Sunday Long Read: A Zodiac Thriller

This week's Sunday Long Read is Aaron Gell's tale in LA Magazine about the 53-year-old Zodiac Killer mystery, with a dogged amateur sleuth's evidence pointing to a new suspect, and the woman who discovered her father may not have been the man she thought he was.

 

The Hawaiian rainforest where Gloria Doerr has lived since 2017 is a sort of magnet, she says, for people who are running away from something. But even there, in the shadow of an active volcano, sometimes things catch up with you.

For Doerr, 70, it happened this past April. She was spending a tranquil afternoon at home when she learned that her late father, Paul Alfred Doerr, had been linked to one of the most notorious murder sprees of the twentieth century. Her son had stumbled on a podcast interview with Paul’s accuser, Jarett Kobek. An internationally best-selling novelist based in Los Angeles, Kobek had written a whole book, How to Find Zodiac, about how her Dad might just have been the maniac who more than fifty years earlier had terrorized the Bay Area with a string of cold-blooded and seemingly random killings.

By the time she’d finished listening to the podcast, Doerr, a retired real estate agent, was in shock. If this writer had only bothered to pick up the phone and call her before lodging his accusation, she would happily have told him that her father, who died of a heart attack in 2007, while far from perfect, to put it mildly, could be a charming, quirky, and voraciously curious man—a member of Mensa and an early proponent of organic foods.

In the following days, Gloria mentioned the situation to a few close friends, who thought she might have a libel case. She even reached out to an attorney. Though she was reluctant to pay $17.95 for the book, a friend ordered her a copy.

Paul Doerr is hardly the only suspect in the case—far from it. Among the rogue’s gallery of other presumptive Zodiacs are a house painter, a former schoolteacher, a sports car dealer, a theater operator, and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. “There are probably 50 or 100 suspects named every year,” sighs Richard Grinell, the former postman who runs the website Zodiac Ciphers and has been following the case for a decade. In October, a self-described “national task force of seasoned investigators” called the Case Breakers pointed to a brand new Zodiac suspect. Their theory was quickly debunked, but not before Fox News picked up the story, leading to hundreds of credulous media reports.

Gloria’s father, in other words, was in good company.

The killer, who is linked to a series of late-1960s attacks in the Bay Area, employed a shifting MO: Often he shot his victims, but on one especially macabre occasion, clad in an executioner’s hood, he tied them up and used a knife. Though he mostly attacked young couples around Vallejo, he also murdered a cab driver in San Francisco. Officially, he is believed to have killed just five and severely injured two, but his modest body count has been far outstripped by his well-tended mystique, bolstered by a sinister handle and a practice of firing off letters to the media and other authorities, often including mysterious ciphers and signed with a crosshairs logo.

Perhaps his greatest cultural contribution, if one can call it that, is having popularized a tone of smug superiority that attention-hungry outcasts, both fictional and real—from Hannibal Lecter and the Riddler to the aforementioned Ted Kaczynski and a substantial subset of 4Chan dwellers—have sought to emulate ever since. Meanwhile, his cryptic puzzles brought a seductive element of interactivity to crime-solving (a married couple decoded his first cipher over breakfast in 1969) and prefigured the citizen-sleuth movement along with its twisted progeny, 9/11 trutherism and QAnon. That might explain why his modest murder spree managed to inspire so much media coverage, including documentaries, a David Fincher film, a bottomless podcast playlist, an array of websites and forums, and enough paperbacks to stock a small, very grisly library.

And now, a new book had been added to the shelf, and Gloria’s father was the main character.

 

Gell covers the tale of how Jared Kobek and Gloria Doerr met and a lot more. It's a solid true crime read.

And maybe a mystery solved at last.

Last Call For Iran, Iran, So Far Away Con't

The largest protests against the Iranian government in more than a dozen years have spread to a number of Iranian cities as the repressive crackdowns of the government of hard-liner President Ebrahim Raisi have triggered a massive response in return.

 

The largest anti-government protests in Iran since 2009 gathered strength on Saturday, spreading to as many as 80 cities, even as the authorities escalated a crackdown that has reportedly killed at least 50 people and brought the arrests of dozens of prominent activists and journalists, according to rights groups and news media reports.

Internet access — especially on cellphone apps widely used for communication — continued to be disrupted or fully blocked, affecting Iranians’ ability to communicate with one another and the outside world. News from Iran has trickled out with many hours of delay.

While the 2009 protests erupted over an election widely condemned as fraudulent, the current demonstrations seemed focused on the Iranian security forces, with reports of vicious beatings of security officers and firebombings of the local headquarters of the notorious morality police.

In many cities, including Tehran, the capital, security forces responded by opening fire on the crowds. On Boulevard Ferdous and at the Shahrak Ekbatan apartment complex in Tehran, officers fired at windows; in the city of Rasht, they threw tear gas into apartments, according to witnesses and videos on social media.

Iranian state media said Friday that at least 35 people had been killed in the unrest, but human rights groups said on Saturday that the number is likely to be much higher. A previous death toll of 17 issued by the state news media included at least five members of the security services.

The videos posted online and the scale of the response from the authorities are difficult to independently verify, but video and photographs sent by witnesses known to The New York Times were broadly in line with the images being posted widely online.

