Someone who didn’t understand Jack Smith is under 24-hour armed protection attempted to “swat” the Special Counsel on Christmas Day, NBC News reports, calling 9-1-1 claiming a man had shot and killed his wife and children at Smith’s home address.  Montgomery County, Maryland police were dispatched to the house, but US Marshals informed the police department that the call was a fraud.

Trump says he hopes the economy crashes so he can blame President Biden: I hope it crashes during these next 12 months pic.twitter.com/xn6NjNoMbA

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 9, 2024

Trump minion Mike Roman, the asshole who coordinated the fake 2020 electors scam and one of the Orange God Emperor’s remaining co-defendants in the Fulton County, Georgia RICO case, filed a motion Monday in court accusing District Attorney Fani Willis of improperly hiring a prosecutor to the case – Nathan Wade, a man she’s allegedly been romantically involved with – and that vacations they supposedly took together could’ve amounted to a kickback since Willis’s office has paid Wade $654,000 since his November 2021 appointment, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

MSNBC host and legal analyst Katie Phang points out that “Notably, this filing was NOT DONE UNDER OATH by Michael Roman, under penalties of perjury,” which says a lot about how confident he is in the accusations. If that didn’t already make him a fucking weasely little shit, recall that Roman also reportedly entered into a cooperation agreement with Jack Smith’s team in DC last June, meaning he’s helping one major prosecution effort while actively trying to undermine another.

It’s not a good sign when the CEO of your private space exploration company announces the mission to land on the Moon will be replaced with an as-yet undefined exploratory mission to the Moon mere minutes after your craft has taken flight.  But as CNN reports, that’s what happened with Astrobotic’s Peregrine mission, launched early Monday morning:  first, a battery charging issue jeopardized communication with the craft, then flight engineers found a massive loss of propellant that makes a controlled landing of the craft now impossible.

The latest announcement from the company says the mission crew is now attempting to use the remaining lifespan of the craft to “perform as many payload and spacecraft operations as possible.”  One potential plan is to place the craft in orbit transmitting data back until it runs out of power instead of attempting any type of landing.

After the FAA grounded more than 171 Boeing 737 Max 9s like the one involved in the fuselage blowout over Oregon, United Airlines reported finding loose bolts in some of its aircraft with exit door plugs, Politico reports.  Inspections found loose fasteners “that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug” and “needed additional tightening,” which is not what you want to read as you’re flying 35,000 feet above the ground.

This stupid hick is insufferable. First off, Hunter didn’t not “disavow” the subpoena you sent him, he “disregarded” it. Second, like we wrote before, any charging decision for contempt of Congress on Hunter Biden might just kick over to special counsel David Weiss immediately, making this question moot, but just the fact that he thinks that Garland only targeted Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro is bullshit too because Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino also got referred to the Justice Department on contempt for defying subpoenas and those charges never happened.

Finally, it’s also quite possible that the subpoena was never legally enforceable at all because it was issued before the House authorized the inquiry. So really Garland or Weiss could just fuck off on prosecuting Hunter for contempt and tell Comer and his buddies they have to start all over.

Alcoholic shitbrain Rudy Giuliani’s lawyers on Monday filed a motion requesting Fulton County, Georgia Judge Scott McAfee to compel now-flipped co-defendants Sidney “Kraken” Powell, Jenna Ellis, Kenny Chesebro, and Scott Hall to sit for interviews to, uh, we guess help Captain 9/11’s defense by giving them a heads-up on what they plan on testifying about during the trial, lol.

To be fair Rudy’s lawyers cite case law like “OCGA § 17-16-6 authorizes the Court to order the State to permit the discovery or inspection and the interview of witnesses. The purpose of the disclosure of witnesses prior to trial is to ‘prevent a defendant from being surprised at trial by a witness that the defendant has not had an opportunity to interview,'” which sounds reasonable-ish enough but who the hell knows with this crazy asshole and the crackerjacks he’s getting at a budget rate.

In related news Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis also moved to depose Susan Holmes, a would-be real Trump 2020 elector who dropped out of the fake slate because “she knew that Defendant Donald Trump did not win the presidential election in Georgia” and she “has testimony regarding the recruitment of individuals to attend the December 14 meeting that other witnesses do not have, and that no other witnesses can testify to.” Guess Trump’s going to have to intimidate her too.

Monday’s batch of documents unsealed from the case brought by Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre in 2015 reveal another alleged trafficking victim’s emails to a friend claiming that disgraced former President Trump, sort-of disgraced former President Bill Clinton, definitely disgraced British Prince Andrew, and billionaire publicity stunt expert Richard Branson had been recorded on video having sex with a woman in the dead pimp Epstein’s Manhattan lair, the New York Post reports.

