Deep State 2020-23: News, Revelations, Commentary

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Editor's Choice: 2020-23 News & Views

This archive of assassination, regime change and propaganda news and commentary excerpts significant news stories and commentaries regarding alleged work by those involved with so-called "Deep State" efforts to subvert normal democratic procedures.

The materials are arranged in reverse chronological order backwards in time. They focus heavily on current news arising from the 1960s murders of President John F. Kennedy (shown in a file photo), his brother Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK). Although conventional wisdom is that the deaths were solved long ago and hence of little but historical importance our contention is that close study reveals a Rosetta Stone of lost history that makes current events far more understandable.

Much of that research probes what are known as Deep State activities, which are covert and often illegal activities by powerful private figures working with allies in government, often connected to security bodies, in ways unaccountable in the ostensible leaders. This section includes materials on such other covert activities as government-connected regime change, false flag attacks, propaganda, spy rings, blackmail, smuggling, election-rigging and other major "crimes against democracy" (in the description of historian Lance deHaven Smith).

The top section shows excerpts since the beginning of the calendar year. Below at far bottom also are links to the Justice Integrity Project's multi-part and separate "Readers Guides" to the JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations containing notable books, films, archives and commentary. Included also are several reports regarding other alleged political murders of prominent international leaders, or attempts. Correspondence should be sent to this site's editor, Andrew Kreig.

Editor's Note: Excerpts below are from the authors' own words except for subheads and "Editor's notes" such as this.

Index: Deep State News, Revelations, Commentary

2020-21-22-23

March

March 24

ronald reagan 1981 w

Going Deep with Russ Baker, Investigative Commentary: The Iran Hostages, Carter, Reagan, and Bush: What the NY Times ‘Scoop’ Missed, Russ Baker, right, author, widely published journalist and founder of the WhoWhatWhy investigative project, russ baker new head and shoulders March 25, 2023. A seemingly stolen election in 1980 led to the US of today, where the richest one percent hold power over the rest of the population.

Recently, The New York Times published an article with a stunning new claim that seemingly verifies a long-alleged plot by Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign to prevent Jimmy Carter, below left, from winning reelection.

jimmy carter portrait The fact of the Times publishing the scoop was significant, since the paper has generally dismissed the so-called October Surprise theory, relying on a congressional investigation that I and many believe was a whitewash.

In fact, though I have come to believe there’s enough evidence to conclude that the Reagan campaign did carry out this outrageous and illegal operation, I also have doubts about the new material.

But my big beef is how the Times, following a familiar pattern, presents something in isolation as if completely unaware of, or unwilling to discuss, the much vaster criminality of which it is part. That larger framework is required for anyone trying to understand the political corruption and immorality that has long afflicted America, and the profound consequences still being felt 43 years later.

Carter Election Mystery

The article recounts the story of a former Texas politician, Ben Barne (shown at left in a 2019 photo), who says he accompanied his friend and business partner John Connally, a former Democratic Texas governor turned Republican (shown at right on a 1979 Time Magazine cover), on a trip to the Middle East in 1980. john connally time cover During the trip, Barnes says, they met a slew of Arab leaders. Barnes now says he suspects the real purpose of the trip was to help Reagan steal the election:

Mr. Barnes said he was certain the point of Mr. Connally’s trip was to get a message to the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election. “I’ll go to my grave believing that it was the purpose of the trip,” he said.

This is a new wrinkle on a topic that has confounded investigators and researchers for decades.

The background: 52 Americans were taken hostage in the 1979 Iranian revolution led by exiled Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. This was the long-festering blowback from the CIA-orchestrated 1953 Iranian coup d’état, which put the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, back into power. His puppet government spent two decades torturing and murdering Iranian dissenters. The US media’s nightly drumbeat of coverage about the hostages’ plight reminded audiences of Carter’s complete failure. It was such a hot topic that it led to the launching of the first new network news program in a decade, Nightline with Ted Koppel.

The Reagan campaign was panicked that Carter would succeed in negotiations to get the American hostages released prior to the election — and, some believe, they endeavored to block any deal. Although that is every bit as treasonous as it sounds, we now know that this is not the first time a Republican presidential candidate negotiated against the interests of America to enhance his career. Richard Nixon’s campaign worked aggressively to block Democratic peace negotiations to end the Vietnam War in 1968 for the same reason.

CIA Director William Casey, left, and Vice President George H.W. Bush, below right, President Ronald Reagan portraits published in the Michael Evans Portrait Project in 1985 from the Reagan Library

According to some accounts, William Casey, Reagan’s campaign manager and a future director of the CIA, met with Iran’s representatives in Madrid in July and August of 1980. Then, in October, according to these accounts, Casey was joined by George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s vice presidential candidate and a former director of the CIA, in a Paris meeting with the Iranians, where they nailed a deal to sell arms to Iran if Iran held the hostages until Reagan could beat Carter. Of course, it would have been most unusual for private citizens to meet with any foreign government, let alone one with whom the US was in a de facto war. Most striking, of course, is the purported treachery at the heart of the matter.

Much of the recent Times article is devoted to showing that the paper has an authentic, historic scoop about Carter’s presidency, at a time when the country stands vigil during the 98-year-old’s final days.

I’ll share what insights I can offer here, since I know Ben Barnes, the Times’s source — and since I have some experience investigating the issue years ago. My main objective, though, is to do what I always do: provide missing context.

Part of a Pattern

All the focus on the Reagan campaign and its alleged connivance to gain power misses this point: In many fundamental ways, Reagan was a figurehead president, while George H.W. Bush, the man he beat in a heated nomination battle, was deeply involved with seismic US policy operations, highly sensitive and often illegal covert activities, including, it appears, blocking the hostages’ release.

Connally himself is a fascinating character deserving of more attention, for more reasons than I can give here — including his suppressed assertion that during the Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963, he and John F. Kennedy, riding together, one in front of the other, were hit by volleys from different shooters.

***

It is impossible to overstate the importance of the “October Surprise” and how things would be different today if Jimmy Carter had been able to get the hostages released.

Many believe the president’s popularity would have surged, and that Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush would never have been elected president and vice president.

Imagine how things might look today if Reagan — the author of today’s “rule by the rich” government — had not unseated Carter.

Among other things, we never would have had Reaganomics, or the entire deregulation movement and major tax cuts for the wealthy. Almost certainly, George H.W. Bush would never have become president, nor his son, George W. Bush. We likely would have had no Gulf War in the ’90s and no Iraq War in 2002 — and, based on various calculations, possibly no 9/11.

For various reasons related to changes in media ownership laws, we probably would have had no Fox News. Environmental policy would have been completely different, and early warnings about climate change would almost certainly have been acted on, at least in part.

We would have a completely different Supreme Court, and therefore a completely different country. Campaign contributions from the rich would have been restricted, changing the face of Congress. Though Buckley v. Valeo had been decided in the 1970s, giving corporate money the status of speech, at least we’d have had no Citizens United decision to weaponize that ruling.

Finally, if “rule by the rich” economics had not been instituted, it’s doubtful that anyone like Donald Trump could have ever entered the White House except as an outré guest.

Instead, the hostages were imprisoned longer, while Reagan and Bush covertly orchestrated Carter’s and Walter Mondale’s departure from the White House.

Of course, if the secret agenda of the Barnes-Connally trip was indeed to conspire with the Iranians to prolong the captivity of the hostages until after the election, this gambit would have been considered treason, a hanging offense.

For decades, people more knowledgeable than I have thought that such a deal took place. Barnes admits that he does not actually know, but a dispositive claim is that on their return, he and Connally met at a Dallas airport lounge with Reagan’s campaign chairman, Casey, who debriefed them on the trip.

Were Reagan’s people worried about losing? Of course. Was the possibility of a hostage release before the election real? Of course. The only question is, just how ruthless, amoral, and ultimately un-American would Reagan’s team show itself to be in their pursuit of electoral victory?

In my research about George H.W. Bush for Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, I found plenty of evidence of this extraordinary level of anti-American, self-serving criminality – which the Times and other establishment media have gone to great lengths to avoid exploring.

The late journalist Robert Parry, who did extensive research on the October Surprise, received an anonymous tip and found documents in a closet on Capitol Hill. One, by future National Security Advisor Richard Allen, showed discussion about Carter and the hostages, and mentioned Connally and Bush specifically. (Parry’s son wrote about it in a recent article.) The excerpt from Allen’s notes, cited by Nat Parry, reads:

Geo Bush — JBC [Connally] — already made deal. Israelis delivered last wk spare pts. via Amsterdam. Hostages out this wk. Moderate Arabs upset. French have given spares to Iraq and know of JC [Carter] deal w/Iran. JBC [Connally] unsure what we should do. RVA [Allen] to act if true or not.

As mentioned previously, Bush is alleged to have traveled to Paris with Casey to seal an Iranian deal. Whether he took that trip or not, the Allen notes show that he was intimately involved with the issue.

Yet for some reason, the media establishment has seemed unable to really focus on Bush himself or his true role and actual imprint on American history. Conventional popular histories, biographies, documentaries, and “assessments” — though they contain some critical material — are largely admiring in retrospect.

It is all myth.

As my book research showed, when Bush was named CIA director, he was not the intelligence “outsider” presented to the public by the Times and other media. In fact Bush, son of CIA Director Allen Dulles’s close friend and collaborator Prescott Bush, had been inducted into covert CIA work decades earlier, shortly after graduating from Yale, a nursing ground for future CIA employees. While operating undercover as an “oilman,” documents show George H.W. Bush personally involved with a host of stunning and illegal covert schemes (including assassination and domestic intrigue), many still publicly unrecognized today.

By the time Bush became Gerald Ford’s CIA director, a number of disturbing revelations began to emerge in Senate hearings about the extent of the CIA’s unaccountability as well as their illegal and immoral operations worldwide. No one, not even the president, had control of this vast shadow enterprise, a concern voiced by several presidents including Truman, Eisenhower, and especially Kennedy. That Bush — known at the time as a minor, uncredentialed, and undistinguished politician — was chosen to oversee the agency at that very sensitive moment is highly significant and should by now be front and center for understanding that pivotal moment for national scrutiny.

Just as Kennedy kicked a hornet’s nest by firing Dulles in 1961, so too did Carter when, upon defeating Ford, he gave Bush the boot. Although Bush personally lobbied Carter to keep him on, Carter refused. Bush then turned to running for the presidency himself, only to be frustrated by the popularity of media idol Ronald Reagan.

But after Bush managed to convince the Reagan team to bring him on as the vice presidential candidate, he was able to utilize his own vast network of current and former CIA people. If the hostage deal with Iran in fact took place, it would be but one of many stunning criminal acts described in my book and ignored to this day by the establishment media — and even by many in the so-called “alternative media.” (A bit more on that below.)
Ben Barnes Tells a Carter Story

Enter the Times and its Ben Barnes confession. The story centers around the claims of the 85-year-old former Texas politician that he realized in retrospect he might have been part of the larger treasonous effort to foil Carter’s reelection.

I am not surprised that Barnes spoke with the Times and provided them with this story. The “paper of record” is still the most prominent news outlet in the world. The article doesn’t say how its DC-based reporter got the story. Did Barnes, who is not averse to attention and long had a DC lobbying practice, approach the Times? That’s unclear, though the reporter does mention “three paragraphs about Mr. Barnes’s recollections in a 2015 biography of Mr. Reagan,” which lends credence to Barnes’s having told others about the trip before now.

In considering his late-in-life confession, I should note I have known Ben Barnes for years and we’ve spoken on various occasions. He’s a likable guy, though I do have to point out that the Texans I know, and who have also worked with him, describe him, some affectionately, in Texas parlance as a “rogue” and a “first class bullshitter.” Indeed the Times failed to mention that Barnes’s political career ended because of a stock-fraud scandal. Barnes and Connally also did business with some dubious characters.

It’s only fair and good journalism to include that. Instead, the Times wrote,

Mr. Barnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory.

As the Times did note, Barnes helped George W. Bush avoid the draft by getting him bootstrapped into a coveted out-of-harm’s-way slot with the Texas Air National Guard, though this was presented not as a failing but as evidence of his “influence.”

In general, the attempts to verify the alleged Reagan-Bush plot have been stymied by disinformation, and failed House and Senate panels (as has been common with national security investigations over the years) that never get to the bottom of anything.

I — along with colleagues of mine at the alternative paper The Village Voice, including Frank Snepp and Doug Vaughan — spent a lot of time investigating the so-called hostage deal and found that several individuals who claimed to have flown Casey and Bush to Paris and Madrid for meetings with the Iranians (or to have been present themselves) were fabricating their stories.

These individuals could either have been pure con men seeking fame or they could themselves have been part of a deliberate effort to derail inquiries into the deal itself. Hence, we should not let their dissembling influence the investigation of this alleged quid pro quo.

As for Barnes, he has shown in the past that it is best not to take everything he says literally. One example: He once showed up, uninvited, to an Austin party to celebrate my book and raise funds for WhoWhatWhy. From the back of the room, he pronounced the work to be of vital national significance, urged everyone to donate, and announced that he would personally be writing a big check. When, predictably, he never did, one longtime Barnes associate chortled, “That’s Ben for you!”
Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on February 11, 1981. Photo credit: Reagan Library / Consortium News

I still like Barnes and in the ensuing years we have continued to occasionally communicate. I only recount this incident because what he says does need to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.

He claims he came forward now because Carter, at 98 and in hospice care, deserves to know the truth. I’d like to believe that was his primary motivation. And, like the source mentioned in the Times article, I’ve never known Barnes to outright lie, in spite of his penchant for Texas-style embellishment.
Times Misses Big Flaws in the Story

One serious flaw in the story is timing. The Times quotes Barnes’s basis for concluding that the trip was not purely on Connally’s own initiative:

“It wasn’t freelancing because Casey was so interested in hearing as soon as we got back to the United States.” Mr. Casey, he added, wanted to know whether “they were going to hold the hostages.”

But that doesn’t make sense.

The Mideast trip lasted 24 days, and the duo returned on August 11, though their meeting at the airport lounge with Casey wasn’t until September 10. The Times reporter does not draw attention to that nearly one-month gap between their return and the Casey meeting, and someone reading quickly, and particularly reading Barnes’s quote on the matter, might conclude that Casey rushed to meet them upon their return to hear their urgent information.

If it were so urgent, why would Casey wait an entire month? It sounds more like they went on a trip, a month passed, and then Casey came to Dallas (either to see them or because he was passing through the airport) and they came out to speak with him.

Another problem is that Barnes cannot say for sure that the topic was the hostages. But why wouldn’t he know? He was right there with Connally and Casey. Meanwhile, Casey was alleged to already be in Europe for direct negotiations with the Iranians by July, so it is not clear what the purported Connally-Barnes mission would have accomplished — besides building covert support for the swap among Arab regimes that were not even natural allies of Iran.

Moreover, there is the significant cognitive dissonance in his statement that he has no proof that Connally’s intent was to affect the election — and then, in another breath, claiming he knows this for sure:

“Mr. Connally said, ‘Look, Ronald Reagan’s going to be elected president and you need to get the word to Iran that they’re going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter,’” Mr. Barnes recalled. “He said, ‘It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over.’ And boy, I tell you, I’m sitting there and I heard it and so now it dawns on me, I realize why we’re there.”

I also find rather strange Barnes’s contention that he went on this long trip to the Middle East at Connally’s request with no idea of the purpose of the trip. It’s been my impression that Barnes always knew the purpose of what he did, and, a fan of luxury and comfort, he would never take a three-week trip around the Middle East without a very good reason.

The Times does immunize itself by quoting someone who claims no knowledge of the purpose of the trip. The fact that the person quoted is Connally’s son introduces for the Times the face-saving appearance of doubt:

John B. Connally III, the former governor’s eldest son, said in an interview on Friday that he remembered his father taking the Middle East trip but never heard about any message to Iran. While he did not join the trip, the younger Mr. Connally said he accompanied his father to a meeting with Mr. Reagan to discuss it without Mr. Barnes and the conversation centered on the Arab-Israeli conflict and other issues the next president would confront.

“No mention was made in any meeting I was in about any message being sent to the Iranians,” said Mr. Connally. “It doesn’t sound like my dad.” He added: “I can’t challenge Ben’s memory about it, but it’s not consistent with my memory of the trip.”

Nonetheless, if emails I’ve received are any indication, people reading the article generally conclude that the Times nailed a huge historic scoop.

I don’t blame Peter Baker, who seems to be an excellent journalist. It’s not his fault that he ended up with such a hopelessly complex matter. More context was needed, as this sort of byzantine story should be handled by journalists with decades of experience in complicated, subterranean matters and an investigative mindset. Baker’s expertise, in contrast, comes principally from covering the White House and Washington on a day-to-day basis.

And, in fact, there’s still reason to believe, with or without the Times piece and Barnes’s contradictory recollections, that a deal to steal the election did take place.

For that, the Times cites the work of Parry, who, years later, discovered a memo from a lawyer for President George H.W. Bush about the existence of “a cable from the Madrid embassy indicating that Bill Casey was in town, for purposes unknown.” It would be an anomaly for anyone with Casey’s CV to go anywhere for “purposes unknown,” especially during this period.

Will Media Ever Confront Reality?

My aim here is to highlight the poor job major media have done to investigate and expose the true dynamics of power and the actual state of democracy in this country. There’s been too much self-interested caution, and too little support for those who take the time and the risks required for meaningful excavation.

I witnessed the cowardice of the establishment personally. Everyone, from my publisher, the well-respected Bloomsbury, to friends throughout the media, were floored, as I was, by what I discovered missing from prior Bush histories (go here to learn more). Everyone expected the revelations in my book — including previously undiscovered Bush involvement in other presidential oustings, from Kennedy to Nixon — to receive broad attention. Instead, initial invitations by media bookers were quickly all reversed by their superiors.

As for the Times, its lead political book reviewer expressed enthusiasm to my publisher and asked if she could be the first to publish a review. They agreed. And waited. And waited. Not a word ever appeared. (For more on the de facto media blockade that greeted the book, coupled with cheap ad hominem attacks — Family of Secrets nonetheless has become a bestseller — see this.)

Meanwhile, as we’re praising the Times for publishing Barnes’s claims, we would do well to not forget the propagandist role that paper played in launching two wars initiated by two Presidents Bush.

Moreover, the machinations behind the 1980 election evolved from other treasonous acts and spawned still more abuses and constitutional crises that mean little to today’s younger generation and grow foggier for older folks. These include Iran-Contra and the BCCI scandal and the collapse of the savings and loans banks, all of which were connected. And all of which are prequel to our current mess.

What began with an attempt to steal an election was antecedent to the fragmented United States of today, where a small group of rich One Percenters hold vastly disproportionate power, while the rest of the population is estranged, distracted, demoralized, defunded, and set against each other.

How can we expect to solve such systemic problems when the media simply won’t show us factual reality? Won’t tell us what we are actually seeing — and why it is happening?

From 1980 to today, there’s been a war going on between the One Percenters who want it all and the rest of us who just want to live dignified lives in peace and safety. Once we see that this conflict lies at the root of these malignant schemes, everything becomes easier to understand. If we have the courage and tenacity to tell the full story, we can confront the players, and begin to reform the entire system itself.

Azerbaijan. Belarus, whose leader Alexander Lukashenko allows Russian forces to use the country as a staging post for the war, remains a firm ally.

New York Times, A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election, Peter Baker, right, March 18, 2023. It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of the president of the United States.

It was 1980 and Jimmy Carter, below left, was in the White House, bedeviled by a hostage crisis in Iran that had paralyzed his presidency and hampered jimmy carter portrait his effort to win a second term. Mr. Carter’s best chance for victory was to free the 52 Americans held captive before Election Day. That was something that Mr. Barnes said his mentor was determined to prevent.

His mentor was John B. Connally Jr., a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally, shown at right on a 1979 Time Magazine cover, resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make john connally time cover his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

william casey o Then shortly after returning home, Mr. Barnes said, Mr. Connally reported to William J. Casey, left, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency, briefing him about the trip in an airport lounge.

Mr. Carter’s camp has long suspected that Mr. Casey or someone else in Mr. Reagan’s orbit sought to secretly torpedo efforts to liberate the hostages before the election, and books have been written on what came to be called the October surprise. But congressional investigations debunked previous theories of what happened.

Mr. Connally did not figure in those investigations. His involvement, as described by Mr. Barnes, adds a new understanding to what may have happened in that hard-fought, pivotal election year. With Mr. Carter now 98 and in hospice care, Mr. Barnes said he felt compelled to come forward to correct the record.

“History needs to know that this happened,” Mr. Barnes, who turns 85 next month, said in one of several interviews, his first with a news organization about the episode. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”

On Wednesday evening, October 30, 2019, Speaker Nancy Pelosi received the 2019 LBJ Liberty & Justice for All award from the LBJ Foundation. The event was held at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington D.C...LBJ Foundation photo by Amanda Rhoades. Mr. Barnes (shown at left in 2019 photo) is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory. He was once one of the most prominent figures in Texas, the youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and later lieutenant governor. He was such an influential figure that he helped a young George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard rather than be exposed to the draft and sent to Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that Mr. Barnes would become president someday.

See also the related column below, excerpted in our Top Global News section below:

Emptywheel, Analysis: KT McFarland Likened Trump's Transition Interventions to the Iran October Surprise, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, Ph.D., right, an author and legal researcher who publishes the Emptywheel blog of in-depth legal analysis)

March 23

Ben Barnes, left, with Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, in Austin, Tex., on Aug. 29, 1970 (Associated Press photo by Ted Powers).

Ben Barnes, left, with Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, in Austin, Tex., on Aug. 29, 1970 (Associated Press photo by Ted Powers). The New York Times reported this week that Barnes revealed to the newspaper that he had played a role, largely unwittingly, in helping Republicans delay the release by Iran of U.S. hostages in 1980 in order to hurt President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and help the election campaign of Republican Ronald Reagan. President Carter is shown below in a 1980 Associated Press photo telling the American public that a rescue attempt he had authorized had failed, with resulting in U.S. military rescuers' deaths.

Jimmy Carter 1980

New York Times, Former Iran Hostages Are Divided on Jimmy Carter and a Sabotage Claim, Michael Levenson, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). A report about a covert effort to delay their release until after the 1980 presidential election drew anger, resignation and disbelief from the survivors of the crisis.

They are the last survivors of an international crisis that hobbled Jimmy Carter’s presidency and may have cost him re-election. Many are now in their 80s.

With the former president gravely ill in hospice care, some of the 52 Americans who were held hostage in Iran for 444 days are looking back on Mr. Carter’s legacy with a mix of frustration, sadness and gratitude.

Many feel neglected by the government, which has paid them only about a quarter of the $4.4 million that they were each promised by Congress in 2015, after decades of lobbying for compensation, said their lawyer, V. Thomas Lankford. Some endured physical and mental abuse, including mock executions, during the hostage crisis. About half have died.

Last week, their ordeal was thrust back into the news with the account of a covert effort to delay their release until after the 1980 presidential election in a bid to help the campaign of Mr. Carter’s Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan.

A former Texas politician, Ben Barnes, told The New York Times that he had toured the Middle East that summer with John B. Connally Jr., the former Texas governor, who told regional leaders that Mr. Reagan would win and give the Iranians a “better deal.” Mr. Connally, a former Democrat turned Republican, was angling for a cabinet position.

Mr. Barnes, 84, said that he was speaking out now because “history needs to know that this happened.”

He told The Times that he did not know if the message that Mr. Connally gave to Middle Eastern leaders ever reached the Iranians, or whether it influenced them. Mr. Connally died in 1993. Nor was it clear if Mr. Reagan knew about the trip. Mr. Barnes said Mr. Connally had briefed William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in an airport lounge after the trip.

The account stirred anger among some of the former hostages, while others dismissed his story of election sabotage as not credible. They are a diverse group that includes former diplomats, retired military officers and academics, and members of both major political parties.

“It’s nice that Mr. Barnes is trying to soothe his soul during the last years of his life,” said Barry Rosen, 79, who was press attaché at the embassy in Tehran when it was overrun on Nov. 4, 1979. “But for the hostages who went through hell, he has not helped us at all. He has made it just as bad or worse.”

Mr. Rosen, who lives in New York, said that Mr. Barnes should have come forward 43 years ago, given the decades of speculation about political interference.

“It’s the definition of treason,” he said, “knowing that there was a possibility that the Carter administration might have been able to negotiate us out of Iran earlier.”

A Four-Decade Secret:

But Kevin Hermening, a certified financial planner in Mosinee, Wis., who was a Marine Corps sergeant guarding the embassy, said that he did not believe Mr. Barnes’s account and that, even if it were true, the effort would not have influenced his captors.

“The Iranians were very clear that they were not going to release us while President Carter was in office,” said Mr. Hermening, 63. “He was despised by the mullahs and those people who followed the Ayatollah.”

The Barnes account cast a new light on these long-ago events, troubling David M. Roeder, a retired colonel who was the deputy Air Force attaché at the embassy. Mr. Roeder said that he had repeatedly told his captors that if Mr. Reagan won, they would be dealing with a “much tougher person.”

“I have come to the conclusion — perhaps because I want to — that hopefully President Reagan was unaware that this was going on,” said Mr. Roeder, 83, of Pinehurst, N.C. But, he added, “I gained a great deal more respect for President Carter because I’ve seen what he went through with us in captivity.”

Greg Palast Investigates, Commentary: Reagan’s Treason, Two Bushes and the $23 Million Payoff, Greg Palast, March 23-24, 2023. This week, a Texas pol, Ben Barnes, confessed that he was personally involved—and therefore an eyewitness to–high treason: The Ronald Reagan campaign’s successful secret deal with the Iranian government to hold 52 Americans hostages so that Reagan could defeat Jimmy Carter.

ronald reagan 1981 w Reagan’s skanky deal worked. In 1980, Carter’s failure to bring home the hostages destroyed his chance of reelection. Reagan, right, ultimately would repay the favor from Iran’s murder-crats with weapons and even, for the Ayatollah Khomeini, a birthday cake from Reagan advisor Oliver North.

The question is, why now? Why did Barnes suddenly blow the whistle on this crime—and a crime it is—four decades late? His cute excuse, reported without question by the New York Times, is that, “History needs to know that this happened.”

Wrong. “History” doesn’t need to know—American voters needed to know about Reagan’s treason before the 1980 election.

So, then, why did Barnes squirrel away the truth for decades? Follow the money.

It’s a money trail that leads to two Bushes who would not have become president if not for Barnes’ silence about Iran—and Barnes’ omertà about another creepy Bush scheme.

george w bush air force HR In 1999, for The Guardian, I discovered that Barnes, in his previous role as Lt. Governor of Texas, used his political juice to get Congressman George Bush Sr.’s son, “Dubya” into the Texas Air Guard—over literally thousands of far-more-qualified applicants. (Little Bush scored 25 out of 100 on the test, just one point above “too dumb to fly.”)

And so, Dubya, shown at left, dodged the draft and Vietnam.

Barnes hid the truth despite pleas from Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who, in 1994, lost a squeaker of an election too.

In Austin, Texas, I received unshakeable evidence that Barnes was the fixer who got Congressman Bush’s son out of the Vietnam draft. (This, while Bush Sr. was voting to send other men’s sons to Vietnam.)

What did Barnes get for his burial of Reagan’s deal with Iran and Bush Jr.’s draft dodging? Did $23 million do it?

In 1999, I was investigating a company, GTech, which ran both the British and Texas lotteries. Texas had disqualified GTech from operating the state lottery based on strong evidence of corruption. But oddly, the new Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, fired the lottery director who banned GTEch. Then Bush’s new lottery commissioner gave GTech back its multi-billion-dollar contract, no bidding.

Notably, Bush’s firing of the state’s lottery director came two days after a meeting with GTech’s lobbyist—Ben Barnes.

Barnes’ fees from GTech? $23 million.

I wasn’t in the Bush-Barnes little tête-à-tête: the info came from a confidential memo from the lottery director that was well buried inside Justice Department files.

In a civil suit, Barnes supposedly denied any quid pro quo with Gov. Bush. Maybe. A nice payment from GTech to the wronged lottery director sealed Barnes’ testimony from the public.

Maybe Bush met with Barnes just to reminisce. But if Barnes had the Bush family’s entire political fortune in his pocket, did he really need to remind Dubya of the consequences if the Governor did not take care of Barnes’ client?
Secretly conspiring with a foreign power to keep Americans imprisoned, secretly negotiating with and providing weapons to a foreign enemy is the definition of treason—and so would a cover-up for cash.
This was another example, I wrote in The Guardian, how the Bushes turned America into “the best democracy money can buy.”
I then wrote a book of that title and made a film, Bush Family Fortunes, detailing the Bush Family crime-wave, for BBC Television.

Today, you can download that documentary, Bush Family Fortunes, free of charge. (If you want to throw in a tax-deductible donation, hey, we won’t say ‘no.’ Our nvestigations continue: The cast of characters has changed, but not the crimes.)

And a word about the creeps, cowards and conmen who call themselves “journalists.” Let’s start with a trivia question: Who is Dan Rather? He’s a former TV star and one-time reporter who took my story of Bush’s draft dodging, stuck it on 60 Minutes and, in violation of any sense of ethics and decency, exposed a whistleblower, Texas Air Guard Col. Bill Burkett, a man of inestimable courage and integrity.

Rather’s exposure ruined Burkett. No Texan would sell him feed. His cattle were dying, so he lost his ranch.

Dan Rather was fired by CBS for getting the network in hot water with the Bush White House. Then, by his own admission, Rather agreed to backtrack on the story of Bush the draft dodger in return for a promise of a return to the CBS airwaves. CBS screwed Rather—but that often happens to feckless recreants.

Neither I nor the BBC nor The Guardian retracted a single word of our story of Dubya the Draft Dodger nor the tale of the $23 million questionable payment.

There are zeroes—and there are heroes. The story of Reagan and his “October Surprise” was first busted open by Robert Parry – who also uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal. Instead of getting a Pulitzer, Parry’s career was destroyed. For uncovering too many uncomfortable truths, he was bounced from the Associated Press, Newsweek, Bloomberg, and The Nation.

Parry died in 2018, in journalistic exile.

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and "Billionaires & Ballot Bandits," out as major motion non-fiction movie: "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election," available on Amazon and Amazon Prime.

March 19

Trump-supporting former law school dean John Eastman, left, helps Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani inflame pro-Trump protesters in front the White House before the insurrection riot at the U.S. Capitol to prevent the presidential election certification of Joe Biden's presidency on Jan. 6, 2021 (Los Angeles Times

In a now-deleted Facebook post, New Mexico county official Couy Griffin, above, predicted of Inauguration Day at the Capitol, “blood will run out of the building.”

Washington Post, The Jan. 6 investigation is the biggest in U.S. history. It’s only half done, Spencer S. Hsu, Devlin Barrett and Tom Jackman, March 19, 2023 (print ed.). To date, roughly 1,000 people have been charged for their alleged roles in the events of that day. The total could grow above 2,000, and a federal courthouse strains to handle what may be years more of trials.

The city’s federal court system is bracing for many years more of trials stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, with new charges possible against as many as 1,000 more people.

In recent months, law enforcement and judicial authorities have engaged in discussions to manage the huge volume of Jan. 6 cases without overwhelming the courthouse where pleas and trials are held, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations.

“It’s an enormous, enormous case and, by almost any measure, the largest case the Justice Department has ever had,” said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at George Washington University. “Big criminal investigations that are far less complicated than this often take several years.”

Eliason said that while the riot cases may be about halfway over, there are indications some of the other branches of the investigation — like the false electors scheme or efforts to use Justice Department officials to undo the election results — appear to be further along, because the witnesses now being subpoenaed include some of the most thorny legal matters and the people closest to former president Donald Trump. Those are generally indicators that an investigation is nearing the end of the fact-gathering phase, he said.

“There are a lot of court fights over privilege, and those take time, and you can’t just plow past them and not try to get critical evidence,” Eliason said.

The Attack: The Washington Post's investigation of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol and its aftermath

Prosecutors are hopeful many will be incentivized to plead to help manage the crush of cases, which already have strained the court in the nation’s capital. A Washington Post analysis of the cases so far shows defendants who seek a trial rather than plead guilty end up getting about a year of prison time added to their sentences.

March 18

World Crisis Radio, Weekly Strategic Overview: Indictment watch for Trump! Webster G. Tarpley, right, author, historian, activist, March 18, 2023 (122:53 min.). On eve of bungler Xi’s visit to Moscow, Putin hit by war crimes indictment and arrest warrant from International Criminal Court in The Hague!

Charges include kidnapping and deporting children from Ukraine into Russia; Vlad’s co-defendant will be Maria Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights, also implicated in child deportations;

New York City prepares for possible reactions to charges against Trump by DA Bragg; Citing likely crime/fraud exception, DC chief judge opens door to grand jury testimony by Don’s lawyers;

Rolling back deregulation is key to ending ravages of globalization; for US banks, this means ending regulatory capture, banning crypto and derivatives, and instituting a 1% Wall Street sales tax to reduce speculation and promote tangible physical production, including the new arsenal of democracy;

Vast mass of Sargasso seaweed floats toward Florida, just in time to stymie the deSantis election campaign;

A dangerous example of semantic infiltration: helping right-wing extremists, reactionaries, and fascists camouflage themselves as ”conservatives!”

Palmer Report, Opinion and Analysis: Manhattan DA signals to law enforcement that Donald Trump is being indicted. Here comes the serious part, Bill Palmer, right, March 18, 2023. Major news outlets are now reporting that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has met with multiple law enforcement agencies to put the logistics in place for Donald Trump’s criminal indictment. In turn, Trump’s attorneys are putting it out there publicly that Trump intends to surrender himself for processing and arraignment, just like any other criminal defendant.

In other words, this really is happening. We’ve known all along that this was going to end up happening. The pieces have been incrementally falling into place for a very long time in a way that continuously made clear this was going to happen. And recently the pieces have been rapidly falling into place in a way that made clear this was going to happen soon. But now it is happening.

We should take a moment to remind ourselves that this isn’t some movie script. In the movies, story arcs tend to play out in the most dramatically constructed ways possible, complete with a climax that achieves a dramatic peak. In the real world, dramatic arcs are rarely so linearly constructed.

If this were a movie, Donald Trump would refuse to surrender himself, perhaps barricade himself inside his mansion, maybe even embark on a plot to flee the country which would end with the District Attorney chasing him through the airport and catching the cabin door just before it closes. It would happen that way in the movie because it would make for the most dramatic and suspenseful climax, whether it made sense for those characters to be making those choices or not.

In the real world, things tend to be less dramatic and more pragmatic. Even in Trump’s increasingly frantic state, he surely understands that trying to flee the country would result in a harsh life of poverty in a foreign land at best, and (if he gets caught in the act) pretrial incarceration until his trial.

For that matter Trump likely understands that if he forces law enforcement to come and forcibly drag him out of his home – or for that matter if there’s even so much as a whiff in the media about the possibility of him refusing to surrender when ordered – the judge assigned to his criminal case might be less than inclined to grant bail. And Trump knows that right now, the best case scenario he can hope for in life is to be out on bail.

Not that bail is going to be a good situation for him, mind you. Yes, the judge assigned to the case is going to look at his lack of a criminal record, the nonviolent nature of the charges, and the lack of evidence to suggest he’s an international flight risk (Twitter conspiracy theories aside), and likely grant him bail. But that bail may come with conditions. He may be forced to get all of his interstate travel approved. And at some point the judge in the case will surely end up hitting Trump with a gag order preventing him from publicly attacking the District Attorney or even so much as publicly discussing the case against him at all. If Trump violates that gag order, the judge can and will haul him in and assign more harsh bail restrictions or ultimately revoke it entirely.

In other words, the criminal justice system is about to treat Donald Trump like it treats any other criminal defendant who’s under felony indictment and awaiting trial. The judge in the case will own Trump, so to speak. The criminal justice system won’t view Trump as a former President or as a candidate in a future election. It’ll view him as a criminal defendant. The usual rules will apply.

It’s important to keep in mind that Donald Trump, seventy-six years old and having clearly lost a step or three in the cognitive department, is a newcomer to the criminal justice system. In spite of more than half a century of committing crimes, Trump has never been criminally indicted before. Not at the federal, state, or local level. The secret that the wealthy and powerful use for keeping themselves out of prison is that they pull strings behind the scenes to quietly keep themselves from getting indicted in the first place.

But when the wealthy and powerful do occasionally get indicted, their options suddenly become rather limited. They can afford better lawyers than most criminal defendants can. But if the case against you is overwhelming then even the best lawyers won’t dramatically improve your odds of acquittal. And in spite of his supposed wealth, Trump has been employing some of the most inept lawyers imaginable. So he doesn’t even appear to have that working for him.

Let’s be real: no matter how anyone anywhere tries to spin Donald Trump’s criminal indictment, and no matter what anyone’s dramatic expectations might be heading into this, the reality is still that neither side in these things ever has a magic wand. Prosecutors in various jurisdictions didn’t have a magic wand for producing viable indictments any sooner than this. And accordingly, now that prosecutors have taken the time to painstakingly build what appear to be overwhelmingly strong indictments against Trump, he does not have a magic wand for shaking off indictment.

This is not the political arena, where Trump can just bully his way through whatever conflict he’s facing. Nor is this an arena in which being dramatic or entertaining will in any way help you. This is the criminal justice system. It’s an arena that Trump has spent a lifetime working feverishly to avoid having to participate in, because as a career criminal, he’s known better than anyone that the criminal justice system is not an arena that anyone wants to be in or can prosper in. Yet now he’s being forced to enter that arena anyway.

That’s why Donald Trump is already indicating that when he’s indicted he intends to just walk in through the front door and surrender himself for arrest and processing (and yes he’ll be considered “under arrest” whether there are handcuffs involved or not). It’s not the kind of play that Trump wants to make. It’s just that going along with the criminal justice system’s demands, begging for bail, and hoping to find some narrow angle for getting acquitted at trial is the only play he has left. Surrendering voluntarily is not a good move for Trump. It’s just the least bad move. And no matter how he plays it, the most likely outcome is that he spends the final years of his life behind bars.

March 18

Azerbaijan. Belarus, whose leader Alexander Lukashenko allows Russian forces to use the country as a staging post for the war, remains a firm ally.

See also the related column below, excerpted in our Top Global News section below:

Emptywheel, Analysis: KT McFarland Likened Trump's Transition Interventions to the Iran October Surprise, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, Ph.D., right, an author and legal researcher who publishes the Emptywheel blog of in-depth legal analysis)

March 11

World Crisis Radio, Strategic Commentary: Trump invited to testify before Manhattan grand jury as indictment in Stormy payoff case looms! Webster G. Tarpley, right, author, historian, activist, March 11, 2023 (120 mins.). Pillars of MAGA-GOP power splntering: not just four probes of Don, but also crises of CPAC and fundraising, Fox News, NRA, Southern Baptists, Twitter, Congressional feuding, factions, and more;

Even as he starts role as official despot, Xi is dogged by his catalogue of failures: GDP way below fake official 5% claim, with youth unemployment elevated; population shrinking and aging, raising fears of post-takeoff Thermidor against Communists; Bungling covid policy a hecatomb followed by landmark mass protests;

Loss of beachheads in Europe due to Xi’s foolish embrace of Kremlin; Gulf antics are cold comfort! Result is Xi’s demagogic rocket-rattling vs US;

Fall of Putin is key to ouster of many demagogues across world who have endorsed him;

Alt-lefts increasingly act as scribes and stenographers for predatory oligarchs, from Xi & Putin to Don: they ignore Trump White House’s attempt to silence Chrissy Teigen over choice comments vs Don because it’s not a Musk-approved theme!

Media hit new nadir as cynics and trimmers!

March 10

Methane gas leaking from the Nord Stream gas pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm, Denmark. Photo credit: Danish military.

Going Deep with Russ Baker: Nord Stream Bombing: The Plot Thickens… and Thickens; Norwegian journalist shares his perspective, Russ Baker, right, March 10-11, russ baker new head and shoulders 2023. In last week’s column, I raised questions about those claiming to absolutely know that the US government was behind the bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

People cite that claim as a basis for creating a kind of complicated equivalency between Russia and the US, which is then used to argue for not helping the Ukrainians defend themselves from Russia’s furious assault.

More reasons to question that certitude have emerged since. Here are a few news items of note, and below that, I’ll reprint an email I got from a Norwegian journalist regarding Seymour Hersh’s assertion that the US and Norway worked together to bomb the pipeline.

March 9

Methane gas leaking from the Nord Stream gas pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm, Denmark. Photo credit: Danish military.

Politico Pro, Who blew up Nord Stream? Charlie Cooper, March 9, 2023 (print ed.). There are lots of theories. They’re all full of holes. Nearly six months on from the subsea gas pipeline explosions, which sent geopolitical shockwaves around the world in September, there is still no conclusive answer to the question of who blew up Nord Stream.

Some were quick to place the blame squarely at Russia’s door — citing its record of hybrid warfare and a possible motive of intimidation, in the midst of a bitter economic war with Europe over gas supply.

But half a year has passed without any firm evidence for this — or any other explanation — being produced by the ongoing investigations of authorities in three European countries.

Since the day of the attack, four states — Russia, the U.S., Ukraine and the U.K. — have been publicly blamed for the explosions, with varying degrees of evidence.

Still, some things are known for sure.

As was widely assumed within hours of the blast, the explosions were an act of deliberate sabotage. One of the three investigations, led by Sweden’s Prosecution Authority, confirmed in November that residues of explosives and several “foreign objects” were found at the “crime scene” on the seabed, around 100 meters below the surface of the Baltic Sea, close to the Danish Island of Bornholm.

Now two new media reports — one from the New York Times, the other a joint investigation by German public broadcasters ARD and SWR, plus newspaper Die Zeit — raised the possibility that a pro-Ukrainian group — though not necessarily state-backed — may have been responsible. On Wednesday, the German Prosecutor’s Office confirmed it had searched a ship in January suspected of transporting explosives used in the sabotage, but was still investigating the seized objects, the identities of the perpetrators and their possible motives.

In the information vacuum since September, various theories have surfaced as to the culprit and their motive:

Theory 1: Putin, the energy bully
Theory 2: The Brits did it
Theory 3: U.S. black ops
Theory 4: The mystery boatmen

The latest clues — following reports on Tuesday from the New York Times and German media — center on a boat, six people with forged passports and the tiny Danish island of Christiansø. Both the New York Times and the German media reports suggested that intelligence is pointing to a link to a pro-Ukrainian group, although there is no evidence that any orders came from the Ukrainian government and the identities of the alleged perpetrators are also still unknown.

Podolyak, Zelenskyy's adviser, tweeted he was enjoying “collecting amusing conspiracy theories” about what happened to Nord Stream, but that Ukraine had “nothing to do” with it and had “no information about pro-Ukraine sabotage groups.”

Meanwhile, Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned against “jumping to conclusions” about the latest reports, adding that it was possible that there may have been a “false flag” operation to blame Ukraine.

The mystery continues.

March 5

seymour hersh 2009 institute of policy studies

Journalist Seymour Hersh, 2009. Photo credit: Institute for Policy Studies / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Going Deep with Russ Baker, Investigative Commentary:Nord Stream Explosion: Plenty of Gas, Not Much Light, Russ Baker, right, best-selling author, widely published media critic and founder of the investigative website and radio show WhoWhatWhy, March 4-5, 2023. Why does the Hersh story — which relies on a single inside source — have so few details of the sort that only an insider would know?

A small but vocal cohort keeps asking me, “Who do you think blew up the Nord Stream,” or more often, “Why don’t you admit the US blew up that pipeline?” One fan of hyperbole even wrote to say that certainly the US did it, and called it “the worst act of terror in history.”

I am well aware of the real possibility that the US was behind the September 26, 2022, explosion. The US has done worse in the past. And certainly, the Biden statement back in February 2022 — warning Russia of possible action to shut down the Nord Stream were it to invade Ukraine (see below) — provides powerful grist for the mill.

But what really bothers me are all the unwarranted assumptions in this case on the part of many: First, that the US is definitely responsible. Second, that this act is morally equivalent to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Third, that this is a reason to bar further US military aid to Ukraine.

The attack on the natural gas pipeline — which happened more than half a year after Russia invaded Ukraine — has receded from the news. But with growing GOP pressure to reduce or cut off funding for the defense of Ukraine, the issue will come up again, perhaps as a core piece of the overall debate.

And more people may be receptive to anything that justifies a reduction of funding, and just the general desire to “move on.” This is exactly what Putin, in my view, fervently hopes will happen, and really the only possible way he wins or even survives politically.

Who Done It?

As a journalist in the agnostic tradition, I believe in being open-minded on the fascinating issue of who done it, and on the equally intriguing question, how do we know?

The US is certainly capable of doing such a thing. However, I don’t know that it bombed the Nord Stream, and neither do those who are so certain it did.

Even Seymour Hersh, who reported that the US is responsible for the Nord Stream explosion, cannot know for sure, although he treats it as a certainty. He says the information is from “a single source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.”

That’s different from knowing. And as Hersh is well aware, news organizations rarely publish stories based on a single source because the risk of error is too high. Click link to read more.

Above is a high-resolution Daguerreotype portrait of President Zachary Taylor, a Southern-born pro-Union former general famed for leadership during at the Mexican-American War, shown at the White House during March 1849, in a portrait by Mathew Brady (Source: Library of Congress).

Salon, Historical Commentary: Did the South assassinate this president to preserve slavery? Forensic scientists say it's possible, Matthew Rozsa, March 5, 2023. Zachary Taylor died in 1850 of food poisoning. Some experts think the culprit was arsenic — here's why

Background: President Zachary Taylor (elected as a member of the Whig Party, had spent most of his career in the military, and it was obvious to the trio of Southern politicians as they confronted him. They were warning their fellow Whig that he needed to abandon his support for America's growing anti-slavery movement. The year was 1850: Taylor, in office for a mere sixteen months, staunchly opposed allowing slavery to spread into the new territories America had wrested from Mexico; and Taylor was equally adamant President Zachary Taylor that the pro-slavery Texas government, which lacked a valid claim to disputed land in eastern New Mexico, should not be allowed to use armed force to seize that territory.

Sensing his stubbornness on these issues, Reps. Charles Conrad, Humphrey Marshall and Robert Toombs informed Taylor that Texas and the South were not just opposed to his policies; they were violently opposed.

For several days thereafter, Southerners grumbled among themselves about impeaching Taylor — the Vice President, Millard Fillmore, disagreed with Taylor and shared their views right down the line — or even seceding from the Union and starting a Civil War. Yet three days later, the entire conversation had been rendered moot: Taylor had mysteriously taken gravely ill after eating cherries and iced milk during 4th of July celebrations. Five days after that, Taylor was dead, and within two months President Fillmore had given the South virtually everything it wanted in a legislative package known as the Compromise of 1850.

If Taylor's death sounds awfully suspicious (and politically convenient) to you, some good news: There are historians and scientists who agree with you. Doctors officially diagnosed Taylor with cholera morbus from eating too many cherries and drinking too much iced milk. His symptoms included severe stomach pains, sharp pains on the side of his chest, vomiting, diarrhea, fevers, sweating, thirst, chills and fatigue. These could very well have meant that he developed gastroenteritis, especially considering the ghastly sanitary conditions in 19th-century Washington D.C.

Yet as forensic scientists are quick to note, these symptoms are also synonymous with arsenic poisoning. Arsenic, a highly toxic element that resembles a metal but which is technically a metalloid, was an easily accessible poison in the mid-19th century; its poisonous properties were widely known.

For more than a century after Taylor's death — long after the 12th president had faded into obscurity — history buffs and forensic science experts alike wondered if there was any way to prove what had really happened to Taylor. One of those scholars was novelist Clara Rising, a former humanities professor who shared her views with Coroner Richard F. Greathouse of Jefferson County, Kentucky. That is where Taylor is buried, and in 1991 his body was exhumed so samples of hair, skin, nails and other tissues could be examined.

March 4

World Crisis Radio, At G-20 in New Delhi, Blinken tells Lavrov to end the attack on Ukraine, Webster G. Tarpley, right, author, historian and activist, March 4, 2023 (109:21 mins.). China’s dishonest peace ploy would freeze and expand Russian invasion force, stop NATO military aid, roll back sanctions unless approved by UNSC, and recognize Moscow’s rule of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Crimea; Rump Ukraine east of Dneiper to be de-militarized; Real purpose may be to give Xi a pretext for massive Russian re-armament when his ”plan” is not endorsed;

Former KGB commandant General Savostyanov, an ally of Ivashov, describes Putin as terrified by Ukrainian invasion catastrophe he has singlehandedly wrought, triggering rage of oligarchs stripped of loot by sanctions; Entire country permanently impoverished; Forecast is for autogolpe orchestrated Putin to install a plausible figure seen as less toxic in west, possibly meaning agriculture minister Dmitri Patrushev (45), son of Putin crony Nikolai Patrushev, head of Kremlin NSC; Russia sliding back into developing sector as sanctions bite accumulates;

IMF lets Moscow peddle fake economic stats; Deripaska warns that Russia’s money will be gone by end of year;

On Russian TV, producer Shakhnazarov argues Kremlin must recognize danger of defeat in a disastrous predicament; Useless to imagine that NATO will collapse; Another TV expert says positive outcome for Russia is now ”not possible”; Lavrov treated as a laughingstock by locals in New Delhi;

Department of Justice Civil Division will not defend Trump vs. wave of lawsuits for damages based on his ”incitement of private violence” around January 6;

Extinction process of GOP infrastructure goes on as pro-DeSantis Club of Growth competes with pro-Trump CPAC, and Fox News eyes colossal costs of losing Dominion law suit because they cynically pushed the Big Lie knowing it was a complete fabrication;

February

Feb. 25

World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary and Strategic Advocacy: Biden scores the greatest US strategic-diplomatic triumph of recent decades — at the expense of the aggressor Putin! Webster G. Tarpley, right, author, historian and activist, Feb. 25, 2023. (117:09 mins.). Kyiv, Warsaw, the Bucharest Nine, and 54 nations in the Ramstein armaments group show the scope of world opposition to the Kremlin butchers;

UN Security Council hears unproven theories on Nordstream pipelines; General Assembly demands Russian forces leave Ukraine by vote of 141 to 7, with 32 abstentions; South Africa should remember Moscow’s food warfare vs. Africa; India’s Modi may seize moment for increased authoritarianism in what was once called the world’s largest democracy;

Putin’s major speech was a collection of threats to oligarchs and nomenklatura, demanding that they repatriate their foreign holdings and finance Russia; Low energy and tepid response;

Clumsy leaks from Fulton County GA grand jury foreperson suggest bad news is imminent for Don and 12 apostles; AG Garland is a threat to Biden’s re-election and must go; Jack Smith subpoenas Meadows, Meadows, and Jarvanka;

FDR’s landmark fireside chat of May 27 1941 explained the forward defense of the western hemisphere to isolationists: ”When your enemy comes at you in a tank or a bombing plane, if you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you will never know what hit you. Our Bunker Hill of tomorrow may be several thousand miles from Boston.”

World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary and Strategic Advocacy: After a year of Putin’s criminal assault on Ukraine, Kremlin’s strategy of aggression is in ruins! Webster G. Tarpley, right, author, historian and activist, Feb. 18, 2023. (109:18 mins.) After extravagant Russian losses, mercenary butcher Prigozhin admits that Bakhmut has not been encircled and cannot be taken for months to come;

Appeasers and Quislings from Berlin to Washington march to cut off NATO military aid and validate endless occupation by Putin’s soldateska; At Munich Conference, Macron, Scholz, and Sunac slightly improve their posture towards helping Ukraine; Biden set to visit Poland on eve of anniversary;

’I will wage war, but not declare war’: How Franklin D. Roosevelt set up victory over fascism between the Fall of France in June 1940 and Pearl Harbor; Lend Lease, destroyers for bases, Greenland and Iceland patrols, merchant convoys, wiping out Nazi weather stations, and shoot on sight; Guidance for dealing with Putin in our time!

Feb. 20

World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), The “Rage Against the War Machine” rally: A reactionary political freak show, Jacob Crosse and Joseph Kishore, Feb. 20, 2023. The WSWS is the online publication of the world Trotskyist movement.

The “Rage Against the War Machine” rally held yesterday in Washington, D.C., was a political freak show attended by a motley crowd of several hundred Libertarian Party supporters, neo-fascists, and disoriented and demoralized middle-class individuals without an independent program or perspective. The speeches, many of which were obscenity-laced rants, were pitched to the lowest political level. By the time the event finally dribbled to an end, it had left nothing behind but confusion and a bad smell.

The rally, which was moderated by Angela McArdle of the Libertarian Party and Nick Brana of the “People’s Party,” was sold as an opportunity by the organizers and the speakers to “bring together” the “left and the right” to oppose war. In fact, there was no left-wing perspective; the political direction was provided entirely by the right.

Even on its own terms, the event was an organizational fiasco, with a turnout of approximately 750 to 1,000 people, at most, despite being promoted on Fox News by Tucker Carlson and other right-wing outlets.

The rally featured no less than three speakers from organizations affiliated with the late fascist and anti-Semitic cult-leader, Lyndon LaRouche, lyndon larouche larouche tv cropped right, including his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche. A platform was also provided for Jackson Hinkle, a fascist proponent of “MAGA communism,” and Jordan Page, who wrote the Oath Keepers anthem. Page gave an extended “musical” interlude with far-right anti-vaccine advocate and “bitcoin” enthusiast, Tatiana Moroz.

The Libertarian Party provided the main political line of the rally, with the buildup of speakers concluding with Libertarian candidate Ron Paul, below left. McArdle and the “Mises Caucus” of which she is a member is closely associated with the efforts of the Libertarians to orient to right-wing militia groups.

The continuous ranting of the reactionary tropes of right-wing populism gave the event a distinctly anti-Semitic slant. One speaker after the march to the White House declared that the conflict was “a Zionist war against the Slavic people.” McArdle, who promoted the rally last week on Infowars, run by the fascist conspiracist Alex Jones, has invited and defended anti-Semitic speakers to Libertarian Party events.

Pacifist journalist and author Chris Hedges, having evolved politically from warning of the fascist threat in the United States to promoting the unity of left and right, opened the event with a sermon intended to provide benediction for the speakers who would follow.

Hedges, along with Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone, Jill Stein of the Green Party, and comedian Jimmy Dore and a few others were there to give a progressive gloss to the “left-right” coalition and legitimize the extreme right. Their principal message was that unity with the fascistic right was permissible and should be actively pursued. Those who oppose collaboration with the right are viewed as political enemies.

The visceral hostility to opponents of “left-right unity” was recorded in various video clips of Hedges and Blumenthal, in conversations before the start of the rally, denouncing the World Socialist Web Site.

This anger against the defense of principled socialist politics erupted in the speech of Dore. He devoted most of his remarks to a thinly-veiled denunciation of the World Socialist Web Site for opposing unity with the fascists.

In the case of Dore, alliance with the right is not only a tactic. It is an expression of his own political views. Dore advanced the position of the far right on the COVID-19 pandemic, denouncing public health measures and vaccines. At one point he declared that “they” want me “to hate my neighbor for the pain I am feeling because of that because they wouldn’t take a vaccine that didn’t work the way they said it did in the first f**king place.” He added, “Eat boosters you mother f**kers.”

At one point, Dore bizarrely asked, “Why are we sending that money to Nazis in Ukraine when we could be funding Nazis here in America struggling to buy eggs?”

Support for the ruling class policy of mass infection, promoted most aggressively by the far right but adopted in essence by the Biden administration, was present throughout the rally. Several denounced the “medical industrial complex” and downplayed the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over 1.14 million people in the US alone.

In an indication of the political outlook of those attending the rally, the largest cheers were for Dore and Ron Paul, including many who cheered for both.

federal reserve system Custom To the extent there was a political perspective, it was provided by Paul, the former Texas congressman. In his headline speech, Paul falsely claimed that by eliminating the Federal Reserve, the US government would be forced to pay its debts and therefore could not fund military expenditures.

In reality, Paul’s program of austerity and debt elimination, if put into practice, would result in the evisceration of every single social welfare program in the United States, which is in fact the aim of the most right-wing sections of the ruling class and the program of the Libertarian Party.

Paul ended his speech with a call for an end to all “regulations,” i.e., minimum wage, social security, medicare and medicaid, child labor and work place safety laws, that “bankrupt the country.”

Individuals linked to the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and who participated in former President Donald Trump’s failed coup were in attendance.

Local journalist Molly Conger photographed Matthew Heimbach, the leading neo-Nazi who helped organize the 2017 rally in Charlottesville. In a podcast prior to the Unite the Right rally, Heimbach called for the extermination of the “international Jew and the local Jew, I don’t care if he runs a f**king bagel shop, he’s got to go.”

Conger also photographed Proud Boy Randy Ireland, wearing a shirt with the phrase “Justice 4 J6,” a reference to the small number of individuals who were imprisoned for participating in Trump’s failed coup.

Perhaps the biggest fraud of all was that the rally was an “antiwar” event. Whatever the denunciations of the “military-industrial complex” and the “war machine,” the main impact of the rally was to politically legitimize and elevate far-right forces that are utilized by sections of the ruling class itself.

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote last week:

In the final analysis, the right-wing pseudo-opposition to war represents a dispute within the ruling class over certain aspects of foreign policy. One can find on the Internet no shortage of ex-military personnel, entirely fascistic in their outlook, who believe that the present war in Ukraine is a distraction from other pressing issues confronting the American ruling class, such as the merciless removal of undocumented immigrants from the United States and preparations for a future war with China.

The role of the “Rage Against the War Machine” rally is not to develop a movement against imperialist war, but to confuse and disorient young people.

The rally itself more than confirmed this appraisal.

Feb. 18

Going Deep, Investigative Commentary: Western and Russian Imperialism: Our Wrongs Don’t Make Putin Right, Russ Baker, right, Feb 18, 2023. The bifurcation of the left reflects a growing lack of common sense and empathy with the actual circumstances faced by ordinary people.

Ever since Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation” in Ukraine a year ago, many people have expressed frustration with WhoWhatWhy for covering the Russian invasion from the premise that Russia is the problem.

They say we don’t understand the situation. As one old friend and supporter said to me, “It’s complicated.” And some say I’ve forgotten the insights revealed in my own work — on the troubling history of malicious operations by US intelligence and financial elites detailed voluminously in Family of Secrets — and in my early efforts to expose the true (and bad) reasons we invaded Iraq.

ej dionne w open neck

But from the very beginning of the Russian invasion, I simply could not understand why some intelligent people I knew, longtime peaceniks and humanitarians, and more than a few noteworthy journalists, had scarcely a word of sympathy for the people of Ukraine. After all, Putin’s genocidal intentions became clear early on — from Putin confidant Vladislav Surkov stating that “there is no Ukraine” to the daily atrocities reported by multiple NGOs.

How can anyone be insensitive to the horror happening over there? Day after day for the past year, the world has witnessed Putin’s scorched earth strategy of targeting civilians, bombing their homes, schools, churches, hospitals, ancient historical sites, crops, and basic infrastructure. Russian troops steal all they can, from small items like wedding rings to millions of tons of Ukrainian grain. They even appear to be draining a massive Ukrainian reservoir.

And from the confirmed testimony of survivors, we learn of sickening atrocities committed by those troops (many of whom Putin mobilized by emptying prisons), including prolonged torture, gang rape of children as young as four and grandparents as old as 85, often in front of loved ones; the shooting of beloved pets as they scrounged for food, as if it were a sport. According to Ukrainian authorities, they even hung animals in trees “for entertainment.”

Most progressives do “get it.” Yet, the holdouts, both here and in Europe, have impacted the discussion, effectively helped Putin, and undermined perception of the facts on the ground.

Which raises the inevitable question: Does their indifference or outright opposition to helping Ukraine have any merit at all? After months of thinking constantly on this topic, I’ll say it: I appreciate the basis for their beliefs — but I don’t think so.

I understand that disagreements like this can sometimes end friendships, and I hope we can all be honestly blunt without that happening. Anyway, here goes.

Left vs. Far Left

Those on what might be called the “ideological left” — those who are against aiding Ukraine — tend to distrust any military or foreign policy initiatives by the US. The idea is that, based on the US’s long history of imperialism, we should default to assuming the worst of intentions when it comes to Ukraine.

To them, it makes no difference what party is in power in the US: It is as if there are no good people in positions of authority, no one able to resist the imperial advance of the military-industrial complex. Thus their refusal to support the effort to help Ukraine.

As for Putin, according to them he had to invade Ukraine, because of the “NATO encirclement” of Russia and the (in their minds) evil threat that the coalition-of-almost-everybody still represents in today’s world. They also point to what could be called a “reverse Monroe Doctrine” — after all, they say, Ukraine is in Russia’s backyard, just as Mexico is in ours. Finally — and certainly no small thing — they also believe that anyone who supports arming Ukraine for self-defense is leading humanity into a nuclear war.

So… If there’s a nuclear war, America and NATO are responsible, not Putin. That’s the line we hear.

Dissonance and Empathy

I would contend that this bifurcation of the left reflects a growing lack of common sense and empathy with the actual circumstances faced by ordinary people — a rigidity that treats with ambivalence or doubt any support for the Ukrainians’ efforts to defend themselves. This kind of skepticism feels both outdated and verging on the paranoid. Crucially, it fails to take into account the continuous changes in everything from the governance of individual countries to shifting alliances and the ebb and flow of global power. In both cases, a failure to pay attention to the changing reality — and the actual facts on the ground — risks millions of innocent lives.

One key difference between the war in Ukraine and the Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan wars, which should be obvious to any unbiased observer, is this: Zelenskyy’s government has rallied widespread elements of the Ukrainian population in a heroic and punishing battle against Russia, in contrast to the quagmires that led the US into propping up deeply unpopular and manifestly incompetent governments in Southeast and Central Asia.

The Power of Fear

It’s certainly true that, in assessing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the appropriate response for the West, confronting Russian aggression militarily, even if by proxy, could indeed plunge the world into a series of events leading right to nuclear annihilation.

Fortunately so far, while creeping forward in terms of military aid, the US has not engaged in direct combat in Ukraine. Yet if confronted, we face a set of choices, none of them good: Back down, or don’t back down.

Over the last year, Putin has used the threat of nuclear war several times, specifically to weaken pro-Ukranian resolve; yet while his propaganda has convinced more than a few, there are no signs that Russia has taken steps to prepare for a nuclear conflict.

But Putin’s aggressive behavior since the West effectively acquiesced in his annexation of Crimea (not getting into “Russia’s historic right to it”) should give us pause: Where exactly would we draw the line in opposing naked military aggression, if not Ukraine?

And if Putin keeps succeeding in grabbing his neighbors by force, what message does that send other would-be aggressors, in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world? The canard that all politics, all government is inherently, fatally, corrupt is a counsel of self-validating despair — and a gift to the forces of authoritarianism and autocracy. It also ignores the fact that, of the many countries in the world, the US, even with the tremendous deficiencies and wrongs we cite and endeavor to expose, isn’t — by multiple indices and relatively speaking — all that bad.

Yup, I said it. The critics, by and large, still choose to live here for good reason.

Of course, the how-to of avoiding nuclear holocaust in a world with countless nuclear powers is an extraordinarily difficult problem. But giving carte blanche to bad actors like Putin to kill or ruin the lives of millions in pursuit of their ambitions is hardly the only option.

The majority of progressive-minded Russians are opposed to Putin, repressed by Putin, and totally sympathetic with Ukraine and its plight.

And the notion that it is the only option reflects just how many of us seem truly lost. Here is a tweet to the world from a fellow I’ve known and liked for years:

You insane Dems have launched war on #Russia. To please your biggest donor @georgesoros you risk destroying us in #NuclearWar.

This is from a longtime idealist and activist! I may not agree with George Soros on some issues, but I have always found him to be a man of conscience, and hardly ever eager to see war. (Disclosure: We have never received a penny from Soros or his organizations.)

That this bizarre attitude is increasingly on display, with its concomitantly myopic view of Putin and his reign, is just astonishing to me and, thankfully, to most people.

It’s not that hard to see the truth for what it is. Documented stories of Putin’s police-and-corruption state come in a never-ending stream, even beyond Ukraine, and not just from Western media. Conscientious, brave Russian reporters tell us all the time.

If you pay attention, you will learn about the profound poverty of the nation, especially outside of Moscow. And about the dissidents and journalists who are murdered, seemingly weekly, via curious “falls” out of windows, other kinds of “accidents,” shootings, poisonings, and other means. For details, go here, here, here, here, here. Even an American businessman got the window treatment. Brutalized war protesters are sent to jail for a decade for posting on social media. Russian victims are often named and, if possible, quoted.

Here are only two random items from just this week:

A Russian court has sentenced journalist Maria Ponomarenko to six years in prison for a Telegram social media post about a Russian airstrike.

Olesya Krivtsova is a 19-year-old Federal University of Arkhangelsk student on trial, facing decades in prison for an antiwar instagram social media post.

When versions of this kind of oppression happen to Americans, Palestinians, or folks almost anywhere else, they actually do seem to bother my friends. But I never hear expressions of concern about this oppression with regard to Russia.
Putin Is Russia and Russia Is Putin? Not So!

The defense of Putin’s war from some of these people is, of course, based on a lot of talking points I see, spread widely and presented as certitudes:

Ukraine has to this day a propensity for neo-Nazism or fascism, Jewish president notwithstanding.

Ukraine is inherently corrupt, while Russia under Putin has kept corruption in check, as a professor told me the other day. (Despite decades of documented evidence to the contrary.)

The CIA thwarted the Ukrainian people’s will and overthrew the pro-Moscow Ukrainian government in the country. (Here’s a different view from interested parties in the region.)

The West is driven solely by selfish motives in backing Ukraine. (See the rest of this piece for counter-arguments.)

Putin and his prolific disinformation machine spread these manufactured ideas through state-controlled news outlets, social media, and paid propagandists, including actually creating fake “BBC” reporting(!). Meanwhile, writers I consider to be naive or deluded and historians outside Russia skillfully deploy selected “true facts” or anecdotes in support of highly questionable conclusions.

One of these conclusions appears to be that we can and should give Putin the benefit of the doubt and assume that he actually has “Russia’s” interests at heart. But it seems easy enough to discount that, even without looking into the man’s soul, as former President George W. Bush famously claimed to have done. Putin’s own actions, along with many of his statements, indicate rather his devotion to the Putin and Friends enrichment scheme, or some deranged and dangerous plan (plucked from the 19th century’s Great Power playbook) to “Make Russia Great Again.” Does Putin = Russia any more than Trump = the USA?

In truth, “Russia’s interests” and Vladimir Putin’s objectives seem far from the same thing, even if you leave out the billions Putin and his oligarch cronies have siphoned from Russian coffers since 1999. From the perspective of hard-nosed realpolitik alone, it may actually be good for Russia to get along better with its neighbors. And it may also be true that most Russians do not feel threatened personally by NATO or by Ukraine.

To be sure, the majority of progressive-minded Russians are opposed to Putin, repressed by Putin, and totally sympathetic with Ukraine and its plight. Thousands have close family in Ukraine and know the extent of Putin’s perfidy; some have actually taken up arms for Ukraine. Thousands have fled Russia since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

How can Western naysayers minimize or ignore this large subpopulation opposed to Putin, or suggest that people in the US know better than those actually living in what is in fact a totalitarian state? It’s worth recalling that many who condemn US actions to oppose Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine were themselves protestors against aggressive US war policy in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and Iraq. Why can they not relate to Russians’ domestic opposition to Putin and his war?

Furthermore, how can anyone ignore the thousands of conscripted Russian civilians given only hours of training and little combat gear, who are then turned into waves of cannon fodder? Or ignore the thousands of panicked Russians fleeing? The horrible abuses? The soldiers defecting, and other Russians, embarrassed and horrified by what their country is doing, taking action to help the Ukrainians?
One Man

I could go on, but ultimately, there is no getting around the simple fact that one man, Vladimir Putin, who for decades has openly voiced his wish to reinstate the USSR, invaded a sovereign nation and is willing to countenance the death of huge numbers of his own people, let alone even more Ukrainians.

We have to start from there. We have to acknowledge the murderous madness of that. We must show sympathy for innocent people being slaughtered — not just innocents, but badly outnumbered ones, standing up to a vastly superior military power.

Why? Because if we do not start from a position that considers other human beings, how human are we?

This brings to mind one of my friends, an economist, a good guy, who worries about nuclear war and essentially argued, in a conversation with me, that the US should give Putin whatever he wants. The next day, we both happened to be on a group teleconference on an unrelated topic. Once he finished opining, he paused, chortled, and dryly noted: “Spoken like a true economist — notice there are no people in this analysis.”

As I was wrapping this article up, I read Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech in Munich about Russia’s crimes against humanity in Ukraine, and about the need to stand up to authoritarian nations using “brute force.” Exactly. No appeasement.

I also happen to be reading a Budd Schulberg book written in the late 1930s, in which one character explains that a movie studio doesn’t plan to make a screen version of Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t Happen Here — because the English leadership at the time “doesn’t want to make Hitler and Mussolini sore.”

Putin’s major speech was a collection of threats to oligarchs and nomenklatura, demanding that they repatriate their foreign holdings and finance Russia; Low energy and tepid response;

’I will wage war, but not declare war’: How Franklin D. Roosevelt set up victory over fascism between the Fall of France in June 1940 and Pearl Harbor; Lend Lease, destroyers for bases.

Feb. 17

tucker carlson fox horizontal

New York Times, Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. ‘Crazy Stuff,’ Jeremy W. Peters and Katie Robertson, Feb. 17, 2023 (print ed.). The comments, by Tucker Carlson (above), Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems.

Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.

The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell, right, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.

Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not.

rupert murdoch new The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, left, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.”

On one occasion, as Mr. Murdoch watched Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell on television, he told Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.”

Dominion’s brief depicts Ms. Scott, whom colleagues have described as sharply attuned to the sensibilities of the Fox audience, as being well aware that Mr. Trump’s claims were baseless. And when another Murdoch-owned property, The New York Post, published an editorial urging Mr. Trump to stop complaining that he had been cheated, Ms. Scott distributed it widely among her staff. Mr. Murdoch then thanked her for doing so, the brief says.

The filing, in state court in Delaware, contains the most vivid and detailed picture yet of what went on behind the scenes at Fox News and its corporate parent in the days and weeks after the 2020 election, when the conservative cable network’s coverage took an abrupt turn.

Fox News stunned the Trump campaign on election night by becoming the first news outlet to declare Joseph R. Biden Jr. the winner of Arizona — effectively projecting that he would become the next president. Then, as Fox’s ratings fell sharply after the election and the president refused to concede, many of the network’s most popular hosts and shows began promoting outlandish claims of a far-reaching voter fraud conspiracy involving Dominion machines to deny Mr. Trump a second term.

New York Times, Guest Essay: It’s Time to Prepare for a Possible Trump Indictment, Norman L. Eisen, E. Danya Perry and Amy norman eisen Small Lee Copeland, Feb. 17, 2023. Mr. Eisen, right, is a co-author of “Fulton County, Georgia’s Trump Investigation,” a Brookings Institution report on the Fulton County district attorney’s investigation. Ms. Perry is an author of “Trump on Trial,” a Brookings Institution report on the Jan. 6 committee. Ms. Copeland is a criminal defense and appellate attorney in Savannah, Ga.

