A Republican county official in Georgia escorted two operatives working with an attorney for former President Donald Trump into the county’s election offices on the same day a voting system there was breached, newly obtained video shows.
The breach is now under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and is of interest to the Fulton County District Attorney, who is conducting a wider criminal probe of interference in the 2020 election.
The video sheds more light on how an effort spearheaded by lawyers and others around Trump to seek evidence of voter fraud was executed on the ground from Georgia to Michigan to Colorado, often with the assistance of sympathetic local officials.
In the surveillance video, which was obtained by CNN, Cathy Latham, a former GOP chairwoman of Coffee County who is under criminal investigation for posing as a fake elector in 2020, escorts a team of pro-Trump operatives to the county’s elections office on January 7, 2021, the same day a voting system there is known to have been breached.
Donald Trump won Coffee County in 2020 by 69.5 percent.
The newly obtained surveillance video and text messages in the civil lawsuit suggest the fake elector plot and the effort to breach voting machines in Georgia were part of a larger, coordinated plan to subvert the 2020 election. Some of the same Trump lawyers and allies who helped orchestrate the effort to seat fake electors in states Trump lost in 2020 were also involved in attempts to gain unauthorized access to voting machines in numerous counties in states around the country seen as friendly toward the former president.
Read the whole thing.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
“History being made, the right way,” says Umair Haque
MAGA Republicans recoiled at Joe Biden’s Phildelphia speech.
The Net is awash in devastating commentary about how bad Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling was granting TFG a special master to review documents seized by the F.B.I. in its August search of Mar-a-Lago. Digby touched on it on Monday (and may again later today). Neal Katyal’s thread is worth reading also. Charlie Savage of the New York Times calls the decision “extraordinary,” and not in a good way. Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at University of Texas, brands the decision “an unprecedented intervention by a federal district judge into the middle of an ongoing federal criminal and national security investigation.”
Cannon demonstrates once again how Donald J. Trump has made a career of turning “justice delayed is justice denied” on its head to avoid ever seeing the inside of a prison cell.
But I want to turn to Umair Haque’s stunning commentary on President Joe Biden’s Philadelphia speech from Thursday. I’d missed this until browsing on Monday.
The London-based British economist is not normally upbeat. Haque has over the last decade condemned the “the logic of opulence,” the looting of the social contract by the wealth-addicted. Haque noted the reduction of the American middle class to “something very much like Neo-serfs” by the same logic. “Americans aren’t poor because they don’t work, they don’t work hard enough, or they don’t work long enough,” he wrote in 2019. “They’re poor even if they do.”
That same Haque saw Biden’s condemnation of MAGA Republicanism as a speech for the ages. Anti-democratic, xenophobic reactionaries and bona fide fascists gained ground across the planet over the last decade with no pushback. Biden’s speech answered the democratic world’s Mrs. Robinson-esque, “Where have you gone, Beacon of Liberty?” plea. The world was watching, even if Americans were not.
Before Thursday, it was as if the world learned nothing from the 1930s. “Our leaders on the center left failed to challenge them, to stop them, to even call them out,” Haque laments. Until Biden “let it rip” in Philadelphia:
What did he have to say? He made basically four points. Number one, the rise of this form of politics — violence, intimidation, hate, scapegoating, Big Lies, rage, a vitriolic rage at the values of democracy itself — was not normal. Not in a democracy. Because, two, it was inimical to democracy — this was how modern societies plunged backwards into chaos and ruin. That meant, three, that fighting this form of politics, rejecting it, wasn’t a partisan issue of left and right at all — but about coming together to defend democracy itself. And four, that was every sane and thoughtful person’s not just choice, but responsibility. Their duty. To whom? To history. To futurity. And to each other.
Beautiful. Elegant. Powerful. True.
Some speeches are just speeches. The tedium of democratic bureaucracy — new policies, updates, agendas, like Zoom meetings, but for a society. The boring stuff of management. History safely ignores them. And then there are speeches. Ones which change history, because they remind people of it, where they stand in it, and how it’s made — or unmade.
This was one of those speeches.
It was a Gorbachev announcing the end of the Soviet Union-level speech in Haque’s estimation. Yet it garnered almost no coverage from major media. They knew what Biden meant to say.
