UPDATE 12:59 p.m. ET:  Okay, readers, this is a rare time when we have to completely refocus a story as new information came in.  CNN reports that one of the key points of the search warrant applied for by the Special Counsel’s office for Twitter was that the prosecutors “found reason to believe that the former President would ‘flee from prosecution,'” although it later said it “errantly included flight from prosecution as a predicate’ in its application,” noted in a footnote.  Prosecutors also “found that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump ‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates.”

Original story:  After Elon Musk made his $44 billion impulse buy, Twitter was fined $350,000 for failing to comply with a search warrant from Special Counsel Jack Smith to turn over information about Donald Trump’s Twitter account, Politico reports.

What additional information Smith may get from Twitter–other than the already-publicly available posts (including those he deleted) made by the indicted court-designated rapist–is unknown, but given rumors that Smith is investigating fundraising efforts based on a false claim of fighting election fraud, the posts soliciting donations would be key to a future probe.

Republicans’, um, dedication to governing leaves a lot to be desired.  From failing to reveal any relevant evidence justifying the multitude of hearings about impeaching Hunter Biden, to LB² Lauren Boebert being embarrassingly lying about missing a vote because she was too busy doing social media posts (but claiming she didn’t vote as a protest against overspending Socialist, Marxist, LGBTQ people or somesuch nonsense), to Ted Cruz’s famous vacation to Cancun when he abandoned his dog in a heat-less house during a winter power outage not to mention abandoning his constituents, Republican leadership is lacking.

But nothing is more embarrassing than calling a hearing in which you claim Constitution-rattling information about bribery of the President of the United States would be disclosed… but you don’t bother to show up.  And that’s where Republican House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer sits now.  Having skipped the hearing where Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer was supposed to blow the lid off the Biden Crime Family [Spoiler alert:  he didn’t], Comer is now in damage control mode.

According to the Daily Beast, Comer is now claiming he participated in the hearing via conference call.  It’s an unusual claim for the committee chairman, given that during the hearing he wasn’t heard making a single comment or asking a single question.  And it’s even more curious given that all the participants in the hearing–even members who participated via video calls–are listed on the hearing minutes; Comer is not listed as attending the July 31st closed-door hearing.

In a rare appearance in Florida, GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis returned to his gubernatorial job momentarily from his flailing White House campaign to announce he removed another elected Black district attorney for a bogus reason.  After DeSantis’s announcement, his subject takes to the mic to lambast the decision done to boost DeSantis’s cred among racist, misogynist right wingers who don’t believe the law applies to them–particularly when the law is enforced by a non-white, non-male prosecutor.

Having already removed Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren for, DeSantis claims, failing to protect the citizens of the county for refusing to waste county resources on prosecuting minor crimes, DeSantis now goes after Monique Worrell, the elected prosecutor for Florida’s 9th Circuit which encompasses Orange and Osceola Counties.

DeSantis originally cited the shooting of two Orange County police officers by a suspect who was out on bail as the justification for removing Worrell, citing complaints from local law enforcement officers–overwhelmingly white and male–who claim Worrell is responsible for releasing the criminal.  In fact, as in most of the United States, a judge set the defendant’s conditions of bail, not the prosecutor.

Even though the state Department of Education stated that it would authorize teaching the course in its entirety, eight of Florida’s eleven largest school districts have pulled AP Psychology from its course curriculum, leaving more than 28,000 students without a clear class plan days before the school year starts, the Washington Post reports.

Republican Florida Governor and the Ernst Röhm of the current conservative culture war Ron DeSantis demands Florida schools don’t teach subjects to students that make their straight, white, self-declared Christian parents feel uncomfortable, like slavery, gender studies, and literature.  According to the College Board, a vital part of the AP Psychology curriculum is a study of how sex and gender influence society and personal development; without that subject address, the College Board would not certify the AP course.

