It’s another rainy weekend in Boston, and I overslept because it was so dark. They were predicting a nor’easter. I don’t know if this qualifies, but it’s very dark and raining hard, with high winds expected later on. This feels like about the 20th rainy weekend in a row here.
Yesterday, House Republicans rejected Jim Jordan as Speaker after he lost more votes on a third ballot. Members then held a secret ballot to see if he should keep trying, and this time he got only 86 votes of the 217 he would need to be elected.
In a shocking turn, Jim Jordan on Friday lost an internal GOP vote that was intended to show confidence in him remaining as his party’s speaker designee.
The Ohio Republican is now no longer his party’s pick to lead the House, a demise sealed by a GOP secret ballot just after his third failed floor vote as a speaker hopeful.
It was an unexpectedly fast end to the Ohio conservative’s candidacy to lead the chaos-ridden Republican conference — and a sign that the flailing party is fed up on its 17th day without a speaker. Lawmakers now plan to leave Washington for the weekend as the next round of ambitious Republicans decide whether to mount their own speaker bids.
But most Republicans acknowledge that even with new faces to consider, they still have no clear path to uniting their splintered conference. They have already rejected two speaker candidates — Jordan and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise — as well as former Speaker Kevin McCarthy during this month alone.
McCarthy gave voice to a sentiment that’s growing within the GOP: The party’s inability to run the half of Congress that it narrowly won doesn’t bode well for its broader future.
“I’m concerned about where we go from here,” said McCarthy, who had been backing Jordan. “It’s astonishing to me, and we are in a very bad position as a party.”
Jordan’s loss of the speaker nod from his party came as something of a surprise, since he had sought the internal vote with allies preparing to cite it as a show of continued support for his candidacy. Instead, the secret ballot revealed that while Jordan’s public opposition never topped 25 votes, scores more House Republicans wanted to see him out of the race.
The next race to replace him is expected to get crowded, even as Congress faces no shortage of pressing business that it’s unable to conduct while the House stays shut. At the top of that list: a government shutdown deadline that’s less than a month away and a $100 million-plus emergency funding request from the Biden administration, encompassing aid to both Israel and Ukraine.
I don’t know why Politico didn’t expect this. It had become clear that semi-normal Republicans weren’t responding well to being bombarded with death threats by MAGA Jordan supporters.
There is still no end in sight for the high-stakes speakership battle after House Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy more than two weeks ago.
The search is on for a new GOP speaker nominee after Rep. Jim Jordan on Friday became the latest exit from the race, and it’s already shaping up to be a crowded candidate field.
It will be our secret, by Margaryta Yermolayevay
Frustrations and divisions have only intensified within the conference as Republicans search for a way to resolve the impasse. That, along with the GOP’s narrow majority, has made it increasingly unclear whether any candidate will be able to secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel on the House floor.
The House, meanwhile, remains in a state of paralysis as Republicans struggle to coalesce around a speaker candidate, with the chamber effectively frozen amid the threat of a government shutdown next month and conflict unfolding abroad.
House Republicans are expected to hold a candidate forum Monday evening and more candidates are likely to throw their names into the running before then….
Here are some of the candidates now vying to become the next GOP speaker nominee:
Rep. Tom Emmer, who serves as majority whip, said in a letter to his colleagues shared on Saturday that he was seeking the speakership with the goal of delivering “historic change.”McCarthy is backing Emmer for speaker, sources tell CNN, delivering an early boost for his candidacy.
Rep. Kevin Hern told CNN on Friday that “yes” he plans to run for speaker. When asked how he plans to get 217 votes, Hern said he’ll work “hard” to get people on his side.
Rep. Jack Bergman is running for the speaker role, his spokesman told CNN.
Rep. Austin Scott, who launched a last-minute bid against Jordan last week, but quickly dropped out and then supported Jordan, is now running for speaker again now that the field is wide open, his spokesperson told CNN.
Rep. Byron Donalds, a Freedom Caucus member, announced on X that he’s seeking the speakership to advance a “conservative vision for the House of Representatives and the American people.”
Rep. Mike Johnson, the House Republican conference vice chairman, also announced a run for speaker in a letter to his Republican colleagues Saturday, saying “after much prayer and deliberation, I am stepping forward now.”
Meanwhile, in the midst of this Republican chaos, the first thing I saw this morning–at the top of the Memeorandum news feed–was this opinion piece by a Republican named Douglas MacKinnon, who argues that both Biden and Harris should step down. LOL!
Playtime is over. We have to put the toys away and have the adults in the room re-exert their authority.
It’s one thing when the issues of the day are identity politics; “green” energy; organized looting; cashless bail; Trump’s legal exposure; political corruption; or who’s really in charge of the border, when having a president and vice president in power who even countless Democrats no longer have faith in. It’s quite another when the world is teetering on the edge of massive violent conflict or outright nuclear war and that leadership looks demonstrably lost and feeble.
Beware of magic cats, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
The barbaric attack by Hamas upon men, women and children in Israel, coupled with the war in Ukraine inching us ever closer to a nuclear conflict, should serve as stark reminders that real and resolute leadership does matter and is needed before it is too late.
Unfortunately, history reminds us that it is not uncommon for presidents — or vice presidents — to find themselves in untenable or overwhelming positions in which they can no longer cope or effectively govern. They often can’t see the proper course forward because they are either standing too close to the problem or are shielded from the negative fallout by overprotective aides or a partisan media.
Such a case came during the summer of 1974. It was becoming obvious to all that the Watergate break-in and the subsequent widespread coverup had politically and legally ensnared President Richard Nixon in a trap from which there was no viable escape.
A growing number of senior Republicans feared Nixon was too isolated from reality, and quite possibly misinformed by aides, to rationally ascertain his dire predicament. For those reasons, and others, a few decided that an intervention at the White House was urgently nee
A growing number of senior Republicans feared Nixon was too isolated from reality, and quite possibly misinformed by aides, to rationally ascertain his dire predicament. For those reasons, and others, a few decided that an intervention at the White House was urgently needed.
We all know the story, which is not at all analogous to anything happening with Biden/Harris. Who are these “adults” that MacKinnon refers to?
We need Biden — and Harris — to rise above that nonsense while turning the eyes of our nation toward the true threats that could destroy us. We need a president who is actually “presidential.”
We need a Thomas Jefferson, an Abraham Lincoln, a John F. Kennedy, or a Bill Clinton. This is not a partisan point. It is one about mutual survival….
I can’t find a Democrat I know who wants either one on the ticket for 2024. Be it for age reasons; cognitive-health concerns; potential Hunter Biden corruption issues; plain competency fears; or record-low polling numbers, a second act of Biden-Harris comes across as political kryptonite for many Democrats hoping to retain the White House in 2024….
That stated, where are the “adult in the room” Democratic powerbrokers willing to emulate the 1974 Republicans and travel down to the White House to tell Biden and Harris that they are “in over their heads” and that their “time has come and gone”?
MacKinnon would do better to ask where the Republican “adults” are.
This weird perception of Biden is so mysterious to me. He has just traveled all over the world and returned to give an oval office speech last night. He doesn’t seem tired or confused to me.
With viewing taking place across 10 networks, President Biden‘s Thursday night address from the oval office has reached a total audience of 20.326 million total viewers, according to Live+Same Day figures from Nielsen.
First trick or treat, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
Coverage of the 15-minute speech lasted from approximately 8 pm to 8:22 pm ET, varying by network with nearly 65% of the 20.3 million viewers tuning in to the president’s speech on broadcast networks, Nielsen reports. 35% of the audience watched on cable networks. People ages 55 and up make up the majority of the audience at 15.94 million and averaged an audience rating of 15.7. Notably, the adults 18-34 key demo made up only 4% of the Thursday night audience.
Biden addressed the nation on the U.S.’s response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, telling his constituents why it’s necessary to show continued support for America’s partners in Israel and Ukraine.
“The security package I’m asking congress to do is an unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security that will sharpen their qualitative military edge which we’ve committed to,” Biden said. “At the same time, President Netanyahu and I discussed the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war. That means protecting civilians in combat. The people of Gaza urgently need food, water, and medicine. Yesterday, in discussions with the leaders of Israel and Egypt, I secured an agreement for the first shipment of humanitarian assistance from the United Nations to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
“As hard as it is, we cannot give up on peace. We cannot give up on a two-state solution,” the President said.
President Joe Biden’s task, as he looked America in the eye from the Oval Office, was to explain why a nation wearied by its own foreign quagmires and political estrangements should send $100 billion to help other people fight their wars.
His answer was that Israel and Ukraine were fighting existential struggles and that their wars were not just their own but were critical to the security of each American watching his primetime speech on Thursday.
