I mentioned yesterday that Twitter became unstable over the weekend because of evil forces which Elon Musk and crew had to combat — that is, according to Elon Musk. Mainly that’s just BS from a company that has stiffed service providers and cut staff to a level that they couldn’t keep the site online anymore. But there likely are more efforts to “scrape” Twitter and other platforms going on right now. (Scraping here means bots which scan through a site and collect copies of its public or non-restricted data.) So there’s some element of truth to Musk’s claims that they’re facing more demands on the site’s capacity. The key is that that only becomes a big problem if you’re running very close to the edge already. But I want to zero in a bit on this point.
Continue reading “Twitter, Musk and the Great AI Land Grab”DeSantis Tries To Explain His Bizarre Anti-Pride Campaign Ad
Florida Governor and 2024 GOP candidate Ron DeSantis made headlines last week when his campaign posted a bizarre video that appeared to tout his aggressively anti-LGBTQ+ policy positions while attacking former President Donald Trump.
Continue reading “DeSantis Tries To Explain His Bizarre Anti-Pride Campaign Ad “During Live CNN Interview, Ex-Arizona House Speaker Reveals He Spoke To The FBI In Smith’s Probe
Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) revealed Wednesday that he has been interviewed by the FBI in connection with special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into former President Donald Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Continue reading “During Live CNN Interview, Ex-Arizona House Speaker Reveals He Spoke To The FBI In Smith’s Probe”Is Trump Using His Co-Defendant To Stall The MAL Trial?
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Walt Nauta, Round 3
After two previous delays, Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta is scheduled to be arraigned in South Florida today. Nauta’s arraignment was postponed the two previous times because he had not yet obtained local counsel.
Still no indication in the court docket that Nauta has obtained a lawyer who practices in federal court in South Florida. Stay tuned. If Nauta still doesn’t have local counsel today, it’s possible the magistrate judge will assign him a public defender rather than delay arraignment again.
Is this all part of Trump’s strategy to delay and drag out the proceedings? It’s certainly consistent with that. We should get a better idea later today soon of how elaborate of a stall strategy Trump is preparing. Trump is due to respond today July 10 to the government’s proposed schedule for pre-trial proceedings and a January 2024 trial date.*
*Correction: The judge previously extended the time for Trump to respond to July 10. The error was mine.
The MAL Surveillance Footage Was Key
The unsealing of an additional portion of the FBI affidavit in support of last August’s search warrant for Mar-a-Lago showed again how central the surveillance footage from Trump resort was and remains to the entire case. The feds, as you would expect, knew quite a bit about what had been going on inside Mar-a-Lago before they took the extraordinary step of searching a former president’s residence.
Watch Her Face!
I had so much fun watching Kaitlan Collins’ face as she realized she was breaking real news live on air with her interview of Former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers:
Collins usually defaults to an impervious, no-nonsense look while on air, but as Bowers begins to hem and haw her eyebrows fly up and her eyes widen. For me, the rush of extracting a revelation in an interview is right up there with the thrill of mountain climbing or skiing. Pure adrenaline, but with the need to stay calm and focused enough to execute. So much fun watching this interview unspool.
The specifics of what Bowers recounted:
- Bowers talked to the FBI a few months ago for about four hours.
- He talked with them about two calls: (i) one with Trump and Rudy Giuliani after the election, and (ii) another call from just Trump.
- Bowers did not tell the FBI anything that he hadn’t already said publicly.
Trump Continues Attacking The Special Counsel
These kinds of outbursts are going to come back to bite Trump hard, especially at sentencing:
The Right-Wing Threat Matrix
The Jan. 6 defendant arrested near former President Obama’s D.C. home is clearly a danger to the public, a judge said in court Wednesday, but questioned whether the current charges against him are insufficient to detain him pre-trial. The judge recessed the proceeding and plans to take it back up today.
The man came to DC after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) offered to let Jan. 6 defendants review surveillance footage from the Capitol. He ended up near the Obama residence after former President Trump recently posted on Truth Social what he claimed was the Obamas’ address. He was arrested with two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his van.
