During a sidebar in court on Thursday, Law and Crime reporter Adam Klasfeld was able to catch Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina telling federal Judge Lewis Kaplan “I know you understand what I am dealing with,” after his insane and obese client told reporters in Ireland he was headed back to New York to “confront” rape accuser EJ Carroll before the expected end of the trial next week.

“Reporting on newsworthy leaked material is a cornerstone of journalism. For Fox to argue otherwise is absurd and further dispels any pretense that they’re a news operation. Perhaps if I tell them that the footage came from a combination of WikiLeaks and Hunter Biden’s laptop, it will alleviate their concerns,” says Media Matters For America President Angelo Carusone in a statement responding to Fox News’s lame and kind of pathetic cease and desist letter over their Tucker leaks series.

Side note: One of the tragedies of the clickbait age is that with the ubiquity of “X ABSOLUTELY DESTROYS Y OVER Z” bullshit headlines the actual snappy comebacks like this diamond get ignored by readers. We need not say that we strive to make sure National Zero is not the kind of site that churns out such “content” unless, well, X actually destroyed Y. We think this meets that standard.

In all the years of their Orange God Emperor’s scandals and bullshit, the one question that fanboys could never really gin up a consistently plausible-ish excuse for was “Well if XYZ isn’t true, then why is he complaining about it leaking to the media? If it was made up he’d just ignore it.” Worse, their struggle with it was never really truly appreciated enough by libs. This one’s a hot cattle brand you need to push down harder and deeper while the MAGA hatters writhe in agony.

The fat bastard also posted about an array of other grievances, including his obvious anguish over missing out on an invite to King Charles’s coronation (he was probably in Scotland and Ireland this week thinking he could sneak in), writing “CROOKED JOE BIDEN WILL NOT ATTEND THE KING CHARLES’ CORONATION. THE UNITED KINGDOM IS NOT HAPPY. BIDEN WANTS TO SLEEP!” Before that it was “Many people are saying, about me, ‘I ALONE CAN FIX IT.’ Thank you – You will be very happy!!!” which is just lol enough of this stupid “Many people are saying” shit.

Then Trump began admitting he had stolen classified documents, writing “The Special ‘Prosecutor’ is harassing and threatening my people over the Document’s Hoax, while NOTHING is being done with respect to Crooked Joe Biden’s MANY TIMES MORE Documents, especially those stored in CHINATOWN & Delaware. Another RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, style Witch Hunt. Under the Presidential Records Act, I have done everything right, except that I probably should not have returned documents until it was ALL settled. I had every right to have them, with the right, also, to Declassify…” and then “…ALSO, just as in the Mueller Scam case, you can’t have Obstruction of Justice if there is NO CRIME or, even more so, if they MAKE UP A CRIME!” which just no, it doesn’t work like that, at all and it doesn’t take a legal scholar to understand it.

“We write on behalf of FOX Corporation to clarify any misunderstandings Media Matters may have had regarding previously unaired footage that Media Matters has published in a series of articles headlined ‘FOXLEAKS.’ That unaired footage is FOX’s confidential intellectual property; FOX did not consent to its distribution or publication; and FOX does not consent to its further distribution or publication. This proprietary material was given to you without FOX’s authorization. FOX demands that Media Matters cease and desist from distribution, publication, and misuse of Fox’s misappropriated proprietary footage, which you are now on notice was unlawfully obtained. We reserve all rights and remedies,” writes Fox lawyer Chris Chiou in a letter to Media Matters for America after the string of embarrassing leaks about their former ratings darling Tucker Carlson.

Weird how they’re not going after them for the shit that’s already been published. You’d think that Fox would have a case for that and demand they pull that down rather than warn them against future reporting. Almost like the implied threat of successful action here is pretty empty and they’re instead simply saying that they’re going to pester the shit out of Media Matters.

Ghoulish recent divorcee Kellyanne Conway on Friday downplayed her role in hiding payments from corrupt far right activist Leonard Leo to other corrupt far right activist Ginni Thomas.

It was not very easy to find reactions to the Justice Department going 4 for 5 on seditious conspiracy charges against the leadership of the Proud Boys (5 for 5 on other conspiracy counts) on Thursday. Some sites just didn’t want to cover it – and understandably so, because it wasn’t the “winning” their audience demands. But we found enough to fill this out, and man are they butthurt:

“Tarrio said a long time ago he wasn’t even there… unlike FBI informant ray epps screaming for everyone to ‘go into the capitol’ when will he be convicted?! democrat radicals used to call Tarrio a white supremacist until they found out he is a Black Hispanic, morons that they are! I have about had it with joe biden justice and their kangaroo courts” – Top comment on the OAN story.