More than 560 schools in Florida taught the AP Psychology class, but because of DeSantis’s authoritative dicta, schools are dropping the class, for which students can save money by getting college credits.  Because of the DeSantis administration’s habit of changing policy talking points based on the political winds, school districts refuse to believe the state’s education officials about their consent to carry the course, fearful that the state’s top undersized autocrat will again change his direction in the future.  Schools are switching to seminar courses on psychology or other college-level course curricula, which may not provide the opportunity to gain college credit.

Super-senior Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinstein was hospitalized briefly after a “minor fall” in her San Francisco home, but she is currently recovering at home, CBS News reports.  “Senator Feinstein briefly went to the hospital yesterday afternoon as a precaution after a minor fall in her home. All of her scans were clear and she returned home,” her office said in a statement Wednesday.

The 90-year-old is under pressure to resign after a bout of shingles kept her from her duties in Washington for weeks earlier this year, and she’s been recorded receiving significant help and prompting from her staff as she conducted her official duties.

An in-depth review by Reuters finds that of 14 fatal political attacks committed since the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection identified as having a clear left-right partisan dimension to them, 13 of their perpetrators were right wingers. The one they identified as “Left wing” was Clark County, Nevada Public Administrator Robert Telles, which we’re not sure we agree with because is it really “politically motivated” if a public official stabs a journalist to death for exposing his corruption?

Anyway at least 33 people have been killed in politically-motivated MAGA scumbags in the last two-and-a-half years since the Capitol riot, 10 of them the Black victims of white supremacist shithead Payton Gendron in the May 2022 Tops Supermarket massacre in Buffalo, New York.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential campaign has hired a debate coach, ABC News reports on the saddest political news you will read all day. Seriously he hired a “coach” to prep him for the upcoming debate against a bunch of scrubs like Nimrata “Nikki” Haley and Doug Burgum after he already twice won the highest office in the nation’s fourth largest state. Jesus Christ lol.

In related news, the short little bastard has suspended another duly elected prosecutor, this time it’s Orange-Osceola State’s Attorney Monique Worrell, per the Orlando Sentinel’s Chris Cann. No details were available yet, but it’s probably over abortion or education or some culture war bullshit again.

After having ignored strategists’ advice and stupidly said the now-failed Issue 1 effort to make participatory democracy more difficult for Ohio voters was specifically about blocking the expansion of abortion rights in the state, GOP Secretary of State and declared US Senate candidate Frank LaRose omitted it from his statement on the crushing defeat of his flagship campaign initiative.

“I’m grateful that nearly 1.3 million Ohioans stood with us in this fight, but this is only one battle in a long war. Unfortunately, we were dramatically outspent by dark money billionaires from California to New York, and the giant ‘for sale’ sign still hangs on Ohio’s constitution. Ohioans will see the devastating impact of this vote soon enough. The radical activists that opposed Issue 1 are already planning amendments to shut parents out of a child’s life-altering medical procedure, force job killing wage mandates on small businesses, prevent law abiding citizens from protecting their families and remove critical protections for our first responders. I’ve said for months now that there’s an assault coming on our constitution, and that hasn’t changed. I’m just getting started in the fight to protect Ohio’s values,” said LaRose in the statement after Issue 1 went down in flames Tuesday night.

“This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution,” LaRose told reporters in June after GOP polling firm OnMessage had specifically told him not to do it.

If that first post didn’t really make sense (because of course it didn’t) the fat bastard later “clarified” with “The January 6th Unselect Committee got rid of EVERYTHING! Discarded, Deleted, Thrown Out. A Flagrant Violation of the law. They had so much to hide, and now that I have Subpoena Power, they didn’t want to get caught. They knew EXACTLY what they were doing. AN EGREGIOUS CRIMINAL ACT & BLATANT DISREGARD OF THE LAW! Can you imagine if I would have done such a thing???” …which we can actually imagine since he deleted the video footage from Mar-a-Lago sought by Jack Smith’s team in the investigation into the stolen classified documents.

