What New Madness Has Aileen Cannon Visited Upon Us?!

Posted on by David Kurtz

Morning Memo comes to you this week from Knoxville, Tennessee, where I’m checking in on my folks. Sign up for the email version.

Buckle Up!

A rapid-fire series of developments in the various Trump legal entanglements Monday demonstrate anew what a precarious position Trump is in. Precarious probably doesn’t do it justice. There is simply no precedent for a major party nominee for the presidency to be under criminal indictment in four different jurisdictions while also burdened by half a billion dollars in civil judgments against him.

Let’s get to it.

The Newest Cannon Craziness

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has unlocked new achievements in weirdness and incompetence.

On Monday, she issued an order directing Special Counsel Jack Smith and Donald Trump to each come up with a set of proposed jury instructions based on two hypothetical interpretations of the Presidential Records Act. Both of her interpretations are wrong as a matter of law and favorable to Trump, putting Smith in an extraordinary bind.

If this is confusing, trust me, it’s not you. This is a strange and unusual place to be at this stage in a criminal case. Cannon clearly doesn’t understand her role or the law at issue. She is casting about for help, but doing so in a way that is not going to be helpful to her or to the case.

This is where I would usually insert a brief (and incisive!) explanation of the legal issues, but that’s impossible to do here. It makes no sense.

It’s an utter mess and left legal observers flabbergasted.

A Sampling Of The Reaction To Cannon

  • George Conway: “In the decades that I have been a lawyer, this is the most bizarre order I’ve ever seen issued by a federal judge. What makes that all the more amazing is that the second and third most bizarre orders I’ve ever seen in federal court were also issued by Judge Cannon in this case.”
  • Joyce Vance: “[I]t’s two pages of crazy stemming from the Judge’s apparent inability to tell Trump no when it comes to his argument that he turned the nation’s secrets into his personal records by designating them as such under the Presidential Records Act.”
  • Much more here …

Trump Fails To Get James’ Bond

Donald Trump came up short, he told an appeals court, in obtaining a bond to secure payment of the $454 million judgment against him obtained by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Some 30 companies rebuffed Trump, most refusing to accept real estate as collateral for the bond. The deadline to obtain a bond is March 25, after which James can begin collecting on her judgment against him – unless the appeals court gives Trump some relief.

Good Catch

NBC News dug into UCC filings in Florida to find evidence of the collateral that Trump used to secure the $91.63 million appeal bond he posted in the E. Jean Carroll case: It’s a brokerage account at Charles Schwab held by the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust.

Trump: I Didn’t Rape Her! I Sexually Assaulted Her!

Donald Trump has sued George Stephanopoulos and ABC News for defamation, claiming that it was libelous for Stephanopoulos to say on his March 10 Sunday show that Trump had been found liable for raping E. Jean Carroll when he had only been found liable for sexually assaulting her. Good luck with that one!

Keep An Eye On Georgia RICO Case

Trump and his co-defendants having formally asked the trial judge to allow them to immediately appeal his decision not to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis. If granted, it could add significant delay to a case that is already going to drag deep into 2025.

Key Pre-Trial Rulings In The Hush Money Case

The trial judge in the now-delayed Stormy Daniels hush money case issued several important pre-trial evidentiary rulings Monday:

  • Prosecutors may not play the Access Hollywood tape but they can ask witnesses about it.
  • Prosecutors may call Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, and Karen McDougal to the stand.
  • Prosecutors may argue that Trump was seeking to influence the 2016 election.
  • Prosecutors may present evidence of the National Enquirer using “catch and kill” to protect Trump from unflattering stories.

Peter Navarro Reports To Prison Today

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rebuffed Trump White House official Peter Navarro’s last-ditch effort to avoid serving four months for his contempt of Congress conviction. He is to report to federal prison in Miami today.

