Retribution Execution, Con't

The scheduled execution of GOP Rep. Liz Cheney's career in Wyoming continues, as now Trump wants the state legislature and GOP Gov. Mark Gordon to change primary election laws in order to eliminate party switching and voting in the state's primary contests.

Former President Donald Trump and his allies have been privately lobbying Wyoming lawmakers to change the state’s election laws as part of an effort to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).

On Thursday, Trump endorsed Wyoming legislation that would prevent crossover voting in a primary election. Were the law to pass, Democrats, Republicans, or independents would no longer be able to switch party affiliation on the day of the state’s primary to vote for a candidate in another party.

The bill, introduced by Republican state Sen. Bo Biteman, is part of a push by some Republicans in the state to oust Cheney by blocking Democrats from switching parties to support her in her upcoming election against Trump-endorsed congressional candidate, Harriet Hageman.

Behind the scenes, Trump and Club for Growth’s David McIntosh have both personally called Wyoming’s Republican governor, Mark Gordon, to encourage him to back the bill, according to two people familiar with the calls.

“The Governor has had many conversations about this issue, including with President Trump and David McIntosh, however characterizing that as ‘pressure’ would be incorrect. Governor Gordon is going to do what’s best for Wyoming and he respects the legislative process,” said Michael Perlman, the communications director for Gordon.

The intensity of the push for the legislation peaked earlier this week, when Republicans began speculating that Gordon could announce his support for it in his State of the State address. But he did not. And as the week has gone on, Trump’s private lobbying became public.

“This critically important bill ensures that the voters in each party will separately choose their nominees for the General Election, which is how it should be!” Trump said in a statement. “It makes total sense that only Democrats vote in the Democrat primary and only Republicans vote in the Republican primary.”

The former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., also called on Wyoming to “pay attention” to the bill and American Conservative Union president Matt Schlapp — a close Trump ally — tweeted on Thursday that his group might score the legislation as it considered its support of GOP lawmakers.

“There was a big push this morning to get all of our MAGA influencers to push it and make a big deal out of it,” said one Republican operative involved in the race.

Cheney told The New York Times she will not encourage party switching or support any effort to encourage Democrats to vote in the Republican primary.

 

Two observations:

 

One, yes, these are the lengths Donald Trump will go to in order to punish perceived disloyalty. In Trump's worldview, political power only exists to further his own ambitions, and anyone who interferes with that, let alone actively assists in conducting a congressional investigation against him, is exterminated.

Two, all Republicans at the state and national level work for Donald Trump as far as Donald Trump is concerned. There's a reason we keep coming back to the organized crime comparisons because Trump is essentially the political version of a mobster kingpin. 

This is a political version of a mob hit on someone turning states' evidence against Trump, and it's being done for the same reasons: everyone knows who ordered the trigger pulled, and everyone in the GOP will know who did it and why, and to never even think about following suit.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has endorsed Harriet Hageman, the Trump-backed opponent of incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming -- a rare endorsement from leadership in a divisive GOP primary, and one that marks the culmination of a simmering feud between the two powerful Republicans battling over the future of their party. 

The tension between the two began in the wake of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol when Cheney called for her party to move on from former President Donald Trump and voted to impeach him, while McCarthy chose to cozy up to the former President. Cheney's criticism of Trump led to his backers in the House to successfully push for her to be removed from her position as the chairwoman of the GOP Conference. It was a move McCarthy initially resisted, but ultimately backed. 

"I am proud to endorse Harriet Hageman for Congress," McCarthy said in a statement Thursday. "[Throughout] her career, Harriet has championed America's natural resources and helped the people of Wyoming reject burdensome and onerous government overreach." 

McCarthy explained his endorsement in remarks to Fox's Sean Hannity. 

"Wyoming deserves to have a representative who will deliver the accountability against this Biden administration. Not a representative that they have today that works closer with Nancy Pelosi, going after Republicans instead of stopping these radical Democrats from what they're doing to this country," the California Republican said. 

Hageman responded to the endorsement in a statement, saying, "I am very grateful for Leader McCarthy's strong support, and I pledge that when I am Wyoming's congresswoman, I will always stand up for our beautiful state and do the job I was sent there to do."

 

It's a hit job alright, and Cheney's career is all but cold in the ground.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Yet another significant legal loss for Donald Trump this week as a NY judge ordered him and Ivanka and Junior to turn over evidence to the NY Attorney General's office and to sit for depositions in the civil trial against him.

 

The New York attorney general can question Donald J. Trump and two of his adult children under oath as part of a civil inquiry into his business practices, a judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting the former president’s effort to block the interviews.

The inquiry by the attorney general, Letitia James, and a parallel criminal investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney are examining whether Mr. Trump improperly inflated the value of his assets to receive favorable loans.

Lawyers for the Trump family had sought to prohibit Ms. James, a Democrat, from interviewing Mr. Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. They had argued that she was politically biased against Mr. Trump and was inappropriately using her civil inquiry to aid the district attorney’s criminal investigation, which she is also participating in.

But the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, wrote that “this argument completely misses the mark.”

He ruled in favor of Ms. James’s lawyers, who had asked that the former president and the two adult children be interviewed in the next three weeks. The order also requires that the former president provide the attorney general with documents she sought in her subpoena.

“Today, justice prevailed,” Ms. James said in a statement, adding, “No one is above the law.” The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ruling does not mean that Ms. James will automatically receive the answers she is seeking. Mr. Trump and his children can invoke their constitutional right to not incriminate themselves, as Mr. Trump’s other adult son, Eric Trump, did when questioned by the attorney general’s office in October 2020. The Trump family can also appeal the decision.

The judge’s decision followed a fiery virtual hearing in State Supreme Court on Thursday, during which lawyers for Mr. Trump and the attorney general made their cases. Several times, Mr. Trump’s lawyers became so heated that Judge Engoron and his law clerk had to call for a timeout — raising their hands in the shape of a “T,” a gesture more often seen at a sporting event than in a courtroom.