Anyway it appears the fat bastard is not aware that the House January 6th Select Committee’s records are still public, so right off the bat he’s lying when he says they “got rid of EVERYTHING.” This shrieking apparently originated with insurrectionist MAGA Congressman Barry Loudermilk, who told Fox News “we don’t have anything much at all from the Blue Team,” when it came to preservation of raw data. Basically he’s just bitching that the Committee didn’t preserve video of transcribed interviews, which Chairman Bennie Thompson wrote “Consistent with guidance from the Office of the Clerk and other authorities, the Select Committee did not archive temporary committee records that were not elevated by the Committee’s actions, such as use in hearings or official publications, or those that did not further its investigative activities.” It’s all inside baseball shit that Trump, per usual, made no effort to try to understand before throwing a tantrum.

“‘The dog ate my homework.’ ‘I have to wash my hair.’ ‘I can’t go out, I’m sick.’ Since the dawn of time, people have made up excuses to avoid doing things they do not want to do. This is exactly what Giuliani has done here.  For months, Giuliani has made up excuses to get out of his discovery obligations. …To date, Giuliani has not produced a single non-public document responsive to the discovery requests Smartmatic issued 14 months ago.”

Frustrated with former lawyer, parody movie pervert and Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani’s ongoing delays in getting them subpoenaed information for their $2.7 billion suit against Fox, Rudy, and other propagators for the Big Lie, according to CNN.  As an example:  Smartmatic wanted all of Giuliani’s communications that mentioned the company; Giuliani claimed his phone fell in the water, so he was only able to turn over two tweets.

Finally fed up, Smartmatic wants a New York State judge to order the former hair dye model to turn over all discovery material by a specified date.  The company also wants Co-conspirator 1 to provide documentation on his claims of financial hardship, something that explains his listing his $5 million apartment for sale.

A December 6th, 2020 memo from Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro appears to be the grenade pin in a plan to blow up the results of the 2020 election by using slates of false electors from key states to disrupt the resolution of the Electoral College vote, outlining how, by having fake elector slates from six states submitted to Vice President Mike Pence, Trump supporters could cause chaos that would lead to Trump being reinstalled.

The plan lays out how the fake electors in the states must meet as planned on December 14th to sign their certifications.  Then, the plot demands that lawsuits be filed to be active on January 6th, covering each of the states individually, that would have even the slightest plausibility.  This, Chesebro wrote, would be enough to cause the Vice President to open all potential votes, sending the resolution of the competing slates back to the states, where Republican-controlled state legislatures would dutifully vote for Trump.

Yeah, the votes aren’t out there. True, the count has come a little closer, with “Yes” at 43.19 percent as of this printing to 56.81 for no. But that’s with 76 percent reporting and circa 700,000 votes outstanding. The absolute delta is at 307,469, meaning “Yes” would need to take at least 60 percent of the remainder to win. And this is how elections get called. Saying there are 7,000 precincts outstanding doesn’t mean shit when all the other ones have already said you lost by X amount.

The week after Special Counsel Jack Smith issued indictments of Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election, former Trump and Rudy Giuliani confidante Bernie Kerik was questioned by prosecutors about fundraising and financing operations related to the Save America PAC, the New York Times reports.

In a new path for the investigation, the Special Counsel’s office is looking into allegations that money raised specifically to assist efforts to audit, or overturn, the 2020 election results were then spent on other issues.  Kerik reportedly was asked if the team led by Giuliani, the lead effort to overturn state election results and reinstall Trump, had received any funding from the PAC; Kerik responded they had not.  The questions then need to be asked:  where’d all the money go, and was it fraudulently raised?

Just last week, Fox’s early primetime bro Jesse Watters was extolling how Donald Trump was going to use the government to exact revenge on his political opponents if he got reelected in 2024.  Watters hellscape included a series of “legal assaults” on Trump’s enemies.  And now, Jesse has prematurely decided the federal agencies Trump would use had already turned bad because… Hunter Biden.

