Month: July 2022

Manafort speaks

I’m not sure we needed to ever hear from this creep again, but he’s written a book that apparently has one bit of news:

“I didn’t want anything to get in the way of the president’s re-election or, importantly, a potential pardon,” Trump’s 2016 campaign manager writes in his new book.

In May 2020, as Covid-19 ravaged the prison system, Manafort was released to home confinement. He stayed in an apartment in northern Virginia. From there, he re-established contact with Trumpworld.

“But when the re-election campaign started kicking off, I was interacting, unofficially, with friends of mine who were very involved. It was killing me not to be there, but I was advising indirectly from my condo.”

The startling admission is spelled out in Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced, a memoir that will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.

As you know, he got his pardon in late December. I wonder what advice he had for Trump? After all, the guy had been involved in some very dubious elections around the world for decades. He knew a lot about election stealing.

Why Republicans love the electoral college

From the Federalist:

The left is at it again, and conservatives need to be on high alert. The left has been pushing for a national popular vote to elect the president of the United States for years. Since 2017, 10 more states have either signed the National Popular Vote bill into law or approved the bill in one state legislative chamber. This should be a grave concern because it directly undermines the electoral system established by our Constitution. If not stopped, the American system of presidential elections will be changed potentially forever.

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It has been enacted by 15 state legislatures plus Washington, D.C., and passed in 41 legislative chambers in 24 states. For the proposal to become the law of the land, enough states totaling at least 270 electoral votes would be required to enact the law, and states would then commit their electoral votes to the candidate with the most popular votes nationally, regardless of which candidate won at the state level.

The states that have enacted the compact represent 195 electoral votes: Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Vermont, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, California, New York, and the District of Columbia. States with passage in one chamber include Arkansas, Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Virginia. Successful passage in all of these states represents 283 electoral votes, enough to change the law and make our presidential election decided via popular vote rather than the Electoral College. 

He thinks that’s a bad thing…

Democrats have long been unhappy with the electoral process, unless, of course, their candidate won. When their candidate loses, debate begins anew about how unfair the Electoral College is. The argument is always the same. Since we conduct our elections by democratic process, it makes sense to elect our nation’s executive according to the will of the majority with a voting plurality.

Five times, presidential candidates have won elections without the popular vote: John Quincy Adams (1824), Rutherford B. Hayes (1876), Benjamin Harrison (1888), George W. Bush (2000), and Donald Trump (2016).

Can this be any more specious? There have only been two cases of winners without the popular vote in more than a hundred years. They both happened in this century and both times Republicans won. Trump also lost the popular vote in 2020 and staged an insurrection when he didn’t win the electoral vote anyway. But Democrats are accused of being unhappy with the electoral process unless their candidates win.

Here is the usual argument that Real Americans would be cheated out of representation:

Minority and Less Populated Areas Would Lack Representation

The commonly heard sentiment during election cycles is “every vote matters.” However, what is not fair is that if the president is elected based on a plurality, then the minority would not have a chance of having their candidate elected. Only the concerns and interests of more heavily populated areas, such as the East and West coast cities, would be represented. Interests of the minority and less populated areas would naturally be set aside and of little interest to future presidential candidates. Worse, the executive would be beholden and accountable solely to the majority.

This condition was not the intent of our founders. Their intent was to ensure that the nation’s highest executive, as well as the executive branch, represented the interests of all Americans regardless of political affiliation. A future president would need to appeal to those concerned about not just national but also regional issues.

Further, the Electoral College provided a means to disburse and decentralize power. State electors are elected just days before and are unknown until just prior to an election to prevent undue influence to stay true to the people’s votes in their states. Our founders framed it so as to prevent collusion and cabalist (their word) behavior, preclude violence, and thwart involvement of foreign powers.

Again, who is he talking about? One party has committed all of those acts in just the last two elections and it wasn’t the Democrats…

Cabalism Comes to Light

Following the 2020 election, our founders’ concerns came to light and fruition. Our national elections have been fraught with cabalist behavior, undue influence, numerous forms of cheating, as well as foreign interference. The tyranny they feared came to pass, driven by collusion among the administrative state, the legislative branch, legacy media, Big Tech, and nongovernmental organizations. An independent executive branch separate from the legislature has become an illusion.

In Federalist Paper 68, Alexander Hamilton wrote, “the process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of the president will never fall with a lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue and a little arts of popularity may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first owners of a single state, but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole union.” Hamilton would have been appalled today to have witnessed the travesty undermining his sentiment.

