Wednesday Reads: Graham Platner, Just Because

Posted: July 8, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Graham Platner

I’m going to write about Graham Platner today, because I am pissed off.

I have to believe that most women with any experience of abusive men could see right away that Platner was not going to be a good candidate for Democrats. I don’t live in Maine, so I haven’t even followed the stories about him that closely. Yet I could see this mess coming.

Frankly, I thought the Nazi tattoo was bad enough, but when I heard a about the racist, sexist, ableist social media messages and the sexting with other women soon after getting married, I thought this guy is a loser. I even hated his facial hair. The last thing we needed was another Eric Swalwell. I didn’t even know until yesterday that Platner served as a mercenary in Iraq. That would have been a red flag for me too. But Maine Democrats liked Platner, so nothing I could do about it.

Later I read the NYT article about women who found his behavior threatening and  talked about his heavy drinking. I was not at all surprised to learn that a woman accused Platner of rape. The signs were all there. I don’t understand why so many people were supposedly shocked.

Maria Kabas had misgivings similar to mine. She writes at The Handbasket: We didn’t need a rape accusation to know Graham Platner was unfit.

Since we learned last fall about the Maine Democratic senate candidate’s Nazi insignia tattoo, the personal revelations about the Marine veteran and oyster farmer have only gone downhill from there. But an initial instinct told me not to weigh in. Let the people of Maine decide for themselves, I thought. I watched from New York as the public learned about shitty stuff he’d posted online, his previous work for the private military contractor Blackwater, and the sexually explicit texts he sent to other women while married to his current wife (which were flagged by her to his campaign as a concern.) And when the New York Times published a story just a few days before the June primary detailing “unsettling” behavior alleged by three women Platner had dated in the past, while I weighed in on social media, I shied away from opportunities to explicitly spell out how dangerous I believed him to be. He went on to win the primary.

It turns out the instinct that kept me from vocalizing my opinion on Platner was the same as the one that prevented Jenny Racicot from coming forward with allegations of a 2021 rape—that is, until this week. “One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” Racicot, who had dated Platner a few years back, told Politico. My position is in no way analogous with Racicot’s, but I, too, had a latent feeling that turning on Platner was in some way turning on an opportunity to kick Republican Susan Collins out of the senate, and possibly regain control of the entire chamber.

While Racicot was one of the women in the NYT story, the stomach-churning details of her sexual assault were for whatever reason not reported then. But on Monday, she said it all: “I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me. I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’” She describes Platner letting himself into her home while “almost blackout drunk” and having sex with her against her will. Now that we have a fuller picture of Platner’s malfeasance, there is finally consensus around what has long been clear to many of us: he’s a dangerous man. If only the earlier evidence was enough.

Marisa Kabas

When the NYT story dropped on June 4th describing “unsettling” behavior alleged by three women Platner had dated in the past, people who I considered political heroes insisted continuing their support. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders stuck by Platner, even when there was already more than enough evidence that he was not fit to be the Democratic candidate. Both Warren and Sanders finally pulled their support this week after the rape allegations were published, but it shouldn’t take a woman sharing details about a grotesque intimate experience to knock a man off his pedestal.

Meanwhile, men (and some women) who I nominally considered allies not only defended Platner at the time, but disparaged anyone concerned by the allegations.

Read more at the link. The men Kabas names as allies are people I can’t stand, like Ryan Grim and John Favreau, but even so, she had no problem seeing that Platner was trouble. Her “progressive” male examples:

Ryan Grim, a progressive journalist and co-founder of Drop Site News, tried to undermine the allegations because one of the women from the story, Lyndsey Fifield, is a Republican. He then went on the progressive podcast Breaking Points and said the Platner situation was good because it was forcing Democrats to confront bigotry against white men. “The current cultural divorce between progressives and white men is so, like, stark that it is—it’s just culturally, morally, ethically wrong,” Grim said. “But also just pragmatically, from a political perspective, you can’t build a national party if you assume every white guy or every white guy with a deep voice who is a combat vet or whatever is, like, out to get you.”

Jon Favreau of Pod Save America defended Platner at every turn and mega-streamer Hasan Piker vocally stood by him. The Substack journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote that continuing to defend Platner showed that “People are done with the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council and have lived every waking moment accordingly. I call them smoothgroins: real-life barbie dolls with smooth plastic where a sexual organ should be.”

Read more at the link.

Here’s the Politico article by Jessica Piper and Adam Wren in which Jenny Raciot described her rape: Exclusive: Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her.

A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.

The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks. POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office.

Jenny Racicot

Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.

“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”

Racicot previously described “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior by Platner to The New York Times, but says she didn’t go public with the specific assault claim because she didn’t want to be known as a rape victim.

Racicot said she later felt compelled to go public about her experience because the reaction to the Times story was dominated by controversy about another woman, Lyndsey Fifield, who alleged Platner mistreated her and faced attacks because of her ties to the Republican Party. (Contacted by POLITICO, Fifield stood by the allegations she made to the Times and declined to comment further.)

“My part of the story was just a read-over,” Racicot said in an interview. “And the story was Lyndsey, and the accusations of her being politically motivated.”

For many Platner supporters, that report crossed a line. But why was anyone surprised?

Here are some of the “red flags” from the June 4 article by Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer  in The New York Times, headlined (gift article): Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall ‘Unsettling’ Behavior.

In interviews with The New York Times on Wednesday, several women [described] Mr. Platner as a fun and caring partner…saying they felt safe with him. Some remain friends with him to this day, years after their relationships ended.

But in extensive conversations over the past two months, three other women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner offered a far more complicated assessment, describing volatile and “toxic” relationships that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching.

Mr. Platner could be charming and charismatic, they recalled in interviews, but also demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening. He drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful….

Lyndsey Fifield

Lyndsey Fifield, 40, a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns, recalled him as “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness.’” Ms. Fifield, who dated Mr. Platner from roughly 2013 to 2015, said that his offensive online posts “reminded me of just how much he hated women.”

Jenny Racicot, 41, a Maine Democrat, who said she dated him casually off and on between 2019 and 2021, said the posts deepened her belief that he did not respect women. “When I saw the old comments that he made online,” she said, “I recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.” […]

The women who described difficult relationships with Mr. Platner knew him at different points of his life. Ms. Fifield said she dated him starting when they were both in their late 20s in Washington, during a time Mr. Platner has described as challenging. Ms. Racicot knew him in Maine when they were in their mid-30s and he was living in Sullivan, Maine, and working on his oyster farm.

The third woman, a Democrat from Maine who spoke on the condition of anonymity, had a long-distance relationship with Mr. Platner on and off for years, as recently as 2016.’

The three described him in similar terms. Spending time with him could be exhilarating, they said. But they also recounted patterns of heavy drinking and womanizing. Asked to sum up how he treated her, the third woman said she felt like “collateral damage to the world that is his.”

It’s too bad that Racicot didn’t describe the rape for this earlier article–perhaps Platner would have lost the primary. But to me, Fifield’s experiences should have been enough.

Mr. Platner could be rough with her, Ms. Fifield said, particularly when they were drinking, leaving her shaken and sometimes afraid. In the interviews, Ms. Fifield grappled with how to process her experiences. She was quick to note that he “never hit me, he never punched me.”

But she said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks — and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car.

During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was “calm.” Eventually, Ms. Fifield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning.

“It hurt,” she said. But she added: “It didn’t cause an injury, it didn’t break my arm.”

Ms. Fifield also recalled that Mr. Platner’s displays of weaponry and discussions of violence sometimes left her uneasy.

Apparently, some people dismissed her story because she is a Republican. I thought it sounded authentic.

Yesterday, The Washington Post published this story by Amy Brittain, Liz Goodwin, and Amy B. Wang with more information from Lyndsey Fifield: Ex-girlfriend of Graham Platner says he removed condoms without consent during sex.

An ex-girlfriend of embattled Senate candidate Graham Platner told The Washington Post that he repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex.

Lyndsey Fifield, who said she dated Platner from 2013 to 2015 in D.C. and has previously accused him of physical abuse, said that she told Platner on multiple occasions that he had to wear condoms during sex because she was not on birth control.

“He would pull condoms off,” she said in an interview. “He would do it in a sneaky way. He wouldn’t tell me.”

Fifield, 41, is the second woman to allege this week that Platner engaged in nonconsensual sexual conduct. Jenny Racicot, 41, who said she previously dated Platner, told The Post and other outlets on Monday that he sexually assaulted her in late 2021, leading a growing number of allies to drop their endorsements and call on him to withdraw from the race for a Maine seat in the U.S. Senate….

Fifield initially told The Post about the alleged condom removal during a June 20 interview that was off the record. She said she decided to speak publicly about it Tuesday in part because, she said, she wanted to show that Racicot was not alone in experiencing issues with Platner involving sexual consent.

Removing a condom during sex without consent, known as “stealthing,” is classified as a form of sexual assault in several countries, including Britain, Canada and parts of Australia. In the United States, Maine, California and Washington state have laws that address the nonconsensual removal of condoms during sex. The alleged incidents involving Platner took place in D.C., Fifield said.

She estimated that Platner removed condoms without her consent at least six times when they had sex at both of their residences in D.C. during their two-year, on-and-off relationship. She said she told him that she was upset about it but that he would make light of the situation.

