Last Call For Paxton, Repaxtonated

As widely expected after Donald Trump made it clear earlier this week that any Texas state Republican senator who votes for AG Ken Paxton's removal would face political extermination, Paxton easily survived his Texas Senate impeachment trial and has been fully reinstated to office with the Texas House charges dismissed.

 

Impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was acquitted on 16 impeachment articles on Saturday, thwarting an effort to remove him from office over allegations of corruption.

"Attorney General Warren Kenneth Paxton Jr. is hereby, at this moment, reinstated to office," said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Republican president of the Senate who also presided over the trial.

While two Republican senators broke with their party to vote for conviction on some articles of impeachment, the vast majority of Paxton's party voted to acquit him following a two-week trial and a day of deliberations behind closed doors. Four impeachment articles that had been put on hold during the trial were dismissed immediately after the acquittal vote.

Paxton had been suspended without pay from his post after he was impeached in the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives in May by an overwhelming vote.

"The attorney general is excited and ready to get back to work, and that's what he's gonna do," said Paxton attorney Tony Buzbee.

 

Only two Republicans voted to remove Paxton on any of the 16 charges he faced, meaning he never got closer than 14 of the 21 votes needed to convict him on any of the charges. Nobody wanted to tangle with Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the armed Texas MAGA mob.

Paxton, who attended just two days of the trial and was not present to witness his exoneration, was characteristically defiant.

“The sham impeachment coordinated by the Biden Administration with liberal House Speaker Dade Phelan and his kangaroo court has cost taxpayers millions of dollars, disrupted the work of the Office of Attorney General and left a dark and permanent stain on the Texas House,” Paxton said in a statement. “The weaponization of the impeachment process to settle political differences is not only wrong, it is immoral and corrupt.”

The dramatic votes capped a two-week trial where a parade of witnesses, including former senior officials under Paxton, testified that the attorney general had repeatedly abused his office by helping his friend, struggling Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, investigate and harass his enemies, delay foreclosure sales of his properties and obtain confidential records on the police investigating him. In return, House impeachment managers said Paul paid to renovate Paxton’s Austin home and helped him carry out ­and cover up an extramarital affair with a former Senate aide.

In the end, senators were unpersuaded.

"This should have never happened," Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, told reporters outside the chamber. He criticized what he called a rushed and flawed investigation by the House.

But acquittal was not a foregone conclusion during the eight hours of deliberation, Sen. Royce West said. The Democrat from Dallas said some Republicans supported conviction but switched their votes when it became clear it did not have the required two-thirds support.

 

Retribution, I expect, will be swift for Texas House Republicans and the two Republican state senators who broke ranks. The real battle will be between Ken Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the coming years over Gov. Greg Abbott's job...if Abbott doesn't run for a record fourth term himself in 2026.

Ultimately though, Paxton's impeachment was meaningless. We'll see if the federal case against him goes anywhere, although it hasn't in years.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed for a gag order on Donald Trump involving his January 6th case before federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, arguing Trump's repeated social media and campaign rally tirades amount to witness intimidation and threats against officers of the court.

Citing threats against individuals former President Donald Trump has targeted, special counsel Jack Smith has asked a federal judge for a narrowly tailored gag order that restricts the 2024 presidential candidate from making certain extrajudicial statements about the election interference case brought against him.

A redacted copy of a government filing — released Friday, after an order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — comes in connection with the election interference case, one of four criminal cases the former president is facing, two of which are federal.

“The defendant has an established practice of issuing inflammatory public statements targeted at individuals or institutions that present an obstacle or challenge to him,” the special counsel's office wrote.

The government said Trump "made clear his intent to issue public attacks related to this case when, the day after his arraignment, he posted a threatening message on Truth Social."

Trump's Aug. 4 post read: "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!"

Trump, the office wrote, "has made good on his threat," spreading "disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.

"Like his previous public disinformation campaign regarding the 2020 presidential election, the defendant’s recent extrajudicial statements are intended to undermine public confidence in an institution—the judicial system—and to undermine confidence in and intimidate individuals—the Court, the jury pool, witnesses, and prosecutors," the prosecutors wrote.

At an event in Washington, Trump made his first public remarks on the filing by attacking Smith, arguing that the special counsel "wants to take away my rights under the First Amendment, wants to take away my right of speaking freely and openly."

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, responded earlier Friday by calling the filing "nothing more than blatant election interference because President Trump is by far the leading candidate in this race."

This is hardball stuff on the part of Smith and the DoJ, and of course nobody should be surprised by the part where Trump violated this order almost immediately Friday evening and is risking Chutkan citing him for contempt.  In fact, I expect Trump will absolutely push this as far as he can because he wants the process to break down. He wants riots and violence and bloodshed if she does try to put him behind bars, and he's going to all but openly dare her to do so.

 

At the very least, as Steve M. points out, it's daily free publicity through the primaries and election where Trump gets to martyr himself and get tens of millions of voters on his side.

 

Maybe Trump will eventually be convicted and imprisoned. But for now, he's playing these people for fools. He engages in harassment and intimidation, and that becomes news; the system tries to rein him in, and that becomes news; he whines that he's being censored, and that's news, too -- and then, if there is a limited gag order, he'll really complain about censorship (news again) and then defy the order (also news). And the court probably won't have the courage to do the one thing that might stop the harassment and intimidation, which is to jail him for a few days, but either way he wins: either he beat the system or he's a political prisoner.

And this is just one of his cases. They're all going to be like this as the trials approach (and then there'll be the trials).

Trump shouldn't be allowed to get away with the things he's done, obviously, but I wonder if the legal system has guaranteed his nomination (and possibly smoothed his path to another general-election win) by rallying right-wingers and right-centrists to his cause. Would he have been easier to beat in the primaries if he'd never been indicted? I think he still would have won the nomination, though I'm not sure. It's obvious that he's coasting to a primary victory because he's up on charges. Let's hope he doesn't coast to a general-election victory for the same reason -- because he's rallied more voters to his side than the lackluster Biden.

