“Thanks, Dakinikat, for putting this in my head; I couldn’t sleep last night.” John Buss @repeat1968
It’s yet another crazy day with Donnie Dotard! Have you ever heard of one person indicted on 91 felonies in 2 state courts and several Federal venues out running amok on bail? There are so many articles out there that show how unfit this man is for office, and it’s not even funny! Let’s start out with this one at The Independent. Trump’s temper tantrums should land him in a jail cell and he almost did. “Donald Trump storms out of closing arguments in E Jean Carroll trial, The former president continued to attack the woman suing him for defamation after his testimony on Thursday.”
Roughly 20 minutes after walking into the courtroom, Donald Trump stormed out of closing arguments in a civil trial to determine how much money he owes E Jean Carroll for repeatedly defaming her.
The former president arrived in federal court in Manhattan on Friday morning after briefly testifying in his defence on Thursday afternoon, after which he unleashed more attacks and potentially defamatory statements about the former Elle magazine columnist.
In her closing statement, Ms Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan told jurors that the former president “acts as if these rules of law just don’t apply to him.”
His attacks didn’t stop after he was found liable for defamation and sexual abuse in a $5m jury verdict, she noted.
“Not at all,” Ms Kaplan said. “Not even for 24 hours.”
Mr Trump then stood up from the defence table, where he was seated next to attorney Alina Habba, and walked out of the hearing, to which he had arrived late.
“The record will reflect that Mr Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom,” US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said.
Mr Trump returned to the courtroom for defence closing arguments from Ms Habba.
As he returned to the courtroom, his Truth Social account fired off several posts repeating incendiary and potentially defamatory claims about the case, claiming he is a victim of “extortion” and falsely labelling the case a “Joe Biden-directed Election Interference Attack” against him.
I really feel for this judge who has had to deal with this idiot for more than time than would be humanly possible for most people. Adam Klasfeld–The Messenger–reports this. “Judge Threatens to Send Trump Lawyer Alina Habba ‘in the Lockup’ at E. Jean Carroll Trial. The blockbuster remark came moments before closing arguments in Trump’s second trial in a case brought by E. Jean Carroll.”
A federal judge threatened Donald Trump’s attorney Alina Habba with jail time on Friday, after the former president’s lawyer kept contesting a ruling after it had been issued.
“You are on the verge of spending some time in the lockup,” senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan warned. “Sit down.”
The bombshell remark came moments before the start of opening statements in Trump’s second trial in a case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.
Before the jury was let into court, Carroll and Trump’s attorneys had debated the boundaries for their closing arguments. Habba’s co-counsel Michael Madaio had sought to arguing about what he could display in a slideshow to jurors before his summations began, and Carroll’s legal team objected to the presentation of messages that were not entered into evidence.
Judge Kaplan sided with Carroll’s legal team, and Madaio unsuccessfully tried to urge the judge to reconsider his ruling. That’s when Habba jumped up and pressed on, insisting that she had to make a record. She stopped pushing her case after Kaplan threatened her with incarceration.
The jury then entered, and Carroll’s lead attorney Roberta Kaplan — who shares a name with but isn’t related to the judge — began her closing arguments.
His cognitive decline has been evident these days. This is from The New Republic. “Cognitive Decline? Listen to Trump Try to Describe Missile Defense. “Ding, ding, ding, boom, whoosh!”.”
Donald Trump took the road less traveled on Monday, opting to use sounds and shapes rather than words to explain what he had in mind for America’s military.
During a campaign stop in Laconia, New Hampshire—the last rally before the state’s Republican primary—Trump announced that under his leadership, the country would copy and paste Israel’s Iron Dome defense system over our own national borders. That idea, by the way, has previously earned him ridicule even by the likes of Fox News.
“I will build an Iron Dome over our country, a state-of-the-art missile defense shield made in the USA,” Trump said. “We do it for other countries. We help other countries, we build, we don’t do it for ourselves.”
But then, things got weird as Trump tried once again to assert his “extremely stable genius” status.
“These are not muscle guys here, they’re muscle guys up here, right,” Trump said, gesturing to his arms and then his head.
“And they calmly walk to us, and ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.… They’ve only got 17 seconds to figure this whole thing out. Boom. OK. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom,” he added.
The stunning performance comes after the 77-year-old bragged that he “aced” a cognitive test that required him to correctly identify a giraffe, tiger, and whale. According to Trump, that means his “mind is stronger now than it was 25 years ago.” In reality, that test is meant to measure dementia or cognitive decline, and it has never included the combination of animals Trump keeps mentioning.
Trump’s cognitive decline has been in question recently after the GOP front-runner was spotted with mysterious red sores on his hands. Trump has also been making increasingly nonsense remarks during his campaign tangents—last week, the former president said he would stop banks from “debanking” Americans—and confusing major players in American politics. During another campaign speech, Trump switched up former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his only rival in the GOP race, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, several times, blaming Haley for the events of January 6 while claiming she turned down extra security. (The House committee assigned to probe the attack found no evidence to support Trump’s claim, which he has previously leveled at Pelosi.)
Trump’s political performances are just altogether weird. They are completely inappropriate–once again–for any one running for any office let alone the U.S. Presidency. This is from Stephan Robinson writing at Public Notice. “Trump’s stubborn defiance of normal political gravity. Trump’s Haley/Pelosi gaffe would’ve ended most campaigns. For him it was just another Friday.”
One week ago tonight in New Hampshire, Donald Trump confused Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and it wasn’t a mere slip of the tongue.
Trump went on a full-length tear accusing his primary opponent of failing to secure the Capitol on January 6, despite the fact Haley wasn’t even in government at the time. (What Trump was trying to say still would’ve been a grotesque lie even if he’d gotten the names right.)
“You know, by the way, they never report the crowd on January 6,” he began. “You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley. Do you know that they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything. Deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it. Because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security. We offered her security, 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guard, whatever they want, they turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that.”
That sad spectacle would’ve devastated any normal candidate’s campaign. Several political commentators from Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer to David Corn at Mother Jones noted on social media with almost rueful resignation that had Biden done this, it would’ve dominated the news cycle. Alas, Trump is different. His staff didn’t even really try to clean the gaffe up, and he beat Haley in New Hampshire by double digits a few days later. How is that possible?
Indeed, how is this possible? I love this analysis.
The media grades Trump on an infinity curve
Although most media outlets did state categorically that Trump mixed up Haley with Pelosi, they failed to connect it to a larger narrative. Instead, they just … moved on. Compare this to the “Rubio bot” aftermath when the New York Times declared, ”How a Debate Misstep Sent Marco Rubio Tumbling in New Hampshire.” Journalist Molly Jong-Fast wondered, “Donald Trump confused Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley and Joe Biden with Barack Obama. Where are the ‘is Donald Trump too old’ think pieces?” But that might also miss a larger point: A narrative that Trump is “too old” or has “lost a step” since 2016 minimizes his threat. He’s not even trying to hide that he aspires to become a dictator.
Trump has interfered with current Congressional negotiations on the situation at the border just because the chaos suits his campaign goals. This is utter madness. This happens as the Governor of Texas has decided to ignore a Supreme Court Ruling. This is from U.S News & World Report as reported by the Associated Press.
A politically treacherous dynamic is taking hold as negotiators in Congress work to strike a bipartisan deal on the border and immigration, with vocal opposition from the hard right and former President Donald Trump threatening to topple the carefully
Senators are closing in on the details of an agreement on border measures that could unlock Republican support for Ukraine aid and hope to unveil it as soon as next week. But the deal is already wobbling, as House Speaker Mike Johnson faces intense pressure from Trump and his House allies to demand more sweeping concessions from Democrats and the White House.
“I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people,” Trump posted on social media this week.
It’s a familiar political dynamic, one that has repeatedly thwarted attempts to reform U.S. immigration law, including in 2013 when House Republicans sought to pin illegal immigration on a Democratic president and in 2018 when Trump helped sink another bipartisan effort. The path for legislation this time around is further clouded by an election year in which Trump has once again made railing against illegal immigration a central focus of his campaign.
Well, it done wobbled. This report is from CNN. “GOP senators seethe as Trump blows up delicate immigration compromise.”Election-Year Politics Threaten Senate Border Deal as Trump and His Allies Rally Opposition,” What role is there in current policy for a deranged, convicted rapist, and insurrectionist who has been indicted 91 times for his crimes against our country? He’s also pushing Policies friendly for Putin’s ugly regime.
Senior Senate Republicans are furious that Donald Trump may have killed an emerging bipartisan deal over the southern border, depriving them of a key legislative achievement on a pressing national priority and offering a preview of what’s to come with Trump as their likely presidential nominee.