Although Ms. James had signaled in court papers that she had amassed significant evidence against Mr. Trump’s family business — she has accused the Trump Organization of engaging in “fraudulent or misleading” practices — she has said that she needs to question Mr. Trump and his children before determining her next move.

Mr. Trump and his children sought to block the questioning, and Ms. James responded in a court filing last month, arguing that there was “heightened need” for testimony from the three family members. She said that by questioning them, she would be able to determine who was responsible for the misstatements and omissions that the organization made in its financial documents.

Because Ms. James’s inquiry is civil, she cannot bring criminal charges. If she finds evidence of criminal wrongdoing, she can file a lawsuit against Mr. Trump, his organization or others involved in the business. In last month’s filing, Ms. James said that her lawyers had not yet reached a final decision on a lawsuit but argued that “the grounds for conducting the investigation are beyond reproach.”

 

The judge agreed with NY AG Tish James, saying in his ruling that there was "copious evidence" of possible financial fraud committed by the Trump Organization.

 

Of course, the Trump lawyers plan to appeal in order to keep Trump and his kids from having to give depositions for as long as they can. They have to, because the moment the clock runs out and they have to sit under oath, things start going very badly for all of them. 

If Trump takes the Fifth, it can be used against him in the civil case being developed by the New York Attorney General.

If Trump doesn’t take the Fifth, the Manhattan DA can use his words against him.

He’s between a rock and a hard place. https://t.co/Qk9hIghhLu

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) February 17, 2022

Trump increasingly has to run for President in 2024, if only to dodge the ruinous legal consequences unless he wins.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

As I've been saying for weeks now (and so has the Biden administration who has far better intel than little ol' me) any Russian invasion of Ukraine would be preceded by a false flag pretext for war in which Russian troops would enter the country in order to "protect Russian interests and human rights" in the pro-Russian Caucasus and Donbas areas of Ukraine that Russian troops already occupy and have occupied for eight years now.

Unfortunately, we've reached that stage today.

Ukraine's military and the Russian-backed separatists it has battled for eight years in the country's eastern Donbas region both accused the other side of opening fire on Thursday in violation of ceasefire agreements that have been shaky, at best, since they were signed seven years ago.

As the reported shelling raised tensions — and despite Russia's claims to be pulling forces back from Ukraine's borders — the Biden administration said "evidence on the ground" showed Russia was "moving toward an imminent invasion" of its neighbor.

The United States and its NATO partners have dismissed Moscow's assertions of an initial force drawdown along Ukraine's northern, eastern and southern borders, saying that President Vladimir Putin's military appears, in reality, to be bolstering troop numbers, not reducing them.

America and its allies have also warned for weeks that Russia could try to stage a "false-flag" incident — including a faked attack by Ukrainian forces on the rebels in Donbas — to use as a pretext to invade Ukraine. On Thursday, amid the claims of shelling from both sides, NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance was "concerned" that Russia was trying to do just that.

With U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken making an unscheduled stop in New York on Thursday to address a Security Council meeting requested by Ukraine, a senior State Department official echoed Stoltenberg's concerns about possible Russian preparations to fabricate a pretext for an invasion.

 

The playbook should seem eerily familiar here. It's the same one Dubya used to invade Iraq after 9/11. 

Putin's not a stupid man. He knows what works and what he can get away with, and increasingly it looks like he's going to invade in the days ahead. The question was always what NATO's response would be, and frankly there's no appetite here in the States to defend Ukraine with US troops.

Not after, well, two decades in Afghanistan (and 12 years in Iraq).

Hold on, folks. Things just got serious.

School Of Hard Right Knocks, Local Edition, Con't

Here in Kentucky, Republicans are trying to figure out just how racist and bigoted they want public schools to be forced to be, with a number of competing bills to stop the dreaded "Critical Race Theory" from ever being forced down kids' throats or something, despite it definitely not being taught anywhere in this damn state. The results are laughably unconstitutional bills that not only make teaching the sobering failures of American history impossible, the latest state Senate bill actually mandates indoctrination of right-wing Republican dogma.

In response to outcry over "critical race theory," a top Kentucky Republican filed a bill outlining what and how kids should be taught about the nation's history.

Touching on themes from measures in the House aimed at eradicating "CRT" from classrooms, Senate Bill 138 clarifies that teachers can discuss historical events such as slavery and oppression but should note such things ran counter to the country's founding values.

It would also prohibit schools from requiring educators to discuss current events with students or participate in race-related training.

The bill from Sen. Max Wise, a Campbellsville Republican who chairs the chamber's education committee, says lessons should be consistent with a set of American principles.

Among them are the values that all people are created equal and individuals are not responsible for things those of the same race or sex did. People should be judged by their character, not their race or sex, the bill says.

Students should be taught slavery, segregation and racial discrimination are "contrary to the fundamental American promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it says, but blaming racial disparities solely on the nation's history is "destructive to the unification of our nation."

Teachers would need to remain consistent with the notion that any American can succeed when they are "given sufficient opportunity and is committed to seizing that opportunity through hard work, pursuit of education, and good citizenship," the bill continues.

The measure's tone is "a little more positive" than two bills filed in the House aimed at curbing how teachers discuss race, Angela Billings, a spokeswoman for the Senate Republicans, said.

It doesn't preclude conversations from happening, she said, but provides some parameters for them.

The House bills sparked outcry from educators, who said the broad list of banned topics would block them from teaching the ugly parts of the country's history.

SB 138 attempts to address those concerns, saying the bill should not limit "impartial" instruction on controversial topics and the oppression of marginalized groups.

But school districts would not be allowed to require teachers to discuss controversial public policy topics or current events with students. Educators who do take on these conversations would be required to do so from "diverse and contending perspectives" without deferring to any perspective.

"It is clear from the bills that continue to be introduced that the Republican-led legislature is intent on limiting discourse about the realities of our history," KY 120 United-AFT, a group of educators and public employees, said in reaction to the bill. "We do not have to wonder whose reality counts when we see this kind of legislation."

If passed, around two dozen historical documents and speeches would be required to be taught in middle and high school history classes.