He would have been appalled by Donald Trump, certainly, a man who illustrates every one of his fears. Can this argument be any more obtuse?

So why does all this matter?

An Oppressive Majority

It matters because the idea of a national popular vote is gaining steam and if adopted by enough states, the Electoral College will become irrelevant. Minority voter interests will no longer matter at the national level. Only the whims of the majority will. And the result will be precisely why Socrates opposed a democratic form of government. Once a majority is established, it finds a way to remain permanent, and the majority class will become oppressive to the minority class. There will be no means to overturn the majority, no matter how skewed the majority’s view may be.

The implications for the country are vast and would make the United States just another oppressive tyrannical state. The ultimate reason for the success of the U.S. was that its founders held a belief that we are created and guided by a higher power, and they recognized that men are inherently corruptible. They implemented controls to prevent those with ambitions from achieving outright power over the minority, thus making the U.S. unique among nations.

Right. Outright power over the majority was their vision all along.

The left’s tactics are in high gear, accelerating in an attempt to overwhelm conservatives and Republicans to a tipping point at which the left acquires complete control and the right becomes powerless.

The left’s all-out assault has become abundantly clear since President Joe Biden took office. As soon as Democrats attained the presidency and the narrowest of majorities in the House and Senate, they pressed forward with their agenda, nearly unimpeded had it not been for the likes of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and perhaps divine intervention.  

Whether changing voting laws in its favor, creating crises to circumvent the laws already in place, continually flooding the courts with litigation designed to throw sand in the gears of transparent elections, or changing the electoral process altogether, the left’s efforts to gain and retain control, by any means necessary, will not relent.

In addition to ongoing election integrity efforts across the nation, it is imperative that conservatives push back attempts to advance a national popular vote. It is incumbent upon individual citizens to tell their state representatives that it is not the desire of the people to circumvent the constitutional process for electing our president.

Failure to stop a national popular vote could take generations to reverse.

It’s hard to believe that any Republican in their right mind could make this argument after Donald Trump but there you have it. They are living in Bizarroworld and it’s one of the most disorienting aspect of our current era. It’s mind-boggling.

Just ask yourself what they will say the first time (if it ever happens) that a Democrat wins the electoral college and loses the popular vote. You will be able to hear the collective primal scream on the moon.

The Pa. GOP Nominee is as far out as it gets

Pennsylvania’s GOP nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano, is under fire again for his extremist views. The Republican is in hot water for paying consulting fees to Gab, a white nationalist social media site owned by a raging anti-Semite named Andrew Torba. Torba is quoted saying:

“We don’t want people who are atheists. We don’t want people who are Jewish. We don’t want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country.”

Needless to say, Torba is also a raging Islamophobe.

Gab is probably best known for being the site that helped inspire the Tree of Life Synagogue mass murder in 2018, but Torba has also supported white nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes, as well as the Great Replacement theory currently being mainstreamed by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Torba’s a Vladimir Putin super fan, endorsing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for being “liberated and cleansed from the degeneracy of the secular western globalist empire.” He’s also expressed support for an idea popular among neo-Nazis, the theory of “accelerationism,” which holds that society needs to be “burned to the ground” and has been cited in numerous far-right mass murderers’ manifestos. He is, in short, a Christofascist.

Mastriano, who is set to face off against Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general this fall, has reportedly been an eager participant on Gab for some time now. Such views are common on the platform, but Mastriano’s presence should not be surprising considering that he was also a participant in the January 6 insurrection (he denies going into the Capitol although there is evidence that he did) and has affiliated himself with some of the most extreme Christian Nationalist organizations in America.

Sarah Posner reported for Talking Points Memo last spring that Mastriano “announced his run for governor at a Christian nationalist event at which a shofar was blown, an increasingly commonplace occurrence as a symbol of Trump’s victory over satanic forces, otherwise known as our democracy.” Mastriano commonly appears at events hosted by Christian Nationalist extremist groups like Pennsylvania For Christ and Patriots Arise for God, Family, and Country, and has even been associated with a group headed by the son of Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon called the “Rod of Iron Ministries” at which adherents perform ceremonies wearing bullet crowns and carrying AR-15s. Moon and some of his followers were also among the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