Deep resentments and anger have been building for months, analysts say, particularly among young Iranians, in response to a crackdown ordered by the country’s hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, that has targeted women.

That comes on top of a litany of complaints over the years over corruption, mismanagement of the economy, inept handling of Covid and widespread political repression. The problems have persisted under Mr. Raisi, who came to power in an election in which any potential contenders were eliminated before the vote, particularly those from the reformist faction.

During the tenure of Mr. Raisi’s predecessor, the moderate Hassan Rouhani, the morality police had been discouraged from enforcing Iran’s often draconian laws against women, particularly the requirement that they wear the hijab in public in the “proper” fashion. But Iran’s powerful supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is now said to be resting in bed after emergency surgery, engineered the ascent of Mr. Raisi, eliminating an important outlet for the frustrations of Iran’s younger generation.

Those frustrations are now boiling over. The small Kurdish city of Oshnavieh reportedly fell to protesters when local security forces retreated after days of intense fighting, the editor of a Kurdish news site said.

“Since last night, Oshnavieh has been governed by the people,” a Kurdish official, Hussein Yazdanpana, said in an interview, adding that women had thrown off their mandatory head scarves in celebration.

“The liberation has far-reaching consequences for other cities,” he said, describing the town as a gateway to other Kurdish areas of Iran.

Ammar Golie, an Iranian Kurd based in Germany who edits the news site NNS Roj, has been in regular contact with residents of Oshnavieh, which is in West Azerbaijan Province and has a population of 40,000 ethnic Kurds. He said the residents had set up roadblocks at the gateway to the city’s only two roads.

Videos posted on social media show large crowds marching in the streets of Oshnavieh, many wearing traditional Kurdish garb, and chanting, “Freedom.” Another video shows intense gunfights over control of the city’s Police Headquarters.

Mr. Golie said local contacts had told him that an army battalion and a unit of the Revolutionary Guards Corps from the nearest city, Oroumiyeh, had been deployed to crush the protests and take Oshnavieh back.

“We are expecting blood to be spilled,” Mr. Golie said. “It’s an extremely tense situation.”

The nationwide uprising was ignited by the death of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, in the custody of the morality police on Sept. 16. Ms. Amini was arrested on accusations of violating the hijab mandate. Women have led the past week’s demonstrations, some ripping off their head scarves, waving them and burning them as men have cheered them on.

For seven days and nights, Iranians have taken to the streets, facing bullets, tear gas, beatings and arrests to send a message to the clerics who have led the nation for 43 years. They have chanted for an end to the Islamic Republic’s rule, according to witnesses and videos shared on social media.

 

You mean a government willing to use "religious freedoms" in order to control women and ethnic and religious minorities in a theocratic police state may not be able to maintain popularity for long without having to constantly resort to lethal force?

 

There's a lesson here for those to choose to learn it.

Dems Playing The Money Game

And they're finally playing it to win, dropping $60 million to help Democrats in state legislature fights, where we've seen that Republican domination has only led to misery and fascism.

A Democratic-aligned group is investing nearly $60 million in state legislative races in five states, a significant sum in an often overlooked political arena where Democrats have struggled for decades.

The group, the States Project, said it was focusing on flipping a single seat in the Arizona State Senate that could swing it to Democratic control and on winning back both chambers of the Michigan and Pennsylvania Legislatures. The group also aims to defend Democratic majorities in Maine and Nevada.

The large infusion of cash from the States Project amounts to a recognition of the critical role that state legislatures play in American politics, orchestrating policy on abortion access, what can be taught in schools and other issues that animate voters. In every state except Minnesota, Virginia and Alaska, a single party controls both chambers.

Next year, the Supreme Court could give the legislative bodies yet more power if it endorses a theory, often called independent state legislature doctrine, that would give state legislatures nearly unchecked authority over elections. Left-leaning groups like the States Project argue that state legislative contests this year in several key battlegrounds could have an outsize impact on future elections.

“The alarm bells are ringing in our state legislatures,” said Adam Pritzker, a founder of the States Project and a Democratic donor. “With the rise of the Tea Party and the balance of power dramatically shifting toward the right, the rest of us have been asleep at the wheel for too long at the state level. And now, this threat is truly off the charts.”

The $60 million investment represents all of the States Project’s spending for the 2022 election cycle. The group estimates that it has already contributed about half of the money to candidates and legislative caucuses.

While Democrats have historically been outgunned by Republicans at the state legislative level, in part because of gerrymandered districts created after the Tea Party wave of 2010, they have ramped up their spending over the past few years and are coming closer to parity this year.

On the television airwaves, Republican candidates and outside groups have spent roughly $39 million, while Democrats have spent roughly $35 million, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. In Pennsylvania and Arizona, Republicans have spent nearly $1 million more than Democrats on ads since July.

 

The time for this fight was in 2010 and 2014, we'd be in far better shape as a functioning representative democracy if the people representing us weren't violent, racist white supremacy conspiracy theorists with theocratic delusions. 

And yet we elect the people who are like us as a whole. The problem remains that white America wants to go back to the supremacy era of the 50's (1950's, 1850's, 1750's, take your pick) and at this point it's going to be incredibly hard to stop them.

But we can do it.

Vote.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Arizona, Con't

Just six weeks before midterm elections, a state Judge has lifted a Roe-era injunction on Arizona's Civil War-era abortion ban and it will be allowed to take effect, criminalizing the procedure across the state.

