Deep State

Whitehouse revealed 80 cases at the Supreme Court involving an identifiable Republican donor. Astoundingly, damningly, all were decided in the right-wing’s favor in 5-4 decisions. Many whittle down the concept of civil juries. Because why would fat cats suffer standing before a jury not of their board members?

Eighty five-four partisan decisions. People with track records of defying odds like that wouldn’t be allowed through the door of a casino. What the hell are they doing on the Supreme Court?

Oct. 14

American System Network, Opinion: Judge Barrett Discredits Herself with Fantastic Claim She Did Not Know about Trump’s Pledge to Destroy Obamacare/Affordable Care Act, Webster G. Tarpley, right, Oct. 14, 2020. She Also Failed to Mention Her Signature on Strident Anti-Roe Petition in Original Questionnaire She Submitted to the Senate;

Many of Her Answers Suggest She Will Function as Handmaid for Trump’s Expected Coup d’État; Moscow Mitch Might Attempt to Pass a Placebo Covid Relief Bill with Minimal Benefits to Relieve Political Pressure on His Beleaguered Members as Collapse of the GOP Senate Majority Looms.

Oct. 13

American System Network, Opinion: In Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Whitehouse and Dem Members Slam “Slap Dash” Hearings Called in Obedience to GOP Megadonors Despite Pandemic, Webster G. Tarpley, right, Oct. 13, 2020. Extremist Ideologue Amy Barrett: “Judicial Torpedo” to Destroy the Affordable Care Act; Her Protestations of Impartiality Reek of Hypocrisy; Dems Seek to Flip One Seat on Committee or Two Seats for Floor Vote to Stop Barrett Nomination.

Sen. Whitehouse, left, Exposes Sinister Machinery Which Has Produced Trump’s Judicial Nominees; The Federalist Society Has Been Decisive in Picking Judges, with Judicial Crisis Network Campaigning to Get Them Confirmed, with the Creation of Desired Case Opportunities and Orchestration of Phalanxes of Friend of the Court Briefs Telling Judges How to Vote in Key Cases; Goals of This Apparatus Include Allowing Unlimited Anonymous Dark Money in Campaigns; Marginalizing the Jury in Civil Cases; Weakening Regulation and Regulatory Agencies; and Relentlessly Eroding Voting Rights; Supremes Give Trump Permission to Halt Census at Once; Sotomayor Dissents, Citing Irreparable Harm Involved.

The Defeat of Trump and the Extinction of the Republican Party Loom Closer: Carville Argues That Democrats May Capture Georgia Legislature, Creating a Blue State on the Eve of Re-Apportionment; Cornyn in Trouble in Texas; Alaska Seen as Longshot Possibility for Dems; Veteran Operative Forecasts Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Ohio Results Will Be Known by 10:30 PM Eastern on Election Day, Eliminating Trump from Contention with No Chance to Game the Courts!

Oct. 12

Anders Tegnell, the architect of the Swedish Coronavirus strategy, relaxing at an outdoor bar in Stockholm, May 28, 2020. By that time, Sweden had recorded the highest Covid-19 deaths per capita in Europe. (Aftonbladet)

The Indicter, Opinion: Why Swedish herd immunity model should not be followed; Analysis of the Covid-19 case fatality rate in Sweden and neighbouring countries, Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Oct. 12, 2020. Dr. Marcello Ferrada de Noli is a professor emeritus of epidemiology, formerly at Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and at Harvard Medical School. His is Chair, Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR). He has studied Sweden’s response to the virus and advises countries elsewhere to reject the neoliberal model and survive instead.

The elderly have comprised the vast majority of Covid-19 fatalities in Sweden, either dying in care homes or their own residence, often alone.

By mid-May 2020, only 13 percent of the care home victims had received treatment at Swedish hospitals. In August 2020, only five percent of the Covid-19 patients admitted for treatment at Swedish hospitals came from care home facilities.

Sweden has by far the highest proportion of deaths among confirmed Corona cases in the Nordic countries. Let’s look into the possible reasons.

Herd Immunity

International comparisons of the Covid-19 situation may help to assess the efficacy of the different strategies used by developed countries’ health authorities.

Such strategies may have been assimilated by some countries formerly known as “Third World” because of continued economic dependency; the praxis of attributing superior technical know-how in matters of public health to countries seen as more economically developed still exists in some governing circles.

For this reason, populations in Latin America and Africa and other regions have been ruthlessly targeted with propaganda by developed countries promoting their epidemiological methods.

In Europe, Italy was the first country to apply the “lockdown” approach. At the start of the “second wave” it had one of the lowest incidences of new Covid-19 cases.

The model presented as alternative is “herd immunity,” most associated with Sweden’s neoliberal interpretation of it.

Economy First

The idea here is to prioritize the economy: no closing factories, schools, or restaurants. Sweden’s Public Health Agency’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said, “if we close the schools we would lose 25 percent of the labour force” (parents would have to stay at home).

He has also stated, “herd immunity is the one thing which eventually will stop the spread of this virus.” In the words of Johan Giesecke, the agency’s senior adviser, herd immunity strategy would consist of “letting the virus pass through the population.”

In response to the international criticism that ensued, the Swedish government tried to distance itself from the term but in practice the strategy has not changed.

Sweden’s ambassador to the U.S. declared that “Stockholm could reach herd immunity by May.” However, five months’ later this has not been achieved, and Sweden’s economy has suffered just as much, if not more, than its neighbors who used lockdown measures.

The epidemiological indicators I present below expose the flawed, not to say macabre, effects of the Swedish exporting model.

The message to other nations is: Don’t buy it. Survive instead.

What Do We Need?

Don’t follow the herd immunity model. To decimate SARS-cov-2 what we do need is a vaccine. What countries in disarray need is to start with available vaccination programs.

By adopting a Swedish public-health model, you may be serving a political establishment whose remits are greed, corporate economic power and adherence to its own interpretation of what democracy should mean.

For what is democracy in the context of this debate? Who shall ultimately decide the domestic strategy of a problem threatening the life of every single citizen of a country?

Democratic decisions are built on the participation of all, and in the interests of all, ensuring all voices are heard. In my experience, this is not the case in Sweden.

The findings of this work were refused publication by Swedish mainstream newspapers. They prefer, instead, to control discourse, permitting only mild criticism, which serves the authorities in the current Covid-19 debate.

This new Ikea-wrapped neoliberal concept of democracy, should not be unpacked by countries in Latin-America, Africa and other latitudes. There, a dignified formula for democracy should preclude the Swedish praxis of how – without the participation of the demos (Greek for “people”), those in power exercise the kratos (“rule”) to politically benefit themselves.

American System Network, Opinion: Barrett’s Fanatical Hostility to Affordable Care Act/Obamacare Is Threat to Lives and Health of 20 Million Who Are Insured through Exchanges, Webster G. Tarpley, Oct. 12, 2020. 17 Million Insured under Medicaid Expansion, and 129 Million Who Need Protection for Pre-Existing Conditions, GOP Senators Attempt Diversions by Railing at Non-Existent Anti-Catholic Campaign.

Biden Leads Trump by 12 Points in ABC-WaPo Poll; Trump Behind by 8 in Michigan; Biden Ahead by 10 in Wisconsin; Trump’s Itinerary Shows His Weak Points of Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Iowa; Biden on the Offensive, Campaigns among Workers in Ohio; Former Trump Voter: “He Lies Like a Rug”

Barrett’s Doctrines of Originalism and Textualism Are Varieties of Bankrupt Legal Positivism and the Rejection of Natural Law as Summarized in Preamble; Her Preference for Formalism and Contempt for Outcomes, Results and Justice Are an Open Door for Dismantling Health Care and Roe, after Rubber-Stamping Trump’s November Coup!

Oct. 11

Dar Leaf, far right, sheriff of Barry County in Michigan, praises right-wing militia member William Null, at left, and his armed cohorts at a rally in May. Null was arrested last week in what federal and state authorities described as a plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Gov. Gretchen Witmar (D) for their claims she had committed "treason" by ordering safeguards against the pandemic virus. Leaf says he did not know about any plan for kidnap and murder.

Washington Post, Arrests in alleged plot against Mich. governor bring new attention to state’s history of extremist groups, Abigail Hauslohner, Matt Zapotosky, Kayla Ruble and Devlin Barrett, Oct. 11, 2020 (print ed.). Michigan has a unique history as a hotbed for self-proclaimed militia groups that blend a variety of ideologies and grievances but share an overarching antipathy toward the government, a sentiment that is sometimes shared even by local law enforcement.

Speaking to a crowd gathered in Grand Rapids, Mich., in May to protest coronavirus restrictions, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf pointed to William Null, a beefy man in tactical gear carrying a big gun, and declared, “This is our last home defense right here, ladies and gentlemen.”

Leaf’s declaration, which drew chants of “USA! USA!” from the crowd of hundreds that day, highlights Michigan’s unique history as a hotbed for self-proclaimed militia groups that blend a variety of ideologies and grievances but share an overarching antipathy toward the government, a sentiment that is sometimes shared even by local law enforcement.

This past week, Null and a dozen other men were arrested on a variety of charges ranging from supporting terrorist acts to plotting to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) — bringing new attention to such groups of well-armed men.

According to court papers, Null was part of a group that called itself the Wolverine Watchmen, and they engaged in regular firearms training and discussed a variety of potential attacks on law enforcement, the state capital complex, and the governor.

Accused leader of governor kidnap plot was struggling financially, living in basement storage space

Leaf,shown in an official photo — who knew Null to be the founder of a different group called the Michigan Liberty Militia — said he was generally supportive of self-styled militias, which he said often grow in numbers when people feel their rights are threatened. He sought to distinguish what such groups do from the allegations against Null and the others.

“There’s your militia duties, and if they did what they’re accused of doing, those are not militia duties,” said the sheriff, adding he was shocked by the charges. “I did not see this coming. Had I caught wind they were even talking about this, I would have stopped it immediately.”

Judge Amy Coney Barrett (shown at right in a 2018 photo by Rachel Malehorn via Creative Commons and Wikimedia)

Washington Post, How Amy Coney Barrett played a role in Bush v. Gore — and helped the GOP defend mail ballots, Beth Reinhard and Tom Hamburger, Oct. 11, 2020 (print ed.). Amy Coney Barrett was just three years out of law school, a 28-year-old associate at a boutique Washington law firm, when she was dispatched to Florida to help George W. Bush’s legal team rescue thousands of Republican absentee ballots.

The litigation was a sidebar to the central drama of the 2000 presidential contest, but a loss in the case could have cost Bush the presidency.

At issue were thousands of absentee ballot request forms in Martin County — just north of Palm Beach County, home of the notorious “butterfly ballot” — that had missing voter registration information.

After county officials allowed the GOP to take the forms back and fill in the missing information, a Democratic voter sued, saying ballots cast by those voters should be tossed out. The county canvassing board, the Florida Republican Party and the Bush campaign argued that the votes should still count.

Barrett’s work on the case serves as a reminder of how aggressively the Republican Party has sought to harness mail voting for years, in contrast to President Trump’s relentless attacks on the practice.

This year, the Trump campaign and Republicans in Iowa have pushed to invalidate tens of thousands of absentee ballot applications with missing information that had been filled in by county officials.

“It’s the very antithesis of what we were arguing to the courts back then,” said Daryl Bristow, who represented the Bush campaign in the Martin County absentee ballot case and a related suit in nearby Seminole County. “We were trying to keep voters from being disenfranchised.”

As both parties brace for the possibility of another contested election that Trump has suggested could go to the high court, the previously unreported role of his Supreme Court nominee in the absentee ballot fight is more than a historical footnote. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh also played a role in Bush v. Gore — meaning that if Barrett is confirmed, three of the nine justices will have participated in litigation related to the only presidential contest to be decided by the high court.

“Here we are, two decades after Bush v. Gore, and it’s as if it was yesterday,” said Daniel Smith, a University of Florida political science professor. “It divided the nation 20 years ago, and it’s amazing how it continues to be a specter in national politics.”