In recent weeks, Trump has been lobbying Republicans both in private conversations and in public statements on social media to oppose the border compromise being delicately hashed out in the Senate, according to GOP sources familiar with the conversations – in part because he wants to campaign on the issue this November and doesn’t want President Joe Biden to score a victory in an area where he is politically vulnerable.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged in a private meeting on Wednesday that Trump’s animosity toward the yet-to-be-released border deal puts Republicans in a serious bind as they try to move forward on the already complex issue. For weeks, Republicans have been warning that Trump’s opposition could blow up the bipartisan proposal, but the admission from McConnell was particularly striking, given he has been a chief advocate for a border-Ukraine package.
Now, Republicans on Capitol Hill are grappling with the reality that most in the GOP areloathe to do anything that is seen as potentially undermining the former president. And the prospects of a deal being scuttled before it has even been finalized has sparked tensions and confusion in the Senate GOP as they try to figure out if, and how, to proceed – even as McConnell made clear during party lunches Thursday that he remains firmly behind the effort to strike a deal, according to attendees.
“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling,” said GOP Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump.
He added, “But the reality is that, that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president not to try and get the problem solved. as opposed to saying, ‘hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”
GOP Sen. Todd Young of Indiana called any efforts to disrupt the ongoing negotiations “tragic” and said: “I hope no one is trying to take this away for campaign purposes.”
How do we get rid of this meddlesome former guy? The Border Standoff now includes multiple Governors defying a Supreme Court ruling as I mentioned above. This is playing with fire. PBS News Hour has this headline. “Border standoff between Texas, feds intensifies as governor defies Supreme Court ruling.” My stupid-ass governor as well as others are joining in the defiance. This is from a transcript of an interview of Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law by Laura Barron-Lopez.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
And Governor Abbott is claiming that he has this authority under the U.S. Constitution because the federal government isn’t protecting Texas against a — quote — “invasion.” That’s the way he’s been describing it.
Is this a reasonable interpretation of the Constitution?
Steve Vladeck:
No, and in two different respects.
I mean, the first is that, obviously, an influx of asylum seekers, however many we’re talking about, is not what the founders had in mind when they used the word invasion. But, Laura, second, even if you’re not persuaded by that, the clause Governor Abbott’s relying on in Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution was dealing with the specific scenario of the ability of states to respond to invasions until federal authorities were able to respond.
This is the time in American history when the federal military was small. It was very spread out. It took weeks to travel. Congress was usually out of session. There’s no support in our history, there’s no support in founding or other materials for the idea that states can decide for themselves that they’re under invasion, and, even if the federal government disagrees, that somehow it’s the state’s determination that would control.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
Recently, three migrants drowned in the Rio Grande in this section that Border Patrol agents have been trying to access.
And all this comes as a number of Republican governors still say that they support Texas, that they stand by Texas. What are the larger implications of this standoff between Texas and the federal government?
Steve Vladeck:
I mean, the larger implications are pretty staggering.
It’s not just the specter of a physical confrontation between federal and Texas officials along the border in Eagle Pass. It’s also basically a relegation of a debate that we had in American law for the first 70 years of this country about the ability of states to effectively nullify those federal laws that they disagreed with, that they thought were unconstitutional.
For better or for worse in our constitutional system, federal law supersedes state law, even when we don’t like how the federal government is or is not enforcing those federal laws. The remedies for those disagreements are not to allow every state to go out on their own and to have their own policies.
The remedies, if you really have a problem with the policies, is to change the people who are making them. Otherwise, it’s a federal system, Laura, in name only.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
And Governor Abbott also claims that the federal government has — quote — “broken the compact with states.”
Where have — what do you think he means by that? And have states in the past used that language to justify defying the federal government?
Steve Vladeck:
Yes, I mean, the compact theory of the Constitution is a pretty outlier view, especially these days, about the way the Constitution was formed.
The basic premise is that the federal government, the constitutional system we have was formed by the states, and, therefore, the states can control its terms. That was the argument on which the Southern states predicated secession and helped to precipitate the Civil War. There’s a reason why we tend not to hear that much of it these days.
Again, I mean, I think there’s a lot of folks who are going to have strong views about whether the Biden administration is or isn’t doing what’s best for the country at the border. But the way to air those disagreements is through the federal electoral process.
In a world in which states can follow this version of the compact theory as a justification for interfering with federal authority, what’s to stop California from doing that to the next Republican president? What’s to stop Vermont from doing that to the next Republican president? And then we’re talking about a system in which the states have all the power, and the federal government is basically impotent to do anything.
Laura Barron-Lopez:
And Governor Abbott also claims that the federal government has — quote — “broken the compact with states.”
Where have — what do you think he means by that? And have states in the past used that language to justify defying the federal government?
Steve Vladeck:
Yes, I mean, the compact theory of the Constitution is a pretty outlier view, especially these days, about the way the Constitution was formed.
The basic premise is that the federal government, the constitutional system we have was formed by the states, and, therefore, the states can control its terms. That was the argument on which the Southern states predicated secession and helped to precipitate the Civil War. There’s a reason why we tend not to hear that much of it these days.
Again, I mean, I think there’s a lot of folks who are going to have strong views about whether the Biden administration is or isn’t doing what’s best for the country at the border. But the way to air those disagreements is through the federal electoral process.
In a world in which states can follow this version of the compact theory as a justification for interfering with federal authority, what’s to stop California from doing that to the next Republican president? What’s to stop Vermont from doing that to the next Republican president? And then we’re talking about a system in which the states have all the power, and the federal government is basically impotent to do anything.
This is another example of hour Republicans are basically trying to destroy our system of government. It’s coming from all sides. I’m not sure this will all end even if Trump manages to choke on McDonald’s fries and head off to a different hell realm out of our reality.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Here we are, faced with choice
Shutters and walls or open embrace
Like it or not, the human race
Is us all
History is what it is
Scars we inflict on each other don’t die
But slowly soak into the DNA
Of us all
Of us all
Us all
I pray we not fear to love
I pray we be free of judgement and shame
Open the vein, let kindness rain
O’er us all
O’er us all
O’er us all
Us all
Songwriters: Bruce Cockburn
Peder Mørk Mønsted, Sunny winter landscape with a road, 1907
I was just about to get going on my post when I glanced at the TV screen (sound muted) and noticed a wild scene in the House Oversight Committee hearing. The Republicans scheduled the meeting today to hold Hunter Biden in contempt for ignoring their subpoena to appear for a secret deposition.
You’ll recall that Rep. James Comer originally said that Hunter could testify either in a public hearing or behind closed doors with committee staff. Hunter offered to testify publicly under oath but Comer freaked out and said it would have to be in a closed deposition. Obviously, they have no evidence of wrongdoing and Comer wanted to be able to lie about what happened in a closed hearing.
Anyway, Hunter showed up at the hearing today with two of his attorneys and sat in the audience. The media was all a-flutter.
Republicans were outraged. Nancy Mace yelled at Hunter and accused him of not having the “balls” to respond to the subpoena. After a long, idiotic rant by Mace, it was Margery Taylor Greene’s turn. Unfortunately for her, Hunter and his attorneys left the meeting as she began to speak, and all of the press followed them out the door, leaving Greene with no one to record whatever stupid things she planned to say.
Here’s the report from NBC News: Hunter Biden makes surprise appearance at House committee hearing to hold him in contempt.
The son of the president arrived on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning to attend in person congressional committee meetings called to hold him in contempt of Congress — setting up an unprecedented standoff on live television between Hunter Biden and House Republicans who have long sought his testimony as part of their impeachment inquiry into his father.
Hunter Biden was accompanied by his attorneys Abbe Lowell and Kevin Morris. He did not initially respond to questions.
House Republicans on the Oversight and Judiciary Committees are holding separate committee votes on Wednesday recommending that Hunter Biden be charged with contempt of Congress.
Hunter Biden is at odds with Republicans over their demand that he testify behind closed doors. The president’s son, who is facing two separate criminal indictments, has agreed to testify publicly, an offer Republicans have refused, continuing to insist that the testimony be given behind closed doors.
During the Oversight Committee’s markup Wednesday morning, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., called for Hunter Biden’s arrest on the spot for defying the congressional subpoena.
“Hunter Biden you are too afraid for a deposition, and I still think you are today,” she said.
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” she added.
Outside the chamber, Lowell said committee Republicans were motived by “improper partisan motives.” He said he and his client had offered to work with Republicans on the committees on a half dozen occasions since February of last year to see “how relevant information to any legitimate inquiry could be provided,” but their first five offers were ignored. He called the subsequent GOP subpoena for a closed-door deposition “a tactic that the Republicans have repeatedly misused in their political crusade to selectively leak and mischaracterize what witnesses have said.”
Asked by NBC News shortly after leaving the Oversight hearing whether he would testify today if asked, Hunter Biden replied “yes.” He and his team left the building afterwards.
