Bragging Wrongs, Con't

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has announced via press release that the office's investigation into Donald Trump is in fact continuing, and not all but dead as it appeared to have been killed by Bragg himself last month, but the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery and Asawin Suebsaeng call bullshit and say the case is 99.99% dead.

Over the last several weeks, the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into former President Donald Trump has appeared to be unraveling, with the two top prosecutors on the case resigning over the lack of charges and the DA feeling so attacked over the lack of movement that he issued a statement Thursday saying an indictment against Trump could still come.

"Investigations are not linear,” DA Alvin Bragg Jr. told CNN Thursday. “So we are following the leads in front of us, and that's what we're doing.”

But inside the DA’s office, the inertia and frustration over Trump potentially avoiding culpability looks worse than ever before.

Yet another prosecutor appears to have been pulled back from the case, according to knowledgeable sources who say it could be further proof of the probe’s failure. And sources now seem to think Trump dodging an indictment is inevitable.

Solomon Shinerock—a lead investigator who helped drive much of the intensive, four-year effort—is no longer as actively involved in the case, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.

In recent weeks, Shinerock’s pullback from the team investigating Trump has been conspicuous enough to frustrate some who have been on the prosecutors’ side—and has been noticeable enough to quietly delight lawyers working on the ex-president’s and Trump Organization’s end, sources noted.

Another person familiar with the situation described the current state of the team, which had been investigating Trump, as “gutted” and a “shell” of its former self, even beyond what’s previously been reported. The loss of momentum in this high-profile probe—which some of its former prosecutors believe already produced sufficient evidence to criminally charge Trump—has left several lawyers who’ve worked on the investigation feeling frustrated, and in some cases enraged.

Among the frustrated is Shinerock, according to a source familiar with the matter and another individual briefed on the situation. Shinerock has, predictably, refrained from commenting in public about the current state of the criminal probe, or his opinion about the apparently stalled investigation into Trump and his business empire.

Shinerock is still employed at the DA’s office, but his connection to the special prosecution team now appears tenuous. The office declined to provide a comment addressing allegations that he has stepped back from his lead role on the case. Similarly, Shinerock declined to comment for this story.

For days, The Daily Beast had been pressing spokespeople in the Manhattan DA’s office for comment, sharing with them specific details of this reporting. A spokesperson for the office had repeatedly refused opportunities to go on the record to deny or challenge any of the details.

But Thursday afternoon, hours after being informed of the Beast’s final deadline, the office blasted out its written statement, attributed to Bragg, to a variety of national media outlets, insisting that “the team working on this investigation is comprised of [sic] dedicated, experienced career prosecutors," who are still “investigating thoroughly and following the facts without fear or favor.”

The Daily Beast did not receive this statement, and the DA’s office has continued to decline chances to go on the record to explain how their claims square with this reporting showing how another lead investigator on the case has had his role significantly curtailed.

Shinerock may still be part of the prosecution in some official capacity, and his name may still appear on a number of documents related to the Trump investigation. But sources were clear: Shinerock’s role has been greatly reduced.

One source told The Daily Beast that he last heard from Shinerock six weeks ago.

Another source said Shinerock has been less involved in day-to-day communications ever since the departure of the other two high-ranking prosecutors who recently quit.

Indeed, last month, Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz abruptly departed, citing their displeasure with Bragg’s refusal to sign off on an indictment of Trump on the criminal charge of falsifying business records, among other allegations.

 

So now not only are the lead prosecutors gone, but the lead investigator is all but toast. Expect Bragg to announce that won't be charges filed against Trump sometime in the months ahead.  Nothing has changed, and Trump still has to be indicted by anyone, state or federal.

I still don't see that changing anytime soon.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

A general rule of thumb I've developed over the years is "Try to live your life in a way that you're not listed as a keynote speaker at a white nationalist celebration of Hitler's birthday". I'm fairly sure that's pretty easy to do, but I'll be damned if GOP Rep Paul Gosar of Arizona can figure it the fuck out.

Prescott Republican Congressman Paul Gosar was listed as a “special guest” with the white nationalist American Populist Union at an event that will be on a date popular among white nationalists and Neo-Nazis: Hitler’s birthday.

The American Populist Social will be held in Tempe on April 20, a date revered by white supremacists and Neo-Nazis.

But Gosar’s campaign says he isn’t attending and it doesn’t know how he was listed as a guest of honor, even though Gosar promoted his scheduled appearance on social media.

The American Populist Union is closely aligned with groypers, a group of white nationalists who strive for their ideas to become a part of the Republican mainstream and are largely followers of 23-year-old white nationalist Nick Fuentes. In 2021, Gosar was the first elected official to speak at Fuentes’ America First Political Action Conference in 2021. This year, the conference saw speeches by Gosar, Rogers and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Earlier this month, Gosar said his March video message to attendees of AFPAC was the fault of a staffer who sent his video message to the wrong group. He distanced himself from Fuentes, telling Politico that the young Holocaust-denying racist “has a problem with his mouth.”

