How Jeff Bezos Smothered Pete Hegseth News because Hunter Biden Was Pardoned of Already Declined Charges

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When I went to bed last night, the WaPo was feeding me the following stories at the top of its digital front page.

WaPo has since added a story about Biden’s attempt to surge weapons to Ukraine before Trump cuts them off.

There was not and is not any story dedicated to Kash Patel’s promises to target Trump’s enemies at FBI — a story that not only is more urgent than any of the seven Hunter Biden pardon stories, but is fundamentally tied to the how and why of the Hunter Biden pardon.

There was not and is not any story on Jane Mayer’s report about how Pete Hegseth,

was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.

Even as Hegseth made visits with the Senators whose vote he would need to be confirmed (definitely watch this video), the rag owned by defense contractor Jeff Bezos chose to litter its front page with seven stories and columns about Hunter Biden’s pardon rather than report out that Hegseth has a history of failing to manage the budgets of even just two medium-sized non-profits.

And it’s not just that Bezos’ rag buried far more urgent news about Trump’s nominees.

It’s that (with the exception of this column explaining the risks and difficulty of seizing weapons from addicts) the Hunter Biden stories were not all that useful.

Will Lewis has again chosen to platform Matt Viser’s dick pic sniffing about Joe Biden, this time trying to drive the controversy about the pardon; as far as I’m aware, Viser still has not disclosed to WaPo’s readers that an error in his own reporting caused a false scandal about Hunter’s art sales.

Viser’s 1800-word post includes 22 words that address, with no specifics, Pam Bondi and Kash Patel’s promise to persecute Trump’s enemies: “His picks for attorney general, Pam Bondi, and for FBI director, Kash Patel, have urged retribution against Trump’s political adversaries and critics.” It does, however, float an inaccurate quote also included in this Aaron Blake piece (as well as these Betsy Woodruff and Ken Vogel stories), claiming that Hunter’s pardon is broader than any since Nixon’s pardon.

Former Pardon Attorney Margaret Love hates this pardon and she’s not afraid to mislead reporters to criticize it, as when she told Woodruff that Nixon was the only precedent.

“I have never seen language like this in a pardon document that purports to pardon offenses that have not apparently even been charged, with the exception of the Nixon pardon,” said Margaret Love, who served from 1990 to 1997 as the U.S. pardon attorney, a Justice Department position devoted to assisting the president on clemency issues.

“Even the broadest Trump pardons were specific as to what was being pardoned,” Love added.

Love’s claim conflicts with what she herself laid out to Politico, the very same outlet, when Mike Flynn was pardoned four years ago.

“Pardons are typically directed at specific convictions or at a minimum at specific charges,” said Margaret Love, former pardon attorney for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who now leads the Collateral Consequences Resource Center. “I can think of only one other pardon as broad as this one, extending as it does to conduct that has not yet been charged, and that is the one that President Ford granted to Richard Nixon.”

“In fact, you might say that this pardon is even broader than the Nixon pardon, which was strictly cabined by his time as president,“ Love said. “In contrast, the pardon granted to Flynn appears to extend to conduct that took place prior to Trump‘s election to the presidency, and to bear no relationship to his service to the president, before or after the election.“ [my emphasis]

And I believe even then, Love misstated the intended scope of Flynn’s pardon.

Like Hunter’s pardon, Flynn’s pardon excused the crimes included in his charging documents (false statements, including false statements about being an unregistered agent of Turkey). While Hunter’s pardon specifically invoked the conduct in his Delaware and Los Angeles dockets, Flynn’s pardon excused conduct reviewed in two jurisdictions, DC and EDVA. Like Hunter’s pardon, which would cover the false statements referral from Congress, Flynn’s pardon would have covered the contradictory sworn statements he made as he tried to renege on his plea deal. But Flynn’s pardon also covered,

any and all possible offenses arising out of facts and circumstances known to, identified by, or in any manner related to the investigation of the Special Counsel,

This pardon attempted to excuse any crime based on a fact that once lived in Robert Mueller’s brain or case files.

As I laid out here, that certainly would have covered referrals from Mueller elsewhere (including to DOD), it might have attempted to pardon crimes in process, if (for example) Flynn’s relationship with Russia developed into something more in the future. Flynn’s pardon, unlike Hunter’s didn’t have an end date, and as a result, if Congress wants to continue to harass Hunter about stuff he just accepted a pardon for, he’ll have less protection than Trump intended Flynn to have.

And while Republicans might argue that Hunter’s allegedly false claim to Congress — regarding how he cut Tony Bobulinski out of a deal with CEFC to protect his family’s name — served to protect his father, even the most feverish Republican fantasies would amount to three Biden men profiting from a Chinese company after Biden left the White House and before he decided to run again. Flynn’s conflicting claims about whether “The Boss is aware” of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, including regarding undermining sanctions, served to protect Trump’s actions as incoming President. (Another thing WaPo decided was less important than seven pieces about Hunter’s pardon was that Chinese national Justin Sun, who has been charged with fraud by the SEC, just sent Donald Trump $18 million.) That is, you can measure the pardon in terms of familial closeness to the President granting it (none of these stories mention Charles Kushner, much less his nomination to be Ambassador to France); you can also measure the pardon in terms of the silence or lies about the guy giving the pardon it buys. And any one of about ten pardons from Trump, including the Flynn one, were far more corrupt by that measure.

But here’s the other reason why Blake’s piece, one of the seven pieces littering the front page instead of stories about Kash Patel or Hegseth’s unfitness, is not useful. Here’s how Blake introduces the scope of Hunter’s pardon.

Biden didn’t just pardon his son for his convictions on tax and gun charges, but for any “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024.”

That’s a nearly 11-year period during which any federal crime Hunter Biden might have committed — and there are none we are aware of beyond what has already been adjudicated — can’t be prosecuted. It notably covers when he was appointed to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2014 all the way through Sunday, well after the crimes for which he was prosecuted.

Hunter Biden hasn’t been charged for his activities with regard to Burisma or anything beyond his convictions, and nothing in the public record suggests criminal charges could be around the bend. Congressional Republicans have probed the Burisma matter and Hunter Biden extensively and could seemingly have uncovered chargeable crimes if they existed, but haven’t done so.

Blake glosses over a great deal with his reference to things that have “already been adjudicated,” and in doing so, ignores the problem. Yes, both prosecutors and Republicans in Congress looked long and hard for something to hang a Burisma charge onto; yes, none of them found it. But — here’s the important bit — they still want to pursue one anyway.

