Kash Patel Is Incredibly Disqualified

 

Antisemitic far-right broadcaster Stew Peters responds to Kash Patel claiming that he is not familiar with Peters, despite appearing on his show multiple times: "Clearly, Kash Patel is lying. He absolutely does know who I am." https://t.co/gc5MlT7NVs pic.twitter.com/UqX9mAFFlE

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) January 30, 2025

He straight up lied. There's no beating around that point--he also lied about the 1/6 choir--he bragged about producing their single and now wants to pretend he doesn't know much about that "community".  He pretends he disagrees with Trump's clemency for the violent offenders sentenced for their 1/6 activities, but that doesn't square with his broad, conspiracy-theory based defense that the FBI (the agency he wants to lead) was behind it--

When what was behind it was Trump inviting these people to "Stop the Steal", a slogan based on a whole-ass lie, and Patel himself can't even admit Trump lost the 2020 election. 

The Steaming Manure of 2000 Mules

 

Pardoned felonious dirtbag Dinesh D'Souza wrote a genuinely fraudulent book stating that the 2020 election was stolen, and absolutely everything was wrong with it. Now Salem Media Group wants nothing to do with it or the film made from it because they do not want their whole ass sued off of them. 

This is a very clear stance largely based in the very real situation that what D'Souza posits is indefensible and that he used bad false data to defame real people. You know, the same way Rudy Giuliani defamed real election workers with his false claims, and for which he is now being disbarred and bankrupt because he decided to use fraud to do treason.

(Look, you can say I'm over the top to call this "treason", but when Russian active measures support Trump, I don't equivocate about that--why? Why do they want this senile indebted corrupt and easily blackmailable asshole for president? Because he is the entire handbook of "people you would never give top secret clearance to" and there he nonetheless was. Scooping up boxes to take to Mar-a-Lago and by some accounts, having scooped some off to Bedminster while he was at it. Given his Oval office performance with Lavrov and his little gimp act at Helsinki, you want to bet he never sold assets out to his lil' friend Putin? Therefore, if I were a patriot, I would simply not accept their witch hunt intel about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, because how in the hell is that the American Way? And I would view his Mar-a-Lago docs case way differently from how blindfolded hostage judge Aileen Cannon seems to have . Are you okay Aileen? Blink or something!) 

TWGB: Wheels Within Wheels

 

I joke from time to time that we aren't ever leaving the 2016 election, and it's not actually that funny--we're in 2024, but the Trump hush money trial feels like old home week, what with characters from earlier in the Trump Saga popping back up. This week, we will hear from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who plead guilty to a campaign finance violation regarding Stormy Daniels, Last week, in a story that was overshadowed by the trial, former 2016 Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort decided to step back from his involvement with the 2024 Republican National Convention--for which he was going to work for free, as he did for Trump's campaign. 

"Free" for a value of "access to our political infrastructure" which actually does have value. 

We are never leaving 2016. The Russian disinfo op that tried to blame Ukraine for the DNC hack that profoundly affected the 2016 election (in Trump's favor?) still has echoes in the Trump impeachment and the current-day GOP House still trying to impeach Joe Biden. The story of what happened to Stormy Daniels, now a little bit better understood as coerced sex--a situation not much different from the "casting couch" or the cartoonish image of a boss chasing a secretary (just imagine it in the White House) reminds us of all the stories we just barely heard in 2016 in the wake of the Access Hollywood video, which were drowned out by Wikileaks.

TWGB: This Situation is not Hypothetical

 

In today's SCOTUS hearing, Samuel Alito argued that immunity for former presidents is good, actually, because without it, ex-presidents might refuse to leave office peacefully if they lose reelection...

Make it make sense. https://t.co/HepJVcgN2Q

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) April 25, 2024

If I were to take Justice Alito as a good-faith interrogator adhering to the actual facts of the Trump presidency--the actual president this case is about, and not some future generic president we're just having a classroom thought-experiment about, are we supposed to play along and imagine a path where 1/6 does not happen because Trump can rest safe in his bed at Mar-a-Lago certain that no ill shall befall him, because he had immunity. So, he just gracefully turns over the keys to the established firm:

And maybe that even means he is just fine keeping those documents from the White House that he doubtless acquired during his presidency--several boxes of, in fact--and selling them, because we are just going to assume a president does official things officially, and not shady-ass criminal stuff because one has always been a shady-ass criminal? 