Washington Post, Analysis: The Senate Judiciary Committee dynamics that will shape Amy Coney Barrett’s hearings, Amber Phillips, Oct. 11, 2020 (print ed.).  Before the Senate votes on whether to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, she has to undergo public vetting before 22 senators. They make up the Senate Judiciary Committee, which must approve her nomination so it can go to the Senate floor.

Barrett, right, will testify before them committee starting Monday. Her confirmation hearings are going ahead despite concerns about the coronavirus outbreak that has infected many Trump administration officials and allies, including a couple committee members. Republicans are also speeding ahead despite public opinion polls that show Americans would rather let the winner of the November election pick the next Supreme Court justice. Barrett could be confirmed by Election Day.

Barrett is likely to face a friendly audience of Judiciary Committee Republicans and extremely critical Democrats. Here are six things to know about the committee. 1. There are politically vulnerable Republicans on the committee.

OpEdNews, Opinion: A horror story in 2 parts (Part II): A Travesty of Justice as UK Caters to US Desire to Crush Assange, Ron Ridenour, Oct. 11, 2020. The second indictment of alleged violations of the Espionage Act belatedly filed by the US against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, shown above, actually should not include him since there is no contention that he spied for any warring enemy, nor is he a U.S. citizen or resident, which the 1917 law targeted.

The original indictment focused on allegations that Assange had criminally aided Chelsea Manning in "hacking" into and downloading secret documents that show U.S. war crimes. That case went sour when the government prosecutors could not find any evidence. Furthermore, Manning (at that time while known as Bradley Manning) was a private in the US Army working in Iraq as an intelligence analyst and was authorized to download those documents so she had no need of assistance from Assange.

Hence the second indictment admitted Assange is a publisher, but claimed he had put government informant lives in danger - a different crime. Ample defense evidence was presented showing how Assange had carefully redacted the names of informants. Some names were mentioned by The Guardian and other mass media, but that was because of a choice by those editors who chose not redact their names.

Part of the prosecution's case was now built on Assange's ordering 18-year-old Sigurdur Thordarson to hack into Iceland politicians' phone conversations. Even if earlier charges fell apart, the new allegation could still form grounds for extradition. The new charges included using FBI informant Thordarson, but he had been convicted in Iceland for fraud, embezzlement, and impersonating Assange. He served time in an Icelandic prison, and was diagnosed as a sociopath. Significantly, Iceland has not sought to prosecute Assange or Wikileaks for any crime.

In 2010-11, Thordarson worked with Wikileaks first as a volunteer and for some months on staff. In August, 2011, he contacted the U.S. embassy in Reykjavik to give them information about Assange and Wikileaks. Eight FBI agents and a prosecutor flew to Iceland in a private jet to interview him. The Icelandic government had the courage to tell them to leave, fearing that the FBI and a mole sought to frame Assange. The FBI took their pigeon to ever-compliant Denmark to interview him. They did this several times.

In 2013-5, Thordarson was also tried for various sexual offenses, promising boys from 15-20 years of age cars and money in exchange for sex. This is the man whom the U.S. government had as its key witness in the new indictment. The UK hearing judge appeared to have no problem with that.

Another problem with the government's admitting that Assange is a publisher is that under the US Constitution's First Amendment journalist-publishers have special protection against prosecution for engaging in free-speech and press activities. So, in another change of tactic, the US government now interprets the Espionage Act to mean that anyone, journalists and publishers alike, can be charged with crimes of violating the Espionage Act. That includes any and all media personnel in the entire world - perhaps ordinary citizens too, who simply access Wikileaks materials. It's a fact that journalists and editors and publishers the world over who have been ignoring or misreporting on this case should be paying close heed to because of the dangerous precedent it is setting.

Edward Snowden wrote about reading former British ambassador Craig Murray's daily accounts of court proceedings: "Read this and tell me the show trial of Assange doesn't read like something from Kafka. The judge permits the charges to be changed so frequently the defense doesn't know what they are. The most basic needs are denied. No one can hear what the defendant says-a farce."

Oct. 9

OpEdNews, Opinion: A horror story in two parts -- Part I: Will England Send Assange-the-Messenger to America's Dungeons? Ron Ridenour, Oct. 9, 2020.  Most people might be excused for not knowing it, because the story is mainly ignored, or is shamelessly misreported in the corporate media when it does get any attention. A courageous Australian journalist, abandoned by his own country, is being railroaded by a British court towards extradition to the US where he could face life in prison in solitary confinement for the "crime of espionage"-exposing US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What Julian Assange and his organization Wikileaks have revealed for the whole world to see is the systematic devastation of peoples, of lands, and perennial military pollution of planet earth. The main perpetrator is the most powerful and self-declared "greatest democratic nation" in the world, the United States of America-accompanied by its European and Commonwealth vassal states, plus proxy allies in the Middle East and Zionist Israel.

The villainous perpetrators are the prosecutors. The truth-telling hero is their prisoner.

That is what the British extradition hearing holding Julian Assange's fate in its hands is all about. The testimony aspect of the court case has ended after four grueling weeks. While awaiting closing arguments and the judge's decision, the truth-teller is forced to deteriorate in a prison cell where he has been languishing for 18 months.

The defense and prosecution are now preparing for closing arguments, which, however, will not be held orally. The public will be denied court interaction. The extradition judge, Vanessa Baraitser, will take only written arguments on November 16. She will make her ruling on extradition January 4, 2021.

Magistrate Baraitser noted in this purportedly "non-political" court case that the election might have an impact on the hearing. She said, "I agree that one way or the other my decision will come after an election in the United States. For that reason, I find no reason not to give you the four weeks," to prepare closing arguments, she told the arguing parties.

Assange and his publication Wikileaks have not murdered anyone. Nevertheless, Assange is treated as a dangerous criminal, because he and his staff have published well over 10 million government/military secret documents showing crimes and corruption of scores of governments, above all how the United States, with its always faithful "United" Kingdom, have committed massive war crimes during their "war on terror". This three-decade-long war has resulted in the deaths of three to five million humans, and forced between 37 and 58 million to flee their bombed out countries seeking refuge in neighboring countries and in Europe.

Wikileaks' disclosures are clearly in the "public interest". Yet the public's interest is not allowed as evidence in United States grand jury courts nor in the British courts created as part of the Magna Carta-heralded by "Lord" "Baron" "King's Counsel" Alfred Thompson Denning as "the greatest constitutional document of all times - the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot". The Magna Carta is a forbearer to the U.S. Constitution.

Julian Assange has been held in isolation 23 hours every day at Belmarsh high-security prison since he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy, in London, on April 11, 2019. This was just the beginning of a "charade of justice", as former British ambassador Craig Murray has called court proceedings against Julian. (1)

President Donald Trump successfully pressured, or to put it more accurately bribed, Ecuador's new president, Lenin Moreno, to expel Assange from its embassy in London. Moreno also expunged Assange's Ecuadoran citizenship. In return, the U.S. saw to it that Ecuador got a much-needed loan from the International Monetary Fund, and improved trade deals. Ecuador would realign its foreign policy to meet U.S. terms, such as recognizing Juan Guadió as the self-declared president of Venezuela, and have Ecuador's troops trained by the U.S.

Moreno also met with Trump in Washington D.C. Trump and about what he termed this "great meeting," said, "We're working on military options including the purchase of a lot of our military equipment."

Upon expulsion (actually more of a kidnapping by British Metropolitan police) from Ecuador's embassy, Assange was immediately convicted of jumping bail. He had been given 15 minutes with his lawyer before the hearing. A judge called him a narcissist. He was sentenced to 50 weeks in the country's hardest prison.

JFK Assassination Analysis

Vincent Salandria, an attorney and pioneering researcher into flaws in the Warren Commission's 1964 report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is shown above in a file photo. He died this summer in Philadelphia. His works include, via People and the Pursuit of Truth (via Ratical), The Design of the Warren Report to Fall to Pieces, April, 1977.

Kennedys and King, Sylvia Meagher and Clay Shaw vs. Jim Garrison, James DiEugenio, below left, Oct. 9, 2020. Having recently recounted Vincent Salandria's faithful support of Jim Garrison, Jim DiEugenio now examines Sylvia Meagher's own relationship to Jim Garrison and her unflinching defense of Clay Shaw to the point of stubbornly refusing to consider the last year and a half of Garrison’s investigation and files.

In writing my elegy for Vincent Salandria, I reviewed his career in the JFK field, cataloguing his achievements and his characteristics as a critic — the first critic — of the Warren Report.

In reviewing that impressive record, I was again struck by his personal relationship and his lifelong fairness to New Orleans DA Jim Garrison. What made this aspect more salient was something I may have underplayed in my article: Salandria spent decades as a practicing attorney in Philadelphia. In my article, I noted that Vince was a high school teacher in 1964 when he encountered Arlen Specter talking about the Warren Report at a Philadelphia bar association event. That was true, but Salandria taught part time. He practiced law in the afternoons, and after he retired as a teacher, he worked for the Philadelphia school system as an attorney.

Salandria had attended law school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. That university is a member of the Ivy League and their law school is habitually rated in the top ten of the US News and World Report rankings in the field. (For 2021, they are rated number 7).

Therefore, Salandria was one of the few early critics who was also a lawyer. In fact, in the early critical period of 1964–66, aside from Mark Lane, he may have been the only one. This placed him in a position to not only understand more precisely what the Warren Commission had done with the evidence, but also to understand what Jim Garrison, right, was up against when he began his criminal investigation in New Orleans. As I noted in my requiem, Salandria told me that at his first personal meeting with Garrison he told him he probably would not succeed in his attempt to flush out the conspiracy by beginning at the lower level and leveraging them against the upper level. But he would be able to learn something about the plot by the acts of those who would try and interfere with his inquiry.

With what the Assassination Records and Review Board declassified about New Orleans in this regard, Salandria — as he usually was — proved to be prescient in that prediction. For as we now know, very soon after Garrison’s investigation was made public, the CIA was recruiting local attorneys in New Orleans to defend certain suspects and defendants (e.g. lawyers like James Quaid, Edward Baldwin, and Steve Plotkin).

In September, at the request of Director Richard Helms, the Agency assembled its first meeting of the Garrison Group. At that meeting, Ray Rocca, James Angleton’s first assistant, declared that if things were to proceed as they were, Clay Shaw, would be convicted. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 270) The meeting was convened by Helms in order to consider the implications of Garrison’s actions before during and after the trial of  Shaw, left. From the declassified record, the result was that certain counter measures were now taken to obstruct, cripple, and negate Garrison’s inquiry (e.g. blocking service of subpoenas, flipping witnesses, recruiting infiltrators). (Ibid, pp. 271–85)

I should add here another key action taken by the Agency around this time. In April of 1967, they issued worldwide a memorandum which was titled “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report”. This memo was essentially a call to action to all station chiefs to use their assets in order to attack the critics of the Commission. It even outlined techniques to use in the attacks, for instance: accuse them of being interested in monetary gain, of having been biased from the start, or of having leftist political orientation. As author Lance deHaven Smith has noted, it was around this time that the New York Times began to use the phrase “conspiracy theorist” in a much more profuse and pernicious manner than before.

Later — in July of 1968 — the CIA distributed an attack article on Jim Garrison which had been written by Edward Epstein and published in The New Yorker. The memo advised all station chiefs to use the article in order to brief any political leaders; or assign it to assets in order to counter any attacks. This important memo, and the article’s author, should be kept in mind as we progress.

Since Salandria predicted that things like the above would occur, and since he visited Garrison in New Orleans and served as an advisor for the Shaw trial, he appreciated what Garrison was doing in the face of the forces arrayed against him. Some others who did so were Mark Lane, Penn Jones, Maggie Field, Ray Marcus, and, at the time, Harold Weisberg. (Lane and Weisberg were actually working with the DA.)

But there was a prominent Commission critic who, quite early, did not appreciate the warnings Salandria had issued about what Garrison was doing or the countermeasures taken against him. That critic was Sylvia Meagher, below left, of New York. At a rather early date, she staked out a position that separated her from the above writers and researchers. She also fostered a counter-movement in the critical community against Garrison. That movement would eventually include Josiah Thompson, Peter Scott, Paul Hoch, and, later, Anthony Summers.

