“Former President Donald Trump faces various legal and political challenges, but few seem to have gotten him as agitated as a routine, expected, unsigned decision by the Supreme Court on Monday. Trump had already lost a bid to prevent Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. from acquiring his financial records via subpoena. The former president then sought a stay while he searched for other means to stall. As anticipated, the justices rejected the request. Trump then issued one of just a handful of public statements he’s issued since leaving office, blasting ‘the Continuing Political Persecution of President Donald J. Trump.’ His vehemence is part of a long-running pattern: Trump dislikes all investigations, but nothing rattles him like probes into his finances.”

“Reading Trump in the medium of the emailed statement, post–Twitter ban, remains disorienting. His statements maintain the vitriol of his tweets, but they have none of the concision, instead meandering through long lists of grievances. Nonetheless, the outlines of how Trump might try to frame his defense against legal investigations in the next stage of his career are starting to emerge. Trump makes four main claims: I’ve already been investigated, and I was found innocent; this is a fishing expedition by prosecutors; this is a politically motivated prosecution; and I got 75 million votes in the 2020 election. There’s a mix of the true, false, and irrelevant here worth teasing apart, but it’s the last claim – that the fact that so many people voted for him means he can’t be guilty of any crimes – that is most likely to endure, and most dangerous” – The Atlantic.

Fox News: “An American Airlines passenger jet traveling from Cincinnati to Phoenix encountered a UFO over northeastern New Mexico Sunday afternoon. The pilot on Flight 2292 radioed around 1:00 p.m. CST that the UFO was flying right on top of them, according to a radio transmission recorded by Steve Douglass on his blog, Deep Black Horizon. American Airlines verified to Fox News that the transmission is from flight 2292.’ Do you have any targets up here? We just had something go right over the top of us,’ the pilot said in the radio transmission. ‘I hate to say this but it looked like a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing moving really fast. It went right over the top of us.’ American Airlines confirmed that the radio transmission is authentic, but did not give any further comment on the possible alien encounter.”

“‘Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21,’ an American Airlines spokesperson told Fox News in a statement. ‘For any additional questions on this, we encourage you to reach out to the FBI.’ The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Flight 2292 was around 37,000 feet at the time of the sighting, and Albuquerque Center did not respond because local air traffic interfered, according to Douglass. The flight went on to land in Phoenix, Arizona. New Mexico is home to White Sands Missile Range, which is located in the southern part of the state and is described as the Department of Defense’s ‘largest, fully-instrumented, open air range.’ White Sands did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.”

“President Biden plans to call Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Wednesday, ahead of the public release of a potentially damning intelligence report about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a source briefed on the call told Axios. The call, if it happens as scheduled, will be Biden’s first conversation as president with the Saudi king. While they are likely to discuss a range of issues, the conversation will be colored by the imminent release of the explosive report expected to involve one of the monarch’s sons. The report, an unclassified document produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for expected release on Thursday, implies Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in Khashoggi’s murder and dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Bin Salman has denied involvement but accepted responsibility as the kingdom’s de facto leader” – Axios.

CBS News: “South Dakota House lawmakers on Tuesday began impeachment proceedings against the state’s attorney general, who is facing misdemeanor charges for striking and killing a man with his car and is already under pressure to resign. A bipartisan group of lawmakers filed a resolution in the House to impeach the state’s top law enforcement officer, Jason Ravnsborg, after he indicated he would not heed calls for his resignation. The Republican attorney general faces three misdemeanor charges but no felonies in the September death of 55-year-old Joseph Boever. Gov. Kristi Noem released videos of Ravnsborg’s two interviews with law enforcement late Tuesday. In the videos, investigators confront the attorney general with the gruesome details of the crash, at one point telling him, ‘His face was in your windshield, Jason, think about that.'”

