Georgia Protests On My Mind

No, not that Georgia, the other Georgia.

There's been a lot of unrest in that nation (via Ani Chkhikvadze at Foreign Policy):

In Tbilisi, on a cobblestoned street next to the Georgian Parliament, a robotic female voice warned protesters to disperse or face legal action. The demonstrators were gathered in opposition to the reintroduction of the controversial “foreign agent” law by the ruling Georgian Dream party.

The legislation that was retracted following widespread protests a year ago, requires civil society organizations and media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad, mainly from the United States and EU, to register as agents of foreign influence. Tens of thousands have flooded the streets, demanding the withdrawal of the legislation seen as aligning Georgia more closely with Russia, which has used a similar law to crush dissent.

In the past, the Georgian Dream party kept hold on power through a combination of fearmongering, vilifying the divided opposition, and engaging in diplomatic bartering with Western allies. However, these once-successful strategies appear to have waned. As the party navigates its third term in office, it finds itself confronted with genuine protests both domestically and internationally that may cost it the elections in October.

One thing to remember from history is how Ye Olde Imperial Russia - and later the Soviet Union - treated a place like Georgia as occupied territory. When the USSR broke up in 1991, Georgia was one of the earliest states to break away and form their own nation.

Unfortunately, political opportunism and ambition - and arguably mixed signals from NATO and the U.S. - led to the Georgian government triggering a disastrous conflict with Russia in 2008, reducing the nation back into a puppet state under Putin's control.

Georgians as a population still resent the situation, and are using the current Russia-Ukrainian conflict to express their anger:

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine shook the carefully crafted balance the Georgian government sought between Russia and the West.

Over the past two years, hundreds of thousands of Georgians have taken to the streets in solidarity in demonstrations aimed as much at their own government as at Moscow. At every turn in Tbilisi, “Fuck Putin,” “Russia is an occupier,” and “Georgia stands with Ukraine” are painted on the walls. Almost every establishment, from banks to bars, displays Ukrainian flags...

The relationship between Tbilisi and Kyiv was already strained over the arrest of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who returned to his native Georgia after serving as a member of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration. Today, it’s near rock bottom. The two sides have exchanged strong words. Ukraine withdrew its ambassador from Georgia and sanctioned some members of Ivanishvili’s inner circle...

The current Georgian government is trying to spread fear and propaganda that "The West" is trying to drag their nation into another costly war against Russia, but the current street protests show that sizable numbers of their own people aren't buying those messages.

So the pro-Putin leadership is moving on to the next trick in the Putin playbook: mass arrests and beatdowns. Via Reuters:

WASHINGTON, May 9 (Reuters) - The United States is deeply troubled by actions taken against those protesting a draft law in Georgia and the government should change its course, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Thursday.

Georgian security forces have repeatedly deployed tear gas, pepper spray and water cannon against protesters who have been staging almost daily demonstrations for around a month against the government's "foreign agents" bill.

There's been a number of reports on social media of bloody beatdowns and arrests of known opposition figures. There hasn't been any sign of the protests abating.

It does beg the question if the Georgian government destabilizes over this uprising "what would Putin do next?" He's already been shamed on the international stage over his Ukrainian warmongering, and he's invested a lot of his military and focus on breaking Ukraine's will to resist. There is still a lot of manpower in Russia he could deploy, but it would involve diverting resources away from his primary target. And any escalation of his conscription efforts to handle a multi-front war can well trigger protests back home even he can't subdue.

In the meantime, stay strong Georgia. Stay alive and alert and don't believe any of the bullshit Putin and his allies are going to shove at you.

And sing to yourselves the songs of Ray Charles, Georgia's beloved Favorite Son. Well, okay, the other Georgia's beloved Favorite Son, but we'll lend him out to you for the time being.

Seriously Can We Hurry This Up

Some quick updates about the situation donald trump and his alleged RICO buddies are facing in Fulton County Georgia.

If there's good news for trump and his cronies, it's that the judge overseeing matters reduced the overall number of counts they're facing regarding their election interference and fake electors schemes (via Sam Gringlas for NPR):

The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump and his allies has thrown out six criminal counts from the indictment.

Trump now faces 10 felony charges in Georgia, instead of 13.

Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee agreed to grant motions from defendants in the case to quash six counts in the indictment, writing in an order Wednesday that: "The Court's concern is less that the State has failed to allege sufficient conduct of the Defendants – in fact it has alleged an abundance. However, the lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned's opinion, fatal..."

McAfee wrote that when prosecutors alleged that the defendants violated their oaths to the Georgia Constitution and the U.S. Constitution, that charge was so broad that it would be impossible for defendants to prepare a defense.

"On its own, the United States Constitution contains hundreds of clauses, any one of which can be the subject of a lifetime's study," McAfee wrote.

McAfee wrote that prosecutors could appeal the ruling or ask a grand jury to produce a more specific indictment on those six counts...

The good news for the rest of us is that the remaining defendants - not the ones who plead already - are still seeing at least one felony charge - such as Mark Meadows, down to a single count of Conspiracy - in a courtroom. Better news is that the infamous audio of trump himself pressuring Georgia's Secretary of State to overturn the vote count is still admissible as evidence in some of the charges trump and others are facing, although McAfee will likely limit its use.

There is a door left open for DA Fani Willis to bring back the grand jury to refile charges on more specific claims, but given the number of counts still on the table she may decide to proceed with what she has (refiling runs the risk of getting overturned again over those specifics and delaying the trial further).

Speaking of Willis, she had been facing a disqualification hearing by the defendants over an "inappropriate relationship" with a special prosecutor hired to work on the DA's team. Judge McAfee issued his ruling today on that, essentially clearing Willis but requiring the man to quit the team to "avoid any impropriety" (also Gringlas for NPR):

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis accepted the resignation of Nathan Wade, her top special prosecutor in former President Donald Trump's election interference case, after a Georgia judge made Wade's stepping aside a condition of allowing Willis to remain on the case.

The decision bolsters chances that 15 defendants including former President Donald Trump will face trial in Georgia for attempting to overturn the 2020 election result.

In a 23-page ruling that followed hours of dramatic courtroom testimony last month, Fulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis' romantic relationship with Wade, the top special prosecutor she hired, created the appearance of a conflict of interest, but did not require her disqualification.

McAfee wrote that, "an outsider could reasonably think that the District Attorney is not exercising her independent professional judgment totally free of any compromising influences. As long as Wade remains on the case, this unnecessary perception will persist."

McAfee gave prosecutors a choice: If Wade does not resign from the case, Willis must step aside and "refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council for reassignment."

Willis, in a letter accepting Wade's resignation, said she complimented him for "his professionalism and dignity..."

During a multi-day evidentiary hearing last month, lawyers sparred over when Willis and Wade's relationship began – and over the veracity of their claims that Willis reimbursed Wade in cash.

As prosecutors fought a subpoena for Willis to take the stand, the district attorney appeared in the courtroom and declared that she wanted to testify. Willis and defense attorneys sparred over intimate personal details, the testimony became so tense that McAfee had to call for a five-minute recess.

In the end, McAfee found that, "the evidence demonstrated that the financial gain flowing from her relationship with Wade was not a motivating factor on the part of the District Attorney to indict and prosecute." And he wrote that the defendants failed to show how Willis' conduct influenced the case.

So Willis stays on as lead prosecutor in the Fulton County matter. And those defendants have to be fully aware that she is going to be pissed at them for dragging her personal life - the primary tactic of conservative wingnuts when deploying the Politics of Personal Destruction - into their political bullshit. Any of them considering getting a plea deal now better do before she gets them on the stand.

With all this sturm und drang going on there's still a question of when the actual trial in Georgia is going to take place, considering how packed trump's calendar is facing 91 88 felony charges across four courtrooms. But things are on hold with the federal cases while the Supreme Court considers trump's claims of Absolute Immunity - not until late April, and then further delay until late summer issuing a ruling - and now with the New York "hush money" trial on a 30-day delay due to a questionably late delivery of thousands of federal documents trump claims is needed for his defense.

I may have jinxed things last month when I blogged that trump's judgment was coming, in spite of how trump repeatedly finds ways to delay every court challenge he faces.

