Last Call For Hunting The Hunter, Con't

A lot of ink has been spilled over Hunter Biden's laptop over the last several years, but as Marcy Wheeler notes, the person who may have to answer for the Hunter Biden plea deal may not be Hunter Biden at all, but Justice Department Special Counsel David Weiss.

 

To understand why, a review of the current state of the (known) legal case is in order.

On August 11, as Merrick Garland was announcing that he had given David Weiss Special Counsel status, Weiss’ prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the charges against Hunter Biden. After describing that, “When the parties were proceeding to a negotiated resolution in this matter, a plea in this District was agreed upon,” the filing said that because Hunter did not plead guilty, it may have to file charges in the district where venue lies. At the same time, Weiss also moved to vacate the briefing schedule in the gun diversion.

Judge Maryellen Noreika gave Hunter a day to respond to the motion to vacate. That response, signed by Chris Clark but including Abbe Lowell on the signature line, explained that Hunter planned to fulfill the terms of the gun diversion agreement, which the government had stated was a contract between the two parties.

[T]he Defendant intends to abide by the terms of the Diversion Agreement that was executed at the July 26 hearing by the Defendant, his counsel, and the United States, and concurs with the statements the Government made during the July 26 hearing,1

The Government stated in open court that the Diversion Agreement was a “bilateral agreement between the parties” that “stand[s] alone” from the Plea Agreement, and that it was “in effect” and “binding.”

But, “in light of the United States’ decision on Friday to renege on the previously agreed-upon Plea Agreement, we agree that those issues are moot at this point.” Effectively, Hunter’s team was saying they considered the gun diversion as still valid, recognized everything else was moot, and described that it was moot because the government had reneged on the terms of the deal.

Then Abbe Lowell entered his appearance in the case. And Clark moved to withdraw from the case because — given that the plea and diversion would be contested — he might have to serve as a witness.

Mr. Clark’s withdrawal is necessitated by recent developments in the matter. Pursuant to Delaware Rule of Professional Conduct 3.7(a), “a lawyer shall not act as advocate at a trial in which the lawyer is likely to be a necessary witness unless… disqualification of the lawyer would work substantial hardship on the client.” Based on recent developments, it appears that the negotiation and drafting of the plea agreement and diversion agreement will be contested, and Mr. Clark is a percipient witness to those issues. Under the “witness-advocate” rule, it is inadvisable for Mr. Clark to continue as counsel in this case.

Noreika never actually approved Clark’s withdrawal, but the defense team filed notice that Hunter consented to the withdrawal while the docket remained active.

Meanwhile, Noreika ordered the government to reply to Hunter’s response on the briefing, and ordered Hunter to respond to the thing she failed to ask about in the first place, whether he objected to the dismissal of the charges.

Hunter’s team agreed that the charges must be dismissed, but reiterated that the court had no oversight over the diversion agreement (which had been Noreika’s complaint from the start).

Without adopting the Government’s reasoning, as venue for the existing information does not lie in this District, the information must be dismissed.

Further, the Defendant’s position is that the enforceability of the Diversion Agreement (D.I. 24-1 in No. 23-cr-00061-MN) has no bearing on the United States’ Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Venue (D.I. 31 in No. 23-mj-00274-MN), and any disputes regarding the effect of the Diversion Agreement are therefore not before the Court at this time.

The government, meanwhile, filed a seven page reply attempting to claim that the government did not renege on the plea that had been negotiated in advance of its filing in June, by describing how after Hunter refused to plead guilty because Leo Wise, an AUSA who had not been involved in the original deal, claimed its scope was far narrower than Hunter understood, the parties did not subsequently agree on one to replace the signed deal Hunter entered into.

First, the Government did not “renege” on the “previously agreed-upon Plea Agreement,” as the Defendant inaccurately asserts in the first substantive sentence of his response. ECF 33, Def. Resp. at 1. The Defendant chose to plead not guilty at the hearing on July 26, 2023, and U.S. Probation declined to approve the proposed diversion agreement at that hearing.

Then Noreika dismissed the charges.

David Weiss may have plenty of time to argue with Lowell, relying on Chris Clark’s testimony, that he should not be held to the terms of signed agreements he entered into in June.

But the two important takeaways from all this are, first, that Hunter Biden is stating that before the plea hearing, Weiss attempted to change the terms of the signed plea deal, and second, that Chris Clark is no longer bound by any terms of confidentiality that will allow him to prove that’s true.

These twin stories are a warning shot to Weiss — before Hunter even gets more discovery on all the other problems with this investigation — what that is going to look like.

 

Remember, the entire Hunter Biden "bribery scandal" has been a railroad job from the start. Merrick Garland giving David Weiss Special Counsel status is the proverbial rope for Weiss to hang himself with. 

Now, normally, misconduct by a prosecutor like Weiss would be reviewed by the feckless Office of Professional Responsibility. But that’s less likely with a Special Counsel, because of the reporting structure for an SCO. And that’s particularly true here given the involvement of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer in earlier discussions about the plea. Weinsheimer oversees OPR, and so any review by OPR presents a conflict. Indeed, Weiss may have asked to be made SCO precisely so he could escape the purview of OPR.

But to some degree that may not matter.

That’s because there are already parallel investigations — at TIGTA and at DOJ IG — into the leaking that occurred during this investigation. David Weiss was already going to be a witness in them, because Gary Shapley made claims about what Weiss said personally at a meeting on October 7, 2022, a meeting that was called first and foremost to discuss leaks.

