2024 Presidential Election Archives - Page 19 of 60

Ryan Routh’s Eleven Phones and Two Iran Mentions

September 23, 2024/69 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

DOJ has submitted a detention memo for Ryan Routh, the man held on suspicion that he was trying to assassinate Donald Trump.

The memo cites a letter, left in a box with a neighbor months ago, that seems to confirm that he was trying to assassinate Trump (and offering six figures to anyone else who would accomplish the task). That same letter describes that Trump, “ended relations with Iran like a child and now the Middle East has unraveled.” The detention memo also cites the passage from Routh’s manuscript that I noted here, apologizing to Iran for voting for Trump.

I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake and Iran I apologize. You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the deal.

The memo describes a number of other things that suggest an operational security far exceeding that of a mentally ill man seeking glory. As I noted in the earlier post, the phone he had on his person while surveilling the golf course was one for which he had posted the WhatsApp number while Asif Merchant, charged in an attempt to recruit hitmen to target Trump, was still at large on July 10.

But in addition to that phone, Routh had six cellphones in his truck, at least two of which used different carriers, and four more cell phones in the box he left at a neighbor’s. As I mentioned, Merchant provided the informant in that case instructions on acquiring secure phones.

As previous reports described, the license plats on his truck were stolen, and he had two other sets of plates in the truck. One of the phones in the truck had been used to search for directions to Mexico.

Again, it certainly may be that Routh was simply disturbed. But more of this looks like Iran may have been involved.

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Why No One Went to Prison for Rudy Giuliani’s Hunter Biden Corruption

Like many people, I’ve watched From Russia with Lev since it was released the other day.

The documentary tells a story I’ve covered here in real time: of how, with Lev Parnas’ help, Rudy Giuliani solicited dirt on Hunter (and Joe) Biden from foreigners, mobsters, and Russian spies, in hopes of helping Trump stay in office.

As told, with Lev’s spouse Svetlana serving as a key narrator, it’s a compelling, personal story.

I’ve also told — am one of the only people who has told — the story that many people are now asking: why no one went to prison for this caper. The documentary has led many people, understandably, to demand to know why no one (besides Lev, they sometimes say, inaccurately) went to prison for all this, which has, predictably, led to the same conspiratorial bashing of Merrick Garland we saw with the January 6 investigation.

The question is premised on certain choices the filmmakers made: focusing away from Dmitry Firtash and especially from Andrii Derkach (who got involved after Lev was done), crediting the spin of Lev’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, and simplifying the investigation of Hunter Biden. The film doesn’t fill in any of the gaps I noted in Lev’s book, and creates new ones. It creates the appearance that Lev was prosecuted solely to protect Trump from impeachment and that the investigation into Hunter arose solely out of Rudy’s efforts. Those choices make sense for narrative and legal reasons, but as a good story does, it simplifies the issue.

And I promise you, the film vastly understates the corruption that went on. Wildly understates it. One goal I have for Ball of Threads is to unpack what is currently known of that far deeper corruption, but that still just scratches the surface.

The quick explanation of why Rudy didn’t go to prison for this is that:

Bill Barr did wildly corrupt things to protect him, Donald Trump, and himself
By the time, shortly into the Biden administration, DOJ tried to pursue Rudy, Rudy’s phones were corrupted

Trying to hold Garland responsible for failing to prosecute the underlying crime amounts to doing Bill Barr’s propaganda work, because Barr worked relentlessly to protect Rudy.

You can, however, hold Garland responsible for one thing: the continued appointment as Special Counsel of David Weiss, who as a witness to Barr’s corruption, is conflicted in any investigation pursuing Alexander Smirnov’s attempts to criminally frame Joe Biden.

This post explains all that in more detail.

Lev didn’t go to prison for the Hunter Biden stuff

As I said, the film leaves the impression that Lev was arrested to protect Trump during impeachment by silencing the key witness.

But that’s not why Lev went to prison (as a news clip in the movie tacitly admits).

Lev and Igor Fruman (along with David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin) were first charged on October 9, 2019, via indictment that was (according to then US Attorney for SDNY Geoffrey Berman’s memoir) drafted quickly overnight in advance of Lev and Igor’s trip to meet Dmitry Firtash in Vienna. From Berman’s memoir, I’m not 100% sure whether he pushed it because he genuinely feared they were about to flee the country, felt he had to do so before Barr intervened … or for more nefarious reasons.

The charges were:

Conspiring to make a bunch of political donations in the name of Global Energy Producers
Lying to the Federal Election Commission
Falsifying a document to the FEC
Laundering donations from Russian Andrey Muraviev to pay pro-cannabis politicians

As Bondy described, the indictment implied that Lev and Igor’s political contributions to Pete Sessions were tied to an attempt to fire Marie Yovanovitch. But that was not charged as FARA.

On September 17, 2020, the indictment was superseded. Lev and Correia’s longterm Fraud Guarantee fraud was added and the charges tied to Muraviev (who was secretly indicted that same day) were bumped up. The paragraph describing a payment to Sessions took out the reference to an Ambassador, describing it instead as to “further their political goals.” There were still no FARA charges though.

Ultimately, Lev was convicted at trial in October 2021 of the GEP and Muraviev donations, and in March 2022, pled guilty to the fraud guarantee charges. He was never charged with FARA violations.

Bondy’s insinuation that SDNY took out the foreign agent aspect to protect Rudy is wholly inconsistent with the warrants (linked below) targeting Lev and Rudy unsealed last year.

They show that the investigation into Lev, which started based on a Campaign Legal Center complaint, initially focused on campaign finance crimes. In August 2019 — after the firing of Marie Yovanovitch but before the disclosure of the Perfect Phone Call — SDNY began to turn to Foreign Agent suspicions (though one of two warrants obtained in August 2019 was not executed). After the arrest, SDNY more aggressively turned to developing the Foreign Agent prong of the investigation. On November 4, 2019, SDNY obtained warrants targeting Rudy (which were not released last year). On December 10, 2019, the Foreign Agent prong continued.

That’s when Bill Barr intervened to kill that prong of the investigation, certainly as it pertained to Rudy, as I’ll lay out below.

After that point, SDNY focused on the Fraud Guarantee fraud.

It’s not that Lev went to prison for this but Rudy did not. On the contrary, Barr worked hard to ensure no one could go to prison on such charges.

While Barr was doing that, SDNY appears to have put that investigation on ice and attempted, without success, to resuscitate once Barr was out of office.

SDNY believed Lev was not fully forthcoming

The film makes it sound like SDNY refused Lev’s efforts to cooperate against Rudy and everyone else.

It’s more complicated than that.

SDNY has a rule: To enter into a cooperation agreement with them, one has to plead to all crimes. Geoffrey Berman described it this way in his memoir, explaining why SDNY didn’t give Michael Cohen a cooperation deal.

Cooperation in the Southern District means full cooperation—taking responsibility for all criminal actions, not just a select few. If any one area of a defendant’s life is off limits, we do not recommend leniency in sentencing. (Some districts are more transactional: you give a little, you get a little.)

When defendants agree to this and become cooperating witnesses against others, their testimony is more credible. Our prosecutors can tell juries that if the cooperator is caught lying, the agreement can be revoked and he or she will be prosecuted not only for the crimes covered at trial but for a host of others that the cooperator copped to as part of his agreement.

The SDNY rules also serve as a powerful investigative tool, because when you acquire absolute cooperation, your avenues for making other cases expand dramatically. We often learn of additional criminal activity—whole new threads of wrongdoing that in some instances we knew nothing about.

That’s one reason why SDNY didn’t give Lev a cooperation agreement. As SDNY explained in their sentencing memo for him, Lev’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, proffered information in the months after his arrest in October 2019. But Bondy provided details that were contradicted by the evidence (at the time, Lev may not have understood that FBI had obtained iCloud content he deleted). SDNY then did a reverse proffer on November 6, 2019 (two days after obtaining a warrant for Rudy’s comms), meaning they told Lev and Bondy all the evidence they had against Lev. After that, Bondy replied saying that Parnas was unwilling to plead guilty to the campaign finance crimes charged against him.

After that meeting, Parnas’s counsel wrote the Government to report that he could not “accept responsibility for criminal activity for which he is not guilty,” which based on discussions with counsel, the Government understood to be a reference to, among other things, the campaign finance and false statements offenses of which Parnas now stands convicted.

That’s consistent with Parnas’ own memoir, in which he still attributes the campaign finance stuff as a lack of awareness of the law and of the Russian source of the money he was throwing around.

According to SDNY, that unwillingness to fully accept responsibility continued when Parnas did sit for a proffer on March 5, 2020.

In addition, SDNY was unable to corroborate some of the things Parnas claimed in that March proffer.

[T]he Government was ultimately unable to corroborate significant portions of what Parnas said.

This was during a period when Barr was aggressively trying to limit SDNY’s investigation, so it may not have been Lev’s fault they couldn’t corroborate this stuff.

Finally, DOJ generally has a rule: Cooperating witnesses who chat to the press are usually useless as witnesses. This makes sense for a lot of reasons, not least that it alerts criminal targets of what prosecutors do and don’t know. SDNY told Parnas this early on, in November 2019, and his early 2020 interviews would have only exacerbated this.

At the close of that [November 6, 2019] meeting, the Government informed Parnas that public spectacles, leaks, and social media postings could undermine his credibility and diminish his value as a potential cooperating witness.

Given Barr’s fuckery, I don’t know if Parnas could have pulled off cooperation in any case. But even without it, things he himself did made it virtually impossible he could get a deal from SDNY.

And honestly, it wouldn’t have served his purposes. He needed to come out publicly against Trump, but that was inconsistent with the ability to cooperate criminally. The impeachment was his one shot for accountability, and Congress blew that. (As I was writing this, I considered that, had Democrats made Lev’s testimony more central to impeachment, Republicans might have forced Hunter Biden to testify, as they were threatening at the time; I have long wondered whether Trump’s impeachment defense team had a copy of the laptop.)

Bill Barr insulated the impeachment review from the Hunter Biden caper

The film focuses closely on how, after Trump’s Perfect Phone Call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy was released, onetime Trump defense attorney John Dowd, speaking as a lawyer for Lev and Igor, first refused to cooperate with Congress. Their arrest, days later, put Parnas and Fruman at the mercy of lawyers arranged by Trump, until Parnas hired Bondy.

