Much Ado About an Unknown Something

By Ken Zino

The report’s introduction and conclusion, as well as a section where the grand jurors expressed unease that some witnesses may have lied under oath in the partial report released Thursday by Fulton County, Georgia, Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney confirmed what is already publicly known. A crime regarding an allegation of election fraud has likely been committed. The Grand jury found by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud was committed.

There isn’t enough here for me to comment on, so I’ll have to wait for the widely expected indictments. Like detective Sam Spade throughout most of The Maltese Falcon, we know that people are lying. We still don’t know how many people in this pending case shot to kill American Democracy. Interesting coincidences – in both cases there is an overweight man (described in Dashiell Hammett’s classic detective novel with a politically incorrect epithet for his physical appearance), a lying blonde, and perfidious relatives.

Any recommendations on who should or should not be prosecuted will remain secret for now to protect his or her due process rights, McBurney wrote in the opinion ordering the skimpy release (just four of its nine pages were released) today. The cast of characters who testified over several months include clear Trump supporters – disbarred attorney Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. There are Georgia politicians, starting at the top with Gov. Brian Kemp. How about the 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were its “duly elected and qualified” electors?

So, I await Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to say something to the effect that I don’t care who loves you, I’m not going to play the sap for you. The stuff that dreams are made of?

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What is Left

Write to us about ...

•Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), 89, will not seek re-election in 2024. California Reps. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff have already announced they will run for the Democratic nomination for her seat.

•Coverage and analysis of President Biden’s State of the Union address, plus commentary by Ken Zino, “Biden’s Strategy Wins,” this column and Stephen Macaulay, “Say Goodbye, Joe,” in the right column.

•As Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders gave the traditional opposing-party response to Biden’s State of the Union address (right column), Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) gave a response on behalf of the progressive Working Families Party (this column).

•••

What do you think? Go to the Comments section in this column, or the one in the right column if that’s how you lean, or email editors@thehustings.news and type “for the left column” or “for the right column” in the subject line.

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Georgia Grand Jury Prescribes Perjury Charges

The 24-member Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury investigating Donald J. Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 electoral votes recommends the Fulton County district attorney’s office pursue indictments against one or more individuals it believes have committed perjury under oath. Among the 75 witnesses who gave testimony during the eight-month investigation led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis were Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it. The grand jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Four of nine pages of the grand jury report were released Thursday under order by Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney.

The grand jury also found that “no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that would result in overturning that election” … Nowhere to find 11,780 votes to flip for Trump.

Four of the grand jury report's nine pages have been released. You can read them here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23683579-ga-special-purpose-grand-jury-report

--Edited and compiled by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

…meanwhile…

(Chart: 12-month percentage change in the CPI on selected categories)

(TUE 9/13/22)

CPI Slips Slightly, Not Enough: The Consumer Price Index slipped just a bit in August to an annual rate of 8.3%, from 8.5% annually in July, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. It is not enough for Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Averages fell nearly 4% by late afternoon, anticipating a likely three-quarter interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve when they meet next week. The CPI reached a four-decade high of 9.1% annually for June.

Leading price increases in August were shelter, food (+0.8%), food at home (+0.7%) and medical care, partly offset by a 10.6% drop in the gasoline index. The energy index was off 5.0%.

Used cars and trucks dropped by 0.1% to an annual inflation rate of 7.8%, though new vehicle prices rose 0.8% for the month, to a 10.1% annual rate.

AAA reports…The national average for a price of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.707 per gallon on Tuesday, down from $3.779 one week ago. This compares to a record-high $5.016 per gallon per AAA data for June 14.

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DOJ Issues More than 30 Subpoenas, Seize Two Phones in 1/6 Probe: The Justice Department issued more than 30 subpoenas in its January 6 Capitol insurrection inquiry in the last week, according to joint reporting by The New York Times and CNN, and seized electronic devices of Trump advisor Boris Epshteyn and campaign strategist Mike Roman in the swing states’ “fake electors” attempt. Among subpoena recipients was ex-President Trump’s former social media director, David Scavino.

Former New York City police commissioner and friend of former America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Bernard Kerik, who promoted baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, was issued a subpoena by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. Kerik has been implicated in alleged plans to overturn the election for Trump in Congress’ official Electoral College count on January 6.

--Todd Lassa

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Like Beating a Dead Election Results Challenge

By Todd Lassa

If you think you’ve heard everything from the eighth hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^thAttack on the United States Capitol before, it’s because you watched it in horror that day, and maybe watched most, or all seven, previous hearings.

Thursday night, the panel filled in Donald J. Trump’s 187 minutes of public “absence” that day with loyal Republican White House aides testifying he ignored their pleas to call off the mob as he tried to disrupt the ceremonial Electoral College count.

D.C. Metro Police Sgt. Mark Robinson testified on video that Trump wanted to return to the Capitol after Secret Service drove him back to the White House and put the motorcade on standby for 45 minutes. Trump knew within 15 minutes of returning to the White House that the Capitol had been breached, he said.

