According to documents filed by Glynn County, Georgia prosecutors, Republican former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson made or received 16 calls with Greg McMichael, one of the hicks convicted last year of killing 25 year old Black man Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020, CNN reports. McMichael, a former police officer, had previously worked as an investigator for Johnson’s office until retiring in 2019 and had used his position to get Johnson to hold off for months on charging him, his son Travis, and neighbor Roddie Bryan in the shooting death of Arbery until a neighboring district attorney stepped in to handle the case. Johnson was indicted in September 2021 on charges of obstructing law enforcement and violating her oath of office for instructing cops not to arrest the McMichaels or Bryan on the day of the shooting, as well as concealing her contacts with Greg McMichael. Johnson lost reelection in November 2020.

Trump attorney and bipedal shoe polish dispenser Rudy Giuliani will not appear before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack as he was scheduled to do tomorrow, The Guardian reports.

Giuliani reportedly demanded that the session be recorded, something the committee leaders would not agree to.  The committee had already agreed to another requirement of Giuliani, that he not be required to testify about items already determined to be covered by attorney-client privilege.  Giuliani reportedly wanted a recording of the session to provide protection against possible so-called “perjury traps” in future cases.  He also did not want to appear under subpoena because he considers the Committee’s investigation illegitimate.

Giuliani was expected to disclose communications he had with the White House and other members of the Trump campaign and the Republican Party in the weeks running up to the January 6th attack.  Giuliani had hinted that he would turn over documents that the Committee would not otherwise have access to.

Earlier on Thursday we were discussing the newly unearthed question posed to Madison Cawthorn in 2019 about a gay sexual encounter with his buddy Blake alleged to have occurred in 2016. It suddenly dawned on me that all these latest reveals of deeply embarrassing – well, downright fucking humiliating – for a supposedly masculine heterosexual Christian Conservative Republican politician all came after he blabbed about “cocaine-fueled sex orgies” to that right wing douchebag back in March. Now as much as we’re fluent in the language of paranoia and conspiracy theories, there’s actually not a lot of sincere conjecture on this site when you look back and think of it. Unless we’re writing some bullshit satire, of course. There’s plenty of that going on here.

Aside from some UFO articles written with a straight face, by and large we don’t stray too far from the facts here and let the other guys do tinfoil-ing – indeed Jack told me he wanted to avoid speculating in his piece and have the timeline speak for itself. But it’s undeniable that everything truly went to shit for Cawthorn after he said what he said about what happens after hours in DC. It’s one thing for ethics violations that Republican voters do not now and never will give a shit about to come up. It’s another thing entirely for Cawthorn to first be pictured dressed in women’s lingerie, then his cousin grabbing his crotch, then that disturbing video in the hotel room. That’s a fucking takedown, coming in successive and incrementally worse pieces of kompromat that someone, somewhere kept the powder dry on until it was going to hurt the most.

Which led me to conclude that this is some kind of coordinated attack from the right, possibly for breaking omerta about the coke and sex stuff. By whom exactly we’ll let our readers spitball.

Spartan NZ ✓TEAM SOROS™ • a month ago Removed
️Notice how Cawthorn didn’t say if there were women at these sex orgies
Thu, 3/28/2022 9:25 AM on ‘Cawthorn says people in DC have invited to orgy, done cocaine in front of him’

Didn’t mean to be prescient with that one. Only wanted to break balls and annoy the MAGA trolls over their sexual insecurities. Should ask the angry jerkoffs who replied what they have to say now.

Remember John Schnatter, the former CEO of Papa John’s who was booted out of the protofood delivery company for using the n-word during company conference calls?  He’s not looking good these days, and his mind seems to have left him.

“The ideology is not connected to reality,” John says.  “A lot of my friends lean to the left, and they’re highly intelligent, but they’re also unconscious. They’re not aware that two plus two actually is five.”

After comedian Dave Chapelle was attacked on stage at the Hollywood Bowl by a Trump supporting wannabe rapper, Fox host and Donald Trump consultant Sean Hannity decided to spend a good part of the segment when he spins the attack into being Joe Biden’s fault to explain how much of a tough guy he is, in the most pathetic jargon-filled explanation of his marshall martial arts training.

…’cause, y’know, it’s always about Sean Hannity. The world revolves around Sean Hannity.

Ray Epps has been at the center of right-wing conspiracy theories spouted from the likes of Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Marge and Alex Jones.  Epps is, according to their accounts, is the man who instructed agitators planted in the January 6th crowd to attack Capitol police.

However, evidence has been turned over to the defense attorneys in the cases of people accused of participating in the attack shows that Epps was not a federal agent and acted to try to prevent someone else from starting the violence that day, the New York Times reports.

Epps, a 60-year-old venue manager from Queen Creek, Arizona, was videotaped on January whispering something into a man’s ear just before that man attacked the police line at the Capitol in what’s thought to be the violent spark that started the attack. 

