Last Call For Here Comes The Judge, Con't

DC Distrct Court Judge Tanya Chutkan has clearly run out of patience with Donald Trump's now bog standard social media threats and attacks on the legal system, and she's warning Trump of consequences if he continues.

 

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan warned Donald Trump and his attorney Friday that repeated “inflammatory” statements about his latest criminal prosecution would force her to speed his trial on charges related to his bid to subvert the 2020 election.

“I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case,” Chutkan told Trump lawyer John Lauro during a hearing. “I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”

Chutkan’s stark admonition came at the conclusion of her first courtroom session in the newest criminal case against the former president. The aim of the hearing was for special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors and Trump’s attorneys to hash out disputes about the handling of evidence in the case. Once Chutkan enters a so-called “protective order” governing evidence, prosecutors say they’re prepared to share millions of pages of documents with Trump’s team, jumpstarting the case and setting it on a path to trial.

But Chutkan, aware of the national spotlight on her oversight of the explosive case, repeatedly emphasized that she intended to keep politics out of the courtroom and treat Trump like any other criminal defendant. That included potential consequences if he makes statements that could be construed as harassing or threatening witnesses.

“The fact that he’s running a political campaign has to yield to the orderly administration of justice,” Chutkan said. “If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about witnesses in this case, that’s how it has to be.”

“Even arguably ambiguous statements from parties or their counsel, if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors, can threaten the process,” Chutkan added later. “The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case which could taint the jury pool … the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial quickly.”

 

Ahh, but Trump isn't the only person to experience the Finding Out phase of messing with federal judges today.

 

Sam Bankman-Fried is heading to jail after a U.S judge on Friday revoked his bail, finding probable cause that the indicted founder of the bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange tampered with witnesses at least twice.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan's decision to jail the 31-year-old former billionaire ahead of his Oct. 2 fraud trial over FTX's November 2022 collapse came after prosecutors said he had "crossed a line" by sharing private writings by former romantic partner Caroline Ellison with a New York Times reporter.

"He has already - without violating any other bail condition save that he not commit another crime - gone up to the line over and over again," Kaplan, who is known for his no-nonsense demeanor in the courtroom, said in a hearing in Manhattan federal court.

The judge rejected a defense request to delay Bankman-Fried's detention pending appeal of the decision.

The decision could complicate Bankman-Fried's efforts to prepare for trial. He faces charges of having stolen billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund, where Ellison was chief executive officer.

She has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify against him at his Oct. 2 trial.

Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not guilty, sat with his shoulders hunched, leaning forward on the table and fidgeting with a Post-It note as the judge order him detained.

He had a blank expression as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs by members of the U.S. Marshals Service after removing his shoelaces, watch, jacket and tie and emptying his pockets.

 

Obscenely rich and powerful criminals held to account for their actions before a trial even starts is music to my ears.

Long overdue StupidiTag™: Behold The Finding Out Phase!

 

 

Black History Matters

Black History Matters, because Black History is American history, but in Ron DeSantis's Florida, it's propaganda and indoctrination designed to take history away from everyone.

 

Slavery was a compromise. The Black Lives Matter movement led to more crime. Masculinity helped win World War II.

Those are some of the lessons included in PragerU Kids videos, an educational entertainment program created by PragerU, a right-wing advocacy group long criticized for its content being “misleading” or factually inaccurate. Its videos have prompted even more backlash online since PragerU CEO Marissa Streit announced last month that the group is partnering with the state of Florida as an education vendor to provide supplemental lessons.

Among the PragerU Kids videos making the rounds on social media is one called “Leo & Layla Meet Frederick Douglass,” in which a pair of children go back in time and meet an animated depiction of Frederick Douglass. In the video, Douglass, an abolitionist who devoted his life to anti-slavery efforts, describes slavery as a compromise between the Founding Fathers and the Southern colonies for the benefit of the U.S. The depiction also criticizes fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

The animated video drew swift criticism from social media users who deemed it propaganda, and condemned an apparent reference to the police violence protests of 2020, in which a purported Douglass said “William refuses all compromise, demands immediate change, and if he doesn’t get what he wants, he likes to set things on fire,” referring to Garrison.

“This is some of the most dangerous & false propaganda I’ve ever seen,” one person tweeted. “The description of Frederick Douglass in this animation is a flat out lie and the concept that children should be learning from this should scare everyone.”

Another added: “This video bastardizes the essence of Frederick Douglass. It’s insulting for me as a former history/govt teacher. I can’t imagine how devastating it must feel for Black people to see this dehumanizing curriculum implemented (or continued) in Florida public schools.”

Streit, though, said in a phone interview Thursday, that any educational offering could potentially include material that could be deemed offensive.

“I challenge those same people to look through every word that Scholastic has printed or, or every word that BrainPOP has published, and tell me that you’re not going to find something that you are not offended by," she said. "But you know, I completely stand by what’s in our videos. I actually think that our Frederick Douglass video is a great one.”

Streit contends that critics have only read one version of history — a progressive one, documented in works like "A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. "The fact that people are so upset is actually a sign of the fact that there has been one way of doing things for a very long time," she added.

Her sentiments echo her announcement last month that the K-12 “supplemental educational resources” are a response to U.S. schools being “hijacked by the left.” The news comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president in 2024, has championed controversial changes to the state’s education curriculum. His administration has tried to block a high school Advanced Placement African American studies course and signed laws to restrict the instruction of reproductive health and gender identity in schools. Additionally, challenges to book access have reportedly increased as a result of DeSantis’ education bills.

In a statement, the Florida Department of Education said in part: “The Florida Department of Education reviewed PragerU Kids and determined the material aligns to Florida’s revised civics and government standards. PragerU Kids is no different than many other resources, which can be used as supplemental materials in Florida schools at district discretion.”

 

PragerU hogwash as an officially recognized supplemental lesson for kids in Florida is disturbing as hell. It's vile, and they give the excuse that the right-wing noise machine always gives: "Stupid libtards fear our real history in the marketplace of ideas!"

Well yes, "slavery was an acceptable compromise that helped the Blacks" is something that should be shunned along with flat earth nonsense and "your womb belongs to God and the state".

And I wish  Zinn's People's History of the US was as ubiquitous in high school or college as the right claims it is, Jesus.

Black History Matters.

The House GOP Circus Of The Damned, Con't

Ol' Jim Comer is promising to subpoena President Biden, Hunter Biden, and anyone else in the Biden family he can drag under the lights in his fantasy delusions.

 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, who is leading the investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, said Thursday his panel plans to subpoena members of the Biden family, including possibly President Joe Biden.

