Sore Losers, Inc. Con't

Democrats won big victories in Wisconsin and Michigan, ousting two of the worst GOP governors in the nation with Scott Walker and Rick Snyder, men who have caused countless damage to millions of working-class folk and done everything they could to hurt people of color in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, Flint and Madison.  Voters in November also approved a number of measures to help the state's most vulnerable.

Now Republicans, in unprecedented and awful lame duck midnight sessions, have passed bills that would scrap all that and as with North Carolina in 2016, strip much of the power over elections, legal challenges, and regulations from the governors and attorneys general in both states by giving the massively gerrymandered Republican state legislatures a final veto over day-to-day operations of the states' executive branches.

The Republican-led Michigan Legislature on Tuesday passed bills that would delay a minimum wage hike and scale back paid sick leave requirements, an unprecedented lame-duck strategy that was endorsed legally by the state’s conservative attorney general despite criticism that it is unconstitutional.

The fast-tracked legislation, which drew protesters to the Capitol, was pushed through on largely 60-48 and 26-12 party-line votes. Changes were made at the request of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who stayed mum on whether he will sign the measures despite Senate leaders saying they expect him to do so.

To prevent minimum wage and paid sick time ballot initiatives from going to the electorate last month, after which they would have been much harder to change if voters had passed them, GOP legislators — at the behest of business groups — preemptively approved them in September so that they could alter them after the election with simple majority votes in each chamber.

One bill would gradually increase the state’s $9.25 minimum wage to $12.05 an hour by 2030 — maybe later in the case of a recession — instead of $12 by 2022. It would also repeal provisions to tie future increases to inflation and bring a lower wage for tipped employees in line with the wage for other workers.

Another bill would exempt employers with fewer than 50 employees from having to provide paid sick time as required under the existing law that is scheduled to take effect in March. It also would limit the amount of annual mandatory leave at larger businesses to 40 hours, instead of 72 hours, and make other changes. About 162,000 small businesses that collectively employ 1 million workers would be exempt from awarding paid sick leave under the legislation, according to the Michigan League for Public Policy.

Democratic Rep. Darrin Camilleri of Wayne County’s Brownstown Township, who voted against the measures, said gutting the minimum wage hike “would not only hurt thousands of workers in Michigan but would also betray the trust of millions more by ignoring the will of the people.”

Wisconsin too saw a midnight session last night stripping power from incoming Gov. Tony Evers.

The Wisconsin Senate voted just before sunrise Wednesday following an all-night session to pass a sweeping bill in a lame-duck session designed to empower the GOP-controlled Legislature and weaken the Democrat replacing Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Republicans pushed on through protests, internal disagreement and Democratic opposition to the measures designed to reduce the powers of incoming Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers and Democratic Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul. Both Evers and Kaul urged Republicans not to do it, warning that lawsuits would bring more gridlock to Wisconsin when the new administration, and the first divided government in 10 years, takes over.

But Republicans forged ahead regardless, passing it 17-16 with all Republicans except one in support. All Democrats voted against it. The Assembly was expected to pass the bill later Wednesday, sending it on to Walker for his consideration. Walker has signaled support.

"This is a heck of a way to run a railroad," Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling said as debate resumed at 5 a.m. "This is embarrassing we're even here." 

In one concession, Republicans backed away from giving the Legislature the power to sidestep the attorney general and appoint their own attorney when state laws are challenged in court. An amendment to do away with that provision was part of a Republican rewrite of the bill, made public around 4:30 a.m. after all-night negotiations.

Walker, who was booed and heckled during an afternoon Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the Capitol rotunda, has signaled support for the measures that he would have to sign before they take effect. He's in his final five weeks as governor after losing a bid for a third term to Evers, the state schools superintendent.

Despite the victories by Evers, Kaul and every other Democrat running for statewide office, Republicans maintained majority control in the Legislature for the next two years. Democrats blamed partisan gerrymandering by Republicans for stacking the electoral map against them.

But faced with a Democratic governor for the first time in eight years, legislative Republicans came up with a package of lame-duck bills to protect their priorities and make it harder for Evers to enact his.

"Why are we here today?" Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz said as the debate of more than nine hours began late Tuesday night. "What are we doing? Nothing we're doing here is about helping the people of Wisconsin. It's about helping politicians. It's about power and self-interest."

You have to admit, pushing back a minimum wage hike 12 years is pretty hideous, even for Republicans.  But that's exactly what's ahead for Michigan, and Wisconsin is going to face years of lawsuits, where North Carolina is now.

