Here Comes Indictment IV

Conspiracy, fraud, obstruction, rape, and now . . . racketeering?

(Composite by Hannah Yoest / Photos: GettyImages)

The news cycle is likely to be full this week. So, let’s catch up:

• “Donald Trump expected to face 2020 election charges in Georgia this week.”– The Guardian

  Apparently, Trump will be able to add ‘racketeering,” to a legal resume that already includes fraud, rape, conspiracy, obstruction, and violations of the Espionage Act. And, of course, he remains the GOP frontrunner.

• CNN: “Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach.”

• The NYT explains: “How Trump Benefits From an Indictment Effect.”

• Today’s Bulwark: “Trump’s ‘It’s Just My Opinion’ Defense Is Just More Gaslighting.”

• Also in the Bulwark: “How Fani Willis Became the Latest Enemy of ‘America First’.”

Happy Monday.

Perfectly Normal, right?

NBC: Trump shares barrage of QAnon content and other conspiracy theories on his social media platform

Former President Donald Trump spent Tuesday morning posting inflammatory messages on social media, including many explicitly promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory.

While Trump has in the past promoted QAnon-inspired accounts and theories, the posts on his Truth Social account were his most explicit, unobscured, QAnon-promoting and QAnon-baiting posts to date.

In one, he reposted the QAnon slogan — “Where We Go One We Go All.” In another, he re-posted a 2017 message from “Q” that’s critical of the intelligence community. The QAnon conspiracy theory was built around Q, an anonymous account that posts periodically on 8kun, often with vague or symbolic language that is then interpreted by followers. The account claims to document a secret battle being waged by Trump against the Democratic Party, which followers of the theory contend is run by satanic, child-eating cannibals who run a pedophile ring filled with celebrities and political elites who have been covertly running the United States government for decades. None of the posts’ concrete predictions have come to fruition.

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On Friday, Judge Tanya Chutkan warned Trump against making “inflammatory” statements about the case.

“I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case,” Chutkan told Trump lawyer John Lauro during a hearing. “I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”…

“The fact that he’s running a political campaign has to yield to the orderly administration of justice,” Chutkan said. “If that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say about witnesses in this case, that’s how it has to be.”

“Even arguably ambiguous statements from parties or their counsel, if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors, can threaten the process,” Chutkan added later. “The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case which could taint the jury pool … the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial quickly.”

Trump’s response?

And your daily dose of witness intimidation:

And finally,

• Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg: The stupidest story of the summer appears to be over.

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They’re STILL Humoring Him

Remember one of the worst quotes in history about just ‘humoring’ Trump after he lost in ’20? Well, he’s creating another threatening climate. Plus, Tim’s reporting trip to Iowa, Pence gets a little loose, and we share some life advice.

You can listen to the whole thing here.

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Meanwhile, in Wisconsin

Yes, they might actually do this.

Earlier this year, Wisconsin voters elected liberal Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz after a bitter campaign that left Republicans reeling and seething. (I wrote this for the Atlantic: “Wisconsin’s Republicans Are In a Bind—And Angry.”)

They haven’t gotten over it.

The speaker of the State Assembly, Robin Vos, is now threatening to use the GOP’s supermajorities in the legislature to impeach and remove the new justice — before she has ruled on even a single case.

The threat is revealing on several levels.

The court will be taking up a host of hot-button issues, including the state’s nineteenth-century-vintage abortion ban. But Vos is breathing hot fire about something else altogether: the possibility that the new liberal majority on the court might revise the state’s gerrymandered legislature districts.

That — not abortion — is the hill he’s prepared to die on, even it means overturning an election.

MADISON - If Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz does not recuse from lawsuits challenging the state's legislative boundaries, Republicans who control the state Legislature might consider impeachment proceedings, the Assembly's top Republican said Friday.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican from Rochester… said the idea could move forward if Protasiewicz does not recuse herself on cases he said she "prejudged" during her campaign for a seat on the state's highest court.

Three reasons they might actually do that: (1) While they may claim to care about other issues, redistricting is the WI GOP’s Precious, and they fight to preserve it anyway they can; (2) they may not be able to help themselves, and (3) they may have the votes in both the assembly and state senate to do it.

But there are two reasons they might not actually try to impeach the justice: (1) It’s a profoundly stupid idea to spend that much political capital on an issue that is far more likely to motivate Democrats and alienate independents than is to fire up their own base; and (2) even a successful impeachment would be pointless, since Democratic Governor Tony Evers could fill the seat with a liberal justice the very next day.

In Wisconsin, Supreme Court appointments do not require senate confirmation.

Keep an eye on the Badger State.

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Meanwhile, in Kansas…

This story is so ugly.

“Police raid on Kansas newspaper called 'authoritarian' as furor intensifies.”