Paul Manafort Is Back At The Worst Possible Time

With Trump under financial pressure and angling to avoid jail, the possible reemergence of Russia-oligarch-whisperer Paul Manafort – himself convicted in the Mueller probe and later pardoned by Trump – as an adviser to the Trump campaign is a development that I would find implausible in a fictional political thriller, but here we are:

  • Brian Beutler: Desperate Trump Turns Once Again To Paul Manafort
  • David Corn: Trump Considers Adding Paul Manafort—a “Grave Counterintelligence Threat”—to His Campaign
  • Marcy Wheeler: “Donald Trump is considering hiring the former business partner of two alleged Russian spies, admitted money launderer Paul Manafort, to help with fundraising.”

Notable

The Supreme Court was cool to the argument from red states that the Biden administration had illegally coerced social media platforms into removing misinformation.

Centering Christian Nationalism

TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports on a little-noticed speech last fall given by former Trump OMB Director Russ Vought that puts Christian nationalism at the center of the Trump II agenda.

Lovely …

Donald Trump: Any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion” and “everything about Israel.”

What An Intern Program!

A conservative “influencer” and former intern for Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has been charged in the Jan. 6 attack. Isabella Deluca interned with Gosar for three months starting the fall of 2022, after she had already been contacted by the FBI and while she was under investigation.

Gosar interns should ring a bell for you.

One of the them popped up in this May 2023 TPM story about the ties between a Gosar staffer and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.

Then in January 2024, the Arizona Mirror published a story on two other Gosar interns who had “expressed deeply racist, homophobic and antisemitic beliefs.”

Smart Move!

With a bench warrant outstanding against her back in Michigan, pro-Trump lawyer Stefanie Lambert showed up anyway for a hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., where she was representing former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in a defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems. She was arrested after the hearing by U.S. marshals. The bench warrant was issued after she failed to appear to face four felony counts in a voting machine tampering case that grew out of bogus 2020 election conspiracies.

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Trump II Architect Russ Vought Embraces A Christian Nationalist Vision For America

Posted on by Josh Kovensky

One of the key architects of Donald Trump’s plans for a second administration has been quite public about the driving force animating that radical agenda: a “cold civil war” to be won by those willing to use “biblical principles” to “instruct government” to do what the MAGA right wants.

Continue reading “Trump II Architect Russ Vought Embraces A Christian Nationalist Vision For America” →

How Not To Fall For Yet More Trumper Textualism About His Latest Threat of Violence

Posted on by Josh Marshall

If you’ve followed the uproar over ex-President Trump’s promise of a “bloodbath” if he’s not elected you’ll see it’s partly been diverted into a kind of textualist grudge match over whether he meant apocalyptic and blood-drenched civil violence or simply stiff competition for the U.S. auto industry. If you look at the actual words it seems clear he initially riffs on his claims about the auto industry but then doubles down on the promise of a bloodbath, suggesting that problems with the economy will be the least of the country’s problems. You can interpret it either way in large part because Trump always expresses himself in the kind of disjointed word salad which always require the words to be reconstructed after the fact, thus giving a fair amount of leeway to whoever wants to do the interpreting and reconstructing.

But that’s a feature, not a bug.

Continue reading “How Not To Fall For Yet More Trumper Textualism About His Latest Threat of Violence” →

Trump Will ‘Soon’ Decide Who He’s Willing To Piss Off On Abortion

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Tucked into that exceptionally grim, softball Trump interview with Fox News’ Howard Kurtz over the weekend, there was a little chunk of news: the former president plans to make a decision “pretty soon” on whether he’ll back a national abortion ban if he wins the White House again in the fall.

Continue reading “Trump Will ‘Soon’ Decide Who He’s Willing To Piss Off On Abortion” →

Supreme Court Justices Balk At Red States’ Free Speech Absolutism In Social Media Case

Posted on by Kate Riga

Even some of the right-wing justices hitched up an eyebrow Monday when a couple of red states argued against nearly any government intervention in social media content moderation. 

