July 30, 2023

Afternoon Update:

It is most likely that, by the time we get on the debate stage on August 23, the [Republican presidential] front-runner will be out on bail in four different jurisdictions. -- Chris Christie, Sunday

Arlette Saenz of CNN: "The Biden administration is launching a beta website for its new income-driven student loan repayment plan today, officials told CNN, allowing borrowers to begin submitting applications for the program as federal student loan payments are set to resume in October. The SAVE, or Saving on a Valuable Education, plan was finalized after the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness initiative in June. It marks a significant change to the federal student loan system that could lower monthly loan payments for some borrowers and reduce the amount they pay back over the lifetime of their loans."

Pakistan. Sophia Saifi & Allegra Goodwin of CNN: "At least 44 people died after a suicide bomber attacked a political convention organized by an Islamist party in northwestern Pakistan, police said. More than 100 were injured, 17 critically, in the attack targeting members of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) party, who had gathered in the town of Khar, close to the border with Afghanistan. Local police said the attacker detonated explosives near the convention's stage. There has been no initial claim of responsibility for the attack. But the local branch of ISIS has previously targeted JUI-F party leaders as they consider them apostates."

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David Sanger & Julian Barnes of the New York Times: "The Biden administration is hunting for malicious computer code it believes China has hidden deep inside the networks controlling power grids, communications systems and water supplies that feed military bases in the United States and around the world, according to American military, intelligence and national security officials. The discovery of the malware has raised fears that Chinese hackers, probably working for the People's Liberation Army, have inserted code designed to disrupt U.S. military operations in the event of a conflict.... The malware, one congressional official said, was essentially 'a ticking time bomb' that could give China the power to interrupt or slow American military deployments or resupply operations by cutting off power, water and communications to U.S. military bases. But its impact could be far broader, because that same infrastructure often supplies the houses and businesses of ordinary Americans, according to U.S. officials."

Thomas Brewster of Forbes: "The Pentagon is investigating what it has called a 'critical compromise' of communications across 17 Air Force facilities by one of its engineers, according to a search warrant obtained by Forbes. The document also details evidence of a possible breach of FBI communications by the same employee, who worked at the Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee. The government had been tipped off by a base contractor that the 48-year-old engineer had taken government radio technologies home, effectively stealing them for his own use, according to the warrant, which alleged the amount of pilfered equipment was worth nearly $90,000. When law enforcement raided his home, they found he had 'unauthorized administrator access' to radio communications tech used by the Air Education and Training Command (AETC), 'affecting 17 DoD installations,' according to the warrant. The AETC is one of nine 'major commands,' defined by the Pentagon as 'interrelated and complementary, providing offensive, defensive, and support elements' to Air Force HQ."

** Mike McIntire of the New York Times: "To understand the ascendancy of gun culture in America, the files of [Rep. John] Dingell, a powerful Michigan Democrat who died in 2019, are a good place to start. That is because he was not just a politician -- he simultaneously sat on the N.R.A.'s board of directors, positioning him to influence firearms policy as well as the private lobbying force responsible for shaping it.... Mr. Dingell was one of at least nine senators and representatives, both Republicans and Democrats, with the same dual role over the last half-century -- lawmaker-directors who helped the N.R.A. accumulate and exercise unrivaled power.... Over decades, politics, money and ideology altered gun culture, reframed the Second Amendment to embrace ever broader gun rights and opened the door to relentless marketing driven by fear rather than sport.... The lawmakers, far from the stereotype of pliable politicians meekly accepting talking points from lobbyists, served as leaders of the N.R.A., often prodding it to action." Read on.

Andrew Zhang of Politico: "House Democrats are putting Justice Samuel Alito on blast over his comments that Congress does not have the constitutional authority to regulate the Supreme Court. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal editorial page published an extensive interview with the conservative justice in which he pushed back against a Democratic-led effort to regulate the Supreme Court's ethics rules.... Senate Democrats last week passed a bill in committee that would revamp ethics and transparency standards for the court's justices. But the bill has little chance of proceeding any further in the Senate.... 'Alito's next opinion piece in the WSJ is about to be "I am a little king, actually. The Constitution doesn't explicitly say I'm not,"' Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) quipped.... 'This view is more than controversial; it's incorrect,' Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) posted on X."

