He Cops To It

The Never-Trumpers have been pretty solid, and doing some good work, even though they have yet to make a big dent in the "conservative" citadel. They've helped, but the problem with the unholy alliance of Evangelicals, MAGA, Gutless Congress Critters, and Big Dark Money is a much bigger problem than we can expect to be solved any time soon.

The saving grace there tho' is the same thing that's got Putin and Xi worried. ie:

The strongman is invincible until he isn't.

Rick Wilson has played a fair-sized role in orchestrating the shitty things Republicans have been doing for 30 years.

It's good to hear him cop to it finally.

We Ain't Even

First, nobody gets to pretend "our side" is always the greatest, and "their side" is always nothing but dog-ass liars and thieves.

Second, I have to say I've allowed this Adams guy too much leeway - suspecting he's a dirtbag, but not knowing much about him, and thinking there's a possible "vast right wing conspiracy" angle to it.

Nope. Apparently the guy's just a fuckin' dirtbag.

And while we have to wait for the system to run its course, if they put all their little ducks in a row, and a jury turns him up guilty, then I hope they burn that fucker to the ground.

There's nothing worse than some dick in public office indulging himself in whatever corruption Adams is being accused of - which could include accepting campaign money from a foreign government - which could easily be a money laundering scheme.

Money is power, and power makes the corruptible more corruptible.

But - like I said - waiting.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted

The charges against Adams are expected to be made public Thursday.

Eric Adams calls federal charges 'entirely false' after indictment

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors have indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams, making him the first mayor in city history to be charged while in office.

The dramatic move comes after a lengthy investigation that has dogged the moderate Democrat for nearly a year. The revelation — along with several other law enforcement probes that have led to a spate of high-level resignations — stand to imperil Adams’ 2025 reelection prospects.

Shortly after news of the indictment broke, nearly all of Adams’ competitors called on him to resign.

The investigation is being led by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams. A spokesperson for his office declined to comment.

The specific charges in the sealed indictment were not yet known. Williams is expected to make the charges public Thursday.

Adams huddled with close aides, including former Chief of Staff Frank Carone, in the mayor’s official residence of Gracie Mansion on Wednesday evening, figuring out how to respond to the monumental news, which was rumored for most of the day, people familiar with the matter told POLITICO. As he exited the mansion late Wednesday night, Carone said Adams had not been informed by federal authorities of the pending indictment by the time news broke. Asked to describe Adams’ mindset, Carone replied, “very strong.”

“Sad day for the mayor and for the city,” he said.

Carone said Adams should “never” step down. “He deserves a day in court and he’ll have it,” he added.

After The New York Times first reported the indictment, the mayor preempted Williams’ expected announcement with a statement released Wednesday night in which he proclaimed his innocence and vowed to fight the charges.

“I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” he said. “If I am charged, I am innocent and will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit.”

In a subsequent video released by his office, Adams sought for a second time to get ahead of the details set to be released by prosecutors.

“It is now my belief the federal government plans to charge me with crimes. If so, these charges will be entirely false, based on lies,” Adams said.

“For months, leaks and rumors have been aimed at me in an effort to undermine my credibility and paint me as guilty,” Adams continued, referencing the FBI raid on the home of his newly installed interim police commissioner, who took over after the resignation of former NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban.

Caban stepped down after his phone was seized as part of a separate federal investigation.

“I will fight these injustices with every ounce of my strength and my spirit,” Adams said.

His declarations did not sway a suite of candidates looking to challenge him for the mayoralty next year.

“The most appropriate path forward is for him to step down,” City Comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement posted on X.

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie said the city needs “a leader who is fully focused, without distraction.”

“Today I am calling on him to resign,” he said.

Former Comptroller Scott Stringer made similar remarks.

“There is simply zero chance that the wheels of government will move forward from this full steam ahead. Instead, we are left with a broken down trainwreck of a municipal government,” Stringer said. “The mayor needs to resign for the good of the city.”

State Sen. Jessica Ramos stopped short of calling on Adams to step down, but suggested he has lost the ability to govern.

“Over the past two and a half years, this administration has made the city more expensive, while those close to the mayor have benefited financially,” she said in a statement posted to X. “That’s a betrayal of every hardworking New Yorker.”

While investigations around him have reached a fever pitch, Adams has insisted he will not resign.

“The people of this city elected me to fight for them, and I will stay and fight no matter what,” he said in a statement earlier Wednesday, responding to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s earlier call for his resignation.

If he did step down, New York City’s Public Advocate Jumaane Williams would become acting mayor, and a nonpartisan special election would be held to fill the seat.

