COSC

Oops

Alina Habba was SO sure about this.

But in the end, we all knew that Donald Trump is a f•cking coward... pic.twitter.com/IN1re3caZ0

— SmackeyCracks 🇺🇸 (@SmackeyCracks) December 11, 2023

Trump says he won’t testify again at his New York fraud trial. He says he has nothing more to say

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump said Sunday he has decided against testifying for a second time at his New York civil fraud trial, posting on social media a day before his scheduled appearance that he “very successfully & conclusively” testified last month and saw no need to do so again.

The former president, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican nomination, had been expected to return to the witness stand Monday as a coda to his defense against New York Attorney General Letitia James ' lawsuit.

James, a Democrat, alleges Trump inflated his wealth on financial statements used in securing loans and making deals. The case threatens Trump’s real estate empire and cuts to the heart of his image as a successful businessman.

“I will not be testifying on Monday,” Trump wrote in an all-capital-letters, multipart statement on his Truth Social platform less than 20 hours before he was to take the witness stand.

Accountability

We're in a long drawn out process of teaching Donald Trump that he has to start behaving like a normal civilized human being.

And if he doesn't, then he's going to jail, where he will await trial to decide whether or not he spends the better part of the rest of his miserable life in a federal prison.

That's the message Judge Chutkan is trying to convey to Mr Trump. He will be held to account.

And it's about fuckin' time.

Judge reimposes restrictions on Trump’s speech in Jan. 6 case

A federal judge has reimposed limits on former president Donald Trump’s public statements in advance of his trial on charges of conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Sunday evening put back in place an order she had lifted nine days earlier to give Trump and U.S. prosecutors more time to argue whether the restrictions were unconstitutional, as attorneys for the former president had claimed. Trump can now ask a higher court for an emergency stay pending appeal, but in the meantime he is bound by Chutkan’s limits. If Trump violates the gag, as he did a similar order by a state judge in New York, Chutkan will have to decide how to punish the former president and leading presidential candidate.

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A notice that Chutkan had denied Trump’s request that she stay the gag order throughout his appeal was posted on the electronic docket of the federal court in Washington at about 7 p.m. Sunday, but the judge’s underlying opinion and specific order were not immediately available on the computer system.

Under the existing order Trump and all interested parties in the case are barred from making or directing others to make public statements that “target” individual attorneys, witnesses, “any reasonably foreseeable witness,” or court staff involved in the case or the substance of their testimony. While the order was on hold, Trump posted a comment on social media calling special counsel Jack Smith “deranged” and saying former chief of staff Mark Meadows would be a lying coward if he testified for the prosecution. Both comments involved some of the exact type of language Chutkan deemed out of bounds.

Trump appeared to potentially to violate Chutkan’s order 75 minutes after she gave notice that it was reinstated, attacking his former attorney general and potential witness, William P. Barr.

“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB,” Trump said in part of an 88-word post on his social media platform that both belittled the man he chose to serve as the nation’s top law-enforcement officer and exaggerated his crowd sizes. “So now this Moron says about me, to get even, ‘his verbal skills are limited.’ Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!”

About 19 minutes after his post about Barr, Trump complained on social media: “The Corrupt Biden administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech.”

In other cases, violators of gag orders have gone to jail, but the logistics and political implications of imprisoning a former president and current presidential candidate make that unlikely. Trump is personally furious about the gag order, advisers told The Washington Post, but his campaign sees it as a political asset; any punishment would likewise feed into Trump’s narrative that he is a victim of government persecution. In New York, the judge overseeing Trump’s civil fraud trial has fined the ex-president $15,000 for repeated comments attacking a court clerk.

Trump “knows the effect of his targeting and seeks to use it to his strategic advantage while simultaneously disclaiming any responsibility for the very acts he causes,” prosecutors wrote in opposing the stay — “harassment, threats, and intimidation.”

They noted that Chutkan herself has received a death threat from a Trump supporter after being attacked online by Trump and that a Trump supporter went to the home of former president Barack Obama after Trump tweeted the address. Prosecutors also said Trump’s public criticism of Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, was concerning enough that Secret Service agents protecting the vice president were notified.

Trump’s lawyers maintain that any court-imposed limits are unconstitutional suppressions of “core political speech” because “his reelection campaign … is inextricably intertwined with this prosecution and his defense.” Moreover, they say, his 100 million social media followers have a right to hear his point of view.

Chutkan rejected that argument in her ruling, saying he could criticize the prosecution as political and unfounded without personal attacks that could intimidate people involved in the case and mislead the public.

“Mr. Trump is a criminal defendant,” she said. “First Amendment freedoms do not allow him to launch a pretrial smear campaign against participating government staff, their families, and foreseeable witnesses.”

She singled out Pence, saying Trump could make “statements criticizing the campaign platforms or policies of [his] current political rivals” without getting into expected testimony. Pence had made his decision not to help overturn the election results on Jan. 6 part of his campaign, saying Trump betrayed the U.S. Constitution and endangered lives. Pence dropped out of the race this weekend.

Prosecutors said in their filings that in the five days it was in effect, the gag order was working. Trump posted to social media about 182 times in that period, repeatedly claiming that President Biden and the Justice Department were trying to silence him. “The Order … leaves him entirely free to do those things,” the government said.

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ari Explains

One of the things that has become a complete bugaboo is the fairly simple fact that when normal people don't know enough about some issue - eg: all this Trump shit - we go in search of good info, knowing "good" info is not all that easy to find, while an awful lot of truly shitty people are willing to put out all kinds of total bullshit that gets internalized by gullible (but honestly trusting) people who've been sucked in because cynically manipulative assholes feel no compunction about amping up the rage in order to cash in on it - either politically or monetarily, or both.

