Discussing the historic indictment of former president Donald Trump, presidential historian Michael Beschloss told Joy Reid an amazing story about Democratic and Republican leaders having grounds for impeachment and indictment of a former president before, but declined to pursue it because they feared the downfall of the country.  The president: Ronald Reagan during the Iran-Contra scandal:

I hate to pull these historical figures out of my hat, but I once talked to Howard Baker, who was Reagan’s chief of staff at the time [of the Iran-Contra scandal] … and I said to Howard Baker, “Y’know given the things Reagan did in Iran Contra–and there were big investigations and people were taken to the court and suffered penalties–how was it that there was never a discussion of indicting reagan or impeaching him.  And Howard Baker said, I spoke to Democratic leaders in the Congress–I’m quoting Baker–and we decided that the country could not go through another Nixon experience where you’re endangered of a president being impeached and possibly sent to prison, so we just agreed among ourselves that this will never go that far.

Disgraced former President Trump is facing at least 30 felony counts of falsifying business records in his indictment over the Stormy Daniels hush money payoff shitshow, sources tell CNN.

UPDATE 3/30/23 8:35 PM EDT: Trump will surrender on Tuesday, the Guardian reports.

In an obvious bit of performance art, Republican Florida Governor and animated Weeble Ron DeSantis tweeted that he would not authorize the extradition of Donald Trump from Florida to New York to face felony charges, expected to relate to an illegally payment to cover up a Trump affair with a porn star.

“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head,” tweeted DeSantis, who unleashed untold criminal and civil penalties on people he’s targeting to garner political power among bigots, transphobes, homophobes and other Republicans. “It is un-American. The Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney has consistently bent the law to downgrade felonies and to excuse criminal misconduct. Yet, now he is stretching the law to target a political opponent. Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda.”

However, according to Daily Beast legal correspondent Jose Pagliery, there’s not actually anything DeSantis can do to fully prevent Trump’s extradition to New York (and Trump is going to surrender anyway). He can drag his three-inch heels on it a bit, but there would be no staving off the inevitable. It’s just a little cheap shot at Donald, one that’ll probably get his fans even more pissed at Tiny D for not stopping Trump from flying to New York to surrender of his own accord.

“This evening we contacted Mr Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan DA’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal. Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected,” says the Manhattan DA’s office in a statement.

UPDATE 3/30/23 7:27 PM EDT: Politico reports the Manhattan DA’s office wanted the arrest on Friday but the Secret Service pushed back due to lack of time to prep. No day has been set yet.

After saying that Donald Trump will be completely and entirely vindicated in trial after his felony indictment believed to be for financial fraud relating to paying with corporate money a porn star he had sex with to protect his presidential aspirations, current Trump spokes lawyer Alina Habba asserted on Fox that the lawyers pursuing Trump in various courts are just trying to get reelected and trying to prove their liberal bona fides to voters while decrying the lack of “fair AGs and DAs.”

Asked by Fox host Bret Baier if she views the various investigations differently, Habba pontificated:  “I think that in some ways, they’re different in terms of what the context is, but quite honestly, Bret, I-I think they’re all based in the same thing, which is selective prosecution by these Soros-backed in many cases DAs who are trying to prove, y’know, in their last di– they’re trying to prove that they are a far-left progressives before they’re voted out of their offices and I think that that is really the theme here.  We’ve got Jack Smith, as you mentioned.  DA Alvin Bragg.  We’ve got Letitia James, which I handle in New York.”

Continuing to demonstrate the sub-par ethical and legal performance we’ve come to expect from Trump lawyers, Habba misses the mark:  Smith was appointed and doesn’t have to run for office, so he doesn’t have to prove anything (except Trump’s guilt).  Bragg took office in 2023 and won’t be up for election until 2026.  And James won her reelection bid in 2022 and won’t face voters for nearly four years. 

