A woman sewing blue denim pants, by “Master of the Blue Jeans.”
I’m going to begin today with a story that has nothing to do with politics or current events–just because I think it’s interesting. Did you know that people wore blue jeans way back in the 16th century? I didn’t. An art exhibit will soon open in Paris that will focus on a mysterious artist, known only as “Master of the Blue Jeans.”
An exhibition centered on the “Master of the Blue Jeans” is opening in Paris this month—and the work on display is not that of Levi Strauss, founder of the eponymous clothing company, but rather a 17th-century Italian painter.
The upcoming show at Galerie Canesso features two paintings by the mysterious artist, who was active in northern Italy in the 1600s and is known only by his “master” moniker. The painter’s oil canvases depict early iterations of the stiff blue fabric beloved today, as worn by Italian peasants. According to a statement, the pieces have proved to be important artifacts in garment history, “pushing back [blue jeans’] provenance by centuries.”
Speaking with Artnet’s Vittoria Benzine, Maurizio Canesso, an art collector and the gallery’s founder, says, “People are still not very familiar with the true history of blue jeans, as they confuse it with the material made by Levi Strauss.”
In truth, Canesso argues, when the American businessman behind Levi’s jeans started selling denim work pants in the late 1800s, he merely added metal rivets and structure to a fabric that already boasted a storied European past.
“Jeans come from Genoa, while denim comes from the French city of Nîmes,” says Canesso. Blue jeans were made with perpendicular stitches in northwest Italy, while denim was woven in chevron patterns in southern France. But the key component of the fabric’s history is its coloration.
“Until the 11th century, no one could wear blue fabric because they didn’t know how to make blue color adhere,” Canesso says. “Only in the year 1000 did this begin to happen using woad leaves, and at a very high cost. The genius of the Genoese was to find the indigo stone in India and make this an industrial and therefore low-cost process.”
The ten denim-themed paintings attributed to the master were previously thought to be the work of several different artists. But in 2004, curator Gerlinde Gruber reattributed the group of artworks to a single unnamed painter then dubbed the Master of the Blue Jeans. By 2010, Canesso had acquired all of the master’s works, and he presented them in an exhibition at his Paris gallery that same year.
“Unfortunately, we have no new theories about who the Master of the Blue Jeans was,” Véronique Damian, an art historian at Galerie Canesso, tells the Observer’s Vanessa Thorpe. Evidence indicates the artist spent the bulk of his career in Italy’s northern region of Lombardy, though he may trained elsewhere.
I’m including some of the artist’s work in this post, just because.
In the more painful world of politics, Trump had a bad day in New York yesterday, and he got some bad news in India; but he got some gifts from judges in Florida and Georgia.
As I’m sure you’re aware, Stormy Daniels testified in Trump’s hush money case yesterday.
Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress at the center of Donald Trump’s hush money trial, testified Tuesday about a disturbing sexual encounter she says she had with him, leading to angry, profane muttering from the former president that alarmed the judge.
New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan called Trump’s lawyer Todd Blancheto a sidebar during a midday break to say that Trumpwas “cursing audibly” and possibly intimidating Daniels, who had begun testifying, according to a trial transcript.
Beggar Boy with a Piece of Pie (wearing a denim jacket)
“I understand that your client is upset at this point,” Merchan said to the defense attorney,according to the transcript,“but he is cursing audibly and he is shaking his headvisually and that’s contemptuous. It has the potential to intimidate the witness and the jury can see that.”
Blanche assured the judge he would speak to Trump.
“I am speaking to you here at the bench because I don’t want to embarrass him,” Merchan said. “You need to speak to him. I won’t tolerate that.”
The exchange punctuated a day of rage — sometimes whispered from the defense table, sometimes declared loudly by Daniels from the witness stand.
It was one of several surreal moments on the 13th day of the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president, including descriptions by Daniels of their alleged sexual encounter in 2006 that were so detailed that defense attorneys demanded a mistrial.
While Merchan rejected their request, Daniels at times seemed to be describing nonconsensual sex that could be considered highly prejudicial for the jury, which in turn could give Trump — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — solid grounds to appeal if he is found guilty.
It sounds like the sex actually was nonconsensual though. Daniels’ description of what happened sounds very much like a date rape situation in which she was taken advantage of by a much older and more powerful man. She was 27. He was 60. He was much taller and stronger. She was invited for dinner, but there was no dinner. When she was ready to leave, she went to the bathroom. When she came back, he was on the bed in boxers. She tried to leave, but he blocked the door. This description is from Harry Litman on Twitter:
thought time to go. when opened the bathroom door, Trump had come in and was on the bed, in boxer shirts and a t-shirt. she was startled. felt like room spun in full motion. blood leaves my hands and feet. “ohmygod — what did I miss to get here?” she laughed nervously
The next thing I knew I was on the bed. opposite side of bed. missionary position. objection – sustained
I blacked out. but I was not drugged in any way, no alcohol. didn’t feel threatened physically “There was an imbalance of power for sure. but I was not threatened verbally or physically”
Had sex with him on the bed. Merchan sustaining objections to details. Staring at ceiling didn’t know how I got there. sustained. stricken touch his skin? objection sustained. he wasn’t wearing a condom. concerning to her but didn’t say anything.
sex was brief. remembers getting dressed. sitting on edge of bed, noticed completely dark outside. hard to get shoes on, hands shaking so hard. DJT: “oh it’s great, let’s get together again honey bunch.” I just wanted to leave. DVD she signed was on nightstand.
DJT: “We have to get together again soon” “we were so fantastic together. talked about the show” I just left as fast as I could. Didn’t express any concern about Melania. or mention her. didn’t have dinner. took cab back to hotel.
I felt ashamed I didn’t stop the sex so I didn’t tell many people about it. Remembered some additional details later. Merchan very stern about level of detail — wants to keep it spare.
It’s pretty clear from Daniels’ description that she was traumatized. I doubt if the judge understands that, but maybe some jurors will. Just because she is a porn actress doesn’t mean she can’t be raped. Her description is also reminiscent of E. Jean Carroll’s experience–Trump lifted her up against the wall and grabbed her genitals before she realized what was happening. It’s also reminisce of his own description in the Access Hollywood tape–how he can grab women “by the pussy. If you’re a star they let you do it.”
Daniels matters for reasons outside of the courtroom and the specifics of this hush-money trial. Daniels’ story is yet another reminder of what may prove to be Trump’s electoral downfall: His bottomless misogyny.
On the witness stand, Daniels reportedly spoke quickly and was apparently quite nervous. Initially, her story of meeting Trump sounded funny. She painted him as a pathetic older man trying — and failing — to impress the younger woman. When he first asked her to dinner, she replied “no,” but with an expletive. Her publicist eventually talked her into it, hoping Daniels could leverage the connection into a spot on “The Apprentice.” In his hotel room, she described him wearing “silk or satin” pajamas and asked him to put on real clothes. He allegedly used the “don’t even sleep in the same room” line when she asked about his wife, Melania, who had recently had a baby. Daniels described Trump as “pompous” and “arrogant.” She recounted how she jokingly spanked him with a magazine, hoping to tease him into being less of a jerk.
Then the tone of her story changed, as she described how they came to have sex. Trump waited until she was in the bathroom, Daniels said, and then he stripped down to boxer shorts and a T-shirt. “The room spun in slow motion,” she recalled on the witness stand. When she made for the door, “he was bigger and blocking the way,” she said of Trump. She denied it was sexual assault, however, because “I was not threatened either verbally or physically.” [….]
Whether or not Trump’s sexual encounter with Daniels was consensual in the legal sense, she describes it as unwanted.
“I didn’t say anything at all,” she told the court repeatedly. Claiming that she “blacked out” during the encounter, afterward, Daniels said, “my hands were shaking so hard” and “I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it and that I didn’t say ‘No.'”
Another painting by Master of the Blue Jeans
A person doesn’t have to be threatened in order for sex to be nonconsensual. Back to Marcotte’s piece:
Since the release of the “Access Hollywood” video in 2016, in which Trump can be heard bragging about sexual assault, the Beltway media has repeatedly tried to move on from the story of Trump’s legion of issues with women. Indeed, when Carroll’s accusations first came out in 2019, the press barely paid any mind. But the story of his rampant misogyny has never fully gone away. There was the Women’s March that overshadowed his 2017 inauguration. Then the over two dozen women who stepped forward with stories of being subject to the sexual harassment and assault Trump himself described so vividly. Trump, of course, is more responsible than any other person on the planet for the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the stampede of Republican state legislators banning abortion. He promised to stack the Supreme Court with anti-choice justices, and his three appointees provided the votes necessary in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which ended the legal right to abortion. While Trump has tried to make moderate-sounding noises on this issue, he keeps inadvertently revealing his anti-choice radicalism. In a recent Time interview, for instance, he indicated that he’s fine if states “monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion.”
On the stand, Daniels provided ugly details about how Trump treated her, and about how Trump treats, and views, women. These insights are notable, but they’re not new. In 2016, leaked audio of Trump making grotesque and sexist comments about women to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush almost derailed his presidential campaign. Last year, Trump was held liable for sexual assaulting and then repeatedly defaming advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.
But Daniels’s testimony is a reminder that contempt and mistreatment of women is a core theme of Trump’s life and politics. Both the press and Democratic opponents have struggled to make this issue central to 2024, even though abortion rights and women’s health care are the key issues of the campaign. It’s unclear whether the trial will spark more reporting and discussion of Trump’s treatment of and attitudes about women. But it should….