On a day where Justice Brown-Jackson noted that immunity (or should we rather call it, impunity?) would turn the Oval Office into a center of criminal activity, we received testimony that Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders were in contact--via their White House offices, with David Pecker regarding the election interference/hush money cover-up scheme. 

TWGB: Bust Out?

 

BREAKING - Trump moved docs from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster in 2022, according to another Trump employee who confirms what has long been reported - including this video from spring 2022:

pic.twitter.com/eUxW1sESVV

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) March 12, 2024

The savvy among you know perfectly well this blog title isn't about how the classy ladies of Mar-a-Lago are wearing their cleavage this year but is actually a term of art. The above reference in the embedded Tweet to Bedminster reminds of that quintessentially New Jersey show--The Sopranos.

There's a great episode that lets us know what Tony Soprano's business is--Bust Out. Davey Scatino, a gambler, thinks he understands who Tony Soprano is and what his business is. He thinks they are friends. But his business is ruined because he's in debt to Tony. Why? Business, and respect. Tony is a mob boss. His business is getting paid back in full. Friendship doesn't get in the way of that. 

When Trump was betrayed by the American people by their not re-electing him, he took a few things from the White House. (He would have taken things anyway.  He takes. He's funny that way.) For all I or you know or The Mahoff of Jabib knows, he still has documents at Bedminster, where one of his Mar-A-Lago employees has broken omerta and told us he knows some of these boxes of documents went there. A lot of water has run under the bridge since then. It would be great if it could be confirmed there is still something there. (I'm guessing a legal pretext for a warrant needs something more substantial than "COOMMMME OOOONNNNNN!")

I just think maybe it's time to see a case opened up in New Jersey. "Loose" Cannon seems to be okay with giving Trump infinite delays. And I am definitely not. 

Anyway, TrumpWorld has officially taken control of the RNC, and changes are being made--big changes. There will be dozens of staffers let go, and believe me, any replacements will be Trump loyalists. You can already foresee what the fundraising goals will look like. And where the money will go. How assets will be used. How "help" will be steered to the Trumpiest candidates for down ticket offices, if at all, and might even be withheld for candidates that just aren't Trumpy enough. All with the strategic know-how of people named Trump or Yunaska or behind the scenes ass-wipers from the set of Celebrity Apprentice. 

South Carolina Sweet Tea Leaves

 

I spend way too much time on Twitter, but I know Twitter is not real life. Dean Phillips just finished 3rd in South Carolina. Despite polling that only had Joe Biden at 69%, he won SC with about 96%. (Maybe they were looking at the results upside-down?)

I see people online trying to say there was really low turnout. President Biden is the incumbent. Nobody expects him to lose. It isn't a sign of ,as far as I can tell, anything, and the spin people are putting on the low turnout takes me back to, um, former President Trump's numbers in Iowa. I also want to point out that SC isn't a state Biden would expect to win in the general (although, no kidding, I'd love to pretend Democrats were competitive everywhere) 

Here's the thing that is interesting to me--South Carolina has open primaries, but you can't vote in both and they are held on separate dates. So what I'm wondering is, what's going to be the turnout for the Republican SC primary, held after the Nevada contest (which looks like a dog's breakfast, and why would any political machine do that to themselves?)  

TWGB: Raining Bad Pennies

 

This post is brought to by Bell's Theorem, karma and the tendency of criminals to return to the scene of the crime. If this opening sentence doesn't make sense, wait for it. I've been waiting for the NY civil trial decision and the immunity thing like all of you guys. The waiting is either the hardest part as Petty proclaimed, or the special sauce as hedonists everywhere have discovered to their throbbing surprise and delight. 