Statement from now criminally indicted ex-President Trump: “This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history. From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats – the enemy of the hard- working men and women of this Country – have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement. You remember it just like I do: Russia, Russia, Russia, the Mueller Hoax, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, Impeachment Hoax 1, Impeachment Hoax 2, the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid, and now this.”

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable – indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference. Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done. The Democrats have cheated countless times over the decades, including spying on my campaign, but weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent, who just so happens to be a President of the United States and by far the leading Republican candidate for President, has never happened before. Ever.”

“Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand- picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace. Rather than stop the unprecedented crime wave taking over New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work, ignoring the murders and burglaries and assaults he should be focused on. This is how Bragg spends his time! I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” wrote Trump or one of his minions. Sucks for them.

Disgraced former President Trump has been officially indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office on at least one state-level charge stemming from his $130,000 hush money payoff in 2016 to pornstar Stormy Daniels to cover up their magazine butt-spanking and then 45 seconds-long sexual encounter from 2006, The New York Daily News’s Molly Crane-Newman reports on the end of the twice-impeached would-be American dictator’s decades of evading legal accountability and setting off what’s very likely to be a series of titanic court battles in the heat of a 2024 comeback attempt.

May this historic day be the first of several in which we can report Orange God Emperor faces the wages of his many grievous sins against democracy, civility, and basic human decency.

Law enforcement sources in New York City tell MSNBC that additional security measures are again being put in place around the Manhattan courthouse where the grand jury investigating fat former President Trump’s 2016 hush money payoff to pornstar Stormy Daniels (and reportedly Playboy model Karen McDougal too) have been meeting thrice a week over the past two months.

Again, this is coming from inside law enforcement who work closely with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. This isn’t Trump posting on Truth Social that he’s going to be arrested, thereby setting his own timeline which he can claim to his fanboys that case fell apart because the DA didn’t meet it. It does not mean the indictment is definitely happening this week or next week, all it is right now is a potential fresh sign of movement that could come before the grand jury goes on a pre-scheduled break for a few weeks starting next Wednesday or thereabouts.

NEW: I'm launching a new organization, Campaign for Democracy.

America is in an existential struggle for democracy.

Extremist Republicans are systematically attacking the very foundations of our free society — denying women equality, attacking https://t.co/dhkSqoB0db… pic.twitter.com/cvdJu9mNro

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 30, 2023

“Notwithstanding any other law, in a county with a population of more than one million, the secretary of state shall order a new election if the secretary has good cause to believe that at least two percent of the total number of polling places in the county did not receive supplemental ballots under Section 51.008 for one or more hours after making a request for supplemental ballots to the authority responsible for distributing election supplies,” says Texas Senate Bill 1993, making an overturn basically guaranteed to happen in Houston, according to Talking Points Memo.

The Manhattan grand jury investigating disgraced former President Trump’s $130,000 October 2016 hush money payoff to pornstar Stormy Daniels are now also looking into a similar $150,000 payment earlier that same year to Playboy model Karen McDougal, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Truth Social administrators on Thursday sent a warning out to users to avoid a scammer who (probably) doesn’t work with or is otherwise unaffiliated with the company or its advertisers, sending a clear message that if the scam isn’t getting people to buy stock in that sketchy “Special Purpose Acquisition Company” that Truth Social parent TMTG is supposed to merge with so it can “go public,” or ads that say shit like “CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE GOLD BARS GUIDE,” “HOW DO YOU PLAN TO PAY FOR YOUR LOVED ONES’ FUNERAL COSTS?” by America First Insurance, and “Strongest residential flagpole available. Made from 11 gauge aluminum and tested at 100 mph wind. Veteran Owned and Operated,” or posts by Truth Social found Donald Trump saying this like “We are now a Nation in Decline being stupidly led into World War lll,” or QAnon conspiracy bullshit about vaccines turning people into robo-zombies, then it isn’t welcome on the platform.

