We’ve planned a perp watch party here in my hood for tomorrow. We’re all excited that it’s finally happening. Here are some reads to get you ready for this big week!
We’re told Tuesday’s arraignments are being handled by Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman in the courthouse in Miami, rather than in the Fort Pierce Division where Cannon sits. District judges can and do on occasion handle arraignments themselves in high-profile cases—it happened in this district in a case involving Colombian drug kingpins. But here, it’s likely that arraignment will proceed before the magistrate judge in a perfunctory matter, and Trump will enter his plea of not guilty after being processed, fingerprinted, and submitting to a mug shot. The process is likely to be highly orchestrated by the court, the Marshals Service, and the Secret Service, with everyone on high alert because of Trump’s social media posts, reminiscent of the “will be wild” tweet ahead of January 6. As the New York Timesdetailed, these latest posts have set off a cascade of troubling calls to “support” Trump.
Vance wrote quite a bit of what we might have to see with the appointment of Judge Loose Cannon.
Since we’re talking about judicial discretion, there is lots of concern about the assignment of federal Judge Aileen Cannon to this case. And rightly so given the way she mishandled Trump’s lawsuit after the search, designed to delay or prevent the investigation. Cannon was nominated to the bench by Trump and confirmed after he lost the election. However, there was nothing nefarious about Cannon’s selection. The clerk’s office uses a computerized random selection process. It was the bad luck of the draw.
Among other things, judges are supposed to carefully protect the integrity of the judicial system and the public’s confidence in it. That’s the reason for rules about recusal. The rules come down to requiring recusal where “the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” This isn’t a casual standard requiring constant recusals, which would be disruptive. It’s reserved for situations where an objective observer looking at a case would lack confidence the judge could act fairly, for instance, if they had a financial interest in the outcome or a family member were a lawyer for one side.
In less obvious situations, a decision about when a judge should recuse is made on a case-by-case basis. In a case I handled in 2006, U.S. v. Martin, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals considered an unusual situation involving sentencing and determined that a judge needed to step aside. The judge had sentenced the case, was appealed and reversed, and had resentenced. Considering the judge’s second bite at the appeal, the court reflected, “Finally, based on our review of the record and the elements that this Court considers in determining whether to reassign a case to a different judge where there is no indication of actual bias, see United States v. Torkington, 874 F.2d 1441, 1447 (11th Cir. 1989) (per curiam), we have determined it wiser to remand this case with instructions to reassign it to a different judge. This is the second appeal in Martin’s case and the second time we have had to reverse the sentence that the district court gave Martin…In light of the two reversals in this case and three other appeals in which we have reversed the same judge for extraordinary downward departures that were without a valid basis in the record, we find it likely that ‘the original judge would have difficulty putting his previous views and findings aside.’” It’s unusual to find that a judge’s decisions can form the basis for recusal, but it did in Martin.
When Cannon handled the earlier Trump matter, the 11th Circuit ruled against her twice. The first time was on a preliminary motion after she limited the ways the government could use classified documents seized—in an entirely lawful and normal fashion—from Mar-a-Lago and seriously hampered the government’s investigation (as well as unnecessarily expanding the universe of people with access to classified material). When the Court decided the case on its full merits, they resoundingly reversed Cannon and were sharply critical of the way she handled the case in a fashion that went beyond the typical reversal where the appellate court thinks the district judge got it wrong. It’s not infrequent for that to happen. There are many close calls, and judges acting in good faith can disagree. The tenor of the 11th Circuit’s opinion reversing Cannon was different, finding she lacked jurisdiction and insinuating it was not a particularly close call. She reached a result that was favorable to Trump by all but ignoring the law, refusing to apply it, and rejecting the government’s positions without explaining why. It was the sort of extreme error that rises to the level of Martin, calling into question both whether the judge could set aside her previous views and whether a reasonable person would question her ability to handle the case fairly. Cannon had gone so far as to say her decisions were “inherently impacted by the position formerly held by the plaintiff,” i.e., that he had been the president.
All of this forms a solid basis for Cannon to decide that she should recuse. And she could couch it in this manner, that although she is confident she could handle the case fairly, she is stepping aside to ensure the public has confidence in this highly important matter. That wouldn’t guarantee a judge appointed by a Democratic president would take over—it could even be another Trump appointee. But it would ameliorate specific concerns about a specific judge that would so overtake the case that it would be impossible to have confidence in the outcome. Trump might even argue that she was bending over backward to rule against him in order to protect her own reputation. No one wins, including the judge herself, if she remains on the case. But it’s up to her right now.
What do we make of the fact that Cannon is a Trump appointee? Normally, that’s just not a factor. Every judge is appointed by a president from one party or another, and judges are often called upon to rule in favor of or against a policy of the president who appointed them. It’s not viewed as a ground for recusal. This may be a little different because it’s a criminal case involving the president who appointed her. A judge probably would recuse from a criminal case involving their former boss or mentor. That’s not precisely the relationship here, and, of course, there is no exact case law since Trump is the first ever president to be indicted. But judges err on the side of caution to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and here, combined with her conduct in the earlier case, this might be a factor to consider, although it’s unlikely it would suffice on its own.
