Our Constitutional Republic faces a clear and present danger more deadly than that of the Civil War. The danger is the Republican Party, a "political party" that has sold out to white supremacy, autocracy, misogyny, and hatred of everything our Nation stands for. Republicans dismiss any sense of a common American narrative. The "Republican Party" is an outlier in our history – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of social and economic policies that have sustained us for a century; unwilling to compromise; dismissive of evidence, fact, and science; dismissive of the legitimacy of any viewpoint except their own. America needs to face the simple, frightening fact that the Republican Party is a clear and present danger to our Constitutional Republic.
Photo of Trump at Mar-A-Lago in mid-August 2022. That boy ain’t looking good. He will not run in 2024 . . . he’ll be dead of a heart attack or stroke before then.
Don’t know the time or origin of this one, however, it was taken in 2022. I’ll say it again: This boy ain’t looking good. He looks like a pic of my Uncle Fred that was taken about a month before he died of a stroke.
Trump’s lawyers have requested the court appoint a Special Master to review the documents that the FBI retrieved from Trump’s home. You know, documents like these:
Having been caught red-handed with highly classified, very sensitive documents in his possession, and having his lawyer lie to the DOJ, Trump did what he does best — try to drag it on with legal maneuvers.
On Monday, Sep 4, the judge will announce her decision on Trump’s request for a Special Master. I think we should all calm down — a Special Master doesn’t matter — with or without a Special Master, Trump is in deep shit. Consider:
1. Documents subject to attorney-client privilege have already been identified and separated out by the FBI’s review team.
2. Even if a SM is appointed, and if some documents are determined to be subject to executive privilege, it doesn’t mean Trump gets them back; they still belong to the National Archives.
3. Executive privilege is only a qualified privilege, as Nixon found out the hard way re: the Watergate tapes. If there is incriminating info in any of the documents indicating the commission of a crime it could be used against him (same re: the crime/fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege).
4. The main thing is this: The specific content of any allegedly privileged documents isn’t important; the important thing is that TFG unlawfully removed government documents from the WH, then refused to give them back, then lied about whether he still had any. This is the crime, so it doesn’t matter what the documents actually are. All of them belong to the National Archives and not to him.
So, whatever is eventually decided about a special master is a side show. The investigation will go on regardless, and the crimes of taking and refusing to return government documents (no matter what they are), obstructing an investigation by lying to the FBI about having returned all of them, and violating the Espionage Act by mishandling national security materials, can be charged no matter whether a special master is appointed and no matter what they decide about privileged materials.
Let the side show continue…
This will be a short comment because of pressing family matters.
After we learned that highly classified, very sensitive documents were found at Mar-A-Lago — which was after Trump’s fourth-rate attorneys swore to a court that no more documents were there — Trump’s lawyers (no doubt in respnose to his demands) requested a Special Master be appointed to review the documents.
This was clearly a delaying tactic.
Now DOJ has filed a 40-page response to Trump that lays waste to him, his lawyers, and his entire case.
I will be posting more pages and posts about this matter later tonight, Sep 1.
Meanwhile, read the DOJ response to the ridiculous request for a Special Master. The DOJ response reads like a brief for the charges that will be brought against Trump — charges of which he is guilty and for which he will go to jail.
The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday released a photo of classified documents it retrieved from Donald Trump’s Florida home earlier this month, the latest disclosure in its investigation into the former president’s removal of secret government records from the White House following his 2020 election loss.
The heavily redacted photo, which shows documents clearly marked “secret” and “top secret” sprawled out on carpet, accompanied a new 36-page filing in which the Department of Justice said it compiled evidence that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct” its investigation, a finding that puts members of Trump’s team and potentially the former president himself in even more legal jeopardy.
The filing notes that the FBI “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed” from a Mar-a-Lago storage room that Trump’s team claimed was the location of all the documents removed from the White House.
“Against that backdrop, and relying on the probable cause that the investigation had developed at that time, on August 5, 2022,” the filing reads, “the government applied to Magistrate Judge Reinhart for a search and seizure warrant, which cited three statutes: 18 U.S.C. § 793 (Willful retention of national defense information), 18 U.S.C. § 2071 (Concealment or removal of government records), and 18 U.S.C. § 1519 (Obstruction of federal investigation).”
