Rafael Struve was eating dinner at his parents’ home in Houston when the mug shot flashed on his cellphone.
Wow, he thought, staring at Donald Trump’s face. This is it.
“It’s one thing to anticipate it, but to actually see it,” said Struve, 31, who works in business development and is a spokesman for Texas Young Republicans. “ … I don’t think it bodes well for our party if we keep this as the center.”
This first booking photo of an American president — of Fulton County, Ga., Inmate No. P01135809 — is proving a Rorschach test of our political moment. If we see the world not as it is, but as we are, the same appears true for what’s shaping up to be the most divisive image of the 2024 election.
Some Americans see a criminal facing 91 charges across New York, Florida, Washington, D.C. and Georgia, a man whom the law is treating like anyone else. Others see a wrongly accused champion, the likely Republican presidential nominee facing off against a biased justice system conspiring to bench him. Still others see an experienced showman working the camera….
Struve, a two-time Trump voter who now supports Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, considered the jailhouse portrait over a plate of steak with guacamole and yucca.
Trump’s scowl? Calculated, he thought — “part of the game he’s trying to play long-term, this sort of grievance politics.”
In Atlanta, Anthony Michael Kreis dismissed the image as an outdated ritual of the criminal justice system.
To Kreis, an assistant law professor at Georgia State University, mug shots have devolved from an identification tool to a vehicle for shaming. Consider the galleries of arrestees that newspapers once commonly published. Even without a conviction, such photos can haunt someone for life.
“It’s a skeevy thing we do as a society,” Kreis said.
Yet he acknowledged that it might have been just as skeevy to grant a special pass to an enormously powerful man. The mug shot has “a certain degree of symbolism,” he noted, signaling “that no person is above the law.”
Extra Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: August 26, 2023 Filed under: cat art, caturday, Crime, Criminal Justice System, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: 14th amendment, folk art, Trump mugshot, Twitter aka X, two-tier justice system 8 Comments
Miné Okubo, American artist
Happy Caturday!!
Now that Trump has been indicted and arrested repeatedly, I’m feeling a bit calmer about possibilities for the the future of democracy in America. It will still be a long fight, but the opening battles have been won by the good guys.
Trump reportedly tried to avoid having a mug shot taken, and then used it to fundraise. But, let’s face it, the man is in deep legal trouble. He’s been exposed as a common criminal–the first former president ever to be indicted. I have to believe that most Americans are not going to want to vote for an accused and/or convicted felon for president in 2024.
On the mugshot, The Washington Post looked for reactions: Hero, showman, scoundrel: What Americans see in Trump’s mug shot.
Claudia Olivos, ‘Cats in Love’
The WaPo writers managed to find one Democrat to quote in their article, which mostly focused on Trump voters.
Some 1,400 miles north, in the village of Ephraim on Wisconsin’s northeastern thumb, Monique McClean looked at her Apple watch and thought: What is that?
Without comment, her husband had texted Trump’s mug shot, which she initially mistook for some kind of illustration. “It looked like a Marvel supervillain to me,” she said.
McClean, 61, the owner of Pearl Wine Cottage on Green Bay’s shoreline, felt her mood turn gloomy when she considered the image more closely. A Democrat, she’d been horrified by the way Trump accused poll workers in Georgia of scheming against him. Two women had been forced into hiding.
“I just thought of all the lies he has told for years,” she said.
Trump is back on Twitter AKA X, but he hasn’t made much of a splash so far. At Politico, Jack Shafer argues that: Trump Can’t Go Home Again. Twitter is not the site that it used to be. And he’s not the same man.
After surrendering on Thursday at an Atlanta jail to be booked on state felony charges alleging his involvement in a criminal conspiracy to void the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump sat for a mug shot in which he scowls like a psychopath out of a Stanley Kubrick film. Trump’s next grand act of surrender was to post the picture on his Twitter account — now called X by owner Elon Musk, pedants and copy desks but by nobody who uses it — marking his first appearance there since being reinstated in November, after being booted by the service 958 days ago following the Jan. 6 riots.
Trump’s post, which garnered a healthy 1.3 million likes and 305,000 retweets, essentially concedes that his plan to build his own social media empire under the Truth Social banner is a bust. Aside from Trump’s regular posts there, Truth Social is a wasteland of brimstone and salt whose finances and corporate structure make a Rube Goldberg machine look like a Swiss watch. Except for when journalists repeat his Truth Social outbursts or report on them, that Trump account goes unnoticed. By returning to the social media outlet that helped make him “great,” Trump’s post may presage an attempt to restart the media fire of his 2016 campaign and his presidency.
Man with black cat, by Gea Zwanink
But no man ever steps in the same river twice — it’s not the same river, and he’s not the same man, as the sage said. Twitter is not the same and neither is Trump, and the media watershed that allowed Trump to politically prosper doesn’t drain the way it once did. Thanks to inertia, changing technology, fickle tastes and Musk’s determination to wreck it, the site has lost its cachet. What does that mean for Trump? [….]
The environment that so nurtured Trump’s nuttism has degraded since he filled our silos with his opinions and policy statements. Many journalists still use Twitter, but the site has lost its cultural and political primacy. During his vacation from Twitter, TikTok became the world’s most popular domain, and his comments on Truth Social or at rallies no longer carried instant weight now that he was an ex-president. Even since announcing his candidacy and leading the polls, Trump has often failed to make himself Topic A in the political conversation (except for during his spurt of indictments). Even Fox News, which pampered him like a pet pig during his presidency, now gives him the cold shoulder.
Read the rest at Politico.
At The Daily Beast, attorney Shan Wu writes: Trump’s Arrest in Georgia Shows a Two-Tier Justice System.
LaShawn Thompson shared something in common with former President Donald J. Trump. Both were defendants charged in Fulton County, Georgia, and booked at the Fulton County Jail—known as “Rice Street.” But that is their only shared commonality with the criminal justice system.
On Thursday, with TV cameras overhead and behind his motorcade following every moment of his journey, Trump arrived with an armed U.S. Secret Service escort, and sped through the process of paperwork and having his fingerprinting and mug shots taken like a VIP being let into a night club. It took only 24 or so minutes for him to be booked and leave the jail. His height was logged at 6-foot-3, his weight at 215 pounds, and his hair color as “blond or strawberry.”