“I confronted him both during and after [sex] because he knew that I was not on birth control and how dangerous that was,” she told The Post in one interview. In another, she said: “He would act like cute about it, like ‘Oh sneaky me.’”

The guy is a complete asshole. I just can’t understand why Democrats supported him for so long.

Graham Platner

This piece at MSNOW is by Michael A. Cohen, who opposed Platner’s candidacy from the beginning: Why Graham Platner’s progressive supporters ignored glaring warning signs.

For nine months, Graham Platner’s supporters have insisted that Democrats should ignore the mounting evidence of his personal foibles and political vulnerabilities — and support his bid for the Senate in Maine.

They argued that his Nazi “Totenkopf” tattoo was a youthful indiscretion and parroted his ludicrous argument that he didn’t know the origins of the Nazi insignia that was on his chest for 18 years before he covered it up with more ink. They waved away his dozens of racist, misogynistic and, frankly, creepy Reddit posts. They said his sexting with as many as a dozen women soon after his wedding was between him and his wife. They insisted that he was the best candidate to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins, even as polling showed him badly underperforming other Maine Democrats.

On Monday, they ran out of excuses and rationalizations.

Jenny Racicot’s story of Platner’s alleged assault is stomach-turning, and while some Democrats will seemingly excuse antisemitism, a Nazi tattoo and persistently bad behavior toward women, sexual assault is the line the party won’t cross.

Now Democrats are abandoning Platner in droves, but the signs were there all along. Cohen:

The first lesson is don’t fall in love with an unvetted political outsider — or, for that matter, any politician. When he announced his candidacy, Platner told a compelling story. He was a political outsider with no experience in electoral politics, a Marine combat veteran and an oyster fisherman in a state where working on the water is a badge of honor.

But as quickly as Platner emerged, so too did the stories of his past deeds — his controversial Reddit posts, his Nazi tattoo and an actual life story that didn’t quite match up with his campaign narrative.

Platner’s supporters claimed he’d grown and matured and that his bad behavior was the result of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered in Iraq….

Redemption and maturity are certainly attributes to be celebrated, but perhaps it would have been better for Platner to work out his personal issues in private, not under the harsh klieg lights of one of the most competitive Senate races in the country….

Second, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.

With Platner, it wasn’t just one news cycle of bad stories. It was a constant drumbeat — and many of these allegations shared the same theme: Platner disassembling and distracting.

It turned out that, far from being a successful oyster fisherman, his biggest customer was his mother, who runs a restaurant. Platner’s claims of a hardscrabble youth were contradicted by stories of living off his parents’ generosity and stints at an elite private school.

When the New York Times published on-the-record accounts of him allegedly physically assaulting a former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, Platner and his allies dismissed the claim by arguing that Fifield is a Republican and thus can’t be trusted.

There’s more at the link. Again, the simple truth is the signs were there all along.

Graham Platner shows the tattoo he got to cover up the Nazi one.

Get this: Platner is demanding that his replacement share his progressive politics as a condition for his dropping out! Andrew Howard and Jessica Piper at Politico: Graham Platner’s campaign says it contacted state party to discuss process if he drops out.

Graham Platner’s campaign said it had reached out to the Maine Democratic Party to discuss the process for replacing him if he were to drop out of the state’s U.S. Senate race.

The acknowledgment came after the state party accused the campaign of improperly trying to influence that succession process, and it’s the clearest indication yet Platner is considering leaving the race after saying Monday he was “taking the time to reflect” on his bid for Senate.

Devon Murphy-Anderson, the party’s executive director, said in a Tuesday night press release and social media video that Platner’s campaign staff had repeatedly reached out to the state party in an attempt to “put their thumb on the scale” in selecting his replacement.

“We’ve repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like,” Murphy-Anderson said. “We have also reiterated that Graham Platner must drop out of this race so that Democrats in Maine can focus on defeating Susan Collins this November.”

Read the rest at Politico.

Two more speculative posts on what comes after Platner:

Christa Dutton at NOTUS: Ties to Graham Platner Could ‘Haunt’ a Replacement.

Democrats are coming to realize Graham Platner will be a specter in Maine’s Senate race even if he ends his campaign.

Platner has denied the allegations of sexual assault and misconduct from former girlfriends that have ratcheted up pressure on him to drop his bid for the seat. Still, Democrats who anticipate he will be forced to end his run told NOTUS their party has a unique challenge: Democrats need a replacement candidate who is distant enough from Platner to avoid his toxicity, but not so far from his politics that they would undermine the Democratic primary voters who nominated Platner.

Given that this is playing out in one of the most competitive Senate contests in the country, any ties to Platner could become an issue for a potential alternative candidate — and the rest of the Democratic Party, they said.

Nate Cohn at The New York Times: Why Democrats Would Probably Come Out Ahead if Platner Dropped Out.

It may be only a matter of time before Graham Platner drops out of the Maine Senate race.

If he does, it’s too soon to say who might replace him, but it’s not too early to suggest that his replacement would probably be a modest favorite against Susan Collins, the longtime Republican incumbent. The same couldn’t be said for Mr. Platner, even before he faced a rape accusation on Monday.

If the race does get a reset, it will be an enormous break for Democrats. Without a victory in Maine, their path to control of the Senate is extremely challenging — not just in 2026, but potentially even if they secure the tiebreaking vice presidency in 2028. It would be an exaggeration to say Mr. Platner was doomed before the latest allegation, but his candidacy was already in a lot of trouble.

To take one example from last week’s New York Times/Siena poll of Maine: Thirty percent of Mr. Platner’s own supporters said his various controversies were making them question whether they could support him. Although he led Ms. Collins in the poll by two percentage points, it was an open question whether he would be able to withstand another round of controversy — and another round seemed all but inevitable. The extraordinary speed with which Mr. Platner’s loyalists pushed him to withdraw after the allegation Monday is partly a reflection of how badly he was wounded. He was already near the breaking point….

If he drops out by next Monday, the Maine Democratic Party will get to choose his replacement. It would have until July 27 to select a new nominee, and my colleague Reid Epstein reports that Maine Democrats are considering several means of doing so, from a pop-up convention to a statewide caucus. Most of the likeliest Democratic replacements aren’t especially well known statewide or nationally, but in this political environment Ms. Collins would be in jeopardy against any one of them.

On paper, this is a race Democrats should win. Yes, Ms. Collins has won many times before, despite Maine’s Democratic lean, but that does not mean she should be expected to defy political gravity forever.

I think Platner should drop out today, and certainly before the weekend. Maine Democrats need to make sure it happens.

Sorry this isn’t a news post, but this is an important issue. Women need to pay attention to and call out the red flags that men just don’t seem to notice. Platner was poison from day one. Women in politics need to pay attention to the signs and speak out loudly.

Lazy Caturday Reads: Scandals Galore!

Posted: April 11, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

By Mary Cassatt, 1883-84

The negotiations about the proposed cease fire in the Iran war are expected to begin soon, but meanwhile the news in the U.S. is suddenly filled with scandalous stories.

Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Melania Trump’s mysterious announcement to the White House press; I have a bit more context to add to that. Then last night the news about serious accusations of sexual misconduct by Eric Swalwell broke. There’s also news about Kristy Noem’s husband and his identity crisis.

I’ll get to those items, but I want to begin with a feel-good story for once.

Marcia Dunn at AP: Artemis II’s record-breaking journey around the moon ends with dramatic splashdown.

HOUSTON (AP) — Artemis II’s astronauts closed out humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than half a century with a Pacific splashdown on Friday, blazing new records near the moon with grace and joy.

It was a dramatic grand finale to a mission that revealed not only swaths of the lunar far side never seen before by human eyes, but a total solar eclipse and a parade of planets, most notably our own shimmering Earth against the endless black void of space.

With their flight now complete, the four astronauts have set NASA up for a moon landing by another crew in just two years and a full-blown moon base within the decade.

The triumphant moon-farers — commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen — emerged from their bobbing capsule into the sunlight off the coast of San Diego.

In a scene reminiscent of NASA’s Apollo moonshots of yesteryear, military helicopters hoisted the astronauts one by one from an inflatable raft docked to the capsule, hauling them aboard for the short trip to the Navy’s awaiting recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha.

“These were the ambassadors from humanity to the stars that we sent out there right now, and I can’t imagine a better crew,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said from the recovery ship.

NASA’s Mission Control erupted in celebration, with hundreds pouring in from the back support rooms. “We did it,” NASA’s Lori Glaze rejoiced at a news conference. “Welcome to our moonshot.”

Read more at the AP link.

Now for the feel-disgusted news about Eric Swalwell. Based on what I’ve read, it’s surprising that this didn’t come out sooner. Apparently, he’s been DM young women, sending dick picks, and sexually assaulting women for years.

CNN: Exclusive: Four women describe sexual misconduct by Rep. Eric Swalwell, including a former staffer who says he raped her.

A former staffer of Rep. Eric Swalwell, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, says that the congressman raped her when she was heavily intoxicated and left her bruised and bleeding, an allegation Swalwell strongly denies.

“I was pushing him off of me, saying no,” the woman told CNN of the incident, which she said happened in 2024 after she had stopped working in Swalwell’s office. “He didn’t stop.”

