Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certification

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Trump lawyers saw Justice Thomas as 'only chance' to stop 2020 election certification: “We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in an email exchange.
by Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein and Nicholas Wu
Politico
11/02/2022 10:17 AM EDT
Updated: 11/02/2022 03:09 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/0 ... n-00064592

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The emails were part of a batch that lawyer John Eastman had sought to withhold from the Jan. 6 select committee but that a judge ordered turned over anyway, describing them as evidence of likely crimes committed by Eastman and Donald Trump. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Donald Trump’s attorneys saw a direct appeal to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their best hope of derailing Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election, according to emails newly disclosed to congressional investigators.

“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 31, 2020, email to Trump’s legal team. Chesebro contended that Thomas would be “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.”

“I think I agree with this,” attorney John Eastman replied later that morning, suggesting that a favorable move by Thomas or other justices would “kick the Georgia legislature into gear” to help overturn the election results.

The messages were part of a batch of eight emails — obtained by POLITICO — that Eastman had sought to withhold from the Jan. 6 select committee but that a judge ordered turned over anyway, describing them as evidence of likely crimes committed by Eastman and Trump.

They thought we were so slow, that we were so stupid, that we would elect the lowest caricature of a stereotypical broken black man, as opposed to somebody who is educated, and erudite, and focused.

Y'all aren't ready for me today.

-- Pastor Jamal Bryant DEMOLISHES Herschel Walker. White Evangelicals in Disarray, The Benjamin Dixon Morning Show, Oct 31, 2022

They were transmitted to the select committee by Eastman’s attorneys last week, but remained largely under wraps until early Wednesday morning.

House General Counsel Douglas Letter acknowledged Wednesday afternoon that his office effectively released the messages by including a link to them in copies of messages publicly filed with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We were not aware that the links in Dr. Eastman’s email remained active, and had no intention to provide this type of public access to the materials at this stage. Providing public access to this material at this point was purely inadvertent on our part,” Letter told the appeals court in a brief letter. The emails, as produced to the committee, included formatting errors that removed “i”s and “l”s. POLITICO has included the missing letters for clarity.

[DELETE]

From: Eastman, John [DELETE]
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2020 9:45 AM
To: Kenneth Chesebro [DELETE] Bruce Marks [DELETE] Kurt Hilbert [DELETE]
Cc: Chris Gardner [DELETE] Kaufman, Alex B. [DELETE] Nina Khan [DELETE] CMitchell [DELETE] Tom Sullivan [DELETE]
Subject: Re: Confidential

I think I agree with this. If the court were to give us "likely", that may be enough to kick the Georgia Legislature into gear, because I've been getting a lot of calls from them indicating to me they're leaning that way.

John

_____________________________________________

From: Kenneth Chesebro [DELETE]
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2020 7:35 AM
To: Bruce Marks [DELETE] Kurt Hilbert [DELETE] Eastman, John [DELETE]
Cc: Chris Gardner [DELETE] Kaufman, Alex B. [DELETE] Nina Khan [DELETE] Tom Sullivan [DELETE]
Subject: Re: Confidential

I see.

I haven't focused on the relief sought, but if what we're seeking as something that TENTATIVELY holds, either by way of PI or DJ, that very likely the electoral votes sent in by the Biden electors aren't valid, because the election failed, as long as that's what the district court, or 11th Cir., or Supreme Court says, that's the key, and probably good enough.

The point is to have the court say that probably the election was void, which ought to be enough to prevent the Senate from counting the Biden electoral votes from Georgia, right?

Merely having this case pending in the Supreme Court, not ruled on, might be enough to delay consideration of Georgia, particularly if Pence has the legal ability and will to insert himself at least enough to win delay.

So I would go for non-final relief, trying to get a statement by a court helping Trump-Pence by Jan. 6.

Possibly Thomas would end up being the key here -- circuit justice, right? We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt. Realistically, our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress, is from Thomas -- do you agree, Prof. Eastman?

Ken

[DELETE]

Thomas is the justice assigned to handle emergency matters arising out of Georgia and would have been the one to receive any urgent appeal of Trump’s lawsuit to the Supreme Court — a fact that seemed to be part of the Trump legal team’s calculus.

Rulings from so-called circuit justices are typically stopgap measures aimed at preserving the status quo until the full Supreme Court weighs in, but the Trump lawyers hoped a favorable order from Thomas would embolden state GOP-controlled legislatures, Congress — or then-Vice President Mike Pence — to block final certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

In another Dec. 31 email, Chesebro explicitly laid out this strategy:

"[ I]f we can just get this case pending before the Supreme Court by Jan. 5, ideally with something positive written by a judge or justice, hopefully Thomas, I think it’s our best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress,” Chesebro said.

[DELETE]

From: Kenneth Chesebro [DELETE]
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2020 9:55 AM
To: Kurt Hilbert [DELETE] Bruce Marks [DELETE] Eastman, John [DELETE]
Cc: Chris Gardner [DELETE] Kaufman, Alex B. [DELETE] Nina Khan [DELETE] Tom Sullivan [DELETE]
Subject: Re: Confidential

I know we're at the district court level, and late in the day, but if we can just get this case pending before the Supreme Court by Jan. 5, ideally with something positive written by a judge or justice, hopefully Thomas, I think it’s our best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress.

WI and PA have strong cert. petitions, but in both cases, at least the state courts involved issued timely rulings, and Trump & Pence have had an opportunity to file cert. petitions, and thus a chance to have the Supreme Court weigh in before the count.

But the Georgia courts just sat on this for weeks. No opportunity for judicial review. On a showing of a reasonable chance of success of the merits, it would be unconscionable for Congress to count the electoral votes for Biden. It would set a horrible precedent -- that a State can be represented in the Electoral College despite serious concerns about the regularity of the election, which it suppressed through its courts.

Maybe that should be one argument for preliminary relief, that to deny relief would incentivize the denial of due process in future presidential elections. States could do what they wanted, and ignore the rule of law, confident that there would be no judicial interference. What's the point of having life-tenured federal judges if they won't intervene to stop state courts from doing this?

Ken

[DELETE]

Chesebro’s emails continued to offer detailed strategy proposals about ways to delegitimize Biden’s victory on Jan. 6 and beyond.

In one scenario, Chesebro proposed encouraging Senate Republicans to filibuster long enough to delay the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, ignoring limitations on the length of debate. He also described how Trump allies could use inaction by the courts to build political pressure against Biden’s inauguration.

“Hard to have enormous optimism about what will happen on Jan. 6, but a lot can happen in the 13 days left until then, and I think having as many states still under review (both judicially and in state legislatures) as possible is ideal,” Chesebro wrote Trump campaign attorney Justin Clark on Dec. 24, 2020. It’s unclear how or whether Clark responded to Chesebro’s message.

The New York-based lawyer has been scrutinized by the Jan. 6 select committee, as well as prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., who are investigating Trump’s efforts to subvert the election there.

The Trump’s team’s effort found virtually no traction at the high court. The only outward signs of dissension among the justices were mild, like a Dec. 11 order where the court rejected a bid by Texas to challenge the vote counts in four other states. Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito issued a brief statement saying they’d have accepted jurisdiction over the case, but joined the other justices in denying Texas any relief.

Eastman, an architect of Trump’s last-ditch bid to subvert the 2020 election, once clerked for Thomas and had corresponded with his wife, Virginia, in the weeks before Jan. 6.

Eastman played a central role in pressuring Pence to single-handedly subvert the 2020 election when he presided over the Jan. 6 session of Congress — a legally required proceeding to count electoral votes and certify the election results.

In his conversations with Pence’s staff on Jan. 4 and 5, Eastman suggested that he believed Thomas would likely support their efforts. Eastman’s emails, which he has fought to keep from the select committee, have yielded some of the most potent evidence against Trump’s team — including a March 28 ruling from a federal judge declaring it likely that Trump and Eastman had criminally conspired to subvert the election.

Federal prosecutors have also scrutinized Eastman, who pleaded the Fifth in testimony to the Jan. 6 panel. FBI agents seized Eastman’s cell phone in June as part of a wide-ranging investigation related to efforts by Trump allies to undermine the election results.

