;)
Monday
Jan232023
January 23, 2023
Afternoon Update:
Wow! Shayna Jacobs, et al., of the Washington Post: "The former head of FBI counterintelligence in New York has been charged in two separate indictments that accuse him of taking secret cash payments of more than $225,000 while overseeing highly sensitive cases, and allegedly breaking the law by trying to get Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska removed from a U.S. sanctions list, officials said Monday. Charles McGonigal, 54, who retired from the FBI in September 2018, was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on money laundering, violating U.S. sanctions and other charges in connection to his alleged ties to Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his role at the FBI, McGonigal had been tasked with investigating Deripaska, whose own indictment on sanctions-violation charges was unsealed in September. Separately, McGonigal was accused in a nine-count indictment in federal court in Washington of hiding his receipt of $225,000 from a former Albanian intelligence agent living in New Jersey. McGonigal was also accused of hiding foreign travel and contacts with senior leaders in countries including Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia where the former Albanian agent had business interests." The ABC News story is here.
Zach Montague of the New York Times: "Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia were found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Monday for their roles in trying to keep Donald J. Trump in office after his 2020 election defeat, nearly two months after the group's leader -- Stewart Rhodes -- was convicted of the same offense in a separate trial in November. A jury in Federal District Court in Washington also found the four defendants guilty of two separate conspiracy charges. The defendants -- Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo -- were originally charged along with Mr. Rhodes and other members of the group. But their trial was broken off as a separate proceeding by the judge in the case, Amit P. Mehta, because of space constraints in the courtroom." CNN's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Michael Levenson of the New York Times: "An Arkansas man who posed with his boot propped on a desk in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was convicted by a federal jury on Monday of eight counts, including disorderly conduct in a capitol building, prosecutors said. The man, Richard Barnett, 62, of Gravette, Ark., became one of the highest-profile defendants charged in the storming of the Capitol after he was photographed in Ms. Pelosi’s office, wearing a hat, plaid jacket, bluejeans and brown boots, with a stun gun dangling from his belt, prosecutors said." The NBC News story is here.
They're Ba-a-ack! (At Least Some of Them.) Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court, which had not announced a decision from the bench since the start of the coronavirus pandemic almost three years ago, returned to the courtroom on Monday to issue a unanimous decision in a case on veterans' benefits. The decision, the first in an argued case in the term that started in October, was announced by its author, Justice Amy Coney Barrett. It was the first time she had summarized an opinion from the bench." In the veteran's case, the Court ruled that he waited far too long to apply for benefits that he would have been due had he filed within a year of his discharge from the Navy. Besides Barrett, in attendance were Chief Justice John Roberts & Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. ~~~
~~~ Marie: MEANWHILE, Kagan was out having lunch at a Chinese restaurant; Gorsuch was driving a truck up to my place because there is (really!) a blizzard going on here; O'Kavanaugh was having a few beers at a D.C. watering hole and Alito was photocopying his latest opinion to send to Josh Gerstein of Politico.
Historian Eric Foner in a New York Times op-ed highlights a little-discussed provision of the Fourteen Amendment: Section Four, which states that "The validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned." Foner argues that, given the historical application of this provision -- which he describes -- the current Congress may not question the validity of our national debt and refuse to authorize payment. "But if the current House of Representatives abdicates this responsibility, throwing the nation into default by refusing to raise the debt limit, President Biden should act on his own, taking steps to ensure that the federal government meets its financial obligations, as the Constitution requires." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. See his commentary below.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "President Biden's lawyers told the Justice Department in November that they had no reason to believe that copies of official records from his vice presidency had ended up anywhere beyond a think tank in Washington, where several classified documents had been found that month, two people familiar with the matter said on Sunday. That assertion, the people said, was based on interviews with former officials who had been involved in the process of packing and shipping such material. But it would turn out that a handful of classified records were at Mr. Biden's residence in Wilmington, Del., too. The mistaken premise, according to the people..., helps explain why roughly seven weeks elapsed before Mr. Biden's lawyers searched boxes in the garage at his Wilmington home on Dec. 20 and found several more classified papers." Savage goes on to outline the timeline and discussions between DOJ and President Biden's lawyers, as described by Biden's team.
