Month: September 2022

Grain of salt time

There’s a lot of talk today about polling errors in the past two years making it probable that Democratic optimism about this fall’s election is also misplaced. I won’t argue. It’s just more supposition based upon historical examples that may or may not come true. In fact, I’m much more interested in the data about first time voter registration which is real data and indicates that there is a serious gender gap among new voters:

I don’t think it’s grasping at straws to note that and make an informed supposition that it’s caused by the Roe ruling. This would likely translate to an increase in votes for Democrats which may not be being picked up in the polls. (I don’t see the data-guys making that point.)

Also, they are mostly young first-time voters which is also difficult to poll:

I am going to hold to my belief that it’s foolish to make predictions about this election based upon historical precedent. Our current political environment is unprecedented. The best thing to do is just try to get as many Democrats to the polls and hope for the best.

Did he de-classify them in his mind?

It look like they’re going for it:

Lawyers for former president Donald Trump filed court papers Monday arguing against any pause in a judge’s order for a special master to review documents seized at Mar-a-Lago last month, suggesting that some of the documents marked classified may not be, and that Trump may have the right to keep the materials in his possession.

“In what at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiraled out of control, the Government wrongfully seeks to criminalize the possession by the 45th President of his own Presidential and personal records,” the Trump lawyers wrote, arguing that prosecutors are trying to limit any outside review of “what it deems are ‘classified records.’ ”

Their filing was in response to the Justice Department’s request for U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon to temporarily suspend parts of her Labor Day order, in which she agreed to appoint a special master to review thousands of documents seized by the FBI in a court-approved search of Trump’s club and residence on Aug. 8.

Federal prosecutors asked Cannon to withhold her ruling that the FBI not use the more than 100 classified documents seized in the search until they are reviewed by the special master, essentially an outside legal expert. The government also asked Cannon to exempt the classified documents from outside examination, saying that requiring such a review would unnecessarily complicate the national security issues in the high-profile case.

In their filing, Trump lawyers disagree, charging that prosecutors are overstating the national-security concerns and that “there is no indication any purported ‘classified records’ were disclosed to anyone.” The filing was submitted by four members of Trump’s legal team: Christopher Kise, Lindsey Halligan, Evan Corcoran and James Trusty.

Trump’s lawyers argued that the government “has not proven” that the materials marked classified are actually still classified. A section of their 21-page filing outlines a president’s power to declassify documents, but does not say Trump actually declassified the material before he left office. The filing also says there is no indication that the “purported ‘classified records’ were disclosed to anyone.”

The Washington Post has reported that among the documents seized by the FBI was one describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it. Those people also said some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations that are so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them.

The Justice Department has said in court filings that among the 100-plus classified documents taken in August, some were marked “HCS,” a category of highly classified government information that refers to “HUMINT Control Systems,” which are systems used to protect intelligence gathered from secret human sources. There were also dozens of empty folders marked classified, according to a government inventory filed in court, and documents marked confidential, secret and top-secret.

“The Government contends that President Trump can have no such interest in the purported ‘classified records,’ the filing by Trump’s legal team reads. “But, again, the Government has not proven these records remain classified. That issue is to be determined later.”

The former president’s lawyers also said that investigation of the documents should be centered around the Presidential Records Act — a civil law that says presidential records belong to the government, not the individual president. Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing that their interpretation of parts of the act suggest that Trump has “an absolute right to access” his presidential records. They did not address criminal statutes — including a part of the Espionage Act — that the government alleges may have been violated by keeping or hiding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s lawyers suggest that recent coverage of the documents case shows the government is being selective and unfair when it raises concerns about national security, citing The Post’s reporting that materials involving a foreign country’s nuclear capabilities were among the documents seized.

“The Government is apparently not concerned with unauthorized leaks regarding the contents of the purported ‘classified records,’ ” the filing reads.

For months before the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the National Archives and Records Administration and the Justice Department tried to get Trump to return all White House and presidential documents still in his possession, according to court filings in the case.

In May, the government subpoenaed Trump, asking for all the classified documents he still had. His lawyers told the government in response to the subpoena that everything had been returned. But the search last month yielded an additional 27 boxes containing a mix of personal items and classified and unclassified government material.

I can’t believe they actually used Marco Rubio’s “it’s just a storage issue” defense but they did. Wow.

I guess these defense lawyers don’t have any choice but to say that Trump declassified the documents. It’s either that or they have to say the FBI planted them and that’s even more difficult to prove. But please. If the courts (or a jury) let him get away with this ….

Oh, what am I saying? It’s totally possible.

