Month: September 2022

Elephants!

https://twitter.com/ValaAfshar/status/1566903206587899904?s=20&t=ugZ9GjPmVw3ynWTzR0nbvA

I just love them.

Mitch McConnell rammed through the nomination of Florida lawyer Aileen Cannon after Trump had lost the election in 2020. You have to wonder if they did this, where they did it, specifically to give Trump a friendly venue to litigate his own lawsuits as well as try to defend himself as we have seen in the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case.

Take a look at who it was they planted in that slot for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge:

Aileen Cannon, a 38 year-old lawyer with no judicial experience and limited resume, was handed a LIFETIME appointment as a federal judge just as Trump left office. Cannon’s primary credentials for the job were apparently her young age and membership in the Federalist Society.

Her professional experience was so limited that she was forced to admit on her Sen Judiciary Comm questionnaire that she had never made any speeches, produced any reports, participated in any panel discussions, spoke at any conferences or written for any bar association.

In her twelve years as a lawyer, she published no writings of her own and just 3 writings done with colleagues at Gibson Dunn — limited to promotional articles on cases handled by the firm for their own website.

In an attempt to show writing experience, Cannon listed 17 short articles from a 2-mo undergrad stint at El Nuevo Herald. ranging from “Prenatal Yoga” to “Flamenco: An Explosion of Energy and Passion.” Cannon is unclear on whether she authored or simply edited the articles.

Finally, the questionnaire for a LIFETIME judicial appt asks Cannon to list all interviews she has given to the media. Cannon lists only her wedding article in a local magazine as her only media experience.

Originally tweeted by Peter Vroom 📫🌊 (@PeterVroom1) on September 8, 2022.

It’s an insult to America. I wonder how many more like her are out there?

By the way, fuck you Mitch. You did this.

What a week for their Dear Leader

I wrote earlier about the no good terrible week Trumpworld is suffering on the legal front. Well, he just got even more bad news. Here, Philip Bump points out that Donald Trump’s little wingnut cocoon of friendly media and rallies full of ecstatic followers is no longer the secure little world he once enjoyed:

It was a rhetorical terrarium, self-contained and self-sufficient. An ecosystem where nonsense thrived and spread, where conspiracy theories competed Darwinistically for dominance. So his vague dismissals of the Russia investigation as a hoax in early 2017 had, by 2021, become complicated organisms, vines stretching and intertwining throughout the pro-Trump media universe.

And then, earlier this year, a change. Trump proudly removed his Russia theory from its home and presented it to the court, like a kid digging up a dandelion he’d been watching in his yard and offering it as a horticulture contender at the state fair. The verdict, offered in a filing on Thursday, was probably not what Trump would have hoped.

Suffice it to say, he did not earn a blue ribbon.

The background here is interesting, by the way. Trump presented his grand Russia hoax conspiracy in the form of a lawsuit, alleging that Hillary Clinton and others — FBI officials, attorneys, IT guys — had conspired against him in violation of racketeering statutes (a.k.a. RICO). The suit was filed in a specific courthouse in the Southern District of Florida, apparently with the hope that it would be heard by a particular judge that Trump himself had appointed.

It wasn’t. Instead, it landed with District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks. When Trump’s legal team quickly moved to have Middlebrooks removed from the case, alleging bias, Middlebrooks responded by disparaging the transparency of Trump’s effort.

“I note that Plaintiff filed this lawsuit in the Fort Pierce division of this District, where only one federal judge sits: Judge Aileen Cannon, who Plaintiff appointed in 2020,” he wrote in denying Trump’s request. “Despite the odds, this case landed with me instead. And when Plaintiff is a litigant before a judge that he himself appointed, he does not tend to advance these same sorts of bias concerns.”

Aileen Cannon, you may be aware, is the jurist who recently issued a ruling of remarkable favorability on Trump’s behalf in the matter of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

Middlebrooks’s blunt tone in assessing Trump’s intent carried through to his dismissal of the lawsuit this week.

“Plaintiff’s theory of this case, set forth over 527 paragraphs in the first 118 pages of the Amended Complaint, is difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner,” Middlebrooks wrote as he began picking Trump’s allegations apart. “It was certainly not presented that way.”