 

This is clearly Trump's plan and it's already rallying his base: the worse of a system-destroying virus he becomes, the more likely he'll be put in a position where he can finish that system off for good. He's all but got the primaries sewn up at this point before a single vote has been cast. If Trump is able to delay any consequences (and let's remember there's an entire political party 100% dedicated to making sure those consequences never materialize) and Republicans are able to impeach Biden for months on end, there's a significant possibility that Trump's going to win and we're all fucked.

The fact that the White House is ready to play and win this game gives me hope however. We have to stand up to this bullshit.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The constant attacks by Donald Trump against federal law enforcement and his calls for his MAGA faithful to "fight together" has resulted in the Justice Department getting so many credible threats that the agency now has an anti-domestic terrorism task force to deal specifically with all the threats against agents and prosecutors.

 

Prosecutors and FBI agents involved in the Hunter Biden investigation have been the targets of threats and harassment by people who think they haven’t been tough enough on the president’s son, according to government officials and congressional testimony obtained exclusively by NBC News.

It’s part of a dramatic uptick in threats against FBI agents that has coincided with attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department by congressional Republicans and former President Donald Trump, who have accused both agencies of participating in a conspiracy to subvert justice amid two federal indictments of Trump.

The threats have prompted the FBI to create a stand-alone unit to investigate and mitigate them, according to a previously unreleased transcript of congressional testimony.

“We have stood up an entire threat unit to address threats that the FBI employees’ facilities are receiving,” Jennifer L. Moore, then an executive assistant director of human resources for the FBI, told the House Judiciary Committee in June. “It is unprecedented. It’s a number we’ve never had before.”

“It’s going to be about 10 people when it’s finished,” she said. “We are still in the process of staffing it right now. But their sole mission on a daily basis is threats to FBI employees at facilities.”

Moore told lawmakers that threats to FBI agents and facilities had more than doubled — there were more in the six months from October to March than in the previous 12 months. More recent data was not available; officials say the pace of threats increased after the FBI investigations of Trump became public last summer and has not slowed since.

The FBI declined to comment.

Natalie Bara, president of the FBI Agents Association, a nonprofit group that advocates for current and retired agents, said in a statement, “FBI Special Agents and their families should never be threatened with violence, including for doing their jobs. This is not a partisan or political issue. Calls for violence against law enforcement are unacceptable, and should be condemned by all leaders.”

Federal prosecutor Lesley Wolf, who had been part of U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ team investigating Hunter Biden, got such a barrage of credible threats that she sought security help from the U.S. Marshals Service, according to previously unreleased testimony from an FBI official to the House Judiciary Committee last week. Two IRS agents on the case have accused Wolf of making decisions that appeared favorable to Biden. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Special counsel Jack Smith and his team have long been protected by an armed security detail, as is Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and office.

On Thursday, the Atlanta office of the FBI said in a statement that it is aware of threats of violence against officials in Fulton County, Georgia, and is working with the county sheriff's office. Trump and 18 other defendants face state charges in Fulton County in connection with alleged election interference.

The field office declined to provide details of any investigations, but said, "[E]ach and every potential threat brought to our attention is taken seriously. Individuals found responsible for making threats in violation of state and/or federal laws will be prosecuted."

 

Republicans have found agents ready to accuse FBI and Justice Department officials of wrongdoing in the Hunter Biden and Donald Trump cases, and those officials are being targeted by constant, consistent, credible threats to their lives. This includes Georgia officials prosecuting Donald Trump and his election interference case.

Nobody's been hurt, yet. But Trump and other GOP 2024 hopefuls keep turning up the heat, and eventually someone's going to get burned. Remember, we have an entire series of trials, convictions, and sentencings because Donald Trump fomented a violent insurrection against the federal government. People were hurt and killed as a result of Trump's statements leading up to January 6th, 2021.

The Justice Department is scrambling to contain the growing threats now. Remember, the FBI office here in Cincy was attacked for this reason last year. More violence leading up to the 2024 election has always been part of the GOP plan. This is being done deliberately.

Keep that in mind.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump's lawyers have successfully derailed NY AG Tish James's state civil bank fraud case by counter-suing the presiding judge and getting a state appellate judge to block the trial for now.

An appellate judge has taken the remarkable step of hitting pause on the New York Attorney General’s upcoming bank fraud trial against Donald Trump—granting the former president’s request in a surprise hearing on Thursday that was closed off to the public.

Now, a full five-judge appellate panel is set to make a decision that could fundamentally alter the case on the eve of trial. And if they take longer than a few days, it will delay the trial altogether.

Appellate Justice David Friedman’s rapid decision—following a brief 3:45 p.m. virtual hearing—acquiesced Trump’s frantic last-minute attempt to derail a trial that threatens to destroy his corporate empire. The former president’s lawyers have turned the heat on the judge overseeing this case—by suing him directly.

Trump was represented by Florida attorney Christopher Kise, according to court employee conversations overheard by this reporter. According to paperwork obtained by The Daily Beast, three lawyers from the AG’s office were also present at the virtual hearing.

Shortly after the appellate judge’s decision, Attorney General Letitia James released a statement, saying, “We are confident in our case and will be ready for trial.”

In an emergency court filing Thursday morning, attorneys for the former president and his associates cited an “urgency” that required New York’s higher courts to step in. They want an appellate judge to commence an “Article 78 special proceeding” against Justice Arthur F. Engoron, one that would force him to decimate a case brought by the AG.

“Although he has yet to perform his lawful duty, Justice Engoron plans to proceed with the trial of the Attorney General’s claims on October 2, 2023—just nineteen days from the date of this petition,” attorneys Clifford S. Robert and Michael Madaio wrote.

It’s a rare move of aggression—particularly this close to trial, which was set to start on Oct. 2. But this has become Trump’s preferred strategy in recent months, a far-fetched gamble he’s currently trying against federal judges in Washington and West Palm Beach who remain utterly unswayed by his relentless attempts to violate their orders and delay cases.

Trump’s lawyers filed a case before New York’s First Department appellate court, which has repeatedly weighed in on this Trump case and many others originating from Manhattan.