That should tell you something — something very, very important.
The American Establishment is deeply uncomfortable with what Biden’s doing. They are trying to stop him. The networks didn’t fail to cover his speech and the Times and Post barely mention it and CNN disgracefully attacks its backdrop, as if that was the thing which really mattered — in some kind of coincidence. It’s how power works. Some of it’s explicit — like CNN reporters obviously being instructed by their new libertarian boss to attack the President. Some of it’s implicit, like networks all deciding, hey, a President warning your democracy’s under existential threat isn’t worth you hearing about, all you need is more more dumb Superhero TV Shows. There are many ways to stop a political movement, after all. Acts of commission — CNN style, or acts of omission, New York Times and Washington Post and networks style.
Meanwhile, “the internet lit up like a thunderbolt from the hand of Jove was coursing through it.” Why? Because over the last decade leaders of what we once called the free world sat silent or, worse, pandered to the demagogues, lunatics and fanatics, hoping they might just go away without direct confrontation. “And the truth is that while they’ve been doing that? All of us have lost respect for them.”
Biden broke the spell, Haque argues:
He didn’t just invite people, regular sane people — who’ve not had a voice, a leader, representation, but been crying out, for God’s sake, for our leaders to get in the fight, say something, do something, anything — to “get involved” in “hope and change” or what not, the usual anodyne ways political speeches end. He said, right out loud, that it was every sane person’s responsibility and duty to defend democracy from those who are attacking it existentially — regardless of their minor-league partisan politics. He made it a matter of responsibility and duty to history, the future, and each other.
In other words, Biden issued not just a political call — but something much, much more vital: he issued a moral directive. He reminded us that each of us has a moral stake in this life, in the project of civilization, and those millions upon millions of moral stakes are what the house of democracy is. On those stakes, we can grow the fruits of equality, justice, truth, freedom — or we can try to distill the poisons of hate, lies, and violence. But duty and responsibility — history says, futurity will say, each of us must say to one another — impel us to make the right choice.
The same overconfidence by which the left believes the truth — expressed in raw facts — will set people’s minds free led them to stop making moral claims decades ago. We stopped leading with our values and foolishly assumed people would infer them from policies we promote. Into that values vacuum flowed white Christian nationalism, free market fundamentalism, and the manifold moral horrors to which the 21st century is heir to, including the acid-washing of the social contract upon which the American polity was erected.
Fascists gained ground by making moral claims, Haque reminds readers.
Their demagogues make moral claims — Nietzschean ones, you’re the superhumans, all you have to do is annihilate, hate, extinguish, get, cleanse away, the subhumans. And it works. To bond their base into a movement, because movements arise from moral claims, which create deep sense of belonging, meaning, and purpose. Our side has been missing all that entirely, and it’s felt like it, because there was no moral meat on the bone. But all that’s different now.
One hopes, anyway.
One anecdote to support Haque’s optimism.
Major Garrett hosted a panel of Trump supporters on Sunday’s Face the Nation. A Trump supporter named Mary from Virginia said, “It’s getting — somebody like me who’s not a Republican or Democrat but I do support Trump — it’s getting really old hearing ‘democracy, democracy, democracy.'” Biden and Democrats use the term as a weapon, she complained.
Good. That means she’s threatened by the pushback, by Democrats reclaiming democracy the way Republicans appropriated freedom and “law and order” to advance the opposite for non-MAGA Americans. It suggests Biden’s speech sent a shudder through the MAGA movement’s white Christian nationalists.
After Biden’s speech, the word “Finally” cropped up over and over in emails a friend received. Let’s pray Biden wasn’t too late.
(h/t DJ)
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
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 FBI concluded what many Americans have known for quite some time, which is that Hillary Clinton’s conduct as Secretary of State and her mishandling of classified information was disgraceful and unbecoming of someone who aspires to the presidency. There is simply no excuse for Hillary Clinton’s decision to set up a home-cooked email system which left sensitive and classified national security information vulnerable to theft and exploitation by America’s enemies. Her actions were grossly negligent, damaged national security and put lives at risk.
