Trump Cards, Con't

Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon is all but signalling a significant delay in the Mar-a-Lago documents case against Trump himself, and I wouldn't expect this trial to begin -- if it begins at all -- until after the November 2024 election.

 

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s indictment for allegedly mishandling national security secrets suggested Wednesday that she might push back the planned trial timeline, as courts wrestle with the growing complexity of juggling four separate criminal cases and an ongoing civil trial against the former president.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon listened to prosecutors argue at a hearing for keeping the schedule she set earlier this year, which includes a trial in May 2024. Lawyers for the former president insisted they needed more time to prepare.

“I’m having a hard time seeing how this work can be accomplished in this compressed time frame,” Cannon said at one point, focusing in particular on a federal trial scheduled to begin March 4 in Washington in which Trump is accused of conspiring to obstruct the results of the 2020 election.

Wednesday’s debate largely centered on looming deadlines for Trump’s lawyers to file pretrial motions in the Florida case. But pushing back that time frame could have a domino effect of delaying the entire trial schedule.

Prosecutor Jay Bratt argued that whatever the deadlines may be in other cases, those could all change, so it did not make sense to alter the trial date in the Florida case. Cannon sounded skeptical.

“I’m not quite seeing in your position an understanding of these realities,” Cannon told Bratt. The judge said she would rule on the schedule “as soon as possible.”

The hearing highlighted the complexities of a case that centers on highly classified documents, involving a defendant who has multiple competing court dates up and down the East Coast — even as he again runs for president.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche spent close to an hour telling the judge how “voluminous” the evidence in the classified documents case is, and emphasizing that he and Trump’s other lawyers need more time to review it. He also noted that the D.C. indictment — also brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith — came after Trump was first charged in the classified-documents case. The Florida trial date was set by Cannon before Trump was indicted in Washington.

“Everything has changed” since Cannon first set the trial date, Blanche told the judge. “There is not a single part of your honor’s schedule that is not adversely affected by the D.C. case.”

Trump is charged in Florida with dozens of counts of mishandling classified information and plotting with two aides to obstruct government efforts to recover hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach home and private club, after his presidency ended. He has pleaded not guilty.

 

Expect the trial to be pushed back until early 2025 at the soonest, which of course was the timeframe that Trump's lawyers asked for initially, that they would need two years to go over the evidence.  It was ridiculously obvious then that the lawyers expected Cannon to deliver on a scenario where a victorious Trump would be able to order the case dismissed after the November 2024 election, and it's even more obvious now just how corrupt Judge Cannon is.

Luckily for America, the other criminal proceedings against Trump are continuing apace.

Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu failed miserably to protect the Jewish state from Hamas, and whether it was intentional or not, the world will pay a heavy price in the weeks and months ahead.

 

Hamas’ massacre of more than 1,400 Israelis and kidnapping of over 200 others on Oct. 7 was more than a national tragedy for Israel — it was also a massive intelligence failure. Now, as Israel goes to war against Hamas, vital questions abound: Why didn’t Israeli leadership see this coming? If Israel defeats Hamas, what will take its place? And what are the odds that Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, could get pulled into a direct role in the conflict?

Amos Yadlin has unique insights into all these questions. The 71-year-old former Israeli intelligence chief, who oversaw the destruction of Syria’s nascent nuclear program and the serial sabotage of Iran’s, has emerged as a key voice on the crisis, briefing members of Israel’s war cabinet. For the last 12 years, he’s served as the head of Israel’s highly influential Institute for National Security Studies, and he remains a security eminence grise.

In a new interview with POLITICO Magazine conducted via Zoom over two days last week, Yadlin offered a useful window into official Israeli thinking on the escalating war — from solutions to the ongoing hostage crisis to the challenge of avoiding Palestinian civilian casualties.

Yadlin made clear that Israel’s policy in this war was not simply to retaliate for the massacre or weaken Hamas, but to definitively end the jihadist group’s 16-year rule in Gaza.

“We are going to destroy Hamas, as Nazi Germany was destroyed,” he said, adding that Israel would mount a global assassination campaign against Hamas leaders akin to the one it launched following the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

Aligned politically with the country’s center left — he was the Labor Party’s candidate for defense minister in the 2015 elections — Yadlin attributed much of the blame for the catastrophe to the national distraction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push to overhaul the country’s judiciary: “Netanyahu got all the warnings — from his defense minister, from the chief of staff, from the head of intelligence, from the head of Shin Bet and from independent writers like me, like others — that this is weakening Israel deterrence and endangering Israeli national security.”

Complicating matters in recent days, the Israeli media has been abuzz with reports of internal Israeli government deliberations over a second front with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, with the defense minister and other Israeli officials reportedly advocating a preemptive strike on the militant group and the U.S. cautioning against it.

Yadlin said Hezbollah’s “very cautious” behavior indicated a low likelihood of a second front developing. But while declining to go into details, Yadlin — who is privy to recent discussions between U.S. and Israeli officials — hinted that, in the event Hezbollah were to initiate a full-blown war with Israel, the U.S. might join “shoulder to shoulder” with Israel: “If Hezbollah attacks first, don’t be surprised — the U.S. may participate in this war.”

 

So yeah, expert after expert agree on two things: Bibi dropped the ball, and that the odds of a much bigger -- if not global -- conflict are ridiculously high as a result. This should all look familiar to Americans after 9/11, because we're headed down the same path with the same results.

Meanwhile, the ground invasion in Gaza is getting underway.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Friday that they are "expanding ground operations" in the Gaza Strip, according IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

“In addition to offensive operations we carried over the past few days, the IDF ground forces are expanding their ground operation this evening,” Hagari said.

“Hundreds of thousands of IDF soldiers are all around the borders of the state — in the air, ground, and the sea — to protect the state," he added.

The announcement comes as CNN reports a large series of explosions rocked Gaza City on Friday night. 

 

Gaza is without power, telecommunications, or internet and is being bombed to ashes.

Large swaths of buildings around Gaza City, Beit Lahya and Beit Hanoun have been destroyed. A big amount of the damage that CNN was able to confirm is in northern Gaza.

Hundreds of craters across northern Gaza have also been identified.

CNN was able to identify the areas of destruction in Gaza through satellite imagery from Planet Labs, and by working with Synthetaic — a company that utilizes AI to identify and classify data, including satellite imagery.

Using imagery of the entire Gaza Strip from Planet Labs, Synthetaic is analyzing and comparing it through its proprietary AI-driven Rapid Automatic Image Categorization (RAIC) system, looking for destruction such as damaged and destroyed buildings, as well as impact craters. Aided by what RAIC identified as destruction, CNN is taking the Planet Labs imagery and conducting its own analysis to independently confirm the destruction.

The result is a snapshot of the destruction that's occurred across Gaza.