Fuentes shared the story on the encrypted messaging app Telegram with the message “April Fool’s!” and later said in a livestream that he and Gosar will continue to “collaborate behind the scenes.”

American Populist Union has connections to Fuentes ideologically and through its members. The group hobnobbed with Arizona politicians in December when it held an event across the street from Turning Point USA that attracted a slew of fringe activists and groypers.

The other featured guest at the event, John Doyle, has allied with and promoted groypers, and he organized a “Stop the Steal” rally in Michigan with Fuentes. Doyle, a YouTube personality who runs a show called “Heck off Commie,” regularly advocates far-right ideology. He has said that Martin Luther King was “not a hero” and has claimed that liberalism is linked to satanism.

 

Weird, Rep. Gosar happily tweeted that he was going to the actual Hitler barbecue and potluck shindig, and his campaign is like "Well I don't know what you're talking about, I'm just a regular guy and not a Nazi."

 

This is the GOP, folks.

 

For ens of millions of American voters, this isn't a dealbreaker.

Last Call For Secret (Squirrel) Service

Sometimes you have to chutzpah of a criminal plan to bribe Secret Service agents before you crush the whole operation.

 

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged two men they say were posing as federal agents, giving free apartments and other gifts to U.S. Secret Service agents, including one who worked on the first lady’s security detail.

The two men — Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36 — were taken into custody as more than a dozen FBI agents charged into a luxury apartment building in Southeast Washington on Wednesday evening.

Prosecutors allege Taherzadeh and Ali had falsely claimed to work for the Department of Homeland Security and work on a special task force investigating gang and violence connected to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. They allege the two posed as law enforcement officers to integrate with actual federal agents.

Taherzadeh is accused of providing Secret Service officers and agents with rent-free apartments — including a penthouse worth over $40,000 a year — along with iPhones, surveillance systems, a drone, flat screen television, a generator, gun case and other policing tools, according to court documents.

He also offered to let them use a black GMC SUV that he identified as an “official government vehicle,” prosecutors say. In one instance, Taherzadeh offered to purchase a $2,000 assault rifle for a Secret Service agent who is assigned to protect the first lady.

Prosecutors said four Secret Service employees were placed on leave earlier this week as part of the investigation.

The plot unraveled when the U.S. Postal Inspection Service began investigating an assault on a mail carrier at the apartment building and the men identified themselves as being part of a phony Homeland Security unit they called the U.S. Special Police Investigation Unit.

Prosecutors say the men had also set up surveillance in the building and had been telling residents there that they could access any of their cellphones at any time. The residents also told investigators they believed the men had access to their personal information.

Taherzadeh and Ali are scheduled to appear in court on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if they had lawyers who could comment on the allegations.

 

So the question is why bribe the USSS agents, and what they were getting in return. That's going to be a fun investigation, I think. It seems since I started this blog back in 2008, the USSS has not exactly covered itself in glory as an institution.

 

Here's hoping we get real reform.

 

A Shadow Of A Country

The Supreme Court issued yet another "shadow docket" ruling today, another 5-4 unsigned ruling with no explanation or decision, that restored a Trump regime environmental rule. The Roberts Court has done this before, most notably in refusing to stay Texas's Abortion Bounty law, a practice that has all but eliminated abortions in the state over the last few months, but the the difference this time is that Chief Justice Roberts finally joined the Court's three liberal justices in denouncing the practice.

Chief Justice John Roberts for the first time joined the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal wing in blasting the conservative majority’s handling of the stream of emergency requests that critics have dubbed the “shadow docket.”

Roberts joined the three liberal justices in dissent Wednesday as the court temporarily reinstated a Clean Water Act rule issued by former President Donald Trump’s administration. A federal trial judge had tossed out the rule, which scaled back federal protections for streams, wetlands and other bodies of water.

Writing for the dissenters, including Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan said the states and industry groups backing the rule hadn’t shown that its reinstatement would have any practical impact. The court typically requires a showing of “irreparable harm” to issue an emergency order.

The majority’s decision “renders the court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all,” Kagan wrote. “The docket becomes only another place for merits determinations -- except made without full briefing and argument.”

The Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden is in the process of rewriting the rule. The court is planning to consider a more sweeping clash over the reach of the Clean Water Act in the nine-month term that starts in October.

 

Indeed, Justice Kagan ripped into the practice by the five conservatives.

Writing for the dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan said the court should have allowed the appeal to proceed in the ordinary course.

“The applicants have given us no good reason to think that in the remaining time needed to decide the appeal, they will suffer irreparable harm,” she wrote. “By nonetheless granting relief, the court goes astray.”

She added: “That renders the court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all. The docket becomes only another place for merits determinations — except made without full briefing and argument.”

 

So yes, another SCOTUS decision with no oral argument, no debate, no authored opinion to explain the ruling, just a decree from the bench by five justices.

 

That's how the Court works now, you see. It's just there to rubber-stamp what the GOP wants.

 

 

 

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Oklahoma

In anticipation of SCOTUS ending Roe v. Wade in the weeks ahead, Oklahoma Republicans have essentially banned and criminalized abortion outright.