I am going to say some adverse things about Meagher in this regard, but I want to make it clear at the outset that none of this should detract from her achievements in the field. Her subject indexes to both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee volumes were and are valuable assets to the research community. Her critique of the Warren Commission, Accessories After the Fact, is still one of the signal achievements in the literature on the case.

It is one thing to expose a patently phony murder investigation, especially one that furnished the critic with 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits in order to dismantle itself — since so much of the 26 volumes contradicted, or at least compromised, the conclusions in the report. It’s quite another to try and find out what actually happened in a complex political assassination and what the smoke and mirrors were all about.

As Vincent Salandria once said, the Warren Report was just too easy to tear apart  -- to the point that he came to think that it was designed to collapse [as argued in his 1977 article, The Design of the Warren Report to Fall to Pieces, cited above].

September

Sept. 27

Washington Post, Analysis: Facing possible defeat, Trump threatens the integrity of the election, Dan Balz, Sept. 27, 2020 (print ed.). His relentless campaign against mail-in ballots seeds the ground for chaos or worse when votes are still being counted in the days after Nov. 3. Each week has brought evidence of the damage President Trump has done during his nearly four years in office. According to his own words, he is not finished. This past week brought a renewed warning of a harm he could yet inflict on the integrity of elections.

The president did more than simply refuse to pledge that he would facilitate a peaceful transfer of power if he loses to former vice president Joe Biden, though that in itself was a step no previous president has taken. In doing so, he escalated his ongoing attack on mail-in ballots, seeding the ground to contest the election as rigged or fraudulent if he is not the winner and to propel the country into chaos.

Perhaps what Trump said merely reflected the mind-set of a president who knows he is running behind in his bid for a second term, one more rhetorical flailing to somehow throw the opposition off balance and to distract from the real reasons for Biden’s lead in the polls. But this close to the election, anything Trump does to question the validity of the count should be regarded as serious and treated as such.

Republicans who normally stand by idle when the president says or does something outrageous pushed back against his words — though, notably, nearly all were careful neither to rebuke nor condemn the president personally. They simply pointed to a long history of peaceful transfers from one presidency to the next and stood up for the Constitution, which is the minimum expected of elected officials who have sworn an oath to defend that document.

Washington Post, Biden maintains lead over Trump as support from women fuels ex-vice president’s advantage, Post-ABC poll finds, Dan Balz and Emily Guskin, Sept. 27, 2020. After two political conventions, the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus, economic dislocation, more racial upheaval and a coming battle over a Supreme Court vacancy, the race for the White House remains stable, with former vice president Joe Biden holding a steady advantage over President Trump, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

New York Times, President Trump stoked more doubt on mail-in ballots and raised the prospect of Congress deciding a disputed election, Michael D. Shear and Michael Crowley, Sept. 27, 2020 (print ed.). President Trump sought again on Saturday night to cast doubt on the integrity of the presidential election, telling supporters that the only way Democrats can win in Pennsylvania is to “cheat on the ballots” and raising the prospect that a disputed election could be decided by Congress.

Pressing his baseless case that the election in November will be a “disaster,” Mr. Trump said at a rally just outside a hangar at the Harrisburg airport that he would have “an advantage” if Congress were to decide.

The comments, delivered in drizzling rain, were part of the president’s continuing effort to discredit the United States’ election process as he trails former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his Democratic rival.

“I don’t want to end up in the Supreme Court, and I don’t want to go back to Congress, even though we have an advantage if we go back to Congress. Does everyone understand that?” Mr. Trump told supporters. “I think it’s 26 to 22 or something.”

New York Times, U.S. Voters Believe Winner of Election Should Fill Court Vacancy, Poll Shows, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, Sept. 27, 2020. A clear majority of voters believes the next president should fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll; Joe Biden retained a lead over President Trump, 49 to 41 percent.

More striking, the voters Mr. Trump and endangered Senate Republicans must reclaim to close the gap in the polls are even more opposed to a hasty pick: 62 percent of women, 63 percent of independents and 60 percent of college-educated white voters said they wanted the winner of the campaign to fill the seat.

Washington Post, Amy Coney Barrett, a disciple of Justice Scalia, is poised to push the Supreme Court further right, Michael Kranish, Robert Barnes, Shawn Boburg and Ann E. Marimow, Sept. 27, 2020 (print ed.). If Barrett is confirmed, her vote on cases involving health care, abortion, immigration, gun control and many other issues could prove decisive.

Washington Post, Opinion: This is not a drill. The Reichstag is burning, Dana Milbank, right, Sept. 27, 2020 (print ed.). For five years, my colleagues and I have taken pains to avoid Nazi comparisons. It is usually hyperbolic, and counterproductive, to label the right “fascists” in the way those on the right reflexively label the left “socialists.” But this is no longer a matter of name-calling.

With his repeated refusals this week to accept the peaceful transfer of power — the bedrock principle that has sustained American democracy for 228 years — President Trump has put the United States, in some ways, where Germany was in 1933, when Adolf Hitler used the suspicious burning of the German parliament to turn a democracy into a totalitarian state.

Overwrought, you say? Then ask Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a top authority on Nazism and Stalinism. “The Reichstag has been on a slow burn since June,” he told me. “The language Trump uses to talk about Black Lives Matter and the protests is very similar to the language Hitler used — that there’s some vague left-wing conspiracy based in the cities that is destroying the country.”

New York Times, Opinion: Amy Coney Barrett and the New, Old Anti-Catholicism, Elizabeth Bruenig, Sept. 27, 2020 (print ed.). Critics of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee argue that pious Catholics are a problem for liberalism. They have a point.

In 2017, when Judge Barrett was appointed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, she faced a tense confirmation hearing in which Senator Dianne Feinstein infamously remarked that “the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.” A mother of seven and a devoted Roman Catholic, Judge Barrett has continued to field concerns about whether she will be able or willing to resist the expectations of her church when it comes to cases involving relevant moral issues, and whether she will cater to the wishes of People of Praise, a mostly Catholic ecumenical organization with a distinctly traditional bent, of which she is a member.

The scrutiny focused on Judge Barrett’s beliefs has provoked allegations of old-fashioned anti-Catholicism on behalf of her Democratic critics.

But the animosity faced by Catholics in today’s America has little in common with its direct predecessor. Real sex-abuse scandals have replaced the imaginary ones circulated in the lurid tracts of yesteryear. White Catholics are no longer subject to the religious bigotry that once animated vicious rumors and, occasionally, violent attacks on Catholics and their places of learning and worship. Rather than regenerating a long-vanquished prejudice, Judge Barrett’s nomination has merely renewed attention to a fundamental conflict, centuries underway, between Catholicism and the American ethos.

Washington Post, Trump’s pick for high court could be seated before election day, Anne Gearan, Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey, Sept. 27, 2020 (print ed.). Judge Amy Coney Barrett is expected to be confirmed swiftly by the Republican-majority Senate to fill the vacancy left by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

President Trump announced Saturday that he will nominate federal appeals court Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, a choice that would lock a conservative majority on the high court and that could help turn out Republican voters in the election less than six weeks away.

Barrett, 48, would fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, preserving the court’s gender balance of three women and six men while potentially tipping its ideological balance for decades.

Trump introduced Barrett in a Rose Garden ceremony attended by a who’s who of Republicans and conservative activists, a reminder that shifting the Supreme Court to the ideological right has been a decades-long focus for Republicans.

Neither Trump nor Barrett wore face masks as recommended by public health officials to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, and few in the crowd did either. Guests were seated close together, rather than the recommended six feet apart, and hugged and kissed one another.

Washington Post, Prayer march draws thousands to the Mall seeking healing for the nation, Michelle Boorstein and and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Sept. 27, 2020 (print ed.). Thousands of Christians gathered on the Mall in Washington on Saturday, waving U.S. flags, kneeling in small prayer circles alongside monuments, singing and listening to speakers who called on the nation to come together and heal.

Two groups — one organized by New Jersey-based pastor and popular author Jonathan Cahn, the other led by Evangelist Franklin Graham — emphasized slightly different objectives but came with a shared focus central to many millions of Christian conservatives: repairing a country they say is in the midst of a spiritual crisis.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Fifty-seven percent, BD Holly, Sept. 27, 2020. Fifty-seven percent. In US politics, that’s called a landslide. Except I’m not talking about an election — I’m talking about how many people think the election winner should take the late Justice Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court. The ABC News/Washington Post Poll is clear. This country doesn’t want Trump to choose the next justice unless absolutely necessary.

And it shouldn’t be surprising. Trump’s nomination, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, would be the fifth current Supreme Court justice nominated by a president who didn’t even win the popular vote. That’s frankly disgusting. The framers of the Constitution agreed on the electoral college to ensure smaller states would have a chance at having their voices heard, but this has become so warped that we’re quite literally having to live under the tyranny of the minority.

What’s worse is that Judge Barrett is deeply, fastidiously conservative. Her agenda isn’t a secret either. She’s written about how she believes Catholicism should affect a judge’s decision-making — something made all the more harrowing by the fact that she’s a member of a secretive Catholic fundamentalist group that’s been likened to a cult. On top of this, she has written about how she thinks stare decisis — which is a judicial principle that legal precedent should guide a court’s decision and is critical to keeping justice fair and consistent — is a “soft rule,” with constitutional cases being the “easiest to overrule.”

Taken together, Judge Barrett’s extremist beliefs and her lack of respect for the most basic principles of jurisprudence would position the Supreme Court’s 6-3 majority not just “to the right,” but “to the Bronze Age.” Again, fifty-seven percent of Americans want the winner of the presidential election to choose the next Supreme Court justice. That too was Justice Ginsburg’s dying wish. If the Senate confirms Judge Barrett, it would be a punch in the face of the American people and a torch to the monument of Justice Ginsburg’s incredible achievements.

Sept. 26

New York Times, Trump Selects Amy Coney Barrett to Fill Ginsburg’s Seat on the Supreme Court, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, Updated Sept. 26, 2020. President Trump has selected Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the favorite candidate of conservatives, to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and will try to force Senate confirmation before Election Day in a move that would significantly alter the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for years.

Mr. Trump plans to announce on Saturday that she is his choice, according to six people close to the process who asked not to be identified disclosing the decision in advance. As they often do, aides cautioned that Mr. Trump sometimes upends his own plans.

But he is not known to have interviewed any other candidates and came away from two days of meetings with Judge Barrett this week impressed with a jurist he was told would be a female Antonin Scalia, referring to the justice she once clerked for. On Friday night, Judge Barrett was photographed getting out of her car outside her home in South Bend, Ind.

The president’s political advisers hope the selection will energize his conservative political base in the thick of an election campaign in which he has for months been trailing former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., his Democratic challenger. But it could also rouse liberal voters afraid that her confirmation could spell the end of Roe v. Wade, the decision legalizing abortion, as well as other rulings popular with the political left and center.

The nomination will kick off an extraordinary scramble by Senate Republicans to confirm her for the court in the 38 days before the election on Nov. 3, a scenario unlike any in American history. While other justices have been approved in presidential election years, none has been voted on after July. Four years ago, Senate Republicans refused to even consider President Barack Obama’s nomination to replace Justice Scalia with Judge Merrick B. Garland, announced 237 days before Election Day, on the grounds that it should be left to whoever was chosen as the next president.

Washington Post, Politics Live Update: Justice Ginsburg becomes first woman and first Jewish person to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, John Wagner, Sept. 25, 2020. Democratic nominee Joe Biden is paying his respects Friday to the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as she becomes the first woman to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, while President Trump puts in a full day on the campaign trail with stops in Florida, Georgia and Virginia and a fundraiser at his hotel in Washington.

