Stand Back and Stand By 🌻 🌻 🌻

Money Can’t Buy You Class:  Yesterday, while golfing in Ireland Trump told reporters that he would be cutting his overseas junket short to fly home to testify in the E Jean Carroll battery and defamation case. He’s lying, unfortunately he will be coming back to the US but he has no plans to testify, at least that’s what his lawyer Joe Tacopina told Judge Kaplan yesterday when he also said that he wouldn’t be presenting a defense or calling any witnesses, because the one witness he had planned to call, a psychiatrist, has called in sick or maybe just saw the light.  While Trump didn’t testify in person and probably won’t, though the Judge said he still could if he really wants to, the jury did get an opportunity to hear Trump’s taped deposition in which he said that “historically it’s true” that “over the last million years” rich stars like him get to do whatever they want to women. The jury also heard from one time NY news anchor Carol Martin, another friend who E Jean spoke to shortly after the assault took place. The case is expected to go to the jury next week and though jury’s can be unpredictable and there’s a chance that they’ll buy Tacopina’s position that E Jean’s contemporaneous witnesses are just anti-Trumper’s out to get him, it’s more likely that they’ll find for E Jean Carroll, agreeing that she was attacked and defamed.  Not that their decision will make much of a difference given that Trump’s base could care less and if the jury awards E Jean some money, big deal, Trump can always ask them to help pay and besides he’s rich or so he keeps telling us while he continues to defame her.   

Still Proud?  Another group of Trump’s fans who could care less about the E Jean Carroll case to the extent that they’ve had anytime to pay any attention to her case are the five Proud Boys who were on trial in Washington.  Yesterday a DC jury returned guilty verdicts on multiple felonies against five of them, finding four guilty of the most serious offense, seditious conspiracy, for their actions before and during the January 6^th attack on the US Capitol.  Notably Enrique Tarrio, who once served as president of the far-right neo-fascist Proud Boys and who shows up in photos alongside quite a few Republican politicians, including Ted Cruz, Trump BFFs like Roger Stone, as well as alongside many members of the Trump family including Trump was found guilty of seditious conspiracy even though he wasn’t in the Capitol that day. That’s a big win for the Department of Justice, not as big a win as finding Trump guilty of something, but still bigly.  As to Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith remains on his case.  According to the NY Times, Smith‘s team now has an “unidentified” Mar a Lago employee cooperating with them.  That witness has provided investigators with a picture of the storage room where some of Trump’s purloined documents were kept when they should have already been returned to the National Archives. They NYT also reports that the Feds are trying to track down some missing video tape of the Mar a Lago environs, because this being an investigation of a Republican president who remains a great admirer of Richard Nixon, of course there are missing tapes.  And maybe because everything Trump touches has a criminal angle the DOJ has also subpoenaed records related to Trump’s involvement in the Saudi Arabia back LIV professional golf venture which is holding some of its tournaments at Trump owned courses.  In response, Republicans led by Senator Chuck Grassley and House Oversight Chair James Comer claim to have proof that the Biden crime family led by kingpin Joe excepted millions in bribes back Joe was VP.  Likely, they have nothing but that won’t stop them from screaming and maybe even launching an impeachment proceeding because why not?       

Clarence and Ginni: Trump isn’t the only one who appears to be wrapped in Teflon, apparently so is Justice Clarence Thomas. Yesterday via ProPublica we learned that he hasn’t just excepted lavish vacation trips to exotic places and a house from his benefactor, billionaire conservative Harlan Crow but that Crow also paid for much if not all of the $6000 per month private school tuition for Thomas’s grandnephew, who Thomas says he raised “like a son.”  Naturally, Thomas did not report the tuition gift on his disclosure forms though he did once report an earlier tuition contribution of $5000, proof that he knew that was the type of gift that should be disclosed. Billionaire Crow acknowledged that he paid for Thomas grandnephew’s education saying that it wasn’t out of the ordinary since he and his wife are nice people who frequently pay for disadvantaged youths’ educations.  That’s sweet and kudos to Clarence for raising his grandnephew, but since when is a child raised by a Supreme Court Justice disadvantaged and anyway why not be upfront about the gifted tuition, unless of course there was more to the gift than just charity.  Also, why did the Federalist Society’s conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo, who chose most of Trump’s judicial nominees, route some payments to Clarence’s wife Ginni through Kellyanne Conway’s polling firm?  According to the Washington Post, in 2012, Leo had Kellyanne bill a nonprofit group that he advised  $25,000 for “polling and opinion consulting” and then had the group pay Ginni. That’s a rather odd way to pay someone for legit services unless of course you are trying to obfuscate the payment and maybe even there were no services.  Not so coincidentally, not long after the payment was made, the Judicial Education Project, the nonprofit involved, filed a brief with the Supreme Court for a landmark voting rights case.  In all Ginni received around $80,000 through this circuitous, hide the recipient, route. No comments yet from Kellyanne who will probably try to tie the payments to a fund for the survivors of her faux Bowling Green Massacre and naturally, no Republicans seem all that concerned about all those Crow gifts to Clarence Thomas instead they are now attacking Justice Sotomayor for not recusing from a case involving Penguin Random House, the publisher of her books because deflection is so much more fun. Worth noting Justice Gorsuch who also had a book deal with the publisher didn’t recuse either.    

2024:  Senator Ted Cruz is up for reelection in 2024 and now has a credible challenger – Democratic Congressman Colin Allred.  Allred is a popular moderate who stands a good chance of unseating Cruz whose popularity has nosedived since his close 2020 election. If you’d like to help unseat Cancun Ted, go to ActBlue.com.  Also, Congressman Jamie Raskin who is now cancer free and let’s all hope he stays that way, is considering running for the Maryland Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Ben Cardin.       

Timebombs:  The debt ceiling still looms though maybe, just maybe there’s a flickering light out there.  The Wall Street Journal reports that though Republicans and Democrats are still sticking to the public position that they won’t cave to each other’s demands, privately they are looking at a short-term increase to buy more time for negotiations.  McCarthy who is facing a lot of pressure from his crazy caucus who could care less about economic consequences of a default also has to keep his big donors happy and few if any of them want to see the economy and their fortunes crumble.  On the subject of conflagrations, the Ukraine situation is not good.  So far, it’s unclear whether the Ukrainians launched those drones that hit the Kremlin or whether the Russians are looking for a false flag justification to do something exceptionally nasty.