Category Archives: History and Politics

The Right to Violence

A brutal method some humans with power use to dominate others is violently punishing them for understandable anger that they themselves provoked in the other. You treat people unfairly, even brutally, and ruthlessly keep the pressure on them. Then, when resentment finally turns to anger, use violence to “put down” that anger and restore “law and order”.

We can see this same mechanism at work in our personal lives, when somebody insists we have no right to our strong feelings — no matter what may have caused them.

On a political level, it works the same way. Subjugate them, abuse them, make them mad, when they get mad point out that they are dangerous and insane, then surround them with the now ubiquitous SWAT teams empowered to use any violent means necessary to “keep the peace”. SWAT, we learn from the internet, is Special Weapons and Tactics, and these highly militarized police teams originated in Los Angeles in the late sixties in response to the Watts Riots.

Works every time, if you have a monopoly on state violence, make and enforce the laws, you have nothing to fear but the injury and death of as many people you don’t care about as needed to maintain the status quo. If the enraged bastards don’t like it, fuck ’em, bring in the militarized anti-insurgency riot police.

You can’t read any serious history of the United States and not understand that most of today’s American blacks are the descendants of chattel slaves (property with “no rights a white man is bound to respect”[1]) and, after the end of slavery, the victims of more than a century of unpunished, state-tolerated terrorism by white supremacists. You’d have to be Bill Barr to insist that open racism, upheld by law and traditionally enforced by deadly violence, is not a large part of our history as a society. Law enforcement and our legal system have been integral to this arrangement, always steadfastly protecting private property, if not always human life.

In law school our Constitutional Law casebook had a footnote to a case called US v. Cruikshank. The footnote was one sentence, to the effect that federal enforcement of all race-motivated violence had been left to the criminal codes of the individual states as a result of Cruikshank. Since every case in our system has a number for citation, and Cruikshank’s is 92 U.S. 542, I was able to read the legalistic Supreme Court decision that decided:

that the Bill of Rights did not apply to private actors or to state governments despite the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Wikipedia

The case arose from a massive racist pogrom in Grant Parish, Louisiana where a huge army of angry local whites attacked and slaughtered at least 150 blacks who were in Colfax, some of whom (a small group of armed black Civil War veterans) were defending the duly elected government. The whites were not having this, killed the black defenders as they surrendered, went into a frenzy of murderous violence that left dozens of mutilated, burnt bodies — the corpses of men, women and children– all over Colfax on Easter Sunday, 1873.

Ninety-eight perpetrators were identified and eventually charged by the newly created US Attorney in Louisiana (the DOJ was created to enforce citizens’ rights under the Fourteenth Amendment). By the time the case got to the Supreme Court only three or four defendants were still involved — charges against the rest had all evaporated. When the case got to the Supreme Court our unappealable justices ruled — uh, nothing to see here, the indictments were faultily drafted, riddled with fatal flaws — for example, the DOJ’s absurd contention that defendants evinced:

an intent to deprive the same persons of the ‘free exercise and enjoyment of the right and privilege to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property’ enjoyed by white citizens.

plus, the new laws were confusing, unenforceable, an intrusion onto the constitutionally protected criminal prosecution monopoly of the individual states, further, it is the right of each of the defeated Confederate States to decide how best to accommodate their own Negros to full citizen status and equal protection of the privileges and immunities newly conferred upon their, until recently, chattel, selves (not to say ‘persons’).

The Supreme Court case ruled strictly on the law, made almost no mention of the underlying racially-motivated massacre of blacks by a racist white “militia” of former Confederate defenders of “the Lost Cause.”

This case became the unappealable legal framework for the hundred years of anti-black terrorism that followed — let the states decide how to deal with their own citizens, black and WHITE alike. Notably, (as in Kavanaugh’s recent ruling banning extension of mail-in voting in Wisconsin that made only a glancing reference to the pandemic) the case stuck to a narrow question of law. There was no mention of the massacre itself, only of two or three murdered individuals, two blacks (one named Tillman, as I recall) and a white, and whether Cruikshank et al’s killing of them constituted an enforceably unconstitutional deprivation of a legitimately protected federal right [2].

I was gratified to see that someone has finally written a full book-length treatment of this atrocity (there was almost complete darkness on the subject when I was in law school, right before the turn of the century), it is referred to in this excellent (and horrific) short opinion piece The Massacre That Emboldened White Supremacists from the New York Times.

The citizens of our nation are famously inattentive to our history. For example, from the above opinion piece:

As Americans debate the merit of tearing down monuments to founding fathers, a monument to the men who massacred Black Americans in Colfax 147 years ago stands unopposed and largely unnoticed. Two blocks off Main Street, a 12-foot marble obelisk is the focal point of the Colfax cemetery. An inscription carved into its base declares it was “erected to the memory of the heroes” who “fell in the Colfax Riot fighting for white supremacy.” On the north side of the present-day courthouse, a historical marker reads, “On this site occurred the Colfax Riot in which three white men and 150 negroes were slain” and added that the episode “marked the end of carpetbag misrule in the South.”

During an ongoing nationwide protest over the continued brutality toward and killing of unarmed blacks by police, unarmed blacks continue to be brutalized and killed by police. Last week, a Wisconsin man named Jacob Blake was shot by police seven times, in the back, for … as far as we know, being an alleged domestic violence perpetrator with a warrant out for his arrest — who may have been in possession of a hidden knife.

A Kenosha police spokesman told the news media that Blake was reaching into his car for a knife, or perhaps even had a knife on his person, when police shot him seven times, in the back. Maybe that accounts for why the man, who amazingly survived seven bullets in the back, had been shackled to his hospital bed until yesterday– you can’t be too careful with a man who might have been reaching for a knife after having an arrest warrant for misdemeanor domestic violence and third degree sexual assault filed against him last month. Never mind that he is currently paralyzed with a spinal injury caused by a police bullet– we can’t be too careful with potentially violent perps like Jacob Blake!

