Monday, March 18, 2024

Trump goes nuts over the weekend, and former federal prosecutor calls him a "threat to democracy" and says his bond should be revoked for "bloodbath" remarks

 

Donald Trump, Republican candidate for president, called yesterday for members of the Congressional Jan. 6 committee to be jailed. That comes on the heels of a speech in Ohio, earlier in the weekend, where Trump warned of a "bloodbath" in America if he loses the November 5 election to President Joe Biden. A former federal prosecutor denounced Trump as a "threat to democracy" and called for bis bond to be revoked in the wake of the "bloodbath" statement.

These are just the latest signs that Trump's mental health is deteriorating and he is not fit to serve in any public office. It also is a sign that Americans need to take a cold, hard look at the reality surrounding Trump's candidacy. First, Trump seems to be suggesting that, if he resided in the White House, he could have the Jan. 6 committee members, arrested and jailed -- on his own whim. But for more than 50 years, U.S. policy has forbidden presidents from being involved with the charging -- or non-charging -- decisions of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ); the DOJ is to act independently of the White House. In other words, it's not the president's job to have people arrested or detained. And that's the latest of many signs that Trump has no clue how the American government works, and he apparently has no interest in learning.

We now have overwhelming evidence that Trump is both mentally unfit and incompetent in the government world. In fact, it's not clear at this point that he even was a good businessman. Incompetence and shaky mental health are a bad combination, and it's time those who claim to support Trump recognize that. 

If some Americans were slow to notice Trump's unfitness for office before, they certainly should recognize it now after his "bloodbath" remarks. Those statements should be a "bridge too far" for anyone with a few functioning brain cells. For MAGA types who don't realize that Trump is not deserving of anyone's vote, they might want to examine their own mental fitness. In fact, that could raise this question: Who has the most diseased brain, Trump supporters or Trump himself?"

For those who are just dying to experience living in an authoritarian state, I would suggest you move to Russia, Hungary, Iran, China, or North Korea. Give it a shot, and let the rest of us enjoy a democracy that has served our country well for almost 250 years.

As for Trump's incompetence and unfitness, consider the way he botched the coronavirus pandemic. Public-health experts knew an outbreak of a deadly virus was a serious threat when Trump took office for his first term in 2017. They knew the virus likely was to originate in China and previous administrations -- led by George W. Bush and Barack Obama -- developed a step-by-step "playbook" on how to deal with such a crisis. With genuine leadership from the U.S., the virus could have been contained in China and eventually eradicated there -- saving millions of lives around the globe, including 1.2 million lives in the United States.

Trump apparently could not be bothered to read the playbook -- or pay attention to warnings from intelligence officials in daily briefings -- and he downplayed the threat in public statements. Just before the coronavirus outbreak appeared. Trump eliminated the position of Dr. Linda Quick, an American epidemiologist who had been embedded in Beijing specifically to monitor for signs of a viral outbreak. Here is more information about Dr. Linda Quick and her abrupt exit, which coincided with a Trump-fueled trade war with China.

Many Americans, including yours truly,  have been concerned about Trump's mental fitness for months. For him to call for members of Congress to be jailed, even though they've committed no apparent crimes, speaks to clouded judgment. And the "bloodbath" comment is, by far, the most grotesque, outlandish statement I've heard from a public figure in my lifetime. Based on news accounts, I'm not sure anyone in attendance at the speech in Vandalia, Ohio, knew exactly what Trump meant by a "bloodbath," but a number of observers have taken it to be a call to violence among his supporters, demanding they spill blood in furtherance of his political aspirations. That is classic Trump, likely a malignant narcissist. Would MAGA types fall for this con game. They've fallen under con-game spell already, so the answer appears to be yes. Sad.

A former federal prosecutor is taking Trump's words seriously, according to a report at Newsweek:.

Glenn Kirschner condemned Donald Trump's "bloodbath" remarks and warned that the former president is a "threat to democracy."

Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney and frequent Trump critic, called for the former president to have his bond revoked over his comments on Saturday.

Trump, the presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee who was in Ohio on Saturday for a campaign stop at the Buckeye Values PAC rally, is facing mounting criticism for telling rallygoers that there will be a "bloodbath" if he loses to his Democratic rival President Joe Biden in November.

"Now if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole—that's gonna be the least of it," Trump said. "It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it."

Trump's comments quickly went viral and sparked a flurry of reactions on social media. While supporters of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) leader defended his "bloodbath" remarks and argued they were taken out of context, critics accused Trump of inciting violence.

Trump, the presumed 2024 Republican presidential nominee who was in Ohio on Saturday for a campaign stop at the Buckeye Values PAC rally, is facing mounting criticism for telling rallygoers that there will be a "bloodbath" if he loses to his Democratic rival President Joe Biden in November.

"Now if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole—that's gonna be the least of it," Trump said. "It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That will be the least of it."

Kirschner weighed in on the bloodbath remarks during Sunday's segment of his Justice Matters podcast, where he said, "Trump tried to walk it back later saying he was really talking about what would happen to the auto industry if he wasn't elected, but his words belie that; indeed they contradict that BS walk back."

The former prosecutor blasted Trump and compared Saturday's remarks to his January 6, 2021, rhetoric, for which Trump is accused of inciting the U.S. Capitol riot by spreading unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election. The claims led to a deadly siege as part of an effort to block Joe Biden's 2020 Electoral College victory.