Many of them — including the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and court opinions in Brown v. Board of Education — are likely already taught. Others, including Ronald Reagan's 1964 "A Time for Choosing" speech, are a little less common.

 

So yes, next year Kentucky classrooms will be filled with "America is the greatest nation that ever existed", Reagan's awful anti-government, anti-Black speeches, and GOP doctrine. Current events like the fact these kids will grow up in increasingly worse climate events and mass shootings? Nobody would dare.

 

There's your "indoctrination", folks.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the Democratic reelection effort in the House, is warning his colleagues that if Dems don't start hitting back hard against the GOP on schools, abortion, race and immigration and other "culture war" issues, they are going to get wiped off the map in nine months.

 

Democrats’ own research shows that some battleground voters think the party is “preachy,” “judgmental” and “focused on culture wars,” according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

And the party’s House campaign arm had a stark warning for Democrats: Unless they more forcefully confront the GOP’s “alarmingly potent” culture war attacks, from critical race theory to defunding the police, they risk losing significant ground to Republicans in the midterms.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is recommending a new strategy to endangered members and their teams, hoping to blunt the kinds of GOP attacks that nearly erased their majority last election and remain a huge risk ahead of November. In presentations over the past two weeks, party officials and operatives used polling and focus group findings to argue Democrats can’t simply ignore the attacks, particularly when they’re playing at a disadvantage. A generic ballot of swing districts from late January showed Democrats trailing Republicans by 4 points, according to the polling.

It wasn’t all bleak, though: The data showed that Democrats could mostly regain the ground lost to Republicans if they offered a strong rebuttal to the political hits. When faced with a “defund the police” attack, for instance, the presenters encouraged Democrats to reiterate their support for police. And on immigration, they said Democrats should deny support for “open borders or amnesty,” and talk about their efforts to keep the border safe.

If Democrats don’t answer Republican hits, the party operatives warned, the GOP’s lead on the generic ballot balloons to 14 points from 4 points — a dismal prediction for Democrats when the GOP only needs to win five seats to seize back the majority. But when voters heard a Democratic response to that hit, Republicans’ edge narrowed back down to 6 points, giving candidates more of a fighting chance, especially since those numbers don’t factor in Democrats going on the offensive.

Many Democrats, led by DCCC chief Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), have pushed to more forcefully counter the GOP’s attacks since the last election. But that message has picked up new urgency as President Joe Biden’s approval has tanked in recent weeks, stoking more party anxiety.

The internal presentation underscored some of those anxieties: The GOP hits are most effective with center-left voters, independents and Hispanic voters, demographic groups that Democrats have struggled to attract in recent years.

The solution does not lie in policy proposals, the pollsters found, because voters are not generally opposed to Democratic policies. “Rather, Democrats need to demonstrate they fully understand and care about stressors in people’s lives” and focus on the issues “without stoking divisive cultural debates,” one of the slides said.

Summarizing the party’s midterm problems bluntly, the presentation notes that voters think Democrats “are not making good use of their majority.” 

It was time to fight GOP garbage 12 months ago, but Dems effectively gave Republicans a year head start, and it shows. Dems had better demonstrate forecfully why they should be in charge and fast, or they will no longer be in charge.

It's that last bit, "not making good use of their majority" that hurts. We know that Republicans can block everything in the Senate and get away with it, but only because Blue Dogs like Manchin and Sinema let them by refusing to change filibuster rules.

It all goes back to these two in the end, and they are going to end up costing us everything at this rate.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

 Last week, Donald Trump found out the hard way that crossing the National Archives on the Presidential Records Act was nothing but trouble. This week he's in a whole new world of pain as long-time corporate accounting firm Mazars is now disavowing a decade's worth of the Trump Organization's financial documents as the New York Attorney General's office continues to investigate Trump's company for fraud, and that could quickly mean financial disaster for Trump.

Predictably, Donald Trump wants you to think his longtime accounting firm’s decision to ditch the Trump Organization last week is no big deal. In fact, he would like you to not think about it at all.

But that hasn’t stopped members of his inner sanctum from wondering if the highly publicized investigations in New York could actually be what ultimately torches the ex-president’s sprawling family business.

Which is why after accounting firm Mazars USA dropped the Trump Organization, three people close to former President Trump told The Daily Beast they have each urged Trump—or others in his family and brain trust—to take this possibly ruinous development seriously.

“I’ll be honest with you: I have said for years that this whole thing is one big fishing expedition,” one of the sources said. “I’ve expected it to just fizzle at some point, or to turn up ticky tacky shit that can score prosecutors big headlines. The Mazars news was the first time I started thinking, ‘Hey, this might be serious.’ Could Donald Trump [and his business] be screwed? I don’t know, but I’m not as confident as I once was in saying, ‘No.’”

The question now facing the Trump Organization—which is already in hot water after being indicted in Manhattan for criminal tax fraud last summer—is whether the pillars propping up his business empire will now crumble.

The massive bank loans that fund his real estate development projects are the foundation of his empire. Banks that approved lending Trump money for his golf courses and skyscrapers relied on his personal guarantees and “statements of financial condition”—guarantees that are now shaky at best.

None of these sources who spoke to Trump believed he was taking this as seriously as he should. Two of them said the former president told them that his business empire has been doing “great,” no matter what prosecutors are trying to do to it.

But notably, all three predicted that this latest Mazars development would likely strengthen Trump’s resolve to run again for the presidency in 2024.

“Right now, all the voters care about is stopping the decline of the United States and President Trump is the one person who they know who can do it,” claimed John McLaughlin, who served as one of Trump’s top pollsters in 2016 and 2020. “Voters could care less who his accountant might be. As long as Joe Biden fails, President Trump grows stronger.”

After a day of remaining silent on the topic, the ex-president released a lengthy statement Tuesday night insisting that, among many other things, “We have a great company with fantastic assets that are unique, extremely valuable and, in many cases, far more valuable than what was listed in our Financial Statements.”

However, Mazar’s decision on Feb. 9 to disavow every financial condition statement Trump made from 2011 until 2020 does more than cast a shadow of doubt on his riches and his future.