As often in these cases, the sordid-sounding history of the man killed or severely injured by the police is immediately brought into the story. Police usually don’t shoot innocent people, the familiar story goes, this guy was a THUG. He had a KNIFE and CRIMINAL INTENT. He had an arrest warrant against him for A SEX CRIME. Trayvon Martin, the teenager killed by a white vigilante who shot him to death “standing his ground” under Florida law, was reputed to have had marijuana in his system when he died. Michael Brown, the kid shot to death in Ferguson, Mo., was shown, on store surveillance video, stealing a box of cigars or something mere hours before he was killed by a police officer. George Floyd was a convicted FELON! Even though he was meekly cooperating with the police when they killed him, he was BIG and REALLY SCARY!! Breonna Taylor, the Emergency Medical Technician shot to death in her own apartment in the middle of the night by plain-clothes officers who broke down her door pursuant to an erroneous no-knock warrant? Suspected (although mistakenly, as it turned out) site of an illegal drug storehouse!!!

I don’t know how a black person in America bears this kind of regular, obscene outrage, day after day, year after year, century upon century. I am not black, and my head keeps threatening to explode every time I hear the latest fucking variation on the same goddamned story about some guy who might be reaching for a knife who needed to be shot over and over by those duty-bound to serve and protect.

Humor break (c/o a friend earlier today):

A racist, a hypocrite and a liar walk into a bar.

The bartender says: “what are you having, Mr. President?”

Of course, every American knows that joke is bullshit and totally implausible bullshit, at that. The president famously doesn’t take a sip of alcohol, having seen his older brother die of alcoholism (and being too nice, which is what really killed him, according to his little brother). The president is high on life, obviously, and gets his joyfulness the natural way — by being a good person and leading a great life.

Still, there’s that small kernel of truth in the joke since the man is a racist, a hypocrite and a liar many times over. He can’t help it, that’s just the way he is, has always been, nothing he can do about it.

Except to proclaim himself the Law and Order President. The most lawless man ever to sit in the Oval Office, a man openly contemptuous of all rules, traditions and norms, and many laws as well (all of those things are for LOSERS), positions himself as the Law and Order candidate. He’s running against his own failure to end the American Carnage he warned of in his first State of the Union, in every dark, divisive, incendiary speech he’s made since. Presumably, since he’s the infallible strongman who broke it, he’s the only one who can fix it.

ROTFLMAO!

[1] From no less an authority than Chief Justice Roger Taney of the Supreme Court, in the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision that was one of the factors leading to the Civil War.

[2] The Cruikshank court dismissed the indictments against every remaining white man who rode into town as part of that enraged army and participated in the indiscriminate slaughter, after delineating the charges in its opening section:

This was an indictment for conspiracy under the sixth section of the act of May 30, 1870, known as the Enforcement Act (16 Stat. 140), and consisted of thirty-two counts.

The first count was for banding together, with intent ‘unlawfully and feloniously to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate’ two citizens of the United States, ‘of African descent and persons of color,’ ‘with the unlawful and felonious intent thereby’ them ‘to hinder and prevent in their respective free exercise and enjoyment of their lawful right and privilege to peaceably assemble together with each other and with other citizens of the said United States for a peaceable and lawful purpose.’

The second avers an intent to hinder and prevent the exercise by the same persons of the ‘right to keep and bear arms for a lawful purpose.’

The third avers an intent to deprive the same persons ‘of their respective several lives and liberty of person, without due process of law.’

The fourth avers an intent to deprive the same persons of the ‘free exercise and enjoyment of the right and privilege to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property’ enjoyed by white citizens.

The fifth avers an intent to hinder and prevent the same persons ‘in the exercise and enjoyment of the rights, privileges, immunities, and protection granted and secured to them respectively as citizens of the said United States, and as citizens of the said State of Louisiana, by reason of and for and on account of the race and color’ of the said persons.

The sixth avers an intent to hinder and prevent the same persons in ‘the free exercise and enjoyment of the several and respective right and privilege to vote at any election to be thereafter by law had and held by the people in and of the said State of Louisiana.

‘The seventh avers an intent ‘to put in great fear of bodily harm, injure, and oppress’ the same persons, ‘because and for the reason’ that, having the right to vote, they had voted.

The eighth avers an intent ‘to prevent and hinder’ the same persons ‘in their several and respective free exercise and enjoyment of every, each, all, and singular and several rights and privileges granted and secured’ to them ‘by the constitution and laws of the United States.’

The next eight counts are a repetition of the first eight, except that, instead of the words ‘band together,’ the words ‘combine, conspire, and confederate together’ are used. Three of the defendants were found guilty under the first sixteen counts, and not guilty under the remaining counts...

Dismaying that NOBODY is covering this crucial lawsuit!

I realize the “news” under our vulgar distractor-in-chief is a constant torrent of diarrhea coming at us through high-powered spray hoses and at this point most of us reflexively turn away from it. Still, the news media has not been following what several of them have fairly characterized as a crucial election 2020 story, teasing a federal ruling– by a Trump appointee– on the virtual non-existence of frequently claimed voter fraud.

I should make a separate category for this case so you can have my many posts on it all in one place. I’ll do that now. OK, click the link to view my several posts in order HERE.

The Trump campaign and the RNC brought a federal lawsuit in key swing state Pennsylvania to stop the expansion of absentee voting, which included provisions for the widespread use of drop boxes for mail-in ballots. The lawsuit was filed on June 29, 2020. There were hundreds of documents filed in this case, (410 as of last filing) you can see them all here. Click on any entry to read the public filing (any news service, incidentally, could do the same).

You can, for example, read the judge’s entire short August 13 order to Plaintiffs, granting Defendants’ motions to compel the production of actual evidence of the RNC/Trump campaign’s claims. JUDGE RANJAN’S ORDER IS HERE and at the bottom of this post for your scrolling convenience [1].

You will notice, if you read the judge’s order, that he orders Plaintiffs to produce specific, responsive evidence and that “if there are no responsive documents, Plaintiffs must state as much.” The judge details exactly what specific evidence (or admission they have none) Plaintiffs must provide in section 2) of his order.

