Where to start? Dan Friedman and David Corn have a piece up this morning at Mother Jones detailing a whistleblower complaint from an FBI agent, Johnathan Buma, who says he was stopped from investigating whether Giuliani was “compromised” by Russian intelligence when he was on his various “dirt” safaris marching through Ukraine and other post-Soviet states trying to drum up dirt on the Bidens to sabotage the 2020 presidential election. Friedman and Corn say other stymied agents may soon be coming forward as well.
Continue reading “For All Rudy’s Troubles, There’s Much More Still There”Schumer Places Blame For Any Impending Shutdown Squarely On MAGA House GOP
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Friday called out far-right House Republicans for taking appropriations bills hostage and risking a government shutdown.
Continue reading “Schumer Places Blame For Any Impending Shutdown Squarely On MAGA House GOP”The Summer We Faced A World On Fire
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Or … The Summer Of Our Discontent
This is last Morning Memo of what has been an extraordinary summer in the annals of human civilization. I don’t want the hot season to slip away without some acknowledgement of what has just transpired.
As the unprecedented series of climate-change-driven disasters has unfolded, especially over the past two months, I have struggled not to turn Morning Memo into a daily weather column.
Floods in Vermont, deadly wildfires in Hawaii, a tropical storm warning in Los Angeles, record-obliterating heat waves in the Southwest and Deep South. Not to mention the searing heat in Europe, ferocious wildfires from Greece to Canada to Louisiana, alarming sea surface temperatures across the globe, and the dawning realization that this isn’t the new normal, not even close. It’s merely a way station en route to a cataclysmic future we can barely conceive.
For people who study climate change and those who are working to avert its worst effects, this was the summer of starting to wonder whether the models had underplayed the effects and the speed of even modest global warming. We won’t know for some time, years even, whether that turns out to be true. But the lived experience of the summer of 2023 suggested that the big changes long forecast are going to be bigger and come faster than we had expected.
The physics of climate change are inexorable. That’s not a theory or a theology or a belief. It’s a fact. What remains unknown is the precise scale and scope of the direct, indirect, knock-on, and ripple effects of the planet-wide warming that is underway. We are not only unprepared for what comes next, we remain deeply unsure of what exactly does come next besides ever-rising temperatures.
But as grim as the last few weeks have been, the future is portended by the joke you’ve probably heard going around: This was coolest summer of the rest of your life.
Trump Pleads Not Guilty In Georgia RICO Case
The former president waived his arraignment and pleaded not guilty to the state RICO charges against him, so he will not need to return to Atlanta to appear in person next week.
Trump: Slow The Fuck Down!
The former president wants nothing to do with the speedy trial requests of his RICO co-defendants. Trump asked the state judge overseeing the case to sever his trial from those seeking a speedy trial, which is currently set to start Oct 23.
Jockeying Over Meadows’ Removal Gambit
The federal judge considering Mark Meadows’ motion to remove his Georgia RICO prosecution to federal court has all he needs now to issue a ruling:
- Meadows and Willis have each filed additional briefs on the question U.S. District Judge Steve Jones asked them to answer: “Would a finding that at least one (but not all) of the over acts charged occurred under the color of Meadows’s office, be sufficient for federal removal of a criminal prosecution?”
- Meadows filed an additional notice to the federal court that Willis is moving fast in state court and urging a prompt decision on removal.
- An amalgam of former prosecutors, judges and officials have filed a friend of the court brief on why removal would be inappropriate for Meadows.
Meadows’ Play For Immunity
In a recent Morning Memo, I cautioned that most of what’s playing out right now procedurally in the Georgia RICO case won’t matter much in the end. But I probably should have included one caveat: Mark Meadows’ play to remove his case to federal court is part one of a two-step gambit to try to win immunity from prosecution under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. Harry Litman explains.
Quote Of The Week
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on the efforts by some state Republicans to target Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis for retribution for her prosecution of Donald Trump:
The bottom line is that in the state of Georgia as long as I’m governor, we’re going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps and harms politically. Over the last few years, some inside and outside of this building may have forgotten that. But I can assure you that I have not.
Just Plain Weird
Trump co-defendant Harrison Floyd claims he’s going to run for Congress from Georgia – even though he lives in Maryland (where he’s facing separate charges for allegedly assaulting an FBI agent), TPM’s Hunter Walker reports.
Proud Boys Sentencing Continues
Proud Boys leader Joe Biggs was sentenced to 17 years in prison for his seditious conspiracy conviction, the second-longest Jan. 6 sentence to date (behind the 18 years meted out to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes).
Still, the sentence was dramatically less than the 33 years sought by prosecutors, less than the lower end of the sentencing guidelines, and, according to the Trump-appointed federal judge, probably the biggest departure from the sentencing guidelines he’ll ever entertain.
