Crooked Media - What A Day: It doesn't pass Musk-er

The bad news keeps piling on for old Teflon Don. 
 

• Today was the big day for disgraced former president Donald Trump as he sat for a scheduled deposition with the New York attorney general. The man loves to pop off, so he probably went on one of his deranged rants, right? Nope. He invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and said nothing. This from the man who once asked, “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” Good question! Especially when posed to someone who was president and wants to be again. On Trump’s social media platform of choice, Truth Social, he called the deposition “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. history. My great company, and myself, are being attacked from all sides. Banana Republic!” 
   

• Between the raid at Mar-a-Lago, a federal appeals court denying his yearslong effort to block a House committee from obtaining his tax returns, and having to appear for this deposition, it’s not a good week for Donny Boy. In January, Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) said she found “significant” evidence that the Trump Organization used false and/or misleading asset valuations in its financial statements. Today Trump was face-to-face with James, whom he had previously referred to as an “out of control prosecutor” and a “racist” (James is the first Black attorney general in New York State). Ivanka Trump’s deposition took place last week and Donald Trump Jr. was deposed in late July. Neither asserted their Fifth Amendment rights. 
   

• Once the investigation wraps, the attorney general’s office could move to bring a lawsuit seeking financial penalties against Trump or his company, or even ban their future involvement in certain kinds of businesses. Some of the evidence seems jarringly clear. The Trump Organization exaggerated the value of its holdings to impress lenders and then undervalued them to fraudulently lower their tax bill. The DA’s investigation has already led to criminal charges against the Trump Organization and its longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, who are accused of tax fraud related to company benefits.

Meanwhile, more information is unfolding about Monday’s raid at Mar-a-Lago.
 

• A right-wing lawyer for Trump said agents who brought the court-approved warrant to the premises took about 12 boxes of documents after conducting their search. This came after, according to one of his lawyers, Trump’s teams and the Justice Department had a series of discussions this spring over classified materials and records held at Mar-a-Lago, and then handed over 15 boxes of documents. Interestingly, neither Trump nor any of his lawyers have furnished the warrant (still), but they have seeded baseless allegations that the FBI may have “planted” evidence, which suggests he was trying to hold on to a bunch of very sensitive shit and got busted.
   

• For those who were involved with approving the FBI raid, and even some who weren’t, the GOP backlash has been swift and deeply troubling. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) received an extremely disturbing voicemail from an angry Trump supporter who threatened his life as well as the lives of his wife and children. Pro-Trump fascists have made voilent, antisemitic online threats against the judge, Bruce Reinhart, who signed off on the warrant. They have posted his home address, phone numbers, and names of his family members interspersed with threats of extreme violence. Attorney General Merrick Garland, despite his centrist credentials and previous hesitancy to put the screws to Trump for his crimes, is suddenly in major political crosshairs and accused of partisanship. 

All signs point to a political environment hurtling towards right-wing violence, regardless of how overwhelming the evidence against Trump may be. It would be nice for Dems to get in the game and use their powers to protect these investigations from GOP interference and the people conducting them from the violent lunatics Republicans are intentionally inspiring.

The January 6 hearings, and earlier investigations, have revealed more Trump crimes than we could have imagined six years ago, yet he hasn’t faced criminal charges and our institutions haven’t been bolstered to protect future threats he poses to the Constitution. Former FBI investigator Peter Strzok joined Positively Dreadful to talk about how the Trump accountability story isn’t fully written and discuss whether the justice system is failing? 

New episodes of Positively Dreadful drop each Friday. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Trump sycophant and coup plotter Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) says the FBI seized his cell phone yesterday.

The Justice Department has charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in connection with a plot to murder former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. 

A traveling nurse accused of killing five people with her car by plowing into a busy Los Angeles intersection has been charged with murder, and investigators revealed she had been involved in 13 previous crashes. 