 

Hundreds, if not thousands of foreign nationals remain trapped. 

More than two weeks of intense negotiations to evacuate foreign nationals out of Gaza have yielded few signs of progress, leaving hundreds of desperate civilians stranded inside the war-torn strip of land as Israeli ground operations expanded amid a barrage of airstrikes on Friday.

Multiple sources involved in the diplomatic talks tell CNN that the effort to open a key border crossing in southern Gaza remains stymied by Hamas’ control of the enclave, Israel’s blockade and bombing, as well as Egyptian security concerns.

Now that the Israeli defense forces have announced an expansion of their ground operations, the situation for civilians and foreign nationals who remain trapped in Gaza has become even more dire. Aid officials and other individuals on the ground had expressed fears even before the expansion of operations that nowhere in Gaza was safe, and despite US officials saying they were working with Israel to establish civilian safe zones, such areas have not been fully stood up.

People who have family in Gaza told CNN on Friday they have not been able to make contact with them after communications went down in the strip amid the barrage of strikes.

Negotiators have been furiously working to find a solution to appease Egypt’s concerns about refugees entering the country through the Rafah crossing in southwestern Gaza, the border between Egypt and the Sinai. Complicating things are Israeli and American claims that Hamas has blocked the way out, as well as the inherent difficulties that come with processing thousands of people who claim to be foreign nationals.

The US had also been rushing to negotiate the release of hostages held by Hamas ahead of the incursion, talks that the US government insisted will continue amid Friday’s intensified airstrikes.

The Biden administration said Thursday it was hopeful that a deal will be reached in the coming days to allow US citizens to evacuate Gaza through Egypt, though the State Department had previously issued an alert saying the crossing into Egypt would open but it never did.

 

The catastrophe continues as the UN demands a cease fire, falling on deaf ears in Tel Aviv and Washington.

 

The U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution Friday calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, the first United Nations response to the ongoing war.

The 193-member world body adopted the Arab-drafted resolution by a vote of 120-14 with 45 abstentions after rejecting a Canadian amendment backed by the United States. It would have unequivocally condemned the Oct. 7 “terrorist attacks” on Israel by Hamas and demanded the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas.

The votes came part way through a list of 113 speakers at an emergency special session on Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories. Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Mahmoud Hmoud, speaking on behalf of the U.N.’s 22-nation Arab group, had called for action on the resolution because of the urgency of the escalating situation on the ground.

The Arab group went to the General Assembly after the more powerful 15-member Security Council failed to agree on a resolution after four attempts over the past two weeks. While council resolutions are legally binding, assembly resolutions are not, but they do serve as a barometer of world opinion.

 

Things always get darker right before it goes pitch black.

Trump Cards, Con't

Trump gets the federal documents trial delay he was looking for, from the judge he appointed.

 

 

A federal judge ordered Friday that the trial in the classified documents case that special counsel Jack Smith brought against former President Donald Trump begin in May 2024.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon said that the trial could begin as early as May 20. A pretrial hearing in the case will be held on May 14.

If that timeline holds, then the trial would fall deep in the 2024 race for the White House, coming amid multiple GOP presidential primaries. It would be a rebuke to Trump and his legal team, who wanted to postpone the trial until after the general election takes place in November 2024.

However, Cannon’s order also means that the case will unfold at a far slower speed than what Smith’s team was proposing, when it recommended a fast-paced timeline that would start the trial in mid-December of this year. Such a schedule would have a trial wrap up before primary voting gets underway in the 2024 election, where Trump is the leading GOP candidate.

The vast majority of state primaries will be finished by mid-May, although Nebraska, Maryland and West Virginia are set to hold their primary elections on May 14. Oregon votes the following week and a handful of states, including New Jersey, are now scheduled to vote on June 4. During his first presidential run, Trump effectively clinched the nomination at the end of May 2016 – before formally becoming the party’s nominee in July at the GOP convention in Cleveland.

While it’s likely the nominating process will be essentially decided by May, recent history has plenty examples of the race remaining a delegate fight until early summer.

 

It's within Judge Cannon's purview to delay the trial until next May, but the issue is she's personally responsible for delaying the proceedings for several months before we even got to this. 

Otherwise, she literally split the difference. How Solomonic. Marcy Wheeler explains it all:

Her order is not, on its face, unreasonable. It sets a CIPA trial for 49 weeks after it was charged, which is solidly within the scope of what it normally takes to bring these cases to trial. She has made this a complex case which is similarly not unreasonable.

The most unreasonable part of her order, thus far, is that she set the trial to be held in her tiny courtroom in Fort Pierce, making it utterly unworkable for the press.

The second most unreasonable part of her order is that she has treated the classified protective order as a month-long fully briefed affair, effectively absolving Trump and his co-defendant of conferring like grown-ups, such that classified discovery might not begin until after August 25, two months of delay she is adding to this timeline on top of the three months of delay she created last year.

Finally, she deferred on the question of whether the election will make jury selection next May impossible.

Again, this is not unreasonable, at least thus far. But she is letting Trump and Walt Nauta stall by obstructing from the outset.

 

Cannon has learned the difference between putting a thumb on the scale of justice instead of 318 metric tons of concrete.  Progress!

Trump Cards, Con't

Looks like Trump is going to get his federal documents trial delayed until 2024 after all.

 

The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in South Florida said Tuesday she doesn’t think the 2024 election will be a deciding factor for her in determining when the ex-president's historic trial begins.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon made the comment during a nearly two-hour public hearing on the 37-count criminal indictment that Special Counsel Jack Smith secured in June against Trump and his personal valet and co-defendant, Walt Nauta.

Among Cannon's top early priorities is establishing a schedule for the legal proceedings, and Tuesday's hearing marked the first time she's brought together federal prosecutors and defense attorneys for Trump and Nauta to discuss the matter.

Smith's team has been pressing for a mid-December beginning to the Trump trial, while lawyers for Trump and Nauta want the entire proceeding postponed until after the 2024 election that the former president is running in with the hope of winning back his old White House job.

During Tuesday's hearing, Smith's team appeared to concede their December proposal was aspirational.

"We feel it is very important that we have a trial date to work from, realizing that the trial date may not be set in stone," said Jay Bratt, the Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the Justice Department's National Security Division.

Such a schedule may depend on whether the cases against Trump and Nauta are labeled complex, a designation that the government has opposed. Cannon appeared inclined to find that it was, pressing prosecutors on whether any similar Espionage Act case had such an ambitious schedule. Bratt appeared to concede that he couldn't find one, though he added that Trump's case was different from the fold in an important aspect. The evidence has been available for nearly a year, since the FBI searched and seized the documents at issue in the case in August 2022.

