Fridays with Nicole Sandler
Welcome to the Good Friday – Happy Birthday Marcy edition of Fridays with Nicole Sandler.
This weekend will be a bit quiet due to holiday observations and celebrations.
Posts
Aileen Cannon Is Stiff-Arming the Press
I’m going to write up what really happened yesterday — as predicted, virtually all outlets I’ve seen simply quoted what Aileen Cannon claimed she had done, rather than describing what she had actually done.
Before I do that, I want to note that Judge Cannon is stiff-arming the same press that is reporting so credulously on her interventions.
Back on August 31, the press coalition that does such things moved to intervene in the case. Most of it was the same boilerplate the coalition uses for all such motions, but they did cite both sides in the matter calling for transparency.
Former President Trump himself has called for greater transparency. See, e.g., ECF No. 1, at pp. 2-3 (noting personal desire for more openness). The Government has stated likewise. See, e.g., ECF No. 1, at pp. 9-10 (detailing Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statements on why the Government sought to unseal certain search warrant records); see also ECF No. 48, at p. 2 n.1 (noting that the Government is “prepared . . . to unseal the more detailed receipt”).
They described that the government did not oppose the motion and Trump took no position on it. They asked to be heard on the matter on September 1.
The next day, Judge Cannon released the detailed inventory the government had submitted (it has since submitted a slightly revised inventory, but didn’t address the press access.
After the government moved to unseal the privilege status report on September 8, the press coalition submitted their own request for unsealing.
Then, after two weeks had elapsed since their initial motion, the press coalition tried again. They pointed out that if anyone wanted to oppose their intervention, the two week deadline to do so had expired. And they noted that the privilege review status report still remained under seal.
The News Media further note that certain records remain under seal in this matter, namely those docketed at ECF No. 40. The News Media understand ECF No. 40 to contain the Government’s submission regarding its Privilege Review Team’s Notice of Status of the Filter Process. The Government filed a motion to unseal that document (less Exhibits A and B to that filing) on September 8, 2022. See ECF No. 71. The News Media filed a further motion to unseal that court record on September 9, 2022. See ECF No. 79.
But Judge Cannon has simply ignored those requests.
There’s an obvious reason she did so: In her September 5 order first appointing a Special Master, she made claims based on that sealed status report. The claims are not only probably false, but she effectively double counted the potentially privileged materials as both potentially privileged and personal. That was the means by which she found that Trump had a possessory interest in the items seized on August 8. So she likely can’t allow that status report to be unsealed, because if it were, her deceit would become evident.
Ironically (or perhaps cynically), Cannon cited the importance of the perception of fairness in that same ruling relying on the status report she won’t let the press see.
A commitment to the appearance of fairness is critical, now more than ever.
[snip]
As Plaintiff articulated at the hearing, the investigation and treatment of a former president is of unique interest to the general public, and the country is served best by an orderly process that promotes the interest and perception of fairness. See supra Discussion III–IV; see also In re Search Warrant Issued June 13, 2019, 942 F.3d at 182 (“[A]n award of injunctive relief in these circumstances supports the ‘strong public interest’ in the integrity of the judicial system.” (quoting United States v. Hasting, 461 U.S. 499, 527 (1983) (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part))).
[snip]
“[E]fficient criminal investigations are certainly desirable,” In re Search Warrant Issued June 13, 2019, 942 F.3d at 181, but so too are countervailing considerations of fair process and public trust.
But she only maintains this perception by stiff-arming the press and hiding that status report.
Thus far, she has gotten away with it. Not only isn’t the press calling her out for stiff-arming them, but they continue to quote what she says rather than reporting on what she does.
Update, 10/4: After she ordered the status report unsealed, Judge Cannon granted the motion to intervene prospectively.
Three Things: Mit Handelsblatther
Let’s get some more pressing business out of the way and then we’ll get down to this alleged subpoena.
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Calls — make them. We should all simply get used to making calls or sending faxes to our members Congress and other government officials on a regular basis. Our democracy has now shown us the error of believing in the vote alone; voting is the very minimum democracy requires. We simply have to do more.