Thursday’s court filing claims Engoron and James are both acting to defy appellate orders that could narrow the AG’s behemoth bank fraud lawsuit, putting the judge in the awkward position of having to use lawyers to defend himself alongside the AG. He is expected to be represented by the local court administration’s own lawyers.

Trump’s legal team says Engoron is overstepping his authority, and they want an appellate judge to put him in his place. It’s the latest escalation against the trial court judge, who has increasingly grown tired of their delay antics.

This summer, a state appellate court ordered Engoron to figure out which real estate deals by the Trump Organization are too old for the AG to examine for potential bank and insurance fraud. The judge has yet to draw a cutoff, even though he is expected to do so in the coming days.

But Team Trump can’t wait, and they’re itching to use this as a method to push back the trial. When they requested a three-week delay, Engoron immediately shot that down.

In Thursday’s court filing, the Trump lawyers complained about the way Engoron was “terse” in his curt, nine-word order in which he simply wrote, “Decline to sign; Defendants’ arguments are completely without merit.”

They argued that the judge’s “summary rejection… demonstrates he has no intent to do so and deems the notion that he is bound by this court’s mandate to be ‘completely without merit,’” framing Engoron’s decision as an act of defiance.

The defense lawyers represent the former president, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, Trump Organization executives Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney, and various corporate entities.

The judge who made the decision to halt the trial, Friedman, has reputation as a tough-on-crime judge who was appointed by Republican New York Gov. George Pataki in 1999.

 

Trump's lawyers found the Republican state judge they needed and got the delay they wanted. Every day Trump can delay justice, he can deny justice by getting closer to a second term. And Trump being able to get a judge in New York to agree with the notion of "I'm suing the judge trying my case because HE'S A MEANIE AND TRYING MY CASE" is something you or I would be laughed out of the courtroom for filing, along with sanctions against your defense lawyer.

 

Delay any court trial for as long as possible until you can get a higher court to kill the case is working, at least for now. Run out the clock until January 20, 2025. It's a lot of clock, and a lot of things have to go Trump's way, including an election win.

But for now, it's working. How long he can skate on monomolecular ice, we'll see.

Hunting The Hunter, Con't

The weird legal saga of Hunter Biden continues, as Special Counsel David Weiss is now charging the President's son with felony gun possession.

 

President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden has been indicted by special counsel David Weiss on felony gun charges.

The charges bring renewed legal pressure on the younger Biden after a plea agreement he struck with prosecutors imploded in recent months.

The younger Biden has been charged with two counts related to false statements in purchasing the firearm and a third count on illegally obtaining a firearm while addicted to drugs. The three charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 25 years, when added together.

Prosecutors have spent years scrutinizing Hunter Biden's business endeavors and personal life -- a probe that appeared to culminate in a plea agreement the two sides struck in June, which would have allowed him to plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax offenses and enter into a pretrial diversion program to avoid prosecution on a felony gun charge.

But that deal fell apart during a court hearing in July after U.S. Judge Maryellen Noreika expressed concern over the structure of the agreement and questioned the breadth of an immunity deal, exposing fissures between the two parties.


Weeks later, on Aug. 11, Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss, who was originally appointed by then-President Donald Trump, to special counsel, granting him broader authority to press charges against Hunter Biden in any district in the country.

Prosecutors subsequently informed the court that a new round of negotiations had reached "an impasse," and attorneys for Hunter Biden accused Weiss' office of "reneging" on their agreement.

 

So yeah, 25 years in federal prison is no joke, but as Marcy Wheeler wrote over the weekend, Weiss may not have the slam dunk case that he thinks he does.

There’s something missing from coverage of the claim, made in the second-to-last sentence of a Speedy Trial filing submitted Wednesday, that David Weiss will indict Hunter Biden before September 29, when — according to calculations laid out by prosecutor Leo Wise in the filing — the Speedy Trial Act mandates an indictment.

None of the coverage has considered why David Weiss hasn’t already charged the President’s son.

The filing was submitted in response to an August 31 order from Judge Maryellen Noreika; its very last sentence politely asked her to butt out: “[T]he Government does not believe any action by the Court is necessary at this time.” Given the unusual nature of this legal proceeding, there may at least be question about Wise’s Speedy Trial calculations. One way or another, though, the Speedy Trial clock and the statute of limitations (which Wise said in July would expire on October 12) are ticking.

It would take probably half an hour to present the evidence for the weapons charge — which would consist of the form Hunter signed to purchase a gun, passages from Hunter’s book, a presumed grand jury transcript from Hallie Biden, and testimony from an FBI agent — to a grand jury. It would take maybe another ten minutes if Weiss wanted to add a false statements charge on top of the weapons charge. There certainly would be no need for a special grand jury.

Any tax charges would be more complicated, sure, but they would be in one or another district (probably Los Angeles), ostensibly severed from the weapons charge to which the misdemeanors planned as part of an aborted plea deal were linked.

So why wait? Why not simply indict and avoid any possible challenge to Speedy Trial calculations?

The answer may lie in something included in a long NYT story citing liberally from an anonymous senior law enforcement official who knew at least one thing that only David Weiss could know. That story explains that Weiss sought Special Counsel status, in part, to get, “added leverage in a revamped deal with Mr. Biden.”

If Weiss indeed sought Special Counsel status to get leverage for a deal, then at least last month when he asked for it, he wasn’t really planning on indicting Hunter Biden. He was hoping to get more tactical leverage to convince Hunter Biden to enter into a plea agreement that would better satisfy GOP bloodlust than the plea that failed in July.

Now he has used the opportunity presented by Noreika’s order to claim he really really is going to indict Hunter, a claim that set off predictably titillated reporting about the prospect of a Hunter Biden trial during the presidential election.

Again, if you’re going to charge Hunter Biden with a simple weapons charge, possibly a false statements charge, why not do it already, rather than threatening to do it publicly? Why not charge him in the week after Noreika entered that order, mooting all Speedy Trial concerns?

Whatever Weiss's game is, he's moving ahead now. Why he didn't do so before, well, we'll find out.