In short, the theory that flourished in Trump’s friendly ecosystem was that the Russia probe was a function of explicit dishonesty on the part of Clinton: that her allies sought to create a dossier of false reports about Trump and Russia and that they used stolen data to suggest a link between Trump’s business and a Russian bank.

The suit was filed only after the latter allegation became a central part of special counsel John Durham’s investigation. Durham, you’ll recall, was appointed by then-Attorney General William P. Barr specifically to try to see whether a case could be made to cast the investigation into Russian interference as flawed or biased. Unfortunately for Trump, the case was also filed before Durham’s case fell apart and before the lawyer targeted for prosecution, Michael Sussman, was found not guilty by a jury.

(“The Amended Complaint cites copiously to the indictment of Michael Sussmann and a substantial portion of the Amended Complaint contains its allegations,” Middlebrooks writes at one point. “ … But nowhere does the Amended Complaint mention Mr. Sussmann’s acquittal.”)

As one would expect, the focus of the decision is on the legal merits of the case, which Middlebrooks found entirely unconvincing.

“Plaintiff cannot state a RICO claim without two predicate acts,” he writes at one point, for example, “and, after two attempts, he has failed to plausibly allege even one.”

Middlebrooks derides the sloppiness of the Trump team’s presentation, the obvious challenges with the statute of limitations for any such suit and the quality of the evidence offered. At one point, for example, he notes that Trump’s lawyers misunderstood an allegation centered on computer hacking. (“What must be ‘off limits,’ ” he explains, “is the area of the computer from which the information was obtained, not the information itself.”) At another, he reflects on the circuitousness of Trump’s assertions about the FBI probe into interference, code-named “Crossfire Hurricane.”

“Perplexingly, Plaintiff appears to argue that the Defendants obstructed investigation Crossfire Hurricane by contributing to the initiation of Crossfire Hurricane,” he writes. “That Defendants could have obstructed a proceeding by initiating it defies logic.”

While the decision centers on the legal questions, it does also uproot the conspiracy theory itself. A report from the Justice Department inspector general cited by Trump’s lawyers “compels the opposite conclusion” from the one Trump offers in his theory: The IG “concluded that the FBI operated Crossfire Hurricane ‘for an authorized purpose’ and ‘with adequate factual predication’ that had nothing to do with any Defendant.”

What’s more, Middlebrooks adds later, “Plaintiff does not plausibly allege that any [White House] or Trump Organization computer was hacked.” This was an allegation Trump and his allies made repeatedly earlier this year, elevating components of legal filings from Durham. Middlebrooks is correct: there is no evidence of any such hacking, much less Trump’s broader theory that the Russia probe was to any significant degree downstream from Hillary Clinton.

“The Inspector General Report specifically explained that the investigation was not predicated on DNC information or the Steele Dossier, but on a tip from a friendly foreign government,” Middlebrooks wrote, articulating what is common knowledge in the world outside of Trump’s terrarium.

The judge made very clear that he understood Trump’s suit for what it obviously is.

“At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is not attempting to seek redress for any legal harm,” he wrote. “ … instead, he is seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.”

The appropriate forum is cable news or Truth Social. You can’t simply pluck a mushroom off a rotting log and transplant it onto a table and expect it to thrive. It needs the right environment, one in which credulity and fealty are abundant.

The real world is simply too inhospitable.

Here’s hoping he’s right about that. Trump has always believed that he could literally change reality simply through his lies. And he’s done that for millions of people. The question is whether that can stand up to the rule of law. The fact that Judge Ailene Cannon exists in our legal system at all makes me wonder.

It’s Friday. You deserve it.

Can we count on the young to vote? Not usually. Voting, especially in the midterms, isn’t often a priority. But this time could be different:

In Texas, it’s not just women who are fired up about access to abortion and registering to vote in large numbers following this summer’s historic Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade.

A new analysis from political data and polling firm TargetSmart found that while Texas’ new voter registrants are evenly split between men and women, they are younger and more Democratic than before the June ruling.

