

In case you are keeping track at home:
Is Trump going to jail? List of criminal charges and potential prison time - Vox
Ranking the indictments in order of importance.
Why Trump might fear the Georgia indictment the most - The Washington Post
Prison, pardons, RICO, mugshots, bail restrictions, and TV.
What the Heck Happened in Coffee County, Georgia? - Anna Bower, Lawfare
āIn the name of preventing election fraud, this group appropriated county election systems . . . and came to be charged with conspiring to commit election fraud themselves.ā
Whatās Actually New in the Georgia Indictment? - Will Saletan in the Bulwark
It overlaps with one of the federal indictmentsābut the Fulton County indictment includes disturbing new details about Trumpās alleged ācriminal enterprise.ā
The Beating Heart of the Georgia Indictment - Philip Rotner in the Bulwark
āThe fake elector scheme wasnāt merely a contingency plan. It was an action plan.ā
āSome lawyers have said that if Mr. Trump were an ordinary citizen issuing these attacks, he would be in jail by now. The question is whether Mr. Trump will face consequences for this kind of behavior ahead of a trial.ā
āOne of Trump's trial dates - for the original E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit - is set to take place on January 15, 2024, the exact same day as the Iowa caucuses.ā
Rudy Giuliani, RICO Champion, Gets Indicted on Law He Made Famous - WSJ
Geoff Duncan: The Georgia indictment should be a turning point - The Washington Post
āThis case has always been viewed as the most serious of the bunch for multiple reasons. For one, it is the first time that senior members of Trumpās inner circle will face criminal charges beside him. For another, with the prospect of real prison time, the odds of cooperating witnesses that are no longer infatuated with being in the cool kidsā club increase.ā
āWhen it comes to analysis of Donald Trumpās growing legal liabilities, the conservative press has succumbed to something resembling a state of denial.ā
Happy Wednesday.
All the Ex-Presidentās Conspirators
Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now heās getting the indictment he deserves. And this time, some of the co-conspirators are likely to flip. Plus, how the Big Lie plays at next weekās debate. A.B. Stoddard joined me on Tuesdayās pod.
You can listen to the whole thing here.
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BONUS for Bulwark + Members:
Are Georgia Republicans Different?
Bulwark+ members can listen here.
A Festival of Hypocrisy
Double-standards and hypocrisy are not new, nor are they particularly rare. Indeed, even the editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica would quail at the prospect of compiling all of the instances of two-faced sanctimony in our political/cultural/media universe:
The moralists who insisted that ācharacter matters,ā and then embraced Donald J. Trump.
The party of ālaw and orderā that rationalized and downplayed the attacks on Capitol Police and now wants to DEFUND THE FBI.
The folks who chanted ālock her up,ā who now clutch pearls over the āweaponizationā of the justice system against their felonious cult-leader.
Lindsey Graham on any day that ends with -y.
And weāre just scratching the surface here.
So, letās talk about a few egregious examples in the last few days. In yesterdayās Press Pass, my colleague, Joe Perticone, wrote that the reaction to the latest Hunter Biden News was āA Clinic in Hypocrisy.ā
On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss to serve as special counsel in the case against Hunter Biden. What followed defied the powers of satire:
Elected Republicans sounded the alarm of a ācoverupā while conveniently forgetting that the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter was exactly what they had asked for.
There was plenty of bad faith to go around. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) immediately condemned Weiss, who was appointed by Trump to his role as a U.S. attorney in 2018, as āprobably the least independent person that Merrick Garland could have appointed.ā Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) tweeted that Garland chose Weiss ābecause he knows Weiss will protect Hunter.ā Ted Cruz called it ādisgraceful.ā
As Joe pointed out: āthe outraged senators appear to have forgotten the letter they and dozens of other GOP senators signed last fall explicitly asking Garland to give special counsel powers and protections toāyepāDavid Weiss.ā
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Then there is the global champion of free speech, Elon Musk. (Remember the whole āTwitter Filesā thing? Me neither.)
Last seen caving to the demands of autocrats to censor political foes, Musk has apparently been āthrottlingā access to sites that had gotten under his remarkably thin billionaire skin. Via the Wapo: āElon Musk's Twitter throttles links to Threads, Blue Sky and New York Times.ā
The company formerly known as Twitter on Tuesday slowed the speed with which users could access links to the New York Times, Facebook and other news organizations and online competitors, a move that appeared targeted at companies that have drawn the ire of owner Elon Musk.