Discovering that Trump's data protection suit against Christopher Steele was rejected was a fun thing to trip over on a Thursday morning. There's no good reason to have brought that case, and no good reason to file it when it got filed except--as a warning that Trump will try to sue you eventually if you say mean things about him ever? I don't know UK law, but this was rejected for statute of limitations, which really feels to me like he didn't want the suit, just the message the making the suit sends. And his campaign paid for the pleasure of a lolsuit. (Level Law--the firm--it's in his FEC reports. Donors are paying for the pleasure of Trump satisfying his grudges.)

Trump's predicament is dumb. What if there were a suit that had to deal with the data in the dossier, which would be rehashing shit that could have come up in 2016--NOW?! Me? I think there were a LOT OF THINGS we could have discussed about Trump in 2016 that we didn't. And now it's 2024, there's SO MUCH MORE. 

TWGB: The Hot Stove Lessons of Democracy

 

A couple of days ago, one of the insurrectionists sometimes called "Pink Hat Lady" (government name: Rachel Powell) took to Twitter to complain of her treatment.  She has apparently spent the last three years barefoot and mooning out the window like a princess in a tower...no wait, she was able to move about, but violated her pre-term release and got home confinement. She pretends she has no representatives, but she had lawyers. She exhorted her fellow 1/6 dopes to enter the Capitol that day--why isn't she being looked at as a possible "Fed" provocateur, huh?

She's living in a whole different universe from our reality. She went from saying on social media: “We will do what we want and there’s nothing the gov can do to stop us,” to asking, “Why should I go to jail? Over what? A broken window?”

Burglars break windows, too, and are felons. And apparently, the government actually DOES do something about that. These windows were broken because the stolen-election-believing sheeple who went to the capitol on 1/6 wanted to steal the election back for their Peerless Feeder. 

Will incarceration "fix" Rachel? Who knows? But maybe she educates others as an example to not be her. 

This is why I look at nattering nabobs like David Axelrod with disdain. OOoooooohhhh, taking Donald Trump off the ballot will divide the country, will it? Tell it to the fuckfaces who already thought we were in a Civil War on 1/6. A Civil War, because Trump's election is a Lost Cause that he keeps fighting, and maybe, just maybe, that shit needs to be removed from his grasp, and the people who lived through our bloodiest conflict on this soil understood that very well. 

TWGB: All Trump Wants for Christmas

 

Well, it's not hard to figure out what Trump wants for Christmas, since it's all been put into a filing available to the public: he wants immunity!  Some people might want their day in court and to be found innocent and to clear their good name. 

He would like to very much not have that conversation out loud if we can at all. His lawyers are claiming that everything he did while president counts as an official act (I guess they mean everything: official Tweets, official watching tv, official golfing, and probably official trips to the bathroom--since that also covers "document handling") and he wasn't convicted by the Senate at his impeachment, so if that was good enough for them, it's good enough for him. 

It's a fantasy. It starts out with a wonderful supposition: 

"During the 234 years from 1789 to 2023, no current or former president had ever been criminally prosecuted for official acts. That unbroken tradition died this year, and the historical fallout is tremendous," the Trump filing reads. "The indictment of President Trump threatens to launch cycles of recrimination and politically motivated prosecution that will plague our nation for many decades to come and stands likely to shatter the very bedrock of our republic—the confidence of American citizens in an independent judicial system."

We are to believe it would seem, that the officeholders from 1789 to January 20, 2017 may have been simply lousy with crime, but were not prosecuted due to...tradition?  And we are not invited to contemplate the fallout from a president being told that literally anything they do and label an "official act" is without legal consequence? And he's handing that same card to our current sitting president?

Lordy. I think Santa definitely puts one on the naughty list for this kind of jackassery. 

TWGB: He's Flaunting It

 

Trump last night: “Thank you very much for being here. They wanted to use the place … this place is packed. We don’t let people use Mar-a-Lago very much because, as you know, we hold very important documents here.” pic.twitter.com/jyIlDVrZN0

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 2, 2023

Ha, ha. He implies there are still very secret documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. This is so funny to me. So funny I think we need another search warrant.  Because this man is not learning anything from his various brushes with the law yet: like, does it apply to him? He's in well enough trouble over keeping documents at Mar-A-Lago, regardless of his pet Judge Cannon's attempts to delay his trial. We know he had advice of counsel he'd be screwed if he still had documents, but then sort of ignored that. 