Daniels’s testimony is intended to establish the background facts of the payment. It also, though, paints Trump as a liar, a bully, and a sexual manipulator. Daniels said while she was in Trump’s hotel room, she went to the bathroom, and when he came out he was in his boxer shorts, a moment Daniels describes as “like a jump scare.” She said, “the room spun in slow motion” and she realized “I’ve put myself in this bad situation.”
Daniels is careful to emphasize that Trump did not physically coerce her. He did, however, according to Daniels, suggest that if she cooperated with him he could help her career through his connections and a possible appearance on the Celebrity Apprentice reality show, where Trump was the star. She eventually agreed to have sex even though Trump did not use a condom — she was adamant about using condoms in her adult film shoots.
By Master of the Blue Jeans.
She testified that during sex she stared at the ceiling and tried to think of something else, and afterwards she had trouble dressing because her hands were shaking. She said, “I felt ashamed that I didn’t stop it and that I didn’t say no.”
Daniels kept in touch with Trump for some time because he was still offering her the chance to appear on Celebrity Apprentice, which would have been a huge mainstream boost to her career. She met with Trump once more in Los Angeles, at which point “he kept trying to make sexual advances, putting his hand on my leg, scooting closer.” She rebuffed him, and in a later phone call he admitted he was not going to put her on his television show. At that point she ceased communicating with him.
Again, Daniels has not accused Trump of sexual harassment or violence, and she says their encounter was consensual. Her testimony makes clear, though, that Trump was pressuring her for sex in return for business opportunities — a variation on the ugly tradition of the Hollywood casting couch. We don’t know if Trump ever had any intention of keeping his promises or of helping Daniels. But whether he did or not, his actions as she describes them were sleazy at best, and she found the experience painful and traumatic enough to leave her literally shaking.
The encounter doesn’t sound consensual to me. As I said above, it sounds like date rape.
The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s criminal case in Florida — on charges that he hoarded classified secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate after his presidency — has indefinitely postponed the trial, once scheduled for May 20.
The date had been widely expected to move amid a tangle of pretrial conflicts between special counsel Jack Smith and Trump’s attorneys. Smith had urged Judge Aileen Cannon to reschedule the trial to begin on July 8, but an order from the judge on Tuesday afternoon suggested that she is unlikely to even decide on a new trial date before late July.
Cannon, a Trump appointee who took the bench in late 2020, indicated in the order that, before setting a new trial date, she intends to resolve the backlog of other issues in the case that have piled up on her plate. Smith’s defenders have criticized Cannon for what they see as a plodding pace in resolving pretrial matters, and tensions between the special counsel and the judge have flared in recent months over a series of puzzling rulings that threatened to derail the case.
“[F]inalization of a trial date at this juncture — before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and [classified evidence] issues … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions,” Cannon wrote in the five-page order.
That reshuffling further clouds the picture for Smith, who is also awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity that could determine whether his other case against Trump — charges in Washington D.C. for attempting to subvert the 2020 election — can move forward this year….
Trump has sought to delay all of his criminal cases until after this year’s election. If he wins, he could shut down the two federal cases brought by Smith, and the state cases in New York and Georgia also might have to be frozen.
The Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday decided to hear an appeal of a judge’s ruling allowing District Attorney Fani Willis to remain at the helm of Fulton County’s election interference case against former President Donald Trump.
The court’s decision almost certainly means a significant delay of a trial here for Trump and his 14 co-defendants and signals that Willis’ leadership role isn’t guaranteed. It is unclear how long the appeals court will take to decide the issue but they are not known for moving swiftly.
Farmers wearing jeans, 1930s
“There’s no way this case gets to trial this year,” said Atlanta defense attorney Andrew Fleischman, who is closing following the case. “I would expect the appeals court to issue its opinion some time next year.”
On March 29, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued a “certificate of immediate review,” which allowed the defendants to appeal his ruling to the Georgia Court of Appeals before a trial begins.
Under Appeals Court rules, such a pretrial — or interlocutory — appeal is typically assigned to a three-judge screening panel. And all it takes is for one of those judges to decide whether the court accepts the appeal. The court’s order one-page order did not divulge which judge voted to grant the application.
In his order granting the pre-trial review, McAfee said he will continue working on the case, resolving pending motions, while the appeals court takes up the removal issue.
The bad news for Trump is that he is losing a significant percentage of Republican voters in the primaries, which are still going on. Niki Haley is still getting votes. Adam Wren and Madison Fernandez at Politico: Unexpected warning signs for Trump in busy Indiana primary.
In 2016, Indiana put Donald Trump on the doorstep of the GOP presidential nomination. But eight years later, the state he called “Importantville” delivered his campaign some flashing red warning signs as Nikki Haley cleaned up in the suburbs.
By virtue of its late-in-the-nominating-calendar primary, the Hoosier state has always occupied a unique and occasionally powerful perch to make or break candidacies: Sen. Ted Cruz and then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich dropped out immediately after Trump’s victory that year. But the barn-red state also often acts as a pace car for Republicans nationally.
And in a primary that saw a record-breaking $98 million splash across the state, according to AdImpact, Tuesday was no exception.
A zombie Haley candidacy continued to punch above its weight in the Trumpiest of states: The former South Carolina governor is on track to break 20 percent for the first time since she dropped out of the race two months ago.
Read more at the link.
I don’t know if you’ve been following the reporting about New York Times editor Joe Kahn and his pathetic explanations for why his paper seems to be rooting for another Trump presidency.
Joe Kahn, after two years in charge of the New York Times newsroom, has learned nothing.
He had an extraordinary opportunity, upon taking over from Dean Baquet, to right the ship: to recognize that the Times was not warning sufficiently of the threat to democracy presented by a second Trump presidency.
But to Kahn, democracy is a partisan issue and he’s not taking sides. He made that clear in an interview with obsequious former employee Ben Smith, now the editor of Semafor.
Kahn accused those of us asking the Times to do better of wanting it to be a house organ of the Democratic party:
To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote — that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda.
But critics like me aren’t asking the Times to abandon its independence. We’re asking the Times to recognize that it isn’t living up to its own standards of truth-telling and independence when it obfuscates the stakes of the 2024 election, covers up for Trump’s derangement, and goes out of its way to make Biden look weak.
And to the extent that Kahn has changed anything in the Times newsroom since Baquet left, it’s to double down on a form of objectivity that favors the comfortable-white-male perspective and considers anything else little more than hysteria.
Throwing Baquet under the bus, Kahn called the summer of the Black Lives Matter protests “an extreme moment” during which the Times lost its way.
“I think we’ve learned from it. I think we found our footing after that,” he said.
I translate that to mean that the old guard has reasserted total control over the rabble.
Read the rest at Press Watch.
I’ll wrap this up with a couple of creepy stories about Robert Kennedy Jr.
In 2010, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was experiencing memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor. Mr. Kennedy said he consulted several of the country’s top neurologists, many of whom had either treated or spoken to his uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, before his death the previous year of brain cancer.
Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Kennedy was immediately scheduled for a procedure at Duke University Medical Center by the same surgeon who had operated on his uncle, he said.
While packing for the trip, he said, he received a call from a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who had a different opinion: Mr. Kennedy, he believed, had a dead parasite in his head.
The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.
Gross. Maybe that explains some of his weird ideas?
A right-wing social media influencer hired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign who previously said Jan. 6 was “Democrat misdirection” appears to have himself been on the restricted grounds of the U.S. Capitol during the attack.
Marilyn Monroe in blue jeans
NBC News first reported that Kennedy’s campaign hired Zach Henry’s firm, Total Virality, for “influencer engagement” in March. Henry had worked as deputy communications director for Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign, as well as for Blake Masters during his Senate run in Arizona.
Henry, as NBC News reported, had posted that Jan. 6 was “no MAGA insurrection Just more Democrat misdirection” and appears to have embraced conspiracy theories about the Capitol attack, including posting that “antifa” was behind it, which is false.
But photos and videos uncovered by NBC News and online “sedition hunters,” who have aided the FBI in hundreds of cases against Capitol rioters, appear to show Henry among the mob outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, beyond the previously established police lines, although it is unclear whether any of the barricades and “restricted” signs remained by the time he arrived.
There is no indication that Henry entered the Capitol or that he engaged in assaults on police officers or in destruction of property. Federal prosecutors have almost entirely focused their resources on Jan. 6 participants who either went inside the building or committed violence or destruction outside it, so there is little chance that Henry would be charged; the few nonviolent Jan. 6 defendants who were charged solely for going on restricted Capitol grounds were generally charged with misdemeanors.
But Henry’s presence on Capitol grounds would be significant given his previous social media posts about Jan. 6 and his new position on Kennedy’s campaign as Kennedy runs for president as an independent against former President Donald Trump.
That’s it for me today. What stories have you been following?
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As Dakinikat wrote yesterday, the Trump hush money trial had a marquee witness yesterday in Hope Hicks, who was very close to Trump during the his 2016 campaign and his four years as “president.” A couple of reports/reactions:
Donald Trump’s former campaign press secretary and White House communications director Hope Hickstook the stand Friday, sitting feet away fromher former boss as she described the fallout from the “Access Hollywood” tape and the Trump White House response to stories about hush money payments.
Hicks was visibly nervous, and she mostly avoided eye contact with Trump while answering questions from prosecutors for more than two hours. When prosecutors finished with their questions and Trump’s attorney took the podium, Hicks began crying and appeared tobecomeoverwhelmed; she finished her testimony after a brief break.
