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Stop The Press(es)

Published by digby on April 4, 2024

They are not meeting the moment

Dan Froomkin is back from vacation and he’s not happy:

The nation stands on the edge of a precipice, and our political media is so addicted to neutrality that it is casting both choices — survival or cataclysm — as equally plausible.

It’s sickening.

We are one election away from becoming a Christian nationalist state, losing our democracy as we know it, and putting the fate of our country in the hands of a corrupt madman filled with fever dreams of retribution.  And yet political journalists seem to think this is just fine. Fun, even.

I barely surfed the web while I was gone, but I did open a few emails here and there. And there was one I found particularly enlightening – in a very troubling way.

Being the lead writer for the New York Time’s signature On Politics newsletter is one of the most influential jobs in the industry these days, and the email that popped up in my inbox announcing the latest hire for that job – a Boston Globe reporter named Jess Bidgood who had previously worked for the Times — made it painfully clear that she is absolutely clueless about the topic she is now covering, and intentionally so.

Offered an opportunity to explain what she found particularly compelling about the coming election, Bidgood didn’t talk about how the Republican Party has succumbed to the extreme Christian far-right. She didn’t talk about how Trump was a hateful, dangerous demagogue. She didn’t even mention the fate of democracy or the rule of law.

Let me be very clear here: Whether or not the country succumbs to fascism is a helluva political story no matter how you feel about it. A Trump victory would profoundly change how government and justice are practiced. If you don’t understand that, you are a wildly incompetent political reporter.

You can choose to cover a race like that in different ways, but to deny what is going on is the act of a moron or a loon – or someone paid a lot of money to look the other way.

Instead of a probing analysis of the stakes, what Bidgood gave us in her welcoming remarks was just more of the generic political-journalist pablum about finding interesting stories and covering both sides and — yes — having fun.

The introductory email in question was written by the newsletter’s founding editor, Lisa Lerer, and grandiosely headlined: “Welcome to the Jess Bidgood Era.” (That is how seriously the Times takes itself.)

Here is what Bidgood said are her “favorite things” about covering politics:

Politics give us a window into this country — what’s shaping it, who’s shaping it, how people feel. When you cover politics, you’re covering people. You’re covering voters. You’re covering political figures, people bursting with ego and ambition as they fight for power. You’re covering the change people want and what kind of country we’re going to be. I love that.

And what an adventure it is! I’ve taken that special nighttime flight from Iowa to New Hampshire right after the Iowa caucuses, when a candidate stands on the tarmac in the dark and insists her big moment is still coming. (Oftentimes, it is not.) I’ve held in my hand a fake slate of electors that a swing state’s secretary of state received from Trump supporters in 2020 and decided to ignore. I’ve listened to L.G.B.T.Q. teens tell their school board who they are, and watched a community sick of high taxes disband its local government altogether. These are important political stories, big and small, and I can’t wait to bring them to On Politics.

It’s an adventure! Oh goodie. (For the rest of us, it’s a nightmare.)

What should people expect in the Jess Bidgood era?

This election is going to be strange, messy and deeply consequential, and every day this newsletter comes out, I’ll bring readers one idea, one story or one interview that will illuminate this country’s political morass.

And it will be fun. Really. I promise.

Yes, she actually said that. It will be fun.

She added a bit of bothsidesing, for good measure:

You won’t agree with everybody whose voice you hear, but you might understand them a little better.

And while my dream newsletter would be a primer on fascism, Bidgood’s would be something else altogether:

LL: So what would be your dream newsletter?

JB: My dream dream? That would be an interview with Taylor Swift, whose rain-drenched show I attended in Foxborough last year.

Fun!

He points out that the editors said that she understands the politics of the moment are “deeply consequential” but there is nothing to indicate that she knows or cares about that. It’s Fun!

He then directs his readers to that exceptional Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial (which I wrote about earlier) as an example of what journalism should be. If you haven’t read it, it’s well worth your time.