“And Ray Epps walks free” – Top comment on the Breitbart article.

“Hard to do a legal defense when the Judge prevents you from calling witnesses eh? Or revealing to the jury that the person who emailed the ‘plot’ around to people in the organization in the first place was working for the FBI?” – Top comment on the Daily Caller’s report.

Buried in the New York Times report about Justice Department special counsel having flipped an informant at Mar-a-Lago that we picked up on Thursday night was an interesting detail that the Times probably should’ve put in a separate article: Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed the Trump Organization for information about their ties to Saudi Prince Mohammed Bonesaw’s LIV Golf blood money laundering promotion, potentially opening up a fun and interesting new line of criminal liability for the Orange God Emperor amid his 2024 comeback attempt. Inspiring!

Still kowtowing to the MAGA 2020 election conspiracy bullshit, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on Thursday signed a bill banning county elections offices from accepting private donations to fund their operations, a priority for fanboys still butthurt that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg built out a system for awarding grants to help election officials deal with increased turnout and vote by mail amid the COVID-19 pandemic (aka “Zuckerbucks“), John Solomon’s lame website reports.

It’s still not clear what the fucking “legitimate” rationale is for this given that there’s not to our knowledge any similar bans on private individuals or entities donating things like uniforms to a public high school football team, land to use for parks, kegs of beer to volunteer fire departments, so on and so forth. If an elections office needs money to upgrade their computers or hire more people to count ballots and a state or local legislature isn’t giving them money for it, then they should be permitted to accept outside donations just like any other government entity.

“The private funding of election administration ultimately sows distrust in election outcomes,” said MAGA “election integrity” activist Jason Snead, as if he himself isn’t among those sowing such distrust and creating the permission structure for Republicans make it harder to accept outcomes.

Former mid-level Trump 2020 campaign staffer Thomas Lane, whose home was raided by the FBI last summer in connection to its investigation into the fake electors scam and was present when 11 MAGA scumbags signed fake Trump electoral votes for Arizona, is now working as staffer for the GOP majority on the House Administration Committee (which oversees elections), Politico reports.

Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee for Florida governor who came within a half-percentage point of saving the world from Ron DeSantis in 2018, was acquitted of a charge of lying to the FBI in a corruption investigation, but the jury hung on other charges related to alleged misuse of campaign funds, NBC News reports.

Prosecutors said they would refile charges against Gillum on charges he funneled campaign funds to his personal accounts through a false billing scheme with a campaign vendor:  The vendor would bill the campaign for non-existent costs, and then pay out that money to Gillum–in a scheme very similar to how Leonard Leo got Kellyanne Conway to cover-up payments to Ginni Thomas.

The Arizona Supreme Court sanctioned Kari Lake’s lawyers for making “false factual statements” to the court during their arguments to overturn the 2022 governor’s race based on their claims of fraud, NBC News reports.

Robert Brutinel, the chief justice of the court, also fined the team of lawyers $2,000, noting Lake and the legal team continued to pursue lawsuits even after the Supreme Court “concluded and expressly stated that the assertion [of election fraud] was unsupported.”

Lake continues to claim she’s actually the legitimate governor of Arizona, despite having lost the election, numerous recounts and an untold number of lawsuits.  Rumor has Lake as a contender for the 2024 Arizona Senate race, currently held by Kristen Sinema (I-Corporatist).

(Note:  do not adjust your audio.  It’s not being played back at 1.5x normal speed; that’s just how the Palin of the Rockies speaks.) “And y’know, during the President Trump, ah, investigations, ah, what did they find out?  They found out that he makes a lot of money, ah, he does a really good job at it, and can’t wait to see him back in the White House and, ah, just fixing all of this,” failing Colorado mother and Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert asserts.

Fixing what, exactly?  The 12 million jobs?  The improved foreign relations?  The lowering deficit?  And the only thing we found from Trump’s tax returns is that he doesn’t pay taxes; we found out through the courts that he’s incredibly corrupt.

Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr. will be nominated by President Joe Biden to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, the top military post in the United States, the New York Times reports.  Brown will face a Senate confirmation hearing before taking the post.

