Last Call For Mitch In The Ditch

Senate GOP majority leader Mitch McConnell is trying to evacuate himself and as many of his Senate GOP enablers as he can from the sinking Trump regime, but all the lifeboats are being set on fire by the Trump cultists, and I can't say that I'm sorry to hope they all drown like the rats they are.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Republican senators Tuesday during a private caucus call not to object to the election results on Jan. 6, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

McConnell told his caucus that challenging the results would force Republicans to take a “terrible vote” because they would need to vote it down and appear against President Donald Trump. Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) also echoed McConnell’s remarks.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said that no one objected on the call to McConnell encouraging members to accept the election results.

"There wasn’t any pushback to it," she said. "There’s wasn’t anyone saying: oh wait a minute. That didn’t occur."

McConnell’s advice comes one day after the Electoral College officially voted for Joe Biden as the president-elect. The Kentucky Republican acknowledged for the first time that Biden will be the next president in his floor remarks Tuesday.

Several House Republicans, led by hard-line conservative Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), are still planning to challenge the election results on Jan. 6, the date Congress will officially certify them. If a Republican senator joins the long-shot effort, however, it will force both chambers to take a vote on the election. But they have yet to get official buy-in from any GOP senators, though Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) hasn't ruled it out.

Brooks, in response to McConnell cautioning the GOP against objecting to the election results, tweeted that he hopes it’s “fake news.”

“I find it unfathomable that anyone would acquiesce to election theft and voter fraud because they lack the courage to take a difficult vote on the House or Senate floor,” Brooks said in a phone interview. “Last time I checked, that’s why we were elected to Congress.”

Brooks met briefly last week with several GOP senators to discuss his effort, but declined to say whether anyone is seriously considering the idea. Conservatives, however, have been eyeing Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville — another Alabama Republican and Trump supporter — as someone who may get on board. And Senate Republicans are unsure where he stands; Tuberville was not a part of Tuesday’s conference call.

McConnell’s warning underscores how the last-ditch bid to overturn the election is putting the GOP in a bind. On the one hand, Republicans are facing pressure from Trump and his allies to support his attempt to remain in power. And party leaders want to keep the base energized ahead of a pair of critical Georgia runoff races on Jan. 5. that will determine control of the Senate.

But at the same time, McConnell — who is defending a tough Senate map in 2022 — needs to protect his members from taking a tough vote. If the Senate is forced to deliberate the election results, most GOP senators would be going on the record against a president who values fealty above all else. And it would be none other than Vice President Mike Pence presiding over the floor debate — a potentially awkward scenario as his boss continues to deny the reality of the election he lost.

 

Mitch now faces a trap of his own design. He either has to risk losing his power now and anger Trump's cultists enough that they sabotage the George runoffs, or risk losing power in 2022 when attacks ads will show Republican after Republican who voted to overturn the election (or they are primaried out by Republicans who didn't and are replaced with even worse ones).

I hope it's the former.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Understand that Bill Barr was fired by Trump for several reasons, and not appointing a special prosecutor to go after Joe Biden's son is one of the main ones. Incoming replacement Jeff Rosen is now going to be under tremendous pressure to make this happen.

President Donald Trump is considering pushing to have a special counsel appointed to advance a federal tax investigation into the son of President-elect Joe Biden, setting up a potential showdown with incoming acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen.

Trump — angry that out-going Attorney General William Barr didn’t publicly announce the ongoing, two-year investigation into Hunter Biden — has consulted on the matter with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone and outside allies.

That’s according to several Trump administration officials and Republicans close to the White House who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters.

Beyond appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the younger Biden, the sources said Trump is interested in having another special counsel appointed to look into his own baseless claims of election fraud. But if he’s expecting his newly named acting attorney general to go further than Barr on either matter, he could end up quickly disappointed.

Barr on Monday evening announced he will resign effective next week, revealing his plans about a week after Hunter Biden publicly disclosed that he was under investigation related to his finances. It is generally Justice Department policy not to disclose investigations that are in progress, though the subjects of those investigations can.

Rosen, the deputy attorney general, will step into the Justice Department’s top job in an acting role. A longtime litigator, he has served as Barr’s top deputy since May 2019 but largely shies away from the spotlight. He said in a statement Tuesday he was “honored” to serve and “will continue to focus on the implementation of the Department’s key priorities.”

Trump is still weighing his options, considering whether to pressure Rosen to make the special counsel appointment or, if needed, to replace the acting attorney general with someone more likely to carry out his wishes. He has even asked his team of lawyers, including personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, to look into whether the president has the power to appoint a special counsel himself.

A key question will be whether Rosen can stand up to presidential pressure — and potentially withering attacks — in the waning weeks of the Trump administration. If not, Rosen could be cast aside in favor of others more willing to do Trump’s bidding.

Believing that a special counsel probe could wound a Biden administration before it even begins, Trump aides have urged the president to push for one, which would make it so the investigation can’t be easily stopped by the incoming president. No firm decision has been made.

 

Trump has 35 days left in office.  He can still cause a tremendous amount of damage in five weeks, and the damage he has already caused will leave scars on America's political system for decades, not to mention the irreversible human carnage wrought by his cancerous party: hundreds of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands more will die, and millions are facing a wintry eviction in a matter of a score of days.

 

As he runs out of options as the days go by -- and as America reaches a point not seen since the 1930s -- the odds of precipitous calamity increase exponentially. We're still at the phase where Trump going after Hunter Biden is an ugly political attack to force Joe Biden to relent before New York serves Trump with subpoenas. Give it a couple of weeks, and we'll be at the point after Christmas where Trump may do something so profoundly illegal, immoral, and indefensibly evil that the entire country could be set aflame.

 

The monster is most dangerous when cornered by the hero as the final battle begins.

The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

At this point, Republicans are openly running their campaign platforms on Donald Trump imposing a second term through a coup and martial law, and Republicans will vote for them, because they are all traitors.

State Sen. Amanda F. Chase, a brash Republican gubernatorial contender who bills herself as "Trump in heels," called on President Trump on Tuesday to declare martial law to prevent his removal from office.

One day after the electoral college formally confirmed former vice president Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, Chase (Chesterfield) doubled down on baseless allegations of election fraud in an early-morning Facebook post.

“Not my President and never will be,” she wrote, referring to Biden. “The American people aren’t fools. We know you cheated to win and we’ll never accept these results. Fair elections we can accept but cheating to win; never. It’s not over yet. So thankful President Trump has a backbone and refuses to concede. President Trump should declare martial law as recommended by General Flynn.”

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser pardoned by the president, recently shared a Twitter post advocating that the president “temporarily suspend the Constitution” and declare martial law.

In an interview Tuesday, Chase said she was holding out hope that Trump somehow would be declared the winner when the electoral college ballots are formally counted during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 — an all-but-impossible outcome, especially as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday publicly acknowledged Biden’s victory for the first time since the election. Barring that extremely unlikely turn of events, Chase thinks martial law is in order.

Under martial law, she said, troops would “go and seize these [voting] machines and voting equipment to find the voter fraud. There needs to be a national audit.”

Chase’s call for martial law drew rebukes from a few prominent Virginia Republicans, including her lone rival for the GOP nomination, Del. Kirk Cox (Colonial Heights).

“Senator Chase’s suggestion that martial law be imposed is absurd and dangerous,” Cox, a retired teacher, said in a written statement. “I taught government for 30 years and have great respect for our constitutional republic. Per that system and the electoral college vote yesterday, Joe Biden will be the next President.”

Cox, a former House speaker who had said he would not comment on the presidential election until after the electoral college vote, acknowledged Biden’s win for the first time Tuesday.