That’s because lending agreements often include provisions that immediately cancel a deal—causing the loan to default—if the underlying documents prove false. According to a widely cited analysis by journalists at Bloomberg, the Trump Organization has had at least $590 million of debt coming due between 2021 and 2025. It’s unclear if Trump’s loan deals included a “material change in condition” clause, but if they did, as most do, the fallout could spell financial ruin.

Steven J. Solomon, an attorney in Miami who leads the bankruptcy practice at the national law firm GrayRobinson, warned about the gravity of the situation for the Trump Organization.

“It’s incredibly significant. And frankly, I’ve never heard of a situation where an accounting firm is going back retroactively 10 years,” he told The Daily Beast. “This would be a trigger point. If your lender doesn’t have confidence in you because it can’t rely on the information, you can’t be friends anymore.”

 

In other words, if all of Trump's lenders decide to call him out and demand their money back now, Trump goes under.

 

The bigger issue for Trump is that Mazars is running far, far away from ten years of being Trump's accountant, which means the NYAG office has almost certainly found dirty numbers and that Mazars doesn't want to go down with Trump. If they are now assisting the NYAG with forensic accounting issues, Trump is in real, dire trouble.

Let's remember Trump has gotten money off the books all his adult life. We know he's managed to keep his nose clean so far when it came to his mafia ties in Manhattan starting out, to the Russian mob in the last couple of decades, and to his Saudi friends for his campaign chest. But if this investigation unravels all of that bloody web, Trump's going to face real prison time.

Not to mention, the people he took money from off the books are not too forgiving about being stiffed. I agree with the assessment of the sources in the article that Trump will run in 2024, party from his huge, abyssal ego, but also because he figures winning again is the only way he stays out of prison...and an unfortunate "accident".

 

Trump just got a lot more desperate this week, and he's far more liable to do something stupid as a result.

Moose Lady Versus The Media Isn't Over

Sarah Palin's libel case against the New York Times ran into twin buzzsaws of reality this week, with the judge dismissing the case for lack of merit, and the jury already in the deliberation stage returned a unanimous verdict of Palin's loss. But as TPM's Bill Kovarik explains, the case is far from over and almost certainly headed for the Roberts Court, where Justices Thomas and Gorsuch lie in wait to dismantle legal protections for media outlets.

As a media historian, I can see the Palin case providing a vehicle to return libel laws back to a time when it was much easier for public figures to sue the press.

Before 1964’s Sullivan standard, the libel landscape in the U.S. consisted of a patchwork of state laws that made it easy for political figures to selectively persecute newspapers and public speakers who espoused opposing or unpopular views.

For example in 1949, John Henry McCray, a Black editor from South Carolina, served two months on a chain gang after being charged with criminal libel for writing a story about a racially charged execution. White publications reporting the same story were not charged.

Similarly, in a 1955 libel case, Dr. Von Mizell, a Black surgeon and NAACP official, was ordered to pay a US$15,000 fine for writing in opposition to a Florida state legislator’s idea of abolishing public schools instead of integrating them.

Then came the Sullivan case. It centered around several tiny mistakes in a civil rights advertisement carried by The New York Times. L.B. Sullivan, a public official not even named in the advertisement, sued for defamation, and the case went from Alabama to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In setting the Sullivan standard in 1964, the Supreme Court said in effect that it ought to be difficult for any official at the federal or the state level to prove that a falsehood was libelous enough – and personally damaging enough – to surmount First Amendment protections.

The court said a public official could not win a libel lawsuit by citing minor mistakes, technical inaccuracies or even outright negligence. Instead, under the Sullivan standard, a public official had to prove that there was “actual malice,” which means that a critic knowingly published something false or was in reckless disregard of the truth.

The court insisted that “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on public officials.”

Originalists on the current Supreme Court – that is, those justices who believe that the Constitution should be interpreted as it was by those crafting the original document – seemingly disagree.

Justice Thomas, in a 2019 opinion, suggested the Sullivan ruling failed to take into account “the Constitution’s original meaning.” He followed this up in a 2021 opinion that stated the requirement on public figures to establish actual malice bears “no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution.”

Some legal scholars have argued that originalism doesn’t cut much ice when it comes to First Amendment protections. After it passed in 1791, the First Amendment was open to so many state interpretations that there is no agreement on what the accepted interpretation of the day was.

Nonetheless, should Palin appeal against the latest ruling, it is likely that the case could reach a Supreme Court in which at least two justices seem primed to challenge the decades-old Sullivan rule.

Given the Roberts Court track record on dismantling standing precedent in order to push the country into 1850 Federalist hell, don't be surprised if this come back to haunt an America that, by the time SCOTUS gets to destroying Sullivan, will have already lost Roe, the Civil Rights Act, the rest of the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and probably the law of gravity.

It'll take some time for this one to work its way up, but I'm sure SCOTUS will hear it in 2023 or 2024.

Last Call For Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

For the first time, a major American firearms manufacturer faces real consequences in a product liability case.

Remington Arms agreed Tuesday to settle liability claims from the families of five adults and four children killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, according to a new court filing, marking the first time a gun manufacturer has been held accountable for a mass shooting in the U.S.

Remington agreed to pay the families $73 million.

The settlement comes over seven years after the families sued the maker of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S semiautomatic rifle that was used in the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Nicole Hockley, whose son, Dylan, was killed in the shooting, said in a statement, "My beautiful butterfly, Dylan, is gone because Remington prioritized its profit over my son's safety. Marketing weapons of war directly to young people known to have a strong fascination with firearms is reckless and, as too many families know, deadly conduct. Using marketing to convey that a person is more powerful or more masculine by using a particular type or brand of firearm is deeply irresponsible."

"My hope is that by facing and finally being penalized for the impact of their work, gun companies, along with the insurance and banking industries that enable them, will be forced to make their business practices safer than they have ever been," Hockley said.

On Dec. 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20, forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School, and in the course of 264 seconds, fatally shot 20 first-graders and six staff members.

The rifle Lanza used was Remington’s version of the AR-15 assault rifle, which is substantially similar to the standard issue M16 military service rifle used by the U.S. Army and other nations’ armed forces, but fires only in semiautomatic mode.

