I Didn't Even See Her Enter the Building Let Alone Leave

This happened so fast I didn't even have time to blog about it properly (via NPR's Washington DC desk)

Katie Zacharia is "transitioning out" of her role as press secretary, according to a White House official not authorized to speak on the record, marking a stunning turn of events for the spokeswoman who officially started Monday and is out by Friday.

Zacharia's first briefing was Tuesday morning where she faced scrutiny both over her performance – during which she delivered a lengthy and halting opening statement read from notes and called on only three reporters – and her legal credentials.

President Trump on Friday cast doubt on the future of Zacharia, saying he had a discussion with her just before leaving for a campaign rally in Georgia.

The 41-year-old graduate of Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and self-described attorney had stepped in as Trump's chief spokesperson at a moment when his popularity has fallen to record lows and Republicans are scrambling to limit potential losses in the midterm elections.

Much of the scrutiny of Zacharia focused on her credentials as an attorney. While standing with Trump, she was asked by reporters where she passed the bar exam.

"When I moved to China," Zacharia answered, an apparent reference to what she has described on her LinkedIn page as a period of time from 2011 through 2013 spent working for a prominent Beijing-based law firm called Zhon Lun...

Except that there's no record of Zacharia getting certified in China, and currently no record of her passing a bar exam stateside. She has a law degree, but that's different from the bar which allows you to practice law in courts and other legal matters. (It's like me having a degree in journalism, but it doesn't automatically make me a reporter.)

As much as her credentials were under question, what hurt Zacharia as trump's new bald-faced gaslighting liar press secretary was her actual performance her first official day on the job (via Tom Jones with Poynter): 

New White House press secretary Katie Zacharia held her first press briefing on Tuesday.

And how did it go? Put it this way: It could have gone better. Way better. In fact, it couldn’t have gone much worse.

Here’s how you know it’s bad: Insiders are already asking if her days are numbered.

A visibly nervous Zacharia met the media for a mere 14 minutes, looking down for most of it while reading prepared notes. She then called on just three reporters, all from conservative outlets: Breitbart, Fox News and the Daily Mail.

Reactions to the slow-motion train wreck were swift and overwhelmingly negative.

The New York Times’ Shawn McCreesh called Zacharia’s debut “a bumpy one.”

CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins called it a “bizarre” press briefing, telling colleague Wolf Blitzer on the air, “And so I’m not really sure, Wolf, that I’ve ever been to a press briefing where there were only three questions in the briefing. It was quite unusual, especially for the first press briefing, which was widely touted by the White House and announced by the president...”

It was bad enough that some are wondering if Zacharia will last even as long as Anthony Scaramucci, who made it only 10 days as White House communications director during Trump’s first term. One anonymous official told MS NOW’s Jake Traylor, “Getting behind the podium is tough, but she got off on the wrong foot. She needs to get much better, fast, otherwise she’ll break Scaramucci’s record...”

Ahhh, Anthony Scaramucci. The original tin-plated standard for political career brevity. Jones had him at 10 days but most others are generous about his brief stay as trump's media whipping boy, setting a Scaramucci as a measurement of 11 days in office. Wiki editors are unforgiving in their promptness: they've already added Zacharia as a measurement of 5 days (or .45 a Scaramucci).

Zacharia's week-long tenure brought up serious questions from Jones about why someone as inexperienced as her with public relations was tapped for trump's Mouth of Sauron Putin:

Veteran media journalist Jeremy Barr of The Guardian made the correct point on social media Tuesday: “There were plenty of actual Fox News employees available who could have done this job (rather than an unpaid guest), someone like Emily Compagno for example…”

How true. It seems as if Trump had plenty of people to choose from instead of Zacharia for such an important role.

Did Trump really hire her simply because he liked her appearances on various news networks, particularly Fox News? How did she get the job? Was she vetted at all?

The Washington Post’s Michael Birnbaum reported Trump made the hire without even talking it over with his chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

Birnbaum wrote, “Senior White House staff, including Wiles, were informed of the decision to hire Zacharia the night before Trump announced it on Friday, the people said. Zacharia had little time to prepare for the briefing, which can be a challenging joust with the press in which a press secretary needs to advocate on behalf of the administration, stick to the facts — sometimes — and improvise quickly when tricky topics arise.”

She looked overwhelmed and underprepared, leading some to wonder why she was rushed to the podium so quickly after being hired. One Trump adviser told CNN, “She should have been doing murder boards for two weeks before going up there.”

It should be noted Zacharia's predecessor Karoline Leavitt at least had experience in the communications rooms of various political offices, not only interning during trump's first term but also for Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik. Everyone else beforehand - even good old Sean "Spicy" Spicer had years as a communications director for the GOP - were practiced and field-tested to go before hostile press rooms. It's not like trump - and it doesn't seem like his handlers had a say in this one - could would or should go after incompetency as a quality for such a high-profile position. And yet he did, because trump is more obsessed with appearances - young, white, blonde - than anything else anymore.

Zacharia's sudden departure leaves trump's comms unit in serious turmoil, desperate to find a more credible spokesperson who isn't going to drag trump or the Republicans any further into humiliation that trump and the Republicans are already doing to themselves this midterms.

If Zacharia has any good thing happening for her this week, it's that Saturday Night Live will never get around to mocking her the way they did Spicy. (slow clap) Good for you, Katie. Good for you.

When Wingnut Hypocrisy Is On-Brand

I don't think I've posted much about this guy here, and it's been some time since I shared any schadenfreude, so here's a report making the rounds of one of the extremist anti-immigrant wingnuts on the Far Right getting hit with his own cruelty (via Nicole Acevedo with NBC News):

Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-described libertarian and professional internet troll who became known for his controversial right-wing political views, is in ICE custody.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News that ICE arrested Yiannopoulos, a United Kingdom national, on Thursday at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana.

You might think a guy well aware of his own brand - making money off of hatred and bashing Muslims, women, anyone not White And Male - would discreetly make sure his own paperwork and legal status would be secure so he wouldn't get caught in the same dragnet he's cheering on, but ignorance about their own hypocrisy is actually part of the wingnut brand so...

The DHS spokesperson said Yiannopoulos legally entered the U.S. on May 14, 2019, through New York City, but then “chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”

Yiannopoulos was taken into ICE custody Thursday after “failing to show up for his immigration hearing” on July 22, prompting an immigration judge to issue a final order of removal against him, according to the spokesperson. “He will remain in ICE custody pending removal,” the spokesperson added.

Not that showing up for his hearing back in July would have saved him: ICE thugs are happily arresting legal migrants at the hearings anyway.

I can't speak for Milo, but I'm willing to bet he operated on the belief that as a high-profile Far Right Influencer, he was untouchable. Wilhoit's Law - the conservative group-think that "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect" - on full display: Milo thought himself part of the In-Group that the law would protect while attacking Latino and other dark-skinned people who make up the Out-Groups.