It is true that their arrest discredited them as witnesses.

But it wasn’t just their arrest that limited the investigation from impacting impeachment. DOJ also did some tactical things to prevent the Trump impeachment from merging with Lev’s prosecution.

When Lev and Igor were arrested, DOJ told the press that Barr had been briefed on the investigation from early in his tenure as Attorney General.

That seems inconsistent with a claim that Barr made in his memoir (which IMO is largely CYA about these matters). Barr claimed he had no awareness of Rudy’s efforts to investigate Biden, and only learned of it from news reports.

By the spring of 2019, I had noticed news stories stating that Giuliani was pushing the Ukrainians to investigate Biden’s role in Shokin’s dismissal. But other than what I glimpsed in the media, I had no knowledge of the former mayor’s activities. During the spring, I expressed my concern about Giuliani with the President. As I was leaving an Oval Office meeting on another topic, I paused briefly to raise the matter.

“Mr. President,” I said, “I don’t think you are being well served by Giuliani at this point. Mueller is over, and Russiagate is dying. Why is Giuliani thrashing about in Ukraine? It is going to blow up—”

“Yeah,” the President said, cutting me off. “I told him not to go over there. It was a trap.” President Trump gave the impression Giuliani had a degree of independence and was going to pull back. I did not press the point.

Even imagining that SDNY kept these details from Barr, by August 14, 2019, it is highly likely that the National Security Division had notice of the focus on Rudy. That’s when possible Foreign Agent charges (and a reference to Marie Yovanovitch) got added to the warrants targeting Lev and Igor.

NSD head John Demers was one of the first people at DOJ to review the Perfect Phone Call. He did so, on August 15, 2019, after SDNY had turned to FARA crimes normally overseen by NSD.

That may explain why DOJ did something that served to insulate the Public Integrity (PIN) review of the Perfect Phone call from the ongoing investigation of Rudy’s efforts with Lev and Igor: Demers and Criminal Division head Brian Benzkowski only had PIN review the transcript of the call, not the full whistleblower complaint. Had investigators done what investigators have been ordered to do since 9/11 with the full complaint, they would have searched on all the references in the complaint, including those in the OCCRP report on Lev and Igor referenced repeatedly in it. That, in turn, should have identified the SDNY investigation, which would have immediately implicated Trump in the investigation.

Effectively, by focusing solely on the transcript, someone at DOJ deliberately blinded that PIN review to an ongoing FARA investigation, thereby eliciting a clean bill of health for Trump.

There’s a lot more that Barr did as the scandal unfolded, as I’ve laid out here and here. But the first thing someone at DOJ did was to gin up a prosecution declination before anyone could tie Trump’s coercion of Zelenskyy with the existing investigation into Lev and Igor.

Bill Barr played a shell game to protect Rudy’s “collusion” with a known Russian spy

Barr was nowhere near done.

There seems have been an ongoing cat-and-mouse between SDNY and Barr.

When SDNY got the indictment, according to Berman, they got approval from two PIN prosecutors in the middle of the night, not NSD, which may be why only the campaign finance crimes were in the indictment and only the campaign finance crimes were on the warrants for the searches done the day of arrest (this would have served to hide that part of the investigation from Lev and Igor, too). That’s the biggest piece of evidence that SDNY did not arrest Lev and Igor as a favor for Barr, as he attempted to kill impeachment, but the reverse.

In October, SDNY got warrants to search everything for the FARA crimes. On November 4, 2019, SDNY got warrants targeting Rudy for FARA crimes.

On December 5, 2019, Rudy met, with Barr’s foreknowledge, known Russian asset Andrii Derkach.

And on December 10, 2019, SDNY got further warrants in that investigation.

DOJ had just let Rudy meet with a Russian spy while SDNY had an ongoing investigation into whether Rudy was working with foreign spies. It was insane to let that happen in any case. All the more so given the ongoing investigation from the Sovereign District of New York, as SDNYers like to call themselves.

So Barr had to gut SDNY’s sovereignty.

Barr did several things:

Assigned any investigation of Derkach, with whom Rudy had just met, to EDNY, not SDNY where it would be a natural follow-on.
Made EDNY US Attorney Richard Donoghue the gate-keeper for all Ukraine investigations, requiring SDNY to get permission from him before taking any investigative steps against Rudy or Lev.
Asked Pittsburgh US Attorney Scott Brady to play a role. Publicly, Barr and Brady claimed this was a vetting process of tips from Ukraine. But Brady’s congressional testimony revealed he did almost no functional vetting; he ignored evidence from the impeachment and some key public articles. Plus, he did more than vetting. Brady also checked in on investigations into all the oligarchs from whom Rudy had solicited dirt on Hunter Biden, with uncertain outcome; he tried to tell SDNY he knew better than they did about their investigation; he demanded details about the investigation into Hunter Biden. Most importantly, some yet unidentified person told Brady to seek out FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who had made a reference to Hunter Biden in an informant report about Mykola Zlochevsky years earlier. By May 2020, Smirnov was allegedly attempting to frame Joe Biden with allegations of bribery, and Brady made that part of his work. Once again with Smirnov’s allegations, Brady did little functional vetting, falsely claiming that his travel schedule confirmed the claim, rather than debunked it.
Barred the FBI Agents working with SDNY from receiving certain information, including Rudy’s interview with Scott Brady.
Ordered David Weiss, whom DOJ had put in charge of an investigation into DC and CA resident Hunter Biden, to consult with Brady on his tips.

These efforts halted what should have been obvious next steps in the SDNY investigation, ensured Rudy could share information obtained from a known Russian spy with no legal risk, and ordered that some of Rudy’s information be used in an investigation of Joe Biden’s kid. DOJ was literally protecting a Russian influence operation, because it served the interest of the President.

The biggest reason why Rudy didn’t go to prison for this is that Barr protected this entire process, including the solicitation of dirt from a known Russian spy.

DOJ approved steps against Rudy on Lisa Monaco’s first day on the job

While Trump remained in office, SDNY tried several more times to get warrants targeting Rudy, but were denied.

On Lisa Monaco’s very first day on the job, April 21, 2021, SDNY finally obtained warrants targeting Rudy. Merrick Garland’s DOJ did precisely what everyone is wailing for: He immediately permitted prosecutors to advance this long-thwarted investigation.

Based on what we can see, there were at least two limitations on the investigation, however. First, the warrants targeting Rudy did not include the Trump lawyer’s January 29, 2020 interview with Scott Brady. That suggests Rudy’s effort to share dirt from Russian spies was still protected as cooperation rather than confession, even after Garland took over (indeed, that’s what Rudy pointed to to argue he couldn’t be searched at all, his “cooperation” with Barr). Just as importantly, while some of the 2019 warrant affidavits mentioned Donald Trump’s call to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the 2021 warrants did not. I would be unsurprised if Barr got OLC to write a memo putting all that off limits before they left office.

Aside from that, DOJ’s approach to Rudy Giuliani remained remarkably aggressive, contrary to what virtually every news outlet will tell you. Importantly, SDNY did something no one else has reported: They installed a Special Master and got permission to review Rudy’s content — all Rudy’s post-2017 content — for privilege. Among other things, that freed up content, including at least one document the January 6 Committee did not get, for any other investigations.

Nevertheless, the delay (or possibly corrupt Rudy dead-enders in NY) appears to have killed any chance of pursuing Rudy for his role in soliciting dirt from Russian spies and others to attack Hunter Biden. On November 14, 2022, SDNY informed the court that the grand jury had concluded without filing charges (though Rudy’s lawyer and Hunter Biden laptop co-conspirator, Robert Costello, has never substantiated a declination letter). In a July 25, 2023 declaration in the Ruby Freeman lawsuit, Costello revealed one potential explanation: many of the devices seized from Rudy obtained in April 2021 were corrupted. Costello blamed the FBI’s contractor for making the phones unusable.

Not all the devices were corrupted, however. As noted, the privilege log from Freeman’s case shows a great deal of files pertaining to January 6 were successfully extracted, including a few identifiable files not obtained by the January 6 Committee.

DOJ also seized a phone from Victoria Toensing. But the value of that may have been limited by attorney-client privileged tied to Firtash, the same privilege which has, at times, led Lev (because he was a translator in that relationship) to limit his own comments about Firtash in all this. To fully unpack what happened, you’d need to know what promises Toensing made to Firtash and what Barr knew about them.

Attorneys General have vast discretion

In a just world, Bill Barr could be held accountable for the corruption he enabled. But that’s virtually impossible under the structures of impunity our system accords prosecutors and Attorneys General.

I’m neck-deep in a post on the three IG investigations pertaining to Bill Barr’s corrupt conduct.

All of them conclude that however nuts Bill Barr’s conduct was, the expansive authority of the Attorney General means that his actions, including his intervention into the sentencing for Trump’s rat-fucker and his decision to share details of minor infraction by someone whom Barr knew would never be charged for political gain, were within the discretion of the Attorney General.

DOJ IG has spent over four years investigating Barr’s corruption, and thus far, they have always concluded that as Attorney General, Barr’s discretion was so vast that he can break all of DOJ’s rules prohibiting its politicization.

There’s still at least one IG Report including Barr’s conduct outstanding (almost certainly, the ongoing investigation into DOJ getting the communications records of journalists for whom people like Jim Comey might have been a source). But of all the fuckery I know Barr to have committed, I can envision only a few details of his conduct might even remotely end up the focus of criminal investigation.

Even the most corrupt insinuations about Rudy’s efforts, in which Rudy allegedly offered Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Dmitry Firtash, and Mykola Zlochevsky relief from criminal investigations for dirt on Hunter Biden, would be included in this.

Lev explains why in his book: This was deliberately framed as the exact equivalent of Andrew Weissmann’s efforts to flip Firtash for information on Paul Manafort.

Andrew Weissman, who was lead prosecutor for the investigation of Russian collusion in the 2016 Election, had gotten there first. He offered a deal in which Firtash could avoid prison if he testified about the relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The inclusion of Putin meant that Firtash would never take the deal. Nobody over there wants to make Putin angry.

