On the Left

Donald J. Trump’s “offer” to the Justice Department to “do whatever I can to help the country” in lowering tensions among his MAGA supporters over the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home for sensitive government documents is being seen as a “threat” by some directed to Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland. (Some conservative media outlets still call the FBI search a “raid.”) Trump made the offer in an "exclusive" interview with Fox News Digital.

Meanwhile, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has announced he will retire in December. 

Opine on these or any other recent issues covered here in the Comment box below, or email editors@thehustings.news.

_____

Florida, New York, Oklahoma Primaries

(WED 8/24/22)

Florida: And so, a former Republican governor challenges incumbent Republican governor and presumed 2024 challenger to Donald J. Trump for the GOP presidential nomination Ron DeSantis. Rep. Charlie Crist (pictured), now a Democrat from Florida’s 13thDistrict, won his party’s gubernatorial primary Tuesday, 59.8% to agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried’s 35.3% (per Ballotpedia). Fried is the only Democrat holding a statewide office in Florida, which now counts more registered Republican voters.

Rep. Val Demings easily won the Democratic Party’s primary, with 84% of the vote, to take on incumbent Republican Sen. Marco Rubio for his seat in the November 8 midterms. 

New York: Rep. Jerrold Nadler easily beat Rep. Carolyn Maloney, 56.3% to 24.2%, for the state’s redrawn U.S. House 12thDistrict, which pitted two 30-year incumbents for the seat covering the East Side of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Challenger Suraj Patel took 18.3% of the Democratic primary vote. 

A special election to replace former Democratic Rep. Antonio Delgado for his 19th District congressional district seat is seen as a bellwether for the midterms in general. If so, count it as good news for Democrats, with Pat Ryan taking 51.1% to Republican Marc Molinaro’s 48.8% -- decisive, though hardly commanding in a district that encompasses the mid-Hudson Valley and New York Catskills region, which NBC News' Steve Kornacki describes as a "classic swing district." Ryan will serve the remainder of Delgado’s term, to January 3. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul selected Delgado as her lieutenant governor after replacing former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

In the Democratic race for the House 10th District seat, 17th District incumbent Mondaire Jones came in third with 18.2%. Daniel Goldman, with 25.7%, edged out Yuh-Line Niou at 23.7% for the win.

Oklahoma: U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, who represents the 2nd congressional district, won the Republican Party’s runoff for a special election in November to replace Republican Sen. James Inhoffe, who is retiring with four years left in his term. Mullin will face the winner of the Democratic runoff, cybersecurity professional Madison Horn. 

•••

On the 31st Anniversary of Ukraine's independence ... The White House has announced a new $2.98-billion "security package" for Ukraine in its fight for sovereignty against Russia's invasion. The package is for weapons and assistance as provided by the Ukrainian Security Assistance Initiative, Politico reports.

--TL

_____________________________________

Primaries Tuesday (TUE 8/23/22)

Florida: In the Democratic gubernatorial primary to challenge 2024 GOP presidential candidate and incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis, progressive candidate Nikki Fried, commissioner of agricultural and consumer services, has been gaining in the polls against moderate Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist. Fried since 2019 has been the state’s commissioner of agriculture and consumer services. Crist was Florida’s Republican governor from 2007 to 2011, and since 2017 has served as the state’s Democratic representative for the 13th District. Crist has been considered the stronger candidate to take on populist cultural warrior DeSantis, though Fried has been hammering Crist on his prior history regarding abortion rights when he was a Republican, according to NPR’s Morning Edition. 

In the race for U.S. Senate, Rep. Val Demings (10th District) is very likely to beat three other Democrats to take on incumbent Republican Marco Rubio November 8. Like Crist, Demmings, a former police officer, is currently serving her second term in the House of Representatives.

New York: Redistricting has forced Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of the 10th District to compete with Rep. Carolyn Maloney for Maloney’s 12th District seat. Both are powerful representatives, with Maloney chairing the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Nadler chairing its Judiciary Committee. 

Oklahoma: Both major parties have runoffs Tuesday for the November midterm to replace Republican Sen. James Inhoffe, 87, who is retiring next January with four years left on his current term. In the Republican runoff, it’s Markwayne Mullin v. T.W. Shannon while on the Democratic side it’s Jason Bollinger v. Madison Horn to replace the conservative five-term senator (per Ballotpedia).