If Cannon doesn’t recuse voluntarily, prosecutors will likely have to file a motion requesting the recusal to take the issue forward. This is always a difficult move for prosecutors, one to be avoided unless the circumstances are extreme, like they are here. Under the rules, if a judge denies a request by one of the parties that they recuse, “the Judge shall issue a ruling on the record, stating the grounds for denying the request.” Provoking that statement alone would be worthwhile.
Most likely though, prosecutors will wait for Cannon to make an objectionable ruling that can be appealed pre-trial, and use that opportunity to request that the 11th Circuit order the Chief Justice in the Southern District of Florida to reassign the case on remand. Of course, this means delay, and delay here works in Trump’s favor. None of this is ideal, by any means. But this is the type of situation where the 11th Circuit protects its integrity and reputation by ordering recalcitrant judges to recuse. Prosecutors are likely to get their opportunity because Cannon, whose appointment of the special master and rulings in the earlier matter already demonstrated some inexperience and discomfort handling highly sensitive classified matters, will be called upon to make decisions and set appropriate procedures under a complicated statute, CIPA, the Classified Information Procedures Act, that governs the handling of classified material in a trial setting. Because those decisions can be appealed immediately, it seem likely that the government will need to take an appeal at some point and that will give it the opportunity to request recusal.
The selection of Judge Cannon unnecessarily complicates the trial of what would be a straightforward case of mishandling classified documents and obstructing an investigation into that conduct if the defendant were anyone other than the former president of the United States. Trump seems to get all the breaks, and this is a difficult one to stomach. But I continue to think the courts will sort this out, one way or the other.
Federal and local authorities on Sunday ramped up security preparations ahead of Donald Trump’s first appearance in federal court on criminal charges here, monitoring online threats and potential gatherings of far-right extremists while marshaling more police officers to be on duty.
Escalating violent rhetoric in online forums, coupled with defiant statements from the former president and his political allies, have put law enforcement officials on alert for potential disruptions ahead of Trump’s court appearance. He is facing a 37-count federal indictment, 31 of which allege he willfully kept classified documents in his possession after leaving the White House.
Authorities were monitoring plans for pro-Trump rallies in Miami, including one outside the federal courthouse on Tuesday purportedly organized by a local chapter of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, some leaders of which were found guilty of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
This interview with a superb former federal prosecutor, @DennisAftergut, is the best explanation yet published of just how grave a betrayal of the nation this 37-count indictment charges and how devastating is the evidence it recites from Trump himself ⬇️https://t.co/cPM8KnE7U6
I’ve read a fair number of criminal indictments in 30 years as a journalist, and by any standard this one seems extraordinary. I’d like to ask you, as a former federal prosecutor, how you perceived it in a number of different ways. First of all, what was your general impression of Jack Smith’s indictment overall — as a work of legal argument and narrative, and also as an event in legal and political history?
The narrative here is one of betrayal of a nation and its most precious secrets by a man who was the commander in chief for four years and who seeks that mantle again. There’s never been anything remotely like it.
Just think about it. The disregard for the lives, the risk and the individual courage that goes into gathering information vital to our national security and our safety is incomprehensible. There is no way for the brain to wrap itself around what is described in this indictment, the violation of sacred trust, a one-man demolition crew working against the American intelligence system that has been built, brick by brick, over 80 years.
With the kind of conduct alleged in the indictment by the former occupant of the highest office in the land, how is any foreign intelligence service supposed to trust us to keep information confidential, to protect its methods of collecting our enemies’ secrets or the identity of its sources?
It could take years, if not decades, to recover from the damage.
In more concrete terms, how does that conclusion emerge from this indictment?
Put together three basic pieces: 1) The bone-chilling nature of the materials unlawfully taken from the White House; 2) the apparent exposure of those materials at Mar-a-Lago; and 3) what we know from public reporting about security there and our nation’s enemies whose agents may have breached it.
First, focus on paragraph 77. It lists, with brief descriptions, 31 documents, many of which have what are called “compartmentalized” Top Secret markings.
“Compartmentalized” means “information about certain intelligence sources and methods.” “Top Secret” signifies information that would cause, if revealed, exceptionally grave harm to the nation’s security. Compartmentalized top secret documents are kept in secure structures, or SCIFs — the fortified rooms that protect against electronic surveillance or other efforts by outside parties to obtain the information.
Examples on the list of materials that Trump took to Mar-a-Lago include documents “concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States,” “nuclear capabilities of a foreign country” — which could be North Korea, Russia, China or Iran, we just don’t know. The materials Trump possessed at his resort home included documents “concerning military attacks by a foreign country,” “timeline and details of attack on a foreign country,” and “military contingency planning of the United States.”
These are materials that almost anyone hostile to the interests of the United States would love to get their hands on. Which is why they should never be held at easily penetrated places like Mar-a-Lago.
Second, the indictment describes — and indeed shows, via an abundance of photographs — boxes of documents stacked in exposed locations: A ballroom stage, a bathroom shower and in one instance, a Secret document “concerning military capabilities of a foreign country” that had spilled out of its box and onto the floor in a storage room. (The indictment does not say whether the room was locked at the time.)