Nobody else knew about the deal he was offered. Giuliani and Solomon wanted Firtash’s legal team to make it public. His Viennese lawyers were against it, so Firtash was reluctant. Soon, in a heated meeting in Vienna, an argument between some of Firtash’s legal team led to Victoria Toensing, who was on our team, confronting Dan Webb about it months later. Webb — who was connected with Weissmann, William Barr and other heavy hitters — admitted to the deal.

Still, we convinced Firtash that we — who were representing Trump’s interests — could help him with his extradition far more effectively than Weissman. The real goal for us was to get Firtash to use his contacts to pressure President Zelenskyy to announce an investigation of the Bidens. Our pitch was successful, Firtash agreed to hire Giuliani for $1 million. And $200,000 for me to be official translator and to be under the attorney-client privilege umbrella.

Prosecutors trade leniency for information on other crooks all the time. Here, however, it was the Attorney General, who had never served as a prosecutor himself, who would be making those deals, offering leniency to foreign oligarchs if they could offer dirt on Donald Trump’s likely opponent.

It’s unclear whether, and if so what, deals were made: an investigation into Zlochevsky was reportedly shut down in December 2019; investigations into Kolomoyskyi ratcheted up in 2020; and the prior investigation into Dmitry Firtash remains deadlocked on his extradition, as it has been for years.

But these kinds of deals would be consistent with an elaborate effort Barr makes in his book to spin Trump’s pursuit of dirt on the Bidens as a legitimate law enforcement pursuit, the logic of Trump’s impeachment defense taken to its logical conclusion.

It’s all transparent bullshit. But it would also be virtually impossible to debunk at trial, even if you could get beyond the vast discretion of an Attorney General.

David Weiss’ appointment threatens to limit further fallout

There’s one thing I do fault Merrick Garland for: For not removing David Weiss from the investigation into Alexander Smirnov.

By all appearances, Weiss asked to be appointed Special Counsel only after he renewed his focus on Smirnov in July 2023, after receiving, but blowing off, the allegation days before the 2020 election, on October 23, 2020.

Investigating Smirnov’s allegation that Joe Biden accepted a bribe from Burisma was the first thing that focused the investigation onto Biden, after the original prosecutor, Lesley Wolf had successfully avoided that focus for years. It was the first thing that created a real conflict with working for Joe Biden.

And Weiss bases his authority to prosecute Smirnov for lying when he started chasing that hoax on his Special Counsel authority. He could only do so if he were legitimately chasing that hoax as witness testimony.

Here’s the problem with that: David Weiss is a witness in what should be a broader investigation into how a side channel set up by Bill Barr ended up discovering an informant who once met Mykola Zlochevsky and then not vetting the false claims he made. At the very least, there should be an investigation into who — everyone swears it was not Rudy, and Smirnov has at least three other links to people close to Trump — alerted Brady that Smirnov might offer up such claims.

Bill Barr’s deputy ordered David Weiss to accept briefing on this hoax. He ordered him to let Scott Brady snoop on Weiss’ investigation of Joe Biden’s kid. That makes Weiss a witness. Once Smirnov became a subject rather than a witness, that created a conflict that should disqualify Weiss from overseeing an investigation into the former informant and the circumstances that allowed him to make allegedly false allegations against Joe Biden.

Merrick Garland should (at a minimum, though I could argue more broadly) move the primary team prosecuting Smirnov under supervision without such conflicts. A system set up by Bill Barr criminally framed Joe Biden, and a guy who worked with Bill Barr on that case continues to supervise the aftermath.

The complicity of the press

There’s one more party that demands accountability: The press.

Much of what I wrote in this post is public. It requires diligent reading, but not great access to Donald Trump or anyone else.

Not only has this entire story not been reported by mainstream outlets. Not only did NYT affirmatively obscure Rudy’s role in all this (and therefore Trump’s) in their one attempt to cover it. But one after another journalist — especially at NYT — writes stories that disappear the Hunter Biden pursuit from all of Trump’s abuse of DOJ. Indeed, some outlets, including Rachel Maddow’s parent company, seem to treat Hunter Biden as a gossip rag to drive clicks, rather than the locus of unprecedented corruption. Rather than chasing this story, or even asking Bill Barr direct questions about it, one after another TV star invites him on as if he’s a critic of Trump’s corruption, rather than a key player in it. WaPo’s Will Lewis pointed to a badly conflicted Hunter Biden piece as his antidote against accusations of lefty bias.

Want to know how Rudy Giuliani was allowed to solicit dirt from Russian spies to help Trump get elected, without accountability? Want to know why Barr is considered a critic of Trump rather than his most corrupt enabler? Ask the journalists who lost interest in that story as soon as Rudy released a laptop full of Hunter Biden’s dick pics.

From Russia with Lev begins to reverse all that. But as infuriating as it is, it barely scratches the surface.

Timeline

Below, every bullet is a known warrant. The ones not linked were described in a passage that failed to be fully redacted in a Lev Parnas filing. This document compares the Foreign Agent focus of the three warrants bolded below.

January 18, 2019, 19 MJ 1729: Yahoo and Google content

May 15, 2019: Marie Yovanovitch firing public

May 16, 2019, 19 MJ 4784: iCloud content
August 14, 2019, 19 MJ 7593: Yahoo and Google content since January, with expanded focus
August 14, 2019, 19 MJ 7594: Unknown warrant
August 14, 2019, 19 MJ 7595: Existing Yahoo and Google content, with expanded focus

September 25, 2019: Disclosure of Perfect Phone call

October 9, 2019: Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman arrested

October 17, 2019, 19 MJ 7595: Actual authorization of the warrant approved in August
October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9829: iCloud content since May
October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9830: Unknown warrant
October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9831: Devices from Dulles
October 21, 2019, 19 MJ 9832: Existing iCloud content for expanded focus
November 4, 2019: Warrant for Rudy’s iCloud
November 4, 2019: Warrant for Rudy’s email
November 4, 2019: Warrant for Victoria Toensing’s iCloud
November 6, 2019: Warrant for Yuriy Lutsenko’s email

December 5, 2019: Rudy meets with known Russian asset, Andrii Derkach

December 10, 2019, 19 MJ 11500: Stuff seized from residences for foreign agent focus
December 10, 2019, 19 MJ 11501: Instagram
December 10, 2019, Warrant for Roman Nasirov’s email
December 13, 2019, Warrant for Victoria Toensing’s email

December 14, 2019: Barr aide texts him: “Laptop on way to you”

January 3, 2020: Barr establishes dedicated channel to ingest Rudy’s dirt

January 17, 2020: Jeffrey Rosen makes Richard Donoghue a gatekeeper for all Ukraine-related investigations

February 28, 2020: iPhone of Alexander Levin
March 3, 2020: iPad of Alexander Levin
March 20, 2020, 20 MJ 3074: Fruman iCloud content obtained with October 21, 2019 warrant to cover earlier periods

June 20, 2020: Barr fires Geoffrey Berman

November 2020: SDNY denied authority to seek devices of Rudy Giuliani

January 2021: SDNY denied authority to seek devices of Rudy Giuliani

April 13, 2021: Cell site data for Rudy and Toensing

April 21, 2021: Lisa Monaco sworn in

April 21, 2021, 21 MJ 4335: Rudy’s office, residence, and devices
April 21, 2021: Victoria Toensing iPhone

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Trump Will Stage an Emergency to Ban Jack Smith’s Book Report

September 22, 2024/148 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

I expect, on top of everything else this week, Trump’s lawyers are going to claim an emergency to try to ban Jack Smith’s book report, currently due Thursday.

As you’ll recall, after Judge Tanya Chutkan finally got the Trump January 6 case back, she agreed with Jack Smith’s proposed path forward: They would submit a brief explaining how the superseding indictment complies with the Supreme Court’s immunity opinion. Chutkan set a deadline of September 26, Thursday, for that brief.

Trump seems certain that if voters see that brief, he will lose the election.

Last Thursday, Trump’s lawyers submitted what was supposed to be a discovery filing, in which they basically said, “NOOOOOOO!!!!! No briefing before the election.”

Dismissal is required to protect the integrity of the Presidency and the upcoming election, as well as the Constitutional rights of President Trump and the American people.

Judge Chutkan does not have to rule on those issues before determining the immunity question, though, so the filing was better read as, “Help me Sammy Alito!!!! Help me John Roberts!!!! You’re my only hope!!!”

Yesterday, Jack Smith submitted a request to file excess pages, 180 pages instead of 45. In it, he disclosed that Trump objected and wanted a chance to respond, with the deadline set for Tuesday, September 24.

Defense counsel opposes the Government’s motion at this time, and requests that the Court set a deadline of September 24, 2024, 5:00 PM ET for the defense’s response.

Judge Chutkan ordered Trump’s team to file their opposition one day earlier, Monday September 23 (note: Trump’s team filed their last filing after 5PM, after which Judge Chutkan made it clear she’ll permit no more of that).

Defendant shall file any opposition to the Government’s [237] Motion for Leave to File Oversized Motion by September 23, 2024 at 5:00 PM ET.

Trump will oppose not just the excess pages, 180 instead of 45, but the entire filing. Now he’s got one less day to make that argument.

Which is what you need to understand the other things in the Jack Smith request. Trump is going to stage an emergency to get this question elevated to SCOTUS to prevent the filing this week. He will try to take things SCOTUS ordered Chutkan to do out of her hands, to put them back before SCOTUS.

Anticipating that, Smith starts his request by laying out that he is just trying to do what Chutkan ordered, to show that SCOTUS ordered precisely this briefing.

In Trump v. United States, 144 S. Ct. 2312, 2340 (2024), the Supreme Court emphasized the “necessarily factbound” nature of any presidential immunity analysis. See id. at 2339 (“Determining whose characterization may be correct, and with respect to which conduct, requires a close analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations.”); id. at 2340 (“The analysis therefore must be fact specific and may prove to be challenging.”); id. (“Knowing, for instance, what else was said contemporaneous to the excerpted communications, or who was involved in transmitting the electronic communications and in organizing the rally, could be relevant to the classification of each communication.”). The Supreme Court remanded to this Court “to determine in the first instance—with the benefit of briefing we lack—whether [the defendant’s] conduct in this area qualifies as official or unofficial.” Id. at 2339.