Josh Dawsey, et al, of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump's political group spent more than $40 million on legal costs in the first half of 2023 to defend Trump, his advisers and others, according to people familiar with the matter, financing legal work that has drawn scrutiny from prosecutors about potential conflicts of interest between Trump and witnesses. Save America, the former president's PAC, is expected to disclose about $40.2 million in legal spending in a filing expected Monday.... Trump's advisers say the costs of providing lawyers for dozens of people are necessary and will continue mushrooming as investigations continue trials are scheduled, and the possibility of indictment looms.... In an indictment unsealed Thursday ... in the classified documents case, authorities allege that Trump called [Carlos] De Oliveira last August to tell him he would pay for his attorney. That same day, authorities said, [Walt] Nauta had a conversation with a different Trump employee who assured Nauta that De Oliveira was loyal to Trump.... The PAC's own fundraising and creation is under investigation, The Post has reported, though the group has not been accused of wrongdoing. Much of the money it is using to pay for legal bills was raised on false claims that the 2020 election was stolen." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Maggie Haberman & Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "The political action committee that ... Donald J. Trump is using to pay his legal bills faced such staggering costs this year that it requested a refund on a $60 million contribution it made to another group supporting the Republican front-runner, according to two people familiar with the matter. The decision signals a potential money crisis for Mr. Trump, who has so far refused to pay his own voluminous bills directly and has also avoided creating a legal-defense fund for himself and people who have become entangled in the various investigations related to him." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: We should bear in mind that this is all wasted money. It would never have been necessary had Trump not been corrupt. For instance, his stupid, stupid donors are spending their own money to bail out Trump because he insisted on stealing and keeping some classified souvenirs. And of course all of us bear the cost of prosecuting him.

Caroline Anders of the Washington Post: "A federal judge on Friday dismissed Donald Trump's lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president said the network defamed him by associating him with Adolf Hitler. Trump argued that by using the phrase the 'big lie' in reference to his unfounded claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, the network created an unfair association between him and the Nazi regime. Hitler and Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels used the term as a propaganda tool that involved repeating a falsehood until the public started to believe it. A quote, 'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,' is often attributed to Goebbels, though it's unclear where the comment came from." The judge, Raag Singhal, is a Trump appointee. Politico's story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Singhal called CNN's use of the term "repugnant." Frankly, I don't find calling a big lie a big lie repugnant at all. If claiming you won an election you lost (then directing a coup based on that false claim) isn't a big lie, what is?

Presidential Race 2024

Toluse Olorunnipa, et al, of the Washington Post: "The 2024 presidential race ... is increasingly being consumed by a roiling debate over reexamining, redefining and reimagining its past. Over the past 10 days, candidates from across the political spectrum have discussed the intricacies of slavery, Reconstruction, military desegregation and lynching -- a rare moment in modern presidential politics when Black history has become a more dominant subject than more traditional topics like taxes or crime."