“This is always going to end with the Bidens coming in front of the committee. We are going to subpoena the family,” Comer, R-Ky., said during an appearance on Fox Business.

“Obviously, with all the opposition and obstruction we’re getting from the Biden attorneys now, we know that this is going to end up in court when we subpoena the Bidens,” he continued. “So, we’re putting together a case and I think we’ve done that very well.”

Comer said that had he subpoenaed Joe and Hunter Biden on the first day he became Oversight chairman, a judge would have thrown it out. But after months of investigations, Comer argued that his team has put together a case that “would stand up in any court of law in America.”

Comer’s subpoena threats come just one day after he released a third memo detailing bank records that show Hunter Biden and his associates received millions of dollars from foreign entities while his father was vice president — a fact that has been known for years. But the White House and congressional Democrats point out that none of the records, or the new memo, demonstrate that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business transactions.

“Comer and his fellow extreme Republicans in Congress are now admitting they haven’t uncovered any proof of involvement or wrongdoing by President Biden,” said White House spokesman Ian Sams. “They simply will continue to spread innuendo and lies as they pursue a baseless impeachment stunt to attack the President.”

 

I actually do want to see Comer try. I figure that'll be worth 5 to 8 House seats flipped to blue from red.

 

You'd think Trump was going to be indicted again or something...

 

Last Call For The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

As with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Sen. Joe Manchin is looking to make good on his threat to leave the Dems. Whether he remains in the Dem caucus, well...

 

Sen. Joe Manchin, in an interview with a West Virginia radio station, said Thursday that he has “absolutely” thought about becoming an independent, one of his strongest statements yet in his flirtation with exiting the Democratic Party.

After criticizing the Biden's administration’s implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, which he helped write, and slamming President Joe Biden for “playing” to the Democratic base, Manchin said he has considered leaving the party.

“I want to be able to speak honestly about, basically, the extremes of the Democrat and Republican Party that is harming our nation,” Manchin told host Hoppy Kercheval.

The three-term senator has kept his political plans close to the vest, dodging questions from reporters and pledging to announce a decision on his political future at the end of the year. He has not ruled out running for president in 2024, including a third-party run with the No Labels organization.

At the same time, Manchin is up for re-election in 2024 and he's kept a close eye on the Republicans seeking to flip it from blue to red in a state former President Donald Trump won by nearly 40 percentage points in 2020.

Elected to the Senate in 2010, Manchin is the last Democrat to win a statewide race in West Virginia, following his re-election in 2018.

“I’m thinking seriously what’s best for me, I have to have peace of mind basically,” Manchin said in the interview Thursday about becoming an independent, “I’ve been thinking about that for quite some time."

 

To recap the extremists in the GOP want to remove civil rights from LGBTQ+ folk, women, Black folk, Hispanic folk, Asian folk, and anyone who isn't a Christian.

The extremists in the Democratic party would like free health care, college, and more affordable housing. They're the same, so we need Joe Manchin to make sure nobody gets any of that ever while he rakes in that coal and gas money.

Awesome.

 

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's authoritarian tyranny continues as he has summarily removed a second Black state attorney for failing to give in to his diktats.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has once again suspended an elected local prosecutor, a move that comes as his presidential campaign struggles amid a continued reset.

DeSantis on Tuesday suspended Orlando-area State Attorney Monique Worrell, a Democrat who is the only Black woman serving as a local prosecutor in Florida.

It’s the second time he has used his authority as governor to take such action. DeSantis suspended Tampa-area prosecutor Andrew Warren in August 2022 for signaling he would not bring charges under Florida's new 15-week abortion ban. A federal judge called that decision unconstitutional but said he could not overturn the suspension. A challenge filed by Warren was later thrown out by the DeSantis-friendly Florida Supreme Court.

Both Warren's and Worrell’s 2020 campaigns received help from a committee that got money from Democratic megadonor George Soros, a frequent target of Republican attacks. In fundraising emails and in speeches, DeSantis has boasted that he is the “only elected official in America to remove a ‘progressive’ Soros-funded district attorney,” a reference to Warren's suspension.

DeSantis made the announcement during a hastily called press conference in Tallahassee. It included top law enforcement officials and a room packed with his administration staffers, who were apparently given a heads-up the day before to show up at the 8:15 a.m. press conference. DeSantis alerted the media to the event less than 30 minutes before it began.

The press conference was held one day after DeSantis' presidential campaign elevated his gubernatorial chief of staff, James Uthmeier, to campaign manager. Uthmeier was chief of staff when DeSantis suspended Warren in 2022.

DeSantis is trailing in public polling to former President Donald Trump, and over the past few weeks, he has fired roughly 40% of his staff as part of an ongoing reboot of his presidential campaign.

Worrell’s held a press conference in Orlando hours after the DeSantis announcement, calling him a "weak dictator."

"I am your duly elected state attorney, and nothing done by a weak dictator can change that," she said.

In an interview with NBC News, Worrell said that the country was "in danger of losing our democracy."

"This man is running for president and the country should be afraid," she said. "The country should be afraid of an individual who removes duly elected officials because they are not politically aligned with him. The country should be afraid of a man who dares to teach our children that slavery was somehow a benefit to the African Americans in this country. ... Our country should be afraid of the impact that this could have across this country if he were to be elected."

Worrell’s suspension comes after months of political fights with Republicans, including with DeSantis directly, over her handling of a string of Orlando-areas shootings — most notably a March shooting spree in the Orlando area that left three dead, including a 9-year-old and a local television journalist. The alleged gunman had eight felonies and 11 misdemeanors, but those all came while he was a juvenile. His only crime as a legal adult in 2021 was when he was in possession of drug paraphernalia and cannabis. 

Worrell, whose office announced it is seeking the death penalty in the case, said Republicans were playing politics with the issue, and noted her office closed almost 3,000 cases this year. But conservatives blasted her for allowing someone with such an extensive criminal record, even though most of it came while he was a juvenile, to remain on the streets.

 

DeSantis is systematically removing Black prosecutors from office, point blank. The state Supreme Court will continue to side with him. And even as his presidential aspirations rightfully fail, the people of Florida will continue to be ruled over by a petty tinpot dictator until they decide they've had enough, and even then it may already be too late.

Fani, Flagged In Georgia, Con't

Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis is coming for the entire Trump Gang.

 

DONALD TRUMP MAY be in trouble in Fulton County, Georgia. But unlike the recent indictment of him in a federal court in Washington, DC, he may not be alone.

Three sources who have spoken with prosecutors tell Rolling Stone that they believe that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis is likely to indict not just Trump, but a number of his associates involved in attempting to overturn the election, as well.