By Francesca Strino

She said it was the second time Swalwell had nonconsensual sexual contact with her while she was drunk. In 2019, when she was still working for him, she said she woke up naked with him in a hotel room after a night of heavy drinking. She said she had no memory of what happened but could feel physically that they’d had sexual contact.

Three other women who spoke with CNN also alleged various kinds of sexual misconduct by the Democratic congressman – including Swalwell sending them unsolicited explicit messages or nude photos.

One woman who connected online with Swalwell over her interest in Democratic politics says she ended up extremely drunk inside his hotel room after a night out with the congressman, with little memory of what occurred. Earlier in the night at a bar, he kissed her and touched her leg without her consent, she said.

Another woman, who described receiving unsolicited nude messages from Swalwell, was social media creator Ally Sammarco. She said she initially reached out to the congressman on Twitter to discuss politics. “I truly never thought he would respond – I had like 1,000 followers at the time,” she said. “And he actually responded.”

Swalwell denied the women’s allegations.

“These allegations are false and come on the eve of an election against the front-runner for governor,” Swalwell said in a statement to CNN. “For nearly 20 years, I have served the public – as a prosecutor and a congressman and have always protected women. I will defend myself with the facts and where necessary bring legal action. My focus in the coming days is to be with my wife and children and defend our decades of service against these lies.”

I don’t think that’s going to work. These are not subtle accusations, and the women told others about their experiences at the time. Sammarco saved the messages she got from Swallwell. A bit more from CNN:

One member of Swalwell’s staff said they quit immediately after receiving CNN’s detailed list of questions about the allegations.

CNN found corroboration for key elements of each of the women’s claims, including the former staffer who said she was sexually assaulted. Two family members and a friend said in interviews with CNN that she told them about the alleged 2024 assault in the following days, and CNN also reviewed text messages she sent two friends describing her allegations at the same time. “I was sexually assaulted on Thursday,” she wrote to one of her friends, adding: “By Eric.”

The woman also shared medical records related to her receiving STD and pregnancy testing after the alleged assault.

For the woman who connected online with Swalwell over Democratic politics, a family member and two friends confirmed she told them last year about the incident where she ended up intoxicated in his hotel room. CNN also reviewed messages between her and Swalwell, including a photo he sent her that matches footage of him during a CNN interview in her city on the night they met in person.

There’s still more at the link.

Politico: Jeffries, Pelosi and other Democrats call on Eric Swalwell to end governor campaign.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi headlined a growing list of Democratic lawmakers called on Rep. Eric Swalwell Friday to withdraw his campaign for California governor amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

Lily Walton with Raminou, 1922, by Suzanne Valadon

“This extremely sensitive matter must be appropriately investigated with full transparency and accountability,” Pelosi said in a statement. “As I discussed with Congressman Swalwell, it is clear that is best done outside of a gubernatorial campaign.”

In a joint statement with other elected House Democratic leaders, Jeffries called for a “swift investigation” as well as the end of his pending campaign.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday that a former congressional aide accused the congressman of two sexual encounters without her consent, beginning in 2019. CNN later reported that four women allege that Swalwell has committed sexual misconduct, including one former staffer who accuses Swalwell of rape….

Key backers of Swalwell’s governor bid swiftly revoked their support after the Chronicle’s story was published, including Reps. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) and Adam Gray (D-Calif.), who served as campaign co-chairs.

“Today’s reports about Eric Swalwell’s conduct while in office are deeply disturbing,” Gray said in a statement. “Harassment, abuse, and violence of any sort are unacceptable. Given these serious allegations, I am withdrawing my support and Eric Swalwell should end his campaign immediately.”

But nothing underscored the peril for Swalwell’s nearly two-decade political career as vividly as Pelosi’s statement. The former speaker included Swalwell in her inner circle of favored Democratic members for years, tapping him for junior leadership roles and to serve as a manager in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021.

Read the rest at the link.

The Melania Trump story might have stayed on social media if she hadn’t decided to make a public statement at the lectern that is supposed to be reserved for the POTUS. But it’s out there now, and she will have to deal with it.

It began with a disturbing story in The New York Times on March 20: Trump Friend Asked ICE to Detain the Mother of His Child.

Last June, the man credited with introducing President Trump to his wife asked the administration for a favor.

Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent turned presidential special envoy, had learned that his Brazilian ex-girlfriend was in a Miami jail, arrested on charges of fraud at her workplace. They had been in a custody battle over their teenage son. Now he saw an opportunity.

Eduard Manet, Woman with a Cat, 1880

He reached out to a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, explaining that his ex was in the country illegally, according to records obtained by The New York Times and a person familiar with the communications. Could she be put in ICE detention? That could help him get his son back.

The official, David Venturella, promptly called the agency’s Miami office to ensure that ICE agents would pick up the woman from the jail before she was released on bail, according to the records and a person with knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity to discuss it. During the call, Mr. Venturella noted that the case was important to someone close to the White House.

The woman, Amanda Ungaro, was placed in ICE custody and ultimately deported, an outcome that may well have happened regardless of Mr. Zampolli’s meddling. But the ICE official’s willingness to spring into action for a Trump ally — even one in a low-level, largely ceremonial role — reflects a recurring theme of the second Trump administration: The levers of the federal government can be pulled to settle a personal score.

I read this story when it was published, but I didn’t make the connections I should have.

Amanda Ungaro is on X AKA Twitter, and she is fighting back. If you have access, you can read the many tweets she has been sending to Melania.

Melania is apparently sensitive about how she came to the U.S. In fact Zampolli is the one who brought her here and got her an H1-B visa. When she first arrived, she moved into a building occupied by other models who worked for Zampolli’s agency. It looks like Melania has really stepped in it. The Epstein files are back in the news.

From Julie K. Brown, the journalist who originally wrote about Epstein in The Miami Herald, at her Substack The Epstein Files: Could a former Brazilian model be the whistleblower Melania Trump is afraid of?

The First Lady’s unprecedented public statement about Jeffrey Epstein yesterday raised a lot of questions about what, if anything, is about to be revealed about Donald and Melania Trump’s relationship with the late sex trafficker.

The Epstein case had quieted down in the wake of Trump’s decision to attack Iran — some critics allege that was one of Trump’s goals in launching a war in the first place — to cool the MAGA furor over DOJ’s inept release of the Epstein files.

Now it seems that plan, if true, has led to a Jack-In-The-Beanstalk effect — as in trading a cow for beans and climbing into danger without really thinking it through.

Because there is another story that I admit I missed when it ran in the New York Times a few weeks ago.

It appears that the Trump administration may have targeted Zampolli’s ex-girlfriend, a former Brazilian model named Amanda Ungaro, deporting her back to Brazil amid her custody battle with Zampolli over their teenage son.

As the NYT’s story notes: “The levers of the federal government can be pulled to settle a personal score.”

Self-Portrait with a Cat, created by Frida Konstantin

In this case, the score involved Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent who was appointed last year by Trump as special envoy for “global partnerships,” which allows him to travel the world to advance trade and other partnerships with the U.S.

Just days ago, he was in Hungary with Vice President Vance, supporting the re-election of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an effort to publicly back the right-wing leader in the days running up to the election.

Zampolli, 56, was in Epstein’s orbit around the time that Trump met Melania in 1998. He was also friends with Epstein, as the two entertained a business deal over buying a modeling agency.

And Zampolli’s name is in the Epstein Files, with Epstein noting in one email that he was “trouble.”

Still all the drama surrounding Zampolli’s custody battle with his estranged girlfriend didn’t connect any dots, at least not for me, until the First Lady’s speech yesterday.

Read the rest at the link.

The New York Times has another piece about Melania’s statement today: Trump Says First Lady ‘Had a Right’ to Talk About Epstein.

President Trump said Friday that he had known his wife wanted to speak about Jeffrey Epstein at some point, and that he “thought she had a right to talk about it,” even if he had not known what exactly she planned to say.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Mr. Trump said in a brief telephone interview, referring to the remarks Melania Trump made from the entrance hall of the White House a day earlier.

“I didn’t know what the statement was,” he said, “but I knew she was going to make a statement.”

The first lady’s comments certainly came as a surprise to many other people who work in the White House, according to two officials familiar with the situation who asked for anonymity to discuss the matter. It was not clear why she had chosen that moment to talk about Mr. Epstein. Absent any explanation, questions and feverish conspiracy theories swirled.

The president said his wife had been agonizing for a long time over her press coverage and rumors connecting her to Mr. Epstein. What was particularly upsetting to her, Mr. Trump explained, was one theory positing that it was Mr. Epstein who introduced her to her future husband. In her remarks on Thursday, Mrs. Trump recounted the story of meeting Mr. Trump “by chance at a New York City party in 1998.” She said she did not encounter Mr. Epstein for the first time until two years after that.

“She finds it very insulting,” Mr. Trump said of the rumors. “And I said, ‘If you want to do that, you can do that.’ I said if she wants to do it — I didn’t recommend it, but I said, I let it be her, I said, if you want to do it. …”

He added, “She didn’t meet me through Jeffrey Epstein. And I could understand her feelings. But I said, ‘If you want to do it, do it.’”

