive legislative agenda.”
Will this movement continue even after Trump has left the building? His lawsuits are mostly delayed, but the impact becomes obvious, starting with the total takeover of the RNC. This headline from NBC News is an omen of things to come. “
Karma is a bitch, Don the Con! #TrumpIsBroke is trending on X. Susan B Glasser continues her narrative on how to cover this pariah of a politician in a system and media set-up that just doesn’t seem to get it. “
“Mired in delays” is the understatement of the year-to-date. Meanwhile, Trump gets more incoherent by the day. His appearance is more startling than usual. 
Trump still is unhinged when it comes to Hillary Clinton. This analysis was written by Phillip Bump for the 
The Washington Examiner
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