A federal judge has largely rejected arguments lawyers for right-wing muckraking group Project Veritas related to privilege claims for documents in an investigation into the theft of Ashley Biden’s diary, saying the group’s assertion that it was acting as a journalistic enterprise and that it was covered under attorney-client privilege do not stand up.

Project Veritas claimed that it is protected under the First Amendment for its efforts to purchase the diary, stolen from the president’s daughter by a former housemate who found the book in personal belongings Ms. Biden said she would retrieve after moving out of the house in Florida. Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander pleaded guilty for stealing the book and transporting the stolen property over state lines to try to facilitate the sale to right-wing interests; both are cooperating with prosecutors.

Retired federal judge Barbara Jones reviewed the documents flagged by a Department of Justice filter team as potentially covered by privilege.  The materials in question relate to Project Veritas reportedly obtaining the dairy from Harris–she admitted to receiving $20,000 for it–and trying to sell it on to high-dollar Republican donors to use during the 2020 presidential campaign to benefit Donald Trump.  Project Veritas elected to not publish the diary; it was.

The comments made by Governor Ron DeSantis about the possible indictment and arrest of President Donald Trump were unfair. The American people now know DeSantis is not yet ready to lead our country. America needs leadership, and Donald Trump will deliver again in 2024.

— Congressman Troy E. Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) March 21, 2023

Fat former President Trump suffered yet another loss in court Tuesday as Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron rejected a motion to push back the start of the trial in New York Attorney General Leticia James’s $250 million lawsuit against Donald’s corrupt business empire, Law and Crime reports

“I don’t want to move this trial, not only because I said I don’t want to move it,” Engeron told Trump lawyer Chris Kise upon rejecting the requested six-month delay from the October 3rd start date.

Hong Kong film distributor VII Pillars Entertainment on Tuesday abruptly and without explanation announced the planned Thursday local premiere of slasher flick “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” had been canceled in the city and neighboring Macau, the AP reports on a pretty goddamned obvious act of censorship by the ChiCom regime protecting their dear leader Xinnie the Pooh.

The Hong Kong Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration simply told the AP the canceled screenings “are the commercial decisions of the cinemas concerned,” which besides that it wasn’t the theaters, but the distributor who made the call, is actually accurate. What could be more fundamental of a commercial decision than choosing between not showing a certain movie or showing the movie and then having your business shut down and your ass thrown in prison because you’ve offended a dictator? And to whoever might raise that maybe American horror movies in general are verboten in Hong Kong, be ready to explain why “Scream VI” is playing in theaters there.

Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov on Tuesday told other officials in the quasi-autonomous Russian state he was just fine, don’t worry about him during a televised meeting in which Kadyrov’s lieutenants seemed aghast by his noticeably bloated appearance, the Daily Beast reports.

“People are attributing various diseases to me: Sometimes I have problems with my kidneys, sometimes with the liver. And they come up to me with different treatments, as if they know my medical history. I even began to have doubts and underwent medical tests, maybe I really am sick,” Kadyrov said before having the Chechen health minister confirm that he’s doing just fine.

Speaking on Fox and Friends on Tuesday, dainty GOP Senator Lindsey Graham predicted the looming indictment of fat former President Trump in Manhattan is will “blow up the country,” and that DA Alvin Bragg’s case is “without merit, in my view. Donald Trump will be the only person prosecuted under this theory.” The problem for Lindsey however is that no, Trump will not even be close to the first person ever charged for falsifying business records in furtherance of another crime.

Twice-impeached pornstar fucker former President Trump leads heels-wearing Florida Governor 54 percent to 26 percent in a March 17-19th Morning Consult 2024 Republican presidential primary survey, which also finds fly guy Mike Pence at 7 percent and former South Carolina Governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley at 4 percent, and former Congresswoman Lizard Cheney at 4 percent.

All the rest of them got 1 percent support in the poll, early on the second day of the sampling period of which the fat former President announced he expected to be arrested on Tuesday. It appears from a “three-day moving average” in an accompanying line chart that Trump’s support among respondents (predictably) increased on Sunday from a 51 to 29 lead over Tiny D found on Friday.

Legendarily uncourageous Speaker of The House Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday deftly defended his boss, fat former President Trump, on not the facts of the pending criminal case in which Trump paid off pornstar Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stay quiet about their 45-second sexual encounter in the days before the 2016 election but that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is not even the district attorney of the entirety of New York City, but just the borough of Manhattan.