The newly minted Inmate No. Po1135809 was back on his private jet within a matter of moments, after claiming again he had done “nothing wrong.”
Dama Con Gato, 2009, by Pescador
But LaShawn Thompson never got to leave after his booking at Rice Street. He died there at the age of 35.
Thompson died at the Fulton County Jail after being held there for three months. According to his autopsy, contributing factors to his death included dehydration, malnutrition, untreated schizophrenia, and severe insect infestation on his body from lice and bed bugs.
His family’s attorney said he “was eaten alive by insects and bedbugs.” Thompson was charged with a misdemeanor.
By contrast, Trump is charged with racketeering crimes in a 41-count felony indictment and facing a total of four different criminal cases brought by prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice, Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and now the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. But the Fulton County case is the first time that Trump will experience the normal booking procedures of fingerprinting and likely be photographed for his “mug shot.” He also has release conditions that include bail.
Food for thought. Read the rest of this sickening story at The Daily beast.
As Trump faces legal jeopardy, the fight to use the 14th Amendment to disqualify him from public office is gaining steam.
ABC News: 14th Amendment, Section 3: A new legal battle against Trump takes shape.
Separate from the criminal cases, over the past few weeks a growing body of conservative scholars have raised the constitutional argument that Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election make him ineligible to hold federal office ever again.
That disqualification argument boils down to Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which says that a public official is not eligible to assume public office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States, or had “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” unless they are granted amnesty by a two-thirds vote of Congress.
Advocacy groups have long argued that Trump’s behavior after the 2020 election fits those criteria. The argument gained new life earlier this month when two members of the conservative Federalist Society, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, endorsed it in the pages of the Pennsylvania Law Review.
“If the public record is accurate, the case is not even close. He is no longer eligible to the office of Presidency,” the article reads.
Since then, two more legal scholars — retired conservative federal judge J. Michael Luttig and Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe — made the same case in an article published in The Atlantic.
By Andrie Martens
“The disqualification clause operates independently of any such criminal proceedings and, indeed, also independently of impeachment proceedings and of congressional legislation,” they wrote. “The clause was designed to operate directly and immediately upon those who betray their oaths to the Constitution, whether by taking up arms to overturn our government or by waging war on our government by attempting to overturn a presidential election through a bloodless coup.”
The argument even got raised on the Republican presidential debate stage in Milwaukee this week.
“Over a year ago, I said that Donald Trump was morally disqualified from being president again as a result of what happened on January 6th. More people are understanding the importance of that, including conservative legal scholars,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said, eliciting a mix of cheers and boos from the audience. “I’m not going to support somebody who’s been convicted of a serious felony or who is disqualified under our Constitution.”
This is from Shan Wu at The Daily Beast: Trump Can and Should Be Disqualified From Running for President Under the 14th Amendment.
The “Disqualification Clause” found in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment fits Donald J. Trump like a glove.
Or as political podcaster Allison Gill asked on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter: “if section 3 of the 14th amendment wasn’t designed for him, who was it designed for?”
The historical answer to Gill’s query is, of course, that it was designed for Confederates trying to get back into the federal government after losing the Civil War. And that very same historical context draws a direct analogy to Trump’s efforts to get back into the presidency after losing the 2020 election.
Three black cats, by Tacha, Toronto
Here’s what the Disqualification Clause says:
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
The plain language of this obviously encompasses Trump’s actions to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. These actions include but are not limited to asking the Georgia Secretary of State to find additional votes for him, conspiring to put forth slates of unelected “fake” electors for the electoral college, and his call for “wild” protests on Jan. 6 that led to the attack on the Capitol.
But while these actions have resulted in Trump being charged criminally both by the U.S. Justice Department and the State of Georgia, his disqualification does not depend upon him being convicted in either of those cases.
Yu quotes from the piece by Tribe and Luttig mentioned in the previous article along with other experts:
Tribe and Luttig are hardly outliers in their view. A forthcoming law review article written by Federalist Society conservative law professors—William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas—not only agrees that the disqualification is self-enforcing but also makes the case that numerous others who supported Trump’s efforts also may be disqualified.
Baude and Paulsen note that this could include people like former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn (who proposed a plan to seize voting machines), the “fake electors,” Jeffrey Clark of the Justice Department, and “at least one member of Congress” (that would be Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA)) who had supported Clark’s plans—and even lobbied for removal of senior DOJ officials who opposed Clark’s scheme.
Head over to The Daily Beast to read some counterarguments.
All in all, I think things are looking better for the efforts to keep Trump from getting back into power.
That’s it for me today. Have a nice weekend everyone!
Finally Friday Reads: The Petty American Minority Runs Amok! Amok! Amok!
Posted: August 25, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: 1st GOP Presidential Debate 2023, Heat Dome: UNCLE!!!!!, Trump Crime Syndicate, Trump cult, Trump Mug Shots 5 Comments
John (repeat1968) Buss,
Damien… er Donald, seems pissed. #TrumpMugShot #TrumpArrest #Omen #PAB #FullDiaper
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
All I can say today is, “We’ve seen the enemy, and he is us!” The last of the Trump co-conspirators have turned themselves in. Fittingly enough, the last guy was a Lutheran minister and retired California cop. A Naptha Fire at a Marathon Oil Refinery just west of me is causing schools to close and nearby residents to evacuate. Fires are now a big thing in Louisiana, and we’re still setting record highs that should have the asterisk next to them since they’ve been super fueled by Climate Change. Most years, we never see much of the upper 90s, let alone the 100s, but this year oy, such a heat dome! This election year will deliver a Republican governor to us that’s bound to make things worse.
Maui County’s Power Company is destroying the evidence that could possibly point to their malice in the big fire there. Compromising Evidence seems to be a pastime these days. Oh, and some idiot saw fit to bring Sarah Palin back into the Public dialogue as if she ever had anything intelligent to say. Today, she’s inciting a riot. Setting fires is what all Republicans are suitable for these days. That idiot was Eric Bolling, by the way.