He would not say when exactly he had this discussion with the first lady, but said that “it wasn’t a big discussion. I’d say it lasted for about two minutes. I had no problem. I thought she actually did a good job.”

He’s lying, obviously. I doubt if she told him. Now she has revived interest in the Epstein files and Trump can’t be happy about that.

The Black Cat, by Carl Wilhelm Wilhelmson , 1922, Swedish, 1866-1928

The last scandal for today–the Kristi Noem story. The story was originally in the Daily Mail, but it’s behind a paywall.

The Independent: Kristi Noem’s husband offers cryptic three-word answer to report that he talked about leaving wife and becoming a woman.

Kristi Noem’s husband, Bryon Noem, has pushed back on a report that he insulted his wife in phone calls and online messages with a dominatrix and expressed a desire to become a woman.

Bryon Noem told The Independent the claims in the report were “not all true.” He did not elaborate when asked for more information.

The 56-year-old was reported to have been in an on-off relationship online with Shy Sotomayor, a 30-year-old sex worker known as Raelynn Riley, since 2016, she claimed in an interview with the Daily Mail, published Friday.

It is the latest in a series of exposés on the husband of the recently ousted Homeland Security Secretary, who has been keeping a low profile since the story broke last week.

Sotomayor shared recordings of phone calls and screenshots of messages she said she exchanged with Bryon Noem, where he said she was “so much better” than his wife. He also expressed wanting to transition to become a woman, the messages showed.

In one recent message, the South Dakota insurance boss said he wanted to change his name to Crystal “so bad,” and that he wanted plastic surgery. “I want to be your trans bimbo b****,” the messages showed.

The outlet linked Bryon Noem’s telephone number to the messages with Sotomayor, and it also corresponded to an email address under the pseudonym “Chrystalballz666.”

The messages reportedly from Bryon Noem appear in stark contrast to Kristi Noem’s opposition to transgender rights. As South Dakota governor, she signed an exclusionary bill to ban surgical and non-surgical gender-affirming treatments for children in the state, and barred transgender girls and women from playing on women’s sports teams.

Read the rest at The Independent.

There’s no news on the Iran talks yet, so I’ll end this with two disturbing Iran stories:

The New York Times: Iran Unable to Find Mines It Planted in Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Says.

Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them, according to U.S. officials.

The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance meet in Pakistan this weekend for peace talks.

Woman with a cat, Pierre Bonnard

Iran used small boats to mine the strait last month, soon after the United States and Israel began their war against the country. The mines, plus the threat of Iranian drone and missile attacks, slowed the number of oil tankers and other vessels passing through the strait to a trickle, driving up energy prices and providing Iran with its best leverage in the war.

Iran left a path through the strait open, allowing ships that pay a toll to pass through.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has issued warnings that ships could collide with sea mines, and semiofficial news organizations have published charts showing safe routes.

Those routes are limited in large part because Iran mined the strait haphazardly, U.S. officials said. It is not clear that Iran recorded where it put every mine. And even when the location was recorded, some mines were placed in a way that allowed them to drift or move, according to the officials.

As with land mines, removing nautical mines is far more difficult than placing them. The U.S. military lacks robust mine removal capabilities, relying on littoral combat ships equipped with mine sweeping capabilities. Iran also does not have the capability of quickly removing mines, even the ones it planted.

Raw Story: Hegseth’s key Iran claim collapses as US intel finds Iran has thousands of missiles.

One of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s main defenses of the U.S. decision to negotiate a controversial ceasefire with Iran is that its ballistic missile program has been “functionally destroyed.”

But that claim has now been shot down by U.S. intelligence assessments, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

“Iran still has thousands of ballistic missiles in its arsenal that it could use by retrieving launchers from underground storage areas, according to American officials familiar with U.S. intelligence assessments,” said the report. “The assessments come as the U.S. is working to cement a cease-fire that would fully open the Strait of Hormuz and also insulate Iran, American troops and states in the region from further attacks. Some American officials said they are concerned that Iran will use the break in fighting to reconstitute some of its missile arsenal.”

The conflict has taken a toll on Iran, with around half of its missile stockpile lost, the assessment found — but “it retains thousands of medium- and short-range ballistic missiles that could be pulled out of hiding or retrieved from underground sites, said U.S. and Israeli officials.”

This comes as even a number of Republican and conservative analysts are crying foul about the terms of the ceasefire, which appear one-sidedly in favor of Iran.

That’s it for me today. I guess it’s okay to focus on salacious stuff on the weekend. Happy Caturday!

Wednesday Reads: Could the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Disrupt Trump’s Agenda?

Posted: July 16, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: #We are so Fucked, Donald Trump, just because, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

How can such a stupid person do so much damage so quickly?

I’ve finally begun to accept that what is happening to our country will not be reversed in my lifetime. When I think about it, I feel so despairing that I can’t bear to focus on it for long. But I know it’s true. How can such a stupid person do so much damage so quickly?

Trump has already done so much damage and he is likely to do much more before we can get rid of him–if we succeed in doing that. He has destroyed the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and has likely done irreparable damage to the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the office of DNI (Director of National Intelligence). He has also damaged Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare.

His insane tariffs are wrecking the economy, and he may soon be able to do even more damage by naming a new Fed chairman who will carry out his orders. Guess who Trump is likely to appoint? According to Bloomberg, it will be Kevin Hassett! The story is behind a paywall. I read the headline on Memeorandum.

He has begun weaponizing the military and with the new funding for ICE in the big ugly bill, he will control a vast private army. He has begun to establish a system of concentration camps.

Have I forgotten anything? Probably.

I can’t cover all of these issues today, but here’s some commentary on Trump’s ongoing destruction of our economy.

This piece by Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark is truly depressing: LOL Nothing Matters. Inflation is back. The government is nationalizing one private company and blackmailing another. But no one cares because . .

Remember back in 2024 when Americans had to vote for the insurrectionist felon because there had been 14 months of inflation in 2021–22?

Yeah, well inflation is back now.

US inflation climbed to 2.7 per cent in June, surpassing expectations and signalling that Donald Trump’s tariffs are hitting prices. Tuesday’s annual consumer price index figure was up from 2.4 per cent in May and above expectations of 2.6 per cent among analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

How upset are voters about this? They are a solid “Meh.” Trump remains at only -7 net approval, which is a huge improvement from where he was in late April.

Why am I feeling nihilistic today? It’s not just the voters; it’s the markets. We got a bad inflation report this morning and then the markets reacted by . . . betting that the Fed is going to cut rates in September.

Which is, you know, the opposite of what you’d expect in an environment where tariffs are pushing prices higher. Are the markets betting on TACO? Or preparing for Fed Chairman Kevin Hassett? Or going full-nihilist, too?

Trump embracing socialism?

Here is another thing that doesn’t seem to matter: Democrats are freaked out because their nominee for mayor in New York City wants to run a pilot program with five municipal-owned grocery stores, which is “socialism” or something.

Meanwhile, last week the U.S. government became the largest shareholder in the mining company MP Materials. Which is, you know, kind of like socialism? […]

On May 27, MP began a sudden climb. After months of sitting around $25 a share, it moved consistently upward for a month, to almost $40. On June 20 a selloff started and the share price lost a quarter of its value over three weeks. The government announced its purchase on the morning of July 10 and MP went to the moon.

Any of this look to you like someone knew the score?

But that’s just the first layer of corruption.

This morning, Apple announced that it would also contribute invest $500 million in MP stock.

That’s right: Apple, which is currently negotiating with Trump on the 25 percent tariffs the president wants to put on iPhones made in China, decided to do the government a solid and throw some cash behind Uncle Sam’s MP position, thus driving the price higher and forming a shareholder bloc that will, along with the government, be enough to control MP.

And since Apple’s business now depends on what the U.S. government allows it to do, I suspect Apple’s share will be a pure proxy for whatever the Trump administration’s wishes are.

There’s more at the link.

Here’s what Paul Krugman has to say about Trump’s economic policies: Hawks, Doves and Lapdogs: The next Fed chair will be an obedient partisan.

Yesterday’s CPI report looked fairly tame on the surface, but if you look at the details it showed clear signs that Trump’s tariffs are starting to drive up prices. And private surveys suggest that there’s a lot more inflation in the pipeline. For example, look at S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing, which shows the percentage of firms reporting higher prices. A higher number almost always points to higher official inflation ahead, and right now it’s definitely telling us that tariffs are about to hit hard (see figure at the link)….

The next Fed chair?

Why aren’t we seeing the full effects of the tariffs in official statistics? For the record, I don’t believe Trump officials are cooking the books — yet.

That’s not to say that they won’t at some point, and there’s a good chance that they will. But so far what we’re probably seeing is a combination of ordinary lags and the temporary effects of the TACO (Trump always chickens out) narrative. Buyers get pissed off at sellers when prices rise, so sellers who don’t want to lose market share have an incentive to hold prices down despite higher costs if they think the Trump tariffs will come back down in a few weeks.

I, however, am a TACO skeptic. I think Trump really is a Tariff Man who will keep us at Smoot-Hawley-level tariffs indefinitely, and businesses will eventually realize that and raise prices accordingly.