He seems to think he’s been called to a non-existent January 6th Grand Jury — or something

Basically it’s just a bunch of gibberish:

BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): Newt, the January 6th committee is going to reconvene and do their report in October. Ironically, just before the election. Evidently they are targeting you and the vice president. And they want you two to testify. Will you respond to their request — have you been requested — would you go?

NEWT GINGRICH (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Well, my attorneys are working all that out. I’m not directly engaged with the committee. But I will say, there has never been a more blatant misuse of the justice department this close to an election. You know, the ground rule used to be that 60 days out they stopped all this stuff precisely to not try to influence an election. Instead, you have a deliberate targeting process underway to intimidate Republican donors, Republican candidates, even Republican lawyers.

We haven’t — this is as close to a police state tactic as we have ever seen in this country. And, of course, this totally, I think, inappropriate, it’s not really a congressional committee. It’s a show trial in the Stalinist tradition. They are apparently sitting down this week with their Hollywood producer, think about this, they’re sitting down with their Hollywood producer to plan the next two months. This is an absurdity, and Americans should be insulted that these people think they are stupid enough to fall for this kind of thing.

It truly is outrageous. Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing.

It’s not pretty

If you were to read Donald Trump’s Truth Social feed over the past few days you would think that he was a member of the British royal family. He’s posted picture after picture of his bumbling state visit to the U.K. a couple of years ago, along with numerous tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth (always in reference to their allegedly close relationship) and even had someone write a saccharine commemorative op-ed for the Daily Mail under his name. It seems sincere enough. It’s clear that he is genuinely smitten with the British monarchy and sees himself as her late majesty’s American stepson.

Normally, American presidents visit Canada as their first foreign visit, for obvious reasons, and also visit Britain early in their term as a mark of the “special relationship.” Trump, as you may recall, broke with all tradition and almost immediately headed off to Saudi Arabia to get feted by the desert kingdom’s royal family in an especially ostentatious and sycophantic display. (The Saudi royals weren’t the first or last to understand that they could wrap Trump around their little fingers with pomp and flattery.)

Theresa May, who was U.K. prime minister at the time (they’ve had four in the last six years), first invited Trump for a state visit in summer 2017. That turned into an immediate brouhaha in Britain, causing significant political damage to May, and the visit never happened. It was widely as unprecedented for a U.S. president to offered such a splashy event in the first year in any case and with an anti-Trump petition reaching more than 1.5 million signatures in Britain, the queen was reportedly in “a very difficult position.”

There had already been large street protests in U.K. cities against Trump’s election and his infamous “Muslim ban.” Nonetheless negotiations for the visit continued until they hit a snag over Trump’s demand to be taken through the streets of London in Queen Elizabeth’s golden Cinderella coach. It had been used for other visiting dignitaries, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (as Trump was no doubt aware) but security people on both sides of the Atlantic did not want this controversial president riding in a little carriage with the aging monarch, with angry protesters lining the streets, and the whole thing was canceled.

In fact, Trump didn’t visit Britain until July of 2018 when he finally met both May and the queen before heading off to his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, where he could be the master of all he surveyed. This was the visit when Trump dissed May in the papers, saying about her handling of Brexit, “I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it but she didn’t agree.” Diplomatic, as usual. He tried to make it up to May by holding her hand and declaring that their relationship was at “the highest level of special.”

This was the visit where the famous Trump Baby Blimp was flown over the streets of London, cheered on by tens of thousands of protesters. (It was later acquired by the Museum of London.) He also managed to insult the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, telling the city’s public, “You have a mayor who has done a terrible job in London” and calling him a “stone cold loser.”

Then there was the moment when Trump almost tripped the elderly queen by defying protocol and walking in front of her:

Trump Walks in Front of Queen Elizabeth, Causing Social Media Frenzy https://t.co/22TQkfSosk

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 14, 2018

Luckily for him, this notoriously embarrassing visit was immediately eclipsed by what he did at this next stop: That was in Helsinki, where he groveled and scraped before Vladimir Putin in one of the worst foreign policy performances in American history.

A year later, the British government apparently felt obligated to offer Trump the state visit he craved, since they’d staged them for both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He didn’t receive the golden carriage ride but they soothed him with all the pomp and circumstance he has believed he deserved ever since he supposedly sat at his Scottish immigrant mother’s knee watching Queen Elizabeth’s coronation on TV. He just loves that stuff.

Unlike other dignitaries, Trump brought his entire family along for the festivities, spouses included. It’s surprising he didn’t invite all the ex-wives and grandchildren as well. That visit will go down in history as one of the most awkward, uncouth public appearances by a world leader in modern memory. They wore bad dresses and ill-fitting tuxedos and appeared to all the world as the Clampetts of Washington, D.C., even appearing on the famous balcony at Buckingham Palace as if they were preparing to challenge William and Kate for the throne:

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner stand on Buckingham Palace balcony. #TrumpUKVisit https://t.co/lO6nAfwNye pic.twitter.com/rW5XsZRSZu

— The Hill (@thehill) June 3, 2019

Notice Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin taking videos like a tourist from Boca Raton, while various other randos just stand around on the balcony as if they were at Disneyland.