The investigation into Hunter Biden started six years ago, based off a Suspicious Activity Report tied to a payment to a sex worker. Investigators tried to turn that into a criminal investigation based on the same Burisma focus that Rudy Giuliani was chasing; in fact, investigators first got data from Apple on the day Trump released the Perfect Phone Call, a transcript that may or may not have expunged a specific reference to Burisma. According to Joseph Ziegler, his supervisor at the time documented the problem of chasing a tax investigation that tracked Trump’s public demands for dirt on the Bidens related to Burisma.

You can actually trace how investigators cycled through one or another potential FARA violation — Burisma, Romania, CEFC — each time, with even the disgruntled IRS agents conceding they couldn’t substantiate those FARA cases (not least because Hunter was pretty diligent about not doing influence peddling himself, at bringing in others to do any of that kind of lobbying). Tips from Gal Luft — awaiting extradition on foreign agent charges — and Alexander Smirnov — awaiting trial on false statements — were key elements of that investigation.

But we know that in the precise period when someone was leaking to try to pressure prosecutors to bring certain charges, David Weiss had decided not to charge 2014 and 2015. Here’s how Gary Shapley wrote up the October 7, 2022 meeting that set him off.

In 2022, David Weiss told Shapley he would not charge 2014 and 2015, which is one thing that led Shapley to start reaching out to Congress to complain.

Prosecutors included more detail in Hunter’s tax indictment.

a. The Defendant timely filed, after requesting an extension, his 2014 individual income tax return on IRS Form 1040 on October 9, 2015. The Defendant reported owing $239,076 in taxes, and having already paid $246,996 to the IRS, the Defendant claimed he was entitled to a refund of $7,920. The Defendant did not report his income from Burisma on his 2014 Form 1040. All the money the Defendant received from Burisma in 2014 went to a company, hereafter “ABC”, and was deposited into its bank account. ABC and its bank account were owned and controlled by a business partner of the Defendant’s, Business Associate 5. Business Associate 5 was also a member of Burisma’s Board of Directors. The Defendant received transfers of funds from the ABC bank account and funds from the ABC bank account were used to make investments on the Defendant’s behalf. Because he owned ABC, Business Associate 5 paid taxes on income that he and the Defendant received from Burisma. Starting in November 2015, the Defendant directed his Burisma Board fees to an Owasco, PC bank account that he controlled.

One reason Hunter wasn’t charged for 2014 and 2015 is because Devon Archer was paying taxes in that period.

But the point is (as reflected in Blake’s note this was all adjudicated), a prosecutor made that decision. And Republicans in Congress and, specifically, Kash Patel, squealed about the injustice of not charging Hunter because the evidence didn’t merit charges.

This decision and the backlash with those dissatisfied by it dictates the lengthy period of Hunter’s pardon. Not just because they want to charge Burisma whether or not there’s evidence of a crime. But because the five year statute of limitations for FARA and the six year SOL on tax crimes, to charge anything related to Burisma, they’d have to apply crimes — like Espionage or certain kinds of Wire Fraud — that have ten year statutes of limitation.

Kash Patel and Republicans in Congress have already said they want to charge Hunter Biden regardless of whether there’s evidence to do so. When David Weiss first offered a plea deal, Trump posted that Hunter should instead have gotten a death sentence.

These people have made it clear they want to prosecute Hunter regardless of what the evidence supports. They have said that over and over. That’s what dictates the pardon, not any corruption by Biden. And to flip that on its head — to flip Trump and Kash Patel’s demand for prosecutions regardless of evidence — on its head is to cooperate in Trump’s assault on rule of law.

This is a point reflected by experts quoted in Vogel’s piece (and expanded by Kim Wehle in her own post).

Mr. Morison, who worked for years in the Office of the Pardon Attorney before going into private practice, added that the Bidens may have seen risk in crafting the pardon grant more narrowly.

“I assume that Hunter’s lawyers were worried that an especially vindictive Trump DOJ would have looked for something to charge him with if they were too specific, so they asked for a blanket pardon, subject only to a fairly broad date range,” he wrote in an email.

Kimberly Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, predicted that if Mr. Trump’s Justice Department were to charge Hunter Biden, he would raise the pardon in a motion to dismiss the case.

Ms. Wehle, the author of a recent book detailing how the lack of constraints on presidential clemency powers invite abuse, said in an email that it was Mr. Trump — not President Biden — who initiated “the norm-violating behavior” by pledging to use the Justice Department to prosecute his enemies.

“This is not a corrupt pardon,” she said in an email. “It’s about taking care of a family member knowing what Trump will do otherwise.”

The reason you have to pardon broadly is because Trump has demanded an outcome divorced from evidence. And to get to his desired outcome, he would have to do something expansive, something that could not be foreseen by the scope of the existing investigation that (as Blake notes) has already been adjudicated.

You can tell this story about how broad the pardon is — structured very similarly to the Mike Flynn one.

But if you leave out the story of how this investigation from the start paralleled Trump’s extra-legal effort to gin up dirt on Joe Biden’s son, if you leave out the fact that even in his first term, Trump’s DOJ solicited information from at least one Russian spy and a Chinese agent to pursue dirt on Hunter Biden, then you are flipping the matter of justice on its head. That’s what Trump did already, in his desperation to find something to hang on Hunter Biden. And particularly given his picks of Bondi and Patel (the latter of whom played a role in extorting a foreign country for such dirt, too), there’s no telling what Trump will do in a second term.

That’s what dictates the terms of this pardon. A prosecutor issued a declination for charges related to 2014 and 2015, and almost the entire Republican party said, we’re going to find something anyway. And if you hide that detail, you’re burying the most crucial information, just like you’re burying detrimental information about Hegseth and Patel below a seventh post on Hunter Biden.

This is what a captive oligarch press looks like: Burying detrimental information on the guy who might oversee Jeff Bezos’ defense contracts, while hiding the reasons why the Hunter Biden pardon looks like it does.