This is what happens when Republicans come to power.  When you evict them, they still cheat.

It's Mueller Time, Mike Flynn Edition

Last night's Mueller team court sentencing filing on Michael Flynn did not disappoint, as it turns out that the good General has been cooperating with the FBI since before the Mueller probe was even authorized.

Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, helped substantially with the special counsel’s investigation and should receive little to no prison time for lying to federal investigators, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Mr. Flynn was a key cooperator who helped the Justice Department with several investigations, prosecutors for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said. He sat for 19 interviews with Mr. Mueller’s office and other prosecutors and handed over documents and communications, they said.

“His early cooperation was particularly valuable because he was one of the few people with long-term and firsthand insight” into the subject of Mr. Mueller’s investigation — Russia’s election interference and whether any Trump associates conspired, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing recommendation memorandum and an addendum that was heavily blacked out.

In particular, they wrote, he might have prompted others to cooperate with the inquiry. “The defendant’s decision to plead guilty and cooperate likely affected the decisions of related firsthand witnesses to be forthcoming,” prosecutors said.

They also indicated that Mr. Flynn helped with other investigations without revealing details about them.

Mr. Flynn, who served briefly as the president’s national security adviser, is the only White House aide and the first person from the president’s inner circle to strike a cooperation deal with the special counsel’s office in exchange for a more lenient penalty. He pleaded guilty a year ago to lying to the F.B.I. about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time, Sergey I. Kislyak.

“The defendant deserves credit for accepting responsibility in a timely fashion and substantially assisting the government,” prosecutors wrote.

The cases of some other former Trump aides caught up in the special counsel investigation are also nearing resolution, marking an active week for Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. By Friday, Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors are due to enumerate how they believe Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, violated a plea agreement and separately to outline the extent of cooperation by Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer.

Another longtime Trump associate whom Mr. Mueller is scrutinizing, Roger J. Stone Jr., said on Tuesday that he had invoked his the Fifth Amendment rights in response to a request from Democratic investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hand over documents and testimony relevant to their own Russia inquiry. Mr. Stone’s lawyer, Grant J. Smith, said the committee’s request was “overbroad” and stressed that Mr. Stone was “an innocent citizen who denounces secrecy.”

Basically everything we've suspected about Mike Flynn is true.  All the stuff about him getting rounded up by the FBI nearly immediately after Trump took office, getting caught lying red-handed, and then turning states' evidence, is 100% accurate.

And Flynn's plea deal made it clear to everyone else that Mueller's investigation was for real, and that people should start cutting deals ASAP.  There are only two people that Flynn, Manafort, and Cohen could give up more important than themselves, and that's Mike Pence and Donald Trump.

The two of them should be crapping cinder blocks right now.  We know what role Flynn played, according to the sentencing filing, there are at least three investigations, one involving Flynn's lies, one involving the Trump campaign's relationship with Russia, and a third, completely redacted investigation.  It's that last one that should have Trump and Pence paralyzed with fear.

We'll know what roles Manafort and Cohen played before the end of the week, too.  More is coming, folks.  A lot more.

And then the indictments will come like the cleansing rain of justice.

StupidiNews!

• After a classified briefing from intelligence officials, GOP Sen. Bob Corker says there's "zero question" that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
• Disgraced former CBS network chairman Leslie Moonves allegedly destroyed evidence and misled an internal CBS investigation of sexual misconduct claims.
• US prosecutors have announced indictments against four individuals in connection with the massive "Panama Papers" leak of offshore tax evasion schemes by corporations over decades.
• The Dow Jones took an 800-point tumble Tuesday as investors remain skittish over Chinese trade war concerns and growing issues in the UK and France.
• The loss by Texas GOP Rep. John Culberson in last month's midterm elections could spell the end of NASA's plans to send a probe to Jupiter's moon of Europa.

Last Call For Hacking Off The GOP

Politico today reported a major e-mail hacking story involving the House GOP 2018 campaign arm, the National Republican Campaign Committee, when of course the Trump regime did everything it could to weaken data security before the midterm elections.

The House GOP campaign arm suffered a major hack during the 2018 election, exposing thousands of sensitive emails to an outside intruder, according to three senior party officials.

The email accounts of four senior aides at the National Republican Congressional Committee were surveilled for several months, the party officials said. The intrusion was detected in April by an NRCC vendor, who alerted the committee and its cybersecurity contractor. An internal investigation was initiated and the FBI was alerted to the attack, said the officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the incident.

