Donald Trump's planned $200,000,000 White House Ballroom

Individual dinner guest reservations from $100,000 per seat.

 

UPDATE 

 

Happy New Year's Day Greetings from Your Favorite President

 

309 days until the 2024 U.S. national elections. 

 

JOYCE VANCE ON SUBSTACK

 

Click.

I am now a paid subscriber. Totally worthy.

Also relevant on Substack, Timothy Snyder:

"Trump cannot run for office"

"The Pitchfork Rulling"

clamorem et uthesium?

"The purpose of the insurrection clause of the Constitution (the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment) is not to encourage insurrections!  If we publicly say that that Supreme Court should disregard it because we fear insurrections, we are making insurrections more likely.  We are telling Americans that to undermine constitutional rule they must only intimate that they might be violent.  

 

To advocate pitchfork rulings is to endorse regime change; to issue pitchfork rulings is to announce regime change..."

More to come...

__________

 

This man

is seriously mentally ill.

 

Up at 1 a.m. at Mar a Lago to rant incoherently on his "Truth Social" platform. It would be comical were it not so.

 

 

ON A SERIOUS NOTE

 

I highly recommend Elie Honig's new book.

 

Chapter 17
United States v. Donald John Trump

Donald Trump has, as of this writing, never been charged with a crime. He has been investigated criminally at the federal level and in several states for crimes ranging from endangering-the-republic serious to the technical and obscure. But he has never been criminally charged, ever, with anything.

That’s a far cry, of course, from saying that Trump has never actually committed a crime. To the contrary, as I’ll argue here, he has committed many crimes, dozens even (depending how thinly we slice each of his criminal episodes into component parts), often in open public view. He has simply gotten away with it.

Trump might still face charges at some point; it’s possible he gets charged by somebody, somewhere, with something, between the writing of this book and publication. (The Fulton County district attorney in Georgia seems the most likely of anyone to file charges, as we’ll discuss in chapter 19.) But given the time that has lapsed, and the complex legal, structural, and political obstacles that any prosecution is certain to encounter, Trump’s ultimate conviction and imprisonment are now more the stuff of fantastical Twitter memes than reality.

So, looking back at Trump’s history of criminality, we need to consider the counterfactual. What charges might Trump have faced, in a (hypothetical) world where he received no formal legal protection while he was president, and none of the other advantages that bosses commonly enjoy and exploit, both during and after his presidency? What if Trump had done all he did, but was just an ordinary guy? And what if prosecutors had taken action quickly and decisively, without spinning their wheels for years and allowing the political landscape to shift under their feet?

Before we begin, I need to make this clear: I reject the casual assertion that a prosecution of Trump would be easy, or a given. I’ve worked long enough as a prosecutor to know that there’s no such thing as an automatic conviction, and that a criminal case against a former president would be extraordinarily difficult, regardless of the strength of the evidence. But we also need to move beyond the defeatist shrug of the shoulders—“Well, it’s complicated, he was the president, it’s never been done before, it’ll cause dissension, what are you gonna do?” There’s a substantive discussion to be had between these poles.

We do not, of course, have all the facts that were available to prosecutors—or would have been available, had they opened criminal investigations and pursued them in a timely and aggressive manner. But we do know an awful lot, often more than enough to conclude with confidence that Trump did in fact commit a particular crime.

We know about Trump’s conduct, first, because journalism about his misdeeds has been remarkable for its scope, depth, and accuracy. There have been sporadic misfires, but by and large, media reporting about Trump’s conduct has been spot-on, and countless scoops have later been definitively confirmed. Of course we’ll rely here only on those factual allegations that have now been established beyond serious dispute.

Over time, even more evidence has entered the public domain. Grand jury materials have now been publicly disclosed, as criminal cases against Trump’s cohorts (and, at times, co-conspirators) have progressed and concluded. Judges have ordered the Justice Department to turn over internal documents to Congress, media outlets, and public transparency advocates. Congress, inspectors general, and others have uncovered new evidence through their investigative work; the House January 6 Select Committee has uncovered particularly damning evidence about Trump’s quest to steal the 2020 election. People who were directly involved in Trump’s crimes, or witnessed them, have come forward (at times, conveniently, just a bit too late for prosecutors or other investigators to make meaningful use of their information). Heck, Trump himself has openly admitted much of his wrongdoing—bragged about it, even—in his tweets (pre-ban) and other public statements. The amount and quality of evidence varies by crime, but we have an ample factual record to proceed here…

Honig, Elie. Untouchable (pp. 201-203). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Yeah.