This is from The Daily Beast. “Sarah Palin Says Civil War Is ‘Going to Happen’ After Trump’s Arrest.” I’ve never seen a political party so willing to say anything that nearly everything is an outright lie, a conspiracy theory, or propaganda.
Sarah Palin responded to Donald Trump’s arrest in Georgia on Thursday night by talking up the possibility of civil war. Speaking to Eric Bolling as the former president was booked at the Fulton County Jail on election interference charges, Palin slammed “those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice.” “I want to ask them: What the heck?” the former Alaska governor said. “Do you want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this.” Addressing Bolling, Palin went on to say: “I like that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.”
Trump Supporters in Georgia couldn’t even tell the difference between Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms and current Fulton County District Attorney Fawni Willis.
Do Trump supporters even know what Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis looks like? When former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms appeared at the Fulton County Jail on Thursday, MAGA fans berated her and yelled “Lock her up!”—because they mistook her for Willis. “They thought I was Fani and started chanting at me as well, and just walking through the crowd, there was a lot of hatred out here,” Bottoms told CNN. “Imagine that. A lot of hatred and really bad energy out here, but, you know, this is—when you sign up for public service you don’t get to pick and choose your good days and your bad days.” She went on to say being “subjected to threats” is “part of the job” but added that it’s “a threat to our democracy in and of itself” when people “people don’t serve because they fear for their lives.”
We can’t even have any conversations about policy or strategy differences anymore because the Grand Old Party is full of hypnotoads swaying the opinions of the idiots that watch them. I watched the entire GOP debate on Wednesday. What a shit show! I could make so many remarks about misogynoir right now, plus the fact the two women do not look alike, which leads straight down to that old cracker troupe, but hey, there’s more shit to show!
The biggest shit show was the Republican Debates. “The First Republican Presidential Debate Was Rife With Abortion Misinformation. “Abortions on demand,” “born alive abortions” and other fact-free claims were on display at the first GOP debate.” This is from HuffPo.
The first Republican presidential debate included a lot of fake news about abortion.
At least four of the eight candidates standing on the debate stage on Wednesday night repeated the flagrant lie that people are getting abortions “up until birth.”“I would love for someone to ask Biden and Kamala Harris: Are they for 38 weeks, are they for 39 weeks, are they for 40 weeks? Because that’s what the media needs to be asking,” said Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, referring to President Joe Biden and his vice president.
“What the Democrats are trying to do on this issue is wrong — to allow abortion all the way up to the moment of birth,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis added, before diving into a story about a woman named Penny who allegedly “survived multiple abortion attempts” until her grandmother saved her. So-called “born-alive” anti-abortion legislation ― purportedly meant to protect fetuses that survive botched abortions ― has flooded the country in recent years and become a right-wing talking point even though it has no scientific basis.
Other contenders like Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) fanned the flames around the “abortion up until birth” myth.
“We cannot let states like California, New York and Illinois have abortions on demand up until the day of birth,” Scott said. “That is immoral. It is unethical. It is wrong.”
But it’s downright wrong to suggest that women are getting abortions up until their last days of pregnancy simply because they changed their minds about having a child. To start, abortion later in pregnancy is extremely rare: Less than 1% of abortions occur at 21 weeks or later and the subset of abortions in the third trimester (after 26 weeks) is even smaller.
My OB/GYN, board-certified, Dr Daughter reminds me that anything after 26 weeks isn’t even considered an abortion. At that point of viability, there’s a delivery that is either successful or not. It’s done because something is drastically wrong with the fetus or drastically wrong with the mother. Anyone who believes anything else belongs to a cult for a tortured death.
Additionally, the large majority of pregnant people who are in their third trimester have wanted pregnancies and often need an abortion for medical reasons, like finding a fatal fetal abnormality or the health of the pregnant person is being threatened.
“Abortion ‘up until birth’ simply does not happen,” Angela Vasquez-Giroux, NARAL Pro-Choice America vice president of communications and research, told HuffPost.
“The GOP candidates know that Americans don’t support their extreme bans on abortion, and they are desperately grasping at straws to muddy the waters,” Vasquez-Giroux said. “Republicans want you to be fooled by the disinformation they pushed tonight – but they want a national ban on abortion, full stop. A ban is a ban, no matter how they try to spin it.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence piled on to the misinformation garbage fire, telling the American people that 70% of the U.S. supports a federal 15-week abortion ban. Recent polling from USA TODAY/Suffolk University found that 80% of voters oppose a federal abortion ban ― including 65% of Republicans and 83% of independents.
While Nikki Haley did manage to sound reasonable on a few issues, this was only because she was surrounded by worse fools. I believe one of the candidates is secretly an animatronic character on the run from Chuckie Cheese. Either that, or he jumped out of some cartoon strip somewhere. It figures he’s a tech bro and the darling of right-wing billionaires. He’s as odd as Musk in his overly animated way. This is from Margaret Sullivan, writing for The Guardian. “Vivek Ramaswamy is America’s demagogue-in-waiting.’ Ramasmarmy is more like it. But, he’s racking in bucks and taking them from DeSanctemonius and wow is he chatty.
He thinks the climate crisis is a hoax, supports Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and would gladly pardon Donald Trump on day 1 of his would-be presidency. A wealthy biotech entrepreneur, the 38-year-old has never before run for public office.
Despite all of this (or maybe because of it), this week’s Republican debate became a national coming-out party for Vivek Ramaswamy.
Suddenly, this inexperienced and dangerous showoff is almost a household name.
Many in the Republican base ate up his showmanship and blatant fanboying of their hero, Donald Trump. In CNN’s post-debate focus group of Republican voters in Iowa, for example, Ramaswamy got the most favorable response.
Trump publicly applauded him. And many in the mainstream media declared him victorious. The Washington Post put him up high in its “winners” column, trailing only behind Donald Trump, who notably wasn’t even there. (Choosing not to enter this particular clown car showed some uncharacteristic good sense on the former president’s part.)
The New York Times analyzed the situation under a glowing headline “How Vivek Ramaswamy Broke Through: Big Swings With a Smile”, with emphasis on his style: “unchecked confidence and insults”.