“Hillary Clinton’s actions have sent the worst message to the millions of hard-working federal employees who hold security clearances and are expected to go to great lengths to secure sensitive government information and abide by the rules. They don’t take their oaths lightly, and we shouldn’t expect any less of their leaders.
Today he says that Trump leaving a bunch of highly classified documents lying around in his resort hotel is just a storage issue:
.@marcorubio is the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee. And he doesn’t give a damn about protecting classified information. Now that’s a national security threat. https://t.co/yzwz2is5wI
A lawyer breaks down the Mar-a-lago ruling yesterday
I found this to be clarifying and I thought you might find it useful as well:
I think it is hard for nonlawyers to understand just how distressing Judge Cannon’s rulings and arguments are. I’m going to set aside more technical aspects and try to explain accessibly. The key point to remember is that Donald Trump is under criminal investigation for breaking federal criminal laws. He’s not been indicted yet and may never be. Right now federal law enforcement is gathering evidence.
As the subject of a criminal investigation, Trump has no more and no less Constitutional protection than any other ordinary person in America. All have rights not to be subject to unreasonable searches of their residences and seizures of property from them, per the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. When the DOJ (prosecutors) and FBI (police) decided to search Mar-A-Lago, they had to get to a search warrant.
DOJ gave the magistrate judge evidence of their reasonable grounds for searching Mar-a-Lago for evidence of crimes committed by Trump. They had to name the possible crimes and explain specifically what they thought they would find that would show Trump committed them.
The FBI did the search and got boxes of evidence relevant to the question of whether Trump had illegally taken possession of and otherwise mishandled government government documents. Basically, the relevant evidence is, of course, the documents in the boxes. If the documents are government records Trump retaining them is illegal; if the records are classified in various ways Trump taking them and storing them improperly is illegal in other, additional ways.
To bring Trump to trial, DOJ would have to convince a grand jury the government has reasonable grounds to charge him with specific crimes. So, DOJ would want to show a grand jury documents that are government records, including classified records, taken from Mar-a-Lago. Trump, like any subject of a criminal investigation, wants to discourage the prosecutor, DOJ, from going before a grand jury and to make it hard for prosecutor to convince grand jury to vote to charge him with crimes. This averts a criminal trial.
Since seized documents are the possible evidence DOJ would present to grand jury, Trump wants to prevent DOJ from even examining them to ascertain if they are government records. He wants to argue that DOJ cannot look at them. So he’s arguing they are “privileged.” Privileged means shielded from examination and use by the DoJ as part of building a case against Trump. If documents seized from Mar-a-lago are privileged, DOJ can’t use them.
If enough documents are privileged, DOJ might not feel confident going to a grand jury or it might not have strong evidence that Trump had illegally taken/kept/stored government records, including classified ones. Different types of privilege protect different documents. For example, if some of the documents seized from Mar-a-lago memorialize legal advice Trump received from his personal attorneys, it is likely protected by “attorney-client privilege.”
Attorney-client privilege exists to promote open communication between people and their lawyers, to ensure that people, especially those potentially likely to charged with crimes, get good legal representation. Another possible privilege, another possible way to shield documents from examination/use by DOJ in criminal investigation is “executive privilege.” Unlike attorney-client privilege, this one doesn’t cover too many people.
Executive privilege pertains to the President, the head of the executive branch. It allows the President to withhold information from courts and Congress when releasing it would jeopardize the public interest. Executive privilege asserted in good faith makes sense: sometimes government records held by the president contain information that should be private to the president, not available to other branches of government, bc revealing the info would hurt the country. But, a president might not have the public interest in mind when she asserts executive privilege. She might want to keep records private bc they contain embarrassing info; or info that would show she committed crimes.
While a president is in office, DOJ policy has been not to charge him with crime in any event, because that would be distracting and could be dangerous for the country. But now Trump is out of office, and so, just like all of us, potentially chargeable. This makes asserting executive privilege especially attractive to him.
If a former president can assert executive privilege however he has a tool almost no other ordinary American has to shield himself from grand jury review, indictment, trial. Executive privilege could render him de facto above the law. Part of keeping presidents legally accountable, then, is not making it too easy for them to shield evidence of criminal wrongdoing from DOJ.