#SeditionHunters know the Jan 6 mob was packed with organized extremist groups: Proud Boys, Oath Keepers…& the Rod of Iron Ministries. Rev. Sean Moon, son of the late “Moonies” leader, says “Jesus created the assault weapon”, brought 50+ followers to storm the U.S. Capitol… 1/ pic.twitter.com/TV1lbJiVGc

— capitolhunters (@capitolhunters) August 8, 2021

After the media started to pay attention to his close ties to Gab founder Torba, and it was revealed that Mastriano actually paid Torba for campaign consulting, the gubernatorial candidate issued a statement saying that he rejects anti-semitism and railing against the Democrats. He complained that Democrats were smearing him by calling attention to his affiliations with Christofascists. On Thursday night, however, Mastriano finally deleted his account on Gab and Torba released a statement saying that his words are his alone and do not reflect Mastriano’s beliefs. Mastriano, most notably, did not repudiate Torba.

The fact is that the GOP nominee for governor of Pennsylvania is also a Christofascist with Neo-Nazi ties. That may sound hyperbolic but the record is clear. If he were alone in this, a fringe character who accidentally fell into the nomination it would be one thing. But he has a real constituency in the party.

The Great Replacement Theory has gone mainstream, having been promoted heavily by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. The New York Times did an in-depth profile of Carlson’s show and determined that “in more than 400 episodes of his show, Mr. Carlson has amplified the notion that Democratic politicians and other assorted elites want to force demographic change through immigration” and “replace” what he calls “legacy Americans.” This is a common theme in right-wing media and what’s left unsaid is just as interesting as what they are saying: Who is defined as the “invaders”  coming to destroy American culture?

In Europe, where this theory really took flight in the last decade as immigration from the middle east and Africa, under pressure from war and famine, it is Muslim immigrants who are seen as the invaders. In America today, most people would say that any foreigner with black or brown skin would qualify. In earlier times on both continents, however, Jews were always portrayed as representing this threat. You can see by the comments of fascists like Torba that anti-semitism remains a big part of this belief system. The Nazis marching in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” made that very plain.

The European right has tried to downplay the anti-semitism in recent years and it helped them move into the mainstream. But it’s still there. A case in point is the vaunted leader of the European right today, Viktor Orban. I wrote about his affiliation with Tucker Carlson and the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) earlier, which showed the tremendous influence Orban is having on the American right. Using government power to hobble the media, academia, the judiciary and manipulate the voting system, he has managed to subvert the Hungarian democracy and institute a modern fascist state and they are watching him closely.

Related

Is Pennsylvania losing it? Hate groups proliferate as state GOP descends into MAGA paranoia

He has long derided Muslim immigrants as a threat to European “Christian Identity” but last week, he made some statements that lowered the veil and exposed his true intentions. He gave a speech in which he described immigration as “population replacement or inundation.” But he went further, making it clear just what that means:

“Migration has split Europe in two — or I could say that it has split the West in two.One half is a world where European and non-European peoples live together. These countries are no longer nations. They are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples…We are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed race.”

The speech was so noxious that it caused one of his longest standing associates, who happens to be Jewish, to resign in disgust calling it “a pure Nazi speech worthy of Goebbels” that would “please even the most bloodthirsty racists.” She said he had advocated an “openly racist policy that is now unacceptable even for the Western European extreme right.” She could hear the echoes of the past in his speech. And while he didn’t explicitly say “Jews will not replace us” his constant haranguing of pro-democracy philanthropist George Soros, who was born in Hungary, is a perfectly adequate wink and nod.

If it’s true that the Western European right is rejecting him, Orban can take heart in the fact that he still has plenty of friends right here in the good old USA. He is going to be a featured speaker at the CPAC conference in Dallas next week alongside the likes of Ted Cruz, R-TX., Rick Scott, R-FL., Greg Abbott, R-TX., and various right-wing luminaries such as Sean Hannity and Steve Bannon. Donald Trump will keynote, of course. When asked about whether it was right to allow Orban to attend the conference after making his poisonous comments, CPAC executive Matt Schlapp just said, “let’s listen to the man speak.” I would expect nothing less. Doug Mastriano, for his part, isn’t scheduled to speak. No doubt he’s busy on the campaign trail. But he will assuredly be there in spirit. These are his people. 

Salon

Denial is strong with them

While I assembled Thursday’s post featuring second thoughts of a former anti-abortion preacher, this video clip of 12 year-old Addison Gardner speaking out against a West Virginia abortion ban went viral:

12 year-old Addison Gardner in West Virginia, where an abortion ban without rape or incest exceptions passed the House yesterday.