The families argued Remington negligently entrusted to civilian consumers an assault-style rifle that is suitable for use only by military and law enforcement personnel and violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act through the sale or wrongful marketing of the rifle.

Remington, which filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2020, had argued all of the plaintiffs’ legal theories were barred under Connecticut law and by a federal statute -- the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act -- which, with limited exceptions, immunizes firearms manufacturers, distributors and dealers from civil liability for crimes committed by third parties using their weapons.

Francine Wheeler, mother of 6-year-old victim Benjamin Wheeler, said at Tuesday's news conference, "Today is about how and why he died. Today is about what is right and what is wrong. Today is about the last five minutes of his life. Which were tragic, traumatic and the worst thing that can happen to a child."

"Our legal system has given us some justice today but … David [Ben's father] and I will never have true justice," she said. "True justice would be our 15-year-old healthy and standing next to us right now. But Ben will never be 15. He will be 6 forever."

David Wheeler added, "We want to make sure that another father and another mother don't have to stand here someday."

 

Executives from other firearms manufacturers are almost certainly going to be having lots of meetings and issuing lots of memos in the weeks ahead.  

It's a small victory, but the first of hopefully many wins, as there seems to be a never-ending stream of American firearm tragedies to take legal action against.

School Of Hard-Right Knocks, Con't

A new Reuters investigation finds that local school board officials are being flooded with death threats and targeted by right-wing fanatics who want to take over America's schools, burn books, whitewash American history, and more.

The letter came to the home of Brenda Sheridan, a Loudoun County, Virginia school board member, addressed to one of her adult children. It threatened to kill them both unless she left the board.

“It is too bad that your mother is an ugly communist whore,” said the hand-scrawled note, which the family read just after Christmas. “If she doesn’t quit or resign before the end of the year, we will kill her, but first, we will kill you!”

School board members across the United States have endured a rash of terroristic threats and hostile messages ignited by roiling controversies over policies on curtailing the coronavirus, bathroom access for transgender students and the teaching of America’s racial history.

Reuters documented the intimidation through contacts and interviews with 33 board members across 15 states and a review of threatening and harassing messages obtained from the officials or through public records requests. The news organization found more than 220 such messages in this sampling of districts. School officials or parents in 15 different counties received or witnessed threats they considered serious enough to report to police.

While school controversies are traditionally local, these threats often come from people out of state with no connection to the districts involved. They are part of a rising national wave of threats to public officials – including election officials and members of Congress – citing an array of grievances, often underpinned by apocalyptic conspiracy theories alleging “treason” or “tyranny.”

About half the hostile messages documented by Reuters were sent to Sheridan, former chair of the Loudoun County, Virginia, school board, amid controversies over coronavirus protections, anti-racism efforts and bathroom policy. Twenty-two messages sent to Sheridan or the entire board included death threats or said members should be or would be killed.

In June, she received a threat saying: “Brenda, I am going to gut you like the fat f‑‑‑ing pig you are when I find you.”

The message, like the letter to her home, also threatened her children. Reuters agreed not to publish any personal details about Sheridan’s family members, at her request, because of her continuing safety concerns.

Board members in Pennsylvania’s Pennsbury school district received racist and anti-Semitic emails from around the country from people angry over the district’s diversity efforts. One said: “This why hitler threw you c‑‑ts in a gas chamber.”

In Dublin, Ohio, an anonymous letter sent to the board president vowed that officials would “pay dearly” for supporting education programs on race and mask mandates to stop the coronavirus. “You have become our enemies and you will be removed one way or the other,” it said.

School officials reported the messages to law enforcement in those three cases, as in many others documented by Reuters. No one has been arrested for sending these threatening messages, though a few people have been arrested for unruly or threatening behavior at board meetings.

Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed last year to devote federal resources to combating threats to school officials after the National School Boards Association in September sent the White House a request for federal enforcement to stop the “growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.” But the association’s plea for help only added to the controversy as Republican politicians argued the administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, sought to censor free speech and label dissenting parents as terrorists. Nineteen state school boards withdrew their membership or withheld dues from the national association in protest of its Sept. 29 letter.

The school boards association apologized to its state members for the letter on Oct. 22, saying there was “no justification” for some of its language, without specifying what it regretted. The organization did not respond to requests for comment.

The hostility faced by school officials mirrors the campaign of fear documented by Reuters against U.S. election workers in response to former President Donald Trump’s false claims of voting fraud. A federal election-threats task force was announced in June, after a Reuters investigation that month revealed the widespread threats. In January, the task force reported the arrests of two people who had threatened election officials.

 

Right-wing millionaires are doing everything they can to fund campaigns of terror against basic governance and the people who get involved. The goal is to get ordinary people to flee from local school boards, election boards, county and city governments, and state legislatures and leave them wide open for frothing lunatics.

 

The goal is to put Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Lauren Boberts in every school board, in every election office, in every county commission, in every city council, in every state legislature in America through violence and fear.

 

It's working.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

A sober reminder that political violence is becoming more and more common, as Louisville Democratic mayoral primary candidate Craig Greenberg was targeted by a racial justice activist yesterday morning in a clear assassination attempt that failed.

A Louisville activist has been identified as a suspect in Monday's attempted shooting of mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg.

Quintez Brown, 21, was charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment after Greenberg was shot at in his campaign headquarters Monday morning in Butchertown, LMPD spokeswoman Elizabeth Ruoff said late Monday.

Brown, a civil rights activist, is a former intern and editorial columnist for The Courier Journal.

A police report says a man later identified as Brown entered the building and fired a 9mm Glock handgun at Greenberg before fleeing the building.

Greenberg was not injured, but one of the bullets struck his clothing, Chief Erika Shields said earlier Monday. Police evacuated Greenberg, a Democrat, and his staff from the building and eventually took a person into custody, she said.

Officers found a man matching the suspect description less than a half-mile from the campaign headquarters about 10 minutes later, carrying a loaded 9mm magazine in his pants pocket, according to the arrest report.