Sentencing continues today, with Proud Boys Ethan Nordean and Dominic Pezzola due up next.
Oh Really?
A Trump supporter who told police at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to “go hang yourself” is now the Trump campaign’s No. 2 in New Hampshire.
DOJ Going Hard After Threats To Election Workers
The Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force secured two new convictions against defendants accused of threatening election workers, bringing to nine the number of convictions it has obtained.
Biden Being Biden
This Is The Icing On The Ken Paxton Cake
In an especially-for-the-AP rollicking account of Ken Paxton’s petty corruption as Texas attorney general, the usually staid wire service teed up this kicker to its story absolutely perfectly:
Around Christmas for years, Texas grocery giant H-E-B sent a coconut-dusted cake to the attorney general’s office, which staff shared.
That changed after Paxton was elected, according to three former employees of his executive office who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
One said Paxton once told staff not to touch the cake because it was for his birthday, which is on Dec. 23. Another said Paxton once had the cake brought to a Tex-Mex restaurant for a staff lunch but never served it. The third recalled watching Paxton and an aide walk out of the office carrying the cake box.
According to required gift logs kept by Paxton’s office, the cake was worth $45.
Definitely worth a read.
The ‘Inadvertent’ Justice
After getting an extension to grapple with all of the exposés about his billionaire-funded travel and vacations, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas finally filed his financial disclosure form for 2022 – and in it he used the word “inadvertently” 16 times.
Thomas was forced to disclose some of his past transactions with Harlan Crow already reported by ProPublica and others, and revealed previously unknown transaction from 2022. My personal fave was Thomas claiming that he needed to travel on Crow’s private plane because of the security concerns prompted by the leak of the draft Dobbs decision.
Justice Samuel Alito filed his financial disclosure form, too, but made no mention of the 2008 fishing trip he took with billionaire Paul Singer that was recently made public.
The Supreme Court’s Naked Corruption
For the bulk of the past year … we’ve been confronted with the towering pile of stories about justices accepting luxury trips and gifts from billionaires with a vested interest in the conservative legal movement’s deregulatory project …
As story after story appears, suggesting that the same person who is cultivating relationships between billionaire donors and Supreme Court justices is also working to suppress elections, the failure to understand and then write about the Supreme Court as an institution largely captured by moneyed partisan political interests feels more and more like journalistic malpractice.
Ohhh, He’s Ken Starr’s Nephew?
The federal judge in Texas who sanctioned Southwest Airlines lawyers by making them attend a religious liberty training session with a right-wing legal advocacy group is not backing down.
Clown Of The Week
The fake outrage, the macho pose of a peacock, the staged setting, the human props. Who is snookered by this low-rent propaganda?
Have A Great Labor Day Weekend!
I’ll be back in Washington starting next week. See you Tuesday.
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A Window Into Trump’s Abortion Strategy As The Rest Of His Party Spirals
The 2022 pivot to the general was a particularly shameless spectacle to witness. In the weeks leading up to the midterm elections last November, we saw a handful of far-right, Trump-backed Republican candidates who managed to win their primary elections on 2020 grievances soften their policy positions.
Concerned about dampening turnout and the unpopularity of the 2020 redux among general voters, election deniers flailed as they tried to run away from their months-old hardline positions. We witnessed the same pivoting on the abortion front. Extremist candidates like Blake Masters tried to tweak their absolutist positions on abortion into policy a bit easier to stomach for a general election audience.
This watering down of policy positions from the primary to the general isn’t new. But the midterms were the first major election since the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and Republican strategists still didn’t quite comprehend the energizing power abortion would have on that election and others in the future.
Donald Trump, though, apparently had an inkling that his grand success in getting the right justices on the high court to overturn Roe might come back to bite some of his allies.
The former president made an appearance on Michigan Republican Tudor Dixon’s podcast in an episode that aired Tuesday. During the discussion, Dixon, a conservative media personality and failed-Republican gubernatorial candidate who Trump endorsed last year, revealed that Trump advised her to tone down her abortion rhetoric at some point before the general election. Like many 2022 races, the gubernatorial race in Michigan last year was widely seen as a referendum on abortion due to the timing post-Dobbs, incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) abortion rights advocacy and a simultaneous ballot measure that asked voters to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.
Dixon, who campaigned as an anti-abortion candidate, was criticized for not saying whether she would support abortion exemptions for rape victims.
Here’s a snippet of the conversation, emphasis mine:
Dixon: I just want you to know that and I’ll tell my viewers that you came to me and you said, you got to talk differently about abortion. And we could not pivot, we could not pivot in time. And it really… You were absolutely right, sir. And I hope that you are able to navigate that issue in 24 and that we can win those women back because they are already putting out attack ads, and it is not a fair issue for them to attack on.