Meanwhile, controversy continues over Trump’s refusal to commit to the peaceful transition of power and his repeated attempts to undermine the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, even as he urges his own supporters to take advantage of absentee voting ahead of Election Day.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows lashed out at FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, a Trump appointee, for his assessment during congressional testimony that the United States has not experienced large-scale voter fraud by mail or other means.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump’s executive order goes completely off the rails, Ron Leshnower, Sept. 26, 2020. On Thursday in North Carolina, Donald Trump announced something surreal: he was signing an executive order to offer Americans something they already have and that he has been desperately trying to take away.

Trump’s order promises a “steadfast commitment to always protecting individuals with pre-existing conditions”—even while the Department of Justice is suing to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, the law that accomplishes this. While this announcement was both ridiculous and insulting, the other big headline from Trump’s speech has already blossomed into a full-blown scandal.

Promoting his latest snake oil known as the America First Healthcare Plan, Trump boasted that “33 million Medicare beneficiaries will soon receive a card in the mail containing $200 that they can use to help pay for prescription drugs.” The clueless fool was surely hoping that his pandering would win over seniors on Election Day. Instead, Trump’s brashness and ignorance about how government works threw a big question mark onto his plans.

Trump’s half-baked promise has an odd backstory. After months of difficult negotiations with the pharmaceutical industry to lower drug prices were nearing success, they broke down after Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows insisted the companies pay to send $100 gift cards for all seniors. Even though Meadows seemed to promise that Trump’s name would not appear on the cards, the companies refused to go along, citing the political optics plus the fact it’s just a lame idea, according to a report from the New York Times.

Rather than shelve the plan and heed the industry’s advice, Trump (of course) chose to proceed and double down, promising seniors a $200 card courtesy of Uncle Sam. Apparently, Trump’s plan was to leave the details about the card’s legality and affordability to his surprised underlings, who have since been finding more blockades and hurdles than Trump could have imagined. These expensive cards (carrying a total value of $6.6 billion) may wind up getting paid out of Medicare’s quickly diminishing trust fund, which could result in even higher premiums for seniors, according to an analysis by Slate.

If this latest Trump boondoggle somehow manages to move forward, White House officials now admit most seniors wouldn’t get their money until after Election Day, according to reporting from Inside Health Policy. So, Trump now risks that seniors might rethink their vote if their assistance doesn’t arrive “soon,” as he promised. Americans deserve honest and thoughtful leaders whom they can trust. The Biden-Harris administration stands ready to deliver for the American people, and they deserve our enthusiastic votes on November 3.

Judge Amy Coney Barrett (2018 photo via Rachel Malehorn via Creative Commons and Wikimedia)

The Guardian via Yahoo, Analysis: Amy Coney Barrett: spotlight falls on secretive Catholic group People of Praise, Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Sept. 26, 2020. Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court, to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has drawn attention to a secretive Catholic “covenant community” called People of Praise that counts Barrett as a member and faces claims of adhering to a “highly authoritarian” structure.

The 48-year-old appellate court judge has said she is a “faithful Catholic” but that her religious beliefs would not “bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge”.

At the same time, the Louisiana native and Notre Dame Law graduate, a favorite among Trump’s evangelical Christian base, has said legal careers ought not to be seen as means of gaining satisfaction, prestige or money, but rather “as a means to the end of serving God”.

Interviews with experts who have studied charismatic Christian groups such as People of Praise, and with former members of the group, plus a review of the group’s own literature, reveal an organization that appears to dominate some members’ everyday lives, in which so-called “heads” – or spiritual advisers – make big life decisions, and in which members are expected to financially support one another.

Married women – such as Barrett – count their husbands as their “heads” and all members are expected to donate 5% of their income to the organization.

Some conservative and progressive activists have said any discussion of Barrett’s faith is inappropriate in the context of a Senate confirmation to assess her judicial qualifications, and potentially reflects anti-Catholic bigotry.

Other Catholic writers have said it is fair to scrutinize People of Praise because the group falls far outside mainstream Catholicism.

Barrett has not publicly discussed her affiliation but her connection was reported in multiple media accounts at the time of her confirmation to an appellate court in 2017.

Her picture appears in a May 2006 edition of People of Praise’s magazine, which documents her participation in a Leaders’ Conference for Women. Her father and her husband, Jesse Barrett, are also known members.

The group emerged out of the Catholic charismatic movement of the late 1960s, which blended Catholicism and Protestant Pentecostalism – Catholics and Protestants are both members – and adopted practices like speaking in tongues. The group’s literature shows communal living is also encouraged, at least among unmarried members, as is the sharing of finances between households.

A July 2007 “our money our selves” edition of People of Praise’s Vine & Branch magazine included an article about a 17-member group of women described as “single for the Lord” and living together in South Bend, Indiana. The women shared a “sisterhood budget”, which involved them pooling their paychecks while a “head of the sisterhood” determined, with the sisters’ input, how the money was spent.

TalkingPoints Memo, Biden Compares Trump To Nazi Propaganda Leader, Zoë Richards, Sept. 26, 2020. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called out President Donald Trump’s penchant for spreading misinformation on Saturday, comparing Trump’s tendency to mislead to Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s minister of propaganda.

Biden made the Goebbels comparison when asked by MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle about Trump’s assertion that Biden is pushing a socialist agenda during an interview that aired Saturday.

“I’m not sure anybody that hadn’t already made up their mind they’re for Trump will believe it,” Biden said. “But who knows. He’s sort of like Goebbels. You say the lie long enough — keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it — it becomes common knowledge.”

Biden also appeared to dismiss Trump’s suggestion earlier this week that he may refuse to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in the case of electoral defeat in November, calling it “a typical Trump distraction.”

“He’ll leave,” Biden said.

Biden had previously responded to Trump’s comments late Wednesday, by facetiously asking a reporter, “What country are we in?”– implying that the President’s remarks did not represent those of a leader committed to ruling by the democratic tradition established in the United States.

World Crisis Radio, Opinion: Trump Nominates Reactionary Bigot Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme Court, Webster G. Tarpley, right, Sept. 26, 2020. She Is Bitter Foe of Affordable Care Act, Adumbrating Genocide Against American People.

GOP hopes to start railroading of nominee on October 12, in time to start stripping 20 million of health care in November; welcome to government by cult; Trump wants a sectarian ideologue to validate his looming coup
Petition against Trump by 489 national security leaders for Biden includes generals and admirals from many service branches, as well as top civilian officials from wide array of factions, improving chances of blocking Trump coup plots; only Lincoln and FD have faced greater crises than 46; active duty US flag officers must reject illegal orders, and stand and fight for the constitution, not engage in craven gestures of resignation.

Trump’s “America First” executive orders for Obamacare replacement are cheap pre-election trick; he orders Azar to succeed where he himself and Hill GOP have failed; his endorsement of protection for pre-existing conditions is a pious wish with zero legal force; wording would let insurance companies sell policies at astronomical prices and call that protection; no concrete action to lower prescription drug prices; nothing on the obligation to issue policies or preserving ten essential medical benefits, contraception, yearly and lifetime spending limits, children on parents’ policies, and more; don’t be duped so late in the day.

Beware clerical fascism, where religious hierarchy plays key role in fascist regime, as in Austria before 1938 and later in Slovakia. Breaking: Russian military reportedly now in Belarus, threatening supply line to Baltic States; US Air Force Bolsters Defense of Central Europe with Astral Knight Drill from Germany to NATO front line states.

New York Times, At Pentagon, Fears Grow That Trump Will Pull Military Into Election Unrest, Jennifer Steinhauer and Helene Cooper, Sept. 26, 2020 (print ed.). Defense Department officials said top generals could resign if President Trump ordered the active-duty military to quell election protests.

President Trump gave officials no solace on Wednesday and Thursday when he again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power no matter who wins the election, and on Thursday, he doubled down by saying he was not sure the election could be “honest.” His hedging, along with his expressed desire in June to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to send active-duty troops onto American streets to quell protests over the killing of George Floyd, has incited deep anxiety among senior military and Defense Department leaders, who insist they will do all they can to keep the armed forces out of the elections.

“I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military,” General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in written answers to questions from House lawmakers released last month. “In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law, U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military. I foresee no role for the U.S. armed forces in this process.”

But that has not stopped an intensifying debate in the military about its role should a disputed election lead to civil unrest.

Sept. 25

Washington Post, Trump’s attacks on election prompt fears of a constitutional crisis, Philip Rucker, Amy Gardner and Annie Linskey, Sept. 25, 2020 (print ed.). The president’s continuing threats have prompted election and law enforcement authorities nationwide to prepare for an unprecedented clash.

President Trump reiterated Thursday that he may not honor the results should he lose reelection, reaffirming his extraordinary refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power and prompting election and law enforcement authorities nationwide to prepare for an unprecedented constitutional crisis.

Trump escalated his months-long campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the Nov. 3 election with comments Wednesday that, taken together and at face value, pose his most substantial threat yet to the nation’s history of free and fair elections.

In recent days, the president cast doubt on the integrity of vote totals. He said he might not accept the results if they show him losing to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. He said it was imperative to quickly fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg because the nation’s high court could determine the winner of the election.

Washington Post, GOP senators reject Trump’s assertion about transfer of power — with no direct criticism of the president, Paul Kane and Rachael Bade, Sept. 25, 2020 (print ed.). Republicans, with almost no direct criticism of Trump’s statements, uniformly asserted that if Joe Biden wins the election, they will support a peaceful transition to the Democrat’s inauguration in January.

New York Times, At Pentagon, Fears Grow That Trump Will Pull Military Into Election Unrest, Jennifer Steinhauer and Helene Cooper, Sept. 25, 2020.  Defense Department officials said top generals could resign if President Trump ordered the active-duty military to quell election protests.

President Trump gave officials no solace on Wednesday and Thursday when he again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power no matter who wins the election, and on Thursday, he doubled down by saying he was not sure the election could be “honest.” His hedging, along with his expressed desire in June to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to send active-duty troops onto American streets to quell protests over the killing of George Floyd, has incited deep anxiety among senior military and Defense Department leaders, who insist they will do all they can to keep the armed forces out of the elections.

“I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military,” General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in written answers to questions from House lawmakers released last month. “In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law, U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military. I foresee no role for the U.S. armed forces in this process.”

But that has not stopped an intensifying debate in the military about its role should a disputed election lead to civil unrest.

Washington Post, Politics Live Update: Justice Ginsburg becomes first woman and first Jewish person to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, John Wagner, Sept. 25, 2020. Democratic nominee Joe Biden is paying his respects Friday to the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as she becomes the first woman to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, while President Trump puts in a full day on the campaign trail with stops in Florida, Georgia and Virginia and a fundraiser at his hotel in Washington.

Meanwhile, controversy continues over Trump’s refusal to commit to the peaceful transition of power and his repeated attempts to undermine the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, even as he urges his own supporters to take advantage of absentee voting ahead of Election Day.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows lashed out at FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, a Trump appointee, for his assessment during congressional testimony that the United States has not experienced large-scale voter fraud by mail or other means.

 New York Times, Less Than Six Weeks to Election Day, and Voting Rules Remain in Flux, Nick Corasaniti and Kenneth P. Vogel, Updated Sept. 25, 2020. The two parties are locked in fights over laws in many battleground states, creating uncertainty that is being fanned by President Trump.

With less than six weeks until Election Day, laws governing how Americans vote remain in flux in many battleground states, with the two parties locked in an intensive fight over the rules as President Trump continues to suggest he will challenge any outcome unfavorable to him.

The combination of the pandemic, doubts about the capacity of the Postal Service to handle a flood of mail ballots and an aggressive push by Democrats to expand access to voting rights and counter Republican efforts to limit them has fueled litigation and legislative battles across the country that have not been resolved even as early voting has gotten underway.

The result is uncertainty that Mr. Trump is already seizing on in his extraordinary campaign to cast doubt on the election system and the result. In the latest of a string of remarks on the issue, the president refused on Wednesday to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, igniting new concern about his commitment to the Constitution and drawing pushback on Thursday from prominent members of his party.

Washington Post, Investigation: Barbara Lagoa refused to recuse herself from Florida felons’ voting case, creating controversy, Aaron C. Davis and Ann E. Marimow, Sept. 25, 2020 (print ed.). President Trump’s potential Supreme Court pick, right, could face scrutiny for staying on — and becoming a key voice — in a federal court decision expected to limit voting by poor former inmates.

