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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

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

Extraordinary

I’m not sure we’re close to getting our collective heads around the malign influence of foreign governments in U.S. elections even as we are in the midst of the third consecutive presidential election cycle in which it is a significant dynamic.

Even if you were to somehow set aside the unprecedented nearly-decade-long willingness of Donald Trump and the Republican Party to accept, encourage, and benefit from foreign election interference, it would still be an enormously complex, difficult, and hard-to-combat national security issue.

The details that emerged yesterday in the new federal indictment announced by the Justice Department in the most high-profile of ways offers an extraordinary glimpse of how brazen Russia’s influence operations within the United States have been – and of the extreme gullibility of right-wing influencers who were the highly paid alleged victims of the Russian-backed scheme.

It helps to remember that the Justice Department has two roles here: prosecuting criminal wrongdoing and thwarting future attacks on the U.S. election system, which is what these foreign interference campaigns amount to. In service of both parts of its mission, the Justice Department released highly detailed charging documents that go well beyond what’s needed to establish the elements of the alleged crimes. In doing so, it’s trying to expose the full extent of the kinds of methods Russia uses in order to scuttle future Kremlin efforts. One former U.S. official called the charging documents “an absolute intelligence gold mine.”

Among the right-wing commentators who were allegedly duped by the lucrative-to-them Russian scheme are some familiar names: Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, and Dave Rubin.

Tucker Carlson’s ‘Overt Shilling’ Was Too Much Even For Russia

My favorite part of the indictment:

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1831427285196603639

Trump’s Arlington Cemetery Fiasco

• I joined my former colleague Greg Sargent, now at The New Republic, on his podcast The Daily Blast for a lively conversation about authoritarianism, the MAGA threat, and Trump’s outright denial that any kind of altercation took place between his campaign staff and an Arlington National Cemetery staffer trying to enforce the rule against political activities. My thanks to Greg having me on:

• Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen: Politics has no place at Arlington’s Section 60
• New reporting this week from NPR on the lead-up to the incident:

A source familiar with the event said the cemetery staff worked with the staff of Republican Congressman Brian Mast of Florida, who joined Trump at Arlington. Arlington Cemetery staff dealt directly with Mast’s chief of staff, James Langenderfer, briefing him extensively on the rules, which include no campaign events at the cemetery. They also reiterated that only an official Arlington National Cemetery photographer — and no campaign photographer — could be used at Section 60. The source said Langenderfer told them the Trump campaign agreed to these rules. NPR reached out to Mast’s staff and asked if Langenderfer was briefed and relayed that information to the Trump campaign. They did not address the questions but instead released a statement, which said: “President Trump conducted no politics at Arlington National Cemetery.”

The Racist Jihad Against Non-Citizen Voting

The NYT joins the party on the GOP’s pretend obsession with the noncitizen voting, which isn’t allowed and doesn’t happen in federal elections. The story does a good job of not accepting the premise – “false theories,” “supposed scourge,” “they claim, inaccurately,” – but it doesn’t fully the capture how the GOP jihad is rooted in and appeals to racist xenophobia.

Yes, it can also be a pretext for new voting restrictions that may have broader effects on voting, but at its core it’s a rallying cry against immigrants that echoes elements of the Great Replacement Theory.

That’s why it has campaign appeal to Republican electeds and why the House GOP is threatening a government shutdown during the stretch run of the election over noncitizen voting.

2024 Ephemera

• CNN/SSRS poll: Among likely voters in the battleground states:
  • Wisconsin: Harris 50%, Trump 44%
  • Michigan: Harris 48%, Trump 43%
  • Georgia: Harris 48%, Trump 47%
  • Nevada: Harris 48%, Trump 47%
  • Pennsylvania: Harris 47%, Trump 47%
  • Arizona: Trump 49%, Harris 44%
• Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) announced that she will vote for Kamala Harris for President.
• After milking the issue for a few days, Kamala Harris has agreed to the terms of the ABC News debate with Donald Trump: The candidates’ microphones will be muted when it’s not their turn to speak.

Trump Prosecution Watch

• Jan. 6 case: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is holding a status conference this morning, the first time she’s convened the parties since the Supreme Court’s notorious decision on presidential immunity. TPM’s Kate Riga is at the DC federal courthouse and will spearhead our coverage.
• Mar-a-Lago case: I didn’t pay much attention to the amicus brief filed by CREW with the 11th Circuit that urges it to remove U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, but Roger Parloff makes a convincing case that the brief deftly threads the needle of avoiding the weakest arguments for her removal while bolstering the strongest ones.
• Hush money case: Trump is still scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 18, but all eyes are on Judge Merchan to see whether he postpones sentencing until after the election, as Trump has requested.

Stark

The number of federal criminal trials faced before the November election:

• Hunter Biden: 2
• Donald Trump: 0

Ginni Thomas Privately Praised Anti-SCOTUS-Reform Group

ProPublica: “Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.”

Remember This One?

A few weeks ago, I flagged the QAnon brain worms infesting a small town police department outside of Nashville. Yesterday, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation raided the police department at Millersville City Hall and also searched the home of the assistant police chief:

The exact focus of the investigation is not clear, but reporting from NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams offers some potential clues:

Two local district attorneys have previously confirmed to NewsChannel 5 Investigates that the TBI has been asked to investigate the possible use of sensitive law enforcement data to dig up dirt on potential political enemies.

The TBI is also investigating possible perjury of a Millersville detective, stemming from his testimony in what appears to have been a botched child predator sting.

All of this comes against the backdrop of the police chief and assistant police chief espousing extreme right-wing QAnon-flavored conspiracy theories, which of course means that now the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is in on the conspiracy.

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