As you’re probably aware, we’re not Raw Story, and we do our best not to milk an upstream report for extra clicks – meaning we don’t take a single major article from CNN or the New York Times and split it into three or four articles, secondary and tertiary reactions, subsequent developments, etc excepted. However every once in a while our aggregation fails to fully encompass all the pieces of a sprawling story such as in our previous article about the Washington Post’s story on how Matt Gaetz informed Rogers Stone in 2019 not to worry about being convicted for the crimes he was charged with in connection with the Mueller investigation as Trump would take care of him.

As such, the Post’s description of how the talk between Gaetz and Stone “shifted largely to small talk such as a shared dislike of Washington. Gaetz quipped that to escape the capital, he might ask DeSantis to make him head of Florida’s juvenile justice agency, before reflecting that Trump would not permit him to leave. ‘He had heard a rumor that I was maybe not gonna run for reelection, and at the Christmas party, he berated me in front of my date. Like, straight berated me,’ Gaetz said,” is more than good enough to give its own article. Plus it’s not really germane to the whole “Trump rigging the justice system” thing and would just have been an extraneous and possibly distracting detail to put in the previous article. We can sleep well tonight over this one.

The Washington Post has a Saturday morning bombshell exclusive that a hot mic picked up Florida Republican Congressman and reputed child sex trafficker Matt Gaetz telling Trump dirty trickster and general scumbag Roger Stone that he would not “do a day” in prison if he didn’t turn on Donald Trump.

At an October 2019 event at a Trump property, a hot mic on a video of the pair caught Gaetz telling Stone that he’d likely be found guilty of the obstruction charges and other crimes he was facing regarding his lies, misstatements and omissions to the Mueller investigation probing Russian involvement in the 2016 election and Trump’s efforts to block that investigation.  But, Gaetz said, Stone shouldn’t worry because Trump would grant him clemency if Stone didn’t turn on Trump.

Gaetz explicitly stated that he heard from Trump that Trump would not let Stone be punished for his acts, an overt act of obstruction of justice and witness tampering on the parts of both Gaetz and Trump.  “They’re going to do you, because you’re not gonna have a defense,” Gaetz told Stone, acknowledging that the evidence against Stone was overwhelming.

The grand jury investigating the failed Trump 2020 coup have subpoenaed MAGA lawyer Josh Findlay, the director of the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity” Schutzstaffel, along with three more witnesses to the fake electoral college vote scam – two in Arizona and one in Georgia, Politico reports. Findlay had worked for the Trump 2020 campaign and along with the other three witnesses will be subjected to a rigorous colonoscopy of all communications with Trump minions from October 2020 through January 2021 pursuant to the subpoena.

Upon launching the “election integrity” unit, Findlay had proclaimed the RNC would “train and build the largest, most well-prepared election integrity organization in the history of the Republican Party,” and that the goal was “to recruit and train and place volunteers to watch every aspect of every election to make sure that Democrats aren’t committing fraud, that election administrators are not abusing their position, and just to make sure that there’s no mistake in what’s happening across the board,” even though he obviously was party to a failed attempt to submit fraudulent votes to the electoral college. What a fine picture of the cowardice and unmanliness of MAGA.

You did not win the $1.28 billion Mega Millions lottery jackpot, the AP reports. A person in Illinois, not you, bought the winning ticket and their life will change dramatically for the better beginning Saturday. Yours will remain the same. Or change for the worse because, hey, you never know.

The shooting death of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the hands of a man with a vendetta against the South Korea-based Unification Church – aka the Moonies – has prompted a serious examination of the Church’s hidden hand influencing right wing Japanese politicians, and not a good one for the Moonies, the Daily Beast reports on the fallout from the assassination.

• You can’t claim to be pro-police AND pro-assault weapons in anybody’s hands at any place at any time.  It’s simply not compatible with keeping officers and communities safe.
• A 40% cut in carbon emissions by 2030 and the ability to negotiate Medicare drug prices are two key provisions of the Manchin-Schumer agreement.  If you’re against it, you’re a pro-pollution advocate who wants seniors to pay more for drugs.  THAT’S what Democrats should campaign on.
• Another major part of the Schumer-Manchin deal:  a deficit reduction plan.  After already cutting a trillion from the deficit, Biden wants to do more to stabilize the nation’s finances.  And the self-declared deficit hawks in the GOP will still vote against it.  
• Jon Stewart merits a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work in helping 9/11 responders and members of the military sickened by burn pits.  He’s not just a comedian; he’s a true leader.  
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume LXXX”

A unidentified North Carolina man stepped off a twin-engine turbo passenger plane that crashed on runway after a landing gear malfunction at Raleigh Durham International Airport on Friday, completely unhurt in the accident that left the pilot hospitalized with minor injuries, WRAL reports.