Sept. 24

Washington Post, Nearly 500 former senior military, civilian leaders sign letter backing Biden, Karen DeYoung, Sept. 24, 2020 (print ed.). Nearly 500 retired senior military officers, as well as former Cabinet secretaries, service chiefs and other officials, have signed an open letter in support of former vice president Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, saying that he has “the character, principles, wisdom and leadership necessary to address a world on fire.”

The letter, published Thursday morning by National Security Leaders for Biden, is the latest in a series of calls for President Trump’s defeat in the November election.

“We are former public servants who have devoted our careers, and in many cases risked our lives, for the United States,” it says. “We are generals, admirals, senior noncommissioned officers, ambassadors and senior civilian national security leaders. We are Republicans and Democrats, and Independents. We love our country.

“Unfortunately, we also fear for it.”

The letter has been signed by 489 people.

Not all of those Republicans who previously have broken ranks with Trump have called for Biden’s election, although the numbers are growing. Last month, more than 60 former national security officials who served in Republican administrations, including Trump’s, signed a statement calling him “unfit to serve as President.” Noting that some of them held different policy positions from Biden, they nonetheless called for his election, saying it was “imperative that we stop Trump’s assault on our nation’s values and institutions and reinstate the moral foundations of our democracy.”

CBS News, Bernie Sanders says Trump is ready "to undermine American democracy in order to stay in power," Grace Segers, Sept. 24, 2020.
Senator Bernie Sanders argued in an impassioned speech Thursday that President Trump's refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power is a threat to American democracy.

"What I am going to talk about is something that, in my wildest dreams, I never thought I would be discussing," Sanders (shown in a Gage Skidmore file photo) said. "And that is the need to make certain that the president of the United States, if he loses this election, will abide by the will of the voters and leave office peacefully."

"This is not just an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. This is an election between Donald Trump and democracy – and democracy must win," Sanders said in an address at George Washington University. He referred to Mr. Trump as a "pathological liar" with "strong authoritarian tendencies," and accused him of being "prepared to undermine American democracy in order to stay in power."

On Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump declined to commit to a peaceful transition of power if Biden wins the election in November. Sanders also quoted Mr. Trump's remarks at the Republican National Convention last month, in which he declared that "the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election."

"I think it is terribly important that we actually listen to, and take seriously, what Donald Trump is saying," Sanders said. "There is nothing in our Constitution or in our laws that give Donald Trump the privilege of deciding whether or not he will step aside if he loses. In the United States, the president does not determine who can or cannot vote and what ballots will be counted."

He went on to criticize Mr. Trump for continuing "to be obsessed with the belief that there is massive voter fraud in this country," even though instances of voter fraud are extremely rare. The president has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that mail-in voting leads to widespread voter fraud, even as he urges supporters to vote by mail in critical swing states like Florida.

"Trump's strategy to delegitimize this election and to stay in office if he loses is not complicated. Finding himself behind in many polls, he is attempting massive voter suppression," Sanders said. "He and his Republican colleagues are doing everything they can to make it harder and harder for people to vote. In addition, he is sowing the seeds of chaos, confusion and conspiracy theories by casting doubt on the integrity of this election and, if he loses, justifying why he should remain in office."

Sanders noted that this election will see an influx of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic, and brought up a scenario under which Mr. Trump could claim victory on election night before all the mail-in ballots are counted.

He also worries that states controlled by Republican legislatures will ignore election results "because of false accusations of voter fraud," and predicted that if this happened, "the legislature itself will use its power to appoint electors pledged to vote for Trump, overriding the will of the people."

"And, in the midst of all of this, with the death of Justice Ginsburg, Trump is attempting to push through a Supreme Court Justice who may very well cast a vote in a case that will determine the outcome of this election," Sanders continued. There are enough Republican senators who have said they would vote to confirm Mr. Trump's nominee to the court before the election, despite Democrats' argument that the vacancy has opened so close to November 3 that it should be the winner of the election who selects the next justice.

Washington Post, Trump won’t commit to a ‘peaceful transfer of power’ if he loses, Colby Itkowitz, Sept. 24, 2020 (print ed.). President Trump refused Wednesday to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election, asserting that if he doesn’t win, it will be because of fraudulent mail-in voting and not because more Americans voted against him.

His latest comments came after he has spent months making unsubstantiated claims that voting by mail is corrupt and will lead to a “rigged” election. In fact, states that have embraced universal mail voting have documented tiny rates of possible ballot fraud, data shows.

“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens. You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster —” Trump (shown in a file photo) began when asked during a White House press briefing if he would ensure a peaceful transition.

“I understand that, but people are rioting; do you commit to making sure that there’s a peaceful transferral of power?” the reporter pressed, appearing to refer to incidents of violence that have broken out during some protests.

The president seems to be referring to, as he has for months now, the massive uptick in people voting by mail this fall rather than in person amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Trump continues to claim, with no evidence, that Democrats are supporting widespread mail-in voting not for public health reasons but to corrupt or commit fraud in the results.

Trump has previously been asked whether he would accept the results of the election if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wins. Asked by Fox News’s Chris Wallace in July, Trump said, “I have to see. Look, you — I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time, either.”

Sept. 21

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Investigation: HSBC moved vast sums of dirty money after paying record laundering fine, Spencer Woodman, right, Sept. 21, 2020. FinCEN Files probe reveals Europe’s biggest bank aided massive Ponzi scheme while on probation over ties to drug kingpins. (Continued from above.)

In March 2014, three men kidnapped Reynaldo Pacheco and bludgeoned his head with rocks, leaving the 44-year-old father of a young daughter dead in a creek bed in California’s Napa County. Local authorities determined that his murder was a consequence of an investment fraud that targeted low-income Latino and Asian immigrants around the world.

Like other victims of the World Capital Market scheme, or WCM, Pacheco energetically promoted the deal to relatives and acquaintances. When the Ponzi scheme collapsed, an unlucky investor decided to have him killed.

Four days before Pacheco was beaten to death, compliance officers at the global banking giant HSBC raised a warning about millions of dollars flowing into a big-dollar account in Hong Kong controlled by the scammers. It was at least the third in a series of so-called suspicious activity reports that the bank’s internal watchdogs had lodged about WCM over several months.

Yet HSBC continued to handle the Ponzi network’s massive flow of dirty money into — and out of — its accounts at the bank.

HSBC was profiting from an international criminal scheme even while on probation for having served murderous drug cartels and other criminals. HSBC had admitted to U.S. prosecutors in 2012 that it had helped dirty money flow through its branches around the world, including at least $881 million controlled by the notorious Sinaloa cartel and other Mexican drug gangs.

In a controversial decision, prosecutors declined to seek an indictment of the bank but instead allowed it to pay a $1.92 billion settlement and serve five years of probation during which its efforts to prevent money laundering would be monitored by a court-appointed watchdog. The court named a former top New York state financial crimes prosecutor, Michael Cherkasky.

A 16-month investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, BuzzFeed News and 108 other media partners has found that HSBC continued to provide banking services to alleged criminals, Ponzi schemers, shell companies tied to looted government funds and financial go-betweens for drug traffickers. This occurred even while the bank was on probation and under Cherkasky’s scrutiny.

The FinCEN Files investigation found that HSBC’s highly profitable branch in Hong Kong played a key role in keeping the dirty money flowing.

Although providing only a partial view of HSBC’s suspicious activity reports, the records show that between 2013 and 2017, HSBC’s U.S. compliance staff, who are charged with monitoring customer activity, filed reports lacking crucial customer information on 16 shell companies that had processed nearly $1.5 billion in more than 6,800 transactions through the bank’s Hong Kong operations alone. More than $900 million of that total involved shell companies linked to alleged criminal networks, according to an analysis by ICIJ and its media partners.

In a statement, HSBC defended changes the bank made under the monitorship. “Starting in 2012, HSBC embarked on a multi-year journey to overhaul its ability to combat financial crime,” said Heidi Ashley, a spokesperson for the bank. “HSBC is a much safer institution than it was in 2012.”

The bank told ICIJ that it increased its compliance staff from a few hundred members in 2012 to several thousand in 2017 and invested more than $1 billion in compliance initiatives since 2015. “Though we have made significant improvements in our financial crime compliance programme, we are continually seeking ways to improve,” the bank said in a statement.

The investigation is based on a review of dozens of leaked suspicious activity reports, or SARs, as well as interviews with more than a dozen former HSBC anti-money-laundering employees. Banks doing business in the United States submit the confidential reports to an intelligence office within the U.S. Treasury Department known as the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. Suspicious activity reports reflect concerns of watchdogs within banks and are not necessarily evidence of any criminal conduct or wrongdoing.

Leaked records show HSBC processed at least $31 million between 2014 and 2015 for companies later revealed to have moved stolen government funds from Brazil; and more than $292 million between 2010 and 2016 for a Panama-based organization branded by U.S. authorities as a major money launderer for drug cartels. The organization, Vida Panama, denies wrongdoing and is fighting the U.S. designation. The records show HSBC worked with a bank in Tiraspol, within Moldova’s breakaway territory of Transnistria, for four years after the U.S. Treasury Department issued a 2011 advisory warning of the risks of doing business with the Tiraspol bank.

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Administration threatens leakers of FINCEN SARs, Wayne Madsen, left, Sept. 21, 2020. The Trump administration has threatened with criminal prosecution leakers of over 2,500 Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) filed by banks with the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN). The SARs, covering the period 1999 to 2017, were published over the weekend by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The suspicious financial transactions total in excess of $2 trillion.

In anticipation of the leak of the SARs, on September 1, the Treasury Department issued a statement warning of criminal prosecution of those involved in the leak: Treasury has indicated that it not only seeks to prosecute the leakers of the FINCEN files, but those who have the reports in their possession. That may include ICIJ, which has published the leaked reports on their website, and other media organizations. The eldest daughter of Attorney General William Barr, Mary Daly, is a senior official of FINCEN.

In January of this year, senior Treasury official Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards pleaded guilty to leaking SARs that dealt with Russian oligarchs' financial support to key officials of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, including convicted campaign manager Paul Manafort. Many of the leaked SARs involve transactions of shady businessmen in Trump's orbit who featured prominently in the Trump-Kushner global criminal syndicate list compiled by WMR in 2019.

The leaked SARs involve several oligarchs tied to the Trump family, the Trump Organization, and their associates. These include Oleg Deripaska and the brothers, Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, who are all close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. 

Wall Sreet on Parade, Analysis: 3-Count Felon, JPMorgan Chase, Caught Laundering More Dirty Money, Pam Martens and Russ Martens, right, Sept. 21, 2020. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has once again managed to do what federal bank regulators refuse to do in the United States – come clean with the American people about our dirty Wall Street banks.

ICIJ dropped a bombshell investigative report yesterday about money laundering for criminals at some of the biggest banks on Wall Street, but you won’t find a peep about it on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal or New York Times’ print editions.

JPMorgan Chase has already pleaded guilty to three criminal felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice since 2014. Two of those counts related to money laundering and failure to file suspicious activity reports on the business bank account it held for Bernie Madoff for decades. JPMorgan Chase actually told U.K. regulators that it suspected Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme but it failed to share those concerns with U.S. regulators, even though it was required under law to do so.

The third felony count brought by the U.S. Department of Justice came one year later, in 2015. It related to JPMorgan’s involvement in a bank cartel that was engaged in rigging foreign exchange trading.

The ICIJ investigation is based on secret documents leaked from FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a unit of the U.S. Treasury. The documents “show that five global banks — JPMorgan, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon — kept profiting from powerful and dangerous players even after U.S. authorities fined these financial institutions for earlier failures to stem flows of dirty money.”

The report has much to say about JPMorgan Chase:

JPMorgan Chase was involved in moving illicit funds for the fugitive, Jho Low, involving the notorious looting of public funds in Malaysia. Jho Low has been accused by multiple jurisdictions of playing a key role in the embezzlement of more than $4.5 billion from a Malaysian economic development fund, 1MDB. JPMorgan Chase moved $1.2 billion in money for Jho Low from 2013 to 2016, according to the report.

The ICIJ bombshell includes the charge that JPMorgan also “processed more than $50 million in payments over a decade, the records show, for Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for President Donald Trump (shown at right in a 2016 file photo). The bank shuttled at least $6.9 million in Manafort transactions in the 14 months after he resigned from the campaign amid a swirl of money laundering and corruption allegations spawning from his work with a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.”

More troubling activity at JPMorgan Chase includes the following, according to ICIJ investigators:

“JPMorgan also moved money for companies and people tied to corruption scandals in Venezuela that have helped create one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. One in three Venezuelans is not getting enough to eat, the UN reported this year, and millions have fled the country.

“One of the Venezuelans who got help from JPMorgan was Alejandro ‘Piojo’ Isturiz, a former government official who has been charged by U.S. authorities as a player in an international money laundering scheme. Prosecutors allege that between 2011 and 2013 Isturiz and others solicited bribes to rig government energy contracts. The bank moved more than $63 million for companies linked to Isturiz and the money laundering scheme between 2012 and 2016, the FinCEN Files show…”

Civil Rights, Race, Religion

The Rev. Robert Graetz, a civil rights pioneer, died Sunday. He is shown shown below left with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the cover of Graetz's 2007 memoir, A White Pastor's Message on Race and Reconciliation (2007). The introduction was by the late civil rights pioneer John Lewis, who died this summer after representing in Georgia in Congress.

Here is the publisher's description: In 1955, when the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, author Bob Graetz was the young white pastor of a black Lutheran Church in Montgomery. His church and his home were in the black community and he and his wife among the few whites who supported the boycott. Their church and home were both bombed; their lives were threatened often. But Graetz never wavered, and his Montgomery experiences, recounted in rich detail here, shaped a long ministerial career that always emphasized equality and justice issues no matter where his call took him. In addition to Graetz’s boycott memoirs, this book includes provocative chapters on white privilege, black forgiveness, and the present-day challenges for human and civil rights.
Like King, he preached integration from the pulpit and told followers to trust in God and boycott segregated city buses in 1955.

"This was a movement of the church, the Christian church in the black community," he has described it on many occasions.

Montgomery Advertiser, Robert Graetz, minister who helped organize Montgomery Bus Boycott, dies at 92, Brian Lyman, Sept. 21, 2020. The Rev. Robert Graetz, whose support of the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott made him a target of segregationists and sparked a career dedicated to social justice, died Sunday, his daughter Meta Ellis said. He was 92.

Graetz had been in hospice care. Graetz, who ministered to the majority-Black Trinity Lutheran Evangelical Church, helped organize the early stages of the boycott and helped drive people to and from work.

Graetz was the only white clergyman to support the boycott, and like other participants in the boycott, the reverend and his family persisted in the face of harassment, terrorism, and death threats that extended to their preschool children. Vandals poured sugar in their gas tank; slashed their tires and sprayed acid over their cars. White students on segregated school buses shouted "n---r lover" at Graetz and his wife, Jeannie (shown together in a photo for the Montgomery Advertiser by Rainier Ehrhardt), as they walked the street.

The family home was bombed twice, and while arrests were made, no one was ever convicted. Graetz often became emotional remembering the bombings in later years.

“People often said we had courage,” he said in 2001. “There were times when I was scared to death.”

Washington Post, Justice Dept. targets Portland, New York and Seattle over protests, Devlin Barrett, Sept. 21, 2020. The Trump administration has released a list of cities that face possible federal aid cuts. A similar approach over immigration policies has been blocked by the courts. The Justice Department labeled the cities of Portland, Ore., New York and Seattle on Monday as jurisdictions “that have permitted violence and destruction of property,” targeting them for possible cuts in federal funding.

Following a memorandum that President Trump issued earlier this month, the Justice Department published a list of cities that the White House wants to get more aggressive on civil unrest in the wake of police shootings and killings.

“We cannot allow federal tax dollars to be wasted,” Attorney General William P. Barr said in a statement. “It is my hope that the cities identified by the Department of Justice today will reverse course and become serious about performing the basic function of government and start protecting their own citizens.”

Palmer Report, Opinion: The increasingly ugly story behind Robert Mueller’s miserable failure and Rod Rosenstein’s treason, Bill Palmer, right, Sept. 21, 2020. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate an obviously guilty Donald Trump, he started off with a bang. He quickly got Michael Flynn to flip on Trump. He arrested George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort. There was every reason to expect that Mueller would continue on that path and take Trump down. But somewhere along the way Mueller stopped doing his job, and in the end he simply gave up and went home. So what happened?

Now the details of the ugliest and most damaging failure in U.S. prosecutorial history are starting to pour out – and some of it’s even uglier than we thought. Robert Mueller’s former top deputy, Andrew Weissmann, is now flat out admitting that Team Mueller failed to do its job, partly due to fear and intimidation. While Weissmann doesn’t attack Mueller personally, he makes clear that Mueller screwed up by failing to subpoena Trump, and by failing to admit that Trump obstructed justice.

This comes on the heels of recent reporting that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had been secretly sabotaging Robert Mueller’s investigation from the very start, going so far as to block Mueller from investigating Trump’s financial ties to Russia, while tricking the FBI into thinking that Mueller was following the money.

If Robert Mueller had done his job, and if Rod Rosenstein hadn’t tried too hard to prevent Mueller from doing his job, there’s a good chance Donald Trump would be in prison by now instead of still being in the White House. At the least, Mueller’s reputation should be destroyed by his cowardly refusal to do his job – unless he really did go senile during his investigation. And Rosenstein, by illegally obstructing an investigation into whether Trump was conspiring with the Russian government against the United States, is guilty of some form of treason. Rosenstein must be put on criminal trial when this over.

Sept. 18

Breaking News: Washington Post, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87; McConnell says Trump’s court pick will get Senate vote despite Ginsburg’s dying wish, Derek Hawkins, Darren Sands and Meryl Kornfield, Sept. 18, 2020. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the second woman on the high court in 1993 and legal pioneer for gender equality.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who refused to consider President Obama’s choice months before the 2016 election, said in a statement Friday hours after Ginsburg’s death: “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

The death of Ginsburg, right, sent shock waves through the country Friday, igniting debate about the future of the high court and President Trump’s role in choosing a successor to the 87-year-old jurist.

Ginsburg died in her home in Washington, where she was surrounded by family, the Supreme Court said in a statement announcing her death. The cause was complications of metastatic pancreas cancer, according to the court.

A trailblazer for gender equality, Ginsburg was the second woman appointed to the Supreme Court and served there for more than 27 years.

She rose to the top of her class at Columbia Law School in the 1950s, helped battle gender discrimination as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and, in 1993, became the second woman on the high court. Her fierce opinions as a justice made her a hero to the left.

On the court, she became an iconic figure to a new wave of young feminists, and her regal image as the “Notorious RBG” graced T-shirts and coffee mugs. She also was the subject of a popular film documentary, RBG, in 2018.

Her death sets up what is all but certain to be a fierce political fight over whether Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate will decide her replacement.

The Justice Integrity Project joins in mourning her passing and celebrating her achievements.

Sept. 16

Top Stories

Washington Post, Trump, in town hall, says he wouldn’t have done anything differently on pandemic, Colby Itkowitz, Josh Dawsey, Felicia Sonmez and John Wagner, Sept. 16, 2020 (print ed.). The president (shown in a file photo) blamed cities and states run by Democrats for any problems with the response to coronavirus, as well as for any crime or violence in the country.

President Trump faced tough questions from undecided voters during a wide-ranging town hall Tuesday night on ABC in which he was pressed to defend his responses to the coronavirus pandemic, racial justice protests and health care.

Trump often praised his own performance and said problems were the fault of others.

He said he would not do anything differently with regard to his response to the pandemic, despite nearly 200,000 Americans having died from the outbreak. He blamed China for the pandemic and said he saved many lives by “closing up the country.” His claim he could not have done more to slow the deadly virus has been rebutted by a number of epidemiologists.

Washington Post, Woodward: ‘Denial across the board’ in White House about severity of virus, Felicia Sonmez, Sept. 16, 2020 (print ed.). The Washington Post associate editor, right, who conducted 18 interviews with President Trump for his new book Rage, said the president is a “one-man band” who is going to do what he wants.

Washington Post, CDC director says coronavirus vaccines won’t be widely available till the middle of 2021, Amy Goldstein, Sept. 16, 2020. It will take months after approval for a vaccine to help control the pandemic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield predicted at Wednesday’s Senate hearing on the government’s response to the pandemic.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, right, predicted Wednesday that most of the American public will not have access to a vaccine against the novel coronavirus until late spring or summer of next year — contrary to President Trump’s assertions that the pandemic is nearly over.

At a Senate hearing on the government’s response to the pandemic, CDC director Robert Redfield adhered to President Trump’s oft-stated contention that a safe and effective vaccine will become available in November or December — perhaps just before the presidential election seven weeks away.

But Redfield said the vaccine will be provided first to people most vulnerable to covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, and supplies will increase over time, so Americans who are lower priority for the protection will be offered the shot more gradually. For it to be “fully available to the American public, so we begin to take advantage of vaccine to get back to our regular life,” he said, “I think we are probably looking at late second quarter, third quarter 2021.”

Though any individual vaccinated should benefit, he said, the progressive widening of its availability means there will be a time lag between when a vaccine is approved and when it could have a measurable effect in controlling the pandemic. That might be six to nine months after the day it is approved by federal drug regulators, Redfield predicted.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump just lost Michael Caputo, Bill Palmer, Sept. 16, 2020. Donald Trump’s handpicked HHS spokesman Michael Caputo, right, has had arguably one of the most scandalous and disturbing weeks in presidential administration history – and in a reminder of just how deranged the Trump administration is, there was no guarantee he’d even lose his job over it. But now Caputo is leaving the building.

After Caputo was caught altering CDC coronavirus reports, and caught calling for violence surrounding the election, and caught tweeting racist things prompting him to delete his account, and flat out admitted that he thought the shadows on his wall were out to get him, he let it be known yesterday that he was considering taking a medical leave of absence. Sure enough, that’s officially happened as of this afternoon. So now what?

If Michael Caputo is as disturbed as he claims, we hope he gets professional help. But from a strictly political standpoint, what’s notable is that his leave of absence is for sixty days. That’s after election day. Caputo was supposed to play a key role in the election for Trump, by using his HHS position to put false pro-Trump information out there. Now he’s stepping off the stage for the rest of the election. Caputo was a rather ineffective henchman to begin with, but this means Trump has nonetheless lost yet another henchman. Trump is running out of people and he’s running out of time.

 Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Donald Trump

New York Times, Barr Told Prosecutors to Consider Sedition Charges for Protest Violence, Katie Benner, Sept. 16, 2020. Attorney General William P. Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition, according to two people familiar with the call.

The highly unusual suggestion to charge people with insurrection against lawful authority alarmed some on the call, which included U.S. attorneys around the country, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be named describing Mr. Barr’s comments because they feared retribution.

The attorney general, left, has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer, according to two people briefed on those discussions.

The directives are in keeping with Mr. Barr’s approach to prosecute crimes as aggressively as possible in cities where protests have given way to violence. But in suggesting possible prosecution of Ms. Durkan, a Democrat, Mr. Barr also took aim at an elected official whom President Trump has repeatedly attacked.

Washington Post, More than half of all wrongful criminal convictions are caused by government misconduct, study finds, Tom Jackman, right, Sept. 16, 2020. The study also found that police and prosecutors are rarely disciplined for actions that lead to a wrongful conviction; Misconduct can be intentional or unintentional, but either way innocent people are found guilty.

When a prisoner is granted their freedom because they were wrongly convicted of a crime, the focus turns to the years — or decades — they spent behind bars, their feelings upon release and their hopes for the future. But a new study digs into the reasons people are wrongly convicted, and it has found that 54 percent of those defendants are victimized by official misconduct, with police involved in 34 percent of cases, prosecutors in 30 percent, and some cases involving both police and prosecutors.

