Stupid is as stupid does.
In this case, felon is as felon did.
If I read that article correctly, he was arrested the next day (Jan 7). And he’s just now going before a judge to plea? And the trial isn’t until next year? Why is it taking so f-ing long to prosecute these people? (On the other hand, if they’re all sitting in jail while the wheels of justice grind slowly, then I’m OK with that. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening.)
God, it pains me to say it…
But… based on his performance as AG, McConnell was right (but for the wrong reasons), to deny this schlub a USSC seat.
Yeah, so it seems.
The whole judicial system has been underfunded for years. Poor funding of public defenders gets attention from time to time. But public prosecutors are underfunded as well. And there’s not enough courts, either. That’s why there’s an incentive for plea deals, because a plea deal is a fraction of the cost of a full trial. It’s the only way the system can function at its current funding level.
Also, there’s literally like 800 of them.
And on the political front:
I put this in the Michael Flynn thread, but figured it is too good to only enjoy there.
Quoting myself from said thread -
Now, note, the actual event is in no-way news. We long ago brought up that once Flynn went political, he was widely willing to lend his name to anyone for the cash… but I certainly sniggered a bit when I saw that the DoD is going after the money he collected due to Flynn’s violations of the emoluments clause that his own patron managed to dodge.
In other heartwarming news:
We shouldn’t enjoy this too much, I think, because if we do we may be headed for heartbreak. For one thing, some legal experts believe the grand jury probe is likely to be aimed at someone below Trump. (Yikes, what an image.)
For another thing, GOP control of Congress–and of the DOJ budget–may be coming mere months from now. (Not that I am buying the corporate-media “Republican victory is inevitable” narrative, but: we just don’t know.) If the GOP has certain levers of power to bring to bear, including budgetary ones, what might happen to “open probes”?
In short: it would be wonderful if Donald actually faced some consequences for his contemptuous deep-sixing of US laws. But it’s not a done deal yet.
This is a cute headline: "DeSantis tries to rig elections by gerrymandering but Florida Judge says Hell No!"
The judge in question was appointed by DeSantis’ Republican predecessor, Rick Scott. He threw out DeSantis’s new electoral map as blatantly unconstitutional. The Miami Herald has a lot of unkind things to say about DeSantis and his state Pubbie colleagues.
The original article:
This article gives new details:
The investigation is focused on the discovery by the National Archives in January that at the end of Mr. Trump’s term he had taken to his home at the Mar-a-Lago resort 15 boxes from the White House that contained government documents, mementos, gifts and letters.
After the boxes were returned to the National Archives, its archivists found documents containing “items marked as classified national security information,”
This is notable because my previous understanding was that there were 15 boxes of classified documents.
It’s also the first article to give enough details to lend credence to the claim that these boxes were actually taken from the White House at the end of his term rather than already being in Maralago from time he spent there while in office. Up to now that always sounded like speculation, but now it sounds like there are real reasons to believe that.
This is pretty weak sauce as far as potential prosecutions. Sure its worse than anything that Hillary did to deserve that chants of “lock her up” but this looks more like an issue of lazy incompetence rather than active malfeasance.
Yup. He has completely slithered away from the more serious stuff. Stuff like trying to overthrow the United States Government.
A few boxes of papers won’t do anything.
Unless we can Al Capone him.
This is some goddamned fine schadenfreude right here!
Long story short, it was ruled the Sandy Hook families suing Alex Jones and Infowars are not subject to the same bankruptcy protections which guard his other creditors, so they are free to get full value on their lawsuit and restart it asap.
If the things he took were things that all happened to most concretely demonstrate criminal activities then it would be active malfeasance.
That seems unlikely, though, or he wouldn’t have given the boxes back.
This could be Garland’s way of saying that he’s perfectly ready to prosecute Trump, he just needs hard evidence in advance. In this particular case, the hard evidence just happened to be straightforward and so it’s going forward ahead of everything else being worked on.
I think this is the correct thread for this bit of news:
GOP Staffers Fired in Wake of Potential Ballot Harvesting Scheme in Pennsylvania
In short: a GOP PAC chairman was signing voters up for mail-in ballots (Wait just a moment! I thought the GOP was against those.) and the PAC’s address, not the voter’s home address, on the registration for the ballot.
So, a two for one schadenfreude!
This explains why Alex Jones was literally screaming at his listeners to buy his scammy products.
I’m pretty sure that the GOP staffers weren’t fired for running a voter harvesting scheme, they were fired for being CAUGHT running a voter harvesting scheme.