Crazy, Corrupt Old Man Holds Rally. Neil Vigdor of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump lashed out at Republicans in Congress while campaigning in Pennsylvania on Saturday, threatening members of his party who do not share his appetite for pursuing corruption investigations against President Biden and his family -- and for retribution. In a litany of grievances about his deepening legal woes and the direction of the country, the twice-indicted former president cast G.O.P. holdouts as meek during a rally in Erie, Pa., criticizing their response to what he described as politically motivated prosecutions against him.... 'Any Republican that doesn't act on Democratic fraud should be immediately primaried,' said Mr. Trump, to the roaring approval of several thousand supporters at the Erie Insurance Arena. Throughout the night he referenced the case against Hunter Biden and accused the president of complicity in his son's troubles." ~~~

~~~ Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump called on congressional Republicans to withhold military support for Ukraine until the Biden administration cooperates with their investigations into the president and his son Hunter Biden's business dealings. The demand, delivered at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, echoed Trump's conduct at issue during his first impeachment, when Trump withheld aid from Ukraine while pressuring the country's president to announce an investigation of Biden." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I wish Joe Biden's infrastructure bill had concentrated on building giant insane asylums all over the country for Trumpbots. You have to be crazy to think this guy should run anything. I doubt he can run his own bath.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Dan Froomkin of Press Watch: "Political reporters at our leading news organizations routinely put a thumb on the scale in favor of the far right -- both by failing to call out its racist and increasingly homophobic nature, and by adopting right-wing frames in reporting current events." MB: I've linked some of the stories Froomkin cites, and I couldn't agree more. You have to look for the references to racism & homophobia in MSM stories about racism & homophobia if you find them at all. The whole journalistic project seems to embrace the rationale, "Let's not insult bigots because we might lose some bigoted subscribers."

Adam Satariano, et al., of the New York Times: Elon "Musk, who leads SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, has become the most dominant player in space as he has steadily amassed power over the strategically significant field of satellite internet. Yet faced with little regulation and oversight, his erratic and personality-driven style has increasingly worried militaries and political leaders around the world, with the tech billionaire sometimes wielding his authority in unpredictable ways. Since 2019, Mr. Musk has sent SpaceX rockets into space nearly every week that deliver dozens of sofa-size satellites into orbit. The satellites communicate with terminals on Earth, so they can beam high-speed internet to nearly every corner of the planet. Today, more than 4,500 Starlink satellites are in the skies, accounting for more than 50 percent of all active satellites. They have already started changing the complexion of the night sky, even before accounting for Mr. Musk's plans to have as many as 42,000 satellites in orbit in the coming years.... Starlink is often the only way to get internet access in war zones, remote areas and places hit by natural disasters." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Beyond the Beltway

North Carolina. The Turncoat. Kate Kelly & Davi Perrmutt of the New York Times: "When Tricia Cotham, a former Democratic lawmaker, was considering another run for the North Carolina House of Representatives, she turned to a powerful party leader for advice. Then, when she jumped into the Democratic primary, she was encouraged by still other formidable allies. She won the primary in a redrawn district near Charlotte, and then triumphed in the November general election by 18 percentage points, a victory that helped Democrats lock in enough seats to prevent, by a single vote, a Republican supermajority in the state House. Except what was unusual -- and not publicly known at the time -- was that the influential people who had privately encouraged Ms. Cotham to run were Republicans, not Democrats.... Three months after Ms. Cotham took office in January, she delivered a mortal shock to Democrats and to abortion rights supporters: She switched parties, and then cast a decisive vote on May 3 to override a veto by the state's Democratic governor and enact a 12-week limit on most abortions -- North Carolina's most restrictive abortion policy in 50 years."

Way Beyond

Africa. From Sea to Sea. Declan Walsh of the New York Times: "Africa's coup belt spans the continent: a line of six countries crossing 3,500 miles, from coast to coast, that has become the longest corridor of military rule on Earth. This past week's military takeover in the West African nation of Niger toppled the final domino in a band across the girth of Africa, from Guinea in the west to Sudan in the east, now controlled by juntas that came to power in a coup -- all but one in the past two years.... Russia has positioned itself as the torch bearer of anti-Western, and especially anti-French, sentiment in a swath of Africa in recent years.... For Wagner's mercurial boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin the run of coups is a business opportunity. His forces already operate openly in Mali and Sudan in the coup belt, as well as in the nearby Central African Republic and Libya. Hovering on the margins of the St. Petersburg summit this past week, Mr. Prigozhin praised the coup in Niger, then proposed sending his own armed fighters to help." Read on. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Colombia. AP: "Colombian police arrested the president's son Saturday as part of a high-profile money laundering probe into funds he allegedly collected from convicted drug traffickers during last year's presidential campaign. President Gustavo Petro, a former rebel who rose through Colombia's political ranks as an anti-corruption crusader, said he wouldn't interfere with the investigation."