So, do I think he's still that stupid? Well, yeah. As the comedian Ron White has established, "You can't fix stupid." He's happily stupid this far in his life, what good would smartening up do him? 

Does he think he has all kinds of rights and privileges other people don't? Huh--well he got told this week he doesn't have immunity against civil trials over 1/6 because what in the world does pretending your election was stolen have to do with being president? He also got told, and not for the first time, that presidents aren't kings and hell yeah, he is liable for shit he's done. 

But why would that stick if it doesn't help him any?

TWGB: You Don't Have to Hand it to Hezbollah

Trump's reckless stream-of-consciousness diatribes are sometimes more revealing than he thinks they are. What does it say about the man when he feels the need to say that "Hezbollah is very smart" and that he has some beef with Netanyahu going back to the US strike on Iran's General Soleimani? You have to wind of the tangled thread of his speech; he might not know that Hezbollah is based in Lebanon making striking Israel in the north sort of logical: what should they do, go around?  He mentions the failure of Iran's intelligence. He says Netanyahu was unprepared...

Many people are saying, as the formulation goes, that Trump is really actually made at Netanyahu for acknowledging Biden's win over him in 2020 and for his gratitude at US support now. Trump is, in other words, jealous and feeling upstaged. This might make sense of another weird detail of Trump's ramblings lately, his insistence that Barack Obama is Joe Biden's boss. He needs to credit the competence of his political rival to someone else.

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

 

(A post also to be known as "Republicans in Disarray.) 

I don't know why I'm leading with the story that a resolution from Matt Gaetz drafted September 15th was found under a baby changing table in the restroom underneath the House floor.  I guess it's because of my astonishment that we didn't hear about such a resolution like, Friday. And who left it behind? Maybe Gaetz himself, setting up the changing table with a couple parallel o' grams of Bolivian Borax to chase away the Floridian palmetto bugs in his high-rise skull? I know Gaetz was opposed to McCarthy even being Speaker like he was a new stepdad threatening to be the boss of him. 

And of such drama is the current House GOP currently made. They can't pass a resolution on Pentagon spending. None of them know what they want. They want to cut the spending. They want to fund border defense. They want to strengthen the defense but maybe not fund aid to Ukraine (the Moscow Marge Caucus, I guess you'd call it). Kevin McCarthy can't count votes and he doesn't count in uniting his troops. And I seriously don't know who is supposed to be Speaker for the GOP if McCarthy isn't. Scalise? Maybe they don't want nobody to be the Boss of Them. 

They just want to shut down the government for no good reason and impeach the Democratic president for no good reason the year before the presidential election? Is that so wrong?

(YES?)

What it means is they can't govern. But take heart!

Um, Trump is the leader of their party and a hapless fuckwit, also, too. It seems like, while in my heart of hearts I wanted Trump's document investigation to reveal selling secrets or something very dire, the bare reality is Trump just apparently took boxes of paper to save trees, because clearly, there were clean bits you could still use. All of this lovely notepaper for grocery lists and whatnot--says a Mar-a-Lago employee. 

And the material is back in the hands of the government to review with his peculiar Sharpie handed seismic handwriting and all. He also obstructed justice by telling his secretary she didn't know anything about the boxes she saw, just like nobody was supposed to know about all the boxes. Of all the stupid, stupid things. 

TWGB: Paper Chasing

 

So, while we were all waiting like utter pigeons for that 1/6 insurrection indictment to come down, what actually got dealt was the superseding indictment regarding Trump ordering his Mar-a-Lago employees to do obstruction of justice stuff. 

The revised indictment added three serious charges against Mr. Trump: attempting to “alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence”; inducing someone else to do so; and a new count under the Espionage Act related to a classified national security document that he showed to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

The updated indictment was released on the same day that Mr. Trump’s lawyers met in Washington with prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to discuss a so-called target letter that Mr. Trump received this month suggesting that he might soon face an indictment in a case related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It served as a powerful reminder that the documents investigation is ongoing, and could continue to yield additional evidence, new counts and even new defendants.