Users who clicked a link on Muskās website, now called X, for one of the targeted websites were made to wait about five seconds before seeing the page, according to tests conducted Tuesday by The Washington Post.
The delayed websites included Xās online rivals Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and Substack, as well as the Reuters wire service and the Times. All of them have previously been singled out by Musk for ridicule or attack.
Busted, Elon scrambled to cover his tracks.
On Tuesday afternoon, hours after this story was first published, X began reversing the throttling on some of the sites, dropping the delay times back to zero. It was unknown if all the throttled websites had normal service restored.
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Which brings us to the Boy Philosopher of the Right, Ben Shapiro, who Tweeted: āWhatever you think of the Trump indictments, one thing is for certain: the glass has now been broken over and over again. Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies. Running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail ā on all sides.ā
Well, this was awkward, because Shapiro had written a whole book calling for the criminal prosecution of Barack Obama: āThe People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration.ā
In a 2014 interview with talk show Larry King, Shapiro waxed enthusiastic about using RICO to go after Obama.
āI make the case that the RICO Act, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act from 1970, which allows for civil charges ā people can file civil suits ā that that be broadened to allow people to sue members of the executive branch. So, the people themselves, essentially, become the guardians of the criminal law. Because, sorry, but I just donāt trust the executive branch to prosecute its own guys.ā
āWhat did he do, hands on, that was criminal?ā King asked of then-President Obama.
āWell, you see, this is the problem, this is why you have to use the RICO Act,ā Shapiro answered. āSo, no president is actually going to do things ā unless youāre Richard Nixon, presumably, and there are tapes ā is going to have to do things that are particularly hands on. The government is run more like a mafiaesque organization, which is, you have somebody at the top who makes, you know, a basic demand that certain things be done, and somebody at the low level says, āOK, well, you know, I want to up my career.ā This is Henry II with Thomas Beckett, āWill no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?ā And someone goes and rids him of the meddlesome priest.ā
That, of course, was then. This is now. Like so many others on the right, Ben has evolved.
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BONUSES:
Also awkward.
Quick Hits
Bidenās Age Might Not Be a Problem
Mona Charen has second thoughts about our octogenarian president.
CONFESSION: FOR THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS, I fell into the āBiden shouldnāt run againā camp. Too old. Better not to ask Americans to re-elect a man who will be 82 in November of 2024 and . . . you know the rest. Nikki Haley summed it up tactlessly in April: āThe idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is probable.ā
But Iāve thought better of it. Yes, Biden is the oldest man ever elected president and bids fair to break his own record, but thatās not entirely a bad thing.
Cheap Shots
Geraldo Rivera on Tucker Carlson:
āIt was pathetic, really pathetic,ā Rivera said. āHe really got way too big for his britches. The worst thing about what he did was the ruthless pragmatism that he displayed. Iām going to do this because thatās what the audience wants. In other words, it wasnāt the malevolent media leading the audience. It was the audience leading the malevolent media.ā
āWhat he did was unforgivable,ā Rivera concluded, arguing Carlson expressed views he did not believe in to boost his ratings. āHe made a mockery of the tenets of journalism.ā
If you are waiting for Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, or others on the far right to be either consistent or accurate, you might as well wait for the Titanic to arrive in New York with them aboard it. Simply put, there is no such thing in the entertainment and disinformation wing of what someone once referred to as a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy -- telling some people what they want to hear, most people what they want to fear, and everyone what brings Ben and Charlie enough money and fame to make it worth their while.
They do not care if what they say is truthful or deceptive. They do not care if you are keeping score of how often they contradict themselves. They only care that you listen, repeat their claims, and tell everyone where you heard them. Because, in the end, it is about Ben and Charlie. Not democracy. Not even America. It's free enterprise, my friends, and the Almighty Buck, as elsewhere, talks longest and loudest. Listen accordingly and know that in their world, the truth and its interpretation are for sale to the highest bidder, as long as they get theirs in the process. That is the first and foremost freedom that these "patriots" espouse: the freedom to profit off of the vulnerabilities of others. Their mothers must be so proud.
The festival of hypocrisy is a direct outgrowth of the longer term tendency on the right to lie all the time about everything.