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At least two Trump fans circled around the Palm Beach, Florida federal courthouse on Thursday as Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart heard arguments from media outlets seeking to unseal the search affidavits. Per Politico, Justice Department counterintelligence division Chief Jay Bratt argued against it, as it could compromise an ongoing investigation and reveal sources. Media lawyer Chuck Tobin said the DOJ could unseal it with redactions to protect the identities of informants but Bratt said doing so would render it completely useless for public consumption.

Reinhart however appeared to be open to at least partially unsealing the search affidavit, saying “I am not prepared to find that the affidavit should be fully sealed,” per Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

NBC News producer Frank Thorp V tweets that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has recognized that he’s like to stay in the minority in the Senate–politically speaking, not white man speaking–because of the host of horrible, no good candidates Republicans have nominated in Senate elections.

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different, they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” McConnell said at a Kentucky fundraiser Thursday.

The statement recognizes the realities on the ground:  Democrats will likely hold on to seats in Georgia, where Democrat Raphael Warnock has a strong lead against GOP head trauma victim Herschel Walker; in Pennsylvania, where Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman continues to open up a lead against carpetbagging TeeVee personality Mehmet Oz for a seat previously held by Republican Pat Toomey, who is retiring; and in Arizona, where Democrat Mark Kelly will likely hold his seat against Trump-endorsed Blake Masters.

Totally innocent, has nothing to hide Lindsey Graham filed an appeal to the Monday order requiring him to testify to the grand jury investigating the failed Trump 2020 coup attempt and Lindsey’s calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger following Trump’s loss, the AP reports.

Former Trump Education Secretary and billionaire oligarch Betsy DeVos told Megyn Kelly in a podcast interview Thursday that President Biden in 2019 grabbed her shoulders and pressed his forehead up against hers and she “nowhere to go to or escape,” the Detroit Free Press reports.

According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, lame duck Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn reports that he’s personally more than half a million dollars in debt because of financial schemes he played with campaign money, The Daily Beast reports.

The filings show Cawthorn claims to have loaned his campaign more than $800,000 out of pocket in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.  Currently, his campaign account has just $1,504 in it as of June 30th; it owes hundreds of thousands to vendors, and it’s expected to repay or donate to a non-profit funds donors gave the campaign for the November general election, a point made moot by Cawthorn losing the Republican primary for re-election.

Cawthorn created his own financial mess, using funds donated for the general election to fund his primary battle against a less immature, more sane Republican.  Using those funds violated FEC regulations on campaign spending.  Records show Cawthorn was more than $200,000 overdrawn on his campaign accounts in the weeks after the May 31st primary.  To try to cover up his misuse of campaign funds, Cawthorn reportedly took money out of his own pocket to pay back the deficit.  That leaves Cawthorn more than $500,000 short, meaning he does not have campaign funds that can repay his loan.   

Trump Organization CFO Allen Weaselberg officially pleaded guilty to tax fraud charges in a Manhattan court on Thursday, the Daily Beast reports. The plea agreement stipulates that Weaselberg must testify against the Trump Organization at its upcoming trial.

Non-Correction: The current version of this article misspelled Alan Weisselberg’s last name as ‘Weaselberg’ in the headline. National Zero does not regret the error and will not be correcting it.

At least 29 people have been sickened, nine of whom have been hospitalized, as an E.coli outbreak spreads across Ohio and Michigan, and food safety officials are investigating the possible cause of it, the Washington Posts reports.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say 15 people in Michigan and 14 Ohioans have verified cases, but the total number of infected is likely far less given most people can fend off a mild E.coli infection.   Michigan state officials say they have identified 98 cases in August, an increase from 20 logged last August.

Unlike most other E.coli outbreaks where investigators can find a common source for the spread–like a common restaurant where patients ate or a common food they consumed–officials have not yet determined what these patients had in common, nor have they determined if the outbreak has one source.

Latvian-born Putin critic and businessman Dan Rapoport “jumped” from his apartment building on Sunday night per a New York Post report citing DC Metro police, contradicting the Independent’s piece sourced from Russian state media reporting on Wednesday which said he’d been found dead in a park somewhere in the city after attaching a note to his unleashed dog.

