Garth Brooks is selling Bud Light at his bar and says that the boycotters are assholes. The right is now calling for a boycott against Garth Brooks. Of course. (Read the comments to this…)
Look who’s making moral judgments about Garth Brooks:
I know, I know.
Garth does a great version of a Billy Joel song called “Shameless” and I think it’s called for right now:
Apparently, some people think that one of the unnamed recipients of classified information in the Trump indictment was Kid Rock. It’s because of this interview from 2022 on Tucker Carlson’s show. But the event happened in 2017 so it was when Trump was president and has nothing to do with this indictment.
He does show just how cavalier he always was with government secrets.
In the 2022 interview, Rock said the embattled former business mogul asked him for assistance when writing a tweet about ISIS and probed the rocker on how he would handle North Korea – showing him maps in the Oval Office.
A 52-year-old Rock – whose real name is Bob Ritchie – is not the mystery person mentioned in the indictment, though the stories he told to Carlson do call into question Trump’s handling of top secret material.
Rock recalled one session with Trump when the now ex-president ‘ended the caliphate,’ a reference to the Islamic State terror group that took over parts of Iraq.
‘He wanted to put out a tweet. And it was like – I don’t like to speak out of school, I hope I’m not – but he said something like … and I’m paraphrasing – but it was like, ‘If you ever joined the caliphate, and trying to do this, you’re going to be dead,” the rocker recalled.
Trump asked Kid Rock his thoughts on the tweet, Kid Rock said.
‘I go, ‘Awesome. Like, yes tweet that out.’ I was like, ‘I can’t add anything better than [that],” he said.
Rock – often a guest of Trump at the White House and a very public supporter of the President – said when the actual tweet came out it was ‘reworded and more political and like a little politically correct.’
He also said he and Trump would be ‘looking at maps and s**t.’
‘And I’m like – I’m like, ‘Am I supposed to be like in on this s**t?’ Kid Rock said.
‘What do you think we should do about North Korea?’ Kid Rock also said he was asked. ‘I’m like, what? I don’t think I’m qualified to answer this.’
‘I make dirty records sometimes. What the f**k am I doing here?’ Kid Rock said of the pinch-me moments with the former commander-in-chief.
A lot of people have pooh-pooh’d the idea that Elon Musk’s degradation of twitter is of any real world importance and I’ve always thought that was ridiculous. No, it doesn’t really matter that a bunch of right wingers are hurling insults at everyone — what else is new?
A viral hoax that briefly sent the stock market down last month apparently first gained traction on Twitter through a conspiracy-mongering, pro-Russian account.
The picture that grabbed attention on the morning of May 22, captioned “Large Explosion Near the Pentagon,” was generated by artificial intelligence without much sophistication, experts said. But it is probably a harbinger of things to come, especially as generative AI gets better at producing images to meet the demandsof anyone’s imagination.
Research by The Washington Post, misinformation tracking firm Alethea and othersfound that the earliest confirmed Twitter posting of the image came from an account called @CBKNEWS121. In its less than two years on Twitter, CBK has posted a grab-bag of references to QAnon and other baseless conspiracy theories, current events, and memes and statements praising former president Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. On May 3, it tweeted “I stand with Putin,” followed by a heart emoji.
CBK is in the new wave of Twitter accounts with blue check symbols that only mean the accounts were paid for but boost how often and how prominently their tweets appear. Taking advantage of other changes in Twitter standards and enforcement, some of the early amplifiers used the name of a real media organization to enhance credibility.
The hoax served the interests of some of the most significant forces behind viral misinformation — quick-buck artists and those who serve them, fringe attention-seekers and state propagandists — which can form long-running or ad hoc alliances that overwhelm the reduced watchdog staffing at the biggest social networks.
Until twitter just degrades to the point where nobody pays any attention to it at all, this is the sort of thing that could be catastrophic. It is quickly becoming the greatest propaganda tool in the world with AI becoming ever more sophisticated and virtually no standards at all. Thanks to Musk.
Trump and the MAGA wingnuts are hystericl screeching about Hillary Clinton’s emails again so it’s worth reminding everyone what it actually was about and comparing it to Trump’s bizarre classified documents case:
The obvious comparison that Republicans have, and will, make to Trump’s predicament is Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. The email server became a public controversy during her 2016 presidential campaign against Trump, with his rally crowds chanting “Lock her up,” a sentiment Trump said he was “starting to agree with” in July 2016. Trump ally Alex Jones sold “Hillary for prison” T-shirts.