Through Hicks’ testimony, prosecutors showed jurors the transcript of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that upended Trump’s campaign – and, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, fueled Trump’s concern about keeping Stormy Daniels quiet in the days before the November 2016 election….
After sitting in the witness box, Hicks looked visibly uncomfortable and quickly acknowledged as much when she began answering questions.
“I’m really nervous,” she said, adjusting herself and the microphone in front of her.
Trump often had a scowl on his face, occasionally looking at Hicks and frequently passing notes with his attorneys while watching the proceedings play out on the television above him. Hicks, for her part, looked nearly always at assistant district attorney Matthew Colangelo and the jury, not at the defendant’s table.
Much of Hicks’ testimony focused on her role on the Trump campaign in October 2016, just before Election Day. Prosecutors asked what happened when the “Access Hollywood” tape came out.
“The tape was damaging. This was a crisis,” Hicks said.
Tranquility, by Dora Hathazi Mendes
The aftermath of the tape then informed how the campaign responded when the Wall Street Journal reported on Karen McDougal’s deal with American Media, Inc. not to speak about an alleged affair as part of a $150,000 agreement
In the report, which also mentioned Daniels, Hicks, then a Trump campaign spokesperson, denied that Trump had had affairs with either woman.
Hicks was asked about her conversations with Trump as well as Michael Cohen when reporters came to her for comment.
“What I told to the Wall Street Journal is what was told to me,” Hicks said of the denial she gave about the Daniels allegations.
When cross-examining Hicks, Trump attorney Emil Bove elicited testimony that Trump was also concerned about what his wife would think. Trump asked for the newspapers not to be delivered to his residence the day the story published, Hicks testified.
“I don’t think he wanted anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed by anything that was happening on the campaign trial. He wanted them to be proud of him,” Hicks said.
Hicks discussed her key role in meetings and made clear that she “reported to Mr. Trump,” who, she said, closely managed his communications strategy. Multiple news outlets, including The New York Times, reported that Hicks said she was “very concerned” about the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals. The audio clip was published in October — a month before the election.
“I was concerned,” Hicks said Friday. “Very concerned. Yeah. I was concerned about the contents of the email, I was concerned about the lack of time to respond, I was concerned that we had a transcript but not a tape. There was a lot at play.”
Trump’s defense, meanwhile, used their cross examination to ask Hicks questions about Cohen’s informal role with the campaign and Trump’s concern about his wife Melania’s reaction to the “Access Hollywood” tape.
“He liked to call himself a fixer, or Mr. Fix-it, and it was only because he first broke it,” Hicks said, according to The Times. Hicks also said of Cohen: “He would try to insert himself at certain moments.” [….]
New York prosecutors have cited text messages, witness testimony, phone calls and other records to allege that Trump schemed to pay off adult film star and director Stormy Daniels, model Karen McDougal as well as a doorman who falsely claimed Trump had an affair with a housekeeper. The scheme allegedly involved a $130,000 payment to Daniels described as “legal expenses” in Trump Organization records. Bragg said the scheme “mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the reimbursements” for that payment.
According to The Times, prosecutors asked Hicks if Cohen would have paid Daniels without alerting Trump. Hicks said that would have been out of character for Cohen.
Prosecutors on Friday asked Hicks about an email she wrote saying “Deny, deny, deny” concerning the Washington Post’s email seeking comment about the Access Hollywood tape. She described that reaction as a “reflex.” She also said the campaign was concerned about a Wall Street Journal article about McDougal.
“One of the defining characteristics of Hope Hicks, both in the campaign and in her time in the White House, was that Mr. Trump wanted to have her in the room as often as possible,” Hofstra University constitutional law professor James Sample said. “Hope Hicks is a witness who will heighten the connection between what the jury has already heard and the prosecutors need to establish that part of the reason for these deals was to influence the election.”
Charges have formally been made public against Mark Meadows, the onetime chief of staff to former President Donald Trump, in the expansive fake electors case now underway in Arizona.
Trump is not charged in Arizona but is considered an unindicted co-conspirator.
As Law&Crime recently reported, 18 fake electors in the state were indicted by a grand jury on April 24 for their alleged efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election. Though several Republicans were named directly in the fraud and forgery indictment including, among others, leaders of the state’s Republican party and two incumbent state lawmakers, some of those charged had their identities redacted, including Meadows and Trump’s former attorney also facing indictment in Georgia, Rudy Giuliani.
Formal charges have still not been confirmed for Giuliani in Arizona.
The Associated Press reported first on Wednesday that the state’s attorney’s general office confirmed Meadows was being charged with nine felony counts and has been served.
An attorney for Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment to Law&Crime on Friday.
Those charged with trying to pass off bogus elector slates in 2020 and named openly when the indictment first went public included Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward, her husband Michael Ward, Tyler Bowyer, Nancy Cottle, Jacob Hoffman, Anthony Kern, James Lamon, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead, Lorraine Pellegrino, and Gregory Safsten.
BF Borgers, the independent accounting firm for Trump Media & Technology Group, is facing allegations of “massive fraud” from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which on Friday claimed the auditor ran a “sham audit mill” that put investors at risk.
Henriette Ronner-Knip, Cat Nap
The SEC said Borgers has been shut down, noting that the company agreed to a permanent suspension from appearing and practicing before the agency as accountants. The suspension is effective immediately. Additionally, BF Borgers agreed to pay a $12 million civil penalty, while owner Benjamin Borgers will pay a $2 million civil penalty.
Neither the SEC statement nor its complaint mentioned Trump Media & Technology Group. Borgers didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In an email, Trump Media said it “looks forward to working with new auditing partners in accordance with today’s SEC order.”
The SEC charged Borgers with “deliberate and systemic failures” in complying with accounting standards in 1,500 SEC filings from January 2021 through June 2023, a period during which Borgers had about 350 clients. Trump Media’s March debut as a public company came after that time period, but the social media company said in its 2023 annual report that it had worked with Borgers prior to going public on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
There could be some progress in the Israel-Hamas cease fire talks, but there are still substantive disagreements. Both Haaretz reports that Hamas has agreed to the current proposal, but only if Israel withdraws from Gaza. Of course Netanyahu won’t agree to that.
Efforts have intensified to secure a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages, with talks resuming in Cairo on Saturday.
Hamas said its delegation was travelling in a “positive spirit” after studying the latest truce proposal.
“We are determined to secure an agreement in a way that fulfils Palestinians’ demands,” it said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “taking the ceasefire should be a no-brainer” for the militant group.
Hamas’s negotiators have returned to the Egyptian capital to resume long-running talks – brokered by Egypt and Qatar – that would temporarily pause Israel’s offensive in Gaza in return for freeing hostages.
In a statement released last night, Hamas said it wanted to “mature” the agreement on the table, which suggests there are areas where the two sides still disagree.
The main issue appears to involve whether the ceasefire deal would be permanent or temporary.
Hamas is insisting any deal makes a specific commitment towards an end to the war, but Israel is reluctant to agree while the group remains active in Gaza. It’s thought the wording being discussed involves a 40-day pause in fighting while hostages are released, and the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted there will be a fresh military ground operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, even if a deal is agreed. Israeli media reported on Saturday that his position remained unchanged despite the latest round of talks.
But the US – Israel’s biggest diplomatic and military ally – is reluctant to back a new offensive that could cause significant civilian casualties, and has insisted on seeing a plan to protect displaced Palestinians first. An estimated 1.4 million people have taken shelter in Rafah after fleeing the fighting in the northern and central areas of the strip.
I certainly hope so. IMHO, Biden should cut off weapons support to Israel unless they start paying attention to his recommendations.
Scores of lawmakers from U.S. President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party told him on Friday that they believe there is sufficient evidence to show that Israel has violated U.S. law by restricting humanitarian aid flows into war-stricken Gaza.
A letter to Biden signed by 86 House of Representatives Democrats said Israel’s aid restrictions “call into question” its assurances that it was complying with a U.S. Foreign Assistance Act provision requiring recipients of U.S.-funded arms to uphold international humanitarian law and allow free flows of U.S. assistance.
The White Cat, Franz Marc
Such written assurances were mandated by a national security memorandum that Biden issued in February after Democratic lawmakers began questioning if Israel was upholding international law in its Gaza operations.
The lawmakers said the Israeli government had resisted repeated U.S. requests to open enough sea and land routes for aid to Gaza, and cited reports that it failed to allow in enough food to avert famine, enforced “arbitrary restrictions” on aid and imposed an inspection system that impeded supplies.
“We expect the administration to ensure (Israel’s) compliance with existing law and to take all conceivable steps to prevent further humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza,” the lawmakers wrote.
Biden’s memorandum requires that Secretary of State Antony Blinken report to Congress by Wednesday on whether he finds credible Israel’s assurances that its use of U.S. arms adheres to international law.
At least four State Department bureaus advised Blinken last month that they found Israel’s assurances “neither credible nor reliable.”
The Democratic convention is in Chicago this year, and it’s looking like we could see a repeat of 1968, when Mayor Daley unleashed his storm troopers on Vietnam war protesters as the whole world watched. That ended with Richard Nixon finally getting into the White House. This year the results could be even worse.
As protests over the Israel-Gaza war sweep college campuses, pro-Palestinian activists are ramping up plans for a major show of force at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, increasingly worrying Democrats who fear the demonstrations could interfere with or overshadow their efforts to project unity ahead of the November election.
If unruly protests unfold during the four days of the convention on Aug. 19-22 — especially if they feature inflammatory rhetoric, property damage or police intervention — they could strike at the heart of the Democratic message that President Biden represents competent and stable leadership, while presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump is an agent of chaos and confusion.
