We talked about shutdown and the Jim Comey indictment. The post Fridays with Nicole Sandler appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
According to the public record, Jim Comey didn't lie in an exchange with Ted Cruz on September 30, 2020. Ted Cruz did. The post Will Ted Cruz Go to Prison for the Lies He Told as Part of the Jim Comey Indictment? appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Watching the mainstream press, you'd think it was the first time that an investigation ordered up by Donald Trump resulted in a flimsy false statements charge just before the statute of limitations expired. The post Mainstream Press Confesses They Missed the Other Politicized Prosecutions appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Thus far, Republicans seem intent on using the shutdown to demonstrate in more visible fashion the need for it. The post Russ Vought Threatens to Do What He Already Did appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
One possible explanation for the flood of leaks about EDVA's disastrous case against Jim Comey is that everyone would be better off if Lindsey Halligan gets no-billed. The post Why DOJ Might Be Pushing for Lindsey Halligan to Get No Billed appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
In one speech, Donald Trump gave the world a lot to think about, and none of it was good. Especially if you are Secretary of State/National Security Advisor/Archivist of the United States Marco Rubio The post What Trump’s UNGA Speech Tells the World appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
In a tweet laying out all the welfare he plans to give so-called libertarian Javier Milei, Scott Bessent confirmed the tie between the bailout and Trump's election interference. The post Scott Bessent Links Bailout of Argentina to Trump’s Election Interference, Even as Argentina Poaches US Soybean Markets appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Yesterday's return of Jimmy Kimmel to ABC is not a time to declare victory. Now is the time to use the notoriety that the censoring screeds have acquired to push back on their efforts to extort control over free speech. The post Sinclair Makes Itself Visible appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Trump's now dismissed lawsuit against NYTimes did not dispute a bunch of damning claims laid out in the Peter Baker story he cites, including that Trump weaponized government against his adversaries. The post Donald Trump Wants a $5 Billion Premium for Confessing His Weaponization Claims Are Bullshit appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Betting markets say we're probably going to have a government shutdown. It's time to start messaging to win the shutdown. The post Time to Win the Shutdown appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
The infantile, the sub-man, and serious people The post Coping With Existentialist Ambiguity appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Trump's ouster of Erik Siebert, who refused to charge Tish James for fraud without evidence she engaged in fraud, will create big headaches for Todd Blanche. The post Trump Can’t Even Weaponize DOJ Competently appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
We talked a lot about Jimmy Fallon. The post Fridays with Nicole Sandler appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
From coast to coast, the lies that DHS is telling in an attempt to criminalize scrutiny of its actions are falling apart. But that didn't prevent DOJ from trying to sustain the effort to do the same against LaMonica McIver. The post The “Boo Boos” and Bovino Bullshit DHS Uses to Criminalize Scrutiny appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Jimmy Kimmel's suspension and the little-noticed continued effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil for his speech demonstrates the urgency of setting up alternative media outlets to bypass the oligarch-owned and multinational media companies susceptible to Trump's censorship. The post Speech appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
The document Chuck Grassley released as part of a distraction appears to be dated. The post Chuck Grassley Complains that DOJ Investigated Why TPUSA Sent 80 Busses to a Riot appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Among other things Todd Blanche told Kaitlan Collins when she asked him a single simple question about his "proffer" with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell is that he did not vet the answers she gave before he moved her to comfier digs at a Camp Fed. The post Todd Blanche’s Sex Predator PR Service appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
In the midst of an effort to rebut a selective prosecution claim from LaMonica McIver, a badly-conflicted prosecutorial team describes what DOJ claims happened with the January 6 pardons, which is not reflected by the plain language of the pardon itself. The post Todd Blanche Exposes Trump’s Pardon Auto-Pen Scandal appeared first on emptywheel.| emptywheel
Tyler Robinson's sole stated motive for killing Charlie Kirk, per the charging document, was Kirk's hatred. The post Tyler Robinson: Guns, Gaming, and Gay appeared first on emptywheel.| 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
How conveniently the story about Vance's canoe trip popped up just about the time the Epstein conspiracy meeting was making too much trouble for Trump and his conspirators.| 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
Go stare at the ocean and prepare to pick yourself back up again.| emptywheel
In an attempt to sustain his argument that the FBI was overly hasty in opening an investigation into Trump's Coffee Boy, John Durham whitewashed many of the details about George Papadopoulos, including that he himself found the Coffee Boy's communications with Sergei Millian to be "creepy."| emptywheel
It's crazy enough that Bill Barr treats George Papadopoulos' hoaxes seriously. It's crazier still that those hoaxes derive not from Papadopoulos' first hand knowledge, but from what he read, often in propaganda sites. Craziest of all, even George Papadopoulos tells us not to believe the main source for one of those hoaxes.| emptywheel
Whistleblower X, the IRS agent claiming misconduct in the Hunter Biden investigation, did provide evidence of that Presidential misconduct had killed the case. But that evidence implicates Donald Trump, not Joe Biden.| 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
Around the same time someone downloaded Hunter Biden's iCloud account, someone restored his contacts list.| emptywheel
In January 2019, the Gmail account Hunter Biden used to contact sex workers took over his iCloud account and ordered all his content for download. The next month, the data on the Hunter Biden laptop was deleted.| emptywheel
Kamala Harris is in good shape as she heads into the Democratic Convention. But there are a lot of distinctly possible developments that could upend the race.| emptywheel
Just a week after Elon Musk used Xitter to sow political violence in the UK, Donald Trump returned to Xitter.| emptywheel
Jack Smith probably asked for a delay of the status report on Trump's January 6 case to figure out how to approach the two obstruction charges against him in light of SCOTUS' ruling on Fischer. But a delay until August 30 allows for the possibility Jack Smith might supersede Trump's indictment.| emptywheel
Republicans were hoping to use Josh Shapiro and his faith -- whether he was selected or not -- as a way to recreate divisions in the Democratic party. And that plan to divide first left them flat-footed and unprepared, once again.| emptywheel
The two reports WaPo had done last year, assessing the "Hunter Biden" drive forensically, are two of the only available reports that might explain anomalies disclosed by IRS agents in testimony to Congress. But unlike the Washington Examiner, WaPo won't release those reports.| emptywheel
Hunter Biden's Uber account was arranged from December 2018 through February 2019 in a way that may have made it possible for "Hunter Biden" to be in two places at once, even in DC, having a car accident, while his assistant believed he was in Massachusetts.| emptywheel
In an opinion that tries to cloak his power grab with an appeal to President Washington, John Roberts has suffocated the greatest thing Washington gave the United States, the presumption that Presidents would cede to the power of elections.| emptywheel
David Weiss appears to have submitted a photo of a photo of sawdust taken by a Keith Ablow client and claimed it is a photo of "apparent cocaine" taken by Hunter Biden. That's going to make the forensic challenges of prosecuting Hunter Biden using the laptop far more difficult.| emptywheel
