It’s exactly what you’d expect them to do.
Continue reading “Man Victimized By Jan. 6 Truthers Charged With Jan. 6 Crime”Get It Together
I’m still seeing articles about how Dems or the White House are worried Trump is going to muddy the waters about abortion. Worry and reacting to Donald Trump is in fact not the only way to encounter life. Democrats should be happy to spend the next fourteen months debating with Donald Trump whether he wants a 6 week national ban or an 8 week ban. If he’s really forgotten that he’s the “most pro-life President ever” who single-handedly overturned Roe by appointing three diehard abortion opponents, then by all means get him to demand his obediant and gerrymandered state legislatures to ditch all the state bans altogether.
Continue reading “Get It Together”Damning New Evidence Emerges Against Trump In The Mar-a-Lago Case
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
‘You Don’t Know Anything About The Boxes’
The new evidence is unsourced, but it comes via the ABC News team doing first-rate coverage of the Mar-a-Lago case. At the center of the new reporting is Molly Michael, the Trump aide who was his executive assistant in the White House who moved with him to Mar-a-Lago post-presidency, and resigned last year when the Mar-a-Lago case blew up.
The most damning allegation in the new report:
Sources said that after Trump heard the FBI wanted to interview Michael last year, Trump allegedly told her, “You don’t know anything about the boxes.”
The next sentence in the ABC report is a doozy, perhaps lol credulous: “It’s unclear exactly what he meant by that.”
Other tidbits from the new report:
- Michael told investigators that on more than one occasion at Mar-a-Lago Trump scratched notes or to-do lists for her on documents marked classified.
- Michael recognized the documents as classified notecards used to brief Trump while he was in office.
- Oddly, the FBI seemed to miss or overlook the notecards in its search of Mar-a-Lago, but Michael found them the day after the search and facilitated turning them over to the FBI.
Michael is identified in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago indictment as “Trump Employee 2.”
It Did Not Go Well For Jeff Clark
A federal judge in Atlanta seemed deeply skeptical that former Trump DOJ lackey Jeff Clark is entitled to removal of his RICO case from state court – and Clark didn’t give him much to work with. Highlights from yesterday’s removal hearing:
- Clark didn’t appear in person and did not testify, making it very difficult to meet the legal standard of proof for removal.
- The judge refused to admit a sworn declaration from Clark because he wasn’t there to be cross examined by prosecutors.
- The judge also rejected a sworn declaration on Clark’s behalf by Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese.
- Meanwhile, DA Fani Willis called former Trump DOJ Civil Division Chief Jody Hunt to testify that Clark’s actions were outside the bounds of that role.
Clark faced a tougher slog to begin with than Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows did in his so far losing effort for removal, but Clark did little to help himself.
Rudy G’s Financial Struggles
Attorney Robert Costello is suing Rudy Giuliani in state court in New York for $1.36 million in unpaid and overdue lawyer fees accrued since 2019. Costello claims he has billed Giuliani for $1.57 million of work but has only received payments totaling $214,000.
“I can’t express how personally hurt I am by what Bob Costello has done,” Giuliani said in a statement. “It’s a real shame when lawyers do things like this, and all I will say is that their bill is way in excess to anything approaching legitimate fees.”
Colorado Disqualification Clause Case Looks For Real
A state judge in Colorado appears to be taking seriously a lawsuit seeking to enforce the 14th Amendment’s Disqualification Clause against Donald Trump. Anticipating the case would wend its way to the Colorado Supreme Court and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Sarah Wallace determined she would need to render a decision by Thanksgiving. She set deadlines for motions to dismiss and assuming the lawsuit survives those, she scheduled a weeklong evidentiary hearing starting Oct. 30.
Government Shutdown Watch
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) sums it up:
Jennifer Wexton Won’t Seek Re-Election
Citing an especially aggressive form of Parkinson’s disease, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) announced she will not seek re-election in 2024. Wexton had previously revealed her Parkinson’s diagnosis earlier this year:
Wexton was first elected in her Northern Virginia district in 2018, knocking off GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock. Her 2022 race was one of the most scrutinized in the country, and she ended up winning more comfortably than expected. The district went heavily for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
What Happened To Ken Buck?