“Ravnsborg appeared unsure of many details in the crash, but investigators told him Boever’s glasses had been found in the attorney general’s Ford Taurus and bone scrapings were found on the highway shoulder. As investigators described how his car swerved onto the shoulder and struck Boever, causing major damage to the car hood and windshield, Ravnsborg appears distressed. ‘I never saw him,’ he told the investigators. ‘I never saw him.’ CBS affiliate KELO-TV reports that during the first interview, Ravnsborg told investigators that he thought he may have hit a deer. ‘I’m thinking it’s a deer at this point, but I had, I did not see anything. I didn’t have a time to swerve or accelerate or decelerate or anything,’ Ravnsborg said. ‘I didn’t see anything.'”

“Dominion CEO John Poulos on Tuesday slammed MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for being ‘reckless’ in peddling disinformation and signaled that the defamation lawsuit like the one the company is waging against Lindell won’t be the last of its kind. During an interview on CNBC on Tuesday, Poulos took aim at the ‘reputational damage’ that Dominion has experienced as a result of Trump loyalists, such as Lindell, pushing the former president’s false claims of widespread election fraud, which include unfounded allegations of Dominion contributing to a ‘stolen’ election.”

“Poulos insisted that the $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Lindell is about getting the facts out. ‘The reputational damage alone has been devastating to us,’ Poulos said. ‘We are seeing untold damage unfolding every day with our customers and the effects that they are having with a lot of constituents who unfortunately watch these videos, and watch the repeated attacks and disinformation.’ Asked whether he intends to put MyPillow out of business, Poulos denied that’s the case and said that Dominion ‘strongly believes in’ free speech. After taking aim at Lindell for being ‘reckless’ in his ‘peddling of disinformation and the falsities,’ Poulos signaled that Dominion’s lawsuit against Lindell is ‘definitely not the last’ against figures who peddled Trump’s election fraud falsehoods. Pressed on whether Dominion has a lawsuit against Fox News in the works, Poulos replied: ‘We are not ruling anybody out'” – Talking Points Memo.

Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine: “Michael Anton has been confronted with a dilemma few writers have ever contemplated: how to handle catastrophic success. Anton’s 2016 essay, ‘The Flight 93 Election’, made a then-shocking case to the right-wing intelligentsia in favor of Donald Trump’s election. Anton chose the arresting metaphor of Flight 93, the hijacked plane from September 11, 2001, whose passengers stormed the cockpit in a desperate bid to stave off certain death. Electing Trump, he conceded, was risky (like seizing a plane from terrorists midair), but the alternative of electing Hillary Clinton posed certain political and demographic death.

“Trump won, of course. Anton got a job in the administration, and his millennialist perspective grew so influential that the Trump presidency culminated in a mob of thousands following Anton’s metaphor quite literally, storming the center of government power in a desperate bid to prevent a Democratic presidency. Either out of modesty, or perhaps the advice of a friendly lawyer, Anton does not take credit for inspiring the January 6 insurrection. Still, his new essay labors under the burden of success. He is arguing for a new strategy for the right in the wake of Trump’s presidency crashing and burning. His position is chilling: He urges Republicans to keep rushing the cabin, to make the Flight 93 ’emergency’ more or less a permanent condition.”

On a typical day, her work goes unnoticed.  During the February impeachment trial, however, her profile was heightened as she handed Senate President pro tem Patrick Leahy slips of paper with precise wording on them relating to obscure rules of the Senate.

But Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate Parliamentarian, will make one of the most important rulings of her tenure when she determines if the Democrats’ proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour falls within the scope of budget reconciliation process.

With an undergraduate degree in English literature from George Washington University, MacDonough is a veteran of Capitol Hill.  She started in Washington as the assistant librarian of the Senate in 1990, taking some time off to get her law degree from the University of Vermont before returning and rising through the ranks to take over as Senate Parliamentarian in 2012, appointed by then-Majority Leader Democrat Harry Reid.  She’s so respected, Mitch McConnell kept her in the position when Republicans took the Senate in 2015. 

I absolutely can not wait to hear President Trump’s speech at CPAC on Sunday!

For all of you traitor RINO’s prepare for a reckoning!

He is the leader of the Republican Party!! pic.twitter.com/CgMXiSj1L4

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) February 24, 2021

Former Florida Republican Congressman David Rivera has been fined $456,000 by the Federal Election Commission for a 2012 scheme in which his campaign financed the campaign of a primary challenger to his expected Democratic candidate in an effort to undermine his opponent’s chances, Politico reports.