•••

Up for discussion … Donald J. Trump is suing the U.S. Justice Department over its FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for White House documents. The former president’s attorneys argue the government provided no reason for its search of Trump’s Florida residence and that the search raised questions about Fourth Amendment rights, Newsweek explains. ... Meanwhile ... The New York Times reports that Trump had taken more than 300 classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago. Federal officials “became alarmed” after the National Archives found more than 150 sensitive papers among the first batch received from the former president in January. … A federal judge has given Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) attorneys to Wednesday to provide a list of questions they think a grand jury can and cannot ask a sitting senator, Yahoo! News reports. Graham’s testimony before the Fulton County, Georgia grand jury investigating Trump’s alleged attempt to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results was temporarily halted by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has to next Monday to respond to Graham’s list of questions. … Dr. Anthony Fauci has announced his retirement in December, after 38 years as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He also serves as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation and as chief medical advisor to President Biden. 

--Todd Lassa

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

On the Right

Should Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) be compelled to testify before Fulton County, Georgia’s special grand jury investigating the 2020 presidential election? What are your thoughts on pro-MAGA treatment of Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is retiring as the nation’s lead infectious disease expert?

Also, national security attorney Bradley P. Moss called the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago “justified,” in an op-ed for Fox News Digital [https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-mar-a-lago-search-justified].

Opine on these or any other recent issues covered here in the Comment box below, or email editors@thehustings.news.

_____

From Left 

On Fox and Friends, co-host Steve Doocy recently warned against threats of violence on the FBI for serving a warrant to search for government documents at Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. They were just doing their job, he noted, a point-of-view later echoed by former Vice President Mike Pence. Neither Doocy nor Pence defended Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland, who ordered the FBI search.

We want to learn your thoughts on this and other recent political news. Please enter your opinions in the Comment box in this column, or the right column, or email editors@thehustings.news.

Scroll the trackbar on the far-right to read, in this column, contributing pundit Jim McCraw’s comments on the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago; “The Documents Were There. Really. The FBI Took Them Back.”

Click on The Gray Area to read contributing pundit Ken Zino’s commentary, “The Forgotten Obvious” on Kansas voters’ rejection of an amendment on the ballot that would have opened the state to strict abortion laws. 

_____

…meanwhile…

(THU 8/18/22)

Judge may allow release of affidavit… U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday gave U.S. Justice Department prosecutors one week to submit the affidavit, with proposed redactions, used to issue an FBI warrant to search Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, the AP reports. The order indicated the judge is amenable to making at least part of the affidavit supporting the search warrant public. 

The former president’s attorneys requested the affidavit’s release, but the Justice Department argues its release could hamper its ongoing investigation, which it says is “in its early stages.”

•••

Weisselberg’s plea deal… Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 felonies in a Manhattan court Thursday in exchange for a reduced sentence for conspiring with his employer of nearly 50 years, the Trump Organization, to carry out a long-running tax avoidance scheme, The New York Times reports. Under the plea agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Weisselberg, 75, is required to testify at the Trump Organization’s criminal trial scheduled for this October if prosecutors call him to the stand to admit his role to carry out the tax avoidance scheme. 

If Weisselberg testifies truthfully in the trial, he will receive a five-month sentence and serve as few as 100 days with time credited for good behavior, according to the NYT. Though the criminal case involves the real estate development company run by Donald J. Trump and his family, the plea deal does not require Weisselberg to cooperate with the Manhattan D.A. on its broader criminal investigation and his admissions will not implicate the ex-president. But Weisselberg will be required to pay nearly $2 million in taxes, penalties and interest for receiving tax-free perqs, including leased Mercedes-Benzes, an apartment on New York’s Upper West Side and private school tuition for his grandchildren.

Upshot: Weisselberg’s plea deal is something of a consolation to Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, whose criminal investigation appeared to be falling apart early in the year. Two lead prosecutors abruptly quit the case in February because Bragg had told them he had “doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump.” The investigation was initiated by Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., who chose not to run for re-election last year. 