He must not have gotten the memo that Stephen Miller - a higher-ranking anti-immigrant hater - wants his quota of 20 million migrants deported, which means ICE and DHS are also rounding up anyone in the Eurotrash ethnicity just so they can claim to the media "oh hey, we're not THAT racist!"

It's likely that someone in trump's administration will intervene at some point, give Yiannopoulos some face-saving act of mercy to let him out and flee to a friendlier European nation that won't bar him from entering. Going through the whole deportation process - the humiliation, the chains, the black site airflights to nations where the migrants don't even belong in order to prevent them from re-adjusting to strange locales - could expose the Far Right's cruelty to their own audiences if Milo gets to a smartphone and reaches his core followers to complain. Update: Never mind all that, the news is already reporting that Yiannopoulos was deported back to the United Kingdom today. Wow. He's really lost his friends in high places.

In the meantime, enjoy the "Leopards Eating People's Faces" moment for what it is.

As of May 30 2024 at 5:15 PM EDT

It is official now. donald trump is a convicted felon. The jury returned the verdict with all 34 counts as Guilty.

THAT'S GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY!

I'm at work at the moment so I'll add some comments later.

I'm Just Waiting On a Monday (Suck It, trump)

You might notice that despite all on the harrumphing from me about how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter that I'm still on there. Like spotting a car wreck on I-4, I can't look away and need to fulfill my Reply Guy urges. (Also, I want to be there when Musk implodes Twitter: Screw you, Elon, I'm deadnaming it 'cause calling it X is stupid) 

Having mentioned how donald trump (lowercase-naming him) spent the past week filing last-minute legal appeals against the pending April 15th Manhattan criminal trial over his hush money payments, I had a Reply Guy moment on Twitter that I'd like to share on this blog:

Top 10 trump excuses to delay trial
10) Dog ate paperwork
9) Eric ate paperwork
8) Blinded by staring at eclipse AGAIN
7) Accidentally mailed himself to Guam
6) Taking over OJ's hunt for real killer
5) Claims he already won
4) (redacted)
3) Cofveve
2) The Boogie
1) BUT HER EMAILS

— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) April 13, 2024

I had to take the "thes" out of the sentences to fit Twitter character count, by the by.

Ron Filipkowski is someone I follow and reply/requote often, also by the by.

It's a little bit of levity - and a shit-ton of schadenfreude - waiting for Monday to roll up tomorrow, with trump forced to sit in the courtroom during jury selection knowing that this is no longer something he can control.

Justice is coming, trump. No more delays. Cower like the coward you are.

P.S.: Tank the stock. SELL MORTIMER, SELL!

The Scent of Desperation

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.
-- Albert Camus, A Happy Death

Facing an imminent criminal trial in New York for his hush money payments, trump isn't just getting annoying he's getting DESPERATE.

he's getting his lawyers to file last-minute demands to move the trial venue out of Manhattan as yet another means of delaying the start, and he's trying to file a lawsuit directly against the judge to force a recusal. With regards to the venue, well this is how the upper court handled it (via ML Nestal at Raw Story): 

Judge Lizbeth Gonzalez denied the former president's request to move the venue out of New York City without explanation in a one-sentence order, according to multiple reports.

I bet the one-sentence order went along the lines of "sucks to be you, donald."

Trump's lawyers attempted to sway an intermediary appellate court pause the upcoming date suggesting it would be impossible to find an impartial jury.

"In terms of prejudicial pretrial publicity in this county, this case stands alone," wrote defense attorney Emil Bove, arguing there had not been a case with so much attention since the 1999 police killing of Amadou Diallo.

All things considered, it's trump's own fault he draws this much attention to himself. There are remote tribes in the Gobi Desert who've heard of him. There's no place to move a venue, so he might as well face a jury of fellow New Yawkers where he stands.

With regards to trump's attempt to sue Judge Merchan, there's more detail with Charles R Davis at Salon:

Trump, who is accused of falsifying business records to cover up a 2016 “hush” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, has spent weeks now railing against Judge Juan M. Merchan. One ex-prosecutor likened his attacks on Merchan — and Merchan’s daughter — to the behavior of a “mob boss.”

That behavior led Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to seek a revised gag order barring such attacks on the judge’s family. Now, with the trial set to begin April 15, Trump is again trying to stall the case against him, this time with a legal filing that directly targets Judge Merchan.

According to the Times, the filing constitutes an “Article 78”  action, a proceeding that can be used to challenge decisions by state officials and judges in New York. While it remains under seal, the former president has claimed that the gag order against him violates his right to free speech...

There's been long debates about gag orders violating free speech rights, but if the Supreme Court precedence is viewed properly they're meant primarily to ensure the fair rights and safety of the defendants: There's nothing there about the defendant using speech to threaten the rights and safety of the judges, prosecutors, and juries. If defendants had the power to issue threats and insults towards judges in every other trial, we'd never see justice done.

trump, for all we know, intentionally went on the attack against Merchan - and the judge's daughter - precisely to trigger a gag order that trump could then use was denying his free speech. It's behavior that shouldn't be tolerated or allowed.

One way or another, trump is desperate to delay this criminal trial like he's delayed all the others.

Because he knows - despite all his claims of innocence, and despite all his bravado that he's happily being martyred (seriously, comparing himself to Mandela???) - the second a trial gets a jury empaneled, the second the witnesses start testifying under oath, the second every nasty little detail comes out that trump can't debunk where it matters (because he dare not go on the stand under oath) he becomes even more a political liability to GOP party leaders than he already is.

trump knows the second a jury comes back with even one Guilty verdict, his presidential campaign is doomed. While the legal experts are saying DA Bragg's case here is the weakest trump faces - due to Bragg using unconventional interpretations of records laws - there's still solid evidence against him, and the jury will be hearing from witnesses like Michael Cohen, who will point out he'd plead out to similar charges on the same hush money matter, implying trump should face his justice as well.

trump may claim that his followers will accept him even if he's found guilty - and there are a lot of them who will vote for a convicted trump - he has to know there's a solid faction of Republican (and No Party Affiliate) voters who will never vote for a convicted felon. There's already signs at least 20 percent of the existing GOP voting base won't accept trump under any circumstance, and he can't afford - even with all the plotting he's doing to disqualify the Electoral Count this 2024 - to lose that many across most of the states.

This is why trump is desperate to delay every criminal trial he's facing well past November.

This is why the courts shouldn't indulge him.

Let Justice be done. Bring trump to trial.

Time to Break the NRA, Now That It's Financially Broke

I hadn't talked about it much, but the National Rifle Body County Association had been facing civil lawsuits in the state of New York - where their organization had been incorporated - and the State AG Letitia James delivered for justice and sanity (again) when the jury came back this afternoon holding the NRA leaders liable for decades of embezzlement, mismanagement, and corruption (via Emma Bowman and Brian Mann at NPR):

A Manhattan jury found three top executives of the National Rifle Association liable Friday in a lengthy civil trial that focused on alleged corruption and the misspending of millions of dollars.

Longtime NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, a key architect in the nonprofit's hardline gun rights agenda who stepped down as CEO last month, was central to New York state's case.