Pressing both the government and the defense, Cannon similarly showed little interest in basing her ultimate decision on waiting until the November 2024 election has passed.

"I can appreciate that more time is necessary, but we need to set a schedule," Cannon told Trump's attorney, Todd Blanche, early in the afternoon session.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, did not issue a decision on a trial date during Tuesday's hearing. Instead, she said she'd be weighing a number of other factors in determining a schedule, including the volume of discovery materials Smith team will be handing over to Trump's defense so it can prepare for the trial.

Court watchers have viewed the trial schedule as a key test for Cannon, whose rulings in favor of the 45th president of the United States received a blistering rebuke late last year.

After the FBI seized the documents from Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, Cannon issued an injunction blocking the government from using them in their investigation. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit overturned that order in a blistering rebuke that accused Cannon of undertaking a “radical” restructuring of criminal procedure on behalf of the ex-president.

In the shadow of that decision, Cannon shot down attempts by Trump's team to weigh the case's political backdrop into her consideration, or for prosecutors to respond to insinuations of political persecution by the former president's legal team. Trump's attorney Christopher Kise previously hinted, but had not outright stated, that they wanted to postpone a trial until after the 2024 election.

At one point, Cannon pressed Kise to go on-the-record about that desire.

"Your position is there can be no trial until after the election?" the judge asked.

After Kise answered in the affirmative, Cannon told him that the volume of discovery and anticipated motions would provide a more "suitable" framework for her under the Speedy Trial Act. Trump's attorneys previously accused the government of seeking an "expedited" criminal trial, but special counsel attorney David Harbach said that this formulation gets it backwards.

"It's not a speedy trial that has to be justified," Harbach noted. "It's deviation from a speedy trial that has to be justified."

Despite the unprecedented Justice Department prosecution of a former president, Harbach argued that Trump was no different from any other "busy, important person" who's been indicted.

 

Judge Cannon was all but begging Trump's lawyers to give her a discovery excuse, that the volume of documents would be too much for Trump's team to handle before at least this time next year or something perverse like that.

I don't know exactly how she's going to delay this case until after the election, but it looks like she's going to try.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Federal Judge Aileen Cannon is running the show in Donald Trump's trial over federal documents kept illegally at Mar-a-Largo, and he made clear today that appointing her to the federal bench in the first place is a favor he expects to be paid back.

 

Former President Trump praised the judge overseeing his classified documents case as his legal team seeks a postponement of his trial in Florida.

Trump’s motion for a continuance of the trial, filed last Monday, awaits a decision by Judge Aileen Cannon, an appointee of the former president who presided over his initial challenge to the FBI search of his Florida home.

Asked on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News whether he believes the judge will grant the motion, Trump said he did not know.

“I know it’s a very highly respected judge. A very smart judge, and a very strong judge,” Trump said.

When host Maria Bartiromo noted that Trump appointed the judge in the case, Trump said, “I did, and I’m very proud to have appointed her.”

“But she’s very smart and very strong, and loves our country,” Trump said. “We need judges that love our country so they do the right thing.”

 

Trump wants Judge Cannon to delay the trial until 2025 or so, after the election, where he expects to be back in the Oval Office and he can then order the Justice Department to drop the case. It's glaringly obvious what's going on here, but nobody's going to do anything about it.

Given her history with this case, everyone should expect Cannon to "do the right thing" for Trump, and soon.

Their Gal Friday

TPM's Josh Marshall recounts the long, crazy ride of Gal Luft, the House GOP's supposed star mystery witness in the Biden "bribery scandal", who apparently is also a wanted fugitive by the Justice Department.  Republicans are howling at the indictment, but the problem is Luft was indicted last year, well before his spurious accusations.

“The timing is always coincidental according to the Democrats and the Department of Justice,” Comer told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday evening. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who said that Luft could be a key witness, said on Sunday that he “does not trust the Department of Justice.”

The facts, as laid out in and around the indictment, tell a far more familiar story of D.C. grubbiness.

Per the docket, unsealed on Tuesday, the indictment came down on Nov. 1, 2022. That’s eight months before the DOJ made it public, and three months before Luft himself first loudly alleged that he was the victim of a Biden political persecution.

And per the indictment, Luft’s assertion that he’s been charged with “thought crimes” appears far-fetched.

He faces eight separate counts, including two charges of making false statements to federal officials, one for conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and five counts relating to separate schemes which allegedly involved Luft trying to trade in sanctioned Iranian oil and broker deals for a Chinese firm to supply, among other things, “strike UAVs” to Kenya and anti-tank missile launchers to Libya.

The foreign agent scheme, prosecutors say, had less to do with the Bidens than it did with the Trump administration’s entrance to power in 2016.

Luft, while co-director for a Maryland energy security think tank, allegedly agreed in 2015 to receive annual payments of $350,000 from CEFC, the Chinese energy firm that would go on to ink contracts with Hunter Biden. The payments were made, prosecutors say, as part of an agreement with Luft to advance China’s interests in the U.S.

Luft was, the indictment alleges, to do three things in exchange for the payments: arrange an “international meeting” in a major U.S. city on “energy security issues,” secure CEFC’s chair an honorary position at a separate energy group that Luft advised, and help make a member of that energy group a “senior advisor” to CEFC.

The arrangement allegedly continued through the 2016 election, when Luft began to develop a relationship with a person whose description in the indictment matches that of former CIA Director James Woolsey.

At one point, prosecutors cite a quote from a December 2016 conference in D.C. about China’s Belt and Road project, in which Woolsey allegedly said that “We want to joyfully participate with China in international trade operations and economic growth.” The same quote appears attributed to Woolsey in a China Daily article about the meeting.

When Woolsey was named in a September 2016 article as a Trump campaign adviser on national security policies, Luft allegedly sent a celebratory email to an unnamed associate.

Luft, prosecutors say, tried to use his relationship with Woolsey — and the prospect that Woolsey might be asked to take a top position in the Trump administration — as part of his agreement to help China. That included an alleged plan for Luft’s think tank to make a monthly payment of $6,000 to Woolsey from November 2016 to October 2017, in exchange for which Woolsey would allegedly publish pro-China articles. In one case alleged by prosecutors, Luft purportedly edited an introductory email that Woolsey planned to send to another Trump adviser post-election.

 

Knowing that he was indicted, Luft came up with a scheme to not only skip town, but to accuse President Biden of "bribery" and to contact House Republicans as a wanted fugitive. Doesn't exactly seem like the "star witness" that Jim Comer promised, does he? 

No, all this seems like nonsense to try to cover up the fact that Luft was a spy for China during the Trump regime, and that he faces a long stint in prison if convicted as a result. Republicans are going to call him as a witness anyway, it seems.

Good luck with that, I guess.