Tyler Pager & Yasmeen Abutaleb of the Washington Post: "President Biden will name Jeff Zients to serve as his next chief of staff, turning to a management consultant who oversaw the administration's coronavirus response to replace Ron Klain, who is expected to leave in the coming weeks, according to four people familiar with the decision. Zients left the White House in April after steering the administration's pandemic response and leading the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history. He returned to the White House in the fall to help Klain prepare for staff turnover after the midterms -- a project that was ultimately limited in scope, as few senior staff members have left across the administration. But, in recent weeks, Klain has assigned him different projects, which some viewed as preparing Zients for the top role, people familiar with the arrangement said...." CNN's story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
John Wagner & Marianna Sotomayor of the Washington Post: "House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has formally recommended that Reps. Adam B. Schiff and Eric Swalwell be reappointed to the House Intelligence Committee, escalating a clash with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who has vowed to deny spots on the panel to both California Democrats. In a letter dated Saturday, Jeffries argued that McCarthy has no justifiable reason not to accept his appointments of Schiff, who served as chairman of the Intelligence panel until Republicans took control of the chamber, and Swalwell.... Unlike most committees, where party leaders control their appointees, the speaker has final say over who sits on the Intelligence panel.... Republicans have been angling to deny spots on key panels to Democrats partly in retaliation for votes by the Democratic-led House in the last Congress to remove Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Reps. Paul A. Gosar (R-Ariz.) from committees.... Greene and Gosar were removed 'after a bipartisan vote of the House found them unfit to serve on standing committees for directly inciting violence against their colleagues,' Jeffries wrote. 'It does not serve as precedent or justification for the removal of Representatives Schiff and Swalwell, given that they have never exhibited violent thoughts or behavior.'"
Poppy Noor of the Guardian: "Thousands of protesters gathered across the United States to protest the end of the federal right to abortion -- marching on the the 50th anniversary of the Roe v Wade supreme court decision that made abortion a constitutional right in 1973, but which was struck down last year. At more than 200 Women's March events in 46 states, demonstrators condemned the court's decision.... The vice-president, Kamala Harris, delivered a speech in Tallahassee, Florida, [a] state with tight restrictions on abortion that will get tighter if state Republicans have their way."
The Pandemic, Ctd. Fenit Nirappil of the Washington Post: "... early waves of respiratory syncytial virus and influenza peaked before the new year, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And the expected winter uptick of coronavirus is nowhere close to overwhelming hospitals, as it did in 2021 when covid wards were filled with unvaccinated people.... The RSV wave has receded ... across the country. Flu cases have rapidly dwindled. Covid hospitalizations rose briefly after Christmas, only to fall again.... The United States is better equipped now than earlier in the pandemic to weather coronavirus surges because most people have some degree of immunity, and early treatment keeps the most vulnerable people from becoming seriously ill." Access to this article is free to nonsubscribers.
Beyond the Beltway
Arizona Senate Race. Jazmine Ulloa of the New York Times: "Representative Ruben Gallego, a progressive Democrat from Phoenix, announced on Monday that he would run for the Senate in 2024, setting up a potential face-off with Senator Kyrsten Sinema over her seat that could carry high stakes for Democrats' control of the upper chamber. Mr. Gallego, a 43-year-old former state lawmaker and U.S. Marine veteran, began his campaign with a video in which he declares his run to a group of fellow veterans at American Legion Post 124 in Guadalupe, Ariz., near Phoenix.... Ms. Sinema, whose opposition to key elements of her party's agenda had angered Democrats, left the party in December and registered as an independent.... It is expected that Ms. Sinema will seek re-election, but she has not yet announced her intentions.... A head-to-head matchup between Mr. Gallego and Ms. Sinema in the general election is likely to split the coalition of Democrats and independents who have powered Democratic victories in Arizona in recent elections." CNN's story is here.
South Carolina Gothic. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of the New York Times: "The trial of Alex Murdaugh begins on Monday, the centerpiece of a twisted tale of two fatal shootings and the downfall of a South Carolina legal dynasty."