Trump then spent the next two-and-a-half hours watching Fox News from the White House dining room. From 11:06 a.m. to 6:45 p.m., the committee said, no calls to the president were entered into the White House logs.

But the president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called Trump for about four minutes beginning at 1:39 p.m., Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), of the panel said, and at 1:49 p.m. the D.C. police called the attack a riot. Trump responded by tweeting a video of his speech at the Ellipse from that morning.

In his video testimony, Trump administration counsel Pat Cipollone testified that he and everyone else in the White House except the president wanted the president to call off the riot from the moment its intensity was apparent on TV.

Former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, who testified live with former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger (both pictured above) said Thursday she supported a move to get Trump to record a video from the press briefing room, less than a 60-second walk from the dining room, telling his followers to leave the Capitol.

Trump did not budge, and instead took an eight-minute call from Giuliani at 2:03 p.m. At 2:13 p.m., the Capitol building was breached and rioters entered. An anonymous White House security official testified on an audio recording that members from the vice president’s security detail, holed up with Mike Pence in his Capitol office, were beginning to fear for their own lives. The security detail were “close to pressing to use lethal weapons, or worse,” and were calling family with goodbyes.

Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet said that Mike Pence “did not have the courage to do what should have been done to defend our country and the Constitution,” and that prompted the mob to turn on the vice president and call for his hanging.

Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who, in his opening remarks, praised Trump’s foreign policy on China trade and the Middle East Abraham Accord “decided to resign after that tweet. … I simply did not want to be associated with the events that were unfolding at the Capitol.”

Matthews, the former deputy press secretary, called it a “bad tweet” that “essentially gave the green light to these people.” Supporters “truly latch on to every word and every tweet” from Trump. The president called one of his minions, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who had to end the call so he could evacuate himself from the Capitol. The 1/6 committee showed the infamous photo of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) raising his fist in support of the insurrectionists, then moments later running away from the rioters inside the Capitol.

Trump tweeted at 2:38 p.m. and 3:13 p.m., calling on his supporters to “stay peaceful,” but Trump “already knew the mob was attacking the police,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said. One rioter’s two-way radio broadcast said that Trump had told them to support the police, but said nothing about the safety of members of Congress.

Fox News personalities joined the White House staff in urging Trump to call off his supporters and to condemn their actions. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) tweeted a video asking Trump to call it off and President-elect Biden told him to “demand an end to this siege.”

Finally, at 4:17 p.m., Trump tweeted a video from the Rose Garden telling rioters to go home, that they were “special” and he “loved” them. By now, the National Guard and FBI began to deploy on the Capitol.

Trump had rejected a Rose Garden script that asked his supporters to “leave the Capitol in a peaceful way. He instead began the message by repeating “fraudulent election” claims.

“I was shocked by the fact that he chose to begin the video by repeating the lie that the election was stolen,” Matthews said. She found it heinous that she may have to defend Trump’s words. “I knew I was leaving (the White House job) that evening.”

Kinzinger showed Trump’s last tweet of the day, from 6:01 p.m., in which he begins, “These are the things that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away … remember the day forever.”

“He showed absolutely no remorse,” Kinzinger said.

Testimony bled into January 7, when both Pottinger and Cipollone officially resigned. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows described to him that Trump was “very emotional and in a very bad place.”

January 6 panel vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), standing in for COVID-stricken chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who briefly appeared via video, concluded the hearings saying Trump should not “be even trusted with another position of authority again.”

The committee continues its investigative work in August, when its first report is due, and its next set of hearings are scheduled to begin in September.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

The Turbulent Winds of Joe’s Presidency Have Just Begun to Blow

By Andrew Boyd

President-elect Biden (there, I said it) was speaking recently to a group of Black Lives Matter activists and mistakenly, I imagine, said the quiet part out loud, in essence imploring the group to drop the “Defund the police” sloganeering, just until after the Georgia Senate runoffs, mind you. Joe isn’t great on the nuance. He’s also the guy who keeps saying stupid crap like police should just shoot perpetrators in the legs.

Barack Obama, by contrast, is an exceptionally talented messenger, and respected as such, I believe. The party would be wise to listen, but its radical left is young, avaricious and impatient for change, and when the old guard says “shhh,” well, they're likely to do what young whippersnappers do, which is to double down. Where things go from here is anyone’s guess.

The AOC wing (God save us all) has made it plain that when they say defund the police, that’s precisely what they mean. Credit for the honesty on at least this one point, I suppose. Indeed, the prevailing rhetorical winds of the D part blow straight from the mouths of the social justice squad, and it’s going to be an incredibly hard gale against which to tack, particularly for the likes of Joe, who is less the accomplished sailor than the well-oiled old weathervane. Also, he’s got Kamala with a strainer full of Chai Cyanide Evening Brew hanging from a chain about her neck, just waiting to strike. Poor old goat.

Oh, and for the record, while it might surprise some, I too believe that we need police reform, though my prescription runs afoul of the ‘defund’ bit. I think what we really need is more policing, a hell of a lot more, including aggressive stop and frisk, and broken windows policies of the kind a somewhat saner Rudy Giuliani used to astonishing effect during his tenure as America’s mayor.