I’m not saying that Americans have any obligation to treat royal property with special reverence, but the president’s entourage should behave with a little class if at all possible. These particular Americans were so over-the-top excited about being pretend-royalty for a day, it was downright uncomfortable to watch.

Trump has been going on and on for days about what a great honor it was to meet the queen and is portraying himself as almost as close with the new king, as if they were old golf buddies or something. He really, truly loves the royal family.

In fact, he has more in common with them than he might realize. Recall that the royals were confronted with the inconvenient fact during World War I that their name was Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, reflecting their true German lineage. That wasn’t a good look in Britain at the time and so they changed the name to the much more English-sounding Windsor. Trump’s paternal ancestors were also German and changed their name,(from Drumpf to Trump) for similar reasons. He is famously proud to have that “German blood,” just like the late queen.

With all that in common, it’s a wonder they haven’t found some leftover dukedom for him, at the very least. Maybe the next time Trump and his good pal King Charlie are on the links, he can put that bug in his ear. 

And don’t care who knows it

“I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, a father of movement conservatism and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, told a religious right group in Dallas during the 1980 campaign. Plenty more where he came from still hold that belief and work every election to limit access to the ballot to the right people.

Pro Publica examines one method for suppressing turnout among left-leaning voters that gets little attention: limiting the ability of people with reading difficulties from obtaining assistance in voting:

Conservative politicians have long used harsh tactics against voters who can’t read — poor, often Black and Latino Americans who have been failed by the U.S. education system and who conservatives feared would vote for liberal candidates. Some states have required voters who needed help to sign an affidavit explaining why they need assistance; some have prevented voters who couldn’t read from bringing sample ballots to the polls and limited the number of voters that a volunteer could help read a ballot. Time and again, federal courts have struck down such restrictions as illegal and unconstitutional. Inevitably, states just create more.

Over the last two years, the myth of election fraud, supercharged by former President Donald Trump in the wake of his 2020 loss, has fueled a barrage of new restrictions. While they do not all target voters who struggle to read, they make it especially challenging for voters with low literacy skills to get help casting ballots.

Last year, Georgia passed a law limiting who can return or even touch a completed absentee ballot. Florida expanded the radius around election locations in which volunteers are prohibited from asking people if they need help. Texas passed a law prohibiting voters’ assistants from answering questions or paraphrasing complicated language on the ballot; a federal judge struck down several sections of the law in June. But the court left other provisions in place, including ones that increase penalties for helping voters who don’t qualify and require people who assist voters to fill out more paperwork. Texas did not appeal the decision.

Recent narrowly decided elections reinforce how efforts to reduce voter turnout even marginally can change outcomes. Incentives for devising multiple suppression tactics are high. A few votes not cast here and there can make the difference.

Congress amended the Voting Rights Act in 1982 to affirm that voters who need help due to an “inability to read” could bring someone, other than their employer or union representative, to assist them in the voting booth. A string of subsequent lawsuits shows this federal action again failed to eradicate the discrimination.

In a 2001 case, the federal justice department claimed that white poll managers in Charleston County, South Carolina, were intimidating Black voters who requested assistance. According to testimony given in the case, the poll workers launched a barrage of questions at these voters, such as, “Can’t you read and write? And didn’t you just sign in? And you know how to spell your name, why can’t you just vote by yourself? And do you really need voter assistance?”

A federal judge found that there was “significant evidence of intimidation and harassment,” but said evidence of the mistreatment was too “anecdotal” to take direct action.

Pro Publica profiles Olivia Coley-Pearson’s efforts to get out her neighbors’ votes in Coffee County, Ga. Yes, that Coffee County. She sometimes assists voters who cannot read. She was investigated for doing so in 2016.

The state election board chose not to recommend her case for criminal prosecution, but a local district attorney’s office prosecuted her anyway, which made national headlines in BuzzFeed. It charged her with two felonies for improperly assisting a voter and for signing a form that gave a false reason for why a voter needed assistance. The trial ended with a hung jury. One of two Black people on the jury told a local reporter that she was the only holdout; everyone else voted to find Coley-Pearson guilty. She was tried again in a nearby county and, after about 20 minutes of deliberations, the new jury acquitted her of all charges. The district attorney’s office did not respond to ProPublica’s emailed questions.

So it goes.