For this millennial tech bro, his performance on the Fox News stage in Milwaukee couldn’t have gone much better.
As a glimpse of America’s future, it couldn’t have gone much worse.
“If you have wondered what Trumpism after Trump looks like, ask no further,” suggested the magazine writer David Freedlander on the social media site formerly known as Twitter. His prediction accompanied a debate stage photo of Ramaswamy with clenched fist.
Certainly, he has the essentials covered. No, not foreign policy chops or a background in public service, but a mocking aversion to social justice and equality. Amelia Robinson of The Columbus Dispatch provides links on the newest cipher to enter the race. Dive in if you dare!
Dick Wright has been an award winning editorial cartoonist for decades, drawing for the San Diego Union, the Providence Journal, Scripps-Howard Newspapers and the Columbus Dispatch.
Great! Shallow and narcissistic! Just another Republican!
So, I will end with Don the Con that took ConAir back to New Jersey yesterday and immediately go to work on hi merchandising mugshot paraphenalia. I can only imagine how much his fools will send to him. This is from Salon. It’s written by Chaucey DeVega. “Trump is in the final stage of cult leadership”: Fulton County arrest elevates his MAGA “martyrdom”. The “country is on the precipice of sustained violence we haven’t seen in 150-160 years,” says Republican Joe Walsh.” Yes, when I don’t remember my history, I ask my plumber to remind me. Oh, well.
In all, this week has been a spectacle of the worst sort. At CNN, Stephen Collinson accurately described it as, “No other GOP leader could confidently snub a prime-time television debate and turn his no-show into an argument for his inevitability. But Trump – as with his attempt to use criminal indictments to advance a political career that has always prospered amid perceptions that he’s being unfairly treated – is changing all the rules of campaigning once again.”
The American news media, political class, and general public will do their best (and will largely fail) to navigate these “historic” events with the goal of finding some sense of balance, normalcy, and clarity in unprecedented times. Unfortunately, it is those same bad habits and norms that helped to create the disaster that is the Age of Trump and ascendant American neofascism in the first place.
So, in an attempt to make sense of what comes next in this truly historic and unprecedented moment with Donald Trump and his criminal indictment(s) in Georgia, wishcasting and other forms of denial by the news media and political elites about the true depth of the country’s democracy crisis, and what potentially comes next, I recently asked a range of experts for their thoughts and insights.
What follows is an interview with Gregg Barak who is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and author of “Criminology on Trump.” Good. Not a Plumber, not that I don’t appreciate and love talking to my plumber about all kinds of things while he works miracles on the plumbing that brought fresh water to my house and made the outhouse unnecessary in my 1840s era house. He and my electrician work your basic wonders in my eyes. We just don’t talk politics.
I am looking forward to each of these criminal trials especially because they are “slam dunks” for the prosecution regardless of what Trump or his attorneys and supporters have been saying up to now. Reality check: There are simply no legal defenses for Trump’s criminal behavior other than trying to procedurally dissolve these cases by denying that they were crimes in the first place or to simply make motion after motion in the hopes of delaying these trials from beginning for as long as possible.
With respect to the January 6 and Georgia election fraud and conspiracy cases, neither one has anything to do with free speech or with the weaponization of the Justice Department (DOJ) by either President Joe Biden or Attorney General Merrick Garland. While both of these political talking points may continue to thrive in the Trumpian alternative universe, I believe that their powers of persuasion are already starting to fade or decline as a byproduct of the powerful RICO indictments in Georgia. No matter though, these arguments may have had or have value in the court of public opinion, they will have no value whatsoever in the federal or state criminal courts of law where Trump should ultimately be tried will also be convicted.
I am especially looking forward to these trials as they converge with Trump’s campaigns during the GOP primaries like Super Tuesday in March and in the runup to the general election as well. Although Trump could probably stop campaigning altogether and still win the GOP nomination he won’t have to. Instead of taking to the expensive campaign trail week after week, he will simply transfer what passes for political campaigning, or more accurately, his staged and unhinged tirades of doom, gloom, and bada-bing bada-boom to the courthouse steps each and every day of those first two federal criminal trials that will probably not be televised.
I am looking most forward to the RICO trial and to Trump’s Court TV reality show because it will be televised, and its star defendant Donald Trump won’t say one word because he will never take the stand. More importantly, the trial of Trump’s criminal enterprise will be a most illuminating and entertaining criminal trial. If it materializes, this trial will captivate viewers and audiences like never before and that includes the 9-month-long criminal trial of OJ. Simpson. Watched literally by the whole world, this fairly complex yet easily understood criminal trial will witness the prosecution methodologically taking us through those 161 acts that furthered the conspiracy of their criminal enterprise. When Trump leaves the Fulton County criminal trial daily for perhaps as long as nine months he will uncharacteristically no longer be talking about his innocence or his persecution. Instead, with his tail tucked firmly between his legs Trump will be demonstrating that he is quite capable of keeping his gaslighting mouth shut when it better serves his interests or when his talking will only make a fool of himself even to his sycophantic MAGA base.
In other words, stay tuned.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thank you @Caylen Duke. I’m taking your suggestion.
Tuesday Reads: The Latest Trumpy Legal News
Posted: August 22, 2023 Filed under: Crime, Criminal Justice System, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Georgia election interference case, Jack Smith, January 6 case, Jeff Clark, John Eastman, Judge Tanya Chutkan, Mark Meadows 9 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
Now that Trump has been indicted and arrested 3 times, the 4th arrest on Thursday seems sort of old hat. Ho hum . . . Trump will surrender at Fulton County Jail in Georgia on Thursday; his bail has been set at $200,000.
Associated Press: Trump says he will surrender Thursday on Georgia charges tied to efforts to overturn 2020 election.
Former President Donald Trump says he will surrender to authorities in Georgia on Thursday to face charges in the case accusing him of illegally scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.
“Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED,” Trump wrote on his social media network Monday night, hours after his bond was set at $200,000.
It will be Trump’s fourth arrest since April, when he became the first former president in U.S. history to face indictment. Since then, Trump, who remains the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has had what has seemed like an endless procession of bookings and arraignments in jurisdictions across the country. His appearances in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C., have drawn enormous media attention, with news helicopters tracking his every move.
