Seriously 🌻 🌻 🌻

Retribution: Borrowing from Succession’s Logan Roy or more accurately the show’s writers, House Republicans are not serious people. Petty and into retribution, definitely, but serious, hardly.  Yesterday the Gym Jordan chaired House Judiciary Committee held a hearing featuring John Durham and his report.  Durham is the Special Counsel who was appointed by then AG Bill Barr to prove that the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election was an anti-Trump witch hunt except that he couldn’t because as he admitted yesterday during questioning by several Democratic members of the committee including Representatives Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff the Russians really did meddle in the 2106 election and that meddling included outreach to various receptive Trump family and team members. You’d think that instead of hosting Durham, Jordan and company would want to vanquish his name to the wastebin of history, but nope. Then, later in the day, House Republicans held a vote to censure California Democrat Adam Schiff, retribution for his role in Trump’s first impeachment. They had previously tried to censure Schiff but their first attempt, initiated by Florida Republican Anna Paulina Luna, failed because it included a $16 million fine, a penalty that a handful of Republicans thought was a step too far even for them. Luna, an ardent Trumpist and a member of Matt Gaetz’s insurrection caucus, is another one who lied about her credentials and family history ala George Santos. Like George, despite her claims she doesn’t have Jewish ancestry, though her grandfather was a Nazi.  After Luna’s first censure resolution went down in flames, Trump threatened to primary all of those who voted against it which eased the passage on the second go round. For the record, Adam Schiff doesn’t seem to care, his Democratic colleagues have his back, the censure won’t shut him up but will probably boost his chances of winning the Democratic nomination to run for the California Senate seat being vacated by Dianne Feinstein. The Durham hearing and Schiff censure weren’t enough stupid for one day so last night Colorado’s gun toting high school dropout Lauren Boebert introduced articles of impeachment against President Biden, something to do with his failure to handle the Mexican border crisis. Worth mentioning, border crossings are down but facts aren’t really an issue here.  Naturally, Margie Q who got into a shouting match with Boebert on the House floor last night, is upset, not about the effort to impeach Biden, but because Boebert beat her to the punch.  Apparently, Kevin McCarthy isn’t happy either, he doesn’t mind the whole impeachment thing but doesn’t believe the timing is right or so he says.  As to the not Jew ish George Santos, later today the names of those who provided the bond that has been keeping him out of jail are due to be released unless of course George releases them from their obligation, instead and goes to jail as he said he would if he was forced to come clean. Not that he would lie about that, right? .

Guns and Taxes: One of the many, many things feeding Republican fury right now is that Hunter Biden, another one who Logan Roy would describe as a not serious person won’t be going to jail unless of course he falls back down the addiction rabbit hole and does some more stupid stuff.  Hunter who failed to file his taxes for a few years back when he was binging on cocaine and whatever else he was into at the time, has agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of failing to pay federal income taxes for 2017 and 2018 but will avoid full prosecution on a separate charge of lying about his drug use when purchasing a gun that he had in his possession for eleven days before his girlfriend at the time got rid of it because while she had questionable taste in men she knew that guns and drugs were a bad combo.  Hunter has since made good on the money he owed the IRS. Depending on where you stand on the political divide, Hunter either got off easy or was treated too harshly which probably means that he was treated fairly. Putting aside how Hunter was treated the rest of us got screwed because the investigation into all things Hunter which was overseen by Trump appointed US Attorney for Delaware David Weiss who was held over just to complete the task took five years and the resolution was the same as what Biden’s lawyers offered up at the beginning. The money spent on the Hunter investigation, like that spent on Durham should have been spent elsewhere or not spent at all.  Naturally, Gym Jordan, James Comer and the rest of their crowd aren’t done with Hunter.  They plan to keep on investigating his laptop, the $30 million faux bribe and whatever else because of course they will.

 

Legal Morass: On the Trump front, the mango maniac has slipped a bit in the Republican polls with just a few of his points moving to candidates not named DeSantis.  Also, the general agreement is that his interview with Fox’s Brett Bair was a disaster. Baier was prepared, asked tough questions, and pushed back against most of Trump’s lies, doing what journalists are supposed to do but what we’ve increasingly grown used to them not doing especially on Fox where softball interviews have become the norm.  No doubt Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team enjoyed the show because Trump admitted to taking all those boxes with secret, classified documents and war plans, and according to him, golf clothing with him to Mar a Lago while also saying that he ignored the subpoenas to return the purloined documents because he was too busy golfing, doing his combover and applying orange make up to comply.  To the extent Trump’s lawyers aren’t tripping over each other in an effort to get to the exit, they are probably pretty busy right now working on delay tactics because Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon has set a hearing date of August 14 for the beginning of his trial and because Jack Smith and his team have already started sharing discovery material including the names of the witnesses they plan to call. Don’t count on the August date being real, it will likely be pushed back.  Judge Cannon plans to hold the first hearing in Fort Pierce Florida, in a courthouse that suits her but that lacks adequate space and security so that location could also change.  August could be a busy month for Trump because despite NY AG Letitia James statement that all other cases against him would be put on hold to make way for Special Counsel Jack,  Fulton County’s Fani Willis says she’s not changing her schedule for anyone.  Jack and Fani are what Logan would call serious people.

Fishing:  Another day, another paid for SCOTUS junket.  The team at ProPublica have uncovered another Supreme Court Justice boondoggle. This time the Justice in question is Samuel Alito rather than Clarence Thomas.  Apparently Justice Alito failed to disclose that in 2008 shortly after being confirmed to the Court, he flew free to Alaska on a private jet owned by Hedge Fund billionaire Paul Singer and then spent some quality time fishing for salmon with Singer and the Federalist Society’s Judge picker Leonard Leo.   Instead of responding to questions about the trip, Alito front ran the ProPublica article with a WSJ op-ed of his own in which he defended his failure to include anything about the funding of the trip on his disclosure statements and rejected any assertion that he should have recused from any of the several cases that Paul Singer has since had before the Court.  The WSJ followed up with an Editorial Board opinion attacking ProPublica for engaging in “court thinning” by pushing for Conservative Justices like Alito and Thomas to recuse when they accept extravagant gifts from those with cases in front of the court.  Worth noting, Justice Kagan once refused a congratulatory gift of bagels and lox from some Hunter High School classmates so as not to violate ethics rules but expecting the conservative Justices to come clean about free flights and more, that’s a step too far for the WSJ Editorial Board.