He gives them until the close of business the following day, August 14th, to provide the evidence (which has never been produced anywhere) of the massive voter fraud and abuse they predict, or admit they don’t have evidence.

Reading the order I at first believed I may have been seeing another encouraging judicial profile in courage: a judge, appointed by Trump, telling him that his case would not go forward without evidence. Then the media went silent on this case.

I did my own research (tip of the hat to my old friend from law school who provided me the link to the docket). In light of further reading, Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan does not appear to be performing any kind of profile in courage, as I will explain in a moment.

The bold-faced type below is from the August 14 New York Times report of the order. Facing that is a section of the August 23 Reuters account of the same thing, phrased not as an “order” but as the judge asking the campaign to do something they simply declined to do, assuring the judge they’d win the case without evidence.

Both of these reports can’t be true. The judge’s order of August 13 was clear and explicit. It was actually an order, and not a polite ask the party could politely decline by telling the judge their case would be just fine without the evidence. You can see for yourself below [1] or on the actual docket of the case (above) that the “ask” narrative is ridiculous. How does a mainstream news organization make that kind of rookie blogger error?

Reviewing the filings on the online docket, we can see that Plaintiffs filed nothing on August 14, in spite of being ordered by the judge. Contempt of court? They don’t seem to have filed anything responsive to the judge’s order after August 14th either, which is surprising and confusing, since the only two stories updating the progress of the case (Reuters and this one, from the Intercept) cited their submission of hundreds of pages (“over 300 documents”, “524 pages”) of non-responsive documents containing no evidence of voter fraud.

Judge Ranjan writes well, and his analysis of the applicable law appears to be sound. He appears to be a qualified judge, unlike some of his recently appointed extreme-right ideologue colleagues (some deemed unqualified by the non-partisan American Bar Association). Yet he crafted a few beautifully tell-tale lines in his opinions in this case which suggest he may not be as dispassionate in this matter as his August 13 order might make him appear. Here are two.

The first is from his August 13 order to Trump 2020 and the RNC to produce evidence (addressing defendants’ request for attorneys fees for being forced to fight a lawsuit brought without evidence, to suppress the vote):

4) Pursuant to Rule 37(a)(5)(A)(ii), the Court finds that Plaintiffs’ positions were substantially justified, and so will not award reasonable expenses or attorneys’ fees.

That might be fair enough, if that subsection of Rule 37 states some legal ground for presuming a lawsuit “substantially justified” until proven otherwise or something like that. On the other hand, if the cited rule is not so generous, Judge Ranjan summarily concludes that the RNC/Trump positions were “substantially justified” even without seeing any of the evidence he ordered them to produce. In that case — hmmmm… 

As to Trump’s “substantially justified” lawsuit, this next bit is as close to analysis as we get from the judge. The audacity of this amazingly supple sentence would make legalistic wordsmith and prose contortionist Robert Mueller III blush and fall on the floor:

In the context of recently analyzing why the law compels him to “stay” the case until the resolution of related state law cases, he crafts this wonder of a sentence, which I have carved up a bit, for emphasis and ease of appreciation:

…while Plaintiffs do assert one facial constitutional challenge and allege a few violations of statutory provisions 

that are probably not ambiguous,

these claims are intertwined with those that are less clear.  [2]

Dig it, I’m not saying every one of these assertions are necessarily legally ambiguous, a few of them are probably not, one is arguably an actual constitutional claim, but those claims that are probably not ambiguous are freely mixed in and entangled with claims for which we have even less confidence of their probable unambiguity, if you know what I’m sayin’.

I read that abortion of a sentence, the truth of what I was actually reading hit me hard and my heart sank. The words that came into my mind next were these, uttered recently to a cheering audience in red MAGA hats by the innocent and heroic non-perjurer Michael Flynn (and much in the news lately as well):

Where we go one, we go all.

[1]

ORDER GRANTING MOTIONS TO COMPEL [ECF 366, ECF 368]

After considering the parties’ submissions on the motions to compel, the Court hereby ORDERS as follows: 

1) As to the motion to compel filed by the Democratic Party Intervenors [ECF 366], Plaintiffs shall respond fully to the Democratic Intervenors’ Interrogatory Nos. 1-9 and Document Requests Nos. 1-4 and 9 with specific information or documents requested and/or specifically identify by Bates number which document(s) produced are responsive to each Document Request and Interrogatory. If there are no responsive documents, Plaintiffs must state as much.

2) As to the motion to compel filed by the Sierra Club Intervenors [ECF 368], the Court finds that instances of voter fraud are relevant to the claims and defenses in this case, particularly since Plaintiffs are reserving their right to introduce such evidence or retain an expert regarding the same. Plaintiffs shall produce such evidence in their possession, and if they have none, state as much. More specifically, Plaintiffs must respond fully to the Sierra Club Intervenors’ Document Request Nos. 1 and 15, “as narrowed to include documents, data, analysis and communications relating to allegations Case 2:20-cv-00966-NR Document 374 Filed 08/13/20 Page 1 of 2 2 in the Amended Complaint concerning potential or actual fraud or voter misconduct,” including as relates to: a) “non-uniform procedures concerning drop boxes in Pennsylvania”; b) “fraudulent voting resulting from the use of drop boxes, absentee ballots, or vote-by-mail in Pennsylvania”; c) “fraud resulting from the use of third-party groups to collect absentee or mail ballots in Pennsylvania”; d) “the existence and/or prevalence of fraud, ballot harvesting, ballot manipulation or destruction, or duplicitous voting in Pennsylvania”; and e) “the prevalence and/or counting of absentee or mail ballots in Pennsylvania that lack a secrecy envelope, whose envelope contains any text, mark, or symbol which reveals the elector’s identify, political affiliation, or candidate preference, or whose envelope does not include on the outside envelope a completed declaration signed by the elector.” 