OK - thus endeth the rant.

Let's go to Ari Melber for a pretty good explainer.

And Another One Down

Trump co-defendant Jenna Ellis pleads guilty in Georgia election case

ATLANTA — Jenna Ellis, a former lawyer for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, pleaded guilty Tuesday to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, making her the third attorney associated with the former president to accept a plea deal in the sweeping criminal racketeering case.

Ellis, who had been facing two charges including violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering act, pleaded guilty in court Tuesday morning to a single felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings. The deal allows her to avoid jail time in exchange for providing evidence that could potentially implicate other defendants and agreeing to testify in any future trials. Ellis worked closely with personal Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, another defendant in the case who faces 13 charges.

The plea marks the first time a senior Trump aide has been held criminally accountable for and has admitted to making false statements that the 2020 presidential election was tainted by widespread fraud. In a hearing Tuesday morning, Ellis tearfully admitted that she was wrong and misled and that she no longer believes those false claims.

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges,” Ellis said.

Appearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee on Tuesday, Ellis and her attorneys Franklin and Laura Hogue listened as a prosecutor read out details of an amended indictment. According to the details of the agreement, Ellis agreed to complete three to five years probation and 100 hours of community service, and to pay $5,000 in restitution to the Georgia secretary of state. She agreed to write a letter of apology to the state of Georgia.

She is the fourth Trump co-defendant to plead guilty in the case. Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall, accused of playing a wide-ranging role in the conspiracy to reverse Trump’s loss in Georgia, pleaded guilty Sept. 29 in a cooperation deal with prosecutors. Former pro-Trump attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro each pleaded guilty last week on the eve of their scheduled joint trial in the case.

As part of their plea deals, Hall, Powell and Chesebro each recorded a lengthy video answering prosecutors’ questions about their roles and the roles of others in the alleged election interference conspiracy.

Ellis is the second co-defendant with known direct links to Trump to plead guilty in the case. A onetime Fox News regular who was hired in late 2019 as a legal adviser to the Trump campaign, Ellis was part of the post-2020 election legal team, appearing alongside Giuliani and pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell at press conferences where she echoed false claims of election fraud.

She worked closely with Giuliani, traveling to battleground states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania where prosecutors say she spoke to lawmakers urging them to reject the popular vote results in their states. The Georgia indictment also pointed to memos she wrote for Trump outlining how Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the election results.

Ellis was later admonished by a Colorado judge for the false statements she made about the 2020 election. As part of that proceeding, Ellis admitted that several statements she said back then were false — stating that she acted “with “a reckless state of mind” and telling the court she had acted with “selfish” motives and that her actions had "undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election.”

It is not known what Ellis told prosecutors or what documents she might share in the case. Rumors had swirled for weeks that Ellis might be among those seeking a plea deal — in part because of her public complaints that Trump was unwilling to pay her mounting legal bills.

Ellis, who hosts a podcast for the American Family Network, also publicly declared in September that she was unlikely to support Trump’s bid for the 2024 nomination. “I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said on her podcast in September. “I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”

More Worser

I realize he may actually have a case to make for him being able to blab anything he wants to blab, to anyone he wants to blab it to - while he's POTUS.

But I need somebody to explain to me why this prick is walkin' around free right now.

Trump Said to Have Revealed Nuclear Submarine Secrets to Australian Businessman

Soon after leaving office, the former president shared sensitive information about American submarines with a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the matter.

Shortly after he left office, former President Donald J. Trump shared apparently classified information about American nuclear submarines with an Australian businessman during an evening of conversation at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The businessman, Anthony Pratt, a billionaire member of Mar-a-Lago who runs one of the world’s largest cardboard companies, went on to share the sensitive details about the submarines with several others, the people said. Mr. Trump’s disclosures, they said, potentially endangered the U.S. nuclear fleet.

Federal prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, learned about Mr. Trump’s disclosures of the secrets to Mr. Pratt, which were first revealed by ABC News, and interviewed him as part of their investigation into the former president’s handling of classified documents, the people said.

According to another person familiar with the matter, Mr. Pratt is now among more than 80 people whom prosecutors have identified as possible witnesses who could testify against Mr. Trump at the classified documents trial, which is scheduled to start in May in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla.

Mr. Pratt’s name does not appear in the indictment accusing Mr. Trump of illegally holding on to nearly three dozen classified documents after he left office and then conspiring with two of his aides at Mar-a-Lago to obstruct the government’s attempts to get them back.

But the account that Mr. Trump discussed some of the country’s most sensitive nuclear secrets with him in a cavalier fashion could help prosecutors establish that the former president had a long habit of recklessly handling classified information.

And the existence of the testimony about the conversation underscores how much additional information the special prosecutor’s office may have amassed out of the public’s view.

During his talk with Mr. Pratt, Mr. Trump revealed at least two pieces of critical information about the U.S. submarines’ tactical capacities, according to the people familiar with the matter. Those included how many nuclear warheads the vessels carried and how close they could get to their Russian counterparts without being detected.

It does not appear that Mr. Trump showed Mr. Pratt any of the classified documents that he had been keeping at Mar-a-Lago. In August last year, the F.B.I. carried out a court-approved search warrant at the property and hauled away more than 100 documents containing national security secrets, including some that bore the country’s most sensitive classification markings.