And then what? Clearly, we shouldn’t expect Trump to admit that his tariffs are raising prices, or even to admit that prices are rising. What we can expect is that he will keep putting pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates. I don’t think he’ll manage to push Jerome Powell out before next May, but as I wrote last week, whoever he picks after that will do his bidding.

Bloomberg has an interesting article about Kevin Warsh, one likely choice — although a newer article suggests that Kevin Hassett, whom nobody suspects of having any independent principles, may be in first place. The article expresses puzzlement over Warsh’s support for rate cuts now, despite above-target inflation, when he was a big advocate of higher rates in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. How did such a monetary hawk suddenly become a monetary dove? But one of the people the article quotes hits the nail on the head.

Read the Bloomberg excerpts at the link.

We are so screwed.

Right now the only hopeful signs I see is that Trump’s policies are very unpopular with Americans, and his association with Jeffrey Epstein could possibly damage him before the midterm elections. I’m probably wrong and Trump is clearly trying to fix the midterms. Anyway, I’ve gathered some stories on the Epstein scandal.

Ewan Palmer at The Daily Beast: White House Freaked Out Over a Question About Trump’s Ties to Epstein.

White House officials were left scrambling after a reporter straight-up asked whether Donald Trump knew if his name appeared in files connected to Jeffrey Epstein, according to Axios.

The media inquiry was posed after reports that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino had a screaming match with Attorney General Pam Bondi over the Department of Justice’s handling of the files on the pedophile who died in 2019.

Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, best buds

The question helped the administration figure out how badly holding back any release of the Epstein files was playing in MAGA world.

In a memo, the DOJ and FBI denied the existence of any so-called “client list” belonging to Epstein featuring potential high-profile names, and said they will not be releasing any more information regarding Epstein. The agencies also stated that the billionaire financier took his own life in his New York City jail cell, rather than being murdered, a conspiracy theory pushed for years by Trump loyalists, including Bongino.

In the wake of the Bongino-Bondi blow-up, one reporter asked if Bondi had told Trump that his name was in the Epstein files. For the first time, White House and DOJ personnel realized how bad the optics were of refusing to release more information on Epstein after multiple MAGA figures, including Trump himself, vowed to do exactly that. Officials feared it suddenly looked like they might be shielding Trump from potentially damning revelations.

“It put people in a tizzy,” an unnamed source familiar with the matter told Axios. An administration source added, “It didn’t look like a coincidence at that point” that the Trump administration had stopped releasing Epstein files.

Read more at the link. It’s weird that the White House was taken by surprise by this question, since Trump and Epstein were close friends for years.

I was stunned yesterday when House Speaker Mike Johnson actually disagreed with Trump about covering up the Epstein files. Marianna Sotomayor at The Washington Post: Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans break with Trump on Epstein.

One of the leading Republicans on Capitol Hill broke with the Trump administration’s decision not to release the files of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as the controversy deepened over the handling of an issue that has caused unprecedented division among the GOP base.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson that he supported the release of the Epstein files, days after President Donald Trump’s Justice Department said the matter was effectively closed. Johnson is a close Trump ally and has never broken so publicly with the president on an issue.

“I’m for transparency,” Johnson told Benny Johnson. “It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”

Even as Johnson publicly called for the files to be released, he opposed a procedural motion advanced Tuesday by Democrats that would have set up a House vote to release them.

On the podcast, Speaker Johnson said that Attorney General Pam Bondi “needs to come forward and explain” the confusion she has brewed after she said in interviews earlier this year that the purported Epstein “client list” was sitting on her desk for review, suggesting it would be released. Bondi and other Justice Department officials now say the client list — which some claim would reveal the names of powerful figures who allegedly participated in Epstein’s crimes — does not exist.

“I like Pam. I think she’s done a good job, but we need the DOJ focusing on the major priorities,” he said. “I’m anxious to put this behind us.”

Trump will have to have a stern talk with Speaker Johnson.

Oliver Holmes at The Guardian: Donald Trump says those interested in Jeffrey Epstein inquiry are ‘bad people.’

Donald Trump has dismissed a secretive inquiry into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as “boring” and of interest only to “bad people”, but said he backed the release of any “credible” files, as he sought to stamp out a conspiracy-fuelled uproar among his supporters.

The US president is facing a political crisis within his usually loyal Republican Make America Great Again (Maga) base over suspicion that the administration is hiding details of Epstein’s crimes to protect the rich elite he associated with, which included Trump.

One of the most dramatic theories circulating among supporters is that Epstein – who killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody – was murdered by powerful figures to cover up their roles in his sex crimes against children.

“I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday night when asked why his supporters are so interested in the case. “It’s pretty boring stuff. It’s sordid, but it’s boring, and I don’t understand why it keeps going.

“I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going,” he added. “But credible information, let them give it. Anything that is credible, I would say, let them have it.”

Sex trafficking, pedophilia, and prison suicide are boring stuff?

Frankly, I have no doubt that Epstein committed suicide. He was looking at years in prison, loss of his status, his fortune, and his fabulous lifestyle. As a narcissistic sociopath, he couldn’t tolerate that. But Wired has found new evidence that the surveillance tape outside Epstein’s cell was manipulated. It may be perfectly innocent, but the MAGA crowd won’t see it that way. The magazine had previously found 1 minute missing from the tape; now it’s 3 minutes. Rich Friedman writes: The FBI’s Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Had Nearly 3 Minutes Cut Out.

Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation described as “full raw” surveillance video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead. The video was released last week as part of the Trump administration’s commitment to fully investigate Epstein’s 2019 death but instead has raised new questions about how the footage was edited and assembled.

WIRED previously reported that the video had been stitched together in Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files, contradicting the Justice Department’s claim that it was “raw” footage. Now, further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It’s unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed.

The nearly three-minute discrepancy may be related to the widely reported one-minute gap—between 11:58:58 pm and 12:00:00 am—that attorney general Pam Bondi has attributed to a nightly system reset. The metadata confirms that the first video file, which showed footage from August 9, 2019, continued for several minutes beyond what appears in the final version of the video and was trimmed to the 11:58:58 pm mark, right before the jump to midnight. The cut to the first clip doesn’t necessarily mean that there is additional time unaccounted for—the second clip picks up at midnight, which suggests the two would overlap—nor does it prove that the missing minute was cut from the video.

The footage was released at a moment of political tension. Trump allies had spent months speculating about the disclosure of explosive new evidence about Epstein’s death. But last week, the DOJ and FBI issued a memo stating that no “incriminating ‘client list’” exists and reaffirmed the government’s long-standing conclusion that Epstein—whom the US government accused of committing conspiracy to sex traffic minors and sex trafficking minors—died by suicide. That announcement triggered immediate backlash from pro-Trump influencers and media figures, who essentially accused the administration of a cover-up.

In response to detailed questions about how the video was assembled, WIRED sent a request for comment to the Department of Justice at 7:40 am on Tuesday morning. Just two minutes later, Natalie Baldassarre, a public affairs officer for the DOJ, replied tersely: “Refer you to the FBI.” The FBI declined WIRED’s request for comment.

Read more at Wired.

It’s possible that Ghislaine Maxwell, who procured young girls for Epstein to rape, could reveal whether Trump was involved in Epstein’s crimes. Unfortunately that’s unlikely, since she hopes to win a pardon or commutation from Trump. Janna Brancolini at The Daily Beast: Epstein Pimp’s Family Kiss Up to Trump: ‘Ultimate Dealmaker.’

Ghislaine Maxwell’s family is turning to the tried-and-true method of flattering President Donald Trump in a bid to get the convicted sex trafficker sprung from prison.

Trump with Ghislaine Maxwell

Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year jail sentence after being convicted in 2021 of luring and grooming young girls for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring.

Earlier this year, her lawyers filed a petition with the Supreme Court arguing her conviction was invalid, saying her prosecution in New York was barred by a 2007 non-prosecution agreement the government made with Epstein in Florida that also covered his co-conspirators.

A federal appeals court and the Department of Justice have both smacked down that argument, leading the family to now co-sign a flattering statement about the president.

Her siblings shared a statement from Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus that said, “I’d be surprised if President Trump knew his lawyers were asking the Supreme Court to let the government break a deal. He’s the ultimate dealmaker—and I’m sure he’d agree that when the United States gives its word, it should keep it.”

“These are sentiments with which we profoundly concur,” the family added.

The family members didn’t sign the statement individually—perhaps because the family has long been associated with scandal.

Read more details at the link.

Two more interesting articles about the Epstein controversy and the MAGA faithful:

Will Sommer at The Bulwark: The Five MAGA Factions Waging an Epstein Civil War.

Zack Beauchamp at Vox: Why Trump betrayed his base on Jeffrey Epstein And why he’ll get away with it.

There’s one reporter who really knows the Epstein story and what’s in the files: Julie K. Brown from The Miami Herald. Here is a piece she wrote in March: The Epstein files: What is public, and what is still secret?

Opening up two decades of government files related to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein isn’t going to be as simple as inserting them into three-ring binders or putting them on the internet.

After hyping the release of Epstein documents as “breaking news” on Fox News, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday distributed binders filled with material to a group of conservative social media pundits. But the big reveal, designed to promote President Donald Trump’s new culture of transparency, fell flat.

When the group opened the binders, they discovered 200 pages of dated material, most of which had long ago been made public. To make matters worse, some of the material was overly redacted — the same material had already been available on the internet in unredacted form.