Visual journalist Art Lien says Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (center top) was known for being hard to capture on paper.
I would really recommend you read the complete interview.
David Aaron from Just Security uses U.S. sentencing guidelines to estimate how much jail time Trump might face.
The base level for willfully retaining national defense information in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) is 24 — but increases to 29 if the information at issue was classified Top Secret, as alleged in the Trump indictment (§2M3.3). A defendant’s leadership role in a crime could add 4 points if the defendant was an “organizer or leader” of criminal conduct that involved at least five people or was “otherwise extensive” (for example, conduct that relied on the assistance of unwitting outsiders), or 2 points if the defendant organized or led criminal activity that involved fewer people and was not as extensive (§3B1.1). The Indictment alleges the defendant was the organizer or leader of criminal conduct that involved at least five other people, whether or not all were witting (Waltine Nauta, Employee 2, and Attorneys 1-3), so the defendant’s attorneys will consider calculations based on the 4-point increase. Conversely, point deductions are available if a defendant had a minimal or minor role (§3B1.2).
The Guidelines add 2 points for a defendant’s abuse of public or private trust to commit the crime (§3B1.3). Courts routinely add those extra points in Section 793(e) cases because the defendant usually came into possession of national defense information while in a position of public trust, and indeed by virtue of that position. Two additional points are added for a defendant’s willful obstruction of the investigation, prosecution, or sentencing of the offense at issue (§3C1.1). (The obstruction points are not applied to violations of statutes that themselves prohibit obstruction except in certain circumstances.)
A defendant’s acceptance of responsibility, such as by pleading guilty, provides a 2-point reduction in offense level. An additional 1-point reduction is available at the prosecutor’s discretion (if applied, the court would also need to approve the basis for the reduction following a motion from the government).
For an individual count of 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), then, a potential offense level could consist of:
Base level with Top Secret: 29
Leadership role: 4
Abuse of trust: 2
Obstruction: 2
Total: 37
For a defendant with no prior criminal convictions, an offense level of 37 yields 210 to 262 months (17 1/2 to almost 22 years). A defendant who accepted responsibility could reduce that range to 151 to 188 months if the prosecution agreed to deduct the third point.
The base levels for the other charges in the Indictment are lower. Section 2J1.2 applies to “obstruction of justice” charges such as the Tampering and related Conspiracy counts, the Concealment count, and the Scheme to Conceal and False Statements counts. The base level for these crimes begins at 14, but that increases to 17 if the offense “resulted in substantial interference with the administration of justice.” The base further increases to 19 if the court finds that the offense was extensive or involved “any essential or especially probative record,” which the allegations in the Indictment, if proved, would likely support. To account for obstruction of investigations of particularly serious crimes, however, the Guidelines direct the court to apply Section 2X3.1 instead of 2J1.2 if, as alleged in the Indictment, the offense involved obstructing a criminal investigation and Section 2X3.1 would yield a higher offense level. Section 2X3.1 provides a base level of 6 below the underlying offense, which in a Section 793(e) investigation involving Top Secret documents would result in a level of 23. The “leadership role” and “abuse of trust” increases would still apply, but the obstruction increase does not apply to sentences calculated based on Sections 2J1.2 or 2X3.1. As a result, for a conviction of one of these counts, a potential offense level could consist of the following (I’ve included alternate calculations based on 2J1.2 to illustrate the difference in guidelines)…
Base level using 2X3.1: 23 (or 19, as alleged, under 2J1.2)
Leadership role: 4
Abuse of trust: 2
Total: 29 (or 25)
For a defendant with no prior criminal convictions, an offense level of 29 yields 87 to 108 months (7 1/4 to 9 years) and an offense level of 25 yields 57 to 71 months (4 3/4 to almost 6 years). A defendant who accepted responsibility could reduce those ranges to either 63 to 78 months or 41 to 51 months if the prosecution agreed to deduct the third point.
The question of whether sentences would run concurrently or consecutively has come up. The answer will depend on a variety of factors, not least of which include the evidence at trial, the count or counts of conviction, and “grouping” under Section 3D1.2. Section 5G1.2, which addresses sentencing on multiple counts, provides that if the sentence imposed on the count with the highest statutory maximum is sufficient to implement the total punishment, then the sentences on multiple counts will run concurrently. But if the sentence on the count with the highest statutory maximum is insufficient, the court can run sentences consecutively to achieve the target sentence.
No wonder Melania took off for New York City Today!
Today I want to highlight two important days in our country’s history. Today is the 79th anniversary of D-Day, and yesterday was the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
— Mat McLachlan \ Battlefield Historian (@MatMcLachlan) June 5, 2023
"Today is June 6, 2023, the 79th anniversary of the airborne assault and amphibious landings made primarily by American, British and Canadian Forces along a 50-mile stretch on the Normandy Coast. So long as human beings live in freedom, it will rank as one of human civilization’s… pic.twitter.com/MyvgR4eHiJ
Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944. Of those, 73,000 were from the United States, 83,000 from Britain and Canada. Forces from several other countries were also involved, including French troops fighting with Gen. Charles de Gaulle against the Nazi occupation.