In today’s decision, Judge Cannon permitted Trump to use assertion of executive privilege to at least delay DOJ examination of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. Cannon ruled that DOJ cannot look at the documents until a special master, an appointed judicial advisor, examines them and decides which, if any, are covered by executive privilege.
There are all sorts of problems with this. First, how is a special magistrate supposed to decide what information is executively privileged? Obviously, can’t just rely on Trump’s assertions. Cannon gives no clues. Law governing presidential records says former president claiming executive privilege over records from her term should work with current president to ascertain if public interest requires keeping the records from courts and Congress. Ultimately, call is current president’s.
Seemingly, current president via National Archives has already decided that public interest does not require that Mar-a-lago documents be kept under wraps. So, why is Cannon letting a special magistrate second-guess? Moreover, many legal experts, in and out of government, question whether a former president can ever be the one to assert executive privilege, on ground that only the current head of executive branch can.
Trump is asserting executive privilege when he is out of office, subject of criminal investigation and his premises searched under warrant upon showing of reasonable grounds to believe evidence of crimes were there. Not a compelling situation to recognize the privilege. Instead Judge Cannon assumed Trump can assert the privilege and appointed a special master to decide which seized documents it covers, if any. She had many other options, including simply declining to decide the case. (I’m not explaining technicalities of jurisdiction here.)
If DOJ pursued case to grand jury or trial, Trump could have raised executive privilege and exclusion of documents at those junctures. Instead Cannon has given his questionable assertion bite at a very early stage in a criminal investigation. Whether Cannon’s decision delays DOJ review of documents for long is an open question. It isn’t clear that the decision and its arguments will survive appeal, if DOJ chooses to appeal. But these uncertainties don’t affect the horror many lawyers have in reaction to decision.
We are horrified that a Trump-appointed judge repeatedly went out of her way to give Trump unprecedented and extraordinary protection from ongoing criminal investigation.
Horrified is right. And a little bit depressed to see this hand-picked MAGA judge doing his bidding. But it is what it is and we have to accept that’s where we are.
Seventy-one percent of Americans now approve of labor unions. Although statistically similar to last year’s 68%, it is up from 64% before the pandemic and is the highest Gallup has recorded on this measure since 1965.
These data are from Gallup’s annual Work and Education survey, collected Aug. 1-23.
The latest approval figure comes amid a burst of 2022 union victories across the country, with high-profile successes at major American corporations such as Amazon and Starbucks. The National Labor Relations Board reported a 57% increase in union election petitions filed during the first six months of fiscal year 2021.
Support for labor unions was highest in the 1950s, when three in four Americans said they approved. Support only dipped below the 50% mark once, in 2009, but has improved in the 13 years since and now sits at a level last seen nearly 60 years ago.
About One in Six Americans Live in a Union Household
Sixteen percent of Americans live in a household where at least one resident is a union member. This includes U.S. adults who report that they themselves are a union member (6%), those who say someone else in their home is a member (7%), and those who say they and someone else in their household belong to unions (3%).
The net 16% union household figure is within the 14% to 21% range Gallup has recorded since 2001.
Gallup also polled union members and nonunion members June 13-23 in a separate online Gallup Panel survey about union membership.
Membership is highest among front-line and production workers, of whom one in five (20%) are union members.
About one in 10 workers in healthcare and social assistance (13%), white-collar positions (11%), and administrative and clerical roles (10%) are union members.
Workers in managerial roles (6%) are the least likely to be members of unions.
Two in Five Union Members Say Membership Is ‘Extremely Important’
Among union members, two in five (40%) rate their membership as “extremely important,” or as a 5 on a five-point scale, with another 28% rating it a 4. In contrast, just one in 10 rate it as “not important at all,” a rating of 1 on the scale.
Union members were also asked which of various potential reasons for joining a union are most important to them. Their top answers are better pay and benefits (65%) and employee rights and representation (57%).
More than a third of union members cite job security (42%) and better pension and retirement benefits (34%) as reasons for joining a labor union. Meanwhile, about one in four list improving the work environment (25%) and fairness and equality at work (23%).
Few members select health and safety (9%) or unions having a positive effect on the country (5%) as reasons to join.