An Arizona law that bans abortions in nearly all circumstances can again be enforced after a Pima County judge lifted an injunction that had left the pre-statehood law dormant for nearly five decades.

That decision Friday was immediately praised by abortion foes and lamented by abortion rights advocates — and it stands to be a potentially galvanizing force just ahead of November's midterm elections.

Republican state Attorney General Mark Brnovich asked the court to rule on the injunction after the U.S. Supreme Court in June overturned Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that legalized abortion across the country.

The court's decision earlier this year, in the Mississippi case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, put the question of abortion policy back in the hands of states.

Arizona had conflicting laws on the books, leading to the court challenge and confusion among abortion providers about what was legal and what was not.

The Friday ruling by Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson provides clarity in allowing enforcement of the old law, which bans abortions in all cases except when necessary to save the pregnant person's life.

But abortion rights advocates are likely to appeal, meaning the state of abortion law in Arizona is still far from settled. Providers expressed shock, outrage and enduring confusion over the ruling, which came a day before another abortion law was set to go into effect.

“Today’s ruling by the Pima County Superior Court has the practical and deplorable result of sending Arizonans back nearly 150 years," Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona, said in a statement. "No archaic law should dictate our reproductive freedom and how we live our lives today."

The basic provisions of the law were first codified by the first territorial Legislature of Arizona in 1864: It mandates two to five years in prison for anyone who provides an abortion or the means for an abortion. The state adopted the law with streamlined language in 1901; it remains on the books today as ARS 13-3603.

"We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue," Brnovich said in a statement Friday. "I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans."

The abortion fight will definitely be on the ballot in Arizona, where women will have to decide whether or not they want a law written before women and Black folk even had the right to vote rule their lives.

2018 was a 49-49% split among white women, and Democrats did very well. But if 2022 is another year where white women vote majority Republican again though, it's going to be bad.

Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.

Last Call Fof The Bad Batch

What should have been an easy win for House Republicans in Ohio in another unconstitutional district that they gerrymandered specifically to get rid of long-time Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur has seemingly blown up n their faces thanks to their terrible candidate to replace her, secessionist and serial liar J.R. Majewski.

House Republicans have withdrawn their advertising for Ohio Republican J.R. Majewski, a MAGA-aligned candidate who was at the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots, Axios has learned.

What's happening: The National Republican Congressional Committee withdrew about $1 million in ad reservations for the district, according to a GOP source familiar with its strategy, all but surrendering the seat to Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur.

Why it matters: Kaptur's redrawn district — which backed Trump by three points in 2020 — once looked like an easy pickup for House Republicans. The GOP is now at risk of squandering another race because Republican primary voters nominated an extreme candidate.

Details: Majewski, an Air Force veteran, has been under fire for sympathizing with the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and saying that every state that backed Trump in 2020 should secede from the United States. 

The AP reported this week that Majewski misrepresented his military service, inaccurately claiming he was deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. In reality, he spent six months loading planes at an air base in Qatar. 

The AP wrote: "His post-military career has been defined by exaggerations, conspiracy theories, talk of violent action against the U.S. government and occasional financial duress."

Zoom in: Democrats have been relentlessly hammering Majewski on television over his extremist views. "He broke through police barricades at the Capitol, then blamed police for the riot. Now he wants to break our country apart," one Kaptur ad says. "He's not just radical, he's dangerous!"

 

Majewski lied about his military service, he lied about his direct involvement in the January 6th terrorist attack, and he has no business being a free man walking the streets, let alone in the House. Even this Republican party is giving up on him because what they hate most isn't Democrats, Democrats serve as targets and useful enemies they can focus on. 

 

Seeing his campaign come apart in real time, Majewski tried to save his ass with a lame press conference earlier today.

 

Majewski had a press conference on Friday to address allegations raised by the AP piece -- and, according to Toledo Blade reporter Luke Ramseth, he said that he could not provide details about his purported deployments to Afghanistan because they were classified.

"The orders and military records that I have been able to obtain from my personal files shows that all of my deployments are listed as classified," he said.

However, Majewski claimed that he flew into "multiple bases" in Afghanistan, although he provided no specifics. He also said he had pictures of himself in Afghanistan, although he only said he might share them.

What's more, Majewski issued threats to sue the Associated Press, and said that in Congress he would push for new laws to make it a crime to "besmirch veterans" such as himself.

With six weeks left of Majewski's stupid lies and threats to the media and Kaptur ads to wreck this idiot, I'm betting that Kaptur pulls this off and keeps her seat.

And Dems get one step closer to keeping the House.

The Jackson, Hole Con't

The most corrupt, most broken Republican state government in America continues to get worse as the nation's poorest state, Mississippi, deals with twin scandals of welfare money embezzlement and state capital Jackson's wrecked water system, and this is coming from someone who has lived in KY for the last 16 years.

First up, the state welfare director that oversaw the slush fund is pleading guilty to both state and federal charges and cooperating with prosecutors.

 

Former welfare agency director John Davis is set to plead guilty on Thursday to two federal charges and 18 state counts of fraud or conspiracy related to his role in the Mississippi welfare scandal, according to separate federal and state court filings.

