That's a big number.
Friday, June 30, 2023
Desperate Liars will do anything
No wonder they won't produce the whistleblower complaint.An attorney for Hunter Biden says purported screenshots of a text message from Hunter Biden to a potential Chinese business partner where he refers to Joe Biden — a message that has been the subject of intense scrutiny following statements made by an IRS whistleblower — are “not real and contain myriad of issues.”
Abbe Lowell, who is one of Hunter Biden’s attorneys, made the statement in a letter to Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has interviewed the whistleblowers.
[...]
IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley told the committee under oath that, as an investigator for the IRS, he obtained messages Hunter Biden sent on the WhatsApp platform, including one in 2017 that he read demanding payment from a Chinese businessman named Henry Zhao.
In the message, Shapley said, Biden appeared to suggest that he was sitting with his father, then the former vice president, saying, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
Lowell writes that the screenshots of the message as tweeted by Smith, “both include a photo of Mr. Biden not from 2017 but from the White House Easter Egg roll in April 2022 (long after the purported message was sent); both images portray the message in a blue bubble, when WhatsApp messages are in green; one image super-imposed the Chinese flag for the contact ID, when surely that was not how a text or contact was kept; and one purports to be a screenshot with the '. . .' of someone composing a text (as in Apple’s iMessage) when that does not happen on WhatsApp.”
He writes, “In short, the images you circulated online are complete fakes.”
[...]
“These interviews were orchestrated recitations of mischaracterized and incomplete 'facts' by disgruntled agents who believed they knew better than the federal prosecutors who had all the evidence as they conducted their five-year investigation of Mr. Biden.”
[...]
Lowell concludes his letter with, “Chairman Smith, it is easy when a committee does not operate with fairness and thoroughness and an adherence to rules and procedures to forward a false political narrative.”
NBC
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE :07/10/2023
No standing, but no surprise
The Supreme Court is apparently done pretending to be guided by law and precedent.
UPDATE 07/03/2023:
Read it.
No standing. No problem. "Brave."The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that the First Amendment bars Colorado from "forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees."
[...]
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: "Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class."
She added: "Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities. New forms of inclusion have been met with reactionary exclusion. This is heartbreaking. Sadly, it is also familiar. When the civil rights and women's rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims."
[...]
For years, the justices have side-stepped the difficult issue presented by business owners who don't want to comply with public accommodation laws for same-sex weddings. Florists, photographers, and a baker all went to court arguing that they should not have to use their artistry for same-sex weddings. But the court either declined to review lower court rulings or, in the case of the baker who refused to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple, the court punted.
This year, however, the new conservative supermajority reached out in an unusually aggressive manner, agreeing to decide a case in which nobody had yet filed a claim of discrimination.
Instead, Smith, a web designer who is opposed to same sex marriage, pre-emptively sued the state of Colorado, claiming that the state law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation violates her right of free speech.
NPR
Remember: this woman doesn't even HAVE a website. This was made up so SCOTUS could play their anti-LGBTQ hand.
[T]he court ruled against the state and for the web designer in a decision that could have profound consequences in Colorado and 29 other states that have laws requiring businesses open to the public to serve everyone, regardless or race, religion, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.
UPDATE 04:59 pm:
UPDATE 06/30/2023: Could it be any worse? Why, yes, it could...
A friend quoted someone on MSNBC saying essentially: all these justices during their confirmation hearings refused to opine on a hypothetical, and yet, they had no problem ruling on one.
UPDATE 07/01/2023:
The 303 Creative ruling gives every segregationist who never gave up hope, every bigot who keeps hate close to their heart, and every neo-Nazi who pines for a whites-only nation a brand new tool to fight for the legally protected discrimination that they yearn for so deeply.That's from an excellent (and emotional) article by Elie Mystal.
Read it.
Brazil's democracy is more secure than ours
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.The political future of Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro has been cast into doubt after electoral judges banned him from running for office for eight years for abusing his powers and peddling “immoral” and “appalling lies” during last year’s acrimonious election.
Five of the superior electoral court’s seven judges voted to banish the far-right radical, who relentlessly vilified the South American country’s democratic institutions during his unsuccessful battle to win a second term in power. Two voted against the decision.
The verdict means Bolsonaro, who lost last year’s election to his leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will only be able to seek elected office again in 2030, when he will be 75.