Trump was indicted on four counts by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for his alleged role in the insurrection, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Trump, meanwhile, has maintained his innocence, accusing prosecutors of investigating him of attempting to derail his 2024 presidential campaign.

More than 1,265 individuals have been charged by the DOJ for their alleged involvement in the violent riot, with many already convicted and serving sentences.

Kirschner also took aim at Trump for making the bloodbath comments while facing dozens of felony charges in four separate criminal indictments. The former president had pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

"He is a threat to everyone in the United States of America," Kirschner said. "He is a threat to democracy. He launched an attack on January 6 against our democracy and it turned out to be a deadly attack. And he launched it with far less inflammatory language than he just used at the rally on Saturday: 'There will be a bloodbath in this country.' Do you understand me? That's what he just said. He's actually ratcheted up the recklessness and the violence of his rhetoric. And he's on pretrial release in four felony cases."

The former prosecutor argued that Trump's comments are dangerous and said that being a former president and presumptive GOP presidential nominee doesn't give him a free pass.

"He shouldn't be allowed to endanger our nation and her people and our democracy with this kind of violence-inducing rhetoric, more reckless than his rhetoric on January 6," Kirschner said. "This is institutional insanity if the institutions of government just receive this with a shrug. Do what the law provides, revoke Donald Trump on release, detain him pending trial. And for gosh sakes, let our country begin to move forward again."

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Fani Willis manages to stay on the Trump case in Georgia, but what about the crooked judges who are embedded, and protected, in the U.S. "justice system"?

Fani Willis
 

Georgia district attorney Fani Willis had the "distinct pleasure" of having a state judge "read her the riot act" over her highly questionable personal behavior in the Donald Trump election-subversion case in The Peach State. Judge Scott McAfee ultimately allowed her to stay on the case, so now the rest of us might have the "distinct pleasure" of watching Willis convict Trump -- in a case that appears to consist mostly of open-and-shut evidence -- and help send his doughy derriere to prison. Now that will be must-see TV.

It's been a long and winding road to justice in Georgia, and Liz Dye, of the Above the Law legal website analyzes the many twists and turns in this peculiar case. Under the headline "Court Reads DA Willis For Filth, But Lets Her Office Stay On The Trump Case; Well, that was ugly," Dye writes:

Donald Trump’s bid to derail the Georgia election-interference indictment ran aground Friday morning as Judge Scott McAfee ruled that the Fulton County District Attorney’s (FCDA) Office can stay on the case.

TL, DR (too long, didn't read)? Don’t sleep with your direct report on the biggest case of your career. Just don’t.

That seems like the most obvious take-home lesson from Willis' self-created mess. But Dye does not stop there:

The sprawling RICO prosecution has been in chaos for two months since former Trump campaign official Mike Roman revealed that DA Willis was romantically involved with Nathan Wade, the outside attorney hired as special prosecutor on the case. The allegations, which appeared to have come from Wade’s sealed divorce proceedings, were couched in a motion to dismiss the case on dubious procedural grounds, or to disqualify the FCDA entirely.

No one gave a damn about the procedural complaints, which had been previously rejected and rated just a couple of pages in Friday morning’s order. But we all watched hours of nasty, televised hearings dissecting the sex lives, bank accounts, and cellphone records of consenting adults in excruciating detail. It was a huge black eye for the FCDA, which certainly appears to have misrepresented the nature and timing of the relationship to the court. Or as Judge McAfee put it, “[N]either side was able to conclusively establish by a preponderance of the evidence when the relationship evolved into a romantic one. However, an odor of mendacity remains.”

That's a polite way for the judge to say, "I'm not pleased about having to wade through the muck of your romantic exploits." And Judge McAfee had more to say on that subject, as Dye writes:

Whether or not an actual conflict existed, giving Willis an incentive to prolong the case so her boyfriend could bill more hours, the optics were just terrible.

The appearance standard recognizes that even when no actual conflict exists, a perceived conflict in the reasonable eyes of the public threatens confidence in the legal system itself,” the judge scolded. “When this danger goes uncorrected, it undermines the legitimacy and moral force of our already weakest branch of government.”

(The judiciary is our weakest branch of government? You could have fooled me. I've seen first-hand that judges can ruin a litigant's life with a flick of the hand. I've seen them -- in multiple kinds of cases, in multiple jurisdictions -- brazenly rule contrary to fact and law and get away with it. As a nation, we've even seen that kind of crooked behavior from the U.S. Supreme Court (see here and here). When it comes to acting corruptly and getting away with it, federal judges certainly are not weak. They answer to no one, except appellate judges (on federal circuit courts), and those "justices" will go to extraordinary lengths to protect district-court scoundrels..Mrs. Schnauzer (my wife, Carol), and I have been there and seen that.

 

How gross can it get? An apparent sheriff's deputy attacked Carol from behind while she simply was talking with two other officers during an eviction that was unlawful on eight to 10 grounds. Carol wound up with a comminuted fracture of her left arm that required eight hours of trauma surgery for repair -- and her medical records indicate the surgical team had to deal with a number of possible complications that could have put Carol's life at risk; plus, she is expected to lose at least 25 percent usage of her arm. You can see the damage in the images above and right.

Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott has gone to considerable lengths to protect Carol's assailant, who should be in prison for felony assault. We only know the guy as "Mr. Blue Shirt" because neither Arnott nor his lawyer --Damon Phillips of the Keck & Phillips law firm, has been willing to produce his name as they are required to do under the discovery provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Why are Arnott and his attorneys going to such an effort to protect "Mr. Blue Shirt's" real name and affiliations? More importantly, why is U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool issuing all kinds of unlawful rulings, apparently designed to help Arnott & Co. conceal the assailant's identity, in our civil rights/personal injury lawsuit, By the way, records from Carol's health-care provider indicate the cost of her treatment is more than $80,,000, so we have sustained significant physical, financial, and emotional damages that are ongoing.

We are going to expose Mr. Harpool for the rogue that he is, explaining exactly how he has violated relevant law in a way that can only be intentional, raising this question: Who has been communicating with the judge in an improper ex parte manner, encouraging him to screw us over at every turn?

Our efforts likely will include a complaint against Harpool to the Judicial Conference, which recently was featured in a ProPublica article titled "The Judiciary Has Policed Itself for Decades. It Doesn’t Work;The secretive Judicial Conference is tasked with self-governance. The group, led by the Supreme Court’s chief justice, has spent decades preserving perks, defending judges and thwarting outside oversight

In upcoming posts, we will be unmasking some of the federal "rogues with robes" we have encountered, both in Alabama and Missouri. We also will be further examining how the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) violated Constitutional principles and its own precedent in unlawfully ruling for Trump in his insurrection case and presidential-immunity case. 

Bottom line: Trump is disqualified from appearing on the 2024 ballot -- or any future ballot-- because of his actions as an insurrectionist on Jan. 6, 2021. Also, Trump cannot be granted presidential immunity because there is no provision of law that supports such a finding.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Going for the jugular: "Smokin'' Joe" Biden plans to take off the gloves and hit Trump where it hurts, in his already rattled brain, as hardball begins in campaign

Biden plans to land haymakers on Trump
 

President Biden wants to start playing hardball with Donald Trump, in a move that could be called 'Going for the Jugular," according to a report at Axios. The plan is to rattle Trump by getting under his skin, partly by referring to him as "The Loser." That plan likely was behind Biden's fiery rhetoric in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, and the president reportedly wants to keep it up. Trump is soft and shaky in several places, especially between his ears, so that appears to be Biden's No. 1 target. Writes Axios' Mike Allen:

President Biden is privately pushing for a much more aggressive approach to 2024: Go for Donald Trump's jugular.

  • Why it matters: Biden is convinced he'll rattle Trump if he taunts him daily, Axios' Hans Nichols and Alex Thompson report.

Biden has told friends he thinks Trump is wobbly, both intellectually and emotionally, and will explode if Biden mercilessly gigs and goads him — "go haywire in public," as one adviser put it.

  • Other sources tell us Biden is looking for a fight.
  • Biden's instincts tell him to let it fly when warning about the consequences of Trump winning the presidency again. Biden told The New Yorker that Trump would refuse to admit losing, again.

The story of Biden's plan comes amid reports that Trump's already shaky mental health is showing signs of slipping. Mike Allen writes:

Between the lines: The "trigger Trump" approach would be a departure from a traditional Rose Garden re-election campaign.

  • Instead of focusing on jobs and the economy — areas in which polls suggest Americans aren't giving Biden much credit — Biden would be making the contest as much about Trump as his own accomplishments.
  • One potential upside: It would help assuage concerns about Biden's age by showing that at 81, he can still throw a Scranton punch.

We've already seen signs of a feisty Biden, and Axios reports we should look for that to continue:

State of play: Biden flashed his new fighting spirit at the State of the Union address, but his feistiness has been apparent for several weeks.

  • "Loser" has become a favorite Biden taunt of Trump lately.

In a rare, lengthy interview with The New Yorker published yesterday, Biden said: "I'm the only one who has ever beaten him. And I'll beat him again."

  • "Trump lost 60 court cases — 60," Biden said recently, referring to the legal challenges on Trump's behalf that alleged fraud in the 2020 election. (It was 63, actually.) "The legal path just took him back to the truth — that I won the election, and he was a loser."

Zoom out: In a speech at Valley Forge, Pa., before the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Biden attacked Trump in terms that were clearly personal — and nearly profane.

  • He suggested Trump was a "sick [blank]" before catching himself.

Biden advisers have some evidence that Biden already is getting under Trump's skin.

  • After Biden's recent appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Trump posted a video complaining about the show, calling the president a "basket case."

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Questions Galore: Why did Robert Hur resign one day before testifying in Congress; how strong are Hur's ties to TrumpWorld; did Hur intentionally cheat Biden?

Robert Hur testifies before Congress
 

When former special counsel Robert Hur issued a report in the Joe Biden classified-documents case, questioning the president's mental acuity because he allegedly could not remember the date of his son's death, it raised red flags with critics, who called the report a "partisan hit job." We now know the report probably was more partisan than the critics suspected.

And what about the word "former" that now appears before Hur's name. It turns out that Hur resigned his job in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday of this week. one day before he was to testify before Congress. We also know there are benefits to Team Trump from having Hur off the DOJ payroll. And finally, as we reported yesterday, we know it is an alarmingly common practice to allow sketchy figures in high government positions to resign in lieu of facing a criminal proceeding, which might uncover all kinds of embarrassing details that someone wants to keep under wraps.We cited the example of Abdul Kallon, a former federal judge in Alabama who was up to his neck in the North Birmingham Bribery scandal. One day, Kallon held a lifetime government position that came with all the trappings of power and prestige; The next day, he was announcing his retirement and hauling off for Seattle, where he now toils as a regular lawyer at the Coies Perkins firm. Why did this happen to Abdul Kallon? Why is something similar happening to Robert Hur?