--Todd Lassa

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

To Right

Pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay writes about the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search in two commentaries in this column; “Of Scanners, Stars and Boxes,” and in “Donald Trump and the Art of the Flush.” 

We want to learn your thoughts on this and other recent political news. Please enter your opinions in the Comment box in this column, or the right column, or email editors@thehustings.news.

_____

About the Timing

As the FBI receives heightened threats from the radical right over its search of Mar-a-Lago last week, liberal and never-Trump conservative pundits warn the serving of the warrant will inspire a heavy pro-MAGA vote in the midterms, and possibly boost Donald J. Trump’s own chances for the 2024 presidential election. But Democrat strategists also are hopeful that Trump will announce for ’24 this fall and re-invigorate the party’s own chances in the midterms. 

Voice your opinions on which party gains most from the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, whether you are left or right, in the Comment box in the left or right columns, or email editors@thehustings.news. Be sure to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on the ex-prez’s use of his Florida estate as a repository for classified White House papers in the right column.

_____

Liz Cheney and The Great Task

(WED 8/17/22)

Expected defeat…Trump-endorsed House candidate Harriet Hageman beat incumbent Liz Cheney, 65.8% to 29.5% in Tuesday’s Wyoming GOP primary election. That’s 106,322 votes for Hageman to Cheney’s 47,615 in a state with about 580,000 residents. 

Cheney will continue to fight to keep former President Donald J. Trump from retaking the White House by running for the 2024 nomination for president, Politico, which reported those numbers above, speculates Wednesday. The three-term congresswoman, who now leaves the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection by January whether Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becomes speaker and gets a chance to dismantle and investigate it or not, has launched The Great Task, a political action committee devoted to keeping Trump out of office, NPR reports. 

“Two years ago, I won this primary with 75% of the vote,” Cheney said in her concession speech Tuesday night (per The Guardian video). “I could easily have done the same again. The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. …

“It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundation of our republic. That is a path I could not and would not take.

“No House seat, no office in this land is more important than the principles we were all sworn to protect and I well understood the political consequences of abiding by my duty. The primary election is over. But now the real work begins.”

Irony alert: Hageman, for her part, also nationalized the Wyoming primary for the House seat (as recorded by NBC News). 

“Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone across this great country who believes in the American Dream … who believes in liberty and recognizes that our natural rights; Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal protection and due process come from God.” 

They do not come from politicians, she said, “and the government cannot take them away."

“Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone who is concerned that the game is becoming more and more rigged against them," she continued. "And what Wyoming has shown today is that while it cannot be easy, we can dislodge entrenched politicians who believe they have risen above the people they are supposed to represent.”

Meanwhile, in Georgia: Former Trump attorney and America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani is scheduled to testify Wednesday before a Fulton County grand jury investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there. Giuliani is a target of the investigation.

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire: Attending a “Politics and Eggs” breakfast in the state holding the first presidential primary again in 2024, ex-Vice President Mike Pence said he would testify before the House Select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, MSNBC’s Morning Joe reports Wednesday. His statement came in the form of an answer to a question posed at the event. 

The count, so far: Of 10 House Republicans who voted for then-President Trump’s second impeachment after the January 6 Capitol attacks, four have lost their primaries this season to pro-Trump candidates and two have won, according to the Associated Press. Three, including Cheney’s only fellow Republican on the House Select Committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, chose not to run for re-election. One primary race is still to be determined; Rep. John Katko’s New York seat.

•••

Alaska’s non-partisan ranked-preference primary … Preternatural MAGA politician and former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s shot at the state’s single, at-large House seat remains alive. Palin came in second with 32.2%, to Democrat Mary Peltola’s 34.5% and ahead of Republican Nicholas Begich’s 27.1%. A third Republican, Tara Sweeney, also advances to the general election, with her 3.2% of the vote.

Because of the ranked-preference vote, a candidate who gets more second-place votes could beat the first-place candidate. 

Alaska will determine the winner among these three for the special election to serve out the remainder of Republican Don Young’s seat, by the end of August, NPR says. (Young died in office earlier this year). Peltola, Palin, Begich and Sweeney face off in the ranked-preference general election November 8.