Here’s a righteous rant about today’s Trump ruling from Kurt Eichenwald. I’m not sure he’s right in every respect but it’s cathartic to read it anyway:
I kept an open mind. I really did. But reading Judge Cannon’s ruling left my jaw on the floor in its absurdity. Unless the federalist society wants to argue that this precedent would only apply to trump, this ruling would demolish future white collar criminal investigations. One of the most absurd things is her discussion of how an indictment in the future – something not even in play ye – would cause “reputational damage” to Trump. The argument she is making is not that an indictment would result from a criminal investigation and grand jury but rather be act of bad faith and whim.
This makes the “presumption of innocence” apply, not in court, but during an investigation before anyone has even suggested a crime has been committed. Then she talks about the “power differential” between a former president and DOJ which requires that the target of a search warrant essentially be placed on an equal footing with the criminal investigators *during the investigation.*
This, she says, must be done under the growing conservative legal theory of “Stomp feet and scream ‘that’s not fair!’“ If there had been a finding of bad faith or dishonest affidavit in support of search, there could be actions that the judge could take. But that is not even an argument here. It is purely “not equitable” meaning the subject of an investigation needs to be on an equal footing with the DOJ in managing the documents obtained in the investigation. Stopping the investigation in its tracks – while still allowing the intelligence agencies to proceed – also demonstrates that this idiot judge doesn’t even understand the basics of how government works.
DOJ and FBI have divisions that deal with national security and intelligence – that is why we have agents and prosecutors with clearance to handle national security cases. That was how there was a criminal investigation of Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent turned spy for Soviet the Russian intelligence services. This was an intelligence case. The CIA is, under law, only allowed to deal with intelligence issues overseas. DIA only allowed to deal with military issues. NSA cannot (despite wildly incorrect understanding of how it works) collect info on US citizens, or even foreign citizens on American soil. Everything domestic falls to the FBI.
If the FBI was developing evidence of a foreign national having broken in to Mar-a-Lago storage room, without knowing what nation that person was working for yet, that inquiry is dead in its tracks right now. FBI has to stop using documents. They can develop nothing further (presumably, otherwise this ruling makes no sense, even more than it doesn’t make sense on its face). Can they continue to feed data to the CIA? How could they? We are now in a national security crisis because “that’s not fair!”
Now, any person with a reputation – say there is an investigation of the CEO of Citigroup for laundering money for the Medillen cartel – this dumbass ruling would have the “reputational damage of a possible indictment” kick in to justify having the investigation stop in its tracks and share information DURING THE INVESTIGATION with the subject of the investigation. Or, what if the person invoking “that’s not fair! Wahhh!” doctrine is not even the subject of the investigation, but still had a search warrant executed on his home (a not unusual investigative event.” That person would equally have the ability to stop the investigation in its tracks.
Next, for the first time in history, a Judge is saying that executive privilege does not belong to the executive but to whoever happens to have been president when the documents were created. The law *specifically* says that is not true. But Judge MAGA says the Nixon case doesn’t speak to that. So? Is she saying the law on executive control is potentially unconstitutional? No, she is declaring a Supreme Court case doesn’t speak to it – which, in fact, it does – without invalidating or questioning the law on this.
Now, every former president can stop the functioning of any current administration by declaring that every document produced during his prior administration is covered by the “former guy has executive privilege” standard, leaving current government flying blind. Or is the judge saying this only applies to stolen documents? There is not a “these documents were taken in violation of presidential records act.so therefore a former president has authority over them.” There can’t be a delineation between documents that were stolen and those left behind on executive privilege.
So, what if Clinton as former president invoked executive privilege on records pertaining to Al Qaeda? Or Bush invoked executive privilege on all documents pertaining to the Iraq war after Obama took over? The reason that all executive documents, past and present, belong to the executive as defined under the constitution and not an individual president is because the government is there to protect and advance the interests of American citizens, not just one guy sitting around who is out of government. Could Obama have invoked executive privilege on all of Hillary Clinton’s emails? Those were issued as part of the executive branch so why not? Oh! I know! Because the entire idea is frigging absurd and outside the law.
