Crooked Media - What A Day: RICO-ing

In the immortal words of Frankie Valli: Oh, what a night!
 

• Disgraced former president Donald Trump and 18 of his cronies were (finally!) indicted on criminal charges by a grand jury in Fulton County, GA, for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results on Monday night. The staggering 41-count indictment caps off a two-and-a-half year investigation, and the group charged with orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” includes a former senior Justice Department official, the former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, and of course Trump’s cadre of unhinged White House lawyers with whom we’ve all become so familiar. 

• All 19 defendants were charged under Georgia’s racketeering statute, originally created to fight organized crime, among other charges, and as state crimes they can not be pardoned by a U.S. president. The indictment enumerated eight ways the defendants were accused of obstructing the election, including lying to the Georgia state legislature, inventing fake pro-Trump electors, and soliciting then Vice President Mike Pence to join the coup. It also lists 161 separate actions that the defendants took to further the conspiracy, including Giuliani’s false testimony about election fraud and Trump’s “perfect”(!) telephone call to Georgia Secretary of State Ben Raffensperger in January 2021 insisting “find 11,780 votes.” 

• Speaking of that phone call, another party on the line that day was former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who also made the exclusive indictment list. The indictment cites a meeting between Trump, Meadows, and several Michigan state officials in which Trump made false statements about the state’s election results. On Tuesday, Meadows filed a request to move the charges brought against him to federal court. Attorneys for Meadows argued that his case should be moved based on a federal law requiring state charges be moved to federal court when the defendant is charged for actions they took as a federal official. Trump is expected to pursue a similar effort.

Speaking of the Big Guy…
 

• For his part, Trump obviously freaked the fuck out online, falsely claiming that he is in possession of an “Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia,” that he plans to release in a press conference on Monday. Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) has been noticeably quiet during the extensive investigation, but he responded to Trump’s Truth Social tirade on Tuesday, saying, “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward - under oath - and prove anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor.”
   

• The Fulton case is Trump’s fourth indictment this year. The federal government indicted him on August 1, also accusing him of illegally attempting to overthrow the 2020 election, but the Justice Department case takes a vastly different approach. Special Counsel Jack Smith has charged Trump alone, leaving his co-conspirators unindicted. The federal indictment also avoids thornier accusations such as seditious conspiracy or insurrection. Fani Willis’s case will allow Fulton County prosecutors to tell the full story of a broad conspiracy to throw out the 2020 election results supported by dozens of aides, lawyers, and local officials, but the logistics of charging so many defendants will pose certain challenges. 

Willis said she would like to see a trial date within six months, and the defendants have 10 days to turn themselves in. Trump remains the definitive frontrunner in the 2024 Republican Primary race, holding his 40-point lead over the next-closest challenger. Next year sure should be…interesting!!! For now, though, we’ll have what she’s having.

The future of reproductive rights is looking a little less bleak after Ohio voted against Issue 1, a referendum that would have made it substantially harder for voter-led initiatives to amend the Ohio State Constitution. Last week on Hysteria, Erin and Alyssa talk about the results of Ohio’s win, the latest Trump indictment, and “prenatal care deserts’' aka the lack of maternity care in South Dakota. Plus, Megan Gaily and Kiran Deol join to discuss the effects of the double Hollywood strike on their career, the economy, and more. New episodes of Hysteria drop every Thursday. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

A Washington Post investigative series has placed a spotlight on the Smithsonian Institution’s collection of at least 30,700 human bones and other body parts. Most of these remains are from people of color and all were taken without consent. In the 1930s, an anthropologist for the Smithsonian’s U.S. National Museum (which would later become the National Museum of Natural History) named Ales Hrdlicka repeatedly traveled to a small community on Kodiak Island off the coast of Alaska to exhume Indigenous graves. He offered locals $0.10 to find human remains, and, with the help of a small team, disinterred the remains of over one thousand people, in what became a federally sponsored, mass grave robbery. Hrdlicka used his research in Alaska to proliferate the theory that the first people to populate North America came across a land bridge at the Bering Strait. The Smithonian’s collection of body parts includes 255 human brains, most of which were collected by Hrdlicka or under his direction. 

Hrdlicka, who earned the nickname “The Bone Doctor,” was widely celebrated in his time, testifying before Congress as an expert witness and advising the FBI as a consultant. He was also a virulent racist who believed not only that non-White people were inferior, but that he could decipher someone’s race primarily through anatomical characteristics. He went to extreme lengths to acquire human remains, preying on Indigenous populations, decapitating bodies of Mexican people who had been murdered by their government. On a single trip to Peru, he collected more than 2,000 skulls. He took at least 57 brains from Black people who had died in the United States. He was frequently cited in newspapers, and his work and beliefs influenced U.S. government policies on race. Beginning in the 1990’s, almost a half-century after Hrdlicka’s death, Indigenous communities began demanding that the disinterred remains be returned. But those within the Smithsonian lamented the “loss of the collection” and continued to “deif[y]” Hrdlicka. As The Post investigated, the secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie G. Bunch III (what a name) publicly apologized for the way the museum had collected human remains and announced the creation of a task force that will decide on the proper course of action for the future of the body parts, and acknowledged that the institution must do more to acknowledge Hrdlicka’s legacy of racism.

Ninety-nine people have been confirmed dead in the wreckage of the Maui wildfires, and the investigation is only about 25 percent complete.

Trump’s co-defendant in the classified documents case Carlos De Oliveira pleaded not-guilty on Tuesday to charges that he conspired with the former president to keep classified information from being returned to the federal government.

Authorities are investigating the cause of a fire that destroyed a Planned Parenthood in El Centro, CA, early on Tuesday morning. 

Elon Musk is using his corporate petty-tyrant status to slow down the loading of links on “X” (it’s always going to be Twitter in our hearts) to websites he dislikes, including the New York Times and rival Facebook. 

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) says he has “basically moved on” (lol okay sure sweetie) from his crusade against Disney and wants the company to drop its lawsuit against his administration. 

The mother of the six-year-old Virginia boy who shot and critically wounded his teacher pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a charge of felony child neglect. Prosecutors agreed to drop a misdemeanor charge of reckless storage of a firearm as part of her plea agreement. 

United Auto Workers members are planning to vote next week to authorize possible strikes at Detroit’s big three automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis) ahead of the September 14 contract negotiation deadline. The UAW represents 150,000 workers.

The criminal prosecution of Tesla driver Kevin Aziz Riad in Los Angeles County appears to be nearing its end, in a first-of-its-kind case in which U.S. prosecutors brought felony charges against a motorist using a partially-automated driving system. Riad was driving in a 2019 car crash that killed two people in an L.A. suburb, and only received probation as punishment. Lorena Ochoa, the widow of one of the victims, believes both Tesla and Riad should face harsher punishments. A restitution hearing for Riad scheduled for Tuesday was postponed until September 19, when a judge will determine how much money he owes the victims’ families. At the time of the crash, Riad was using Autopilot, about which critics say Tesla has and continues to use a misleading marketing campaign implying that vehicles with that feature can drive themselves. Autopilot has “trouble” stopping for emergency vehicles parked on roads, and it’s under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for braking without driver input. Tesla’s automated driving systems have been involved in at least 35 crashes and 17 deaths nationwide since 2016. We must once again praise the indisputable genius of Elon Musk!

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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen inadvertently took magic mushrooms on her trip to China and had an “extremely magical day.” Janet, invite us next time! 

The Department of the Interior announced $50 over the next five years to improve key water infrastructure across the Upper Colorado River Basin.

The White House plans to issue new regulations through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to crack down on companies that compile and sell data from millions of Americans.