Jack Smith Has An Insider Source At Mar-a-Lago?

Posted on by David Kurtz

`A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

I’m Excited. Are You Excited?

A whopping FIVE New York Times reporters have dumped their notebooks on the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The revelations fall into three buckets:

✅ a cooperating inside source

✅ video tampering suspicions

✅ Saudi LIV connection

Am I enjoying this too much? Probably a little.

Let’s take them in order:

Try To Keep The Witnesses Straight

Last night’s NYT story on the Mar-a-Lago investigation leads with: A person who has worked for Trump at his oceanside resort is cooperating with prosecutors.

This is a different witness than Walt Nauta, the former military valet for Trump who went with him to Mar-a-Lago post-presidency, whose cooperation has reportedly been, shall we say, spotty, the NYT reports:

But prosecutors appear to be trying to fill in some gaps in their knowledge about the movement of the boxes, created in part by their handling of another potentially key witness, Mr. Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta. Prosecutors believe Mr. Nauta has failed to provide them with a full and accurate account of his role in any movement of boxes containing the classified documents.

With me so far?

Tell Me More About The MAL Video Tampering Suspicions

The NYT story echoes some of CNN’s reporting from the day before about investigators’ suspicions that the surveillance video at MAL was tampered with (emphasis mine):

Prosecutors have also issued several subpoenas to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, seeking additional surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, his residence and private club in Florida, people with knowledge of the matter said. While the footage could shed light on the movement of the boxes, prosecutors have questioned a number of witnesses about gaps in the footage, one of the people said.

But hoping to understand why some of the footage from the storage camera appears to be missing or unavailable — and whether that was a technological issue or something else — the prosecutors subpoenaed the software company that handles all of the surveillance footage for the Trump Organization, including at Mar-a-Lago.

Like the CNN story Wednesday, the NYT connects prosecutors suspicions about the video to grand jury testimony yesterday by a father-son duo who works for Trump:

And they recently subpoenaed Matthew Calamari Sr., the longtime head of security at the Trump Organization who became its chief operating officer. His son, Matthew Calamari Jr., who is the company’s corporate director of security, was subpoenaed some time ago, according to a person familiar with the activity.

Both would have insight into the security camera operation, according to people familiar with the matter. Both Calamaris appeared before the grand jury gathering evidence in the case on Thursday. CNN first reported that prosecutors planned to question them.

Still with me?

I’m 100% Here For The Saudi Golf Connection

The emergence of the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour as a would-be competitor to the PGA has been fascinating to my sports-and-politics sotted brain, so I was delighted(!) to see a potential connection to the MAL probe:

One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts.

It is unclear what bearing Mr. Trump’s relationship with LIV Golf has on the broader investigation, but it suggests that the prosecutors are examining certain elements of Mr. Trump’s family business.

It’s a lot, I know.

What To Make Of All This?

A couple of thoughts to keep in your head as you process the new MAL news this week:

  • Don’t rule out that part of the reason for stories like the NYT and CNN ones this week could be defense attorneys communicating to each other about the status of the investigation via press reports. This probably sounds more sinister to you than I intend it to be because it doesn’t make the reports false or the lawyers guilty of obstruction of justice. It may just color the way the info is presented and framed.
  • For what it’s worth, I am a little surprised to see the reports this week suggesting a flurry of activity recently in the MAL probe. I had been under the impression that the core of the investigatory work was complete and a charging decision might not be too far off. Maybe or maybe not.

Historic Seditious Conspiracy Verdict For Proud Boys

The conclusion of the four-month long Proud Boys trial with seditious conspiracy convictions for its leaders was the most historically resonant news of the day.

While the verdict was mixed, that didn’t blunt the significance of the outcome:

Remember it was the Proud Boys whom Trump directed to “Stand back and standby” during a 2020 presidential debate then unleashed them on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The big unknown coming out of the trial is whether the Proud Boys convictions pave the way for prosecutors to connect the Capitol attack to the White House or to Trump or to those in his inner circle. More on that to come.

SCOOP

Politico: “A former Trump campaign staffer who was subpoenaed by the Department of Justice as part of its investigation into the plot to overturn the 2020 election, is currently serving on the House committee overseeing U.S. elections.”