The new federal charges pertain to welfare funds Davis allegedly helped funnel to the companies of retired professional wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., son of famed WWE wrestler Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase. Davis and Teddy DiBiase Jr. had developed a close relationship during Davis’ term as welfare director from 2016 to 2019, as Mississippi Today has reported in its investigative series “The Backchannel.”

Davis instructed two nonprofits receiving tens of millions in welfare funds from his department to pay Teddy DiBiase Jr. under what the federal court filing called “sham contracts” to deliver personal development courses to state employees and a program for inner-city youth, “regardless of whether any work had been performed and knowing that no work would ever be performed.”

Davis, who had not previously faced federal charges for his role in the welfare scandal, is the latest defendant to plead guilty and agree to aid prosecutors. In April, Nancy and Zach New pleaded guilty to state charges in the welfare case as well as to separate federal fraud charges they faced related to public school funding. The News are cooperating with federal investigators, who continue to probe the welfare scheme and who else may have been involved.

The federal bill of information unsealed Wednesday, to which Davis is set to plead guilty, also describes four unnamed co-conspirators in the scheme. Based on the incorporation dates provided in the filing for the co-conspirators’ affiliated organizations or companies, Mississippi Today identified three of the alleged co-conspirators as Nancy New, director of Mississippi Community Education Center; Christi Webb, director of Family Resource Center of North Mississippi; and Teddy DiBiase Jr., owner of Priceless Ventures, LLC and Familiae Orientem, LLC.

A fourth unnamed co-conspirator, a resident of Hinds County, is unidentifiable in the filing.

Davis and the three alleged co-conspirators are each facing civil charges in an ongoing lawsuit Mississippi Department of Human Services is bringing in an attempt to recoup welfare money from people who received it improperly.

“As a result of the actions of DAVIS, the Co-Conspirators, and others, millions of dollars in federal safety-net funds were diverted from needy families and low-income individuals in Mississippi,” the federal filing reads.

 

The Brett Favre stuff is only $3-4 million of the $77 million stolen. A lot of people are going to jail on this one, folks.

And many more people need to go to jail over Jackson's broken water supply. 

 

A class action lawsuit was filed in federal court Monday seeking $5 million in damages related to Jackson's ongoing water crisis.

The lawsuit alleges the city of Jackson's water supply has been neglected for decades, culminating in its complete shutdown in August 2022. Before the water supply failure, the lawsuit states Jackson's water was not fit for human consumption due to high levels of lead and other contaminants.

The plaintiffs claim they were poisoned by lead and other contaminants in Jackson's drinking water.

"This didn't start a couple weeks ago. This started years ago," said lead plaintiff Priscilla Sterling.

The lawsuit names the city of Jackson, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, former mayor Tony Yarber, former public works directors Kishia Powell, Robert Miller and Jerriot Smash; Siemens Corporation, Siemens Industry, Inc., and Trilogy Engineering Services LLC as defendants.

 

Meanwhile, House Democrats want to get Jackson the money they need, as state Republicans wasted, spent elsewhere, or outright stole the money to keep the water system going.

 

House appropriators are considering sending as much as $200 million to address the drinking water crisis in Jackson, Miss., as part of the stop-gap spending measure to fund the government past Sept. 30.

Documents obtained by POLITICO show draft language that would deliver the money directly from EPA to the city, bypassing the Republican-controlled state government. Democrats, including Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), have accused the state of withholding resources from the majority Black state capital.

The numbers: Thompson told POLITICO he is pushing for $200 million in emergency funds for a first phase to address the dilapidated water infrastructure in Jackson.

Jackson’s 150,000 residents were without drinking water for weeks this summer after flooding on the Pearl River caused the system’s water pressure to drop precipitously. The city has also issued a series of boil water orders throughout the year due to dangerous water quality.

Jackson’s water system, which was built in 1914, is in a dire state of disrepair, according to a 2020 EPA review. The total cost for upgrading it is unclear, but estimates have ranged as high as $1 billion. The city has not completed a long-term plan for addressing its problems. Thompson said $200 million is “what appears to be reasonable” now, in the absence of a plan.

 

Keep in mind that the victims in both of these scandals are some of Mississippi's poorest Black communities. It's 2022, and Republican environmental and economic racism continues in full swing across red state after red state.

It has all my life, and it will continue well after we're all gone.

Like A House Afire, Con't

The latest Cook Political Report analysis of the House has Republicans at 212 and Dems at 192, with 31 tossups, 22 Dem seats and 9 GOP seats. Republicans only have to pick up 6 of those 22 Dem toss-ups to win the House back.

Every Dem win of those 9 GOP toss-ups will be critical, including Cincinnati's competitive district, OH-1. Dems can keep the House, but it's going to require some heavy lifting.

It's a far better picture than even last month or in June, when Republicans were expected to pick up 40+ seats as opposed to the 15-20 now.

Dems can win this, but they're going to have to get some very close wins in those toss-up districts.

Republicans are still favored, but nowhere near as much as they were. That's progress.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead Goes Through Michigan

Michigan GOP Attorney General candidate Matt DePrano wants to outlaw Plan B contraceptive medication in the state, apparently wanting to prosecute possession and sales and treating it like hard drugs like fentanyl. 

At an event last month, Michigan attorney general candidate Matt DePerno (R) said that Plan B is no different than fentanyl and should be banned in Michigan.