The initial investigation into Clinton’s private email server revealed classified information had been shared in upwards of 2,000 email chains stored on the server. In making the server a campaign issue, Trump promised to enforce the law.
“In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,” Trump said in August 2016. “No one will be above the law.”
Trump’s repeated attacks on Clinton and promises of upholding the rule of law are cited in the indictment against him as evidence that he knew about the importance of enforcing the proper handling of classified information.
The investigation into Clinton’s private email server crescendoed when FBI Director James Comey’s July 2016 statement that although Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” no charges would be filed because “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
Comey used such prosecutorial discretion because there was no evidence Clinton or her aides failed to turn over documents or that the server was set up to receive classified information and retain it and that there was little evidence that the documents deemed to be classified were properly marked as such when they were sent and received in her email.
A Justice Department inspector general’s report on the investigation and the agency’s handling of it was released in June 2018, revealing that none of the emails contained clear classification markers as required under executive rules.
Just three email chains “contained any classification markings of any kind,” according to the IG report. The classified documents in these three chains were “call sheets” marked with the lowest priority of classification, providing reminders and talking points on scheduled calls between Clinton and foreign leaders.
It was also difficult for prosecutors to determine if Clinton and her aides intended to receive and retain classified information because the State Department’s email oversight and retention practices had been so poor for years that her actions were just normal practice.
Two State Department reviews conducted under Trump’s secretaries of state, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, also found that Clinton bore no “individual culpability” for any “spillage” of classified information and there was “no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information.”
Four investigations revealed that Clinton did not have forethought in her retention of classified information, just three of the emails on her server were even marked as classified when they were received and she complied with the Justice Department’s investigation fully. This is almost the exact opposite of what Trump is alleged to have done.
There’s more at the link comparing the Biden and Pence cases. And this Fact Check by Daniel Dale on Trump’s stupid claim that Biden has stashed 1850 boxes of classified documents is also informative.(Hint: they’re Senate papers held at the University of Delaware under he same rules and laws that govern all Senate records. Trump is full of shit as usual.)
The “whataboutism” is rampant and I’m sue it will have a political effect. Just look at this garbage — and he’s supposed to beone of the moderates:
Luckily the whole panel was shocked at his inane attempt to have it both ways. This is the correct response:
It’ the GOP “moderates'” job to clean up their party. And they refuse to do it.
Fox News and guests threw a blizzard of chaff into the air last night to reassure MAGAstan that the 37-count Trump felony indictment was a malicious hit job by the left against the patron saint of kitch. After a few glances, I needed a palate cleanser.
John Pavlovitz regularly reposts some of his sermonettes. One from April he posted last night, “The Conservative War on Everything,” outlines how the conservative project “is a case study in what fear does when it fully grips a group of people.” Their view is as bleak and cold as Trump’s “American carnage.” Their oversized displays of “patriotism” smack of flop-sweat desperation.
“In this environment,” Pavlovitz wrote, “the human heart become unable to manufacture empathy for the other, as it finds encroaching enemies everywhere it looks.”
The result is a withered soul. Millions of them.
Another post he wrote just days ago, “Woke Will Win,” indirectly lays out the choice America faces: fear or hope.
Yes, the Woke Mob is coming for them: the disparate, sprawling army of human beings who know that diversity makes us better, that compassion is the better path, that more voices make a sweeter sound, that everyone should gave the chance to have joy in this life.
And the bigots and the hate-preachers and the supremacists are right to be afraid of us because we in our “wokeness” are going to make sure that they do not have the final word here.
Kindness is woke.
Compassion is woke.
Generosity is woke,
Love is woke.At the heart of it all, to those who traffic in this latest war cry, to be woke is to be deeply human.
And that humanity will be the foe they cannot defeat and are right to fear.
Woke will win.
Perhaps starting with equal justice for all.
The Department of Justice released the indictments in the Trump documents case Friday afternoon and it was much worse (and far more detailed) than many commentators anticipated. It included 37 felony counts in all against Trump for national security violations and obstruction of justice. The bathroom photo (above) became instantly iconic.
Pages 28-33 of the indictment reveal that documents found at Mar-a-Lago contained national defense, foreign intelligence, and U.S. nuclear secrets. From the indictment:
The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP’s presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club—including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.