Jurors found that LaPierre "violated his statutory obligation to discharge the duties of his position in good faith."

They concluded that he had caused roughly $5.4 million worth of harm to the nonprofit group's finances — though they also found that LaPierre had already repaid roughly $2 million.

LaPierre is the same sonofabitch who made the decision after the horrifying Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre to double down on the madness of gun proliferation that has led to more guns and more gun violence. He went out there and claimed "there was no way to end the violence" and that the best way to solve it was "good guys with guns." (Guess what, good guys with guns doesn't work) All the while raking in the profits that the NRA succored out of the gun manufacturers - who all had a part of the NRA's leadership - that he then indulged himself.

The executives were accused of misappropriating and mismanaging funds donated to the gun rights group's members. According to New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the lawsuit, their actions led to "the loss of more than $64 million in just three years."

During the six-week trial, state lawyers alleged that LaPierre had spent over $11 million for private flights and approved $135 million in NRA contracts in exchange for yacht access and free trips to the Bahamas, Greece and other vacation hotspots, The Associated Press reported.

All those vacations to overseas nations that have gun control laws in place. Probably made it safe for LaPierre to walk around at night spending more blood money.

LaPierre spent three decades growing the NRA's political and lobbying influence. Even as mass shootings became commonplace, LaPierre rejected attempts to change gun policy, branding gun control proponents as enemies of freedom and using the threat of firearms regulation to fundraise.

His resignation was announced just days before the trial began, with the NRA instead citing health as the reason for his departure.

The NRA's grip on politics has weakened in recent years as it's faced declining membership and revenue, and concerns within the group over leadership's direction and misuse of funds...

There was a moment, years ago, when ties to Russian intelligence exposed the dire financial straits that the organization found itself (It doesn't look like that investigation went far). There had also been power struggles both behind the doors and on the public stage that exposed how corrupt LaPierre had made himself and the NRA. There'd been complaints the organization had been rigging their internal elections for decades.

With any luck, this court ruling breaks all of that. This jury decision will block some of the more corrupt NRA leaders from holding office, hopefully leaving room for reformers to gain meaningful footholds. AG James is looking to install an independent court monitor to oversee the financials, which would go a long way towards clearing out any of the other org leaders unable to bribe or bully their way back into power.

While I am hopeful of all that, whether this will lead to any sanity on the political stage remains unknown. Far too many politicians - cough Far Right Republicans cough - have built their "brands" on being "gun-toting, 2nd Amendment Loving" psychopaths, and they're not going to change their public image any time soon.

It's up to the voters - now without the NRA funneling their blood money into the electoral process - to hear the calls for gun reforms more clearly, and to vote appropriately for the federal and state officials who will do something - banning the assault rifles that make up most of our mass shootings; reinstating gun safety regulations like waiting periods, registration and training; and stopping the intentional market glut of cheap guns; things like that - to stop our streets - and our schools, and our stores, and our churches, and our movie theaters, and our concerts - filling with innocent blood.

Hope you go to Hell broke, Wayne. You earned that.

Judgment Cometh and That Right Soon: trump is Toast (and Now Broke) (w/ Update)

Update 5/8/24: I think I wrote this thing too fucking soon. When I insisted towards the end that trump was facing four criminal trials in short order, I jinxed it or something. Three of those trials are now suffering delays due to trump-appointed judges or his spamming of the appeals system, and the likelihood is trump won't see those three trials until 2025 after the November election. If that Shitgibbon pulls off a goddamn steal of the election - either through a broken Electoral College or getting a Republican-controlled Congress to gift it to him - he will shut those trials down and never answer for his sins. He's currently facing trial in Manhattan for his hush money schemes to silence stories about his sex scandals during the 2016 election, but he HAS to answer for the serious acts of insurrection and document theft he caused. 

For the LOVE OF GOD, America, do NOT vote for trump or the Republicans this November...

We were waiting for this. trump's civil case over tax evasion and acts of fraud came due today (via Ximena Bustillo at NPR): 

The Friday decision from Judge Arthur Engoron orders Trump and his flagship organization to pay the bulk of that amount: nearly $355 million. Trump's two sons and co-defendants, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., are each liable for $4 million. Allen Weisselberg, a former Trump Organization executive, is liable for $1 million. The total is even higher with interest — more than $450 million overall, according to the attorney general's office.

"Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin," Engoron wrote in the court filing. "Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways..."

trump is of course not admitting to his errors and is screaming on his social media bubble about how unfair this is, A TOTAL WITCH HUNT, it's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. etc.

If you want to view the full travesty of a mockery of a sham, the court filing should be here.

If you want popcorn, that should be in Aisle 9 at your local Publix. If you don't have a local Publix I assure you there will soon be one. (evil laughter from Publix HQ in Lakeland FL)

The judge also decided to limit Trump and his co-defendants' ability to do business in the Empire State. Trump and his companies are prohibited from serving as an officer or director of any New York business or applying for loans for three years. His sons are limited from similar leadership roles for two years.

Jeffrey McConney, ex-controller of the Trump Organization and also a defendant, was not ordered to pay any amount, but he and Weisselberg are permanently barred from serving in the financial control function of any New York corporation or similar business entity registered or licensed in New York state.

One of the thing trump - and his sons - can't do is get any loans from banks that do business in New York, which was one of the ways he'd been inflating his personal wealth and perpetuating his ongoing grifts over the decades. Considering New York City is the financial capital of the world - well, it's one of the major centers along with London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and (checks notes) that one nation-state that allows shell companies to money-launder off-shore accounts - this is tossing a wooden shoe into trump's gears real quick. If trump is trying scheme up anything else to make money down the road... he might not be able to. At least not for the next three years.

This is also going to put a crimp on trump's ability to pay not only the penalties in this case but also the fines and penalties in the Carroll defamation and sexual assault decisions (add in another $88 million to trump's bill).

I mentioned earlier that trump - like most rich folk - doesn't have a lot of real cash on hand to be able to pay these kinds of fines. Most of the wealth is on paper, on the estimated values on properties and businesses owned, and on the amounts floating around in investment portfolios and the stock markets. Either trump is going to be forced to sell a number of properties - at fair market value, NOT the inflated prices trump claimed - or use other people's money. There's a reason why a lot of people - myself included - viewed trump's effort to claim control of the RNC this week was to claim the revenues flowing in to the party organization's campaign coffers.

It's going to be a question of how trump can get to any of that RNC money, if the court-appointed oversight by judge Barbara Jones is expanding over the next 14 months to ensure this order gets enforced (even during the appeal process, by the looks of it).

And he doesn't have that time afforded to him. trump is facing more court trials, specifically the criminal cases. A quick update on those:

The ruling comes at a crucial time for Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Engoron's decision comes a day after another judge set the date for what could be Trump's first criminal trial, related to hush money payments issued during the 2016 election.

He is facing a combined 91 state and federal charges, including several related to his role to stay in office after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden...