With no fanfare and very little noise of any kind, the Oklahoma House of Representatives on Tuesday morning passed and sent to the governor a near-total ban on abortion.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the final vote on Senate Bill 612, by Sen. Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow, occurred as abortion rights activists and others gathered outside the Capitol for a previously scheduled protest against several bans implemented this year by the Republican-controlled state leadership.

If signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, SB 612 would almost certainly be immediately challenged.

While federal courts have recently upheld state laws severely restricting access to abortion, an outright ban on the procedure has yet to be allowed.

A holdover from last session, when it passed the Senate and a House committee, SB 612 would outlaw all abortions in Oklahoma except to save the life of the woman. It would impose a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine on anyone performing an abortion.

The law would not penalize women who undergo the procedure.

Some might consider SB 612 redundant, since Oklahoma statute already would reactivate the state's long-dormant abortion laws should Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that guaranteed a woman's right to an abortion, be overturned.

Some think that could happen in a few months, when the current Supreme Court is expected to issue its decision in a Mississippi case.

Anti-abortion rights activists calling themselves abolitionists advocate ignoring Roe v. Wade or any other federal action that permits abortion, but SB 612's House sponsor, state Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, said he would not go that far.

Olsen said his bill is intended to have everything in place should Roe v. Wade be overturned.

It could also become a vehicle for a direct challenge of Roe v. Wade if that decision is not overturned.

SB 612 passed off the House floor 70-14, with 16 members not voting. Rep. Carol Bush, R-Tulsa, who is not seeking reelection, was the only Republican voting against the measure.

It was not immediately clear whether Gov. Kevin Stitt will sign SB 612, though he has said previously he would sign any bill restricting abortion rights that comes to him.

Again, the most likely outcome is that there are five votes on the Supreme Court to dismantle Roe and Casey v. Planned Parenthood within three months from now, and states will be allowed to restrict abortion as they see fit, creating a two-tiered system where women will have rights to their bodies in half of America and won't in the Gilead states.

I don't particularly see it affecting Republicans negatively, either. If anything, we'll see a massive turnout of the MAGA faithful willing to finish off civil rights for good.

We're going to have to beat them with numbers unseen in our history.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

Donald Trump has been regularly targeting the handful of House Republicans who voted to impeach him (as well as Mitt Romney, the lone GOP Senator to do so) and today he collected his most valuable head to date of that group: Michigan's Fred Upton, who has been in the House since I was in middle school, is retiring.

Longtime Michigan Republican U.S. Rep. Fred Upton is announcing Tuesday that he will retire from the House at the end of his term after nearly 36 years in office, ending speculation about his political future that had swirled for months.

The St. Joseph lawmaker made the announcement Tuesday morning on the House floor, bringing to a close months of indecision by Upton, who, at 68, is Michigan's most senior lawmaker in Congress — a moderate conservative first elected to the U.S. House in 1986.

"Even the best stories has a last chapter: This is it for me," Upton said.

In an email sent to supporters and friends Tuesday, Upton cited "very positive" poll numbers and sounded upbeat about his upcoming primary against U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga of Holland, but said he'd decided "it is time to pass the torch."

His retirement would be a substantial blow to Michigan's clout in the House of Representatives at a time when Republicans are poised to take back the majority in the fall midterm elections.

The St. Joseph Republican formerly chaired the influential House Energy and Commerce Committee and has served on House GOP leadership's powerful steering committee that determines committee assignments for lawmakers.

Jason Watts, an Upton ally and west Michigan-based political consultant, said Upton’s decision Tuesday represented him ending his distinguished career on his own terms.

Upton became a top target of former President Donald Trump last year after he and nine other House Republicans voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Despite death threats, Upton has stuck by that vote, defending it in the face of primary challenges and censures from county party leaders in his current district in southwest Michigan.

Then the state redistricting commission redid Michigan's political maps after the 2020 Census, and Upton was drawn into the new 4th District with Huizenga, who last month got Trump's "complete and total" endorsement in the primary contest.

 

Upton was crucified in public, his district destroyed, and facing a primary challenge he was rigged to lose.  The Republicans who opposed Trump are being picked off, and Upton was the biggest target of them all. The entire Michigan GOP turned against their elder statesman because Donald Trump commanded his political execution.

The Republican party exists to serve Donald Trump, and Trump exists to serve his white supremacist masters.

Tech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself, Con't

Tesla kajillionaire Elon Musk is now Twitter's largest shareholder, and to keep him from using his billions in pocket change to buy the company out completely, the company is putting Musk on its board of directors. 

Twitter is appointing Tesla CEO Elon Musk to its board of directors, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk will serve as a class II director until 2024. This is a type of position that can be used as an anti-takeover measure.

In a pair of tweets, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal confirmed Musk’s new role on the board. He called Musk “both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service” and said he would “bring great value to our Board.” Musk responded via Twitter saying he looks forward “to making significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!”

