Sunday, August 28, 2022

On Our "Virtual Route 66" As August comes to a close: On the Week That Was


Our team chose the headline above to epitomize what we've tried to do as we approach our anniversary of service.    We pulled together a compilation of all that occurred throughout quite a week that was as we look forward to the continued privilege to serve--We will be dark through Labor Day Week-End here in the United States but our Twitter Corner will be updated and our live broadcast POD featuring SkyNews will be available:

The Department of Justice (DOJ) today released the redacted affidavit that persuaded a judge to agree to issue a search warrant for FBI agents to look for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, the property owned by the Trump Organization in Florida. 

It was bad. 

The affidavit explained to the judge the history behind the FBI’s request. 

On February 9, 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration (what did I say about archivists?) told the DOJ that after seven months of negotiations, on January 18 it had received 15 boxes of material that former president Trump had held at Mar-a-Lago. Those boxes contained “highly classified documents,” including some at the very most secret level of our intelligence: those involving our spies and informants. 

In those initial 15 boxes, FBI personnel found 184 classified documents. Sixty-seven were labeled CONFIDENTIAL, 92 were SECRET, 25 were TOP SECRET. Some were marked SCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, and SI, the very highest levels of security, involving human intelligence, foreign surveillance, intelligence that cannot be shared with foreign governments, and intelligence that is compartmented to make sure no one has full knowledge of what is in it. The former president had made notes on “several” of the documents.

On June 8, 2022, a DOJ lawyer wrote to Trump’s lawyer to reiterate that Mar-a-Lago was not authorized to store classified information, and warned that the documents were not being handled properly. The DOJ lawyer asked that the material be secured in a single room at Mar-a-Lago “in their current condition until further notice.” 

Trump’s lawyers told the DOJ that presidents have the absolute authority to declassify documents—this is not true, by the way—but did not assert he had done so. 

The FBI opened a criminal investigation “to, among other things,” figure out how the classified records were taken from the White House and ended up at Mar-a-Lago, and to determine if other classified records might have been improperly taken and stored, and to figure out who might have taken and mishandled them. 

They concluded that there was good reason to think that more classified records remained at Mar-a-Lago and that investigators would find evidence that Trump and his allies were obstructing the government’s effort to recover the material. The person who made the affidavit said they were a special agent with the FBI, “familiar with efforts used to unlawfully collect, retain, and disseminate sensitive government information, including classified N[ational] D[efense] I[nformation].” They swore that “there is probable cause to believe” that locations at Mar-a-Lago “contain evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed.” 

The affidavit confirmed that the Department of Justice is “conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records,” and asked for the affidavit to be sealed because “the items and information to be seized are relevant to an ongoing investigation and the FBI has not yet identified all potential criminal confederates nor located all evidence related to its investigation.”

Sidestepping Trump’s insistence that he could declassify whatever he wished when president, the affidavit specifies that the documents could cause damage even if they are not classified, and it notes that retaining “information related to the national defense” is illegal. 

The information that Trump stole classified documents itself was eye-popping, and then that he refused to return them was astonishing. Now, the knowledge of the extent of it, and that it included information from our human sources, is stunning. 

AND THIS WAS JUST THE AFFIDAVIT TO GET A SEARCH WARRANT TO GET MORE RETAINED DOCUMENTS… which the FBI did on August 8. 

We still don’t know what was in those more recently recovered boxes.

Trump is in serious trouble…and so are the rest of us. This stolen and mishandled classified intelligence compromises our security. The best-case scenario is that it was never seen by anyone who knew what they were looking at. Even that would mean that our allies have every reason to be leery about sharing information with us again. 

But that’s the best-case scenario. We have to wonder, who else now knows the secrets designed to keep Americans safe? Multiple news stories during Trump’s presidency noted that even then, Mar-a-Lago was notoriously insecure. And, unthinkable though it should be but sadly is not, what if secret documents have already been given or sold into the hands of foreign actors whose interests conflict with ours? 

I have been writing today about Trump’s first impeachment and the hearings where Marie Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, and Alexander Vindman, immigrants all, who served our nation faithfully and fully, risked—and ultimately lost—their jobs to warn us that Trump was willing to compromise our national security for his own interests. 

“He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again,” House impeachment manager Adam Schiff warned the Senate. “You can’t trust [Trump] to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can’t. He will not change and you know it.” Schiff begged them to say “enough.” 

But they would not, and they did not, and here we are.

Notes:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/mar-a-lago-documents-intelligence-us-national-security/671140/

https://www.propublica.org/article/any-half-decent-hacker-could-break-into-mar-a-lago

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/26/us/trump-search-affidavit-release.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/closing-argument-democrats-say-not-removing-trump-would-render-him-n1128766












- Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker on why climate spending is a *waste of money*​​

For a guy who is extremely not the president anymore, Donald Trump sure does still have a firm grip on our national current events.
 