“Around here, to me, they target the leaders, the people that are standing up for the rights of the minority,” said James Curtis Hicks, another charged volunteer who took a plea deal rather than risk jail time and fines. “To shut me and Ms. Pearson down, it would stop a whole lot of people going to the polls.”

It is impossible to say precisely what role literacy plays in voter turnout. There are many other factors that contribute to lower participation, including some closely intertwined with literacy, such as income and education level. But to put the importance of reading ability in perspective, ProPublica analyzed data on turnout from the three most recent national elections and compared it to average estimated literacy levels for over 3,000 counties. (Read more about our analysis, and the data used, in our methodology.) Our analysis found that if low-literacy counties had turnout similar to high-literacy counties, they could have added up to about 7 million votes to the national total for each of those three elections.

I’ve been engaged in voter turnout operations for many cycles now and am aware that assisting voters who request help completing their ballots is permitted. But this report from ProPublica quantifies the scope of the problem in a way I’ve not seen before.

What’s more, as Pro Publica confirms, calling out Ohio Republicans for targeting poor, nonwhite and low-literacy voters, is how flagrantly conservative legislatures erect obstacles to voting, including tossing out absentee ballots over minor errors while limiting aid from assistants. Even knowing some provisions are likely to be struck down in court is no disincentive to adding layer upon layer of them. If the right one don’t get you | Then the left one will, sang Tennessee Ernie Ford (of his fists).

Data submitted as evidence shows that thousands of forms were tossed in the 2014 and 2015 general elections for simple problems such as incomplete addresses and birthdays. Poll workers refused one form because the street name “Cuthbert” was misspelled as “Cuthberth.” Several others were rejected because birth dates were listed as the current date, an indicator that voters may not have understood the instructions.

In 2016, a federal judge struck down the measures, concluding they disproportionately harmed Black voters. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that state rules requiring perfect completion of absentee ballot forms posed an undue burden to voters. But the panel said the other measures were minimally disruptive and left in place regulations that limited the assistance voters could get from poll workers and the amount of time voters were given to correct errors on absentee and provisional ballots.

“What the case demonstrates is the indifference of officials from one political party, and of unfortunately many federal judges, to voting rights and to the need to make voting not only secure, but relatively unburdensome,” said Subodh Chandra, an attorney for the plaintiffs.

And also in Brian Kemp’s Georgia, no surprise, where Coley-Pearson faces continued harrassment.

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No perp walk yet

Speculation flew Sunday night after spotters captured video of TFG abruptly leaving his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club and arriving at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. still in his golf shoes. (He does seem to have brought a large suitcase and a suit bag.) It’s unlike former president Donald J. Trump to do anything un-trumpeted via Truth Social these days. Unless he was headed to Walter Reed for a colonoscopy, a Twitter user speculated.

Had Trump come to be reinstated, cultists asked? Had he come to be questioned by the FBI? Shouldn’t the FBI use his absence to search Bedminster for more purloined documents that former FBI agent Peter Strzok suggested could be hidden there?

Those look like USG plates. Usually USSS protective details use cars with state license plates to drive protectees around. Odd. https://t.co/EuRHYbZ3JI

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) September 12, 2022

Pending further details, of more interest is a guest post this morning in James Fallows’ “Breaking the News” newsletter. Jan Lodal “has held responsible positions involving military policy, the intelligence community, nuclear strategy, and similar realms” for decades across a string of presidential administrations both Republican and Democrat. He offers perspective on Trump’s greatest legal jeopardy under the Espionage Act of 1917.

“This Act was already ‘old’ when the current document classification system was put in place during World War II,” Lodal begins. It consists of six subparagraphs regarding “information respecting the national defense.” Conviction under the first three require evidence of intent to use such information “to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” No unanimous jury could find Trump either a traitor or a spy, Lodal believes.

For a conviction under another provision (e), a jury would have to find Trump in “unauthorized possession” of “information respecting the national defense.” Again, getting twelve jurors to agree that the former president had unauthorized possession would be a reach.

Subparagraph (f) involves gross negligence in handling such documents and in failing to report it to a “superior officer.” Same problem in convicting a president, Lodal writes:

But there is one remaining subparagraph of the Espionage Act that is unambiguously applicable to what Trump has done — subparagraph (d).  This paragraph makes a straightforward action a crime: namely, failing to return classified documents if properly directed to give them back.  No proof of the level of classification, or the intentions of the document holder, or the content of the documents, is required.  Just a simple question, did he or she give them back or not. 

The only subjective or “soft” element of proof required by this paragraph is one easily met at trial. That is whether the perpetrator believed the information in the boxes “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”   Even Trump had to believe that: it’s true by definition of any document that has been classified. You cannot classify a document otherwise.

