CNN: “The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday will interview Byung ‘BJay’ Pak, the former US attorney in Atlanta who departed abruptly from the role amid then-President Donald Trump’s attacks on Georgia’s election results. The circumstances of Pak’s exit are among the lingering mysteries from that chaotic early January stretch of events. There are some indications that he was pushed out by the White House for his refusal to pursue the bogus voter fraud claims that Trump was pushing in Georgia as Congress’ certification of the election approached.”

“After Pak’s surprise January 4 resignation, Trump replaced him with his US attorney in Savannah, bypassing the normal chain of succession. Documents released by the House in an investigation of Trump’s pressure on the Justice Department to substantiate his election fraud claims show Pak resigning after a key weekend in which Trump considered overhauling DOJ leadership because they hadn’t found widespread fraud. Pak is one of six former DOJ political appointees whom the Biden administration green-lighted to talk to the committee about Trump’s election fraud push.”

“Avaaz, a US-based non-profit activism organisation, petitioned Scotland’s highest court after MSPs rejected calls to pursue an Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO) against the former US president’s Scottish firms. The government has said that any decision to apply for a UWO is a matter for ministers, with the Civil Recovery Unit (CRU) handling any applications to the courts in practice. But Avaaz, backed by a cross-party group of opposition MSPs, argued that ministers have a duty to seek a UWO where the relevant requirements under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 are met.”

“Its petition to the court stated that there are ‘no reasonable grounds’ to suspect that known sources of lawfully obtained income would have been sufficient to bankroll Mr Trump’s acquisition of his Scottish properties. Now, Lord Sandison has given the green light for Avaaz to seek a judicial review, a development which will reignite the debate over how Mr Trump acquired his Scottish resorts during a decade-long spending spree. Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie, who brought the UWO motion to Holyrood in February, said the decision represented a ‘step forward’ in an issue where Scotland’s reputation was ‘at stake.’ UWOs are rarely used civil powers which allow authorities to target suspected corrupt foreign officials who have potentially laundered stolen money through the UK” – The Scotsman.

AFP: “A British man suspected of spying for Russia in exchange for cash has been arrested in Germany, federal prosecutors said Wednesday, in a case expected to stoke tensions between Berlin and Moscow. The suspect identified only as David S., who worked until the time of his arrest as local staff at the British embassy, ‘on at least one occasion passed on documents he acquired as part of his professional activities to a representative of Russian intelligence’.”

“‘The accused received a cash payment in an unspecified amount in return,’ the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement. It said David S., who was taken into custody Tuesday in the eastern city of Potsdam on an arrest warrant issued on August 4, was believed to have been spying since November 2020 ‘at the latest’. His arrest was the result of a joint operation by German and British authorities. David S. is to appear later Wednesday before an investigating judge who will decide whether he will be remanded in custody.”

“Democrats pushed a $3.5 trillion framework for bolstering family services, health, and environment programs through the Senate early Wednesday, advancing President Joe Biden’s expansive vision for reshaping federal priorities just hours after handing him a companion triumph on a hefty infrastructure package. Lawmakers approved Democrats’ budget resolution on a party-line 50-49 vote, a crucial step for a president and party set on training the government’s fiscal might on assisting families, creating jobs and fighting climate change. Higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations would pay for much of it. Passage came despite an avalanche of Republican amendments intended to make their rivals pay a price in next year’s midterms.”

“House leaders announced their chamber will return from summer recess in two weeks to vote on the fiscal blueprint, which contemplates disbursing the $3.5 trillion over the next decade. Final congressional approval, which seems certain, would protect a subsequent bill actually enacting the outline’s detailed spending and tax changes from a Republican filibuster in the 50-50 Senate, delays that would otherwise kill it. Even so, passing that follow-up legislation will be dicey with party moderates wary of the massive $3.5 trillion price tag vying with progressives demanding aggressive action. The party controls the House with just three votes to spare, while the evenly divided Senate is theirs only due to Vice President Kamala Harris tie-breaking vote. Solid GOP opposition seems guaranteed” – AP.

1984 is a great fiction novel to read but it seems like it is becoming the reality we are currently living under more and more each day.

— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) August 11, 2021

Delta Airlines will not require its employees to be vaccinated against Coronavirus, CEO Ed Bastian told Fox 5 Good Day New York on Tuesday. So Delta is making it easier to fly Delta. The first occurrence of “Delta” in that sentence refers to “Delta Airlines”, the second being “Delta variant Coronavirus”, the implication being that by not requiring their flight crews to be inoculated against Coronavirus, Delta Airlines is facilitating the spread of Delta variant COVID-19 on its flights.

Adding a little wordplay to a headline about a dreary corporate bureaucratic decision, most likely made to prevent further losses among the company’s workforce, colors the news and makes it a little more “fun” than a staid “Delta CEO says no plans for vax requirement for employees”.

