Tag: Donald Trump

Of Course This Drops Just Before Kol Nidre

No Comments

The New York Times has gotten its hands on more than 20 years of Donald Trump’s income tax returns, and it appears that this is the real deal*, revealing a pattern of massive losses and next nothing in taxes paid.

I’m about to eat, and then fast, so I have barely had a chance to glance at the article.

The nickel tour appears to indicate that he’s a money loser who cheats on his taxes. 

This raises the question:  How has the Trump Org continued to be a going concern over all of these years?

My answer is that he’s been laundering money for the mob, whether it is US, or, as is more likely, foreign organized crime.

To quote Bette Davis, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

*As opposed to Rachel Maddow’s widely mocked expose of a handful of Trump’s tax documents in 2017.

Pass the Popcorn

No Comments

A New York judge has ordered Eric Trump to give a deposition on the Trump Organizations’s business practices by October 7. 

Trump wanted it deferred until after the election, but the judge was not buying that sh%$.

Assuming that the deposition is leaked, and that is not beyond the realm of possibility, we will either see him incriminate himself, because he is very stupid, or constantly taking the 5th, because he understands just how stupid he is.

In either case, it’s pretty obvious that the Trump Org is a criminal enterprise, even if you ignore the obvious, that they are mobbed up as f%$#:

A state judge on Wednesday ordered Eric Trump to be deposed no later than Oct. 7 in the New York attorney general’s examination of the Trump Organization’s financial practices, rejecting a protest by President Trump’s son, who has said he is too busy to meet with investigators until after November’s election.

The ruling was handed down by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron after nearly two hours of arguments in a lawsuit brought by state investigators conducting the civil investigation.

The president’s company is managed now by his two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., both of whom have taken active roles in their father’s reelection efforts. An attorney for Eric Trump said during Wednesday’s hearing that the president’s son travels nearly seven days a week to make campaign-related appearances.

“This court finds that application unpersuasive,” Engoron said, referring to Eric Trump’s stated need to put off an interview until mid-November. He added that he felt Eric Trump’s attorney had cited no legal authority to support a bid to delay the deposition.

………

The probe is a civil matter, not a criminal one. James’s office has said the Trump Organization potentially misled lenders and duped tax authorities. The state attorney general’s office began investigating the company last year after the president’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, a former executive with the company, gave Congress copies of financial statements from 2011 to 2013.

This should be fun.

European Leaders Call Bullsh%$ on Trump’s Anti-Iran Jihad

No Comments

We don’t care, we don’t have to ……… we’re the United States.

The European signatories of the Iran nuclear deal are saying that they will not support the US move to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran. 

More specifically, they note that, since the US unilaterally pulled out of the deal, the UN response is none of our business.

I get what is going on here, Trump, who wants to overturn one of the few Obama administration foreign policy successes, has found common ground with the regime change folks, but this is not a basis for a winning friends and influencing people:  (Also, Russia and China still have a veto)

European leaders have warned the US that its claim to have the authority to reimpose sweeping UN-mandated sanctions on Iran has no effect in law, setting up a major legal clash that could lead to Washington imposing sanctions on its European allies.

In a joint statement on Sunday, France, Germany and the UK (E3) said any attempt by the US to impose its own sanctions on countries not complying with the reimposed UN ones was also legally void.

On Saturday, the US moved to reinstate a range of UN sanctions against Iran, saying it had the authority to do so as an original signatory of the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA), the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and other major powers.

The other signatories claim the US left the JCPOA in 2018 and therefore no longer has a unilateral legal right to either declare Iran in breach of the agreement or to reimpose sanctions in the name of the UN.

………

The disagreement is not just a legal wrangle since the Trump administration claims the US now has the authority to act against any country breaching the reimposed sanctions.

The US also claims the scheduled lifting of the UN embargo on arms sales to Iran in October is null and void. There is also a risk that the US will claim it has a new mandate to interdict Iranian shipping, a move that could lead to a naval clash in the Gulf.