Soon after the release, Special Counsel Jack Smith delivered a brief statement.
“This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida, and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged,” Smith began.
“The men and women of the United States intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk,” Smith added. “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”
Readers will not be surprised that urging viewers and partisans to read the document in full for understanding was not on the agenda at Fox News and among Trump’s supporters and sycophants. But disinformation, slippery slopes and whataboutism were.
First, the disinformation story line on the right is that Joe Biden did this! He weaponized the Department of Justice to target his principle rival in the 2024 election. What they won’t remind their audience is what Smith said, “This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida.” Smith presented the evidence. The citizen grand jury found a there there.
Knowing well the conservative base, the right-wing propagandist’s next order of business is to personalize the threat. We’re on a slippery slope! “If they can indict a former president,” we’ve become a banana republic. You could be next!
Judd Legum satirized that predictable response:
But the whataboutism brought up a case brought by Judicial Watch that I’d forgotten, but the group’s president, Tom Fitten, had not.
Jesse Watters of Fox News led with the “Clinton sock drawer” story line Friday night.
“If you believe the most ardent defenders of newly indicted former president Donald Trump, there’s a silver bullet hiding in Bill Clinton’s sock drawer,” Alison Frankel writes for Reuters:
The reference to Clinton’s socks, which has cropped up not just in the former president’s Truth Social feed and at conservative news outlets but even in Trump court filings, stems from a 13-year-old case in which the right-leaning nonprofit Judicial Watch sought access to 79 audio tape recordings of Clinton interviews conducted by the historian Taylor Branch while Clinton was in office.
During his presidency, according to GQ magazine in a 2009 Q&A with Branch, Clinton “squirreled away the cassettes in his sock drawer.” But for Trump’s purposes, what matters is Clinton’s handling of the tapes after he left office: Clinton designated the recordings as personal records, not official presidential records, that were therefore not required to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration under the Presidential Records Act.
[…]
“The [Presidential Records Act] does not confer any mandatory or even discretional authority on the archivist,” wrote U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in that 2012 ruling. “Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the president.”
That language, as I’ll explain, has emboldened Trump supporters who contend that under Jackson’s analysis, the Justice Department had no authority to seize documents from Mar-a-Lago.
Ergo, if Bill Clinton could do it, Donald Trump had plenary authority to designate anything he removed from the White House as personal, Watters asserted. This was not the right’s position when “the Clintons returned the $28,000 worth of furnishings to the National Park Service,” items intended as gifts for the White House that the Clintons mistook as personal gifts.
What NARA wanted returned were not gifts to the White House, nor to the president, nor tapes “in the nature of a diary or journal in recorded form,” but U.S. government records, highly classified records.
Frankel concludes:
That argument could have political salience among Trump backers asserting that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” to pursue the former president. But as a matter of law, said professor Margaret Kwoka of Ohio State University, Jackson’s ruling in the Judicial Watch case isn’t going to be much help for Trump. “These are completely different kinds of records,” she said. “And there are different legal obligations when it comes to the handling of classified records.”
In other words, for a former president accused of repeatedly violating the Espionage Act, the sock drawer case is probably more of a red herring than a silver bullet.
The Trump indictment confirms as much, featuring direct quotes from Trump that he knew the records were classified, that he had no power to declassify them, and referencing Trump’s own quotes from the campaign on the sensitive nature of national security secrets.
There are receipts:
… found that the companionship with this Lab has not only helped it calm down, but thrive.
CHEETAHS AND DOGS WEREN’T ALWAYS friends. And at first glance, the feline-and-canine couple seems an odd pairing—one that turns heads for its cuteness, if not its unconventionality.
But the practice of rearing young cheetahs with a canine companion has become a major means of relaxing the notoriously nervous cats at U.S. zoos from New York to San Diego.
The relationship didn’t begin there, however. Nor, for that matter, did it start on an African wildlife reserve. Captive cheetahs and dogs first became friends in a small town in Oregon.
In 1976, research scientist and conservation biologist Laurie Marker was living in Winston, a town of about 3,000 people. As the curator of a cheetah-breeding program at Wildlife Safari, she found herself hand-rearing a lonely cheetah cub named Khayam.