America Just Failed the Test of Responding to Trump’s Politicized Prosecutions

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Let’s imagine that, two years from now, Pam Bondi rolls out charges against some onetime adversary of Donald Trump. To the extent that journalists will still be employed and reading court filings, to the extent that prosecutors under Emil Bove (who at SDNY oversaw a team sanctioned for discovery violations) comply with discovery requirements, the adversary in question learns the following about his prosecution:

  • The case started when an investigator started looking into a transnational trafficking network
  • The investigator discovered that the prominent adversary had paid one of the sex workers trafficked in the network
  • Rather than pursuing the traffickers, the investigator used the payment for sex as cause to open an investigation
  • Of course, no one is going to charge a John … so the investigator starts pulling divorce records and four year old tax returns to try to move from that payment for sex work to something that can be charged
  • Then the investigator started incorporating oppo research from Peter Schweizer into his investigation
  • Kash Patel’s FBI set up protected ways to accept tips from Trump supporters who’ve doctored documents to create a crime
  • Trump called up Bondi and told her to take more aggressive steps
  • Trump called up foreign leaders asking for help on this prosecution
  • Bondi then set up a way to launder that information from foreign sources, including known spies, into the investigation of the adversary
  • Patel’s FBI asked a partisan informant to fabricate claims against the adversary
  • Trump publicly called out prosecutors — resulting in them and their children being followed — because they had not yet charged his adversary
  • Ultimately, the adversary got charged on 5-year old dirt, and only then, after charging, did prosecutors quickly do the investigative work to win the case at trial

Now, as I’ve described it, you surely imagine you’d say, wow, that looks like a thoroughly corrupt prosecution, a clear case of Trump using DOJ to punish his adversaries.

Right?

It’s not so much that investigators didn’t, after the fact, find a crime to charge. They did. If you investigate most high profile people long enough, you’ll find something to charge, particularly if multiple people come to DOJ with doctored evidence to help create that crime.

It’s that someone found the name of an adversary in the digital records of crimes that were more important to investigate, and instead of pursuing that crime, used the electronic record as an excuse to keep looking until they found some evidence of a crime against Trump’s adversary.

Everyone would recognize that’s what happened, right?

Of course not. Of course no one would recognize that that was a political prosecution.

We need no further proof than the fact that none of those very same details showed up in any of the coverage of the Hunter Biden investigation. Not now that he has been pardoned. Not when all these details came out last year. Not in any of the retrospectives of the times Trump demanded investigations on his adversaries.

What will happen instead is that a bunch of self-important DC scribes will chase the most salacious allegations, provide endless headlines about sex workers and wild parties. The DC scribes will ignore every detail about the legal investigation — every one!! — and instead use the prosecution as an opportunity to sell political scandal. And also, they will point to their Tiger Beat coverage as proof, they say, they are not politically biased.

Rather than diligently rooting out the obviously politicized prosecution, the press will be complicit in it.

And rather than deciding that the adversary was the target of an obviously politicized prosecution, American public opinion would instead decide that the adversary was icky, and because he is icky, his statements about Trump cannot be credited.

That is what political prosecutions look like. That is, of course, precisely what the Hunter Biden prosecution was (ignoring the assurances from prosecutors who say no one with the fact set Hunter faced would be charged). Every single bullet has an analogue in the Hunter Biden case. That obviously political prosecution is what happened.

Once the GOP got the House majority, they did nothing else but platform these claims, which a different set of self-important scribes treated as an interesting process story, not an obvious case of a great abuse of government power.

And now that Biden has pardoned his son, the very same self important scribes who ignored all the signs this was a political prosecution, are giving non-stop coverage to a pardon that — unlike those of Trump’s Coffee Boy, National Security Adviser, campaign manager, personal lawyer, and rat-fucker — are not about self-protection, most with no mention of all the evidence Trump ordered up this prosecution to target Joe Biden.

The question is, what are we going to do about this, now that we have rock solid proof the press establishment is not only incapable, but wildly uninterested, in rooting out this kind of politicized prosecution — at least not when they can instead sell scandal?

In the face of seeing Pam Bondi and Kash Patel preparing to redouble efforts to find politicized prosecutions against Donald Trump’s adversaries, Joe Biden chose to end the process, with his son, at least.

I’m actually on the record opposing the pardon — but not for the reasons everyone else is. I don’t think pardoning Hunter in this circumstance is corrupt. I take Biden at his word that he changed his mind about pardoning Hunter. I’m far more interested in Trump admitting he was lying about his plans to implement Project 2025 than that Biden reneged on assurances no one much believed anyway.

I oppose the pardon because it eliminates Hunter’s standing to appeal and with those appeals to begin telling the story that the media chose to ignore. I oppose the pardon because if we don’t start laying out how Trump already politicized DOJ while there’s a good base of legitimate judges in place, it’ll be far too late.

And don’t get me wrong. I think Biden fucked this one up. Not just for saying he wouldn’t pardon Hunter, but for not taking action far earlier — like firing David Weiss the day he was inaugurated, citing Trump’s first impeachment, or pardoning Hunter and firing Weiss on November 6 — to do something about this. I think Merrick Garland shouldn’t have given Weiss himself SCO status (not least, because Weiss continues to investigate crimes — the alleged attempted framing of Joe Biden by Alexander Smirnov — to which he is a witness). I think Garland’s supervision of Special Counsels allowed the abuse of the system, repeatedly.

I’ve never, as far as I’m aware, spoken with Hunter Biden. I have, however, spoken to a good number of the people who were and who would be politically prosecuted in Trump’s second term (not including myself, of course). And the thing I’ve learned from them is because the press is complicit in their politicized prosecution, it guarantees they’ll be isolated, regardless of guilt or innocence. Because the press has unquenchable thirst for lazy dick pic sniffing, they don’t do the work of reading the court filings. Because the press thirsts for a false appearance of both sides neutrality, they’re always on the hunt for something to fit into their both sides scandal box.

And meanwhile, those very same self-important scribes were largely silent in 2020 when Trump pardoned his way out of Russian trouble, and even more silent in 2024 when they could have explained to voters that he had done so.

Whatever else you think about the Hunter Biden case and the way Joe Biden pardoned him, it is crystal clear proof that the thing defenders of democracy swear they’ll do in a second Trump term — rise to the defense of those targeted for political prosecution — they already failed to do. Whatever you think about the Hunter Biden case, the vast majority of people talking about it have absolutely no clue that it is precisely what people fear in Trump’s second term, not (just) because Hunter was charged in two indictments when others would not be, but because Trump and his people repeatedly ordered up this prosecution.

Update: Peter Baker, who wrote an otherwise thorough piece during the election about Trump’s corruption which ignored Hunter, claims to be unable to tell whether Biden’s claim that Hunter’s prosecution was politicized is true or not.

Update: Here’s a copy of a white paper Hunter’s attorneys released to describe the politicization of the case. It adds the Parnas and Scott Brady allegations to the stuff in the selective prosecution motions.

The Little Noticed Jay Clayton Pick at SDNY

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Amid the Star Wars bar menagerie of Trump Administration picks, that of Jay Clayton to be US Attorney for SDNY has gone little noticed.

