Category Archives: Law and Justice

Fascism does not succeed without mass desperation

Inheriting a fairly thriving economy (an unjust one, but by the measures we use to determine the health of a capitalist economy, healthy) and a Congressional budget that promoted renewable energy and allocated funds to address many other longstanding problems, Trump went to work deliberately negating the will of the majority, as expressed in Congress, and tanking the world’s richest economy. In doing so he also sought to crush all hope for a sustainable and more equitable future for 90% of Americans.

Make people insecure enough, gouge them for services they need, deny them health care, and food, demonstrate your right to rough up, detain and deport anyone you like with masked, unidentified squads of secret immigration police not accountable to any laws, remove all hope of change for the better and you have fertile ground for public panic. Mass firings, in violation of civil service law, by unaccountable, secret state actors, great for stoking fear and outrage. By putting the populace in increasing fear for their day to day existence you create the desperate, violent conditions in Germany after the Great Depression. Once you’ve set the stage on fire, creating enraging propaganda and stoking the blind fear necessary for a fully fascist state becomes child’s play for the dictator on day one.

There were at least three direct outcomes of Trump’s “in your fucking face” approach from the day he claimed victory in the 2024 election. Trump, as the Unitary Executive, on a self-proclaimed divine mission of vengeance, asserted, in a series of executive orders he never read, that he would carry out Project 2025 boldly by saying “fuck you” to Congress, which, under our constitution, has the exclusive “power of the purse” and later to every court but the 6-3 majority one that has his hideous back. He declared a fake emergency (we are supposedly at nationwide war with a super powerful Venezuelan gang) which he claims gave him the unlimited powers his idol, Mr. Hitler, assumed under the Enabling Act in the Weimar constitution after the torching of the German parliament building. Trump’s seizure of emergency powers, based on nothing, is currently under leisurely review by the courts.

The second direct, predictable outcome of his “economic” policies (and the president’s claimed right to impose tariffs without the consent of Congress is currently also tied up in court) is already hurting tens of millions, sending the poor deeper into inescapable poverty, increasing poverty and child hunger, until the rippling effects of his idiotic, economically nihilistic policies fuck the vast majority of Americans a short time later (while further enriching our most lucrative corporations). All of this predictable economic destruction, the inevitable result of his colossally stupid (or devilishly clever, depending on desired outcome) policies, is coming to pass as surely as his “clean coal” and fossil fuel pollution will continue killing people as he defunds what Congress has allocated for renewable energy and places new taxes on it to further enrich super-wealthy psychopathic fossil fuel barons who will now generate all electricity by burning up handsomely subsidized non-renewables.

The third, and probably most dangerous, is Trump’s largely uncontested insistence on his right to prevail with incoherent arguments that fly in the face of all evidence. He continually reserves to himself the right to lie and to fight, to the death, anyone who calls out his lies. Emotionally, he is two years old, and he cannot control his impulse to rage. Our acceptance, as a culture, of a powerful two year-old’s right to rage at us whenever he feels frustrated, which is several times a day, is the most damaging part of this stunted strongman’s attack on reality. That and the sycophancy of his shamelessly ambitious political appointees (and powerful unappointed “influencers” like Laura Loomer).

The capitulation of America’s most powerful individuals and institutions, the prime beneficiaries of our corrupt culture, is probably the most sickening aspect of this Project 2025 scenario. Frivolous lawsuits brought by America’s most litigious asshole, lawsuits that would be laughed out of any court, net the Orange Polyp tens of millions of dollars in settlement money (a business expense and tax write off for these craven financial giants) from corporations (and their human alter-egos) eager not to get on the madman’s shit list.

One key thing to remember during all this — there is only one true victim in the United States. Donald J. Trump. Everyone else is whining about nothing, only poor, innocent Mr. Trump is persecuted like nobody’s ever seen. In Trump’s mind there is no such thing as an “Epstein victim,” aside from Donald J. Trump, whose only “crime” was being friends with a creep.

In closing, here’s a bit from Heather Cox Richardson’s most recent letter:

Today Sadie Gurman, Josh Dawsey, and Brett Forrest of the Wall Street Journal reported that, according to an official at the Department of Justice, Bondi has signed an order directing a U.S. attorney to present evidence concerning the matter [Tulsi Gabbard’s Russian talking point that Obama, not Trump, committed treason — with allegedly false claims of Russian meddling — in the lead up to the 2016 election] to a grand jury. This is a major escalation in their crusade to convince voters that the real story in the news should be that Trump is a victim.

The Wall Street Journal reporters note that the administration’s claims “come as the Trump administration has faced intense bipartisan criticism over its refusal to provide more information about the FBI investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.”

”Jeff was a creep who stole my beautiful 16 year-old Mara-Lago towel girl.”

Endlosüng

Every insane, violent, totalitarian plan for world domination has an end game, one Nazi word for this was Endlosüng — The Final Solution. This widely known secret plan of mass extermination, of all Jews and millions of other undesirables, would solve Germany’s problems once and for all, true believers in the infallibility of a morally deformed supreme leader believed. The Leader spellbound masses of otherwise hopeless Germans with promises of endless winning and eternal national glory, once the homeland was cleansed of blood poisoning and made mythically pure again. Mass belief in the Leader was fueled by his charismatic certainty in his holy mission. God, it is well known, and those He speaks to directly, can never be wrong.

94 year-old saltwater crocodile, and compelling argument against naturalization, Rupert Murdoch, and equally crusty, soon to be 90 year-old fossil trillionaire Charles Koch don’t have much time left to see the payoff for their vast investments, to watch their 50-year wet dream come to full, final fruition — a one party government that protects their privileges from “majoritarian tyranny” in perpetuity. American fascists are in overdrive now, working overtime around the clock, as their figurehead battering ram reveals himself as more and more of a liability to their cause of a government permanently controlled by the 0.01%.

Cracks are appearing daily in the transactional far right coalition currently going by the idiotic name of MAGA. It seems, by The Wall Street Journal’s current treatment of Trump (Murdoch’s other main public opinion organ, FOX, continues to play both sides for now) that Trump may be close to the end of serving his purpose for the oligarchs’ cause. An additional data point: Murdoch has always personally hated Donald Trump, outside of Trump’s usefulness to Murdoch’s cause. So, of course, Trump sues Murdoch for truthful reporting he claims is a lie and demands Murdoch immediately appear to be grilled under oath.