Just this week, the judge overseeing that Hush Money trial - the DA is trying to claim it's an "election interference" trial because trump evaded campaign finance rules and lied to voters about the matter, but seriously it's the Hush Money To Stormy Daniels case - ruled against trump's bid to have the case dismissed and set the jury selection to start March 25, 2024 (it's also Bustillo but it's a different NPR article, well that IS her beat):

New York Judge Juan Merchan has rejected an attempt to dismiss the charges in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump, and a jury trial will begin as originally scheduled on March 25.

The case was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who charged Trump with 34 felony counts last year, alleging he falsified New York business records in order to conceal damaging information before the 2016 presidential election. That included hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, who was threatening to go public with charges that she had had an affair with Trump not long after he married Melania Trump. Trump, who was present for Thursday's court hearing before Merchan, has denied the affair.

You should remember, this is the matter that brought "bagman" lawyer Michael Cohen to the national stage ("I have a hard drive just labeled 'YIKES'!"), and there was enough proof back then - with trump as un-indicted co-conspirator Individual-One - to get Cohen to plead out. It took awhile - and Bragg overcoming his initial reluctance when he took office - for these charges to come out, but it's here now, it's starting in March and should be finished in four weeks, meaning in late April we'll see if trump gets convicted on even one count or survives his first criminal trial.

The next trial was technically the matter in DC federal court regarding trump's involvement in the January 6th insurrection, with four felony counts there. However, Judge Chutkan postponed that trial awaiting the ruling on trump's claim of Absolute Immunity, which an appellate court rebuked and which the Supreme Court received this week to determine if they need to hear the matter.

A number of legal experts are arguing SCOTUS doesn't even need to hear the appeal, and that is a choice the justices can make. They could still take it, and deliberate the matter in order to give trump what he REALLY wants - more delay - but they'd still have to make a ruling on it this term year (by late summer if they pad it out). If they dismiss trump's appeal, this trial could start as early as mid-May (depending on another trial): If SCOTUS takes it, they still have to rule on it by August (and like the 11th District of Appeals, they dare not approve in favor of absolute presidential immunity, it would literally kill the Constitution) and the trial could start by September (cutting it close to Election Day).

That other trial that could skew the DC trial schedule is the one in South Florida regarding trump's mishandling of federal classified documents at Mar-A-Lago. Ostensibly it's set for late May, but Judge Cannon overseeing that matter has been causing havoc with the pre-trial elements - such as wanting to expose the Justice Department's witness list to trump's lawyers earlier than usual, and against Special Counsel Jack Smith's wishes - that a potential delay could be happening in that trial as the appeals courts straighten the mess. Outside legal experts -some of them former federal prosecutors - argue Cannon should be removed from this case considering how she's risking witness safety, but that could delay the start of trial as well.

If by some miracle the Mar-A-Lago trial does start by May, it's still expected to take two or three months to complete considering the sheer amount of classified documents - and their mishandling - to go through. It would affect whenever the DC trial starts, which I would argue deserves to go first because of its immediacy and its importance in confirming trump's culpability over the nightmare of January 6th. Hopefully this will get straightened out soon.

Thrown into this mix is the fourth criminal matter trump faces in Fulton County, Georgia... which hit a huge delay when one of the co-defendants filed a complaint against DA Fani Willis over possible misconduct with an affair with one of the special investigators hired by the DA's office. The judge overseeing that trial held a hearing the last two days, during which the worst part of trumpian (damn you Roy Cohn) legal tactics - public smearing of opponents - was on full display.

Igor Derysh at Salon has more details:

Thursday’s evidentiary hearing on the misconduct claim against Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis yielded a lot of drama but little evidence of wrongdoing, legal experts say.

Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee held a hearing after Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney for Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, alleged an improper relationship between Willis and top prosecutor Nathan Wade and claimed that Wade used his earnings from the case to fund trips for the pair...

“I simply don’t see any new evidence that requires disqualification. It’s a credibility pissing match so far. Ugly. Dramatic. But the needle hasn’t moved,” tweeted Georgia State University Law Prof. Anthony Michael Kreis.

“As an excavation of a now-defunct relationship, it was Bravo-worthy (and frankly, sad). But as an evidentiary hearing, it wasn’t the win the defense promised, especially under the governing legal standard,” agreed MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin...

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance told MSNBC that the hearing featured “a lot of spectacle but not very much substance.”

"Ultimately, at the end of the day yesterday, it was just a big nothingburger," she said. "There was nothing to show that Fani Willis and Nathan Wade had the financial conflict of interest that Georgia law recognizes, something akin to a prosecutor who only gets paid if they win a case. That's the classic case in Georgia law where there is a conflict that results in disqualification. That wasn't there yesterday in the courtroom..."

If trump and his co-defendants were hoping to throw the whole prosecution out, that wasn't going to happen. At the least, the judge could have removed Willis from overseeing the matter and handing it off to another prosecutor in the DA's office. Whether it delays this trial any further - which legal experts considered an open-shut case because of so much direct evidence against trump including that audio tape - is unlikely, because it's all the other trials' schedules that's interfering when this one starts.

Again, to all the Republican voters out there, to all the Republican Party leaders out there: You could have avoided all this. trump was dirty and corrupt and vulgar in the years before 2016. You had all the warning signs when he first campaigned - the failed casinos, the civil trial involving trump's university scam, the reports of sexual assault, the open racism and sexism - that trump was going to be a disaster of a human being. AND YOU STILL VOTED FOR THAT.

We've had other corrupt men in high office before, just that none of them reached the criminal lows that trump has. trump's not facing criminal trials because he's a "great conservative American," he's facing criminal trials now because 40 years of bills over his bullshit are finally coming due.

The civil trials are mostly done, and trump has to pay those dues soon. The criminal trials start March, and the countdown to just even ONE felony conviction begins.

Tick fucking tock, trump.

Update: This got to be a very popular tweet.

at this rate, trump should raise the $355 million in 30,527 days.
That's almost 83 years.
It could work.

— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) February 17, 2024

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.

The Bare Minimum of Congressional Standards

So, having completed NaNoWriMo for 2023, and trying to get back into the swing of political blogging again, is there anything out there this Friday I could comment about?

...

Oh, right. This happened (via Eric McDaniel at NPR): 

Members of the House of Representatives voted 311-114 Friday morning to expel New York Republican George Santos from Congress. Santos is the sixth House member ever to be expelled from Congress.

Santos is accused by prosecutors of a number of financial misdeeds, including reimbursing himself for loans to his congressional campaign that he appears to have never actually made — in essence, stealing money from campaign donors.

Almost all Democrats and more than 100 Republicans voted to expel Santos, who will now be replaced in a special election...

You know, I'm still not convinced George Santos is his real name.

This is someone who got caught committing some very shaky con games who still bluffed and bought his way into elected office before anyone even cared to follow up on a background check.

It slowly turned out Santos violated a number of campaign finance laws: Getting his helpers to fake signatures, shake people down for credit card numbers, and spend tens of thousands on personal perks instead of actual campaign work. If there was any positive in this story, it's that Santos set records for fastest criminal indictments issued against a freshman congresscritter.