Trump: Yep, that’s what happened to you. And that’s what happened to a lot of other people and didn’t happen to me because, you know, there’s a way of talking about it. You know, they’re the radicals. they’re the radicals and you have to explain it. And I think exceptions are very important. They need the exceptions. You and I talked about that.
Trump has never been one to campaign in specifics. But the exceptions line is about as specific as he’s gotten on where he stands on abortion this election cycle. The most he’s spoken on the issue thus far was during a CNN town hall earlier this year when he waffled on policy and refused to directly answer questions about whether he’d support federal restrictions on the procedure, a must have for anti-abortion groups.
During a time when Republicans as a whole are flailing to plant a flag because of how unpopular abortion restrictions have proven to be in the last several elections, a window into any messaging strategy is interesting — especially after the first Republican debate revealed just how extensively the Dobbs ruling has turned Republican abortion politics on its head.
Trump may be the only Republican who has the freedom to outline any kind of nuanced position on the procedure before the primaries, as his crushing lead in national polls leaves him slightly less beholden to anti-abortion groups’ strict parameters for endorsement. Still, that nuance so far has been confined to a low-profile podcast episode.
The Best Of TPM Today
Here’s what you should read this evening:
Trump Asks To Split His Case Off From Co-Defendants Who Want A Speedy RICO Trial
Sitting Georgia State Senator Nods At Violence In Response To Trump Fulton County Charges
Trump Pleads Not Guilty In Fulton County Election Theft Case
Trump Said He Was Too Busy Saving Millions From ‘Nuclear Holocaust’ To Commit Fraud
Clarence Thomas: Jet-Setting Was Forced On Me By The Dobbs Leak
McCarthy Dangles Hunter Biden Probes In Front Of Hardliners Risking Shutdown
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
John Eastman Gets Dunked On Hard After Fox News Interview — David Kurtz
What We Are Reading
45 New Victims Allegedly ID’d in Leaked Chats From Andrew Tate’s ‘War Room’ — Daily Beast
Rudy Giuliani Literally Can’t Afford to Be Defaming People — New York Magazine
For George Santos, a life in Brazil at odds with his GOP politics — WaPo
One Of President Trump’s Georgia Co-Defendants Is Using The Case To Flirt With A Run For Congress
If Harrison Floyd has his way, he might go from the Fulton County jail in Georgia to Capitol Hill.
Floyd, along with former President Donald Trump, is one of 19 co-defendants who were hit with criminal charges by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for their alleged roles in a scheme to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in the Peach State. On Wednesday night, Floyd was released on a $100,000 bond after five days in jail. Since then, he has gone on a mini media tour decrying the case against him and announcing his intention to run for office.
Shortly after his release, Floyd stood in front of the courthouse and claimed “our country and the state of Georgia” were standing “on pillars of corruption, racism, lying, and cheating.” Floyd, who is Black, accusedWillis, who is also Black, of giving him “what we call in our community a Negro wake up call” and warned that the nation would plunge into “more and deeper darkness” if our leaders do not change course.
“So, the only thing we can do is follow God and lead by example, and so, I’m also announcing right now that I am exploring running for a congressional seat in Georgia,” Floyd said. “I’m coming back here to get things right.”
In a Twitter post on Thursday, Floyd declared:, “Georgia is on my mind” alongside a makeshift “FLOYD ‘24” campaign logo.
Spoiler alert: Floyd doesn’t actually live in Georgia. According to court records, Floyd is currently a resident of Maryland.
This isn’t the first time Floyd has taken a shot at running in Georgia. He previously campaigned for the 7th Congressional District seat in 2019 before dropping out of the race after about a month.
Floyd seems quite eager to join the tradition of Trump allies who have sought to capitalize on legal drama and build careers in conservative politics. Floyd raised money for his bond and legal expenses via a fundraiser on the site GiveSendGo, a “Christian fundraising site” that has been popular with people charged for taking part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Floyd’s fundraiser, which he has promoted on social media, has drawn in over $200,000 and includes a note filled with a series of incendiary claims from his legal team.
“Harrison Floyd is one of 19 defendants who has been victimized by Fani Willis, a Democrat prosecutor bent on advancing her political career,” the note says, before adding, “Harrison is innocent. There is no victim here in this fake case being brought by Fani. … There’s a lot more to Harrison’s story and we’ll be posting more soon.”