[...]
Bolsonaro made baseless claims against Brazil’s electronic voting system which caused a public outcry and were denounced by one supreme court judge as politically motivated disinformation.
Guardian
We're bleeding her dry
Humans are essentially parasites.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
SCOTUS Sneaky SOBs
They served their own purpose by those rulings: to lift some of the heat from recent stories about corruption at the Court. And they managed to have their cake and eat it too by those sneaky rulings.In several recent rulings, the Supreme Court unexpectedly handed wins to liberal advocates on election law, minority voting rights and Native American issues, but all three rulings were not conclusive.
That means contentious issues could return to the conservative-majority court, and — based on what some of the justices have said — the outcome next time could be very different.
NBC
And then, they knocked down affirmative action, in case anyone thought they were going to start ruling according to law instead of their feelings.Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the UCLA School of Law, said the voting rights and election cases both constitute "ticking time bombs" because of what was left undecided.
[...]
On Tuesday, the court handed a decisive defeat to Republican advocates for a broad endorsement of a fringe legal theory that would give state legislatures almost unlimited powers over election regulation.
[...]
Chief Justice John Roberts said state courts do not have "free rein" on election issues, meaning there are situations in which federal courts could intervene.
In the voting case decided on June 8, the vote was 5-4 in rejecting an effort to further weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the majority but wrote separately that his vote did not rule out challenges to the provision in question based on whether there is a time at which the 1965 law’s authorization of the consideration of race in redistricting is no longer justified.
Remember when all you heard about the courts from "conservatives" was complaints about "activist judges"? They're fine with activist judges, as long as they're right wing activists.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Of course, MAGA will not believe Zlochevsky. They believe Giuliani. At least until they find out Giuliani turned government witness against Trump.Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, sent a letter to Chairman James Comer sharing the transcript of statements made by Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, to an associate of Rudy Giuliani’s directly contradicting allegations repeated in the FBI Form FD-1023 tipsheet, which the FBI made available to all Committee Members. Republican Committee Members identified Mr. Zlochevsky as the source of the information relayed to the FBI by a confidential human source (CHS) in the Form FD-1023. As part of the 2019 impeachment inquiry against then-President Trump, the Committee received a transcript created by associates of Mr. Giuliani recording statements by Mr. Zlochevsky that squarely rebut these allegations.
[...]Specifically, Mr. Zlochevsky denied (1) that anyone at Burisma had ‘any contacts’ with then former Vice President Biden or his representatives while Hunter Biden served on the Burisma board, and (2) that former Vice President Biden or his staff ‘in any way’ assisted Mr. Zlochevsky or Burisma.[...]
As both the FBI and Mr. Giuliani himself stated, the unverified, second-hand allegations in the June 2020 Form FD-1023 largely repeated allegations Mr. Giuliani shared previously with the FBI.
House Dems
Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements are recorded in a written document that was produced by Mr. Giuliani’s associate, Lev Parnas, to the House Committees overseeing former President Trump’s first impeachment inquiry in January 2020, including the Oversight Committee, and was made available to both Democratic and Republican Members. The Department of Justice has been in possession of the document since the FBI seized Mr. Parnas’ phone—including the document—pursuant to a warrant in 2019.
Smith is still handing out subpoenas
Three weeks after former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on charges of illegally retaining national security records and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them, a federal grand jury in Miami is still investigating aspects of the case, according to people familiar with the matter.
[...]
While it remains unclear who received the subpoenas and the kind of information prosecutors were seeking to obtain, it is clear that the grand jury has stayed active and that investigators are digging even after a 38-count indictment was issued this month against Mr. Trump and a co-defendant, Walt Nauta, one of his personal aides.
[...]
[T]he indictment recounted how Mr. Trump displayed a classified map to someone described as “a representative of his political action committee” during a meeting in August or September 2021 at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
The representative of the PAC was Susie Wiles, one of the top advisers for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
[...]
The fact that Ms. Wiles could become a prosecution witness should Mr. Trump’s case go to trial, even as she is helping run his third bid for office, underscores the complexities that the former president now faces as he deals with both a presidential campaign and a criminal defense with an overlapping cast of characters.
[...]