“It really seems like they’re coming for everyone,” says one lawyer who has repeatedly dealt with the prosecutors in this criminal probe. “Based on what I know, Willis and her team do not seem to be stopping at Donald Trump. The scope for this [likely coming indictment] is probably going to be a hell of a lot wider than that…and round up a significant number of people.”

The Fulton County DA’s office has declined to comment on what will occur with an indictment, and only she knows for sure who ultimately will be hit with charges.

Still, some of Trump’s own lawyers, as well as other attorneys retained by his election-denying allies, are already preparing for the very real possibility that Trump will have plenty of company in an upcoming indictment. Lawyers have already outlined legal strategies, memos, and other material that factor in their expectation that an array of these Trump subordinates will face charges alongside him, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Trump’s team is in part basing their expectation of wider charges on the subject matter of prosecutors’ witness grillings, as well as what the DA has asked for. Those inquiries include granular details of what certain Trump allies were doing in the weeks following Election Day 2020. Figures of particularly high interest have included, but aren’t limited to, the once obscure lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, and Rudy Giuliani, sources who’ve dealt with the prosecutors tell Rolling Stone.

The Fulton County district attorney’s office and attorneys for Trump, Eastman, and Giulaini did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

 

In return, Donald Trump is making good on his threats that he's coming for Fani Willis. 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Wednesday flatly denied that she had a relationship with a former client and other rumors spread by former President Donald Trump in a new campaign ad.

In an email to her colleagues, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Willis called the information in a television spot bankrolled by the Trump campaign “derogatory and false.” She urged her staff not to respond to any of the allegations.

“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in the coming days, weeks or months,” Willis wrote in the email, sent early Wednesday. “We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any.”

A Willis spokesman declined to comment.

In the minute-long ad, titled “The Fraud Squad,” the narrator refers to Willis as “Biden’s newest lackey.” It says that Willis presided over a sharp rise of violent crimes in Atlanta and highlights her office being disqualified from investigating Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in her long-running election interference case due to a political conflict of interest.

But the most incendiary allegation is that Willis “got caught hiding a relationship with a gang member she was prosecuting.” It cites as evidence a Jan. 25, 2023, article in Rolling Stone.

But the ad gets several facts wrong. The Rolling Stone article is an interview with YSL Mondo, one of Willis’ former clients in 2019 when she worked as a defense attorney, and it doesn’t make reference to any sort of affair.

In the interview, Mondo is quoted saying that he had some “auntie-to-nephew, mother-to-son type of talks” with Willis. But the article notes that the two didn’t talk after his case was resolved.

After Willis was elected DA, her office opened a racketeering case against the rapper Young Thug and the alleged street gang Young Slime Life. YSL Mondo co-founded the Young Slime Life music crew with Young Thug in the early 2010s, according to Rolling Stone, and in the article commented that the Willis who defended him is not the same person who would pursue such a racketeering case.

Trump made a similar baseless relationship allegation against Willis during a Tuesday campaign rally in Windham, N.H.

“I guess they say that she was after a certain gang and she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member,” Trump said. “And this is a person that wants to indict me.”

Since then, his comments have been amplified by several right wing activists.

The Trump campaign paid $79,000 for “The Fraud Squad” ad to run on cable news channels in metro Atlanta between Aug. 9 and 13, according to Medium Buying, which tracks political ad spending.

As I said last week, Georgia Republicans will almost certainly try to use a law passed earlier this year and signed into law by former GA Secretary of State and current GOP Gov. Brian Kemp to remove Willis from office for "misconduct" with an "independent commission" whose members are of course appointed by Kemp. That law is currently being challenged in state court by four of Willis's fellow Georgia County DAs.

What Trump is doing with his ludicrous slime job is laying the false justification for doing just that. If the indictment includes several of the false slate of electors who are powerful members of the state Republican Party apparatus on RICO and fraud charges as I strongly suspect, then the pressure on Kemp and the commission to remove Willis will be overwhelming, hence the lawsuit filed last week.

We're most likely headed for a massive court battle to even see if Willis will be allowed to bring her case against Trump at all, delaying a possible trial for months, if not years. Willis will be attacked on all sides, and Trump is sending a message to anyone else poised to charge him: you're next.

And even if he is found guilty, Gov. Kemp will then be under pressure to pardon Trump, his lackeys, and all the state Republicans who joined in.

What I'm saying is don't expect Trump to end up in an Atlanta jail anytime soon.

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

A Provo, Utah man who made multiple online threats against President Biden was shot and killed by FBI agents trying to serve a warrant for those threats.

 

A suspect shot and killed by FBI agents early Wednesday in Provo was connected to alleged threats against President Joe Biden and other officials.

The FBI says its agents were attempting to serve arrest and search warrants in Provo when they shot and killed a suspect, now identified as Craig Deleeuw Robertson, at around 6:15 a.m.

Court documents show Robertson threatened to "inflict bodily harm" on Biden during his visit to Utah in a social media message sent on or about Aug. 7.

"I hear Biden is coming to Utah. Digging out my old Ghille suit and cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle," Robertson allegedly wrote.

President Biden is scheduled to arrive in Salt Lake City on Wednesday afternoon for an overnight stay.

In March, Robertson had also claimed he was heading to New York to kill New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who was overseeing the criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump.

"I’ll be waiting in the courthouse parking garage with my suppressed Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm to smoke a radical fool prosecutor that should never have been elected," he posted. "BYE, BYE, TO ANOTHER CORRUPT B______!!!”

While conducting surveillance on Robertson's home on March 19, a special agent attempted to speak with Robertson about his posts, to which Robertson replied, "I said it was a dream!"

Robertson then told the agent that they shouldn't return without a warrant.

 

They came back with the warrant, and apparently a gunfight ensued. It's tragic, but the MAGA terrorists are apparently willing to die for their master.

As I said all during the Obama administration and the thousands of threats he got as President: the bad guys only have to get lucky once.

 

Burning Lake Of Fire, Con't

Arizona Republican and professional election denier Lari Lake is stepping in to the 2024 US Senate race against Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, and the primary field just got a whole lot more interesting.

 

Former Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake is staffing up for a Senate campaign in anticipation of an October launch, making Arizona ground zero to replay — and relitigate — GOP losses in the last two elections.

Why it matters: A potential three-way battle, with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema running as an independent, will expose deep divisions in both parties on whether to appeal to their bases or independents in a critical 2024 battleground state.The race will have implications in the presidential campaign and give President Biden an opportunity to run against the "ultra MAGA" mindset that Lake represents, even if former President Trump isn't Biden's opponent in November 2024.