“The news of this indictment is itself incredibly serious,” Williams’ spokesperson William Gerlich said in a statement. “As the facts emerge, the public advocate will have more to say.”

Calls for his resignation should come as no surprise. Aside from the obvious political calculations his rivals are applying, there is no precedent in New York City’s history for a mayor to be criminally charged while in City Hall.

“We’ve had some unseemly mayors who have left office before their terms have actually ended,” said Doug Muzzio, a retired Baruch College political science professor. “We’ve never had a mayor with criminal charges. The law-and-order mayor broke the law — allegedly. But they’re not going to indict a sitting mayor unless they have an airtight case.”

Adams and his campaign have maintained the mayor’s innocence for months following a series of FBI raids that targeted figures close to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.

On Nov. 2, federal agents fanned out to multiple locations around the city where they conducted raids and interviews at the homes of several people tied to Adams, including his former campaign treasurer, an aide focused on Turkish relations and a former Turkish Airlines executive who served on Adams’ transition team. Days later, the feds stopped Adams himself on the street and confiscated several electronic devices.

Throughout the process, Adams has maintained he broke no rules.

“It takes a great deal of discipline to defend yourself when you know you have done nothing wrong,” Adams said Aug. 16, a day after The Times reported a second round of subpoenas had gone to the mayor and City Hall earlier in the summer. “But I trust my team.”

That team includes attorneys from WilmerHale — including the mayor’s former chief counsel, Brendan McGuire — who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But his allies were defending him late Wednesday night. Adams has maintained support among prominent Black New Yorkers, including NAACP New York State Conference President Hazel Dukes.

“This is just unreal, and I am angry, and I will stand with him all the way,” said the 92-year-old Wednesday night, who has known Adams for three decades. “He should not resign. He should have his day in court.”

In the past, Adams’ allies had sought to characterize the investigation by Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District, as somehow politically or racially motivated. (Both Adams and Williams are Black.)

“I’ve been telling other people that I thought this was a witch hunt and the FBI’s going too far,” state Sen. Leroy Comrie told POLITICO weeks after the initial FBI raids.

People close to Adams, such as former Gov. David Paterson, have theorized the investigation run by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is meant as political punishment for Adams’ criticizing Biden’s border policy.

That the U.S. Attorney’s office would bring an indictment within just weeks of a presidential general election is remarkable. It is common practice within the Department of Justice to not take any overt investigative steps in political cases in the run-up to an election — typically known as the 60-day rule.

As POLITICO has previously reported, Adams has traveled to Turkey numerous times and has deep ties to the Turkish diaspora in Brooklyn, where he served as a state senator and then in the largely ceremonial role of Brooklyn borough president before he assumed the mayoralty in 2022.

Adams has already raised millions of dollars for his reelection campaign, and the effect this indictment will have on his efforts remains unclear. Several challengers have already opened campaign accounts, while former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been watching from afar and may enter the fray should Adams be severely weakened by the forthcoming case.

Tim Walz

And let the swiftboating commence!

Swiftboating

The term swiftboating (also swift-boating or swift boating) is a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The term is derived from the name of the organization "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" (SBVT, later the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) because of their widely publicized—and later discredited—political smear campaign against 2004 U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry. Since the 2004 election, the term has come to commonly refer to a political attack that is dishonest, personal, and unfair.

Today's Dirtbag Triscksters

Under the heading of Both Sides Don't:

I can't say Lefties never do this kinda shit - I mean I can't think of anything right now, but there has to be something.

That said, holy crap - why is it always the fucking Republicans?

Today's Beau

The fuckery:

Arizona GOP chair resigns, alleges pressure from Kari Lake team

The chair of the Arizona Republican Party announced he will resign Wednesday after leaked audio appeared to show him attempting to pay Senate candidate Kari Lake not to run for office in 2024.

Jeff DeWit said that the audio was “selectively edited.” He explained, however, that he chose to resign because he was threatened by members of Lake’s team that more tapes would be released if he did not step down. Lake’s campaign has denied the allegation.

Lake publicly demanded DeWit resign over the audio Tuesday, calling him “corrupt” and “compromised.”

The audio recording was first reported by The Daily Mail.

“There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” DeWit reportedly told the Senate hopeful in the recording, saying only that these figures were from the “east.”

“Just say, is there a number at which,” DeWit begins, before being cut off.

“I can be bought? That’s what it’s about,” Lake retorted.

DeWit allegedly responded, “You can take a pause for a couple of years … You can go right back to what you’re doing.”

Lake — who ran an unsuccessful bid for Arizona governor in 2022 — said she would not accept a billion dollars to leave the Senate race.

On Wednesday, DeWit said the call was not a form of bribe, but rather a conversation about hiring Lake at his personal company. He said she was already an employee when the recording was made early last year.

