Crooked Media - What A Day: Make no Jones about it

Dear readers, have we ever told you how wise and handsome we’ve always found Merrick Garland to be? No? Well it’s totally true, and Mr. Attorney General, if you’re reading this, you would look especially good putting a certain disgraced former president behind bars. 
 

• According to four sources, the Justice Department is actively investigating former president Trump and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. These sources say prosecutors overseeing witness testimony to grand jurors have asked detailed, pointed questions about Trump’s involvement in the coup. Although federal criminal probes are opaque by nature, the lack of overt DOJ actions over the past year had fueled speculation from liberals and leftists alike that the department, and Garland in particular, was not pursuing high-level coup plotters aggressively enough.
   

• Among the witnesses who may have received questions about Trump? Former vice president Pence’s top two aides. His former chief of staff Marc Short, and his former legal adviser Greg Jacob testified under subpoena to a DC-based grand jury last week, and faced questions about the fake-elector scheme and the role of Trump lawyers John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, because Short and Jacob were both present in key meetings leading up to the January 6 insurrection.
   

• The fake-elector scheme looks extra-super crime-y now. Emails obtained by the New York Times and authenticated by former employees of the Trump 2020 campaign provide new evidence demonstrating that the Trump campaign worked with outside lawyers and advisers to organize the fake-electors plan and other options that would overturn the results of an election he had already already lost. What’s more, the lawyers literally referred to the fake electors as “fake,” providing strong evidence that they knew they were conspiring to defraud the United States. (That’s a crime!) 

Speaking of DOJ, the man of the hour, Merrick Garland, continues to maintain an enigmatic presence in public.
 

• In an interview with NBC News, Garland insisted that factors like Trump’s status as a former president or a potential future candidate will not affect prosecution decisions in the event that crimes were committed. (Spoiler: Trump absolutely committed crimes.) He also attributed speculation over the Department’s investigation to the opaque nature of criminal investigations in general.
   

• Specifically, Garland told Lester Holt, “We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding Jan. 6, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable. That’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.” If he means it, then Trump’s lawyers should expect a letter informing them that their client is the target of a federal criminal investigation sooner rather than later.
   

As it happened, Trump returned to D.C. to talk some shit for the first time since he left the city in disgrace some eighteen months ago. May his next trip back be for his arraignment.

The newest Crooked podcast, Another Russia, is here. 

In 2015 Putin’s number one public enemy, Boris Nemtsov, was shot and killed in front of the Kremlin. He was a relentless critic of Putin, corruption, and war in Ukraine. Then, he was assassinated. 

In Another Russia, his daughter, journalist Zhanna Nemtsova, and co-host Ben Rhodes, tell his story to find out what happened to an entire country and to explore the question: Is another Russia possible?

Listen to new episodes of Another Russia each Monday on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

One month ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that a public high school football coach in Washington state had a first-amendment right to regularly led student-athletes on his football team in prayer, and that the district was wrong do discipline him for what the majority of the Court saw as a private act (even though it totally wasn’t). Unsurprisingly, the prayer-in-public-schools floodgates immediately opened. Parents, teachers, and activists are preparing to push religious worship into public schools nationwide, bolstered by the coach’s victory and a June ruling in which SCOTUS declared that the state of Maine could not prevent religious schools from receiving public tuition grants. Of course, in most of America, “prayer” in public schools will mean Christian prayer, and any children of other religions will be alienated. But as many Americans know, prayer in public schools and other public settings, fully enmeshing church and state, has been happening for some time now. Many school board meetings and huddles in public-school sports open with explicitly Christian prayers. An Oklahoma parent contacted the Freedom From Religion Foundation after her third-grade daughter told her that her teacher’s prayers instructed students “to thank Jesus for things like sunny days and good classroom behavior.” Her daughter, who previously had no religious background, was quoted as saying that at first she thought prayer was “a little weird, but I went along with it because I thought it was required.” With a right-wing, mostly-evangelical Supreme Court presiding over us, there’s no telling what kind of grip religion (specifically Christianity) will be allowed to exert over state-funded spaces.

A congressional investigation has discovered that China tried to build a network of informants inside the U.S. Federal Reserve over the past decade, including by threatening and bribing Fed employees.

CEO of Gab, the right-wing extremist social media network, Andrew Torba went on the record saying that Jewish right-wing commentators like Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin are not welcome on the far-right. Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor Doug Mastriano paid Gab $5,000 for “consulting services” on April 28th. 

Washington, DC, will shift its monkeypox-vaccine strategy, to focus on getting first doses to as many people in the highest-risk populations as possible.

Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) was among the 157 House Republicans who voted against protecting marriage equality last week, but over the weekend he attended his son’s wedding to another man. 

Mandy Gutierrez, the principal of Robb Elementary School during the May 24 shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers, has been placed on administrative leave with pay. 

European Union nations voted today to curb their natural gas consumption this winter in anticipation of expected supply cuts by Russia.

Speaking of Russia, they are set to pull out of the International Space Station after 2024, closing one of the only remaining avenues of communication between Russia and the U.S.

Torrential rain caused flash flooding in St. Louis, MO, and its surrounding areas, shattering 24-hour rainfall records and stranding residents in their homes and cars.

National Park Service rangers are investigating reports of human remains found in Lake Mead near Boulder City, NV, after severe drought caused the water level to sink to its lowest point in nearly a century.

Disney-backed streaming service Hulu is refusing to run Democratic campaign ads about abortion and guns. Like other digital providers, it’s not subject to the Communications Act that requires broadcast television networks to provide politicians equal access to airtime. Hmm...starting to think that maybe corporate monopolies aren’t good after all?

The Uvalde school board has formally urged Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) to call state lawmakers back to Austin in order to raise the legal age to buy an assault rifle from 18 to 21. This latest insistence from local officials comes two months after the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, where the gunman killed 19 students and two teachers just days after he turned 18. The governor is the only Texas official with the power to call special legislative sessions, and the legislature only meets for 140 days every two years. We get it, you guys hate functional government! Last week, a Texas House of Representatives special commission released a report detailing the “systemic failures” that led to the massacre at Robb Elementary, just one of which was all of the obvious warning signs about the shooter that officials missed: at least a year before the shooting, the gunman threatened a woman, carried around a dead cat, and was nicknamed “school shooter” by classmates, yet he was able to legally purchase an assault rifle on his 18th birthday. Abbott has been reluctant to even entertain changes to Texas’s gun laws because he’s a craven, unrepentant asshole, but called the special committee’s findings “beyond disturbing,” and said critical changes are needed. We hope he’s actually planning to do something, but not holding our breath.

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Almost half of the University of Michigan Medical School’s newest class of students walked out of the school’s white-coat ceremony in protest of keynote speaker Kristin Collier, an openly anti-abortion provider.

Gen Z-ers (18-25 year olds) are putting away more money for retirement than other generations. That might be a response to the crippling fear that comes from living in a country with no social safety net, but very responsible behavior nonetheless, Zoomers!

Nearly 60 percent of Americans support federal legislation protecting same-sex marriage, according to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll.

The Senate voted 64-32 today to advance a $280 billion funding package to boost domestic chip production, a rare legislative priority win for the Biden administration. 

President Joe Biden is considering a new, extended pause on federal student-loan payments, and $10,000 in student-loan debt forgiveness is reportedly back on the table, according to sources. C’mon Joe…you’re so close! “Yes we can!”...remember???