Lake, who has not conceded her gubernatorial loss in 2022, is one of Trump's most ardent defenders and frequently amplifies the false election claims at the heart of the former president's most recent indictment.

Between the lines: The race also offers a state-level experiment on the implication of a possible three-way presidential contest, with Sinema playing the role of a No Labels candidate.

Driving the news: Lake is expected to spend most of September in Arizona interviewing potential staff and consultants, a source familiar told Axios.The former TV news anchor has hit the campaign trail with Ohio GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in recent days, drawing a crowd of more than 650 people in a rural area.

"I'm really, really excited about [Sen. J.D. Vance], I'm super excited that Bernie Moreno's going to be in the Senate. And if they're in the Senate, I just might have to join them," she said during a Monday fundraiser in Cleveland with Vance and Moreno.

What they're saying: "When President Trump gets back in the White House he's going to need fighters like Kari Lake in Washington, DC to help enact his Agenda 47," Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake, told Axios. "Kari Lake is seriously considering a run for the United States Senate and will be making a final decision this fall."

 

We'll see if Lake entering the race makes it easier to split the Democratic vote, but as awful as Sinema's poll numbers are right now, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego could benefit greatly.

Voters were presented with a potential list of candidates for the 2024 Republican U.S. Senate Primary. A plurality of Republican state primary voters, 42%, support former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Eleven percent support Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, 7% support former Senate candidate Blake Masters, 2% support Brian Wright and Jim Lamon respectively. Twenty-eight percent are undecided.

In the Democratic US Senate Primary, a plurality of Democratic primary voters (48%) plan to support Rep. Ruben Gallego, while 40% are undecided.

In a head-to-head matchup between Gallego (D), independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and Mark Lamb (R), 36% support Gallego, 29% support Lamb, 21% support Sinema, and 15% are undecided. Without Sinema on the ballot, 42% support both Gallego and Lamb, while 16% are undecided.

In the same two ballot tests with Brian Wright, 37% support Gallego, 26% support Sinema, and 25% Wright, and 12% are undecided. Without Sinema on the ballot, 41% support Gallego, 38% Wright, and 21% are undecided.

“It appears Senator Sinema pulls more support from Republican voters than Democrats on the ballot. About 21% of Republicans would vote for Sinema with Lamb on the ballot, and 34% of Republicans would support Sinema with Wright on the ballot,” Kimball said. “By contrast, Sinema only pulls about 8% of Democratic support from Gallego.” 

 

 I'll take a Gallego win any day of the week here.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

So it turnes out that the Trump legal brain trust were indeed dumb as hog shit, because yes, they were, in fact, taking notes on the criminal fuckin' conspiracy.

A lawyer allied with President Donald J. Trump first laid out a plot to use false slates of electors to subvert the 2020 election in a previously unknown internal campaign memo that prosecutors are portraying as a crucial link in how the Trump team’s efforts evolved into a criminal conspiracy.

The existence of the Dec. 6, 2020, memo came to light in last week’s indictment of Mr. Trump, though its details remained unclear. But a copy obtained by The New York Times shows for the first time that the lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, acknowledged from the start that he was proposing “a bold, controversial strategy” that the Supreme Court “likely” would reject in the end.

But even if the plan did not ultimately pass legal muster at the highest level, Mr. Chesebro argued that it would achieve two goals. It would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and “buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”

The memo had been a missing piece in the public record of how Mr. Trump’s allies developed their strategy to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory. In mid-December, the false Trump electors could go through the motions of voting as if they had the authority to do so. Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally count those slates of votes, rather than the official and certified ones for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

While that basic plan itself was already known, the document, described by prosecutors as the “fraudulent elector memo,” provides new details about how it originated and was discussed behind the scenes. Among those details is Mr. Chesebro’s proposed “messaging” strategy to explain why pro-Trump electors were meeting in states where Mr. Biden was declared the winner. The campaign would present that step as “a routine measure that is necessary to ensure” that the correct electoral slate could be counted by Congress if courts or legislatures later concluded that Mr. Trump had actually won the states.

It was not the first time Mr. Chesebro had raised the notion of creating alternate electors. In November, he had suggested doing so in Wisconsin, although for a different reason: to safeguard Mr. Trump’s rights in case he later won a court battle and was declared that state’s certified winner by Jan. 6, as had happened with Hawaii in 1960.

But the indictment portrayed the Dec. 6 memo as a “sharp departure” from that proposal, becoming what prosecutors say was a criminal plot to engineer “a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect.”

“I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on Jan. 6,” Mr. Chesebro wrote. “But as long as it is one possible option, to preserve it as a possibility it is important that the Trump-Pence electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.”

Three days later, Mr. Chesebro drew up specific instructions to create fraudulent electors in multiple states — in another memo whose existence, along with the one in November, was first reported by The Times last year. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot also cited them in its December report, but it apparently did not learn of the Dec. 6 memo.

“I believe that what can be achieved on Jan. 6 is not simply to keep Biden below 270 electoral votes,” Mr. Chesebro wrote in the newly disclosed memo. “It seems feasible that the vote count can be conducted so that at no point will Trump be behind in the electoral vote count unless and until Biden can obtain a favorable decision from the Supreme Court upholding the Electoral Count Act as constitutional, or otherwise recognizing the power of Congress (and not the president of the Senate) to count the votes.”

As an American, I demand that our national political conspiracies are held to the standards of terrifyingly powerful evil seen in Mission Impossible and James Bond films and Tom Clancy novels, not this middle school class "And I'll put soda vending machines in all the homerooms" president bullshit.

We nearly lost the country to magical thinking cartoon evil.  We may still lose it unless this blunderfuck ends up in prison, for the love of God.  The trials cannot come quickly enough, and the convictions and sentencings require even more alacrity.

Last Call For A Buckeye Constitutional

The Ohio GOP's effort to make constitutional amendment ballot measures exponentially more difficult to pass -- in a blatant effort to sink a November ballot measure to guarantee abortion rights in the state -- went down in flames in tonight's special election.

Issue 1 was projected to fail on Tuesday, dealing a blow to Ohio Republicans who wanted to hamstring a November ballot question on abortion rights.

Decision Desk HQ, an election results reporting agency providing results and race calls for the USA TODAY Network Ohio, called the race around 8:09 p.m. The Associated Press projected that Issue 1 had failed around 9 p.m.

The no vote was leading 57% to 43% with more than 80% of the vote counted, according to unofficial results.