3) Plaintiffs shall provide supplemental responses and documents consistent with the foregoing no later than August 14, 2020. 

4) Pursuant to Rule 37(a)(5)(A)(ii), the Court finds that Plaintiffs’ positions were substantially justified, and so will not award reasonable expenses or attorneys’ fees.

[2] Judge Ranjan concludes:

Thus, the state court’s resolution of the uncertain questions could narrow even these claims, or at least cause Plaintiffs to present them in a different posture. Under these exceptional circumstances, the mandatory elements of Pullman abstention are satisfied.

The long “Libertarian” campaign against the US Postal Service

In their single-minded determination to privatize every aspect of American government, outside of the military and the police (and possibly local fire departments) wealthy lovers of Liberty have long eyed the popular United States Postal Service as ripe for privatization. The history of this well-engineered plan is discussed here. It is laid out in an article HERE

Ridding us all of the US Postal Service was a longtime dream of America’s most aggressive and influential Libertarian, Charles Koch. Koch-funded institutes, think-tanks, candidates and other organs of influence have moved his once extremist vision into mainstream Republican politics Here is a short history of the recent, organized Republican/Trump administration attempt to bankrupt and dismantle the public postal system.

The skinny: 2006 the lame duck Republican Senate (rascals voted out in the blue wave that preceded Obama 2008), a few days before Christmas, in the dead of night, by voice vote, passed the crippling , Postal Accountablity and Enhancement Act, forcing the Postal Service to fully fund all pensions 75 years in advance, eventually creating a $72,000,000, hole in the USPS budget.

It turns out that, during the Obama administration, of course, Mitch McConnell blocked the nominations by Obama for the USPS Board of Governors. This left the board vacant and allowed Trump to fill all vacancies. This allowed the USPS Board of Governors to appoint Louis DeJoy, until May the finance director of the Trump 2020 campaign, during the pandemic, when voting by mail became much more crucial to ensuring everyone’s right to vote safely. This appointment allowed DeJoy to remove mailboxes and high-speed sorting machines and institute strict rules about overtime in order to hobble the timely delivery of mail.

As always, nothing to see here. Nothing to fucking see here!

In other news:

Both of these things cannot be true

A federal judge ordered Trump to produce evidence by August 14th, a judge politely asked Trump if he felt like producing evidence.   Both cannot be true.

President Trump, as part of his open national effort to suppress the “Democrat” vote, has gone to court to challenge the use of drop box voting in Pennsylvania.   He won that key state’s twenty electoral votes in 2016 by a whopping 0.7 percentage points, 44,292 votes.   The more people he stops from casting ballots, the better his chance to win the Electoral College votes of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

Trump knows that his best, likely his only, chance of re-election lies in motivating his diehard base by constantly stoking their anger, their most extreme fears, driving them to the polls in their full 40% numbers, and making sure large numbers of voters for the other party do not get to vote.   He is also setting things up to contest the results of another “rigged” election if he loses.  He will do this in court and by “Second Amendment” means, if necessary.  Those who believe Trump is fighting a cabal of Satanic pedophile cannibals will take up arms, as they did recently against the tyranny of a “Democrat” governor who attempted to force them to wear masks during an extremely infectious pandemic.

Trump’s legal team in the Western District of Pennsylvania made explosive claims about widespread voter fraud, claims they offered no evidence to support.   As Bill Barr has said when questioned about what proof he has of voter fraud: “it’s obvious!”.    The judge in the Pennsylvania case was appointed by Trump and McConnell.   It seemed Trump might have another Neomi Rao, the loyally partisan DC District Court of Appeals appointee, overseeing his claims that to allow widespread absentee voting in Pennsylvania would inevitably lead to massive “Democrat” fraud.

On August 13 the federal judge in that case ordered the Trump campaign and the RNC to submit evidence of fraud or admit it had none.   As reported the following day in the New York Times:

Screenshot_20200815-003724_Messages

Though this order appeared to be a do-or-die profile in courage by this 42 year-old Trump appointee, drawing a line in the federal court sand against the president’s constant abuse of the court system to delay and bully (in cases he almost always loses in the end), there was no media follow up on this case. Over the following days I wrote to news directors at several outlets, was in communication with the news director at WESA, the public radio station in Pittsburgh, where the district courthouse is. The only article I saw was published on the Intercept website. It is headlined:

TRUMP COMES UP EMPTY WHEN PRESSED FOR EVIDENCE OF ELECTION FRAUD IN COURT:

The Trump campaign’s 524-page response to a discovery demand turned up precisely zero instances of mail-in vote fraud.

WESA published this piece earlier today.

This morning a friend sent me this Reuters piece which contains this, eh, analysis:

The Trump campaign says the ballot drop box invites fraud. The federal judge asked the campaign to provide evidence of actual fraud, but the campaign declined, arguing it did not have to do so in order to win the case.

The upshot of the Reuters update is that federal judge Ranjan put the federal lawsuit on hold to allow state lawsuits to resolve the state law issues. Presumably, on the advice of his superiors, the new judge chose to “stay” the case rather than dismiss the complaint outright as a flagrantly political stunt submitted in bad faith and without any evidentiary basis. Reuters reports:

The Republican president has repeatedly and without evidence said that an increase in mail-in ballots would lead to a surge in fraud, although Americans have long voted by mail.

There is perhaps no more consequential lawsuit than the one in Pennsylvania, which Trump won by less than 1 percentage point in 2016 and is considered essential to his re-election effort.

J. Nicholas Ranjan, U.S district judge for western Pennsylvania, said the federal case brought by the Trump campaign would not move forward until similar lawsuits in state courts are completed or unless they are delayed.

But what’s with Reuters’ ridiculously anodyne statement of Trump’s apparent defiance of a court order?

but the campaign declined, arguing it did not have to do so in order to win the case.

The federal judge didn’t “ask,” he ordered the campaign and the RNC to produce evidence or state that they had none, according to every report I read a week earlier.  A judge does not ask when issuing a court order. That’s why it’s called an “order”. 

