The Media’s Past Indifference to Trump’s Past Abuse of Pardons Invites Him To Do It Again

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It took former Reagan and Poppy appointee Wayne Beyer to raise the subject of pardons as the very first question at CNN’s Town Hall on Wednesday.

[Wayne] BEYER: My question to you is: will you pardon the January 6th rioters who were convicted of federal offenses?

TRUMP: I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control.

But, you know, when you look at Antifa, what they’ve done to Portland, and if you look at Antifa, look at what they’ve done to Minneapolis and so many other – so many other places, look at what they did to Seattle. And BLM – BLM, many people were killed.

These people – I’m not trying to justify anything, but you have two standards of justice in this country, and what they’ve done – and I love that question because what they’ve done to see many people is nothing – nothing. And then what they’ve done to these people, they’ve persecuted these people.

And yeah, my answer is I am most likely – if I get in, I will most likely – I would say it will be a large portion of them. You know, they did a very –

And it’ll be very early on. And they’re living in hell right now.

Given his legal focus on police misconduct and sometime membership in a GOP lawyers association, Beyer may have been teeing Trump up to promise to pardon the men and women who attacked the Capitol on January 6 and might have assassinated Mike Pence. Given his background, this feels like a scripted question, designed to provide Trump an opportunity to promise those facing prosecution (including some lawyers!) to remain loyal to Trump.

In response, Kaitlin Collins attempted to point out Trump’s hypocrisy by raising one of the several cops and former cops who rioted on January 6, to say nothing of the former and active duty service men and women who participated in the attack (she was probably alluding to Thomas Webster, the most celebrated of the former cops charged with assaults, but he is not the only one). That only teed up another opportunity for Trump to undermine the rule of law in the US.

COLLINS: So when it comes to pardons –

TRUMP: They’re living in hell, and they’re policemen, and they’re firemen, and they’re soldiers, and they’re carpenters and electricians and they’re great people. Many of them are just great people.

COLLINS: Mr. President, one of the people who was convicted was a former policeman but he was convicted of attacking a police officer, I should note.

But when you said you are considering pardoning a large portion of those charged with crimes on January 6th, does that include the four Proud Boys members who were charged and convicted of seditious conspiracy?

TRUMP: I don’t know. I’ll have to look at their case, but I will say in Washington, D.C., you cannot get a fair trial, you cannot. Just like in New York City, you can’t get a fair trial either.

Collins made no mention — none — about Trump’s past pardons. She let one of the most unprecedented abuses committed during Trump’s first term, his pardons for those who lied to protect him, go unmentioned even when discussing a topic directly on point.

She’s not alone in her silence. Six months after Trump announced he was running, I’m aware of no deep dive on Trump’s abuse of the pardon power in his first term, not even the pardons that were — as a mass pardon of January 6 convicts would be — pardons of criminals whose crimes served his own power.

Take Paul Manafort. Whatever you imagine the Mueller Report says, whether or not you’ve read the far more damning Senate Intelligence Committee Report, it is a fact that Trump pardoned his way out of legal trouble with Manafort.

After entering into a plea deal in September 2018 that averted a damaging trial during the 2018 pre-election period, Manafort immediately changed his testimony on several key subjects. Judge Amy Berman Jackson ultimately ruled that his changed testimony amounted to lies that breached his plea agreement. She ruled that Manafort lied about three topics, one of which was what happened during an August 2, 2016 meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik at which:

  • Manafort explained how the campaign planned to win the swing states where Trump would eventually win the election
  • Kilimnik discussed how Manafort could get millions in payments from his Ukrainian paymasters and $19 million in disputed funds forgiven with Oleg Deripaska
  • Kilimnik recruited Manafort’s involvement in a plan to carve up Ukraine very similar to the plan Russia pursued until they invaded last February

Had Manafort not entered the plea deal he abrogated within hours, weeks of pre-election coverage would have focused on Manafort’s FARA trial, the proof that Manafort had worked for pro-Russian Ukrainians and then lied to cover it up. Such a trial might have led to even greater Republicans losses in the November 2018 elections.