The Post also says Rapoport was “allegedly locked in a feud with a Russian venture capital firm, which was trying to cheat him out of $10,000,” which would seem to be a relatively small amount considering he had owned a home worth millions in DC’s Kalorama neighborhood before selling it to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in 2016. Rapoport then moved to Kyiv to live with his second wife, a Ukrainian virologist, but headed back to DC after the Russian invasion in February, renting a unit at 2400 Main Street in Georgetown. It’s not clear from the Post report if he “jumped” from the balcony of his unit or the roof, but wherever it was it was high enough to do the job.

National Black Farmers president feels betrayed by Biden, Schumer: 'We're in a crisis' https://t.co/Wg131y0OMl

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 18, 2022

2022 is apparently the year the Black American farmer has been betrayed by Joe Biden. 2021 was the year the Black farmer was getting an unfair advantage at the expense of the white farmer.

Nine days after the FBI executed a search and seizure warrant on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago buffet and retirement condo, the Bureau’s “filter team” is still combing through the boxes of documents to determine if any are covered by legitimate claims of privilege, NBC News reports.

The filter team, an independent group of FBI agents and lawyers, read all the documents to decide what’s relevant to the investigation, what may be covered by attorney-client privilege, and what can be returned to the owner.  In the case of the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago, the filter team is also determining which documents contain classified material, whether or not it is marked.

The raid was carried out by a specific unit within the DOJ, the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, which the Department of Justice says “supervises the investigation and prosecution of cases affecting national security, foreign relations, and the export of military and strategic commodities and technology.”

You can have your name or a phrase scrawled on a missile or shell targeting Russian soldiers invading Ukraine thanks to a website that takes contributions and then forwards your message to a fighting unit in the Ukrainian military, the Washington Post reports.

Messages on bombs and shells are nothing new:  pilots in World War I would scrawl messages on explosives they would drop from their planes.  Servicemen from World War II to modern wars have written messages on munitions.  Now, through the website Sign My Rocket, you can have one for yourself, and you’ll receive a photograph of your shell or missile from the front-line unit firing it.

With Americans being the highest percentage of patrons, messages including things like “Remember the Alamo,” and “From NATO with love,” with one surface-to-air missile bedecked with the message “Not for use on Malaysian Airlines,” a rebuke of a Russian-backed militia shooting down a civilian airliner during Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. 

“If Joe Biden’s goal was to do the opposite of Trump, he is nailing it on the work ethic front, because we know my father-in-law was working 24/7 for the American people,” former television segment producer and wife of the least popular Trump of his generation, Ewic, boasts, ignoring his frequent trips to play golf and long weekends in Florida.   “Here Joe Biden is on vacation.”

Shocking.  The President takes a vacation.  And in August, while Congress is in recess!  How dare he!  But, c’mon, Lara, Joe’s earned it.  He actually got an infrastructure bill passed–and the Inflation Reduction Act, bipartisan gun control legislation, the CHIPS Act, created 9 million jobs in 18 months, AND killed the leader of al Qaeda.

Back in June, former Devin Nunes staffer, Trump White House staffer, and chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense Kash Patel told a podcast audience he planned to publish classified documents at the National Archives that, he claims, Donald Trump declassified prior to leaving office, ABC News reports.

Donald Trump had requested the National Archive grant Patel and disgraced conservative propagandist John Solomon access to his non-public papers that actually weren’t stolen and hidden in a basement storage closet at a geriatric supper club and reception venue.

“I’ve never told anyone this because it just happened,” Patel said in an interview on a pro-Trump podcast on June 22. “I’m going to identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified at the National Archives, and we’re going to start putting that information out next week.”

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday issued a sweeping subpoena to the National Archives for any and all information about disgraced former President Trump’s actions on and around January 6th, 2021 as the other criminal investigation into the fat bastard heats up, the New York Times reports.

School library systems around the country are facing unprecedented challenges as states and local school districts introduce new rules and regulations for how the libraries operate and what they’re capable of helping students with, according to the Washington Post.

