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Federal prosecutors have informed Yuscil Taveras, the IT employee at Donald Trump’s Salisbury steak emporium at Mar-a-Lago who reportedly started to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s office after he ditched a Trump-paid attorney, that he is not facing perjury charges after admitting to giving false testimony previously, CBS News reports.

After receiving a target letter from Jack Smith’s office, Taveras consulted with a non-aligned federal public defender who gave him independent legal advice.  After the consult, Tavares ditched his Trump-paid lawyer, Stanley Woodward, who is also representing Trump co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.  He then told prosecutors he lied in previous statements and he wanted to rescind inaccurate previous grand jury testimony to reflect the truth.  Prosecutors informed Taveras that he will not face charges for those lies to the grand jury.

Taveras’s situation demonstrates the complications co-defendants and his fellow co-conspirators face when he and his RICO operation are funding the lawyers representing them:  they don’t know whose best interests the lawyers are working for.  As the case with Cassidy Hutchinson, Mark Meadows’ White House assistant who cooperated with the House January 6th Select Committee who was told by her Trump-appointed lawyer to pretend to not remember details, these defendants may not be getting the best counsel.  Woodward, the Trump-paid attorney, might have racked up a perjury charge for his client if Taveras had continued to retain him.

A 57-year-old Queens, New York man wearing a homemade glove festooned with blades and knives who attacked Black Lives Matter protesters in the summer of 2020 has been convicted of myriad felonies related to those attacks and a later attempt to run demonstrators over with his SUV, ABC News reports.  Frank Cavalluzzi was convicted after a two week trial of nine counts of attempted murder in the second degree, nine counts of attempted assault in the first degree, seven counts of menacing in the second degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree and reckless driving.

Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, one of his client’s co-defendants in the Georgia RICO prosecution and as-yet-unindicted Co-conspirator 5 in Donald Trump’s federal indictment for attempting to overthrow the Constitution, has filed his motion for a speedy trial in the Fulton County case.

Such a move counters Trump’s preference to drag out his various legal entanglements for as long as possible to take them past the 2024 election, when he believes he’ll win his return to the White House so he can issue himself a pardon.  That’s a fine strategy for Trump, whose legal bills and living expenses are being paid for by his gaggle of loyal suckers.  But to the “lesser” defendants who don’t travel on their own private jets and must get on with their lives, a faster trial meets their needs better.

Ten people including Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary Wagner Group force that fought Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine,  have reportedly been killed in a small aircraft crash north of Moscow, Sky News reports.  The passenger list of the Embraer aircraft, en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg, included seven passengers and three crew.  Prigozhin’s name was listed on the passenger manifest.

Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef” for going from a Moscow caterer favored by the Russian leader to the head of a private military force frequently called on by Putin, attempted an apparent coup in June, sending thousands of fighters out of Ukraine toward Moscow, with Prigozhin saying he demanded better supplies and support for his fighters.

Once a headline-creating far-right muckraking operation, Project Veritas has effectively thrown in the towel, announcing that due to budget issues, it was shutting down its New York office, outsourcing content development and making its remaining few employees work from home, the Daily Beast reports.

After the board of directors ousted founder James O’Keefe for mismanagement and self-dealing, the group known for making outrageously deceptive “sting” videos continues to struggle to find donors willing to finance its stunts.  It’s dropped its staff from 43 to 18 people, and it’s essentially ceased its performance art productions.

“Project Veritas is in a tough situation,” recently-retained CEO Hannah Giles, best known for deceptively dressing like a streetwalker for one of the group’s early successes in conservative media, said. “It was made tough by O’Keefe leaving, and made doubly challenging by mismanagement before I was hired. I wish we could have kept everyone on and grown the organization but I’ve been put in the situation where I have to cut and refocus so we can get to growth. I’m not going to fight in the press over complaints from laid off staffers, I’m going to keep doing the work to rebuild this organization from the mess it was left in.”

Five-time indicted felon Donald Trump will hold a $100,000-per-plate fundraiser for his co-conspirator in his effort to undermine the presidential election Rudy Giuliani to help the disgraced former mayor of New York City pay for his lavish lifestyle and legal bills, the Newsweek reports.

Rudy, along with fellow roadkill Jenna Ellis who find themselves run over by the Trump bus, have noted that the Trump-aligned SuperPAC is not picking up their legal fees, incurred as they tried to undermine the Constitution to illegally install Trump in a second term.

The September 7th event, promoted through a Twitter post, will include a roundtable with Trump and Giuliani, during which the hardest question that will be asked is, “President Trump, how do you manage to be soooooo supreme when you’re constantly betting struck by Democrat arrows fired by Hillary Clinton and George Soros?”

After images spread around the country of mothers being pulled by state troopers out of a House committee meeting for silently holding signs decrying gun violence, a Tennessee county judge has suspended new Republican-passed state legislature rules banning signs from the gallery, the Tennessean reports.