Today we need to do more to protect Net Neutrality. We have less than two weeks to make an impression on the Federal Communications Commission, leaving them with no doubt the public wants Net Neutrality.
Contact the FCC — need a script? See @Celeste_pewter.
Contact your Senators — need a script for that too? Here you go.
The odds may not be in our favor given the intransigence of FCC chair Ajit Pai and two of the commissioners, but we can’t curl up and give in.
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NBC’s Today Show won morning ratings after firing accused sexual harasser and abuser Matt Lauer this past week. Good fucking riddance to bad baggage.
NBC's "Today" wins in the ratings for the first time in three months on the week of Matt Lauer's firing on sexual misconduct charges. https://t.co/Dav24K9ncQ
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 5, 2017
Ah, but NBC only terminated him because Lauer represented a threat to the corporation’s bottom line. They really don’t give a flying fig about women, proved with their donations.
No corporation that gives a campaign donation to pedophile and political hack Roy Moore really cares about women. NBC and its parent corporation Comcast care far more about ending Net Neutrality and being on the prospective GOP senator’s good side. What flexible ethics — get rid of an abuser because he violates policy then donate money to another abuser.
Polling shows the race between pedophile Roy Moore and Democratic Party candidate Doug Jones is far too tight to feel comfortable. It’s within margin of error which is too easily gamed by voter suppression or other tactics. But I hope Jones kicks Moore’s ass on election day.
Sen. Jeff Flake kicked in a $100 donation to Jones, writing “Country above party” on the description line. It’s chump change but he’ll take some crap from the GOP over this now that the RNC has lost whatever remained of its spine and returned to financing their pedo candidate.
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Now for Handelsblathering —
The first report I read Tuesday morning was by Bloomberg, which offered very little detail about the subpoena allegedly served on Deutsche Bank. Where was the subpoena served? The article didn’t say; it only said,
Mueller issued a subpoena to Germany’s largest lender several weeks ago, forcing the bank to submit documents on its relationship with Trump and his family, according to a person briefed on the matter, who asked not to be identified because the action has not been announced.
Caveat: Bloomberg has a nasty habit of updating their articles without leaving adequate evidence of the changes made. The graf excerpted above may not be exactly the same as the one I read on Tuesday morning.
We’ll assume service was made on Deutsche Bank in Berlin. When was the subpoena served? “Several weeks ago” the article said, which is horribly non-specific. I would personally guess this was less than a month ago or the journalists would have said “more than a month” or offer some other framing to extend the time beyond a month. “Several weeks ago” might fit the period of roughly 20 weeks since Trump was asked about special prosecutor Robert Mueller looking into his family’s finance’s (July 9) — but that’s a big stretch at nearly five months.
What niggled at me was the sourcing of Bloomberg’s piece — it relied almost wholly on German financial news outlet Handelsblatt. Its editor Daniel Schaefer referred to the story as “our scoop” on Twitter. Every report after Handelsblatt’s relied on the same story — or at least it isn’t clear in much later stories whether secondary news outlets called Deutsche Bank in Berlin and confirmed there was a subpoena served on them, or if they contacted Handelsblatt to confirm what their source had told them.
The sourcing looked too damned thin.
It didn’t help matters that the article is partially behind a paywall and in English at their global site and in German at their domestic site; nor did it help that the German language article is difficult to find.
Looking at Handelsblatt’s article on the global site, the wording seems odd; it might be due to differences between German and English but this first graf doesn’t seem like it.
Deutsche Bank has been served. US investigators are demanding that it provide information on dealings linked to the Trumps, sources familiar with the matter told Handelsblatt. The subpoena is part of a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller and his team to determine whether the president’s campaign was involved in Russian efforts to influence the US election.
“…[Has] been served. When have you last seen a statement as bald as this yet as unclear? ‘Served’ what — pie? The word ‘subpoena’ appears in the third sentence, and even at that point its use is odd. “…[part] of a probe” suggests there has been more going on in Berlin than just the handing over of documents on request.
And then Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow came out later in the day and denied there had been any subpoena served.
Reporters contacted Handelsblatt but by then it was well after business hours in Germany.