And, then, there's this mess. Fox News execs and show hosts caught red-handed via the Dominion defamation lawsuit discovery process stating multiple times off the record that they knew the Trump "stolen election" allegations had zero credible evidence justifying them.

So, you'll enjoy this: we put what Fox hosts Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham said, on air, side by side with what they were saying to each other on text, in private, when the cameras stopped rolling.

It's a must-watch and it's pretty shocking:pic.twitter.com/tkrkzpF5tY

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 18, 2023

ERRATUM

OK, then…

 

Running for President? Lordy.

 

ON DECK

 

Release date Feb 21, 2023

Click cover image

"A carefully researched work of intellectual history, and an urgently needed political analysis." --Jane Mayer

“[A] scorching indictment of free market fundamentalism … and how we can change, before it's too late.”-Esquire, Best Books of Winter 2023

The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound, startling history of one of America's most tenacious--and destructive--false ideas: the myth of the "free market."

In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, they unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma: the “magic of the marketplace.”

In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with “big government” and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman into household names; recount the libertarian roots of the Little House on the Prairie books; and tune into the General Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine to millions and launched Ronald Reagan's political career.

By the 1970s, this propaganda was succeeding. Free market ideology would define the next half-century across Republican and Democratic administrations, giving us a housing crisis, the opioid scourge, climate destruction, and a baleful response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve, not stifle, democracy.

Recall my coverage of Dr. Oreskes' prior book “Why Trust Science?”

 

Waiting impatiently to download and study. 

UPDATE ON THE MENTALLY ILL DONALD

Sir, your neurological calamity is still covered by Obamacare.

__________

 

President Trump Responds Angrily

 

UPDATE

 

DOJ will now release the redacted information pertaining to the Mar-a-Lago search affadavit.

 

 

 

AFFADAVIT RELEASE 

 

38 pages, probably 90% redacted. Key highlight screen grab snips below.

Plenty of probable cause to authorize the search warrant. Prosecution? We shall see.

 

THE ELEMENTS OF THE OFFENSE FOR AN 18 USC 793E PROSECUTION

CODA

 

More popcorn, please... 

__________

 

Theft of classified documents and obstruction of justice.

This correspondence was just made public today.

May 10, 2022

Evan Corcoran
Silverman Thompson
400 East Pratt Street, Suite 900
Baltimore, MD 21202

By Email

Dear Mr. Corcoran:

I write in response to your letters of April 29, 2022, and May 1, 2022, requesting that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) further delay the disclosure to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the records that were the subject of our April 12, 2022 notification to an authorized representative of former President Trump.

As you are no doubt aware, NARA had ongoing communications with the former President’s representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing Presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to NARA in January 2022. In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials. NARA informed the Department of Justice about that discovery, which prompted the Department to ask the President to request that NARA provide the FBI with access to the boxes at issue so that the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community could examine them. On April 11, 2022, the White House Counsel’s Office—affirming a request from the Department of Justice supported by an FBI letterhead memorandum—formally transmitted a request that NARA provide the FBI access to the 15 boxes for its review within seven days, with the possibility that the FBI might request copies of specific documents following its review of the boxes.

Although the Presidential Records Act (PRA) generally restricts access to Presidential records in NARA’s custody for several years after the conclusion of a President’s tenure in office, the statute further provides that, “subject to any rights, defenses, or privileges which the United States or any agency or person may invoke,” such records “shall be made available . . . to an incumbent President if such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of current business of the incumbent President’s office and that is not otherwise available.” 44 U.S.C. § 2205(2)(B). Those conditions are satisfied here. As the Department of Justice’s National Security Division explained to you on April 29, 2022: There are important national security interests in the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community getting access to these materials. According to NARA, among the materials in the boxes are over 100 documents with classification markings, comprising more than 700 pages. Some include the highest levels of classification, including Special Access Program (SAP) materials. Access to the materials is not only necessary for purposes of our ongoing criminal investigation, but the Executive Branch must also conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps. Accordingly, we are seeking immediate access to these materials so as to facilitate the necessary assessments that need to be conducted within the Executive Branch.

We advised you in writing on April 12 that, “in light of the urgency of this request,” we planned to “provid[e] access to the FBI next week,” i.e., the week of April 18. See Exec. Order No. 13,489, § 2(b), 74 Fed. Reg. 4,669 (Jan. 21, 2009) (providing a 30-day default before disclosure but authorizing the Archivist to specify “a shorter period of time” if “required under the circumstances”); accord 36 C.F.R. § 1270.44(g) (“The Archivist may adjust any time period or deadline under this subpart, as appropriate, to accommodate records requested under this section.”). In response to a request from another representative of the former President, the White House Counsel’s Office acquiesced in an extension of the production date to April 29, and so advised NARA. In accord with that agreement, we had not yet provided the FBI with access to the records when we received your letter on April 29, and we have continued to refrain from providing such access to date.

