Crooked Media - What A Day: McBurney after reading

By the time you read this, Donald Trump may be a four-times (frice?) indicted felon, but we sent this at the normal time because the Fulton County district attorney and grand jury have been stringing us along all dang day!

• Fulton County, GA prosecutors appear to be seeking a far-reaching, multiple-count indictment against the disgraced former president, bringing in witness after witness to testify before a grand jury, and even accidentally posting a list of possible charges online (before quickly removing the document). Prosecutors are reportedly in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Trump’s clown car of a legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, GA, which may form a basis of a racketeering charge against Trump, for violating a statute frequently used to target organized-crime leaders.

• After launching the investigation in February 2021, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis began presenting her case before a normal grand jury on Monday, where the case is being presided over by Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney. At least two witnesses who were expected to testify on Tuesday reported that they were called to Fulton County Courthouse on Monday, a nod that an indictment may be close at hand. Sorry, we should clarify: another indictment, as Trump has already been indicted three times this year, including earlier this month in a separate federal probe led by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith. 

• Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat said that if Donald Trump is charged, he will be booked, photographed, and fingerprinted just like any other accused criminal. Sounds good to us! It’s suspected that Willis could charge Trump under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which has wide-ranging authority thanks to the federal law from which it is derived. The Atlanta grand jury continued hearing from witnesses into Monday night, as the jurors were still meeting at the Fulton County courthouse hours past its usual 5 p.m. close of business.

Moving now to New York for more of Trump’s legal troubles. 
 

• Also on Monday, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan announced in an 11-page ruling that it would not be in the public interest for him to recuse himself from overseeing Trump’s criminal indictment for falsifying business records. Trump’s legal team demanded that Justice Merchan step down because he gave a $15 donation to President Biden’s 2020 campaign, as well as two $10 donations to political organizations that oppose GOP policies. 

• Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his prosecution team echoed Merchan’s opinion, saying there was no actual evidence of his ability to remain impartial. If Trump-appointed, barely-qualified federal judge Aileen Cannon hasn’t had to recuse herself from overseeing a case against Trump—the man who appointed her, and who would presumably put her on the U.S. Supreme Court if re-elected—what leg did his legal team think they had to stand on? 
   

We will surely have a big update for you tomorrow, if everything goes at it seems to be going, but for now, keep clicking refresh and have some champagne handy.

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You’re not gonna believe this, but Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) campaign staff did some deeply unethical shit. Greene’s 2020 campaign manager Isaiah Wartman (can't even trust a guy named Wart Man these days!) and two others have agreed to pay more than $50,000 in restitution and penalties for operating a fraudulent charity supposedly meant for the people of East Palestine, OH after a widely publicized train derailment in February. The fake charity in question, called the Ohio Clean Water Fund, collected nearly $149,000 in donations by claiming the money would go to the Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley, but the individuals running the fake charity, like co-founder Michael Peppel, only gave about six percent of that money to the food bank, and pocketed the rest. An attorney for Wartman and Mahoney claimed that they too were victims of fraud perpetrated by Peppel but did not cite any proof or propose taking legal action against him. Peppel previously worked as an aide to Republican lawmakers from Ohio at the state and federal level. This settlement supplements  a separate $132,000 settlement that the fake charity’s other co-founder, Michael Lee, agreed to send to the Second Harvest Food Bank. We have to hand it to these Republican operatives for always finding new ways to show us with their actions what the conservative movement is really all about.

As a new Omicron subvariant of the coronavirus spreads worldwide, a new COVID vaccine is due out next month, but medical experts are skeptical that enough Americans will choose to get the new shot to knock down the outbreak. 

A member of the Independent School District Board of Trustees in Conroe, TX claimed that a first grade student was “traumatized” by a poster depicting children of different races holding hands, to the point that the child had to switch classrooms. Yes, you read that correctly. They’re claiming that a 6-year-old child was deeply upset by “displays of personal ideologies in classrooms.” Sounds suspiciously like a complaint a conservative, reactionary adult would make, not a child just learning to read, don’t you think?

Extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations (a move congressional Republicans are desperately pursuing) will cost over $3.8 trillion with interest over the next 10 years. Always gotta look out for the one percent!

Retired NFL player Michael Oher, whose teenage adoption by a wealthy White family was immortalized in the 2009 film The Blind Side, petitioned a Tennessee court on Monday with allegations that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy never actually adopted him, and tricked him into signing a document months after he turned 18 that made the couple his conservators, allowing them to enrich themselves by taking over his business dealings and not sharing the profits. 

A 13-year-old rape victim in Mississippi was forced to carry to term because of ultrastrict abortion bans across the south. The closest legal abortion at just 10 weeks of pregnancy would have been in Chicago, IL, a nine-hour drive away. 

Former Trump national security adviser and all-around nutjob Michael Flynn is launching a dating app for anti-vaxxers called—I wish I were joking—4thePURE. 

Speaking of famous anti-vaxxers, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said he would sign a federal abortion ban after three months of pregnancy, because he is a Republican. 

Fox Corporation’s chief legal counsel, Viet Dinh, will leave the company at the end of the year after a pretty rough stretch in the courtroom for Fox News! We love to see it. 

Far-right candidate Javier Milei vastly outperformed predictions in Sunday’s primary elections in Argentina, receiving 30 percent of the vote. It’s a harbinger of an expected right-wing backlash in the country’s October general election.

Joan Meyer—the 98-year-old woman who co-owned a small Kansas newspaper called the Marion County Record—collapsed and died at her home on Saturday after police raided her home and the Record’s office on Friday. During the newsroom raid, officers seized personal cell phones, computers, the newspaper’s file server, and other equipment, including Meyer’s personal computer and router. The Record reported that Meyer had been “stressed beyond her limits and overwhelmed by hours of shock and grief,” and called the raids illegal under the federal Privacy Protection Act, which protects journalists and newsrooms from most searches by law enforcement, requiring police issue them subpoenas rather than subjecting them to search warrants. The County Record’s supposed crime? Having legally obtained a government document—that is, doing journalism. Though the real issue may be that the paper had previously investigated the city’s police chief over sexual-misconduct allegations.

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A Montana State Court decided on Monday in favor of young Montanans who alleged that the state violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment” by promoting the use of fossil fuels, in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit.  

Last year, Massachusetts passed a four percent tax on people making over $1 million per year. Now, every public school student in the Commonwealth will have access to free breakfast and lunch. Small taxes on the wealthiest people being used to fund universally-beneficial programs? Sounds crazy enough that it just might work!