Indictment Watch ?! 🌻 🌻 🌻

Gas Stoves: After the debt ceiling vote, the pundit wrote glowing articles about how Kevin McCarthy was exceeding expectations .  Mostly ignoring that he needed Democratic help to even get the debt ceiling legislation to the House floor, the mainstream press crowed about how he had wrangled his disparate crowd of crazies into a lean mean voting machine.  Well, they got the mean part right.  Yesterday a dozen of them, all members of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus including the likes of Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Chip Roy and Andy Biggs, staged a protest, voting against legislation that they supported, a silly bill to protect gas stoves leaks and health risks be damned, to make the point to Kevin and the rest of Republican leadership that they’re really pissed that their slash and burn budget cuts were excluded from the final debt ceiling legislation. The good news for Kevin is that at least for now, his insurrection caucus is holding off on using their one vote right to knock him from his Speaker perch, the bad news is that they have figured out another way to throw the House into disarray.  The indicted George of many names Santos didn’t participate in the gas stove insurrection, but he did manage to get some press yesterday after a Long Island judge ruled against his request to keep the identities of the three people who guaranteed his $500,000 bail private. Lyin’ Santos who has until Friday to appeal the Judge’s decision says he’ll go to jail if that’s what it takes to keep those names private, as if. Santos in jail would be a problem for Kevin who needs every vote he can get if he ever hopes to protect those all-important gas stoves or do anything else. One vote Kevin doesn’t plan to take with or without the insurrection wing or Santos involves a supplemental budget to increase defense spending even though some of his colleagues in the Senate, most notably Lindsey Graham, were promised that the Defense Department would get more money if they voted for the debt ceiling legislation. Note to Lindsey, that’s not Biden and the Democrats reneging on a promise, that’s your crowd.  

Legal Woes:  For what it’s worth a number of legal pundits including former Attorney General Bill Barr expect that Trump will be indicted soon as a result of the efforts of Special Counsel Jack Smith.  Former Impeachment prosecutor Andrew Weissmann believes that an indictment in the purloined document case, maybe even the January 6 case, could come as early as this week while former federal prosecutor/legal pundit Renato Mariotti thinks those indictments, while imminent, will take a week or so more to happen. Though the timing isn’t clear, it is clear that the still bearded but recovered from his bicycle crash Smith who NBC caught on camera outside of his DC offices yesterday, has been quite busy.   Reports are that, in addition to his Washington DC grand jury, Smith has another one doing his bidding in Miami. In all likelihood the Miami grand jury is focusing on criminal activities that originated in Mar a Lago though it’s possible, although not likely, that Smith could opt to bring all the charges related to Trump’s document grab in Florida rather than in Washington DC. One of the “crimes” that the Miami grand jury may be hearing about could relate to the mysterious flooding of the room where the Mar a Lago video logs were kept.  Oddly enough the video log room was “accidentally” flooded last October after the same Mar a Lago maintenance worker who helped move boxes of Trump’s purloined documents drained the club’s pool. Unfortunately for Trump, the maintenance worker’s Rose Mary Woods moment didn’t turn out as planned as not even 18.5 minutes of the video logs were ruined.  Damp video logs aside, the smoking gun that Smith is thought to be focusing on relates to the Iran war plans that Trump was caught on tape discussing because absconding with and possibly sharing defense plans is a bigly no-no. Though the precise timing of the expected indictments remains unclear, what is certain is that Trump’s lawyers did emerge unhappy from a recent preindictment, possibly meeting with Jack Smith and, ominously for Trump, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who never testified before the House January 6^th committee did testify before Smith’s Washington DC grand jury.  Also bad for Trump, his recently resigned lawyer Evan Corcoran taped his reflections about his days working for Trump because there’s nothing like covering your arse.   

Red: Former NJ Governor Chris Christie made it official yesterday, he’s running.  No one expects Christie to survive the Republican primaries, but the pugnacious former prosecutor is expected to do his best to verbally take down Trump which won’t be easy because Trump isn’t expected to show for the first debate and even if he does show for later debates, it’s not clear that Christie who isn’t popular with the Republican base, will be able poll high enough to qualify for later debates.  Pence, who polls a just a bit higher than Christie is expected to make his run official shortly but isn’t expected to survive the primaries either. Turning back to former UN Ambassador/South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a few lowlights from her CNN townhall are worth mentioning.  She alleged that Democrats support abortion up to 39 weeks of pregnancy; they don’t and anyway babies are lost at 39 weeks as the result of a still birth or a delivery tragedy not as a result of an elective abortion.  Haley also claimed that the presence of transgender girls in locker rooms causes 25% of teenage girls to have suicidal ideation. That’s a statistic that she made up to impress the right. Being a teenager, especially in the days of social media, isn’t easy and concerns about teen suicide can’t be dismissed but suicide is far more common among transgender youth and politicians normalizing their victimization contribute to that problem..  Bottom line, Haley is another one selling her soul to impress culture war triggered base voters who are unlikely to give her the time of day.  

Blue Plus:  Republicans aren’t the only ones with problems.  Biden has to contend with RFK Jr, Marianne Williamson and left-wing activist Cornell West who declared that he is running as an independent.  RFK Jr who was deplatformed from Twitter for spreading COVID and vaccine misinformation was recently endorsed by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and participated in a Twitter Spaces chat with current Chief Twit Elon Musk, another vaccine skeptic whose ad revenues are currently down 59%. Musk has allowed RFK Jr back on Twitter because he’s all in on platforming misinformation and also because he like Dorsey likes RFK’s pro cryptocurrency position. RFK Jr who told Musk that he wants to close the border with Mexico and who blamed gun shootings on pharmaceutical drugs is actually polling around 20%, a number that Vanity Fair says is partially attributable to the fact that some voters are attracted to his name but have no idea about his political positions. Not surprising since there are a whole lot of voters on the right who want JFK Jr to be Trump’s running mate. Worth mentioning that Tulsi Gabbard also participated in the Musk-RFK Jr Twitter spaces discussion.  That’s Tulsi who also once ran for president as a Democrat but who left the party and now occasionally subs on Fox. As to Cornell West, he’s another one who won’t be sitting in the Oval Office anytime soon but who, like those who are pushing for a no-labels “centrist” candidate, someone like a Joe Manchin, will pull more votes from Biden than from Trump so think Jill Stein or Ralph Nader.  Not good to say the least.    

And: House Oversight Chair James Comer is moving forward with plans to cite FBI Director Wray in contempt for refusing to handover the Burisma related sketchy transcript that provides “evidence” of Joe Biden accepting bribes back when he was VP.  The evidence isn’t credible, Comer knows that but he’s doing Trump’s bidding and trying to tarnish Biden and who knows, it could work.  Also, despite right wing assertions to the contrary,  murder is down about 12% year to date and border crossings are down even more but that’s not stopping Ron DeSantis from flying more migrants from Texas to California because of course.  The destroyed dam situation in Ukraine is making conditions unimaginable worse for Ukrainians and on a far less tragic note, what’s up with the air quality in NY.  Eh Canada.