CNN reports that lawyers representing Donald Trump are currently in discussions with representatives from the US Department of Justice relating to potential testimony about his actions around the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress and his efforts to overturn the results of the November 2020 election.

The discussions reportedly revolve around what communications Trump can claim to be shielded under various privilege claims such as executive privilege and lawyer-client confidentiality.  Trump reportedly wants to keep discussions he had with West Wing staff shielded from grand jury testimony.

While Trump has absolutely no authority to claim executive privilege on any conversations because only the sitting President can make such an assertion, the discussions appear to be an attempt to get the Biden Administration to outline what topics could legitimately be covered by the privilege, with the Justice Department serving as a conduit to the White House.

After benefiting from a midnight vote dump that pushed her into the lead, drag queen show patron Kari Lake has been declared the winner of the GOP primary to be the Party’s nominee for Arizona governor, the New York Times reports.

Although she repeatedly claimed that the election was rigged because she was losing support, the Trump-endorsed Lake has not claimed that she will challenge the election results, which is kinda the playbook for people who believe conspiracy theories:  they’re never the beneficiary of the conspiracy; they’re always the victim.

With 88% of the votes counted, Lake has nearly a 20,000 lead against Karrin Taylor Robson, leading by 46.8% to 44.0%.  Lake will take on Democrat Katie Hobbs in November, in an election that she will surely claim is fraught with fraud and corruption… unless she wins, of course.

Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has betrayed her fellow Republicans and agreed with some relatively minor changes in tax revenue provisions to support the spending bill pushed by Communist West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the Washington Post reports.

I look at polling with a significant amount of skepticism.  No poll is right; most polls are wrong.  Some polls are wrong because of faulty methodology; others because they go into the survey process with a desired outcome and they make the numbers fit their narrative.  (Rasmussen and Trafalgar are in the latter category, in my opinion.)

My skepticism is grounded in my professional experience.  For nearly two decades, major portions of my jobs were spent analyzing numbers and the external factors influencing those numbers.   

I was an automotive “bluebook” editor for more than a decade.  The service I ran provided this information to the companies that you now use through the internet (although not the namesake of the type of publication, Kelley Bluebook, an entity which I can tell you more about than you’d care to know and which has its own, um, unique methodology of setting car prices) as well as to the manufacturers, dealers, insurance companies and financial institutions reliant on having accurate values of the cars they were financing or insuring, as well as companies that had macroeconomic needs like Jaguar, Volvo, GM and many other manufacturers. 

“A federal indictment was unsealed yesterday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, charging a former private prisoner officer with sexually assaulting a male pretrial detainee during a prisoner transport and later lying to the FBI. According to the indictment, at the time of the alleged crime, Dewayne Dudley, 55, of Claremore, Oklahoma, worked as a private prisoner transport officer for Blue Raven Services, a company that was hired by local jails and prisons throughout the country to transport people who had been arrested pursuant to out-of-state warrants and needed to be transported back to the states that had issued the warrants. Count One of the indictment charges Dudley, while acting under color of law, with willfully depriving a male pretrial detainee whom he was transporting from Indiana to New Mexico, of his constitutional right to bodily integrity.”

“The indictment alleges that Dudley’s conduct resulted in bodily injury to the victim and kidnapping. Count Two charges Dudley with knowingly and willfully making false statements to a Special Agent with the FBI regarding his transport of the victim. If convicted, Dudley faces a maximum sentence of life in prison,” says a Justice Department press release. What it doesn’t say is that Dudley is a registered Republican, which is fine because it’s not relevant to the crime for the DOJ’s purposes.

For us however it is important. We are a mostly political news site, and as such we wanted to politicize this. A sexual predator in a position of authority over a vulnerable person being Republican helps perpetuate the biases inherent to our reporting that our readers crave. It would be pseudo-journalistic malpractice not to list Dudley’s political affiliation here. Even better is that we can be so unabashedly open about these biases and state so with the express intent of annoying our handful of right wing readers who think accusing us of being biased is going to result in some kind of apology and/or retraction. Go fuck yourself if you think National Zero can be shamed.

Amid escalating tensions between Taiwan and China, the Biden Administration has ordered the US Navy aircraft carrier the USS Ronald Reagan to maintain its current position near Taiwan as a deterrent to more aggressive actions by China, Politico reports.