"Am I, a child, supposed to carry and birth another child? Some here say they are pro-life. What about my life? Does my life not matter to you?” pic.twitter.com/uCW0ZYnF4T

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) July 28, 2022

“I don’t think what happened at the Court in Dobbs or what is happening among the Republicans now in Congress or especially on state levels, is conservative. It’s radical, it’s fascist,” said Rev. Rob Schenck. Addison Gardner might agree.

Maya Yang reports at The Guardian:

Despite speeches from Gardner and other abortion rights activists, the house passed the bill by an overwhelming vote of 69 to 23. Shortly after Gardner delivered her address, house members adopted an amendment that would allow abortions in cases of rape or incest.

However, the amendment, which passed narrowly with 46 to 43 votes, only allows for the procedure to be performed up to 14 weeks of pregnancy and only if the rape or incest is reported to the police.

Michelle Goldberg wonders, given the steam of horror stories of pregnancies gone wrong since Dobbs, how many others on Team Pro-Life, like Schenck, might have second thoughts about the secondary effects of their hard-won Supreme Court ruling: “delayed care for traumatic pregnancy complications.”

Too few, likely. Denial is strong in this crowd. As is, one suspects, overlap between them and Trumpist denials about their political savior’s truthfulness, integrity, and suitability for any elected office.

Goldberg sees among them “frantic and sometimes paranoid deflection.” They dismiss the shocking stories, including the one of the rape-impregnated 10-year-old from Ohio, because they distrust the motives of the messengers:

I’ll cop to wanting to undermine anti-abortion laws; I believe they put people’s health at grave risk, but that’s far from the only reason I oppose them. But dismissing an argument because of the motive of the person making it is a classic logical fallacy, the sort of thing you resort to when you’d rather not deal with the argument itself.

Members of the anti-abortion movement, including DeSanctis, often claim that abortion is never medically necessary. If they can’t bear to look clearly at the world they’ve made, maybe it’s because then they’d have to admit that what they’ve been saying has never been true.

Team Pro-Life has yet to address the question posed by Addison Gardner: “Does my life not matter to you?” They insist a pregnant 10-year-old be forced to bear a rapist’s child while averting their eyes, as Goldberg puts it, from the “discomfiting gap between intentions and effect.”

Would you let a 10-year-old babysit your newborn? Or hers?

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Floods and heat waves the new normal

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world

As much as 10 inches of rainfall in eastern Kentucky produced catastrophic flooding on Thursday. At least eight people died as floodwaters washed away cars, bridges, roads, businesses and homes.

Calling the events “devastating,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear asked Thursday morning for prayers for the region. “And I do believe it will end up being one of the most significant, deadly floods that we have had in Kentucky in at least a very long time.”

Houses under water, schools under water, folks stranded in their flooding homes, water rescues, reports of people swimming across flooded highways to reach higher ground. This continues to be a life threatening siutation for SEKY. This is heartbreaking. #kywx pic.twitter.com/MQgZntuWrn

— Chris Johnson FOX 56 Weather (@cjwxguy56) July 28, 2022

CNN:

Beshear later warned that the destruction is far from over as more rainfall is expected Friday. Eastern Kentucky has a slight to moderate risk of flash flooding through Friday evening as an additional one to 3 inches are possible throughout the day, according to the Weather Prediction Center.

Parts of southeastern Kentucky are under a flood warning through early Friday morning as storms move across the already drenched region. A flash flood warning has also been issued for areas near the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, where 1 to 2 inches of rain have already fallen.

Flooding is expected to move into West Virginia today.

And there is flooding in St. Louis:

⚠️ Flash flooding continues in St. Louis area. This was taken near Central West End of St. Louis City about an hour ago. Please avoid the area. Over half of flooding deaths involve vehicles. Don’t attempt to drive through floodwater! pic.twitter.com/KpYh4WIJuK

— Missouri State Emergency Management Agency (@MoSEMA_) July 28, 2022

And in Las Vegas:

Breaking: Flash flooding is occurring in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. pic.twitter.com/k8aTmgaoGh

