Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: September 9, 2023 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: disinformation, earthquake, first amendment, G20 summit 2023, Georgia election interference case, India, Joe Biden, Mar-a-Lago, Mark Meadows, Morocco, social media, stolen documents case, Yuscil Taveras 8 CommentsHappy Caturday!!
Cat and Flowers, by Ruskin Spear, British, 1911-1990
There has been a terrible earthquake in Morocco, with hundreds of people dead. President Biden is attending the Group of 20 summit meeting in India. Back in the U.S., a Georgia federal judge said no to Mark Meadows’ request to transfer his case to federal court; and now Trump’s lawyers are scrambling to figure out a way for him to still do that. It’s not likely to happen. The 5th Circuit court of appeals reversed some of a previous ruling that hamstrung government agencies, but they still found that the Biden administration violated the first amendment in trying to influence social media companies. Finally, The New York Times has an interesting read about the former Mar-a-Lago IT guy who had turned on Trump.
The strongest earthquake to hit the country of Morocco in more than 120 years has left over 800 people dead and many thousands more trapped, missing, or injured.
The quake registered 6.8 on the Richter scale with the epicenter located in the Atlas Mountains and not far the city of Marrakesh where historic buildings—many built of mortar and stone not designed to withstand such tremors—collapsed and the streets filled with people overnight trying to flee the destruction and danger.
“The problem is that where destructive earthquakes are rare, buildings are simply not constructed robustly enough to cope with strong ground shaking, so many collapse resulting in high casualties,” Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, told the Associated Press. “I would expect the final death toll to climb into the thousands once more is known. As with any big quake, aftershocks are likely, which will lead to further casualties and hinder search and rescue.”
Morocco’s interior ministry put the initial death toll at 822 as of Saturday morning, with 672 injured, but both numbers are certain to rise. Though the stronger impacts were closer to Marakesh, the earthquake was felt across the country, including in Casablance, Essaouira, and the capital city of Rabat.
Large nations, including both the United States and China, sent their well wishes to the people of Morocco.
“I am deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation caused by the earthquake in Morocco,” said U.S. President Joe Biden in an overnight statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted by this terrible hardship.”
Biden said his administration as in contact with Moroccan officials and willing to send whatever help might be necessary. “We are working expeditiously to ensure American citizens in Morocco are safe,” Biden said, “and stand ready to provide any necessary assistance for the Moroccan people.”
Self-Portrait with Cat, Indira Baldano
Associated Press: Biden, Modi and G20 allies unveil rail and shipping project linking India to Middle East and Europe.
NEW DELHI (AP) — President Joe Biden and his allies on Saturday announced plans to build a rail and shipping corridor linking India with the Middle East and Europe, an ambitious project aimed at fostering economic growth and political cooperation.
“This is a big deal,” said Biden. “This is a really big deal.”
The corridor, outlined at the annual Group of 20 summit of the world’s top economies, would help boost trade, deliver energy resources and improve digital connectivity. It would include India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Israel and the European Union, said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.
Sullivan said the network reflected Biden’s vision for “far reaching investments” that come from “effective American leadership” and a willingness to embrace other nations as partners. He said the enhanced infrastructure would boost economic growth, help bring countries in the Middle East together and establish that region as a hub for economic activity instead of as a “source of challenge, conflict or crisis” as it has been in recent history.
Politico: Judge refuses to move prosecution of Mark Meadows to federal court.
The prosecution of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows for attempting to overturn the 2020 election will remain in Georgia state court, a federal judge ruled Friday as he turned down Meadows’ bid to move the case to federal court.
The decision is a victory for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ drive to bring former President Donald Trump, Meadows and 17 other defendants to trial under the state’s broad criminal racketeering statute for their roles in trying to help Trump cling to power.
“The Court concludes that Meadows has not shown that the actions that triggered the State’s prosecution related to his federal office,” U.S. District Judge Steve Jones wrote in his decision, while emphasizing that he was not ruling on the right of any other defendant to have the case against them moved to the federal system.
By Belinda Del Pesco
Jones, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, concluded that Meadows was not acting within the scope of his employment at the White House when he organized a Jan. 2, 2021 phone call where Trump pressed Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to declare him the victor in that state. Other actions that Meadows took, as described in a grand jury’s indictment last month, similarly fell outside Meadows’ official duties, the judge said.