William Daley, a native Chicagoan who co-chaired the 1996 Democratic convention in the city and later served as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, said he has heard more angst in recent days from fellow Democrats about the scenes that might unfold at this year’s party gathering. The convention, with more than 4,500 delegates set to formally nominate Biden for president, will serve as a starting gun for the final sprint to Election Day on Nov. 5.
“This last week has taken the demonstrations to a different level,” Daley said. “It portends that you have the potential for big demonstrations. Whether they get violent — that’s more imaginable today than it was a year ago.”
Still, Daley, who attended the 1968 convention in Chicago with his father, then-Mayor Richard J. Daley, strenuously pushed back against comparisons to that notoriously violent event, saying the country is not facing the same kind of angry, anarchic violence. In 1968, the streets of Chicago were engulfed in riots and bloodshed, prompting the activation of the National Guard, as the convention nominated Hubert H. Humphrey just months after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
“To analogize what’s going on in the country today with 1968 is ridiculous,” Daley said. “Only people who weren’t alive in ’68 have that idiotic perception.”
He’s right about that, but there are lot of people now who don’t remember 1968. Of course in those days, college students actually had skin in the game–they were in danger of being drafted and sent to Vietnam.
I’ll end with some Abortion rights stories. There is good news and bad news.
Two more states with near-total abortion bans are poised to have citizen-sponsored measures on the ballot this year that would allow voters to reverse those bans by establishing a right to abortion in their state constitutions.
Sleeping Cat, by Kawanabe Kyosai
On Friday, a coalition of abortion rights groups in Missouri turned in 380,159 signatures to put the amendment on the ballot, more than double the 172,000 signatures required by law. The Missouri organizers’ announcement followed a petition drive in South Dakota that announced on Wednesday that it, too, had turned in many more signatures than required for a ballot amendment there.
Both groups are hoping to build on the momentum of other states where abortion rights supporters have prevailed in seven out of seven ballot measures in the two years since the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had established a constitutional right to abortion for nearly five decades.
Groups in about 10 other states have secured spots on the ballot for abortion rights measures or are collecting signatures to do so. Those include Arizona and Nevada, swing states where Democrats are hoping that voters who are newly energized around abortion rights will help President Biden win re-election.
Florida’s six-week abortion ban officially went into effect this week. But another bill also intended to lower the number of abortions could soon quietly become law as well.
An expansion of Florida’s “Safe Haven” policy — which decriminalizes surrendering unwanted infants, as long as they are given up to specific agencies like hospitals, fire stations and EMS services — faces just one more hurdle to becoming law. It has long been a piece of legislation in the toolbox of anti-abortion supporters who view legal infant surrenders as a way to encourage more women to carry their pregnancies to term.
The bill’s fate still hangs in the balance, because it has yet to be sent to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk by legislative leaders. The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the bill, but a sponsor of the bill, state Rep. Mike Beltran, said he doesn’t anticipate a veto.
But unlike many proposals considered alongside outright abortion bans — like “fetal personhood” or funding decisions — the Safe Haven bill in Florida attracted bipartisan support during the legislative session earlier this year. It’s found success with anti-abortion lawmakers supporting it in hopes of further reducing abortions, and with frustrated pro-abortion rights lawmakers who view it as a triage to help a desperate person with no other options.
“This was a way of doing something that was pro-life without making the left agitated,” Beltran, a Republican from Apollo Beach, said in an interview. “It was a good way to find common ground on the life issue when options were more limited.”
State law currently allows for a surrender up to 7 days after the child was born. This bill would more than quadruple the amount of time to 30 days and also authorize 911 responders to arrange an infant drop-off location in case the child’s guardian has no transportation to an agency’s site.
You’d have to be insane or just plain evil to believe that it would be less painful to dump a baby in a box at the fire department than to have an abortion early in a pregnancy.
As soon as Collin Davis found out his ex-partner was planning to travel to Colorado to have an abortion in late February, the Texas man retained a high-powered antiabortion attorney — who court records show immediately issued a legal threat.
Young Cat Sleeping, by Mabel Wellington Jack
If the woman proceeded with the abortion, even in a state where the procedure remains legal, Davis would seek a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the abortion and “pursue wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child,” the lawyer wrote in a letter, according to records.
Now, Davis has disclosed his former partner’s abortion to a state district court in Texas, asking for the power to investigate what his lawyer characterizes as potentially illegal activity in a state where almost all abortions are banned.
The previously unreported petition was submitted under an unusual legal mechanism often used in Texas to investigate suspected illegal actions before a lawsuit is filed. The petition claims Davis could sue either under the state’s wrongful-death statute or the novel Texas law known as Senate Bill 8 that allows private citizens to file suit against anyone who “aids or abets” an illegal abortion.
The decision to target an abortion that occurred outside of Texas represents a potential new strategy by antiabortion activists to achieve a goal many in the movement have been working toward since Roe v. Wade was overturned: stopping women from traveling out of state to end their pregnancies. Crossing state lines for abortion care remains legal nationwide.
The case also illustrates the role that men who disapprove of their partners’ decisions could play in surfacing future cases that may violate abortion bans — either by filing their own civil lawsuits or by reporting the abortions to law enforcement.
Sickening.
That’s it for me today. Have a great weekend, Sky Dancers!!
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“You know, when the jury is seated, Trump won’t be able to contain himself.” John Buss, @Repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
We’ve had incredibly stormy weather down here this week. Almost all the streets a few blocks downhill from me flooded, and Uptown became a surfing safari. Even City Hall was closed for the day. The winds were wild. A tornado severely damaged a small city on the North Shore close to the Mississippi Border. Fortunately, I had just bought groceries, and the electricity stayed on. It was a good week to just read a book in many ways. This weekend is the quiet before the next storm. It’s a named storm like many that go into the history books. It’s officially entitled “The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump.” We all know it as the Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case.
Former President Donald Trump will go on trial in Manhattan next week as he faces felony charges for falsifying bank records—the first of his criminal cases to go to trial—which will mark the culmination of a yearslong saga stemming from his alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels and a “hush money” payment made during his 2016 campaign to keep her quiet.
Kristal did not want to hear any news yesterday afternoon. I imagine a lot of us are Kristal.
This is a historical trial. He’s the first Former President to be criminally indicted. Trump faces 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in the first degree. These charges carry a maximum sentence of 136 years if convicted on all counts. Since Trump is a criminal defendant on parole, he must attend court daily. Unless they can sedate him with tranquilizers that would stun an elephant, I doubt he can hold it together. You see, my friend John agrees with that assessment. The list of witnesses is trickling out through the media. This is from MSNBC.
NBC News obtained a list of potential witnesses for the prosecution in Trump’s hush money trial. The list includes Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, Michael Cohen, and Hope Hicks among other Trump associates.
Politico has a long story today about Michael Cohen and his testimony next week. “Michael Cohen on the Trump Trial: Prepare To Be Surprised. Trump’s former attorney on the hush money trial, how he’s preparing for life as the key witness and who he expects Trump will choose as a 2024 running mate.” Ryan Lizza interviewed Cohen, which is the central part of the article.
Trump’s defense is going to be to paint you as an untrustworthy witness. He’s going to cite your guilty plea for lying to Congress, and the fact that the Justice Department declined to offer you a cooperation deal because prosecutors thought you lied to them. And he’ll say you’re out for revenge and that you have a financial incentive to see him convicted. So how do you defend yourself from those accusations?
I wish that when people state that “you lied to Congress,” that you’d do me the courtesy — do yourself the courtesy — of finishing the sentence. What is the sentence? That I had done that, really, for the benefit of Donald J. Trump. And that lie centered around the number of times that I had stated that I spoke to Donald about the failed Trump Tower Moscow real estate project — in conjunction with other lawyers Jay Sekulow, Abbe Lowell, Ty Cobb, with other individuals like Alan Garten or Ivanka [Trump] and Jared [Kushner]. Everybody worked on that statement. I was just the fool who went ahead and read it into the record and submitted it. But what benefit did I have in terms of saying three times versus 10? That’s the lie: That I claimed to have spoken to Donald three times about the failed Trump Tower Moscow real estate project, when the true answer was 10.
I appreciate you putting it in context. With these other accusations, is that the way you approach it: You put those things in context for the jury so that they understand them, and what sounds like a dramatic allegation can be defanged?
Absolutely. There is a ton of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation that has been put out there by Trump and acolytes literally since the Steele dossier. We all know that the Steele dossier was completely inaccurate, as it related to me. I don’t even talk about any of the other allegations raised in that garbage document.
Hey, look what I found on the side of the street while walking Temple. You’d think gold spray paint and a Sharpie signature would last longer!
Can you imagine the energy in that courtroom when he takes the stand, and Trump has to just sit there? So, most of us know the basis of this story and have been pummeled by it for such a long time. I might as well go to that level since so many of these concerns are about killing tabloid stories. This is the first time I’ve seen someone get the dirt on Melania’s reaction to the allegations. This is from HuffPo. It’s reported by Ed Mazza. “Ex-Aide Reveals What ‘Humiliated’ Melania Trump Did After Stormy Daniels News. Stephanie Grisham also explained why the ex-president is probably “quite worried” about his wife right now.”
A former aide to Melania Trump said former President Donald Trump’s looming trial in the Stormy Daniels hush money case could be causing some stress in their marriage.