“It’s not that we’re not seeing a surge from women but that in Texas, we’re somewhat uniquely also seeing a surge from men, particularly younger, more progressive men, who are matching the surge from women,” said CEO Tom Bonier, whose firm works with Democratic and progressive candidates.

“I would expect to see that trend develop more in other states as we get closer to the election, but it was interesting to see Texas as first in that sense.”

The state added about 300,000 new voters from June 24, the day of the high court’s ruling, to late August, state data shows. Prior to the ruling, about 51 percent of voters identified as female, and after the ruling, slightly less than half, or 49 percent, demarcated they were female. Gender is an optional field on voter registration forms.

According to TargetSmart, Democrats now have a 10-percentage point advantage among new registrants since the high court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, making up 42 percent to Republicans’ 32 percent. Prior to Dobbs, Republicans had a five-point advantage.

The state’s young voters — defined as those under age 25 — are also leaning more blue, the analysis found. Democrats now make up 47 percent of young Texas voters, up from 34 percent. The Republican share has remained the same at just under 30 percent.

That’s in line with what TargetSmart is seeing in 25 states that report party registration. In Texas, the firm uses a variety of data, including past primary participation and consumer demographic data, to identify likely Democratic and Republican voters.

Whether the registration trend will translate to high turnout of young voters is still yet to be seen. The group had tended to turn out at low rates compared to other age groups, but that trend started to turn around nationally and in Texas in 2018.

That midterm election year, with the rise in popularity of Democrat Beto O’Rourke amid his campaign for U.S. Senate, turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds more than tripled from about 8 percent in 2014 to about 26 percent.

“No one knows if that’ll be the case in 2022,” Bonier said. “But there is reason to be optimistic that these younger voters are much more highly energized than they have been in past.”

Bonier added that new voter registrants tend to have a higher turnout rate than those already registered.

Stephanie Gómez, political director of MOVE Texas, a progressive nonprofit focused on mobilizing young voters, said the high numbers of progressive young people registering to vote lines up with what she sees working with that demographic everyday. Gómez said she often has to remind national political organizers that the old norm of young voters being apathetic is no longer true in Texas.

“Dobbs was a big one for a lot of people,” Gómez said. “Everyone has that moment where they realize this is the call to action, this is the call to democratic participation, and I just think for a lot of people, a lot of young Texans, they went to bed one night, and they woke up the next day and they had less rights. I certainly felt that.”

MOVE Texas plans to hold about a dozen events on college campuses for National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 20, one of many efforts by the group to encourage young voter participation.

Genevieve Carter, communications director for Texas Young Republicans, said it’s no surprise that Democrats are pinning their hopes on a backlash against the Dobbs decision to drive turnout, but that’s out of touch with Texans’ priorities.

While many young conservatives are passionate about the abortion issue, she said, they’re overall more energized by “issues that really affect day-to-day life.”

“Inflation rising and the cost of goods as well as crime,” Carter said. “Those are the two biggest issues across Texas.”

Carter said Texas Young Republicans is seeing record increases in membership and participation in block-walking and campaigning for candidates up and down the ballot.

TargetSmart’s analysis showed that women were registering to vote at higher rates than men particularly in states where abortion access is at risk or has been eliminated.

The first and most dramatic disparity surfaced in Kansas, where voters last month rejected a constitutional amendment that would have banned abortion there. After the Dobbs decision, 69 percent of new registrants in that state were women.

Several battleground states also showed large increases, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio.

These are all first time voters, obviously. I wonder if they’re being accurately polled?

Again, it’s a long shot that Dems could prevail in this election. Everyone says they have to be ahead by many percentage points on the generic ballot in order to win (which tells you how lopsided this democracy we are trying so hard to protect really is.) But this is a new and different political era and anything can happen.

Including the man himself

The week began as one of Donald Trump’s best weeks in ages. His hand-picked federal judge came through for him and issued an extremely broad injunction against the government investigation into all the stolen secret government documents he was storing at Mar-a-Lago and decreed that a “special master” be appointed to look through all of it to determine if any of Trump’s alleged “privileges” had been trampled since she apparently believes he’s is entitled to special protections. Her reasoning may have been panned by every credible legal expert in the country but that’s just the sort of reaction that would make Trump’s followers respect her more.