From Bradley P. Moss — “I have read the entire Government filing. I spend all day, every day, litigating against the Government, so some of this is familiar stuff to see. This particular brief is very well-done.”
Here are the highlights:
1) The facts. NARA negotiated in 2021 for the missing records. They finally got 15 boxes. After going through them and finding all kinds of classified records (not organized at all), they raised the alarm. They wanted to make a referral to the FBI but had to first consult with Trump’s team, per the PRA procedure. Trump’s team delayed for weeks and weeks, and never substantively responded. Finally, NARA told Trump’s team they were making the referral and rejected the “protective” assertion of Executive Privilege.
2) At no time did Trump’s legal team file an action *at that point* to prevent the referral to FBI.
3) The FBI reviewed the records and the criminal inquiry was opened. A grand jury subpoena was issued to Trump’s team. Again, they delayed and delayed in complying. Finally, in early June they agreed to a meeting at MAL to comply. They turned over more classified records, and swore out a statement that they had done a diligent search, they had not found any more classified records, and any records that remained were in the storage room. They refused to let the FBI agents look at the boxes in the storage room.
4) The FBI gathered new evidence that there were in fact more classified records at MAL, including in locations outside of the storage room. They got the search warrant and found approximately 100 additional classified records, some located in Trump’s own office.
5) That is straight up obstruction and concealment of classified records, and willfully retaining them in an unauthorized location.
6) Now come the legal arguments. First, DOJ says Trump lacks standing. The records are not his: they are the property of the US. Even if he wanted to claim them as personal records, he never did so. He did not do so in 2021, he did not do so when subpoenaed, he never did it. He has no possessory interest in the records.
7) Second, they argue Trump is not entitled to any injunctive relief. Again, these are not his records, he waited way too long to even try to stop the FBI from getting the records, he’s not entitled to relief given Executive Privilege would not apply, and even if it did the criminal investigative need outweighs it.
8) Third, the Special Master is moot. The A/C privilege records
were already separated and are set to be evaluated by the magistrate. The records Trump claims are covered by EP are not his anyway, and the Nixon precedents make clear he cannot invoke it to override the need to conduct a criminal investigation.9) To sum it up, Trump took
PLAINLY MARKED classified records to MAL, he delayed, obstructed and resisted Government efforts to recover them, he (or his staff) concealed the records from investigators, and they got caught doing so.
The big news until shortly before midnight tonight was that businesses do indeed seem to be coming home after the pandemic illustrated the dangers of stretched supply lines, the global minimum tax reduced the incentives to flee to other countries with lower taxes, and the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act spurred investment in technology.
Yesterday, Honda and LG Energy Solution announced they would spend $4.4 billion to construct a new battery plant in the U.S. to join the plants General Motors is building in Ohio, Michigan, and Tennessee; the ones Ford is building in Kentucky and Tennessee; the one Toyota is building in North Carolina; and the one Stellantis is building in Indiana. The plants are part of the switch to electric vehicles. According to auto industry reporter Neal E. Boudette of the New York Times, they represent “one of the most profound shifts the auto industry has experienced in its century-long history.”
Today, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear (D) announced that Kentucky has secured more than $8.5 billion for investment in the production of electric vehicle batteries, which should produce more than 8,000 jobs in the EV sector. “Kentuckians will literally be powering the future,” he said.
Also today, First Solar, the largest solar panel maker in the U.S., announced that it would construct a new solar panel plant in the Southeast, investing up to $1 billion. It credited the Inflation Reduction Act with making solar construction attractive enough in the U.S. to build here rather than elsewhere. First Solar has also said it will upgrade and expand an existing plant in Ohio, spending $185 million.
Corning has announced a new manufacturing plant outside Phoenix, Arizona, to build fiber-optic cable to help supply the $42.5 billion high-speed internet infrastructure investment made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. AT&T will also build a new fiber internet network in Arizona.