Cheetahs are companionable litter-mates, but Marker had no other cats to put with Khayam. So she decided to try pairing the fastest land mammal on the planet with the animal typically thought of as a human’s best friend.
And it worked: Khayam and a Lab-mix named Shesho became fast friends.
Raising Khayam with a dog “provided friendship, security, and [helped keep the cheetah] calm,” Marker says in an email. “Companion dogs act as a surrogate for cheetah siblings … It is the friendship between the two individuals that creates a strong bond, and this is what makes for a successful pairing.”
In other words, it chills the cheetah out. Now, when a cub that’s abandoned or orphaned ends up in human care, many zoos pair the cat with a dog as a substitute sibling.
“When I provided the San Diego Zoo with a cheetah named Arusha five years later, I recommended placing a puppy with him,” Marker says. “They did, and the publicity around the cheetah-dog duo made the popularity of companion animals soar.”
There’s no doubt that cheetahs lead stressful lives. Hunted to extinction in India, Israel, and Egypt, there are now fewer than 7,000 of them left worldwide. That’s a drop of more than 90 percent since 1900. And in the wild, only 5 percent of cheetah cubs make it to adulthood, due to lurking lions, hyenas, and poachers, plus the constant threat of not getting another meal.
“The cheetah would rather flee than fight,” says Suzi Rapp, vice president of animal programs at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, which has 16 cheetahs and four companion dogs. “Even though the cheetah has this [incredible] speed, there are predators that are bigger and badder than they are.”
All of which makes the animals nervous, even in captivity.
Dogs, on the other hand, are often mellow. Thousands of years of instinct have been subdued and replaced by thousands of years of domestication. From the historical use of hunting dogs and sled dogs to today’s show dogs and Internet dogs, canines occupy a special place in the human heart. We’ve also taught them to provide furry, drooling therapy for everyone from babies to college students to, evidently, Africa’s rarest big cat.
Captive cheetahs form singular bonds with their companion dogs, which are usually easygoing breeds eager to make new friends. But cheetahs are as fickle as they are fast. “I can always introduce an older dog to a new cheetah, but I can’t introduce an old cheetah to a new dog,” says Rapp.
[…]
The relationship, an adorable example of mutualism, has captivated zoo visitors and clearly benefited the jumpy felines. The cheetahs get a sense of security, and the dogs get a new best friend.
“[Cheetahs are] extremely high-stress animals,” says Roy. “Dogs are everyone’s best friend. Cheetahs soak that in.” So much so, she says, that some are called “the dog of the cat family.”
I’ve seen this in action at the San Diego zoo. We were walking down one of the paths just as the zoo was opening one morning and and walking toward us was two Cheetahs and their companion labs on leashes with their handlers. It was beautiful.
Special Indictment Day Soother Special:
Oyez, Oyez!!!
In case you were wondering what the dark corners of MAGA land are talking about, grab a (large) whiskey and read on:
In what is becoming a now all-too-familiar trend, former President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters have threatened civil war after news broke Thursday that the former president was indicted for allegedly taking classified documents from the White House without permission.
“We need to start killing these traitorous fuckstains,” wrote one Trump supporter on The Donald, a rabidly pro-Trump message board that played a key role in planning the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Another user added: “It’s not gonna stop until bodies start stacking up. We are not civilly represented anymore and they’ll come for us next. Some of us, they already have.”
Trump has been indicted on seven counts following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into classified documents taken by Trump from the White House in 2021. The indictments have not been released, but Trump’s attorney Jim Trusty told CNN that his client is facing a charge under the Espionage Act, as well as “charges of obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements.”
Trump announced the news himself on Truth Social, writing that he had been indicted in the “Boxes Hoax” case, as he put it, and said he would be arraigned on Tuesday at Florida Southern District Courthouse in Miami. Within minutes, his supporters lit up social media platforms with violent threats and calls for civil war, according to research from VICE News and Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan think tank that tracks online extremism.
Trump supporters are making specific threats too. In one post on The Donald titled, “A little bit about Merrick Garland, his wife, his daughters,” a user shared a link to an article about the attorney general’s children.
Under the post, another user replied: “His children are fair game as far as I’m concerned.”
In a post about the special counsel conducting the probe, one user on The Donald wrote: “Jack Smith should be arrested the minute he steps foot in the red state of Florida.”
In addition to threats of violence against lawmakers and politicians, many were also calling for a civil war.