Ginni Thomas became the focus of congressional investigators after text message emerged showing her urging Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to continue efforts to keep Trump in power despite losing the 2020 election. She interviewed with the Jan. 6 panel earlier in the fall.

The emails also shed new light on an effort to get Trump to sign documents connected to a Dec. 31, 2020, federal lawsuit challenging the election results in Georgia, including acute concerns Trump’s lawyers voiced during that chaotic period that Trump might put himself in legal jeopardy if he attested to the voter fraud data contained in it.

From: Eastman, John [DELETE]
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2020 12:15 PM MST
To: Kaufman, Alex B. [DELETE] Kurt Hilbert [DELETE]
Subject: RE: Link to entire case

Keeping Bruce and his team off this for the moment.

Here's the issue. The complaint incorporates by reference the state court challenge. Although the President signed a verification for that back on Dec. 1, he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate. For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate. And I have no doubt that an aggressive DA or US Atty someplace will go after both the President and his lawyers once all the dust settles on this.

I know it is late in the day, but do we need to incorporate that complaint by reference?

John

[DELETE]

“I have no doubt that an aggressive DA or US Atty someplace will go after both the President and his lawyers once all the dust settles on this,” Eastman wrote in an email to two other private attorneys working on Trump election challenges, Alex Kaufman and Kurt Hilbert.

After some exchanges, including with Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, the lawyers agreed they would remove some of the specific figures before Trump swore to the accuracy of the lawsuit.

But they also debated whether the federal complaint should “incorporate by reference” the voter fraud data included in an earlier state-level lawsuit. Eastman warned that since the state lawsuit was filed, evidence had disproved some of the voter fraud data contained in it — and having Trump point to the earlier data would be erroneous.

“I know it is late in the day, but do we need to incorporate that complaint by reference?” Eastman wondered.

It’s unclear how the other attorney responded to Eastman. But in a separate email chain with additional lawyers, an intensive effort was underway to get the court filings in front of Trump so they could be signed and notarized in time to file the lawsuit that evening.

Trump, they were informed, was on a plane back to D.C. and they needed him to sign and notarize the document. Trump attorney Cleta Mitchell said Trump’s personal assistant had informed her they had no access to a notary until Monday.

“So, now what?” she wondered. “Can we figure out a way to file this without a verification?

“There’s no one they can call to come to the White House that’s a notary?” Chris Gardner, a Virginia attorney and former GOP House aide assisting the president’s legal team, asked in an email sent just before 4 P.M. on New Year’s Eve. “I don’t know how we file without it. Presidential trip to a UPS store?”

Mitchell later said she was exploring the possibility of getting a notary to certify Trump’s signature via a Zoom call.

Court records show Trump’s signature was ultimately attested to by William McCathran, an assistant executive clerk working for the White House.

Trump’s signature was key to U.S. District Court Judge David Carter’s Oct. 19 ruling that the emails must be disclosed to the House Jan. 6 committee. Carter said Trump signed the verification to a federal court complaint under penalty of perjury despite evidence that he’d been told many of the fraud claims in the lawsuit were inaccurate.

The messages “show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” wrote Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.

[admin]

Trump's company to get a court monitor, judge rules: Former president’s lawyers fight bid for restraints on Trump’s business empire
by Josh Gerstein
11/03/2022 02:27 PM EDT
Updated: 11/03/2022 09:37 PM EDT

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NEW YORK — A judge Thursday granted the New York attorney general’s request that former President Donald Trump’s business empire be overseen by an independent monitor.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron issued an order after a daylong hearing, requiring that the Trump Organization’s dealings with banks and sale of major assets be subject to supervision by a third-party expert to be named by the court.

One provision in the order requires 14-days notice to the court before Trump can dispose of any “non-cash asset” listed in a financial statement his firm prepared last year.

The judge’s order came over strenuous objections from Trump’s lawyers in Manhattan earlier Thursday, where Trump’s team pleaded with Engoron to reject Attorney General Tish James’ bid to impose potentially far-reaching supervision of Trump’s business empire as litigation proceeds over her claims that the firms engaged in vast bank and insurance fraud in real estate transactions.

Engoron said in his ruling the evidence of fraudulent valuations by Trump and his businesses was “more than sufficient” to indicate that James is likely to prevail in the lawsuit she filed in September, which is seeking strict limits on the Trump businesses’ activities in New York and a ban on the former president and his three eldest children from serving as an officer of any New York corporation.

The legal setback for Trump came after the two sides squared off in court for the first time since James drew national attention for her civil lawsuit taking on the former president and his businesses. She was quick Thursday to hail the judge’s decision as a step toward justice for Trump.

“Time and time again, the courts have ruled that Donald Trump cannot evade the law for personal gain,” James said in a statement. “Today’s decision will ensure that Donald Trump and his companies cannot continue the extensive fraud that we uncovered and will require the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee compliance at the Trump Organization. No number of lawsuits, delay tactics, or threats will stop our pursuit of justice.”

A Trump Organization spokesperson denounced the decision and suggested that the judge was aiding James politically. She is seeking a second term Tuesday.

Trump himself ripped James’ case, continuing his war of words with the Democratic attorney general of his native state.

“A puppet judge of the New York Attorney General and other sworn enemies of President Trump and the Republican Party has just issued a ruling never before seen anywhere in America. It is Communism come to our shores,” he said in a statement.

Later, at a rally in Iowa, Trump knocked James and “a radical left lunatic judge.”

“They’re weaponizing the Justice Department. They weaponized things that are not supposed to be weaponized,” Trump continued. “Companies are already fleeing New York, as you probably read … What they’re doing in New York is unbelievably sad, and it’s all coming from Washington D.C.”

During the hearing, Engoron — who has overseen earlier rounds of legal jousting between the attorney general and the former president — sounded highly skeptical of Trump’s legal arguments against imposing restrictions and oversight on the businesses during the year or more it could take for the case to go through fact-finding and trial.

Trump’s decision during a long-delayed deposition in August to repeatedly invoke his constitutional right not to incriminate himself came back to haunt him in the ruling Thursday.

“Although not dispositive on any single issue, this Court is permitted, and is here persuaded, to draw a negative inference from Mr. Trump’s invocation of his Fifth Amendment right … more than 400 times in response to questions posed to him during his deposition,” Engoron wrote.

Trump’s history of clashes with regulators and prosecutors undermined his drive to avoid court supervision: Among the decisions Engoron cited in his order was a 2016 ruling involving allegations of fraud by Trump in connection with his Trump University venture.

The judge rejected Trump’s arguments that disclaimers on his financial statements meant that banks and insurance companies were not entitled to rely on them. Engoron said those warnings were supposed to insulate Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars, from responsibility, not Trump.

“The Mazars’ language…does nothing to alert its recipients that Mr. Trump himself cautions them not to rely on its contents,” Engoron wrote.

During the court session, Engoron declared that the government had to meet a “heavy burden” to get immediate relief, but he suggested Trump’s case against doing so consisted of little more than hot air, such as arguments from their attorneys without evidence to rebut the extensive collection of documents and deposition excerpts James presented from their three-year investigation.

“Let’s be real here …They submitted all these documents,” the judge said to a lawyer for Trump, Christopher Kise. “What kind of evidence do you want? This is a motion for preliminary injunction.”

An attorney from James’ office, Kevin Wallace, pressed Engoron’s point, arguing that the evidence the AG submitted should be weighed against the lack of proof offered by the other side.

“The Trump Organization didn’t field a team,” Wallace said. They didn’t put in any documents. … Most of the evidence is in their custody and they presented nothing.”

Kise, a Florida attorney who is also deeply involved in Trump’s response to the federal investigation into sensitive White House documents the former president kept at his Mar-a-Lago home after leaving office, repeatedly complained that the safeguards James is seeking now would amount to a “nationalization” of Trump’s businesses, effectively placing them into receivership.

“The order itself really borders on nationalization of a private enterprise,” said Kise, who said it would amount to “tremendous and staggering interference” in the ability of the Trump businesses to manage their own affairs. “It’s really more in the nature of seizing control of a successful corporation and interfering on a day-to-day basis with its financial arrangements.”