“Meadows’s participation on the January 2, 2021 call was political in nature and involved the President’s private litigation, neither of which are related to the scope of the Office of White House Chief of Staff,” Jones wrote. “The Court finds that these contributions to the phone call with Secretary Raffensperger went beyond those activities that are within the official role of White House Chief of Staff, such as scheduling the President’s phone calls, observing meetings, and attempting to wrap up meetings in order to keep the President on schedule.”
By finding that Meadows acted outside the scope of his duties, Jones concluded that Meadows is not eligible for so-called “removal” — a procedure under federal law that allows federal officials to transfer a case from state court to federal court if the case is based on their official acts.
It’s now unlikely that any of the other people trying to move their cases to federal court–including Trump–will succeed. Meadows had the strongest case according legal experts.
Reacting to U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones late Friday ruling that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows may not have his election tampering case moved to a federal court, former Re[publican National Committee chair Michael Steele said that was a major blow not only to Meadows but also all of the other 18 Georgia co-conspirators facing RICO charges including Donald Trump.
As Steele put it, any hopes that defense attorneys might have had in the outcome of the Meadows hearing died a quick death.
Meadows’ attorneys had signaled that they hoped to move the case to federal court as a precursor to arguing that the case against him should be thrown out on grounds that as a former federal officer he’s immune from charges relating to his duties. And if a trial went forward in federal court, the jury pool would likely have been broader and slightly friendlier to Trump and his allies than one drawn only from Fulton County.
A federal court trial also would be unlikely to be televised, whereas the state court judge has already vowed to livestream all the proceedings.
Four other defendants in the Georgia case have also asked for the cases against them to be moved to federal court: former Justice Department official Jeff Clark and three pro-Trump activists accused of falsely certifying that they were presidential electors from the state. Those requests remain pending with Jones, and he said he was not pre-judging them as he turned down Meadows.
Nora Heysen (Australian, 1911-2003) – A Boy with his cat
A federal appeals court on Friday said the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment in some of its communications with social media companies, but also narrowed a lower court judge’s order on the matter.
The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that certain administration officials – namely in the White House, the surgeon general, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation – likely “coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content” in violation of the First Amendment in its efforts to combat Covid-19 disinformation.
But the three-judge panel said the preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty in July, which ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, was “both vague and broader than necessary to remedy the Plaintiffs’ injuries, as shown at this preliminary juncture.”
The Biden administration had previously argued in the lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general claiming unconstitutional censorship that channels with social media companies must stay open so that the federal government can help protect the public from threats to election security, Covid-19 misinformation and other dangers.
n briefs submitted earlier this summer, the administration wrote, “There is a categorical, well-settled distinction between persuasion and coercion,” adding that Doughty had “equated legitimate efforts at persuasion with illicit efforts to coerce.”
The 5th Circuit left in place part of the injunction that barred certain Biden administration officials from “threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech.”
“But,” the appeals court said, “those terms could also capture otherwise legal speech. So, the injunction’s language must be further tailored to exclusively target illegal conduct and provide the officials with additional guidance or instruction on what behavior is prohibited.”
So it’s some good news and some bad news if you care about disinformation on social media.
From a summary of the NYT article on Yuscil Taveras at Raw Story:
In a deep dive into the life of the key Donald Trump employee who has flipped on the former president and some of his colleagues who worked with him at Mar-a-Lago, the New York Times is reporting that Trump’s head of security made a fateful decision that helped out special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation.
Composition with Cat on the table with striped tablecloth – Herdis Gelardi , 1951 Danish, 1916-1991
As part of their profile of IT manager Yuscil Taveras, the Times creates a moment-by-moment timeline where Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira contacted Yuscil Taveras to meet him “somewhere more private” to discuss deleting the surveillance video.
As part of their profile of IT manager Yuscil Taveras, the Times creates a moment-by-moment timeline where Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira contacted Yuscil Taveras to meet him “somewhere more private” to discuss deleting the surveillance video.
As the Times is reporting, “According to the indictment, which does not name Mr. Taveras but refers to him as ‘Trump Employee 4,’ Mr. De Oliveira led him through a basement tunnel to a small room known as an ‘audio closet,’ where Mr. De Oliveira delivered a message from Mr. Trump: ‘the boss’ wanted the footage deleted. Mr. Taveras rebuffed the request, prosecutors said in the indictment, but Mr. De Oliveira raised it again.”
Noting that Taveras once again denied the request, the report states that Taveras then reportedly confided to fellow employee Renzo Nivar about what had happened and days later alerted “a superior in Trump Tower.”
According to the Times, “One executive in New York, Matthew Calamari Jr., the Trump Organization’s corporate director of security, apparently became alarmed, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He alerted the company’s legal department, prompting a senior lawyer at the company to deliver a stern warning not to delete anything.”