So if Michael Horowitz wanted to subpoena Weiss to find out whether he was the senior law enforcement official denying things only he could deny, to find out whether days after being made a Special Counsel, Weiss decided to violate DOJ guidelines to which he still must adhere, the only way Weiss could dodge that subpoena might be to resign from both his US Attorney and his Special Counsel appointment.

And if Weiss and DOJ IG didn’t already have enough to talk about, there’s this passage from the NYT, with its truly epic use of the passive voice: “Mr. Weiss was quietly assigned,” by whom, NYT didn’t choose to explain.

NYT corrected their earlier error on the date of the failed plea hearing, but the date here is probably another: Both IRS agents and the FBI agent have testified that this occurred in 2019, not 2018. Indeed, Joseph Ziegler testified, then thought the better of it, in a period when Bill Barr was making public comments about all this, that Barr himself was involved, which would date it to February 2019 or later, in a period when Barr was engaged in wholesale politiciziation of the department. Who assigned Weiss to investigate Joe Biden’s son as Trump demanded it would already be a question for any inquiry into improper influence, but it’s nice for NYT to make it more of one, in a story otherwise repeatedly sourced to “a senior law enforcement official” who might know.

I don’t know whether Hunter Biden’s lawyers deliberately intended to bait Weiss into responding in the NYT. But under DOJ guidelines, he is only permitted to respond to these claims in legal filings, after Abbe Lowell makes it an issue after Weiss files an indictment somewhere, thereby confirming precisely the concerns raised in these stories and creating another avenue of recourse to address these issues.

But whether that was the intention or not, that appears to be what happened.

 

The Hunter Biden case is a massive example of prosecutorial misconduct, and we're going to find out how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.

Trump Cards, Con't

A new poll from CBS News and pollster YouGov shows pretty convincingly that the most recent spate of Trump indictments ahead of what passes as a GOP presidential candidate debate this week has only served to lock in loyalty from his cultists months before a single primary or caucus vote is cast.

Well, there's no debate about this: Right now, the Republican Party would easily re-nominate Donald Trump for 2024. And it's not close.

The former president now holds his largest lead over his rivals in our polling amid his recent legal troubles. In fact, most of his voters cite those troubles as yet one more reason to show him support.

His nearest — but not too near — rival Ron DeSantis has fallen even further back. Everyone else is in single digits.

Trump voters' affinity for him seems to insulate the former president from attacks whether or not he debates this week, because voters basically say they aren't receptive to such criticism.

Instead, a whopping nine in 10 GOP primary voters want the other candidates to focus on making the case for themselves, but not against Trump.

(In interviews conducted before there were reports that Trump has decided to skip the debate, his voters were likelier than others to both say he should participate in the event and that they intend to watch.)

First, as was the case with Trump's previous indictments, Republican primary voters' overwhelming concern about the Georgia charges is that they're politically motivated.

They dismiss the premise of the charges: the bulk of them do think Trump tried to stay in office, but to them, it was legal and constitutional because these Republican primary voters overwhelmingly think Joe Biden didn't win legitimately.

There may be a rally effect: a sizable three-quarters of Trump's voters include those who "show support for his legal troubles" as one rationale, among others, for considering him in the first place.

Second, information in the indictments doesn't have an impact, in part, because they generally believe it's Trump who tells them the truth.

Trump far and away leads the GOP field among voters who place top importance on a candidate being "honest and trustworthy."

The context here is that Republican primary voters believe the political system is corrupt at an even higher rate than Americans overall do. That could mean perceiving Trump as railing against — or prosecuted by — that system might well make him seem, from their perspective, like the one telling a larger truth.

More generally, Trump's voters hold him as a source of true information, even more so than other sources, including conservative media figures, religious leaders, and even their own friends and family.

Fourth, Trump "checks the boxes" across all the ways voters generally make choices.

His track record shows that those considering him almost all think things were better in the country under his presidency. And the vast majority say they've "always been a supporter." Together, these appear to contribute to a powerful "incumbency advantage" for Trump.

It could be strategic: Republican voters think Trump has the best shot to beat Biden — remember, many think he already did. And that's really important to them, outweighing even some disagreements on policy. (Of note: Ron DeSantis has fallen on this electability measure since earlier in the summer, along with his support.)

There's also Trump's personal connection: Almost all his voters say he "fights for people like me."

And then, in particular, a large majority of primary voters would want a candidate similar to Trump, if it were not him. So, they're picking the original, as it were.

Trump has a nearly 50 point lead over second-place DeSantis, 62-16, among likely primary voters. More than three-quarters believe the Trump indictments are political, 73% say showing support for Trump's legal fights is a reason to consider supporting him, and a whopping 99% of Trump supporters believe everything was better when Trump was in the Oval Office, with 95% believing Trump will fight for "people like me." Some 61% of GOP primary voters say Trump is trustworthy and honest, with 71% of Trump supporters saying they believe him over any other source.

As I've said for years now, it's a cult, and deprogramming the tens of millions of white supremacist domestic terrorist cultists in our midst who expect Trump will exact bloody revenge on the rest of us will be the work of a lifetime. When Trump gives his cult permission to enact violence in his name in more than just a stochastic or implied manner, that's when America burns, and my fear is that this day is coming sooner rather than later.

Sunday Long Read: Returning, To Basics

The logistics of managing returning products to retailers is literally a trillion-dollar industry in America's consumerist culture, and in our Sunday Long Read this week, the New Yorker's David Owen explores the growing reverse supply chain of stuff we send back every day.