Prosecutors under Mr. Smith had been investigating Mr. De Oliveira for months, concerned, among other things, by his communications with an information technology expert at Mar-a-Lago, Yuscil Taveras, who oversaw the surveillance camera footage at the property.

He ordered his employees to wipe information he knew the DOJ was looking for because he understood it would incriminate him. 

So, what I'm gleaning is the 1/6 indictments are still in the pipeline, and this indictment is to keep Trump lawyers in mind that the charges can always be added to. For just how obviously ham-fisted the cover-up at Mar-a-Lago has been, recall these guys didn't just move boxes of White House docs where there was a surveillance camera that had data to be subpoenaed but the boobs tried to flood the area by draining a pool. 

Also, the Iran document that Trump both agreed he had and didn't want to say he had, has been verified as in this mook's possession and a big problem for him.

TWGB: Trump--Target and Bullseye

 

Trump hustled to let us know he got his letter on Suday, right after he did his little thing at TPUSA whatever, and he was so mad you guys. He knows this means an indictment (or several more) for him is likely imminent. 

Is he really surprised? I mean, do you concoct a whole "Stop the Steal" thing when your own Attorney General and two firms you hired to look into the voter fraud thing all say you lost, and think no one will notice you were lying? 

Trump's statement was extra-special:

Trump says he’s a target of special counsel’s criminal probe into 2020 election aftermath pic.twitter.com/ZR5swPqqJK

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 18, 2023

It's a litany of presumed wrongs heaped upon his noble brow--feh. It's a bunch of stuff he's also fucked up with. He's pointing out the many, many scandals imputed to him--do you really want to bet they are all hoaxes? If you really know Trump--would you put good money on ANY OF THEM being hoaxes?  

Look, given the Mar-A-Lago documents scandal, which is dumb as hell because he could have just given over what the National Archives asked for and no one would have said anything more, but OH HELL NO THAT'S NOT HOW TRUMP ROLLS, he played around. He FA and is big mad he has to FO about it. And he lost his election and knew it, and FA about that, and is now big mad he has to FO about that, too. 

TWGB: A Few Offerings

 

I'm trying to clear my tabs, so I'll make this march--you know what I think is funny? There was no standing order to declassify documents. I'm not sure who among you may have believed it (color me a skeptic!) but we now have confirmation that appears to have been bullshit. But wasn't there just a little corner of your brain thinking "But what if he told the truth about something for once?"

Nah. Didn't think so.

Here's something--Giuliani sat down voluntarily with DOJ for a proffer. The man at the center of Trump's fateful push to overturn the election, the fraud regarding "the steal" and the fake electors. I guess he kind of stretches the definition of "reliable witness" in some ways, but he really seems to be in some real difficulty--and could be what you might call motivated? All I know is, he's not the only one. Mike Roman has a bit to do with that ill-fated enterprise as well.

And you know what else? Jack Smith is still investigating the documents probe--which I guess shouldn't shock anyone. After all, we don't really know why he had some of these docs and it might be helpful to understand who he was showing them to.  Another non-shock? Trump and his allies could be facing another few dozen or so indictments for various things.

I think he might also be charged for mishandling docs in New Jersey.  That's not subject to "loose cannons".

Is it "hot accountability summer" yet?

TWGB: The Tale of the Tape

 

"I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case you know.... Except it is like, highly confidential."

That's a quote from the tape CNN played last night as an exclusive. It's Trump, at Bedminster, talking about one of the documents that proves his case. What case--does it absolve him of the Russia Hoax or the first impeachment? 

Nah. Just a pissing contest he's having in his own mind with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, FGen Mark Milley. 

That audio comes from open pissing and moaning about, among other things, Trump's need to be right, and a discussion about how, supposedly, Hillary Clinton handled secret documents. "Please print" was a joke between Trump and a suck-up aide of his that can be heard on the tape. Irony of ironies: he knows having this stuff printed out is wrong, and here he is, with the actual paper in his hand.