The powerful plaintiffs respectfully disagreed with the judge’s “request” and said they’d win even without evidence, like in the rigged Senate “impeachment” “trial”.   

What the fuck, man, is everybody asleep?

On His Way Back from Epstein’s?

World-class instinctual expert on propaganda, Adolf Hitler, applauded the Allied propagandists who, during the World War (the first, and at the time, only one) created incendiary, aggressively lying captions for news photos.  These captions effectively inspired hatred, rage and terror, three things needed to make an army fight a hated enemy (or civilian group, for that matter) to the death.   Mr. Hitler could not endorse this tested and effective technique of creating lying captions strongly enough.  He sang its praises lustily in the pages of Mein Kampf.     

So, using this principle, I could take, say, an otherwise innocent picture of somebody, like this one:

And simply provide a scandal-evoking caption like:

Coming home from Epstein’s?

to suggest, without a shred of evidence (and with perfect deniability– it’s just a question!), that the man pictured here is with a child prostitute, solicited and groomed by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell [1], for the use of wealthy, influential pedophiles. The girl is a takeout order.

It is a small step from producing fake photographic “proof” (the kid is actually a young self-made entrepreneur-in-training named Ivanka Trump) to spinning the rest of the conspiracy– not only does this evil pervert pay a sex-trafficker to kidnap this young girl so he can take her away in his limo to sexually abuse her, but, even worse, not long after this picture was taken he murdered her and drank her blood.

And, of course, as the mysterious and all-knowing oracle named W preaches: only Joe Biden can save us from this dastardly plot hatched by this depraved sex-pervert cannibal and his likeminded followers!!!

[1] The above link will take you to a long Guardian article about Maxwell’s father, Ian Robert Maxwell, controversial self-made millionaire media titan and politician and his influence on Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend. In Ghislane’s larger-than-life father’s defense, and you have to love it, his widow had this to say:

In her autobiography, Betty, who died aged 92 in 2013, described Maxwell as bullying, unfaithful and frequently absent. But she insisted he was “not the degenerate monster” many said he was.

source

Worthwhile investigations take time

I heard two award winning investigative reporters say that time is the single most important aspect of doing a full investigation into anything.   If you have the time to follow every lead, and go where that lead takes you, you will discover things that are impossible to learn if you’re working under a deadline.   To perfect any difficult thing, there is no substitute for time.   Robert Caro, the great biographer and historian, famously sometimes takes a year or longer to dig for the truth about a single disputed fact that troubles him.

Let’s take a moment to consider the gift of time itself, the single greatest gift we have, until we don’t have it any more.  Brother David Steindl-Rast gives a beautiful meditation on gratefulness for the gift of time and our ability to appreciate the wonders our senses provide us, if we take a few moments every day to pay attention.   He speaks midway through this beautifully illustrated TED talk by visionary nature photographer Louie Schwartzberg.   Well worth ten minutes to watch in its entirety, the monk’s inspirational short speech is cued up HERE (if you’re in a hurry).

 

 

Back to investigations, my own leisurely dive into my father’s life is a perfect example of the benefit of spending as much time as needed to gather something worthwhile.  Without any time limit, I carefully wrote out everything I know or could imagine about my father’s life.  I constructed this tricky puzzle, with many key pieces missing, in a darkened room, free from any thought that I had to rush.  In the end, after more than two years of doing this daily, I am finally able to truly understand my father’s motivations — in a way that was impossible for me to grasp as I was working toward it.   I don’t agree with every position he took, but I feel like I completely understand why he took each one.  That empathetic view was unimaginable to me as I was working over the sketchy puzzle in the dimness.

A long, thoughtful investigation will always be more fruitful than one done in a hurry.   We tend to miss details when we rush.  Sometimes these details can be very important.   The gift of time can cut both ways, as when it is extended or contracted for an unscrupulous purpose.

If, for example, A.G. Bill Barr empowers a federal prosecutor to launch a limitless, global exploration into the detailed investigation into Mr. Trump and associates that he calls “a travesty” based on the “flimsiest” of evidence, embarked on after illegal “spying” — after enough time and resources are invested something will likely be turned up about some irregularity or impropriety.    Something concrete to support Barr’s politically handy theory of partisan “presidential harassment” and baseless “spying” on a president who (in spite of massive proof to the contrary) took no help from Russia or anyone else.

As it turned out, in the case of “Russiagate,” there was incorrect information on two of the four original FISA warrants that began the surveillance and investigation into the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russian state actors who were later shown to have meddled directly in all fifty US states on behalf of Mr. Trump.  False information, perhaps a dozen instances of it, in at least two applications for the FISA warrants to wiretap Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page [1]. 

After enough digging by a team of prosecutors and investigators, a malefactor was found, an FBI lawyer who left out that Page had been an informant for the CIA at one time.    A smoking gun!    As announced a few days ago, this now unmasked traitor (who claims the mistake was inadvertent, not part of a Deep State coup d’etat against a duly elected American president) is going to plead guilty for this deliberate misstatement on an application for the original FISA warrant that got operation Crossfire Hurricane up and running.   

I’d always thought the standard of proof for a FISA warrant to be approved was fairly low.  I’d understood that something like 99% of them were approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  Though 99% of them are granted, based on probable cause to reasonably suspect a national security threat, the standard of proof to submit a warrant is higher than I supposed.   Here is an article extensively quoting an FBI insider’s description of how high the bar for a FISA warrant actually is.

That said, the DOJ’s own Inspector General, like the DOJ’s Special Counsel Mueller before him, and the Republican majority Senate Intel Committee since [2], determined that there was adequate legal predicate for the investigation of what is now known to be widespread, high level cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia, an investigation that resulted in numerous prosecutions and guilty pleas.   The DOJ’s IG pointed out the errors and omissions in the paperwork to get the FISA warrant and concluded that ambiguities in FBI and DOJ policy need to be tightened up.   He also made a referral for prosecution, which was not publicized much at the time.

