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- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), being intentionally obtuse, (or maybe unintentionally, lest we give him too much credit).
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Yesterday, a federal judge whom disgraced former president Trump appointed to the bench (and whom he sought out to intervene on his behalf to gum up the criminal investigation of all those sensitive documents he stole) did precisely the lawless thing he wanted her to do, if you can believe it!
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Judge Aileen Cannon specifically ordered the appointment of an independent “special master” to review the more than 11,000 government records the FBI seized in its August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago. Cannon granted this yet-to-be-named appointee broad powers that extend beyond filtering materials that may be subject to attorney-client or executive privilege. She also blocked federal prosecutors from further examining the seized materials for the investigation until the special master has completed their review. Okay, yikes!!!
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If you think this is an egregious judicial corruption from a judge with a serious conflict of interest, you are far from alone. For instance: A former homeland security official for George W. Bush, and prosecutor for the independent-counsel investigation of Bill Clinton, (i.e. about as Republican as they come) said it was obscene of Cannon to block the Justice Department from taking standard and necessary investigatory steps like asking witnesses about government files, many marked as classified, that agents had already reviewed. Even Resistance Hero Bill Barr thinks what Cannon did was indefensible. The decision will likely be appealed, but any such appeal would be heard by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, where Trump appointed six of the 11 active judges there. Also very bad!
- New York University’s resident legal scholar specializing in separation of powers said there was no basis for Judge Cannon to expand a special master’s authority to screen materials that were also potentially subject to executive privilege, as that tool is normally designed to protect internal executive branch deliberations to outsiders like Congress, and the Justice Department is itself part of the executive branch, while Trump is conspicuously not. This exact scenario harkens back to the 1977 Supreme Court case in which former President Richard Nixon tried to use executive privilege to shield his documents from criminal investigation. Ah, Nixon. At least he created the EPA? Other legal scholars from around the country characterized Cannon’s legal justification as “thin at best” and “laughably bad.”
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Meanwhile, in other Trump-related criminal news…
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Digital World Acquisition Group, the corporate firm that agreed to merge with Trump’s social media company Truth Social, failed to receive enough shareholder support for a one-year extension to complete the deal, most likely due to Truth Social’s tanking value. In other news, an investigative report shows that Doug Berlin, a pro-Trump police officer, successfully worked from within the Washington Metropolitan Police Department to undermine the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s homicide investigation into the 2016 murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.
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A damning, newly-obtained video shows former GOP elections chairwoman of Coffee County, GA, Cathy Latham, escorting a team of pro-Trump operatives to the county elections office on January 7, 2021, the same day the voting system was known to have been breached. The footage further illuminates how the organized effort spearheaded by lawyers and others in Trump’s orbit to seek evidence of voter fraud was actually executed in battleground states like Georgia, Michigan, Colorado, and Wisconsin. Latham, it should be noted, is also currently the subject of two criminal investigations related to efforts to help overturn the 2020 election, one of which is for posing as a fake elector in 2020. She was apparently the “primary point of contact” for Trump’s lawyers who traveled to Coffee County. Connections between lawyers working for Trump and local Republican elections officials sympathetic to Trump have been found in Michigan, Colorado, and Nevada as well, pointing to a large-scale coordinated effort.
Here’s what Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon is trying to help Trump cover up. Whatever ultimately happens with the now-enjoined criminal investigation, her unfathomable ruling is a reminder that Trump has fatally compromised the judiciary; and if the country doesn’t rise up against him again, he’ll do the same thing to the people who count votes in our elections. In other words, the Trump emergency is far from over. Sorry!
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In Fairfield, CT, nearly 2,400 residents signed a petition opposing a proposed building project for 31 affordable housing units downtown in the city. They even raised $84,000 in a legal fund to fight it. In extremely-wealthy Greenwich, CT, a developer recently withdrew an application to build a project that would include 58 apartments priced below market rate. This phenomenon being seen throughout Fairfield County, CT, is not new, nor is it unique to the region. Across the country, campaigns against applications to build new housing have become increasingly fervent, despite the widespread knowledge that low housing supply has directly contributed to the housing crisis. It should be noted that “affordable” housing projects are based on area median income, and are therefore below market-rate, as opposed to low-income housing, which is a different classification. In a place as wealthy as Greenwich, CT, a truly low-income household could not even afford what constitutes “affordable” housing there. Last week, a group led by the Open Communities Alliance announced that it would file a civil-rights lawsuit against the town of Woodbridge, CT, stating that the town’s zoning regulations (which sharply restrict multifamily housing) violates the state Fair Housing Act, state zoning laws, and the state constitution. Zoning laws which disproportionately discriminate against anything other than single-family housing contribute to soaring housing and rent prices, and this lawsuit will therefore be closely watched nationwide.
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Republicans are not doing well with women, which could compromise their hopes for taking back the Senate. Can’t imagine why!!
Newly surfaced confidential documents show that Russia may face a longer and deeper recession than initially thought due to American and European sanctions as the country’s war on Ukraine rages on.
Actors Ben Stiller and Sean Penn are, weirdly, the latest Americans to have been banned from Russia by the country’s government.
The Trump-backed Republican nominee for Michigan secretary of state, Kristina Karamo, reportedly threatened to kill herself and her two daughters according to new family court documents.
Iran sentenced two LGBT activists to death, after a court found them guilty of “corruption on Earth.”
Though the move has not been officially approved in Taliban-run Afghanistan, authorities in the country’s eastern province of Paktia said girls’ high schools had opened in recent days.
The United Nations atomic watchdog agency urged Russia and Ukraine to establish a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the Ukrainian power plant currently under Russian military occupation.
As a brutal heatwave lingers in California, energy prices have soared to their highest price in years.
The retaining wall of Pakistan’s largest lake burst today after months of heavy rains, forcing thousands more Pakistanis from their homes.
In a November 2020 email, a Fox New producer begged the network to pull Jeanine Pirro from the air for repeatedly spreading conspiracy theories sourced from dark corners of the internet, a piece of evidence that’s now central to Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the network.
The Russian ministry of defense is in the process of purchasing millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea according to new intelligence findings. Not great!
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After months of upheaval, including former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s entire cabinet resigning in rapid succession, after which he resigned as well, the United Kingdom has a new prime minister. In a private audience with Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, Boris Johnson officially resigned in a bow to the Queen, and Liz Truss asked permission to form a government as the new Prime Minister, as tradition holds. God, do the English love processional ceremony! With this, the U.K. joins a small club of nations who have elected at least three female heads of state. In Britain’s case, interestingly, all three have been members of the Conservative Party. Prime Minister Truss is a shifty, somewhat-unpopular political figure, who initially fought for Britain to stay in the E.U., only to become a hard-line Brexiteer. She began her political career on the left, but now ostensibly models herself after Margaret Thatcher. Truss inherited an unenviable list of political and economic ills facing her country, chief among them the soaring energy bills hitting Britons hard in an already-precarious economy. As one of her first orders of business, she is planning to freeze household energy bills at the current level ahead of this winter and next, subsidized by government-backed loans to suppliers. European governments are pushing through multibillion-euro packages to prevent utilities from collapsing and protect financially vulnerable households as the fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions they necessitated will continue to be felt across the continent as it loses one of its major energy suppliers.
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