“Contrary to accusations of bribery, my discussions were transparent and intended to offer perspective, not coercion,” the outgoing GOP chair wrote in a statement. “Our relationship was based on friendship, and the conversation that is now being scrutinized was open, unguarded exchange between friends in the living room of her house.”

“I genuinely believed I was offering a helpful perspective to someone I considered a friend,” he added.

He continued, saying Lake has been “on a mission to destroy” him since the conversation, and condemned her “disturbing tendency” to record interactions without the other party’s consent.

“This is obviously a concern given how much interaction she has with high profile people including President Trump,” DeWit argued. “I question how effective a United States Senator can be when they can not be trusted to engage in private and confidential conversations.”

He also alleged that the conversation was a “set up,” adding that Lake “orchestrated this entire situation to have control over the state party.”

“This morning, I was determined to fight for my position,” he continued. “However, a few hours ago, I received an ultimatum from Lake’s team: resign today or face the release of a new, more damaging recording.”

“I am truly unsure of its contents, but considering our numerous past open conversations as friends, I have decided not to take the risk,” he added.

In response to DeWit’s resignation and allegations of threats, Lake’s campaign said the “tape speaks for itself.”

“No one from the Kari Lake campaign threatened or blackmailed DeWit. It is unfortunate that Dewit hasn’t recognized how unethical his behavior was and still hasn’t apologized to Arizona Republicans,” senior advisors Caroline Wren and Garrett Ventry said in a statement.

“DeWit’s false claims are just par for the course,” they continued. “The Arizona GOP must be relieved to have his resignation. Now we can focus on getting ethical leadership and win big in 2024.”

DeWit served as the state party chair since January 2023, after working as the chief operating officer for Trump’s 2016 and 2020 White House bids.

Lake, a former news anchor, has faced pushback against her Senate bid. She has been a leading booster of former President Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in the 2020 election, and fought her own legal battle after the gubernatorial loss in 2022.

She said Tuesday that she didn’t have anyone in mind to replace DeWit.

“I haven’t given it a lot of thought. What I want to do is make sure we get the corrupt people out,” she said.

It’s not the first time Lake has been accused of recording others without consent. Last year, she recorded an impromptu airport lounge conversation with Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) — the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Senate seat — confronting him over policy issues.

Lake, DeWit and the Arizona GOP have not responded to a previous request for comment on the recording.

Slippage

Seems like all the hangers-on are still trying to play it on the straight with Trump - even after he's demonstrated consistently that he has no intention of repaying their loyalty - because they're absolutely sure they've sold him on the idea that they need to stick together (?)

And it doesn't matter if his reciprocation makes his own position better or worse. It's just a matter of whatever fucked up notion he has in his head at any given time.

There's something wrong with these people. They all act like rubes.

Prick Up Your Ears

When even the Press Poodles notice something - enough to actually say something about it - and to say straight out that the behavior sucks and needs to stop - maybe we're starting to get somewhere.

Of, course there's the usual Both Sides razor blade in this apple, and that pisses me off, but at least WaPo subtly points out the differences in the way each member is using the power to block.

Manchin is being Manchin - a self-dealing prick, and coin-operated shill for the Dirty Fuels Cartel.

And Bernie is holding certain nominees in order to get a commitment from Biden to put up a real plan to reduce medication prices.

So on one side we've got Senators holding things up for reasons other than partisan politics.

But the Republicans are doing it in order to impose minority rule - perfectly in keeping with their fucked up ideas about using government to exact political vengeance (ie: "weaponizing government") - so they can suck up to Trump and his MAGA rubes.

Opinion

Senators have become hostage-takers. It should stop.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) announced during former president Donald Trump’s arraignment in federal court on Tuesday that he will use what are known as “procedural holds” to stop the confirmation of Justice Department nominees. “We have to grind this department to a halt until Merrick Garland promises to … stop going after his political opponents,” he said in a video posted to Twitter. To decry what he wrongly claims is the politicization of law enforcement, Mr. Vance is, well, politicizing law enforcement.

Mr. Vance is not the only senator taking hostages. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is blocking more than 200 military promotions, typically approved by unanimous consent, in a gambit to stop the Pentagon from reimbursing service members who need to travel out of state for abortions. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said Monday that he’ll block President Biden’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health, as well as any other health nominee, until the White House releases a comprehensive plan to cut prescription drug prices. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announced blanket opposition last month to every nominee for the Environmental Protection Agency until the Biden administration rescinds proposed power plant regulations.

In taking an unprincipled stand on behalf of a criminal defendant, Mr. Vance appears to be acknowledging that a political debt has come due. He owes his Senate election to Mr. Trump’s endorsement last year.

