Entries by emptywheel

Hunter Biden Moves to Enjoin David Weiss Under an Appropriations Argument Trump Adopted

Before Trump made his frivolous challenge to Jack Smith’s Special Counsel appointment on appropriations grounds, Hunter Biden challenged David Weiss’ appointment with more merit. That could make the parallel track of these prosecutions — with Hunter Biden’s prosecutions rushing towards conclusion next month and Trump’s stalled past the election — more interesting.

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The Cultivation of Don Jr: A Framework to Think of the Russian Attack

With the 2016 attack, Russia didn’t need cooperation from Trump’s people (though they got it from at least Manafort and Stone and idiot who proved useful Don Jr). They just needed to make any already improbable conciliation impossible, impossible politically and impossible for a Narcissist like Trump to do. That would practically guarantee that Trump would attack the country to defend himself, his son, his ego.

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Barr Time 1: “Conjuring up criminal conspiracies about political opponents”

Bill Barr walked into the AG job determined to kill an investigation into Russian interference. Before he walked out, he set up a system that protected interference from Russian agents in Ukraine. His claims about what he did fall apart given what we’ve learned since he made them.

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Judge Maryellen Noreika Prepares for a Hunter Biden Trial … without Bates Stamps

Judge Maryellen Noreika relied in a key decision on evidence made available from Rudy Giuliani, while claiming that it derived from Hunter Biden’s memoir. That’s one of many reasons to be alarmed that Judge Maryellen Noreika has decided that Hunter Biden prosecutors don’t have to tell him whence they’ve derived laptop evidence before trial.

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