The Conversation -- May 6, 2024

Marie: In case you're feeling sorry for Hope Hicks because those mean prosecutors drove her to tears when thet forced her to testify against her Dear Ole Boss, remember that her Dear Ole Boss was Donald Trump and that Hicks conspired with him time and again to mislead the public, as this WashPo story demonstrates in regard to some of Trump's scandalous past. Hope Hicks knew what Donald Trump was and she aided & abetted him anyway.

Into the Weeds We Go. David Nakamura of the Washington Post: “An obscure New York state election law that has rarely been prosecuted over five decades has been dusted off by Manhattan prosecutors and elevated to a prominent role in Donald Trump’s criminal trial over allegedly falsifying documents related to a hush money payment during the 2016 election campaign. The law — Section 17-152 of the state’s election code — makes it a misdemeanor for two or more people to 'conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.' Trump is not being charged under that statute, which apparently has been used only a few times in cases related to state or local elections, though it is a key factor in his case.... In bringing the felony charges, prosecutors are required to prove not just that Trump doctored records, but that he did so to commit or conceal another crime.... '... The entire case is predicated on the idea that there was a conspiracy to influence the election in 2016, [prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan during Trump’s trial on April 23.... Prosecutors do] not have to prove Trump violated the statute but merely demonstrate that he was falsifying internal Trump Organization records as part of a broader scheme to improperly influence the 2016 election.”

** Gaby Del Valle of the New York Times profiles Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) (Also linked yesterday.) 

Brett Samuels of the Hill: “The White House on Sunday slammed former President Trump after he compared the Biden administration to the Gestapo police force in Nazi Germany. 'Instead of echoing the appalling rhetoric of fascists, lunching with Neo Nazis, and fanning debunked conspiracy theories that have cost brave police officer their lives, President Biden is bringing the American people together around our shared democratic values and the rule of law...,' deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.”

Veepstakes. digby: “Kristi Noem went on Face the Nation and poured gasoline on her dumpster fire of a political career this morning[.]... [According to the Daily Beast,] 'At one point in the book, titled No Going Back, Noem recalled meeting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, claiming he “underestimated” her. However, experts have called into question whether such a meeting could have ever taken place. “Did you meet Kim Jong Un?” [host Margaret] Brennan directly asked the governor, who avoided answering the question and instead said she’s “met with many, many world leaders” and has “made some edits” to the book. “I’m not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders...,” [Noem replied]....' And here’s the coup de grâce....She ended the book by saying that she wanted to shoot Biden’s dog. I’m not kidding.” The New York Times story is here. At the end of the NYT story, we find out that Noem believes in doggie heaven and doggie hell.

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Israel/Palestine, et al.

The Washington Post's live updates of developments Monday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: “The Israel Defense Forces is calling for civilians in parts of Rafah to 'evacuate immediately' to a humanitarian zone, saying they will operate with “extreme force” in those areas. Israel’s determination to invade Rafah remains a sticking point in cease-fire negotiations that appear to be at an impasse, with a Hamas delegation leaving the ongoing negotiations in Cairo to consult its leadership in Qatar.... The U.N. agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, said it was not evacuating Rafah and would “maintain a presence” in the city for 'as long as possible' to continue providing aid. An Israeli offensive would be 'devastating' for the more than 1 million people sheltering there, it said.”

Michael Schwartz, et al., of CNN: “Israel has ordered the closure of Al Jazeera in the country, a move the Qatar-based news network called a 'criminal act.' Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on X: 'The government headed by me unanimously decided: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel.'... In a post on X, [Netanyahu's spokesman] said that the network’s 'broadcast equipment will be confiscated, the channel’s correspondents will be prevented from working, the channel will be removed from cable and satellite television companies, and Al Jazeera’s websites will be blocked on the Internet.' Israeli cable providers ceased carrying the Al Jazeera networks by late Sunday afternoon.... Several of the network’s journalists working in Gaza have been injured or killed since October 7.” (Also linked yesterday.)

Cinco de Mayo 2024

What is Cinco de Mayo anyway?