The looming specter of legal accountability is making for an awkward start to the 2024 Republican primary rumblings. 
 

  • Usually around this time (two years before a presidential election) we would start seeing Republican presidential hopefuls pop up at the Iowa State Fair putting on their best “I’m just like you,” attire and housing corndogs. But compared to previous cycles, very few Republican politicians on the 2024 radar attended this year’s fair, because Trump’s presence still looms so large. It’s still unclear whether former president Trump will run, but the overwhelming majority of would-be contenders strenuously do not want to position themselves against him. I believe the term for this is “coward.” Former Vice President Mike Pence still showed up to eat a turkey leg, or tell women they should only speak when spoken to, or whatever he usually does there. 
     

  • While Republican senate candidates are polling considerably worse-than-expected in key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, they have potential to pick up a seat in purple New Hampshire, where Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) is polling poorly. The New Hampshire Republican Party is pulled in two directions, as more moderate Republicans often fare better there, but the Republican primary front runner is Don Bolduc, a fringe psycho who is not only a booster for the Big Lie but recently called to repeal the 17th Amendment (the one that lets voters, instead of state legislatures, choose U.S. senators). Cool guy! Predictive polling shows that Bolduc’s edge in the primary may be his ceiling, as many general election voters would be scared off by his lunacy. Fingers crossed all of the general elections go this way.


Republican primary voters have not let go of Trump, but as he inches ever closer to real legal consequences, they may be strapping themselves to a political suicide vest.

The hosts of Imani State of Mind, Dr. Imani Walker and MegScoop Thomas are taking a deeper look at what it takes to make friendships last and what role they play in your mental health. The ladies are also diving into the reality of different types of relationships and the emotions that arise out of them. From your spouse to your parents to grief and anxiety, Imani State of Mind is the show to talk about it all. 


Listen to new episodes of Imani State of Mind every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Last year, a new conservative nonprofit group saw a $1.6 billion windfall from a little-known donor named Barr Seid, an extraordinary amount of money that could give Republicans and their pet issues (taking away people’s rights, giving themselves more money) a huge financial boost in the coming midterm elections and beyond. Seid made his fortune in electronics manufacturing, and his donation is one of if not the largest single contributions ever made to a political nonprofit organization. Of course, Seid’s donation to Marble Freedom Trust (excuse me while I dry heave) was arranged through an unusual series of transactions meant to avoid tax liabilities. Classic Republican shit. To zoom out, the $1.6 billion Seid gave is slightly more than the total of $1.5 billion spent in 2020 by 15 of the most politically-active nonprofit organizations that generally align with Democrats. Republican billionaires basically invented dark money, and this staggering sum means they are extremely serious about spending as much as they have to to achieve their political goals.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Biden’s chief medical adviser, announced today that he plans to retire in December after more than 50 years in public service. 

 

Three Arkansas law-enforcement officers have been taken off duty after a horrifying video footage of them brutally beating a man during an arrest circulated online this weekend.

 

Staff at American University went on strike today to protest inequitable healthcare and insufficient wages after more than 30 bargaining sessions with the University did not produce meaningful changes in either. 

 

Flash floods struck the Dallas-Fort Worth area overnight last night resulting in severely flooded roads and cars floating down streets. In some areas, rainfall totaled what would be considered a one-in-one-thousand-year flood. 

 

Singapore has decriminalized homosexuality

 

More than three years after New York lawmakers passed regulations restricting landlords’ ability to hike rents in regulated apartments, many of them are using a loophole of combining units to dramatically jack up rents in a time of already sky-high prices

 

Millions of students in the Philippines are finally back in school after two years of coronavirus lockdowns

 

A growing consensus among experts who study the intersection of the two is that history of mental illness is not actually a good predictor of mass shootings

 

The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian intelligence of carrying out a car bombing on Saturday that killed the daughter of a leading right-wing Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin. Ukraine denies any involvement. 

 

Workers at the United Kingdom’s biggest container port went on strike yesterday, joining a series of walkouts by transportation workers across the country

 

Pakistani police have charged former prime minister Imran Khan under their “anti-terror” laws after Khan delivered a speech attacking the police and a judicial officer at a recent rally in the nation’s capital, Islamabad.