This is interesting. It appears that Chairman Comer has a hypocrisy issue as he accuses Joe and Hunter Biden of “corruption.” Roger Sollenberger at The Daily Beast: Oversight Chairman James Comer’s ‘Legitimate’ Shell Company Was Shut Down—Twice.
As Rep. James Comer (R-KY) plows ahead with his sensationalized impeachment inquiry premised on Hunter Biden’s business dealings, the Oversight Chairman has alleged that Biden’s opaque financial operations merit investigation, and that people who own corporations have a “responsibility” to maintain proper “books and records.”
But a review of dozens of tax, real estate, and business filings in Kentucky and Tennessee indicate that Comer’s own personal “books and records” are opaque at best—and improper at worst.
Jef Bourgeau (American, b.1950), The Gloaming, 2024
Those records include the dealings of Comer’s shell company, Farm Team Properties LLC, which the state of Kentucky has dissolved twice for failure to file annual reports—first in 2020, then again in 2022.
Kentucky law states that an administratively dissolved business “continues its existence but shall not carry on any business except that necessary to wind up and liquidate its business and affairs.” An official with the Kentucky Department of Revenue told The Daily Beast that a company in administrative dissolution may not legally conduct business in the state—such as executing deals and leases, securing loans, or collecting rent as an LLC.
But in response to questions about the shell company last month, Comer told Fox Business that Farm Team Properties not only holds properties, it also “manages” them, “leases hunting on my 1,600 acres of farmland,” and generates “lots of revenue, legitimate revenue.” (The previous month, he denied having an LLC during a committee hearing.)
While Comer and his wife rectified the first dissolution within a few weeks, they allowed the October 2022 dissolution to languish for more than a year, only reinstating the entity last month, after The Daily Beast first reported on the company and flagged the dissolution on social media. It’s not clear from Comer’s filings whether Farm Team Properties ceased business activity for those 14 months.
The “books and records” questions also run to Comer’s real estate holdings, which directly contradict his recent public statements about his LLC. For one, Comer reports rental income from all of his farmland holdings, but it’s not clear whether that income derives from Farm Team’s alleged hunting leases. If so, experts told The Daily Beast, his records should reflect that, and they do not.
The opacity of Comer’s disclosures—along with his contradictory defenses of the shell company—mean the public still doesn’t have a clear picture of his finances. And Comer’s broadsides targeting Hunter Biden’s cloudy corporate entities would seem to invite parallel scrutiny into the similar haze that has settled over his own business dealings….
On personal financial disclosures starting from 2017—the year Comer’s wife created Farm Team Properties—and continuing through his most recent statement covering 2022, Comer has listed the income from the company as “none.” But after recent reports from The Daily Beast and the Associated Press raised questions about the shell company, Comer has called into question whether he’s really making no money from the entity.
House ethics rules state that members who “own an interest in a partnership or limited liability company established for the purpose of holding real estate,” must describe “each individual property held by the company.” Members also “must disclose each asset held by the company in which your interest (or that of your spouse or dependent child) had a period-end value of more than $1,000” or had recorded “more than $200 in income during the reporting period.”
Brendan Fischer, an ethics expert and deputy director of watchdog Documented, told The Daily Beast that it seems as if Comer should disclose more information.
“For a company created to hold investment properties—which sounds like Farm Team Properties, LLC—a Congressperson not only must disclose the company, they must also provide details about the properties it owns, and the amount of any income (such as rental income) from those properties,” Fischer said, noting that the rules apply “regardless of whether the entity is taxed as a partnership or corporation.”
Comer’s disclosures list his FTP ownership as a business interest, not as investment or real estate, despite the fact that it owns properties and is engaged in “real estate speculation.” This was true in 2017, when Farm Team Properties was created to hold property and obscure Comer’s co-ownership with a campaign donor, the Associated Press reported last month.
Sollenberger notes that Comer is a millionaire, because his father handed over two valuable properties for $10 apiece. Read much more about Comer’s shady dealings at The Daily Beast link.
The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jim Jordan (who refused to honor a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee) is also meeting today in order to decide whether to hold Hunter Biden in contempt.
Winter Trees, by Egon Schiele
CNN on the Judiciary Committee hearing:
In a different committee room, Jordan gaveled in the Judiciary panel’s meeting.
“Rather than come before us and answering questions about these and other concurring instances of the Biden family trading cash for influence, Hunter Biden held a press conference a few hundred yards from here, a press conference where he said I’m happy to answer questions in public but when he finished his statement he abruptly left, taking no questions from the press,” Jordan said.
“We have no choice but to hold Mr. Biden in contempt,” he added.
The pair of markups on Wednesday kick off a lengthy process and underscore that the Republican effort to obtain testimony from the president’s son will remain difficult. If the contempt resolution passes out of committee, it is referred to the full House for a contempt vote.
If an eventual House floor vote succeeds, the Department of Justice, which is already pursuing two criminal cases against the president’s son, would have to determine whether to prosecute the president’s son for evading a congressional subpoena.
Yesterday, Trump showed up in person for the hearing on his appeal of Judge Tanya Chutkan’s denial of his claim of “absolute presidential immunity” from criminal prosecution. The hearing didn’t go well for him. Joyce Vance wrote about it at Civil Discourse: Trump’s Bad Day in Court. The first of many to come.
Following Tuesday morning’s oral argument in the District of Columbia, Donald Trump made some predictable comments to the press from a Washington, D.C., hotel. As he finished, a reporter shouted out a request that he use the moment to tell his followers, “No violence.” The former president walked out of the room without responding.
The Judges came prepared for oral argument on Trump’s immunity motion. Let’s start with the key figures in the argument:
Judges: Bush appointee Karen LeCraft Henderson. Biden appointees Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs.
Lawyer for Trump: Former Missouri Solicitor General John Sauer.
Lawyer for the Special Counsel: James I. Pearce, a career federal prosecutor who has worked in both DOJ’s public integrity section, which Jack Smith previously led, and in the Criminal Division’s appellate section.
The top line from the argument: a broad consensus among observers that the panel didn’t buy Trump’s immunity argument. None of the Judges seemed to believe Trump should be immune from prosecution. But each Judge came at it from a different vantage point. While they may end up agreeing on a single rationale for their decision, it’s also possible we could have an opinion with concurrences by one or more of the Judges, using different reasoning.
Mr. Sauer argued first because Trump is the petitioner—he lost in the trial court and is asking the Court of Appeals to reverse Judge Chutkan’s decision. Mr. Pearce, who argued second, began by telling the court that no other president in history claimed his immunity from prosecution extended beyond his time in office. A president’s role is unique, Pearce said, “but not above the law.”
The most telling points in the oral argument centered on hypotheticals offered by Judge Pan. Judges frequently use hypotheticals to help them understand what a ruling would mean both for the case at hand and in future cases. Judge Pan posed three to Sauer, asking whether, under his view of immunity, a president could:
- order Seal Team 6 to execute a political rival, and get away with it
- accept a payment for issuing a pardon, and get away with it
- sell nuclear secrets to a foreign power, and get away with it
Landscape with Snow, Vincent Van Gogh
Sauer argued that presidents can only be prosecuted if they are first impeached and convicted by the Senate. He, of course, has to argue this because otherwise, his client Donald Trump is in trouble.
It’s an unappetizing position. Sauer ran into still more trouble as the hypothetical was played out with both lawyers in turn, exploring the ways a president could avoid being impeached and convicted. They ranged from a president who resigns to avoid conviction, succeeds in concealing criminal conduct until he leaves office so he is never impeached, or even one who orders the deaths of his opponents in the Senate to prevent conviction. Under Trump’s theory of immunity, no prosecution would be available in these cases.
You don’t have to be a high-end appellate lawyer to understand that this argument is a stone-cold loser. At least in a democracy.
Read the rest of Vance’s analysis at the link above.
HuffPost recaps an interview from last night’s Lawrence O’Donnell show on MSNBC: Ex-Prosecutor Surprised By ‘Jarring’ Aspect To Trump Court Appearance.
Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on Tuesday said Donald Trump’s demeanor as he appeared before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — while his attorneys argued his “absolute immunity” for acts he committed during his presidency ― was “kind of jarring.”
The former president and Republican 2024 front-runner behaved “entirely like a defendant, not like a politician,” Kirschner told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.
It was in stark contrast to Trump’s usual bluster.
“I think I know what retail politics means,” said Kirschner. “He didn’t look anybody in the eye, he didn’t take an interest in anyone around, he kept his head down. He sort of lumbered forward to counsel table and plopped down.”
Trump “seemed like a defeated defendant who was kind of resigned to his fate,” he added.Kirschner later described the argument being put forward by Trump’s legal team as “harebrained.”
Former President Donald Trump’s attorney John Sauer failed catastrophically in selling an absolute immunity argument the appellate judges considering whether special counsel Jack Smith’s election conspiracy prosecution can move forward, argued former federal prosecutor Harry Litman on MSNBC Tuesday.