Other aides who have been close to Mr. Trump are featured in the indictment, such as “Trump Employee 2,” who has been identified as Molly Michael, an assistant to Mr. Trump in the White House and his post-presidential office. The portion of the indictment describing the transcript of an audio recording in which Mr. Trump described what he said was a plan to attack Iran given to him by the Pentagon lists someone as a “staffer,” whom three people identified as Liz Harrington, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump.
NYT
I suppose Stupid's recent TV interviews could even be added fodder for Smith.The Department of Justice is prepared to seek indictments against multiple figures in former president Donald Trump’s orbit and may yet bring additional charges against the ex-president in the coming weeks, The Independent has learned.
[...]
The team of federal prosecutors working under Special Counsel Jack Smith is currently prepared to add an “additional 30 to 45 charges” in addition to the 37-count indictment brought against Mr Trump on 8 June, either in a superseding indictment in the same Florida court or in a different federal judicial district. In either case, they would do so using evidence against the ex-president that has not yet been publicly acknowledged by the department, including other recordings prosecutors have obtained which reveal Mr Trump making incriminating statements.
UK Independent
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.Additionally, it is understood that Mr Smith’s team is ready to bring charges against several of the attorneys who have worked for Mr Trump, including those who aided the ex-president in his push to ignore the will of voters and remain in the White House despite having lost the 2020 election.
One of those figures is Mr Trump’s erstwhile personal attorney, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Mr Giuliani [...] reportedly participated in a voluntary interview with prosecutors working under the supervision of Mr Smith.
It is further understood that Mr Giuliani’s cooperation with prosecutors was undertaken as part of what is known as a “queen for a day” deal, under which the ex-mayor can avoid indictment for anything he tells prosecutors about during the interview.
This will allow the disgraced former federal prosecutor to avoid some charges, but a source familiar with the matter has said Mr Smith’s office will “most definitely” bring some charges against Mr Giuliani for his work on Mr Trump’s behalf in the weeks between the November 2020 election and the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol.
The Independent has also learned that Mr Giuliani’s “proffer” session with prosecutors dealt mainly with Mr Trump’s machinations during that time period as he sought to find a way to remain in the White House for a second term.
[...]
Earlier this month, The Independent reported that [Trump's then Chief of Staff, Mark] Meadows had given evidence before a Washington DC grand jury under Mr Smith’s supervision as part of an agreement that would see him eventually plead guilty to lesser federal charges in exchange for his testimony against Mr Trump and other figures.
Although Mr Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, previously vehemently denied that Mr Meadows had entered any pleas of guilty to any crimes in response to that previous report, it is understood that the ex-congressman has signed an agreement with the Department of Justice which memorialises his obligations to cooperate with any prosecution against Mr Trump or others in the ex-president’s orbit in exchange for consideration that will spare him considerable legal jeopardy.
Another sad day at the Supreme Court
Affirmative action is essentially dead.
Thomas will be celebrating with tonight. Or maybe at lunch.
UPDATE 10:52 am: It's necessary in the military, but not in civilian life??
Thomas will be celebrating with tonight. Or maybe at lunch.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 10:08 am:
What was perhaps most remarkable in these largely predictable arguments was how much time the conservative justices devoted to pure policy arguments. These justices dislike affirmative action for a whole lot of deep emotional reasons that, it turns out, have nothing to do with the Constitution. They barely even considered the meaning of the 14th Amendment until Justice Elena Kagan finally brought it to their attention two and a half hours into the UNC arguments. Kagan, along with Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, was vastly more interested in the history of the Constitution’s equal protection clause than their ostensibly originalist colleagues. [...] [No one] should pretend the decision was remotely rooted in actual law.
[...]
Although these cases involve both public and private institutions, the Supreme Court has consistently held that federal law simply applies the equal protection clause to private universities that receive federal funds. So, in theory, the justices should’ve been debating the meaning of the Constitution. Instead, the conservative justices continually reverted to free-floating policy discussions about how affirmative action makes them feel. (Hint: They feel bad.)
[...]
When North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park explained that students benefit from having classmates with different backgrounds and viewpoints, offering peer-reviewed research on the topic, [Thomas] retorted: “I don’t put much stock in that because I’ve heard similar arguments in favor of segregation, too”—as though Southern states had once defended Jim Crow as necessary to expose students to the lived experiences of their classmates.
[...]