Unfortunately for Trump, that was the last bit of good news that he got this week.

First, his most zealous defender and former campaign manager, Steve Bannon, already awaiting sentencing for his contempt conviction, was indicted in New York on fraud charges for bilking Trump’s followers out of millions in that phony “Build the Wall” scam. You’ll recall that he was already indicted on federal charges for the same crime but Trump pardoned him on his last day in office. Sadly for him, that pardon doesn’t apply to state charges.

As I have written before, Bannon will no doubt fashion himself as the MAGA Luther King and write his War Room manifesto that he’ll sell to the same chumps who gave him money for that ridiculous wall. His cri de cœur as he was being led to the courtroom on Thursday gives a taste of what they can expect:

Steve Bannon placed in handcuffs… pic.twitter.com/R3iN3n9McF

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) September 8, 2022

Trump hasn’t had anything to say about this but he may be wondering if Bannon might have a few things to say about the insurrection plotting in the days before January 6 once it sinks in that he could be doing time at Riker’s Island.

On the same day as Bannon’s surrender, reports surfaced of an impaneled federal grand jury looking into Trump’s post-election fundraising. Several of Trump’s associates affiliated with his Save America PAC were subpoenaed this week including some of the people involved in a different crime the Department of Justice (DOJ) is already investigating:

The subpoenas sought information about communications with a range of people, many of them lawyers who were also listed on earlier subpoenas that focused on the fake elector plan. Among the lawyers appearing as subjects of interest on both sets of subpoenas were Jenna Ellis, who was part of Mr. Trump’s initial legal team after the election, and Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin-based lawyer who helped devise the fake elector scheme.

A lot of money has flowed through this so-called political PAC, virtually none of it going to candidates or political causes. It’s unclear what connections there are between two different grand jury investigations but let’s just say this New York Times report reads like one of those early Woodward and Bernstein stories during Watergate: “follow the money.”

Thursday ended with the DOJ’s response to Trump’s favorite judge’s injunction. Widely acclaimed, it was a very deft bit of lawyering. The department lawyers patiently pointed out that her split-the-baby injunction, in which she allowed the Director of National Intelligence to continue its investigation of national security damage from the stolen documents but barred the DOJ from doing any further criminal investigation, is unworkable. The offices of the DNI, CIA, NSA etc have no domestic investigatory powers, which is as it should be. They must rely on the FBI to do that work, which is why it is also part of the intelligence community. As a result, the investigation into the damage that may have been caused by this serious breach is currently at a standstill.

Rather than fight the entire order, the DOJ simply asked the judge to allow them to access the 100 classified documents that were found in various areas of Trump’s beach club, arguing correctly that these documents belong to the government, not Donald Trump, and cannot possibly have any kind of attorney-client privilege. The government agreed to “make available to [Trump] copies of all unclassified documents recovered during the search — both personal records and government records — and that the government will return [Trump]’s personal items that were not commingled with classified records and thus are of likely diminished evidentiary value,” taking his whining about his personal medical records and tax documents off the table. Since the judge cited those items as her reason for blocking the DOJ from access to all documents this should allay her concerns as well.

It will be interesting to see if Trump’s lawyers make the case that he magically declassified all those documents with a Vulcan mind-meld when he was still president as his minions have been saying all over television ever since the search. If they don’t I think we can put that silly idea to bed. If they do, we are dealing with a whole other level of misconduct.

It is very clear that this is a serious national security investigation, not a “storage” issue or even a Presidential Records Act issue. And the government seems to be equally serious about the evidence pointing to blatant obstruction of justice. The DOJ, following procedure, asked the judge to allow them to access the classified documents immediately and also indicated that they plan to appeal her original ruling so all of this will be aired out in due course. Most lawyers who are following this case closely believe that it is going to be very difficult for the appeals court to uphold her feeble reasoning. Of course, you never know.

Finally, on Friday morning a federal judge issued a scathing dismissal of Trump’s sprawling lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, Rod Rosenstein and former FBI official Peter Strzok. Calling the lawsuit “devoid of facts” and “premised on nonsense legal claims,” Judge Donald Middlebrooks accused Trump and his lawyers of judge shopping before calling his complaint frivolous. 