The Company will appoint Mr. Musk to the Company’s Board of Directors (the “Board”) to serve as a Class II director with a term expiring at the Company’s 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders,” the filing says. “For so long as Mr. Musk is serving on the Board and for 90 days thereafter, Mr. Musk will not, either alone or as a member of a group, become the beneficial owner of more than 14.9% of the Company’s common stock outstanding at such time, including for these purposes economic exposure through derivative securities, swaps, or hedging transactions.”

On Monday, Musk announced via an SEC filing that he’d purchased a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, despite his complaints about free speech on the platform. Musk’s acquisition makes him the largest individual shareholder in the company. Shortly after making that disclosure, Musk polled followers about creating an “edit” button. Agrawal replied by tweeting “the consequences of this poll will be important,” and he warned users to “vote carefully.”

Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter, expressed that he’s “happy” that Musk is joining the Twitter board, citing that “he cares deeply about our world and Twitter’s role in it.” Dorsey stepped down as CEO in November 2021 but will still remain on the board until sometime in May.

As noted by CNBC, Musk’s investment could set off more issues with the SEC. The SEC requires anyone with more than a 5 percent stake in the company to disclose their purchase within 10 days. Musk first acquired the shares on March 14th, 2022, and didn’t reveal that information until April 4th, 2022 — 21 days after the fact. According to CNBC, the SEC’s fines for this kind of violation typically aren’t exorbitant (for the world’s richest man at least), and tend to waver around the $100,000 mark.

 

Needless to say, Elon Musk now effectively owns Twitter without actually having to buy it, and you can bet that his friend Donald Trump will be back online very soon. Next time a major Republican politician -- or Musk himself -- goes into a racist, bigoted, and/or antisemitic tirade, don't even expect the consequences of a soft ban.

 

Musk has tens of billions to play with, and now has de facto control of a major weapon as a result. If you think Twitter's bad now, give it a few months.

 

Making Ends Meet

Three-quarters of Americans in CNBC's latest poll believe they will have to rethink financial choices due to rising prices.

Surging inflation has Americans reconsidering how they spend their money.

The Consumer Price Index, which measures a wide-ranging basket of goods and services, jumped 7.9% in February from 12 months prior. Prices are going up on everything from the food you put on the table to the gas that powers your car.

That’s weighing heavily on people’s minds, with 48% thinking about rising prices all the time, according to a CNBC + Acorns Invest in You survey, conducted by Momentive. The online poll was conducted March 23-24 among a national sample of 3,953 adults.

Three-quarters are worried that higher prices will force them to rethink their financial choices in the coming months, the survey found.

Inflation is costing the average U.S. household an additional $296 per month, according to a Moody’s Analytics analysis. Experts expect it to get worse before it gets better.

Still, there hasn’t been a significant impact on consumer spending, although retail sales grew at a slower pace than expected in February.

The biggest area people have cut back on is dining out, with 53% saying they’ve done so, according to the survey. They are also driving less and canceling monthly subscriptions, among other things.

 

Americans are already acting like we're in a recession. The problem with that is slowed spending could very well bring that about, and even more Americans -- 81% -- now expect a recession this year.

After two years of the coronavirus pandemic, a recession and a rapid recovery, Americans are worried that the economy may swiftly decline once again.

Some 81% of adults said they think the U.S. economy is likely to experience a recession in 2022, according to the CNBC + Acorns Invest in You survey, conducted by Momentive. The online survey of nearly 4,000 adults was conducted from March 23 to 24.

Certain groups are anticipating a potential economic downturn more than others, the survey found. That includes Republicans, who are more likely to think there will be a recession than Democrats, as well as those who see themselves as financially worse off this year than they were last year. 

 

Economists are scratching their heads, as the Biden Boom continues, but Americans, even Democrats, see economic disaster ahead.

I'm no economist, but considering the plurality of Americans believe we've lost millions of jobs under Biden instead of gained and the majority of Americans consider Biden's first year as a complete and total failure, if enough voters believe that this is a recession, they'll vote like it, too.

 

Last Call For Speaking, Truth To Sour

As I predicted last year when Tang The Conqueror announced his own social media platform and that former GOP. Rep Devin Nunes was going to run it, "Truth Social" is neither, and just another failed Trump business venture that he'll use for a tax write-off.

The two Southern tech entrepreneurs had the two qualities that Donald Trump’s Truth Social startup needed: tech-industry expertise and a politically conservative worldview aligned with the former president, a rare combination in the liberal-leaning industry centered in San Francisco.

Josh Adams and Billy Boozer - the company’s chiefs of technology and product development - joined the venture last year and quickly became central players in its bid to build a social-media empire, backed by Trump’s powerful brand, to counter what many conservatives deride as “cancel culture” censorship from the left.

Less than a year later, both have resigned their senior posts at a critical juncture for the company’s smartphone-app release plans, according to two sources familiar with the venture.

The departures followed the troubled launch of the company’s iPhone app on Feb. 20. Weeks later, many users remain on a waiting list, unable to access the platform. Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) Chief Executive Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman, said publicly that the company aimed to make the app fully operational within the United States by the end of March.