For U.S. Senate: Moderate Republican incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski edged Trump-endorsed Republican Kelly Tshibaka, 42.% to 41.8%, and Democrat Patricia Chesbro at 6.2%, and Republican Buzz Kelley at 2.3% to advance to the general election. The four beat 15 other candidates for the chance to compete in another ranked-preference race for the Senate seat November 8.

--Todd Lassa

...meanwhile... (TUE 8/16/22)

Tuesday’s primaries… Wyoming’s and Alaska’s primaries are quite probably Donald J. Trump’s most important so far and coincide with a resurgence of support for the former president coming a week after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Politico calls the Wyoming primary “Liz Cheney’s day of reckoning” as she faces Trump-endorsed challenger Harriet Hageman for the state’s at-large House seat. Cheney is about 30 points behind in the polls thanks to her voting for ex-President Trump’s second impeachment and sitting as vice chairwoman of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, though there has been some hope that she would make up that deficit with sympathetic Democratic and independent voters in the open primary. There will not be enough.

In Alaska, preternatural Trumpian Republican Sarah Palin faces Democrat Mary Petola and Republican scion of prominent state Democratic family Nicholas Begich in a special election to replace Don Young, who died in office earlier this year. Alaska has a new ranked-preference system, which means that if no candidate gets at least 50% of the vote for the at-large House seat, the second and third rounds are counted. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski also faces Democratic and Republican challengers in the non-partisan primary for her seat (per Ballotpedia).

Upshot: Cheney could flip Tuesday’s likely loss into a serious challenge to Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

•••

Biden to sign Inflation Reduction Act… President Biden is scheduled to sign the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the sweeping climate change, health care and tax bill at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. While the Congressional Budget Office estimates no effect on inflation – why should it? – for 2022 and ’23, its scoring says the reconciliation bill will reduce the federal deficit by $300 billion, NPR reports.

•••

Giuliani a ‘target’ in Georgia probe… Prosecutors in Georgia have informed former America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani he is a ‘target’ in its “wide-ranging” criminal investigation into election interference involving his former client as attorney, ex-President Trump, in the 2020 presidential election, The New York Times reports. A federal judge in Atlanta also has rejected Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) efforts to avoid testifying in the investigation being led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis. Graham’s attorneys say the senator has been informed he is a witness, not a target.

--Todd Lassa

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Of Scanners, Stars and Boxes

By Stephen Macaulay

For about $100 you can buy a computer scanner.

In a matter of moments even documents that are labeled “top secret/sensitive compartmented information” could be deposited on a hard drive for quick email distribution or stuck on a thumb drive.

Donald Trump, not a man known for his dynamic reading capability (or even for, well, reading), took 26 boxes of documents to Mar-a-Lago, which is described on its website as “the only private club world-wide to attain the prestigious 6-Star Diamond Award from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences.”

The what?

Well, according to a May 2016 AP story, “when it comes to Trump, the academy isn't an independent observer.

“The organization is run by Joseph Cinque, a longtime Trump acquaintance who goes by the nickname "Joey No Socks" and has a felony conviction for possessing stolen property.”

And it goes on to report:

“As recently as last May, Trump himself was listed on the group's website as its "ambassador extraordinaire," and he appeared in a 2009 tribute video to Cinque in which he said: "There's nobody like him. He's a special guy."

“But Trump told The Associated Press on Friday that he doesn't know Cinque well and was unaware of Cinque's criminal conviction.”

All of this sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Now anyone who has moved house, even if it isn’t from one of the most legendary houses in the world to a prestigious 6-Star Diamond manse, knows that when you pack boxes often things go awry. Somehow no matter how carefully you mark things, there is a nearly metaphysical impossibility that all of the forks disappear. And sometimes upon unpacking there is the discovery of something that was long thought to be lost.

So let’s give Trump a benefit of a doubt. Certainly something in that move—a move that he still argues shouldn’t have occurred because the election was stolen, rigged or otherwise stacked against him (and let’s not forget, he, too, is a special guy)—probably got misplaced. After all, he had to be in a bit of a rush.

Maybe it just so happened that some documents that are top, top secret just happened to get snagged on a paper clip on the stack of love letters (his adjective) to Kim Jong-un and was shipped to his swank (six diamonds!) digs purely by accident.

