DOJ leadership is Trump’s criminal defense team

Now Trump is planning to install the first of them on the Supreme Court.

There are many other horror stories going on at the same time: mass killing and war crimes in Gaza, in Ukraine, a determined and insane plan to bring the US back to the age before there was any regulation of predatory capitalism, the deliberate erasure of history, the deliberate destruction of essential government services, incoherent denial of science and disease control, rage against those who would protect the environment, poverty and the pain associated with it about to explode in the wealthiest country in history, inhuman treatment of humans in our country who are trying to obey our laws, called “illegals” and brutalized by masked goon squads when they appear for court hearings, or simply go to work, violence and hate crimes on the rise as a result of these brutally unpopular policies.

The news cycle is currently dominated by arguments about Jeffrey Espstein, infamous pedophile and sex trafficer, a onetime close friend of Trump’s, found dead in one of Bill Barr’s jail cells (the night after Epstein’s lawyers found their client in fairly good cheer), and the DOJ’s refusal to release the vast files it has on the powerful sex trafficker’s clients and victims. The super-rich, politically connected dead pedophile’s ultra-wealthy girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, is the only conspirator ever charged in connection with a criminal conspiracy victimizing countless girls and young women that saw over 4,700 wire transfers to the pedophile/sex trafficker amounting to over $1,000,000,000 (in only one of several banks he had money in) [1].

Trump’s criminal DOJ recently issued a short memo concluding: nothing to see here. The shit show is vast, deliberate, relentless. Number Two in the DOJ, Trump criminal attorney Todd Blanche, is set to visit Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in prison, certainly to make her an offer in exchange for her principled silence if Congress manages to subpoena her. Nothing to see here. The Supreme Court said the president is allowed to commit crimes, as long as he uses his official chain of command to order those crimes in performance of his core duties. What? You got a problem with that?

Here’s one small but key circus act, playing out against the hideous backdrop of an openly criminal administration whose Department of Justice leadership are Trump’s top criminal and impeachment lawyers.

I am referring, of course, to Emil Bove III, Trump’s 44 year-old pick to replace one of the aging far-right hardliners on the 6-3 Trump majority.

The Grey Lady has annotated Bove’s letter to Acting US Attorney for SDNY, Danielle Sasson, accepting her resignation and snarling at her like the bully he is known to be.  Sasson was the principled Trump-appointee who tendered her resignation rather than do Bove’s unjust, unethical, illegal bidding (dismiss criminal case against NYC mayor Eric Adams, without prejudice, allowing it to be prosecuted any time Adams didn’t do his part of the quid pro quo).    

Bove, sounding more like a defense lawyer for Adams than a top Justice Department official, demeans the process by which a grand jury indicted the mayor, saying they had done so based on a “one-sided” and “partial” presentation of the evidence.

You can scroll through the annotations, there are maybe a dozen, to get a pretty good picture of Mr. Bove’s, eh, character.   He’s on Trump’s one man short list to fill Alito or Thomas’s smelly seat before the midterms.  Senate to vote on his lifetime seat on the federal bench any day now.  His nomination left the Judiciary Committee last week on party lines, 7-6 when Grassley cut off questioning of Bove, called for a vote, and Democrats walked out.

Bove is a real modern day Roy Cohn.

clickez above for the rest

[1] From Senator Ron Wyden:

The file shows Epstein used multiple Russian banks, which are now under sanctions, to process payments related to sex trafficking. A lot of the women and girls he targeted came from Russia, Belarus, Turkey and Turkmenistan. You shudder to think about the kinds of people who must have been involved in trafficking these women and girls out of those countries and into Epstein’s web of abuse.

Again, these are all potential leads the Department of Justice ought to be digging into. This is about years and years of international sex trafficking. None of this is a hoax. None of it is a scam. It’s insulting to the intelligence of the American people when Trump and Bondi say there’s nothing here to investigate.

source

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”

Philosopher King NPC — empathy is for cucks

What the hell is an NPC?