This section of the Espionage Act does not require that prosecutors access or cite individual documents to prove the crime. It requires only that there were any classified documents in the boxes that Trump did not return. On that there is no doubt. It was settled by the release of the Department of Justice  (DoJ) Affidavit authorizing the Mar-A-Lago document seizure.

Trump was asked seven times to give the Mar-A-Lago documents back and did not comply, despite the clear requirement of this section of the Espionage Act.  The first request came from the National Archives, citing the Presidential Records Act.  They made three formal demands the he give them back.  Then the Department of Justice intervened and asked three more times but didn’t get them back.  Finally DoJ got a court subpoena ordering that he give them back, but he didn’t.  So the FBI had to forcibly take them. 

Holding Trump accountable under law for possession of the seized documents (and others still unaccounted for) will require prosecutors to avoid “the use of those elements of the law that could give any pro-Trump jurors an excuse to vote for acquittal.” Subparagraph (d) is prosecutors’ best bet, argues Lodal. It’s a process crime not involving proving intent.

Several instances in which past intelligence leaks harmed national security were never prosecuted, Lodal offers, because proving the “soft” (subjective) elements of a crime is so difficult, or because of First Amendment protections for the leaker.

Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Ga., is still investigating attempts by TFG and his allies to subvert the 2020 presidential election in her state (New York Times):

In recent weeks, Ms. Willis has called dozens of witnesses to testify before a special grand jury investigating efforts to undo Mr. Trump’s defeat, including a number of prominent pro-Trump figures who traveled, against their will, from other states. It was long arm of the law stuff, and it emphasized how her investigation, though playing out more than 600 miles from Washington, D.C., is no sideshow.

Willis could beat the Department of Justice to a Trump indictment.

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I just can’t get over the nerve of the GOP

Herschel: “Warnock, I remember hearing him say, ‘America need to apologize for it whiteness.’ That’s not in a Bible I ever read. Our Founding Fathers already apologized for its whiteness. Because if you read the Constitution, it talks about every man being treated fair.” pic.twitter.com/7dAaUwOfnk

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 9, 2022

Herschel continued his bus tour today: “And I want to thank you Ambassador (Nikki) Haley, for your great word. She is a great example of the American-Indian community.” pic.twitter.com/DaGB0Xbtop

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 9, 2022

Walker on 9/11: You saw America come together because this country was on the war against a country that didn’t believe in us pic.twitter.com/NOu1Wrg4x1

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 11, 2022

Walker: Everyone on the left don't want to address the problem, this economy, crime, men in women's sports, they don't want to address — they'd rather talk about whether a man can get pregnant. pic.twitter.com/X52DrXMAqJ

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 11, 2022

The man is incoherent and it will be an embarrassment to our country if he defeats Rafael Warnock, a brilliant speaker and leader. It’s unthinkable. And yet, it may very well happen.

I encourage you to read the best profile of Walker by Tim Miller, if you haven’t already. It’s a stunning expose of a man who is manifestly unfit for any public office. (Not that you can’t tell that from the above quotes.) He starts off relaying the story of Walker’s storied football career if you are unfamiliar and it’s not quite as positive as you might have been led to believe.

And then he parlayed his name into some other things including “The Apprentice.” Then came politics.

Enter Herschel Walker.

Walker currently lives in Texas, but is thought of as a Georgia candidate thanks to his heyday between the hedges. The Trump family wants revenge against Georgia’s Republican political establishment and see Walker as their prime recruit. And, God bless ‘em, the Republican consultant/media complex is getting on board, too.

Reading about Walker, you will see what the Trump family likes about him (spoiler: he’s a Trump suck up). What’s less clear is why Georgia Republicans would want to bring the Walker Texa(n)’s drama to the Peach State.

In a 2008 interview with Nightline, Herschel wanted to tell the world “my truth.” (He was ahead of the game in the now omnipresent cultural distinction between “the truth” and “my truth” so, points for that I guess?)

Part of his truth was that he had been diagnosed with a rare mental illness called “dissociative identity disorder” or D.I.D., which is colloquially known as “multiple personality disorder.”

While some of his work with the Patriot Support Program and others to destigmatize the disease is laudatory, the “darker behavior” that he attributes to this problem is rather shocking.

In the 2008 interview his ex-wife said “we were talking and the next thing I knew he just kind of raged and he got a gun and put it to my temple.” She later attributed it to one of Walker’s alternate personalities saying, “there was somebody there that was evil.” Walker subsequently “threatened to kill his wife, his wife’s friend, and his therapist” in a therapy session.

In 2015 Walker told ESPN that he used to play “Russian Roulette” when guests came to his home. He described these encounters as part of a test of wills, where he would demand that anyone who wanted to challenge him in an athletic endeavor first demonstrate their strength by participating.