Trump’s announcement came hours after his attorneys met with prosecutors in Atlanta to discuss the details of his release on bond. The former president is barred from intimidating co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the case — including on social media — according to the bond agreement signed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump’s defense attorneys and the judge. It explicitly includes “posts on social media or reposts of posts” made by others.
This morning, two of Trump’s co-defendants surrendered in the Georgia election interference case.
Atlantic News First, via NBC29 VA:
ATLANTA (Atlanta News First/Gray News): First co-defendants in Trump indictment surrender at Fulton County jail.
The first co-defendants in a sweeping indictment out of Fulton County, Georgia, has surrendered to the jail.
Shortly before 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, former President Donald Trump’s attorney John Eastman turned himself in. A bond agreement for $100,000 was reached Monday in his case.
Eastman, prosecutors say, was deeply involved in some of his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election. He wrote a memo arguing that Trump could remain in power if then-Vice President Mike Pence overturned the results of the election during a joint session of Congress where electoral votes would be counted. That plan included putting in place a slate of “alternate” electors in seven battleground states, including Georgia, who would falsely certify that Trump had won their states.
In a social media statement, Eastman said he was surrendering “to an indictment that should never have been brought.”
“It represents a crossing of the Rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances,” Eastman said. “As troubling, it targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide and which was attempting here by ‘formally challeng[ing] the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.’ An opportunity never afforded them in the Fulton County Superior Court.”
A $10,000 bond agreement was reached Monday for Scott Hall, the Atlanta-area bail bondsman who was allegedly involved in commandeering voting information that was the property of Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County in south Georgia.
On Tuesday, just before 9 a.m., Hall surrendered to authorities, and was booked and processed on charges that include conspiracy to commit a felony, conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to defraud the state of political subdivision, and violation of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced And Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Jeff Clark, the DOJ official who wanted to send letters to the swing states saying that the DOJ believed there was significant voter fraud in their states, is trying to avoid going to Atlanta to be booked.
https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1694008924863602918?s=20
Jeff Clark on the morning his house was searched by the FBI:
This is going to enrage Trump. The New York Times just posted an article on Mark Meadows, another of Trump’s co-defendants in Georgia: How Mark Meadows Pursued a High-Wire Legal Strategy in Trump Inquiries.
This winter, after receiving a subpoena from a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Mark Meadows commenced a delicate dance with federal prosecutors.
He had no choice but to show up and, eventually, to testify. Yet Mr. Meadows — Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff — initially declined to answer certain questions, sticking to his former boss’s position that they were shielded by executive privilege.
But when prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, challenged Mr. Trump’s executive privilege claims before a judge, Mr. Meadows pivoted. Even though he risked enraging Mr. Trump, he decided to trust Mr. Smith’s team, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Meadows quietly arranged to talk with them not only about the steps the former president took to stay in office, but also about his handling of classified documents after he left.
The episode illustrated the wary steps Mr. Meadows took to navigate legal and political peril as prosecutors in Washington and Georgia closed in on Mr. Trump, seeking to avoid being charged himself while also sidestepping the career risks of being seen as cooperating with what his Republican allies had cast as partisan persecution of the former president.
His high-wire legal act hit a new challenge this month. While Mr. Meadows’s strategy of targeted assistance to federal prosecutors and sphinxlike public silence largely kept him out of the 45-page election interference indictment that Mr. Smith filed against Mr. Trump in Washington, it did not help him avoid similar charges in Fulton County, Ga. Mr. Meadows was named last week as one of Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in a sprawling racketeering indictment filed by the local district attorney in Georgia.
Interviews and a review of the cases show how Mr. Meadows’s tactics reflected to some degree his tendency to avoid conflict and leave different people believing that he agreed with them. They were also dictated by his unique position in Mr. Trump’s world and the legal jeopardy this presented.
Read all the juicy, gossipy details at the NYT link.
There’s also news about the January 6 case against Trump in DC.
The Washington Post: Justice Dept. pushes back against Trump’s bid for a 2026 trial in D.C.
The Justice Department pushed back Monday on former president Donald Trump’s claims that he cannot be ready to go to trial in January on charges that he illegally sought to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
That’s it for me today. I guess I’m still mainly obsessed with seeing Trump tried, convicted, and imprisoned. I’ll add more links in the comment thread.
Sunday Reads: Some like it Chill
Posted: August 20, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: @repeat1968, Climate change, Climate Deniers, Drought and Heat Wave, Hurricane Hilary, John Buss, Maui Fires, New Orleans Heat Dome, Stormy Weather, The Parrot and the Igloo 5 Comments
Hurricane Hilary swirls near Baja California, Mexico, on Friday. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The stress from extreme weather should be sending a huge wake-up call to the community of humans sharing the planet. Relentless heat here is setting records week after week. Now we’re staring down a map of disturbances in the Atlantic and the Gulf that reminds me of Multiball mode in pinball. We’re still receiving unsettling news from Maui after fires destroyed a historic town. Now, we’re watching a Hurricane threatening a good portion of the west coast. I’m still worried about the koala population decimated by fires in Australia in 2020.
Why aren’t we doing more?
This is from Politico. “Hilary will produce ‘really significant impacts’ in California, FEMA administrator warns “People really need to take this storm in California serious,” Deanne Criswell said.” I’m reading this as I begin my hurricane preparations and readiness as a 30-year veteran of hurricanes. I really hope the people in California are getting up to speed quickly.
As the federal government prepares its response to the tropical storm expected to hit parts of Southern California on Sunday afternoon, FEMA is bracing for potentially devastating flooding.“Hurricane Hilary is going to produce some really significant impacts to Southern California,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said Sunday during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Though the total amount of rain appears unlikely to exceed that of similar storms that more frequently make landfall on the East Coast, people should not downplay this threat, Criswell said.
“People really need to take this storm in California serious,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think it’s interesting that the total rain amounts aren’t like what we see in some of our Atlantic storms and Gulf storms, but it’s going to really be potentially devastating for them in these desert areas.
