Fridays with Nicole Sandler - emptywheel
Trump's authoritarianism is drowning out coverage of the shutdown.| emptywheel
Jim Comey's response to prosecutors' bid to access his privileged communications reveals that John Eckenrode and Miles Starr may be engaged in the same kind of corrupt investigative tactics used on the Durham investigation. The post Donald Trump’s [Miles] Starr Chamber appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Trump's attempts to extend his power by force -- to replace American hegemony with personalized coercion -- are and will continue to backfire, diluting the power of that coercion. The post Love in the Time of Hegemonic Suicide appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
The loaner prosecutors doing Lindsey Halligan's dirty work are insinuating that Patrick Fitzgerald -- and not Halligan herself -- has a conflict on this case. The post Lindsey Halligan Lectures Someone ELSE about Conflicts appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
If the Supreme Court allows Trump to invade Democratic states based on transparent fabrications, we're in real trouble. But Trump spent the weekend proving how unreliable he is. The post Shit-Posting All the Way to SCOTUS appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Stephen Miller is incredibly powerful and so fascistic that Trump even hesitates to describe his ambition. But he is also downright slovenly. Increasingly, The post Stephen Miller’s Trains Don’t Run on Time appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Trump's authoritarianism is drowning out coverage of the shutdown.| emptywheel
Trump Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller announced yesterday that rather than doing the most basic things to try to prevent further school shootings, he will target people who had nothing to do with the shooting of Charlie Kirk.| emptywheel
Shortly after Ghislaine Maxwell claimed that Jeffrey Epstein's brownstone wasn't wired to take video, a mysteriously sourced NYT story proved that is false.| emptywheel
It's funny that Todd Blanche decided that Dan Bongino needs a babysitter at FBI. But the guy who'll serve as "co-Deputy," Andrew Bailey, has already proven his desire to infringe on Democrats' constitutional rights.| emptywheel
The hold Putin has over Trump is existential for Trump. And unless we can expose that, the US will increasingly become a mere satellite of Russia.| emptywheel
In 2018 in Helsinki, when Vladimir Putin utterly humiliated Trump publicly, Trump still had competent Russian advisors to advise him. Today, after years of chasing a manufactured grievance against the Deep State, Trump walks into a solo meeting with his KGB handler having rid himself of any competent advisor.| emptywheel
And all we're waiting to see on Trump's Friday meeting with Putin is what kind of deceit Trump adopts to pretend that his coming betrayal of not just Ukraine -- but the US itself -- is instead the peace deal Russia floated nine years ago.| emptywheel
Scott Bessent confessed to Larry Kudlow how the Trump Administration is trying to sustain their illegal tariffs: by collecting enough revenue from them (and lying about how much they're really collecting) that SCOTUS won't dare uphold the law.| emptywheel
Donald Trump just moved the woman who "stole" his spa girls and turned one into a sex slave into comfier prison digs to prevent her from revealing the dirt she has on him, and yet he has the gall to suggest DC's brown residents are "filth."| emptywheel
In rejecting Trump defense attorney Todd Blanche's bid to unseal the Ghislaine Maxwell grand jury transcript, he called out the degree to which this request was an attempt at diversion.| emptywheel
Today, Trump will claim to care about people who commit assaults in DC, like the hundreds of his supporters he pardoned after they assaulted cops. But Trump means teenagers from DC, not people like Cory Mills, who has been implicated this year in misconduct involving two girlfriends.| emptywheel
Kash Patel and Pam Bondi said they wouldn't release details about what Trump knew about Ghislaine Maxwell stealing girls from his spa, recruiting one into a sex slavery, because such disclosure would not be "appropriate or warranted." But Kash adopted radically different rules last week when he smeared SVR victim Julianne Smith with his release of the Durham classified annex.| emptywheel
Joke's on us! Nine years into this influence operation, that phrase, "put more oil into the fire," a phrase that someone at the FBI should have recognized as a Russian idiom at least five years ago, is still ripping the country to pieces.| emptywheel
We talked about Ghislaine Maxwell and Emil Bove.| emptywheel
If you believe it's a crime for a political ally to gin up FBI noise about a foreign hack during an election -- the most that John Durham's purported Clinton Plan substantiates (and he falls far short of substantiating that) -- then you believe Jim Jordan should go to prison.| emptywheel
There are really better ways to fight fascism than focusing on what magical ponies we'll ride if we "win." But if you're going to do that, consider what would need to happen to actually reverse the tide.| emptywheel
Trump is so mad that Ghislaine Maxwell "stole" his girls and turned at least one of them into a sex slave that he's saying the same thing about pardoning her that he did about pardoning Paul Manafort and Roger Stone before he rewarded them for lying to protect him.| emptywheel
Emil Bove's confirmation to a lifetime appointment on the Third Circuit hones Trump's criminal protection racket in a bunch of ways, both by rewarding those who engage in abuse for him and by punishing those who don't.| emptywheel
In the guise of complaining about politicized spies exercising undue due diligence yesterday, Tulsi Gabbard just parroted Russian reports written by Russian spies -- reports that either rely on intercepts of an American citizen or just make shit up -- as if they reflected the American intelligence community's beliefs.| emptywheel
To assemble an album of letters from Trump's "pals" for his 50th birthday, Ghislaine Maxwell would have sent letters about letters. And those may well remain in her custody.| emptywheel
Already, in Trump's first term, crony US Attorneys managed to claim evidence was the opposite of what reality said it was. But in a Matt Gaetz DOJ, a willingness to sustain Trump's myth would be the price of admission. Trump's myth cannot fail, it can only be failed.| emptywheel
In motions in limine in advance of the Alexander Smirnov trial, Leo Wise and Derek Hines made a superb case they're treating Alexander Smirnov differently than the gun shop owner who doctored the Hunter Biden gun purchase form after the fact.| emptywheel