That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. Musk’s AI creation, Grok, recently expressed religious veneration for the greatest human/deity in history, Adolf Hitler. Hitler famously said “conscience is a Jewish invention”. I don’t know if Mr. H. was right about that, I do know that iron-willed repression of conscience was necessary for the men originally tasked with the liquidation of Jews, men, women and children, and others deemed undesirable by Mr. Hitler. Members of the einsatzgruppen, the death squads, regularly developed drinking problems, suffered nightmares and mental breakdowns after shooting countless civilians in the head and forcing locals to bury the dead in trenches. They had a high burnout rate and had to be replaced regularly, which (along with the bullets needed for battles everywhere) was one impetus for a mechanized Final Solution.

Part of the far-right’s (not very coherent) critique of “wokeness” is that it is empathy run amok, turning victims of the “woke virus” into performatively empathetic weak prey animals unaware of the true Darwinian nature of the world where only the ruthless can triumph morally. The New York Times published a brilliant op ed by Jennifer Szalai on the Christian right’s condemnation of empathy as practiced by most of the rest of us. An excellent discussion, with some great insights from, and into, my hero, Hannah Arendt. Not surprising that Hannah made an excellent contribution to Jennifer Szalai’s analysis of this perverse Christian nationalist condemnation of empathy.

Here’s a taste:

The death of thinking, in fact, was what Arendt worried about in her work on totalitarianism. When she reported on the trial of the Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, what struck her was his “thoughtlessness.” At one point Eichmann declared that “he had lived his whole life according to Kant’s moral precepts” — a claim that was particularly outrageous to Arendt, who elsewhere wrote about Kant’s concept of the “world citizen.” Such citizenship was not, she maintained, a matter of “an enormously enlarged empathy” but something more rigorous: “One trains one’s imagination to go visiting.”

Click on the image below for the piece, gifted to you by The New York Times, which owns it, I’m just providing them a free ad.

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.

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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

Fascism-induced depression

The lessons of history? Hogwash! Factual things that can be observed and are part of the public record? Never existed! Cause and effect? Not applicable here. Reasoned discussion versus passionate fact-free partisan anger? No contest — fact-free partisan anger, ANGER! Demonstrated Russian determination, over the course of three presidential elections, to get an American political party into power? Russia, Russia, Russia! Hoax, hoax, big, fat, commie, fascist hoax! Books? BURN THEM!

When public discourse, from a presidential administration, becomes a series of denials of reality (no need for the Department of Education, FEMA, USAID, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Epstein “victims”, Congress, any court but the Supreme one, etc.) we are living under the dark shadow of fascism. Fascists depend, like malevolent narcissists and psychopaths in general, on creating the reality that makes their absolute, unchallengeable power look inevitable. Make Incoherence Great Again!

When the Department of Justice, whose top ranks, purged of all J6 rioter prosecutors (except for Emil Bove III, oddly enough) are all lawyers who defended the president in impeachments and criminal trials, and demonstrated their fawning obsequiousness to the boss (oh, yeah, Bove was one of the best at this), treats the transgressive president as their client, it’s a quick slide down the rest of the slippery slope to American fascism.

It keeps you up at night, at least it keeps me up sometimes, the crawling thoughts of what this experiment in democracy has come to, how many ways it is under attack by determined, well-organized uberwealthy mad men and mad women and their accomplices. Mad is an easy word (though it appears to describe virtually all of our most public-facing billionaires), some of the political opportunists who work for Trump are a little bit crazy, though all of them are supremely ambitious, see a chance to hold a prestigious, powerful job they are not qualified for by sucking up to a mad CEO, and compete for who can be most useful to the “cause”, the “president’s agenda” (the advancement of which is now the stated mission of DOJ).