However, senior House Republicans — including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) — were not informed of the hack until POLITICO contacted the NRCC on Monday with questions about the episode. Rank-and-file House Republicans were not told, either.

Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), who served as NRCC chairman this past election cycle, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Committee officials said they decided to withhold the information because they were intent on conducting their own investigation, and feared that revealing the hack would compromise efforts to find the culprit.

"We don't want to get into details about what was taken because it's an ongoing investigation," said a senior party official. "Let's say they had access to four active accounts. I think you can draw from that."

The hack became a major source of consternation within the committee as the midterm election unfolded. The NRCC brought on the prominent Washington law firm Covington and Burling as well as Mercury Public Affairs to oversee the response to the hack. The NRCC paid the two firms hundreds of thousands of dollars to help respond to the intrusion. The committee’s chief legal counsel, Chris Winkelman, devoted hours of his time to dealing with matter.

Party officials would not say when the hack began or who was behind it, although they privately believe it was a foreign agent due to the nature of the attack.

Three observations:

One, it was Russia, you knobs, and everyone knows it.  Let's put aside all the "but we don't have proof" and "ongoing investigation" crap, it's Putin.

Two, the timing on this reveal right now seems weird but probably related to observation one.

Three, nobody told House Republicans, including their own leadership, because of possibly compromising the investigation and that's related to observation number two and definitely to observation number one.  Steve Stivers knew as the head of the NRCC, but who else knew, and how did they keep a lid on it?

We'll find out more as this goes along, I would imagine.

It's About Suppression, Con't

The GOP scheme to allegedly steal the US House election in NC's ninth congressional district is coming to light, and it looks like GOP Rep. Mark Harris hired a convicted fraudster named McCrae Dowless to run his illegal absentee ballot farming operation, according to Charlotte ABC affiliate WSOC-TV.

What Channel 9 found appears to be a targeted effort to illegally pick up ballots, in which even the person picking them up had no idea whether those ballots were even delivered to the elections board.

Consistently, Channel 9 found the same people signing as witnesses for the people voting, which is very rare.

Of the 159 submitted and accepted absentee ballot envelopes, below is the breakdown of those who signed as witnesses:

• Woody Hester witnessed 44
• James Singletary witnessed 42
• Lisa Britt witnessed 42
• Ginger Eason witnessed 28
• Jessica Dowless witnessed 15
• Cheryl Kinlaw witnessed 13
• Deborah Edwards witnessed 11
• Sandra Dowless witnessed 10

Many times, people on that list witnessed ballots together.

Channel 9’s political reporter Joe Bruno went door-to-door in Bladen County trying to find out who these people are.

No one answered at Woody Hester’s home. James Singletary wasn’t home either and Lisa Britt doesn’t live at the address she said she did on the ballots.

Bruno then visited Ginger Eason. She told him why her name appeared so many times as a witness.

“I was helping McCrae pick up ballots,” Eason said.

Eason said Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr. paid her $75 to $100 a week to go around and pick up finished absentee ballots.

Once again, Dowless is a convicted felon who has served time for both fraud and perjury and it looks like he may have been running similar scams for multiple candidates over the years in NC.

Dowless’ past work includes huge differences between his candidate’s absentee by mail total and opponents.

Dowless wasn’t always connected to the Harris campaign.

In the 2016 primary, records show Dowless worked for Todd Johnson, who ran against Harris and Robert Pittenger.

Campaign finance reports show Dowless was paid $6,456 by Johnson’s campaign.

The disbursement description was for “get out the vote.”

In the June 2016 primary, Johnson finished last in the race, trailing the top vote-getter Pittenger by a little more than 1,100 votes. Despite the loss, Johnson dominated in Bladen County, carrying 68 percent of the vote.

A deeper look at the votes reveals Johnson received 98 percent of absentee by mail votes.

Johnson received 221 absentee-by-mail votes.

Pittenger and Harris combined for five.

The 221 absentee-by-mail votes amounted to 51 percent of his total votes received by that method and 21 percent of the total amount of absentee-by-mail votes when each candidate’s totals are added together.

As Channel 9 reported last week, Dowless was referenced in two affidavits that are now included in NCSBE’s investigation.

In one affidavit, a witness claims he overheard a person saying Dowless would be paid $40,000 for a Mark Harris victory.

Another man claims in an affidavit that Dowless told him he was doing “absentees” for the Mark Harris campaign and James McVicker’s campaign for Bladen County sheriff.

I would have to at this point assume a new election will be held, and I wouldn't want to be in Mark Harris's shoes when all this mess comes out to voters.

