Minneapolis MAGA cop Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison over after pleading to violating the civil rights of George Floyd in the 2020 murder, the AP reports. Chauv will serve his federal time concurrently with his 22 year Minnesota state prison sentence.

Michigan GOP governor candidate Ryan Kelley pleaded not guilty via video arraignment to charges over his involvement in the January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection, the AP reports. There’s no evidence Kelley actually entered the building itself, but he was filmed within the restricted perimeter during the assault. “That was a 1st Amendment activity by a majority of those people, myself included,” Kelley said during a Wednesday primary debate. “We were there protesting the government because we don’t like the results of the 2020 election, the process of how it happened. And we have that 1st Amendment right. And that’s what 99% of the people were there for that day.”

“A federal grand jury in Brooklyn returned a superseding indictment yesterday charging five defendants, including one current federal law enforcement officer and one retired federal law enforcement officer, with various crimes pertaining to a transnational repression scheme orchestrated on behalf of the Government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Defendants Fan ‘Frank’ Liu, 62, of Jericho, New York; Matthew Ziburis, 49, of Oyster Bay, New York; and Qiang ‘Jason’ Sun, 40, of the PRC were charged in March 2022 with allegedly perpetrating a transnational repression scheme that targeted U.S. residents whose political views and actions are disfavored by the PRC Government. Among other items, these defendants allegedly plotted to destroy the artwork of a PRC national residing in Los Angeles, who was critical of the PRC government and planted surveillance equipment in the artist’s workplace and car to spy on him from the PRC.”

“Liu and Ziburis were arrested pursuant to a criminal complaint in March 2022, while Sun remains at large. The superseding indictment adds two new defendants, Craig Miller and Derrick Taylor, to the scheme. Miller is a 15-year employee of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), currently assigned as a deportation officer to DHS’s Emergency Relief Operations in Minneapolis, and Taylor is a retired DHS law enforcement agent who presently works as a private investigator in Irvine, California. Miller and Taylor are charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying evidence after they were approached by FBI agents and asked about their procurement and dissemination of sensitive and confidential information from a restricted federal law enforcement database regarding U.S.-based dissidents from the PRC. Both Miller and Taylor were arrested pursuant to a criminal complaint in June 2022” – Justice Department press release.

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig has referred the case of the “random” IRS audits of former FBI director Jim Comey and acting director Andrew McCabe to the Treasury Department Inspector General, CNN reports. “The IRS has referred the matter to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration for review. IRS Commissioner (Charles) Rettig personally reached out to TIGTA after receiving a press inquiry,” said the IRS in a statement. So JUST WAIT FOR THE IG REPORT LIBS!

One more thing we forgot to note about McCabe: He was notified of the audit in October 2021, the same month he settled with the DOJ over his firing, getting his pension and official good conduct employment record reinstated. So it would appear that even though Trump was already long out of office by then (Comey’s “random” audit was in 2019) and McCabe had been vindicated in court, his ally Rettig or some other MAGA loyalist in the IRS still targeted McCabe for retribution.

A second House January 6th Select Committee hearing has been scheduled for next week and it’s expected to air during prime time on Thursday, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports. While the Tuesday morning hearing, led by Congressman Jamie Raskin and Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, will center on links between Trump minions and extremist groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, the Thursday hearing – possibly the grand finale – helmed by Adam Kinzinger and Elaine Luria, will focus on what happened inside the White House as the Capitol riot raged, most likely featuring public testimony from former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews. It’s possible plans are still tentative given that Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone will testify Friday and the hearing may need to be modified to incorporate whatever new info he may have provided.

Disgraced former President Trump, his son Don Jr, and shitty children’s book author Kash Patel all removed themselves from the board of the Trump Media and Technology Group on June 8th, weeks before the SEC and Justice Department subpoenaed the company in a criminal investigation over its planned merger with the “Digital World Acquisition Corporation” scam in order to be publicly listed on stock exchanges, Florida business records obtained by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune show.

It’s not clear why Trump and his minions quit the board or if it was related to the investigation. More curious is that the Sarasota-based TMTG only disclosed this in Florida state business filings, and not the SEC filings that would probably require a future publicly-traded entity to be completely honest about this sort of thing as they were uncharacteristically about the Donald’s past fuckups in business and politics in a number of reports to prospective investors.

Assclown British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has his wedding reception scheduled for July 30th at a country villa called Chequers (basically the UK’s Camp David), about 40 miles outside of London, and appears to be trying to hang to office as “caretaker” after his resignation announcement Thursday at least long enough to retain use of state property, the Mirror reports.

Johnson, 58, was married to his third wife Carrie, 34, last year, in a private ceremony with only about 30 people present due to COVID, so the reception had been scheduled for this year.

