The Conversation -- October 22, 2023
Marshall Cohen & Kristen Holmes of CNN: "... Donald Trump claimed Sidney Powell was 'never' his attorney in a social media post Sunday, three days after she pleaded guilty in the Georgia election subversion case. Despite Trump's claims, Powell was briefly an official member of Trump's legal team in 2020, and Trump stayed in contact with her on election-related matters even after she was ousted from his campaign. 'Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was RIGGED & STOLLEN, AND OUR COUNTRY IS BEING ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED BECAUSE OF IT!!! MS. POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS. In fact, she would have been conflicted,' Trump wrote on Truth Social.... Trump publicly announced on November 15, 2020, that he 'added' Powell to his 'truly great team' of lawyers working on the election." Thanks to RAS for the lead. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Germans call "stollen" "christstollen," but I think it's about time they adopt an all-nuts version called "trumpstollen" a/k/a "electionstollen." On a more serious note, it is rather odd how Trump comes up again and again with "truly great" staff, plucked from among "the best people," yet they all eventually disappoint him to the point he must disavow and/or berate them as losers. He's kinda down to his personal valet and the former parking valet now.
Last week's guy is frustrated:
Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Rarely is the contrast between the leadership of the two political parties as clear as it has been in recent days. President Biden has been steadfast in responding to the vicious attacks against Israeli citizens by Hamas terrorists. Republicans in the House have been so consumed by internal differences that they have left Congress immobilized when action is demanded. The split-screen projections have reinforced perceptions that Republicans are unable or unwilling to govern. Too many Republicans in the House operate in a bubble constructed of false claims about the 2020 election and conspiracy theories about a potpourri of other topics -- a worldview shaped by a diet of Fox News and the erratic and at times dangerous rhetoric of ... Donald Trump.... Chaos hardly describes the scene on Capitol Hill. [Republicans] are damaging not only themselves as a party but also faith in the United States as a stable democracy.... On Ukraine and now Israel, Biden has earned praise from abroad and from many in the foreign policy community at home."
Faris Tanyos of CBS News: "As tensions heighten in the Middle East amid the escalating Israel-Hamas war, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced late Saturday that the U.S. will redeploy one of its strike groups to the Persian Gulf, as well as send additional air defense systems to the region. Austin also said that he has placed additional U.S. forces on 'prepare to deploy orders,' but did not detail how many. Austin earlier this week ordered 2,000 troops to be prepared to deploy to the Middle East. The latest decision followed 'detailed discussions with President Biden on recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces across the Middle East,' Austin said in a statement." ~~~
~~~ Secretary Austin's statement is here.
Loveday Morris & Steve Hendrix of the Washington Post: "A Hamas field manual obtained by The Washington Post and other documents found in the wake of the group's brutal attack on Israel two weeks ago illustrate some of its military capabilities and preparations for close-in, bloody killing. The manual, dated last year and found on the body of a Hamas fighter, lists instructions on operating certain weapons, identifies vulnerabilities in Israeli military equipment and offers tips on killing with a knife. The document appears to have been prepared for different units of Hamas's elite Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, including anti-armor, engineering, sniper, infantry and tunnel specialists as well as what the booklet describes as 'shock troops.'"
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Meet the Candidates: A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts. Catie Edmondson & Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "At least 10 Republicans have announced that they will run for speaker or that they are considering doing so since Friday.... Here are the Republicans who are running -- or who are considering running -- for speaker."
Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post: "As Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) waged his battle to become House speaker, some House Republicans were uncomfortable with the possibility of having an election denier occupying the most powerful legislative seat in the U.S. government heading into a presidential election year.... Jordan ... functioned as one of the key conduits ... from the House GOP conference to the White House in [Donald] Trump's quest to overturn his defeat. Jordan sowed unsubstantiated claims of election fraud across conservative media, encouraged Trump not to concede the election, spoke at 'Stop the Steal' rallies, and met with Trump campaign officials ahead of Jan. 6, where they discussed social media tactics and the march to the Capitol.... Some Republican lawmakers -- even some who supported Jordan's bid [for speaker] -- raised concerns about his continued refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden's 2020 election win when asked by peers this week.... On Friday morning, during his last-minute news conference..., Jordan again would not definitively say whether he thought the 2020 election was over.... Among the numerous lawmakers who said they would seek to fill the speaker vacancy on Friday, only Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) voted to certify the 2020 election." ~~~
~~~ So Naturally ... Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "... Donald Trump privately conveyed to allies on Friday he does not back House Majority Whip Tom Emmer's bid for speaker, throwing another wrench into an already chaotic process to find the next person to hold the gavel.... The Minnesota Republican, who has been making calls to fellow lawmakers, has emerged as an early frontrunner, having received the endorsement of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.... The former presidents top allies are already working to thwart Emmer's candidacy. Trump supporters have begun passing around opposition research on the congressmember, and the pro-Trump 'War Room' podcast on Friday afternoon turned into an Emmer bash-fest."
Flippity Doo-Dah
Zachary Cohen & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "Two stalwart allies of ... Donald Trump flipped against him this week, a staggering turn of events that could now pose a grave threat to [Trump's] ability to fend off criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The rapid-fire developments are a massive boost for prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, and the separate but overlapping federal case against Trump that was filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.... [Kenneth] Chesebro directly implicated Trump in a criminal conspiracy, and his plea establishes for the first time that the fake electors plot was illegal. Notably, Chesebro has now admitted that 'the purpose' of the fake electors conspiracy was to 'disrupt and delay the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021,' which is a key element of the federal charges Trump is facing.... While [Sidney] Powell's guilty plea only covers charges related to the breach of election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, her deal with prosecutors opens the door for testimony about first-hand interactions with Trump and other key co-defendants."
Nick Robertson of the Hill: "Kenneth Chesebro, one of former President Trump's 18 co-defendants in the George election fraud case, didn't truly believe the 2020 election was stolen, according to his attorney. 'First of all, Mr. Chesebro never believed in "The Big Lie,"' attorney Scott Grubmann said Saturday in an interview on MSNBC. 'If you ask Mr. Chesebro today who won the 2020 presidential election, he would say Joe Biden.'... Grubmann said Chesebro's guilty plea doesn't implicate any other defendants, and that Trump should 'not be worried.... At the same time I will say, if he is called by a defendant he will testify and testify truthfully.'..." ~~~
~~~ Marie: This looks like legal malpractice to me. If Cheseboro did not believe the Big Lie, then his efforts to overturn the election were undertaken for corrupt reasons. One could argue (I won't, but someone else might) that a person who believed that the election results were fraudulent was not committing immoral acts (even if his actions were illegal) by attempting to flip the results so the victory went to the person he believed was the "real" winner. But Grubmann condemns Chesebro as a bad actor by announcing that Kenny Boy knew all along that Biden had won the election. Of course the Chese does not stand alone in this; we know that none of the top people in Trump's circle was serious about the election results being fraudulent. But to have one's own attorney admit on the teevee that his client is a treacherous, anti-democratic conman is something else.
Elizabeth Williamson of the New York Times: People are speculating about why this happened: "In January 2001, Kenneth Chesebro was a mild-mannered Harvard lawyer toiling for Al Gore during the 2000 presidential election recount battle. Two decades later, on Jan. 6, 2021, he joined the mob outside the Capitol, reborn as a MAGA-hatted kingpin.... Laurence H. Tribe, the Harvard constitutional law scholar who was Mr. Chesebro's mentor..., see[s] Mr. Chesebro as a 'moral chameleon' and his story an old one about the seduction of power. 'He wanted to be close to the action,' said Mr. Tribe, who is among 60 lawyers and scholars who signed an ethics complaint in New York that could result in Mr. Chesebro's disbarment.... Mr. Chesebro has responded that in his work for Mr. Trump, he was providing him with the zealous legal advocacy that all clients deserve when he proposed a scheme that he acknowledged at the time 'could appear treasonous.'" MB: Yes, yes, it could.