I’m depressed about this too. Journalism is better in many ways than it was 10 years ago. It’s less sycophantic toward the right to be sure. But it still hasn’t accepted what the stakes really are in our politics in the age of MAGA and they are failing.

Total Eclipse Of The Mind

Published by digby on April 4, 2024

These people are just plain nuts

Trump staring at the eclipse without protective glasses

SOLAR ECLIPSES, LIKE the upcoming one on April 8, are a well-documented scientific phenomenon. As early as 763 BCE, ancient Assyrians were charting the process by which the path of the moon temporarily obstructs the sun, and astronomers have continued to do so for thousands of years since. Our knowledge of eclipses predates our knowledge of gravity, algebra, and toilet paper. We are well aware of their existence, and we are well aware of what causes them. (I mean, I personally am not, but other people ostensibly are.)

What the ancient Assyrians could not have possibly predicted, however, was the singular stupidity of the current incarnation of the American right. Unconvinced by thousands of years of scientific inquiry, as well as driven by a general sense of apocalyptic bloodlust, many on the right are trading conspiracy theories about the upcoming eclipse, ranging from the belief that it signals the End Times to the idea that the Biden administration is using it as an opportunity to shut down cell phone service or bring in the National Guard in an effort to make beautiful blond children who play sports transgender.

This latest onslaught of misinformation began, as it often does, with InfoWars host Alex Jones, who has spent the past few weeks ranting on X about the upcoming eclipse. Last week, he posted a clip with the caption: “Major Events Surrounding The April 8th Solar Eclipse[.] Masonic rituals planned worldwide to usher in New World Order.”

The post, which has more than 3000 retweets and one million views, illustrates how the trajectory of the most recent solar eclipse viewable in the United States, as well as the trajectory of the upcoming eclipse, form an “Aleph” and “Tav,” which (as anyone who was forced to go to Hebrew school instead of staying home and using cheat codes to make your Sims woo-hoo naked knows), are the first and last letters in the Hebrew language, signaling the beginning and end times.

In another eclipse tweet posted on March 26, which has 3.8 million views, Jones included a video of a man speculating that various Texas and Oklahoma counties had declared a state of emergency in order to usher in a billionaire-led new world order.

Those counties just issued advisories because they expected traffic congestion from people travelling to view the eclipse. That hasn’t stopped these weirdoes from pushing conspiracy theories asserting that “there will be rituals performed during the April 8th Eclipse,” during which “Masonic, Satanic, Esoteric, Gnostic, Brotherhood of the Snake and other occult-like groups will be performing.” I’m not kidding.

This is idiotic but then these are people who eagerly believe every crackpot notion that that grifters like Alex Jones and Donald Trump throw out there so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

If you haven’t seen the new documentary on Alex Jones and the Sandyhook case, I highly recommend it. it’s heartbreaking and infuriating, particularly since we know that he has millions and millions of avid followers.

Update:

Block The Steal

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 4, 2024

The MAGA minority means to impose its will

ICYMI, the effort in Nebraska to change the state’s electoral vote allocation to winner-take-all failed last night.

It is more evidence that the GOP is pulling out all the stops in seeking ways to tip the presidential election in Donald Trump’s favor, even for a single electoral vote.

But do not lose sight of other places (and other 2024 races) where the MAGA GOP is hoping to place heavy thumbs on the scales. Pay attention (Bolts):

The Texas supreme court closed out 2023 by blocking an abortion during a medical emergency, forcing a woman to flee the state. Just days before Christmas, Wisconsin justices struck down the state’s GOP-drawn gerrymanders. So far this year, Montana’s supreme court has stepped in to protect voting rights, while a decision in Alabama threatened in vitro fertilization treatments. 

In each of these states, unlike at the federal level, voters chose who sits on the bench and which judges get to dictate such profound consequences. And the 2024 elections may now reshape who holds power on supreme courts across the country.

Thirty-three states have elections for their high courts this year; some have as many as five or six seats on the ballot. In total, 82 seats are up for voters to decide. 