But it was among the earliest picks Trump announced, on November 14, like that of Mike Huckabee to be Ambassador to Israel on November 12, weirdly early, bespeaking an unusual set of priorities.

Here’s how NYT — reporters who know the Sovereign District well — covered the Clayton pick.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday said he would pick Jay Clayton, the top Wall Street enforcer in the first Trump administration, as the head federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, a critical post for an incoming president who has vowed revenge on those who pursued him in the courts.

Mr. Trump made the announcement on his social media platform Truth Social, where he called Mr. Clayton “a highly respected business leader, counsel and public servant.” Mr. Clayton still must be confirmed by the Senate.

The office of U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is considered one of the most prestigious federal prosecutor’s offices in the nation. It holds sway over some of America’s most powerful businesses and financial institutions, and it has aggressively targeted politicians accused of corruption.

[snip]

Mr. Clayton is not a former prosecutor — often seen as a prerequisite to being named as a Southern District U.S. attorney — but he has long wanted the Manhattan post, said Steven Peikin, a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell who served as his co-director of enforcement at the S.E.C.

In fact, toward the end of his tenure at the S.E.C., Mr. Clayton nearly got the job when he emerged as a potential candidate to replace Geoffrey S. Berman, a Trump-appointee who then held the post.

In a surprise move, the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, announced in June 2020 that Mr. Berman had resigned as U.S. attorney for the Southern District and Mr. Clayton would replace him. But Mr. Berman denied he had stepped down. He was then fired by President Trump, an action he did not contest after he was assured his deputy, Audrey Strauss, would lead the office.

The affair was worrisome to some Justice Department officials because at the time Mr. Berman’s office was handling cases involving people close to Mr. Trump. The episode raised concerns about possible political interference in criminal investigations.

Mr. Berman, in a statement to The New York Times on Thursday evening, said of Mr. Clayton, “Jay is an exceptional lawyer and will be an excellent United States attorney.”

Clayton is a grownup, though not a prosecutor. But Trump attempted to install him once before as a way to oust the incumbent US Attorney and — it is widely understood — in an attempt to thwart ongoing investigations into Trump’s people.

Even in spite of their expertise, I don’t see a NYT story on what happened next.

First, on November 18, Merrick Garland visited SDNY to encourage AUSAs there to continue on: “You will continue in the Department’s mission, what has always been its mission: to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights.”

Then on Monday, the current US Attorney for SDNY, Damian Williams, announced he would resign on December 13, leaving his Deputy, Edward Kim, in charge.

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who has served as the chief federal law enforcement officer in the district, announced today his intention to resign his position as United States Attorney, effective 11:59 p.m. on December 13, 2024. Edward Y. Kim, who currently serves as Deputy United States Attorney, will become the Acting United States Attorney upon his departure.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Today is a bittersweet day for me, as I announce my resignation as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It is bitter in the sense that I am leaving my dream job, leading an institution I love that is filled with the finest public servants in the world. It is sweet in that I am confident I am leaving at a time when the Office is functioning at an incredibly high level – upholding and exceeding its already high standard of excellence, integrity, and independence. That success is due to the career attorneys, staff members, and law enforcement agents of this Office. Working with them during my tenure has been a privilege of a lifetime. They are worthy custodians of this Office’s tradition of doing the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons. They are patriots. They are my family. And I will miss them dearly.

In spite of NYT’s apparent reticence (or, perhaps, ongoing reporting), it was big news: WaPo’s coverage noted Williams’ close ties to Garland and Bill Barr’s past effort, described by NYT, to install Clayton as a means to oust Williams.

NYPost’s coverage instead focused on the boon this may present for Eric Adams’ case, even while noting that prosecutors plan to supersede the indictment and have a December 20 status hearing scheduled. By the end of NYPost’s story, they had moderated their headline claim that Williams’ move, will “make way for Trump’s replacement.” As they acknowledged, Williams’ resignation doesn’t make way for Clayton, at least not before he is confirmed; it makes way for Kim as the interim Acting US Attorney.

Clayton’s appointment still requires confirmation by the US Senate.

Until then, Williams’ deputy, Edward Y. Kim, is set to take over as acting US Attorney when he steps down.

We’ll see how all this plays out, as we saw how it played out in June 2020, when Barr tried to remove Geoffrey Berman before SDNY took action in August 2020 against Steve Bannon and his co-conspirators and tried to advance the investigation into Rudy Giuliani, only to have Berman lawyer up and invoke succession rules to ensure that his Deputy Audrey Strauss would continue. Unless SDNY judges take action to protect Kim, I think Trump can just replace him with another Acting US Attorney on January 20, though I’m not an SDNY lawyer and they have ways of working the law.

In any case, by announcing the Clayton pick so early, Trump ensures that incoming SJC Republicans can prioritize his confirmation — and since he’s a much higher caliber pick than Trump’s other picks — it could go quickly.

But it’s likely not Adams’ prosecution (much less Diddy’s, which NYPost also invoked) that Trump’s early pick of Clayton was an attempt to redirect. For a variety of reasons, I expect Trump will include Adams in the pardon-palooza that will kick off his Administration.

Indeed, I can’t help but notice that Trump announced this pick one day after the FBI seized the devices of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan on November 13.

The FBI seized a cellphone and other electronic devices of betting site Polymarket’s CEO, Shayne Coplan, in a raid on his New York City apartment early Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The company’s markets wagered correctly and controversially in Donald Trump’s favor in bets on who would win the presidential election, even though opinion polls showed a tight race.

Coplan, 26, was home when numerous agents entered his apartment Wednesday and he turned over his devices to authorities, the source said, adding that he has not been arrested or charged. The source said it is not clear whether Coplan or Polymarket are targets of an investigation.

“New phone, who dis?” Coplan posted on X after the raid.

Polymarket, which Coplan founded in 2020, has recently been the subject of intense debate and scrutiny over its creation of election betting markets. It brought in more than $3.6 billion from bets placed on the presidential election, including $1.5 billion on Trump and $1 billion on Vice President Kamala Harris, according to an NBC News analysis.

Speculation has swirled around the identities of major bettors who wagered on Trump and whether or not the odds and the existence of the markets could have had an effect on voters.

Though U.S. election betting is newly legal in some circumstances, Polymarket is not supposed to allow U.S. users after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission halted its operations in 2022, but its user base largely operates through cryptocurrency, which allows for easy anonymity.

There are other investigations that Trump might be trying to interrupt with this quick appointment. But the Polymarket investigation — in which FBI got a probable cause warrant targeting someone who helped Trump’s campaign within days of the election — is likely one of them.