The twentysomething daughter of a friend of mine recently ordered half a dozen new dresses. She wasn’t planning to keep the lot; she’d been invited to the wedding of a college classmate and knew in advance that she was going to send back all but the one she liked best. “Swimsuits and dresses for weddings—you never buy just one,” Joanie Demer, a co-founder of the Krazy Coupon Lady, a shopping-strategy Web site, told me. For some online apparel retailers, returns now average forty per cent of sales.

Steady growth in Internet shopping has been accompanied by steady growth in returns of all kinds. A forest’s worth of artificial Christmas trees goes back every January. Bags of green plastic Easter grass go back every spring. Returns of large-screen TVs surge immediately following the Super Bowl. People who buy portable generators during weather emergencies use them until the emergencies have ended, and then those go back, too. A friend of mine returned so many digital books to Audible that the company now makes her call or e-mail if she wants to return another. People who’ve been invited to fancy parties sometimes buy expensive outfits or accessories, then return them the next day, caviar stains and all—a practice known as “wardrobing.” Brick-and-mortar shoppers also return purchases. “Petco takes back dead fish,” Demer said. “Home Depot and Lowe’s let you return dead plants, for a year. You just have to be shameless enough to stand in line with the thing you killed.” It almost goes without saying that Americans are the world’s leading refund seekers; consumers in Japan seldom return anything.

Earlier this year, I attended a three-day conference, in Las Vegas, conducted by the Reverse Logistics Association, a trade group whose members deal in various ways with product returns, unsold inventories, and other capitalist jetsam. The field is large and growing. Dale Rogers, a business professor at Arizona State, gave a joint presentation with his son Zachary, a business professor at Colorado State, during which they said that winter-holiday returns in the United States are now worth more than three hundred billion dollars a year. Zachary said, “So one and a half per cent of U.S. G.D.P.—which would be bigger than the G.D.P. of many countries around the world—is just the stuff that people got for Christmas and said, ‘Nah, do they have blue?’ ” The annual retail value of returned goods in the U.S. is said to be approaching a trillion dollars.

Most online shoppers assume that items they return go back into regular inventory, to be sold again at full price. That rarely happens. On the last day of the R.L.A. conference, I joined a “champagne roundtable” led by Nikos Papaioannou, who manages returns of Amazon’s house-brand electronic devices, including Kindles, Echos, and Blink home-security systems. He said that every item that’s returned to Amazon is subjected to what’s referred to in the reverse-logistics world as triage, beginning with an analysis of its condition. I asked what proportion of triaged products are resold as new.

“It’s minimal,” he said. “I’m not going to give you a specific number, because it’s so dependent on the product category. But our approach with this question is that, if the seal has been broken, if the wrap is not intact, then it’s not going back to the shelf.” Even though Papaioannou understands this fact as well as anyone, he said, he often shops the way the rest of us do. When he buys shoes, for example, he typically orders two pairs, a half size apart. In brick-and-mortar stores, a pair of tried-on shoes will be re-boxed and reshelved. “From an Amazon viewpoint, the moment the box opens, you’ve lost the opportunity,” he said.

For a long time, a shocking percentage of online returns were simply junked. The industry term is D.I.F., for “destroy in field.” (The Web site of Patriot Shredding, based in Maryland, says, “Product destruction allows you to protect your organization’s reputation and focus on the future.”) This still happens with cheap clothes, defective gadgets, and luxury items whose brand owners don’t want a presence at Ocean State Job Lot, but, in most product categories, it’s less common than it used to be. Almost all the attendees at the R.L.A. conference, of whom there were more than eight hundred, are involved, in one way or another, in seeking profitable, efficient, and (to the extent possible) environmentally conscionable ways of managing the detritus of unfettered consumerism. “Returns are inherently entrepreneurial,” Fara Alexander, the director of brand marketing at goTRG, a returns-management company based in Miami, told me. She and many thousands of people like her are active participants in the rapidly evolving but still only semi-visible economic universe known as the reverse supply chain.

In a world where more and more products are going digital, existing only online, we demand the same functionality from our analog physical products too, including the ability to just send it back when we're done with it.  Even our consumerism is temporary in the 2020s. We rent apartments, clothes, jobs, entire lives, and return them when we're ready to move on to the next stage, the next place, the next career. We reinvent ourselves regularly to adapt, evolve, and stay ahead of being "destroyed in field".

That includes all our stuff, too. 

A Score Of Fifteen, Love

This month marks the 15th anniversary of ZVTS and, well...damn.

This child of mine is almost old enough to start taking driving lessons.

 

Didn't think I'd make it this far, or that I'd still be fighting The Stupid a decade and a half later, but here we are.

Thanks for sticking around, folks.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

As Jon Chait says, after Trump's fourth indictment, putting hundred if not thousands of Democratic politicians in state and federal prison is all that matters now to the MAGA chuds.

 

Donald Trump’s supporters, as you might expect, have not taken his latest indictment in stride. Charlie Kirk, writing in the Federalist, proposes a list of Democrats or liberal groups to charge in retaliation, proposing Hunter Biden, James Biden, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka, Black Lives Matter, the Southern Poverty Law Center, or “literally any Democrat, for anything.” Trump’s indictments, Kirk argues, “aren’t the product of a reasoned criminal inquiry. They are the product of years of work that started from the premise of ‘investigate Trump for literally anything, and bring whatever charges you can come up with, even if they’re invented.’”

What is perhaps more surprising is that Republican supporters of Trump’s erstwhile rivals are saying more or less the same thing.