But the most profound takeaway from what was only his second Oval Office address was this: While Biden scheduled the appearance to discuss two nations fighting for their survival against outside attack, his real topic was America itself – and perceived threats to its foundational values in a volatile political age.
He implored his country to honor the global role that has cemented a stable world order since World War II and to reject the appeasement of terrorists and tyrants. And in remarks that foreshadowed a reelection bid that will help decide the character of America and its place in the world for years to come, he sought to inspire it to reject intolerance as bitter politics rage at home.
Biden delivered his speech hours after returning from Israel and meeting victims of the Hamas terror attacks that killed more than 1,400 civilians, and months after his daring trip to another war zone in Ukraine. Even as he spoke, the first signs of an expected Israeli incursion into Gaza began to unfold, suggesting a crisis he sought to contain with his trip on Wednesday is about to get far worse.
“I know these conflicts can seem far away, and it’s natural to ask – why does this matter to America?” Biden said. “So let me share with you why making sure Israel and Ukraine succeed is vital for America’s national security.”
The president beseeched Americans to understand that if the “pure unadulterated evil” of Hamas and the attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to “erase” Ukraine’s independence prevailed, terrorism emanating from the Middle East would threaten Americans again and Russia would imperil global peace.
Biden’s address is likely to be seen by historians as a signature moment in his presidency because of the messages he sent to American allies and foes abroad and how he sketched his vision for his own deeply divided nation.
President Joe Biden said that Hamas’ attacks on Israel were intended in part to scuttle the potential normalization of the U.S. ally’s relations with Saudi Arabia.
“One of the reasons Hamas moved on Israel … they knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis,” Biden said at a campaign event Friday night, according to pool reports. “Guess what? The Saudis wanted to recognize Israel,” the president added.
Less than a month ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also expressed optimism about the potential detente, telling Biden that a “historic peace” between the two countries seemed attainable.
Invitation, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
The normalization push began under former President Donald Trump’s administration and was branded as the Abraham Accords.
But Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel and sustained retaliation from the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza have pushed the possibility of normalization between Israel and neighboring Arab countries farther from reach.
On Saturday, the first 20 trucks carrying about 3,000 tons of aid passed through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt on Saturday, bringing humanitarian assistance to Gazans, who have been rationing food and water and relying on dwindling medical supplies amid the barrage of Israeli airstrikes.
In his speech at a Washington, D.C., fundraiser, Biden emphasized his administration’s commitment to supporting the longevity of the Israeli state.
“I am convinced with every fiber of my being: If there were no Israel, there’s not a Jew safe in the world — not in the entire world … including the United States,” Biden said.
Likening the conflict to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as he did in his Oval Office speech Thursday night, Biden underscored America’s role in providing aid to both allies, once more invoking former secretary of state Madeleine Albright in calling the U.S. the “essential nation.”
The United States on Friday released a U.S. intelligence assessment sent to more than 100 countries that found Moscow is using spies, social media and Russian state-run media to erode public faith in the integrity of democratic elections worldwide.
“This is a global phenomenon,” said the assessment. “Our information indicates that senior Russian government officials, including the Kremlin, see value in this type of influence operation and perceive it to be effective.”
A senior State Department official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said that Russia was encouraged to intensify its election influence operations by its success in amplifying disinformation about the 2020 U.S. election and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Success breeds more, and we definitely see the U.S. elections as a catalyst,” the official said.
The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The release of the assessment comes amid serious tensions between the United States and Russia over Moscow’s war against Ukraine and a raft of other issues.
The assessment was sent in a State Department cable dated Wednesday to more than 100 U.S. embassies in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa for distribution to their host governments, he said.
Washington was privately briefing recipient governments and shared the assessment “to get ahead of elections that are over the horizon over the next year,” the official said.
The report represents Washington’s latest move to combat what it says are Moscow’s efforts “to sow instability” in democratic countries by portraying elections as “dysfunctional, and resulting governments as illegitimate.”
Washington “recognizes its own vulnerability to this threat,” said the report, noting that U.S. intelligence agencies found that “Russian actors spread and amplified information to undermine public confidence in the U.S. 2020 election.”
Finally, here are a few interesting stories about Trump’s many problems.
Two stalwart allies of former President Donald Trump flipped against him this week, a staggering turn of events that could now pose a grave threat to his ability to fend off criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The witch is coming, by Margaryta Yerrmolayeva
The rapid-fire developments are a massive boost for prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and the separate but overlapping federal case against Trump that was filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
The pleas are a stark display of the reality that the Georgia case against Trump and his co-defendants is getting stronger. While Trump has vowed to fight until the bitter end, these newly inked plea deals force his co-defendants to confront the same difficult choice: cut a deal or roll the dice at trial.
or two prominent Trump co-defendants – Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro – the looming five-month trial, potentially resulting in a yearslong prison sentence, appears to have spurred them into flipping.
Their decisions to transform from Trump diehards to key witness against him have likely shattered any sense of invincibility that the former president or others charged may be feeling – perhaps for the first time.
What can these two testify about?
Chesebro directly implicated Trump in a criminal conspiracy, and his plea establishes for the first time that the fake electors plot was illegal. Notably, Chesebro has now admitted that “the purpose” of the fake electors conspiracy was to “disrupt and delay the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” which is a key element of the federal charges Trump is facing.
As part of the plea, Chesebro established that the fake electors plot was part of “an attempt… to violate” the US Constitution and federal law, by subverting the Electoral College proceedings. This dovetails with the allegations against Trump in Smith’s federal indictment.
On Thursday, former Trump campaign lawyer Powell pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a separate, but complementary, effort to interfere with the 2020 election by breaching Georgia voting systems.
While Powell’s guilty plea only covers charges related to the breach of election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, her deal with prosecutors opens the door for testimony about first-hand interactions with Trump and other key co-defendants.
For example, if called to the stand in a future trial, Powell could face questions about White House meetings she attended where Trump considered taking extreme steps to overturn the 2020 results, like ordering the Pentagon to seize voting machines.
After a mini-saga in the classified documents case against Donald Trump, both of the former president’s co-defendants have waived concerns that their attorneys have represented witnesses in the case.
During Friday’s hearing in Fort Pierce, Florida, Trump’s personal aide Walt Nauta told federal Judge Aileen Cannon he had no concerns that his attorney, Stanley Woodward, has represented several witnesses in the case.
Moonlight Tea, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
“I still choose Mr. Woodward as my lawyer,” Nauta told the judge after she went through the potential conflicts in detail.
Last week, Carlos De Oliveira, a maintenance worker at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, also waived potential conflict of interest concerns raised by prosecutors who noted that his attorney also represented witnesses in the case, too.
Woodward and prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith have gone back and forth in court filings and before Cannon over the potential conflicts. In court Friday, Woodward agreed that he would not cross-examine witnesses he has represented or is currently representing.
One of those witnesses, Yuscil Taveras – an IT director at Mar-a-Lago – cut an agreement with prosecutors in exchange for his cooperation in the case after switching attorneys from Woodward.
Nauta is completely screwed. He’s going to prison unless Judge Cannon somehow protects him. I wonder if he knows that?
In a double serving of what could arguably be described as doses of one’s own medicine, special counsel Jack Smith plucked apart Donald Trump‘s latest efforts to throw out criminal conspiracy charges against him in Washington, D.C., by citing two arguments the former president would seem hard pressed to deny — one from the U.S. Supreme Court justice he appointed, Brett Kavanaugh, and the other from Trump’s own mouth when he was impeached for the second time.
The pointed response from federal prosecutors is found in a 52-page filing directed at Trump’s early October motion when he urged U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss the election subversion indictment against him on the grounds that as former president, he held “absolute presidential immunity” from prosecution.
While Trump argued his public proclamations of rampant voter fraud and efforts to advance slates of false electors, among other things, fell squarely within the parameters of his duties as president, special counsel argued those schemes were largely rooted in “fraud,” “conspiracy,” “exploitation” and “deceit.”
Discussion of the nature of the crimes themselves aside, Smith contends that an inability to prosecute a former president for his crimes alleged or otherwise as Trump would have it is antithetical to the very premise of the office of the presidency, the meaning of the U.S. Constitution and longstanding legal precedent on similarly aligned subjects throughout years of case law.
“Indeed no sound policy supports granting a former president blanket immunity from criminal prosecution for a time he or she served as president,” Smith wrote.
Fox News was essential to Donald Trump’s success in both of his last presidential runs. Now, as the former president navigates another campaign through a tidal wave of indictments and legal problems, he’s facing a much frostier relationship with the cable giant—and that could be bad news for both of them.
Jokers, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
In recent months, Trump’s inner circle has become convinced that Fox News is essentially sidelining the former president by restricting live appearances on the network.