“Here are the ten upheavals that the left has successfully undertaken.  Free expression, under assault.  Your life could be over for telling the truth.  Truth has been redefined as hate speech, and it could be career suicide for speaking your mind.  The weaponization of justice.  The Justice Department, the DA’s office and the FBI and of course, the CIA have become Democrat stormtroopers, legally annihilating any threat to the Democrat Party.”

Batshit insane failed 2022 gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is staffing up for an October launch of a campaign to take on likely Dem nominee Congressman Ruben Gallego and (maybe) useless “independent” incumbent Kyrsten Sinema if she ends up actually running, Axios reports.

The Ohio Issue 1 single ballot measure referendum, a Republican effort to sandbag a scheduled November ballot measure to decide to amend the state constitution to establish a right to abortion by increasing the threshold for one to pass, has been defeated, Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman projects. The final margin for no will likely be massive as the Columbus Dispatch has it at 70.33 percent no and 29.67 percent yes as of this printing. So really the Ohio Republicans wasted a shit ton of taxpayer money to hold an August referendum for the sole purpose of making participatory democracy more difficult, focused specifically on abortion rights, and failed miserably.

Defrocked attorney and characteristic Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani responded to an order by Federal District Judge Beryl Howell to explain how he’s going to defend himself in a defamation suit brought by Fulton County election workers Shae Moss and Ruby Freeman by basically saying, yeah, I said all those things and they were wrong and stuff, but it’s all protected free speech.  Rudy apparently missed the law school class on defamation.

Defendant Giuliani concedes, for purposes of this litigation only, that liability in this case on Plaintiffs’ causes of action should be treated as though there is default liability. Giuliani specifically preserves his arguments that the statements complained of are protected and non-actionable opinion for purposes of appeal.  Giuliani also does not waive his rights to require Plaintiffs to prove the amount of their alleged damages alleged caused by Giuliani’s conduct.

It was at 6:47 PM EDT on August 8th, 2022 that we picked up the first reporting of a federal law enforcement raid on disgraced former President Trump’s Floridian redoubt and damn, what a year it’s been in criminal accountability for the fat bastard, getting indicted not just for the crime the FBI were investigating that night, but two other ones as well. Plus stupid douchebag Dan Bongino’s been fired from Fox News too. Before that all we had were vague reports of “momentum” in criminal probes against Trump. This was the moment a year ago that shit got real.

Lawyers for Donald Trump filed his latest attempt to delay his trial on charges stemming from his attempt to undermine the Constitution and destroying the peaceful transfer of power:  Trump attempts to waive his right to a speedy trial under the aptly named “Speedy Trial Act.”

“Here, the sheer number of witnesses and volume of discovery alone warrants a continuance, to say nothing about the issues of first impression that the parties will inevitably have to brief,” the lawyers assert.  “For a case of this magnitude, it would be impossible for the defense to evaluate the government’s evidence, prepare its own defense, and participate in pretrial proceedings, all within the time constraints of the Speedy Trial Act. Accordingly, the ends of justice would be served by the exclusion of the 25-day period from the Speedy Trial Act calculation.”

Included in the motion is an initial response from Jack Smith’s office to the request:  “The Government’s position is that the ends of justice are best served by a speedy trial.”

Attempting to fill a slew of new positions made necessary by the skyrocketing number of threats to members of Congress–some made by other (cough, cough… Republican) members of Congress–the Capitol Police embarked on a hiring spree, Roll Call reports.

Positioning itself as the Congress’s version of the Secret Service, the agency says starting salaries for agents and investigators are set at $81-85,000, with experienced offices transferring in from other agencies or the military eligible for up to $132,000.  Capitol Police is responsible for the protection of members of Congress, both in Washington, DC and in their home districts.  Incidents such as the one at Washington Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal’s home, where an angry Trump supporter shot at her house.

There were 7,501 threats to members of Congress investigated by the Capitol Police in 2022, significantly lower than the 9,500+ from 2021, fueled by the right-wing hatred over Donald Trump failed coup attempt and the subsequent investigations.