It turns out the FBI lawyer was referred for prosecution by DOJ Inspector General Horowitz, not by the Barr/Durham criminal investigation [3].   But that is not for lack of effort by Barr/Durham who are determined to have some dramatic criminal indictments for an October Surprise to help their candidate.

With enough time and effort, a dogged team of investigators can usually turn up some kind of wrongdoing, about something.  If not Whitewater, for example, incriminating, irrefutable DNA on a blue dress.   Contrast this kind of thorough long-game investigation with one conducted under a tight deadline.

The tight negotiated deadline in the FBI’s five-day investigation into the sexual impropriety charge against Brett Kavanaugh is an example of a  investigation starved for time to investigate.   Even within that tight time frame, if the intent had been to verify or dismiss the allegation against the judge, the FBI could easily have learned if there was a house among that small circle of people at the gathering nobody specifically recalled (except for the girl who was traumatized) that fit the description the witness gave.   You walk up the stairs, bathroom on the left, bedroom directly across.   Who owned the home during the summer in question?   Did the parents work late every day?   Were they in town during the month the event nobody remembered took place? 

The answers to those relatively straight-forward questions make it more likely than not that one or the other was telling the truth, based on a now verified (or not) recollection of place.  Confirm the place, confirm the time frame, re-interview everyone there with this new information, other leads emerge, in time.

Of course, some investigations are merely for show, to demonstrate a willingness to investigate the truth or falsity of the statements of those involved, even if, as in the case of the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford controversy, the FBI spoke to neither Kavanaugh nor Blasey Ford, nor Kavanaugh’s high school best friend, who was allegedly also in the room, also drunk, laughing uproariously and finally throwing himself on top of the two teenagers struggling on the bed, allowing one to escape.

Time, the only gift any of us cannot do without.

 

[1]  Wikipedia

Carter William Page (born June 3, 1971) is an American petroleum industry consultant and a former foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential election campaign.[1] Page is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy Capital, a one-man investment fund and consulting firm specializing in the Russian and Central Asian oil and gas business.[2][3][4]

[2]  Wikipedia:

The Republican-controlled Committee released its final report on 2016 Russian election interference in August 2020, finding that despite problems with the FISA warrant requests used to surveil him, the FBI was justified in its counterintelligence concerns about Page. The Committee found Page evasive and his “responses to basic questions were meandering, avoidant and involved several long diversions.” The Committee found that although Page’s role in the campaign was insignificant, Russia may have thought he was more important than he actually was.[101]

[3] Wikipedia 

Horowitz did fault the FBI for overreaching and mistakes during the investigation. These included failing to disclose when applying for a FISA warrant to surveil Page in October 2016 that he had provided the Central Intelligence Agency details of his prior contacts with Russian officials, including the incident the FBI indicated made Page’s conduct most suspicious.[84] In addition, Horowitz found that Kevin Clinesmith, an attorney in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of General Counsel (OGC), intentionally altered an interagency email to exclude from the FISA warrant application that Page was a CIA source from 2008 to 2013.[84][92] According to the Horowitz Report, if the FISA court judges had been informed of Page’s CIA relationship, his conduct might have seemed less suspicious, although the Report did not speculate on “whether the correction of any particular misstatement or omission, or some combination thereof, would have resulted in a different outcome.”[84][93] Horowitz referred Clinesmith to prosecutors for potential criminal charges.[94] On August 14, 2020, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a felony for making a false statement by altering the email.[95][96]

Horowitz attributed the warrant problems to “gross incompetence and negligence” rather than intentional malfeasance or political bias.[97] In a December 10, 2019, interview on Hannity, Page indicated that he had retained attorneys to review the Horowitz Report and determine whether he has grounds to sue.[98]

In December 2019, the Justice Department secretly notified the FISA court that in at least two of the 2017 warrant renewal requests “there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause” to believe Page was acting as a Russian agent.[99]

In a subsequent analysis of 29 unrelated FISA warrant requests, Horowitz found numerous typographical errors but just two material errors, which were determined not to impact the justifications for the resulting surveillance.[100]

Update on Trump 2020-RNC filing of evidence of vote-by-mail fraud!

In granting a motion in the case Trump 2020 and the RNC brought to restrict alternatives to live, in-person voting in Pennsylvania, Judge Ranjan ordered Trump’s lawyers to submit evidence of mail-in voting fraud or admit that it has no evidence.    Never ones to be put in a corner, or back down, or admit their claim was based on nothing but a desire to win at any cost, the Trump campaign chose a third option:   they submitted 524 pages of what purported to be evidence of fraud. 

Did they offer any actual evidence that allowing voters to submit mail-in ballots at drop boxes (to get around Trump mega-donor Louis DeJoy’s multi-pronged slowdown of US Postal Service mail delivery): “provides fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos.”???

No.

Did they admit that they had no proof?

No.

524 pages, your honor, some of it redacted.   Read it and weep, chumps.  One of the parties in the lawsuit had this comment after reading it all.

“Not only did the campaign fail to provide evidence that voter fraud was a widespread problem in Pennsylvania, they failed to provide any evidence that any misconduct occurred in the primary election or that so-called voter fraud is any sort of regular problem in Pennsylvania,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim director of Common Cause PA, one of the parties in the lawsuit. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

source

Beautiful NY Times nuance in arguable Trump perjury

You have to admire a newspaper that can report that Senate Republicans “rejected” Trump’s claim (under oath) that he did not recall talking to Roger Stone about the perfectly timed release of hacked DNC emails, while fairly pointing out that the Senate Intel Committee report did not state that Trump was lying.   They rejected his claim, yet didn’t claim he was lying, though they rejected the truth of what he submitted under oath.

A neat display of lawyerly Republican contortions and a nice bit of New York Times journalism, in an article that notes Trump and Stone spoke by phone at least 39 times (that are known) from March to November 2016, and that they spoke (on a Trump assistant’s phone, as the careful conspirators often did, for deniability) on the eve of the disclosure of hacked emails that was timed to knock the “you can grab ’em by the pussy” tape off of the news.