It has now been four weeks since we first informed you of our intent to provide the FBI access to the boxes so that it and others in the Intelligence Community can conduct their reviews. Notwithstanding the urgency conveyed by the Department of Justice and the reasonable extension afforded to the former President, your April 29 letter asks for additional time for you to review the materials in the boxes “in order to ascertain whether any specific document is subject to privilege,” and then to consult with the former President “so that he may personally make any decision to assert a claim of constitutionally based privilege.” Your April 29 letter further states that in the event we do not afford you further time to review the records before NARA discloses them in response to the request, we should consider your letter to be “a protective assertion of executive privilege made by counsel for the former President.”

The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported “protective assertion of executive privilege.” See 36 C.F.R. § 1270.44(f)(3). Accordingly, I have consulted with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel to inform my “determination as to whether to honor the former President’s claim of privilege or instead to disclose the Presidential records notwithstanding the claim of privilege.” Exec. Order No. 13,489, § 4(a).

The Assistant Attorney General has advised me that there is no precedent for an assertion of executive privilege by a former President against an incumbent President to prevent the latter from obtaining from NARA Presidential records belonging to the Federal Government where “such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of current business of the incumbent President’s office and that is not otherwise available.” 44 U.S.C. § 2205(2)(B).

To the contrary, the Supreme Court’s decision in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977), strongly suggests that a former President may not successfully assert executive privilege “against the very Executive Branch in whose name the privilege is invoked.” Id. at 447-48. In Nixon v. GSA, the Court rejected former President Nixon’s argument that a statute requiring that Presidential records from his term in office be maintained in the custody of, and screened by, NARA’s predecessor agency—a “very limited intrusion by personnel in the Executive Branch sensitive to executive concerns”—would “impermissibly interfere with candid communication of views by Presidential advisers.” Id. at 451; see also id. at 455 (rejecting the claim). The Court specifically noted that an “incumbent President should not be dependent on happenstance or the whim of a prior President when he seeks access to records of past decisions that define or channel current governmental obligations.” Id. at 452; see also id. at 441-46 (emphasizing, in the course of rejecting a separation-of-powers challenge to a provision of a federal statute governing the disposition of former President Nixon’s tape recordings, papers, and other historical materials “within the Executive Branch,” where the “employees of that branch [would] have access to the materials only ‘for lawful Government use,’” that “[t]he Executive Branch remains in full control of the Presidential materials, and the Act facially is designed to ensure that the materials can be released only when release is not barred by some applicable privilege inherent in that branch”; and concluding that “nothing contained in the Act renders it unduly disruptive of the Executive Branch”).

It is not necessary that I decide whether there might be any circumstances in which a former President could successfully assert a claim of executive privilege to prevent an Executive Branch agency from having access to Presidential records for the performance of valid executive functions. The question in this case is not a close one. The Executive Branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the Federal Government itself, not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to “conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.” These reviews will be conducted by current government personnel who, like the archival officials in Nixon v. GSA, are “sensitive to executive concerns.” Id. at 451. And on the other side of the balance, there is no reason to believe such reviews could “adversely affect the ability of future Presidents to obtain the candid advice necessary for effective decisionmaking.” Id. at 450. To the contrary: Ensuring that classified information is appropriately protected, and taking any necessary remedial action if it was not, are steps essential to preserving the ability of future Presidents to “receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of [their] duties depends.” Id. at 449.

Because an assertion of executive privilege against the incumbent President under these circumstances would not be viable, it follows that there is no basis for the former President to make a “protective assertion of executive privilege,” which the Assistant Attorney General informs me has never been made outside the context of a congressional demand for information from the Executive Branch. Even assuming for the sake of argument that a former President may under some circumstances make such a “protective assertion of executive privilege” to preclude the Archivist from complying with a disclosure otherwise prescribed by 44 U.S.C. § 2205(2), there is no predicate for such a “protective” assertion here, where there is no realistic basis that the requested delay would result in a viable assertion of executive privilege against the incumbent President that would prevent disclosure of records for the purposes of the reviews described above. Accordingly, the only end that would be served by upholding the “protective” assertion here would be to delay those very important reviews.

I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s “protective” claim of privilege. See Exec. Order No. 13,489, § 4(a); see also 36 C.F.R. 1270.44(f)(3) (providing that unless the incumbent President “uphold[s]” the claim asserted by the former President, “the Archivist discloses the Presidential record”). For the same reasons, I have concluded that there is no reason to grant your request for a further delay before the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community begin their reviews. Accordingly, NARA will provide the FBI access to the records in question , as requested by the incumbent President, beginning as early as Thursday, May 12, 2022.