During Trump’s six month snatch and grab crime spree, preemptively greenlighted by the best Supreme Court unlimited dark money could buy, POTUS has done such widespread damage, in so many ways, that his political brand is probably expendable now. His inept attempts to distance himself from his good friend Jeff, a guy who appears to have become a billionaire by blackmailing his rich, powerful libidinous guests with videos of them in compromising positions with 14 year-old girls, seem to be digging him deeper and deeper into a hole he can’t get out of. What are Charles Koch and Rupert to do at this point? They’re not going to be taken down by this ranting, revenge obsessed two year-old and his cult of violent dupes. He’s crashing the economy with his demented tariffs and other destructive and widely unpopular agency closures. First order of business: make sure citizens can’t vote! Then they can deal with the Trump problem.

I would think what the FBI would posthumously identify as a flamboyantly gay Venezuelan hairdresser, former prisoner illegally rendered to CECOT, the torture prison for terrorists, on a successful mission of revenge (turn off the cameras, let the Secret Service fall asleep, not notice the crowd pointing to the nut with a gun on a nearby rooftop), after posting communist messages online, would be the perfect patsy to place the quieter, less obtrusive, equally psychopathic JD Vance into the Oval Office to put the final touches on Koch’s Project 2025. Fascists are always killers who practice strategic murder along with indiscriminate killing — death threats and murder are integral to fascist rule. A dramatic political murder would leave the base in a much better mood than removing a cognitively failing popular president (among his 39%, anyway) using the 25th Amendment. Killing makes the most sense to transactional psychopaths.

In fact, Trump’s US, in all of our names, is currently engaged in mass killing that makes Israel’s horrific killing spree in Gaza look restrained. Project 2025, demanding the closure of USAID, has already killed hundreds of thousands of poor people worldwide. As of June 15, the death toll for adults and children from aid funding cuts topped 340,000 and came out to 103 deaths PER HOUR (per HOUR!) [1] (on pace for 14,000,000 total deaths, it is widely reported [2])  by denying food and medical aid to desperately poor HIV, TB, malaria and diarrhea patients and starving children and elderly around the world. The story of this deliberately caused (illegally so, but the president may commit unlimited crimes in office with impunity, see Trump v. US) senseless program of mass death, alone, should be disqualifying for an American presidential administration. Instead, because of the far right firehouse of mendacity, always spewing disinformation full-bore, it’s a rarely covered “externality” of Making America as Great Again as it was during previous Gilded Ages.

A successful takedown of numero uno, organized with discipline, distance and perfect deniability by the ruthless Koch network (and we still don’t know exactly who was involved in Lee Harvey Oswald’s successful hit on JFK, 62 years later), committed on live TV by a “gay illegal alien radical leftist” would also inflame the public and merit imposition of martial law. That would seem to be pretty timely about now, in light of the raging unpopularity of Project 2025 and the cascading follies of Trump.

What better than something dramatic. cinematic, galvanizing — riveting live reality TV with scripted commentary — to facilitate seizing absolute power once their popular front man has proved himself expendable and becomes an involuntary martyr to the cause? Killing is nothing for Nazi types, the goal of autocratic power and limitless wealth is worth every bit of the illegality and violence it takes to achieve. Would they rule out nuking an anarchist jurisdiction? Do you think these folks would hesitate for a minute if there was a chance it could cement them into permanent power?

When the ideologically pure 6-3 Supreme Court majority, bought and paid for by our oligarchs and groomed in the extreme right judicial fraternity, The Federalist Society, declared, before his reelection, that Trump could not be prosecuted for virtually any crime he committed while president the first time and had immunity for any crimes he might commit, no matter how many or how egregious, during his second term — unless they ruled otherwise (they haven’t), that was set and match for American democracy, unless we, the People, can stop these motherfuckers first. The Federalist Society majority he recently railed against has continued to rule that Trump can engage in illegal firings, illegal agency closures, illegal renderings of humans to foreign countries without due process and so forth until they get around to ruling on the merits of things like mass firings without cause that violate civil service law, usurping the powers reserved to Congress, and the constitutionality of the 14th amendment and birthright citizenship, in a year or two, or never.

July 2024’s 6-3 decision in the aptly named Trump v. US effectively made the next president, be it Trump, JD Vance, or Peter Thiel himself, the American dictator. In order install a dictator implementing wildly unpopular programs that benefit only the top of the top 1% while immiserating tens of millions of less fortunate Americans, the vote must be suppressed as much as possible. Fortunately for Koch and Rupert, Leonard Leo and their creepy allies, this is something the Supreme Court can adjust at any time by striking down all voting rights legislation, like it did in Shelby County v. Holder, disemboweling the Voting Rights Act reauthorized last time 98-0 in the Senate and then nullified by John Roberts and four Federalist Society Libertarians, based on a lie Roberts wrote into the heart of the ruling.

Here’s something to add a bit of steel to your spine here in the shadow of the swastika and urge you not to tune out, not to give up advocating for truth, justice and the American way (well, not all of the American way, obviously, but the high principles we are supposed to always be animated by in the world’s longest running experiment in democracy).

[1] The calculator shows us that’s 2,472 deaths a day, 17,304 a week, 74,160 in a thirty day month. WHAT THE FUCK?!!! Cutting a program that cost 0.3% of the federal budget to give billionaires a little more money they don’t need? This is what happens when AI is employed to make life and death decisions that benefit a select handful of citizens at the expense of everything else.

[2] from that article:

Projections suggest that ongoing deep funding cuts – combined with the potential dismantling of the agency – could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million deaths among children younger than 5 years, the study in The Lancet said.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse makes irrefutable case for Bove’s unfitness for office

Three major examples of prosecutorial misconduct in his short six month tenure in Trump’s DOJ, including a contempt hearing delayed for months by two Trump judges on the DC Circuit appeals court (until their colleague can be appointed to a lifetime post on the federal bench), and the creepy Emil Bove, Trump’s modern day Roy Cohn, is put up for a party line vote without any further debate or questioning.

Voted in for life with a 50-49 mandate!

In his honor, here is Trump’s tribute poem to Bove, himself, the Deep State and Project 2025.