 

I bet you dollars to doughnuts that this "brash, Trump on heels" wins the Virginia Republican gubernatorial primary by 20 points, and my fear is that running on "not my President and never will be" is all she'll need to say and do at campaign rallies to have a serious chance to beat former Dem Gov. Terry McAuliffe come November 2021.

 

And Chase isn't alone. Far from it, in fact. 

A North Carolina senator suggested Tuesday that the president might suspend basic liberties to overturn an election that he believes, without evidence, was stolen.

Sen. Bob Steinburg, R-Chowan, paraphrased on his Facebook page comments that retired Gen. Thomas McInerney made earlier this month on a conservative talk show. Among other things, McInerney suggested President Donald Trump declare a national emergency, invoke the Insurrection Act and suspend habeas corpus.

Steinburg told WRAL News on Tuesday evening that he wasn't endorsing the idea, just "putting out there options that others say still remain on the table," though he later said he'd be on board with it. In an extended harangue, Steinburg also made it clear he believes the recent presidential election was stolen and that Trump is the victim of a conspiracy to which multiple countries, the media, U.S. government agencies, officials and judges are either a part or turning a blind eye.

“There’s something going on here bigger than what anybody is willing to talk about," he said. "I’m not nuts. … I’m not a conspiracy theory person. I don’t like them. I don’t like conspiracy theories at all. But something is going on here that’s bigger than meets the eye.”

Steinburg then offered, unprompted, to take a psychiatric evaluation. He said the CIA and FBI both know there's a coup d'etat going on in the country but won't do anything about it.

"They think we’re just bunch of boobs out here in the hinterland," he said. "Well, these boobs are waking up.”

People like this aren't just going to vanish into the ether on January 20th.

A former Houston Police Department Captain was arrested and charged for running a man off the road and pointing a gun at his head in an attempt to prove claims of a massive voter fraud scheme in Harris County, according to a news release from the Harris County's DA's office.

Mark Anthony Aguirre, 63, was arrested by Houston police Tuesday and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

"He crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime, and we are lucky no one was killed," Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said. "His alleged investigation was backward from the start - first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened."

According to court documents, Aguirre told police that he was part of a group of private citizens called the "Liberty Center," who were conducting a civilian investigation into the alleged ballot scheme.

According to Aguirre, he had been conducting surveillance for four days on a man who was allegedly the mastermind of a giant voter fraud scheme. Aguirre told authorities the man was hiding 750,000 fraudulent ballots in a truck he was driving.

Instead, the victim turned out to be an innocent air conditioner repairman, court documents said.

Aguirre ran his SUV into the back of the truck to get the technician to stop and get out, according to court documents.

When the technician got out of the truck, Aguirre pointed a handgun at the technician, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man's back until police came, the court document said.

Aguirre allegedly directed police to a parking lot nearby where another suspect, who has not been identified, took the truck.

According to court documents, there were no ballots in the truck. The truck was filled with air conditioning parts and tools.

"I think it's a political prosecution. I really do," said Terry Yates, Aguirre's attorney. "He was working and investigating voter fraud, and there was an accident. A member of the car got out and rushed at him and that's where the confrontation took place. It's very different from what you're citing in the affidavit."

 

This is just a taste of what's coming in the weeks and months ahead, especially should Donald Trump and his family end up facing the music in New York on state charges. People are going to get hurt, and our long national nightmare is not over, it's just moving on to a different phase.

I hope we can get through it.  I'm not so sure we will.

StupidiNews!

• A New York State judge has ordered the Trump Organization to turn over tax documents to state Attorney General Tish James in the state's ongoing Trump Organization tax fraud investigation.
• The FDA has released new medical data on the second major COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna, paving the way for FDA approval which could come later this month.
• House and Senate leaders from both parties say they are nearing a final agreement on a COVID-19 stimulus bill as the government faces a Friday shutdown deadline.
• The Trump regime is asking the Supreme Court to stop mail delivery of Plan B abortion medication, claiming using the postal service to deliver the pills is a violation of the Hyde Amendment.
• Claiming they haven't been paid in months, workers at an iPhone parts plant in India have damaged the factory as millions of workers across India are going on general strike.

Last Call For Hard Hats, Parklands, and Reactors

Joe Biden is picking former rival Pete Buttigieg for Transportation Secretary, which means maybe we can actually get the damn Brent Spence Bridge replaced.

President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Pete Buttigieg to be his transportation secretary, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN, elevating the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to a top post in the federal government.
Buttigieg would be the first Senate-confirmed LGBTQ Cabinet secretary should his nomination make it through the chamber. 

The choice -- which represents the first time the President-elect has called on one of his former Democratic presidential opponents to join his administration as a Cabinet secretary -- vaults a candidate Biden spoke glowingly of after the primary into a top job in his incoming administration and could earn Buttigieg what many Democrats believe is needed experience should he run for president again. 

The role of transportation secretary is expected to play a central role in Biden's push for a bipartisan infrastructure package. 

Buttigieg is seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party but someone who lacked an obvious path to higher elected office given the continued rightward shift of his home state of Indiana. 

As a presidential candidate, he rolled out a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that prioritized upgrading the country's crumbling infrastructure and expanding broadband internet access through payment to state and local governments. Buttigieg often spoke about infrastructure on the campaign trail from the perspective of a small mayor, arguing that local governments like the one he once ran needed people in Washington who understood their needs and issues.

Infrastructure reform had been a priority of Trump's earlier in his four years in office, but if routinely took a back seat to other issues. 

Buttigieg often faulted the administration for failing to do anything on infrastructure, writing in his plan on the issue that the Republican President's team was "incapable of keeping its promise to pass major infrastructure legislation, and critical projects around the country are stalled because of it." 

Buttigieg emerged as the leading candidate for the transportation secretary role in recent days. The former mayor was considered for a host of other posts, including US ambassador to the United Nations and commerce secretary. 

Other Democrats were also considered for the post, including former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo.

 

While Pete wouldn't be my first choice for the job, it's not my call to make, and it's not like Elaine Chao cared about anything other than lining her own pockets (and that of her husband, Mitch McConnell). 

 

Besides, the other candidates, Gina Raimondo, Eric Garcetti, and especially Rahm Emanuel, all were train wrecks who would have been far worse. Raimondo has had multiple ethics problems with unions and casinos as Rhode Island's governor, Garcetti, LA's mayor, has a serious issue with the fact his top aide is a serial sexual predator, and Rahm...well..Rahm should never be anywhere near a Biden administration except if he buys a ticket to an event, and even then he should be tossed out on his ass.

Mayor Pete is actually the best pick of a truly meh bunch.

Meanwhile, Biden's doing a much better job with former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm as his choice for Energy Secretary, and Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico as Interior Secretary.

U.S. Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico appears to be President-elect Joe Biden’s top choice to head the Interior Department, three informed sources said, a pick that would make her the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency.

The position would give her authority over a department that employs more than 70,000 people across the United States and oversees more than 20% of the nation’s surface, including tribal lands and national parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite.

She has told Reuters she would seek to usher in an expansion of renewable energy production on federal land to contribute to the fight against climate change, and undo President Donald Trump’s focus on bolstering fossil fuels output.

Two of the sources familiar with the proceedings said Biden’s team was close to finalizing the decision on Haaland but weighing concerns about the loss of a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Democrats are hanging on to a slim majority. The third source said the decision was made and that an announcement was imminent.

Biden is also in the process of finalizing other key energy and environment picks, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator and Secretary of Energy - all of which will be crucial to his sweeping climate change agenda.

Two sources said Biden currently favors Jennifer Granholm to run the Department of Energy. Granholm, 61, was Michigan’s first female governor and pushed for a transition to green technologies in the longtime car-manufacturing state.

 

Both Haaland and Granholm are excellent choices.

 

And then there's...Pete.  I guess.