These races to decide the composition of state courts could potentially shift the outcome in high-stakes cases that are already in the legal pipeline on everything from the rules of direct democracy to the fate of reproductive rights.

Michigan and Ohio are the two states where a supreme court’s partisan majority could flip outright. Democrats are defending a narrow edge in Michigan; the GOP is doing the same in Ohio. 

Heather Cox Richardson cautions:

Finally, in an illustration of extremists aiming not to moderate their stances but to impose the will of the minority on the majority, Republicans are putting in place rules to make it easier for individuals to challenge voters, removing them from the voter rolls before the 2024 election.

Marc Elias of Democracy Docket noted today that states and local governments have regular programs to keep voter registration accurate, while right-wing activists are operating on a different agenda. In one 70,000-person town in Michigan, a single activist challenged more than a thousand voters, Elias reported, and in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, right-wing activists have already challenged 16,000 voters and intend to challenge another 10,000.

One group boasted that their system “can and will change elections in America forever.” 

Rather like the election of 2000.

Developing situational awareness isn’t just for policemen and soldiers.

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Going for 2.0

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 4, 2024

A “multipronged assault”

Navy quarterback Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada puts the ball over the goal line for a two-point conversion at the 2007 Poinsettia Bowl. Public domain via Wikipedia.

Last week, I questioned the sufficiency of the “comically long” list of MAGA “nightmare scenarios” the Biden campaign is planning for that could arise leading up to and in the aftermath of the November election. We witnessed live on Jan. 6 the lengths to which MAGA Republicans would go to maintain power. Even then it took many months of investigation to uncover the plotting Trump’s confederates did not put on public display. It’s likely that people without criminal minds are not devious enough to anticipate all the ways Insurrection 2.0 might unfold.

This time, the prospect of jail time if he loses increases Trump’s incentives for instigating mayhem. As with stochastic terrorism, his followers don’t require explicit orders from the chief to know what he wants.

From Daily Beast (via Yahoo Finance):

Maria Bartiromo didn’t even bother to wait for the 2024 election to pass before suggesting it could be stolen.

During an on-air conversation Wednesday morning with Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley, the MAGA loyalist Fox Business Network host suggested President Joe Biden can’t reasonably expect to win the 2024 election when his policies don’t seem to resonate with voters. She highlighted Wall Street Journal poll that found Donald Trump leading Biden in multiple swing states, using the question as a set-up to boost a new conspiracy theory about Democrats being forced to manipulate the election in order to help the president win re-election.

“How does Biden win?” Bartiromo asked the RNC chairman. “Republicans are talking about the potential of an election that is tampered with. Republicans are warning there is a Biden order—executive order—which allows illegal immigrants and felons to vote.”

Bullshit, of course. The executive order Bartiromo references means to remove “significant obstacles” to voting many Americans face. Especially nonwhite Americans.

The order makes no mention of undocumented immigrants nor does it expand the right to vote to any groups previously unable to do so. The president does not have any authority to extend the right to vote to undocumented immigrants, and a 1996 federal law expressly prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections.

Sarah Posner, author of “Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind,” writes Trump is “is dangerously priming his voters for a repeat of his multipronged assault on the 2020 election results and the peaceful transfer of power.”

MSNBC:

At a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday, Donald Trump decried President Biden for issuing a White House proclamation of March 31 as the annual Trans Day of Visibility, which this year happened to fall on Easter. “What the h— was Biden thinking when he declared Easter Sunday to be trans visibility day?” Trump complained, to loud boos from the audience. “Such total disrespect to Christians.”

The former president omitted that Biden has observed Trans Day of Visibility on the same day every year of his presidency, and the overlap with Easter was purely coincidental. Instead, Trump turned from stoking fears of Christian persecution to another campaign trail favorite: predicting his election victory. “November 5th is going to be called something else,” he said. “Christian visibility day, when Christians turn out in numbers that nobody has ever seen before.” The crowd reacted, of course, with raucous applause.