We get very little important news from our corporate media

Here are a couple of major, and extremely urgent, real life stories that the corporate mass media (and, recall, corporations, as “persons” are psychopaths whose only goal is monetary profit) mentions marginally, if at all. The mass media covers politics as a good old fashioned horse race, with handicappers giving betting odds. The whole enterprise is a mind-numbing casino designed to fuel anxiety and generate advertising dollars. Meanwhile, in the board rooms, the human embodiments of corporate personhood who make decisions for their corporate alter egos openly bribe the most corrupt president in US history, pursuant to the plan to fully corporatize the US meticulously outlined in Charles Koch’s Project 2025.

To learn what’s really going on more of us need to become reliable citizen journalists, people so offended and alarmed by the march of fascism — masked goons squads on the streets obedient to no law, brutalizing law abiding immigrants, and the occasional Democratic elected official, to make their arbitrary arrest quotas of 3,000 per day,  unrestrained by a spineless Congress passively watching laws unenforced, and court orders defied, overseen by an openly partisan DOJ leadership composed entirely of Trump’s recent team of criminal lawyers, criminal in the sense of having defended the boss in numerous criminal proceedings and criminal in their contempt for the law — that they follow stories more closely than corporate advertisers may be comfortable with. 

ICE filling privatized for-profit detention centers (GEO Group’s former lobbyist, Pamela Jo Bondi, is on board with this highly lucrative plan) with law-abiding immigrants and American citizens with Hispanic surnames:

That tricked out used 747 that AG Pamela Jo Bondi’s former employers, Qatar, gifted to President Agent Orange? We haven’t heard a peep about it in the media for months. Did he accept the illegal emolument? We may never find out from “the most transparent administration in US history.” All media eyes are on the distraction du jour, are there videos of Trump cavorting with underaged girls at his former best friend Jeff’s place? Calling it a distraction is not to minimize the destruction done to countless young lives by these powerful, unaccountable pedophiles who anonymously participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. Wait, what about the big, fat, beautiful plane Qatar is bribing Trump with? No news. Except, there was apparently almost a billion dollars to refurbish the plane, snuck into the Big, Hideous, mass murdering Bill that Trump twisted arms to ram through Congress 51-50, as reported in the NY Times… at the same time Trump denied $15M in FEMA aid to Maryland after a devastating storm, because they are not a “red” state, like the surrounding ones, all hit by the same storm, that got FEMA money.

Most of my once large family was killed by Nazis and their accomplices in 1943. I was raised in the shadow of this horrific fact, like Armenians, Native Americans, Darfuris, Hutus, Tutsis, Gazans, Ukrainians, descendants of enslaved Africans, the list is as long as history. The fuckers who create the conditions for genocide are always the same, they change hats, colors, languages but their deadly narrative is always identical — don’t look at what I am doing to YOU, go kill THEM!

It is frustrating as hell that there is no clear organized resistance for progressives, how hard it is to jump directly into the fight, the way there is on the right with a marching lockstep and a million opportunities to prove their devotion to the cause.  We have no strong opposition party organizing resistance and making news every day by presenting facts in reaction to every single incoherent step toward fascism that Project 2025 inplements.   The Democratic party urges us to donate and vote, and sometimes sign petitions, and to please, please donate to the important fight.  The minority leader of the House of Representatives telling the American people that Democrats will address everything being done to our democracy “at a time and place of our choosing” come on, Hakeem Jeffries.

We can’t rely on mass media owned by psychopaths for accurate, actionable information about the world.   It has a single minded agenda: to sell advertising to generate profits for shareholders.  Billionaires all have the same bottom line — to make even more money.  It’s a kind of sickness that has no cure.   Corporate culture is its deadliest symptom.  We are living in it.  Keep your eyes open.

Subscribe to historian Heather Cox Richardson’s invaluable free daily newsletter, for starters; follow Robert Reich, Alison Gill, David Feldman, Katie Phang, Mehdi Hasan, Brian Tyler Cohen, Glenn Kirschner. Be alert for other trustworthy, non-corporate sources for what is actually going on during the American far-right’s determined lurch toward permanent one party rule, also known as totalitarianism.

Trump is as insane as the most powerful madmen of the 20th century, but he is only a battering ram for the interests of those much smarter and more calculating than him. The people calling the shots, even if equally mad, have been fine tuning their secretive plan for American fascism for decades, and financing it with unlimited dark money. Their goal is within reach, but for our resistance, and you can almost smell their frothy saliva at being so intoxicatingly close to their goal.

Also, never forget that mockery is what monsters fear more than anything. This short bit cracked me up. Laughing has never been more important than it is right now, my friends.

Beware Emil Bove III

Emil Bove III, supremely loyal Trump criminal attorney, is, unless several Republicans find their spines, about to be confirmed for a lifetime seat on the federal appeals bench, with a party line majority of 51-50 or so. That would put the relentless, unprincipled 44 year-old Trump warrior, Trump’s present day Roy Cohn, in position to take ethically compromised Samuel Alito’s or Clarence Thomas’ smelly seat before the midterms, when he could be confirmed 51-50.

Bove is, not to put too fine a point on it, a straight up evil fuck. Significantly, Bove lacks candor. A lawyer, as an officer of the court, has a duty of candor to the court. Bove (as made explicit in a 2/5/25 memo from Pam Bondi the day after she was confirmed as AG, quoting Executive Order, Ending the Weaponization of The Federal Government (Jan. 20, 2025)) instructed DOJ subordinates to fuck candor to the fucking court if the court was not letting DOJ carry out the policies and directives of Mr. Trump.

A prevaricating, stonewalling lawyer is bad, unethical, an enabler of evil practices and subject to disbarment in the rare case where the stars line up correctly. If a dishonest lawyer works for the Department of Justice, it’s very dangerous, for justice and democracy. Imagine the harm a federal appeals judge without candor can do to the faithful administration of justice. Try to imagine a harm an unappealable Justice without candor, or the capacity for remorse (a feature of moral weaklings in a fascist regime) would not be capable of doing.