And, going back further, the 14th Amendment was not a breakthrough because it granted Black Americans equal citizenship, but because it made race irrelevant to the government. As Sotomayor and Jackson reminded their colleagues, this argument is ahistorical nonsense: The 14th Amendment was a color-conscious effort to give Black Americans all the rights and privileges enjoyed by white Americans. Even Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a self-proclaimed originalist, didn’t seriously try to contest this fact.
Instead, Barrett seized upon Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s famous prediction in Grutter that affirmative action would no longer be necessary in 2028, based on her own inchoate sense that racial progress was marching apace. Barrett framed O’Connor’s wish-casting as though it were the critical factor in these cases. She characterized O’Connor’s language as a “self-destruct mechanism” that expires in 2028, but also—in the view of the court’s conservatives—has already run out today. When defenders of affirmative action protested that this prediction was mere optimism, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that, in fact, it was a proper holding that bound the court. Why? Because Thomas called it that … in his Grutter dissent. Kavanaugh and Barrett also suggested that the much-mocked 2028 deadline cannot be extended unless its proponents set a new date by which race-conscious admissions would no longer be necessary. (Siri, set the timer for racial harmony.)
Slate
UPDATE 07/05/2023: Well, then.
Not good
With all of Trump's legal baggage, the 2024 presidential election is the Democrats' to lose, and they're aiming to do it.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
FFS
Somebody. Anybody. We'll figure out what to charge them with later.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Spotlight on Alito
Journalists are digging into Alito's life now. Who's next? Gorsuch and Roberts must be jumpy. And I still want to know who paid off Kavanaugh's debts.In a lease filed with the Grady County clerk, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito entered into an agreement with Citizen Energy III for revenue generated from oil and gas obtained from a plot of hard scrabble she inherited from her late father. It is one of thousands of oil and gas leases across Oklahoma, one of the top producers of fossil fuels in the United States.
Last year, before the lease was activated, a line in Alito’s financial disclosures labeled “mineral interests” was valued between $100,001 and $250,000. If extraction on the plot proves fruitful, the lease dictates that Citizen Energy will pay Alito’s wife 3/16ths of all the money it makes from oil and gas sales.
In the past, Alito has often recused himself from cases that pose potential conflicts of interest with his vast investment portfolio. Many of these recusals were born from an inheritance of stocks after the death of Alito’s father-in-law, Bobby Gene Bomgardner. Because Citizen Energy III isn’t implicated in any cases before the Supreme Court, Alito’s holding in Oklahoma doesn’t appear to pose any direct conflicts of interest. But it does add context to a political outlook that has alarmed environmentalists since Alito’s confirmation hearing in 2006 — and cast recent decisions that embolden the oil and gas industry in a damning light.
“There need not be a specific case involving the drilling rights associated with a specific plot of land for Alito to understand what outcomes in environmental cases would buttress his family’s net wealth,” Jeff Hauser, founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, told The Intercept.
In May, Alito penned a majority decision in Sackett v. EPA which radically scaled back the Clean Water Act, reducing its mandate by tens of millions of acres.
[...]
Prior to targeting the Clean Water Act, Alito joined the courts’ other conservative justices in attacking another set of EPA powers under the Clean Air Act in West Virginia v. EPA. The 2022 ruling gutted the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The Intercept
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 07/03/2023:
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Tell all time again
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 06/29/2023:
But Kelly kept that from the public anyway."Afterward, Kelly retold that story to me in visible disgust. Trump, he said, was 'a very, very evil man.'"
Raw Story
So Taylor was the anonymous op-ed writer who claimed to be doing us a favor by staying on in the administration. Staying on until he could write a book, apparently.[Trump's] comments are used by Taylor to highlight almost daily instances of sexism in the Trump White House that were so bad one senior female official told the writer, “This is not a healthy workplace for women.”
[...]
Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security who admitted to anonymously writing a 2018 op-ed in the New York Times titled “"I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” said, "There still are quite a few female leaders from the Trump administration who have held their tongues about the unequal treatment they faced in the administration at best, and the absolute naked sexism they experienced with the hands of Donald Trump at worst."
But you'll stay there for your own enrichment rather than go public to try to halt it. That's how so many women were raped by Harvey Weinstein, isn't it?He remembered Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s former secretary of homeland security, being called “sweetie” and “honey” and having her makeup critiqued by the president.