“I spent a ton of time with her when the news was breaking about Stormy Daniels,” Stephanie Grisham said on CNN on Wednesday. “And she didn’t take it lightly at all.”
Daniels claimed to have had an affair with Trump from 2006-2007, while Melania Trump was caring for the couple’s then-infant child. Grisham said separate allegations of an affair with Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal also led to tensions in the White House.
“We went to the State of the Union separately. She refused to walk out to Marine One with him because she didn’t want to be like Hillary Clinton and standing by her man,” said Grisham, who was chief of staff to the then-first lady before becoming White House press secretary under Donald Trump. “She’s a very independent and strong woman.”
She said she believed Melania Trump would “push” her husband to go on the witness stand during the hush money trial, which is set to begin next week, to defend himself in public.
“This is very, very embarrassing for her. It’s humiliating for her,” she said. “And I can guarantee you that she’s not happy right now and that he’s quite worried about that.”
You may watch the video here on CNN. Frankly, I just couldn’t get past the Botox lips. While this is all historical, sensational, and tacky, I still have this question. The analysis is also from Politico. It’s provided by James Romoser. “How Donald Trump Gets Special Treatment in the Legal System. The former president rails against a “two-tiered system of justice.” But he’s the one benefiting from it.” This is what my Inquiring Mind wants to know.
A firebrand politician named Donald is about to stand trial. Just a few days before jury selection, he goes on TV to slam the charges as baseless and biased.
“The FBI and the Justice Department,” he insists, have “targeted” their political opponents in a burst of partisan persecution.
The rhetoric sounds familiar, but this is not a story about Donald Trump. It’s about a man named Don Hill, a former Dallas City Council member who was facing bribery charges 15 years ago.
The telltale clue that this isn’t about Trump is what happened next: The judge, upset by the attempt to taint the jury pool, slapped the politician-turned-defendant with criminal contempt and ultimately sentenced him to 30 days in jail for violating a gag order.
Today, Trump routinely spouts invective far more inflammatory than anything Hill said. He denigrates prosecutors. He lies about his cases. He vilifies thejudges overseeing them — and then vilifies their wives and daughters, too. Yet Trump has never faced the swift repercussions that were imposed on Hill — and are routinely imposed on other defendants in America.
Instead, Trump gets special treatment.
“I can’t imagine any other defendant posting on social media about a judge’s family and not being very quickly incarcerated,” said Russell Gold, a law professor at the University of Alabama.
As Trump prepares to begin his first criminal trial on Monday in New York, the tolerance of his tirades is perhaps the most glaring sign of the judicial system’s Trump exceptionalism. But it’s far from the only example. Over the past year, in ways large and small, in criminal cases and civil ones, Trump has consistently been given more freedom and more privileges than virtually any other defendant in his shoes.
Some judges in Trump’s cases may have afforded him unique leeway in hopes of avoiding any appearance that they are meddling in the 2024 campaign. Indeed, Trump’s role as a presidential candidate — one who is always eager to play the martyr — complicates the task of prosecutors and judges eager to lower the temperature of the proceedings. Penalizing Trump before he’s ever convicted of anything could stir a backlash and trigger more heat, not less.
Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon
The central question to every discussion I have with anybody concerning Trump and his trial antics is, How The FUCK does this guy get away with it? The interesting analysis this week that Kristal avoided was the comparison between OJ Simpson’s epic trial and Trump’s endless trials. The answer is, “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” It took me a while to determine the resounding difference between my black and white colleagues’ reactions to the trial verdict as we watched its announcement in our corporate lawyer’s office. It was, for once, the system did to a rich black guy (football star, football announcer, and movie star) what they always do for rich and famous white men. OJ had an excellent lawyer and the prosecutors weren’t up to the challenge.
The jury saw the opportunity to make a point. Johnny Cochrane was a well-paid and extremely brilliant lawyer who knew how to do his job. I can’t say Donald will have that exact representation. Kaitlin Collins at CNN has this story. “Trump attorney who became a crucial witness against him has departed legal team.” OJ eventually got caught doing more crimes and did time. Will one of these criminal suits put this asshole in jail please?
More from Romoser.
But even in the civil fraud case — which by all accounts was a devastating loss for Trump and his businesses — there were nonetheless signs of special deference. Justice Arthur Engoron, who oversaw the trial, was extraordinarily tolerant of Trump’s courtroom antics and outbursts. During a day of testimony in November, Trump essentially converted the witness box into a campaign stump — a privilege few other witnesses would receive.
Engoron ultimately issued the nearly half-billion-dollar penalty, and Trump seemed headed toward a financial crisis when he was unable to secure a bond to stave off the immediate enforcement of the verdict.
But after Trump complained to a New York appeals court, a panel of judges intervened with an unexpected 11th-hour reprieve, issuing a terse, unexplained order that sharply reduced the bond amount that Trump had to post while he appeals the verdict. The decision ensured that Trump wouldn’t have to start selling off assets and that James couldn’t start seizing them.
The American legal system is currently undergoing a Trump-induced stress test, one that will only intensify when Trump’s Manhattan trial begins on Monday.
Each day, during breaks in trial, he’ll stand in the hallway outside the courtroom and denounce the charges. He’ll continue to test the bounds of the gag order that the judge in the case, Justice Juan Merchan, recently imposed. He may even mutter “witch hunt” within earshot of jurors, as he’s done before.
Voters will be watching. So will the prosecutors in his other criminal cases — all of whom are trying, but so far failing, to bring him to trial before Election Day. Those prosecutors have left unsaid the reason why the timing matters so much, but everyone involved knows it: If Trump is elected president again, all pending criminal cases will stop in their tracks.
This is an extremely long article, but it is definitely worth reading. It capsulizes everything most of us have been wondering about these long Trump-filled years. One more Trump Trial note, and I’m off for the weekend. This is from The Daily Beast and reported by Jose Pagliery. “Trump Bond’s Cayman Connection ‘Stinks to High Heaven.’ The company that saved Donald Trump with a $175 million bank fraud bond is playing an insurance game that has experts questioning whether New York will ever see the money.”
When the questionably leveraged company that rescued Donald Trump with a last-minute $175 million court bond insured itself with its own parent company, it raised concerns about how the company was playing with its finances.
But now, as even more details come out about that parent company—particularly that it’s based in the Cayman Islands, a notorious tax haven—the concerns are just piling up.
Former industry regulators and investigators told The Daily Beast that Knight Specialty Insurance Company being financially backed by a firm based in the Cayman Islands should raise eyebrows at the New York AG’s office—particularly because companies frequently organize in the Cayman Islands not just to avoid taxes, but also to minimize visibility into its business practices, avoid more stringent U.S. regulations, and make liability harder should things go wrong.
All of those concerns could come into play if the New York Attorney General has to chase the company down for the money Trump currently owes for committing bank fraud.
“This just stinks to high heaven,” said Dave Jones, who oversaw the nation’s largest insurance market as California’s insurance commissioner for seven years until 2018.
“Taken in its totality, this dog does not hunt. Along every step of the way, this purported bond is problematic. It’s just one issue after another that calls into question whether this bond could ever possibly satisfy the judgment,” said Jones, who’s now the director of the Climate Risk Initiative at University of California Berkeley.
Former regulators described a potential worst-case scenario: Trump loses his bank fraud case on appeal and refuses to pay, the insurance company can’t actually come up with the money, and the New York Attorney General runs into problems chasing after a second company that never explicitly promised to pay this particular court judgment—and is based in a little-regulated foreign jurisdiction in the Caribbean Sea.
“The risk here is the company will not have the liquidity to pay on the bond when demanded, and the beneficiary of this bond, the New York AG, may not have a direct claim against the reinsurer,” said former New York Department of Financial Services superintendent Maria Vullo. “That the reinsurer is in the Cayman Islands compounds this issue as it is a non-U.S. jurisdiction, which makes collection very difficult.”
These rich assholes usually do not come by their money with ethical businesses. So, why do we expect them to play by the book? Here’s another one that should be thrown in jail. “Leo rejects Senate subpoena from panel probing gifts to Supreme Court justices. The conservative judicial activist called the move ‘politically motivated,’ and the committee chair said Leo had left them ‘no other choice’ but to move forward with the compulsory process.” This is from Washington Postwriter Tobi Raji.
The Senate Judiciary Committee sent a subpoena Thursday to conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo as part of a months-long inquiry into undisclosed gifts to Supreme Court justices and he promptly rejected it, calling the move “politically motivated.”
“I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and the left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition,” Leo said of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the committee’s chairman, in a statement to The Washington Post.
The committee voted along party lines on Nov. 30 to authorize subpoenas for Leo and Texas billionaire Harlan Crow following reports that Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomasand Samuel A. Alito Jr. accepted — and did not disclose — free luxury travel and gifts from Crow, Leo and conservative donor Robin Arkley II.
Crow did not receive a subpoena Thursday, his spokesman Michael Zona told The Post.
In a statement to The Post, Durbin said sending a subpoena to Leo was a necessary step.
“Since July 2023, Leonard Leo has responded to the legitimate oversight requests of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a blanket refusal to cooperate,” Durbin said. “His outright defiance left the Committee with no other choice but to move forward with compulsory process. For that reason, I have issued a subpoena to Mr. Leo.”
“Mr. Leo has played a central role in the ethics crisis plaguing the Supreme Court and, unlike the other recipients of information requests in this matter, he has done nothing but stonewall the Committee. This subpoena is a direct result of Mr. Leo’s own actions and choices,” Durbin continued.
First, they eliminate campaign finance law, and then the dark money warps the system. Welcome to the hell wrought by Leonard Leo and his Federalist Society buddies.