But the judge chided the Trump side for exaggerating the severity of the oversight the attorney general is proposing.

“Your papers kept using the word receiver. ... They’re not asking for one and that’s very different from a monitor. True or false?” the judge said to Kise.

Engoron, who issued no immediate ruling but promised to do so later Thursday, made clear his familiarity with the case. He noted that one of the claims raised by James is that Trump claimed to lenders that his Trump Tower apartment was 30,000 square feet, even though it was actually 11,000.

“Could that be a good faith disagreement ... ?” the judge asked.

“I would submit that it could be,” Kise replied, contending the claim was part of a broader financial statement that was reasonable when taken as a whole.

However, the judge ruled that the central issue wasn’t whether Trump, his family members or his employees intended to deceive anyone. The promotion of wildly inflated valuations can amount to fraud under New York law “whether or not” the figures were intentionally misstated, Engoron wrote.

During the court hearing, Kise also accused James of pursuing the injunction to score political points, looking to grab headlines as she campaigns for reelection next week.

“We’re a few days out from an election,” Kise told the judge. “I’m hoping that’s not behind the motivation and the timing here, but I’m candidly a little bit cynical about it. ... I hesitated to bring it up, but this really shouldn’t be about political theater.”

The former Florida solicitor general also said that by delving into business transactions between the Trump organization and banks and insurance companies he called “corporate titans,” James was encouraging businesses to flee the state.

“Look at what’s happening in Florida, go down to Miami, see the businesses that are moving from California, the businesses are moving from New York,” Kise told reporters. “This is why. Because there’s this extraordinary interference with the free marketplace. And it’s a dangerous precedent to set.”

Trump has fought a series of unusual and unsuccessful legal battles against James’ probe, beginning long before the attorney general’s massive suit against his business empire was filed in September.

The latest maneuver came just Wednesday in a state court in Florida, where Trump sued James for allegedly interfering with a Florida-based trust that holds many of the former president’s business assets.

As is typical with Trump suits, the complaint departs from the usual dry legalese to unleash withering rhetorical attacks on James that sounded more like fodder for political speeches.

The Florida suit details a series of sharply critical statements James made about Trump while running for office and accuses her of mounting a “political and personal vendetta” against the former president.

One shot the suit takes at James says she had no intention of fulfilling her oath of office when she took it in 2019. “Unfortunately, she must have had her fingers crossed behind her back when she did so,” the Florida suit says.

“What began as a cartoonish, thinly-veiled effort to publicly malign President Trump for personal political gain has morphed into a plot to obtain control of a global private enterprise ultimately owned by a Florida revocable trust,” the 41-page complaint says.

The Florida suit, filed in Palm Beach County, which became Trump’s legal residence in 2019, seeks to block James from interfering with the trust and even from obtaining a copy of it. It doesn’t seek a money judgment against James, but says in a footnote that a move for that sort of compensation is planned.

The Trump lawsuit rehashes a series of arguments Trump’s lawyers have previously made in other venues without success, including in proceedings before Engoron where Trump resisted efforts to force him to testify in connection with the probe. Trump finally sat for such questioning in August, invoking his constitutional right against self-incrimination more than 440 times.

Kise insisted in court Thursday that the former president has no plans to try to evade James’ suit by moving any assets out of New York. He said just two of Trump’s New York buildings, Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street, could amply cover the $250 million in disgorgement that James seeks in her suit.

Kise said Trump shouldn’t be penalized for seeking to vindicate any rights he may have under Florida law, but the attorney also seemed to distance himself from that litigation. “I don’t represent the trust in Florida,” he said. “I didn’t file it, obviously.”

Trump had also filed a federal court lawsuit last year trying to shut down James’ investigation, but a district court judge in Syracuse tossed that case in May. Trump has appealed that decision to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which is expected to hear arguments on the case early next year. He also attempted to get James’ suit assigned to a different judge, but struck out on that effort.

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Arizona Republican [Rusty Bowers] who crossed Trump sees bad omens
by Romain Fonsegrives
AFP
Wed, November 2, 2022 at 8:03 PM

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In three decades of involvement in conservative politics, Rusty Bowers has never been so worried by the gap between perception and reality that currently plagues Arizona's Republican Party.

Ahead of the November 8 midterm elections, masked poll watchers, some of them armed, have been looming over ballot drop boxes in a bid to prevent a repeat of the vote-fixing they are convinced took Donald Trump's presidency away from them in 2020.

No such conspiracy exists, says Bowers, and a party that was once more pragmatist than propagandist is now fully in thrall to unhinged theories -- and it's dangerous.

"It's intimidation," Bowers -- the 70-year-old speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives -- says of the men and women wearing paramilitary gear who set up camp at ballot boxes in parts of the southwestern state.

"If you take voting away and make it insecure, and you increase the violence, to me that's a fertile ground for fascism," he tells AFP in an interview in Arizona's state Capitol.

On Tuesday a judge this week ordered the self-appointed poll watchers to keep their distance from the drop boxes. But a toxic political climate that has swirled since the last election has persisted, and ensnared Bowers.

In November 2020, after campaigning for Trump in the presidential race, Bowers watched with dismay as Joe Biden's vote tally in Arizona squeaked past those of the GOP incumbent.

A mere 10,000 ballots separated the two candidates, but under the first-past-the-post rules, the state's electoral college votes all went to Biden, helping tip the Democrat over the national line and into the White House.

Multiple investigations, including a recount organized by the Republican Party, found no evidence of wrongdoing; nothing to throw any doubt on the results.



In line with his constitutional duty as leader of the state House, Bowers readied to certify the results. And that should have been that.

But then his phone rang.

On the other end, Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani set about assuring Bowers that an old Arizona law -- which he has never found -- allowed the Republican-controlled assembly to change the state's electors, the people responsible for formally electing the president after the election, in defiance of the popular vote.

"I said, 'Mr. Trump, I voted for you, I walked for you, I campaigned for you, I was at your campaigns with you, but I will do nothing illegal for you,'" he recalls.

"When they asked me to break my vow to the Constitution, it's like saying: 'We want you to throw away your religion, your faith, the foundation of who you are.'"

- 'RINO coward'? -

Bowers stuck to his guns, and Arizona's electoral college votes went to Biden.

As it has for others before and since who have taken a principled stand in defiance of Trump, that decision tipped his world upside down.

Bowers is no wilting liberal; he is fiercely pro-life, wants the southern US border strictly controlled, and wears his Mormonism proudly.



Since Trump smeared him as a "RINO coward" -- a Republican In Name Only -- Bowers has been besieged by death threats and a torrent of abusive emails.

The father-of-seven was called to Washington to testify before the committee investigating the January 6 US Capitol assault about the pressure he came under to rig the election.

For weeks, Trump supporters and far-right militia members demonstrated in front of his home, sometimes armed, sometimes carrying signs that accused him of paedophilia and other insults favored by QAnon conspiracists.

Even as the physical intimidation died down, Bowers found himself the target of a political assassination.

Like many who cross Trump, he was faced with a far-right challenge in the Republican primary for a state senate seat.

He lost.

But until he leaves office in January, Bowers says he will keep fighting.

A Republican state bill introduced this session would have given the Arizona House authority to summarily dismiss the results of a popular election, Bowers said, calling it "dangerous legislation."

"It doesn't say they may 'if....', it doesn't say they may 'when....', or why. Nothing, no criteria," according to Bowers.

"I killed it," he says.

Whether it stays dead is another matter.

Arizona voters are being offered Republican candidates for governor, secretary of state and US senator who all subscribe wholly to Trump's election denialism.

"The strength of the leadership of the current party is just anger," Bowers says, adding it is "leaning towards the Mussolini model," referring to Italy's WWII-era Fascist leader.

And that, he concludes, is not good for the country as a whole, whose polity is hanging by a thread.

"It's a very shallow civilization," he says, gesturing with his thumb and his forefinger squeezed tightly together.

"About that thick."