This ruling MUST be appealed immediately. If it is not, criminal investigations can easily be crippled based on this absurd precedent, the functioning of the executive branch can be crippled, and people *could be killed* because domestic intelligence efforts would be put on hold while a special master is found, reviews records, figures out which should go to the former president and….oops! Terrorists detonated a dirty bomb in New York City. Damn these Fox News, federalist society jackasses who truly care nothing about America, and only about party. These people are going to get us killed all for propaganda purposes.
In what we used to think of as normal times, this would badly hurt DeSantis’s political future. Today, it’s just as likely to help him. It’s a gross miscarriage of justice and I hope these people sue the state for millions:
When Leo Grant Jr. cast his ballot in the 2020 election, it was the first time the 53-year-old had ever voted — an act that made him feel like he was setting a good example for his three sons and fulfilling his role as a citizen.
But in August, three Florida officers showed up at his home near Lake Okeechobee in Palm Beach County as he was about to go bass fishing with a friend. They had handguns tucked into holsters strapped to their jeans and carried shackles.
Grant had committed a grave offense, they said:election fraud. He’d voted despite a sexual offense conviction two decades earlier in 1999. They placed handcuffs around his wrists and drove him to jail.
“I’ve been a good father and I follow the law,” he thought. “I do good for the community. And here they come to my house and pick me up for voting?”
Grant, a high-ranking officer in his local Freemasonry chapter, is one of 20 individuals — most of whom are Black — charged by an elections police force created by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to pursue allegations of election fraud and improper voting. Those arrested are all accused of voting in violation of a state law that forbids those convicted or murder or felony sexual offenses from casting ballots.
Yet, in the days that followed DeSantis’s campaign-style event to announce those arrests, cracks have begun to emerge in the state’s case amid intensifying questions about whether the governor and his election police unit have weaponized their new powers for political gain.
Several of those charged told The Washington Post that they were led to believe by election officials and voter registration groups that they were eligible to vote as part of Florida’s widely publicized push to restore the voting rights of most felons. They expressed despair that they could face prison time for simply misunderstanding the law.
Attorneys representing some of those being prosecuted said the state appears to have targeted individuals who made honest mistakes amid a shifting and confusing legal landscape. They are skeptical the cases will hold up in court, noting prosecutors will need to prove those arrested knew they were ineligible.
What’s more, those arrested had submitted voter registration applications that were processed by the state — a move that for many amounted to a green light that they were eligible. In Florida, the state Division of Elections is responsible for identifying who isn’t qualified to vote and would have been required to flag their applications.
Here’s the kicker:
Attention has now turned to the state’s role is signing off on their registrations. Three were cleared in Broward County, where the local election chief at the time was Pete Antonacci — now director of the Office of Election Crimes and Security, who did not respond to a request for comment.
That’s right. The head of DeSantis’s vote fraud gestapo was in charge of the election office that failed to flag these people as they were required to do under the law. But that didn’t stop him from arresting them anyway.
Yet, DeSantis is almost certain to win the election this November and could easily end up the next GOP nominee after Trump.
It was based upon a motion that even Bill Barr called a “crock of shit”
Surprise! The judge ruled in favor of Trump and said a Special Master must be appointed to look at not only any Attorney Client privilege but Executive Privilege as well:
This ruling is preposterous—especially the part where it blocks the government from continuing to use materials already in its possession.
At the very least, that last ruling creates an immediately appealable injunctive-like order, which DOJ can now take to the Eleventh Circuit.
BREAKING: Judge Aileen Cannon grants Trump’s request and orders the appointment of a special master to review questions over the materials seized at Mar-a-Lago. She also halts use of the materials for “criminal investigative purposes” pending the special master’s review. pic.twitter.com/VvDzIAzCSF
This ruling is ridiculous and will be immediately appealed by DOJ.
the standing argument makes no sense with respect to any executive privilege invocations and Cannon barely addresses it.
is Trump arguing every classified document is subject to executive privilege?
NEWS: Judge Cannon has granted Trump’s request for a special master to review attorney client and executive privilege — she also says her order will not stop the intelligence community review of the records. Unclear how that’s going to work. https://t.co/TVzYtZUvc0pic.twitter.com/hjseiwFAar
If not, why would this apply to classified materials?
the Rule 65 analysis conflicts with recent rulings on using Rule 65 for procedural issues, including a case @MarkSZaidEsq and I lost
even if executive privilege does apply, what is the purpose of this relief?
