Crooked Media - What A Day: The chronicles of NARAnia

Folks, it brings us no some pleasure to report, once again, that he did the crimes. 
 

• A redacted version of the affidavit that precipitated the search warrant of former president Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence has been released. New information points to the fact that the search was set in motion after FBI agents reviewed 184 classified documents that were kept at Trump’s Florida property after he left the White House until they were returned in January, and interviewed a “significant number” of witnesses. 
   

• The affidavit suggests that if some of the classified documents returned from Mar-a-Lago in January had fallen into the wrong hands, they could have revealed sensitive details about human intelligence sources, or how spy agencies intercept the electronic communications of foreign targets. Particularly damning, the affidavit states: “There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found.” But of the 38 pages in the affidavit, nearly half are entirely or mostly redacted. 

• Today’s release does not provide new details about the 11 sets of classified records recovered during the August 8 search, but instead concerns the 15 boxes that Trump handed over to the National Archives and Records Administration in January, of which 14 contained classified documents, many of them top secret. According to the affidavit, part of the FBI’s rationale for searching Mar-a-Lago last month was that no space at Mar-a-Lago was authorized for the storage of classified materials. But it’s not just how they were stored, it was the possible unlawful concealment or removal of the documents. On top of that, classified materials were mixed with unclassified documents like newspapers, magazines, and personal documents, which further demonstrates Trump’s complete gross negligence with sensitive information and property that doesn’t belong to him.

Increasingly disturbing developments illustrate just how dangerous it was for highly-classified materials to be housed at Mar-a-Lago.

• A woman claiming to be Anna de Rothschild, a member of the European banking dynasty, was invited to Mar-a-Lago last year where she mingled with Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). But the woman’s real name is Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant fluent in several languages who is now the subject of a widening FBI investigation into her financial activities and the chain of events that led her to Trump’s Florida estate. Law enforcement agents in Canada have also confirmed that she has been the subject of a major crimes unit investigation in Quebec since February. The ease with which Yashchyshyn was able to bypass the security at Mar-a-Lago—multiple trips in and out of the club grounds—demonstrates how vulnerable the facility was and is. 
   

• As always, Trump and his ilk are still crying “Witch hunt!!” because the evidence against him is piling up to their ears. Interestingly, president Biden, who has been quite circumspect, even rhetorically soft since taking office, seems to have flipped a switch in recent weeks. Perhaps it’s the looming specter of midterm elections, or feeling emboldened by his recent high-profile legislative successes, but the gloves are off and the aviators are on. At a speech in Rockville, MD, last night, Biden went straight for the jugular, saying that MAGA Republicans are “a threat to democracy” but perhaps more importantly, he noted that, “it's not just Trump, it's the entire philosophy that underpins the — I'm going to say something — it's like semi-fascism.” Finally, our boy has dropped the f word. Then on Friday he mocked the Trump-world excuses and false alibis for Trump’s theft of classified information. In a time when mainstream Republicans are hacking voting machines, openly trying to overturn election results, stealing state secrets, and stripping rights from every marginalized group, even the crown prince of reaching-across-the-aisle Joseph R. Biden can see what the Republican Party has become, or more likely has quietly always been.

The escalating evidence mounting against the former president, and all of his allies in some of the highest offices in government who are sparing no effort to help him try to get away with it, show that Trump is the symptom, not the disease.

With less than 100 days until the midterms - it’s safe to say Midterm Madness is setting in! Right now, you can find all new Vote Save America merch in the Crooked Store! A portion of every single order on the Crooked store goes to VoteRiders—the leading organization focused on informing citizens of their state’s voter ID requirements and helping them secure the documents they may need to vote.

So check out crooked.com/merch for the latest drop, then head to votesaveamerica.com to find out how to get involved and do your part in the lead up to this year’s midterms. 

The Secret Service said today that it has recovered $286 million in fraudulently obtained pandemic loans and is in the process of returning the money to the Small Business Administration.

As was bound to happen when corporations were put in charge of vaccine development, Moderna sued Pfizer and BioNTech today for patent infringement.

Luke Bowen, a former political director for Texas Right to Life, one of the state’s most influential anti-abortion groups, was arrested for soliciting a minor. 

The ongoing drought punishing Europe has forced the earliest-ever harvest in French wine country. 

A school district in southwest Missouri has decided to bring back spanking as a form of discipline for students, as one of 19 states that still allows corporal punishment in schools. 

The World Health Organization is holding an open forum to solicit suggestions for an alternative name to Monkeypox, in search of a less-stigmatizing (and, um, vaguely racist?) moniker. 

Administrators at a Nebraska public school shuttered its award-winning student newspaper days after the latest edition included articles and editorials on LGBTQ+ issues. Because, you know, Conservatives just love free speech!!

New court documents and interviews show that several Floridians who were arrested last week as part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) “voter fraud crackdown” were notified by official government entities that they were in fact eligible to vote. 

Trump-backed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano posed in a Confederate uniform in a faculty photo at Army War College in 2014. Just “honoring history” I’m sure!

A new report suggests Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) privately tanked the Biden Administration’s nomination of Vanderbilt Law Professor Ganesh Sitaraman, whom she deemed too progressive to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an obscure but key position in the enforcement of the president’s agenda. The office facilitates the often-torturous process of writing regulations, which requires input from the public, legal reviews, and inter-agency coordination. It will be crucial in implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, particularly the climate provisions therein. Sinema reportedly told the White House she would oppose Sitaraman last spring, but as with most things related to her, her rationale is unclear. Also as with most things related to Sinema, the answer probably has to do with some very powerful corporate donors.

Defend Our Future empowers and mobilizes the next generation of climate leaders in pursuit of environmental justice, clean energy, and climate solutions. Here at Defend, we’re working hard to prepare our campus ambassadors for their fall semester by giving them the tools and skills to take urgent climate action. As we train campus ambassadors across the country, we need your help.
 

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The EPA will finally begin to apply Hazardous Substance labels to “forever chemicals” — toxic chemical compounds that can persist in the environment for years. 

Students at Grapevine High School in a suburb of Dallas, TX, staged a walkout today to protest new district policies limiting how teacher are allowed to discuss race, gender, and sexuality, restricting which bathrooms transgender students can use, and giving trustees a greater say over which books are available in libraries. 

To encourage water conservation, a Swedish municipality is holding an “ugliest lawn” contest, which is pretty creative and fun. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) pledged $100,000 to Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist’s campaign to unseat Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).

Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle’s new podcast “Archetypes” knocked Joe Rogan off the top of the podcast charts in most of the English-speaking world. We owe her a debt of gratitude for this act of global public service. 

Recent polls for the Los Angeles mayoral runoff find that progressive Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) has widened her lead over real estate billionaire and Republican-until-three-years-ago Rick Caruso.