The only real election fraud in 2018 was perpetrated by Republicans against elderly voters, mostly poor black ones.  Let's keep this in mind.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

As I said last week, the Manafort court filing last Friday by Robert Mueller is the beginning of the endgame.  

So bottom line, Mueller knew all along that Manafort was going to renege on his plea deal.  He had every suspicion that Manafort was going to relay any information right back to Trump, and then after Trump used that information to answer his questions to submit to Mueller, Manafort was going to drop the deal and Trump was going to pardon him.

Only Mueller knew this the entire time, deliberately fed Manafort misinformation which went right back to Trump, and then beat Trump and Manafort to the punch and filed today that Manafort was lying.

It also means Mueller can, in a future open court filing, lay out exactly what Manafort was lying about, which will basically consist of a copy and paste text of Mueller's final report.

There's nothing Acting AG Matt Whitaker can do about it, either.  By lying, Manafort assured that the report can't be buried, because Trump and Manafort really are this stupid.

 

It's that third paragraph that's the key.  We now know that "future open court filing" date for Flynn is today, and for Cohen and Manafort on Friday.  Grab your popcorn, the last month of 2018 is going to be a doozy.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors have told defense lawyers in recent weeks that they are “tying up loose ends” in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks, according to multiple sources close to the matter.

The new information about the state of Mueller’s investigation comes during a pivotal week when the special counsel’s prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high profile defendants — former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

A Flynn sentencing memo is due Tuesday, and memos about Manafort and Cohen are slated for Friday. All three documents are expected to yield significant new details on what cooperation the three of them provided to the Russia investigation.

There has been much speculation that Mueller might file his memo in Manafort’s case under seal in order to prevent public disclosure of the additional crimes his office believes Manafort committed when he allegedly lied to prosecutors and broke a plea deal after agreeing to cooperate.

But Peter Carr, spokesman for the special counsel, confirmed to Yahoo News on Monday that the Manafort memo “will be public,” although he added there could be some portions that are redacted or filed as a sealed addendum. The Manafort memo has been requested by the federal judge in his case so that prosecutors could, for the first time, spell out what matters they believe Manafort has lied to them about.

The fact that Mueller is planning a public filing about Manafort suggests he may no longer feel the need to withhold information about his case in order to bring additional indictments against others. That would be consistent with messages his prosecutors have given defense lawyers in recent weeks indicating that they are in the endgame of their investigation.

Again, by making these court filings public, Mueller is almost assuredly and publicly laying out his report against the Trump campaign in a way where Acting AG Matt Whitaker or Republicans in Congress can't bury it.

It doesn't mean that the prospect of more indictments are over, though.  It means that Mueller may serve them all at once and it may mean that Mueller safely has all the information he needs to unseal those indictments and start rounding up people.

Plus, the Trump Organization case in New York state continues regardless.

Stay tuned.  It's going to be a bumpy week.

StupidiNews!

• The US Postal Service will suspend most mail deliveries on Wednesday in honor of a national day of mourning for former President George H.W. Bush.
• Trump regime economic adviser Larry Kudlow says the White House will end federal subsidies for electric cars and renewable energy sources within the next three years.
• A new study finds corporate tax giveaways cost schools $1.8 billion in 28 states in fiscal year 2017, enough to hire 28,000 teachers.
• Opposition lawmakers in the UK have blocked debate on Brexit legislation pending an emergency contempt motion for not releasing the May government's legal advice on leaving the EU.
• Verizon says online blogging site Tumblr, owned by Verizon subsidiary Oath, will block all adult content starting December 17th, something that could end 20% of the site's traffic.

Last Call For Sore Losers, Inc.

Just like North Carolina Republicans and Pat McCrory did in the December 2016 lame duck session after Democrat Roy Cooper was elected, Wisconsin Republicans and Scott Walker are stripping power from incoming Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and giving it to the GOP legislature, and they're doing right now in Madison.

Wisconsin Republicans moved quickly Monday with a rare lame-duck session that would change the 2020 presidential primary date to benefit a conservative Supreme Court justice and weaken the newly elected Democratic governor and attorney general.

The changes being sought would shift power to the GOP-controlled Legislature and allow outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker to make one last major mark on the state’s political landscape after he lost re-election in November.

Republicans forged ahead despite threats of lawsuits, claims by Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers and others that they were trying to invalidate results of the November election and howls of protest from hundreds of people who showed up for a public hearing.