Mr. Trump had earlier returned hundreds of other documents he had taken with him from the White House, some in response to a subpoena.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Mr. Smith declined to comment. Representatives for Mr. Pratt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Even though Mr. Pratt has been interviewed by prosecutors, the people familiar with the matter said, it remained unclear whether Mr. Trump was merely blustering or exaggerating in his conversation with him.

Joe Hockey, a former Australian ambassador to the United States, sought to play down Mr. Trump’s disclosures to Mr. Pratt in a phone interview on Thursday.

“If that’s all that was discussed, we already know all that,” Mr. Hockey said. “We have had Australians serving with Americans on U.S. submarines for years, and we share the same technology and the same weapons as the U.S. Navy.”

Still, Mr. Trump has been known to share classified information verbally on other occasions. During an Oval Office meeting in 2017 shortly after he fired the F.B.I. director James B. Comey, Mr. Trump revealed sensitive classified intelligence to two Russian officials, according to people briefed on the matter.

Well into his presidency, he also posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, a classified photo of an Iranian launch site.

The indictment in the documents case also accused Mr. Trump of showing a classified battle plan to attack Iran to a group of visitors to his club in Bedminster, N.J. Prosecutors claim that a recording of the meeting with the visitors depicts Mr. Trump as describing the document he brandished as “secret.”

Mr. Trump has not had access to more updated U.S. intelligence since leaving the presidency; President Biden cut off the briefings that former presidents traditionally get when Mr. Trump left office in the wake of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings,” Mr. Biden said at the time.

“What value is giving him an intelligence briefing?” he said. “What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”

Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. Pratt appear to fit a pattern of the former president’s collapsing his public office and its secrets into his private interests.

Mr. Pratt cultivated a relationship with Mr. Trump once he became president. He joined Mar-a-Lago in 2017, then was invited to a state dinner and had Mr. Trump join him at one of his company’s plants in Ohio.

Today's Occam's Razor

William of Ockham

When the whole world is calling you a crook,

one thing you have to stop and consider is that

maybe you're a fucking crook.

So Much Losing

Donald Trump's Properties Will Likely Be Auctioned Off, Attorney Says

Donald Trump's properties will likely be liquidated and sold off at auction after a judge found he had committed fraud, New York's former assistant attorney general has said.

Tristan Snell was speaking after a court found that the former president had massively inflated the value of some of his properties and ordered that some Trump companies involved be stripped of their corporate licenses. It's one part of Trump's ongoing civil fraud trial.

"The worst outcome that could have come from this case has already been handed down, and that is for the corporate licenses to be canceled," Snell told MSNBC. "The properties are likely going to be liquidated. The properties are probably going to be sold at auction. That's probably what is going to happen. We don't know that for sure, but that is probably where this is headed. So [Trump] is already really, really in trouble."

Snell said that it was important to remember that Trump has already lost, despite his protestations of innocence.

Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last week that Trump, his adult sons, The Trump Organization and other businesses associated with the former president had overvalued several of his properties—including his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, and his triplex in Manhattan at the Trump Tower—for financial gain.

Trump and his sons responded with incredulity to Engoron's summary judgment last week, which ordered that some of their business licenses in New York be rescinded and that the companies that own the properties named in the judgment be handed over to independent receivers.

Trump's lawyers have vowed to appeal the decision and took issue with the figures used to determine that the properties had been overvalued during the first day of the trial. The former president himself appeared in court on Monday in order to, as he put it, "fight for my name and reputation."

The ongoing trial will now determine the outstanding allegations against Donald Trump and his named associates.

Judge Engoron is presiding over the trial in the $250 million civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump, his adult sons and The Trump Organization. Trump is accused of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to secure favorable loan terms from banks. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Newsweek reached out to Christopher Kise, a lawyer for the former president, via email for comment.

The former president's daughter, Ivanka Trump was listed as a witness in James's prosecution case in court filings prior to the trial, having previously been named as a co-defendant.

A court order filed on June 27 this year dismissed Ivanka Trump as a co-defendant as the claims against her were "accrued prior to...February 2016" and that she had not been party to a 2021 tolling agreement between the New York attorney general and the Trump Organization extending the period of statutory limitations on the claims.

The move to becoming a witness in the case against Donald Trump "usually indicates some form of cooperation," an attorney previously told Newsweek, leaving open the potential that Ivanka Trump could give potentially damaging evidence against her family at the trial.

Newsweek reached out to a lawyer for Ivanka Trump via email for comment.

Prison Is On His Mind

Through all the usual bluff-n-bluster, Trump is worried about going to prison. 

TRUMP PANICS OVER GAG ORDER AND GOING TO PRISON - 9.21.23
SEASON 2 EPISODE 40: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: Trump has descended into full-fledged panic over the Possible Gag Order and either he is exaggerating for effect – what a shock – or, more likely, his lawyers, preparing an answer to Jack Smith’s request to Judge Chutkan that is due Monday, told him SOMETHING that set his hair on fire and you know the dangers of combustion when spray paint is mixed with open flames. And that imagery is more than a joke about his bottle blondness. It is a forecast of things to come. We are headed to a legal crisis over Trump’s social media posts and his refusal to accede to the rule of law and I don’t know where this ends but at the far end of political science fiction, where it ends is a shootout between United States Marshals and United States Secret Service.

His bail – his NOT being held in a jail cell in the District of Columbia until trial starts – is dependent on him NOT defying the law. As I said last week, at some point, whatever limitations Chutkan imposes upon him, WHEN he violates them, whether it’s the first time or the fiftieth – he is NOT going to surrender. He is not going to let them put him in prison. They are going to have to go and get him. And what happens THEN?