As with Bartiromo, the former huckster-in-chief is selling what they’re buying. He’s feeding their persecution complex. Writes Posner, “After all, in the minds of Trump loyalists, if Christians (that is, Trump’s loyal base of white evangelical Christians) show up on Election Day in unprecedented numbers, how could he lose?” They cannot unless the election is stolen by THEM.

Most Christians do not share evangelicals’ paranoia, Posner explains. For the others, Trump is signaling “that they make themselves available to defend him against a possible loss.” 

The tenor of his speeches of late, especially those delivered to evangelical audiences, are built around a claim that Christian America has fallen into an apocalyptic hellscape, and only Trump can rescue it.

With their help. In Jesus’ name.

Trump’s declaration of Election Day as “Christian Visibility Day” is more than a get-out-the-vote technique. It’s a blaring alarm warning us that he could use his base’s persecution complex about the “radical left” and their messianic zeal for him to claim that any election loss must have been “rigged” not only against him but against them, too. As Jan. 6 showed, that zeal can easily turn into terrible consequences for the country.

I can’t help linking evangelicals’ persecution complex to a regional insecurity complex that lingers among many southerners (especially the less educated) a century and a half after the defeat of the Confederacy. The South and Jesus will rise again.

By any means necessary.

Update: Regarding Trump’s unscrupulousness and his MAGA followers’ “How could we lose?” hubris, it occurs to me that Pickett’s Charge was Lee’s folly because he thought his southern boys were invincible. Via the American Battlefield Trust: “Pickett was asked years following the war what caused the assault to fail. He responded rhetorically, ‘I’ve always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.’”

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Four Years Ago Today

Published by digby on April 3, 2024

Trump’s leadership killed so many people

“Let People Eat”

Published by digby on April 3, 2024

Jose Andres in the NY Times today:

In the worst conditions you can imagine — after hurricanes, earthquakes, bombs and gunfire — the best of humanity shows up. Not once or twice but always.

The seven people killed on a World Central Kitchen mission in Gaza on Monday were the best of humanity. They are not faceless or nameless. They are not generic aid workers or collateral damage in war.

Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, John Chapman, Jacob Flickinger, Zomi Frankcom, James Henderson, James Kirby and Damian Sobol risked everything for the most fundamentally human activity: to share our food with others.

These are people I served alongside in Ukraine, Turkey, Morocco, the Bahamas, Indonesia, Mexico, Gaza and Israel. They were far more than heroes.

Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right. It is not conditional on being good or bad, rich or poor, left or right. We do not ask what religion you belong to. We just ask how many meals you need.

From Day 1, we have fed Israelis as well as Palestinians. Across Israel, we have served more than 1.75 million hot meals. We have fed families displaced by Hezbollah rockets in the north. We have fed grieving families from the south. We delivered meals to the hospitals where hostages were reunited with their families. We have called consistently, repeatedly and passionately for the release of all the hostages.

All the while, we have communicated extensively with Israeli military and civilian officials. At the same time, we have worked closely with community leaders in Gaza, as well as Arab nations in the region. There is no way to bring a ship full of food to Gaza without doing so.

That’s how we served more than 43 million meals in Gaza, preparing hot food in 68 community kitchens where Palestinians are feeding Palestinians.

We know Israelis. Israelis, in their heart of hearts, know that food is not a weapon of war.

Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces.

The Israeli government needs to open more land routes for food and medicine today. It needs to stop killing civilians and aid workers today. It needs to start the long journey to peace today.

In the worst conditions, after the worst terrorist attack in its history, it’s time for the best of Israel to show up. You cannot save the hostages by bombing every building in Gaza. You cannot win this war by starving an entire population.

We welcome the government’s promise of an investigation into how and why members of our World Central Kitchen family were killed. That investigation needs to start at the top, not just the bottom.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said of the Israeli killings of our team, “It happens in war.” It was a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by the Israel Defense Forces.

It was also the direct result of a policy that squeezed humanitarian aid to desperate levels. Our team was en route from a delivery of almost 400 tons of aid by sea — our second shipment, funded by the United Arab Emirates, supported by Cyprus and with clearance from the Israel Defense Forces.