A reader at TalkingPointsMemo speculates that Deutsche Bank may not have been able to disclose any subpoena to Trump or his lawyer if a grand jury orders them not to do so, and that Sekulow may not have been told there was a subpoena for this reason.
I don’t know; do German banks follow U.S. grand jury instructions to the letter? Maybe this one does since it has been in trouble with the U.S. for money laundering and it wants to improve its credibility while reducing its exposure.
I have a another theory, though, thanks to researching the Volkswagen dieselgate scandal. VW’s executives used some weaselly language to imply they were not involved in decision making; the language used relied on American’s limited grasp of German and the ways in German could be manipulated to misrepresent the truth.
What I want to know is whether Germans use the word “subpoena” in the same way we do, or if they rely on either an EU legal term, or a German word equivalent. In other words, if someone asked the bank if a subpoena had been served, they may say no — but if they were asked if document production had been ordered (Dokumentenproduktion, perhaps?), they might say something very different.
This entire story seems off kilter, as if it were intended for a very narrow audience. Why did the Deutsche Bank leaker talk with Handelsblatt, the fourth largest Germany daily subscription newspaper and the biggest business news paper, versus a Sun-like tabloid Bild or the weekly Der Spiegel? Why was there a specific indication that both Melania and Ivanka as well as Jared Kushner had accounts with Deutsche Bank?
Something isn’t quite right. But then nothing’s been quite right since January 21.
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That’s a wrap. Treat this like an open thread.
Just Another Misogynist Monday
![[What's her name? How hard is it to print her name? Isn't this Journalism 101 -- get the subject's name?]](https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CoryCogdell_2.jpg)
[What’s her name? How hard is it to print her name? Isn’t this Journalism 101 — get the subject’s name?]
And I am SO glad I haven’t bothered to watch based on the persistent anger in my timeline. NBC’s coverage has been a bunch of sexist and racist nonsense, framing female athletes not by their performance but by the men or white family members in their lives.
Like noting a particular athlete became a mother since her last competition — gee, how many of the male athletes became fathers? The narrative NBC built around each woman competitor sounds more like an observation of their performing femininity. “She’s turned in the best time and look, she can still clean house and wear a dress!” Obnoxious.
Or in the case of Simone Biles, a woman of color, about whom NBC’s Al Trautwig feels compelled to note she’s adopted. He cannot simply talk about Biles’ gymnastic performance or the family who came for her as her parents.
Other U.S. media covering the Olympics don’t do any better, like this ridiculous bullshit from The Chicago Tribune and USAToday. First this internationally-recognized athlete is not named but identified as the spouse of non-Olympic male athlete — then half-assed corrections revealing her name still ensure she’s pegged as a man’s wife. Are you kidding me with this?
![[Because the Chicago Bears figure largely to the Olympics...]](https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CoryCogdell_1.jpg)
[Because the Chicago Bears figure largely to the Olympics…]
The rationalization for NBC’s craptastic framing as offered to WaPo:
Women don’t watch the Olympics for the live results; they watch it for the narrative. Or that’s the reasoning of NBC, anyway. As the network’s chief marketing officer John Miller explained:
“The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans,” he told Philly.com recently. “More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”Women don’t watch the Olympics for the live results; they watch it for the narrative. Or that’s the reasoning of NBC, anyway. As the network’s chief marketing officer John Miller explained:
“The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans,” he told Philly.com recently. “More women watch the games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and miniseries wrapped into one.”
“Less interested in the result” — yeah, that’s why so many women in my timeline were holding their breath as they waited for gymnasts’ scores, or flailing on keyboards as swimmers sped toward the end of the pool. They do care, deeply and intensely, about the results of each sport.
But they don’t care for propping up men — oh, look, this swimmer co-parents with his med student wife, and wow, this guy was responsible for this woman’s swimming medal — at the expense of women.
We are not things. We are not your wallpaper or props. We are not accessories to men’s or white people’s lives. We don’t need your white and/or male validation to affirm our existence. We are competitors who work fucking hard to meet others as committed to sports as we are. We are viewers who appreciate the competitors’ respect and commitment to sport and want to see the field strive hard and the best win.