He also had a drawstring bag with a handgun, handgun case and additional magazines, the report said.

Surveillance video from the building showed the suspect wearing clothes matching Brown's and carrying a matching bag, the report said.

Craig Greenberg shooting:Mayoral candidate describes shooting at campaign office, 'shaken but safe'

Brown had been a University of Louisville student and an opinion editor for the Cardinal, the student newspaper. He was involved in the racial justice protests of 2020.

He disappeared last summer but was found safe July 1 after being missing about two weeks.  

In a statement after he was found, his family said: "We are asking for privacy and would appreciate everyone's patience and support while we tend to the most immediate need, which is Quintez's physical, mental and spiritual needs.”

Brown was an MLK Scholar at U of L and is the founder of From Fields to Arena, a group committed to providing political education and violence prevention training to youths engaged in hip-hop and athletics.

After he went missing, family and friends formed several search parties, distributed flyers and met at locations around the city to look for him.

He recently announced he would run for Metro Council in District 5.

 

The full story has yet to come out, but I can't think of anything worse right now for already strained race relations in Louisville after Breonna Taylor than Brown's alleged attack being successful.

 

It's also a hard reminder than not all political violence comes from the right. I don't know what hell Brown is going through that would prompt him to try to kill Greenberg specifically, but the consequences will be far-reaching here in Kentucky.

Black Lives Still Matter.

Last Call For The Great Canadian Trucker War, Con't

 Although the Ambassador Bridge from Michigan to Ontario was cleared over the weekend, trucker protests remain at several other border crossing areas, as well as in Canada's capital city of Ottawa. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is finally invoking federal emergency powers to deal with the trucks blocking commerce and disrupting cities across the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will invoke emergency powers in response to protests in Canada’s capital city that have entered their 18th day.

Trudeau will inform provincial premiers of his decision to use the Emergencies Act during a virtual meeting Monday morning, according a government official speaking on condition of anonymity before the announcement. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. first reported the news. The law gives the federal government extraordinary powers, including the right to prohibit travel from or within any specified area and to requisition property it deems necessary for managing the situation.

The act also allows the government to order the provision of “essential services” by any person and to impose emergency fines or imprisonment for violating orders. It has never been used since being enacted in 1988 and is meant for an “urgent and critical situation, temporary in nature, that endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians,” according to a government memo.

It doesn’t mean Trudeau has decided to call in the military to deal with the protests. The prime minister has repeatedly said he thinks that’s a bad idea.

Trudeau’s government has been facing increasing pressure to step in, after protests over vaccine mandates and other Covid-19 restrictions spread last week to the bridge that carries a quarter of Canada’s commerce with the U.S., its largest trading partner.

Ontario declared an emergency on Friday, and police began clearing protesters at the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario on Saturday morning. The span was blocked for six days and was finally reopened Sunday night.

Protests against vaccine rules, which include hundreds of semi trucks parked in the streets of Ottawa, swelled into the thousands over the weekend. But truckers were met Sunday with counter-demonstrations from residents who are angry that parts of their city have been paralyzed, with businesses closed and streets impassable, since the trucks arrived on Jan. 28.

The federal government’s new powers are limited by Canada’s charter of rights and must be reviewed by elected lawmakers. A public inquiry be must held within 60 days after the emergency has ended, according to the legislation, and a report must be made to parliament within a year.

 

So the Trudeau government will be held accountable for invoking the law, but they were always going to be held accountable for what happened if they didn't step in and end the right-wing nonsense, which is going on its third week now.

 

What it means is that Canadian local, provincial, and federal police will be repeating what we saw on Saturday night and Sunday morning on the Ambassador Bridge: clearing and removal of those blocking bridges and crossing points, as well and clearing out the circus in downtown Ottawa.

I hope that nobody will be hurt as a result, but this is something that should have been done weeks ago.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

"Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war" Sir Winston Churchill one said, and on that he was correct. Having had his plans exposed again for a military invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday by the Biden White House, Russian President Vladimir Putin suddenly feels like "leaving the door open for diplomacy".

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin left the door open Monday to further talks with Western leaders on his efforts to end NATO’s open door policy, when his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the scope for dialogue was “far from exhausted” and called for intensified talks with Washington and NATO.

Putin met Lavrov in the Kremlin Monday in what appeared to be a scripted moment on Russia’s formal response to the rejection of its key security demands by Washington and NATO – including its demand that the alliance bar Ukraine from ever joining.

Putin opposed "the endless, in our opinion, and very dangerous expansion of NATO to the East,” but supported the Foreign Ministry’s conclusion on a need to keep talking, RIA Novosti reported, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Reporting to Putin formally on Russia’s bid to end NATO expansion, Lavrov said the rejection of Russia’s key security demands by Washington and NATO did not satisfy Moscow. But he added that there was room for further dialogue.

He said that NATO wanted to determine Europe’s security architecture without reference to Russia but that talks with the United States and NATO “now must be developed and intensified.”

Lavrov added: “I have already said more than once that we warn against endless conversations on issues that need to be resolved today, but still, probably, being the head of the Foreign Ministry, I must say that there is always a chance.”

Peskov, in a call with journalists, insisted on Moscow’s right to move its troops anywhere within Russia’s borders, saying there were “equally large” movements of Kyiv’s forces in Ukraine which he said led to “a serious deterioration of the situation.”

As massive Russian military drills continued with Belarus, in the Black Sea, in southern Russia and other parts of the country, Putin also met Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who said that some drills were coming to an end and others would be completed “in the near future.”

Earlier, the Kremlin continued to press Ukraine to drop its NATO membership plan after Ukrainian officials explicitly ruled it out.

And German Chancellor Olaf Scholz began a two-day trip to Kyiv and Moscow to try to de-escalate the NATO-Russia crisis over Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry ruled out any compromise Monday on its aim of joining NATO and called for security guarantees to deter a Russian invasion, amid warnings from U.S. officials that Russia could launch an attack on Ukraine at any time.

