At least seven people are dead and hundreds more have been injured after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake, the strongest since 1999, struck Taiwan on Wednesday, AFP reports.

“The earthquake is close to land and it’s shallow. It’s felt all over Taiwan and offshore islands,” said Taipei Central Weather Administration’s Seismology Center director Wu Chien-fu.

JESSE WATTERS: Biden's 'bloodbath' at the border is seeping into the swing state suburbs https://t.co/hTvZ2UoFyG

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 3, 2024

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s reply to Judge Aileen Cannon’s request for jury instructions starts with a strong rebuke of the judge’s order, stating the premise of the argument set forth is wrong:

The Court has issued an order (ECF No. 407) directing the parties to file preliminary proposed jury instructions and verdict forms for Counts 1-32 of the Superseding Indictment, with a specific requirement that the parties “engage with [two] competing scenarios and offer alternative draft text that assumes each scenario to be a correct formulation of the law to be issued to the jury.”  Both scenarios rest on an unstated and fundamentally flawed legal premise—namely, that the Presidential Records Act (“PRA”), and in particular its distinction between “personal” and “Presidential” records determines whether a former President is “[]authorized,” under the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), to possess highly classified documents and store them in an unsecure facility, despite contrary rules in Executive Order (“EO”) 13526, which governs the possession and storage of classified information.

Read More ▶ “Jack Smith tears into Judge Cannon’s request for jury instructions in Florida docs case: “That legal premise is wrong””

There’s a fun time here at National Zero when a new filing drops in one of the many legal cases in the Trump Universe.  The first late-night one tonight comes from Donald Trump’s lawyers, who submitted some ludicrous language for the jury instructions that would exclude Donald Trump from being guilty until and unless He Himself declares Him to be, because he is The Trump.   Here’s the fun part of what Trump’s lawyers claim: that under the Presidential Records Act, Trump gets to decide what’s a “personal record,” and thus what’s his:

Specifically, under Judicial Watch, backed by decades of practice by NARA under the PRA, and consistent with the history of former Presidents and government officials retaining classified records when they leave office, “an outgoing president’s decision to exclude what he/she considers to be personal records from presidential records transmitted to [NARA] constitutes a president’s categorization of those records as personal under the PRA.” ECF No. 407 at 2; see also 44 U.S.C. § 2203(f) (mandating that, “[d]during a President’s term of office,” “[t]he President shall remain exclusively responsible for custody, control, and access to … Presidential records”)” [Citation removed].

In a response to Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, gave more than $350 million–less than Donald Trump owes New York State–to local election administration during the pandemic in 2020, voters in Wisconsin supported a Republican-championed referendum to ban private money from election administration, the Washington Post reports.

The money, dubbed “Zuckerbucks” by paranoid conservatives, was targeted for equipment and technology to help ease voting processes for workers during the pandemic:  curbside drop boxes, mail-in voting costs, personal protective equipment for workers, and other unforeseen expenses.  In conservative conspiracy circles, however, the money was used to pay off election officials to change numbers to favor Joe Biden and Democrats, which they believe in their hearts but never found evidence to prove.

“Now over there at that hard-hitting news show, The View, Whoopi Goldberg is accusing you of having memory issues for believing that you were better off four years ago,” Trump advisor and proven liar (just read his texts!) Sean Hannity dogmatizes, forgetting that four years ago this week, the US passed 10,000 deaths due to the coronavirus, on its way to 1.2 million dead.

Republican Colorado Congresswoman and carpetbagging candidate Lauren Boebert underwent emergency surgery for a blood clot in her leg while campaigning in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional district, not the 4th, which she currently represents.  Per Kyle Clark of NBC 9 in Denver, Boebert was diagnosed with May-Thurner Syndrome, a manageable blood flow disorder.

A human in Texas tested positive for the bird flu after contact with a cattle herd, NPR reports, with the disease being diagnosed in herds across five states.  In addition to Texas, infected herds were identified in Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, and New Mexico.

The disease continues to take its toll on its namesake species.  A Texas egg processing plant for the nation’s largest egg distributor shut down on Tuesday after bird flu was found among the chickens, and a Michigan poultry processing plant was closed after birds tested positive, CBS News reports.