Results showed voters in urban counties voting overwhelmingly against Issue 1. The no side had more than 80% support in Cuyahoga County, more than 70% support in Franklin, Summit and Lucas counties and more than 60% of the vote in Hamilton and Montgomery counties.

Tuesday’s election was the culmination of a months-long fight that began last year, when Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, first introduced a plan to tighten the rules for constitutional amendments. The debate played out in the halls of the Ohio Statehouse, on the campaign trail and even in the courtroom as opponents tried to stop GOP lawmakers in their tracks.

Proponents of the measure said they wanted to keep controversial policies out of the constitution and reserve it for the state's fundamental rights and values. Critics argued the ballot measure was a power grab that would hamstring the rights of citizens to place an issue on the ballot.

Ohioans appeared to buy the message opponents were selling.

"Tonight, Ohioans claimed a victory over out-of-touch, corrupt politicians who bet against majority rule, who bet against democracy," Ohio Democratic Party Chair Liz Walters told reporters at an election night gathering in Columbus. "Tonight, Ohioans everywhere have claimed a victory for the kind of state we want to see."

 

The ludicrously corrupt Ohio GOP lost when they took their policy to the people in order to vote on it.  And remember, nullifying a 57%-43% ballot measure vote like tonight is exactly what this measure was designed to do in November to prevent abortion rights in the state from being enshrined in the state constitution.

November here is going to be a hell of a fight, but it's a winnable fight now.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

President Biden is designating nearly a million acres in Arizona around the Grand Canyon as a National Monument, protecting the area from mining while preserving hunting, fishing, and grazing rights for Native American use.

 

The designation would protect the area from potential uranium mining. It also protects existing grazing permits and leases, existing mining claims and will support area hunting and fishing, officials said. It encompasses approximately 917,000 acres of public land, officials said.

The president’s trip to battleground Arizona is part of a three-stop Western swing to highlight his economic agenda and legislative accomplishments this week ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping climate, tax, and health care law. The monument’s designation makes good on longtime calls from tribal leaders and environmental activists, as well as Arizona lawmakers, including Democratic Rep. Raùl Grijalva and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who have advocated for the lands surrounding the Grand Canyon to be protected.

Biden will designate Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, a move aimed at conserving “nearly 1 million acres of greater Grand Canyon landscape,” Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory told reporters.

“This land is sacred to tribal nations and indigenous peoples. Its sweeping plateaus and deep canyons share many of the features of the Grand Canyon. The land includes some of the most biodiverse habitats in the region, providing refuge for wildlife like bighorn sheep, bison, bald eagles and songbirds. And the area’s meandering creeks and streams flow into the mighty Colorado River, a critical water supply to millions of people across the Southwest,” Mallory said.

“Many of us have worked for decades to safeguard our Grand Canyon homelands from desecration at the hands of extractive, harmful operations like uranium mining, and today, with the designation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, we see these lands permanently protected at last,” Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition coordinator Carletta Tilousi said in a statement.

The Biden administration has been gathering public input on the designation for months, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland – the first Native American Cabinet secretary – visited the area in May and met with tribal leaders. Haaland and her staff hiked 10 miles into the canyon to visit Supai Village, a small village that is the capital of the Havasupai Indian Reservation.

Haaland described the visit as “one of the most meaningful trips of my life,” as she detailed the importance of the lands that make up Tuesday’s designation.

The Havasupai people’s ancestors, Haaland said, “lived, farmed, and prayed among the canyons and plateaus far beyond the borders of the reservation they occupied today.” She added that the Havasupai people “were driven out of their homelands” after the establishment of the Grand Canyon National Park in 1919.

“Their story is one shared by many tribes in the southwest who trace their origins to the Grand Canyon, and the plateaus and tributaries that surround it and who have persevered by continuing their longstanding practices on sacred homelands just outside the boundaries of the park,” she said.

The designation will help ensure that the lands can be used by indigenous peoples for religious ceremonies, as well as for hunting and gathering. But it also sends an important signal to native people, Haaland said.

Native American history, she said, “is American history. And that’s what tomorrow is all about: This president and this administration see Indian country. I’m speaking to you as the first Native American Cabinet secretary as a testament to that. Feeling seen means being appreciated for who we are: The original stewards of our shared lands and waters.”

Haaland continued, “These special places are not a pass-through on the way to the Grand Canyon. They are sacred and significant unto their own right. They should not be open to new mining claims and developed beyond recognition. We are in a new era, one in which we honor tribally led conservation, advanced co-stewardship and care about the well-being of native people.”

Native American history is American history, good and bad. We absolutely need to remember that, and the lessons gained from it. Sadly, judging from the rate that we're wrecking the environment, we haven't learned much at all.

But we have to start somewhere, and this is a good act. $44 million will be invested in our national parks and monuments thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.  Would that it was ten or even a hundred times as much, but it's better than the cuts Republicans (and some Democrats, looking at you, Manchin) wanted in order to turn our national lands into strip mines.

Record heat will only get worse in states like Arizona, and all we can do now is try to control the damage. Of course, that could start with breaking up energy giants, but that's not going to happen.

Fusion News You Can Use

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have repeated their fusion power experiment from December, only with an even better energy yield.

 

A group of U.S. scientists say they have repeated their landmark energy feat — a nuclear fusion reaction that produces more energy than is put into it. But this time, they say the experiment produced an even higher energy yield than one in December that got international attention for making a major step forward toward the long elusive goal of producing energy through fusion.

This second achievement by researchers at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is another crucial step — albeit in a journey that may still take decades to complete — in the quest for an unlimited source of cheap and clean power. The successful effort was initially reported by the Financial Times on Sunday.

“We have continued to perform experiments to study this exciting new scientific regime. In an experiment conducted on July 30, we repeated ignition at (the National Ignition Facility),” Paul Rhien, a spokesman for the federal laboratory, said in a emailed statement. “Analysis of those results is underway, but we can confirm the experiment produced a higher yield than the December test.”

Rhien said the lab “won’t be discussing further details” of the July experiment until after more analysis. But the team plans to “share the results at scientific conferences and peer-reviewed publications as part of our normal process for communicating scientific results.”

 

That positive net energy yield is the key to fusion power, and the better we get at it, the closer we get to sustainable clean energy for everyone.

You know, if we don't barbecue humans off the face of the earth first.

Last Call For Talking It Out

With Niger's military junta now firmly in control of the country, US diplomacy is springing into action to try to limit the volatility in the region.

Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland met with some of the members of the military junta in Niger Monday – a significant diplomatic push to restore democratic rule in what has been a key US partner nation.

Nuland met with Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the self-proclaimed chief of defense, and three colonels supporting him for more than two hours for “extremely frank and at times quite difficult” conversations, she said.

