Crooked Media - Buma goes the dynamite

- A courthouse protester fending off  former Trump aide Peter Navarro trying to snatch her “TRUMP LOST (And you know it!)” sign. Give that woman the keys to the city.

Editor's note: We'll be off on Monday for Labor Day, and right back in your inbox on Tuesday. Solidarity forever ;)

Trump aides and allies continue their hot streak of humiliations as dozens of federal and state-level investigations continue. Nice!
 

• FBI agent Jonathan Buma says that his investigation of “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani was stymied within the bureau, just the latest in a long string of “Hmmmm why did the investigation of this corrupt far-right person/group get pushed to the side for so long?” in recent FBI history. Buma says that Giuliani “may have been compromised” by Russian intelligence while working as a lawyer and adviser to disgraced former president Donald Trump during the 2020 campaign. 
   

• Buma sent a 22-page statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee in July full of extremely serious allegations, and the document leaked shortly thereafter. According to the account Giuliani was used as an asset by a Ukrainian oligarch tied to Russian intelligence and other Russian operatives for a disinformation operation that aimed to discredit Joe Biden and boost Trump in the 2020 presidential election. But what else is new?! Even more explosive, Buma says he was retaliated against within the bureau for investigating the matter. 
   

• A source familiar with Buma’s work told Mother Jones that other potential FBI whistleblowers who participated in the investigation involving Giuliani have consulted the same lawyer as Buma and could meet with congressional investigators in the coming weeks. Giuliani’s attempts to dig up and disseminate dirt on Biden in Ukraine is well-known by now. In particular, Giuliani pushed an unfounded allegation that when Biden was vice president he put the kibosh on an investigation of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, for which his son Hunter worked as a director at the time. It turned out something close to the exact opposite was true—Biden got the corrupt prosecutor who wouldn’t investigate Burisma fired. But House Republicans are still hot on this dead-end trail to this day.

Giuliani isn’t the only Trump loyalist having a bad year. 
 

• Five more members of the far-right Proud Boys were sentenced in a Washington, DC, court on Friday. One of them yelled “Trump won!” as he left the courtroom after being sentenced to 10 years in prison. Enjoy the clink, my guy! Dominic Pezzola, who did not play a leadership role in the group, was the only defendant of the five to be acquitted of seditious conspiracy. He was convicted of other felonies, including obstructing an official police proceeding and assaulting police. 
   

• Thanks to amateur online sleuths known as “Sedition Hunters” who have helped authorities identify thousands of January 6 insurrectionists, the man shown in a newly released video telling Capitol police officers, “I want you to do me a favor right now and go hang yourself, because you’re a piece of shit,” has been identified as Dylan Quattrucci, who happens to be the deputy state director of Trump’s New Hampshire campaign operation. Four officers who responded to the insurrection later died by suicide. U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn—who testified in the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy trial—praised his former colleagues and excoriated Quattrucci in a statement to NBC News on Thursday night, saying, “I hope Dylan Quattrucci will take the time to comprehend that 4 members of Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Dept did die via suicide and that the efforts to stop the certification of duly elected President Biden failed in part because of their brave heroics…You are a failure. Those men will be remembered for service to their country. And you’ll be remembered as the guy in the cheap suit during the failed insurrection.”

Finally, there’s a new development in the Donald Trump criminal proceedings extended universe. Unlike his trials in Florida, New York, and Washington, DC, court proceedings in Fulton County, GA will be televised and streamed. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee announced on Thursday that cameras would be allowed in the courtroom and that the case would also be livestreamed on the court’s YouTube channel. Feels kinda weird that a district court has its own YouTube channel, but that’s a problem for another day.

Ever catch yourself staring at the office clock, convinced it’s in a time war with your motivation? Then Work Appropriate is the podcast for you. On this week’s episode, host Anne Helen Peterson is joined by peptalker extraordinaire Josh Gondelman to talk about ways to get unstuck at work. Listen to this episode and more only on Work Appropriate, wherever you get your podcasts.

The monthly Department of Labor employment report showed meaningful cooling, reducing pressure on the Federal Reserve to further increase interest rates. Unemployment rose slightly to 3.8 percent, reflecting an influx of people into the workforce, along with steady hiring. 

Hong Kong and the Chinese province of Guangdong canceled hundreds of flights and evacuated almost 800,000 people on Friday ahead of the arrival of a super typhoon which is expected to make landfall late Friday or early Saturday. 

The Los Angeles City Council has unanimously approved a motion prohibiting the sale or rental of recreation vehicles for use as housing. Let us know when you guys take meaningful steps to make housing more affordable and address the homelessness crisis instead of just criminalizing every facet of poverty! 

Mississippi’s public defender system is so underfunded and overburdened that some defendants wait years before they receive a court-appointed lawyer.

An 87-year-old North Carolina woman’s death has been ruled a homicide because her oxygen machine shutoff when a terrorist opened fire onto a local power grid, likely in connection with opposition to a drag queen show that took place in the town of Southern Pines, NC last December. Another banner day for the Republican Party! 

Ukraine said on Friday that its troops had broken through Russia’s first line of defense in several places despite having encountered even more heavily-fortified Russian positions. Kyiv’s Deputy Defense Minister said that the counteroffensive is advancing.

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Higher education levels are linked with more civic engagement and better physical health. 

Happy Labor Day Weekend! Let’s celebrate all of the major wins unions have given us so far in 2023.