Month: August 2022

At least Nixon had the good grace to resign and slink away in shame

When President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974, many Americans were appalled. In fact, it’s widely assumed to have been a decisive factor in Ford’s 1976 loss to Jimmy Carter. Still, there was a general sense of relief among the public that the Watergate saga was over. Ford had wanted Nixon to show contrition as a condition of the pardon but the disgraced former president refused. Ford issued the pardon anyway, absolving him of all crimes committed while he was president. Nixon did eventually issue a fairly gracious acknowledgment after he received the pardon. It’s the closest thing to an apology Richard Nixon ever gave the country:

I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy. No words can describe the depth of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency, a nation I so deeply love, and an institution I so greatly respect.

Richard Nixon had made many political comebacks in his career, but, at this point, it was all over. He had resigned in disgrace and the country could move on, at least secure in the knowledge that he would never hold public office again. There would be no more comebacks.

The notion that it is wrong to prosecute former presidents for what they did while in office may have been around before all of that happened but it really seemed to take hold with Nixon. Many people were upset, of course, but the argument that there was something destabilizing about a new administration prosecuting its predecessor and having the taint of banana republic politics was pretty compelling. The shame and humiliation of a tarnished legacy were believed to be powerful deterrents to the kind of people who would seek the highest office in the nation. The ugliness of putting a former leader on trial and potentially in jail would change American politics forever and it made a whole lot of people feel queasy.

Donald Trump simply won’t stop committing crimes and is determined to keep doing it as long as he can get away with it.

It’s pretty clear today that that was a mistake. It may have once been OK to allow a disgraced president to resign and live in solitary obscurity to contemplate his crimes. The acute danger to the country was over, after all, the presidency was peacefully transferred and Congress enacted many reforms to deal with future presidential overreach. But those arguments do not apply to our current crisis. Donald Trump simply won’t stop committing crimes and is determined to keep doing it as long as he can get away with it. Just try to imagine him putting out a statement like Nixon’s.

Jack Goldsmith, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, wrote a piece for Lawfare this week in which he discusses this subject. He has long been one of those opposed to prosecuting former presidents for all the reasons I outline above but has reluctantly come to the conclusion that this situation may require it. Donald Trump is unlike any president in American history. Goldsmith was moved to write about this in the context of Trump’s latest scandal — his inexplicable decision to illegally abscond with White House documents intended for the National Archives, some of which we now know were highly classified and which he refused to return. We may never know the contents of those documents but we do know that a grand jury has been hearing testimony about this issue for months and that the head of the counterintelligence division of the FBI was alarmed enough to apply for a search warrant citing laws governing obstruction of justice, removal or destruction of records, and violation of the Espionage Act. Goldsmith believes that whether this was a wise move by the DOJ depends on the contents of the documents and whether it is proven that Trump refused to cooperate. I think he’s missing the forest for the trees. 

Look at this in the context of Trump’s years-long crime spree to see that there was no choice but to take this extraordinary step. His contempt for the rule of law is so brazen that if they didn’t, we might as well just officially declare that he has blanket immunity from criminal prosecution in perpetuity and call it a day.

It may turn out that the documents are not as sensitive as they thought and all that will happen is that they are returned to the National Archives. But you have to look at this in the context of Trump’s years-long crime spree to see that they had no choice but to take this extraordinary step. His contempt for the rule of law is so brazen that if they didn’t, we might as well just officially declare that he has blanket immunity from criminal prosecution in perpetuity and call it a day.

Consider the long list of crimes that the Justice Department was precluded from prosecuting because of the policy against prosecuting a sitting president. The Mueller Report alone listed almost a dozen instances of obstruction of justice just in the first two years of Trump’s presidency. He tried to bribe a foreign leader for personal political gain and was impeached for doing it. His abuse of presidential power to punish enemies and reward cronies is unprecedented. As we speak, he is under investigation for attempting a coup and disrupting the peaceful transfer of power.

And he’s running for president again, with the full backing of tens of millions of loyal followers who are convinced that Trump is being persecuted simply for being their hero.