The lame-duck maneuvering in Wisconsin is similar to what Republicans did in North Carolina two years ago and is being discussed in Michigan before a Democratic governor takes over there.

Angry opponents filled the hallways of the Wisconsin Capitol, and the hearing room, banging on the doors and chanting “Respect our votes!” and “Shame!”

The protests, coming at the end of Walker’s eight years in office, were reminiscent of tumult that came shortly after he took office in 2011 and moved to end collective bargaining powers for public sector unions.

In addition to moving the primary date, the proposals would weaken the governor’s ability to put in place rules that enact state laws and shield the state jobs agency from his control.

Other measures would weaken the attorney general’s office by allowing Republican legislative leaders to intervene in cases and hire their own attorneys. A legislative committee, rather than the attorney general, would have to sign off on withdrawing from federal lawsuits. That would stop Evers and incoming Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul from fulfilling their campaign promises to withdraw Wisconsin from a multi-state lawsuit seeking repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald downplayed concerns about what was being considered in the lame-duck session, saying “I don’t think it’s outrageous at all.”

“But listen, I’m concerned,” he said. “I think that governor-elect Evers is going to bring a liberal agenda to Wisconsin.”

Walker has been largely silent on what is being considered, voicing general support last month for moving the primary date. But Fitzgerald said Walker and his chief of staff had been deeply involved in crafting the measures.

Giving this state legislature, the most gerrymandered state legislature in America, in a state where Democrats won the majority of state assembly votes but Republicans control it 63-36, even more power is insanity bordering on an immoral destruction of representative democracy.

This is how Scott Walker chooses to go out.  Only power matters to Republicans, and they will use it against the people until the people remove them.  And please note, the Supreme Court passed on hearing the lawsuits against this gerrymandering, in what will probably be a permanent Republican control of the state's lawmakers.

It should be criminal, but in the era of Trump, this is who the GOP is.

Meat The Press, Con't

Over the weekend, Trump regime Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once again picked a fight with the CIA, declaring that there was "no direct evidence" of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's involvement in the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo doubled down Saturday on the United States' support for Saudi Arabia and declined to comment on a CIA assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman was involved in journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder. 

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Pompeo again noted a lack of direct evidence linking bin Salman to Khashoggi's murder. 

"I have read every piece of intelligence that's in the possession of the United States government," Pompeo said. "And when it is done, when you complete that analysis, there's no direct evidence linking him to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. That is a accurate statement, it is an important statement, and it is a statement that we are making publicly today." 

When asked if the CIA has a high confidence of the de facto Saudi leader's involvement, Pompeo told CNN, "I can't comment on intelligence matters."

Today the CIA decided to make Pompeo look like the fool he is.

The C.I.A. has evidence that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, communicated repeatedly with a key aide around the time that a team believed to have been under the aide’s command assassinated Jamal Khashoggi, according to former officials familiar with the intelligence.

The adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, topped the list of Saudis who were targeted by American sanctions last month over their suspected involvement in the killing of Mr. Khashoggi. American intelligence agencies have evidence that Prince Salman and Mr. Qahtani had 11 exchanges that roughly coincided with the hit team’s advance into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where Mr. Khashoggi was murdered.

The exchanges are a key piece of information that helped solidify the C.I.A.’s assessment that the crown prince ordered the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Virginia resident who had been critical of the Saudi government.

“This is the smoking gun, or at least the smoking phone call,” said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. official now at the Brookings Institution. “There is only one thing they could possibly be talking about. This shows that the crown prince was witting of premeditated murder.”

Honestly, Pompeo should have known better.  The man was Trump's CIA Director in 2017 before taking over State for the departed and unmissed Rex Tillerson in April 2018.  If anyone in the Trump regime (besides current CIA head Gina "I love torture" Haspel) should be aware of what the CIA is capable of doing when it comes to backing up public analysis that something happened abroad, it's Pompeo, and he jumped directly on this land mine anyway.

I guess the guy's not that bright, because at this point pretty much every other foreign intelligence agency is 100% convinced that the Crown Prince ordered Khashoggi's murder too.  Pompeo must have known that the CIA would have leaked existence of a smoking gun to the press within a day or two, and that's exactly what happened.

This will not end well for the Saudis, or for Pompeo, frankly.

Meet The New GOP, Same As The Old GOP

Incoming House freshman Republican Ross Spano of Florida is already facing campaign finance violations before even taking office, because apparently Republicans are so utterly corrupt that they hit the ground running already lawyered up for federal investigations.

Newly elected congressman Ross Spano has acknowledged that his campaign financing "may have been in violation" of federal law.