Ouch. Eat that Alvin. You just got served, sucka. Better put some ice on that sick burn. Anyway that slice and dice came in the middle of McCarthy answering a question about why the House GOP retreat is so preoccupied with defending the Orange Warlord instead of talking about actual policy and issues, a roughly 90 second answer (in which he also called Trump the “nominee” for president) that McCarthy ended with about five seconds of chiding a reporter for not asking about policy or issues. It was even dumber than his “But Hillary” answer to another, similar question.

An extensive profile of House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer in the New York Times delves into a sordid episode from Comer’s failed 2015 Republican gubernatorial primary bid in which a local blogger had dug up accusations of physical abuse by Comer’s girlfriend from college – a woman who also said that the future pro-lifer had taken her to get an abortion.

After the allegations surfaced, a story appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader suggesting that the blogger had coordinated with lawyer Scott Crosbie, the husband of KC Crosbie, running mate of one of the other primary candidates, Hal Heiner (both Heiner and Comer ended up losing to dipshit future Governor Matt Bevin). Rumors then went around that Comer had somehow stolen and leaked the emails between Scott Crosbie and the blogger which formed the basis of the coordination story, rumors that Comer did not exactly deny when asked about it in an interview with the Times.

“I’ve had two servers in my lifetime,” Comer said when asked about the emails that came from Scott Crosbie’s law firm’s server. “Hunter Biden’s is one, and you can – I’m not going to say who the other one was, but you can use your imagination. It ended up in my lap. I’ll put it like that.”

A spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office on Monday responded to the House GOP’s demand for DA Alvin Bragg to testify by telling them to get bent, the Washington Post reports.

“We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process,” said the spokesperson in a brief statement. “Many false claims have been lobbed out, so let’s set the record straight. New York remains one of the safest big cities in the US.” We assume they elaborated on why that’s true (it is, by miles), but for whatever reason the Post didn’t print any more of the statement.

Appearing on the Daily Show guest-hosted by former colleague Al Franken on Monday, dainty South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham bet Franken $20 his master, fat former President Trump, would win 2024 GOP nomination and defeat President Biden in the general election, Politico reports.

“I look at the policies of Trump, and I like the policies of Trump. And at the end of the day, he’s got to prove to people, not me, that he’s able to lead us again, and that will be a challenge for him. And that’ll be a challenge for Biden, to say, give me four more years after the last four. We’ll see what happens,” said Lindsey before offering the bet with Franken, thus raising the painfully obvious question of why not make it $20,000 if he’s so fucking confident Trump will win?

Fat former President Trump blamed the “radical left” for causing him to be disconnected from a “Pastors For Trump National Prayer Call,” hosted by Mike Flynn and Roger Stone late Tuesday, Insider reports. “Okay, I guess we have some phone miscommunication. And I think what happened was that the radical left was working on the phone. There is no question about it,” said Donald.

More than 400,000 students in Los Angeles will have an impromptu three-day vacation as the negotiations between the school district and the teachers’ union broke down and the teachers will go on a three-day strike, KABC ABC-7 in Los Angeles reports.

“This afternoon, SEIU (Service Employees International Union) Local 99 had agreed to enter a confidential mediation process with LAUSD to try and address our differences,” the union said in a statement. “Unfortunately, LAUSD broke that confidentiality by sharing it with the media before our bargaining team, which makes all decisions, had a chance to discuss how to proceed. This is yet another example of the school district’s continued disrespect of school workers. We are ready to strike. We want to be clear that we are not in negotiations with LAUSD. We continue to be engaged in the impasse process with the state.”

Sick of hearing House Republicans disparage his city, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office issued a statement reminding people that New York City is a statistically safe city, even as sexual assault misprisioner Jim Jordan and others, in a weaponization of government, threaten the DA’s office federal funding–which would be a minimal hit given that most of the office’s funding comes from local taxes, not the whims of partisan Committee heads kowtowing to a carrot-colored criminal.

“We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process,” a spokesperson said according to the Washington Post.  “Many false claims have been lobbed out, so let’s set the record straight. New York remains one of the safest big cities in the US.”