The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

The Trump regime continues to openly plot sedition after yesterday's electoral college votes sealed Biden's victory.

President Trump's allies are preparing to send an "alternate" slate of electors to Congress, senior White House adviser Stephen Miller said Monday, signaling Trump will drag out his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election even after the Electoral College certifies Joe Biden as the winner.

Miller, appearing on Fox News as a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, brushed off the idea that the Electoral College vote marked any kind of end to the process.

"The only date in the Constitution is Jan. 20. So we have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election," Miller said on "Fox & Friends."

"As we speak, today, an alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote and we're going to send those results up to Congress," he continued. "This will ensure that all of our legal remedies remain open. That means that if we win these cases in the courts, that we can direct that the alternate state of electors be certified."

Electors from every state met on Monday to formally elect Biden as the next president. Those results will be certified by the states and submitted to Congress.

Miller indicated that Trump supporters will act as "alternates" in a handful of contested states, including Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, to submit their own, unofficial results. Should the Trump campaign succeed in overturning the outcome in any of those states, Miller said, the alternate electors could then be recognized by Congress.

Nothing in the Constitution or state electoral processes allows for such an "alternate" slate of electors.

Miller also raised the idea of state legislatures stepping in to overturn the results or of Congress interceding.

 

This is no longer cute, or funny, or even a cynical grift to raise funds for Trump's campaign coffers.

 

This is sedition.

 

Actually meeting to elect alternate electors, and then sending those electors' votes to Congress with the express intent of overturning an election, is sedition, period.

These people must go to prison or our democracy will be damaged, perhaps fatally so.

Wilbur Runs The Numbers

With all the drunken first year law student frat boy coup idiocy going on, it's important to note a quick reminder from Forbes Magazine's Dan Alexander that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross may actually be the most corrupt member of Trump's Cabinet, and that's actually a singularly amazing feat in the field of massive grifting in a field of massive grifters.

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, one of President Trump’s longest-serving cabinet members, has been under investigation for most of his tenure in office, according to a report issued Thursday by the inspector general of the commerce department.

The report both revealed the investigation and published its findings. It concluded that Ross, who has served as commerce secretary since Trump’s first year in office, violated a federal regulation by failing to avoid the appearance of ethical and legal breaches. The report cleared him on other matters, including whether he lied to federal officials and engaged in insider trading.

The probe began in November 2017, after Forbes reported how Ross had been apparently fibbing about his fortune for years. The investigation eventually expanded, following revelations the next year about false ethics filings, conflict-prone meetings and suspiciously timed investments.

Thursday’s report catalogues a litany of inaccurate statements that Ross submitted to federal officials. He did not list all assets on his financial disclosure report. He claimed to have divested things he did not. He described stock distributions that did not happen. He said he sold assets that he actually shorted.

It’s not a crime to unintentionally provide false information to officials—only to intentionally do so. The report does not conclude that Ross knowingly lied.

The inspector general also documented several meetings that don’t look good at first glance. For instance, Ross was supposed to receive advice from ethics lawyers before dealing with issues involving China or energy. But in conversations about gas exports, the commerce secretary ignored that and talked to Chinese officials. Another example: While Ross’ wife owned stock in Boeing, he met with the company’s CEO and asked about subsidies to its rival Airbus. A third one: the commerce secretary met with the CEO of a railcar company even though Ross owned a hidden stake in the business.

The report concludes that the China energy talks violated the regulation meant to curb unethical appearances, while determining that Ross’ actions didn’t have a clear enough effect on his holdings to constitute a violation of the criminal conflicts-of-interest statute. Merely asking the CEO about Airbus, without taking some action related to the conversation, didn’t rise to that level either, according to the report. Nor did the meeting with the railcar CEO, which Ross claimed was “purely social.”

Ignoring the regulatory violations, the commerce secretary struck a triumphant tone. “I am pleased that the inspector general’s report puts to rest any notion that I violated the conflict-of-interest statutes,” Ross said in a statement sent shortly after this story published. “I have always been and will remain committed to adhering to the highest standard of ethics in the discharge of my duties.”

For all the insider trading Sonny Perdue and Kelly Loeffler ae accused of doing, it's Wilbur Ross who got away with enriching himself the most while just barely getting away with it.  I'm sure we're going to find out that between Ross and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that these two got away with billions in fraud while being much smarter than Trump was in the process of making it happen.

Trump will surely pardon the two of them on the way out too, if only to buy their silence.

Last Call For Russian To Judgement, Con't

So very odd how that weeks after Trump fires the nation's top cybersecurity expert because he won't sign off on Trump's "election fraud" lunacy and leaves the country rudderless on the defending the internet, the US Treasury immediately gets hit by a massive cyberattack that compromised our entire internet infrastructure.  I'll give you three guesses as to who's behind this, and the first seven don't count. 

The Russian government hackers who breached a top cybersecurity firm are behind a global espionage campaign that also compromised the Treasury and Commerce departments and other government agencies, according to people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The FBI is investigating the campaign by a hacking group working for the Russian foreign intelligence service, SVR. The group, known among private-sector security firms as APT29 or Cozy Bear, also hacked the State Department and the White House during the Obama administration.

It is not clear what information was accessed.

Reuters first reported the hacks of the Treasury and Commerce agencies Sunday, saying they were carried out by a foreign government-backed group. The SVR link to the broader campaign is previously unreported.

The matter was so serious it prompted an emergency National Security Council meeting on Saturday, Reuters reported.

“The United States government is aware of these reports and we are taking all necessary steps to identify and remedy any possible issues related to this situation,” said NSC spokesman John Ullyot. He would not comment on the country or group responsible.

APT29 has been linked to several has attempted to steal coronavirus vaccine research.

The Washington Post reported last week that the Russian hacking group, APT29, breached the cybersecurity firm, FireEye, according to sources familiar with the report.

At Commerce, the Russians targeted the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency that handles internet and telecommunications policy, Reuters reported.

The campaign is said to be quite broad, encompassing an array of targets, including government agencies in the United States and other countries. It has been running for months, one person said.

So to recap, the Russians most likely have the entire set of keys to the US internet infrastructure, and now have the ability to manipulate it as they see fit. Even Trump is scared enough to have an emergency national security meeting over this.

Just in time for basically all the previously secure internet communications in the US to now be open to Moscow and Putin to do whatever he wants to the Biden administration.

BREAKING: He's Done, Barr None

Bill Barr is stepping down as Attorney General and will be replaced by Deputy AG Jeff Rosen.

 

Attorney General William Barr resigned on Monday, ending a tenure in which the President Donald Trump loyalist carried the administration's "law and order" message but ultimately dealt the most credible blow to Trump's unfounded claims that the 2020 election was littered with fraud. 

"Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been a very good one, he has done an outstanding job! As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family," Trump tweeted, announcing the news. 

"Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen, an outstanding person, will become Acting Attorney General. Highly respected Richard Donoghue will be taking over the duties of Deputy Attorney General. Thank you to all!" 

Barr repeatedly and unapologetically prioritized Trump's political goals while furthering his own vision of expansive presidential power. In his most notorious move, Barr delivered a misleading summary of special counsel Robert Mueller's report, essentially clearing Trump in the Russia probe, which drew a sharp rebuke from Mueller himself. 

He remained steadfast in his support of the President heading into Election Day, including by launching various operations across the country to combat violence and drug trafficking and reiterating Trump's message not to participate in mail-in voting prior to the presidential election. He also appointed a special counsel to continue investigating one of Trump's longtime infatuations, that intelligence and law enforcement violated the law in investigating the 2016 Trump campaign. 

But the decision from the former attorney general to rebuke the President's false claims of widespread fraud in his loss to Democrat Joe Biden represented a final failure of Trump's often successful attempt to weaponize the Justice Department as a personal and potent political weapon.