Now if we prepended that boring headline with “They don’t call it ‘Delta’ Airlines for nothing” and joined it with a colon, it’d be okay, but not really all that good though and would distinctly lack National Zero’s signature trollishness-bordering-on-outright-contempt for our readers. It’s actually kind of annoying to think of it. Worse, it’s the wrong kind of annoying.

We want to deliver the right kind of annoying. It’s our commitment to that distinct lack of quality that sets us apart from the other guys, the ones who are either sincere in their actual quality, or sincere in lying to you and themselves the shit content they churn out is quality.

Republican Florida state lawmaker and US House primary candidate Anthony Sabatini, a devout acolyte of the Orange Warlord, submitted a bill Monday to rename the Floridian portion of US Route 27, the longest of any federal highway in the state, “President Donald J. Trump Highway” and for the state Department of Transportation “to erect suitable markers designating” the highway which, while unspecified in design, would probably be as visually loud and obnoxious as possible.

This is Sabatini’s second major legislative attempt to please the Orange Pharaoh since launching his campaign for the US House, hoping to challenge Dem Stephanie Murphy in the 7th district and undoubtedly seeking to be showered with the God King’s golden, glorious endorsement in the GOP primary. The first was Sabatini’s bill calling for CyberNinjas-style investigation of Florida’s vote in the 2020 election (auditing urban counties only, of course), introduced in late July.

Should Sabatini succeed in his quest to make this legislation actually happen, gone would be the signage identifying Florida’s portion of US Route 27 as the “Claude Pepper Highway”, its namesake a long-time Florida Democratic congressman, then senator, then a congressman again over much of the 20th Century. Pepper notably filibustered an anti-lynching bill in 1937, so he’s not exactly the kind of Democrat you see Republicans eager to erase from history these days.

Sabatini himself is that kind of character, having on two different occasions been revealed to have worn blackface at Halloween parties in his wild partying days. He’s also bros with Matt Gaetz’s bro Joel Greenberg and endorsed MAGA terrorist Kyle Rittenhouse for Congress, so at this point Sabatini appears to be just running up the score over his rivals in the Trump endorsement contest.

A Reagan-appointed federal judge on Tuesday ruled that a number of highly restrictive Indiana abortion laws were unconstitutional, saying that they illegally forced women to go through unnecessary inconvenience to obtain medical services, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker, a senior judge in for the Southern District of Indiana, issued a permanent injunction against a state law banning telemedicine appointments for abortion patients.  She also ordered an immediate halt to a state ban on telemedicine appointments for abortion medications and second trimester abortions.

Barker also ordered an immediate halt to a state law that requires abortion providers tell patients that human life begins when the egg is fertilized and that fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks development; both statements are medically and ethically dubious.  The state of Indiana is expected to appeal the ruling to the Seventh Circuit Court.

“Sen. Rand Paul is fuming after YouTube censored the second one of his videos for violating community guidelines on COVID-19 and suspended him from posting more videos for a week. ‘They are now banning all my speech, including speech that is given on the Senate floor, which is protected constitutional,’ the Kentucky Republican senator told reporters on Tuesday.”

“‘YouTube now thinks they are smart enough and godly enough that they can oversee speech, even constitutionally protected speech.’ YouTube last week removed a video of an interview the Kentucky Republican senator did on Newsmax. Paul discussed his suspicions about the origins of the coronavirus, his feud with Anthony Fauci over what funding for research in China’s Wuhan lab came from the United States, and argued that most face coverings do not help stop the spread of the virus” – Washington Examiner.

The Texas House Republicuns done voted overwhemingly to send the law after them Demmacrat bastards who done absconded most unceremoniously from they job legislatin’ to break quorum. The final tally was 80-12. Theys considered to be armed an extremely dangerous, an orders are to turn them liberal sons of bitches into swiss cheese if they done put up any resistance to arrest.

North Korea is apparently having a temper tantrum as the United States and South Korea hold joint military exercises, and North Korean officials refuse to answer phone calls made on a special hotline between the two countries that share the peninsula, Reuters reports.

Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean Premier Kim Jong Un and the senior spokesperson for the regime, said the maneuvers were a sign of South Korea’s “perfidious behaviour” after North Korea agreed to reinitiate the hotline after cutting it off in 2020.  Jong said the exercises are an “act of self-destruction for which a dear price should be paid as they threaten the safety of our people and further imperil the situation on the Korean peninsula.”

The joint training session will continue next week as the US and South Korea undertake simulated exercises next week.

