During a Thursday hearing on their request for a special master, fat former President Trump’s lawyers opposed the unsealing of a more detailed inventory list of items the FBI seized during the August 8th Mar-a-Lago search, to which the Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon obliged.

The implication of this was laid out by former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman, apparently laughing his ass off: “Trump team in court now opposes this more detailed inventory becoming public! Tells you everything, as govt said it was okay unsealing this. Why doesn’t Trump team want this detailed MAL search inventory made public – because it would be inculpatory, not exculpatory.”

UPDATE 9/1/2022 3:05 PM EDT: The judge ended the hearing without making a ruling on the special master, however it does appear she will actually in fact unseal the inventory list.

Republican Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley on Thursday announced his support for the Electoral Count Act reform bill aimed at closing the procedural loopholes Trump and his minions tried to exploit to overturn the election on January 6th, 2021, Politico’s Burgess Everett reports.

Among the bills provisions are nailing down the Vice President’s role in the counting process, empowering Congress to identify which state official is lawfully tasked with establishing a state’s electors, raising the threshold for an objection to a single state’s electoral votes from just one Senator or Congressperson to 20% of each chamber, increasing funding for the Electoral Assistance Commission, protecting local election officials from harassment, and allowing two candidates to access presidential transition funds. More would be better, of course.

“This case comes before the Court on Senator Lindsey Graham’s Supplemental Motion to Quash [40]. After due consideration, the Court again declines to quash the subpoena in its entirety. As to the issue of partial quashal, the Court quashes the subpoena only as to questions about Senator Graham’s investigatory fact-finding on the telephone calls to Georgia election officials, including how such information related to his decision to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

“The Court finds that this area of inquiry falls under the protection of the Speech or Debate Clause, which prohibits questions on legislative activity. As to the other categories, the Court finds that they are not legislative, and the Speech or Debate Clause does not apply to them. As such, Senator Graham may be questioned about any alleged efforts to encourage Secretary Raffensperger or others to throw out ballots or otherwise alter Georgia’s election practices and procedures. Likewise, the grand jury may inquire into Senator Graham’s alleged communications and coordination with the Trump Campaign and its post-election efforts in Georgia, as well as into Senator Graham’s public statements related to Georgia’s 2020 elections,” says the order by Judge Leigh Martin May.

Graham still has an appeal pending at the 11th Circuit, but this ruling certainly narrows his escape route considering how little of what was relevant would be covered by Speech and Debate.

Former First Lady Melania Trump was so disgusted by the idea of FBI agents searching for stolen classified documents in her personal bedroom and wardrobe at Mar-a-Lago that she’s tossed all of her underwear and bought new ones since, sources tell Radar Online. “Melania doesn’t like the idea of strangers going rifling through her things. Who knows who touched her underwear during the raid? She’s never going to feel comfortable wearing those ever again. Most people don’t know that Melania is a bigger germaphobe than her husband. She hates people touching her and certainly doesn’t want to put on lingerie that FBI agents have had their hands all over,” said a friend.

“This is her home. It’s her bedroom. Even her husband isn’t allowed in her bedroom [lol]. Even if they wore gloves, it is still strangers going through your underwear draws. She has already bought new underwear and thrown everything that has been contaminated away,” said a source.

Oath Keepers lawyer Kellye SoRelle was arrested by FBI agents in Junction, Texas on Wednesday after being charged on four counts – conspiracy, obstruction of a federal proceeding, tampering with documents and misdemeanor trespassing in a restricted building or grounds – related to her involvement in the January 6th MAGA insurrection, the Washington Post reports.

Among SoRelle’s legal oeuvre is the groundbreaking civil complaint “LATINOS FOR TRUMP, BLACKS FOR TRUMP, JOSHUA MACIAS v PETE SESSIONS, MITCH McCONNELL, NANCY PELOSI, MARK ZUCKERBERG, CHUCK SCHUMER, ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, ALL MEMBERS OF THE 117TH U.S. CONGRESS, et al” which charged “the entire 117th Congress is illegitimate and all actions taken since January 3, 2021, including the counting of the Electoral College votes and confirmation of Joseph Biden as President-Elect and the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump are null and void,” filed in the West Texas federal court district on January 18th, 2021. We strongly encourage our readers to check it out.