In a filing with the Federal Elections Commission which Spano released publicly Saturday afternoon, he acknowledged borrowing $180,000 from two people he has described as personal friends from June through October this year, and then lending his campaign $167,000 in roughly the same time period.

When he made the loans to his campaign, Spano said on campaign finance reports that the money came from his "personal funds."

But under federal campaign finance law, a loan made to a candidate with the intent of providing money for a campaign must be considered a campaign contribution, not the candidate's personal funds.

Any such loan must adhere to campaign contribution limits — $2,700 each for the primary and general elections, far less than the loans Spano acknowledges having received.

Several election law experts have said that if Spano's loans to his campaign came from money from money borrowed from friends, it appears to violate campaign finance law.

The purpose of the law, those experts said, is to prevent one or more wealthy individuals from single-handedly financing a candidate for office.

At the time of the loans, Spano "believed he was acting in full compliance with the law" as did the two lenders, "based on the consultations they had at the time," stated a letter to the Commission that was released Saturday afternoon.

But the letter, written by attorney Elliott Berke of Washington, said Spano and the lenders "now recognize that some of the proceeds from the personal loans … may have been in violation of the Federal Campaign Finance Act."

Berke said in the letter that he was submitting it on behalf of Spano and the two people who gave Spano the loans, retiree Karen Hunt of Plant City and businessman Cary Carreno of Valrico.

Spano, currently a state House member from Dover, is himself a lawyer who specializes in wills and probate law.

Spano's Democratic opponent in the congressional District 15 election, Kristen Carlson, has asked for a federal investigation of whether Spano illegally funded his campaign.

So Spano took tens of thousands of dollars illegally, because I guess he's just bad at not getting caught.  A real Republican House veteran would have laundered that money through a political action committee or two, and then pulled a Duncan Hunter and would have gotten elected anyway.

Not even competent crooks, these Trump-era newbies.

StupidiNews!

• Former President George H.W. Bush will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda Monday through Wednesday, where his funeral will be held Wednesday at the National Cathedral.
• Hundreds were arrested Sunday in Paris as the worst riots in 50 years rocked the French capital, transport drivers are rallying against higher diesel fuel prices and the Macron government.
• Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have reached a tentative trade war ceasefire as negotiations at the G20 Summit in Argentina produced a pause in new punitive trade actions.
• The UK Labour Party is threatening a no-confidence vote in PM Theresa May's government if lawmakers reject her Brexit deal as widely expected next week.
• The Trump regime is moving ahead with seismic testing ahead of new offshore drilling off the Atlantic coast, states are warning of major damage to ocean life, fishing, and the environment.

Last Call For Heading Towards The Cliff

Republicans have now lost 40 House seats, and were destroyed in suburban districts across the country, but they have no plans to change a thing.  It's not like they can however, as they're all aboard the Trump train, heading for a cliff, and there's nothing they could do to stop it.

With a brutal finality, the extent of the Republicans’ collapse in the House came into focus last week as more races slipped away from them and their losses neared 40 seats.

Yet nearly a month after the election, there has been little self-examination among Republicans about why a midterm that had seemed at least competitive became a rout.

President Trump has brushed aside questions about the loss of the chamber entirely, ridiculing losing incumbents by name, while continuing to demand Congress fund a border wall despite his party losing many of their most diverse districts. Unlike their Democratic counterparts, Republicans swiftly elevated their existing slate of leaders with little debate, signaling a continuation of their existing political strategy.

And neither Speaker Paul D. Ryan nor Representative Kevin McCarthy, the incoming minority leader, have stepped forward to confront why the party’s once-loyal base of suburban supporters abandoned it — and what can be done to win them back.

The quandary, some Republicans acknowledge, is that the party’s leaders are constrained from fully grappling with the damage Mr. Trump inflicted with those voters, because he remains popular with the party’s core supporters and with the conservatives who will dominate the caucus even more in the next Congress.

But now a cadre of G.O.P. lawmakers are speaking out and urging party officials to come to terms with why their 23-seat majority unraveled so spectacularly and Democrats gained the most seats they had since 1974.

“There has been close to no introspection in the G.O.P. conference and really no coming to grips with the shifting demographics that get to why we lost those seats,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, an upstate New York Republican who is planning to repurpose her political action committee to help Republican women win primaries in 2020. “I’m very frustrated and I know other members are frustrated.”

Ms. Stefanik said there had been “robust private conversations” but she urged Republicans to conduct a formal assessment of their midterm effort.