The questions about Hur do not end there. We now know that a transcript issued earlier this week shows Biden did remember the date of his son Beau's death. In short, Hur used his platform to disseminate false information about a sitting president's mental faculties -- which, after Biden's powerful State of the Union address, look like they were pretty strong all along. That should cause reasonable Americans to notice a foul odor emanating from Hur's report.

The stench grows stronger when you learn that Hur was a partisan from the outset, that he not only was a Donald Trump appointee, he maintain close ties to Trump insiders. So, who benefited the most from Hur's false portrayal of Biden as a doddering, confused, memory-challenged old man, playing on the concerns of some voters that Biden is not up to the task of fulfilling a second term in the White House? That, of course, would be Donald Trump, who is Biden's challenger in the 2024 election.

Recent articles from Salon and The Independent shine light on Hur's extensive ties to Trump world and raise this question. Was Biden "investigated" by an objective, disinterested prosecutor, as should have been the case? Or was he the victim of a Trump-fueled con job, one that could have an impact on the 2024 election. 

Let's check out the Salon article first. Under the headline "Biden special counsel Robert Hur’s resignation from DOJ makes his testimony “even more problematic”; “It’s hard not to anticipate some real ugliness with Robert Hur’s testimony," predicts ex-prosecutor Harry Litman," Managing Editor Igor Deyrsh writes:

Special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated and declined to charge former President Joe Biden over classified materials found in his home and office, resigned from the Justice Department and will appear as a private citizen in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, according to The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg.

Hur, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who was tapped to lead the Biden probe by Attorney General Merrick Garland, formally stepped down one day before his Tuesday appearance at the request of Republicans led by Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. He drew criticism from Biden and the Democrats for criticizing the president’s memory in the report even as he declined to charge him.

Former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained that the Justice Department “cannot give instructions” to a former employee about what he “can and cannot testify to.”

“That makes it even more problematic from our perspective ... if he was still a federal employee, DOJ would have to approve his testimony and they’d be involved in his appearance,” a Democratic Judiciary Committee source told The Independent.

“It’s hard not to anticipate some real ugliness with Robert Hur’s testimony,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman. “He already showed his partisan colors in the inappropriate parts of his report. And he and the [Republicans] obviously contemplate he can vilify Biden now that he’s testifying as a ‘private citizen.’”

A report from The Independent's Andrew Feinberg raises all kinds of questions about Hur's objectivity, which appears to have been highly compromised. Under the headline "Robert Hur will testify as private citizen with help from Trumpworld figures; EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Special Counsel arranged to leave Justice Department the day before his appearance with the House Judiciary Committee,"Feinberg writes:

Robert Hur, the former Trump-appointed US Attorney who declined to prosecute President Joe Biden after classified materials were found in his Delaware home and a former office in Washington, DC, will appear before the House Judiciary Committee as a private citizen who has surrounded himself with Republican partisans and notorious figures linked to former president Donald Trump as he prepares for his Tuesday appearance before the House Judiciary Committee. 

According to multiple sources familiar with Mr Hur’s plans, the special counsel, who is appearing before the Judiciary Committee at the request of the Republican majority led by Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, has arranged his departure from the Department of Justice to be official as of Monday 11 March, one day before he is scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill.

Instead of appearing as a DOJ employee who is bound by the ethical guidelines which govern the behaviour of federal prosecutors, he will appear as a private citizen with no constraints on his testimony.

This story is smelling worse than it did when I started writing this post a few minutes ago. What is going on here? This is my educated guess:

Donald Trump, or someone close to him, pulled strings to get Hur on the Biden case. Then someone pulled more strings to get Hur, already a Trump partisan, to file a false report criticizing Biden's mental state.

Can something be done about this? Yes, it can. Since Hur was acting as an investigator, he could be sued. He also could be investigated criminally, along with any possible conspirators, under 18 U.S. Code 242 (Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law)

Could an investigatory trail lead to Donald Trump and his associates? In my view, the answer is yes. Could that lead to a fifth criminal indictment against Trump? Again, I think the answer is yes.

The question then becomes this: Does anyone in the DOJ have the guts and integrity to pursue such a case -- one that would require a federal prosecutor to go after a former federal prosecutor. That would be an uncomfortable assignment for any DOJ employee. But such an investigation can be done, and it must be done if we are going to have a fair presidential election in 2024, one that could determine if we continue to live under a democracy or head toward an authoritarian regime under Donald Trump.

Will such a criminal probe happen? As a skeptic of our justice system -- judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, etc. -- I have doubts that anyone will take this on. But I hope I'm wrong.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Is Katie Britt on the path to becoming a malignant narcissist, like her Republican political ally -- the brazenly and dangerously self-centered Donald Trump?

We have come to understand in recent days how U.S. Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) came to form a political alliance with Donald Trump. How did that happen? It started when a piece at Raw Story, about the fallout from Britt's brain-dead State of the Union (SOTU) response came to our attention. The piece showed how Britt had taken a story about the horrific sexual abuse of a 12-year girl by a pimp in Mexico and turned it into a story about . . . herself. That's the very thing Trump -- probably the most brazen and well-known narcissist in  American history -- has been doing for years.

