Corruption all around.

In today's corruption news: 

"A confession letter written by Joel Greenberg in the final months of the Trump presidency claims that he and close associate Rep. Matt Gaetz paid for sex with multiple women—as well as a girl who was 17 at the time.

“On more than one occasion, this individual was involved in sexual activities with several of the other girls, the congressman from Florida’s 1st Congressional District and myself,” Greenberg wrote in reference to the 17-year-old.

“From time to time, gas money or gifts, rent or partial tuition payments were made to several of these girls, including the individual who was not yet 18. I did see the acts occur firsthand and Venmo transactions, Cash App or other payments were made to these girls on behalf of the Congressman.”

The letter, which The Daily Beast recently obtained, was written after Greenberg—who was under federal indictment—asked Roger Stone to help him secure a pardon from then-President Donald Trump.

A series of private messages starting in late 2020—also recently obtained by The Daily Beast—shows a number of exchanges between Greenberg and Stone conducted over the encryptedmessaging app Signal, with communications set to disappear. However, Greenberg appears to have taken screenshots of a number of their conversations.

“If I get you $250k in Bitcoin would that help or is this not a financial matter,” Greenberg wrote to Stone, one message shows.

“I understand all of this and have taken it into consideration,” Stone replied. “I will know more in the next 24 hours I cannot push too hard because of the nonsense surrounding pardons.”

I hope you are prepared to wire me $250,000 because I am feeling confident,” Stone wrote to Greenberg on Jan. 13.

In a text message to The Daily Beast, Stone said that Greenberg had tried to hire him to assist with a pardon, but he denied asking for or receiving payment or interceding on his behalf. He did, however, confirm he had Greenberg prepare “a document explaining his prosecution.”

In the private text messages to Stone, Greenberg described his activities with Gaetz, repeatedly referring to the Republican congressman by his initials, “MG,” or as “Matt.”

“My lawyers that I fired, know the whole story about MG’s involvement,” Greenberg wrote to Stone on Dec. 21. “They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage.”' 

And in other pals of the former guy corruption news:

"Eighteen months ago, media reports indicated that Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, was under scrutiny by federal prosecutors at the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York for actions related to his involvement in the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump's first impeachment. 

Given the time that has passed, one could be forgiven for thinking that the investigation had petered out and that Giuliani was in the clear. All that changed early Wednesday morning, however, when FBI agents showed up at Giuliani's home and office to execute a search warrant approved by a federal judge, and later did the same with respect to fellow lawyer Victoria Toensing, a major sign that the investigation is not just still alive, but that it is ramping up in a big way. (In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Toensing's law firm said she had been informed she wasn't a target of the investigation.)

The crimes under investigation, according to The New York Times, relate to whether Giuliani acted as an unregistered foreign agent -- namely, that if while he was working on Trump's behalf to get Ukrainian officials to announce a criminal investigation into the Bidens, Giuliani was also lobbying US officials about matters of interest to Ukrainians with whom Giuliani was working, like the removal of then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

Pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), trying to influence US policy at the direction of a foreign actor without registering as an "agent of a foreign principal" is illegal; for national security reasons, the US government wants to know the identities of the interests behind those lobbying US officials on matters of US and foreign policy.

One may ask: why did it take so long to get around to executing search warrants? We don't know for sure, and likely never will given the confidentiality around internal deliberations involving criminal investigations at DOJ, but The New York Times is reporting that there may have been politically motivated action taken to delay and then refuse to approve the warrant under the Trump administration. Search warrants involving lawyers like Giuliani carry particularly onerous approval requirements, because of concerns around breaching the attorney-client privilege by gaining access to communications between a lawyer and his client.

That means that these particular warrants would have been sent through the chain of command at the US Attorney's Office, up to Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss, and then down to the Justice Department in Washington for another set of approvals. In the past, approval was required from a special unit at DOJ called the Office of Enforcement Operations that handles particularly sensitive search warrants, including warrants for lawyers; now, due to a rule change, billed as a "clarification," by former Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen shortly before he left office at the end of the Trump administration, search warrant requests involving lawyers also must be approved all the way up to the Deputy Attorney General him- or herself.