Trump has slithered out from under the law and managed to evade accountability for his misdeeds his entire life. He has been committing crimes and dealing in corrupt practices at an ever-increasing pace since he entered politics, believing that it shields him from legal liability. In fact, he believes that being president allows him to literally do anything he chooses.

So everyone is rightfully worried about what will happen if Trump is held accountable for his crimes. After all, he has already unleashed his violent supporters on the FBI and is saying publicly that something terrible is going to happen because of his supposed persecution. His cult-like following is talking about civil war.

But part of the reason he has all those followers in the first place is that he seems to be invulnerable. They see him as a super-hero, still standing after all the slings and arrows dished out by the legal authorities and the political opposition. It’s just possible that if the rule of law prevails for once, the veil might fall and some of them will see him as the frail narcissist he really is. Let’s just say, it’s worth a try. It’s not like letting him off the hook has worked up until now. 

Salon

But we’re seeing courtesy of the Roberts Court

Months ago and for decades prior, this was not a story that would make news. Because until Dobbs, it was not an issue for the state to intercede:

Louisiana Woman Is Forced Carry Headless Fetus to Term or Travel to Florida for Legal Abortion

Jezebel’s headline puts the woman’s plight in blunt terms:

“It’s hard knowing that I’m carrying it to bury it,” Nancy Davis, who’s 13 weeks pregnant and is already the mother of one child, told local news station WAFB9 on Monday. A few weeks ago, she had her first ultrasound and was told the fetus wouldn’t survive—but that she would have to either carry and birth the nonviable fetus or travel to Florida, the closest state where abortion is still legal. Davis is running out of time to make her decision, however, because Florida bans the health service at 15 weeks.

Extremely dark abortion news is just pouring out today. Now a Louisiana woman says she's being forced to either carry a fetus to term that is missing its skull and part of its head, or travel to Florida for the nearest legal abortion. https://t.co/xRYLUFPN8I

— Laura Bassett (@LEBassett) August 16, 2022

Before this summer, we’d have lumped together forced birth of a headless child with bloodletting, trepanation, or animal dung ointments.

WAFB:

“Florida is the closest…so ideally Florida. But then the next closest place would be North Carolina or something,” Davis added.

Without taking a position on abortion, Davis says she thinks state lawmakers need to consider broadening the list of conditions that qualify for an abortion in the state.

“I just want them to consider special circumstances as it relates to abortion…medical problems, like this is one that needs to be in that,” said Davis.

Nope. Eating corpses is making a comeback. Elect more Republicans this fall and you’ll see even more.

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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.

Not my designation. Greg Sargent’s. But it fits.

Sargent examines ways by which Republicans could torpedo accountability for their God-man-child should they gain control of the House in the 2022 elections. It might not only take the form of endless Benghazi-like hearings targeting Merrick Garland and his department. They might employ parliamentary tools to defund ongoing investigations:

Such a tactic could badly complicate efforts to hold Trump accountable and could lead to government shutdowns and other chaos. The prospect is even more dire when you consider that a GOP House would containa large faction of feral Trumpists who see making Trump untouchable by the law as their highest calling.

Democrats tell me they’ve begun to examine a range of tools Republicans could employ in such a situation, in part to prepare for a worst-case scenario. The specifics of this show that the GOP rallying around Trump right now could have appalling real-world consequences later.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), for example, has been looking at ways Republicans might attack the salaries of law enforcement officials deemed enemies of Trump.

“They want to ensure that Trump is above the law,” Beyer told me in a statement, noting that he expects a GOP House to coalesce around the position that anyone in law enforcement “who poses a threat to Trump must be deterred, blocked, punished, or fired.”

Call went out from the erstwhile, “back the blue” congressional MAGAs to defund the FBI after the search of Mar-a-Lago. It is unlikely they would cut off 35,000 employees without provoking a backlash against the GOP. But considering the crackpot ways Trumpists thought they could overturn a national election, who knows?

