Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕
If Trump’s sentencing hearing happens on its new date of November 26, we’ll know a few things.
Continue reading “The Art Of The Sentencing”Inside TPM with John Light
One of the great mysteries of the world is how the news gets made. Theories abound. The reality is every newsroom is its own little ecosystem with its own way of doing things. I worked in several newsrooms before arriving at TPM, and TPM operates in a way that was vastly different from any other. I noticed the conspicuous lack of meetings and that nobody really had a “beat” — two things I had supposed were universal. But of course, TPM is not your average news gathering operation. So, in this episode of Inside TPM, I spoke to Managing Editor John Light to find out how the news gets made at TPM. We discussed how the team decides what is newsworthy, how the team tries to serve readers, and even how he thinks TPM would cover Tony Soprano if he were a real person. (The answer surprised me!)
All that and more in this month’s episode of Inside TPM.
BREAKING … Or At Least Something Josh Is Obsessing About
So after my last update below, new reports from TPM readers have confirmed that the Mailer Storm overwhelming the mailboxes of partisan Democrats in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia are all coming from a single zip code in Jacksonville, Florida (32204) and presumably a single vendor. This notwithstanding the fact that they are all going out as sent from the respective Republican parties of the respective states. That’s not terribly strange in itself. Direct mail is a national business. It’s actually not okay to use state parties, which have preferential mail rates, as pure passthroughs, but I’m told it’s a widespread practice and rules against it are basically unenforced. The one exception may be the mailers going out in Pennsylvania. The mailers are all the same in every state. But the ones in Pennsylvania are the only ones that are from a state party committee rather than the state party, and their “nonprofit indicia” mark does not include the the zip code they are mailed from.
Judge Delays Trump’s New York Sentencing Until After Election
The New York state judge presiding over Donald Trump’s hush money case pushed the GOP candidate’s sentencing until past the November election, saying in a Friday order that the upcoming election had played a role in his decision.
Continue reading “Judge Delays Trump’s New York Sentencing Until After Election”My Hunt After the Mailer Storm Mystery Continues!
I wanted to update you on the mailers story I discussed with you yesterday. Before getting to the details, I want to thank everyone who sent in reports. Really, really helpful. In fact, what I’m doing would be completely impossible without them. I’m going to assume you read yesterday’s post, which has various caveats and context. If not, you can read it here.
- First, there are a lot of people talking about this independently in different swing states. Like, it’s really a thing. I was listening in on a Zoom call yesterday about a state legislative race in North Carolina and the topic actually came up — how we’re all getting spammed by these Trump mailers. And to be clear, this was a call where everyone was either a party official or a partisan Democrat or actually a candidate. From this and other discussions with TPM readers it’s clear this is being discussed as a minor mystery among Democrats in each swing state but with everyone thinking that it’s just their town or state and not something that’s happening in all the swing states.
Alleged Assailants In Trump’s Arlington Cemetery Fiasco Identified
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Drip, Drip, Drip
NPR has been leading the pack in the reporting on Trump’s violation of the Arlington National Cemetery rules against political activities. It was the first to report that there had been an altercation of some sort between two Trump campaign staffers and a cemetery staffer who was trying to enforce the rules. Now NPR has identified those staffers:
The two staffers, according to a source with knowledge of the incident, are deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of Trump’s advance team.
According to the NPR report, both staffers verbally abused the cemetery worker, but it was Picard who allegedly pushed her aside:
When an ANC employee tried to enforce the rules, she was verbally abused by the two Trump campaign operatives, according to a source with knowledge of the incident. Picard then pushed her out of the way according to two Pentagon officials.
Caporale, as a deputy campaign manager, is the higher ranking of the two staffers. He used to work for Melania Trump in the White House before he reportedly ran into problems with his security clearance and was let go by then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. As NPR notes, Caporale also served in another notable capacity:
He was also listed as the on-site contact and project manager for the Women for America First rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 where Trump urged the crowd to “stop the steal” before some of them stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Neither Caporale nor Picard commented to NPR.
The Supreme Court’s Handiwork On Full Display
Yesterday’s first hearing in the Jan. 6 case since the Supreme Court rocked the constitutional foundation with its presidential immunity decision showed what a difficult of not impossible task it left for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. She threw some light shade toward the Trump team and more indirectly toward the high court, but she seemed resigned to having to make lot of difficult decisions ahead with little guidance from the justices and ample opportunities for her to be second guessed.
The hearing produced no major news that changes the complexion or trajectory of the case. It’s not going to proceed as slowly as Trump wants, but it’s going to be awfully slow to work through the immunity issues and have those go up on appeal yet again. So much still has to happen in the pretrial phase that Chutkan didn’t bother to set a trial date.
U.S. Comes Down Hard On Russia
The traditional post-Labor Day start to the campaign season kicked off this week with a wide-ranging sweep by federal authorities of a variety of alleged Russian election interference and other clandestine operations.
In addition to the bogus media startup that was allegedly funneling Russian cash to right-wing influencers, other law enforcement moves this week included:
- DC think tanker and former Trump 2016 campaign adviser Dimitri Simes was charged with money laundering and sanctions violations for allegedly working with a Russian state TV network. His wife was indicted separately.
- DOJ announced a superseding indictment in Russia’s WhisperGate malware attacks targeting computer systems in Ukraine, the United States and more than two dozen NATO countries.