On the other hand, had Manafort cooperated in good faith, Mueller would have had three witnesses to the meeting, days after the conventions, where Manafort took steps — either wittingly or unwittingly — that provided someone who played a key role in the Russian interference operation with inside information about the Trump campaign.

Instead, Manafort forestalled the trial and undermined any value that his damning testimony (including that Roger Stone had pre-knowledge that WikiLeaks would release John Podesta emails) would have.

And after Manafort lied to cover up what really happened at that meeting and thereby faced a stiffer sentence, Trump pardoned his former campaign manager. In the process, Trump — who has bitched about the cost of the Mueller investigation — reversed the forfeitures that would have contributed to the expense of investigating Manafort’s crimes.

Intelligence judgments since make the meeting even more damning. In June 2020, the FBI offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to Kilimnik’s arrest. The Senate Intelligence Committee Report included two redacted sections (one, two) describing evidence that Kilimnik may have been more closely tied the hack-and-leak activities.

An April 2021 sanctions report stated as fact that Kilimnik had shared campaign information with Russian intelligence.

Konstantin Kilimnik (Kilimnik) is a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant and known Russian Intelligence Services agent implementing influence operations on their behalf. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy. Additionally, Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In 2018, Kilimnik was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice regarding unregistered lobbying work. Kilimnik has also sought to assist designated former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. At Yanukovych’s direction, Kilimnik sought to institute a plan that would return Yanukovych to power in Ukraine.

Kilimnik was designated pursuant to E.O. 13848 for having engaged in foreign interference in the U.S. 2020 presidential election. [my emphasis]

The declassified intelligence report on the 2020 election (which was declassified in March 2021 but completed in classified form on January 7, 2021, before Trump left office) described that Kilimnik continued to interfere in US elections in 2020.

A network of Ukraine-linked individuals— including Russian influence agent Konstantin Kilimnik—who were also connected to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) took steps throughout the election cycle to damage US ties to Ukraine, denigrate President Biden and his candidacy, and benefit former President Trump’s prospects for reelection. We assess this network also sought to discredit the Obama administration by emphasizing accusations of corruption by US officials, and to falsely blame Ukraine for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election.

Derkach, Kilimnik, and their associates sought to use prominent US persons and media conduits to launder their narratives to US officials and audiences. These Russian proxies met with and provided materials to Trump administration-linked US persons to advocate for formal investigations; hired a US firm to petition US officials; and attempted to make contact with several senior US officials. They also made contact with established US media figures and helped produce a documentary that aired on a US television network in late January 2020.

In other words, the tie to Kilimnik ended up being far more damaging than imagined at the time of the Mueller Report, but by the time voters learned it, Trump had already bought Manafort’s silence with a pardon, one that because it reversed the forfeiture, ended up being worth millions to Trump’s former Campaign Manager.

Though the evidence is sketchier, Trump may have pardoned his way out of even worse Russian trouble with Roger Stone. A jury found that Trump’s rat-fucker lied to cover up the true means by which he learned that WikiLeaks would release files from John Podesta (Manafort and Gates both testified that he did get advance knowledge). As Stone was about to report to prison, Stone did a series of appearances where he specified the number of calls Stone had with Trump during 2016 that (Stone claimed, unreliably) prosecutors had asked him about, a list of calls that may have come from a notebook of such contacts prosecutors hoped to find in the search of Stone’s properties. And amid Stone’s claims to have refused to tell prosecutors about the substance of dozens of contacts he had with Trump during 2016, Trump first commuted Stone’s sentence and then — the same day as Manafort — pardoned him.

Importantly, within days of getting that full pardon, Stone met with Trump to thank him for that pardon. At what was likely the same meeting, they talked about January 6, including Trump speaking; the meeting immediately preceded the White House’s shift on making that speech happen. Prosecutors have tied a January 3 appearance Stone did with the Proud Boys with efforts some of those Proud Boys made days later to prevent the vote certification.

Which leads to the most remarkable unremarked pardon of one of Trump’s co-conspirators, that of Steve Bannon.

Bannon did not get pardoned, directly, for lying to cover up what went on in 2016 (indeed, Bannon’s testimony helped to convict Stone).

Rather, as one of his last acts as President, Trump pardoned Bannon for defrauding Trump voters, to the tune of millions, using Trump’s image to do that.