“Trump is not allowed live on Fox,” a Trump operative told The Daily Beast, chalking it up to “fear” that Trump could level a baseless allegation that could leave the network in a legal mess.
A Trump adviser told The Daily Beast a similar story—that the former president isn’t allowed live on air anymore, and that Fox News prefers to have Trump in a pre-recorded setting.
“Fox sent down word from the top that they don’t want to ‘platform’ Trump like they did before,” a Trump adviser told The Daily Beast. “I find it hilarious. For one, it sounds like something MSNBC would do.”
After a lengthy hiatus last year, Trump re-emerged on Fox News in March, but in a diminished capacity in a string of interviews with Fox hosts and anchors including Sean Hannity, Bret Baier, and Larry Kudlow. Gone are the days when Trump could simply call in live and share his stream of consciousness.
According to a search by The Daily Beast and Media Matters for America, Trump last phoned in live to a Fox News program in April of 2022. And Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters, told The Daily Beast the live freeze-out is no accident.
“Fox News’ record defamation settlement stemmed in part from its on-air Trump fanatics refusing to correct their guests’ election-denial conspiracy theories live, even when they knew their claims were lies,” Gertz said. “It’s wildly implausible to imagine the likes of Sean Hannity pushing back on Trump’s rigged-election fantasies, so it looks like Fox’s lawyers may have engineered a solution that doesn’t require its propagandists to perform journalism.”
One Trump confidant contrasted the apparent ban on Trump’s live appearances to earlier Fox News coverage, when they “used to go live at every single one of his rallies!”
As Trump would say, “Sad.”
So . . . that’s all the news I have for today. What stories have you been following?
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As usual, I’m riveted to the coverage of Trump’s criminal cases. It’s not particularly surprising that he plans to follow his usual method of defense: delay, delay, delay. He hopes to delay the trials until after the 2024 election so that if he’s elected, he can dismiss the cases against him or pardon himself.
In Florida, Judge Aileen Cannon seems willing to help Trump slow down the stolen documents case as long as possible.
In DC, Judge Tanya Chutkan is less likely to accept his delay tactics in the January 6 case, but, at the moment, he has succeeded in slowing down the discovery process–probably for a couple of weeks.
Here’s the latest on the two cases.
On August 2, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked Judge Cannon for a Garcia hearing to evaluate a possible conflict of interest involving Walt Nauta’s defense attorney Stanley Woodward. Nauta is a co-defendant with Trump in the stolen documents case. NBC News: Special counsel cites potential conflicts for Mar-a-Lago defense attorney.
The special counsel prosecuting former President Trump for his alleged mishandling of government secrets has asked for a hearing to discuss whether the defense attorney for a co-defendant has a conflict of interest stemming from his multiple clients.
According to a court filing on Wednesday, attorney Stanley Woodward’s current and past clients include three people who could be called to testify against Walt Nauta, Trump’s aide who is charged with conspiring to obstruct the government’s efforts to reclaim classified documents.
Woodward’s clients include two aides who worked for Trump at the White House and into his post-presidency, and a Mar-a-Lago IT director identified as “Trump Employee 4” in the updated indictment. The Washington, D.C.-based lawyer also represents at least seven other people who have been questioned by prosecutors in the case. He declined to comment when reached by NBC News.
Trump’s Save America PAC has spent $20 million on legal fees in the first half of this year, according to FEC filings. Woodward’s firm was paid more than $200,000 in the first six months of the year.
In defending Nauta, Woodward may need to cross-examine a witness with whom he has had privileged discussions, which raises the risk of an “attorney’s improper use or disclosure of the client’s confidences during the cross-examination,” or “may cause the attorney to pull his punches during cross-examination, perhaps to protect the client’s confidences or ‘to advance the attorney’s own personal interest,’” the motion filed by special counsel Jack Smith’s office argues.
Woodward was previously defending Yuscil Taveras, who has now hired a new attorney and appears to be cooperating with the government.
“Employee 4, who is unnamed in the indictment but was identified by NBC News as Yuscil Taveras, secured a new lawyer in July, and did not waive the conflict, according to the motion. Roughly three weeks later, a grand jury charged Trump, Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira, a Mar-a-Lago property manager, over their efforts to have Taveras delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage.
Prosecutors told Woodward earlier this year that they believed Taveras had information that would incriminate Nauta, and that representing both clients at the same time raised a potential conflict of interest. Woodward said he advised both clients of the government’s position, but that he was unaware of anything the employee could say to incriminate Nauta and did not see a conflict, according to the filing.
Judge Cannon was unconvinced, and instead has revealed the existence of secret grand jury still investigating this case in DC., thus delaying the case for who knows how long.
Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Monday asked federal prosecutors to explain the use of grand juries in Florida and Washington in the classified documents case against Donald Trump even though charges were filed in South Florida.
Cannon, the federal judge in South Florida assigned to the case, posed the question in a court filing Monday and told federal prosecutors to respond by Aug. 22.
“The response shall address the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district,” Cannon wrote.
Trump and two aides — Waltine “Walt” Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira — were charged this summer in a 42-count indictment that accuses the former president of improperly retaining 32 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence and private club, and seeking to thwart government attempts to retrieve them….
For many months, Justice Department prosecutors had questioned witnesses in the Florida case before a federal grand jury in Washington. The secret proceedings yielded much of the evidence at the crux of the case. But in May, the grand jury activity appeared to continue at a federal courthouse in Miami. Ultimately, prosecutors filed charges in a West Palm Beach courthouse — a courthouse in the same district as Miami and the area where Mar-a-Lago is located.
Prosecutors said in a court filing last week that they continued to use the grand jury in Washington after they initially charged Trump in June to investigate alleged instances of obstructing the investigation. The focus of the July superseding indictment was on obstruction, alleging that all defendants tried to delete security footage that the government wanted as evidence in the case.
“The grand jury in this district and a grand jury in the District of Columbia continued to investigate further obstructive activity, and a superseding indictment was returned on July 27, 2023,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Judge Cannon apparently disapproves, and decided to reveal the information the Special Counsel had given her under seal.
Prosecutors included that revelation in a motion asking the judge to consider holding a hearing to determine whether Nauta’s attorney has too many conflicts of interest to provide his client with adequate legal advice.
The government lawyers said Stanley Woodward — the Nauta attorney — has represented at least seven other clients whom prosecutors have interviewed about Trump’s alleged efforts to keep classified documents in defiance of the government’s demand they be returned. Two of Woodward’s clients could be called as government witnesses in the trial, the filing by the government said.
If that happens, Woodward may need to cross-examine his other clients as part of defending Nauta, said the prosecutors leading the Justice Department investigation.
The requested hearing — known as a Garcia hearing — is fairly common in legal proceedings. At the hearing, prosecutors said Cannon should inform Nauta and the two witnesses, whose names have not been made public, of their legal rights and the potential conflicts their attorney poses. Lawyers are generally required to flag to a judge any potential conflicts of interest they encounter.
Cannon said Nauta’s lawyers are expected to respond to the judge’s question about the two grand jury locations and the prosecutors’ request for the Garcia hearing.
So it’s a normal request, but Cannon is going to drag the process out as long as she can, and, instead of keeping the existence of the secret grand jury under seal, she decided to announce it to the world.
Today [August 7] in the Southern District of Florida’s version of United States v. Trump, Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order denying the Justice Department’s motion to seal and requesting supplemental briefing. While seemingly insignificant, today’s order raises troubling concerns regarding her administration of the case….
Judge Cannon became nationally known in August and September 2022, when, in a civil case brought by Donald Trump, she issued a series of unusual orders blocking the Justice Department from reviewing documents seized at Mar-a-Lago and appointing a special master to oversee the Justice Department’s work. The Eleventh Circuit reversed Judge Cannon’s ruling, holding that the court lacked jurisdiction to interfere with the Justice Department’s review of lawfully-seized documents.
Unikowsky argues that it is important in dealing with Trump’s cases to be scrupulous in following norms. He doesn’t yet see any basis for asking for Judge Cannon to be removed from the case. It isn’t unusual for Judges to have rulings reversed and still continue to preside in the cases. I hope you’ll read the whole post if you’re interested in Unikowsky’s views on the case, but for this post, I’ll just cut to the chase.
The Justice Department’s motion notes: “The Government has advised Mr. Woodward of its intent to file this motion requesting a Garcia hearing and its reasons for doing so. Mr. Woodward has indicated that as a general matter he does not oppose the Court informing his client of the client’s rights or inquiring into potential waivers, but that he will not consent to this motion without seeing it in advance, and he requests the opportunity to respond.” This is a reasonable position for Woodward to take—he can’t possibly object to a hearing intended to safeguard his own client’s constitutional rights, but he wants to see the motion before taking a position.