Nuland is the highest level US official to meet in person with the military putschists. Her trip to the capital city of Niamey – made at the request of Secretary of State Antony Blinken – comes less than two weeks after members of Niger’s presidential guard seized power and a day after the deadline set by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for the military junta to restore democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum to power or risk a military intervention.

Nuland told reporters Monday that the US “kept open the door to continue talking” and urged Barmou and his allies “to hear our offer to try to work with them to solve this diplomatically and return to constitutional order.”

“I hope they will keep the door open to diplomacy. We made that proposal,” Nuland said. “Their ideas do not comport with the Constitution. And that would be difficult in terms of our relationship if that’s the path they take, but we gave them a number of options to keep talking and we hope they take us up on that.”

Nuland noted that she was not granted a meeting with the self-proclaimed new leader of Niger, General Abdourahmane Tiani, “so we were left to have to depend on Mr. Barmou to make clear again what is at stake.”

The US was pushing for a negotiated solution in Niger, Nuland explained, but “it was not easy to get traction there” because the putschists “are quite firm in their view of how they want to proceed.”

Nuland said she was frank about what is at risk if they do not reverse course and that she explained “very clearly” the US’ legal responsibilities if the military takeover is formally declared a coup, telling them that “it is not our desire to go there, but they may push us to that point.”

The US is required under law to cut foreign and military assistance to the Nigerien government if a formal coup designation is made. On Friday, Blinken announced the US had paused certain assistance.

“That assistance will affect development aid to the government, security aid to the government. It’s a significant amount,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Monday.

 

The last thing we need is another forest fire to try to put out with US troops, so I'm hoping very much that Nuland can find the price for the Niger junta to accept. Something tells me however that the US doesn't have nearly as much leverage right now than it did, say, in January 2021 before Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

 

We'll see.

 

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

On Sunday, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis rejected the notion that Donald Trump "won" in 2020, and if he wasn't somehow toast before in the GOP primary race, he's definitely finished now.

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday rejected Donald Trump's claim that he was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election in his most forceful comments to date on the matter.

"Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on Jan. 20 every four years is the winner," DeSantis told NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns in his first broadcast network interview since he launched his presidential campaign.

DeSantis continued to discuss all the ways he believed the previous presidential election was not perfect. But pressed further, he clearly stated that Trump lost.

"But respectfully, you did not clearly answer that question," Burns said. "And if you can’t give a 'yes' or 'no' on whether or not he lost —"

"No, of course he lost," DeSantis said, adding, "Joe Biden’s the president."

"Ron DeSantis should really stop being Joe Biden’s biggest cheerleader," Trump spokesman Steve Cheung told NBC News.

DeSantis' comments come just days after Trump pleaded not guilty to charges that he broke the law by trying to overturn the 2020 election.

And at a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday, DeSantis also strongly dismissed theories that the election was stolen, saying they "did not prove to be true."

Still, DeSantis made sure to point out in Sunday's interview that he saw a number of problems with the 2020 election, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s grants for election administration, the widespread availability of mail-in ballots, state laws that allow third parties to collect and return voters' ballots, and how social media outlets de-emphasized a story about the laptop of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

"I think what people in the media and elsewhere, they want to act like somehow this was just like the perfect election. ... I don’t think it was a good-run election," DeSantis said. "But I also think Republicans didn’t fight back. You’ve got to fight back when that is happening."

 

Even when Ron's gone right a bit, he can't help being wrong. Trying to have his cake and eating it too is just going to piss off Republican primary voters even further.  MAGA is a Trump cult and has been for years now, and DeSantis just doesn't know how to play the game. He's sliding into Jeb Bush territory here.

Questioning election integrity, but rejecting Trump's "win" is the middle of the road that DeSantis is walking, and eventually he's gonna get flattened by a truck if he stays out there.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Since Judge Tanya Chutkan wasn't appointed by Donald Trump to the federal bench, there's no way he can get a fair trial if the case stays in her hands, he whines.

 

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for recusal of the judge presiding over the federal case that alleges he illegally conspired to overturn his election loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, according to the docket in federal court in Washington, D.C. Chutkan, 61, was appointed to the district in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama. She is one of the only federal judges in D.C. who has delivered sentences against defendants in cases related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that are longer than the sentences that the DOJ asked for, according to NBC News.

On Saturday, Chutkan gave Trump's team until 5 p.m. ET on Monday to respond to prosecutors' request for a protective order. The order would prevent the former president and his legal team from sharing discovery materials with the public. Trump's attorneys asked for more time to prepare their response, which Chutkan swiftly denied.

"THERE IS NO WAY I CAN GET A FAIR TRIAL WITH THE JUDGE 'ASSIGNED' TO THE REDICULOUS FREEDOM OF SPEECH/FAIR ELECTIONS CASE. EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS, AND SO DOES SHE," Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social Sunday morning.

 

Trump lawyer John Lauro went on the Sunday shows to predict an easy acquittal.

 

Donald Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro, will welcome testimony from former Vice President Mike Pence in the federal case Trump is facing for his alleged efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“Mike Pence will be one of our best witnesses at trial,” Lauro said Sunday during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “I read his book very carefully, and if he testifies consistent with his book, then President Trump will be acquitted,” Lauro added.

Trump is currently facing 78 felony charges across three criminal cases. In the latest indictment unveiled Tuesday, federal prosecutors charged Trump with four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

The 45-page document revealed key details from Pence’s testimony to the grand jury, including that Pence took contemporaneous notes of some conversations he had with Trump in the days leading up to Jan. 6. In one conversation, Pence recalled Trump falsely telling him that the Justice Department was finding “major infractions” related to election fraud.

Despite the revelations in the indictment, Lauro said Sunday that he does not believe Pence’s testimony would be enough to prove that what Trump did in the days leading up to the violent riot on the Capitol was criminal.

“I cannot wait until I have the opportunity to cross-examine Mr. Pence, because what he will do is completely eliminate any doubt that Mr. Trump, President Trump firmly believed that the election irregularities had led to inappropriate results,” Lauro said.

 

Tauro also agrees with congressional Democrats that the trial needs to be televised, which should be a gigantic alarm against doing that. Trump and Tauro want this case tried the court of public opinion for a distinct reason.

America's response to this week's indictment of Donald Trump is providing a window into more than just how Americans view his alleged actions per se — but also into what they think it means for democracy itself.