Haiti. Justine McDaniel, et al, of the Washington Post: "An American woman and her child were allegedly kidnapped near Haiti's capital city on Thursday, according to the nonprofit organization she works for. The woman, Alix Dorsainvil, 31, is from New Hampshire but lives in the Caribbean nation and is married to the organization's director, Sandro Dorsainvil.... [Alix] is the organization's community health nurse.... On Thursday, the U.S. State Department ordered non-emergency U.S. government workers at the embassy in Port-au-Prince and diplomatic family members to evacuate and advised all American citizens in Haiti to leave."

Ukraine, et al. The Washington Post's live briefing of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine is here: "A barrage of Russian attacks on Saturday left civilians dead and buildings destroyed, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. It said Russia launched five missile strikes and 19 airstrikes and fired 30 times with multiple-launch rocket systems on cities and military forces. The attacks come as Ukraine ramps up a counteroffensive that, according to Russia, has included a number of mostly intercepted drone attacks on Moscow."

Jack's Cliffhangers

The cliffhanger is an underappreciated element of the special counsel's indictments of Donald Trump and his fellow defendants in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. I hear legal experts calling these indictments "speaking indictments," in that they go beyond the minimum requirement of an indictment to recite a list of the charges against the accused. Rather, these so-called speaking indictments lay out in some detail the facts and allegations underlying the case.

Jack Smith and his team have surpassed the standard speaking indictment. They have made something of a literary narrative of the case. But rather than leaving the public with self-contained short stories, each indictment contains at least one cliffhanger: one thread of the story left dangling so that readers wonder what happens next. That is, Smith weaves into his narrative an essential literary tool: the element of suspense.

In the original indictment, prosecutors tell the story of Trump's waving around a classified document in front of staff and people working on a book for Mark Meadows. None of these visitors -- according to the indictment -- had either classified clearances or a need to know the information in the document. (See esp. p. 2 & pp. 14 ff. of the indictment.) At that July 21, 2021 meeting at Trump's Bedminister club, Trump himself told his visitors the document he showed them was "highly confidential" and "secret." He also admitted that the document was classified and that, since he was no longer president*, he did not have the authority to declassify it. What Trump did not say was that Bedminster is not an "authorized location" to keep classified documents, and in fact Trump had no right to take any classified documents out of the White House when he left office.

Yet the prosecutors drop the Bedminster story right there. They don't tell us exactly what the classified document was or who wrote it. They don't tell us whether or not they have the document. And even though they devote several pages to this thread of the narrative, they don't charge Trump with any criminal act related to the incident. That is, they just leave the incident "out there," as if it's nothing more than an indication of how cavalier Trump is in his handling of classified documents.

This seemingly irrelevant sidebar left legal experts and other observers scratching their heads. I don't think many recognized the element of suspense. I suspect the suspense was intentional, even if the intended target audience was not us but Donald Trump. No sooner was the indictment published than Trump made a series of contradictory claims about the Bedminister incident. He first said, "There was no document there. ... That was not a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles." After audio of the taped conversation surfaced in the media, Trump claimed he had 'copies of different plans' in his desk. Finally, his defense morphed into an admission: "I would say it was bravado, if you want to know the truth. It was bravado... I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents." In other words, Trump's changing story was no help at all. He isn't just an infamous liar so nothing he says can be believed; his final "defense" of this episode was to declare he was lying to his guests. 

But it turns out the Bedminster incident, as depicted in the original indictment, was a tease or preview of the superseding indictment. All will be explained in Episode 2. The dangling "loose end" wasn't loose at all. It was a cliffhanger. Tune in next month.

In the superseding indictment, released this past Thursday night, Smith revealed that prosecutors had possession of the Bedminster document (see p. 37, Count 32). More important, prosecutors charged Trump with an additional crime for the Bedminster "presentation," which they assert was "in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 793(e)." That is, the crime Trump committed at Bedminster was hiding in plain sight in the original indictment, but it was neither specified nor charged until Smith released the superseding indictment.

The Bedminister story was not Jack Smith's last cliffhanger. The superseding indictment leaves us with its own cliffhanger, one presented in a form and situation so common to episodic teevee mysteries and thrillers that everyone should recognize it. In formulaic scenes and finale, a subpoena for surveillance tapes threatens to reveal that Trump is still hoarding classified documents. (See pp. 27 ff. of the superseding indictment.) Oh noes! What to do, what to do? Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta are in Bedminister, a thousand miles from Mar-a-Lago and Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Illinois the following day. Nauta, Trump's body man, is supposed to go to Illinois with Trump, but Trump quickly dispatches Nauta to fly down to Mar-a-Lago instead, with an implied mission to destroy the taped evidence.

Once at Mar-a-Lago, Nauta and new defendant Carlos De Oliveira, a former Mar-a-Lago car valet and maintenance man, now described as a "property manager," skulk through a dark tunnel armed with flashlights to help them find surveillance cameras.

Subsequently, De Oliveira lures "Trump Employee 4" to a secret meeting in a windowless closet. Reporters quickly figured out the mysterious Employee 4 was "Yuscil Taveras, an information technology worker. Taveras oversaw the surveillance camera footage at the property." After insisting that the conversation remain private, De Oliveira told Taveras that "the boss" -- that is, Trump -- wanted a surveillance camera server deleted. Taveras was skeptical of the plan, according to prosecutors. He told De Oliveira "that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that." After some unspecified back-and-forth, the conversation ends, at least as far as Smith's narrative goes, with De Oliveira asking, "What are we going to do?"

Oh, cue ominous music. What indeed? That is the question. The superseding indictment leaves us hanging.

But -- unlike the cliffhanger in the original indictment -- this one at least lets us know that the question does not end the story. There is more to come. For one thing, the conversation-in-a-closet did not end the conspiracy among Trump and his co-defendants to destroy evidence that the government had subpoenaed. After De Oliveira's apparently inconclusive meeting with Taveras, Nauta and De Oliveira held two secretive meetings in the bushes of a property that abuts Mar-a-Lago (really!). Between those two clandestine meetings, according to the indictment, De Oliveira visited the IT office. There was a subsequent phone conversation between De Oliveira and Nauta.

We don't know what Nauta and De Oliveira said to each other in those meetings and phone call. We don't know what, if anything, was decided or promised during De Oliveira's visit to the IT office. We don't know if Trump's IT personnel refused to delete the surveillance server or if someone in IT tried and failed to delete the server. We don't know if someone in IT thought s/he had deleted the server but later the government was able to retrieve the video footage. We don't know if the Trump Organization turned over only a portion of the tapes while the co-conspirators managed to get some deleted.

What we do know is that the government did obtain enough surveillance footage to incriminate the defendants: in the first paragraph following the story of the meetings in the bushes, we learn that "In July 2022, the FBI and grand jury obtained and reviewed surveillance video from The Mar-a-Lago Club showing the movement of boxes...."

It seems unlikely that the special counsel will bring another superseding indictment, if only because each new indictment is apt to move back the trial date. Maybe reporters will ferret out the answer to this new cliffhanger, as they have done in other pieces of this story. Or perhaps the trial itself is Episode 3.

July 29, 2023

Afternoon Update:

Josh Dawsey, et al, of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump's political group spent more than $40 million on legal costs in the first half of 2023 to defend Trump, his advisers and others, according to people familiar with the matter, financing legal work that has drawn scrutiny from prosecutors about potential conflicts of interest between Trump and witnesses. Save America, the former president's PAC, is expected to disclose about $40.2 million in legal spending in a filing expected Monday.... Trump's advisers say the costs of providing lawyers for dozens of people are necessary and will continue mushrooming as investigations continue trials are scheduled, and the possibility of indictment looms.... In an indictment unsealed Thursday ... in the classified documents case, authorities allege that Trump called [Carlos] De Oliveira last August to tell him he would pay for his attorney. That same day, authorities said, [Walt] Nauta had a conversation with a different Trump employee who assured Nauta that De Oliveira was loyal to Trump.... The PAC's own fundraising and creation is under investigation, The Post has reported, though the group has not been accused of wrongdoing. Much of the money it is using to pay for legal bills was raised on false claims that the 2020 election was stolen."

Adam Satariano, et al., of the New York Times: Elon "Musk, who leads SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, has become the most dominant player in space as he has steadily amassed power over the strategically significant field of satellite internet. Yet faced with little regulation and oversight, his erratic and personality-driven style has increasingly worried militaries and political leaders around the world, with the tech billionaire sometimes wielding his authority in unpredictable ways. Since 2019, Mr. Musk has sent SpaceX rockets into space nearly every week that deliver dozens of sofa-size satellites into orbit. The satellites communicate with terminals on Earth, so they can beam high-speed internet to nearly every corner of the planet. Today, more than 4,500 Starlink satellites are in the skies, accounting for more than 50 percent of all active satellites. They have already started changing the complexion of the night sky, even before accounting for Mr. Musk's plans to have as many as 42,000 satellites in orbit in the coming years.... Starlink is often the only way to get internet access in war zones, remote areas and places hit by natural disasters."

From Sea to Sea. Declan Walsh of the New York Times: "Africa's coup belt spans the continent: a line of six countries crossing 3,500 miles, from coast to coast, that has become the longest corridor of military rule on Earth. This past week's military takeover in the West African nation of Niger toppled the final domino in a band across the girth of Africa, from Guinea in the west to Sudan in the east, now controlled by juntas that came to power in a coup -- all but one in the past two years.... Russia has positioned itself as the torch bearer of anti-Western, and especially anti-French, sentiment in a swath of Africa in recent years.... For Wagner's mercurial boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the run of coups is a business opportunity. His forces already operate openly in Mali and Sudan in the coup belt, as well as in the nearby Central African Republic and Libya. Hovering on the margins of the St. Petersburg summit this past week, Mr. Prigozhin praised the coup in Niger, then proposed sending his own armed fighters to help." Read on.

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Marie: Some of you didn't think much of my support of a recent column by Maureen Dowd in which she related that her Republican sister Peggy had written to President Biden urging him to acknowledge his seventh grandchild, the out-of-wedlock daughter of Hunter Biden. Well, Joe Biden has vindicated MoDo, Peggy and me: ~~~

~~~ Katie Rogers & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "President Biden publicly acknowledged his 4-year-old granddaughter, Navy Joan Roberts, for the first time on Friday, saying in a statement that he and the first lady, Jill Biden, 'only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.' The statement came as Mr. Biden faced increasing pressure from critics who said that failing to acknowledge Navy publicly went against the image of a loving patriarch that he has nurtured since the beginning of his political career. 'Our son Hunter and Navy's mother, Lunden [Roberts], are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,' Mr. Biden told People magazine in a statement.... In recent weeks, the president told his son that he wanted to meet Navy when the time was right...."

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Biden gave final approval on Friday to the biggest reshaping in generations of the country's Uniform Code of Military Justice, stripping commanders of their authority over cases of sexual assault, rape and murder to ensure prosecutions that are independent of the chain of command. By signing a far-reaching executive order, Mr. Biden ushered in the most significant changes to the modern military legal system since it was created in 1950. The order follows two decades of pressure from lawmakers and advocates of sexual assault victims, who argued that victims in the military were too often denied justice, culminating in a bipartisan law mandating changes. The White House called the changes to the military justice system 'a turning point for survivors of gender-based violence in the military' and said they kept promises Mr. Biden made as a candidate.... The changes had for years been opposed by military commanders. But they were finally embraced by the Pentagon in 2021 and mandated by a law spearheaded by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York." (Also linked yesterday.)