Once before, Trump tried to install Jay Clayton at SDNY to block investigations into his people. This time around, Trump will have to find a different path than just firing the incumbent US Attorney. Because he already quit.

On Background Checks for Trump Appointees, The Magic Number Is “Four”

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Yesterday, Hugo Lowell reported that Trump wants to bypass FBI background checks until he has gutted the FBI.

Trump officials to receive immediate clearances and easier FBI vetting
Exclusive: president-elect’s team planning for background checks to occur only after administration takes over bureau

Donald Trump’s transition team is planning for all political appointees to receive sweeping security clearances on the first day and only face FBI background checks after the incoming administration takes over the bureau and its own officials are installed in key positions, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move appears to mean that Trump’s team will continue to skirt FBI vetting and may not receive classified briefings until Trump is sworn in on 20 January and unilaterally grant sweeping security clearances across the administration.

Trump’s team has regarded the FBI background check process with contempt for months, a product of their deep distrust of the bureau ever since officials turned over transition records to the Russia investigation during the first Trump presidency, the people said.

But delaying FBI vetting could also bring ancillary PR benefits for the Trump team if some political appointees run into problems during a background check, which could upend their Senate confirmation process, or if they struggle to obtain security clearances once in the White House.

In the days before this story, as I laid out here, up to five Senators have spoken with various degrees of fortitude in support of requiring FBI background checks before confirming any Trump appointee. Lisa Murkowski did so in an Alaskan interview. Then the Hill quoted four Senators at least expressing support for background checks, with Susan Collins, Kevin Cramer, and Mike Rounds joining Murkowski in questioning the value of a private firm’s review as opposed to the FBI’s.

“The FBI should do the background checks, in my judgement,” said Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), who serves as the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense and as a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the FBI has access to information gathered by law enforcement on the federal, state and local levels that private firms don’t.

“If you wanted to supplement it with a private firm, I’d say OK. But the FBI does have access to information that probably a private firm wouldn’t have, even a really good savvy one,” he said.

Cramer said a private firm could help the FBI in its background investigations, but he “sure wouldn’t leave it” entirely outside the FBI’s hands.

[snip — click through to see Murkowski’s comments]

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said not having the FBI conduct background checks for high-level nominees by the time Trump formally appoints them next year “would come under scrutiny at the congressional level.”

He said lawmakers “would want to know the validity of those individuals doing the background checks.”

“Just because the White House doesn’t request a background check out of the FBI wouldn’t then mean perhaps some committees might not ask for it,” he said.

A different Hill story, which focuses on Scott Caucus member Bill Hagerty scoffing at the value of background checks, also quotes Joni Ernst saying FBI checks would be “helpful,” at least for Pete Hegseth.

Other Senate Republicans, however, say the FBI should retain its leading role in conducting background checks, and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), a member of the Armed Services Committee, says an FBI background check of Hegseth would be “helpful.”

I get that Susan Collins has a history of backing down from principles she claims to care about. I get that some of these statements are squishy. It is also true that right wingers are already targeting Murkowski’s more categorical statement as some kind of Deep State plot.

But even as the pressure on Murkowski ratchets up, those seeking to prevent the wholesale takeover of the government by conspiracy theorists need to understand that it will take more than journalism about the risks of entrusting the intelligence community to a woman who finds Bashar al-Assad persuasive and the largest military in the world to a guy slathered with white supremacist tattoos (though experts have pointed out that for some of these positions, a proper vetting would require further intelligence involving).

It requires convincing four Republicans in the Senate to insist on doing the bare minimum by requiring background checks. In a 53-47 Senate, any four Republican block of voters, joining the Democrats, would be enough to thwart Trump’s crazier plans.

Want proof that can work? After four Republicans (and then six) came out against Matt Gaetz’ nomination, Trump conceded he didn’t have and never would get the votes.

Realizing this — understanding that the Magic Number to guard against Trump’s crazier plans is four — makes things both easier, and harder. Easier, because we know that only a quarter of Senate Republicans (including Hagerty) will reflexively support everything Trump does, at least as measured by support for Rick Scott over one of the more institutionalist Senate Majority Leader candidates. And harder, because most of these people have a history of caving and Trump will bring a great deal of pressure on them to do so again.

But that’s no reason to cede the fight ahead of time. On the contrary, it’s all the more reason to spend the time, now, to call Republican Senators who might demand background checks — to call your Republican Senator — and insist that exercise at least that minimum level of due diligence for the most powerful positions in government.

Get used to that magic number, four. Because trying to persuade four-Senator blocks of Republicans to oppose something is one of the most obvious ways to protect the country.

The Zombie Case against Trump’s Indicted Co-Conspirators

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Jack Smith signed the motion to dismiss the January 6 case against Trump, but his appellate lawyer, James Pearce, (digitally) signed the parallel request before the 11th Circuit.

Who knows whether that means anything.

But now that Smith has committed to sustaining the appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision as it applies to Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, someone needs to take over the case and write the reply, which is due on December 2. Pearce has done the primary work for all Jack Smith’s appeals and so could do so here — or, perhaps Jack Smith will close up shop, along with Pearce, and let Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar take over before she’s replaced by John Sauer in January.

One way or another, there’s likely to be a transfer of the Zombie case back to DOJ, where it will be suffocated with pillows never to be heard from again.

The decision to sustain the Nauta and De Oliveira case just long enough for Trump to shut down next year has certain ramifications I only touched in passing in this discussion with Harry Litman about what we might get in a report from Jack Smith, which is probably more accessible than this post about what declination decisions we might see (transcript here).

First, they’ve got due process rights. Meaning, you can’t say anything in a report that might endanger their ability to get a fair trial (a trial they’ll never face, of course). That may lead to redactions of the sort we saw in the original Mueller Report but which were re-released under FOIA. Or it may lead prosecutors to gloss certain things — such as the obstruction — in the report. In the chat with Litman, I noted that ABC reported that Walt Nauta and Trump went back to Mar-a-Lago after hiding documents from the FBI, which might make the report. But if it appears in there, it would need to be presented in such a way to protect Nauta’s due process rights.

It’s possible, even, that until the appeal, DOJ would avoid describing the investigative steps taken in the documents case after Smith was appointed in November 2022. The logic of Cannon’s opinion basically wiped out all that investigative work. Poof. Though it’s possible that Julie Edelstein and David Raskin — who left Smith’s team in October — have done something to recreate some of the work, such as the declassification that had happened in advance of an imagined Florida trial.