The emergency management agency already has a team embedded in California, and is moving additional resources into the state, Criswell said, as the storm moves north toward Mexico and the southwest United States, where it’s expected to cause “catastrophic” flooding.
“They’re a very capable state as well and they have a lot of resources,” Criswell said of California Sunday. But if it does exceed what their capability is, “we’re going to have additional search-and-rescue teams, commodities on hand to be able to go in and support anything that they might ask for.”
The storm is the latest in a series of natural disasters and extreme weather that left communities in need of federal assistance. Wildfires in Hawaii recently raged across a historic Maui town, leaving more than 100 dead and even more without shelter. President Joe Biden will visit Lahaina on Monday to see the devastation first-hand and “reassure” residents “that the federal government is there,” Criswell said.
Volunteers from the West Orange County Community Emergency Response Team load sandbags for local residents as the hurricane approaches. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Isn’t it a relief to have a president in charge of things whose response is not limited to throwing paper towels at people? While President Biden has worked to get a climate change policy on the American Agenda, it’s blocked by the same old pols who adore fossil fuels and the money they receive from them. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is a perpetual spoiler. This is from the Washington Post. “White House is torn over Joe Manchin’s fury at climate law he crafted. As White House officials weigh how much to give in to his demands, rift grows between president and senator from West Virginia.”
The obscure federal agency that oversees the nation’s immense tangle of pipelines, power lines, and transfer stations is unfamiliar to most Americans. But it has very much been on Sen. Joe Manchin III’s mind.
By the end of last year, the West Virginia Democrat had become deeply displeased with how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was helping the Biden administration advance its aggressive climate goals. Manchin, a staunch ally of fossil fuel interests, was particularly critical of the agency’s efforts to write regulations that more fully consider climate impact when it reviews new natural gas infrastructure.
So he kneecapped the agency. The chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Manchin refused to hold a confirmation hearing for the reappointment of Richard Glick, the agency’s chair and a key ally of President Biden, after Glick’s term expired at the end of the year. That has effectively stripped the board of its Democratic majority, leaving it deadlocked and limiting its ability to advance renewable energy projects.
Manchin isn’t the essential tiebreaking vote for Democrats in the Senate anymore, but a year after the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act — which wouldn’t have passed without his support — he’s irate at the way Biden is implementing the law. And he’s fighting back: Besides his pressure on FERC, Manchin has vowed to oppose appointments to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. He is even publicly flirting with running for president in 2024, an unlikely prospect but one that could be devastating for Biden — and a situation that senior White House officials are closely monitoring.
In this photo provided by Tiffany Kidder Winn, burned-out cars sit after a wildfire raged through Lahaina, Hawaii, on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. The scene at one of Maui’s tourist hubs on Thursday looked like a wasteland, with homes and entire blocks reduced to ashes as firefighters as firefighters battled the deadliest blaze in the U.S. in recent years. (Tiffany Kidder Winn via AP)
The horrifying Maui fires are nearly contained, but their damage to one community will be a forever thing. This is from Forbes. “Maui Fire Death Toll Reaches 114 As Island Nears Containment Of Multiple Blazes” The response to the fires is under investigation. Why did this happen? It is probably the more acute question.
The cause of Maui’s wildfires has been attributed to multiple factors. When the blazes first began raging, experts pointed to drought conditions, dry vegetation, and strong winds caused by Hurricane Dora, which was several hundred miles away from Hawaii at the time. Media reports suggested the island’s first fire was likely caused by a power line in the woods of the Maui Bird Conservation Center. Hawaiian Electric, which services 95% of Hawaii’s residents, is facing several negligence lawsuits from residents alleging failure to maintain their equipment and clear vegetation located near utility poles. However, the power company told Forbes this week a cause for the fire had yet to be determined.
Believe me, it’s odd to live in a tropical zone, experiencing basically desert conditions week after week after week. It’s not normal. I haven’t opened my curtains in days, and I judge the heat by how many cold baths I take. Early in the morning, Temples panting worried me, and I put her in a cold bath. The relentless heat has been the most significant weather topic we’ve had since Hurricane Katrina. The biggest question is, “Will this be the new normal?
The answer – according to the World Meteorology Organization–is yes.
The summer of extremes continues. July was the hottest month ever recorded. The high-impact weather is continuing through August.
“This is the new normal and does not come as a surprise,” said Alvaro Silva, a climate expert with WMO. “The frequency and intensity of many extremes, such as heatwaves and heavy precipitation, have increased in recent decades. There is high confidence that human induced climate change from greenhouse emissions is the main driver,” he told a regular media briefing in Geneva.Moderate and severe heat warnings for the third week of August have been issued by several national meteorological and hydrological services in Europe, including from France, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Austria, Lithuania.
WMO stresses the need to follow authoritative warnings from national meteorological and hydrological services to stay safe.
During the weekend of 19-20 August, maximum temperatures may reach up to 40 °C in parts of southern France, according to Meteo-France. It said it would be the most intense heatwave of the summer of 2023. This situation is due to a strong high pressure and subtropical warm air from North Africa.
Meteo-Suisse has issued level 3 amber alerts for most of the country, with maximum daytime temperatures between 33 and 35 °C and high nighttime temperatures.Morocco set a new national temperature record of 50.4 °C in Agadir on 11 August, as temperatures crossed 50°C for the first time. Turkey reported a new national temperature record of 49.5°C on 15 August, beating the previous record of 49.1°C set in July 2021. Many parts of the Middle East also saw temperatures of above 50°C.
Spain, including Canary Islands and Portugal, also experienced extreme heat, fuelling an extremely severe fire risk. As of 17 August, the Tenerife wildfire continued out of control, with more than 2600 ha burnt area and people evacuated in some sites. Dry conditions, maximum temperatures above 30 °C, night temperatures above 20 °C, peak wind gusts above 50 km/h were observed on 16 and 17 in some AEMET weather stations of Tenerife.
Japan has also suffered a prolonged heatwave, with many station records broken, according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, which issued concurrent warnings for torrential rain and typhoon-related floods.