— PM Breaking News (@PMBreakingNews) July 29, 2022

Prior to the East Coast hurricane season, beach homes were washing away in North Carolina.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore (Seashore) has confirmed that an unoccupied house at 24265 Ocean Drive, Rodanthe, N.C. collapsed this afternoon. This is the second unoccupied house collapse of the day at the Seashore. Read more: https://t.co/ZPUiklQAWA pic.twitter.com/OMoPNCpbzk

— Cape Hatteras National Seashore (@CapeHatterasNPS) May 10, 2022

Like dryer weather? Try Oregon where temperatures reached 111ºF in The Dalles on Thursday and may again Friday east of the Cascades. Triple-digit temperaures are anticipated again today across the Pacific Northwest. Portland, Oregon, reached 116° F in June 2021, but this heatwave may last longer. Roughly 800 PNW residents died from heat injuries in 2021.

If Congress won’t even provide aide to American veterans exposed to burn pits, don’t expect them to do anything about climate change.

Update: Climate activists block entrances to Congressional Baseball game for over an hour now—although several entrances are open—lines are long. They are demanding Biden declare a climate emergency. @ShutDown_DC @OurRightsDC @downrightimp pic.twitter.com/SsbLOhvdML

— DCMediaGroup (@DCMediaGroup) July 28, 2022

https://twitter.com/VVertuccio/status/1552813139346980864?s=20&t=Wqd98kCOGooUBIxpv5l5ZQ

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Feel the magic

I will never understand why Yang is a thing but here he goes again:

Dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials announced on Wednesday a new national political third party to appeal to millions of voters they say are dismayed with what they see as America’s dysfunctional two-party system.

The new party, called Forward and whose creation was first reported by Reuters, will initially be co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. They hope the party will become a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties that dominate U.S. politics, founding members told Reuters.

Party leaders will hold a series of events in two dozen cities this autumn to roll out its platform and attract support. They will host an official launch in Houston on Sept. 24 and the party’s first national convention in a major U.S. city next summer.

The new party is being formed by a merger of three political groups that have emerged in recent years as a reaction to America’s increasingly polarized and gridlocked political system. The leaders cited a Gallup poll last year showing a record two-thirds of Americans believe a third party is needed.

The merger involves the Renew America Movement, formed in 2021 by dozens of former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump; the Forward Party, founded by Yang, who left the Democratic Party in 2021 and became an independent; and the Serve America Movement, a group of Democrats, Republicans and independents whose executive director is former Republican congressman David Jolly.

Two pillars of the new party’s platform are to “reinvigorate a fair, flourishing economy” and to “give Americans more choices in elections, more confidence in a government that works, and more say in our future.”

The party, which is centrist, has no specific policies yet. It will say at its Thursday launch: “How will we solve the big issues facing America? Not Left. Not Right. Forward.”

Historically, third parties have failed to thrive in America’s two-party system. Occasionally they can impact a presidential election. Analysts say the Green Party’s Ralph Nader siphoned off enough votes from Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000 to help Republican George W. Bush win the White House.

It is unclear how the new Forward party might impact either party’s electoral prospects in such a deeply polarized country. Political analysts are skeptical it can succeed.

Public reaction on Twitter was swift. Many Democrats on the social media platform expressed fear that the new party will siphon more votes away from Democrats, rather than Republicans, and end up helping Republicans in close races.

All those Republicans and Democrats are worried that they’ll siphon off Democratic voters. I wish I could laugh that off but I can’t. Sadly, I think they’re probably right, as self-destructive as that would be. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time.

The J6 Committee goes up the ladder

Look who’s coming to testify:

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is working to secure testimony from a growing number of officials in former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who reportedly discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, recently sat with committee investigators for a transcribed interview, the sources said.

ABC News previously reported that Pompeo is expected to speak with the committee in the coming days, though his interview is not officially scheduled.

Among the officials actively negotiating with the committee are the former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and the former acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, sources familiar with the negotiations said.

Wolf would also be able to speak to Trump’s desire to order the federal government to seize voting machines.

The engagement shows that even after the committee’s round of dramatic public hearings, it continues to pursue additional evidence about what the administration’s most senior officials knew about Trump’s actions surrounding Jan. 6.

Committee investigators are not only focused on the discussions surrounding the 25th Amendment that occurred within the Cabinet, but also Cabinet members’ concerns after the attack on the Capitol about Trump’s decision-making, including his potential conversations with world leaders.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified that Ratcliffe “didn’t want much to do with the post-election period.” Hutchinson said that Ratcliffe “felt that there could be dangerous repercussions, in terms of precedent set for elections, for our democracy, for the 6th. You know, he was hoping that we would concede.”

