Author: clearandpresentdanger

I have to confess that I have been one of the multitude complaining loudly that Dept of Justice under AG Merrick Garland seems to be letting Trump and his band of fascist coup plotters go untouched while prosecuting only the low-level thugs who attacked the Capitol on Jan 6.

However, it appears as though DIJ is moving along . . . here’s a compilation of DOJ activity involving Trump’s inner circle . . . the noose may be tightening around Trump.  Remember:  Trump has been the head of a criminal enterprise for 40 years, similar to a Mafia family, so, there’s no reason to believe his political “family” is no different.  When DOJ goes after the Mob, they start at the bottom and work up, which appears to be exactly what’s going on here.

---

RUDY GIULIANI

April 13, 2021: SDNY obtains historic and prospective cell site warrant for Rudy.

April 21, 2021: Warrants for Ukraine-related investigation approved. This was Lisa Monaco’s first day as Deputy Attorney General. The temporal scope on the Ukraine warrants extends from August 1, 2018 through May 31, 2019.

April 28, 2021: Warrants executed. Around 18 devices seized, of which 16 can be cracked.

September 3, 2021: SDNY argues that the privilege review for Rudy’s devices must be conducted pre-scope (meaning, before just the information on Ukraine is identified) and generously offers to limit temporal range of review to items post-dating January 1, 2018, significantly expanding the temporal scope of the privilege review vis a vis the known warrants.

September 16, 2021: Judge Paul Oetken approves SDNY’s desired treatment of Rudy’s phones, meaning anything that post-dates January 1, 2018, regardless of topic, will be reviewed for privilege.

November 2, 2021: Special Master releases contents of 7 devices, for which privilege review extended through seizure. 2,223 items were provided to the government.

January 15, 2022: WaPo quotes Rob Jenkins, who represents a number of Proud Boy defendants, explaining that DOJ is asking about Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani’s ties to militia members.

January 19, 2022: Special Master releases contents through April 2021 of one phone amounting to over 25,000 items, as well as eight other devices for which the privilege review extended from December 1, 2018 through May 31, 2019.

April 12, 2022: In guise of coming to a final decision on the Ukraine influence-peddling that hasn’t happened yet, DOJ asks Rudy to unlock last several devices.

May 26, 2022: Subpoenas (CNN, NYT) relating to the fake elector plot ask for information on:

• Rudy Giuliani,
• Boris Epshteyn
• Justin Clark
• John Eastman
• Bernard Kerik
• Joe diGenova
• Victoria Toensing
• Jenna Ellis
• Kenneth Chesebro

ROGER STONE

March 17, 2021: In response to motion for bail for Connie Meggs, DOJ includes picture showing both she and Graydon Young worked a Roger Stone event on December 14, 2020.

June 23, 2021: Oath Keeper Graydon Young, who interacted with Stone in Florida in December 2020, enters into a cooperation agreement.

June 30, 2021: Oath Keeper Mark Grods, who worked the Willard the morning of the insurrection, enters into a cooperation agreement.

September 15, 2021: Oath Keeper Jason Dolan, who guarded Stone in both Florida and DC, enters into a cooperation agreement.

January 15, 2022: WaPo quotes Rob Jenkins, who represents a number of Proud Boy defendants, explaining that DOJ is asking about Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani’s ties to militia members.

March 2, 2022: Oath Keeper Joshua James, who oversaw security of Stone on the morning of January 6 and reported back frequently, enters into a cooperation agreement. James also provides statement to NYPD inquiry of Stone associate Sal Greco.

March 4, 2022: WaPo describes hours of documentary video tracking Stone’s events leading up to the attack, including details from a Friends of Stone list on which Stone started planning Stop the Steal immediately after the election. Both DOJ and January 6 obtained the video.

May 2022: NYT describes more about the FOS list, confirming that Owen Shroyer, Enrique Tarrio, Stewart Rhodes, and Ivan Raiklin took part. By June 23, 2022, DOJ had extracted the contents of Shroyer, Tarrio, and Rhodes’ phones.

SIDNEY POWELL

June 2021: Nikki Fried announces Sidney Powell’s Defending the Republic had been raising funds in Florida without registering as a charity.