It seems madness to risk the lives of Marshals or Secret Service to protect this semi-sentient pile of feces. But, what? You’re going to have the Secret Service agents protecting him turn around an arrest him? Biden is going to order the head of the Secret Service to order his men to stand down when the Marshals arrive? Trump is going to see the photo-shoot-value in an actual perp walk?

I’m not counting on the last one. Rolling Stone now reports that as you’d expect, the I-don’t-think-about-jail crap he gave to the gullible Kristen Welker in last Sunday’s stenography class is nonsense. Quoting: “In the past several months, Donald Trump has had a burning question for some of his confidants and attorneys: Would the authorities make him wear, quote, “one of those jumpsuits” in prison?... Three sources familiar with his comments say he’s been aking lawyers and other people close to him what a prison sentence would look like for a former American president. Would he be sent to a ‘club fed’ style prison… or a bad prison? Would he serve out a sentence in a plush home confinement?... those who’ve heard him ask these questions about a hypothetical sentencing tell Rolling Stone that it’s clear the gravity of his mounting legal peril is GETTING to Trump."

As an aside, I understand Jann Wenner is asking the same questions.

Also: Cassidy Hutchinson's book includes a sexual assault accusation against Rudy Giuliani. It's the worst sexual misconduct accusation against him in nearly four months. Also Lin Wood flips on the entire Trump crowd. And a tweet from Junior Trump announces his father had died. He was hacked. We think.

B-Block (18:45) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: JD Vance sets some kind of record by averaging more than one lie per sentence in a tweet about an "American journalist held hostage by Ukraine" who is none of the above. Congresswoman Victoria Spartz asks Merrick Garland a question and if he's still thinking about the hearing he's probably asking 'what the hell did she SAY?' And James O'Keefe's obsession with becoming a musical star has now led to the closure of Project (In Vino) Veritas. But who will think of the cast of O'Keefe-Homa!?

C-Block (25:39) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: If Rudy is back in the news then the question: "what happened to Rudy?" is also back in the news and I'll give you the answer: whatever it is, it happened in 1995 or earlier.

 (heavy pay wall)

Trump Privately Frets He Could Be Headed to Prison

• Would he be sent to a “club fed” style prison — or a “bad” one?
• Would he have Secret Service protection?
• And what would they make him wear?

Those are some of the questions Donald Trump is asking his lawyers as his many trials loom

Dead To Rights

Paraphrasing:

Model the right behavior, and then tell the jury, "Let's be grownups about this."

Dear Mr Jordan

Read a fuckin' book.

Your friend,

Fani

Never Ending

He had someone in his entourage fill out the form - and they lied for him. Because of course they fucking did.

And this is not a mug shot. It's a publicity still for a cheap 2nd rate WWE promo.

A Score Card

With Mike Pence finally coming out and showing us a bit of actual courage - joining Chris Christie as pretty much the only well know Republicans to go openly against Trump, we start to think maybe there's hope for the GOP to reclaim its honor.

Yeah no - prob'ly not. But a guy can dream, can't he? I mean it is a sign of hope, right?

WaPo has kind of a breakdown on the State Of The Indictment



5 things Trump’s Jan. 6 indictment week tells us about the 2024 election

The first former president of the United States to be indicted has now been charged a third time. This historic event capped a week that tells us a few things about the 2024 presidential race, in which the former president remains the overwhelming GOP favorite.

Here’s what we’ve learned from the past five days.

1. No candidate can escape the specter of Jan. 6

Republican Party leaders have spent much of the past two years hoping to just move on from Jan. 6 — and urging Trump (in vain) to stop talking about the 2020 election.

This week made clear that nobody can escape it.

Trump faces a criminal trial over his role in efforts to overturn the election that culminated in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And former vice president Mike Pence, who was invoked more than 100 times in the indictment, has been forced to lean into making the Jan. 6-centric case he had long declined to emphasize.

(Imagine you were told a month ago that Pence would be selling merchandise based on Trump’s indictment — new gear features the slogan “too honest,” which is what Trump allegedly called Pence as Pence declined his entreaties to help overturn the election.)

The party as a whole and all its 2024 contenders will feel a newfound onus to weigh in, too.

The GOP has done its best to avoid a detailed accounting of Trump’s actions and his false claims of mass voter fraud. It acquitted him at his post-Jan. 6 impeachment trial based on a technicality. (Key senators said you can’t impeach someone who has left office.) Then it pulled out of a deal for a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission.

But this indictment has landed when Trump is again the focal point of American politics. There is no waving it off because he’s out of office. And 2024 opponents who have carefully massaged and triangulated their messages about Trump’s legal peril will risk being left out of the major topic of conversation if they don’t engage.

Oh, and Trump has signaled he is going to make all of this very uncomfortable for the GOP by using it to re-litigate the 2020 election and his false claims that it was “stolen” from him.

2. Trump may be losing control of the clock

Trump’s legal team has made clear it would prefer his federal criminal cases don’t go to trial before the 2024 election. While that remains possible with the classified-documents case in Florida — set for trial in May but subject to delay, in part thanks to the new superseding indictment and the care required in handling sensitive material — the Jan. 6 case in Washington, D.C., may be a speedier affair.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment appears built for speed. For a start, he charged Trump solo. If he charges Trump’s alleged co-conspirators, it will apparently be separately. And he kept the indictment narrowly focused on four charges, one count each. Then Smith announced at a news conference that “my office will seek a speedy trial.”