Gearing Up For A Strike

The United Auto Workers union went on a targeted strike this morning as the Year of the Strike continues. The Biden administration may have been able to deal with rail workers and UPS employees and get favorable deals for workers, but Hollywood writers, directors and actors are still on the picket lines, and now auto workers are joining the fray.

As the United Auto Workers union is poised to go on a targeted strike against Detroit’s three biggest automakers at midnight Friday morning, Biden administration officials are preparing economic measures to protect suppliers to the auto industry from long-term damage, according to three people aware of internal conversations.

While the administration is not expected to intervene in a strike, Biden aides are worried that a protracted walkout could wipe out the thousands of suppliers that depend on business from the three key automakers, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. Widespread failure of these smaller supplier firms — which number as many as 5,600 — could impede the broader U.S. auto supply chain even after the possible strike ends, according to the people.

It is unclear what form the aid would take, but one option would be for the Labor Department to provide grants to assist workers at firms affected by a strike, two of the people said. Another option could be for the Small Business Administration to provide favorable loans to these firms. The discussions about these measures are preliminary, and talks remain fluid.

“The administration wants to be sure to do what it can to protect the Detroit supply chains,” one administration ally said. This person also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. “They have to worry about how some of the less well-capitalized firms could be at risk.”

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on any internal planning.

 

It took the rail workers six months to get their sick day demands met even with Congress and the White House ordering rail workers back to work and breaking the strike. The Biden administration was able to avert a UPS strike last month. So we'll see how long this strike lasts.

But yes, striking by a vast majority of US workers is necessary at this point.

 

Last Call For The Romneybot Exits Program, Or, Halt And Catch Liar

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney is retiring after the end of his term, and it's BOTH SIDES, you guys.

 

Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 and the only member of his party to twice vote to convict former president Donald Trump in politically charged impeachment trials, announced Wednesday that he will not seek a second term in the Senate representing Utah, saying in an interview that it is time for a new generation to “step up” and “shape the world they’re going to live in.”
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Romney, 76, said his decision not to run again was heavily influenced by his belief that a second term, which would take him into his 80s, probably would be less productive and less satisfying than the current term has been. He blamed that both on the disarray he sees among House Republicans and on his own lack of confidence in the leadership of President Biden and Trump.

“It’s very difficult for the House to operate, from what I can tell,” he said in a lengthy telephone interview previewing his formal announcement, “and two, and perhaps more importantly, we’re probably going to have either Trump or Biden as our next president. And Biden is unable to lead on important matters and Trump is unwilling to lead on important matters.”

Romney, elected to the Senate in 2018 with 63 percent of the vote, said he will serve out the duration of his term, which ends in January 2025. His decision not to seek reelection next year is likely to mark the end of a political career that has been notable, especially in the Trump era, for independence and a willingness to stand up against the base of his party that has shifted dramatically in Trump’s direction in the decade since Romney was its standard-bearer.

From the time Trump first became a candidate until today, Romney has been among his most outspoken critics, and nothing about his departure is expected to change that. In the weeks before Trump’s 2017 inauguration, Romney publicly acquiesced, expressing hope for the president-elect’s leadership while he was under consideration to be secretary of state. But his turnabout was short-lived.

Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump in the 2020 impeachment trial, which involved Trump’s efforts to persuade Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign and withholding aid to that country. Romney was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict in the second trial, which came weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Both votes, but especially the first, cost Romney politically, at home in Utah and more broadly within a party that Trump has come to dominate. He acknowledged the damage he had sustained, but said, “If there were no cost to doing what’s right, there’d be no such thing as courage. … I think it’s fair to say that the support I get in Utah is because people respect someone who does what they believe is right, even if they disagree with me.”

Republicans have speculated that because of his opposition to Trump, Romney could face a difficult battle to win a second term if he decided to run again. But the senator said fear of losing had nothing to do with his decision. In fact, he said, he was confident that, had he decided to run again, he would prevail. He pointed to a recent poll in Utah that showed his approval rebounding to 56 percent, a sharp rise from the 40 percent recorded in May and numbers showing him well ahead of potential rivals.

The highest-achieving Mormon politician of his time, Romney twice sought the presidency and served as governor of Massachusetts before moving to Utah and being elected to the Senate. His father, George, was a governor of Michigan, ran unsuccessfully for president in 1968 and served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Richard M. Nixon.

 

And as just about every other Republican in my lifetime has done, is doing, and will do in the future, Romney's choice was do nothing to fix the problems their party created over that lifetime, and blame the Democrats for it while holding the blowtorch and kicking over the 55-gallon drum of flammable accelerant.

 

Romney had 20 years in government to do better, and at every opportunity he chose not to, and now he's choosing to bail out of the plane he's helped to crash again and again, failing his father's legacy whenever he could.

Most of all, wherever Romney did the right thing, like MassCare when he was Governor there two decades ago, he just disavowed it later.

What a failure of a career. Even when he won, he lost.

Florida Goes Viral, Con't

The FDA has new guidance on the latest Covid booster vaccine, approving and recommending the booster for all Americans over six months in age, and once again, Florida's MAGA nutjob Surgeon General David Ladapo is telling Florida residents under 65 not to get vaccinated at all.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hand-picked surgeon general on Wednesday warned healthy adults under the age of 65 against taking a new Covid-19 booster, contradicting the Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration.

Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, speaking during a roundtable that DeSantis hosted, said that after three years of Covid, most healthy people don’t need to worry about getting infected from a virus that has killed more than 1 million people across the country. Ladapo is a well-known vaccine skeptic who has claimed some shots pose risks to healthy young men.

“With the amount of immunity that’s in the community — with virtually every walking human being having some degree of immunity, and with the questions we have about safety and about effectiveness, especially about safety, my judgment is that it’s not a good decision for young people and for people who are not at high risk at this point in the pandemic,” he said.

Previous guidance by Ladapo about Covid-19 vaccine safety has been widely rejected by the medical community. Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, said Wednesday it appeared that Ladapo and the others at the roundtable were selectively highlighting data to show problems with the new boosters.

“In general, they’re cherry-picking data and facts and science,” Salmon said. “And I think that they’re there, because they don’t want to recommend this vaccine for Florida.”

