Last Call For insurrection Investigation, Con't

As widely expected, Donald Trump is taking his silly legal argument on blocking the release of his national archives records from the January 6th Committee all the way to the Supreme Court.

Former President Donald Trump turned to the Supreme Court Thursday in a last-ditch effort to keep documents away from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol led by his supporters.

Trump’s attorneys asked the Supreme Court to reverse lower court rulings against the former president, who has fought to block the records even after President Joe Biden waived executive privilege over them. The federal appeals court in Washington previously ruled the committee had a “uniquely vital interest” in the documents and Trump had “provided no basis” for it to override Biden and Congress.

The records include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts, handwritten notes “concerning the events of January 6” from the files of former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and “a draft Executive Order on the topic of election integrity,” according to a previous court filing from the National Archives.

Repeating arguments they made before lower courts, Trump’s attorneys wrote Thursday that the case concerned all future occupants of the White House. Their filing came on the day that an administrative injunction issued by the appeals court was set to expire.

Former presidents had “a clear right to protect their confidential records from premature dissemination,” Trump’s lawyers said.

“Congress cannot engage in meandering fishing expeditions in the hopes of embarrassing President Trump or exposing the President’s and his staff’s sensitive and privileged communications ‘for the sake of exposure,’ ” they added.

The House committee has said the records are vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly insurrection aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election. Before and after the riot, Trump promoted false theories about election fraud and suggested that the “real insurrection” was on Election Day, when he lost to Biden in an election certified by officials from both parties as fair.

 

Nice stinger at the end there from the AP's Mark Sherman and Nomaan Merchant.

In all seriousness however, the lower court decisions have ranged from "It's the current Chief Executive who makes these decisions" to "Trump is basically full of it and has no argument here." 

What Trump has as an expectation is for the Roberts Court to construct him a new as yet seen right of refusal and protection over national archives documents, provided under law. I don't think they'll do it, because it'll expand to Biden when he's out of office too.

On the other hand, I expect if Trump does get control back, he'll dispense with the need for documents and just start putting people in boxes or in the ground.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem

I've talked about white supremacist domestic terrorist organizations like Three Percent and Proud Boys and Oath Keepers time and time again on ZVTS, but the biggest concentration of armed, trained, lethal white supremacist domestic terrorists remains your local police departments, county sheriffs offices, state police and other law enforcement agencies.

For nearly 10 years, Joseph Moore lived a secret double life.

At times the U.S. Army veteran donned a white robe and hood as a hit man for the Ku Klux Klan in North Florida. He attended clandestine meetings and participated in cross burnings. He even helped plan the murder of a Black man.

However, Moore wore something else during his years in the klan – a wire for the FBI. He recorded his conversations with his fellow klansmen, sometimes even captured video, and shared what he learned with federal agents trying to crack down on white supremacists in Florida law enforcement.

One minor mistake, one tell, he believed, meant a certain, violent death.

“I had to realize that this man would shoot me in the face in a heartbeat,” Moore said in a deep, slow drawl. He sat in his living room recently amid twinkling lights on a Christmas tree, remembering a particularly scary meeting in 2015. But it was true of many of his days.

Before such meetings, he would sit alone in his truck, his diaphragm heaving with the deep breathing techniques he learned as an Army-trained sniper.

The married father of four would help the federal government foil at least two murder plots, according to court records from the criminal trial for two of the klansmen. He was also an active informant when the FBI exposed klan members working as law enforcement officers in Florida at the city, county and state levels.

Today, he and his family live under new names in a Florida subdivision of manicured lawns where his kids play in the street. Geese wander slowly between man-made lakes. Apart from testifying in court, the 50-year-old has never discussed his undercover work in the KKK publicly. But he reached out to a reporter after The Associated Press published a series of stories about white supremacists working in Florida’s prisons that were based, in part, on records and recordings detailing his work with the FBI.

“The FBI wanted me to gather as much information about these individuals and confirm their identities,” Moore said of law enforcement officers who were active members of or working with the klan.

“From where I sat, with the intelligence laid out, I can tell you that none of these agencies have any control over any of it. It is more prevalent and consequential than any of them are willing to admit.”

 

Police organizations are hotbeds of white supremacists, they are armed and dangerous and they can freely persecute and kill Black and brown folk at will.  The second another Republican government gets in charge at the federal level, these local police will be given absolute free reign like they were under Trump. Biden at least is trying to contain them.

When activists say "defund the police" we mean "stop giving avowed white supremacist killers unlimited money to buy military surplus gear to use against Black folks."

And yes, Moore is right, this is beyond pervasive, it's structural. This is what we mean, precisely, by structural racism: institutions that effectively exist to maintain white supremacy. In the case of police, it's through deadly force.

Remember that.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump is a simple creature. He's a raging malignant narcissist and he wants credit for the vaccine. Of course, he's also convinced his cultists that the vaccine will kill them, but Trump's narcissism is now exceeding his need for his cult.

Former President Donald Trump pushed back on Candace Owens during a recent interview when the conservative commentator appeared to be undermining the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccines to hurt President Joe Biden politically.

Trump joined the Daily Wire host for a wide-ranging interview, which was released on Wednesday, in which the two pushed various conspiracy theories surrounding the riot in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. But the issue of vaccines came up and the former president continued to tout the efficacy of the vaccines in a manner that will likely encourage some of the vaccine-hesitant and eventually save lives.

Trump took credit for the incredible speed at which the vaccinations were developed during his administration and in partnership with private pharmaceuticals, reiterating a point he made over the weekend during Bill O’Reilly.

“I came up with a vaccine with three vaccines,” Trump said. “All are very, very good. Came up with three of them in less than nine months. It was supposed to take five to 12 years.”

Owens interjected, “yet more people have died under COVID this year.” She then pivoted to hit the current administration, saying “By the way, under Joe Biden, then under you and more people took the vaccine this year. So people are questioning how …”

Trump interrupted “oh no, the vaccine work, but some people aren’t the ones. The ones who get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected.”

“Look, the results of the vaccine are very good, and if you do get it, it’s a very minor form,” he continued. “People aren’t dying when they take the vaccine.”

 

You catch that?

 

Trump says he came up with the vaccine, three of them. 

This is why Biden thanked him earlier this week. Biden pushed Trump's buttons like a pro.

And now we have Trump pushing the vaccine to his own cultists willing to not take it and die for him.

It's so easy, folks. How did America ever elect this idiot in 2016?