The CHIPS and Science Act is spurring investment in the manufacturing of chips in the U.S. Earlier this month, Micron announced a $40 billion investment in the next eight years, producing up to 40,000 new jobs. Qualcomm has also committed to investing $4.2 billion in chips from the New York facility of GlobalFoundries. Qualcomm says it intends to increase chip production in the U.S. by 50% over the next five years. In January, Intel announced it would invest $20 billion, and possibly as much as $100 billion, in a chip plant in Ohio.
This investment is part of a larger trend in which U.S. companies are bringing their operations back to the U.S. Last week, a report by the Reshoring Initiative noted that nearly 350,000 U.S. jobs have come home this year. The coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and China’s instability were the push to bring jobs home, while the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act were the pull. Dion Rabouin notes in the Wall Street Journal that this reshoring will not necessarily translate to blue-collar jobs, as companies will likely increase automation to avoid higher labor costs.
If today ends in a “Y”, Republicans are lying.
So many lies, so little time.
Let’s consider the lie, endlessly repeated by Republicans and the Fox News-led echo chamber, that new legislation enacted by Democrats funds the hiring of “87,000 armed IRS agents.” Like the “death panel” fabrication during the Obamacare debate, this is a whole-cloth invention designed to stoke paranoia.
Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent an open letter last week warning Americans not to work for the IRS. He falsely claimed that the Democrats’ climate, energy and tax bill would add “roughly 87,000 agents” at the IRS, creating “an IRS super-police force”.
“The IRS made it very clear that one of the ‘major duties’ of these new positions is to ‘be willing to use deadly force.’ … The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing, to kill them.”
Where to begin?
The IRS certainly isn’t adding 87,000 armed agents. It isn’t even adding 87,000 agents. In fact, it’s not even adding 87,000 employees.
When you figure in attrition (current funding doesn’t let the IRS fill all vacancies), Treasury officials tell me, the expected increase in personnel would be more like 40,000, over the course of a decade — which would merely restore IRS staffing to around the 117,000 it had in 1990.
And fewer than 1 percent of the new hires would be armed. (The IRS job posting Scott cited, which predated the new law, was specifically for such law-enforcement personnel.) Such officers, who go after drug rings and Russian oligarchs, have been part of the IRS for more than a century.
As for the IRS coming after “hardworking Americans,” Treasury says the new law will result in a “lower likelihood of audit” for ordinary taxpayers, because technology upgrades will enable the IRS to target the actual tax cheats — the super-rich — for more audits. The wealthiest 1 percent defraud the government, and fellow taxpayers, of more than $160 billion a year.
Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), fantasizing about an “army of 87,000 IRS agents,” proclaimed that “we WILL NOT FUND these 87k armed new IRS agents who will target the American people.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa) mused on Fox News about “a strike force that goes in with AK-15s [sic] already loaded ready to shoot some small-business person.”
House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) warned that “Democrats’ new army of 87,000 IRS agents will be coming for you.”
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel saw an “IRS ‘SWAT team’ ” invading “your kids’ lemonade stand.”
Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade imagined that IRS agents would “hunt down and kill middle class taxpayers that don’t pay enough.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) envisioned “87,000 new agents, AR-15s and 5 million rounds of ammunition.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) claimed “87,000 new IRS agents.” Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia alleged “87,000 armed IRS agents.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called it a “middle finger to the American public.” (COMMENT: Okay, Gov., you want to see a middle finger?)
The media startup Grid found that Republican members of Congress tweeted the “87,000 agents” falsehood hundreds of times, while Fox News has repeated it more than 90 times this month, according to the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer — all unmoved by fact checks repeatedly debunking the nonsense.
Grid traced the 87,000-agents lie to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which in May 2021 took a Treasury Department proposal to add 86,852 positions at the IRS by 2031 (again, a gross figure that didn’t account for attrition) and wrongly concluded: “Biden Plans to Hire 87,000 New IRS Agents.” Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) repeated the misrepresentation, and Republicans were off to the races.
Instead, they could have told the truth: that the administration plans to add a few thousand IRS agents over 10 years, and a few hundred armed officers, to go after super-rich tax cheats. But the lie is so much scarier.