Here are a few highlights from the resignation letter of Trump appointee, acting US Attorney for SDNY, Danielle Sasson, on being instructed, by then acting AG Emil Bove, to conditionally drop the charges against NYC mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams’ agreement to allow ICE raids in New York City. The letter was sent to Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General of the United States. Bondi apparently accepted the resignation of this principled Trump appointee:

You and I have yet to meet, let alone discuss this case. But as you may know, I clerked for the Honorable J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and for Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. Both men instilled in me a sense of duty to contribute to the public good and uphold the rule of law, and a commitment to reasoned and thorough analysis. I have always considered it my obligation to pursue justice impartially, without favor to the wealthy or those who occupy important public office, or harsher treatment for the less powerful.

I therefore deem it necessary to the faithful discharge of my duties to raise the concerns expressed in this letter with you and to request an opportunity to meet to discuss them further. I cannot fulfill my obligations, effectively lead my office in carrying out the Department’s priorities, or credibly represent the Government before the courts, if I seek to dismiss the Adams case on this record. . .

. . . Rather than be rewarded, Adams’s advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case. Although Mr. Bove disclaimed any intention to exchange leniency in this case for Adams’s assistance in enforcing federal law,[1] that is the nature of the bargain laid bare in Mr. Bove’s memo. That is especially so given Mr. Bove’s comparison to the Bout prisoner exchange, which was quite expressly a quid pro quo, but one carried out by the White House, and not the prosecutors in charge of Bout’s case. . .

. . . Moreover, dismissing the case will amplify, rather than abate, concerns about weaponization of the Department. Despite Mr. Bove’s observation that the directive to dismiss the case has been reached without assessing the strength of the evidence against Adams, Adams has already seized on the memo to publicly assert that he is innocent and that the accusations against him were unsupported by the evidence and based only on “fanfare and sensational claims.” Confidence in the Department would best be restored by means well short of a dismissal. As you know, our office is prepared to seek a superseding indictment from a new grand jury under my leadership. We have proposed a superseding indictment that would add an obstruction conspiracy count based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI, and that would add further factual allegations regarding his participation in a fraudulent straw donor scheme. . .

. . . For the reasons explained above, I do not believe there are reasonable arguments in support of a Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss a case that is well supported by the evidence and the law. I understand that Mr. Bove disagrees, and I am mindful of your recent order reiterating prosecutors’ duty to make good-faith arguments in support of the Executive Branch’s positions. See Feb. 5, 2025 Mem. “General Policy Regarding Zealous Advocacy on Behalf of the United States.” But because I do not see any good-faith basis for the proposed position, I cannot make such arguments consistent with my duty of candor. N.Y.R.P.C. 3.3; id. cmt. 2 (“A lawyer acting as an advocate in an adjudicative proceeding has an obligation to present the client’s case with persuasive force. Performance of that duty while maintaining confidences of the client, however, is qualified by the advocate’s duty of candor to the tribunal.”). . .

. . . I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal. Mr. Bove admonished me to be mindful of my obligation to zealously defend the interests of the United States and to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Administration. I hope you share my view that soliciting and considering the concerns of the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case serves rather than hinders that goal, and that we can find time to meet.

In the event you are unwilling to meet or to reconsider the directive in light of the problems raised by Mr. Bove’s memo, I am prepared to offer my resignation. It has been, and continues to be, my honor to serve as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.

Here’s a short excerpt from Emil Bove’s acceptance of Danielle Sasson’s resignation letter (nicely annotated by the Grey Lady) in which he suspended lawyers working for Sasson and told her they’d all be investigated for disloyalty to the Boss and flagrant violation of Executive Order 14147.

On January 20, 2025, in Executive Order 14147, President Trump established the following policy: “It is the policy of the United States to identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to the weaponization of law enforcement.” In a February 5, 2025 memorandum setting forth the Department’s general policy regarding zealous advocacy on behalf of the United States, the Attorney General stated:

[A]ny attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law.

Your Office was not exempted from the President’s policy or the Attorney General’s memorandum.

Here is a former AG Merrick Garland’s October 4, 2021 memorandum, duly rescinded by Pam Bondi in footnote two of the Führerwortes haben Gesetzeskraft [1] memo of 2/5/25. It is now officially and explicitly NOT the policy of the totally, like not-weaponized Trump DOJ that: the Department is steadfast in its commitment to protect all people in the United States from violence, threats of violence, and other forms of intimidation and harassment.

[1] Führerwortes haben Gesetzeskraft “the Leader’s words have the force of law”

Ban “Humanities” — and stop with the “Epstein” already, it’s antisemitic!

There is a powerful documentary about Hannah Arendt, one of the twentieth century’s most fearless and original thinkers, currently available to watch for free (until July 26th) on recently knee-capped PBS. Arendt is a hero of mine, I’ve seen the film twice so far, looking forward to seeing it at least once more before it vanishes behind a pay wall (though we all need to kick in some cash for PBS now after Koch/Project 2025 defunded it in a treacherous 51-48 “recission”). Her insights about totalitarianism (it is driven by intense mass loneliness/hopelessness) could not be more relevant today. Here is the link.

Charles Koch, fossil fuel baron and America’s most successful and influential living Nazi/Libertarian, has a favorite think tank, The Institute for Humane Studies. You can imagine how humane those studies must be if second generation Nazi Charles Koch loves them. The name of that outfit’s got to be up there with Arbeit Macht Frei for cynically “puckish” repurposing of language. That was a Nazi specialty, coming up with comically misleading names for hideous things. They even had a word for their creative designations to hide their actual purposes, sprachregelung. This refers to strict rules for language to be used about sensitive subjects. References to Jews on cattle cars heading to death camps in the East — sonderbehandlung [1] “special handling”, kind of darkly funny, to Nazis, anyway.

While playing with language, a central feature of our Age of Incoherence and brute force (destroy meaning, destroy the possibility of negotiation), as the largely incoherent master of the “weave” likes to do (or at least, can’t help himself from doing) why not contest the legitimacy of the National Endowment for the Humanities?

You can easily spin it: that agency, by its very title, is false, divisive and insanely, destructively over-inclusive — there is only one humanity, not multiple humanities! To claim there is more than one humanity is sick, a liberal plot to groom children to become sexual slaves to powerful creeps like Jeffrey Epstein. On second thought, not like Epstein, forget about Epstein, Epstein killed himself, Bill Barr said so, Epstein’s so-called victims are all lying, and anyway, who cares? Those “victims”, like the one who got millions of dollars in a settlement and then killed herself? Why does someone get millions of dollars and then kill themselves? You have to question that, don’t you? May I answer a question with a question? Is that questionable? That’s a funny word, when you think about it, “questionable”, right? What makes something questionable? Just asking a question, right? Right? Am I right?