Walter Chandoha plays with one of his subjects at his home studio in 1955.
Today I’m featuring cat photos by Walter Chandoha. Chandoha was a famous photographer of animals–mostly cats. You can read about him and see more photos in this 2019 New York Times obituary by Richard Sandomir: Walter Chandoha, Photographer Whose Specialty Was Cats, Dies at 98.
Taking pictures of cats soon began to look like a more fulfilling career path than the one in advertising that Mr. Chandoha had planned while attending New York University, after serving in World War II. So, after graduating, he turned to freelance photography for a living — and, by the mid-1950s, he had begun a long period as the dominant commercial cat photographer of his era.
“Walter Chandoha’s cat models, shown on this page, must be alert, graceful and beautiful,” read a newspaper ad in 1956 for a cat food brand that featured his photos. “To keep them that way, Mr. Chandoha feeds them Puss ‘n Boots because Puss ‘n Boots is good nutrition.”
On a winter’s evening in 1949, Walter Chandoha was walking to his three-room apartment in Astoria, Queens, when he spotted an abandoned gray kitten shivering in the snow. He put it in a pocket of his Army coat and brought it home to his wife, Maria.
The kitten’s antics — racing through the apartment each night as if possessed, shadowboxing with his image in a mirror — inspired the couple to name him Loco. Mr. Chandoha (pronounced shan-DOE-uh) was moved to photograph Loco and quickly sold the pictures to newspapers and magazines around the world.
By the time he died, on Jan. 11, Mr. Chandoha had taken some 90,000 cat photos, nearly all before cats had become viral darlings of social media. He was 98.
Now, on to the day’s news:
It’s becoming very clear that the courts are not going to protect us from a possible Trump dictatorship. Thank goodness for E. Jean Carroll and NY AG Letitia James. At least two New York courts have hit Trump where it hurts–his finances. But the two federal cases seem stalled and the Georgia case just took a bit hit. Those three prosecutions of Trump are unlikely to take place before the election now. We are going to have to defeat him at the ballot box.
Judge Scott McAfee has ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on the case against Donald Trump in that jurisdiction, provided that Nathan Wade, the prosecutor on the case with whom she had a relationship, withdraws. I guess we count that a win, although to be honest, Willis has so damaged herself by her colossally terrible judgment that it probably would have been better if she were out of the picture.
Cats play together in 1962.
The other problem with Willis’s scandal is how it slowed the case down, giving Trump’s lawyers a chance to make this not about the defendant but about her—and another chance to delay, delay, delay.
Meanwhile, Thursday, down in Florida, we saw Trumpy Judge Aileen Cannon issue yet another ruling in the classified documents case that helps Trump. She didn’t support Trump’s lawyers’ motion to dismiss the case, but she kicked the can down the road in a way that’s very helpful to Trump. MSNBC analyst Andrew Weissmann even called it the “worst possible outcome” for the government. “If the judge had simply said, ‘I agree with Donald Trump, and I find that this is vague, and I’m dismissing it,’ the government could have appealed it to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, as they have done twice before and won twice before,” Weissmann said. “But she also did not want to rule in favor of the government. So what she did is said, ‘Why don’t you bring this up later? I think there’s some real issues here.’”
Also this week, in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case against Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg shocked us all by asking for a 30-day delay in the trial, which was scheduled to start March 25. Trump’s lawyers had requested a 90-day delay. Bragg conceded that some delay was appropriate.
Why? It looks like it’s the fault of federal prosecutors. Bragg’s office requested certain documents a while ago from the Southern District of New York, and it shared them with Trump’s lawyers during the discovery process. Trump’s lawyers suspected there was more, especially relating to Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, so they subpoenaed the SDNY. That happened in January. It was only earlier this month that the Southern District turned over all the documents….
It’s more than fair to ask: Why did the Southern District take so long to produce these documents? And we must also ask this: Did Merrick Garland know his prosecutors were taking so long to hand over documents, and thus playing into Trump’s hands? And if he knew, did he do anything about it?
And then there’s the most significant case of all–the one about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Finally, let’s recall the status of the fourth criminal case against Trump, the biggest one, at least to my mind—the January 6 insurrection case. On that one, we’re basically waiting on the Supreme Court, which announced on February 28 that it would hear arguments in Trump’s claim of complete immunity but set the argument date for April 25. The high court could easily take another month—or even two—to hand down its decision after that, meaning that this crucial trial, about whether a sitting president initiated an insurrection against the government of the United States, may not happen before Election Day.
How in the world did all this happen? A few weeks ago, it looked like the wheels of justice were finally turning, catching up on a man who has flouted and broken laws not only during his presidency but for his entire adult life,
going back to when he and his father wouldn’t rent apartments to Black people in Queens. There was the judgment in the E. Jean Carroll case. And then the whopping penalty in the New York attorney general’s case against the Trump Organization.
But this week, it looks like everything is falling apart.
An American shorthair in 1966.
We can’t count on the courts. They move slowly and they favor the rich and powerful. We can’t count on the media either. They seem to favor another Trump presidency because the bosses believe the insanity and chaos would be good for their bottom line.
CNN on the Fani Willis case:
Another problem comes from MAGA threats. MSBNC’s Kyle Griffin wrote on Twitter that
“Judge Scott McAfee had written his order on Willis and Wade early last week, according to NBC News, but because he had been receiving threats, he waited until today to make it public in order to allow for proper security to be in place for him and his family.”
The trial in the New York hush money case against former President Donald Trump has been delayed until the middle of April, Judge Juan Merchan ruled Friday.
Merchan said the trial — originally scheduled to begin March 25 — would be pushed back 30 days from Friday.
He also scheduled a hearing for the trial’s initial start date, to discuss a motion filed by Trump’s attorneys regarding document production in the case.
Merchan said he will set a new trial date “if necessary” when he rules on that motion, meaning it’s possible the trial proceedings could be delayed beyond the middle of next month.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had previously said he would support the trial being delayed at least 30 days, into late April. Trump’s legal team requested that it be postponed 90 days.
Bragg said Thursday that Trump’s request to delay the trial was the result of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan providing over 100,000 pages of discovery, which Bragg said were “largely irrelevant to the subject matter of this case.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office provided an additional 15,000 pages of discovery on Friday, which Bragg’s office said were also “likely to be unrelated to the subject matter of this case.”
The documents relate to Michael Cohen’s guilty plea in 2018 to numerous criminal charges, including making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings with Russia and failing to report millions of dollars in income.
Echoing MIchael Tomasky, WTF is going on with the Southern District and the DOJ. Are there MAGA people still in place that are helping Trump delay justice?
This 1955 photo is one of Walter Chandoha’s most famous shots. “My daughter Paula and the kitten both ‘smiled’ for the camera at the same time. … But the cat’s not smiling, he’s meowing.”
Speaking of the rich and powerful, why is Elon Musk still getting federal contracts after his support for Nazis and white supremacists and his support for Russia’s war against Ukraine?
SpaceX is building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a classified contract with a U.S. intelligence agency, five sources familiar with the program said, demonstrating deepening ties between billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company and national security agencies.
The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an intelligence agency that manages spy satellites, the sources said.
The plans show the extent of SpaceX’s involvement in U.S. intelligence and military projects and illustrate a deeper Pentagon investment into vast, low-Earth orbiting satellite systems aimed at supporting ground forces.
If successful, the sources said the program would significantly advance the ability of the U.S. government and military to quickly spot potential targets almost anywhere on the globe.
The contract signals growing trust by the intelligence establishment of a company whose owner has clashed with the Biden administration and sparked controversy, opens new tab over the use of Starlink satellite connectivity in the Ukraine war, the sources said.
The Wall Street Journal reported, opens new tab in February the existence of a $1.8 billion classified Starshield contract with an unknown intelligence agency without detailing the purposes of the program.
Reuters reporting discloses for the first time that the SpaceX contract is for a powerful new spy system with hundreds of satellites bearing Earth-imaging capabilities that can operate as a swarm in low orbits, and that the spy agency that Musk’s company is working with is the NRO.
Will Musk have access to this program, as he does with Starlink? How do we know he won’t share information with Russia? Am I an idiot to ask that?
Chandoha’s backlighting technique dramatizes the defensive posture of a kitten seeing a dog in 1957.
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald J. Trump, confirmed on Friday that he was closing in on major real estate deals in Albania and Serbia, the latest example of the former president’s family doing business abroad even as Mr. Trump seeks to return to the White House.
Mr. Kushner’s plans in the Balkans appear to have come about in part through relationships built while Mr. Trump was in office. Mr. Kushner, who was a senior White House official, said he had been working on the deals with Richard Grenell, who served briefly as acting director of national intelligence under Mr. Trump and also as ambassador to Germany and special envoy to the Balkans.
One of the proposed projects would be the development of an island off the coast of Albania into a luxury tourist destination.
A second — with a planned luxury hotel and 1,500 residential units and a museum — is in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, at the site of the long-vacant former headquarters of the Yugoslav Army destroyed in 1999 by the NATO bombings, according to a member of Parliament in Serbia and Mr. Kushner’s company.
These first two projects both involve land now controlled by the governments, meaning a deal would have to be finalized with foreign governments.
A third project, also in Albania, would be built on the Zvërnec peninsula, a 1,000-acre coastal area in the south of Albania that is part of the resort community known as Vlorë, where several hotels and hundreds of villas would be built, according to the plan.