But then there is that little matter of him taking things he had no legal right to. Boxes and boxes.

On Meet the Press August 14, Andrea Mitchell put it to presidential historian Michael Beschloss that Trump tweeted, “President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots.”

Beschloss responded, surprisingly, “Well, President Trump is absolutely right. Barack Obama has tens of millions of documents. . .” YIKES! but the shoe drops. . .”and they are in a National Archives installation, Hoffman Estates, Illinois, under armed guard with heavy surveillance, using the procedures that are supposed to be used for a former president. We have never in history seen a former president take ultra-classified documents, stick them in his basement, loosely watched by government standards, and with the shadow of we still don't know what his motive was.”

Well, it is the basement of that venue that won that coveted award.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Trump Tower got one of those plaques, too.

But I wonder about that scanner.

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Congress Takes Recess

After Friday’s House vote on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Congress is on its scheduled summer recess until after Labor Day. The House Select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack will continue its investigation, though with no plans for public hearings before September. The Hustings is taking a break, too, though with news updates, including coverage of the Wyoming Republican primary Tuesday, August 16, in which Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House Select committee, faces challenges from pro-Trump candidates. 

Scroll down to read our aggregate coverage of the FBI’s search of Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and the fallout, with commentary in the left and right columns. Contributing pundit Jim McCraw’s commentary, “The Documents Were There. Really. The FBI Took Them Back,” is below in the left column.

COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news.

_____

House Passes Inflation Reduction Act

The vote … in the House of Representatives was 220-207 Friday with unanimous Republican opposition to the bill. Approximately $370 billion for curbing harmful emissions and subsidizing green technology counts as the federal government’s “largest-ever investment” in climate change mitigation, according to The Washington Post, and relies on tax law revisions, including a 15% minimum tax on billion-dollar corporations that now pay nothing, plus a new tax on corporate tax buybacks and new funding for the Internal Revenue Service. Democrats claim a $300-billion reduction in the federal deficit, although the fiscal analysis is not yet final, according to WaPo. 

The Senate passed the bill last weekend along party lines, 51-50, with Vice President Harris breaking the tie.

Upshot: Though progressive Democrats will have to get over, or hide, their disappointment that their party’s majority in Congress could not pass the much larger Build Back Better bill, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 now stands as the latest and best argument for stanching a Republican wave in November 8th’s midterm elections. Republican candidates are countering with arguments that small businesses and the middle class will be subject to greater harassment by the IRS and inflationary effects from the federal spending.

--Todd Lassa

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Contact Us

Although we’re joining Congress in taking recess through Labor Day, this is a good opportunity to voice your thoughts for the right or the left columns. Write your opinions down in the Comments box in this column or the left column, or email us at editors@thehustings.news and please include your political leanings (conservative or liberal) in the subject line.

Scroll down to read our aggregate coverage of the FBI’s search of Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and the fallout, with commentary in the left and right columns. Pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay’s commentary, “Donald Trump and the Art of the Flush” is below in the right column.

_____

The Documents Were There. Really. The FBI Took Them Back

By Jim McCraw

Whether he will be prosecuted for it or not, it is a simple fact that, if there had not been a number of classified documents still inside Mar-A-Lago after repeated attempts by federal authorities to return them to the National Archives, it would not have been necessary for the FBI to serve the search warrant and execute the search of the former president’s mansion on Monday.

A simple fact the Trump people resolutely refuse to understand has turned into loud accusations of political persecution. “Persecution” of a man who has been flouting the law since college, told more than 20,000 lies while in office, was impeached twice, lost big in 2020, told The Big Lie about the election, and fomented the January 6th attack on the Capitol, continues to evade and flout the law, but is still somehow a great guy who deserves another chance to run the country.

The right has accused the Biden administration of another witch hunt, while the White House says it has been completely unaware of the timing of execution of the warrant. The White House would have not scheduled Biden’s signing of the CHIPS Act on the same day it would be overshadowed by the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago. 