“At its core, the problem with Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint is that Plaintiff is…seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him, and this Court is not the appropriate forum.”

Trump himself has not intelligibly addressed this latest state of affairs but he has been emitting periodic primal screams as events unfold. On Thursday he posted this on his social media platform:

So now the FBI & Biden Department of “justice” leakers are going to spend Millions of Dollars, & vast amounts of Time & Energy, to appeal the Order on the “Raid of Mar-a-Lago Document Hoax,” by a brilliant and courageous Judge whose words of wisdom rang true throughout our Nation, instead of fighting the record setting corruption and crime that is taking place before their very eyes. They SPIED on my Campaign, lied to FISA COURT, told Facebook “quiet,” preside over worst CRIME WAVE ever!!

…..They leak, lie, plant fake evidence, allow the spying on my campaign, deceive the FISA Court, RAID and Break-into my home, lose documents, and then they ask me, as the 45th President of the United States, to trust them. Look at the I.G. Reports on Comey, McCabe, and others. Things are safer in the middle of Central Park!

They would be safer in Central Park because Donald Trump doesn’t live there, an easy target of all of America’s adversaries who know he has all the common sense of a bath mat.

He seems upset. And he should be. It’s possible that he will escape any accountability for his actions. Lord knows it wouldn’t be the first time. Trump has been playing fast and loose with national security since the 2016 campaign but this time he doesn’t have the power of the presidency to protect him. Now we’re going to see if the courts will step in to do his dirty work.’

Salon

More evidence emerges

The conventional wisdom on the Trump years is that “the guardrails held” despite his chaotic, clownish behavior. “Team normal” managed to stop him from doing anything bad so no harm, no foul.

Not true. He did plenty bad and we’re only not finding out about just how bad it was. Jonathan Chait writes:

Geoffrey Berman’s inside account from the Justice Department deeply undercuts this comforting belief. Berman, who served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York until Barr Trump* sacked him, describes constant pressure to go easy on Trump’s cronies while bringing charges against anybody who opposed him. That is hardly a surprise; Trump blurted out his belief that the Justice Department was his personal weapon all the time, and a stream of underlings has affirmed that he made these demands loudly and repeatedly behind closed doors.

The truly novel revelations brought forward by Berman is that Trump’s pressure campaign frequently succeeded. Officials loyal to Trump successfully pressured the Department of Justice to bring charges against Gregory Craig, a Democratic lawyer, for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Berman responded that, after investigating the matter, he believed Craig was innocent, but his deputy told him to “even things out” — a reference to previous cases charging Republicans — by indicting Craig.

When Trump began publicly demanding the Department charge John Kerry for violating the Logan Act by trying to persuade Iran not to build a nuclear weapon, Trump began publicly calling him a criminal. Trump’s demands made their way down to Berman, who was forced to investigate Kerry, and faced complaints that he wasn’t moving quickly enough.

Berman also notes that Barr’s deputies tried to remove any references to illegal behavior by Trump from the indictment of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Barr tried and failed to stifle the investigation into the violations of campaign-finance laws Cohen had undertaken at Trump’s behest. Trump was never charged.

What Berman reveals is that the pressure to weaponize the Justice Department against Trump’s enemies (and to protect him and his criminal friends) did not always fail, and it did not merely come from Trump himself. Barr and other officials in the Department frequently applied pressure to advance Trump’s corrupt ends. Barr successfully intervened several times to help Trump, by reducing sentences for Roger Stone and attempting to drop its prosecution of Michael Flynn.

It is true that Barr was only willing to go so far, and when Trump’s attempt to secure an unelected second term devolved into conspiracy theories so bizarre they couldn’t win a court case, Barr was ready to concede defeat. Even then, however, he left quietly and wrote an obsequious note praising Trump rather than warn the country that the president had gone stark raving mad.

Berman got his job because he had worked on Trump’s campaign. The system “worked” to the extent that Barr was less deranged than, say, a Rudy Giuliani. It did not protect either the process or the outcome of the Justice Department’s nonpolitical integrity.