His goal, he claims, is to “limit the number of people that [Attorney General] Merrick Garland has access to.” In practice, Mr. Vance’s announcement means Rosie Hidalgo will not get confirmed anytime soon to be director of the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women. The Senate Judiciary Committee already advanced her nomination, and she’s awaiting a floor vote. Mr. Vance says he will not put holds on nominees to the U.S. Marshals Service, but his procedural ploy also jeopardizes the confirmations of U.S. attorney nominees for Mississippi and the Southern District of California.

Most relevant for Mr. Vance’s constituents, his announcement means Cleveland is unlikely to get a U.S. attorney anytime soon. Last week, Mr. Biden nominated veteran prosecutor Becky Lutzko to oversee the Northern District of Ohio, which is responsible for combating federal crime in 40 Ohio counties that are home to nearly 6 million residents. The office has already suffered the longest stretch without a Senate-confirmed leader in its 166-year history. Ms. Lutzko has worked as a career prosecutor since 2005 and oversees the office’s appellate division. Depriving the staff of permanent leadership disadvantages the community and undermines public safety while having no impact on the probe into the former president.

Hey, WaPo - maybe you could connect a coupla more dots here by pointing up how Republicans love to bitch about "rampant crime" while blocking the appointment of federal crime fighters. Just a thought, fellas.

Mr. Garland has gone out of his way to stay above the political fray and to restore the independence of his department. He appointed Jack Smith as special counsel so he could keep the case at arm’s length. Mr. Smith charged Mr. Trump with 37 serious crimes, including violations of the Espionage Act and conspiracy to obstruct justice. William P. Barr, who served as Mr. Trump’s attorney general, called the indictment “very damning” and said Sunday on Fox News: “If even half of it is true, then he’s toast.”

Holds cannot ultimately stop confirmations, but breaking through them requires significant and valuable Senate floor time — typically two or three days per nomination — that is better used, for instance, to confirm judges to lifetime appointments. While we might like to see Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) keep the Senate in session seven days a week and cancel summer recess to force the hands of obstinate members and push through the president’s nominees, that’s not realistic.

Senators in both parties need to respect a president’s right to make appointments. It’s unconscionable to treat the people charged with keeping us safe, whether career prosecutors or generals, as pawns in partisan fights. These senators should drop their holds.

Curiouser

We have to figure out how to deal with this shit. Either we go on allowing foreign money to influence elections and buy favor with the politicians who are being installed with the help of that money, or we get back to trying to "form a more perfect union".

There will not be both.

New details link George Santos to cousin of sanctioned Russian oligarch

The New York congressman once claimed Andrew Intrater’s company was his “client,” while another Intrater company allegedly made a deposit with a firm where Santos worked

George Santos, the freshman Republican congressman from New York who lied about his biography, has deeper ties than previously known to a businessman who cultivated close links with a onetime Trump confidant and who is the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to video footage and court documents.

Andrew Intrater and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’ main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Intrater’s cousin is Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in the Russian energy industry.

The relationship between Santos and Intrater goes beyond campaign contributions, according to a statement made privately by Santos in 2020 and a court filing the following year in a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a Florida-based investment firm, Harbor City Capital, where Santos worked for more than a year.

Taken together, the evidence suggests Santos may have had a business relationship with Intrater as Santos was first entering politics in 2020. It also shows, according to the SEC filing, that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Santos’ onetime employer, Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme. Neither Santos nor Intrater responded to requests for comment. Attorneys who have represented Intrater also did not respond.

The congressman, whose election from Long Island last year helped the GOP secure its narrow House majority, has apologized for what he called “résumé embellishment” while rebuffing calls for his resignation. He is under scrutiny by prosecutors in New York and Rio de Janeiro.

Ties between Santos, 34, and Intrater, 60, reflect the ways Santos found personal and political support on his path to public office.

While Intrater is a U.S. citizen, his company, the investment firm Columbus Nova, has historically had extensive ties to the business interests of his Russian cousin. As recently as 2018, when Vekselberg was sanctioned by the Treasury Department, his conglomerate was Columbus Nova’s largest client, the company confirmed to The Post that year.

⬆︎ That may be perfectly legit, but c'mon - really?

Intrater’s interactions in 2016 and 2017 with Michael Cohen, who at the time was working as a lawyer for Donald Trump, were probed during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links between Trump and the Kremlin.

Intrater’s company paid the lawyer and self-described Trump fixer to identify deals for his business, and court records show they exchanged hundreds of texts and phone calls. Neither Intrater nor Vekselberg was accused of wrongdoing in Mueller’s investigation.