Politico: “Donald Trump asked the country’s top legal official in late December about a conspiratorial draft complaint aimed at overturning the 2020 election results, according to a previously unreported account of Trump’s phone call with former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen persuaded Trump the lawsuit wasn’t a good idea, he told Senate investigators last weekend, two sources familiar with his testimony said. The previously unreported details underscore how hard DOJ lawyers worked to shoot down the increasingly harebrained legal strategies that reached the president’s desk. Trump brought up the 54-page legal document in a phone call with Rosen in late December, weeks after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Why, the then-president wanted to know, wasn’t the Justice Department doing more about the election?”

“The complaint was being circulated by an outside group helmed by Kurt Olsen, an attorney who had represented Texas in its own failed suit challenging Trump’s loss earlier that month, and some of the president’s allies found its logic compelling. The complaint, modeled on the Texas suit, would have urged the Supreme Court to declare that the Electoral College votes from six key swing states lost by Trump ‘cannot be counted’ because of baseless allegations of fraud, and for the justices to order a ‘special election’ for president be held in those states.”

Bro, if you see this shit and you’re not like, fuckin stoked to the extreme then check your pulse. Getting totally wasted on this shit and shredding a half pipe without a helmet’s going to be fuckin awesome dude. Can’t wait. Like we don’t even need to put vodka in Dew anymore since it’s already gonna be in the fuckin can! Sick, right? Check out more EXTREME details at AdWeek, bro.

Former New York City Mayor and unpaid Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, apparently desperate for money, has now joined the pay-for-your-friends site Cameo, where he will talk to commoners who pay $199 for the privilege.

“Hi I’m Rudy Giuliani and I’m on Cameo. If there is an issue you want to discuss or a story you’d like to hear or share with me, or a greeting that I can bring to someone that would bring happiness to their day, I would be delighted to do it,” Giuliani says in his welcoming message. “It can be arranged, we can talk through the magic of Cameo.”

Facing billions of dollars in lawsuits and legal fees for spreading false information about the 2020 election and companies like Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, Giuliani has reportedly been pleading with alleged billionaire Donald Trump to pay for his legal fees.  Trump has been unresponsive.

Biden accuser Tara Reade reacts to Cuomo's resignation, calls for 'real investigation' into presidenthttps://t.co/FetGTVS4wn

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 10, 2021

“After a successful 2020-21 school year, Maclay School looks forward to returning to a more ‘normal’ environment for our faculty, staff, and students. Below is the update of safety protocols for summer and school opening in August. We will continue to monitor area numbers and local Department of Health officials and remain responsive to new data and information as it becomes available… As of August 8, the opt-out option for indoor masks has been temporarily paused. A face covering is required indoors. The opt-out options will be reinstated at a later date. Parents who wish to activate the opt-out option should email their appropriate Dean” says the Coronavirus info page of the Maclay School, a private and pretty expensive-looking K-12 in Tallahassee, Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis’s children reportedly attend.

We say reportedly because multiple sources on Twitter and elsewhere say his kids go there. We’re not interested in learning any more about them because they’re kids and they should be left the hell alone besides identifying their school for the purpose of reporting on their dad’s hypocrisy.

“Mike Lindell is legit upset that some people want to break for lunch in this ‘cyber symposium,’ yelling that he’s gonna stay up on stage for 3 days straight. ‘There’s no breaks!… You guys can go eat. That’s fine, but I ain’t eating! I’m staying up here for 72 hours’… Needless to say, Lindell walked off stage a few minutes later” reports The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona.

Reuters: “A Chinese court upheld on Tuesday a Canadian man’s death sentence for drug smuggling, prompting condemnation from Ottawa, a day before another court is due to rule on the case of a Canadian accused of spying. The court proceedings for the two Canadians come as lawyers in Canada representing the detained chief financial officer of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei make a final push to persuade a court there not to extradite her to the United States.”

“Robert Schellenberg was arrested in China in 2014 for suspected drug smuggling, convicted in 2018 and jailed for 15 years. The High Court in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning heard his appeal against the death sentence in May last year and confirmed the verdict on Tuesday. ‘Canada strongly condemns China’s decision to uphold the death penalty sentence,’ Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said in a statement. ‘We have repeatedly expressed to China our firm opposition to this cruel and inhumane punishment.'”

I agree with Governor Cuomo's decision to step down. It is the right thing to do and in the best interest of New Yorkers.

As someone who has served at all levels of government and is next in the line of succession, I am prepared to lead as New York State’s 57th Governor.

— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) August 10, 2021

The fifth (?) state Lieutenant Governor we’ve ever reported on here at National Zero only comes on our radar when she gets a promotion because her dirty old man boss has to quit. To Governor-replace Kathy Hochul (D-NY), first ever woman to lead the state: May the wind be at her back, and may the road rise to meet her. May the sounds of high approval ratings fill the halls of her home.

AP: “New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigns amid a barrage of sexual harassment allegations”