Continue reading “Supreme Court Justices Balk At Red States’ Free Speech Absolutism In Social Media Case” →

A Wild Weekend Of A Deranged Trump Telling You Exactly What He Will Do

Posted on by David Kurtz

Morning Memo comes to you this week from Knoxville, Tennessee, where I’m checking in on my folks. Sign up for the email version.

The Descent Into Madness

In a wild rally in Ohio and Fox News sit-down interview, Donald Trump continued to demonstrate this weekend how utterly unfit for any public office he is, how disastrous a second term would be, and how much pain and suffering he would inflict on actual people.

Trump casually engaged in dehumanizing rhetoric, threats of violence, vows of retribution, and unhinged commentary. Nothing new, you say? Perhaps. But at this point if you can no longer register alarm for the country or for yourself, muster it for those who are and will be direct targets of Trump’s fantasies of revenge and systemic violence. In the meantime, what are we left to do if not document day by day, step by step the rapid descent into madness that Trump promises in a second term?

The “J6 anthem” is now routine at Trump events, coupled with Trump assurances that he will immediately pardon what he calls the Jan. 6 “hostages”:

Trump is now calling for the members of the House Jan. 6 committee to be jailed.

In a fawning interview with Howard Kurtz (no relation), Trump did not recoil at the comparisons to Hitler and Mussolini:

I’ve only picked a few of the most egregious examples from this weekend. There was more. So much more.

Credit Where Due

Mainstream news outlets aren’t completely deaf to the Trump threat:

Dark Humor

Essential Reading

Yale historian Timothy Snyder:

Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.  He won’t.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it. 

What Pence’s Refusal To Endorse Trump Means

Trump’s own vice president has joined the dozens of former Trump officials who are not supporting his re-election but instead are warning of the dire consequences of him reattaining the Oval Office:

Former Obama White House official Dan Pfeiffer notes: “I can’t believe I am writing this, but Donald Trump’s Vice President refusing to endorse him is a big deal, and overly cynical Democrats like myself shouldn’t dismiss it outright.”

BREAKING …

Just out this morning from the WaPo: Trump is eyeing Paul Manafort for 2024 campaign role

SCOTUS Oral Arguments Today In Major Case

The Supreme Court oral arguments today in the Biden administration social media case is as important for how the case arrived at the high court as it is for the underlying interests at stake.

If you read just one thing in advance of oral arguments, make it this JustSecurity piece by Justin Hendrix and Ryan Goodman titled “A Conspiracy Theory Goes to the Supreme Court: How Did Murthy v. Missouri Get This Far?”

Other reading material as you prep for oral arguments:

  • Mary B. McCord: The Supreme Court Cannot Ignore the National Security Implications of the So-Called ‘Jawboning’ Case
  • NYT: How Trump’s Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation

Justice Breyer: SCOTUS Has Taken A Wrong Turn

Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has a new book coming out and sat for an interview with the NYT where he warns: “Something important is going on. The court has taken a wrong turn, he said, and it is not too late to turn back.”

Keep An Eye On This

Judd Legum: Will Senate Democrats cave to an Islamophobic smear campaign against Adeel Mangi, a Biden nominee to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals?

MUST READ

TPM’s Hunter Walker: House GOPers Teamed With Conspiracist Who Called Migrants ‘Apes’ And ‘Congo-Cannibals’

What’s Next In the Georgia RICO Case?

With the judge’s order Friday excoriating District Attorney Fani Willis and Nathan Wade’s subsequent withdrawal as special prosecutor in the case, the big question is whether the judge’s ruling can be appealed immediately – and the delays that will inevitably result.

The Mess That Is Now The Hush Money Case

The state judge overseeing Trump’s hush money trial in New York delayed the trial at least 30 days, did not set a new trial date, and (angrily) ordered Trump and District Attorney Alvin Bragg to submit detailed timelines of their efforts to obtain relevant materials from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York ahead of a new hearing set for March 25 in which he will try to get to the bottom of what happened that caused the trial delay and who, if anyone, is to blame for it.