In 2020, when Santos was tasked by Harbor City with locating investors in New York, he claimed in a Harbor City meeting held over Zoom that Intrater’s investment firm, Columbus Nova, was a “client” of his, according to footage obtained by The Washington Post.

He made the comment during a discussion of the difficulties of residential real estate investing, in particular for investors who put money into the 1,400-foot tall tower at 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan, which for a time was the tallest residential building in the world. Intrater did not respond to a question about whether he or Columbus Nova was involved in the project.

“You might know who they are,” Santos added in the company meeting, referring to Columbus Nova. “They’ve made the news on several occasions. They were heavily involved with the Russia probe. Unjustified.”

“But they’re a real estate company,” Santos added. “They’re legitimate.”

Santos did not respond to a text message seeking comment. Intrater did not respond to an emailed question about whether his firm was Santos’s client as claimed or about the deposit with Harbor City.

The congressman has falsified substantial aspects of his work experience. And, in the Harbor City Zoom meetings reviewed by The Post, he recounted dealings with other prominent investors or moneyed organizations that those entities denied took place.

But Harbor City was able to land a $625,000 deposit from a company registered in Mississippi that identifies Intrater as its lone officer, according to an exhibit included in the SEC’s complaint against Harbor City. The alleged deposit, which is undated, is included in a chart that lists several entities that the SEC says made payments to Harbor City.

The Mississippi company, FEA Innovations, is registered to Intrater, according to secretary of state records. Registration documents include no other officers or directors and identify Intrater’s address as the same one used by Columbus Nova on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Columbus Nova is now known as Sparrow Capital.

In the SEC action, initiated in April 2021, regulators accused Harbor City and its founder of running a “classic Ponzi scheme” — promising investors reliable profit and instead bilking them out of millions.

The SEC complaint did not name Santos, who has denied knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing, although he had been told by a prospective investor that the firm was using a fraudulent bank document, as The Post previously reported.

Harbor City’s founder, J.P. Maroney, has denied the SEC allegations, which were brought in federal court in Florida. The company itself has not responded in court. Maroney did not respond to a text message about the alleged deposit from Intrater’s firm. The exhibit that identifies the alleged deposit from Intrater’s company does not elaborate on its purpose or suggest that Intrater had knowledge of purported wrongdoing at Harbor City.

After Harbor City’s assets were frozen, and with assistance from a fellow former Harbor City employee, Santos in 2021 formed a company, the Devolder Organization, that paid him at least $3.5 million over the next two years, according to Florida business records and financial disclosure forms he filed as a candidate. Santos loaned his campaign more than $700,000 but did not report any income from Harbor City despite having been paid by the company as recently as April 2021.

Details of Santos’s tenure at Harbor City were confirmed by a court-appointed lawyer overseeing liquidation of the company’s assets.

Columbus Nova became a subject of interest for the Mueller investigation as prosecutors probed the ties forged by Intrater and his company with Cohen, a confidant of Trump’s at the time.

Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee, according to campaign finance records, and attended the 2017 inaugural, along with Vekselberg. The Washington Post has reported that the two men encountered Cohen at the inauguration. Not long after, Columbus Nova began paying Cohen as part of a contract to recruit new investors for the company, The Post reported. Court records show the payments totaled $583,000.

Court records also show that Cohen and Intrater exchanged more than 1,000 calls and text messages between November 2016 and November 2017. Intrater donated $35,000 to attend a 2017 fundraiser for Trump’s reelection, attending at Cohen’s invitation, The Post has reported.

Federal officials questioned both Intrater and Vekselberg during the probe, interviewing the latter after his private airplane made a stop in the United States in 2018, people familiar with the investigation said.

Cohen ultimately pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, tax and bank fraud and lying to Congress — matters unrelated to his interactions with Columbus Nova. Intrater told the New York Times in 2019 that his omission from Mueller’s final report “confirms what I knew all along — that I’ve done nothing wrong.”

Cohen later turned on Trump, criticizing him in a 2019 congressional hearing and cooperating with investigations into his former boss’ business practices.

Vekselberg and his company, Renova, were sanctioned by the Treasury Department in April 2018, cited for benefiting from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “malign activity around the globe.” In April 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vekselberg’s $90 million yacht was seized by Spanish authorities at the request of the United States.

Columbus Nova has long been described as closely associated with the Renova Group, a Russian conglomerate run by Vekselberg. As recently as 2017, a website for Renova Group listed Columbus Nova as one of its companies, and Columbus Nova confirmed to The Post in 2018 that Vekselberg’s conglomerate was at that time its largest client. However, the firm said at the time that it was owned by Americans and had never been controlled by Renova Group or Vekselberg.