[admin]

Trump Lawyers Sanctioned by Judge on Clinton Conspiracy Suit
by Erik Larson
Bloomberg News
November 10, 2022 at 2:41 PM MST Updated on November 10, 2022 at 5:05 PM MST

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** Judge orders lawyers to pay $66,000 for filing conspiracy suit
** The same federal judge dismissed Trump’s suit in September


Attorney Alina Habba Photographer: Amir Hamja/Bloomberg

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers who accused Hillary Clinton and dozens of other people of engaging in a conspiracy to harm his reputation were sanctioned by a federal judge who excoriated them for filing a “frivolous,” politically motivated lawsuit.

Alina Habba, one of Trump’s most outspoken attorneys, and other lawyers involved in the case were ordered Thursday to pay $50,000 to the court and $16,274 in legal fees and costs to one of the defendants, Democratic political operative Charles Dolan, who was involved in Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“The rule of law is undermined by the toxic combination of political fundraising with legal fees paid by political action committees, reckless and factually untrue statements by lawyers at rallies and in the media, and efforts to advance a political narrative through lawsuits without factual basis or any cognizable legal theory,” wrote US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks in West Palm Beach, Florida.

“It should be no surprise that we will be appealing this decision.” Habba said in a statement.

Middlebrooks, a Bill Clinton appointee, dismissed Trump’s suit in September, calling it a “manifesto.” The judge was even harsher in his ruling on Dolan’s motion for sanctions, saying the failings of the lawsuit were “basic and obvious” and that the lawyers’ conduct was “willful, not simply negligent.”

“Thirty-one individuals and organizations were summoned to court, forced to hire lawyers to defend against frivolous claims,” the judge wrote. “The only common thread against them was Mr. Trump’s animus.”

Trump’s suit repeated many of his grievances over the FBI’s 2016 investigation into whether his presidential campaign was colluding with Russia to influence the election that year, alleging the entire probe was the result of a Democratic-led conspiracy to undermine his presidency and tarnish his reputation. Along with Clinton, he named former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta, British intelligence ex-agent Christopher Steele and many others.

Clinton and other defendants are also seeking sanctions against Trump and his lawyers. That group filed a joint motion for fees and costs totaling more than $1 million. The judge hasn’t ruled yet on that request.

Middlebrooks noted in his ruling Thursday that the many flaws in Trump’s complaint, filed in March under the civil version of a racketeering law normally used against organized crime, were correctly highlighted by Clinton in her motion to dismiss the suit. But when Habba amended the suit in an effort to address its shortcomings, she merely added irrelevant detail and new defendants, the judge said.

“This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering,” Middlebrooks wrote. “It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.”

Trump and Habba have repeatedly attributed rulings against them to a broader effort by allegedly partisan judges to unfairly punish the Republican in court. Habba previously asked Middlebrooks to recuse himself from the suit because he was appointed by the lead defendant’s husband -- a request the judge denied.

The case is Trump v. Clinton, 22-cv-14102, US District Court, Southern District of Florida.

[admin]

Judge orders Newt Gingrich to testify in Georgia 2020 election probe
PBS News Hour
Politics
Nov 9, 2022 3:39 PM EST

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich must comply with a subpoena seeking his testimony in front of a special grand jury in Georgia investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence that state’s 2020 election results, a Virginia judge ruled Wednesday.

Gingrich, who lives in northern Virginia, had argued that the federal law that normally requires states to honor out-of-state grand jury summonses should not apply in this case because the special grand jury lacks the power to indict. He also argued that the subpoena would be unnecessarily duplicative and burdensome because he has already agreed to testify in front of a congressional select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and that his testimony in both matters would essentially be the same.

But Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Robert Smith sided with prosecutors who said the subpoena should be enforced. The judge said the law doesn’t parse out a difference between regular grand juries and special grand juries, as Gingrich’s lawyer argued.

“I think I have to read the statute as written,” the judge said.

Gingrich’s lawyer, John Burlingame, said he expects to appeal the ruling. If the appeal fails, Gingrich will be required to testify to the special grand jury on Nov. 29.

Gingrich declined comment after the hearing.

Gingrich, a Republican, is one of several high-profile Trump allies who have unsuccessfully tried to avoid testifying.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened the investigation early last year, shortly after a recording of a call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was made public. In that call, Trump urged Raffersperger, the state’s top elections official and a fellow Republican, to “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss in the state to Democrat Joe Biden.

The scope of the investigation has broadened considerably since then, and Willis, a Democrat, has sought the testimony of dozens of witnesses, including numerous Trump attorneys, advisers and associates since the special grand jury was seated in May. It is among several cases that have the former president in potential legal jeopardy as he prepares to launch a 2024 presidential campaign.

Because Gingrich lives outside Georgia, Willis had to use a process that involves asking a judge where he lives to order him to appear.

Willis filed that paperwork in court in Atlanta last month, and Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand jury, certified that Gingrich is a “necessary and material witness for the investigation.” In her petition seeking Gingrich’s testimony as a witness, Willis said she relied on information made public by the House committee that’s investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

The petition says Gingrich was involved along with others associated with the Trump campaign in a plan to run television ads that “repeated and relied upon false claims about fraud in the 2020 election” and encouraged members of the public to contact state officials to push them to challenge and overturn the election results based on those false claims.

Gingrich was also involved in a plan to have Republican fake electors sign certificates falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s official electors even though Biden had won, the petition says.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Burlingame said the information sought by the Georgia special grand jury overlaps entirely with the congressional investigation, so there’s no need to require Gingrich to testify twice, since the Georgia prosecutor can obtain the transcript of Gingrich’s upcoming testimony to the congressional committee.

“They’re very thorough,” Burlingame said of the congressional investigators. “It almost sounds like the Fulton County district attorney is concerned that the professional attorneys for the select committee aren’t going to be doing a capable job. Your Honor, I assure you they will.”

Fairfax County Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Kyle Mandelbaum acknowledged there may be overlap in the two investigations but said it would be wrong to assume they have identical interests.

“The grand jury in Fulton County is specifically looking at the question of whether or not Georgia law was violated which is not necessarily the focus of the January 6 committee’s investigation,” Mandelbaum said.

The subpoena provides him immunity for his testimony and covers his lodging and transportation costs, Mandelbaum said.

Special grand juries in Georgia are generally used to investigate complex cases with many witnesses. They can compel evidence and subpoena testimony from witnesses, but they cannot issue indictments. Once its investigation is complete, a special grand jury can recommend action, but it remains up to the district attorney to decide whether to then seek an indictment from a regular grand jury.

Associated Press writer Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed.

[admin]

Trump Is Back By Unpopular Demand, Ivanka Bails on Daddy & Marjorie Taylor Greene Wants VP Spot
by Jimmy Kimmel Live
Nov 16, 2022

Donald Trump is back by unpopular demand after announcing his 2024 presidential campaign at Mar-a-Lago, he entered to a song from the musical “Les Misérables,” he gave a weird rambling speech with many false statements, Fox News cut away from him before the speech was even over, his beloved NY Post threw some shade at him, many prominent members of his inner-circle were notably absent including three of his kids, Ivanka announced that she will not be involved in her dad’s political career anymore, MyPillow Mike Lindell was on the scene all fired up and raging against the machines, Jimmy was served an ad on Twitter for a “Return of the Great MAGA King” silver coin, Trump has lost the support of some big Republican donors, Marjorie Taylor Greene is hoping for the VP spot, Herschel Walker is busy talking about Vampires, and we invited the exceptionally talented P!nk to put her talent to the test in a round of “Wing It & Sing It.”