A few paragraphs later, he describes that because this review will be what SCOTUS reviews on appeal, the record must be comprehensive. Thus the need for 180 pages.

The Court has been directed to conduct a detailed, factbound, and thorough analysis of the Government’s case to make appropriate immunity determinations. Because the Court will make determinations “in the first instance” that will be subject to exacting appellate review, it is essential that the Court ensure that the record in support of its determinations is complete. The Government believes that a comprehensive brief by the Government will be of great assistance to the Court in creating that robust record, and the Government thus seeks leave to exceed the typical limit for a single motion. See Local Crim. R. 47(e) (limiting opening motions and oppositions to 45 pages and replies to 25 pages).

Smith goes into detail about the breakdown of those 180 pages: half is narrative, thirty pages are footnotes, a bunch are exhibits. Those details will only matter if we ever get to see it.

Remember: Trump is looking for some basis to cause an emergency that will allow him to get back to SCOTUS. So Jack Smith will (and probably would have, in any case) submit the filing under seal, and only afterwards work on unsealing it for the voting public.

For the Court’s awareness, the opening brief and its exhibits contain a substantial amount of Sensitive Material, as defined by the Protective Order. Consistent with the Protective Order, the Government intends to file a motion for leave to file under seal that attaches an unredacted copy of the motion and appendix and proposed redacted versions to be filed later on the public docket at the Court’s direction. See ECF No. 28 ¶¶ 11-12. Because of the extensive and time-consuming logistics involved in finalizing the brief, appendix, and proposed redacted public versions of the same, the Government respectfully requests the Court’s decision on this motion as soon as practicable.

Voila, no emergency.

But without creating such an emergency, then Chutkan will get a look at the argument.

I honestly have no idea how it’ll end up. I’ve been wracking my brain for what procedural reason Trump’s team could use to declare an emergency.

But with this SCOTUS, it doesn’t have to be all that plausible.

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Fridays with Nicole Sandler

September 20, 2024/18 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

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Permission Structures and Polling Puzzles

September 19, 2024/167 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election, emptywheel /by emptywheel

As of today, Trump has less than 7% of his campaign left (47 of 721 days).

As of today, Harris has almost 44% of her campaign left (47 of 107 days).

Keep that in mind as you read this column from NYT’s Nate Cohn, in which he tries to puzzle out why Kamala Harris is doing less well in what he deems high quality national polls than she’s doing in Pennsylvania.

Never mind that his pick of polls has some few suspect polls in there. Effectively what Cohn convinces himself he’s seeing is that the Electoral College, which normally favors Democrats, may this year favor Trump.

Now let’s consider our puzzle: a clear lead for Ms. Harris in Pennsylvania, but a tie nationwide? This is unexpected. Four years ago, President Biden won the national vote by 4.5 percentage points, but won Pennsylvania by just 1.2 points. Similarly, our poll averages have shown Ms. Harris doing better nationwide than in Pennsylvania. This poll is nearly the opposite.

Usually, I’d say that this is probably just statistical noise — the inevitable variation in poll results inherent to random sampling. And it might well be, as we shall see. But I think it’s hard to assume that this is simply noise, for two reasons:

It’s what we’ve shown before. It’s easy enough to dismiss any single poll result as a statistical fluke. But we’ve now found similar results in our last two polls of the nation and Pennsylvania.

This is becoming a trend among high-quality pollsters. Yes, our poll average shows Ms. Harris doing better nationally than in Pennsylvania, but if you focus only on higher-quality polls (which we call “select pollsters” in our table), the story is a bit different. Over the last month, a lot of these polls show Ms. Harris doing relatively poorly nationwide, but doing well in the Northern battleground states.

Note that Nate says NYT’s own polls aren’t moving much (while admitting the first days after the debate, responses in PA were more favorable to Harris). But Harris’ lead in MI and PA, across all polls, is inching ever so slowly higher, with some polls beginning to show leads outside the margin of error.

My suspicion is we’re still seeing two effects: that of RFK endorsing Trump, which may have helped Trump by a point (indeed, some polls aren’t including him in states, like WI and MI, where he remains on the ballot) and the debate and Taylor Swift endorsement, which may have helped Harris by up to three.

So far.

But this is why I keep coming back to the 7% versus 44% that each candidate has left in their campaign. Harris is doing in an incredibly compressed timeline, at least by US standards, what campaigns spend years doing. As a result, some baseline actions, such as recruiting volunteers, happened later than they otherwise might have. So there could be — though by no means is guaranteed — a late-election effect from them, as those efforts bear fruit.

Still, as Harris tries to build on that foundation, Trump’s unconventional choices — such as to fire the RNC personnel doing field work and instead to let an Elon Musk PAC do that work — has risks, as evidenced by the decision to fire and replace the canvasing contractor in NV and AZ with 50 days left to go.

That leaves open the possibility that we’ll see gradual movement in the weeks ahead, even ignoring a big blunder by one of the campaigns, or a Black Swan event of the type that would be unsurprising this year.

Brittany Mahomes

To understand what kind of delayed effect recent events might bring about, start with Brittany Mahomes, the spouse of KC Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes, who has become close to Taylor Swift as both root for their partners at football games. According to the Daily Mail, Trump’s attack on Swift led Ms. Mahomes to rethink her prior support of Trump.

Brittany Mahomes is ‘deeply bothered’ by Donald Trump’s very public attack on her close friend Taylor Swift, according to sources who claim the Kansas City Chiefs WAG is questioning her support for the former president.

Brittany, who has been married to Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes since 2022, sparked a liberal meltdown last month when she liked a post about Trump, 78, on social media.

Weeks later, Taylor, 34, publicly endorsed Kamala Harris’ bid for president – an action that drove a reported 338,000 visits to the federal voter registration website after she shared a link on Instagram.

Trump hit back in predictably blistering style on his Truth Social platform, claiming ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT’ – prompting Brittany, 29, to ‘question’ if she will continue to endorse his campaign.

‘She is questioning her support for Donald Trump after he lashed out at Taylor, saying he hates her,’ a source exclusively revealed to DailyMail.com.

Swift is perhaps the most trusted American, in any sphere. Because of that, polarization will work in her favor, and through her, Harris’, in the same way it tends to work in Trump’s favor when he spins prosecution of him as an attack on him. If people do things to Swift, her supporters will side with her all the more strongly, and in this matter, that may produce movement to Harris.

Mahomes’ vote — presumably cast in MO, where the couple lives — is not going to swing any races. But what is publicly reported to be going on with her may go on with millions of the diehard Swifties who would normally be soft Trump supporters. But that process takes time. First they reconsider their prior beliefs, then they learn why Swift supports Harris, then they get used to the idea of voting for a Democrat.

It’s a process, one that has as many as 47 days left to work.

Springfield’s Republicans and Reagan’s Dead-Enders

Something similar may be happening among more traditional Republicans.

Politico reported on how Republicans stuck with the chaos Trump has created in heavily Republican Springfield are rethinking their Republican support.

“Any political leader that takes the national stage and has the national spotlight needs to understand the gravity of the words that they have for cities like ours, and what they say impacts our city,” Rue, who said he was tired and angry, told POLITICO. “And we’ve had bomb threats the last two days. We’ve had personal threats the last two days, and it’s increasing, because the national stage is swirling this up. Springfield, Ohio, is caught in a political vortex, and it is a bit out of control. We are a wonderful city — a beautiful town. And for what it’s worth, your pets are safe in Springfield, Ohio.”

Asked whether he is going to vote for Trump, the 54-year-old mayor said, “I’m just probably not going to answer that question.” He said he is deeply “frustrated” with Trump’s remarks and how Springfield has become collateral damage.

[snip]

Republican Clark County Commission President Melanie Flax-Wilt, who said she backed Trump in 2016 and 2020 but is now undecided, largely refused to talk about national politics. But she said she was frustrated.

“I’m of the belief that it’s our local community that is going to be here dealing with this after all of the national news is gone and everybody’s done using Springfield, Ohio, as a poster child for immigration reform. We’re the ones who are going to be stuck figuring out what to do with these challenges that are facing us,” said Flax-Wilt.

Sasha Rittenhouse, another Republican member of the county commission, said, “We’ve seen a lot of, I don’t want to say crazy, but unfounded things. It’s a matter of trying to go back and see if there’s any validity to any of it.”

She added, “And thus far, we have not been able to track anything down that definitively shows that any of these things are happening.”

Of her plans to vote this November, Rittenhouse said: “I have not decided what I’m doing. I’ve been a Republican my entire life, and I will leave it at that.”

Any such reconsideration would happen amidst a larger permission structure created by the number of Republicans who’ve publicly supported Harris, including a new batch of national security professionals (some with ties to Dick Cheney, who of course endorsed Harris a week ago — rolled out yesterday, and a group of former Reagan aides rolled out days earlier.

I don’t know whether that will or is working; clearly, Harris finds the support valuable, so the campaign may be seeing positive effects from the GOP support.

But the point is to simply create a permission structure for those wavering in their support for Trump to consider Harris, to rebrand it as patriotism.

Again, if it works, it’ll take time. It’ll be a process.

Iowa draws closer

One of the most interesting polling developments in recent weeks is not in a swing state; it’s in Iowa. The state’s best pollster, Ann Selzer — whom some argue is the best state pollster in the country — released a poll showing Harris within 4 of Trump in the state.

Ann Selzer’s gold standard poll is out, and suggests a remade presidential race in Iowa.

The top line numbers from Selzer & Co’s latest poll for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom indicate former President Donald Trump has 47 percent support and Vice President Kamala Harris 43 percent among likely Iowa voters. This poll started contacting respondents on September 8 (before the debate) and concluded on September 11, the day after the debate. At the end of this piece is a summary of post-debate national polling, which has found a gain for Harris of about 1 percent.

When you compare the new survey to Selzer’s numbers from June (Trump 50 percent, President Joe Biden 32 percent in Iowa), you will find a 14 point shift in margin. But purely focusing on the margin may be a mistake.

Trump’s level of support has varied little since February, when Selzer found him ahead of Biden by 48 percent to 33 percent in Iowa. The change is in the Democratic number. Harris has consolidated the Democratic base, and the 43 percent she receives in this survey is close to the 44.9 percent vote share for Biden in the 2020 election.