He might get his wish. A magistrate judge said Thursday that a trial date will be set at the first hearing, on Aug. 28, which isn’t always how it’s done. Trump lawyer John Lauro has said it’s “absurd” to try to conduct the trial in accordance with the Speedy Trial Act, which would mean starting the trial within 100 days.

Also remember that, unlike the classified-documents case, this one doesn’t feature a Trump-appointed judge who has in the past ruled in his favor in controversial ways. And it does feature a fact pattern that has been chewed over extensively for more than two years.

3. Ron DeSantis is running out of ideas

July was not a good month for the Florida governor. The presidential race was actually mostly static for his first month as a candidate, but since then he has gone from trailing Trump by nearly 30 points in the Republican primary to trailing by nearly 40 points. He’s now competing just to be in second place in states like Iowa and South Carolina, after polling close to Trump as recently as February, before he was officially running.

Hence the campaign shake-up.

What’s got to be particularly frustrating for DeSantis is that he’s even losing badly to Trump among voters who might logically be in his corner, like those who emphasize fighting “woke” corporations, a DeSantis signature issue. And his supposed retooling of his message hasn’t exactly borne fruit.

So what’s left for him to do to arrest the backsliding? Well, this week DeSantis sent Vice President Harris a letter seeking a meeting to discuss his state’s controversial slavery curriculum (she declined). And he just agreed to a one-on-one debate with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), which Newsom proposed nearly a year ago.

The combined picture is a campaign more focused on stunts than anything else, because the “anything else” has roundly failed.

4. Trump’s woes have not helped Biden

Despite all the legal drama surrounding Trump, polls this week suggested that the GOP might be as competitive as ever in the 2024 general election.

A New York Times/Siena College poll showed Trump and Biden tied at 43 percent in a prospective matchup, despite most recent quality polls giving Biden a small edge.

A CNN poll, meanwhile, showed that encouraging signs about the economy and inflation really have yet to give President Biden much of a boost.

Finally, the CNN poll included a somewhat remarkable finding. It asked whether people had more confidence in Biden or congressional Republicans to deal with major issues. While Americans in December picked the GOP by two points, they picked it by nine points in this poll.

All of which might help explain why Barack Obama felt the need to give Biden a reality check about Trump’s potential to defeat him in 2024.

• About the only thing the polling data shows is how ubiquitous and dangerous wingnut propaganda is. Press Poodles always miss the point on this one, and that blind spot always shows them to be unaware of (or deliberately ignoring) the single most important angle they should be reporting on.
• As the village is being wiped out by an avalanche, WaPo tells us all about property damage and the human toll, while carefully omitting any reference to one party's denial of gravity, friction, and slope failure - making it impossible for normal people to prevent the catastrophe.

5. Republicans won’t desert (or vouch for) Trump

There has been little in the way of a merit-based defense of Trump after this latest indictment, as was the case after the previous two. And relatively few Republicans have actually gone to bat for him in any significant way — at least compared with the way they did when the federal government searched Mar-a-Lago a year ago.

But in this case, the tepid pushback is arguably more pronounced.

The idea is that Trump is being politically targeted.

The idea is that there is a two-tiered system of justice.

The idea is that Trump was entitled to free speech and may even have believed his falsehoods.

Virtually none of the Republican defense argues that Trump was actually right and that his actions were warranted. This lack might be considered rather patronizing, because it implies that he wasn’t, and they weren’t. Why not just argue that what he said and did was substantiated?

Because they can’t. It’s in some ways an extension of what happened after the 2020 election. Republicans by and large didn’t echo Trump’s obviously false claims of mass voter fraud, because they seemingly knew they were ridiculous. They instead made process arguments about voting rules that changed during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, supplementing Trump’s objections with these to at least seem like they were on the same page.

Some seemed to think that was the smart play and it would all just blow over. Then Jan. 6 happened.

Nearly three years later, Republicans get to keep dealing with it, right into the middle of the 2024 election.

BTW - Pence (and a shit load of notable others) ignored congressional subpoenas. But they've all complied with the subpoenas from Jack Smith's office. Maybe we should be doing something about the little problem of people cherry picking which laws they will and won't obey. Seems like we need just a bit of a change.

What He Said

The Hunter Thing

There's a distasteful feel about this that smacks of two-tiered justice. If the guy is named Jamal or Pedro or Joe Bob, he doesn't have the .50 caliber legal help that Hunter Biden has, and he's probably already doing time.

On the other hand, this guy is the son of a president who isn't always trying to duck responsibility. So the fact that he's standing up and facing the music speaks well for him and his family.

We can say Hunter's bad behavior is a reflection on his parents, but there's absolutely no guarantee that all of our kids are going to be model citizens no matter how great we think our child-rearing skills are. Everybody's got an uncle or a cousin or a half-brother nobody likes to talk about at Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody.

I'm not excusing the bone-head stunts - or truly shitty things - the young Biden has pulled. Though I will say (not to get all What-About-y on you), that we're seeing a very different thing play out here compared with all the shit the Trump gang has thrown at us.

In a lot of cases, it's not so much what you did that counts - it's how you react when you're caught doing it.

Morality is the understanding that we're punished by our sins, not for them.

Hunter Biden reaches deal to plead guilty in tax, gun case

The president’s son would get about two years probation and enter a diversion program, people familiar with the negotiations said

President Biden’s son Hunter has reached a tentative agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to two minor tax crimes and admit to the facts of a gun charge under terms that would likely keep him out of jail, according to court papers filed Tuesday.

Any proposed plea deal would have to be approved by a federal judge, and it was not immediately clear what day Hunter Biden, 53, might appear in court to enter his guilty plea.