“Family values” party Georgia Senate candidate and mentally unhinged moron Herschel Walker was approached by his campaign staff last winter about rumors he had fathered one more child than his one “legitimate” little ray of sunshine, Christian – which Herschel promptly denied, the Daily Beast reports. Thing is, per the Beast, Walker campaign staff already knew their candidate was lying about one 10 year-old boy, handing him documents confirming he fathered the boy, to which the shitbrained moron admitted he had lied to them and prepared to fess up publicly.

It gets better. When campaign manager Scott Paradise asked him if there were any other kids out there, before they put out a statement, Walker point blank lied to him and said no. The next day, after the campaign had acknowledged Walker’s fatherhood of the boy, the Beast called and asked about a 13 year old boy. That time Walker decided to be honest about him and a 40 year old daughter. “He’s lied so much that we don’t know what’s true,” say campaign staff about all the insane shit Walker has spewed. All this and Walker still edges out Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock 54 to 46 in FiveThirtyEight’s forecast of the November election.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump
Why would a future President of the United States want to have candid and important conversations with his White House Counsel if he thought there was even a small chance that this person, essentially acting as a “lawyer” for the Country, may some day be brought before a partisan and openly hostile Committee in Congress, or even a fair and reasonable Committee, to reveal the inner secrets of foreign policy or other important matters. So bad for the USA!

16,134 4,204 Jul 06, 2022, 22:59

Rant continued on Thursday morning: “BOTH of my phone calls to Georgia were PERFECT. I had an absolute right to make them &, in fact, the story on the one call was given a retraction, or apology, by the Washington Post because they were given terribly false information about it, & when they heard the actual call, they realized that their story was wrong. Thank you to the W.P. I, as does anyone else (just look at the Democrats!), have the absolute right to challenge the results of an Election.This one, CORRUPT, RIGGED, & STOLEN!” and “I did NOTHING wrong in Georgia, but others did. They CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election, and those are the ones that should be investigated (and prosecuted)! Letter to follow”

As for the “retraction” Trump’s talking about here in March 2021, The Post made a correction to the quotations attributed to Trump during his December 2020 call with Georgia elections official Frances Watson, something the fanboys seized upon as somehow exculpatory. A recording of the call that surfaced later revealed Trump did not actually say “find the fraud” or that Watson would be “a national hero” if she did. The correction is substantively meaningless because just two weeks or so later Trump was also recorded saying “everyone’s going to look very good if the truth comes out,” about his “stolen election” fantasy to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. So who gives a fuck about the Washington Post correcting part of one call? It’s a good practice of ethical journalism – exactly what Trump hates from the “Enemy of The People”.

WNBA player Britney Griner, jailed in Russia since February over bogus drug possession charges, pleaded guilty Thursday to the fake crime, Reuters reports. Griner faces up to 10 years in prison for possessing hash oil. The Biden Administration have been working on securing her release in what’ll most likely end up being a prisoner exchange for some Russian scumbag similar to the one in which former US Marine Trevor Reed was sent home back in April.

During President @JoeBiden's state visit to Israel next week, I will award him the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor to thank him for being a true friend of Israel. Grateful for his decades-long support for Israel's security, deepening our alliance & fighting antisemitism.🇮🇱🇺🇸

— יצחק הרצוג Isaac Herzog (@Isaac_Herzog) July 7, 2022

And no Trump is not a past recipient of the medal which was first awarded in 2012. Other honorees include Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Henry Kissinger. But not the “Chosen King of Israel.”

Assclown British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has finally met his end after the Pinchygate scandal saw the end of his government, the BBC reports. Johnson will stay on until a new leader is chosen.

The officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 in Cleveland has landed a new job as the sole police officer for Tioga, Pennsylvania, a town of 700 people in a region of the state popular with white nationalists.

HuffPost reports that Timothy Loehmann was sworn in to the job Tuesday.  In the spring of 2014, Loehmann, as he jumped out of a moving police car, shot Tamir Rice, who was in a public park playing with a toy gun.  An Ohio grand jury refused to indict Loehmann in the case.

Tioga Mayor David Wilcox said that he was “unaware” of Loehmann’s infamous history and that he had been led to believe that there were no issues with Loehmann’s background.  “I found it strange that someone would move here all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, for $18 an hour,” Wilcox said.  “But I heard that he wanted to get away from it all and come here to hunt and fish.”

It never ceases to amaze me the lengths gun control zealots will go! They turned my speech about protecting Second Amendment rights and my right to protect my grandchildren from violent criminals into a claim I would harm my own grandchildren. Absolutely ridiculous!

— Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (@RepDLesko) July 6, 2022

As reported earlier, the Arizona Republican took to the House floor to say she needed guns show she could shoot her grandkids:  “I have five grandchildren. I would do anything–anything–to protect my five grandchildren, including as a last resort, shooting them, if I had to, to shoot protect the lives of my grandchildren.”  I mean, we’ve got her on video, so I’m pretty confident on the earlier reporting.