Transcript

we have so much to get to tonight
and of course I want to start with a
young presidential hopeful named Donald
Trump the the yellelephant in the room who
is backed by unpopular demand it was a
quieter if you watch this but it was
quite the scene at Mar-A-Lago last night
starting with this entrance set to a
song from the musical Les Mis Miserables
here they come it's former first lady
Melania with her husband John Valtrex
and um I can think of no better way to
kick off another Trump campaign than
with Les Miserables it's a musical about
a criminal with a hot daughter who gets
away with in the end and
sorry I should have said spoiler alert I
didn't mean to whatever the soundtrack
Trump is waddling for president again
you know he hasn't actually conceded the
last election yet if he won that you
know if he beat Joe Biden in 2020 as he
constantly says he did he shouldn't even
be allowed to run he's termed out now
that's eight years but
one of the reasons Trump is
one of the reasons he's running again is
try to to slow down the many many
criminal investigation he's at the
center of right now he's basically a
bank robber on the run from the cops and
the White House is a dumpster behind an
Arby's he's trying to hide it he gave a
weird rambling speech with so many false
statements it makes you wonder where
he's even getting them I don't know if
he's making them up but he bragged about
many imagined accomplishments and seemed
especially proud that he never got us
into a war they said during the 2016
campaign that if he becomes president
there will never be a war within weeks
and we will have wars like you've never
seen before it will happen immediately
and yet
I've gone decades decades without a war
the first president to do it for that
long a period
it's gone decades without a war even
Donald Trump thinks his four years in
office felt like decades
[Applause]
in front of Joe Biden but he seemed kind
of out of it he was so low energy we
might have to start calling him Jeb he
was reading from a teleprompter which
you know he doesn't like to do and he
turns it into a conversation with
himself he'd be like uh we promise to
build the wall and we built the wall we
did build the wall we completed the wall
and now we will build more wall like
he's he's chatting with his own words
and while he he may not have started a
war for decades Captain bone spurs has a
plan to strike fear in the hearts of our
adversaries with the mother of all
missile defense systems we need it the
power of these missiles and the power of
a word that I refuse to say
nuclear
yeah I just you just
you just refuse to say it and then
when it comes to the type of missiles he
refuses to say Trump knows how to build
him he's got the plans right downstairs
in his basement at Mar-A-Lago
Donald Trump is mentally unbalanced and
so are the dummies who follow him here
he is musing about some grandpa style
solutions to America's drug problem pay
attention to the to the crowd's reaction
here in China when I was with president
xia said president do you have a drug
problem no no no no no we don't he
looked at me like I didn't know what I
was doing
he said no we don't have a drug how come
you don't have a drug problem he said
quick trial what is a quick trial quick
I sort of knew what is a quick trial
that's where if you get caught dealing
drugs you have an immediate and quick
trial and by the end of the day you're
executed
that's a terrible thing
but they have no drug problem you're
cheering
they're cheering for quick trials and
same-day executions huh I mean how sick
do you have to be to clap for that
especially in a room full of secret
cokeheads I mean this is
by the way I do want to say if you love
these
idea of these quick trials and and
immediate execution so much what's with
all the appeals and delays from your
armies of lawyers for the many crimes
you've been charged with let's get you
right up in front of the judge by the
end of the day let Justice be done right
I mean it's
it was alumni the speech was an hour and
four minutes long at a certain point
people were trying to leave the ballroom
but security forced them to stay it was
like a room full of melanias begging to
be set free
even Fox News cut away from his speech
before it was over not only that this is
the cover of Trump's beloved New York
Post today you see the only mention is
all the way at the bottom it says
Florida man makes announcement
hahaha and then when you go to page 26
this is real this is this article little
article says been there don that and
that's that
his cholesterol levels are unknown but
his favorite steak is served with
ketchup that's the story they put in the
New York Post for real my how the word
has turned many prominent members of
Trump's Inner Circle were notably absent
last night three of his kids didn't make
it Don Jr Ivanka and Tiffany were
nowhere to be found Eric was there
hoping to be found
um it's really just Jared and Eric it's
like just like secession Jared's Tom
Erica's cousin Greg and
um at least I think that was Jared it
could have been a Sherwin-Williams extra
wide paint swatch I don't know but
Ivanka Trump announced she will not be a
part of her father's campaign she wants
to spend more time away from her family
she said uh in a statement while I will
always love and support my father going
forward I will do so outside the
political Arena most likely from the
other side of
the glass on a prison cone but I don't
know he can't do this without Ivanka
that's like rebooting Sex in the City
without Samantha I mean you need
that character only one politician
showed up last night North Carolina
representative Madison cawthorne but
that's just because he heard there was
going to be an orgy afterwards even
creepy Matt Gaetz didn't go he claimed
it was because of the weather but I hear
he was online trying to get his
girlfriend Taylor Swift tickets and um
but you know who was there none other
than that pride of Mankato Minnesota Mr
Mike Lindell Mike Mr my pillow was on
the scene all fired up and raging
Against the Machines well nowadays it's
like I'm sorry you don't get to uh you
know get to another and you certainly
can't look inside our machine come on
that's proprietary technology in there
my brain if you told me there were rocks
and knives in my pillows you know what I
tell you take a look there's no rocks
and knives it's beautiful patented built
yeah and certainly that use promo code
rsvn yeah
all right just for the record there are
no rocks or knives in his beautiful
patented pillows
there used to be rocks but he might
smoke them all
and uh
there's a whole industry designed to
fleece the Trump faithful I got this ad
on Twitter this morning uh Return of the
great Maga King silver coin cherished
family heirloom your children will
dispose of immediately upon your death
this is a great Christmas gift for
someone you no longer invite to
Christmas Trump has already lost the
support of some big Republican donors
like Stephen A Schwartzman and Kenneth C
Griffin you know the rich guys when they
use the middle initial but both
Schwartzman and Griffin said they're
going to support different candidates
this time around they don't know who yet
they just know it won't be him
it's a good thing Donald Trump doesn't
care about money or he would be very
upset about that meanwhile his former
secretary of defense today said he's
unfit for office his former Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo said Republicans need
more seriousness less noise than leaders
who are looking forward not staring in
the rear view mirror claiming victimhood
even Melania this afternoon was spotted
arriving at Trump Tower in Manhattan she
hightailed it out of there but there's
still plenty of swamp creatures on board
for round two Trump picked up a key
endorsement last night before he even
threw his wig in the ring we know that
President Trump has a special
announcement tonight and I'll go ahead
and say right now president Trump has my
full endorsement and my support as our
Republican nominee in 2024. all right
well he's got one vote I think I know
why she's doing this we know Mike Pence
isn't going to be running mate again his
own vice president won't even endorse
Trump but Pence says he thinks
Republicans have better choices so maybe
this Goblin named Marjorie Taylor greene
is hoping she gets the nod
you're a real American and you deserve a
vice president who's as real as you are
someone who knows our history Kennedy
getting killed in the plane crash that's
another one of those
um Clinton murders right someone who
respects our democracy flood all the
government buildings go inside these are
public buildings we own them
someone who knows how to ask the tough
questions I've introduced a bill to ban
it and make it a felony to genital to
mutilate children's generals do you
stand by that
all right that was a lot someone who
knows other things too like words not
only do we have the DC jail which is the
DC Gulag but now we have Nancy Pelosi's
gazpacho police so many words and why
their due process rights are being so
fragrantly and horrifically violated
Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake
meat that grows in a Peachtree dish
Marjorie Taylor greene real American real
stupid
we've never studied in history how much
taxes people paid back in the ice ages
to warm up the Earth and melt the ice
Are you fucking kidding me?
I'm not green and I approve this message
also Hillary Clinton is part of a deep
State baby eating cabal
speaking of Marjorie Taylor greene male
fertility is on the decline according
new study researchers found worldwide
sperm counts fell by more than 51
percent since 1973 which is why we need
Herschel Walker in the Senate more than
ever before you know down in Georgia
herschel's gearing up for his runoff
with Rafael Warnock and he's doing it by
tackling the issues voters believe
matter the most the other night I was
watching this movie I was watching this
movie called Fright Night Street night
or some kind of night but it was about
vampires I don't know if you know
vampires and cool people are they not
but I'm gonna tell you something that I
found out a werewolf to kill a vampire
did you know that uh Senator your time
has expired uh I didn't I know that did
you know that Guillermo? no I didn't we
didn't know that all right we learned
something thanks

[admin]

FBI Had Informants in Proud Boys, Court Papers Suggest
by Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman
The New York Times
November 14, 2022

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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The FBI had as many as eight informants inside the far-right Proud Boys in the months surrounding the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, recent court papers indicate, raising questions about how much federal investigators were able to learn from them about the violent mob attack both before and after it took place.

The existence of the informants came to light over the past few days in a flurry of veiled court filings by defense lawyers for five members of the Proud Boys who are set to go on trial next month on seditious conspiracy charges connected to the Capitol attack.