Jason Salemi, an epidemiology professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, said there are plenty of credible studies showing that healthy people under the age of 65 are still at risk of death from Covid-19.

“Equipping ourselves with and implementing mitigation measures can result in considerably less severe illness, less long Covid, and less mortality, all with little impact on our day-to-day lives,” Salemi wrote in an email. “So, there is clearly a need.”

The CDC and FDA this week gave the green light for two new vaccine boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which are recommended for people ages 6 months and up.

 

Remember, the only person here who manipulated the science on vaccines is Ladapo himself.

Ladapo, a well-known vaccine skeptic, has gone even further. Last year, he warned young men against taking the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, suggesting that they increase the risk of cardiac-related deaths. POLITICO later revealed that Ladapo personally altered a state study to imply that the vaccines pose a health risk to young men. He highlighted that study when asserting that some Covid vaccines are dangerous for young men. 

He lied to make the Covid vaccines look more dangerous than they were, got caught, and nothing happened. And now, he's lying again, and putting thousands of Floridians at risk of dying from Covid.

This is what I mean when I say Republicans will kill everyone you know if it means they can "own the libs."

Shutdown Countdown, Clown Town Edition

Usually as we head into the last half of September, we have the annual spending bill battle where Republicans and Democrats work it out and fund the government for another year. Only one problem this time around, and that's because House GOP Speaker Kevin McCarty is such an absolute paperweight of uselessness that the House GOP hasn't managed to pass any spending bills at all, and that the country is headed for an economic nightmare again.

 

House GOP leaders have abandoned efforts to pass an agriculture funding bill amid an intraparty row over abortion policy. Now, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is left without critical leverage as the Democratic-majority Senate advances its own plans and Congress hurtles toward a federal shutdown Oct. 1.

House GOP leaders had hoped that inserting abortion policy into every major piece of their government spending plans would help win over conservative members and placate influential outside groups agitating for more aggressive action on the issue. But so far, the move has helped to seal the demise of what is usually among the easiest appropriations bills for Congress to pass, drawing fierce and rare pushback from more than a dozen moderate Republicans.

At the center of the battle: a GOP provision in the agriculture funding bill to ban mail delivery of abortion pills nationwide. Divisions over the move, along with disagreement over the total spending levels, forced senior Republicans to scuttle a planned House vote on the bill that funds the USDA and Food and Drug Administration at the end of July. Discussions to revive the bill over the August recess failed, according to three people who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Now, Republican leaders have no plans to bring the bill to the floor vote amid the time crunch, the three people familiar with the talks confirmed. That leaves the Democratic-controlled Senate — which is advancing its own, very different version of the Agriculture and FDA funding bill as part of a “minibus” spending package this week — in a far stronger negotiating position when it comes time to hammer out a compromise spending bill to fund the government.

“It’s dead, dead,” one of the people familiar with the talks said, describing the fate of the House USDA and FDA funding bill, and, for now, the ban on mail delivery of abortion pills House Republicans have been pushing.

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a member of the Appropriations Committee, said agriculture was important “on both sides of the aisle” but that Agriculture Department and FDA funding will likely be hammered out in talks with the Senate. The focus now, the Montana Republican said, should be elsewhere.

“We gotta get the border done,” Zinke said.

While GOP leaders anticipated pushback on the spending proposals from their right flank — including pressure for deeper spending cuts and tougher border security measures — they’ve also faced rare public pushback from moderate Republicans, who have dug in against their abortion strategy. In particular, those moderates have objected to the provision in the Agriculture and FDA spending bill to ban mail delivery of abortion pills, which have become a major flashpoint since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, the pills have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S. but battles over the drugs continuing to play out in courts, state legislatures and on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.), who represents a district President Joe Biden won in 2020, said in an interview earlier this summer that he “cannot vote for the bill” as long as it includes the abortion pill rider. Fellow New York Republican Mike Lawler, who also hails from a Biden district, told POLITICO the abortion pill policy “should be dealt with at the state level.”

Those GOP moderates are eager to see controversial abortion provisions and other divisive provisions included the House’s other spending bills tossed out as House GOP leaders turn to crafting a larger funding package and reconciling it with the Senate.

In other areas of the spending fight, House Republicans’ Financial Services draft funding bill would block Washington, D.C., from using its own money to support abortion services and ban insurance coverage of either abortion or gender-affirming care for federal employees. Their Labor-HHS-Education spending bill would ban federal funding for medical research using fetal tissue and bar Planned Parenthood from participating in any federal programs. And their State-Foreign Operations spending bill would ban funding to any group overseas that provides abortions or information about the procedure.

The House’s Defense spending bill, which recently drew a veto threat from the White House over its anti-abortion provisions among other measures, is also in trouble. A floor vote on the GOP bill, which would block funding for service members to travel for an abortion if they’re stationed in a state where the procedure is banned, is now in jeopardy.

“A number of us would like to see the stickier social issues presented as individual amendments,” said Rep. John Duarte, a Republican who represents a blue district in California.

The fight comes as Republicans continue to struggle to unite around a strategy and message on abortion more than a year after the fall of Roe v. Wade. And Democrats plan to lean heavily on the issue in the 2024 campaign.

 

In other words, the House GOP can't even pass its own bills at this point, which means the Senate is in charge, the deals will be made with the Democrats, and McCarthy will have to eat bowl after bowl of turd flakes, resulting in his eventual ouster next month as he gets the Boehner Special. 

 

And note it's not the right-wing MAGA trolls dropping out of this bill, it's the House Republicans in Blue and purple states who know if they vote to end shipping of abortion meds by mail that they're done.

Who knows who will replace him, but I don't see him surviving as Speaker for much longer. Maybe Gaetz or Stefanik? Steve Scalise? 

We'll see.

Last Call For Gunmerica: The Battle Of New Mexico, Con't

If you had "Wednesday" down for the federal court injunction blocking New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's emergency order rolling back open carry in Albuquerque and surrounding environs, please collect your fabulous ZVTS no-prize.

 

A federal judge in New Mexico on Wednesday issued a temporary restraining order against the state governor's ban on carrying guns in Albuquerque and its surrounding county, a move which threw the state into the center of the U.S. gun-rights debate.

