It appears to be over, at least as far as the DOJ is concerned: Hunter Biden has reached a deal with federal prosecutors to resolve a five-year federal investigation into his failure to pay about $1 million in federal taxes and his purchase of a handgun in 2018. Under an agreement detailed Tuesday in a filing in federal court in Delaware, President Joe Biden’s son will plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax charges. Prosecutors have also charged him with possessing a firearm while being a user of illegal drugs — a felony — but have agreed to dismiss that charge if he completes a two-year period of probation. Hunter Biden, 53, is unlikely to serve time in prison if he complies with release conditions. The deal calls for both sides to recommend that he be put on probation. The probe was overseen by U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump and was permitted to stay in his post after Joe Biden took office in order to complete the investigation of the president’s son. The White House and the Justice Department have said they did not interfere with Weiss’ investigation.
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What a nut: In a recently unearthed video interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the noted anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and a Democratic challenger of President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection bid, claimed chemicals in the water supply are turning boys trans. “A lot of the problems we see in kids, particularly boys, it’s probably underappreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing,” the scion of the Kennedy political dynasty said during an interview with Canadian psychologist and ring-wing pundit Jordan Peterson.
It’s a celebration of stupid.
And Democrats couldn’t be happier Kevin managed to keep the government from defaulting and losing his speakership which is something I didn’t think he was capable of doing. But it could be a Pyrrhic victory after all. The way they’re going they could end up losing the House in 2024: As the drama between Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY and hardline conservatives roils the House, Democratic leaders are watching with total fascination — and giddiness. For years, their own caucus has fallen in line behind a masterful political tactician who bent over backwards to protect her most vulnerable members — and by extension, her majority — often steamrolling progressives in the process. (Yes, we’re speaking of the one and only NANCY PELOSI.) Now, as Democrats see it, McCarthy is doing the exact opposite to protect his own gavel — and playing right into their hands.
Trump’s “I was very busy” interview with Fox News “Good morning, everyone, especially those of you who didn’t admit to committing more federal crimes on television last night,” snarks the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson. “I don’t like watching the former guy EVER – least of all on Juneteenth – but he just confessed to the crime of stealing classified documents,” tweeted Christine Pelosi Monday night. ICYMI, Wilson and Pelosi mean this Donald Trump interview with Bret Baier of Fox News. “Because I had boxes, I wanted to go through the boxes and get all of my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen,” Trump insisted about why he failed to return all the national defense documents he removed from the White House. But he was not too busy to order his attorneys to affirm in a sworn statement that he had complied fully with the subpoena. Also, he’s not a very good listener, is he? The sniffing is back. “His tell… whenever he’s spewing an egregious lie,” observed GottaLaff on Mastodon.
Judge Aileen Cannon sets Aug. 14 trial date But don’t get too excited (CBS News): U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has set an Aug. 14 start date for former President Donald Trump’s trial in the case over his alleged mishandling of classified documents. In a brief order issued Tuesday, Cannon said the criminal jury trial is set to take place over a two-week period beginning Aug. 14 at the federal district court in Fort Pierce, Florida. That date, however, is likely to change, as Trump’s legal team files requests with the court that could result in the trial’s delay. Prosecutors suggested in their indictment that Trump’s documents trial might take 21-60 days, not two weeks. So there’s that. We are told that the Southern District of Florida has a “rocket docket,” but what do I know? Is this normal procedure, or an attempt to keep Trump from rope-a-doping justice yet again with his delay-delay shtick? Not that Cannon would help stop that. Or is it an attempt by Cannon to help Trump clear his legal dance card in advance of his 2024 run for president?
What a pair This piece by Ruby Cramer about the DeSantis’ is fascinating. To me she seems like a version of Kari lake — a local broadcaster with a little bit of kook behind the eyes. (I don’t think she’s as out there as Lake, however.) But apparently, DeSantis is pretty much a robot and she’s his engineer: She knew, starting with his early days in politics, when Ron was still a member of Congress, elected at the age of 34, how she wanted to figure in his world. She knew the staff he should hire, former aides said, the invitations he should accept and the invitations he should decline. She knew his walking path at events, the people he’d stand next to on a stage. She knew his schedule, down to every meeting and call and fundraiser and congressional vote, because she asked to be copied on every calendar entry. She knew the cowboy boots he should wear, even though, at first, he complained that they hurt his feet, until a staffer suggested he buy dress shoes instead, at which point he said, “Casey got them for me,” and that was the end of the conversation about the cowboy boots.
Tom wrote about Trump confessing to his crimes on last night’s Bret Baier interview earlier. It really was a doozy. I just wanted to add a few more of his comments that are unrelated to the Mar-a-Lago case. Like this hilarious story where he supposedly scared Vladimir Putin into not invading Ukraine, which he was apparently asking Trump’s permission to do: Right. Sure. That happened. And this will happen too: He’s not the first to run with this sort of macho preening. The sainted john McCain famously used to say that he’d get the Shia and Sunni in a room together and crack some heads. But at least he knew they existed which I’m sure Trump does not. And he didn’t take one side over the other as Trump clearly does. It’s insulting that America ever dreamed of putting a man like this in the White House. It’s tragic that we are even contemplating doing it again.
If there’s no personal gain in it, fuck it The people who ran against Democrats over “defund the police” (never a Democratic Party policy) now want to dismantle the F.B.I., make the Department of Justice a political enforcement tool of a future Republican presidency, dismantle the civil service and more. Consider it an extension of the profit motive to our entire experiment in popular sovereignty, from regulatory capture to full repurposing the government to serve personal aggrandizement. If there’s no personal gain in it, fuck it. Now under federal indictment under a Joe Biden administration D.O.J., Donald Trump promised in a speech last week that if elected he would appoint a “real” special prosecutor to investigate the current president and his entire family. Being held to the rule of law is for Republicans an abomination. Holding your enemies to it is delicious. Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman write in the New York Times: But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr.
Slavers hid news of slavery’s end A Juneteenth tale from CNN: Temple “Tempie” Cummins stoically stares at the camera with her arms folded in her lap, sitting stiffly in a chair in her dusty, barren backyard with her weather-beaten wooden shack behind her. Her dark, creased face reflects years of poverty and worry. The faded black and white image of Cummins from 1937 was snapped by a historian who stopped by her home in Jasper, Texas, to ask her about her childhood during slavery. Cummins, who did not know her exact age, shared stories of uninterrupted woe until she recounted how she and her mother discovered that they had been freed. She said her mother, a cook for their former slave owner’s family, liked to hide in the chimney corner to eavesdrop on dinner conversations.