Goddammit, American legal system. You're playing into trump's only legal tactic - Delay, Delay, DELAY - he's got. Stop playing by his rules and get his ass in court.

Never the Honest Answer from Republicans

As part of her ongoing campaign to survive long enough for trump to get jailed / barred from the ballot to be the Republican presidential candidate for 2024, Nikki Haley has been making the tour stops taking questions from people so she can sell herself as presidential timber.

Of course, this means she's exposing her political, cultural, and historical ignorance when she does so, such as making a massive gaffe when quizzed about a simple fact of American history (via Ashley Lopez at NPR):

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is facing significant backlash after failing to mention slavery as a driving force behind the Civil War during a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

At an event on Wednesday, a voter asked Haley: "what was the cause of the United States Civil War?"

She replied that the cause "was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn't do."

"I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are," Haley continued. "And I will always stand by the fact that, I think, government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people."

Haley essentially regurgitated the "States Rights" defense that the former Confederacy flew as their excuse to the historians once the bloodshed stopped. At no point did she even explain what "rights of the people" were getting fought over. Even the person who asked the question replied "you didn't mention slavery."

So let's go over this, one more time about how the Civil War was unavoidable because slavery was the dividing issue between Free and Slave states.

The Confederacy happened because most of the pro-slavery southern states would not accept the election results - both the popular vote AND Electoral College - going decisively towards the anti-slavery Republican Party in 1860. Even with Abraham Lincoln promising only to "limit slavery's spread" and not abolish it outright, the slaveowner class knew it still meant the death of their "peculiar institution" because the industry needing slavery - Cotton - consumed all agricultural land and it needed to expand.

And when slave state after slave state seceded from the Union in that period between November 1860 through March 1861 (before Lincoln would be sworn in as the next President), nearly every declaration of secession included Slavery as the motivation.

Nikki Haley's own state of South Carolina - infamously the birthplace of secession (its incubator since the days of John C. Calhoun and talk of Nullification) - put slavery - and the growing resistance to the Fugitive Slave Acts - as center to their "Declaration of the Immediate Causes" and the core argument for their attempt to break the Constitution: 

...The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation...

If the conflict ever was over the idea of States Rights, it was over WHICH states who have more rights over the others. South Carolina - and the other slave-owning states - found themselves in opposition to the freedman states that didn't want slavery imposed on them. Rather than accept the democratic - or  republican if you're going by the Roman model - concept of the majority having a say when the Republicans won outright control of the federal government in 1860, the slave states got upset they weren't in charge like they were in the 1820s or even 1852 anymore, and decided they wanted to take their ball and go home.

Just to show how the other slave states were taking it, here's the declaration of secession from my birth state of Georgia. They mentioned slavery right off the bat, and more often than South Carolina's:

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war. Our people, still attached to the Union from habit and national traditions, and averse to change, hoped that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not redress, at least exemption from further insults, injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated all such hopes and demonstrated the necessity of separation. Our Northern confederates, after a full and calm hearing of all the facts, after a fair warning of our purpose not to submit to the rule of the authors of all these wrongs and injuries, have by a large majority committed the Government of the United States into their hands. The people of Georgia, after an equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they shall not rule over them. A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia...

I'd quote more but good lord do my Peach State peeps go on and on about this.

You can tell from the Georgia declaration more than the South Carolina one how the slave states were framing the argument: That they were the ones under attack, that the poor slave states were getting pressured to change a perfectly legal and constitutional institution as human slavery, and that it's the fault of the abolition northern states who refuse to accept the natural order of things.

That view got spelled out by the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, who bluntly makes slavery the Cornerstone of what the rebelling states wanted:

...Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth...

...The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails...

Spoken like true Far Right conservatives convinced of the righteousness of their side, which back in 1860 were the slave-owning Whites of the Southern Democratic faction. Today, the Far Right conservatives are the immigrant-bashing civil-rights-denying anti-woke anti-women Whites of the modern Republican Trumpian Party

These declarations were not only their excuses for giving up on the American Union, they were the foundations for the Lost Cause mythos that built up in the post-War Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras where the Southern states - even after slavery was abolished for good with the 13th Amendment - refused to accept the sins of slavery and tried to rewrite history to make themselves the victims of an aggressor North. In order for that Lost Cause to work - in order for the southerners and Klansmen and Confederate sympathizers to paint themselves as tragic heroes "betrayed" by abolitionists - the revisionists had to argue the fight was never about slavery.

So you get modern-day Confederate sympathizers - who are now all camped with a Conservative Republican Party that flipped from being the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Jeff Davis during the Southern Strategy of the 1960s-80s - who keep parroting that Lost Cause narrative as "vice signaling" to their fellow racists.

People should ask Nikki Haley about her assertation that the Civil War was about "the freedoms" for the people. Where was the "freedom" from an intrusive government when it came to the African-American slaves still in bondage when the Civil War started? Because according to the slave states like South Carolina and Georgia and Florida and Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas and Arkansas and Tennessee and North Carolina and Virginia, their idea of government was making sure the Blacks had no freedoms at all.

The American Civil War - the first one, which by some measures never really finished because it's fueling the coal-burn of the second one we're in - was about slavery, Republicans. Stop feeding yourselves the Lost Cause myth that your party founders abhorred back in the day, because those slaveholders they fought weren't the heroes of that war, and neither are you when you keep plotting to reset our nation back to 1850. You're lying to yourselves, and you keep getting caught in spite of your denials.

Gods help us. This is how 2024 is going to be.

You Signed Up For This, Rudy, Time to Pay Up

If there's anything that gets you back into the rhythm of political blogging, it's a tasty uber-sized serving of schadenfreude. For example, watching one of donald trump's most loyal lapdogs in Rudy Giuliani get brutalized in a civil court case for defaming Georgia election officials over trump's "stolen votes" gaslighting (via Miles Park at NPR):

Former Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to pay a staggering $148 million to two former Georgia election workers he spread lies about following the 2020 election.

The decision on Friday comes at the end of a week-long federal civil trial in Washington, D.C., where an eight-person jury heard from the workers — Wandrea "Shaye" Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman — about how 2020 election conspiracies spread by Giuliani and former President Donald Trump turned their lives upside down.

"I was afraid for my life," Moss said during her testimony on Tuesday. "I literally felt that someone would attempt to hang me and there was nothing anyone could do about it."

Jurors heard numerous violent and racist voicemails the women received, after Giuliani used his massive platform as a campaign attorney for Trump to spread lies about their actions as election workers in Georgia.

In the time after voting ended in 2020, Giuliani shared video from an absentee ballot counting facility in Fulton County, which he falsely claimed showed the two women cheating and scanning ballots multiple times to benefit Joe Biden.

A hand-count audit in Georgia found votes to have been tallied correctly in the 2020 election, and a years-long investigation by the Georgia secretary of state's office found the accusations against Moss and Freeman to be "false and unsubstantiated..."

In August, district Judge Beryl Howell found Giuliani liable for defamation, due to his lack of cooperation in the case, and Giuliani conceded as part of the proceedings that his statements about Moss and Freeman were false.

So the trial this week was only held to determine the damages Moss and Freeman were owed...

The penalties broke down to roughly $16 million per woman, and then an additional $20 million each for emotional damages, added to $75 million in punitive damages because Rudy was that huge a jerkass about all this.

Rumor has it Giuliani doesn't have that kind of personal wealth to pay out those damages. Granted, the lengthy appeal process will likely see the punitive damages reduced (and perhaps some of the emotional damages) but the appellate courts are loathe to overturn jury rulings, meaning at some point down the road he owes these women he victimized a shit-ton of money he doesn't have.

In most respects none of us should have any sympathy for Rudy. He intentionally went out of his way to attack these women - and wouldn't you notice how it's women he attacked, not the men who worked as elections officials in Georgia - as part of a massive scheme to overturn a legal election result not just in Georgia but across the United States.