The company has an app for iPhones but no app for Android phones, which comprise more than 40% of the U.S. market, though the company has advertised seeking an engineer to build one.

Boozer declined to comment and Adams did not respond to a request. Representatives for TMTG and Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

This account is based on Reuters interviews with eight people with knowledge of Truth Social’s activities, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

Truth Social is part of a growing sector of tech firms catering to conservatives and marketing themselves as free-speech champions. The platform promised to give Trump unfettered communication with the American public more than a year after he was kicked off Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for allegedly inciting or glorifying violence during the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.

The exit of two executives critical to the app-launch efforts could imperil the company’s progress as it tries to prove it can compete with mainstream platforms such as Twitter, said two people familiar with the company. Like Twitter, Trump’s platform offers users the chance to connect and share their thoughts.

“If Josh has left… all bets are off,” one of those sources said of tech chief Adams, calling him the “brains” behind Truth Social’s technology.

 

Don't worry, Trump more than made his money back off of selling "Truth Social" as a subscription service and charging users $10 a month to play in his mudhole. Remember, the deal to create Trump's media company is already under FEC investigation, and still hasn't closed yet.

The publicly traded company that plans to merge with former president Donald Trump’s media company is under investigation by two federal regulators, which have asked for stock trading information and communications.

Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that it had received “certain preliminary, fact-finding inquiries” from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in late October and early November regarding stock trading tied to the merger agreement announced Oct. 20.

Separately, the SEC asked for information related to meetings of the company’s board of directors, information on investors, and communications, according to the filing.

The company said the filing should not be construed as an indication that either agency has concluded anyone violated the law. Spokespeople for DWAC and Trump did not immediately respond Monday to requests for comment.

 

I don't think it ever will, meaning people will be out millions. Trump will make a mint though...and blow it on his next deal to fleece his voters.

The Republican Mask Slips Again...

...And a GOP politician accidentally tells the truth.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) indicated on Monday that Senate Republicans wouldn’t have accepted Ketanji Brown Jackson as a Supreme Court pick if they controlled the Senate and sent a warning shot about how Republicans will treat any Supreme Court nominees in 2023 or 2024.

“If we get back the Senate and we’re in charge of this body and there is judicial openings, we will talk to our colleagues on the other side. But if we were in charge, she would not have been before this committee. You would have had somebody more moderate than this,” Graham said during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting.

Graham’s comments come as he’s set to vote “no” on Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination — the first time he’ll oppose a Supreme Court pick since joining the Senate.

Republicans previously refused to move Merrick Garland’s 2016 Supreme Court nomination, arguing that it was in line with how Supreme Court nominees had been treated in a presidential election year when the White House and the Senate were controlled by different parties. If Republicans had kept control of the Senate after the 2020 election, that would give them the ability to similarly have refused to take up whoever President Biden nominated to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer.

If Republicans had kept control of the Senate, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) was expected to be chairman of the committee, and he’s likely to become chairman if Republicans win back the Senate in the November midterm elections.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said that he would not let President Biden fill a Supreme Court seat in 2024.

 

There is nobody Biden could have nominated that would have been acceptable to Graham.

 

Expecting a Republican to vote for an extremely well-rounded and well-qualified person, especially a Black woman, is laughable. Everyone knows the GOP are racists, and that's why their voters vote for them. 

As I've been saying for years now, Donald Trump's open bigotry, racism, and antisemitism was not a dealbreaker for 72 million people six years ago, and it's certainly not a dealbreaker now for the people who remain in the party six years later.

The Big Lie, Moose Lady Edition

Again, the Republican Party is dedicated to two things in 2022: Putting Donald Trump back in the White House as Maximum Leader of the American Regime, and doing so over the broken democracy that America used to be.

 

Donald Trump's supporters give him credit for lots of things, but a Michigan member of Congress went way beyond reality in falsely claiming that Trump "caught" Osama bin Laden.

"Caught Osama bin Laden and Soleimani, al-Baghdadi," said Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., during a Trump rally Saturday in Washington Township, Mich., in a speech in which she attacked President Joe Biden's foreign policy.

Trump was a private citizen in 2011, when President Barack Obama authorized the mission that killed bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and architect of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Biden was vice president at the time, and opposed the raid during internal deliberations because of uncertainty over whether bin Laden would be at the location of the raid.

During his presidency, Trump authorized military operations that led to the deaths of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Iranian military commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and accused terrorist Hamza bin Laden – the son of bin Laden.

 

Of course this is a huge lie, and everyone applauded anyway.  Fact don't matter to Trumpies, and they haven't for a long time. The people he endorses are bound to him by falsehoods, the latest of which is Moose Lady, up for the now late Don Young's Alaska House seat.

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday endorsed Sarah Palin in the upcoming Alaska House special election.

Calling her a “wonderful patriot” and “tough and smart,” Trump said the former governor had been “a champion for Alaska values, Alaska energy, Alaska jobs, and the great people of Alaska.”