“We find by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.” With those words, a Fulton County special grand jury’s report, part of which was released Thursday, repudiated Donald Trump’s assault on our democracy.

The excerpts from the report did not explicitly offer new detail on a potential indictment of Mr. Trump or any other individual. But they suggest that, combined with everything else we know, Mr. Trump may very well be headed for charges in Georgia.

We need to prepare for a first in our 246-year history as a nation: The possible criminal prosecution of a former president.

If Mr. Trump is charged, it will be difficult and at times even perilous for American democracy — but it is necessary to deter him and others from future attempted coups.

fani willis resized Fani Willis, left, the Fulton County district attorney, may present the case as a simple and streamlined one or in a more sweeping fashion. Success is more likely assured in the simpler approach, but the fact that the redacted report has eight sections suggests a broader approach is conceivable. In either event, we must all prepare ourselves for what could be years of drama, with the pretrial, trial and appeal likely dominating the coming election season.

Ms. Willis opened her investigation shortly after Mr. Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, demand that the Georgia secretary of state, Brad brad raffensperger Raffensperger, “find 11,780 votes.” The second impeachment of Mr. Trump and the Jan. 6 committee hearings developed additional evidence about that request for fake votes and Mr. Trump and allies pushing fake electors in Georgia and nationally. There is now abundant evidence suggesting he violated Georgia statutes, like those criminalizing the solicitation of election fraud.

The parts of the special grand jury’s report revealed on Thursday only reinforce Mr. Trump’s risk of prosecution. The statement that the grand jurors found “no widespread fraud” in the presidential election eliminates Mr. Trump’s assertion that voter fraud justified his pushing state election officials. We also know that the grand jurors voted defendant by defendant and juror by juror, and set forth their recommendations on indictments and relevant statutes over seven (currently redacted) sections. The likelihood that they did that and cleared everyone is very low. And the fact that the grand jurors felt so strongly about the issues that they insisted on writing the recommendations themselves, as they emphasize, further suggests a grave purpose.

Also notable is the grand jury’s recommendation of indictments, “where the evidence is compelling,” for perjury that may have been committed by one or more witnesses. It seems unlikely that Ms. Willis will let that pass.

She will now decide the next steps of the case. Her statement that charging decisions were imminent came more than three weeks ago. If she does indict Mr. Trump, the two likely paths that she might take focus on the fake electoral slates and Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Raffensperger. One is a narrower case that would likely take weeks to try; the other is a broader case that would likely take months.

Narrow charges could include the Georgia felonies of solicitation of election fraud in the first degree and related general crimes like conspiracy to commit election fraud, specifically focusing on events and people who have a strong nexus with Georgia. In addition to Mr. Trump, that might include others who had direct contacts with Georgia, like his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and his attorneys John C. Eastman and Rudolph W. Giuliani (who already received a “target” notification from Ms. Willis warning him that he may be charged). Such a case would focus on activities around the execution of the fake electoral slates on Dec. 14, 2020, followed by the conversation with Mr. Raffensperger on Jan. 2, rooting it in Georgia and avoiding events nationally except to the extent absolutely necessary.

Or Ms. Willis could charge the case more broadly, adding sweeping state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, charges that could still include the impact of the conduct in Georgia but bring in more of a nationwide conspiracy. This would look more like the Jan. 6 investigation, albeit with a strong Georgia flavor. It could additionally include those who appeared to have lesser contact with Georgia but were part of national efforts including the state, like the Trump campaign attorney Kenneth Chesebro and the Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.

A more narrow case might make slightly more sense: Given the extraordinary circumstances around it, Ms. Willis will surely have her hands full. And it will feature a likely lead defendant who has demonstrated his propensity for legal circuses — coming in the midst of a heated political season no less.

That said, Ms. Willis has a proven propensity for bringing and winning RICO cases. And as we have learned in our criminal trial work, sometimes juries are more responsive to grander narratives that command their attention — and outrage.

Whether it’s simple or broad, if a case is opened, one thing is nearly certain: It’s going to take a while, probably the better part of the next two years, and perhaps longer. We would surely see a flurry of legal filings from Mr. Trump, which while often meritless nevertheless take time. Here the battle would likely be waged around pretrial motions and appeals by Mr. Trump arguing, as he has done in other cases, that he was acting in his official presidential capacity and so is immune.

That challenge, though not persuasive at all in our view, will almost certainly delay a trial by months. Other likely sallies are that the case should be removed to federal court (it shouldn’t); that he relied on the advice of counsel in good faith (he didn’t); or that his action was protected by the First Amendment (it wasn’t).

Even if the courts work at the relatively rapid pace of other high-profile presidential cases, we would still be talking about months of delay. In both U.S. v. Nixon and Thompson v. Trump, about three months were consumed from the first filing of the cases to the final rejection of presidential arguments by the U.S. Supreme Court. In this case, there would be more issues, which would be likely to require additional time. At the earliest, Ms. Willis would be looking at a trial toward the end of 2023. Even on that aggressive schedule, appeals would not be concluded until the end of 2024 or beyond.

Needless to say, this would have a profound impact on the election season. It would feature a national conversation about what it means for a former president to be prosecuted, and it would no doubt have unexpected consequences.

Still, the debate is worth having, and the risks are worth taking. The core American idea is that no one is above the law. If there is serious evidence of crimes, then a former president should face the same consequences as anyone else. If we do not hold accountable those who engage in this kind of misconduct, it will recur.

It would be the trial of the 21st century, no doubt a long and bumpy ride — but a necessary one for American democracy.

Norman Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Donald Trump. E. Danya Perry is a former federal prosecutor and New York State corruption investigator. Amy Lee Copeland, a former federal prosecutor, is a criminal defense and appellate attorney in Savannah, Ga.

Disgraced InfoWars host Alex Jones, in a dark shirt second from the right, stands next to

Disgraced InfoWars host Alex Jones, in a dark shirt second from the right, stands next to "Stop the Steal" pro-Trump insurrectionist Ali Alexander at a rally.

Washington Post, Alex Jones is ‘holding firearms’ for Jan. 6 rioters, bankruptcy docs show, Timothy Bella, Feb. 17, 2023 (print ed.). As Infowars founder Alex Jones is facing bankruptcy for damages he owes to the families of victims of the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a new filing shows the right-wing conspiracy theorist has been “holding firearms” for those who participated in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Jones, who owes nearly $1.5 billion to the families after years of saying the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults were killed, was a hoax, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas last December. Jones’s personal financial disclosures were shared in a bankruptcy filing on Tuesday that was obtained by The Washington Post.

In the section of the bankruptcy statement that asks Jones to identify property he owns or controls for somebody else, the right-wing conspiracy theorist described the items he has in limited detail.

“Holding firearms for certain January 6th participants to be provided,” the entry says.

The filing does not state why Jones, who participated in the Stop the Steal rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, is holding the weapons for the rioters or where they are located.

In addition to the firearms, Jones, 49, lists boats and lifetime helicopter access as part of his personal financial disclosures, records show. Jones reported his gross income in 2021, the most recent year that data is available, as $617,143.02, according to the filing. He reported a gross income of nearly $639,000 in 2020, the filing shows.

The filing says that Jones has reported assets worth an estimated $10 million — significantly less than the $1.4 billion in a Connecticut case and $45.2 million in a Texas case that he owes to the Sandy Hook families in damages. Jones and his legal team have said they would appeal.

Feb. 16

djt barr conferring headshots

New York Times, Opinion: Under Trump, Bill Barr and John Durham Made a Mockery of the Rules I Wrote, Neal K. Katyal, Feb. 16, 2023 (print ed.). Mr. Katyal is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and a co-author of “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.” He was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration.

The recent revelations about Special Counsel John H. Durham’s investigation of the origins of Robert Mueller’s Russia inquiry paint a bleak picture — one that’s thoroughly at odds with governing law. Those rules, called the Special Counsel Regulations, contemplate someone independent of the attorney general who can reassure the public that justice is being done.

I drafted those guidelines as a young Justice Department official, and there is zero chance that anyone involved in the process, as it was reported on by The New York Times, would think that former Attorney General William Barr or Mr. Durham acted appropriately.

According to the report, Mr. Barr granted Mr. Durham special counsel status to dig into a theory that the Russia investigation likely emerged from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. That investigation took almost four years (longer than Mr. Mueller’s inquiry) and appears to be ending soon without any hint of a deep state plot against Mr. Trump.

Furthermore, the reporting suggests that the Durham inquiry suffered from internal dissent and ethical disputes as it lurched from one unsuccessful path to another, even as Americans heard a misleading narrative of its progress.

But now Merrick Garland, not Mr. Barr, is the attorney general, and the regulations give him the power to require Mr. Durham to explain himself — and to discipline and fire Mr. Durham if the explanation is not adequate. Right now, there are a plethora of investigations in Washington — in addition to Mr. Durham’s, two special counsels are looking into presidential handling of classified documents, the new Republican House of Representatives has created a “weaponization” of government committee and the new House Oversight Committee is ramping up as well.

At this moment, it is critical for Mr. Garland to use the supervisory powers under the Special Counsel Regulations that govern Mr. Durham to remind Americans of what actual justice, and independent investigations and decision making, look like.

The special counsel regulations say that a special counsel must have “a reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking” and that, once appointed, the counsel “shall not be subject to the day-to-day supervision” of the attorney general or any other Justice Department official.

The point of the regulations was to create a strong degree of independence, especially in highly fraught political investigations where the attorney general’s status as a presidential appointee might cause the public to question the appearance of partiality. The appointment of Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, to examine President Biden’s handling of classified documents is a perfect illustration. The special counsel is supposed to be someone who cannot be reasonably accused of laundering an attorney general’s dirty work.

In light of the new reporting, it is hard to view Mr. Durham as anything else. Indeed, no one involved in developing these regulations thought that a prosecutor who has regular scotch-sipping sessions with the attorney general would ever be remotely fit for the job. Yet that was the relationship reportedly developed by Mr. Durham and Mr. Barr, who jetted off to Italy as a team, where they learned of a lead about President Trump and potential criminal acts. Mr. Barr gave that investigation, too, to Mr. Durham, where it appears to have died.

Feb. 11

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary: World history now depends on defeating the imminent Russian spring offensive against Ukraine, and on charges being brought against Trump, Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D., right, author, historian and activist, (87:34 mins.), Feb. 10-11, 2023. Putin’s desperate bid to hold on in Ukraine may resemble Ludendorf’s last-ditch offensive of mid-1918, a prelude to collapse.

In the current Time of Troubles, camouflaged pretenders infest the Kremlin as hapless draftees are fed into the meatgrinder of Prigozhin’s human wave assaults; US and NATO must be audacious in deliveries of weaponry after Zelelensky’s visits to London and Brussels;

Trump’s special counsel Jack Smith obtains subpoenas for Pence and ex-NSC Director Robert O’Brien in regard to January 6 coup attempt; FBI finds more classified material at Pence’s Indiana home, but no special counsel so far named by Garland;

Manhattan prosecutor Pomeranz courageously sums up choices for NY DA Alvin Bragg, who must charge Trump no matter what the chances of conviction or else utterly repudiate the rule of law in the United States; Establishment voices still demand fairness for fascists;

Biden SOTU [State of the Union] bears comparison with the best of FDR in 1936; Dramatic achievements of Dems in stark contrast to grotesque escapades of MAGA fascist buffoons; Feckless orchestration of hearings on Twitter/New York Post and weaponization exposes McCarthy clique as bungling amateurs; MAGAt money supply line grievously damaged by defection of Koch and Club for Growth as GOP bigwigs and donors plot to stop Trump; Dems launch effort to expel mythomaniac Santos!

Feb. 4

Julia (Julie) Jenkins Fancelli, Publix heiress and Donald Trump mega-donor.

Julia (Julie) Jenkins Fancelli, Publix heiress and Donald Trump mega-donor.

Proof, Exclusive Investigative Commentary: The Donald Trump “Mega-Donor” From Florida Who Funded January 6 Has Just Given America the Most Detailed Timeline Ever of When and Where Trump’s Coup Plot Formed, Seth Abramson, Feb. 3, 2023. Seth Abramson, left, is a a former criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney whose January 6 research Congress often cites unpacks January 6 evidence many missed.

Part of a Series: The “January 6 Files” Series (2023-)

Charlie Kirk
Ginni Thomas, Part I
Julie Jenkins Fancelli (current entry)

1. Introduction

You’ve probably seen the “How It Started vs. How It’s Going” meme, which tracks the relative sanguinity of the beginning of a given process and how it thereafter descends into chaos. In the case of the 132-page federal testimony of Julie Jenkins Fancelli—the Donald Trump mega-donor who almost single-handedly bankrolled the January 6 White House Ellipse rally and march on the U.S. Capitol—it begins like this (the speaker is a House January 6 Committee investigator tasked with examining Fancelli under oath):

And it does not get better from there.

Fancelli’s reticence in providing even the barest degree of cooperation with the House January 6 Committee is to some degree understandable. After all, even far-right media reports indicate that the Special Counsel recently appointed by Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland on behalf of the Department of Justice, Jack Smith, is focusing his investigation on the “money trail” linked to the January 6 coup attempt.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

And on the very short list of radical Trumpists who funded events on January 6, the Trumpworld figure who appears atop the list—by sheer dollar value—is Ms. Fancelli.

kimberly guilfoyle smile w And so it is that we see Fancelli invoking four different federal constitutional amendments to avoid even revealing whether she knows Caroline Wren, an agent of future Trump daughter-in-law and current top Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle, right (who will be marrying Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr.) and someone whose long relationship with Fancelli has already been documented fifty different ways and is a settled fact.

But as was the case with (again) Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle associate—you may be seeing a trend here—Charlie Kirk, who also pleaded the Fifth Amendment, Fancelli revealed much more than she might have intended simply by showing up to be questioned by Congress. Why? Because the many, many questions asked of her by lawyers from the now-disbanded House January 6 Committee comprise a stunning compendium of evidence compiled by the Committee before its investigation ended in December 2022.

This third entry of the new “January 6 Files” series at Proof will reveal, through a long analysis and contextualization of these questions—and perhaps more surprisingly, some sudden abandonments of her constitutional invocations by Ms. Fancelli—how this recently released federal witness transcript must change forever how we think about the following:

The timeline of the January 6 coup plot;
the level of involvement the Trump family had in this coup plotting, and its after-the-fact attempts to deny that involvement;
the consistent pattern of federal Witness Tampering that has marked Trump family attempts to deny its involvement in any coup plotting or fundraising;
the extent to which the Trump family benefited financially from this plotting and to which Trump himself was aware of the fundraising and logistics work that the plotting entailed; and
the degree to which this plotting may have helped fund Stop the Steal activities now associated with domestic terrorism.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, the longtime publisher, editor and controlling shareholder of The Nation magazine and also wife of Russian studies scholar Stephen Cohen, is shown joining a CSPAN Washington Journal cablecast in 2009.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, the longtime publisher, editor and owner of The Nation magazine and also wife of Russian studies scholar Stephen Cohen, is shown joining a CSPAN Washington Journal cablecast in 2009.

ByLine Times, Media Criticism: Russia & the US PressThe Article the CJR Didn’t Publish, Duncan Campbell, Feb. 4, 2023. Duncan Campbell, below at right, is an investigative journalist who has covered security, surveillance and politics since the 1970s.

Introduction: Two and a half years ago, the Columbia Journalism Review refused to publish Duncan Campbell’s investigation into The Nation magazine and its apparent support for Vladimir Putin. It is published here in full.

In 2018, Duncan Campbell was commissioned by the “voice of journalism” and “watchdog of the press,” Columbia Journalism Review, to write an investigation into the venerable New York magazine The Nation, and its apparent support for Russia’s territorial ambitions. In 2020, after a full fact check, legal review and edit, the article was cancelled two days before the scheduled publication. In 2022, months after Putin’s full invasion of Ukraine, the CJR again refused to publish the article. Byline Times is publishing the final agreed copy here, and Duncan Campbell will explain what happened in a follow-up article.

The Nation’s Russia Problem
By Duncan Campbell, 15 July 2020

One afternoon, five weeks before Election Day in 2016, on the 21st floor of a tower overlooking Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue, members of The Nation’s editorial advisory board gathered for a twice-annual meeting. Katrina vanden Heuvel—the magazine’s editor, publisher, and owner—invited attendees to hear from a special guest, who had come to warn them that criticizing Donald Trump’s involvements with Russia, or his relationship with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, could trigger global nuclear annihilation. Vanden Heuvel, who was 56, gestured to her husband, Stephen F. Cohen, then 77, a retired professor of Russian studies. Russia and the United States “were closer to war than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis,” he told the board. He also derided Democrats and American media organizations for “demonization of Russian President Putin.”

Philip Green, a political theorist who had been on the board for forty years, listened with skepticism. Cohen’s theory, “presented with deadly and urgent seriousness,” he thought, appeared to be channeling the paranoia of the far-right. Others felt the same way. But afterward, Green says, “It became the party line.”

stephen cohen professor Cohen (who died in 2020 and who is shown above) would go on to make the same argument in at least 160 Nation articles; more than a hundred talk radio show appearances; and on Russia’s state-owned international channel, Russia Today (RT). In many cases, his articles were “essentially transcribed radio programs that were unedited and did not go through other editorial filters,” according to Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor and investigative journalist. Accusing the Russian government of committing an act of war by hacking the Democratic National Committee, Cohen warned, might mean “the necessity of actual war, conceivably nuclear war, against Russia.” He wrote that “villainizing the Kremlin—without much evidence—is increasing the possibility of a US-Russian war.” Once Trump took office, Cohen branded media investigations of Russia’s involvement with the Trump campaign as “neo-McCarthyism” and “Kremlin-baiting.”

For these critiques, Cohen won praise from outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart, anathema to The Nation readership; soon, he began making periodic appearances on Tucker Carlson Tonight. “Today, in my scholarly, long-term judgment, relations between the United States and Russia are more dangerous than they have ever—let me repeat, ever—been, including the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen told Carlson in 2018.

Nation employees became uneasy about Cohen’s assertions and who was airing his ideas. “The people who work there, especially the younger staff, are disgruntled about the Russia coverage,” Adam Shatz, a former Nation writer and literary editor, says. A joke began circulating around the office: “We tried to fact check Steve’s pieces but we couldn’t find any facts to check.” (Vanden Heuvel denies that her husband’s work was not checked by normal standards, saying that whether or not something is checked “depends on the complexity of the piece.”)

Some left The Nation or stopped writing for it. Anne Nelson, a former war correspondent now teaching at Columbia University, came to feel that the magazine’s stance on Russia “is destroying a valuable institution on the left.” Subscribers and donors, too, expressed displeasure with The Nation’s Russia pieces. One reader tweeted: “Sounds like the Nation has a pee tape out there somewhere.”

Duncan Campbell is former crime correspondent of the Guardian, former chairman of the Crime Reporters Association and winner of the Bar Council’s newspaper journalist of the year. He has written for the Observer, New Statesman, LRB, Oldie, Esquire and British Journalism Review. He has presented Crime Desk on BBC Radio 5 Live and the Radio 4 documentary "Bandits of the Blitz," has appeared on the Today programme, LBC radio and numerous TV documentaries, and has lectured widely on crime reporting. He is the author of six books including the bestselling "The Underworld" (1994) and an acclaimed crime novel, "If it Bleeds" (2010).

djt impeachment graphic

World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary and Advocacy: Chinese balloon offensive plus Putin’s start of long-awaited Ukraine attack add up to a strategic emergency! Webster G. Tarpley, historian and author, right, Feb. 4, 2023 (120:48 mins.). Russian dictator faces defeat and likely ouster provided that battle tanks and other equipment from NATO countries can arrive soon, so he seeks to retake initiative; Russia violating arms control inspection regime since August 2022;

Are the cabal of pro-appeasement US generals who refused to defend Capitol from armed fascist gangs on January 6 2021 and sabotaged prompt delivery of Abrams tanks the same ones now declining to eliminate balloon device well suited to deploying electromagnetic pulse weapons for nuclear confrontation?

US should respond with serious economic retaliation, while warning Beijing that future intruders will be summarily destroyed;

Chinese Communists dismayed by Washington-Manila accord to re-open US bases closed for three decades; Beijing’s bullying over West Philippine Sea has backfired!

US strategic position vastly enhanced by strong domestic economy with 517,000 new jobs created in January; unemployment at 3.4%, a 53-year low dating back to Nixon in 1969; Biden credited with creating 12.1 million jobs in 2 years, including 880,000 manufacturing jobs; Real wages are rising, with inflation down 6 months in a row, including gas down $1.50 per gallon; Biden’s achievement is now comparable to that of FDR under Lend-Lease in 1941, when joblessness virtually disappeared thanks to defense mobilization;

Zombie bankers stunned by results of Biden’s infrastructure program, inflation reduction policies, and high tech revival under Chips Act; these measures are being felt for the first time;

Globalized, pro-austerity, supply side economic charlatans are doomed by stunning success of Biden’s methods of industrial policy, dirigism, and Hamiltonian protectionism;

For Black History Month, recalling the bankers’ playing the race card of divide and conquer from The 2011 Occupy agitation to the present;
the establishment-backed 1619 study neglects Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King, who built united fronts across all races, and sneers at Lincoln; Spurious claim that American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery has been retracted, but still distorts the presentation; Origins of the Revolution are in any case located in western Massachusetts in summer 1774, far beyond the reach of the Earl of Dunmore or any royal governor of Virginia!

Feb. 2

Going Deep With Russ Baker, Why We Should Be Wary of Wikipedia, Russ Baker, right, publisher of WhoWhatWhy, author of best-selling Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, and longtime journalist and media critic, Feb. 2, 2023 (Part 1 of a Series). Probably the best kept secret about Wikipedia is that its “truths” largely protect the establishment — and that is baked into the formula.

Dear Reader: For many years, the Russ Baker page on Wikipedia has been under a clever and nuanced attack by parties unknown, operating as “editors.” The resulting text subtly questions my work, character, and judgment. The net effect is to give the casual reader cause to minimize or even dismiss my revelations — and me. The consequences of this are almost impossible to overstate, as they impact so many aspects of my life.

As with many things, I have always meant to get to the bottom of this, but just didn’t get around to it — nor have I been sure about what I could or should do about it.

What I found was, for me, hair-raising at times.

I now think it’s worth sharing this with others, as my own experience in the maw of the world’s dominant opinion shaper seems anything but unique.

What follows is a series of articles seeking to understand the phenomenon, and how it affects us all.

***

If you’re like me, and pretty much the rest of humanity, when you want to know something, you Google it. Invariably, at or near the top of the results, is a Wikipedia finding with your answer.

That is an astounding amount of power and influence for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia claims to be the place for us to understand… everything, quickly and simply.

Apparently we trust Wikipedia… why?

For one thing, Wikipedia is a nonprofit.

And it says that: Wikipedia is a place to learn, free from bias or agenda… Show the world that access to independent and unbiased information matters to you." — The Wikimedia Foundation

How does Wikipedia provide this “independent and unbiased” information?

Wikimedia, the foundation that hosts Wikipedia, allows anonymous individuals whose identity it does not know — and whose expertise or agenda it has not vetted — to create its content.

Some of these anonymous editors are relentless about creating negative perceptions of certain individuals and entities — and they are experts at it, rendering their subjects powerless to correct false or slanted information.

This is a serious issue that needs to be addressed and widely discussed. But is it? Not that I can see. I searched Google to see how much this has come out in major media.

I found a 2021 article in The Washington Post, written by Samuel Baltz, “a PhD candidate in political science and scientific computing and an MS student in applied mathematics at the University of Michigan.” He asserted:

Wikipedia is one of the few socially driven websites where, even though anyone can contribute information about breaking news, misinformation is largely suppressed. And Wikipedia’s coverage of current events often directs attention to its pages about ideas in political science, giving readers context for the news…

Wikipedia has developed an impressive record of political and ideological neutrality.

He then goes on to state that it “has serious biases in its coverage.” But what strikes me is that those biases are in the interests of the establishment media like The Washington Post. And, like the fox in the hen house, those media serve as the actual arbiters for whether information on Wikipedia should be trusted.

January

Jan. 31

john roberts o

New York Times, Investigation: At the Supreme Court, Ethics Questions Over a Spouse’s Business Ties, Steve Eder, Jan. 31, 2023. Chief Justice John Roberts’s wife recruits lawyers to top firms, some with business before the court. But her ties have raised ethics questions.

After Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the Supreme Court, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, gave up her career as a law firm partner to become a high-end legal recruiter in an effort to alleviate potential conflicts of interest. Mrs. Roberts later recalled in an interview that her husband’s job made it “awkward to be practicing law in the firm.”

Now, a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicating Mrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.

In his letter last month, Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, argued that the justices should be required to disclose more information about their spouses’ work. He did not cite specific Supreme Court decisions, but said he was worried that a financial relationship with law firms arguing before the court could affect justices’ impartiality or at least give the appearance of doing so.

“I do believe that litigants in U.S. courts, and especially the Supreme Court, deserve to know if their judges’ households are receiving six-figure payments from the law firms,” Mr. Price wrote.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, Patricia McCabe, said that all the justices were “attentive to ethical constraints” and complied with financial disclosure laws. The chief justice and his wife had also consulted the code of conduct for federal judges, Ms. McCabe said, including a 2009 advisory opinion that a judge “need not recuse merely because” his or her spouse had worked as a recruiter for a law firm with issues before the court.

Mrs. Roberts previously said that she handled conflicts on a case-by-case basis, avoiding matters with any connection to her husband’s job and refraining from working with lawyers who had active Supreme Court cases.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, did not address how the committee would respond to Mr. Price, but said in a statement that his letter raised “troubling issues that once again demonstrate the need” for ethics reforms to “begin the process of restoring faith in the Supreme Court.”

Public confidence in the court recently fell to a historic low, polls showed, and Democrats in Congress have called for greater transparency, including stronger disclosure and recusal standards. The Justice Department declined to comment.

Mr. Price and Mrs. Roberts both had worked as legal recruiters for Major, Lindsey & Africa, a global firm based in Maryland. According to the letter, Mr. Price was fired in 2013 and sued the firm, as well as Mrs. Roberts and another executive, over his dismissal.

He lost the case, but the litigation produced documents that he sent to Congress and the Justice Department, including spreadsheets showing commissions attributed to Mrs. Roberts early in her headhunting career, from 2007 to 2014. Mrs. Roberts, according to a 2015 deposition in the case, said that a significant portion of her practice was devoted to helping senior government lawyers land jobs at law firms and that the candidates’ names were almost never disclosed.

“I keep my placements confidential,” she said in the deposition.

Mrs. Roberts, now the managing partner of the Washington office of Macrae Inc., had spent two decades at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, where she became a partner in the global technology group and also focused on talent development. In 2007, she changed careers and soon ascended the ranks of her new industry. Partners at leading law firms in Washington on average make well over $1 million a year, and at the high end, they can be paid over $7 million. Recruiting firms take a large cut from those placements, often equivalent to a quarter of the new hires’ first-year salaries.

The spreadsheets list six-figure fees credited to Mrs. Roberts for placing partners at law firms — including $690,000 in 2012 for one such match. The documents do not name clients, but Mr. Price recalled her recruitment of one prominent candidate, Ken Salazar, then interior secretary under President Barack Obama, to WilmerHale, a global firm that boasts of arguing more than 125 times before the Supreme Court.

Jan. 30

djt march 2020 Custom

New York Times, Manhattan Prosecutors Will Begin Presenting Trump Case to Grand Jury, William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich, Jan. 30, 2023. The decision potentially sets the case, tied to Donald Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star in 2016, on a path toward criminal charges.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday will begin presenting evidence to a grand jury about Donald J. Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The grand jury was recently impaneled, and witness testimony will soon begin, a clear signal that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, is nearing a decision about whether to charge Mr. Trump.

david pecker cropped On Monday, one of the witnesses was seen with his lawyer entering the building in Lower Manhattan where the grand jury is sitting. The witness, David Pecker, left, is the former publisher of The National Enquirer, the tabloid that helped broker the deal with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, right.

stormy daniels djt insight 1 19 2018 Custom As prosecutors prepare to reconstruct the events surrounding the payment for grand jurors, they have sought to interview several witnesses, including the tabloid’s former editor, Dylan Howard, and two employees at Mr. Trump’s company, the people said. Mr. Howard and the Trump Organization employees, Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, have not yet testified before the grand jury.

The prosecutors have also begun contacting officials from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, one of the people said. And in a sign that they want to corroborate these witness accounts, the prosecutors recently subpoenaed phone records and other documents that might shed light on the episode.

djt michael cohen disloyal A conviction is not a sure thing, in part because a case could hinge on showing that Mr. Trump and his company falsified records to hide the payout from voters days before the 2016 election, a low-level felony charge that would be based on a largely untested legal theory. The case would also rely on the testimony of Michael D. Cohen, left, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who made the payment and who himself pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money in 2018.

Still, the developments compound Mr. Trump’s mounting legal woes as he faces an array of law enforcement investigations: A district attorney in Georgia could seek to indict him for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, and he faces a special counsel investigation into his removal of sensitive documents from the White House.

Mr. Bragg’s decision to impanel a grand jury focused on the hush money — supercharging the longest-running criminal investigation into Mr. Trump — represents a dramatic escalation in an inquiry that once appeared to have reached a dead end.

Under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney’s office had begun presenting evidence to an earlier grand jury about a case focused not just on the hush money but on Mr. Trump’s broader business practices, including whether he fraudulently inflated the value of his real estate to secure favorable loans and other financial benefits. Yet in the early weeks of his tenure last year, Mr. Bragg developed concerns about the strength of that case and decided to abandon the grand jury presentation, prompting the resignations of the two senior prosecutors leading the investigation.

One of them, Mark F. Pomerantz, was highly critical of Mr. Bragg’s decision and has written a book that is scheduled to be published next week, “People vs. Donald Trump,” detailing his account of the inquiry. Mr. Bragg’s office recently wrote to Mr. Pomerantz’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, expressing concern that the book might disclose grand jury information or interfere with the investigation.

For his part, Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing and chalked up the scrutiny — as he has many times before — to a partisan witch hunt against him. If he were ultimately convicted, Mr. Trump would face a maximum sentence of four years, though prison time would not be mandatory.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg’s office declined to comment. Mr. Pecker’s lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Ronald P. Fischetti, declined to comment, as did a lawyer for Mr. McConney and Ms. Tarasoff.

The panel hearing evidence about the hush money is likely what’s known as a special grand jury. Like regular grand juries, it is made up of 23 Manhattan residents chosen at random. But its members are sworn in to serve for six months to hear complex cases, rather than the routine 30-day panels that review evidence and vote on whether to bring charges in cases of burglary, assault, robbery, murder and other crimes.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Palmer Report, Analysis: Donald Trump is now in the process of being criminally indicted by grand juries in three different jurisdictions, Bill Palmer, right, Jan. 30, 2023. When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg decided last year not to criminally indict Donald Trump for his Trump Organization financial fraud, it seemed obvious that Bragg was simply trying to avoid being the first to indict Trump, and that he’d eventually indict him on something. After all, Bragg would have zero chance of reelection in Manhattan if he doesn’t end up indicting Trump.

Last week Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told the court that indictment decisions in her criminal probe against Donald Trump were “imminent.” Now that Willis is seemingly just days away from indicting Trump, it’s perhaps not a surprise that Alvin Bragg is now also in the process of indicting Trump.

Bragg is presenting evidence of Donald Trump’s campaign finance fraud to a grand jury, per the New York Times. Specifically, Trump is being criminally targeted for illegally using campaign money as part of his payoff scheme to keep Stormy Daniels quiet. This is the same Trump criminal plot which previously sent Michael Cohen to prison. So all that Bragg really has to do is show that Cohen was acting upon Trump’s instruction.

Michael Cohen responded to today’s news by retweeting a reminder that he met with the Manhattan DA’s office just two weeks ago. Cohen also retweeted a reporter who stated that campaign finance charges could be the “most dangerous criminal case” against Trump, in terms of landing a conviction.

The public will understandably be wary of Alvin Bragg until he actually indicts Trump, given how badly Bragg has dragged his feet up to this point. But there would be no reason for Bragg to go to the effort of presenting a criminal case against Trump to a grand jury, and leaking to the media that he’s doing so, unless he’s already decided to go through with indicting Trump. Bragg was seemingly just waiting until word came down that the Fulton County DA is now just days away from indicting Trump, meaning Bragg will get to indict Trump second (or third) instead of first.

This all comes after Bloomberg reported roughly two weeks ago that DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith was just weeks away from critical indictment decisions in his own criminal case against Donald Trump. This means Trump is now on track to be indicted by three different sets of prosecutors, each of which will put him on criminal trial. It’s been tricky to predict the timing, but this was always coming. And now we’re here.

U.S. Justice Failures, Scandals

william barr hearing new

New York Times, Opinion: Bill Barr’s Image Rehab Is Kaput, David Firestone, Jan. 30, 2023. Mr. Firestone is a member of the editorial board.

Former Attorney General William Barr has spent the last year in a desperate salvage operation for what’s left of his legal and ethical reputation.

During his 22 months in office, he allowed his Justice Department to become a personal protection racket for his boss, Donald Trump, and left prosecutors, the F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials subject to the worst impulses of the president. But then, in his 2022 memoir, Mr. Barr did an about-face, bashing Mr. Trump for lacking a presidential temperament and singling out his “self-indulgence and lack of self-control.”

In the book, he urged Republicans not to renominate Mr. Trump in 2024, accusing the former president of going “off the rails” with his stolen-election claims by preferring the counsel of “sycophants” and “whack jobs” to that of his real advisers. Clearly concerned that history was paying attention, he was even stronger in his videotaped testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, loosing a variety of barnyard epithets and bitter insults to describe Mr. Trump’s legal strategy. He said the president had become “detached from reality” and was doing a disservice to the nation.

The hollow and self-serving nature of this turnabout was always apparent. Mr. Barr never made these concerns public at a time when his dissent would have made a difference. Instead, he left office in 2020 showering compliments on his boss, praising Mr. Trump’s “unprecedented achievements” and promising that Justice would continue to pursue claims of voter fraud that he must have known were baseless.

But if Mr. Barr harbored any fantasy that he might yet be credited with a wisp of personal integrity for standing up for democracy, that hope was thoroughly demolished on Thursday when The Times published the details of what really happened when Mr. Barr launched a counter-investigation into the origins of Robert Mueller’s report on the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The reporting demonstrated a staggering abuse of the special counsel system and the attorney general’s office, all in a failed attempt by Mr. Barr to rewrite the sour truths of Mr. Trump’s history.

It was bad enough when, in March 2019, Mr. Barr tried to mislead the public into thinking the forthcoming Mueller report exonerated Mr. Trump, when in fact the report later showed just how strong the links were between the campaign and the Russian government, which worked to help defeat Hillary Clinton. A few months later Mr. Barr assigned John Durham, right, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, as a special counsel to investigate Mr. Mueller’s investigation, hoping to prove Mr. Trump’s wild public allegations that the federal intelligence officials had helped instigate the claims of Russian interference to damage him.

Attorneys general are not supposed to interfere in a special counsel’s investigation. The whole point of the system is to isolate the prosecution of sensitive cases from the appearance of political meddling. But the new Times reporting shows that Mr. Barr did the opposite, regularly meeting with Mr. Durham to discuss his progress and advocating on his behalf with intelligence officials when they were unable to come up with the nonexistent proof Mr. Barr wanted to see. (Aides told Times reporters that Mr. Barr was certain from the beginning that U.S. spy agencies were behind the allegations of collusion.)

When the Justice Department’s own inspector general prepared to issue a report saying that, while the F.B.I. made some ethical mistakes, the investigation was legitimate and not politically motivated, Mr. Durham lobbied him to drop the finding. When that effort was unsuccessful, Mr. Barr reverted to his usual pattern of trying to spin the report before it was issued, disagreeing with its finding before it was even out. Mr. Durham then followed up with a similar statement, shattering the clear department principle of staying silent about a current investigation.

The two men even traveled to Britain and Italy together, pressuring government agencies there to disclose what they told U.S. spy agencies about the Trump-Russia connections. That infuriated officials of those governments, who said they had done nothing of the kind, and no evidence was ever found that they had. But on one of those trips, The Times reported, Italian officials gave the men a tip which, people familiar with the matter said, linked Mr. Trump to possible serious financial crimes. (It is not clear what those crimes were, and more reporting will be necessary to reveal the details.) Did Mr. Barr follow protocol and turn the tip over to regular prosecutors in his department for investigation? No. Instead, he gave it to his traveling companion, Mr. Durham, who opened a criminal investigation but never made it public and never filed charges, and when word began to trickle out that a suspected crime had been discovered, he falsely let the world think it had something to do with his original goal.

The Durham investigation, of course, has never presented any evidence that the F.B.I. or intelligence agencies committed any misconduct in the course of the Russia investigation, bitterly disappointing Mr. Barr and especially his patron, Mr. Trump, who had assured his supporters for months that it would produce something big. Desperate for some kind of success, Mr. Durham indicted Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who had worked for Democrats in their dealings with the F.B.I., over the objections of two prosecutors on the special counsel team who said the case was far too thin and who later left the staff.

Mr. Sussmann was acquitted last May of lying to the bureau, and the jury forewoman told reporters that bringing the case had been unwise. Mr. Barr later tried to justify the trial by saying it served another purpose in exposing the Clinton campaign’s starting the Russia narrative as a “dirty trick.” The trial did nothing of the kind, but it did expose Mr. Barr’s willingness to abuse the gratuitous prosecution of an individual to score political points against one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent enemies.

One of the other casualties of this deceitful crusade was the deliberate damage it did to the reputations of the F.B.I., the intelligence agencies and officials in Mr. Barr’s own department. All of these agencies have had many problematic episodes in their pasts, but there is no evidence in this case that they willfully tried to smear Mr. Trump and his campaign with false allegations of collusion. They were trying to do their jobs, on which the nation’s security depends, but because they got in Mr. Trump’s way, Mr. Barr aided in degrading their image through a deep-state conspiracy theory before an entire generation of Trump supporters. Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt for proof that these same government offices were “weaponized” against conservatives, an expedition that is likely to be no more effective than Mr. Durham’s and Mr. Barr’s.

But weakening the country’s institutions and safeguards for political benefit is how Mr. Barr did business in the nearly two years he served as the nation’s top law enforcement official under Mr. Trump. He has a long history of making the Justice Department an instrument of his ideology and politics; when he was attorney general in 1992 during the Bush administration, the Times columnist William Safire accused him of leading a “Criminal Cover-up Division” in refusing to appoint an independent counsel to investigate whether the Bush administration had knowingly provided aid to Saddam Hussein that was used to finance the military before Iraq invaded Kuwait. Under Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr did the opposite, demanding that an unnecessary special counsel do the bidding of the White House and trying to steer the investigation to Mr. Trump’s advantage. His efforts came to naught, and so will his campaign to be remembered as a defender of the Constitution.

David Firestone is a member of the editorial board. Mr. Firestone was a reporter and editor at The Times from 1993 to 2014, including serving as a congressional correspondent and New York City Hall bureau chief, and was executive editor for digital at NBC News until 2022.

New York Times, Opinion: The Durham Fiasco Is a Warning of What’s to Come, Michelle Goldberg,right, Jan. 30, 2023. Thank goodness Speaker Kevin McCarthy has created a House subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government!

Last week, The New York Times reported on an outrageous example of such weaponization, the flagrant use of federal law enforcement powers to target an administration’s political enemies. I’m talking, of course, about the John Durham special counsel investigation, which was meant to root out the ostensibly corrupt origins of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and quickly came to embody the sins that Donald Trump and his allies projected onto the F.B.I.

Trump’s circle insisted, falsely, that the Mueller inquiry was a hit job that employed Russian disinformation — via the Steele dossier — to frame Trump, all part of a plot cooked up by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Durham seems to have bought into this Trumpist conspiracy theory, and to help prove it, he tried to employ what appears to be Russian disinformation to go after the Clinton camp. More specifically, he used dubious Russian intelligence memos, which analysts believed were seeded with falsehoods, to try to convince a court to give him access to the emails of a former aide to George Soros, which he believed would show Clinton-related wrongdoing.

Astonishingly, The Times found that while Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr and Durham, right, were in Europe looking for evidence to discredit the Russia investigation, Italian officials gave them a “potentially explosive tip” linking Trump to “certain suspected financial crimes.” Rather than assign a new prosecutor to look into those suspected crimes, Barr folded the matter into Durham’s inquiry, giving Durham criminal prosecution powers for the first time.

Then the attorney general sat back while the media inferred that the criminal investigation must mean Durham had found evidence of malfeasance connected to Russiagate. Barr, usually shameless in his public spinning of the news, quietly let an investigation into Trump be used to cast aspersions on Trump’s perceived enemies. (The fate of that inquiry remains a mystery.)

This squalid episode is a note-perfect example of how Republican scandal-mongering operates. The right ascribes to its adversaries, whether in the Democratic Party or the putative deep state, monstrous corruption and elaborate conspiracies. Then, in the name of fighting back, it mimics the tactics it has accused its foes of using.

Look, for example, at the behavior that gave rise to Trump’s first impeachment. Trump falsely claimed that Joe Biden, as vice president, used the threat of withholding American loan guarantees to blackmail the Ukrainian government into doing his personal bidding. Hoping to get Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to substantiate his lies, Trump tried to use the threat of withholding American aid to … blackmail the Ukrainian government into doing his personal bidding. The symmetry between accusations and counter-accusations, in turn, fosters a widespread cynicism about ever finding the truth.

It’s important to keep this in mind because we’re about to see a lot more of it. Now that they control the House, Republicans have prioritized investigating their political opponents. McCarthy has stacked the Oversight Committee, central to the House’s investigative apparatus, with flame-throwing fantasists, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert. Further, as Politico reported in a “field guide” to the coming Republican inquiries, McCarthy has urged Republicans to treat every committee like the Oversight Committee, meaning all investigations, all the time.

There are going to be investigations into Hunter Biden, and investigations into the origins of the pandemic. There will likely be scrutiny of the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago and Biden’s handling of classified documents. And, as my colleague David Firestone on the editorial board put it over the weekend, “Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt” for proof that the F.B.I. and other intelligence agencies were “weaponized” against conservatives.

These all promise to be congressional equivalents of the Durham inquiry. Certainly, most if not all congressional investigations are politically motivated, but there is nevertheless a difference between inquiries predicated on something real, and those, like the many investigations in the Benghazi attack, meant to troll for dirt and reify Fox News phantasms. House Democrats examined Trump’s interference with the C.D.C. during the acute stage of the pandemic. House Republicans plan to look into what the Republican congressman Jim Banks termed the military’s “dangerous” Covid vaccine mandates. There might be an equivalence in the form of these two undertakings, but not in their empirical basis.

It remains to be seen whether our political media is up for the task of making these distinctions. The coverage of Trump and Biden’s respective retention of classified documents offers little cause for optimism. Again and again, journalists and pundits have noted that, while the two cases are very different, there are seeming similarities, and those similarities are good for Trump. This is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, since by speculating about political narratives, you help create them.

“John Durham has already won,” said the headline of a Politico article from last year, noting his success in perpetuating the right’s fevered counter-history of Russiagate. Of course he didn’t win; he would go on to lose both cases arising from his investigation as well as the honorable reputation he had before he started it. What he did manage to do, however, was spread a lot of confusion and waste a lot of time. Now the Republican House picks up where he left off.

Jan. 28

World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary: McGonigal arrest focuses attention on nest of pro-Russian, pro-Giuliani Trump supporters in New York City FBI field office, aka “Trumpland,” Webster G. Tarpley, right, Jan. 28, 2023 (105:52 mins.). NYC field office holds key to sabotage of initial Trump-Russia inquiry of 2016, the failure of which helped Don prevail in presidential contest;

Scrutiny of Special Counsel John Durham reveals a blatantly political operative with no principles, eager to please Trump and Barr; Durham’s grotesque contortions to procure a conviction to feed the reactionary noise machine at Fox News; Two humiliating innocent verdicts brought back in mere hours; Four years of blind alleys; The Barr-Durham junket to Rome in summer 2019 that yielded no exoneration of Trump, but rather a possible finance scandal against the hotelier!

UK, France, Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Estonia and Poland had reported suspicious contacts of Trump campaign with Russia in 2015-2016; British GCHQ chief personally warned US;

With 15 NATO countries sending almost 100 modern main battle tanks to Ukraine, Biden’s alliance diplomacy continues to pay off!

Jan. 27

New York Times, Investigation: How Barr’s Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled, Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner, Jan. 26, 2023. The review by John Durham, right, at one point veered into a criminal investigation related to Donald Trump himself, even as it failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry.

It became a regular litany of grievances from President Donald J. Trump and his supporters: The investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia was a witch hunt, they maintained, that had been opened without any solid basis, went on too long and found no proof of collusion.

Egged on by Mr. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Mr. Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John H. Durham, and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Mr. Trump left office.

But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.

Moreover, a monthslong review by The New York Times found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.

Interviews by The Times with more than a dozen current and former officials have revealed an array of previously unreported episodes that show how the Durham inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes as it went unsuccessfully down one path after another even as Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr promoted a misleading narrative of its progress.

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.

Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.

There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)

Now, as Mr. Durham works on a final report, the interviews by The Times provide new details of how he and Mr. Barr sought to recast the scrutiny of the 2016 Trump campaign’s myriad if murky links to Russia as unjustified and itself a crime.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: What did the Italians tell Barr and Durham about Donald Trump's criminal activity? Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Jan. 27, 2023. In the fall of 2019, Attorney General William Barr and John Durham, the Special Counsel assigned by Barr to investigate the FBI for wrongly investigating Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign for ties to Russia, flew to Italy to pressure law enforcement there to fess up that they were involved with the FBI in what was falsely called by Trump the "Russia hoax."

Instead of getting the goods on the FBI -- whose top counterintelligence agent in New York at the time was in bed with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska --Italian law enforcement provided Barr and Durham with information that Trump was involved in a major criminal matter, including suspicious financial dealings. Barr assigned Durham, a pro-Trump shill, to investigate the matter, granting him, for the first time, criminal prosecution authority. Not only did Durham not find any evidence of a "Russia hoax" involving the Democratic Party, 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, or George Soros -- all of whom Durham had under investigation -- but the criminal matter conveyed by the Italians was never acted upon.

WMR had reported on a serious criminal matter involving the car bombing assassination of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, right, on October 16, 2017 and its possible ties to Trump. Italian intelligence and law enforcement have kept a close eye on Malta daphne caruana galizia cropped ever since the 1970s, when the island country developed close ties with the Soviet Union and Libya. Although Malta is now a member of the European Union, the Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza (Financial Guard), as well as the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE) foreign intelligence service maintain a close eye on Malta, which has become a haven for offshore banking, corporate brass plates, and Russian and other foreign residents who have purchased Maltese passports and established residency in the twin island nation.

Caruana Galizia was assassinated after she had implicated Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, his wife, and top aides in a scandal partly exposed by the release of the Panama Papers. The scandal led directly from Malta to Azerbaijan and, ultimately, to the Trump Organization in New York.

Caruana Galizia was well-aware of Trump's connections to international wealth and political and financial power brokers. During the 2016 presidential campaign, she wrote on her website, "You can't get more establishment than billionaire Donald Trump, scion of an extremely wealthy WASP family. So the real problem is stupidity and malice. But then it always was."

And, as she found out a year later, you can't get more corrupt and murderous than Donald Trump. Whatever the Italians passed on to Barr and Durham about Trump, America's "Mr. Magoo" Attorney General, Merrick Garland, has a duty and an obligation to the American people to make that information public without delay.

Jan. 26

Charles McGonigal, left, former FBI counterintelligence chief in New York, and his alleged ally, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, are shown in a photo collage.

Byline Times, Investigation: The Steele Dossier, the Indicted FBI Officer & The ‘Most Consequential Investigations in US History,’ Peter Jukes and Caroline Orr, Jan. 26, 2023. Christopher Steele is concerned his dossier on Donald Trump’s Russian connections was held up at the FBI Office whose head of Counter Intelligence has been indicted for working with one of Putin’s most powerful oligarchs.

News that a senior FBI official Charles McGonigal has been indicted for taking payments from sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and then trying to conceal those payments, raises deeply disturbing questions about the investigations he oversaw as head of counterintelligence at the FBI’s New York Field Office during the tumultuous 2016 presidential election,

The case, which is still unfolding, has particularly concerned the former British intelligence officer and Russia expert, Christopher Steele, author of the ‘Steele Dossier’ on Donald Trump and his Kremlin connections which was passed on to the FBI’s New York in the summer of 2016.

Steele told Byline Times that McGonigal had the opportunity to influence both “Trump-Russia and the (re-opened) Hillary Clinton email investigations in 2016, arguably two of the most politically consequential ones in US history.”

McGonigal, who has denied charges of money laundering and violating economic sanctions against Russia, was also a key figure in the FBI’s Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section prior to being tapped to lead the counterintelligence division at the FBI’s New York Field Office a few weeks before the end of the presidential campaign.

Within weeks of McGonigal’s promotion to the new position in early October, the New York Field Office took centre stage as part of a scandal involving alleged leaks that ultimately forced then-FBI Director James Comey to go public with information about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails barely over a week before Election Day — a decision that radically altered the course of the 2016 campaign and may have swung the election in Trump’s favour.

Although we don’t yet know whether or to what extent McGonigal may have been aware of or involved in these events, the allegation that one of the FBI’s most senior counterintelligence officials — who was tasked with overseeing some of the agency’s most sensitive and top-secret investigations — may have been secretly taking money from the Russian oligarchs he was supposed to have been investigating raises serious questions about his role in a series of events that, more than six years later, remains among the most pressing national security issues facing the United States.

Having worked as section chief for the Cyber-Counterintelligence Co-ordination Section at FBI headquarters during the height of Russian hacking around the looming election, McGonigal was named by the FBI’s then director, James Comey, as special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence division for the New York Field Office on 4 October 2016.

A few weeks later, close Trump ally and former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, started dropping hints on Fox News about information coming from the FBI field office. On 26 October, Rudy Giuliani told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum that Trump had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days.”

“I’m talking about some pretty big surprise,” he added.

Giuliani went on to boast of his close friendships with retired FBI agents, and though he denied having a role in Comey’s Oct. 28 announcement and the events leading up to it, he also acknowledged that he had “heard about it” from contacts at the FBI.

“I did nothing to get it out, I had no role in it,” Giuliani said in a Fox & Friends interview on 4 November. “Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it…”

In addition to Giuliani, FBI agents from the NY Field Office also reportedly leaked information to GOP Rep. Devin Nunes. According to Nunes’ own telling, in late September 2016, “good FBI agents” revealed to him — and possibly other congressional Republicans — that they had discovered more of Clinton’s emails on Weiner’s laptop.

Three weeks after the appointment of McGonigal, and in the closing days of the 2016 presidential election, James Comey made the unprecedented decision of announcing that the FBI was reviewing new emails possibly related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server due to information from the New York field office. Comey made the announcement in a letter to Congress on October 28, 2016, saying that agents working on “an unrelated case” had turned up new emails and were investigating whether or not the material was significant.

A Republican congressman, Jason Chaffetz, leaked news of the letter and misrepresented its content, tweeting that the investigation into Clinton had been reopened. The unrelated case, it was later revealed, was the FBI’s investigation into disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner. While examining Weiner’s laptop, investigators discovered that his wife Huma Abedin — a top aide to Clinton — had also used the laptop, which contained emails between Abedin and Clinton.

Jan. 23

Charles McGonigal, left, former FBI counterintelligence chief in New York, and his alleged ally, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, are shown in a photo collage.

Washington Post, Former senior FBI official accused of working for Russian he investigated, Shayna Jacobs, Spencer S. Hsu and Devlin Barrett, Jan. 23, 2023. Charles McGonigal, a former counterintelligence chief, is charged with money laundering and other counts connected to oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

The former head of FBI counterintelligence in New York has been charged in two separate indictments that accuse him of taking secret cash payments of more than $225,000 while overseeing highly sensitive cases, and allegedly breaking the law by trying to get Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, left, removed from a U.S. sanctions list, officials said Monday.

Charles McGonigal, 54, who retired from the FBI in September 2018, was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on money laundering, violating U.S. sanctions and other charges in connection to his alleged ties to Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his role at the FBI, McGonigal had been tasked with investigating Deripaska, whose own indictment on sanctions-violation charges was unsealed in September.

Separately, McGonigal was accused in a nine-count indictment in federal court in Washington of hiding his receipt of $225,000 from a former Albanian intelligence agent living in New Jersey. McGonigal was also accused of hiding foreign travel and contacts with senior leaders in countries including Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia where the former Albanian agent had business interests.

McGonigal’s alleged involvement with Deripaska may impact a significant push by the Justice Department to hit wealthy Russians with economic sanctions for conducting business in the United States, an effort that accelerated last year with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The twin indictments are also a black eye for the FBI, alleging that one of its most senior and trusted intelligence officials was taking secret cash payments and undermining the bureau’s overall intelligence-gathering mission.

Through his lawyer, McGonigal pleaded not guilty at a brief court appearance Monday. The lawyer, Seth DuCharme, told journalists that his client "served the United States for decades in positions of public trust and leadership, so this is a distressing day for him, but we’re going to litigate the case in the courtroom.”

Prosecutors alleged that from at least August 2017 and beyond his retirement from the FBI, McGonigal failed to disclose to the FBI his relationship with the former Albanian security official, described as “Person A” in charging papers. He also allegedly failed to disclose that he had an “ongoing relationship with the Prime Minister of Albania,” the indictment said. Since 2013, Edi Rama has served as the prime minister of that country.

In late 2017, authorities charge, McGonigal received packages of cash totaling $225,000 from Person A — the first time, in a parked car outside a New York City restaurant, the next two times at the person’s New Jersey home. According to the indictment, McGonigal “indicated to Person A that the money would be paid back.”

Months later, at McGonigal’s urging, the FBI opened an investigation into an American lobbyist for an Albanian political party that is a rival of Prime Minister Rama, an investigation that used Person A as a source of information, authorities said.

Current and former U.S. officials who know and have worked with McGonigal said they were shocked by the indictments. As a senior FBI counterintelligence official, McGonigal had access to an extraordinary amount of sensitive information, potentially including investigations of foreign spies or U.S. citizens suspected of working on behalf of foreign governments, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the work McGonigal did. One former official said that McGonigal had worked with the CIA on counterintelligence matters.

Washington Post, Four Oath Keepers found guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy, Rachel Weiner, Jan. 23, 2023. The verdict is the the second of three seditious conspiracy cases charged in the U.S. Capitol breach.

Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group were convicted of seditious conspiracy Monday, joining founder Stewart Rhodes in being found guilty by a jury of plotting to keep President Donald Trump in power by force.

Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used and even more rarely successful, making the verdict a significant victory for the Justice Department. Of the nearly 1,000 people charged with committing crimes at the Capitol on Jan. 6, only 14 were charged with seditious conspiracy, identified by the Justice Department as not just participants in a violent mob but leaders using brutality to further a political plot. In November, the same prosecution team failed to convict three associates of the Oath Keepers of the crime.

At Rhodes’s trial only he and Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs were found guilty of conspiring to commit sedition, while three associates were convicted of less politically loaded felonies that did not require plans to use force. The Oath Keepers verdict — which came after the jury deliberated for about 13 hours — comes as five members of the Proud Boys face trial down the hall on seditious conspiracy charges.

Joseph Hackett, 52; Roberto Minuta, 38; David Moerschel, 45 and Edward Vallejo, 64, were all also convicted Monday of obstructing lawmakers and Congress generally and conspiring to do the same. Hackett was convicted of destroying evidence by deleting it from his devices, while Minuta and Moerschel were acquitted on that charge. Hackett and Moerschel were acquitted of responsibility for damaging the Capitol’s historic Columbus doors.

The Oath Keepers were described by federal prosecutors as armed and dangerous traitors, and by their attorneys as hapless has-beens who stumbled into chaos.

“They claimed to wrap themselves in the Constitution, but they trampled it,” prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler said in closing arguments. “They ignored the will of the people,” he said, but “had the audacity to claim to be oath-keepers.”

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta allowed all four men to await sentencing on 24-hour house arrest, noting that none of them had prior criminal history or issues on pretrial release.

Richard Barnett sits inside the office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 6, 2021 (AFP Photo by Saul Loeb via Getty Images).

Richard Barnett sits inside the office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 6, 2021 (AFP Photo by Saul Loeb via Getty Images).

Washington Post, Man photographed in Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6 convicted of 8 counts, Paul Duggan, Jan. 23, 2023. An Arkansas man who entered the U.S. Capitol with rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, and was photographed lounging at a desk in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite was convicted Monday of eight federal crimes related to the incursion.

Richard “Bigo” Barnett, who acknowledged leaving a vulgar written message for Pelosi before departing the suite with a purloined envelope bearing the California Democrat’s digital signature, sat impassively as a jury in U.S. District Court in Washington delivered its verdicts.

After eight days of testimony and legal arguments in Barnett’s trial, the panel began deliberating Monday morning and reached guilty findings on all eight counts against him, including four felonies, in less than two hours.

As for potential prison time, the most serious charge in the case, obstructing an official proceeding, carries a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars. Based on previous prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants, however, advisory sentencing guidelines used by the court are likely to recommend a much shorter term for Barnett.

He kicked back in Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6. Now he has ‘regrets.’

Although a prosecutor argued Monday that Barnett, who lives in Gravette, Ark., in the Ozarks, should be jailed pending his May 3 sentencing, Judge Christopher R. Cooper allowed him to remain on home detention.

Barnett, a construction company employee in 2020 and an ardent supporter of then-President Donald Trump, was carrying a walking stick equipped with a 950,000-volt stun device when he entered the Capitol with a riotous mob. Congress was meeting that day to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election despite Trump’s false claim that he had been denied a second term because of voter fraud.

In addition to obstructing an official proceeding, Barnett was convicted of two felonies related to carrying a dangerous weapon during the attack on the Capitol and a felony charge of civil disorder. The four misdemeanors he was convicted of included theft of government property, meaning the empty envelope.

Authorities said the stun device on his retractable walking stick was capable of rendering a person unconscious if held against the skin for 10 seconds.

Legally speaking, it did not matter to prosecutors whether Barnett sat or stood in the House speaker’s deserted office suite. His alleged criminal presence in the Capitol was the key issue in his trial.

But what brought him to viral notoriety was his decision to recline nonchalantly in a staff member’s swivel chair and plunk his left work boot atop the desk.

Like Jacob Chansley, the shirtless so-called QAnon shaman, who roamed the Capitol in face paint and horned headgear during the riot, and another accused trespasser, often referred to as the “zip tie guy,” who scaled the Senate gallery wearing military fatigues and carrying a fistful of plastic handcuffs, Barnett became an avatar of the Jan. 6 mayhem in widely viewed images captured by photojournalists.

Chansley was sentenced to 41 months in prison. The accused “zip tie guy,” identified by the FBI as Eric Munchel, is awaiting trial in U.S. District Court.

Jan. 21

World Crisis Radio, Commentary: Is Garland double-crossing Biden by demanding cautious deference in secret documents case before blindsiding him with a Trump-appointed special prosecutor? Webster G. Tarpley, right, Jan. 21, 2023 (97:55 mins.). Take Care Clause of Constitution makes President — not the Attorney General – the top law enforcement officer of US; This refutes Garland’s absurd claim of absolute metaphysical independence for DoJ as virtual state within a state; January 6 committee hearings shocked DoJ into August MaL search;

Garland’s claim to act based on fact and law only is refuted by his obsessive fixation on his own image and reputation; His rejection by Senate GOP must rank as greatest humiliation of his life, but is he seeking to restore his credit with Moscow Mitch?

If justice delayed is justice denied, Garland is violating the Preamble’s mandate to ”establish justice”;

The Mueller report detailed multiple cases of obstruction by Trump, but Garland has ignored these since January 20, 2021; Garland’s legal aid for Trump against E. Jean Carroll; Ending DoJ non-feasance is key to avoiding default and betrayal of allies simply by enforcing law against insurrectionists;

History of interwar period teaches that fascist movements can be crushed, provided they are confronted quickly!

Jan. 20

Going Deep with Russ Baker, Investigative Commentary: George Santos and Lisa Marie Presley: Media Missed the Story, Russ Baker, right, russ baker new head and shoulders Jan. 20, 2023. Santos could have been spotted earlier; Presley stories leave out what mattered most: the effects of Scientology.

One of the most odious practices of large news organizations is acting like smaller news organizations don’t exist, even while taking or building on work done by those smaller outfits.

This practice has always been a problem, but many people are unaware of it because large news organizations do, very selectively, credit other news organizations. They do this either because they have sizable or consequential followings, and not crediting them would be noticed and criticized, or because some small news entities are perceived as somehow “hot” and, again, there might be consequences for withholding credit.

I was thinking about this issue the other day when I saw a clause in a New York Times article about resume fabricator Rep. George Santos (R-NY). Mr. Santos, 34, managed to keep almost all of it from the public until after he was elected, when an investigation by The Times independently unearthed the problematic claims documented by researchers and others that they missed.

Of course, the Times deserves credit for its excellent reporting in shedding light on Santos’s web of self-aggrandizing lies. But it was not the first news organization to do so.

As I noted in a previous substack, a small Long Island newspaper, the North Shore Leader, reported dramatic allegations about Santos’s disdain for the truth months earlier. Now, we don’t know whether the Times found that article online or not, though there is no reason they wouldn’t find it; it comes up with any Santos Google search. Most likely, the investigation began with a tip, if not with a mention of the earlier story somewhere else.

Given how powerful the Times is and how “early” it was on this story compared to most news organizations, it is understandable that the Times would continue to press its leading role for credit, perhaps angling for yet another Pulitzer Prize.

But I again want to point out that the questions about Santos were out there for a long time before the election, yet the Times did not publish its bombshell until after Santos had already been elected.

Lisa Marie Presley’s (Un)Timely Death

Journalism has often been slow to critically investigate big names, as opposed to an Average Joe accused by the system of doing something nefarious. That’s true of individuals, and it is especially true of entities known to respond aggressively to critics and news organizations.

Over the years, as I investigated the doings of the so-called Church of Scientology, other journalists professed admiration for what they considered “guts.”

They admitted that they personally wouldn’t touch the topic because of the organization’s reputation for aggressiveness toward anyone, from former members to outsiders, thought likely to air material that made the cultish outfit look bad. Decision-makers at news organizations sometimes explicitly told me it was not a “topic for us.”

And no wonder: Scientology is so aggressive that its leader, David Miscavige, hired two private investigators to stalk his own father, an outspoken critic of his son’s operation. Police who stopped the investigators’ car found weapons in the trunk, including a silencer. In addition, the FBI has probed allegations that Miscavige was involved in sex trafficking, slave labor, torture, and violent beatings of members to insure their obedience. But, as of December 2022, attempts to serve him with a lawsuit have failed because he cannot be found.

Thus, when I saw the bland coverage of Lisa Marie Presley’s recent death, with mostly brief mentions of her embrace of Scientology, I was not surprised.

The fact is that her mother involved her in Scientology circles while Lisa Marie was a child and she lived most of her life “inside.” (Elvis, however, would have none of it. After one meeting at the church, he stormed out, saying, “Fuck those people! There’s no way I’ll ever get involved with that son-of-a-bitchin’ group. All they want is my money.”)

That Lisa Marie and her mother publicly embraced Scientology was a tremendous publicity coup for a highly controversial organization accused by many, including high-ranking defectors, of being a money-hungry cult that preyed on people and inflicted substantial financial, psychological, and even physical damage on them. It has been accused of intentionally dividing families, threatening critics, employing blackmail, and outright brainwashing.

I knew she had some years ago cut ties with the organization after a lifetime inside, and had been quite outspoken about it.

Then I saw a disturbing report noting that she had figured in the criminal trial of another high profile Scientologist, actor Danny Masterson, who has been accused of multiple rapes. In a very troubling — and certainly illegal — action Scientology officials asked Presley to talk an accuser out of testifying; Presley complied. This fact then became part of the prosecution’s case.

Although a judge had ruled against having Presley testify, a new trial was due to start this year, and, this time, her testimony was possible.

And now she is dead....Had she lived, what would she have said at the new trial?

Despite the institutional wariness, some excellent journalism and books have been done on the topic of Scientology, and I doubt most well-informed people need me to lay out the sordid history. However, the media in general have not done enough to highlight how, by targeting big names for membership, Scientology has been able to make itself attractive to thousands, more than a few of whom say they suffered everything from destitution to severe mental health issues. The organization has also taken a ferocious attitude toward those who leave, and assiduously defended those who do not, especially the high-profile ones like Masterson.

One example of the elaborate use that Scientology makes of its stars was Presley’s surprising (and improbable) 1994 marriage to Michael Jackson. News organizations often mention the marriage matter of factly, although it’s hard to believe that any sentient journalist actually believes that the marriage was a true match of soul (or body) mates.

Left out was the fact that the pop singer’s marriage to Elvis’s daughter came on the heels of a string of scandals and legal problems around Jackson’s behavior with underage and even prepubescent male youths.

The marriage gave Jackson a most remarkable PR makeover — but it also benefited Scientology. Jackson was by far the biggest “get” for the church, a bigger icon than its frequently touted endorsers like John Travolta or the late Kirstie Alley, or even Tom Cruise.

I’ve been able to find only one major news organization, The Washington Post, that published actual speculation on the marriage itself and a possible Scientology role.

Jan. 19

Longtime advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, plaintiff in civil suits accusing Donald Trump of rape three decades again and defamation more recently, is show at left in a recent file photo along with Trump.

Washington Post, Trump thought photo of accuser was of ex-wife during deposition, Shayna Jacobs, Jan. 19, 2023 (print ed.). Donald Trump mistook his sexual assault accuser E. Jean Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples when shown a photograph from the 1990s in a deposition at Mar-a-Lago last year, potentially undermining one of the common defenses he has used to deny an attack.

Trump, who is being sued by Carroll, an author and advice columnist, for defamation and sexual assault stemming from the same alleged encounter, has repeatedly said Carroll is not his “type,” suggesting an assault could not have occurred because he would not have pursued her romantically.

“That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” Trump said under examination from Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan, in a new selection of excerpts from the deposition that was unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Trump’s blunder in a sworn deposition was quickly corrected by his attorney Alina Habba, who told him it was Carroll, not Maples, an actress and singer who was married to Trump from 1993 to 1999.

The top 10 Republican presidential candidates for 2024, ranked

Maples was Trump’s second of three wives and is the mother of Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany.

Trump’s lawyer did not immediately have a comment.

The black-and-white photo at issue has been circulating since Carroll made allegations against then-president Trump in 2019, detailing an account in her memoir of a forced sexual act during an encounter with Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.

Trump has denied having ever known Carroll, and in response to the photo’s existence, he has said in the past that he was often introduced to people at events that he didn’t know. In the deposition, he said the photo appeared to show him on a “receiving line,” possibly at a charity event, where he met and greeted guests.

New York Times, Support for Trump Is Wavering Among Nation’s Evangelical Leaders, Maggie Haberman and Michael C. Bender, Jan. 19, 2023. Former President Trump, who relied on evangelical voters in 2016, has accused Christian leaders of “disloyalty.” Can he count on them in 2024?

On Sunday, the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a longtime supporter of Donald J. Trump who has yet to endorse his 2024 White House bid, shared the stage at his Dallas megachurch with one of the former president’s potential rivals next year: former Vice President Mike Pence.

The next day, Mr. Trump lashed out at Pastor Jeffress and other evangelical leaders he spent years courting, accusing them of “disloyalty” and blaming them for the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

While Pastor Jeffress shrugged off the criticism, others weren’t as eager to let it slide, instead suggesting that it was time for Mr. Trump to move out of the way for a new generation of Republican candidates.

The clash highlighted one of the central tensions inside the Republican Party as it lurches toward an uncertain 2024 presidential primary: wavering support for Mr. Trump among the nation’s evangelical leaders, whose congregants have for decades been a key constituency for conservatives and who provided crucial backing to Mr. Trump in his ascent to the White House.

If these leaders break with Mr. Trump — and if evangelical voters follow, which is by no means a certainty — the result will be a tectonic shift in Republican politics.

“When I saw his statement, I thought, ‘You’re not going to gain any traction by throwing the most loyal base under the bus and shifting blame,’” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical activist in Iowa and the chief executive of the Family Leader organization.

Mr. Vander Plaats said that while evangelicals were grateful to Mr. Trump for his federal judicial appointments and for moving the United States Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, many thought that his time as leader of the party has passed given how hardened many Americans’ views of him are. Asked whether Mr. Trump would command support among evangelical leaders as he did in the past, Mr. Vander Plaats, who has criticized Mr. Trump in the past, said, “No way.”

Indeed, recent polls point to some Trump fatigue among Republican voters. But it is an open question whether evangelical voters will abandon him if prominent Christian ministers support other candidates. And Mr. Trump has previously had an ability to cleave various types of conservative voters from their longtime leaders, as he did during his unexpected Republican primary victory in 2016.

Trump legal advisors John Eastman, left, and Rudy Giuliani speaking on Jan. 6, 2021 at a rally led by then-President Donald Trump outside the White House whereby speakers repeatedly urged the crowd to oppose the presidential vote certification process then pending before the U.S. Congress (File Photo)..

Trump advisors John Eastman, left, and Rudy Giuliani speaking on Jan. 6, 2021 at a rally led by then-President Donald Trump outside the White House whereby speakers repeatedly urged the crowd to oppose the presidential vote certification process then pending before the U.S. Congress (File Photo).

New York Times, John Eastman Is Unbowed as Investigations Proliferate, Danny Hakim and Michael S. Schmidt, Jan. 19, 2023. A legal reckoning awaits a chief architect of Donald Trump’s effort to reverse his election loss. But in Mr. Eastman’s telling, he was far from a criminal.

John C. Eastman, a legal architect of Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times under questioning by the House Jan. 6 committee.

But in recently released testimony from the committee’s investigation, other witnesses had plenty to say about him.

Many White House lawyers expressed contempt for Mr. Eastman, portraying him as an academic with little grasp of the real world. Greg Jacob, the legal counsel to former Vice President Mike Pence, characterized Mr. Eastman’s legal advice as “gravely, gravely irresponsible,” calling him the “serpent in the ear” of Mr. Trump. Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House lawyer, recounted “chewing out” Mr. Eastman. Pat A. Cipollone, the chief White House counsel, is described calling Mr. Eastman’s ideas “nutty.”

In the coming months, Mr. Eastman will be facing a legal reckoning. He has been drawn into the criminal investigation into election interference in Atlanta, which is nearing a decision on potential indictments. The F.B.I. seized his iPhone. And the Jan. 6 committee, in one of its last acts, asked the Justice Department to investigate Mr. Eastman on a range of criminal charges, including obstructing a congressional proceeding. For good measure, he faces a disciplinary bar proceeding in California.

merrick garland john laucsch al drago bloomberg

Attorney General Merrick Garland, right, announces last week his appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Biden government documents case. Alongside him is John R. Lausch, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News).