That wasn’t enough to keep the right from bleating instantly about a witch hunt, persecution, and “weaponizing” of the Justice Department. The FBI serves warrants on private citizens in all kinds of federal investigations every day. Donald J. Trump is a private citizen with Secret Service protection, but a private citizen, nevertheless, who had access to classified documents and information for four years and illegally retained some of those documents, contents unknown, which are the property of the American people, not Donald Trump. That’s as much as we know about the FBI affidavit or the search warrant. The documents were there, and they were taken away. Trump’s lawyers have an invoice of items removed from Mar-a-Lago, and they have the right to release that invoice to the public.

For legal actions, warrants and searches involving a former president to even happen in the first place requires very, very careful sequential steps by the DOJ, the FBI, local police, and of course, the Secret Service, which was duly informed prior to the early morning visit to Mar-a-Lago.  The documents were there, illegally, and the FBI took them away.

•••

View from the Left

And so the hard-right continues to lambast the FBI and Justice Department for Monday’s FBI seizure of 12 boxes of documents that belong to the federal government from Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. The MAGA-right are listening to the conspiracy social media-right, insisting that the ex-president continues to be mistreated, continues to be the victim of a deep-state witch hunt. This could mean another civil war.

Some even suggest that perhaps the FBI planted those dozen banker’s boxes full of papers found in Mar-a-Lago’s basement. Conversely, The Wall Street Journal reports that it appears to be a Trump insider who tipped off the Justice Department that Trump failed to return all the boxes they had demanded be returned months ago.

Our estimable pundit-at-large, Stephen Macaulay, weighs in on all this on the other side of this page, in the right column. Spoiler alert: Macaulay is, once again not the least bit sympathetic toward Trump. What is Macaulay doing in the right column, you ask? He has always leaned right as a conservative in the traditional sense of the adjective and would consider authoritarian populists like the ex-president to be the true RINOs.

Whether your politics are to the right or left of Stephen Macaulay, you are invited to tell us what you think in the Comments box in this column or in the one on the right, or to email editors@thehustings.news. You’re even invited to defend Donald J. Trump if that’s your thing. Please be civil in your comments, and please avoid false or misleading statements. Your comments may be edited for length or clarity, though not for point of view.

--TL

_____

FBI Removed 11 Sets of Docs from Mar-a-Lago

(FRI 8/12/22)

Some marked ‘top secret’ … and meant to be only available in special government facilities, according to documents taken from ex-President Trump’s Florida estate, as reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The FBI took about 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note and Trump’s executive grant of clemency to his ally, Roger Stone. Information about the “President of France” was included in the list, which is in a seven-page document included with the search warrant granted by a federal magistrate judge in Florida.

The FBI’s list includes one set of documents marked “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” (for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information”) the WSJ reports. Agents collected four sets of top secret documents and three sets each of secret documents and of confidential documents. The list gave no other details. 

Trump’s attorneys say that he used his authority to declassify the material before he left office. The president has power to do this, according to the WSJ, but only under a process described by federal regulations. 

Regarding that French president: The FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago to look for nuclear documents and other items, The Washington Post reported earlier. France, for what it’s worth, is Continental Europe’s only designated nuclear weapons state.

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich’s response: “The Biden administration is in obvious damage control after their botched raid where they seized the President’s picture books, a ‘hand written note’ and declassified documents. This raid of President Trump’s home was not just unprecedented, but unnecessary.”

Fact-check:

•It was a legal FBI search, not a “raid.” 

•Trump is ex-president, not president. 

•According to the White House, Biden had no knowledge of the search until Trump himself announced it Monday night.

Some Republicans back off: Congressional Republicans are “contorting” themselves over details of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Politico reports. “As new information emerged about the circumstances behind the FBI search … the contrast drew starker between Republicans advancing a knee-jerk defense of the former president and those who are simply calling for additional disclosures” by the Justice Department, including Ohio’s Rep. Mike Turner, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

--Todd Lassa

_____________________________________

Garland Seeks to Unseal Mar-a-Lago Warrant (FRI 8/12/22)

By Todd Lassa

UPDATE: Ex-President Trump has called for the "immediate release" of the Justice Department's search warrant and property receipt for the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, per NPR, though Trump's own lawyers have always had the right to release these documents themselves.

The Justice Department has filed a motion in the Southern District of Florida seeking to unseal the search warrant and property receipt for the FBI search of Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland announced in a rare public statement Thursday afternoon. Garland confirmed that the search was conducted in his authority and used the public forum to defend the actions of his department and of the FBI. 