In particular, he said, it was over as soon as Sauer seemed to concede their position would imply Trump can assassinate his opponents with no recourse.
Edvard Munch, Winter Landscape
“He basically threatened some sort of unrest or bedlam if things didn’t go his way,” said anchor Chris Hayes. “He didn’t take any questions … and the headline comes from a hypothetical that appears in Jack Smith’s own briefs, which is to say the argument that Trump and his lawyers are making proves too much, obviously goes too far. It cannot be the case. Under the Constitution and under the rule of law, in a democracy and such as ours, it would allow it to be possible to order Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival and not face accountability but for some impeachment and conviction.”
“Cannot be, that is the headline, all three judges will reject that proposition,” agreed Litman. “Basically after Judge Pan asked that hypo about Seal Team Six, Sauer … was a dead man walking. He will lose. He should lose. Legally, historically, logically, et cetera. So in that sense there is the satisfaction that this vampire will have a stake in its heart.”
“But below the headline, Chris, there’s more drama, I would say, because this is one of the cases in which the three judges were kind of probing different theories, and one at one stage Judge Henderson said maybe we need to remand, to Judge Chutkan, this. They were probing different ideas, none of which was in lockstep with what Chutkan said. There are two reasons it matters. Depending on how they decide, even if they were unanimous, and you could see it concurring with Judge Henderson, if they were unanimous it could affect the prospects for a remand, and remand might entail a subsequent round of appeals under the remanded standard by Trump and a little bit more delay. And also could affect whether the Supreme Court takes review. So that lower level, there was some drama.”
George Conway wrote a long piece about yesterday’s hearing at The Atlantic: Trump’s Lawyer Walked Into a Trap. It’s pretty entertaining, if you can get through the paywall. They usually allow one free article, before they cut you off.
The second E. Jean Carroll case is also coming up soon. From Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Judge Signals Trump Is Doomed in New E. Jean Carroll Trial.
With Donald Trump’s second rape defamation trial only one week away, a federal judge has rewarded the billionaire’s unceasing legal insolence and delusional defense strategy with a brutal order laying out just how punishing the court battle is going to be.
Until recently, the former president’s lawyers had been preparing for the upcoming defamation trial as if the first one never happened—seeing it as a chance to rewrite history and try to clear Trump’s name after a jury last year concluded he sexually assaulted the journalist E. Jean Carroll decades ago.
But on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan made it clear that Trump is not getting another go at whether he raped Carroll.
“In other words, the material facts concerning the alleged sexual assault already have been determined, and this trial will not be a ‘do over’ of the previous trial,” Kaplan wrote in an order.
In the 27-page order, the federal judge reiterated that the jury will merely be deciding how badly to reprimand Trump for dragging Carroll’s name through the mud while he was at the White House in 2019—when he denied a coercive sexual encounter that did, according to a jury last year, occur.
This new jury will see the most damning evidence of Trump’s misogyny, from the Access Hollywood tape in which he gloats about how he can “grab them by the pussy” to the videotaped deposition where he remarks that stars get away with sexual assault “unfortunately—or fortunately.”
The previous iteration of this case dealt with the defamatory denials Trump made after leaving office, a trial that cost him $5 million in damages (which he apparently paid).
The second defamation trial, which begins next week, deals with the denials Trump made as U.S. president, with all the additional attention and gravitas his former position of power bestowed upon him at the time he made those comments.
Kaplan’s order on Tuesday clarified that Trump will have the obligation—but not the right—to remain silent about nearly everything the billionaire intended to say in court.
“Mr. Trump and his counsel are precluded, in the presence of the jury, from claiming that Mr. Trump did not sexually abuse (“rape”) Ms. Carroll, that Mdid not make his… 2019 statements concerning Ms. Carroll with actual malice… or that Ms. Carroll fabricated her account,” he wrote.
In other (not new) news, Republican politicians are showing themselves to be sadistic psychopaths when it comes to women’s abilities to make choices about their bodies and health care. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: Republican Officials Openly Insult Women Nearly Killed by Abortion Bans.
For many years before S.B. 8 passed in Texas and was then swept into existence by the Supreme Court, and before Dobbs ushered in a more formal regime of forced childbirth six months later, the groups leading the charge against reproductive rights liked to claim that they loved pregnant women and only wanted them to be safe and cozy, stuffed chock-full of good advice and carted around through extra-wide hallways for safe, sterile procedures in operating rooms with only the best HVAC systems. Then Dobbs came down and within minutes it became manifestly clear that these advocates actually viewed pregnant people as the problem standing in the way of imaginary, healthy babies—and that states willing to privilege fetal life would go to any and all lengths to ensure that actual patients’ care, comfort, informed consent, and very survival would be subordinate.
We are only beginning to understand the extent to which pregnant women are dying and will continue to die due to denials of basic maternal health care, candid medical advice, and adequate treatment. The issue of emergency abortions, though, has already rocketed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed on Friday to decide whether federal law compels hospitals to terminate dangerous pregnancies regardless of state bans. No matter how SCOTUS rules, the fallout is already all around us. The stories of Kate Cox in Texas, devastated would-be mothers in Tennessee, and a horrifying prosecution of a mother who miscarried in Ohio all surface the brutal reality of the post-Dobbs zeitgeist: Any woman who seeks to terminate a pregnancy is wicked, any woman who miscarries is evil, and any woman who—for reasons of failing health, circumstance, or simple bad luck—does not prove to be an adequate incubator deserves whatever she gets. Every unborn fetus is the priority over the pregnant person carrying it and must be carried to term at all costs. So goes the moral calculus of the death-panel judges who now determine how to weigh the competing interests between real, existing human life and a state’s dogmatic fixation with a fetus that, by definition, must be seraphically innocent.
Frosted Evening, by Paul Evans
One need only look at red states’ scramble to defend their draconian abortion bans to witness this perverse moral hierarchy in action. In the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise, the victims of these laws are no longer hypothetical: They are flesh-and-blood women, directly and viscerally injured by the denial of basic health care, and some of them have even had the gall to fight for their rights. Republican attorneys general have responded with furious indignation, openly demeaning these women as liars, wimps, partisans, and baby killers.
A recent filing by the office of Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan T. Skrmetti, a Republican, captures the dynamic all too well. Skrmetti has been fighting a lawsuit filed by a group of Tennessee women denied emergency abortions under the ultranarrow medical exception to that state’s ban. The women plaintiffs suffered an appalling range of trauma, including sepsis and hemorrhaging, because they could not terminate their pregnancies. The attorney general’s response to their complaint is a scathing, shockingly personal broadside against the victims of the ban. He accused them of attempting to draw “lines about which unborn lives are worth protecting” by imposing a medical exception “of their own liking.” He mocked them for asserting that ostensibly minor conditions like “sickle cell disease” might justify an abortion. And he insisted that the lead plaintiff, Nicole Blackmon, lacks standing, because she underwent sterilization after the state forced her to carry a nonviable pregnancy and deliver a stillborn baby. The attorney general viciously suggested that, if Blackmon really wanted to fight Tennessee’s ban, she could have tried for another doomed pregnancy.
Perhaps Skrmetti deserves half credit for candor, because he did not even pretend to treat these plaintiffs like compelling moral human beings. Instead, he wrote that Tennessee may allow different standards of care for pregnant and nonpregnant women. A pregnant woman, the attorney general averred, may be refused a treatment if it “has the potential to harm unborn lives—an issue not implicated” when treating nonpregnant women. “No equal-protection rule,” he concluded, “bars lawmakers from acting on that difference to protect unborn babies.” In other words, once a woman is pregnant, she becomes a vessel for “unborn babies,” giving the state authority to cut off her access to urgently necessary health care. Since nonpregnant women don’t immediately suffer the consequences of abortion bans, those bans don’t discriminate on the basis of sex.
There’s much more at the link.
One more story before I wrap this up. I’m sure you’ve heard that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was was treated for prostate cancer in December and was hospitalized with complications from surgery on Jan. 1. The problem is that President Biden and other top officials had no clue this was happening. From BBC News: President Joe Biden was only told that US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin was being treated for cancer on Tuesday, the White House has said.
Mr Austin, 70, was admitted to hospital on 1 January and then to the intensive care unit for complications following surgery in December.
He has faced criticism for not telling senior officials about it for days.
He has since apologised for not “ensuring the public was appropriately informed”.
The lag in notifying the White House raised potential national security concerns and issues of transparency within the Biden administration.
The defence secretary sits just below the president in the chain of command for the US military, and is one of the most important members of the president’s Cabinet.
The Pentagon confirmed Mr Austin remained hospitalised on Tuesday.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that President Biden was only informed that day about the diagnosis of prostate cancer.
“Nobody at the White House knew that Secretary Austin had prostate cancer until this morning,” he said.