There had been a vote to expel Santos on November 1, but it fizzled due to it happening before an official report from the in-house Ethics Committee - an otherwise toothless entity - was released. As soon as THAT came out - documenting all the sins Santos committed not only towards his constituents but also towards his fellow elected officials - this second vote came up and this time the two-thirds supermajority needed to expel him was pretty much confirmed.

Granted, Santos hasn't even been convicted yet in a court of law, something the previous Congressmen expelled for their sins had to incur (that or getting expelled for joining the Confederacy). Expulsion doesn't require convictions however, merely the disapproval of Congress members betrayed by their own. Stealing from the voters was one thing, but grifting fellow Republican congresscritters (and their mothers)? Unforgivable. 

This was all happening as the House Republicans are struggling to stay on-message - attack Hunter Biden so they can justify impeaching Joe Biden - with half the party voting to keep Santos among their ranks due to their majority control being the slimmest in American legislative history. The GOP were holding roughly a five-seat majority, which is now down to four seats and even harder to maintain a unified front. With reports that several other House Republicans - especially ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, still bitter about his downfall - are looking to retire before 2024 even shows up on the calendar, Speaker Johnson - more vulnerable than ever for his own Motion To Vacate doom - tried to pressure his caucus to keep Santos to shore up the vote. That he and the rest of the GOP leadership failed - losing 105 Republican votes - speaks to the lack of power they truly hold.

In the meantime, the House will muddle through more continuing resolutions and fights over financial aid to Ukraine and Israel while a special election takes place in 90 days to temporarily fill that seat (the regular 2024 election will still happen). Given how Biden won that district in spite of Santos' "win" in 2022, there is a good chance the Democrats can flip that seat. Until then, inertia and corruption are still in play.

The members of the House may well pat themselves on the back for performing the bare minimum towards upholding some standards, but they have yet to do anything to prevent any future Santoses from joining their little club. There needs to be a massive overhaul of the electoral process: Greater transparency in tracking the campaign money and enforcing against misuse; public background checks to ensure the candidates are even who they say they are; even serious efforts to reduce the expenses and reduce the temptations of all that money bouncing back and forth.

Until then, we're going to see more con artists like Santos play their games in getting elected by hook and by crook into Congress, where the real money is. Gods help us.

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.

Just a Quick Observation or Five About the Current House Situation

Well, since last I blogged, the situation with the House Republicans have gotten crazier and with 87 percent more schadenfreude, so let's go to the hits:

Jim "Scandals Aplenty" Jordan's second attempt at a floor vote lost him two more supporters, indicating how any further attempts to push him through the caucus will worsen. Realizing that every vote won't make him a martyr - more of a clownish loser - Jordan is now trying to avoid future votes with his name on the ballot. But he might not be able to, since the only thing the House can do right now is hold votes for Speakerships.

Meanwhile, reports got out how the Republican representatives who voted against Jordan - and their families - are getting harassed with texts and phone calls, highlighting the brute-force tactics of the Freedom Caucus and their media followers. Jordan apparently told his backers to stop the bullying, but enough congresscritters are upset about the abusive tactics that they're not going to deal with Jordan at all.

At one point, a suggestion that various Democratic congresspersons made to make the Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry a "temporary Speaker" with enough authority to manage the House to conduct select business got some support from Jordan and other Republicans, but the deal fell through when nobody could be certain how it would work, and enough Democrats became concerned that Jordan would undermine McHenry as "Speaker Designate" (whatever the hell that is) to rule from the shadows.

Stories got out about the in-fighting going on behind closed doors between the more exasperated Republican leaders, especially fun stories about ex-Speaker McCarthy screaming at Matt Gaetz (you know, the moran who started this whole mess) while another congresscritter threatened to punch the shiznit out of Gaetz.

Per a source in the room, McCarthy screamed at Matt Gaetz to sit down when he went to the mics, with the source saying Rep. Bost “almost lunging at him.”

— Juliegrace Brufke (@juliegraceb) October 19, 2023

Brufke by the by is a Capitol Hill reporter for Axios. 

This is where the popcorn GIFs would be real helpful. Especially with the current reports that McHenry is threatening to quit the Pro Tem job and throw the entire House into chaos.

SCOOP w/@RebeccaRKaplan:

In private meeting, McHENRY said he might RESIGN as speaker pro tem if Rs push him to move legislation without a formal vote to expand his powers, multiple lawmakers in the room said. https://t.co/rBUwe6W12x

— Scott Wong (@scottwongDC) October 19, 2023

Wong reports for NBC, by the by.

There's more reports McCarthy is trying to negotiate for the Speakership again, bolstered by the reality that the Republicans are now embarassed to hell and beyond by this clown show and would desire going back to how it was.

But there is no going back. The wingnuts wanted this breakdown of functional government and now they're going to make the rest of us suffer with them.

This is not going to end until enough Rational members of the House Republicans realize the only way forward is to deal with the Democrats and kick the Freedom Caucus bomb-throwers out of power.

And that's not going to happen because all the House Republicans are cowards, too terrified of their MAGA voting base to make that move.

If there's any joy to be had, it's that trump is facing multiple civil and criminal trials and suffering at each one.

Speaking of... (FORESHADOWING next blog article)

Chaos Agents In the House

Steve Scalise didn't even have one day of pretending he was going to be a Real Boy uh Speaker of the House. Via Lisa Mascaro, Farnoush Amiri, and Stephen Groves with AP News:

Republican Steve Scalise ended his bid to become House speaker late Thursday after hardline holdouts refused to back the party’s nominee, throwing the GOP majority into deeper chaos with the chamber unable to function.

Scalise told GOP colleagues at a closed-door meeting late Thursday of his decision and pointedly declined to announce backing for anyone else, including his chief rival, Rep. Jim Jordan, the hardline Judiciary Committee chairman backed by Donald Trump who had already told colleagues he no longer would seek the job.

Next steps are uncertain as the House is essentially closed while the Republican majority tries to elect a speaker after ousting Kevin McCarthy from the job.

As noted yesterday, Scalise already had enough No votes among Republicans that he wasn't going to clear the 217 total threshold to secure a majority of Representatives.

There wasn't much hope for his Speakership if he had gotten it, as the rules that Vacated McCarthy were still in place and likely in use to get Scalise removed down the line.

What happened here was that the demagogues / bomb-throwers among the extremist factions still wanted to hold Congress hostage to prevent any budget deals or further continuing resolutions that a replacement Speaker would be compelled to support. Instead of rallying to unite their party in a moment of public division, those "Freedom Caucus" / "Gym Jordan Or Bust" congresscritters insisted that either they Rule or they Ruin the rest of the nation. 

There is some schadenfreude to be had here as we watch a political party that's risen to power through partisan bullshit tears itself apart applying that partisan bullshit to themselves. However, there is little joy to savor. This is all happening as the planet faces multiple global crises - not just the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East but also increasing climate change disasters and also economic instability with China - that creates an urgency to fill the Speaker's role so that our government can function and respond to these crises.