Britt's handling of her SOTU hatchet job was so dreadful that the 12-year-old girl, who has grown into a woman and activist named Karla Jacinto Romero, has blasted the senator for the fact-challenged portrayal she concocted of Romero's ordeal. 

Here is a question to ponder: If Britt continues to play in Trump's psychologically scattered world, could she become a world-class narcissist just like her "orange idol"? We aren't qualified to give a clear-cut answer to that question. But if Britt continues to dip a toe in the Trump cesspool, our guess is that she runs the risk of developing what medical professionals call narcissistic personality disorder

A number of medical professionals have stated that Trump shows signs of combining narcissism with antisocial personality disorder (also known as sociopathy). This is an exceptionally dangerous combination. Could it come to have an impact on Katie Britt? She hasn't asked for my advice, but if she did, I would suggest -- for her own good -- that she stear clear of TrumpWorld. It is not a healthy place to be. Plus, it's not an accident that Trump is facing four criminal indictments, totaling 91 counts. Scientific research tells us  malignant narcissists are prone to criminal behavior. 

Let's take a close look at the Raw Story piece, which describes Britt's self-centered approach to fallout from her SOTU screw up. Under the headline "'My heart is broken': Katie Britt sends out self-pitying cash plea after SOTU debacle," Travis Gettys writes:

Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) sent out a self-pitying fundraising plea after her State of the Union rebuttal made her a national laughingstock.

The Alabama Republican delivered a response last week to President Joe Biden that mystified and alarmed viewers in both parties with her hushed tones, dark themes and inaccurate claims. Her speech was lampooned by actress Scarlett Johansson just two evenings later in the cold open to Saturday Night Live.

"Following my speech, the left-wing media didn't waste a second flooding the airwaves with despicable, disgusting messages about me," the senator's fundraising pitch states. "They attacked my character. They attacked my faith. They attacked my identity as a mother and a wife."

"My heart is broken," she added. "Not just for myself, but for my children, your children, and the ENTIRE next generation of Americans. Why? Because I didn't prepare a 20-minute speech and stand up to Biden in front of millions of Americans for ME. I did it for them, for YOU and your children, Friend!"

Britt then tried a rhetorical trick often used by Donald Trump and claimed the attacks were aimed at her, but she was instead absorbing blows meant for her supporters.

"Friend, they're not just laughing at me," reads her fundraising pitch. "They're laughing at every single American who dares to stand up to their radical agenda. Every patriot who fights to defend their American dream."

"Because they can't handle the truth," the pitch adds. "The truth about their failed leader."

Britt's State of the Union rebuttal was widely panned by critics who commented on her overacting and her wild swings between facial contortions and raw emotion.

You see what Britt did there? She took a story about the sexual abuse or a child and made it all about . . . her. That is Narcissism 101!

Gettys concludes: It was a story Britt presented about a sex- trafficking victim that got the most attention. Britt gave a horrific portrayal of meeting a woman she said had been raped multiple times, and suggested it was a symptom of a crisis at the southern border during Biden's presidency.

It was later revealed that the abuse happened in Mexico, and during the presidency of George W. Bush.

Could Britt be headed down a path toward malignant narcissism? Trump has a propensity for sucking people into his orbit and then discarding them at the first sign of perceived disloyalty. My advice? Run, Katie, run -- while you still can.

Transcript shows Joe Biden knew the date of his son's death, so Robert Hur spread false inormation about that, while also mysteriously resigning as special counsel one day before his Congressional testimony

Robert Hur testifies before Congress
 

For many Americans, the most memorable part of Special Counsel Robert Hur's report in the Joe Biden classified-documents case was the claim that the president could not remember the date of his son's death. But a transcript of the Hur-Biden interview, released yesterday, shows the president did know the date of his son's death and stated it correctly, along with other relevant details.

Here is a particularly thorny detail about Robert Hur. He resigned from his Department of Justice position on Monday and testified before Congress yesterday as a private citizen. Why did Hur make that decision, and did he make it on his ow or with the assistance of someone else.

It is common for sketchy figures in high government positions to be allowed to resign in lieu of being criminally prosecuted. This serves at least two purposes: (1) It keeps the sketchy figure from going through the discovery process of a criminal proceeding, which could reveal all kinds of embarrassing details that someone wants left under wraps; (2) More importantly, it keeps those who benefited from the sketchy figure's dubious conduct from being unmasked to the public.

We have written about this issue, particularly as it applied to former Alabama federal judge Abdul Kallon, who presided over the North Birmingham Bribery scandal before, seemingly out of the blue, resigning and fleeing to Seattle, where he now practices as a private attorney. What is going on with Robert Hur's abrupt resignation? We will address that in a moment, but for now, we know the transcript from the Biden-Hur interview shows Hur gave a false assessment of the president's words regarding Beau Biden's death. Could Hur face political or legal repercussions for getting this key information wrong? We will address that in a moment, but first, let's look at the relevant section of the transcript, from the reporting of The Washington Post's Matt Viser:

President Biden was in the early stages of his interview with special counsel Robert K. Hur when the topic of Beau Biden came up — initially with Biden raising it and later as Biden was attempting to get his chronological bearings and wondered aloud when, exactly, it was that his son died.

“What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30,” he said, naming the correct day, according to a transcript of the exchange reviewed by The Washington Post.

Two others in the room chimed in with the year, and Biden questioned, “Was it 2015 when he died?”

Not long after the exchange, Hur suggested they consider taking a brief break.