Let’s have a look at this neat bit of journalistic fairness:

The Republican-led committee rejected Mr. Trump’s statement to prosecutors investigating Russia’s interference that he did not recall conversations with his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. about the emails, which were later released by WikiLeaks.

Senators leveled a blunt assessment: “Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”

The senators did not accuse Mr. Trump of lying in their report, released on Tuesday, the fifth and final volume from a three-year investigation that laid out extensive contacts between Trump advisers and Russians.

source

Beautiful, no?   They rejected Trump’s claim under oath that he didn’t recall ever talking to Stone about the WikiLeaks dump, yet… they did not accuse Mr. Trump of lying.   

Both fair and balanced. 

Meanwhile, no Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee will talk to the New York Times.   You can’t blame them.  As Mr. Barr told Representative Swalwell in reply to his question about whether he was investigating Mr. Trump for commuting the sentence of Mr. Stone, who bragged about dummying up for Mr. Trump and not turning rat, “why should I?”

As for convicted perjurer Roger Stone, he dismissed the whole thing as a fabrication based on the sworn testimony of two fucking liars, two stinkin’ rats.

In fairness to the Grey Lady, the editorial board did publish this today, entitled The Trump Campaign Accepted Russian Help to Win in 2016.  Case Closed:

A bipartisan report released Tuesday by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee cuts through the chaff. The simplicity of the scheme has always been staring us in the face: Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign sought and maintained close contacts with Russian government officials who were helping him get elected. The Trump campaign accepted their offers of help. The campaign secretly provided Russian officials with key polling data. The campaign coordinated the timing of the release of stolen information to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The editorial board takes a paragraph or two to debunk the narrative being spun by AG Barr that “Russiagate” was a transparent partisan attempt to persecute the president.   Then:

The committee documented that, on Oct. 7, 2016, Mr. Stone received advance notice of the impending release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump brags about sexually assaulting women. In response, Mr. Stone made at least two phone calls arranging for WikiLeaks to release stolen internal emails from the Democratic National Committee.

it concludes:

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. In less than three months, the American people could re-elect a man who received a foreign government’s help to win one election and has shown neither remorse nor reservations about doing so again.

Case closed, voters?   Or, a second Civil War against the angry, violent hoards who hate the white Christian values typified by great men like Donald Trump, William Barr, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence and Michael Flynn?

 

Paul Manafort — the spy who did not “collude”

“According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed Mr. Kilimnik [Russian intelligence officer] on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.” 

source

Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, a man fond of expensive jackets made out of things like ostrich, was a founding partner, with self-proclaimed “political dirty trickster” Roger Stone, of the longtime DC lobbying/campaigning firm Black, Manafort and Stone.   They were pioneers in campaigning for national elections (starting with Ronald Reagan’s presidential run) and then profiting as lobbyists by providing paid access to their candidates once in office.

Manafort later made millions grooming and helping Kremlin-backed Ukrainian politician Viktor F. Yanukovych become president of Ukraine.  Yanukovych’s successful presidential run, orchestrated by Manafort, was backed by pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs, as well as at least one Russian oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska.   Would-be strongman Yanukovych was forced out of office for corruption and abuses of power by a popular uprising in 2014 and fled to Russia. 

Manafort felt he’d been stiffed out of millions in fees that were owed to him for his tireless efforts on behalf of Yanukovych and his pro-Putin backers.  The billionaire Deripaska believed Manafort owed him a small fortune on a business deal gone bad.   Manafort, needing money, volunteered to head Trump’s presidential campaign, working without a fee, for the promise of a big payday from his wealthy longtime associates in Russia and Ukraine.   

In the course of his work for the Trump campaign Manafort met with, communicated secretly with, and gave detailed, strategic voter and campaign information to, a Russian intelligence officer named Konstantin V. Kilimnik.   Manafort did this important but illegal work, with agents of a foreign adversary, to get his client Mr. Trump elected secretly, like a spy.   Thus concludes the Rubio-Cotton Report, volume five, released by the Senate Intel Committee yesterday.   The report Marco Rubio spins as proving once and for all that there was “no collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence.

Stone and Manafort are both convicted felons who lied under oath to the Mueller investigators, but the extent of Manafort’s direct ties to Putin’s intelligence service was revealed yesterday for the first time by the Senate report.

The following is from the New York Times article outlining what was revealed about Manafort’s extensive ties to, and communications with, a close longtime associate, Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik. 

The report portrayed Mr. Manafort as deeply compromised by years of business dealings with those oligarchs. Collectively, they had paid him tens of millions of dollars, lent him millions more and may also have owed him millions.

These complex financial entanglements apparently figured in Mr. Manafort’s decision to give Mr. Kilimnik inside campaign information, including confidential polling data and details of Mr. Trump’s campaign strategy. The report builds on other evidence suggesting that Mr. Manafort hoped that Mr. Kilimnik would open up lucrative business deals with the oligarchs in return or that they would consider the value of the information as its own form of payment.

and:

The report said Mr. Kilimnik was Mr. Manafort’s link to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and has acted “as a proxy for the Russian state and intelligence services” since at least 2004, when Mr. Manafort apparently met him.

Mr. Deripaska, who has worked to install pro-Kremlin governments around the globe, initially hired Mr. Manafort as a political consultant, the report said. A group of pro-Russia oligarchs in Ukraine later became the financiers of Mr. Manafort’s operations to help Viktor F. Yanukovych, a politician aligned with Russia, become Ukraine’s president.

Mr. Manafort recognized the Kremlin’s interests, the report said. “This model can greatly benefit the Putin government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitments to success,” he wrote in a memo to Mr. Deripaska.

The report called Mr. Manafort’s efforts for the oligarch “in effect, influence work for the Russian government and its interests.”

No collusion, baby!!!   Nothing to see here!   Liberal fascist lies, unwittingly abetted by Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio!    Traitors, devils and darkness!!!!