They faced around 50,000 German forces.
More than 2 million Allied soldiers, sailors, pilots, medics and other people from a dozen countries were involved in the overall Operation Overlord, the battle to wrest western France from Nazi control that started on D-Day….
The sea landings started at 6:30 a.m. local time, just after dawn, targeting five code-named beaches, one after the other: Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword, Juno.
The operation also included actions inland, including overnight parachute landings on strategic German sites and U.S. Army Rangers scaling cliffs to take out German gun positions.
Around 11,000 Allied aircraft, 7,000 ships and boats, and thousands of other vehicles were involved in the invasion….
A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself, including 2,501 Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded.
In the ensuing Battle of Normandy, 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded. The battle — and especially Allied bombings of French villages and cities — killed around 20,000 French civilians.
New York Times tomorrow about D-Day 1944: “Allied Armies Land in France…..Great Invasion is Under Way”: pic.twitter.com/muWgNQ5V7j
Just after midnight on June 5, 1968, in a ballroom in the ornate Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a packed crowd watched charismatic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy give a victory speech after winning the California primary.
Almost five years after his older brother John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Robert Kennedy was making his own run for the White House. America was divided over the Civil Rights Movement and the war in Vietnam.
The New York senator was gaining momentum to potentially secure the Democratic nomination. But that night — 55 years ago today — was the last time he would address the public….
As Kennedy walked off stage at the Ambassador Hotel through a pack of eager reporters, the crowd chanted his name.
“We want Bobby,” they cheered.
Kennedy shook hands with supporters and exited the ballroom through the kitchen. Then, the crowd heard what witnesses would later describe as the sound of firecrackers. A gunman fired a .22 caliber revolver, hitting Kennedy and injuring five others.
Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson — one of Kennedy’s friends who worked on his campaign — wrestled the gunman to the ground and tried to disarm him….
Kennedy died the next day. He was 42. His widow, Ethel, was pregnant with their 11th child….
Mourners lined up before dawn outside New York City’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Kennedy’s funeral mass. Inside the church, Sen. Ted Kennedy delivered the eulogy.
“As he said many times in many parts of this nation: Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ ” Kennedy said. “I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’ “
Read more about Kennedy’s 1968 campaign at the NPR link.
Of course, that was not the only assassination in 1968. The Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered on April 4th. A highlight of Robert Kennedy’s campaign was the speech he gave in Indianapolis after informing the audience of King’s death.
Here is a short clip from Robert F. Kennedy’s speech on the night of #MLK assassination.
Every five years, we drag ourselves through a year of melancholy anniversaries. For some reason, we tend to account for these things in five-year increments, like college reunion cycles. And, in the litany of lousy American years, 1968 is right up there with 1860-1865, 1929, and 1941. And the sad and mournful commemorations are not limited to this country, or even to this side of the Atlantic. It was 55 ago this May that Paris erupted in riots and a nationwide wildcat strike. It was 55 years ago this August 20th that the Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Prague to crush the promise of the Prague Spring.
Over here, the 55th anniversaries of that misbegotten year began in January, with the 55th anniversary of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, in which the American public got a good look at the lies it had been fed about that war for years. It would be the deadliest year for the U.S, military of the entire conflict and, 55 years ago this past March, elements of the 20th and 23rd U.S, Infantry marched into Quang Ngai province toward the hamlet of My Lai.
As the opposition to the war exploded, President Lyndon Johnson’s political support began to disintegrate. In January. Senator Eugene McCarthy ran him a close race in the New Hampshire Democratic primary and shook up all political expectations for that fall’s presidential election. And then, 55 years ago this past March 16, Senator Robert F. Kennedy announced his campaign for president. Two weeks later, Johnson dropped out.
Kennedy’s campaign may have peaked 55 years ago this April 4. He was in Indianapolis. In Memphis, Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. stepped out onto a motel balcony into a soft spring evening and a sniper shot him in the face. It was a crime almost unthinkable, but, sadly, not unanticipated. Kennedy got word of the murder on his way to a rally in a largely black section of Indianapolis. It would be up to him to deliver the news to his supporters already gathered there, most of whom had not yet heard it. Kennedy got up on the back of a truck and delivered one of the most remarkable spontaneous political speeches in the country’s history. He ended his address by summoning the year’s dark angels.
“We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”
Since it’s Caturday, I decided to share this funny video I found on Twitter before I get started with today’s news. It shows how intelligent cats really are.
Cats prove that there are good things in this world, even though the news people make can be so depressing.
Neighbor's cat figures out he gets attention when he sets off this woman's Ring camera — so he does it 20 times a day ❤️ pic.twitter.com/PKvSmxuNWc
More than 260 people were killed and hundreds more injured when a passenger train derailed and struck two other trains in eastern India on Friday, officials said, a rail disaster whose toll was exceptionally large even by the standards of a nation with a long history of deadly crashes.
The crash, in the state of Odisha, shocked India, now the world’s most populous country, and renewed longstanding questions about safety problems in a system that transports more than eight billion passengers a year. The country has invested heavily in the system in recent years, but that has not been enough to overcome decades of neglect.