Washington Post, How the White House strategy on classified documents backfired, Matt Viser, Tyler Pager, Carol D. Leonnig and Yasmeen Abutaleb, Jan. 19, 2023. When sensitive documents began to emerge, Biden aides are said to have tried to defer to the Justice Department, lie low and avoid Trump-like behavior. They got a political firestorm — and then a special counsel.

One of President Biden’s personal attorneys entered the luxurious 10-story office building, so near the U.S. Capitol that its promoters billed it as “the front seat to power,” on a Wednesday last November to begin what seemed a mundane task: clearing out a rarely used office that Biden occupied after leaving the vice presidency.

The attorney, Pat Moore, went through a large closet and found nothing out of the ordinary, a person familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Then he tackled a smaller closet, finding it stuffed with folders, boxes and other political memorabilia, including documents related to Beau Biden’s funeral, drafts of political speeches and boxes of personal books, the person said.

But next, Moore made a surprising discovery: a folder with a cover sheet saying it contained secret government documents. Moore immediately called another attorney and notified the White House Counsel’s Office, which in turn contacted the National Archives, according to two people familiar with the matter.

But if the way they found the classified documents was out of the ordinary, Biden’s lawyers were determined to be sticklers for the rules once it happened, said people familiar with their work.

Those first decisions inside the airy office complex at the Penn Biden Center at 101 Constitution Ave. NW launched a 71-day push by Biden’s team, federal archivists and the Justice Department to make sense of the startling discovery. It culminated in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision, to the deep consternation of many in the White House, to appoint a special counsel.

Interviews with people directly involved in the discovery and the subsequent fallout provided new details on the effort to handle the crisis created at the intersection of politics, intelligence and the law. Republicans and other critics say the White House was, at a minimum, slow to seek the truth and level with the public; Biden’s aides say they were simply proceeding cautiously in a sensitive probe and taking their lead from federal investigators.

Jan. 14

World Crisis Radio, Investigative Commentary and Advocacy: Biden and Yellen must prepare to ignore unconstitutional and illegal “debt limit” to prevent US financial catastrophe! Webster G. Tarpley, right, Jan. 14, 2023 (108:38 mins.). Treasury says borrowing authority will be exhausted by next Thursday, January 19, after which only cash conservation, tax receipts, and postponed payments will delay default; MAGAts ready extortion to launch genocidal austerity against American people; But XIV Amendment directs federal government to service the public debt; Yellen can order Treasury auctions to continue;

Following Sweden and Finland, Japan upgrades defense cooperation with US-in this case to ward off China and discourage attacks on Taiwan;

Putin’s cyber-war is prime suspect in UK Royal Mail breakdown plus failures of US and Canadian NOTAMS which disrupted passenger traffic here;

george santos headshot Santos campaign got large irregular contributions from Russian and Chinese sources, suggesting he poses risk to US national security;

McCarthy’s microscopic majority faces attrition if Santos, left, faces justice for campaign finance violations and is replaced by a Democrat, and more so when Jennifer McClellan wins February 21 special election for VA-4 seat held by late Congressman McEachin;

Past scandals provide context for future failures of McCarthy, Scalise (right), and Jordan;

New special counsel Hur is dyed-in-the-wool Republican linked to liberticide Federalist Society;

Garland pursues Fairness for Fascists while preening a non-existent reputation for integrity; Facts, law, but especially his precious public image are his lodestars; He belongs to same sleazy tradition as partisan AGs John Mitchell, Alberto Gonzalez, Sessions, and Barr; Remember Lincoln’s warning to legal positivists that the Constitution is not a suicide pact!

Sen. Murphy recognizes that robust immigration is necessary for US work force to compete with China!

Congressman until proven guilty? Kevin’s strange jurisprudence.

United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (l) with his wife of thirty-five years, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas (r). (Safe Image)

United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (l) with his wife of thirty-five years, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas (r).

Proof, Investigative Commentary: Ginni Thomas Gave the Strangest January 6 Testimony By Far—and in Doing So Revealed Far More Than She Intended, Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 14, 2023. In “The January 6 Files #2: Ginni Thomas, Part I,” an ex-federal criminal investigator and criminal defense lawyer whose January 6 research Congress has cited unpacks January 6 evidence others missed. (Note: This report builds upon Proof’s many prior reports on Ginni Thomas: I, II, III, IV, V.)

Before the January 6 testimony of Ginni Thomas can be discussed as to its specifics, several broader points about her September 29, 2022 appearance before the House January 6 Committee must be established that confirm it as perhaps the strangest—and most suspicious—testimony ever received by the Committee.

These points include the following:

(1) Ginni Thomas lied about her testimony before it began. Thomas initially insisted that she “couldn’t wait” to talk to the House January 6 Committee, as she had nothing to hide. This itself was, apparently, a lie. Within a matter of weeks, Thomas’s attorney Mark Paoletta was attacking the Committee on several fronts, insisting that Thomas would never testify before it and falsely contending that Thomas had no knowledge of any events related to January 6 despite the fact that (by then) it’d been well established by major media that she was in contact with several of the major January 6 coup plotters in the latter half of 2020 as they were in the midst of their illicit plotting.

(2) Ginni Thomas chose as her attorney the former boss of a leading coup plotter. There’s a basically endless stock of high-end lawyers in America who are willing to jump onto a high-profile case, and that includes scores of well-respected conservative lawyers who primarily work in Washington, D.C. So it is truly inexplicable that Ginni Thomas, in the midst of claiming to have no connection to the Trumpist coup plots that encircled D.C. in January 2021, hired as her lead attorney for the most important legal imbroglio of her life Mark Paoletta, a longtime close professional associate of Ken Klukowski—not just one of the leading co-conspirators of John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark in the Trumpist plot to stage a historic anti-democratic coup inside the Department of Justice, but a man who Thomas specifically stood accused of having helped infiltrate the DOJ. Thomas’s choice of attorney alone would have marked her as running in insurrectionist circles, but in fact during her 136 pages of congressional testimony things got even worse—as she admitted to herself being a close associate of Klukowski.

ginni thomas gage skidmore Given that Thomas, right, knew this line of questioning was coming, her voluntary selection of Paoletta to represent her raises an understandable concern that she wanted a trusted and privileged conduit to Klukowski (Paoletta) to ensure that her testimony synched with his. Certainly, as we know from public hearings held by the House January 6 Committee this is a strategy many of the January 6 coup plotters have used: hiring lawyers intimately connected to Trump, his family, his inner circle, and his leading PACs, with formal joint defense agreements or informal information-sharing agreements (sometimes conducted against the will of the witnesses involved in them, such as Trumpworld lawyer Stefan Passantino’s apparent dismissal of his client Cassidy Hutchinson’s demand that he not share attorney-client privileged data with other Trumpworld figures) being used to pass information between conspirators.

Thomas could have avoided this appearance of complicity with leading Trumpist coup plotters, but she decided to indulge it, instead. And that’s not all, unfortunately: her own testimony before the House January 6 Committee, as we will soon see, offers compelling evidence that she herself sought—multiple times, even—to inappropriately make contact with other January 6 witnesses either directly or through her attorney (especially witnesses whose testimony could, based on all the evidence we have thus far, be problematic for her) which would seem to increase the odds that her selection of Klukowski’s friend Paoletta as her lead counsel was indeed a strategic decision.

(3) Ginni Thomas refused to testify under oath. To be clear, a refusal to testify under oath certainly does not equate to an intent to lie, but keep in mind that Thomas and her lawyer had loudly opined that not only did Thomas have nothing to hide from the House January 6 Committee but also that there was nothing of importance she could offer to it. Just so, her status as the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has, as she has at times conceded, opened social and professional doors for her and lent additional attention and weight to her words, so surely the flip side of that must be that if one’s spouse is one of just nine people in the United States who sit atop the nation’s jurisprudential superstructure, one must also (in addition to the myriad perks that come with that status) have some obligation—quite apart from the one Thomas already has from the mere fact that she herself is a lawyer—to respect government investigations enough to want to assist them to the best of your ability.

It is strange that media pundits so often note that Thomas is a partisan without simultaneously noting that she is also a lawyer, a judge’s spouse, a devout Christian, and someone who has worked for years in public service—all identities that would militate in favor of a person who says they have nothing to hide being willing to testify under oath in a duly constituted public inquiry (which the House January 6 Committee surely was).

Ginni Thomas refusing to testify under oath is so complex a legal, political, moral, ethical, and logistical question that it could easily give birth to its own report at Proof. Suffice to say that there is nothing normative, non-controversial, or simple about the decision, especially (again) since it was a decision made on the advice of a man extremely close to a man alleged to be a leading coup plotter.

Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who teaches digital journalism, seth abramson resized4 proof of collusion legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.

Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Harvard Law School, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Ph.D. program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include a Trump trilogy: Proof of Corruption: Bribery, Impeachment, and Pandemic in the Age of Trump (2020); Proof of Conspiracy: How Trump's International Collusion Is Threatening American Democracy (2019); and Proof of Collusion: How Trump Betrayed America (2018).

Jan. 13

john clarence discovery promo Channel Guide, Investigative Report: Discovery’s ‘Gold, Lies & Videotape’ Unravels the Mystery of Victorio Peak, Staff Report, Jan. 13, 2023. New Series!

One family has been fighting for over 70 years to recover what they say is rightfully theirs: a $28 billion treasure buried deep inside a mountain in the New Mexico desert.

Some believe the U.S. government stole the 16,000 gold bars and priceless artifacts, while skeptics claim it never existed. Now, for the first time ever, in this six-part docuseries, the family and its supporters reveal exclusive evidence to prove their case, crack open the mystery of America’s greatest treasure story and reveal the truth of Victorio Peak.

Background research report by Robert Morrow, independent research historian and political advocate based in Austin, TX who befriended through long years of research author John Clarence, whose trilogy The Noss Gold formed the basis for the Discovery Channel series:

If you want to read about the astronomical greed and perfidy of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and thieving military generals at White Sands Missile Range, this is the place to do it. This fascinating docuseries is running every Friday night during prime time on Discovery and is one of the most popular new editions to Discovery. Click here for schedule and program titles.

Information on John Clarence, the author of The Noss Gold: Born in Forty Fort, a small town in the hard coal region of Pennsylvania, John lived his youngest years there enjoying the benefits of Susquehanna River, the worlds’ longest non-navigable river, 444 miles long with 4 million people living within its watershed. The Susquehanna has another impressive history; above its smooth flowing current towered the longest stone-arch bridge in the world. When his family moved away, he left behind his best friend, Fritz, and his first heart throb, Connie, a wonderful red hair, blue-eye young girl; they were in the fifth grade. As a writer, the move to Las Cruces was the backdrop for the remaining days of his life. He still lives there.

When he arrived in Las Cruces in 2004, he moved into a private residence on Missouri Avenue; the Ova Noss Family Partnership work crew called it the “War Room.” he left there two years later and moved into White Sands Missile Range’s backyard and set up the second “War Room.” The following year he moved back to Las Cruces into the third “War Room” and began an eight-year non-stop writing project on the Victorio Peak treasure saga.

When he finished, he titled the volume, The Gold House, a non-fiction, three-book exposé on government and military corruption in the theft of gold from the Noss treasure. Finally, in 2022, he left for Long Beach, California and worked out of the fourth “War Room” in filmmaker Alex Alonso’s studio repairing video tapes and digitizing more than 55,000 ONFP documents and files. His name is John C. “Jack” Staley. He uses the pseudonym, John Clarence, for his written work, described here.

Washington Post, Opinion: Church Committee aide rips House Republicans: ‘A sad spectacle,’ Greg Sargent, right, Jan. 13, 2023. Because Rep. Jim Jordan is widely known as a statesman of world-historical stature, Republicans have been comparing the new investigative committee he will chair to the Church Committee of the 1970s.

Just as that storied panel exposed rampant intelligence abuses, the Ohio Republican vows his committee will boldly expose contemporary “weaponizing of the federal government” that’s similarly corrupt, lawless and pervasive.

But the analogy doesn’t ring true to a onetime aide to Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, the former chairman of the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, which was colloquially named for its chair.

frank church “That is really an absurd comparison,” Loch Johnson, who wrote a book about his experiences as Church’s top staffer on that committee, said in a phone interview. “It’s really a sad spectacle.”

Yet the GOP attempt to reboot the Church Committee tells us a good deal about our current political moment, about the GOP-controlled House’s obvious intention to abuse its oversight function to protect former president Donald Trump and about what’s happened to today’s Republican Party.

Jordan’s committee will examine the executive branch’s “collection of information” on U.S. citizens, “including criminal investigations.” It will have access to highly sensitive information available only to the House Intelligence Committee. Republicans say Jordan’s panel will reveal how “the radical left” weaponized law enforcement against ordinary Americans.

The Church Committee of the mid-1970s actually did uncover extraordinary abuses by intelligence services directed at U.S. citizens — mostly of the left-wing variety. The committee was established after revelations that the CIA had been spying on antiwar activists for more than a decade, and its investigation probed FBI covert actions directed at the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. anti-Vietnam War protesters and many others (though some on the far right were also targeted).

It is widely understood that Republicans on today’s committee hope to paint a similarly lurid tale, this time depicting conservatives as mass victims of jack-booted oppression. But they are unlikely to find anything similar to what left-wing activists actually did experience in the 20th century.

“Driven by ideology and revenge,” is how Johnson, a professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, describes the new GOP committee. He predicts an endless “search for the mythical deep state,” the imagined instrument supposedly used by the left to persecute conservatives inside the MAGA information bubble.

Jordan’s committee will also likely seek to harass and undermine criminal investigations of Trump and even prosecutions of rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. We know this because GOP rage rises to its highest pitch in response to law enforcement activity directed at Trump. The GOP version of the Church Committee has no discernible aim of meaningful reform, but rather seeks to smear in advance what by all indications are legitimate law enforcement investigations into Trump.

“This is a protection operation,” Johnson told me, one designed to “protect the insurrectionists.” Because Jordan and other House Republicans are implicated in the events of Jan. 6, Johnson added, this is really “a self-protection operation.”

Jan. 11

turning point 12 2023

Proof, Investigative Commentary: The Biggest Hole in the House January 6 Committee Final Report Has Been Found—and It Could Hold the Key to All Future Investigations of Donald Trump’s Insurrection, Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 11, 2023. In “The January 6 Files #1: Charlie Kirk,” a former federal criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney whose January 6 research Congress often cites unpacks January 6 evidence others missed.

In “The January 6 Files #1: Charlie Kirk,” a former federal criminal investigator and criminal defense attorney whose January 6 research Congress often cites, unpacks January 6 evidence others missed.

Introduction

The evidence is quickly mounting—after the public release of over a hundred January 6 witness transcripts by the House January 6 Committee in the final hours of 2022—that the plot to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 had its origin in the Turning Point USA “Student Action Summit” (SAS) that was held just four miles from Mar-a-Lago between December 19 and December 22 of 2020.

Hours before that raucous far-right conference began, then-President of the United States Donald Trump—at the time just 72 hours from flying to Mar-a-Lago himself—infamously announced his endorsement of a “big” and “wild” event (which he termed a “protest”) that was slated to occur a nine-minute walk from the Capitol on January 6.

Documentary evidence now confirms that this December 2020 Mar-a-Lago-adjacent summit, which featured Trump himself as well as Trump family members and leading congressional allies, was used to shape the planning, funding, and logistics of a rally and subsequent march in January 2021—a rally and march that in turn helped set off an armed insurrection of a sort not seen in the United States since the American Civil War.

charlie kirk host The summit, which brought together far-right radicals from all across the country and even threatened to turn violent—with “angry” and “tense” confrontations between attendees and local officials—was set up by Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder Charlie Kirk, right.

Speakers at the summit included Donald Trump (by phone), Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Donald Trump Jr.’s soon-to-be-fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Trump domestic policy adviser Sebastian Gorka, and Trump foreign policy adviser Tucker Carlson. United States senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), who would play critical roles as Trump allies during the horrifying events of January 6, also attended and spoke. Many less well-known far-right firebrands, like convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza and author/podcaster David J. Harris Jr.—the latter of whom was in D.C. on January 6, 2021—were also speakers at the summit.

Promotional materials for the several-day event, which was attended by thousands, promised that it would offer “first-class activism training” to all attendees while in turn “organizing” them for future political action. It promised to put these angry, tense, newly organized far-right activists in direct contact with many conservative “political leaders and top-tier activist organizations.”

Jan. 10

Trump Organization’s former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg arrives to court, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023, in New York (AP Photo by John Minchillo).

Law&Crime, Ex-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg Gets Five Months Behind Bars, as Judge Bemoans Sentence Couldn't Have Been 'Much Greater,'
Jerry Lambe, Jan. 10, 2023. "Were it not because I made that promise, I would not be imposing five-month sentence, I would be imposing a much greater sentence," Judge Merchan said in court.

Allen Weisselberg, right, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, will be trading his office in the glitzy Trump Tower for a cell in one of the most allen weisselberg cropped scandal-beset prisons in the country after pleading guilty to a series of financial crimes in connection with his work for the former president’s real estate empire.

New York Judge Juan Manuel Merchan on Tuesday sentenced the 75-year-old Weisselberg to five months in prison to be served at Rikers Island immediately. He appeared to dress for that outcome, skipping his usual business suit in favor of a North Face fleece and navy sweatpants.

The judge said that Weisselberg’s testimony at the Trump Organization criminal trial, over which he also presided, gave him pause about the lenient prison sentence he had agreed to hand down in the current case.

“Were it not because I made that promise, I would not be imposing a five-month sentence. I would be imposing a much greater sentence,” Merchan said in court. “Most significantly was the $6,000 payroll payment to Mr. Weisselberg’s wife and the reason I find that so offensive is that it was driven purely by greed.”

Merchan explained how Weisselberg was “earning upwards of seven figures” and clearly “did not need that money.” However, he still “found a way” to make sure that his wife received sufficient payroll income so she could “one day benefit from social security payments she was not entitled to.”

The sentence was previously agreed to by Weisselberg and prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in exchange for the longtime Trump executive pleading guilty to 15 separate criminal charges and testifying against the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corp, which were convicted last month on more than a dozen felony charges.

In addition to the time in prison, Judge Merchan also sentenced Weisselberg to five years of post-release probation and ordered him to make full repayment of taxes, penalties, and interest due to New York City and New York State tax authorities totaling $1,994,321.

With good behavior, Weisselberg may be eligible for release from detention in just over three months.

Prior to the Judge Merchan passing the sentence, Weisselberg’s attorney, Nicholas Gravante Jr., asked the court to further reduce his client’s time behind bars, requesting that Weisselberg be permitted to serve the second half of his prison term under house arrest.

“Aside from fact that he’s 75 years old, Mr. Weisselberg has no criminal history. He does have history of military service and has fully accepted responsibility for actions in this case, poses no danger to community, and has already been punished severely,” Gravante said, adding that what his client has had to endured was “unique for this particular case.”

“The publicity in this case has exponentially increased the severity of punishment that he has had to suffer,” Weisselberg’s attorney told the court.

He then spoke about how Weisselberg’s grandchildren “saw their grandfather being led into court” earlier that morning, and said the shame his crimes brought upon his family “causes him more pain than anything else that’s been imposed on him.”

The only individual currently charged in the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into the company’s roughly 13-year tax fraud scheme, Weisselberg in August pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree grand larceny, three counts of third-degree criminal tax fraud, one count of first-degree scheme to defraud, one count of fourth-degree conspiracy, one count of fourth-degree criminal tax fraud, four counts of first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, and four counts of first-degree falsifying business records.

Brazilian Coup Attempt, U.S. Ties

Brazilian, Other Fascist Attacks (Graphic via The Wayne Madsen Report).

Brazilian, Other Fascist Attacks on U.S., Western Legislatures (Graphic via The Wayne Madsen Report).

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: We are in a global war on fascism: When will the Biden administration face that fact? Wayne Madsen, Jan. 9-10, 2023. As Ian Fleming famously wrote in "Goldfinger" -- "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."

The attack on the Brazilian National Congress, Supreme Court, and the Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, dubbed the "Tropical Trump" is beyond coincidence. The attack on Brazil's government institutions is the fourth such major attack by fascist cadres representing a collection of anti-democratic cadres which include neo-Nazi thugs, anti-vaccine conspiracists, fundamentalist Christian extremists, and anti-social malcontents. In August 2020, such a group attacked and almost occupied the German Reichstag building in Berlin.

That was followed by the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of electors in the 2020 presidential election. Shortly after the January 6 attack, convoys of Canadian truckers attempted to lay siege to Parliament Hill in Ottawa, forcing the suspension of the regular order of business by the House of Commons and Senate. And on January 8, almost two years to the date since the January 6th attack, Brazilian fascists, aided and abetted by some of the same individuals who were behind the coordination of the attacks in Berlin, Washington, and Ottawa, stormed the government buildings in the Brazilian capital.

If fascist attacks on legislative bodies over the past few years includes assaults or other threatening actions targeting U.S. statehouses and governors' mansions, the insurrection in Brazil would count as the fifteenth such attack by fascists. The far right has also targeted the Legislative Assemblies of Alberta and Ontario and the parliament of the state of Victoria in Australia and New Zealand.

Four major attacks on the national legislatures of Germany, the United States, Canada, and Brazil in two years is enemy action. The enemy, the greatest global fascist threat since the Axis pact of World War II, represents a far-right coalition that includes Donald Trump and his chief political acolytes, including Steve Bannon, Jason Miller, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and others.

President Biden could take advantage of his current "Three Amigos" Summit in Mexico City with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to announce a global anti-fascist coalition dedicated to eliminate safe havens for fascist seditionists, Florida as but one example, and quick deportations, extraditions, and arrests of those who conspire to overthrow democratically-elected governments. That should happen today, not tomorrow, next week, or next month.

Update: Bolsonaro coup backer Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) has just been made chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.

Then-U.S. President Trump is shown meeting, from left, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Vice President Mike Pence and Bolsonaro Press Secretary Fabio Wajngarte (March 7, 2020 photo at Mar-a-Lago via Instagram).

Washington Post, Brazil’s riot puts spotlight on close ties between Bolsonaro and Trump, Michael Kranish and Isaac Stanley-Becker, Jan. 10, 2023 (print ed.). In August 2021, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s son traveled to Sioux Falls, S.D., to meet with some of the most prominent purveyors of former president Donald Trump’s false claims of mass election fraud.

Eduardo Bolsonaro had a dire warning for the group, which included Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former top adviser: Brazil’s electronic voting system was “ridiculous” and vulnerable to mass fraud, he said according to a recording of the event.

How Bolsonaro’s rhetoric — then his silence — stoked Brazil assault

The gathering was part of the prologue to events that unfolded in Brazil on Sunday, when Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed government buildings — smashing windows and assaulting police — in a striking echo of the pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Like Trump, Bolsonaro had spent months predicting mass fraud and then refused to concede defeat after losing his October election.

While no evidence has emerged that Bolsonaro or his son had a direct role in the rioting in Brazil’s capital, it is clear that the family fomented anger against democratic institutions — part of a playbook that reflected their deep ties to Trump and those who fueled his own push to cast doubt on American election results.

As Trump endorsed Jair Bolsonaro, right, for reelection, prominent U.S. election deniers made inroads with Bolsonaro’s movement and family, according to interviews and public documents. Eduardo Bolsonaro discussed election fraud with Bannon and lunched with former Trump adviser Jason Miller, while Donald Trump Jr. spoke remotely to a gathering in Brazil last year to push claims that outside forces were seeking to undermine Bolsonaro’s campaign.

In more recent months, Bannon has used his “War Room” podcast to stoke claims of fraud in Bolsonaro’s loss and insist that proof of systematic cheating was at hand. When rioters breached Brazilian government buildings on Sunday, Bannon took to the social media site Gettr to call the pro-Bolsonaro crowds “Brazilian freedom fighters.”

Bolsonaro’s new life as a Florida man: Fast food runs and selfies

The parallels between Trump and Bolsonaro show how an anti-democratic ideology embraced by Trump has been exported abroad and enlisted by foreign leaders and their allies. In addition to Brazil, Trump supporters have forged ties with far-right leaders in Hungary and other parts of Europe. While both Bolsonaro and Trump were ultimately cast out of office, with democratic institutions ratifying the will of voters, the recent turmoil has illuminated how deeply the Trump network has been enmeshed in Bolsonaro’s political world.

Washington Post, U.S. would ‘treat seriously’ requests to revoke Bolsonaro’s visa, Miriam Berger, Emmanuel Felton and Karen DeYoung, Jan. 10, 2023 (print ed.). Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro arrived in Florida on Dec. 30, 2022 — two days before the inauguration of his opponent, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and nine days before a large group of his supporters stormed Brazil’s capital and tried to overturn the country’s democratic elections.

But his tenure in the Sunshine State, where some analysts believe he’s hoping to stay clear of possible legal trouble back home, could be limited. If he entered the United States on a diplomatic visa, he would have to depart by the end of the month or apply for a different status, the State Department said Monday, amid calls by some lawmakers to extradite the far-right leader.

The United States requires all visitors from Brazil to acquire a visa. But Bolsonaro’s legal status remains murky. Both the White House and the State Department have refused to comment on his visa status, citing the need to protect individual confidentiality.

Bolsonaro was still Brazil’s president when he touched down in Florida, and could have entered on an A-1 visa reserved for diplomats and heads of state. In an apparent tacit recognition that Bolsonaro could be using a diplomatic visa, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Monday that A-1 visa holders had 30 days to either leave or apply for a different visa at the conclusion of their term in office.

“If an A visa holder is no longer engaged in official business on behalf of that government, it is incumbent on that visa holder to depart the U.S., or to request a change to another immigration status within 30 days,” Price told reporters. “If an individual has no basis on which to be in the United States, an individual is subject to removal by the Department of Homeland Security.”

“It’s the responsibility of the individual to take care of it,” he said.

Several Democratic lawmakers have questioned why Bolsonaro has been allowed to remain after his supporters tried to overthrow Brazil’s democratically elected government.

The White House said that while it had not yet received any requests from Brazil regarding Bolsonaro’s “visa status,” it would “treat seriously” any inquiries to review or revoke it.

Politico, Biden to host Brazilian President Lula in February following storming of government buildings, Nahal Toosi and Myah Ward, Jan.10, 2023 (print ed.). The announcement came hours after Biden and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts released a joint statement pledging to support the recently elected leader of the country.

President Joe Biden will host Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, right, widely known as Lula, in Washington in February, the White House announced on Monday.

Lula headshot 2022 Biden extended the invitation during a call with Lula following the weekend storming of Brazil’s government institutions, according to the White House. During the call, Biden condemned the rioters’ violence and “conveyed the unwavering support of the United States for Brazil’s democracy and for the free will of the Brazilian people as expressed in Brazil’s recent presidential election, which President Lula won,” the White House said in a statement.

The announcement came hours after Biden and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts released a joint statement pledging to support the recently elected leader of the country, whose predecessor has fueled doubts about his legitimacy.

The statement of condemnation from the three North American leaders came as they attended a summit and as some Democrats called for that predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, to be kicked out of the United States. Bolsonaro is reported to have been staying in Florida after he skipped Lula’s recent inauguration.

Biden administration officials declined to say whether they were looking at kicking out Bolsonaro, but noted that the Brazilian government had not requested it. A Brazilian news organization, meanwhile, reported that Bolsonaro had been admitted to a Florida hospital because of abdominal pains, though that report could not immediately be confirmed. Agence France-Presse later tweeted the same information about the former president’s health and hospitalization, citing his wife.

Unwilling to accept his defeat, Bolsonaro supporters on Sunday stormed Brazil’s presidential, congressional and supreme court buildings. The events echoed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump, a vocal backer of Bolsonaro. Like Trump, Bolsonaro has a strongman style and sought to sow doubts about the election he lost.

Monday’s statement from Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was terse, but it put the countries’ full support behind Lula.

Jan. 7

World Crisis Radio, Investigative Commentary and Advocacy: Death agony of Republican Party signals long-overdue US party re-alignment! Webster G. Tarpley, right, Jan. 7, 2023. In Pyrrhic win, hollow man McCarthy is finally elected as Speaker of the House on fifteenth [sic] ballot, but exposed as discredited and impotent hack seeking an office stripped of power; MCarthy’s rules package still risks defeat; Obscene GOP spectacle of chaos shocks US allies, offers aid and comfort to Putin and Xi;

Beyond the obvious soap opera, real program of House GOP amounts to genocidal austerity, debt default and national bankruptcy, betrayal of Ukraine and NATO allies, suicidal balanced budget amendment, demolition of Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, and Medicaid; massive federal job cuts, border fortifications to block legal and illegal immigration, replacement of federal income tax and IRS with brutally regressive consumption tax, drastic defense cuts, ending of foreign aid (including food aid), and police state attacks on Democrats camouflaged by oversight hearings;

Russian secret police veteran Strelkov sees three rival groups contending to oust Putin; Russo-Japanese War of 1904 models how military defeat can trigger crisis of regime in Russia;

Demand for bills limited to one issue only has precursor in Confederate Constitution of 1861; exaggerated power of individual legislators recalls disastrous Polish Diet of seventeenth century;

Given the rampant MAGAt insanity, Biden and Yellen must prepare to ignore the spurious ”debt ceiling” as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment admonition to pay the US public debt; Payments and Treasury auctions must occur on schedule, with no defaults allowed!

Lessons from Weimar: Hitler’s beerhall putsch of November 1923 failed, but change of tactics allowed him to become Chancellor on second try in January 1933;

Marking the second anniversary of January 6 fascist coup attempt, Biden honors heroes who defended Capitol and administered the 2020 election.

Jan. 5

Washington Post, Opinion: The awful corruption of Trump’s ‘coup lawyers’ demands accountability, Greg Sargent, Jan. 5, 2023. You are probably familiar with the term “mob lawyer.” It might now be time to inaugurate another, similar term: “coup lawyer.”

John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were instrumental to the plotting and execution of President Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow his reelection loss, and they corruptly abused their knowledge of the law to that end. Will they ever face real accountability?

Eastman and Giuliani are facing disciplinary proceedings and might even get disbarred. But if they are disciplined on overly narrow grounds — say, for making false statements — it would be a highly insufficient outcome. They should also face professional discipline that declares in some way that their efforts to undermine our constitutional order were central features of their unscrupulous professional misconduct.

Yet good-government advocates are beginning to fear that opportunity will be squandered.

Right now, the state bar in California — where Eastman is licensed — is investigating whether he violated ethics rules governing attorneys. And the bars in New York and D.C. — where Giuliani is licensed — are currently weighing the former New York City mayor’s fate.

In Giuliani’s case, a New York court temporarily suspended him from practicing law for making false statements in court — his lies about the 2020 election — and the D.C. bar appears focused on that charge as well. In Eastman’s case, it is unclear what misconduct the California bar is weighing.

But the option exists for disbarment on a broader basis, according to advocates urging this course of action. In California, New York and D.C., ethics rules provide for sanctions on the grounds of fundamental unfitness for the legal profession and deep contempt for the rule of law. Disbarment decisions should cite both lawyers’ efforts to help Trump subvert democracy as the basis for those violations.

Washington Post, Several documentary filmmakers have made Jan. 6 projects. Getting them released is proving difficult, Elahe Izadi, Jan. 5, 2023. Documentary filmmakers found reluctant subjects, wary distributors, polarization fears — and a long shadow from the hearings into the attack on the Capitol.

Nick Quested watched along with millions of other viewers as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol doled out revelation after revelation in a series of live televised hearings last year. But for him, some of the findings were less than revelatory.

“Scooped!” he found himself thinking on more than one occasion. “Scooped! … Scooped again!”

A British documentary filmmaker, Quested spent several months following the Proud Boys, which positioned him for an intimate view of the far-right extremist group’s actions during the siege on the Capitol two years ago. His unreleased film is one of more than a dozen recent or in-the-works projects related to the Capitol riot — the kind of world-shaking event, fraught with unanswered questions, tangled narratives, stark human tragedy and startling visuals, that could be documentary fodder for generations to come.

But launching a Jan. 6 documentary right now is proving complicated for many filmmakers and producers. Some of the subjects are still too traumatized to talk about it easily. Some platforms and distributors may hesitate to take on such a project, concerned that the topic has become too polarizing or that it has already inspired too many films.

And then there was the Jan. 6 committee itself, which revealed so many compelling details about the attack through a rich narrative approach worthy of a hit prime-time serial — and, unlike filmmakers, had subpoena power to get certain subjects to talk.

The subtle stagecraft behind the Jan. 6 hearings

One of those, ironically, was Quested, who testified as a witness in the first of the much-watched hearings this past summer and shared some of his film footage in response to a subpoena. Now, as he continues to labor on his project, he prefers not to mull whether the Jan. 6 hearings stole his thunder.

“This is too important to be selfish about your film at this point,” he said. “This is our collective future that we’re discussing here.”

Going Deep, Investigative Commentary: JFK Murder: Evolving Strategies for Damage Control, Russ Baker and Milicent Cranor, Jan. 5, 2023. More revisions upon revisions. What next?

After 60 years, establishment figures are increasingly voicing the belief that government agencies and officials might have at least covered up critical information about the assassination plot to kill President John F. Kennedy. And one major interpreter of history is even going so far as to suggest a key governmental entity took delight in JFK’s demise.

Nonetheless, they’re still behind the curve of public opinion. And even in their new posture, they appear to be playing a game of denial.

Most Americans don’t buy the official story of one disgruntled loner coincidentally securing a job along an as-yet-undetermined presidential motorcade route, then, once the route information was public, deciding spontaneously to bring a rifle and thereby altering the course of history.

And most people who have studied the copious research done over the years are even more sure that it’s hooey. (As was a 1970s panel, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded there was seemingly some kind of conspiracy involving more than one person). That’s why at least some of us keep on digging.

After Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, swung public opinion on the issue in the early 1990s, Congress unanimously mandated that the government find and release all documents on the assassination. By 2017, a quarter-century later, all the documents were supposed to be out. But delays dragged on as federal agencies sought more time to review, redact, or outright withhold documents that might somehow breach individuals’ privacy or harm national security.

Still, more documents have slowly emerged, and finally, in December, the National Archives and Records Administration (“Archives”) let loose online another pile of faint, eye-straining documents related to the Kennedy assassination — 13,173 of them. The agency says that pretty much everything covered by the JFK Records Act of 1992 is now out, except a handful of papers protected by other laws involving IRS documents or those protected by rules around judicial proceedings like grand juries.

The commercial media’s reaction to this “final” release was, with one notable exception, pretty much what you would expect.

Oswald did it alone. Nothing to see here folks, move right along.
Oswald did it alone. And here’s more proof that he did it.
Oswald did it alone. The CIA has been hiding things, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the assassination.
The exception: Oswald alone pulled the trigger — but maybe others were involved.

Setting the Stage

This last version — that maybe others were involved — was speculation on the part of the historian Michael Beschloss, on NBC News Now, a day after the records were released.

Based on our long-term study of how “uncomfortable truths” are managed for public consumption, it is possible that this explanation will be softly promoted to prepare the public for any future semi-revelations, pieced together by savvy and conscientious researchers, that at least in part contradict the conclusions of the Warren Commission, which in 1964 became the formal government pronouncement on the matter.

Beschloss’s role here is important because he seems to have been anointed as one of a long string of go-to interpreters of all things presidential, hence all things Kennedy, hence all things related to the assassination.

It’s hard to overstate the extent to which Beschloss has attained the loving embrace of the establishment.

Here are only a few of his titles, in an untidy pile: trustee of the White House Historical Association and the National Archives Foundation; board member of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation; trustee of the Miller Center of Public Affairs; a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Russian Research Center; chair of the annual Robert F. Kennedy Book Awards; and… that’s quite enough.

Who could or would ever doubt that anything this man says must be authoritative and settle all disagreements?

He’s hardly alone in fulfilling the system’s longstanding imperative that every single political assassination in US history be seen as the work of lone, or near-lone, lunatics — with nary a possibility of “executive action” by some entity or faction. In other words, the US must see itself, and present itself, as utterly unlike just about every other country on earth, where, when a leader is killed, suspicion immediately turns to powerful elements with a stake in the leader’s removal.

Others only too glad to serve the cause, and receive the professional rewards for doing so, include an army of up-and-coming “reporters” in major news organizations, who themselves are unfamiliar with the massive amount of research done over the years that does not point to the “Oswald presidential assassin” scenario.

For example, take NBC’s White House correspondent, Monica Alba. She made a brief, but remarkably deceptive announcement, just before Beschloss was brought into the discussion. She said that, from these newly released documents, they are now learning, in her words:
... new details about Lee Harvey Oswald’s time in Mexico City and a wiretap that had collected some information about what he had said there in relation to wanting to kill John F. Kennedy.

We have the relevant document on that wiretap, a CIA report on all of the recorded phone conversations by someone claiming to be Oswald with Soviet Embassy personnel — and we read every word of it. Not once does “Oswald” say anything at all about Kennedy, let alone killing him, on those tapes.

The phone calls were all about “Oswald” trying to get a visa to the Soviet Union, and being able to wait in Cuba while it would have been processed.
In this same report, the CIA also expressed doubt that, contrary to what many were saying, Oswald was conspiring with the Russians:

The very openness of his visits and the phone calls speak against any secret role. His trip to Mexico was not itself a secret act; he traveled under his real name or a close variant of it… corresponded with the Soviets through the open mails… (page 18)

Certainly if Oswald had been a Soviet agent in training for an assassination assignment or even sabotage work, the Soviets would have stopped him from making open visits and phone calls to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico after he tried it a couple of times. (page 20)

Beschloss, who spoke immediately after Alba on the same NBC show, praised her brief report — and did not correct it. (Beschloss did not respond to emails requesting comment.)

This Is What They’ve Been Hiding?

Beschloss then went on to provide what seems meant to explain one reason certain documents have been withheld: He actually claims that the former director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, and perhaps others, knew in advance that a so-called Soviet defector would be in the book depository window the day Kennedy would be driven by — and that they did nothing to have him removed.

Beschloss speculates this is possibly because Hoover and his colleagues “hated and disapproved of” Kennedy; and that, if Americans had known all this, they would have had Hoover prosecuted.

This of course is an astonishing claim being made by a major figure, yet it passed without further comment. It also goes to the growing desperation of the establishment to head off at the pass any further movement in the direction of a broader conspiracy.

To fall back on the idea that the head of the FBI either didn’t care whether Kennedy was assassinated or passively hoped that he would be means that the needle continues to move toward acceptance that, as the Rolling Stones sang in “Sympathy for the Devil”:

I shouted out “Who killed the Kennedys?”

When after all, it was you and me

In other words, that the death of political figures has been somehow sanctioned and approved by the leading elements of our establishment, far beyond one person or even agency.

Philip Shenon, a former New York Times reporter and author of A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination, echoes this same damage control strategy. He told the BBC:

I suspect there may be information in these documents to suggest that … Oswald was a danger and that he may have talked openly about his intention to kill the president. And the question has always been: did the agencies of government, the CIA and FBI, have some sense that this man was a danger to President Kennedy, and if they had acted on that information could they have saved the president?"

Michael Isikoff, a longtime national security correspondent at Newsweek now working for Yahoo News, takes a more cautious stance of after-the-fact posterior-covering for security failures:

What emerges from this account is not so much a portrait of CIA officials horror-struck that their role in the president’s murder might be exposed but of government bureaucrats scrambling to find details about the accused assassin and cover themselves, no doubt worried that they might be blamed for not paying more attention to him before the murder.

Getting back to Beschloss, he ended his report with another startling remark — his main takeaway from the documents — that it seems less and less likely that Oswald acted alone. But he also said, with great confidence, “Oswald pulled the trigger.”

***

Another thing that is supposed to explain the secrecy — something that, so far, seems to have attracted much more attention than the above: The wiretap operation targeting the Soviet Embassy was a joint CIA effort with the office of the Mexican president, an arrangement that was “highly secret and not even known to Mexican security and law enforcement officials.” Several news organizations — including The New York Times — made much of this.

But no matter what the pundits say in nearly all the stories on the records release, one point stands out above all else: Oswald is always blamed as the one and only shooter.

In a New York Post article on Mary Ferrell, a longtime researcher who died decades ago and after whom a nonprofit foundation dedicated to JFK records is named, foundation founder Oliver Curme is quoted as saying Ferrell “was never able to find ‘the smoking gun’ evidence of whom Oswald might have been working for, or why the US government might have been covering up the assassination.”

And the same point was made in Newsweek, which said Oswald’s involvement with the CIA reignited questions “about whether Oswald truly was alone in his decision to kill the youngest man ever elected president.”

The Fox Factor

Various JFK researchers got a welcome and rare opportunity to present in commercial media.

Tucker Carlson — not usually known as a purveyor of reliable, accurate, and agenda-free systemic critiques — nonetheless surprised longtime researchers with a perspective rare on television. In his opening monologue on his December 15 show, he weighed in unambiguously on the controversy — and then claimed new information from an exclusive source.

Some critical excerpts:

The government’s explanation didn’t seem entirely plausible. And some people started asking obvious questions about it. It was at that point, as Americans started to doubt the official story, that the term “conspiracy theory” entered our lexicon. As Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith points out in his book on the subject, “The term conspiracy theory did not exist as a phrase in everyday American conversation before 1964. In 1964, the year the Warren Commission issued its report, The New York Times published five stories in which ‘conspiracy theory’ appeared.”

Now, today, of course, the term “conspiracy theory” appears in pretty much every New York Times story about American politics. It’s wielded, now as then, as a weapon against anyone who asks questions the government doesn’t feel like answering. But despite 60 years of name-calling, those questions have not disappeared. In fact, they have multiplied with time.

And here’s one of them. In April of 1964, a psychiatrist called Louis Jolyon West visited Jack Ruby in his isolation cell in a Dallas jail. According to West’s written assessment, he found that Jack Ruby was “technically insane” and in need of immediate psychiatric hospitalization. Those are conclusions that puzzlingly no one who had spoken to Jack Ruby previously had reached. … But what West neglected to say was that he was working for the CIA at the time. Louis Jolyon West was a contract psychiatrist for the spy agency. He was also an expert on mind control and a prominent player in the now infamous MKUltra program in which the CIA gave powerful psychiatric drugs to Americans without their knowledge.

Carlson went on to question why so many records are still being withheld, and he quotes a mysterious source:

We spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents. … We asked this person directly, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American President? And here’s the reply we received verbatim. Quote: ‘The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.’”

While we have no reason to doubt this answer, the choice of words seems to reflect some hesitancy: “I believe” sounds more like an opinion, based on indirect evidence, rather than an acknowledgement of having seen unambiguous verbal proof. It’s almost as if he’s not really tattling… at all. Although assassination researchers desperate for acknowledgement of the truth from big media were glad to get anything — even from Carlson — the fact is he appears to have oversold the comment. Why would he do that? Was it to seal the deal against the CIA?

As for who this anonymous source is, Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future for Freedom Foundation, thinks he knows who: Donald Trump. Because of what Judge Andrew Napolitano, a former Fox judicial analyst, said in an interview on November 8:

I once had a conversation … with President Trump when he was in the White House. He used to call me all the time. And we talked about everything under the sun. I said, “Are you going to release those documents or not?” And he said to me, “If you saw what I saw, you wouldn’t release them.”

Can you imagine Trump keeping such information to himself? Hornberger, whose libertarian focus invariably leads to highlighting real or perceived government abuses, has an idea why that may be:

One possibility is that the CIA “Hoovered” Trump into continuing to keep the CIA’s decades-old assassination-related records secret. By “Hoovered” I am referring to J. Edgar Hoover, who was a serial blackmailer when he was serving as FBI director. Hoover would acquire personal information about people with the aim of blackmailing them into bending them to his will… If they refused…

If true, this might indicate that Trump, despite his claimed boldness, is just like virtually every other president: afraid to tangle with the CIA.

Jan. 4

Washington Post, Jan. 6 papers detail infighting, ‘chaos’ among extremist organizers, Hannah Allam, Jan. 4, 2023 (print ed.). Newly released documents zoom in on the role of far-right militants and conspiracy theorists.

How do we know that the architects of a pro-Trump rally that spiraled into insurrection were right-wing extremists? They said so themselves, according to newly released witness interviews from the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But it doesn’t mean they were all on the same page.

Thousands of pages of documents made public in recent weeks portray promoters of the Stop the Steal movement as backstabbing rivals who viewed one another as “crazies,” “extremists,” “nutty,” and “white supremacist.” The documents include a text exchange in which former senior Trump adviser Hope Hicks, while watching the Capitol rioting unfold, lamented, “We all look like domestic terrorists now.”

The behind-the-scenes chaos detailed in the report underlines how the risk of violence that day was known in advance, causing alarm even among some organizers who said they had qualms about working with fellow pro-MAGA factions such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, extremist groups whose members later were charged in the attack.

“I don’t think that we should be out there inciting people,” Amy Kremer of Women for America First told the committee of another organizer’s public chant of “victory or death.”

The documents offer glimpses into other aspects of national right-wing organizing: leaders’ proximity to power, a tolerance for violent rhetoric, fierce infighting, and the role of “grifters” who make their living by stoking conservative outrage. The committee traces this mobilization to Trump, going back to a 2015 campaign-trail interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to show how Trump “normalized” the extremist factions that later rallied supporters to march on the Capitol.

Here are five examples of how the latest documents shed light on the militant, conspiratorial movements that have gained a toehold in mainstream Republican politics:

Washington Post, Fact Checker Analysis: Jan. 6 committee yet again debunks Trump claim of 10,000 troops, Glenn Kessler, Jan. 4, 2023.

“The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C.”

— former president Donald Trump, in a post on Truth Social, Dec. 22

Trump and his defenders have repeatedly claimed that the violence at the Capitol two years ago would have been prevented if only his order for 10,000 troops had been heeded. We have explored this claim twice before and debunked it, each time awarding Four Pinocchios.

But now the Jan. 6 committee has released its report and dozens of transcribed interviews that provide new details on the meetings in which Trump claims he requested troops at the Capitol.

Trump, in his post, says he made a “recommendation for troops” and that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) failed to act on it. But the evidence shows Trump did not issue any formal request — so there was nothing for Pelosi to heed. The committee report says it found “no evidence” to support the claim that he ordered 10,000 troops.

Moreover, the committee said that when he referenced so many troops, it was not because he wanted to protect the Capitol. He “floated the idea of having 10,000 National Guardsmen deployed to protect him and his supporters from any supposed threats by left-wing counterprotesters,” the report said.

The report says that Trump brought up the issue on at least three occasions but in such vague and obtuse ways that no senior official regarded his words as an order. Here’s what we know now about his statements at the time:

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Washington Post, Jack Smith returns to U.S. weeks after becoming Trump special counsel, Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett, Jan. 4, 2023 (print ed.). Tasked with two Trump-related investigations, the former war crimes prosecutor has returned from Europe, people familiar with the situation said

Washington Post, Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Jan. 6 panel he’s become a political ‘lightning rod,’ Dan Lamothe, Jan. 4, 2023 (print ed.). The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke with congressional investigators about a ‘deliberate attempt’ to smear the military’s general officer corps.

The Pentagon’s top general told congressional investigators scrutinizing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that he has become a “lightning rod for the politicization of the military,” decrying critics who have sought to “smear” him and the Defense Department’s other senior leaders.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered the assessment during a remarkable portion of his discussion with the House select committee in November of that year. The panel in recent days released Milley’s interview transcript along with dozens of other documents as its work drew to a close.

He cited as one example the backlash he faced upon telling lawmakers in separate testimony months earlier that he wanted to “understand White rage,” a statement prompted by Republicans who had criticized leaders at the U.S. Military Academy for allowing cadets to learn about critical race theory. The academic framework centers on the concept that racism is systemic and not just exhibited by prejudiced people.

Milley told the Jan. 6 committee that he is “constantly strung out” along with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other top officials at the Pentagon. The military, he said, must avoid such fights.

“I think it’s fundamental to the health of the republic that we have an apolitical military,” Milley said in his testimony. “And apolitical means nonpartisan, neither Democrat nor Republican, and we execute the lawful orders of the civilian leadership that’s appointed over us. The key is ‘lawful’ orders, and therein lie some judgment calls.”

Milley addressed a range of issues during the Nov. 17, 2021, interview, including the Pentagon’s response to the Capitol riot, how senior defense officials navigated President Donald Trump’s tumultuous final year in office, and what Milley did to reassure U.S. allies and adversaries after Trump’s refusal to accept the election results culminated in an eruption of violence.

Jan. 3

New York Times, As Jan. 6 Panel Closes, More Evidence Trump Planned to Join Protesters, Luke Broadwater, Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer and Emily Cochrane, Jan. 3, 2023 (print ed.). One top aide wrote in a note on Jan. 6 that former President Trump had wanted to walk alongside the crowd as it descended on Congress; Since Friday, the panel has released a whirlwind of files, including an adviser’s testimony that Mr. Trump seemed to acknowledge his election loss.

The nation’s top military officer saw the Jan. 6 attack as similar to the “Reichstag moment” that led to Nazi dictatorship. Aides for former President Donald J. Trump saw their future job opportunities slipping away, and predicted being “perpetually unemployed.” Mr. Trump himself saw the push to overturn the 2020 election as a financial opportunity, moving to trademark the phrase “Rigged Election.”

These were among the latest revelations from the House Jan. 6 committee, which released a whirlwind of documents in its final days and wrapped up its work on Monday. Since Friday night, the panel has released several troves of evidence, including about 120 previously unseen transcripts along with emails and text messages obtained during its 18-month inquiry, totaling tens of thousands of pages.

The evidence touched on nearly every aspect of Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election. It provided new details about how some of his top allies lobbied for aggressive plans to keep him in power, while others lamented how the dark day of Jan. 6, 2021, had negatively affected their employment prospects.

The panel said it has now turned over an “enormous volume of material” to the Justice Department as Jack Smith, the special counsel, conducts a parallel investigation into the events of Jan. 6.

“Accountability is now critical to thwart any other future scheme to overturn an election,” the committee’s leaders, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said in a statement.

In the end, the committee released about 280 transcripts of interviews. Though the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, only a few hundred sessions took the form of formal depositions or transcribed interviews. Lawmakers said they withheld certain transcripts that contained sensitive information.

Here are some takeaways from the recently released evidence.

Then-U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney, R-WY, and Adam Kinzinger, R-IL are shown at left with incoming U.S. Rep. George santos, R-NY, and his campaign supporter U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, shown at right.

Shown above are then-U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney, R-WY, and Adam Kinzinger, R-IL. The photo was accompanied by another showing the incoming and disgraced U.S. Rep. George santos, R-NY, and his campaign supporter U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, who replaced Cheney in Republican House leadership because Cheney was willing to investigate Trump's role as part of her committee work. The photo array was labeled: "A tale of two Republican parties. An honorable one, for now in the wilderness. A dishonorable one, for now in power. Proud to stand with the first, and against the second." (Reported via Twitter by Bill Kristol, Bulwork co-founder and former chief of staff to then-Vice President Dan Quayle, a Republican from Indiana).

george santos elise stefanik

Politico, Inside the Jan. 6 committee’s massive new evidence trove, Kyle Cheney, Jan. 3, 2023 (print ed.). The panel's evidence provides the clearest glimpse yet at the well-coordinated effort by some Trump allies to help Trump seize a second term he didn’t win.

The Jan. 6 select committee has unloaded a vast database of its underlying evidence — emails between Trump attorneys, text messages among horrified White House aides and outside advisers, internal communications among security and intelligence officials — all coming to grips with Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election and its disastrous consequences.

The panel posted thousands of pages of evidence late Sunday in a public database that provide the clearest glimpse yet at the well-coordinated effort by some Trump allies to help Trump seize a second term he didn’t win. Much of the evidence has never been seen before and, in some cases, adds extraordinary new elements to the case the select committee presented in public — from voluminous phone records to contemporaneous text messages and emails.

Trump lawyers strategized which federal courts would be likeliest to uphold their fringe constitutional theories; Trump White House aides battled to keep unhinged theories from reaching the president’s ears; as the Jan. 6 attack unfolded, West Wing aides sent horrified messages about Trump’s incendiary tweets and inaction; and after the attack, some Trump allies discussed continued efforts to derail the incoming Biden administration.

Here’s a look at some of the most extraordinary and important evidence in the select committee’s files.

Proof, Investigative Commentary: Proof Launches Stage 2 of Its January 6 Coverage, Seth Abramson, left, Jan. 3, 2023. Proof’s January 6 reporting—which has provoked lawsuit threats from and texts between key January 6 actors, and often appeared in the U.S. House record—is moving from investigation to evidence review.

Introduction: The first two years of Proof have been a wild ride. This media outlet evolved into a sprawling, 14-section center for curatorial journalism that accrued a readership of 75,000 and became one of the Top 15 political substacks in the world.

It was cited in the successful House January 6 Committee referral of Steve Bannon for criminal prosecution by the Department of Justice. Its reports were entered into the Congressional record during the second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. It was the subject of private texts between two of the key event-planners behind January 6, Trump adviser Katrina Pierson and Women for America First capo Amy Kremer.

In 2022, the House January 6 Committee even reached out directly to Proof for aid.

Shortly thereafter, Proof published the fourth book in the New York Times-bestselling Proof series: Proof of Coup: How the Pentagon Shaped An Insurrection. The book tells the story of events so critical to national security, politically sensitive, and (not to put too fine a point on it) historically contingent—because they remain under active federal investigation—that they don’t even appear in the sprawling final report of the House January 6 Committee.

Proof has been the subject of lawsuit threats from key January 6 figures Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, as well as the co-founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes.

And Proof is currently being sued for $25 million by an attorney linked to the Flynn family, Kash Patel, Truth Social head (and former GOP congressman) Devin Nunes, and the First Amendment Praetorians (bodyguards for Flynn, Ali Alexander, Patrick Byrne, Sidney Powell and other Trumpist leaders in the post-election period in 2020).

January 6 reporting at Proof has been cited by major-media news outlets around the world, and even helped launched a Brazilian congressional inquiry into the actions of neo-fascist Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Trump ally and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. (You can read much more about the odd, frenetic history of Proof here.)

And now, in these opening hours of 2023, Proof is about to enter a striking new phase in its celebrated January 6 investigation.

The Three Stages of An Investigation

From its founding in January 2021—just a week after the events of January 6—Proof has followed (a) the curatorial journalism methods I taught as a journalism professor at University of New Hampshire, and (b) the investigative methods that I employed as a federal criminal investigator in D.C. in the 1990s. My journalistic and investigative practices are informed by years of criminal defense work in multiple jurisdictions as an attorney, up to and including coordination and execution of investigative and trial-advocacy strategies in First-Degree Murder cases.

Every investigation worth its salt has at least three discrete stages.

(1) Building a theory of the case and collecting supporting evidence. Since every criminal case begins, on the defense side at least, with certain documents already prepared by the government—most notably police reports, but in some cases also photographs, timelines, witness interviews, maps, and other such investigative work product—an investigator is often in a position to develop an initial theory of the case (that is, a narrative of what most likely happened in a given situation and why) with the aid of these seminal documents.

January 6 is no exception. The work of law enforcement agents, corporate journalists, and independent researchers gave Proof a mountain of data with which to work in building a theory of the case for the coup plot behind January 6, as well as potential plans of action for collecting additional evidence that might confirm or deny such a theory. Those who don’t actually read Proof, and only casually consume social media content that discusses Proof, often mistake my work as a curatorial journalist (a type of investigative journalist) who has a background in criminal investigation and trial advocacy as the advancement of hard-and-fast notions about how a given criminal conspiracy unfolded. In fact, what Proof offers is the routine work of an investigator and a curatorial journalist—revealing what existing reliable evidence tells us, with an eye toward encouraging future investigations based on a well-sourced theory of the case.

To the extent Proof often ends its reports with explicit proposals for additional federal investigation(s), this project is clear to anyone who reads Proof and has a background in any of law, criminal investigation, or curatorial (investigative) journalism. It is also clear to anyone who simply approaches the work of this media outlet in good faith. All too often, however, what critics of Proof there are either never read Proof or do so with no background in (or even interest in) the professional pursuits that animate this site.

So much of the work that readers of Proof have found here over the last two years has been the basic work of a simultaneously journalistic and legalistic investigation in its earliest stages: synthesizing seminal evidence to create an investigative plan firmly rooted in a theory of the case, a theory that self-consciously remains unproven but is undergirded by what evidence presently exists. And since, in the law, proof is evidence that tends to support a given theory of a case (only those with no knowledge of the law equate the word proof to the phrase proof beyond a reasonable doubt), this publication has—from the day of its birth—been denominated Proof. If the aim of every report on this site had been to offer “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” for some ironclad and presumptively immovable theorem rather than “proof” advancing a mutable theory of the case, it would’ve instead been called Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

So how do we know that Proof was successful in Stage 1 of its January 6 investigation?

For the reasons stated above: its work spooked key January 6 figures to the point that they obsessively discussed it backchannel, and in some instances even tried to shut it down; it was cited as part of the permanent Congressional record a number of times, including during both an impeachment trial and a successful federal investigation and prosecution of white-supremacist Trump adviser Steve Bannon; and it was deemed so essential to the journalism surrounding January 6 that not only was it repeatedly cited by major media, but led to the House January 6 Committee reaching out to its author.

Katrina Pierson, the trusted Donald Trump presidential adviser who was in charge of the precipitating event on January 6—Trump’s incitement-to-insurrection rally at the White House Ellipse, now the subject of a sprawling federal criminal investigation by the FBI—opined in 2021, as we now know from the House January 6 Committee’s final publication of data, that this author was “like a dog with a bone” when it comes to January 6: in other words, per the definition of that phrase, “stubborn, tenacious, persistent, relentless, and dogged.” While there can’t be a much better endorsement of the work done by Proof since mid-January 2021 than this, the fact that some media columnists—non-reporters whose job, more or less, is to capriciously separate U.S. journalists into the cool and the uncool—have written hit-pieces about Proof shot through with barely disguised envy underscores that few media outlets have been as successful at tearing down the layers of misinformation, disinformation, rumor and innuendo surrounding the events of January 6 as this one.

Which is why there was always going to be a Stage 2 to Proof’s January 6 reporting.

(2) Evidence review. Once any available initial (seminal) evidence has been reviewed, and a theory or dueling theories of the case developed, and evidence supporting that theory or theories pursued, a time inevitably comes for the most critical determination of all: has one theory of the case won out, in view of all the evidence now compiled?

Determining this takes an encompassing and sometimes lengthy evidentiary review—a process not nearly as dry as it sounds, as it operates upon not just seminal evidence and early supporting evidence but the entire universe of available evidence that the case investigators have been able to compile, collate, and curate over a protracted period of time (in the case of January 6, approximately two years).

It’s at this stage that a final determination is made about “what really happened.”

While invariably some evidence once desired will be finally found to be unavailable—will even have been destroyed or degraded, perhaps intentionally—it is in this second stage that decisions can and must be made, with the evidence present, about whether the evidence is sufficient to warrant a criminal prosecution (if the investigators are government investigators) or what defense will be offered if or when a prosecution commences (if the investigators are defense investigators).

What differentiates these two different perspectives are their ambitions. What conjoins them is that each must make a good-faith effort to determine “what really happened.”

Just as a prosecutor, aided by his or her investigators, can’t proceed with a prosecution unless he or she believes the case they will offer to a jury is a fully realized, evidence-undergirded narrative roughly answering to the description “what really happened”, a successful defense to criminal allegations always starts with—but may or may not end with—a similarly fully realized, evidence-undergirded narrative. Simply put, a defense attorney and defense investigator can’t do their jobs properly if they don’t have a fully formed record (whether memorialized or simply memorized) of what happened in a given criminal incident. They need this to determine how to use that record (or just some of it) to force government agents to meet their constitutional burden of proof.

Needless to say, if the defense’s theory of a case ends up not bearing any meaningful relation to “what really happened,” the theory is doomed to be reified in court as a losing defense strategy. While the defense theory of the case need not be a totalizing narrative, it also cannot be contradicted in significant ways by the evidentiary record if it hopes to have any chance of success.

So how does this translate to Stage 2 of the January 6 investigation at Proof, which is about to be launched?

Now that the House January 6 Committee has published not just an 845-page final report but the entirety of the “non-sensitive” portion of its evidentiary record—which includes over a hundred notable witness transcripts—the seminal evidence related to January 6 (much of it already synthesized by DOJ in its prosecutions of January 6 foot-soldiers and by some independent researchers via the online #SeditionHunters effort) can be conjoined to this new evidence, and to existing theories of the case, to form the most complete picture of the events of January 6 we have ever had. Books like Proof of Coup—which cover information that was left out of the House January 6 Committee report for national security and political-sensitivity reasons (e.g., fear of destabilizing institutions that defend the nation’s soil and the President of the United States)—can also become a critical part of this encompassing evidentiary record.

You may now be asking, “Yes, but doesn’t the House January 6 Committee’s final report constitute the conclusive synthesis and summation of the January 6 record?”

And the answer—perhaps surprisingly—is no.

The reason the House January 6 Committee not only released a final report but all the evidence upon which it relied is because its work was curtailed far more dramatically than many realize. Had the Democrats not lost the House of the Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, we could expect the House January 6 Committee to have continued its work for at least two more years. We would have had more hearings, more witness interviews, a longer final report, and—above all—much, much more federal litigation in an effort to force certain subpoenaed witnesses to honor their subpoenas. Moreover, because DOJ likely needs to make its charging decisions with respect to the January 6 coup plotters (as opposed to merely its foot-soldiers) in 2023, we would expect that a House January 6 Committee not prematurely shuttered by Republican gains in the House in November 2022 would have gleaned an enormous amount of additional data from anything DOJ already has or will soon find that will be made public via its hotly anticipated prosecutions of the masterminds of January 6.

The Committee is aware, in other words, that legions of corporate and independent journalists have been waiting to assist the Committee in its investigative work. All that these people and entities (which include this author and this media outlet) have been waiting for is the release of the evidence Congress has developed as it chased down various theories of the case of January 6 which—to be candid—Proof helped develop both directly and indirectly.

Now that this evidence has been made public, Stage 2 of the January 6 investigation—which is also Stage 2 of the January 6 investigation at Proof—can begin. It is likely to last almost the entirety of 2023.

But what about Stage 3? When will that stage begin, and what form will it take?

(3) Prosecution. In cases with only one defendant, calling the “prosecution” stage an “investigative” stage would make no sense. Indeed, one of the only things Law & Order gets right about the criminal justice system is the native divide between police and prosecutors (though, remarkably, the show and its numberless offspring get wrong precisely who these entities represent; in the criminal justice system, the “people” are represented only by juries, while judges represent the impartial face of the law and both police and prosecutors represent, in the most literal sense imaginable, the government).

In a situation, like the one emanating from the events of January 6, in which 1,000+ foot-soldiers and as many as fifty coup plotters may ultimately be charged—though we should have much more confidence that the former will happen than the latter—the prosecution stage is also an investigative stage because certain coup plotters may cut cooperation deals with the federal government to save their own skins. Such deals require these wrong-doers to divulge to investigators everything they know about the January 6–related crimes others may have committed.

In this way, new prosecutions can become part and parcel of existing investigations.

In the case of January 6, Stage 3 is almost certain to overlap somewhat with Stage 2 because (a) Stage 2 may take as long as a year, (b) DOJ appears to be operating on a political calendar that presumes that all politically sensitive prosecutions relating to January 6 must be launched by mid-2023 (in an effort to conclude them all by the end of Summer 2024, with an eye toward minimal overlap with the 2024 general election), and (c) it is a sure bet—if past is precedent—that DOJ will let certain coup plotters off the hook who it should in fact have prosecuted, which will only complicate (while also stoking new interest in) Stage 2.

For journalists, Stage 3 is of course not about prosecutions but about reporting on prosecutions, which usually involves little more than detailing what happens in court (and perhaps on occasion opining on how events could have or should have developed differently). Proof will likely conduct some journalism of this sort in late 2023 and 2024—after all, its author has a law degree and practiced criminal law for many years—but it is not likely to be as bracing or complex a process of discovery as Stage 2 will be.
Conclusion

It is the ambition of this author to have the Stage 2 investigation of January 6 at Proof be the most comprehensive—and essential—such journalistic coverage in the United States.

If that sounds like a preposterously lofty goal, perhaps it is: certainly, January 6 is already as reported on and analyzed an event as America has ever seen.

But as we have already seen, coverage of the House January 6 Committee Final Report is, at least in major corporate media, fairly shallow. Only a handful of newly released January 6 witness transcripts have been given any attention at all, and this attention has generally been (a) not from lawyers, (b) focused only on one or two very obvious takeaways, (c) so transient that the assumption of major media appears to be that Americans can’t focus on any discrete piece of evidence for more than a day or two, and (d) disconnected from the best research on January 6 (which frankly has come from obsessive independent researchers with an eye for detail, rather than major-network TV producers with an eye toward producing satisfying one-off “A” blocks).

What is needed now are researchers, historians, and investigative journalists who will, with academic precision, take discrete pieces of evidence and plug them meaningfully into the vast network of data the historic January 6 investigation has become. If major-media coverage of January 6 has devolved into briskness, redundancy and shallowness, it must now be durable, incisive and profound. It’s with this in mind that Proof says the following: that it aims for its readers to be the best-informed students of January 6 anywhere in the world.

This goal isn’t a small one—not when January 6, 2021 has turned out to be merely the launch of an ongoing far-right insurrection inside America, one that aims to replace our democracy with an authoritarian, Christofascist tyranny. January 6 doesn’t matter because of what it was in American history, but because of what it is right now.

In view of all this, the idea of Proof starting 2023 by launching Stage 2 of its January 6 investigation is at once exhilarating and terrifying. Proof has already uncovered, via its soon-to-be-launched “January 6 Files” series—which decodes, contextualizes, and networks the most important January 6 witness transcripts in exhaustive detail—acts of perfidy and possible sedition that couldn’t even have been contemplated, let alone reported on, prior to the release of witness transcripts (in the scores and more) by the U.S. House of Representatives over just the last two weeks.

What Proof asks of its readers, in advance, is a certain degree of patience. There are so many documents newly available for review by January 6 historians, researchers, and January 6 beat reporters that it is tempting to think they can be adequately unpacked in quick-hit major-media “listicles” addressing just a handful of the most high-profile witness transcripts. In fact, Stage 2 will be a painstaking process that may take, as was noted above, almost the entirety of 2023.

I intend this introductory essay to serve as a personal invitation for you to take a year-long journey with me right here at Proof, a place where the journalism is indeed—and very proudly so—“like a dog with a bone”: stubborn, tenacious, persistent, relentless, and dogged.

Seth Abramson, shown above and at right, is founder of Proof and is a former criminal defense attorney and criminal investigator who later taught digital journalism, seth abramson resized4 proof of collusion legal advocacy, and cultural theory at the University of New Hampshire. A regular political and legal analyst on CNN and the BBC during the Trump presidency, he is a best-selling author who has published eight books and edited five anthologies.

Jan. 2

djt hope hicks

Newly disclosed message from former Trump White House and campaign aide Hope Hicks (shown above in a file photo) about the Jan 6 insurrection stated: “All of us who didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed....I’m so mad and upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now....This made us unemployable, untouchable. God, I’m so fucking mad.” (Reported via Twitter by Mike Sington, former senior executive at NBCUniversal.)

Washington Post, Ex-Capitol police chief: FBI, DHS and Pentagon failed on Jan. 6, Carol D. Leonnig, Jan. 2, 2023 (print ed.). In a new firsthand account of the frantic efforts of Capitol Police officers to protect Congress and themselves from an armed mob on Jan. 6, 2021, the department’s former chief blames cascading government failures for allowing the brutal melee.

The federal government’s multibillion-dollar security network, built after 9/11 to gather intelligence that could warn of a looming attack, provided no such shield capitol riot nyt jan 7 2021 on Jan. 6, former Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund, left, writes in a new book.

The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and even steve sund recropped his own agency’s intelligence unit had been alerted weeks earlier to reams of chilling chatter about right-wing extremists arming for an attack on the Capitol that day, Sund says, but didn’t take the basic steps to assess those plots or sound an alarm. Senior military leaders, citing political or tactical worries, delayed sending help.

And, Sund warns in Courage Under Fire, it could easily happen again. Many of the factors that left the Capitol vulnerable remain unfixed, he said.

The Washington Post obtained an advance copy of the book, which will be published Jan. 3.

In his account, Sund describes his shock at the battle that unfolded as an estimated 10,000 protesters inflamed by President Donald Trump’s rally earlier in the day broke through police lines and punched, stabbed and pepper-sprayed officers, outnumbering them “58 to 1.”

Sund said his shock shifted to agony as he unsuccessfully begged military generals for National Guard reinforcements. Though they delayed sending help until it was too late for Sund’s overrun corps, he says that he later discovered that the Pentagon had rushed to send security teams to protect military officials’ homes in Washington, none of which were under attack.

Sund reserves his greatest outrage for those Pentagon leaders, recounting a conference call he had with two generals about 2:35 p.m., 20 minutes after rioters had broken into the Capitol and as Vice President Mike Pence and other lawmakers scurried to hiding places.

Sund writes that Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt told him he didn’t like the optics of sending uniformed Guard troops to the Capitol, but could allow them to replace police officers at roadside checkpoints. Listening incredulously and trying to explain that he needed help to save officers’ lives, Sund said, he felt both “nauseated” and “mad as hell.”

“It’s a response I will never forget for the rest of my life,” Sund writes. While on the call, Sund recalls hearing the frantic voice of an officer being broadcast into the command center: “Shots fired in the Capitol, shots fired in the Capitol.”

Sund’s anger boiled over and he shouted the report of gunfire into the conference call: “Is that urgent enough for you now?” Then Sund hung up to deal with this new crisis.

December

Dec. 31

This week's new official portrait of the U.S. Supreme Court

New York Times, Investigation: A Charity Tied to the Supreme Court Offers Donors Access to the Justices, Jo Becker and Julie Tate, Dec. 31, 2022 (print ed.). The Supreme Court Historical Society has raised more than $23 million in the last two decades, much of it from lawyers, corporations and special interests.

While ostensibly independent, the society has become a vehicle for those seeking access to nine of the most reclusive and powerful people in the nation. A Charity Tied to the Supreme Court Offers Donors Access to the Justices

People in formal attire sit on and stand amid the audience benches that face the bench where the justices sit in the Supreme Court chamber. Behind the justices’ bench are red curtains and four white marble columns.

john roberts o In some years, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., right, does the honors. In others, it might be Justice Sonia Sotomayor or Justice Clarence Thomas presenting the squared-off hunks of marble affixed with the Supreme Court’s gilded seal.

Hewed from slabs left over from the 1930s construction of the nation’s high court and handed out in its magnificent Great Hall, they are a unique status symbol in a town that craves them. And while the ideological bents of the justices bestowing them might vary, there is one constant: All the recipients have given at least $5,000 to a charity favored by the justices, and, more often than not, the donors have a significant stake in the way the court decides cases.