In the papers, some of which were heavily redacted, the lawyers claimed that some of the information the confidential sources had provided to the government was favorable to their efforts to defend their clients against sedition charges and was improperly withheld by prosecutors until several days ago.

In a sealed filing quoted by the defense, prosecutors argued that hundreds of pages of documents related to the FBI informants were neither “suppressed” by the government nor directly relevant to the case of the Proud Boys facing sedition charges: Enrique Tarrio, the group’s former leader; Joseph Biggs; Ethan Nordean; Zachary Rehl; and Dominic Pezzola.

Because all of the material remains under a highly restrictive protective order, it is not possible to know what the informants told the government about the Proud Boys’ role in the Capitol attack or how that information might affect the outcome of the trial.

A closed court hearing was held Monday to discuss the informants in U.S. District Court in Washington. Lawyers for the Proud Boys have asked Judge Timothy Kelly, who is overseeing the case, to dismiss the indictment — or at least delay the trial to give them more time to investigate the newly revealed informants.

Kelly made no decision at the hearing, according to a notice placed on the docket after the proceeding ended. Because it was sealed, journalists were not allowed in the courtroom.

The dispute about the informants in the Proud Boys came on the heels of revelations that the FBI also had a well-placed source in the inner circle of Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, another far-right group that took part in the Capitol attack.

Last week, lawyers for Rhodes and four other Oath Keepers who are being tried on sedition charges planned to call the informant — Greg McWhirter, the group’s former vice president — as a defense witness, believing that his testimony would bolster their case. But on the eve of his planned appearance, McWhirter suffered a heart attack and the defense put other witnesses in his place.

Questions about informants reporting to the government from inside extremist groups have been raised repeatedly throughout the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack. They have included concerns about why the informants were not able to give the government advanced warning about plans to storm the Capitol that day or seemingly to corroborate accusations after the fact that the groups conspired in plotting the attack.

Former FBI officials say there might have been gaps in what bureau intelligence analysts had told agents to ask their informants. Analysts at the bureau are supposed to help agents connect the intelligence dots to provide a clearer picture of threat activity. The FBI’s intelligence directorate was created after 9/11 to help thwart terrorism and other threats.

It remains unclear what sorts of questions the FBI was asking its informants in the Proud Boys and how focused the bureau was on the group’s activities to undermine the results of the elections as Jan. 6 drew near. Previous court papers have suggested that some Proud Boys — including Biggs — were recruited by the FBI before the election to provide information about their adversaries in the leftist movement known as antifa.

Last year, The New York Times revealed the existence of an informant in the Kansas City chapter of the Proud Boys who took part in the storming of the Capitol with a group of his compatriots. After the attack, the informant told his handlers in interviews that he was not aware of a premeditated plan to break into the building on Jan. 6, although as a relatively low-level member of the group it is possible that he was simply not privy to the making of such plans.

Right-wing media figures and Republican politicians have often sought to use the issue of FBI informants in extremist groups to suggest that the bureau had a hand in guiding or encouraging the attack on the Capitol in a way that entrapped other rioters. No evidence has surfaced suggesting that the FBI played any role in the attack.

But the lawyers for the Proud Boys have made entirely different claims, arguing that the information the confidential sources provided to prosecutors appears to be exculpatory and could contradict the government’s chief allegation in the case: that their clients went to Washington on Jan. 6 with a plan in place to storm the Capitol and disrupt the transfer of power from President Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

The newly disclosed material called into question “whether a Proud Boy conspiracy plan to obstruct the Biden-Harris vote certification or to commit sedition ever existed or could have existed,” J. Daniel Hull, Biggs’s lawyer, wrote in papers filed Monday.

The notion of whether there was a predetermined plan to attack the Capitol or whether the violence that erupted there Jan. 6 was more spontaneous will be one of the key disputes when the Proud Boys’ trial — now scheduled to start Dec. 12 — goes in front of a jury. To prove seditious conspiracy, prosecutors will have to show that the defendants knowingly entered into an agreement to use force to stop the lawful transfer of power after the 2020 election.

If the information provided by the informants is indeed exculpatory, the lawyers for the Proud Boys could in theory call some of them to testify at the trial and rebut the government’s charges.

A similar dynamic has been playing out in recent days in the Oath Keepers sedition trial, which could go to the jury as early as this week. A central part of the defense’s strategy in the case has been to introduce evidence that the Oath Keepers had no explicit plan to attack the Capitol.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

[admin]

Trump hosted Holocaust denier at Mar-a-Lago estate during visit with Kanye West, a week after announcing 2024 run
by Maeve Reston and Kristen Holmes
CNN
Updated 8:53 AM EST, Sat November 26, 2022

Former President Donald Trump hosted White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago estate this week, demonstrating his continued willingness to associate with figures who have well-publicized antisemitic views as he embarks on another White House run.

West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, posted a video Thursday on Twitter in which he claimed that Trump “is really impressed with Fuentes,” who has repeatedly made antisemitic and racist comments as chronicled by the Anti-Defamation League.

Fuentes, West said in the Twitter video, “is actually a loyalist” to Trump, unlike others who he said abandoned the former president after the 2020 election.

In a text message conversation tweeted by West on Thursday, he and Fuentes said they both met with the former president. A source familiar with the dinner confirmed to CNN that Trump on Tuesday met with Fuentes and West, who became engulfed in controversy after repeating antisemitic conspiracy theories and making other offensive claims during an appearance on a podcast in October.

The source said that Fuentes was a guest of West, who attended the dinner along with Karen Giorno, who ran Trump’s 2016 Florida campaign, and another unidentified man. The group feasted on a Thanksgiving dinner for roughly two hours at Trump’s outdoor patio table.

Trump was engaged with Fuentes and found him “very interesting,” the source said, particularly Fuentes’ abilities to rattle off statistics and data, and his familiarity with Trump world.

During the dinner, Fuentes told Trump that he was familiar with “Trump’s base,” which preferred Trump being natural and himself, speaking off the cuff and ad-libbing. Trump said that his advisers don’t like that, and want him reading from the teleprompter.

At one point during the dinner, Trump declared that he “liked” Fuentes.

According to the source, the dinner grew tense at various times, including after West asked Trump to join his 2024 campaign ticket for president as vice president, which Trump “laughed off.” The source could not pinpoint the exact moment the former president’s mood shifted.

Trump acknowledged the dinner in a post on Truth Social Friday stating: “This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport.”

Trump repeated later Friday that he “didn’t know” Fuentes and had offered West business as well as political advice.

“I told him he should definitely not run for President, ‘any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP,’” the former president wrote on Truth Social. “Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’”

The White House on Friday condemned Fuentes’ appearance at Mar-a-Lago.

“Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America - including at Mar-A-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to CNN.

David Friedman, Trump’s former Ambassador to Israel, also condemned the former president’s association with West and Fuentes.

“To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this. Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable. I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong,” he said in a pair of tweets Friday afternoon. “Antisemites deserve no quarter among American leaders, right or left.”

West’s recent antisemitic remarks caused companies that he was affiliated with – including Adidas and Balenciaga – to sever their relationships with him. He has made numerous inflammatory statements over the years, including assertions that slavery was a “choice” and “racism is a dated concept.”

The Anti-Defamation League has identified Fuentes as a White supremacist and he has been banned from most major social media platforms for his White nationalist rhetoric. Fuentes was present on the grounds of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and he has promoted Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about fraud in the 2020 election. The House select committee investigating the events of January 6 issued a subpoena to Fuentes in January.

West tweeted late Tuesday night that he had kept Trump waiting during his first visit to Mar-a-Lago due to rain and traffic. And Right Wing Watch, a project of the left-leaning group People for the American Way, [https://www.pfaw.org/] posted Tuesday footage of West and Fuentes walking through the Miami airport together. That footage was included in the video West posted on Twitter.

This story has been updated with new reporting about the dinner.

CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this story.

*************************

Watch Rachel Maddow Highlights: Nov. 28
MSNBC
Nov 29, 2022



4:03

[Rachel Maddow] We've got the leading presidential contender for the Republican nomination in 2024, this holiday weekend, having a nice Thanksgiving dinner with Kanye West, the rapper who just lost all of his corporate sponsorship deals when he started saying he was going to go "Defcon 3 on the Jews". The leading Republican presidential candidate, their last president, Donald Trump, just hosted Mr. West this weekend, and also this man for what was apparently a very nice Thanksgiving dinner at the former president's home.