“You gotta figure out how to ban the pill from the state,” DePerno said in audio, taken from a conversation at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas last month and provided by a Democratic source on the condition of anonymity. When asked about ideas on how to ban the contraceptive, DePerno said: “But you have to stop it at the border. It would be no different than fentanyl. The state has to ban it, and it should be banned. But it’s just an issue of how do you enforce it; how do you make sure that it stops? That’s your problem.”

Plan B is a form of emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex. The pill, also known as the “morning-after pill”, has nothing to do with the United States’ borders or fentanyl. It is a legal and safe medication that millions of people use.

Since the 1970s, Americans have had a constitutional right to contraception. Married couples were guaranteed the right in the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court decision. And unmarried people have the right through the 1971 Eisenstadt v. Baird decision.

“If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child,” wrote Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in the majority opinion for the Baird case.

Now that abortion is no longer a constitutional right for all Americans, the Republican Party is trying to diminish American rights even further with talks of banning contraception and revisiting the right to gay marriage.

 

Which anyone who has read ZVTS for even a couple of months would have figured out, that Republicans were never going to stop at ending Roe. They are coming for all of it, the entire civil rights and women's rights eras, and dropping us back in 1950, and in more than a few cases, in 1850 or even 1750.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

If Donald Trump thought his legal troubles were bad now, last night the 11th Circuit just ruled against his "special master" nonsense, all but tossing Judge Aileen Cannon's ruling out the window on appeal.

 

A federal appeals court is allowing the Justice Department to continue looking at documents marked as classified that were seized from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home and resort. 

The emergency intervention upends a trial judge's order over those documents that blocked federal investigators' work on the documents. 

A special master's review of that subset of about 100 records, which would've allowed Trump's legal team to see them, is now partially stopped. The special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, is able to continue his work reviewing the rest of the material seized from Mar-a-Lago, to make sure records belonging to Trump or that he may be able to claim are confidential aren't used by investigators. 

"It is self-evident that the public has a strong interest in ensuring that the storage of the classified records did not result in 'exceptionally grave damage to the national security,'" the three-judge panel from the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals stated. "Ascertaining that necessarily involves reviewing the documents, determining who had access to them and when, and deciding which (if any) sources or methods are compromised." 

 

Team Trump of course will demand a full panel hearing (called en banc) from the entire 11th Circuit now,  but it turns out he can't get one.

 

Eleventh Circuit Rule 35-4 expressly prohibits en banc reconsideration of panel rulings on applications for stays.

In English, if Trump wants to continue to defend Judge Cannon's injunction, his only remaining option is #SCOTUS (where, IMHO, he'll lose):https://t.co/PbyNFqkNgq pic.twitter.com/9rQ4ApbuR9

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) September 22, 2022

 

We'll see. This was always going to go to SCOTUS anyway.

Last Call For Orange Metldown, Con't

NY State Attorney General Tish James has dropped the hammer on Donald Trump, filing a $250 million fraud suit involving the Trump Organization and Trump family.

For 20 years, Donald Trump and his family enriched themselves through "numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentations," New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges in a new lawsuit that accuses the Trumps of "grossly" inflating the former president's net worth by billions of dollars and cheating lenders and others with false and misleading financial statements.

The civil lawsuit, filed Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, seeks a $250 million judgment and a prohibition on any of the Trumps leading a company in the state of New York.

Among other allegations, the suit claims that the former president's Florida estate and golf resort, Mar-a-Lago, was valued as high as $739 million, but should have been valued at around one-tenth that amount, at $75 million. The suit says that higher valuation was "based on the false premise that it was unrestricted property and could be developed for residential use even though Mr. Trump himself signed deeds donating his residential development rights and sharply restricting changes to the property."

James is referring her findings to federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who could possibly open a criminal investigation into bank fraud, according to a footnote in the lawsuit.

Through "persistent and repeated business fraud," the Trumps convinced banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than deserved, according to the lawsuit, which named the former president, three of his adult children, the company, and two of its executives, Allan Weisselberg and Jeff McConney.

"Mr. Trump made known through Mr. Weisselberg that he wanted his net worth on the Statements to increase -- a desire Mr. Weisselberg and others carried out year after year in their fraudulent preparation of the Statements," the lawsuit said. "The scheme to inflate Mr. Trump's net worth also remained consistent year after year."

Weisselberg last month pleaded guilty to unrelated criminal charges of tax evasion brought by the Manhattan district attorney's office, which has been conducting a parallel investigation.

 

And just in time for Manhattan AG Alvin Bragg opening his fraud trial next month against the same Trump Organization.  SDNY US Attorney Damien Williams, and the IRS will also be notified of the case and its evidence, as this could very well turn into both a state and federal tax fraud case against Trump and not just his company.

Trump's in real trouble now. The civil burden of proof is a lot lower than any criminal proceeding would be, meaning that hitting Trump in the pocketbook is very much a real option.

Trump no doubt will fundraise off this, and I expect he'll announce his candidacy in order to force Republicans into pressuring James to drop the case. The only question there is timing.