** Gaby Del Valle of the New York Times profiles Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)

Michael Schwartz, et al., of CNN: “Israel has ordered the closure of Al Jazeera in the country, a move the Qatar-based news network called a 'criminal act.' Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on X: 'The government headed by me unanimously decided: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel.'... In a post on X, [Netanyahu's spokesman] said that the network’s 'broadcast equipment will be confiscated, the channel’s correspondents will be prevented from working, the channel will be removed from cable and satellite television companies, and Al Jazeera’s websites will be blocked on the Internet.' Israeli cable providers ceased carrying the Al Jazeera networks by late Sunday afternoon.... Several of the network’s journalists working in Gaza have been injured or killed since October 7.”

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Maggie Haberman & Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: “Fresh from his criminal trial in New York, Donald J. Trump delivered a frustrated and often obscene speech, lasting roughly 75 minutes, at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Florida on Saturday, attacking one of the prosecutors pursuing him and comparing President Biden’s administration to the Nazis. 'These people are running a Gestapo administration,' Mr. Trump told donors who attended the event at Mar-a-Lago.... Before making the comparison, Mr. Trump baselessly insisted that the various indictments against him and his allies in several states were being orchestrated by the Biden administration.... Mr. Trump entered the event to the recording of the national anthem that he made with a group of people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.... Mr. Trump also mocked the physical appearance of Jack Smith, the special counsel who has indicted him twice. 'He’s unattractive both inside and out,' Mr. Trump said. 'This is one unattractive dude.' He then used two expletives to describe Mr. Smith.” The NBC News report is here.

Donald Trump Has Been Asking, “Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?” Let's Check. Top News in the New York Times, May 5, 2020: “As President Trump presses states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in coronavirus infections and deaths over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1 — nearly double the current level.”

Maegan Vazquez of the Washington Post: “The D.C. Court of Appeals has temporarily suspended John Eastman’s law license after a similar decision in California, which did so over his role in a legal strategy to help Donald Trump stay in power after his 2020 election loss.... Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, chief judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals, wrote in an order filed Friday that Eastman’s license is suspended in D.C. until there’s a final decision in the California proceeding. Eastman also faces potential disbarment in D.C.; that challenge to his license is also on hold during the California litigation.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: It occurs to me that the Trumpist lawyers who are getting their licenses suspended don't have much recourse. Even if Trump becomes king, I doubt he can force law bars to reinstate their law licenses.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: “Charlie Spies, the Republican National Committee’s chief counsel, was pushed out of his new role just two months after taking the job, amid a storm of controversy over conflicts involving other clients at the firm where he still works, according to two people briefed on the matter.... In the last few weeks, the fact that Mr. Spies’s firm — from which he did not take a leave when he accepted the R.N.C. job — still has ties to [Ron] DeSantis became a particular point of concern for Trump officials, the two people said.” ~~~

~~~ The Rest of the Story. Josh Dawsey & Michael Scherer of the Washington Post: “The top lawyer at the Republican Party is resigning after he cited conflicts with his other work obligations and after Donald Trump grew angry about his criticism of the former president’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, people familiar with the situation said Saturday night. The lawyer, Charlie Spies, is a long-respected GOP election operative who was hired by Trump’s top lieutenants in March after the former president engineered a takeover of the Republican National Committee, which in recent years has been the party’s main operation in both fundraising and field operations. Trump had approved of the hiring but later learned about additional comments the lawyer had made.” MB: I thought Haberman's report was thin. Odd she didn't seem to know about the only thing that matters at the RNC: the mercurial mood swings of Trumplethinskin. All Retribution Roads lead to Trump. ~~~

     ~~~ The NBC News report is here.

CNN is live-updating developments related to U.S. college campus protests: “Colleges and universities are holding graduation ceremonies this weekend as pro-Palestinian protests continue on campuses across the US. Several schools enhanced security measures as they prepared for commencement. At the University of Michigan, banners with opposing messages flew overhead and some protesters were removed during the school's main graduation ceremony on Saturday. A smaller ceremony held Friday at the school was also interrupted. At the University of Virginia, police took down tents and cleared out protesters Saturday after declaring an unlawful assembly near the center of campus. UVA said 25 people were arrested. The US ambassador to the United Nations will no longer deliver the commencement address at the University of Vermont following calls by protesters for the school to rescind its invitation.”

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Ellen Knickmeyer & Russ Bynum of the AP: “A top U.N. official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in 'full-blown famine' after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory. Cindy McCain, the American director of the U.N. World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine. 'It’s horror,' McCain told NBC’s 'Meet the Press' in an interview to air Sunday. 'There is famine — full-blown famine — in the north, and it’s moving its way south.'” ~~~