[Nick Fuentes] When you look at these things like abortion, it's popular. People like abortion. Hate it, but it's true. And you can thank the Jewish media for that. Abortion's popular; sodomy's popular; you know, being gay is popular; being a feminist is popular; sex out of wedlock is popular; contraceptives are. It's all popular. That's not to say it's good. That's not to say I like that. "Popular" means the people support it, which they do. And, uh, it sucks, and it is what it is. But that's why we need dictatorship. That's, unironically, why we need to get rid of all that. We need to take control of the media; we need to take control of the government, and force the people to believe what we believe.

[Rachel Maddow] "That's why we need a dictatorship; force people to believe what we believe. We need a dictatorship, unironically." So that clip is from People For the American Way [https://www.pfaw.org/]. They have a project called Right Wing Watch, where they monitor and document what's going on on the ultra right, on the far right fringe. And that's a great public service all of the time. I'll tell you, it becomes a fire alarm system for the whole country when someone from that fringe, someone from that far out on the political spectrum, ends up having a Thanksgiving dinner with the Republican party's leading candidate for president.

[Nick Fuentes] Here's the pathway. We have one more election where white people can make the decision. The white people got to make the right decision, and then Trump's got to get in there and never leave. That, to me, at this point, is a pathway. It's time to shut up, elect Trump one more time, and then stop having elections. We have got to talk about the fundamentals of our worldview, and what it would look like to build a society based on our distinct worldview. It looks like a society where women don't have the right to vote. And it looks like a society where boys and girls get married as teenagers and start having kids. And they don't use birth control. And they don't use contraceptives. And they have big families. And a high birth rate. And it looks like women wearing veils at church. And it looks like women not being in the workforce. Banning gay marriage is back on the menu. Banning sodomy is back on the menu. Banning contraceptives is back on the menu. And basically, we're having something like Taliban rule in America in a good way. We're having something like a Catholic Taliban rule in America. Who cares? You know, enough with the Jim Crow stuff. Who cares? Oh, to drink out of a different water fountain! Big fucking deal. Oh, no! They had to go to a different school! Their water found in that famous picture was worse! Who cares? Grow up. Drink out of the fucking water fountain. It's water. It's the same, you know. And even if it was bad, who cares? Who cares? It's better, it's better in general. We all agree.

[Rachel Maddow] "It's better; it's better. Jim Crow segregation. It was better." Almost all of that was posted by "People for the American Way, [https://www.pfaw.org/] their project Right Wing Watch which monitors stuff like this on the far right which is usually only of interest to people who study the far right, but it suddenly becomes totally relevant to everyone else in the country when a guy like that suddenly ends up invited to the home of the Republican party's leading presidential candidate, to have a private Thanksgiving dinner with him. That guy and former president Donald 8:02 Trump. I should tell you, he is also a holocaust denier. I'm not going to show you those clips of him denying the Holocaust, but they're there. He not only explicitly calls for the imposition of a dictatorship in this country, he's explicitly praised Hitler. He says Jewish people should not be allowed to participate in the U.S government. And now he's having a nice private dinner with the man most likely to be the next Republican nominee for president of the United States. So yeah, you know, "back to work on this split screen," you know. And in politics we've got sort of normal, or normal-ish, questions right now about what are the Democrats going to get done in the lame duck period? And are they working enough of the days in the lame duck period? Are they acting with enough urgency given that they're about to lose control of half of Congress? Will there be a government funding bill in time to avert another dumb government shutdown? Will the house Republican leader get enough votes to become speaker on the first ballot. Remember, we've got all these sort of normal politics headlines here on Earth One, but it's all simultaneous and adjacent to the "Deathcon 3 on the Jews" guy, and the Holocaust denier, eating turkey and stuffing with the leader of the Republican party at his home. And I feel like since this came to light over the holiday weekend, most of the talk among political circles has been about whether or not this is bad for Trump, whether or not this is going to reflect poorly on him as the leader of the Republican Party, whether this is something that might hurt him in some way, whether this might be a mistake for him, or whether this will slide off him too. Okay. The reason groups like 'People for the American Way" monitor guys like this, and keep track of what they are saying and doing, is not just because a guy like this might have an incidental effect someday on some real politician who interacts with them. No, the reason that it is worth keeping track of Holocaust denying racist agitators who advocate race war and -- I kid you not -- burning women alive in America, the reason you monitor guys like that is not just because of their potential future impact someday on other people who have power, it's because of their power, and because of the damage that they want to do. And guys like that Neo-Nazi agitators getting a big proverbial hug, getting a private audience with the Republican party's likely next-Presidential-nominee, yes sure, that reflects on that political candidate, and on his party, but more importantly it's great for the Nazis, right? It's a super charging thing for them, for their perceived legitimacy, their reach, their ability to get their message out to people, to operate, to recruit, and to do what they want to do, which in this guy's case is turning the United States of America into a Whites-Only-No-Jews-Allowed fascist Homeland under a dictator who he would please like to be Donald Trump. It is hard to have regular everyday normal politics alongside this kind of politics too. But that's where we are. And the violent ultra right will benefit greatly from this moment, whether or not any right-wing politicians do as well.

[admin]

Appeals Court Scraps Special Master Review in Trump Documents Case: The panel’s decision removed a major obstacle that had hindered the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of sensitive government documents.
by Alan Feuer and Charlie Savage
New York Times
Dec. 1, 2022
Updated 8:44 p.m. ET

The Justice Department is investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of about 13,000 documents and photographs that were hauled away from Mar-a-Lago by the F.B.I. in August.

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Thursday removed a major obstacle to the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of government documents, ending an outside review of thousands of records the F.B.I. seized from his home and freeing the Justice Department to use them in its inquiry.

In a unanimous but unsigned 21-page ruling, a three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta shut down a lawsuit brought by Mr. Trump that has, for nearly three months, slowed the inquiry into whether he illegally kept national security records at his Mar-a-Lago residence and obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

The appeals court was sharply critical of the decision in September by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who sits in the Southern District of Florida, to intervene in the case. The court said Judge Cannon never had legitimate jurisdiction to order the review or bar investigators from using the files, and that there was no justification for treating Mr. Trump differently from any other target of a search warrant.

“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the court wrote.

Limits on when courts can interfere with a criminal investigation “apply no matter who the government is investigating,” it added. “To create a special exception here would defy our nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank.’”

The panel’s ruling is set to take effect next Thursday. If there is no stay for an appeal before then, the review by the independent arbiter, or special master — Raymond J. Dearie, a judge who sits in the Eastern District of New York — would abruptly end. At that point, Judge Cannon would also be required to dismiss Mr. Trump’s lawsuit.

It was unclear whether Mr. Trump would appeal the appeals court’s decision. Lawyers for the former president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump had already asked the Supreme Court to overturn an earlier ruling by the appeals court that excluded 103 documents marked as classified from Judge Cannon’s review, but the justices rejected his request without any noted dissents.

All three of the judges on the panel that ruled on Thursday were appointees of Republican presidents — and two of them, Andrew L. Brasher and Britt Grant, had been placed on the bench by Mr. Trump himself.

The decision came on the same day that the chief federal judge of the Federal District Court in Washington ruled that the two top lawyers in Mr. Trump’s White House, Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, must testify before a grand jury investigating Mr. Trump’s role in an array of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mr. Trump faces legal jeopardy on multiple fronts, even as he begins a third bid for the White House. A special counsel, Jack Smith, is now overseeing two of the most prominent inquiries, one into Mr. Trump’s bid to cling to power after the 2020 election and the documents investigation. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

The appeals court’s ruling on Thursday was not a surprise. During a hearing on Nov. 22, a panel of the court indicated its deep skepticism of the legality of the unusual intervention by Judge Cannon.

“The law is clear,” the appeals court wrote on Thursday. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”

The ruling was an embarrassing development for Judge Cannon, a young jurist who found herself in the middle of a politically sensitive case.