The committee also has expressed interest in speaking with other senior Trump officials like Robert O’Brien, the former national security adviser.

Representatives for Mnuchin, Ratcliffe, Wolf and O’Brien did not immediately respond to ABC’s request for comment.

Another area of focus are Cabinet officials who resigned in the wake on Jan. 6: former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

They will potentially join a growing list of officials who have already cooperated with committee investigators, including former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, former Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and former Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia. Former Attorney General Bill Barr also sat with committee investigators for a deposition.

I don’t know if they’re going to offer anything useful but they are all self-interested opportunists so they will undoubtedly do what they think is best for them, not Donald Trump. The only question is if they think their self-interest is aligned with his.

Where is the money going?

Bush’s Brain, Karl Rove goes there in the Wall Street Journal:

What will Donald Trump do with his campaign cash?

The former president controls four political-action committees—Save America; Make America Great Again, Again! Inc.; Trump Make America Great Again PAC; and Make America Great Again Action. The PACs’ cash on hand as of June 30 came, respectively, to $103.1 million, $10.3 million, $7.3 million and $700,000, giving Mr. Trump more than $121 million at his disposal.

In comparison, at the end of June, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee together had $174.8 million. Mr. Trump has assembled a war chest equivalent to 70% of that of these national GOP groups.

That won’t surprise the many Republican small donors who are pummeled with requests from the former president’s causes. In a 24-hour stretch this week, I received 25 fundraising pleas from Trump World beseeching me to help save America from the Democrats. In exchange for donations, I was offered a blue “Official 2022 Trump Card,” then a gold one, “Limited Edition Trump Wine Glasses” (I don’t drink), an “EXCLUSIVE Trump Rally Shirt,” and a slot on the “Official 2022 Trump Donor Wall.” Alongside gifts, the emails offered flattery: I was called a “Trump MVP,” one of the former president’s “Most Loyal Supporters,” an “America First Trump Patriot” and “Patriot of the Month.” I even got an invitation to join the “American Defense Task Force.”

These requests have apparently produced a flood of contributions that donors think will help defeat Democrats. But it isn’t clear that much of Mr. Trump’s lucre is going to help in the midterms.

One option off the table is converting that money to a Trump presidential campaign, according to federal election lawyers. If Mr. Trump decides he must upstage the midterms and announce this fall rather than waiting, he’ll immediately need to file a new committee for his presidential campaign to pay his political expenses. That’ll mean asking for donations at the same time GOP candidates for Senate, House, governor, state legislatures and local offices are scrambling for dollars to win midterms. Candidates, donors and grass-roots activists are sure to be angry that the former president put his personal interests above those of the party if he announces before the midterms.

So what can Mr. Trump use his existing cash stash for? Well, financially supporting other candidates, but he hasn’t shown much interest in that so far. Save America, the former president’s leadership PAC, has given $5,000 each—the maximum by law—to 60 House and 13 Senate candidates. This $365,000 is a pittance, and it’s impossible for him to use up Save America’s remaining $103.1 million this year simply with direct contributions. If Republicans were running candidates for every House and Senate seat this year and Mr. Trump gave each $5,000, that would amount to only $2.35 million.

One way to use more of this money is through independent expenditures on behalf of candidates, but Mr. Trump hasn’t devoted much cash to that either. Save America transferred $2.6 million to a Georgia group in an effort that failed to defeat Gov. Brian Kemp and $500,000 to a super PAC opposing Rep. Liz Cheney in her Aug. 16 primary.

The former president’s Make America Great Again! Inc. has made roughly $394,000 in independent expenditures, all in GOP primaries to candidates he endorsed. Mr. Trump put $193,000 toward TV for Hershel Walker’s Georgia Senate bid, about $69,400 for direct mail and text messaging for Adam Laxalt in the Nevada Senate primary, and a little under $25,000 to boost Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and attack Mr. Oz’s two Senate primary opponents. The rest was split among four Trump-backed House candidates in Georgia and South Carolina, where the former president notched one win and three losses.

With more than $121 million left in his four committees, Mr. Trump has quite a bit to spend on independent expenditures to help his endorsed favorites in their general election contests. Legally, the former president can’t coordinate with candidates, but he could help rescue those who are obviously in need, such as Ohio Senate hopeful J.D. Vance. The Trump-backed candidate was outraised by his Democratic opponent 4 to 1 last quarter. Mr. Vance is compounding his problem by making the payback of a $700,000 personal loan to his primary campaign a priority.