Beyer points out thata GOP House majority could reinstate the so-called Holman Rule. This obscure rule — which Republicans revived last time they held the majority, until the Democratic majority ended it — would allow Republicans to use spending bills totry toslash the salary of specific federal officials or eliminate blocks of federal employees, and thus specific programs.

In a little-noticed aside, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) recently floated this idea, without detail. So it’s easy to see this rule being used as a mechanism to try to eliminate Garland’s salary, or the salaries of FBI officials overseeing an investigation involving Trump (or, if this happens, Justice Department officials prosecuting him).

Investigations into Jan. 6 that might lead not only to Trump but to Republican House members would be especially tantalizing for a MAGA-led House. With Joe Biden still in the Oval Office, he could veto any such legislation. But the GOP could make life miserable for all if they win control of the Senate.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.) said Republicans will “use the levers of government to target, harass, and defund.”

Sargent concludes, “For MAGA loyalists, Trump is above the law.”

That much as been obvious for years. Confronting Trumpist drones in and out of government with their lack of scruples is to no avail. Conscience, ethics, and oaths are meaningless to the cult.

I’m reminded of Tom Lehrer’s musical takedown of Wernher von Braun:

Gather ’round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience
Call him a Nazi, he won’t even frown
“Nazi, Schmazi!” says Wernher von Braun

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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.

Did I mention they are shameless?

Republicans used the “defund the police” slogan after George Floyd’s murder to paint the Democratic Party as radical. But since the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, a growing number of GOP candidates and lawmakers are rallying around their own calls to defund or abolish federal law enforcement agencies.

The new demands muddle a narrative embraced by Republicans long before the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020 — that they are the party of law enforcement. They also show how much former President Trump has reshaped his party.

Strategists say it could jeopardize the GOP’s chances in some contests in November.

Could this become the new Trump loyalty litmus test?

Dan Bolduc and Bruce Fenton, leading Republican Senate candidates in New Hampshire, said in a recent debate they believe the Department of Homeland Security and top agencies need to be significantly “reduced” and called for abolishing the FBI.

Anthony Sabatini, a leading primary candidate in Florida’s 3rd District, has long called to defund the FBI and tweeted on the night of the Mar-a-Lago search that Florida should “sever all ties with DOJ immediately” and arrest FBI agents on sight.

Tim Baxter, a candidate i New Hampshire’s 1st District, expressed support for abolishing the FBI in a debate on Saturday. Another candidate, Karoline Leavitt, called to “investigate, litigate and incarcerate them.”

J.R. Majewski, the GOP nominee in Ohio’s 9th District, says on his website’s issues page: “I will fight to abolish all unconstitutional three letter agencies,” including the CIA.

Sandy Smith, the GOP nominee in North Carolina’s 1st District, tweeted a poll with “Abolish the FBI” as one of the options.

Asked in a recent radio interview whether Republicans are “actually going to be willing” to defund the FBI, IRS and other agencies, Bo Hines, the Trump-endorsed GOP nominee in North Carolina’s 13th District, responded: “Well, I mean we have to.”

When his campaign was contacted for comment for this story, a spokesman provided a statement from Hines that said: “I fully support the men and women within these agencies that work tirelessly in good faith to keep our communities safe, but I do not support the political hacks that use these agencies as vessels to go after the American people.”

The position also has been embraced by Texas GOP chair Matt Rinaldi and Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who is selling “Defund the FBI” merchandise.

 “Crime has been a winning issue for Republicans, and they need to be careful not to jeopardize that,” Alex Conant, GOP strategist and founding partner of Firehouse Strategies, told Axios.

While it’s natural for House Republican candidates to tap into grassroots anger to generate turnout and contributions, Conant warned that Democrats may be able to use that “to neutralize what has been a very effective issue for Republicans.”

Ken Spain, a founding partner of Narrative Strategies and former GOP campaign official, told Axios: “This might score political points in the handful of remaining GOP primaries, but it will serve as a textbook case study in how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the general election.”

The backdrop: Republicans have long used the left’s “defund the police” slogan to attack Democrats — and Democratic operatives have warned lawmakers to steer clear of anti-law enforcement rhetoric ahead of the midterm elections.