Read the entire profile at The New York Times: He Was Just the I.T. Guy. Then He Got Caught in the Trump Documents Case.
So that’s an overview of the news today. I hope you all have a great weekend!!
Thursday Reads: Drip, Drip, Drip
Posted: June 1, 2023 Filed under: Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Carlos Deoliveira, iran, James Trusty, Mar-a-Lago security footage, Margo Martin, Mark Meadows, Mark Milley, Special Counsel Jack Smith, stolen documents case, Susan Glasser, Tim Parlatore, Walt Nauta, Yuscil Taveras 43 Comments
The Balcony in Vernonnet, 1920, Pierre Bonnard
Good Morning!!
The evidence against Trump keeps coming out bit by bit. Yesterday was a big day for news about the stolen documents case. CNN first broke the news that Trump was caught on tape discussing a classified document that he retained after leaving the White House. Then The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post added more information to the story.
Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.
The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said….
Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Justice Department investigation into Trump, has focused on the meeting as part of the criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of national security secrets. Sources describe the recording as an “important” piece of evidence in a possible case against Trump, who has repeatedly asserted he could retain presidential records and “automatically” declassify documents.
Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident.
Ramo de gladiolos, lirios y margaritas (1878), Claude Monet
It’s interesting and significant that the meeting at which Trump talked about the document was at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey. The incident took place at a meeting with two ghost writers who were working on Mark Meadows’ autobiography. Other attendees were “communications specialist” Margo Martin, and other Trump aides. It appears that Martin may be the source of the recording.
Back to the CNN story:
Meadows’ autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”
The document Trump references was not produced by Milley, CNN was told….
The meeting in which Trump discussed the Iran document with others happened shortly after The New Yorker published a story by Susan Glasser detailing how, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Milley instructed the Joint Chiefs to ensure Trump issued no illegal orders and that he be informed if there was any concern. The story infuriated Trump.
Glasser reported that in the months following the election, Milley repeatedly argued against striking Iran and was concerned Trump “might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified.” Milley and others talked Trump out of taking such a drastic action, according to the New Yorker story.
Glasser reported that in the months following the election, Milley repeatedly argued against striking Iran and was concerned Trump “might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified.” Milley and others talked Trump out of taking such a drastic action, according to the New Yorker story.
Trump appeared to be holding the secret document he was describing because the recording picked up the “sound of paper rustling.” Even if he didn’t show it to the others, he never should have had the document in an unsecured meeting room with people without security clearances.
Some observers were wondering if Trump could be charged with espionage if this recording is “top secret,” because then it might not be able to be used in court. But Hugh Lowell reports at The Guardian that it is only classified as “secret”: Trump regretted not declassifying retained military document in recording.
The document at issue is understood to be classified as “secret” – significant as the justice department typically prefers to charge espionage cases involving retention of materials at that level, rather than “top secret” papers that might be too sensitive or “confidential” papers that are too low.
The recording was made at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in July 2021, when the former president met with people helping his former chief of staff Mark Meadows write a book, by his aide Margo Martin who regularly taped conversations with authors to ensure they accurately recounted his remarks.
Apple Tree In Blossom, 1898c, Carl Larsson (Swedish 1853-1919
For several minutes of the audio recording, the sources said, Trump talks about how he cannot discuss the document because he no longer possesses the sweeping presidential power to declassify now out of office, but suggests that he should have done so when he was still in the White House.
But the previously unreported suggestion that he should have declassified the document presents a potentially perilous moment, as it indicates Trump knew that he had retained material which remained sensitive to national security – as well as the limitations on discussing it with unauthorized people. CNN earlier reported that prosecutors had the recording.
Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith appear to have obtained the recording around March, as the criminal investigation targeting Trump intensified and numerous Trump aides were subpoenaed to testify before the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the case in Washington.
The tape was played to multiple witnesses, including Martin, when she testified in mid-March after having her laptop and phones imaged by prosecutors, the sources said. The first time the Trump lawyers learned about the tape was after Martin testified, one of the sources said.
As I suggested earlier, it appears that Martin’s laptop was the source of the recording. The New York Times also reported that Martin attended the meeting and doesn’t quite claim she is the source, but it seems pretty likely, since prosecutors had her laptop. A bit more from The New York Times story:
Bouquet de Mimosa sur la Table 1938, Édouard Vuillard
In an interview with CNN on Wednesday night, James Trusty, a lawyer representing Mr. Trump in the case, indicated that the former president was taking the position that he had declassified the material he took with him upon leaving office.