- Meanwhile, The Blaze terminated its contract with YouTuber Lauren Chen, a co-founder with her husband of the startup Tenet Media, which was paying exorbitant sums to the likes of Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, who were not charged and claimed to have been victimized by the Russian scheme. YouTube took down the channels of Tenet Media and Chen.
China, Too
NYT: The Secrets of an Unassuming N.Y. Official Accused of Working for China
Expected Today
New York state Judge Juan Merchan originally planned to issue a decision Thursday on whether to delay the Sept. 18 sentencing of Donald Trump in the hush money case, but he missed his self-imposed deadline. He now expects to rule today.
Meanwhile, Trump has filed a new appeal in the Second Circuit to try to reverse a federal judge’s decision not allowing him to seek removal of the hush money case to federal court.
For The Record
Just Security: Chronology of a Dozen Times Trump Pushed to Prosecute His Perceived Enemies
No Deal: Hunter Biden Pleads Guilty
Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in prison and $1.3 million in fines after he pleaded guilty to federal tax charges – apparently without the benefit of a plea deal with Special Counsel David Weiss.
The surprise change of plea came as jury selection was set to begin Thursday in Los Angeles. Biden initially tried to enter an Alford plea, where he concedes there is sufficient evidence to convict him but doesn’t accept guilt. Weiss rebuffed that legal gambit, and subsequent negotiations failed to yield a plea agreement, at which point Biden capitulated.
The only obvious upsides for Biden of pleading guilty are perhaps some leniency for it in sentencing and sparing his family, including potential witnesses, from the rigors of a trial.
Not Normal
With Hunter Biden and the nonsense of the “Biden Crime Family” now a dead end for House Republicans, they are shifting their focus to the new Democratic ticket:
The House Republicans have turned the machinery of their committees against the Democratic presidential ticket. It’s a preview of what they’ll face if Republicans keep the House and Harris manages to defeat former President Donald Trump.
It’s so striking to see how much we’ve normalized House Republicans abusing their congressional powers for purely partisan political purposes
2024 Ephemera
- MT-Sen: In a lightly polled race, a new AARP survey of likely voters finds Tim Sheehy (R) leading Sen. Jon Tester (D) 49%-41% in a four-way matchup and 51%-45% in a two-way race.
- White evangelicals are taking notice of Donald Trump’s double talk on abortion.
- By conceding that he lost in 2020 “by a whisker,” Donald Trump has induced a meltdown by the likes of once-stalwart supporters like Nick Fuentes.
You Look Like Friday Night
The TPM team will put out Monday’s Morning Memo. I’ll be back Tuesday. Enjoy your weekend:
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Donald Trump Has Triggered A Groyper Meltdown
After Donald Trump announced Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) as his running mate several weeks back, we noted the racist meltdown that was collectively had by some of Trump’s most ardently white nationalist supporters over Vance’s wife, a woman of Indian heritage with immigrant parents. Among the most upset about Vance was the white nationalist groyper chieftain Nick Fuentes.
Continue reading “Donald Trump Has Triggered A Groyper Meltdown”Chutkan Will Let Jack Smith Make New Immunity Arguments, Possibly With New Evidence
WASHINGTON, DC—U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Thursday granted Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s request that the government present an opening brief to defend its superseding indictment under the Supreme Court’s new presidential immunity regime.
Continue reading “Chutkan Will Let Jack Smith Make New Immunity Arguments, Possibly With New Evidence”Arizona SoS Office: CPAC Request To Monitor Drop Boxes Akin To ‘Arsonist Calling The Fire Department’
Members of the Conservative Political Action Conference recently announced the group intends to monitor ballot drop boxes in November in order to identify supposed illegal voters. State officials told TPM that the initiative, which was outlined to both the Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and the state Attorney General Kris Mayes in a letter last month, is merely another effort to cast doubt on the safety and integrity of the election system — and intimidate voters in the process.
Continue reading “Arizona SoS Office: CPAC Request To Monitor Drop Boxes Akin To ‘Arsonist Calling The Fire Department’”The Mystery of the Pro-Trump Mailer Storm Flooding Dem Mailboxes
I wanted to share with you some of my findings about the mass mailing of Trump mailers to registered Democrats in swing states across the country. It’s a bit of a rabbit hole. So in part, understand it as such, an entertaining mystery. But I think it’s potentially a bit more than a rabbit hole. It also sheds some light on the dynamics of the campaign, specifically on the Trump campaign, which has firepower heavily weighted toward a series of super PACs and outside groups both for messaging and ground operations.
As I’ve discussed in a few posts, I started hearing from readers who are registered Democrats with long histories of straight-ticket voting who are being inundated with Trump mailers. In some cases it’s as much as two or three mailers a day everyday. Others aren’t quite that level of saturation. But lots of readers who fit in what we’ll call the category of “poor target” are getting them. The reports come from all the swing states, though they’re concentrated in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina. They’re also in Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, but it seems to be a bit less there. In all cases the recipients have never seen anything like it before. So it’s not just that this is what always happens in swing states. Getting this many flyers from any Republican campaign is totally new. It all seems to have started in the last couple weeks.
Continue reading “The Mystery of the Pro-Trump Mailer Storm Flooding Dem Mailboxes”