Working to find a new voting equipment vendor following yet another example of injury suffered by Dominion Voting Systems in their multiple civil defamation complaints against Fox News and various right wing conspiracy theorists – as in they voted to not renew their contract with the company because they bought into the bullshit stories – the conservative majority on the Shasta County, California Board of Supervisors on Tuesday decided to just simply not find a new vendor and instead voted 3-2 to hand-count all ballots in every election going forward, SFGate reports, noting that they’re banking on Mike Lindell to cover the legal fees to fight the state to make it happen.

“The whole thing is just hard to absorb and I’m in a little bit of shock,” Shasta County elections chief Cathy Darling Allen told SFGate following the nine-hour board meeting. “It’s pretty clear the supervisors don’t quite understand what they’ve undertaken.” 2024 ought to be a blast.

The iconic, American flag-painted face of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection, Jake “QAnon Shaman” Chansley, has been released from a federal prison to a halfway house in his native Arizona ahead of his full release from custody as soon as May 25th, CBS News’s Scott MacFarlane reports citing federal bureau of prison records. Chansley had been sentenced in October 2021 to 41 months in the slammer for carrying a deadly weapon – his spearhead-tipped US flag – into the Capitol on the 6th and was arrested a few days later. It’s not clear why – even credited from time served starting in January 2021 and for good behavior behind bars – Chansley will be out roughly 13 months early.

An even bigger question mark is if Chansley’s probation officer will allow him to show up on the Trump rally circuit for pics and autographs with his adoring fans or some other similar means of capitalizing on his MAGA fame, as there’s almost zero doubt he will if given the chance to do so.

Coming off a “Red Wave” that failed in large part due to disgraced former President Trump’s criminal behavior and coup attempt, a number of GOP consultants tell ABC News they’re resigned to the fat fuck weighing down heavily on their down ballot campaign in 2024 as his all but inevitable indictments for various felonies in three different jurisdictions come to the forefront and distract them from their “messaging” of pretending to fix crime, inflation, and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“Can Republicans focus in on an agenda and a message that not only works with the base but also can appeal to swing independent voters in the five or six key swing states, or are they going to get dragged down into another chaotic Trump presidential run? And that I think is probably the biggest challenge going forward,” said Republican pollster Robert Blizzard (Cool name, bro).

“Any Republican who’s not prepared to answer a question about the indictment, if it should come, and not prepared to pivot away from questions about Trump and back to the economy, crime and Biden’s shortcomings is going to have a really hard time,” said one Senate GOP campaign consultant.

“If he’s the nominee next year at this time, and the nominee despite three or four criminal indictments hanging over his head, absolutely, that puts the entire map in jeopardy,” said another.

“I think the last time you and I talked was about the insurrection stuff, and I was like, ‘this stuff’s going away,’ and it clearly didn’t,” said yet another Senate Republican campaigned, referring to the midterms. “Maybe for me being a consultant… I’m hoping this kind of stuff goes away more than it actually does.” Note how this guy is actually admitting the House January 6th Select Committee hearings worked and did in fact do damage to the Republicans in 2022.

Hearing #3 of Jim Jordan’s stupid “Weaponization” Select Subcommittee started at 9AM EDT on Thursday, but they’re still doing opening statements, so we didn’t miss much. The witnesses on deck are Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, who in his prior job as the state’s attorney general, along with fellow witness Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, filed a lawsuit last year against various Biden Administration officials for “colluding” with Big Tech to suppress the Hunter Biden Laptop and anti-vax conspiracy bullshit. The other two witnesses are Missouri Special Assistant Attorney General John Sauer and Stanford Law Professor Matthew Seligman.

At least nine US Army soldiers operating out of Fort Campbell in Kentucky were killed in a collision between two Black Hawk helicopters during a “routine training mission” late Wednesday night in nearby Trigg County, the Washington Post reports on a tragedy that elected Republicans and Fox News personalities will inevitably somehow link to the military going “woke,” if they haven’t already.

“This never would have happened if Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was more focused on aircraft radar maintenance than diversity and inclusion!” some asshole Republican is going to say in a tweet or on Fox News or in a hearing. Probably will demand Austin be impeached over it.