Moreover, I think police are overworked, underpaid and asked to do the hardest job there is this side of soldier or Biden’s food taster: to be in near-constant contact with the worst elements of our human nature, and still behave rationally and with infallible precision. Among the roughly 800,000 men and women in blue, there are undoubtedly more than a handful of really bad apples, and they should be sorted appropriately.

More training, education, rest, and emotional and psychological support is needed; and with that, unquestionably, an absolute maximum of transparency and full accountability within the bounds of the law.

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I am Just Over It

By Michelle Naranjo

I have two different friends of different generations: one millennial and one boomer, and both are consistently two to three days behind the news cycle. The former has a penchant for sending texts with screenshots of the circus that has become the Trump campaign post-election, have typically been passed around Twitter for at least 24 hours, and have already expired like a dad joke. The latter takes to Facebook to announce political news that is often so dated, the accompanying commentary/rant is out of touch with current events.

It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does, but it’s so annoying. They get outraged and amused at stuff I’m way over. And that is because the stream of idiocy feels endless one month after election day.

This brand of annoyance also has become the general reaction to the seemingly never-ending string of failed lawsuits, hearings, and press conferences led by Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

President Trump’s Twitter account has become a string of outrage about a rigged election (a false claim, as Twitter is quick to annotate). Followers are leaving the spectacle in droves since the sole focus appears to be on overturning an election that was conducted legally and not on the exploding pandemic.

In an attempt to get more airtime, Trump traveled to Georgia Saturday night to lead a rally under the auspices of supporting the Republican senate candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. What actually happened was an appearance by the two candidates drowned out to chants of “four more years” and Trump delivering his usual level of speech that is wearing out the fact-checkers.

And we learned that he likes cucumbers.

After four years of this presidency and an especially difficult 2020, a general air of exhaustion fills the atmosphere. The people complicit in this, from the Republican politicians refusing to acknowledge Biden won, to the rabid supporters who don’t appear to understand math, let alone how a democratic election works, only reveal deeper and deeper levels of racism, ignorance, and greed.

And it is annoying. I am way over it all. Trump doesn’t need to concede. He needs to get out of the way and let us all get on with healing and recovery.

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Get out of the way, President Trump.

Trump Won’t Celebrate National Pancake Day

By Michelle Naranjo

“Denial is a save now, pay later scheme.”

― Gavin de Becker, "The Gift of Fear"

If you were to look at TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter, you would think it is National Pancake Day. But, alas, it is a passive-aggressive collective statement from sarcastic users to Trump supporters promoting a Million MAGA March, focused on their conclusion that there was widespread voter fraud in the recent presidential election. President Trump keeps claiming there was fraud committed, so they believe it. There are a lot of JPGs and GIFs of pancakes out there.

After 18 failed lawsuits filed in the key states that Trump would have liked to have won, the projected tally is 306 electoral votes for Biden, with Trump receiving 232: Ironically, the exact margin Trump got when he triumphed over Hillary Clinton. Like Biden, she won the popular vote, while Trump didn’t in 2016, or 2020.

Even as the law firms representing Trump in his court battles to regain electoral votes resign from their duties, Trump has committed to proceed with his desperate battle; most recently, appointing Rudy Giuliani to be in charge of the lawsuits. Both Democratic and Republican election leaders in swings states have stated that there is no evidence. They refuse to follow Trump’s last gasp that he doesn’t have to leave office because they will not change their process for selecting state electors. International election observers also stated that there were no significant irregularities.

Super Trump supporter Sheldon Adelson’s Nevada newspaper, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, even told the president that it was time to pack his bags, stating, “Mr. Trump lost this election because he ultimately didn’t attract enough votes and failed to win a handful of swing states that broke his way in 2016.”

A group of two-dozen chief officers of major U.S. companies met and determined that should Trump try to prevent a transition to the Biden team, they would consider stopping donations to political action committees and even relocate their corporate headquarters.

And yet, Trump refuses to concede the election with all of the mounting lack of fraud evidence. This decision not to give in is not denial: He knows that he lost and is acting the sore loser. However, it is a decision that widens the division in the United States and makes the transition of power very difficult for the Biden/Harris team.

If not for the headlines and bizarre tweets proclaiming victory from the accounts of Trump, his children, his press secretary, a few Republican politicians who must have no desire to be re-elected, and a bunch of angry people on Parler, Biden and his team keep marching forward. The week began with a meeting of the president-elect and a Covid-19 response team. Biden may not be getting daily briefings, as is customary by this time post-election, but he is steadfast in getting to Jan. 20, 2021, also known as inauguration day.

The official Biden/Harris Transition Team website has listed the priorities:

Covid-19
Economic recovery
Racial equity
Climate change

Clearly, Biden is determined not to acknowledge the Shrek in the room because that would give it legitimacy. What he is addressing are the issues affecting all Americans. He may not officially take office until Jan. 20, but he is already leading the way. And there will be pancakes.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”