Last Call For Lordy, There Are Tapes

Ladies and gentlemen, here's audio evidence that Donald Trump committed a federal crime.

CNN has exclusively obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where President Donald Trump discusses holding secret documents he did not declassify.

The recording, which first aired on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” includes new details from the conversation that is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information, including a moment when Trump seems to indicate he was holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran.

“These are the papers,” Trump says in the audio recording, while he’s discussing the Pentagon attack plans, a quote that was not included in the indictment.

In the two-minute audio recording, Trump and his aides also joke about Hillary Clinton’s emails after the former president says that the document was “secret information.”

“Hillary would print that out all the time, you know. Her private emails,” Trump’s staffer said.

“No, she’d send it to Anthony Weiner,” Trump responded, referring to the former Democratic congressman, prompting laughter in the room.

Trump’s statements on the audio recording, saying “these are the papers” and referring to something he calls “highly confidential” and seems to be showing others in the room, could undercut the former president’s claims in an interview last week with Fox News’ Bret Baier that he did not have any documents with him.

“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Trump said on Fox. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”

Trump pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

The audio recording comes from a July 2021 interview Trump gave at his Bedminster resort for people working on the memoir of Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff. The special counsel’s indictment alleges that those in attendance – a writer, publisher and two of Trump’s staff members – were shown classified information about the plan of attack on Iran. 

 

If you still want to know why Republicans are trying to invent a Joe Biden "bribery scandal" out of smoke and mirrors where nobody can actually come up with the tapes proving anything at all happened, it's because these tapes proving Trump is a crook actually exist.

Russian To Judgment: Putin On A Show

I've read some pretty wild reasons as to why Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin called off his coup after just a day or so, but Occam's Razor reminds us the simplest explanations are most often correct, and in this case, it's that "Putin threatened Prighozin's family and the families of the rest of Wagner's bigwigs."

 

Russian intelligence services threatened to harm the families of Wagner leaders before Yevgeny Prigozhin called off his advance on Moscow, according to UK security sources.

It has also been assessed that the mercenary force had only 8,000 fighters rather than the 25,000 claimed and faced likely defeat in any attempt to take the Russian capital.

Vladimir Putin will now try to assimilate Wagner Group soldiers into the Russian military and take out its former leaders, according to insights shared with The Telegraph.

The analysis offers clues into the mystery of why Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader, called off his mutinous march on Moscow on Saturday just hours before reaching the capital.

There remains speculation about what formal deal was struck, if any. The Kremlin said on Saturday that Prigozhin would head to Belarus in exchange for a pardon from charges of treason.

There has been no comment from Prigozhin over the suggestion. It also remains unclear if Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, is set to be demoted or fired, as Prigozhin demanded.

On Sunday, the Russian MP Andrey Gurulyov, a prominent Kremlin propagandist, said there was “no option” but for Prigozhin and another high-profile Wagner figure to be executed.

Putin has not been seen in public since addressing the nation on Saturday morning, but a pre-recorded interview filmed earlier in the week was played on state television on Sunday.

 

As far as how long Prigozhin himself survives, well, that's the million-ruble question, isn't it?

On Sunday, intelligence officials and diplomats — unsure if they had just witnessed an aborted coup or a thwarted mutiny — were left to parse official Kremlin statements and re-watch blurry videos posted on Telegram, the social network that Prigozhin has used to try to convince the Russian people that the war in Ukraine has been a strategic disaster led by incompetent commanders and political sycophants.

Publicly, U.S. officials have highlighted the possible benefits to Ukraine from the chaos in Russia. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the brief Wagner revolt, and how it was ultimately if tentatively resolved, showed “cracks in the facade” of Putin’s authoritarian leadership.

“Think about it this way: 16 months ago, Russian forces were on the doorstep of Kyiv in Ukraine, believing they would take the capital in a matter of days and erase the country from the map as an independent country. Now, what we’ve seen is Russia having to defend Moscow, its capital, against mercenaries of [Putin’s] own making,” Blinken said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”

“Certainly, we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead,” Blinken added.

Officials in the United States and around Europe said they were unsure of what comes next and were concerned about the instability that could follow an effort by Putin’s rivals, including Prigozhin, to unseat the president at a vulnerable moment.

High on the list of questions policymakers are now putting to their intelligence analysts is whether Prigozhin has managed to shake the foundations of the Kremlin so strongly that Putin will feel compelled to sack top generals or ministers leading the war, as Prigozhin has repeatedly demanded.

More immediately, though, there’s another question: What just happened? One minute, Prigozhin had taken over a key military headquarters in the south running Russia’s war machine in Ukraine. The next, he had agreed to a truce brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who’s more accustomed to playing second fiddle to Putin than intervening between warring factions.

“Why did it calm down so quickly, and how come Putin’s puppet Lukashenko got the credit?” asked one senior European diplomat, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. “What impact will it have on Russia’s defenses, and are there going to be any personnel changes in the military leadership?”

 

Remember, US intelligence services have been crippled for a decade by Dudebro Defector's leaks exposing means and methods against Russia. Moscow's been a black hole for the US ever since. The fact that we're seeing multiple US news outlets tells us that both the State Department and intelligence services know basically nothing other than "something was up" in the weeks leading up to the coup and know even less now about Russia and its nuclear arsenal is...not good.

The UK is in a better position, it seems, to gather information from Putin and his oligarchy, than we are. That should worry a lot of people.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump's biggest tactical flaw is that he can't shut up, something that's going to get him prison time one of these days.

A WEEK AFTER his second post-presidential arrest, this one for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House, Donald Trump turned to Fox News host Bret Baier on Monday to make the case for why he should lead the country again. But he ended up essentially confessing to the crime of which he’s accused: stealing and sharing top-secret government information.

Before that, however, Baier pressed Trump to explain why he kept the boxes of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago and refused to comply with government requests to return them, as described in his new felony indictment. In between dismissing the case as “the document hoax” or accusing other presidents of illegally hoarding their own sensitive documents, Trump offered the bizarre explanation that he couldn’t give up the boxes to authorities because they also contained… his clothes.

“Like every other president I take things out,” Trump said. “In my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry. People packed it up and left. I had clothing in there, I had all sorts of personal items in there. Much, much stuff.” After a brief digression to call his former attorney general Bill Barr a “coward,” Trump reiterated, “I have got a lot of things in there. I will go through those boxes. I have to go through those boxes. I take out personal things.” Finally, he clarified what those items were: “These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things: golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things,” he said.

While not wanting Dark Brandon to seize your golf shirts may prove a compelling argument in court, another of Trump’s evasions seems less likely to hold water. Baier also brought up one of the most damning parts of the federal indictment, a recording from July 2021 in which Trump is heard showing off a document detailing an attack plan against Iran, revealing that it’s still officially secret and he no longer has the power to declassify it. Trump blustered for a moment about what he actually said, then pivoted to the claim that he wasn’t even holding a particular document — despite corroborating testimony from others in the room when it happened. No wonder this guy’s lawyers keep quitting on him.