“This may be the last indictment of Trump, but it won’t be the last indictment of its type. Expect to see this scenario repeat itself any time a conservative who rattles the establishment cage gets too close to winning,” said Laura Ingraham. “Whatever you think of the Trump indictments, one thing is for certain: the glass has now been broken over and over again. Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies,” Ben Shapiro proclaimed, “Running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail — on all sides.” In a column headlined, “Republicans must fight dirty — or America is finished,” Nate Hochman urged Republicans to start bringing legal charges against their political rivals.

Ingraham and Shapiro have both plumped for Ron DeSantis, and Hochman left a job at National Review to work for him (before being forced out after making fascistic, white supremacist memes for the campaign’s social media accounts). You might think they would depict Trump’s legal jeopardy as, if not fair punishment for his crimes, then at least a political vulnerability. It’s too bad prosecutors keep targeting Trump, but maybe the party should nominate a non-incarcerated candidate for president seems like an obvious case to make for DeSantis.

Instead, they are insisting all Republicans — or at least all Republicans who pose a real threat to the left — are equally vulnerable to prosecution. They are throwing away a strong rationale, perhaps the only remaining viable one, to nominate the candidate they prefer. Why?

The answer is that Republicans are genuinely obsessed with the potential for using the criminal-justice system as a political weapon. They are so obsessed they don’t even wish to imagine leaving behind a world in which prosecution is linked with political identity. “Victory or prison” is the political environment they affirmatively wish to inhabit. Trump’s predicament hands them permission to do what they have always craved. And now the campaign, which will be anchored around a series of criminal trials, will be framed around their desire not only to keep Trump out of prison, but to lock up as many of their political opponents as they can.

If you haven’t drunk deeply from the fetid waters of the conservative fever swamp, this impulse might seem incomprehensible. Trump’s legal jeopardy is easily explained: His private sector record was a long history of shady associations with gangsters and running scams. His presidency was a continuous procession of his own advisers pleading with him not to do illegal things while he complained that his attorneys weren’t as unethical as Roy Cohn, the mob lawyer he once employed.

If Trump were being charged because he was a Republican, rather than because he were an incorrigible crook, then why weren’t George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan hauled into court by their successors? Why are other liberal hate objects like, say, DeSantis, Tucker Carlson, or Marjorie Taylor Greene not facing criminal investigations right now?

But conservatives have constructed an alternative reality that obscures these facts. Right-wing news sources serve up a curated version of events that ignores or justifies misbehavior by conservatives and magnifies or invents crimes by their opponents, creating a belief system resting upon a foundational premise that Democrats are evil and criminal and always get away with it.

The whataboutism allows even Republicans who recognize Trump’s failings to justify supporting him. Because Democrats are allowed to commit crimes and walk away scot-free, Trump should be allowed to commit crimes. Because Trump is being prosecuted unfairly — it’s unfair even if his crimes are real, remember, because Democrats get away with it all the time — Democrats should be, too.

 

Or, as Steve M. puts it:

 

I think the real reason they're humiliated and crave revenge is that they believe they should be the party of smashmouth politics, and they're embarrassed that they've never been able to send a president or presidential candidate or House speaker to prison, while Trump's antagonists might. I think they believe they have a monopoly on political toughness, and Democrats are wusses (which, let's face it, they are much of the time), so a legal assault on one of their own seems to violate the fundamental laws of the universe. They know Trump is a crook, but they think think he ought to be able to get away with being a crook because he's a Republican. Trump is guilty of many crimes, but I'm sure they think they should be able to "create their own reality," one in which he's a selfless patriot who's under attack despite his obvious innocence. They've certainly created that reality within their own bubble, and it's killing them that the rest of us live in the real world, where he's guilty as hell and nearly everyone knows it.

So they think we stole their smashmouth act, and they think we're doing it better. And they can't stand it.

 

Yep. And if Republican voters actually believed Ron DeSantis would lock up Democrats, he'd be doing a lot better than he is right now in polls. The Republican primary votes are being driven by vengeance, and they will have more than a year to soak in the bloodlust, although I suspect the primary will be over by Super Tuesday on March 5, and definitely be over by March 19 when Florida, Arizona and Ohio vote. None of Trump criminal trials will be over by then.

When November 2024 rolls around however, there's a chance Trump will be serving time. If you though the bloodlust was bad now, well...

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump's lawyers are requesting that, since Special Counsel Jack Smith had 2.5 years to investigate Trump's election interference charges, that Trump should have 2.5 years to prepare his defense and that the trial under US District Judge Tanya Chutkan shouldn't start until April 2026.

 

Citing extraordinary amounts of evidence — including a tranche of 11.5 million pages that prosecutors handed over earlier this month — Trump lawyers John Lauro and Todd Blanche said in court papers filed Thursday that a 2.5-year delay before picking a jury would properly factor in the complexity of the case.

The proposal stands in almost absurd contrast to prosecutors’ call for a trial to begin on Jan. 2, 2024, a highly ambitious timeline. And it sets up a consequential choice for U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has indicated she will set a trial date by Aug. 28.

Trump’s proposal is almost certainly a non-starter. It would result in a trial six years after the events that formed the basis for the charges: Trump’s staggering and multi-faceted effort to subvert his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. But his lawyers framed the decision in stark terms, noting the unprecedented nature of a leading candidate for president being prosecuted by the Justice Department led by his political opponent.

Trump’s lawyers also pointed to typical lags in more routine criminal trials in Washington, D.C.’s federal court.

“In this District, ordinary order when faced with such overwhelming discovery is to set a reasonable trial schedule, commensurate with the size and scope of discovery and complexity of the legal issues,” Lauro and Blanche wrote. “The government rejects this sensible approach. Instead, it seeks a trial calendar more rapid than most no-document misdemeanors, requesting just four months from the beginning of discovery to jury selection.”