Several of Bannon’s victims testified about believing they were investing in Trump’s wall at his co-conspirator Timothy Shea’s trial. Public school teacher Nicole Keller described investing because border security was so important to her late border patrol agent spouse.

Q. Why did you decide to donate to We Build the Wall? A. My late husband was a border patrol agent. We lived at the southern border in the Rio Grand Valley from 1998 through fall of 2007. Border security is something that is very — was very important to him. He dedicated his career to it. At that point in time, I was a teacher at the southern border. I taught sixth grade and high school science. And we believed that the southern border should be secure, just like the door to our house. It’s not that we’re trying to keep people out; it’s just making sure when someone comes in to our home or residence, we know who they are and what business that they might have at our house.

William Ward, a veteran and retired Washington State Medicare fraud administrator, described contributing because he didn’t believe Congress was doing enough to build Trump’s wall.

Q. Why did you decide to make that donation to We Build the Wall?

A. It was symbolic on my part more than anything else, that I thought if there were a whole lot of people that donated that way, that it might draw some attention to what I think is a difficulty along our Southern Border.

Q. Why do you think there’s a difficulty along the Southern Border? Explain what you mean by that, please.

A. Well, it’s a personal view, but I’m not sure that Congress has done what they should in passing laws that have sort of gotten out of date with the truth on the ground now, for a couple of decades, and that I think that’s where it should start. It should be a congressional thing.

Both described feeling cheated when they discovered their donations were being misused. Keller:

Q. Did there come a time when you became concerned that We Build the Wall wasn’t using donors’ money properly?

A. There did, yes.

Q. Why did you become concerned about that?

A. Again, it was something that was being talked about on news websites.

Q. And when you saw news that caused you concern, what, if anything, did you do about it?

A. I went to the GoFundMe website and tried to get my money back. Mr. Kolfage had implied that if I did not — if the monies were not used as they could be, that we would get our money back.

Q. Were you able to get your money back?

A. I was not, no.

Q. Why did you want your money back?

A. I was insulted that somebody had taken what should be a position of honor and valor, being injured for their country, and, instead, used it to defraud me.

And Ward:

Q. Did there come a time when you became concerned that We Build the Wall wasn’t using donated money in the right way?

A. Yes, there was.

Q. Why did you become concerned about that?

A. The — again, going through a news feed at breakfast every morning, I saw something that there was an investigation of misuse of the funds.

Q. When you saw that, what, if anything, did you do?

A. I got a hold of the GoFundMe page to see if I could recover my donation.

Q. Were you able to get your donation back?

A. No, I was not.

Q. Why did you want your money back?

A. I just felt I’d been cheated.

A restitution filing ordered the defendants to pay over $25 million to their victims.

Bannon cheated people who believed in Trump and his goddamn wall. And Trump pardoned him for it. And Kaitlan Collins didn’t think it worth mentioning to an audience of potential Trump supporters.

Trump obviously didn’t find the charges themselves faulty; he didn’t pardon Bannon’s co-conspirators. They were just sentenced — to three to four-plus years in prison — for the fraud they perpetrated against Trump supporters. And while Dustin Stockton’s testimony to the January 6 Committee has proven unreliable, he and Jennifer Lawrence claimed they were floated pardons in conjunction with their involvement with planning January 6.

The full story of why Trump pardoned Bannon in one of his last acts as President has not been — may never be — told. But there’s no way to regard a pardon for defrauding Trump supporters outside the context of Bannon’s involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. And, particularly given the absence of any defect in the charges themselves — given that Trump didn’t pardon all the Build the Wall fraudsters — it’s impossible to understand Bannon’s pardon as anything but payback.

And yet, when Kaitlin Collins talked about how horrible it would be if Trump started pardoning everyone else who helped Trump attack Congress, she treated as if it would be an unprecedented abuse. She did so even though she made that tie herself in breaking the story of the Bannon pardon.

Bannon’s pardon would follow a frantic scramble during the President’s final hours in office as attorneys and top aides debated his inclusion on Trump’s outgoing clemency list. Despite their falling out in recent years, Trump was eager to pardon his former aide after recently reconnecting with him as he helped fan Trump’s conspiracy theories about the election.