Presidential Race 2024. Marshall Cohen of CNN: "A judge has rejected three more attempts by ... Donald Trump and the Colorado GOP to shut down a lawsuit seeking to block him from the 2024 presidential ballot in the state based on the 14th Amendment's 'insurrectionist ban.' The flurry of rulings late Friday from Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace are a blow to Trump, who faces candidacy challenges in multiple states stemming from his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. He still has a pending motion to throw out the Colorado lawsuit, but the case now appears on track for an unprecedented trail this month."
Rebecca Lai & Jennifer Medina of the New York Times: "Since 1790, the decennial census has played a crucial role in creating and reshaping the ever-changing views of racial and ethnic identity in the United States. Over the centuries, the census has evolved from one that specified broad categories -- primarily 'free white' people and 'slaves' -- to one that attempts to encapsulate the country's increasingly complex demographics. The latest adaptation proposed by the Biden administration in January seeks to allow even more race and ethnicity options for people to describe themselves than the 2020 census did. If approved, the proposed overhaul would most likely be adopted across all surveys in the country about health, education and the economy. Here's what the next census could look like." Includes facsimile of the proposed race I.D. questionnaire. ~~~
~~~ Sydney Trent of the Washington Post(Oct. 16): "Racial categories, assigned to people based on their appearance, geographic origin and other supposed attributes, got their start during the dawn of Western science in 18th century Europe. White Europeans, who then had no knowledge of human genetics and little meaningful contact with other cultures, placed themselves at the pinnacle.... In 2003, the completion of the Human Genome Project -- which found that humans globally share 99.9 percent of their DNA -- laid waste to the notion of 'race' among the vast majority of scientists. But the public appears barely to have noticed.... A small but increasingly vocal group of people ... favor phasing out racial categories.... In fact, there have long been thinkers who have questioned the use of racial categories, as well as people who sought to escape them and the harm they've posed."
Here's a 2020 article published by the National Institutes of Health by Wolfgang Umek & Barbara Fischer arguing that "we should abandon 'race' as a biological category in biomedical research."
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Maryland & Beyond. Minyvonne Burke & Dennis Romero of NBC News: "A $10,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to the arrest of a man accused of fatally shooting a Maryland judge in a 'targeted attack' outside his home. The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that it is seeking the public's help in finding Pedro Argote, 49, who is wanted in connection with Thursday's killing of Washington County Circuit Court Judge Andrew Wilkinson. Wilkinson was shot hours after he gave Argote's estranged wife custody of their four minor children, officials said. On Saturday, a resident of the Williamsport, Maryland, area near the West Virginia border found an SUV belonging to Argote..., Washington County Sheriff Brian K. Albert said at a news conference."
Michigan. Sara Smart & Emma Tucker of CNN: "The president of a Detroit synagogue board was found dead Saturday morning with multiple stab wounds outside her home, police said. The victim, Samantha Woll, was the president of the board of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, which is in downtown Detroit, the synagogue said in a Facebook post.... Police believe the crime took place inside her home. Officers found Woll's body with multiple stab wounds and she was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said. A motive for the killing is not yet known, police said."
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Israel/Palestine
The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in the Israel/Hamas war are here: "As Israeli forces massed along the border with Gaza on Sunday ahead of an expected ground invasion of the enclave, escalating clashes on Israel's northern border with Lebanon along with strikes in Syria and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank raised fears of a widening regional conflict.... Violence also has been surging across the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Israeli military carried out a rare airstrike there overnight against what it described as an underground 'terror compound' beneath a mosque in the city of Jenin. Two people were killed, according to Palestinian health officials. The Israeli military also continued to pound Gaza with punishing airstrikes, as armed groups there fired a salvo of rockets toward cities in central Israel on Sunday morning." ~~~
~~~ CNN's live updates are here.
Jacob Magid, et al., of the Times of Israel: "The US and several European governments are quietly pushing Israel to hold off on launching a ground invasion of Gaza following Hamas's release of two hostages, fearing that the incursion will all but scuttle efforts to secure additional releases for the foreseeable future, a senior diplomatic official told The Times of Israel. The Western governments currently pressuring Israel each have citizens among those unaccounted for and believe that the more time that passes, the harder it will be to secure the hostages' release, the official said." Read on for details.
Michael Biesecker of the AP: "Who is to blame for the fiery explosion [that struck Gaza's al-Ahli Arab Hospital and killed hundreds] has set off intense debate and finger pointing between the Israeli government and Palestinian militants, further escalating tensions in their two week-long war. The AP analyzed more than a dozen videos from the moments before, during and after the hospital explosion, as well as satellite imagery and photos. AP's analysis shows that the rocket that broke up in the air was fired from within Palestinian territory, and that the hospital explosion was most likely caused when part of that rocket crashed to the ground.... AP ran its visual analysis by a half-dozen experts who all agreed the most likely scenario was a rocket from within Gaza that veered off and came apart seconds before the explosion.... AP's assessment is supported by a range of experts with specialties in open-source intelligence, geolocation and rocketry." Includes videos.
X, Your Source for Lies. Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News: "A handful of influential but unreliable accounts, some of which have been promoted by Elon Musk, are dominating the flow of news on X around the Israel-Hamas war and easily outpacing established mainstream news outlets, according to research published Friday by the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public. Researchers analyzed viral posts about the conflict during a three-day period starting ... on Oct. 7. They concluded that the most popular posts about the crisis revealed how news on the platform is 'faster, more disorienting, and potentially more shaped by Musk himself.' The new work adds data to a swell of recent anecdotal accounts from researchers, academics and journalists who have noted a change for the worse in the way news and information moves and is incentivized on Twitter over the last year.... A separate analysis published Thursday by NewsGuard, a nonpartisan company that tracks false narratives online, found verified accounts were responsible for nearly three-fourths of the most viral misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war on Twitter."
News Lede
Tennessee. New York Times: "The authorities in Tennessee were searching on Sunday for the estranged son of Nashville's police chief, a day after the chief's son was identified as the suspect in the shooting of two police officers outside a Dollar General store. The officers were investigating a stolen vehicle Saturday afternoon in La Vergne, Tenn., about 20 miles southeast of Nashville, when they confronted the suspect outside the store, the La Vergne police chief, Christopher Moews, said at a news conference on Saturday. During a struggle, he said, the man shot the two officers with a handgun: one in the shoulder, and the other in the groin and forearm. Later on Saturday, the La Vergne police identified the suspect as John C. Drake Jr., 38, and said he should be considered armed and dangerous. The police issued a shelter-in-place order before lifting it Saturday night."
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Reader Comments (10)
Marie
I hope are feeling better and able to get some rest.
The NYT article on “The Cheese” referred to above quoted Laurence Tribe and cited his essay from August 2023 in Just Security titled “Anatomy of a Fraud: Kenneth Chesebro’s Misrepresentation of My Scholarship in His Efforts to Overturn the 2020 Presidential Election”
https://www.justsecurity.org/87498/kenneth-chesebros-misrepresentation-of-laurence-tribe-scholarship-in-his-efforts-to-overturn-the-2020-presidential-election/
Marie, I agree with you about Grubman ouch that’s gonna leave a mark.
I am guessing “The Cheese” read Laurence Tribe as noted above and maybe perused this persuasive letter of advice from some experienced defense attorneys published on Just Security in September 2023.
“A Letter to Kenneth Chesebro on Pleading Guilty”https://www.justsecurity.org/88068/a-letter-to-kenneth-chesebro-on-pleading-guilty/
@Julia: Thank you. A fascinating letter. Chesebro should be forever grateful for the high-powered, free legal advice. As you say, looks as if he took it.
All The Best People
The former Oval Office Occupier really has a talent for picking untalented representation. First, one of his lawyers didn't check the box requesting a jury trial in Georgia. Now, his lawyer in the DC case filed an appeal to the gag order, but that lawyer isn't a member of the DC bar, so the appeal is dead in the water until he gets his paperwork in order.
https://www.salon.com/2023/10/19/embarrassing-dc-flags-lawyers-filing-because-hes-not-a-member-of-the-bar/
@NiskyGuy: It was the New York civil fraud case, not the Georgia criminal case, in which some reports (one of which I think I linked) said that Trump's lawyer forgot to request a jury trial. But it turns out that isn't true since the case is of a type that does not qualify for a jury trial: according to this Yahoo! News report,
"[Justice Arthur] Engoron addressed a persistent rumor that there was no jury in the case because Trump's lawyers forgot to check a box on a form requesting one.... 'We are having a non-jury trial because we are hearing a non-jury case,' Engoron said, adding, 'It would have not helped to make a motion. Nobody forgot to check off a box.' But Engoron also noted that James had requested the trial be decided by him, and that Trump's lawyers did not request a jury. 'The AG checked off non-jury, and there was no motion for a jury,; the judge said, adding that if Trump's lawyers had made a request for one, he would have rejected it anyway because James sought 'equitable relief,' the return of profits illegally obtained, that, under New York's constitution, precludes a jury trial. Trump has often complained in social media posts that Engoron, who ruled Trump was liable for fraud, is biased against him, adding that he was denied a jury trial."
Killers of History
“Killers of the Flower Moon”, a look back at a little known (to most Americans) episode of greed, murder, and white supremacy, directed by Martin Scorsese, based on the novel by David Grann, tells the story of the killing of members of the Osage Nation, on whose land oil was discovered a hundred years ago.
Now you might think Grann’s book would be a natural for history teachers in Oklahoma, where the murders took place. If so, you’re living in a different country:
“There’s a measure in Oklahoma called HB 1775. The broad language in the law, adopted in 2021 and similar to other CRT-type bills around the country, decrees that it is illegal in Oklahoma—the site of the 1920s Osage Indian murders chronicled in Killers—to ‘make part of any Course offered in a public school…discriminatory principles’ such as, for instance, the notion that ‘an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously’; or the idea that ‘any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.’”
Because in Donald Trump’s Amerika, real history, if it involves the murder of non-whites, for example, must, by definition be based on “discriminatory principles” that offend snowflake white supremacists, whose entire fucking lives are anchored in discriminatory principles.
And the outcome? Exactly what this bill was designed to do. Make teachers fearful of teaching facts the bigots don’t like:
“In at least one Oklahoma high school, copies of Killers were purchased for an 11th-grade English class, only to sit unread after HB 1775 became law. An English teacher at the school, Debra Thoreson, felt it would be a professional risk to introduce discussions about race that are central to the story. ‘As soon as that passed,’ she told The Oklahoman, ‘I realized I would be setting myself up for House Bill 1775 to take away my license.’”
And it’s not just in Oklahoma. The right-wing white supremacist legislative assembly line has passed dozens of similar bills designed to kill history they don’t want taught.
We get caught up in what’s happening at the top of the dumpster fire but there are nasty things crawling around all through the dumpster.
Ben Protess, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer of the New York Times describe the relationship between Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt and the orange monster, including disturbing gossipy bits like "how Mr. Trump asked his wife, Melania, to strut around Mar-a-Lago in her bikini 'so all the other guys could get a look at what they were missing'.”
How Anthony Pratt worked his way into Trump's inner circle
Here's some video from 60 Minutes Australia about Pratt and DiJiT, includes cameos of John Bolton.
"'Was not my attorney, and never was': Trump melts down on Sidney Powell over plea deal"
I guess there are no privilege issues to worry about the Kraken testifying against TFG.
Too many Americans have no idea that the colonization of North America was a genocide, not by infections disease, which contributed, but by steel and lead, wielded with enthusiasm by the so-called pioneers and settlers so lionized in our naive history books, now enjoying renewed protections in many states. Here in California the native men women and children were systematically murdered in the early and mid 19th century by gangs ne "militias" recruited by the territorial and later state governments. Some estimates are that a peaceful NorCal population of 180,000 in 1800 was reduced to 30,00 by the beginning of the Civil War. At no time in my K - college education did I hear or read a single sentence of this history. And now it is being suppressed so our young people don't have to feel bad about it.
So it goes.