TWGB: The Notorious Box-Grabber

 

Baier: Why not just hand them over? Trump: Because I had boxes, I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things pic.twitter.com/PwW85wlTzH

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 19, 2023

They are his things! His precious! And he wanted to keep the things!  Trump had them, and didn't want to give them over. He was told they weren't his things, he felt differently. How do we know? He keeps telling us:

He wanted them back in 2022, he wants them back now. 

They are his "Beautiful mind" material.  What the whole hell:

During President Donald J. Trump’s years in the White House, his aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the “beautiful mind” material.

It was a reference to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of John F. Nash Jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by Russell Crowe, who covered his office with newspaper clippings, believing they held a Russian code he needed to crack.

The phrase had a specific connotation. The aides employed it to capture a type of organized chaos that Mr. Trump insisted on, the collection and transportation of a blizzard of newspapers and official documents that he kept close and that seemed to give him a sense of security.

They were his PRECIOUS! And we keeps the preciouses close we does. 

TWGB: It's Really Very Damning

 

Um, the thing with the nuclear secrets and the boxes of stuff just being out where anyone would see them is real. The pictures are like some freaky episode of  Hoarders. Mar-a-Lago staff was calling these boxes "Beautiful Mind Paper" because TFG was obsessed with them. Did I spend the last half-dozen years going around saying "It looks bad because it is bad?" Because shit, look upon the goddamn works of your trunkless idol and despair!

The indictment: Trump had documents about U.S. defense and weapons capabilities and U.S. nuclear programs. pic.twitter.com/vHLwdgWSk0

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 9, 2023

Yes. Nuclear program stuff.   Kept in places as insecure as a bathroom and a ballroom, in a country club where randos, including foreign nationals, just wander in and out all the time.  This was revealed after the absolutely damningest transcript of all time, save one:

The transcript of the audio recording suggests that Trump is showing the document he’s discussing to those in the room. Several sources have told CNN the recording captures the sound of paper rustling, as if Trump was waving the document around, though is not clear if it was the actual Iran document.

“Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump says at one point, according to the transcript. “This was done by the military and given to me.”

This here is classified--please, non-eligible person to receive this data, look. 

TWGB: The Target

 

We're on pins and needles, aren't we? I mean, news has come out that Trump's lawyers have received a letter that he's a target in the documents' investigation, and we also hear that the grand jury is considering charges for Trump under the Espionage Act and for obstruction.  We also are finding out that Mark Meadows has accepted a plea to some federal crimes in exchange for his testimony against Trump, which overlaps both the Espionage case and the 1/6 investigation--which has the bonus of so much admissible stuff against so many people he was texting with, like a whole lot of people. 

For what it's worth, even if the Espionage Act stuff (Two grand juries? with Jay Bratt whose deal is Espionage Act? Hmm!) seems like the real damaging stuff (I think it's bad, because it certainly looks bad), I'm not overlooking the possibility that Trump also eventually sees some heat from the 1/6 stuff, especially regarding the gathering of R. Congress people and talking to assorted goons to that fell purpose. (I consider Flynn a goon. Some people wouldn't but that just attributes to his success at creative goonery.) Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed in that matter. 

Am I confident that we're going to see some indictments in these things as early as this week?  Hell if I know. I know in the short term, based on what I see on the MAGA comments on Twitter, if it happens some folks are gonna be shirt-ripping mad, and then their mommas are gonna be mad they ripped their shirts. 

So Dumb it Has to be True?

NEWS: An employee at Mar-a-Lago drained the resort’s swimming pool last October and ended up flooding a room where computer servers containing surveillance video logs were kept, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, w/ @kpolantz @kaitlancollins https://t.co/VZqCUDCTuT

— Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) June 5, 2023

There's a little part of me that feels insulted! that I might be suckered in by a "too dumb to be true" apparent cover-up where an employee floods a room that juuuuussssttt haaapppeeennnnns to have surveillance video logs in it. Come on! This isn't a Coen brothers movie! This is real life! 

And then I remember who these folks are...