“Perhaps it’s time for that Civil War that the damn DemoKKKrats have been trying to start for years now,” a member of The Donald wrote. Another, referencing former President Barack Obama and former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said: “FACT: OUR FOREFATHERS WOULD HAVE HUNG THESE TWO FOR TREASON…”
Others on similar social media platforms made general calls for an armed uprising. “The entire Republican Party should flood the courthouse and demand real justice here,” one supporter wrote on Truth Social. It wasn’t just anonymous users saying this, however: Right-wing talk show host Charlie Kirk called on all Trump supporters to descend on Miami on Tuesday to protest the indictment.
“This is the JFK assassinaton all over again,” right-wing personality and Pizzagate promoter Michael Cernovich wrote, claiming that the “deep state” had killed JFK and were now using the Justice Department to take down Trump.
Other right-wing lawmakers and commentators also pushed the idea that this was a politically-motivated prosecution ordered by Joe Biden. Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy echoed Trump’s own words, calling Thursday “a dark day for the United States of America.” In a statement, he also claimed that Biden was directly behind the indictment of Trump in a bid to remove the leading GOP candidate for the 2024 election.
On right-wing media, hosts echoed the messages posted on social media, boosting the same baseless claims while using war-related language and providing no evidence to back up their allegations.
Fox News host Sean Hannity, for example, told his viewers that the U.S. justice system has “been weaponized beyond belief” and that the country is “in serious trouble,” while former Trump aide Stephen Miller appeared on Fox News and said he hoped the “whole of the Republican party, the whole of the conservative movement, the whole of the country that cares about the rule of law coalesces around President Trump.”
Later, one of Trump’s own lawyers Alina Habba appeared on Fox News and said she was “embarrassed to be a lawyer at this moment. Honestly, I’m ashamed to be a lawyer.”
And just like Trump’s last indictment in April, many of his supporters said they believed that these indictments would actually be a benefit to Trump’s campaign.
“It’s the biggest campaign contribution ever, thanks Dims,” one user wrote on The Donald. “This will actually help Trump get re-elected by a wide margin. Then he will go on a rampage. These communists don’t know when to quit,” another wrote.
Alternatively, some even believed that the latest indictments were the result of Trump’s failure to get January 6 prisoners released from jail while they awaited their trial, something the former president has no power over.
“Karma is a bitch isn’t it, you rich fuck asshole,” a 4chan user wrote. “Leaving innocent people to be abused in the DC jail then catch hard time for supporting you on Jan 6th 2021, has consequences.”
And then there’s this member of congress:
Yikes.
I just read through it quickly and it’s much, much worse than we thought. He had very sensitive documents including war plans and classified info about America’s nuclear arsenal and showed them to people. He kept them in totally insecure locations, including an unlocked bathroom and a ballroom at Mar-a-Lago. When they asked for them back he moved them around, rummaged through them and tried to get his lawyer to lie about what was in them.
I highly suggest that you read the whole thing if you have time. It’s better than a Nordic Noir.
Meanwhile, here’s a first draft analysis from Politico:
A federal indictment unsealed Friday charges former President Donald Trump with 37 felony counts stemming from an investigation into the presence of a trove of classified information at his Florida estate and other locations after he left office.
Prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith allege that Trump arranged to remove a massive collection of highly sensitive classified material — much of which consists of intelligence about the “defense and weapons capabilities” of the United States and foreign countries — to his private residence as he left the White House in January 2021.
He had aides stash those records in boxes that also included personal items and ordered them shipped to his estate in Mar-a-Lago at the end of his tenure, according to the indictment. The charging document also says that on at least two occasions, Trump showed classified records to visitors without security clearances at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey — including the map of a military operation to a representative of his political committee.
As the Justice Department began inquiring about the records stashed at Trump’s home, the indictment alleges, Trump ordered an aide — Walt Nauta — to begin moving boxes with classified records to obscure them from investigators. Trump did this without informing his attorney, who was preparing to search Trump’s property in compliance with court-authorized subpoenas to recover the records.
Trump is facing 31 counts of violating the Espionage Act through “willful retention” of classified records and six counts related to his alleged effort to obstruct the investigation. Nauta was also charged with five felonies, including obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI.
“We have one set of laws in this country,” said Smith, briefly addressing the media after the unsealing of the indictment. “They apply to everyone.”