 “Crime has been a winning issue for Republicans, and they need to be careful not to jeopardize that.”

Lol. I’m afraid that ship sailed when they voted for a criminal for president.

Don’t doubt it

Sen. Cruz (R-TX) predicts “significant chance” Biden & AG Garland get impeached after the FBI’s lawful search of Mar-a-Lago:

“The consequence of the Democrats politicizing impeachment … when there’s a Republican Congress, the pressure to impeach Biden is going to be enormous.” pic.twitter.com/s93Yz6JAkq

— The Recount (@therecount) August 16, 2022

They will do it purely on behalf of Trump as he kicks off his “Vengeance is Mine” tour 2023. He will demand it and they always do what he tells them to do.

The big question is how the media will cover it. If they take it seriously out of a misplaced sense of fairness, it will be a big problem. I don’t have any idea how it will go.

*BTW: the party that politicized impeachment was the Republican party when they impeached Bill Clinton for allegedly lying in a deposition in a case that had been dismissed.

Alina Habba is his latest creation

You may have noticed this new spokesperson making the rounds:

Nice little country you have here … https://t.co/bRM21bRGte

— digby (@digby56) August 16, 2022

Facing high-stakes investigations that could cripple his business empire or even mean jail time for him and close associates, former President Donald Trump and his family’s armada of lawyers are facing a threat from within.

Her name is Alina Habba, and—almost out of nowhere—the relatively unknown New Jersey lawyer went from representing a college student ticked off at COVID-19 virtual learning to being one of the top attorneys defending the twice-impeached former president in some of the country’s most high-profile cases.

There’s just one problem for Habba: There’s hardly anyone in the Trump legal universe who can stand her.

Many of Habba’s fellow senior Trumpland attorneys—including but not limited to Alan Garten—have all privately vented that she has botched things or doesn’t know what she’s doing, according to Trumpworld legal sources intimately familiar with the topic. Some of them want her fired or sidelined.

Some of the Trump lawyers think her work is so bad—so self-interested, pointlessly aggressive, and sloppy—that they think Habba’s mere presence on the team increases the likelihood of Trump and his family facing court losses and legal peril.

This reporting is based on interviews with four current and former Trump lawyers, as well as three other sources familiar with the situation at the Trump Organization and in the Trump family orbit.

“‘What the fuck is she doing?’ is probably the most common question we asked about her,” one of these lawyers, who still works in the Trump inner sanctum, remarked last week.

Habba’s professional conduct, decisions, and courtroom theatrics have routinely embarrassed her Trumpworld legal colleagues—to the point that there are multiple group chats of Trump lawyers where much of the discussion is devoted to profusely complaining about Habba or harshly mocking her. (Habba, naturally, is not included in the text or email threads.)

Habba did not reply to requests for comment. Instead, the Trump Organization released a largely similar statement given to Axios when it profiled Habba in January.

“This story is totally untrue. Alina Habba is not only an incredibly competent attorney, she has our utmost trust and confidence and has the fortitude to take on some of the most politically corrupt and unethical institutions in this country,” read a statement attributed to Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons.

But if she has the utmost trust and confidence of Eric Trump, lawyers attached to Trumpworld aren’t as sure. One lawyer in the Trump orbit, who acknowledged they had never met Habba, simply had this to say of her legal analysis on TV: “Ouch.”

So why is she there? It’s not too hard to figure out:

In private, Trump has repeatedly commented on how much she “loves Trump” and has on many occasions gushed to close associates about her physical appearance—how she’s “a beauty” on TV and at his clubs, according to two sources who’ve talked to him about Habba in recent months.

Of course. She’s also willing to go on TV and make outlandish claims on behalf of her Dear Leader:

Another attorney pointed out that Habba seems to be filling a spot that was once reserved for Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell: an attack-dog lawyer who serves as a mouthpiece for Trump. But this person also warned that Habba could ultimately share their fate. Both lawyers have faced disciplinary inquiries over their willingness to amplify their client’s baseless claims in a matter considered undignified in the legal profession.