Which is exactly what the Freedom Caucus / "Government Is Bad" / pro-Russian / racist-sexist bastards want to prevent. They WANT government to fall so they can build their Utopia on the ashes.

An argument could be made that Jordan's supporters now have no opposition to assume the Speakership nomination for the House Republicans... except for the facts that A) he wasn't their first (or second or even third) choice, B) that he's still wildly unpopular outside of his own faction, C) that the party is fully aware Jordan is covered with fleas scandals, and D) that Jordan can easily be denied the nomination the same way Scalise was by those Congresspersons still loyal to McCarthy or Scalise AND still livid at the naysayers for making them look bad.

If the anti-Jordan (Rationalist) factions decide to roll over/surrender to the bomb-throwers now, they have to realize that Jordan will push for a government shutdown anyway, crippling the nation at a moment we should be working. They have to know they'll regret putting that ignorant demagogue in the high chair sooner instead of later. And they'll have to know that if they surrender now, they'll surrender to even more insane demands by the wingnuts to the point the Rationalists will have no power in their own party.

None of this looks good. The chaos is not going to go away because there are too many GOP wingnuts who profit from that chaos.

That all said: We need to change the animal motifs of our major parties. It's turning out that the Republicans are the party made up of asses.

And trump Keeps Losing Like the Drunken Gambler He Is

The news broke earlier tonight, and I've been feasting on the schadenfreude ever since. The judge overseeing the New York case vs. donald trump and his Trump Org issued a summary judgment that apparently nukes his corporate empire from orbit (via Michael R Sisak at AP News): 

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations...

Engoron’s ruling, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.

Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.

Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

trump is, obviously, railing on social media that the ruling is "unfair" and "un-American," but the judge isn't going by trump's words he's going by trump's actions, and trump kept acting fraudulent enough to earn this summary judgment (link to court papers).

There's still a trial: This ruling covered a portion of AG James' case against trump. The imposition of more penalties - to the tune of $250 million - is up to a jury to decide, and it's looking like that part of the case starts this October 2nd.

(breaks out the celebratory whiskey) Wait, I don't drink. Anybody else like whiskey...?

From what I gather, this ruling - and whatever comes of the penalty phase - means trump and his sons - Ivanka somehow avoided getting meshed into this civil case - will be blocked from any and all business dealings in the state of New York. An inability to maintain a financial corporate empire would/should/could undercut any attempt by trump and his lackeys to perpetuate any grifts and con games. I'm not fully versed on the law, so obviously I will follow up with someone - likely Emptywheel - who is.

In the meantime, trump once again lost a major judicial matter. He's not made of Teflon when it comes to the law, and his failings will continue to pile up as his sins are an affront to all of Heaven and Humanity.

More whiskey?

The Tucker Carlson Hate Machine Unplugged

Let's just get to the facts. This Monday morning, without ceremony or forewarning, Fox Not-News kicked their prime-time fearmonger Tucker Carlson to the curb. To refer to David Folkenflik at NPR:

In an austere, four-sentence statement, Fox News announced Monday that prime-time star Tucker Carlson is leaving the network, effective immediately.

"FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways," the network said in a statement released by a spokesperson. "We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor."

Fox said Carlson's last day hosting his show was Friday, April 21. Suzanne Scott and Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executives of Fox News and its parent company Fox Corp. respectively, had decided Carlson's fate on Friday, a source with knowledge told NPR...

The ouster of Fox's top opinion host comes less than a week after Fox settled an epic defamation lawsuit by an election technology company for more than $787 million. Dominion Voting Systems sued over segments promoting bogus claims that election fraud cheated then-President Donald Trump of victory in 2020...

Oddly enough, the follow-up reporting on Carlson's ouster wasn't the damaging revelations from Dominion's civil suit - although it should have been the reason - it had more to do with the pending damage involving the lawsuits from former show producer Abby Grossberg, who claimed a harmful sexist workplace and apparently had the receipts to back her up.

In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, Grossberg accused Carlson and Fox of sexism and harassment, alleging that his show's workplace was replete with examples of misogyny. Her lawsuit claims, among other things, that mocked-up photographic images depicted then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "in a bathing suit revealing her cleavage" and that staffers were polled — on two separate occasions — on which of two female candidates for Michigan governor they would rather have sex with.

"Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox News is, in part, an admission of the systemic lying, bullying, and conspiracy-mongering claimed by our client," said Tanvir Rahman, one of Grossberg's lawyers, in a statement Monday afternoon. "Mr. Carlson and his subordinates remain individual defendants in the S.D.N.Y. case and we look forward to taking their depositions under oath in the very near term."

All that said, let's go to the man in the street to get his opinion on how Tucker Carlson deserved this shoddy mistreatment by his billionaire bosses. (checks notes) Actually let's go to Steve M. over at No More Mister Nice Blog for more:

Whatever is happening, it's odd. Fox put election denialism on the air in 2020 because rejecting one of the Fox audience's core beliefs was seen as likely to damage the Fox brand. But in 2023 nothing could damage the Fox brand in the eyes of viewers more than letting Tucker Carlson go. Has Rupert Murdoch stopped caring about the brand? Or does he resent Carlson's demagoguery about "globalism," which he might regard as an indictment of people like himself?

I assume everything will settle down soon. There'll be a Jesse Watters or Greg Gutfeld show in Carlson's slot and the vitriol will be flowing again as if it never stopped.

But Carlson was worse than other Fox hosts, and it will be good to have him gone -- possibly for a while. Does he have a non-compete clause? If so, how long will it silence him? For a long time, I hope.

As Steve notes, the Fox Not-News network was chugging along just fine with its brand of Far Right toxic fearmongering before Tucker showed up. After all, he filled the gap left open by Bill O'Reilly, who also departed under a cloud of sexual misconduct. And the network will happily plug in a fresh face who'll figure out the proper mix of racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism that made Tucker their number one guy (until he was a millstone).

That Tucker is getting forced out over the same troubles with women that O'Reilly departed, and considering how Roger Ailes' tenure as network overlord ended over sexual harassment charges, we should all notice how misogynistic that whole network seems to be (they may hire a lot of women but they sure as hell mistreat them).

But Tucker Carlson was a monster in his own right, a horrifying blend of upper-class privilege and white-boy grievance. He began with a conservative bent and skewed further rightward towards fascism. If Tucker wasn't shilling lies about the January 6th insurrection, he was sucking up to Putin and his dreams of Russian empire.

What made Tucker truly dangerous was his mostly-open support of the odious Replacement Theory at the base of every racist, anti-Semitic attack on American norms. It formed the foundation of every rant, every outrage towards The Dread Other - immigrants (mostly Hispanics), Blacks, Jews, women - that Tucker aired on his shows.