In a joint statement, the E3 said: “The United States of America ceased to be a participant in the JCPOA following their withdrawal from the agreement on 8 May, 2018. Consequently, the notification received from the United States and transmitted to the member states of the [UN] security council, has no legal effect. It follows that any decision or action which would be taken on the basis of this procedure or its outcome have no legal effect.

………

Earlier on Saturday the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said the US had reimposed UN sanctions and expected “all UN member states to fully comply with their obligations to implement these measures”.

Since the fall of the USSR, the United States’ foreign policy can be summed up as, “Rules for thee, but not for me.”

I am stunned that France and Germany have called the Trump administration on this, and I am positively flabbergasted that the US poodle in Europe (the UK) is also making the same statement.

Quote of the Day

No Comments

Trump is horrible, but as most commenters on this blog keep pointing out – he’s the stench, not the rot.

—Commenter a different chris in the comments section at Naked Capitalism.

Until people understand this, and people like consultants in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) make their salaries by NOT understanding this, things will not get any better.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

No Comments
The Justice Department is taking over the defense in the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump.

She alleges sexual assault, and has stated that she is lying and she has never met her. (There are multiple pictures of them together)

The government is claiming that even though the (alleged) rape occurred in the mid 1990s, that his denial of meeting her was made when he was President, so the DOJ should defend him at taxpayer expense, and that the case should be moved to federal court.

This is a transparent attempt to delay the case.

It is also the single most corrupt thing that any US Attorney General has ever done, because this could not have proceeded without Bill Barr specifically directing this:

The Justice Department moved on Tuesday to replace President Trump’s private legal team with government lawyers to defend him against a defamation lawsuit by the author E. Jean Carroll, who has accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

In a highly unusual legal move, lawyers for the Justice Department said in court papers that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he denied ever knowing Ms. Carroll and thus could be defended by government lawyers — in effect underwritten by taxpayer money.

Though the law gives employees of the federal government immunity from most defamation lawsuits, legal experts said it has rarely, if ever, been used before to protect a president, especially for actions taken before he entered office.

“The question is,” said Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, “is it really within the scope of the law for government lawyers to defend someone accused of lying about a rape when he wasn’t even president yet?”

The motion also effectively protects Mr. Trump from any embarrassing disclosures in the middle of his campaign for re-election. A state judge issued a ruling last month that potentially opened the door to Mr. Trump being deposed in the case before the election in November, and Ms. Carroll’s lawyers have also requested that he provide a DNA sample to determine whether his genetic material is on a dress that Ms. Carroll said she was wearing at the time of the encounter.

Bill Barr makes John Mitchell look like Perry Mason.

This is real banana republic sh%$#.

Could Someone Help Me with a Metaphor?

1 Comment

Sometimes, I’m not good with metaphors.

I can recognize that certain situations evoke a metaphor just as well as the average Joe, but sometimes, the metaphorical possibilities are so broad that I am paralyzed by the range of choices.

Case in point, the sinking of multiple boats at the pro-Trump rally on Lake Travis outside of Austin, TX.

Is this the time for a metaphor about choppy waters, or a metaphor about the wakes of large boats swamping small boats, or just a snarky comment about how maritime navigation charts having a,”Well known liberal bias?”

I am at a loss, reader(s), so I need your help:

A parade of boats in Texas celebrating their support for Donald Trump ended in disarray when multiple vessels got into trouble on apparently choppy waters leading to several sinking and a slew of distress calls being made to rescue officials.

Multiple media reports described a chaotic scene on Lake Travis, near the state capital of Austin, when a procession of boats waving Trump flags and banners motored over the waters but then got into potentially serious trouble.

Videos of the event circulating on social media showed several boats being swamped by waves and sinking as frantic passengers jumped into the water.

I’m Calling Political Ploy

No Comments

Nameless bureaucrats in the Pentagon announce plans to shutter the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, and Trump reverses the decision with a tweet.

Call me a cynic, but I think that this was the plan all along.

In the middle of a minor sh%$-storm about Trump dissing dead soldiers, he gets to play hero:

Update: Following blowback, President Trump announced on Twitter that the publication will not be shuttered after all.