But for now, the game begins in earnest.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Big Mad Edition

Ol' Vlad, seeing his boys laughed out of huge swaths of Ukraine territory earlier this month, is now promising Even More, Less Trained Russian Troops™ for the Fellas to play with.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the partial mobilization of his country’s military Wednesday, calling up reservists in a significant escalation of his war in Ukraine after battlefield setbacks left the Kremlin facing growing pressure to act.

In a rare national address, he also backed plans for Russia to annex occupied areas of southern and eastern Ukraine, appearing to threaten nuclear retaliation if Kyiv continues its efforts to reclaim that land.

It came just a day after four Russian-controlled areas announced they would stage votes this week on breaking away from Ukraine and joining Russia, in a plan Kyiv and its Western allies dismissed as a desperate “sham” aimed at deterring a successful counteroffensive by Ukrainian troops.

Vowing that Russia would use all the means at its disposal to protect what it considers its territory, Putin accused the West of nuclear blackmail and warned: “This is not a bluff.”

Speaking after him, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said an initial 300,000 reservists would be called up.

Only those with relevant combat and service experience will be mobilized, he said. Another clause in the decree, which came into effect immediately, prevents most professional soldiers from terminating their contracts and leaving service until the partial mobilization is no longer in place.

 

Gosh, I don't understand, I was told the Special Military Operation to Liberate Russians in Ukraine, or Operation SMOL RU, was going fantastically and that Kyiv was going to surrender at any minute. Also, if Putin has to liberate Ukraine by setting the whole country on nuclear fire and liberate them from breathing, well that's a price he's willing to pay, I guess.

 

He's mad. Big mad.

A month ago I would have at least said he was on the verge of actually capturing the Donbas, but that all fell apart after Biden brought in the HIMARS and suddenly the Russkies are on the run.

Now, Russia *is* winning the economic sanctions war with the EU still, but it's not like he can cut gas to EU any more than the zero Gazprom is delivering now.

We'll see.

Here Comes The (Actual) Judge

Team Trump's hearing today with the Justice Department and Special Master Judge Raymond Dearie did not go very well for them. At all.

After the FBI found highly classified documents inside his Mar-a-Lago home, former President Donald Trump sought review of the materials by a special master. Now that his choice for that position has been appointed, Trump’s attorneys struggled in their efforts to have the review process play out in the way they prefer.

On Tuesday, a skeptical Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie pressed Trump’s lawyers repeatedly on their refusal to disclose whether he declassified any of the documents he brought to Mar-a-Lago — and if so, which ones.

“The government gives me prima facie evidence that these are classified documents,” Dearie said, referring to the plain markings on the records. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it.”

Dearie gave Trump’s lawyer James Trusty ample opportunity to explain why his consideration shouldn’t end there.

On the eve of the hearing, Trump’s lawyers had filed a four-page letter urging Dearie to back off from his demand that they disclose declassification arguments.

“We respectfully submit that the time and place for affidavits or declarations would be in connection with a Rule 41 motion that specifically alleges declassification as a component of its argument for return of property,” Trusty wrote in the filing. “Otherwise, the Special Master process will have forced the Plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the District Court’s order.”

Dearie said he agreed that Trump’s lawyers have the right to assert that position, but he suggested that they would have to live with the consequences of that course of action.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it,” the judge said.

Throughout the litigation, top Justice Department officials — including Jay Bratt, the chief of Counterintelligence and Export Control Section in National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney Juan Antonio Gonzalez — have noted that Trump’s legal team has danced around the declassification issues. Their legal briefs have not said that Trump declassified any of the documents, which were marked “Top Secret” and above. The lawyers only said that Trump may have declassified them.

During Tuesday’s hearing, the judge needled Trump’s lawyers on what he’s supposed to do in light of the fact that the government provided “prima facie evidence” of classification, such as the markings on the documents.

“As far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it,” Dearie said.

When Dearie spoke offhandedly of lawyers’ “litigation strategy,” Trusty played down the notion that he was engaged in “gamesmanship.” Trusty denied the implication.

Under the terms of the order of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, the special master’s review should be completed some time after Thanksgiving. Trump’s attorneys have asked Dearie to extend the deadline.

Dearie appeared to recognize that he is on a time crunch — and seemed unlikely to budge from it.

“I’m going to do the best I can with the time available to us,” Dearie said.

The Department of Justice has a pending appeal before the 11th Circuit, seeking an emergency stay that would prevent the government from having to disclose the classified documents for review. The stay also seeks to allow them to continue scrutinizing the documents in their ongoing criminal investigation.

 

This entire exercise is a woeful disaster, and Dearie seems to appreciate that fact. He's clearly not going to let the Trumpies get away with this. None of this would be happening without Judge Aileen Cannon's shameful mess of a ruling earlier this month, and Dearie is stuck being the person of history right now. He's decided to do the best job he can.

We'll see if the 11th Circuit acts on the Justice Department's emergency stay request or not, but it's pretty obvious that the Trumpies are in for a world of hurt from Judge Dearie.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead, Con't

The road to Gilead runs through Red State Republican men (and women) who want to criminalize not just abortions, but miscarriages and contraception too, resulting in women filling for-profit prisons for "reproductive crimes" if they get their way.

 

A businessman turned state representative from rural Oil City, Louisiana, and a Baptist pastor banded together earlier this year on a radical mission. 

They were adamant that a woman who receives an abortion should receive the same criminal consequences as one who drowns her baby. 