Spokespeople for Willis did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Willis charged Floyd with one count of conspiracy to commit solicitation of false statements and writings, one count of influencing witnesses, and one count, along with all the other co-defendants, of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
During the 2020 election, Floyd was the executive director of the Trump campaign’s “Black Voices For Trump” initiative. The charges against Floyd stem from his involvement in a desperate scramble to press Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman to admit to false allegations of election fraud that included multiple visits to her home and a cameo from a publicist tied to rapper Kanye West.
Floyd has made multiple appearances within the past day on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” broadcast, declaring himself a victim and touting his potential candidacy. In one of his interviews with Bannon on Wednesday afternoon, Floyd suggested the charges were part of an unspecified “cover up.” On Thursday morning, Floyd again appeared with Bannon and stressed the fact he is the only one of the 19 co-defendants who spent time in jail before being released on bond. Floyd claimed he was “absolutely” singled out by Willis as part of an effort to discourage Black people from supporting Trump.
“She wanted to send a message to Black folks,” Floyd said. “I definitely think she was trying to make an example.”
Willis has pushed back on the claims from Floyd and his attorneys that he was unduly held in jail. As part of that effort, the district attorney’s office provided the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper with an audio recording of a conversation between Willis and one of Floyd’s attorneys where she claimed he was offered a consent bond and refused it.
In a separate case in Maryland, Floyd was arrested earlier this year and charged with attempting to assault an FBI agent who was serving him a subpoena as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the attempts to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 race.
One of Floyd’s attorneys, who declined to go on record to discuss the case, said Floyd disputes the allegation he assaulted the FBI agent. The attorney also said Floyd’s defense in Georgia will include revisiting comments Freeman made during her meetings with the co-defendants that were recorded by the police. His legal team also plans to raise questions about the election and the handling of ballots in Georgia as they argue Floyd had reason to believe election fraud had occurred. Freeman has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and noted the conspiracies about her role in the election led to a wave of violent threats against her. The video footage at the center of those conspiracies, which were heavily promoted by Trump and his allies, has been reviewed by officials who confirmed it shows normal ballot processing. Officials — including Georgia’s Republican leadership — have also confirmed there was no fraud in the state’s result, which was checked in two separate recounts.
While Floyd’s legal team has been vocal about the idea he has been mistreated, they appear to be more reticent when it comes to his potential political ambitions. Reached on Thursday afternoon, Aaron McCullough, who is one of Floyd’s attorneys, declined to comment on the possible congressional campaign citing the fact the potential candidate does not currently live in the state where he might run.
“Technically, he’s not even local so that’s just not something that we even need to weigh in on. Those are all kinds of personal stuff,” McCullough said of Floyd, adding, “And so, legal stuff there’s plenty of it going on.”
Trump Asks To Split His Case Off From Co-Defendants Who Want A Speedy RICO Trial
Donald Trump formally asked a Georgia judge on Thursday to cleave his Georgia RICO case from his co-defendants who have exercised their rights to a quick trial as soon as October.
Continue reading “Trump Asks To Split His Case Off From Co-Defendants Who Want A Speedy RICO Trial”Listen To This: March 4
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the latest in the Jan. 6 and Georgia indictments, along with Republicans’ eleventh-hour gambit to sink an abortion amendment in Ohio.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Clear Dividing Line in Georgia
This is an interesting development. In a press conference today, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp shot down pretty much all the talk in the state legislature about punishing Fulton County DA Fani Willis for indicting ex-President Trump and his various associates. I think some publications have been overplaying the odds of something like this happening. But far right members of the state legislature have been pushing hard for either removing Willis from office or defunding her office or in other ways punishing her. Rabble rousing Sen. Colton Moore, an antic, Trump-fluffing weirdo basically threatened violence if his demands aren’t heeded. And the AJC reports at least five state senators have told the paper they have received threats from Trump supporters for not heeding Moore’s demands.
Kemp basically shot it all down. No impeaching, no defunding, nothing.
“The bottom line is that in the state of Georgia as long as I’m governor, we’re going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps and harms politically. Over the last few years, some inside and outside of this building may have forgotten that. But I can assure you that I have not.”
Sitting Georgia State Senator Nods At Violence In Response To Trump Fulton County Charges
Georgia state Sen. Colton Moore (R) said on Tuesday a civil war might break out when former President Donald Trump goes to trial for his efforts to overturn the state’s presidential election results in 2020.
Continue reading “Sitting Georgia State Senator Nods At Violence In Response To Trump Fulton County Charges”Trump Pleads Not Guilty In Fulton County Election Theft Case
Donald Trump entered a plea of not guilty via a court filing on Thursday to state-level charges brought in Fulton County accusing him of orchestrating a sweeping “criminal enterprise” to reverse his loss in the 2020 election.
Continue reading “Trump Pleads Not Guilty In Fulton County Election Theft Case”