The attorneys also noted that the district typically prioritizes trials for defendants who are in pretrial detention, a factor that is not facing Trump.

Unsaid in the brief, however, is another significant calculus. Trump could, conceivably, be back in the White House in January 2025. If that happens and the case is still pending, he could instantly shut it down, either by issuing himself a presidential pardon or by appointing an attorney general who would agree to dismiss the charges.

Special counsel Jack Smith has charged Trump with three conspiracies aimed at derailing the transfer of power to Joe Biden, in part through a campaign of disinformation aimed at disrupting state government and congressional efforts to certify the 2020 election.

In their court filing Thursday, Trump’s team also continued to push the notion that prosecutors have had 2.5 years to investigate the case, while Trump is only just beginning to prepare his defense. An April 2026 trial date would give Trump’s team an equal amount of time to prepare, they said.

But that notion is erroneous, prosecutors said in their own proposed trial schedule brief last week. They noted that Trump is privy to large swaths of evidence arrayed against him as a result of the House Jan. 6 select committee’s hearings and trove of public documents. And he also has access to millions of pages of records that overlap with the materials the government is producing to him — such as documents from his White House, his campaign and his PAC.

Chutkan has given no hints about the timetable she’s considering, but she has warned that she would speed up the timeline if Trump continues to make “inflammatory” remarks about witnesses and parties to the case that could influence the jury pool. She is also unlikely to be swayed by Trump’s claims of political malfeasance by prosecutors: During her first hearing in the case, she repeatedly emphasized that she won’t be factoring in Trump’s political candidacy or the politics of the matter at all in her trial decisions.

 

The legal nonsense is just what it is, nonsense. Trump's lawys know Judge Chutkan won't buy this for a millisecond. The point however is to continue to stoke anger and outrage by Trump's faithful against his "unfair" treatment, and maybe, just maybe, someone rids him of that troublesome Judge Chutkan. Even the very real prospect of such a grim act however is secondary to creating a path for Trump-appointed judges on appeal having a fig leaf to overturn all his convictions, preferably just ahead of the November 2024 elections.

 

In a just world, Trump would have long ago dropped out of the race and would be under house arrest waiting trial quietly. 

 

Sadly, that won't happen.

 

 

The Road To Gilead, Con't

With this week's 5th Circuit ruling against mifepristone providing future SCOTUS shenanigans towards the end of not just legalized abortion but contraception in America, Charlie Pierce shows us the road map to Gilead:

Right into the lap of Justice Sam Alito, who will undoubtedly find some obscure codicil in the Code of Hammurabi to justify upholding the ruling of the 5th Circuit, which is the Uruk-Hai to Alito's Saruman anyway. All the lawyers seeking to ban the drug will need to do is talk very fast and use the word "abortifacient" a lot. And the ducks will all be marching in formation.

The assembly line between the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans and the chambers of the Supreme Court is the best example we have of how completely the conservative takeover of the federal judiciary is. It is the Wal-Mart of conservative judge shopping. The most recent former president* put four judges on that court including James Ho, who is a real prize. From the Texas Tribune: 

The 5th Circuit had upheld an Austin campaign donation limit — a maximum individual contribution of $350 to a city council candidate. His opinion seemed to challenge all restrictions on campaign donations, arguing that “if you don’t like big money in politics, then you should oppose big government in our lives...If there is too much money in politics, it’s because there’s too much government,” Ho wrote. A cash-flooded campaign system, he added, is “the inevitable result of a government that would be unrecognizable to our Founders.”

It was through the Fifth Circuit that the Dobbs case was shuffled from Mississippi upwards to Alito and his invisible chorus of 17th Century witch hunters. And now the circle is nearly complete. Sooner or later, some loaded court will declare all contraceptives to be "abortifacients," and that will be the final end for a protected right of privacy.

That's the big finish here after SCOTUS decides in the next year or two that abortion medications are illegal nationwide. It won't just be mifepristone. It'll be all contraception, including birth control medication, hormone therapy, IUDs, the whole works. That's the next milepost on the road to Gilead, and unless SCOTUS is stopped, it's going to be reality.

Last Call For Fani, Flagged In Georgia, Con't

As I expected and warned about, Georgia GOP lawmakers are now calling for Fulton County DA Fani Willis to be investigated and removed from office for the crime of indicting Trump.

 

Georgia state Republican Sen. Colton Moore is calling for an emergency special session to review the actions of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

"America is under attack. I’m not going to sit back and watch as radical left prosecutors politically TARGET political opponents," Moore wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday.

Moore's special session request is in response to Fani's indictment charging former President Donald with more than a dozen felonies, including racketeering, related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

Moore's call quickly earned the support of fellow Trump supporter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

"Great job Colton!" she wrote when sharing Moore's message calling for a potential impeachment of Willis. "There must be something done to stop Biden’s political henchmen like Fani Willis!!"

A special session would need majority support in the state Senate and House as well as from Gov. Brian Kemp, R, who has been pushing back on Trump's continued claims of election fraud against him within Florida.

 

If what I think will happen does happen, that is Trump and Rep. Greene to run amok on social media with the calls of a special session to remove Willis from office, then Gov. Kemp and the rest of the Georgia GOP will have a difficult time resisting.  Actually impeaching and removing Willis may not be possible, but they sure will try to get rid of her, or maybe in the special session pass a law that makes that far easier.