It's The Terrorism, Stupid

From CNN:

A former police captain who was part of a private citizens group investigating still unsubstantiated 2020 election fraud claims was charged Tuesday with running a man off the road and pointing a gun to his head two weeks before the election, the Harris County district attorney said in a statement.

Prosecutors say former Houston Police captain Mark Anthony Aguirre said he believed the man was transporting fraudulent ballots.

"I believe it's a political prosecution," Terry Yates, Aguirre's attorney, told CNN affiliate KTRK.

Prosecutors say Aguirre was paid over a quarter million dollars by a private group called "Liberty Center for God and Country" to investigate alleged ballot schemes in the Houston area.

Jared Woodfill, the center's president, told CNN the group and Republican activist Steve Hotze hired a private firm that included "Aguirre, a former FBI investigator and about 20 investigators that investigated reports of voter fraud," reports that were sent to Hotze. The Republican activist was also one of the plaintiffs who filed a petition prior to Election Day seeking to invalidate 127,000 ballots cast in drive-thru early voting. A federal judge rejected that request.

CNN has reached out to Hotze for comment.

According to the district attorney's news release, Aguirre, 63, told authorities he had conducted surveillance for four days on an unidentified man driving a truck that he suspected had 750,000 fraudulent ballots inside. The release said Aguirre believed the man was "the mastermind of a giant (voter) fraud."

Instead, prosecutors say the victim was an "innocent and ordinary" air-conditioner repairman.

"Aguirre ran his SUV into the back of the truck to get the technician to stop and get out," the news release said, describing the October 19 incident. "When the technician got out of the truck, Aguirre, pointed a handgun at the technician, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man's back -- an image captured on the body-worn camera of a police officer."

Responding authorities found no ballots inside the vehicle, only air conditioner parts and tools, prosecutors said.

After an investigation, Houston police said they found the allegations of election fraud "unfounded" and referred the case to the district attorney's office.

And also too - follow the money.

Aguirre had been paid more than $260,000 by the "Liberty Center" group, prosecutors alleged, and received about $211,400 the day following the incident.

He was arrested Tuesday and is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors said. He is currently at a Harris County jail facility with bond set at $30,000.

We can call this "dirty tricks" or "good ol' boys gone wild" or "vigilante numb-skullery" or whatever else, but it's Terrorism For Hire. and the DOJ needs to be approaching it as such. They took a huge bite out of the KKK by helping The SLPC sue some the Klan chapters into oblivion back in the 80s and 90s. And the Feds take the same kind of action against known terror groups outside the US by freezing their financial assets here, and getting other countries to do the same abroad.

We can't fuck around with this and let it go without real consequences.

It'll continue. It'll get worse. And it's going to get Americans killed.

"He crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed," Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. "His alleged investigation was backward from the start -- first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened."

Yates, Aguirre's attorney, told CNN affiliate KTRK, "He was working and investigating voter fraud, there was an accident. ... A member of the car got out and rushed toward him and that's where the confrontation took place. It's very different than what you're citing in the affidavit."

The statement from prosecutors about Aguirre's arrest came one day after the Electoral College voted to affirm Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.

Despite the announcement of election results by media outlets and government officials, outgoing President Donald Trump has continued to claim that widespread voter fraud occurred during the 2020 election, and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for a purported legal defense fund, despite official certifications that former Vice President Joe Biden won the presidential election.

I can see this as prelude to some pretty awful shit coming our way as Qult45 settles in after the inauguration and Trump continues to pimp his shadow government, We-Was-Robbed bullshit.

The Guardian

What They're Up To

Judd Gregg on with Ari Melber

When Gregg says, "The country just isn't going to go with a socialist...", I think we can hear some of what the GOP is planning.

First, Ari shoulda pushed back on the "Bernie's a socialist" thing. There may well be a few "socialist" aspects to Bernie's philosophy, but I haven't heard him espousing anything that sounds like "the people must seize the means of production" - and that's kinda the big one.

Anyway -

The obvious part is that Cult45 want to run against Bernie. We've seen efforts from more than a couple of "conservatives" to push Republicans to vote for Bernie in the open primaries.

But I think it goes beyond the usual divide-n-conquer and scare-mongering they always use against "liberals" and anyone who shows signs of getting people together in order to resist the Daddy State. 

I think they have mountains of rat-fuckery shit they were planning to use against him if he'd pulled it off in 2016, and knowing the bellicose propensities of these clowns, I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude they're champin' at the bit, obsessing over the phrase that always haunts their subconscious: "An unused weapon is a useless weapon".

They've been running the same plays this time. They're tearing away at Biden - and the others too - but leaving Bernie more or less unscathed, except for a few potshots, and the usual needling of the anti-Bernie factions in the Dem coalition, which makes the Press Poodles salivate and put out the latest installment of "Democrats in disarray...".