The charity, the Supreme Court Historical Society, is ostensibly independent of the judicial branch of government, but in reality the two are inextricably intertwined. The charity’s stated mission is straightforward: to preserve the court’s history and educate the public about the court’s importance in American life. But over the years the society has also become a vehicle for those seeking access to nine of the most reclusive and powerful people in the nation. The justices attend the society’s annual black-tie dinner soirees, where they mingle with donors and thank them for their generosity, and serve as M.C.s to more regular society-sponsored lectures or re-enactments of famous cases.

The society has raised more than $23 million over the last two decades. Because of its nonprofit status, it does not have to publicly disclose its donors — and declined when asked to do so. But The New York Times was able to identify the sources behind more than $10.7 million raised since 2003, the first year for which relevant records were available.

At least $6.4 million — or 60 percent — came from corporations, special interest groups, or lawyers and firms that argued cases before the court, according to an analysis of archived historical society newsletters and publicly available records that detail grants given to the society by foundations. Of that, at least $4.7 million came from individuals or entities in years when they had a pending interest in a federal court case on appeal or at the high court, records show.

The donors include corporations like Chevron, which gave while embroiled in a 2021 Supreme Court case involving efforts by cities to hold the oil company accountable for its role in global warming. Veteran Supreme Court litigators gave while representing clients before the court that included Tyson Foods and the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China.

Among the ideologically driven activists from both sides of the political aisle who donated to the society were the benefactors of an anti-abortion group whose leader instructed them to use the society’s annual dinners to meet and befriend conservative justices.

Virtually no one interviewed by The Times, including critics of the society’s fund-raising practices, said they believed that donations to the society had any bearing on cases before the justices. For one thing, many of the donors are already part of the Supreme Court’s insular and clubby world, where former clerks frequently socialize with and argue cases before their former bosses, and where the justices steadfastly refuse to televise their arguments and specifically reserve only a fraction of the court’s 439 seats for members of the public.

Carter G. Phillips, a Supreme Court litigator at Sidley Austin and the society’s treasurer, said it never occurred to him that anyone would use the society as a way to buy face time or favor with the justices, in part because the society’s events generally afford only fleeting contact with them.

“It’s disgusting,” he said. “Many of the people who contribute have the same reasons I do. You go to a cocktail party and support a good cause. But it turns out that for some people it’s not that innocent. And I think the justices are a victim of that.”

But David T. Pride, the executive director of the society from 1979 until he retired last year, defended the society’s practice of seeking donations from those with interests before the court, saying he “was pretty unabashed about it.”

“Who wouldn’t expect that to be our constituency?” he said. “I don’t think I would have taken money from the Communist or Nazi Parties, but within reason the society was open to all.”

The society was founded in 1974 by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger to make the court more welcoming to visitors and to restore dusty old portraits of justices of yore. Every chief justice since has served as its honorary chairman.

It publishes bound journals of Supreme Court history; restores, maintains and displays historically significant artifacts such as the robes of Justice Louis D. Brandeis; hosts lectures; and brings schoolteachers from around the country to Washington for an annual summer institute, where they learn about the court. Trustees of the nonprofit are expected to give at least $5,000 a year, “patrons” give between $12,500 and $25,000, and “benefactors” give more than $25,000.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the historical society’s most significant source of identifiable funds — more than 34 percent — is the lawyers and law firms that practice before the Supreme Court, according to the Times analysis.

The chairman of the society’s board of trustees, Gregory P. Joseph, is a corporate litigator who served as the president of the American College of Trial Lawyers. Over the years, he and his firm have given at least $187,500 to the society, including in 2019, when he filed a submission with the court on behalf of the Sackler family, the longtime owners of Purdue Pharma, in a case involving accusations that they had siphoned billions of dollars out of the company in an attempt to deplete its coffers and limit the exposure the drugmaker faced over its deceptive marketing of OxyContin.

A number of other trustees who give regularly, such as Beth Brinkmann of Covington & Burling, served as Supreme Court clerks. Ms. Brinkmann joined the society’s board in 2006, and she was featured in the society’s newsletter in 2021 for giving at the patron level. Also in 2021, she represented power companies in the Supreme Court case West Virginia v. E.P.A., which limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plant emissions.

In 2013, the general counsels of Facebook and Time Warner were invited to attend the gala at the Plaza Hotel in New York. There, under a projected image of the Constitution, they were given the society’s first “Amicus Curiae Awards,” according to a society newsletter. That year, Facebook and Time Warner, through its various entities, donated at least a combined $50,000. This year, Kathryn Ruemmler, the general counsel of Goldman Sachs, received the award (as shown below in a promo for the event); Goldman Sachs, which had recently secured a Supreme Court victory making it harder for shareholders to mount class-action suits alleging securities fraud, donated $25,000.

supreme court historical society ny gala 2022

supreme court Custom

Washington Post, Chief justice ignores one of the most controversial Supreme Court terms in his annual report, Robert Barnes, Dec. 31, 2022. It was one of the most controversial terms in Supreme Court history, with the shocking leak of a draft opinion that eventually overturned a half century of abortion rights, public polls that showed record disapproval of the court’s work and biting dissension among the justices themselves about the court’s legitimacy.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., right, chose not to address those or any other controversies in his annual “Year-end Report on the Federal Judiciary,” issued john roberts o Saturday. Instead, he focused on a high mark of the judiciary’s past — a federal district judge’s efforts to implement school desegregation at Little Rock’s Central High School after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

“The law requires every judge to swear an oath to perform his or her work without fear or favor, but we must support judges by ensuring their safety,” Roberts wrote in his nine-page report. “A judicial system cannot and should not live in fear. The events of Little Rock teach about the importance of rule by law instead of by mob.”

Roberts thanked Congress for recently passing the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, named for the son of New Jersey District Judge Esther Salas. Anderl was murdered in 2020 when he answered the door to their home in what was meant to be an attack on the judge.

The legislation allows judges to shield on the internet certain personal information about themselves and their families, such as home addresses, some financial information and employment details of their spouses. It has an exception for media reporting, but some transparency groups have worried that broad interpretation of the law could inhibit watchdog efforts.

Roberts also commended “the U.S. Marshals, Court Security Officers, Federal Protective Service Officers, Supreme Court Police Officers, and their partners” for “working to ensure that judges can sit in courtrooms to serve the public throughout the coming year and beyond.”

That’s about as close as Roberts came in his 18th report to commenting on the present day. The chief justice and other conservative members of the court have seen protesters outside their homes since the May leak of a draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which a majority of the court overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal guarantee of abortion rights.
A California man is facing attempted assassination charges after being arrested outside the suburban Maryland home of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh with weapons and a plan to break into the justice’s house.

Roberts announced an investigation of the leak of the draft Dobbs opinion in the spring, just days after it was published in Politico, calling it a “singular and egregious breach of … trust that is an affront to the court and the community of public servants who work here.”

He directed Supreme Court Marshal Gail A. Curley to investigate the leak, saying that “to the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed.”

Man accused of threatening to kill Kavanaugh is indicted

But Roberts has not publicly mentioned the investigation since then. Last summer, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the justices were expecting reports from Roberts about the work, but nothing has been exposed beyond leaked accounts of disagreements among justices and their clerks about attempts to examine cellphone records.

It is only one controversy to engulf the court. Several media outlets reported on what a former antiabortion evangelical leader said were efforts to encourage conservative justices to be bold in decisions regarding the procedure. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. denied a specific allegation from Rev. Rob Schenck to the New York Times that the justice or his wife disclosed to conservative donors the outcome of a pending 2014 case regarding contraceptives and religious rights.

World Crisis Radio, Commentary and Advocacy: McCarthy still lacks the votes to be elected Speaker, so Democrats must pre-empt MAGA chaos and subversion with a Coalition Speaker! Webster G. Tarpley, right, Dec. 31, 2022. (135:48 min. video). In the light of the January 6 committee findings, Garland and Jack Smith have a couple of months to indict Trump & Co. or preside over the end of the rule of law in US! DoJ obeyed Sessions and Barr, but now the survival of the Republic is the supreme law!

World situation is marked by the coalescence of a new edition of the Rome-Berlin-Moscow-Tokyo axis, this time as the Moscow-Beijing-Pyongyang-Tehran axis; US must lead opposition of free world to this New Axis;

Moments of decision loom for Ukraine: after so many atrocities, a negotiated peace with Putin is unthinkable; as with Hitler, appeasement spells wider war; Putin may escalate, but his military situation is unlikely to improve; CFR now regards anti-Putin coup as most likely outcome; As Gen. Ivashov foresaw, Putin’s aggression may mark the end of the current Russian state; His clones Patrushev, Prigozhin, Kadyrov contend for power; Over two dozen top Russian oligarchs eliminated by poison and open windows this year, the Kremlin equivalent of a faction fight!

Renaissance of Science under Biden: Artemis-Orion and Mars lander revive space program; Lawrence Livermore surpasses break even point for thermonuclear fusion reaction, a first for the world; NASA inaugurates planetary defense by deflecting an asteroid for the first time; Covid vaccines are landmark achievements; Cancer Moonshot advances; Chips and Science Act and other new laws repatriate offshored technology; NOAA upgrades oceanography and marine biology; Federal science workforce is expanding; lasers needed to defend against hypersonic weapons;

French scholar of eastern Europe sees roots of Ukrainian spirit of independence in the Zaporizhia Cossacks of the 1600s

NBC News, Law Demands Full JFK Record Release, But ‘Clearly The CIA Doesn’t Care About Those Consequences,’ Anchor Chuck Todd interviews JFK expert Jefferson Morley, Dec. 16, 2022. Jefferson Morley, historian and editor of the JFK Facts blog, discussed the release of thousands of documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. According to the National Archives, 97% of all documents related to JFK's assassination have now been released, and the remaining 3% are either fully or partially redacted. Details below:

Dec. 27

nicholas luna portrait Former Donald Trump “body man” (personal assistant) Nicholas Luna, shown above

Proof, Source: Nick Luna Not Involved with Trump NFT Company CIC Digital or Trump NFT Scam, Seth Abramson, left, Dec. 27, 2022. Journalists at both the New York Times and Washington Post linked CIC Digital and a similarly named company, CIC Ventures—but that presumption appears to have been wrong, per a Proof source.

Proof readers will be well aware that Proof has reported both here and elsewhere—for instance, in the New York Times-bestselling Proof Trilogy—that former president Donald Trump has a history of directly or indirectly promising money, jobs, and/or favors to those federal witnesses who testify before Congress or speak to the DOJ or FBI in a fashion consistent with his own interests, leading to some understandable concern that if any such individual were to have been involved in Trump’s get-richer-quick NFT scam it could position that scam as part of a larger January 6 cover-up.

As the subhed of this new Proof report indicates, and as the last Proof report on Mr. Trump’s NFT venture disclosed, both the Washington Post and New York Times saw leading journalists on their payrolls draw conclusions about two Trump-launched companies—CIC Ventures and CIC Digital—that treated the two as one and the same, and therefore possibly at the head of a January 6 Witness Tampering scheme.

But Proof can now report, on the basis of contact with a person confirmed to have knowledge of the situation—and to whom Proof has granted anonymity to allow them to speak freely—that while former Trump “body man” Nicholas Luna was indeed involved with CIC Ventures for the purposes of signing contracts for Mr. Trump’s post-presidential speaking engagements, he had no involvement, formal or otherwise, with CIC Digital, a distinct venture that ultimately contracted with a dodgy entity named NFT INT LLC to mint Trump’s chintzy, much-mocked NFTs. Indeed, per this Proof source, CIC Digital was founded after Luna left Trump’s employ in October 2021.

This source believes CIC Digital to have been run, instead, by individuals associated with (or even formally part of) the Trump Organization. This source further states that there were no contacts between Luna and the listed co-director for CIC Ventures, Trump lawyer John Marion.

These revelations keep active the following key questions: (1) why a Trump lawyer (Marion) was made the co-director of an entity exclusively associated with Trump’s speaking engagements; (2) whether Marion was also involved with CIC Digital; and (3) whether Marion was given his business role(s) in the labyrinthine world of Trump single-purpose (sometimes shell) corporations as a means to avoid paying him for legal services rendered—whether through corporate perks or write-offs or by allowing Marion to do side business under Trump’s aegis and/or brand, as appears to have been the case in Ukraine with fellow Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani—or to generate a zone of attorney-client privilege in the context of a Witness Tampering (or other criminal) scheme.

Hopefully the Times and Post will update their coverage of Donald Trump’s NFT scam consistent with this new reporting by Proof.

Dec. 26

Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, a leading proponent of the Jan. 6 pro-Trump

Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, a leading proponent of the Jan. 6 pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" that led to the Capitol insurrection, is shown in a collage with then-President Donald Trump (File photos).

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: The missing piece in the January 6th Committee Report, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books (including The Rise of The Fourth Reich, below, and former synidcated columnist, Navy intellitence officer and NSA analyst, Dec. 25-26, 2022.

The House Select Committee on the January 6 attack on the Congress did an admirable job of cutting through the obstruction of justice, obfuscation, and plain old lying from Donald Trump and his administration’s and presidential campaign’s hopeless sycophants.

However, the committee failed to answer the mail on the military’s involvement in pre- and post-coup plans for a Trump military-civilian junta to rule the United States. Far too many Department of Defense political appointees were not criticized in the committee’s report, particularly those who failed to order the early deployment of National Guard troops to safeguard the Capitol complex for the ceremonial counting of the electoral votes to proclaim Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the president- and vice president- wayne madsen fourth reich cover elect of the United States.

It is quite clear that Trump had installed a coterie of military and civilian officials at the Pentagon whose main task it was to fail to respond to pleas for assistance from congressional and Washington, DC authorities as insurrectionists stormed the Capitol.

The presence of then-Major General Charles Flynn, right, within the U.S. Army’s Pentagon staff should have raised the suspicions of the committee. Flynn’s brother, charles flynn o Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Flynn, had been one of the chief proponents of advancing Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign to the point where he called for the military to not only seize voting machines but Trump to declare martial law and hold an unconstitutional “do-over” of the November 3rd election.

Other active duty officers who stymied the dispatch of National Guard troops to the Capitol included Lieutenant General Walter Piatt, Charles Flynn’s immediate superior, who remains the Director of the Army Staff at the Pentagon, and then-Brigadier General Christopher LaNeve, the Director of Operations and Mobilization, who worked under Piatt and Flynn, and has since been promoted to Major General and is currently the Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

It is very clear that a group of far-right retired flag rank military officers stood ready to fill important government positions in a Trump junta after a successful January 6 coup. During the 2020 campaign 317 of these officers, representing “Flag Officers 4 America,” signed an open letter full of vitriolic pro-Trump rhetoric, including the charge that the “Democrat Party” was “welcoming Socialists and Marxists” and that “our historic way of life is at stake.”

WMR has compiled a spreadsheet listing the names of the “Flag Officers 4 America” and other lower-ranked military retirees and active members of the military and reserves who provided aid and comfort to Trump and his coup plotters. While this is not a complete list of officer-level traitors in the U.S. military community, it can be appended with additional names.

Just Security, January 6 Clearinghouse Congressional Hearings, Government Documents, Court Cases, Academic Research, Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix, Dec. 26, 2022. Deposition Transcripts of House Select Committee (sorted by affiliation, alphabetical, date of deposition) Welcome to this all-source repository of information for analysts, researchers, investigators, journalists, educators, and the public at large.

Check out our new addition below: A curated repository of deposition transcripts from the House Select Committee. Readers may also be interested in Major Highlights of the January 6th Report.

If you think the January 6 Clearinghouse is missing something, please send recommendations for additional content by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The authors are grateful for the assistance of Joshua Asabor, Matthew Bailey, Sarah Butterfield, Brianne Cuffe, and Nicholas Tonckens in the creation of the Clearinghouse.

Dec. 25

Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk, standing in the back row at center, is shown with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner in Qatar at the World Cup championship game in a VIP box on Dec. 18, 2022. Twitter owner Elon Musk, standing in the back row at center, is shown with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner in Qatar at the World Cup championship game in a VIP box on Dec. 18, 2022.

Washington Post, Investigation: Here’s who helped Elon Musk buy Twitter, Hamza Shaban and Faiz Siddiqui, Dec. 24, 2022. Who pulls the financial strings at Twitter? These are Musk’s backers:

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud
The Qatar Investment Authority
Binance
Andreessen Horowitz
Sequoia Capital
Larry Ellison
Jack Dorsey
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays

After slashing half the company’s 7,500 member staff, he’s driven away advertisers and created a bigger financial hole for the company. So far, his ideas for bringing in additional money — paying for verification and additional features — have failed to make much of a dent. An unscientific poll he launched recently told him to step down as CEO.

On a Twitter audio chat recently, Musk cited the company’s precarious financial position as a driver of his aggressive job cuts and drastic actions, adding “we have an emergency fire drill on our hands.”

That’s making at least some of his investors in the deal antsy, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Last week, at least a couple of the original investors received letters from a Musk associate soliciting additional investments, according to two people familiar with the matter, although it was unclear if that would proceed.

Here’s who initially invested in the deal, and what we know about why:

Foreign Investors

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud. Estimated Contribution: $2 Billion

The Saudi prince agreed in May to convert his shares of Twitter, worth nearly $2 billion, into a stake in the company when Musk took it private. A month earlier, he had publicly sparred with Musk about the company’s worth, but later tweeted that Musk would be an “excellent leader for Twitter.”

The prince has previously placed winning bets on Apple, Amazon and eBay. But his latest Silicon Valley investment has drawn skepticism in Washington. qatar map President Biden and some members of Congress have called on officials to examine the role of Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Twitter deal.

The Qatar Investment Authority. Estimated Contribution: $375 Million

Washington Post, Opinion: For Cassidy Hutchinson, ‘I don’t remember’ wasn’t good enough, Ruth Marcus, right, Dec. 25, 2022 (print ed.). Cassidy Hutchinson knew better than to put herself in debt to what she called “Trump world.” As she would later testify, “Once you are looped in, especially financially with them, there is no turning back.”

But Hutchinson, who witnessed the final days of the Trump White House from her all-access perch as an aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, had been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 select committee. The deadline for turning over documents was looming, and Hutchinson was, she said, “starting to freak out.” One lawyer she consulted said he could assist — then demanded a $150,000 retainer.

So, the young aide, out of work since Trump had left office a full year earlier, initially decided to turn to Trump world for help. Which is how she came to receive a phone call from Stefan Passantino, previously a lawyer in the Trump White House counsel’s office.

“We have you taken care of,” he told Hutchinson. When she asked who would be paying the bills, Passantino demurred — this despite legal ethics rules that let attorneys accept payment from third parties but only with the “informed consent” of their client.

“If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now,” Hutchinson, in her deposition, recalled him saying. “Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about.”

If Hutchinson’s live testimony before the select committee was riveting, her deposition testimony, taken several months later and released Thursday, is a page-turner: The Godfather meets John Grisham meets "All the President’s Men." Before, we could only imagine how frightening the situation must have been for the 20-something Trump staffer. Now, we can read of her frantic search for help, and her terror as she contemplated telling the truth.

It is a tale, at least in Hutchinson’s telling, of Trump allies dangling financial support in exchange for unyielding loyalty. “We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world. You don’t need to apply other places,” Passantino assured Hutchinson. “We’re gonna get you taken care of. We’re going to keep you in the family.” The goal, as he set it out, was clear: “We just want to focus on protecting the President.”

Dec. 24

World Crisis Radio, Commentary and Advocacy: January 6 committee issues criminal referrals for Trump and Eastman, raising hopes for justice against former tenant of White House! Webster G. Tarpley, right, Dec. 24, 2022 (119:08 mins.). Charges against MAGA boss include interference with a federal function; conspiracy to defraud US; conspiracy to make false statements; and aiding an insurrection;

Report leaves no doubt about Don’s criminal intent; Weakness of Report lies in failure to deal with subversives and enablers in Secret Service, Pentagon, and elsewhere;

Just as Condoleeza Rice claimed that use of airplanes against buildings had been inconceivable before 9/11, despite numerous drills, Report claims Trump’s role as prime mover of insurrection was inconceivable;

More attention required for call to Pentagon in which Gens. Charles Flynn and Piatt refused to send National Guard to Hill;

Some distortions due to demands of Liz Cheney, who wanted everything focused on Trump and no attention for subversive networks in intelligence, Pentagon, FBI, and Secret Service;

Lack of adequate military and police response on January 6 suggests failure of reforms advocated by Kean-Hamilton 9/11 commission almost two decades ago;

Zelensky’s address to Congress validates Biden’s achievement as champion diplomat of 2022; Ukraine to get $45 billion in aid, Patriot surface to air missiles,and should also receive ATACM longer-range missiles, more long-range artillery, and Abrams tanks; If Trump had still been president this year, Russians would already be in Kiev and massing on the Polish border, threatening world war; Churlish behavior of McCarthy towards distinguished guest; Reminder: ”In war, there is no substitute for victory”;

Congress passes $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill to fund US government despite hysteria of right-wing anarchists, reactionaries and fascists; 18 GOP join with all Dems in Senate; In House, measure passes 225 to 201, with 9 GOP votes; Squad member Tlaib votes present, while AOC joins MAGA rejection front; US government funded through end of September.

ali alexander alex jones proof uncredited

Proof, Investigative Commentary: Stunning New Ali Alexander Text Message Released By House January 6 Committee Could Be the Smoking Gun for Link Between Trump and Capitol Attackers, Seth Abramson, left, Dec. 23-24, 2022. The House January 6 Committee has just released dozens of transcripts of January 6 witness testimony—and the one transcript that only Proof would be obsessed with is the one everyone needs to read.

For two years, Proof spilled more words reporting on Ali Alexander and Alex Jones and their role in the events of January 6, 2021 than any media outlet in the United States. All told, more than a hundred Proof reports detailed how these two men in particular—along with their fellow Stop the Steal co-organizer Roger Stone—directly coordinated with the Trump White House, and even Donald Trump himself, to move an armed mob from the White House Ellipse onto the Capitol grounds on January 6.

Then the House January 6 Committee hearings came, and Alexander and Jones were hardly mentioned at all. Instead, the Committee focused almost exclusively on Trump, and in only attenuated ways on Trump advisers who had been close to him for many years, like Stone. Alexander was interviewed but not mentioned, Jones was mentioned once or twice but had successfully fought revealing any testimonial evidence to the Committee by over and over and over again pleading his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination under live questioning by the Committee.

This led some to fear that Proof had been off-base in focusing so much on the Stop the Steal group alongside other topics that ultimately did make up a significant part of the Committee’s more than a dozen televised presentations to America: for instance, the Trump-, John Eastman-, and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA)–led coup inside the DOJ or the pressure campaign the first two men waged against then-vice president Mike Pence.

So when, just 24 hours ago, the Committee began releasing dozens of transcripts of its interviews with January 6 witnesses, relatively few gravitated toward the Alex Jones transcript—not only because it was by then widely known that Jones had pleaded the Fifth Amendment in response to every question asked of him (despite having often insisted in the past that he had done nothing wrong with respect to the events of January 6), but because Jones hadn’t been a focus of the Committee’s many televised evidentiary hearings, so how significant could his testimony or transcript possibly be?

In fact, it may be a smoking gun.

As Proof has reported across scores of investigative reports on his activities on and before January 6, Ali Alexander has always claimed that he’s met face-to-face with Donald Trump several times (to the point that Trump had developed a nickname for him prior to January 6, “Sammy,” for his likeness to the late entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.), has spoken with him on other occasions as well, was in touch with Donald Trump Jr.’s wife-to-be Kimberly Guilfoyle on (at a bare minimum) Insurrection Eve, and was in constant communication with the 2020 Trump presidential campaign on January 6 itself. He’s also intimated that he was in touch with top officials at the White House throughout December of 2020—a period of time in which he began making what many would consider terroristic threats against the United States related to January 6.

More recently, over at Post News, Proof detailed how the just-published Executive Summary of the House January 6 Committee Report makes clear that Trump and Eastman developed their plot to use January 6 to overturn the 2020 election results in the first week of December 2020, approximately two weeks before Ali Alexander made public his plan to create a mob scene on Capitol Hill on that date (that is, on federal grounds that it would be illegal to enter upon or occupy on that day in January 2021).

Dec. 23

The headline and photo collage above about Republican members of Congress who were disclosed this year as having unsuccessfully sought from then-President Trump presidential pardons for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021 were by a liberal activist and not the New York Times.

Editor's Note: The headline and photo collage above about Republican members of Congress who were disclosed this year as having unsuccessfully sought from then-President Trump presidential pardons for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021 were by a liberal activist and not the New York Times.

New York Times, Opinion by Adam Schiff: My Fellow Members of the Jan. 6 Committee and I Don’t Want You to Forget About ‘the Republican Congressmen,’ Adam Schiff, right, Dec. 23, 2022 (print ed.). Mr. Schiff is a representative from California and a member of the Jan. 6 committee.

adam schiff square On Dec. 27, 2020, more than six weeks after losing re-election, an infuriated President Donald Trump telephoned his acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen. Mr. Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, had announced his resignation less than two weeks earlier, after telling the president that the claims of election fraud Mr. Trump had been trumpeting were — as Mr. Barr later bluntly put it in testimony — “bullshit” and publicly affirming that there was no fraud on a scale that would affect the outcome of the election.

With Mr. Rosen’s deputy, Richard Donoghue, also on the line, Mr. Trump launched into the same tired, disproved and discredited allegations he had propagated so often at rallies, during news conferences and on social media. None of it was true, and Mr. Donoghue told him so. According to Mr. Donoghue, Mr. Trump, exasperated that his own handpicked top appointees at the Justice Department would not affirm his baseless allegations, responded: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

It was a remarkable statement, even for a president who had serially abused the powers of his office. Having been told by the very department that had investigated his claims of fraud that they were untrue, Mr. Trump told the acting attorney general and his deputy to lie about it and said he would take it from there.

That Mr. Trump was willing to lie so baldly about a matter at the heart of our democracy — whether the American people can rely on elections to ensure the peaceful transfer of power — now seems self-evident, even unremarkable, when we consider the violent attack on the Capitol he incited days later. But Americans shouldn’t lose sight of how this behavior indicts the former president, and not just the former president but also the Republican members of Congress who he knew would go along with his big lie.

The report released Thursday from the Jan. 6 committee, on which I served, makes abundantly clear that there were multiple lines of effort to overturn the 2020 election. Some involved attempts to pressure state legislatures to declare the loser to be the winner. Others involved a fake electors plot, pressure on the vice president to violate his constitutional duty and efforts to force an elections official to “find” thousands of votes that didn’t exist. It was only when all of these other efforts failed that the president resorted to inciting mob violence to try to stop the transfer of power.

But one line of effort to overturn the election is given scant attention, and that involved the willingness of so many members of Congress to vote to overturn it. Even after Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police put down the insurrection at great cost to themselves, the majority of Republicans in the House picked up right where they left off, still voting to overturn the results in important states.

At one of our Jan. 6 committee hearings, the committee vice chair Liz Cheney, a Republican, called out her colleagues in Congress for their duplicity in the most searing terms: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

With our work on the committee largely concluded, it will now fall to the Justice Department to ensure a form of accountability that Congress is not empowered to provide, and to vindicate the rule of law in a manner beyond our reach: through prosecution. Multiple laws were violated in the course of a broad attempt to overturn the election, and not just by the foot soldiers who broke into the Capitol building that day and brutally assaulted police officers, but also by those who incited them, encouraged them and, when it was all over, gave them aid and comfort. Bringing a former president to justice who even now calls for the “termination” of our Constitution is a perilous endeavor. Not doing so is far more dangerous.

Adam B. Schiff is a Democratic member of Congress from California and the author, most recently, of “Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.”

Dec. 21

Elon Musk released what he called the “Twitter Files” this month, delving into the company's decision to block the Hunter Biden laptop story and limit other controversial messaging that Musk wants distributed. In this 2019 photo, Musk speaks during a gaming convention (Photo by Mike Blake for Reuters).

The Guardian, Opinion: Elon Musk was never a liberal, and his plans for Twitter were never benevolent, Thomas Zimmer, Dec. 21, 2022. Tech barons’ lip-service to democracy and pluralism was always conditional on preserving their own positions at the top.

On Monday, Elon Musk polled Twitter users on whether he should step down as CEO. The answer was a resounding yes. On Tuesday, Musk announced that he will step down once he finds a replacement. Still, the damage has been done: Musk’s tenure has been a disaster for democracy.
Elon Musk is a Jekyll and Hyde character. And as head of Twitter, Hyde is winning

Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, he has encouraged far-right conspiracy theories, consistently articulated rightwing extremist ideas and coddled extremists who propagated them, changed or undermined content moderation in a way that allowed hate speech and far-right abuse to flourish, and constantly derided Democrats, liberals and anyone he perceives as part of “the Left” in an escalating crusade against “wokeism”. He is now banning critical voices, including those of mainstream journalists, under obviously disingenuous pretenses.

Musk’s actions are fully consistent with the worldview that dominates among far-right reactionary extremists. Yet, many observers seem reluctant to acknowledge that what is happening is exactly what it looks like. People who cover the tech world are still searching for a grand business strategy that would explain all this behavior. And some people whose main occupation is to cover politics are also struggling. The New York Times recently declared Musk’s politics “tricky to pin down”, and said that “what he stands for remains largely unclear.”

The source of confusion seems to be that Musk’s actions collide with certain assumptions about the supposedly liberal tech world and with Musk’s own previous claims about his political leanings. But the male-dominated tech world seemed “liberal” only because it was associated with technical progress, while most of the (predominantly male) tech oligarchs were happy to present a culturally permissive image. And people say all sorts of things about their political leanings and may even believe them – that doesn’t mean we should take their proclamations at face value. What people actually do, the political projects they support, is far more relevant.

So, what’s up with Musk’s politics?

From a democratic perspective, it’s highly problematic that tech oligarchs like Musk are amassing so much power and influence. They are not democratically controlled in any way or guided by any concern for the public good. Musk is yet another example of how short the path from a certain kind of libertarianism to the far right is, a reminder that this type of libertarianism is driven by a desire for freedom from regulation and criticism of any kind.

Musk believes that the world works best if people like him are in charge and get to do as they please, unhampered by regulations or demands for equality – because their interests ought to be the same as humanity’s. It’s an inherently anti-democratic worldview that tracks very well with the reactionary idea that the world should be run by wealthy white men. This is what is pulling these people to the right, and why they eventually gravitate toward autocratic regimes at home and abroad.

Much of the moral panic over “cancel culture” – which animated Musk to buy Twitter in the first place – is a reaction to the fact that traditionally marginalized groups gained technological means to affect the political debate.

Twitter has been crucial in this uphill struggle: a tool for organizing, a platform, a global amplifier that enabled people with no traditional access to power to speak to powerful elites directly and criticize them in the public square. How valuable this has been is evidenced by the fact that many of those elites are so consistently bemoaning “persecution” – and, like Musk, wish to sabotage and destroy this instrument for public criticism. To the extent that traditional societal elites – and elite white men in particular – face a little more scrutiny today than in the past, Twitter has helped to democratize public life.

Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer

Dec. 19

U.S. House Jan. 6 insurrection investigating committee members Liz Cheney (R-WY), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Jamie Raskie (D-MD) are shown, left to right, in a file photo.

New York Times, Jan. 6 Panel to Cap 18-Month Inquiry With Final Public Session Today, Luke Broadwater, Dec. 19, 2022. The committee is expected to approve its final report and vote on issuing criminal and civil referrals against Donald Trump at a 1 p.m. hearing.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will hold its last public meeting on Monday afternoon, ending an 18-month investigation with the approval of its final report and a vote on issuing criminal and ethics referrals against former President Donald J. Trump and his top allies.

During a business meeting at 1 p.m., the committee is expected to discuss some of the findings in its final report and recommendations for legislative changes.

The panel is also expected to vote on referring Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on charges of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Referrals against Mr. Trump would not carry any legal weight or compel the Justice Department to take any action, but they would send a powerful signal that a congressional committee believes the former president committed certain crimes.

New York Times, From Zero Covid to No Plan: Behind China’s Pandemic U-Turn, Chris Buckley, Alexandra Stevenson and Keith Bradsher, Dec. 19, 2022. An examination of how the shift unfolded reveals a government overtaken by a cascade of outbreaks, confusion over directives, economic woes and protests.

The southwestern city of Chongqing was the latest frontline of Xi Jinping’s “zero Covid” war, until it came to epitomize China’s potentially devastating about-face that has cracked the Communist Party’s edifice of absolute control.

The city last month was enduring one of the biggest outbreaks cropping up across China, when the national leader, Mr. Xi, ordered officials to continue mass testing, lockdowns and quarantines. Chen Min’er, the Chongqing party secretary, devoutly complied, closing off neighborhoods and ordering the instant construction of a quarantine hospital designed to hold up to 21,000 beds.

“Be resolute in fighting and winning this war of annihilation against the pandemic,” Mr. Chen, a protégé of Mr. Xi, told officials on Nov. 27. “Not a day of delay.”

But 10 days later, China suddenly abandoned the “zero Covid” strategy on which Mr. Xi had staked his reputation. Now the country faces a surge of infections, and Mr. Xi has left officials scrambling to manage the disarray and uncertainty.

Twitter, Tesla and SpacXe primary owner Elon Musk, top center, joins Jared Kushner and VIPs from Qatar at the World Cup finals in Qatar on Dec. 18, 2022.

Twitter, Tesla and SpacXe primary owner Elon Musk, top center, joins Jared Kushner and VIPs from Qatar at the World Cup finals in Qatar on Dec. 18, 2022.

Washington Post, After backlash, Elon Musk is staking his leadership on a Twitter poll, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski and Marisa Iati, Dec. 19, 2022 (print ed.). After a new policy prompted backlash, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said future policies would be determined by polls.

Elon Musk apologized and launched a poll asking whether he should step down as head of Twitter on Sunday night after the company launched a new policy that would suspend accounts linking to certain other platforms, a move that ignited massive backlash from individuals including some of Musk’s own supporters.

Musk apologized after putting the policy in place and wrote: “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.”

He then launched a Twitter poll, surveying users on whether he should step down. Musk had abided by past polls, despite them being unscientific and unrepresentative.

“Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll,” he wrote. He added shortly after: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”

Respondents leaned heavily toward “Yes” in Musk’s poll, indicating Musk should step down, after nearly an hour of voting: 58 percent of more than 3 million votes were in favor of him handing over the reins. The poll was set to expire Monday morning before the opening of the stock market. The value of Tesla’s stock — the source of much of Musk’s net worth — has recently plunged. Investors have said Musk stepping aside from Twitter would improve Tesla’s outlook.

Musk’s sudden reversal came after Twitter earlier in the day said it would start suspending accounts linking to “prohibited platforms” such as Facebook and Instagram if those accounts are “used for the main purpose of promoting content on another social platform,” according to the announcement Sunday.

The policy, dated this month and tweeted Sunday afternoon, said tweets promoting accounts on some sites may be removed if users urge their Twitter followers to join them elsewhere.

“At both the tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms,” the policy said. It lists several examples of such social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram and Truth Social, which former president Donald Trump co-founded.

Musk’s ownership of Twitter — which he bought in October for $44 billion — has plunged the site into turmoil. He ousted the company’s executives and installed a team of loyalists, laid off more than half the staff and dialed back Twitter’s content moderation. He has engaged in misinformation as the site’s owner and hastily rolled out new and confusing changes, courting controversy and alarming advertisers, some of whom paused their spending on the site.

His sudden and sometimes arbitrary decisions have grated on many of Twitter’s core users and staff, but also some of his own supporters who pushed his ownership bid rooted in a “free speech” driven approach.

Already Sunday, Musk appeared to be losing the support of some who had backed his management moves at Twitter over the new policy.

Twitter has slashed most of its public relations team since Musk took over the company in October, and Musk did not respond to an emailed list of questions about the new rule earlier in the day. Musk tweeted posts from the World Cup finale in Qatar earlier Sunday.

New York Times, Twitter Users Say Elon Musk Should Quit as C.E.O., Eshe Nelson, Dec. 19, 2022. Elon Musk asked Twitter users if he should step down. Millions of votes were cast and delivered a clear verdict: yes.

Elon Musk asked Twitter users Sunday if he should step down as head of the social media site. More than 17 million votes were cast and delivered a clear verdict: 57.5 percent said he should quit, in a Twitter “poll” that closed after 12 hours on Monday.

Mr. Musk had said that he would abide by the results of the vote. After voting ended there was no immediate response from Mr. Musk on Twitter.

If he follows through, Mr. Musk would be handing over the reins of the company that he bought for $44 billion in late October. The turbulent weeks since then have been marked by mass layoffs at the company, falling advertising sales, executive resignations and various high-profile user accounts suspended for infractions of newly invented policy.

On Sunday, Twitter announced a policy to prevent users from sharing links and user names from other social platforms, like Instagram, Facebook and Mastodon, and then apparently curtailed the same policy.

Elon Musk: A Collage of Influencers (Graphic courtesy of the Wayne Madsen Report).

Elon Musk: A Collage of Influencers (Graphic courtesy of the Wayne Madsen Report).

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: The apartheid South Africa of Elon Musk's pampered existence, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books (including Decade of Death: Secret Wars and Genocide in Africa 1993-2003), former syndicated newspaper columnist and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Dec. 19, 2022.

Elon Musk's predilection for censoring and banning journalists on his Twitter platform makes sense when his pampered youth in apartheid Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Durban is fully taken into consideration.

This apartheid-era South Africa was Jim Crow on steroids. Strict racial segregation of blacks, those of Indian subcontinent descent, and mixed race mulattoes (called "Coloureds") from white society was strictly enforced by the police and other authorities. Musk obviously gets his ideas on restricting freedom of expression from a major apartheid censorship contrivance, the Publications Control Board, which had been empowered by the 1963 Publications and Entertainments Act.

Consider that "banning orders" were applied by the apartheid regime to its opponents. Banned individuals were told where they could live and with whom they could have contact. Those banned were required to report to a police station weekly and they were prohibited from traveling outside a specific area. Moreover, those banned could not meet with more than one person, contact with journalists was particularly prohibited, and violations of banning orders carried a five-year prison sentence. The press was barred from reporting statements made by banned individuals.

Elon Musk is as undesirable as a naturalized citizen as an American could possibly be. As such, he should be shown America's exit door. Musk would not be the first Nazi sympathizer who became a citizen under false pretenses to be shown the door. And he should not be the last.

Dec. 17

World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary and Strategy, To help defend Constitutional government, January 6 Committee must issue criminal referrals against Trump and his co-conspirators! Webster G. Tarpley, right, Dec. 17, 2022 (124:01 mins.). Trump’s day of reckoning approaches: Fateful events next week include Monday decisions on criminal and civil referrals, followed by Tuesday’s announcements of further action from House Ways and Means after initial probe of Don’s tax returns, and Wednesday’s publication of the January 6 Committee’s final report with interview transcripts: democracy hangs in the balance!

Public focus is also on Eastman, Giuliani, and Meadows of Don’s circle; TPM publishes trove of Meadows messages exchanged with 34 GOP tyrants;War of all against all rages among House Republicans as McCarthy appears to fall short of 218 votes need to be Speaker, meaning no decision on first ballot of January 3; Coalition Speaker is only means of avoiding prolonged chaos; Struggle for power in RNC mirrors pervasive power struggles throughout GOP;

Special Counsel subpoenas witnesses in seven battleground states: AZ-MI-WI-GA-NV-NM-PA;

Erratic Putin punks out of yearly press conference, but redoubles rocket rattling; Gen. McCaffrey welcomes promise of Patriot battery for Ukraine, wants ATACMs and other offensive weaponry added as well; Ukrainian command expects Russian winter offensive, most likely against Kyiv;

Berserker Musk launches vendetta vs. his Twitter critics, provoking warnings from European Union and United Nations; DeSantis forming anti-vax council of mountebanks and charlatans to help recruit anti-science mob;

Twilight of globalization as finance oligarchs, anti-union practices, foreign supply chains, just in time inventory, and prevalence of speculation over hard-commodity manufacturing are transformed;

Breaking: Press reports January 6 committee is preparing criminal referrals against Trump for conspiracy to defraud US, insurrection, and obstruction of an official proceeding; Conviction for insurrection would entail lifetime ban from federal office!

Dec. 16

Politico, Exclusive: Jan. 6 panel to vote on urging DOJ to prosecute Trump on at least three criminal charges, Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu, Dec. 16, 2022. The report that the select panel (with two of its leaders shown at right above) is expected to consider on Monday afternoon reflects some recommendations from a subcommittee that evaluated potential referrals.

The Jan. 6 select committee is preparing to vote on urging the Justice Department to pursue at least three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump, including insurrection.

The report that the select panel is expected to consider on Monday afternoon, described to POLITICO by two people familiar with its contents, reflects some recommendations from a subcommittee that evaluated potential criminal referrals. Among the charges that subcommittee proposes for Trump: 18 U.S.C. 2383, insurrection; 18 U.S.C. 1512(c), obstruction of an official proceeding; and 18 U.S.C. 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States government.

It’s unclear whether the select committee’s final report will recommend additional charges for Trump beyond the three described to POLITICO, or whether it will urge other criminal charges for other players in Trump’s bid to subvert his 2020 loss. The document, according to the people familiar, includes an extensive justification for the recommended charges.

To justify incitement of insurrection, the report references U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta’s February ruling saying Trump’s language plausibly incited violence on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters besieged the Capitol in a bid to disrupt congressional certification of his loss to Joe Biden. The report also cites the Senate’s 57 votes in last year’s impeachment trial, Trump’s second, to convict him on an “incitement of insurrection” charge passed by the House.

The select panel’s report also notes that, in order to violate the insurrection statute, Trump did not need an express agreement with rioters — but rather, simply needed to provide “aid or comfort” to them.

A select committee spokesperson declined to comment.

A Trump spokesperson denounced the committee’s plans.

“The January 6th un-Select Committee held show trials by Never Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history,” said Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung in a statement. “This Kangaroo court has been nothing more than a Hollywood executive’s vanity documentary project that insults Americans’ intelligence and makes a mockery of our democracy.”

DOJ, which is already pursuing a criminal probe of Trump’s Jan. 6-related actions, is not required to consider referrals from Congress, which have no legal weight. However, the select committee plans to act in the hopes that lawmakers’ input can influence prosecutorial decision-making. Panel chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) has also raised the possibility of referrals to outside entities like bar associations for the constellation of lawyers involved in election subversion efforts.

Highlights: Jan. 6 panel ends with unanimous subpoena for Trump testimony

The panel’s lawmakers have debated the value of referrals at length through the end of their investigation. But in recent days, they’ve made the referrals into a play for history and have stressed their symbolic nature, regardless of what DOJ or other entities might do.

Dec. 15

Biden Releases JFK Murder Documents, Withholds Others

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), National Archives Releases New Group of JFK Assassination Documents, Staff Report, Dec. 15, 2022. In accordance with President Biden’s memorandum of December 15, 2022, the National Archives today posted 13,173, documents containing newly released information subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). Released documents are available for download.

At the direction of the President, and following the December 15, 2021, release, the National Archives and the agencies responsible for withheld documents conducted an intensive review of each remaining redaction withheld under section 5 of the JFK Act. This was the first review under the JFK Act that was done in an interagency manner at the redaction level.

The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection (the Collection), established by the National Archives in November 1992, consists of approximately five million pages. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without restrictions on access since the late 1990s. Following today’s release, over 97% of records in the collection are now available.

As permitted under section 5 of the JFK Act, agencies appealed to the President to continue postponement of certain information beyond October 22, 2021. Section 5 of the JFK Act permits postponement for an identifiable harm to military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations where the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure. The President then provided agencies with a temporary certification until December 15, 2022, to allow for a review of all documents withheld in part under section 5 of the JFK Act and directed agencies “to ensure that the United States Government maximizes transparency, disclosing all information in records concerning the assassination, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.” Today’s release is the result of that review. Section 5 postponement decisions now affect less than 4,400 documents in the Collection.

As of the December 15, 2021 release, all documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act had been released in their entirety or in part, and no documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act remained withheld in their entirety.

The Collection also includes 515 documents withheld in full and another 2,545 documents withheld in part under sections 10 and 11 of the JFK Act. Section 10 of the JFK Act addresses records withheld under court seal or for grand jury secrecy, and section 11 of the JFK Act addresses records subject to section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code or a deed governing access to or transfer or release of gifts or donations to the United States Government. Information subject to sections 10 and 11 of the JFK Act cannot be released independently by NARA, the agencies, or the President, though some of these documents also contain information postponed under section 5, which has been made available and posted today.

The National Archives and the Department of Justice are working together to determine whether information in five records withheld in full under court seal or for grand jury secrecy under section 10 of the JFK Act can be released.

Also posted online today are the letters from agencies requesting postponement, agency indices, and agency transparency plans.

Online Resources:

Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection
Documenting the Death of a President
JFK Assassination Records Review Board
JFK Assassination Records FAQs
Warren Commission Report

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), JFK Assassination Records: 2022 Additional Documents Release, Staff Report, Dec. 15, 2022. NARA is processing previously withheld John F. Kennedy assassination-related records to comply with President Joe Biden’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, requiring disclosure of releasable records by December 15, 2022.

The National Archives has posted records online to comply with these requirements.

Accessing the Release Files: The table below displays metadata about all the released documents. You can also download the spreadsheet as an Excel file (1.4 MB).

Dec. 13

Rolling Stone, Russian Trolls Made Fake Kid Rock Fan Accounts — and Fooled Donald Trump Jr., Dec. 13, 2022. The former president’s son reposted a conspiracy theory on Ivermectin and oil supplies from “KidRockOfficial.” The account was a Russian troll trying to meddle in the U.S. election.

Russian trolls are taking advantage of the free-for-all on far-right social media apps to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda — and they were particularly successful when impersonating fans of MAGA musician Kid Rock.

Those conclusions are from a new report by the social media tracking firm Graphika and Stanford University’s Internet Observatory. The researchers traced at least 35 accounts on the right-wing social apps to the Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens (NAEBC), a phony news organization linked to Russia’s troll factory. The fake accounts focused on ginning up support for failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, attacking Democratic Senate candidates, and pushing bizarre conspiracy theories about Ukraine and the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, among other topics.

Researchers found Russian-linked fake accounts posing as authentic American conservatives cross-posting content to personas on Truth Social, Gab, and Gettr. While right-wing social platforms like Gab and Parler have previously played host to Russian influence operations, the report marks the first documented case of Russian meddling on Truth Social, the social media app founded by Trump.

The former president’s son reposted a conspiracy theory on Ivermectin and oil supplies from “KidRockOfficial.” The account was a Russian troll trying to meddle in the U.S. election

Russian trolls are taking advantage of the free-for-all on far-right social media apps to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda — and they were particularly successful when impersonating fans of MAGA musician Kid Rock.

The 35 trolls amassed an audience of approximately 33,000 unique followers spread across Gab, Gettr, and Truth Social. The network’s memes and talking points mostly failed to recapture the large audiences they enjoyed during the 2016 presidential election, but a few — particularly those impersonating Kid Rock, a favorite target of Russian trolls — outperformed their troll persona colleagues.

One of the trolls, KidRockOfficial, created a fake Kid Rock fan account that even scored a repost from Donald Trump Jr., when the former president’s son (a friend of the real Kid Rock) shared it with his more than 6 million Instagram followers. After screenshotting the troll’s post — a memed conspiracy theory about gas prices and the bogus Covid cure Ivermectin originally posted to Gettr — and putting it on Instagram, Trump Jr. commented simply “Yup.”

Researchers linked the bogus “official” fan account on Gettr to Russia’s troll factory when they discovered an identical account on Gab — first identified by the FBI as run by Russia’s Internet Research Agency in 2020 — had resurfaced under the same handle to post the same content as its Gettr twin.

Dec. 10

World Crisis Radio, Analysis and Advocacy: House Democrats must go towards January 3 with a #CoalitionSpeaker candidate and a unified party, ready to head off two years of MAGA chaos amid war and depression! Webster G. Tarpley, right, historian and commentator, Dec. 10, 2022 (127:50 min.). #NeverKevin faction of five Tea Party extremists urges McCarthy to end candidacy because he lacks the 218 votes; Seven other raving extremists pose conditions for getting their votes, including toppling of Speaker, using debt ceiling to extort a balanced federal budget, and attaching extraneous riders to must-pass bills;

Many center-left pundits still studiously avoid mentioning #CoalitionSpeaker option, although McCarthy cites it incessantly;

Trump reeling from series of political and legal defeats, making indictments timely;

On Hunter Biden Twitter story, GOP cannot grasp that First Amendment applies to government actions, not private companies, and that Trump, not Biden, was president in October 2020;

Ukraine launches successful attacks against the Russian air bases that support criminal bombardments of cities: Engels-2 in the Saratov region, Dyagilevo in Ryazan near Moscow, and Kursk;

Legal cranks with guns plan Putsch: German authorities round up 25 ”Reichsbuerger” fanatics seeking to make disgruntled petty nobleman Heinrich XIII Emperor and successor to Kaiser Wilhelm II;

In Peru, attempted autogolpe by President Castillo is turned back;

Crackpot doctrine of independent state legislatures is another MAGA timebomb threatening democracy; No conservative jurist would entertain such vandalism!

Dec. 9

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

djt confidential markings

The warrant authorizing the search of former president Donald Trump’s home said agents were seeking documents possessed in violation of the Espionage Act.

New York Times, Judge to Hear Justice Dept. Contempt Request in Trump Documents Case, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, Dec. 9, 2022. The department wants a representative of Donald Trump to swear under oath that there are no more classified documents at any of his properties.

A federal judge in Washington was set to hear arguments at a closed-door hearing on Friday about whether to force a representative of Donald J. Trump’s presidential office to swear under oath that there are no more classified documents at any of Mr. Trump’s properties, according to two people familiar with the matter.

beryl howell The judge, Beryl A. Howell, right, is also being asked to decide whether to impose financial penalties or issue a contempt finding if no one from Mr. Trump’s office agrees to formally vow that, to the best of their knowledge, all of the classified materials he took from the White House when he left office last year have been returned to the government.

The hearing, in Federal District Court in Washington, is being held at the request of federal prosecutors who asked Judge Howell in recent days to declare Mr. Trump in contempt of court for failing to obey a grand jury subpoena that was issued in May seeking the return of all of the classified records in his office’s possession.

The request by the government, first reported on Thursday by the Washington Post, came after months of frustration with the former president and his lawyers, who have repeatedly made assurances to prosecutors that the sensitive materials had all been returned — only to find out there were more.

No matter what Judge Howell decides, the fact that she has been asked to mull a contempt finding suggests that the Justice Department has taken a newly aggressive stance toward Mr. Trump’s long-delayed response to the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove sensitive records that he took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.

Dec. 7

JFK Facts, From That D.C. Press Conference on the CIA and Oswald, Plus a New JFK Poll, Jefferson Morley, right, Dec. 7, 2022. Judge Tunheim and former CIA officer comment on CIA's pre-assassination interest in the so-called 'Lone Gunman.'

Here’s the Dec. 6 Mary Ferrell Foundation press conference that’s making news at home and abroad..

In my presentation I add more detail to my Nov. 22 post, “Yes, There Is Smoking Gun” laying out what we know about CIA operational activities around accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer and fall of 1963 and where the rest of the story is concealed.

Judge John Tunheim, former chair of the Assassination Records Review Board, says that the 44 CIA documents I seek should be made public on Dec. 15.

Former CIA officer Rolf Mowatt-Larssen also comments.

Watch:

wmr Reichburger Coup 12 7 2022 Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Neo-Nazis on move in North Carolina and Germany, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Dec. 7, 2022. In my The Rise of the Fascist Fourth Reich: The Era of Trumpism and the New Far-Right, this wayne madsen fourth reich cover author calls for governments around the world to cooperate in suppressing resurgent Nazism and Fascism.

Recent events in North Carolina, Germany, and elsewhere have shown that governments are beginning to take more seriously the threat of international Nazism.

Germany's action December 7 in arresting more than a score of far-right insurrectionists underscores the global threat, as described below. In addition, Russian support for far-right terrorists is coming into sharper focus.

The right-wing terrorist attack on two Duke Energy electrical substations in Moore County, North Carolina, which knocked out power to 45,000 homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, and nursing homes, is being investigated by federal, state, and local law enforcement.

The neo-Nazi plotters in North Carolina were in possession of a handwritten list of a dozen sites in Idaho and surrounding states that, according to the federal indictment, "contained a transformer, substation, or other component of the power grid for the northwest United States."

Dec. 6

elon musk shadow cnn CNN, Opinion: Elon Musk’s Twitter is helping to normalize a neo-Nazi, Dean Obeidallah, Dec. 5, 2022. Elon Musk (shown above) apparently is trying his hand at creating a major media story by the release of what he called the “Twitter Files,” which included internal Twitter documents from October 2020 showing the social media company’s executives debating whether to allow postings on the platform of a New York Post article about a laptop Hunter Biden reportedly owned.

As CNN reported, Musk’s release on Friday pointed to tweets by journalist Matt Taibbi, who was provided “with emails that largely corroborated what was already known about the incident.”

But the Twitter story that demands coverage is not about something that happened more than two years ago but what we are seeing now on Twitter since Musk took control in October. There has been an “unprecedented” spike in hate speech as well as a resurgence of ISIS-linked accounts, The New York Times detailed in an article published Friday, citing findings from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups studying online platforms.

In addition, Twitter just reinstated the account of self-professed White supremacist Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. Anglin, who was banned from Twitter in 2013, has called for tearing down Berlin’s memorial to the Holocaust (which he despicably calls a “hoax”) and replacing “it with a statue of Hitler 1,000 feet tall.”

I have firsthand experience with the neo-Nazi just reinstated on Twitter. Anglin targeted me in 2017 in response to an article I wrote at that time slamming then-President Donald Trump for refusing to denounce White supremacist violence. (This was months before the August 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.)

Anglin first posted fabricated tweets on his White supremacist website that appeared to have been written by me claiming responsibility for an ISIS terrorist attack. (I’m Muslim.) He then instructed his followers to “confront me.” Given that readers of The Daily Stormer had in the past committed acts of violence — including apparently Dylann Roof, left, who murdered nine Black people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 — they did what Anglin asked.

I was soon inundated with death threats. However, if Anglin thought I was going to cower in fear, he was wrong. I sued him in federal court for defamation and emotional distress, where I won a default judgment of $4.1 million. While I still have not recovered a penny, I have long pledged to donate all the proceeds to organizations that fight the type of hate Anglin spews.

I’m not alone. Anglin has orchestrated targeted harassment of other minorities, including African American student Taylor Dumpson who successfully sued Anglin, and Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent who also sued Anglin, resulting in a $14 million judgment.

In fact, the person who was reinstated on Twitter had an arrest warrant issued against him by a federal judge just last month over refusing to comply with court orders in the collection of those damages in Gersh’s lawsuit.

Alarmingly, Anglin’s dangerous influence continues. The White gunman who killed Black people in a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a racist attack in May, reportedly cited Anglin’s Daily Stormer by name in a manifesto, crediting it as shaping his view that White people were being “replaced” by people of color.

Reinstating Anglin on Twitter not only helps normalize a neo-Nazi, but it also helps him recruit followers. One of Anglin’s first tweets on Friday said: “Trying to find my friends. I lost them in 2013.”

But Anglin is not the only problem. As laid out in the bone-chilling New York Times article, recent data from groups that study online platforms has documented that hate speech has exploded on Twitter in the first two weeks since Musk took over. Overall, the Times reported that researchers noted “they had never seen such a sharp increase in hate speech, problematic content and formerly banned accounts in such a short period on a mainstream social media platform.”

Some of the most jarring statistics include that slurs against Black Americans have tripled to 3,876 times per day, antisemitic posts are up more than 60% and slurs against gay men jumped from 2,506 a day to now nearly 4,000 comments per day, according to the article.

Dec. 3

djt sedition graphic

Twitter, Analysis: Seditious Conspiracy by Trump? Seth Abramson, left, attorney, professor and best-selling author, Dec. 3, 2022. Calling for the overthrow of our government via “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” is Incitement to Sedition. If Trump has taken any action in conjunction with anyone else to advance his goal [see announcement on Dec. 3 above] it is Seditious Conspiracy.

New York Times, Defaults Loom as Poor Countries Face an Economic Storm, Alan Rappeport, Dec. 3, 2022. Debt-relief efforts are stalling as developing economies are being hit by higher interest rates, a strong dollar and slowing global growth.

Developing nations are facing a catastrophic debt crisis in the coming months as rapid inflation, slowing growth, rising interest rates and a strengthening dollar coalesce into a perfect storm that could set off a wave of messy defaults and inflict economic pain on the world’s most vulnerable people.

Poor countries owe, by some calculations, as much as $200 billion to wealthy nations, multilateral development banks and private creditors. Rising interest rates have increased the value of the dollar, making it harder for foreign borrowers with debt denominated in U.S. currency to repay their loans.

Defaulting on a huge swath of loans would send borrowing costs for vulnerable nations even higher and could spawn financial crises when nearly 100 million people have already been pushed into poverty this year by the combined effects of the pandemic, inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The danger poses another headwind for a world economy that has been sputtering toward a recession. The leaders of the world’s advanced economies have been grappling privately in recent weeks with how to avert financial crises in emerging markets such as Zambia, Sri Lanka and Ghana, but they have struggled to develop a plan to accelerate debt relief as they confront their own economic woes.

david ray griffin office Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, David Ray Griffin (1939-2022) The Man and His Work: A Synopsis, Elizabeth Woodworth, Dec. 2, 2022. How big can a mind be?

If we’re lucky, we have threescore and ten years — in a very big wide world, full of history — to experience as much as we can take in.

Threescore-ten is not nearly enough, but some extraordinary people manage to encompass and give order to a lot of it.

And some even more extraordinary people manage to rise above their own lives to interpret creation and the fabric of the universe as having consistent meaning across cultures and throughout the ages.

David Ray Griffin was Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, at the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, from 1973-2004. With his senior, Dr. John Cobb Jr., he co-founded the Center for Process Studies in 1973.

Griffin has stated that “the task of a theologian is to look at the world from what we would imagine the divine perspective, one that would care about the good of the whole and would love all the parts.”

Not only was David an outstanding theologian and one of the two best-known living scholars of Alfred North Whitehead’s process theology (the other being John Cobb): His books also spanned the related fields of postmodernism, theodicy (defence of God against evil), primordial truth, panentheism, scientific naturalism, parapsychology, Buddhist thought, and the mind-body interaction.

About the time that he retired in 2004, he was approached by some people who admired his candor, and pointed to evidence that the 9/11 event was highly suspicious.

At first David thought that 9/11 was simply blowback from the way America had treated the Middle East — but upon researching it more deeply he realized that there was indeed a very serious likelihood that the US had contrived 9/11 as a false flag operation to manufacture consent to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq for their oil.

This injustice fired his energy to research in depth, then write a dozen scholarly books on 9/11 — books that were not acknowledged in the media but which engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the purveyors of the official 9/11 narrative, who continually adapted their story to cover up the weaknesses that David tracked and revealed as their tattered narrative evolved.

The first and most famous of these books was The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, published by his much-appreciated Interlink press in March 2004.

That best-seller was followed in 2005 by a devastating takedown of the Bush Administration’s whitewash Commission titled The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, which exposed 115 problems in “the 571-page lie”.

Following these early 9/11 works, David was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2008 and 2009, and was named among “The 50 People Who Matter Today” by the New Statesman, on September 24, 2009.

In November, 2008, David’s seventh book about 9/11, The New Pearl Harbour Revisited, was one of only 51 books awarded as “pick of the week” that year by Publishers Weekly.

What followed was extraordinary.

As the foremost book reviewing tool in the English language, Publishers Weekly’s spotlight should have led to reviews in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, Library Journal, and many other top reviewing sources — but the word was out in the narrative-controlled media to give it a pass.

In 2011, David and I founded an organization called the 9/11 Consensus Panel, comprised of more than 20 professionals expert in various aspects of the 9/11 attacks. In 2018, the 51 consensus points that were developed during this unique evidence-based reviewing project were published under the title 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation (2018).

During that seven-year project, David addressed the existential crisis of climate change, penning his encyclopaedic 2015 reference, Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? (I took that book to the COP21 Paris climate summit in 2015, and presented it there, following up with a YouTube documentary on that enormous gathering of humanity – the largest meeting since World War II.)

David then turned his attention to US imperialism – writing Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World in 2016, and producing the incredible work of scholarship, The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic, in 2018.

David was at last able, in 2019, to turn to his long-planned The Christian Gospel for Americans: A Systematic Theology. It is a magnum opus of enormous breadth and depth.

In it, for example, he confronts the science vs religion issue, showing that some scientists – former atheists – have been overwhelmed by the extent of exceedingly precise ratios between the chemical elements of earth that are required for life, to now saying that the universe was “fine-tuned for life,” thus reflecting a “fine-tuner” (or divine creator).

In 2022, as he approached the end of his life, and following a long struggle with prostate cancer, David wrote the beautiful and crowning reflections of his maturing theology, James and Whitehead on Life after Death.

In the spirit of James and Whitehead, he explains that the universe is not separate from, but is within God, and is itself the very nature of God. This evolving world view requires a new understanding of the divine reality – panentheism, meaning “all in God”.

The causal principles of the universe exist naturally, being inherent in the nature of things, because they exist in the very nature of God.

This chapter on the infinitely fine-tuned nature of the universe to support life is a transporting gift.

But he was not done yet!

Forthcoming in March, 2023, from the publisher Clarity Press, is David’s America on the Brink: How the US Trajectory Led Fatefully to the Russia-Ukraine War – which was completed during the last days of his life.

In total David Ray Griffin has written 50 books and more than 200 essays. (He was once asked if he had ever had an unpublished thought!)

In all of his books – and most notably those on American imperialism – he read and cited recent scholarly investigations from top university presses, effectively overriding the propaganda that has passed down through many years.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote: “David has served truth to the hilt. He is a hero of our time.”

There is no question that his body of work will go down in history as providing some of the most elegant thinking our century has witnessed.

And at some point, his chronicling of historically suppressed truths must emerge into full daylight, to allow reality-based civilization to advance.

Let us keep his work alive, so that earth’s future peoples will inherit the great spectrum of wisdom he has left them: from a hopeful common-sense theology, to the exposés of imperialist propaganda and false flag operations, to the full extent of the climate crisis, to our evolving perception of the nature of the divine, to the evidence that our spirits will survive after death.

David Griffin stands with the greats – yet was quiet, humorous, down to earth, and unassuming.

Elizabeth Woodworth, a career medical librarian and author/co-author of five books, worked with David Ray Griffin in various capacities from 2006-2022. She did proof-reading/editing on about 12 of his books and many of his essays, co-authored two books with him directly, and has also written in-depth reviews of most of his books from the 2006-2022 period on Amazon.

World Crisis Radio, Historical commentary and strategic advocacy: A coalition Speaker of the House must be elected on January 3 to head off nightmare scenario under Speaker Trump! Webster G. Tarpley, right, author and historian, Dec. 3, 2022 (93:44 mins.).

A realistic compromise. Speaker backed by a bipartisan majority to attain or exceed magic number of 218 is now the only alternative to two years of chaos, default, defeat, and sabotage by MAGA diehards!

McCarthy warns Republicans that Democrats could control House if ”Freedom Caucus” lunatics run wild over coming weeks; House currently estimated at 222 R, 213 D; If 5 current categorical no votes hang tough, McCarthy would be unelectable – and there may be more;

Likely formula would be all Democrats plus half a dozen dissident Republicans to block McCarthy’s power grab; GOP is grievously damaged by MAGA midterm failure, and losing control of House would seal party’s doom as a national force;

Under cover of corrupt media lies blaming Biden, Republicans block student loan relief and seven days of paid sick leave;

Other news: Biden administration dismantling many of the worst aspects of globalization era (c. 1990 to 2022); Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta ends the farce of Judge Cannon’s Special Master as indictments get closer;

Andrew Jackson had his Kitchen Cabinet of sycophantic advisers; his admirer Trump has raving antisemitic ideologues Kanye West and Fuentes; In broadcast, Ye endorses mass murderers Hitler, Stalin and Mao; Under massive backlash, Gym Jordan’s House Judiciary staff finally remove their ”Kanye. Elon. Trump.” slogan!

Dec. 2

President George W. Bush with Vice President Dick Cheney and senior staff in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) (Photo credit: U.S. National Archives via Flickr).

President George W. Bush with Vice President Dick Cheney and senior staff in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) (Photo credit: U.S. National Archives via Flickr).

Going Deep, Investigative Commentary:Revealed: What Bush Said About 9/11 Behind Closed Doors, Russ Baker, right, Dec. 1, 2022. What he didn’t say — and what investigators didn’t ask.

So, you may not remember this, but after 9/11, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney managed to avoid testifying publicly about the historic tragedy and massive government screw-up (to be kind). They very reluctantly agreed to meet in private with a blue ribbon panel — but only if they were not sworn in, i.e., so they could lie with impunity.

You also may not know that the contents of that meeting have never come out — until now.

Recently, an entity known as the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel released a summary of what was said — to almost total media silence.

Since you come here for a deeper and more informed take on subjects that get ignored or suppressed, I wanted to share with you some revealing things about that Oval Office session. But before we get to the content, let’s look at the report’s narrative writing style, which is also revealing.

Lots of warm smiles — but no explanation, no accountability. This echoes an earlier theme. Bush shielded himself in the standard self-serving attire of every guilty government official, the cloak of patriotism. He told the 9/11 Commission (this during his tough 2004 reelection campaign), that he “didn’t see much point in assigning personal blame for 9/11.” Perhaps because assigning personal blame might have led to… him being blamed.

Indeed, it’s essential to underline that Bush mysteriously failed to assign fault to anyone — despite the stunning failures and bizarre actions that significantly eroded the legitimacy of the government’s official 9/11 story.

9 11 world trade center smoking on 9 11 flikr michael foran

New York’s World Trade Center after each of the towers were hit by hijacked Boeing 767 passenger jets on Sept. 11, 2001 (Photo: Michael Foran CC by 2.0).

elon musk sideview

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Elon Musk: the Julius Streicher of the digital age, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer, Dec.1-2, 2022. Musk (shown above in a file photo) may fall victim to EU laws designed to combat the atrocities committed by Streicher.

By re-platforming in the name of "freedom of speech" previously banned neo-Nazi and pedophile Twitter users, Elon Musk has become the Julius Streicher of the digital age. Although Julius Streicher, one of the Nazi war criminals hanged in Nuremberg, is now largely remembered only in history books, his main avenue of propaganda, the Nazi weekly tabloid Der Stürmer ("The Storm"), lives on in QAnon and neo-Nazi conspiratorial lore.

Users linked to the neo-Nazi website "The Daily Stormer" continue to have a home on Twitter and Musk's announced policy of permitting all forms of hate speech on the social media platform will only increase the preponderance of such content. The homage paid to Der Stürmer by neo-Nazi Twitter users and QAnon, which uses the slogan "The Storm in Coming," is outrageous when one considers that Der Stürmer was considered so extreme in its vitriol against Jews that Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring banned his staff from reading it.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: America's Immigrant Spies. Part 2: The pro-apartheid white South Africans, Wayne Madsen
Politico, Never mind, Musk says — accusation against Apple was a ‘misunderstanding,’ Staff Report

Dec. 1

Kennedys & King, Analysis: JFK Assassination Records – A Watershed Moment? Mark Adamczyk, Dec. 1, 2022. A new lawsuit aimed at forcing the President and the National Archives to finally release JFK assassination records, as required by law, is before the courts. Mark E. Adamczyk, Esq., explains the issues involved.

On October 19, 2022, a lawsuit was filed by the Mary Ferrell Foundation against President Joseph R. Biden and the National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) to enforce the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The lawsuit seeks to compel the President and NARA to finally perform their duties under the federal law that governs the final declassification of JFK assassination records.

Some historical context is important. The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (the “JFK Records Act”) was unanimously passed by Congress in 1992. President Biden, a Senator at the time, voted in favor of the JFK Records Act. The JFK Records Act was unanimously approved by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush. One can read the JFK Records Act in its entirety by searching “Public Law 102-526, 102d Congress, President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.”

The JFK Records Act is extremely favorable to the American public in terms of transparency and declassification of assassination records. On reading the JFK Records Act one does not have to go past the first page of the statute to see what Congress intended and how strong of an impact it was meant to have. For example:

Section 2(a)(2), JFK Records Act: “all Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should carry a presumption of immediate disclosure, and all records should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination.”

[Snip]

This is what your Congress declared in 1992, 30 years ago, and with the strongest of language. Congress declared that records pertaining to the JFK assassination had already been unreasonably withheld from the public for 30 years. Even the CIA felt the JFK Records Act was a different breed of declassification law, that had the teeth to go much further than FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) or any previous effort to shed light on deep government secrets. In a 1998 internal CIA Memorandum titled JFK Records Review – Lessons Learned, the CIA stated that, “The level of evidence required by the Board [the Assassination Records Review Board or ARRB] to postpone what was generally considered protectable information was extremely high and usually required documentation of ‘current harm’. Defenses based on general principles such as official cover or sources and methods were not acceptable.”

The Board closed down in 1998. In 2022, after another 30 years, and in spite of the strongest possible legislation, the President and responsible agencies are still withholding almost 15,000 records that are relevant to the JFK Assassination. Many records are still withheld in full. Others have been “released” with significant redactions. The point of this article is not to analyze which specific records have been withheld in full, which records still have significant redactions, or which records have not been turned over to NARA for inspection and preservation. The point of this article is to explain why legal action was necessary and also unfortunately for the American public, the last and only choice.

The JFK Records Act established and created the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). Upon creation of the JFK Records Act, agencies and government offices were ordered to deliver all assassination records to NARA. An assassination record is defined as any record related to the assassination of President Kennedy that was “created or made available for use by, obtained by, otherwise came into the possession of” (i) the Warren Commission; (ii) the Rockefeller Commission; (iii) the Church Committee; (iv) the Pike Committee; (v) the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA); (vi) any executive agency; and (vii) and other office of the Federal Government, or any state or local law enforcement office that performed work in connection with the federal inquiry in the Kennedy assassination. For anyone looking to understand the full scope of the JFK Records Act and the work of the ARRB, the ARRB’s Final Report is essential reading.

The above-defined assassination records became known as the JFK Records Collection, or the “Collection.” It was then the job of the ARRB, an independent body, to review the Collection and make legal determinations on which records might still qualify for classification under the standards of the JFK Records Act. What are those standards? For an agency or government office to request continued classification, section 6 of the JFK Records Act put the burden of proof on the objecting agencies. The burden of proof is not on researchers and the American public to demonstrate why an assassination record(s) should be released.

[Snip]

To its credit, the ARRB did a tremendous amount of work from 1994 to 1998, releasing more than 2 million pages of assassination records. In 1998, however, the ARRB’s authority had run its course according to its Congressional mandate and the ARRB was dissolved in late September of that year. NARA, and the American public, were then left with a Collection that still contained tens of thousands of classified records, totaling hundreds of thousands of pages. Agencies were required under the JFK Records Act to perform periodic review pursuant to the recommendations and Final Determinations of the ARRB in order to ensure timely declassification and release of the assassination records.