Gravity, the fundamental force of nature which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy, claimed the life of yet another Russian citizen on Thursday, as Ravil Maganov, chairman of energy giant Lukoil, was hit with a sufficient dose of gravity and pavement after exiting a hospital room window, Bloomberg reports. Maganov had been taking antidepressants and had suffered a heart attack, neither of which have much to do with gravity.

“Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, issued the following statement after the Committee reached an agreement to end litigation filed by former President Trump and require the former President’s accounting film, Mazars USA to turn over his financial records to the Committee: ‘After numerous court victories, I am pleased that my Committee has now reached an agreement to obtain key financial documents that former President Trump fought for years to hide from Congress. In April 2019, the Oversight Committee issued a lawful subpoena for financial records as part of our investigation into President Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and foreign financial ties.”

“After facing years of delay tactics, the Committee has now reached an agreement with the former President and his accounting firm, Mazars USA, to obtain critical documents. These documents will inform the Committee’s efforts to get to the bottom of former President Trump’s egregious conduct and ensure that future presidents do not abuse their position of power for personal gain,'” says a statement from Congresswoman Carolyn B Maloney on the conclusion of the long-running case.

The whole case is kind of inert since the New York Times obtained some of Trump’s tax returns back in September 2020 and he’s in deep shit over other documents, but why not bring him a little more pain and suffering while he’s already having the worst stretch of his post-presidency?

Republican former Idaho state House Rep Aaron Von Ehlinger was sentenced to 20 years in state prison Wednesday after being convicted in April of raping a 19 year old legislative intern , ABC News reports. Von Ehlinger resigned in April 2021 after first being hit with charges in the case, which was made all the more heinous by a fellow scumbag Republican Priscilla Giddings leaking the name of the victim to a far-right extremist local politics blog with the implication she was lying.

Democrats lead Republicans 47 percent to 44 percent on the generic ballot question of the latest Wall Street Journal public opinion survey. The firm they used to conduct the survey is Trump’s former campaign pollsters, Fabrizio Lee, so make what you will of that.

Alina Habba, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers who is working to [checks notes] stop Trump from getting convicted, goes on Trump advisor Sean Hannity’s Fox show and [checks notes again] proceeds to tell stories about how she’s been in the room with unsecured top secret files and hey, it’s no big thing.  She was in the room with these files sitting in a desk drawer, and various other guests were going in and out of the room.  Because nothing says “security facility” like tourists wandering the halls gawking at the gaudiness.

Did I mention this lawyer is supposed to be working on Trump’s defense?  I think I need to make that clearer.

The Trump attorneys filed a reply to the Department of Justice motion against the judge appointing a special master to review documents recovered from Donald Trump’s Florida meatloaf emporium and three-star flophouse–many of which had designations marking them Top Secret or specialty classifications.  Plus, we’ll review some of the more spectacular assertions made by Trump’s lawyers.

Much of the 19-page filing revolves around two very erroneous arguments.  First: Donald Trump has some type of claim to assert executive privilege (which he sorta does) that must be honored (which it does not).  Trump cannot claim executive privilege; he can ask the sitting President to assert executive privilege.  President Joe Biden has not done any such thing for any of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

Second:  Trump’s lawyers seem to rely on an erroneous–one might say, fraudulent–reading of the Presidential Records Act.  The PRA, (You can read it here), is very detailed in how presidential records are to be handled, and nowhere in the law does it state that a former President has the right to possess records from his time in office nor can he hide them from federal officials.  Apparently, Trump’s lawyers think the Presidential Records Act is designed to allow any President to determine what belongs to them and what goes to the Archives.

60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat "won."

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 1, 2022

“[The Justice Department’s] argument against oversight begins with a contention that somehow the Movant lacks standing to object to a search of his home. The convoluted theory, which appears to be that the Biden administration will not allow President Trump to assert executive privilege and consequently he has ‘no right’ to possess Presidential documents, and that, therefore, he has no standing to object to their seizure, is contrary to the well-established doctrine of standing.”

So starts the response by Trump’s lawyers to federal prosecutors’ filing, arguing against the appointment of a special master to review the government documents recovered from Donald Trump’s Florida geriatric care facility and venue-for-hire.

Unfortunately for Trump, none of that is true:  the documents weren’t Trump’s and he has no claim to executive privilege.