Rivera directed about $55,000 to the coffers of Justin Lamar Sternad, a then-33 year old upstart Democrat running for his party’s nomination for the Florida 26th District Congressional seat.  The clear favorite for the Democratic nomination was Joe Garcia, a long-time member of the influential Florida Public Service Commission.

A one-term Congressman, Rivera boosted the campaign of Sternad, a hotel administrator with no political or public service experience, by directing cash through Sternad’s campaign manager, Ana Alliegro, to pay for expenditures such as postage for the Sternad campaign.  The Miami Herald ran an expose on irregularities into the Sternad campaign finances, prompting the FBI and the FEC to investigate.

Alliegro, who was charged in February 2012 with multiple counts, including campaign finance fraud.  After losing the primary, Sternad was charged with a variety of counts in February 2013.  Originally cooperating with the investigation, Alliegro jumped bail and fled.  She was found in Nicaragua working at a barber shop cutting hair in April 2013 and was subsequently extradited back to the US.

Daily Beast: “For months, some of Donald Trump’s top advisers have assured him that he has virtually nothing to fear from the Manhattan district attorney’s tax investigation, which they view as merely ‘fishing’ for information. But investigators with the D.A.’s office have been expanding their criminal probe into Trump’s business empire, asking questions and grilling witnesses – as recently as in the past few days – not only about Trump but particularly about his eldest son, Don Jr., and Allen Weisselberg, one of the former president’s most trusted officers, The Daily Beast has learned.”

“During his father’s administration, Trump Jr. became a chief MAGA spokesman and campaigner while simultaneously serving as the Trump Organization executive vice president, fronting the business with his brother, Eric Trump. According to his company bio, Trump Jr. is involved in ‘deal evaluation [and] analysis,’ as well as the leasing operation, among other functions. Trump Jr. has also overseen the organization’s international dealings, the growth of which were somewhat hampered due to his father’s ascension to the presidency.”

Thomas Webster, a Marine Corps veteran who worked for 20 years as a New York City police officer, has been arrested for his role in the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol during which he was caught on camera assaulting a police officer, NBC News reports.

Webster is seen in video and photographs beating a Capitol Police officer with a flag pole flying the flag of the US Marine Corps.  In a series of photos, Webster can be seen ripping a shield from an officer who had fallen to the ground, trying to take the helmet off the officer, and shoving his fingers under the mask and into the eyes of the officer.  In a video, he is heard yelling at officer, calling him a “commie motherfucker.”

Clad in a red, black and white jacket, Webster wore a bulletproof vest under his jacket to the Capitol attack, preparing for “armed conflict,” according to charging documents.

Slate: “The reckoning that Trump’s D.C. hotel faces in Joe Biden’s Washington isn’t just the result of the previous administration’s bungled response to a raging pandemic followed by an election loss and attempt to subvert democracy. And it’s not just because the broader hospitality industry is still struggling as Americans travel less during lockdown. After all, without any of those factors, Trump previously steered six hotels into bankruptcies.”

“The Trump Hotel D.C. also enjoys a business plan that befuddles industry experts, a $170 million mortgage that’s coming due, the scrutiny of continuing investigations, and a new landlord who – for a change – does not double as the hotel’s owner. While it’s unlikely the federal government will evict the Trump Organization, the ex-president’s company doesn’t seem happy to hang around either. It tried to unload its lease in 2019 and couldn’t find someone to meet its asking price. So like a boot left abandoned in the gooey muck of swamp bottom, the Trump International Hotel is sticking around D.C. It’s a fitting monument to the former president, his cult of personality, and the culture of graft that defined his Washington.”

A New York state grand jury declined to issue charges against the police officers who responded to a domestic disturbance call that resulted in them handcuffing and putting a hood over the head of Daniel Prude, a mentally disturbed Black man who died of asphyxiation.

As NPR reports, the grand jury did not find cause to charge the Rochester police officers involved in the March 2020 encounter, instigated when the family called police because they feared the 41-year-old Prude might harm himself.