The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch. It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2020

The Trump administration has decided to shutter Stars and Stripes, the award-winning independent military newspaper that began during the Civil War and has continuously published since World War II. The publication has broken many important stories, including highlighting predatory or unethical practices by military brass.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have been trying to prevent this move for months. “Stars and Stripes is an essential part of our nation’s freedom of the press that serves the very population charged with defending that freedom,” fifteen senators said in a letter sent to Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

Even Trump sycophant Lindsay Graham has attempted to save the paper, writing to Esper, “as a veteran who has served overseas, I know the value that the Stars and Stripes brings to its readers.”

But the administration announced it is going ahead with closing the publication as part of cost-cutting measures, ordering it to stop publishing by September 30th and setting a deadline at the end of January to dissolve it completely.

If you think that this is a sincere effort, or has resulted from the storm blowing up over this, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Also, I cannot believe that I am f%$#ing reposting a f%$#ing a f%$#ing Donald f%$#ing Trump Tweet.

Stopped Clock Again

No Comments

Trump really does not give a sh%$ about people at risk of eviction, but he does have a very real low cunning regarding politics, and his order to use the CDC authority to prevent evictions is a smart move politically.

It’s not going to be renewed, because it expires after the election is over, and then, why bother?.

Still, it shows that he’s doing something while Congress is on vacation:

The Trump administration Tuesday announced a four-month halt on eviction proceedings against cash-strapped renters, invoking federal public health laws out of concern that a national homelessness crisis could worsen the country’s coronavirus outbreak.

The new moratorium seeks to cover families experiencing financial hardship as a result of the pandemic, aiming to help as many as 40 million Americans who are already struggling to pay their monthly housing costs in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who referenced that an action was imminent earlier in the day.

The policy comes roughly a month after President Trump signed an executive order tasking the U.S. government, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with exploring ways to protect renters as talks broke down on Capitol Hill over a new round of coronavirus relief. Brian Morgenstern, a spokesman for the White House, said the goal has been to ensure that families “struggling to pay rent due to the coronavirus will not have to worry about being evicted and risk the further spreading of, or exposure to, the disease.”

Doing the right thing poorly and for the wrong reasons.

Burying the Lede

No Comments

So, Gabriel Debenedetti of the New York Times has reviewed Michael Schmidt’s book, DONALD TRUMP V. THE UNITED STATES (Inside the Struggle to Stop a President).

What is interesting how this very chatty review completely buries the lede.

11 paragraphs, and this waits until the penultimate paragraph before this reveal:

More interesting, however, is the constant flow of shocking anecdotes: Schmidt writes that Mitch McConnell fell asleep during a classified briefing on Russia, for example, and he details the F.B.I.’s shambolic reaction to evidence of the hacking in 2016, including an unresolved disagreement over how to handle the material. Describing Trump’s unexpected November 2019 visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, he reports the White House wanted Mike Pence “on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.” (The vice president never had to take this step.)

(Emphasis mine)

How is an allegation that Trump had a medical emergency that sent him to Walter Reed, and then covered it up not the lede?

H/t Southpaw for tweeting this.

I’m Surprised That It Took So Long

No Comments

@whatchugotforme How to tiktok
♬ original sound – whatchugotforme

The reason Trump wants to shut down TikTok

The video sharing site TikTok has filed a lawsuit against Trump’s executive order shutting it down.

Trump claims that it’s a security risk, because its parent company is Chinese owned, but the reality is that he’s chuffed about how Sarah Cooper has gone viral doing satirical lip syncing of him.

In any case, this court case will almost certainly result in an injunction that will last well beyond election day:

Made-in-China social network TikTok has decided to challenge the Trump administration’s looming ban on its service by taking the matter to the USA’s courts.

On its qq account and in a statement, TikTok owner Byte Dance offered a two-pronged rationale for its actions.

The first disagrees with the Trump administration’s suggestion that TikTok shares data with China’s government and is therefore a threat to national security. ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, said it has tried to explain itself to the administration and find a solution that would satisfy US authorities its service is safe.

The second strand is an alleged “lack of due process” during those talks. TikTok spokesperson Josh Gartner said the Trump administration “paid no attention to facts and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses”.