U.S. District Court Judge David Urias said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham's 30-day suspension of concealed and open firearm carry rights went against a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that people had a right to carry a gun outside their homes for self defense.

“They just want the right to carry their guns,” Urias said of the several plaintiffs who requested restraining orders against Lujan Grisham's Sept. 8 emergency public health order.

The Democratic governor issued the suspension on firearm carry laws to offer a "cooling-off period" in which authorities could address solutions to the state's high rates of gun crime after several children were fatally shot.

Lujan Grisham's order outraged gun-rights advocates and drew backlash from fellow Democrats and law enforcement officials, also Democrats, who called it unconstitutional.

Gun control campaigners called the move "courageous" and the Catholic Archbishop of Santa Fe feared more value was being given to gun rights than the life of an 11-year-old boy shot dead last week in an apparent Albuquerque road rage incident.

Albuquerque's mayor and Bernalillo County's sheriff, both Democrats, have urged Lujan Grisham to call a special state legislative session on gun crime after the gun ban.

Mayor Tim Keller said that, in order to fight gun crime, he needed legislation to fix a broken criminal justice system, regulate assault weapons and provide addiction and mental health services, among other measures.

"Albuquerque families can't afford political debates that distract us from fighting violent crime," Keller wrote in a letter to the governor.

Gun violence kills around 500 people a year in New Mexico, which ranks sixth among U.S. states for gun deaths per capita, according to gun violence prevention group Everytown for Gun Safety. Albuquerque is among the 10 most dangerous U.S. cities, based on FBI violent crime data.

 

We'll see how much Gov. Grisham wants to fight this, but there's approximately zero chance this wins on appeal and negative zero chance it wins on SCOTUS appeal.  In fact, zero is the number of SCOTUS justices that would side with Grisham on this.

I applaud the effort, but it's futile one here in Gunmerica.

 

 

 

The Greene Monster Gets Her Due

Once again, Republican Congressmonster Marjorie Taylor Greene is openly calling for secession from the US.

 

IN FEBRUARY, GEORGIA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a “national divorce” between red and blue states. Now, she’s taking her call for a schism even further by encouraging states to outright “consider seceding from the union.”

On Monday, Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that “if the Biden admin refuses to stop the invasion of cartel led human and drug trafficking into our country, states should consider seceding from the union.”

“From Texas to New York City to every town in America, we are drowning from Biden’s traitorous America last border policies,” Greene added.

Months ago, Greene suggested that a “national divorce,” rather than, say, a democratic form of governance, was needed to remedy the disputes between Republican and Democratic states. “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done,” Greene said at the time.

 

Once again, the problem isn't Greene. The problem is the party she represents allows her to stay in the House., and there's no reason to believe they will change that, nor the voters in her district. She is allowed to make statements like that as a sitting member of Congress because she is enabled to by the House GOP and the people of Georgia.

And Greene is more than happy to take credit for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's decision on Tuesday to bring an impeachment inquiry into President Biden to a vote on the House floor. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants it to be known that she was the first to push for impeaching President Joe Biden, chiding fellow Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz for trying to steal some of the credit.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday announced that he was directing his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over allegations that the now-president profited off of the business activities of his son, Hunter Biden.

The decision comes as the California Republican has faced mounting pressure over the issue from many members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, who hold immense sway in the narrow Republican House majority. Greene, a Georgia Republican and key McCarthy ally, was previously ousted from the caucus.

Just minutes before McCarthy made his announcement on Capitol Hill, Gaetz remarked on the Biden impeachment inquiry debate, writing on X that he "pushed" for the Speaker to act on the issue. The Florida Republican is close with the caucus, but he is not a member.

"When @SpeakerMcCarthy makes his announcement in moments, remember that as I pushed him for weeks, @kilmeade said I was: 'Speaking into the wind' on impeachment. Turns out, the wind may be listening!," he said.

But Greene, who has pushed for Biden's impeachment since he first took office, countered Gaetz's argument on X by accusing the lawmaker of being late to the game in seeking going after the president and his son.

"Correction my friend. I introduced articles of impeachment against Joe Biden for his corrupt business dealings in Ukraine & China while he was Vice President on his very first day in office," she said. "You wouldn't cosponsor those and I had to drag you kicking and screaming to get you to cosponsor my articles on the border. Who's really been making the push?

—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 12, 2023

Earlier on Tuesday, Greene said that the impeachment inquiry "isn't a tall order," contending that the House Oversight Committee has "uncovered mountains of evidence of crimes and corruption committed by the Biden family."

The White House on Tuesday immediately pushed back against GOP efforts to start an impeachment inquiry.

"McCarthy is being told by Marjorie Taylor Greene to do impeachment, or else she'll shut down the government," Ian Sams, the White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, wrote on X.

"Opening impeachment despite zero evidence of wrongdoing by POTUS is simply red meat for the extreme rightwing so they can keep baselessly attacking him," he added.

Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, on Sunday told MSNBC's Jen Psaki that the "time for impeachment is the time when there's evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor."

"That doesn't exist right now," he said.

Greene in a recent CNN interview slammed Buck over his stance, remarking that there was an "unbelievable" degree of frustration with the former prosecutor.

"This is the same guy that wrote a book called 'Drain the Swamp', who is now arguing against an impeachment inquiry," she told the network. "I really don't see how we can have a member on Judiciary that is flat out refusing to impeach. … It seems like, can he even be trusted to do his job at this point?"

 

The White House has the right of this, and they're ready to play defense while pointing out the GOP is willing to wreck the economy over nonsense like this, reminding everyone exactly why Trump lost in 2020 and why the GOP lost the Senate...and needs to lose the House again.

Greene wants to take credit? Let her, as loudly and as often as possible.

A Bunch Of Block Heads, Con't

Social media outlets don't want to piss off Republicans in any way, so they're now specifically targeting Democratic, liberal topics, outlets, and constituencies. First up: Elongated Muskrat is specifically blocking NY Times articles.

 

X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times.

Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post, and the BBC, according to NewsWhip’s data on 300,000 influential users of X.