The Southern Poverty Law Center has obtained emails surrounding a deal between the Omaha, NE, Police Department and a local gun shop that has hosted far-right politicians from around the world and at least one openly anti-Muslim speaker and festoons itself with neo-Nazi iconography. The deal as such is that OPD planned to trade almost $45,000 worth of expired helmets and bulletproof vests for approximately $3,000 worth of firearms equipment, and it highlights OPD’s friendly relationships with far-right business owners. The gun shop and training center, 88 Tactical, first came on the SPLC’s radar in 2017 when it joined with conspiracy theory/anti-Muslim organization the Global Faith Institute to invite ex-FBI agent and violent islamophobe John Guandolo to speak in Nebraska that year. The number 88 is extremely important to and widely used among neo-Nazis, referring to the 8th letter of the alphabet, H, as in “Heil Hitler.” 88 Tactical has also hosted Donald Trump, Jr., and the sons of far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, all three of whom push anti-leftist conspiracy theories. Far-right and white supremacist links to law enforcement have been well-known for years in the intelligence community, and unless the problem is pulled from its root, police will rightly lose all legitimacy in the eyes of the residents they are supposed to serve.

Our Rights Are In Danger

The federal right to an abortion has been overturned. And politicians are not stopping at abortion rights. Overturning Roe v. Wade has opened the floodgates for further attacks on all of our rights—and we need your support to fight back with the full strength we need.

 

The same extremists working to take away our right to an abortion are putting so many other freedoms – everything you and the ACLU have fought so hard for – at risk in ways we haven't seen in generations. Everything from our right to use birth control, marry whom you love, and even the right to vote.

 

But we can't – and we won't – let them get away with it. The ACLU has the nationwide and multi-issue infrastructure to lead in this urgent fight back. We're on Capitol Hill, in the courts, statehouses, and on the ground in all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. And our reach extends not to one but every major civil liberty under threat.

 

This will take sustained effort to continuously push back against this all-out assault on our fundamental freedoms. Sign up today to help us protect and defend our fundamental freedoms.

 

Thank you,

The ACLU Team

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined a workers’ rights rally in Cambridge, MA, yesterday highlighting local union battles in Massachusetts including Boston-based Starbucks unions, MIT Grad Student Union, and the Massachusetts Nurses Association. 

 

New evidence shows that cognitive rehabilitation may help older adults affected with brain fog as a result of COVID-19 or “long Covid.” I wonder if cognitive rehabilitation would finally allow my parents to remember "What's-her-face from that movie."

 

TikTok and Meta have banned one-time kickboxing champion and now full-time professional misogynist Andrew Tate from their platforms for his extreme content which advocates for men exerting their “authority” over women. We wish him only the worst.

 

Colorado state Sen. Kevin Priola is resigning from the Republican Party and becoming a Democrat because of the former’s complicity in the January 6 insurrection and proliferation of the Big Lie. 

 

Surprise, surprise: anti-abortion activists still lost by a wide margin after a recount of this month’s referendum in Kansas

 

The District of Columbia will more than double the amount of assistance for first-time home buyers in a bid to help residents of the nation’s capital, particularly Black Washingtonians, remain competitive in the city’s expensive housing market. 


Construction of 420,000 new apartments is expected to be completed in cities across the U.S. this year, which could (fingers crossed so hard they break) lower rental and home asking prices.






Today’s big news is an eye-popping $1.6 billion donation to a right-wing nonprofit organized in May 2020. This is the largest known single donation made to a political influence organization.

The money came from Barre Seid, a 90-year-old electronics company executive, and the new organization, Marble Freedom Trust, is controlled by Leonard A. Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society, who has been behind the right-wing takeover of the Supreme Court. Leo has also been prominent in challenges to abortion rights, voting rights, climate change action, and so on. He announced in early 2020 that he was stepping back from the Federalist Society to remake politics at every level, but information about the massive grant and the new organization was broken today by Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times

Marble is organized as a nonprofit, so when Seid gave it 100% of the stock in Tripp Lite, a privately held company that makes surge protectors and other electronic equipment, it could sell the stock without paying taxes. The arrangement also likely enabled Seid to avoid paying as much as $400 million in capital gains taxes on the stock. Law professor Ray Madoff of Boston College Law School, who specializes in philanthropic policy, told the New York Times: “These actions by the super wealthy are actually costing the American taxpayers to support the political spending of the wealthiest Americans.”

This massive donation is an example of so-called “dark money”: funds donated for political advocacy to nonprofits that do not have to disclose their donors. In the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) decision, the Supreme Court said that limiting the ability of corporations and other entities to advertise their political preferences violates their First Amendment right to free speech. This was a new interpretation: until the 1970s, the Supreme Court did not agree that companies had free speech protections.

Now, nonprofit organizations can receive unlimited donations from people, corporations, or other entities for political speech. They cannot collaborate directly with candidates or campaigns, but they can promote a candidate’s policies and attack opponents, all without identifying their donors. 

“I've never seen a group of this magnitude before,” Robert Maguire of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) told Casey Tolan, Curt Devine, and Drew Griffin of CNN. “This is the kind of money that can help these political operatives and their allies start to move the needle on issues like reshaping the federal judiciary, making it more difficult to vote, a state-by-state campaign to remake election laws and lay the groundwork for undermining future elections.” Our campaign finance system, he said, gives “wealthy donors, whether they be corporations or individuals, access and influence over the system far greater than any regular American can ever imagine.”