Under a bill they promoted, pregnant people could face murder charges even if they were raped or doctors determined the procedure was needed to save their own life. Doctors who attempted to help patients conceive through in-vitro fertilization, a fertility treatment used by millions of Americans, could also be locked up for destroying embryos, and certain contraception such as Plan B would be banned. 

"The taking of a life is murder, and it is illegal," state Rep. Danny McCormick told a committee of state lawmakers who considered the bill in May, right after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked. 

"No compromises, no more waiting," Brian Gunter, the pastor who suggested McCormick be the one to introduce the legislation, told the committee. 

Only four people spoke against the bill during the committee meeting— all women. They pleaded with the lawmakers to grasp the gravity of the proposed restrictions, which went farther than any state abortion law currently on the books, and warned of unintended consequences. 

"We need to take a deep breath," said Melissa Flournoy, a former state representative who runs the progressive advocacy group 10,000 Women Louisiana. She said the bill would only punish women and that there wasn't enough responsibility being placed on men.
But in the end, only one man and one woman, an Independent and a Democrat, voted against it in committee. Seven men on the committee, all Republicans, voted in favor of the bill, moving it one step closer to becoming law.

A faction of self-proclaimed "abolitionists" are seeking to make abortion laws more restrictive and the consequences of having the procedure more punitive than ever before.
Emboldened by the overturning of Roe v. Wade, they say they will not be satisfied until fetuses are given the same protections as all US citizens — meaning that if abortion is illegal, then criminal statutes should be applied accordingly. While major national anti-abortion groups say they do not support criminalizing women, the idea is gaining traction with certain conservative lawmakers. And the activists and politicians leading the charge are nearly always men, CNN found. 

This year, three male lawmakers from Indiana attempted to wipe out existing abortion regulations and change the state's criminal statutes to apply at the time of fertilization. In Texas, five male lawmakers authored a bill last year that would have made getting an abortion punishable by the death penalty if it had gone into law. A state representative in Arizona introduced legislation that included homicide charges — saying in a Facebook video that anyone who undergoes an abortion deserves to "spend some time" in the Arizona "penal system." And a male Kansas lawmaker proposed a bill that would amend the state's constitution to allow abortion laws to pass without an exception for the life of the mother. 

While most in the anti-abortion movement believe that human life begins at conception, "abolitionists" are particularly uncompromising in how they act on their beliefs — comparing abortion to the Holocaust and using inflammatory terms such as "slaughter" and "murder" to describe a medical procedure that most Americans believe should be legal in all or most cases.  

Bradley Pierce, the attorney who helped draft the Louisiana bill, said his organization has been involved with many of the "abolition" bills that have been introduced in more than a dozen states. All of this proposed legislation would make it possible for women seeking abortions to face criminal charges. 

An overwhelming majority of Americans said in a Pew Research Center poll they don't believe men should have a greater say on abortion policy, but that is what is happening. Experts told CNN that the male dominance fits within the anti-abortion movement's current framing as being focused on "fetal personhood" and "fetal rights" as opposed to maternal rights. 

 

This movement to criminalize women who have abortions even to save their own lives? That's 100% men wanting control of women, full stop. Reducing them to birthing units, and if they die in childbirth, that's God's will. Or, you know, the will of the state putting them in jail for decades if they survive it.

"Maybe women shouldn't be having sex, the dirty sluts" is the inevitable response, never mind the rape and sexual assault millions of women go through each year.

That really is the road to the fictional Gilead from The Handmaid's Tale, complete with raging white supremacy on top of the misogyny, because it would be Black and brown women suffering the most from laws like this, when Black and Native women in particular have astronomical birthing mortality rates as it is.

No, this is about control. Dobbs was about putting women in their places, beneath a man that they serve.

Vote these assholes out.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin hasn't made a lot of friends this year, and as I said earlier this year, Senate Republicans have every reason to sink his environmental deregulation bill so that Manchin enacts the "consequences" he threatened a few months ago, those consequences being a party switch to the GOP ahead of midterms. Senate Republicans are well aware of this, and are telling Manchin his bill won't survive a filibuster, and to get on board with the GOP now.

Senate Republicans say Joe Manchin can’t count on them to save his energy permitting deal with Democratic leaders, potentially upending efforts to attach the centrist’s proposal to a must-pass government funding bill.

With progressives already balking, several Republicans said Monday night that they might not provide the votes needed to break a filibuster of permitting reform, a key cog of this summer’s Democratic climate, health care and tax deal. Though easing construction of energy projects is a longstanding core GOP goal, the party’s senators said they were under no obligation to cough up perhaps a dozen or more votes that Democrats need to get Manchin’s vision done.

Republicans have introduced their own proposal, led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and supported by nearly the entire GOP conference. Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said Democrats would have better luck attaching that Republican permitting legislation to this month’s government funding bill than adding Manchin’s plan, which remains unreleased.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said that “I don’t think you can count on any Republicans to vote for something they haven’t seen.” But there’s another factor: Manchin’s agreement with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass their party-line domestic policy centerpiece this summer — with permitting reform as a side agreement, requiring votes from both parties to pass later.

“Given what Senator Manchin did on the reconciliation bill, [it’s] engendered a lot of bad blood,” Cornyn said. “There’s not a lot of sympathy on our side to provide Sen. Manchin a reward.”