[snip]

Things shifted in recent months as Bannon attempted to breach Trump’s inner circle once again by offering advice before the election and pushing his false theories after Trump had lost.

One concern that had stalled debate over the pardon was Bannon’s possible connection to the riot of Trump supporters at the US Capitol earlier this month, a source familiar with the discussions told CNN.

“All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon promised listeners of his podcast – “War Room” – on January 5, the day before the deadly siege on the Capitol.

[snip]

While some advisers believed it was decided last weekend that Bannon was not getting a pardon, Trump continued to raise it into Tuesday night. Throughout the day, Trump had continued to contemplate pardons that aides believed were settled, including for his former strategist – something he continued to go back and forth on into Tuesday night, sources told CNN.

Ultimately, Trump sided with Bannon.

It would be the exact same thing Trump did in the wake of the November 2020 election, at a time he thought he would face no consequences for such an abuse of the pardon power.

Trump waited to pardon those who had protected him until after voters weighed in. He waited, because he knew that making these pardons before an election would harm his chances of getting elected.

And yet no one — not even Collins, when discussing pardons in the direct context of the next election — could be bothered to mention how abusive were Trump’s past pardons.

Of course Trump will pardon January 6 criminals if he wins in 2024, Kaitlan! Why wouldn’t he?!?! You let him blather on for an hour, even discussed future pardons with him, with not a single mention of his past abuses.

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“Lock Him Up!” Trump Calls on Congress to Halt the Criminal Investigation into Joe Biden

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Yesterday, four Trump lawyers sent House Intelligence Chair Mike Turner a really risky letter. CNN first reported on the letter.

Boris Epshteyn, who had allegedly been leading Trump’s defense in that investigation, did not sign the letter.

The letter responds to the news that Turner and other Gang of 8 members have recently been given access to the documents found at Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Mike Pence’s properties.

We understand that DOJ is making the documents marked classified available for your review, and this letter provides the Committee with information that we suspect DOJ has not disclosed to it.

It doesn’t cite its source of information about those reviews, which is one way to obscure that the Gang of 8 actually began to get such access by April 11, two weeks ago.

Since Mike Turner and other Gang of 8 members started reviewing the documents, two things have happened.

First, Joe Biden announced his reelection campaign, without waiting on Special Counsel Robert Hur to report the results of his investigation into Biden for mishandling classified information.

And, about a month after Evan Corcoran testified in a crime-fraud excepted appearance before the grand jury, Boris Epshteyn spent two days last week chatting with Jack Smith’s prosecutors. (Like Epshteyn, Corcoran did not sign this letter, but that’s because his partners forced him to recuse from the investigation after he testified.) Even though Epshteyn has been a likely source for a lot of the press reports on the various investigations into which he has or had visibility, I’m not aware of any report describing his testimony, much less why he testified without any report of a subpoena.

Contemplate the significance of the first item — Biden’s reelection announcement — as you consider the purported point of the letter. Donald Trump — the guy who won the presidency with non-stop chants of “Lock her up!” in 2016 — claims to think that an investigation analogous to the one that targeted Hillary Clinton in 2015 to 2016 is improper.

A legislative solution by Congress is required to prevent the DOJ from continuing to conduct ham-handed criminal investigations of matters that are inherently not criminal.

[snip]

What is consistent in all three of these cases is that the document handling procedures in the White House are flawed and DOJ is not the appropriate agency to conduct investigations pertaining to the mishandling or spillage of classified material.

Conclusion

The solution to these issues is not a misguided, politically infected, and severely botched criminal investigation, but rather a legislative solution. DOJ should be ordered to stand down, and the intelligence community should instead conduct an appropriate investigation and provide a full report to this Committee, as well as your counterparts in the Senate. Armed with the appropriate knowledge, we respectfully suggest that your Committee hold hearings and make legislative changes to:

1. Correct classified document handling procedures in the White House;

2. Standardize document handling and storage procedures for Presidents and Vice Presidents when they leave office; and

3. Formalize procedures for investigations into the mishandling or spillage of classified material, to prevent future situations where DOJ is inappropriately assigned to conduct an investigation.