After the candidates wrapped up the nominations for their respective Parties, incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican multi-jurisdictional defendant Donald Trump will their Parties’ primaries in Connecticut (8 p.m. ET closing time), Rhode Island, (8 p.m.) New York (9 p.m.), and Wisconsin (9 p.m.).  There won’t be any surprises like a resurrected Dean Phillips overtaking Biden in Wisconsin, but the question of the night will be if the underlying anti-Trump sentiment in the GOP will continue through the later primaries.

Apparently, everyone who goes into business with Donald Trump thinks they’re the one who won’t end up getting screwed.  Donald Trump’s newly-public Trump Media & Technology Group is suing Truth Social co-founders Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky claiming the two former Apprentice contestants mismanaged the enterprise in its early days and therefore should have their shares revoked, NBC News reports.

With a history of putting incompetent people in charge of major projects–Trump put re-imaging the Veterans Administration, modernizing the entire federal government and negotiating peace in the Middle East into Jared Kushner’s portfolio–it shouldn’t be a surprise that two game show contestants couldn’t handle a major start-up operation for the game show host.

“This was a phenomenal opportunity for Moss and Litinsky,” the suit says, adding the pair were “riding President Trump’s coattails. … Without President Trump, Truth Social would have been impossible.”  While Truth Social currently exists, it’s far from a profitable enterprise:  it lost more than $50 million in 2023.

The fat orange bastard is tired and sundowning already as evidenced by his earlier stop in Michigan, so it’s likely we’ll see some good damage control for his campaign after this one.

The American intelligence warnings to the Kremlin in the lead-up to the deadly ISIS attack on the Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow weren’t just like “Oh they might strike somewhere crowded” but very specifically mentioned the Crocus City Hall as a potential target, the Washington Post reports.

Maybe what you should recall here is not that Putin ignored the warning or that the thanks for providing the heads up to a hostile regime was more conspiracy bullshit, but that Marco Rubio tried to fucking blame Biden for it. How is it Biden’s fault if Russia ignored the warning?

“Dear Justice Merchan: We respectfully submit this pre-motion letter seeking leave to file a motion for recusal, pursuant to Judiciary Law § 14 and Canons 2 and 3, based on changed circumstances and newly discovered evidence. In August 2023, the Court reasoned that recusal was not warranted because President Trump had presented only ‘speculative and hypothetical scenarios.'”

“The scenarios identified by the defense have come to pass. President Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president in the 2024 election. Your Honor’s daughter is an executive and partner at Authentic Campaigns, Inc. As recently as February and March 2024, Authentic has used social media to market its connections to President Biden and Vice President Harris while deriding President Trump. Authentic and Your Honor’s daughter are making money by supporting the creation and dissemination of campaign advocacy for President Trump’s opponent, political rivals, and the Democrat party. It can no longer be ignored that Authentic’s commercial interests are benefitted by developments in this case that harm President Trump’s penal interests and divert his efforts from running his leading campaign for the presidency by requiring him to prepare and sit for trial during the general election. The trial in this case will benefit Authentic financially by providing its clients more fodder for fundraising, Authentic will make more money by assisting with those communications, and Your Honor’s daughter will continue to earn money from these developments by virtue of her senior role at Authentic. The ethics opinion relied on by the Court to deny the prior recusal motion emphasized that ‘[w]e see nothing in the inquiry to suggest that the outcome of the case could have any effect on the judge’s relative, the relative’s business, or any of their interests.'”

House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer and spandex-wearing grapple-freak Jim Jordan on Tuesday sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland claiming they “learned from Special Counsel David Weiss’s filing that the Justice Department is apparently investigating Internal Revenue Service (‘IRS’) Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joseph Ziegler for their protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress related to the Department’s handling of the Hunter Biden investigation. Hunter Biden and his lawyers have waged an aggressive intimidation campaign against Mr Shapley and Mr Ziegler, slandering them with false allegations and demanding that the Justice Department investigate them for making protected disclosures to Congress…”

“…Litigation counsel Mark Daly and two Assistant US Attorneys demanding that the whistleblowers be investigated. Hunter Biden’s current attorney, Abbe Lowell, sent a similar letter to Special Counsel Weiss on August 14, 2023, again falsely claiming that Mr Shapley and Mr Ziegler acted illegally in disclosing information to Congress and demanding that they be investigated. The Department appears to have been receptive to the intimidation campaign of Hunter Biden’s lawyers.”