The G.O.P. response, or lack thereof, to the midterm backlash stands in stark contrast to the shake-ups and soul-searching that followed its loss of Congress in 2006 and consecutive presidential defeats in 2012.

House officials indicate that they will pursue an after-action report, but it is unclear how far it will go in diagnosing why they lost the popular vote by more raw votes than any time in history.

Many of the lawmakers who lost their races or did not run again say the party has a profound structural challenge that incumbents are unwilling to fully face: Mr. Trump’s deep toxicity among moderate voters, especially women.

With most of the Republicans who lost hailing from suburban seats, those who remaining represent red-hued districts where the president is still well-liked.

“Now the party is Trump,” said Representative Tom Rooney of Florida, who at 48 decided to retire, “so we follow his lead.”

Right off the cliff, into oblivion.  The next two years will decide the fate of America, whether we finally decide to purge the country of Trumpism and the GOP, or head off the cliff with them.

Time to pick a side, folks.

Bibi Busted Bigly

After more than eight months of investigation and three separate bribery probes and previous recommendations of corruption charges on two of them, Israeli police are finally to the point of recommending bribery charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara in the third and biggest case, a bribery scandal involving Israel's biggest telecom firm in exchange for press coverage over 15 years.

Israeli police on Sunday recommended indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on bribery charges related to a corruption case involving Israel’s telecom giant, prompting immediate calls for his resignation.

Police say their investigation has established an evidentiary foundation to charge Netanyahu and his wife Sara with accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust. The case revolves around suspicions that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulations worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bezeq telecom company in exchange for positive coverage of the prime minister on Bezeq’s subsidiary news website, Walla.

Police have already recommended indicting Netanyahu on corruption charges in two other cases. One involves accepting gifts from billionaire friends, and the second revolves around alleged offers of advantageous legislation for a newspaper in return for positive coverage.

The prime minister has denied any wrongdoing, dismissing the accusations as a witch hunt orchestrated by the media.

“The police recommendations regarding me and my wife don’t surprise anyone,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “These recommendations were decided upon and leaked even before the investigation began.”

The Bezeq case, known as Case 4000, is the most serious of all those of which Netanyahu has been accused. Two of his top confidants have turned state witnesses and are believed to have provided police with incriminating evidence. Netanyahu held the government’s communications portfolio until last year and oversaw regulation in the field. Former journalists at the Walla news site have attested to being pressured to refrain from negative reporting of Netanyahu.

Police say the investigation, which included the testimony of 60 witnesses, revealed that Netanyahu and Bezeq boss Shaul Elovitch engaged in a “bribe-based relationship.”

From 2012 to 2017 the prime minister and his associates “blatantly intervened” on a near-daily basis in the Walla news site, using the connections with Elovitch to influence appointments there and to promote flattering articles and pictures while quelling critical stories of the prime minister and his family, police said.

Police are also recommending charges be brought against Elovitch and members of his family.

Needless to say, this being the third strike against Bibi, the calls for his immediate resignation are now louder than ever.

“The most serious bribery case yet leaves no room for doubt: a prime minister who is accused of the most serious offense for a public servant in the Israeli rule book cannot keep serving one minute longer,” said Tamar Zandberg, head of the dovish opposition Meretz party.

“The prime minister has no moral mandate to keep his seat and must resign today. Israel must go to elections.”

Other opposition figures, including opposition leader Tzipi Livni, quickly joined in the call for Netanyahu to resign.

Whether or not Bibi and the Likud Party can survive is still in the air, but at this point Israel's Attorney General, Avichai Mendelblit, has been dragging his feet, waiting for police recommendations in all three cases before deciding on any charges.  However, that time has now come.

We'll see if any indictments come or not.  If so, Bibi's most likely toast.

Exit question:  Will Trump step in and interfere on behalf of Netanyahu?  Don't be surprised if that eventually comes to light.

Sunday Long Read: The Boys Club

This week's Sunday Long Read comes to us from the Miami Herald, where Emily Michot and Julie K. Brown give us the history of Jeffrey Epstein, the Florida hedge fund millionaire who specialized in trafficking underage girls for sex parties.  The FBI had Epstein dead to rights, and then an extraordinary deal was struck where he got 13 months and the FBI investigation quashed.  The man behind the deal?

Trump's current Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta.

On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz.

It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush.

Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in the prestigious Washington law firm of Kirkland & Ellis — convened at the Marriott in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles away. For Lefkowitz, 44, a U.S. special envoy to North Korea and corporate lawyer, the meeting was critical.