 

• Half the nation believes Trump tried to stay in office beyond his term through illegal and unconstitutional means.
• To most Americans, such an effort would mean undermining democracy.
• For them and for a majority of Americans overall, the series of indictments and ongoing investigations against Trump are seen as "defending democracy" and "upholding the rule of law."
• Just under a third of the country thinks Trump was trying to stay in office through legal, constitutional means — legal, in part because most of them (and including most Republicans) believe Trump's claim that the election was illegitimate in the first place.
•  For most Republicans, the series of indictments are also personal, seeing them as "an attack" on people like them — echoing some of Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail. 
• And big majorities of Republicans think the indictments are an attempt to stop Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.

 

In fact more than 85% of Republicans in this CBS News poll believe the indictments are meant to stop Trump's campaign, and more than 55% believe these indictments are "an attack on people like us". There's no way these charges are going to result in anything other than a Trump landslide in the primaries. Oh, and two thirds of Republicans don't believe Biden won in 2020.

We'll see where this goes, but it's not going to be pretty, and we have tens of millions cheering the cancer on.

 

 

 

 

Sunday Long Read: Professional Chow Hounds

Our Sunday Long Read this week is Jaime Loftus's profile in The Takeout of two world-class competitive eaters: Mary Bowers and "Megabyte" Ronnie Hartman, as they talk about everything from hot dogs to horseshoes to human trafficking.

“You know how many times of the day I answer questions about poop?” an absolutely jacked professional eater asks me. “Every single interview.”

I look down at my notes. Shit, why didn’t I think of that?

It’s mid-July, and by now, the professional eating world is well into its 51 weeks of annual obscurity. The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest held annually on the Fourth of July has come and gone on Coney Island, its usual winners declared in Joey Chestnut (62 hot dogs and buns) and Miki Sudo (39 ½ hot dogs and buns). Brothers George and Richard Shea, the founders of Major League Eating, were there to promote and announce every contestant with typical gusto. The contest aired on ESPN2 this year—Wimbledon took up the main station—and very few competitors outside of Sudo, Chestnut, and their immediate rivals got any airtime outside a passing mention.

So who are these other people?

Their introductions are carefully crafted WWE-grade nightmare fuel, announced as if each competitor is a god come down from the heavens to vacuum meat tubes down their gullets. The intros for these lesser known eaters are largely drowned out by color commentary about the main competitors—still, there they are, forming the outer edges of a Last Supper–style tableau, each with their own stats and training processes and very specific traumas.

What if I were to tell you these are, by far, the most interesting characters in the professional eating world?

Mary Bowers and “Megabyte” Ronnie Hartman, both decade-long veterans of Major League Eating, are unlikely to agree with me on that, since the stars who take center stage are their friends. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve fallen under the spell of Chestnut and Sudo, too—my book Raw Dog: A Naked History of Hot Dogs focuses mainly on the careers of the country’s best known eaters.

Still, there’s so much to navigate beyond each year’s winners. There’s Joey Chestnut’s rivalry with Takeru Kobayashi, the original Nathan’s breakthrough celebrity, and there’s the industry-wide undercurrent of racism and xenophobia Kobayashi was subjected to. There’s Korean American women’s champion Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, who was forced to navigate the 2011 split of the contest into distinct men’s and women’s contests, something no other professional eating event is subjected to. There’s the unceremonious way the women’s contest has been obscured, shoved onto lesser ESPN stations, even as Sudo has risen through the ranks. There’s a guy named Crazy Legs Conti who I don’t have time to get into right now. There’s a lot.

Ronnie and Mary, by contrast, don’t have eating careers defined by high-profile rivalries—they’ve got something better. The Nathan’s Contest isn’t just their chance to achieve their own personal bests, it’s an opportunity to represent causes you don’t expect to hear about on a major sports network: veteran’s affairs and international human trafficking, respectively.

Stay with me.

 

Do it, this is a fun story and these folks are a lot more complex and interesting than most athletes.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Trump and his MAGA cronies are working on formalizing plans to investigate, charge, and arrest hundreds, maybe thousands of Democratic politicians, Justice Department lawyers, FBI investigators, staffers, and analysts involved in the federal probes of Donald Trump criminal activities starting with Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, and Joe Biden.

 

DONALD TRUMP IS a long, long way from winning the GOP primary, let alone retaking the White House. But he always has revenge on his mind, and his allies are preparing to use a future administration to not only undo all of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s work — but to take vengeance on Smith, and on virtually everyone else, who dared investigate Trump during his time out of power.

Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters.

The preparations have been underway since at least last year, with Trump being briefed on the designs by an array of attorneys, political and policy advisers, former administration officials, and other allies. The aim is to build a government-in-waiting with the hard-right infrastructure needed to turn the Justice Department into an instrument of Trump’s agenda, according to five sources familiar with these matters and another two people briefed on them.

Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

One idea that has caught thrice-indicted former president’s attention in recent months is the creation of the so-called “Office of Election Integrity,” which would be a new unit inside the Justice Department. It would be tasked not only with relitigating Trump’s lies about his 2020 election loss, but also with aggressively pursuing baseless allegations of election “fraud” (including in Democratic strongholds) in ways that Trumpist partisans believe the department has only flirted with in the past.

This idea was recently pitched to Trump by a longtime Republican activist and an attorney who’s known the ex-president for years, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. (Republican officials have also begun voicing their own support for state-level offices of election integrity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made the proposal a reality in his state. Officials in Tennessee, Missouri, and Wisconsin have proposed the offices, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, proposed a similarly named office.)

And when it comes to Special Counsel Smith’s office — which just handed Trump his third indictment, this one related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election — the former president and his fellow travelers already know what they want: They want the FBI and DOJ to name names.

This year, close advisers to Trump have begun the process of assembling lists of the names of federal personnel who have investigated the former president and his circle for years, and are attempting to unmask the identities of all the DOJ attorneys and others connected to Smith’s office. The obvious purpose of this, according to one source close to Trump, is to “show them the door on Day 1 [if Trump’s reelected]” — and so “we know who should receive a subpoena” in the future.

Such subpoenas would of course be instrumental in Trumpland’s vows to its voters that, should he return to power, Trump and his new attorney general will launch a raft of their own retaliatory “special counsel” and “special prosecutor” probes to investigate-the-investigator, and to go after their key enemies. As it were, Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official and a central figure in Trump’s efforts to subvert the legitimate 2020 presidential election results, has been on Trump’s informal shortlist for plum assignments, including even attorney general, in a potential second administration.

Sources familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone that Trump and his close ideological allies — working at an assortment of MAGA-prone think tanks, advocacy organizations, and legal groups — are formulating plans for a wide slate of “special prosecutors.” In this vision, such prosecutors would go after the usual targets: Smith, Smith’s team, President Joe Biden, Biden’s family, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray. But they’d also go after smaller targets, from members of the Biden 2020 campaign to more obscure government offices.

