Ken Chesebro Has A Whole Lotta ‘Splaining To Do

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

New Warrants Issued For Chesebro’s Social Media Accounts

As TPM first reported in February, Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Chesebro had an anonymous Twitter account under the handle Badger Pundit that he used in the run-up to Jan 6. Shortly thereafter, CNN reported that Chesebro had failed to tell prosecutors with whom he was cooperating about the social media accounts.

That partial truthiness now seems to have landed Chesebro in additional hot water in the Michigan fake electors probe, CNN now reports:

Google and X, formerly Twitter, recently provided hundreds of files to Michigan prosecutors for their 2020 election subversion probe, complying with search warrants that investigators obtained after CNN revealed secret social media accounts belonging to pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who played a major role in the fake electors plot. …

The search warrants to Google and X were executed in March, shortly after CNN reported that Chesebro had concealed some of his social media accounts from prosecutors during his cooperation session last year. Chesebro has not been charged in Michigan, and he has pleaded guilty in Georgia’s election interference probe.

It’s not clear if the Michigan probe is now targeting Chesebro, turning his would-be cooperation into a new avenue of legal jeopardy for him. Chesebro’s lawyer, speaking after the new CNN report, played down the latest development and suggested they didn’t fight the warrants. “There is no legal jeopardy — we have been cooperating the whole time,” Manny Arora said on MSNBC.

Trump Trial Resumes Today

It’s going to be a herky-jerky week in the Trump hush money trial, with trial only today, Thursday, and Friday. TPM’s Josh Kovensky will be covering the trial for us all week.

Deserved

Philip Bump: Bill Barr doesn’t mind a little autocracy if your politics are right

Michael Cohen Wins Retraction From OAN

The far-right One America News cable net has retracted a false claim it published that it was Michael Cohen who had actually had a dalliance with porn star Stormy Daniels. Cohen had recently retained a defamation lawyer to handle the March 27 OAN report.

Hunter Biden Threatens To Sue Fox News

Lawyers for the president’s son have told Fox News that they plan to sue the network “imminently” over its coverage of him:

Biden has hired attorney Mark Geragos and his firm to represent him in the Fox litigation efforts. The letter is the second outreach to Fox this month. An earlier letter was hand-delivered to Fox’s counsel two weeks ago, and the network asked for more time to respond, according to a source familiar with Biden’s legal efforts. The network has not yet responded to the letter sent April 23, which included a Friday evening, April 26, deadline to respond, according to Geragos. The letter is signed by Tina Glandian, a partner at Geragos & Geragos working on the case.

The plan to sue Fox News has been in the works for a while, NBC News reports, but was reinvigorated by the indictment of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov for making false claims about the Bidens. Many of Smirnov’s bogus bribery claims against the Bidens were laundered through House Republicans and Fox News.

Campus Protests Watch

• At Columbia University, students protesting over Israel-Gaza took over and barricaded themselves in an academic building overnight after the school began suspending students who refused to leave a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus.
• At Virginia Tech, more than 80 protesters, 53 of whom were students, were arrested Sunday night into Monday morning.
• The WaPo has a rundown on which campuses nationwide have seen arrests.

Student Revolt And The Curtailing Of Critical Speech

Thomas Zimmer:

And yet, in the face of such outrageous suppression of protest through state agents, the powerful phalanx of elite opinionists who have told us for about a decade now that the “free speech crisis” on college campuses is a clear and present danger to freedom and democracy has had nary a critical word to offer. On the contrary, the crackdown at Columbia, specifically, has garnered an enthusiastic response from such prominent members of the “free speech crisis” industrial complex as Caitlin Flanagan and John McWhorter who have sided unequivocally with the authorities. The same circles who have been presenting themselves as uncompromising fighters for free speech, imploring us to understand that speech must not be curtailed just because you (on the Left!) may disagree with it, are now fully on board with speech they don’t like being suppressed by the state. Weird, huh?

Bad All Around

Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) qualified for re-election two months ago, then on the last day of qualifying a GOP ally of his quietly filed to run in the primary against him, and when the filing deadline passed at noon, Posey dropped out of the race and endorsed his ally for his seat.

These kinds of shenanigans around qualifying for elections have been going on forever, but I still loath them. They were real common in the South when elected Democrats were switching en masse to the Republican Party: Switch parties right before qualifying and deprive both parties of the chance of challenging your big move. Now these schemes are usually more geared to letting electeds or their parties pick successors and install them without the chance to muster any opposition.

‘I’ve Decided To Bring Kitara Out Of The Closet’

The Hill: George Santos hawking Cameo videos with his drag queen alter ego

It’s Go Time NOW

With time of the essence to transition to a carbon-free energy economy, the Biden administration is moving to speed up regulatory approval for clean energy projects while giving greater scrutiny to projects with potential damaging climate effects.

Go Grizzlies!

The federal government is planning to restore grizzly bears to their native range in the North Cascades, where the last confirmed grizzly sighting was in 1996.

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