So, this motion is a hanging curveball for Judge Cannon. It’s obvious how Judge Cannon should respond to this motion. She should wait to hear Woodward’s position on it!
If Woodward agrees a Garcia hearing is warranted, Judge Cannon should hold the hearing to ensure that Nauta’s rights are protected. Maybe there’s some discretionary reason to deny the hearing even if everyone agrees it’s warranted? I can’t think of one, but maybe. But clearly, Judge Cannon should wait until she hears from Woodward before deciding what to do….
Instead, Judge Cannon does something intensely weird. Two things, actually.
First, she denies the Justice Department’s motion to seal.
Second, she requests that Nauta file a response brief to the Justice Department’s motion addressing, among other things, “the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district.” She also says Trump and De Oliveira “may, but are not required to” file a brief addressing this issue.
First, the court denies the Justice Department’s motion to seal, and strikes the motion for leave to file under seal, as well as the secret information itself, from the docket.
Here’s the court’s rationale: “The Special Counsel states in conclusory terms that the supplement should be sealed from public view ‘to comport with grand jury secrecy,’ but the motion for leave and the supplement plainly fail to satisfy the burden of establishing a sufficient legal or factual basis to warrant sealing the motion and supplement.”
Seriously?
Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, and the Justice Department is disclosing the identity of grand jury witnesses and the substance of their testimony, so it wants to keep that information secret. That’s not a “legal or factual basis to warrant sealing the motion and supplement”?
There’s a lot more, and it’s pretty useful if you are interested in this case.
The January 6 Case – Judge Tanya Chutkan
I’m sure you’re familiar with what has happened so far. Trump has been threatening Jack Smith, President Biden, the DOJ, and Judge Chutkan on social media and in speeches, even after he was warned not to commit crimes or tamper with witnesses or the jury pool. Smith requested a protective order before turning over discovery to the Trump team. He is concerned–with good reason–that Trump will release secret grand jury material and other evidence to the public so he can try the case in the media.
Former President Donald Trump argued Monday that he should be allowed to share evidence in his latest criminal case with “volunteer attorneys” and other unpaid advisers as he prepares to defend himself against charges related to his effort to subvert the 2020 election.
“The government cannot preclude the assistance of those individuals, nor should President Trump be required to seek permission from the Court before any such individual assists the defense,” Trump’s attorney John Lauro wrote in a filing that seeks to govern the handling of the mountains of evidence prosecutors have gathered and are preparing to share with Trump’s team.
“Such a limitation or requirement would unduly burden President Trump and impede the efficient preparation of his defense,” Lauro continued.
In a Sunday email between Trump’s lawyers and prosecutors, appended to Trump’s filing, assistant special counsel Thomas Windom raised concerns about Trump’s plan to broaden the group of legal advisers who might be permitted to review evidence in the case, worrying that the language Lauro proposed was “boundless.”
The dispute is one of several between Trump’s legal team and the special counsel over the handling of evidence in the case and how significantly to restrict Trump’s ability to publicly disclose any of the evidence he receives. Prosecutors have proposed a so-called “protective order” that would prohibit Trump or his legal team from publicly sharing any evidence produced by prosecutors. They say that they can’t begin sharing evidence with Trump and his team until a protective order is in place.
The matter now falls to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who ordered Lauro to respond to prosecutors’ proposed protective order by Monday at 5 p.m. She may either rule on the matter or seek additional argument at a hearing in the case. Prosecutors are due to propose a trial date by Thursday.
Lauro said the blanket restriction on disclosing any evidence prosecutors provide is draconian and should be narrowed to limit the treatment only of materials deemed “sensitive” — such as those containing personally identifying information, grand jury subpoena returns, sealed search warrant returns and recordings or transcripts of witness interviews.
The government asked the judge to simply grant the protective order, which is usually a routine decision. But instead, she ordered the parties to hash it out in a hearing this week–probably on Friday. Again the upshot is more delay, which is just what Trump wants.
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team says that a protective order proposed by special counsel Jack Smith would infringe on Trump’s right to free speech.
Trump’s attorneys made the argument in their response Monday to the special counsel’s motion for a protective order over the discovery evidence in the case against Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election by enlisting a slate of so-called “fake electors” targeting several states; using the Justice Department to conduct “sham election crime investigations”; and trying to enlist the vice president to “alter the election results” — all in an effort to subvert democracy and remain in power.
The former president has denied all wrongdoing and has dismissed the probe as politically motivated.
Monday’s filing argues for narrower limits on the protective order, which Trump’s attorneys say would protect sensitive materials while ensuring Trump’s right to free speech.
“In a trial about First Amendment rights, the government seeks to restrict First Amendment rights,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in their filing. “Worse, it does so against its administration’s primary political opponent, during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members, and media allies have campaigned on the indictment and proliferated its false allegations.”
Of course, the trial is not about First Amendment rights. Trump is charged with three criminal conspiracy counts.
Smith asked the judge for the protective order on Friday, referencing a social media post Trump made Friday afternoon in which he said, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
The proposed protective order submitted by Smith does not seek to bar Trump from commenting on the case in its entirety, but would restrict Trump and his attorneys from disclosing evidence such as materials returned from grand jury subpoenas and testimony from witnesses and other exhibits shown to the grand jury. It does not limit Trump from discussing materials that were already available to the public separate from the government’s investigation.
Smith’s attorneys have said the proposed order is largely modeled after similar protective orders issued in other cases.
But in their filing on Monday, Trump’s attorneys accuse Smith’s team of asking Judge Tanya Chutkan to “assume the role of censor and impose content-based regulations on President Trump’s political speech that would forbid him from publicly discussing or disclosing all non-public documents produced by the government, including both purportedly sensitive materials, and non-sensitive, potentially exculpatory documents.”
This is the crap we are going to have to deal with, folks. None of these trials is going to be quick or easy.
Security for the federal judge assigned to oversee the criminal case against former President Donald Trump over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election has been increased in the federal courthouse in Washington, DC.
CNN has observed more security detailed to Judge Tanya Chutkan, and deputy US Marshals discussed security plans for the judge on Monday. The US Marshals Service handles security at the DC District Court and a spokesman for the service said it “take(s) that responsibility very seriously.”
“Ensuring that judges can rule independently and free from harm or intimidation is paramount to the rule of law, and a fundamental mission of the USMS,” spokesperson Drew J. Wade told CNN. “While we do not discuss our specific security measures, we continuously review the measures in place and take appropriate steps to ensure the integrity of the federal judicial process.”
The uptick in security inside the courthouse comes after security measures, including fencing and yellow tape, were taken down following Trump’s arraignment last week. That hearing, where Trump pleaded not guilty, was presided over by a magistrate judge. Chutkan takes the case from there.
Trump has already said he will be asking for Chutkan to recuse herself from the case, writing on social media in all caps: “There is no way I can get a fair trial with the judge ‘assigned’ to the ridiculous freedom of speech/fair elections case.”
So that’s what’s happening in the two federal cases against Trump. It’s going to be a long road, and there will be a lot of stupidity to deal with, but we can get through it together!
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Remember that so-called “whistleblower” that House Republicans were so excited about? They claimed to have a witness who would blow their “Biden family corruption” case wide open. Then the witness supposedly disappeared and they had no idea where he was. Well, yesterday the DOJ indicted the guy. It turns out he’s an agent for China.
The “missing” witness long-touted by Republicans in Congress as the missing link to their probe into alleged Biden family corruption was accused Monday of being an unregistered foreign agent for China and an international arms trafficker while violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and lying to investigators, among a laundry list of other federal charges.
Dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Gal Luft had already skipped out on his bail while in Cyprus awaiting extradition to the U.S. for a separate case in March—though he alleges that the sprawling case against him represents political persecution and retaliation by the Biden administration against a potential witness.
The House Oversight Committee has for months touted a secret “informant” who could provide evidence of an alleged “quid pro quo” deal for foreign aid between an Obama-era Biden and an unnamed country—though details of the arrangement remain murky and unverified at best.
Those claims partially unraveled when Rep. James Comer (R-KY) in May held a much-hyped press conference in which he promised to expose the preliminary findings of four months’ worth of scrutiny into the Biden family’s business dealings—while failing to air any real evidence of corruption. He then offered a partial excuse for the failure: their star witness had up and disappeared….
Luft then came forward days later in an interview with New York Post opinion columnist Miranda Devine, alleging that he was hiding out in an undisclosed location after being arrested on five charges, including arms dealing across the Third World, as well as a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, among other charges.
“The chances of me getting a fair trial in Washington are virtually zero,” he told Devine as the reason he skipped out on his bail. “I had to do what I had to do.”
Comer and other Republican House members continued to tout Luft as a credible witness right up until Friday, the day before charges were announced by the SDNY.