 

Whatever villainy Trump is planning next, Bill Barr doesn't want any part of it. And Trump fired Barr specifically today in order to kill the news that Joe Biden got the required 270 electoral college votes today and will be sworn in on January 20.

Fighting Back Against The Viral

Around the US and here in Kentucky, the first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine are arriving in hospitals and in senior care facilities to help those on the front lines and those most vulnerable to the virus.

The first vaccines against COVID-19 arrived Sunday in Kentucky, and Gov. Andy Beshear said that some Kentuckians may be vaccinated as early as Monday morning.

A “significant” shipment of the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine landed at the UPS Worldport in Louisville on Sunday. The vaccine was the first to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is believed to be 95 percent effective.

“Kentucky is going to play a major role in getting this vaccine to people all over the eastern United States through UPS’ Worldport,” Beshear said in his announcement Sunday. “We in the commonwealth are excited to be a big part of defeating this virus all over this country. We now believe that the first individuals will be vaccinated here in the commonwealth tomorrow morning. We are less than 24 hours away from the beginning of the end of this virus.”

The fight against COVID-19 will continue for months, but in his release Beshear said this development was a historic milestone to be celebrated.

Shipments made to Kentucky are expected to include 12,675 vials of the vaccine that will be sent to 11 hospitals in Lexington, Louisville, Pikeville, Corbin, Bowling Green, Paducah and Edgewood, according to the announcement Sunday by Beshear’s office. An additional 25,350 vials will be sent to CVS and Walgreens, and those vaccines will go to long-term care facilities in the state.

With the expected approval of another effective vaccine from Moderna, Beshear’s office expects Kentucky could get as many as 150,000 doses of vaccine in December.

The initial rounds of vaccinations will include hospitals and long-term care facilities, and the specifics will be announced based on guidelines from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, according to Beshear’s office. Health care staff are being prioritized.

With 66 percent of COVID-19 deaths coming from long-term care facilities, vaccines to such facilities are expected to help reduce Kentucky’s COVID-19 death toll significantly, according to Beshear’s office.

The vaccination plan and phases are still being determined, but local health departments have been working with the state to prepare for the distribution of the vaccines, according to Beshear’s office.

“Our community doctors and nurses, as well as long-term care residents and staff, are preparing to do their part first,” Beshear said in Sunday’s release. “We will all get a turn. When it is your turn, I strongly encourage you to get vaccinated so you can do your part to protect yourself, your family and our entire state.”

 

It's been a long time coming, and it's important that the vaccine go to the people who need it the most. I don't foresee problems with that, I foresee problems with 35-40% of Americans still refusing the vaccine at this point. I hope they will change their minds, but frankly I expect the rest of the world is going to move quickly over the months ahead on "get vaccinated or else".

Among all the tools that health agencies have developed over the years to fight epidemics, at least one has remained a constant for more than a century: paper vaccination certificates.

In the 1880s, in response to smallpox outbreaks, some public schools began requiring students and teachers to show vaccination cards. In the 1960s, amid yellow fever epidemics, the World Health Organization introduced an international travel document, known informally as the yellow card. Even now, travelers from certain regions are required to show a version of the card at airports.

But now, just as the United States is preparing to distribute the first vaccines for the virus, the entry ticket to the nation’s reopening is set to come largely in the form of a digital health credential.

In the coming weeks, major airlines including United, JetBlue and Lufthansa plan to introduce a health passport app, called CommonPass, that aims to verify passengers’ virus test results — and soon, vaccinations. The app will then issue confirmation codes enabling passengers to board certain international flights. It is just the start of a push for digital Covid-19 credentials that could soon be embraced by employers, schools, summer camps and entertainment venues.

“This is likely to be a new normal need that we’re going to have to deal with to control and contain this pandemic,” said Dr. Brad Perkins, the chief medical officer at the Commons Project Foundation, a nonprofit in Geneva that developed the CommonPass app.

The advent of electronic vaccination credentials could have a profound effect on efforts to control the coronavirus and restore the economy. They could prompt more employers and college campuses to reopen. They may also give some consumers peace of mind, developers say, by creating an easy way for movie theaters, cruise ships and sports arenas to admit only those with documented coronavirus vaccinations.

But the digital passes also raise the specter of a society split into health pass haves and have-nots, particularly if venues begin requiring the apps as entry tickets. The apps could make it difficult for people with limited access to vaccines or online verification tools to work or visit popular destinations. Civil liberties experts also warn that the technology could create an invasive system of social control, akin to the heightened surveillance that China adopted during the pandemic — only instead of federal or state governments, private actors like employers and restaurants would determine who can and cannot access services.

“Protecting public health has historically been used as a proxy for discrimination,” said Professor Michele Goodwin, a law professor who directs the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California, Irvine. “That is the real concern — the potential to use these apps as proxies for keeping certain people away and out."

 

There are legitimate civil liberties and racial justice concerns here, and we're going to need to deal with them now. That's the next big fight in American society, and it will define 2021 as much as the virus defined 2020. 

We have a long road to travel here. As I've said constantly, electing Joe Biden, keeping the House and (hopefully) winning back the Senate are just the start of years of grueling work ahead of us as a country, as a people, and as a planet.

 

Another #MeToo Moment, Con't

And this one is big: NY Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is publicly being accused of years of sexual harassment by his former economic adviser Lindsey Boylan.

 

Lindsey Boylan, a Democratic candidate for Manhattan Borough president, accused New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, of sexual harassment during the time she worked as an adviser to him.

Boylan served as Deputy Secretary for Economic Development and Special Advisor in the Cuomo administration from March 2015 until October 2018. She then unsuccessfully challenged New York Representative Jerrold Nadler in the 2020 Democratic primary.

Last Saturday, Boylan posted a series of tweets alleging that the work environment in Cuomo's administration was "toxic." Then on Sunday, she alleged that she'd been sexually harassed by the governor.

"Yes, @NYGovCuomo sexually harassed me for years. Many saw it, and watched," the former Cuomo administration official tweeted Sunday. "I could never anticipate what to expect: would I be grilled on my work (which was very good) or harassed about my looks. Or would it be both in the same conversation? This was the way for years."

Boylan alleged that she was not the only woman to experience harassment: "Not knowing what to expect what's the most upsetting part aside from knowing that no one would do a damn thing even when they saw it. No one."

"I'm angry to be put in this situation at all. That because I am a woman, I can work hard my whole life to better myself and help others and yet still fall victim as countless women over generations have. Mostly silently," she wrote. "I hate that some men, like @NYGovCuomo abuse their power."

 

Cuomo's name came up late last week as a possibly candidate for US Attorney General in the Biden administration, something that was floated before the election back in October. Needless to say, Cuomo's name was removed from this list just before these accusations were made on Sunday, as Biden's list by Friday night was down to Doug Jones and Sally Yates, with former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as the long shot, with Biden no longer considering Cuomo or DC Chief Justice and former Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland.

In other words, Cuomo's goose got cooked right fast, and now we know why. 

Tish James should have a little conversation I think with him.

StupidiNews!

• Celebrated spy novel author John Le Carre is dead at age 89, the British Cold War author, born David Cornwell, wrote more than two dozen novels translated into 40 languages.
• Germany will shut down most businesses and shops well into January as COVID-19 continues to ravage EU countries.
• Donald Trump, Mike Pence and White House staffers will be given top priority for the COVID-19 vaccine, no word on if the Biden transition team will be given any doses at this time.
• Donald Trump says he will veto a military spending bill over renaming Confederate military bases and social media legal protections, forcing the House and Senate to vote to override it.
• Oracle founder Larry Ellison is following Elon Musk's lead and is moving the company's headquarters from California to Texas for lower employee cost-of-living -- and lower wages.
  