Well we kind of left a few what you might call “key details” out of the headline and lede. See it’s all technically true except that the guy wasn’t actually on the plane when it crash landed. So he didn’t get hurt in it. He jumped out just a little short of the airport. Well 20 miles from it, so they had to be pretty high up. No he wasn’t wearing a parachute. Guess he was really afraid of plane crashes.

https://youtu.be/c8KR4fsuJQ0

Trump lawyer, woman who will be hiring a collection agency soon and Mean Girl who just feels this is *so* boring Lindsey Halligan is aghast–AGHAST, I tell you!–that CNN would brand Donald Trump a liar, and she announces he intends to file a lawsuit against the network.  “Um, CNN branded President Trump as, uh, a liar and referred to his questions regarding voter fraud as ‘The Big Lie’ which is actually linked to Adolf Hitler, so it’s pretty simple.  If you’re going to call someone a liar back it up with researched, well founded facts, otherwise, don’t report it, don’t distort the truth and ahhhhh, as Boris pointed out, CNN responded to our letter advising us that, uh, they will not retract the statement, so they will get, be getting served with a lawsuit very shortly, I believe.”

Prediction:  Trump filing a defamation lawsuit against CNN is a lie.  He will never, ever put himself under oath.  And for related reading, here’s the Washington Post Fact Checker documenting 30,573 lies Trump told during his four years in the White House and during his campaigns.

The House passed a renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004 as a measure to address the increasing number of mass shootings where the murderers used the weapons of war to kill and mutilate people at supermarkets, clubs and elementary schools, the Associated Press reports.

On a mostly Party-line 217-213 vote, the bill where head to the Senate, where it is likely to be canceled by Republicans who hold on to the myth that assault weapons are needed by civilians to protect themselves from a tyrannical government, which is directly contrary to the Constitution; Republicans rarely follow the Constitution.

Without an iota of irony following mass shooting using assault weapons in places like Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, Republican Georgia Congressman Andrew Clyde claimed, “An armed America is a safe and free America.”

A video of a Russian soldier castrating a Ukrainian POW circulating on social media Friday – and no we sure as fuck aren’t showing or linking it here – certainly proves the Putin regime is handling the situation pretty savvily and genius-like. Ukraine is obviously a danger to Russia with their network of Fauci-funded bioweapons labs and Jewish Nazi woke thug president, so sometimes they need to fight a little dirty. It’s pretty ballsy, no pun intended, how the Russians have steeled themselves against a NATO encroachment on their borders spearheaded by Ukraine’s corruption.

The Burisma thing was basically a war crime. Ukraine tried to interfere in the 2016 election too. They didn’t want Trump to be president and that’s way worse than bombing a maternity hospital. Missile strike? Try CrowdStrike. They NEVER gave that server up. Nobody ever got to see that server. So what if one young man is probably dead or dying of sepsis after being violently emasculated with a boxcutter? This never would have happened if Trump had still been president.

That blood is on Biden’s hands. He didn’t help Ukraine. Trump gave them way more lethal weaponry. Obama-Biden sent blankets and teddy bears. Trump would have made them sit down and with tears in their eyes both Putin and Zelensky would say “Sir, thank you. We want to make a deal.” Trump is deal maker. He wrote the book on making them. He knows how to negotiate.

Homeland Security Department Inspector General Joseph Cuffari was informed that the Secret Service’s text messages from January 5th and 6th 2021 had been deleted in May 2021, more than six months earlier than the December 2021 report to him previously acknowledged by Secret Service officials in testimony to Congressional committees, CNN reports. The Secret Service claims the texts were lost due to a data migration that happened on January 27th, 2021, which was after they’d been asked to preserve communications from around the time of the MAGA insurrection.

For all the pissing and wailing the MAGA trolls have done about the “Deep State” over the years they should appreciate an unaccountable federal bureaucracy coming through for them big time here. They lost their shit every time some whistleblower comes forward to expose the various corrupt scams Trump and his scumbags pulled and the resulting coverup that inevitably got lost because some other corrupt scam came up. They should be happy about this one. Those texts, probably ones that would’ve described Trump’s meltdown in the SUV that was supposed to have been debunked, among other more incriminating shit, are more likely than not lost to the aether.

QAnon asshole Mesa County, Colorado clerk, under a 13 count indictment for tampering with Dominion equipment has come up with the $256,000 fee for the recount in the Republican primary for Secretary of State which she lost on June 28th by more than 88,000 votes despite having earlier missed a deadline to make the payment, NBC News reports.

And yeah, Peters was allowed to bail herself out again after she turned herself in on her second arrest warrant. We have no idea what the fuck this judge was thinking.