While he emphasised the president’s initial reaction was concern for the secretary’s health, Mr Kirby acknowledged the communications were “not optimal.”
“This is not the way it is supposed to go,” Mr Kirby said.
Mr Biden and Sec Austin have not spoken since their last interaction over the weekend, according to Mr Kirby.
Mr Austin’s deputy, Kathleen Hicks, was not informed of his hospital stay despite being asked to assume some of his responsibilities.
“The upcoming E. Jean Carroll defamation trial has him in a total meltdown. It’s only going to get better.” John Buss @repeat1968
So far today, Trump keeps harassing E. Jean Carroll, recruits another excellent Dem candidate for Congress, and gets his lawyer to corner JustICE KavanaUGH! It makes for some dark humor today. It also makes me wonder about his cult. Who could possibly take this hot mess seriously?
Let’s start with his excellent recruitment of Dem Candidates for Congress. He has already brought Retired Army Colonel Alexander Vindman into the race in Virginia. Vindman announced last month. He’s been making the case for Ukraine and against Russia on MSNBC recently. Today, Harry Dunn has announced that he will run to represent Maryland on Morning Joe. This comes after the release of his book “Standing My Ground: A Capitol Police Officer’s Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble After January 6th” last year. This is from The New York Times. “Officer Who Defended Capitol on Jan. 6 Runs for Congress in Maryland. Harry Dunn, who endured racist slurs as he fought off a pro-Trump mob and gained fame with his emotional testimony before the Jan. 6 committee, is joining a crowded Democratic primary.” Trump sure knows how to bring the nation’s heroes into politics.
In 2023, President Biden awarded Mr. Dunn the Presidential Citizens Medal in recognition for his role in protecting the Capitol.
Mr. Dunn grew up in the Washington suburbs of Prince George’s County, Md., and graduated from James Madison University in Virginia, where he played football and helped lead the team to its first national title.
He has written a book called “Standing My Ground.”
In an interview, Mr. Dunn said his last day at a police officer was Dec. 17. If elected, Mr. Dunn said he would fight for women’s reproductive rights, “common sense” gun reform, voting rights and affordable health care, among other priorities.
He said he believes he is the candidate in the field best equipped to combat the right-wing movement loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.
Trump not only can’t keep his trap shut, he forces his lawyers to open theirs and look positively bereft of brains. “Unprofessional”: Experts blast Trump lawyer for saying Brett Kavanaugh “quid pro quo part out loud.” “Imagine for a second if a lawyer for Clinton, Obama or Biden said this. It’d be a massive scandal,” attorney says. This is from Salon.
Trump attorney Alina Habba on Thursday suggested that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh would “step up” and rule in favor of the former president because he “fought for” him.
Trump on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court ruling barring him from the presidential primary ballot under the Constitution’s “insurrectionist” clause. Trump has privately told people that he thinks the Supreme Court will “overwhelmingly” overturn the ruling but has also expressed concern that the conservative justices he appointed “will worry about being perceived as ‘political’ and may rule against him,” according to The New York Times.
Habba echoed Trump’s worries in an interview with Fox News.
“That’s a concern that he’s voiced to me, he’s voiced to everybody publicly, not privately. And I can tell you that his concern is a valid one,” she said. “They’re trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call.”
But in a later appearance on the network with host Sean Hannity, Habba said the case should be a “slam dunk in the Supreme Court.”
“You know people like Kavanaugh ― who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place ― he’ll step up,” she said. “Those people will step up. Not because they’re pro-Trump but because they’re pro-law. Because they’re pro-fairness, and the law on this is very clear.”
CNN host Phil Mattingly was taken aback as he played the clip on Friday.
“If a Democrat said that about the Justice Department or Merrick Garland or fill-in-the-blank here, there would be an absolute implosion. That’s bonkers,” he said.
Francisco de Goya, The Madhouse, 1793
Then, there is his ongoing slander of E. Jean Carroll. This is from The New Republic. “Trump Is Absolutely Losing It Over His E. Jean Carroll Case. The former president could have just handed Carroll another chance to take him to court..” This is crazy!!
Donald Trump has lost another battle with E. Jean Carroll, and he’s handling it in a classic fashion: by completely flying off the handle.
Over the span of about 30 minutes Thursday morning, Trump made 31 posts about Carroll on Truth Social. Although he didn’t say anything himself, he shared stories from conservative outlets attacking her and comments from internet users calling her “creepy.” He also shared media interview clips and social media posts that appear to come from Carroll, all stripped of context so as to paint her as some sort of sexual deviant.
Trump’s gross little rampage is likely the result of a Wednesday court ruling rejecting his latest attempt to delay his upcoming trial for defaming Carroll. The trial is due to start on January 15.
In May, a jury unanimously found Trump liable for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her in 2022 while denying the assault. He was ordered to pay her $5 million in damages.
The upcoming trial is for comments Trump made in 2019, when he said Carroll made up the rape allegation to promote her memoir. Presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that since Trump has already been found liable for sexual abuse, his 2019 comments are by default defamatory. Carroll is now seeking up to $12 million in damages.
Nancy Pelosi has written an account of January 6 at The Atlantic. “What January 6 Made Clear to Me. Our democratic institutions are only as strong as the courage of those entrusted with their care.” Tomorrow will be the 3rd anniversary of one of the worst events the country has ever experienced. This story was new to me.
Congressional leadership was taken to Fort McNair. As I left the Capitol, I kept asking if the National Guard had been called, a power reserved for the executive branch. While the governor of every state in the union has the power to call up their own National Guard, the District of Columbia’s National Guard is under the control of the Defense Department—and, ultimately, of the commander in chief.
When I got to Fort McNair, it was clear that no one had deployed the National Guard to the Capitol. As Senator Chuck Schumer and I watched the television coverage of the unfolding insurrection, we began to place urgent calls to the administration.
I contacted Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, who could not have been more casual. In response to our pleas to dispatch reinforcements, he said: “Well, I have to report to my boss. That takes time. I don’t know what we can do.” His answer was horrifying.
While the Pentagon dragged its feet, Chuck, Representative Steny Hoyer, and I called the governors of Virginia and Maryland to ask them for help. Virginia law enforcement and National Guard troops began arriving in D.C. around 3:15 p.m., and Maryland was cooperative too.
Chuck, Senator Mitch McConnell, and I then contacted McCarthy’s boss, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, to plead for more reinforcements. Mitch insisted that the National Guard “get there in one hell of a hurry, you understand?” I demanded an answer: “Just pretend for a moment it was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege.” Still, Miller delayed.
Hours later, the Capitol was finally cleared. While it was suggested that we continue the certification from Fort McNair for security reasons, it was always our goal to return to the Capitol that night to finish the count. The whole world had seen the vile “Stop the Steal” venom the president was pushing, and the violence that it had caused. It was essential that we continue our duties in the Capitol of the United States, for the American people and the world alike to see.
And, what is the instigator of this horrid event doing?
Egon Schiele, Self Portrait In Jerkin With Right Elbow Raised, 1914
This is from MTN. It’s crazy enough but then there are seriously demented White Evangelicals pushing the same meme. If the Asylum is the Republican Party, White Christian Nationalists are its gatekeepers. “Trump Posts Video Calling Himself a God-Given “Caretaker“ and “Shepherd to Mankind”. The video also appears to take a dig at Melania.”
On Truth Social, Trump posted a video with the caption, “God made Trump.” In the video, a narrator explains “God gave us Trump” because he was looking for certain qualities God allegedly needed in a leader including a “caretaker,” and working long hours. Trump, who said he would be a president who never took vacations, spent over 400 days visiting Trump properties while president.
Besides the “caretaker” description, the video also contains messianic descriptions of Trump as “man who cares for the flock, a shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave or forsake them.” Similar language is found in the Bible.
In Psalm 23, David describes God as a shepherd who provides for the flock. The teaching that God will “never leave or forsake you” is found multiple times in the Bible. Jesus called himself “the good shepherd” who “lays down his life for the sheep” and taught he “is with you always.”
This latest video echoes the teachings we’ve seen by Christian nationalists who make Trump out as a divine figure sent by God to save the world. American Christian nationalists have not just woven Trump into their faith, they’ve placed him on the throne and are rewriting, ignoring, and breaking away from historic teachings on helping the poor, migrants, and upholding justice as these conflict with their MAGA agenda.
The cult is definitely as insane as its leader. “God Made Trump” is trending on the X-crement site. It’s pretty evident that the Republican Party, and its Mega Donors, are basically schoolyard bullies with more money and access to Media. This is from The Guardian. “A bully’: the billionaire who led calls for Claudine Gay’s Harvard exit. US hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posts 4,000-word screed decrying ‘racism against white people’ after Gay’s departure.” This wasn’t about anti-semitism. Unlike most of Gay’s white male critics, Ackman actually graduated from Harvard.