Meanwhile, sustaining the case against Nauta and De Oliveira creates an interesting dilemma for DOJ that may have repercussions for others and Trump’s DOJ going forward: how to get rid of the appeal. He would pay least political capital by just dismissing the appeal. But that would reflect a DOJ stance that Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed — something that might bind DOJ going forward (as if Pam Bondi won’t just pick Trumpy US Attorneys to do her dirty work like Bill Barr did) — though that may be unavoidable if Trump’s Solicitor General and Deputy Attorney General had both argued that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed, as they have.

But that would go some way to arguing that David Weiss’ appointment as Special Counsel is unconstitutional as well. It might give Hunter Biden, if his father doesn’t pardon him (and Alexander Smirnov, if he is convicted next month and not pardoned) cause to enjoin Weiss’ prosecutors from publishing a report; it would also make Hunter’s appeal of his charges far easier, especially in Los Angeles, where Weiss is not the confirmed US Attorney.

Which may be why (as both Litman and I suggested) Trump might want to pardon Hunter — to give the air of magnanimity to unintended consequences of his efforts to kill the case against him. To say nothing of the transparency into Trump’s first term that Hunter might get if he succeeds with his other appeals.

The case against Nauta and De Oliveira will be dead, one way or another, in two months. But until then, it’ll exist as a Zombie, having potentially unanticipated consequences.

Update: The full Jack Smith team has submitted its reply brief.

Boris’ Shakedown

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By all accounts, CNN was the first to report that lawyers for Trump conducted a review of Boris Epshteyn’s “consulting” for access to Trump. Not long after, John Solomon wrote a more thorough version of the story, including the detail that an announcement for Boris’ appointment as an Assistant to Trump in the White House has been held up as the review concluded.

A week ago, a draft of a press release was handed to transition aides announcing Epshteyn as an assistant to the president, but it was never released, several senior aides confirmed to Just the News. He has told some friends in recent days that he might prefer to stay on the outside rather than go into the administration.

Before I get into what those reports say, consider Hugo Lowell’s take, which focuses not so much on the allegations, but on an assertion that the report itself arises from in-fighting among Trump’s team.

Epshteyn remained part of Trump’s inner circle as of Monday evening, with Trump riding high on the news that special counsel prosecutors had moved to dismiss the two federal criminal cases against him – a victory he credited to Ephsteyn.

The first person that Trump called when prosecutors withdrew the cases against him was Epshteyn, according to two people with Trump at the time, which occurred just as CNN first reported the existence of the review into Epshteyn’s consultancy scheme.

For the remainder of the day, Epshteyn was on the offensive as his allies dismissed the review as an attempt by Warrington to decapitate Epshteyn after he successfully pushed for Bill McGinley to be the White House counsel, rather than Warrington, who had also been in contention for the role.

Epshteyn’s allies later portrayed the review as a political hit job capitalizing on Epshteyn’s role in pushing for the former congressman Matt Gaetz to get the nomination for attorney general before it sank under the weight of sexual misconduct allegations.

It’s unclear the event that predicated the investigation (note that Steven Cheung told multiple outlets that the review focused on others in addition to Boris). But incoming Treasury nominee Scott Bessent’s discomfort with Boris’ entreaties, going back to February and including a pitch for a basketball related business with some ties to Steve Bannon, seem to have played a key role.

Which is one question I have about this process. The various stories quote disgruntled targets, including a defense contractor whose access Boris promised to throttle going forward. CBS includes comment from Don Bolduc, who found the entire process of getting Trump’s neutrality in a New Hampshire Senate primary so distasteful, he left politics thereafter (though a Bolduc staffer was more positive about the experience).

“There’s nothing honorable about politics,” said Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general. After his failed Senate race, Bolduc enrolled in a police academy and became a rookie small-town cop at age 60.

But it doesn’t say whether Matt Gaetz paid Boris for his support for a reckless bid to be Attorney General just as the ethics report into him was completed.

Boris’ “consulting” has been public for years, in campaign finance disclosures. What seems to have happened here is that someone who, after some brawling, came out of ahead on a contentious cabinet spot, Treasury, complained about the manner in which Boris monetizes his access to Trump.

But the timing of the effort matters: given the dismissal of the federal cases against Trump, he’s unlikely to prioritize the views of those who didn’t help him beat the rap, at least for now. Heck, that may explain the conflicting stories about whether the inquiry is done or not: maybe Trump ended it once the dismissals came out.

And so six people who would like to see him gone have made sure this gets publicized.

It’s sort of cute: People like Solomon claim that Trump’s promise to Drain the Swamp was anything but projection. So whatever else this incident does (Eric Trump has suggested it could lead to Boris’ ouster, but perhaps that’s just from the White House itself), it may disabuse Trumpsters of their fantasy that they’re not part of a very corrupt system.

One more point: I assume there will be a Jack Smith report. And I assume it’ll include Boris’ actions in there, actions that (like this shakedown) seem to tie to Steve Bannon. If people are interested enough in ousting Boris that may provide an interesting dynamic.

Just a Quarter of Republican Senators Voted for Rick Scott

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Politico is one of the outlets that is focusing most productively on areas of tension between Article I Republicans and Trump. Their very good House journalists have this piece on objections to impoundment (which would strip the House of its most basic function, the power to appropriate), use of military for mass deportation (from Rand Paul), and tariffs (from John Thune). Josh Gerstein noted Chuck Grassley’s opposition to Trump’s plan to replace all the current Inspectors General. And they did an uneven post on which Senators might be most likely to oppose Trump (which was perhaps too early to note that Utah’s Senator-elect John Curtis was among the first to go on the record with concerns about Matt Gaetz). Mike Rounds gave a hawkish interview in support of Ukraine. And after Lisa Murkowski said (in a little-noticed Alaska interview) that she won’t vote to confirm any Trump nominee who has not undergone an FBI background check, four more Senators — Susan Collins, Kevin Cramer, Rounds, as well as Joni Ernst — joined Murkowski in expressing support for background checks (though without making them a litmus test), with Bill Hagerty scoffing at the entire idea that they’re necessary.

There are far too many Democrats dismissing the possibility that there can be meaningful opposition to Trump from Congress. The Senate, especially, held up some of Trump’s plans the first go-around, even before he sicced an armed mob on them. And if nothing else, these people love their own prerogatives, and so will — at least selectively — defend those (as the bid to insist on FBI background checks would be a means to do).