………


The ban on TikTok was enacted with an Executive Order that relies on powers designed to let a US president act during a national emergency. The power has not previously been applied to an entity like TikTok so the case may well rest on some gnarly legal issues rather than the nature of TikTok’s activities.

TikTok allows people to share short videos.

The idea that it could be a threat to anything than it’s users’ or Donald Trump’s dignity is simply ludicrous.

Stopped Clock

No Comments

Donald Trump has made a vague statement that he is open to the possibility of pardoning NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

If he does this, it will be a good thing, even if does so for the basesest of reasons, because whistle-blowing like Snowden’s is essential to preserving democracy:

Donald Trump said on Saturday that he would look at the issue of giving a pardon to whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Snowden disclosed highly classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013. He revealed the news covertly to the Guardian after he fled to Hong Kong, before flying to Moscow to avoid extradition back to America. He currently lives in Russia.

………

At a press conference on Saturday Trump said he did not know much about the case and heard powerful arguments for and against a pardon. He then added that he would look into the matter.

………

In 2016 a petition was started urging Barack Obama to pardon Snowden. The Pardon Snowden petition reached a million signatures in 2017 and was delivered to the White House.

If Trump does this, it will almost certainly be because he wants to send another “F%$# You” Barack Obama’s way, but it is still the right thing, even if it is motivated by such petty motivations.

Deliberate Sabotage

No Comments

Trumps new appointed Postaster General has rearranged and decimated senior management in a part of the ongoing attempts of the Trump administration to undermine the viability of vote by mail.

It’s been called a “Friday night massacre.”

Trump is going to be dragged out of the White House kicking and screaming in January if Joe Biden and his Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) incompetents manage not to completely screw up the campaign:

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s mail service, displacing the two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations, according to a reorganization memo released Friday. The shake-up came as congressional Democrats called for an investigation of DeJoy and the cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared ballots in recent primary elections.

Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. All told, 33 staffers included in the old postal hierarchy either kept their jobs or were reassigned in the restructuring, with five more staffers joining the leadership from other roles.

The reshuffling threatens to heighten tensions between postal officials and lawmakers, who are troubled by delivery delays — the Postal Service banned employees from working overtime and making extra trips to deliver mail — and wary of the Trump administration’s influence on the Postal Service as the coronavirus pandemic rages and November’s election draws near.

………

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), chair of the House subcommittee responsible for postal oversight, called the reorganization “a deliberate sabotage” to the nation’s mail service and a “Trojan Horse.”

………

The structure displaces postal executives with decades of experience, moving some to new positions and others out of leadership roles entirely, including McAdams, Williams and chief commerce and business solutions officer Jacqueline Krage Strako, who previously held the title of executive vice president and chief customer and marketing officer.

………

Earlier Friday, congressional Democrats demanded an investigation of DeJoy’s cost-cutting initiatives, which postal workers blame for delivery slowdowns.

A letter signed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and seven other Democrats, including Connolly, urged Postal Service Inspector General Tammy L. Whitcomb to examine how DeJoy came to implement policies that prohibit postal workers from taking overtime or making extra trips to deliver mail on time, and how such delays specifically affect election mail.

This is a toxic mix election tampering and Trump’s vendetta against Amazon.

Most of This Is Completely Unconstitutional

No Comments
In response to Republican attempts to run out the clock on pandemic relief, which Trump has characterized as Democratic stonewalling, Trump has issued a profoundly constitutionally dubious executive order which appeared geared toward his reelection, with a side order of killing Social Security.

Briefly, he has issued an order for $400/week supplemental unemployment payments, a suspension of Social Security tax payments, deferring student loan payments and cutting interest, and extending the eviction moratorium.

The first two items are very clearly unconstitutional, Congress has exclusive power over taxation under, and I’m not sure that he has authority over either the student loan or eviction actions.

The interesting thing is that anyone who is a landlord has standing to challenge the executive order, since they can show damages to themselves personally.

I expect this to hit court (more likely courts) by the close of business on Monday:

President Trump took executive action on Saturday to circumvent Congress and try to extend an array of federal pandemic relief, resorting to a legally dubious set of edicts whose impact was unclear, as negotiations over an economic recovery package appeared on the brink of collapse.