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates for Monday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~
~~~ ** The Washington Post's live briefing for Monday is here: "The German government won't oppose Poland sending German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, if Warsaw makes such a request, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told French TV channel LCI on Sunday. Her remarks came as pressure mounted on Germany over its reluctance to send its own tanks or approve the export of German-made tanks from other nations, which prompted backlash from Western allies that say it's urgent to get them to Ukraine to bolster its fighting capacity this year. The Polish government has condemned Berlin's hesitancy as 'unacceptable' and said it stands ready to send some of its own, though it requires Germany's legal authorization before doing so.... Former British prime minister Boris Johnson visited two war-torn cities outside of Kyiv: Bucha and Borodyanka this weekend.... Representatives from France and Germany were meeting in Paris on Sunday for talks on Europe's security and energy." ~~~
~~~ Here's the AP's story on Germany's permitting Poland's German-made tanks to be sent to Ukraine.
Russia, Spain. Edward Wong, et al., of the New York Times: "American and European officials believe that Russian military intelligence officers directed associates of a white supremacist militant group based in Russia to carry out a recent letter bomb campaign in Spain whose most prominent targets were the prime minister, the defense minister and foreign diplomats, according to U.S. officials.... No one was killed in the attacks, which U.S. officials consider terrorism. An employee of the Ukrainian Embassy was injured when one of the packages exploded. Investigators in recent weeks have focused on the Russian Imperial Movement, a radical group that has members and associates across Europe and military-style training centers in St. Petersburg, the officials said/ They added that the group, which has been designated a global terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, is believed to have ties to Russian intelligence agencies. Important members of the group have been in Spain, and the police there have tracked its ties with far-right Spanish organizations."
News Ledes
The New York Times' liveblog of developments Monday in the mass shooting in Monterey Park, California is here: "Another victim of the mass shooting at a popular Southern California ballroom died at a hospital on Monday, bringing the death toll to 11, as investigators continued to seek the gunman's motive." ~~~
~~~ The New York Times' liveblog on the mass shooting in Monterey Park, California is here. (Also linked yesterday.) "Five men and five women were fatally shot and 10 more were injured before the gunman, the police believe, left the scene and entered a second dance club in nearby Alhambra, where patrons were able to disarm him before he fled in what investigators described as a white cargo van. The drama came to an end on Sunday afternoon, when after an hourslong manhunt, a SWAT team pinned that van in a parking lot in Torrance, some 30 miles from the scene of the shootings. Officers heard one shot as they approached the van, and discovered that the suspect had shot himself, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said. The man, identified as Huu Can Tran, 72, was pronounced dead at the scene.” NBC News live updates are here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: In case you are ever on a jury in a criminal trial, bear this in mind: eyewitnesses are completely unreliable. According to yesterday's reporting, the shooter was a male between the ages of 30 and 50. So somebody thought this maniac was 40 years younger than he was. And this isn't a case of cross-race identification, which is even more -- in fact, notoriously -- inaccurate. Most of the people in the dance club, according to reports, also were ethnic Asians (specifically, Chinese). And the witnesses weren't lying or obfuscating; I'm sure they wanted the authorities to catch this person.
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Reader Comments (12)
I meant to respond to Unwashed’s question, posed yesterday, regarding which headline about the latest documents snafu came off the worst.
Although Marie beat me to it, I agree that the word “seized” in the Both Sides Times headline is the most inaccurate and (unnecessarily) inflammatory.
The word carries with it both denotations and connotations of forcible removal, of the application of violence in a struggle culminating in the successful apprehension by law enforcement of booty hidden away by some evil doer.
Nothing could be further from what happened. Unlike with the Fat Fascist, no warrant was necessary. There was no refusal to cooperate, no screaming about how his “beautiful home was raided”, no lies about trying to squirrel away top secret documents.
Nevertheless, the “Biden Document Scandal” is all the rage. The both sides media are having a field day and the traitors in congress and their media hacks are demanding that everyone see this as “much worse” than what their Dear Leader did.