As Selzer describes it, this poll reflects new participation among groups energized since Harris got in the race.

Now, 81% of all Iowans say they will definitely vote in the general election, up from 76% in June. However, some of the demographic groups more likely to favor Harris are showing increased participation.

Women show an 8-percentage-point uptick in likely voting since June, Iowans younger than 45 show a 10-point increase, city dwellers show a 6-point bounce, and those with a college degree are up 9 points.

Iowa is not going to go for Harris; if it does, this would not be a close race. But because of Selzer’s credibility, this suggests a trend in the Midwest that likely confirms positive polling for Harris in neighboring WI (and Nebraska’s Omaha district).

But by drawing close in Iowa, Harris puts two of Iowa’s congressional districts in play.

To understand the importance of this new poll, and what it means if it is on target, let’s look at Iowa’s U.S. House seats. As noted above, this poll find Harris trailing Trump by 4 percent statewide. The table below applies that shift to both the 2020 numbers and the results of the 2022 Congressional races.

If Selzer is accurate, Harris is ahead in two of Iowa’s four Congressional districts (the first and the third), and would only narrowly lose the second district. Based on those numbers the Democrats would likely pick up at least one House seat in Iowa, and three races would be competitive.

Even before this poll, Democrats had started dumping (more) money in the two Iowa CDs, so their internals must be showing similar movement.

Pennsylvania bellwethers

There have been a slew of polls from PA overnight. But the result I find most interesting is this one, from earlier in the week: a Suffolk poll of PA (showing a 49-46 Harris lead) and two bellwether counties, Northampton (Bethleham) and Erie (around the city), showing 4-5 point leads for Harris in both.

The survey results showed that the vice president also led the former president in Northampton and Erie counties – two counties that have picked the winner of the last two presidential elections.

Harris had a five-point edge (50-45%) over Trump in Northampton County, located in eastern Pennsylvania and is the home of the cities of Bethlehem and Easton. President Joe Biden carried the county, 50-49%, in 2020 after Trump topped Hillary Clinton, 50-46%, in 2016.

In the northwest corner of the Commonwealth, Harris carries a four-point advantage over Trump, 48-44% – a larger margin than either winner produced in the last two elections. Biden squeezed out a 1-point edge (50-49%) in winning in 2020, while Trump had a two-point triumph in Erie, 49-47%, four years earlier.

Experienced politicos tend to focus on bellwether precincts or counties to read a state and Suffolk just started doing this in the 2022 race (their results predicted John Fetterman’s victory, but weren’t accurate for the county). I’m interested in this approach, though, because it’s one attempt to address all the difficulties with polling.

I’m also interested because of how NYT, among other outlets, has covered the race in Erie.

In July, when Trump led Joe Biden’s native state by 3, NYT did a story on how little credit Biden has gotten for economic investment in Rust Belt areas, focusing on Erie.

On a blighted industrial corridor in a struggling section of Erie, Pa., a long-abandoned iron factory has been humming with activity for the first time in decades. Construction crews have been removing barrels of toxic waste, knocking down crumbling walls and salvaging rusted tin roofing as they prepare to convert the cavernous space into an events venue, advanced manufacturing hub and brewery.

The estimated $25 million project is the most ambitious undertaking the Erie County Redevelopment Authority has ever attempted. It was both kick-started and remains heavily funded by various pots of money coming from Biden administration programs.

Yet there is no obvious sign of President Biden’s influence on the project. Instead, the politician who has taken credit for the Ironworks Square development effort most clearly is Representative Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican who voted against the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law that is helping to fund the renovation.

It is one example of a larger problem Mr. Biden faces in Pennsylvania, a swing state that could decide the winner of the 2024 election. In places like Erie, a long-struggling manufacturing hub bordering the Great Lake that is often an election bellwether, Mr. Biden is struggling to capitalize on his own economic policies even when they are providing real and visible benefits.

In August, after Harris had remade the race, WaPo did a story about Erie’s longterm economic plight, noting that its plight would affect the vote there. When it described a new factory funded by the Inflation Reduction Act as a green shoot that might change things, it didn’t describe that Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote for the law that funded it.

The irony — or the puzzle — is that this evident stress coexists with hints of green shoots in the local economy.

A long-planned plastics recycling facility is moving forward, thanks to a new federal loan guarantee. The Japanese corporation Kyocera broke ground this spring on a new manufacturing facility. And popular amenities, including an indoor golf simulator and a rock climbing gym, have opened downtown.

A pre-debate September story in NYT focused on Tim Walz’ appearance in Erie to highlight the campaign’s efforts — more apparent in Harris’ stop in Wilkes-Barre, a story about which NYT focused on skeptics about Harris — to shave Trump’s margins in rural areas.

“Look, it would be easier if we didn’t have to do this. It would be easier if these guys wouldn’t undermine our system, if they wouldn’t lie about elections, if they wouldn’t put women’s health at risk. But they are, so it’s a privilege for us to do the fight,” he said in Erie, Pa., where he stumped from a stage at the edge of Presque Isle Bay before hundreds of cheering supporters waving “Coach” and “Kamala” signs.

The appearance was one of several events that Mr. Walz used to blitz the local media airwaves and fire up Democratic volunteers with the Midwestern dad charm that his party is banking on to help draw white working-class voters. Mr. Walz, and his daughter, Hope, hit several cities in counties that went for Mr. Trump in 2016 — stung by fading American manufacturing and a difficult economy.

[snip]

His trip also underscored the challenges for his ticket as Democrats aim to improve their margins in rural and red-leaning areas in November. The specter of the former president loomed at nearly every stop, and though Mr. Walz arrived ready to engage with undecided voters, some places yielded few opportunities to do so. Mr. Walz also frustrated a handful of reporters as he refused to answer shouted questions.

It complained, twice, that Walz didn’t take reporters’ bait to answer questions only interesting to a pack of beltway journalists.

That outcome by Suffolk, if accurate, reflects a lot of work that Harris and Walz have put in, work that mainstream outlets seem ready to dismiss (while griping that candidates aren’t focusing on coastal journalists while visiting those areas).

There’s a story in Erie. It is a recognizable bellwether area. But rather than look there to see if that’s what explains a possible split between the national polls and PA, NYT’s pollster ignores the possibility that Harris is doing better in swing states than nationally because efforts she has made in those swing states, efforts that don’t feed the media’s narrative have made a difference.

What the Iowa poll may show is a national reconsideration that has happened as Kamala took over the ticket, particularly as women and young voters became more enthused. What the Suffolk PA poll may show is that more focused efforts in swing states are, very gradually, having some results.

That’s why I keep coming back to timing. Trump has 7% of his campaign left, and he’s spending much of his time outside of swing states, attempting to create stunts to shift the media narrative. Harris has 44% of her campaign left, and she’s spending it, partly, out of the limelight, working relentlessly to win over small groups of voters in the swing states that will decide the election.

We should expect a well-run campaign that has focused on swing states to show some results in those swing states, particularly in a race against a guy, Trump, who seems to have a ceiling for his support. Maybe that’s what we’re seeing.

If the election were held today, Harris would have a very good shot to win, but only narrowly. A narrow win might not be enough to stave off whatever fuckery Trump has planned.

But the election won’t be held today. She’s still got 44% of her campaign left to get this hard work to pay off.

Update: Fixed spelling of bellwether.

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Useful Idiot Networks, Now Featuring Elon Musk and Don Jr.

September 19, 2024/56 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

As I noted in my piece in The New Republic the other day and as I have before, there’s a figure in the Twitter DM lists presented at the Douglass Mackey trial, using the moniker P0TUSTrump and referred to by others as “Donald,” who pushed the group to spread the PodestaFiles hashtags WikiLeaks had adopted on the same day that WikiLeaks had directly encouraged Don Jr to promote those hashtags.

[I]n an interview with Mackey last year, Donald Trump Jr. admitted that he had been added to the chat rooms. There’s even a persona on the lists who used the moniker “P0TUSTrump,” whom others called Donald, who pushed the John Podesta leaks in the same days that WikiLeaks encouraged Don Jr. to disseminate them. That user aimed to use the same trolling method to “Make #PodestaEmails4 Trend” so that “CNN [a]nd liberal news forced to cover it.”

If P0TUSTrump is Don Jr, it means that WikiLeaks piggybacked on the trusted network of this trolling group by getting Don Jr, a trusted member of it, to suggest pushing WikiLeaks. The trolls were otherwise occupied doing things that more directly impugned Hillary Clinton, but when P0TUSTrump suggested they push the Podesta hashtags, they all turned to doing that.

That may not have been an accident. There are many ways via which that group could have been discovered by WikiLeaks supporters and/or Russia. If they had, Don Jr’s since-admitted inclusion in it would be one of the most lucrative features of the group, a really dumb member of Trump’s family who commanded a lot of trust from the group. Don Jr was (and remains) really easy to manipulate, and by manipulating him, you can direct entire groups.

These networks matter not just for the work they do and the memes they put out. These networks matter because they can be mapped and exploited. Don Jr is going to be a ready point of weakness in any network because, well, he’s Don Jr.

The same is true of Elon Musk.

In my piece arguing that people were overstating what a comment in the Doppelgänger affidavit about the project identifying 2,800 influencers and 1,900 anti-influencers meant, I noted that there had already been signs that those behind the effort were exploiting the way that Musk very publicly acts on Xitter (public behavior documented through a whole lot of journalism about how Musk has ordered Xitter engineers to make it work this way).

Even if SDA were doing more, it would in no way signal full “collaboration.” An earlier report on Doppelgänger’s work (one I’m still looking for, to link), for example, described how Doppelgänger would exploit the way Elon Musk uses his Xitter account to piggyback on his visibility to magnify pro-Russian content with no involvement from him. Elmo is so predictable and so stupid with his Xitter account it requires no payment or even witting involvement to be exploited in such a way.

Like Don Jr, Elon Musk is very important, very trusted among a key network, and painfully easy to dupe. And in his case, the algorithms deliberately magnify any network effects of his influence.

You would not necessarily have to recruit Elon Musk to be a Russian stooge (though some of his close advisors might make that easier to do). You would only need to recruit those whom he trusted to exploit him as a useful idiot.