The crash killed 261 people, according to Indian railway officials. Odisha’s chief secretary, Pradeep Jena, said that an additional 900 had been injured. Officials said they expected the toll to rise.
As daylight broke, teams of rescue workers with dogs and cutting equipment were laboring to free injured people trapped in the wreckage of twisted train carriages. Officials said that 115 ambulances had been mobilized and that all nearby hospitals were on standby.
The government in the state, home to about 45 million people, declared a day of mourning after India’s worst rail disaster in two decades. Dozens of trains were canceled. Teams from the Army, Air Force and National Disaster Response Force were mobilized to help. And people near the site of the crash were lining up to donate blood.
About 1,000 people were injured in the collision Friday night in the state of Odisha, the government said in a preliminary incident report obtained by The Washington Post. Rescue operations were “completed” Saturday afternoon local time, India’s Railways Ministry said on Twitter, adding that “restoration work” was underway.
Pagan Cats, by Cécile Berrubé
The crash involved high-speed trains that collided “head-on,” Odisha’s director of fire and emergency services, Sudhanshu Sarangi, said, calling it “a major, major tragedy.”
“Psychologically, we were not prepared to see so many dead bodies,” said Sarangi, who was supervising the rescue operation. More than 300 rescue workers were involved in the search, “but then as our evening progressed … we were not really hopeful of finding survivors,” he said.
The disaster unfolded around 7 p.m. local time Friday, when the Coromandel Express, which was ferrying passengers from Howrah to Chennai on India’s eastern coast, derailed and hit a freight train near the Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore, a district in Odisha. Soon after the initial crash, the Superfast Express running from Bangalore to Howrah with roughly 1,000 passengers crashed into the other two trains, according to Aditya Kumar Chaudhary, a spokesman for the South Eastern Railway zone.
By Saturday evening local time, the death toll had reached 288, Chaudhary said, adding that 17 passenger compartments had derailed and were severely damaged.
Photographs and video from the wreckage site showed overturned train cars. Witnesses said people converged at the scene and tried to pull survivors from the mounds of mangled steel as emergency alarms sounded and the injured cried out for help.
A medical officer at Balasore District Hospital said Saturday afternoon that 1,053 people had been brought to the facility, 183 of them already dead. Fifty-five died at the hospital, he said.
“I have never seen something like this in my life. This is the first time we have received so many patients,” D. Jagatdeo said by phone from his office, where he had been stationed since the previous night.
By Martine Coppens
Chris Licht has been demoted at CNN. He’s the moron who decided to give a platform to Donald Trump at a so-called “town hall” with an audience of MAGA fanatics. It was a disaster. CNN got great ratings for the “town hall,” but after that the MAGA folks went back to Fox News, and normal people turned off CNN.
A series of tough headlines are hitting CNN CEO Chris Licht. First, Mediaite reported Thursday on the appointment of a new executive to take over business operations at CNN in a move seen as a rescue operation for the network leader. Then, The Atlantic dropped a tough cover story on the network chief, and Dylan Byers of Puck News reported Licht faces serious headwinds.
Byers, who used to work for CNN, said in the Puck newsletter on Friday that confidence in Licht has “wavered considerably” following the appointing of David Leavy – chief corporate affairs officer at Warner Bros. Discovery – to now handle the business side.
The revelation of Leavy’s appointment as COO was first reported by Mediaite’s Colby Hall, who followed up with a piece spelling out what this means for Licht and CNN.
“There’s no way they would put David Leavy down into CNN to work for Chris Licht,” one industry insider told Mediaite. “He’s too important to Zaslav to take what on paper sounds like a demotion. It sure sounds like he’s taking one for the team.”
The Puck reporting came hours after The Atlantic also published a lengthy and not exactly flattering profile of Licht’s tenure at CNN, which has seen precipitous ratings declines since Licht replaced former chief Jeff Zucker.
I hope CNN will get back on track, but they’ve lost a lot of viewers. The simple truth is that CNN is never going to be able to compete with Fox News for the Republican audience.
As North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban is due to come into effect on 1 July, an analysis from the non-profit Center for Political Accountability (CPA) shows several major corporations donated large sums to a Republican political organization which in turn funded groups working to elect anti-abortion state legislators.
The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) received donations of tens of thousands of dollars each from corporations including Comcast, Intuit, Wells Fargo, Amazon, Bank of America and Google last year, the CPA’s analysis of IRS filings shows. The contributions were made in the months after Politico published a leaked supreme court decision indicating that the court would end the right to nationwide abortion access.
Google contributed $45,000 to the RSLC after the leak of the draft decision, according to the CPA’s review of the tax filings. Others contributed even more in the months after the leak, including Amazon ($50,000), Intuit ($100,000) and Comcast ($147,000).
Google, Amazon, Comcast, Wells Fargo and Bank of America did not respond to requests for comment. An Intuit spokesperson pointed out that the company also donates to Democratic political organizations, and that “our financial support does not indicate a full endorsement of every position taken by an individual policymaker or organization.