It was not clear what authority Mr. Trump had to act on his own on the measures or what immediate effect, if any, they would have, given that Congress controls federal spending. But his decision to sign the measures — billed as a federal eviction ban, a payroll tax suspension, and relief for student borrowers and $400 a week for the unemployed — reflected the failure of two weeks of talks between White House officials and top congressional Democrats to strike a deal on a broad relief plan as crucial benefits have expired with no resolution in sight.

………

“We’ve had it,” he added, repeatedly referring to his directives as “bills,” a term reserved for legislation passed by Congress. He accused the Democrats of holding up negotiations with demands for provisions that appeared to have little to do with the pandemic, though he made little mention of comparable items in the $1 trillion proposal Republicans unveiled last month.

Democrats have refused to agree to that plan, pressing instead for a far more expansive economic relief package, at least twice as large, that would provide billions more for states and cities and food aid, and revive the lapsed $600-per-week enhanced federal jobless aid payments. (Republicans are proposing to revive the payments, but at a rate of $400 a week.)

………

It was unclear whether the aid would even materialize if lawsuits are filed challenging their legality. Mr. Trump walked away from the lectern after just a few questions from reporters about his claim that he had the ability to circumvent Congress.

………

Shortly after the event on Saturday, the White House released texts of the measures — one executive order and three memorandums — which included several flourishes that read like political documents in accusing Democrats of playing games. One invoked the Stafford Act, a federal disaster relief statute, to divert money from a homeland security fund and allow states to use money already allocated by Congress to help people who have been laid off amid the coronavirus pandemic, effectively allowing them to apply for disaster relief to cover lost wages. The mechanism would pull from the same fund that covers natural disasters in the middle of what is expected to be a highly active hurricane season.

………

It was unclear how quickly states, whose unemployment systems had already been overburdened by the record numbers of new jobless claims, would be able to adjust to a new system, or whether they will have the resources to supplement an additional benefit.

………

He also retroactively signed a memorandum suspending the payroll tax from Aug. 1 through the end of 2020, though the order would just defer the payment of the taxes. (Mr. Trump vowed that if re-elected in November, he would extend the deferral and the payments.)

If Mr. Trump tried to make a payroll tax cut permanent, it would have a drastic effect on the funding of Social Security, which he has previously vowed not to cut.

Trump has actually promised to permanently eliminate the Social Security and Medicare taxes, so that “vow” is inoperative.

The memorandum that Mr. Trump called a moratorium on evictions did not revive the expired moratorium that was part of the $2.2 trillion stimulus law passed in March. Instead, it said that federal policy was to minimize evictions during the pandemic and that officials should identify statutory ways to help homeowners and renters.

So his actions on evictions translate to, “¯_(ツ)_/¯”.  Weak tea.

Needless to say this is a political ploy, and there likely to be weeks, if not months of legal challenges before they might take effect.

Oh, Snap!

No Comments

It looks like Donald Trump won’t get his massive convention in Jacksonville.

The event has been cancelled, which means that the convention will be conducted in a far more sparsely attended manner in ……… I dunno ……… Maybe back to Charlotte, NC?

In a stunning reversal, President Donald Trump announced Thursday evening that he was canceling the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville next month, abruptly calling off an event he’d pushed only weeks earlier to relocate from North Carolina to his home state.

Trump announced the decision during a White House news conference, saying “the timing of the event is not right” amid the surging coronavirus outbreak in Florida, where earlier in the day officials announced a state record of 173 COVID-19 deaths.

“I told my team it’s time to cancel the Jacksonville, Florida, component of the GOP convention,” Trump said, adding that his campaign would still hold “tele-rallies” and online events. “I’ll still do a convention speech in a different form, but we won’t do a big crowded convention per se. It’s just not the right time for that.”

Trump’s announcement — which caught some of his closest allies off guard after he pushed the event out of Charlotte, N.C., in the hope that he could give his nomination acceptance speech in a packed arena in Florida — signals a shift in position on the novel coronavirus pandemic, which he’d attempted to write off for months as a minimal threat.