Initial tabulation of the votes in the Alaska rank choice election for the state’s sole seat in the US House of Representatives show Democrat Mary Peltola defeating Republican Sarah Palin to take the special election for the remainder of the current term, left vacate after the death of Republican Congressman Dan Young.  The screenshot from the live webstream posted on Facebook shows the final vote counts after the votes from third-place finisher Nick Begich were divided into their second choices.

Heir to a frozen food fortune and old guy who still shows up at fraternity parties at his alma mater Tucker Carlson was deposed Wednesday as part of the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems filed against the Fox propaganda network, CNN reports.

Carlson was the second Fox host interviewed in the case:  one-time network star Sean Hannity was deposed last week.  Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo is scheduled to be deposed next week.  Fox has repeatedly attempted to have the lawsuit quashed, but judges have not found the network’s arguments to be persuasive.

Dominion claims that relentless broadcasting of lies about its voting systems by Fox–propagated by other media outlets as well–has led to the loss of a substantial amount of business and significant damage to the company’s reputation.  Given that Republicans are still running on the lie that Dominion machines switched votes because of Hugo Chavez and something something Italian adding machines, it seems that Dominion has a strong case.

Add to the long list of reasons lawyers don’t want to work for Donald Trump:  he makes you commit crimes.  As the New York Times reports, the two attorneys representing him in his problems with the National Archives, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, are likely being considered suspects or witnesses to crimes related to the government documents found at Trump’s Florida manse.

Bobb and Corcoran worked with government agencies relating to getting documents returned to their rightful conservator, the National Archives.  At various points, they assured the government that all documents had been turned over, while later arranging for additional documents to be turned over.  They claimed that they conducted a thorough search of the property, only to have the FBI uncover scores of classified documents in a three-hour search.

The lawyers are now in a precarious situation of being suspects in a potential obstruction case, or being witnesses against their own clients in a felony case.  Either way, besides becoming potential defendants, they’ll likely not get paid by Trump.

A new report by the United Nations Human Rights Commission explicitly declares the Chinese conducted “serious human rights violations” in the suppression of the Uyghur and Muslim populations under its control.

“Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR in the context of the Government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-‘extremism’ strategies,” the report reads.  “The implementation of these strategies, and associated policies in XUAR has led to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights. These patterns of restrictions are characterized by a discriminatory component, as the underlying acts often directly or indirectly affect Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday told local radio station 1010 WINS the ghosts in Gracie Mansion are “friendly” and haven’t acted menacingly or violently toward him since he’s moved in to the mayoral residence. “I keep telling people they’re ghosts in that house. But they are definitely from the state of Casper, they are friendly ghosts,” said Adams, who did not add if he’s gonna call any eccentric former Columbia University parapsychologists running an innovative Tribeca-based ghost removal startup in to investigate the matter further.

Adams isn’t alone in claiming spectral encounters in the mansion as in 2017 Bill DeBlasio’s wife said she’s seen some strange things and had heard the ghost of a young girl who once lived in the home before it was donated to the city still haunts it. Adams did not say if he saw the same ghost or if it was former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia appearing at night to advise him on how to run the city.

There’s a point that I’ve wanted to make for a while about the fact that Donald Trump would not have officially, previously-declared the documents he has at Mar-a-Lago because it wasn’t in his best interest to do so, but I couldn’t quite figure out a way to explain it.  Luckily, former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa has a way with words.  And a Twitter account.

The fact that Trump never formally declassified anything, and also never raised it to DOJ, but is asserting it (unofficially) now, is actually an incredibly damning admission by Trump. That’s because it means that he wanted these secrets to still have value. As I noted in a previous tweet, had Trump formally declassified these secrets, he would have had to notify all the agencies responsible for the respective intel. They, in turn, would have taken steps to protect methods and sources. Why? Because it would no longer be secret.  If you *really* think something should be public, then you want to take steps to protect the sources of the intel before you release it. But Trump claims he did it secretly. That means he *intentionally* wanted to leave these sources and methods exposed.  Why would you want that? Only if you wanted the secrets to have value to someone. Similarly, if he had asserted declassification to DOJ, they ‘d ask, “Which ones?” He’d have to show what he had. Again, once the USG knows, the secrets get protected, i.e. no value as “secrets.”  Of course, he conveniently trots out the claim that he “declassified” them know — once he is found out. The gig is up, so now he thinks it’s a shield. But you only secretly “declassify” if you want secrets to remain valuable while giving yourself “cover” if you get discovered.