Anyway, looking for concrete information about this sudden, posthumous fuss about one disgusting, rich, well-connected dead pedophile, I started reading the Wikipedia article about Virginia Guiffre. She was the young woman (14) who worked at Mar-a-Lago and fell into Epstein’s orbit, eventually broke free, sued and won large settlements against Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew (a real royal prince of a man, apparently) and then, quite recently, committed suicide.

Did you know that all this was out in 2005?

In March 2005, while Giuffre was still establishing her family in Australia, the Palm Beach Police Department began investigating Epstein after a 14-year-old girl and her parents reported his behavior.[39] The girl described being recruited by a female classmate from her high school to give Epstein a massage at his mansion in exchange for money, wherein he subsequently molested her.[22][39] By October 2005, the police had a growing list of girls with similar claims of sexual abuse, statements from Epstein’s butlers corroborating their claims, and a search warrant for his Palm Beach property.[39]

Police detectives noted that the accusers all described a similar pattern[40] where Epstein would ask them to massage him and then sexually assault them during the massage. When police searched through Epstein’s trash, they found notes with the telephone numbers of the girls on them.[39] One of the girls was called by Epstein’s assistant while being questioned by police.[39]

Giuffre told the Miami Herald that she received a series of phone calls in rapid succession over three days in 2007. The first call was from Maxwell, then one day later came a call from Epstein, both of whom asked if she had spoken to authorities, followed by a third call from an FBI agent who stated that Giuffre had been identified as a victim during the first criminal case against Epstein.[41] She resisted speaking at length to the FBI until she was approached again about the matter in person, this time by the Australian Federal Police, six months after being contacted by phone.[41][42]

Photos, records and witnesses confirm large parts of Giuffre’s statements about her time with Epstein.[43][44]

Anyway, Epstein, because he was very rich and had many powerful friends (who he would NEVER think of blackmailing), got a sweetheart non-prosecution deal on his Florida state prosecution from then US Attorney for South Florida Alex Acosta. The state of Florida declined to prosecute, after monkey business during the investigation caused the lead law enforcement officer involved to turn it over to the FBI for federal investigation. The FBI referred it to Acosta, who, somehow, left the case in state court instead of federally prosecuting Epstein, as he should have, given the weight of the serious allegations against Epstein.

Wikipedia continues:

Lead police detective Joseph Recarey asserted that the state prosecutors were at first eager to pursue criminal action against Epstein, but that “everything took a turn” when lawyer Alan Dershowitz got involved.[45] Krischer then decided to take the unusual action of turning Epstein’s case over to a grand jury, and then presented testimony from only one girl. Epstein’s legal team aggressively sought concessions and prolonged the process when negotiating a plea deal with Acosta.[46] Acosta, who described the tactics of Epstein’s lawyers as a “year-long assault on the prosecution and prosecutors”, eventually agreed to sign a controversial non-prosecution agreement in 2008, which was done without informing the victims,[46] later determined to be in violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.[47]

Reiter expressed that the state and federal prosecutors’ handling of the Epstein case amounted to “the worst failure of the criminal justice system” in modern times.[40]

Pursuant to the “sweetheart” non-prosecution agreement negotiated between Dershowitz and Acosta, Epstein was able to leave the minimum security prison whenever he needed a “massage”, after kind of pleading guilty only to not verifying the age of the young “prostitute” he hired that one time. Acosta wound up in Trump’s cabinet, until he had to resign in shame, and former Florida AG (2011-2019) Pam Bondi is currently Trump’s Attorney General, the one with only one client, the president.

What does Bondi have to do with it? Just asking.

As for Joe Biden, check this out!

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019, at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey[99] and charged with sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy by prosecutors with the Public Corruption Unit of the Southern District of New York[100] In the indictment, Epstein was accused of soliciting massages from underage girls where the activities became increasingly sexual and then of enlisting the girls to recruit other underage victims for pay.[100] U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York appealed for other victims of Epstein to come forward.[100] The federal indictment also listed the key role of Epstein’s paid “employees and associates” responsible for scheduling victims.[100]

One month after his arrest, Epstein was found dead on August 10, 2019, after reportedly hanging himself in his Manhattan prison cell.[11][101]

On August 29, 2019, in the wake of Epstein’s death 19 days prior, the case against Epstein was closed after District Judge Richard Berman dismissed all sex trafficking charges.[102][103] Judge Berman expressed support for Epstein’s accusers, stating that he invited them to speak publicly at a hearing on August 27, 2019, out of “respect” for “the difficult decisions victims made to come forward”.[102] Giuffre was among the 16 women who spoke publicly at the hearing, which included Anouska De Georgiou, Sarah Ransome, Jennifer Araoz, Chauntae Davies, Courtney Wild, Theresa J. Helm, and Marijke Chartouni.[104] At the hearing, Giuffre stated, “The reckoning must not end. It must continue. He did not act alone. We the victims know that.” Prosecutors signaled that they would continue an investigation for potential co-conspirators.[103]

I know what you’ll say, Trump was president in 2019. That’s what they WANT YOU TO THINK!

Watch the Hannah Arendt documentary, please. It is, in part, an instruction manual for what we are up against at this perilous moment in history.

[1]

Nullifier-in-Chief

Trump’s hero, Andrew Jackson (from Trump’s first administration when he hung Old Hickory’s portrait in the Oval Office) was enraged by South Carolina’s attempted nullification of a tax bill Jackson had signed into law (South Carolina’s nullification decree was written by his vice president John C. Calhoun, “the Great Nullifier” [1]). Jackson, a famously violent psychopath, was mad enough to kill. Calhoun advanced the proposition that any state may nullify any federal law that is not in that state’s best interests. Jackson’s public response was to threaten to go to South Carolina and personally hang Calhoun. South Carolina was forced to back down and the federal government’s power was retained, for the moment. That Jackson hadn’t followed through on his threat to kill Calhoun was one of his greatest regrets as he was leaving office.

In our current Age of Incoherence, presidential nullification (if the president is Republican) — of Congressional budgets, of agencies created by Congress, of civil service and immigration law, of separation of powers, of long cherished norms and common decency — is fine, according to the Supreme Court.

