|
- Fox News’s resident mean blonde with an “alleged” drinking problem (wink) Laura Ingraham, doing an unintentional ad for Dems
|
|
|
If you thought we could get through a single week without a big Trump news roundup, well, that’s simply not the world we live in.
-
A top Justice Department official told Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks that the department believes he still has not returned all of the documents he took when he left the White House. This is the most concrete indication yet that investigators remain skeptical that Trump has any intention of cooperating with their document-retrieval efforts on behalf of the National Archives. But it’s not clear what steps DOJ will take, if any, to retrieve materials it believes Trump still holds. Naturally, the department declined to comment.
-
The newest addition to Trump’s legal team, Christopher Kise almost immediately put himself at odds with the former president by advocating the formation of a “forensics team” of independent investigators to meticulously inspect whether Trump indeed possessed any further records. In other words, to play ball with DOJ. Although initially open to the idea, Trump was dissuaded by other members of his legal team to take a more defiant and belligerent posture, and Kise was benched. So the official response to the report from Team Trump ended up being: “The weaponized Department of Justice and the politicized F.B.I. are spending millions and millions of American tax dollars to perpetuate witch hunt after witch hunt.” Yep! That sounds more like him.
- Newly disclosed logs created by federal investigators detail lists of seized materials from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retirement home, and if you can even believe it, it doesn’t paint a law-abidin’ picture of ol’ Donny boy. The thousands of documents seized from his property included a mix of government, business, and personal affairs, including analysis of who should get a presidential pardon. There were also call notes marked with a presidential seal, retainer agreements for lawyers and accountants, and legal bills. (In fairness, the guy has a LOT of legal bills.)
|
|
|
But of course, Trump’s legal troubles extend far past the Mar-a-Lago investigation.
-
According to a new review published in Rolling Stone, FBI agents have also looked into whether the twice-impeached man of the hour possibly stored presidential documents at his other residences such as Trump Tower in New York City and his estate in Bedminster, NJ., also in violation of the law. Trump Tower is of particular interest to the FBI because although Trump doesn’t often stay there, it remains the headquarters of his crumbling real-estate empire. More trouble brews for Trump in New York State, where U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan told Trump’s lawyers to “stop wasting time” after they tried halting the deposition of former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham in a defamation lawsuit…minutes after it began. This time the defamation case was brought by New York magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, who claimed Trump raped her two decades ago—an allegation Trump denied, while defaming her as a liar, while he was in office.
-
In older news, an extensive new report in Politico details the ways in which a number of Senate Democrats, eager to put January 6 behind them and move on to passing President Biden’s agenda, worked to dissuade impeachment manager Jamie Raskin from calling witnesses like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-WA) about a call between Trump and McCarthy on January 6 in which Trump sided with the insurrectionists. According to Beutler, McCarthy confided to her that on January 6, as he pleaded with Trump to help quell the insurrection, but Trump flatly refused, and said, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” This fucking guy!
With Trump sycophants and election deniers making up the majority of the incoming class of Republican candidates, it remains as important as ever to have all hands on deck to extinguish the legacy of this antidemocratic lunatic. Happy Friday!
|
|
|
Lovett or Leave It has some GREAT live shows coming up. Lovett and friends will be in Baltimore tonight - October 7th and in Philadelphia tomorrow on October 8th.
Get your tickets to these shows and more right now at crooked.com/events
|
|
|
A federal judge has struck a decisive blow to the Biden administration’s antitrust agenda by ruling against DOJ’s effort to block a merger between two of America’s largest sugar producers, and it’s leaving a trail of bitterness in its wake. The Justice Department had argued that the merger between U.S. Sugar and Imperial Sugar would lead to higher prices for millions of Americans. But Barbara Fesco, the USDA’s top analyst of the sugar industry, said she believed the merger would benefit consumers, based on her relationships with executives at the companies involved, who allegedly assured her they had no plan to raise prices. Ah yes, verbal assurances from your corporate-executive buddies: ironclad! No way they would ever lie about raising prices to increase their profits! If you can believe it, when Fesco was asked if she had seen any data supporting her claim that the merger wouldn’t lead to higher sugar prices, she said she had not. Nevertheless, Fesco’s testimony alone was good enough for Judge Maryellen Noreika—a Trump appointee—and she ruled that the merger did not violate antitrust laws. We will continue to see more cases like this as long as government officials actively undermine antitrust laws on behalf of the interests they’re supposed to regulate, abetted by right-wing judges who will reflexively do the bidding of big business.
|
|
|
The Uvalde, TX, school district suspended its entire police force today, and placed two officials on administrative leave, five months after 19 students and two teachers were killed in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Yet another Republican who voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial for inciting January 6, will not return to Washington. Rather than face voters, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) will resign, and has accepted a position as president of the University of Florida. Our condolences in advance to all University of Florida students and faculty.
The Biden administration published a sweeping set of export controls today intended to hobble China’s semiconductor chip industry.
Today was the first day of arguments challenging Ohio’s near-total abortion ban where providers, medical scholars, and ethicists will make their cases in the hopes of extending a stay on the ban.
Extreme heat and a dearth of rainfall have severely damaged much of this year’s cotton harvest in the United States, which produces about 35 percent of the world’s cotton.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency today over the thousands of migrants being sent from southern border states since late spring.
President Biden said that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at its highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not joking” about potential use of nuclear weapons. Great, now everyone have a relaxing weekend!
Early data shows that only about four percent of eligible Americans have received the new bivalent Covid-19 boosters.
Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s campaign fired its political director just weeks out from midterms. Seems like things aren’t going great over there!
And the hits just keep on coming. The woman who claimed Walker urged her to have an abortion when they were in a relationship in 2009 revealed that when she became pregnant again in 2011, he urged her to have another abortion, and her decision to carry the pregnancy to term ended their relationship. But remember, he wants to ban all abortions! No exceptions!
The United States labor market remained strong in September, despite the Fed’s aggressive interest-rate hikes. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is said to be sitting in his office throwing darts at these good job reports.
Top allies of disgraced former president Trump including his former national security advisor Michael Flynn and long-ago Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich may be compelled to testify before the Fulton County Grand Jury hearing in Georgia about interference in the 2020 election.
|
|
|
The British government has opened a new round of licensing for North Sea oil and gas drilling despite criticism from climate scientists, a response to the squeeze across Europe after Russian oil imports were shut off. The Conservative government, led by new Prime Minister Liz Truss, argues that extracting more fossil fuels from the North Sea will create jobs and strengthen energy security in the United Kingdom, and that it’s less environmentally harmful than importing gas and oil from other countries. The organization that oversees Britain’s electricity grid has said that planned blackouts might be necessary this winter if the gas-fired power plants, which produce 43 percent of the country’s electricity, have insufficient gas stores for operation. The last time the U.K. saw planned blackouts was during the international oil crisis of the 1970’s that coincided with a series of coal-miners’ strikes. The Conservative government and the fossil-fuel industry say drilling in the North Sea will not undermine Britain’s pledge to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, but members of the opposition and climate scientists aren’t buying it. Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said, “The government’s claim that burning ever more fossil fuels from the North Sea will help the U.K. meet its international obligations to become net-zero by 2050 has no connection to reality. We truly have stepped through the looking glass.”
|
|
|
|
|