Keeping It In Perspective

Morning Memo feels a constant tension between the imminent threat of Donald Trump and the only threat that dwarfs him: climate change. I usually feebly resolve the tension with a reminder to self that nothing will do more to set back the transition to a carbon-free economy than Trump’s re-election. But in the meantime, warming is not slowing and the knock-on effects of climate change slowly come into clearer focus. But the unknowns remain staggering, such as the last year of record-smashing sea surface temperatures:

[F]or the last twelve months, the seas have been so feverish that scientists are starting to worry about not just the physical impacts of all that heat but the theoretical implications. Can the past year be explained by what’s already known about climate change, or are there forces at work that haven’t been accounted for? And, if it’s the latter, does this mean that projections of warming, already decidedly grim, are underestimating the dangers?

For ongoing insights on sea surface temperatures, you can follow Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science.

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Employees Have A Right To Show BLM Support On The Job After Historic Labor Board Decision

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

A Home Depot store violated labor law when it disciplined Antonio Morales, the National Labor Relations Board ruled on Feb. 21, 2024.

Continue reading “Employees Have A Right To Show BLM Support On The Job After Historic Labor Board Decision” →

The Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Behind The Great Replacement Theory

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.

The “great replacement theory,” whose origins date back to the late 19th century, argues that Jews and some Western elites are conspiring to replace white Americans and Europeans with people of non-European descent, particularly Asians and Africans.

Continue reading “The Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Behind The Great Replacement Theory” →

House GOPers Teamed With Conspiracist Who Called Migrants ‘Apes’ And ‘Congo Cannibals’

Posted on by Hunter Walker

As Republicans in Congress have attacked President Biden’s handling of the southern border, some of them have turned to a far-right media figure with a decidedly extreme perspective. Online, Michael Yon has dubbed himself “just a simple war correspondent and cannibal hunter.” The latter part of his job description refers to his work tracking migrants and his fears they are part of “a planet of the apes style invasion” that is targeting the white race for “genocide and cannibalism.” This shockingly racist paranoia — including referring to migrants as “apes” and “Congo-Cannibals” — has not stopped Yon from collaborating with multiple Republican members of Congress who have turned to him to participate in inflammatory documentaries and junkets to Latin America.

After receiving a request for comment on this story, Yon posted the message on his social media rather than responding. TPM engaged in an extensive back and forth with Yon over email to obtain comment from him for the story. As of publication, he had not provided a response.

Yon, a Special Forces veteran, gained notoriety as an independent blogger who spent extensive time on the front during the Iraq War. A 2008 profile in the New York Times said Yon spent three years in Iraq where he wrote reader-funded dispatches while “racking up more time embedded with combat units than any other journalist, according to the United States military.” The newspaper noted Yon had “an agenda” and described him as firmly believing the American mission in that country was “succeeding and must continue.” Since then, Yon has turned his attention to immigration — and his agenda has become far more strident and extreme. 

Michael Yon appearing in “Alien Invasion.” (Photo: Youtube.com/@RepAndyBiggsAZ05)

In September 2022, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) put together an approximately 30-minute video called “Alien Invasion” that he dubbed “a documentary on the Biden border crisis.” The video coincided with Bigg’s push to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It premiered at the Heritage Foundation and is still, as of this writing, featured on Biggs’ website. According to the credits, “Alien Invasion” was “presented by” Biggs, who served as a narrator and produced by two of his staffers. It features an interview with Yon about the conditions in the Darien Gap, a treacherous, dense jungle between Panama and Colombia that is traversed by immigrants who attempt to make the journey by land from South America to the United States. Yon, who was billed as a guest star of the documentary, has spent time in the region and was credited by Biggs’ team with providing some of the footage used for the “documentary.”

“Darien Gap is very dangerous. It’s one of the most dangerous places on earth,” Yon said during his appearance in the video, adding, “It’s just wild jungle including the indians who live out there, who kill migrants pretty much every day. It’s literally the law of the jungle, so if the jungle doesn’t get you often the indians do.”