Chief among the campaigners celebrating the resignation of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University was a man who arguably did the most to push Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, out the door: Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge-fund manager and Harvard alumnus.
Ackman, who accused Gay of antisemitism and plagiarism, was a major player in what increasingly became a rightwing campaign against the Harvard president – who said many of the attacks against her were “fueled by racial animus”.
In the past month alone, the 57-year-old has tweeted about Gay, Harvard, or both, more than 100 times to his 1 million followers. On Tuesday, he topped that with a rambling 4,000-word X post about “racism against white people”; universities’ efforts to increase diversity; and accusations that student groups were “supporting terrorism”.
Ackman’s campaign came after “years of resentment”, the New York Times reported, in part because his donations to Harvard did not give him greater influence over the university.
A previous donor to the Democratic party, Ackman has denied he has rightwing politics. But his campaign has been seized upon by conservatives and a Republican party that have long been resentful of an alleged liberal bias, and of affirmative action efforts, on college campuses and elsewhere – something commenters pointed out after Gay’s resignation.
AI, the final frontier. Women aren’t even safe from men there. This horrifying article came to me via JJ. This is from The Guardian. “A girl was allegedly raped in the metaverse. Is this the beginning of a dark new future?” This is reproted by Nancy Jo Sales.
The cheerful language with which tech companies describe their platforms is often in stark contrast to the dark possibilities lurking within them. Meta, for example, describes its virtual world, the metaverse, as “the next evolution in social connection and the successor to the mobile internet”, a place where “virtual reality lets you explore new worlds and shared experiences”. But for a young girl in the UK recently, that “shared experience” was an alleged gang rape perpetrated by several adult men.
British police are investigating the sexual assault of the girl, identified only as being under the age of 16, in what is said to be the first investigation of its kind in the UK. The girl was reportedly wearing a virtual reality headset and playing an immersive game in the metaverse when her avatar was attacked.
Was this really rape? some have asked. The comments on an Instagram post for a story about the case in the New York Post were characteristically skeptical: “Couldn’t she have just turned it off?” “Can we focus on real-life crime please?” “I was killed in [the war video game Call of Duty],” one person said sarcastically: “Been waiting for my killer to be brought to justice.”
The difference, of course, is that while Call of Duty players can expect to be virtually killed sometimes as part of the game, the girl had no reason to expect that she would be raped. It isn’t yet known what game she was playing when the alleged assault occurred, but obviously there isn’t an online game where the goal for adult players is to rape children. The fact that they are able to in the metaverse is the issue at the heart of this case, which has attracted international attention.
The question of whether virtual rape is “really rape” goes back to at least 1993, when the Village Voice published an article by Julian Dibbell about “a rape in cyberspace”. Dibbell’s piece reported on how the people behind avatars that were sexually assaulted in a virtual community felt emotions similar to those of victims of physical rape.
As did the girl whose avatar was attacked in the metaverse, according to a senior police officer familiar with the case; he told the Daily Mail: “There is an emotional and psychological impact on the victim that is longer-term than any physical injuries.” In addition, the immersive quality of the metaverse experience makes it all the more difficult for a child, especially, to distinguish between what’s real and what is make-believe.
So while it is necessary for the police to investigate this case – with the courts to decide on the appropriate punishment for the alleged offenders – it is equally important for Meta to be held accountable.
I’d say that 2024 is getting off to a worse start than even I expected.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Sea, Dark Sky (2021), by Alice Brasser (Netherlands)
Before I get to all the Trump crime news, I want to highlight this piece at The Guardian about climate change: ‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come, by Oliver Milman.
The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because “we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.
Hansen, whose testimony to the US Senate in 1988 is cited as the first high-profile revelation of global heating, warned in a statement with two other scientists that the world was moving towards a “new climate frontier” with temperatures higher than at any point over the past million years, bringing impacts such as stronger storms, heatwaves and droughts.
The world has already warmed by about 1.2C since mass industrialization, causing a 20% chance of having the sort of extreme summer temperatures currently seen in many parts of the northern hemisphere, up from a 1% chance 50 years ago, Hansen said.
“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts,” Hansen, who is 82, told the Guardian. “These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren. We are headed wittingly into the new reality – we knew it was coming.”
Hansen was a Nasa climate scientist when he warned lawmakers of growing global heating and has since taken part in protests alongside activists to decry the lack of action to reduce planet-heating emissions in the decades since.
He said the record heatwaves that have roiled the US, Europe, China and elsewhere in recent weeks have heightened “a sense of disappointment that we scientists did not communicate more clearly and that we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response”.
“It means we are damned fools,” Hansen said of humanity’s ponderous response to the climate crisis. “We have to taste it to believe it.”
This year looks likely to be the hottest ever recorded globally, with the summer already seeing the hottest June and, possibly, hottest week ever reliably measured. Conversely, 2023 may in time be considered an average or even mild year, as temperatures continue to climb. “Things will get worse before they get better,” Hansen said.
“This does not mean that the extreme heat at a particular place this year will recur and grow each year. Weather fluctuations move things around. But the global average temperature will go up and the climate dice will be more and more loaded, including more extreme events.”
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Now on to the Trump Crimes:
The news that Trump received a target letter from Jack Smith warning him he is about to be indicted in the January 6 case has pushed the stolen documents case in Florida into the background. Judge Cannon can dither about setting a date for the stolen documents trial all she wants; the January 6 case will be tried in Washington DC, will likely be on a fast track, and will be higher profile. Trump could be indicted for the third time as early as Friday.
Tao Fung Shan (2019), by Stephen Wong Chun Hei (Hong Kong b. 1986),
ABC News: Special counsel informs Trump he is target in probe of efforts to overturn 2020 election.
Special counsel Jack Smith has informed former President Donald Trump by letter that he is a target in his investigationSp into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
Trump also confirmed the development in a post on his Truth Social platform….
The target letter mentions three federal statutes: conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law, and tampering with a witness, victim or an informant, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
There are no additional details in the letter and it does not say how the special counsel’s office claims Trump may have violated the statutes listed, sources said.
Trump, appearing Tuesday night at a town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he received the letter on Sunday.
“It bothers me,” said the former president. “I got the letter on Sunday night. Think of it, I don’t think they’ve ever sent a letter on Sunday night. And they’re in a rush because they want to interfere, it’s election interference, never been done like this in the history of our country and it’s a disgrace what’s happening to our country.”
Target letters are typically given to subjects in a criminal investigation to put them on notice that they are facing the prospect of indictment.
The letter mentions three federal statutes: Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States; deprivation of rights under color of law; and tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant. It does not offer further details, nor does it detail how the special counsel believes Trump may have violated the statutes, the source tells Rolling Stone.
The letter does not mention statutes on sedition or insurrection, according to the source….
The source said the statutes listed likely refer to the prosecutor’s interest in charging Trump with obstructing the election certification process, including Trump efforts to pressure Mike Pence to stop the certification of President Biden’s 2020 victory.
More bad legal news for Trump at HuffPost: Donald Trump Loses Bid For New Trial In E. Jean Carroll Case.
A federal judge on Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s request for a new trial in a civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, where a jury found the former U.S. president liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer and awarded her $5 million in damages.
In a 59-page decision, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan said the jury did not reach a “seriously erroneous result,” and the May 9 verdict was not a “miscarriage of justice.”
Carroll had accused Trump of raping her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, and then branding the incident a hoax in an October 2022 post on his Truth Social platform.
Trump had argued that awarding Carroll $2 million in compensatory damages for sexual assault was “excessive” because the jury found he had not raped her, while the award for defamation was based on “pure speculation.”
The judge also found that Trump did rape Carroll, despite his claims of being exhonerated of that charge, according to the “common definition.”
As I’m sure you know, more big legal news hit yesterday from Michigan. The Detroit News: 16 false Trump electors face felony charges in Michigan.
Attorney General Dana Nessel is leveling felony charges against 16 Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Donald Trump won Michigan’s 2020 presidential election, launching criminal cases against top political figures inside the state GOP.
Each of the 16 electors, including former Michigan Republican Party Co-Chairwoman Meshawn Maddock and Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot, have been charged with eight felony counts, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election law forgery, according to Nessel’s office.
Moonlight Dance, by Paul Batch,, 1979
The revelation capped six months of investigation and produced the most serious allegations yet in Michigan over the campaign to overturn Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Biden won the state by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points, but Trump and his supporters maintained false and unproven claims that fraud swung the result.
As part of the push to undermine Biden’s victory, Trump supporters gathered inside the then-Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Dec. 14, 2020, and signed a certificate, claiming to cast the state’s 16 electoral votes for Trump.
Eventually, the false certificate was sent to the National Archives and Congress. The document inaccurately claimed the Trump electors had met inside the Michigan Capitol. However, they hadn’t. Biden’s electors convened inside the Capitol, and the building was closed to others on Dec. 14, 2020.