Of course, the president’s enemies will try to spin this to make Manafort look guilty of spying or treason.   The New York Times continues, citing the Cotton-Rubio report released yesterday:

Despite questions about who was behind Mr. Kilimnik — both financially and politically — Mr. Manafort increasingly depended on him. But by 2014, the Ukraine work had dried up.

Mr. Yanukovych had been forced out as president after a popular uprising and fled to Russia. Mr. Manafort claimed the Ukrainian oligarchs had stiffed him out of millions for his work for Mr. Yanukovych. And Mr. Deripaska was trying to collect from Mr. Manafort for a failed private equity deal in Eastern Europe.

Now broke, Mr. Manafort volunteered to work for the Trump campaign, which hired him in March 2016. In a memo, Mr. Manafort offered to brief Mr. Deripaska on “this development with Trump.”

Mr. Manafort also speedily passed along the news of his new job to Mr. Kilimnik, who traveled to the United States specifically to meet him in May and again in August 2016. According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed Mr. Kilimnik on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.

After he rose to campaign chairman, Mr. Manafort also instructed his deputy, Rick Gates, to periodically share confidential Trump campaign polling data with Mr. Kilimnik, including surveys showing what voters most disliked about Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent. Mr. Gates “understood that Kilimnik would share the information with Deripaska,” the report said.

The transfer of internal campaign data to a known Russian agent is “about as clear a coordination or cooperation between two entities as could be established,” said Senator Angus King, a Maine independent on the Senate Intelligence Committee who votes with Democrats.

The president’s enemies try to make it sound like secretly meeting with a member of a foreign intelligence organization and sharing detailed election polling and voter information with a country that later is shown to have hacked into electronic elections in all fifty states, in order to give their chosen candidate victories by tiny majorities in each key swing state, is some kind of nefarious crime, something akin to treason.

We never get tired of slinging these kind of outrageous, slanderous, libelous allegations against the best people, do we?

“According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed [Russian intelligence officer] Mr. Kilimnik on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.”

SO?

Flynn– from the Mueller witch hunt

While I was looking for something else (Mueller’s characterization of Trump’s evasive written statements under oath– I think it was “incomplete and inadequate”), I came across these paragraphs on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.  These are from the section, starting on page 191 of Mueller’s first volume, about obstruction of his investigation into Russian interference.

4. False Statements and Obstruction of the Investigation

The Office determined that certain individuals associated with the Campaign lied to investigators about Campaign contacts with Russia and have taken other actions to interfere with the investigation. As explained below, the Office therefore charged some U.S. persons connected to the Campaign with false statements and obstruction offenses.

 

Michael Flynn agreed to be interviewed by the FBI on January 24, 2017, four days after he had officially assumed his duties as National Security Advisor to the President. During the interview, Flynn made several false statements pertaining to his communications with the Russian ambassador.

First, Flynn made two false statements about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak in late December 2016, at a time when the United States had imposed sanctions on Russia for interfering with the 2016 presidential election and Russia was considering its response. See Flynn Statement of Offense. Flynn told the agents that he did not ask Kislyak to refrain from escalating the situation in response to the United States’s imposition of sanctions. That statement was false. On December 29, 2016, Flynn called Kislyak to request Russian restraint. Flynn made the call immediately after speaking to a senior Transition Team official (K.T. McFarland) about what to communicate to Kislyak. Flynn then spoke with McFarland again after the Kislyak call to report on the substance of that conversation. Flynn also falsely told the FBI that he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which Kislyak stated that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to the U.S. sanctions as a result of Flynn’s request. On December 31, 2016, Flynn in fact had such a conversation with Kislyak, and he again spoke with McFarland within hours of the call to relay the substance of his conversation with Kislyak. See Flynn Statement of Offense ¶ 3. 194 U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Work Product // May Contain Material Protected Under Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)

Second, Flynn made false statements about calls he had previously made to representatives of Russia and other countries regarding a resolution submitted by Egypt to the United Nations Security Council on December 21, 2016. Specifically, Flynn stated that he only asked the countries’ positions on how they would vote on the resolution and that he did not request that any of the countries take any particular action on the resolution. That statement was false. On December 22, 2016, Flynn called Kislyak, informed him of the incoming Trump Administration’s opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution. Flynn also falsely stated that Kislyak never described Russia’s response to his December 22 request regarding the resolution. Kislyak in fact told Flynn in a conversation on December 23, 2016, that Russia would not vote against the resolution if it came to a vote. See Flynn Statement of Offense ¶ 4.

Flynn made these false statements to the FBI at a time when he was serving as National Security Advisor and when the FBI had an open investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including the nature of any links between the Trump Campaign and Russia. Flynn’s false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on that ongoing investigation. Flynn Statement of Offense ¶¶ 1-2. They also came shortly before Flynn made separate submissions to the Department of Justice, pursuant to FARA, that also contained materially false statements and omissions. Id. ¶ 5. Based on the totality of that conduct, the Office decided to charge Flynn with making false statements to the FBI, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a). On December 1, 2017, and pursuant to a plea agreement, Flynn pleaded guilty to that charge and also admitted his false statements to the Department in his FARA filing. See id.; Plea Agreement, United States v. Michael T. Flynn, No. 1:17-cr-232 (D.D.C. Dec. 1, 2017), Doc. 3. Flynn is awaiting sentencing.

source  at 194-195

Flynn is awaiting sentencing, the immediate dismissal of his case by Trump gunsel William Pelham Barr (who overruled Mueller and deemed Flynn’s lies innocently immaterial [1]), or, if all goes south, a pre-hearing — perfectly legal — pardon by the president.

USA!   USA!!!

 

[1]  From Mueller (above)   

Flynn’s false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on that ongoing investigation. Flynn Statement of Offense ¶¶ 1-2.

They also came shortly before Flynn made separate submissions to the Department of Justice, pursuant to FARA, that also contained materially false statements and omissions. Id. ¶ 5. Based on the totality of that conduct, the Office decided to charge Flynn with making false statements to the FBI, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a).