The study by the National Registry of Exonerations reviewed 2,400 exonerations it has logged between 1989 and 2019, nearly 80 percent of which were for violent felonies. Of the 2,400, 93 innocent defendants were sentenced to death and later cleared before they were executed.

Craig Murray Blog via Information Clearing House, Commentary: Assange Hearing Day 9, Craig Murray, right, Sept. 15, 2020. Things became not merely dramatic in the Assange courtroom today, but spiteful and nasty.

There were two real issues, the evidence and the procedure. On the evidence, there were stark details of the dreadful regime Assange will face in US jails if extradited. On the procedure, we saw behaviour from the prosecution QC that went well beyond normal cross examination and was a real attempt to denigrate and even humiliate the witness. I hope to prove that to you by a straightforward exposition of what happened today in court, after which I shall add further comment.

Today’s witness was Eric Lewis. A practicing US attorney for 35 years, Eric Lewis has a doctorate in law from Yale and a masters in criminology from Cambridge. He is former professor in law at Georgetown University, an elected member of both the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He is Chairman of Reprieve. He has represented high profile clients in national security and terrorism cases, including Seymour Hersh and Guantanamo Bay internees.

Trial coverage continued below under "Section U.S. Law, Courts, Investigations"

Washington Post, DeJoy’s Postal Service policies delayed 7 percent of nation’s first-class mail, Senate report says, Jacob Bogage, Sept.16, 2020. The postmaster general suspended some cost-cutting maneuvers but not the moves experts say are behind the worst problems

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s controversial midsummer operational directives delayed nearly 350 million pieces, or 7 percent, of the country’s first-class mail in the five weeks they were in effect, according to a new report published Wednesday by the Senate’s top Democrat in charge of postal oversight.

A month after taking charge of the U.S. Postal Service, DeJoy implemented stricter dispatch schedules on transport trucks that forced workers to leave mail behind and prohibited extra mail trips, leading to well-documented bottlenecks. Managers under him also cracked down on overtime, which postal workers commonly rely on to complete routes, though DeJoy has denied having a role in those cutbacks.

New York Times, Opinion: War Crime Risk Grows for U.S. Over Saudi Strikes in Yemen, Michael LaForgia and Edward Wong, Updated Sept. 16, 2020, 6 State Department officials have raised alarms about airstrikes that kill civilians. The Trump administration recently suppressed findings as it sold more weapons to Gulf nations.

The civilian death toll from Saudi Arabia’s disastrous air war over Yemen was steadily rising in 2016 when the State Department’s legal office in the Obama administration reached a startling conclusion: Top American officials could be charged with war crimes for approving bomb sales to the Saudis and their partners.

Four years later, more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials say the legal risks have only grown as President Trump has made selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Middle East nations a cornerstone of his foreign policy.

Yet rather than taking steps to address the legal issues, State Department leaders have gone to great lengths to conceal them. Even after a State Department inspector general investigation this year revealed that the department had failed to address the legal risks of selling bombs to the Saudis, agency officials ensured that details of the finding were put in a classified part of the public report released in August, and then so heavily redacted that lawmakers with security clearances could not see them.

The concerns will be the subject of a congressional hearing on Wednesday. House lawmakers are expected to question senior State Department officials, including the agency’s top lawyer and the assistant secretary overseeing weapons sales.

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Opinion: William Barr is worse as AG than Nazi Germany's first Justice Minister, Wayne Madsen, left, Sept. 17, 2020. Attorney General William Barr is less independent of aspirant dictator Donald Trump than Nazi Germany's first Justice Minister, Franz Gurtner, was of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Barr has systematically turned the Justice Department into a political weapon designed to protect Trump from the Congress, the courts, and individual U.S. citizens exercising their rights under the Constitution. Barr has trashed the rule of law that has ensured that America's system of democracy has prevailed since the birth of constitutional government. 

Washington Post, DHS says it won’t make officials available for questioning in House probe of Portland protests, Shane Harris, Sept. 16, 2020 (print ed.). The Department of Homeland Security has said it will not agree to a congressional panel’s request to interview official witnesses as part of an investigation of the department’s response to protests in Portland, Ore.

The congressional investigation has been fueled by allegations from a top DHS official, who has accused the White House of trying to skew intelligence reports to match President Trump’s claims that far-left extremist groups are behind nationwide protests against police violence.

The House Intelligence Committee’s request to interview several DHS officials “will not be accommodated at this time,” Assistant Secretary Beth Spivey wrote to the committee chairman Monday, arguing that the committee had unreasonably broadened its scope after receiving a whistleblower complaint from Brian Murphy, who until recently was in charge of the department’s intelligence office.

Murphy has alleged that senior DHS officials, acting on orders from the White House, have tried to color intelligence reports in ways that favor Trump’s campaign rhetoric.

Murphy claimed in a complaint filed last week with the DHS inspector general that the department’s acting secretary, Chad Wolf, right, instructed him in May to stop reporting Russian interference in the election and to focus his office’s efforts on China and Iran, two countries Democratic lawmakers briefed on intelligence say are not engaged in the same aggressive attempts to influence the elections as Russia.

Washington Post, Because of pandemic, Supreme Court will begin new term with teleconference arguments, Robert Barnes, Sept. 16, 2020. The justices, six of whom are at special risk because of age, have not held arguments in person since March.

Washington Post, Louisville agrees to $12 million settlement with family of Breonna Taylor, Tim Craig and Marisa Iati, Sept. 16, 2020 (print ed.). In addition to the cash payout, the settlement includes a number of changes in how local officers obtain and execute search warrants.

The city of Louisville announced on Tuesday a $12 million settlement with the family of Breonna Taylor and a number of changes in how local officers obtain and execute search warrants, among the largest payouts for a police killing in the nation’s history, according to a Taylor family attorney.

Louisville police killed Breonna Taylor, 26, while executing a “no-knock” search warrant at her apartment during a drug raid in March that uncovered no illegal substances and has become a driving symbol in the Black Lives Matter movement.

The settlement, which follows a wrongful-death lawsuit that Taylor’s family filed in May, requires police commanders to approve all search warrant applications that are submitted to a judge, said Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (D) during a news conference Tuesday afternoon. Louisville police will also have to conduct extensive risk assessments before applying for a warrant.

Jacob Wohl, whose supposed investment acumen as a 17-year-old, was featured by Fox Business News (screenshot above). Separate from his investment activities, Wohl has become known as a promoter of scandal allegations against perceived opponents of Donald Trump and other Republicans. On May 7, 2020, Reason Magazine published a column quoting Diana Andrade, shown below right in a photo with Wohl when she said they were dating, in a story headlined as follows: Reason, She Said Anthony Fauci Sexually Assaulted Her. Now She Says Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman Paid Her to Lie.

Washington Post, Fake FBI raid staged by right-wing activists dupes The Post, Paul Farhi and Elahe Izadi, Sept. 16, 2020 (print ed.). It appears that Jacob Wohl used photos of the event in Arlington to trick a reporter into believing that Wohl’s longtime associate Jack Burkman was being targeted by law enforcement officials.

A fake FBI raid staged Monday by a notorious right-wing activist and conspiracist turned into an embarrassment for The Washington Post, which briefly reported the faux-event as if it were the real deal.

The “raid” on a house in Arlington, Va., actually involved actors recruited by Jacob Wohl, who has a history of making false accusations and has orchestrated dubious events in an effort to smear perceived opponents of President Trump.

This time, Wohl recruited actors to pose as FBI agents, telling them they would be participating in a scene for a “TV pilot,” one of the actors involved told the Daily Beast. The actors donned FBI-style windbreakers and pretended they were raiding a house during early-morning hours.

It appears Wohl used photos of the event to trick a reporter into believing that Wohl’s longtime associate, Jack Burkman, was being targeted by law enforcement officials. The intended purpose of the deception was not clear.

In a story written by Metro reporter Rachel Weiner, The Post briefly reported Monday that a real FBI raid had taken place. The story was updated about two hours later to note that the raid was a fabrication and later taken down entirely with an editor’s note in its place saying it “was published because The Post failed to obtain appropriate confirmation.”

Burkman is longtime conservative lobbyist and recent conspiracist. Together with Wohl, a 22-year-old former hedge fund manager with a history of investment scandals, the pair have mounted several failed media stunts. Among others, the pair hosted a “news” conference in late 2018 to lay out alleged sexual assault claims against special counselor Robert Mueller; Mueller’s supposed accuser never materialized. They also tried in 2019 to paint then-Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg as a sexual predator; that stunt blew up when the supposed accuser said the allegations were entirely made up and that he had been paid to make them.

Craig Murray Blog via Information Clearing House, Commentary: Assange Hearing Day 9, Craig Murray, right, Sept. 15, 2020. Things became not merely dramatic in the Assange courtroom today, but spiteful and nasty.

There were two real issues, the evidence and the procedure. On the evidence, there were stark details of the dreadful regime Assange will face in US jails if extradited. On the procedure, we saw behaviour from the prosecution QC that went well beyond normal cross examination and was a real attempt to denigrate and even humiliate the witness. I hope to prove that to you by a straightforward exposition of what happened today in court, after which I shall add further comment.

Today’s witness was Eric Lewis. A practicing US attorney for 35 years, Eric Lewis has a doctorate in law from Yale and a masters in criminology from Cambridge. He is former professor in law at Georgetown University, an elected member of both the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He is Chairman of Reprieve. He has represented high profile clients in national security and terrorism cases, including Seymour Hersh and Guantanamo Bay internees.

Lewis had submitted five statements to the court, between October 2019 and August 2020, addressing the ever-changing indictments and charges brought by the prosecution. He was initially led through the permitted brief half-hour summary of his statements by defence QC Edward Fitzgerald. (I am told I am not currently allowed to publish the defence statements or links to them. I shall try to clarify this tomorrow.)

Eric Lewis testified that no publisher had ever been successfully prosecuted for publishing national security information in the USA. Following the Wikileaks publications including the diplomatic cables and the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, Assange had not been prosecuted because the First Amendment was considered insuperable and because of the New York Times problem – there was no way just to prosecute Assange without prosecuting the New York Times for publishing the same material. The New York Times had successfully pleaded the First Amendment for its publication of the Pentagon Papers, which had been upheld in a landmark Supreme Court judgment.

Lewis here gave evidence that mirrored that already reported of Prof Feldstein, Trevor Timm and Prof Rogers, so I shall not repeat all of it. He said that credible sources had stated the Obama administration had decided not to prosecute Assange, notably Matthew Miller, a highly respected Justice Department figure who had been close to Attorney General Holder and would have been unlikely to brief the media without Holder’s knowledge and approval.

Eric Lewis then gave testimony on the change of policy towards prosecuting Assange from the Trump administration. Again this mostly mirrored the earlier witnesses. He added detail of Mike Pompeo stating the free speech argument for Wikileaks was “a perversion of what our great country stands for”, and claiming that the First Amendment did not apply to foreigners.

Attorney General Sessions had accordingly stated that it was “a priority for the Justice Department” to arrest Julian Assange. He had pressured prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia to bring a case. In December 2017 an arrest warrant had been issued, with the indictment to be filled in later. The first indictment of a single count had been launched in March 2018, its timing possibly dictated by a limitation deadline.

In May 2019 a new superseding indictment increased the counts from one to eighteen, seventeen of which related to espionage. This tougher stance followed the appointment of William Barr as Attorney General just four months previously. The plain intention of the first superseding indictment was to get round the New York Times problem by trying to differentiate Assange’s actions with Manning from those of other journalists. It showed that the Justice Department was very serious and very aggressive in acting on the statements of Trump administration officials. Barr was plainly acting at the behest of Trump. This represented a clear abuse of the criminal enforcement power of the state.

The prosecution of a publisher in this way was unprecedented. Yet the facts were the same in 2018 as they had been in 2012 and 13; there was no new evidence behind the decision to prosecute. Crucially, the affidavits of US Assistant Attorney Gordon Kromberg present no legal basis for the taking of a different decision to that of 2013. There is no explanation of why the dossier was lying around with no action for five or six years.