The agreement caps an investigation that was opened in 2018 during the Trump administration, and has generated intense interest and criticism since 2020 from Republican politicians who accused the Biden administration of reluctance to pursue the case. The terms of the proposed deal — negotiated with Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a holdover from President Donald Trump’s administration — are likely to face similar scrutiny.

The court papers indicate the younger Biden has tentatively agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay in 2017 and 2018. The combined tax liability is roughly $1.2 million over those years, according to people familiar with the plea deal, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe details of the agreement that are not yet public. Prosecutors plan to recommend a sentence of probation for those counts, these people said. Biden’s representatives have said he previously paid back the IRS what he owed.

In a letter filed in federal court in Wilmington on Tuesday, federal prosecutors said they were filing two documents called criminal informations — typically used in cases in which a defendant has agreed to plead guilty.

“The defendant has agreed to plead guilty to both counts of the tax Information,” the prosecutors wrote. The second criminal information is about the gun charge. “The defendant has agreed to enter a Pretrial Diversion Agreement with respect to the firearm Information,” the letter says.

Both the prosecutors and the defense counsel have requested a court hearing at which Biden can enter his plea, the letter said.

While Biden is pleading guilty to two tax charges, handling the gun charge as a diversion case means he will not technically be pleading guilty to that crime. Diversion is an option typically applied to nonviolent offenders with substance abuse problems.

In all, prosecutors would recommend two years of probation and diversion conditions, these people said. If Biden successfully meets the conditions of the diversion program, the gun charge would be removed from his record at the end of that period, the people familiar with the plea deal said.

The gun purchase that led to the criminal charge happened in late 2018, at a time when, by his own telling in his autobiography, Hunter Biden was regularly abusing crack cocaine. When he filled out paperwork to buy the gun, however, he denied using drugs or having a drug problem, exposing him to a potential charge of making a false statement on the document, as well as illegal gun possession once he acquired the weapon. Biden owned the gun for less than two weeks, because his then-girlfriend threw it away, according to public accounts of that time period.

Hunter Biden’s proposed plea deal will likely become grist for the 2024 presidential race, as the nation’s two main parties once again debate the influence of politics on law enforcement, and the effects of law-enforcement investigations on political campaigns.

Biden’s defenders have argued that Hunter Biden is a recovering addict accused of relatively minor offenses — the type of case that would not typically be prosecuted by federal authorities, barring some additional aggravating factors that are not present in this case. They suggest the investigation would have been dropped long ago if he wasn’t the president’s son.

Republicans seeking to win back the White House have sought to tie Hunter Biden’s legal woes directly to his father, claiming the extent of wrongdoing in the Biden family goes far beyond a simple tax and gun case, and that the Justice Department is trying to avoid prosecuting more serious matters. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said he gave full authority over the investigation to Weiss, a Trump appointee, and would not interfere in any charging decision.

Trump, who is the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, frequently tries to contrast the Justice Department’s treatment of Hunter Biden with his own legal jeopardy involving the discovery that hundreds of classified documents were kept at his Mar-a-Lago home and private club. Trump was indicted earlier this month on 37 federal charges of withholding highly sensitive national security information and trying to prevent the federal government from regaining possession of that material. He has denied wrongdoing.

Federal authorities began investigating Hunter Biden’s finances in 2018. Much of that work has centered around whether he evaded paying taxes on money he collected from overseas business clients. Last year, witnesses were called before a grand jury in Wilmington to answer questions about what they knew about Biden’s spending and work. Over time, the inquiry expanded to look at whether Biden’s gun purchase amounted to a crime.

People familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing case, told The Washington Post in October that federal agents had determined there was enough evidence to file tax and gun charges. Last month, The Post reported that prosecutors in the case were nearing a decision.

Lying on the government forms needed to purchase a firearm represents a small percentage of the nation’s overall firearm-related prosecutions. Between October 2022 and March 2023, federal prosecutors filed 3,863 cases in which the unlawful possession of a firearm was the lead charge, according to Syracuse University’s TRAC database, which gathers federal data. In 130 of those cases, or about 3 percent, the lead unlawful possession charge was related to making a false statement to acquire the weapon.

During that same six-month period, federal prosecutors in Delaware filed nine cases in which unlawful gun possession was the lead charge, according to the TRAC data. One of the nine involved making a false statement to acquire the weapon.

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor whose research focuses on gun policy, said prosecutors typically would not charge lying on a gun form as a stand-alone crime, instead filing it as a secondary charge when someone also may have committed a violent crime with the weapon.

President Biden stands with his son Hunter Biden and sister Valerie Biden Owens as he looks at a plaque dedicated to his late son Beau Biden while visiting Mayo Roscommon Hospice in County Mayo, Ireland, on April 14. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
In recent months, Hunter Biden has tried to take a more public and publicly combative stance in the face of the accusations. His revamped legal team has fired countersuits, issued criminal referral letters, and sent cease-and-desist letters to some of those who have publicly argued he committed crimes.

In April, he also was part of a high-profile visit to Ireland with his father, who introduced him enthusiastically to crowds, along with the president’s sister.

Hunter Biden’s finances became a subject of heated debate during the 2020 presidential campaign, in part because of reports in the New York Post about a laptop computer that he purportedly dropped off at a Wilmington repair shop in 2019 and never came back to collect.

The laptop was turned over to the FBI in December 2019, according to documents reviewed by The Post, and a copy of the drive was obtained by Rudy Giuliani and other advisers to then-President Trump a few months before the 2020 election.