Thus, in this case, before presenting the warrant to a judge, the Giuliani and Toensing search warrants also would have been approved by DOJ's second-in-command, now Lisa Monaco. Once approval is given, prosecutors take the application to a federal judge, who must be satisfied that there was probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that the evidence sought would be relevant to proving that crime.

Now that the search has occurred and evidence has been seized, I expect a few things to happen. As would be expected, Giuliani, who has long denied any wrongdoing, is ramping up his defense in the court of public opinion. We heard comments from Giuliani's lawyer Robert Costello, who complained that execution of the warrant was "legal thuggery" because Giuliani served as associate attorney general and US attorney, as well as Trump's lawyer. Giuliani's son, Andrew Giuliani, also chimed in with comments suggesting political bias in the case.

I also expect significant litigation over the seized information to happen before the prosecution team is able to review it. Prosecutors certainly will be prepared to create a walled-off two-team review system to ensure protection of attorney-client privilege. But I expect -- as we saw when another Trump personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was served with a search warrant as part of his criminal investigation by SDNY -- that Giuliani will challenge them every step of the way. " [Source]

I know one thing, the right- wing republicans who fought against Merrick Garland getting on the supreme court will regret the day that they did that. He is not playing around over at the justice department. 

Just ask the former guy and his cronies. This won't end well for them.   

 

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Please don't shut up after you dribble.

 

A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender why the NBA playoffs isn't on the big screen television. The bartender says that the owner has banned all NBA games in the establishment because of LeBron James and his attitude.

That wasn't a lame attempt at a joke, that is actually happening somewhere in Ohio because some FOX News watching guy objects to an athlete actually speaking his mind (albeit poorly in this case) about an issue of the day. 

Just imagine if some of these folks like the bar owner would actually bring this type of energy and passion into trying to make the world a better place free of bigotry and ignorance. The country would be such a better place. 

LZ Granderson summed up my feelings about this issue perfectly in the following article: 

"The season finale of Marvel’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" was released Friday but I’m still processing a statement made in the previous episode: “They will never let a Black man be Captain America.”

I wonder if LeBron James has seen it yet.

Last week the Kid From Akron found himself in the crosshairs of another stick-to-sports maelstrom for posting, then deleting, a tweet about the police shooting of a 16-year-old Black girl in Ohio. From sports debate show hosts to members of Congress, someone from every walk of life seemingly was asking, "Why?"

Why did he post it? Why did he delete it? Fox News did a story about how the other networks weren’t making a big enough deal about it. Opportunistic politicians — representing the proverbial “they” that won’t let a Black man be Captain America — piled on.

“Lebron James truly has a lot of nerve targeting a police officer for doing his job,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) wrote on Twitter. “I’m not sure what China has on him, but his constant push for division in this country is obscene.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said James’ tweet “could certainly be interpreted by some, even, as a call for violence,” a remark echoed on social media by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who posted, “this is disgraceful and dangerous. Is the NBA okay with this? Is Twitter?”

And so we found ourselves in the familiar space of debating more about how LeBron James said something than why he said it.

James’ back story — a literal rags to riches story — should make him the paragon of American exceptionalism embodied by Captain America. But his politics, specifically his tendency to speak out on issues that are important to the Black community, makes him more of a villain than a source of inspiration for conservatives prone to be more upset about tan suits than such hard questions as the atrophied relationship between law enforcement and communities of color.

The controversial, deleted tweet — in which James posted a picture of the white officer who shot and killed 16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant along with the words “YOU’RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY” — was inarguably premature. Body cam video appears to show Bryant attacking another teen with a knife seconds before the shots were fired; many consider the officer’s actions justified. Others are skeptical because of years of simmering tension that resulted in Columbus' current search for a new police chief because, according to the city's mayor, the previous one “could not successfully implement the reform and change I expect and that the community demands.”

Those details are germane to the larger issue of this country’s discomfort with Black leadership. And nowhere is that discomfort more evident than in the world of sports.

Which brings me back to that line from “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.”

It’s easy to assume “they will never let a Black man be Captain America” was written to reflect a post-George Floyd world, the dangers of “woke culture.” The reality is that subject was approached more than three decades ago: Captain America, Volume I, Issue No. 333. It hit stores in 1987.

Like the current streaming series, the question of "Who will be Captain America’s successor?" is an essential element of the storyline in the comic book. In Issue 333, a committee of military and government officials is debating who should represent American exceptionalism when a Mr. Mathers holds up a headshot.

“I imagine we could also rule out another of Rogers’ friends and ex-partners, Sam Wilson, alias the Falcon,” he starts. “I doubt the country is ready for a Black Captain America.”

The issue hit shelves a few months after longtime Dodgers executive Al Campanis went on ABC’s "Nightline" and infamously said, when asked about the lack of Blacks in leadership positions in baseball, “No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager.”

The interview ignited a firestorm, and Campanis was fired less than 48 hours later. But here’s the rub: When Ken Williams was hired 13 years later as GM — the third Black GM in MLB history — , he said “no n— should run the Chicago WHITE Sox” was painted on the side of his house. More than 20 years later, Derek Jeter is baseball's only Black CEO.

So, did Campanis get canned for the substance of his remarks or for the act of giving voice to them?

It’s not just baseball. In the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport 2020 report, of the 130 athletic director positions at FBS, white men accounted for nearly 77%; nearly 70% of conference commissioners were white men; roughly 84% of football head coaches were white men, who also make up about 59% of assistant coaches as well. Meanwhile the number of football student athletes who were white was less than 35%.

The NFL’s Rooney Rule was enacted in 2003 to compel owners to interview candidates of color for head coaching jobs. How’s that working? The league just hired its first Black team president ever last year and I’m not sure if the Washington Football Team would have selected Jason Wright had Floyd’s murder not sparked a national racial reckoning. (I write this confidently because until Floyd’s death, the team was still comfortable using a racial slur as its nickname.)

It’s my sense many white conservatives prefer Black athletes like James to just play, because they don’t want to be reminded of their Blackness. They want feel-good stories about making it out of the ghetto without talk of why there is a ghetto in the first place. They don’t want discussions about racial inequality blended in with sports because they don’t want discussions about racial inequality anywhere. They pretend “I don’t see color” is a declaration of inclusion, when in fact it’s a denial of the trauma people of color experience regularly.

Instead they lurk in the bushes, waiting to pounce on missteps as a way to stifle larger cultural debates because that’s easier than genuine problem solving.

James' tweet was a mistake. He was linking the circumstances behind one death with that of another without the facts. So, he deleted it, and instead posted about the pain that comes from seeing Black and brown bodies being gunned down by police.

But individuals like Tom Cotton, who is constantly criticizing James about China, aren’t interested in James’ pain, or understanding how the confluence of the Derek Chauvin verdict and a police shooting of a Black girl in a city that has had four similar shootings in the past four months might inspire a rush to judgment. They’re not interested in his Blackness or the brand of leadership it inspires.

He’s not the Captain America they want. The one featured in the first issue punching out Adolf Hitler, as an “America to the rescue” metaphor.

No, LeBron James is allowed to rescue the Lakers.

But anything beyond that is deemed a problem by those not interested in solving the ones he’s talking about." [Article] 

"Just shut up and dribble" is what one right-wingnut told Mr. James to do. 

I'm glad he didn't listen to her.  We need more athletes like LeBron James, not less.  

Deja vu?

Like the rest of you,  I watched the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial on television, as well as all the celebrations and sighs of relief that soon followed. (Thank you Dr. Tobin.) And while it's good that the legal process was allowed to play itself out, and that the jury seemed to have done its job, I didn't really feel like celebrating. 

I kept thinking to myself: Why should I feel a sense of relief about a verdict that should never have been in doubt? One would think that Derek Chauvin's lawyers main focus would have been to get a nice plea deal with the state and call it a day. But they must have thought that they could have gotten at least one juror to see something different than what we all saw with our own eyes.  A hung jury, and then live to fight another day. Given how these types of trials have played themselves out in the past few years, I can't really say that I blame them for thinking this way. 

As if she was reading my mind, my sister sent me the following article yesterday, and I realize now why I didn't feel like celebrating. 

"The Derrick Chauvin trial has evoked a myriad of emotions for me in the last few weeks. Many have asserted  that this is the first time a law enforcement officer has been held to account for murdering an unarmed citizen.

Not true: For me, and for other Detroiters who were alive in 1993, the Chauvin trial was deja vu.

Few Americans outside Michigan recall the successful prosecution of a case eerily similar to the Chauvin trial. But Detroiters remember: That trial was the People of the State of Michigan v. Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn for the unjustified beating death of Malice Green.

Mr. Green was a Black motorist who died after a bogus traffic stop that spun murderously out of control. He was pummeled and beaten to death by police officers armed with heavy Kell flashlights. But like George Floyd's killer, Mr. Green's murderers insisted the deceased was to blame for his own death.

I was the lead prosecutor in the Budzyn/Nevers trial. For weeks, I have had flashbacks to that long-ago August.. I can still hear defense attorneys telling jurors that Budzyn and Nevers were not responsible for Green's death He died because he was high on cocaine..

He died because he had heart issues. 

He died because of this, and because of that —  but certainly not because he was stuck in the head multiple times by on-duty, veteran police officers with flashlights.

At that time, no on duty police officer had ever been convicted of murder. Never in the history of the United States.

But I had faith in the juries that we had selected. I was convinced that Detroiters would accept the verdict no matter which way it fell. I believed this even though nothing had been captured on videotape. Cell phones, body and dashboard cameras were not yet commonplace. But the testimony of those who labored to explain the circumstances of Mr. Green's death —the civilian witnesses, the medical experts, the use of force expert — was compelling.

Over the last few weeks, the Chauvin trial has been broadcast on TV, and even live-streamed, But in 1993, there was only Court TV, and it had yet to reach Detroit.

Don Barden, the owner of Barden Cablevision, understood the significance of the Green case, and made sure his viewers knew what was happening in the courtroom. Every day for twelve weeks, Detroiters saw prosecutors fighting like hell to convict the defendants and hold them accountable. People saw that we were serious and singularly focused.

 I will never, ever forget what it was like waiting on those verdicts.  Each defendant had his own jury, so we waited on 24 people to decide the fate of the defendants. And waited, and waited.

One jury would take eight days, the other nine. Intellectually, I knew that we had done everything that we could possibly do. Even so, I couldn't help second-guessing every decision: What if I had made this argument, or that one?

I sleepwalked through those days, trying to ignore the world and minutia around me, and praying to God every waking moment.

In the end, Budzyn and Nevers were both convicted of murder, and Detroit did not burn. 

I distinctly remember bolting up the stairs of the courthouse followed by the press when I was contacted about the verdict from the first jury; the second jury announced that they had a verdict the next day. I knew that justice had prevailed before the verdicts were even read. I just knew. Both defendants were held accountable for their actions.

 I was just as confident that there would be a verdict of guilty in the Chauvin case. As a result of videotaped footage of the crime, police and civilian and expert witnesses presented to the jury, justice prevailed, as it did in the Malice Green case.

The verdict in the Derrick Chauvin case is a victory for police accountability. I would urge the public to believe in our system of justice.  I would also urge the public to remain peaceful in respect for the memory of George Floyd. " [Source]

Kym Worthy toots her own horn a little, and that's fine. But what she didn't say in the article (although there is a mention of it with the captioned that comes with the article), was that the convictions of these two police officers was later overturned on appeal, and they were retried separately and found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

I am thinking the same thing here. It's deja vu alright, but not for the reasons that Ms. Worthy thinks. 

Photo: Richard Lee/Detroit Free Press

Questions of the day.

 

What do you think will be the final outcome of the Derek Chuavin trial? And how will the result (whatever it is) impact the psyche of the country? 

Exhausted.

                                                                                 

                                                          

 Let me start tonight's post by saying that I am fed up with urban terrorists running roughshod through major inner city neighborhoods. They are doing it without regard for the loss of life of innocent citizens who aren't about "that life." And they have to be held accountable for their actions by those who are tasked to do just that.. 

Yesterday a six year old was shot in Philly and he is battling for his life as I write this post. That makes over fifty children (yes children) who have been shot in the city of not so brotherly love since the start of the year. (It's April) 

Now, more than ever, we need community leaders and those in law enforcement and politics to come up with solutions and stop giving lip service to stopping crime in the streets. We have to think outside the box and rethink the way we do things. And I'm not only talking about policing.

Now, having said that, let's talk about police shootings and the dehumanization of black and brown bodies in America of late.

 If you are a black person in America, you have been bombarded with images of state killings of black children, and those in law enforcement abusing their authority. To say that we are exhausted would be an understatement. 

While the trial of Derek Chauvin was going on, just ten miles away another black man was shot to death by a police officer on camera. You can't make this stuff up. Daunte Wright is another one of those names that we are going to be hearing a lot for all the wrong reasons. Lake Philando Castille and  Tamir Rice before him, he paid with his life because so many people in law enforcement fear black and brown men and harbor an implicit bias towards them. 

If you think I am wrong, take a look at the video of a white man in Minnesota who dragged a police officer with his SUV, hit another officer with a hammer, and who is still alive. This is what infuriates people of color. Had that man been black, we all know that his family would be getting out their best Sunday outfits for the funeral that was sure to follow. The running joke among black folks is that we never have to hear the race of  a mass shooter announced to know what their actual race is. We just have to know if he was taken alive. Taken alive equals white. Shot to death by law enforcement equals black.  

While I was writing this post, I watched yet another horrific video of the shooting and killing of 13 year old Adam Toledo by law enforcement in Chicago. Sadly, I can't help but think of that word exhausted again. It just never seems to stop. 

Policing is a tough job, and there are a lot of good men and women who do it. I know quite a few of them. But we have to get rid of the bad actors, and we have to properly train those who want to do the right thing and represent their departments in the right way. 

I started this post by condemning the urban terrorist who terrorize black neighborhoods, but they are criminals who have to be dealt with. I don't want the people who we pay to protect and serve to become like those that they are supposed to be protecting us from. When we reach that place in society, we might as well pack it in and head to our underground silos. 

*Image newsoneplace.com   

Caption Monday.

 

What's the title of this movie? 

Image from weeklystandard.com

"Everybody got guns"

"I gotta a gun, he gotta gun, he gotta gun. Everybody got guns." ~Gyp Rosetti, Boardwalk Empire~

 There were two more high profile mass shootings again today in America. Maybe we shouldn't be calling them high profile because they registered a little above a blip in the nightly news cycle. We are all pretty fed up with the carnage and daily body count, but we have resigned ourselves to the fact that we will never defeat the NRA and the Second Amendment fanatics who honestly believe that a musket and a HK416 is the same thing. 

If you live in and around one of the major cities in this country, you will also notice that the murder rate is through the roof. And what makes this all the more sad is that it's children in most of these areas who are killing each other in record numbers because it's so easy to get their hands on a gun.  

This is all a bit perplexing because poll after poll shows that most Americans want sensible gun laws and legislation. I can only assume that what's stopping this from happening is a few politicians who owe their power to the fund raising arm of the NRA. These are men (and women) who are always going to be elected because they come from districts that have been gerrymandered with like-minded voters to ensure that they never lose another election. 

Today, the newly elected president, Joe Biden, tried to address the gun crisis in America by using the bully pulpit to talk about it. 

 "Gun violence in this country is an epidemic," Biden said in the Rose Garden to an audience of lawmakers and Americans touched by gun violence. "And it's an international embarrassment."  

The executive actions -- which Biden repeatedly argued did nothing to impinge on the Second Amendment right to bear arms -- include efforts to restrict weapons known as "ghost guns" that can be built using parts and instructions purchased online.

The moves are limited in scope and fall short of the steps Biden has vowed to pressure Congress to take. Still, they fulfilled his pledge last month to take "common-sense" steps on his own, and one move -- more heavily regulating arm braces used to make firing a pistol more accurate -- directly relates to the March shooting in Boulder, Colorado, where such a device was used. They took on new urgency coming on a day when the country experienced two more mass shootings..."

"Fall short." There are those two little words again. It seems that we are always falling short of doing the right thing when it comes to guns.  

 

"One of their own."

 

With all of the latest legal troubles facing trump lead cheerleader and boy pal, Matt Gaetz, now would be a good time to revisit the following article written by Tom McCarthy for The Guardian. 

"To live outside the law, Bob Dylan sang, you must be honest. It also helps, apparently, to stay as clear as possible from Donald Trump, whose inner circle of advisers has suffered steady attrition since 2017, through a series of encounters with the criminal justice system.

On Thursday, the former White House strategist Steve Bannon became the latest Trump intimate to be taken into custody, when the Chinese-owned yacht on which he was sunburning was boarded by agents of the US Postal Service.

Bannon was accused of defrauding people who gave tens of millions to a private fund which existed, Bannon claimed, to finance the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico. The real purpose of that fund and others, federal prosecutors say, was to cover the “luxury” lifestyle expenses of Bannon and his fellow defendants.

“This entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall,” Bannon declared outside a Manhattan courthouse, proclaiming his innocence.

Depending on how – and whom – you count, Bannon was the seventh former close Trump adviser to be arrested, face charges, plead guilty or to be convicted of a crime since the 45th president took office.

Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort (convicted: tax fraud, bank fraud) is in home confinement due to Covid-19; former adviser Roger Stone (convicted: obstruction, false statements) received a presidential commutation; former adviser Michael Cohen (guilty plea: campaign finance crimes, lying to Congress) is in home confinement; former national security adviser Michael Flynn (guilty plea: lying to the FBI) is awaiting a ruling on a request to dismiss charges; former adviser Rick Gates (guilty plea: lying to investigators) has completed a prison term; and former adviser George Papadopoulos (guilty plea: lying) has completed a prison term. 

I believe it unprecedented in any US administration for so many of the closest circle of persons around the president to have been shown to be conmen, grifters and base criminals,” said Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who was part of the team that convicted the Gambino family boss John Gotti, in an email.

“While previous administrations had their share of those trying to personally profit and those willing to break the law to serve the political interests of the president, what is unique about the Trump administration is the large number of people in direct contact with the president, often for years, who are revealed to be out-and-out fraudsters for whom crime is apparently part of their lifestyle and character.”

As his re-election campaign enters full swing, Trump has made an effort to brand himself as the president of “law and order”. But Trump himself has at times appeared to sail within dangerous distance of criminal legal hazards.

During impeachment proceedings that straddled the turn of this year, Democrats and the Republican senator Mitt Romney voted to remove Trump for abuse of power.

Robert Mueller detailed nearly a dozen potential instances of obstruction of justice by Trump during the Russia investigation, though the special counsel did not propose criminal charges.

Before that, Trump paid $2m in fines and closed his family’s “charity” foundation, admitting it had used donations to pay campaign and business expenses.

The prosecutors in that case, in the New York state attorney general’s office, are currently investigating Trump’s banking and tax conduct, while federal prosecutors in New York – the ones bringing charges against Bannon – are also looking at alleged graft by Trump’s inauguration committee.

The Manhattan district attorney is investigating Trump’s tax records, as are multiple congressional committees.

Trump says he is a victim of a witch-hunt by politically motivated prosecutors. His critics say that in fact the full scope of Trump’s alleged criminal conduct is unknown because he is using the power of the presidency to block details from coming to light.

Continued arrests of former associates could at some stage pose a threat to Trump himself, if one decided to cooperate with prosecutors against Trump, legal analysts have said. But past speculation about the dangers of such a “flipped” witness have not been borne out – in part perhaps because Trump has demonstrated a willingness to pardon his friends for their wrongdoing, decreasing any incentive to “flip”.

Consider Trump’s clemency for Stone; the justice department’s efforts to drop the case against Flynn, which the courts have not yet granted; attorney general William Barr’s sudden removal of prosecutors seen as threatening to Trump; and Trump’s deployment of the might of the justice department to stop his tax records being handed to state authorities and Congress, in a case that reached the supreme court.

Barr and Trump have denied using the levers of American justice to prosecute the president’s enemies and protect his friends. But evidence-heavy charging documents against figures in Trump’s orbit keep stacking up.

“Why this unprecedented situation?” said Cotter, now a Chicago-based officer with the Greensfelder law firm.

“My almost 40 years working in criminal law has taught me that criminals of a particular type tend to associate with other criminals of the same type. There is a comfort level and mutual understanding in such associations.

“So when I see a swarm of conmen buzzing around one particular man, in this case Trump, my experience suggests that it is because they recognize one of their own. And in selecting them to be his confidants, the president also recognized kindred spirits.”

It just keeps happening. But it has not happened Trump, yet." [Source] 

Not yet. But his tax returns are in the hands of  the Manhattan District Attorney's office. Let's see where this leads. 

Oh, and have you noticed who is still silent when it comes to these latest accusations and investigations of the above mentioned Mr. Gaetz? If you guessed Donald trump move to the head of the class.

 One day these people will learn that trump cares about one thing and one thing only: Himself. 

*Image from The Nation

Newsworthy.

These last few days have been certainly very interesting in terms of news.

First, I will start with the trial of Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin. 

I honestly can't write too much about this, because I have to say that whenever I see those images and videos being played out of that horrific day,  I get angry and sad all over again. I spend a lot of time in courtrooms, and I am always curios to see how other trial lawyers operate, but not this time. It's very hard to just step back and view this case objectively, and so I won't even try. 

I will say this, though, if someone says that they know how this verdict will come down they are lying to you and to themselves. As is always the case with these types of high profile jury cases, we just don't know. 

Second, there is the Matt Gaetz federal investigation. (That's Matt in the picture. You can't miss him.) It seems that Matt has gotten himself in some trouble, and now he might have to face the music. If what is alleged is true, a lot of people will say that they are not surprised. Matt has quite a spotty record when it comes to these types of activities, and the friends he keeps (including the former president) doesn't help his credibility when it comes to this issue. 

And If Matt actually has a lawyer, this might be a good time to remind his client that he has a 5th Amendment right to keep his mouth shut. Matt has been doing a lot of talking since this all came down, and needless to say he is not helping his case. 

  "Gaetz has denied any allegations of wrongdoing and claimed that he was the target of an extortion attempt folllowing a Tuesday New York Times report that said Gaetz is currently the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation involving a then-17-year-old girl.  

Gaetz told Fox News' Tucker Carlson that his family had notified the FBI about the alleged extortion, naming McGee as being behind it. Gaetz said his father had worn a wire during a meeting as part of an investigation of the extortion claim, and that he believes the Times story had been leaked in order to thwart that investigation"

What a mess. 

Finally, there is the story of Major and Champ. These poor guys have been under scrutiny since they left their cozy home in Delaware for the craziness and fishbowl that is Washington. 

"President Biden's dogs Major and Champ are back in the news. And the coverage of the presidential pooches is generating some strong reactions -- with some people arguing that the canine behavior isn't newsworthy at all.

To be sure, Biden's infrastructure plans are certainly the more important story emanating from the White House this week. But the Biden's-best-friend news is revealing in its own way. First there were those biting incidents. Then on Wednesday there was an instance of "dog poo on the floor," which was dutifully (doo-doo-tifully?) reported by the White House press pool.

Reactions to the doggie coverage have run the gamut, showcasing the many feelings and gripes and questions people have about the American news media."

This is crazy! They are dogs! What do people expect?  

I know one thing, they better not even think about putting them down. I know how Americans feel about their pets (especially their dogs), and if the president were to make such a mistake he would have a hard time getting back to 50% approval ratings. 

The former guy didn't even have a dog, and the American press should have made that a much bigger issue than the way they are scrutinizing the behavior of Major and Champ. 

But hey, I guess when you have a boring president who does every thing in a normal way, you have to find something to write about.