What is perhaps most notable is the conclusions the relevant Republican actors have drawn from the experience. The Republican Establishment has decided Barr is a hero. Trump has decided he needed an attorney general even more loyal than Barr. And virtually the entire GOP believes the Justice Department is currently being corrupted, and that Merrick Garland is only investigating Trump’s stolen documents because Joe Biden wants to help the Democratic midterm campaign.

The system did not work under Trump. And every indication is that the next time Trump or any other Republican gains control over it, the outcome will be worse.

Berman actually was fired by Trump himself after he insisted on protocol which didn’t allow Barr to fire him. I knew he was pissed. I had no idea why.

And to think we have to listen to caterwauling from the right that Biden is “weaponizing the Justice Department” for political gain when the fact is that Trump is simply a criminal. This is just another data point in that long, long, list.

Joyful political cannon fodder march into the guns

On the Docket newsletter from Marc Elias spotlights mass attempts to challenge people’s right to vote:

With only two months left before the November midterm elections, a conservative group is challenging the eligibility of thousands of Georgia voters. On Monday, Aug. 29, VoterGA challenged the registrations of 37,500 voters in Gwinnett County, a formerly Republican stronghold that has trended Democratic since 2016.

• What does it mean to challenge a voter’s eligibility? In a legal, though outdated, process in most states, an individual can challenge a voter’s eligibility if that individual has a suspicion that a registered voter is actually not qualified to vote. The laws vary from state to state, but frivolous challenges can target certain communities, disenfranchise voters and overwhelm election officials during an already busy time.

Georgia is the hotbed for mass challenges. In December 2020, the conservative group True the Vote challenged 364,000 voters in the lead up to the U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia that decided control of the chamber. (Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight sued True the Vote; a year and a half later, we are awaiting a ruling in the case any day now.) Instead of curbing this problematic practice, the Georgia Legislature and Gov. Brian Kemp (R) further empowered it with the state’s omnibus voter suppression law, Senate Bill 202. Earlier this year, a single man challenged 13,000 registrations in Forsyth County. VoterGA’s announcement brings the number of challenges this election cycle in Georgia to 65,000.

Also last week, it was reported that hundreds of registered voters were challenged in two of Iowa’s most populous counties. Iowa law permits individuals to challenge registrations if they believe the information is incorrect or fraudulent. Election officials in Iowa speculate the increase in challenges is inspired by continued falsehoods about the 2020 election.

What gets repeatedly missed in these stories about Republican efforts to harm Democrats is that Republicans don’t even care if these and other efforts to “stand their ground” on issues harm their own supporters. They’re playing percentages. Just so long as Democrats get the worst of it.

Mass shootings? Collateral damage.

Barriers to voting? Collateral damage.

Vaccine skepticism? Collateral damage.

Photo ID requirements: Collateral damage.

Their faithful supporters remain steadfastly joyful political cannon fodder.

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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.

Sen. Tom Cotton gets his Law ‘N Order on

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas on Thursday felt a spell of law ‘n order come over him like a plate of grits ‘n eggs. He began tweeting — scheduled tweets by the time stamps. He posted a pair of them several times. The replies were priceless. By re-upping them, he kept asking for more.

Here’s one.

We don't have an over-incarceration problem. We have an under-incarceration problem.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 8, 2022

As George Carlin said, we obviously have a dope problem.

https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1567913109309759490?s=20&t=VkZOWiCMIra626wOPDBpUg

“Let’s start by jailing all of the terrorists who attacked the Capitol,” replied former Director of the United States Office of Government Ethics Walter Shaub.

Here’s another 100% Cotton:

A large reason for the crime wave is that Democrats won't treat criminals like the criminals they are.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 8, 2022

Multiple repondents pointed out that with Steve Bannon in handcuffs, we’re working on it.

“Your party is threatening to stage riots if Donald Trump is simply held to the same laws that everyone else is,” replied podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen.