Two soldiers based at Fort Benning, GA, died and three others were injured by a falling tree yesterday while training in bad weather on a mountain in the northern part of the state. 

Professional troll and comic book villain Elon Musk sold $7 billion in Tesla stock shares ahead of his forthcoming court battle with Twitter after he reneged on his contractual obligation to buy the company.

Police in Washington, D.C. are investigating a possible hate crime after two men were reportedly attacked this weekend by suspects who hurled homophobic slurs at them and made derogatory references to monkeypox. 

Booster vaccines for polio will be offered to London children after more traces of the virus were found in the city’s sewage water. Congratulations, anti-vaxxers! You brought back polio.

A Hawaii man was arrested after DNA technology helped investigators identify him as a suspect in the 1992 abduction, rape, and murder of a 15 year-old girl in Northern California. 

Police in Albuquerque, NM, have detained and charged a man said to be the “primary suspect” in the killings of four Muslim men in the area over the past few months. 

A coalition of tenants unions, community organizations, and legal groups is calling on the Biden administration to launch a full government response to skyrocketing rents nationwide.

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk has an outsized presence in the political and economic conversation, and many of his most ardent defenders on Twitter (to say nothing of himself) tout him as a “visionary” who “makes things.” But does he? It’s not just this deal to acquire Twitter which he is trying to back out of. There’s also Tesla, Elon’s flagship company, which features electric cars that are supposed to be the model for “green” automobiles, but the emissions required for each vehicle are on the rise, they don’t have a clean, green, supply chain, and there are persistent problems with production quality (i.e. they likely won’t last as long as vehicles from other carmakers.) Tesla has recalled millions of cars since the company launched in 2008. Elon himself continually misleads the public about how safe and capable his self-driving cars are, which have slammed into highway medians, emergency vehicles, transport trucks and more. Musk said he would fix nationwide transit with another of his companies called Hyperloop, but later admitted to his biographer that he had no plans to build it, and it was a scheme to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California. There’s also the well-documented problem of systemic racism against Black employees at Tesla. He also tweeted to the U.N. World Food Programme that he would sell $6 billion of Tesla stock and donate it to the WFP if they gave him a financial breakdown, which apparently they did, but the check never came, and he did not respond to WFP officials' offers to meet. Elon will continue to be a looming presence in our culture and economy, he will keep pumping out grand ideas and not actually doing anything about them, and the more people are able to see through his shiny veneer, the better.

Every gallon of oil extracted from our coastal floor is possible because of a lease sale. Data proves that new federal leasing won’t lower gas prices now or for decades – but it will irreversibly harm our communities and our environment, all while fast-tracking climate disaster. 

Our climate and communities cannot afford more oil and gas drilling on our public waters. That is why we are asking you to join Earthjustice to tell the Biden Administration to end new offshore oil and gas leases. 

We know that drilling in our public waters leads to oil spills and contributes to extreme weather, rising sea levels due to climate change, and harms coastal communities – all while the oil and gas industry continues to profit at the expense of our health and our climate. 

The Biden administration has a unique and critical opportunity in 2022 to determine the future of offshore leasing in federal waters for the next five years through the Five-Year National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program. This plan determines how – or, crucially, if – the United States uses its assets in federal waters, namely underwater oil and gas. Part of this process requires the public – like you – to provide input on the future of offshore oil and gas leasing.  

Take a moment today to weigh in on the future of our planet and our health and urge the Biden administration to not offer any new offshore leases to fossil fuel companies.

President Biden has signed bipartisan legislation (previously filibustered by Republicans) to help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan into law today. 

Monthly inflation was flat in July, a new report finds. 

Italians have run Domino’s Pizza out of the country, which is pretty funny. 

Fast food company Chipotle has reached a $20 million settlement with New York City to resolve fair scheduling and sick leave violations for 13,000 current and former employees. It’s the largest settlement of its kind. Guac costs extra and so does corporate wage theft.