And this time, Trump refusing to shut up about the classified documents he had in his possession may end up putting him in a box early. 

A magistrate judge has signed off on special counsel Jack Smith’s request that former President Donald Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta be prohibited from disclosing information the discovery handed over to the defense in the criminal case Trump and Nauta now face from the special counsel.

Among the restrictions approved by US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who previously approved the search warrant the FBI executed at Mar-a-Lago last year, is that “The Discovery Materials, along with any information derived therefrom, shall not be disclosed to the public or the news media, or disseminated on any news or social media platform, without prior notice to and consent of the United States or approval of the Court.”

The order sought by prosecutors and approved by Reinhart was expected and used standard language. However, it comes in a first-of-its-kind federal criminal case against an ex-president who has a proclivity to express opinions on social media and who is being prosecuted, in part, because of his alleged mishandling of sensitive government information.

The order follows the language that Smith proposed and it governs the unclassified discovery the defense will receive. The defendants did not oppose Smith’s request.

The classified materials federal investigators have collected, which are at the heart of Smith’s case, will be subjected to their own procedures for the case. The two Trump attorneys who have made appearances in the case confirmed Friday to US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who will preside over the case, that they have been in contact with the Justice Department about expediting their security clearances.

Somehow, I don't think this will be the last public interview Trump gives about these very documents. 

Just keep watching.

Last Call For The Original Paper Chase

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the infamous Pentagon Papers more than 50 years ago, has died at age 92.

 

Mr. Ellsberg, a Harvard-educated Midwesterner with a PhD in economics, was in some respects an unlikely peace activist. He had served in the Marine Corps after college, wanting to prove his mettle, and emerged as a fervent cold warrior while working as an official at the Defense Department, a military analyst at the Rand Corp. and a consultant for the State Department, which dispatched him to Saigon in 1965 to assess counterinsurgency efforts.

Crisscrossing the Vietnamese countryside, where he joined American and South Vietnamese troops on patrol, he became increasingly disillusioned by the war effort, concluding that there was no chance of success.

He went on to embrace a life of advocacy, which extended from his 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers — a disclosure that led Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser, to privately brand him “the most dangerous man in America” — to decades of work advocating for press freedoms and the anti-nuclear movement.

Mr. Ellsberg co-founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a Brooklyn nonprofit, and championed the work of a new generation of digital leakers and whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

He also continued to release secret government documents, including files about nuclear war that he had copied while working on the military’s “mutually assured destruction” strategy during the Cold War, around the same time he leaked the study that made him perhaps the most famous whistleblower in American history.

“When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969,” he wrote in the email announcing his cancer diagnosis, “I had every reason to think I would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would gladly have accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam War, unlikely as that seemed.”

Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in June 1967, the Pentagon Papers comprised 7,000 pages of historical analysis and supporting documents, revealing how the U.S. government had secretly expanded its role in Vietnam across four presidential administrations.

The papers showed that government leaders had concealed doubts about the war’s progress and had misled the public about a troop buildup that eventually took half a million Americans to Vietnam, as part of a war that cost the lives of more than 58,000 U.S. service members and millions of Vietnamese.

The study was given a bland official title, “Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force,” and a classification of “Top Secret — Sensitive,” an informal designation that suggested the contents could cause embarrassment.

Mr. Ellsberg, one of three-dozen analysts who helped prepare the report, had access to a copy at the Rand Corp., an Air Force-affiliated research organization in Santa Monica, Calif. As his opposition to the Vietnam War hardened, he began smuggling the papers out of his office, a full briefcase at a time, and photocopied them with help from a colleague, Anthony J. Russo, whose girlfriend owned a nearby advertising agency with a Xerox machine.

Their efforts got off to a rocky start: On their first night copying papers, they accidentally tripped a burglar alarm in the office, drawing the attention of police who stopped by but saw no sign of trouble.

Hoping to hasten the end of the war, Mr. Ellsberg contacted several U.S. senators and tried to share the documents through official channels. When he found no takers, he contacted New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, leading to the publication of the first story about the history on June 13, 1971, running above the fold on the front page of the Times.

The disclosures bolstered criticism of the war, horrified Mr. Ellsberg’s former colleagues in the defense establishment and blindsided the White House. After the third day of stories, the Nixon administration won a temporary injunction that muzzled the Times, blocking further publication.

The ruling set up a legal and journalistic showdown, later dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film “The Post” (2017). Mr. Ellsberg, who was played on-screen by Matthew Rhys, had by then started sharing material from the study with almost 20 other media organizations, including The Washington Post, which began printing stories of its own. When The Post, too, was ordered to stop publishing, it partnered with the Times in court, and the newspapers won a landmark decision June 30, with the Supreme Court ruling 6 to 3 in favor of allowing publication to continue.

The ruling was hailed as a victory for the First Amendment and an independent press, and seemed to blunt the government’s use of prior restraint as a tool to block the publication of stories it did not want the public to read. The decision meant the Pentagon Papers would continue to find an audience even if Mr. Ellsberg, who turned himself in to the authorities, faced a potential 115-year sentence.

 

Three observations:

 

One, Ellsberg was one of the reasons any budding journalist in my generation went into the field.

 

Two, live a life that causes Henry Kissinger to label you "The most dangerous man in America."

 

Three, a war secretly expanded over the course of four administrations? That's fiction!

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The federal cases against Trump involving January 6th and documents in Mar-a-Lago both took major steps forward with grand jury testimony in both venues. Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows testified about both cases.

Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, has testified to a federal grand jury as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing investigation into the former president, according to one source familiar with the matter.

Meadows was asked about the former president’s handling of classified documents as well as efforts to overturn the 2020 election, another source familiar with the matter said.

George Terwilliger, a lawyer representing Meadows, said in a statement that “Without commenting on whether or not Mr. Meadows has testified before the grand jury or in any other proceeding, Mr. Meadows has maintained a commitment to tell the truth where he has a legal obligation to do so.”

A spokesperson for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.

The New York Times first reported on Meadow’s appearance before the grand jury.

Meadows is viewed as a critical witness to Smith’s investigation. He was ordered to testify before the grand jury and to provide documents after a judge rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

His testimony could provide investigators key insight into the former president’s actions and mental state following the election he lost to Joe Biden as well as into Trump’s actions after he left office in January 2021.

CNN previously reported that Meadows, under subpoena, turned over some materials to the Justice Department as part of their investigation.

 

And in Florida, the grand jury in the documents case has been very busy this week.

Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed multiple witnesses to testify before a previously unknown grand jury in Florida in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of national security materials and obstruction of justice, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new grand jury activity at the US district court in Miami marks the latest twist in the investigation that for months has involved a grand jury that had been taking evidence in the case in Washington but has been silent since the start of last month.

Trump aide Taylor Budowich is scheduled to testify before the Florida grand jury on Wednesday, one of the people said, and questioning is expected to be led by Jay Bratt, the justice department’s counterintelligence chief detailed to the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation.

The previously unreported involvement of Bratt could suggest the questioning may focus on potential Espionage Act violations, particularly whether Trump showed off national security documents to people at his Mar-a-Lago resort – a recent focus of the investigation.

Bratt, who was seen arriving in Miami on Tuesday by the Guardian, has previously appeared for grand jury proceedings in the espionage side of the investigation, as opposed to the obstruction side, which has typically been led by Smith’s other prosecutors or national security trial attorneys.

A justice department spokesperson declined to comment.

But the underlying reasons as to why prosecutors in the special counsel’s office impaneled the new grand jury in Florida, and whether it is now the only grand jury active in the case after the Washington grand jury has sat dormant for weeks, remains an open question.

 

We know now that the Washington grand jury heard from Mark Meadows today.

 

We're reaching the end game here, folks.

 

Whether or not Trump gets federal charges, well, I have to believe he will.

 

[UPDATE] Maybe this is moving much faster than we thought.

The Department of Justice is preparing to ask a Washington, DC grand jury to indict former president Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstruction of justice as soon as Thursday, adding further weight to the legal baggage facing Mr Trump as he campaigns for his party’s nomination in next year’s presidential election.

The Independent has learned that prosecutors are ready to ask grand jurors to approve an indictment against Mr Trump for violating a portion of the US criminal code known as Section 793, which prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” any “information respecting the national defence”.

The use of Section 793, which does not make reference to classified information, is understood to be a strategic decision by prosecutors that has been made to short-circuit Mr Trump’s ability to claim that he used his authority as president to declassify documents he removed from the White House and kept at his Palm Beach, Florida property long after his term expired on 20 January 2021.

That section of US criminal law is written in a way that could encompass Mr Trump’s conduct even if he was authorised to possess the information as president because it states that anyone who “lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document ...relating to the national defence,” and “willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it” can be punished by as many as 10 years in prison.

It is understood that prosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday, but that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation if necessary.

 

Tomorrow's my birthday. The universe doesn't love me this much for this to happen then, but we'll see.

 

 

Putin's Pipe-Lying Problem, Con't

A lot of ink has been spilled over the Nord Stream pipelines, but the fact remains that the Nord Stream pipelines both blew up, and somebody is responsible for it. Russia blames the US, the US blames Russia, but the actual team that did it could very well be Ukrainian, at least, that's what the Washington Post is reporting today.

 

Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure.

The European intelligence reporting was shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira. The Washington Post obtained a copy from one of Teixeira’s online friends.

The intelligence report was based on information obtained from an individual in Ukraine. The source’s information could not immediately be corroborated, but the CIA shared the report with Germany and other European countries last June, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence operations and diplomatic discussions.

 

Which brings us back to the Discord leaks on Ukraine's military intelligence to begin with. The folks profiting the most from this scenario are of course Vladimir Putin and his merry band of oligarchs. How white-hot intel like this ended up in the hands of an Air Force reservist, well, as I've said since Snowden, the Russians have had the crown jewels of US intelligence for nearly a decade now. 

And pointing the finger at Ukraine for the pipeline is exactly the kind of thing Russia wants in order to justify actions like this.

A torrent of water burst through a massive dam on the Dnipro River that separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine on Tuesday, flooding a swathe of the war zone, forcing villagers to flee and prompting finger-pointing from both sides.

Ukraine said Russia had committed a deliberate war crime in blowing up the Soviet-era Nova Kakhovka dam. The Kremlin blamed Ukraine, saying it was trying to distract from the launch of a major counteroffensive Moscow says is faltering.

Some Russian-installed officials said the dam had collapsed on its own.

Neither side offered immediate public evidence of who was to blame. The Geneva Conventions explicitly ban targeting dams in war because of the danger to civilians.

Hundreds of people were evacuated from settlements along the southern stretch of Ukraine's Dnipro river as flood waters submerged streets, town squares and homes.

It was not immediately clear if anyone had been killed. The White House said it could not say conclusively what caused the destruction of the dam, but spokesman John Kirby said it had probably caused "many deaths".

Lidia Zubova, 67, waiting for a train out of the city of Kherson in Ukrainian government-controlled territory after abandoning her inundated village of Antonivka, told Reuters: "Our local school and stadium downtown were flooded... The road was completely flooded, our bus got stuck."

 

The suffering in Crimea because of the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam is already massive, with thousands fleeing the area, and sustainability of water supplies in the region now questionable for decades. It's a straight up violation of the Geneva Conventions, but it happens to be payback for the Nord Stream, and everyone knows it.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is becoming more and more of a nightmare each day, it seems. And Putin is still the one laughing about it.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

The mountain of evidence against Donald Trump that the intelligence information contained in the classified documents he took and kept after he left office were shown to foreign nationals continues to grow exponentially.

 

Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said.

CNN has not listened to the recording, but multiple sources described it. One source said the relevant portion on the Iran document is about two minutes long, and another source said the discussion is a small part of a much longer meeting.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Justice Department investigation into Trump, has focused on the meeting as part of the criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of national security secrets. Sources describe the recording as an “important” piece of evidence in a possible case against Trump, who has repeatedly asserted he could retain presidential records and “automatically” declassify documents.

Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident.

The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees, sources said, did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows didn’t attend the meeting, sources said.

Meadows’ autobiography includes an account of what appears to be the same meeting, during which Trump “recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency.”

 

The NY Times backing up the CNN story:

 

The tape was made during a meeting Mr. Trump held in July 2021 with people helping his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, write a memoir of his 10 months in the White House, according to the people briefed on the matter. The meeting was held at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J., where he spends summers.

Until now, the focus of the documents investigation has been largely on material Mr. Trump kept with him at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, rather than in New Jersey.

Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, but at least two of Mr. Trump’s aides did. One, Margo Martin, routinely taped the interviews he gave for books being written about him that year.

On the recording, Mr. Trump began railing about his handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was described in media accounts at the time as having guarded against Mr. Trump’s striking Iran in the final days of the presidency, according to the people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Trump then began referencing a document that he had with him, saying that it had been compiled by General Milley and was related to attacking Iran, the people briefed on the matter said. Among other comments, he mentioned his classification abilities during the discussion, one person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Trump can be heard handling paper on the tape, though it is not clear whether it was the document in question.