If Biden gets the nomination, he goes into the general election wounded, and they can keep pimping the resentment and victimhood bullshit that the Bernie Bros stewed about the whole time in 2016, and are still muttering about.

If Bernie gets the nomination, they'll pull out every little piece of shit they've been stock-piling for the last 5 years, and you know it's gotta be pretty fuckin' awful.

(some of the shit I've seen, just with a little light browsing on 4chan and Gateway and Breitbart, is bad enough that I won't put it up here even with quotation marks and *s - it's bad - it's really fuckin' bad)

And actually, I think Gregg has probably had a bit of a firsthand look, and knows a little something about what they're planning, and what's likely to happen this time around no matter who the Dems nominate.

So I'll listen to the Never Trumpers, and the ex-Repub rat-fuckers, and the "conservative brain trust dweebs" but like Dick Nixon said: "Don't count on the fella who made the mess to clean it up."

Today's Tweet

If this doesn't make your skin crawl, then you're part of the problem.

ERNST: "IA caucuses are this next Monday evening. And I'm really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Demcaucus goers. Will they be supporting VP Biden at this point?"

H/T @JaxAlemany pic.twitter.com/tYYkSPuIDY

— Alan He (@alanhe) January 28, 2020

And there it is, kids. The latest version of the Benghazi Moment - when Trey Gowdy and Jason Chaffetz (et al) admitted on camera that their "investigations" had nothing to do with finding the truth, or national security, or the well-being of Americans who sometimes risk it all serving the country.

They don't really care about any of that.

It was all about the typical GOP rat-fucking - intended only to drag Hillary down in the polls.

And here we are again.

Dear Democrats

It's already started.

It doesn't matter what the truth is. The right radicals are going to make shit up and slag you with it.

Just like the Troopergate bullshit, and the Vince Foster bullshit, and the Swift Boat bullshit, and the Kenyan Usurper bullshit, and and and.

So, none of you boogers ever played any high school football?

Proving again that even a blind hog roots up an acorn once in a while, here's one of the very few life lessons my coach was actually right about.

You're looping around the end, out of the backfield, going over the middle for a short pass.

The ball's coming to you, and you know this much:

There's a linebacker in front of you, and a safety coming from your right, and whether you catch the ball or you drop the ball, they're gonna hit you so hard your dog dies.

So get something out of it for us, and catch the fuckin' football.

Short Term Thinking

Republicans have allowed their rat-fuckers so much leeway to do their thing, the results are starting to eat away at their long-con strategy.

The story of Ed Whelan is a case-in-point.

Politico:

Ed Whelan may have just crossed a line he can’t jump back over.

Yesterday, Whelan, the president of the Ethics and & Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, and an assertive supporter of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, took to Twitter to lay out a Hardy Boys-inspired scenario, suggesting that Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Kavanaugh of attempted rape in high school, might have been mistaken about the identity of her alleged sexual assaulter. Using a mash-up of yearbook photos, Zillow information, Google Maps and Facebook, Whelan laid out a “case” that another man, a former classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Georgetown Prep—whom he named and provided a current photograph of—might have been the person Ford has in mind. After his wild theory received widespread criticism, Whelan deleted the tweets, and tried to walk back the accusation this morning.

But, if it’s false, it’s already too late to protect him against a possible defamation claim.

The common law of defamation isn’t that complicated. To be liable, the defendant must make an intentionally or negligently false statement about the plaintiff that tends to cause reputational harm, and harm must actually ensue.

Desperate to fill the federal bench with guys like Kavanaugh, the Daddy Staters are throwing caution to the wind, and forgetting what their operatives are telling us thru their idiotic short-term tactics.

Ed Whalen's attempt to deflect from the Blasey-Ford issue isn't just stoopid on is face.

By mounting this bullshit Scooby-and-the-gang "defense", they signal that at least some of them know (or have reason to strongly suspect) that something did in fact happen. 

They're admitting to the allegation that Dr Ford was assaulted. Which is why it got swept under the rug almost before it got out. Almost.

And of course, it fits with all the other shitty things Republicans have been doing:

• Nothing happened - you're lying
• OK, maybe something happened but it's not illegal, and it happened too long ago to worry about
• OK, something happened and it was illegal, but it's not a big deal - everybody does it
• OK, Something illegal happened and it's a big deal, but

Rachel

Rachel Maddow via Stitcher (audio only) - the A Block is good and long and ties things together pretty well:

Not That It'll Matter

via Right Wing Watch:

A new study by three political science professors found that state laws ostensibly targeting the fictional menace of voter fraud “have a disproportionate effect on minorities.”