Taylor said, at one point, Nielsen whispered to him, "Trust me, this is not a healthy workplace for women.”
Maybe because you people didn't speak up when he was in office the first time!"He's a pervert, he's difficult to deal with," Taylor told Newsweek. "This is still the same man and, incredibly, we're considering electing him to the presidency again."
Yeah, with PLENTY of abetting by many, many people.He added, “He's setting a very vile tone within the Republican Party, and in a sense has normalized pretty derisive views towards women in general.”
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Hallelujah!
Of course the MAGA three who voted FOR the doctrine were Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito.
A 6-3 decision from the Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid to give state legislatures sweeping authority in drawing congressional maps and regulating federal elections, declining to endorse the so-called “independent state legislature” theory.
[...]
“The independent state legislature theory is a dangerous, fringe legal theory that has no place in our democracy,” Abha Khanna, a partner at progressive elections firm Elias Law Group, which represented one group of plaintiffs, said in a statement.
“In its most extreme form, the Independent State Legislature Theory could have weakened the foundation of our democracy, removing a crucial check on state legislatures and making it easier for rogue legislators to enact policies that suppress voters and subvert elections without adequate oversight from state court. We are incredibly relieved that the Supreme Court decisively rejected this dangerous theory.”
The Hill
Do you think if Thomas and Alito weren't causing such scrutiny and negative press lately this would have gone the other way?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 12:49 pm:
And keep it up.
And if the state Supreme Courts are packed with MAGA justices, well...the US Supreme Court isn't going to help that state's voters, but that's another story.The ruling ensures that state Supreme Courts will remain ultimate arbiters of partisan gerrymandering, and that they can rein in legislatures looking to use redistricting to eviscerate a minority party.
Politico
Lucky Ivanka
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.A New York appeals court [...] said that New York Attorney General Letitia James must exclude from her suit transactions that took place before July 13, 2014, or February 6, 2016, depending on the defendant. The court also dismissed claims against Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
The Appellate Division in Manhattan said James has the power to sue over “repeated or persistent fraud or illegality”, but that the allegations against Ivanka were too old and should have been dismissed.
James first filed the lawsuit against Trump in September, accusing the Trump Organization of “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation”. The suit seeks $250m in damages and proposes to bar the Trumps from running businesses in New York.
[...]
The trial is expected to begin in October before the state Supreme Court in Manhattan.
aljazeera
Unique delay tactic
When do they stop him and appoint a public defender? Is that even allowed in this case?The arraignment of former President Donald Trump’s valet Waltine “Walt” Nauta, who is accused of helping his former boss hide classified documents from federal investigators, has again been delayed.
Nauta’s lawyer briefly appeared in federal court in Miami on Tuesday, telling the judge Nauta had not yet found Florida legal counsel to represent him in the case. His next appearance was set for July 6.
Nauta faces six counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice, false statements, and withholding and concealing documents.
alJazeera
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Monday, June 26, 2023
What HE said
And Luttig is famously conservative. You may remember his testimony before the Jan 6 Committee.
Oh my
It couldn't happen to a more deserving group.House Freedom Caucus members took a momentous vote Friday on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s future with the group, according to three people familiar with the matter — but it’s not yet clear whether she’s been officially ejected.
[...]
While her formal status in the conservative group remains in limbo, the 8 a.m. Friday vote — which sources said ended with a consensus against her — points to, at least, continued strong anti-Greene sentiment.
[...]
The right-flank group took up Greene’s status amid an internal push, first reported by POLITICO, to consider purging members who are inactive or at odds with the Freedom Caucus. Greene’s close alliance with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and her accompanying criticism of colleagues in the group, has put her on the opposite side of a bloc that made its name opposing GOP leadership.
[...]
Interviews for this story reflected lingering interest in trying to reconcile differences with Greene before any formal action is taken, and a suggestion that the chair or board could separately intervene to slow down any removal.
[...]
Should Greene ultimately exit the Freedom Caucus, it is likely to trigger a greater feud within the House GOP as conservatives wrestle over how closely to work with their own party leaders. McCarthy’s team is still struggling to quell an ongoing rebellion propelled by Freedom Caucus members.
Politico
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 07/06/2023:
It's official: she's out.
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Ridiculous
Change the Senate rules, FFS.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 06/28/2023:
What the fuck, Chuck?
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