Rolf Nesch (Germany 1893-1975 Norway), Swans, from Esslingen
A “whistleblower” who has repeatedly accused the Bidens of corruption has been charged by the Justice Department with arms trafficking, acting as a foreign agent for China and violating Iran sanctions.
Gal Luft, who is a citizen of both the United States and Israel, is accused of paying a former adviser to Donald Trump on behalf of principals in China in 2016 without registering as a foreign agent.
Prosecutors say that Mr Luft pushed the former government employee, who is not named, to push policies that were favourable to China.
They also allege that he set up meetings between officials of Iran and a Chinese energy company to discuss oil deals, which would violate US sanctions.
They also alleged that Mr Luft “conspired with others and attempted to broker illicit arms transactions with, among others, certain Chinese individuals and entities” by working as a middleman to find both buyers and sellers for “certain weapons and other materials” in violation of the US Arms Control Act.
Specifically, prosecutors say he attempted to broker a sale of anti-tank weapons, grenade launchers and mortar rounds to Libya by Chinese companies, and also pushed to arrange for the United Arab Emirates to purchase bombs and rockets, and for Kenya to acquire unmanned aerial vehicles capable of striking targets on the ground.
He sounds like a great witness for the Republican “investigations.”
Mr Luft, 57, was arrested in Cyprus in February on US charges but fled after being released on bail while awaiting extradition and is not currently in US custody.
US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a statement that Mr Luft “engaged in multiple, serious criminal schemes”.
“He subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking U.S. Government official; he acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement,” Mr Williams said.
“As the charges unsealed today reflect, our Office will continue to work vigorously with our law enforcement partners to detect and hold accountable those who surreptitiously attempt to perpetrate malign foreign influence campaigns here in the United States”.
Comer was still defending this guy as a credible witness last night on NewsMax.
Frits Thaulow, Norwegian, Summer Day in the Garden, 1880
Yesterday Judge Cannon granted a short delay in for Walt Nauta to appear in the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case.
Controversial U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted a delay for Donald Trump’s aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta in a classified documents case. Prosecutors have called the delay “unnecessary.”
In a filing on Monday, Nauta’s team asked to delay Friday’s hearing, which was set to determine how some materials would be handled in the trial. The attorneys did not propose a date for the new hearing.
“An indefinite continuance is unnecessary, will inject additional delay in this case, and is contrary to the public interest,” special counsel Jack Smith said in a subsequent filing on Monday.
On Tuesday, Cannon granted a 4-day delay, setting the new hearing for July 18 at 2:00 P.M. A court filing said Trump and Smith had agreed to the new date.
This is obviously part of Trump’s usual strategy of delaying court cases as long as possible. Now the Trump lawyers are trying to get Cannon to delay the case until after the 2024 election!
Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal judge on Monday night to indefinitely postpone his trial on charges of illegally retaining classified documents after he left office, saying that the proceeding should not begin until all “substantive motions” in the case had been presented and decided.
The written filing — submitted 30 minutes before its deadline of midnight on Tuesday — presents a significant early test for Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the Trump-appointed jurist who is overseeing the case. If granted, it could have the effect of pushing Mr. Trump’s trial into the final stages of the presidential campaign in which he is now the Republican front-runner or even past the 2024 election.
While timing is important in any criminal matter, it could be hugely consequential in Mr. Trump’s case, in which he stands accused of illegally holding on to 31 classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to reclaim them.
There could be complications of a sort never before presented to a court if Mr. Trump is a candidate in the last legs of a presidential campaign and a federal criminal defendant on trial at the same time. If the trial is pushed back until after the election and Mr. Trump wins, he could try to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general dismiss the matter entirely….
Judges have wide latitude to set schedules for trials, and scheduling orders are typically not subject to appeal to higher courts. That said, given the extraordinary nature of Mr. Trump’s case and the potential implications of a delay, prosecutors under Mr. Smith could in theory try to come up with a rationale to challenge a scheduling decision made by Judge Cannon to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
This really is a test for Cannon. If she grants such a delay, she should be replaced.
Albert Marquet (1875-1947), Baigneurs à Carqueiranne (1938)
Here are some details on the Trump filing, from the TPM Morning Memo, by David Kurtz.
Some of the filing is the usual defense counsel performative moaning and groaning and sighing heavily about all the work involved and the inherent advantages prosecutors have over them because they’ve long had access to the evidence, blah blah blah. To that end, Trump wants U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to:
withdraw her order for an August 2023 trial;
reject DOJ’s proposal for a December 2023 trial; and
postpone indefinitely even setting a trial date.
But there’s more than the usual slow-rolling going on here. And it matters to the big question of whether Cannon can and will keep the Mar-a-Lago case on track for a trial before the 2024 presidential election.
Trump’s claims in this regard are remarkable:
He’s too busy running for president to be put on trial.
He’s too busy with other criminal and civil trials to add this one to the calendar.
He’s still trying to make the case about the Presidential Records Act (it’s not).
“There is no ongoing threat to national security interests nor any concern regarding continued criminal activity.”
You can’t find an impartial jury in the midst of a presidential election.
The overall thrust of the filing by Trump is that a trial before the election is not advisable, though it stops short of saying so explicitly.
The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents trial is taking steps that could stock the jury box with the former president’s supporters.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon has set the upcoming trial to open on Aug. 14 at her tiny satellite courthouse in the northern reaches of her district, which stretches from the tropical Florida Keys to the citrus groves halfway up the state.
That decision means Trump’s jurors are set to be drawn from the most brightly red corner of a vast court district, plucked from a community that leans heavily Republican—instead of the highly populous and more Democratic urban areas further south….
Park View, Aksel Jørgensen, Danish, 1909
Several Miami lawyers, some of whom asked to remain anonymous because they have active cases before Cannon, noted that Trump’s chances to win what otherwise appears to be an insurmountable criminal case increase the further north he goes.
“You drive around, and you’ll see ‘Trump’ flags and ‘Make America Great Again’ flying in front of houses,” said Paul Bernard, a criminal defense lawyer in Fort Pierce. “With Trump’s trial down this way, he’s going to have a bunch of supporters—and they’re going to make their way onto the jury panel.”
According to local court rules, federal trials in the Fort Pierce division draw jurors from five counties: Highlands, Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, and St. Lucie.
It’s solidly MAGA country: all five counties voted heavily in favor of Trump in the 2020 election he ultimately lost, with Okeechobee topping out at 72 percent. Across the board, the former president nabbed 62 percent of the vote on average.
Read the whole thing at The Daily Beast link.
There is also news in the Georgia election interference case.
The selection of two Fulton County grand juries will be made Tuesday, with one of the panels expected to decide whether to hand up an indictment for alleged criminal interference in the 2020 presidential election.
One set of jurors is likely to be asked to bring formal charges against former President Donald Trump and other well-known political and legal figures. In a letter to county officials almost two months ago, District Attorney Fani Willis indicated the indictment could be obtained at some point between July 31 and Aug. 18.
Willis began her investigation shortly after hearing the leaked Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to defeat Joe Biden in Georgia. She later convened a special purpose grand jury which examined evidence and heard testimony over an almost eight-month period. Its final report, only part of which has been made public, recommended multiple people be indicted for alleged crimes.
Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special purpose grand jury, will preside over Tuesday’s selection of the two grand juries for this term of court.
Each panel will have 23 grand jurors, plus three alternates. One panel will meet Mondays and Tuesdays, the other Thursdays and Fridays. Both will work in secret and are expected to decide whether to hand up indictments in hundreds of cases. It is unclear which one will consider the much-anticipated election-meddling case.
When a grand jury meets, at least 16 members must be present to conduct business. At least 12 grand jurors must vote to bring an indictment. The burden of proof is much lower for a grand jury to indict someone than it is for a jury to convict or acquit someone and grand jurors typically hear only from the prosecution.
Rudy Giuliani is negotiating a possible resolution in his ongoing court dispute with former Georgia election workers Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman, after they accused him of defaming them following the 2020 election and already won nearly $90,000 from him for attorneys’ fees.
The lawsuit from Moss and her mother, Freeman, presents a significant risk to Giuliani financially. It also comes at a time when the former New York mayor and Manhattan prosecutor is attempting to fend off two disbarment proceedings, as well as interest from special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which is criminally investigating Donald Trump’s response to the 2020 vote, of which Giuliani was a central player.
In a court filing late Friday, Moss and Freeman’s legal team disclosed that Giuliani’s lawyer approached them on Thursday “to discuss a potential negotiated resolution of issues that would resolve large portions of this litigation and otherwise give rise to Plaintiffs’ anticipated request for sanctions.”
“Counsel for both parties have worked diligently to negotiate a resolution and believe they are close,” Moss and Freeman’s lawyer wrote.