Keep that in mind as you read this analysis of how much content from Tenet Media Musk shared.

Musk has frequently replied to or reposted content from three conservative pundits formerly paid by Tenet: Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson. From the public launch of Tenet Media in November 2023 until the release of the indictment, Musk interacted with Pool’s account at least 32 times, Rubin’s at least 11 times and Johnson’s at least nine times, according to searches of X’s archives. He did so on a wide array of subjects including immigration, presidential politics and homelessness.

[snip]

In August, Musk replied “!!” to a Tenet post on X criticizing diversity training at NASA. That post by Tenet received 1.9 million views, far more than Tenet’s typical posts, although it’s impossible to determine how much Musk helped. In April, Musk replied with the monocle emoji to a Tenet video about “eco-terrorism.”

Musk has used his influence to spotlight some of Tenet’s individual creators, too. In mid-August, Musk had a back-and-forth with then-Tenet Media pundit Lauren Southern, which began with her saying most people misunderstand Musk and Trump.

“Anyone who thinks the media is real is an idiot,” Musk responded, getting more than 647,000 views.

“Much work to do in reversing this brain rot,” Southern wrote back.

“Much work indeed. And it’s far worse in Europe. People really believe the media there!” Musk replied.

Lauren Chen didn’t pick Dave Rubin and Tim Pool to recruit because they were her buddies or because they would be profitable (though the fact that they were her buddies made her more useful). Rather, they were on a list that her handler gave her. The project was built around people like them.

Beginning in or about February 2023, Founder-1 solicited Commentator-I and Commentator-2 to perform work on behalf of “Eduard Grigoriann.” For example:

a. On or about February 6, 2023, Persona-1 emailed Founder-1 a “shortlist of candidates” for the YouTube channel, including Commentator-1 and Commentator-2. In the same email, Persona-1 attached a receipt for an $8,000 money transfer from an entity in the Czech Republic (“Czech Shell Entity-I “) to Founder-1 ‘s Canadian company, Canadian Company-1. Persona-I requested that Founder-I submit an invoice for Founder-1 ‘s “consultation services” to Czech Shell Entity-I, which Persona-I described as “our Czech sister company.” Czech Shell Entity-I has a website purporting to sell automobile parts, but also listing unrelated services (e.g., “CyberAmor Suite, Fortifying Your Digital Defenses”). The website makes no mention of “Eduard Grigoriann,” Persona-I, Persona-2, Persona-3, Viewpoint Productions, or Hungarian Shell Entity-I.

[snip]

c. On or about February 8, 2023, F ounder-1 reported to Persona-I on Founder1 ‘s outreach to Commentator-I and Commentator-2. Founder-I advised that Commentator-I said “it would need to be closer to 5 million yearly for him to be interested,” and that Commentator-2 said “it would take 100k per weekly episode to make it worth his while.” Founder-I cautioned that “from a profitability standpoint, it would be very hard for Viewpoint [i.e., the initial publicfacing name of the new venture] to recoup the costs for the likes of [Commentator-I] and [Commentator-2] based on ad revenue from web traffic or sponsors alone.” Despite Founder-1 ‘s warning that Commentator-I and Commentator-2 would not be profitable to employ, on or about February 14, 2023, Persona-I informed Founder-I that “[w]e would love to move forward with [Commentator-I and Commentator-2].”

And one reason you pick someone like Tim Pool is because you know that Elon Musk will promote his idiotic commentary, which not only ensures the widest possible dissemination, but uses Musk’s credibility to gain credibility for the project itself.

You piggyback on Pool’s credibility with Musk to piggyback on Musk’s credibility and reach.

The thing about these networks of right wing influencers is they offer a cascade effect. You pay off or persuade one or six useful idiots and the entire network becomes your useful idiot.

Update: In related news, the Guardian has a close focus on what George Papadoupoulos and his spouse, Simona Mangiante, have been up to, building a network around the Hunter Biden laptop.

Amid the recent crackdown on Russian influence in American media, a group of former Trump advisers and operatives have quietly helped build a pro-Russian website that frequently spreads debunked conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine, election fraud and vaccines.

Working alongside contributors for Kremlin state media, the former Donald Trump policy aide George Papadopoulos, his wife, Simona Mangiante, and others have become editorial board members of the website Intelligencer, which is increasingly becoming a source of news for those in the rightwing ecosystem.

[snip]

Intelligencer appears to be gaining in popularity. It recently had its best month for internet traffic, with an increase of nearly 300% during August, according to data from Similarweb, and its articles have been shared on social media by the conspiracist Alex Jones, former Trump White House staffer Garrett Ziegler and former Trump aide Roger Stone.

[snip]

Three other editorial board members also have close connections to the Trump campaigns. Leah Hoopes and Greg Stenstrom, both from Pennsylvania, have written a book falsely alleging the 2020 election was stolen. Both of them have been litigants in court cases challenging the results of the election in Pennsylvania, and Hoopes was one of Pennsylvania’s fake electors, who falsely signed paperwork saying that Trump had won the election.

Tyler Nixon, Roger Stone’s personal attorney, also serves on the board and hosts his own show on TNT Radio. The former Radio Sputnik journalist Lee Stranahan is also involved.

Nixon, Hoopes, Stenstrom and Stranahan did not respond to requests for comment.

Simona met with Andrii Derkach, the Russian spy who cultivated Rudy Giuliani, earlier this year and did a big roll-out of the efforts to return to Hunter Biden disinformation.

I have long believed that one reason Trump was so sad that Biden dropped out is that there were plans for shit like this that now have limited value.

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JD Vance Makes Light of Actual Foreign Interference in His State

September 18, 2024/119 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

At a press conference on Ohio’s efforts to respond to the chaos created in Springfield by a slew of bomb threats, Governor Mike DeWine revealed that a number of the bomb threats came from “one particular country” overseas.

We have people, unfortunately, overseas, who are taking these actions. Some of them are coming from one particular country. We think that this is one more opportunity to mess with the United States. And they’re continuing to do that.

After that, in a truly deranged Xitter manifesto basically arguing that if the media doesn’t platform the false claims of Nazis attacking migrants, they’ll shoot someone, JD Vance falsely claimed that that’s proof a double standard from the media, then continued to lie that Kamala Harris was responsible for the assassination attempts against Trump.

[R]eports today suggest they came from a foreign country, not–as the media suggested–a deranged Trump fan.

The double standard is breathtaking. Donald Trump and I are, by their account, directly responsible for bomb threats from foreign countries. Why? Because we had the audacity to repeat what residents told us about the problems in their town. Meanwhile, Harris allies call for Trump to be eliminated as the media publishes arguments that he deserved to be shot.

Vance integrated this attack into his stump speech in Sparta Michigan, claiming that, “the American media has been laundering foreign disinformation” and deliberately lying — before DeWine revealed this — when they noted the bomb threats followed Trump and JD’s false attacks on Haitians.

Bomb threats that shut down schools and police stations and city halls is not foreign disinformation, JD. They are threats, just like the threats Trump has elicited against prosecutors, judges, and witnesses in cases against him. Everyone has had to take those bomb threats seriously, because you never know when one will be real. A school principal can’t tell in real time if a threat is coming from overseas. The threats have caused real costs to the city and its residents.

And, even if all the threats are coming from overseas — which goes further than what DeWine said — they are a foreign attack on Springfield. A foreign attack on Springfield doing very real damage.

I find it curious that DeWine didn’t reveal which country — China, Iran, Russia are the likely candidates given DeWine’s description that the country is taking “one more opportunity to mess with the United States” — is calling in these bomb threats. A Trump supporter like DeWine would have incentive to reveal if it were either of the first two (China doesn’t do this kind of thing, but Iran adopted the identity of Proud Boys in 2020 to threaten Democratic voters). If it’s Russia — and even if it’s Iran — the foreign country would be doing the bomb threats for the same reason Trump and JD keep lying about Haitians: to stoke fear and division. If it’s Russia, they’d be doing so in support of the candidate selling fear and division. But whichever it is, it appears to be (given DeWine’s description), a hostile foreign country seeking to harm the United States.

And the Senator from Ohio, JD Vance, treats these attacks on his state with very real consequences as mere disinformation.

The Senator from Ohio is minimizing an attack from one foreign country so he can attack immigrants legally in his state. JD Vance is awfully selective about which foreign threats he wails about.

Update: Relatedly, yesterday The New Republic published my analogy between JD’s false claims and those made by trolls pushing Trump in 2016.

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The Concerning Paragraph in the Ryan Routh Complaint

September 16, 2024/114 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

Of all the coverage on Ryan Routh — the seemingly unbalanced man who fled Trump’s golf course after being spotted with a gun yesterday — just the NYT (that I’ve seen) notes that Routh’s various statements seeming to express regret about the US’ worsening relationship with Iran.

In one convoluted passage, Mr. Routh vented his anger at Mr. Trump’s dismantling of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran.

After writing “Iran, I apologize,” Mr. Routh added, “you are free to assassinate Trump” — although he moves freely in the book between addressing his general readers and specific subjects.

Mr. Trump and his allies have long warned about the threat posed by Iran to the former president’s personal safety. In August, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man who had recently visited Iran with trying to hire a hit man to assassinate political figures in the United States. Investigators believe that those potential targets likely included Mr. Trump.

Most journalists report that there have been two seeming assassination plots against Trump. Not so, if you count Asif Merchant’s efforts to hire a hit man, purportedly to go after Donald Trump. That would be a third.

Unless there’s a tie between Merchant’s efforts and Routh’s.

That’s almost certainly not the case.

Routh seems like someone who keep searching for grandiose meaning in his life.

Still, I keep thinking about this paragraph from the complaint charging Routh with owning a gun as a felon.

Routh was offering a public way to contact him, via WhatsApp, on the phone he had with him yesterday, a phone he seems to have carried on his person even though the gun he had and the truck he drove both had identifying information obscured.

Routh was doing so on July 10, on a day when Merchant remained at large (Merchant was arrested on July 12).

One aspect of Merchant’s planning involved requiring the EDNY informant — whom Merchant believed would help him find a hit squad — to get him a new phone.