We'll see how far they go, but Trump's going to make life very uncomfortable for those Republicans who don't play ball.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump's lawyers are in absolute panic mode ahead of Monday's scheduled press conference where Trump says he will present "conclusive" evidence that refutes his RICO charges in Georgia.

Former President Donald Trump's promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County District Attorney's Office is now very much in doubt, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Sources tell ABC News that Trump's legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.

Trump announced the planned press conference with a social media post shortly after he and 18 co-defendants were indicted late Monday in Georgia. He said he would present, "A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia."

Georgia's Republican governor responded to that with his own social media post declaring, "The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward -- under oath -- and prove anything in a court of law.”

Campaigning in Iowa, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he agreed with Kemp. And so did former Vice President Mike Pence, who said on Wednesday, "The Georgia election was not stolen."

Georgia's 2020 presidential election has been thoroughly examined and re-examined. The results were confirmed in three separate counts, include a hand count of the nearly 5 million ballots cast in the state. Under Attorney General Bill Barr, Trump's own Justice Department looked allegations made by Trump. So did the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

To recap, Trump's solution to being charged with a conspiracy to defraud the 2020 presidential election in Georgia  based on fraudulent evidence is to publicly present additional fraudulent evidence in a further attempt at conspiracy to defraud the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. 

No wonder Trump's lawyers are looking for the nets and tranquilizer darts. Even GOP Gov. Brian Kemp is telling Trump to screw off.

Now again if this evidence is actually irrefutable and exculpatory, presenting it publicly would be Trump's duty to America. Since it's in fact flatulent elephant diarrhea that will almost certainly be used against Trump in the trial that Fani Willis wants to start in early March, I can't wait to see it.

By all means, proceed.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

DC Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan is already getting death threats serious enough to prompt an arrest for being the presiding judge over his January 6th trial, months before the proceeding have even started.

A Texas woman was arrested and has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Washington and a member of Congress.

Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington and left the threatening message — using a racist term for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — on Aug. 5, court records show. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.

In the call, Shry told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” the documents said. Prosecutors allege Shry also said, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you,” and she threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat running for mayor of Houston, according to court documents.

A judge earlier this week ordered Shry jailed. Court records show Shry is represented by the Houston public defender’s office, which did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday.

Trump has publicly assailed Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, calling her “highly partisan” and “ VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!” because of her past comments in a separate case overseeing the sentencing of one of the defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Chutkan in a hearing Friday imposed a protective order in the case limiting what evidence handed over by prosecutors the former president and his legal team can publicly disclose. She warned Trump’s lawyers that his defense should be mounted in the courtroom and “not on the internet.”

 

How dare a Black woman preside over a federal criminal case against Donald Trump, right? Of course she's getting death threats, along with repeated Trump target Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, also Black. Hell, Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis has been getting death threats for years now. 

 

What they really hate is Black people - particularly Black women -- daring to have power over America's favorite white supremacist.  Don't think for a second that race isn't playing a heavy part in these threats against the prosecutors and judges involved in Donald Trump's dozens of indictments.

And don't think for a second that Trump will hesitate to turn up the heat until someone is hurt or killed.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

The Fulton County grand jury that indicted Donald Trump have all just become targets for right wing stochastic terrorist violence.

The purported names and addresses of members of the grand jury that indicted Donald Trump and 18 of his co-defendants on state racketeering charges this week have been posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric, NBC News has learned.

NBC News is choosing not to name the website featuring the addresses to avoid further spreading the information.

The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis faced racist threats ahead of the return of the indictment and additional security measures were put in place, with some employees being allowed to work from home.

The grand juror's purported addresses were spotted by Advance Democracy, Inc., a non-partisan research group founded by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI investigator and staffer for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“It’s becoming all too commonplace to see everyday citizens performing necessary functions for our democracy being targeted with violent threats by Trump-supporting extremists," Jones said. "The lack of political leadership on the right to denounce these threats — which serve to inspire real-world political violence— is shameful.”

Advance Democracy also noted that users were posting on other social media sites the names and images of people believed to have been grand jurors. The posts asserted that the jurors had posted on social media in support of Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., former President Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Yesterday — after Trump posted on his social media website that authorities were going "after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!" — Advance Democracy noted that Trump supporters were "using the term ‘rigger’ in lieu of a racial slur" in posts online.

The Fulton County Sheriff's Office, which is handling the surrender of Trump and his co-defendants over the course of the next 10 days, declined to comment.

Three of the grand jurors gave an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday with their names withheld for precisely this reason, and now all of them are in danger. Worse, if this heinous doxxing attempt is identifying the wrong people, then we're looking at putting lives in danger that have nothing to do with the indictment.

I suppose if these assholes do hurt jurors in a blatant effort to force the case to be dismissed, well, tens of millions of Trump voters will cheer that on too.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

As expected, the 5th Circuit has sided with US Judge Andrew Kacsmaryk in banning the abortion drug mifepristone from being prescribed or sent by mail, although the SCOTUS hold on that order remains during the appeals process.

 

Access to the abortion pill mifepristone must be restricted, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday, ordering a ban on telemedicine prescriptions and shipments of the drug by mail, though the order will not immediately take effect.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stopped short of ruling that the drug must be pulled off the market altogether, as a lower court had done.

Mifepristone's availability remains unchanged for now, following an emergency order from the U.S. Supreme Court in April preserving the status quo during the appeal.


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved the pill, and lawyers for the anti-abortion groups challenging the drug's approval did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The three-judge 5th Circuit panel was reviewing an order in April by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas. While it was a preliminary ruling that applied while the case was pending, Kacsmaryk said he was ultimately likely to make it permanent.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by four anti-abortion groups headed by the recently formed Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and four anti-abortion doctors who sued in November.