August 24, 2021: Powell’s fund settles with Florida.

September 2021: AUSA Molly Gaston issues subpoena for records relating to Sidney Powell’s grift going back to November 2, 2020.

November 30, 2021: Several outlets report on subpoenas relating to Powell. (WaPo, Daily Beast)

January 22, 2022: Powell’s attorney claims to be “cooperating” with DOJ investigation.

June 22, 2022: Months after BuzzFeed and Mother Jones report on the scheme, DOJ asks Judge Amit Mehta to conduct conflict inquiry regarding Powell’s funding of Oath Keeper defendants’ defense.

ALEX JONES

April 13, 2021: Jones videographer Sam Montoya arrested on trespassing charges related to January 6.

August 19, 2021: Jones sidekick and January 5 speaker Owen Shroyer arrested for violating a non-prosecution agreement by trespassing; Shroyer did not enter the Capitol.

January 20, 2022: Judge Tim Kelly denies Shroyer’s motion to dismiss, effectively agreeing with DOJ that Shroyer (and so Alexander and Jones) weren’t invited by cops to the East steps and didn’t de-escalate the crowd.

May 5, 2022: Montoya asks for 60 day extension to discuss plea deal.

May 9, 2022: At status hearing, Shroyer attorney Norm Pattis describes talks of a plea deal.

June 14, 2022: Long-time Jones attorney Norm Pattis, who is representing Owen Shroyer, joins Joe Biggs’ defense team.

June 23, 2022: DOJ provides Shroyer unscoped contents of his phone, to provide scoped contents later.

ALI ALEXANDER

January 25, 2021: Brandon Straka arrested for trespassing and civil disorder. Straka was a key player in the Stop the Steal movement, playing a key role at the riot at the TCF vote counting center in Michigan after the election, spoke at the January 5 rally, sat next to Mike Flynn at Trump’s speech, and stopped at the Willard before heading to the riot. Straka was also on Alexander’s Stop the Steal LISTSERV.

February 17, 2021: First FBI interview with Straka.

March 25, 2021: Second interview with Straka.

December 8, 2021: In released testimony for an appearance before J6C, Alexander told a story that DOJ had already debunked in the Owen Shroyer case. For this and other appearances, Alexander was represented by Paul Kamenar, the same attorney that guided Andrew Miller through stalling the Mueller investigation for a year.

January 5, 2022: Third interview with Straka.

January 13, 2022: DOJ includes sealed cooperation memo in Straka’s sentencing memo.

June 24, 2022: Ali Alexander testifies before grand jury.

June 28, 2022: Alexander returns to DC.

JEFFREY CLARK

January 25, 2021: DOJ IG Michael Horowitz opens probe into whether current or former DOJ officials attempted to overturn the election.

July 26, 2021: Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer writes former top Trump DOJ officials permitting them to testify on efforts, led by but not limited to Clark, to involve DOJ in an attempt to overturn the election. This was the first of a series of Executive Privilege review waives DOJ asked Biden to make and roughly coincided with the delayed institution of a Contact Policy preventing Biden from learning about investigations.

June 22, 2022: Agents search Clark’s home and seize his devices. Per CNN, DOJ IG coordinated with the wider investigation into January 6.

JOHN EASTMAN

March 28, 2022: Judge David Carter rules it is more likely than not that Eastman and Trump conspired to obstruct the vote certification.

May 26, 2022: Subpoenas (CNN, NYT) relating to the fake elector plot ask for information on:

• Rudy Giuliani,
• Boris Epshteyn
• Justin Clark
• John Eastman
• Bernard Kerik
• Joe diGenova
• Victoria Toensing
• Jenna Ellis
• Kenneth Chesebro

June 28, 2022: FBI seizes Eastman’s phone, gets him to unlock it.

FAKE ELECTORS

Fall 2021: According to NYT, Thomas Windom assigned, “to pull together some of the disparate strands of the elector scheme.”

January 25, 2022: Lisa Monaco confirms on the record that DOJ is investigating the fake elector scheme.

May 26, 2022: Subpoenas (CNN, NYT) relating to the fake elector plot ask for information on:

• Rudy Giuliani,
• Boris Epshteyn
• Justin Clark
• John Eastman
• Bernard Kerik
• Joe diGenova
• Victoria Toensing
• Jenna Ellis
• Kenneth Chesebro

June 22, 2022: DOJ takes a slew of overt steps in their investigation into the fake electors:

• WaPo: Law enforcement activity targeting GA lawyer David Carver and Trump staffer Thomas Lane, subpoenas for GA GOP Chair David Shafer and Michigan fake electors
• NYT: Subpoenas to Trump campaign aide in MI, Shawn Flynn, as well as Carver, Lane, and Shafer
• CBS: Search warrants for NV GOP Chair Michael McDonald and Secretary James DeGraffenreid
• CNN: Subpoena for Shafer, a warrant for David Carver’s phone, information on a GA Signal chat

---

ALSO — MORE GOOD NEWS:  On July 15, we learned that DOJ has rented office space and is bringing in assistant federal prosecutors from around the country to beef up their group that is investigating the Jan 6 attempted coup.

DOJ takes aim at Trump world — Brings in more firepower!!

The bombshell revelations of the House’s Jan. 6 hearings have the Department of Justice putting more manpower—and more real estate—toward its investigations of figures close to ex-President Donald Trump, according to The Wall Street Journal. The paper revealed the law enforcement agency has expanded the roster, office space, and mission of the band of attorneys digging into Republicans potentially complicit in the bloody attack on the Capitol last year. The news comes after the latest rounds of congressional hearings disclosed that a host of GOP congressmen sought pardons in connections with their activism to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, and after feds raided the home of ex-DOJ lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who the House committee found had assisted Trump in pressuring the agency to falsely claim fraud in the Georgia election results. But the Journal also reported DOJ had grown frustrated with the committee for failing to turn over transcripts of its interviews, particularly with Republicans who participated in false pro-Trump elector slates in states Biden won.

 

 

 

 

Donald J. Trump: Classy, always classy.

 

In September 2020, a Minneapolis Trump supporter’s home was savagely attacked by antifa. Or possibly by BLM supporters. Or by Biden-supporting anarchists? In any event, somebody painted “Biden 2020 BLM (A)” on Denis Molla’s garage doors and set fire to his camper. That fire spread significantly, damaging other vehicles and his home.

Federal investigators have found the culprit and, surprise, they say it was Molla himself. CBS Minneapolis reports that Molla now faces two counts of wire fraud for setting the fire, then filing insurance claims for $300,000 in damages. He was graciously hosted in a Minneapolis courtroom last Tuesday for the beginning of his federal trial, and it’s very unlikely he’ll be scoring a Trump pardon like Trump’s more (ahem) significant allies did, because Trump no longer has the power to do that.

There are many lessons we can learn here, and even more lessons than that if we want to be jerks about it, which we absolutely do. Once again it appears that nearly all politically motivated crimes against Trump supporters are self-inflicted, suggesting that Trump voters are, broadly speaking, so prone to criminal behavior that not even they are safe from themselves. The vast majority of incidents of proven election fraud, for example, have turned out to be Trump supporters voting for dead relatives, Trump supporters giving conspiracy theorists unauthorized access to voting machines, Trump supporters faking signatures to get their names on the ballot, Trump supporters financing private detectives willing to run random repairmen off the road on the off chance their work trucks are stuffed with secret ballots, or just straight up ballot-box stuffing.

Similarly, we may yet learn that half or more of the shadowy not-organization known as “antifa” actually consists of Trump supporters viciously attacking themselves in order to put themselves in their place. In any event, Trump supporters seem to think that both antifa and their local Black Lives Matter movements exist primarily to harass them, personally, by forcing them to read things written on their house.

I imagine many of you are rather tired of this at this point. Many of us around these parts are members of “antifa,” at least for all Trump supporters know, but if Trump’s supporters are going to go around pretending to be pro-Biden provocateurs, they should at least do enough damn research to know how secret pro-Biden cells actually target and take down individual nobodies who have gotten on The Big List of Trump Supporters To Annoy.

Trump supporters, do you really think that “what if we paint on this guy’s house” is the grand master plan of the police reform movement and antifascist cells nationwide? Really? Or is that just the easiest thing to fake? And if Biden 2020 supporters were going to burn down your past-its-prime recreational camper, don’t you think they’d do a thorough evaluation of the surrounding terrain so as to prevent the blaze from spreading to other, unrelated vehicles? That’s arson 101, right there. No Biden voter worth their salt would burn your camper down without doing at least a cursory environmental impact report.

Please start faking better crimes. Please. Here are some tips for how Black Lives Matter protesters, anarchists, antifascists, and Donald Trump’s other various enemies actually harass podunk Trump supporters. If you want people to believe you’re a victim of any of these groups, you can start by mimicking the crimes they’re actually responsible for.

Anarchists are a tough crowd known for despising authority and all its symbols, and there is no more flagrant symbol of government authority than government-issued money. Anarchists are therefore well-known for something called “twentybombing.” In the dark of night, anarchist agents enter the homes of Trump supporters looking for $20 bills. If they find any, they will steal them. The anarchists will then go to the nearest public library and shove your $20 bills through the book deposit slot.

It’s a perfect crime. Nobody in these pro-anarchy groups goes around painting circled “A”s on people’s houses, that’s just ridiculous. But every day in America, Trump supporters wake up to find they have $20 less than they thought they had, while local librarians gasp in confusion on seeing their library’s book deposit bins overflowing with loose Andrew Jacksons.

Want to fake a crime against you perpetrated by anarchists? Take all your $20 bills and shove them through the little library slot. Go home, call up the local news, and claim anarchists did it. There ya go, sport, you’re on television.

Antifa and anarchists aren’t the same thing, and Trump supporters need to get this through their skulls if they want to fake crimes by either group. Antifa stands for “antifascist,” or an opposition to fascism, while anarchists are against whatever presents itself but tend to focus most of their rage on $20 bills. Only fascists are targeted by antifa, so if you’re going to claim you’re a victim of antifa you first need to go around saying fascist things. Already done that? Fine, now you can burn down your own camper. But don’t do that either, because that’s not how antifa operates. Antifa is a loose community of idealists with access to much better technology than your average camper owner; they specialize in attacks using ultraviolet radiation.

Let’s explain. If you’re a Trump supporter with a pro-Trump flag hanging off your house, you may notice that the colors on that flag fade rather quickly, right? It starts out looking bright and new, then begins to look tired, then begins to look washed-out. This is because local antifa cells drive around each evening looking for Trump flags; when they find one, they briefly shine a very powerful ultraviolet light at it, causing it to fade just a little bit.

While the effect of a single antifa drive-by is barely perceptible, a Trump flag left out night after night will begin to show irreversible effects. Flags targeted by elite super-antifa cells will, however, fade out completely. If you want to claim your home was attacked not just by antifa but by super-antifa, dear Trump supporters, hang a white flag outside your house. Then go to your local police station and file your report: Antifa turned my Trump flag white. You’ll have a much more believable story to tell than the “somebody drew on my house” version, and if you tell the insurance company that it was a special Trump flag signed by the big man himself, you might be able to defraud them for an extra five bucks.

There are also myriad groups that are part antifa and part anarchist—too many to go through individually. There’s anarfa, and antichist, and anar-anti, and a bunch of others. Generally these groups focus on the forceable distribution of hard candies and tend to skew older. If your parents or grandparents tend to always have butterscotch candies on hand, for example, you should be wary. Sharing hard candies is socialism. Sharing bad hard candies is anarchy.

That leaves Black Lives Matter, but that one’s easy so we can dispense with it quickly. There’s only one crime that Black Lives Matter supporters tend to target Trump supporters with, and that’s “being seen.” Black Lives Matter supporters are known for walking on sidewalks and for going shopping. Sometimes they drive, but other times they operate toll booths. If you see a person in public who is not you and is not part of your immediate family, they are likely a Black Lives Matter supporter and you should, I don’t know, wet your pants or something.

This won’t technically count as a crime, but you might be able to bilk your insurance company anyway. Like, maybe whatever you’re sitting on will suffer water damage. Oh—or you can always go to the police and file a complaint that Black Lives Matter peed on your favorite chair or whatever. Here’s a tip: When filing the report, discretely pass the officer a $20 bill. If the officer quietly accepts the bill he’s likely to file out a report that makes your chair damage seem more severe, but if the officer gets unaccountably furious about you handing them $20 you know that they’re not actually a police officer, they’re an anarchist posing as one. If that happens, you’re in trouble. It means that anarchists have captured the local police department. They’ll say they’re seizing your $20 bill for “evidence,” but we both know the truth. That bill is going to be dumped into a library’s book return slot within a day.

So go nuts, Trump supporters, but at least make your fake crimes believable. Put a white flag outside your house and claim antifa bleached it using superweapons. Hand over all your cash to local librarians while wearing a fake mustache so nobody can tell it was you.

Nobody’s going to believe anarchist Biden-supporting Black Lives Matter supporters took their rage out on your two-car garage. Everybody will believe that Trump’s enemies are going around making the colors on your Trump flags fade or giving money to public libraries, because those are crimes every other Trump supporter has also seen happen. Just remember to look sad when you’re describing it to the police officers and the local reporters and you’ll be fine. Just … enough with the spray paint and poorly planned arson already.

This affair is better than a circus midway freak show !!!

On Aug. 20, Trump will be traveling to Milwaukee for an “American Freedom Tour” event.

Pricing for the day-long event, which will include Trump, Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump Jr., Dinesh D’Souza, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Judge Jeanine Pirro and Sheriff Mark Lamb, of Pinal County, Arizona, ranges from $9 for seating in an overflow room to $395 for seating in the VIP section to $3,995 for seating in the “Presidential Section,” which includes a meeting with Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle.   The price is not listed for seating in the “Patriot Section,” which comes with a meeting with Trump and Pompeo.

In economics, they call it the law of unintended consequences:  An event ultimately produces an outcome, sometimes negative, that was not expected.

That’s what is happening to Brandy Bottone of Plano, TX, a mother who is 34 weeks into her pregnancy.

On June 29 she was driving on U.S. Highway 75 South and headed to the Interstate 635 West interchange.

“I was driving to pick up my son. I knew I couldn’t be a minute late, so I took the HOV [high-occupancy vehicle] lane. As I exited the HOV, there was a checkpoint at the end of the exit. I slammed on my brakes, and I was pulled over by police.

“An officer peeked in and asked, ‘Is there anybody else in the car?’

“I said, ‘Well, yes.’

“He asked, ‘Where?’

“I pointed to my stomach and said, ‘My baby girl is right here. She is a person.’

“He said, ‘Oh, no. It’s got to be two people outside of the body.’

“One officer kind of brushed me off when I mentioned this is a living child, according to everything that’s going on with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. ‘So I don’t know why you’re not seeing that,’ I said.

“He was like, ‘I don’t want to deal with this.’ He said, ‘Ma’am, it means two persons outside of the body.’

“He waved me on to the next cop who gave me a citation and said, ‘If you fight it, it will most likely get dropped.’

“But they still gave me a ticket. So my $215 ticket was written to cause inconvenience?

“This has my blood boiling. How could this be fair? According to the new law, this is a life.

“I know this may fall on deaf ears, but as a woman, this was shocking.”

I mean, might as well make the argument!

SAYING SOMETHING DOES NOT MAKE IT TRUE.

Read that again. THINK about it.

Saying something does not make what you said true—no matter how loudly you say it,  no matter how many times you say it, no matter how many times you hear it on Fox, no matter how many times Trump says it, no matter how many time your MAGA friends say it.

Here are some things that ARE true:

• Trump is NOT intelligent.
• He is NOT a good businessman.
• He is NOT a strong leader.
• He will NOT make America great.
• He IS a habitual liar.
• He IS a sexual predator.
• He IS a coward.
• He did NOT “make America great again”.
• He did NOT win the 2020 election.
• He DID plan, call for, and incite the attempted coup on January 6th, 2021..For those of you still reading—and not curled up on the floor in a fetal position with your thumbs in your mouths—I know the above may have caused you extreme discomfort and spiked your blood pressure. I make no apology for that. It is simply the price of your willful ignorance.

 

 

Now, go home and get your shine box.

 

A Fulton County judge has reportedly ordered Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to appear before a special grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump for alleged election tampering.

According to Jose Pagliery of The Daily Beast, the judge’s order was filed on Friday.

“The judge called Graham ‘a necessary and material witness’ who can’t dodge grand jury testimony,” Pagliery reported.

Graham is scheduled to appear on Aug. 2, the order said. But the Republican senator is expected to fight the subpoena from his home state of South Carolina.

Last week, a judge also ordered Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to appear before the grand jury.

We all are familiar with Trump’s call to GA Secretary of State Raffensberger, asking him to “find another 11,000 votes.”  What you may not have noticed is that Graham made the same call to the GA SecState.  Graham and Trump both are looking at likely felony convictions.  Let’s hope they serve their time in a Georgia state prison . . . maybe on a chain gang.

This morning on “Face the Nation,” Glenn Youngkin did his usual: lots of dodging and lying, in an attempt to soften or conceal his extreme policy positions. 

• Basically admitted that the only reason he’s not pushing to completely ban abortion in Virginia is that Democrats control the State Senate. If Democrats lose the Senate next year, god forbid, then watch out!
• Said he believes “life begins at conception,” which of course implies a complete ban on abortion, as well as several forms of contraception, embryonic stem cell research, etc.
• Dodged on whether he’d ever support a “full ban” on abortion. For now, he’s for a “15-week pain threshold bill.”  Except that, as this NPR fact check reports, “this contradicts widely accepted medical research from 2005. This study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded that a fetus is not capable of experiencing pain until somewhere between 29 or 30 weeks. Researchers wrote that fetal awareness of pain requires ‘functional thalamocortical connections.’ Those thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 and 30 weeks’ gestational age, but the capacity for pain perception comes later.” So yet again, Youngkin’s full of crap.
• Claimed that Democrats supposedly support abortion “all the way up through and including birth” (an apparent reference to Ralph Northam talking about a case where a fetus is “non viable” and has “severe deformities”). In fact, as this fact check finds, “Virginia Governor Ralph Northam was not supporting ‘infanticide.’ According to a spokeswoman, he was referring to a ‘extremely rare case’ of a nonviable pregnancy.”
• On whether or not he’d push to codify same-sex marriage in Virginia, he dodged and weaved, blathering about the Supreme Court returning these types of decisions to the states, then stating that “we actually do protect same-sex marriage in Virginia, that’s the law…and therefore as governor of Virginia, we protect same-sex marriage.”  Huh? In fact, the Virginia constitution STILL BANS same-sex marriage, thanks to *REPUBLICANS* who put the ban in there and to the *REPUBLICANS* who blocked moves to amend the constitution in order to get it out of there!
  • Asked about whether his PAC would support and spend money to help elect extremists/insurrections like Doug Mastriano for governor in Pennsylvania, Youngkin dodged, talks about electing Republican candidates for Congress (all of whom are extremists, by the way) in Virginia.  Youngkin then dodged again on Mastriano, said “we’re still working on my agenda,” and flat-out lied that “there are states, like Virginia, where people recognize that a Democrat [sic] governor has not done a good job, and a Republican governor, like Republican governors all over America, can do a good job.” As Aaron Rupar tweeted, “Youngkin is an astoundingly slippery character. Check out how he dodges a question about whether he’ll help pro-coup Republicans win elections this November.” Slimier. Than. Whale. Shit.

By the way, Bob Costa of “Face the Nation” did try to pin Youngkin down, but not hard enough IMHO. Also, Costa and other journalists need to call out lies, in real time, and even stop interviews if the person they’re talking to keeps lying. But, of course, they won’t do that, because apparently they have whatever number of questions to get through, and also because they’re afraid if they “bark” at their guests (as Chuck Todd once admitted) they fear that the liars won’t come on their shows (would that really be a loss?).