On or about June 10, 2024, Merchant met with the purported hitmen, who were in fact undercover U.S. law enforcement officers (the “UCs”) whom the CS introduced to Merchant at Merchant’s request. Merchant advised the UCs that he was looking for three services from them, including killing a “political person.” During the meeting, Merchant presented himself as the “representative” in the U.S., indicating that there were other people he worked for outside the U.S. Merchant told the UCs that he wanted to pay the hitmen in cash through “hawalas”—an informal and unregulated method of transferring money—in Istanbul and Dubai. Merchant also stated that he would give the hitmen instructions on who to kill either the last week of August 2024 or the first week of September 2024, after he returned to Pakistan. Merchant requested that the UCs provide him with a secure cellular phone so they could communicate, and the UCs said they would do so. The UCs also told Merchant that they would be in touch about how much their services would cost.

On or about June 12, 2024, Merchant met the UCs again and obtained the cellular phone from the UCs to use in furtherance of the assassination plot. During the meeting, Merchant agreed to pay the UCs a $5,000 advance payment for the plot. Following the meeting with the UCs, Merchant met with the CS again in furtherance of the plot.

On or about June 13, 2024, Merchant wrote out coded language on a piece of paper that he instructed the CS to copy down and use when communicating with him in the future. Merchant wrote that the word “tee-shirt” would mean a “protest,” which he described as the “lightest work.” The phrase “flannel shirt” would mean “stealing,” which was “heavier work.” The phrase “fleece jacket,” the heaviest work, would mean “the third task . . . commit the act of the game,” indicating murder as previously discussed. The phrase “denim jacket” referred to “sending money.” Merchant told the CS to use the code words only orally on the phone and not to text them. [my emphasis]

So even in the plot the FBI thwarted, Merchant had a plan to set up a dedicated device for his efforts.

Again, I think it most likely that Routh is just a mentally ill person looking to give his life meaning.

But I don’t rule out that Iran tried to find more potential recruits to target Trump. Routh’s public profile would make it clear he wanted to recruit and be recruited, and his beliefs were so quirky, he might well allow himself to be recruited by Iran.

Which is to say, it’s early yet. Routh’s story may well be more complicated than it seems.

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How Kamala Harris Dodged the Two Truths Problem

September 15, 2024/128 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

One reason fact checking doesn’t work with Donald Trump is that he has trained his followers to so distrust the press that even if Daniel Dale lays out 33 lies in one debate, Trump’s followers will simply write that off to press bias. Donald Trump has created a system in which there are two truths in the United States: one, the reality that sane people live in, and another, an all-encompassing system of false claims that Trump has spun with the help of Fox News.

So every time you try to fact check Trump, you simply reinforce the polarization in the US. You simply reinforce the belief of Trump’s supporters that the other half of society simply hates Trump’s truth. And so, counterintuitively, fact checking has the opposite effect you might want it to have: it reinforces the loyalty of Trump’s rubes, rather than leads them to doubt him.

Kamala Harris appears to understand that. One of the most fascinating aspects of last week’s debate is how, with one major and two lesser exceptions, rather than directly disputing Trump’s truth, Harris instead rebutted his false claims by making Trump look weak.

The one exception — over an hour into the debate — came when Linsey Davis invited Harris to respond to Trump’s accusation that she hates Israel.

LINSEY DAVIS: Vice President Harris, he says you hate Israel.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: That’s absolutely not true. I have my entire career and life supported Israel and the Israeli people.

But aside from Harris saying, “that’s not true,” or, “that’s a lie,” Harris usually doesn’t directly dispute any of the lies Trump tells. Often, she instead says things that suggest his incompetence.

For example, in response to Trump’s first answer in which he makes a claim about the economy under his term, instead of directly disputing it, Harris mocks what a mess he left her and President Biden.

Let’s talk about what Donald Trump left us. Let’s talk about what Donald Trump left us.

[snip]

And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.

Trump claims that all the jobs created under the Biden Administration were just “bounceback” jobs as the economy reopened after the pandemic. Rather than disputing that, Harris describes how Trump is just trying to help rich people (and then notes that even Wharton assess his economic plans would bankrupt the country).

So, Donald Trump has no plan for you. And when you look at his economic plan, it’s all about tax breaks for the richest people.

[snip]

What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump’s plan would actually explode the deficit.

Trump complains about inflation and brags that up to 90% of people think he’ll be better on the economy. Harris could have corrected the polling claim or — more importantly — talked about how the Biden Administration had tamed inflation. She didn’t (there are reports that some Biden insiders are hurt she didn’t defend him more, and this may be an example). Instead, she hit Trump for sending chips to China.

[Y]ou wanna talk about his deal with China what he ended up doing is under Donald Trump’s presidency he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military basically sold us out when a policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century.

Donald Trump tells his normal lie, claiming that everyone wanted abortion to be returned to the states, and Harris simply calls him a liar, before explaining how his hand-picked Justices did what Trump wanted.

Well, as I said, you’re going to hear a bunch of lies. And that’s not actually a surprising fact.

Trump’s claim that people are engaged in infanticide is one of three lies that ABC, in this case Linsey Davis, fact-checked in real time. So Harris starts her reply by first addressing Davis’ question about whether Harris would put any limits on abortion access by using Roe as a stand-in, she then translates Trump’s infanticide claim into what it would really mean, then describes even claiming it is an insult to women.

I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade. And as you rightly mentioned, nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion. That is not happening. It’s insulting to the women of America. And understand what has been happening under Donald Trump’s abortion bans.

Trump interrupts and tries to refloat his infanticide claim and Harris successfully interjects — come on! But her first response to the infanticide is to emphasize that Trump hasn’t denied he would veto an abortion ban.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Come on.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Would you do that? Why don’t you ask her that question —

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Why don’t you answer the question would you veto –

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That’s the problem. Because under Roe v. Wade.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Answer the question, would you veto–

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: You could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month –

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: That’s not true.

David Muir invites Harris to respond after Trump’s cat screech. She starts by labeling him as extreme and pivots to talking about her Republican endorsers.

Talk about extreme. Um, you know, this is I think one of the reasons why in this election I actually have the endorsement of 200 Republicans who have formally worked with President Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain including the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressmember Liz Cheney.

That leads to a long exchange between Muir and Trump in which Trump falsely blames crime on immigrants. Muir corrects Trump’s claim that crime is going up. But there’s still a false claim that Harris could have corrected: that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than American citizens. Instead of doing that, she raises Trump’s own crimes.

Well, I think this is so rich. Coming from someone who has been prosecuted for national security crimes, economic crimes, election interference, has been found liable for sexual assault and his next big court appearance is in November at his own criminal sentencing. And let’s be clear where each person stands on the issue of what is important about respect for the rule of law and respect for law enforcement.

Trump responds with his tired lies about the legal cases against him being political. Again, Harris could fact check those lies (at least the ones that wouldn’t amount to command influence from a sitting Vice President). Instead, she doubles down on the “extreme” comment, then lays out the way SCOTUS’ immunity decision would immunize Trump for misconduct.

Well let’s talk about extreme. And understand the context in which this election in 2024 is taking place. The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the white house again. Understand, this is someone who has openly said he would terminate, I’m quoting, terminate the constitution of the United States.

After Trump responds to Harris answer to a Davis question about fracking, he spurts out some of the other things that Trump claims she has flip-flopped on. Don’t lie, Harris answers after first saying that his claims were not true.

Uh, defund the police. She’s been against that forever. She gave all that stuff up, very wrongly, very horribly. And everybody’s laughing at it, okay? They’re all laughing at it. She gave up at least 12 and probably 14 or 15 different policies. Like, she was big on defund the police.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: That’s not true. [mouthed, not audible]

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: In Minnesota, she went out — wait a minute. I’m talking now. If you don’t mind. Please. Does that sound familiar?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Don’t lie. [lie is audible]

Then Trump responds to a Muir question about whether he regretted his actions on January 6 by blaming Nancy Pelosi. Again, Harris could fact check Trump’s claim that it was Pelosi’s role, and not his own, to keep the country safe. Instead, she states clearly that he incited a violent mob and coddled right wingers on other occasions.

I was at the Capitol on January 6th. I was the Vice President-Elect. I was also an acting senator. I was there. And on that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation’s Capitol, to desecrate our nation’s Capitol. On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And some died. And understand, the former president has been indicted and impeached for exactly that reason. But this is not an isolated situation. Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing antisemitic hate, and what did the president then at the time say? There were fine people on each side. Let’s remember that when it came to the Proud Boys, a militia, the president said, the former president said, “Stand back and stand by.”

Harris says, “we’re not going back” to this — a clear sign that when she uses the term, it’s not about incumbency, it’s about Trump’s fascism.

After the Israel exchange — the clearest moment, I argue, when Harris directly disputed a claim Trump made — and the commercial break, the discussion turns to Ukraine, to Trump’s unwillingness to answer whether he wants them to win. After Trump babbles a bunch about Biden before claiming he would end the Ukraine war before he took office, Harris accuses Trump of planning to just give up.

Well, first of all, it’s important to remind the former president you’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me. I believe the reason that Donald Trump says that this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up. And that’s not who we are as Americans.

When Muir invites Harris to respond to Trump’s false claim that she met with Putin, Harris first notes she has predicted he would lie, then describes, again, meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy (I’ve seen Trump supporters complain that she didn’t deny meeting Putin).

Yet again, I said it at the beginning of this debate, you’re going to hear a bunch of lies coming from this fella. And that is another one. When I went to meet with President Zelenskyy, I’ve now met with him over five times. The reality is, it has been about standing as America always should, as a leader upholding international rules and norms.

Some questions later, Trump interrupts to respond to Harris’ observation that Trump uses race to divide America, making a rubber-glue argument. I’m not the most divisive presidency, you are.

Knowing that regardless of people’s color or the language their grandmother speaks we all have the same dreams and aspirations and want a president who invests in those, not in hate and division.

DAVID MUIR: Vice President Harris thank you. Linsey?

LINSEY DAVIS: President Trump, this is now your third time —

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This is the most divisive presidency in the history of our country.

Trump is trying to revert to that two truths position, on which he usually operates. Rubber, glue. In such a world, you don’t have to decide who really has had a divisive presidency, you have only to decide who you trust, and your answer will come from there.