While climate change is controversial to interests aligned with the oil, coal, and gas industries, data shows that America’s voters aren’t as skeptical as some would have you believe. “Climate change issues have a reputation for being divisive. Data show it’s not quite true. The majority of the country believes climate change is happening and is worried for the future. But experts say real change won’t happen until the beliefs are more personal.” This is reported by Grace Manthey.
Climate perspectives vary across the country, but by smaller margins than political leanings.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe global warming and climate change is happening. Two thirds are worried about it, according to The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Yale’s program produces Climate Opinion Maps based on a large national survey dataset with more than 28,000 respondents collected between 2008 and 2021. And, the strong majorities nationwide don’t just apply to believing climate change is impacting the weather and might harm people. The data show widespread support for government intervention:
77% of Americans support funding research into renewable energy sources and tax credits for electric vehicles and solar panels
72% believe the government should regulate CO2 as a pollutant
66% support imposing strict limits on coal power plants and taxing fossil fuel companies
For context, the largest popular vote percentage in a presidential election in American history was in 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson won 61% of the popular vote.
President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 win was considered a landslide when he nearly swept electoral votes. But Reagan only won about 59% of the popular vote.
These climate change opinions vary by geography with some resemblance to political trends, and democrats are more likely to have pro-climate leanings, a recent Pew survey found.
But the issue isn’t black and white: republicans are not completely against climate-friendly changes and geographic trends on climate opinions aren’t as extreme as political ones.
Here’s something that seems contradictory.
In 92% of counties in the country, more than half of residents are worried about global warming.
That includes Mobile County, AL – the county surrounding the city of Mobile – where 58% of residents are worried about global warming and 59% believe it will harm people.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump received 55% of the 2020 presidential vote in Mobile County.
The most significant disconnect seems to be that those that haven’t experienced it don’t connect to the issue. The analysis in the article is interesting. You can read more at the link. Texas Public Radio provides some clues in its investigation “Why Climate Change Denial is still working.” It’s reported by David Martin Davies.
You may listen to it at the link. Here’s another link to a different interview.
https://twitter.com/NOLALeyda/status/1690372060789313540
Lipsky is a contributor to the Rolling Stone. “How Sun Myung Moon ‘Digested the Scientists’ and Fueled Climate-Change Denial. In an excerpt from his new book The Parrot and Igloo, Rolling Stone contributor David Lipsky reveals a forgotten chapter in the climate crisis — when two once-respected scientists became merchants of doubt and mouthpieces for the Unification Church’s controversial leader.
IF THERE WERE A DENIAL Mt. Rushmore the two biggest heads would be S. Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz. Dishonesty’s Lincoln, lying’s Washington. Together, the two graybeard prophets launched a movement.
Frederick Seitz’s slab would be the larger and more solemn. Most decorated scientist ever to slip over to the dark side, the non-truth side. With just about the grandest possible resume entry: former President of the National Academy of Sciences.
He did it for the old man reasons. Because the new politics made him nervous. Because the new generation made him feel vulnerable and defensive, rickety. (Seitz called students “the youth.”) There are accomplished people who fear any change to the order that once promoted them is really a portent of chaos and doomsday. When Seitz was a university president, one student said hello — and he coolly explained college presidents are not people you say hello to. Fifty years later, climate denial’s most coveted honor is the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award. Its first statuette was delivered by Dr. S. Fred Singer.
Singer’s Rushmore head would smaller, sneakier, giving visible side-eye. He is the man responsible for all of it. There was a big denier convention a decade ago. (Held in Las Vegas; because denial is classy.) The president of a denial think tank raked his eyes across the denial ballroom, took in the denial faces at the denial tables making up his denial audience. “Fred Singer is the most amazing and wonderful person participating in the global warming debate today,” this president explained. “If there’s any person in the world responsible for the development of a skeptics movement on global warming, it’s Dr. S. Fred Singer… Fred is a giant. He is a hero.” Singer is the origin of denial. And here is his origin as a denier.
At this stage of the denial story — end of the eighties, that John Hughes decade — Frederick Seitz is already a denier. This is a story about how and where S. Fred Singer joined him. Singer began as a straight scientist — an environmentalist. Did not attain promotion at the EPA. (HR Departments: be careful who you disappoint.) So he quit. And came back changed. Served briefly in Washington as the Department of Transportation’s chief scientist. And then the surprising part, the historical part of Fred Singer’s journey — his real travels and adventures — began.
The thing this story shows about deniers: they will accept money from . . . anyone. (And once you deny — once your lips break that truth barrier — the succeeding denials become easier and easier. In a sense, you become deaf to the sound made by your own life. As you must.) That openness is what this story is also about. And about how everybody, even people with the most powerful friends, can eventually require the services of a professional denier.
Our friend @repeat1968 (John Buss) gets the last word.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
And please stay safe wherever you are!
I had the pleasure of meeting, setting up her microphone, and listening close up to Etta James at Jazz Fest. Believe me, it’s one of the performances I’ve witnessed that I will never forget.
Thursday Reads: What Might Have Been vs. Reality
Posted: August 17, 2023 Filed under: just because 9 CommentsGood Day!!
Another day of Trump news. I’m so sick of it. On Monday, Hillary Clinton was on Rachel Maddow’s show. She looks great, she’s as mentally sharp as ever, she’s dignified, and she’s a true patriot. She could have been president today if Trump hadn’t gotten help from Vladimir Putin in 2016. Imagine how different things could have been. Instead, we had to deal with four years of chaos and crime with a would-be dictator supposedly in charge, but actually just enriching himself in every corrupt way he could dream up.
If only . . .
From The New York Times the following day: Hillary Clinton Says ‘I Don’t Feel Any Satisfaction’ From Trump Indictments.
Less than an hour after a grand jury in Atlanta returned indictments in the 2020 election interference case in Georgia, Hillary Clinton on Monday called the developments “a terrible moment for our country.”
The indictment, released late on Monday evening, charges former President Donald J. Trump in a sprawling case. Before the charges were made public, Mrs. Clinton gave a previously scheduled late-night interview on MSNBC. She said that she felt “great profound sadness” that the former president had already been indicted on so many other charges that “went right to the heart of whether or not our democracy would survive.”