Habba has also taken her role as Trump’s personal litigator and turned what would normally be staid courtroom arguments into showy antics that—to her deeply disdainful colleagues—seem like a constant audition for conservative television.

“If you want to be a lawyer you stick to the facts in the case. Stick to the law. If you want to be on some news show… then that’s probably where you should be,” one such lawyer told The Daily Beast.

Those theatrics were on full display last month in New York state court, when Habba argued against having Trump testify before New York Attorney General Letitia James by casting the entire investigation as a smear job and making snarky speeches parroting right-wing political talking points—including a non sequitur argument about Hillary Clinton. Habba was repeatedly reprimanded by a clerk for interrupting the judge and talking over him.

But it hasn’t just been her courtroom lawyering that’s drawn the ire of fellow Trump lawyers. Habba signed off on a court filing last month making assertions that were immediately countered by Trump’s own public statement the very next day.

While court papers said Trump “denies knowledge” about the way his brand value was used to inflate the value of business properties, Trump himself quickly turned around and publicly detailed exactly how he slapped a brand premium that inflated the value of some business properties in 2014. Attorneys at the James’ office seized on that and asked the judge to treat Trump’s statement as admissions, forcing Trump to testify for the office’s ongoing bank fraud and tax dodging investigation.

The judge later ruled Trump must appear for questioning under oath, and that ruling is heading to a state appeals court.

Sources said the public statement had been reviewed by Trump’s lawyers before it was published, making the legal self-own even more confounding.

One source in Trump’s orbit who spoke to The Daily Beast wondered whether Habba had found herself in the same position as so many Trump lawyers before her: stuck with an unruly client who will say anything he wants, consequences be damned.

Habba, who turns 38 this month, runs a small law firm just an eight-minute drive from Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. According to three sources, Habba has spent an inordinate amount of time at Trump properties, including the Jersey golf club. She’s there so often, in fact, that car thieves drove past a security checkpoint at the club last month before tracking down her unlocked vehicle at another parking lot and breaking in, she told The Daily Mail.

The article doesn’t say how she came to Trump’s attention but she wound up on his team to take on the lawsuits filed by Summer Zervos and E. Jean Carroll when his former lawyer Marc Kasowitz dropped out. Despite being chastised by the judge in the latter case he liked what he saw, apparently:

In December, Trump tapped Habba to launch a head-turning attack against Letitia James, suing in federal court to have a judge unilaterally block the state attorney general’s investigation.

According to two people familiar with the matter, several of Trump’s attorneys working alongside Habba were vocally opposed to the move and internally argued against doing what they saw as a counterproductive move that was doomed to fail. Those other lawyers largely blamed Habba for backing up Trump on the suit, and encouraging Trump’s vengeful instinct to do it.

In recent months, Habba has done several TV appearances on Fox News and Newsmax, railing against a legal system she claims is stacked against conservatives. Lawyers, especially those who represent high-profile figures, often appear on television to discuss their cases. But they rarely attack the character of the judges overseeing their cases—or set expectations by saying any future loss in court is completely determined by a judge’s personal politics.

And yet, that tactic is quickly becoming a favorite for Habba.

In January, she gave copious amounts of side-eye to U.S. District Judge Brenda K. Sannes and Magistrate Judge ​​Christian F. Hummel, telling a Newsmax host, “We have our cards stacked against us in New York. We’re in the northern district, we have judges that you know are mostly liberal unfortunately… if the judge can put his politics on the side, this should be granted and we should win.”

Habba also recently lobbed a few grenades at New York Judge Arthur F. Engoron and others when she appeared on Newsmax.

“At the end of the day, this is the problem with New York State right now. Donald Trump cannot get a fair judge to hear him on the facts with what’s going on,” she told the host last month.

Her other legal work isn’t nearly as politically charged.

Her other clients are just as disreputable as the former president:

In July, she represented pharmaceutical entrepreneur Caesar DePaço in federal court when he sued Portuguese journalists for exposing his close ties to that country’s far-right Chega party.