Referring to her time on the 2008 Republican ticket alongside the late Sen. John McCain — a longtime foil of the former president — Trump said, “Sarah lifted the McCain presidential campaign out of the dumps despite the fact she had to endure some very evil, stupid, and jealous people within the campaign itself. They were out to destroy her, but she didn’t let that happen.”

“I am proud to give her my Complete and Total Endorsement, and encourage all Republicans to unite behind the wonderful person and her campaign to put America First,” Trump added.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate and conservative firebrand announced Friday that she was running to fill the House seat held by the late Rep. Don Young, following recent talks with Trump.

“Public service is a calling, and I would be honored to represent the men and women of Alaska in Congress, just as Rep. Young did for 49 years. I realize that I have very big shoes to fill, and I plan to honor Rep. Young’s legacy by offering myself up in the name of service to the state he loved and fought for,” Palin said in a statement Friday.

Some 51 candidates are presently running to replace Young, including several state lawmakers, and Palin is no shoo-in. The special election’s primary is scheduled for June 11, with the top four candidates advancing to the general election on Aug. 16.

 

This is the biggest test so far of Trump's Dear Leader powers. If he can't get Palin into the race on June 11, his endorsement may not mean as much as previously.

 

Then again, if we see dozens drop out now that Trump has endorsed Moose Lady, well, we'll see.

 

Who are the Democrats running here?

Last Call For Mick, Jagged

Late Show host Stephen Colbert welcomes former Trump Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to the CBS family.

With a baseball bat.

Tonight, we address the hot topic at the CBS watercooler. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/hiW3BBKV28

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) April 1, 2022

 

Mulvaney was hired for his access to Trump and to the GOP, who at least one CBS News executive admits they'll need soon because Republicans will win the midterms and take over Congress.

Remember, this is the network where CEO Leslie Moonves infamously said in 2016 of Trump's WH run:

"It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS"

 

We have to depend on Colbert to check the CBS News division these days, and frankly that's been true for years now.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorist Problem, Con't

I've groused about Attorney General Merrick Garland's stone-faced lack of comment on January 6th before, as you all well know. I know that Garland has to be perfect in his case to take down someone like Trump, where everyone involved in prosecuting and trying the case would be immediate targets of terrorists willing to kill, but like myself, Democrats are openly wondering if this is the perfect being the enemy of the good.

Immediately after Merrick B. Garland was sworn in as attorney general in March of last year, he summoned top Justice Department officials and the F.B.I. director to his office. He wanted a detailed briefing on the case that will, in all likelihood, come to define his legacy: the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

Even though hundreds of people had already been charged, Mr. Garland asked to go over the indictments in detail, according to two people familiar with the meeting. What were the charges? What evidence did they have? How had they built such a sprawling investigation, involving all 50 states, so fast? What was the plan now?

The attorney general’s deliberative approach has come to frustrate Democratic allies of the White House and, at times, President Biden himself. As recently as late last year, Mr. Biden confided to his inner circle that he believed former President Donald J. Trump was a threat to democracy and should be prosecuted, according to two people familiar with his comments. And while the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Mr. Garland said that he and the career prosecutors working on the case felt only the pressure “to do the right thing,” which meant that they “follow the facts and the law wherever they may lead.”

Still, Democrats’ increasingly urgent calls for the Justice Department to take more aggressive action highlight the tension between the frenetic demands of politics and the methodical pace of one of the biggest prosecutions in the department’s history.

“The Department of Justice must move swiftly,” Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the House committee investigating the riot, said this past week. She and others on the panel want the department to charge Trump allies with contempt for refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas.

“Attorney General Garland,” Ms. Luria said during a committee hearing, “do your job so that we can do ours.”

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen people, including officials in the Biden administration and people with knowledge of the president’s thinking, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations.

In a statement, Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said the president believed that Mr. Garland had “decisively restored” the independence of the Justice Department.

“President Biden is immensely proud of the attorney general’s service in this administration and has no role in investigative priorities or decisions,” Mr. Bates said.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. 

 

And while we know that Trump is a criminal, the hard reality is that the President's son is also under federal investigation, and has been for almost four years now. There's no good way out of this, no way the case can be perfect.

So how long can America afford to wait for the good?

To be fair, there's a lot of work to be done.

Hundreds of Republican state legislators may have legal exposure stemming from Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a former top GOP strategist explained on Friday.

Amanda Carpenter, a columnist at The Bulwark, drew attention to a text message sent to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 3, 2021. The message references a call with Trump and Peter Navarro the previous day.

"We focused a ton on Trump's call to Brad Raffensberger but the idea Trump was coordinating with potentially hundreds of state legislators to block Biden's certification is...major. We should talk about that a lot more," Carpenter said.

Carpenter noted a press release sent the day before the text message to Meadows that described a very similar call.

In the press release, the group "Got Freedom?" said it "conducted an exclusive national briefing."

"Nearly 300 state lawmakers and others participated in the briefing, which also featured an address by President Trump," the group said. "Also on the call were Rudy Giuliani; professor of law John Eastman; Peter Navarro, Assistant to the President for Trade and Manufacturing (appearing in his personal capacity), and John Lott, Senior Advisor, U.S. Department of Justice (also appearing in his personal capacity)."