~~~ José Andrés in a Washington Post op-ed: “... barely a month has passed since Israeli forces killed seven of our World Central Kitchen family, despite knowing their location, movements and the nature of their essential work. Our colleagues risked everything to feed people they did not know. Yet ... we cannot stand by while so many people are so desperate for the essentials of life. Food is a universal human right, and we will not cease until those basic human rights are respected. This week, we are restarting our operations at scale: We have 276 trucks, representing almost 8 million meals, ready to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing in the south. We are also sending trucks from Jordan as we push to distribute food into northern Gaza, where the situation is most dire.” outlines the Israel Defense Forces' mistreatment of World Central Kitchen workers and the IDF's failure to provide security.

The Conversation -- May 4, 2024

Azi Paybarah & Mariana Alfaro of the Washington Post: “President Biden on Friday gave the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to 19 people — with recipients covering nearly every corner of American life, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Olympic champion Katie Ledecky, Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh and, posthumously, civil rights leader Medgar Evers. During a ceremony held at the White House on Friday, Biden said he had the 'extraordinary honor to bestow the nation’s highest civilian honor to 19 incredible people whose relentless curiosity, inventiveness, ingenuity and hope have kept faith in a better tomorrow.'” This is an update of a story linked yesterday.

Maxine Joselow of the Washington Post: “President Biden on Thursday expanded the boundaries of two national monuments in California by nearly 120,000 acres, using his executive authority to protect vast swaths of land of cultural significance to Native American tribes and nearby communities. During a ceremony in the Oval Office, Biden signed two proclamations enlarging the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, both of which were originally designated by President Barack Obama.”

Jamie Frevele of Mediaite: “Pop culture icon and Star Wars actor Mark Hamill kicked off Friday’s White House press briefing wearing a new pair of aviator shades — a gift from President Joe Biden. Hamill told a delighted White House press corps that he had a visit with the president, calling Biden 'the most legislatively successful president in my lifetime' and listing a few of Biden’s accomplishments. '... The Bipartisan Infrastructure law, the PACT Act, the Chips Act, all of that, inflation, 15 million jobs. It’s all good....'”

The Trials of Trump & the Trump Mob, Ctd.

Ben Protess, et al., of the New York Times: Trump's former aide Hope Hicks testified Friday against her will “that [Donald] Trump was an image-obsessed micromanager. She also acknowledged that it seemed implausible that Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s fixer, would pay hush money to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, without the then-candidate’s say-so. And Ms. Hicks testified that Mr. Trump had shown awareness of that payoff years after the fact. 'Mr. Trump’s opinion,' she said, was that 'it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election.' But she was not totally unhelpful to the defense, providing Mr. Trump’s lawyers grist to argue that their client was a family man, and that his motive for suppressing damning stories might not have been solely to win election but also to protect his home life.” Politico's report is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Both the NYT & the Politico report emphasize that Hicks' testimony was helpful to Trump in that she boosted his "family man" defense. However, two legal experts [one was Ryan Goodman; I don't know the name of the other person] appearing on CNN yesterday said that two things can be true simultaneously: that a person is concerned about both his personal AND his business or political interests. That is essentially what Hicks said in court. So the fact that Trump seemed to be concerned about his wife's reactions to the sex scandals does not diminish the government's assertion that he wanted to hide the stories from voters.  

** And There's This: According to Maggie Haberman's notes in the Times liveblog linked below, Hicks testified during cross-examination, "President Trump really values Mrs. Trump’s opinion, and she doesn't weigh in all the time, but when she does, it’s really meaningful to him. He really, really respects what she has to say. I think he was just concerned of what her perception of this would be." What that says to me is that the Family Guy didn't care as much about hurting Melania's feelings as he did about getting the benefit of her "opinion" and her "perception" of the scandal, IOW, how Melania thought the story would affect his campaign and how he should manage it. So still totally narcissistic, as we would expect. ~~~

~~~ AND. Michael Luciano of Mediaite: “MSNBC commentator and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said the testimony of Hope Hicks dealt a 'body blow' to ... Donald Trump in court on Friday.... The jury heard testimony from Hicks ... [that] Trump had told her that [Michael] Cohen made [the payment to Stormy Daniels] 'out of the kindness of his own heart.' [Even] during cross-examination, Hicks appeared to back up the prosecution’s argument that Trump arranged the hush money payment to prevent it from being an election issue. 'Mr. Trump’s opinion was that it was better to be dealing with it now and it would’ve been bad to have that story come out before the election,' she said.... Weissmann said, '... I also thought about how her crying was kind of icing on the cake for the D.A.’s office. I’m not in any way suggesting that they sought it, but her testimony was a body blow to the defense here because she put the guilty knowledge of the hush money payments into Donald Trump’s mouth…. Her crying would underscore to the jury, in my view, that she was not there because she wanted to help the government, that she had all loyalty for the Trump Organization. And so, it was going to make it impossible for the defense to actually say that she was lying to help the government and to hurt Donald Trump.” ~~~

~~~ AND. Michael Luciano of Mediaite: “Jim Trusty, a former attorney for Donald Trump said the testimony of Hope Hicks in the ex-president’s New York criminal trial 'certainly hurts' his case.... '... You see a person that is clearly uncomfortable with being there, doesn’t want to hurt anybody, doesn’t want to be a part of it, but they end up giving devastating, very entertaining, and interesting information.'... During CNN’s coverage of the trial, network legal analyst Norm Eisen theorized that Hicks cried on the stand 'because she was throwing her former boss under the bus.'”

An elderly, sleepy-headed, possibly confused Donald Trump returned to the courtroom yesterday to face his accusers in a trial for financial records crimes the Manhattan D.A. alleges he committed in relation to his 2016 campaign for president*. New York Times reporters were on the scene to relay developments. Yesterday's Conversation includes many of their observations. 

Links to transcripts of the proceedings are here. (At 2:30 am ET Saturday, they do not yet include Friday's testimony.

Even Trump's Auditors Are Crooked. Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times: “An accounting firm that audits the financial statements of hundreds of public companies including ... Donald J. Trump’s social media company can no longer do so, U.S. securities regulators said on Friday. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged the firm, BF Borgers, with fraud, saying that it had failed to comply with accounting rules. In settling with the S.E.C., the firm agreed immediately stop filing audited statements on behalf of its clients. The regulator held BF Borgers and its owner, Benjamin F. Borger, responsible for 'deliberate and systemic failures' to comply with accounting rules. The accompanying settlement requires both the firm and Mr. Borgers to pay a total of $14 million in civil penalties. Many companies that used BF Borgers must now find new auditors.” (Also linked yesterday.) A CBS News story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Here's the SEC's press release.

Brandi Buchman of Law & Crime: "Charges have formally been made public against Mark Meadows, the onetime chief of staff to ... Donald Trump, in the expansive fake electors case now underway in Arizona.... Though several Republicans were named directly in the fraud and forgery indictment including, among others, leaders of the state’s Republican party and two incumbent state lawmakers, some of those charged had their identities redacted, including Meadows and Trump’s former attorney ... Rudy Giuliani.... The reason they were not named openly is because they had not yet been formally served."

Perry Stein & Marianna Sotomayor of the Washington Post: “Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) and his wife allegedly accepted $600,000 in bribes from an oil company controlled by the Azerbaijan government and a bank headquartered in Mexico, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Texas on Friday. The 68-year-old congressman and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, are accused of setting up front companies that entered into sham contracts with the bank and the Azerbaijan government, the indictment said. Through their lawyer, they denied wrongdoing. The 54-page indictment details a bold corruption scheme in which Cuellar — who co-chairs the Congressional Azerbaijan Caucus — allegedly promised to wield his power as a U.S. congressman to advocate for his benefactors. To Azerbaijan, he pledged to influence legislation related to the country’s conflict with neighboring Armenia, insert favorable language into committee reports on economic aid programs and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the House floor, the indictment says. To the Mexican bank, Cuellar allegedly promised to pressure executive branch officials to back off money laundering enforcement practices that threatened the bank’s business interests and to support legislation that would block regulation of the payday lending industry, which has been accused of exploiting poor Americans.” The AP's report is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Nice to see Cuellar, who admittedly is a conservative Democrat but still a Democrat, join Sen. Bob Menendez in the (Alleged!) Crooked Democrats Club. It isn't fair that Republicans get to claim all the crooks.