The Food and Drug Administration has updated the recommendations for use for the single-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, saying that the formula should only be given to people who cannot take the mRNA vaccines, Politico reports.

The decision was made after a review of data regarding cases of thrombosis of thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS, a rare and sometimes fatal blood condition that causes clots and low platelet counts 10 days to two weeks after inoculation.  The FDA reasoned that with the availability and safety of the two mRNA vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, allow the agency to pull back the J&J recommendation.

“Our action reflects our updated analysis of the risk of [thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome] following administration of this vaccine and limits the use of the vaccine to certain individuals,” Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “We recognize that the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine still has a role in the current pandemic response in the United States and across the global community … The agency will continue to monitor the safety of the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and all other vaccines.”

Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper writes in his upcoming memoir fat former President Trump wanted to fire missiles at drug cartel facilities inside Mexico and act like the US had nothing to do with it, the New York Times reports.

First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will travel to Romania and Slovakia for a weekend visit with US service members stationed overseas, Ukrainian war refugees, aid workers and embassy workers for the Mother’s Day holiday, Reuters reports.

An instructor a community college in northern Virginia, Dr. Biden will also visit with another educator on the trip, Romania’s first lady Carmen Iohannis, who is also an English teacher.  She’ll also visit the President of Slovakia Zuzana Caputova.

More than 800,000 Ukrainians have entered Romania as they fled the war, with about 80,000 remaining.  Another 380,000 entered Slovakia, which provided Soviet-era S-300 aircraft defense missile systems to the Ukrainians.

The White House announced that Karine Jean-Pierre will become the first Black person and openly gay person to be the White House press secretary when Jen Psaki leaves the position in a couple weeks, the Washington Post reports.

Psaki restored much of the dignity to the press room that was denigrated by the previous administration’s carnival of spokespeople, from a former Easter Bunny/hedge resident/future guest on the misnamed Dancing With the Stars who routinely lied to the press; to the daughter of a failed presidential candidate who routinely lied to the press; to a woman who could not answer a question if it wasn’t written out in her binder, and who routinely lied to the press.

During the Biden campaign, Jean-Pierre was the press secretary for Vice President Kamala Harris.  She joined the White House as Psaki’s deputy, and she’ll take on the duties to publicly humiliate Peter Doocy in daily briefings.

Texas Gov Low Energy Greg Abbott is thinking bigger than just forcing pregnant women to give birth even if doing so will kill them and eyeing a challenge to a 1982 Supreme Court ruling mandating universal public education so he can deny it to kids born to illegal immigrants, USA Today reports. And yes, the irony of “pro-lifers” making actual life harder on people is not lost on us.

“The challenges put on our public systems is extraordinary, Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler versus Doe. And the Supreme Court ruled against us on the issue… I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago,” said the impotent man on some right wing asshole’s radio show when asked about the costs of educating the children of illegal immigrants, even those who are citizens by birth under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission are working to determine the species of a dead shark found strapped up by bungie cords at a high school south of Jacksonville, the Miami Herald reports. That the mascot of Ponte Vedra HS is a shark makes the implication as well as the culprits obvious, and if the shark was an endangered species then someone at one of Ponte Vedra’s rival schools will have some explaining to do. And that is damn good rigging job that few if any high schoolers would be capable of without adult help, never mind actually acquiring the shark.

The top two candidates vying for the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania governor are both MAGA conspiracy douchebags with names ending in vowels, but only Doug Mastriano was actually at the Capitol riot while rival former Congressman Lou Barletta only signed on as a fake Trump 2020 elector. But like Barletta, Mastriano also struggled with scrutiny applied by mainstream media journalists in a recent interview, abruptly walking away from a podcast chat with the Delaware Valley Journal after being asked one too many questions about his connections with QAnon freaks.

Mastriano started off cheerfully and amiably, cracking jokes with the interviewers, complimenting them on their fairness but things went to shit pretty quickly when host Michael Graham pressed the Trump minion on his bussing MAGA assholes to the riot, at least several of whom were arrested and charged with various crimes. “I resent the fact that you want to castigate anyone who went down to Washington D.C. on January 6th as some kind of enemy of the public. That is dangerous. You’re talking like an East German there,” said Mastriano. When asked about his participation in a QAnon fan fest called “I want you to call out [Dem Pennsylvania Attorney General and gov candidate] Josh Shapiro and scrutinize who’s in his audience or which groups he’s speaking with, or do you give him a free pass? That’s what I always see on the left. And I’m sick and tired of it. If you’re gonna cast judgments and aspersions on people that I associate with, then by God, you better see what Josh Shapiro — I know [Lt. Governor John] Fetterman’s been in a room with some really radical people, especially with his bus tour around the state on recreational use of marijuana. They get a free pass every time. And so we’ve got to tighten this up.” The whole thing’s a shitshow, but an entertaining one at that. We recommend a listen for those who can spare the 21 minutes.