Biggs and his communications director Matthew Tragesser, who is one of the staffers that produced the documentary, did not respond to a request for comment. The other staffer involved in making the video, Paul Windsor, became the creative director for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) last December. Cruz’s office did not respond to a request for comment. 

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) appearing in his “Alien Invasion” video. (Photo: youtube.com/@RepAndyBiggsAZ05)

Yon’s collaboration with Biggs is typical of how some on the right have used the specter of dangerous conditions south of the border to criticize Biden and to advocate for more restrictive immigration policies. This fearmongering reached an absurd peak with the GOP response to the president’s State of the Union that Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) delivered earlier this month where she falsely implied that a dramatic incident of sex trafficking which occurred roughly two decades ago in Mexico had taken place in this county and on Biden’s watch. Yon’s work also shows how, along with highlighting the real dangers faced by migrants in their home countries and on the border crossings, some on the right believe the immigrants themselves are a direct threat. 

In multiple posts he wrote in 2021 on the site formerly known as Twitter, prior to the release of Biggs’ documentary, Yon described foreigners as cannibals. On two occasions this month, he used the sci-fi movie “Planet of the Apes” to describe the effects of immigration. This included a March 13 post after Biden’s State of the Union where the president announced plans to build a pier in the Gaza Strip to deliver aid to starving Palestinians. 

“That port will be to facilitate the ex-vasion from Gaza into Florida, etc,” Yon wrote. “And boy will all the people in SouthEast Florida be surprised when the Haitians and Gazans all arrive in a planet of the apes style invasion.”

Along with criticizing foreigners, Yon has disparaged American minorities on social media. In February 2021, he wrote about his frustration with “black men murdering white people.” Later that year, he urged his followers not to go to Washington D.C. and said it is “too dangerous there. Especially for white folks”

In other posts made before and after his collaboration with Biggs, Yon openly referenced concepts popular in white nationalist circles, including the “Great Replacement” theory, the book “Camp of the Saints,” and the notion of white genocide. Yon tied all of this together in a July 2022 post on his website where he suggested the white population was being targeted by shadowy, evil forces. 

“The Beast is setting conditions for famine and war that will include justification for genocide and cannibalism of selected targets. Specifically, the new Jews, the new Kulaks: white people,” Yon wrote. 

None of this has stopped Yon from gaining traction in right-wing circles. He has amassed a six-figure social media following and crowdfunded nearly $70,000 for his work. Yon has also appeared on the “War Room” show with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and been interviewed by the prominent podcaster and author Jordan Peterson. Along with these more fringe figures, Yon has engaged with congressional Republicans. In addition to his work with Biggs, Yon accompanied Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) on a trip to the Darien Gap region in 2021. That junket included another member of Congress who initially declined to be identified. Yon and others subsequently named Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) as the other participant on the trip. Both Owens and Tiffany, who was also featured in Biggs’ documentary, did not respond to requests for comment. 

Along with working alongside Republican members of Congress, Yon made at least one trip to Capitol Hill — on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Yon posted photos showing he was on the steps of the U.S. Capitol wearing a helmet and tactical gear as the building was overrun by the pro-Trump mob. Like others on the right, since that day, Yon has repeatedly promoted baseless conspiracies that leftists and antifascists were responsible for the violent assault on the Capitol. He also insisted that he did not break into the building like the hundreds of people who have been arrested and was there merely as a “war correspondent.” However, in other posts, Yon made clear he sympathized with those who hoped to reverse Trump’s loss. Yon, who claimed to have been with Rudy Giuliani in the days after the attack, expressed frustration with Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the election. He also made a post during the violence urging people to “stand up” and one the night before exhorting his audience to “CONFRONT DARKNESS.” 

Shortly after Biden’s inauguration, Yon made clear his version of frontline correspondence is a decidedly unconventional one. “I’ve never claimed to be unbiased, or a reporter,” Yon wrote.