The team members put their lives at risk precisely because this food aid is so rare and desperately needed. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative, half the population of Gaza — 1.1. million people — faces the imminent risk of famine. The team would not have made the journey if there were enough food, traveling by truck across land, to feed the people of Gaza.

The peoples of the Mediterranean and Middle East, regardless of ethnicity and religion, share a culture that values food as a powerful statement of humanity and hospitality — of our shared hope for a better tomorrow.

There’s a reason, at this special time of year, Christians make Easter eggs, Muslims eat an egg at iftar dinners and an egg sits on the Seder plate. This symbol of life and hope reborn in spring extends across religions and cultures.

I have been a stranger at Seder dinners. I have heard the ancient Passover stories about being a stranger in the land of Egypt, the commandment to remember — with a feast before you — that the children of Israel were once slaves.

It is not a sign of weakness to feed strangers; it is a sign of strength. The people of Israel need to remember, at this darkest hour, what strength truly looks like.

This man’s humanity, decency and compassion are inspirations to us all. Everything he says is correct and if the Israeli government hasn’t completely given up on being regarded as a civilized 21st century nation it will listen to what he says and recognize that this is a watershed moment that will determine whether it is.

A New Trump Scandal

Published by digby on April 3, 2024

As grotesque as always

Greg Sargent has the details and it’s truly awful:

Donald Trump has invented a new criminological category he describes as “Migrant Crime,” and in Michigan on Tuesday, he seized on the horrible murder of a young woman, allegedly by an undocumented immigrant, to underscore the point. Some news accounts covered this by quoting GOP strategists, with one enthusing that this will win over “security moms,” as if Trump is engaging in something like a conventional campaign strategy here.

But Trump’s ugly demagogic rants in Michigan, and others like it, deserve to be treated as a national scandal. The cherry-picking of isolated terrible crimes to smear migrants as a class is not something we would tolerate if it were directed toward other groups. Never mind what Trump is attempting to do politically. His deranged, malicious, hateful public conduct should be seen as the real story here. It should be covered that way.

Trump’s appearance in Michigan has been overshadowed by the news that Trump may have lied about relatives of the victim, 25-year-old Ruby Garcia. At his event, Trump claimed he had spoken to “some of her family,” but her sister flatly denied he or his campaign had contacted them, and blasted Trump for singling out crimes committed by “illegal immigrants.”

That did shape some of the coverage. But it should not require a brave public intervention from a young woman enduring a horrific tragedy to prod the media into registering the appalling way Trump is twisting this murder and other similar crimes to viciously smear undocumented immigrants across the board.

During his rants in Michigan, Trump also discussed the killing of another woman in Georgia by an “illegal alien animal.” He mocked Democrats for describing undocumented immigrants as “human,” declaring, “They’re not human, they’re animals,” while keeping what “they” means vague. Trump insisted other countries are sending “prisoners, murders, drug dealers, mental patients, and terrorists” to our country, claimed migrants have “wrecked our country,” and blamed it all on “Biden’s border bloodbath.”

It was outrageous. And even more outrageous was his cult’s reaction. Gut wrenching.

Sargent runs down the facts of the Garcia killing as far as we know. She was murdered by a Mexican citizen with whom she had some sort of relationship although it’s unclear exactly what it was. The alleged killer, Brandon Ortiz-Vite was originally a DACA recipient who has been in the US since he was a child but his status expired, he was deported to Mexico and then returned at some point.

None of this can be attributed to Biden’s policies so Trump bringing it up is purely a way to demonize immigrants and smear the president. Neither would he have likely been prevented from any of this by Biden’s first term policies.

Sargent continues:

It is true that with any large group of people—undocumented migrants included—one risks seeing a small percentage of them turn to violent crime. But that’s not an argument against Biden’s immigration policies. As has been demonstrated again and again, there is no evidence that migrants are driving any kind of crime wave in the United States.