As Russians attempt to control the city of Mariupol, the Ukrainian military has held off desperate attacks by the invaders to eliminate the last major outpost of significant resistance in the city, the Associated Press reports.

Military and political analysts believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is pushing his military leaders to have a major victory prior to the Russian patriotic holiday, Victory Day, celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany on Monday.  Putin reportedly wants to announce a major victory or a major escalation in the invasion, which has not gone as the Kremlin has planned due to still Ukrainian resistance with significant assistance from Western nations.

Ukrainian authorities say an electrician employed at the plant showed Russians a series of tunnels that allowed them to access the grounds of the steel plant, which the Russians have been attacking over the last three days. 

Sometimes in journalism, you come across a story that was forgotten but needs to see the light again because of current news.  And so we have this:

During the 2020 campaign, an unknown reporter asked Republican North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn campaign staffer Blake Harp about an incident that happened in 2016 in which a janitor at Patrick Henry College caught Cawthorn and Harp in an intimate moment in a janitorial closet.  Literally in a closet.

“Can you comment on an encounter of a homosexual variety between you and Madison Cawthorn which allegedly took place in a custodial closet and was witnessed by a custodian?” the text , which appears to be a Facebook post, reads.  The text is sent in response to a text, apparently from Harp praising Cawthorn’s speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Madison Cawthorn attempted to manipulate his Congressional chief of staff’s federal compensation to allow him to collect tens of thousands of dollars from the campaign, but screwed up the calculations to such a degree the staffer violated Congressional rules on outside income, The Daily Beast reports.

Blake Harp, a long-time friend of Cawthorn, became the new Congressman’s chief of staff when Cawthorn took office in January 2021, even though he had no legislative experience and little work experience according to his bare LinkedIn profile.  He attended Patrick Henry College, the institution from which Cawthorn dropped out of after less than a year.

Public records of Congressional staffer income show that Cawthorn paid Harp for most of 2021 at a level that would have allowed Harp to collect unlimited income from outside sources.  Congressional rules state that anyone who makes a daily rate of $363.16 or more qualifies as a senior staffer; Cawthorn paid Harp $353.25 for the first three quarters of 2021, which does not make him a senior staffer.

Dem Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul told WTMJ on Thursday he’s doubtful Republican members of the state Senate and Assembly can be prosecuted for pissing away millions in taxpayer dollars on their moronic 2020 election “review” that has turned up zero evidence of election fraud but is still going on eighteen months later, even as the fat idiot running it has blown deadline after deadline to issue a final report. “Unfortunately, when the lame-duck laws were passed in 2018, one of the aspects of that law was to give the Legislature an unlimited ability to spend money on lawyers… They’ve basically given themselves carte blanche… Now I think this is an absolute waste of tax dollars but, unfortunately, they passed a law that gives themselves that power,” said Kaul.

“Fijian law enforcement executed a seizure warrant freezing the Motor Yacht Amadea (the Amadea), a 348-foot luxury vessel owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov. Fijian law enforcement, with the support and assistance of the FBI, acted pursuant to a mutual legal assistance request from the U.S. Department of Justice following issuance of a seizure warrant from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which found that the Amadea is subject to forfeiture based on probable cause of violations of U.S. law, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), money laundering and conspiracy. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Kerimov as part of a group of Russian oligarchs who profit from the Russian government through corruption and its malign activity around the globe, including the occupation of Crimea. In sanctioning Kerimov, the Treasury Department also cited Kerimov as an official of the Government of the Russian Federation and a member of the Russian Federation Counsel” says a Justice Department press release.

A lib group called “Ruth Sent Us” are planning to protest outside the homes of far right Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and not as far right Chief Justice John Roberts next week in response to the leak of a draft decision overturning Roe v Wade and ending abortion in dozens of states, Fox News reports.

The implication of Fox News’s reporting, which ends with “This is a developing story. Check back soon for updates” because they need to punch up the story with more outrage. An article about private property owned by white people (plus the one Black guy who’s cool with them because he’s Conservative) besieged by angry libs might has well have been created in a Fox News lab, precision engineered to target the amygdalae of their audience whose own lawns and vinyl siding are constantly under threat from violent Antifa/BLM maniacs. If only Fox had devoted the same breathless level coverage to the non-libs “protesting” outside of homes of the Michigan Secretary of State, random election workers in Georgia, the Dem Lt Governor of Hawaii, Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and others in recent years they’d be a lot more “Fair and Balanced”.

“Phuong” doesn’t have a “kiss” emoji in the name but “she” is certainly an upvote bot of the same stripe that has plagued Disqus on and off over the last few months. To their credit, our comment providers have actually been much faster at nuking the scumbags than they were during that first great wave of February 2022, so “Phuong” and her ilk should be gone in a few hours, as we put in a support thread requesting as such earlier this morning. As for “Jasmin”, there will be yet another addition to our profanity filter that isn’t actually profane. Sorry in advance to our real readers on the off chance they really want to share a link from easy77.com, but rules are rules.