“On March 11, 2024, Special Counsel Weiss applied for an order to seal the Department’s unredacted brief opposing Hunter Biden’s motion to dismiss the charges against him on the grounds that it ‘relates to a potential ongoing investigation(s)…’ The redacted portion of the Department’s brief is in a paragraph about guidance from the IRS on whistleblowing options distributed to IRS employees, ‘including Shapley and Ziegler,’ suggesting that the whistleblowers may be subjects of the purported ongoing investigation. Given that the whistleblowers’ disclosures were lawful, if they are under investigation for their protected disclosures to Congress, the Committees are concerned that such an investigation is an attempt to seek retribution against these two brave whistleblowers.”

TLDR: They’re screaming “STOP PROSECUTING OUR WITNESSES FOR BREAKING THE LAW!”

“This memorandum outlines the Biden-Harris Administration’s policy to establish time standards at and around celestial bodies other than Earth to advance the National Cislunar S&T Strategy. OSTP directs federal departments and agencies to align their planning and policies with this memorandum.

“The approach to establish time standards consists of the definition, development, and implementation of a distinct reference time at each celestial body and its surrounding space environment. Each new time standard developed will include the following features:

1. Traceability to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC); 2. Accuracy sufficient to support precision navigation and science; 3. Resilience to loss of contact with Earth; and 4. Scalability to space environments beyond the Earth-Moon system Federal agencies will develop celestial time standardization with an initial focus on the lunar surface and missions operating in Cislunar space, with sufficient traceability to support missions to other celestial bodies. NASA will, in coordination with the Departments of Commerce, Defense, State, and Transportation, provide a finalized strategy to the Executive Office of the President to implement lunar timing standardization no later than December 31, 2026,” says a memo from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Not sure what happened here and why Trump’s handlers didn’t want him on camera while he’s talking to ostensibly loyal MAGA sheriffs in Michigan. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that what was billed as a border bloodbath something had the fat bastard rambling about how he saw electric cars dead all over the roads when it was 40 degrees below zero in Iowa in January.

“Any person who collects human blood donations for the purpose of providing blood for human blood transfusion shall require blood donors to disclose whether the blood donor has received a COVID-19 vaccine or a messenger ribonucleic acid vaccine during the donor’s lifetime,” says the text of Louisiana House Bill 822 as introduced by Republican state House member Peter Egan.

Continued: “An individual or entity that collects blood from a donor who received a COVID-19 vaccine or messenger ribonucleic acid vaccine shall record the vaccine status of the donor on the receptacle containing the donated blood. In a nonemergency situation, as determined by a licensed healthcare professional, a person receiving a blood transfusion has the right to request blood based on whether the blood originated from a person who has received a COVID-19 vaccine or a messenger ribonucleic acid vaccine, if the requested blood is available.”

MAGA lawyer John Eastman’s license status with the State Bar of California has been officially updated to “Not Eligible to Practice Law” as of Tuesday as a result of last week’s finding of a court misconduct proceeding over his involvement in fat former President Trump’s failed post-2020 election coup attempt, a status we’re calling “un-barred” for now because it will take the very certain failure of his appeal with the state Supreme Court to make it officially “disbarred.”

Hilariously the status page also says “CONSUMER ALERT: This attorney has been charged with a felony. The felony matter is pending in the State of Georgia, Fulton County Superior Court (Case No 23SC188947). For more information, contact the court in the jurisdiction where the case is pending. The State Bar posts consumer alerts online when lawyers are charged in a criminal court with a felony or felonies. Anyone who believes they have been the victim of attorney misconduct is urged to file a complaint with the State Bar,” but that’s probably been there since August.

Licking County, Ohio officials have warned all Lickers to be safe as a major storm licks the region Tuesday, with Licking Commissioner Tim Bubb warning that local rivers “are close to running full” and the Licking Highway Department updating a list of road closures, the Newark Advocate reports.

Bubb did not tell Lickers to remain at home or “Lick your ass goodbye” if caught in a flash flood, because that would be gross. We also made up the part about “Lickers” being a demonym.

Are you ready for a "bovine bird flu" fear p**n news cycle? pic.twitter.com/RFFI47jStS

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) April 1, 2024