Mr. Kushner’s participation would be through his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which has $2 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, among other foreign investors. In a statement, an official with Affinity Partners said it had not been determined whether the Saudi funds might be a part of any project Mr. Kushner is considering in the Balkans.
How does Kushner get away with this? Why aren’t Congressional Democrats investigating him, even if the DOJ is too busy or corrupt? I don’t get it.
Former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (who was also a senior adviser in his White House) has been ramping up his overseas business dealings undeterred by the optics of doing so in the midst of his father-in-law’s presidential campaign.
A Friday report in the New York Times scrutinized Kushner’s real estate deals in Balkan countries of Albania and Serbia, in which he stands to reap significant financial benefits once they’re completed. The Times reported that Kushner has been working with Richard Grenell, who was Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence who also served as German ambassador and a special envoy to the Balkans.
An American shorthair squeezes into a glass in 1960.
Notably, two of the three projects Kushner is aiming to finalize this year involve the transfer of land currently owned by Albania and Serbia, meaning a member of the president’s immediate family (Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka) stands to receive money directly from foreign governments. According to the Times, the first project involves redeveloping an island off the Albanian coast into a high-end luxury resort, and the second would be a 1,500-unit apartment building, museum and luxury hotel in the Serbian capital city of Belgrade. The third — which doesn’t involve a direct land acquisition from a foreign government — is a planned resort development in coastal southern Albania.
Kushner has been capitalizing on his foreign connections since leaving the White House. After Kushner’s departure became official, he launched his investment firm, Affinity Partners, which received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as well as from other foreign business interests in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
The former president’s son-in-law worked closely with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman while he was in the White House, as Trump frequently put him in the driver’s seat in negotiations with Middle Eastern countries. In 2018, bin-Salman was accused of playing a direct role in the dismemberment and murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (President Joe Biden made it clear in 2022 that the Saudi crown prince was immune from any legal action in relation to Khashoggi’s assassination)….
Meanwhile, Republicans continue to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter, for his own foreign business deals even as Kushner plows ahead in the Balkans. House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) both maintain that the president improperly influenced foreign governments in his son’s favor, though their respective investigations have yet to yield any smoking gun evidence.
Over 44 painstakingly scripted minutes on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, spoke of his Jewish identity, his love for the State of Israel, his horror at the wanton slaughter of Israelis on Oct. 7 and his views on the apportionment of blame for the carnage in Gaza, saying that it first and foremost lay with the terrorists of Hamas.
Then Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat and the highest-ranking elected Jew in American history, said Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was an impediment to peace, and called for new elections in the world’s only Jewish state.
The opposition was not nearly so painstaking.
Within minutes, the House Republican leadership demanded an apology. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, declared: “Make no mistake — the Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem. It has an anti-Israel problem.” And the Republican Jewish Coalition proclaimed that “the most powerful Democrat in Congress knifed the Jewish state in the back.”
Walter Chandoha, 1962
The months that have followed the slaughter of Oct. 7 and the ensuing, calamitously deadly war in Gaza have been excruciating for American Jews, caught between a tradition of liberalism that has dominated much of Jewish politics and an anti-Israel response from the political left that has left many feeling isolated and, at times, persecuted.
But Mr. Schumer’s speech was potentially a watershed moment in a much longer political process, pursued initially by Republicans but joined recently by left-wing Democrats — to turn Israel into a partisan issue. Republicans, as they see it, would be the party of Israeli supporters. Democrats, as the rising left would have it, would be the party of Palestine
At the root of that divide is a fundamental question: Is support for the Jewish State separable from the support of Israel’s democratically elected government? For years, Republicans have said no. Increasingly, the Democratic left agrees but from a different perspective: Israel is bad, regardless of who governs it.
“The pressure — electoral, social, cultural — on American Jews right now to declare themselves” on the justice of the war in Gaza and on the legitimacy of the Israeli prime minister has been “unrelenting, unforgiving and sometimes downright vicious,” said David Wolpe, a prominent rabbi in Los Angeles and a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.
Mr. Schumer’s speech and the ensuing partisan response have made that pressure even more intense.
“It’s impossible to understate the seismic event this was,” said Matthew Brooks, the longtime chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who made it clear that the group would use the speech to drive Jewish voters to the G.O.P.
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday said he “cannot in good conscience” endorse presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, a stunning repudiation of his former running mate and the president he served with.
“Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years. That’s why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign,” Pence said on Fox News.
A cat cozies up to a dog, 1968
The former vice president, after ending his own presidential bid in October, withheld an endorsement in the 2024 Republican primary, but he previously vowed to back the eventual GOP nominee. Trump had said after Pence dropped out that his former vice president should endorse him, saying, “I chose him, made him vice president. But … people in politics can be very disloyal.”
While he said he is “incredibly proud” of the record of the Trump-Pence administration, Pence argued that the former president has walked away from conservative issues, pointing to Trump’s stance on abortion and US national debt and his reversal on TikTok.
“During my presidential campaign, I made it clear there were profound differences between me and President Trump on a range of issues. And not just our difference on my constitutional duties that I exercised January 6th,” Pence said on “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
“As I have watched his candidacy unfold, I’ve seen him walking away from our commitment to confronting the national debt. I’ve seen him starting to shy away from a commitment to the sanctity of human life. And this last week, his reversal on getting tough on China and supporting our administration’s efforts to force a sale of ByteDance’s TikTok,” he added.
Many other former members of Trump’s administration have also said they won’t vote for him. Yesterday Ron Filipkowski posted this list on Twitter:
The Republican 43rd President won’t endorse Trump.
Alabama Republican U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville had a stark warning for the approximately 100 Utah GOP delegates who crowded into a Bluffdale warehouse to hear him speak on Friday afternoon: Malevolent supernatural forces are working to undermine America.
“I’ve traveled all over the country — all 50 states — I’ve been in good places and bad places. The one thing I saw, we are losing our kids to a satanic cult,” Tuberville, who traveled to Utah to campaign for GOP U.S. Senate candidate Trent Staggs, warned.
The former college football coach and ardent Donald Trump supporter gave his full endorsement to Staggs, one of 11 Republicans vying for the GOP nomination to succeed Sen. Mitt Romney in Washington.
Brandishing an upside-down pocket Constitution, Tuberville said the 2024 election wasn’t Republican vs. Democrat but “anti-American vs. American.”
“We’ve lost our moral values across the country. We’ve got to get back to the Constitution, and we have got to get back to the Bible. We’ve got to get God back in our country,” Tuberville said. “There’s not one Democrat that can tell you they stand up for God.”
What exactly is he talking about? Is he saying the Democratic Party is a satanic cult or is he referring to the Mormon Church? Probably the former, I know.
Republican delegates ate it up as he careened from anti-transgender statements to discussion of immigration and chaos at the border to a prediction left-wing mobs are set to wreak chaos across the country this summer to help Joe Biden win reelection.
Tuberville even went so far as to claim the federal government has been corrupted to go after conservatives instead of criminals, which was seemingly an indirect reference to the hundreds of Trump supporters who were charged after attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We’ve lost our Department of Justice. In most of the country, we don’t have a criminal justice system anymore. Nobody goes to jail, unless you’re an innocent person that really loves this country, then they’ll put you in jail,” Tuberville said. “We have never overcome a cult like we’re dealing with right now.”
The loudest boos from the GOP delegates on hand came when Tuberville and Staggs took swipes at Sen. Mitt Romney, who was the party’s presidential nominee just a dozen years ago.
What a wacko.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all are having a nice weekend!
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“The American people have a constitutional right to peacefully assemble,” Pence said, adding, “The frustration the American people feel about what they sense is a two-tiered justice system in this country, I think is well founded. But I believe that people understand that if they give voice to this – if this occurs on Tuesday, that they need to do so peaceful and in a lawful manner.”
We’re about to see a big test of is it really liberty and justice for all? If you talk to Black Americans, women with functional reproductive systems, poor people, religious minorities, and the GLBTQ+ Community, we have one justice system, and rich old white men have another. Ours treats us like property with a lower value than actual physical junk.
Is Tuesday really the day, and will Trumpsters strumpet themselves into an insurrectional frenzy again?
Over the weekend, Trump declared on social media that he expected to be indicted this week by a grand jury empaneled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He’s been attacking Bragg for some time now, but the idea that things were coming to a head triggered a new round of scattershot protests from the former president.
At the platform he helped launch, Trump posted a lengthy, all-caps attack on Bragg, accusing the D.A. of letting murderers “walk free” and insisting that Bragg had “presided over the biggest violent crime wave” in the city’s history, which is not even close to true. But he led with his core frustration: that Bragg is a “racist, [George] Soros backed D.A.”
This “Soros-backed” claim is not a new one from Trump or others on the right. Soros, a left-wing philanthropist, is a frequent target of the right in part because of his willingness to spend to influence politics and, in some quarters, because he is Jewish. The link to Bragg is by no means direct: Soros has backed a nonprofit called Color of Change that includes a political action committee committed to electing Black candidates. Bragg, who is Black, received the group’s backing.
Bragg being Black is also why Trump accuses him of being “racist.” Trump has done this before; he has accused New York Attorney General Letitia James of being racist, as well as Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis. The two characteristics all of those prosecutors have in common are that they are Black and are involved in investigations into Trump.
Now we lumber into familiar territory when we’re talking about Trump. Does he actually think they are racist against him, echoing concerns about discrimination against Whites that is common among White Republicans, or is he simply being opportunistic? The answer, as it usually is, is that it’s probably a mix of both. Trump is both a driver and consumer of right-wing rhetoric, and it’s hard to disentangle what he believes from what he believes to be useful.