They contend the FDA used an improper process when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug's safety when used by minors.

All three judges on the panel are staunchly conservative, with a history of opposing abortion rights. One of them, Circuit Judge William Ho, said he would have gone further and pulled mifepristone off the market altogether.

Instead, the majority of the panel rolled back FDA actions that had made the drug easier to access in recent years. Those included allowing distribution by mail, approving its use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven weeks, reducing the dosage and cutting the number of required in-person doctor visits from three to one.

The decision will almost certainly be appealed first to the full 5th Circuit and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last year overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide.

 

We'll see if the appeals make it to SCOTUS in time for June's traditional Removal of the Rights in 2024.

 

And once again, we had one of the three judges on the panel completely agreed with Judge Kacsmaryk that mifeprestone should be removed from the market entirely, which is still lunatic nonsense.

 

I have a notion that SCOTUS doesn't want to deal with this in an election year, ridding the entire country of a safe, effective medical abortion medication for tens of millions of women four months before a presidential election will be catastrophic for the GOP, and everyone knows it.

Cop Out, Or, That's The Sound Of The Police (Leaving)

The small town of Goodhue, Minnesota is cop-free this week as the entire department resigned over pay issues.

 

A small city in southeast Minnesota is without a police force after its chief and officers resigned over low pay.

Goodhue — population 1,250, according to the 2020 census — accepted the resignation of its police chief, only full-time officer, and five part-time officers at a Monday city council meeting that was originally intended to discuss pay raises.

Mayor Ellen Anderson Buck said the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Office will patrol the city when the officers’ contracts expire later this month.

“We need to pursue other options. So at this point, there is no reason to really talk about pay increases since we no longer have a police force,” she said at the meeting Monday evening. “We will have police coverage in the City of Goodhue. That is not an issue.”

The county sheriff will also take over active criminal cases, she said.

The council was adamant on its intent to eventually re-form the department, which Anderson Buck called the “ultimate goal,” though she acknowledged the difficulty of hiring new officers. There are about 200 open police jobs in Minnesota, she said.

“We’re not the first, and we won’t be the last,” she said. “This is not unusual, it does happen.”

 

Cop-free, yes. County Mountie-free, no.  Still, if the county can handle it, why not use the money for the now defunct town PD for, say, a real service to the people of Goodhue like library books, school renovation,  or, you know, anything not police-related.

Just an idea.

 

Last Call For The Unindicted Co-Conspirators

To complete our post trifecta here on Indictment Day,we take a look at one of the unindicted co-conspirators in Fani Willis's case against Trump: current Georgia GOP Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is now facing a special prosecutor to determine if he should be among the charged.

 

A state agency is moving ahead with plans that will determine whether Lt. Gov. Burt Jones faces criminal charges as part of a scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Jones is one of 30 people who prosecutors said participated in a conspiracy to overturn the election but were not charged in a Fulton County indictment released late Monday. But Jones may yet face charges, and his fate will rest with a special prosecutor who will determine whether further investigation is needed.

Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, said he has reviewed the Fulton County indictment and hopes to appoint a special prosecutor to consider Jones’ actions soon.

In a social media post Tuesday afternoon, Jones did not directly address a possible investigation of his actions. He said Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had spent millions of taxpayer dollars and 2 1/2 years “orchestrating a constant media and PR campaign for the sole purpose of furthering her own political career.”

“While the Fulton County district attorney continues to pursue the political vendettas of the past — I have and will continue to look forward, solving the most pressing issues facing our city and our state,” Jones added.

The steps toward a possible investigation of Jones follow Monday’s indictment of 19 people — including former President Donald Trump — on allegations that they conspired to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia in 2020.

Jones, a state senator at the time, played a prominent role as Republicans in the General Assembly considered rejecting Georgia’s official presidential electors and appointing a slate of Trump electors instead.

Jones and a handful of other senators pressed for a special legislative session to consider appointing the Trump electors, supported lawsuits that sought to void the results and pressed Vice President Mike Pence to reject the official results when Congress met to certify Biden’s victory.

Monday’s Fulton County indictment did not name Jones, but it referenced his efforts to rally support for overturning Biden’s victory. It noted that on Dec. 7, 2020, a tweet by “unindicted co-conspirator Individual 8″ urged Georgians to “call your state Senate & House Reps & ask them to sign the petition for a special session. We must have free & fair elections in GA & this is our only path to ensuring every legal vote is counted.”

The tweet matches one that Jones shared on the same date.

The indictment mostly notes Jones’ role as one of the fake Republican electors. In that capacity, the indictment says Individual 8 participated in a conspiracy that involved impersonating a public officer by falsely saying they were the state’s duly elected presidential electors, forging fake Electoral College paperwork, making false statements and writings, and filing false documents.

The indictment includes charges against some Republican electors — such as state Sen. Shawn Still — but not others. It’s unclear whether Willis intended to charge Jones, but she never got the chance.

Last year, Jones objected to being investigated by Willis after she hosted a fundraiser for the eventual Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, Charlie Bailey. Jones argued Willis’ political support for his opponent constituted a conflict of interest.

Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney disqualified Willis and her office from questioning Jones as part of their investigation. The judge asked the prosecuting attorneys council — a state agency that assists district attorneys — to appoint an outside prosecutor to investigate Jones.

Skandalakis was waiting for Willis to complete her investigation. Now that the grand jury has acted, he said he has reached out to Willis to obtain a copy of a special grand jury report on her investigation and to get a briefing on the investigation to date.