Supreme Court Scandal Watch

  • What Now, Clarence!?! The next shoe to drop has dropped, via the WaPo:

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group he advises and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the nonprofit, the Judicial Education Project, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

  • A Remarkable Statement. The Thomas camp issued the following statement in response to the separate ProPublica report that billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow paid the private school tuition of Thomas’ grandnephew. I’ll put it here in full as an historical artifact:
  • Ouch! The reaction to the latest Thomas news was blistering:

Durbin Totally Not Getting It

With no certain time for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s return to the Senate, Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) is in the “hope and understanding” phase of denial:

Carroll Judge Trolls Trump

Standing on a golf course in Ireland Thursday, former President Trump suggested – against all evidence – he was going to leave early and head back to New York to “confront” the allegations being levied against him in the E. Jean Carroll trial, which he hasn’t attended and where he doesn’t plan to testify in his own defense.

The news of Trump’s remarks made it back to the trial judge, who ended the day by calling Trump’s bluff and giving him until Sunday at 5 p.m. ET to change his mind about testifying at trial.

The trial went slower this week than expected and will spill over into next week.

Trump Throws Hail Mary In Criminal Case

Donald Trump is trying to get the hush money case against him in New York state moved to federal court.

Kari Lake’s Lawyers Sanctioned

AP:

 Republican Kari Lake’s lawyers were sanctioned $2,000 Thursday by the Arizona Supreme Court in their unsuccessful challenge of her defeat in the governor’s race last year to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

In an order, the state’s highest court said Lake’s attorney made “false factual statements” that more than 35,000 ballots had been improperly added to the total ballot count. They have 10 days to submit the payment to the court clerk.

Finding Humor In A Grim Moment

Of all the Trump barbarism to come out in the E. Jean Carroll trial, I don’t know why this froze me the most, but it did:

It took some effort to find any humor in this, bust MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin may have succeeded:

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Where Things Stand: Trump Makes Sure Jury Knows He’s Not Attracted To E. Jean Carroll’s Lawyer, Either

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

The jury in the civil trial in which author E. Jean Carroll is accusing Donald Trump of rape was finally shown video of Trump’s taped deposition Thursday where he mixes up a photo of Carroll with one of his ex-wives, Marla Maples.

Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Trump Makes Sure Jury Knows He’s Not Attracted To E. Jean Carroll’s Lawyer, Either” →

Romney Laments That Democrats Didn’t Raise The Debt Ceiling Themselves Before His Party Got Involved

Posted on by Kate Riga

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) bemoaned Thursday that Democrats didn’t just raise the debt ceiling themselves before Republicans got their grubby mitts on it. 

Continue reading “Romney Laments That Democrats Didn’t Raise The Debt Ceiling Themselves Before His Party Got Involved” →

Florida GOP Lawmakers Use Last Days Of Legislative Session To Attack Trans Rights

Posted on by Kaila Philo

Florida’s state legislature approved a flurry of anti-“woke” bills on Wednesday, banning college diversity programs and preventing schools from being required to use pronouns that don’t correspond to one’s sex.

Continue reading “Florida GOP Lawmakers Use Last Days Of Legislative Session To Attack Trans Rights” →

Tucker Carlson Helped Broker The Deal That Got McCarthy The Speaker’s Gavel

Posted on by Emine Yücel

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson extracted concessions from Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), helping the California Republican to get the votes he needed from MAGA members of his caucus to become Speaker of the House, according to text messages obtained by Insider.

Continue reading “Tucker Carlson Helped Broker The Deal That Got McCarthy The Speaker’s Gavel” →

Sugar Justice: The Clarence Thomas Story

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Did you see the latest Clarence Thomas bombshell? To head off any misunderstanding, let me state that I know with a perfect certainty that Thomas will never be removed from the Court. And while it is theoretically possible he could resign, the odds of that happening are roughly equivalent of finding sentient life on Mars. But that doesn’t take any of the punch away from the news that Thomas had a child (a grandnephew for whom the Thomases became legal guardians) at private school and Harlan Crow picked up the tab for the tuition.

I want to take a moment to chart the trajectory of these revelations.

Continue reading “Sugar Justice: The Clarence Thomas Story” →

Clarence Thomas Had A Child In Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition.

Posted on by John Light

This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica.

“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial information through his work as an administrator.

Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate.

ProPublica interviewed Martin, his former classmates and former staff at both schools. The exact total Crow paid for Martin’s education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000, according to public records of tuition rates at the schools.

Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas disclosed a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education from another friend. It is not clear why he reported that payment but not Crow’s.

The tuition payments add to the picture of how the Republican megadonor has helped fund the lives of Thomas and his family.

“You can’t be having secret financial arrangements,” said Mark W. Bennett, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. Bennett said he was friendly with Thomas and declined to comment for the record about the specifics of Thomas’ actions. But he said that when he was on the bench, he wouldn’t let his lawyer friends buy him lunch.