The drop in engagement in Times posts seems isolated to X: NewsWhip data showed that engagement with Times links shared on Facebook remained consistent relative to other outlets.

“There was a drop off in engagement for NYT compared to the other sites in late July/early August,” NewsWhip spokesperson Benedict Nicholson told Semafor.

 

Indeed, article engagement by X posters has dropped by 90% over the last six weeks.  Oh, and before we think that Zuckerbot and his Facebook/Threads/Instagram empire are the good guys, well, they're not.

Instagram’s text-based social platform Threads last week rolled out its new search function, a crucial step toward the platform’s expansion and one that would give it more parity with X, formerly known as Twitter.

Not even 24 hours later, the company was embroiled in controversy. When users went to Threads to search for content related to “covid” and “long covid,” they were met with a blank screen that showed no search results and a pop-up linking to the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Meta acknowledged in a statement to The Washington Post that Threads is intentionally blocking the search terms and said that other terms are being blocked, but the company declined to provide a list of them. A search by The Post discovered that the words “sex,” “nude,” “gore,” “porn,” “coronavirus,” “vaccines” and “vaccination” are also among blocked words.

“The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content,” the statement said, adding that the company will add search functionality for terms only “once we are confident in the quality of the results.”

Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University, discovered this himself when he attempted to use Threads to seek out research related to covid, something he says he does every day. “I was excited by search [on Threads],” he said. “When I typed in covid, I came up with no search results.”

Other public health workers criticized the company’s decision and said its timing was especially poor, given the current coronavirus uptick. Hospitalizations jumped nearly 16 percent in the United States last week and have been rising steadily since July, according to CDC data, though they remain less than what they were for the comparable week a year ago. Deaths are less than a quarter of what they were year to year, CDC statistics show. 

 

Yes, that's right, Covid is just as bad as porn and gets blocked by Threads in searches. Americans will just have to go to independent social media like TikTok to search for...never mind. 

TIKTOK HAS FIXED a mistake that temporarily prevented users from searching for videos related to the Writers Guild of America strike — saying the phrase was accidentally flagged by the app’s filters against QAnon.

News of the block was first reported by Media Matters. When the phrase WGA was put into the search bar, viewers were instead shown a warning that the search “may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.” The hashtag WGA also did not bring up any videos.

A spokesperson for TikTok told Rolling Stone on Monday that the search term was inadvertently blocked as part of existing protections against QAnon conspiracy theories, which violate community guidelines against disinformation. In 2020, the app banned several large hashtags related to the conspiracy theory and told Rolling Stone in a statement that the company would be developing a way to make QAnon-related content harder to find with TikTok’s search function.

The spokesperson also noted that searching WGA fully written out as Writers Guild strike or “Writers’ Guild of America” would show related videos.

 

Just a mistake, you see. Until they got caught.

 

Blockheads, all of them.

Last Call For Reparation Nation, Con't

A new LA Times poll finds that Californians are massively opposed to cash reparations for Black citizens in the state as Oakland and other municipalities are suggesting be looked into.

 

California voters oppose the idea of the state offering cash payments to the descendants of enslaved African Americans by a 2-to-1 margin, according to the results of a new poll that foreshadows the political difficulty ahead next year when state lawmakers begin to consider reparations for slavery.

The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times, found that 59% of voters oppose cash payments compared with 28% who support the idea. The lack of support for cash reparations was resounding, with more than 4 in 10 voters “strongly” opposed.

“It has a steep uphill climb, at least from the public’s point of view,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers created California’s Reparations Task Force in 2020 with the goal of establishing a path to reparations that could serve as a model for the nation. After two years of deliberations, the task force sent a final report and recommendations this summer to the state Capitol, where Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature will ultimately decide how the state should atone for slavery.

The group suggested providing cash payments to all descendants based on health disparities, mass incarceration and over-policing and housing discrimination that have adversely affected Black residents compared with white Californians.

The remedies recommended in the report also go far beyond cash payments and include policies to end the death penalty, pay fair market value for jail and prison labor, restore voting rights to all formerly and currently incarcerated people and apply rent caps to historically redlined ZIP Codes that disadvantaged Black residents, among dozens of other suggestions.

 

This will never happen, of course. The closer California actually got to reparations, to resolving the core causes of the egregious economic imbalance between Black and white folks in even a state as liberal as the Golden State, the easier it becomes for Republicans and other opposition groups to kill any reparation measures at all. 

There's no faster way to get white, Asian, and Hispanic voters back on the GOP train, enough so to turn Cali back into the Pete Wilson/Arnold Schwarzenegger red state that it was 15, 20 years ago than meaningful reparations. Republicans would be crazy not to drive that wedge into everything from school boards to the Governor's mansion.

Reparations are still the moral thing to do, but there will be consequences to the point where I can see California Republicans taking every dime back and charging Black folk for interest.

Just to be assholes.

Redistricting Rodeo, Con't

Democrats are feeling good about recent court decisions that could mean enough redistricting going into the 2024 election that the Dems could regain control of the House.

 

In the past nine days, state and federal judges threw out two congressional maps — and helped Democrats avoid a worst-case scenario in Ohio — kicking off an unusually busy redistricting calendar heading into the election year.

All told, a dozen or more seats across at least six states could be redrawn, increasing the likelihood Democrats could chip away the five-seat GOP House majority through redistricting alone.

Democrats could pick up an extra seat in each of a handful of states, including Florida, Alabama and Louisiana, and perhaps several more in New York. Republicans could still pick up as many as four seats in North Carolina, but the recent rulings put Democrats in a position to offset those losses — and then some.

Redistricting could not only give Democrats a slight edge in their bid to reclaim the majority they lost in 2022 but also increase the number of Black members in their conference. Prospective Democratic candidates in several key states are already eagerly eyeing a rare chance to run for a federal office, and the party is brimming with hope about growing its footprint in the South.

“It’s an incredible win,” Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said of Alabama. “It’s an incredibly important moment.”

The court rulings and new maps coming in the next four months, she said, could determine the 2024 House map.