His client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.

The eccentric hedge fund manager, whose friends included former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show.

Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life.

But on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck — an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein’s crimes and the number of people involved.

Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.

The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators’’ who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane.

As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it.

This is the story of how Epstein, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them.

“I don’t think anyone has been told the truth about what Jeffrey Epstein did,’’ said one of Epstein’s victims, Michelle Licata, now 30. “He ruined my life and a lot of girls’ lives. People need to know what he did and why he wasn’t prosecuted so it never happens again.”

Now President Trump’s secretary of labor, Acosta, 49, oversees a massive federal agency that provides oversight of the country’s labor laws, including human trafficking. Until he was reported to be eliminated on Thursday, a day after this story posted online, Acosta also had been included on lists of possible replacements for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned under pressure earlier this month.
Acosta did not respond to numerous requests for an interview or answer queries through email. 

But court records reveal details of the negotiations and the role that Acosta would play in arranging the deal, which scuttled the federal probe into a possible international sex trafficking operation. Among other things, Acosta allowed Epstein’s lawyers unusual freedoms in dictating the terms of the non-prosecution agreement.

“The damage that happened in this case is unconscionable,” said Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor who represents some of Epstein’s victims. “How in the world, do you, the U.S. attorney, engage in a negotiation with a criminal defendant, basically allowing that criminal defendant to write up the agreement?”

As a result, neither the victims — nor even the judge — would know how many girls Epstein allegedly sexually abused between 2001 and 2005, when his underage sex activities were first uncovered by police. Police referred the case to the FBI a year later, when they began to suspect that their investigation was being undermined by the Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office.

This is such a damning piece on Acosta that he should be forced to resign and disbarred for life, even with him being knocked out of the running for Jeff Sessions's job, and that's before we get to Epstein himself, a monster who deserves the deepest abyss for eternity.  How Acosta was confirmed with this deal on his record shouldn't be a mystery at all, the most corrupt American regime in history is just doing business as usual.

Deportation Nation, Con't

Somebody at the Trump regime (probably Mad Dog Mattis) figured out that Republicans in the House and Senate might actually be forced to do something if the thousands of Trump's military troops on the border actually violate Posse Comitatus rather than twiddling their thumbs for another month or two, so apparently the end run around that is having Homeland Security deputize law enforcement from just about every other federal agency to do the heavy lifting.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has requested the deployment of civilian law enforcement officers from several other Cabinet departments to the U.S.-Mexico border as early as next week, according to an internal memo obtained by POLITICO.

In what current and former U.S. officials said would be an unprecedented move, the officers — who in most cases have duties entirely unrelated to border security — would help Border Patrol agents repel what the memo calls “migrant caravans originating from Central America.”

The request suggests that personnel with such assignments as guarding diplomats, patrolling national parks, and protecting nuclear weapons might effectively “become Customs and Border Protection personnel,” as one former Justice Department official put it, with the power to arrest border-crossers.

Although the White House position on the request is unclear, such an action would be the latest extraordinary Trump administration effort to crack down on border security amid what President Donald Trump has increasingly cast as an immigration crisis. In particular, Trump has recently depicted a northbound migrant caravan as an attempted “invasion” of the U.S. But there is little evidence that existing border officials are unable to prevent members of the caravan, currently marooned in Mexico, from entering the country.

A senior DHS official who confirmed the memo’s authenticity said the Justice Department has already made a commitment to dispatch officers to the border, and that DHS is actively “working with” other departments named in the memo to determine the availability of law enforcement resources.

The memo was sent to leaders of the departments of State, Labor, Energy, Transportation, Interior and Justice.

In recent months, Trump has ordered thousands of active duty military troops to the border. But they are prevented by a law known as the Posse Comitatus Act from participating in searches or making arrests. Civilians at the departments contacted by Nielsen would not face such a restriction.

“The administration seems to recognize that under Posse Comitatus … the military can’t do something enforcement-wise. So they’re saying, ‘Let’s grab as many law enforcement people and bring them to the border,’” said Leon Fresco, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation under the Obama administration.

Because I'm sure the Diplomatic Protection Service really wants to be in San Ysidro lobbing tear gas at kids.

Look, I understand the need for a secure border and all, but at this point there's no way Trump's regime should be given benefit of the doubt on anything.  This will be at best a cynical waste o executive branch resources on things they wren't trained to do, and at worst, a ready-made goon squad or Trump to harass anyone darker than a paper bag with.

This is going to be a disaster.