What a gal. She’ll probably be Attorney General in the 2nd Trump administration.

Will anyone ever hear about it?

The Biden administration doesn’t get the credit it deserves when it comes to improving the American consumer experience. Allowing hearing aids to be sold without a prescription is huge.

Big health care news: the FDA has finalized a rule allowing hearing aids to be sold over the counter, potentially saving millions of people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss thousands of dollars. Look for hearing aids in your local drug store as early as mid-October. pic.twitter.com/LWLUn6gL6m

— Bharat Ramamurti (@BharatRamamurti) August 16, 2022

Consumer rights are an unsexy topic when it comes to political coverage but its how most Americans most often engage with politics. See: inflation.

Originally tweeted by Helaine Olen (@helaineolen) on August 16, 2022.

Five years ago yesterday, Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides" of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia https://t.co/3U6jMIDN8s

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 16, 2022

Now we have white nationalist celebrities pushing “the Great Replacement” on cable news.

The host of the most-watched cable news show in America is saying that the president is "explicitly declaring war on his own population" before defending white supremacy. pic.twitter.com/LCcplb2hvg

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) August 16, 2022

They’re still at it

After Trump failed to order the military to seize the voting machines, they just did it themselves:

A team of computer experts directed by lawyers allied with President Donald Trump copied sensitive data from election systems in Georgia as part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment that was broader, more organized and more successful than previously reported, according to emails and other records obtained by The Washington Post.

As they worked to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat, the lawyers asked a forensic data firm to access county election systems in at least three battleground states, according to the documents and interviews. The firm charged an upfront retainer fee for each job, which in one case was $26,000.

Attorney Sidney Powell sent the team to Michigan to copy a rural county’s election data and later helped arrange for it to do the same in the Detroit area, according to the records. A Trump campaign attorney engaged the team to travel to Nevada. And the day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol the team was in southern Georgia, copying data from a Dominion voting system in rural Coffee County.

The emails and other records were collected through a subpoena issued to the forensics firm, Atlanta-based SullivanStrickler, by plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit in federal court over the security of Georgia’s voting systems. The documents provide the first confirmation that data from Georgia’s election system was copied. Indications of a breach there were first raised by plaintiffs in the case in February, and state officials have said they are investigating.

“The breach is way beyond what we thought,” said David D. Cross, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, who include voting-security activists and Georgia voters. “The scope of it is mind-blowing.”

A drumbeat of revelations about alleged security breaches in local elections offices has grown louder during the nearly two years since the 2020 election. There is growing concern among experts that officials sympathetic to Trump’s claims of vote-rigging could undermine election security in the name of protecting it.

The federal government classifies voting systems as “critical infrastructure,” important to national security, and access to their software and other components is tightly regulated. In several instances since 2020, officials have taken machines out of service after their chains of custody were disrupted.

It’s still happening:

Eight months after the 2020 presidential election, Robin Hawthorne did not expect anyone to ask for her township’s voting machines.

The election had gone smoothly,she said,just as others had that she had overseen for 17 years as the Rutland Charter Township clerk in rural western Michigan. But now a sheriff’s deputy and investigator were in her office, asking her about her township’s three vote tabulators, suggesting that they somehow had been programmed witha microchip to shift votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden and asking her to hand one over for inspection.

“What the heck is going on?” she recalled thinking. The surprise visit may have been an “out-of-the-blue thing,” as Hawthorne described it, but it was one element of a much broader effort by figures who deny the outcome of the 2020 vote to access voting machines in a bid to prove fraud that experts say does not exist.

In states across the country, including Colorado, Pennsylvania and Georgia, attempts to inappropriately access voting machines have spurred investigations. They have also sparked concern among election authorities that, while voting systems are broadly secure, breaches by those looking for evidence of fraud could themselves compromise the integrity of the process and undermine confidence in the vote.

In Michigan, the efforts to access the machines jumped into public view this month when the state attorney general, Dana Nessel (D), requested a special prosecutor be assigned to look into a group that includes her likely Republican opponent, Matthew DePerno.