The Trump administration had in fact taken a different political decision through the Presidential spokesperson Sarah Sanders who had boasted that only this administration had acted against Assange and “taken this process seriously.”

Edward Fitzgerald QC then turned to the question of probable sentencing and led Lewis through his evidence on this point. Eric Lewis confirmed that if Julian Assange were convicted he could very probably spend the rest of his life in prison. The charges had not been pleaded as one count, which it had been open to the prosecution to do. The judge would have discretion to sentence the counts either concurrently or consecutively. Under current sentencing guidelines, Assange’s sentence if convicted could range from “best case” 20 years to a maximum of 175 years. It was disingenuous of Gordon Kromberg to suggest a minimal sentence, given that Chelsea Manning had been sentenced to 35 years and the prosecution had requested 60.

It had been a government choice to charge the alleged offences as espionage. The history of espionage convictions in the USA had generally resulted in whole life sentences. 20 to 30 years had been lighter sentences for espionage. The multiple charges approach of the indictment showed a government intention to obtain a very lengthy sentence. Of course the final decision would lay with the judge, but it would be decades.

Edward Fitzgerald then led on to the question of detention conditions. On the question of remand, Gordon Kromberg had agreed that Julian Assange would be placed in the Alexandria City Jail, and there was a “risk” that he would be held there under Special Administrative Measures. In fact this was a near certainty. Assange faced serious charges related to national security, and had seen millions of items of classified information which the authorities would be concerned he might pass on to other prisoners. He would be subject to Special Administrative Measures both pre- and post-conviction.

After conviction Julian Assange would be held in the supermax prison ADX Florence, Colorado. There were at least four national security prisoners currently there in the H block. Under SAMS Assange would be kept in a small cell for 22 or 23 hours a day and not allowed to meet any other prisoners. He would be allowed out once a day for brief exercise or recreation excluded from other prisoners, but shackled.

Fitzgerald then led Lewis to the 2017 decision by the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan, in which the evidence provided by the Wikileaks release of US war logs and diplomatic cables provided essential evidence. This had been denounced by Trump, John Bolton and Pompeo. The ICC prosecutor’s US visa had been cancelled to hinder his investigation. An Executive Order had been issued imposing financial sanctions and blocking the banking access of any non US national who assisted the ICC investigation into crimes alleged against any US citizen. This would affect Julian Assange.

Coverage continued in much greater detail on the Craig Murray Blog. Craig John Murray is a British former diplomat turned political activist, human rights campaigner, blogger and whistleblower. Between 2002 and 2004, he was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan during which time he exposed the violations of human rights in Uzbekistan by the Karimov administration.

Sept. 11

U.S. 9/11 Memorials, Researchers

World Crisis Radio, Opinion: Pioneering 9/11 Truth Researcher Criticizes Movement, Urges Focus On Trump Defeat, Webster G. Tarpley, right, Sept. 11, 2020 (59:50 min.). Dr. Webster Tarpley, the historian and progressive advocate whose 2008 book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made In the USA debunked official accounts of the 9/11 attacks, ended his weekly radio show on the 19th anniversary of the attacks by criticizing in general fellow 9/11 "truth researchers." He urged them to refocus energies to more current struggles, with the major initial goal of defeating Donald Trump, thereby enabling a progressive agenda. His comments below, primarily addressed to fellow "truth" researchers to couple their revelations about past cover-ups with political action to address current problems, are lightly edited and condensed.

You're still talking about 9/11 and now we have a world depression. What are you going to do? Are you going to go to the unemployment office or a breadline and say to people, "Hey, Buddy! Let me tell you about Building 7!"?

The time has passed. There's also a very serious problem of intellectual stagnation and also the mental map. It's now a three-cornered world. There's Beijing, who are totalitarians. There's Moscow, which is strong authoritarians. These are two powers bent on world domination. Then there's the U.S. Now the U.S. means Europe, Japan, South Korea, a lot of South American countries, a lot of Africa.

We learned in the 9/11 Truth Movement that the U.S. was 'the bad guys.' You can say a lot of this is the fault of the neocons. The neo-cons have antagonized everyone in the world by their lunatic ideas. This entire neo-con venture has been a failure.

But the Anti-American choice, frankly, is wrong. The world has changed. The problem is the U.S. has been outdistanced in evil and depravity by Putin and Xi. They are worse.

And above all, if you want to avoid the catastrophe, if you want to avoid the apocalypse, that means fighting Trump. A lot of these 9-11 people have taken their mental map from 2004 to 2006 and they say, if anything, "Trump is better" or "Trump isn't so bad." This is absolute folly.

I'm sorry to say that a lot of people are so addicted to the notion of false flags. Yes, 9-11 was a false flag. The Kennedy assassination was a false flag in many ways.

But not everything is. If the 9/11 experience is all you know you're going to say 'Covid is false flag' or any number of other things are 'false flags.' This is, unfortunately, not adequate.

I would say to people, "Bring yourself up to date. Fight today's and tomorrow's battles, not the battles of the yesterday.”

That means if you want to use the undoubtedly valuable experience of having been in the 9/11 Truth movement, then mobilize that against Trump in the next two months. That's what I intend to do to the very best of my ability.

So that would be the end of our time here [on the radio show], the 19th anniversary of that tragic and criminal event of 9/11.

Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Recent and Upcoming Research Discussions, Staff report, Sept. 11, 2020. Below is a schedule of recent and upcoming research discussions and broadcasts supported by the Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry. Most are free but some request or require a small donation.

The events still pending will be free. The Lawyers' Committee for 911 Inquiry, Inc. is the last entry on this list, it is free, and you can access it through its website for Sunday's show from 3 to 6 pm.

Thursday, September 10th from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. Eastern: Livestreamed on the Jason Goodman CrowdSourceTheTruth Show, an historic new 9/11 Congressional petition will be announced with host Jason Goodman and guests Dr. Meryl Nass, Dr. Graeme MacQueen, and Mick Harrison, Esq. and David Meiswinkle, Esq. of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry. Go to here -- https://youtu.be/bpVsuYW8jFQ -- to watch live beginning just before or at 1 p.m. Eastern on the 10th.

Thursday, Sept. 10th from 3 to 11 p.m. Eastern: The online ‘9/11 Film Festival’ with Documentaries and Speakers. Listeners need to make a minimal donation – at least one dollar here -- (https://noliesradio.org/ticket4.html), which includes typing in your email address, before or by Wednesday, Sept. 9. You’ll receive the link to enter the Festival in your e-mail box sometime on the 9th. The entire eight hours will be archived and the video available for viewing at any time for a week afterwards at the same link provided to watch the live Event. (Note: This Event follows half an hour after the end of the above Jason Goodman Show.)

Friday, September 11th at 8:15 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth 9/11 Anniversary Conference -- Session on Legal Actions with Richard Gage, AIA; Mick Harrison, Esq.; Barbara Honegger, M.S.; and David Meiswinkle, Esq. Go to www.AE911Truth.org/JusticeRising to watch live for free.(Note: This is just the final Session of this three-hour-long online conference, and only the first day of three for the Conference. If You want to watch the whole Conference, either just on the 11th and/or also on the 12th and 13th, Go to this link here to access it live each day: www.ae911truth.org/justicerising).

Friday, September 11th at 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern: ‘The Other Side of The News’ online Radio Show which reaches over 100 countries with Guests Barbara Honegger, M.S., David Meiswinkle, Esq., Mick Harrison, Esq., and Richard Gage, AIA. Go to here -- www.theothersideofmidnight.com -- at 7:00 p.m. Eastern and click on the white square ‘poster’ or ‘banner’ that says ‘The Other Side of the News’ near the top. When the next page comes up after a few seconds scroll down a bit and click where it says something like ‘Use our own Player’ and then click on the arrow to start the audio.

Saturday, Sept. 12th at Midnight to 3:00 a.m. Eastern -- just going into Sunday September 13th: ‘The Other Side of Midnight’ online radio show which reaches over 100 countries with host Richard Hoagland. Guests are Barbara Honegger, M.S., David Meiswinkle, Esq., Mick Harrison, Esq., Richard Gage, AIA, and Matt Campbell, a UK citizen who lost his brother in WTC1 on 9/11. Go here to www.theothersideofmidnight.com at Midnight Eastern and click on the ‘poster’ or ‘banner’ near the top with the Guests’ names. When the next page comes up after a few seconds scroll down a bit and click where it says something like ‘Use our own Player’ and then click on the arrow to start the audio.

Sunday, September 13th, 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern: Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry online Conference "Recognizing and Pushing Back The Police State" with speakers who includ Professor Francis Boyle, national security experts Bill Binney, Ray McGovern, Dr. Meryl Nass, Dr. Graeme MacQueen, and more. Go to LCfor911.org beginning Saturday night the 12th for the Zoom link to watch live at the start time on the 13th.
https://www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org/

New York Times, New York City Marks 9/11 at a Time of Harrowing Loss, Michael Gold, Sept. 11, 2020. As New Yorkers memorialize a past tragedy, they face another profound and deadly crisis that is not yet over.

The families came together again on Friday to honor their loved ones at the site where their lives were stolen. The names of the victims resounded across the plaza, and the bells tolled in New York City as they have in years past, sounding a peal of collective mourning for those killed on one of the darkest days in American history.

Yet the somber, solemn rituals held at the Sept. 11 memorial to mark a tragedy that brought New York and the nation to its knees were unmistakably altered at a time of another crisis — one also marked by devastating loss.

Some of America’s most notable politicians were in attendance, including Vice President Mike Pence and Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic candidate for president. All of them wore masks in addition to their customary memorial ribbons and lapel pins. They exchanged elbow bumps, then distanced themselves six feet apart as they stood for the national anthem.

There was no stage in front of them on Friday, and no speeches given to the mourners gathered at the site known as ground zero — two hallmarks of past memorials that were removed in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

Palmer Report, Donald Trump caught stealing money from 9/11 fund, Ron Leshnower, Sept. 11, 2020. Although 19 years have passed since the horrific attacks of 9/11, people across the United States pause to remember the day with a deep sense of sorrow and solemnity. The President of the United States should treat 9/11 as sacred and strive to honor the sacrifices of the first responders and their families. Unfortunately, Donald Trump’s shameful desecration of 9/11 began on that tragic day and shows no signs of letting up.

Last night, on the eve of 9/11, the New York Daily News reported that the Trump administration has “secretly siphoned” funds aimed at helping FDNY firefighters and medics who suffer from 9/11-related illnesses. A review of documents reveals that Trump’s Treasury Department “mysteriously” decided to keep some of the money — already authorized by Congress under the FDNY World Trade Center Health Program — for years without even a single communication about it.

This unexplained withholding of money is not only an affront to first responders, but it threatens the continued employment of physicians, nurses, and support staff and has required New York City to cover the shortfall, even as the coronavirus pandemic has stressed the economy. Not surprisingly, no one in the Trump administration has responded to requests for comments, and there is no sign that this will get resolved soon.

This is not the first time Trump has offended our sensibilities when it comes to 9/11. Within mere hours of the attacks, Trump boasted (inaccurately, no less) that he now owned the tallest building in Lower Manhattan. Trump later falsely claimed he watched “thousands and thousands” of Muslims on New Jersey rooftops cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center. Trump then lied by saying he “was down there also” with the first responders in the wake of 9/11, and he lied again by claiming he sent “a couple of hundred people” from his company to help with the recovery effort.

In the ensuing months, Trump pledged $10,000 to the Twin Towers Fund, yet investigations show he donated nothing. Trump later applied for and received substantial federal money for small business recovery, made available thanks to the efforts of Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, New York’s two senators at the time — even though, as Trump later admitted, his one property in the area was “fortunately” not affected. Last year, Trump secretly invited the Taliban, who protected Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, to Camp David for peace talks just days before the anniversary 9/11. And the list goes on.

Sept. 10

9/11 Remembrances and Research

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