Last Call For Our Little White Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Here in Kentucky, another hate crime happened last night as a Jewish Student Center in Lexington was attacked during a Menorah lighting.

A member of Chabad of the Bluegrass was injured Saturday night when a driver shouting antisemitic slurs dragged and ran over him outside the Jewish Student Center near the University of Kentucky, according to the center and police.

The incident happened as people were gathered at the center to prepare for the lighting of a menorah for the third night of Chanukah. The driver pulled up and nearly hit a volunteer camera crew outside the center before dragging and injuring another member of the community, Chabad of the Bluegrass announced on its Facebook page.

“A community member who was assisting in the lighting heroically stepped between the assailant and the Chabad house as several children were in the front room,” the center said in its Facebook announcement. “The attacker grabbed the man and held his arm, dragging him for a block, and running over his leg. The car then sped off ... Before he left for the hospital, the newest hero of Chanukah insisted we light the Menorah, and not allow darkness to quench our light.”

The incident is still under investigation. The suspect was described as a man in his mid to late twenties driving a black SUV, Lexington Police Lt. Daniel Truex said Sunday.

The victim was taken to a local hospital for treatment Saturday night with injuries that were not life threatening, Truex said.

The center praised the Lexington Police Department and the ambulance crew that helped Saturday night.

Multiple state and local officials took to social media on Sunday to condemn the attack at the Jewish Student Center, including Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton.

“Racism and religious persecution have no place here,” Gorton said on Twitter Sunday. “Police have started an investigation into the criminal incident at Chabad of the Bluegrass on Saturday. Those who violated the law will be prosecuted. Let’s join in the spirit of Chanukah, a celebration of good over evil.”

 

But remember, the vast majority of white Americans believe white Christians are the most persecuted group in America, by far. 

I'm glad that nobody was killed, and yeah, I hope they nail this bastard.

The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

Trump cultists are turning their long knives on each other, blaming everyone else for failing their Dear Master, as the final days of the Trump Regime wane.

Thousands of maskless rallygoers who refuse to accept the results of the election turned downtown Washington into a falsehood-filled spectacle Saturday, two days before the electoral college will make the president’s loss official.

In smaller numbers than their gathering last month, they roamed from the Capitol to the Mall and back again, seeking inspiration from speakers who railed against the Supreme Court, Fox News and President-elect Joe Biden. The crowds cheered for recently pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, marched with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and stood in awe of a flyover from what appeared to be Marine One.

“There he is! There is our guy!” a woman exclaimed, reaching toward the sky.

After railing on Twitter about the failure of his most recent attempt to overturn the election results, President Trump praised the crowd that gathered in his honor, tweeting “Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA,” he wrote.

Later in the day, attention was focused not on the president but on a group he once told to “stand back and stand by”: the Proud Boys, a male-chauvinist organization with ties to white nationalism. In helmets and bulletproof vests, hundreds of men in their ranks marched through downtown in militarylike rows, shouting “move out” and “1776!”

They seemed intent on intimidating onlookers and adopted a chant popular with counterprotesters: “Whose streets? Our streets.”

After the sun went down, the evening became violent. At least two people were stabbed as Proud Boys and pro-Trump demonstrators clashed near 11th and F streets NW.

Doug Buchanan, a D.C. fire department spokesman, said the victims were taken to a hospital, but details about their conditions weren’t available.

The attacks were an escalation after an evening of faceoffs that took place near Black Lives Matter Plaza, Franklin Square, Harry’s Bar — a hangout popular with Trump supporters — and other spots around downtown.

At first, officers in riot gear successfully kept the two sides apart, even as the groups splintered and roamed.

The Proud Boys became increasingly angry as they wove through streets and alleys, only to find police continuously blocking their course with lines of bikes.

“Both sides of the aisle hate you now. Congratulations,” a Proud Boy shouted at the officers.

But before long, the agitators determined to find each other were successful — and posturing quickly turned into punching, kicking and wrestling.

Again and again, officers swarmed, pulling the instigators apart, firing chemical irritants and forming lines between the sides. At Harry’s Bar, an ambulance arrived, but the extent of injuries was unknown.

Each time a fight was de-escalated, another soon began in a different part of town.

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham made a brief appearance in the chaos, telling protesters: “We’re doing the best we can.”

 

After Monday's electoral vote makes it official, I expect the Trump cultists to do something appropriately stupid and possibly lethal in order to try to provoke some sort of action from Trump himself.  Trump meanwhile is too busy going to college football games to care. 

But the vultures and revenants circling the corpse of the GOP want blood.

Speaking at a pro-Trump demonstration from the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., Flynn — who briefly served as Trump's national security adviser in 2017 before pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia's ambassador — echoed other Trump allies who have been pushing unfounded allegations that the president lost the November's election to President-elect Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. Like the others, including the president himself, Flynn didn't produce any actual evidence of fraud, but said "in this crucible moment of our time, we have to pray that truth triumphs over lies, justice triumphs over abuse and fraud, honesty triumphs over corruption. Our sacred honor triumphs over infamy."

He added that there are "avenues" to keep challenging the results and that "courts aren't going to decide who the next president of the United States is going to be. We the people decide." He did not, however, elaborate on how that would work now that polls have been closed for more than a month.

 

If there is actual lethal violence, everyone seems to be waiting on Trump to give them permission, but I still think there will be lone cases of real tragedy in the weeks ahead, not that it should distract or detract from the 3,000 dead we're seeing from COVID right now.  The polls make it clear that Trump's voters now want a coup.

With the Electoral College poised to elect Joe Biden on Monday, a sizable 62% majority of the nation's voters feel the election is "over and settled" and it's "time to move on." Large majorities feel their own votes were counted correctly, and a majority acknowledge Mr. Biden as the "legitimate winner."

But the president's backers feel very differently: 82% of Trump voters say they do not consider Mr. Biden legitimate and — perhaps most notably for the coming transition month — almost half of President Trump's voters say Mr. Trump should refuse to concede after that Electoral College vote happens, and instead do all he can to stay in power.

As a rationale, the Trump voters who do not see Mr. Biden as legitimate widely accept Mr. Trump's premise for overturning the election results, and — even as states have certified results and courts have ruled against challenges — echo the president's assertions of fraud.

And before the Electoral College votes head to Congress to be read, we find similar sentiments and splits regarding what the president's party should do now: two thirds of voters say congressional Republicans should acknowledge Mr. Biden and move on to other legislative matters, but most Trump voters instead say congressional Republicans should do all they can to help Mr. Trump stay in power.

 

In fact, 49% of Trump voters want him to refuse to concede after the Electoral College votes on Monday, and 75% say Republicans in Congress should do everything they can to help him stay in power.  Almost all of them, 93%, say "millions of ballots were cast illegally."

 

They want a coup, period.

My fear is at some point very soon Trump is going to float that option.

Sunday Long Read: Fathers Burying Their Sons

GQ's Mosi Secret talks to the fathers and uncles of those Black men lost to police brutality and how they dealt with burying their sons, and what it means to raise a Black son in America in the age of Black Lives Matter, in a country that violently hates us, and wants us dead every day.

Six months have passed since a Minneapolis police officer killed George Perry Floyd Jr., and already the subsequent storm of fury and hope that spawned so many anti-racist dreams seems to have lost its charge. A recent Pew survey points to a decrease in support for the Black Lives Matter movement among all racial groups except Black people since June, a reflection of the American, and perhaps human, tendency to return to life as normal, even if today's normal is very weird. One hopes, at least, that a new awareness has been brought to daily life.