(Remember kids, Giuliani was grandstanding in front of Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia when the state of Pennsylvania confirmed the win for Joe Biden, effectively killing trump's gaslighting about "stolen votes" and subjecting Giuliani to public humiliation)

For all of Rudy's bluster during this trial in front of the cameras, he wasn't able to present honest evidence in the courtroom - or in ANY courtroom - that his (and trump's) lies about the elections results were real. For all the times Rudy said he was going to prove himself, that he was going to prove these women were part of a massive conspiracy, he never presented a shred of proof. And when he promised he was going to go on the stand and testify to his own defense, well of course he chickened out at the last minute and let the matter go to the jury, because even as a bad lawyer he knew the risks of being under oath and cross-examination.

Again, no sympathy for Rudy, because this sonofabitch signed up to be trump's bitch, and this is how everyone who lies and grandstands for that con artist ends up: Broke, facing jail time, and wondering how the hell their lives ended like this.

Giuliani volunteered for this, everyone. He happily went to work for donald trump knowing he was a bad boss with a long history of throwing lackeys under the bus to save his own orange hide. He willingly played the role of trump's Roy Cohn successor, the legal attack dog doing trump's bidding while trump plotted to subvert constitutional norms and overturn legal elections.

And what did it get Rudy? Failures in courtroom after courtroom trying to overturn election results without evidence to prove it. Getting tied up in fake electors schemes that currently has Giuliani facing thirteen racketeering charges in Fulton County Georgia.

That case, by the by, is likely why Rudy refused to testify in his own defense at the defamation trial: Anything he says under oath is admissible elsewhere. And according to reports, DA Fani Willis is not offering Giuliani - a major player in the conspiracy charges - a plea deal. Willis is also telling the state court that her office can take their case to trial within 30 days, depending at least on where things fit in trump's busy criminal trial calendar (this link is updated frequently, so save it to favorites, kiddos) for 2024.

So not only is Giuliani facing financial ruin over whatever years he has remaining, he's facing the reality that he's going to watch all of his wealth taken away from behind prison bars.

No sympathy for Rudy, though. He willingly signed up to work for a liar and a con artist. He willingly chose the path that Roy Cohn took, unloved and broken to the grave.

And he's still a freaking perv because of what we saw in that Borat movie. Gods.

Suffer, Rudy. You honestly earned this fate.

Rats, Sinking Ship, SS Trumptanic

This morning we got word that Jenna Ellis, a lawyer on donald trump's payroll since 2019, made a plea agreement with the Fulton County DA's office. Via Gringlas at NPR: 

Ellis is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in the broad racketeering case focused on efforts to keep then-President Donald Trump in office after his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.

Lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell entered guilty pleas last week just before their trial was set to begin. Scott Hall, a bail bondsman, pleaded guilty in September.

In exchange for truthful testimony at future trials, Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. She had been charged with two counts, including racketeering...

Ellis' charge stems from a Dec. 3, 2020, subcommittee hearing of Georgia's Senate Judiciary Committee where Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Ray Smith made a litany of baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

Guliani and Smith, both co-defendants in the Georgia case, asserted that tens of thousands of minors, felons and dead people voted in Georgia's 2020 election. Ellis pleaded guilty to aiding this testimony, which prosecutors say was intended to convince the legislature to disregard Biden's victory in Georgia.

"The false statements were made with reckless disregard for the truth," prosecutor Daysha Young said at Tuesday's plea hearing.

DA Willis hadn't charged too much on Ellis, so there wasn't much for Ellis to plead out. She's still getting a sweetheart deal because - as any fan of Law & Order franchise will tell you - the ones who flip the earliest in a criminal conspiracy case are the ones who get the best deals.

What all these early plea deals do is put pressure on the remaining defendants - 15 to go - to make plea deals of their own before one of the others sets them up as the scapegoat. There are tiers to this racketeering case - the ones who made the plans, the ones who carried out the illegal acts, the ones who covered for the others - and it's clear prosecutors want the major players, giving the lesser members - the ones with more to lose - more incentive to flip now instead of later.

Ellis' plea deal is a serious blow to Ray Smith and Rudy Giuliani, so the expectation is that they might flip next. Smith could, since he's a state-level lawyer whose career - and life outside of prison - is at stake. But Giuliani might not: His reputation and livelihood are now so directly tied to trump's fortunes that he can't make a clean break. 

And trump of course - because his whole self-worth and ongoing grift is tied into the Big Lie of "stollen elections" - will never plead out. he will enter the court trial and try to bully and gaslight his way out of it.

Much like he's trying to bully and gaslight his way out of the January 6th indictments he's facing in Washington DC, except for the revelation tonight that Mark Meadows - trump's acting Chief of Staff during his final days in the White House - gave hours' worth of testimony to Jack Smith's grand jury and received full immunity as part of the deal. Via the Guardian: 

The testimony that Meadows provided to prosecutors included evidence that he repeatedly told Trump in the immediate aftermath of the election that the allegations about fraud were unsubstantiated, ABC reported.

Exactly when Meadows was granted immunity and when he testified before the grand jury in Washington remains unclear but he appeared at least three times, ABC reported. Trump was indicted in August for conspiring to defraud the United States among other charges stemming from the investigation.

The cooperation of Meadows in the criminal case against Trump would be a victory for the special counsel, Jack Smith, because Meadows was among the closest advisers to Trump in the post-2020 election period and had direct knowledge of virtually every aspect of the charges...

Meadows was literally in the room when it happened (yes, quoting from the Hamilton musical is unavoidable). There are multiple eyewitness accounts from other parties - Cassidy Hutchinson, Meadows' aide, already testified what Meadows knew and did to the Congressional hearings last year - that made it impossible for Meadows to testify otherwise. There'd been reports for months - especially when he wasn't named in the indictments Smith's grand jury issued against trump this past August - that Meadows had an immunity deal, but we're getting confirmation now.

That the Special Counsel team is willing to let this information out there hints to the likelihood they are ready to act on Meadows' testimony, increasing the likelihood that additional indictments over January 6th - and maybe even more indictments in the classified documents case - not only for trump but the other insurrection plotters are coming very soon.

Thing is for Meadows, while this deal grants immunity at the federal level, it doesn't cover state like the conspiracy charges he's facing in Georgia. Seeing how he's already made a deal with Smith, NOW would be the perfect time for Meadows to make a deal with Willis.

If donald trump's empire was a ship (not a luxury liner, but a garbage scow), it's already hit the iceberg, and the rats better get off it quick before they sink.

The trump Façade Krakens In Georgia

It's been awhile since I've checked in on donald trump's status as an alleged criminal racketeer. While there's been slow going in South Florida over the stolen documents case, and furious legal battles waged in Washington DC over his role in the January 6th Insurrection, in Georgia the Fulton County case is racing ahead on six cylinders as a number of the 19 indicted alleged co-conspirators are close to facing their courtroom dates with destiny.

In one such matter, a major player in trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results decided to play ball with DA Fani Willis' team and took a plea. Via Kate Brumback at AP News:

Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to reduced charges Thursday over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election in Georgia, becoming the second defendant in the sprawling case to reach a deal with prosecutors.

Powell, who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law, entered the plea just a day before jury selection was set to start in her trial. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties.

As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also recorded a statement for prosecutors and agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials...

That last part is important, because Sidney Powell is one of the major actors in trump's planning and staging to disrupt the Electoral Count in Congress that January 6th 2021. As Jeremy Stahl notes over at Slate (paywalled):

...This is awful news for Donald Trump, as Powell also immediately becomes the highest-level known cooperating witness against him. Given what we know about Powell’s role in the days surrounding Jan. 6 and the very lenient terms of her plea deal, she appears poised to offer damning testimony against the former president...

Powell is only the second domino to fall among Trump’s alleged co-conspirators agreeing publicly to cooperate against Trump. So far, she is the most damaging for Trump, but she is likely to be joined by others who were targeted in the 19-person RICO conspiracy case filed in August by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and her cooperation places further pressure on others to agree to testify against Trump...

Under the terms of Powell’s agreement, she will receive a small monetary fine and a six-year sentence of probation, and she will have to write an apology letter to the people of Georgia. This may seem like a slap on the wrist for one of the top figures implicated in the Jan. 6 cases, but it could mean she gave up a significant amount of evidence against even higher-level figures as part of her deal. Indeed, the agreement included a pledge to turn over all documents, testify against all of her co-defendants, and offer a recorded statement to prosecutors. She’s already done the last part.

That testimony against her co-defendants could start as soon as next month, when the trial of Chesebro is projected to begin. While Powell is not obligated by the agreement to testify against Trump as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution, scheduled for March, any testimony she gives in the Chesebro trial could potentially be used by Smith’s team. If Powell refuses to testify in the federal case, Judge Tanya Chutkan could decide to admit any Georgia testimony. “Her testimony will be on the record and potentially admissible,” in the federal case, said Eisen...

What’s more important, for the purposes of the prosecutions against Trump, though, is that the House Jan. 6 committee revealed that she was an active participant during a critical White House meeting in the weeks before Jan. 6, during which Trump allegedly sought to have her appointed as special counsel in order to seize voting machines. Eisen called that the “the Oval Office meeting that has been described as one of the craziest of the Trump administration,” and said testimony on it is likely to be critical to the overall conspiracy charge...

Powell was literally in the room when it happened. She was going to play whatever role trump wanted her to do in order to disrupt the vote counts and overturn the results to favor himself.

This was a trumpian supporter who jumped from state to state, filing legal motion after legal motion to delay, overrule, and eliminate any election results that went to Biden. Rallying to a battlecry of "Release the Kraken!" Powell blundered through every case with poor and ill-informed legal challenges lacking credible witnesses or documentation, and that pretty much got herself laughed out of each and every courtroom.

With Powell flipped, she becomes an eyewitness to most of everything trump's inner circle of election deniers - Bannon, Stone, Giuliani, and many others - planned and committed before, during, and even after January 6th blew up.

I doubt any of the marquee names are going to flip - not yet - because their own grifting and personal fortunes are on the line to where fighting it out in court is the only path they can take (and still make money from MAGA believers).

But the lower-tier people in the plots and schemes don't have such options. They're facing serious jail time, and in Georgia there's no chance for parole until AFTER they've served in prison.

We're all just waiting for the rest of the Fulton County 19 to flip to save their own hides.

Get kraken, you fools. The ones who make the quickest deals get the best deals.

Let The Dominoes Fall on trump

While donald trump is facing multiple criminal indictments across various jurisdictions, he's not facing them alone. There are others brought into the various conspiratorial actions who are caught between staying loyal to a crime boss like trump and deciding what's best for themselves and their families.

This is most apparent in the Georgia racketeering charges involving 19 people, facing indictments over various schemes tied together in an attempt to force Georgia officials to flip election results to trump. One of the things you see in a large-scale criminal trial is how any of the lower-level suspects jump at plea deal arrangements to avoid serious jail time. It's a truism in the legal system (known as the Prisoner's Dilemma): The ones who flip first tend to get the best plea deals. But what also happens is that others along the chain of racketeering charges feel the pressure to flip to get the next-best deals. So one of the things people were watching as matters move quickly to trial (I'm hearing late October for some of the defendants) was who flips first in Georgia and how it would affect the others to get them to flip.

This past weekend, those dominoes began tipping over. One of the lower-rung defendants Scott Hall agreed in court to a deal that would involve his testimony (via Charlie Gile, Dareh Gregorian, Blayne Alexander and Katie S. Phang at NBC News):

Hall is the first defendant to enter a plea in the case.

Under the terms of an agreement with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' office, Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges and will be sentenced to five years' probation, if he abides by the terms of the deal. He also agreed to testify in related court hearings and trials stemming from the sprawling 41-count indictment that was unsealed in August.

Hall, 59, is a bail bondsman who was hit with charges relating to a voting system breach in Georgia’s Coffee County in early 2021. He was also the first of the 19 defendants charged in the case to surrender last month.

Also named in the indictment as participating in the Coffee County conspiracy was former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, who is scheduled to stand trial on those charges in late October. Powell has pleaded not guilty.

The speculation quickly turned on how quickly Powell - one of trump's most enthusiastic defenders in the "Stolen Votes" Big Lie - will turn. As David Badash posts over at Raw Story:

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and frequent MSNBC contributor, says Hall "was in the thick of things with Sidney Powell on Jan 7 for the Coffee County scheme involving voting machines. If he's cooperating, it's a bad sign for her."

Hall's plea deal "spells bad news for, among others, Sidney Powell," says former Dept. of Defense Special Counsel Ryan Goodman, an NYU Law professor of law. Goodman posted a graphic showing the overlap in charges against Hall and Powell, which he called "alleged joint actions."

It may not be speculation. The Fulton County DA dropped hints they have further plea deals in the works, conveniently done at a preliminary hearing involving Powell's upcoming trial (via Hannah Rabinowitz at CNN):

The revelation came during a procedural hearing for former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the fake elector scheme. They are the first defendants in the case set to go on trial on October 23 on charges related to alleged plots to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state.

Trial dates for former President Donald Trump and the other 16 co-defendants have not been set.

Prosecutor Nathan Wade said during the hearing that while the district attorney’s office has not yet offered a plea deal to Powell or Chesebro, it may soon.

“We have not, at this point, made an offer,” Wade said during the hearing.

“Is the state in a position to make one in the near future?” Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, asked.

“Judge, I believe that we can,” Wade said. “We’ll sit down and kind of put some things together, and we’ll reach out to defense counsel individually to extend an offer...”

Prosecutors usually don't advertise even a hint of deals getting done unless they're certain they've got the defendants on the ropes begging "no mas."

There may not be a lot connecting Scott Hall to donald trump in terms of conspiring to overturn legal election results, but there is a lot connecting Powell to trump. She was all over the map, filing numerous legal stunts to deny election results in vain attempts to steal the 2020 election for trump. She was in the room when the plans were laid out to interfere with the January 6th congressional confirmation of the Electoral College results.

If the DA is this close to getting Powell to plead out is a sign that they've got more than enough evidence to convict, and she's reconsidering whether to stay loyal enough to a crime boss like trump to take a 10-to-20 year stint in a Georgia penitentiary. 

Getting Powell to flip on a plea deal would have to involve her agreeing to testify to everything she discussed and planned with her fellow co-conspirators, which would have to include trump himself.

Keep sweating, trump. You're not going to have anybody putting themselves on the line for you when shit gets real.

Mug Shot Day

I will not post the mugshot of donald j. trump, indicted on counts of racketeering and other crimes in the state of Georgia, but I will provide a link to NPR that shows it.

trump is scowling in the photo. According to reports, he told his handlers he was going to do is best Churchill impression, to act out the 'stern, stubborn, stoic' behavior of one of the Western world's iconic leaders. Instead, he looks pouty, petulant, miserable. The thing about trump, he rarely smiles. Every other time, he's frustrated or upset or annoyed. 

The only times trump smiles are when he knows he's humiliated another human being, and that gets him happy.

Knowing trump, he's going to want to use this mug shot to put on t-shirts and coffee mugs and posters and all the merch he can think of to raise money for his legal defense his own pockets. It's not something any of us should look forward to, but this mug shot and processing into the Fulton County judicial system was necessary if we as a nation are going to hold trump and his cohorts accountable for the crimes they committed trying to stop the 2020 election results.

Let justice be done. And don't buy any fcking t-shirts of his mug shot. It's not worth it.

Georgia Indicts trump and his Big Lie

At last.

Stephen Fowler over at NPR has the basics: 

A grand jury in Georgia has indicted Donald Trump for his role in failed efforts to overturn the state's 2020 election results, implicating the former president as the head of a sweeping conspiracy to subvert his defeat.

It's the fourth indictment in as many months for Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. And it's part of a massive case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis under Georgia's racketeering law, ensnaring a number of defendants that the DA alleges acted as part of a coordinated effort to pressure officials to change the election outcome.

In an indictment handed up Monday, an Atlanta-based grand jury outlined a series of charges against Trump, including violation of the Georgia RICO law and solicitation of a violation of an oath by a public officer.

RICO by the by is a racketeering charge, meaning trump and others engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy to commit multiple crimes. Emptywheel - you know what I need to call her by name, so hello Marcy Wheeler! - has more details on the implications of trump getting hit by RICO:

To explain how, I want to first show that the indictment is, fundamentally, about protecting the integrity of Georgia’s government and elections. To see that, it helps to read counts 2 through 41 before reading the RICO charge, which is laid out in 70 pages describing 161 overt acts, many of which took place outside of Georgia...

LIES TO AND SOLICITATION OF GEORGIA OFFICIALS

Count 2 though Count 7: False claims and illegal requests made, many by Rudy Giuliani, before the fake electors scheme. These were lies told to official bodies of Georgia state government, and charging them is an attempt to prevent corruption in state government.

Count 23 through Count 26 charge Rudy, Ray Smith, and Robert Cheely with false claims and solicitations on December 30 — similar in structure and purpose to Counts 2 through 7.

Count 28 charges both Trump and Mark Meadows for the January 2 call to Brad Raffensperger. Count 29 charges Trump for the lies he told during the call.

Counts 38 and 39 charge Trump with lies and solicitations of Brad Raffensperger on September 17, 2021.

FAKE ELECTORS

Count 8 through Count 19: These are a series of six paired charges tied to various kinds of fraud involved with the fake electors. In each pair, the first count charges David Shafer, Shawn Still, and Cathleen Latham for doing the fraudulent thing, and the second count charges Trump, Rudy, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro, Ray Smith, Robert Cheely, and Mike Roman with soliciting the fraudulent thing. They’re a near parallel to the Michigan charges against the fake electors, except that in Georgia only the three most culpable fake electors are charged, and there’s a mirror charge for Trump’s side of the conspiracy.

ATTEMPTS TO ENTRAP RUBY FREEMAN

Counts 20 and 21 and : These charge two efforts to defraud Ruby Freeman by offering her help when in fact they were an attempt to entrap her.

Count 30 and Count 31 charge aspects of a plot to get Kanye’s publicist to travel from Illinois to Georgia to entrap Ruby Freeman into making false claims.

LIES ABOUT GEORGIA

Count 22 charges Jeffrey Clark for his attempts to get DOJ to claim the Georgia election was fraudulent.

Count 27 charges Trump and Eastman with lying about Georgia’s results in a lawsuit.

TAMPERING WITH COFFEE COUNTY TABULATORS

Count 32 through Count 37 charge Sidney Powell, Latham, and two others for tampering with the Coffee County vote tabulators. Again, this has a parallel in the Michigan charges against Matt DePerno and two others.

LIES DURING THE INVESTIGATION

Count 40 charges David Shafer with false statements told during the investigation.

Count 41 charges Robert Cheely with perjury for false claims made during the investigation.

As I understand it, these are the charges on which the RICO conspiracy is built. The RICO conspiracy gives prosecutors additional tools and penalties with which to prosecute this (similar to the conspiracy law charged at the federal level)...

That's a lot of criming (relax, Spellchecker, we can use slang while blogging), but what are the implications surrounding these particular indictments compared to the other three (and counting) trump and cohorts are facing? Why is this one a bigger deal than most?

One of the common elements in the Georgia indictment is the word "lies". Over and over, DA Willis spells out how trump and company lied and kept lying to other state officials in order to get them to violate the integrity of the 2020 election results. They have trump lying in a lawsuit, they have one underling Robert Cheely charged with straight-up perjury to the grand jury, they had people lying to county-level elections official Ruby Freeman to get her to "confess" to rigging ballots.

All of these lies, serving to the Big Lie that trump pushed and keeps pushing about the 2020 results. trump's Big Lie that the election "was stolen" and he "fairly" won.

I blogged about trump's Big Lie before, and why he can't stop:

Trump has made it clear he views the world in the simplest of terms: That people are divided into Winners and Suckers, and that HE (champion and most excellent of the former group) shall never be lumped in with the latter.

So just on this mindset alone, trump cannot admit – not to others, not to himself – that he lost... 

In one respect, trump lost in 2016: The Popular vote clearly went for Hillary. But due to the broken and anti-democratic nature of the Electoral College, trump squeaked into winning three battleground states with literally mere hundreds of votes that gave him their Electoral Votes instead. It should be noted that trump promptly crowed – against all evidence – that he had won a LANDSLIDE, not just the College but also the Popular vote, and claimed it was the greatest victory in history (ignoring the Electoral and Popular vote blowouts of 1984 and 1932 (we don't count Nixon's 1972 blowout because the cheating exposed by the Watergate scandal negates that)).

Trump can't crow like that this time. The illusion of the Electoral College can't grant him that excuse. So he has to settle on denial. Constant, whining denial that he's the victim of voter fraud and to get us to pity him back into office...

The horrifying thing was how easily trump got fellow Republicans to buy into his Big Lie all because the GOP fears the loss of political power:

The Republicans are stuck with the Big Lie because it happens to fit this One Truth:

The Republican Party cannot and will not share power with a Democratic Party they view as un-American and thus illegitimate.

Somewhere back in time - you can argue happening between the rise of the conservative Southern Strategy in the late 1960s or the rise of Saint Ronnie in the 1980s or the corruption of Newt's Contract On America in the 1990s - the Republican Party bought into the idea that only they were true God-fearing God-chosen Gun-worshiping patriots...

But the Republicans have a problem. Where their One Truth was merely a world-view that did not expose itself to self-destructive implosion (Republicans could keep believing it and still function rationally in polite society), the Big Lie is a direct attack on the Real World that sooner rather than later is going to hit the Brick Wall of Unbreakable Facts. The Big Lie compels trump's believers into direct action - SEE the January 6th Insurrection - and these actions have legal consequences where the Big Lie has not and cannot prevail.

The Republicans are betting on their Big Lie carrying them forward into the future. But it's a Big Lie stuck in the past of a failed 2020 election, pushed constantly by a Big Liar in trump who cannot avoid his impending fate either in civil or criminal courts.

With the Georgia indictments, we are at that moment of Truth for the Republican Party as a whole. DA Willis and her team are making a direct rebuke to trump's Big Lie, confronting it with facts and evidence that not only were the voted counted fairly but that trump and his people intentionally worked to subvert those fair counts.

I am paraphrasing Jean-Luc Picard here, in one of the greatest quotes about the quest for justice. Courtrooms are crucibles: In a courtroom we burn away irrelevancies (the lies and misunderstandings) until we are left with a pure product - the truth (based on fact), for all time. For all of trump's bullshitting at his rallies, for all of the deflection and deception by the Far Right media, for all the spineless quibbling of other Republican leaders who fail to hold trump to the factual truth, in a court of law those lies and deceptions cannot withstand scrutiny. trump will confront - at last - the lies he's been telling to everyone and even to himself, and that those lies have no power to keep him in power.

The reason why I remain so optimistic - giddy, even - about the criminal cases leveled against trump is that these courtrooms are going to be the few places where trump will be held accountable for the ongoing costs of destruction and ruin he has built up over the decades. trump's greed, trump's racism, trump's sexism, trump's rage, trump's delusions of grandeur... All of that finally getting added up and presented as a bill way past due that he has to pay.

Let trump face his lies and failures before the 2024 elections. Let the nation come to terms with the reality that trump should never hold any elected office again.

Let justice be done. Let truth prevail. At last.

I'm Just Sitting Here Watching the Indictment Wheels Go Round and Round

It is Tuesday August 1st 2023.

I was promised indictments for donald trump and his associates/handlers/lackeys involved in both the January 6th insurrection in Washington DC, as well as indictments in Fulton County Georgia covering trump's attempts to bully state elections officials into throwing the results and scheming fake electors to steal the 2020 Electoral College count.

Goddammit. The sooner we get these charges before a judge, the sooner we get trump in a courtroom before the November 2024 general election, and the sooner we can see trump dragged off in handcuffs when a jury finds him guilty - one hopes - on at least ONE of the multiple charges he's facing.

I am tired of the delays.

Indict him on everything, for the Love of Mom, Baseball, Apple Pie, and good music, just do it, and let God - and a competent jury - sort it all out.

Lemme quote from Lennon:

Ah, prosecutors asking questions
Lost in confusion
Well, I tell them trump insurrected
Bring the solution

Well, they shake their heads and they look at me, as if I've no legal mind
I tell them there's a hurry, I'm hoping trump finally sees doing time

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels of justice go round and round
I really love to watch them charges roll
No longer riding on the media go-around

I just hope to see trump go (to jail)
I just hope to see trump go (to jail)
I just hope tooooooooo see trump go (to jail)

(piano flourish at the end)

Update about seven hours later: ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE. Special Counsel Jack Smith indicts trump on four charges related to January 6th insurrection. More to follow.

The Waiting for trump Indictments IS the Hardest Part

Update: Driftglass, while I'm grateful for the link to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this Monday, I seriously want people to go straight to Emptywheel's articles so she can get the stat numbers. All this page does is provide links to her. I encourage you to go straight to https://emptywheel.net/ right now.

It's still hard to just sit here and wait for the legal consequences to show up - if ever - for donald trump's various criminal misdeeds, but while we're waiting Emptywheel went and created three updated reports on "where we stand" regarding three of the major criminal investigations facing trump. 

I encourage the nine official readers of this blog to hop over - if you haven't already - to her website and check out each entry. I will only provide quick quotes of each to entice you over there.

Where the investigation stands in Georgia:

...Willis discovered that, while Bobb claimed to have been uninvolved in the crimes in Georgia, she testified that she and, “at least two dozen others,”  over at least two rooms, sat in on Trump’s call to Brad Raffensperger, and “we all thought … it was totally fine.” On top of discovering that there were up to 24 witnesses who might be willing to misrepresent the call at trial, this may have caught Rudy Giuliani in a lie...

Where the investigation stands with stolen documents:

...Not only are Trump’s attorneys wildly ill-suited to an Espionage case, but as they admit in the letter, they haven’t reviewed the classified documents Trump retained. If, as some of the questions reportedly asked of witnesses seems to have suggested, Trump tried to curate classified documents for his own personal revenge, then it may make 793 charges more compelling...

Where the investigation stands with January 6th insurrection:

...On Thursday, Mike Pence testified to the January 6 grand jury for over five hours. Many commentators have suggested — and I agree — that was one of the last major testimonial steps Jack Smith would need to take before deciding whether and if so how to charge Trump for inciting a mob to threaten to assassinate his Vice President...

Please go read each article in full and leave affirmative comments to each one, thank ye.

As for any possible indictments, it's clear the Georgia case won't start issuing them until July 11th. I am hopeful that with my birth month being May, that I will get to enjoy some federal indictments over the stolen documents AND trump's incitement to riot along with my birthday cake. Yum.

Tick Tock trump, On the Clock In Georgia

The current status on the case in Georgia involving trump's various attempts to interfere with the 2020 election results: the Fulton County DA Fani Willis announced she will begin charging decisions with the next court cycle beginning July 11, 2023. We now have a countdown. Details via Blayne Alexander, Charlie Gile and Dareh Gregorian at NBC News: 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said Monday that she'll announce charging decisions stemming from her probe into possible interference in the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and his allies as early as mid-July.

Willis said the charging decisions will be revealed during the state Superior Court’s fourth term, which begins July 11 and ends Sept. 1...

“In the near future, I will announce charging decisions resulting from the investigation my office has been conducting into possible criminal interference in the administration of Georgia’s 2020 general election,” Willis wrote in a letter Monday to Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat.

She said “the need for vigilance will increase” during that time period.

“Open-source intelligence has indicated the announcement of decisions in this case may provoke significant public reaction,” Willis wrote. “We have seen in recent years that some may go outside of public expressions of opinion that are protected by the First Amendment to engage in acts of violence that will endanger the safety of our community. As leaders, it is incumbent on us to prepare.”

Willis is referring to the ongoing incitement by trump on social media to get his followers to RISE UP and defend him, similar to how he summoned about 2000 of them to riot at the Capitol on January 6th. It may seem odd otherwise that Willis isn't announcing charges now, but giving law enforcement and the judicial security people time to plan ahead for MAGA riots is a sensible move (although she could have done this back earlier in the year when the special grand jury presented their recommendations).

Given what we know from that special grand jury, we should expect a lot of indictments handed out: Not just to donald trump but also to his handlers working on his election fraud schemes, and also the 'Fake Electors' in Georgia who had volunteered to counter the official Electors going to Congress that January.

One of the other reasons for the delay until July is that Willis is trying to offer a lifeline to those fake electors with plea deals, but running into their lawyer blocking all offers. A little more detail from Digby over at Hullabaloo with her quoting tweets from legal expert Lisa Rubin:

Recall that last week, Willis’s office moved to disqualify a lawyer representing 10 of Georgia’s fake electors. They had two grounds: First, that she did not, contrary to representations by her then-co-counsel, communicate immunity offers to certain of her clients.

Second, they revealed that in meetings with prosecutors on 4/12 and 4/14, certain of that lawyer’s clients accused another fake elector — and fellow client — of committing “acts that are violations of Georgia law.”

Because of the “impracticable and ethical mess” the lawyer created, the D.A.’s office has moved to disqualify her from representing ANY of the 10 electors, all of whom were notified last year they were targets of the investigation.

That means 10 people — some of whom remain targets, others of whom are cooperators or exploring cooperation — likely need new lawyers.

I've mentioned before - and others with greater legal experience can as well - that in criminal conspiracy cases like this involving a broad circle of people, prosecutors love to get the lower-rung players to flip and get the eyewitness testimony to go along with the paper trails. The more you get to testify, the harder it is for the higher-ups in the conspiracy to walk away with Not Guilty verdicts. Willis needs a number of those Fake Electors - caught dead to rights with their signatures on illegal paperwork - to flip on the go-betweens who could then get pressured to flip and can give even more details that can convict the top organizers of their criminal intent.

You can flip those Fake Electors because a number of them will have personal considerations - family, business, future ambitions - that can override any loyalty they may have to a trump who wants them to go to jail so he won't have to.

By July, one way or another she'll know how the chessboard looks for her.

It's interesting how July 11 is one week after July 4. Our national day of independence followed by our national day of justice against trump and his handlers who tried to overthrow that independence.

Let the countdown to July 11 begin.

Will 2023 Be The Year trump's Bills Come Due?

China has an animal zodiac for each year on the calendar. I know for example that the European/Christian calendar corresponded 1970 to The Year of the Dog.

China is going to need to update their zodiac, because 2023 is going to be the Year of the Shitgibbon. This is the year a number of pundits and legal experts are claiming donald trump will finally face direct criminal charges for the crimes he's committed both before and during office as President Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice).

Over at MSNBC, columnist Jordan Rubin - who has a legal background working as prosecutor for the Manhattan's District Attorney's office (insert Law & Order ding-ding cue here) - makes the case that several ongoing investigations into trump's alleged misdeeds are set to wrap up soon with a lot of credible evidence the Justice Department can use to indict him:

On the one hand, it’s unremarkable to prophesy that a man who’s facing several probes by federal and state prosecutors for conduct that looks pretty unlawful will be charged with crimes.

On the other hand, it’s Trump, whose name hasn’t been synonymous with accountability.

There’s reason to think that will change...

...If anything, the feds’ search and seizure of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last summer felt like a watershed moment: federal law enforcement action against a former president who had seemingly lived a consequence-free life and might have continued to do so. Even an incremental step toward potential prosecution from the branch of government that can actually bring charges seems more significant than the legislative branch’s asserting Trump’s guilt by way of criminal referrals (both things, of course, can be and are significant).

Plus, the Mar-a-Lago case appears to be more straightforward than the sordid legal maze of January 6 and its tentacles. As former federal prosecutors said in a November memo analyzing the documents case, published at Just Security, “there is a strong basis to charge Trump.” With his special master detour officially crushed — by Trump-appointed judges, no less — he looks a step closer to charges related to his apparent mishandling of classified documents and obstruction.

Rubin does also note the state-level legal trouble trump is facing, but Jacob Shamsian over at Business Insider has more details on that:

Fulton County's district attorney, Fani Willis, launched her investigation shortly after Trump made an infamous call to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, asking him to "find" enough votes to reverse Trump's 2020 electoral loss to now-President Joe Biden.

Court filings indicate the DA's investigation expanded to include Trump's allies who plotted to send fake electors to Congress on January 6, 2021, and hand Trump a second term.

Willis has swiftly moved the investigation forward. Over the past year, she empaneled a grand jury and fought court battles to ensure testimony from Gov. Brian Kemp; the state's Republican Party chairman, David Shafer; Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; and more than a dozen others who spoke with Trump at the time. Two other high-profile witnesses who fought grand jury subpoenas, Mark Meadows and Newt Gingrich, have their cases before appeals courts.

Trump and the fake electors could face charges of election fraud, improperly trying to influence government officials, and criminal solicitation, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution.

As of December, Willis has gotten testimony from most of the main players in Trump's plot to overturn election results in Georgia. According to CNN, her office has been negotiating plea deals with participants in the fake-elector scheme.

If she's going to bring indictments, they could come soon...

Even without testimony from the likes of Meadows - who's facing his own legal woes to the point where pleading out is the only way he'll avoid hard time in prison - DA Willis reportedly has enough evidence to indict trump and others. It's just the niceties of getting the smaller fish (the fake electors who don't want jail time on their resumes) to plead out in order to catch the bigger fish (trump) with direct testimony that's slowing up the inevitable announcement.

The grand jury Willis is using now is only an investigatory one, which has to make referrals to a regular grand jury that can actually bring the charges for the DA to use. So there is another step to go through, but according to Georgia rules that regular grand jury has a two-month window to work in. Once the special grand jury is finished (likely February) the regular grand jury should be done late April.

Meaning I get a nice birthday gift in May when Willis issues the arrest warrants.

trump is still facing other legal woes such as the state civil case in New York over tax fraud is set for October 2023. The civil trial between trump and E. Jean Carroll - who accused him of rape and brought defamation charges when he mocked her - is set to begin April 17 (any settlement deal has to be done April 10, I think) this year. Both of these trials are likely to hit trump's wallets in ways that could well bankrupt him forever, as well as paint him a loser before the primary voters in 2024.

In 2016, trump bullied all the other Republican candidates while his opponents had nothing to hit him with - they couldn't attack his business failings because he shamelessly gaslight the public about them - and so they floundered. In 2024, anybody campaigning against trump will have proof on the debate stage that trump is a loser, a tax fraud, breaking laws he was sworn to uphold, and can force trump to be on the defensive instead of offensively attacking everyone else.

trump will be a broken man, one way or another, by the time 2024 rolls around.

Here's hoping trump will be broken sitting in a darkened jail cell for next New Year's.

Republicans Will Vote For the Devil When It Suits Their Purpose

"He may be a bastard, but he's OUR bastard!"
- standard excuse given by political cynics whenever they justify supporting a terrible, scandal-plagued candidate

It's come up again that the Republican Party has no morality when it comes to selecting their candidates. The Georgia Senate race involving Herschel Walker - a well-proven domestic abuser with an insane history of fabricating his history - just got exposed with reports from the Daily Beast that he paid a number of former girlfriends to have abortions. All of this highlighting the hypocrisy of the GOP running on a pro-life anti-abortion platform.

Just like Alabama's Roy Moore back in 2017, when he was exposed as a pedophile chasing after teen girls in shopping malls and stalking them to their high schools, the Republicans are publicly and perfectly fine with Walker paying for abortions, because GOD FORBID the political power should ever go to those radical evil Democrats instead.

As Steve M. notes at his No More Mister Nice Blog, the cruelty AND hypocrisy are the ever-constant focal points of an unhinged power-mad minority party:

Right-wing thought leaders are making it clear that they don't care whether Walker was an accessory to what they normally regard as murder -- only power matters in this case...

We all know what Frank Wilhoit said: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” But we need to realize that conservatives believe that this applies not just to what's legally permitted, but also to what's regarded as moral. If a conservative does it, that means it's not immoral. And the corollary: Liberals are immoral even if they don't commit immoral acts.

So Bill Clinton's marital troubles make him a moral degenerate, but Donald Trump's don't -- in fact, he's widely regarded on the right as a good Christian. Barack and Michelle Obama are depraved even though they've had a long, sturdy marriage. Similarly, Hunter Biden's past transgressions damn him for life, no matter how thoroughly he cleans up -- but Herschel Walker's past is irrelevant to the right.

What's the right's definition of a good person? A Republican in good standing. What's the right's definition of an evil person? Anyone who isn't a Republican in good standing, or on the way to becoming one. (Democrats who attack the "Democrat Party" get a special exemption.) So no one on the right is calling Herschel Walker an accessory to murder. It's only murder -- with, increasingly, the risk of real legal penalties -- if we do it...

Republicans keep proving that they don't care if the elected official or candidate they're backing is an imbecile, if that person is racist or anti-Semitic or misogynistic to hell and back, or if that person has so many ethical red flags they should never be trusted.

Republicans want emotionally broken, ethically vacant people among their ranks to ensure they are loyal only to themselves (and their rich deep pocket sugar daddies) and not to the states and districts they are sworn to serve. They know they are not truly representative of the needs of the majority, and they know they can't find people who are ethical and honest to run as Republicans. So they'll run the crooks they do draft into service, and use mudslinging attacks on Democrats as "leftist radicals destroying America" to rile up their base to show up and vote (while discouraging independent voters from paying attention) while doing everything to rig the midterms to discount/disqualify every Democratic vote they can.

Every Republican action exposes their gaslighting and hypocrisy as damaging to our national well-being. These midterms matter, people. For the LOVE OF GOD and for honest representation in OUR government, please show up to vote this November and PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE FOR EVERY DEMOCRAT YOU CAN. Do not let the Herschel Walkers and the Matt Gaetzes and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the GOP win a damn thing.

Another Grand Jury Investigating trump: Georgia On My Mind Edition (w/ Update)

Kind of breaking news: Remember when Loser of the Popular Vote (Twice) donald trump called the Georgia Secretary of State to intimidate him into "finding" 11,780 votes that trump could use to overturn Biden's election results in that state?

Welp. In the latest stage of the criminal investigation, the county DA in charge of things is asking the judge for a special grand jury to compel testimony. Via Tamar Hallerman at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 

In a Thursday letter to Christopher S. Brasher, chief judge of Fulton County’s Superior Court, Willis said the move was needed because a “significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”

She cited comments Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made during an October 2021 interview with NBC News, in which he said “if (Willis) wants to interview me, there’s a process for that.”

Raffensperger is a loyal Republican. He won't willingly spill the beans unless legally compelled to do so. It wouldn't be surprising if he or any other potential witnesses delay this stage of the investigation, but this IS a serious turn of events for trump. Back to Hallerman:

Willis’ probe, launched in February, is centered on the Jan. 2 phone call Trump placed to Raffensperger, in which he urged the Republican to “find” the 11,780 votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win in Georgia in November 2020. But it could also include other actions from Trump’s allies who sowed doubts about the election results, including testimony his attorney Rudy Giuliani gave at a state legislative hearing.

In her letter to Brasher, Willis said the DA’s office “has received information indicating a reasonable probability that the State of Georgia’s administration of elections in 2020, including the State’s election of the President of the United States, was subject to possible criminal disruptions.”

Special grand juries, which typically have 16 to 23 members, can’t issue indictments. But they can subpoena witnesses, compel the production of documents and information, and enter into certain offices for the purposes of an investigation...

Those criminal disruptions Willis alleges revolve around election fraud and election interference, which at the state level would mean a minimum of one year in jail on either count if found guilty.

This would be the third criminal probe currently ongoing into trump's various misdeeds, with the one investigating tax and financial fraud in New York and the federal investigations into the January 6th insurrection. 

There is a substantial amount of documented evidence of what trump attempted to do. What's needed here is the testimony of those involved: I'm not a legal expert but I think it has something to do with proving trump's intent to coerce others to commit these acts.

According to Hallerman's article, DA Willis is hoping to get this done in the first half of this year (meaning wrapping up the grand jury by July). With luck, it'll happen on the same day they bring out criminal charges in New York and criminal charges in D.C.

trump attempted to subvert a legal election. trump keeps lying about "stolen votes" he can't prove in any court of law.

Someone needs to arrest trump, drag him to the courtroom, put him under oath and see if he keeps lying then about something he didn't win. Make him confront the facts that there was no mass fraud, there were no stolen votes, that he IS the damn loser he keeps denying to himself. This case is the best possible way to do that.