In covering Trump’s Michigan event, some news accounts dutifully noted that fact. But they tended to treat this as a conventional fact-check of typical political rhetoric, rather than treating his heinous smearing of a large class of people as itself being the story.

Trump’s constant use of the deranged “migrant crime” trope provides the hook for doing just that. The Republican National Committee now has an official website devoted to chronicling “migrant crime” and “illegal alien crime,” listed out by state (in some states no “illegal alien crimes” have yet been documented). The casual use of such terms to smear large classes of immigrants is the official party position.

All this is straight from the authoritarian playbook. As The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum has noted: “The repetition of the phrase ‘migrant crime’ is a tactic stolen from Victor Orban, who used to use ‘Gypsy crime’ in the same way.”

How about some stand-alone news analysis pieces devoted to that sort of malign confluence of tactics? Why not cover this hateful, dangerous rhetoric as a sign of Trump’s seething contempt for even the most minimal standards of conduct in public service and public life?

He suggests that Democrats should enter this fray as well, perhaps holding events with the Baltimore bridge collapse victims. immigrant essential workers who lost their lives doing heavy work when it it happened. He writes:

Democrats could say: This is what immigrants are really doing for our country. They could call on Trump: Stop the hate... The Trump-GOP smearing of immigrants is an absolute scandal. And it should be treated as exactly that.

I happened to be in Baltimore when the accident happened and I will say that the local officials and media (even country radio!) were very focused on those victims and their families. Maybe the national Dems, as they live in the area, have made note. They should. The demonization of immigrants is so over-the-top that Trump’s fascism is no longer theoretical.

Good News In The Heartland

Published by digby on April 3, 2024

A white supremacist in rural Oklahoma ran for city counsel and won in the last cycle. He attended the fascist Charlottesville march and when some people in the town found out about it they ran a campaign against him. They won.

It’s possible to go too far even in hardcore right wing places like rural Oklahoma. I agree with Roy Edroso who pointed out:

This is why it’s important to get the real views of conservative candidates out in front of voters. A lot of voters think these guys are just low-tax law-and-order types. When they find out what they’re *really* like, they turn against them.

I hope that’s right. It would mean that the country isn’t as far gone as I thought.

It Always Comes Back To Russia

Published by digby on April 3, 2024

Yet another corrupt connection to Donald Trump

Who could have ever predicted? The Guardian reports:

Donald Trump’s social media company Trump Media managed to go public last week only after it had been kept afloat in 2022 by emergency loans provided in part by a Russian-American businessman under scrutiny in a federal insider-trading and money-laundering investigation.

The former US president stands to gain billions of dollars – his stake is currently valued at about $4bn – from the merger between Trump Media and Technology Group and the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which took the parent company of Truth Social public.

But Trump Media almost did not make it to the merger after regulators opened a securities investigation into the merger in 2021 and caused the company to burn through cash at an extraordinary rate as it waited to get the green light for its stock market debut.

The situation led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the porn industry.

Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.

The existence of the trust was first reported by the Guardian last year. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.

The new details about the trust are drawn from documents including: Paxum Bank records showing Postolnikov having access to the trust’s account, the papers that created the trust showing as its settlor a lawyer in St Petersburg, Russia, and three years of the trust’s financial transactions.

The concern surrounding the loans to Trump Media is that ES Family Trust may have been used to complete a transaction that Paxum itself could not.

Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.

Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime. In response to an email to Postolnikov seeking comment, a lawyer in Dominica representing Paxum Bank warned of legal action for reporting the contents of the leaked documents.

There is also no indication that Trump or Trump Media had any idea about the nature of the loans beyond that they were opaque, nor has the company or its executives been accused of wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Trump Media did not respond to a request for comment.

But Postolnikov has been under increasing scrutiny in the criminal investigation into the Trump Media merger. Most recently, he has been listed on search warrant affidavits alongside several associates – one of whom was indicted last month for money laundering on top of earlier insider-trading charges.

Read the whole story. It won’t surprise you except to the extent that he keeps getting away with this stuff.