Props to one of the premier Twitter cable news clip hunters, Acyn, for digging up this clip from 2018 of Joe Tacopino, the latest stable pony in the glue factory that is the Trump legal team, on CNN discussing how the payment to Stormy Daniels could lead to Donald Trump’s downfall, saying it was a legitimate investigation.

Fox News producer Abby Grossberg on Monday filed a pair of complaints – one in New York and one in Delaware – against her employer, accusing their attorneys of coercing her into giving misleading testimony in the network’s defense against Dominion Voting Systems, the New York Times reports.

In the complaints Grossberg alleged she was coached in “a coercive and intimidating manner” and told to avoid mentioning any male hosts before her September 2022 deposition in the Dominion case. Earlier on Monday the Daily Beast reported that Fox has filed for a temporary restraining order to prevent Grossberg from filing her lawsuit, alleging she was threatening to disclose “privileged” conversations she had with Fox lawyers before the deposition. Guess that motion didn’t work out.

“And in fact, settlements like this no matter what you think of them are common, both among famous people–celebrities–and in corporate America,” says Tucker Carlson, who fills a timeslot on Fox previously occupied by Bill O’Reilly, for whom the network paid out millions in hush money and legal settlements for his sexual harassment and who seems to be preparing the ground for disclosure of a settlement he paid, maybe to the “wife” he took to the dinner with Matt Gaetz and his underage date.  “The results are usually known as an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement.  In this case, you can believe whatever side you wanna believe, but paying people not to talk about things, hush money, is ordinary in modern America.

So the modern-day Lord Hee Haw, champion of the Everyman, says paying off porn stars you had sex with because you want to keep your chances of winning your presidential campaign is completely normal.

The New York City Police Department has ordered all officers – including plainclothes detectives and street cops – to be in uniform starting 7AM Tuesday in anticipation of disgraced former President Trump’s looming indictment, a police source tells CBS News reporter Patricia Milton.

There’s little indication as of yet that they’ll need to be ready to take on MAGA rioters as a Monday rally outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse organized by the New York Young Republicans Club to protest the Orange God Emperor’s arrest had terrible turnout from actual Trump fans, who were greatly outnumbered by meida, NBC’s Ben Collins reported from the scene. “One guy yelling fuck Trump trying to rile people up. All the cameras just immediately wrap around him, including some known pro-Trump YouTube guys who really need this footage. This whole thing is very stupid,” Collins wrote. National Zero still sort of regrets not sending a reporter the rally.

It also seems unlikely at this point that the indictment will be handed down on Monday evening as CBS’s Graham Kates reports that Trump’s team have still yet to be notified of a charge. Reportedly the grand jury are meeting again on Wednesday, which could end up being the big day.

There’s no other word than “disgust” to sum up what I felt reading the account of Ben Barnes, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Texas who admitted, after 42 years, that he was part of the original GOP plot to “own the libs.”  The disgusting part: to own the libs–in this case, Jimmy Carter–Barnes and other Republicans allegedly prolonged the captivity of 52 Americans held in Tehran by Islamic fundamentalists.

Set aside that the reason this story is coming out now is to self-servingly cleanse Barnes’ soul as Jimmy Carter rests in hospice care; Carter endured decades of mocking from Republicans when in fact, the Republicans had subverted his administration’s efforts to free the captives.  Nothing Barnes can do can erase the mocking Carter has endured, and nothing will change the history books to reflect the Reagan camp’s malfeasance.

Barnes owes an apology to every single one of the 52 men held until after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated January 20, 1981.  He allowed these men to live under torturous conditions–the men were periodically subjected to mock executions, besides more “traditional” forms of abuse–so that they could gain political power.  Barnes should be ashamed of himself, not just for extending the hostages’ torture, but for letting a false legacy of a good man prosper.

Fox News host Jessica Watters was disconsolate on Monday as the signs of disgraced former President’s imminent indictment became too much for him to dismiss as “fake news” from CNN or the Washington Post or whatever. “They better not put my president in prison. He represents 74 million Americans,” Watters whined, incorrectly so as all Americans are represented by the actual current President of the United States Joseph R Biden. “If he’s the nominee, you’re putting 74 million votes in prison. And that’s how I see it,” Watters added. “On a bookkeeping charge!” Watters later said “they” are “trying to trigger another January 6th,” continuing that thing about the normal execution of the functions of law and government being invitations to violence from fanatics.