More importantly, we don’t have the luxury of assuming Republicans will routinely capitulate to Trump: It is the job of the Democratic party, at this point, to give them cause to do so. Yes, Mitch McConnell failed in 2021 when he had an opportunity to disqualify Trump. He will have further opportunities to amend his own failure, and it’s simply not an option not to fight to get him to do so. Not least, because the mere act of doing so effectively may have an effect in 2026, if elections are really held.

And that’s why I’ve been trying to identify what I’m calling the Scott Caucus: The (just) 13 Republicans who voted for Rick Scott in the first round of the election for Majority leader. There was a good deal of pressure, including from online influencers who can elicit mob and also Elon Musk, the mobster incarnate, to vote for Trump’s pick for Majority Leader, Scott. But he lost in the first round of voting, with a reported outcome of:

  • Thune 23
  • Cornyn 15
  • Scott 13
  • Not voting 2

Thune won the second round between him and Cornyn 29-24.

To repeat: Just 13 members of the Senate voted, on a secret ballot, for Trump’s preferred candidate for Majority Leader. There’s undoubtedly a lot that went into that vote, but the 38 Senators who affirmatively voted against Scott are people who voted, at least partly, against capitulating to Trump.

We don’t know who all is included in that list, but these people publicly endorsed Scott:

  1. Marsha Blackburn
  2. Ted Cruz
  3. Hagerty
  4. Ron Johnson
  5. Mike Lee
  6. Rand Paul
  7. Marco Rubio
  8. Tommy Tuberville

I suggested that this vote, of the people who voted against Charles Q. Brown to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, might be a proxy for other Senators who prefer gross politicization against basic competence — though according to his public statements, Josh Hawley voted for Thune.

Whoever the other five people are (Rubio, of course, will be replaced once he is confirmed as Secretary of State), they’re just a small fraction of the GOP Senate.

Republicans will enjoy their time in the majority, and most of the time most Republican Senators will gleefully support what Trump will do.

But when given a choice to capitulate immediately or to uphold their own prerogatives, an overwhelming majority of Republican Senators voted to defend their own privilege.

Pam Bondi Offers a Platform to Expose the Consequences of Trump’s Past Corruption

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Greg Sargent had a column proposing ways for Democrats to really challenge Pam Bondi at her confirmation hearing. He describes it as an opportunity to expose how badly she’ll be willing to politicize rule of law.

Democrats should start thinking right now about the opportunity presented by Bondi’s Senate confirmation hearings next year. This will be a major occasion to unmask just how far she’ll gladly go in corrupting the rule of law and unleashing the state on all the “vermin” he has threatened to persecute.

“The attorney general will be the weaponizer-in-chief of the legal system for Trump,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, told me.

While I agree with Sargent’s premise — Democrats should treat Bondi’s confirmation hearing as an opportunity — I disagree with his proposed approach (and that espoused by Jamie Raskin, whom he quotes at length).

Sargent’s focus is on how Bondi would act under predictable eventualities.

Trump has threatened to prosecute enemies without cause. How will Bondi respond when he demands such prosecutions? He has vowed to yank broadcasting rights to punish media companies that displease him and send the military into blue areas for indeterminate pacification missions. His advisers are reportedly exploring whether military officers involved in the Afghanistan mission can be court-martialed. Raskin says Bondi should be confronted on all of this: “Ask whether she thinks the First Amendment and due process are any impediment to what Trump has called for.”

But this is precisely the approach that failed with Bill Barr, who months after a contentious confirmation hearing, kicked off the process of politicizing DOJ.

Most tellingly, Barr was asked questions about the kind of foreseeable eventualities that Sargent describes (such as, pardons for January 6ers), and it did no good. Patrick Leahy, Amy Klobuchar, and Lindsey Graham all asked Barr whether pardoning someone for false testimony would amount to obstruction. Every time, Barr at least conceded the potential applicability of obstruction in that case. And then, just months after that hearing, when Barr wrote a declination memo for Robert Mueller’s obstruction charge, he simply ignored the pardons. He didn’t mention them at all. While it took years for us to learn how he had reneged on his own stated views (by simply ignoring them), those setting these expectations never found a way to hold him accountable for the dodge.

That said, January 6 Committee staffer Thomas Joscelyn, whom Sargent also quotes, gets a bit closer to the approach I’d recommend. Don’t ask Bondi whether she would do something; make sure you lay out her responsibility for inevitable consequences when things she’s likely to do have untoward effects.

“What happens if Trump pardons the Proud Boys leaders who were convicted for seditious conspiracy and instigating the violence?” said Tom Joscelyn, a lead author of the Jan. 6 Committee report, in suggesting lines of questioning for Bondi. “What about the dozens of defendants convicted of assaulting cops?”

Joscelyn adds that pardons for them would provide a major boost to violent far right extremist groups in this country and would “legitimize their cause.” Dems should confront Bondi with all of that. Make her own every last bit of it.

Where I’d add to what Joscelyn suggests is with Trump’s past history.

Rather than asking Bondi about something we know will happen going forward (political violence from freed militia members), ask her how she’ll avoid the negative consequences Trump’s past actions already had. Rather than asking Bondi whether she’ll be responsible for Proud Boy violence when Trump pardons them, instead note that Bill Barr treated threats  the Proud Boys and Roger Stone made against Amy Berman Jackson as a technicality, only to have them plan an insurrection 18 months later. “Bill Barr’s coddling of Trump’s far right extremists led to a predictable increased threat, an attack on the Capitol. How will you avoid the same mistake?” It uses the confirmation hearing to lay out the consequences of past corruption.

You can use this approach with pardons more generally. “Because Trump didn’t properly vet his pardons the first time around, at least seven of them quickly returned to crime, with many of them beating their spouses. How will you ensure that Trump’s bypassing of normal pardon protocol don’t put violent men back on the streets?” You can pick some of the January 6ers — like hardened criminal Shane Jenkins, who almost had a fundraiser at Bedminster, or NeoNazi Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who did — to ask Bondi how coddling such criminals is consistent with the law-and-order promises she makes.

The difference, so far, is subtle: Using the hearing to show past consequences for Barr or Trump’s own failures, rather than generically predicting future woes.

But that difference becomes more important when adopting a more important focus for the hearing.

Like the legitimization of far right extremists that Joscelyn predicts, we can predict a number of other inevitable outcomes from Trump’s second term. The most important is that as billionaires like Elon Musk loot the government, government service will decline precipitously, only exacerbating the alienation of many of the people who voted for Trump. And when those same billionaires get impunity from Trump’s DOJ, consumers will have their lives ruined. But Trump will work hard to blame scapegoats: liberals, trans people, and unions, rather than the billionaires Trump chose to given direct control over the looting process.