“When he left for Mar-a-Lago with boxes of documents that other people packed for him that he brought, he was the commander in chief,” Mr. Trusty said. “There is no doubt that he has the constitutional authority as commander in chief to declassify.”
Mr. Trusty said officials could prove that Mr. Trump had declassified material. But when pressed on whether Mr. Trump had declassified the document in question at the Bedminster meeting, Mr. Trusty declined to say.
That’s pretty weak.
Here’s The Washington Post story, which you can read if you’re interested. It’s mostly a recap of the other reports and background on the investigation: Prosecutors have recording of Trump discussing sensitive Iran document.
One more Trump stolen document investigation story from The New York Times: Prosecutors Scrutinize Handling of Security Footage by Trump Aides in Documents Case.
For the past six months, prosecutors working for the special counsel Jack Smith have sought to determine whether former President Donald J. Trump obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove of classified documents he took from the White House.
More recently, investigators also appear to be pursuing a related question: whether Mr. Trump and some of his aides sought to interfere with the government’s attempt to obtain security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago that could shed light on how those documents were stored and who had access to them.
The search for answers on this second issue has taken investigators deep into the bowels of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, as they pose questions to an expanding cast of low-level workers at the compound, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the workers played a role in either securing boxes of material in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago or maintaining video footage from a security camera that was mounted outside the room.
Two weeks ago, the latest of these employees, an information technology worker named Yuscil Taveras, appeared before a grand jury in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter.
So now we know the name of the aide who helped Walt Nauta move the boxes around.
Mr. Taveras was asked questions about his dealings with two other Trump employees: Walt Nauta, a longtime aide to Mr. Trump who served as one of his valets in the White House, and Carlos Deoliveira, described by one person familiar with the events as the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago.
Phone records show that Mr. Deoliveira called Mr. Taveras last summer, and prosecutors wanted to know why. The call caught the government’s attention because it was placed shortly after prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding the footage from the surveillance camera near the storage room.
The call also occurred just weeks after Mr. Deoliveira helped Mr. Nauta move boxes of documents into the storage room — the same room that Mr. Deoliveira at one point fitted with a lock. The movement of the boxes into the room took place at another key moment: on the day before prosecutors descended on Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Mr. Trump’s lawyers intended to get him to comply with a demand to return all classified documents.
The Trump Organization ultimately turned over the surveillance tapes, but Mr. Smith’s prosecutors appear to be scrutinizing whether someone in Mr. Trump’s orbit tried to limit the amount of footage produced to the government.
They asked Mr. Taveras an open-ended question about if anyone had queried him about whether footage from the surveillance system could be deleted.
The Times doesn’t know what Taveras told the grand jury. Read more at the link.
Today, Hugo Lowell has another story at The Guardian on the turmoil among Trump’s many lawyers: Months of distrust inside Trump legal team led to top lawyer’s departure. And get this: Lowell learned all this because he was sitting at the next table in a restaurant.
Donald Trump’s legal team for months has weathered deep distrust and interpersonal conflict that could undermine its defense of the former president as the criminal investigation into his handling of classified documents and obstruction of justice at Mar-a-Lago nears its conclusion.
The turmoil inside the legal team only exploded into public view when one of the top lawyers, Tim Parlatore, abruptly resigned two weeks’ ago from the representation citing irreconcilable differences with Trump’s senior adviser and in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn.
But the departure of Parlatore was the culmination of months of simmering tensions that continue to threaten the effectiveness of the legal team at a crucial time – as federal prosecutors weigh criminal charges – in part because the interpersonal conflicts remain largely unresolved.
It also comes as multiple Trump lawyers are embroiled in numerous criminal investigations targeting the former president: Epshteyn was recently interviewed by the special counsel, while Parlatore and Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran testified to the grand jury in the classified documents inquiry.
The turmoil has revolved around hostility among the lawyers on the legal team who have come to distrust each other as well as their hostility directed at Epshteyn, over what they regard as his oversight of the legal work and gatekeeping direct access to the former president.
In one instance, the clashes became so acute that some of the lawyers agreed to a so-called “murder-suicide” pact where if Parlatore got fired, others would resign in solidarity. And as some of the lawyers tried to exclude Epshteyn, they withheld information from co-counsel who they suspected might brief him.
Read all the details at The Guardian link.
So . . . that’s the latest on just one of the Trump investigations. Will we learn more today? Drip, drip, drip.
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