Last Call For The Klep-Trump-Cracy, Con't

The first round in, as far as I can tell, the sixth? Seventh? Grand Jury Investigation into Donald Trump's criminal wrongdoing while in office subpoenas have gone out to Trump regime scumbuckets this week over Trump's 2020 political PAC/slush fund, and they include Trump Secretary of Racism Stephen Miller, and Trump's insurrection-era political director, GOP fixer Brian Jack.

 

The Justice Department has subpoenaed two former top White House political advisers under President Donald J. Trump as part of a widening investigation related to Mr. Trump’s post-election fund-raising and plans for so-called fake electors, according to people briefed on the matter.

Brian Jack, the final White House political director under Mr. Trump, and Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s top speechwriter and a senior policy adviser, were among more than a dozen people connected to the former president to receive subpoenas from a federal grand jury this week.

The subpoenas seek information in connection with the Save America political action committee and the plan to submit slates of electors pledged to Mr. Trump from swing states that were won by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 election. Mr. Trump and his allies promoted the idea that competing slates of electors would justify blocking or delaying certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College win during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

A lawyer for Mr. Miller declined to comment. Mr. Jack, who remains an adviser to Mr. Trump as well as to Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, and several other House Republicans, declined to comment.

A subpoena does not indicate someone is under investigation, but the Justice Department may send one to people from whom it is seeking information.

The subpoenas were issued to a wide range of people who either worked in the White House or on the Trump campaign, including senior officials like the campaign’s chief financial officer; personal aides to Mr. Trump; and the former chief of staff to Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter who also served as one of his senior advisers.

The Save America PAC was formed soon after Election Day in 2020, as Mr. Trump aggressively raised money on his baseless claims of an election “stolen” through widespread voting fraud.

 

So add another grand jury to the pile of grand juries.

God I hope one of them sticks.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

Another Trump sycophant crapping out a book full of information that if brought to light earlier may have helped mitigate the damage from Tang The Conqueror's reign, another Trump lackey trying to make a buck off the misery they enabled.

A book by a former top federal prosecutor offers new details about how the Justice Department under President Donald J. Trump sought to use the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan to support Mr. Trump politically and pursue his critics — even pushing the office to open a criminal investigation of former secretary of state John Kerry.

The prosecutor, Geoffrey S. Berman, was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York for two and a half years until June 2020, when Mr. Trump fired him after he refused a request to resign by Attorney General William P. Barr, who sought to replace him with an administration ally.

A copy of Mr. Berman’s book, “Holding the Line,” was obtained by The New York Times before its scheduled publication Tuesday.

The book paints a picture of Justice Department officials motivated by partisan concerns in pursuing investigations or blocking them; in weighing how forthright to be in court filings; and in shopping investigations to other prosecutors’ offices when the Southern District declined to act.

The book contains accounts of how department officials tried to have allusions to Mr. Trump scrubbed from charging papers for Michael D. Cohen, his former personal lawyer, and how the attorney general later tried to have his conviction reversed. It tells of pressure to pursue Mr. Kerry, who had angered Mr. Trump by attempting to preserve the nuclear deal he had negotiated with Iran.

And in September 2018, Mr. Berman writes, two months before the November midterms, a senior department official called Mr. Berman’s deputy, cited the Southern District’s recent prosecutions of two prominent Trump loyalists, and bluntly asserted that the office, which had been investigating Gregory B. Craig, a powerful Democratic lawyer, should charge him — and should do so before Election Day.

“It’s time for you guys to even things out,” the official said, according to Mr. Berman.

The book comes as Mr. Trump and his supporters have accused the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland of using the Justice Department as a weapon after a judge authorized FBI agents to search his Florida house for missing classified records. Mr. Trump, who is a likely presidential candidate in 2024, has suggested without evidence that President Biden is playing a role in that investigation.

However, Mr. Berman’s book says that during Mr. Trump’s presidency, department officials made “overtly political” demands, choosing targets that would directly further Mr. Trump’s desires for revenge and advantage. Mr. Berman wrote that the pressure was clearly inspired by the president’s openly professed wants.

In the book, Mr. Berman, who as U.S. attorney did not give news interviews, offers new details about the high-profile prosecutions of defendants like Mr. Cohen; Chris Collins, a Republican congressman from New York; Michael Avenatti, the celebrity attorney and Trump antagonist; and Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier.

He says there were cases his office pursued without pressure from Washington, but in others, he makes clear his greatest challenges did not always have to do with the law.

“Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney,” Mr. Berman, 62, writes, “Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining — in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired.”

“I walked this tightrope for two and a half years,” writes Mr. Berman, who is now in private practice. “Eventually, the rope snapped.”

 

This information would have been valuable to the country in 2018. It coming out now as part of a tell-all book is pretty awful. Being ordered to bring charges against a political enemy and being fired for refusing to do it, well, I'm sure Democrats would have loved to hear from Mr. Berman in January 2019 or so as to why Bill Barr fired him.

 

It's all about that filthy lucre though, isn't it?

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, 2022 Edition

The dirty GOP tricks shop Project Veritas is trying to claim their Democratic Senate candidates for this fall now that primaries are over, and of course their first target is a Black woman, South Carolina Democrat Rep. Krystle Matthews.

 

The South Carolina Democrat vying to oust Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Scott is facing calls from within her own party to fold her campaign, following the publication of additional leaked audio in which she appears to make disparaging remarks about her constituents.

The calls for state Rep. Krystle Matthews to withdraw just two months ahead of the general election came Thursday in reaction to leaked audio published by conservative activist group Project Veritas of Matthews speaking to one of its members, without her knowledge.

Sitting in a restaurant, Matthews, who is Black, is heard saying that she represents a “mostly white” district, adding, of white voters: “I keep them right here — like under my thumbs. ... Otherwise, they get out of control — like kids.”

“You ought to know who you’re dealing with,” Matthews goes on to say. “You’ve got to treat them like s—-. That’s the only way they’ll respect you.”

In a statement, Matthews acknowledged her voice on the recording, calling Project Veritas a “satirical MAGA Powered news outlet.”

The compilation also features more of Matthews’ conversation, parts of which were previously published by Project Veritas, in which she spoke to an inmate about funding her campaign with “dope boy money” and having Democrats run as Republicans, saying “secret sleepers” represent “the only way you’re gonna change the dynamics in South Carolina.”

 

I figured James O'Keefe would be in prison by now, but he has high-powered GOP lawyers with deep pockets to give him enough cover to keep harassing Democrats, and you'd think Democrats would be wise to the idea by now.  Sadly, Democratic candidates for office should consider their conversations in public spaces to be taped by GOP operatives unless otherwise proven clear.

 

It's a rookie mistake that will almost certainly cost Matthews her entire political career because Black women have no room for error in America, especially in the political arena.

It's entirely unfair, and Matthews is correct in her assessments, but nobody on the Red Team side wants any truths of facts except their own lies, and anyone who speaks them gets crucified.

Look how quickly South Carolina Democrats are abandoning her. One party still responds to shaming. The other party is fascist garbage, without an ounce of it.

They will get wins because of it, and already have.