With that information in hand, Skandalakis said he will find a special prosecutor to make the final decision on whether more investigation or criminal charges against Jones are warranted.

 

We'll see where this all goes, but expect more of the fake electors to be charged in an effort to defraud the state of Georgia.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The right-wing noise machine is blasting bullshit at full volume over Trump's fourth set of indictments.

“Stalin would be proud” of the Fulton County indictment, claimed right-wing radio host Mark Levine during a Monday night appearance on Fox News. (Not mentioned during the broadcast: emails from the January 6 committee show Levin chatting with John Eastman, a Trump attorney who was also charged in the Georgia racketeering case.)

Other commentators suggested that prosecutors were setting off a potentially catastrophic backlash against the left.

“Civil war,” tweeted media personality Tim Pool (who, in fairness, has authored similar posts for years).

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also took to Fox News to warn that “we are drifting towards the greatest constitutional crisis since the 1850s,” Media Matters reported. Gingrich also opined that the latest criminal charges against Trump represent “a desperate last ditch effort by a corrupt machine to destroy their most dangerous opponent.”

Some conservative voices claimed the indictment of some of Trump’s attorneys on election interference crimes foretold a crackdown on lawyers writ large.

“How are all the lawyers in America feeling today?” tweeted Dilbert creator-turned-wingnut Scott Adams. “Safe?”

Jenna Ellis, a Trump lawyer indicted in Fulton County for alleged racketeering offenses, tweeted that “the Democrats and the Fulton County DA are criminalizing the practice of law. I am resolved to trust the Lord and I will simply continue to honor, praise, and serve Him.”

Other Trump fans claim the indictment imperils even more Americans for innocuous activities.

“Apparently illegal in America now,” tweeted former One America News Network personality Liz Wheeler, listing out activities mentioned in the indictment like “Telling people to watch TV,” “Asking for phone numbers,” “Renting rooms at the Capitol,” “Advocating for signature verification,” and “Tweets.”

“It’s not just Trump they’re coming after,” Wheeler wrote. “They’re coming next for our free speech if we dare dissent.”

The indictment does not claim that tweeting is illegal. It claims that Trump and allies used Twitter during an extensive effort to overturn a presidential election. Nevertheless, Wheeler and other figures on the right have repeated the refrain that the indictment might criminalize watching television.

“Everyone should read the Georgia indictment to discover how nonsensical it is,” tweeted conservative columnist Gary Abernathy. “This is actually one of the counts—apparently, sending a tweet encouraging people to watch TV is a crime.”

That is not true, as the indictment (or even the screenshot Abernathy posted) reveals. The indictment describes Trump’s promotion of an election-denying OANN segment. Trump’s hyping of the segment is not described as a crime, but as an overt act in furtherance of a conspiracy, much as renting a car is not illegal, but might be relevant to a criminal case if the rental car is used in a series of bank robberies.

Some talking heads suggested radical action to block a Trump conviction. “I think this is so dangerous to the very survival of the republic that it has to be stopped,” Gingrich said on Fox.

Another Monday night Fox guest, Mike Davis, pointed to the difficulty of securing a pardon in Georgia. If convicted on the state’s RICO statute, Trump could neither be pardoned by a president nor Georgia's governor.

“Under the Georgia law, there is a statute that limits the Republican governor’s ability to pardon, and I think that the legislature in Georgia needs to amend that statute and give Governor Kemp the ability to pardon in this situation because this is clear election interference,” Davis said.

“It is clear Democrat lawfareby Democrat prosecutors where they are trying to have Democrat prosecutors, Democrat judges and Democrat juries and Democrat hellholes decide the next presidential election instead of the American people.”

 

I'd say as a layman that the RICO laws make it pretty clear that doing things like "tweeting to watch TV is a crime" when it's used to further a criminal conspiracy like when "criminalizing sending mail" is illegal when it's mail fraud but these are, ostensibly, actual lawyers making these idiotic comparisons. 

You know who should be well-versed in RICO law? Former US Attorney for Manhattan, Rudolph Giuliani, who is now facing...RICO charges.

Mr. RICO just got RICO-ed.

In the 1980s Rudy Giuliani all but reinvented an underused 1970 law against racketeering. He made it his mission in a two-year stint as the No. 3 official at the Justice Department to hire prosecutors across the country who would ferret out and prosecute criminal enterprises of all shapes and sizes. Then, as Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, he wielded the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act with huge success against Mafia dons, corrupt politicians and 1980s Masters-of-the-Universe financiers like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken.

Now Giuliani, 79, is on the other side of the law that was the essential scaffolding of his own career. He was accused alongside former President Donald Trump and 17 others in an indictment late Monday of operating a criminal enterprise that sought to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory in Georgia, in violation of Georgia’s RICO Act, which is modeled on the federal law he once championed. He was also charged with other counts, including soliciting public officials to violate their oaths, making false statements and conspiracy.

“I’m the same Rudy Giuliani that went after the Mafia,” Giuliani said Tuesday afternoon on the Greg Kelly Show on WABC radio. “The same quest for justice. Gosh almighty, if Donald Trump committed a crime, love him though I do, I’d put him in jail.”

The indictment punctuates a remarkable fall from grace for Giuliani, who parlayed his success taking on the mob and Wall Street miscreants into two high-profile terms as New York City’s first Republican mayor in decades. His dramatic efforts in reducing crime were widely copied elsewhere, and his resolute response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks earned him the nickname “America’s mayor.”

 

How far these clowns have fallen, indeed.