The negotiation is over “certain factual issues regarding Defendant Giuliani’s liability,” the court filing also said.
Another update on the negotiations is expected in court on Tuesday….
Moss and Freeman accuse Giuliani of scapegoating them in a fabricated effort to undermine how votes were counted in Georgia in 2020.
That’s all I have for you today–lots of legal news involving corrupt Republicans. What else is new?
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Summer Day or Embrace on the beach, (1904), by Edvard Munch
Good Day!!
There is some Trump investigation news this morning, plus, news just broke that the Supreme Court has gutted Affirmative Action in college admissions.
But before I get to those stories, a few articles about the awful summer weather we are having. Here in New England and across much of the Midwest, we’re having poor air quality because of the Canadian wildfires; and in much of the Southern U.S. people are suffering greatly from excessive heat.
Dangerous air quality and hazy skies persist as smoke from Canada’s raging wildfires drifts south, leaving more than 100 million people under air quality alerts across a dozen states from Minnesota to New York and down to the Carolinas.
Chicago had the worst air quality among major cities in the world early Thursday, according to IQAir. The air in Washington, DC, Minneapolis, Detroit and New York City was among the top 10 most polluted.
Smoke will continue to drift across the Midwest and into the mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Thursday. Forecast models predict a slow improvement beginning Thursday and additional decreases by Friday.
The worst air quality is likely to remain over the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, with some increase in smoke in states including Washington and New York, but levels are not expected to reach those seen a few weeks ago.
“With no end in sight to the Canadian wildfires and west to northwesterly winds expected to persist from south central Canada into the north central to northeast U.S., poor air quality conditions are likely to continue,” the National Weather Service warned.
The New York Times is providing live updates on the smoke as it works it’s way toward NYC.
Even for Southerners used to spending a lot of time outside, this week’s brutal heat and humidity — which spread from Texas across the Gulf Coast and north into Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas on Wednesday — are a little much….
An oppressive heat wave that baked Texas and Oklahoma last week, contributing to several deaths, has engulfed much of the southern and central United States, raising the heat index to dangerously high levels from Kansas City to the Florida Keys.
High Summer, 1915, by Edvard Munch
Temperatures will climb up to 20 degrees above normal for much of the region through at least the weekend, reaching the upper 90s or low 100s in many places, with the heat index — a measure of how heat and humidity make the air feel — soaring even higher….
Major cities where the heat index could reach between 110 to 120 degrees over the next few days include Dallas, San Antonio, New Orleans and Nashville, as well as Little Rock, Ark.; Jackson, Miss.; and Montgomery, Ala. “Many areas outside of Texas will experience their most significant heat of the season so far,” a forecast from the National Weather Service said.
Health experts consider a heat index of over 103 degrees dangerous, with a higher risk of cramps, exhaustion and heat stroke, particularly after exercise or long stretches in the sun.
High humidity will continue to produce “potentially life-threatening” heat through the rest of the week, the Weather Service said, and nighttime temperatures will offer little respite, staying unseasonably high even while the sun is down.
“That’s substantial because your house isn’t cooling off as much at night,” said Rob Perillo, the chief meteorologist at KATC-TV in Lafayette, La. “When you’re shooting 95 at noon, and it’s above 95 until 7 at night,” he added, “it’s not only hotter, but it’s hotter longer.”
Scientists say a closely watched atmospheric pattern — the jet stream — is behind both the Canadian wildfires and the scorching heat in Texas, raising questions about how it shapes extreme weather events and whether climate change is disrupting its flow.
The jet stream, a ribbon of air that encircles the Northern Hemisphere at high altitudes, drives pressure changes that determine weather across North America. The jet stream’s wavy pattern creates areas of high and low pressure.
Summer Night’s Dream/The Voice, by Edvard Munch, 1893
More than 100 million people in the U.S. faced either blistering heat or unhealthy air quality Wednesday.
In recent weeks, the jet stream has appeared unusual and disjointed, scientists say. Some researchers think climate change is disrupting its flow and causing it to bake regions in heat longer. They are concerned that changes in the patterns could cause extremes to increase more rapidly than climate models have projected as the world warms.
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, likened visualizations of the jet stream’s appearance in recent weeks to the swirling brushstrokes of a post-impressionist painter.
“I’m honestly at a loss to even characterize the current large-scale planetary wave pattern,” Mann tweeted this month. “Frankly, it looks like a Van Gogh.”
Now that’s an interesting interpretation!
In other news, the right wing Supreme Court has struck again.
In disavowing race as a factor in achieving educational diversity, the court all but ensured that the student population at the campuses of elite institutions will become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino.
Race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, the latest decision by its conservative supermajority on a contentious issue of American life.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, said the two programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner” and “involve racial stereotyping,” in a manner that violates the Constitution.
Universities can consider how race has affected an applicant’s life, but he emphasized that students “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarized her dissent from the bench — a rare move that signals profound disagreement. The court, she wrote, was “further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”
“The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated,” she said in her scorching dissent.
The ruling could have far-reaching effects, and not just at the colleges and universities across the country that are expected to revisit their admissions practices. The decision could prompt employers to rethink how they consider race in hiring and it could potentially narrow the pipeline of highly credentialed minority candidates entering the work force.
One of the top advisers on Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is among the individuals identified but not named by special counsel Jack Smith in his indictment against the former president for allegedly mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The Mystery of a Summer Night, 1892, by Edvard Munch
Susie Wiles, one of Trump’s most trusted advisers leading his second reelection effort, is the individual singled out in Smith’s indictment as the “PAC Representative” who Trump is alleged to have shown a classified map to in August or September of 2021, sources said.
Trump, in the indictment, is alleged to have shown the classified map of an unidentified country to Wiles while discussing a military operation that Trump said “was not going well,” while adding that he “should not be showing the map” to her and “not to get too close.”
The alleged exchange between Trump and Wiles is the second of two instances detailed by prosecutors in the indictment showing how Trump allegedly disclosed classified information in private meetings after leaving the White House. The first was a July 2021 audio recording, obtained by ABC News earlier this week, in which Trump is heard showing people what he describes as a “secret” and “highly confidential” document relating to Iran.
ABC News has reported the meeting involved people who were helping Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with his memoir, according to sources. Smith’s team has spoken to the meeting’s attendees, which included the writers helping Meadows with his book and at least two aides to Trump, according to sources….
It does not appear, based on the indictment, that Trump was charged specifically for his retention of either the Iran document or the classified map shown to the person identified as Wiles. Rather, the two instances speak to what Smith’s prosecutors see as Trump’s state of mind in how he handled and sometimes shared classified materials in his possession after leaving the White House, sources said, as well as his alleged efforts to subvert the government’s efforts to get the documents back.
LAST MONTH, DONALD Trump’s lawyers told him he was on the cusp of a federal indictment in the classified documents case. But the former president still wanted “my documents” and “my boxes” back, asking some of his lawyers if they could get them from the federal government, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter and two other people briefed on it.
It’s one of many such conversations Trump has had over the past few months, the sources say. In these conversations, Trump also claimed it was “illegal” that he could no longer have the documents seized in the Mar-a-Lago raid. Those materials, Trump insisted, belonged to “me.” Trump has also asked if there are any other possible legal maneuvers or court filings they could try to accomplish this that they hadn’t thought of yet.
For much of his post-presidency, Trump has incorrectly insisted to various aides and confidants that the highly classified documents he continued to hoard were “mine.” In some of these conversations, according to the source with knowledge of the matter, Trump has also mentioned that he’ll get the documents back in 2025 — because he predicts he’ll be president again, and therefore regain unfettered access to the government’s most sensitive secrets.
Summer Night – Inger on the Shore, 1899, by Edvard Munch
Apparently some of Trump’s lawyers have gone along with his claims.
Two sources familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone that several lawyers — some retained by Trump and others politically aligned with him — have briefed Trump that he is, in their view, entitled to the return of government documents under an obscure part of the Presidential Records Act, specifically 44 USC 2205(3), which asserts that “Presidential records of a former President shall be available to such former President or the former President’s designated representative.”
But experts on classification rules disagree. “Whatever one might say about his Presidential Records Act argument, there’s no argument that it immunizes him from criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act,” Brian Greer, an attorney who served in the CIA’s office of general counsel from 2010 to 2018, tells Rolling Stone. Nor does the act allow a former president to defy a lawful court-ordered subpoena for documents and obstruct justice, as the special counsel alleges Trump did in the indictment, Greer adds.
Donald Trump’s valet charged in the classified documents case had his arraignment on Tuesday delayed for a second time to July by a magistrate judge, after he was forced to abandon his top choice Florida lawyer over a dispute about legal fees, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The valet, Walt Nauta, appeared alongside Trump when the former president pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal charges in federal district court in Miami this month but could not himself enter a plea – a necessary step to start trial preparation – because he lacked local counsel.