Video of the encounter was published by the local newspaper in September 2020, prompting public demonstrations in Rochester and around the country as a continuation of the Black Lives Matter social movement from early summer. 

Ahmaud Arbery’s mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the three white men who chased her son through a Georgia neighborhood and shot him to death, claiming that he was a burglar and that they were defending neighborhood property, NPR reports.

The lawsuit, filed by Wanda Cooper, seeks in excess of one million dollars, naming father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael, and William “Roddie” Bryan, who saw Arbery jogging through the neighborhood and without evidence, accused him of robbing construction sites in the community.  They chased Arbery through the development, where the McMichaels cornered and shot Arbery, with Bryan recording the event on his phone.

The suit states that the trio, who are all white, conspired to deny Arbery his civil rights and liberties.  Cooper filed it on the first anniversary of her son’s death.

In a letter making its way around Capitol Hill, Florida GOP Senator Rick Scott, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, implored Republican Senators to set aside differences and not tear the Party apart.  Instead, Scott suggests in the letter obtained by Fox News, Republicans should concentrate the real threat to the Republic:  Democrats.

“The Republican Civil War is now cancelled,” Scott declared, saying that the media and Democrats are stoking animosity with the GOP ranks without recognizing the existential threat to the Party presented by Donald Trump and those that are calling for the removal of Republicans who voted to impeach or convict Trump.

“This does not need to be true, should not be true, and will not be true. Those fanning these flames, in both the media and our own ranks, desire a GOP civil war,” Scott declares.  “No, we don’t have time for that: The hour is late, the Democrats are planning to destroy our freedoms, and the threat in front of us is very real.”

Right wing conspiracy shithouse The Gateway Pundit published an article taking deep umbrage over President Joe Biden cracking a joke about Trump’s infamous April 2020 bleach-injection line during a virtual event with Black workers dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, characterizing the quip as a “cheap shot”, as if it were somehow unfair of Biden to mention it. And, oh yeah, Biden does Botox anyway, so he’s one to be talking about getting stuff injected.

Gateway writer Kristinn Taylor concludes the three-paragraph article with: “He was spitballing ideas at a press briefing last April and talked about the possibility of using light therapy or injecting disinfectant (he never said bleach) as a means of fighting the virus. The media and Democrats immediately twisted what Trump said and as seen above, nice guy Joe Biden is not too nice to lie about and smear President Trump to make himself look good.”

Noticeably absent is any defense consistent with Trump excuse at the time, that he was “being sarcastic” which makes it pretty obvious that the writer did not believe it or care enough to pretend to believe it, even though that was the best Trump and his fans could come up with at the time.

On his “Ruthless” podcast, Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo) vulgarly expressed his displeasure with the unknown neighbor who leaked his wife’s text message encouraging people to join them for a vacation in Cancun while Cruz’s Texas constituents struggled without power during a winter storm.

According to Raw Story, Cruz appears to believe that releasing the texts that exhibit how the US Senator abandoned his constituents while a major power failure left people without heat and water was a violation of some “neighbor code” that applies to him, because he’s a Senator and politician

“I will say, Heidi was pretty pissed at that,” Cruz said. “She was over at the neighbor’s house yesterday, sort of walking through that… We have a number of Republicans who are neighbors but we also have a lot of Democrats, folks on our streets who put up Beto signs, which I thought was a little rude.”

Not many people have Oval Office walk-in privileges. Happy to report that these two are on the list. pic.twitter.com/DRfr9hMsyW

— President Biden (@POTUS) February 23, 2021

Not only does Senator Josh Hawley (Bruh-MO) deny any responsibility for encouraging the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, he’s now claiming that they were not actually insurrectionists.

Asked if he was complicit in the attacks, Hawley replied, “That’s outrageous.”  Asked a follow up question about encouraging the “insurrectionists” with his first pump as he walked by, he responded, “Let me stop you right there.  You called them insurrectionists,” before explaining that they were actually peaceful demonstrating exercising their First Amendment rights (apparently, before turning into a rabid mob of domestic terrorists attacking the Capitol).

https://youtu.be/03NraFkVIv4