MARION, Kan. — A small central Kansas police department is facing a firestorm of criticism after it raided the offices of a local newspaper and the home of its publisher and owner — a move deemed by several press freedom watchdogs as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection of a free press.

The Marion County Record said in its own published reports that police raided the newspaper’s office on Friday, seizing the newspaper’s computers, phones and file server and the personal cellphones of staff, based on a search warrant. One Record reporter said one of her fingers was injured when Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody wrested her cellphone out of her hand, according to the report.

Police simultaneously raided the home of Eric Meyer, the newspaper’s publisher and co-owner, seizing computers, his cellphone and the home’s internet router, Meyer said. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother — Record co-owner Joan Meyer who lived in the home with her son — collapsed and died Saturday, Meyer said, blaming her death on the stress of the raid of her home.

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Hunter gets his special counsel

There is neither world enough nor time to chronicle all of the hypocrisy, double standards, and hackery that surround this tawdry saga. Democrats really ought to stop pretending that they can ignore Hunter’s cloud of sleaze; and Republicans should stop pretending that they actually care about the ethics of presidential sons.

On Friday, AG Merrick Garland gave U.S. Attorney David Weiss special counsel status in the case against the president’s son. For months Republicans had been demanding that Garland do exactly this; and when he did exactly what they wanted, they complained bitterly. Because, of course.

The NYT captured the Dem’s sense of denial about the whole thing: “Democrats Dismiss Worries Over Hunter Biden Investigation.”

In interviews, more than a dozen Democratic officials, operatives and pollsters said Hunter Biden’s legal problems were less worrisome than their other concerns about the president: his age, his low approval ratings and Americans’ lack of confidence in an improving economy.

Welp.

There is also the countervailing Trump/Jared factor.

Part of their sense of calm stems from a version of the what-aboutism often adopted by Republicans since Donald J. Trump’s rise: Mr. Biden’s son is under investigation, Democrats say, but across the aisle, the G.O.P. front-runner has actually been criminally indicted — three times.

“I find it hard to imagine that anyone concerned about political corruption would turn to Donald Trump to address the problem of political corruption,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland..

But this is not a story that will go away, and the optics are actually pretty ugly. As David Leonhardt notes:

When his father was vice president from 2009 to 2017, Hunter tried to create the impression that he could leverage his family connections to help his clients, as a former business partner has testified to Congress.

Some clients believed it. Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, put Hunter on its board, in an attempt to signal that it was pro-Western. A Chinese tycoon also signed a partnership with him. All told, Hunter made more than $800,000 in 2013 and more than $1.2 million in 2014.

My colleague Luke Broadwater, who covers Congress, told me that he initially found the public discussion of Hunter Biden to be uninteresting — typical partisan noise. But Luke came to believe the story was more important. “Many rich and famous people try to cash in on their family name, including relatives of the politicians,” Luke said. “It’s certainly worth newspaper coverage.”

Luke notes that Joe Biden made a false statement during a 2020 campaign debate when he claimed, “My son has not made money” in China. “The only guy who made money from China is this guy,” Biden continued, referring to Donald Trump. (Amazingly, Biden was correct about the Trump part: The Trumps received money from the same Chinese company.)

These details are not pretty. The current president’s son made substantial sums of money from the perception of his proximity to top government officials, and the president has claimed otherwise. That story is notably different from past Republican lies about Obama’s birthplace or Kerry’s war record.

Which brings us back to Jared, the $2 billion man. If Hunter’s scandals can be measured in kilotons, the Trump/Jared grifts register in megatons. (Yes, I did go see Oppenheimer this weekend.) Even the hackiest hacks have qualms: “Comer says Jared Kushner ‘crossed the line of ethics’ by taking $2 billion Saudi investment.”

All of that is more than fair game now.

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Quick Hit

The Media Still Doesn’t Get Biden Voters

Outstanding piece from Nicholas Grossman in today’s Bulwark.

CONSERVATIVE AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA don’t agree on much, but one point of consensus is that everyone should work harder to understand Trump supporters. The implicit message: You don’t have to agree with the populist right, but you should be listening to, empathizing with, and engaging them more.

A common style of this coverage is the safari to “Trump Country,” in which journalists from various outlets, most of whom live in big metropolitan areas, go to a rural community or Rust Belt town and talk to Trump voters, often white, working-class men in diners. The resulting articles are often tautological—basically “Trump Supporters Support Trump”—and framed as if explaining to liberals who might think that Trump’s failures will cause some voters to abandon him that they won’t. A great example is a May 2019 New York Times story titled “There’s No Boom in Youngstown, but Blue-Collar Workers Are Sticking With Trump.” It’s such a well-trod trope that it’s inspired parodies and running jokes.

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Cheap Shots

Grow the f up.