Bondi, a former prosecutor and Florida attorney general, said she had been misled by the FBI into believing she had all the documents. She then accused federal agents of withholding thousands of pages, and ordered the agency to turn over the rest by Friday morning. But the 8 a.m. deadline came and went without any word on the files.

FBI sources told the Miami Herald Friday that they worried releasing the documents without a careful review — one that would likely take weeks or months — would jeopardize the hard-won 2021 conviction of Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell is appealing her conviction and 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.

Sources also said that the files are voluminous. There are 22 files containing over 500 pages in the FBI vault, a portal on the FBI’s website accessible to the public. The bulk of those 11,000-plus pages are heavily redacted, and Justice Department prosecutors have fought their release for years. While Bondi pointed fingers at the FBI in New York, many more files exist in other jurisdictions. One critical source of evidence against Epstein was in the discovery for a Florida civil case brought by Epstein’s victims against the FBI in 2008. That case spanned a decade and included tens of thousands of pages of material that sheds light on how federal prosecutors

mishandled that early case. Not all the FBI documents connected to that case — or the federal criminal case — in Florida have been made public.

“Going through those files would be an enormous, enormous effort. They contain the names of victims, witnesses and other personal information,” said Paul Pelletier, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “There was tons of discovery in the New York case alone. There’s no prosecutor in their right mind who would be able to corral all the evidence in the Epstein case over 20 years in a week and be able to release it carefully and accurately.”

Read the rest at The Miami Herald. For anyone who’s interested in the truth, Brown is the one to trust.

I don’t know if I’ve enlightened anyone with this collection of reads, but I hope I’ve helped some.

What’s on your mind today?

Fabulous Friday Reads

Posted: May 26, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Donald Trump, SCOTUS | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Good Day, Sky Dancers!!

I am addicted to books. In my adult years, I have bought so many books that I could never read them all; but I can’t stop myself–or maybe I don’t want to. When I moved into the apartment I live in now, I had to leave hundreds of books behind, because I simply didn’t have room for them. I tell myself an addiction to buying books is at least better than addictions to alcohol and drugs. I do much of my reading on my Kindle now, and at least those books don’t take up space. But I still love physical books and I still buy more than I can read. I’m 75 years old now, and I don’t have that much time left; but I still want to read as many books as I can before I “shuffle off this mortal coil.”

Could this be a solution?

Okay, probably not; but it’s an interesting fantasy. And now for some news.

Yesterday The Washington Post broke a story on the investigation into Trump’s theft of, and refusal to return, government documents. A short time later, The New York Times followed up with more details.

Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, Spencer S. Hsu, and Perry Stein at The Washington Post: Trump workers moved Mar-a-Lago boxes a day before FBI came for documents.book

Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before an early June visit byFBI agents and a prosecutor to the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.

Trump and his aides also allegedly carried out a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers even before his office received the May 2022 subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive ongoing investigation.

Prosecutors in addition have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others, these people said.

Taken together, the new details of the classified-documents investigation suggest a greater breadth and specificity to the instances of possible obstruction found by the FBI and Justice Department than have been previously reported. It also broadens the timeline of possible obstruction episodes that investigators are examining — a period stretching from events at Mar-a-Lago before the subpoena to the period after the FBI search there on Aug. 8.

That timeline may prove crucial as prosecutors seek to determine Trump’s intent in keeping hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House, a key factor in deciding whether to file charges, possibly for obstruction, mishandling national security secrets or both. The Washington Post has previously reported that the boxes were moved out of the storage area after Trump’s office received a subpoena. But the precise timing of that activity is a significant element in the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.

The WaPo writers focus on obstruction, but if Trump showed documents to other people, that could be espionage. Remember, espionage was one of the crimes listed on the warrant for the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

More details from the WaPo story:

Of particular importance to investigators in the classified-documents case, according to people familiar with the probe, is evidence showing that boxes of documents were moved into a storage area on June 2, just before senior Justice Department lawyer Jay Bratt arrived at Mar-a-Lago with agents. The June 3 visit by law enforcement officialswas to collect material in response to the May 2022grand jury subpoena demanding the return of all documents with classified markings.

John Irving, a lawyer representing one of the two employees who moved the boxes, said the worker did not know what was in them and was only trying to help Trump valet Walt Nauta, who was using a dolly or hand truck to move a number of boxes.

“He was seen on Mar-a-Lago security video helping Walt Nauta move boxes into a storage area on June 2, 2022. My client saw Mr. Nauta moving the boxes and volunteered to help him,” Irving said. The next day, he added, the employee helped Nauta pack an SUV “when former president Trump left for Bedminster for the summer.”

The lawyer said his client, a longtime Mar-a-Lago employee whom he declined to identify, has cooperated with the government and did not have “any reason to think that helping to move boxes was at all significant.” Other people familiar with the investigation confirmed the employee’s role and said he has been questioned multiple times by authorities.

Awhile back there was a video circulating on Twitter of people moving boxes out of Mar-a-Lago and loading them onto a truck to be taken to Bedminster. This happened the day before Trump left to spend the summer at his New Jersey golf club. Now it’s being posted again.

This is from Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman at The New York Times: Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case.

The day before a key meeting last year between a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and officials seeking the return of classified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession, a maintenance worker at the former president’s private club saw an aide moving boxes into a storage room, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The maintenance worker offered to help the aide — Walt Nauta, who was Mr. Trump’s valet in the White House — move the boxes and ended up lending him a hand. But the worker had no idea what was inside the boxes, the person familiar with the matter said. The maintenance worker has shared that account with federal prosecutors, the person said….

Mr. Trump was found to have been keeping some of the documents in the storage room where Mr. Nauta and the maintenance worker were moving boxes on the day before the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, traveled to Mar-a-Lago last June to seek the return of any government materials being held by the former president.

Mr. Nauta and the worker moved the boxes into the room before a search of the storage room that same day by M. Evan Corcoran, a lawyer for Mr. Trump who was in discussions with Mr. Bratt. Mr. Corcoran called Justice Department officials that night to set up a meeting for the next day. He believed that he did not have a security clearance to transport documents with classified markings, a person briefed on his decision said.

Weeks earlier, the Justice Department had issued a subpoena demanding the return of the documents. Prosecutors have been trying to determine whether Mr. Trump had documents moved around Mar-a-Lago or sought to conceal some of them after the subpoena.

Part of their interest is in trying to determine whether documents were moved before Mr. Corcoran went through the boxes himself ahead of a meeting with Justice Department officials looking to retrieve them. Prosecutors have been asking witnesses about the roles of Mr. Nauta and the maintenance worker, whose name has not been publicly disclosed, in moving documents around that time.

During his trip to Mar-a-Lago on June 3, Mr. Bratt was given a packet of roughly three dozen documents with classified markings by a lawyer for Mr. Trump. Mr. Bratt was also given a letter, drafted by Mr. Corcoran but signed by another lawyer for the former president, attesting that a diligent search had been carried out for any additional material in response to the subpoena and that none had been found. Mr. Bratt was not given access to search the storage room at that point.

The obvious inference is that Trump may have gone through the boxes and removed items that he wanted to keep, concealing them in his private quarters. Remember that classified documents were later found in his office desk and in his bedroom.

Like the WaPo writers, Feuer and Haberman focus their discussion on possible obstruction charges, and ignore the obvious possibility of espionage charges based on the fact that Trump showed documents to people at his private club and left them lying around in plain sight.

The penalties for violating the espionage act are 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

In other news, the Supreme Court yesterday announced another horrific decision. This time they’ve gutted the Clean Water Act.

Timothy Puko and Robert Barnes at The Washington Post: How Supreme Court’s EPA ruling will affect U.S. wetlands, clean water.

Bogs. Marshes. Swamps. Fens. All are examples of wetlands.

But the type of wetland that gets protection under federal law is a matter of wide dispute, one reset by a sweeping ruling Thursday from the U.S. Supreme Court.

At issue is the reach of the 51-year-old Clean Water Act and how courts should determine what count as “waters of the United States” under that law. Nearly two decades ago, the court ruled that wetlands are protected by the Clean Water Act if they have a “significant nexus” to regulated waters.

The Supreme Court decided that rule no longer applies and said the Environmental Protection Agency’s interpretation of its powers went too far, giving it regulatory power beyond what Congress had authorized….

Writing for five justices of the court, Justice Samuel A. Alito ruled that the Clean Water Act extends only to “those wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right, so that they are ‘indistinguishable’ from those waters.” He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett….

Some environmental groups and legal experts estimate that the decision will remove federal protection from half of all wetlands in the continental United States. According to estimates from Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, the decision will prevent the EPA from placing federal protections on as many as 118 million acres of wetlands, an area larger than the landmass of California. Those estimates could not be immediately confirmed, but the ruling is expected to give farmers, home builders and other developers far more latitude to disturb lands previously regulated under the Clean Water Act….

The ruling affects one of the EPA’s most fundamental authorities — its ability to protect upstream waters in order to protect downstream water quality for drinking supplies and wildlife. Experts say greater development upstream could result in silt and pollutants damaging downstream waters and habitat, and reduce the flood control and groundwater-recharge benefits of protected wetlands.