The fact that we have been born with a vagina or different skin color should be irrelevant to corporate content.
I’ll do a daily roundup later today. Get your sports talk out here in thread. ~R
Winter™ — Property of The Weather Channel®
With a lot of self-justifying, back-patting hoopla today, The Weather Channel announced it’s decided unilaterally to assign names to winter storms.
During the upcoming 2012-13 winter season The Weather Channel will name noteworthy winter storms. Our goal is to better communicate the threat and the timing of the significant impacts that accompany these events. The fact is, a storm with a name is easier to follow, which will mean fewer surprises and more preparation.
Yes, fewer surprises. Just the one about winter’s natural disasters being branded by The Weather Channel.
There’s no indication that any federal government entity, including NOAA, has sanctioned this scheme let alone the names.
…until now, there has been no organized naming system for these storms before they impact population centers.
One of the reasons this may be true is that there is no national center, such as the National Hurricane Center, to coordinate and communicate information on a multi-state scale to cover such big events. The National Centers for Environmental Prediction’s Hydrologic Prediction Center (HPC) does issue discussions and snowfall forecasts on a national scale but it does not fill the same role as the NHC in naming storms. …
At this point The Weather Channel’s management breaks their arms with back-patting, lauding their efforts while calling it a bunch of euphemisms for team-playing:
…it would be a great benefit for a partner in the weather industry to take on the responsibility of developing a new concept.
This is where a world-class organization such as The Weather Channel will play a significant role. We have the meteorological ability, support and technology to provide the same level of reporting for winter storms that we have done for years with tropical weather systems. …
In the absence of any government inputs, the selected storm names for this season appear to be intellectual property of The Weather Channel.
Bet you didn’t think that natural disasters could be co-opted, branded, and marketed! Read more →
Media Giants for Health Care
I said on Twitter yesterday that Comcast was endorsing health care reform as a sop designed to butter up Obama’s regulators who must approve the Comcast-NBC deal. But that becomes even more clear when you look at the letter Comcast’s CEO Brian Roberts wrote.
Roberts starts with an utterly shameless suck up. Congratulations, Mr. President, you rock! But as part of that suck up, Roberts appeals to the themes–job creation, investment, and innovation–taht Comcast will mobilize to justify its acquisition of NBC. (He does not, for some reason, mention the real reason behind the deal: profits.)
Congratulations on today’s Summit on Jobs and Economic Growth. I believe that hosting a thoughtful and vibrant discussion with the Vice President, members of your Cabinet, business leaders, scholars, and other public officials about the persistent economic challenges confronting America and the path we must forge to foster job creation, investment, and innovation is a really important initiative.
Then, Roberts uses his non-attendance at the summit as his excuse for making his transparent bid to suck up to Obama.
Because of our announcement today that we have formed a joint venture with General Electric consisting of NBCU’s businesses and Comcast’s cable networks, I am unable to attend the Summit. I very much appreciate the outreach to the business community, and want to express one of the thoughts I intended to make at the Summit –that enactment of comprehensive health care reform legislation is, in my judgment, critical to putting this country on a path of sustained growth and prosperity.
“I can’t attend because I’m busy becoming an even bigger media behemoth and oh by the way I’m sorry I haven’t mentioned yet that I support your signature policy issue but I do.”
From there, Roberts goes on to prove that he has been paying attention to Obama’s talking points, citing the cost and the amount by which it reduces deficits–which Roberts labels “a strong dose of fiscal responsibility.”
Then Roberts’ letter gets really interesting. He makes a sustained pitch for the digital technology aspects of reform.
I also strongly support the development of standards and protocols to promote the digitization of health records and documents, electronic data matching, and the interoperability of systems for enrollment in health services programs. Such steps could revolutionize how health centers and hospitals operate and enrich how health providers and patients communicate. Telemedicine and distant health services will literally transform the delivery and monitoring of health care services and the training of health care professionals. As a leading information and communications technology company, Comcast understands the generative power of broadband technology and its potential to improve the overall quality of health care, while stimulating job creation and restoring our economy.
Notice that Roberts assumes this will all be done via broadband and not–say–satellite.