The uncertainty around Manchin’s proposal is the Hill’s central drama as Congress sprints to finish its work before the midterms. The Senate is expected to move first on a stopgap spending bill to avert a shutdown on Oct. 1, likely extending current government funding through Dec. 16.

Ukraine aid is likely to be included, though the GOP is expected to block coronavirus and monkeypox funding from the measure. That leaves the main question of whether Congress can approve Manchin’s proposal for speeding up construction of energy projects, including West Virginia’s Mountain Valley natural gas line.

Manchin is warning Republicans that it would be “horrible politics” for them to reject legislation that would speed up both fossil-fuel and clean energy projects.

“Something you’ve always wanted, and you get 80 percent of something, and you’re gonna let the perfect be the enemy of the good?” Manchin said. “It’s a shame that basically the politics is trumping policy that we’ve all wanted for the last 10 or 12 years.”

Negotiators still aren’t close to an agreement — making it highly unlikely that any bill will move this week, according to senior aides. Without a deal in the coming days, both chambers could be working right up until next week’s deadline, despite an eagerness among Democrats to avoid chaos in their final legislative stretch before the midterm elections.

Democrats believe Republicans are exacting revenge on Manchin and Democrats for steamrolling them this summer. The majority party passed a microchip bill with bipartisan votes, then announced a deal between Manchin and Schumer that plowed hundreds of billions of dollars into fighting climate change, imposed a corporate minimum tax and extended expiring health care subsidies.

“I think they just don’t want to give another win to either a Democratic Senate or a Joe Manchin,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

 

It's true, Republicans don't want to give Manchin another Democratic win. But a Republican win, where Manchin bails on the party, gets his pipeline for WV as part of must-pass budget negotiations, and his sub-Biden approval numbers back in his home state skyrocket again?

 

Manchin may take that deal.

 

The other theory is that he's bluffing, and there's plenty of evidence for that, too.

We'll see.

 

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

We've now reached the campaign stretch where the reality of Republicans being the party out of power in a midterm is asserting itself as races in Georgia, Florida, and Texas are going to be at best, extremely close, and at worst, double-digit Republican wins.

First up, Georgia.

 

The latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll paints a bleak picture for Georgia Democrats in November, with every statewide candidate aside from U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock facing a sizable deficit less than two months before the election.

The poll of likely voters released Tuesday showed the U.S. Senate race deadlocked between Warnock, who had 44%, and Republican Herschel Walker, who was at 46%. That’s within the poll’s margin of error. An additional 3% of voters indicate they’ll back Libertarian Chase Oliver, while 7% are undecided.

That close race is one of the only bright spots for Democrats in the poll, which was conducted by the University of Georgia’s School of Policy and International Affairs.

Gov. Brian Kemp led Stacey Abrams 50% to 42% in the AJC poll, one of the first polls that shows the Republican incumbent north of the majority-vote mark he needs to win a second term without a runoff.

About 1% of likely voters backed a third-party candidate, and 6% were undecided.

A majority of voters — 54% — approve of how Kemp is handling his job as governor.

Some 51% of likely Georgia voters want the Republican Party to win control of Congress, while 70% say the country is on the wrong track.

And just 37% approve of President Joe Biden’s performance in office, statistically unchanged since the last AJC poll in July. While Biden’s approval rating is rebounding in some other battleground states, he remains underwater in Georgia.

Further down the ticket, Democrats fare no better. Republican nominees for lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state had double-digit leads over their Democratic challengers. With less than 50 days until the election, there’s little time to reverse the trend.

 

Things aren't looking much better in Texas, either. 

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has gained on Democrat Beto O’Rourke in the high-stakes race for Texas governor and now has a 9-point cushion, up from 7 points last month.

According to a new poll from The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler, Abbott leads O’Rourke 47% to 38%.

The poll, conducted Sept. 6-13, surveyed 1,268 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Abbott’s recent flood of TV ads, which for weeks went unanswered, and voters’ slight rightward tilt on abortion, the border and crime may have helped the two-term incumbent build on a 46%-39% lead in August, two political scientists agreed.

“A clear change in the election is that the Abbott campaign started advertising and they went negative while being the only campaign on the air,” said poll director Mark Owens, who teaches political science at UT-Tyler. “Registered voters who say they saw the advertisements supported Gov. Abbott 23% more often.”

University of Houston professor Brandon Rottinghaus said Abbott’s “solid and even growing lead” is a natural result of “the incumbency advantage” — his edge in money, broadcasting airtime and name recognition.

After a spring and summer in which the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade and the mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school boosted O’Rourke, the traditional heating up of campaigns after Labor Day has brought Abbott to more friendly terrain on matters of most concern to voters, Rottinghaus said.

 

In Ohio, Florida and NC Senate races, Republicans remain ahead by 3-5 points at 538. Dems are holding the fort in Nevada, Arizona and NH however. The bright spot is Pennsylvania, where John Fetterman is looking like he's going to win.

That would make it 51-49 if Warnock can hold on. But the other Dem bright spot is Wisconsin, which is as close as Georgia right now. Mandela Barnes is in a neck-and-neck race with Sen. Ron Johnson.

The House, well, Republicans continue to have the same 70% odds that Democrats do in the Senate. We'll see.