If Mr. Trump doesn’t start actually deploying these funds to help candidates he’s backed for Congress, governor and other statewide offices, donors might not keep giving to the former president’s causes. Trump-endorsed candidates might start to wonder how strong an ally the former president really is, beyond lending his name in a primary.

Many Republicans running are parroting Mr. Trump’s views, especially his discredited claims about the 2020 election. We’ll soon see if he backs those who’ve backed him—and how they fare if he does.

That’s not exactly subtle is it? He’s saying that Trump is hogging all the cash he’s collecting, cash that he won’t be able to use for his presidential campaign.

What’s he going to use it for? Well, since at least some of these PACs funciton as slush funds, I’m going to guess he’ll keep using them for payoffs to cronies and keep his businesses afloat.All those “fundraisers” at his properties add up to some serious profits.

Trump edition

In case you aren’t fully aware of the details of the fake elector scheme, the NY Times has published a good explainer. It starts off with a discussion of what took place in Hawaii in 1960 when there was a 100 vote difference in the presidential election and the recount was not expected to be made before the deadline on December 14th. The Kennedy campaign drafted a slate of electors to reflect its win in case it went their way, which it eventually did. The results would not have affected the outcome of the election either way.

The Trump forces used this as their template for the scheme to overturn legal elections in various states on the basis of alleged voter irregularities (not a close election as in 1960):

The Trump plan began with an effort to persuade Republican officials in the targeted states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — to help draft, or to put their names on, documents that declared Mr. Trump to be the victor.

That effort was largely led by lawyers close to Mr. Trump, like Rudolph W. Giuliani and John Eastman, who sometimes communicated directly with local points of contact in the state, or by lawyers who worked in the states themselves and dealt with Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Eastman or with Mr. Trump’s campaign aides.

Their stated rationale was that Mr. Biden’s victories in those states would be overturned once they could establish their claims of widespread voting fraud and other irregularities, and that it was only prudent to have the “alternate” slates of electors in place for that eventuality.

But, as Mr. Trump had been told by his campaign aides and eventually even his attorney general, there were no legitimate claims of fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the race, and the seven states all certified Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory on Dec. 14, 2020. Mr. Trump and his allies barreled ahead with the electors plan nonetheless, with an increasing focus on using the ceremonial congressional certification process on Jan. 6 to derail the transfer of power.

Ultimately, several dozen of Mr. Trump’s allies in the states signed false slates of electors, and most were unequivocal in their contention that Mr. Trump had won. But in Pennsylvania and New Mexico, local officials who drafted the documents included a caveat, saying that they should only be considered if Mr. Trump prevailed in the many lawsuits he and his allies had filed challenging the election, and was legally the winner.

Once the false pro-Trump slates had been created, Mr. Trump and his allies turned to the second part of the plan: strong-arming Mr. Pence into considering them during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. The point was to persuade Mr. Pence to say that the election was somehow flawed or in doubt.

“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” Jack Wilenchik, a pro-Trump lawyer based in Arizona, wrote in an email to his colleagues.

Any number of outcomes could have worked in Mr. Trump’s favor.

Most simply, Mr. Trump and his allies sought to convince Mr. Pence to count the pro-Trump slates, reject those saying Mr. Biden had won and thus unilaterally keep the former president in office.

Alternatively, the Trump team hoped that Mr. Pence might declare the election to be irreparably defective and, under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, let state delegations in the House of Representatives decide the election themselves, a process that would also have given Mr. Trump his victory.

In yet a third option, Mr. Trump and his allies thought Mr. Pence could choose to delay the certification of the electors count, providing the former president with more time to prove his claims of fraud or mount a last-ditch challenge in a Supreme Court case.

At Least 3 Investigations Involve the Fake Electors

In Georgia, the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, has notified 16 people who identified themselves as the state’s pro-Trump electors that they are targets in an ongoing criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the election results in Georgia.

In Washington, the Justice Department’s inspector general obtained a warrant to search the home of a former department official, Jeffrey Clark, as part of its 18-month long investigation into attempts by Justice Department employees to undo the election.

Mr. Clark pressured the nation’s top prosecutors to send a letter to Georgia state officials falsely stating, among other things, that the legislature should create an alternative slate of electors that supported Mr. Trump.