That is sickening. I guess this all goes back to the SCOTUS’ Citizens United decision.
The Good Book is being treated like a bad book in Utah after a parent frustrated by efforts to ban materials from schools convinced a suburban district that some Bible verses were too vulgar or violent for younger children.
And the Book of Mormon could be next.
The 72,000-student Davis School District north of Salt Lake City removed the Bible from its elementary and middle schools while keeping it in high schools after a committee reviewed the scripture in response to a parental complaint. The district has removed other titles, including Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” and John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” following a 2022 state law requiring districts to include parents in decisions over what constitutes “sensitive material.”
On Friday, a complaint was submitted about the signature scripture of the predominant faith in Utah, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church. District spokesperson Chris Williams confirmed that someone filed a review request for the Book of Mormon but would not say what reasons were listed. Citing a school board privacy policy, he also would not say whether it was from the same person who complained about the Bible….
Williams said the district doesn’t differentiate between requests to review books and doesn’t consider whether complaints may be submitted as satire. The reviews are handled by a committee made up of teachers, parents and administrators in the largely conservative community.
The committee published its decision about the Bible in an online database of review requests and did not elaborate on its reasoning or which passages it found overly violent or vulgar.
The decision comes as conservative parent activists, including state-based chapters of the group Parents United, descend on school boards and statehouses throughout the United States, sowing alarm about how sex and violence are talked about in schools.
Turning on his iPhone one day last year, the lawyer M. Evan Corcoran recorded his reflections about a high-profile new job: representing former President Donald J. Trump inst an investigation into his handling of classified documents.
In complete sentences and a narrative tone that sounded as if it had been ripped from a novel, Mr. Corcoran recounted in detail a nearly monthlong period of the documents investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Corcoran’s narration of his recollections covered his initial meeting with Mr. Trump in May last year to discuss a subpoena from the Justice Department seeking the return of all classified materials in the former president’s possession, the people said.
It also encompassed a search that Mr. Corcoran undertook last June in response to the subpoena for any relevant records being kept at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. He carried out the search in preparation for a visit by prosecutors, who were on their way to enforce the subpoena and collect any sensitive material found remaining there.
Government investigators almost never obtain a clear lens into a lawyer’s private dealings with their clients, let alone with such a prominent one as Mr. Trump. A recording like the voice memo Mr. Corcoran made last year — during a long drive to a family event, according to two people briefed on the recording — is typically shielded by attorney-client or work-product privilege.
But in March, a federal judge ordered Mr. Corcoran’s recorded recollections — now transcribed onto dozens of pages — to be given to the office of the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the documents investigation.
The decision by the judge, Beryl A. Howell, pierced the privilege that would have normally protected Mr. Corcoran’s musings about his interactions with Mr. Trump. Those protections were set aside under what is known as the crime-fraud exception, a provision that allows prosecutors to work around attorney-client privilege if they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services were used in furthering a crime.
Read more details at the link.
That’s it for me today. I hope you have a peaceful Caturday.
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The evidence against Trump keeps coming out bit by bit. Yesterday was a big day for news about the stolen documents case. CNN first broke the news that Trump was caught on tape discussing a classified document that he retained after leaving the White House. Then The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post added more information to the story.
Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.
The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said….
Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Justice Department investigation into Trump, has focused on the meeting as part of the criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of national security secrets. Sources describe the recording as an “important” piece of evidence in a possible case against Trump, who has repeatedly asserted he could retain presidential records and “automatically” declassify documents.
Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident.
Ramo de gladiolos, lirios y margaritas (1878), Claude Monet
It’s interesting and significant that the meeting at which Trump talked about the document was at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey. The incident took place at a meeting with two ghost writers who were working on Mark Meadows’ autobiography. Other attendees were “communications specialist” Margo Martin, and other Trump aides. It appears that Martin may be the source of the recording.
Back to the CNN story:
Meadows’ autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”
The document Trump references was not produced by Milley, CNN was told….
The meeting in which Trump discussed the Iran document with others happened shortly after The New Yorker published a story by Susan Glasser detailing how, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Milley instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders and that he be informed if there was any concern. The story infuriated Trump.
Glasser reported that in the months following the election, Milley repeatedly argued against striking Iran and was concerned Trump “might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified.” Milley and others talked Trump out of taking such a drastic action, according to the New Yorker story.
Glasser reported that in the months following the election, Milley repeatedly argued against striking Iran and was concerned Trump “might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified.” Milley and others talked Trump out of taking such a drastic action, according to the New Yorker story.
Trump appeared to be holding the secret document he was describing because the recording picked up the “sound of paper rustling.” Even if he didn’t show it to the others, he never should have had the document in an unsecured meeting room with people without security clearances.
Some observers were wondering if Trump could be charged with espionage if this recording is “top secret,” because then it might not be able to be used in court. But Hugh Lowell reports at The Guardian that it is only classified as “secret”: Trump regretted not declassifying retained military document in recording.
The document at issue is understood to be classified as “secret” – significant as the justice department typically prefers to charge espionage cases involving retention of materials at that level, rather than “top secret” papers that might be too sensitive or “confidential” papers that are too low.