So I take a bullet, put it in the cylinder, spin it and tell you to pull it. People would say “Herschel, you’re nuts.” I would take that gun, put it to my head, and snap it. That is what it was. I was so fired up that I could overcome anything.

Walker survived the gamble of performative self-harm and he went on to do a series of interviews discussing them during his various post-football promotional endeavors. “Russian Roulette In Front of House Guests” became, along with “worst trade in NFL history,” part of his brand identity.

After his book tour in 2008, Walker became a contestant on Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice reality show where he “finished” a gentleman’s 7th place—behind Joan and Melissa Rivers, but ahead of Khloe Kardashian. The judges felt like his orange chicken with a yogurt dessert was not suitable for the frozen food category. It probably says something that Walker’s self-described competitive streak did not seem to engender any bitterness towards the man who fired him in week nine of the show.

Walker then tried his hand at MMA where he was more successful, finishing 2-0 before determining that he was aging out of a young man’s game.

A few years after that Walker reconnected with Trump and began to show a real interest in politics.

Lucky us.

Walker’s political ideology is somewhat muddled, but the through line that connects it all is his willingness to partake in any conspiracy theory that bubbles up from the MAGA internet.

Some examples.

In October of 2020, many months after Obama began campaigning for Biden, Walker suggested that Obama had delayed doing so because he might be privy to unspecified information about “O’Biden’s son” and “he may have known about it, knew it wasn’t right. And, uh, who knows?”

Who does know?! Not Herschel.

He also proposed a complex theory in which the Communist Party of China funded the Black Lives Matter movement, which in turn funded the Democratic party.

“Why does it seem like I’m the only one that’s coming up with this? Just think about it,” he said.

[Chin Scratch Emoji]

Walker was, of course, early to the #StopTheSteal conspiracy, proposing in the weeks before the election that Biden had already admitted to fraud and suggesting that maybe Obama had cheated in his victories, too.

We heard @JoeBiden say they put together voter fraud and Joe stated that’s also what they did for @BarackObama. Did they cheat to get Obama elected? @FoxNews @CNN @realDonaldTrump @espn @LouDobbs @DonaldJTrumpJr @kayleighmcenany

— Herschel Walker (@HerschelWalker) October 26, 2020

It’s absolutely mind-boggling that Georgians may very well vote for this man. The polls are close with most showing Walker leading by a point or two. I can’t believe it.

Read Miller’s whole piece. There’s a lot more about his descent into MAGA madness. It would be sad if it wasn’t so dangerous.

The Ukraine offensive seems to have discombobulated Russia state TV, which is very unusual

ICYMI, watch this too: https://t.co/szdEK3RXVt

— Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) September 11, 2022

The latest:

In the end, the Russians fled any way they could on Friday, on stolen bicycles, disguised as locals, abandoned by their units. Hours after Ukrainian soldiers poured into the area, hundreds of Russian soldiers encamped in this village were gone, leaving behind stunned residents to face the ruins of 28 weeks of occupation.

“They just dropped rifles on the ground,” Olena Matvienko said Sunday as she stood, still disoriented, in a village littered with ammo crates and torched vehicles, including a Russian tank loaded on a flatbed. The first investigators from Kharkiv had just pulled in to collect the bodies of civilians shot by Russians, some that have been lying exposed for months.

“I can’t believe that we went through something like this in the 21st century,” Matvienko said, tears welling.

The hasty flight of Russians from the village was part of a stunning new reality that took the world by surprise over the weekend: The invaders of February are on the run in some parts of Ukraine they seized early in the conflict.

On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that Russian forces had retreated from the Balakliia and Izyum area in the Kharkiv region, saying a decision was taken to “regroup.”

On Sunday, Ukraine’s commander in chief, Valery Zaluzhny, said Ukrainian forces had retaken more than 3,000 square kilometers (1,864 miles) of territory, a claim that could not be independently verified, adding that they were advancing to the east, south and north.

“Ukrainian forces have penetrated Russian lines to a depth of up to 70 kilometers in some places,” reported the Institute for the Study of War, which closely tracks the conflict. They have captured more territory in the past five days “than Russian forces have captured in all their operations since April,” its campaign assessment posted Sunday said.

The apparent collapse of the Russian forces has caused shock waves in Moscow. The leader of the Chechen republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who sent his own fighters to Ukraine, said if there are not immediate changes in Russia’s conduct of the invasion, “he would have to contact the leadership of the country to explain to them the real situation on the ground.”

The Russian Defense Ministry’s own daily briefing Sunday featured a map showing Russians retreating behind the Oskil river on the outskirts of the Kherson region.