 

We've been failed before, and while I still trust Garland to deliver in the end, it's going to come at a ruinous cost.

Sunday Long Read: To Suffer Enough

Our Sunday Long Read this week comes from The New Yorker's Rachel Levy, with the story of Mackenzie Morrison, now Mackenzie Fierceton, who rose from the foster system to get a full ticket to Penn, only for Penn to turn on her for lying about her family status.

In the winter of her sophomore year of high school, Mackenzie Morrison sat in her bedroom closet and began a new diary. Using her phone to light the pages, she listed the “pros of telling”: “no more physical/emotional attacks,” “I get out of this dangerous house,” “the truth is finally out, I don’t have to lie or cover things up.” Under “cons of telling,” she wrote, “damaging mom’s life,” “could go into foster care,” “basically I would probably lose everything.” After she finished, she loosened the screws of a vent panel on the wall outside her closet and slipped the notebook behind it.

Mackenzie went to Whitfield, a private prep school in St. Louis, where the school’s wellness director, Ginny Fendell, called her the “queen of compartmentalization.” She got A’s, served in student government, played varsity soccer, managed the field-hockey team, and volunteered for the Special Olympics. She was five feet ten with long curly blond hair—“the picture of Americana,” as one friend described her. Mackenzie’s parents had separated when she was six, and Mackenzie lived with her mother, Carrie Morrison, the director of breast imaging and mammography at St. Luke’s Hospital, in Chesterfield, a wealthy suburb of St. Louis. They liked to imagine themselves as the Gilmore Girls: the single mother and her precocious daughter, so close they were nearly fused. But Mackenzie’s friends and teachers noticed that in her mother’s presence Mackenzie physically recoiled. Lisa Smith, the mother of one of Mackenzie’s best friends at Whitfield, said that her daughter once asked why Mackenzie was always injured: “My daughter kind of looked at me funny, and I looked back at her and said, ‘What are you trying to say?’ ”

When Fendell asked Mackenzie about her bruises, Mackenzie offered vague comments about being clumsy. Fendell told her that, if she couldn’t talk about why she was injured, she should write it down. “I don’t ever want to cause her any pain or anything, which is why I’ll probably end up burning this,” Mackenzie wrote in the journal. “I wish that I had the courage to tell someone. Or even to write everything down in here. Because if I’m being honest, there are things that I’m too ashamed to even speak of.”

Mackenzie began documenting her life with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, Henry Lovelace, Jr., a personal trainer who had won the Missouri Strongest Man Championship in his weight group. Two days after starting the journal, in March, 2014, she wrote an entry about a head injury she’d suffered three months earlier. She had been hospitalized for four days at St. Luke’s, where her mother worked. “Mom heard her tumble, thought maybe tripped going up the stairs,” the medical records said. Mackenzie told the hospital staff that she didn’t remember what had happened. A consulting physician said that Mackenzie “most likely fell down the steps at home and hit her head.” He observed, “She appears scared.”

In the months since her head injury, Mackenzie had regained memories from the weekend before her fall, and she recalled that she and her mom had been fighting about Lovelace. “Did she actually have something to do with it? God, I don’t know,” she wrote. Eventually, the theory became impossible to avoid. “If I look back at all the signs, at the days leading up to and proceeding my ‘accident,’ ” she wrote, “the signs all seem to point in the same direction. The one that I feared most.” She didn’t elaborate on the thought, because, she added, “I’m literally getting nauseous thinking about it.”

Her mother was a respected figure in the St. Louis medical community, and, when Mackenzie was injured, she saw doctors affiliated with her hospital. “She is brilliant and can charm anyone,” Mackenzie wrote. “She’s pretty much invincible.” Mackenzie felt certain that, if she shared details about her mom or Lovelace, her mother would convince people that she was lying, or crazy. “She is just so amazing at getting people to think, feel, and do what she wants,” she wrote. “She lies better than I can tell the truth.”

Amonth after beginning the journal, Mackenzie came to school with a black eye. She’d tried to cover it up with concealer, but her teachers noticed, and Fendell pulled Mackenzie out of her Spanish class. “I went with the story my mom told me to tell, which is that I was playing with my dogs in the living room and I tripped and fell into a table,” she wrote in her journal. Fendell did not accept the explanation, and she later told Mackenzie that she was legally obligated to notify Missouri’s Department of Social Services.

Mackenzie stayed at school late that night, rehearsing for a musical. When she got home, a caseworker was at her house, chatting with her mother. “They were talking about work and school and whatever else and having a great time just like they were old friends,” Mackenzie wrote. White, upper middle class, and in a position of power, Mackenzie’s mother was demographically dissimilar to most parents who come to the agency’s attention. Interviewed in her mother’s presence, Mackenzie repeated the story about falling into a table. Before leaving, the caseworker, who was white, explained that “she didn’t really need anything else from us and she was sorry to bother us, but was glad everything worked out,” Mackenzie wrote.