For all of Tucker's - and Fox Not-News' - pretensions of being a journalist, this was all he ever was: A Fearmonger. He spewed lies about others in order to have his audiences recoil in fear and then respond in anger. Tucker - and many other Far Right pundits and writers and celebrities - reveled in the controversies he stirred up, playing himself a victim to "woke" critics and getting his followers more addicted to the hate he sold.

Everything about Tucker Carlson and Fox Not-News echoed the practices of the authoritarian regimes of a fictional dystopia, Orwell's 1984. In that work, the powers running Oceania behind the leadership of Big Brother organized daily sessions of Two Minutes Hate, where workers were brought together and overwhelmed by propagandistic showings of "enemies of the state":

The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had started...

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically...

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O’Brien’s heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine! Swine! Swine!’ and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. - 1984, George Orwell

This was what Tucker Carlson brought to Fox Not-News every night. This is what Fox Not-News wanted every night. They served up Fear and Hate like drugs and their audiences got addicted to it even more.

And gods help us, the Fox Not-News overlords will find a replacement for Tucker who will provide another session of Two Minutes Hate for a full hour (minus the 27 minutes for ad space).

None of this is going to end until the whole nation wakes up to the reality that the Hate Speech Tucker and his Far Right allies are shilling - getting us to shout at screens at enemies of their state of mind - is a danger to us all. None of this is going to end until the Murdoch family and their business partners owning Fox can no longer profit from this Hate.

They unplugged Tucker Carlson today. The rest of us need to unplug Fox Not-News and finish this moment.

March 30 2023: IT'S HAPPENING

Dammit! It had to happen while I was getting groceries on my way home!!!

To the AP NEWS (thanks to Michael R Sisak, Eric Tucker, Colleen Long, and Jennifer Peltz)!

A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on charges involving payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter, the first ever criminal case against a former U.S. president and a jolt to Trump’s bid to retake the White House in 2024.

The indictment, confirmed Thursday by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, and other people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss sealed criminal charges, is an extraordinary development after years of investigations into his business, political and personal dealings. It is likely to galvanize critics who say Trump lied and cheated his way to the top and embolden supporters who feel the Republican is being unfairly targeted by a Democratic prosecutor...

The indictment(s) is/are sealed for now, meaning we don't know the specifics, but we should find out soon, probably when trump is required to appear in court.

Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing and has repeatedly attacked the investigation as politically motivated, was expected to surrender to authorities next week, though the details were still being worked out, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss a matter that remained under seal...

The fate of the hush-money investigation seemed uncertain until word got out in early March that Bragg had invited Trump to testify before a grand jury, a signal that prosecutors were close to bringing charges.

Trump’s attorneys declined the invitation, but a lawyer closely allied with the former president briefly testified in an effort to undercut the credibility of Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.

Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her silent about what she says was a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament.

Cohen was then reimbursed by Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, which also rewarded the lawyer with bonuses and extra payments logged internally as legal expenses. Over several months, Cohen said, the company paid him $420,000.

Earlier in 2016, Cohen had also arranged for the publisher of the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer to pay Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 to squelch her story of a Trump affair in a journalistically dubious practice known as “catch-and-kill.”

The payments to the women were intended to buy secrecy, but they backfired almost immediately as details of the arrangements leaked to the news media.

Federal prosecutors in New York ultimately charged Cohen in 2018 with violating federal campaign finance laws, arguing that the payments amounted to impermissible help to Trump’s presidential campaign. Cohen pleaded guilty to those charges and unrelated tax evasion counts and served time in federal prison.

Trump was implicated in court filings as having knowledge of the arrangements, but U.S. prosecutors at the time balked at bringing charges against him. The Justice Department has a longtime policy that it is likely unconstitutional to prosecute a sitting president in federal court...

The state legal system doesn't have to abide by that DOJ policy, but the implications of a sitting President under those circumstances obviously delayed matters until trump was out of the White House.

But this has never even happened for former Presidents before. For all the potential criminal misdeeds that Presidents could commit before, during, and/or after office, none of them have reached this accountability moment before. Nixon almost did until Ford pardoned him. Bill Clinton could have faced indictment but he made a plea agreement to suspend his law license for five years and pay fines.

It's official: donald trump is indicted. He is facing at least one felony criminal charge.

To everyone who complained about DA Alvin Bragg dragging his heels, please apologize.

Let the celebrations - and the worries about wingnut violence - begin!

(starts playing the one dance song from his teen years that still gets his feet moving)

"And now on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons and necking in the parlor!" - Groucho Marx, A Night At the Opera

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Update 3/31/23: Some additional notes to make:

The arraignment is officially set for Tuesday April 4 in the afternoon, so there's pretty much a whole weekend for the Far Right wingnuts to stoke themselves into enough of a frenzy to stage a riot in Manhattan before then. /sigh

A leaked report that has some veracity to it tells us trump is facing at least 30 separate counts, which is telling legal experts that Bragg's office uncovered a lot more serious stuff than just hush-money payouts to cover up trump's alleged affairs. One report suggests a number of counts on First Degree Falsifying Business Records, which is a Class E felony carrying a minimum of a year in jail each count.

Even with all this, those legal experts are also hinting that Bragg doesn't even have that strong a case. They're worried that juries tend to be lenient on matters where the defendant is covering up sexual affairs, that some of the witnesses against trump are tainted, and that Bragg waited too long to pursue this case risking trump's lawyers having a good chance to throw out part or all of the charges due to statutory limits. Those experts may not understand that 1) unlike previous adulterers who turn regretful on the stand, trump remains arrogant and defensive, and 2) Bragg and his team apparently uncovered a lot of financial corruption during their previous trial against trump's corporation to where a jury could convict on that instead of the affairs. 

trump is still facing a serious criminal matter in Manhattan: That the experts believe this is the weakest case should tell everybody how fcked trump is going to be when the Fulton County GA indictments into election fraud (which has the slam-dunk evidence of trump himself on audio) - as well as the federal Special Counsel indictments into BOTH trump's theft of classified docs AND his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection - drop on him.

And for all the storm and fury trump is unleashing over these indictments, it may not even be the worst of it. trump's never faced a criminal court case (only civil cases), and trump's not prepared to deal with the likelihood the judge is going to set harsh restrictions on himself to keep him from raging against all this in public. Given the obvious attention this trial faces - this is international news, a former President facing historic justice - the judge could well insist on gag orders to prevent any pre-trial conflicts and risks to the defendant's (trump) right to a fair trial. Even to where the judge could put that gag order on the defendant himself, whose social media rants could well enflame people interfering with his own right to an honest jury of his peers.

trump's already issued threats to the DA's office and to Bragg directly, and Bragg is already receiving death threats by the boxload. Given this, the judge setting bail could arguably detain trump to stop or reduce trump's danger to the prosecution (and any jury being formed): If not in prison without bail, at least home arrest to where trump can't leave the city without permission from the courts. THAT would unleash a political firestorm our nation's never seen before. The odds of trump refusing to abide by any bail agreement are pretty fucking high.

Everything's not going to calm down. This weekend will be just another escalation of the wingnut madness we've been suffering since 2015, and next Tuesday is going to escalate even more. Gods help us.