The expected Republican nominee, Nessel’s office wrote in a petition filed Aug. 5 based on the findings of a state police investigation, was “one of the prime instigators” of a conspiracy to persuade Michigan clerks to allow unauthorized access to voting machines. Others involved, according to the filing, included a state representative and Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf.

Although Hawthorne rebuffed the request by investigatorsto examine one of her machines, a clerk in nearby Irving Township handed one over to the pair despite state and federal laws that limit who can access them. About 150 miles north of Hawthorne’s township, three clerks in two other Michigan counties turned over voting machines and other equipment to third parties, public records show.

The petition says tabulators were taken to hotel rooms and Airbnb rentals in Oakland County, where a group of four men “broke into” the tabulators and performed “tests” on them. The petition says that DePerno was present in a hotel room during some of the testing.

Officials got the tabulators back weeks or months later, in one instance at a meeting in a carpool parking lot. DePerno has denied any wrongdoing, as has Leaf,the Barry County sheriff. The DePerno campaign issued a statement calling the petition for a special prosecutor “an incoherent liberal fever dream of lies.”

Once election officials lose control of voting machines, the machines can no longer be used because of the risk of hacking. Moreover, voters can lose faith in the country’s electoral infrastructure when they hear about machines that have not been adequately protected, election experts warn.

Until recently, said Tammy Patrick, who works with election officials around the country as a senior adviser at the nonprofit Democracy Fund, “it seemed far-fetched that election networks could be exposed” in the way they were in Michigan. “Unfortunately, we have a number of instances in the last year or so where this sort of thing has happened around the country,” she said. “It is deeply troubling.”

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in an interview with The Washington Post that efforts to “twist the arm of election officials to get them to turn over secure information” are illegal. She said it is important for law enforcement to act “not just to hold accountable those who have been trying to interfere with the process, but to look at the connectivity to see if there is a broader connection, not just in our state, but beyond Michigan to Georgia and Ohio and other states where you see this happening.”

Although the exact nature of connections between efforts in different states to breach machines remains unclear, the situation in Michigan is similar to ones elsewhere in which allegedly unofficial and unauthorized investigators sought evidence of fraud by gaining access to voting equipment. Some of those named in the Michigan case have been connected to cases elsewhere.

In Colorado, the Mesa County clerk, Tina Peters, was indicted in March on charges stemming from her effort to allow allegedly unauthorized people to copy the hard drives of voting machines in her county. Peters has denied wrongdoing. In Coffee County, Ga., a cybersecurity executive named in the Michigan case, Benjamin Cotton, said in court filings that he gained access to the county’s voting system information. In Pennsylvania, the secretary of state ordered the decertification of machines in Fulton County after she said they were improperly accessed by individuals seeking to investigate the 2020 election.

Election experts are worried that in some of these intrusions, voting tabulators may have been compromised or the exposure of serial numbers and other details about voting systems could make them more vulnerable to fraud. More broadly, they said, these instances undermine trust in voting.

Yeah, no kidding.

This mass delusion that Trump unleashed on tens of millions of our fellow Americans isn’t going away. It’s getting worse. And powerful people are taking advantage of the fact that Republicans are brainwashed and bold, believing that anything goes because their idol Donald Trump has been victimized. His lies have now fundamentally changed the country.

I’m growing increasingly concerned that this is going to end very badly.

This one’s especially stupid

I am still gobsmacked that Trump would steal classified documents after his “lock her up” crusade and I doubt I will ever get over it. It’s the most astonishingly arrogant chutzpah I’ve ever seen. Perhaps an equal example is Alan Dershowitz defending him by saying that Clinton and Sandy Berger (former Clinton official who was convicted of taking documents from the National Archives) were treated more leniently than Trump.

Sigh. Here’s why it’s enough to drive you to drink:

As Professor Dershowitz points out, “Berger and Mrs. Clinton were suspected of mishandling confidential materials—he by removing them from the National Archives in 2005, she by transmitting them over her private email server while serving as secretary of state.”