“No,” Biden responded, before launching into a long explanation of Beau’s death and its impact on him deciding not to run for president in 2016. “Let me just keep going to get it done.”

The exchange between Biden and Hur has become one of the focal points of a lengthy interview over two days in October that led the special counsel to conclude that Biden would not be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents — in part because Biden’s “poor memory” would make it difficult to convince a jury.

The transcript provides a more full depiction of the Hur-Biden interview than the public has seen before, Viser writes:

A Post review of the complete 258-page Hur transcript, which was provided to Congress on Tuesday morning, paints a more nuanced portrait of the exchanges between Biden and the special counsel. Biden doesn’t come across as being as absent-minded as Hur has made him out to be — and Hur doesn’t appear as crass as Biden has made him out to be.

“Just allow me to say for a moment, I am so terribly, terribly sorry for your loss,” Hur said after Biden first raised the death of his son.

The full transcript provides a more complete window into the back and forth between the two men, in which Biden frequently joked with prosecutors in a setting that seemed more chummy than antagonistic. (“I just warn you all: Never make one great eulogy because you get asked to do everybody’s eulogy,” Biden said at one point.) But the president also frequently digressed, with stories about trips to Mongolia and about the time he helped represent a client who lost one testicle and part of his penis. He also later twice mimicked the sounds of a car.

Biden spoke of working “in my pajamas” while at the Naval Observatory, made light of his poor spelling (“If it’s spelled right, it’s probably not”), and laughed off a photo of him with a onetime ally. (“You can tell it’s old. I have my arm around Lindsey Graham.”) He joked about how much time the FBI spent inside his home during the documents probe — “The FBI know my house better than I do” — and about what agents may have discovered.

“I just hope you didn’t find any risqué pictures of my wife in a bathing suit,” the president told federal prosecutors. “Which you probably did. She’s beautiful.”

The transcript shows that Biden, throughout the interview, insisted he had little involvement in packing or moving boxes and had no idea what was in them. Viser writes:

During the interview, Biden repeatedly professed that he had almost no involvement in packing or moving documents.

“I wish I could say I was more organized,” he said.

“She wanted nothing to do with my filing system,” he said of his wife.

Jill Biden has often asked him to keep more writings and to keep them organized, he said. She has implored him to be more like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, who would keep daily diaries.

Instead, Biden’s practice was to take contemporaneous notes and often store them away. He would forget what was there, and if anything he had was classified, he didn’t know it. If he found anything with classified markings, he said, he would give it back.

Asked about what might have been stored in the haphazard boxes inside his garage, he responded, “I have no godd--- idea. I didn’t even bother to go through them.”

Pressed further, he said, “I don’t remember how a beat-up box got in the garage.”

“Somebody must’ve packed this up, just picked up all the stuff, and put it in a box, because I didn’t,” he added.

As for the question raised at the beginning of this post, it is hard to say if Hur could face repercussions for his actions in the Biden investigation. Prosecutorial immunity generally protects prosecutors from lawsuits related to acts taken on the job, in their official capacity. Immunity, however, does not shield shield prosecutors from being sued for actions that are not related to advocating for the prosecution, such as acting as an investigator or police detective. Hur's acts in the Biden case appear to have been taken as part of an investigation, so he might have potential liability on that point. 

Documents filed in Anilao v. Spota, a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court case, state the following:

Federal prosecutors may, in their discretion, bring criminal charges against prosecutors who willfully deprive defendants of their rights. 18 U.S.C.§ 242. Section 242 requires “willful” conduct, which requires a high showing from the federal prosecutor. Such prosecutions happen so rarely that they fail to serve as an effective check to a prosecutor’s power.

In my view, probable cause is present to launch an investigation against Robert Hur. Numerous publications have quoted Hur as saying President Biden could not remember the date of his son's death. But evidence from the transcript cited at the top of this post shows that Biden did know the date, and upon being questioned, also knew the year it happened.

The central question likely is this: Did Hur intentionally disseminate a false assessment of the Biden interview and did he do it at the encouragement of a political figure in order to hurt Biden's chances of re-election? The last part of that question comes into play largely because Hur is a one-time appointee of Donald Trump, Biden's chief political rival. 

The even bigger question is this: Did Robert Hur act on his own or was he part of a Trump-fueled conspiracy to feed into concerns about Biden's age, hurting the incumbent's chances in the 2024 presidential election.

Voters need to know the answers to those questions before casting ballots on Nov. 5. And under 18 U.S. Code 242, highlighted in blue above, Hur can, and should, be investigated. But here is an obstacle that must be overcome: Hur was acting as a  federal prosecutor at the time of apparent wrongdoing, so that would require another federal prosecutor to scrutinize the work of a fellow "tribe" member. Would any member of the prosecutorial fraternity have the guts to take on such a task? That seems unlikely, but there is no question that the Hur matter is ripe for an investigation -- and it clearly involves a significant queestion: Did Hur, alone or in concert with others, intentionally try to harm the electoral chances or a sitting U.S. president?

As for Hur's abrupt resignation, we have this from a report at Salon:

Special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated and declined to charge former President Joe Biden over classified materials found in his home and office, resigned from the Justice Department and will appear as a private citizen in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, according to The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg.

Hur, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who was tapped to lead the Biden probe by Attorney General Merrick Garland, formally stepped down one day before his Tuesday appearance at the request of Republicans led by Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. He drew criticism from Biden and the Democrats for criticizing the president’s memory in the report even as he declined to charge him.