It’s crucial for thinking people to understand this anti-democratic mechanism for centralizing all government control in a corporate CEO with no constraint from a board of directors and no input from stakeholders. Koch’s network of “think tanks” have coined the idiotic term Unitary Executive as shorthand for this kind of imperial presidency and it has long been their dream to have a supremely manipulable, brazen puppet in the Unitary Executive’s chair. The better to advance their long game agenda to destroy “majoritarian tyranny”.

Our democracy lurched to a jarring halt during the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign when six unelected members of an activist, far-right judicial fraternity decided Trump v. United States in Trump’s favor. The 6-3 Trump appointed majority (the result of a political deal he made with Leonard Leo/Charles Koch/Evangelical leaders, brokered by the far-right Council for National Policy) delayed hearing the case for months, putting the criminal case against Trump for his multi-pronged attempt to retain power after losing the 2020 election on ice until it was too late to prosecute him for crimes he definitely, and publicly, committed. Then they ruled in favor of Trump.

A president, they ruled, specifically for Trump’s benefit, may not be held accountable for criminal acts done while performing the core duties of his office. A convincing hypothetical for when this criminal act might be necessary was not provided. President Trump, they ruled, is presumptively immune from prosecution for all criminal acts done as president, and proof of criminal acts protected by his new “core duties” absolute immunity may not be offered in evidence in any other criminal case against him. The Fascist Six gave candidate/prospective president Trump, the proverbial carte blanche. For dessert they ruled that no presidential pardon may ever be challenged as corrupt or an abuse of power. How you feeling now, Ghislaine?

If it was illegal for Trump to create a government “department” (that power is reserved for Congress), appoint his top donor to lead it, illegally fire tens of thousands of protected civil servants without cause, and harvest sensitive, personal data on every American, see Trump v. US. If Musk’s actions were criminal, there is no questioning Trump’s pardon of Musk, if the president deems it advantageous to pardon his deeply creepy former bestie, see Trump v. US. If withholding the funds allocated by Congress, sole holders of the “power of the purse”, by the president was illegal, a flagrant violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, see Trump v. US.

The 6-3 majority has increasing used the “Shadow Docket” (formerly reserved for extreme emergency applications) to rule in Trump’s favor whenever he needs a win. His winning percentage in those rulings is impressive, like .900. Shadow docket rulings are bare bones, no explanation for the ruling, no cases cited, no argument, the shadow docket ruling is a mere thumbs up or thumbs down.

Trump illegally fired tens of thousands of civil servants in violation of civil service law (arguably a crime for which he’s immune under Trump v. US.). A shadow docket ruling, in response to an “emergency” application by Trump — the emergency being Trump lost at the trial court and on appeal– put the question of these illegal firings on hold indefinitely. Those firings might be illegal, might be legal, but we’ll allow him to continue doing it until we have time to rule on the merits of the case.

Same deal for his day one executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship. The legal issue is not complex — the Constitution may not be changed by a scrawled Sharpie signature on an order written for the president by someone who hates immigrants and their children. But, for the meantime, pursuant to an unsigned one paragraph 6-3 shadow docket “decision”, taken without argument or any kind of briefing, the president may continue to act as though he has abolished birthright citizenship, until there can be a full argument on the merits. There is no argument on the merits that supports Trump’s illegal action, therefore, delay is the best the 6-3 majority can provide for Trump until an actual police state, and network of private “detention centers” can presumably be put into place.

The most recent 6-3 shadow docket ruling, in McMahon v. New York, allowing Trump to finish dismantling the Department of Education, is a grotesque example of Federalist Society methodology. You work backwards from the conclusion you want, focusing on technicalities, rather than the actual merits of the case or anything that would constitute a true emergency. Fill in the blanks as needed, ignore inconvenient facts, Supreme Court precedents, cite specious authorities (like the 17th century witch burner Alito cited over and over in Dobbs as the “authority” for criminalizing abortion rights [2]) glibly distinguish between substance and procedure and pull new “legal theories” out of far right “think tanks” who act as amicus curae, friends of the court.

Ignore law, and the Constitution, whenever necessary and create binding new law (see Trump v. US., Citizens United, Shelby County v. Holder, etc.) derived from the mystically divined “original intent” of the wealthy slaveholders, and other wealthy non-slaveholding white men, who compromised to come up with our constitution-based system of law. Ignore any constitutional amendments that were not part of the “original intent of the Framers” four score and seven years before the Civil War ended.

McMahon v. New York, the case brought in the name of Linda McMahon, the professional wrestling magnate/generous Trump donor who Trump appointed to dismantle the Department of Education, to allow her to continue gutting the Department of Education (most of its funding goes to poor and disabled students) was lost at the trial court level, where a hold on mass firings was imposed and that stay was affirmed by the appeals court. Time for an emergency application to the rocket docket!

Note the cunning of the unappealable Federalist Society Six. They decline to rule if the president has the power to order the gutting of a Congressionally authorized agency. They rule instead, in an unsigned one paragraph shadow docket ruling, that the practice may continue in the meantime, until they get a chance to hear arguments and rule on the merits of the case. Only Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent sheds any light into the dark, ominous shadow of the 6-3 ruling by the lockstep MAGA majority:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor did offer a sharp dissent, saying the decision is “indefensible” and that “it hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”

In a press release, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said, “While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.” source

Because Linda McMahon is a lying, unqualified political hack/Trump megadonor attached, remora-like, to Trump’s underside, let me give Justice Sotomayor the last word on this:

In her dissent, Sotomayor emphasized that, until this year, “Presidents have recognized they lack the unilateral authority to eradicate a Department that Congress has tasked with fulfilling statutory duties.” But President Donald Trump, she said, “has made clear that he intends to close the Department without Congress’s involvement.”

In its briefs at the Supreme Court, Sotomayor continued, “the Government does not defend the lawfulness of its actions” but instead “presents a grab bag of jurisdictional and remedial arguments to support its bid for emergency relief” – none of which, she said, “justifies this Court’s intervention.”

source

Delay is the primary legal weapon Trump has used throughout his long career as America’s most prolific vexatious litigant/serial scofflaw. If he can get a long enough delay, that generally amounts to a victory. He has evaded legal responsibility for an impressive list of immoral and criminal acts committed over the ugly course of his long, miserable, highly parasitic life.