Inside Hunter Biden's multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company

Trump and his supporters have repeatedly argued that Hunter’s legal problems were evidence not just of his wrongdoing but misconduct by his father. Two areas of the younger Biden’s work came under particular scrutiny — a deal with Chinese firm CEFC, and his membership on the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

As the 2020 election drew closer, Republicans pressed the FBI and Justice Department to explain the status of the Biden investigation and the relevance of the laptop to that investigation. The bureau declined to do so, citing the intense criticism directed at the FBI in 2016 for publicly reopening an investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton just weeks before Trump’s victory at the polls.

In December 2020, after Joe Biden was elected, FBI agents approached Hunter Biden seeking to question him about his finances, and he publicly confirmed he was under investigation.

At the time, a spokesman for Joe Biden said the president-elect had “never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever.”

Today's Today

Donald Trump will be arraigned on a boatload of federal felony charges today, and I have to go out on a limb right here and say I don't expect the kind of MAGA shittiness that lots of people (ie: Press Poodles) have been angsting about.

With almost a thousand arrests, trials, &/or convictions stemming from that mess on Jan6, I have to believe the chill is on. For some, doing time in a federal lock-up reinforces their belief that they're being victimized by 'da gubmint', but for most, it tends to focus your mind on how stupidly you've behaved as you begin to realize that Trump is the one who made you a victim in order to serve his own venal ambitions.

That's not to say some of those idiots aren't planning some more shit - there's always enough assholes around who get themselves, and each other, whipped into a rich creamy lather and decide they need to go fuck something up. I'm just saying government has responded the way I expect government to respond, in getting organized and doing what they can to meet the threat.

BTW, there have been times I've hated the feds for getting organized and moving against people like me when I thought I was doing things what normal citizens are supposed to do.

But this is not the same. There is no equivalence on this.

I was politicking against Bush43 and his fucked up war in Iraq; I was doing nothing like plotting violent action; and while there were some shitty things being done to peaceful protesters, most of our worst paranoia was unfounded. (most)

Now we've got non-peaceful protesters, who are plotting violence, and a government taking mostly appropriate action. (mostly appropriate - never ever put your full trust in people who wield governmental power)

So anyway, Trump will be arraigned today and it'll be a big Circus Of The Stoopid, and some of the more rabid of the MAGA rubes will tumble and stumble and rock the jungle - and nothing will happen except that a crooked ex-POTUS will continue his long slow fall that's been coming since the King Of The Tiny Dick Flimflammers was born.

Ms Dowd

None of our irritations with the perceived inadequacies of the media should ever allow us to suggest even faintly that the independence of the press could be compromised or coerced.

A bad free press is preferable to a technically good subservient press.

-- Nelson Madela

Is it possible the Sulzberger family has finally gotten the message?

It's unlikely, but even though Maureen Dowd starts her piece out like she usually does (hiding the razor blade deep in the apple, by "cleverly" disguising the Both-Sides bullshit as a cute little anecdote about Eugene Debs - inviting the inference that of course the situations involving Trump and Debs are exactly the same - oy).

She starts to redeem herself a bit when she finally gets around to saying there's no comparison (5th paragraph - I guess "columnists" are subject to the whole journalism thing.)

The problem I have with NYT is that they seem to think they can sit there in their Manhattan condos and pretend they have no dog in the fight - that no matter what happens, they'll be totally insulated from the shit that will roll down on them if the more radical of the plutocrats prevail.

And of course, some will thrive under a new regime because they've become extraordinarily adept at their sycophancy. (like the David Spade character in The Coneheads - total suck up to whoever has the power - sorry, I couldn't find a good video clip)

Bathroom Reading at Mar-a-Lago

WASHINGTON — It’s shocking how easy it is to imagine Donald Trump campaigning for the presidency from prison.

He’d have the joint wired, like the mob guys in “Goodfellas.” He’d be enjoying all kinds of privileges, DJing Elvis and Pavarotti; getting a steady flow of Viagra, cheeseburgers and conjugal visits (not from Melania). Maybe he’d even be able to smuggle in his special Tang-colored hair bleach.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried for the White House from the Big House. In 1920, after being imprisoned on sedition charges for excoriating American involvement in World War I, which he considered a capitalistic war, Eugene Debs won about 900,000 votes as the Socialist Party nominee.

“I will be a candidate at home in seclusion,” he joked when asked how he would campaign. “It will be much less tiresome, and my managers and opponents can always locate me.” He was allowed to give one bulletin a week to the United Press. With Trump, it will be Newsmax.

Trump wouldn’t be in prison for sticking by his principles, though. He’d be in prison because he has no principles. We’re watching him spiral down to his essence. At bottom, he’s a humongous, dangerous liar and a criminal. As Logan Roy would say, this is not a serious person.

The dramatic unsealing of United States of America v. Donald J. Trump is a fitting switch. Until now, it has been Donald J. Trump v. United States of America. He tried to engineer a coup against the government he was running. I bet Jack Smith will be bringing those charges later.

The special counsel made it clear that this isn’t just a “boxes hoax,” as Trump called it. You can’t purloin classified documents; leave them in the gilt-and-crystal glare of the bathroom, shower, bedroom and ballroom at Mar-a-Lago; and show them off to remind people how important you are. Trump’s ego is his greatest weakness. He couldn’t resist self-aggrandizing. Hey, I got these secret documents.

The indictment — charging Trump with violating the Espionage Act and other laws — offered devastating photos of America’s secrets stacked up like something on “Hoarders,” spilling out under the dry cleaning, a guitar case and other items.