The decision also avoids a potentially embarrassing clash with Jacksonville city and law enforcement officials, who warned early this week that attempts to gather thousands of law enforcement officers to police the event had fallen short. A workshop with the city council was scheduled Friday to go over make-or-break legislation that some council members had said they might not support.

“We appreciate President Donald Trump considering our public health and safety concerns in making this incredibly difficult decision,” Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams and Mayor Lenny Curry said in a joint statement.

This is a complete cluster-f%$#, which I find intensely amusing.

Major props to Atrios for calling it, “Trumpstock.”

I wish that I came come up with that.

Lawless Criminals

No Comments
Trump has ordered the US Census not to count illegal immigrants, in yet another attempt to corrupt the census for partisan purposes.

Given that the Supreme Court has already ruled against his putting a citizenship question on the tally, in Dept of Commerce v. New York, and the same 5 votes that ruled against him in that case are still on the court, and they ruled against him because he and his Secretary of Commerce lied to them.

I think that either

  • He is hoping that Ginsberg is going to die soon.
  • He is hoping that the wheels of justice will grind slowly enough to allow Republican states to gerrymander extremely enough to skew the house for most of the next decade.

This is truly contemptible.

Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Tuesday instructing the US Census Bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants from the population totals that determine how many seats in Congress each state gets. It’s an unprecedented move that seems to be an attempt to preserve white political power.

The American Civil Liberties Union said immediately that it would sue and the action is likely to be met with a flood of legal challenges. The Trump administration appears to be on shaky legal ground – the US constitution requires seats in Congress to be apportioned based on the “whole number of persons” counted in each state during each decennial census. The constitution vests Congress with power over the census (though Congress has since designated some of that authority to the executive).

Republicans in recent years have been pushing to exclude non-citizens and other people ineligible to vote from the tally used to draw electoral districts. In 2015, Thomas Hofeller, a top Republican redistricting expert, explicitly wrote that such a change “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites”.

The White House memo, titled “Excluding Illegal Aliens From the Apportionment Base Following the 2020 Census,” argues that the term “person” in the constitution really means “inhabitant” and that the president has discretion to define what that means. The memo also argues that allowing undocumented people to count rewards states with high numbers of undocumented people.

“My administration will not support giving congressional representation to aliens who enter or remain in the country unlawfully, because doing so would create perverse incentives and undermine our system of government,” Trump said in a statement. “Just as we do not give political power to people who are here temporarily, we should not give political power to people who should not be here at all.”

This is so deeply and profoundly venal and corrupt that it actually exceeds my already low expectations.

Of Course He Did

No Comments

Donald Trump just commuted Roger Stone’s sentence.

While this is clearly within his power, this is a plenary power of the Presidency, it is also clear that this is an attempt to cover up Trump wrongdoing, so it is obstruction of justice by Trump, even if it would be almost impossible to prove.

I really want this motherf%$#er to spend the rest of his life in prison:

Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former campaign adviser who was to spend three years and four months in jail for crimes related to the Russia investigation.

 In a statement released on Friday evening, the White House denounced the prosecution of Stone on charges stemming from “the Russia Hoax” investigation. “Roger Stone has already suffered greatly,” the statement reads. “He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!”

………

The commutation does not erase Stone’s felony convictions the way a pardon would, but it allows Stone to avoid setting foot in prison for his crimes.

………

While not unexpected, Trump’s move to spare Stone from prison will only increase alarm among critics concerned that the Trump administration has interfered with the justice system in order to shield the president and his friends.

Unfortunately, if Zombie-Obama Biden wins in November, he’s likely not to pursue any of the credible allegations of corruption from this administration, because of that whole, “Looking forward, not back,” bullsh%$.

Oh, You Delicate Snowflake

No Comments

I am not a fan of Bill DiBlasio, he has capitulated to police, real estate developers, and that bully from the third grade, but his decision to paint, “Black Lives Matter,” on the 5th Avenue in front of the Trump Towers is something I can get behind.