“She confided in me about her casual ‘friendship’ with Donald. Mr Trump definitely seemed to have a thing for her and she told me how he kept going on about how he liked her ‘pert nipples,'” the accuser, Sarah Ransome, wrote in the email to the unspecified recipient, adding I also know she had sexual relations with Trump at Jeffery’s NY mansion on regular occasions.” Lol at the “pert nipples”

The Post’s article goes on to say, verbatim, “Ransome walked back the salacious allegations in an Oct 23, 2016 email with a Post columnist, writing, ‘I would like to retract everything I have said to you and walk away from this,’ according to the filing. She added that ‘only bad things’ and ‘pain for my family’ would come from going public,” meaning they wanted the clicks with the headline for something that has already been “debunked” without mentioning that this was literally the same fucking week that Trump was scrambling to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal with just days to go before his first election on the off chance that someone might just connect those dots.

Anyway at no point is it alleged that this “woman” was underage, but the “pert nipples” sounds almost too specific a detail to be made up, so yeah based on that and the timing of Ransome’s “retraction” we’re going to just kind of operate under the assumption that this Trump sex tape story is true until proven otherwise. Deal with it, fanboys. At least Bill Clinton is implicated too.

Missouri Secretary of State and gubernatorial primary candidate Jay Ashcroft got absolutely worked Monday by CNN’s Boris Sanchez, unable to answer the simplest of questions about his cockamamie bullshit plan to remove Joe Biden from the ballot in his state in the 2024 election.

The Florida Republican Party executive committee on Monday officially removed horny Chairman Christian Ziegler in a lopsided vote, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports.

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday made it quite clear he was in no hurry to help Speaker Mike Johnson plug holes in his extremely thin GOP majority, with Newsom announcing Monday the special election to fill the seat vacated by loser former Speaker Kevin McCarthy would have its initial jungle primary round on March 19th with a runoff set for May 21st, Politico reports.

The catch is that the March 19th primary is taking place after the March 5th Super Tuesday primary for the 2024 general election and the full two-year term in the 119th Congress, which Newsom decided to split it up to avoid confusion on the 5th. The district is pretty safe red and Politico’s reporting doesn’t mention any Democrats running. CNN’s Manu Raju’s tweet about the special didn’t either and seemed sound even more certain that the vacancy would stretch to May.

So if you’re rooting against making Mike Johnson’s life easier then you’re rooting for two Republicans to both pull 35-ish percent on March 5th and then on the 19th to force the top-two runoff in May. If a Dem comes in second on the 5th or one of the Republicans wins a majority then the whole GOP field’s going to consolidate and the seat will be filled two months earlier.

A DC law enforcement source confirmed to NBC News on Monday that federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, the jurist assigned to disgraced former President Trump’s upcoming trial on charges brought over his failed post-2020 election coup attempt, was the intended target of a swatting call on Sunday night, but “was not injured and that there was no one in her home,” meaning the MAGA terrorist who placed the fake call failed to get the judge killed by a tactical police squad.

The wave of swattings of public figures had for the last few months seemed mostly targeted at figures on the right, however just over the past week or two several of note have been aimed at those associated with the left such as Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, venerated guardian of global democracy George Soros, Dem Congressman Eric Swalwell, and possibly one or more justices on the Colorado state Supreme Court. Yet for all this we have no reports of arrests for any of the perpetrators, which raises the question of whether it’s more than just asshole trolls with burner phones and/or VPNs but a state actor trying to stir shit on both sides.

President Joe Biden will speak Monday at the historic Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina – site of the horrific 2015 racist massacre in which incel MAGA terrorist Dylann Roof killed nine parishioners attending a prayer group meeting – to denounce such hatred wrought by his rival, disgraced former President Trump, and the genocidal fascist movement he commands.

With Monday’s announcement from Indiana Republican Congressman Larry Buchson that he’s had enough of this shit and won’t be running again in November, the scorecard of retirements from the House in the 118th Congress currently stands at 11 Republicans to 10 Democrats, per the running count on Ballotpedia that hasn’t been updated to add Buchson yet. This also doesn’t include the “retirement” of George Santos, the fuck-off of Kevin McCarthy, or the still-pending resignations of Republican Ohio Congressman Bill Johnson later this month or New York Dem Brian Higgins.

Like we wrote last month, there’s no lopsided edge for one party of another like Dems had with waves of Republican retirements ahead of the 2018 and 2020 elections though there may be some more coming as obviously not all primary registration deadlines have passed yet. But overall the situation seems closer to 2022 when exits were relatively few and more or less even between the parties. We still owe readers a little bit of a deeper dive into how many members are leaving for reasonably winnable races in the Senate (like Adam Schiff) versus how many have no chance and are just fucking off (like West Virginian Alex Mooney in a dead-end Senate GOP primary run).

Fat former President Trump’s lawyers on Monday filed a slew of motions seeking the RICO charges against him in Fulton County, Georgia dismissed on the same grounds he’s been trying in DC, including the stupid “presidential immunity” argument that will come before the federal appeals court this week, “double jeopardy” as if he was impeached on fucking Georgia RICO statute charges, claiming the DA didn’t send him all the evidence in discovery, and some shit about “due process.”

It’s not clear at this point how much federal appellate defeats in the DC case would end up mooting some these same arguments in Georgia. We would have to think the immunity at least would be DOA in a Georgia state appellate court if and when the DC Circuit rules against him and the US Supreme Court spikes certiorari, but we don’t know how fast the turnaround could be on that. What isn’t in doubt is Trump’s timing: This Monday is the final deadline for all pretrial filings in Fulton so of course the fat bastard backloads them in order to slow down proceedings as much as possible.