Copies of the warrant and FBI receipt were provided to the former president’s counsel at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the search, as required by law, Garland said. In accordance with federal law and ethics rules and obligations, the AG was not able to give further details, but Garland said he had to make “certain points” after the strong reaction to the search by pro-Trump followers and pro-MAGA media:

•“I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter.”

•“The department does not take such decisions lightly. When possible, it is standard practice to seek less-intrusive means as an alternative to a search and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.”

•On the  “unfounded attacks on the FBI and Justice Department agents and prosecutors; I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked. The men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are dedicated, patriotic public servants. Every day they protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism and other threats to their safety while safeguarding our personal rights. They do so at great sacrifice and risk to themselves…

“I am honored to work alongside them.”

_____________________________________

...meanwhile... (THU 8/11/22)

'Deplorable and dangerous' ... FBI Director Christopher Wray's reaction to Trump supporters circulating threats online toward his agents after carrying out a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago Monday. "I'm always concerned about threats to law enforcement," the FBI chief, appointed by President Trump in 2017, said in a press conference following a visit to the Omaha field office. "Violence against law enforcement is not the answer, no matter who you're upset with." (Per USA Today.)

•••

Gas drops below $4/gallon ... The average price per gallon for regular unleaded in the U.S. is $3.99 as of Thursday, AAA reports, down from a peak of $5.016 per gallon on June 14.

•••

Fomenting civil war? ... Rhetoric from what constitutes the right wing these days raged on over the FBI’s search of Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago to recover a dozen boxes of classified government documents airlifted with the ex-president to his Florida compound. 

Trump was in Manhattan Monday when the FBI descended on the compound with warrant in hand, and Wednesday he appeared before New York State Attorney Gen. Letitia James for her questioning in the Trump Organization’s civil trial. Of course, Trump evoked the Fifth Amendment to all but one question, The New York Times reports – he confirmed his identity. Of course, Trump’s detractors dug up a tape of him on the campaign trail in 2016, calling the Fifth a mobster tactic and asking why anyone would use it except for evade the truth. Of course he replied to his detractors by saying that now, finally, he knows what good pleading the Fifth is for.

Pleading the Fifth was a smart tactic, and good advice from Trump’s lawyers, University of Michigan law professor and former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade told NPR’s All Things Considered. Any testimony Trump would give in his company's civil trial could be used as evidence in the criminal trial, McQuade said.

--Todd Lassa

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Donald Trump and the Art of the Flush

By Stephen Macaulay

As you may recall from the early days of the pandemic, there was a monumental difficulty in acquiring toilet paper. It was just one of those things that people suddenly realized that were there to be a dearth of, things would not come out particularly well in the end. And because of that realization, the amount of available toilet paper was nearly non-existent.

One thing that continued to be available — more or less, with the emphasis on the latter — was facial tissue. The stuff you use to blow your nose with.

While the configuration of the two — toilet paper and tissues — is different, the material seems to be reasonably the same.

So people, not surprisingly, thought that if they couldn’t get their grip on Charmin, they could use the box of Kleenex.

Turned out that that was a bad move. Warnings came out that while toilet paper is formulated to be dissolved in water, that’s not the case for seemingly similar paper products. The latter would lead to clogs in sewers and septic systems.

One wonders how busy Emergency Plumbing of West Palm Beach is.

Maggie Haberman gave Axios two photographs that show the toilet in the White House residence during the Trump residency: Two pictures of torn up paper — as in copier paper, not something with a flimsiness to it — with Trump’s handwriting visible.

According to Haberman, Trump has a penchant for ripping and flushing.

So the FBI searches Mar-A-Logo.

There is a federal law, the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which, among other things, according to the National Archives:

  • Establishes that Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.

Hmm . . . seems that Trump has taken a whole lot of documents when he left Washington. Back in January the National Archives and Records Administration got 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago.

Presumably there were more.

There is a federal law. If he didn’t “automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist,” isn’t that, ipso facto, a crime?

Maybe it is much simpler.

Possibly the Justice Department was worried about the plumbing situation in Palm Beach.

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news