What happened after 1998? Virtually nothing. Without the independent ARRB to ensure that agencies and government offices continued their periodic review obligation, it was up to NARA to hope that agencies and government offices would finish the work on declassification. The intent of Congress is that maybe 1% (or less) of the Collection could plausibly still require classification as of 2017. Refer again to the declaration of Congress in the JFK Records Act: “most of the records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are almost 30 years old, and only in the rarest cases is there any legitimate need for continued protection of such records.” That declaration was made in 1992! Reflect on that for a moment.

October 26, 2017 was in fact the deadline for final declassification. Section 5(g)(2)(d) of the JFK Records Act required the President (Trump at the time) to take specific action to ensure that Congress’s mandate to release all assassination records by the deadline was completed. We are all aware of Trump’s tweets in which he committed to the final release of all assassination records on the eve of this deadline in 2017.

The President only has power to authorize continued classification of an assassination record if he certifies that “each” specific record continues to pose an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations, as required by the Act; and that such identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure. In other words, the President is required to make decisions with regard to each assassination record under the same constraints and authority as the ARRB. The President was therefore required to finish the ARRB’s job by October 26, 2017, or provide published unclassified reasons, based on clear and convincing evidence for each assassination record withheld under the criteria set out in section 6 of the JFK Records Act, as outlined in detail above.

What happened instead? President Trump initially issued an order Executive Memorandum on October 26, 2017 delaying the release of assassination records. Plain and simple: This order was illegal and did not comply with the clear standards of the JFK Records Act. Trump’s first order in October 2017 authorized a 6-month delay for agencies and governments to continue their review of assassination records and make recommendations to Trump by April, 2018. Then it got worse. On April 26, 2018, President Trump issued another order Executive Memorandum authorizing another delay of over three (3) years.

In October of 2021, President Biden declassified about ten per cent of the outstanding documents. He then continued the trend of his predecessor, which is extremely troubling. President Biden issued another order Executive Memorandum giving agencies and government offices until December 15, 2022 to make final decisions on the release of assassination records. Let me say that again. President Biden has now empowered agencies and government offices to make their own decisions on declassification. This is exactly the opposite of how the JFK Records Act was intended to work. Like both of President Trump’s Memoranda, President Biden’s Executive Memorandum is simply unlawful.

Congress was abundantly clear that the purpose of the JFK Records Act was to publicly disclose all records related to the assassination of President Kennedy through an enforceable process of downgrading and declassification. In all but the “rarest of cases” was any assassination record to be kept secret beyond the final deadline for release on October 26, 2017. It therefore defies both reason and Congress that two Presidents, the Archivist, NARA, and a number of executive agencies have determined that the standards for continuing postponement of the withheld assassination records have somehow become less onerous now after that deadline for release and after 60 years have passed.

There is no reasonable expectation that President Biden will take appropriate action by December 15, 2022. If anything, he has empowered agencies and government offices to act with more secrecy in regard to the withheld assassination records. Thus the necessity of the legal action.

The government continues to operate under the findings of the Warren Commission, which is that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination and with no confederates. That Commission also concluded that Jack Ruby assassinated Oswald on his own and with no associates. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (“HSCA”) concluded in 1978 that there was a probable conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination and referred the matter to the U.S. Justice Department for further investigation. However, the Justice Department has done nothing to further investigate the murder of the 35th President of the United States. If Oswald did act alone, or even if he acted with other alleged “pro-Castro sympathizers”, why the continued secrecy? One can only assume that the thousands of withheld records will show a U.S. Intelligence connection to Oswald, which was covered up immediately after the assassination and is still being covered up. That is an article for another day, but it is the only logical conclusion at this time.

Only time will tell, and hopefully a Court will finally declare that there is no reasonable or legal reason to continue the sixty years of government secrecy.

elon musk sideview

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Elon Musk: the Julius Streicher of the digital age, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer, Dec .1, 2022. Musk (shown above in a file photo) may fall victim to EU laws designed to combat the atrocities committed by Streicher.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: America's Immigrant Spies. Part 2: The pro-apartheid white South Africans, Wayne Madsen
Politico, Never mind, Musk says — accusation against Apple was a ‘misunderstanding,’ Staff Report

November

Nov. 30

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary, January 6th Committee Report -- The devil may be in the details, Wayne Madsen, author of 22 books (including The Rise of the Fascist Fourth Reich, shown below) and a former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Nov. 30, 2022. As the House Select Committee on the January 6th insurrection by Donald Trump and his allies wraps up, there is hope that some details of the planned coup d'état will be found either in the main report or its appendices.

As just one example, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have not advanced their investigations of who planted pipe bombs at Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters.

wayne madsen fourth reich cover In September last year, the FBI was requesting the public to supply any additional information on the identity of the suspect who planted the bombs.

The FBI said that the two pipe bombs were of sufficient explosive strength to have seriously injured or killed bystanders had they detonated.

There is other evidence that points to the January 6th insurrectionists having inside help in the Congress, including the offices of the House and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms; the Secret Service; and possibly other federal and local law enforcement agencies.

With the November 29 convictions for seditious conspiracy being handed down by a Washington, DC jury for insurrection leaders Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, the government has established that there was a criminal plot to overthrow the government. Such a predicate will undoubtedly empower the January 6th Committee to identify in its report others who were part of the conspiracy.

MeidasTouch,

, Ben Meiselas, Nov 30, 2022 (8:41 mins.). Stephen Miller testified before the federal criminal grand jury in Washington DC investigating crimes related to the January 6 insurrection.

Miller is the first witness to testify before this grand jury since Jack Smith was appointed Special Counsel. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on the significance of this news.

vicky ward investigates

Vicky Ward Investigates, The World Cup: Politics, Petrol & Power, Vicky Ward, Nov. 30, 2022. How Middle Eastern aristocrats learned to flex and why the West appears unable to push back.

Even if you are not an avid football fan, most likely you’ve noticed that, for the first time, the World Cup is being played in the Middle East—specifically in the tiny state of Qatar—and that there have been all sorts of controversies to do with that.

In no particular order:

Gianni Infantino, the President of FIFA, gave a surreal hour-long interview, seemingly to try to defend Qatar’s human rights and LGBTQ rights abuses (criticism has been levied on the death toll of the migrants building the World Cup stadiums) by accusing the West of being hypocritical.

Noticeably absent from the action in Doha is MBZ, who reportedly wanted the World Cup to happen in the UAE. “He’s not public-facing like MBS, and you never know—depending on who is in the final, he might go for that,” a source told me.

But who did show up regardless of who was winning on the football field? The U.S.’s Middle-East-Beneficiary-in-Chief Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump.

jared kushner ivanka trump family qatar world cup 2022 Ivanka Trump posted on her Instagram page about her family’s visit to the World Cup in Qatar. [Credit: Instagram]

But what does it all mean for you in your armchair at home?

I spoke to the British academic Matthew Hedges, who specializes in the region. It’s Hedges's informed opinion that what we are witnessing this World Cup is the crescendo of political and economic influence that has been so carefully curated and bought in both the U.S. and the UK by the Gulf states. These countries have all shown us recently they are not desert fiefdoms many miles away; they control a great deal more of our lives than most of us know.

You can listen to my conversation with Hedges in the player above or read the transcript, edited and condensed for clarity.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: America's Immigrant Spies. Part 1: The Germans, Wayne Madsen, left, Nov. 28-29, 2020. With the exception of African slaves and Chinese railroad workers, the United States has generally been a nation of willing immigrants. That has made it an attractive target for foreign intelligence agencies intent on implanting agents and even entire families in the United States as part of covert “illegals programs.”

These sleeper agents have often remained indistinguishable from normal American citizens. These agents bide their time until it is determined by their foreign controllers that they must be activated for specific purposes in service to their fatherland or motherland.

Here is an operative question: Are Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, neither born in the United States, modern-day versions of the German Kaiser’s and Hitler’s programs to seed immigrants to the United States with sleeper spies and saboteurs? If so, America has learned nothing from its past.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: America's Immigrant Spies. Part 2: The pro-apartheid white South Africans, Wayne Madsen, left, Nov. 29-30, 2022. Two white multi-billionaires, both with family connections in apartheid South Africa -- Elon Musk, a native born South African, and Peter Thiel, whose parents lived in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia today) -- moved to the United States at the height of South African intelligence's gambit to place as many agents-of-influence in the United States as possible.

Thiel moved to the United States from apartheid South Africa in 1977, followed by Musk and his Canadian-South African mother in 1990 via Canada. Laundering agents destined for placement in the United States via Canada has always been a favored option for hostile intelligence services, including the apartheid era's three state intelligence agencies: the Bureau of State Security (BOSS), the Department of National Security, and the National Intelligence Service.

Was it pure happenstance that Thiel and Elon Musk merged their businesses to control the first major worldwide cash transfer system, PayPal?

Or had the apartheid regime’s Illegals Program finally paid some handsome dividends?

steward rhodes kelly meigs jessica watkins kenneth harrelson thomas caldwell Daily Kos, Analysis: Oath Keepers Elmer Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs found guilty of seditious conspiracy, Brandi Buchman, right, Nov. 29-30, 2022. Oath Keepers f brandi buchman new ounder Elmer Stewart Rhodes was found guilty of seditious conspiracy, not guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding, not guilty of conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging his duties, and guilty of tampering with documents.

Updates: U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, an attack victim shown at right during his later congressional testimony, was in the courtroom when the verdicts were announced. It was an emotional and long-awaited moment. Justice, he told Daily Kos, should be expected not celebrated but nonetheless, he regarded today as a win for the American people.

It should be noted that after the verdicts were announced on Tuesday an attorney for Rhodes, James Lee Bright, spoke to reporters and offered graceful remarks about the case and U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta.

“The government did good,” Bright said. “They took us to task.”

Though he was disappointed with the mixed bag of verdicts and posited that a different venue may have benefited the case, he added: “I do believe it was a fair trial.”

Though defendants Caldwell, Watkins, and Harrelson were spared the seditious conspiracy charge by the jury, their failure to escape the obstruction of an official proceeding charge is significant. This charge, like the seditious conspiracy charge, carries a maximum 20-year sentence in prison.

For all of the charges he was convicted on, Rhodes faces a max sentence of up to 60 years in prison. Meggs faces up to 86 years in prison. As for Watkins, she could serve up to 56 years in prison if the judge doles out the steepest sentence possible for all of her charges. Caldwell is looking at 40 years and Harrelson could be sentenced up to 46 years for all of the charges he was convicted on. Sentencing guidelines are only recommendations and it could end up that the defendants receive shorter terms than the ones recommended.

All of the defendants will remain jailed except for Thomas Caldwell until sentencing. Caldwell was released from prison well ahead of the trial, citing various health concerns. An attorney for Jessica Watkins asked the judge after the verdict was read if his client could potentially be released ahead of sentencing, but Mehta denied the request from the bench.

The success of the seditious conspiracy conviction is the first one the Justice Department has had in more than a decade. The charge was also the steepest one brought against any defendant tied to Jan. 6 thus far.

It is important to note the subtle difference in charges the defendants mutually faced and in particular, conspiracy to obstruct versus obstruction.

Rhodes was acquitted of conspiracy to obstruct. He was also acquitted of conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties. Though he never entered the Capitol, prosecutors emphasized that in the moments just before Oath Keepers breached the building, Rhodes called Meggs as well as Michael Greene aka “Whip,” a man he selected to serve as his “Jan 6 ops” leader.

What was said on that call was not revealed at trial and the contents of it will remain a mystery short of an admission of the details from Rhodes, Greene, or Meggs.

Phone records offered up by prosecutors showed the conference call was patched through despite Rhodes' claim from the witness stand that it did not.

Greene, who was charged separately from Rhodes, currently faces five charges including conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiring to prevent an officer from discharging their duties, entering a restricted building or grounds, and tampering with documents or proceedings.

Greene, who also goes by Michael Simmons, opted to waive his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in order to testify on Rhodes’ behalf. The former Blackwater contractor’s testimony under direct examination flowed easily but once under cross-examination, his account of the events of Jan. 6 started to fray fast at the edges.

Jurors did not take questions after the marathon trial officially ended on Tuesday. They went straight home instead, so learning exactly how they may have reached their decision will have to wait.

Only three defendants, Rhodes, Watkins, and Caldwell, testified on their own behalf.

Caldwell’s testimony, like Rhodes’, was rife with contradictions and he frequently became emotional on the stand, at one point appearing to sob abruptly as he recounted the day the FBI showed up at his home in rural Virginia and ordered him and his wife to come outside.

Prosecutors said Caldwell was instrumental in coordinating a “quick reaction force” at a hotel in northern Virginia, just minutes from D.C., where Oath Keepers from multiple states including Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona convened in the days before the insurrection.

The “QRF” was packed with weapons that were rolled into the hotel on dollies, in many cases, and in large bins. At least one rifle brought to the hotel was only haphazardly covered with fabric, making its outline recognizable. Oath Keeper Terry Cummings told jurors in October there were more firearms in the QRF than any he had seen since his time serving in the U.S. military.

Caldwell stayed at the QRF hotel on the morning of Jan. 6, and met with Oath Keepers as they gathered for Trump’s insurrection-inciting speech at the Ellipse.

Despite his age and history of back injuries—he was 65 on Jan. 6—video and photo evidence showed Caldwell made it all the way up to the top of the inaugural platform erected at the Capitol. He steadfastly denied seeing any evidence of violence though he was less than 50 yards away, at one point, from the lower west terrace tunnel where police officers were viciously attacked with their own riot shields as well as fire extinguishers, chemical sprays, and the mob’s bare fists. His attorney David Fischer argued Caldwell was unable to see the violence in the tunnel from his vantage point.

“January 6 happened and I had nothing to do with it,” Caldwell testified.

Though he was acquitted of the sedition charge, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties, he was unable to escape the obstruction of an official proceeding charge or the tampering charge.

Jurors saw extensive evidence of Caldwell’s efforts to cover his tracks after the Capitol siege. He deleted nearly 180 Facebook messages tied to Jan. 6 and did so on Jan. 14.

Metadata showed the messages he deleted on Jan. 14 were sent on Jan. 7.

Prosecutors emphasized to jurors that Caldwell wiped his correspondence on the same day he accessed a New Yorker article naming Jessica Watkins and Oath Keeper Donovan Crowl as participants in the riot.

The Oath Keepers insisted their efforts in the run-up to Jan. 6 were purely about providing “security” for Trump allies like Roger Stone and “Stop the Steal” event organizer and conspiracy theorist Ali Alexander. Stone, evidence showed, was part of at least one text group on Signal shared between members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

But other evidence like a secret recording of Rhodes captured four days after the insurrection by Jason Alpers, a military veteran who said he had indirect ties to Trump, showed the Oath Keeper leader was still intent on stopping the transfer of power.

supreme court Custom

Washington Post, Opinion: The court’s supremely obtuse response to its ethical problems, Ruth Marcus, right, Nov. 30, 2022. The Supreme Court sent a two-page letter to Democratic lawmakers looking into allegations of a leak by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., left, or his wife. Words weren’t really necessary; a see-no-evil monkey emoji would have aptly summarized the court’s response.

The letter, by Ethan V. Torrey, legal counsel to the court, could scarcely have been more obtuse. The New York Times reported earlier this month the story of a conservative Ohio couple, Donald and Gayle Wright, who were deployed by a religious rights, antiabortion samuel alito o organization to befriend the Alitos and other conservative justices as part of an influence campaign.

The Rev. Rob Schenck, who headed the organization, said that Gayle Wright had tipped him off in advance about the outcome and authorship of a 2014 case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, involving religious employers’ obligations to provide contraceptive coverage. Gayle Wright and the Alitos denied any leak (Donald Wright died in 2020), but contemporaneous evidence bolsters Schenck’s claim of advance knowledge.

“Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” Gayle Wright wrote Schenck the day after the Alitos hosted the Wrights for dinner at their Virginia home. Wright’s unconvincing explanation? “I was so excited to tell him that Justice Alito had actually gotten in his car to take me home,” she told The Post. “We wanted to talk to him and share it with him.”

The Times article, along with coverage by Politico and Rolling Stone, depicts a disturbing, coordinated effort by conservative activists to insinuate themselves into the lives of sympathetic justices via six-figure donations to the Supreme Court Historical Society and access to vacation spots such as the Wrights’ Jackson, Wyo., home.

A Supreme Court that took ethics seriously would want to get to the bottom of this smarmy arrangement. That is not, apparently, this Supreme Court.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. didn’t bother to respond to a July letter from Schenck alerting him to the episode. But a nonresponse might have been preferable to Torrey’s legalistic and defensive letter to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), who had asked the court about what plans it had to investigate or refine its ethics policies.

In a statement, Whitehouse and Johnson called Torrey’s letter “an embodiment of the problems at the Court around ethics issues.” This seems like a fair diagnosis. And Roberts should keep in mind: If the patient isn’t willing to take steps to heal itself, others will step in to administer the necessary medicine.

Kennedys & King, Book Review: Mel Ayton's The Kennedy Assassinations, reviewed by James DiEugenio, left, Nov. 30, 2022. A new book by Mel Ayton is the latest in a long line of titles that try, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, to show that the Warren Commission was right, after all.

Say this about Mel Ayton, he will not give up. Seven years ago, Martin Hay reviewed his book Beyond Reasonable Doubt — co-written with David Von Pein. Martin left the authors without a leg to stand on and made a mockery of their bombastic title. (Click here for that review)

The subtitle of his new book is “Debunking the Conspiracy Theories.” In his preface, Ayton says that the bogus revelations in the John F. Kennedy case were put to rest by the late Vincent Bugliosi in Reclaiming History and the late John McAdams in JFK Assassination Logic.

This author spent 458 pages of analysis and evaluation in taking apart Bugliosi’s mammoth book. There is no other way to say this: Bugliosi lied in his introduction when he said he would present the critics’ arguments the way they wanted them presented. He then doubled down on this by saying “I will not knowingly omit or distort anything.” (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp XII-XIII)

What was so shocking about the former prosecutor’s initial claim was how easy it was to show it was utterly and, in fact, knowingly false. For a prime example, see how Bugliosi dealt with Jack Ruby’s polygraph. (DiEugenio, pp. 267-70) It seemed to me that, with that book, Bugliosi was simply playing to the crowd. In this case, the MSM. A perfect example of this was his treatment of Doug Horne on the paradox of Kennedy’s brain, which had disappeared. Horne tried to prove that the surviving pictures of Kennedy’s brain cannot really be his. And in Oliver Stone’s documentary, JFK: Destiny Betrayed, we proved this along three evidentiary lines. Horne was on camera elucidating one of those lines: the testimony of autopsy photographer John Stringer. (DiEugenio, pp.160-65)

The book by John McAdams was reviewed by four different authors: Pat Speer, Gary Aguilar, Frank Cassano and David Mantik. The last three were on this site. (Click here to read them.) The remarkable thing about those four critiques is that there is very little overlap between them. Which confirms there was a lot of objectionable material in the book.

This book is an anthology of essays Ayton has written and published, many of them updated. Before the five essays on the JFK case and six on the RFK case, Mel leads off with his Introduction, entitled “Conspiracy Thinking”. This is his way of branding any author who disagrees with him as a heretic who does not abide by the rules of evidence and logic. To any knowledgeable person, it’s quite the opposite. Let us just take a few examples.

Ayton says that the guilt of James Earl Ray in the Martin Luther King case is overwhelming (p. 8). Then why did Bill Pepper win the very accurate and detailed mock trial for Ray? Why did he also win the civil suit in Memphis against Lloyd Jowers for his culpability in the conspiracy. (The Assassinations, Edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 492-509)

He then adds this: “The post-Watergate United States became intensely susceptible to conspiracy arguments.” (p. 2) Well that would happen, if the American public was to finally see the evidence in the Zapruder film, as it was allowed to do in 1975—for the first time, after 12 years. The shocking sight of President Kennedy’s body rocketing backwards with terrific force, when Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to be behind him—well that might do the trick Mel. Especially after trusted newsman Dan Rather misrepresented what happened in the film back in 1963.

One last example: Ayton quotes historian Henry Steele Commager as saying in the new millennium, that ”There has come in recent years something that might be called a conspiracy psychology: a feeling that great events can’t be explained by ordinary processes.” (p. 11) That old Priscilla Johnson, recycled by Michael Shermer, chestnut. The idea that Oswald did not shoot Kennedy was propagated way back in 1967 by the first wave of Warren Commission critics: works by Mark Lane, Sylvia Meagher, Edward Epstein, and Harold Weisberg, among others. In December of 1967, Josiah Thompson’s book, Six Seconds in Dallas, actually made the cover of a large circulation magazine, Saturday Evening Post. Lane’s book Rush To Judgment, was a number one bestseller.

These books did what the MSM did not do. As Barry Ernest says in Oliver Stone’s documentary, they compared the Commission’s 26 volumes of evidence and testimony with the original 888-page Warren Report. They found, quite often, the evidence did not line up with the conclusions in that report. The Commisioners were banking on the premise that no one would ever read those 26 volumes. Not only did some intelligent people read them, they were so outraged they felt compelled to write about the difference, at length.

Nov. 29

stewart rhodes

Washington Post, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes guilty of Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy, Spencer S. Hsu, Tom Jackman and Rachel Weiner, Nov. 29, 2022. Rhodes, above, stayed outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but prosecutors said he was the ringleader of a plot to unleash politically motivated violence to prevent the inauguration of President Biden.

A federal jury on Tuesday convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and a top deputy of seditious conspiracy for leading a months-long plot to unleash political violence to prevent the inauguration of President Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

The panel of seven men and five women deliberated for three days before finding Rhodes and lead Florida Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs guilty of conspiring to oppose by force the lawful transition of presidential power. But three other associates were not convicted of the historically rare and politically freighted sedition count. All five were convicted of obstructing Congress as it met to confirm the results of the 2020 election. Both offenses are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Rhodes, 56, in a dark suit and black eye-patch from an old gun accident watched impassively as verdicts were read.

James Lee Bright, one of Rhodes’s attorneys, said Rhodes intended to testify on behalf of other Jan. 6 defendants “if asked.” Edward L. Tarpley Jr, another Rhodes lawyer, noted that the defendants were acquitted on 11 of the 28 counts: “This is not a total victory for the government in any way shape or form.”

Rhodes and his co-defendants were the first accused of seditious conspiracy and the first to face trial and be convicted on any conspiracy charge to date in the massive Jan. 6 investigation. He is the highest-profile figure to face trial in connection with rioting by angry Trump supporters who injured scores of officers, ransacked offices and forced lawmakers to evacuate the U.S. Capitol.

Rhodes and followers, dressed in combat-style gear, converged on the Capitol after staging an “arsenal” of weapons at nearby hotels, ready to take up arms at Rhodes’s direction in an attack on the ‘bedrock of democracy,’ the government charged. Rhodes’s defense said he and co-defendants came to Washington as bodyguards and peacekeepers, bringing firearms only in case Trump met their demand to mobilize private militia to stop Biden from becoming president.

Analysts called the outcome a vindication for the Justice Department.

“The jury’s verdict on seditious conspiracy confirms that January 6, 2021, was not just ‘legitimate political discourse’ or a peaceful protest that got out of hand. This was a planned, organized, violent assault on the lawful authority of the U.S. government and the peaceful transfer of power,” said Randall D. Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at George Washington University.

“Now the only remaining question is how much higher did those plans go, and who else might be held criminally responsible,” Eliason said.

U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who helped defend the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he ran over to the federal courthouse when he heard there was a verdict. He sat sweating in the front row as the verdict was read.

“I was emotional,” Dunn said afterward. “I didn’t expect to cry.”

He thanked the jury and the Justice Department for their work on the case.

“I don’t look at it like a victory,” Dunn said. “A victory is when you win. This was right. This was about doing the right thing.”

The verdict in Rhodes’s case likely will be taken as a bellwether for two remaining Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy trials set for December against five other Oath Keepers and leaders of the Proud Boys, including the longtime chairman Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio. Both Rhodes and Tarrio are highly visible leaders of the alt-right or far-right anti-government movements, and were highlighted at hearings probing the attack earlier this year by the House Jan. 6 committee.

Nov. 28

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: America's Immigrant Spies. Part 1: The Germans, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books (including The Rise of the Fascist Fourth Reich, shown below) and a former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Nov. 28, 2020. With the exception of African slaves and Chinese railroad workers, the United States has generally been a nation of willing immigrants. That has made it an attractive target for foreign intelligence agencies intent on implanting agents and even entire families in the United States as part of covert “illegals programs.”

wayne madsen fourth reich cover [Snip]

Could Herr Trumpf, eager to regain his German citizenship, have agreed to spy for Germany in New York in order see his conviction as a draft dodger voided?

[Snip]

Friedrich Trump, along with his pregnant wife, settled in The Bronx and on October 11, 1905, Mrs. Trumpf gave birth to a son, Fred Trump.

[Snip]

-------------------

End of Part 1. Next, the “Illegals Program” of apartheid South Africa

Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, director for European Affairs at the National Security Council, testifies before a House Intelligence Committee hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, Nov. 19, 2019.

Jerusalem Post, Elon Musk calls Jewish US Army officer ‘puppet & puppeteer,’ Staff Report, Nov. 28, 2022. Musk's tweet – deliberately or not – evoked an antisemitic trope that Jews control positions of power.

Elon Musk called Jewish American retired US Army officer Lt.-Col. Alexander Vindman both a "puppet & puppeteer" on Monday in response to Vindman sharing a copypasta (copied and pasted text shared on the Internet) suggesting that Musk is "erratic" and too powerful now that he owns Twitter.

"Vindman is both puppet & puppeteer. Question is who pulls his strings … ?" Musk tweeted.

Musk's tweet was in response to another one by Tablet magazine Chief Technology Officer Noam Blum mocking the copypasta, which said that it's "Kinda weird that @elonmusk gets to decide how like a half-billion people communicate. Way too much power for one erratic individual to wield, don't you think?"

JFK Facts via Substack, Investigative Commentary: The Ultra-Reactionaries: Global Analysis of the Dallas Coup, Jefferson Morley, right with bio below, Nov. 28, 2022. A look at a story many Americans ignore: how the world responded to November 22.

In a superb survey, published recently on Medium, the pseudonymous author “Marina” tells the story of how the world reacted to the gunfire on November 22, a story that devotees of the Warren Commission prefer to ignore.

When Thomas Mallon, author of Ruth Paine’s Garage, connects “the dangerous fact-free business of election denial” to “the more fantastical theories that grew up around the assassination decades ago,” “Marina” pitilessly buries his “cheap theory of history” under an avalanche of historical evidence.

“Marina” quotes Charles De Gaulle’s pithy assessment of U.S. officialdom’s attitude about who was behind JFK’s assassination:
“They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.”

The same words, incidentally, apply to our much (but not all) of the American political and intellectual elite today, that chorus of proud unskeptics who assure us, A little man killed a big man. Get over it. They are smug. They are condescending. They, alas, don’t know what they’re talking about.

Thom Mallon is a fine novelist who doesn’t know much about Oswald and CIA operations in 1963; Cass Sunstein is a distinguished Harvard prof whose fact-free JFK conspiracy scholarship tells us nothing about those senior CIA officers who monitored Oswald eight days before Kennedy was killed. Chris Matthews is a Kennedy loyalist, whose bombastic take on old conspiracy theories blots out discussion of new JFK developments, such as the undisclosed Oswald operation.

Jefferson Morley is author of multiple books (most recently Scorpion's Dance) about the JFK assassination, Watergate, and other political crimes and players

Nov. 27

World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary: Brace for #MAGA chaos and ungovernability in House! Webster G. Tarpley, right, author and historian, Nov. 27, 2022 (104:28 mins.). McQarthy is losing 5 to 8 Tea Party extremists, posing risk of hung Congress or monstrous concessions to crazed MAGAts, unless Democrats take over!

GOP busily working on its own extinction: For January 6 Committee final report, Liz Cheney, readying her own 2024 campaign, demands censored report with narrow focus on Trump alone, banning probe of intelligence, law enforcement & Pentagon failures; Study of coup funding to be deep sixed, & investigation of militias & violent extremists banned; Her goal evidently to preserve these networks for her own use; Democrats must block this crude power grab, give public full results of committee’s work; Lesson: Republicans are incorrigible!

MAGA foreign policy Blob is close to embracing outright cut and run policy for US to betray NATO allies, Ukraine & appease Putin, setting up Russian conquest of Europe;

MAGA boss fraternizes with scurrilous anti-semites Fuentes & Kanye;

Garland still dawdling, denying justice through endless delays; Questions arise about his dubious role in Oklahoma City trial, where he was his own Warren Commission;

CSTO, Putin’s feeble answer to NATO, is breaking up due to his abject failures: Armenia pushes back against his dictates in Collective Security Treaty Organization of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, & Tajikistan; Eurasian guru Dugin wants Putin ousted and worse!

Breaking: MAGA Grand Inquisitor Rep. Comer wraps his MTP debut in lies!

Nov. 22

French president Charles De Gaulle (center) and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (right) at JFK’s funeral, November 25, 1963 (Photo Credit: Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock).

French president Charles De Gaulle (center) and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (right) at JFK’s funeral, November 25, 1963 (Photo Credit: Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock).

Medium, The Ultra-Reactionaries: Global Analysis of the Dallas Coup, Marina, Nov. 22, 2022. As soon as the rifle smoke in Dealey Plaza cleared on November 22nd, 1963, the near unanimous reaction was shock and grief. An enormous audience across the country tuned in to view President Kennedy’s funeral televised on November 25th, 1963, viewing JFK Jr. saluting his father’s casket in an immediately iconic image. Pictures from that weekend were reprinted endlessly as glossy spreads in LIFE Magazine, and in William Manchester’s bestselling The Death of a President.

Yet newly inaugurated President Lyndon Johnson’s command to move forward seemed to highlight a glaring contradiction surrounding the assassination. Large numbers of the general public were immediately suspicious of the claim that only one man had acted alone in killing President Kennedy. In time, those figures would rise to a vast majority of the American public that felt a conspiracy was involved in the assassination. But what resulted from this?

As we turn to another anniversary of November 22nd, the media narrative of the public skepticism is that these “wild conspiracy theories” fueled a lack of trust in government, and somewhere along the way morphed into current right-wing conspiracy theories such as QAnon. As Thomas Mallon, author of Ruth Paine’s Garage, put it, “I have lately found myself wondering if the dangerous fact-free business of election denial doesn’t have some of its origin in the more fantastical theories that grew up around the assassination decades ago.”¹

This cheap theory of American history only looks at the public reaction to the Kennedy assassination in a vacuum, refusing to understand why so much of the public felt the government was lying to them. It cleanses the hands of J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, and Richard Helms, while casting anyone who dare doubt those luminaries as deranged fanatical right-wingers.

While American pundits still chortle over the idea of a wider conspiracy to assassinate the president, in any other country this is not an absurd idea at all, particularly in nations targeted by American intelligence agencies. Understanding the international reaction, and the thoughts of other world leaders in 1963, helps put the unresolved assassination into context. Their immediate response is worth examining to better analyze the nature of the crime, as is their characterization of Kennedy, in light of recent portrayals.

For instance, French president Charles De Gaulle had been the target of numerous assassination attempts by the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) due to his withdrawal from the brutal French war in Algeria.

The CIA was behind some of these plots, and President Kennedy had warned the French government that while he personally would do what he could to break up these plots, “the CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled machine that the most unlikely maneuvers might be true.”² A startling quote, and one that reveals how even Kennedy was aware that the CIA’s massive machinery could carry out crimes even beyond the knowledge of the president. Within hours of the shooting in Dealey Plaza, De Gaulle stated “President Kennedy died as a soldier under fire, doing his duty in the service of his country. In the name of the French people, a friend always to the American people, I salute this great example and this great memory.”³

De Gaulle attended President Kennedy’s funeral in Washington, and upon his return to Paris, had a conversation with information minister Alain Peyrefitte about the circumstances of the assassination. De Gaulle noted the similarities between the attempts on his own life, and the murder of President Kennedy, perceptively commenting “the security forces were in cahoots with the extremists.”

Peyrefitte then began asking De Gaulle about the circumstances of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and whether he had been set up as a patsy. De Gaulle told Peyrefitte “they got their hands on this communist who wasn’t one, while still being one. He had a sub par intellect and was an exalted fanatic — just the man they needed, the perfect one to be accused.” Going on, the French president explained the necessity of Oswald’s death at the hands of the conspirators, and how Ruby had been tasked to silence Oswald forever.

De Gaulle finished his examination with this remarkable insight on how the United States would bury the coup:

“America is in danger of upheavals. But you’ll see. All of them together will observe the law of silence. They will close ranks. They’ll do everything to stifle any scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order to not lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new civil war. In order to not ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.”

supreme court Custom

supreme court headshots 2019

djt handwave file

Washington Post, Supreme Court denies Trump request to withhold tax returns from Congress, Robert Barnes, Nov. 22, 2022. The court’s order means that the Treasury Department may quickly hand over six years of tax records from former president Donald Trump and some of his companies to the House Ways and Means Committee.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied former president Donald Trump’s efforts to block the release of his tax records to a congressional committee that has sought the information for years.

The court’s order means that the Treasury Department may quickly hand over six years of tax records from Trump and some of his companies to the House Ways and Means Committee.

There were no recorded dissents in the court’s order.

Lawmakers have said they need Trump’s tax returns from his time in office to help evaluate the effectiveness of annual presidential audits. Trump has argued that Democratic lawmakers are on a fishing expedition designed to embarrass him politically.

Time is not on the side of Democrats who run the committee. The demands for the records will almost surely expire in January, when Republicans take control of the House as a result of the recent midterm elections.

“Delaying Treasury from providing the requested tax information would leave the Committee and Congress as a whole little or no time to complete their legislative work during this Congress, which is quickly approaching its end,” House general counsel Douglas N. Letter said in a filing to the court.

Trump’s lawyers said that was all the more reason to grant the request to block the release of the records. “The Congress has only a few days left on its legislative calendar,” lawyer Cameron T. Norris said in his filing. “Though a few days is enough time to improperly expose the most sensitive documents of its chief political rival, it’s not enough time to properly study, draft, debate, or pass legislation.”

Trump's early 2024 launch fails to rally GOP around him

Last month, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to review earlier rulings finding that lawmakers are entitled to the documents in the long-running legal battle. That court also refused to put the release of the papers on hold while Trump’s lawyers sought Supreme Court review.

JFK Facts via Substack, Investigative Commentary: Yes, There Is a JFK Smoking Gun, Jefferson Morley, right, author of multiple books (most recently Scorpion's Dance) about the JFK assassination, Watergate, and other political crimes and players, Nov. 22, 2022. It will be found in 44 CIA documents that are still jefferson morley new "Denied in Full." As the 59th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy approached, I often hear the question posed last month by NBC News, “What are they hiding?”

With 16,000 plus documents in the JFK Records Collection still containing redactions—11,275 of them held by the CIA—the question is not only appropriate. It is troublesome. If the official theory of a lone gunman is correct, as our leading editors and academic historians insist, why doesn’t the government release all its records and prove it has nothing to hide? Why, pray tell, has the clandestine service blown two congressional deadlines for full JFK disclosure in the last five years?

FBI logo In a memo last year, President Biden set December. 15 as the new deadline. A recent report in Politico shows that Biden’s order will likely to be resisted by the CIA, FBI, and Defense Department. Phil Shenon’s reporting shows these agencies don’t care if their defiance of the JFK Records Act casts doubt on the government’s credibility. They simply don’t care if their furtive actions stimulate conspiracy theorizing. They have secrets they want to keep, public interest in full JFK disclosure be damned.

Why is the CIA so recalcitrant? Some claim the blameless Agency has nothing significant to hide. With all due respect, that argument is simply wrong. The CIA does have something to hide, something significant, something embarrassing, something potentially explosive. Among the CIA’s JFK secrets is a proverbial “smoking gun” that demonstrates the official theory of a lone gunman is misleading, if not deceptive.

I don’t use the term “smoking gun” lightly. I’ve been reporting on the JFK story since I published a story in the Washington Post in April 1995, based on my interview with retired CIA officer Jane Roman. A declassified routing slip, shows Roman signed for an FBI report on Oswald just eight days before Kennedy was killed.

My Post story marked the first interview ever with a CIA officer who handled reporting on Lee Harvey Oswald while President Kennedy was still alive. In the tape recorded interview, Roman said that cables in the Oswald file indicated someone at the CIA had a “keen interest” in Oswald, held on a “need to know basis” in October 1963, six weeks before Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas.

[For more details about this interview, see my article, “What Jane Roman Said,” via Mary Ferrell Foundation/History Matters.]
Denied in Full

Now, after 28 years of reporting and reflection, I am ready to advance the story. Jane Roman was correct. A small group of CIA officers was keenly interested in Oswald in the fall of 1963. They were running a psychological warfare operation, authorized in June 1963, that followed Oswald from New Orleans to Mexico City later that year. One of the officers supporting this operation was George Joannides, a career CIA officer whose records I sued for in 2003.

(This 2009 New York Times story on my lawsuit is pretty good.)

The evidence of the undisclosed Oswald operation is found in one partially declassified document from 1963 and 43 additional documents found in Joannides’ personnel file that have been “denied in full,” meaning no portions of them have been made public.

According to a CIA document filed in my Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, these sensitive records concern Joannides’ intelligence methods, his cover (meaning his false identity), and his travel in 1963-64, when he served as the chief of psychological warfare branch of the Agency’s Miami station, and in 1978, when he served as liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassination.

(The CIA’s policy of not revealing the names of living agents and informants does not apply here; Joannides died in 1990.)

The partially declassified document, partially released in 2004, shows that Joannides was cleared for Special Intelligence in June 1963. “Special Intelligence” is the CIA’s term of art for wiretap information. This document raises a key question: Was Joannides cleared for receiving information from wiretaps in Mexico City?

Smoking gun? This key JFK file from May 1963 is still heavily redacted.

Nov. 19

Washington Post, Opinion: Garland’s appointment of a special counsel was cautious. But also bold, Ruth Marcus, right, Nov. 19, 2022. Trump should not sleep soundly. Attorney General Merrick Garland, shown above, on Friday made a typically cautious decision in a bold way: He appointed a special counsel to investigate former president Donald Trump, but chose a veteran lawyer known for an aggressive streak and a fast prosecutorial metabolism.

This was a step Garland didn’t want to take; he believed the department’s career lawyers were capable of doing the job with integrity and independence. But he had been anticipating — and, careful lawyer that he is, preparing for — this possibility for months.

The first shoe to drop was President Biden’s statement that he intended to run again. That wasn’t enough, in Garland’s assessment, to trigger the requirements of the Justice Department’s special counsel regulations. Even if Trump was teasing another presidential run, the department’s twin investigations — into the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — could proceed as normal.

But Trump’s announcement that he would enter the 2024 race forced Garland’s reluctant hand. The rules, he believed, didn’t leave him any choice.

I thought Garland had more leeway to make the judgment call the other way, but in retrospect it seems almost inevitable that the by-the-books attorney general would go the special counsel route. Justice Department regulations provide that the attorney “will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted” and that investigation or prosecution “would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances.”

The regulations offer an out, one I previously wrote that Garland should take: The attorney general doesn’t have to name a special counsel if he decides that would not be in the public interest. But consider: An administration headed by a president who has announced his intention to seek reelection is investigating a former president who just declared he will run again. If this does not constitute an extraordinary circumstance, what would? What lesson would not appointing a special counsel send to future attorneys general? These are serious concerns.

If Garland had a mission on leaving the bench to return to Justice, it was to repair the department’s reputation for independence and integrity, battered after four years of Trump administration meddling, and to reassure its demoralized troops. Naming a special counsel was never going to assuage the concerns of Trump partisans that the Biden administration is out to get him, as the immediate reaction from Trumpworld underscored. Trump denounced the effort to take any whiff of politics out of the decision-making as “the worst politicization of justice in our country.” A Trump campaign spokesperson called the announcement “a totally expected political stunt by a feckless, politicized, weaponized Biden Department of Justice.”

But Garland’s goal was not to persuade the unpersuadable. It was, in the familiar language of the law, aimed at how a reasonable person would perceive the fairness of the investigation, and whether a reasonable person would think a special counsel was warranted under the facts at hand and the language and spirit of the regulations. It was telling that in this regard, Garland did not acknowledge that investigating Trump constituted a conflict of interest for the department — just that the circumstances had become extraordinary.

“I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity,” Garland said. “And I also believe that appointing a special counsel at this time is the right thing to do.”

This is where the bold part comes in: Special counsels usually have big names. Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, tapped to oversee the Trump-Russia probe, is the most recent such example. History offers others: Harvard Law School professor Archibald Cox to conduct the Watergate investigation as special prosecutor; former U.S. attorney Robert Fiske and then former appeals court judge Kenneth Starr to handle the Whitewater investigation as independent counsels. They came to the job with a public reputation that, at least in theory, lent credibility to their oversight.

jack smith vest Jack Smith, right, Garland’s choice, is decidedly low profile. I spoke with a number of former prosecutors who not only didn’t know Smith — they hadn’t even heard of him. But Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor who has been working at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo, offers advantages that the boldface names don’t. He knows how the department works. He knows how to speed an investigation along. “Stop playing with your food,” Mueller used to instruct hand-wringing prosecutors. Smith is, by all accounts, no food-player. And he offers a potential counter-balance to Garland’s innate cautiousness; hard-charging is the word that comes up in speaking with former colleagues.

“Jack Smith makes me look like a golden retriever puppy,” tweeted Andrew Weissmann, the famously aggressive former Enron and Mueller prosecutor who worked with Smith for years in the federal prosecutor’s Brooklyn office.

One example of Smith’s inclination to aggressiveness: the 2011 decision to charge former North Carolina senator John Edwards for accepting illegal presidential campaign contributions to help support his mistress. This was a stretch, as I wrote at the time, and the subject of controversy within the department. Smith, the head of the department’s Public Integrity Section, pressed to indict. The case ultimately fizzled as a jury acquitted Edwards on one count and deadlocked on five others; the department chose not to seek a retrial.

“For those concerned that the appointment of a Special Counsel will delay things: just the opposite,” Weissmann wrote. “Jack is a super fast, no-nonsense, and let’s-cut-to-the-chase kind of guy. And now, with less DOJ bureaucracy in decision-making, the investigations can move faster.”

That may be over-optimistic, but Trump should not sleep soundly. As a prosecutor, “you have to be able to admit that if it’s not there, it’s not there,” Smith said when he took the public integrity job in 2010. “I think that’s hard for people to do and having been a prosecutor for 15 years that is something I can do.”

World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary: Garland names obscure DoJ veteran Jack Smith special counsel for Trump cases, Webster G. Tarpley, right, author and historian, Nov. 19, 2022 (139:09 mins.). Move raises specter of justice delayed; Far from placating Trump fanatics, this step may increase acrimony, as Rep. Greene demands impeachment of Garland;

Democrats hold Senate and Arizona governor’s post; Pelosi quits as Speaker, followed by Hoyer and Clyburn; likely Dem succession is Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark, and Pete Aguilar;

Pelosi excelled in promoting unity of Dem caucus; Jeffries dealt effectively with disruptions by ousting AOC’s guru Chakrabarti; Ultra-lefts trying to escape blame for New York losses by condemning Mayor Adams’ stance on crime;

Chaos and anarchy run riot among House MAGA extremists, with personal hatreds, rivalries, and runaway committees; no major forces in House GOP respect voters’ aversion to Trump’s bombastic lunacy and demand for dictatorship;

Multiple ballots for Speaker loom in January, with uncertain outcome; GOP could splinter in short order;

Wall Street loves gridlock: corrupt corporate media pushing hard for DeSantis, just as they aided for Trump in 2015-2016;

GOP ran on border, crime, and inflation, but first steps don’t involve oil company executives or energy speculators: instead, in parody of Nixon’s infamous Enemies’ List, House MAGA extremists target 42 Democrats of Biden administration starting with Klain, Mayorkas, and Cardona; Gym Jordan and James Comer focus on Hunter Biden laptop, but voters demand to know about the Ginni Thomas emails;
Seize and nationalize Twitter as a key national security asset of US!

Nov. 17

Kennedys & King, Book Review and Analysis: Worse Than I Thought: A Mother In History, John Kelin, Nov. 17, 2022. This follow-up to an earlier article is a deep and disturbing dive into the source material of Jean Stafford's 1966 profile of Marguerite Oswald, 'A Mother In History.' As John Kelin discovered, the book is false and misleading, almost start-to-finish.

The literature on the JFK assassination is rife with dishonest books that endorse, defend, and/or excuse the findings of the Warren Commission (WC). Nothing new about that: this has been true since publication of the Warren Report in 1964, and has carried on through a long line of apologist nonsense.

One Commissioner and several WC attorneys cashed in on their experiences. A host of lesser, pseudo-serious WC advocates have contributed to this worthless tripe, and profitably. At the time of the assassination’s fiftieth anniversary, Vince Salandria called it a mountain of trash. All of this propaganda is meant to bury the obvious.

Jean Stafford’s A Mother in History (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1966) was an early entry into this disgraceful body of work. I have written about it before, most recently on this Kennedys and King site. What more could I possibly have to say? Do I have an unhealthy preoccupation with this slender book, ostensibly an unbiased profile of the mother of the alleged presidential assassin?

If you Google “Jean Stafford A Mother In History” you are likely to find available copies on used book sites, along with reviews and reader opinions. Most of the opinions I found are favorable. All of them, it is safe to assume, are based solely on reading Jean Stafford’s published text. Almost certainly, none of the writers of these favorable judgments had access to some of the book’s raw material, in particular the tape-recorded Stafford-Oswald interviews. I did. Once it has been appraised, and contrasted with the published work, it is difficult to see A Mother in History as anything but a hatchet job intended to destroy Marguerite Oswald.

The raw material to which I refer is in the Jean Stafford collection at the University of Colorado (CU) in Boulder, part of the Norlin Library’s Rare and Distinctive Collections.

Stafford, who was from Boulder, left her papers to CU. Since she primarily wrote fiction, the source material for A Mother in History is only a small portion of that archive. This small portion includes typescripts, notes, and an interview transcript, all of which reside in one small box. Not included in the box are the interview tape recordings, which have long since been digitized.

A Mother In History was published in three sections, simply titled I, II, and III (plus an Epilogue and appendices). A breathless jacket blurb touts Stafford’s “three incredible days” with Marguerite Oswald. That, and other indicators, clearly imply each of those three book sections correspond to one day of conversation between the author and her subject.

There may have been three days of interviews, incredible or otherwise, but I am highly suspicious of the published chronology. An exchange on the book’s p. 36, as that purported first-day section nears its end, first got my attention. Here Stafford writes that she asked Mrs. Oswald if it would be okay to bring a tape recorder the next day. Marguerite agreed. Stafford does not say so explicitly, but the clear message is that the first day was not tape recorded.

The audio at CU consists of six undated .mp3 files. A CU archivist told me last summer that the original reel-to-reel tapes were transferred to audio cassette in the 1970s. They were digitized sometime in the 1980s, or perhaps a little later.

Nowhere, in the .mp3 audio, does Stafford say the day, date, or subject of her interviews. Interviewers often do; it could even be considered a best practice. It creates a record, and helps keep things in order.

The .mp3 files at CU may be undated, but they do have sequential filenames. The first is stafford-interview-with-mrs.-oswald_-part-1-a.mp3. This particular audio begins with Stafford asking, “Tell me about your early life, Mrs. Oswald. You were born in New Orleans, weren’t you?” The transcript begins the same way. It’s an amiable first question, a likely starting point, and I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest this was, in fact, the very first of the interviews: that is, the first day, which Stafford implied was not recorded.

As I described in my previous article, I had grown curious about a quote in the first section of the book – an unrecorded first day, readers are led to believe. Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite said, “spoke Russian, he wrote Russian, and he read Russian. Why? Because my boy was being trained as an agent, that’s why.”

In Stafford’s book there was no follow-up question. This baffled me. Even an amateur journalist, like Stafford, should have enough sense to explore such an explosive statement. Surely the audio would clarify things. Instead, it revealed that Marguerite Oswald didn’t say what Stafford quoted her as saying. It is a manufactured quote.

It’s a little complicated, so bear with me. Most of the words in that quote were, in fact, spoken by Marguerite Oswald. They were also tape recorded; I have heard the audio. But it’s a false quote, because Stafford pieced together several phrases – some of them separated by as much as three minutes. Placing it all within quotation marks implies it is verbatim – but it is not, and is thus a deception.

I can only speculate on Stafford’s motives. That false quote does not support the lone gunman thesis. Given the magnitude of surrounding events, I cannot believe creating it was innocent. I think Stafford floated the idea of Oswald-as-agent – not a common view at the time – to characterize Marguerite Oswald as paranoid, and out of her mind.

There are other false and manufactured quotes in A Mother In History. I have not itemized them all and don’t intend to; it would be a huge undertaking. The more I studied the source material, the more dishonesty I found.

On page 23 of A Mother In History is the following statement, attributed to Marguerite:

Lee purely loved animals! With his very first pay he bought a bird and a cage, and I have a picture of it. He bought this bird with a cage that had a planter for ivy, and he took care of that bird and he made the ivy grow. Now, you see, there could be many nice things written about this boy. But, oh, no, no, this boy is supposed to be the assassin of the President of the United States, so he has to be a louse. Sometimes I am very sad.

This is a rather inconsequential matter, but it is still false. Marguerite Oswald didn’t really say it. Here is what she did say, in answer to Stafford’s question, “Did he ever have any pets?”

Oh yes, Lee had a dog, and with his first pay he bought a bird and a cage – I have pictures of it, with ivy in it and all the food for the bird. Yes, sir. With his first pay. He had a collie shepherd dog that I had gotten for him when it was a little [bitty] puppy. And he had it all those years until we went to New York. And that dog had puppies. He gave one to his school teacher. She wrote a nice article for the newspaper saying Lee loving animals and giving her a pet.

True, the published quote roughly parallels what she really said. But it is still false. “Lee purely loved animals” does not appear in any of the audio. There is no mention of dogs in the published quote, let alone puppies, or giving one to a school teacher.

Nor does Marguerite say, “Sometimes I am very sad.” In fact, elsewhere in the recorded interviews, she said quite the opposite: “I’m not unhappy, Jean. You can see I’m not.”

As I write these words, I feel like I’m in attack mode. I have listened to all the audio that is available. Can I be certain that every last recorded word from the Stafford-Oswald interviews wound up in the CU archive? Of course not. All that CU has is what Stafford gave them. She also wrote, in her book, that when Mrs. Oswald agreed to be tape recorded, she stipulated that there be two recorders so she could have a copy.

The example about animals and pets is minor, compared to a false quote on pages 12-13 of A Mother In History. This one is presented as dialogue between interviewer and interviewee, and Jean Stafford goes in for the kill. It is intended, I am convinced, to make Marguerite Oswald appear nuts – to use a non-clinical term.

Marguerite spoke first:

“And as we all know, President Kennedy was a dying man. So I say it is possible that my son was chosen to shoot him in a mercy killing for the security of the country. And if this is true, it was a fine thing to do and my son is a hero.”

“I had not heard that President Kennedy was dying,” I said, staggered by this cluster of fictions stated as irrefutable fact. Some mercy killing! The methods used in this instance must surely be unique in the annals of euthanasia.

This exchange is not found anywhere in the interview audio or the transcript. Marguerite does not make the statement, and Jean Stafford does not make that stunned reply.

There is something similar to this in the interviews. Unfortunately, the digitized version of the tape recording at CU ends partway through the quote. Did the original tape end there, too? No, because the corresponding transcript, which I have found to be consistently accurate, continues for several more pages. It is convoluted, but this is what Marguerite Oswald really said.

That President Kennedy was killed by – a mercy killing – by some of his own men that thought it was the thing to do and this is not impossible and since I blame the secret service from what I saw and what I thought it could have been that my son and the secret service were all involved in a mercy killing.

A minute or so before her “mercy killing” remark, Marguerite did say “a dying President,” but “As we all know” is an invention. She says JFK was dying because he had Addison’s disease, which he did. She also called it a kidney disorder, which it is not. Addison’s can be life-threatening, but Stafford correctly points out that it is a manageable adrenal condition. And Kennedy managed his.

But Stafford can’t let this go without having some fun, falsely quoting Marguerite calling it Atkinson’s disease. In the audio, there is no doubt: Marguerite says Addison’s. It is rendered as Atkinson’s in the transcript. Maybe Stafford didn’t remember what Mrs. Oswald actually said, and later on trusted the error of the unknown transcriber. While accurate overall, the transcript does, in fact, garble certain words here and there; in places it reminds me of the sometimes-strange voicemail transcripts my Smartphone makes. The ethical thing would have been double-checking Marguerite’s presumed mistake, before putting it to print.

But the point is that Marguerite Oswald did not say her son was chosen to shoot a terminally ill JFK in a mercy killing. Jean Stafford created that illusion.

According to biographer David Roberts (Jean Stafford: A Biography, 1988) Jean Stafford later “held parties at which she played the Oswald tapes for her friends.” Roberts cites Stafford’s “fascination” with Marguerite Oswald’s voice.

It sounds more like arrogance to me. One imagines a bunch of cocktail-quaffing intelligentsia howling with laughter over Marguerite’s unschooled chatter. But maybe not. Maybe Stafford just wanted to give some of her pals a front-row seat to history. Whatever: the image this conjures is, to me, thoroughly repulsive.

The Stafford-Oswald interviews took place in May 1965. This is approximately ten months after Marguerite met with Harold Feldman and Vince Salandria, after which Feldman wrote “The Unsinkable Marguerite Oswald,” published in September 1964 (available online).

Nov. 15

President John F. Kennedy, with his wife Jacqueline Kennedy seated beside him, waves from his motorcade minutes before he was shot in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22, 1963 (Associated Press photo).

Politico, Why We Still Don’t Have the JFK Assassination Files, Philip Shenon, Nov. 15, 2022. Nov. 15, 2022. The FBI and the CIA are still protecting their sources from six decades ago.

Almost exactly 59 years after those rifle shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, left a president mortally wounded and changed the course of history, there are still secrets that the government admits it is determined to keep about the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. More than 14,000 classified documents somehow related to the president’s murder remain locked away, in part or in full, at the National Archives in clear violation of the spirit of a landmark 1992 transparency law that was supposed to force the release of virtually all of them years ago.

The fact that anything about the assassination is still classified — and that the CIA, FBI and other agencies have refused to provide the public with a detailed explanation of why — has convinced an army of conspiracy theorists that their cynicism has always been justified.

Newly released internal correspondence from the National Archives and Records Administration reveals that, behind the scenes, there has been a fierce bureaucratic war over the documents in recent years, pitting the Archives against the CIA, FBI and other agencies that want to keep them secret.

The correspondence, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that the Archives has tried, and often failed, to insist that other agencies comply with the 1992 law by declassifying more documents. The struggle was especially fierce in 2017, when then-President Donald Trump sided with the CIA and FBI and agreed to waive a supposedly concrete legal deadline that year to release all classified documents related to the JFK assassination.

Last year, President Joe Biden ordered another review of the documents to allow more to be made public this December. Officials involved in the declassification process say they are optimistic that a large batch of documents will be made public next month.

The internal correspondence from the Archives helps resolve one lingering mystery about the documents: In their negotiations with the White House and the Archives in recent years, how have the CIA, FBI, the Pentagon and other agencies justified keeping any secrets about a turning point in American history that occurred decades ago — an event that has always inspired corrosive conspiracy theories about government complicity?

In the past, those agencies have provided the public with only vague explanations about their reasoning, citing potential damage to national security and foreign policy.

The Archives correspondence reveals, for the first time, their detailed justifications, providing a rare window into reasoning inside the CIA and FBI. In many cases, it shows, the CIA and FBI pressed to keep documents secret because they contained the names and personal details of still-living intelligence and law-enforcement informants from the 1960’s and 1970’s who could be at risk of intimidation or even violence if they were publicly identified.

Many of those sources — now elderly, if not close to death — are foreigners living outside the United States, which means it would be more difficult for the American government to protect them from threats. The CIA has also withheld information in the documents that identifies the location of CIA stations and safehouses abroad, including several that have been in use continuously since Kennedy’s death in 1963.

The Archives correspondence shows that, while much of the still-classified information is only indirectly related to the assassination, some of it comes directly from the FBI’s “main investigative case files” about the president’s murder. That includes the all-important case files on Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin [JIP Editor's Note: This should read "alleged assassin.], and Jack Ruby, the Dallas strip-club owner who murdered Oswald two days after Kennedy’s death.

Philip Shenon, a former Washington and foreign correspondent for the New York Times, is author of "A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination."

Nov. 14

djt on phone white house photo

New York Times, Trump Wanted I.R.S. Investigations of Foes, Top Aide Says, Michael S. Schmidt, Nov. 14, 2022 (print ed.). John Kelly, who was White House chief of staff, said former President Trump wanted investigations into perceived enemies like the former F.B.I. director.

While in office, President Donald J. Trump (shown above in a White House photo during his presidency) repeatedly told John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, that he wanted a number of his perceived political enemies to be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Kelly, right, who was chief of staff from July 2017 through the end of 2018, said in response to questions from The New York Times that Mr. Trump’s demands were part of a broader pattern of him trying to use the Justice Department and his authority as president against people who had been john kelly o dhs critical of him, including seeking to revoke the security clearances of former top intelligence officials.

Mr. Kelly said that among those Mr. Trump said “we ought to investigate” and “get the I.R.S. on” were the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe. His account of Mr. Trump’s desires to use the I.R.S. against his foes comes after the revelation by The Times this summer that Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe had both been selected for a rare and highly intrusive audit by the tax agency in the years after Mr. Kelly left the White House.

Mr. Trump has said he knows nothing about the audits. The I.R.S. has asked its inspector general to investigate, and officials have insisted the two men were selected randomly for the audits.

Mr. Kelly said he made clear to Mr. Trump that there were serious legal and ethical issues with what he wanted. He said that despite the president’s expressed desires to have Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe investigated by the I.R.S., he believes that he led Mr. Trump during his tenure as chief of staff to forgo trying to have such investigations conducted.

After Mr. Kelly left the administration, Mr. Comey was informed in 2019 that his 2017 returns were being audited, and Mr. McCabe learned in 2021 that his 2019 returns were being audited. At the time both audits occurred, the I.R.S. was led by a Trump political appointee.

(Comey was a Republican whose firing by Trump during Comey's 10-year term was reported by the New York Daily News in front page story at right on New York Daily News May 9, 2017.)

Mr. Trump regularly made his demands in response to news reports in which he thought his perceived enemies made him look bad. The president would carry on about having them investigated to the point that Mr. Kelly thought he needed to tell the president that what he wanted was highly problematic, explaining, in sometimes heated conversations, that what Mr. Trump wanted was not just potentially illegal and immoral but also could blow back on him.

Mr. Trump would eventually let the idea go, Mr. Kelly said, but during subsequent outbursts about his enemies he would again bring up his desires to have them investigated.

Throughout Mr. Trump’s presidency he regularly, in both public and private, ranted about Mr. Comey, whom Mr. Trump had fired in May 2017, and Mr. McCabe, who played a leading role in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

McCabe, a career federal prosecutor, successfully sued to regain his pension that had been eliminated one day short of vesting when Trump's team fired him. He wrote a memoir,

McCabe, a career federal prosecutor and Justice Department official, successfully sued to regain his pension that had been eliminated one day short of vesting when Trump's team fired him. He wrote a memoir, "The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump."

Kennedys & King, Analysis: Dale Myers and his World of Illusion, James DiEugenio, left, Nov. 14, 2022. 'Lone Nut' supporter Dale Myers recently attacked Oliver Stone's film, JFK Revisited. Stone's screenwriter, James DiEugenio, demonstrates how groundless those attacks are with this detailed reply.

Dale Myers has made a career out of giving the MSM what it wants concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This includes proffering a truly dubious witness, Jack Tatum, to incriminate Lee Oswald as the murderer of J. D. Tippit. Jack Myers exposed the man Myers foisted on the public via PBS in 1993. (Click here for details).

But that was not enough for Myers. Not by a long shot. On the 40th anniversary of JFK’s murder, ABC’s Peter Jennings wanted to do a program supporting the Warren Report. Somehow, he knew where to go. Jennings hired Myers’ buddy Gus Russo as lead reporter. Russo turned to his PBS chum Dale. Myers went to work on two main areas. These were the acoustics evidence, and his Rube Goldberg “computer simulation” of the Zapruder film: an animation that is supposed to reveal the forensic truth about the last few seconds of Kennedy’s life as it was extinguished in Dealey Plaza.

The problem with both of these is that they turned out to be about as reliable as Myers’ PBS work on the murder of Tippit. Concerning the acoustics evidence, Myers tried to proffer that by relating the movement of the DPD motorcycle driven by H. B McLain in the Hughes film, and then drawing a parallel with the same rider in the famous Zapruder film, he could discredit the acoustics evidence as being inaccurate about the shot sequence in Dealey Plaza. Myers attested that by his mathematical comparison, McLain would have had to have been riding at 200 mph to be in the correct spot to capture the sounds of the bullets in Dealey Plaza on his radio. (Donald Thomas, Hear No Evil, p. 676).

The problem with Myer’s statement was that the general public only saw the computations it was based on three years later. When informed people finally did, it turned out that Dale had done some MSM like slicing and dicing in order to come out with that 200 mph number, e. g. the timing of the first shot, assuming the grassy knoll shot missed, the placement of Robert Hughes etc. (Thomas, pp 677-680). After a long and detailed analysis, Don Thomas concluded that not only was Myers wrong, but “The ABC documentary’s “concrete evidence” had feet of clay. The producers had relied on an expert whose only credential was a bias against conspiracy theories.” (ibid, p. 684; we will go into the Myers “simulation” shortly.)

On July 24th, Myers wrote a piece that was his way of getting back at Oliver Stone’s two new documentaries JFK Revisited and JFK: Destiny Betrayed. He bases this critique on his viewing of the two films in the DVD package plus the release of the accompanying book JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, which contains the annotated scripts, and interview excerpts.

He starts off on the wrong foot by saying the DVD package contains almost ten hours of material. Since the long version of the film is four hours and the short version is two hours, and there is overlap between the two, I guess we will have to wait about another three years to figure out how Dale came to that number. (Even if one throws in the commentary track version, it is not ten hours.)

Myers now slips up again. He wants to criticize the film for something that it does not include. Namely the murder of Tippit. He then acknowledges that some might think this is not fair, but he brushes this off with another of his patently bombastic pronouncements: “I think this is the heart of why the film comes off like a stacked-deck.”

This is the guy who used Jack Tatum as his chief witness in the Tippit case, and who then based his 200 mph motorcycle speed on invisible calculations.

He now works his way into the mind of Oliver Stone and his screenwriter—namely me—and says imperiously, ”Oliver Stone and James DiEugenio won’t deal with the Tippit murder because it is the snare that entrapped Lee Harvey Oswald. It was Tippit’s murder that made Oswald a prime suspect in the JFK assassination.”

Now that is a rhetorical trick worthy of a card sharp. For the simple matter that the film shows that Oswald not only did not shoot Kennedy, he could not have shot Kennedy. Therefore why would he be involved in the Tippit murder? As Bob Tanenbaum, who Stone and I met with numerous times while planning the film, says on screen: With the Warren Report’s evidence you could not convict Oswald in any court in the country. As an Assistant New York County District Attorney in Manhattan, Tanenbaum never lost a murder case in seven years. I think those credentials outdo Myers.’ Don’t you?

The book accompanying the DVD contains annotated scripts to both films: the short and long version. It also has excerpts from interviews that largely did not make it into the film due to time issues. Myers refers to that over four hundred-page book as being “semi-annotated.” In reality, the pages dealing with the film scripts contain over 500 footnotes. Every statement of factual evidence is sourced.

Interestingly, Stone’s lawyer actually started that process when, upon seeing the rough cut of the film, she wanted us to prove the things we were saying about the pathologists in the film. She thought they were quite startling and might be hard to comprehend to a general audience. Much of that evidence was produced by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), and this is why we enlisted three members of the Board to appear on the program. The reader may want to ask Myers if, in any of the shows he has worked on, he talked about the existence of that body or revealed any of the new or declassified results of its work. One example: that autopsy photographer John Stringer denied he took the pictures of Kennedy’s brain in the National Archives. After all, JFK Revisited has ARRB employee Doug Horne relating this evidence. He was in the room when Stringer said it under oath. That disturbing testimony leaves us with these questions:

Who did take the pictures?
Why did someone else have to shoot them?

This evidence, as presented in the film, is the kind of material that one could have taken into a court room to adjudicate an acquittal for Oswald. Because the presentation of fraudulent evidence in a felony case can be grounds for having the proceeding thrown out. Stone’s film actually has a practicing neurologist, Michael Chesser, talking about this evidentiary issue.

JFK Revisited, the film and the book, attempted to gather professionals in the field of legal procedure and forensics. I have named two, Tanenbaum and Chesser, and I wish to introduce a third, namely Dr. Henry Lee. Why? Because Myers said that our film included an animated reconstruction of the shooting. No, it does not. If we had done so, we would have had to include scale models of the figures in the car, close ups of where the bullets struck the two bodies, and some kind of time sequence also. We chose not to do that. And this is where Dr. Lee comes in to play.

As screenwriter, I did a pre-interview with Lee when he was in Los Angeles testifying in a case. I asked him about this whole issue of doing computer reconstructions for trajectory analysis purposes in the JFK case. He said simply and pointedly: You cannot do that in the Kennedy case. He added that this is due to the basic reason that neither wound in the president was dissected. Therefore, any trajectory analysis amounts to guesswork. Unless a wound track is dissected, you cannot present a trajectory with any real authority. This from the man who many consider the best crime scene reconstruction professional in the business. I decided he was, in all probability, correct and we did not do that sort of thing.

Why did I conclude that? Because Lee has worked on 8,000 felony cases, and about 1,000 of them have been death by gunshot. He has written over 30 books about true crime cases and some of those are used as textbooks in forensic science classes. He has been approved to testify in almost every state of the union, and also 42 countries. As with Bob Tanenbaum, I would like to ask Mr. Myers: “How many states have you been approved in to testify as a forensic crime scene reconstruction expert? How many countries?”

jim dieugenio destiny cover Concerning Lee’s statement, in Myers’ ABC “simulation’ I don’t recall him telling the audience that there was no dissection of the back wound in President Kennedy. Or explaining why. He surely has to know that Kennedy pathologist Pierre Finck admitted under oath at the Clay Shaw trial that there was military brass in the morgue that night and they would not allow the wound to be tracked. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 302). This was rather important information. But I don’t think that Russo or Jennings would have allowed that in the show; for obvious reasons.

Myers tries to neutralize the attacks on his “computer simulation” by saying the critiques I named of it, that somehow, he had crushed them all. This really makes me wonder about good ole Dale. According to Bob Harris, Myers asked You Tube to remove his critique of Myers’ simulation. To my knowledge, he never replied to Milicent Cranor. Myers said he called David Mantik, but Dave said he never got the call or any message. As for Pat Speer’s, well the reader can see how this exchange turned out himself.

Anyone who watches JFK Revisited can see that what we did was to present evidence that 1.) It is highly unlikely that a bullet could do the damage that CE 399 did and emerge in such intact condition. 2.) The chain of custody of this bullet is rather suspect. For the former we had forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht on camera along with battlefield surgeon Dr. Joseph Dolce, who worked for the Warren Commission. For the latter we had Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. Henry Lee, and former police investigator Brian Edwards as witnesses. In the film, Aguilar proved that the FBI lied when they wrote that Bardwell Odum showed CE 399 to original Parkland identification witnesses O. P. Wright and Darrell Tomlinson. Odum said he never did any such thing. (The Assassinations, edited by James DIEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp.282-84) To repeat: this is the kind of fraud that can get a case thrown out of court. Again, I do not recall Myers discussing this for his ABC “reconstruction”. I think it would be relevant to that presentation. After all, if the bullet was not CE 399, what bullet trajectory was Dale “simulating”?

Myers objects to my references to the Tippit case in the book, JFK Revisited. He says the essay I wrote and reference is a mélange of work by Bill Simpich, Farris Rookstool and John Armstrong. Anyone who reads that piece can see that there are about 7 references to those three in that profusely annotated work. (Click here.) The two most often used sources are, by far, the Warren Commission volumes and the book by Joe McBride, Into the Nightmare. Myers does not want to acknowledge this, perhaps because it indicates 1.) There is material in the volumes he chose not to use and 2.) McBride’s book showed that Myers’ work on the Tippit case was, to be kind, not as comprehensive as he tried to advertise it.

For instance, it turns out that-- in all the decades he says he worked on the Tippit case--he never interviewed the murdered policeman’s father. If Joe McBride found him, why couldn’t Dale? When McBride quoted Edgar Lee Tippit as stating things that would contradict the Myers/Warren Report version of the Tippit shooting, Dale did a funny thing. He now wrote that Edgar Lee was somehow mentally afflicted. As McBride points out, that information was garnered from a sister of J. D. ten days after Myers ordered McBride’s book. In other words, Myers somehow could not locate the man in some 35 years, but now—oh so conveniently-- he finds out it did not matter.

Anyone can read McBride’s reply to Myers. (Click here.) Myers wants to belatedly discredit Edgar because he brings out evidence that indicates Tippit, and another officer, “Had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff.” Edgar then added that the other policeman did not make it to the scene since he stopped for an accident. As McBride also reveals, former DA Henry Wade seemed to corroborate Edgar. He told Joe: “Somebody reported to me that the police already knew who he [Oswald] was, and they were looking for him.” McBride goes further and states, with convincing evidence, that the other officer, who did not get to the scene, was William Duane Mentzel.

In sum, if Oliver Stone had decided to explore the Tippit case, I would have scripted that also. And I would have brought in the work of McBride, as well as authors like Henry Hurt, Jack Myers and myself. I would have chosen what I thought was the best from each of these sources and arranged it as astutely as I could. To put it mildly, it would not have comported with the Warren Report version.

Myers closes his diatribe by making some of his usual sociologically absurd comments. He first says that there is a movement to silence in America. Really Dale? In the age of Donald Trump? He then gets to his point: Somehow Oliver Stone and myself were ignoring and obfuscating what happened on the day Kennedy was killed. No we were not. We were doing what he never did. We were analyzing the newest evidence in the case with persons who are, unlike him, credentialed professionals. That is why we used people like Dr. Cyril Wecht, criminalist Henry Lee, Dr. Gary Aguilar, physicist David Mantik, neurologist Mike Chesser, former police investigator Brian Edwards, journalist Barry Ernest, ARRB investigator Douglas Horne, surgeon Donald Miller and radiologist Randy Robertson. We easily had more accredited professionals on screen than appeared in all of the programs Myers has worked on combined. In fact, the comparison is so one sided as to be kind of laughable.