The man, a military veteran, may be suffering from mental health issues arising from his Iraq War service, the judge noted.
Biden Admin Will Appeal Social Media Gag Order
The Biden administration immediately took steps Wednesday to appeal the inane holiday ruling by a federal judge in Louisiana that bought hook-line-and-sinker the right-wing conspiracy theories that conservatives are censored on social media.
Look for the administration to also seek a stay of the injunction imposed by the lower court, which prevents several different components of the federal government from having contact with social media companies.
Reax To Credulous Trump Judge
TPM: Wild Ruling On Social Media Companies Is Latest Instance Of Trump Judge Setting Nationwide Policy
JustSecurity: Restricting the Government from Speaking to Tech Companies Will Spread Disinformation and Harm Democracy
Philip Bump: A deeply ironic reinforcement of right-wing misinformation
Lin Wood Can No Longer Practice Law
Facing potential disbarment in Georgia, Kraken attorney Lin Wood has received approval from the Georgia bar disciplinary authorities to retire, ending the proceedings against him and assuring effectively the same result as disbarment: Wood can no longer practice law anywhere.
Iowa GOPers Want Another Go At Abortion Restrictions
TPM: “Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) is calling the legislature back for a special session next week to pass abortion restrictions after the state Supreme Court deadlocked on a six-week ban last month, keeping the procedure legal in the state.”
Sums It Up
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Where Things Stand: Smith Zooms In On Trump Circle’s 2020 Lawsuits In Arizona
Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed the Arizona secretary of state’s office as recently as May for information related to the unsuccessful lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign and the Arizona Republican Party about supposed errors in the 2020 election. As you’ll recall, Arizona was a hotbed of conspiracy theories tied to the effort to overturn the election after President Biden flipped the longtime Republican stronghold state, leading to Trumpworld outrage, a phony and expensive state election “audit” and the lawsuits.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Smith Zooms In On Trump Circle’s 2020 Lawsuits In Arizona”Iowa Governor Calls Special Session To Pass Abortion Restrictions After State Supreme Court Deadlocks On Ban
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) is calling the legislature back for a special session next week to pass abortion restrictions after the state Supreme Court deadlocked on a six-week ban last month, keeping the procedure legal in the state.
Continue reading “Iowa Governor Calls Special Session To Pass Abortion Restrictions After State Supreme Court Deadlocks On Ban”Calling All Lawyers!
As we make the final push to reach our $500,000 goal for the TPM Journalism Fund drive, I want to thank all of the lawyer contributors and see if I can convince a few more to help out.
Some of the biggest contributions to date to the TPM Journalism Fund drive have come from the legal community. We can’t thank you enough for that.
Continue reading “Calling All Lawyers!”Georgia Bar Steers Lin Wood Into Retirement
The Georgia bar allowed Celebrity Kraken attorney Lin Wood to retire on Wednesday, saying that the lawyer’s permanent exit from the practice of law was a suitable resolution to his propagation of outrageous claims about the 2020 election and his own divinity.
Continue reading “Georgia Bar Steers Lin Wood Into Retirement”Stewart Rhodes Pushes Deep State Conspiracy Theories About Trump In New Jailhouse Interview
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — who was recently sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack — used a new jailhouse interview to push “deep state” conspiracy theories and claimed that his trial can be used as a blueprint for how federal prosecutors will convict former President Donald Trump.
Continue reading “Stewart Rhodes Pushes Deep State Conspiracy Theories About Trump In New Jailhouse Interview”Ohio Groups Say They Have Enough Signatures To Get Abortion Safeguards On Ballot In November
The groups behind the effort to put abortion rights to a vote in Ohio this fall announced Wednesday that they’d officially turned in “over 700,000” signatures to get the proposal on the ballot.
Continue reading “Ohio Groups Say They Have Enough Signatures To Get Abortion Safeguards On Ballot In November”