Hold trump and the Republicans aiding him accountable for the Big Lie he keeps spewing.

The future of America depends on it.

(Update 1/22): David French at the Atlantic (possible paywall) spells out how this could be serious trouble for trump:

But the question remains: Were Trump’s attempts to reverse the outcome in Georgia (and nationally) criminal? There is compelling evidence that they were, under both Georgia state law and federal criminal statutes.

Perhaps the best guide to why is a Brookings Institution report, published in October, that assessed Trump’s actions in light of Georgia criminal law. Among the seven lawyers and scholars who wrote the report was Gwen Keyes Fleming, an experienced former Georgia prosecutor and the former DeKalb County district attorney. The report concluded that “Trump’s post-election conduct in Georgia leaves him at substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes.” The crimes include “criminal solicitation to commit election fraud” and “conspiracy to commit election fraud,” among others.

I highlight those two statutes because they most plainly apply on their face. Georgia’s conspiracy-to-commit-election-fraud statute makes it a crime when one “conspires or agrees with another” to violate Georgia’s election laws and, crucially, states that “the crime shall be complete when the conspiracy or agreement is effected and an overt act in furtherance thereof has been committed, regardless of whether the violation of this chapter is consummated.” In other words, the scheme does not have to succeed to be criminal...

The Georgia investigation is a consequential victory for the rule of law in this country. Its very existence signals that no man or woman is above the law, a concept foundational to the American experiment. When you walk through the evidence of Trump’s brazen effort to bully, threaten, and command subordinates and state officials to steal an election, his actions quite obviously demand a close criminal inquiry...

The questions also still remaining: How soon will trump be charged with violating those state laws, and how badly will Republicans respond to their false god getting handcuffed?

The Republican Dilemma: Adapt or Die

(Update 4/6/21: Thanks again to Batocchio for including this article in Crooks&Liars Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please check out the site, and support your local library during #NationalLibraryWeek ) 

I may have blogged once or twice before about the Iron Law of Oligarchy. Especially in regards to a Republican Party that no longer respected the American Republic.

The Iron Law basically states that any organization - usually political - that starts with broad support across populations will eventually end up with only an elite or specific faction of that organization in charge of it. One of the side elements of this Law is that a moment comes when that group has a choice between upholding their ideals and imploding from the consequent schism, or adapting/corrupting their ideals in order to maintain their broad support.

The modern Republican Party kind of inverts that side rule: They are corrupting themselves to uphold the oligarchs' ideals - tax cuts for the rich, racism and misogyny for everyone else - rather than adapting themselves to maintain any semblance of broad support with Americans.

We've been seeing it as they slide into Minority Party Rule, where they no longer reflect the majority views of the American voting population, yet maintain political control because they've corrupted themselves and the processes by which our political controls get voted on. A corruption of process we see through Gerrymandering at the state level to grant themselves safe Republican districts at the expense of the voters, and their actions in the past decade of pushing for stricter voting regulations to restrict voting rights rather than uphold them.

Leading up to this past month where the Republican-controlled states - lead by Georgia and Texas - are passing or planning to pass voting restrictions so severe they've pretty much brought back the Jim Crow laws from the 1880s-1960s. Consider the damage being done by Georgia (via Zack Beauchamp at Vox):

The bill, known as SB 202, gives state-level officials the authority to usurp the powers of county election boards — allowing the Republican-dominated state government to potentially disqualify voters in Democratic-leaning areas. It criminalizes the provision of food and water to voters waiting in line, in a state where lines are notoriously long in heavily nonwhite precincts. It requires ID for absentee ballots and limits the placement of ballot drop boxes...

Everybody - myself included - jumped on the most sadistic part of that bill, the part where people can get arrested and jailed for providing food and water to people waiting in long lines (lines that tend to form in Black-heavy cities/counties that have had precincts taken away to force those long lines in the first place). But that's not the scariest part, this is: The bit where the state can disqualify county-level election results in case those counties fail to vote the way the Republicans want them to (hint: never FOR the Democratic candidates). This is where the GOP can say "FUCK YOU, Democratic voters, we don't want you winning anywhere" and nullify the choices their own citizens prefer. They're telling these voters to not even bother trying.

There is nothing in the bill specifically attempting to deny the vote to Blacks or Latinos or even Asians - because even the conservative-held courts will balk at that in this day and age - but given the recent attempts by the Georgia Republicans to disenfranchise those particular communities - with reduced precincts in poor (minority) neighborhoods, for example - you can do the math. You don't expect the Republicans to denounce the rich and mostly White counties they'll be winning, do you?

These laws, these rebirths of Jim Crow 50 years after the Voting Rights Act enfranchised Americans to vote, are not protecting democracy or the republic. These laws are getting passed on a Big Lie (from the liar trump, who still can't accept the facts he lost), that there's massive voter fraud. The Republicans keep screaming that there's fraud but can never prove it, and yet they're using their own screaming lies to justify restrictions we voters do not need.

Why are Republicans lying like this? Because they can't admit to the truth that they no longer reflect the majority views of the United States. They've slid down a path of ideological purification, seeking more conservative leadership that would stick to Far Right dogma, making it harder for any leadership to shift back towards positions on issues more favorable to more Americans. The Republicans' ideology has become so calcified and broken that in 2020 they refused to establish a platform at all, running instead on their candidates' personalities (in trump's case, a Cult of Personality).

The Republicans know they are no longer in majority control of the country - and even in some of the large Red States they're holding onto with these suppression laws - and they also know that the future will not be kind to them: It's long been an open (non)secret that by 2028 the population demographics are against them. To quote from the Center for American Progress' report on voting trends:

Many analysts suggest that if current voting patterns remain the same as in recent elections, the projected rise of communities of color—Hispanics, blacks, Asians, and others—will favor Democrats as the Republican-leaning white share of the electorate shrinks...

The scenarios in this report suggest that there are paths for both parties to win the Electoral College in 2020 and beyond. For Republicans, future success is tied to mobilizing their strength among whites without college educations—a still-substantial but shrinking portion of the electorate—while attaining gains among at least some growing demographic groups. A narrow Republican reliance on noncollege-educated whites would lead, at best, to continued popular vote losses and ever smaller Electoral College wins, which would eventually peter out...

Republicans could (and in 2016, did) win the Electoral College through relying on their base of non-colleged Whites, but they needed (and still need) a mix of disgruntled voters among the non-White blocs. They pulled that off with surprising numbers from Latinos in some states (Florida, where anti-socialistic views turned enough voters away from Dems) both in 2016 and 2020.

But 2020 demonstrated enough losses from White suburbanites negating that bloc's advantage for Republicans, with little sign they're regaining those voters back for 2024 and beyond. It did not help Republicans that 2020 voter turnout among Blacks - especially in Georgia - went up thanks to the mail-in balloting during the pandemic.

Hence the push now to shut down mail-in options and ballot dropoffs and early voting and a hundred other things that help poor (minority) voters, all because Republicans don't want to make the outreach efforts to those voters to balance with their GOP base.

Republicans don't want to make that outreach because they can't. The party itself has become so beholden to their extremist factions - who are mostly rage-driven, racist, and misogynist - that any attempt to moderate the party's stances on issues would cause that base to implode. 

That side rule about the Iron Law of Oligarchy, where a political party reaches a point where it has to Adapt Or Die: The Republican Party has finally reached that moment, these anti-voting laws the big red flag showing us all they are willing to fight to the bitter end on their racist, greedy ways rather than adapt to survive the coming demographic changes.

There is some irony to this: The Republicans cannot adapt, because the party dies if they do. Thanks to the electoral reality that our elections favor a two-party majority, the Republicans can still exist despite their growing minority status.

Except they can't persist this way, either. At some point - and it's coming no matter how much the Republicans try to cheat now - the GOP will fall into minority status in enough battleground states to where no amount of gerrymandering or voter suppression can save them. More states are set to turn Democratic Blue, maybe not this 2022 or even 2024, but it's coming, and when it does they will lose their political power nationwide.

This is when it will get scary. Having talked themselves into the false belief that only Republicans should rule, they are likely to convince themselves they have nothing else left to lose and will seek ruin for us all instead...