President Trump’s legal team would be happy to meet with you or your staff to assist in any way necessary to address these issues. Please know that despite the differences in the cases, we do not believe that any of these three matters should be handled by DOJ as a criminal case. Rather, the stakeholders to these matters should set aside political differences and work together to remediate this issue and help to enhance our national security in the process. [my emphasis]

Donald Trump is asking Congress to intervene to halt not just into the investigation into him — and make no mistake, that is what he’s doing. But he’s also asking Congress to halt the investigation into his opponent!

Having won the presidency in 2016 by demanding the investigation into Hillary be more punitive, he’s now asking Congress to halt the investigation into Joe Biden.

Having won the presidency in 2016 by succeeding in highlighting Hillary’s negligence for mishandling classified information, Trump now wants to forego the opportunity to pursue the same approach in 2024.

At the very least, that’s a pretty good sign that he and his lawyers don’t believe their own claims that the known facts about Biden’s mishandling of classified information are worse than the known facts about Trump’s.

4 Of course, we also recently learned from media reports that President Biden possessed
marked documents in a “personal” folder at the Penn-Biden Center – strong evidence
that he intentionally possessed then after he or someone else secretly removed them,
from the Senate SCIF at least 14 years earlier when he was the Senator from Delaware.
We also now know that after DOJ learned about President Biden’s possession of
classified documents at the Penn-Biden Center, it allowed his personal attorneys to
search for and collect documents from his residence in Delaware making the specific
locations of the documents in the residence difficult, and perhaps impossible, to
determine. And, it has since been publicly reported that there could be even more
classified documents in the 1,850 boxes that Mr. Biden shipped to the University of
Delaware in 2012. https://www.cnn.com/2-23/02/15/politics/biden-delawaresearch/index.html. DOJ’s reaction to all of this is stunningly different from how it
responded to President Trump’s offer of cooperation regarding the boxes stored at Mara-Largo. [sic: Trump’s lawyers misspell Mar-a-Lago in several different ways in the letter]

[snip]

When documents were found in President Joseph Biden’s Penn-Biden Center office, despite clear indicators that his violations were more likely the result of willful misconduct, DOJ treated him very differently by forgoing any attempts at manufacturing conflict, while implicitly approving the spoliation of evidence.

The applicable criminal statute prohibits “willful retention” of national defense information, not mere possession. See 18 U.S. § 793 (e). To prove willful retention, a prosecutor must first establish that the possession was knowing. Despite media spin to the contrary, this is the key element that distinguishes President Trump’s retention of documents from that by President Biden. Evidence of knowing possession can be readily inferred from the length of time that President Biden possessed the marked documents since leaving office and the fact that they were moved and stored at multiple locations. In comparison, the materials found at Mar-a-Lago were still stored in the same GSA boxes in which they left the White House, untouched in the relatively short time since the end of President Trump’s term. Perhaps the most damning fact for President Biden is that he possessed marked documents from his time in the Senate—a body that maintains all marked documents in a SCIF, unlike the White House. Further, as you are no doubt aware and as mentioned earlier in this letter, media reports have indicated that classified documents were contained in a folder labeled “personal,”8 which is much more powerful evidence of knowing retention than documents being randomly dispersed into boxes by moving teams.

8 See, e.g., Jamie Gangel et al., “Exclusive: U.S. intelligence materials related to Ukraine, Iran and UK found in Biden’s private office, source tells CNN,” CNN (Jan. 10, 2023), https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/politics/biden-classified-documents-iran-ukraineunited-kingdom-beau-funeral/index.html.

There is not a chance in hell that Trump would forgo an opportunity to make this race about Biden’s mishandling of classified information if he really believed that Biden’s “violations were more likely the result of willful misconduct.”

Not a chance in hell!

But then, there’s abundant reason to believe that the four lawyers know they’re blowing smoke (to Congress). Heck, I’m so sure of it I think Mark Warner should invite all four of them to give sworn testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

There are the claims this letter makes that conflict with known testimony, such as that Trump didn’t review any of the documents in the boxes ultimately returned to the Archives.