China has undertaken various provocative actions in the days since Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced a possible trip to Taiwan–one which she made earlier this week.  China ordered military aircraft to launch simultaneous runs at the island before turning away at the last moment, and it flew drone incursions into Taiwan airspace.

The Pentagon also announced the delay of a test firing of the Minuteman III ICBM system so as to not engage in an act that could be look at as aggressive. “As China engages in destabilizing military exercises around Taiwan, the United States is demonstrating instead the behavior of a responsible nuclear power, by reducing the risks of miscalculation and misperception,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said of the decision.

Apparent lightning strike Lafayette Park NW. #DCsBravest on scene in the process of treating and transporting 4 patients, all in critical condition. pic.twitter.com/1jyCh44Q2n

— DC Fire and EMS (@dcfireems) August 4, 2022

God’s holy vengeance for the socialist policies of the Biden Administration and the president’s son Hunter’s hard partying ways reportedly missed its target by about 100 yards and instead critically injured four innocent bystanders in the adjacent Lafayette Square Park on Thursday evening. A request for comment from God on his poor aim was not immediately answered at press time.

MAGA influencer scumbag Stewie Peters claimed in a Wednesday Telegram post that fellow MAGA influencer scumbag Laura Loomer had accepted Jesus. “Laura Loomer just accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior! Literally, in real time. Laura Loomer now is covered in the blood of Jesus Christ! This was the most amazing conversation I have ever had in my entire life!” wrote Peters.

The reported acceptance of Jesus by the Jewish Loomer comes as she seeks another nomination to a seat in the US House after having been utterly destroyed by incumbent Florida Dem Lois Frankel in 2020 in the Palm Beach-area 21st District. Loomer will face incumbent GOP Congressman Dan Webster in The Villages-area 10th District on August 23rd, now armed with the coveted endorsement of avowed Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes after a little tiff over her being a Jew.

Conspiratorial talk show host and Mini-Mr. Creosote Alex Jones was ordered by an Austin jury to pay more than $4 million in compensatory damages to the parents of a six-year-old child victim of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, the New York Times reports.  The amount of punitive damages has yet to be decided by the jury, and Jones still faces three other trials from other families and victims.

It took the jury just hours to determine how much Jones should pay the family of Jesse Lewis, one of 20 first graders killed by a gunman at the Connecticut school.  Jones had pushed various conspiracy theories that the shooting didn’t happen, that the families were “crisis actors” playing a role in a government plot to take away guns, or that it was a “false flag” attack to implement liberal policies under the Obama administration.

In many ways, Jones shot himself in the foot with his over-the-top theatrics during the trial, which culminated with closing arguments Thursday morning when his attorney claimed Jones was prepared to pay one single dollar for each of the eight defamation claims against him.

In yet another sign that shit is getting increasingly serious for the disgraced former president, CNN reports Thursday that Trump’s legal team are in contact with Justice Department prosecutors.

The conversations between the sides reportedly concern what kind of testimony Donald would be able to shield from a federal grand jury as privileged. Without getting into that “the walls are closing in” type shit, we would venture that maybe this isn’t where a defense lawyer working to stop his client from being indicted wants to be right now, trying to say certain incriminating statements are technically state secrets because the client was the president at the time and hoping they’ll drop it because they don’t want to be held up in protracted litigation over it.

That’s the best they’ve got to work with right now. Even after they already lost at the Supreme Court when trying to claim ex-executive privilege over White House communications and documents sought by a congressional committee investigation and not a federal criminal one.

Responding to the Biden Administration’s declaration of a public health emergency over the monkeypox outbreak, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters Thursday he is “so sick of politicians – and we saw this with COVID – trying to sow fear into the population,” from which the only logical conclusion we can come to is that Ron DeSantis is in favor of gay sex and lots of it.

“We are not doing fear,” added DeSantis. “And, we are not going to go out and try to rile people up and try to act like people can’t live their lives as they’ve been normally doing because of something,” which would mean he’s totally supportive of casual male-on-male sexual contact, which has been the primary vector for monkeypox transmission. So just as he eschewed masking and vaccination as COVID safety measures, Ron is giving the thumbs down to abstinence for sexually active gay men in his state and encouraging them to continue having relations with multiple partners. Freedom over Faucism, as the diminutive governor is so fond of saying.