“Do you feel satisfaction in that you warned the country, essentially, that he was going to try to end democracy?” the anchor, Rachel Maddow, asked Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state and former first lady.
“I don’t feel any satisfaction,” Mrs. Clinton responded, adding that she did not know whether “anybody should be satisfied.” “The only satisfaction may be that the system is working, that all of the efforts by Donald Trump, his allies and his enablers to try to silence the truth, to try to undermine democracy have been brought into the light.”
Meanwhile Trump and his crazy cult are still dominating the headlines.
Politico: Texas woman accused of threatening to kill judge overseeing Trump election case and a congresswoman.
HOUSTON — A Texas woman was arrested and has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Washington and a member of Congress.
Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington and left the threatening message — using a racist term for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — on Aug. 5, court records show. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.
In the call, Shry told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” the documents said. Prosecutors allege Shry also said, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you,” and she threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat running for mayor of Houston, according to court documents.
A judge earlier this week ordered Shry jailed. Court records show Shry is represented by the Houston public defender’s office, which did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday.
Trump has publicly assailed Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, calling her “highly partisan” and “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!” because of her past comments in a separate case overseeing the sentencing of one of the defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
More details from The Daily Beast: Woman Charged After Racist Tirade Threatening to Kill D.C. Trump Judge.
A Texas woman is facing federal charges after allegedly threatening to kill the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington, D.C., in which he’s accused of conspiring to reverse his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
A criminal complaint filed Friday outlines how Abigail Jo Shry, 48, called U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s chambers on Aug. 5, leaving “a threatening voicemail message.”
The caller began: “Hey, you stupid slave n—–,” according to the complaint. They then went on to threaten the lives of “anyone who went after former President Trump,” name-dropping ” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), “all Democrats in Washington, D.C.,” and “all people” in the LGBTQ+ community.
To Chutkan, the caller continued, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” and “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch,” the complaint alleges. They threatened to target her “personally, publicly, your family, all of it.”
Investigators quickly traced the cell phone used to Shry. When Department of Homeland Security agents knocked on her door in Alvin, Texas, three days later, Shry admitted that she’d made the call to Chutkan. She told the agents that she had no plans to go to D.C. or carry out any of her threats, but added ominously that “if Sheila Jackson Lee comes to Alvin, then we need to worry,” the complaint states.
Shry is charged with transmitting a communication containing a threat to injure the person of another–a felony with a maximum prison term of up to five years.
NBC News: Trump supporters post names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors online.
ATLANTA — The purported names and addresses of members of the grand jury that indicted Donald Trump and 18 of his co-defendants on state racketeering charges this week have been posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric, NBC News has learned.
NBC News is choosing not to name the website featuring the addresses to avoid further spreading the information.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment. District Attorney Fani Willis faced racist threats ahead of the return of the indictment, and additional security measures were put in place, with some employees being allowed to work from home.
The grand jurors’ purported addresses were spotted by Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan research group founded by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI investigator and staffer for the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
“It’s becoming all too commonplace to see everyday citizens performing necessary functions for our democracy being targeted with violent threats by Trump-supporting extremists,” Jones said. “The lack of political leadership on the right to denounce these threats — which serve to inspire real-world political violence — is shameful.”
Advance Democracy also noted that users were posting the names and images of people believed to have been grand jurors on other social media sites. The posts asserted that the jurors had posted on social media in support of Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., former President Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.
The indictment issued Monday lists the names of the grand jury members but not their addresses or other personal information.
If she sounds crazy, what about Jeffrey Clark, who served in Trump’s DOJ? Check this out from HuffPost: Indicted Ex-Trump Official’s Weird ‘Witches’ Gripe Gets The Treatment Online.
Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official under Donald Trump, is posting online about supernatural beings in the wake of his racketeering indictment in Georgia, and everybody’s confused.
“Today witches, spiritists, mediums, those with spirit animals, and Ukrainian NPCs resumed their attacks on me,” Clark wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.
Clark was indicted along with Trump and 17 others on Monday on racketeering and conspiracy charges in an alleged scheme to change Georgia’s 2020 election results following Trump’s loss.
Clark served in the Trump administration as an assistant attorney general in the environment and natural resources division, and then as acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division.
He became a key figure championing the former president’s push to overturn the 2020 election. According to former administration officials, Trump at one point considered elevating him to acting attorney general following the departure of William Barr, who resigned after refusing to back Trump’s voter fraud claims.
X users weren’t sure what to make of Clark’s paranormal paranoia ― but of course they had jokes:
One more from Trump himself. He was supposedly planning a “major announcement” at Bedminster on Monday, but his lawyers are trying to talk him out of it.
ABC News: Trump’s legal advisers urge him to cancel press conference to refute Georgia allegations: Sources.
Former President Donald Trump’s promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office is now very much in doubt, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
Sources tell ABC News that Trump’s legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.
Trump announced the planned press conference with a social media post shortly after he and 18 co-defendants were indicted late Monday in Georgia. He said he would present, “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.”
Georgia’s Republican governor responded to that with his own social media post declaring, “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and prove anything in a court of law.”
What a moron Trump is. If only he would STFU.
You probably heard about this horrible story yesterday. The Washington Post: Appeals court embraces abortion-pill limits, sets up Supreme Court review.
A federal appeals court said Wednesday that it would restrict access to a widely used abortion medication after finding that the federal government did not follow the proper process when it loosened regulations in 2016 to make the pill more easily available.
Food and Drug Administration decisions to allow the drug mifepristone to be taken later in pregnancy, be mailed directly to patients and be prescribed by a medical professional other than a doctor were not lawful, a three-judge panel of the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled.
Mifepristone will remain available for now under existing regulations while the litigation continues, in accordance with a Supreme Court order this spring. The Justice Department said it will go backto the Supreme Court to appeal Wednesday’s decision, which only partially upheld a lower-court judge’s ruling in favor of a coalition of antiabortion challengers.
If the Supreme Court allows the appeals court’s ruling to stand, the abortion pill would still be available in the United States, but it would be more difficult for patients to get it.
I’m going to end there for now. I’ll add more reads in the comment thread. Take care everyone!
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