The Justice Department obtained the recording in recent months, a potentially key piece in a mountain of evidence that prosecutors have amassed under the special counsel, Jack Smith, since he was appointed in November to oversee the federal investigations into Mr. Trump.

Ms. Martin was asked about the recording during a grand jury appearance, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.

 

This alone, in a just world, would be the end of Trump.  We do not live in anything close to a just world, but we do live in one where Trump cannot keep his damned mouth shut.

Hopefully we'll see charges soon. We have to maintain that hope, or we're lost.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

As word is coming in that Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith is wrapping up his investigation and that AG Merrick Garland is nearing a decision on charges with the Trump team bracing for impact, the Washington Post is reporting that the Mar-a-Lago classified document shuffle was a song and dance number that was planned, practiced, and executed by members of Trump's staff.

Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before FBI agents and a prosecutor visited the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.

Trump and his aides also allegedly carried out a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers even before his office received the May 2022 subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive ongoing investigation.

Prosecutors in addition have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others, these people said.

Taken together, the new details of the classified-documents investigation suggest a greater breadth and specificity to the instances of possible obstruction found by the FBI and Justice Department than has been previously reported. It also broadens the timeline of possible obstruction episodes that investigators are examining — a period stretching from events at Mar-a-Lago before the subpoena to the period after the FBI raid there on Aug. 8.

That timeline may prove crucial as prosecutors seek to determine Trump’s intent in keeping hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House, a key factor in deciding whether to file charges of obstruction of justice or of mishandling national security secrets. The Washington Post has previously reported that the boxes were moved out of the storage area after Trump’s office received a subpoena. But the precise timing of that activity is a significant element in the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.

Grand jury activity in the case has slowed in recent weeks, and Trump’s attorneys have taken steps — including outlining his potential defense to members of Congress and seeking a meeting with the attorney general — that suggest they believe a charging decision is getting closer. The grand jury working on the investigation apparently has not met since May 5, after months of frenetic activity at the federal courthouse in Washington. That is the panel’s longest hiatus since December, shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead the probe and coinciding with the year-end holidays.

 

The obstruction of justice charges are coming, but I think a lot more will be unveiled in the months ahead. As it stands, Team Trump is making the same kind of preparations that they did when Alvin Bragg's cards were about to be played.

This month, several legal and political counselors to Trump have bluntly informed him that they expect the Justice Department to charge him in the criminal investigation into his hoarding of highly classified documents following the end of his presidency, two sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. The feds have also been probing whether or not Trump tried to obstruct the investigation prior to last year’s FBI raid of the ex-president’s Florida estate.

This, of course, comes on the heels of Trump’s indictment by local prosecutors in Manhattan in April for falsifying business records. Later this summer, officials in Fulton County, Georgia, are expected to decide whether or not to indict Trump on election fraud charges.

Trump’s attorneys and confidants have told Trump that though they view the federal investigation as “bullshit,” they would be surprised at this point if he wasn’t charged — particularly for alleged obstruction of justice — and have urged Trump to prepare for yet another historic fight. “Looks like they’re going for it,” one of the sources says. “People close to the [former] president have discussed with him what we think is going to happen soon, and how he and everyone else needs to be ready for it … it would be crazy not to.”

In at least one of these recent conversations, the former president angrily complained in response to these predictions that if the Department of Justice is going to charge him for keeping classified documents, then “what about Joe Biden?” according to the other person familiar with the matter. (A small number of classified documents have been discovered at a number of locations connected to Biden, including his garage; the Department of Justice has named a second special counsel to look into the matter.)

It is still unclear if the Justice Department will ultimately bring charges against Trump, though there are signs that this particular investigation is nearing its final phase. Some in the broader conservative movement have also braced for the possibility that Trump — currently the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination — will face indictment across a range of investigations. These potential indictments stem from the Georgia probe into election interference to the Mar-a-Lago documents probe.

“I would just presume indictments in all the jurisdictions,” Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch and a close ally of Trump, said in a brief interview on Wednesday. “The Democrats are so nervous about Trump running, they’ll do anything.”

Trump’s own former attorney general, Bill Barr, also said in a recent interview that the documents case is the one Trump should be “most concerned about.”

“He wouldn’t get in trouble probably just for taking them. … The problem is what did he do after the government asked for them back and subpoenaed them,” Barr told CBS News. “And if there’s any games being played there, he’s going to be very exposed.”

 

You'll know it's actually coming when Trump screams about his impending arrest and tells his terrorists to go after federal law enforcement officers in order to save him. 

Until then, I expect Smith -- and Merrick Garland -- will keep his own schedule.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena for Trump's foreign business dealings during his White House tenure, implying that Trump's illegal trove of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago may not have only been shown to foreign entities, but that Trump directly profited from them, something I've been saying was a distinct possibility from the start.

 

Federal prosecutors overseeing the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents have issued a subpoena for information about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in foreign countries since he took office, according to two people familiar with the matter.

It remains unclear precisely what the prosecutors were hoping to find by sending the subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, or when it was issued. But the subpoena suggests that investigators have cast a wider net than previously understood as they scrutinize whether he broke the law in taking sensitive government materials with him upon leaving the White House and then not fully complying with demands for their return.

The subpoena — drafted by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith — sought details on the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries: China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to the people familiar with the matter. The subpoena sought the records for deals reached since 2017, when Mr. Trump was sworn in as president.

The Trump Organization swore off any foreign deals while he was in the White House, and the only such deal Mr. Trump is known to have made since then was with a Saudi-based real estate company to license its name to a housing, hotel and golf complex that will be built in Oman. He struck that deal last fall just before announcing his third presidential campaign.

The push by Mr. Smith’s prosecutors to gain insight into the former president’s foreign business was part of a subpoena — previously reported by The New York Times — that was sent to the Trump Organization and sought records related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of his golf clubs. (Mr. Trump’s arrangement with LIV Golf was reached well after he removed documents from the White House.)

Collectively, the subpoena’s demand for records related to the golf venture and other foreign ventures since 2017 suggests that Mr. Smith is exploring whether there is any connection between Mr. Trump’s deal-making abroad and the classified documents he took with him when he left office.

It is unclear what material the Trump Organization has turned over in response to the subpoena or whether Mr. Smith has obtained any separate evidence supporting that theory. But since the start of their investigation, prosecutors have sought to understand not only what sorts of materials Mr. Trump removed from the White House, but also why he might have taken them with him.

Among the government documents discovered in Mr. Trump’s possession were some related to Middle Eastern countries, according to a person familiar with Mr. Smith’s work. And when the F.B.I. executed a search warrant in August 2022 at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, among the items recovered was material related to President Emmanuel Macron of France, according to court records.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to emails seeking comment. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

If there is such a link, and Jack Smith is definite;y digging into it, Trump will have literally been caught selling out his country to foes like China and to NATO allies like France and Turkey to line his own pockets, and that's not going to end well for him at all. Even the MAGA faithful will have to find some hesitation to back Trump selling state secrets to Beijing.

