Alexei Navalny RIP ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Guns, Guns, Guns: Add sports team victory parades to the growing list of events to avoid. On Wednesday more than 20 people, many of them children, were injured and one, a local DJ, was killed after a dispute erupted into another mass shooting.  You’ll be relieved to know that Missouri’s pro-gun Governor Mike Parson who attended the rally but was seen running from the scene surrounded by his security force escaped unharmed.  He hasn’t changed his view on guns and is happier than ever that Missouri is a constitutional carry state where permits are not necessary because the problem is thugs, not thugs with guns.  He also wants everyone who was shot as well as all their parents and all the traumatized people who survived but will have nightmares going forward to know that he’s got them in his “heart and prayers.”  Trump who recently told Iowans to just get over a mass shooting in their state responded to the attack by bragging to rally goers in South Carolina that no gun legislation was passed while he was president.  The NRA may be bleeding cash and Wayne LaPierre is no longer their leader but with guns enshrined in our culture and the Supreme Court’s originalists convinced that the founders wanted everyone to have their own personal arsenal, we’re toast. Speaking of those originalists, you may have noticed that a lot of stores in NYC now have “no guns allowed here” signs.  That’s because SCOTUS shot down much of NY’s previously highly restrictive gun permit law leaving it to stores to make up their own rules.  So, no guns in Whole Foods, but okay in a lot of other places.  

Housewives of Fulton County: I gave up watching any of the “Housewives of” programs a long time ago because the novelty of watching crazy humiliation wore off but I did catch snippets of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s testimony in Judge McAfee’s court yesterday and felt like I had landed back in another housewives’ episode. Who needs Andy Cohen and his fame seeking loons when you’ve got real reality?  To recap, a number of the co-defendants in the Fulton County RICO election interference case are going after Willis, asserting that she should be disqualified because of an “inappropriate” relationship with Nathan Wade, one of her prosecutors who for a while was also her paramour. Their chief “fact” witness is a former friend of Willis’ who was fired from her office.  The former friend/employee claim that Willis’ relationship with Wade started earlier than both have admitted and that it involved financial improprieties. Naturally, they don’t just want her disqualified, they want the whole RICO election interference case dropped.  Willis wasn’t planning on testifying but surprised all, including her own lawyer, by showing up to explain why she regularly reimbursed Wade in cash rather than by check or VENMO for her share of their joint escapades.  Her explanation that her father taught her to always keep lots of cash around because women need to maintain their independence and cash is king was both old school and charming in a father knows best and wants his daughter to stay safe kind of way.  Willis’ impromptu testimony wasn’t rehearsed which is probably why it felt so genuine. Still, it was very disconcerting to watch all the defendants’ lawyers publicly tearing apart a proud, competent and in this case Black woman’s personal life. Her fate, and the fate of the case, will ultimately be decided by Judge McAfee who hopefully will rule that Willis can stay on but if we’ve learned anything in this Trump era, nothing’s a given.  

More Legal Morass:  Queue the ketchup bottles.  NY Judge Engoron is expected to announce the penalty in Trump’s fraud case today. All expectations are that the 💰 💰 number will be huge, providing a buying opportunity for anyone interested in acquiring a tower or two. Then again Trump might not have to go forward with a fire sale because yesterday the SEC approved his Truth Social SPAC transaction which could top up his cash reserves enough to cover some of the fraud penalty.  In other Trump legal news, his lawyers have responded to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s response to their request for SCOTUS to weigh in on his immunity defense in his election interference case. Smith wants SCOTUS to deny Trump a trial stay and also wants the court to act as quickly as possible especially if they decide to review the appeals court’s “no immunity because presidents aren’t kings” ruling. Trump and his lawyers really want that stay and also want the immunity case to first be reviewed “en banc” by the full appeals court before it even goes to the SCOTUS Justices because delaying is their thing.  The Judge overseeing NY District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s NY hush money/election interference case has set a trial date, he intends to start jury selection on March 25 and has allocated six weeks for the trial. Trump who ended up not showing up in Atlanta maybe because he didn’t expect Fani Willis to testify, did show up in NYC because showing up and waving to the cameras while screaming unfair persecution is another one of his things.  And Judge “loose” Cannon kind of did something okay yesterday. She denied Trump’s lawyers efforts to postpone some pretrial deadlines but gave them the opportunity to ask again for a delay at some point in the future.

Fog:  It was announced this morning that Russian opposition leader Alex Navalny, who’d been imprisoned by Putin, has died. Not surprising but incredibly sad. No doubt we’ll learn that his death had nothing to do with the way he was treated but Putin but was due to “natural causes.”  In other Russia related news, during the week House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner called a code red over an “imminent security concern,” scaring the bejesus out of anyone who was paying attention. His warning had to do with Russian plans to launch nukes into space to take out satellites, a bigly problem but not something that is going to happen tomorrow or even this year.   It’s not clear why he went public with this, but it may have been his way of pointing out that Russia, especially Putin, is not our friend and that the foreign military aid funding that Speaker for now Mike Johnson is trying to prevent is needed despite Trump’s protestations otherwise. Some of his Republican cronies are now calling for an investigation into his action because Republicans are fully into the eat their own stage of the destruction of their party.  Also, that pivotal impeachment witness who was supposed to prove that President Biden accepted bribes from a Ukraine company, he was indicted yesterday for fabricating that accusation and lying to the FBI. The US Attorney responsible for that indictment was David Weiss, the special counsel responsible for all things Hunter not to be confused with Robert Hur the US Attorney responsible for the “Joe Biden didn’t do anything illegal with his documents but is old and teetering” special counsel.  As to Hur yesterday we learned that Biden’s folks protested his report even before it was published but that AG Garland, let it go out as is. And of course, House Republicans plan to call Hur in to testify to hammer home that Biden is old.  On the subject of old, the No Labels party is teasing that they’re closing in on nominating their presidential candidate.  Joe Manchin who is 76 says he’s still considering the possibility of being that candidate and would love to run with Mitt Romney who is also 76. Neither man is running for reelection for the Senate because neither can win in their states, so maybe this is just about throwing a wrench into the 2024 election, ensuring a Trump victory?              

#BringThemAllHomeNow