Former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained that the Justice Department “cannot give instructions” to a former employee about what he “can and cannot testify to.”

“That makes it even more problematic from our perspective ... if he was still a federal employee, DOJ would have to approve his testimony and they’d be involved in his appearance tomorrow,” a Democratic Judiciary Committee source told The Independent.

“It’s hard not to anticipate some real ugliness with Robert Hur’s testimony,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman. “He already showed his partisan colors in the inappropriate parts of his report. And he and the [Republicans] obviously contemplate he can vilify Biden now that he’s testifying as a ‘private citizen.’”

We will have more zbout Hur's curious resignation in an upcoming post.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Was Katie Britt's tortured SOTU speech a lame, Trump-inspired attempt to peddle "The Great Replacement Theory" to race-obsesed MAGA voters?

Katie Britt and husband Wesley Britt
 

About the only person who has praised Katie Britt's Republican response to the State of the Union address is Donald Trump, the GOP's presumptive candidate for president in 2024 -- and news of Trump's positive review comes amid reports that Britt, U.S. Senator from Alabama, was on his "short list" for a running mate. Does that mean Trump and his allies had heavy input into the content of Britt's fact-challenged and widely panned speech?  Does that mean Britt was happy to deliver a deeply flawed speech -- some journalists have said it contained out-and-out lies -- because she held hopes of becoming vice president, although she appears to have zero qualifications for such a lofty role?

These questions come to mind after reading an op-ed piece by Dean Obeidallah, a former lawyer, frequent CNN contributor, and host of his eponymous daily show at SiriusXM radio. 

Under the headline "Katie Britt’s outrageous statements about migrants," Obeidallah writes:

Republican Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama delivered the GOP response last week to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union, and America has been ruthlessly delivering its response to Britt ever since.

Social media exploded with brutal reviews of Thursday’s speech, mocking everything from Britt’s “acting class energy” to her decision to deliver the address from her kitchen (suggesting, perhaps, that some in the GOP think that’s where women belong), as well as her breathless delivery. 

Saturday Night Live piled on this weekend, with Scarlett Johansson making a surprise appearance portraying the senator in the show’s opening sketch, overperforming every line including “tonight I’ll be auditioning for the part of scary mom” and “I’ll be performing an original monologue called ‘this country is hell’.”

While the SNL parody was a hit, Britt's actual speech was a colossal flop, except in the opinion of one person. Obeidallah writes:

At least one person truly loved Britt’s speech: Former President Donald Trump praised Britt for delivering what he called a “GREAT” speech that was “compassionate and caring.” His accolades should not come as a surprise. After all, Britt took a page from his playbook by baselessly ratcheting up fears about an influx of migrants to scare voters into supporting the GOP.

In her address, Britt blamed Biden for the “border crisis,” claiming he “invited” it with his executive actions. During the speech, she told the harrowing story of a woman she said she’d met on the Texas side of the southern border who told her about having been “sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12.” 

“She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped,” Britt said. After sharing additional details of the woman’s story, the senator declared, “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it.” She added, “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

The content of Britt's speech involved a slight problem. A substantial portion of it was false. Even Karla Jacinto Romero, the victim of the dreadful abuse Britt describes, has blasted the senator's speech -- and the way Britt went about concocting a fact-challenged version of what really happened. Obeidallah writes:

The senator’s words might have led some listeners to conclude that Biden’s border policies resulted in this child being sex trafficked beginning at the age of 12. However, that was not even close to the truth.

As fact checkers detailed — and Britt’s own staff admitted after strong pushback by critics of the speech — this sex trafficking did not happen during Biden’s presidency. And contrary to what Britt seemed to imply, the vile abuse didn’t occur on US soil. It took place in Mexico.

“SNL” mocked the speech and its speaker, with Johansson-as-Britt declaring, “I’m going to do a pivot out of nowhere into a shockingly violent story about sex trafficking.” She quickly added, to big laughs, “Rest assured, every detail about it is real … except the year, where it took place and who was president when it happened.”

Sean Ross, Britt's spokesman, did not do her any favors. He seems as averse to facts as she is. Ross once was a writer and editor at Yellowhammer News, which is more or less an in-house right-wing rag of Alabama Power and its parent firm, Atlanta-based Southern Company -- both of which have been embroiled in the North Birmingham Bribery scandal for 10 years or so. Alabama Power also used to be the employer of Wesley Britt, Katie's husband and a former offensive lineman for the University of Alabama and the NFL's New England Patriots. Obeidallah writes:

Amid the uproar over the story’s accuracy, Britt’s spokesperson defended it as “100% correct,” but conceded that the individual at the center of the account was Karla Jacinto Romero, who testified to Congress years ago about having been forced by traffickers to work in Mexican brothels between 2004 and 2008 — during the George W. Bush administration.

Britt’s border narrative was grossly misleading, but exaggerated stories designed to gin up fears of non-white migrants are exactly what Trump has been delivering from the day he descended the gilded elevator in Trump Tower and kicked off his 2016 presidential run. Trump launched that campaign by falsely telling voters that Mexico was sending people to the United States who were “bringing crime” and were “rapists.” Britt’s story conjures up the very same theme — one that the former president and his supporters have returned to repeatedly since his election.