He somehow goes from there to inflation. Once again, Harris does not respond by pointing out that inflation has been tamed, but instead with her generational comment, which she uses as a way to list all the plans she has, in contrast to Trump.

I want to respond to that, though. I want to just respond briefly. Clearly, I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump. And what I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country. One who believes in what is possible, one who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people. I believe in what we can do to strengthen our small businesses, which is why I have a plan. Let’s talk about our plans.

After Trump sets off on a rant, it appears that Harris tries to interrupt to correct Trump’s claim that she wants to take everyone’s guns, which Davis cuts off.

She has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun. She has a plan to not allow fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. That’s what her plan is until just recently.

LINSEY DAVIS: President Trump, President Trump.

VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: The former president has said something twice and I need to respond too. I just need to respond one time to what he has said multiple times.

She returns to both fracking (which as she notes, she answered in response to a question from Davis) and guns during a later response on healthcare.

I just need to respond to a previous point that the former president has made. I’ve made very clear my position on fracking. And then this business about taking everyone’s guns away. Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.

But that’s it–the next most direct responses to a claim from Trump, after the Israel claim.

Some of these are admittedly closer to direct responses to Trump, but except where Trump makes claims about Harris, she does not directly dispute him.

The effectiveness of this approach is clear: Rather than saying Trump’s manufactured version of truth was false — again, setting up a clear dispute and inviting Trump’s supporters to simply dismiss her as someone opposing him because she hates him — she instead demonstrated, over and over, Trump’s weakness.

That recognizes an important fact about the cult-like following Trump has created: So long as his followers believe his strength, they will believe what he says as an article of faith. They believe in him, and so believe what he says.

But they believe in him because they believe his pose of being strong.

With some exceptions (such as a segment of the Jan6ers prosecuted because they believed him, and left with a lot of time to reconsider the actions they took in response), Trump’s people won’t start to rethink what he tells them to believe until they first doubt who he is, until they first begin to see through his con of being strong and successful.

And you demonstrate that not by telling them facts that might directly contest the belief system they’ve adopted from Trump, but by pointing not just to evidence that he’s weak — he is laughed at, he is insecure about his crowd size, his daddy gave him millions that he squandered in six bankruptcies.

It’s only after they step out of a belief system based on a false belief that Trump is strong will people listen to you.

There was a great deal that Kamala Harris did to succeed in the debate. The most important thing was to rattle the old man, so his own narcissism led him to meltdown of his own accord.

But even as that was happening, the Vice President didn’t stoop to a contest of two truths, a contest over which truth voters might pick. She instead made it clear that the basis of the “truth” Trump offers, is a base of weakness and fear. She didn’t refute individual aspects of Trump’s truth. She instead kicked at its foundations, and showed how flimsy it is.

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The Laura Loomer Problem Is the Same as the Vladimir Putin Problem

September 14, 2024/138 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

At about the same time that several of Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters were warning that Laura Loomer’s access to the former President threatens his presidential bid, Tim Walz was in Grand Rapids mocking how easy it is to manipulate Donald Trump.

Kamala Harris was able to, within a matter of a few seconds, use this guy’s inflated ego and narcissism to bait him into melting down on a national stage in front of 60 million.

You don’t think Vladimir Putin could do that?

You don’t think Xi Jinping could do that?

Jewish space laser conspiracist Marjorie Taylor Greene scolded Loomer about attacking Kamala Harris for her Indian ancestry (after which MTG went back to making racist attacks on migrants again).

Lindsey Graham, a sometime hawk who makes excuses for Trump’s apologies for Russia, agreed that Trump should distance himself from Loomer and the incendiary comments she makes.

“We have policy disagreements but the history of this person is just really toxic,” Graham told HuffPost on Thursday. “I mean, she actually called for Kellyanne Conway’s daughter to hang herself. I don’t know how this all happened, but, no, I don’t think it’s helpful. I don’t think it’s helpful at all.”

[snip]

“Marjorie Taylor Greene is right. I don’t say that a lot,” Graham said.

“I think what [Loomer] said about Kamala Harris and the White House is abhorrent, but it’s deeper than that,” he added. “I mean, you know, some of the things she’s said about Republicans and others is disturbing. I mean, to call for someone’s daughter to hang themselves. Yeah, no, I think that the president would serve himself well to make sure this doesn’t become a bigger story.”

The backlash comes after Trump brought Loomer, a 9/11 conspiracist, with him to the 9/11 memorial in New York. It comes as many of Trump handlers are trying to find someone, someone besides themselves, besides the candidate, to blame for his disastrous debate performance.

When asked about Republican complaints about Loomer the other day, Trump offered word salad.

Well, I don’t know what they would say, Laura has been a supporter of mine, just like a lot of people have been supporters. And she’s been a supporter of mine. She speaks very positively of the campaign — I’m not sure why you asked that question, but Laura’s a supporter. I don’t control Laura. Laura has to say what she wants. She’s a free spirit. Well, I don’t know. Look. I can’t tell Laura what to do. Laura’s a supporter. I have a lot of supporters. So I don’t know exactly what you’re referring to. … I just don’t know. Laura’s a supporter. I don’t know. She is a strong person. She’s got strong opinions. And I don’t know what she said but that’s not up to me. She’s a supporter.

Shortly after this pathetic response from Trump, a Truth Social post was released over Trump’s initials, bearing none of the roughness of a post the man wrote himself. The post disavowed unspecified “statements she made.”

All that, in turn, has led to insinuations and whispers about precisely what kind of access Loomer has to Trump.

No one can keep former President Donald Trump away from Laura Loomer.

Throughout his third presidential campaign, aides and advisers have done their best to shield him from Loomer, a far-right social media influencer, and similar figures who stroke his ego and stoke his basest political instincts.

They lost that battle this week, as Loomer traveled on Trump’s jet to his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday and to Sept. 11 memorial services Wednesday. Her presence at the latter infuriated some Democrats and Republicans because one of the many conspiracy theories she has promoted is the false notion that the terrorist assault on the U.S. was an “inside job.” It wasn’t.

[snip]

[H]er presence reflects Trump’s loss of faith in his campaign aides and their concomitant fear of upsetting him in a time of crisis, according to people familiar with the situation. Last month, he tapped his 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to be an adviser to his top advisers — a move widely viewed as a rebuke of the existing leadership crew.

A senior official from Trump’s 2020 campaign team said that helps explain why Loomer is no longer being kept at arm’s length.

“The people that have the authority to stop it are hanging on to their jobs,” the former official said. “So are you going to pick that fight with him?”

A lot of this is manufactured controversy. Loomer is little different than all the other far right nutbags Trump surrounds himself with. Why blame Loomer for the cat-and-dog screech when Trump’s chosen Vice Presidential candidate — chosen with the considerable input of Trump’s dumbass son — has a much more central role in magnifying this hoax, when Trump has employed Stephen Miller to engage in such fearmongering both inside and outside the White House, for years?

And Marjorie Taylor Greene, lecturing other people about being racist? You have got to be fucking kidding me.

As described, what distinguishes Loomer is her access. I even joined in, speculating that as she traveled on his plane to the Philadelphia debate, handlers may believe she tainted the killer immigration attack coached by upstanding, reasonable people like Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard, creating the screech.

The unspoken (except by Drudge) suggestion they’re fucking is the invented explanation for what might make Loomer more dangerous than the other racists and conspiracists who populate Trump’s inner circle. Me, I’m more interested in whether the problem with Loomer is that she’s so close to Roger Stone, whom campaign officials perennially attempt to keep separate from Trump during presidential elections. Ali Alexander served as Roger’s surrogate during the 2020 election; perhaps Loomer is doing so now.

Whatever it is that has Republican members of Congress and campaign officials blaming Loomer for Trump’s failures, it is also a concession.

The complaint being offered is that none of Trump’s advisors can prevent someone — in this case, Loomer — from getting Trump to parrot the most outrageous beliefs simply by inveigling herself into his closest circle and flattering him enough to stay there.

The complaint being offered is that Loomer’s mere fawning presence will lead Trump to say and do things that will disrupt the carefully cultivated illusion that he is a sane, effective leader.

Trump’s anonymous aides are making the same argument that Tim Walz did: that anyone who strokes Trump’s ego enough can win him to their view. Trump’s boasts about how valuable Viktor Orbán’s adulation is have nothing to do with Orbán’s real stature on the world stage. Rather, Trump boasted about Orbán’s “endorsement” because Orbán has serially sucked up to Trump, repeating back to Trump Trump’s own fantasy that he can deliver “peace” in Ukraine with a snap of his fingers.

The problem isn’t Laura Loomer. She’s little different than all the other extremists who remain in Trump’s good graces by performing near-perfect sycophancy.

The problem is precisely what Tim Walz warned: Trump’s narcissism and his ego make him weak, vulnerable to any person willing to use flattery to win their objectives.

Trump’s aides are making the same argument Tim Walz is: that Trump doesn’t have the self-control to protect against extremists making him their ready tool.

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Ryan Routh’s Eleven Phones and Two Iran Mentions

Why No One Went to Prison for Rudy Giuliani’s Hunter Biden Corruption

Lev didn’t go to prison for the Hunter Biden stuff

SDNY believed Lev was not fully forthcoming

Bill Barr insulated the impeachment review from the Hunter Biden caper

Bill Barr played a shell game to protect Rudy’s “collusion” with a known Russian spy

DOJ approved steps against Rudy on Lisa Monaco’s first day on the job

Attorneys General have vast discretion

David Weiss’ appointment threatens to limit further fallout

The complicity of the press

Timeline

Trump Will Stage an Emergency to Ban Jack Smith’s Book Report

Fridays with Nicole Sandler

Permission Structures and Polling Puzzles

Brittany Mahomes

Springfield’s Republicans and Reagan’s Dead-Enders

Iowa draws closer

Pennsylvania bellwethers

Useful Idiot Networks, Now Featuring Elon Musk and Don Jr.

JD Vance Makes Light of Actual Foreign Interference in His State

The Concerning Paragraph in the Ryan Routh Complaint

How Kamala Harris Dodged the Two Truths Problem

The Laura Loomer Problem Is the Same as the Vladimir Putin Problem

Interesting links

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