None of the new maps are final. Higher courts could reverse lower court rulings, especially in Florida. But the recent spate of decisions have swung the momentum toward Democrats, and party operatives have grown far more optimistic about their House map after the recent rulings.

A change in the composition of even just a few districts could have a huge effect. With Republicans’ majority resting on such a narrow margin, the fight to control the House is expected to once again be highly competitive next year, and Democrats are searching for every possible toehold to climb back to the top.

The most notable movement for Democrats has been in a region that’s fallen away from them: the South. Over the past week, courts overturned Republican-drawn maps in Alabama and Florida for weakening the power of Black voters.

Alabama Republicans had thumbed their noses at the federal court’s instructions to redraw a map that it ruled likely violated the Voting Rights Act. They drew a new map this summer with just one majority-Black district — in spite of the court’s instructions to draw a second. The judges threw out the new map last week.

The three-judge panel ruled that the Alabama legislature does not get “a second bite at the apple” and appointed an independent expert to draw new lines by Sept. 25. Alabama Republicans said they will appeal the ruling.

Southern Democrats are thrilled by the prospect of a new majority-Black seat.

The court-appointed expert could draw a new district uniting Montgomery and Mobile — something that has sparked interest from local legislators in both cities. State Rep. Napoleon Bracy Jr., state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures and state Sen. Kirk Hatcher are high on the list of potential contenders.

Another name to watch: Steven Reed, who was just reelected as Montgomery’s first Black mayor. During his mayoral run, he remained pointedly noncommittal on whether he would be interested in running for a new majority-Black district.

 

This would be phenomenal if it panned out. There's every reason however to believe SCOTUS will step in and sink all of these redistricting efforts (except NC, or course). If anything I see Republicans gaining seats after the Roberts Court gets done.

 

I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong, but the conservatives on the court know who is paying them millions to side with the GOP, and they'll deliver.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

In response to his dozens of criminal indictments in federal court and in Georgia, Trump continues to openly campaign on eliminating the people who indicted him, and Saturday's authoritarian rally in North Dakota was the most ominous rhetoric so far.

Donald Trump is conjuring his most foreboding vision yet of a possible second term, telling supporters in language resonant of the run-up to the January 6 mob attack on the US Capitol that they need to “fight like hell” or they will lose their country.

The rhetorical escalation from the four-times-indicted ex-president came at a rally in South Dakota on Friday night where he accused his possible 2024 opponent, President Joe Biden, of ordering his indictment on 91 charges across four criminal cases as a form of election interference.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a darkness around our nation like there is now,” Trump said, in a dystopian speech in which he accused Democrats of allowing an “invasion” of migrants over the southern border and of trying to restart Covid “hysteria.”

The Republican front-runner’s stark speech raised the prospect of a second presidency that would be even more extreme and challenging to the rule of law than his first. His view that the Oval Office confers unfettered powers suggests Trump would indulge in similar conduct as that for which he is awaiting trial, including intimidating local officials in an alleged bid to overturn his 2020 defeat.

Characteristically, Trump also turned criticism of his behavior against his political foes, implicitly arguing that the true peril for America’s political freedoms did not spring from his attempt to invalidate a free and fair election, but from efforts to make him face legal accountability for doing so. “It’s really a threat to democracy while they trample our rights and liberties every single day of the year,” he said.

“This is a big moment in our country because we’re either going to go one way or the other, and if we go the other, we’re not going to have a country left,” he told supporters in South Dakota. “We will fight together, we will win together and then we will seek justice together,” he added. This followed a March rally in which he billed his 2024 campaign and potential second term as a vessel of “retribution” for supporters who believe they’ve been wronged.

Alarm bells, airhorns, large stacks of guitar amps, all of these need to be going off around the country. This is the language authoritarians use when they promise to annihilate their political enemies. Trump isn't running on anything other than putting Democrats in jail or worse.

Trump isn't seeking justice at all. He's seeking revenge, and he's giving his tens of millions of followers permission to seek that revenge along with him in a blood-soaked pogrom crusade. He's giving them the justification they need to do it, and tens of millions of Trump supporters are looking forward to the carnage.

It'll only get worse as we get closer to the election. 

Meanwhile, speaking of those dozens of indictments against Donald Trump, his lawyers are trying to get Judge Tanya Chutkan thrown off the January 6th case.

 

In a filing Monday, they argued that Judge Tanya Chutkan should recuse herself from the case for previous statements they say give the appearance of bias. They did not outright accuse Chutkan of being biased against Trump, but highlighted statements they claimed "create a perception of prejudgment incompatible with our justice system."

"Judge Chutkan has, in connection with other cases, suggested that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned. Such statements, made before this case began and without due process, are inherently disqualifying," Trump's attorneys wrote in the filing.

Trump has entered a not guilty plea in the case, filed by special counsel Jack Smith, in which he is charged with four felony counts relating to an alleged scheme to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

Trump's filing highlights several instances during hearings related to defendants in Jan. 6 riot cases in which Trump's attorneys say Chutkan appeared critical of the former president.

"This was nothing less than an attempt to violently overthrow the government, the legally, lawfully, peacefully elected government, by individuals who were mad that their guy lost," Chutkan said during one October 2022 hearing, later adding, "it's blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day."

Trump's attorneys called that statement "an apparent prejudgment of guilt."

"The public meaning of this statement is inescapable — President Trump is free, but should not be," they wrote.

The filing also highlights statements Chutkan made to rioter Robert Palmer, who was sentenced to more than five years in prison for using a wooden plank and a fire extinguisher to attack police.

"The people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged," Chutkan said during Palmer's December 2021 sentencing hearing.

Ultimately, it is up to Chutkan to decide if these past statements create a perception of bias. If she does, a new judge would be assigned to the case. If she disagrees with Trump's attorneys, she will continue to preside over the matter. If the recusal is denied, Trump's attorneys could petition an appeals court for a writ of mandamus, essentially an order requiring her to recuse. These efforts are not often successful.

 

It's all bullshit of course, but Trump's playing winning on a SCOTUS appeal down the road, if not pardoning himself with a successful 2024 election. I still have massive doubts that he'll spend a single day in prison for anything.

 

We can hope however.