18 others swept up in Georgia election crimes Where to begin with the sweeping, 98-page indictment issued by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis? The document released before midnight Monday accuses former president Donald Trump and 18 others with conducting a criminal enterprise to undermine the 2020 Georgia election results. Willis means to take this case to trial within six months. Willis’ introduction begins, “Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia.
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Of witch hunts and indictments It’s not news that when it comes to “working the refs,” conservatives command what old-school bloogers once called “the right’s mighty Wurlitzer.” Partisan ownership of conservative media outlets means the right maintains an asymmetrical advantage in steering the national narrative. The left has never really achieved parity on that. The message discipline isn’t there even when the news cannot avoid covering political American carnage, Trump-style. One of the right’s tactics we returned again to last week Digby addressed several years ago: “If they can engage the mainstream media and throw everything they have at it, they may succeed at confusing the public and convincing them that all this smoke they’re blowing means there must be a fire.” When there isn’t. It’s propaganda. See: Hunter Biden and the Biden crime family. When, if ever, will all the legal indictments, pending court cases, hundreds of convictions, imprisonments, and thousands of hours of Jan.
What are the cultists going to do about this? The Georgia Governor doesn’t have the pardon power, it’s relegated to a commission and requires felons to serve their sentences before they are eligible. But it may turn out that’s just for Black people: Meanwhile, Georgia recently passed a law that allows the Governor to remove any DA he doesn’t like but it also requires a commission to approve it. It was originally supposed to take effect in 2025 but was amended at the last minute to take place in October 2023. I wonder why? Gov. Brian Kemp hasn’t named the commission yet but the minute he does you can bet they are going to move to remove Fanni Willis from her job. I’m not sure what happens in that case — if there’s a new DA appointed, a new election or if one of her deputies takes her place, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up about this trial actually happening. The Trumpers have plenty of moves up their sleeves. Update — This certainly isn’t one of them. Fergawdsakes:
Sarah Huckasanders is competing for the vaunted title of most racist governor. Florida, Alabama and Mississippi Govs have early leads but she’s making a real run for it: The Arkansas Department of Education (DOE) abruptly rejected AP African American Studies, saying the course may violate Arkansas law. “The department encourages the teaching of all American history and supports rigorous courses not based on opinions or indoctrination,” Kimberly Mundell, Director of Communications for the Arkansas DOE, told Popular Information on Monday.
CNN’s Daniel Dale sets the record straight on Trump’s grotesque insults toward the Fulton County DA: Former President Donald Trump has launched a barrage of attacks, many of them dishonest, against the Georgia district attorney who is prosecuting him over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state. Both before and after he was indicted Monday in Fulton County, Trump targeted District Attorney Fani Willis, an elected Democrat, in speeches, social media posts and a television ad released by his 2024 election campaign, which Trump also posted on social media. Below is a fact check of two of his false claims, an inflammatory claim for which there is no evidence, and a misleading claim from the campaign ad. The legitimacy of the 2020 election Trump has repeatedly accused Willis of refusing to investigate the supposed theft of the 2020 election. He wrote in a social media post on Sunday: “The only Election Interference that took place in Fulton County, Georgia, was done by those that Rigged and Stole the Election, not by me, who simply complained that the Election was Rigged and Stolen.
This is a good piece about Pence from JV Last. I know I should feel more compassion for the man but it’s really hard. All those years of being a cruel right wing theocrat and then eagerly sucking up to the crude libertine Donald Trump makes it impossible for me to see him as anything but a hypocrite — at best. There is a theory I cannot test, but which I believe to be true: If Mike Pence were to walk through the crowd at a Donald Trump rally—for instance, the recent giant event where 50,000 Trump supporters swamped the town of Pickens, South Carolina—he would need a security detail. He would not be safe without one, and he might not be safe with one either. In fact, I have a hard time believing that any Secret Service team would agree to go along with such an excursion. Enough Trump supporters hate Pence that much. By contrast, I believe Pence could safely walk through the crowd at a Joe Biden event—like his June 17 rally in Philadelphia—without any security.
The American right lost its religion Pondering the collapse of the simulacrum of conservative faith in God and country, Hemmingway’s account of how one goes bankrupt comes to mind: “gradually and then suddenly.” Digby and then Will Bunch remarked on the NPR interview last week with Russell Moore, editor-in-chief of the Christianity Today magazine, about his new book, “Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call For Evangelical America.” The openness with which holy, coal-rolling Christian nationalists rejected both Jesus and the nation’s founding principles is only a surprise to those who have not been keen observers of the political and religious right. Their pas de deux has spun on since the 1970s, their steamy embrace growing closer with the decades. “The increasingly dire, near-death experience of American democracy has felt like the proverbial frog in boiling water,” Bunch begins. But it’s not just democracy at risk. Evangelicals and American conservatives have lost their faith, gradually and then suddenly.
How will Judge Tanya Chutkan respond? Ten days and a second stern warning later, the toddler threw his spoon again early this morning (Politico): Donald Trump slammed the judge presiding over his newest criminal case early Monday, testing her three-day-old warning that he refrain from “inflammatory” attacks against those involved in his case. In a Truth Social post just before 1 a.m., Trump assailed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan as “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair,” citing as evidence a statement she made during the sentencing of a woman who participated in the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “She obviously wants me behind bars,” Trump wrote. What followed is in all caps, of course. He’s daring her to do it. The deranged teetotaler is so drunk on himself, he thinks he’s bulletproof. Trump was alluding to Chutkan’s remark during the October 2022 sentencing of Christine Priola of Ohio. Chutkan admonished Priola, before sentencing her to 15 months in jail, about the Jan. 6 mob’s threat to the peaceful transfer of power. “I see the videotapes.
It looks like Sidney Powell is the preferred fall guy Make room under that bus: JACK SMITH’S LATEST indictment of Donald Trump isn’t yet two weeks old, but the alleged “co-conspirators” it identifies are already beginning to turn on each other — and some of them aren’t even being subtle about it. A number of the ex-president’s chief lieutenants and alleged co-conspirators in the plot to overturn the election, such as conservative attorney John Eastman, have insisted the effort was perfectly legal and based on sound evidence. Others, however, have recently sought to distance themselves from the efforts of others, implicitly heaping the blame for any potential criminal conduct onto fellow participants in Trump’s attempted coup. “It is the ‘please don’t put me in jail, put that other guy in jail’ strategy that was sure to come up at some point or another,” says one attorney working in Trump’s legal orbit.
Why is RFK Jr bothering? I honestly can’t understand what he’s getting out of this: Democratic presidential hopeful and known anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Sunday that he would support a national ban on abortion after the first three months of pregnancy if elected, only to walk back the stance hours later alleging he “misunderstood” repeated questions from NBC News on the topic. “Mr. Kennedy misunderstood a question posed to him by an NBC reporter in a crowded, noisy exhibit hall at the Iowa State Fair,” a spokesperson said, clarifying the candidate’s stance on abortion as “always” being the woman’s right to choose. Kennedy “does not support legislation banning abortion,” the spokesman added. But Sunday morning, Kennedy was much more specific, telling NBC: “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life.” Pressed on whether that meant signing a federal ban at 15 or 21 weeks, he said yes.