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

Failsons

The two adult Trump sons flailed their way through their testimonies in the NY civil fraud trial against their so-called business empire. It didn’t go well.

The upshot of their testimonies was best captured by a spoof account on Twitter: “According to Junior and Eric, the Trump Organization is a ‘massive organization,’ which they ran without any involvement whatsoever in running it.” Indeed.

The evidence against the Trumps is overwhelming, the judge didn’t appear to find them to be credible witnesses, and their defenses wilted under the slightest cross examination, often when presented with documentary evidence that directly contradicted their testimonies.

The day’s testimony ended with another clash between Trump’s counsel and the judge over the judge’s law clerk. MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin has a pet theory for why Trump attorney Christopher Kise would go to such lengths to antagonize the judge in a judge-tried case: It steered the news coverage away from the debacle of Eric’s testimony.

Ivanka Trump added a comic footnote to the day, asking an appeals court to delay her testimony next week on the grounds that it falls “in the middle of a school week.” The appeals court promptly denied her request.

Trump Files Emergency Appeal Of Chutkan Gag Order

Donald Trump went to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals late yesterday seeking an emergency stay of the gag order against him in the Jan. 6 case. He’s seeking an immediate pause of the gag order and then a stay while his appeal is pending. Trump asked the appeals court for a decision by Nov. 10, and if he loses he plans to take the case to the Supreme Court.

Disbarment Watch

• Bloomberg: Rudy Giuliani Fights to Keep His DC Law License After Bar Report
• Bloomberg Law: John Eastman Preliminarily Found Culpable in California Bar Trial

Not Many Tea Leaves To Read

The Minnesota Supreme Court didn’t give a clear read during oral arguments Thursday on how it will rule on the Disqualification Clause case pending against Donald Trump.

Will Trump Flee The Country?

The prospect of Donald Trump fleeing the country rather than facing trial and conviction has always seemed quite plausible to me. The Justice Department rationale for not making him surrender his passport or barring him from traveling overseas seems to be rooted in the fact that he has Secret Service protection which would make any attempt to run almost comical. And yet … can we be so sure?

Here’s a well-edited exchange that includes former FBI Special Agent Chris Favo talking about Trump’s flight risk:

"People have talked about Trump like he was a mob boss for a long time."@JHeil and guest host @AWeissmann_ sat down with former FBI Special Agent Chris Favo to discuss the similar tactics former President Trump has used that were also used by leaders of organized crime. pic.twitter.com/yiAmx4kdgs

— The Circus (@SHO_TheCircus) November 1, 2023

WHOA

The Brooklyn home of NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ chief fundraiser was raided by the FBI early Thursday morning in what the NYT reports is a broad public corruption investigation into whether his 2021 election campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations.

SBF Convicted On All Counts

Cryptoking Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted by a federal jury in New York on all seven counts against him arising from the collapse of FTX:

1. Wire fraud on FTX customers
2. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on FTX customers
3.  Wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research
4. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders to Alameda Research
5. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on FTX investors
6. Conspiracy to commit commodities fraud on customers of FTX in connection with purchases and sales of cryptocurrency and swaps
7. Conspiracy to commit money laundering

The jury deliberated for just over an hour before reaching its verdict.

Reax To SBF Conviction

• Elizabeth Lopatto: Sam Bankman-Fried gambled on a trial and his parents lost
• Ginia Bellafante: Sam Bankman-Fried Was a Grown Up Criminal, Not an Impulsive Man-Child

Every Damn Day

Overt acts of anti-Semitism have exploded since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack:

• California man charged with making threats on Twitter against Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, such as “you better come stop me because I’m intent ona real Holocaust against the ADL Jews. Gas chambers and all”
• Antisemitic graffiti next to the historic Canter’s Deli in L.A.
•  Jewish cultural center in the Bronx vandalized with graffiti.

DOA

House GOP passes Israel aid package that targets IRS funding and is going absolutely nowhere in the Senate.

Quote Of The Day

There comes a time, maybe every six to eight generations, where the world changes in a very short time. … And I think what happens in the next two, three years are going to determine what the world looks like for the next five or six decades.

Joe Biden

Hurtling Toward A 1.5C Global Temperature Rise

Famed climate scientist James Hansen has a new, dire prediction.

October Extended A Record-Setting Scorcher Of A Year

Global temperatures for October are starting to come in. First up, as usual, is ERA5. It's yet another record warm month. This shows anomalies for each month for all years in seven datasets. Broad agreement that 2023 is very hot. pic.twitter.com/85PPrwdI7i

— John Kennedy (@micefearboggis) November 3, 2023

Meanwhile …

Ogles: We may have had a hot summer but I just went trick or treating with my kids and the low that evening was 29 degrees so temperatures change. Temperatures have been changing for a millennia pic.twitter.com/W2qiL2Fp9b

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 3, 2023

‘Vaping Groping Lauren Boebert’

Congress will never be as good as when MTG and Lauren Boebert were still BFFs:

You voted to kick me out of the freedom caucus, but keep CNN wannabe Ken Buck and vaping groping Lauren Boebert and you voted with the Democrats to protect Terrorist Tlaib.

You hate Trump, certified Biden’s election, and could care less about J6 defendants being persecuted. https://t.co/OIgUvndXek

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 2, 2023

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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.

The Only Judge Donald Trump Doesn’t Criticize

A series of developments in the Mar-a-Lago case over the last 24 hours don’t bode well for the rule of law in general or the prosecution of Donald Trump for blatant mishandling of classified information in particular.

In a hearing on Trump’s request for a trial delay, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon signaled that she was open to pushing back the trial date from May 2024. She promised to issue a revised schedule as soon as possible. As of this morning, she hasn’t ruled yet. Delay until he can win re-election and make all this go away is the core of Trump’s defense strategy, which isn’t a legal strategy at all but rather a political one.

But fresh off that apparent victory, Trump may have gotten too cute by half. In the afternoon hearing, he argued to Cannon that she should delay the Mar-a-Lago trial because the Jan. 6 case against him in DC scheduled for March 2024 posed a schedule conflict. But later in the day, he filed a new motion in the DC case seeking to put it entirely on pause until his claims of absolute presidential immunity are resolved.

Get it? He told one judge that he can’t possibly go to trial in Florida in May because he has a trial in DC in March, then turned around and tried to delay the DC trial, too.

Special Counsel Jack Smith seized on Trump’s rope-a-dope and flagged it to Cannon in a filing early this morning, urging her not to allow herself “to be manipulated in this fashion.”

Disqualification Clause Watch

• Colorado: Judge denies Trump motion to dismiss in Disqualification Clause case
• Colorado: “The effort to ban former President Donald Trump from the ballot under the Constitution’s “insurrection clause” turned to distant history on Wednesday, when a law professor testified about how the post-Civil War provision was indeed intended to apply to presidential candidates.”
• Minnesota: Oral arguments begin today in Disqualification Clause case against Trump

I’m Glad Someone Finally Did This

Aaron Blake debunks Donald Trump’s go-to claim that prosecutors timed their indictments of him to interfere with his presidential campaign, the comical implication being that Trump would have been fiiine with the prosecutions if they had come sooner.

What To Make Of Jenna Ellis’ Guilty Plea In Georgia?

Circling back on the implications of Jenna Ellis pleading guilty last week in the Georgia RICO case:

• Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland: Jenna Ellis Could Become a Star Witness Against Trump
• Ellis’ lawyer talked about the guilty plea on a legal podcast hosted by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It’s an interesting account of how the plea agreement came together, but I was struck by what he had to say about Rudy Giuliani:

Asked if Giuliani, who is charged with RICO and 12 other counts, should be worried, Hogue said, “I think he should be.”

But not necessarily because of Ellis, Hogue said. “I think there’s enough for Mayor Giuliani to worry about that wouldn’t have anything to do with Jenna Ellis. I mean, she wouldn’t be a help to him, I don’t think, if she was to be called as a witness. But I think his troubles extend far beyond her.”

GOP Is Rationalizing Cruelty Toward Gaza

Will Saletan looks at what the GOP presidential candidates told the Republican Jewish Coalition over the weekend:

What the Republican candidates are advocating, in sum, is an abandonment of morals. They’re rationalizing bigotry and cruelty—withholding humanitarian aid, barring child refugees, bombing Gaza without limits—and they’re grounding America’s loyalty to Israel in Jewish and Christian scripture. This isn’t the way to build an alliance against terrorism. It’s the way to feed a religious war.

It’s not just the GOP’s presidential candidates. Here’s Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) on the House floor:

Mast: I think when we look at this, as a whole, I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians. I don't think we would so lightly throw around the term innocent Nazi civilians pic.twitter.com/OqDpJHZiHV

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 1, 2023

Senate GOP Fed Up With Tuberville

Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s long-running and unprecedented blockade of President Biden’s military nominees over abortion politics finally hit the limit for Senate Republicans Wednesday night.

Using antiquated Senate rules (for which the Senate has itself to blame), Tuberville has blocked hundreds of military promotions since February to protest the Pentagon policy that reimburses service members for travel expenses where abortions are difficult to obtain.

• WaPo: Senate Republicans erupt in anger over Tuberville’s military freeze

On Wednesday night, a remarkable scene unfolded on the Senate floor as several Republicans, including Sens. Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Joni Ernst (Iowa) Todd C. Young (Ind.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) confronted Tuberville, imploring him to lift his hold for the sake of national security and proposing votes on individual officers whose promotions have been delayed. Tuberville rebuffed them one by one, blocking each proposed nominee as his colleagues’ frustration continued to rise.

• AP: Republicans confront Tuberville over military holds in extraordinary showdown on Senate floor

Republican senators angrily challenged Sen. Tommy Tuberville on his blockade of almost 400 military officers Wednesday evening, taking over the Senate floor for more than four hours to call for individual confirmation votes after a monthslong stalemate.

• Punchbowl:

Republican defense hawks unleashed their fury on Tuberville. They spent four-plus hours haranguing him as they tried to confirm dozens of the more than 300 military promotions the Alabama GOP senator has been blocking over his opposition to the Pentagon’s abortion policy.

All George Santos All The Time

• Rep. George Santos (R-NY) survived an expulsion vote in the House Wednesday.
• TPM exclusive: Santos Campaign Meltdown Attracts Interest From House Investigators 
• TPM: How George Santos Left NYC Republicans Feeling Scammed

Red Alert

Speaker Mike Johnson has hired disgraced Fox executive Raj Shah to be his spokesperson and run messaging for the House GOP.

Does Speaker Mike Johnson Have a Bank Account?

Poverty is not a vice, and Speaker Mike Johnson wouldn’t be the first member of Congress living paycheck to paycheck, but it’s pretty unusual for a financial disclosure report to show zero assets, not even a bank account:

Over the course of seven years, Johnson has never reported a checking or savings account in his name, nor in the name of his wife or any of his children, disclosures show. In fact, he doesn’t appear to have money stashed in any investments, with his latest filing—covering 2022—showing no assets whatsoever.

2024 Ephemera

• I’ve been wondering for a while what the heck happened to Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) that turned him from a teabagger into a relative voice of reason over the past several weeks. I guess this answers that: Buck announced yesterday that he won’t seek re-election next year.
• Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, will not run again in 2024, she announced.
• NYT: Ron DeSantis Leans Into Vaccine Skepticism to Energize Struggling Campaign

US Infant Mortality Rises For First Time In 20 Years

WSJ: The U.S. rate is double that of many developed countries.

What A Scene

Sean Hannity interviews Speaker Mike Johnson with the House GOP conference as a backdrop:

Hannity asks the room full of House Republicans to raise their hands if they think they are headed towards impeaching Biden. Looks like the whole room raised their hands pic.twitter.com/NolDSOwoWE

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 2, 2023

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