In other words, Britt did with her speech what Trump has been doing for years -- telling scary stories about brown people, perhaps designed to attract right-wing voters who, perhaps driven by the GOP-promoted "The Great Replacement Theory," want to see more white faces and fewer brown faces in America. An academic study, by the way, has shown that The Great Replacement Theory was a driving force for rioters at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Writes Obeidallah:

During the 2018 midterm elections, for example, Trump and the Republican establishment put out a message that “caravans” filled with “thugs” and bringing “crime” were heading to the United States. After the election, however, when voters rejected the GOP scare tactics and flipped control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats, the GOP suddenly became suspiciously quiet about migrant “caravans.”

Despite that election loss, scaring people about immigrants is still a major part of Trump’s playbook. In December, he invoked the dangerous language of Adolph Hitler, claiming that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America. (Trump has said he was unaware that the quote had been uttered by Hitler.) Last month, while visiting the southern border, Trump lied that jails “throughout the world” were being emptied so that former inmates could migrate to the US. 

And just last week, after the Super Tuesday primaries, Trump claimed, “Our cities are being overrun with migrant crime, and that’s Biden migrant crime.” The data does not support the assertion that migrants are responsible for higher rates of crime — quite the contrary, in fact. But facts don’t seem to matter when you are trying to scare voters.

The Republican Party was not always associated with racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. GOP President Ronald Reagan in 1989 declared that immigrants were making our “nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas.” The 40th US President added, “If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

But that GOP is dead. It’s now the party of Trump. That’s why Britt’s misleading statements about crime and migrants are applauded by Trump. So, laugh at Britt as much as you want. As long as she stokes fear about migrants, she will be beloved by Trump and the MAGA base.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Victim in Katie Britt's sex-trafficking story rips the Alabama senator for misappropriating and butchering the facts of what really happened to her in Mexico

Karla Jacinto Romero and Katie Britt
 

Even the victim in Katie Britt's elaborate sex-trafficking tale, at the heart of her Republican response to the State of the Union address, now is blasting the Alabama senator's widely criticized oratorical efforts. That is from a piece at The New Republic (TNR), under the headline "Sex Trafficking Survivor Detests Being in Republicans’ SOTU Response; Karla Jacinto Romero isn’t happy about the way Republican Senator Katie Britt used her story for the State of the Union rebuttal." 

TNR reporter Paige Oamek makes it clear that Karla Jacinto Romero is not pleased with the way Britt misappropriated and misconstrued her story of gross sexual abuse at the hands of a pimp in Mexico. Writes Oamek:

The sex trafficking survivor who was mentioned by Republican Senator Katie Britt in the State of the Union rebuttal says her story was totally warped by the senator as part of an attack on Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

“I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo—and that to me is not fair,” Karla Jacinto Romero told CNN on Sunday. Jacinto Romero also confirmed that no one from Britt’s team had reached out to her asking to share her story.

That suggests Britt used Romero's story without talking to her about it, and that's only the beginning of the underhanded ways Britt dealt with the matter. It also raises this question: If Britt did not get her information directly from Romero, and that's what Romero's words suggest, where did she get it? Was someone else -- perhaps from the Donald Trump campaign or the Republican Party -- involved in helping Britt disseminate false information designed to make President Joe Biden look weak on border issues? If so, did the content of Britt's tortured speech involve a conspiracy -- one that could involve criminal activity?

At the moment, we know for sure that Karla Jacinto Romero is unhappy about being dragged into Britt's narrative. Writes Oamek:

In her widely criticized State of the Union response, Britt shared the graphic story of a woman who was raped by human traffickers for years.

 “When I first took office, I did something different. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12,” Britt said in her speech, seeming to imply that this happened in the United States during Biden’s presidency.

Britt’s communications director has already stated that the woman in the story was Jacinto Romero. And Jacinto Romero, in her interview with CNN, is confirming a viral TikTok that Britt got all the dates—and some other details—wrong.

In short, Britt messed up the story big time. Was that done intentionally, perhaps at someone else's encouragement? That is one of many questions hanging out there for now. From the TNR piece:

In reality, Jacinto Romero was kept in captivity in Mexico from 2004 to 2008, when President George W. Bush was president. She was not trafficked in the United States, nor was she trafficked by drug cartels as Britt alleged in her speech, but by a pimp who kidnapped young girls.

Jacinto Romero also disputes Britt’s version of the story, which made it seem like the two women met in a private meeting.

Jacinto Romero told CNN that she actually met Britt at an anti-trafficking event last year at the southern border, with several other government officials in attendance, including Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi.

Has Britt acknowledged her screw ups and maybe apologized for them. Not on your life? Like Donald Trump himself, Britt seems disinclined to take responsibility or apologize for anything. Writes Oamek:

As these clarifications have come to light, how has Britt responded? Well, she’s doubling down of course.

When Fox News host Shannon Bream asked Britt Sunday if she meant to imply that this all happened during Biden’s presidency, Britt responded, “No. I very specifically said, ‘This is what President Biden did during his first 100 days.’ He stopped all deportations, he halted construction of the border wall and he said, ‘I’m going to give amnesty to millions.’ Those types of things act as a magnet to help more and more people here.”

She followed up that sentence with the statement, “President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable. And it’s almost entirely preventable.”

Being a postmodern Republican apparently means "never having to say you're sorry." -- or admitting you were wrong and dishonest, falsely conflating the Romero horror story with Joe Biden's immigration policies -- even now that Romero says the two had nothing to do with each other, and the abuse she experienced did not happen in the United States.

Can you at least say "whoops," Katie?