The effect is the same. Trump is not simply hoping that his supporters view him as a victim of an overzealous prosecutorial effort, as he hoped they might during the Russia travails. He is, instead, amplifying the idea that these Black prosecutors are coming after him because he’s White. While most Trump supporters were not likely to face a probe by the FBI’s counterintelligence infrastructure, most are White. And many of them think that Whites are targets of discrimination as often as Black or Hispanic Americans.
Trump has weaponized the notion of “reverse racism.” Dean Obeidallah argues that “Trump is preparing his base for violence if he’s arrested–and over 50% of them are ready. Today’s GOP is what FASCISM looks like.” We’re on indictment and insurrection (once again) watch, and law enforcement around the country knows it. Check out the poll cited in this think piece.
… Trump and a majority of the GOP base see violence as an acceptable tool to acquire and retain political power. That is the essence of fascism. As Madeline Albright stated when discussing her book “Fascism: A Warning,” “Whatever else it is, fascism involves the endorsement and use of violence to achieve political goals and stay in power.”
This also means Trump’s efforts calls to his base to commit violence if he’s arrested will alarmingly find traction in an already radicalized GOP base. And Trump knows this. Indeed, no one knows Trump’s base better than him.
That is why Trump has been preparing his base to commit violence to avenge him if he’s charged with a crime for well over a year. In psychological terms, what Trump has been doing is called “priming,” which is defined as exposing a person to a stimulus—like words, images, etc.–that influences their behavior at a later date. In general, the person is unaware that have been guided or primed to this point. As experts note, “Priming can be used maliciously or to be manipulative.”
Trump began priming his base for such violence back in January 2022 when he told his supporters to take to the streets if any prosecutor, anywhere charges with him with a crime—not just the Manhattan District Attorney. That is when Trump told his fans at a rally in Texas: “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere.”
In September, Trump was on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show where he again repeated this message—but even more ominously. He told Hewitt that if he’s charged with crimes, “I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.” When asked by Hewitt what he meant by “problems,” Trump responded, “I think they’d have big problems. Big problems.”
Part of Trump’s “priming” of his base to commit violence when called upon was made more persuasive by Trump’s repeated promise to pardon the Jan 6 terrorists. It’s not a coincidence that the first time Trump publicly floated the idea of pardoning these traitors was in the same speech in January 2022 where he called on supporters to engage in massive protests. That is when Trump stated, “If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly — we will treat them fairly.” He added, “And if it requires pardons, then we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
I want to remind you that Republicans have been doing this since the Southern Strategy. I’d also like to remind everyone that Ronald Reagan’s justice department routinely used fascist pogroms and memes. It’s the master class in what’s going on now. Here’s a clip, and more if you follow the thread, from Frank Zappa on Cross-Fire in 1986 talking about the same playbook Republicans follow today. Donald Trump has just up-armored it. They bring military-style weapons to “peaceful demonstrations” now, which likely would include their MAGA congress goose-steppers too.
This is Frank Zappa on Crossfire in 1986. What he said then was true. It’s still true.
Look at what we face today. It’s coming from the same source, attempting to do the same thing with our books, schools, and people they don’t like. And their vehicle is the government. pic.twitter.com/Bgu6pL2JxY
— Christopher Tackett (cjtackett on 🧵) (@cjtackett) March 19, 2023
As far as we know, the Grand Jury in The Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case still hears from witnesses today. This is from the New York Times. “Trump Grand Jury Could Hear From Critic of Prosecution’s Star Witness. The grand jury considering the hush-money case against Mr. Trump might hear the testimony of lawyer Robert J. Costello, a critic of the ex-president’s fixer.”
A Manhattan grand jury that is expected to vote soon on whether to indict Donald J. Trump may hear testimony Monday attacking the prosecution’s star witness, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The testimony would come from a lawyer, Robert J. Costello, who would appear at the request of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the people said. Mr. Costello was once a legal adviser to Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, who has been a key witness for the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
Mr. Costello and Mr. Cohen had a falling out, and Mr. Costello would appear solely to undermine Mr. Cohen’s credibility, the people said.
Under New York law, a person who is expected to be indicted can request that a witness appear on his or her behalf. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have asked that Mr. Costello testify, but the final decision rests with the grand jury; it is unclear whether they have made a decision. The grand jury has been hearing evidence about the former president’s involvement in a hush money payment to a porn star.
Mr. Costello’s appearance would come soon after Mr. Cohen concluded his own grand jury testimony. If Mr. Costello testifies, there is also a chance that Mr. Cohen will be asked to return to rebut some of Mr. Costello’s assertions.
A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment, as did Mr. Costello. A lawyer for Mr. Cohen, Lanny J. Davis, declined to comment.
The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a Democrat, is expected to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump as soon as this week. There have been several signals that charges may be imminent: The prosecutors gave Mr. Trump an opportunity to testify, a right given to people who will soon face indictment. They have now questioned nearly every major player in the hush money saga in front of the grand jury.
Still, Trump is worried. This is from The Guardian. It was written by Hugo Lowell. “Trump in panic mode as he braces for likely charges in Stormy Daniels case. Manhattan district attorney expected to file criminal charges against ex-president for payment to adult film star in 2016.”
Donald Trump is bracing for his most legally perilous week since he left the White House, with the Manhattan district attorney likely to bring criminal charges against him over his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as he huddled this weekend to strategize his legal and political responses.
The former US president has posted in all-caps on his Truth Social platform that he expected to be “ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK” and called for his supporters to engage in protests – an ominous echo of his tweets urging protests in the lead-up to the January 6 US Capitol attack.
Trump’s post was nothing more than guesswork about when Alvin Bragg might bring charges, sources close to Trump said, after he saw media reporting that the district attorney’s office had contacted the US Secret Service about security in the event of an indictment.
The grand jury in New York hearing evidence in the resurrected 2016 hush money case is now expected to hear from one more witness on Monday, making it unlikely that an arrest would come the following day because it could take additional hours to draft charging papers.
Former President Donald Trump’s calls for protests ahead of his anticipated indictment in New York have generated mostly muted reactions from supporters, with even some of his most ardent loyalists dismissing the idea as a waste of time or a law enforcement trap.
The ambivalence raises questions about whether Trump, though a leading Republican contender in the 2024 presidential race who retains a devoted following, still has the power to mobilize far-right supporters the way he did more than two years ago before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It also suggests that the hundreds of arrests that followed the Capitol riot, not to mention the convictions and long prison sentences, may have dampened the desire for repeat mass unrest.
Still, law enforcement in New York is continuing to closely monitor online chatter warning of protests and violence if Trump is arrested, with threats varying in specificity and credibility, four officials told The Associated Press. Mainly posted online and in chat groups, the messages have included calls for armed protesters to block law enforcement officers and attempt to stop any potential arrest, the officials said.
Around the time the Manhattan courthouse complex opened Monday morning, a New York Police Department truck began dropping off dozens of portable metal barricades that could be used to block off streets or sidewalks.
Meanwhile, down in Georgia …
Trump attorneys move to quash Fulton Co., GA Special Grand Jury report https://t.co/Q9h8CJkqLy
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Monday moved to quash the final report of the special purpose grand jury that is recommending indictments for those who meddled with Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
The court filing also seeks to prevent the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office from using any evidence derived from the special grand jury investigation, and it seeks to recuse the DA’s office from further pursuing the case.
“The whole world has watched the process of the (special purpose grand jury) unfold and what they have witnessed was a process that was confusing, flawed and, at times, unconstitutional,” said the 51-page filing, which includes 433 more pages of exhibits. “Given the scrutiny and gravity of the investigation and those individuals involved — namely, the movant President Donald J. Trump, this process should have been handled correctly, fairly and with deference to the law and the highest ethical standards.”
The motion requests that any evidence derived from the special grand jury report be “suppressed as unconstitutionally derived and any prosecuting body be prevented from its use.”
Trump’s lawyers are also asking for a hearing on the motion and that it be heard by Chief Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville or another Superior Court judge, not Judge Robert McBurney who presided over the special grand jury probe. McBurney, the filing argued, violated the rights of parties impacted by the investigation.
The motion takes aim at public comments made by special grand jury forewoman Emily Kohrs as well as five other grand jurors who recently sat down for an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.The five jurors spoke on the condition of not being named because of concerns about their safety and privacy.
Well, they certainly can try. It’s such a Trump stall tactic that you’d think any judge would just snort and say “move along, nothing to see here.”
So, stay tuned. It should be an exciting week!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
It seems there’s a Warren Zevon song for everything!
An icy wind burns and scars Rushes in like a fallen star Through the narrow space between these bars Looking down on Prison Grove
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
According to The 
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This is an extremely long article, but it is definitely worth reading. It capsulizes everything most of us have been wondering about these long Trump-filled years. One more Trump Trial note, and I’m off for the weekend. This is from 
These rich assholes usually do not come by their money with ethical businesses. So, why do we expect them to play by the book? Here’s another one that should be thrown in jail. “Leo rejects Senate subpoena from panel probing gifts to Supreme Court justices. The conservative judicial activist called the move ‘politically motivated,’ and the committee chair said Leo had left them ‘no other choice’ but to move forward with the compulsory process.” This is from 
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Philip Bump of the Washington Post has this analysis. 
Trump has weaponized the notion of “reverse racism.” 
As far as we know, the Grand Jury in The Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case still hears from witnesses today. This is from the 
Still, Trump is worried. This is from 
Have Trumpsters responded to these invitations to an insurrection as much as the last one? 
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