Evidence of the Ukrainian gains continued to emerge Sunday, with images of Ukrainian soldiers raising a flag in central Izyum, after it was abandoned by Russian forces, and similar images from other towns and villages such as Kindrashivka, Chkalovske and Velyki Komyshuvakha.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declined to elaborate on his army’s next moves, except to say in a CNN interview, “We will not be standing still. We will be slowly, gradually moving forward.”

Ukrainians emerged into the string of just-liberated villages southeast of Kharkiv hailing the end of their ordeal, and wondering whether it is truly over. “Only God knows if they will be back,” said Tamara Kozinska, 75, whose husband was killed by a mortar blast soon after the Russians arrived.

Wow. However, it ain’t over ’til it’s over

It is not over by any means, military experts warned. Russia still holds about a fifth of Ukraine and continued heavy shelling over the weekend across several regions. And nothing guarantees that Ukraine can keep recaptured areas secure. “A counteroffensive liberates territory and after that you have to control it and be ready to defend it,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov cautioned in an interview with the Financial Times.

But as Ukrainian soldiers continued Sunday to sweep deeper into territory that had been held by Russia, more of them were willing to see the campaign as a possible turning point.

The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum writes that this may spell the end of Putin:

[W]hen Russian elites finally realize that Putin’s imperial project was not just a failure for Putin personally but also a moral, political, and economic disaster for the entire country, themselves included, then his claim to be the legitimate ruler of Russia melts away. When I write that Americans and Europeans need to prepare for a Ukrainian victory, this is what I mean: We must expect that a Ukrainian victory, and certainly a victory in Ukraine’s understanding of the term, also brings about the end of Putin’s regime.

She also warns that if he does fall, we don’t know exactly what will replace him. It would be a very unstable situation and that’s always terrifying with a nuclear power. But she quotes a Ukrainian official:

“We have learned not to be scared,” Reznikov told his Kyiv audience on Saturday. “Now we ask the rest of you not to be scared too.”

I’ll try …

This is what it actually looks like

TPM takes a look at some of the people Trump and his Major Domo Bill Barr used the Justice Department to punish. It is only a partial list:

John Kerry

According to a forthcoming book from Trump-era U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman that was obtained by the New York Times, Trump was enraged by efforts from former Secretary of State John Kerry to stop him from undoing the Iran anti-nuclear proliferation deal, signed under President Obama.

Trump pushed Berman, the former prosecutor writes, to investigate Kerry. At one point, an investigation was opened into whether Kerry violated the Logan Act — an 18th century statute which prohibits private citizens from unofficially negotiating with foreign governments.

“The conduct that had annoyed the president was now a priority of the Department of Justice,” Berman wrote.

Hillary Clinton

This one was part of Trump’s platform — lock her up.

But alas, Trump never made good on that campaign promise. As the New York Times reported in 2018, however, it was not for lack of trying.

Former White House Counsel Don McGahn purportedly recalled Trump telling him that he wanted the DOJ to prosecute Clinton. It was an odd request, in part because it was addressed to the wrong person: as McGahn reportedly explained, the White House counsel does not have authority over the DOJ.

James Comey

That same round of requests also included former FBI Director Jim Comey, the New York Times reported.

Comey had aroused Trump’s ire by criticizing him, and by memorializing their interactions in a memo.

That document was eventually leaked to the New York Times, and described how Trump asked him to shut down the investigation into Michael Flynn.

Gen. Stan McChrystal

Per a recent memoir from former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper obtained by TPM, Trump was enraged by a misleading report which suggested that retired Gen. Stan McChrystal had signed on with a tech firm to “track down” Trump supporters.

“So disloyal,” Trump reportedly said.

He convened Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley with a plan: could they reactivate Gen. McChrystal, setting the stage to court-martial him?

Adm. William McRaven

The same book says that Trump wanted to add William McRaven — a retired admiral who had written in 2019 that the American form of government was “under attack” from Trump.

After considering McChrystal, Trump also wanted to recall McRaven into active duty — only to court martial him for his criticism.

The plan was shot down. Milley purportedly told Trump that he would call the generals and tell them to dial down their criticism. McChrystal told TPM in May that he never got a call.

Greg Craig

Trump’s direct involvement in this one is unclear, though potentially interesting.

Berman, the former Manhattan U.S. Attorney, wrote about an interaction he had during his office’s investigation of former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig.

It came in September 2018, weeks before the midterm elections that year, and weeks after Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty.

Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Edward O’Callaghan purportedly asked Berman to “even things out” by filing charges against Craig before Election Day.

Berman did not do that. Charges were eventually filed against Craig by the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office in April.

“President Obama’s top White House lawyer, Gregory B. Craig, was indicted yesterday on very serious charges,” Trump tweeted in April 2019.

Craig was found not guilty.