The warrant indicated that Mr. Clark is being investigated for conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the presidential election, according to a person familiar with the matter. In a related action, the inspector general and the F.B.I. seized the phone of Mr. Eastman.

A federal grand jury this spring issued subpoenas to some pro-Trump electors and Republican officials requesting information about several lawyers closely allied with Mr. Trump and the electors scheme, including Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Eastman, Jenna Ellis, who worked with Mr. Giuliani, and Mr. Chesebro. The subpoenas also sought information about any employees of Mr. Trump or his campaign who knew about the plan.

Some pro-Trump elector slates were filed with the National Archives. It is a federal crime to knowingly submit false statements or documentation to a federal agency for an undue end.

Trump’s Ties Come Into View

While no prosecutor has criminally charged anyone for their participation in the scheme to submit false slates of electors to Congress, possible ties between Mr. Trump and the plan have come into view over the past few months.

In a lawsuit that Mr. Eastman filed hoping to keep scores of documents from reaching the House committee investigating Jan. 6, court filings established that he and Mr. Trump had worked together on several efforts to undo the election results, including the fake electors plan.

In a ruling against Mr. Eastman, Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California said that Mr. Trump had facilitated two meetings “explicitly tied” to persuading Mr. Pence to either reject electors or delay the count. Judge Carter said that “the illegality of the plan was obvious.”

The Jan. 6 committee has also pinned the effort to assemble slates of electors in key battleground states squarely on the Trump campaign, saying that Mr. Trump’s allies “created phony certificates associated with these fake electors and then transmitted these certificates to Washington.”

Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, told the committee that he refused Mr. Trump’s directive to create a false slate of pro-Trump electors. “You are asking me to do something against my oath, and I will not break my oath,” he testified saying to Mr. Trump.

Last week, Mr. Pence’s two top White House aides testified before the federal grand jury investigating the electors scheme. The two aides — Marc Short, Mr. Pence’s chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, his counsel — were present in the Oval Office on Jan. 4, 2021, when Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman tried unsuccessfully to convince Mr. Pence that he could invoke the competing elector slates to derail the congressional certification two days later.

As part of its criminal investigation, the Justice Department has begun asking witnesses in the case about Mr. Trump’s involvement.

Trump was certainly involved. He would not have pressured Pence to do what he did if he wasn’t. The whole plot depended upon it.

l’état, c’est moi

The judge isn’t having it:

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers asked a court on Wednesday to rule that he has “absolute immunity” from lawsuits related to the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Trump is appealing a February ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta that the former president can be sued for damages stemming from the Jan. 6 attack, rejecting Trump’s claim of immunity because his actions that day were “plausibly words of incitement not protected by the First Amendment” or presidential immunity.

Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the ruling, again arguing that Trump has “absolutely presidential immunity.”

“President Trump is shielded by absolute presidential immunity because his statements were on matters of public concern and therefore well within the scope of the robust absolute immunity afforded all presidents,” his lawyers said in a filing first flagged by Politico’s Josh Gerstein.

“No amount of hyperbole about the violence of January 6, 2021, provides a basis for this Court to carve out an exception to the constitutional separation of powers,” the brief added.

Trump faces civil lawsuits from Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., two Capitol Police officers and a group of House Democrats accusing him of inciting the insurrection.

Trump’s attorneys argued that impeachment is the only means to punish a president for his actions. The House impeached Trump for a second time after the riot but the Senate fell short of the threshold necessary for conviction in a 57-43 vote. The filing described the lawsuits following his impeachment as “harassment.”

It’s still Trump’s world and he runs it

“A Democratic-controlled House of Representatives already brought impeachment charges against President Trump for allegedly inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021. Their effort failed, and President Trump was acquitted. These further lawsuits are an attempt to thwart that acquittal, and it is just this type of harassment that presidential immunity is meant to foreclose,” the brief says.

Mehta in his ruling determined that Trump’s false claims about a “stolen” election were not immune on separation of powers grounds.

“The President’s actions here do not relate to his duties of faithfully executing the laws, conducting foreign affairs, commanding the armed forces, or managing the Executive Branch,” he wrote. “They entirely concern his efforts to remain in office for a second term. These are unofficial acts.”

Thank God. If coup attempts are considered faithfully executing the laws we’re done.

But his attempt here is very revealing. If anyone had any doubts about his desire to return to the White House, this should clear it up.