Matt Viser, et al, of the Washington Post: "President Biden is sharply escalating his criticism of Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, highlighting his blockade of military nominations and using him to criticize other right-wing Republicans he characterizes as extreme, obstructionist and willing to jeopardize the country's national security.... 'Something dangerous is happening,' Biden said Thursday night, speaking at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium. 'The Republican Party used to always support the military, but today, they are undermining the military. The senior senator from Alabama, who claims to support our troops, is now blocking more than 300 military [nominations] with his extreme political agenda.'" ~~~

~~~ Connor O'Brien, et al., of Politico: "Senators flew home for recess Thursday with no solution in sight to Sen. Tommy Tuberville's (R-Ala.) blockade of military promotions, leaving the Pentagon in an unprecedented predicament: By mid-August, the heads of the Army and Navy are slated to retire with no Senate-confirmed leader to replace them. They'll join the Marine Corps, which has had a temporary commandant for the past three weeks, unable to act with the full force that comes with the stamp of approval from the upper chamber.... The logjam affects more than 270 military officers. They include 10 four-star officers, 54 three-stars, 70 two-stars and 139 one-stars, according to a Senate Armed Services Committee aide. Twenty-one of those three- and four-star officers have had their retirements deferred to ensure continuity of command."

But I Take My Science-y Advice From Sen. Potato Head. Chris D'Angelo & Igor Bobic of the Huffington Post: "Two global climate organizations on Thursday confirmed that July is on track to be the single hottest month on record. It is also likely the hottest monthlong stretch in 120,000 years. Nearly 200 million people -- 60% of the U.S. population -- are currently under an extreme heat or flood advisory. But as usual, Republican climate deniers are quick to dismiss the dire impacts. 'There is a very scientific word for this: I's called summer,' Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told HuffPost when asked about the heat on Thursday. 'It's no hotter right now than it's ever been. I've been in this heat all my life in July and August as a football coach. This world's not heating up, come on.'... 'Southern Louisiana, it's always hot,' [House Majority Leader Steve] Scalise [said'. 'Thank God for air conditioning.'... Meanwhile, the Republican Party is attacking the Biden administration's effort to make home appliances, including air conditioners and dishwashers, more efficient. Fox News and other right-wing media have dutifully dubbed the federal effort as Biden's 'war on appliances.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "Democrats are largely tuning out the House's lurid and shambolic investigatory hearings, which have so far featured photos of a naked Hunter Biden and a much-hyped star witness who turned out to be a fugitive indicted on charges of, among other things, arms trafficking and acting as an unregistered Chinese agent. Behind this circus, however, is something rather astonishing: A major part of the pretext for a possible impeachment of Joe Biden is exactly the same set of lies about Ukraine that helped persuade Democrats to impeach Donald Trump the first time. [Here Goldberg succinctly recounts the whole story of Trump's attempt to bribe President Volodymyr Zelensky to finger Joe Biden for ... something.] Rather than make a specific case, Republicans are trying to foment the cynical sense that scandal surrounds Biden just as it does Trump. The point is not to hold anyone accountable for actual wrongdoing but to parody the process of trying." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: BTW, you may recall that when Zelensky balked at participating in Trump's plan, Trump urged Zelensky to just go on the air and say his government was investigating Joe Biden. A pundit I read or heard recently (cannot recall who) pointed out that this was exactly the same tactic Trump used to try to overturn the 2020 election. When top DOJ officials said there was no significant election fraud and they would not say there was, Trump told them to just say the election was corrupt and Trump and his minions "would do the rest."

Another in the Long-running Series "Trump Was Always a Jerk." Michael Schmidt & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "The accusation [in the special counsel's indictments] about [Donald] Trump's desire to have evidence destroyed adds another chapter to what observers of his career say is a long pattern of gamesmanship on his part with prosecutors, regulators and others who have the ability to impose penalties on his conduct. And it demonstrates how Mr. Trump viewed the conclusion of the Mueller investigation [-- which found evidence of Trump's obstruction --] as a vindication of his behavior, which became increasingly emboldened -- particularly in regards to the Justice Department -- throughout the rest of his presidency, a pattern that appears to have continued despite having lost the protections of the office when he was defeated in the election.... [Robert] Mueller's investigation ultimately identified nearly a dozen acts Mr. Trump took that could be seen as obstruction of justice." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I suppose Schmidt & Haberman partially explain Trump's remarkably stupid trick of attempting to erase the surveillance servers at Mar-a-Lago. That is, obstructing authorities has worked in the past. But if you look at the underlying facts of the Mar-a-Lago incident, you have to conclude that Trump is remarkably stupid. He bought those surveillance cameras. He had them installed and wired to servers. He paid the salaries of the IT staff that maintained the surveillance system. And yet. And yet. He had two employees commit crimes in full view of those cameras. It was not until he got a subpoena that Trump came up with the harebrained scheme of destroying the evidence he knew all along was sitting in his own servers. Who but Trump would be dumb enough to commit a crime in front of his own cameras?

Who's "Rabid" and "Lawless?" Kevin Breuninger of CNBC: "Donald Trump on Friday defended the handling of surveillance footage at his Florida home that is at the center of major new criminal charges in the federal case over the former president's retention of classified documents. 'These are my tapes that we gave to them,' Trump told a conservative radio host in his first public interview since being accused of the new crimes.... 'If we wanted to fight that, I doubt we would have had to give it. But regardless, we gave it.'... Trump also repeated his previous assertion that he is shielded by the Presidential Records Act.... Later in the day, Trump fired off several social media posts raging against the Department of Justice. He accused special counsel Jack Smith ... of 'attempting to destroy the lives of two fine people who have worked for me (and have done a great job!) for a long time.' 'This is textbook Third World intimidation by rabid, lawless prosecutors,' Trump wrote on Truth Social. In a follow-up post, he called for Smith, his prosecutors and Attorney General Merrick Garland to be jailed." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Hmm, if Trump thought the tapes could not be subject to subpoena, why did he set his co-conspirators on an unlawful mission to delete them? Why not fight the subpoena in court as he claimed he could have done before he so willingly (ha ha) gave investigators the tape. Trump's two fine employees may be fine indeed, but they also (allegedly!) joined an illegal conspiracy against the federal government, then lied about their actions to federal agents. It isn't the government that "destroyed their lives"; it's Trump -- and of course their own bad choices.

Brad Reed of the Raw Story: "After he lost the 2020 presidential election..., Donald Trump embraced conspiracy theories espoused by attorney Sidney Powell, who herself got them from a woman who claims she has the ability to speak with the wind. However, Rolling Stone now reports that Trump privately 'sneered at the ridiculousness' of Powell's ideas, which involved the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez designing voting machines that would be used to steal an American election seven years after his death in 2013. And what's more, special counsel Jack Smith's office has been pressing sources for their memories of Trump's mockery of Powell, whom he reportedly secretly believed to be 'crazy.' 'The special counsel's continuing interest in incidents where Trump either seemed to know -- or was told by his own aides -- that his election conspiracy theories were baseless suggests that prosecutors are likely preparing to demonstrate that Trump's attempts to overturn the election weren't the result of a reasonable or good faith belief in conspiracy theories but instead willful disregard of the facts,' writes Rolling Stone." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The underlying story -- that Trump thought Powell's conspiracy theories were crazy -- is an old one, unearthed by the House January 6 committee and printed in its final report, published in December 2022. But it's good to know prosecutors are following up on that thread.

Meet the Third Man. Devlin Barrett, et al., of the Washington Post: "This previously unreported account of [Carlos] De Oliveira's actions at Mar-a-Lago, and later statements to federal investigators, shows how the longtime Trump employee has become a key figure in the investigation, one whose alleged actions could bolster the obstruction case against the former president.... With De Oliveira, the government has another strong candidate for flipping...." Carlos appeared untruthful from the get-go, when he told agents who were executing an August 2022 search warrant that he couldn't unlock the storage room because he didn't know where the key was. "In January 2023, De Oliveira was questioned by investigators at his home, according to the indictment. His answers left agents more suspicious of him, the people familiar with the situation said. Weeks later, agents seized his phone, the people said. He was subpoenaed to testify in April before the federal grand jury. By that point, it was clear that prosecutors were deeply skeptical of De Oliveira's explanations of his interactions with Trump and Nauta, and his occasional claims of faulty memory." After a "queen-for-a-day" interview in April 2023 in which investigators told De Oliveira he would not prosecuted for any answers he gave, "prosecutors told De Oliveira's lawyer that they believed he was not being truthful and should expect to be charged."

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post on the main things we learned from the superseding classified documents indictment: "The superseding indictment drives home how much this trial will be about the alleged coverup.... The document [Trump 'presented' in Bedminster is one] that he acknowledged in real time he hadn't declassified."

Zach Schonfeld & Rebecca Beitsch of the Hill: "Former President Trump on Friday appealed a judge's ruling that mandated his hush money criminal case be tried in state court in New York. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a President Clinton appointee, ruled last week that the 34-count indictment was not connected to Trump's role as president, rejecting his request to move the case to federal court in favor of prosecutors' objections. Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles filed a notice of appeal Friday afternoon, the first step in taking the dispute to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals."

Phil Helsel of NBC News: "A New York man who stole a police radio and badge from a Washington, D.C., police officer who was being beaten by a mob during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S Capitol was sentenced to over four years in prison Friday, prosecutors said. Thomas Sibick, 37, of Buffalo, stole the badge and radio of then-Metropolitan Police Department Officer Michael Fanone, who has been one of several officers attacked that day to testify before Congress. Sibick was sentenced to 50 months, or four years and two months in prison, and was ordered to pay over $7,500, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington said in a statement. He pleaded guilty in March."

I marvel at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year. But that's just not happening. And so at a certain point I've said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself. -- "Justice" Sam Alito, in an interview for the Wall Street Journal opinions section ~~~