Thomas did not respond to questions. In response to previous ProPublica reporting on gifts of luxury travel, he said that the Crows “are among our dearest friends” and that he understood he didn’t have to disclose the trips.

ProPublica sent Crow a detailed list of questions and his office responded with a statement that did not dispute the facts presented in this story.

“Harlan Crow has long been passionate about the importance of quality education and giving back to those less fortunate, especially at-risk youth,” the statement said. “It’s disappointing that those with partisan political interests would try to turn helping at-risk youth with tuition assistance into something nefarious or political.” The statement added that Crow and his wife have “supported many young Americans” at a “variety of schools, including his alma mater.” Crow went to Randolph-Macon Academy.

Crow did not address a question about how much he paid in total for Martin’s tuition. Asked if Thomas had requested the support for either school, Crow’s office responded, “No.”

Last month, ProPublica reported that Thomas accepted luxury travel from Crow virtually every year for decades, including international superyacht cruises and private jet flights around the world. Crow also paid money to Thomas and his relatives in an undisclosed real estate deal, ProPublica found. After he purchased the house where Thomas’ mother lives, Crow poured tens of thousands of dollars into improving the property. And roughly 15 years ago, Crow donated much of the budget of a political group founded by Thomas’ wife, which paid her a $120,000 salary.

“This is way outside the norm. This is way in excess of anything I’ve seen,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to the cascade of gifts over the years.

Painter said that when he was at the White House, an official who’d taken what Thomas had would have been fired: “This amount of undisclosed gifts? You’d want to get them out of the government.”

A federal law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to publicly report most gifts. Ethics law experts told ProPublica they believed Thomas was required by law to disclose the tuition payments because they appear to be a gift to him.

Justices also must report many gifts to their spouses and dependent children. The law’s definition of dependent child is narrow, however, and likely would not apply to Martin since Thomas was his legal guardian, not his parent. The best case for not disclosing Crow’s tuition payments would be to argue the gifts were to Martin, not Thomas, experts said.

But that argument was far-fetched, experts said, because minor children rarely pay their own tuition. Typically, the legal guardian is responsible for the child’s education.

“The most reasonable interpretation of the statute is that this was a gift to Thomas and thus had to be reported. It’s common sense,” said Kathleen Clark, an ethics law expert at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s all to the financial benefit of Clarence Thomas.”

Martin, now in his 30s, told ProPublica he was not aware that Crow paid his tuition. But he defended Thomas and Crow, saying he believed there was no ulterior motive behind the real estate magnate’s largesse over the decades. “I think his intentions behind everything is just a friend and just a good person,” Martin said.

Crow has long been an influential figure in pro-business conservative politics. He has given millions to efforts to move the law and the judiciary to the right and serves on the boards of think tanks that publish scholarship advancing conservative legal theories.

Crow has denied trying to influence the justice but has said he extended hospitality to him just as he has to other dear friends. From the start, their relationship has intertwined expensive gifts and conservative politics. In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, Crow recounted how he first met Thomas. In 1996, the justice was scheduled to give a speech in Dallas for an anti-regulation think tank. Crow offered to fly him there on his private jet. “During that flight, we found out we were kind of simpatico,” the billionaire said.

The following year, the Thomases began to discuss taking custody of Martin. His father, Thomas’ nephew, had been imprisoned in connection with a drug case. Thomas has written that Martin’s situation held deep resonance for him because his own father was absent and his grandparents had taken him in “under very similar circumstances.”

Thomas had an adult son from a previous marriage, but he and wife, Ginni, didn’t have children of their own. They pitched Martin’s parents on taking the boy in.

“Thomas explained that the boy would have the best of everything — his own room, a private school education, lots of extracurricular activities,” journalists Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher reported in their biography of Thomas.

Thomas gained legal custody of Martin and became his legal guardian around January 1998, according to court records.

Martin, who had been living in Georgia with his mother and siblings, moved to Virginia, where he lived with the justice from the ages of 6 to 19, he said.

Living with the Thomases came with an unusual perk: lavish travel with Crow and his family. Martin told ProPublica that he and Thomas vacationed with the Crows “at least once a year” throughout his childhood.

That included visits to Camp Topridge, Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks, and two cruises on Crow’s superyacht, Martin said. On a trip in the Caribbean, Martin recalled riding jet skis off the side of the billionaire’s yacht.

Roughly 20 years ago, Martin, Thomas and the Crows went on a cruise on the yacht in Russia and the Baltics, according to Martin and two other people familiar with the trip. The group toured St. Petersburg in a rented helicopter and visited the Yusupov Palace, the site of Rasputin’s murder, said one of the people. They were joined by Chris DeMuth, then the president of the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. (Thomas’ trips with Crow to the Baltics and the Caribbean have not previously been reported.)