Read all the gory details at the WaPo link.

Commentary by Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: Samuel Alito’s Assault on Wetlands Is So Indefensible That He Lost Brett Kavanaugh.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to the nation’s wetlands by rewriting a statute the court does not like to mean something it does not mean. The court’s decision in Sackett v. EPAis one of the its most egregious betrayals of textualism in memory. Put simply: The Clean Water Act protects wetlands that are “adjacent” to larger bodies of water. Five justices, however, do not think the federal government should be able to stop landowners from destroying wetlands on their property. To close this gap between what the majority wants and what the statute says, the majority crossed through the word “adjacent” and replaced it with a new test that’s designed to give landowners maximum latitude to fill in, build upon, or otherwise obliterate some of the most valuable ecosystems on earth.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the court is remarkably brazen about this approach—so brazen that Justice Brett Kavanaugh (of all people!) authored a sharp opinion accusing him of failing to “stick to the text.” Alito began with a long history of the Supreme Court’s struggles to identify the “outer boundaries” of the Clean Water Act, as if to explain why the time had come for the court to give up wrestling with the text and just impose whatever standard it prefers. The law expressly protects “waters of the United States” (like rivers and lakes) as well as “wetlands adjacent” to these waters. Congress added the wetlands provision in 1977 to codify the EPA’s definition of “adjacent,” which also happens to be the actual definition: “bordering, contiguous, or neighboring.” Under that interpretation—the one Congress adopted—wetlands that neighbor a larger body of water remain protected, even if they aren’t directly connected.

Why did Congress make that choice? Because wetlands provide immense environmental benefits: They filter and purify water draining into nearby streams, rivers, and lakes. They slow down runoff into these larger bodies. And they serve as vital flood control. In other words, the Clean Water Act has to protect “adjacent” wetlands to serve its overarching goal of safeguarding the broader “waters of the United States” from pollution.

Too bad, Alito wrote: We don’t like the definition that Congress used. It could lead to “crushing” fines for landowners and interfere with “mundane” activities like “moving dirt.” It interferes with “traditional state authority.” And it could give the EPA “truly staggering” regulatory authority. Five justices on the Supreme Court think all of that is very bad. So they declared that, instead of applying the statute’s words, the court would impose a different standard: Only wetlands with “a continuous surface connection” to larger bodies of water merit protection under the Clean Water Act.

This definition—which, it just can’t be stressed enough, appears nowhere in the law—is a crushing defeat for wetlands and their protectors. These ecosystems, as Kavanaugh pointed out, are frequently separated from larger bodies of water by “man-made dikes or barriers” as well as “natural river berms, beach dunes, or the like.” Such wetlands “play an important role in protecting neighboring and downstream waters,” which is why Congress included them in the statute. But under the majority’s new test, they are stripped of federal protection.

Sam Alito: the same asshole who overturned Roe v. Wade while citing a 17th century judge who presided over a witch trial.

I’ll wrap up this post with an abortion horror story at The Washington Post: Indiana board fines doctor for discussing rape victim’s abortion.

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1662078210518007813?s=20

Indiana’s medical licensing board decided late Thursday to discipline a doctor who made headlines last year for performing an abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim. The board gave the doctor a letter of reprimand and ordered her to pay a $3,000 fine for violating ethical standards and state laws by discussing the case with a reporter.

For nearly a year, Indiana’s Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) pursued punishment for Caitlin Bernard, an OB/GYN and an assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine who carried out the abortion in June 2022, less than a week after Roe v. Wade was struck down, enacting trigger laws.

Bernard broke patient privacy laws by telling an Indianapolis Star reporter about the patient’s care, the board decided Thursday night after a roughly 14-hour hearing that ended shortly after 11:30 p.m. Bernard’s lawyers argued she properly reported the incident to an Indiana University Health social worker and did not run afoul of privacy laws when she discussed the patient’s case in a general and “deidentified” manner that is typical for doctors.

Records obtained by The Washington Post last year show that Bernard reported the girl’s abortion to the relevant state agencies ahead of the legally mandated deadline, which the board agreed with Thursday night, clearing her of a charge related to that issue.

These assholes are supposedly doing this in order to “protect” the patient–a 10-year-old child who was impregnated by a rapist in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana because her Ohio politicians determined that she should be forced to bear her rapist’s child even though that could be life-threatening for her.

Bernard’s lawyers rejected Rokita’s allegations as baseless and politically motivated. The seven-member board of governor appointees could, by a majority vote, have either taken no action against Bernard or imposed a range of disciplinary measures up to and including the immediate termination of Bernard’s medical license.

Throughout the lengthy hearing, Bernard faced at times pointed questions about her decisions.

She explained how, as a doctor, she felt she had “an obligation” to ensure Hoosiers understood how abortion bans were affecting people across the country — and could eventually affect them.

Bernard was also asked whether she thought she would have “gotten as much attention” if she had not mentioned the 10-year-old patient’s case to a reporter.

“I don’t think that anybody would have been looking into this story as any different than any other interview that I’ve ever given if it was not politicized the way that it was by public figures in our state and in Ohio,” Bernard said.

That’s my contribution for today. What stories have you been following lately?

Thursday Reads

Posted: April 27, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Donald Trump, ethics, SCOTUS | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Tove Jansson, Still life with fruit and flowers on the background of an open door, 1945

Tove Jansson, Still life with fruit and flowers on the background of an open door, 1945

Good Afternoon!!

Once again the news is coming fast and furious today, but the top story has to be the latest about Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old air national guardsman who leaked classified documents on Discord.

The story is getting worse with each passing day. This kid not only had access to secret government documents, but also he stockpiled weapons in his parents’ home and fantasized about being a mass murderer.

NPR: The suspected leaker of Pentagon documents is due back in federal court.

The air national guardsman accused of leaking U.S. government secrets is due back in federal court in Worcester, Mass., at 1 p.m. on Thursday. Federal prosecutors are urging that the defendant, Jack Teixeira, 21, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, remain in jail pending trial.

In a new court filing, federal prosecutors say Teixeira faces significant prison time, if convicted, and poses a serious flight risk. They say he took steps to obstruct the investigation into the leak of U.S. intelligence documents, many of which were about Ukraine’s war against Russia.

According to court papers, investigators found a tablet, a laptop and a gaming console — all of them smashed — in a dumpster at Teixeira’s house after his arrest. Teixeira also allegedly told an associate online to delete all messages with him and that if anyone came asking questions about him, not to tell them anything. Prosecutors also say Teixeira began in February 2022 to access classified national defense information that had no bearing on his job. Not all of those materials have publicly surfaced yet.

NBC News: Intel leaks suspect is a flight risk and could have access to more classified docs, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors will urge a judge Thursday to keep Jack Teixeira, 21, behind bars, arguing he poses “a serious flight risk,” and that a “foreign adversary” could try to help him escape the United States and give him safe haven.

“The information to which the Defendant had access — and did access — far exceeds what has been publicly disclosed on the Internet to date,” the document said. The leaks “have the capacity to cause additional exceptionally grave damage to the U.S. national security if disclosed.”

The 18-page memo said Teixeira had a history of making violent and racist remarks — including posting on social media about wanting to carry out a mass shooting — keeping “an arsenal of weapons”and tactical gear at his house, and trying to thwart federal investigators by apparently destroying evidence.

The filing comes ahead of a detention hearing Thursday in Massachusetts federal court. Teixeira, who has not entered a plea, has been in jail since his arrest earlier this month in a case that represents one of the most significant intelligence leaks in years. The saga has fueled global uproar and doubts over America’s ability to guard its secrets….

“The damage the Defendant has already caused to the U.S. national security is immense. The damage the Defendant is still capable of causing is extraordinary,” prosecutors wrote. “If the Defendant were released, it would be all too easy for him to further disseminate classified information and would create the unacceptable risk that he would flee the United States and take refuge with a foreign adversary to avoid the reach of U.S. law.”

spring-still-life-susan-novak

Spring still life, by Susan Novak

On Teixeira’s fascination with mass shootings:

Teixeira also used his government computer to search for information on previous mass shootings, including “Uvalde” and “Mandalay Bay shooting,” the filing said. Media reports have suggested these searches may have been related to Teixeira’s belief in conspiracy theories that the government had prior knowledge of these shootings, it added. But prosecutors said that coupled with his social media posts and weapons cache these searches were “troubling.”

Teixeira lives in his mother and stepfather’s house in North Dighton, Massachusetts, and in his bedroom keeps a gun locker stocked with handguns, bolt-action rifles, shotguns, and an AK-style high-capacity weapon, prosecutors said.

His “arsenal of weapons” also included a bazooka, and a “silencer-style accessory,” according to investigators, who found a tactical helmet with a GoPro camera and mount in the dumpster outside, according to the filing.

BBC News: Jack Teixeira: Suspected leaker made threats and researched shootings, US says.

Jack Teixeira wrote on social media that he wanted to kill a “ton of people” as a way of “culling the weak minded”, according to a court filing.

The 18-page document also claimed the 21-year-old asked what type of rifle would be easy to operate from an SUV.

According to the prosecutors, he posted repeatedly about “troubling” violent acts including a potential mass shooting. He allegedly described building an “assassination van” and driving around shooting people in a “crowded urban or suburban environment”.