In the aftermath of their embarrassment for expelling two young Black Democratic lawmakers for supporting a gun violence protest in the state house gallery, Tennessee Republicans passed a rule essentially banning all kinds of protests, including silent, non-disruptive demonstrations, during all state house proceedings.  This included displaying any message on a sign or a shirt that expresses an opinion even if the demonstrator doesn’t say a word or move out of their seat.

After Allison Polidor was removed from a Tennessee House Civil Justice Subcommittee hearing for clutching a sign reading “1 kid > all guns” to her chest and refusing to put it out of the sight of legislators, two other protesters were also taken out by troopers as parents of children killed in the Covenant School shooting expressed their displeasure at the committee for failing to take action on gun crime. 

Disgraced attorney and excessive hair dye user Rudy Giuliani is reportedly traveling to Georgia Wednesday morning, telling CNN that he is going to “comply with the law.”  Earlier reports had Giuliani flying to Atlanta to meet personally with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to discuss terms of his bond release, with some speculation that Giuliani was eying a potential deal.

Former Georgia GOP chairman and state legislator David Shafer and former Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham checked into Fulton County’s Graybar Hotel very early Wednesday morning.  lawyer Ray Smith and Trump campaign attorney Kenneth Chesebro were shown on the jail docket to report Wednesday morning.

Democratic and Republican Senate leaders are looking into the potential of initiating a stopgap spending bill in their chamber to potentially head off the obstructionism in the GOP House caucus that has caused the United States to lose its credit rating, Roll Call reports.

Per the Constitution, all appropriations bills must originate in the House, but Senate leaders note that the rule only applies to bills to raise revenue, not direct spending.  The Senate can also attach an appropriate measure to an existing appropriations bill, but the House only passed one appropriate bit of legislation in the last session–a military construction bill for 2024–and Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy has not transmitted the bill to the Senate to prevent them from attaching a stopgap measure to it.  Senators could also resurrect a dormant bill, like the first debt limit increase bill passed by the House, as a zombie host for the measure.

The Senate eyes a move to prevent the intraparty gridlock that has characterized Republican control of the House since Newt Gingrich took the gavel during the Clinton Administration.  Senators worry that the continued mismanagement and effective leadership in the House will lead to a stopgap funding bill that contains so many fever-dream wishes of far-right nihilists that it would be impossible to consider.

Russian General Sergei Surovikin, the top commander for Russia’s forces in Ukraine has been at least figuratively defenestrated from his office, with “office” being used here as a synonym for “role,” though conceivably he could have been thrown from the window of his actual office as part of his termination – which could have a double meaning like he was both fired and killed.

The New York Times reported this minus the speculating that Surovikin had been literally killed by being thrown out of a window. They might’ve just shot him too. Anyway this isn’t terribly surprising given Surovikin’s reportedly close relationship with rogue mercenary commander Yevgeny Prigozhin and that Surovikin hadn’t been seen in public since the failed Wagner rebellion in June.

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is questionable for Wednesday night’s big GOP primary debate after being hospitalized with a pick-up basketball game injury on Tuesday, CNN’s Dana Bash reports.

In a new set of findings previously embargoed for release from the big NBC News/Des Moines Register survey of Iowa Republican voters, 54 percent of respondents said they wouldn’t vote for a candidate who would “aggressively criticize” fat former President Trump for getting indicted. Only 16 percent said the opposite while 29 percent said it wouldn’t matter for their support.

So yeah this is kind of over. It’s been over for a while but that a candidate would be penalized by the electorate for “aggressively” capitalizing on what’s supposed to be a liability for their leading opponent is like, seriously what the fuck, it’s hard to come up with a comparable situation because there’s simply so many one could imagine. It’s treating Trump’s self-inflicted legal issues almost like they’re some sort of off-limits personal or family tragedy when the reality is they’re by far the freshest argument as to why he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the White House again.

Try to map say, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst’s failed marriage onto this. Think of how voters would react if a Dem or Republican primary opponent had used that as an argument as to why she was unfit for office. As shitty as Ernst is of a politician, voters would be absolutely correct to punish a challenger for weaponizing her abusive asshole ex-husband against her. That same sort of disgust they would have felt is what the majority of Iowa Republican voters are expressing now in this poll. How the fuck are Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott supposed to campaign around that? They can’t and won’t and that’s why, barring a very unlikely shake-up, this primary race is pretty much already over.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled to touch down on the surface of the moon at 8:34 am EDT Wednesday, a feat that would make India the fourth nation on Earth to successfully have a functioning probe on the moon, following the Soviet Union, the United States and China. Not sure if Russia technically counts after the little mishap their much-hyped Luna-25 probe had last weekend.