Peskov said that if Ukraine withdrew its bid for membership in the alliance, this could allay some of Russia’s security concerns. Moscow insists that Ukraine’s joining the alliance is a “red line” that would threaten its security — while Kyiv argues that it poses no threat to Russia and that it is seeking membership to guarantee its security.

 

Keeping Putin talking is surely better than keeping Putin shooting, even if the sticking point is obviously NATO membership for Ukraine. Remember that Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet empire, and that NATO and the US does not want him doing that, and for Putin to get his way, he can't openly pick a fight with the entirely of the alliance.

Diplomacy by other means and all, but it's still diplomacy.

On the other hand, this could all be Putin wanting to catch everyone with their pants down and then kicking in the front door and taking Kyiv before anyone can react.

We'll see.

Retribution Execution, Con't

While several GOP Senate hopefuls in Ohio seeking Sen. Rob Portman's seat are scrambling to find a way to get Daddy Trump to notice them, billionaire Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians MLB team, is not one of them. This is not making Donald Trump happy at all, and Trump wants Dolan gone.

Donald Trump has a new fixation: a Major League Baseball scion who hails from one of the country’s richest families — and who, unlike most other Republican Senate candidates, isn’t bowing to the former president.

During meetings, phone calls and impromptu chats, Trump has been peppering top aides and allies with questions about Matt Dolan, a wealthy Ohio Republican who accused the former president of “perpetuat[ing] lies about the outcome” of the 2020 election and called the pro-Trump Jan. 6 Capitol riot “a failure of leadership.”

While other contenders in the crowded GOP Senate primary are auditioning for Trump’s support, Dolan is funding a battery of TV ads that don’t even mention the former president. And in a barely veiled jab at his rivals who are making pilgrimages to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Dolan has declared that his campaign “is about one thing, and one thing only: Ohio.”

While Dolan is widely regarded as a longshot in the Trump-dominated primary, those in the former president’s orbit say there’s good reason to be focused on him: The candidate is spending $10 million-plus out of his pocket, is slowly rising in polling and is poised to benefit from a raft of Trump-aligned primary rivals splintering the vote among themselves.

Now, Trump is confronting a pivotal decision — one fraught with risk that will test his ability to shape primaries. He can wade into the murky field of pro-Trump candidates and try to consolidate his backers behind a single figure, but picking the wrong person could invite backlash from his base of supporters. Or he can stay out the fray entirely, but run the possibility of Dolan winning the May 3 primary with a plurality of the vote.

“In a divided field, anybody willing and able to deploy those kind of personal resources is a credible threat, even though he’s out of step with the Republican base across a whole range of issues,” said Luke Thompson, a Republican strategist who is working for a super PAC bolstering one of Dolan’s rivals, venture capitalist J.D. Vance.

Dolan’s campaign strenuously denies that he’s anti-Trump. The 57-year-old state senator, whose billionaire family owns the Cleveland Guardians, has said he voted for the former president in the 2016 and 2020 elections and that he would support him should he be the Republican nominee in 2024. He has also said he did not support Trump’s impeachment.

Rather, Dolan advisers say, he is simply running a campaign that doesn’t revolve around the former president — a starkly different approach from his Trump-loving rivals.

“The other candidates have been so obsessed with appeasing interests outside Ohio, they forgot what they are supposed to be fighting for in Ohio,” said Chris Maloney, a Dolan strategist. “We like that contrast.”

Still, Trump’s fixation on Dolan has steadily been growing since late September, when he launched his campaign. That same day, Trump released a statement attacking Dolan, a part-owner of the Guardians, for the baseball team’s decision to change the name it had since 1915: the Cleveland Indians. After the team announced the change in 2020, Trump called it “cancel culture at work!”

 

Donald Trump is obsessed with finding someone who worships him and can win. I don't think he really cares if Republicans keep the seat, he just wants to pick the primary winner, and if he can't, well, ask Georgia Republicans what can happen...

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

As David French notes, if you haven't connected right-wing political extremism with modern Christian extremism, then you're missing the powerful connection that the two have, to the point of being largely indistinguishable from each other.

On Thursday night in Castle Rock, Colorado, a group called “FEC United” (FEC stands for faith, education, and commerce) held a “town hall” meeting that featured a potpourri of GOP candidates and election conspiracy theorists. Most notably, the event included John Eastman, the Claremont scholar who authored the notorious legal memos that purported to justify the decertification and reversal of the 2020 election results.

During the meeting, a man named Shawn Smith accused Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold of election misconduct. “You know, if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang,” he said. “Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.”

“I was accused of endorsing violence,” he went on. “I’m not endorsing violence, I’m saying once you put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned.” As soon as he said, “you deserve to hang,” an audience member shouted “Yeah!” and applause filled the room. You can watch the moment here.

The moment, almost entirely ignored by the national media, is worth noting on its own terms, but perhaps the most ominous aspect of the evening was its location—a church called The Rock.

If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event.

Last week, the New York Times’s Robert Draper wrote a must-read profile of former President Donald Trump’s one-time national security adviser Michael Flynn. Before January 6, Flynn advocated military intervention, including martial law, to assist in overturning the election results.

During the Biden administration, he’s taken his show on the road, launching a “ReAwaken America” tour that features conferences that combine “elements of a tent revival, a trade fair and a sci-fi convention.” It is striking to see Flynn’s use of Christian channels and venues to spread his apocalyptic message of election corruption and national doom.

Draper caught up with the tour at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, where 3,500 people had shown up to see Flynn and his collection of speakers. Flynn, Draper says, is “the single greatest draw besides Trump himself” in the “parallel universe” of the Make America Great Again movement.

Intrigued by the Dream City Church reference in Draper’s article, I went to the ReAwaken America tour page to see where Flynn was headed next. The first thing you notice is that the tour is sponsored by Charisma News, a charismatic Christian outlet. The next thing you should notice is the list of upcoming venues: Trinity Gospel Temple in Ohio, Awaken Church in California, The River Church in Oregon, and Burnsview Baptist Church in South Carolina.

It is always difficult to know when and how to cover extremism. Does highlighting a fringe provide an artificial sense of their danger and strength, in much the same way that “nutpicking” works in online spaces to exaggerate the extremism of your opponents? Or does ignoring a fringe allow it to flourish outside the spotlight and shock the nation when it finally emerges?