However, due to other demands on his time, President Trump subsequently directed his staff to ship the boxes to NARA without any review by him or his staff.

There are the claims this letter makes that conflict with known details about the case, such as that, because Trump was too busy starting an insurrection, he didn’t have the ability to send his documents to a GSA-leased facility.

When President Trump left office, there was little time to prepare for the outgoing transition from the presidency. Unlike his three predecessors, each of whom had over four years to prepare for their departure upon completion of their second term, President Trump had a much shorter time to wind up his administration. White House staffers and General Service Administration (“GSA”) employees quickly packed everything into boxes and shipped them to Florida. This was a stark change from the standard preparations made by GSA and National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”) for prior administrations. As NARA acknowledged in a Press Statement it issued on October 11, 2022:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in accordance with the Presidential Records Act, assumed physical and legal custody of the Presidential records from the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, when those Presidents left office. NARA securely moved these records to temporary facilities that NARA leased from the General Services Administration (GSA), near the locations of the future Presidential Libraries that former Presidents built for NARA. All such temporary facilities met strict archival and security standards, and have been managed and staffed exclusively by NARA employees.2

Investigators paid by the lead writer of this letter, Tim Parlatore, found two additional documents with classification marks in what is reportedly a GSA-leased facility in Florida.

Lawyers for Donald Trump found at least two items marked classified after an outside team hired by Trump searched a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Fla., used by the former president, according to people familiar with the matter.

[snip]

Emails released by the General Services Administration, which assists former presidents during their transition to private life, show that the government agency helped rent the storage unit at a private facility in West Palm Beach on July 21, 2021. The unit was needed to store items that had been held at an office in Northern Virginia used by Trump staffers in the months just after he left office.

There’s the claim that DOJ dictated the timing of the June 3 document pick-up, when the record shows Evan Corcoran called FBI and told them to come down the next day.

Ultimately, President Trump’s legal team complied with DOJ’s demands, performing as diligent a search as they could by Mr. Bratt’s arbitrary deadline, and submitted a certification that affirmed the same.

And this letter repeats a bullshit claim that Trump’s lawyers have chanted from the start of his attempts to sucker the press: that the only thing Jay Bratt requested after he had seen the storage room at Mar-a-Lago was to put a lock on the facility.

Although Mr. Corcoran told the DOJ representatives that they were not going to go through boxes together that day, he fully expected DOJ to ask to return to Mar-a-Largo and examine all the boxes. Mr. Bratt reinforced this belief when, five days later, he wrote to Mr. Corcoran requesting that an additional lock be placed on the door. The lock was soon installed, and the boxes kept under lock and key in a facility guarded by armed Secret Service agents.

It’s like Tim Parlatore thinks Mike Turner’s staffers are too stupid to review the unsealed affidavit, which reveals that Bratt’s letter says something else entirely: that the storage facility is not a secure facility authorized to store classified documents.

As I previously indicated to you, Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information. As such, it appears that since the time classified documents (the ones recently provided and any and all others) were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 202 1, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an approptiate location. Accordingly, we ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.

Because the staffers that deal with this document have security clearance they surely want to keep, they’ll undoubtedly know that this is a reference to CFR standards for storage, not a request to add an almost certainly non-compliant lock.

And that’s why I think this letter was ill-advised.

These are just the obvious, affirmatively false things in the letter. There’s a whole bunch more that Trump’s lawyers simply ignore, such as the surveillance video showing Trump’s staffers moving boxes out of the storage facility in advance of the search they’re claiming here was a diligent search or the fact that FBI found 70-some classified documents in the storage facility of which Corcoran had claimed to have done a diligent search.

The only way this document could have the desired effect is if Mike Turner likes being lied to, or is so in the tank that — like Richard Burr before him — he’s willing to risk his own legal exposure to obstruct a criminal investigation.

And that’s assuming Warner didn’t subpoena any or all of these lawyers to repeat these farcical claims to Congress under oath.

All that’s before you consider the asymmetry. Trump’s lawyers — just one of whom (they admit) actually has clearance — acknowledge they have no fucking clue what FBI caught Trump hoarding.