Thomas reconfigured his life to balance the demands of raising a child with serving on the high court. He began going to the Supreme Court before 6 a.m. so he could leave in time to pick Martin up after class and help him with his homework. By 2001, the justice had moved Martin to private school out of frustration with the Fairfax County public school system’s lax schedule, The American Lawyer magazine reported.

For high school, Thomas sent Martin to Randolph-Macon Academy, a military boarding school 75 miles west of Washington, D.C., where he was in the class of 2010. The school, which sits on a 135-acre campus in the Shenandoah Valley, charged between $25,000 to $30,000 a year. Martin played football and basketball, and the justice sometimes visited for games.

Randolph-Macon was also Crow’s alma mater. Thomas and Crow visited the campus in April 2007 for the dedication of an imposing bronze sculpture of the Air Force Honor Guard, according to the school magazine. Crow donated the piece to Randolph-Macon, where it is a short walk from Crow Hall, a classroom building named after the Dallas billionaire’s family.

Martin sometimes chafed at the strictures of military school, according to people at Randolph-Macon at the time, and he spent his junior year at Hidden Lake Academy, a therapeutic boarding school in Georgia. Hidden Lake boasted one teacher for every 10 students and activities ranging from horseback riding to canoeing. Those services came at an added cost. At the time, a year of tuition was roughly $73,000, plus fees.

The July 2009 bank statement from Hidden Lake was filed in a bankruptcy case for the school, which later went under. The document shows that Crow Holdings LLC wired $6,200 to the school that month, the exact cost of the month’s tuition. The wire is marked “Mark Martin” in the ledger.

Crow’s office said in its statement that Crow’s funding of students’ tuition has “always been paid solely from personal funds, sometimes held at and paid through the family business.”

Grimwood, the administrator at Hidden Lake, told ProPublica that Crow wired the school money once a month to pay Martin’s tuition fees. Grimwood had multiple roles on the campus, including overseeing an affiliated wilderness program. He said he was speaking about the payments because he felt the public should know about outside financial support for Supreme Court justices. Martin returned to Randolph-Macon his senior year.

Thomas has long been one of the less wealthy members of the Supreme Court. Still, when Martin was in high school, he and Ginni Thomas had income that put them comfortably in the top echelon of Americans.

In 2006 for example, the Thomases brought in more than $500,000 in income. The following year, they made more than $850,000 from Clarence Thomas’ salary from the court, Ginni Thomas’ pay from the Heritage Foundation and book payments for the justice’s memoir.

It appears that at some point in Martin’s childhood, Thomas was paying for private school himself. Martin told ProPublica that Thomas sold his Corvette — “his most prized car” — to pay for a year of tuition, although he didn’t remember when that occurred.

In 2002, a friend of Thomas’ from the RV community who owned a Florida pest control company, Earl Dixon, offered Thomas $5,000 to help defray the costs of Martin’s education. Thomas’ disclosure of that earlier gift, several experts said, could be viewed as evidence that the justice himself understood he was required to report tuition aid from friends.

“At first, Thomas was worried about the propriety of the donation,” Thomas biographers Merida and Fletcher recounted. “He agreed to accept it if the contribution was deposited directly into a special trust for Mark.” In his annual filing, Thomas reported the money as an “education gift to Mark Martin.”

Jack Smith Probes Whether MAL Video Was Tampered With

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

A rock ’em sock ’em trio of big scoops overnight: Mar-a-Lago, Herschel Walker, Clarence Thomas. Let’s get after it!

‘Obstruction On Steroids’

Special Counsel Jack Smith is probing whether surveillance video at Mar-a-Lago subpoenaed by a federal grand jury was tampered with, CNN reports.

Smith appears to be focused on what, if anything, happened to the surveillance video after it was subpoenaed by investigators last summer. The surveillance video was subpoenaed in June 2022 because investigators already had suspicions about whether Trump had fully complied with a May 22 subpoena for government documents.

Among the new developments via CNN:

  • “Longtime Trump Organization executives Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son Matthew Calamari Jr. are expected to appear Thursday before the grand jury investigating possible mishandling of classified documents brought to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, sources said.”
  • “Prosecutors are expected to ask them about the handling of the surveillance footage and Trump employees’ conversations following the subpoena, according to the sources.”
  • “Investigators also have previously asked about a text message from [Trump aide Walt] Nauta to Calamari Sr. and subsequent conversations about the surveillance footage, according to two of the sources.”

