Spinning and Spilling 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🤮

First and Foremost:  The Epstein saga continues to dominate the news cycle, BUT we shouldn’t let all things Epstein get in the way of our alarm that in response to DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s bogus assertions that former President Obama committed treason by looking into Russia’s involvement in the 2020 presidential election, and with wannabee king Trump’s blessing, the Department of Justice is creating a task force to investigate Obama and his alleged “co-conspirators.”  To be clear, Obama did not commit treason, Bondi is just trying to curry favor with Trump at democracy’s expense, and those frequent assertions that Gabbard is a Russian tool, they’re looking more and more credible. Also, remember John Durham, the Special Counsel that former Attorney General Bill Barr appointed during Trump One and who Biden kept in place, he already investigated the Russia investigation, and did not accuse or indict Obama of treason because there was no treason.     

Epstein, Epstein, Maxwell:  On the Epstein front, in order to avoid taking anymore votes he knows he’ll lose; Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home for an early August recess. That’s ridiculous but makes sense for Johnson whose speakership depends on keeping Trump happy because, with an assist from three Republicans, the House Oversight committee voted to subpoena the DOJ’s Epstein files and Johnson knows that he wouldn’t be able to get any more votes through the House’s key Rules Committee without similar Epstein-related amendments.  Adding fuel to the Epstein 50^th birthday card fire, on Wednesday night Brad Edwards, a lawyer for hundreds of Epstein’s victims, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that the card exists, that it’s in the files held by Epstein’s estate, and that the estate’s executors would share it if requested to do. Yesterday, the executors confirmed that they would comply with a legal request. Also on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that back in May Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump that his name appeared multiple times in the “truckload” of Epstein files that her office had reviewed.  Last night the NY Times reported on that review, calling it a frantic, resource consuming exercise that had been undertaken to find that holy grail, the Epstein “client list,” presumably one cleansed of Trump’s name but chock full of prominent deep state financial big whigs and Democratic politicians like Bill Clinton.  The search was undertaken to find something to satisfy the demands of the conspiracists who make up Trump’s Q Anon/MAGA base, demands that Trump, FBI Director Patel, and FBI Deputy Director Bongino have spent years stoking. The FBI and DOJ folks who “leaked” the file search details to the NY Times say that no such “client list” was found though lots of the names we’ve heard bandied about over the years, including Trump’s and Clinton’s, are mentioned.  They also didn’t find any evidence substantiating conspiracist claims that Epstein had been murdered.  Yesterday the WSJ added more to the “birthday card” story saying that Clinton was among the five dozen or so people, including Trump, billionaire Leon Black, fashion designer Vera Wang and media owner Mort Zuckerman, who responded to Epstein partner Ghislaine Maxwell’s request for birthday wish contributions.  Unlike Trump’s message, the few lines provided by Clinton didn’t reference “secrets and enigmas,” nor did his note include a bawdy doodle. Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who previously and maybe still is serving as Trump’s personal lawyer, spent six hours “interviewing” Ghislaine Maxwell who is currently serving a twenty-year term for sex trafficking and conspiracy and who was also indicted for lying to Federal officials. Blanche who plans to meet with Maxwell again today, reported that their gabfest was productive.  By productive could he mean that Maxwell who didn’t testify on her own behalf and who is currently appealing her conviction to the Supreme Court, is now spinning stories and spilling tea about anyone and everyone not named Trump in exchange for a pardon or commutation? Notably, her SCOTUS appeal doesn’t assert her innocence, rather it argues that she should have been shielded from prosecution due to a clause in Epstein’s earlier Florida non-prosecution agreement that she claims was intended to protect co-conspirators like her from prosecution in New York. And last of all, at least for now, on the Epstein front, ruling that Bondi’s DOJ hasn’t provided a legitimate reason, on Wednesday Federal judges in New York and Florida rejected requests to unseal grand jury transcripts related to investigations into Maxwell and Epstein.  They were particularly peeved that the DOJ hadn’t contacted the victims making their request.   

People and Politics:  AG Bondi is MIA at the moment, something about a torn cornea but maybe because she’s taking lots of heat over the Epstein mess. On again, off again NJ US Attorney/parking lot lawyer Alina Habba is still serving as a US Attorney because with a wave of his wand, Trump “legitimized” her continued service by pulling her official nomination, instead appointing her in an interim role.  Eric Trump’s wife Lara announced yesterday that she will not be running for the North Carolina Senate being vacated by current Republican Thom Tillis who isn’t running for reelection because Trump hates him.  Apparently, Lara’s decision isn’t because she wants to spend more time with her family or because she’s woefully unqualified but because her pop-in-law Trump decided to endorse Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley who he believes will be able to raise more money and given that former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper is expected to announce his candidacy next week, it will take lots of money to keep the seat red.  Cooper is very popular in North Carolina; political pundits and pollsters believe that if anyone can turn the seat blue it’s him, well maybe. With all the focus on the Epstein mess, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has managed to keep a low profile of late, but he’s back in the news. According to the Pentagon’s internal watchdog the war plans that he shared on his infamous Signal Chat came from an internal email that had been marked “SECRET//NOFORN” meaning that the information that Hegseth shared with his friends and family and an Atlantic journalist was classified, that its disclosure could have caused serious damage to national security, potentially jeopardizing the safety of service members and that the information was only to be disseminated to US agencies and individuals not to foreign nationals or even close allies. The remarkable thing about this story isn’t that Hegseth shared secret info, we kind of knew that, instead it’s that there are still government watchdogs. Hegseth who has been busy renaming ships and demoting female officers because, well we know why, has also been bleeding top assistants but he’s still the Secretary of Defense because of course he is.  Similarly, Kristi Noem is also losing experienced executives.  Frustrated over her mismanagement and her failure to adequately respond to the Texas Guadalupe River tragedy another experienced and well-respected FEMA executive has resigned.  We’d better hope that this year’s hurricane season is mild because if not, lots of people are going to suffer needlessly. Keeping with that theme, measles cases, already at a decades high level, are still rising, not that Health Secretary RFK Jr who also used to hang out with Epstein is all that concerned.  Trump visited the Federal Reserve building construction site where he claimed that under Fed Chair Powell, another one of those people he hates, $3 billion had been spent on the rehabilitation project. Taking no prisoners, Powell calmly pointed out that Trump’s number was wrong since it included the costs associated with another building that had been completed and put back in service five years ago.  In a world of Tulsis, Bondis, Blanches, and Hegseths, we need more Powells.      

And: Another Judge who has seen the DOJ’s case against Kilmar Abrego isn’t buying into the government’s assertion that he’s a dangerous, people trafficker or gang member. The judge has ordered that he be released from custody, barring his immediate deportation. On Wednesday by a vote of 2 to 1, the Appeals Court for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, upholding a nationwide ban on his administration from implementing the measure. The judge casting the opposing vote questioned the validity of the nationwide injunction not the constitutionality of birthright citizenship.      

#BringThemAllHomeNow