Needless to say, Donald Trump is completely losing his sh%$ over this, because he is a complete whiny baby:

President Trump on Wednesday said painting “Black Lives Matter” on New York’s Fifth Avenue would be “a symbol of hate” and wind up “denigrating” the street outside Trump Tower, as he ratcheted up objections to a plan that he suggested the city’s police could stop.

Trump’s comments, in morning tweets, were his latest volley directed at New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D), who last week ordered that the tribute to the Black Lives Matter movement be painted in large yellow letters in a move designed in part to antagonize the president. De Blasio responded to Trump’s tweets Wednesday by calling them “the definition of racism.”

I call this your feel good news of the day.

Epic Ownage

No Comments

John Oliver Explains

It appears that K-Pop fans may have sabotaged the attendance predictions for the Trump rally in Tulsa:

President Trump’s campaign promised huge crowds at his rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday, but it failed to deliver. Hundreds of teenage TikTok users and K-pop fans say they’re at least partially responsible.

Brad Parscale, the chairman of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, posted on Twitter on Monday that the campaign had fielded more than a million ticket requests, but reporters at the event noted the attendance was lower than expected. The campaign also canceled planned events outside the rally for an anticipated overflow crowd that did not materialize.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said protesters stopped supporters from entering the rally, held at the BOK Center, which has a 19,000-seat capacity.

But reporters present said there were few protests. According to a spokesman for the Tulsa Fire Department on Sunday, the fire marshal counted 6,200 scanned tickets of attendees. (That number would not include staff, media or those in box suites.)

Reports are that attendance after removing Trump’s entourage are included in the total so the real number was even lower.

TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Mr. Trump’s campaign rally as a prank. After the Trump campaign’s official account @TeamTrump posted a tweet asking supporters to register for free tickets using their phones on June 11, K-pop fan accounts began sharing the information with followers, encouraging them to register for the rally — and then not show. 

Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was impressed:

Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID

Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud. ☺️ https://t.co/jGrp5bSZ9T

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 21, 2020

Behold the power of K-Pop.

Pass the Popcorn

No Comments

Federal judge Judge Royce Lamberth ruled against an injunction against the publication of John Bolton’s tell-all memoir.
This was not a particularly deep ruling, it was just a recognition of reality, which was that with over one hundred thousand prepublications circulating, nothing in the book is a secret any more.

The judge also noted that this does not mean that Bolton is in the right, and that he is likely to lose any profits and advances from the book, as well as facing civil and criminal sanctions.

All in all, it’s a wonderful ruling, because the first and second most horrible people on earth* both lose:

President Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton can go forward with the publication of his memoir, a federal judge ruled on Saturday, rejecting the administration’s request for an order that he try to pull the book back and saying it was too late for such an order to succeed.

“With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe — many in newsrooms — the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo,” wrote Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia.

But in a 10-page opinion, Judge Lamberth also suggested that Mr. Bolton may be in jeopardy of forfeiting his $2 million advance, as the Justice Department has separately requested — and that he could be prosecuted for allowing the book to be published before receiving final notice that a prepublication review to scrub out classified information was complete.

I am amused.

*If I was forced to choose whether to let Trump or Bolton die, I would ask for the Dion Sanders option.†
†Both.

It Always Happens on a Friday

No Comments

Geoffrey Berman, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, just got fired. (“Resigned”)

I wonder which Trump crony pulled some strings when the heat got too intense:

The Justice Department on Friday abruptly tried to oust the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prison and who has been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

 But Mr. Berman said in a statement that he was refusing to leave his position, setting up a crisis within the Justice Department over one of its most prestigious jobs.

 “I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said, adding that he learned that he was “stepping down” in a press release from the Justice Department.

 Attorney General William P. Barr’s announcement that President Trump was seeking to replace Mr. Berman was made with no notice. Mr. Barr said the president intended to nominate as Mr. Berman’s successor Jay Clayton,  current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

 Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign but he refused so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said.

………

The announcement came late on a Friday night, a time of day when government officials sometimes release information so that it does not attract widespread attention.

There are so many potential conflict of interest and corruption here that it is going to be tough to narrow it down to a specific clause.