Democrats need to build in accountability for the corruption from the beginning. They need to explain that a crash in life quality is the inevitable consequence of Trump’s corruption and — just as important because committed MAGAts are more likely to turn on others before they turn on Trump — his billionaire appointees and protected buddies.

And Pam Bondi offers a spectacular way to lay that out, because she has been involved in protecting the villains who harmed Trump supporters in the past.

“Ms. Bondi, these ardent Trump supporters who signed up for Trump University racked up debt but got nothing from their degrees. How will you avoid such abuse of consumers going forward?”

“Ms. Bondi, after you fired the attorneys who were investigating banks foreclosing based on dodgy paperwork, millions of Floridians lost their homes. How will you protect Americans from similar business fraud going forward?”

“Ms. Bondi, after you and Rudy Giuliani made false claims about the vote in Pennsylvania, many of them threw their lives away by attacking the Capitol. How will you ensure that such lies don’t harm Trump supporters going forward?”

There are similar questions she can be asked that will anticipate other actions she’s likely to take — like shutting down investigations into Elon Musk’s various stock manipulations and false claims. “Ms. Bondi, how will you protect consumers who purchased cars falsely sold as self-driving?”

There are other questions that might get at Bondi’s past complicity. “Ms. Bondi, why did you and Trump’s other impeachment defense attorneys claim Trump’s demand for an investigation into Burisma was a pursuit of corruption, when Trump’s own DOJ had just shut down a 3-year investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky’s corruption?”

But the most important questions can and should be framed in terms of the Trump supporters whom her past corruption has harmed.

Democrats are not going to prevent Bondi’s confirmation. They’re also not going to get reassurances that Bondi will protect the integrity of the Department; Bill Barr’s prevarications prove that’s futile.

But they can use the high profile confirmation process as a way to lay out what should be a relentless message going forward: corruption hurts the little guy. Trump’s past corruption has hurt his supporters. Bondi’s past corruption has hurt his supporters.

That’s what the Republicans who will confirm her should have to own: the inevitable consequences of her protection of Trump’s corruption and that of the other billionaires who will be swarming his administration.

WaPo Enthusiastically Joins Trump’s Attack on Rule of Law

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One reason why Trump managed to win the election in spite of his four felony prosecutions is because self-imagined journalists never fact-checked him when he falsely claimed his prosecutions — all of them — were partisan witch hunts.

This article, from WaPo, is a remarkable example.

It confirms what was already clear — that Trump will attempt to fire everyone who worked on his own criminal prosecutions — and adds that Trump also intends to use DOJ to investigate his claims of voter fraud that his own DOJ already debunked in late 2020. It describes this fascist project to politicize DOJ as evidence of his “intention to dramatically shake up the status quo in Washington.”

The post notes that Trump, “lost to Joe Biden but continues to insist [the election] was stolen from him in key battlegrounds,” and describes that, “neither the president-elect nor his allies have ever provided evidence to prove their claims of voter fraud.”

But it doesn’t mention that Bill Barr’s DOJ already did investigate Trump’s claims of election fraud. And although Josh Dawsey is bylined, the story mentions none of Dawsey’s several stories on contractors whom Trump hired in 2020, who looked for — but could not find — any evidence to back these claims (one two three).

More tellingly, WaPo’s four journalists don’t bother to correct Karoline Leavitt’s objectively false claim that, “President Trump won the election in a landslide,” a claim that could be easily debunked by pointing out that Trump won’t break 50% of the popular vote and won by less than 2%.

They just let Leavitt lie.

Worse still, they repeated Trump’s claims of grievance over and over, saying only that it is a frequent claim, not a false one.

[1] a Trump spokeswoman echoed the president-elect’s frequent claim that the Justice Department cases against him were politically motivated.

“President Trump campaigned on firing rogue bureaucrats who have [2] engaged in the illegal weaponization of our American justice system, and the American people can expect he will deliver on that promise,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “One of the many reasons that President Trump won the election in a landslide is Americans are sick and tired of seeing their tax dollars spent on [3] targeting the Biden-Harris Administration’s political enemies rather than going after [a] real violent criminals in our streets.”

[snip]

And he has [4] maintained from the start that Smith’s investigations into his efforts to reverse his defeat — as well as his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House — are examples of the weaponization of government against him that must be avenged.

[snip]

“For too long, the partisan Department of Justice [5] has been weaponized against me and other Republicans,” Trump wrote when announcing his new pick, longtime ally Pam Bondi, in a post on Truth Social. “Not anymore. Pam will refocus the DOJ to its intended purpose of fighting Crime, [b] and Making America Safe Again.”

There are plenty of ways people who chose to engage in journalism could debunk these false claims: to point out that Joe Biden was also investigated for retaining classified documents, to describe that a former Trump US Attorney, Robert Hur, found characteristics that distinguished Trump’s case from Biden’s, to explain what those distinctions were — Trump’s year-long effort to hide documents from DOJ. Regarding January 6, a journalist might explain that hundreds of other people were charged with the same main crime — obstructing the vote certification — as Trump was, but in his case the fraudulent certificates made the evidence even stronger.

At the very least, describe — in detail! — what Trump was charged with! WaPo chooses not to do that.

On the claims of politicization, the laziest reporter might note at least that Joe Biden’s own son was prosecuted on two coasts, along with three high profile Democrats — Bob Menendez, Henry Cuellar, and Eric Adams.

Trump’s claim that Biden’s DOJ targeted Republicans is laughable, and yet four self-imagined journalists repeated the claim as if it were true.

Trump’s claims that Biden’s DOJ didn’t prosecute violent criminals in the streets bears special focus, since hundreds of the January 6ers — people Trump has suggested he’ll pardon — are just that: people convicted of violently assaulting cops.

And his claim that Pam Bondi will fight crime as if Merrick Garland did not? For fuck sake, people, mention that crime rates came down under Biden.

WaPo packages up all this unrebutted propaganda as a process story. Twelve paragraphs in, it addresses the question of whether Trump will be able to fire career employees. In ¶15, it describes the make-up of Jack Smith’s team.

But it’s all buried under dumb repetition of Trump’s attack on rule of law, as if the attack were true. WaPo just couldn’t be bothered to conduct the least little act of journalism on that point, and so simply repeated Trump’s false claims of grievance with no correction.

And as such, the article itself becomes part of precisely the outrageous abuse it describes: the creation of a false myth of grievance by burying (literally in Trump’s case and figuratively in the case of four people calling themselves journalists) the reality about rule of law.