Showing their lack of respect for voters and the democratic process, the power brokers of the Democrat party have now cleared the field for their most radical left candidate. Socialist policies have produced this mess, & a radical left Senator from Wisconsin is not the solution. https://t.co/bQoLFBc6ek

— Ron Johnson (@RonJohnsonWI) July 29, 2022

Oh and – this doesn’t get mentioned enough – Johnson planned to hand Mike Pence the fake Trump 2020 electoral college votes from Wisconsin and Michigan. So he was going to take it upon himself to decide for Wisconsin – the state he represents, which was kind of close in the 2020 election, but only a little bit closer than it had been for Trump in 2016 – and neighboring Michigan – one of the 49 states he does not represent, which Biden won by 150,000 – who their choice was for president.

This excuse for a man also had pledged he would only run for two terms max, a pledge he broke, meaning that as an incumbent, RonAnon effectively decided the outcome of the state GOP Senate primary unilaterally – in contrast to the Dems individually dropping out and coalescing around the frontrunner. But let’s hear more about who’s showing a lack of respect for voters.

“An indictment was unsealed today in Tampa, Florida, charging a Russian national, working on behalf of the Russian government and in conjunction with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), with allegedly orchestrating a years-long foreign malign influence campaign that used various U.S. political groups to sow discord, spread pro-Russian propaganda, and interfere in elections within the United States. As alleged in the indictment, from at least December 2014 until March 2022, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow, together with at least three Russian officials, engaged in a years-long foreign malign influence campaign targeting the United States. Ionov is the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), an organization headquartered in Moscow and funded by the Russian government. Ionov utilized AGMR to carry out Russia’s influence campaign,” says a DOJ press release.

The press release is maddeningly short on specifics – using “Political Group 1” and “Political Group 2” so it’s difficult to parse, but it seems the shit Ionov was involved with included a California secession movement, a “Pan African Socialist organization,” and had organized a demonstration outside the California offices of a Big Tech company – probably Twitter or YouTube, take your pick – to protest a ban on pro-Russian content after the invasion of Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/HuXijin_GT/status/1553054547970760704

Isn’t the whole point of making these kind of threats to actually follow through on them and not end up looking like a bunch of weak betas when they don’t actually do anything to Nancy’s plane?

Texas Gov Low Energy Greg Abbott stayed at a fundraiser for hours even after learning about how bad the massacre at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde was apparent, Dallas Morning News reports. This is in contrast to his previous claims that he only breezed by the MAGA money shindig at some donor’s house in Huntsville, Texas, saying he stopped in to “let people know that I could not stay, that I needed to go,” he actually stuck around for nearly 3 hours, per flight logs from another wealthy supporter’s private jet he’s been using to campaign for reelection.

That’s not even the worst part: Abbott was at a press conference in Abilene, Texas when he first received news of the school shooting. In a straight line, Uvalde is almost directly south of Abilene, roughly 225 miles by air. Meanwhile Huntsville is 276 miles southeast of Abilene and then 271 miles northeast of Uvalde. So a 223 mile direct flight became a 547 mile stopover for nearly 3 hours on the ground in Huntsville when he already fucking knew children had been murdered.

“Unlike Beto O’Rourke who took advantage of the tragedy in Uvalde by increasing his fundraising efforts and resorting to political stunts, Governor Abbott canceled all political activity, including fundraising,” said Abbott spokesworm Renae Eze about the pretty obvious implication that rich assholes are more important to Greg than the nearly two dozen mostly Mexican American children and teachers whose bodies were shredded by the bullets from a madman’s AR-15.

President Joe Biden on Friday nominated abortion-rights lawyer Julie Rikelman to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, Reuters reports. Rikelman, who represented Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Mississippi in the case that Republicans wrote and engineered to overturn Roe v Wade, is among nine federal judgeship nominees Biden submitted on Friday.

“The values on which our country was built are being destroyed more every day. In Florida our rights are being threatened, the family unit is being torn apart, and an unequal justice system is picking and choosing who gets to control our lives. This must end, and I’m determined to do it,” says the victimization-heavy website for Oath Keeper Jeremy Michael Brown’s campaign for Florida State House District 62 set up as he awaits trial on charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct on the Capitol grounds during the January 6th MAGA insurrection. It’s still not clear if Florida law allows for an inmate to run for elected office from jail, lawyers are currently reviewing it.

Actually serving is a different question, but likely an academic one, as the Tampa-area Florida state House District 62 was drawn to pack in Dem voters – Biden won it with 72% of the vote in 2020, which is probably the reason why Brown is running unopposed in the primary for the seat.

The North Carolina town of Kenly, population 2,400, will be without a single law enforcement officer shortly because the entire police force and two administrators resigned after the town council hired a highly experienced Black woman to be town manager, CNN reports.

But before you jump to conclusions that this is strictly some story about racism, pull back on the reins.  It’s also likely about misogyny and police corruption.

After a nationwide search that involved thirty potential candidates, Kenly’s town council hired Justine Jones to handle the day-to-day administrative operations for the municipality, prompting the ironically named police chief, Josh Gibson, to submit his two-week notice, along with those of four full-time and one-part time police officers, and two clerks who worked interdepartmentally for the town.