Crooked Media - What A Day: Bragg racing

Could it be? Could disgraced former president Donald Trump actually face legal consequences for his myriad crimes and misdeeds? 
 

• Well, maybe! Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is expected to decide whether to indict Trump on charges related to the illegal hush-money payment he made to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 any day now. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will likely not be far behind in deciding whether to indict Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. This will be a delicate balance for prosecutors, who will have to weigh not only whether or not to charge Trump and for what criminal offenses, but also his associates who committed related crimes. 
   

• Trump’s potential indictment in the Stormy Daniels case would stem from a bookkeeping fraud charge, an extremely funny charge for someone as cartoonishly evil as Donald Trump, not unlike Al Capone getting brought down for tax fraud. To carry that charge over the finish line, prosecutors will have to show that Trump knowingly instructed his campaign subordinates to miscategorize the $130,000 payment to Daniels with “intent to defraud.” In Georgia, Trump’s potential crimes include election-code violations (including conspiracy to violate the election code and solicitation of election fraud), and racketeering. 
   

• Obviously, many of Trump’s besties in Congress are not happy about this. Three House Republican committee chairmen sent Bragg a letter today insisting he testify before Congress “about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision.” It’s not a subpoena, exactly, but it’s the first indication that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his band of MAGA nutjobs plan to make good on their promise to harass any and all officials who have investigated Trump. This letter comes on the heels of Trump unleashing a series of screeds on Truth Social on Saturday, claiming that “illegal leaks” indicated he would be arrested on Tuesday, and calling on his supporters to protest.

But wait, there’s more!
 

• Apart from the state-level cases, there are also federal investigations, including of Trump’s theft of classified documents, which he took to Mar-A-Lago after his presidency had ended. Last year, Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran falsely told the Justice Department that no additional documents remained in Trump’s possession after Trump turned over an initial set to the National Archives, and then whoopsie daisy, the FBI search of Mar-A-Lago in August produced 103 more. For this, Trump could get slapped with charges of unauthorized retention of national security documents, obstruction of justice, mishandling official documents, contempt of court, and conspiracy to make a false statement. 
   

• DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith is also conducting a broader federal investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and his involvement in the January 6 insurrection. The House January 6 Committee referred Trump and others to DOJ for criminal investigation, but that investigation was underway before the committee disbanded, and before Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel. However, Smith may well use the panel’s findings to help him finish his investigation. This could result in charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement, and insurrection. Wow! Truly an unprecedented achievement in the federal crimes industry!
   

For perhaps the first time, it appears that even Trump can see the writing on the wall. He’s trying to exploit his impending arrest for political gain and fundraising, as he is wont to do, but he just doesn’t have the juice that he did two years ago. Even his legions of loyal adherents now feel like protesting in support of him is a waste of time. Will all of the charges come down on him? Probably not. But it seems highly unlikely at this point that none of them will. You don’t have to be a statistician to know that the odds are finally stacking up against him.

Join Ben and Tommy as they mark the 20-year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq with a bonus episode of Pod Save the World
and attempt to answer the question: how did the Iraq war change America and the world? Joining them for this conversation is journalist and Iraq war supporter turned vocal opponent Peter Beinart, and Congressman and Iraq war veteran Ruben Gallego. 


Listen to this special episode of Pod Save the World and catch new episodes every Wednesday on your favorite podcast platform.

Conservative lawmakers and anti-choice advocates are scrambling ahead of what could be a wave of ballot initiatives coming their way. Chairman of Oklahomans for Life Tony Lauinger recently wrote a letter to Oklahoma state lawmakers urging them to amend the state’s near-total abortion ban to add exceptions for rape and incest, arguing that without such exceptions, there is a significant chance that a citizen-led ballot initiative to make abortion legal will eventually succeed. This is part of a larger strategy by the anti-choice movement to prevent voters from restoring abortion access by popular vote. State legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma are all debating bills that would impose much stricter requirements for ballot initiatives and increase the vote threshold to pass an amendment. So now we have Roe overturned by an unelected body from a conservative majority appointed by two presidents who lost the popular vote, and conservative state legislatures trying to prohibit ballot measures from passing with majority support. Gotta love this anti-democratic turducken! 

Wyoming became the first state to explicitly ban abortion pills on Friday. 

A GOP-proposed bill in Florida would ban girls from talking about their menstrual cycles in school. Great, now instead of “aunt flo” or “the red wave” girls will have to refer to their periods as “the event which legally I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

A new major climate report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that without drastic and immediate changes to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, earth will cross a critical global-warming threshold by the early 2030s. Will this be the warning Republicans and Joe Manchin finally take seriously? Probably not!

European lenders seemed to recover today, as did U.S. banking stocks following last week’s bank run March Madness. 

The New York Times finally nailed down the Reagan campaign conspiracy with foreign regimes to keep U.S. hostages imprisoned in Iran until after the 1980 election, reminder #6384958495 that Trump is just a recent symptom of GOP corruption, not the cause of it.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s government barely survived a no-confidence vote in the country’s National Assembly today after the government bypassed the lower house to ram through deeply unpopular changes to the French pension system.

A bunch of pro-Russian accounts used Elon Musk’s new pay-to-play Twitter verification system to disseminate misinformation about the Ohio train derailment last month in an effort designed to provoke fear and distrust. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for dinner at the Kremlin on Monday, referring to Xi as his “dear friend,” just days after the ICC called for Putin to be arrested for war crimes against Ukrainian children.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich came under fire after a speech he delivered at a conference in France on Sunday. “Is there a Palestinian history or culture? There is none,” he said, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” Yep! That’ll do it! Smotrich, who heads the religious-nationalist party of the most far-right coalition government in Israeli history, made these comments on the same day that Israeli and Palestinian officials met in Egypt for de-escalation talks ahead of Islam’s holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish holiday of Passover. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh immediately condemned the remarks and said they are effectively an incitement of violence, while deputy U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq called the statements “completely unhelpful.” Egypt, the first Arab nation to sign a peace deal with Israel, rejected the statements as well.

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President Biden issued the first veto of his term today to kill Republican legislation that would ban federal government benefit administrators from considering environmental impacts when making investment decisions for American retirement plans.