~~~ Mitts Off My Perks, You Article I Riffraff. Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: “Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said in an interview published Friday that Congress has no authority to impose an ethics policy on the Supreme Court, and he hinted that other justices share his view. In a piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal opinions section, Alito noted that he and other justices voluntarily comply with disclosure statutes, but he said mandating an ethics code would be beyond Congress's powers.... It is unusual for a justice to comment so definitively on the constitutionality of legislation, especially when bills are under consideration, and any law that is passed could come before the court. The Journal article ... was notable for another reason: It was written in part by David B. Rivkin Jr., a Washington lawyer well-known in conservative legal circles, who has an upcoming case before the court.... Rivkin and Journal editorial features editor James Taranto noted that Alito has now spoken with them 'on the record for four hours in two wide-ranging sessions.'..." The Hill's report is here. ~~~

~~~ Oh Lordy, There's a Text. Scott Lemieux, in LG&$, rips apart some of Alito's arguments. There's this central one, for instance:

Alito: I know this is a controversial view, but I'm willing to say it. No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court -- period.

Lemieux: Hmm, I happen to have the text of the Constitution right here and [it reads]: 'the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.'

Presidential Race 2024

Nicholas Nehamas, et al., of the New York Times: "Candidate after candidate at an Iowa Republican dinner on Friday avoided so much as mentioning the dominant front-runner in the race..., Donald J. Trump. But when Mr. Trump took the stage after more than two hours of speeches by his lower-polling rivals, it took him less than three minutes to unleash his first direct attack of the night on his leading challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. Trump not only suggested that Mr. DeSantis was an 'establishment globalist' but called him 'DeSanctis,' which in Mr. Trump's argot is short for the demeaning nickname DeSanctimonious and is so well-known that most attendees clearly got the reference.... The one speaker who did criticize Mr. Trump at length, former Representative Will Hurd of Texas -- who is so far from contention that he's not even attempting to qualify for the first Republican debate next month -- was booed off the stage."

DeSantis May Be Campaigning on the Florida Taxpayer's Dime. Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was involved in a car crash in Tennessee this week as he traveled for his campaign. He was unhurt in the incident. However, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, it's only thanks to that crash that the public found out DeSantis is using state government vehicles to travel for his presidential campaign. And even with that knowledge, there's no way to know who is paying for them. The problem arises from legislation passed earlier this year in Florida that carves out the governor's travel from the state's rigorous public transparency laws."

Beyond the Beltway

Florida. Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "Read together, [Florida's new 'educational'] guidelines seem like an exercise in equivocation and blame shifting -- an attempt to downplay the enormity of American slavery and its defining feature, hereditary racial bondage. This is bad enough. But then consider, as well, the political context of Florida under [Gov. Ron] DeSantis.... [Florida is] where DeSantis, as governor, has vetoed spending on Black history celebrations, actively worked to reduce the representation of Black voters in the state and promised, if elected president, to change back the name of an Army base in North Carolina from Fort Liberty to Fort Bragg, as in the Confederate general Braxton Bragg.... When the board that approved the language was handpicked by DeSantis -- as part of his crusade against so-called wokeness -- it's hard not to see this new instruction on the history of slavery as yet another part of the Florida governor's larger ideological project."

Ukraine, et al. The Washington Post's live briefing of developments Saturday in Russia's war on Ukraine is here: "A missile strike injured nine people, including two teenagers, in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the regional governor Serhiy Lysak said late on Friday. He said the Russian missile attack, the first on the city center in months, hit a high-rise and a building belonging to the Security Service of Ukraine, also known as SBU. In Brazil, justice officials said they could not approve a U.S. request to extradite Sergey Cherkasov, whom the United States accused of being a Russian spy, because they are already processing Moscow's request for him over allegations of drug trafficking.... The International Olympic Committee invited Ukrainian fencer Olga Kharlan to compete at next year's Paris Games after she was disqualified from the Fencing World Championships in Milan for refusing a mandatory handshake with Russian opponent Anna Smirnova.... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law moving the date of Christmas from Jan. 7 to Dec. 25, as part of an effort to 'renounce Russian heritage.'"