Aaron Blake: What the unsparing anti-impeachment op-ed by the GOP’s Ken Buck betrays
Indiana’s Rokita Faces Disciplinary Charges
The Indiana Supreme Court’s disciplinary commission filed charges Monday alleging that Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita violated professional conduct rules with his statements in 2022 about the case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who sought an abortion in Indiana and the doctor who performed the procedure.
2024 Ephemera
- Donald Trump reportedly plans to travel to Michigan and give a primetime speech to autoworkers on Sept. 27 instead of attending the GOP presidential primary debate that night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California.
- Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), on whether he would get involved as president in the UAW strike: “I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely.”
How Not To Interview Trump
Aaron Rupar: Kristen Welker’s tenure as “Meet the Press” moderator got off to an inauspicious start.
Right-Wing Authoritarianism As Spectacle
Michael Tomasky: We Have Two Medias in This Country, and They’re Going to Elect Donald Trump
What … ?
Who’s Who In the U.S.-Iran Deal?
A rundown of the prisoners involved in the two-way trade between the U.S. and Iran.
Trudeau’s Surprise Announcement
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Parliament yesterday that his government is investigating “credible allegations” that India was involved in the June shooting a Sikh independence leader on Canadian soil. India dismissed the claim as “absurd and motivated.”
Canada expelled an Indian diplomat, and India responded in kind.
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Puck for the Win! (Yes, It Can Happen)
Over at the velvet rope publication Puck, Peter Hamby has a good post puncturing the inane chatter that Kamala Harris will be or should be replaced as Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate. This is a kind of sub-genre of “Biden stand down” discourse, a kind of thinking man’s artisanal small batch whiskey of definitely-not-going-to-happen ideas. Hamby actually finds that there is a political scientist, George Sirgiovanni, who has done a formal study of the history of Dump the Veep talk: the gist is that the chatter happens basically every time things look shaky for the incumbent and the Veep absolutely never gets dumped. Yes, it’s happened in the distant past. But not in the modern history of the presidency or vice presidency. It doesn’t happen. So stop trying to make fetch a thing.
Continue reading “Puck for the Win! (Yes, It Can Happen)”Old Man Trump Forgets His Position on Abortion?
Everyone is aflutter today over news that Donald Trump suddenly thinks Ron DeSantis’s six week abortion ban in Florida is “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” Hapless reporters and commentators are running around asking whether Trump is now pro-choice, whether he’s going to steal Democrats’ big issue out from under them. At least some Democrats seem to be worried about this too.
Continue reading “Old Man Trump Forgets His Position on Abortion?”Is the Wisconsin GOP on the Run?
I couldn’t figure out why Wisconsin Republicans wouldn’t impeach newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz since their epic gerrymander basically makes them immune from whatever voters think. Then I saw state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos surprise every one with a purported proposal for “non-partisan” redistricting. It certainly seemed like a show of weakness. Like they weren’t so confident in their ability to impeach her after all. So I talked to the head of the state Democratic Party Ben Wikler to see what he thinks is going on.
Disdain For DeSantis May Force Trump To Actually Land Somewhere On Abortion
As TPM has been reporting since Roe’s overturning: The electoral backlash to the Dobbs ruling has Republicans — especially 2024 Republicans — queasy about staking out a position on abortion. And no one has been more vague about what abortion policy they’d support as president than Donald Trump.
Continue reading “Disdain For DeSantis May Force Trump To Actually Land Somewhere On Abortion”Wisconsin GOP Threat To Impeach Protasiewicz Is Unsupported By Law And Undermines Judicial Independence
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Wisconsin’s April 2023 state Supreme Court election was historic. It was the nation’s most expensive judicial race ever, with over US$50 million in total spending, and it broke turnout records for an off-cycle spring election.