When it comes to Christian nationalism, the bar for concern has been passed by any conceivable measure. When a movement is strong enough to storm the Capitol, then it is worth continued monitoring and continued concern. Moreover, it’s important to understand why it continues to flourish, and why it is so difficult to understand, much less combat.

 

It's all linked, folks.  Right-wing white supremacist violence is absolutely in league with heavily funded Christian Dominionist "prosperity gospel" groups and megachurches, but if you point out the fact that an American Christian church is more of a domestic terrorism hotbed than an American Islamic mosque in 2022, you will be burned to the ground for it.

You're damn right the FBI should be checking churches.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

It's time to start asking some hard questions about Donald Trump's mass mishandling of classified documents and keeping them at Mar-a-Lago, a known hotbed of international espionage, and how much damage was done to America's national security. The Washington Post's White House team gives us a pretty good report on what went down in 2021 and 2022.

For the 15 boxes of documents — some classified and marked “top secret” — the long journey from former president Donald Trump’s gilded Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla., to a secure facility in the Washington area began last summer, when the National Archives and Records Administration contacted Trump’s team to alert it that some high-profile documents from his presidency appeared to be missing.

But it was not until the end of the year that the boxes were finally readied for collection, according to two people familiar with the logistics, one of whom described the ordeal as “a bit of a process.”

At one point, Archives officials threatened that if Trump’s team did not voluntarily produce the materials, they would send a letter to Congress or the Justice Department revealing the lack of cooperation, according to a third person familiar with the situation.

“At first it was unclear what he was going to give back and when,” said one of these people, who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details of a sensitive situation.

Trump was noticeably secretive about the packing process, and top aides and longtime administrative staffers did not see the contents, the people said.

Finally, on Jan. 17, a contractor dispatched by the Archives arrived at Mar-a-Lago to load the boxes into a truck and transport them a thousand miles north, eventually landing at a sensitive compartmented information facility — known as a SCIF — in the greater Washington area. Trump’s assistant had been looped in on the emails handling the logistics, and both Trump’s team and the National Archives described the in-person handover as amicable. Trump said in a statement it was “without conflict” and “very friendly.”

“This unfortunate attempt by the media to twist a story, along with the help of anonymous sources, is just another sensationalized distraction of an otherwise uneventful effort to persevere the legacy of President Trump and a good faith effort to ensure the fulfillment of the Presidential Records Act,” Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said in a statement Saturday. “Sadly, the business of ‘news’ has become reliant on the next manufactured Trump ‘investigation,’ and so here we are. It’s a disgrace.”

The tale of these 15 boxes — and the material contained within — underscores how defiantly and indiscriminately Trump violated the records law, which requires that the White House preserve all written communication related to a president’s official duties and then turn it over to the National Archives. Instead, starting in his presidency and continuing into his post-presidency, documents both classified and mundane — as well as official gifts, which are governed by similarly stringent rules — were treated with the same disregard and enveloped in the same chaos that characterized his term in office.

A trucking administrator at Bennett, a Georgia transportation firm that handles a lot of government contracts, said that under traditional circumstances, shipment of these sorts of materials would be handled through a secure transfer — including GPS tracking of the vehicle and a team trained to handle sensitive information.

But it remains unclear what protocols were followed because, as one person familiar with the transfer said, “Nothing about this is normal.” Officials have not identified what company handled the Mar-a-Lago shipment.

“He would roll his eyes at the rules, so we did, too,” said Stephanie Grisham, the former Trump White House press secretary who has become an outspoken Trump critic since the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. “We weren’t going to get in trouble because he’s the president of the United States.”

Grisham, the author of “I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House,” recalled one instance in which she expressed concern about violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in some forms of political activity. Grisham said that Trump told her: “Who’s the boss of the Hatch Act? It’s me. So say whatever you want.”

That cavalier attitude about the rules extended to Trump’s treatment of documents, which he routinely ripped up and threw away, forcing aides to retrieve them and send them to the White House Office of Records Management to be taped back together to comply with the Presidential Records Act, which dates to 1978.

Trump had a ripping process so distinctive that several aides instantly recalled it — two large, clean tears that left paper in quarters — and the remnants were strewn on desks, in trash cans and on floors, from the Oval Office to Air Force One. As president, Trump also regularly retired to his private residence with reams of official documents, often leaving them to pile up until records staff came searching for them.

When the Archives sent a tranche of documents to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, some of them had been ripped up and taped back together. And some no longer existed at all; when the committee requested certain documents focused on Trump’s campaign to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results, some of the relevant materials had already been shredded, according to a former senior administration official.

A forthcoming book by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman also reports that while Trump was president, White House residence staff members from time to time found clumps of paper clogging a toilet, leading them to believe that Trump was flushing documents.

Trump was warned by his first two chiefs of staff — Reince Priebus and John F. Kelly — about complying with the records act, as well as by Donald McGahn, his White House counsel.

And in 2020, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ripped up a copy of Trump’s State of the Union address after he delivered it, Trump seemed to exhibit at least some awareness of the Presidential Records Act, incorrectly claiming Pelosi had committed a crime.

“I thought it was a terrible thing when she ripped up the speech,” Trump said at the time. “First of all, it’s an official document. You’re not allowed. It’s illegal what she did. She broke the law.”

This past week, The Washington Post reported that Archives officials — suspecting that Trump may have violated laws dealing with the handling of government documents — asked the Justice Department to examine the issue. It is unclear whether the department will launch a full investigation, but the query prompted discussions between federal law enforcement officials about whether they should investigate Trump for a possible crime, though such a prosecution would face a high legal bar.

Trump’s haphazard treatment of documents, including sensitive ones, continued throughout his administration, right up until his frenzied and begrudging departure.

 

So another field of criminality that Merrick Garland will almost certainly ignore.  The Justice Department has been asked to investigate a number of Trump crimes: the Old Post Office Building lease, profiting from being in office, campaign finance crimes, the inauguration and its funding, now this.

No charges.