One repondent offered in reply an August tweet from David Rothkopf:

Fascinating:
"In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.
8 of the 10 states w/the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century."https://t.co/ML5i3EqHas

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) August 17, 2022

Marcy Wheeler addressed both of Cotton’s inanities:

Cotton is right that people arrested under 18 USC 793 are almost always incarcerated pre-trial. But does he really think a 76-year old can handle the strain? pic.twitter.com/7SfersVN1M

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) September 8, 2022

He’s a glutton for punishment, I guess.

To top off his day, Cotton invoked George Soros and mythical gun confiscation.

Democrats caused this crime wave by eliminating cash bail, electing Soros prosecutors, and giving early release to violent criminals.

And what's their solution? To take away YOUR right to own a gun to protect yourself.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 8, 2022

Why do I keep confusing Tom Cotton and “Enter the Fist” Josh Hawley?

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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.

The right’s latest propaganda film

Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir watched the right’s latest failed attempt a filmmaking, “My Son Hunter” so you don’t have to. He first takes a long look at the grift that underlies the whole project which is par for the course. It’s really something in this case.

But then he gets to the film review which, I confess, made me laugh throughout:

“My Son Hunter” is a letdown because it’s just a stupid farce that recycles a bunch of familiar allegations about the Bidens that — setting aside any discussion of their veracity! — we’ve all heard a million times by now. Hunter Biden, a young gentleman with a prep-school background and a fondness for narcotics and the company of sex workers, used his dad’s name to get paid big-time by shady companies in China and Ukraine (so far this is almost inarguably true) and his father delivered big U.S. government contracts to those companies and their official benefactors while taking kickbacks. 

Yes, libs, that last part is almost certainly false, but in the movie all that material is delivered as blah-blah-blah exposition in between the not-very-lurid scenes involving drugs and babes, which fail to convince us that Hunter Biden’s excesses were in any way unusual for a person of his temperament and background. The conspiracy-theory narration is either delivered by former MMA fighter turned “canceled” actress Gina Carano, playing a Secret Service agent (a free-form in-joke that never goes anywhere), or by Grace (Emma Gojkovic), the hooker who gets mildly red-pilled and redeems herself from a life of sin, first by trying to serve as Hunter’s conscience and then by leaking salacious gossip to the New York Post. I mean, a girl’s got to do, etc.

For that matter, actor John James, who was a regular on multiple daytime soaps in the 2000s, looks even less like Joe Biden than Fox looks like Hunter. This is James’ second recent appearance in a right-wing propaganda film, having played James Comey (!) in something called “The ObamaGate Movie.” James looks a lot like Sen. Ron Johnson, the crazy-pants Wisconsin Republican, who would probably pretend to enjoy “My Son Hunter” if someone made him watch it. 

So if this were a movie about Lance Armstrong and Ron Johnson doing some crime, we’d be good. As things stand, it seems like they just hired two white guys who were roughly the right age and height and put suits on them, because who can tell the difference, right? I intended to make a joke here about how that was racist and I was triggered, but it’s honestly not worth it.

This whole thing is really just an excuse to prattle on about the drugs and the babes. Just take a look at this from last night:

Shamelessness is their superpower

Chad Wolf: "Mr. President, I want to again commend you for your dedication to the rule of law." #RepublicanConvention pic.twitter.com/jGdRARlq25

— The Hill (@thehill) August 26, 2020

Big shout out to Brianna Keillor for single-handedly turning this nonsense into a scandal:

House Republicans told the Department of Defense that they are “gravely concerned” about President Biden using Marines as “political props” during his Sept. 1 speech in Philadelphia.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the lawmakers said it appeared that the Marines “participated in a political event” that “jeopardizes their compliance” with Pentagon regulations against participating in political activities while in uniform.

“We are gravely concerned that throughout the entirety of this partisan, politically charged, and divisive address to the nation, two United States Marines were visibly present flanking the President in the background,” the lawmakers wrote.

“The President’s use of active-duty Marines as political props undermines the apolitical nature of our servicemembers and erodes trust in our military,” they continued.

The letter was signed by House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense ranking member Ken Calvert (R-Calf.).

You just cannot make this shit up…

Trump’s inane July 4th military extravaganza wasn’t political either. Not at all.

I’m sure Stefanik and Rogers laughed the whole time they were signing that thing.