Marco Rubio, Trump’s loyal Secretary of State, chaired the Senate Committee that issued a voluminous three volume report on more than a hundred instances of Russian interference in the 2016 election [1]. Rubio’s committee detailed the dealings of then Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort (pardoned felon), former partner of Trump ally Roger Stone (pardoned felon), and Konstantin Kilimnik, a member of Putin’s spy agency indicted by Robert Mueller. Of course, no American journalist would ask Rubio about that report he wrote the introduction to, as his boss dithers between outward support for Putin and occasionally scolding Putin over “killing too many people in Ukraine.” It’s certain that Rubio would dance away from the inconvenient question (the truthful answer to which would undermine his own authority) and defer to the boss, cite Truth Social and echo Trump’s constant catcall of “Russia, Russia, Russia!” We are in the era of “I know you are, but what am I?” politics.

We see this in history everywhere fascism has taken over. Watch the excellent American Masters documentary on Hannah Arendt on soon-to-be defunded PBS. The horrors Arendt escaped in Nazi Germany, and her thoughts about the rise of totalitarian movements, have an eerie personal familiarity to us right now. You can see it HERE, free until July 26.

Hannah Arendt scholar Roger Berkowitz says, in the documentary:

Arendt saw this, she was there, she was living there [Germany, as the Nazis rose to power]. And so many of her friends said ‘oh, well, he’s just crazy, he’s just making things up, and don’t worry about him, he can’t win, he’s just creating fantasies’. But fantasies sometimes are what we want, and especially at times of economic, cultural, social and political despair, people, they were lonely, they were needy of meaning and belonging and that’s what Hitler was giving people.

Hannah Arendt writes:

A most cherished virtue is loyalty to the leader, who, like a talisman, assures that ultimate victory of lie and fiction over truth and reality . . . The Nazi movement recruited their members from this mass of indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene.

Having lost virtually my entire family to the “ideology” of a madman, Mr. Hitler, I tend to take the steady creep of American oligarchy/fascism personally. It is a fight to resist the depression this “fuck your fucking facts, fuckface” regime imposes by their aggrieved insistence on the right to irrationality and the exercise of unlimited power to carry out their masters’ wishes. The donkey they are riding to the finish line is charismatic conman Donald J. Trump, because he’s the only one who can mobilize a good portion of the desperate masses to serve the 1%. When they are done with him, he’ll be disposed of. Nobody in a fascist state has any real loyalty to anyone else, everything is transactional. The philosophy is let the most ruthless rule.

Click the image below to read updated version on Substack

At least there are presently no private companies building a network of concentration camps here, outside of The GEO Group and Core Civic, who got no bid contracts for their important work for ICE [2]. Well, at least there are no concentration camps here for US citizens, at the present time. We have critical Americans calling Alligator Alcatraz (Alcatraz was a prison for convicted criminals on an island) Alligator Auschwitz (a famous Nazi death camp in Poland for people simply deemed enemies) but is the Florida detention center in the Everglades really a death camp? All we know is this:

Over the weekend, Democratic lawmakers were finally given a tour of Alligator Alcatraz, the hastily erected tent city–immigrant detention center in a Florida swamp. What they reported seeing is barbaric.

Detainees are confined to cages enclosed by chainlink fencing with three unhygienic, open-air toilets for 32 people. There is no escape from the oppressive heat, humidity, and swarming mosquitoes. Though lawmakers were not allowed to meet with any of the detainees, they could hear them begging for help.

Dan Rather

Now, my friends, go back to sleep, if you can.

[1] “We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement, directly refuting President Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that Russian interference was a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.

The committee, however, did not find any evidence of a coordinated scheme between the Trump campaign and Moscow, Rubio said.

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[2] from that article:

Private prison executives are forecasting hundreds of millions of dollars in new ICE profits. Since Trump’s reelection in November, CoreCivic’s stock has risen in price by 56% and Geo’s by 73%.

“It’s the gold rush,” Michael A. Hallett, a professor of criminal justice at the University of North Florida who studies private prisons. “All of a sudden, demand is spiraling. And when you’re the only provider that can meet demand, you can pretty much set your terms.”

Geo’s former lobbyist Pam Bondi is now the U.S. attorney general. It anticipates that all of its idle prisons will be activated this year, its executive chairman, George Zoley, told shareholders.

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.

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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