Berger admitted that he removed classified documents from the National Archives. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to a $50,000 fine and community service and lost his security clearance.

Clinton was subjected to a massive, far-reaching criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Justice. Much of the Clinton investigation took place on the public stage, and even though the FBI declined to recommend that criminal charges be brought against her, she was excoriated in a public FBI report that likely cost her the presidency in 2016.

Trump’s situation is closer to Berger’s than Clinton’s. Trump, like Berger, is accused of stealing and carting away government property, including confidential information. Trump’s situation, of course, is far worse, since Berger was never accused of refusing to return the documents once he was caught. (More on that in a moment.)

So, yes, there might be some semblance of equal treatment with Berger if Trump were to now plead guilty to a crime. (As an ex-president, he has no security clearance to lose.)

And “equal treatment” to Clinton might mean that Trump should now be subjected to a comprehensive criminal investigation into his mishandling of classified material, leading either to a felony indictment or a public excoriation, like Clinton.

But that’s where the equivalency with Clinton ends.

Trump, unlike Clinton, is not merely accused of “mishandling” classified information—although he certainly did that—he is suspected of stealing it and, when caught, refusing to return it to the government. More specifically, Trump is suspected of removing storage boxes filled with government property (including classified, top secret / sensitive compartmented information) from the White House, storing it in his unsecured Mar-a-Lago residence, lying to the government about having returned all documents marked as classified, and refusing for months to return the stolen material despite both informal requests and formal subpoenas.

Whatever you may think about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct government business, there was never a hint that she withheld or refused to turn over her servers when they were requested by the government. To the contrary, the issue with Clinton was whether classified information had been “improperly stored or transmitted” on Clinton’s personal system, not whether she had withheld anything from the investigators. Then-FBI director James Comey, in his infamous public excoriation of Clinton, made it clear that Clinton provided 30,000 emails to the State Department in December 2014, that the FBI also searched more than 60,000 other emails remaining on her email system, and had “searched through all” of the servers in an attempt to recover any emails that may have been deleted.

Trump’s harboring the stolen documents and refusing to return them to the government despite months of attempts to recover them, through both voluntary requests and subpoenas—and especially Trump’s reported lying about them—makes Professor Dershowitz’s blather about “what appears to be unequal application of rules and principles” and “treating like cases alike” laughable. The Trump case is not even remotely “alike” to the cases of Berger and Clinton.

There was no indication that the government had any significant, prolonged difficulty obtaining the Berger documents or the Clinton servers once they asked for them. There was no need for a search warrant in either case. Full stop.

Not so with Trump.

While we won’t know everything about the basis for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant until we see the affidavit that led to its issuance—and we may not know everything even then—we don’t know nothing about it. We know that Trump turned over some 15 boxes of documents last January, reportedly including some marked classified and “top secret.” We know, according to press reports, that a Trump lawyer signed a written statement assuring the government that “all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area” at Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the government. We know that, in fact, Trump had not returned all documents marked as classified to the government—to the contrary, the Mar-a-Lago search last week uncovered that a trove of documents marked confidential, top secret / SCI that were still being kept at unsecured locations on the premises.

All of this makes Professor Dershowitz’s bland concession that “the facts, especially the degrees of culpability, may be different” inadequate to the point of absurdity.

Flogging the notion that “if the facts are similar and the treatment is different,” when we already know that the facts are materially dissimilar, makes Professor Dershowitz sound more like Celebrity Defense Attorney Dershowitz, a special pleader auditioning for a high-profile place on Trump’s defense team, not the principled defender of equal treatment that he’s posing as.

Equal treatment with past offenders would mean only that Trump should be the target of a comprehensive criminal investigation, at the conclusion of which law enforcement should either indict him or fully disclose to the public the rationale for not indicting him.

But equal treatment has nothing to do with the search of Mar-a-Lago last week. Neither Sandy Berger nor Hillary Clinton was suspected of harboring, lying about, and refusing to return stolen documents.

The idea that Hillary Clinton got off easy compared to Trump is one of the most audacious spins I’ve ever heard.