Writing today in the Washington Post, professors Zoltan L. Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi and Lindsay Nielson reveal a wide “turnout gap between whites and Latinos, Asian Americans and African Americans in states with and without strict voter ID laws.”

After noting that “strict voter ID laws suppress minority votes,” they add that these laws have also skewed the electorate to help Republicans win elections.
While proponents of strict voter ID laws—almost always Republicans—claim that there is a need to crack down on virtually nonexistent voter fraud, they effectively tilt elections to help Republicans by preventing people of color from voting, a fact admitted by many Republicans.

I saw this up close in November while I was staffing the Dems' table outside my voting station. A lady was turned away because the address on her Voter Registration card didn't match the address the on her ID. She'd been dropped off by a friend because she doesn't have a car, so I drove her to the County Offices, where it took maybe 10 minutes for her to get a picture printed out on regular PC printer paper - which magically passes as her Voter ID. We went back and she was allowed to vote.

That was not a huge ordeal. But it illustrates the main point of this shit - if you put any obstacle in front of people, a good percentage of them will just blow it off.  And the Repubs know that.  Just like they know exactly what Prof Hajnal et al confirmed with their study.

These people have no honor.

Curiouser

It's one guy - and it's CNN - but there seems to be an increasing amount of smoke.

Dmitri Alperovitch said that their firm did, in fact, catch 2 groups associated w Russian intelligence agencies in the act#TrumpLeaks pic.twitter.com/jJDyfBwUmM

— Khary Penebaker (@kharyp) December 13, 2016

Today's Chart

It's the Rat-Fucking, stupid.

трахать этих русских ублюдков

Chicago Tribune:

Former senior U.S. national security officials are dismayed at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's repeated refusal to accept the judgment of intelligence professionals that Russia stole files from the Democratic National Committee computers in an effort to influence the U.S. election.

The former officials, who have served presidents in both parties, say they were bewildered when Trump cast doubt on Russia's role after receiving a classified briefing on the subject and again after an unusually blunt statement from U.S. agencies saying they were "confident" that Moscow had orchestrated the attacks.

"It defies logic," retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, said of Trump's pronouncements.

Trump has assured supporters that, if elected, he would surround himself with experts on defense and foreign affairs, where he has little experience. But when it comes to Russia, he has made it clear that he is not listening to intelligence officials, the former officials said.

--and--

 Miami Herald:

Roger Stone, a self-described master of the political dark arts and the longtime ally of Donald Trump, admits he has had “back-channel communications” with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over the release of thousands of emails stolen from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Stone, however, said he was not provided the hacked material in advance nor was he involved in the timing of their release.

“I do have a back-channel communication with Assange, because we have a good mutual friend,” Stone told CBS4 News Wednesday evening. “That friend travels back and forth from the United States to London and we talk. I had dinner with him last Monday.”

Like they say, maybe it's not a fire - just lots and lots and lots of really heavy smoke.

And btw - at this point, even though the contents of the emails could be the biggest horriblest thing since The Donnie and Marie Show, they mean practically nothing compared with the really big horribleness of the rat-fuck process that brought them to light.  And maybe that could eventually become the silver lining in this monstrous cloud of shit.

Turns Out She Was Right

Olbermann fills in your scorecard:

From Across The Pond

The world watches us pretty closely most of the time, but it's still a pretty neat trick when you've made the Brits notice just how fucked up our politics really is.

The lead article:

HOW do people learn to accept what they once found unacceptable? In 1927 Frederic Thrasher published a “natural history” of 1,313 gangs in Chicago. Each of them lived by a set of unwritten rules that had come to make sense to gang members but were still repellent to everyone else. So it is with Donald Trump and many of his supporters. By normalising attitudes that, before he came along, were publicly taboo, Mr Trump has taken a knuckle-duster to American political culture.

The recording of him boasting about grabbing women “by the pussy”, long before he was a candidate, was unpleasant enough. More worrying still has been the insistence by many Trump supporters that his behaviour was normal. So too his threat, issued in the second presidential debate, to have Hillary Clinton thrown into jail if he wins. In a more fragile democracy that sort of talk would foreshadow post-election violence. Mercifully, America is not about to riot on November 9th. But the reasons have less to do with the state’s power to enforce the letter of the law than with the unwritten rules that American democracy thrives on. It is these that Mr Trump is trampling over—and which Americans need to defend.

And in light of some of our less than sterling political moments - Swift Boat, Iraq's WMD, Whitewater, Willie Horton, Iran-Contra, The Enemies List, Southern Strategy, Joe McCarthy (the list goes on and on) - the fact that this one stands out in bold relief is depressing.