Despite our requests to DOJ, it has refused to tell us whether in its judgment any of the documents remain classified. Similarly, DOJ has refused to allow for inspection of the documents at any time during the last eight months despite the fact that one of our attorneys has sufficient clearance to view the majority of the documents marked as classified.

Mike Turner does know.

Trump’s lawyers claim — or rather confess — that among the files he originally had in his beach resort were call briefings with foreign officials, just like the ones hidden from Congress in the first impeachment.

The vast majority of the placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.

Again, I can only imagine how stupid Parlatore thinks Turner’s staffers are to confess this.

But even I know that many of the things Trump kept after DOJ subpoenaed them are not similar. Even I know that Trump compiled two classified documents with messages from a pollster, a book author, and a faith leader. And Mike Turner has reviewed these documents and he knows it too. And I know that he knows it.

So unless Mike Turner is totally in the tank for Trump — worse even than Burr was! — this letter risks pissing Turner off.

Last month, before Evan Corcoran was forced to give crime-fraud excepted testimony against Trump and before Boris Epshteyn spent two days chatting with Jack Smith’s prosecutors, Tim Parlatore — lead author of this insulting letter — said the following about Epshteyn’s role in the stolen documents case.

Mr. Epshteyn’s legal role with Mr. Trump, while less often focused on gritty legal details, has been to try to serve as a gatekeeper between the lawyers on the front lines and the former president, who is said to sometimes roll his eyes at the frequency of Mr. Epshteyn’s calls but picks up the phone.

“Boris has access to information and a network that is useful to us,” said one of the team’s lawyers, Timothy Parlatore, whom Mr. Epshteyn hired. “It’s good to have someone who’s a lawyer who is also inside the palace gates.”

Mr. Parlatore suggested that he was not worried that Mr. Epshteyn, like a substantial number of other Trump lawyers, had become at least tangentially embroiled in some of the same investigations on which he was helping to defend Mr. Trump.

“Absent any solid indication that Boris is a target here, I don’t think it affects us,” Mr. Parlatore said.

Neither Corcoran nor Epshteyn signed this letter. It’s not yet clear why Epshteyn didn’t.

And that’s as telling as the embarrassing false claims that it makes.

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Trump Edition: What Is And What Shall Never Be

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Upon request I, hopefully, will come back to the big Alvin Bragg indictment of Trump. Later. When have really had a chance to digest and analyze it.

So far, at least, not too sold on it. Not like all the Boyz at Just Security, several of whom I respect, but they have been been overselling, led by Weissmann, this entire scenario mercilessly. To the extent of being dubious.

Anybody who thinks this is all cut and dried as Bragg makes it is a dope. To what extent we shall see. But, yes, we shall see. Tomorrow will be merely the start of the analysis, not merely the end like other dopes will tell you.

So, let us see what is, and what will never really be. They are very different things. Am prepared to be totally wrong. Are you? And how long are you willing to play the long game out?

Criminal law will never be your personal political savior.

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The 98 Luftballoons

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Alrighty then, as TV news is still consumed by the Chinese balloon thing, I need to get a couple of things in. Did the US shoot it down when over Cheney’s sparse area of the country? Nope. Nor before that. Let it wander all the way to The Atlantic. If it was ever a threat (and no, it was not), that thing would have been taken out days and thousands of miles before it was.

But, now, after constant briefing of President Biden, it was shot down. And now there are only 98 instead of 99.

There are now only 98 Luftballoons left. Marcy was spot on with “Wag The Derigible”. Yes, it is exactly that stupid. Every second of it. Make it stop please.

That said, our friend Scribe sent me something. 99 Luftballoons was not just a one hit wonder on American MTV.

Prior to today, I could not have named the musician/singer, Gabriele Susanne Kerner, if my life depended on it. But, holy shit, it is not just she, but an entire band in Germany, and they are seriously good.

NENA. Wow.

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Head of Republican Party Attempts to Stave Off Multiple Indictments by Announcing Candidacy Early

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In the last week — in the last six months, really — the Trump-whisperers keep doing stories on Donald Trump’s plans to plan to announce he’s running in the 2024 election. Those stories include the claim that he wants to make it harder for DOJ to indict him by announcing he’s running for President in 2024.

Each time attention in the ousted President wanes, he toys with the press again.