Please note that, in accordance with the PRA, 44 U.S.C. § 2205(3), the former President’s designated representatives can review the records, subject to obtaining the appropriate level of security clearance. Please contact my General Counsel, Gary M. Stern, if you would like to discuss the details of such a review, such as you proposed in your letter of May 5, 2022, particularly with respect to any unclassified materials.

Sincerely,

DEBRA STEIDEL WALL
Acting Archivist of the United States 

Several months have ensued since this letter was delivered. The former President continues to dodge and weave. This is not funny.

 

 

This is the most serious episode of public corruption in my 76+ years.

 

Lordy Mercy...

__________

 

Espionage+? 18 U.S. Code § 793, 2071, 1519

What a week, 'eh?

 

Anxious republicans have mostly been elbowing each other aside to to claim at the microphones that what Mr. Trump had done was no big deal. I have to emphatically disagree, and said so on Twitter.

 

 

Mr. Trump should certainly be accorded the due process going forward owed to any citizen under criminal scrutiny. I have every confidence that such will be the case, notwithstanding my long-running disdain for him.

MONDAY UPDATE

The former president gave his first interview since investigators executing a search warrant seized 11 sets of classified materials from his private resort, which he called a "sneak attack," and he told Fox News Digital that his supporters had every right to be angry at law enforcement officials.

"The country is in a very dangerous position," Trump said. "There is tremendous anger like I've never seen before over all of the scams, and this new one — years of scams and witch hunts, and now this."

Law enforcement officials have seen an explosion of violent threats since the search, and a Trump supporter was shot and killed by police in Ohio after attacking an FBI field office in Cincinnati, but the former president offered to help cool their anger -- while justifying those passions and sending what sounded like a warning.

"People are so angry at what is taking place," Trump said. "Whatever we can do to help — because the temperature has to be brought down in the country. If it isn’t, terrible things are going to happen."

"The people of this country are not going to stand for another scam," he added.

Trump said he hadn't heard whether the Department of Justice had accepted his offer to help, but he then suggested that FBI agents had planted evidence during the search and called the investigation a politically motivated "hoax."

"I’ve never seen anything like this," Trump said. "It is a very dangerous time for our country. I will do whatever I can to help the country." 

"Years of fake witch hunts and phony Russia, Russia, Russia schemes and scams," he added. "Nothing happens to those people who perpetuate that — nothing happens with them, ad then they break into a president’s house — a sneak attack where it was totally — no one ever thought a thing like this would happen."—RawStory

Idiot.

 

The best in-depth investigative/analytic reporting on this stuff is here.

 

__________

 

#MAGApox Meltdown

 

Mainstream, alt, and "social" media are all in total hyperbolic freakout mode.

 

Pass the popcorn...
 

Likely to be an "interesting" week. One wherein a few actual facts may manage to slip through.

ERRATA

 

apropos of the escalating rhetoric this week:

...Clearly, at this early stage, the responsible reaction to what the FBI did is to withhold judgment, to wait and see, to base one’s assessment on the facts and the evidence as they become known. But such an approach is alien to the modern-day GOP. The entire incentive structure is to use language that is intemperate, belligerent, conspiratorial, even crazed. This week has once again proved that there’s no rhetorical line Trump Republicans won’t cross, no outlandish charge they won’t make. It’s now all about one-upmanship, with each person trying to make a more freakish claim than the next.

This debasement of language comes at a considerable cost. George Orwell believed that political language mattered because politics mattered, and that the corruption of one leads to the corruption of the other. And in some cases, the misuse of words can lead to political violence. We saw that on January 6, 2021. My fear is we’re edging ever closer to that. Some people on the right—enraged and inflamed, caught in an echo chamber of undiluted anger and massive lies—clearly hope for it. They are perpetually frenzied and hyper-agitated, convinced they are in an existential struggle against a wicked foe… [Peter Wehner]

Recall my up-the-ante analogy?

 

"If it bleeds, it leads."

 

FRIDAY UPDATE

 

A week of wild media speculation (the word "espionage" is in the air), GOP denials, and few facts. This afternoon, though, we may get details on the Mar-a-lago search warrant and results thereof. Maybe.

_______

Interesting discussion. Good way to spend an hour.

 

 

Very good.Wish there was a text transcript.

@50:46: “Point me to a time or place in history where one side has had a monopoly on the truth and been right 100% of the time. I can’t think of one.” —Josh Zseps

__________