Still, get the popcorn and the body armor ready.

The Mouse Knows How to Play (w/ Updates)

Well, there's actually been a lot going on in the war between Bully DeSantis and The House of Mouse (aka Disney Orlando) since last I wrote about DeSantis going after Disney for their pro-gay stances. 

After DeSantis' November re-election - and the establishment of super-majorities in both houses of the state legislature - DeSantis carved out a more humiliating law that took complete power of the Reedy Creek Improvement District away from Disney's corporate kingdom, and planned to stack the incoming board with lackeys and anti-gay wingnuts that would look for any excuse to dump their Culture War bullshit on everything Disney runs (even dictate company policy - straight-up censorship - outside of Florida!).

Part of me remained a little shocked by what DeSantis was attempting. I've grown up - my life since my family moved to Florida in 1977 - with the belief that you do not fuck with Disney. They go after day care centers, for God's sake. And yet it seemed to me that Disney - this massive, multi-billion dollar entertainment entity, this behemoth that has enough money it can buy nations if it had to - was rolling over and playing dead to let this godless tiny bully have his way with them. I was wondering when the fabled army of Mickey Mouse lawyers would show up to sue DeSantis and the Florida GOP back to the stone age.

Well, it turns out that army of lawyers already scorched the Earth before DeSantis' lackeys could grab the keys to the Magic Kingdom. Skyler Swisher at the Orlando Sentinel has more:

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handpicked board overseeing Disney World’s government services is gearing up for a potential legal battle over a 30-year development agreement they say effectively renders them powerless to manage the entertainment giant’s future growth in Central Florida.

Ahead of an expected state takeover, the Walt Disney Co. quietly pushed through the pact and restrictive covenants that would tie the hands of future board members for decades, according to a legal presentation by the district’s lawyers on Wednesday...

I was hoping more along the lines of giant dragons melting everything DeSantis owned into a scrap of metal, but this might work.

The previous board, which was known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District and controlled by Disney, approved the agreement on Feb. 8, the day before the Florida House voted to put the governor in charge.

Board members held a public meeting that day but spent little time discussing the document before unanimously approving it in a brief meeting.

DeSantis replaced those Disney-allied board members with five Republicans on Feb. 27, who discovered the binding agreement the previous board approved.

DeSantis and Disney clashed over the corporation’s opposition to what critics call the “don’t say gay” law, which limits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools...

Among other things, a “declaration of restrictive covenants” spells out that the district is barred from using the Disney name without the corporation’s approval or “fanciful characters such as Mickey Mouse.”

That declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England,” according to the document.

A development agreement allows Disney to build projects at the highest density and the right to sell or assign those development rights to other district landowners without the board having any say, according to the presentation by the district’s new special legal counsel...

So what happens here is that DeSantis and his cronies can't interfere with Corporate Disney's power to sell and develop the land in the special district and... and... wait a minute. Back up to that earlier bit.

Valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England”???

It's a Rule Against Perpetuities, an ancient English Common Law practice that applies to modern law - even in the United States - in obscure but powerful ways. Not all states observe it... but Florida DOES.

Did Disney just tie their Magical Kingdom to the fates of the British Royals of the United Kingdom?!

(Taps one of Charles' son on the shoulder) "Yer a Disney Prince, Harry!" (yes, Disney is stealing this from a Warner Bros. franchise... which has a theme park at Universal just up I-4.)

This is where it gets tricky. Are the rules only counting the current descendants of Charlie, which would mean the grandkids under William and Harry both? Or does this extend to future generations, which technically implies the rules are upheld until the Windsor bloodline is officially done (which could take centuries)? (Update: see below)

Either way, the Disney lawyers have set up a situation where DeSantis can't demean or devalue or bully or break the House of Mouse in any way. Even the legal battles over this arrangement could take years to resolve - the delaying tactics alone could take five to ten years to hurdle past - and those are years DeSantis can't afford to slip away.

DeSantis is campaigning now - technically off-the-radar, because Florida laws require him to resign from his current office if he's running for another - for the Presidency, and he's doing it by pandering to the worst parts of Culture War hysteria the Far Right enjoys. Hammering at an "evil pro-gay company" like Disney would have been cheap easy points to score. But if he can't impose his will on Disney's corporate policies - if he and his lackeys can't make Disney change their tune about gay rights, if they can't force Disney to dispose of gay/trans characters on their cartoon shows and streaming service, if they can't compel Disney to shill Christianist bullshit as they hoped to - then he's got nothing to offer the GOP voting base this 2024.

This may not stop DeSantis and his allies in Tallahassee. They can arguably come up with more laws to hammer at Disney's corporate rights in order to humiliate them further. But all that does is expose the hypocrisy of the modern Republican ideology. You'd think a pro-business political party wouldn't do this, but the GOP is no longer pro-business. They're an authoritarian religious cult, obsessing over absolute loyalty to their dogma and themselves, and they will undercut businesses - even ones as profitable and powerful as Disney - as well as people to get their way.

I do hope the Disney lawyers unleash that broom army to drown DeSantis' team of lawyers. Wash 'em all away, Mickey.

Quick update: If the deal holds, if Disney is able to stave off DeSantis' upcoming legal fight, the youngest "current living descendant" of King Charles III is Princess Lilibet of Sussex, Harry and Meghan's daughter born 2021. 

Current British life expectancy is 80 years. Given she will have access to the best doctors and care, we could expect Lilibet to live at least 85 years, after which those 21 extra years added on would mean 106 years before DeSantis' hand-picked board of Culture War meddlers can even order office supplies on the Reedy Creek dime. And by then, the 2024 primaries will be LONG over.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Plus, the Magic Kingdom FINALLY has a REAL Disney princess to celebrate. It's all yours, Lilibeth Diana of House Windsor. Start working on your singing skills for the inevitable three-musical-picture deal with the studio.

Update 3/30/23: There's a detailed report with the Disney Tourist Blog that keeps up with the parks. Even the blogger Tom Bricker was caught off-guard by the company's sleight-of-hand here:

In terms of commentary, I don’t really know what to say. Throughout the Reedy Creek battle, every effort to predict specific outcomes based on legal analysis has proven futile. In our most recent article that touched upon the RCID takeover, I conceded that this was not how I expected the saga to play out.

With that said, there’s one way I’ve been right on the money all along: that this is not about the law, passing meaningful legislation, or the tough and thankless work of local governance. It’s about political theater; scoring a “win” in today’s era of ‘politics as team sports’ and the ongoing culture wars. The goal isn’t to govern; it’s to grab headlines and dominate the news cycle.

Serious analysis isn’t appropriate here because these aren’t serious people with sincere motivations. That’s likely why Disney opted against fighting this previously and instead put out deferential and conciliatory statements. The company’s calculus was that it’s not as easy to “fight” a one-sided culture war. The satisfaction (my note: for DeSantis and his Culture Warriors) was in the struggle...

This was never about reform. This was about control. And Disney is doing everything they can to deny DeSantis any control.