He also allegedly searched for multiple recent mass shootings on his government computer, including Uvalde and the Las Vegas shooting.

The filing also said a search of Mr Teixeira’s home had uncovered “a virtual arsenal of weapons, including bolt-action rifles, rifles, AR and AK-style weapons, and a bazooka” that were kept “just feet from his bed”.

It added that he was suspended from high school when a classmate overheard him making threats and discussing Molotov cocktails as well as other weapons.

How the hell did this kid get a top secret security clearance from the Pentagon? Here’s a clue:

In other news, E. Jean Carroll testified in her civil case against Donald Trump yesterday, and it was powerful. Trump didn’t have the guts to show up in court, and that probably didn’t make a good impression on the jury.

Mitchell Epner at The Daily Beast: Jury Has Likely Decided Trump’s Fate in Rape Case Already.

On the first day of trial testimony Wednesday, E. Jean Carroll took the witness stand and provided unvarnished testimony that she was raped by Donald Trump in the 1990s. She testified: “I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it did not happen.”

André Deymonaz

By André Deymonaz

She testified that she and Trump went together to the lingerie department on the sixth floor of Bergdorf Goodman, flirting. When they got there, Trump followed her into the dressing room and pushed her against the wall, knocking her head and disorienting her. He also pulled down her tights, stuck his fingers inside of her vagina—causing her great pain—and stuck his penis inside of her vagina, for a period of time, while she struggled against him.

This testimony is the key to the case. If the jury believes it, they will find Trump liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll, and likely award her significant damages. If the jury does not believe it, they will return a verdict in favor of the former president.

Based upon more than 25 years of experience as a trial attorney, including service as an Assistant United States Attorney prosecuting sex crimes, I believe that it is highly likely that the jurors have already made up their minds about whether Carroll is telling the truth—before she has completed her direct testimony and long before Donald Trump’s attorneys have the opportunity to cross-examine her.

On Trump absenting himself:

This case won’t be a “he said, she said” case—because Trump is unlikely to testify.

In fact, Trump has not attended the trial at all so far. During opening statements, his attorney, Joe Tacopina, appeared to indicate that the trend would continue, saying that Trump’s testimony would only occur in deposition excerpts. Trump’s witness list consists of only two people, Donald Trump and Dr. Edgar Nace, a psychiatric expert witness.

Trump also is not presenting any exhibits, other than excerpts from depositions. If he does not testify, the only way he will get facts into evidence will be through cross-examination of Ms. Carroll’s witnesses.

Ms. Carroll, on the other hand, will present a number of corroborating witnesses:

  • Lisa Birnbaum: The bestselling author will testify that Carroll told her immediately after the incident what Trump had done to her. She will also testify that she told Carroll that she had been “raped.”
  • Carol Martin: The first African-American anchor on local news in New York City (for over two decade) will likewise testify that Carroll told her immediately of the rape by Trump. Martin will testify that she told Carroll not to pursue the case, because he had “200 lawyers” and would destroy her.
  • Jessica Leeds: Another of Trump’s alleged victims, she will testify that she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump when she sat next to him on a flight in the 1970s, when he attempted to place his fingers inside of her vagina.
  • Natasha Stoynoff: Then a reporter for People magazine, she will testify that Donald Trump sexually assaulted her when she was at Mar-A-Lago in the early 2000s, working on a story.

Carroll is also set to present the infamous Access Hollywood video, in which Donald Trump bragged that he could grab women “by the pussy” without consent, because he was “a star.”

Perhaps even more importantly, Carroll already addressed most of the points that Trump’s attorneys wanted to make on cross-examination.

Read more at the link.

still-life-with-a-ginger-jar-and-eggplants-paul-cezanne

Still life with a ginger jar and eggplant, by Paul Cezanne

In addition to all this, Trump posted about the case on Truth Social yesterday, and the judge was not happy. He suggested that Trump could get himself in further trouble by trying to influence the jury.

The Guardian: Judge rebukes Trump for ‘entirely inappropriate’ post before E Jean Carroll testimony.

Before Carroll took the stand…the judge in the case, Lewis A Kaplan, rebuked Trump for an “entirely inappropriate” statement on his social media platform, Truth Social, shortly before proceedings began.

Kaplan warned the former president’s lawyers that such statements about the case could bring more legal problems upon himself.

Trump, who has not attended so far, called the case “a made-up scam”. He also called Carroll’s lawyer “a political operative” and alluded to a DNA issue Kaplan has ruled cannot be part of the case.

“This is a fraudulent and false story – Witch Hunt!” Trump wrote….

The judge told Trump’s lawyers: “What seems to be the case is that your client is basically endeavoring, certainly, to speak to his quote-unquote public, but, more troubling, the jury in this case about stuff that has no business being spoken about.”

He also called Trump’s post “a public statement that, on the face of it, seems entirely inappropriate”.

The Trump attorney Joe Tacopina noted that jurors are told not to follow any news or online commentary about the case. But he said he would ask Trump “to refrain from any further posts about this case”.

“I hope you’re more successful,” Kaplan said, adding that Trump “may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability”.

This morning Carroll testified that she has been receiving threats, following Trump’s postings.

Another big story broke late yesterday. Trump has lost high fight to keep Mike Pence from testifying to the January 6 grand jury.

CNN: Trump loses appeal to block Pence from testifying about direct communications.

Former President Donald Trump has lost an emergency attempt to block former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying about their direct conversations, in the latest boost to a federal criminal investigation examining Trump’s and others’ actions after the 2020 election.

The former president has repeatedly tried and failed to close off some answers from witnesses close to him in the special counsel’s investigation. This latest order from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals likely will usher in Pence’s grand jury testimony quickly – an unprecedented development in modern presidential history.

The decision, from Judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Greg Katsas on the DC Circuit, came in a sealed case on Wednesday night that CNN previously identified as Trump’s executive privilege challenge to Pence. No dissents were noted on the public docket.

Trump has tried to block Pence from testifying about their direct communications, even after the former vice president wrote about some of those exchanges and a lower-court judge had ruled against him.

Trump asked the DC Circuit for emergency intervention weeks ago. The court refused to put on hold Pence’s subpoena and to override the lower-court ruling, flatly denying Trump’s requests.

Trump could try to appeal again and even press the issue at the Supreme Court. Yet he gave up pushing several past executive privilege challenges to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation after similar rulings from this court of appeals.

breakfast-still-life-1924, Ilya Mashkov

Breakfast still life, 1924, by Ilya Mashkov

One more important story–on the latest developments in the Supreme Court ethics scandal.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: King Roberts: The chief justice’s latest trick to ward off oversight is the ploy of a royal, not a judge.

Last Thursday, Sen. Dick Durbin invited Chief Justice John Roberts to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about, well, to put it directly—the Supreme Court’s diaphanous ethics regime. On Tuesday evening, in his letter to Durbin in which he declined the invitation, Roberts finally named the problem: “Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by the Chief Justice of the United States is exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light of separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence,” he wrote. In other words, the justices can enforce checks and balances on the other branches, but the other branches can enforce no checks or balances upon the justices. Which is precisely the problem the Senate Judiciary Committee is attempting to solve.

In an accompanying “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices,” presumably released for the public, the chief justice laid out the web of laws and practices and guidelines used voluntarily by each justice to determine their individual ethics obligations. Perhaps he was attempting to clarify things, but instead the document illuminates the problem. These obligations and commitments are advisory, unenforceable, and subjective. In response to the widespread concern that no person should be a judge in their own cause, the court has confirmed that it shall continue to be the sole judge of that. (Meanwhile, it will enforce this principle against other courts—which is great, but also … come on!)

Put aside for a moment Politico’s new report that Justice Neil Gorsuch failed to disclose that he’d sold his valuable Colorado property to a prominent lawyer with multiple cases before the court only nine days after he was confirmed, or Bloomberg’s new revelations that Harlan Crow, Justice Clarence Thomas’ GOP-megadonor billionaire friend, also had business before the court, yet his lavish gifts to Thomas were not disclosed because the justice said Crow had no business before the court. Note also that Gorsuch’s failure to disclose has been defended on the grounds that the justice was not friends with the purchaser of his land, whereas Thomas’ failure to disclose Crow’s gifts has been defended on the grounds that the justice was close friends with him. Which “friend” rule wins? Who can possibly know.

The justices themselves are wholly responsible for this high-octane ethics quagmire, which now drags into its fourth week. Any sane institution that relies wholly on public approval, when faced with multiple irrefutable reports of distortions and deception, would respond with a plan to do better. It speaks volumes that the Imperial Court’s response is a promise to simply continue to do the same. Why? Because it thinks the other branches won’t do anything about it. As Ian Millhiser noted in Vox this week, the Constitution makes it extraordinarily difficult to remove a justice, or diminish the court’s power. The reason it is set up this way, believe it or not, is because the framers thought the judiciary would rise above the partisan fray. In practice, however, the Supreme Court has proven remarkably easy for one political party to capture. Its members are selected through a flagrantly political process. It is formed by political imperatives. And yet the court pretends—and demands we all pretend—that it’s magically purified of politics as soon as its justices are seated.

Read the rest at Slate.

That’s all I have for you today. Have a great Thursday, everyone!

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