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.

Amid corporate layoffs, Tesla’s retiring Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn will retire with a golden parachute that includes $550 million in stock options after taking a relatively modest $300,000 annual salary, Bloomberg reports.  Having joined Tesla in 2010, Kirkhorn is just in his late 30’s and spent early parts of his career at McKinsey and Microsoft.

Ignoring Donald Trump’s lawyers’ attempt to further delay the various criminal proceedings against their client, Judge Tanya Chutkan set the hearing for Friday, August 11th at 10 a.m. ET to hear arguments about the protective order regarding Trump’s attempts to intimidate witnesses and court officers.

It’s quite likely posts like this one, made by Trump minutes before the judge’s order was issued, will be subject to the discussions.

Indicted felon Donald Trump’s Tuesday afternoon rally in New Hampshire, which had an estimated crowd in the triple digits, featured the expected litany of scenes:  Trump complaining about being indicted, Trump calling the indictments fake, Trump insulting the Fulton Co. DA by insinuating she had an affair with a defendant/gang member, Trump making a Christie fat joke.  Y’know, the normal stuff.

A 40-year-old college student with no political experience who heads a local chapter of College Republicans announced she’ll run for GOP nomination for the US Senate seat held by incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin, showing once again Republicans have no serious candidates or policy on which to run, NBC News reports.

Rejani Raveendran, a single mother of three who is the head of the College Republicans at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, will announce her candidacy Tuesday evening.  A 2011 migrant from India where she was a nurse and midwife, Raveendran became a US citizen in 2015.  She plans to graduate from college next year with a degree in political science, which she believes qualifies her for one of the 100 seats in the US Senate.

The man Donald Trump chose to lead the US Coast Guard covered up explosive details about decades’ worth of rape and abuse allegations at the service’s academy, attempting to hide from the public attacks and harassment endemic at the institution since at least the 1980s, CNN reports.

Karl Schultz took over as Commandant of the Coast Guard in April 2018 as the seven-year investigation was wrapping up.  Operation Fouled Anchor, as the probe was called, looked at dozens of rapes and sexual assaults that happened on the New London, Connecticut campus of the Coast Guard Academy, which typically accepts fewer than 400 cadets each year.

The report outlines the way Academy leadership downplayed sexual assaults at the institution, sometimes burying reports or refusing to investigate allegations of sexual assault, including leaving the accused on duty; many of the accused ended up accepting commissions into the Coast Guard.

In a new filing on the circus that is Donald Trump’s legal world, Jack Smith’s lawyers complied with Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order to set a day for a hearing by this Friday, August 11th, on the proposed protective order that would prevent Donald Trump from disclosing sensitive information he receives from prosecutors in the discovery process.  The government is prepared for a hearing scheduled in any of the next three days, before Chutkan’s deadline.  Trump’s lawyers, of course, aren’t professional enough to be prepared:

President Trump will not appear. However, he would like to have both his counsel John Lauro and Todd Blanche at the hearing. Todd Blanche is not available on Thursday, since he must appear for a court proceeding in the prosecution brought against the same defendant, President Trump, by the Special Counsel in SD Florida. Mr. Lauro is available on Thursday, with a preference for an aftenoon setting.  However, since we lost Friday as an option, we would respectfully request a setting on Monday (after 12:00 p.m.) or Tuesday (all day) to allow for both Mr. Blanche and Mr. Lauro to be present.

Five members of the white nationalist Patriot Front group in Washington state are suing an activist who infiltrated the group and then exposed its members, causing some of them to lose their jobs for their affiliation with the violence-loving domestic terrorist group, the Seattle Times reports.

David Alan Capito, 37, also known as Vyacheslav Arkhangelskiy and Vincent Washington, pretended to support the group’s xenophobic and hate-filled rhetoric, ultimately becoming a regular attendee at events.  Named the groups official photographer, he would take photos of the participants at group events, and he also surreptitiously photographed their vehicles, including their license plates.  He also worked with an unspecified group of activist hackers who, with Capito’s help, were able to access online chats of group members.

Washington residents Colton Brown, 33, the leader of the chapter; James Julius Johnson, 37; and his wife Amelia Johnson, 31, joined Paul Gancarz of Virginia, a one-time leader of the Washington chapter, and Daniel Turetchi of Pennsylvania in bringing the federal lawsuit against Capito. 

Given the widespread and general bigotry of Republican Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida, the plight of the Lake County (Florida) School Board should be expected:  do they placate the xenophobic glory-seeking presidential candidate by kowtowing to his policies of hate and discrimination, or do they demonstrate common sense to benefit the students in their care?

Turns out, Lake County is making one small step toward the latter, according to the Associated Press, reversing an earlier decision to remove the children’s book “And Tango Makes Three” from school shelves because the family of penguins written about in the children’s storybook has a factually-accurate depiction of two male penguins heading the family unit.

Reportedly one parent issued a complaint about the book, prompting school officials to remove it from the shelves at all schools.  “And Tango Makes Three” describes a scene that happens in the wild, where two same-sex penguins will form a partner unit to raise a chick, a situation that is completely intolerable to conservatives who don’t believe science supports homosexuality in nature; in fact, homosexual relationships as well as transgenderism are found throughout the animal kingdom.