“For the first time in three years, brave American Patriots will be able, in Court, to show how the Presidential Election of 2020 was RIGGED & STOLLEN. For those RINOS, Radical Left Democrats, Communists, Marxists, Fascists , & others who say, ‘Don’t Look Back, Look Forward,’ they either do not want to reveal the answers because they ‘got away with murder,’ or are FOOLS & COWARDS because we now know the answers to all of the Fraud, Irregularities, & Cheating, & WE CANNOT LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN!” wrote fat former President Trump in a really glass half full Truth Social post on Wednesday, just as Georgia GOP co-conspirator David Shafer put up a new “badge of honor”:

Good morning! #NewProfilePicture pic.twitter.com/EADF0zYSSH

— David Shafer (@DavidShafer) August 23, 2023

Definitely a contrast with the way other defendants John Eastman and Mark Meadows have been handling it, with the latter being told to stop crying over the charges and show up for his mugshot – or face an arrest warrant. Meadows isn’t being a very brave American patriot or “PROUDLY BEING ARRESTED TOMORROW AFTERNOON” like Trump wrote in an earlier post.

We can, and maybe even should just copy verbatim this article from August 6th titled “No word from Trump campaign yet on fundraising since indictment,” but not really feeling self-plagiarism right now.

There’s no real novel dimension to add to this besides the time and additional indictments elapsed since we last tried to check in on any public mention of how much disgraced former President Trump’s felony charges added to his campaign’s coffers – in contrast to the boasts about how much the first two big indictments supercharged the MAGA base’s willingness to set their money on fire.

The bottom line is that it’s been 22 days since he was hit with four federal counts in DC for his post-2020 election coup attempt, 13 days since two more superseding obstruction charges for trying to cover up his hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago dropped, and nine days since the Fulton County, Georgia grand jury slapped him with 13 different Georgia state felonies and there’s still no new Google or Twitter results in a search of “Trump campaign raises after indictment.”

Again, it’s not always what they are saying that can tell you how things are going. The silence from the MAGA Reich on how much money is coming in is growing louder and louder as more time passes. It doesn’t mean anything in the primary given Trump’s sense of entitlement being pretty well justified by his polling numbers, but that’s the primary. The general’s going to be a little different.

An Australian court this week ordered Murdoch Media Imperial Prince Lachlan I to pay $1.3 million AUD or $840,000 in legal fees to Australian website Crikey after Murdoch had pressed libel charges against owner Private Media over a piece which declared, correctly, “Trump is a confirmed unhinged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator,” the New York Times reports.

Murdoch’s complaint was dropped just two days after Fox and Dominion Voting Systems settled the massive US libel lawsuit for $787 million. In a statement, butthurt Murdoch lawyer John Churchill tried to spin Lachlan having dropped the complaint, saying they didn’t want to “facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and boost their profits.” Cool story bro.

Possibly reacting to the news that drunken shitbrain Rudy Giuliani is headed to Atlanta to meet with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis before he also presumably shows up to the local jailhouse for booking on the multi-count felony indictment against him, disgraced former President Trump on Tuesday announced he’ll be throwing a $100,000 a head “evening in support of America’s Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani” dinner at the Trump Bedminster golf club on September 7th.

While we’d always suspected that Rudy would continue to remain loyal to the fat bastard one way or another, that Trump, who himself is dealing with 91 felony counts in four separate jurisdictions on top of running a presidential campaign, would actually put the time and effort into such an event is actually fairly surprising and seems almost like a desperate, last-minute damage control effort to keep Mayor Wetbrain from flipping. It’s like after years of laughing at Giuliani’s desperate pleas for help, even just to get paid for the time he put in on the failed post-2020 election coup attempt, Trump suddenly was like “Oh fuck. Wait. Okay, maybe we should do something for Rudy,” and that rather than quietly just writing some checks he’s doing his own version of “Queen for a Day.”

Jeez. You’d think fascist MAGA lawyer John Eastman would smile a little if he wanted his mug shot on merch to fund his defense on with two counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings, conspiracy to commit the filing of false documents, two counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first-degree, conspiracy to commit the impersonation of a public officer, filing false documents, socilitation of the violation of oath of office by a public officer, and two counts of violating Georgia’s RICO law in Fulton County. All the Eastmaniacs out there would’ve loved to rock a defiant “fuck you” grin from their democracy-hating idol. Such a waste of good fan service potential.

Disgraced lawyer Rudy Giuliani is set to meet with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia on Wednesday, presumably to discuss bond provisions relating to 13 racketeering and other felony charges he faces, CNN reports.  Why Giuliani is flying down to personally discuss the terms is unknown, although he could just walk over to the jail once an agreement is reached.  And curiously, Giuliani is taking fellow felon Bernie Kerik with him.

“I just wanted to say how he was so present with so many, like one after one afte– hundr– he spoke with, like, hundreds of people and hugged them and kissed their cheek and heard what we all had to say, and there were really–,” one of the Maui residents who spoke with President Joe Biden during his visit to the devastated island said to a local news crew.  “Since this happened there haven’t been that many smiles in one place on this island and it was profoundly touching.”

Joe didn’t throw paper towels.  Joe didn’t joke with a homeowner about a boat laying in your backyard after a hurricane.  And he didn’t tell the survivors of wildfires to rake the forest.  It seems Joe knows how to relate to people.