“The false electors’ actions undermined the public’s faith in the integrity of our elections and, we believe, also plainly violated the laws by which we administer our elections in Michigan,” said Nessel, a Democrat, in a statement.
“My department has prosecuted numerous cases of election law violations throughout my tenure, and it would be malfeasance of the greatest magnitude if my department failed to act here in the face of overwhelming evidence of an organized effort to circumvent the lawfully cast ballots of millions of Michigan voters in a presidential election.”
The 16 defendants are:
- Kathy Berden, 70, of Snover
- William (Hank) Choate, 72, of Cement City
- Amy Facchinello, 55, of Grand Blanc
- Clifford Frost, 75, of Warren
- Stanley Grot, 71, of Shelby Township
- John Haggard, 82, of Charlevoix
- Mari-Ann Henry, 65, of Brighton
- Timothy King, 56, of Ypsilanti
- Michele Lundgren, 73, of Detroit
- Meshawn Maddock, 55, of Milford
- James Renner, 76, of Lansing
- Mayra Rodriguez, 64, of Grosse Pointe Farms
- Rose Rook, 81, of Paw Paw
- Marian Sheridan, 69, of West Bloomfield
- Ken Thompson, 68, of Orleans
- Kent Vanderwood, 69, of Wyoming
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has contacted former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who Donald Trump pressured to overturn the 2020 election, a source familiar with the outreach confirmed first to CNN.
A spokesman for Ducey confirmed the outreach from Smith’s team, which has not been previously reported.
Phil Greenwood (UK ,Wales. b.1943), Moon Lights, etching and aquating
“Yes, he’s been contacted. He’s been responsive, and just as he’s done since the election, he will do the right thing,” Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato told CNN.
Trump narrowly lost Arizona to Joe Biden by less than 11,000 votes. Trump publicly attacked Ducey, a former ally, over the state’s certification of the results. As Ducey was certifying the election results in November 2020, Trump appeared to call the governor – with a “Hail to the Chief” ringtone heard playing on Ducey’s phone. Ducey did not take that call but later said he spoke with Trump, though he did not describe the specifics of the conversation.
Ducey, behind closed doors, said that the former president was pressuring him to find fraud in the presidential election in Arizona that would help him overturn the election, a source with knowledge told CNN earlier this month after The Washington Post first reported the news. There was no recording made of that call, a source familiar with the matter said.
Then-Vice President Mike Pence also spoke with Ducey in the wake of the 2020 election.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: EXCLUSIVE: Feds sought surveillance video from State Farm Arena in Trump probe.
Federal prosecutors examining former President Donald Trump’s attempt to hold onto power following the 2020 election requested surveillance and other security footage recorded at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, according to a subpoena obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In a grand jury subpoena dated May 31, the Georgia Secretary of State’s office was directed to hand over “any and all security video or security footage, or any other video of any kind, depicting or taken at or near” State Farm and “any associated data.”
The subpoena, which was obtained by The AJC through an open records request and had not been previously reported, shows the widening interest in Georgia from Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who sent a so-called “target” letter to Trump on Sunday.
It also demonstrated the growing areas of overlap between the DOJ probe and the Fulton County investigation of interference in Georgia’s 2020 elections, which is expected to result in indictments against Trump and others next month.
Previous subpoenas and grand jury appearances show that Fulton and federal prosecutors are both interested in the appointment of a slate of “alternate” Trump electors in swing states like Georgia, as well as the pressure the former president placed on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Now back to Judge Cannon’s hearing yesterday on the documents case. Alan Feuer at The New York Times: Prosecutors and Trump Lawyers Clash Over Timing in Classified Documents Case.
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s classified documents case expressed skepticism on Tuesday about the government’s request to go to trial as early as December, but she also seemed disinclined to accede immediately to Mr. Trump’s desire to have the trial put off until after the 2024 election.
Appearing for the first time at a hearing in the case, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, came to no decision about when to schedule the trial, saying she would issue a written order “promptly.”
George Wesley Bellows (USA 1882-1925), A Fresh Breeze, 1913
The question of the trial’s timing could be hugely consequential, given that the legal proceeding is intertwined with the calendar of a presidential campaign in which Mr. Trump is now the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
For nearly two hours in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, peppered prosecutors and the former president’s lawyers with questions that suggested she was in command of her courtroom and well-versed in the facts of the case.
Her decision about when to schedule the trial will be an early test for the judge, who came under widespread criticism last year after she rendered some decisions in a related case that were favorable to Mr. Trump at an early stage of the investigation.
At one point, Judge Cannon directly asked one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Christopher Kise, if he wanted to put off the trial until after the election. When Mr. Kise said he did, Judge Cannon told him that she wanted to focus on near-term issues like the amount of discovery evidence the defense had to review and the types of motions the lawyers planned to file.
As the hearing came to end, Todd Blanche, another one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, asked Judge Cannon if the defense could return to court in November and reassess the trial schedule then. Appearing to pick up on the judge’s desire to create what she called “a road map” for the case, Mr. Blanche said that if a trial date absolutely had to be chosen, he would ask for one in mid-November 2024, after the election.
Timing is particularly important in this case because if the trial is delayed until after votes are cast and Mr. Trump wins the race, he could try to pardon himself or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely.
I imagine the Special Counsel would appeal to the 11th Circuit if Cannon has the nerve to schedule the trial after the election, as Trump wants.
One more tidbit from The Daily Beast: Ex-NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik ‘in Talks’ With Jack Smith’s Team, Lawyer Says.
Former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik is in talks to be interviewed by special counsel Jack Smith’s team investigating efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, Kerik’s attorney said Tuesday. Kerik worked with Rudy Giuliani after the election to find evidence of voter fraud and later provided documents about a plan to keep Donald Trump in power to the House Jan. 6 committee. Tim Parlatore, a lawyer who quit Trump’s legal team in May and who now represents Kerik, was asked by Kaitlan Collins on CNN if he expected the former commissioner to receive a letter like the one Trump received informing him that he was a target of Smith’s investigation. Parlatore said Kerik hasn’t received a target letter and does not expect him to at any point. But when asked if Parlatore is “in talks” about Kerik having an interview with the special counsel, the attorney said: “Yeah sure, absolutely. Mr. Kerik has nothing to hide. He’s happy to sit down and explain everything to them.”
Finally, news broke of another astonishing Trump crime yesterday–theft of valuable Israeli antiquities.
The New Republic: It Never Ends: Trump Took Precious Israeli Antiquities to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathrooms and ballrooms were not just filled with top secret government documents. He apparently has also been hoarding temporarily loaned Israeli antiquities there for four years.
Haaretzreports that Israel lent the Trump White House antiquities, including ancient ceramic lamps from its national treasures collection, for a Hanukkah candle-lighting event in 2019. Israel Hasson, the then-director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, approved the loan of the antiquities so long as they were returned within weeks.
Hasson told Haaretz that “we wanted our man to go and bring it back, but then Covid broke out, and everything got stuck.” So Hasson’s agency had asked Saul Fox, a major Jewish-American donor to the Antiquities Authority, to keep the items in tow until they could be brought back to Israel. But, Haaretz reports, Israeli authorities discovered several months ago that the antiquites instead ended up at Mar-a-Lago, “where they still remain.”
Eli Eskozido, the new Antiquities Authority head, has asked the Israeli government and Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to Israel to coordinate a return of the antiquities, but to no avail. One source told Haaretz that he wouldn’t be surprised if “the items Israel seeks are also eventually found in some bathroom.”
Republicans have bent over backward to show their inextinguishable support for Israel, but it’s unclear whether they will question why Trump has been harboring Israeli antiquities. After all, they had barely any criticism for his stealing of U.S. national security documents.
The extent of Trump criming is breathtaking, but his comeuppance is coming. As we say in the Midwest, he is up shit creek.
Have a wonderful Wednesday, Sky Dancers!!
CNN’s “town hall” with Donald Trump and a handpicked audience of his fans was–as everyone but CNN boss Chris Licht predicted–a complete disaster. No one at CNN was happy (except Chris Licht), and the rest of the media world is stunned and horrified. I actually turned the program on for a few seconds, but I just couldn’t stomach watching Trump. Anyway, the reviews are in.
For a good summary of the reactions, you can read this Morning Shots post by Charlie Sykes at the Bulwark: The Moment That You Knew. What CNN’s disastrous town hall showed us.
Critics had worried that giving the indicted, twice-impeached, coup-plotting, chronically lying sexual predator an unedited, live television forum might turn out badly.
The reality, however, was far ghastlier: a sh*tshow for the ages, and a moment that captured the thorough degradation of both our politics and the media. “It was a f**king nightmare,” remarked one savvy observer, “and it was programmed to BE a f**king nightmare.”
Trump was, of course, thrilled.