Right before cynical, defiant, crying, conspiracy theory spouting, self-pitying right-wing partisan Boof Kavanaugh was confirmed for his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court, days after the American Jesuits called for him to gracefully step down in the face of credible allegations of his unfitness for the Supreme Court, I did a little research on the Jesuits. Kavanaugh had gone to an elite, very expensive, ivy league prep school down the street from my aunt and uncle’s place in Maryland. I’d passed its majestic gates and seen its enormous lawn many times on visits to my relatives. Georgetown Prep is run by Jesuits. I visited their website and learned that the heart of Jesuit teaching is that the godly in us, when it recognizes the godly in another person, is the basis for the deepest love and understanding between people. This is what the Jesuits teach their students, to reach for the godly in everyone you meet.

I mentioned this beautiful idea to a Catholic friend who grunted before gently castigating my naivete. “Read the history of the Jesuits,” he said. The Jesuits were founded in Spain as “defenders of the faith”. They were the fanatical lawyers for the Spanish Inquisition who used learned, convoluted Biblical reasoning to give the green light to Inquisitors to torture heretics in the name of Jesus Christ, essentially arguing that God and His son Jesus love the agonized screams of heretics as they are burned alive. And why wouldn’t They?

[1] From The Calhoun Institute:

The Great Nullifier was dead. A man of enormous ability, Calhoun was, and perhaps still is, South Carolina’s most distinguished son. One cannot help but think that had he devoted his political skills to preserving the Union, rather than championing “state’s rights” and slavery, he would have realized his presidential ambitions and, vastly more important, spared his beloved South and the nation the horrors of civil war.

[2] from ProPublica:

Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century jurist who conceived the notion that husbands can’t be prosecuted for raping their wives, who sentenced women to death as “witches,” and whose misogyny stood out even in his time.

Oh, yeah:

Judicial temperament

Emil Bove III in mid Roman Salute

Here’s some interesting and important material on the “judicial temperament” of Trump’s favorite unprincipled legal Pitbull, Emil Bove III, from an op ed in today’s New York Times. Bove is about as MAGA as they come, apparently deeply drawn to the intoxicating scent given off by America’s Greatest Winner Ever, or, at least, what he can get by loyal proximity to Jeffrey Epstein’s close friend.

In 2018 a defense lawyer, speaking on behalf of a group of colleagues, including several former prosecutors, wrote to a supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office complaining about Mr. Bove’s “unprofessional and unethical” behavior. One former assistant U.S. attorney quoted in the email said that Mr. Bove was “a prosecutor version of a drunken driver — completely out of control” and that Mr. Bove was “quick to bully and threaten.” Still another said that he “seems totally hung up on a power trip.”

That complaint was followed by an incident that appeared to vindicate these warnings, when a federal judge dismissed a prosecution supervised by Mr. Bove after a request from the U.S. attorney’s office. In the case, which involved charges that the defendant had evaded sanctions imposed on Iran, the judge found that prosecutors had attempted to bury exculpatory evidence and then lied to the court about the matter. The misconduct was so severe that the U.S. attorney’s office, even after a jury verdict in its favor, chose instead to end the prosecution.

Then a group of his colleagues complained that Mr. Bove showed uncontrolled anger and was abusive toward subordinates, and they asked that he be demoted from a supervisory role. Mr. Bove was not demoted, but he decided to leave the U.S. attorney’s office shortly after that, in 2021.

Unlike many of his colleagues in the Southern District, Mr. Bove found a soft landing not at a major New York law firm but at a midsize firm in suburban New Jersey. In short order, though, Mr. Blanche asked Mr. Bove to join him in a new venture: a tiny law firm devoted to the criminal defense of Mr. Trump.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Bove portrayed his decision to defend Mr. Trump as an act of courage. “All manner of evil and negative consequences were sort of foisted and thrown at Todd and I regularly as we had to make a decision, and many others didn’t have the courage to make to stand up for what was right,” he said. He added, “That was a decision to fight for what was right and fight for the rule of law.” Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove lost Mr. Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan, but as far as their career fortunes were concerned, they won big, securing themselves their next jobs. . .

. . . Mr. Bove fired about two dozen federal prosecutors in Washington who had brought cases against Jan. 6 rioters, and he endorsed the view that these prosecutions [he himself prosecuted many of the J6 cases] were a “grave national injustice.” Asked at his hearing whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Mr. Bove conceded only that Mr. Biden was “certified” as the victor.

source

Sound about right for a lifetime seat on the federal appeals court, one step away from replacing Alito or Thomas, after their perfectly legal (6-3, suckers!) prospective and retrospective blanket lifetime pardons from Trump? Even a flagrantly criminal pardon, sold to the highest bidder, is cool, as long as the president does it in his official chair at the Resolute desk. So saith the MAGA Six. Emil Bove III would certainly agree. That’s called judicial temperament in MAGA world.

Boof, displaying judicial temperament at his confirmation hearing

Trump 2024 sweep of swing states highly unlikely

Click on image above for updated, improved version of this post

As George Carlin pointed out years ago, obscenely wealthy white men don’t need to meet in a smoke-filled room to hatch a conspiracy, all they have to do is simply keep acting in their common interest. Kick in a tax-exempt billion here and there to buy politicians and influence public opinion and you can control government policy, pack the Supreme Court with right-wing zealots from a far-right judicial fraternity, and fund all other measures needed to consolidate your power and privilege. Use dark money to buy political attack ads and create “grassroots” groups that gather angry, ordinary Americans and televise their coordinated nationwide protests against a Black president (formerly known as mulatto, half-white, anyway) on all of the corporate news outlets simultaneously. Consolidate media so that one script of right-wing talking points is read by thousands of trusted local anchors. Blame liberals for the biased media, and for rigging elections, pedophilia, etc., and continually vilify rare left-wing billionaire George Soros. We’ve been living in an escalating cacophony of well-funded right-wing propaganda for decades, with unregulated social media, AI and finally, an emotionally unregulated, colorful maniac front man/conman for the billionaire class as the final touches. The perfect shit storm.