They still are NOT personal records then and would absolutely not be subject to return to Trump under Rule 41.
how on earth is the IC doing it’s damage assessment without the FBI being involved? That’s ludicrous. So these are EP-protected records for criminal purposes but not for national security purposes? How does that even work???
Trump got every break here. Every single one. Delay delay delay.
Let’s face it. There is every likelihood that they are going to end up making a special Trump exception which says that any document he says belongs to him does belong to him and him alone and he can do with it whatever he wants. It’s only fair.
Update—
Looks like I’m not the only one who sees this coming:
Every defendant suffers massive reputational damage from an indictment. I agree that we will cite this case law in other criminal cases, because if you take it at face value, it is a significant shift to the defense. https://t.co/oONFj1h0wf
Count on E.J. Dionne to provide a Labor Day column each year. After decades of decline, unions ares seeing modest expansion again. Public support “for collective action, collective bargaining and the idea of solidarity” is the highest it’s been in 57 years. A global recession and record economic inequality will do that:
At a time when so many attitudes divide along racial lines, Gallup found that Whites and non-Whites were equally pro-labor. Approval spanned generations — at 72 percent for those under 54, and 70 percent among those 55 and over. Support for organized labor, close to unanimous among Democrats, is in fact bipartisan: 89 percent of Democrats approved of unions, as did 68 percent of independents and 56 percent of Republicans.
Opinion is translating into action. Vox’s Rani Molla documented how well-publicized union victories — at Amazon, Apple, Chipotle, REI, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s — are just the most visible part of a larger trend. (Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, owns The Post.)
“I do believe that this is the beginning of the next era of the labor movement—the modern labor movement,” Vice President Kamala Harris tells The Nation’s John Nichols. She cites the Biden administration’s advocacy as a key factor, but the pandemic also played a role:
“There’s so much about the pandemic that, I think, really highlighted for all to see what some of us have known to be the fractures and the fissures and the failures of systems—including the systems that should support working people but don’t,” she said. “We saw, for example, at the height of the pandemic, that 2 million women had to leave the workforce because a real issue for all workers is child care. How many people had to leave the workforce because they didn’t have paid sick leave? Or paid family leave? We saw how many workers were taking so much risk into their hands—especially those frontline health care workers who, through their sheer commitment, were going to work because they care about saving lives. Think about what that meant in terms of a workplace that may not be safe. Think about it in terms of teachers and other frontline workers.”
The term “essential worker” was a catchphrase for the media as the pandemic unfolded. But it resonated with the people who were putting their lives on the line. “Workers started realizing their value and started demanding that the dignity of their work would be respected in every way, including through their wages and benefits,” Harris said.
Even as industry couldn’t wait to send workers back into the meat grinder. Almost literally, in some cases.
Unions leaders spoke to Nichols about Harris’ history of support for labor that’s received little attention.
“Most people don’t even know that we represent people that work with Google, but she did,” United Steelworkers Vice President Roxanne Brown told Nichols. “She wanted to talk with them about organizing in new sectors, new industries. She was very specific.”
But it will take tangible results, not simply moral support for the Biden administration, to move the balance of power (and wealth) back in workers’ direction.
A spurt of new organizing will not undo years of union decline. Efforts to change labor laws to make unionization easier have failed even in Congresses controlled by Democrats. The new shape of the economy — with fewer of the sorts of manufacturing jobs on which labor built its power between the 1930s and the 1960s — creates challenges that the movement still needs to master.
But the new labor story, based on an embrace of the promise of triumph through shared struggle, runs crosswise to many of the trends in our politics, and usefully so. Unions have the capacity to bring Americans together across some very deep divides. Republicans have yet to alter their largely antilabor policy stances to accommodate a new constituency that includes large numbers of working-class voters. You’d never know from the party’s hostility to unions how sympathetic the GOP rank and file is to what they do.
It is not lost on progressives that the rise of movement conservatism accompanied the decline in union membership since the 1960s. More power for the investor class meant less for workers. And a smaller share for workers in the rewards of their labors.
Except for the paid holiday.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