For a dedicated few, though, Floyd and the other Black people killed and wounded by police will forever remain front of mind—for those activists and civil rights lawyers and family members with a heroic, if sometimes tragic, resolve. Notable among the steadfast are the men who raised the injured and slain, who tend to be Black and are themselves more likely to have been battered by the forces that undid their kin. It is not possible for them to quit imagining a more just future for the United States.

Yet as the movement lulls, they are an easy group to overlook. One could be forgiven, for example, for thinking that no man helped raise George Floyd. Postmortem profiles in the press took us back to Floyd's youth in the public-housing projects of Houston's Third Ward, where his single mother, Larcenia Floyd, did her level best to help raise him and his siblings. Some accounts, searching even deeper for the causes of Floyd's demise, went further back, to his family's roots in the sharecropping South, where his mother grew up as one of 14 children in a small house in the tobacco fields of eastern North Carolina. There was a way in which Floyd's story seemed to adhere to a very old myth, hardly questioned now, of the fatherless and thus doomed Black child. That Floyd in his final moments on earth cried out for his mother, already deceased, was a kind of heartbreaking capstone to this tale. The big man that Floyd was—six feet four inches, 223 pounds—without a big man in his life. This was rendered an implicit part of his tragedy.

But Floyd's mother had a brother, Selwyn Jones—or Unc, as Floyd called him—a man large in stature and spirit, and a fixture in Floyd's life. Jones is remarkable in the family for having evaded the traps awaiting poor Black men, through pro sports and later a career in sales and hospitality, and he tried to lay a path for Floyd. “I talked to his ass often,” Jones told me. “ ‘Yo, man, you know you need to get your butt right.’ ” Jones, who lives in central South Dakota, a six-hour drive west of Minneapolis, visited Floyd frequently when his nephew moved north from Houston. “It breaks my heart to know that happened to one of mine,” he said. “And I just… I cannot stop.”

So here we explore Jones's role as a father figure, alongside the stories of five biological fathers of police-brutality victims—men who have persisted in the face of harrowing loss, fueled in part by memories of the times that were. The Reverend Joey Crutcher smiled as he reminisced about singing gospel in church with his son Terence. “You always wanted the best in your choir,” Reverend Crutcher told me. “So I just nurtured him into being a great male soloist.” Terence was unarmed when a police officer in Tulsa killed him in 2016, at age 40.

Larry Barbine, a maintenance man who has survived three open-heart surgeries, regained his health just in time to meet the 26-year-old son he'd never known, Rayshard Brooks, who had come from Atlanta to Toledo to see him. Soon they were living together, and their love was as intense and youthful as it was short. “I felt that he was still a little kid at heart,” Barbine said. They had known each other for just 14 months when an Atlanta police officer shot and killed Brooks in a Wendy's parking lot in June; protesters would burn down the restaurant one night later.

Joe Louis Cole, whose son Daniel Prude was killed in March by police in Rochester, New York, thinks about the two years when he and his son lived together in Atlanta, working side by side at a UPS warehouse. “The old man and the young guy,” Cole recalled.

The son of Jacob Blake III, who shares his name, still lives. The younger Blake was paralyzed after a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot him seven times in the back. So the elder Blake's sacrifice is different. “My option,” he said, “was to stand for my son that cannot stand.”

Michael Brown Sr. often reflects on the promise he made when his son was born—that he would never let tragedy befall his namesake. In the six years since Michael Brown Jr. was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, Brown senior has emerged as a kind of patriarch for all grieving parents. Giving speeches around the country, running a foundation for families who have lost loved ones to police and community violence, traveling to memorials for Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, he is driven by the belief that he has been called on to prevent more bloodshed however he can.

Each of these men, like all Black father figures, fights against the still pervasive stereotype of the absent Black father. It's a notion that gained currency in the 1960s as the political advancements of the civil rights movement failed to translate into economic and social progress for everyday Black Americans, and social science research turned away from structural explanations for inequality toward a search for behavioral causes. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant secretary of labor, delivered a report to the Johnson White House, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, arguing that the plight of Black American communities was in decline due to a simple factor: the crumbling of the family unit and, in particular, children being raised in fatherless homes.

Just weeks after the study's release, riots broke out across the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles and critics latched onto the report to blame the ensuing violence on what Moynihan called “the deterioration of the Negro family.” The number of fatherless families, Black and otherwise, would rapidly grow in the following decades—a trend partly driven by the nation's primary welfare program, in which for a period some states considered families ineligible for benefits if an adult male was a member of the household. The legacy of that policy and Moynihan's report continues, and the notion of troubled, fatherless Black men has resurfaced after each national reckoning with racial injustice, including in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing. In August conservative commentator Larry Elder, in an op-ed for Fox News, wrote of the unrest in Minneapolis and around the country: “Many of the protesters decry income and net worth ‘inequality.’ But the most serious ‘inequality’ is the unequal percentage of fathers in Black households.”

Such sentiments mostly assign blame to Black men and serve to deny the headwinds they face as they advance toward self-fulfillment in the United States—gusts that sweep a disproportionate number into jails and prisons, into ghettos, into the criminal justice morass, or off the face of the earth altogether. These myths obscure the deep and enduring roles these Black fathers and sons played and continue to play in each other's lives. There is a bond there, among Black men surviving in the United States, which crosses generations and even the boundaries between life and death.

If those bonds weren't convincing enough, a 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that among fathers living with children under the age of five, Black fathers were more likely than Hispanic and white fathers to have bathed, dressed, diapered, or helped their children use the toilet every day, and that among fathers who live with their children, a greater percentage of Black fathers than white fathers took their children to or from daily activities and assisted their kids with homework.

It's true that such data coexists with other, more sobering statistics: More than half of all Black children live in homes headed by one parent, and Black children are more likely than white and Hispanic children to be born to unwed parents. But most Black Americans are aware of the myriad factors shaping these demographics. I'm reminded of something the late Toni Morrison said in an interview, about Ralph Ellison's great novel Invisible Man, which distilled the Black urban experience for 1950s America. “The title of Ralph Ellison's book was Invisible Man,” Morrison said. “And the question for me was ‘Invisible to whom?’ Not to me.” Not to these men, either. They already see one another.

So we asked them to tell us what they know: Joe Louis Cole, Larry Barbine, Rev. Joey Crutcher, Selwyn Jones, Jacob Blake III, and Michael Brown Sr. What a strange experience they share.

This made me tear up, and I had to stop at least twice to get through this, but I thought how lucky I was to have a father that chose me to be his son when he did not have to, and did not hesitate to do so when offered the opportunity.

You did good, Zandardad. It's a bright light and a long shadow you cast, but I strive to be worthy daily.

45 years ago, he knew that Black Lives Matter. And he did something about it and continues to do so to this day, and I won't let myself forget that fact.

A Veteran Disappointment

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie is under withering fire from veterans' advocacy groups over a recent government watchdog report that accuses him of botching an investigation into sexual assault allegations at the department.

Four of the nation’s biggest veterans groups on Friday called for the immediate dismissal of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie following a scathing government audit that found he had acted unprofessionally if not unethically in the handling of a congressional aide’s allegation of sexual assault at a VA hospital.

Veterans of Foreign Wars joined Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans and AMVETS in saying Wilkie had breached the trust of veterans. In the final weeks of the Trump administration, they said they had lost all confidence that he can effectively lead the department, which is responsible for the care of nine million veterans.

“The accountability, professionalism and respect that our veterans have earned, and quite frankly deserve, is completely lost in this current VA leadership team,” said B.J. Lawrence, executive director of VFW, the nation’s oldest veterans group.

“Our veterans cannot wait until Jan. 20, 2021, for a leadership change,” he said. “Secretary Wilkie must resign now.”