There were many highly suspect irregularities in the 2024 presidential election that are outlined in the video, and this analysis barely touches on the sudden drop in mail-in ballots in 2024. We learned in the weeks before the election that Harris led in swing states in the early voting (every one of which she suspiciously lost, by virtually identical margins) This thorough analysis of the several pronged GOP attack on voting does not focus on the significant drop off in mail-in ballots under Trump megadonor Postmaster Looey DeJoy, which, by itself, was capable of wiping out a Kamala Harris majority. I’ll get back to that below.

Voters Cast Fewer Mail Ballots

One of the most noticeable trends this year was the sharp decline in mail-in voting, particularly in states that enacted significant barriers to absentee ballots. These declines may also be influenced by other factors, such as the easing of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased availability of in-person early voting options. 

Georgia, for example, passed S.B. 202 in 2021, which introduced new voter ID requirements for absentee ballot applications and return envelopes, among other provisions. As a result, mail-in voting plummeted. In 2020, over 1.3 million mail ballots were cast in Georgia – making up 26% of all ballots. In 2024, that number plummeted to 286,000 ballots, or just 5% of the total votes cast.

Similarly, Florida – a state known for its high rate of mail voting – saw a drop in absentee ballots after the passage of S.B. 90, which introduced stricter ID requirements and reduced the number of drop-off locations. In 2020, Florida had over 4.8 million mail ballots (44% of total ballots). In 2024, that number fell to just over 3 million (28%). Texas, where absentee voting laws were tightened under S.B. 1 in 2021, also saw a dramatic decrease. In 2020, nearly 1 million mail ballots were cast in Texas (9% of total ballots) compared to roughly 342,000 (3%) in 2024.

source

source

I’ll be keeping my eye on this Rockland County case (mentioned in the video) which appears to be on a very slow track to resolving the underlying issues raised by plaintiffs who claim their votes for Harris were not counted, or were counted for Trump, in Rockland County — it’s on the calendar for August 29, 2025, as the judge considers the Rockland County Election Board’s motion to dismiss.

We are witnessing the chaos, lawlessness and terror unleashed by unqualified anti-government loyalists serving as the federal government, on behalf of a clearly unhinged CEO. The theory is to keep turning up the heat. Create enough misery, financial and health insecurity, food insecurity, stoke enough hatred, turn up the heat on the frog pot to close to boiling and the more violent among us will react with violence, at which point, endgame, welcome to the Libertarian States of Charles Koch, Jeff Bezos, Peter Theil, et al.

Speaking of unhinged, revenge-fueled maniacs, I knew it was only a matter of time until Dear Leader got back to settling his ancient grudge with his longtime enemy Rosie O’Donnell…

FBI director Kashyap Pramod Patel’s birthright citizenship appears to be airtight, at the moment, as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid or disloyal.

Loyalty to Kashyap, not the Constitution

A highly problematic report from the highly problematic New York Times:

It’s no longer a gratuitous comparison, MAGA is, in every essential way, the National Socialist German Workers Party who had such stupendous success during the early years of World War Two.  The requirement of a personal loyalty oath to your superior officer (see, e.g., Führereid or Führer Oath) flows directly from the Führerprinzip, the irrefutable idea that all authority and power flows downwards from the infallible Leader through his chosen chiefs.  It is supported by that old motto of the Third Reich, Führerworte haben Gesetzeskraft, “the Leader’s word is law” since the Leader is the ultimate expert on every subject.  

You don’t advance in this hierarchic, loyalty-based system where you may never question orders unless you accept that you’ll be punished severely if you disagree with the boss — on any grounds.   Principled dissent,  or — as some might claim — acting on conscience, or in obedience to constitutional limits of power, forbidden.  Defiance of authority is a fatal violation of the loyalty oath you are duty-bound to keep, in an authoritarian party.   If part of your duty is to faithfully tell any lie you’re required to tell (and now, as then, there is required language you must always use when asked certain questions — Sprachtregelung [1]) , then you are part of a  totalitarian regime.

Make no mistake, these grossly unqualified, radically ambitious extremists in charge of Trump’s federal government are National Socialists, our own homegrown modern American Nazis (though the FBI director’s immigrant parents both emigrated from Uganda, Kash is a birthright citizen, for the moment).   Motivated by personal ambition and a blind willingness to do whatever they’re asked to do, these guys, Kashyap, Pete, RFK Jr., Kristi, Pam, Marco, Tulsi and so on, will do whatever their Leader, and Stephen Miller, tells them to do.  The same goes for the slim majority in Congress and Charles Koch’s Supreme Court super-majority.

Right now a few Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee face an agonizing decision about who to believe and who is lying.  A whistleblower, a recently fired (for candor to the judge, as an officer of the court), highly respected, fifteen year nonpartisan employee of the DOJ who has now corroborated the main allegations of his complaint — or the president’s recent criminal lawyer and former acting AG, current nominee to a lifetime appointment to the federal appeals bench.

What we know about Emil Bove III is that he’s a fierce and unapologetic Trump loyalist who represented the president in all the weaponized criminal witch hunts against the Leader. More recently, as Acting AG in the present administration, he appeared personally in federal court to deny that there was a quid pro quo to drop federal charges against corrupt-looking NYC mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams giving ICE access to the sanctuary city. He also told the judge that even if there had been a quid pro quo, the court still couldn’t stop DOJ from dismissing the indictment against Adams.  Bove told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he can’t recall if he told his lawyers to be evasive and obstructive in court or to simply ignore court deadlines and orders, like Judge Boasberg’s order not to send 230 non-criminal immigrants to a terrorist torture prison in El Salvador.  

At least one  GOP senator may have a hard choice to make, because the Boss really, really wants his bellicose myrmidon, which proved over and over that he’s willing to lie for him, on the Supreme Court when Alito or Thomas leave.   We’ll have to keep an eye on this one. 

A loyal man who never violated his oath

[1] Sprachregelung is a German language term meaning “speech code”. It refers to a formal or informal agreement, or order, that certain things should be expressed in specific ways in official communications by an organization or by a political entity. It can also cover such concepts as agreed “lines-to-take”, talking points, and the exertion of message discipline. An example came in January 1945 when Ribbentrop sent emissaries to contact the Western Allies in Sweden and Switzerland, aiming to negotiate a separate peace; they carried with them a list of Sprachregelungen to ensure they gave the same message. Wikipedia