It’s an interesting revelation at this particular juncture, when the Republican Party is splitting over former president Donald Trump. Today, a Colorado state senator switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party because he refuses to support the lie that Trump won the 2020 election. “I cannot continue to be a part of a political party that is okay with a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election and continues to peddle claims that the 2020 election was stolen,” Kevin Priola wrote. “We need Democrats in charge because our planet and our democracy depend on it.” Priola has thrown in his lot with those Republicans like Representatives Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).

Priola has voted with Democrats in the past, although he voted with the Republicans 90% of the time. His switch will make it more difficult for Republicans to retake control of the Colorado Senate. Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, tweeted that he was proud to welcome Priola to the Democratic Party. “We are a broad tent party, always seeking good ideas from the left and right to move CO forward. Senator Priola is a strong leader on climate issues & will hopefully be even more effective on the Democratic side of the aisle.” 

In contrast, Sean Paige, former spokesperson for the Colorado Republican Party, tweeted: “Kevin Priola a Democrat? Who knew, LOL? That’s been an open ‘secret’ at the Statehouse since I worked there. He’s beyond just a big phony; he’s a squirrely and calculating opportunist. But I’m glad, for his conscience, that he finally came out of the closet.” 

The new extremist Republican Party is driving away voters in part by this very sort of chaos. This afternoon, Trump’s lawyers asked a federal judge to stop the FBI from looking at the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago until a special master reviews them. But the filing appeared to have been less about the law than about asserting power over the Republican Party. While legal analyst Bradley Moss called it “just garbage” legally, it stated its political principle at the start: “President Donald J. Trump is the clear frontrunner in the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary and in the 2024 General Election, should he decide to run.”

The motion reiterated the arguments he has made since the search warrant was carried out; Moss mused, “[t]he more I read Trump’s motion, the more I am completely confused and shocked he got three lawyers to risk their law licenses by filing this thing.” 

Then, this evening, it turned out that the motion was likely intended to distract attention from a new story dropping from Maggie Haberman, Jodi Kantor, Adam Goldman and Ben Protess of the New York Times, who reported that Trump took more than 300 classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago and that he went through the boxes himself in late 2021, meaning he was aware that he had taken classified documents out of the White House.

The National Archives and Records Administration recovered more than 150 classified documents in January 2022, including intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the FBI. Worried by the sheer number of those documents, the Department of Justice moved to get the rest. In June, Trump’s aides turned over a few dozen more, and Trump lawyer Christina Bobb signed a document asserting that, to the best of her knowledge, all the classified materials had been returned. They had not, of course, and on June 22 the Justice Department subpoenaed the security video tapes from the area, which showed people moving the documents. Hence the search warrant, which the FBI executed two weeks ago, finding yet more documents, including some in a closet in Trump’s office. Some had the highest possible level of classification. It remains unclear whether any U.S. documents remain at Mar-a-Lago.

Meanwhile, according to Andrew Desiderio of Politico, members of the Gang of Eight—the leaders of the House and Senate from each party, and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees from both houses—want to know what was in those recovered files. 

Finally, today, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced that he will be retiring from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which he has led since 1984, in December. Fauci has served seven presidents, and after his work on HIV/AIDS, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Nonetheless, today’s Republicans have tried to deflect blame for the nation’s poor response to the coronavirus pandemic from Trump to Fauci. After the announcement of the 81-year-old’s retirement, Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) said: “It’s good to know that with his retirement, Dr. Fauci will have ample time to appear before Congress and share under oath what he knew about the Wuhan lab, as well as the ever-changing guidance under his watch that resulted in wrongful mandates being imposed on Americans.”

Notes:

https://www.axios.com/2020/01/07/leonard-leo-crc-advisors-federalist-society

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/republican-dark-money.html

https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/freedom-of-speech-for-corporations.html

Twitter avatar for @Teri_KanefieldTeri Kanefield @Teri_Kanefield
Here's the document:
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…… I'll bet Trump wrote this part: "President Donald J. Trump is the clear frontrunner in the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary and in the 2024 General Election, should he decide to run."

August 22nd 2022

763 Retweets2,512 Likes

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/22/politics/dark-money-donation-conservative-group-invs/index.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/22/gang-of-8-trump-mar-a-lago-search-00053118

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https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-mar-a-lago-government-and-politics-d99f53f65920b6d6dce16f8b02aabd13

https://www.axios.com/2022/08/22/colorado-lawmaker-leaves-gop-jan-6-attack-trump

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.1.0.pdf

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763/gov.uscourts.flsd.618763.1.0.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/fauci-retire.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/trump-mar-a-lago-documents.html

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained