I’m not, now, as full of despair as I was at one point in the SCOTUS hearing on Presidential immunity. (Here’s my live thread.) I believe that a majority of the court will rule that for private conduct — adopting the Blassingame rule that a President acting as candidate acts in a private role — a former President can be prosecuted.

But whooboy, Sam Alito really really believes everything Trump has said about this being a witch hunt. He repeatedly said that the protections that we assume ensure rule of law in the US — DOJ guidelines on prosecutions, the role of a grand jury, the role of a judge — are not enough in the case of Donald Trump. Sam Alito believes that Donald Trump should not have to be inconvenienced by a trial while he could be doing something else. Sam Alito also believes that January 6 was a mostly peaceful protest.

Alito even suggested that a President would be more likely to engage in violence after a closely contested election if he knew he might be prosecuted for it than not.

It was fairly insane.

Meanwhile, while I think there’s a majority (though Steve Vladeck is not as convinced) — with at least all the women in a majority — to let this case proceed at least on the private acts alleged in the indictment (with the huge caveat that Trump’s demands of Pence would not be considered a private act!), it’s clear that Neil Gorsuch doesn’t see how 18 USC 1512(c)(2) could be applied to Trump because we don’t know what corrupt purpose is, even though, of all the January 6 defendants, his corrupt purpose — his effort to obtain a improper private benefit — is most clearcut.

But there’s a whole lot of garbage that will come out of this decision, including immunity for core actions, like pardons and appointments, that could clearly be part of a bribe.

Notably, both Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh appear to be gunning for Special Counsels (though possibly only with respect to Presidents, not the sons of Presidents).

Michael Dreeben backtracked and backtracked far enough to preserve a case. But it’s not sure what else there will be.

According to Person 16 — who has the potty mouth and performed candor we’ve come to expect from Eric Herschmann — Person 5 is a “total moron” — an opinion about Boris Epshteyn that Herschmann has expressed elsewhere.

“I certainly am not relying on any legal analysis from either of you or Boris who — to be clear — I think is an idiot,” Mr. Herschmann wrote in a different email. “When I questioned Boris’s legal experience to work on challenging a presidential election since he appeared to have none — challenges that resulted in multiple court failures — he boasted that he was ‘just having fun,’ while also taking selfies and posting pictures online of his escapades.”

Mr. Corcoran at one point sought to get on the phone with Mr. Herschmann to discuss his testimony, instead of simply sending the written directions, which alarmed Mr. Herschmann, given that Mr. Herschmann was a witness, the emails show.

In language that mirrored the federal statute against witness tampering, Mr. Herschmann told Mr. Corcoran that Mr. Epshteyn, himself under subpoena in Georgia, “should not in any way be involved in trying to influence, delay or prevent my testimony.”

“He is not in a position or qualified to opine on any of these issues,” Mr. Herschmann said.

At that same November 2, 2022 interview, Person 16 went on to tell Jack Smith’s investigators how Person 5 ingratiated himself to Trump after the former President left the White House.

Post January 2021, [Person 5] constantly sent FPOTUS what [he] had uncovered on the election fraud and maneuvered [his] way into FPOTUS’ circle. [Person 16] was unaware of an actual [redacted] for [Person 5], stating it was [Person 5] who would instruct media to report [on him] as [redacted].

I long laughed at the the way that journalist after journalist credited Ephsteyn with playing a role in Trump’s legal defense even while Ephsteyn was billing Trump’s PAC for strategy consulting, not law.

For the entirety of the time that Epshteyn was quarterbacking Trump’s response to the stolen documents probe, someone in his immediate vicinity has been telling reporters that he was playing a legal function, all the while billing Trump for the same old strategic consulting his firm, Georgetown Advisory, normally provides (though the two payments the campaign made to Epshteyn after Trump formalized his candidacy, totalling $30,000, were filed under “communications and legal consulting”).

NYT has, in various stories including Maggie in the byline, described Epshteyn’s role in the stolen documents case as “an in-house counsel who helps coordinate Mr. Trump’s legal efforts,” “in-house counsel for the former president who has become one of his most trusted advisers,” and “who has played a central role in coordinating lawyers on several of the investigations involving Mr. Trump.” Another even describes that Epshteyn “act[ed] as [a] lawyer [] for the Trump campaign.” The other day, Maggie described his role instead as “broader strategic consulting.”

All the time that NYT was describing Epshteyn as playing a legal role — and NYT is in no way alone in this — he was telling the Feds he wasn’t playing a legal function, he was instead playing a strategic consulting one. Many if not most of these stories also post-date the time, in September, when the FBI seized Epshteyn’s phone, which would give him a really good reason to try to claim to be a lawyer and not a political consultant.

According to Person 16, he “believed [Person 5] was now trying to create [redacted] to cover [him] for previous activities. [Person 16] believed [Person 49’s] records may reflect recent [redacted] that did not reflect what actually transpired.”

It was around the time of this interview, in November 2022, when Ephsteyn did start billing for legal services, even while the press was credulously reporting that he had always been serving in a legal role. That happened in the aftermath of Ephsteyn’s phone being seized, in September 2022.

Person 16 also thought that “total moron” Person 5 might have shifted the concern about witness tampering from the January 6 investigation[s] to the stolen document one.

[Person 16] could not recall where the information that the concern about witness tampering was related to the document investigation and not the January 6th Committee. [Person 16] commented that sounded like something [Person 5] would do.

That interview was in November 2022.

In January 2023, according to an exhibit submitted in support of a discovery request for records on all correspondence and/or communications regarding counsel, Jack Smith’s office asked the FBI to pull together the toll records between Person 49 — who may be Susie Wiles, the head of America First PAC — and both Person 5 and Stanley Woodward.

The contacts between Person 49 and Woodward are not that interesting — just four phone calls in fall 2022, when Woodward started representing Kash Patel.

The contacts between Person 5 (whom I suspect is Ephsteyn) and Person 49 (whom I suspect is Wiles) are more interesting.

The contacts started on April 20, 2021, when Person 5 called Person 49, with sustained contact for a few months and then a lapse.

The contacts resumed in September and October 2021 (when the January 6 Committee was ratcheting up).

There were four phone cals in one week in November 2021, and two longer calls in December 2021.

And then nothing, until when Ephsteyn started ingratiating himself in Trump’s orbit after the documents issue went public in February 20222. From that point forward they were “in contact almost daily.”

Of course, these SMS texts might not be that useful. The paragraph of the superseding stolen documents indictment that describes Wiles vetting Carlos De Oliveira’s loyalty before arranging legal representation of him describes that Nauta confirmed his now co-defendant’s loyalty on a Signal chat, not an SMS text.

Just over two weeks after the FBI discovered classified documents in the Storage Room and TRUMP’s office, on August 26, 2022, NAUTA called Trump Employee 5 and said words to the effect of, “someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good.” In response, Trump Employee 5 told NAUTA that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal and that DE OLIVEIRA would not do anything to affect his relationship with TRUMP. That same day, at NAUTA’s request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat group with NAUTA and the PAC Representative that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal. That same day, TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and told DE OLIVEIRA that TRUMP would get DE OLIVEIRA an attorney. [my emphasis]

Among the exhibits included in this request for discovery is a fragment of an interview with Person 49 denying unequivocally that she had done such vetting (as well as an earlier interview in which she said Person 16 was at the forefront of finding lawyers). If this is Wiles, she denied conducting loyalty checks before agreeing to find legal representation for people.

Mind you, that’s not the only place Wiles shows up in the superseding indictment.

In August or September 2021, when he was no longer president, TRUMP met in his office at the Bedminster Club with a representative of his political action committee (the “PAC Representative”). During the meeting, TRUMP commented that an ongoing military operation in Country B was not going well. TRUMP showed the PAC Representative a classified map of Country B and told the PAC Representative that he should not be showing the map to the PAC Representative and to not get too close. The PAC Representative did not have a security clearance or any need-t0-know classified information about the military operation.

That was around the time when Person 49 resumed phone contact with Person 5 again.

This ABC piece talks about what a big deal it is that Wiles might have to testify at trial in the height of a campaign she’s leading (though Aileen Cannon seems dead set on preventing that from happening).

And this post describes how Wiles likely showed up in another Trump-related indictment as the Florida campaign official who interacted — unwittingly — with Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s trolls.

Yesterday, Jack Smith submitted his brief on Trump’s immunity claim to SCOTUS. I’m working on a post on it, but thought I should go ahead and post this stub so people can chat until that’s done.

There’s a funny passage in the 2,800-word NYT piece contrasting how Trump has managed Michael Cohen and Allen Weisselberg.

Initially sympathetic, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cohen a “good man” and the search “a disgraceful situation.” He also called Mr. Cohen with a message — stay strong — and the Trump Organization paid for Mr. Cohen’s main lawyer.

But Mr. Trump’s advisers were concerned about witness tampering accusations and he stopped reaching out. Their relationship soon soured.

NYT claims — apparently intending this to be a serious explanation — that Trump stopped trying to buy Cohen’s silence with a pardon and payments for a lawyer because of concerns about witness tampering.

I mean, I’m sure some of NYT’s sources claimed that. But given the amount of witness tampering Trump continued to engage in — publicly and privately — after leaving Cohen to fend for himself, the explanation is not remotely credible.

A far, far more likely explanation — one that is also more consistent with other aspects of NYT’s story — is that Trump and his attorneys intervened in the privilege review of phone content seized from Michael Cohen to conduct a risk assessment. (NYT says it relied on court records to tell this story, but they don’t mention that Trump abandoned Cohen only after getting access to what had been seized and why.) What Trump’s team saw before them in both the seized materials and the warrants used to seize Cohen’s devices may have led Trump to conclude, first, that Cohen had already showed signs of betrayal, by secretly recording the phone call over which they planned the hush payments to Karen McDougal.

Mr. Cohen’s lawyers discovered the recording as part of their review of the seized materials and shared it with Mr. Trump’s lawyers, according to the three people briefed on the matter.

“Obviously, there is an ongoing investigation, and we are sensitive to that,” Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, said in a statement. “But suffice it to say that when the recording is heard, it will not hurt Mr. Cohen. Any attempt at spin cannot change what is on the tape.”

NYT (including Maggie Haberman, who was also part of this story) was the first to break that story, and did so in the days after Cohen hired Lanny Davis, but it is not mentioned here.

Perhaps more importantly, Trump would have gotten a misleading sense from reviewing seized materials that Cohen was only being actively investigated for the taxi medallions and the hush payment.

That warrant may have led Trump to sincerely believe that prosecutors were only looking at the hush payment and business-related crimes, as he claimed on Fox News.

When Mr. Trump called into one of his favorite television shows, “Fox & Friends,” a few weeks after the search, he distanced himself from Mr. Cohen, who he said had handled just “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work, adding: “From what I understand, they’re looking at his businesses.”

“I’m not involved,” Mr. Trump added three times.

The warrants against Cohen built on each other and so built on the Mueller investigation, as I laid out here and here. But the warrant overtly tied to the April 2018 seizure didn’t mention other aspects of the investigation that might have made Trump more cautious about hanging Cohen out to dry, had he seen them.

Trump would not have known that Robert Mueller had succeeded in doing something SDNY does not seem to have done: accessed Cohen’s Trump Organization emails from Microsoft, thereby discovering documents regarding Trump’s ties to Russia that Trump Org had withheld from subpoena responses. Trump would not have known, then, that Mueller had established that Cohen told Congress a false story to cover up Trump’s own lies about Russia. That led to the first damning testimony from Cohen about Trump: That on his behalf, Cohen had contacted the Kremlin during the 2016 election and then lied to cover it up.

Plus, if Trump used the privilege review as a means to assess risk, it was based on a faulty assumption, an assumption mirrored in the NYT story.

NYT ties Cohen’s import as a witness to the crimes for which Cohen was investigated personally, even focusing exclusively on the hush payment and ignoring the lies about Russia. In a description of the damage Cohen’s congressional testimony did to Trump, NYT suggests that damage was limited to the hush payment, the thing that Trump allegedly engaged in financial fraud to cover up (predictably, NYT doesn’t mention the financial fraud alleged in the cover-up, just the cover-up).

When he pleaded guilty to federal charges that August, Mr. Cohen pointed the finger at Mr. Trump, saying he had paid the hush money “at the direction of” his former boss — an accusation he is expected to repeat on the witness stand in the Manhattan trial. A spokeswoman for Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, declined to comment.

Before going to prison, Mr. Cohen also appeared before Congress, where he was asked who else had worked on the hush-money deal. His answer: Mr. Weisselberg.

The far more damaging thing Cohen did in that congressional testimony, though, was to tee up the way Trump adjusted his own business valuations he used for his business to maximize his profits. That was the basis for the fraud trial against Trump Org, and if the verdict sticks, it may cost Trump a half billion dollars and, unless he finds a way to cash in on Truth Social, may create follow-on financial problems.

In other words, Trump seems to have imagined Cohen would not find another way of avenging being hung out like he was, and NYT doesn’t include that other way — predicating investigations that threaten Trump Org itself and led to Weisselberg’s twin prosecutions — in their story.

Ultimately, NYT is still telling this story as if the newsworthy bit is Trump’s continued success at cheating the law, what they describe as, “the power and peril of Mr. Trump’s tactics for avoiding a crisis like the one he now faces.”

This “power and peril” pitch makes Trump the hero of the story and Cohen and Weisselberg contestants in a reality show, with Cohen inflating that contest with his wildly premature boast that “the biggest mistake” Trump ever made was not paying for Cohen’s defense and his claim, “I was the first lamb led to the slaughterhouse.”

If NYT weren’t making this a reality show, it might take away different lessons:

• Trump has invested a great deal in using associates and co-conspirators to learn of the criminal investigation into him, with a Joint Defense Agreement incorporating 37 people during the Mueller investigation and $50 million of Republican campaign funds invested instead in paying attorneys who will at a minimum report back on investigative developments. Even with that $50 million investment (and the potential damage it’ll do to GOP fortunes in November), Trump has fewer tools to discover the status of ongoing investigations than he had when Republicans on both Intelligence Communities were using the committee to spy on investigations for him. Yet even with far more access to information than he currently has about ongoing investigations (the two federal cases against Trump are different, because Jack Smith has overproduced discovery), Trump miscalculated with Cohen.
• The risk Cohen posed was not just — as NYT portrays — that he’ll testify against Trump at trial, at this trial. It was that he would disclose information that implicated Trump (and Weisselberg) in new investigations, as he did. As such, one lesson to take away from this, at least for those who don’t have an incentive to make Trump the protagonist of all stories, is that those spurned by Trump know a whole lot of shit about him, and that shit could turn into investigations that implicate the fraud that lies at the core of his persona. John Bolton, Mike Esper, and Mike Pence are all people whom Trump accused of disloyalty who thus far have only shared shit about Trump when prosecutors came asking. That could change.
• As noted, NYT didn’t mention that Trump only turned on Cohen after discovering that prosecutors had obtained a damning recording from his phone. But he’s not the only Trump associate whose own blackmail on Trump was implicated in a criminal investigation. Mueller’s prosecutors were seeking Stone’s notes of all the calls he had with Trump during the 2016 election when they searched his homes (it’s not clear whether they ever found it), the existence to which Steve Bannon was also a witness. Both Stone and Bannon got their pardons, perhaps because they were better able at leveraging dirt on Trump for legal impunity than Cohen was.
• NYT describes the injury to Trump here as, “his long-held fear that prosecutors would flip trusted aides into dangerous witnesses.” That’s just weird. It’s as if NYT hasn’t considered that the real danger is that he’ll do prison time for his crimes. The focus on loyalty rather than truthful testimony is especially odd in a piece that describes that Hope Hicks is likely to testify in Alvin Bragg’s case, who’ll testify with less of the circus and more credibility than Cohen. After all, even Jason Miller, still a top campaign manager for Trump, would be a key witness against Trump in a January 6 trial if he repeated the true description of how the campaign started refusing to support the Big Lie after a period in 2020. Bannon provided damaging testimony in the Roger Stone trial by being held to his prior grand jury testimony, and he remains a MAGAt in good standing.

Sometimes, it’s not disloyalty that can sustain a conviction, it’s truth, even truth from still-loyal associates.

Not for NYT, I guess. In a piece trying to extend this analogy to Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira (the latter of whom, who really does have a colorable claim he didn’t know he was obstructing an investigation, is not similarly situated in my opinion), NYT describes that they were charged for their loyalty, not claims that sound pretty obviously false in the indictment.

Like Mr. Weisselberg, Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira remained loyal, and they are now paying the price: Mr. Smith charged both men not only with obstruction of justice, but also with lying to investigators.

Nauta and De Oliveira got charged, in part, because prosecutors believe they lied to protect Trump because that is a crime, just like it was a crime when Cohen and Stone and Mike Flynn and George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort did it (Manafort was punished but not charged for those lies). But Nauta, especially, almost certainly got charged because prosecutors still haven’t been able to account for how much Trump intended to steal classified documents when he left the White House and still haven’t been able to account for the stolen classified documents that got flown to Bedminster in 2022. Nauta probably figures it’s a good bet to hope that Trump wins the presidency, ends his prosecution (or pardons him) and rewards him with a sinecure. That’s how having dirt on Trump works! But the prosecution is not over yet, and especially given the likelihood that this won’t go to trial before the election, he may change his mind.

Trump has absolutely succeeded in bolloxing all his criminal cases and may well succeed in delaying all the rest until he can pardon his way out of most of them. But if that effort fails, basic rules of gravity are likely to kick in and Trump will no more be a protagonist than all the other suspected criminals investigated by state and federal authorities.

Welcome to the Good Friday – Happy Birthday Marcy edition of Fridays with Nicole Sandler.

This weekend will be a bit quiet due to holiday observations and celebrations.

Close to the end of Yvette Roland’s recommendation that John Eastman be disbarred, she considered the argument from the Office of Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California (OCTC) that Eastman’s actions were worse than those Donald Segretti committed for Richard Nixon.

For a number of reasons — Eastman’s violations were done in the function of an attorney, Eastman exhibited no remorse, he’s more experienced than Segretti was — she agreed that Eastman’s actions were worse, and on that basis, she recommended a stiffer penalty than the two year suspension Segretti got.

In Segretti, the attorney pleaded guilty to two federal offenses related to his work on
President Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign, including violating 18 U.S.C. section 612
(publication or distribution of political statements) and 18 U.S.C section 371 (conspiracy).
Among other things, Segretti distributed letters containing false accusations about other
candidates for president in order to create confusion among the candidates. The court found
Segretti’s actions involved moral turpitude as he “repeatedly committed acts of deceit designed to
subvert the free electoral process.” (Id. at p. 887.) Segretti had significant mitigation. He was
only 30 years old at the time of the misconduct and thought he was acting under the umbrella of
the White House. The court emphasized that Segretti’s misconduct “was not committed in his
capacity as an attorney” and that he recognized the wrongfulness of his acts, expressed regret,
and cooperated with the investigating agencies. (Id. at p. 888.) Segretti received a two-year
actual suspension.

The scale and egregiousness of Eastman’s unethical actions far surpasses the misconduct
at issue in Segretti. Unlike Segretti whose offenses occurred outside his role as an attorney,
Eastman’s wrongdoing was committed directly in the course and scope of his representation of
President Trump and the Trump Campaign. This is an important factor, as it constitutes a
fundamental breach of an attorney’s core ethical duties. Additionally, while the Segretti court
found compelling mitigation based on his expressed remorse and recognition of his wrongdoing,
no such mitigating factor is present with Eastman. To the contrary, Eastman has exhibited an
unwillingness to acknowledge any ethical lapses regarding his actions, demonstrating an apparent inability to accept responsibility. This lack of remorse and accountability presents a
significant risk that Eastman may engage in further unethical conduct, compounding the threat to the public. Given the greater magnitude of Eastman’s transgressions compared to Segretti and
the heightened risk of future misconduct from his complete denial of wrongdoing, imposing
greater discipline than in Segretti is appropriate to protect the public and uphold public
confidence in the legal system.

To support that judgment, Roland went through each of eleven charges, finding that Eastman had dishonestly advised Mike Pence he could reject the electoral certifications, attempted to mislead two courts, and made public comments he knew or should have known to be false.

Roland did not find that the OCTC had proven that Eastman was responsible for the violence at the Capitol, actions that would be key to an obstruction charge under 18 USC 1512(c)(2) — though the Bar would not yet have access to much of the evidence that Jack Smith may one day present.

But Roland did find that the OCTC had proven that Eastman and Donald Trump conspired to disrupt the electoral count under 18 USC 371, parallel to count one of Trump’s indictment.

By contrast, OCTC has shown that Eastman conspired with President Trump to obstruct a
lawful function of the government of the United States; specifically, by conspiring to disrupt the
electoral count on January 6, 2021, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. To prove a violation of
18 U.S.C. § 371, it must be established that: (1) at least two people entered into an agreement to
obstruct a lawful function of the government; (2) by deceitful or dishonest means; and (3) there
was at least one overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. (See United States v. Meredith
(9th Cir. 2012) 685 F.3d 814, 822.) “An agreement to commit a crime ‘can be explicit or tacit,
and can be proved by direct or circumstantial evidence, including inferences from circumstantial
evidence.’” (United States v. Kaplan (9th Cir. 2016) 836 F.3d 1199, 1212.)

The evidence clearly and convincingly proves that Eastman and President Trump entered
into an agreement to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress by unlawfully having Vice President
Pence reject or delay the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021.

[snip]

Upon consideration of the totality of the facts, the court finds weighty circumstantial
evidence demonstrating a collaborative effort between Eastman and President Trump to impede
the counting of elector votes on January 6, 2021, as articulated in Eastman’s memos.
(See United States v. Kaplan, supra, 836 F.3d at p. 1212 [an agreement to commit a crime “‘can
be explicit or tacit, and can be proved by direct or circumstantial evidence’”].) There is also
extensive direct evidence demonstrating that each party involved in this plan actively
participated in overt acts through in person meetings, communications with Vice President Pence and his counsel, and in public remarks to advance their shared objective—i.e., to have Vice
President Pence reject or delay the counting of electoral votes on January 6. Furthermore, the
court has previously determined, in the aforementioned counts, that Eastman’s actions were
carried out with deceit or dishonesty, as he was aware that his plan was unlawful and lacked any
factual or legal support. Here, all elements of 18 U.S.C. § 371 are established.
Based on this evidence, the court finds that OCTC has met its burden of showing by clear
and convincing evidence that Eastman violated section 6068, subdivision (a), by violating
18 U.S.C § 371 as charged in count one.

Eastman says he will appeal — in part, because he needs to work as a lawyer to pay lawyers to defend him in his Georgia prosecution.

As of now, however, he is provisionally stripped of his ability to practice as a lawyer.

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

There’s a lot of stupid going on right now. Here’s an open thread to talk about it. Let me start off with three examples.

~ 3 ~

Ding dong, the witch is dead — Ronna McDaniel has been terminated less than a week after she signed a contract with NBC.

Even her agency dropped her.

I like journalist Sam Adam’s take:

Story at HuffPo: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nbc-fires-ronna-mcdaniel-election-lies_n_6602d903e4b06a4403a3e80a

NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde accepted the blame for McDaniel’s hiring though he noted it was a collective decision by “collective recommendation by some members of our leadership team” to hire the unindicted January 6 co-conspirator.

It’d be nice if folks who support democracy and a free press checked their investment portfolios for Comcast (Nasdaq:CMCSA) including their mutual fund holdings’ portfolios — and then sent letters to Investor Relations asking for accountability at Comcast and NBC for this stupid hiring decision which damaged NBC.

~ 2 ~

BlackRock CEO is fucking clueless about Millennials and Gen Z, spewing this crap:

You know what’s causing these two demographic groups so much economic anxiety? The two things which cost them the most: tuition debt and housing.

They can’t save for a house if they have tuition debt hanging over them. President Biden has steadily chipped away at this but it isn’t enough.

They can’t buy a house because there’s too little housing available which in turn drives up pricing. Sure, mortgages are pricey right now but if there’s not enough housing, mortgages aren’t the bigger problem.

Rental housing is also overpriced and getting worse; it’s been unaffordable for persons working a full-time minimum wage job for years thanks to continued corporate pressure to resist raising minimum wages at state and federal level for decades. This has begun to change but Millennials are digging their way out of a deep hole to amass savings.

One of the biggest contributors to rising rental housing costs is the commodification of housing as a tradeable asset in the form of real estate investment trusts (REITs). Investors treat REITs as if they should increase in value and payouts like other tradeable stocks.

Gee, guess what BlackRock’s funds include?

Fink also hasn’t gotten the memo that there is a growing wave of disability as a result of the COVID pandemic. People will need to retire earlier, not later, and his bullshit refusal to accept wealthier persons must pay more into Social Security is not going to help.

Side note: I can’t recommend using Fortune magazine at this time. The link to this story follows but be warned: Fortune changed its privacy policy and you will be forced to accept that policy in order to read the fucking privacy policy. Absolutely unacceptable dark pattern.

Source: https://fortune.com/2024/03/26/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-boomers-fix-retirement-crisis-millennials-gen-z-economically-anxious/

~ 1 ~

Trump’s POS social media platform appears to have lifted older Mastodon source code and slapped on a new frontend, without having addressed vulnerabilities in the older source code or handled the open source licensing correctly.

source: https://mstdn.social/@stux/112163975507522652

This massive stupidity is what the new Trump Media & Technology group is based on — the stock for which began trading today.

I’m going to have to buy popcorn futures for this.

~ 0 ~

Once again, this is an open thread. Bring all the stray stupid here along with topics not covered by other posts.

Judge Scott McAfee just ruled that either Fani Willis and her office have to step down from the Trump prosecution, or Nathan Wade must go.

Ultimately, dismissal of the indictment is not the appropriate remedy to adequately dissipate the financial cloud of impropriety and potential untruthfulness found here. See Olsen v. State, 302 Ga. 288, 294 (2017) (“Dismissal of an indictment is an extreme sanction, used only sparingly as a remedy for unlawful government conduct.”) (quoting State v. Lampl, 296 Ga. 892, 896 (2015)). There has not been a showing that the Defendants’ due process rights have been violated or that the issues involved prejudiced the Defendants in any way. Nor is disqualification of a constitutional officer necessary when a less drastic and sufficiently remedial option is available. The Court therefore concludes that the prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the State selects one of two options. The District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office, and refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for reassignment. See O.C.G.A. § 15-18-5. Alternatively, SADA Wade can withdraw, allowing the District Attorney, the Defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case.

He ruled that their relationship did not create an actual conflict of interest, but did create an appearance of one.

Whether this case ends in convictions, acquittals, or something in between, the result should be one that instills confidence in the process. A reasonable observer unburdened by partisan blinders should believe the law was impartially applied, that those accused of crimes had a fair opportunity to present their defenses, and that any verdict was based on our criminal justice system’s best efforts at ascertaining the truth. Any distractions that detract from these goals, if remedial under the law, should be proportionally addressed. After consideration of the record established on these motions, the Court finds the allegations and evidence legally insufficient to support a finding of an actual conflict of interest. However, the appearance of impropriety remains and must be handled as previously outlined before the prosecution can proceed.

The prosecution will go forward.

He also suggested he would entertain gagging Willis from any further public comment about the case, based on her comments at an Atlanta Church after the allegations were made public.

Here’s the link, via Anna Bower.

Update: Wade has now resigned from the case.

Simon Rosenberg didn’t panic about a 2022 Red Wave. As analysts everywhere were wailing that the Sky Was Falling, he was quietly confident.

Keep that in mind as you listen to this conversation he had with Greg Sargent. I have about the same cautious optimism as Rosenberg (I was less confident than he was in 2022) on this year’s election, but he’s a pro who works from fundamentals, not just last week’s poll results.

Among other things, he talks about how any of six big negatives for Trump could blow the election for him:

1. He raped E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room
2. He oversaw one of the largest frauds in America history and that he and Rudy Giuliani through all their various misdeeds own over $700M dollars
3. He stole American secrets, lied to the FBI about it, and shared these secrets with other people
4. He led an insurrection against the United States
5. He and his family have corruptly taken billions from foreign governments
6. He is singularly responsible for ending Roe and stripping the rights and freedoms away from more than half the population

I would add two more: First, Trump routinely defrauds MAGAt supporters. Over the last week, he turned the RNC into a means to do so on a grander scale. Republicans need to hear that they’re being taken to the cleaner by Trump — and by Steve Bannon, whose trial for doing so will also serve as backdrop to this election season.

More tellingly, Rosenberg addressed this detail when he described how Biden’s two big negatives have resolved (my biggest complaint about this interview is it didn’t address Gaza, the unmentioned third), not when he addressed Trump’s scandals.

The Biden crime family story, we just learned in the last few weeks, was a Russian op that was being laundered by the Republican party that blew up in their face.

Rosenberg treated the manufactured “Biden crime family” that was actually a Russian op laundered by the GOP as a resolved Biden negative after he made this point, the most important in the interview, in my opinion.

We have to learn the lesson from waiting for Mueller. Waiting for Mueller was a mistake by the Democratic Party. It prevented us from prosecuting the case against Trump and his illicit relationship with the Russian government that was out there all for us to see. Right? The Russians played a major role in his election in 2016. This is not in dispute in any way. And so I think now what we need to do is not wait for Jack Smith or wait for Merrick Garland. We need to use what’s in front of us and prosecute this in ways that we know is going to do enormous harm.

No superhero will come tell any one of these stories for Democrats. Trump’s opponents have to tell the story of Trump’s corruption. They cannot wait for Mueller. Or Jack Smith.

One of many reasons I’m so focused on the Hunter Biden story is that it is actually what proves the continuity of that story of Russian influence that Democrats failed to tell. Trump asks for Russian help in 2016 and gets it. As part of a campaign in which Rudy Giuliani solicited Russian spies for dirt on Hunter Biden, Trump withheld security support from Ukraine to get the same. Even after that, Trump’s DOJ created a way to launder the dirt Rudy collected from known Russian spies to use in the 2020 election. That campaign created the shiny object that has created the “Biden crime family” narrative. Like Russia’s role in the 2016 election, none of this is in dispute. It’s just not known.

You cannot wait for Robert Mueller or Jack Smith to tell this narrative. But for four months this entire story — this arc — has passed largely unnoticed, even as Trump took steps to deliver Ukraine’s bleeding corpse to his liege, Vladimir Putin.

Those who want to defeat Trump — and honestly, Republicans like Liz Cheney and Amanda Carpenter have been doing a better job of this than most Democrats — have to make sure this story gets told.

This is what I’ve been trying to say over and over and over. The reason why the moderate press hasn’t been telling the story of Trump’s role in the insurrection, of his ties to militia members and his direct inspiration for the most brutal assaults on cops on January 6 is because all their TV lawyers have been whinging instead about their own misunderstanding of the January 6 investigation. They haven’t been telling the story of what we know.

They have been complaining that Merrick Garland hasn’t compromised the investigation to tell them them more, turning Garland into their villain, not Trump.

In the few minutes after I posted these comments on Twitter, commenters have:

• Complained that the full Mueller Report hasn’t been released, when really they’ve simply been too lazy to understand that the most damning bits have been released.
• Bitched that Merrick Garland hired Rob Hur, rather than bitching about Rob Hur telling a narrative even after his own investigation had debunked it.
• Complained about a delay in the January 6 investigation that didn’t happen.

Kaitlan Collins’ interview with Brian Butler, a former Trump employee whose testimony badly incriminated his one-time best friend, Carlos De Oliveira, has been drowned out by all the complaints.

The story barely made a blip. It’s not just the NYT that buries important Trump stories under complaints about Biden, it’s Democratic supporters.

Rosenberg went on to describe how Democrats need to improve this. He noted that the Right Wing noise machine provides them a great advantage on this front, one that Biden will have to spend to combat.

We have to recognize, Greg, that the information environment in the United States is really broken right now and that the power of the Right Wing noise machine to bully and intimidate mainstream media into being complicit in advancing some of their narratives is something that needs a campaign that has half a billion dollars in it to be able to draw even on. What we’ve learned is there is a structural imbalance in the information game between the two parties, that the Republicans have a significant advantage over us in a day-to-day information war.

This is true. But the insularity of the Right Wing noise machine can be made into a weakness for Republicans, even before spending the money. Because right wingers so rarely try to perform for a mainstream audience, as soon as they do — whether it is rising star Katie Britt or Kentucky redneck James Comer — they look like lying morons.

And in the face of that Right Wing noise, Democrats need to be disciplined.

The Biden campaign’s going to have to be wildly disciplined. They can’t chase the daily story. They’re going to have to pick the two or three things they know from research are the things that are a rubicon with the electorate.

[snip]

It’s going to be incumbent upon them to not allow the Trumpian mania and madness sort of push them around every day. They’re going to need to develop an offensive strategy both on what we’re selling and on what we’re indicting him with.

Rosenberg laid out the six bullets; I added two more. Trump will try to distract from that with daily outrages, with spectacle.

Trump — abetted by social media — will try to distract from that argument by demeaning all ability to make, or understand, coherent arguments.

I’m less sanguine than Rosenberg that even discipline is enough to overcome Trump’s circus. Therein lies the challenge.

But he’s right that those who want to defeat Trump have to make that case themselves. Neither Jack Smith, nor the NYT, will save you.