For her part, Kaitlan Collins was poised, prepared, and determined, but she never stood a chance. She raised all of the key questions and tried (not always successfully) to ask followups.
But Trump just rolled over her with a torrent of invective, jibes, and bullsh*t. The fact-checkers were reduced to asterisks. “He declared war on the truth,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper said afterward. “And I’m not sure that he didn’t win.”
Where to start?
- Trump called a black law enforcement officer a “thug.”
- He repeated baseless conspiracy theories about 2020.
- He lied about losing the 2020 election. (CNN’s Oliver Darcy tweeted: “I’ve lost count of how many times Trump has lied about the election. Collins keeps fact-checking him, but he keeps lying.”)
- He lied about calling for “terminating” the Constitution so he could be returned to power.
- He lied about his role on January 6th.
- He suggested that he would pardon many of the January 6th insurrectionists.
- He insisted again that Mike Pence should have overturned the election.
- He endorsed letting the country default on its debt, even if it would bring on an economic cataclysm.
- He claimed that residents of the Chinatown neighborhood in Washington, D.C., “did not speak English as part of an allegation that Biden stored boxes there after his vice presidency because he had nefarious ties to Beijing.”
- He refused to back Ukraine against Russia.
- He lashed out at Collins as “nasty woman” — and the audience CHEERED.
But this was hardly the worst of it. Actually, not even close.
The day after a federal jury found that the ex-president had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, Trump turned the episode into a joke, mocking and insulting his victim.
Sykes then offers excerpts of some of the media reactions.
More reactions:
Rex Huppke at USA Today: CNN town hall audience laughs at sexual assault as Trump reminds us how awful he is.
Donald Trump took full advantage of CNN’s willingness to give him a platform Wednesday night, spouting lies faster than a sprinkler on a cocaine bender and giving Americans a reminder — as if they needed one — of how deplorable he and his supporters can be.
Sexual abuse, like the kind a jury just found Trump liable of? That’s a laugh line for these folks. Literally. They laughed during CNN’s town hall as Trump continued to likely defame E. Jean Carroll, the woman he was just found liable of defaming.
The Jan. 6 domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol? Trump said he’ll swiftly pardon most of the now-imprisoned attackers, possibly even some of the Proud Boys who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, because they’re “great people.” And that brought applause from the crowd.
A rat-a-tat-tat string of lies about the “rigged election”? The crowd chuckled.
A lie about “finishing” the border wall he barely started? You know, the one Mexico didn’t pay for. The crowd applauded.
Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. Laugh, applaud, chuckle, clap, cheer.
CNN effectively gave America a primetime Trump rally with fewer people selling offensive T-shirts outside. And for anyone who grew weary of Trump’s reflexive dishonesty and bullheaded cruelty while he was president, Wednesday night brought back nauseating memories, as well as a preview of how little has changed.
Legal experts believe that former President Donald Trump’s CNN town hall at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire gave fresh evidence to every one of the three ongoing criminal cases against him, reported Salon on Thursday.
The ongoing criminal cases against Trump — not including the bookkeeping fraud case over the Stormy Daniels hush payment, which has already been charged by Manhattan prosecutors — are the election interference probe in Georgia, the federal January 6 investigation, and the federal investigation of classified documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago — all of which came up during the town hall under the questioning of moderator and CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.
“Trump repeatedly lied during the town hall that the election was ‘rigged,’ that Georgia ‘owed’ him votes, that he had the right to take classified documents to Mar-a-Lago and that he does not know E. Jean Carroll — the writer who was awarded $5 million a day earlier after it found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation,” reported Igor Derysh. “‘All three ongoing criminal cases got new evidence tonight against Trump,’ tweeted national security attorney Bradley Moss. ‘He is confessing on live television.'”
“Former FBI agent Pete Strzok called the comment [that he didn’t “really” share the classified documents with anyone] a ‘tacit admission of unauthorized disclosure of classified information,'” said the report. “During another exchange, Collins asked Trump about his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding he ‘find’ enough votes to swing the state’s election. Trump said he believed it was a ‘rigged election’ and said he told Raffensperger ‘you owe me votes because the election was rigged.’ ‘File this clip under new evidence for Fani Willis,’ tweeted Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor. ‘This sure sounds like an admission of corrupt intent to me.'”
As for the January 6 probe, Trump agreed with Collins that the people who stormed the Capitol “listen to [him] like no one else” — which former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told Mediaite it was “the most important clip of the night” because the essential element of proving the crime is that Trump knew he had an influence on the rioters and “I’ve never heard him so clearly admit that. Everything Donald Trump says is out there. It’s fair game. It can be used.”
Not to mention that E. Jean Carroll could sue him again for defamation.
Abigail Weinberg at Mother Jones: Trump Mocked E. Jean Carroll Live on CNN. The Audience Laughed.
Yesterday, a federal jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. As soon as journalist Kaitlan Collins mentioned the verdict during this evening’s CNN town hall with the former president, the audience of Republican-leaning New Hampshire voters started to laugh.
“I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,” Trump said, before launching into a mocking retelling of Carroll’s allegations about what Trump did to her in a New York department store. “What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?”
Trump swore “on my children” that the alleged attack never happened, despite a jury of nine people unanimously finding otherwise. He also repeated an insult he has frequently lobbed at Carroll, calling her a “wack-job,” to rapturous laughter from the audience.
Ryan Bort, Diana Falzone, and Aswin Suebsaeng at Rolling Stone: ‘F–king Disgrace’: CNN Gifts Trump Primetime Campaign Rally.
CNN INVITED DONALD Trump to lie on its airwaves for over an hour on Wednesday night. The evening was billed as a town hall, but played more like a campaign rally for the former president, who steamrolled and repeatedly mocked moderator Kaitlan Collins, pushing a torrent of misinformation about the 2020 election, the multiple investigations into his conduct, and pretty much everything else he commented on.
One CNN insider who spoke to Rolling Stone called the evening “appalling,” lamenting that the network gave Trump “a huge platform to spew his lies.”
Collins tried her best to correct Trump as he spoke. And immediately after Trump went off-air, CNN anchor Jake Tapper led a parade of pundits and fact-checkers to counter his dissembling and pan his performance….
Nevertheless, the town hall was “a fucking disgrace,” in the words of another network insider. “1000 percent a mistake [to host Trump]. No one [at CNN] is happy.”
“Just brutal,” added one of the network’s primetime producers.
Chris Licht was okay with what happened though.
Chris Licht
CEO Chris Licht acknowledged “that there has been people with opinions and backlash” during an editorial call Thursday morning — but he stood by the decision. “I absolutely unequivocally believe America was served very well by what we did last night,” he said. CNN’s own media reporter, Oliver Darcy, didn’t seem to agree. “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” he wrote in his newsletter the previous night.
CNN is finished if this moron stays in charge.
Wajat Ali at The Daily Beast: CNN Failed America With Its Train Wreck of a Trump Town Hall.
With its Republican presidential town hall on Wednesday, CNN failed journalism, the American public, and its own employees by deciding to invite an arsonist who has spent the past seven years trying to burn down their house.
We should remember that Trump regularly refers to CNN as “fake news,” and has trained his cult to see all media that is critical of him as the “enemy of the people.” As a result, CNN had to evacuate its NYC headquarters in 2018 due to a bomb threat. The next year, Cesar Sayoc, who sent functional pipe bombs to Trump’s critics, including CNN, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In turn, CNN decided to reward Trump for his reckless and dangerous behavior by giving him a 70-minute Festivus to air his grievances and lies in front of a fawning cult of 400 sycophants in New Hampshire, which reflected the full spectrum of whiteness and cruelty.
According to NPR, CNN’s current CEO Chris Licht “told his staff they are re-establishing the channel’s original identity.” After witnessing this embarrassing town hall, one could not be faulted for assuming Licht believes that identity is one of masochism and self-immolation. These are apparently the character traits that are needed to gain ratings, money, and access to GOP power. When CNN anchor and moderator Kaitlin Collins attempted to interject with actual facts, Trump simply doubled down on his bullshit and gave red meat in the form of rage, lies, and conspiracies, which the audience and his MAGA base heartily ate up. An hour into the circus, Trump called Collins a “nasty person”—simply because she stood her ground and asked follow-up questions.
The MAGA audience loved it.
David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, defended the town hall on CNBC last week and said that “all voices should be heard on CNN.” This apparently includes the voices of white nationalists, antisemites, conspiracy theorists, and misogynists. He added, “This is a new CNN.”
There’s more at the link.
I can’t believe I thought we would be rid of Trump after he lost the 2020 election and then led a failed coup against the U.S. government. Boy was I ever wrong! This monster is going to be with us a long as he’s still breathing, and the media is going to help him.
That’s it for me today; I’m already exhausted. Please feel free to discuss this or any other topics in the comment thread.
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