Currently the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Brown will succeed Mark A. Milley, whose four-year term ends in September.  With Brown’s appointment, the top two defense positions in the United States will occupied by Black men, with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin occupying the top civilian post.

The conservative dirt keeps uncovering more and more corruption.  The Washington Post reports Leonard Leo, a key figure in the Republican effort to pack courts with far-right activist judges, directed funds to Kellyanne Conway’s polling group in 2012 with instructions to pass the money along to Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice and model for future fictional corrupt judges Clarence Thomas.

Co-chair of the Federalist Society’s board of directors, Leo has an outsized role in which judges get nominated for which posts.  According to documents reviewed by the Post, Leo instructed Conway to bill a non-profit organization he ran for funds that would then be paid to Ginni Thomas to hide the source of the funds, specifically requesting “No mention of Ginni, of course” in communications to Conway, the one-time communications director in the Trump White House. Conway’s firm billed Leo’s Judicial Education Project for $25,000 that day; the invoice did not mention Ginni Thomas.

Setting aside the obvious ethical issues with this, using a non-profit to launder funds could lead to criminal or civil charges.  (See:  Trump Foundation.)  The day hasn’t been a good one for the Thomas household:  earlier Thursday, reports found Thomas’s sugar daddy, Harlon Crow, paid for the boarding school education of Thomas’s grandnephew/adoptive son while hiding the payments by making them directly to the school from his company, potentially to avoid tax issues–a crime for which the Trump Org’s CFO spent months in jail after his conviction.

Federal prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith have secured the cooperation of a confidential source who has worked for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago and who was a potential witness to Trump’s efforts to hide government documents after a court ordered them turned over to federal officials, the New York Times reports.

Sources say the newly-disclosed witness, whose name has not been released, provided prosecutors with photos of rooms where Trump reportedly hid government documents including classified material.  The witness provided information about the location of some of the material, allowing investigators to better track the location of the boxes at specific times.  The information might also contradict the testimony of Trump’s personal valet, Walt Nauta, whom prosecutors believe was less-than-honest in his testimony.

Former school administrator and one-time sneaker designer Ye, nee Kanye West, has fired white supremacist Nick Fuentes from his 2024 presidential campaign exploratory committee, TMZ reports.  To fill the position, Ye brought former Marjorie Taylor Greene intern, pedophilia advocate and conversion therapy alum Milo Yiannopoulos to be YE2024’s Director of Political Operations.

“Your services on Ye’s exploratory team are terminated … and will not be required for any possible future campaign,” Yiannopoulos said in an email to Fuentes.  Yiannopoulos also sent a simliar email to Ali Alexander, the rightwing dung beetle who was recently caught asking teenage boys for pic of their private parts.

Want to know why this day was shot and there hasn’t been a lot of articles here? Midjourney AI and its slot machine of “Oh the next try for Lauren Boebert standing with Stormtroopers will be perfect, I know it.” Seven fucking hours spent on this. Had Trump, Biden, and Harris with the first 20 minutes.

Putin didn’t take too long either. But Zelensky and Boebert? Actually Boebert was supposed to be Marjorie Taylor Greene. Midjourney doesn’t know what she looks like. Or was refusing to make her look real on purpose because it hates her so much. They don’t serve her kind there.

Anyway, happy Star Wars Day to all who celebrate and fuck you to everyone who’s going to write “I have never seen a Star Wars movie in my life” in the comments like that makes you unique or interesting. Go chat somewhere else until the next article. This one’s for the actual fans.

A new Navigator Research survey finds more Americans hold favorable views toward giant megacorporation the Walt Disney Company at 64 percent favorable, 31 percent unfavorable, than its nemesis, heels-wearing Florida Gov Ron DeSantis at 35 percent favorable, 46 percent unfavorable.

Fox News lawyers on Wednesday told Delaware Judge Eric Davis they settled with Dominion Voting Systems for $787 million in order to “buy peace” and stop the continuously damaging revelations while begging the judge to keep sealed the remaining evidence, ABC News reports.

“Fox agreed to settle this case to buy peace and bring an end to the media spectacle that the case had become,” wrote Fox News lawyer Katharine Mowery wrote in a letter to Davis.

Old Man Grassley also told Van Sustern he actually doesn’t even know what country the “foreign national” who supposedly bribed Biden is from. But you know, it’s still early in this scandal. They could really bring down the entire Biden Administration with this. It’s 100 percent within the realm of possibility that there’s a real smoking gun. Totally. We’re certain that it’s possible.