Of course, it’s not. But that doesn’t matter.
The whole thing, however, brings a shiver of recollection at how adept the traitors and their lapdog MSM hacks are at the molehill-mountain thing, taking largely innocuous and sometimes entirely innocent situations and using them to change history. For the worse, and for their benefit, which is the same thing.
I give you The Blue Dress, and The E-Mails.
The blow job investigation cost tens of millions of dollars and engulfed Clinton’s entire second term, much to the delight of the wingnuts.
Jim Comey’s October Surprise investigation of The E-Mails gave us the worst president in history.
And he might be back in the White House before we know it.
This guy, Robert Hur, appointed by the idiot Merrick Garland, aka Neville Chamberlain 2022, could very well turn out to be the next Ken Starr. Have you read his background? I’m sorry, but anyone who willingly worked for Trump is suspect. Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone sez he has the qualifications and he’s a good guy. Then why was he working with a self serving chiseler like Rod Rosenstein?
He might decide that, based on headlines like “FBI SEIZES STOLEN DOCUMENTS SITTING NEXT TO THE FRONT DOOR IN BIDEN’s HOUSE! Aieeee!” he’ll have no choice but to go full Benghazi/Ken Starr with what is just a sloppy administrative blunder.
But just wait for the headlines and 20,000 word Sunday Times Magazine “investigation”. Which should come out in plenty of time to fuck Biden in 2024, allowing the Times and the other lazy both-siders to breathe a sigh of relief that no one can call them the Liberal Media anymore, not to mention they can finally forget about Trump, an authoritarian criminal who caused death and destruction while trying to overthrow the government, and go after a decent guy who screwed up his paperwork.
I am not kidding about this. This could be very bad.
Eric Foner has some things to say:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/opinion/fourteenth-amendment-debt-ceiling.html
Straight and to the point history from a distinguished historian.
Wonder if the White House (or I) would be considered to have sufficient standing to bring a suit against the House R's on national debt non-payment to the Federalist Supremes.
Seems obvious that I would. It's my debt and the R's, acting on my behalf as my employees, are threatening not to pay it.
But I do wonder about those Federalist Supremes. "Federalist" has always had a whiff of the "Confederate" about it to me.
And to follow up with Ak's fury here's a video of what Hillary endured by those nice folks on cable news.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/watch-hillary-clinton-endure-40-years-of-sexism-in-under-3-minutes_n_57a49620e4b021fd987842bf?section=
@Ken Winkes: An interesting idea. I don't think members of Congress are our employees but they clearly are our representatives and as such must act for us and in our interests. Therefore, it would seem they are required to act prudently in the interest of all American citizens, whether or not we're taxpayers.
I suppose what would have to be proved in court was that it was both imprudent and unconstitutional to fail to enact legislation that would secure payment of our debt, and therefore, by implication, the Republicans have "questioned the validity of the national debt." It might be a tough row to hoe, but a good attorney could pull it off. Indeed, it's pretty hard to see where any American benefits by the impending default; therefore, Republicans are planning to act against the interest of every -- or nearly every -- American.
What I can't figure out is when anyone who brought a suit would have standing. Janet Yellen has already informed the Congress we don't have the money to pay our debts and she is employing "extraordinary measures" to pay the bills. Is that enough? Or does a potential litigant have to wait till she stops paying some bills?
And would the suit drag on through the courts for years until Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch finally conclude "the debt is too damn high" and rule for the Republicans?
https://democraticunderground.com/100217582642
The R plan is to blow up Medicare and Social Security and add
a 30% tax to everything you buy.
And if Dems don't agree, then default on the debt and blow up
the global economy.
Don't know if the 30% tax is actually in the plan, but it sounds
plausible.
Latest commentary on McCarthy:
https://youtu.be/tXoJd4BoZTQ
GQP in a nutshell, i.e., a shell for nuts:
So a couple of weeks ago, scanning a news feed, I saw that Matt Gaetz, scandal plagued (alleged—*snicker*) child molester and trafficker of underage girls for sex, sat in for Steve (Burn it all down!) Bannon and “interviewed” Anthony George Devolder Kitara Santos.