This unprecedented gathering of authorities gave the public some new, evidence-backed insights into the actual circumstances concerning what happened to President Kennedy in Dallas. One example: Chesser, Mantik and Aguilar proffered a case-- with House Select Committee on Assassinations advisor Larry Sturdivan’s own evidence—that a shot came from the front. Those same three, plus Horne, also showed that the brain photos, accepted by the HSCA as President Kennedy’s, cannot be his. And, as anyone can see—except Dale Myers—they did this on three evidentiary grounds. I could go on in this vein e.g. about demonstrating Oswald’s alibi, but the point is made. Questions like: What does the autopsy reveal about the true circumstances and the actual cause of death? Does the defendant have an alibi? These are what a criminal investigation of a gunshot homicide are about.

But that is what Myers, Russo, the late PBS producer Mike Sullivan, and Peter Jennings, were not going to do. It was they who were the masters of silence about really happened to JFK. And this new work helps show Dale Myers for what he was and is: a designer of sand castles in the air.

Nov. 13

9 11 world trade center smoking on 9 11 flikr michael foran

New York’s World Trade Center after each of the towers were hit by hijacked Boeing 767 passenger jets on Sept. 11, 2001 (Photo: Michael Foran CC by 2.0).

FloridaBulldog.org, Investigation: U.S. coughs up 9/11 Commission report on 2004 private meeting with Bush/Cheney; Bush saw no reason to pursue accountability for failures, Dan Christensen, right, Nov. 13, 2022 (First of a two-part series).

Nearly two decades after President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney answered questions for the 9/11 Commission in a closed gathering in the Oval Office, a 31-page “summary” of what they had to say finally has been made public.

Neither Bush (shown below announcing military action against Iraq in 2003) nor Cheney was under oath during the three-hour meeting on April 29, 2004. And the summary shows it was a generally relaxed, non-adversarial and largely superficial get-together during which no george w bush oval iraq 2003 w significant new insights were gleaned.

Yet the summary does yield Bush’s forceful, nonpublic opinion that he “didn’t see much point in assigning personal blame for 9/11.”

The president’s admonition, uttered as he was running for re-election, would not have played well with thousands of 9/11 survivors and the families of the murdered – who were then near top of mind with many American voters, Republicans and Democrats alike.

“It would have been pure outrage,” 9/11 widow and activist Kristen Breitweiser, shown below right on the cover of her accusatory memoir, told Florida Bulldog. “We felt that in the face of nearly 3,000 dead bodies in lower Manhattan that people would have been held accountable.”

kristen breitwasser cover “This document makes my blood boil,” said Sharon Premoli, who was in her office on the 80th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the first plane struck on September 11, 2001 and was later pulled from the wreckage. “That our lives were in the hands of these incompetents is chilling and [explains] why 3,000 were murdered, 6,000 injured.”

A LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY

The lack of accountability, Breitweiser said, is exemplified by Bush’s decision to retain then-CIA boss George Tenet amid significant public criticism. “Why leave the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in place when he had utterly failed to synthesize information in the pipeline about the attacks? Is anyone surprised there was [later] bad intelligence in the war on Iraq?”

Tenet retired in July 2004. Five months later, Bush awarded Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Bush and TenetPresident Bush after bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on retired CIA DIrector George Tenet in December 2004. Photo: Wikimedia Commons via the White House

Said Breitweiser, “Tenet is a very good example of why it was important to hold people accountable, not for political reasons, but to make the nation safe. You can’t fix problems and make sure it doesn’t happen again if you don’t have accountability. That was the families’ mandate to the commission.”

Breitweiser was a leader of the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, an organization that had pushed a reluctant Bush to create the 9/11 Commission. The steering committee urged 9/11 Commission Chair Thomas Kean and Vice Chair Lee Hamilton to ask Bush, alone and in sworn public testimony, a list of tough, probing questions, including: “Why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an attack on our own soil?” and “Why no one in any level of our government has yet been held accountable for the countless failures leading up to and on 9/11?”

Nov. 12

World Crisis Radio, Historical Commentary: Fascism was on the ballot this year, and fascism has been defeated! Webster G. Tarpley, right, author and historian, Nov. 12, 2022 (119 mins.). After warnings from Biden in Independence Hall and Union Station speeches, American people confirm standing as most anti-fascist major power on planet!

AG Garland must now honor his oath of office by immediately enforcing the rule of law against a weakened Trump and his co-conspirators; Donald set to declare candidacy next Tuesday, but allies urge him to postpone taking plunge;
Kelly wins in Arizona to make Senate 49-49, while Cortez-Mastow gains on Laxalt in Nevada and Graham threatens civil war if MAGAt does not prevail; Democrats near control of Senate; Warnock must win Georgia on December 6 to devalue recalcitrant Dems; House majority still not clear;

Internecine struggles among disappointed GOPers could cripple party; Reactionary extremists of House Tea Party (aka ”Freedom”) caucus promise challenge to McQarthy, demanding right to oust Speaker at any time and other chaotic measures; Five senators signal no confidence in Moscow Mitch; Trump against DeSantis;

Defeated Rep. Maloney notes AOC was AWOL in New York House races; Ultra-lefts as the bane of the Democrats, from Florida to Albany to Ohio; Shame of the controlled corporate media for pushing the fantastic narrative of a red tsunami;

Too late for maskirovka: Ukraine liberates Kherson from Russian war criminals; Negotiating with Putin is as futile as talking to Hitler about Czechoslovakia in August 1938; Russian troops are free to leave Ukraine at any time; Reparations and transportation might then be discussed; Zelensky: Putin does not negotiate, but issues ultimatums; Crypto world collapsing; Will Wall Street follow?

Biden attends COP 27 in Egypt, where Xi and Modi are absent; President continues to ASEAN in Cambodia, followed by summit with Xi at G-20 in Bali, Indonesia.

Nov. 9

The late financier, sex trafficker and philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein, left, and former longtime Harvard Law School Professor and author Alan Dershowitz (file photo).

New York Times, Epstein Victim Says She May Have Made a Mistake in Accusing Dershowitz, Katherine Rosman and Jonah E. Bromwich, Nov. 9, 2022 (print ed.). Virginia Giuffre, who was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein, had accused Alan Dershowitz of abusing her. Now she says she is no longer certain.

Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey E. Epstein who for years maintained that the law professor Alan Dershowitz had sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager, settled a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Dershowitz on Tuesday and said that she might have “made a mistake” in accusing him.

Virginia Roberts 2015 photo In a joint statement announcing the settlement, Ms. Giuffre, shown at right at age 31, said, “I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations.

“I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz,” her statement said.

The joint statement announced the end of litigation between Ms. Giuffre and Mr. Dershowitz — who had also sued her — as well as of two other lawsuits between Mr. Dershowitz and the lawyer David Boies that stemmed from Ms. Giuffre’s accusation.

Ms. Giuffre had sued Mr. Dershowitz on the grounds that he had made defamatory statements about her after her accusation. Her lawyer would not comment on the statement but confirmed that the settlement had been reached. A document confirming that Ms. Giuffre had agreed to dismiss her case was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan Tuesday afternoon.

“She has suffered much at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, and I commend her work combating the evil of sex trafficking,” Mr. Dershowitz said of Ms. Giuffre in his own statement.

And Mr. Boies, who has represented Ms. Giuffre, though not in this matter, said that “the time has come to end this litigation” and that Mr. Dershowitz “has suffered greatly from the allegation of sexual abuse made against him — an allegation that he has consistently and vehemently denied.”

The terms of Ms. Giuffre’s deal with Mr. Dershowitz were not immediately clear on Tuesday, though the statement and the court filing said that no payments were made by any of the parties.

The settlement of the defamation lawsuit, which was filed in 2019, and Ms. Giuffre’s accompanying statement represented a remarkable turnabout for Mr. Dershowitz, who has been trying to resuscitate his reputation since Ms. Giuffre first made her claim publicly in 2014. Her accusations against Mr. Epstein have been corroborated.

A longtime friend of Mr. Epstein, Mr. Dershowitz defended the financier after he was first arrested and charged with sex trafficking, attacking his client’s young accusers, and in 2008, helped to win a lenient plea deal for Mr. Epstein. After pleading guilty to two prostitution charges in state court, Mr. Epstein served about a year in a Florida jail, leaving confinement six days a week to work out of his office.

Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell, 2001

Giuffre accused Epstein as treating her as a "sex slave" beginning when she was 15 as part of a massive sex trafficking operation he ran exploiting girls in their mid-teens, below the legal age of consent.

Roberts, now 31, claimed that Epstein farmed her out to other men, including Prince Andrew of the British royal family, Epstein's attorney Dershowitz, and French modeling scout Jean Luc Brunel.

The California native said the photo below left portrays her at center with Prince Andrew, also known as the Duke of York, on a trip to London when she was 17 in 2001. At right was Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite daughter of the corrupt newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, who drowned in 1991 after toppling overboard from his yacht Lady Ghislaine. The death left one of the world's largest media empires with a reported $3 billion in debts.

Nov. 8

elon musk safe image time

New York Times, Facing a Tide of Criticism, Elon Musk Is Tweeting Through It, Ryan Mac, Nov. 8, 2022 (print ed.). Twitter’s new billionaire owner (shown above in a file photo) has embarked on a tweeting spree to push back, spar and justify his actions.

Under pressure and facing a wave of criticism, Elon Musk has increasingly turned to his favorite release valve: Twitter.

Since Saturday, Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man and the new owner of Twitter, has embarked on a tweeting spree so voluminous that he is on a pace to post more than 750 times this month, or more than 25 times a day, according to an analysis from the digital investigations company Memetica. That would be up from about 13 times a day in April, when Mr. Musk first agreed to buy Twitter.

His recent tweets have covered an increasingly broad range of topics. Over the last four days, Mr. Musk, 51, needled the comedian Kathy Griffin and beefed with the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on the platform. He made masturbation jokes aimed at a rival — and much smaller — social media platform. He posted, then deleted, a tweet engaging with a quote from a white nationalist. And he defended his ownership of Twitter, including why he had laid off 50 percent of the company’s staff and why people should not impersonate others on the service.

All in all, Mr. Musk, who described himself in his Twitter profile as “Chief Twit” before later changing the description to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator,” has tweeted more than 105 times since Friday, mainly about Twitter, according to a tally by Memetica.

Mr. Musk is under tremendous scrutiny 11 days after completing his $44 billion deal for Twitter, which was the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company in history. On Friday, he cut roughly 3,700 of the company’s 7,500 employees, saying he had no choice because Twitter was losing $4 million a day. At the same time, he has found himself embroiled in the same content debates that have plagued other social media companies, including how to give people a way to speak out without spreading misinformation and toxic speech.

On Friday, Mr. Musk, who has more than 114 million followers on Twitter, proposed a “thermonuclear name & shame” campaign against brands that had stopped advertising on the platform. He said that he had done everything he could to appease advertisers but that activists had worked against him to cause brands to drop out of spending on Twitter.

At the same time, the billionaire was embroiled in a fight over his plan to charge Twitter users $8 a month for a subscription service, Twitter Blue, which would give a check mark to anyone who paid. The check mark had been free for notable people whose identities had been verified by the company, including celebrities, politicians and journalists, as a way to protect against impersonation.

Critics were unhappy about Mr. Musk’s plans to monetize the check mark, saying it could lead to the spread of misinformation and fraud on the platform. In protest, some Twitter accounts that had check marks changed their display names and photographs to match Mr. Musk’s account over the weekend, a move intended to illustrate why it would be confusing if anyone could buy a check mark.

Nov. 7

Kennedys & King, Book Review: Suppressing The Truth in Dallas, by Charles Brandt, reviewed by James DiEugenio, left, Nov. 7, 2022. James DiEugenio, Nov. 7, 2022. Jim DiEugenio reviews the new JFK assassination book Suppressing the Truth, by Charles Brandt, and identifies its many weaknesses.

In the fall of 1977, former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, right, wrote a letter to Jonathan Blackmer of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. They had just met in New Orleans and were developing an informational relationship, one in which Garrison would offer any files he could dig up on a subject and often advise on its value. Blackmer had been originally appointed by Robert Tanenbaum. Tanenbaum was the New York City Chief of Homicide who had been the original Deputy Counsel for the Kennedy side of the HSCA. In this letter Garrison warned Blackmer about the perils of investigating the Kennedy case by using the usual tools of a police investigation. Garrison wrote that these methods would not be adequate in the JFK case. The main reason being that, in reality, Kennedy’s assassination was a covert operation. Which had layers of disguise around it.

That letter is still worth reading today. And I wish Charles Brandt had read it. Because his new book on the JFK case is a prime example of how a former criminal investigator can go off the rails by relying on the lessons he learned in prosecuting felonies back—in Brandt’s case—the state of Delaware. Brandt is the author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction, in the crime genre. He was a homicide investigator, prosecutor and finally Deputy Attorney General for Delaware. In his book on the JFK case, Suppressing the Truth in Dallas, he lets us know about his past career quite frequently. And this is a serious problem with the work.

For instance, fairly early in the book, Brandt states that Lee Oswald killed President Kennedy, wounded Governor John Connally and killed Officer J. D. Tippit. (Brandt, pp. 21-22) Brandt actually embarrasses himself with the following, “… the evidence is overwhelming that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally.” (p. 21) Which would mean that he buys the efficacy of CE 399. Very wisely, he does not actually say that. Because in explaining the Magic Bullet, the evidence would be shown to be rather underwhelming.

I will give the reader one example of what Brandt does say to justify all this. He says that Oswald fired only three shots, and these were heard by the workers on the fifth floor, below the sixth floor crime scene. (Brandt, p. 22)

I was quite disappointed when I read this. First, it ignores the evidence of Tom Alyea. Alyea was the Dallas photographer who was the first civilian on the sixth floor on November 22, 1963. He told Alan Eaglesham that when the police first found the shells, they were within a hand towel of each other. Which means they could not have been ejected by the rifle found on that floor. But Tom also said that they were then lifted up and dropped on the floor and this was the arrangement that was then photographed by the police. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 94)

As per the noise of the dropping of the shells above the workers on the fifth floor, again, this is dubious. One of those witnesses, Harold Norman, presents a problem for prosecutor Brandt. Because it appears Mr. Norman changed his story. On November 26th, in his first statement to the FBI, there is no mention at all about those three sounds he heard from above. And there is nothing in the record about Norman saying anything like that prior to that report. What makes this even more suspicious is that Norman’s new story did not appear until his Secret Service interview of December 2nd. (ibid, p. 55)

Why? Because one of the Secret Service agents who Norman changed his story for was the infamous Elmer Moore. The man who worked on Dr. Malcolm Perry to change his story and the man who pulled a gun on Church Committee witness James Gochenaur. Moore also confessed that Secret Service Chief James Rowley and Inspector General James Kelly helped to frame agent Abe Bolden for his attempt to expose the plot to kill Kennedy in Chicago. (See Oliver Stone’s film, JFK: Destiny Betrayed.)

Right here, Brandt’s case would be in a world of trouble in any kind of legitimate legal proceeding. Two of his underlying evidentiary theses for Oswald’s guilt are quite questionable. But that is just the beginning of the problematic side of this book. Brandt accepts the Warren Commission tenet of Lee Oswald being a communist. He can do this since he proffers none of the new evidence from people like author John Newman, HSCA investigator Betsy Wolf, British researcher Malcolm Blunt, or journalist Jeff Morley. That sum total would indicate that Oswald was not a communist. He was, in all probability, a CIA agent provocateur and FBI informant. The evidence adduced by Morley and Newman in Stone’s film JFK Revisited would be enough to show the problems with Brandt’s ideas about Oswald.

Needless to say, Brandt also thinks that Oswald himself went to Mexico City in late September and early October of 1963. Again, there are serious problems with that belief. Many of them are put forth in the quite important, 410-page Lopez Report declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1995. For instance, the lack of a picture of Oswald entering either the Cuban or Russian consulate, and the fact that Oswald himself spoke fluent Russian and the voice on the CIA tapes portray someone who spoke poor Russian. (DiEugenio, op. cit. pp. 287-300). In fact, it was the Commission treatment of Oswald in Mexico City which Jim Garrison once referred to as being perhaps the key to the plot. Since he was one of the first to suspect Oswald had been impersonated there. (Memo from Garrison to Lou Ivon, 1/19/68)

As part of his case against Oswald, Brandt states that Oswald fled the scene of the crime, namely the Texas School Book Depository. He accepts the Warren Report story about Oswald descending the sixth-floor stairs, and later being found in the second-floor lunch room by supervisor Roy Truly and policeman Marrion Baker; then leaving the building and going back to his rooming house. This is what he says: “…flight is powerful evidence of guilt…” (Brandt, p.22)

We have already shown that the idea that the sixth floor was a crime scene has some questions around it. But something that shocked me about the book is that I could find no mention of the three secretaries on the fourth floor: Sandy Styles, Victoria Adams, and Dorothy Garner. This is really strange in the face of the success of Barry Ernest’s book, The Girl on the Stairs and Rich Negrete’s follow up film, The Killing Floor. Those two works help express strong reservations that Oswald was on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting. And if he was not there, then how can this be powerful evidence of guilt? Also, we should not forget that people like Bart Kamp have presented evidence that the second-floor lunch encounter was an event created after the fact. It may not have happened as depicted in the Warren Report. (For more detail, click here.)

But to go further than that, if Oswald was fleeing the scene of the crime, why did he then take a bus back toward the scene of the crime? (Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, p. 159) Because, if one accepts the Warren Report, that is what he did. But then he got off that bus, walked several blocks, and hitched a ride in a taxi. But before he did that, he was about to get out of the cab and offer it to an elderly lady who asked that same driver to hail a taxi for her. (Lane, p. 165) The question is: Does a man who killed the president and wounded the governor of that state use public transportation to escape the scene of the crime? Does he then get off a bus, and then offer to give up his cab to someone he does not even know? Where is the urgency in this? How does it portray consciousness of guilt? I won’t even bring in the questions some writers have had about whether Oswald was really on that bus—the driver did not think it was him—or whether or not he was in that cab. Some believe that Oswald—or a double-- was actually taken out of Dealey Plaza by a dark complected Cuban in a Rambler station wagon, as testified to by Deputy Sherriff Roger Craig. (Lane, pp. 173-74)

But one of the most arresting characteristics about Brandt is his single-mindedness. He portrays little if any doubt about what he is writing. But yet, that attitude is undermined by several mistakes he makes about the factual record. For instance, in discussing the murder of J. D. Tippit, he says “A few brave eyewitnesses followed Oswald to a movie theater and watched him sneak in.” (Brandt, p. 23) I am not aware of any witnesses who followed Oswald from 10th and Patton, the scene of the Tippit shooting, to the Texas Theater, let alone “a few.” Most people who write books about the case should know that the two witnesses who complained about Oswald sneaking into the Texas Theater were Johnny Brewer and Julia Postal. The former worked at a shoe store down the street from the theater, and Postal was the ticket taker.

To show the reader how determined Brandt is to turn Oswald into the assassin, he actually writes that Oswald tried to kill Officer McDonald inside the theater as he was being apprehended. (Brandt, p. 23) This has been pretty much demolished by Hasan Yusuf. As per the Tippit shooting, Brandt follows the Warren Report on that one also: Oswald shot Tippit. Except in this instance, he uses the testimony of the HSCA’s Jack Tatum as his signal witness. Apparently, he missed Jack Myer’s essay exposing Tatum as rather problematic.

As the reader can guess by now, Brandt also fingers Oswald in the attempted murder of General Edwin Walker. He does not explain how the projectile in that case went from a 30.06 to a 6.5 mm bullet - -and also changed color, during the transfer from the Dallas Police to the FBI. Or how Oswald was never a suspect in the seven months that the police handled the case; but he quickly became the perpetrator shortly after the Commission and Bureau took over the Walker shooting. (DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 100-01)

Robert Tanenbaum once said about his experience as a homicide attorney, he always ended up with more questions than answers in handling a murder case. Well, Brandt seems to have nothing but answers in the JFK case. But as we have seen so far, he has not asked himself the right questions.

III

Having shown some of Brandt’s liabilities, what is his actual take on the crime? Well, in addition to saying that Oswald did what the Commission said he did, he then chalks it all up to the Mob. (Brandt references Robert Blakey several times in his book.) As I noted above, by ignoring all the latest work on Oswald, he can simply make minimal observations about the man, and then label him a tool of organized crime. Even though one of the pieces of evidence he uses -- the whole connection with his uncle Dutz Murret as part of the New Orleans criminal element -- was shown by the declassified record to be incorrect. Dutz Murret’s wife Lillian was examined by the House Select Committee on this point. She said that Dutz was not working for any mob connected bookie outfit in 1963. His son Eugene said the same thing to the HSCA. In fact Eugene said his father had disconnected with the Mob prior to 1959. (Interviews by HSCA with Lillian and Eugene, 11/6 and 11/7/78) So if there is any other significant evidence that Oswald was Mob associated, Brandt does not adduce it. (He does bring up an association much later, but we will deal with the problems with it in due time.)

The structural framework for Brandt’s book is one of the oddest I have ever read. In fact, in that regard it is up there with the likes of Mark Shaw and Lamar Waldron. He begins by making Earl Warren out to be a villain -- not just in the JFK case, but in what he did with criminal law in general. Which is kind of odd, since many prosecutors think that what Warren did in this area was a long time coming and had prior precedents to back it e.g. the exclusionary rule was introduced in the Weeks vs United States case in 1914. Other aspects of what Warren did, ordering defendants to have attorneys in the Gideon case, and reading a suspect his rights in the Miranda case, have usually been praised as ameliorating abuses by police and prosecutors.

But incredibly, Brandt wants to put forth the idea that Warren was covering up for the Mob. (Brandt, pp. 10-11). The way Brandt does this is rather odd. Throughout the book, the author uses a phone call from Lyndon Johnson in which the president alluded to international complications in the JFK case. (Brandt, p. 41) Brandt treats this as a kind of nebulous pretext that LBJ was using. Yet, to anyone who has read say, James Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable, it’s clear what Johnson was referring to. It was to the alleged appearance of Oswald at the Cuban and Russian embassy in Mexico City. (Douglass, p. 83, p. 335). Johnson attempted to intimidate Warren with the threat of atomic warfare due to Oswald’s activities at the two embassies, with the implication that Oswald killed Kennedy for the communists. And by all accounts, LBJ succeeded. For instance, after LBJ put the fear of God in him, Warren did not want the Commission to call any witnesses or have subpoena power. (DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 311-12) How Brandt did not know about this, or failed to understand it, is really incomprehensible. But it was this nuclear intimidation that made Warren into a paper tiger on the Commission.

From this faulty premise, Brandt goes on to postulate another faulty premise. Namely that Warren dominated the Commission members and the legal staff. (Brandt, p. 50) This is undermined by another event the author fails to mention. Warren could not even push through the chief counsel he wanted — namely Warren Olney. By all accounts Olney was too much of a maverick for FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, and commissioners Gerald Ford, John McCloy and Allen Dulles. (DiEugenio pp. 314-15) So, quite early, Warren had been cowed twice. Unlike what Brandt writes, the real power within the Commission was what I refer to as The Troika: Gerald Ford, John McCloy and Allen Dulles. With their handpicked chief counsel, J. Lee Rankin, they essentially ran the show. (DiEugenio, pp. 315-17)

Brandt’s attempts at creating historical context for his structure is so unfounded and illogical that it becomes kind of an exercise in the theater of the absurd. For instance, his discussion of the Bay of Pigs invasion is one of the worst I have seen. Consider this for starters: he writes that Robert Maheu testified to the Church Committee about his actions in the Bay of Pigs. (Brandt, p. 73). I asked: What actions? As far as I can see, Maheu had nothing to do with the Bay of Pigs. The best volume I know of on the subject, Bay of Pigs Declassified, by Peter Kornbluh, never mentions Maheu.

Brandt follows this with something just as inexplicable. He writes that the Bay of Pigs led directly to Kennedy’s death. The problem with writing this is that he never comes close to proving it. If that is not bad enough, his characterization of the operation is a bit ridiculous. Consider how he regards Allen Dulles telling JFK he would have a disposal problem with the Cubans. Brandt interprets this as the Cubans badmouthing Kennedy if the operation failed. (p. 81). This is not what Dulles meant. What the CIA Director was indicating was that if Kennedy did not go through with the operation, there would be a problem in resettling the thousands of Cuban exiles the CIA had assembled.

One of the most bizarre statements the author makes is that the Bay of Pigs constituted felony murder; an invasion of Cuba by the USA. I guess Brandt never heard of the Truman Doctrine, which dates from 1947. Or how it was used—to name just one instance-- in the CIA’s prior disaster in Indonesia in 1958, when Eisenhower tried to overthrow Sukarno.

Then we get to Brandt and Director of Plans Dick Bissell, the CIA’s chief architect and manger of the invasion. Brandt quotes Bissell as saying there would be an “air umbrella” accompanying the invasion. (Brandt, pp. 83-84) As many writers on this subject, like Larry Hancock and David Talbot have concluded, Bissell was a rather unreliable source about the operation. Kennedy had insisted that any further air operations after the preliminary raids—which Brandt all but ignores—were to be conducted from an air strip on the island. (Kornbluh, pp. 125-27). Since no beachhead was ever established, these launches could not be made. Two reasons that the beachheads were not secured are due to lies the CIA had told Kennedy: 1.) There was no element of surprise, and 2.) There were no defections.

Another fact that Brandt never mentions is crucial. Bissell and Director Allen Dulles both later confessed that they knew the invasion would fail. But they were banking on Kennedy intervening with direct American forces to bail out the operation rather than have it collapse. (Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy, pp. 521-22) When Kennedy learned about this duplicity, he decided to fire the top level of the Agency: Dulles, Bissell, and Deputy Director Charles Cabell. I could find no trace of any of this in Brandt.

Brandt continues in his vein as a very poor historian. He says that the Bay of Pigs invasion included a top-secret plan to murder Castro. (Brandt, p. 85) This is false. There was no such plot included in the designs of the plan. That whole affair was a completely separate operation secretly initiated and managed david talbot cover brothers look inside by the CIA. Brandt makes this all the worse by writing that this plot was hatched by President Eisenhower, CIA director Dulles and Director of Plans Bissell and was then executed by President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

To say this is horse manure is an insult to horses. Any real historian would know that the CIA Inspector General Report on the plots to kill Castro was declassified back in the nineties. In two places in that report it specifically states that the CIA had no presidential approval for these plots. (For instance, see pp. 132-33.) But Brandt then doubles down on this and says Operation Mongoose also included assassination plots. Again, this is not true.

But we later see why Brandt does this. He wants to argue that these plots gave the Mob blackmail power over John Kennedy. If Kennedy never knew of them and never authorized them, then such is not the case. And it creates another large fault line in his narrative. He adds to this later by saying that Bobby Kennedy concluded that the Mob killed President Kennedy. The best book on Robert Kennedy’s inquiry into his brother’s death is probably David Talbot’s Brothers. In that book, RFK considered three main culprits: the CIA, the Mob and the Cuban exiles. He never came to a definite conclusion. According to Talbot that was going to happen when he won the presidency.

Nov. 5

World Crisis Radio, Strategic Historical Commentary: 1933 in Germany or 1934 in US? The choice Is in Your Hands! Webster G. Tarpley, author and historian, right, Nov. 5, 2022 (60:40 mins.). 36 million early voters nationwide by late Friday, a midterm record, while Trump is reportedly preparing to announce a new bid for power on November 14; That makes this is a referendum — on Trump!

MAGA is now the party of Quislings appeasing Putin, as shown by Rep. Green’s pledge to betray Ukraine by cutting off all US assistance; Kremlin still rooting for Dem defeat;

AG Garland wanted his job, so he should face up to his responsibility to indict the coup leader within a month after the election — or resign; No to the obvious copout of a Special Prosecutor, which would postpone justice past the November 2024 elections and perhaps forever;

Stakes include civil war, with models including: the polycentric model of the French Wars of Religion, c. 1560-1600, a series of 9 regional conflicts plus assassinations and massacres involving Catholics and Calvinist Huguenots; Victims estimated at 2 to 4 million dead; Rebellious nobility used religious appeal to get mass support vs monarchy; andGermany’s Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, marked by fascist militas, left and right wing putsches, and 350 murders by the Konsul political assassination bureau, culminating in Hitler’s seizure of power, with QAnon-style irrational cults;

Want to avoid these nightmares? Vote the straight Democratic ticket from now on!

Breaking: Rusty Bowers sees fascism; Oprah endorses Fetterman over her protege Oz, plus Val Demings, Mandela Barnes, Cortez Masto, Beto, Warnock, Stacy Abrams, and Cheri Beasley; Harry Styles backs Beto in Texas; Support Adrian Fontes, a tough Democrat for Arizona Secretary of State, challenging the egregious MAGAT Finchem!

Nov. 2

President Biden speaks at Union Station in D.C. on Wednesday (AFP photo by Jim Watson via Getty Images).

President Biden speaks at Union Station in D.C. on Wednesday (AFP photo by Jim Watson via Getty Images).

Washington Post, Biden warns GOP could set nation on ‘path to chaos’ as democratic system faces strain, Rosalind S. Helderman and Yasmeen Abutaleb, Nov. 2, 2022. The president delivered his warning in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol and just days after Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked.

Signs of strain in the nation’s democratic system mounted Wednesday with less than a week left before the midterm elections, as President Biden warned that candidates who refuse to accept Tuesday’s results could set the nation on a “path to chaos.”

Biden’s grim assessment in a speech Wednesday evening came as the FBI and other agencies have forecast that threats of violence from domestic extremists are likely to be on the rise after the election. In Arizona, voters have complained of intimidation by self-appointed drop-box monitors — some of them armed — prompting a federal judge to set strict new limits. And the GOP has stepped up litigation in multiple states in an effort to toss out some ballots and to expand access for partisan poll watchers.

Speaking at Washington’s Union Station — steps from the U.S. Capitol, which was attacked by a pro-Trump mob in the wake of the nation’s last major election — Biden warned of an ongoing assault on American democracy. The president spoke as a growing number of major Republican candidates have said they may follow in former president Donald Trump’s footsteps and refuse to concede should they lose.

“It’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And it is un-American,” Biden said. “As I’ve said before, you can’t love your country only when you win.”

A majority of GOP nominees deny or question the 2020 election results

The virtually unprecedented presidential message — a plea to Americans to accept the basic tenets of their democracy — came as millions of voters have already cast their ballots or are planning to go to the polls on Election Day, and as some election officials expressed confidence that the system would hold.

Biden spoke days after an assailant armed with a hammer broke into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and, according to police and prosecutors, bludgeoned her 82-year-old husband, Paul. Biden opened by addressing the gruesome early Friday morning assault.

“We must, with one overwhelming unified voice, speak as a country and say there’s no place, no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America, whether it’s directed at Democrats or Republicans,” he said. “No place, period. No place, ever.”

stewart rhodes

Washington Post, Oath Keeper Rhodes had violent message for Trump after Jan. 6, witness says, Rachel Weiner, Nov. 2, 2022. Four days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, above, tried to tell President Trump it was not too late to use paramilitary groups to stay in power by force, according to testimony Wednesday in federal court.

If he did not, protesters “should have brought rifles” to Washington, and “we could have fixed it right then and there,” Rhodes said during a Jan. 10 recorded meeting, boasting that he would have killed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Rhodes made the violent comments at a meeting in Texas with Jason Alpers, who described himself on the witness stand as a military veteran and co-founder of Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG). That organization played a key role in spreading false claims about the 2020 election through misleading and inaccurate reports about voting machine software.

On the stand, Alpers said he had an “indirect” line to Trump’s “inner circle,” without elaborating.

That apparent relationship is why Rhodes wanted to meet, Alpers testified. He said he recorded the meeting to accurately “provide information to President Trump.” What he got, he said, disturbed him enough to eventually go to the FBI.

Alpers took the stand in the sixth week of trial for Rhodes and four others accused of taking part in a seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government and planning to block the lawful transition of presidential power by force.

Kellye SoRelle, who is charged separately from Rhodes and has been described in court as both his girlfriend and an attorney for the Oath Keepers, was also at the meeting, Alpers testified.

“Here is the thing, we’re gonna fight,” Rhodes is recorded saying. “We’re not gonna let them come get our brothers. We’re going to fight, the fight’s going to be ours.”

And if he had known on Jan. 6 that Trump would never invoke the Insurrection Act, Rhodes said, he would have gone further that day — including assassinating a Democratic leader.

“If he’s not going to do the right thing, and he’s just gonna let himself be removed illegally, then we should have brought rifles,” Rhodes says on the recording. “We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang f------- Pelosi from the lamppost.”

Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, is currently hospitalized after being attacked by a man who officials say was looking to kill her.

Rhodes in the recording, also called the riot “a good thing in the end,” because it “showed the people that we have a spirit of resistance.”

But he said if Trump left office, “everyone that was at the Capitol” would be in danger of being charged with “felony murder … because someone died.” SoRelle is heard agreeing: “I know it’s gonna happen.”

What to know about the Oath Keepers sedition trial: Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of Oath Keepers, is charged with seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 riot. He is accused of guiding a months-long effort to unleash politically motivated violence to prevent the swearing-in of President Biden. Rhodes is the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far. Five members of the extremist group Oath Keepers, including leader Stewart Rhodes, face trial. Prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Rhodes and his group intentionally conspired to use force to prevent President Biden’s swearing-in. The trial is an important step in the wider probe, analysts say.

Politico, Trump lawyers saw Justice Thomas as 'only chance' to stop 2020 election certification, Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein and Nicholas Wu, Nov. 2, 2022. Thomas is the justice assigned to handle emergency matters arising out of Georgia and would have received any urgent appeal of Trump’s lawsuit to the Supreme Court.

Donald Trump’s attorneys saw a direct appeal to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their best hope of derailing Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election, according to emails newly disclosed to congressional investigators.

“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 31, 2020, email to Trump’s legal team. Chesebro contended that Thomas would be “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.”

“I think I agree with this,” attorney John Eastman replied later that morning, suggesting that a favorable move by Thomas or other justices would “kick the Georgia legislature into gear” to help overturn the election results.

The messages were part of a batch of eight emails — obtained by POLITICO — that Eastman had sought to withhold from the Jan. 6 select committee but that a judge ordered turned over anyway, describing them as evidence of likely crimes committed by Eastman and Trump. They were transmitted to the select committee by Eastman’s attorneys last week, but they have not been publicly released.

Tech Dirt, Analysis and Opinion: Bullshit Reporting: The Intercept’s Story About Government Policing Disinfo Is Absolute Garbage, Mike Masnick, Nov. 2, 2022. Do not believe everything you read. Even if it comes from more “respectable” publications.

The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that “leaked” documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming it reveals the “smoking gun” of how the Biden administration was abusing government power to censor them on social media.

The only problem? It shows nothing of the sort.

The article is garbage. It not only misreads things, it is confused about what the documents the reporters have actually say, and presents widely available, widely known things as if they were secret and hidden when they were not.

The entire article is a complete nothingburger, and is fueling a new round of lies and nonsense from people who find it useful to misrepresent reality. If the Intercept had any credibility at all it would retract the article and examine whatever processes failed in leading to the article getting published.

Let’s dig in. Back in 2018, then President Donald Trump signed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act into law, creating the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as a separate agency in the Department of Homeland Security. While there are always reasons to be concerned about government interference in various aspects of life, CISA was pretty uncontroversial (perhaps with the exception of when Trump freaked out and fired the first CISA director, Chris Krebs, for pointing out that the election was safe and there was no evidence of manipulation or foul play).

While CISA has a variety of things under its purview, one thing that it is focused on is general information sharing between the government and private entities. This has actually been really useful for everyone, even though the tech companies have been (quite reasonably!) cautious about how closely they’ll work with the government (because they’ve been burned before). Indeed, as you may recall, one of the big revelations from the Snowden documents was about the PRISM program, which turned out to be oversold by the media reporting on it, but was still problematic in many ways. Since then, the tech companies have been even more careful about working with government, knowing that too much government involvement will eventually come out and get everyone burned.

With that in mind, CISA’s role has been pretty widely respected with almost everyone I’ve spoken to, both in government and at various companies. It provides information regarding actual threats, which has been useful to companies, and they seem to appreciate it. Given their historical distrust of government intrusion and their understanding of the limits of government authority here, the companies have been pretty attuned to any attempt at coercion, and I’ve heard of nothing regarding CISA at all.

That’s why the story seemed like such a big deal when I first read the headline and some of the summaries. But then I read the article… and the supporting documents… and there’s no there there. There’s nothing. There’s… the information sharing that everyone already knew was happening and that has been widely discussed in the past.

Let’s go through the supposed “bombshells”:

Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

[Snip]

I had tremendous respect for The Intercept, which I think has done some great work in the past, but this article is so bad, so misleading, and just so full of shit that it should be retracted. A credible news organization would not put out this kind of pure bullshit.

October

Oct. 29

World Crisis Radio, Commentary: On hundredth anniversary of Mussolini’s march on Rome, attacker targets Speaker Pelosi, Webster G. Tarpley (historian, author, right), Oct. 29, 2022 (77:41 mins.). Would-be killer severely wounds husband Paul Pelosi, showing fascist threat is real today.

Pelosi demonized in countless GOP cable ads; Corrupt corporate media reach new low with their fatuous narrative of red wave and Democratic defeat; To the contrary: 17 million have voted early so far, with over 1.3 million in Georgia, while Republicans tend to wait for Election Day; Harvard Youth poll shows 40% of those 18-29 intend to vote, with 57% of them leaning Democratic; Polls cannot reflect massive post-Dobbs pro-choice registrations, who will now vote;

Ornstein warns of deliberate falsifications by dishonest pollsters; The role of dark money in punditry;

Jayapal first releases, then repudiates appeasement letter signed by 30 Dems calling for negotiations with Putin just as Kremlin dictator escalates his dirty bomb threats to Ukraine and McCarthy announces GOP will betray Kiev; Ultra-left pasionaria is shown unfit for leadership role in Democratic caucus; As with Hitler in 1938, negotiation with Putin is a fool’s errand;

New UK Premier Sunak expected to impose the most brutal killer austerity seen in Europe in many moons;

Despite media gaslighting, Dem success on scale of New Deal Congress in 1934 remains within reach reach; All Democrats and people of good will must mobilize now!

Washington Post, Attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband follows years of GOP demonizing her, Ashley Parker, Hannah Allam and Marianna Sotomayor, Oct. 29, 2022. This year, the House speaker emerged as the top member of Congress maligned in political ads.

In 2010, Republicans launched a “Fire Pelosi” project — complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames — devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker.

Eleven years later, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joked that if he becomes the next leader of the House, “it will be hard not to hit” Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel.

And this year, Pelosi — who Republicans have long demonized as the face of progressive policies and who was a target of rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — emerged as the top member of Congress maligned in political ads, with Republicans spending nearly $40 million on ads that mention Pelosi in the final stretch of the campaign, according to AdImpact, which tracks television and digital ad spending.

The years of vilification culminated Friday when Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was attacked with a hammer during an early-morning break-in at the couple’s home in San Francisco by a man searching for the speaker and shouting “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” according to someone briefed on the assault.

Police arrested the suspect, 42-year-old David DePape, who attacked Paul Pelosi, 82, and authorities plan to charge him with attempted murder and other crimes, San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said at a news conference Friday. Paul Pelosi was taken to a hospital and is expected to make a full recovery, the speaker’s office said.

Washington Post, Assailant shouted ‘Where is Nancy?’; Paul Pelosi undergoes surgery for skull fracture
Washington Post, What we know about the attack and the suspect now in custody
Washington Post, Youngkin draws ire with Pelosi comment that Democrats call insensitive, Oct. 29, 2022.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and husband Paul Pelosi (New York Times photo by Doug Mills in 2019).

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and husband Paul Pelosi (New York Times photo by Doug Mills in 2019).

New York Times, Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Is Seriously Injured in Hammer Attack by Intruder, Kellen Browning, Tim Arango, Luke Broadwater, Holly Secon, Oct. 29, 2022. As leaders from across the political spectrum condemned the attack, Paul Pelosi underwent surgery for a skull fracture. The police had a suspect in custody.

New York Times, Pelosi Attack Highlights Rising Fears of Political Violence, Catie Edmondson, Oct. 29, 2022. The assault on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband comes as threats against members of Congress have increased in recent years.

Members of Congress have watched warily in recent years as threats and harassment against them have crescendoed, privately worrying that the brutal language and deranged misinformation creeping into political discourse would lead to actual violence.

The assault of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, inside their San Francisco home early Friday morning by an intruder who shouted “Where is Nancy?” and bludgeoned him with a hammer before being taken into custody by police seemed to confirm their worst fears, vividly bringing to life the acute danger facing elected officials amid a rise in violent political speech.

And it revealed the vulnerabilities in security around members of Congress and their families — even a lawmaker as powerful and wealthy as Ms. Pelosi, who is second in line to the presidency and has her own security detail — as midterm congressional campaigns reach their frenzied final push.

Nearly two years after supporters of former President Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, inspired by his lies of a stolen election, sending members of Congress and the vice president fleeing for their lives, the toxic stew of violent language, conspiracy theory and misinformation that thrives in digital spaces continues to pose a grave threat.

“When we see things like what happened last night at the speaker’s home; when we see things like plots to kidnap governors; when we see overt acts ramping up; we see, frankly, a whole host of indicators suggesting that we’re really at a crisis point,” said Peter Simi, an associate professor at Chapman University who has studied extremist groups and violence for more than 20 years.

Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who is among the most threatened members of the House, said the attack on Friday was a “realization” for her and her husband.

“We used to theoretically talk about what would happen if they found our children when they came to look for us; what would happen if they found our loved ones when they came to look for us,” Ms. Omar said on MSNBC. “Now we know.”

While threats have proliferated from every corner of the political spectrum, the Department of Homeland Security has warned that the United States faces growing danger from “violent domestic extremists” emboldened by the Jan. 6 attack, and motivated by anger over “the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives” — a reference to Mr. Trump’s claims that have been echoed by Republicans and right-wing activists.

New York Times, Twitter, Once a Threat to Titans, Now Belongs to One, Kevin Roose, Oct. 29, 2022. A decade ago, the social media platform was a tool for those challenging authority. The powerful now use it for their own goals, Kevin Roose writes.

A decade ago, when Twitter — then a scrappy, young microblogging service — burst into the mainstream, it felt like a tool for challenging authority.

Pro-democracy activists in Libya and Egypt used Twitter to help topple dictatorships. Americans used it to occupy Wall Street. And in 2013, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing an unarmed Black teenager named Trayvon Martin, #BlackLivesMatter took root on Twitter.

These campaigns fueled one of the defining ideas of the 2010s: that social media was an underdog’s dream, a tool for bottom-up organizing that would empower dissidents and marginalized groups, topple corrupt institutions and give ordinary people the ability to communicate on equal footing with tycoons and tyrants. Or, as the Chinese activist and artist Ai Weiwei put it in 2010, “Twitter is the people’s tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources.”

That narrative — shaky as it might have been all along — officially ended this week, when Twitter became the property of the richest man in the world.

Elon Musk, the billionaire industrialist whose on-again, off-again bid for Twitter this year has been marked by chaos and confusion, has now added the company to a portfolio that includes Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company.

The deal, which cost Mr. Musk and his investment partners $44 billion, made history for several reasons. It was the largest buyout in tech history and the first time in years that a major social media network has been sold to an outsider.

It was also a symbolic bookend to a decade in which social media evolved to be, in many ways, more useful to the powerful than the powerless.

elon musk sideview Politico, Musk owns Twitter — and Washington awaits Trump's return, Rebecca Kern, Oct. 28, 2022 (print ed.). Elon Musk, shown above, will own Twitter, after the two sides finally closed a $44 billion deal Thursday to sell the company to the world’s richest man.

Musk’s takeover — reported by multiple news outlets on Thursday night — could have huge implications for the future of Washington’s favorite social media app, especially if former President Donald Trump is allowed back on the platform, and if Musk loosens the rules to prevent the spread of hate speech and misinformation.

With just 12 days until the midterm elections, a resurrected Trump Twitter account could have electoral implications, giving the former president a megaphone to again challenge election results, blast his opponents and spread falsehoods.

What exactly Musk does next is an open question, to say nothing of Trump.

In an effort seemingly aimed at easing concerns from nervous advertisers, Musk, a self-professed “free-speech absolutist,” promised on Thursday that the platform would not descend into “a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.”

New York Times, Analysis: The Moguls Have Been Unleashed, David Streitfeld, Oct. 29, 2022 (print ed.). Silicon Valley moguls used to buy yachts and islands. Now they are rich enough, and perhaps arrogant enough, to acquire companies they fancy.

Forget about the endless drama, the bots, the abrupt reversals, the spectacle, the alleged risk to the Republic and all we hold dear. Here is the most important thing about Elon Musk’s buying Twitter: The moguls have been unleashed.

In the old days, when a tech tycoon wanted to buy something big, he needed a company to do it. Steve Case used AOL to buy Time Warner. Jeff Bezos bought Whole Foods for Amazon. Mark Zuckerberg used Facebook to buy Instagram and WhatsApp and Oculus and on and on. These were corporate deals done for the bottom line, even if they might never have happened without a famous and forceful proprietor.

Mr. Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter, which finally became a reality on Thursday, six months after he agreed to the deal, is different. It is an individual buying something for himself that 240 million people around the world use regularly. While he has other investors, Mr. Musk will have absolute control over the fate of the short-message social media platform.

It’s a difficult deal to evaluate even in an industry built on deals, because this one is so unusual. It came about whimsically, impulsively. But, even by the standards of Silicon Valley, where billions are casually offered for fledging operations — and even by the wallet of Mr. Musk, on most days the richest man in the world — $44 billion is quite a chunk of change.

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigative Commentary: The Trump administration: the worst counterintelligence disaster in U.S. history, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Oct. 28-29, 2022. In an era marked by unprecedented events, it is not hyperbole to state that the Donald Trump administration and the twice-impeached disgraced ex-president's post-presidency represent the worst counterintelligence disaster in U.S. history.

An examination by WMR of court records, including criminal cases dealing with violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and Trump's misappropriation of highly-classified documents at his private properties, points to over a dozen foreign intelligence services, most of them hostile to U.S. national interests, having gained access to America's most guarded secrets.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary QAnon: Russia-style, Wayne Madsen, left, author and former Navy intelligence officer, Oct. 26-27, 2022. Russia's dangerous religious rhetoric is setting the stage for modern-day pogroms in Ukraine.

Oct. 27

New York Times, Garland Formally Bars Justice Dept. From Seizing Reporters’ Records, Charlie Savage, Oct. 27, 2022 (print ed.). The rule codifies and expands a policy he issued in 2021, after it came to light that the Trump administration had secretly gone after records of reporters for The Times, The Washington Post and CNN.

The Justice Department on Wednesday formally banned the use of subpoenas, warrants or court orders to seize reporters’ communications records or demand their notes or testimony in an effort to uncover confidential sources in leak investigations, in what amounts to a major policy shift.

The rules institutionalize — and in places expand — a temporary policy that Attorney General Merrick B. Garland put in place in July 2021, after the revelation that the Justice Department, under Attorney General William P. Barr, had secretly pursued email records of reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.

“These regulations recognize the crucial role that a free and independent press plays in our democracy,” Mr. Garland said in a statement.

“Because freedom of the press requires that members of the news media have the freedom to investigate and report the news, the new regulations are intended to provide enhanced protection to members of the news media from certain law enforcement tools and actions that might unreasonably impair news gathering.”

The broad prohibitions are a major change in how the Justice Department has come to approach leak investigations in the 21st century, when it began a crackdown that spans administrations of both parties and has put pressure on reporting on matters of national security.

The publisher of The Times, A.G. Sulzberger, who was put under a gag order in 2021 that shielded from his own newsroom’s view a legal fight over the email logs of Times journalists, praised the new policy while calling on Congress to pass a law further strengthening such protections.

“We applaud the Justice Department for taking this important step, which will allow journalists to perform the crucial work of informing the public without fear of legal consequences,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “We encourage Congress to enact a federal shield law to help ensure that these reforms are lasting.”

Exceptions to the policy are narrow. Among others, it does not apply to situations in which a reporter is under investigation for something unconnected to news gathering, situations in which a member of the news media is deemed an agent of a foreign power or a member of a foreign terrorist group, or “when necessary to prevent an imminent or concrete risk of death or serious bodily harm.”

The Justice Department developed the regulation in consultation with press freedom advocates like Bruce D. Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Mr. Garland also met with representatives from The Times, The Post, The Associated Press, CBS, CNN, Dow Jones, NBC and The New Yorker.

Those conversations led to several adjustments about potentially critical issues, like how “news gathering” is defined. According to participants, the Justice Department originally intended to define it in a way that was limited to the passive receipt of government secrets. But the final version now covers the act of pursuing information.

The regulation defines “news gathering” as “the process by which a member of the news media collects, pursues, or obtains information or records for purposes of producing content intended for public dissemination,” including “classified information” from confidential sources.

The Justice Department is also said to have removed espionage from a list of criminal activities that are excluded from protected news gathering.

The final regulation does not cover criminal acts “committed in the course of obtaining information or using information.” Those include breaking and entering; theft; unlawfully gaining access to a computer or computer system; unlawful surveillance or wiretapping; bribery; or aiding or abetting or conspiring to engage in such criminal activities.

Emptywheel, Analysis: DOJ Rethinks — But In A Few Areas, Expands — Access To Media Content, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Emptywheel, Oct. 27, 2022. In a story on the new media guidelines DOJ rolled out yesterday, Charlie Savage reveals what representatives of the press think they got in the new guidelines, in addition to a formal codification of broader restrictions on the use of legal process to find real journalists’ sources:

The language in question appears to cover things like encrypted dropboxes, something that journalists liked to compare (inaptly) to the charge against Julian Assange of attempting to hack a password for Chelsea Manning. Thus far, multiple criminal prosecutions show that dropboxes have not thwarted DOJ from prosecuting those who submitted documents into them.

Oct. 26

Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick is overseeing litigation that could require Elon Musk to follow through on his deal to buy Twitter (Photo by Eric Crossan via New York Times).

New York Times, Elon Musk Seems to Answer to No One. Except for a Judge in Delaware, Lauren Hirsch, Oct. 26, 2022. The chief judge of Delaware’s Chancery Court gave Mr. Musk until Friday to acquire Twitter. She is also the judge in at least one other case involving him.

Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick has become a very important person in the rambunctious life of Elon Musk.

The Delaware Chancery Court judge has given Mr. Musk until Friday to close his long-promised, $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter. If he doesn’t, Judge McCormick will preside over a trial in November that could end with Mr. Musk being forced to make good on the deal he made with Twitter in April.

The 43-year-old judge is also expected to preside over another case involving Mr. Musk in November. A Tesla shareholder accused him in a lawsuit of unjustly enriching himself with his compensation package while running the electric vehicle company, which is Mr. Musk’s main source of wealth. The package, which consisted entirely of a stock grant, is now worth around $50 billion based on Tesla’s share price.

Judge McCormick is also overseeing three other shareholder lawsuits against Mr. Musk, though it is not yet clear whether those will go to trial, too.

elon musk 2015 The woman who suddenly has a great deal of influence over Mr. Musk, right, comes from a much different world than the jet-setting, South African-born billionaire. The daughter of a high school football coach and an English teacher, Judge McCormick was raised in Smyrna, Del., a town with roughly 13,000 people about 14 miles away from Dover, the state capital.

Judge McCormick now oversees the 230-year-old court that is considered the foremost destination for adjudicating disputes over mergers and acquisitions and other corporate disagreements. She has been both quick-witted and blunt in months of hearings for Twitter’s lawsuit. And her decision to grant Mr. Musk a delay to a trial that was expected to begin earlier in October also displayed unusual flexibility — and pragmatism — to legal experts.

Oct. 22

Washington Post, Mar-a-Lago classified papers held U.S. secrets about Iran and China, Devlin Barrett, Oct. 22, 2022 (print ed.). At least one of the documents seized by the FBI at former president Trump’s Florida club describes Iran’s missile program, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Some of the classified documents recovered by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club included highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran and China, according to people familiar with the matter. If shared with others, the people said, such information could expose intelligence-gathering methods that the United States wants to keep hidden from the world.

At least one of the documents seized by the FBI describes Iran’s missile program, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Other documents described highly sensitive intelligence work aimed at China, they said.

Unauthorized disclosures of specific information in the documents would pose multiple risks, experts say. People aiding U.S. intelligence efforts could be endangered, and collection methods could be compromised. In addition, other countries or U.S. adversaries could retaliate against the United States for actions it has taken in secret.

The warrant authorizing the search of former president Donald Trump’s home said agents were seeking documents possessed in violation of the Espionage Act. (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

The classified documents about Iran and China are considered among the most sensitive the FBI has recovered to date in its investigation of Trump and his aides for possible mishandling of classified information, obstruction and destruction of government records, the people said. The criminal probe is unfolding even as the Justice Department and a district attorney in Georgia investigate alleged efforts by Trump and others to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and as a House select committee has subpoenaed the former president seeking documents and testimony related to those allegations.

World Crisis Radio, Biden pledges to enact Roe into law on first day of new Congress! Webster G. Tarpley (historian, author, right), Oct. 22, 2022 (132.50 mins.). McCarthy shares his nightmare agenda with Punch Bowl News — Woe to the vanquished: Speaker wannabe plans early betrayal of Ukraine, citing exorbitant costs to justify treachery; National ban on abortion looms, with no exceptions likely; debt ceiling and threat of default to be used to extort genocidal austerity cuts vs Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and other vital programs; revenge against Trump foes to be paramount; Freak show in committees starting with power-mad thespian Marjorie Taylor Green;

Trump subpoenaed by House January 6 committee to testify on damning list of possible charges, starting mid-November; Bannon gets four months in the hoosegow for contempt of Congress; Appeals court orders Lindsey Graham to appear before Atlanta grand jury in Trump vote extortion attempt; CA Judge David Carter tells Eastman to deliver his emails with Trump to House committee since attorney-client privilege is voided by crime-fraud exception; Trump insisted on fake numbers despite warnings from attorneys, removing ”advice of counsel” defense; Trump aide Kashyap Patel appears before MaL documents grand jury; Special Master phase moves toward close; Trump takes Fifth in E. Jean Carroll defamation case;

Truss forced out as British Premier by City and Bank of England after attempted orgy of ”pro-growth” tax cuts for the rich and corporations paid for by borrowing; Her supply side agenda thought to resemble McCarthy’s doomed plans for hoped-for GOP House; Top-down Tory leadership contest underway;
Meloni takes over in Italy after 86-year old Berlusconi signals his support for Putin against Ukraine; Salvini denied police ministry;

Election personnel across US hit by death threats and harassment from MAGAt fascist hooligans; Time for priggish Merrick Garland to protect poll workers by indicting anti-election bigwigs!

”Federalist” columnist opines that western civilization is dead, so conservatives should style themselves radicals and counter-revolutionaries –against 1776 and 1865?

Biden sees inflection point of world history, approximating Schiller’s celebrated punctum saliens.

lindsey graham npr Washington Post, Graham asks Supreme Court to block his Georgia 2020 election testimony, Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow, Oct. 22, 2022 (print ed.). South Carolina Republican was summoned for grand jury questioning on attempts to overturn results in that state.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) asked the Supreme Court on Friday to block his required appearance before a Georgia grand jury investigating possible attempts by President Donald Trump and his allies to disrupt the state’s 2020 presidential election.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Thursday turned down Graham’s attempt to block a subpoena from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D), in which the lawmaker claimed a sitting senator is shielded from testifying in such investigations.

A district court judge had said Graham must appear, but narrowed the range of questions that prosecutors can ask.

Without a stay of the lower courts’ rulings, Graham’s lawyer, Donald F. McGahn, told the Supreme Court, “Sen. Graham will suffer the precise injury he is appealing to prevent: being questioned in state court about his legislative activity and official acts.”

McGahn, a former counsel to Trump, asked Justice Clarence Thomas, the justice designated to hear emergency requests from the 11th Circuit, for at least a temporary stay. He said Graham could be required to testify “in less than a month.”

Thomas could act on the request on his own or refer the matter to the entire court.

Mar-a-Lago classified papers had sensitive secrets about Iran, China

The Atlanta grand jury investigating alleged 2020 presidential election interference has already heard testimony from several Trump lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Boris Epshteyn. Willis also wants to question former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Graham would be asked to testify about calls he made to Georgia election officials soon after Trump lost the election to Joe Biden. Prosecutors say Graham has “unique knowledge” about the Trump campaign and the “multistate, coordinated efforts to influence the results” of the election in Georgia and elsewhere.

New York Times, Lindsey Graham Must Testify in Georgia Elections Inquiry, Court Rules

steve bannon exlarge

Washington Post, Steve Bannon sentenced to 4 months in prison for contempt of Congress in Jan. 6 probe, Spencer S. Hsu and Rachel Weiner, Oct. 22, 2022 (print ed.). The Trump strategist, shown above in a file photo, displayed ‘defiance and contempt’ rather than cooperate, prosecutors said, after the House committee asked about Bannon’s advance knowledge of events.

Stephen K. Bannon, a right-wing podcaster and longtime adviser to former president Donald Trump, was sentenced Friday to four months in prison and a $6,500 fine for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Bannon is set to become the first person incarcerated for defying a congressional subpoena in more than half a century under a statute that is rarely prosecuted. The judge said he would stay imposition of the penalty pending Bannon’s expected appeal.

Bannon’s case probably won’t be the final clash involving the work of the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot and preceding events, as lawmakers Friday issued a subpoena to Trump himself.

“Flouting congressional subpoenas betrays a lack of respect for the legislative branch, which exercises the will of the people of the United States,” U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols said. Bannon “has expressed no remorse” and “has not taken responsibility for his refusal to comply with his subpoena.”

Bannon was convicted at trial in July on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to respond to the Jan. 6 committee’s request for testimony and documents. Both misdemeanors are punishable by at least 30 days and up to one year in jail. But Bannon has said he plans to appeal his conviction because Nichols ruled that Bannon could not argue at trial that he relied on his lawyer’s advice or believed his cooperation was barred by Trump’s claim of executive privilege.

Prosecutors asked for six months in jail and the maximum $200,000 fine, saying in a court filing that Bannon showed “a total disregard for government processes and the law” in ignoring the congressional subpoena, while smearing the House investigation and the justice system with “rhetoric that risks inspiring violence.” Bannon asked for probation, saying a mandatory-minimum jail sentence would be unlawful because his intent was not criminal or “willful.”

Bannon declined to speak in court Friday, saying only, “My lawyers have spoken for me, your honor.”

But in a raucous sidewalk appearance outside afterward, the bombastic Bannon claimed he would be vindicated by American voters next month if Republicans, as predicted, take control of the House of Representatives, and he said that Attorney General Merrick Garland would be impeached and “removed from office.”

“Today was my judgment day by the judge,” Bannon said as demonstrators called him a traitor. But, he added, “on November 8, the American people will weigh judgment, and we will prove the Biden administration ends [that] evening.”

Bannon is one of a half-dozen Trump associates to be convicted of federal crimes including fraud, making false statements and foreign influence-peddling, although Trump pardoned most of those who remained loyal before leaving office. More are now in legal jeopardy in investigations of attempts to subvert the 2020 election results as well as the storage of classified information at Trump’s Florida residence. M. Evan Corcoran, who is representing Bannon, has been counseled by colleagues to hire a criminal defense lawyer because he told the Justice Department that Trump had handed over all classified information at Mar-a-Lago before an FBI raid found more.

The committee had wanted to ask Bannon about his role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence and Republican lawmakers into refusing to affirm the 2020 election results, culminating in the mob assault on the Capitol. Lawmakers in their subpoena noted that Bannon was involved in Trump supporters’ strategy meetings the day before the riot and that he predicted “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”

Justice Matters via MSNBC and Twitter, Opinion: Bannon remaining free pending appeal is the very definition of “a travesty of justice,” Glenn Kirschner, Oct. 22, 2022. Trump-appointed-judge Carl Nichols is an embarrassment to the federal bench.

"I am embarrassed for the criminal justice system and I am saddened and sickened that that is the result for Steve Bannon." @glennkirschner2
on the Trump appointed judge handing Steve Bannon a less severe sentence than prosecutors recommended #CrossConnection

Washington Post, Trump subpoena from Jan. 6 committee sets deadlines for testimony, documents, Jacqueline Alemany, Oct. 22, 2022 (print ed.). It is not clear whether Trump will comply with the subpoena, which could set off a protracted legal debate.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol issued a subpoena Friday for testimony and documents from former president Donald Trump, setting off a potentially prolonged legal battle with little historic precedent.

The committee requested that Trump testify under oath on or about Nov. 14, as well as any documents by Nov. 4 related to the former president’s sweeping efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of presidential power.

While the subpoena was anticipated, it is a remarkable escalation in the investigation into whether the deadly violence on Jan. 6 was the direct result of Trump’s actions in the weeks after he lost his bid for reelection.

“As demonstrated in our hearings, we have assembled overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of your former appointees and staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multipart effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and to obstruct the peaceful transition of power,” Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and vice chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said in a statement, part of a 10-page letter to Trump.

House Jan. 6 Select Investigating Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS.) (Photo via NBC News).

House Jan. 6 Select Investigating Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS.) ((Photo via NBC News).

New York Times, Trump Could Harness Unresolved Legal Issues to Resist Jan. 6 Panel’s Subpoena, Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer, Oct. 22, 2022. If former President Trump turns down the drama of testifying, his legal team could mount several constitutional and procedural arguments in court.

If former President Donald J. Trump decides to fight the subpoena issued to him on Friday by the House committee investigating his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, his lawyers are likely to muster a battery of constitutional and procedural arguments for why a court should allow him not to testify.

In the most basic sense, any legal arguments seeking to get Mr. Trump off the hook would merely need to be weighty enough to produce two and a half months of litigation. If Republicans pick up enough seats in the midterm elections to take over the House in January, as polls suggest is likely, they are virtually certain to shut down the Jan. 6 committee, a move that would invalidate the subpoena.

The issues raised by the extraordinary subpoena, which the panel announced at a hearing last week, are too complex to be definitively resolved before a potential change of power in the House, said Mark J. Rozell, a George Mason University professor and author of “Executive Privilege: Presidential Power, Secrecy and Accountability.”

“We are in a constitutional gray area here where there is no clear guidance as to exactly what should happen,” Mr. Rozell said. “That gives the former president some leeway to put forward various creative legal arguments and ultimately delay the process until it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Emptywheel, Trump Subpoena: The Revolution Will Not Be Signaled, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 22, 2022. The January 6 Committee has released the subpoena it sent to the former President.

It requires document production by November 4 and a deposition starting on November 14. Notably, the first deadline is before the election.

It focuses not just on Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, summon mobsters, and raise money off of it. There are several questions focused on obstruction: both document destruction and witness tampering.

The witness tampering one reads:

The subpoena mentions Signal at least 13 times. Which strongly suggests the President was in direct communication with some of the coup plotters via the mobile app.

The subpoena also asks the former President for all communications devices he used between November 3, 2020 and January 20, 2021. In the Stone trial, there were about nine devices identified on which he may have received a call during the 2016 election, and there are several others — such as that of his then bodyguard Keith Schiller — who weren’t discussed in the trial. Tony Ornato also receives a close focus in this subpoena; I wonder if he was receiving calls for the then-President on the Secret Service phone that has since been wiped.

Washington Post, In middle of Jan. 6 riot, Oath Keepers chief reached out to Proud Boys, prosecutors say, Rachel Weiner and Spencer S. Hsu, Oct. 22, 2022 (print ed.). Prosecutors gave a blow-by-blow of the actions in and around the Capitol of five charged with seditious conspiracy.

Fifteen minutes after rioters broke into the U.S. Capitol building’s west side on Jan. 6, 2021, according to court testimony, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes sent a brief message to an encrypted chat group that included Proud Boys leader Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio.

“Back door of the Capitol,” Rhodes wrote.

He then called Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs, who immediately began leading a group toward the doors on the Capitol’s east side.

The third week of the government’s case in the seditious conspiracy trial of Rhodes, Meggs and three other associates culminated in a minute-by-minute account of the Oath Keepers’ actions on Jan. 6 that prosecutors say shows how the group’s leaders plotted “rebellion” beforehand, greenlit violence while at the Capitol and appeared to coordinate their actions with other figures pushing to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Whitney Drew, a former FBI counterterrorism special agent with experience in Army intelligence, testified as prosecutors deployed audio, video and computers animations to give jurors an immersive path through the defendants’ actions that day.

Prosecutors mined material from Kellye SoRelle, described in court as both an Oath Keepers attorney and Rhodes’s girlfriend. SoRelle, who was recently charged with obstructing the vote count, started a four-minute long Facebook livestream at the east side of the Capitol at 2:12 p.m. just as a crowd began moving up the steps. Proud Boys simultaneously broke into the building on the west side, according to court records, and some moved to the east.

“This is what happens when the people are pissed and when they rise up,” SoRelle told followers in a video played for jurors. “That’s how you take your government back. You literally take it back.”

One minute after SoRelle’s video ended, a group of Oath Keepers led by Meggs arrived near where SoRelle was standing, Drew testified. Rhodes was also approaching, after telling an encrypted Oath Keepers leadership chat that it was Trump supporters, not leftist agitators, responsible for the action. He likened the crowd of “pissed off patriots” to “the Sons of Liberty,” American colonists who carried out the Boston Tea Party.

Washington Post, Capitol rioter gets 34-month term for assaulting police and journalist, Paul Duggan, Oct. 22, 2022 (print ed.). A former carpenter from Pennsylvania who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers and a photojournalist during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced Friday to 34 months in prison after apologizing in court for his actions and saying he behaved like “an antagonistic jerk” on the day of the siege.

“Regretfully, I let my emotions get the best of me, and I’m very disappointed,” the defendant, Alan W. Byerly, 55, told Judge Randolph D. Moss in U.S. District Court in Washington. “But make no mistake: This was no excuse for me to put my hands on anyone. … I was being an antagonistic jerk, and I still can’t understand why I was like that.”

Byerly, a divorced father and grandfather who had lost his carpentry job during the pandemic, said he was experiencing “depression, frustration and isolation” when he traveled to Washington to attend President Donald Trump’s incendiary rally Jan. 6 on the Ellipse, at which Trump repeated his debunked claim that rampant voter fraud had led to his defeat in the 2020 election.

Carrying an electric stun device “for protection,” Byerly said, he then joined thousands of Trump supporters as the mob stormed the Capitol while Congress was meeting to confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. Later, in the months before his July 2021 arrest, Byerly said, “I felt so bad” about the riot that “I wouldn’t even tell the closest people in my life about January 6th.”

In court filings, the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said Byerly, who was not accused of entering the Capitol, was present on the building’s Lower West Terrace when rioters accosted an Associated Press photographer and hauled him down a flight of stairs.

“At the bottom of the stairs, [Byerly] and three other individuals grabbed the journalist and pushed, shoved and dragged him,” the office said in a statement. “Byerly grabbed the journalist with both hands and pushed him backward. He then continued to push and drag him away from the stairs.”

Emptywheel, Bill Barr Complains That His Special Counsel Was Unable To Match Robert Mueller’s Record Of Success, (Marcy Wheeler, right), Oct. 22, 2022. Even before the Igor Danchenko trial, Billy Barr declared victory in defeat — arguing that if John Durham could just “fill in a lot of the blanks as to what was really happening,” the inevitable acquittal would still give Durham an opportunity to spin fairy tales about what Durham imagines happened.

“What these cases show is that these are difficult cases to win,” Barr said. “There’s a reason it takes so long, and you have to build up the evidence because at the end of the day, you’re going before these juries that aren’t going to be disposed to side with the people they view as supporting Trump.”

But despite Durham’s limited success in the courtroom, Barr defended the investigation he ordered, saying the courtroom was allowing Durham to establish a record of what had occurred with the so-called Russiagate investigation.

Durham’s entire project is a continuation of Barr’s unprecedented politicization of DOJ, one that not only places Republicans attempting to secretly work for hostile nations above the law, but that has made the country far less safe in many other ways.

It’s not just Durham prosecuted two men without any real hope of winning conviction, all to expose things that aren’t crimes. It’s that Billy Barr hired him to do so.

World Crisis Radio, Biden pledges to enact Roe into law on first day of new Congress! Webster G. Tarpley ( historian, author, right), Oct. 22, 2022 (132.50 mins.). McCarthy shares his nightmare agenda with Punch Bowl News — Woe to the vanquished: Speaker wannabe plans early betrayal of Ukraine, citing exorbitant costs to justify treachery; National ban on abortion looms, with no exceptions likely; debt ceiling and threat of default to be used to extort genocidal austerity cuts vs Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and other vital programs; revenge against Trump foes to be paramount; Freak show in committees starting with power-mad thespian Marjorie Taylor Green;

Election personnel across US hit by death threats and harassment from MAGAt fascist hooligans; Time for priggish Merrick Garland to protect poll workers by indicting anti-election bigwigs!

”Federalist” columnist opines that western civilization is dead, so conservatives should style themselves radicals and counter-revolutionaries –against 1776 and 1865?

Biden sees inflection point of world history, approximating Schiller’s celebrated punctum saliens.

Mobilize without stint from now through November 8 to prevent MAGAt dictatorship!

Oct. 17

New York Times, Analysis: The House Jan. 6 Panel Has Tried to Show Criminality, a High Bar, Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater, Oct. 17, 2022. The committee has yet to decide on making criminal referrals. But its decision to subpoena former President Trump is in keeping with its prosecutorial style.

In the final moments of what will most likely be the last hearing for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, its vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, returned to a theme that has run through the committee’s work: criminality.

Without naming names or providing any specifics, Ms. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, asserted that the committee now has “sufficient information to consider criminal referrals for multiple individuals” to the Justice Department for prosecution.

It is not clear whether the committee will follow through and take the largely symbolic step of issuing a criminal referral for former President Donald J. Trump or anyone who worked with him to overturn the election and encourage the mob of his supporters who entered the Capitol seeking to block or delay certification of his defeat.

But throughout its investigation and hearings, the committee has operated with a prosecutorial style, using the possibility of criminality like a cudgel in extraordinary ways. It has penetrated Mr. Trump’s inner circle, surfaced considerable new evidence and laid out a detailed narrative that could be useful to the Justice Department in deciding whether to bring charges.

The panel is expected to issue a subpoena as soon as Tuesday seeking to compel Mr. Trump to testify before it wraps up its investigation and issues a final report.

The committee’s effects on related criminal investigations are clear to see. Federal prosecutors and authorities conducting a local investigation in Georgia have found themselves interviewing some of the same witnesses already interviewed by the committee and issuing subpoenas for some of the same evidence already obtained by Congress.

But in suggesting that its goal is to spur criminal charges, the committee is setting a standard for success that is beyond its power to carry out — and one that could risk overshadowing the work it has done in documenting Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power and marshal his supporters to help him.

New York Times, Trump Hotels Charged Secret Service Exorbitant Rates, David A. Fahrenthold and Luke Broadwater, Oct. 17, 2022. House Inquiry Finds, Records obtained by the House Oversight Committee show the former president’s properties charged more than $1.4 million to agents protecting him and his family.