Jonathan Swan kicked off the latest such frenzy, promising a November 14 announcement, or maybe not.

Former President Trump’s inner circle is discussing announcing the launch of a 2024 presidential campaign on Nov. 14 — with the official announcement possibly followed by a multi-day series of political events, according to three sources familiar with the sensitive discussions.

Why it matters: Trump and his top advisers have been signaling for weeks that a 2024 announcement is imminent. But those discussions have reached the point that allies are blocking off days in their calendars for the week after the midterms — and preparing to travel.

[snip]

A Trump spokesman declined to comment. The discussions are still fluid and could change depending on Tuesday’s results, especially if the Senate still hangs in the balance and the Georgia race between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock goes to a run-off.

Reality check: It’s Trump. So anything could happen — or not. He’s conflicted on the timing and nothing is ever certain. But people who have been close to him for many years are lacing up for the next race.

The Guardian picked it up — noting that Trump’s planning has “intensified” as DOJ has continued the investigation of Trump’s theft of documents and attempted theft of an election.

The plans for the anticipated presidential campaign have intensified as the justice department moves forward with several criminal investigations surrounding Trump, including over potential mishandling of national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and over the January 6 attack.

Some advisers have told Trump that the timing could be positive since the combined effects of announcing a presidential run and daring the justice department to indict him as a candidate could drown out political messaging by congressional Democrats and the Joe Biden White House.

Then, one of Trump’s sycophants said that he was going to announce last night. After his belligerent rally (at which he attacked Nancy Pelosi), the press reconvened and, rather than talking about the likelihood he’ll incite more violence against the Speaker of the House, talked about his imminent announcement. Maggie Haberman observed, with no irony,

It’s sort of incredible how good he is at getting everybody to follow along with him when he does this game of, I’m thinking of doing it, and — to be clear Don, it’s hard to know sometimes whether it is a game, or whether he is working this out in his head, testing it with 800 different advisors, which is what he was doing.

[snip]

We all know what he’s talking about, we all know what’s coming. I’m personally of the view that it’s more interesting when he actually does something, because we will cover it. He’s running for President, he’s a front-runner in the polls, there’s legitimate reasons to cover it.

[snip]

I think he is extremely smart in terms of media coverage and what the media will chase.

Again, there was no irony in her extended explanation that when Trump actually makes news, they will cover it. None.

Then WaPo’s Mar-a-Lago stenographer teamed up with another Trump scribe to give the full tick-tock of how it didn’t happen. Again: how it did not happen. After a bunch of blather about the election law implications (Trump has committed a container ship’s worth of campaign finance violations in his short political life, but the FEC refuses to act on any of them), in paragraph 15, WaPo talks about making it harder to indict Trump.

Part of Trump’s urgency comes from wanting to get ahead of a potential indictment, the logic being that a declared candidacy makes a prosecution look more political. He is under investigation in two federal probes: one into the efforts to block certification of the 2020 electoral college results and another into the mishandling of classified documents brought to Mar-a-Lago. The Justice Department’s customary freeze on overt steps that could be seen as influencing an election expires when the polls close Tuesday.

Trump also faces an ongoing investigation from a prosecutor in Atlanta into his pressure on Georgia officials to override the state’s popular vote for president in 2020.

Apparently none of these people mind being treated like tools. They’re happy to keep reporting on stories they realize aren’t stories. And why not? Their career depends on leveraging all the access they’ve gotten by reporting on the gilt furnishings at Mar-a-Lago. Their job, until such time as Trump returns to the White House again, is ensuring he stays in the news.

As Maggie said, It’s sort of incredible how good he is at getting people like Maggie to follow along.

Imagine how this infantilization of journalism would change if every major outlet instead reported, factually, that the leader of the Republican Party may announce his candidacy early, in part, in hopes of staving off at least two federal and possibly a Georgia indictments?

Imagine if these people instead reported the news story they’re burying, that the political cycle of the Republican Party is now dictated, in part, by the suspected criminality of the guy whose legal bills the Republican Party has been subsidizing for years? Imagine if every time he played this game, the Trump beat reporters instead described the institutional support in the Republican Party for fraud and political violence?

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