Which would mean of course that all of Trump's "China Joe" talk was -- surprise! -- projection of his own criminal activity.

If Smith's excavation pans out, this is how Trump gets what he deserves. And if Trump gets re-elected, killing this probe is his first order of business.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Turns out part of those Discord leaks from last month where an Air Force reservist allegedly blabbed US military documents on Ukraine to his right-wing gaming buddies included information on PMC outfit Wagner Group offering to help Ukrainian forces because the Russians left the Wagner mercs they bought  high and dry to die in Bakhmut.

 

In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer.

Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord.

Prigozhin has publicly feuded with Russian military commanders, who he furiously claims have failed to equip and resupply his forces, which have provided vital support to Moscow’s war effort. But he is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who might well regard Prigozhin’s offer to trade the lives of Wagner fighters for Russian soldiers as a treasonous betrayal.

The leaked document does not make clear which Russian troop positions Prigozhin offered to disclose.

Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin and thought his proposals could have been disingenuous.

A U.S. official also cautioned that there are similar doubts in Washington about Prigozhin’s intentions. The Ukrainian and U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would not confirm the contacts with Prigozhin. “This is a matter of [military] intelligence,” he said. The Ukrainian leader also objected to airing classified information publicly and said he believed that the leaks had benefited Russia.

But there is no debating Prigozhin’s bitter frustration with the grinding fight in Bakhmut. He has complained, publicly and privately, that the Russian Defense Ministry has not given his fighters the ammunition and other resources they need to succeed. Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Over the past few months, in a grinding back and forth measured by city blocks, Ukrainian and Russian forces have taken steep casualties.

Prigozhin, who promised to take control of the city by May 9, in time for Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, has recently threatened publicly to pull his forces out of the fight.

Other leaked documents reveal Russian Defense Ministry officials privately wondering how to respond to Prigozhin’s criticism of the military’s performance and his demands for more resources, which they apparently conceded were not illegitimate grievances. The documents also speak to a power struggle between Prigozhin and top officials, including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Against that tense backdrop, Prigohzin has carried on a secret relationship with Ukrainian intelligence that, in addition to phone calls, includes in-person meetings with HUR officers in an unspecified country in Africa, one document states. Wagner forces provide security to several governments on the continent.

The leaked U.S. intelligence shows Prigozhin bemoaning the heavy toll that fighting has taken on his own forces and urging Ukraine to strike harder against Russian troops.

 

Now, don't get me wrong, using mercenary groups composed of veterans in wars to bolster troops is a military strategy as old as human warfare itself. But so is turning on your employer when you leave the mercs in a hole to sacrifice themselves to save your own men.

War, war never changes, as the man once said.

Last Call For Chinese Firing Drill, Con't

As tensions between China and the US continue to worsen, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced today two Chinese nationals operating out of a Chinese police outpost in Chinatown, NYC were arrested for conducting foreign police operations on US soil.

 

Two men were arrested early Monday on federal charges accusing them of conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China in connection with a police outpost operated in Manhattan’s Chinatown, officials announced in a news conference.

The outpost, which court papers say was operated by Chinese security officials, is one of more than 100 Chinese police operations around the world that have unnerved diplomats and intelligence officials. The case represents the first time criminal charges have been brought in connection with such a police outpost, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The charges against the men, Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, grew out of an investigation by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn into the Chinatown outpost, which conducted police operations without jurisdiction or diplomatic approval.

“Today’s charges are a crystal clear response to the P.R.C. that we are on to you, we know what you’re doing and we will stop it from happening in the United States of America,” Breon S. Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in announcing the charges with other officials. “We don’t need or want a secret police station in our great city,” he added.

Last fall, F.B.I. counterintelligence agents searched the outpost’s offices, located on the third floor of a nondescript building at 107 East Broadway, indicating an escalation in the global dispute over China’s efforts to police its diaspora far beyond its borders.

Officials in Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands have called on China to shut down similar operations in their countries. The F.B.I. raid in New York was the first known example of authorities seizing materials from one of the outposts.

It could not be immediately determined whether the men had lawyers. Mr. Lu, who is also known as Harry Lu, lives in the Bronx and maintains a residence in China. Mr. Chen lives in Manhattan. Both men are U.S. citizens.

In 2018 IRS filings, Mr. Lu was listed as the president of a nonprofit organization called the America Changle Association NY, whose offices housed the police outpost. A criminal complaint unsealed Monday said the group was formed in 2013 and lists its charitable mission as a “social gathering place” for people from the Chinese city of Fuzhou. The complaint says Mr. Lu serves as the association’s general adviser and Mr. Chen as its secretary general.

The two men were charged with obstruction of justice and accused of destroying text messages between themselves and their handler at China’s Ministry of Public Security in October 2022, around the time of the F.B.I. search, as well as conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China without registering with the Justice Department, as the law requires.

The charges were announced later Monday at a news conference in Brooklyn by Mr. Peace; the F.B.I. assistant director who leads the New York office, Michael Driscoll; and the Justice Department’s top national security official in Washington, David Newman.

The complaint accuses the men of assisting the Chinese government. Since 2015, according to the charges, Mr. Lu participated in counter-protests in Washington, D.C., against members of the Falun Gong, a religion prohibited under Chinese law.

More recently, the complaint says, they have helped operate the police outpost for the Fuzhou Municipal Security Bureau, a branch of the nation’s Ministry of Public Security, the nation’s intelligence, security and secret police.

When news of the search in Lower Manhattan was first reported in January, the Chinese Embassy in Washington downplayed the role of the outposts, saying they were staffed by volunteers who helped Chinese nationals perform routine tasks like renewing their driver’s licenses back home.

But The New York Times reviewed Chinese state news media reports in which the police and local Chinese officials described the operations very differently.

The officials, cited by name, trumpeted the effectiveness of the offices, frequently referred to as overseas police service centers. In some of the reports, the outposts were described as “collecting intelligence” and solving crimes abroad without the involvement of local officials.

Those public statements left it murky who exactly was running the offices. In some instances, they were described as being led by volunteers; in others, by staff members.

 

Yeah, these "Help Centers" are straight up Chinese police outposts used to keep tabs on Chinese dissidents living abroad.  The fact that these centers are operating out in the open and conducting intelligence operations in broad daylight might be something of an issue, and it's not just here in the US that these outposts exist, either.

I'm glad that the DoJ is moving to interfere with these outfits. NYC can't be the only one in the US, either.

It's time to shut them all down, frankly.