Two weeks later, Nauta remains without a lawyer admitted to practice in the southern district of Florida after the person at the top of the shortlist drawn up by Nauta’s defense team decided he needed to charge higher fees to represent him the night before the arraignment, the people said.
The previously unreported dispute over fees in effect meant Nauta could not retain the person as his Florida lawyer, the people said, even though he would be paid by Trump’s political action committee Save America, which has also been paying the fees of his lead lawyer, Stanley Woodward.
The reason for the rate hike was not clear, but at least one Florida lawyer who had seriously considered representing Nauta decided several days ago that the reputational and legal risks of working with Trump’s co-defendant in the documents case were too great.
With the sounds of papers rustling in the background, Trump is heard complaining about General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He said that I wanted to attack Iran—isn’t it amazing?” Trump told his visitors, who included book advisers to his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows. A few days earlier, I had reported about Milley’s concerns in the final months of Trump’s Presidency that Trump might provoke a military conflict with Iran as part of his effort to remain in power, despite losing the 2020 election. This, Milley told others, was one of the “nightmare scenarios” that he was working to prevent. At Bedminster, Trump apparently brandished the Pentagon’s attack plan—which he claimed had been presented to him by Milley. “This totally wins my case,” Trump said. “You know, except, like, it is highly confidential.” He added, “See, as President, I could have declassified it; now I can’t, but this is classified. . . . it’s so cool.” The tape ends with a line that was not included in the federal indictment: Trump asking, “Bring some Cokes in, please?” The whole exchange was happening, in other words, not in some top-secret facility, but with someone standing by to fetch drinks, in Trump’s office, right near the pool at his country club.
Summer Night on the Beach, Edvard Munch
To legal observers and, indeed, to pretty much anyone who could hear, the audiotape sounded like an admission of guilt. But this is Trump, a serial liar for whom an obvious defense presents itself: that he was not telling the truth to his visitors when he claimed to be showing them secret papers. And, sure enough, by Tuesday, Trump told reporters on his way back from a New Hampshire campaign appearance, “It was bravado, if you want to know the truth”—bravado here being a Trump synonym for “bullshitting.” This is the 2023 equivalent of dismissing the “Access Hollywood” tape as mere “locker-room talk” that had nothing to do with Trump’s actual behavior toward women. He even suggested that the papers he is heard shuffling through were just “building plans.” For Trump, it’s better to be a liar than a convict.
The damning evidence against Trump would not exist if not for his rift with Mark Milley, a remarkable feud between the Commander-in-Chief and the nation’s top general that had been a secret backdrop to the public drama that played out after the 2020 election. At the time the tape was made, in the summer of 2021, Trump was apoplectic that Milley’s fears about him were becoming public. Two recently published books—one by the journalists Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker of the Post, and the other by Michael Bender, then of the Wall Street Journal—had reported new details about Milley’s efforts, including regular “land the plane” phone calls with Meadows, the White House chief of staff, to prevent Trump from drawing the military into his quest to overturn the 2020 election. Milley was even quoted fretting about Trump and his supporters staging a “Reichstag moment”—a fear that seemed eerily prescient on January 6, 2021, when a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, seeking to block congressional certification of Trump’s defeat. Trump, in turn, publicly denounced Milley and said that he had only picked him as chairman in 2018 to spite James Mattis, his soon-to-quit Defense Secretary at the time.
Glasser, as always, is long-winded, so you’ll need to read more at The New Yorker to get the full story about Trump’s rage at Milley. Milley was afraid that Trump might try to attack Iran after he lost the election. Basically, Milley told the truth about him, and Trump never likes people who do that.
Legendary journalist Bob Woodward tore into former President Donald Trump in an interview on CNN Wednesday evening, calling him the largest threat to national security he had ever seen from any U.S. government official.
This comes amid the release of an audio tape of Trump boasting to patrons of his New Jersey golf club about possessing highly classified defense information about an attack on Iran — which he now denies — and reporting that he was motivated to do so by anger at Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley for working to constrain his post-2020 election impulses.
“Bob, you’ve interviewed the former president a lot,” said anchor Anderson Cooper. “We’ve discussed your own tape of him. What stands out to you about this latest recording?”
“Well, it really shows that Donald Trump is an alarming, dangerous threat to national security,” said Woodward, who helped expose the Watergate scandal decades ago and has recently been caught up in a legal battle with Trump over White House transcripts. “In the book, ‘Peril’ that I did with Robert Costa, we recount two National Security Council meetings where Trump, not General Milley or the Defense Department, was agitating for a possible attack on Iran. And he is pushing it. And General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the number one military man in the country, is telling Trump, you don’t want a war. If you start a war, you’re going to get into a conflict that you can’t get out of.”
“You see him in this reporting that we did from these meetings from notes, that it is the generals who say, no, no, no,” Woodward continued. “And Trump says, well — in one of the meetings the Iranians have enough to make two nuclear bombs, and he’s worried about that and thinking that maybe they should consider an attack. And these contingency plans are most sensitive documents in the government because what they do is they outline in a crisis how we might attack Iran, what the casualties would be, how many ships would be sunk, how long it might take. And that’s something you can’t treat casually, as Trump has.”
That’s it for me. What stories have caught your interest today?
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By now you may have heard about the weird crimes that go on here in Massachusetts. A man who used to manage the morgue at Harvard Medical School has been charged by the Feds with selling body parts.
A former manager at the Harvard Medical School morgue, his wife and three other people have been indicted in the theft and sale of human body parts, federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania said. https://t.co/phkvUbhLQW
The manager of a morgue at Harvard Medical School has been charged with selling body parts from donated cadavers and allowing buyers to come to the morgue to choose which parts they wanted, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Prosecutors said that the manager, Cedric Lodge, 55, and his wife, Denise Lodge, 63, both of Goffstown, N.H., and three others had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pennsylvania on charges of conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen goods.
Four grave robbers awaken a ghost, by Joseph Werner
A sixth person, Jeremy Pauley, 41, of Bloomsburg, Pa., was charged separately, prosecutors said. A seventh, Candace Chapman Scott, of Little Rock, Ark., was previously indicted in Arkansas, prosecutors said.
The defendants were all part of a nationwide network that bought and sold human remains stolen from Harvard Medical School and a mortuary in Little Rock where Ms. Scott worked, prosecutors said.
According to federal prosecutors, from 2018 to 2022, Mr. Lodge stole parts from cadavers that had been donated to the medical school and dissected — including heads, brains, skin and bones — before their scheduled cremations.
The Lodges then shipped remains to others, including Katrina Maclean, 44, of Salem, Mass., who owns a store called Kat’s Creepy Creations in Peabody, Mass., and Joshua Taylor, 46, of West Lawn, Pa., prosecutors said.
At times, Mr. Lodge allowed Ms. Maclean, Mr. Taylor and others into the morgue to choose which parts they wanted, prosecutors said. In October 2020, prosecutors said, Ms. Maclean agreed to buy two dissected faces from Mr. Lodge for $600.
More disgusting details about Maclean’s business, if you can handle them:
Prosecutors said that Ms. Maclean stored and sold remains at Kat’s Creepy Creations, which advertises “creepy dolls, oddities” and “bone art” on Instagram.
In June or July of 2021, she shipped human skin to Mr. Pauley and “engaged his services to tan the skin to create leather,” an indictment states.
From September 2018 to July 2021, Mr. Taylor transferred more than $37,000 in electronic payments to Ms. Lodge for body parts that had been stolen by Mr. Lodge, prosecutors said.
In one transaction, Mr. Taylor sent Ms. Lodge $1,000 with a memo that read “head number 7,” prosecutors said. As part of another payment, he sent Ms. Lodge $200 with a memo that read, “braiiiiiins,” prosecutors said.
I’m a horror movie fan, but I don’t want things like this to happen in real life.
Here’s Katrina Maclean leaving court today with a man who came to get her. He shoves our photographer, knocking him into me at the end of the video. @7Newspic.twitter.com/U8oqY5NqbD
An artist from Salem who has been accused of buying and selling stolen body parts had posted on Instagram about having a “real human skull” and offering to sell human body parts to the public, in a picture with one of her creations from February 2020.
Katrina MacLean, the bone art, doll-creating and oddity-collecting artist behind Kat’s Creepy Creations, was named in an indictment against Cedric Lodge, who officials said supplied MacLean and others with the body parts, according to court documents….
MacLean was vocal about her artwork on social media and especially on Instagram, where she routinely sold the baby dolls she reworked, according to a comment she responded to on her account.