“On December 13, 2023, Robert Hunter Biden failed to comply with deposition subpoenas issued by the Committees on Oversight and Accountability and the Judiciary for testimony relevant to the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry and the Committees’ oversight investigations. Instead, Mr Biden opted to read a short, prepared statement in front of the Capitol.”

“Accordingly, Mr Biden has violated federal law, and must be held in contempt of Congress. Mr Biden’s testimony is a critical component of the impeachment inquiry into, among other things, whether Joseph R Biden, Jr, as Vice President and/or President: (1) took any official action or effected any change in government policy because of money or other things of value provided to himself or his family; (2) abused his office of public trust by providing foreign interests with access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him; or (3) abused his office of public trust by knowingly participating in a scheme to enrich himself or his family by giving foreign interests the impression that they would receive access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him,” says the intro to House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer’s resolution for Hunter Biden to be held in contempt for skipping their deposition, expected to come up for a vote this week.

Before you say it’s up to Merrick Garland on whether or not to actually prosecute Hunter for contempt, keep in mind that Special Counsel David Weiss is still on the job, and he might have dibs on whether or not to hit Hunter with the contempt charge on top of the other indictments.

The Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 that lost an exit door plug section from its fuselage after taking off from Portland on Friday had at triggered a cabin depressurization warning in the cockpit on at least three previous flights, the BBC reports.  The warnings were significantly concerning the airline ordered the plane to be scheduled off transoceanic flights.

The good news for Alaska Airlines: the door plug section was found in the backyard of a Portland teacher, and the airline can return at least one of the passenger’s cell phones after it was found by a pedestrian after it fell 16,000 feet from the plane.

While it’s obviously no surprise that it would be fucking freezing during January in the Upper Midwest it may be worth asking what, if anything, the current Accuweather forecast calling for a daytime high of 3° F and then a nighttime low of -5° F (“Real feel” -14°) for Des Moines could mean for turnout in the Iowa Republican caucuses and fat former President Trump’s prohibitive lead.

On one hand of course people there are probably used to this shit, on the other you can contrast with a snowy but far more tolerable low of 32 this Monday, and historical weather data showing a nighttime low of 33 and dry during the February 1, 2016 GOP caucus and a similarly snowless 32 for the 2020 Dem caucus, with turnout in those contests at 186,743 and 176,400, respectively.

Maybe some politics writer who knows the byzantine vagaries of Iowa nominating contests will take a look and and come up with some insanely detailed analysis of what the extreme cold could mean for turnout at some point over the next few days. We can’t speak to any of that, but since we’re already bringing it up we might as well offer the dumb, simplistic take that it maybe could hurt Trump since fans of Nimrata and Tiny D would tend to be more educated and thus concentrated in places with shorter driving distances to their caucus precinct. Equally plausible, at least from our distance, is that old trope about how Trump fans “would crawl through broken glass to vote for him again,” while the others are already deep in the hole against the Orange Messiah and have virtually no chance, so why should Haley or DeSantis fans even bother freezing their asses off to go vote.

Who the hell knows. Considering some Iowan Evangelical just told the AP that Donald “exemplified what Jesus would do” and thinks Democrats are doing to Trump “the same thing they did to Jesus on the cross. I can see a lot of correlation there,” it’s probably going to end up being the latter.

If and when Trump crushes it but overall turnout is significantly lower than past contests it could still prove a fun talking point for Dems to needle the fanboys with. Let them be the ones screaming to explain that it was -5° as if they wouldn’t be doing the same if the shoe was on the other foot.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will pour at least seven figures into building out a ground infrastructure to help defend Senators Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio in their must-win Red State races, Politico reports on a tall order for DSCC chair Gary Peters.

The amounts haven’t been nailed down yet, but Peters, the Michigan Dem Senator, told
Politico in a statement that he’s aiming to create “investments in sustained, effective grassroots organizing will lay the groundwork for our campaigns to win tough races.” The DSCC are also looking to make smaller pushes to see if there’s any shot at taking down detestable and unpopular GOP incumbents Ted Cruz in Texas and Rick Scott in Florida though those may be an even taller order.

DC federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, the jurist assigned to disgraced former President Trump’s upcoming trial on charges brought over his failed post-2020 election coup attempt, may have been targeted in a swatting attack as police on Sunday night responded to a call claiming shots fired at a home that property records in by the judge but found nothing, Lawfare’s Anna Bower reports.

While the headline seems definitive all we have to go off of is Bower’s reporting as she says that she listened to audio from the dispatch. She’s very much a reliable narrator and we trust she’s relaying this accurately. That said, we do hope that it was definitely indeed a swatting call. Not because we’re sick assholes who want the judge – who’s been pretty tough on Trump and his minions these last few years – to be targeted, but because if there were actually shots fired at her home and somehow cops missed real evidence of it then the situation would be considerably worse.