The recording was made at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in July 2021, when the former president met with people helping his former chief of staff Mark Meadows write a book, by his aide Margo Martin who regularly taped conversations with authors to ensure they accurately recounted his remarks.
Apple Tree In Blossom, 1898c, Carl Larsson (Swedish 1853-1919
For several minutes of the audio recording, the sources said, Trump talks about how he cannot discuss the document because he no longer possesses the sweeping presidential power to declassify now out of office, but suggests that he should have done so when he was still in the White House.
But the previously unreported suggestion that he should have declassified the document presents a potentially perilous moment, as it indicates Trump knew that he had retained material which remained sensitive to national security – as well as the limitations on discussing it with unauthorized people. CNN earlier reported that prosecutors had the recording.
Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith appear to have obtained the recording around March, as the criminal investigation targeting Trump intensified and numerous Trump aides were subpoenaed to testify before the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the case in Washington.
The tape was played to multiple witnesses, including Martin, when she testified in mid-March after having her laptop and phones imaged by prosecutors, the sources said. The first time the Trump lawyers learned about the tape was after Martin testified, one of the sources said.
As I suggested earlier, it appears that Martin’s laptop was the source of the recording. The New York Times also reported that Martin attended the meeting and doesn’t quite claim she is the source, but it seems pretty likely, since prosecutors had her laptop. A bit more from The New York Times story:
Bouquet de Mimosa sur la Table 1938, Édouard Vuillard
In an interview with CNN on Wednesday night, James Trusty, a lawyer representing Mr. Trump in the case, indicated that the former president was taking the position that he had declassified the material he took with him upon leaving office.
“When he left for Mar-a-Lago with boxes of documents that other people packed for him that he brought, he was the commander in chief,” Mr. Trusty said. “There is no doubt that he has the constitutional authority as commander in chief to declassify.”
Mr. Trusty said officials could prove that Mr. Trump had declassified material. But when pressed on whether Mr. Trump had declassified the document in question at the Bedminster meeting, Mr. Trusty declined to say.
For the past six months, prosecutors working for the special counsel Jack Smith have sought to determine whether former President Donald J. Trump obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove of classified documents he took from the White House.
More recently, investigators also appear to be pursuing a related question: whether Mr. Trump and some of his aides sought to interfere with the government’s attempt to obtain security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago that could shed light on how those documents were stored and who had access to them.
The search for answers on this second issue has taken investigators deep into the bowels of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, as they pose questions to an expanding cast of low-level workers at the compound, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the workers played a role in either securing boxes of material in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago or maintaining video footage from a security camera that was mounted outside the room.
Two weeks ago, the latest of these employees, an information technology worker named Yuscil Taveras, appeared before a grand jury in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter.
So now we know the name of the aide who helped Walt Nauta move the boxes around.
Mr. Taveras was asked questions about his dealings with two other Trump employees: Walt Nauta, a longtime aide to Mr. Trump who served as one of his valets in the White House, and Carlos Deoliveira, described by one person familiar with the events as the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago.
Phone records show that Mr. Deoliveira called Mr. Taveras last summer, and prosecutors wanted to know why. The call caught the government’s attention because it was placed shortly after prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding the footage from the surveillance camera near the storage room.
The call also occurred just weeks after Mr. Deoliveira helped Mr. Nauta move boxes of documents into the storage room — the same room that Mr. Deoliveira at one point fitted with a lock. The movement of the boxes into the room took place at another key moment: on the day before prosecutors descended on Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Mr. Trump’s lawyers intended to get him to comply with a demand to return all classified documents.
The Trump Organization ultimately turned over the surveillance tapes, but Mr. Smith’s prosecutors appear to be scrutinizing whether someone in Mr. Trump’s orbit tried to limit the amount of footage produced to the government.
They asked Mr. Taveras an open-ended question about if anyone had queried him about whether footage from the surveillance system could be deleted.
The Times doesn’t know what Taveras told the grand jury. Read more at the link.
Trump lawyer Jim Trusty’s frustrations with the legal team emerged over dinner at the five-star Breakers hotel hours after the special master hearing. He was overheard by this @guardian reporter who happened to be sitting at the table next to them. https://t.co/S0oWBMdvnipic.twitter.com/2qUydqvIoL
Donald Trump’s legal team for months has weathered deep distrust and interpersonal conflict that could undermine its defense of the former president as the criminal investigation into his handling of classified documents and obstruction of justice at Mar-a-Lago nears its conclusion.
The turmoil inside the legal team only exploded into public view when one of the top lawyers, Tim Parlatore, abruptly resigned two weeks’ ago from the representation citing irreconcilable differences with Trump’s senior adviser and in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn.
But the departure of Parlatore was the culmination of months of simmering tensions that continue to threaten the effectiveness of the legal team at a crucial time – as federal prosecutors weigh criminal charges – in part because the interpersonal conflicts remain largely unresolved.
It also comes as multiple Trump lawyers are embroiled in numerous criminal investigations targeting the former president: Epshteyn was recently interviewed by the special counsel, while Parlatore and Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran testified to the grand jury in the classified documents inquiry.