NYU law professor Ryan Goodman said any tampering with the subpoenaed surveillance video would be “obstruction on steroids”:

Herschel Walker Did WHAT?

Just an amazing scoop by The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger showing then-Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R-GA) soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars from a billionaire donor who believed he was giving to Walker’s campaign – but the money ended up going to Walker’s personal company:

  • “Emails obtained by The Daily Beast—and verified as authentic by a person with knowledge of the exchanges—show that Walker asked [Dennis] Washington to wire $535,200 directly to that undisclosed company, HR Talent, LLC.
  • “In the best possible circumstances, legal experts told The Daily Beast, the emails suggest violations of federal fundraising rules; in the worst case, they could be an indication of more serious crimes, such as wire fraud.”
  • “According to the legal experts who spoke to The Daily Beast for this article, this scheme appears to not just be illegal—it appears to be unparalleled in its audacity and scope. The transactions raise questions about a slew of possible violations. In fact, these experts all said, the scheme was so brazen that it appears to defy explanation, ranking it among the most egregious campaign finance violations in modern history.”

Things Just Got Worse For Clarence Thomas

ProPublica with the third big overnight scoop: Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition.

Smith Sat In On Pence Grand Jury Testimony

Special Counsel Jack Smith personally attended the grand jury testimony of former Vice President Mike Pence, the first known time that Smith has sat in on grand jury proceedings in the Jan. 6 investigation, CNN reports.

Fani Willis Speaks

“I haven’t made any decisions regarding charging, at all, at least none that I’m willing to make public at this time,” Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis said Tuesday.

Judge Tosses Trump Lawsuit Against NYT

A state judge in New York threw out the lawsuit former President Donald Trump filed against the NYT over its 2018 Pulitzer-Prize-winning series on his taxes. Trump was also ordered to pay attorney fees and court costs.

Trump To Offer No Defense In Carroll Trial

Donald Trump will not take the stand or call any witnesses to defend against’s E. Jean Carroll’s defamation and rape claims, his lawyer told the court Wednesday. The judge expects the jury to get the case Tuesday.

No Fucks Left To Give

Dahlia Lithwick: “[P]erhaps the era of the wan, ruined, long suffering victim may be well and truly behind us.”

Jaw Dropping

Jared L. Wise, the former FBI agent charged for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, was … get this … the supervisory special agent in charge of Homegrown Violent Extremism for the FBI New York Field Office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force from 2014-17, NBC reports.

After Wise left the FBI, he joined … get this again! … Project Veritas, the NYT reports:

  • “Mr. Wise later joined the conservative group Project Veritas under the supervision of a former British spy, Richard Seddon, who had been recruited by the security contractor Erik Prince to train operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets.”
  • “At Project Veritas, according to a former employee with direct knowledge of his employment, Mr. Wise used the code name Bendghazi and trained at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming with other recruits.”
  • Mr. Wise was among a group of Project Veritas operatives who were assigned to infiltrate teacher unions in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Kentucky, according to the former employee. 

Wise’s time with Project Veritas was short-lived. He left in mid-2018, Project Veritas told the NYT.

Deep Dive

WaPo: Behind Trump’s musical tribute to some of the most violent Jan. 6 rioters

‘It’s Not How White Men Fight’

A.O. Scott on that Tucker Carlson text:

That is a jaw-dropping sentence — as empirically ludicrous as it is ideologically loaded. A glance at American history — taking in night riders, lynch mobs, the Tulsa race massacre of 1921 and the killings of Michael Griffith and Yusef Hawkins in New York in the 1980s, to say nothing of Jan. 6 itself — suggests that this is exactly how white men fight. Not all white men, of course, and not only white men, but white men precisely when they perceive the symbolic and material prerogatives of their whiteness to be under attack.

Noted

Prosecutor nears charging decision on Hunter Biden.

2024 Ephemera

  • Rep. David Trone (D-MD), the self-financing Total Wine magnate, plans to run for the open Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD).
  • Big Lie aficionado Jim Marchant (R-NV). who lost his bid for secretary of state, is seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV).

And Another …

Florida is poised to enact a new anti-trans bathroom law.

We’re Not In A Good Place, Y’all

Yesterday was the day elected Republicans in DC went all in on impeaching Joe Biden on the basis of spurious, unsubstantiated claims that the FBI has records of his corruption as vice president. I won’t burden you by making you read the supposed details of this particular nonsense or watch the multiple Fox News segments touting it, but to give you some sense of the saturation coverage, it included:

That’s not a full list. That’s just some of the elected Republicans on TV yesterday about this manufactured non-scandal. The GOP sickness is not just Trump.

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