An investigation by the Veterans Affairs’ inspector general on Thursday concluded that Wilkie repeatedly sought to discredit Andrea Goldstein, a senior policy adviser to Democratic Rep. Mark Takano, who is chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, after she alleged in September 2019 that a man at the VA medical center in Washington, D.C., had physically assaulted her.

The inspector general found that Wilkie’s disparaging comments about Goldstein, a Navy veteran, as a repeat complainer as well as the overall “tone” he set influenced his staff to spread negative information about her while ignoring known problems of harassment at the facility.

Wilkie and other senior officials had declined to fully cooperate with the investigation by VA Inspector General Michael Missal. For that reason, Missal said he could not conclude whether Wilkie had violated government policies or laws, allegedly by personally digging into the woman’s past. Wilkie denied wrongdoing.

“We’ve had our concerns about Wilkie’s leadership throughout the pandemic and this IG report really cements the fact that the VA is not being led with integrity,” said Jeremy Butler, chief executive of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “That calls for an immediate change.”

The report on Thursday drew widespread concern from lawmakers from both parties about VA’s leadership, with Takano the first to call for Wilkie’s resignation. Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative group who supported Wilkie when he became VA secretary in 2018, chided Wilkie and his team, stressing that “VA leaders should always put the veteran and the integrity of the institution ahead of themselves.”

 

But of course the report finds that Wilkie's campaign to discredit Andrea Goldstein was also helped by Republicans, in particular, Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw, also under pressure to resign.

 

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Tx., told Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie that a Navy veteran who reported a sexual assault at a VA hospital had filed frivolous allegations when they served in the same unit, according to multiple senior officials in an internal investigation report released yesterday.

The report outlines a number of "troubling" issues with the department's handling of the assault investigation, including testimony that Wilkie had disparaged the woman after looking into her background himself. Pressure from the top of the agency also allegedly prompted VA police to investigate the victim.

However, the report, issued by the office of VA Inspector General (OIG) Michael Missal, could not corroborate any wrongdoing because the secretary and top staff would not cooperate with investigators, and neither would Crenshaw. Missal concluded that Wilkie and senior officials showed "a lack of genuine commitment" that jeopardized a "safe and welcoming environment" for accusers.

It would not be the first time Wilkie withheld inconvenient information: In 2019, CNN reported that, in violation of Senate rules, Wilkie had failed to disclose a speech he gave in 2009 to a chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a 1995 address in which he praised former Confederate President Jefferson Davis at the U.S. Capitol.

"The tone set by Secretary Wilkie was at minimum unprofessional and at worst provided the basis for senior officials to put out information to national reporters to question the credibility and background of the veteran who filed the sexual assault complaint," Missal wrote, adding that the conduct would "appear to undermine V.A.'s stated goals of providing a safe and welcoming environment for all veterans and to treat complainants of sexual assault with respect."

The woman, Andrea Goldstein, claimed in 2019 that while she waited in a VA hospital, a contractor "bumped his entire body against mine and told me I looked like I needed a smile and a good time." Following a request from House Veterans Affairs Committee chair Mike Takano, D-Calif., for whom Goldstein had once staffed, Wilkie ordered the OIG to investigate.

After the investigation, Wilkie sent Takano a letter saying that the investigation concluded that the claims were "unsubstantiated," counter to the OIG's explicit directions to VA staff not to comment on the merits of the accusation. Wilkie also highlighted the statement in an email to press outlets.

Missal reminded Wilkie he had not reached that conclusion.

"Neither I nor my staff told you or anyone else at the Department that the allegations were unsubstantiated," Missal wrote in an email, adding: "Reaching a decision to close the investigation with no criminal charges does not mean the underlying allegation is unsubstantiated."

Following press requests, the secretary retracted the description, calling it "a poor choice of words."

Missal cites an email Wilkie sent to two top aides after the fundraiser he attended with Crenshaw: "Ask me in the morning what Congressman Crenshaw said about the Takano staffer whose glamor (sic) shot was in the New York Times," it said.

In other words, Crenshaw and Wilkie worked together to bury Goldstein's accusations, and to force VA Committee Chair Mark Takano off the committee.  It's a horrible situation, and while Wiklie's head is definitely rolling when Biden comes in, Crenshaw will be around for some time, having easily won his 2020 ridiculously gerrymandered Houston suburb district against Democrat Sima Ladjevadrian by 13 points last month.

We'll see. Crenshaw may have survived his election, but he'll face other problems down the road over this, and he won't have Wiklie protecting him any longer once Denis McDonough comes in as VA Secretary.

That is, if Biden can get anyone confirmed, which the way the GOP is going right now, is not a sure thing at all.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

Donald Trump is going to do everything he can to put Joe Biden in the position of having to pardon his son to save him from a Bill Barr/Rudy Giuliani-constructed frame job and a long prison stretch, because he wants the Bidens to suffer. He figures it'll be leverage to get Biden to force New York AG Tish James and Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance into dropping their investigations into the Trump Organization, too. After all, if they are going after Trump's kids, Trump will make sure Hunter Biden rots in jail.

 

A subpoena seeking documents from Hunter Biden asked for information related to more than two dozen entities, including Ukraine gas company Burisma, according to a person familiar with a Justice Department tax investigation of President-elect Joe Biden’s son.

The breadth of the subpoena, issued Tuesday, underscores the wide-angle lens prosecutors are taking as they examine the younger Biden’s finances and international business ventures.

Hunter Biden’s ties to Burisma in particular have long dogged the policy work and political aspirations of his father, Joe Biden, now the president-elect of the United States. It’s unclear whether Hunter Biden’s work at the Ukrainian company is a central part of the federal investigation or whether prosecutors are simply seeking information about all his sources of income in recent years.

The person was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

A lawyer for the younger Biden, George Mesires, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment for this story and a spokesman for the Biden transition team declined to comment.

Hunter Biden confirmed Wednesday that his taxes are under federal investigation. The revelation comes at a delicate time for the president-elect, who is building out his Cabinet and will soon decide on his nominee to run the Justice Department, the same department overseeing the investigation into his son.

In addition to the Burisma-related request, the subpoena issued last week also seeks information on Hunter Biden’s Chinese business dealings and other financial transactions.

The probe was launched in 2018, the year before his father announced his candidacy for president. At one point in the investigation, federal prosecutors were also examining potential money laundering offenses, two people familiar with the matter told the AP.

Hunter Biden said he only learned of the investigation on Tuesday.

The younger Biden joined the board of Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. President Donald Trump and his allies have long argued, without evidence, that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine influenced the Obama administration’s policies toward the Eastern European nation.

Senate Republicans said in a report earlier this year that the appointment may have posed a conflict of interest but did not provide evidence that any policies were directly affected by Hunter Biden’s work.

 

Part of me wants to say that Biden should clean house at the DoJ, and definitely replace as many US Attorneys as he can, and get rid of any Special Counsels that Trump appoints. The problem is, he's actually bound by the rules, whereas Trump is not. Actually doing that would prompt howls of BOTH SIDES ARE CORRUPT by the Village, and Biden won't do it anyway.

But Trump thinks he will 1) succeed in convicting Hunter Biden and 2) force Biden into an agonizing choice that "proves" he's either corrupt or willing to "sacrifice his family for political gain" and he's counting on Biden to let Ivanka and Junior (maybe even Eric, maybe) skate as a result.

Anything they find to use against Joe Biden himself is gravy, frankly. That's how they work, you see.

The Maine Event, Explained

Nathan Bernard over at The Mainer (support your independent state news blogs, folks!) gives us the rundown on how Sara Gideon lost to Susan Collins basically the day after she declared her candidacy in summer of 2019, 18 months ago. And apparently, the only person who didn't know Gideon was cooked like a Bar Harbor lobster in 2019 was Sara Gideon in 2020.