The evidence arrayed by the Justice Department paints a devastating picture of an ex-president intent on squirreling away national military secrets at his homes, irrespective of potential consequences. Trump, who took office in 2017 after a campaign in which he lambasted Hillary Clinton for jeopardizing classified information on an unsecured email server, is portrayed as haphazardly stashing documents in different corners of his home — with open access to employees of his club.
At one point in December 2021, Nauta found several boxes toppled in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago storage room, with papers strewn about the floor, including some labeled as “Five Eyes” intelligence — a reference to the group of nations that are most closely allied with the United States and engage in a higher level of intelligence sharing. Nauta took two photos of the spill and shared them with another Trump employee.
If Trump is ultimately tried and convicted on the 37 counts, he faces a potentially lengthy prison term. Each count of willful retention of records carries a maximum 10-year sentence, while the six obstruction charges each carry a 20-year maximum sentence. False statements charges each carry a five-year maximum.
The indictment is Trump’s second in the past three months. He also faces a 34-count indictment in New York for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn star to prevent her from alleging an affair in the final weeks of the 2016 election. And two more criminal probes could result in further charges: a second probe by Smith of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election and an investigation by Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis, also about Trump’s election gambit.
The indictment lists 31 specific documents Trump is accused of intentionally withholding from federal officials after they requested the return of all national security records: 21 of the documents are described as Top Secret, nine as secret and one as lacking any classification marking but involving “military contingency planning of the United States.”
Throughout the indictment, prosecutors emphasize that Trump was aware of the significance of protecting classified information, highlighting statements he made throughout his presidency about the seriousness of upholding laws related to national security secrets. They also repeatedly showed him to be a hands-on manager of the records in question, personally directing the packing and movement of boxes.
And when DOJ came calling to recover them, the indictment notes that Trump — speaking to his attorney — made at least two references to Clinton and her lawyer’s claim that he had deleted her emails before responding to a Justice Department subpoena. Trump’s lawyer, per the indictment, memorialized those exchanges, as well as another in which the lawyer said Trump appeared to instruct him to remove any documents that might be particularly incriminating.
The indictment notes that in June 2022, after Trump orchestrated the last-minute removal of boxes from rooms that DOJ was likely to inquire about, he delayed his trip from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster in order to greet investigators at his home and pledge to be an “open book.”
I’m not surprised that two of Trump’s lawyers quit today. He probably wanted to fire them anyway because they failed him:
Two of Donald Trump’s top lawyers abruptly resigned from his defense team on Friday, just hours after news broke that he and a close aide were indicted on charges related to their handling of classified documents.
Jim Trusty and John Rowley, who helmed Trump’s Washington, D.C.-based legal team for months and were seen frequently at the federal courthouse, indicated they would no longer represent Trump in matters being investigated and prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith, who is probing both the documents matter and efforts by Trump to subvert the 2020 election.
The resignations were shortly followed by an announcement from Trump himself confirming that a close aide, Walt Nauta, had also been indicted by federal prosecutors. Nauta, a Navy veteran, had served as the former president’s personal aide and was a ubiquitous presence during his post White House days.
In their place, Trump indicated that Todd Blanche — an attorney he recently retained to help fight unrelated felony charges brought by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg in April — would lead his legal team, along with a firm to be named later. Trump and his team have liked Blanche, who is expected to play a more elevated, central role.
Though Trump has had shakeups of his legal teams before, the current changes deprive Trump of some of his most seasoned legal hands at the most perilous moment of his legal travails. And it follows the recent departure of a third lawyer who had helped guide Trump’s defense in the documents matter: Tim Parlatore, who cited internal disagreement, particularly with longtime Trump hand Boris Epshteyn, as his reason for abruptly quitting.
One potential silver lining for Trump: The case appears to have been initially directed toward U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who handled his lawsuit last year after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate. Cannon, a Trump appointee to the federal bench, raised eyebrows with her unorthodox rulings sharply in Trump’s favor that were ultimately reversed by a panel of an appeals court.
Two people close to Trump did not dispute that Cannon would potentially oversee the case and said they were pleased by the possibility.
I’m sure this will result in a delay since his new lawyer will have to get up to speed. It won’t be the last one.
By the time you read this, jack Smith may have given his comments. I’ll update here with what he says.