These are only the ones we’ve been able to find out about because a few people have been brave enough to speak. I have no doubt there are many more.

The chutzpah of Trump and his accomplices now getting angry because the FBI is investigating his hoard of classified documents that he refused to give back is really rich. Yes, the DOJ is investigating people who staged a failed coup and stole classified documents from the government. This is their normal job. That Trump happens to be the instigator of all that and surrounds himself with criminals is his fault not theirs.

From left to right …

This piece by John Ganz has been making the rounds and I think it’s worth sharing with you. I’m in total agreement with the sentiments and it’s thrilling to see someone express them so impressively:

It appears that Ukrainian armed forces have accomplished a significant breakthrough near Kharkiv and are even threatening to encircle Russian positions. The war is by no means over, Ukraine’s success is not guaranteed, but it’s clear that quick, lightning victory and perhaps even a gradual, grinding victory are now out of reach for the invaders.

I think it’s worth recalling all the lies and idiocies that have been repeated since the start of the conflict: First, we were told war was impossible, it was a figment of the Western imagination; then we were told war was inevitable, because it was provoked by the West; we were told that they intended to trick Putin into a destructive quagmire; then we were told this was part of Putin’s grand master plan to defy the West and create a new world order; then, that Russia’s total victory was assured in a matter of hours, then days, then weeks, and that news of Ukrainian success was all propaganda; then, that Russia’s serious reversals were actually pre-planned and a new offensive would eventually overwhelm Ukrainian defenses. This moving, parrying, retreating discourse seems to follow or anticipate the retreats of the Russian army itself, trying to dig in to new positions, only to have shift again.

But how about the people who buy it, repeat it, and create their own variations on its themes? What could possibly account for all these contradictory and absurd positions, which have been uttered at different times by the same people? All these sentiments are all the product of a single proposition: the Western democracies are always wrong, both morally and practically. When the West struggles and fails, it’s because of its decadence and senility, a sign of its imminent collapse, when it prevails, it’s because of its dastardly wiles and the limitlessness of its ill-gotten resources. Russia’s appeal in the West, which crosses the traditional boundaries of right and left, is irresistible for those who believe the worst crime imaginable is Western hypocrisy. Since this hypocrisy is the only unforgivable sin, Russia’s crude and cynical exercise of power, it’s barely plausible justifications for its actions, its overt gangsterism at home and abroad, is seen as a virtue.

This leads to mind-bogglingly absurd positions: self-avowed Marxist-Leninists cheering on Lenin’s great enemy, Russian chauvinism, self-declared defenders of European Civilization and “traditionalist” Christians rooting for the destruction of the cradle of Slavic Christianity at the hands of who at other times they would deride as Chechen bashi-bazouks. In the coming months and years, we will likely see the one turn into the other: Red becoming Browns, Browns turning Red, Christian becoming atheists, atheists becoming Christian, “new systems” declaring the essential compatibility of Orthodoxy and communism, of international socialism and national chauvinism, politics shrugged off and then adopted as any other affectation, like health fads or sudden tastes for the exotic Orient, but having the added benefit of granting the appearance of serious conviction and purpose. Here we get an insight into the unifying principle of all these supposedly disparate tendencies: a type of base, moronic cynicism. More than anything else, it is this moronic cynicism that takes itself to be devilish cleverness that is the governing ideology of the Russian state and society, and it attracts all its global admirers.

The cynical pose, which flatters itself on being always undeceived, is in practice highly gullible and distinguishable from naivety only in the sour churlishness of its affect. These attitudes should be expected in the nether regions of the press and intelligentsia, where people make their livings writing semi-pornographic conspiracy literature and closely identify with the mob. But these stances have infected the broader intellectual climate as well. The whole pamphlet literature of the demi-monde provides a new language that sounds provocative and fresh compared to the stale banalities of bien-pensant humanitarian liberalism. It is tempting material for those who treat both life and politics as an irresponsible flight from one pose to another. Even among the putatively more serious, there’s just the simple need to find some take that appears oppositional and critical. The bohemian provocateur can at least always just disown every past statement as a lark, not something to be taken entirely seriously, but the academic has to puff themselves up and insist on their actual correctness in the face of refuting facts.

We shouldn’t believe that the war was waged for any more serious purpose than the sum of all its contradictory defenses and rationalizations: it is not really part of either of some civilization-shaping project or cunning realist maneuvering. To indulge in this is to just create more propaganda. In its conception and execution it is identical to its justification: it is a product of brutish stupidity.

The cynical pose, which flatters itself on being always undeceived, is in practice highly gullible and distinguishable from naivety only in the sour churlishness of its affect…

I could name names but I won’t. Suffice to say that this rings so very true.