In Arizona, schools must send lists of books their child checked out of the school library to any parent who requests it.  A Nebraska school system requires parents to approve the books their child checks out.  Teachers and librarians in Florida are purging their spaces of any literature that covers subjects like LGBTQ issues, sexuality, racism or America’s racist past.  And six states have passed laws mandating school districts to set up parental boards to approve books that will go in school libraries.

In further efforts to squash dissent and hide topics state censors don’t want to be discussed, states like Florida will allow parents to sue teachers and school librarians who provide their children with material dealing with LGBTQ issues, Critical Race Theory, or even slavery in America.  Anything deemed inappropriate by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, his secretary of education, or a group of activist parents could end up costing a teacher her job and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

I’m coming for you, Donald. pic.twitter.com/qCxxykBBRJ

— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) August 17, 2022

Wrote the Donald in a Wednesday Truth Social post before Goldman’s gracious acceptance. “Lawyer Dan Goldman is running for Congress, NY-10, and it is my great honor to Strongly Endorse him. I do this not because of the fact that he headed up the Impeachment Committee and lost, but because he was honorable, fair, and highly intelligent. While it was my honor to beat him, and beat him badly, Dan Goldman has a wonderful future ahead… He will be very compassionate and compromising to those within the Republican Party, and will do everything possible to make sure they have a fair chance at winning against the Radical Left Democrats, who he knows are destroying our Country. I would like to thank Dan for fighting so hard for America, and for working so tirelessly to stop ‘Trump.’ He was not easy to beat, but winning against him made me realize just how very talented I am!” Trump’s right when you leave out the fact that he only “won” because the Republicans were too chickenshit to convict him. Not because of talent.

Trump also “endorsed” Manhattan Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney in her incumbent vs incumbent primary against fellow Dem Congressman Jerry Nadler, the result of a pretty stupid redistricting fuckup that someone in New York State has hopefully already been fired for.

In a unanimous order, the five judges who sit on the South Carolina Supreme Court put a hold on the state’s new law banning abortions after six weeks’ gestation, saying it would hear a lawsuit being brought by Planned Parenthood about the suspect constitutionality of the law, Reuters reports.

While the judges did not issue an opinion on the argument or the constitutionality of the law, the fact that the judges unanimously voted to stop the enforcement of the law signals they all believe the argument is sound.  In announcing the hold, the judges released a letter saying they find the ban could conflict with the state’s constitution.

The issue comes because the government of South Carolina codified Roe v. Wade into state law in 1974, thereby ensuring a person’s right to an abortion.  The new law, passed in 2021 to go into effect if Roe v. Wade was overturned, did not revoke the 1974 law.  While Republicans in 2021 might have tried to pass a law revoking the 1974 law, they might reconsider trying the same stunt given the overwhelming support for abortion rights even in conservative states, as a recent referendum in Kansas supporting reproductive rights affirmed.

The Sun will – tee-hee-hee – shoot a load of solar energy at the Earth this week according to an NOAA forecast of coronal mass ejacula-pppppfffttt hehehe – ejections. The super hot eruption could splooge spread the Aurora Borealis across the northern hemisphere. Tee-hee-hee.

An attorney for Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on Wednesday filed a motion informing a court there had been a breakdown in negotiations over Kemp’s planned video statement to the grand jury investigating the failed Trump coup attempt in the state and asked the judge to squash the subpoena from Fulton County DA Fani Willis, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Kemp’s a fucking weasel who is only dicking around because he’s afraid Trump fans might freak out and be motivated to vote libertarian or just stay home altogether on election day in November if they get word he’s cooperating in an investigation against their Orange Messiah. He wouldn’t be wrong thinking that. On the other hand, it’s probably not absolutely 100% crucial to the case they’re trying to build against Trump and his minions. As much of a miserable asshole he is, Kemp still did the right thing when it came to the 2020 election in Georgia, and is not going to be a target of this investigation. So unless there’s something he has that’s somehow more incriminating than the “Find 11,780” call to Secretary of State Raffensperger, Kemp on record might just be a “nice to have.”