The Trump Organization charged the Secret Service up to $1,185 per night for hotel rooms used by agents protecting former President Donald J. Trump and his family, according to documents released on Monday by the House Oversight Committee, forcing a federal agency to pay well above government rates.

The committee released Secret Service records showing more than $1.4 million in payments by the department to Trump properties since Mr. Trump took office in 2017. The committee said that the accounting was incomplete, however, because it did not include payments to Mr. Trump’s foreign properties — where agents accompanied his family repeatedly — and because the records stopped in September 2021.

The records the panel obtained provided new details about an arrangement in which Mr. Trump and his family effectively turned the Secret Service into a captive customer of their business — by visiting their properties hundreds of times, and then charging the government rates far above its usual spending limits.

The records also make clear that Mr. Trump’s son Eric — who ran the family business while his father was in office — provided a misleading account of what his company was charging.

U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel John Durham, right, is shown in a file photo with international consultant Igor Danchenko, defendant in a false statement prosecution that marks the culmination of a Durham probe that began with his Trump administration appointment in 2019 to investigate Trump allegations that the president was being smeared by suspicions that Trump and his campaign team acted in cooperation with Russian interests and entities before the 2016 presidential election.

Washington Post, Jury begins deliberating in case of Steele dossier source, Salvador Rizzo, Oct. 17, 2022. A jury on Monday began deliberating the case of Igor Danchenko, a private researcher who was a primary source for a 2016 dossier of allegations about former president Donald Trump’s ties to Russia and who was later accused of lying to the FBI about where he got his information.

The trial in federal court in Alexandria, Va., is a major test for special counsel John Durham, who lost his only other case that had gone to trial as part of his nearly 3½-year examination of the FBI’s 2016 probe of the Trump campaign.

Trump predicted Durham would uncover vast corruption inside the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies that investigated his campaign’s links to Russia. So far, no one charged by the special counsel has gone to prison, and only one government employee has been accused of criminal wrongdoing. In both trials this year, Durham has argued that people lied to manipulate the FBI, not that investigators corruptly targeted Trump.

In May, a jury in D.C. federal court acquitted cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, who also was accused by the special counsel of lying to the FBI. A former FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, was sentenced to one year of probation after admitting in a 2020 plea deal with Durham that he had altered a government email used to justify secret surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

A grand jury that Durham was using in Alexandria is now inactive, people familiar with the matter have told The Washington Post. It is unclear whether a grand jury the special counsel was using in D.C. is still active. Barr directed Durham to write a report, and it will be up to Attorney General Merrick Garland to decide how much of it, if any, to release to the public.

A longtime federal prosecutor who served as U.S. attorney in Connecticut during the Trump administration, Durham personally argued much of the government’s case against Danchenko. Prosecutors said Danchenko misled the FBI officials asking for the identity of his sources in 2017, after the agency determined the researcher was the source behind some of the most explosive allegations about Trump in reports compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.

Igor Danchenko in 2021. A jury will now decide whether Mr. Danchenko is guilty of lying to the F.B.I. about one of his sources for information in the so-called Steele dossier (Photo by Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images).

New York Times, Jury Deliberates in Trial of Analyst Who Gathered Steele Dossier Claims, Linda Qiu and Charlie Savage, Oct. 17, 2022. A Trump-era special prosecutor and a defense lawyer delivered starkly clashing views in closing arguments on Monday about the motives of Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst who was a key contributor to the so-called Steele dossier.

A jury will now decide whether Mr. Danchenko is guilty of lying to the F.B.I. about one of his sources for information in the Steele dossier, a compendium of unsubstantiated assertions that Donald J. Trump and his 2016 campaign were colluding with Russia.

The case is a major test of the special counsel, John H. Durham, who was appointed in 2019 to investigate the origins of the F.B.I.’s inquiry into the nature of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. An earlier indictment brought by Mr. Durham ended with an acquittal in May, and the trial appears to be his last chance to obtain a conviction in a case he developed.

In the closing arguments, a prosecutor working for Mr. Durham asserted that Mr. Danchenko had clearly lied to the F.B.I. and that his false assertions had a material effect. He pointed to part of the dossier that the F.B.I. cited to bolster applications to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser with ties to Russia.

“This defendant’s lies caused intensive surveillance on a U.S. citizen,” said Michael Keilty, an assistant special counsel.

In his own remarks, Mr. Durham sought to broaden the case, telling jurors that “the whole house of cards of the dossier crumbles” under the weight of the evidence.

But the defense said the government’s own evidence showed that Mr. Danchenko did not lie. The lawyer, Stuart A. Sears, characterized Mr. Danchenko as a valuable and honest asset to the F.B.I. who unwittingly became embroiled in a politically charged investigation. Mr. Durham, he said, was intent on proving crimes “at any cost” and presumed Mr. Danchenko guilty from the start.

“He’s trying to help the F.B.I., and now they’re indicting him for it,” Mr. Sears said.

After BuzzFeed published the dossier in 2017, public suspicions of Mr. Trump escalated, but it has since been discredited — in part because Mr. Danchenko told the F.B.I. that its author, the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, had exaggerated gossip that Mr. Danchenko had gathered for him.

Mr. Trump and his supporters have falsely sought to conflate the dossier with the official investigation into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, but the F.B.I. did not open the inquiry based on the dossier and the final report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, did not cite anything in it as evidence.

The F.B.I. pointed to part of the dossier in applying to wiretap the former Trump campaign adviser. An inspector general’s investigation uncovered that the bureau had continued to do so after talking to Mr. Danchenko without informing a surveillance court that there was reason to doubt the dossier’s credibility.

The dossier was political opposition research indirectly funded by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee. They paid a law firm, which paid a research firm, which in turn subcontracted to a company run by Mr. Steele. Mr. Steele hired Mr. Danchenko to canvass contacts in Russia and Europe about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in Russia.

Mr. Danchenko verbally conveyed rumors that Mr. Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia and that Russia had a blackmail tape of Mr. Trump with prostitutes in a hotel room in Moscow. But during an interview with the F.B.I., Mr. Danchenko said that he first saw the dossier when BuzzFeed published it and that Mr. Steele had exaggerated his statements, portraying uncorroborated gossip and speculation as fact.

The F.B.I. made Mr. Danchenko a paid confidential source and he disclosed his sourcing for the rumors. While he did not provide information substantiating the dossier, the trial has shown that the bureau found his network of contacts valuable for identifying unrelated Russian influence operations in the United States.

Emptywheel, John Durham’s Missing Signals (And Facetime And Whatsapp And Ipad), Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), right, Oct. 16-17, 2022. As is common, the case agent for the Durham investigation against Igor Danchenko, Ryan James, was the last witness on Friday. Case agents are often used to summarize the case against a defendant and introduce boring communications records that the prosecution will rely on in the closing arguments.

By description, he’s the single current or former FBI employee of five who testified at the trial (the others being Brian Auten, Kevin Helson, Amy Anderson, and Brittany Hertzog) who described no expertise in Russian counterintelligence.

James’ job was to introduce a bunch of travel and communications records that — Durham will claim on Monday — rule out the possibility that Igor Sergei Millian (shown in a screenshot from ABC-TV). Danchenko got a call from an anonymous caller, probably around July 24 or 25, 2016, someone Danchenko claimed to believe was Sergei Millian, left. This is the burden Durham chose to take on when he charged Danchenko with four counts — the four remaining after Judge Anthony Trenga dismissed the fifth on Friday — about whether Danchenko was lying on four different occasions in 2017 when he described what he had believed in July 2016.

[snip]

Whether you find Danchenko’s stories credible or not, the fact of the matter is that Durham charged Danchenko with lying in these conversations in spite of the fact that his primary witnesses both attested, sometimes under oath, that they believed him.

There’s no telling what the jury will do. Durham will use testimony from a validation review to suggest that at least one person at the FBI, someone who didn’t have a personal investment in Danchenko’s success, suspected he was a GRU spy. Durham will likely argue that Auten and Helson only believe Danchenko because they’re incompetent.

New York Times, Oath Keepers Leader Bought Arsenal of Weapons Ahead of Jan. 6, Alan Feuer and Zach Montague, Oct. 17, 2022. The prosecution in the seditious conspiracy trial of Stewart Rhodes and other members of the militia introduced evidence that he spent as much as $20,000 on rifles, ammunition and other equipment.

In the days before a pro-Trump mob — including members of his own organization — broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, went on a cross-country weapon-buying spree.

Setting out for Washington from Texas, his home state, Mr. Rhodes stopped at least six times, bank records show, purchasing items like assault-style rifles, ammunition and scopes. Sometimes he dropped into gun shops and sometimes he conducted the transactions in parking lots with private sellers he met online.

By the time he reached his destination, prosecutors said on Monday at the trial of Mr. Rhodes and four of his subordinates on seditious conspiracy charges, the Oath Keepers leader had spent as much as $20,000 on what amounted to a small arsenal that included at least three rifles and an Israeli-made semiautomatic shotgun.

Prosecutors have not yet told the jury precisely what Mr. Rhodes did with the weapons he amassed as he and a lawyer for the Oath Keepers, Kellye SoRelle, made their way from Texas, through Mississippi and Tennessee, to the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, Va., where they stayed on Jan. 6.

New York Times, Justice Dept. Recommends Bannon Be Sentenced to 6 Months in Prison, Alan Feuer and Luke Broadwater, Oct. 17, 2022. Stephen Bannon, who is set to be sentenced on Friday, deserved a penalty harsher than the minimum term, prosecutors said.

Palmer Report, Analysis: Steve Bannon is being sentenced to prison this week – and that’s just the half of it, Bill Palmer, Oct. 17, 2022. This week, career criminal Steve Bannon will be sentenced in federal court for the pair of contempt of Congress charges he was convicted on earlier this year.

Due to the staggered manner in which criminal charges have been brought against Bannon at various levels of government, Bannon’s prison sentence for contempt is likely to be rather short. This is likely to set off widespread confusion, and a fair amount of mistaken “they’re getting away with it all” sentiment. So let’s make sure we’re all caught up on what’s actually happening to Bannon.

Bannon’s sentencing this week will be solely for the contempt charges. Bannon could realistically get anything from a month to two years in prison. This particular crime gives a lot of latitude to the judge on sentencing, and the judge will have to decide whether or not to take Bannon’s prior pardoned charges into account, along with Bannon’s ongoing inappropriate public remarks about his trial.

But whatever prison sentence Bannon ends up with this week, it’ll be just the half of it. Actually it’ll be a lot less than half of it, because contempt is the least severe charge that Bannon is facing. Bannon is separately set to stand trial next month on New York state-level charges of fraud – and if he’s convicted, that’ll likely come with a far longer prison sentence than whatever he ends up getting this week for contempt.

In addition, we’re still waiting to see if the DOJ ends up bringing additional January 6th related charges against Steve Bannon, which would also likely come with a more severe prison sentence than the current contempt charge.

But when Bannon is sentenced this week, the thing to keep in mind is that contempt of Congress is considered a fairly minor crime, which is why it comes with a shorter prison sentence. Bannon’s state-level fraud trial next month puts him in far greater jeopardy of spending a long time in prison. Bannon’s prison sentence for contempt will just be round one of his worsening legal troubles.

Emptywheel, On Steve Bannon’s Epically Bad Faith, Emptywheel, right, Oct. 17, 2022. The government’s sentencing memo for Steve Bannon, which asks Judge Carl Nichols to sentence Bannon to six marcy wheeler months in prison for blowing off the January 6 Committee subpoena, mentions his bad faith thirteen times (and his failure to make any good faith effort once).

From the moment that the Defendant, Stephen K. Bannon, accepted service of a subpoena from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (“the Committee”), he has pursued a bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt.

[snip]

It also describes how Bannon refused to tell the Probation office how much money he had; DOJ used that refusal to ask for a $200,000 fine as a result.

Even now that he is facing sentencing, the Defendant has continued to show his disdain for the lawful processes of our government system, refusing to provide financial information to the Probation Office so that it can properly evaluate his ability to pay a fine. Rather than disclose his financial records, a requirement with which every other defendant found guilty of a crime is expected to comply, the Defendant informed Probation that he would prefer instead to pay the maximum fine. So be it. This Court should require the Defendant to comply with the bargain he proposed when he refused to answer standard questions about his financial condition. The Court should impose a $100,000 fine on both counts—the exact amount suggested by the Defendant.

Oct. 16

HuffPost, Chilling Memo To FBI Official Warned Of Sympathy In Bureau For Jan. 6 Rioters, Mary Papenfuss, Oct. 15-16, 2022. A "sizable percentage of the employee population felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol,” a person wrote in an email to Paul Abbate.

A recently released email written by someone familiar with FBI operations warned a bureau official just days after last year’s insurrection of sympathy within the FBI for the Jan. 6 rioters.

The memo sent via email to now FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate — first revealed by NBC News — is the latest ominous sign of increasing politicization of policing organizations that are supposed to enforce the law without partisan bias.

“There’s no good way to say it, so I’ll just be direct: from my first-hand and second-hand information from conversations since Jan. 6, there is, at best, a sizable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol,” the email reads.

The sender’s name has been redacted, which was part of a trove of documents released this week by the FBI in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The message is marked “external email” but may have been written by a current or former agent or official on a personal computer. The writer refers to a past FBI “unit” and talking with agents. Abbate, who was then associate deputy director of the bureau, personally responded to the writer with a thank you for sharing the information. The sender addressed Abbate by his first name.

In the message, the sender referred to an unnamed retired senior FBI analyst who had packed his Facebook page with “Stop the Steal” propaganda, referring to former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the election he lost was rigged.

The email noted that several agents insisted the violence at the Capitol was little different than Black Lives Matter protests. Still, Capitol rioters were being singled out because of “political correctness.”

Violence was far more significant at the Capitol riot that apparently involved a bid to disrupt the U.S. government. Nearly 900 people have been arrested and charged with crimes for involvement in the insurrection.

The writer recounted “literally” having to “explain” to a fellow agent the difference between “opportunists burning and looting during [Black Lives Matter] protests that stemmed [from] legitimate grievance to police brutality vs. an insurgent mob whose purpose was to the execution of democratic processes at the behest of a sitting president. One is a smattering of criminals; the other is an organized group of domestic terrorists,” the message added.

The divide on law and order enforcement — often impacted by racism — is so pronounced in the bureau that the email author claimed Black agents were afraid to join SWAT teams for fear their co-workers would not protect them.

Oct. 15

World Crisis Radio, A century after Mussolini’s March on Rome, US voters must choose between 1922 and 1934, when FDR’s New Deal scored midterm gains! Webster G. Tarpley, right, historian and author, Oct. 15, 2022 (94:32 mins.). Time to purge federal agencies of Trump moles implicated in January 6 autogolpe! Latest January 6 hearings prove sabotage of Hill readiness by pro-Trump networks in FBI, Secret Service, Pentagon who left Congress undefended;

Film footage shows Pelosi, Schumer and Hoyer fighting to get police and Guard deployed to Capitol while Trump stooges stalled;

Supremes reject Don’s latest MaL motion, leaving early indictment as job one;

Corrupt television networks hide inflation decline of almost 1% from summer peak; Harping about Latinos and GOP, they forget that Hispanic jobless rate is down from 8.6% to an all-time record low of 3.8%;

Russia spews nuclear threats, mounts revenge attack on Ukraine with 100 missiles after Kerch bridge is crippled; G-7 nations pledge more support for Kiev, including air defense;

Beware GOP’s 2023 plans to destroy social safety net using debt ceiling to extort genocidal austerity; Yellen of Treasury must be ready to implement Fourteenth Amendment to prevent GOP default;

British pound sterling still on the brink of collapse as Truss fires Chancellor while rolling back wild tax cuts for rich; Italian neofascist coalition in crisis even before launch; Chinese Communists set for coronation of Xi, but Biden’s new semiconductor regs are ominous for Beijing; Pope condemns xenophobia and death penalty, posing problems for assorted fascist demagogues!

Oct. 9

maggie haberman confidence man

Washington Post, Book Review: Trump’s origins in a New York world of con men, mobsters and hustlers, Sean Wilentz, Oct. 9, 2022 (print ed.). In “Confidence Man,” Maggie Haberman puts special emphasis on Trump’s ascent in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Maggie Haberman hails from a New York City very different from Donald Trump’s dominion of glitz and criminality, but she knows that dominion well.

Raised in the household of a traditional shoe-leather New York Times reporter and a well-connected publicist, and now herself ensconced at the digitized Times, Haberman’s earliest assignments involved covering City Hall and its satellite ethical sinkholes for the New York Post and the Daily News. That singular education in New York corruption has stuck with her and sets her apart from her peers reporting on the Trump presidency and its seditious aftermath. It now distinguishes Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America as a uniquely illuminating portrait of our would-be maximum leader.

With a sharp eye for the backstory, Haberman places special emphasis on Trump’s ascent in a late 1970s and 1980s New York demimonde of hustlers, mobsters, political bosses, compliant prosecutors and tabloid scandalmongers. This bygone Manhattan that Tom Wolfe could only satirize in The Bonfire of the Vanities is the fundament to any understanding of what makes Trump tick.

“The dynamics that defined New York City in the 1980s,” Haberman observes, “stayed with Trump for decades; he often seemed frozen there.” Zombielike, he swaggers and struts and cons on the world’s largest stage, much as he did when gossip columnists fawned over him as The Donald; and he will continue his night of the living dead, with menacing success, until someone finally drives a metaphorical stake through his metaphorical heart.

The rote rap on Trump is that he was a bumptious, hyper-ambitious real estate developer from Queens who never earned the respect of the Manhattan society pooh-bahs and who vowed to beat them at their own game — a vow that eventually led him to the Oval Office, astonishing even Trump. That storyline appears in Confidence Man, but Haberman knows it is superficial.

Inside that cauldron of fakery, Trump, no rugged individualist, and padded with his father’s millions, gravitated to a specific milieu of arrivistes whom he equated with supreme power, class and ruthlessness. He held in especially high regard the bully George Steinbrenner, from the outer outer borough of Cleveland, and became a constant presence in the Boss’s Yankee Stadium box. (I’d not known until reading Haberman that Trump, a wimp when it came to sacking underlings, found his tag line for “The Apprentice” by impersonating Steinbrenner barking “You’re fired,” over and over, not least at the Yankees’ oft-discharged manager Billy Martin.)

djt roger stone Custom Off to one side there was the raffish schemer Roger Stone, left, a well-digger’s son from Norwalk, Conn., who got his start as one of the political saboteurs for Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign, and whose Washington lobbying mega-firm (with Paul Manafort as one of his co-partners) came to represent the Trump Organization’s interests. From the outermost borough of Adelaide, Australia, there was the unscrupulous media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who had already turned the liberal tabloid New York Post into a right-wing scandal sheet and who in 1985 completed the acquisition of 20th Century Fox that would eventually give the world Fox News, commanded by another member of the New York gang, Roger Ailes. There was also the high-profile, media-savvy U.S. attorney Rudy Giuliani, from Brooklyn like Sharpton, and he and Trump would circle each other until they seriously hooked up some years later.

djt roy cohn file Trump’s chief mentor, and a consigliere to most of the big shots named above, was the legendary underworld and overworld fixer Roy Cohn (shown with Trump at far right). The pampered son of a kingpin in Bronx Democratic politics, long notorious for his McCarthyite Red Scare grandstanding, Cohn, as Haberman details, connected Trump with Stone as well as with organized crime while giving him master classes in high-stakes con-man strategy and tactics. Whenever Trump today intimidates the press with threats of retaliation, whenever he defends his aggressions by claiming to be the victim, whenever he calls his accusers (especially if they represent the federal government) life-destroying, treasonous “scum,” he is channeling his mentor, Cohn.

Haberman offers plenty of material about how these men did it all with virtual impunity. Of course, there would be the occasional fines and sealed judgments — and Cohn was disbarred weeks before he died of AIDS, abandoned by Trump, who knew the score on being heartless. But as Haberman describes, Trump went to great lengths to square himself with a paragon of the city’s power elite, the longtime Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau, including making generous donations to Morgenthau’s pet charity, the New York Police Athletic League, the one charity commitment, Morgenthau would joke warmly, that Trump could be counted on honoring. Not until Cyrus Vance Jr., who had a fine pedigree but was no crusader, succeeded Morgenthau in 2010 did Trump and his properties, after Vance backed off for years, finally face serious investigation by the D.A.’s office — and even then, prosecutors on the case quit in protest when Vance’s successor suddenly seemed to drop it.

Confidence Man likewise enlightens about the massive oversights by the press and the broader world of publishing, especially in New York, not simply in failing to expose the corruption that Haberman catalogues but in creating and then abetting Trump’s celebrity. There were certainly exceptional naysaying reporters, notably Jack Newfield’s protege at the Village Voice, Wayne Barrett, who, at Newfield’s urging, dug deep into Trump’s shady dealings. Barrett’s and the Voice’s condemnations sparked a brief aborted federal investigation, but they weren’t about to shake the inertia at the most influential outlets, topped by the New York Times. Neither did the late lamented Spy magazine’s bull’s-eye satirical shots at the “short-fingered vulgarian” provoke inquiries, although they did provoke Trump to threaten lawsuits and are said to anger him to this day.

Some of the episodes in Haberman’s later chapters on Trump’s presidency have already stirred controversy. Beneath the buzz, though, many of the richest storylines from the Trump White House, as reported in “Confidence Man” and elsewhere, have a distinctly New York ring. “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump snapped in 2018, in anger at his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, the very conservative former senator from Alabama, who had recused himself from the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whom Trump eventually ousted.

Before he was twice impeached, Trump found his man, yet another New York mouthpiece, William Barr, who as attorney general happily did Trump’s bidding in, among other things, lying about the damning Mueller report on the Russian interference — until Trump lost reelection and Barr, well-schooled in transactional loyalty and with his reputation as a supposed “institutionalist” tarnished, declined recruitment into Trump’s coup and at the last minute jumped from the sinking ship. The manic and often antic crimes of Stone, pardoned and unpardoned, add another layer of continuity, a louche link with the old Cohn-centered netherworld.

Haberman’s contribution in Confidence Man, though, is much larger than its arresting anecdotes. Later generations of historians will puzzle over Trump’s rise to national power.

Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, is the author, most recently, of “No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding.”

Oct. 8

World Crisis Radio, Commentary: Shrinking Putin under fire from Kremlin insiders for catastrophic failure of Ukraine campaign, Webster G. Tarpley, right, historian and author, Oct. 8, 2022 (1:05:47 mins.). Russian command structure factionalized and breaking up: Chechen boss Kadyrov and top mercenary Prigozhin demand ouster of Defense Minister Shoigu, Chief of Staff Gerasimov, and Ukrainian front commander Col. Gen. Lapin as draft-age men flee conscription;

Biden reminds Putin that any use of nuclear weapons by Russia will lead to an apocalyptic Armageddon battle;

Ukraine forces secure Izyum and then Lyman on road into Luhansk in east; Ukrainian column moving down west bank of Dneiper River from Mylove towards Beryslav and Kherson; destruction of Dneiper bridges can lead to encirclement of Russian forces on west bank;

After Kim fires missile over Japan, US and South Korea respond with large-scale drills;

One month before midterm vote, October Surprise season: Herschel Walker scandal powerfully underlines central issues of GOP abortion hypocrisy and unfit candidates; In reply, pro-Trump FBI networks illegally leak grand jury material on Hunter Biden;

Anti-ballistic missile defense: use kinetic kill vehicles in short run before deploying layered laser defenses based on new physical principles;

Trump’s pals Putin and MBS procure OPEC oil production cut of 2 million bbl/day to help GOP;

US remains at lowest jobless rate in history; Hispanic unemployment rate is 3.8%, also the lowest in US history;

Previous fascist ideologues as enemy combatants: the cases of Giovanni Gentile and Alfred Rosenberg.

Oct. 7

Senior U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Laurence Silberman speaks at a memorial for the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia (Associated Press Photo by Susan Walsh).

Senior U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Laurence Silberman speaks at a memorial for the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia (Associated Press Photo by Susan Walsh).

New York Times, Laurence Silberman, Conservative Touchstone on the Bench, Dies at 86, Sam Roberts, Oct. 6, 2022 (print ed.). From his powerful perch on the D.C. appeals court, he voided gun controls and challenged press freedoms but also upheld the Affordable Care Act.

Laurence H. Silberman, a conservative federal appeals court judge and advocate of judicial restraint whose opinions on guns rights, press freedom, the Affordable Care Act and other crucial issues resonated widely and sometimes presaged Supreme Court decisions, died on Sunday at his home in Washington. He was 86.

His death was announced by of Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where Judge Silberman had sat since he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1985 and where he continued to adjudicate long after he assumed senior status in 2000. His son, Robert, said the cause was an infection.

Judge Silberman was unanimously confirmed by the Senate for six federal posts; was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, by President George W. Bush in 2008; and three times was shortlisted by Republican presidents for the Supreme Court.

He never got there, but his opinions on the D.C. appeals court, considered one of the most powerful benches in the country, could nevertheless be far-reaching.

Last year, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal described him as “one of the all-time giants of the federal bench” and perhaps “the most influential judge never to have sat on the Supreme Court.”

Judge Silberman defined judicial restraint not as acquiescence but as leaving it to Congress and other representative bodies to legislate and letting the federal courts decide whether those laws pass muster with the Constitution.

In 1988, for example, he wrote in an opinion that the Watergate-era law passed by Congress that allowed for the appointment of special prosecutors was unconstitutional because it interfered with the president’s powers. The Supreme Court disagreed, but the law eventually lapsed anyway.

In 2002, he wrote an opinion upholding a key provision of the post-9/11 Patriot Act that enabled law enforcement and intelligence officers to share information more easily.

In 2007, he ruled that the District of Columbia’s strict gun registration requirements and ban on carrying firearms violated the Second Amendment. In a decision that cheered gun-rights advocates, the Supreme Court momentously agreed with him, holding that bearing arms was an individual right.

And in 2011 he upheld the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which at the time required people to be insured. He wrote that individuals’ decisions to remain uninsured, in the aggregate, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce and were therefore fair game for federal regulation.

The Supreme Court went on to uphold the act on other grounds (and Congress later removed the insurance requirement), but Judge Silberman was applauded in some circles for his consistency in exercising judicial restraint, even in assessing the constitutionality of an emblematic Democratic initiative.

He was not unwilling to challenge judicial precedents, however.

In 2021, he delivered a scathing dissent in a libel case, urging the Supreme Court to overturn its 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan. That precedent said that to sustain a claim of libel against a public figure, a plaintiff had to prove that a published statement was known to have been false or was published with reckless disregard for whether it was true.

Arguing for a ruling that would make it easier for public figures to win libel suits, Judge Silberman said that The Times and The Washington Post had become “virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,” that “the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction,” that nearly all TV network and cable outlets are “a Democratic Party trumpet,” and that big tech companies censor conservatives.

“Democratic Party ideological control” of the media, he warned, could portend an “authoritarian or dictatorial regime.” His opinion on lowering the bar for libel suits, if not his same reasoning, was later echoed by the Supreme Court justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas.

Though a conservative paragon, Judge Silberman defied pigeonholing.

As solicitor in the Nixon administration’s Labor Department, he developed timetables for affirmative action, including numerical quotas that he later said he had initially hoped to avoid.

As under secretary of labor, he threatened to quit unless President Richard M. Nixon overruled a White House aide who sought to prevent the nomination of a Black labor expert as the Labor Department’s director for the New York region.

Judge Silberman said in 2017 that he had completed a draft of his memoirs but that they would not be for public consumption.

“If you write anything for publication, you’ve got to be accurate,” he said. “If you write for your grandchildren, you just have to be honest.”

“That’s the only people I care about,” he said.

Oct. 6

Coffee County historical marker and the county courthouse in Douglas, GA (Photo by Stephen Conn via Flickr, C BY-NC 2.0).

Coffee County historical marker and the county courthouse in Douglas, GA (Photo by Stephen Conn via Flickr, C BY-NC 2.0).

Going Deep With Russ Baker, Investigative Commentary: What Donald Trump Got Right About Voting Machines, Russ Baker, right, Oct. 6, 2022. The weird drama over the supposed “forensic experts” who messed with election software in a tiny Georgia county distracts from the real problem: Voting machines — and our elections — are indeed vulnerabe.

“Fair elections” was perhaps the animating factor in American politics in 2020. That summer, as we all know, Donald Trump seemingly began to prepare for a November loss by declaring ad nauseam that the only way he could lose was if the election was rigged — but the idea that the integrity of the election was at risk was first floated by Joe Biden, who predicted (accurately) as early as June that Trump would “try to steal” the election by casting doubt on mail-in ballots.

Since then, for most people not attending Trump’s post-presidential rallies, the issue has pretty much disappeared. Among “reasonable” people, it’s taken as axiomatic that our elections are secure. But that’s not true. It’s a crisis for our country, beyond the hundreds of election deniers running for key positions overseeing future elections, and the situation sets us up for future disasters.

Thanks for reading Going Deep with Russ Baker! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

We know all about that at WhoWhatWhy. Long before Trump hijacked this legitimate issue for illegitimate purposes with the “Stop the Steal” fantasy, we were one of the first news outlets to sound the alarm over the “chain of custody” of ballots and the vulnerabilities of electronic voting systems.

So-called “hybrid” voting machines, used to both create and mark and then scan and count barcoded paper ballots, can be manipulated in various ways that are difficult to detect. Hand-marked ballots, with the security of the chain of custody preserved and well documented, are probably the only way to ensure an election wasn’t hijacked.

Election integrity is a real concern. But once Trump commandeered the concept, many reasonable people saw any question of voting machine reliability as dangerous territory, the exclusive realm of MAGA and QAnon kooks.

The way legacy media is covering a ballot machine controversy in tiny Coffee County, GA, is not helping.

There, local GOP officials allowed some purported “election experts” — who were in fact Trump loyalists — to access official election computers and poll pads on January 7, 2021, under the cover story that they were looking for evidence that the 2020 election had indeed been stolen.

Exactly what they were up to is still a mystery, but one theory is that whatever they were doing tainted the Coffee County voting machines — and may have provided a blueprint for stealing future elections. For now, that’s just a theory. Georgia’s Republican election officials have repeatedly insisted that despite the curious visits and the so-called “forensic experts” accessing the machines, there was no sign of any tampering or other shenanigans.

Framed that way, Coffee County sounds like a sideshow. Yet it’s been an ongoing national story. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other major news organizations have been publishing bits of closed-circuit video footage and other evidence that increasingly show that the local GOP officials and their allies seem to have been evasive, had poor memory, or possibly lied outright about the incident.

Although the Post has played the story prominently and sought to keep its lead over other news outlets on it, something about the way in which the stories focused on the specific local characters and their actions obscures the larger issue — an issue that legacy media may be, understandably, fearful of highlighting.

georgia map Recent coverage gives the impression that the only reason the footage is public is a lawsuit. What they neglected to mention: That lawsuit, filed in 2018, was brought about because advocates had identified specific security flaws with internet-connected voting machines, like the ones used in Georgia and four other states.

The following year, observers found internet-connected voting machines, used to upload results from precincts, in 10 states. Ahead of 2020, cybersecurity experts identified 35 voting systems that could be reached — and breached — via the internet, despite insistence to the contrary from Jeanette Manfra, the then-assistant director for cybersecurity for the Department of Homeland Security.

This context was absent from the legacy media’s Coffee County coverage. Who cares that, after the election, a small forensic effort took place to examine the voting system used in a tiny county in Georgia? Neither the Post nor the Times has done a great job of highlighting and focusing public attention, front and center, on what’s at stake in this blurry footage. The Times did raise the point, but only in a final paragraph.

I tried to draw attention to the core problem in a previous newsletter. My point was that, under the guise of investigating possible wrongdoing, the people captured in the video might have been opening the door to actual wrongdoing — i.e., by obtaining the code used in the machines, they could potentially use it to tamper with the whole system.

Now, there’s a tiny bit of acknowledgment of this by state authorities in Georgia. Two weeks ago, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger — the same Brad Raffensperger whom outgoing President Donald Trump leaned on in the infamous January 2021 phone request to “find” him 11,780 votes — announced that even though nobody could point out exactly what might be amiss, Georgia would go ahead and replace the Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Coffee County anyway.

But that seems more like a distraction and damage control than anything else — since the actual problem is that the incursion could potentially allow people to access and influence voting equipment throughout the state. That’s the real issue: The overall voting system is potentially insecure. (Raffensperger claimed otherwise, as does this Department of Homeland Security report — but experts we’ve consulted for years vehemently disagree.)

And even worse, Georgia’s exposure to covert election manipulation could be the bellwether for the rest of the country.

With very tight elections anticipated in consequential US Senate and gubernatorial races in that state — races that have national implications — it’s deeply concerning that more attention is not being paid to the underlying risks.

Those risks are copious and varied: There’s no reliable paper trail to ensure that miscounts don’t happen accidentally or deliberately, and there are plenty of ways for miscounts to happen.

What happened in Georgia is this: The state bought a lot of ballot-marking devices (BMDs) designed to make voting easier for handicapped people but then made them mandatory for all in-person voters, even though there are grave concerns among experts that these machines have flaws that could potentially permit manipulation.

But you could read about the Trumpy weirdos in Coffee County for hours, and never pick up this vital takeaway.

***

The lack of attention paid by the media to the real problems with voting machines may be explained, in part, by the fact that news organizations have painted themselves into a corner. They’ve been telling their audience that there is nothing to Trump’s election manipulation claims — and they’re right: There’s no evidence to support his Stop the Steal circus.

But the stench of Trump’s Big Lie has had a peculiar and paradoxical impact on coverage of election security and integrity. Because, in their aversion to it, the legacy media have avoided granting even a shred of credence to anything Trump, or anyone associated with Stop the Steal, has been saying on this issue.

Unless this problem is given attention and gets fixed, election fraud could become endemic — in 2022, and beyond.

Oct. 4

stewart rhodes

Washington Post, Prosecutors outline Oath Keepers’ alleged roles in seditious conspiracy case, Rachel Weiner, Tom Jackman and Spencer S. Hsu, Oct. 4, 2022 (print ed.). Five members of the extremist group Oath Keepers, including leader Stewart Rhodes, above, face trial. Prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Rhodes and his group intentionally conspired to use force to prevent President Biden’s swearing-in. The trial is an important step in the wider probe, analysts say. Rhodes plans to testify, denies call to Trump: defense lawyer; Rhodes attorney corrected by judge as defense openings begin.

Opening statements occurred in the trial of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and other members of the extremist group who face seditious conspiracy and other charges in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Rhodes and four co-defendants — Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell — have pleaded not guilty to felony charges alleging that they conspired for weeks after the 2020 presidential election to unleash political violence to oppose the lawful transfer of power to Joe Biden.

Rhodes, founder and leader of Oath Keepers, is charged with seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 riot. He is accused of guiding a months-long effort to unleash politically motivated violence to prevent the swearing-in of President Biden. Rhodes is the most high-profile person charged in the investigation so far.

The defendants came from Texas, Florida, Ohio and Virginia, and allegedly led a group that traveled to Washington and staged firearms nearby before forcing entry through the Capitol Rotunda doors in combat and tactical gear.

New York Times, Investigation: They Legitimized the Myth of a Stolen Election — and Reaped the Rewards, Steve Eder, David D. Kirkpatrick and Mike McIntire, Oct. 4, 2022 (print ed.). On the day the Capitol was attacked, 139 Republicans in the House voted to dispute the Electoral College count. This is how they got there.

A majority of House Republicans last year voted to challenge the Electoral College and upend the presidential election. That action, signaled ahead of the vote in signed petitions, would change the direction of the party.

Five days after the attack on the Capitol last year, the Republican members of the House of Representatives braced for a backlash.

Two-thirds of them — 139 in all — had been voting on Jan. 6, 2021, to dispute the Electoral College count that would seal Donald J. Trump’s defeat just as rioters determined to keep the president in power stormed the chamber. Now one lawmaker after another warned during a conference call that unless Republicans demanded accountability, voters would punish them for inflaming the mob.

“I want to know if we are going to look at how we got here, internally, within our own party and hold people responsible,” said Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.

When another member implored the party to unite behind a “clarifying message” that Mr. Trump had truly lost, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, emphatically agreed: “We have to.”

More than 20 months later, the opposite has happened. The votes to reject the election results have become a badge of honor within the party, in some cases even a requirement for advancement, as doubts about the election have come to define what it means to be a Trump Republican.

The most far-reaching of Mr. Trump’s ploys to overturn his defeat, the objections to the Electoral College results by so many House Republicans did more than any lawsuit, speech or rally to engrave in party orthodoxy the myth of a stolen election. Their actions that day legitimized Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede, gave new life to his claims of conspiracy and fraud and lent institutional weight to doubts about the central ritual of American democracy.

Yet the riot engulfing the Capitol so overshadowed the debate inside that the scrutiny of that day has overlooked how Congress reached that historic vote. A reconstruction by The Times revealed more than simple rubber-stamp loyalty to a larger-than-life leader. Instead, the orchestration of the House objections was a story of shrewd salesmanship and calculated double-talk, set against a backdrop of demographic change across the country that has widened the gulf between the parties.

Oct. 1

This week's new official portrait of the U.S. Supreme Court

This week's new official portrait of the U.S. Supreme Court

New York Times, Editorial: The Supreme Court Has a Crisis of Trust, Editorial Board, Oct. 1, 2022. The Supreme Court’s authority within the American political system is both immense and fragile. Somebody has to provide the last word in interpreting the Constitution, and — this is the key — to do so in a way that is seen as fair and legitimate by the people at large.

What happens when a majority of Americans don’t see it that way?

A common response to this question is to say the justices shouldn’t care. They aren’t there to satisfy the majority or to be swayed by the shifting winds of public opinion. That is partly true: The court’s most important obligations include safeguarding the constitutional rights of vulnerable minorities who can’t always count on protection from the political process and acting independently of political interests.

But in the bigger picture, the court nearly always hews close to where the majority of the American people are. If it does diverge, it should take care to do so in a way that doesn’t appear partisan. That is the basis of the trust given to the court by the public.

That trust, in turn, is crucial to the court’s ability to exercise the vast power Americans have granted it. The nine justices have no control over money, as Congress does, or force, as the executive branch does. All they have is their black robes and the public trust. A court that does not keep that trust cannot perform its critical role in American government.

And yet as the justices prepare to open a new term on Monday, fewer Americans have confidence in the court than ever before recorded. In a Gallup poll taken in June, before the court overturned Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, only 25 percent of respondents said they had a high degree of confidence in the institution. That number is down from 50 percent in 2001 — just months after the court’s hugely controversial 5-to-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore, in which a majority consisting only of Republican appointees effectively decided the result of the 2000 election in favor of the Republicans. This widespread lack of confidence and trust in the nation’s highest court is a crisis, and rebuilding it is more important than the outcome of any single ruling.

john roberts o Chief Justice John Roberts, right, recently suggested that the court’s low public opinion is nothing more than sour grapes by those on the short end of recent rulings. “Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court,” he said in remarks at a judicial conference earlier in September.

This is disingenuous. The court’s biggest decisions have always angered one group of people or another. Conservatives were upset, for instance, by the rulings in Brown v. Board of Education, which barred racial segregation in schools, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, liberals were infuriated by Bush v. Gore and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates to dark money in politics. But overall public confidence in the court remained high until recently.

The actual cause of its historic unpopularity is no secret. Over the past several years, the court has been transformed into a judicial arm of the Republican Party. This project was taking shape more quietly for decades, but it shifted into high gear in 2016, when Justice Antonin Scalia died and Senate Republicans refused to let Barack Obama choose his successor, obliterating the practice of deferring to presidents to fill vacancies on the court. Within four years, the court had a 6-to-3 right-wing supermajority, supercharging the Republican appointees’ efforts to discard the traditions and processes that have allowed the court to appear fair and nonpartisan.

As a result, the court’s legitimacy has been squandered in the service of partisan victories.

The five most radical right Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are shown above, with the sixth Republican, Chief Justice John Roberts, omitted in this view.

The five most radical right Republican justices on the Supreme Court are shown above, with the sixth Republican, Chief Justice John Roberts, omitted in this photo array.

World Crisis Radio, Opinion: With avalanche of psychotic raving, madman Putin attempts illegal annexation of four more Ukrainian provinces, Webster G. Tarpley, right, historian, author and commentator, Oct. 1, 2022 (92:25 mins.). Issuing new nuclear threats to US and NATO, Kremlin dictator defies specific warnings against more aggression from UN Secretary General, carrying out single worst escalation in conflict thus far; He alleges attack on Baltic natural gas pipelines is work ”Anglo-Saxons.”

Putin accuses West of ”outright Satanism,” but Stalin claimed he had devil on his side; Key Russian novel of twentieth century by Bulgakov is obsessed with devil aka Wolland in Moscow; Russian fascist Ivan Illyin quoted prominently in tirade; Russians vote with their feet in massive exodus of draft-age men;

Truss regime in UK embraces moribund doctrines of free market fetishism and radical deregulation, putting pound sterling and gilt markets in danger of imminent collapse;
Salvini demands post of Interior Minister in emerging Meloni cabinet; Prague coup of 1948 shows this is ideal position for illegal seizure of power;

Origins of Italy’s current neofascism in the Italian Social Republic (RSI), Mussolini’s 1943-1945 German puppet state, and in the postwar fascist party MSI of Giorgio Almirante;

Ginni Thomas continues to deny 2020 election; Espionage Act indictments are overdue;

Hypocrite Rep. deSantis voted against federal aid to states stricken by Superstorm Sandy, but now needs federal largesse for hurricane relief; GOP suing to block Biden’s student loan debt relief measures. So, punish them at the polls!

September

Sept. 28

United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (l) with his wife of thirty-five years, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas (r). (Safe Image)

United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (l) with his wife of thirty-five years, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas (r).

New York Times, Opinion: The Eagerness of Ginni Thomas, Michelle Cottle, Sept. 28, 2022 (print ed.). Ginni Thomas has become a problem. You don’t have to be a left-wing, anti-Trump minion of the deep state to think it’s a bad look for American democracy to have the wife of a Supreme Court justice implicated in a multitentacled scheme to overturn a free and fair presidential election. But that is where this political moment finds us.

A longtime conservative crusader, Ms. Thomas increasingly appears to have been chin deep in the push to keep Donald Trump in power by any means necessary. Her insurrection-tinged activities included hectoring everyone from state lawmakers to the White House chief of staff to contest the results. She also swapped emails with John Eastman, the legal brains behind a baroque plot to have Vice President Mike Pence overturn the election that may have crossed the line from sketchy into straight-up illegal. Along the way, Ms. Thomas peddled a cornucopia of batty conspiracy theories, including QAnon gibberish about watermarked ballots in Arizona.

Even by the standards of the Trumpified Republican Party, this is a shameful turn of events. And after extended negotiations, Ms. Thomas has finally agreed to voluntarily testify soon before the Jan. 6 House committee. Her lawyer has declared her “eager” to “clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election.”

No doubt we’re all looking forward to her clarifications. But many people would be even more eager to have a bigger question addressed: How is it that someone with such evident contempt for democracy, not to mention a shaky grip on reality, has run amok for so long at the highest levels of politics and government?

The most obvious answer is that Ms. Thomas is married to a very important man. And Washington is a town that has long had to contend, and generally make peace, with the embarrassing or controversial spouses and close kin of its top power players (Martha Mitchell, Billy Carter, Ivanka and Jared…).

But even within this context, Ms. Thomas has distinguished herself with the aggressiveness and shamelessness of her political activities, which she pursues with total disregard for the conflicts of interest that they appear to pose with her husband’s role as an unbiased, dispassionate interpreter of the law.

In another era, this might have prompted more pushback, for any number of reasons. But Ms. Thomas has benefited from a couple of cultural and political shifts that she has shrewdly exploited. One touches on the evolving role of power couples and political spouses. The other, more disturbing, is the descent of the Republican Party down the grievance-driven, conspiracy-minded, detached-from-reality rabbit hole.

If most of America has come around to two-income households, Washington is overrun with bona fide power couples and has fashioned its own set of rules, official and unofficial, for dealing with them. Among these: It is bad form to suggest that a spouse should defer to his or her partner’s career, other than when explicitly required, of course. (A notable exception is the presidency, in which case the first lady is in many ways treated as if it were still 1960.) Though plenty of folks discuss it sotto voce, publicly musing that a couple’s work life might bleed into their home life is considered insulting — even sexist, if the spouse being scrutinized is a woman.

The Thomases have been playing this card for years. Ms. Thomas has forged all sorts of ties with individuals and groups with interests before her husband and his colleagues. In the chaotic aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, she was helping the conservative Heritage Foundation identify appointees for a new Republican administration, even as her husband was deliberating over the outcome of the race. When people grumble about perceived conflicts — or Ms. Thomas’s perpetual political crusading in general — the couple and their defenders complain that they are being held to different standards from others. They are adamant that of course the Thomases can stay in their respective lanes.

Washington Post, Jan. 6 committee reaches deal with Ginni Thomas for an interview, Jacqueline Alemany and Azi Paybarah, Sept. 22, 2022

Sept. 24

World Crisis Radio, Historical commentary: To neutralize Putin’s thermonuclear threats to NATO, US must launch crash program for strategic anti-missile defense using lasers & particle beams, Webster G. Tarpley, right, author, historian, commentator, Sept. 24, 2022 (93:10 mins.). US Patriots and Israeli ABM systems could help shield Ukraine in short term.

Desperate dictator runs press gangs to kidnap 300,000 recruits for cannon fodder on Ukraine front; 1,300 protesters arrested, indicating growing crisis for Kremlin; Iranian opposition mounts biggest anti-government actions since 2009;

Mar a Lago state secrets case turning against Trump with rational rulings from Brooklyn and Eleventh Circuit judges; New York AG lawsuit could prove fatal for family rackets; Fed boss Jerome Powell in monetarist frenzy, following catastrophic policy of Paul Adolf Volcker, who helped wreck Carter Administration with 22% prime rate;

MAGAt McQarthy presents GOP’s Commitment to America, a tissue of deception concocted with infamous demagogue Newt Gingrich; Platform is all lies and empty slogans, ducking questions on abortion, 2020 election, insurrection, democracy, and defunding FBI; GOP still at war with New Deal and Great Society reforms; Urging Italians to vote against neofascism this Sunday;

DeSantis’ cynical exploitation of asylum seekers for political provocations reveals the vile cruelty of Republicans; Trump sinking further into QAnon fascist mysticism; Next January 6 hearings September 28; Breaking: Benedict Donald’s lawyers struggling to prevent grand jury testimony on coup plot by subpoenaed White House aides

Sept. 18

djt handwave file

Washington Post, Book Review: Former U.S. attorney dishes on how he held line against Trump White House, Barbara McQuade, Sept. 18, 2022 (print ed.). In detailing his ouster from the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman says former attorney general William Barr "was desperate," cites Barr's interference in other investigations.

geoffrey berman sdny When then-Attorney General William Barr bungled the firing of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, right, in 2020, we all knew there was more to the story.

Now, in his new book, Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, Berman dishes on that clumsy episode and on a range of conflicts with the Department of Justice during his tenure leading the Southern District of New York. Berman names the former DOJ officials who exerted political pressure that he found inappropriate, including Edward O’Callaghan and Jeffrey Rosen. Ultimately, Berman was ousted for the sin of refusing to obey what he believed to be partisan DOJ leadership. “The Department of Justice was not a private law firm dedicated to the president’s personal interests,” he writes, “and it was shameful when they operated as if they were.”

With the storytelling skills of a trial lawyer, Berman describes the episode in which Barr summoned him to Manhattan’s Pierre hotel, “a swanky place where even standard rooms can cost a thousand bucks a night or more.” Barr told Berman that he wanted to replace him at the Southern District of New York (SDNY) with Jay Clayton, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Barr even offered Berman a job he apparently thought would be an enticing sweetener: head of the DOJ’s civil division, which represents the United States in all civil lawsuits — a big job but far from the criminal fray. With that job, Barr told Berman, he could “attract clients and build a book of business” for whenever Berman left the DOJ for the private sector. Only after offering him the job did Barr ask whether Berman had any experience in civil law, revealing that the attorney general was not always concerned with the best interests of the department he was entrusted to lead.

william barr new o Though Berman refused to resign, Barr, right, still issued a news release announcing that Berman was “stepping down” and that, until President Donald Trump could nominate Clayton, the Southern District of New York would be led by Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Barr bypassed Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, the presumptive choice to serve as acting U.S. attorney. Berman responded with a news release of his own, noting that he was not resigning. His main goal, he writes in “Holding the Line,” was to preserve the office’s independence. The next day, Barr backed down on Carpenito and inserted Strauss into the role of acting head of the office. With Strauss in place, Berman agreed to resign. He concludes: “The truth was that Barr was desperate to get me out of the job I was in, and it was not to put a better US attorney in place. The reasons were perfectly obvious. They were based in politics.”

geoffrey berman book Berman knew all along that he was living on borrowed time at the SDNY, given his numerous run-ins with the DOJ over what he thought were inappropriate orders from department officials. In one episode that predated Barr’s tenure as attorney general, Berman was investigating Gregory Craig, a former White House counsel for President Barack Obama, for potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. About two months before the 2018 midterm elections, O’Callaghan called Berman and told him to indict Craig and to do so before Election Day. Berman’s office had recently filed charges in separate cases against a Republican congressman and Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. According to Berman, O’Callaghan had engaged in a heated exchange with the SDNY over the reference in the Cohen indictment to “Individual-1,” which, in context, was an unmistakable reference to Trump. Berman had refused demands to remove it. Now, O’Callaghan said of the Craig case, “It’s time for you guys to even things out.” Berman’s office ultimately declined prosecution. The DOJ sent the case to the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office, which filed the charges. Craig was acquitted at trial.

Berman reserves his strongest criticism for Barr, calling him a bully and his behavior “thuggish.” Upon taking office, Barr tried to “kill” the Southern District’s investigations relating to the campaign finance crimes to which Cohen had pleaded guilty. The reference in plea documents to “Individual-1” made it apparent that Trump faced potential criminal exposure in this investigation. Barr even discussed dismissing Cohen’s conviction in the same way he would later dismiss the false-statements charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In both cases, the defendants had pleaded guilty in open court.

Berman’s book provides a cautionary tale about how political forces can undermine the quest for justice. He’s concerned that power has become centralized in Washington, providing an opportunity for politics to influence decisions. To protect the independence of the 94 U.S. attorney’s offices, he offers some suggestions for reform. For example, he recommends prohibiting DOJ leadership from granting requests by defense counsel to overrule charging decisions made by U.S. attorneys. He further suggests forbidding the DOJ from shopping cases to other districts after they have been declined for prosecution by a U.S. attorney. He also proposes to eliminate prior-approval requirements that U.S. attorneys’ offices must obtain from the DOJ for sensitive investigative steps.

Fortunately, most U.S. attorneys know that their job is to exercise independent judgment and to refuse to take action based on politics. Berman reminds us that to do the job right, you must be willing to resign.

Or in some cases, refuse to do so.

Barbara McQuade is a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School and the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Anti-Trump Womens March on Washington, Jan. 21 2017 (Photo by Jim Fry via Twitter and the Voice of America).

New York Times, Investigation: How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step, Ellen Barry, Sept. 18, 2022. As American feminists came together in 2017 to protest Donald Trump, Russia’s disinformation machine set about deepening the divides among them.

Linda Sarsour awoke on Jan. 23, 2017, logged onto the internet, and felt sick.

The weekend before, she had stood in Washington at the head of the Women’s March, a mobilization against President Donald J. Trump that surpassed all expectations. Crowds had begun forming before dawn, and by the time she climbed up onto the stage, they extended farther than the eye could see.

More than four million people around the United States had taken part, experts later estimated, placing it among the largest single-day protests in the nation’s history.

But then something shifted, seemingly overnight. What she saw on Twitter that Monday was a torrent of focused grievance that targeted her. In 15 years as an activist, largely advocating for the rights of Muslims, she had faced pushback, but this was of a different magnitude. A question began to form in her mind: Do they really hate me that much?

That morning, there were things going on that Ms. Sarsour could not imagine.

More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners. But one message performed better with audiences than any other.

It singled out an element of the Women’s March that might, at first, have seemed like a detail: Among its four co-chairs was Ms. Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist whose hijab marked her as an observant Muslim.

Over the 18 months that followed, Russia’s troll factories and its military intelligence service put a sustained effort into discrediting the movement by circulating damning, often fabricated narratives around Ms. Sarsour, whose activism made her a lightning rod for Mr. Trump’s base and also for some of his most ardent opposition.

One hundred and fifty-two different Russian accounts produced material about her. Public archives of Twitter accounts known to be Russian contain 2,642 tweets about Ms. Sarsour, many of which found large audiences, according to an analysis by Advance Democracy Inc., a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts public-interest research and investigations.

Sept. 17

The five most radical right Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court are shown above, with the sixth Republican, Chief Justice John Roberts, omitted in this view.

The five most radical right Republican justices on the Supreme Court are shown above, with the sixth Republican, Chief Justice John Roberts, omitted in this photo array.

Politico, Opinion: The Supreme Court Is Now Ignoring Precedent It Doesn’t Like, Jeffrey L. Fisher (a law professor at Stanford Law School; co-director of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic), Sept. 17, 2022. Along with overturning major decisions, the court is quietly erecting new barricades on rulings they can’t quite throw out.

The Supreme Court’s recent overruling of Roe v. Wade and other foundational decisions makes clear that key precedents are no longer safe.

But as we take account of the court’s last term and look ahead to the next one, it is critical to understand that the aggressive conservative supermajority has also embraced a new, quieter way of annulling other long-established legal rules — a tactic I call barricading precedent. Any assessment of the court’s fidelity to past judicial decisions should include a tally not just of decisions the court overrules but also those it walls off from any future extensions.

Take Egbert v. Boule, a case last term involving whether federal officers could be held liable for violating a person’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizure. The Supreme Court held in a previous case that officers could indeed be held liable for conducting unreasonable seizures in the course of “conventional” law-enforcement investigations. And — as Justice Neil Gorsuch “candidly” acknowledged in his separate opinion — the Egbert case bore earmarks of a conventional investigation. At the same time, the six Republican appointees stressed that “if we were called to decide [the previous case] today, we would decline” to recognize this type of liability at all. That created a quandary for those justices: Should they follow the rule of the old case or overrule it?

As it turned out, the court did neither. The court professed to accept the prior decision, but it refused to apply it. The new factual setting, the court held, was itself reason enough to withhold application of disfavored precedent — regardless of how comparable the new setting was.

The court’s conservative justices followed a similar course last term in other cases. In Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, the court considered whether recipients of federal funds that discriminate against individuals because of their race, sex or disability must pay damages for any resulting emotional distress. The framework the court established 20 years ago strongly suggested the answer was yes. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, however, supplied the pivotal votes against the plaintiff on the ground that that framework itself was faulty and thus should never be extended. And in Vega v. Tekoh, Kavanaugh took the same approach to the court’s well-known Miranda rule — the rule requiring police officers to warn suspects in custody before questioning them. He encapsulated his approach to Miranda during the case’s oral arguments as follows: “Accept it, but don’t extend it.”

This approach is as problematic as it is pithy. In the guise of respecting precedent, the new tactic of barricading precedent actually thwarts it.

On one level, many surely welcomed the court’s announcement that it intends to preserve those important decisions. But this declaration also seems to confirm that the court is now comfortable deciding cases on the basis of pure power or will, not just traditional judicial reasoning.

That is cause for great concern. A core feature of the rule of law is that judicial decisions must be worth more than their resolutions of specific controversies in the past. Otherwise, the value of precedent threatens to become nothing more than the degree to which the current members of the court thinks a prior decision is correct — in other words, a system, to invert John Adams’ famous phrase, of men, not laws.

World Crisis Radio, Opinion: China and India signal no confidence in Putin’s failing aggression in Ukraine! Webster G. Tarpley, right, author, historian and commentator, Sept. 17, 2022 (111:54 mins.). After military rout east of Kharkiv, Russia faces diplomatic isolation and supply crisis on eve of UN General Assembly in New York; Pope Francis approves arms for Kiev as morally acceptable for self-defense.

70 Russian local officials in St. Petersburg area back petition for peace and Putin ouster; More Russian atrocities and war crimes found in liberated areas, with over 400 victims in mass grave near Izium; torture and execution evident in numerous cases;

DeSantis copies tactics of tyrant Lukashenko of Belarus by using refugees as weapon; Dems have 71% chance of taking Senate; Biden popularity hits 45%, up 9 points over recent months; Whitmer of Michigan and Hochul of New York open 13-15% leads over MAGAt challengers; Lindsay Graham’s national abortion ban will make GOP chances worse;

Italian pro-Putin neofascist block bidding for state power in Sept. 25 election 100 years after Mussolini’s March on Rome; Clashes of ambition aileen mercedes cannon among Meloni, Salvini, and Berlusconi intensify-Could these rivals ever form a government?; European Union condemns Hungarian dictator and MAGAt darling Orban as undemocratic and threat to European values;

Attempted Etch-a-Sketch moment for pro-Trump crackpot candidates as they jettison 2020 election denial baggage in desperate hope of appearing less deranged: two-faced Gen. Bolduc of New Hampshire is a grotesque example; White House chief of staff Gen. John Kelly used Bandy Lee’s ”Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” as handbook for damage control; Meadows, Epshteyn, and Pillow Guy under DoJ scrutiny;

Judge Cannon, left, reaches new low of ineptitude arguing that Trump is uniquely privileged, while denigrating reliability of DoJ; She appears unable to grasp irreparable harm to US inherent in Trump’s stubborn abuse of purloined nuclear secrets!

Sept. 15

Proof, Investigative Commentary:DOJ Investigating Ties Between the FBI and the Kremlin Agent Behind 2016 Trump-Russia Collusion; Jared Kushner May Also Be Implicated, Seth Abramson, left, Sept. 15, 2022. A new Insider report is here expanded upon by Proof to reveal a potentially harrowing triangle linking Trump’s lead agent in Trump-Russia collusion, Putin’s lead agent in the same events, and the FBI.

Introduction: The oft-maligned collation of raw intel known as the Steele Dossier, once advertised as “70%” accurate by its curator, Christopher Steele—who said from the outset that his unprocessed data required additional work by U.S. intelligence agents—has so far proven to be about one-third accurate, one-third inaccurate, and one-third unproven, though with each passing year this last third moves closer and closer to falling under “accurate.”

To hear the Dossier tell it, the two lead agents for Donald Trump in colluding with the Kremlin in 2015 and 2016—which we know Trump did, in secretly negotiating (through Michael Cohen) the most lucrative business deal of his life with the Kremlin, the Trump Tower Moscow deal, throughout the entirety of his 2016 presidential run, and thereafter overseeing a political operation that sent confidential election-related data (through Paul Manafort) to Vladimir Putin’s chief civilian agent doing business in America, Oleg Deripaska—were, well, the men I just said: Cohen and Manafort.

(Along with Trump himself, of course, as the candidate publicly asked the Kremlin’s hackers to hack on his behalf, which they began doing the same day—as requested.)

But at least as to Paul Manafort, this is all a bit misleading. Manafort was in fact under contract with Kremlin agent Deripaska to work as an agent of the Kremlin for the entirety of the time Manafort was allegedly working pro bono for Trump—a contract that had begun in 2005, just before Manafort suddenly moved into Trump Tower and renewed his by-then decades-long friendship with Trump—placing it somewhere between dubious and flat-out wrong to suggest Manafort was ever truly Trump’s man.

Just so, one could argue that Cohen couldn’t possibly have “led” in Trump’s political collusion with the Kremlin in 2015 and 2016, as he wasn’t substantially involved in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign at all; his role in the Trump-Russia scandal was to help Trump secretly negotiate a real estate development deal with the Kremlin while Trump’s political team—the one Cohen wasn’t actually on—authored the most unabashedly pro-Russia foreign policy agenda in the history of American politics.

With this is mind, there’s never been any doubt amongst Trump biographers and political historians that while the lead for Putin in the Trump-Russia scandal was in fact Deripaska—as Steele’s dossier had implied, via its persistent focus on Deripaska agent Manafort—the corresponding lead for Trump was in actuality his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

It was Jared Kushner who held the most secret (and later lied about) meetings with Kremlin agents, both himself and through intermediaries, before and immediately after the 2016 election; it was Jared Kushner who set up Vladimir Putin’s “friend” Dimitri Simes (who would permanently flee Washington for Moscow to take a job as a Putin propagandist the moment Kremlin spy Maria Butina was arrested in the U.S.) as Trump’s top adviser on Russia policy, in which role Simes helped Trump’s Kremlin intermediary George Papadopoulos and Russian Alfa Bank adviser Richard Burt write Trump’s now-infamous agenda for total American capitulation to Moscow (including and indeed perhaps especially on the subject of Ukraine); and it was Jared Kushner who orchestrated the multinational “grand bargain” detailed in 2019 New York Times bestseller Proof of Conspiracy, which bargain in part saw Trump and his son-in-law offering secrets (including nuclear secrets) to strongmen in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt in return for some concessions on Arab-Israeli relations and a windfall for Putin and Russia on (1) Ukraine-related sanctions, and (2) the building of nuclear power plants across the Middle East.

But it was also Jared Kushner who would have been needed to to act as intermediary for perhaps the most controversial component of the Steele Dossier—the sordid affair at the Ritz Moscow notwithstanding, as 2018 New York Times bestseller Proof of Collusion does more than enough to confirm that something uncouth (if largely benign) happened at that location in November 2013—this being the Dossier’s unprocessed intelligence on the sale of a portion of Kremlin-owned oil giant Rosneft, which sale was allegedly to be arranged in such a way as to benefit the Trump family directly.

While Steele’s dossier was silent on exactly how the deal would benefit Trump, its contention that Trump agent Carter Page discussed the deal pre-election in Moscow with Rosneft CEO and Putin lackey Igor Sechin was eventually confirmed (as was Page’s decision to lie about this discussion and his trip to Moscow repeatedly to the media, despite accurately debriefing Trump’s campaign on its particulars at the time).

Sept. 11

djt jan 6 rioters capitol

Proof, Investigative Commentary: An Alphabetical Compendium of the Dangerous and Deadly Weapons Insurrectionists Wielded at the Capitol on January 6, Seth Abramson, left, Sept. 11, 2022. This list of 115+ dangerous and deadly weapons used on January 6 is the largest of its kind, curating reports from media and federal sources to offer a more accurate picture of Trump’s insurrection.

America will never get a full accounting of the weapons supporters of Donald Trump brought to the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

There are a variety of reasons for this. Most notable among them is that precious few Trumpist insurrectionists were arrested on-scene, which means that well over 90% of those who attacked the Capitol on Insurrection Day were able to leave the building and/or its surrounding grounds with all the weapons they had had on their person and later deny having ever been armed at all. And because Washington, D.C. is a gun-free zone, those who carried firearms to the Capitol on January 6—a class of pro-Trump criminals we know from extensive major-media reporting on this critical question sits somewhere in the double digits—largely did so by concealing these weapons on their person, meaning the cases we know about in which this occurred are only a very small fraction of the actual instances of handguns and long guns being brought into or near the seat of the U.S. federal government on January 6.

There’s also the simple fact that the January 6 insurrection was designed to unfold in several stages—an initial storming of the Capitol followed by a long-term occupation and, during that occupation, the reinforcement of the building’s criminal occupiers with a mass arsenal of heavy weaponry—so some significant percentage of the stock of weapons that was supposed to be brought to bear on the Capitol on January 6 was stored off-site, most notably—federal investigators have learned—in a Comfort Inn in Ballston, a Virginia neighborhood just a short distance from the planned launch site for Trump’s armed insurrection.

That Republican Party officials have brutally lied about January 6—falsely claiming that no guns were found on any Capitol attacker; falsely claiming that no arrests for conduct involving a weapon were ever made related to January 6; falsely claiming that an event isn’t an “insurrection” unless nearly all participants are armed with guns; falsely claiming that the only January 6 casualties were caused by government agents; falsely claiming that both antifa and Black Lives Matter were present at the Capitol on January 6; falsely claiming that the intention of the January 6 attackers couldn’t have been in any way seditious because if it had been the Trumpists would have killed everyone at the Capitol; falsely claiming that the United States Capitol Police or the Metropolitan Police Department or unidentified left-wing agitators provoked the Trumpist mob on January 6; and even more vile lies Proof will not repeat here—means that even if we could uncover a significant fraction of the weaponry armed Trumpists brought to downtown D.C. on January 6 to try to overturn a democratic election there is no longer any chance that even a sizable minority of Republicans would believe any such reporting.

This, of course, was the purpose, from the start, of GOP disinformation about January 6: to rewrite the history of that terrifying day and to do so in a manner calibrated to ensure that such events could happen again, indeed on a far greater scale.

And yet, despite the impossibility of investigators ever getting a full accounting of more than a small fraction of the arms carried by the Trumpist mob as it marched on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, here’s what U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said about the weaponry brought to the U.S. Capitol grounds by pro-Trump insurrectionists on January 6 (with reference to her nearly 40-year as a judge in D.C.):

“I don’t think I’ve seen, in all my years as a judge, quite such a collection of weapons.”

Sept. 10

World Crisis Radio, Commentary: Climate Ideologue Charles III Follows in Footsteps of Edward VII, Webster G. Tarpley, Sept. 10, 2022. Strident climate and architecture ideologue Charles III follows in footsteps of Edward VII, who waited decades for Queen Victoria to depart the throne, and James I, the royal pedant who hectored a hostile Parliament about the divine right of kings.

Queen Elizabeth’s 70-year reign puts her second only to Louis XIV in longevity on throne; Her finest moment was her opposition to Margaret Thatcher, an exponent of union busting, de-industrialization, and brutal austerity;
Tandem of Charles III with Tory free market fanatic and new Premier Liz Truss augurs extreme austerity, not the super-LIHEAP needed to prevent Britishers from freezing to death;

EU Commission President von der Leyen calls for action to defeat Putin’s energy blackmail, including an EU price cap on natural gas, a windfall profits tax on Big Oil, economical use of electricity, and emergency credit lines to get through winter;

CNBC veteran Ron Insana forecasts ”collapse of inflation” as gasoline price continues to fall and new jobless claims decline;

DoJ warns Judge Cannon that Federal government owns classified papers, not Trump; Top secret documents are way above pay grade of hack judge or pro-Don ”special master”; Appeal coming Thursday unless FL court cooperates;
Trump lawsuit against Hillary, Comey, and many others thrown out by another federal judge; Don’s Save America PAC probed for fraudulently bilking MAGA dupes after November 2020; Bannon performs perp walk in handcuffs; Trump aides Steven Miller and Brian Jack get subpoenas;

Reactionary-neofascist pro-Russian bloc of Meloni-Salvini-Berlusconi leads in runup to September 24 Italian election, but 35% of voters remain undecided two weeks before vote;

Michigan Supreme Court defies GOP hacks, puts abortion rights on November ballot; Chief Justices of every state urge Supreme Court to reject crackpot legal doctrine of independent state legislatures!

Sept. 8

A photo released by the U.S. Department of Justice shows documents allegedly seized at Mar-a-Lago spread over a carpet. (U.S. Department of Justice via AFPand /Getty Images).

Washington Post, Justice Dept. appeals judge’s order for a Mar-a-Lago special master, Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett, Sept. 8, 2022. Donald Trump’s lawyers want a special master to shield seized documents that are protected by attorney-client or executive privilege.

The Justice Department said it would appeal a federal judge’s decision to appoint a special master to sift through thousands of documents the FBI seized from Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Aug. 8, according to a Thursday court filing.

The notice of appeal arrived three days after Judge Aileen M. Cannon ruled in favor of Trump and said she would appoint a special master, slowing — at least temporarily — an investigation into the possible mishandling of extremely sensitive classified information, as well as possible hiding, tampering or destruction of government records.

The Justice Department wrote in a brief filing that it would be appealing the decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a separate, simultaneous court filing, prosecutors asked Cannon to stay her Sept. 5 decision on two key points: her order to temporarily halt a significant portion of the FBI investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information, and to allow a special master to review the classified material that is among the documents seized as part of a court-authorized search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on Aug. 8.

Ultimately, the Justice Department said that a special master could be appointed, but argued that the judge should prohibit the special master from reviewing classified documents. The special master would be still able to sort through personal documents and other items the FBI also seized, setting aside materials as necessary, the filing says.

Prosecutors wrote that allowing a special master to review the classified material would “cause the most immediate and serious harms to the government and the public,” noting that those documents have already been moved to a secure facility, separate from the rest of the seized Trump papers.

And they argued that by prohibiting investigators from using the classified materials found in the August until a special master has cleared them, Cannon could harm national security by hampering the Justice Department’s ability to recover any other classified papers that may still be outstanding.

Barring the FBI from using the classified material in the investigation “could impede efforts to identify the existence of any additional classified records that are not being properly stored—which itself presents the potential for ongoing risk to national security,” prosecutors wrote — the first time they have suggested in court filings that there could be more unsecured classified material they have yet to find.

Trump’s legal team argued in a federal courthouse in West Palm Beach last week that a special master is needed to determine whether any of the documents — more than 100 of which are classified — should be shielded from investigators because of attorney-client or executive privilege. They also said an independent outside expert would boost “trust” in the Justice Department’s criminal probe.

The Justice Department also argued that a former president cannot assert executive privilege after he leaves office, and that it is not possible for one part of the executive branch to assert privilege to shield documents from another part.

But even if Trump could assert executive privilege, the Justice Department argued in its Thursday appeal, the government’s “demonstrated, specific need” to have access to the classified materials would override that privilege. Government prosecutors also said that Trump had no clear need to maintain possession of these classified documents.

“Among other things, the classified records are the very subject of the government’s ongoing investigation,” the filing says.

In her original ruling, Cannon said that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence could continue its analysis of the possible risk to national security posed by the removal from government custody of classified documents, some of which contain the government’s most sensitive intelligence-gathering secrets.

But Justice Department lawyers said Thursday said that it is difficult to separate the FBI investigation from the intelligence review. They said they were unsure of the “bounds” and “implications” of the court order, prompting the intelligence community to temporarily halt its review along with criminal investigators.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that among the documents seized by the FBI was one describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The people also said of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations that are so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them.

donald trump money palmer report Custom

New York Times, Trump’s Post-Election Fund-Raising Comes Under Scrutiny by Justice Dept., Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Adam Goldman, Sept. 8, 2022. A federal grand jury has issued subpoenas seeking information about Save America PAC, which was formed as Donald J. Trump promoted baseless assertions about election fraud.

A federal grand jury in Washington is examining the formation of — and spending by — a super PAC created by Donald J. Trump after his loss in the 2020 election as he was raising millions of dollars by baselessly asserting that the results had been marred by widespread voting fraud.

According to subpoenas issued by the grand jury, the contents of which were described to The New York Times, the Justice Department is interested in the inner workings of Save America PAC, Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising vehicle after the election. Several similar subpoenas were sent on Wednesday to junior and midlevel aides who worked in the White House and for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.

The new focus on Save America was reported earlier by ABC News.