“There are almost too many targets to keep track of,” says one Trump adviser familiar with the discussions. Trump and members of his inner orbit have already outlined possible legal strategies, examining specific federal statutes they could wield in a Republican-controlled Justice Department to go after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who delivered Trump’s first indictment of this year.

 

People should treat this seriously. A second Trump term will be an authoritarian nightmare, and we have to prevent it.  There will be no guardrails and countermeasures next time. As it is, Trump is already vowing retribution and intimidation against the people involved in his legal cases.

Prosecutors on Friday night called a judge’s attention to a social media post from Donald Trump — issued hours earlier — in which they say the former president appeared to declare that he’s “coming after” those he sees as responsible for the series of formidable legal challenges he is facing.

Attorneys from special counsel Jack Smith’s team said the post from Trump “specifically or by implication” referenced those involved in his criminal case for seeking to subvert the 2020 election.

In a court filing just before 10 p.m. Friday, Senior Assistant Special Counsels Molly Gaston and Thomas Windom alerted the judge in Trump’s latest criminal case — U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan — to a combative post Trump sent earlier in the day.

“If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” Trump wrote in all caps Friday afternoon on Truth Social, which is run by a media company he co-owns.

The prosecutors said Trump’s post raised concerns that he might improperly share evidence in the case on his social media account and they urged that he be ordered to keep any evidence prosecutors turn over to his defense team from public view.

“All the proposed order seeks to prevent is the improper dissemination or use of discovery materials, including to the public,” Gaston and Windom wrote. “Such a restriction is particularly important in this case because the defendant has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him. … And in recent days, regarding this case, the defendant has issued multiple posts—either specifically or by implication—including the following, which the defendant posted just hours ago.”

We'll see what Judge Chutkan does, ordering a response from the Trump legal team by Monday evening.

Denying Trump bail would be a choice fraught with its own dangers, but if you or I posted on social media that we were coming for people after being arraigned on federal charges, you'd better believe there would be consequences. The real "two-tiered justice system" the right keeps squawking about applies to Trump far more than it does Biden.

That's The Sound Of The Police, Con't

The sound of these six white former Mississippi sheriff's deputies who tortured two Black men and shot one in the mouth is a guilty plea deal on federal civil rights charges.

 

Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers have pleaded guilty to charges related to the torture of two Black men, US Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Darren LaMarca said in a Thursday news conference.

The announcement comes after federal charges were filed against the former law enforcement officers, who “called themselves ‘The Goon Squad’ because of their willingness to use excessive force and not to report it,” according to a federal charging document.

“The people of Mississippi and those of Rankin County expect those who enforce the laws to follow the law, clearly these men did not – they held themselves above the law,” LaMarca said.

The charges include conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under color of law, conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice, according to online federal court records.

Former Rankin County Sheriff’s Department deputy Hunter Elward faces the most serious of charges – discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. Court documents name the other officers charged as Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Christian Dedmon, Daniel Opdyke and Joshua Hartfield.

The incident occurred on January 24 in Braxton, Mississippi, just southeast of Jackson. It came to light after two men, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, filed a federal civil lawsuit. Many of the claims in the lawsuit were reflected in the federal charging document.

The two men, who are Black, say six White law enforcement officers entered the home they were in and tortured them for nearly two hours, culminating with Jenkins being shot in the mouth.

“The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims, egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect, and shamefully betrayed the oath they swore as law enforcement officers,” US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Jermicha Fomby described the alleged actions as “horrific.” He added, “I did not expect this to be the actions that we would have subjected upon our citizens in the year 2023.”

“On behalf of our clients Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, Black Lawyers for Justice thanks the United States Department of Justice for the historic legal results choices achieved today,” Malik Shabazz, the lead attorney for the victims, said in a statement.

In an interview last month, Parker told CNN: “Justice is what it all boils down to. I’m just like them, you know, whether they in uniform or not.”

 

These assholes are still facing state charges to boot and a plea deal on those charges is expected later this month, and I guarantee you that nothing would have happened to these bastard cops if Trump's "Justice Department" had been the ones in charge still. Merrick Garland got this done in seven months.

 

And yes, in 2023 we're still having to turn to Reconstruction-era anti-Klan laws to prosecute white supremacist bastard cops. Not a hell of a lot has changed for us Black folk, either.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Both Black Tennessee state lawmakers expelled from the state legislature earlier this year by angry, overwhelmingly white Republicans have easily won their special elections to be returned to Nashville, in time for a scheduled special session by GOP Gov. Bill Lee on gun safety measures.

The two Democratic state representatives in Tennessee who were expelled by Republicans in April for protesting in support of gun safety on the chamber floor won elections Thursday night for their old seats, The Associated Press projected.

Justin Jones won his election for his state House seat in Nashville, and Justin J. Pearson won his race in Memphis, according to AP projections.

Jones defeated Republican Laura Nelson, while Pearson won his race against independent candidate Jeff Johnston.

Both lawmakers had been reinstated by local government officials shortly after their expulsion in April, but they still had to run for their old seats — both in primary elections in June and in Thursday’s general elections.

While Jones and Pearson were heavily favored to win — each of their districts comprise heavily Democratic areas — their electoral success nevertheless delivered a resounding message to Republicans in the state Legislature that the lawmakers continue to enjoy robust support.

Their return may also provide momentum for Democrats and other lawmakers who support gun measures, ahead of a special legislative session scheduled later this month that Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, called specifically to address gun reform.

Jones, in a tweet shortly after the AP projected his victory, addressed Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who led the expulsion hearings, and signaled that he would continue pushing for gun legislation during the special session.

"Well, Mr. Speaker, the People have spoken. The FIND OUT era of politics is just beginning. See you August 21st for special session," Jones tweeted.

Pearson, too, signaled he would work to organize further protests supporting gun reform, as well as efforts to advance the issue, during the upcoming special session.

“This is only the beginning for this Movement. We will organize, mobilize and activate to work tirelessly for the day when there are no more calls to respond to mass shootings and gun violence," he said in a statement. "I look forward to heading back to the Tennessee state capitol Aug. 21 for the special session on gun legislation. We, the People, will march, rally and work to pass legislation."

The question is do Sexton and the TN GOP have the balls to try this again, proving to America and the world just how racist they are? It's been a PR disaster for them for months and these Black lawmakers are showing everyone that even in deep red Tennessee that there's a future for Democrats and the people who voted for them.

We'll see. They tried to martyr them once.

But Black Lives Still Matter.