“In our nation’s 246 year history there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump.” Dick Cheney pic.twitter.com/erBPBNy8ah

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) August 4, 2022

Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a self-avowed conservative who has stated his belief that the most effective government is the one closest to the people being governed, has suspended an elected county prosecutor who stated he would not charge people seeking abortions, the New York Times reports.

Hillsborough County State’s Attorney Andrew H. Warren signed a statement along with more than 90 other local prosecutors from around the nation that they would not criminalize patients seeking an abortion.  Florida enacted a law banning abortions after 15 weeks of gestation following the Supreme Court’s controversial and legally-questionable revocation of the right to an abortion granted through the Roe precedent.

Warren, who won his seat with 53% of the local vote in 2020 versus DeSantis’s 49.6% statewide victory in 2018, had stated that he would enforce other laws relating to illegal abortions while courts heard arguments about the legality of Florida’s law.

WOW! A statewide recount costing $256,000 has confirmed that Mesa County, Colorado Clerk Tina Peters – currently awaiting trial on a 13 count indictment for tampering with Dominion Voting Systems equipment – still loses the Republican Secretary of State primary election by roughly 88,000 votes, the Denver Post reports. The retabulation found a total of four more votes for Peters, but seven more for the winner Pam Anderson, meaning Peters pissed away over a quarter of million dollars to lose by a net total of three more votes. It’s bad, but still not nearly as embarrassing as in 2020 when Trump paid more than $3 million of his fans’ donations to recount two counties in Wisconsin resulting in a net gain of 87 votes for Biden. That was fucking hilarious.

The Biden Administration plans to declare a public health emergency and bring the full might of the federal government to spank the monkeypox outbreak currently threatening to explode as a result of this weekend’s CPAC convention in Texas and may do so Thursday, the Washington Post reports.

“… violent extremist militia,” performance artist Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo) rants during a Senate FBI oversight hearing while slamming his footwear on desk.  “Well, I will self-report right now that every day in the Senate I wear my boots that have the Gonzales battle flag on the back of them.”

I think the point the Canadian-born Cruz is trying to make is that he’s super-cool because he wears boots adorned with a drawing of a cannon and the saying “Come and Take It” emblazoned on it.  His point is in regards to the FBI investigating domestic terrorists who are fighting law enforcement officials, relating to the Republican-led January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress as well as other white nationalist attacks.

The US Department of Justice has filed charges against four Louisville, Kentucky police officers, alleging the group violated the civil rights of Breonna Taylor when they executed a no-knock warrant at her apartment that resulted in her being shot and killed by police though she was unarmed, CBS News reports.

At the time, police claimed they were met with significant gunfire from inside the apartment when they burst in during the middle of the night.  However, subsequent investigations found that Taylor’s boyfriend fired one shot at the unannounced officers, striking one of them in the leg.  Another officer fired randomly into the apartment through a patio door.

Taylor, who was unarmed, was with her boyfriend when the officers burst into the apartment and was targeted by at least two of the officers’ gunfire, according to testimony.  Multiple shots from one of the officers struck her and killed her.  The items sought in the search warrant, reportedly drugs and evidence of drug dealing by an old boyfriend, were not found by police in the apartment.

Mark Bankston, the lawyer representing Sandy Hook parents, told the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell Thursday that the House January 6th Select committee and the FBI have asked him to turn over Alex Jones’ texts — and that he intends to cooperate unless ordered otherwise by a court.

“It was a quite a gut punch. Yes, I’m shocked, absolutely shocked. But regardless, I respect the process… That’s not what I was expecting, not what I was told the polling showed, and I thought it was gonna be a tight race. But it is what it is. And, again, I respect the process. I don’t have an explanation,” Republican Kansas Senator Roger Marshall told Politico when asked about his party’s 59 – 41 loss on Tuesday’s ballot measure. Marshall’s also an obstetrician by trade, which kind of makes him that much more of a fucking asshole who should know better but doesn’t.

When asked about how it changes his outlook for the Midterms, Marshall said, “For a national place, like a congressperson or a senator or president, I think it’s always about the economy. And I think that’s that’s all we’re hearing about right now is the economy,” without saying he’s only hearing about the economy because he’s listening very selectively to Fox News bullshit.