“Yeah”, I thought “do I really want to waste two minutes of my life reading about a traitor, sitting in for a felon, interviewing a liar?” As my mum used to say, “Don’t waste your eyesight”.
I passed.
But it’s gets better. Now I find out that Gaetz was there because Bannon was “away on assignment”, GQP speak for “in court facing criminal charges of conspiracy and fraud”.
I checked out part of the interview. You have Kitara (not in drag) on one side of a double box, and Gaetz, as nasty a dick as you could imagine, in the box on the right, with a giant picture of white Jesus behind him. All taking place while the other guy is in federal court.
How perfect is that? A liar, a sex trafficker (alleged) and traitor, on a show called the War Room, whose host is in court trying to avoid a 5-10 year prison sentence, with Jesus hanging around to help gull the rubes who might think this is all a bit too much. “I dunno, honey, Jesus is there, they must be telling the truth!”
No. What they did was lie. A lot. So here’s how the interview went.
Gaetz: Where’d that $700,000 come from?
Kithara: Not from Russian oligarchs!
Gaetz: Good answer. Moving right along…
(This is exactly what happened!!)
Then Gaetz ripped the media for assailing poor Kitara. “Embellishing your resume is NOT A CRIME!!” (And Gaetz knows all about criming.)
No. Embellishment is not. But fraud is.
It’s one thing to claim that you were the architect of a skyscraper when you were really her assistant and maybe had a lot to do with drawing up the plans and laying out the infrastructure. Okay, that’s some pretty good embellishing there.
But claiming you were the architect when your closest association to the building was walking by it once or twice on the way to your “Making it as a drag queen” class is not embellishment. It’s a lie. And lying to people for the purposes of gaining something for yourself is fraud, which IS a crime.
There should be a new election. Kitara sez “The people voted for me!” No. They didn’t. They voted for the fictional Santos you made up.
Traitors, democracy haters, scammers, felons, sex traffickers (alleged), liars. And Jesus.
The GQP in a shell for nuts.
I haven't read much of anything about the proposed Fair Tax Act, reading the press release for the guy that introduced it tells me all that I need to know. "Buddy" Carter (Brat-GA) introduced it with a slew of other Brats that were newly elected. The idea of a true VAT makes more sense than what the new Fucktard Cuckus is trying to advocate. They're all losers from-the-get-go in my book.
As is often said, "Show me the money." What's the OMB have to say about it?
As some also say, "In God we trust, all others bring data." Prove it.
@unwashed
You're right. The Rep who introduced the flat tax (a zombie idea that's been around at least since Steve Forbes ran on it in the wayback of R presidential candidate history) told you all you need to know.
What should not be forgotten is the essential nature of any "flat" tax. On its surface it treats everyone the same, regardless of who pays it, and under the guise of "fairness" its effect is the opposite. Like all flat taxes (like sales tax) it takes a bigger hunk of resources from those who don't have much and exacerbates the wealth inequality that is draining away our democracy.
Any flat tax is another method to take the country and the majority of its taxpayers backwards. It's a regressive nightmare. Hence the name.
I skimmed the 132 pages of the Fair Tax Act. What I see is 132
pages of loopholes to be read and translated by the lawyers of the
ultra rich.
I did get one thing out of it. A week is 7 days long, and ends on Friday.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/former-fbi-official-charles-mcgonigal-arrested-ties-russian/story?id=96609658
A Trumper from the NY FBI office?
Or am I too suspicious?
"A century ago, American law handled the rare pleasure of a giant inheritance with suspicion. Instead of allowing money to cascade through generations, like a champagne tower, we siphoned off some of the flow through taxes on estates, gifts, and capital gains. As the Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1927, “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” But, since the late seventies, American politics has taken a more accommodating approach to dynastic fortunes—slashing rates, widening exemptions, and permitting a vast range of esoteric loopholes for wealthy taxpayers. According to Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the average tax rate on the top 0.01 per cent has fallen by more than half, to about thirty per cent, while rates for the bottom ninety per cent have climbed slightly, to an average of twenty-five per cent." New Yorker