A tipster led Richmond, Virginia police to arrest two men who were preparing weapons and ammunition to carry out a mass shooting at a local concert venue, NBC News reports, averting a potential massive loss of life.

Undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Julio Alvardo-Dubon, 52, and Rolman A. Balacarcel, 38, were both charged with being non-citizens in possession of a firearm after police, along with agents from the Department of Homeland Security, raided their home July 1st and found a handgun, two assault-style weapons, and more than 200 rounds of ammunition.  Alvardo-Dubon was arrested at the time of the raid, and officers arrested Balacarcel Tuesday after surveilling him over the holiday weekend.

Police received a tip that the pair were planning to attack an amphitheater that seats 2,400 in a local park during an Independence Day celebration.  Police have not identified a motive.

https://youtu.be/QE5QYCB2GtU

Imagine, Alex, that there was an entire month of Pride parades and, and festivals and Drag Queen Story Times and you didn’t see Christian Nationalists going in and shooting up these parades, but y’know the left was, was already preaching the ‘F’ the Fourth with their hashtags and, and terrible language against our Independence Day July 4th but here we had a, a young man, um, come out dressed as a woman, imagine that decided to do ar-ju-ehm just an act of evil.

Wait… “going in and shooting up these parades” is okay to Marge?  And yeah, Christian Nationalists *did* try to attack Pride parades, or does Marge forget the 31 U-Haul Klutzes of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho?  And has she never heard of a disguise?  For the record, there’s no evidence one way or another that the Highland Park shooter was part of the LGBTQ community.  And yes, he was caught while wearing women’s clothes… as an attempt to avoid capture.

Democratic Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed an executive order blocking any cooperation from state agencies in civil lawsuits or criminal cases brought by out-of-state parties against women who travel to Colorado for an abortion or other reproductive medical care, the Denver Post reports.

The order also shields any state-regulated professional or organization from having to comply with any orders for information issued by another state, ordering the state Department of Regulatory Affairs to refuse to take action against them.

“We are taking needed action to protect and defend individual freedom and protect the privacy of Coloradans,” Polis said in a written statement. “This important step will ensure that Colorado’s thriving economy and workforce are not impacted based on personal health decisions that are wrongly being criminalized in other states.”

The vice president of Faith & Liberty, a self-proclaimed non-profit organization that advocates for so-called “christian” causes and which filed briefs with the Supreme Court in favor of overturning  a woman’s Constitutional right to an abortion, boasted on a recent conference call that she regularly holds prayer sessions with justices sitting on the Court, Rolling Stone reports.

While Faith & Liberty’s website has wiped all information from its “About” page, Peggy Nienaber is a vice president of the organization, which markets itself as “Your Missionaries to Capitol Hill” on its social media feeds.  Nienaber is also the executive director of DC Ministry, a subsidiary of Liberty Counsel, which calls itself “a Christian ministry that proclaims, advocates, supports, advances, and defends the good news that God in the person of Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sins and offers forgiveness and eternal life to all who accept him as Lord and Savior.”

An executive of an interested party in a Supreme Court case having unfettered, unsupervised contact with justices hearing that case may be a violation of a number of judicial rules barring lobbying of jurists and unfairly influencing the outcome of a case.  Liberty Counsel submitted an amicus brief on the Dobbs case urging the revocation of Roe v. Wade. 

Former FBI director James Comey and assistant director Andrew McCabe, both fired by disgraced criminal former President Trump for simply doing their jobs, faced intense IRS audits following their departures, the New York Times reports. Aside from being stupid and unnecessary because federal law enforcement agents can be fired for missing too many credit card payments, it was also a hell of a “coincidence,” because it was supposed to be a completely random audit.

Comey was among 5,000 picked in 2019 for a colonoscopy of his 2017 returns, one of 153 million filed that year. In 2021, with the IRS still being helmed by Trump-appointed Commissioner Charles Rettig, Andrew McCabe’s 2019 return was among 8,000 selected out of 154 million from that year.

Comey and McCabe’s returns each roughly had one in 30,000 and one 19,250 chances, respectively, to have been picked in those years. What the odds were for two guys who had formerly worked together to both “win” this lottery two years apart is probably pretty fucking astronomically low, so it would seem like Charlie Rettig, whose four year term expires in November, should face a hell of an invasive probe from the Justice Department himself.

Someone detonated a bomb at the curiosity known as the Georgia Guidestones Wednesday, forcing authorities to demolish what remained standing of the giant stone tablets that had been erected in 1980.  The Guidestones were erected at the direction of a mysterious man named Robert C. Christian who paid a quarry to carve and erect the henge-like installation seven miles north of Elberton, Georgia, near the North Carolina border.

The stones featured writings in seven different languages and served as a compass, clock and calendar.  The sculpture had been demonized by fundamentalist christians as a warning sign of Satanism or Pastafarianism or Veganism or somesuch nonsense they think threatens their view of the world.