Democrat Sara Gideon’s bid to unseat Sen. Susan Collins was doomed the day after she announced she was running.

Gideon, a state legislator from Freeport who was then Maine’s Speaker of the House, formally announced her candidacy on Monday, June 24, 2019. The next day, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), a powerful political organization controlled by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top members of the party establishment, announced it was backing her campaign.

At the time, the DSCC’s endorsement was perceived as a huge boost for Gideon. It would ensure her campaign would be well funded and guided by the brightest political minds in the business.

In retrospect, it was the kiss of death — a guarantee her campaign would be ugly, uninspiring, obscenely expensive, and out of touch with local concerns. Despite spending nearly $60 million, twice as much as Collins’ campaign did, Gideon lost by over 8 percentage points, more than 70,000 votes, in a state where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by over 74,000.

The DSCC and likeminded political action committees flooded Maine’s modest media market and stuffed our mailboxes with ads and junk mail slamming Collins. Among them were so-called “dark money” groups that don’t disclose their donors, like Maine Momentum, an ad hoc operation run by Willy Ritch, a former spokesman for Democratic Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, and Chris Glynn, a former Gideon staffer and spokesman for the Maine Democratic Party. In August of 2019, Maine Momentum dropped nearly three-quarters of a million dollars, all from secret sources, to run over 4,000 commercials attacking Collins, the Lewiston Sun Journal reported.

Incessant negative advertising by outside groups helped make this race the most expensive in Maine’s history. It also made a mockery of Gideon’s oft-repeated pledge to “limit the influence of big money in politics.” Republicans were quick to call the DSCC’s endorsement proof that Gideon was a puppet of Beltway powerbrokers, and her two Democratic primary challengers were equally critical. “The DC elite is trying to tell Mainers who our candidate should be,” Betsy Sweet, one of those challengers, tweeted that summer.

But, crucially, the DSCC’s endorsement also limited the impact of Gideon’s positive messages, the campaign promises she made to improve the lives of everyday Mainers.

It’s an axiomatic fact that Schumer and other top party officials will not back candidates who openly disagree with their policies or are likely to challenge their leadership. Adherence to the party line on big issues like health care and the climate crisis are unspoken prerequisites for a DSCC endorsement. So, unsurprisingly, Gideon did not support popular ideas championed by fellow Democrats, like a Green New Deal or universal health care. Even Democrat Jared Golden, who represents Maine’s conservative 2nd Congressional district, supports “Medicare for All;” he was reelected this fall in a district that once again voted for Trump. Instead, Gideon spoke of lowering prescription-drug prices and made vague vows to “create an economy that works for all Mainers.”

In the aftermath of Election Day, some top Democrats sought to blame progressives for the party’s poor showing in Senate and House races, but the DSCC’s record speaks for itself. Of the 18 Senate candidates endorsed by the committee, only four were victorious last month (two contenders, both in Georgia, failed to win on Nov. 3 but qualified for runoff elections next month).

As the campaign gained speed, the pandemic and the national uprising against police brutality gave Gideon two big opportunities to break from the moderate pack and distinguish herself from Collins, who denied that “systemic racism” is a “problem” in Maine, and whose Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a fraud-riddled failure. But Gideon’s position on racial justice was limited to training-manual adjustments like banning chokeholds and racial profiling, as well as further study of the problems that have plagued Black Americans since Reconstruction. Her credibility to criticize the PPP was compromised by the million or more dollars her husband’s law firm got from the program. And Republican critics took to social media daily to point out that, as far as anyone could tell, the House Speaker was doing practically nothing to help Mainers crushed by COVID-19.

While her constituents worried about keeping their jobs and homes, Gideon’s campaign bombarded them with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of ads, including pleas for them to give her money. The fundraising juggernaut engineered by her highly paid political consultants badgered Mainers for more cash till the bitter end.

On the afternoon and evening of Election Day, the Gideon campaign sent multiple e-mails urging supporters “to rush one final contribution right now to help us keep our digital ads on the air until the polls close.” It was subsequently revealed that her campaign still had about $15 million left in its war chest at the time.

Let's keep in mind that Sara Gideon, Amy McGrath, and Jaime Harrison combined blew through $200 million and none of them came closer than Gideon's nearly 9-point loss. McGrath lost by almost 20 points, guys.

The problem is in 2020, the only Republican enablers that the Dems could beat were the Republicans who beat themselves and retired because they thought they were going to lose. The exceptions were the two worst GOP candidates in the country: Cory Gardner and Martha McSally. Republicans meanwhile picked up 100% of the Dems seats rates as toss-ups by Cook Political and Sabato's Crystal Ball.

One-hundred percent of them.

I appreciate Schumer and Pelosi when it comes to legislative combat, but their national campaign arms keep losing to people who sign onto actual acts of sedition.

Republicans should be relegated to the dustbin of history by now, and yet there's a very good chance they will be America's present and future if Dems don't get their shit together.

And I've been saying this for more than ten years now, and I'm tired of it.

Bone weary.

Do better.

A Taxing Situation, Con't

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance's state tax case against Donald Trump has reached the grand jury stage, complete with evidence, interviews with Deutsche Bank officials, and depositions, and I remind everyone again that Donald Trump is currently conducting an open coup to stay in power because he is 100% sure that he is going to spend the rest of his life in prison.

State prosecutors in Manhattan have interviewed several employees of President Trump’s bank and insurance broker in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, significantly escalating an investigation into the president that he is powerless to stop.

The interviews with people who work for the lender, Deutsche Bank, and the insurance brokerage, Aon, are the latest indication that once Mr. Trump leaves office, he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges that would be beyond the reach of federal pardons.

It remains unclear whether the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., will ultimately bring charges. The prosecutors have been fighting in court for more than a year to obtain Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, which they have called central to their investigation. The issue now rests with the Supreme Court.

But lately, Mr. Vance’s office has stepped up its efforts, issuing new subpoenas and questioning witnesses, including some before a grand jury, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.

The grand jury appears to be serving an investigative function, allowing prosecutors to authenticate documents and pursue other leads, rather than considering any charges.

When Mr. Trump returns to private life in January, he will lose the protection from criminal prosecution that his office has afforded him. While The New York Times has reported that he discussed granting pre-emptive pardons to his eldest children before leaving office — and has claimed that he has the power to pardon himself — that authority applies only to federal crimes, and not to state or local investigations like the one being conducted by Mr. Vance’s office.

Mr. Trump, who has maintained he did nothing improper, has railed against the inquiry, calling it a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

The investigation by Mr. Vance, a Democrat, has focused on Mr. Trump’s conduct as a private business owner and whether he or employees at his family business, the Trump Organization, committed financial crimes. It is the only known criminal inquiry into the president.

 

Now whether Vance ultimately brings charges isn't up to Trump either, and Trump knows this. The political and frankly domestic terrorism issues that charging Trump will create for Vance, his team, his family, and for Manhattan itself will be overwhelming and he will absolutely need the full, open support of the Biden administration before he does, and this goes for any charges that NY state AG Tish James may bring as well.

I'm 99% sure the Biden administration will support them, and I'm also 100% sure that the Biden administration will have long conversations about doing this in January because all the "We can't comment on an ongoing investigation" stuff we will hear is a nicety we can't afford. Should Vance try putting Trump in prison, there's a decent chance that domestic terrorists will descend like locusts upon NYC and a non-zero chance that some of those terrorists plotting to harm or kill prosecutors are, you know, NYPD.

I've said before that Biden and Vance/James have to be ready to deal with a cold civil war going hot if they try to prosecute Trump, and that is absolutely the reality we're in given Republican state AGs and scores of Republicans in Congress are openly asking the Supreme Court to hand the election to Trump anyway.

Folks, you might not think we're in a civil war right now, but the Trumpies sure as hell do.