The Salem artist also sold her art at “oddities markets and expos,” she had said, and had “two cases at Witch City Consignment and Thrift” in the city. Additionally, she is the curator of Freaks Antiques Uniques, a pop-up dark art and oddities market located in Salem, according to her account.
One of MacLean’s creepy dolls
MacLean often posted before-and-after images depicting dolls repainted and dressed in various ways, including with dark coloring around their eyes, blood streaked on their bodies, those made to look dead, clown-style makeup and chilling expressions.
In a post on Feb. 9, 2020, during the time MacLean was believed by officials to be receiving and selling human body parts from Lodge, the Salem woman posted an image of a reworked, “killer clown”-style doll with a skull between its fingers.
The caption on her post read, “Throwback to the set of Hubie Halloween. This doll has been sold and yes that is a real human skull. If you’re in the market for human bones hit me up!”
Even after the FBI searched MacLean’s home in March, according to multiple reports, MacLean continued to post on her Instagram about her reworked dolls and bone art with no apparent signs of issues happening in her personal life. Her most recent post was May 28.
What a weirdo! At one point MacLean revealed more about herself to her readers:
From a March 23, 2020 post, MacLean said, “Meet the maker! I’m Kat, I like to turn regular porcelain dolls into nightmare fuel. I started painting horror dolls back in September of 2018 in an attempt to decorate the store windows @witchcitythrift.
“Everyone wanted to buy the dolls so I began selling them….. I have sold 239 dolls since then! I also make dark art, bone art, human bone jewelry and shadowboxes,” the post went on.
“I joke with my friends and say that my super power is ‘the ability to creepify’ Art and creating is my passion and my therapy. I am also the curator of Freaks Antiques and Uniques dark art and oddity market in Salem MA. Please give my page a follow @freaksantiquesuniques to check out our talented crafters, vendors, artists and creators,” MacLean said.
“Thanks for supporting my twisted creations and I look forward to meeting more of you at upcoming events! Thanks for reading, please share my page with your friends!” the post stated.
A couple of famous attorneys comments on the case:
Penny, 24, was indicted on second-degree manslaughter charges. The Manhattan District Attorney is expected to formally announce the grand jury’s indictment, which is under seal, on Thursday.
Jordan Neely in 2009. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Penny surrendered to police last month to face a second-degree manslaughter charge. He has since been out on a $100,000 bond.
Penny held Neely, an unhoused Black man and street artist, in a chokehold on the subway train May 1 after Neely began shouting at passengers that he was hungry and thirsty and didn’t care whether he died. Penny forced 30-year-old Neely to the train floor and restrained him in a chokehold until he stopped breathing. A medical examiner ruled Neely’s death a homicide.
In May, Penny told the New York Post he was “deeply saddened by the loss of life,” amid what has become a contentious homicide case that has highlighted the city’s handling of unhoused people.
Neely was on a New York City Department of Homeless Services list of the city’s homeless with acute needs – sometimes referred to internally as the “Top 50” list – because people on the list tend to disappear, a source told CNN.
One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department.
The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents.
But Trump was not interested after listening to other lawyers who urged a more pugilistic approach, so Kise never approached prosecutors, three people briefed on the matter said. A special counsel was appointed months later.
Kise, a former solicitor general of Florida who was paid $3 million upfront to join Trump’s team last year, declined to comment.
That quiet entreaty last fall was one of many occasions when lawyers and advisers sought to get Trump to take a more cooperative stance in a bid to avoid what happened Friday. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment including more than three dozen criminal counts against Trump for allegedly keeping and hiding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida.
Attorney Chris Kise
Instead of listening to his attorneys, Trump was seeking advice from Tom Fitton, head of the right wing organization Judicial Watch. Fitton is not a lawyer.
“It was a totally unforced error,” said one person close to Trump who has been part of dozens of discussions about the documents. “We didn’t have to be here.”
Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said. Trump would often cite Fitton to others, and Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the documents, even as they disagreed, the advisers said….
Fitton, who appeared before the grand jury and was questioned about his role in both the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, acknowledged he gave the advice to Trump but declined to discuss the details of their conversations. He added that he read the indictment and did not believe it laid out illegal or obstructive conduct. Multiple witnesses said they were asked about Fitton in front of a grand jury and the role he played in Trump’s decisions.
The 40-year-old body man from Guam now faces 20 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charge against him. Sporting a wide scarlet tie a few shades deeper than his boss’s candy red one, Nauta, once a Navy sailor, made his first appearance in a Miami federal courthouse Tuesday to face charges that he obstructed justice, withheld and concealed a document from the government, and lied to FBI agents.
A key question hovering over the case now is whether Nauta will cooperate with prosecutors against Trump in hopes of a lesser sentence.
Nauta — who spent Tuesday bizarrely toggling between the roles of co-defendant, equal under the law to Trump, and dutiful “body man,” subservient to the former president — has showed no signs that his loyalty to Trump is waning.
Trump’s lawyers and advisers do not see Nauta as a threat to turn, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the criminal case.
Walt Nauta helping his ancient and frail boss
I have to believe that will change as Nauta begins to realize the jeopardy he is in. He’s a young man, and could end up spending many years in prison.
According to the indictment, Nauta helped bring boxes to Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago for his review before Trump returned 15 boxes of documents to the National Archives in January 2022. When interviewed by the FBI in May 2022, however, prosecutors allege Nauta falsely said he had no knowledge of the boxes being taken to Trump’s suite.
He then could be seen on surveillance video removing 64 boxes from the club’s ground floor storage room after Trump received a grand jury subpoena seeking classified records in May 2022. According to the indictment, he was spotted returning only 30 boxes to the room, just before a lawyer for Trump searched the room for documents to turn over to the government in response to the subpoena.
Trump and Nauta spoke repeatedly by phone before Nauta moved the boxes, the indictment alleges. The indictment does not detail what the two discussed. If Nauta chose to cooperate, he could presumably explain what Trump told him on those calls — and offer evidence about whether Trump instructed him to lie to the FBI.
People familiar with the case say that while Nauta spoke more than once with federal investigators, the conversations turned contentious last year when a senior Justice Department lawyer suggested the valet was in legal trouble for some of his statements. Nauta’s lawyers reacted angrily to that suggestion and the relationship never recovered.
CNN reporters figured out a clever way to get the news out of the Miami courthouse on Tuesday, even though electronics–even phones–were not allowed.
After surveying the courthouse on Monday, CNN’s team hatched a plan — one that ultimately led the news network to become the first to report that Trump was in custody and had entered a not guilty plea on 37 counts related to his alleged mishandling of classified intelligence documents.
It started with hiring a group of local high school students to work as production assistants for the day. Noah Gray, CNN’s senior coordinating producer for special events, had grown up in the Miami area and attended Palmetto Senior High School. He contacted his former teacher, who heads the school’s television production program, and said that CNN wanted to quickly hire some of her students to help with its reporting effort.
On Tuesday, several of the hired students were brought into the courthouse and seated in an overflow room with reporters Tierney Sneed and Hannah Rabinowitz. As the hearing unfolded and developments transpired, Sneed and Rabinowitz jotted down their reporting on notepads, tearing off sheets with urgent news, and handing it to one of the students. The students then ran the reporting to one of their classmates who was standing by at one of the courthouse’s only two pay phones.
But there was a twist: the pay phones at the courthouse could only dial local telephone numbers. To overcome the final obstacle, CNN’s staff devised a plan to have the production assistant dial his own personal cell phone, which was located in a nearby RV that the network was using as a mobile headquarters.
Brad Parks, a CNN regional newsgathering director stationed inside the RV, then picked up the phone, typed up the reporting and relayed the information to the outlet’s Washington, D.C. bureau. Once the reporting was cleared for air by senior leaders in Washington, it was then transmitted to the control room and the network at large. And, from there, it was finally communicated to CNN’s anchors, who delivered the news to viewers across the world.
That’s all I have for you today. I hope you all have a terrific Thursday!
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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.
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Woodward was previously defending Yuscil Taveras, who has now hired a new attorney and appears to be cooperating with the government.
Judge Cannon apparently disapproves, and decided to reveal the information the Special Counsel had given her under seal.
So it’s a normal request, but Cannon is going to drag the process out as long as she can, and, instead of keeping the existence of the secret grand jury under seal, she decided to announce it to the world.
The January 6 Case – Judge Tanya Chutkan
The government asked the judge to simply grant the protective order, which is usually a routine decision. But instead, she ordered the parties to hash it out in a hearing this week–probably on Friday. Again the upshot is more delay, which is just what Trump wants.
Meanwhile, because of Trump’s threats, Judge Chutkan needs more protection. CNN: 
Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special purpose grand jury, will preside over Tuesday’s selection of the two grand juries for this term of court.
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