She had not yet served two years on the bench when, in September, she shocked legal experts — and the government — by temporarily barring the Justice Department from using any of the seized materials in its investigation of Mr. Trump and installing a special master to review them and recommend how she should rule on the status of any documents the government and Mr. Trump’s lawyers could not agree on.

Judge Cannon’s appointment of Judge Dearie was especially unusual because she gave him the power to sift through the documents not only for those protected by attorney-client privilege, which is fairly common, but also to evaluate claims by Mr. Trump that some were protected by executive privilege.

There is no precedent for a current or former president to successfully invoke executive privilege to keep the Justice Department — a part of the executive branch — from viewing executive branch materials in a criminal investigation. The appeals court ruling did not reach that issue, however, since it ended Judge Cannon’s review on jurisdictional grounds.

During the early stages of the special master review, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asserted that he personally owned significant numbers of documents that the government said were public property under the Presidential Records Act. Those documents included dossiers about applicants for clemency that Mr. Trump received as president.

The appeals court said it was not considering or endorsing that theory. It said only that even if Mr. Trump could assert ownership over large numbers of the files, it did not mean he could demand their return at this stage of the investigation or that Judge Cannon had jurisdiction to adjudicate such a claim.

Shortly after Judge Cannon’s initial order came down, prosecutors asked the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, to reverse it and restore their ability to examine some of the most sensitive documents: a batch of about 100 that were marked as classified. The prosecutors said they needed quick and unfettered access to those materials to fully understand the potential hazards Mr. Trump had caused in storing them at Mar-a-Lago.

Within a week, the appeals court ruled in favor of the government. In their decision, the appellate panel — which included the same two Trump-appointed judges who issued the ruling on Thursday — indicated that it thought that Judge Cannon had committed a basic error and should not have gotten involved in the case at all.

Mr. Trump appealed this early ruling to the Supreme Court, which declined to block it in a terse order with no dissents. Not long after, the Justice Department returned to the 11th Circuit yet again and this time asked the court to shut down the special master’s review altogether.

The ruling on Thursday did precisely that, cutting short Judge Dearie's work before he even completed his review of the materials. During his brief tenure as a special master, Judge Dearie expressed skepticism about claims by Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the documents he was examining were in fact privileged and thus could be withheld from the Justice Department’s investigation.

In recent weeks, several witnesses connected to the investigation have appeared in front of a grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington. On Thursday, that included three close aides to Mr. Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The aides included Dan Scavino Jr., Mr. Trump’s former social media guru, William Russell and William B. Harrison, who worked for Mr. Trump when he was in the White House, the people said.

[admin]

Secretary of State's Office confirms it has received Cochise County certification
by Mary Jo Pitzl and Ryan Randazzo
Arizona Republic
December 1, 2022

Compelled by a court order, the Cochise County Board of Supervisors certified the results of the Nov. 8 election Thursday on a 2-0 vote.

The vote means all Arizona counties have agreed to send their results to the Secretary of State's Office and ends a weekslong election drama spooling out of the southeastern Arizona county.

The board's two Republican supervisors since October have raised doubts about the reliability of vote tabulation machines. Their actions resulted in a series of losing court battles, the most recent coming Thursday, when a judge ordered them to canvass the election results and get the results to the Arizona secretary of state by 5 p.m.

The Secretary of State's Office confirmed Thursday evening that it had received the Cochise certification, which will allow it to proceed with the statewide canvass, scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday. The canvass is the official proclamation of the winners from the November election and sets in motion the work on three automatic recounts required by law.

Supervisor Tom Crosby did not attend the board meeting ordered by Pima County Superior Court Judge Casey McGinley, although Crosby was present two hours earlier for the court hearing. He later told The Republic he stayed away on the advice of the board's newly hired attorney.

Crosby, along with Supervisor Peggy Judd, had ignored repeated legal advice that their actions were illegal, forcing the board to seek outside counsel to represent them.

"I don't like to be threatened," Judd said before casting her vote to certify. She said she was relieved to not be threatened with jail time, as had been intimated in a Mohave County supervisors' meeting earlier this week. However, defying a court order risked contempt charges.

Judd defended her actions, saying it was important to ensure elections are "fair and good," and balked at making the motion to certify the results. Instead, she deferred to Ann English, the board's chair and a Democrat who has opposed her colleagues' moves.

"I'm not done fighting. I couldn't even make the motion," Judd said.

The vote came after a one-hour court hearing at which McGinley ordered the board to convene a meeting Thursday afternoon to canvass the election results.

He reprimanded the board for its failure to fulfill the obligation to do so earlier this week. The hearing lasted less than a half-hour and proceeded without an attorney representing the board.

McGinley rejected Crosby's request to continue the hearing until Tuesday so the board's attorney — hired two hours before the hearing — could "get up to speed."

“The board has exceeded its lawful authority,” McGinley said, adding the law “unambiguously requires” a vote within 20 days of the election. That date was Monday, Nov. 28.

He said there is only one exception to that deadline: if votes are missing or still being tabulated. That was not the case in Cochise County, he said.

McGinley is not new to the Cochise election issue. On Nov. 7, he ruled that the board had broken the law by pursuing a 100% hand count of every ballot cast in the Nov. 8 election.

Crosby and Judd in Thursday's hearing leaned on an insistence that they needed more information about whether ballot tabulation machines were certified by an accredited laboratory. They set a Friday meeting to explore the issue further and then consider canvassing results.

English told the court that meeting was a tactic to delay certification and further air election conspiracy theories.

Attorneys for the Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans said that point was underscored by comments Judd made to the New York Times earlier this week. Judd said the machine complaints were a pretext to mask their real concern, which was Election Day problems in Maricopa County.

English called the planned Friday meeting "a sort of smack down between the Secretary of State and the election deniers," citing the agenda laid out by Crosby. The Secretary of State's Office said earlier this week it would not participate.

English called the plan "a circus that doesn’t have to happen. I’ve had enough. The public has had enough."

Hours earlier, the board held an emergency meeting and hired attorney Daniel McCauley on a 2-1 vote. But McCauley did not appear in court, telling the supervisors he needed until at least Tuesday to get familiar with the case.

English voted against the action, saying it was "too little, too late" to hire a lawyer so close to the hearing who was not familiar with the case.

She said she previously hoped to have legal representation, but hiring a lawyer so late essentially only would allow a lawyer to go to court and ask for a continuance, which she said was not in the county's best interest.

in casting her "yes" vote on the attorney hire, Judd said, "I can’t talk. It hurts. But yeah. I’m OK with doing it. I feel it’s better than doing nothing. Sorry. We did work pretty hard to try to figure that out when Mr. Blehm wasn’t available."

The supervisors on Tuesday voted to hire attorney Bryan Blehm to defend them and the county government against two lawsuits, even though they had not discussed the matter with him. On Wednesday, they were caught flat-footed when Blehm declined the offer, as did another attorney he had recommended.

The three supervisors were present in the Bisbee courtroom as McGinley considered requests from Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, as well as the retiree group, to order the board to certify election results. That certification, by law, was due Monday. But on a 2-1 vote, the board voted to delay a decision until week's end.

'This craziness has to stop':'This craziness has to stop': Ex-prosecutors recommend charging Cochise County supervisors

While McAuley, the board's emergency legal hire, was not in court, he did file a motion to move the case from state to federal court. That motion came after McGinley had concluded the hearing and called a 15-minute recess so he could ponder his decision.

The motion was never addressed. And even if it had been, it would have presented an impossibility: It wanted the case moved to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arizona. There is no such court.

The drawn-out drama also brought another late claim, one that likely will be dismissed since the certification has occurred.

On Wednesday, the county was hit with a claim seeking $25,000 in damages for the board's inaction on certification. Paul Sivertsen, a Cochise County resident, said the board's failure to certify dismissed his vote and disenfranchised his rights as a voter.

Hobbs has said if Cochise does not submit its certification in time for Monday's statewide canvass, the county's 47,000 votes would not be counted. A court order could avert that scenario.

Sivertsen is seeking the compensation because, he said in a news release, he believes monetary fines are the only way to prevent "future anti-democratic and unlawful maneuvers."