Continue reading “Wisconsin GOP Threat To Impeach Protasiewicz Is Unsupported By Law And Undermines Judicial Independence”The ‘Biden Aliases’: How The GOP’s Scandalmongering Inspired An Armed Protest
An armed protester who appeared outside President Biden’s Delaware home on Sunday appears to have been inspired by the efforts of congressional Republicans and other conservative groups to drum up scandal related to Hunter Biden.
The protester, who seemed to have a pistol holstered on his hip in the open carry state, held a sign that referred to various aspects of the right-wing investigations into the Biden family, including email aliases used when he was vice president which Republicans and conspiracists have tried to cite as proof of malfeasance in the absence of more concrete evidence.
“Joe has aliases?! Robert L. Peters, Robin Ware, JRN Ware,” the sign said.
Biden did indeed use email aliases while he was vice president during the administration of Barack Obama. The White House has confirmed he did this and described it as a security practice. One of the aliases was tied to a government domain, and the records were retained by the National Archives. Government officials including Obama have used obscure addresses to avoid hackers and spam.
However, unlike some of Trump’s allies who used email aliases while engaged in allegedly criminal schemes to overturn the 2020 election, after extensive investigations there is no evidence that Biden’s alternate emails were used in conjunction with illegality. Still, Republicans in Congress and conservative groups have repeatedly tried to point to the emails and dredge up more of them. Those efforts have helped the aliases attain totemic significance for some on the right including random Twitter users who have taken to replying to White House announcements and other political posts with the names as though they are making a coherent point.
The obsession with of Biden’s email aliases on the right has followed the larger Hunter Biden playbook, which involves trying to use the sordid personal and ethical issues of the president’s son to create scandal for the White House and some kind of false equivalency with Trump’s behavior. In the absence of real evidence of malfeasance by the president, elements of the Hunter Biden investigation including the simple existence of his hacked laptop have become standalone signifiers on the right. The other side of the protester’s sign pointed to the laptop and exaggerated interpretations of Hunter Biden’s emails that have become a staple of right-wing memes and partisan investigations.
“Bidens are criminals, 20 shell companies?! Where’s the laptop? 10% for the big guy,” the sign said.
While Republican efforts to paint Biden as operating a “crime family” may be lacking in substance, this incident makes clear they could have real-world and potentially dangerous consequences. The armed protester was observed and photographed by the Daily Mail’s Nikki Schwab, who was working in the White House press pool on Sunday. Schwab noted they were “walking down the road toward the Biden home” around noon and that a Secret Service vehicle was “following him down the road.” Approximately an hour later, Biden’s motorcade passed by the protester.
Delaware, where Biden has two homes, is an open carry state. In an initial statement on Sunday, the Secret Service alluded to the fact the protester did not seem to be violating any local laws.
“The individual expressing his constitutional rights had no impact on any of the Secret Service’s protectees’ movements,” the Secret Service said.
The White House referred questions Monday morning about the incident to the Secret Service. In response to an email from TPM asking if the protester was detained or questioned, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi indicated the protest did not trigger protective measures and suggested law enforcement is aware of the protester’s identity.
“The individual was not of protective interest as he was outside of our protective zone,” Guglielmi said. “He is a member of the community who demonstrates regularly. “
Let’s See A Show of Hands!; On-Going Annals of Feral Lauren Boebert …
Last we checked in on the Reality TV scandal of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R) of Colorado she was shown to have straight up lied when she denied vaping at a performance of Beetlejuice in Denver and refusing to stop after the pregnant woman behind her asked her to. Now it gets better, or worse, depending on your point of view. Over the weekend, a new snippet of video of Boebert at the performance started circulating which appears to show Boebert’s friend aggressively fondling her breasts. I’m not even sure what to call it. He doesn’t so much seem like he’s feeling her up as trying to see how big her boobs are. Weak game, if nothing else. Meanwhile, Boebert … well, lets say the video shows her rhythmically massaging the man’s crotch. And yes, I’m trying to keep this family friendly but look what I have to work with! Judge me on a curve.
Continue reading “Let’s See A Show of Hands!; On-Going Annals of Feral Lauren Boebert …”