Among the roughly half-dozen current and former Trump aides in the White House and the 2020 presidential campaign who are said to have received subpoenas this week were Beau Harrison, an aide to Mr. Trump in the White House and in his post-presidency, and William S. Russell, who similarly worked in the West Wing and now for Mr. Trump’s personal office, according to several people familiar with the events.

The fact that federal prosecutors are seeking information about Save America PAC is a significant new turn in an already sprawling investigation of the roles that Mr. Trump and some of his allies played in trying to overturn the election, an array of efforts that culminated with the violent mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Those parts of the Jan. 6 inquiry related to Mr. Trump have so far largely centered on a plan to create slates of electors pledged to him in seven key swing states that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won.

The new subpoenas appeared to have been issued by a different grand jury in Washington than the one that has been gathering evidence about the so-called fake electors plan, which has focused on questions surrounding pro-Trump lawyers like Rudolph W. Giuliani and John Eastman.

At least one of the new subpoenas bore the name of a veteran federal prosecutor in Washington who specializes in fraud cases, suggesting that this avenue of inquiry is devoted primarily to examining the spending and fund-raising at Mr. Trump’s super PAC.

Future of Freedom Foundation, Opinion: My Prediction on the CIA’s Secret Assassination Files, Jacob G. Hornberger, right, (author, publisher and Libertarian think tank president), Sept. 8, 2022. This jacob hornberger new coming December 15 is the date that President Biden set for the release of the CIA’s long-secret JFK-related records. I would like to place my prediction on the record three months in advance of that deadline.

I predict that the CIA will, once again, request Biden to, once again, extend the time for secrecy. Further Biden, citing national security, Covid, the communist threat, the Russian threat, the terrorist threat, or some other nonsensical justification, will grant the CIA’s request for continued secrecy of its assassination-related records.

There has to be a good reason that the CIA has steadfastly insisted on keeping those records secret for more almost 60 years. Whatever that reason is, it is obvious that it has not disappeared. Otherwise, the CIA would have authorized U.S. presidents to release its long-secret assassination-related records a long time ago.

That’s not to say, of course, that there is some document in there in which the CIA confesses to having committed a violent regime-change operation against President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Long ago, when the CIA was keeping its role in state-sponsored assassinations under wraps, it had a policy of never putting anything about its assassinations into writing. There is no possibility that those long-secret assassination-related records include a confession.

But those records undoubtedly contain some information that helps to fill out the overall regime-change mosaic. Think of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle containing 1,000 small pieces. You have 80 percent of the puzzle put together. You can tell that it depicts the Eiffel Tower. Even though you still have 20 percent of the puzzle to fill in, you don’t really need the rest of the pieces. But each additional piece you’re able to fit into the puzzle helps to fill it out.

That’s what the CIA is scared about — not a confession being revealed but rather that its long-secret records contain additional pieces that fill out the regime-change mosaic.

My hunch is that some of the additional pieces relate to Mexico City, specifically Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip there shortly before the assassination. As I detail in my book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, Mexico City was pivotal in creating the World War III cover story that enabled U.S. officials to shut down the investigation immediately after Oswald was assassinated.

john f kennedy smiling The idea was to establish Oswald’s connections to Cuba and the Soviet Union in Mexico City so that U.S. officials could conjure up the notion that Kennedy had been killed by an international communist conspiracy that had supposedly emanated from Moscow, Russia (yes, that Russia!). They even had Oswald meeting with Valery Kostikov, an officer in the KGB’s assassination department. (Yes, the Reds engaged in state-sponsored assassinations too.)

But everything obviously went wrong with the Mexico City side of the operation. After Kennedy was assassinated, the CIA came up with a photograph of someone who was supposed to be Oswald but wasn’t. We still don’t know who it was in that photograph. The CIA also came up with an audio recording of someone purporting to be Oswald talking with officials at the Soviet embassy but who had a voice that wasn’t Oswald’s.

Permit me though to modify my prediction: I predict that they will release a few records to make it look good, as they have in the past when extending the time for secrecy — to make it look like they are being open and forthright.

But let’s assume that you have 100 records that you steadfastly want to be kept secret. The worst thing you could do is to keep only those 100 records secret because it would call too much attention to them. So, what you would do is hide those 100 records within 10,000 records. In that way, you could slowly release the 9,900 irrelevant records while still keeping the 100 secret.

So, when Biden grants another extension for secrecy in December, don’t be surprised if he and the CIA release a few more records to show how open and forthright they are.

There is another factor to consider. If they release all the CIA’s remaining assassination-related records, then people will be able to see what they are still hiding. For example, in my new book An Encounter with Evil, I detail how the CIA took control over the Zapruder film on the very weekend of the assassination, something they were able to keep secret for decades.

Do any of those remaining records relate to the CIA’s operations with the Zapruder film on the weekend of the assassination? I don’t think so. When the ARRB was enforcing the JFK Records Act in the 1990s, the CIA would not have wanted to reveal that part of its operation. So, I don’t think it would have turned over those records to the ARRB. But we can’t really be certain of that so long as there are still records being kept secret.

Of course, what matters most in all this is what I have been emphasizing for many years — the fraudulent autopsy that the military conducted on Kennedy’s body at Bethesda National Naval Medical Center on the very evening of the assassination. As I emphasize in my three books The Kennedy Autopsy, The Kennedy Autopsy 2, and An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, there is no innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. No one has ever come up with one, and no one ever will. Once the evidence that the ARRB uncovered in the 1990s established the fraudulent nature of the autopsy, it was “case closed” on the regime-change nature of the assassination. The fraudulent autopsy is how we know that the Kennedy assassination cannot possibly be a “conspiracy theory.”

Even through the overall mosaic reveals a national-security regime-change operation against Kennedy on November 22, 1963, there are still pieces to the puzzle that need to be filled in. That’s why I predict that come December, Biden will, once again, grant another request by the CIA for continued secrecy of its assassination-related records.

Freedom, My Prediction on the CIA’s Secret Assassination Files

by Jacob G. Hornberger, Sept. 8, 2022. www.fff.org/2022/09/08/my-prediction-on-the-cias-secret-assassination-files/?utm_source=FFF+Daily&utm_campaign=884189aaed-FFF+Daily+2022-09-08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1139d80dff-884189aaed-318080685 This coming December 15 is the date that President Biden set for the release of the CIA’s long-secret JFK-related records. I would like to place my prediction on the record three months in advance of that deadline.

That’s what the CIA is scared about — not a confession being revealed but rather that its long-secret records contain additional pieces that fill out the regime-change mosaic.

My hunch is that some of the additional pieces relate to Mexico City, specifically Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip there shortly before the assassination. As I detail in my book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, Mexico City was pivotal in creating the World War III cover story that enabled U.S. officials to shut down the investigation immediately after Oswald was assassinated.

The idea was to establish Oswald’s connections to Cuba and the Soviet Union in Mexico City so that U.S. officials could conjure up the notion that Kennedy had been killed by an international communist conspiracy that had supposedly emanated from Moscow, Russia (yes, that Russia!). They even had Oswald meeting with Valery Kostikov, an officer in the KGB’s assassination department. (Yes, the Reds engaged in state-sponsored assassinations too.)

So, when Biden grants another extension for secrecy in December, don’t be surprised if he and the CIA release a few more records to show how open and forthright they are.

Sept. 5

djt confidential markings

Politico, Judge orders halt to DOJ review of documents seized from Trump, Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney
Washington Post, Trump plots aggressive midterm strategy seen in GOP as double-edged sword
Washington Post, Opinion: The Mar-a-Lago espionage scandal is a three-alarm national security crisis. We should act like it, Jennifer Rubin
Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump keeps unwittingly dropping breadcrumbs, Bill Palmer
New York Times, As Midterms Near, ‘60-Day Rule’ Raises Dilemma for Trump Inquiries
Politico, The seeds of Biden’s democracy speech sprouted long before the Mar-a-Lago search
New York Times, A Second Constitutional Convention? Some Republicans Want to Force One
ABC News, Trump calls Biden 'enemy of the state' during 1st rally since Mar-a-Lago search
New York Times, Donald Trump lashed out at President Biden and federal agents in his first rally since the F.B.I. search of his home
Washington Post, Trump vows pardons, government apology to Capitol rioters if he’s elected
Wayne Madsen Report, Commentary, The "F" word to fascists is the word fascist, Wayne Madsen

djt fbi evidence mar a lago

Partially redacted documents with classified markings, including colored cover sheets indicating their status, that FBI agents reported finding in former president Donald Trump’s office at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The photo shows the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box filled with gold-framed pictures, including a Time magazine cover. (U.S. Department of Justice photo.)

Politico, Judge orders halt to DOJ review of documents seized from Trump, Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney, Sept. 5, 2022. Cannon’s order included permitting a so-called special master to review the seized materials for potential attorney-client and executive privilege.

A federal judge on Monday ordered a halt to the Justice Department’s review of materials seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, describing a threat to institutions and the risk of media leaks that could cause harm to Trump.

“Plaintiff faces an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public,” U.S District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, right, wrote in a 24-page ruling issued on Labor Day.

Cannon’s order included permitting a so-called special master to review the seized materials for potential attorney-client and executive privilege. Prosecutors expressed exasperation at Trump’s demand to review for executive privilege, noting that there is no precedent for a former executive to assert privilege to bar review of materials by a sitting executive branch — particularly when the government has determined the need is urgent.

Cannon, a Trump appointee who was confirmed a week after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, gave the Justice Department and Trump’s lawyers until Sept. 9 to submit a joint filing to propose a list of special master candidates and outlining their duties and limitations. In the meantime, Cannon ruled that the documents would not be returned to Trump.

The Justice Department indicated that if Cannon were to make a ruling of this kind, she should formally enjoin the department, a format that would permit an appeal. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Washington Post, Trump plots aggressive midterm strategy seen in GOP as double-edged sword, Isaac Arnsdorf, Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey, Sept. 5, 2022 (print ed.). Republican campaigns hope rallies, robo-calls and virtual appearances by the former president can boost excitement in the party base without turning off moderates and independents.

Donald Trump’s political advisers are in early discussions with Republican campaigns about actively deploying him on the trail this fall, with party strategists placing a risky bet that Trump can boost GOP turnout without repelling moderates and independents who do not support the former president.

Trump plans to be more engaged in October than in September, by appearing at rallies, in robocalls and potentially on tele-town halls and at fundraisers, according to a close adviser, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential strategy. Trump’s political team has told others they want to be cooperative and helpful, focusing Trump on rural areas where he has strong support. Talks have included states across the South and Upper Midwest, among others.

But the risk is acute that his presence could distract from what the GOP has sought to make its central message of the midterms: that voters should fire Democrats who have presided over rising costs and violent crime. Trump, who is under multiple federal and state investigations, continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen and has asserted without evidence that the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate was part of a political attack — inflammatory rhetoric that Democrats have sought to keep in the spotlight.

Trump Spy Scandal

djt confidential markings

Washington Post, Analysis: The photo of classified documents from Trump’s resort, annotated, Philip Bump, Sept. 1, 2022 (print ed.). The Justice Department submitted the photograph as part of a court filing. Here’s what we learned from it.

Now we get to the heart of the matter: what investigators found. Let’s start with that document at the bottom center of the photo. It has a cover sheet indicating that it is classified as “secret.” The government has default cover sheets for various classification levels, ranging from a blue “confidential” classification to an orange “top secret.”

You’ll notice that the documents with the “TOP SECRET/SCI” markings in the photo have a yellow border and not an orange one. Similarly, the document at the bottom center has an orangeish-red-bordered cover sheet (not a purely red one) and is marked “SECRET/SCI.” That “SCI” is important — as are other markings on the cover sheet that provide more information about the document’s classification.

Washington Post, Opinion: The Mar-a-Lago espionage scandal is a three-alarm national security crisis. We should act like it, Jennifer Rubin, right, Sept. 4, 2022. Republicans are treating the investigation of defeated former president Donald Trump’s purloining of classified government documents as another opportunity to play victim and attack law enforcement.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, left, a last-minute Trump nominee jammed through during the 2020 lame-duck session, seems to be contemplating a special master to review the documents one by one to see whether there is some basis for blocking them from prosecutors, even as the intelligence community feverishly conducts a national security review.

aileen cannon Even former attorney general William P. Barr observes, “Well, I think the whole idea of a special master is a bit of a red herring ... at this stage, since they have already gone through the documents, I think it’s a waste of time.”

Alas, Barr’s party cares not one whit about national security, only the security of their cult leader and his war on American intelligence.

The extent of the national security crisis Trump thrust upon us has not yet been fully appreciated. The more detailed inventory released on Friday is jaw-dropping.

Where did the documents that were in those folders go? Were any of them destroyed, given away, copied, hidden, sold or shared? We don’t know, and that is a national security disaster given that the documents could have contained the names of human sources and signals intelligence.

Put differently, any delay in investigation, prosecution and hopefully recovery of documents that contain our nation’s most sensitive secrets would be a further risk to national security.

Let’s imagine that Judge Cannon is willing, contrary to previous rulings in Trump-related cases, to find that Trump enjoys some residual executive privilege consideration. Nevertheless, as U.S. v. Nixon and its progeny have held, any such privilege claim pales in comparison to the interest in criminal prosecution.

It’s beyond time that Republicans demand not only candor from Trump — Why did he have documents? What did he do with them? — but also a full and swift investigation. And unless the court wants to rewrite decades of law, allow Trump to hold the nation hostage and deepen our national security crisis, Cannon should follow Barr’s advice, dismiss Trump’s claim and let the FBI get on with an investigation and any necessary prosecutions.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump keeps unwittingly dropping breadcrumbs, Bill Palmer, Sept. 5, 2022. While we’re all looking forward to the day when Donald Trump is no longer holding political rallies, there’s nonetheless a silver lining to them. For one thing, these rallies never seem to benefit the Republican candidates they’re nominally supposed to be helping. And now, Trump’s rallies are providing insight into how Trump is dealing with the very serious federal criminal charges he’s on the verge of getting hit with.

Certainly, prosecutors at the DOJ are watching footage of Trump’s rally from this weekend. Given how incoherent Trump’s speech was, they might have to watch it a few times to figure out what he was even talking about. But it’s notable, for instance, that Trump now claims the FBI ransacked his son Barron’s room. Whether this claim is true or not, it suggests that Trump – who seems to care nothing for his youngest son – is very concerned with his son’s room. Did Trump hide documents there? Did the Feds find them? Should the Feds circle back and check under the floorboards of that bedroom?

But it’s more than just that. Trump also claimed during his rally speech that Mark Zuckerberg came to visit him last week at the White House, in order to inform Trump that he’s now #1 on Facebook. This suggests that Trump’s mind is sinking further than ever into desperate delusion about how it’s all somehow magically going to work out okay for him. In his mind he’s now back in the White House, he’s back on Facebook, and everything is just fine and dandy. He’s perhaps in his safe space, so to speak, as a way of trying to convince himself that he’s not actually on the verge of arrest under the Espionage Act, which he is.

Of course Trump’s rally speech in Pennsylvania this weekend was supposed to be aimed at boosting midterm voter turnout for Republican candidates like Mehmet Oz. But you wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, because Trump has never had much luck convincing his base to vote in general elections that don’t have his name on the ballot, and because Trump rarely even tries to use these rallies to promote such candidates.

The AP used Trump’s Pennsylvania rally as an opportunity to run a story about a member of Trump’s base who’s still on board with Trump but has no interest in voting for Oz, even after Trump’s rally. Such articles are always biased in the direction of the one anecdotal example that the article’s author has arbitrarily chosen to focus on. But this one example does track with what we already know about the sheer ineffectiveness of Trump’s political rallies – particularly now that he’s no longer in office and only holds them occasionally.

In the meantime, the DOJ is now doing what it always does whenever the target of an active federal criminal investigation publicly shoots off his mouth about the investigation: it’s poring over Donald Trump’s rally speech in search of strategic advantages. In that sense, if Trump wants to keep running his mouth, he’s more than welcome to do so. It’s not helping him, it’s not helping the Republican Party, and it’s probably just helping make it that much easier for the DOJ to take him down.

U.S. Law, Constitution, Crime, Immigration

New York Times, As Midterms Near, ‘60-Day Rule’ Raises Dilemma for Trump Inquiries, Charlie Savage, Sept. 5, 2022 (print ed.).The Justice Department is debating how an unwritten rule should affect the criminal investigations into Jan. 6 and Donald Trump’s handling of sensitive documents.

As the midterm elections near, top Justice Department officials are weighing whether to temporarily scale back work in criminal investigations involving former President Donald J. Trump because of an unwritten rule forbidding overt actions that could improperly influence the vote, according to people briefed on the discussions.

Under what is known as the 60-day rule, the department has traditionally avoided taking any steps in the run-up to an election that could affect how people vote, out of caution that such moves could be interpreted as abusing its power to manipulate American democracy.

Mr. Trump, who is not on the ballot but wields outsize influence in the Republican Party, poses a particular dilemma for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, whose department is conducting two investigations involving the former president. They include the sprawling inquiry into the Jan. 6 riot and his related effort to overturn the 2020 election and another into his hoarding of sensitive government documents at his Florida club and residence.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. But as the 60-day deadline looms this week, the highly unusual situation offers no easy answers, said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Joe President Joe Biden addresses the nation from Philadelphia (Photo by Jim Watson for AFP via Getty Images).

Joe President Joe Biden addresses the nation from Philadelphia (Photo by Jim Watson for AFP via Getty Images).

Politico, The seeds of Biden’s democracy speech sprouted long before the Mar-a-Lago search, Sam Stein, Eugene Daniels and Jonathan Lemire, Sept. 3, 2022. But the actions of Trump and his supporters, along with threats of violence, sped up Biden’s need to address the nation.

President Joe Biden’s speech warning about an assault against American democracy — by Donald Trump and his core followers — was an election-season call to arms unlike anything in modern American history.

It also was months in the making.

Aides said that Biden had been planning to give a version of Thursday night’s address since this past June, relaying he wanted to speak on what he saw as increasingly grave threats to the nation’s democracy. But events continued to get in the way of its delivery. Pressure built over the past few weeks, they said, amid a number of developments.

GOP primary victories of a number of 2020 election-denying candidates in state and federal contests, combined with the consolidation of support around Trump, jolted the White House. Biden told associates that he barely recognized the Republican Party with which he could once work, seeing a personality cult instead.

Threats made against federal agents in the aftermath of the FBI’s search in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home also outraged the president. Biden saw echoes of what happened 18 months ago, when officers lost their lives defending the U.S. Capitol. The actual writing of the speech started about three weeks ago, with Jon Meacham, the historian who has had a hand in a number of Biden’s most sweeping speeches, helping the framing.

When a number of Republican lawmakers warned of violence should Trump be indicted, it only added to the urgency. There was, as one senior administration official put it, “a rising degree of concern that this movement, rather than dissipating, is going stronger.”

New York Times, A Second Constitutional Convention? Some Republicans Want to Force One, Carl Hulse, Sept. 5, 2022 (print ed.). ht Some in the G.O.P. think a debate over rewriting the Constitution is necessary to rein in the U.S. government. A former Democratic senator warns of the risks.

Representative Jodey Arrington, a conservative Texas Republican, believes it is well past time for something the nation has not experienced for more than two centuries: a debate over rewriting the Constitution.

“I think the states are due a convention,” said Mr. Arrington, who in July introduced legislation to direct the archivist of the United States to tally applications for a convention from state legislatures and compel Congress to schedule a gathering when enough states have petitioned for one. “It is time to rally the states and rein in Washington responsibly.”

To Russ Feingold, the former Democratic senator from Wisconsin and president of the American Constitution Society, a liberal judicial group, that is a terrible idea. Mr. Feingold sees the prospect of a constitutional convention as an exceptionally dangerous threat from the right and suggests it is closer to reality than most people realize as Republicans push to retake control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

“We are very concerned that the Congress, if it becomes Republican, will call a convention,” said Mr. Feingold, the co-author of a new book warning of the risks of a convention called “The Constitution in Jeopardy.”

“This could gut our Constitution,” Mr. Feingold said in an interview. “There needs to be real concern and attention about what they might do. We are putting out the alert.”

While the rise of election deniers, new voting restrictions and other electoral maneuvering get most of the attention, Mr. Feingold rates the prospect of a second constitutional convention as just as grave a threat to democratic governance.

“If you think this is democracy’s moment of truth, this is one of those things,” he said.

Elements on the right have for years been waging a quiet but concerted campaign to convene a gathering to consider changes to the Constitution. They hope to take advantage of a never-used aspect of Article V, which says in part that Congress, “on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments.”

Throughout the nation’s history, 27 changes have been made to the Constitution by another grindingly arduous route, with amendments originating in Congress subject to ratification by the states.

With sharp partisanship making that path near impossible, backers of the convention idea now hope to harness the power of Republican-controlled state legislatures to petition Congress and force a convention they see as a way to strip away power from Washington and impose new fiscal restraints, at a minimum.

Recent Headlines

New York Times, Former Idaho Lawmaker Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Raping Intern
New York Times, Investigators, Citing Looting, Have Seized 27 Antiquities From the Met
New York Times, Eight Migrants Drown as Dozens Are Swept Down Rio Grande
Washington Post, Ohio police officer fatally shoots Black man in bed, body camera shows
New York Times, Investigation: Death in Navy SEAL Training Exposes Culture of Brutality, Cheating and Drugs, Dave Philipps
Washington Post, Biden administration urges Supreme Court not to take citizenship case,
New York Times, A Who’s Who of Silicon Valley Lawyers Up for the Musk-Twitter Trial
New York Times, Aspiring Proud Boy Who Stormed Capitol Gets 55 Months in Prison

Trump Rallies, Reactions

djt wilkes barre sept 3 2022

New York Times, Donald Trump lashed out at President Biden and federal agents in his first rally since the F.B.I. search of his home, Katie Glueck and Michael C. Bender, Sept. 5, 2022 (print ed.). Donald J. Trump and President Biden have both made recent appearances in Pennsylvania, one of the key states in November’s midterm elections.

In his first rally since his home was searched by the F.B.I. on Aug. 8, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday lashed out at President Biden and federal agents, calling his Democratic rival “an enemy of the state” and the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice “vicious monsters.”

In an aggrieved and combative speech in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump stoked anger against law enforcement even as the F.B.I. and federal officials have faced an increase in threats following the search of Mr. Trump’s residence to retrieve classified documents.

Mr. Trump’s remarks echoed the chain of similar, escalating attacks he wrote on his social media website this week, including posts that singled out one agent by name. That agent has retired, and his lawyers have said he did not have a role in the search.

Although he faced criticism for the tirades, and some Republicans have warned about the political dangers in attacking law enforcement, the former president signaled he would yield no ground.

His speech came two days after Mr. Biden warned that democratic values were under assault by forces loyal to Mr. Trump. The former president described Mr. Biden’s address as “the most vicious, hateful, and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president.”

Wayne Madsen Report, Commentary, The "F" word to fascists is the word fascist, Wayne Madsen, left, Sept. 5, 2022. "With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

It's a funny thing about Donald Trump's MAGA fascists. They resent being called fascists. Benito Mussolini had no problem with the word fascist. He even named his political party the "National Fascist Party." So, why do Mussolini's fellow Italian fascists like Doug Mastriano, Ron DeSantis, and Rudolph Giuliani abhor the words fascist or fascism so much?

Sept. 3

mar a lago aerial Custom

New York Times, Empty Folders That Had Contained Classified Files Were Found at Mar-a-Lago, Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer, Sept. 3, 2022 (print ed.). An inventory of items seized in the F.B.I.’s search of former President Trump’s home, above, raised the question of whether the documents had fully been recovered.

The F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida club and residence last month recovered 48 empty folders marked as containing classified information, a newly disclosed court filing shows, raising the question of whether the government had fully recovered the documents or any remain missing.

The filing, a detailed list of items retrieved in the search, was unsealed on Friday as part of the court fight over whether to appoint an independent arbiter to review the materials taken by federal agents from Mr. Trump’s estate, Mar-a-Lago, on Aug. 8.

Along with the empty folders with classified markings, the F.B.I. recovered 40 more empty folders that said they contained sensitive documents the user should “return to staff secretary/military aide,” the inventory said. It also said that agents found seven documents marked as “top secret” in Mr. Trump’s office and 11 more in a storage room.

The list and an accompanying court filing from the Justice Department did not say whether all the contents of the folders had been recovered. But the filing noted that the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s handling of the documents remained “an active criminal investigation.”

The inventory also sheds further light on how the documents marked as classified were stored haphazardly in boxes or in containers, mixed among news clippings and “other printed media,” articles of clothing, books and “gift items.”

The inventory listed seven batches of materials taken by the F.B.I. from Mr. Trump’s personal office at Mar-a-Lago that contained government-owned documents and photographs, some marked with classification levels up to “top secret” and some that were not marked as classified. The list also included batches of government documents that had been in 26 boxes or containers in a storage room at the compound.

In all, the list said, the F.B.I. retrieved 18 documents marked as top secret, 54 marked as secret, 31 marked as confidential, and 11,179 government documents or photographs without classification markings.

A federal judge in Florida, Aileen M. Cannon, ordered the inventory list to be released during a hearing on Thursday to determine whether to appoint a so-called special master to review the government records seized from Mar-a-Lago for any that could be privileged. Judge Cannon said that she would issue a written decision on the matter “in due course.”

Mr. Trump appeared to acknowledge on social media this week that he knew that much of this material was at his estate, complaining about a photograph that the Justice Department released on Tuesday night that cataloged some of the evidence that had been seized.

The photograph showed several folders with “top secret” markings and some documents with classification markings visible. All the material was arrayed on a carpet near a placard labeled “2A,” presumably to make a record of what was in a box of that number before the F.B.I. removed it from Mar-a-Lago.

A shorter inventory, released earlier, said Box 2A contained materials found in Mr. Trump’s personal office. In a social media post, the former president declared that the folders had been kept in “cartons” rather than “sloppily” left on the floor, suggesting that he had been aware of the presence of the materials.

djt looking up

World Crisis Radio, Strategic Analysis: Biden formally warns nation and world that US is threatened by fascist dictatorship sought by Trump’s degenerate MAGAt faction, Webster G. Tarpley, right, Sept. 3, 2022 (94:52 mins.). You have been warned!

New York Times calls for Trump’s indictment, which [conservative legal pundits] Andy McCarthy and Judge Napolitano consider imminent; Critical issue remains the indictment, not the Special Master issue;

FBI’s haul from August 8 raid includes 11,000 pages and pictures, 90 empty folders for classified and military aide/staff secretary documents;

Worse than library fines for unreturned books: CIA emergency message to all posts in October 2021 warned of severe losses in killed and flipped among agents and informants; Filchgate: Trump is still silent on his real motive in purloining masses of secret papers;

More to come: Wapo source suggests work of National Archives in recovering documents ”may not yet be done”: ”there might still be more records missing,” says one official;

At 66 days to vote, Biden popularity rises to 45%; Democrats take 3% lead in WSJ Congressional generic ballot, up from minus 5% in March, adding up to an 8% gain; Continuing winning skein from Kansas referendum and NY-19, Democrat wins Alaska House seat, defeating proto-Trumper Palin;

Wave of scientific optimism from Artemis moon shot can turn mass culture and psychology even faster against MAGAts;

G-7 ministers approve price cap on purchases of oil from Russia, while EU Commission endorses price cap for natural gas; Putin responds by cutting natural gas flow from Russia to Europe through Nordstream I; Kherson offensive is rolling;
French Energy Minister pledges that all 56 of France’s reactors will be working by winter, including the 32 now being serviced;

More proof of contemporary fascist threat: Melloni-Berlusconi-Salvini bloc could become the next Italian government after September 25 election, just in time for 100-year anniversary of Mussolini’s infamous March on Rome, which opened the fascist era!

On Labor Day weekend, celebrating 641 NLRB elections won by unions so far this year, defeating union busters at Trader Joe’s, Chipotle, Amazon, and 230 Starbucks! Breaking: Michigan MAGAts use technicalities to throw abortion rights referendum off the ballot because they know they will lose!

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Trump's blood-soaked hands may be behind suspicious deaths, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Sept. 2-3, 2022. Part of the damage assessment currently being conducted by the Intelligence Community with the possibility that Donald Trump, as president and after, compromised U.S. intelligence assets and sources will be to closely examine several suspicious deaths and outright assassinations of influential and key people abroad and in the United States.

In order to be considered a source or asset for the Central Intelligence Agency's Human Control System (HCS), any substantial contact between a U.S. intelligence agent and a source or asset would likely be identified in classified Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) HCS files. These files include those illegally kept by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and at his other properties in the United States and abroad.

Working in concert with its foreign intelligence partners, the U.S. Intelligence Community will examine every source possibly compromised during and after the Trump presidency.

The following chart contains the names of politically-connected decedents around the world whose causes of death were suspicious or not provided. For example, anti-Vladimir Putin Russian businessman Daniel Rapoport was found dead outside of his Washington, DC apartment on August 14. Police ruled Rapoport's death as not suspicious. He supposedly jumped from the 8th floor of his apartment building. Rapoport's suspicious death mirrors those of other Russian critics of Putin, with "jumping" from windows being quite a common cause of death.

WMR has examined the record of suspicious deaths since April of this year. Deaths from Covid have been filtered out. The CIA and other agencies are more than likely looking back to the very day Trump took office, January 20, 2017, to ascertain the damage he has caused to America's network of sources and informants for intelligence. That is no easy task.

Palmer Report, Analysis: The empty folders that reveal Donald Trump is finished, Bill Palmer

New York Times, Barr Dismisses Trump’s Request for a Special Master, Glenn Thrush, Sept. 3, 2022 (print ed.). Former Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department was justified in investigating former President Trump’s handling of government materials.

Former Attorney General William P. Barr dismissed former President Donald J. Trump’s call for an independent review of materials seized from his Florida home on Friday — and said an inventory of items recovered in the search last month seemed to support the Justice Department’s claim that it was needed to safeguard national security.

“As more information comes out, the actions of the department look more understandable,” Mr. Barr told The New York Times in a phone interview, speaking of the decision by the current attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, to seek a search warrant of the complex at Mar-a-Lago.

“It seems to me they were driven by concern about highly sensitive information being strewn all over a country club, and it was taking them almost two years to get it back,” said Mr. Barr, who resigned in December 2020, as Mr. Trump pushed him to support false claims that the election had been stolen.

“It appears that there’s been a lot of jerking around of the government,” he added. “I’m not sure the department could have gotten it back without taking action.”

August

Aug. 31

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Trump's cache of stolen classified files resembles those of America's most notorious spies, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former Navy intelligence officer and NSA analyst, Aug. 31, 2022. Trump's treason may have led to deaths of U.S. informants and intelligence assets in Saudi Arabia and Russia. Trump's cache of stolen classified files resembles those of America's most notorious spies.

Photographic evidence of the classified documents Donald Trump had strewn around Mar-a-Lago presents the U.S. Intelligence Community with the shocking depth and breadth of the compromise by Trump and his associates, Kash Patel and John Solomon, right, of America's most sensitive intelligence.

aldrich ames mug john solomon As damage assessment teams from across 17 U.S. intelligence agencies conduct in-depth analyses of compromised intelligence sources, technical methods, and relationships with foreign intelligence services, federal law enforcement photographic evidence of unprotected classified documents at Mar-a-Lago will give the most seasoned U.S. counterintelligence professional pause.

The cache of documents resembles those seized from America's most notorious spies, including Jonathan Pollard, Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, shown far right in a mug shot, and John Walker.

Associated Press, Feds cite efforts to obstruct probe of docs at Trump estate, Eric Tucker, Jill Colvin and Michael Balsamo, The Justice Department says classified documents were “likely concealed and removed” from a storage room at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as part of an effort to obstruct the federal investigation into the discovery of the government records.

The FBI also seized boxes and containers holding more than 100 classified records during its Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago and found classified documents stashed in Trump’s office, according to a filing that lays out the most detailed chronology to date of months of strained interactions between Justice Department officials and Trump representatives over the discovery of government secrets.

The filing offers yet another indication of the sheer volume of classified records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida. It shows how investigators conducting a criminal probe have focused not just on why the records were improperly stored there but also on the question of whether the Trump team intentionally misled them about the continued, and unlawful, presence of the top secret documents.

The timeline laid out by the Justice Department made clear that the extraordinary search of Mar-a-Lago came only after other efforts to retrieve the records had failed and that it resulted from law enforcement suspicion that additional documents remained inside the property despite assurances by Trump representatives that a “diligent search” had accounted for all of the material.

It also included a picture of some of the seized documents with colored cover sheets indicating their classified status, perhaps as a way to rebut suggestions that whoever packed them or handled them at Mar-a-Lago could have easily failed to appreciate their sensitive nature.

The photo shows the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box filled with gold-framed pictures, including a Time magazine cover.

Though it contains significant new details on the investigation, the Justice Department filing does not resolve a core question that has driven public fascination with the investigation — why Trump held onto the documents after he left the White House and why he and his team resisted repeated efforts to give them back. In fact, it suggests officials may not have received an answer.

During a June 3 visit to Mar-a-Lago by FBI and Justice Department officials, the document states, “Counsel for the former President offered no explanation as to why boxes of government records, including 38 documents with classification markings, remained at the Premises nearly five months after the production of the Fifteen Boxes and nearly one-and-a-half years after the end of the Administration.”

That visit, which came weeks after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the records, receives substantial attention in the document and appears to be a key investigative focus.

Though Trump has said he had declassified all of the documents at Mar-a-Lago, his lawyers did not suggest that during the visit and instead “handled them in a manner that suggested counsel believed that the documents were classified,” according to the document.

Washington Post, Justice Dept. says Trump team may have hidden, moved classified papers, Devlin Barrett, Aug. 31, 2022. A Justice Department filing suggests advisers to former president Donald Trump misled officials trying to recover sensitive and top secret papers from Mar-a-Lago.

Washington Post, Opinion: Trump’s loony rants should remind the GOP his nomination would be disastrous, Jennifer Rubin, right, Aug. 31, 2022. One does not need a medical degree or a therapist’s license to conclude that defeated former president Donald Trump’s nutty rant insisting that he be made president immediately or the 2020 election be rerun is the sign of an unhinged personality.

Under pressure from the increasingly potent espionage investigation, he might be losing his grip. For a change, you don’t hear Republicans rushing forth to support his latest insane demand.

Trump’s posting of QAnon messages and implicit threats (in increasingly unintelligible syntax) suggests that he is losing the ability or desire to control his impulsive outbursts. This is the guy whom millions of Republicans want to nominate for president.

Since the redacted affidavit was released last week, the only two defenses from Republicans are no defenses at all. The first, courtesy of Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), amounts to extortion: Prosecute Trump and there’ll be blood in the streets. The second is the laughable inquiry: Is that all? It’s not “all,” because the affidavit was heavily redacted. Moreover, the notion that we are talking “just” about documents ignores that most espionage cases are about documents (or equivalent material). That’s where the secrets are.

Palmer Report, Analysis: Donald Trump has unhinged meltdown about “terrible” DOJ filing, Bill Palmer, right, Aug. 31, 2022. Donald Trump spent all day melting down on his failed social network, making about a hundred increasingly frantic and frazzled posts that were over the top even by his standards. This was presumably because he knew that by the end of the day, the DOJ would drop the hammer on him with a lengthy court filing spelling out just how throughly it has him nailed.

Sure enough, that document became public just before midnight last night, by which time Trump was presumably passed out near a bowl of Jello or something. But now he’s resumed his ranting and raving this morning, and – not shockingly – he thinks it’s all “terrible.”

Trump seems particularly upset about the DOJ’s decision to include a photo of clearly labeled highly classified documents that it found in a box mixed in with Trump’s framed copies of himself on the cover of Time Magazine. The photo helped make clear that Trump took the classified documents and considered them to be his personal property, even though he could tell just by looking at their covers that they were property of the government.

Nonetheless, Trump still thinks it’s “terrible” that the DOJ dared to do this. He’s accusing them of having thrown classified documents “haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!).” Trump is also apparently very upset that the DOJ released photos of these documents, which he says were supposed to be “secret.” He then claims he’s already declassified them, a false claim that even his own legal team has never officially made at any point.

We’re not going to keep sharing every deranged thought that pops out of Trump’s head today. But his initial response this morning does serve to demonstrate where his mindset is now that the DOJ has released this mammoth public court filing. He’s focused on whining like a baby and floating baseless legal defenses that probably hurt him more than help him. By (falsely) claiming he was allowed to be in possession of these documents because he declassified them, he’s admitting that they were indeed in his possession. So much for blaming the coffee boy.

Washington Post, Opinion: Trump wants to be treated like Hillary Clinton? By all means, Dana Milbank, right, Aug. 31, 2022 (print ed.). Donald Trump dana milbank newest and his MAGA mouthpieces say the former president should be treated the same way Hillary Clinton was — and they’re right!

Ever since the FBI found boxes upon boxes of government secrets hoarded at his resort residence, Trump has complained that he’s being held to a different standard from the one applied to Clinton during the probe of her private email server in 2016. “Absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable,” Trump claimed when he confirmed the search of Mar-a-Lago.

So, by all means, let’s relitigate. In fact, Trump should be treated exactly the way Clinton was:

The FBI should undertake a sprawling, multiyear investigation into Trump’s conduct, grilling him and his staff, running extensive forensics, and examining whether his actions allowed hostile actors to compromise U.S. security. The FBI should continue to keep him under investigation while he runs for president in 2024.

Palmer Report, Analysis: Donald Trump’s attorneys Christina Bobb and Evan Corcoran may have to flip on him after this DOJ filing, Bill Palmer, right, Aug. 31, 2022. We kept seeing it in major media reports, and now we’re seeing it in a public DOJ court filing. Back in May, Donald Trump’s attorney Christina Bobb signed a letter, authored by Evan Corcoran, asserting to the DOJ that all classified documents in Trump’s possession had been returned. This letter obviously turned out to be a false claim, and is felony obstruction of justice on someone’s part.

There are two possible explanations here. The first would be that one or both of Trump’s lawyers knew the letter was a lie when they wrote and signed it. In such case, the attorney(s) would be charged for obstruction, and their only hope of getting off the hook would be to cut a plea deal or immunity deal against Trump.

The second scenario would be that Trump lied to his lawyers about the documents, tricking them into writing and signing this letter. In such case his lawyers would be innocent, but would still be material witnesses who would be compelled to testify against him – and refusing to testify could make them guilty of obstruction.

In either scenario, Trump’s lawyers would need to withdraw from their representation of him in order to cooperate against him. And if they’re looking for full immunity, they’d probably need to convince the DOJ that they were indeed misled, as opposed to being in on the plot. As so often ends up being the case, Trump’s newest lawyers already need their own lawyers.

djt barr conferring headshots

New York Times, Opinion: Bill Barr Made the Decision to Clear Trump, and That Should Still Frighten Us, Neal K. Katyal, right, Aug. 31, 2022 (print ed.). The neal katyal o memo released last week by the Justice Department closing the book on the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election is a frightening document.

Critics have rightly focused on its substance, slipshod legal analysis and omission of damning facts.

But the process by which that memo, sent in March 2019, came to be is just as worrisome. Delivered to the attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, the memo was written by two political appointees in the Justice Department.

Mr. Barr (above right) used the memo to go around the special counsel regulations and to clear President Donald Trump of obstruction of justice. If left to fester, this decision will have pernicious consequences for investigations of future high-level wrongdoing.

It raises particular concerns because, as a young Justice Department staff member, I drafted the special counsel regulations in 1999 to prevent the exact problem of having partisan political appointees undermine an investigation. The regulations were put in place to ensure that the counsel would make any determination to charge or not and to force the attorney general to overrule those determinations specifically and before Congress.

The 2019 memo tendentiously argued that Mr. Trump committed no crimes — leaving the final decision on the matter to Republican-aligned robert mueller testifying flickr appointees instead of to the independent special counsel, left.

The challenge in devising the regulations was to develop a framework for the prosecution of high-level executive branch officials — which is harder than it sounds, because the Constitution requires the executive branch to control prosecutions. So we are left with one of the oldest philosophical problems: Who will guard the guardians?

The solution we landed on was to have a special counsel take over the investigative and prosecutorial functions. That counsel was vested with day-to-day independence in an investigation, but the attorney general would still be able to overrule the special counsel — but, crucially, if the attorney general overruled, to report to Congress, to ensure accountability.

The regulations were written with an untrustworthy president in mind, more so than the problem that Mr. Barr presented, which is an untrustworthy attorney general. Unlike presidents, attorneys general are confirmed by the Senate, with a 60-vote threshold — so we assumed they would be reasonably nonpartisan. And we also knew there was no way around the attorney general being the ultimate decider, because the Constitution requires the executive branch to control prosecutions.

We created the role of special counsel to fill a void — to concentrate in one person responsibility and ultimate blame so that investigations would not be covered up from the get-go and to give that person independence from political pressure.

It is outrageous that Mr. Barr acted so brazenly in the face of this framework. The point of requiring a special counsel was to provide for an independent determination of any potential criminal wrongdoing by Mr. Trump.

But the political appointees in his Justice Department took what was the most important part of that inquiry — the decision of whether he committed crimes — and grabbed it for themselves. This was a fundamental betrayal of the special counsel guidelines not for some principle but because it protected their boss, Mr. Trump. It is the precise problem that the regulations were designed to avoid and why the regulations give the counsel “the full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions of any United States attorney.”

Mr. Katyal is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration and is a co-author of “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.”

Aug. 30

mar a lago aerial Custom

Washington Post, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents already examined by FBI, Justice Dept. tells judge, Devlin Barrett, Aug. 30, 2022 (print ed.). A ‘filter team’ has completed its review of material possibly covered by attorney-client privilege, the court filing says.

FBI agents have already finished their examination of possibly privileged documents seized in an Aug. 8 search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, according to a Justice Department court filing Monday that could undercut the former president’s efforts to have a special master appointed to review the files.

The “filter team” used by the Justice Department to sort through the documents and weed out any material that should not be reviewed by criminal investigators has completed its review, the brief filed by Justice Department prosecutors says. The filing came in response to a decision Saturday by U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon to hold a hearing this week on Trump’s motion seeking the appointment of a special master.

The filing says prosecutors will provide more information later this week. But it notes that even before the judge’s weekend ruling, the filter team had “identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information, completed its review of those materials, and is in the process of following the procedures” spelled out in the search warrant to handle any privilege disputes.

lindsey graham npr

Washington Post, Opinion: Trump again summons the mob, Ruth Marcus, right, Aug. 30, 2022 (print ed.). Richard M. Nixon famously deployed the madman theory of foreign policy, directing aides to suggest to his counterparts overseas that they might not be able to control a volatile and reckless president.

Now, Donald Trump and his defenders are using a version of that gambit to deter the Justice Department from prosecuting the former president, arguing that going after Trump would dangerously incite his already angry followers.

Trump had his lawyer deliver this sinister message to Attorney General Merrick Garland — wrapped in a purported effort to calm the waters. “President Trump wants the Attorney General to know that he has been hearing from people all over the country about the raid. If there was one word to describe their mood, it is ‘angry,’ ” a Trump lawyer told a senior Justice Department official three days after the search at Mar-a-Lago. “The heat is building up. The pressure is building up. Whatever I can do to take the heat down, to bring the pressure down, just let us know.”

Then, on Sunday, Trump acolyte Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) didn’t bother with the disingenuous niceties. He went straight to the threat.

Let’s address that supposed “double standard” between Trump and Hillary Clinton: There isn’t one. Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state was, as I said at the time, sloppy and exasperating. She shouldn’t have used her private email address for official business, and she should have been more careful about classified information being on it. This is, as then-FBI Director James B. Comey concluded, a far cry from an indictable offense.

How does Trump’s conduct fit into this rubric? With so much of the evidence under seal, we can’t tell for sure. But we know, based on the redacted affidavit, that there appear to be significant differences between the Clinton and Trump situations.

Critics have rightly focused on its substance, slipshod legal analysis and omission of damning facts.

Mr. Barr used the memo to go around the special counsel regulations and to clear President Donald Trump of obstruction of justice. If left to fester, this decision will have pernicious consequences for investigations of future high-level wrongdoing.

The 2019 memo tendentiously argued that Mr. Trump committed no crimes — leaving the final decision on the matter to Republican-aligned appointees instead of to the independent special counsel.

Mr. Katyal is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, was an acting solicitor general in the Obama administration and is a co-author of “Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump.”

anthony ornato djt USA Today, Anthony Ornato, Secret Service and Trump official named in explosive Jan. 6 testimony, retires, Bart Jansen, Aug. 30, 2022. Ornato, shown above in sunglasses, was expected to testify to the House committee investigating the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, after another witness described him talking about a clash between Trump and his security detail. A former White House aide to Donald Trump who was a central figure in explosive testimony about the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, retired Monday from the Secret Service.

usa today logo 5 Anthony Ornato, who served as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for operations while also a top Secret Service official, retired after 25 years with the agency, according to agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

“I long-planned to retire and have been planning this transition for more than a year,” Ornato, the former assistant director for the office of training, said in a statement to Politico.

Ornato’s retirement comes as the House committee awaits his additional testimony about an incident involving Trump before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Members of the Secret Service, including Tony Ornato, right, stand guard as then-President Donald Trump, left, speaks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington before departing, Sept. 9, 2019.
A former Trump aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that Ornato told her after Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, 2021, that the president tried to grab the steering wheel in his vehicle and lunged for the chief of his Secret Service security, Robert Engel, in order to join the mob at the Capitol rather than return to the White House.

Hutchinson said Ornato described the incident while Engel was in the room with them and Engel didn’t correct the story.

“Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said, ‘Sir, you need to take your arm off the steering wheel,’” Hutchinson testified. “’We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel and when Mr. Ornato recounted this story for me, he had motioned towards his clavicles.”

Ornato and Engel, who each cooperated with the committee before the June hearing, reportedly wanted to testify again to clear up potential disputes with Hutchinson’s testimony.

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies before the January 6th commission.
Guglielmi said the Secret Service has cooperated with the investigation and made officials available for testimony. It will be up to Ornato to decide whether to testify.

“Certainly when he was an employee of the service, he had all intentions of testifying,” Guglielmi said. “Now that he’s a private citizen working for another organization, you’re going to have to check with him on if that still stands.”

A committee spokesman declined comment on Ornato’s retirement.

Ornato joined the Secret Service in 1997 and served under five presidential administrations. Before joining the White House in 2019, Ornato served as deputy assistant director of the Secret Service’s office of investigations. He previously served in the presidential protective division during the George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations.

Washington Post, Opinion: The next scary matter for Trump’s lawyers: The crime-fraud exception, Jennifer Rubin, right, Aug. 30, 2022. Even occasional “Law & Order” viewers know that the conversations between a criminal defendant and his lawyer are normally protected from prosecutors.

However, when any lawyer becomes a co-conspirator, such attorney-client privilege evaporates because of what is known as the “crime-fraud exception.” If you’re participating in a crime rather than defending a criminal, you and your client don’t get the benefit of the attorney-client privilege.

In the case of former president Donald Trump, we may soon get a treatise on the crime-fraud exception, as the matter is poised to come up in a shockingly large number of instances.

Aug. 29

Politico, Analysis: When an election denier becomes a chief election official, Zach Montellaro, Aug. 29, 2022. Trump-aligned secretary of state hopefuls are campaigning against ballot counting machines and could complicate mail voting, among other changes.

Many of the election deniers running for secretary of state this year have spent their time talking about something they can’t do: “decertifying” the 2020 results.

The bigger question — amid concerns about whether they would fairly administer the 2024 presidential election — is exactly what powers they would have if they win in November.

Atop the list of the most disruptive things they could do is refusing to certify accurate election results — a nearly unprecedented step that would set off litigation in state and federal court. That has already played out on a smaller scale this year, when a small county in New Mexico refused to certify election results over unfounded fears about election machines, until a state court ordered them to certify.

But secretaries of states’ roles in elections stretch far beyond approving vote tallies and certifying results. Many of the candidates want to dramatically change the rules for future elections, too.

The Donald Trump-aligned Republican nominees in a number of presidential battleground states have advocated for sweeping changes to election law, with a particular focus on targeting absentee and mail voting in their states — keying off one of Trump’s obsessions.

And even if they cannot push through major changes to state law using allies in the legislatures, they could still complicate and frustrate elections through the regulatory directives that guide the day-to-day execution of election procedures by county officials in their states.

That could include things from targeting the use of ballot tabulation machines, which have become the subject of conspiracy theories on the right, to changing forms used for voter registration or absentee ballot requests in ways that make them more difficult to use.

Election officials “are the people who protect our freedom to vote all the way through the process,” said Joanna Lydgate, the CEO of States United Action, a bipartisan group that has opposed these candidates. “But all the way through, there are opportunities for mischief, opportunities for election deniers to add barriers to the ballot box, to curtail the freedom to vote.”

Four Republicans on the ballot in major battlegrounds this fall have banded together in what they call the America First Secretary of State Coalition: secretary of state nominees Kristina Karamo in Michigan, Mark Finchem in Arizona and Jim Marchant in Nevada, along with Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, who would appoint the state’s chief election official if he wins.

Washington Post, Opinion: Lindsey Graham’s vile ‘riots’ threat gives away Trump’s game, Greg Sargent, right, Aug. 29, 2022. “If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham on Fox News, there will be “riots in the streets.”

The South Carolina Republican’s quote has been relentlessly skewered as a blatant threat of retaliatory political violence ever since he offered it Sunday night. And it is that: Everyone knows the old mob-speak trick of cloaking threats in the guise of faux-innocent “predictions.”

But there’s a more pernicious danger here that shouldn’t escape notice. Underlying Graham’s threat is another attack on the rule of law, one that more Trump propagandists will resort to when their man’s legal perils deepen. It’s an effort to discredit the idea that the law can be applied to the former president at all.

Trump endorsed Graham’s threat by posting video of it on Truth Social. And Trump himself had already unleashed a volley of deranged hints that the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago compound is the stuff of banana republics and FBI leadership is riddled with corruption.

All this comes after release of the redacted affidavit for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant has deepened our understanding of Trump’s potential crimes and strengthened the case that the search was premised on reasonable law enforcement grounds.

Some Republicans have quietly shifted from objecting to the search to questioning the search’s timing. That’s silly: The timing reflects evidence amassed by federal agents that Trump still had highly sensitive documents as late as June. But this shows how hard defending Trump has become.

Not for Graham, apparently.

“Most Republicans, including me, believe that when it comes to Trump, there is no law,” Graham seethed in that Fox appearance. “It’s all about getting him.”

Washington Post, Opinion: Finally, a Sunday anchor puts his foot down on Espionagegate, Jennifer Rubin, right, Aug. 29, 2022. Finally, a Sunday anchor puts his foot down on Espionagegate.

Given my fervent criticism of mainstream media interviewers for going soft on Republicans carrying water for defeated former president Donald Trump, who is under investigation for possible violation of the Espionage Act, it’s only fair to point out appropriately tough, take-no-prisoners performances.

On Sunday, that came from George Stephanopoulos on ABC News’s “This Week” in an interview with retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). His upcoming retirement is noteworthy since he should have zero reason to fear Trump’s wrath or prostrate himself in front of the MAGA crowd. And yet he did.

Here’s the exchange:

New York Times, Analysis: Trump Document Inquiry Poses Unparalleled Test for Justice Dept., Katie Benner, Aug. 29, 2022. What had started as an effort to retrieve national security documents has now been transformed into one of the most challenging and complicated criminal investigations in recent memory.

As Justice Department officials haggled for months this year with former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers and aides over the return of government documents at his Florida home, federal prosecutors became convinced that they were not being told the whole truth.

That conclusion helped set in motion a decision that would amount to an unparalleled test of the Justice Department’s credibility in a deeply polarized political environment: to seek a search warrant to enter Mar-a-Lago and retrieve what prosecutors suspected would be highly classified materials, beyond the hundreds of pages that Mr. Trump had already returned.

By the government’s account, that gamble paid off, with F.B.I. agents carting off boxloads of sensitive material during the search three weeks ago, including some documents with top secret markings.

But the matter hardly ended there: What had started as an effort to retrieve national security documents has now been transformed into one of the most challenging, complicated and potentially explosive criminal investigations in recent memory, with tremendous implications for the Justice Department, Mr. Trump and public faith in government.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, right, now faces the prospect of having to decide whether to file criminal charges against a former president and likely 2024 Republican candidate, a step without any historical parallel.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: DeSantis's "Mongoose Gang" of intimidators and cronies, Wayne Madsen, left, Aug. 29, 2022. Florida is currently the closest thing to a fascist police state within the borders of the United States.

That is primarily due to its Republican authoritarian governor, military "stolen valor" practitioner Ron DeSantis, below left, acting like a tinpot caudillo or dictator, the type that frequently plagued the Caribbean and Latin America over the decades. DeSantis has continually abused his authority as governor. This includes his throwing elected Democrats out of office, in one case at gunpoint, and replacing them with far-right Republican cronies.

ron desantis o One of DeSantis's victims was the successful elected Democratic State's Attorney for Hillsborough County, Andrew Warren. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Warren described his ordeal in DeSantis's banana republic of Florida: "An armed sheriff’s deputy and a governor’s aide showed up on Thursday morning at the State Attorney’s Office in Tampa, where I was serving as the elected prosecutor for Hillsborough County. They handed me an executive order signed by DeSantis that immediately suspended me from office. Before I could read it, they escorted me out."

Warren, who is suing DeSantis in federal court for his actions, continued in his op-ed: "This is a blatant abuse of power. I don’t work for DeSantis. I was elected by voters — twice — and I have spent my entire career locking up violent criminals and fraudsters. Without any misdoing on my part or any advance notice, I was forced out of my office, removed from my elected position, and replaced with a DeSantis ally. If this can happen to me, what can DeSantis do to other Floridians?"

Warren's question would soon be answered. DeSantis did not hesitate to fire other Democratic officials in the state. A few weeks after DeSantis suspended Warren, he struck again by suspending four elected members of the Broward County school board -- all registered Democrats -- from their non-partisan seats.

New York Times, QAnon accounts have found a home, and Donald Trump’s support, on Truth Social, Tiffany Hsu, Aug. 29, 2022. Researchers identified 88 users promoting the conspiracy theory on Donald Trump’s platform, and said he had reposted messages 65 times.

Dozens of QAnon-boosting accounts decamped to Truth Social this year after they were banned by other social networks and have found support from the platform’s creator, former President Donald J. Trump, according to a report released on Monday.

NewsGuard, a media watchdog that analyzes the credibility of news outlets, found 88 users promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory on Truth Social, each to more than 10,000 followers. Of those accounts, 32 were previously banned by Twitter.

Twitter barred Mr. Trump over fears that he might incite violence after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He started Truth Social as an alternative in February 2022. He has amplified content from 30 of the QAnon accounts to his more than 3.9 million Truth Social followers, reposting their messages 65 times since he became active on the platform in April, according to the report.

djt golf shirt bloated “He’s not simply President Trump the political leader here — he’s the proprietor of a platform,” said Steven Brill, co-chief executive of NewsGuard and the founder of the magazine The American Lawyer. “That would be the equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg reposting content from supporters of QAnon.”

Millions of QAnon followers believe that an imaginary cabal of sex-trafficking, Satan-worshiping liberals is controlling the government and that Mr. Trump is leading the fight against it. Fantastical QAnon ideas have taken root in mainstream Republican politics, although some supporters have struggled at the polls.

The movement has been viewed by law enforcement as a potential domestic terror threat and was linked to the Capitol riot. Tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Twitch have cracked down on QAnon content.

“The other platforms have taken some steps to deal with QAnon and other similar types of misinformation, but here, it’s pretty clear that they’re not,” Mr. Brill said of Truth Social.

Truth Social did not respond to questions about NewsGuard’s findings. Instead, in a statement sent through a representative, the social media platform said that it had “reopened the internet and given the American people their voice back.”

Politico, Same-sex marriage puts Ron Johnson in a bind, Marianne LeVine and Holly Otterbein, Aug. 29, 2022. The conservative Wisconsin senator — the chamber's most vulnerable incumbent this fall — could soon face a very tough vote.

The most endangered Senate Republican incumbent — who’s trailing his reelection foe in one of the most closely divided states in the country — could face a tough vote just weeks out from Election Day on whether to enshrine same-sex marriage into law.

As Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer moves closer to a vote that would put Sen. Ron Johnson on defense in the home stretch of the midterms, the Wisconsin conservative is suddenly under the microscope on a social issue that he’s rarely focused on during his decade-plus in office. But it’s far from clear whether he’ll take that baby step to the center ahead of a November contest against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who’s opened a slight lead in public polls.

Johnson surprised many fellow senators last month when he said he saw “no reason” to oppose what he described as unnecessary House-passed legislation designed to protect same-sex marriage, which could come to the floor as soon as next month. Then, when pressed later, he hedged on whether he’d vote yes or merely present. And he’s now pushing, alongside other Senate Republicans, for the bill to be amended before declaring his support.

Washington Post, Naming of special master could complicate Mar-a-Lago documents case, David Nakamura and Amy B Wang, Aug. 29, 2022. If a federal judge appoints a special master to review materials taken by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago, it could complicate matters in the federal government case.

A federal judge’s indication that she is prepared to appoint a special master to review materials seized from Mar-a-Lago by federal agents could present new complications and unresolved legal questions in the federal government’s high-stakes quest to wrest control of the documents from former president Donald Trump.

aileen cannon U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s two-page order issued on Saturday appeared unusual in that the judge has not yet heard arguments from the Justice Department, said former federal prosecutors and legal analysts on Sunday.

Cannon, right, 41, whom Trump appointed to the bench in the Southern District of Florida in 2020, has also given federal officials until Tuesday to provide the court with a more detailed list of items the FBI had removed from Trump’s Florida estate on Aug. 8.

She asked the government to give a status report of its own review of the materials and set a Thursday court hearing in West Palm Beach, Fla. That location is about an hour away from the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Fla., where she typically hears cases.

Aug. 28

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Proof, Investigative Commentary: The Real Scandal in Donald Trump’s Historic Theft of Classified Records Is Not What You Think, Seth Abramson, left, Aug. 26-28, 2022. As a Trump biographer who’s written more best-sellers on Trump’s presidency than any other author, I’ve a very different view of the current classified-records scandal involving Trump and Mar-a-Lago.

Introduction: Donald Trump orchestrating a premeditated heist of well over 1,000 pages of highly classified taxpayer-owned government records—along with thousands of additional pages of documents that, while not classified, were both sensitive and not his to take—may be the least surprising thing Trump has ever done in his brief political career.

It’s important for Americans to understand not just that what Trump did is actually—for him—unsurprising, but also why it’s unsurprising.

The real story is a historic heist of classified national security-related information that was premeditated, conducted over the course of two years, and constitutes one of the gravest national security breaches in American history. The real story is that we don’t yet know the motive behind the crime. The real story is a historic heist of this sort of course would not have been undertaken for no reason—but had to have had behind it some sort of personal benefit that neither major media nor federal investigators have yet discovered, and which—candidly—there is no evidence as yet either major media or federal investigators are trying to find out.

Because Trump never told anyone about the declassifications—again, humoring for a moment the idea that any such declassifications ever occurred, even in Trump’s head—he was in fact only accomplishing a single goal in executing such a extraordinarily clandestine executive action. To wit, he was empowering himself to secretly show the documents that he had stolen to persons not otherwise entitled to see them, under circumstances in which he had a legal excuse for doing so if he got caught doing so.

There is, to be clear, no other purpose for a declassification that is known only to the President of the United States and not even a single other attorney, adviser, associate, aide, agent, acolyte, or assistant.

But there’s much more to say here, as in fact the act of fully declassifying a document to publicly viewable status—the sort of declassification Trump avoided here—has one other major result: the destruction of the pecuniary value of the data so declassified.

That is, if you take a classified document and make it public, it no longer can be sold for a profit, as everyone everywhere can access it if they have the time and inclination to track it down and view it.

Justice Matters Podcast, Commentary: Trump-appointed-judge Aileen Cannon grants Trump's demand for special master BEFORE DOJ weighs in, Glenn Kirschner, Aug. 28, 2022. There are some fundamental principles and universal rules by which America courts operate. One of those fundamental principles is that a judge does not rule on an issue until hearing from both parties involved in the litigation.

New York Times, Former President Trump’s legal team is scrambling to find a defense to hold off the Justice Department, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush, Aug. 28, 2022. The lawyers representing the former president in the investigation into his handling of classified documents have tried out an array of defenses as they seek to hold off the Justice Department.

On May 25, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers sent a letter to a top Justice Department official, laying out the argument that his client had done nothing illegal by holding onto a trove of government materials when he left the White House.

The letter, from M. Evan Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor, represented Mr. Trump’s initial defense against the investigation into the presence of highly classified documents in unsecured locations at his members-only club and residence, Mar-a-Lago. It amounted to a three-page hodgepodge of contested legal theories, including Mr. Corcoran’s assertion that Mr. Trump possessed a nearly boundless right as president to declassify materials and an argument that one law governing the handling of classified documents does not apply to a president.

Mr. Corcoran asked the Justice Department to present the letter as “exculpatory” information to the grand jury investigating the case.

Government lawyers found it deeply puzzling. They included it in the affidavit submitted to a federal magistrate in Florida in their request for the search warrant they later used to recover even more classified materials at Mar-a-Lago — to demonstrate their willingness to acknowledge Mr. Corcoran’s arguments, a person with knowledge of the decision said.

As the partial release of the search warrant affidavit on Friday, including the May 25 letter, illustrated, Mr. Trump is going into the battle over the documents with a hastily assembled team. The lawyers have offered up a variety of arguments on his behalf that have yet to do much to fend off a Justice Department that has adopted a determined, focused and so far largely successful legal approach.

“He needs a quarterback who’s a real lawyer,” said David I. Schoen, a lawyer who defended Mr. Trump in his second Senate impeachment trial. Mr. Schoen called it “an honor” to represent Mr. Trump, but said it was problematic to keep lawyers “rotating in and out.”

Often tinged with Mr. Trump’s own bombast and sometimes conflating his powers as president with his role as a private citizen, the legal arguments put forth by his team sometimes strike lawyers not involved in the case as more about setting a political narrative than about dealing with the possibility of a federal prosecution.

“There seems to be a huge disconnect between what’s actually happening — a real live court case surrounding a real live investigation — and what they’re actually doing, which is treating it like they’ve treated everything else, recklessly and thoughtlessly,” Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney and F.B.I. official, said of Mr. Trump’s approach. “And for an average defendant on an average case, that would be a disaster.”

Politico, Judge rejects bid by Gov. Kemp and Trump attorney Chesebro to quash subpoenas, Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu, Aug. 28, 2022. However, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney also gave Kemp an election-year reprieve.

The judge overseeing the Atlanta-area grand jury investigation into Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election has rejected an effort by Gov. Brian Kemp to block a subpoena for his testimony.

However, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney also gave Kemp an election-year reprieve, agreeing to delay his testimony until after the Nov. 8 vote, when Kemp is up for reelection and facing a challenge from Stacey Abrams.

“The Governor is in the midst of a re-election campaign and this criminal grand jury investigation should not be used by the District Attorney, the Governor’s opponent, or the Governor himself to influence the outcome of that election,” McBurney wrote in his six-page order.

In a separate opinion, McBurney also rejected an effort by a Trump-allied attorney, Kenneth Chesebro, to similarly block a subpoena for his testimony. Chesebro had claimed that his potential testimony would be entirely barred by attorney-client privilege, as well as New York state’s rules around attorney confidentiality. However, McBurney noted that, as with many other witnesses, there are plenty of topics that would not be subject to privilege claims.

Among them: “Mr. Chesebro’s background and experience, his knowledge of both Georgia and federal election law, his communications with Republican Party officials in Georgia following the 2020 general election, his interactions with the individuals in Georgia seeking to prepare slate of ‘alternate’ electors weeks after the final vote count showed former President Trump losing by over 10,000 votes in Georgia, etc.”

“Because these are legitimate, relevant, non-protected areas of investigation for the special purpose grand jury, quashal is improper,” McBurney wrote in a three-page order.

The rulings are victories for District Attorney Fani Willis, though the delayed testimony for Kemp is a setback for her investigation’s overall timetable. The DA has argued for the urgency of Kemp’s testimony sooner than November.

Kemp’s office and an attorney for Chesebro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kemp was a target of Trump’s fury during the closing weeks of his presidency, as Trump railed against his decision, along with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to certify Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia. Both beat back challenges from Trump-backed candidates in the state’s May Republican primary elections.

Washington Post, Inside Trump’s war on the National Archives, Jacqueline Alemany, Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey, Aug. 28, 2022 (print ed.). The agency has been hit with a wave of threats and vitriol since the FBI retrieved scores of classified records from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club.

In the nearly three weeks since the FBI searched former president Donald Trump’s Florida home to recover classified documents, the National Archives and Records Administration has become the target of a rash of threats and vitriol, according to people familiar with the situation. Civil servants tasked by law with preserving and securing the U.S. government’s records were rattled.

On Wednesday, the agency’s head sent an email to the staff. Though academic and suffuse with legal references, the message from acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall was simple: Stay above the fray and stick to the mission.

“NARA has received messages from the public accusing us of corruption and conspiring against the former President, or congratulating NARA for ‘bringing him down,’ ” Steidel Wall wrote in the agencywide message, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “Neither is accurate or welcome.”

The email capped a year-long saga that has embroiled the Archives — widely known for being featured in the 2004 Nicolas Cage movie, “National Treasure” — in a protracted fight with Trump over classified documents and other records that were taken when he left office.

Archives officials have emailed, called and cajoled the former president and his representatives to follow the law and return the documents. When the Archives recovered 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January, agency officials found a mess of disorganized papers lacking any inventory. Highly classified material was mixed in with newspaper clippings and dinner menus. And Archives officials believed more items were still missing.

What happened next was an extraordinary step for America’s record keepers: they referred the matter to the Justice Department, opening a dramatic new chapter in what had been a quietly simmering dispute.

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Washington Post, Affidavit to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate says 184 classified files found in January, Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein, Aug. 27, 2022 (print ed.). The newly public affidavit will help explain why FBI agents wanted to search Mar-a-Lago for classified documents, with sensitive information blocked out.

The FBI searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home this month after reviewing 184 classified documents that were kept there since he left the White House, including several with Trump’s apparent handwriting on them, and interviewing a “significant number” of witnesses, court filings unsealed Friday say.

The details contained in a search-warrant affidavit and related memo crystallize much of what was already known about the criminal probe into whether Trump and his aides took secret government papers and did not return all of the material — despite repeated demands from senior officials. The documents, though heavily redacted, offer the clearest description to date of the rationale for the unprecedented Aug. 8 search and the high-stakes investigation by the Justice Department into a former president who may run again for the White House.

The affidavit suggests that if some of the classified documents voluntarily returned from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives and Records Administration in January had fallen into the wrong hands, they could have revealed sensitive details about human intelligence sources or how spy agencies intercept the electronic communications of foreign targets. Over the spring and summer, the affidavit states, the FBI came to suspect that Trump and his team were hiding the fact that he still had more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, leading agents to want to conduct a search of the property.

Read the unsealed redacted Mar-a-Lago affidavit, The Justice Department has made public a redacted version of the Mar-a-Lago affidavit.

New York Times, U.S. Intelligence Will Assess Security Risks From Mar-a-Lago Documents, Luke Broadwater, Aug. 28, 2022 (print ed.). The director of national intelligence said her office would lead a review of the sensitive material retrieved from former President Trump’s Florida home.

U.S. intelligence officials will conduct a review to assess the possible risks to national security from former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents after the F.B.I. retrieved boxes containing sensitive material from Mar-a-Lago, according to a letter to lawmakers.

In the letter, Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, informed the top lawmakers on the House Intelligence and Oversight Committees that her office would lead an intelligence community assessment of the “potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure” of documents Mr. Trump took with him to his private club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla.

In the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Haines said her office would work with the Justice Department to ensure that the assessment did not interfere with the department’s criminal investigation concerning the documents. The review will determine what intelligence sources or systems could be identified from the documents and be compromised if they fell into the wrong hands.

Aug. 27

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Proof, Investigative Commentary: The Real Scandal in Donald Trump’s Historic Theft of Classified Records Is Not What You Think, Seth Abramson, left, Aug. 26-27, 2022. As a Trump biographer who’s written more best-sellers on Trump’s presidency than any other author, I’ve a very different view of the current classified-records scandal involving Trump and Mar-a-Lago.

It’s important for Americans to understand not just that what Trump did is actually—for him—unsurprising, but also why it’s unsurprising.

World Crisis Radio, Commentary: Biden launches powerful kickoff for Democrats’ fall campaign under watchword that MAGA Republicans represent “SEMI-FASCISM”! Webster G. Tarpley, right, Aug. 27, 2022 (109 mins.). President provides intellectual clarity and leadership far superior to timid and vacillating academic historians in diagnosing the scourge of fascism in contemporary US;

Democrat Pat Ryan wins NY-19 House seat with campaign based on abortion rights and tax relief; GOP opponent outspent him by 3:1 in campaign stressing inflation and crime, but still succumbed by almost 4% in classic bellwether swing district, showing impotence of main lines of GOP demagogy;

Search affidavit exposes Trump’s betrayal of US interests, resulting in 20 months of above top secret documents being exposed to Russia, China, and other enemy states – or worse; flagrant contempt for security procedures is evident; New York Times breaks with appeasement to demand criminal prosecution of former tenant of White House, joining growing chorus for accountability; Draconian punishment is imperative;

Mar a Lago timelines show that Department of Justice was far too soft on Trump; Archives strove for months to pry loose documents; Affidavit specifies that “significant numbers” of witnesses/informants helped FBI locate papers;

Trump poses incalculable threat to United States, starting with his notorious association with aggressor Putin; Republican pols go silent, run for cover as guilt becomes irrefutable; Maryland GOP gubernatorial hopeful Cox purges website of MAGA references;

Shared features of fascist regimes during interwar period in cases of Horthy in Hungary, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, Franco in Spain, and Petain in Vichy France are all relevant to MAGA phenomenon.

Aug. 26

Retired Army colonel Doug Mastriano, a Republican state senator from Pennsylvania who is running for governor, poses at left in a Confederate uniform in a 2013-14 faculty photo at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, U.S. April 9, 2014. The photo was released by the Army War College to Reuters on August 26, 2022 under the Freedom of Information Act. Mastriano retired from the Army in 2017. (Army War College Photo Handout via Reuters.)

Reuters via U.S. News & World Report, Exclusive: Pennsylvania Candidate Mastriano Posed in Confederate Uniform at Army War College, Phil Stewart and Jarrett Renshaw, Aug. 26, 2022. Three years before retiring from the U.S. Army in 2017, Donald Trump-backed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano posed in Confederate uniform for a faculty photo at the Army War College, according to a copy of the photo obtained by Reuters.

The previously unreported photo, released by the War College to Reuters after a request under the Freedom of Information Act, showed Mastriano in a 2013-14 portrait for the Department of Military Strategy, Plans, and Operations, where he worked.

Faculty at the time ha