After the caseworker’s visit, Mackenzie was “on high alert, trying not to set anyone or anything off,” she wrote in her diary. During conversations with her mother in the kitchen, she made sure “to keep the kitchen island in between us,” while also “bracing for impact.” She thought about running away, but she didn’t have anywhere to go. She had become estranged from her father, a former soap-opera actor, against whom her mother had filed an order of protection, alleging that he posed a physical threat to Mackenzie; a guardian ad litem had been appointed to protect Mackenzie’s interests during the custody proceedings, which were prolonged and bitter. “Thinking about existing in a world where I had no parents just couldn’t be a possibility in my mind,” she told me.

After Lovelace bought Morrison a gun for her birthday, Mackenzie wrote, “If I’m being perfectly honest, I’m terrified.” She described an incident, a year earlier, when she had fallen asleep watching a movie in her mom’s bed and woke up to Lovelace on top of her, “feeling my boobs, running his hand around my inner thighs & exploring other places.” She got out from under him, ran into her own room, and eventually called her mother, who wasn’t home, and related what had happened. “She just bursts out laughing,” Mackenzie wrote. Her mother told her that it was an accident, saying, “I’m flattered that he got me mixed up with my 15-year-old daughter.” In the year since the episode, Mackenzie said, Lovelace had continued to sexually assault her. She felt as if her mother were both sanctioning his abuse—“offering me up to him on a silver platter,” as she later described it—and punishing her for attracting Lovelace’s attention. “I still just don’t understand why she won’t protect me,” Mackenzie wrote. “Did I do something wrong to make her not want to?”

 

What follows is a hard and ugly tale. Mackenzie says that she fought hard to get to Penn. Penn, in evaluating her Rhodes Scholar application, says that Mackenzie is lying and manipulating the story to get what she wants.

 

It's a pretty haunting read, because the thing is, we all know somebody exactly like her, and we have the same suspicions about someone who has clearly overcome serious issues to find success. The cost of that success, it seems, is very steep.

The Big Lie, Georgia Edition, Con't

As Greg Sargent notes, both of Trump's GOP primary picks in Georgia, former Sen. David Perdue for Governor, and Rep. Jody Hice for Secretary of State, are now openly running on annulling the 2020 Biden election win and doing so again in 2024 if Democrats win.

At first, Perdue kept this subtle, if that’s the word for it. He ran an ad featuring Trump, who intoned that Kemp had “let us down.” That implicitly criticized Kemp’s refusal to steal the election for Trump, but without saying so directly.

But now Perdue is all in, declaring outright this week that the 2020 election was indeed stolen. It was actually ratified by numerous audits and recounts, but as Steve Benen notes, this was plainly necessary to keep Trump happy with Perdue’s candidacy.

For good measure, at a rally this week Perdue visibly encouraged the crowd when it chanted “lock him up” about Kemp.

Perdue subsequently backtracked. But Perdue’s campaign promoted his “lock him up” moment, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, boosting the idea that Kemp should be imprisoned for disloyalty to Trump, in an effort to “gain ground” against Kemp among Trump voters.

On top of all this, Perdue has openly declared that he would not have certified Trump’s 2020 loss, as Kemp did. It’s reasonable to read this as an implicit vow not to certify a future loss on the basis of made-up voter fraud claims. It’s also fair to ask whether as governor Perdue would certify a fake slate of electors for Trump or an imitator in 2024, in defiance of the state’s popular vote, which could be counted by a GOP House.

But it gets even worse. Trump has endorsed Rep. Jody Hice’s (R-Ga.) primary challenge to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. One of Raffensperger’s chief transgressions? He rebuffed Trump’s pressure to literally manufacture votes out of thin air to reverse the outcome.

Hice, then, is not just a loyal devotee of Trump’s lies about 2020. He’s really running on an implicit willingness to do what Raffensperger would not, i.e., use his official powers to overturn a future loss. Indeed, this is partly why Trump endorsed him! Hice may still win, but this is proving much closer than observers expected. Trump’s lies are not proving as potent here, either.

This sort of mania is unfolding in many other states. To take just one other bonkers example: the Associated Press reports that a GOP candidate for secretary of state in Ohio who previously acknowledged Trump’s 2020 loss has now backflipped and declared the election stolen.

Why? Apparently because he’s facing primary challengers who full-throatedly embrace that lie, and he needed to keep pace.

At this point there are plenty of Republicans swearing loyalty not to America or the Constitution or even to their own constituents, they are swearing loyalty to Donald Trump, and vowing to overthrow the Biden administration through whatever means necessary. 

The sedition is no longer a conspiracy, it's an open political platform, with candidates openly running on toppling the current government and assisting in a coup. These are true believers, folks.

And this is what the GOP has become. It's not about gaining power, it's not about governing, it's not even about Trump. It's about fascist, permanent, total domination where the opposition is outlawed and the ruling class is the white supremacist theocracy.

They are conducting this right now in the open, and way too many of us accept this as normal, "both sides are bad, why should I bother" politics.

The GOP is coming for everything and everybody, they are openly telling us this. You need to start caring and start voting.