The turmoil has revolved around hostility among the lawyers on the legal team who have come to distrust each other as well as their hostility directed at Epshteyn, over what they regard as his oversight of the legal work and gatekeeping direct access to the former president.
In one instance, the clashes became so acute that some of the lawyers agreed to a so-called “murder-suicide” pact where if Parlatore got fired, others would resign in solidarity. And as some of the lawyers tried to exclude Epshteyn, they withheld information from co-counsel who they suspected might brief him.
Read all the details at The Guardian link.
So . . . that’s the latest on just one of the Trump investigations. Will we learn more today? Drip, drip, drip.
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A small group picnics on ledger-style tombstones in Historic St. Luke’s Ancient Cemetery. The photo is not dated but is believed to have been taken prior to St. Luke’s 1957 Pilgrimage Service. COURTESY HISTORIC ST. LUKE’S
Good day and I hope your Holiday weekend is peaceful, Sky Dancers!
This day reminds me of my family’s picnics in small-town Missouri and Kansas graveyards, where we would clean up the family plots. I don’t even remember where they are, although I could dig my scrapbooks up if I had a ladder to get up there. We paid particular attention to the Civil War Veterans. Many had their own good size monuments. I don’t think anyone does this anymore, but I remember it clearly. “Remembering When Americans Picnicked in Cemeteries. For a time, eating and relaxing among the dead was a national pastime.”
Now I would just like to do it to remind the NeoConfederates they freaking lost.
With apologies to Peggy Lee: Is that all there is?
Late Saturday night, the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced broad outlines of a deal to resolve the debt limit standoff. Their agreement would suspend the debt ceiling through 2025 — which means, hopefully, taking the threat of default and ensuing global financial crisis off the table at least untilafter the next presidential election.
In exchange, Congress would expand spending on defense and veterans’ programs; leave Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and tax rates untouched; keep most other domestic spending roughly flat; trim funding for the Internal Revenue Service; modestly amend the permitting process for energy projects; and tweak the existing work requirements in the food-stamp program.
We’re still waiting on details, of course. But from what we know so far, this much-ballyhooed “deal” doesn’t seem terribly different from whatever budget agreement would have materialized anyway later this year, during the usual annual appropriations process, under divided government. To President Biden’s credit, the most objectionable ransoms that Republicans had been demanding are all gone. For example, there are no longer sharp cuts to safety-net programs, nor measures to effectively block all agency regulations nor new work requirements for Medicaid.
Arlington Cemetery. Illustration: The Library of Congress
Check out the deal Biden got. For starters and very importantly, it raises the debt ceiling for two years—not one as the GOP wanted. That means during the 2024 presidential election the House GOP can neither hold our economy hostage in exchange for massive cuts—nor cause a default that would be horrific for our economy but could be perceived as good for the 2024 GOP presidential candidate.
In addition, the budget cuts agreed–to per a NY Times analysis Sunday–amount to only “a fraction of the cuts Republicans originally sought.” In addition, Biden’s student loan relief program and climate change policies all remain intact. The deal also meets the requests in Biden’s budget to increase spending for the military and veterans affairs in line with inflation. However, the deal will include increasing work requirements—temporarily—as demanded by the GOP for certain federal programs but at the same time it expands food stamp benefits for veterans and the homeless.
The reality is that this deal—if approved—was much more than just about raising the debt ceiling. Like many of us, I believed—as I wrote last week–that President Biden should invoke the untested, yet legally plausible approach of invoking Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to authorize the Treasury to pay bills above the debt limit. (The history behind that post-Civil War Amendment makes using it today against the same GOP responsible for the Jan 6 attack was especially fitting.)
But it became clear late last week from President Biden that these negotiations were more focused on reaching a broader budget deal. As the President stated Thursday afternoon: “I want to be clear that the negotiations were happening with Speaker McCarthy is about the outlines of what the budget will look like, not about default.” He added, “It’s about competing visions for America. Speaker McCarthy and I have a very different view of who should bear the burden of additional efforts to get our fiscal house in order.”
Russia’s Interior Ministry on Monday issued an arrest warrant for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham following his comments related to the fighting in Ukraine.
In an edited video of his meeting on Friday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that was released by Zelenskyy’s office, Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, noted that “the Russians are dying” and described the U.S. military assistance to the country as “the best money we’ve ever spent.”
While Graham appeared to have made the remarks in different parts of the conversation, the short video by Ukraine’s presidential office put them next to each other, causing outrage in Russia.
Later, Zelenskyy’s office issued video of Graham’s actual remarks showing the shorter version had been edited. The Reuters news agency made the video available.
I’m keeping it short today because I’ve been sick the last few days and the fever finally broke last night but I’m still exhausted. Hope you’re enjoying the day!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
This definitely is an open thread.
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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.
The Washington Post discusses the possibility of violence in Miami due to Trump’s armed and hysterical supporters. This analysis is offered by Mark Berman. “Trump’s
So now we know the name of the aide who helped Walt Nauta move the boxes around.
If you want a good smile this morning, try this headline from CBS News. 
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