Well, yesterday was just a Star Wars kinda day ~~~

~~~ GOP Battle of the Jewish Laser Beams! Alex Griffing of Mediaite: “Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) took aim at his Republican colleague, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), on Friday after the Georgia Republican criticized him for authoring a bill regarding anti-Semitism that passed the House this week. Greene wrote on X, 'Since George Soros is Jewish and funds the radical left including the Pro-Hamas Protests breaking out on college campuses, thanks to Mike Lawler’s new Antisemitism bill, college kids who speak out against Soros could be convicted of being Antisemitic.'... [Lawyer wrote in a Tweet,] '... #MoscowMarjorie has gone off the deep end — may be the result of a space laser.'... PolitiFact fact-checked claims that Soros has funded the protest, writing, 'Soros’ grant-making organization, Open Society Foundations, has awarded grants to two groups that the New York Post article linked to the demonstrations, but the connections between Soros’ money and specific campus protesters had several degrees of separation.'”

The New York Times live-updated developments yesterday in the protests on U.S. college and university campuses.

Donald Trump Has Been Asking, “Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?” Let's Check. Top News in the New York Times, May 4, 2020: “President Trump predicted on Sunday night that the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic ravaging the country may reach as high as 100,000 in the United States, twice as many as he had forecast just two weeks ago, even as he pressed states to reopen the shuttered economy.” MB: The actual number of recorded U.S. deaths from Covid -- so far -- is more than 1.1 million. ~~~

~~~ Better Than Bleach! I didn't know that Akhilleus was a scientist, but in yesterday's Comments he presented a proof that Donald Trump is not as smart as an orangutan. Bill Chappell of CNN: "When a wild orangutan in Indonesia suffered a painful wound to his cheek, he did something that stunned researchers: He chewed plant leaves known to have pain-relieving and healing properties, rubbed the juice on the open wound — and then used the leaves as a poultice to cover his injury. 'This case represents the first known case of active wound treatment in a wild animal with a medical plant,' biologist Isabelle Laumer, the first author of a paper about the revelation, told NPR."

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Missouri. Adam Edelman of NBC News: "A proposed amendment to enshrine abortion access in Missouri’s constitution cleared a key hurdle Friday to appear on the ballot this year after a coalition of reproductive rights advocates submitted the required number of valid signatures to state officials. Missourians for Constitutional Freedom ... announced it had collected signatures from more than 380,000 registered voters — more than the approximately 172,000 it needed to move forward with the process of qualifying their proposal for the ballot."

South Dakota. “Hey, Where’s Cricket?” Ashley Parker of the Washington Post: “First, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem wrote about killing her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, in her soon-to-be-released book, 'No Going Back.'... The scene of slaughter [during which Noem shot dead not only the young dog but also a buck goat] ends with Noem’s kids getting off the school bus, and her daughter asking, 'Hey, where’s Cricket?'... Then, over the course of three separate days, the Republican posted on social media about killing her dog — a series of missives that ranged from book promotion to defensive explanation to, finally, blame-the-media spin. And on Wednesday, Noem appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, where the two devoted five minutes to Noem’s late wirehair pointer, as a befuddled Hannity tried to give Noem — who wrote about dragging her female dog out to a gravel pit and shooting her — the benefit of the doubt.... In short, Noem just can’t stop talking about killing her dog — much to the collective confusion of horrified observers.” ~~~ 

     ~~~ Marie: According to reports, Noem's telling of her murderous domestic animal rampage was not framed as a confession but as a boast about her super-MAGA toughness, apparently in an effort to impress Donald Trump enough to tap her as his running mate.