“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries, United States nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack,” the indictment said. “The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Well, that’s bad.

The indictment is based on information from Trump’s own lawyers, staffers, phone records and security cameras. This isn’t the work of some insider or Trump hater who’s out to get him. And it makes clear that there was a very deliberate effort by Trump to hold on to and conceal these documents that he was going to use for heaven knows what and show to God knows whom.

The former president directed his valet, Waltine Nauta (named as a co-conspirator with Trump), to move about 64 boxes from a storage room to Trump’s residence and bring about 30 boxes back to the storage room — without informing the Trump attorney who was supposed to be reviewing the material.

On top of that, the attorney said, Trump later encouraged him to go through the documents that he did review and pluck out anything really bad. Trump even made a plucking motion.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump was always boasting about his devotion to protecting classified information, to mock Hillary. The prosecutors thoughtfully included some of his old comments, like this one: “In my administration I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”

Those statements obviously carried the same weight as his 2016 comments vowing to be so busy as president that he would never play golf. What an utter phony.

The Republicans who jumped out in front of the indictment to defend Trump should be ashamed. Unfortunately, shame is long gone from the Republican Party, except for a vestigial smidge in Mitt Romney’s office.

Up until now, Trump has managed to slink away from innumerable seamy episodes, from bankruptcies to vile personal misconduct, by proclaiming himself a victim.

I was trepidatious, after watching the lame performances of James Comey and Robert Mueller. But Jack Smith seems to be bringing an impressive skill set and temperament to his prosecution of Trump. Maybe he developed them in his years nailing war criminals at The Hague.

In his brief appearance at the Justice Department Friday afternoon, Smith emphasized the risks that this kind of mishandling of sensitive information poses to the people who have volunteered to protect us.

He praised the F.B.I., the agency that Trump and the Republicans have been trying to tear down and defund, saying the agents there work “tirelessly every day, upholding the rule of law in our country.”

Republicans used to embrace the rule of law. Now, many describe the Jan. 6 rioters as martyrs and say Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted. Kevin McCarthy called the indictment “a dark day for the United States of America.”

But Smith is intent on reminding Americans that the rule of law is a fundamental tenet of our country.

Trump ranted on Friday about Smith being “a deranged psycho.” Naturally, he also attacked Smith’s wife, the award-winning documentarian Katy Chevigny, who produced a documentary about Michelle Obama and contributed to Joe Biden’s campaign, as “the biggest Hater of them all.”

But Smith is not likely to be cowed. The guy’s tenacious. In an interview a few years ago, Smith discussed his passion for Ironman competitions. He talked about the time he got hit by a truck while riding his bike and fractured his pelvis. He was back doing a triathlon 10 weeks later.

Happy Day

Donald trump has been indicted on 7 counts - all federal.

$787,500,000.00

She's just gettin' warmed up 

DumFux News took one in the shorts yesterday. They settled, probably thinking they needed to cut their losses and try to move past the problem. But there's more shit rolling their way - they ain't done yet.

4 takeaways from the Dominion v. Fox settlement

The long-anticipated defamation trial in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News ended before it truly began Tuesday, with a judge announcing the two sides had agreed to a settlement. Dominion says Fox has agreed to pay $787.5 million — nearly half of the $1.6 billion Dominion sought.

At issue in the case were false claims that Fox aired about Dominion related to former president Donald Trump’s false accusations about the 2020 election being stolen. Dominion had to prove not only that the claims weren’t true — which it did — but that Fox’s actions met the legal standard of “actual malice,” meaning that it knew better or that it showed a reckless disregard for the truth.

The settlement, the full terms of which weren’t immediately clear and could remain shrouded, will spare Fox a lengthy spectacle delving into those issues. But it came after ugly disclosures about the cable news leader.

Below are some takeaways:

1. The damage done

The name of the game for Fox and its owners in such situations — be it the British phone-hacking scandal, sexual misconduct, gender discrimination cases or others — is almost always to settle. Often, and evidently by design, that deprives us of a true hearing on the merits of the allegations.

But in this case Fox didn’t reach a settlement until after thoroughly damaging revelations via the legal discovery process and early court maneuvers. The documentation in the case showed that many at Fox indeed knew better about the conspiracy theories the network aired, that it chose to air them anyway in the name of appealing to an audience that believed these claims and wanted to believe Trump had won, and that even Fox’s news product toed the company’s political line.

The judge also ruled that it was “CRYSTAL clear” that the claims Fox aired were false.

What will continue to linger over the network are the lessons of all that evidence. Given what we’ve learned about Fox’s focus on its business model, other outlets will view its news product — its journalism — accordingly. It reinforced the idea that the shows put on by Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham are just that: shows tailored to an audience, and they might not reflect what the hosts or the people behind the scenes actually know or believe.

Perhaps as much as anything, the case reflected the control Trump has over the conservative movement, given the fear Fox demonstrated of what Trump could do to it — a fear that echoes the broader Republican Party’s posture toward Trump.

Of course, whether Fox viewers will ever consume any of that is another matter. Fox covered the trial sparingly after initially barring even its media reporter from weighing in. The conservative media ecosystem is exceedingly insular. Just as Fox capitalized on its audience’s false beliefs about voter fraud — even as such claims had been routinely debunked elsewhere — it will probably benefit from their disinterest in learning what just happened at their favored cable news outlet.

What’s clear is that Dominion, while having understandable motives to settle, struck perhaps the most significant blow to date against Fox well before it agreed to the deal.

2. The scale of the settlement

There remain questions about the settlement beyond the dollar figure. But a big one was answered shortly after it was announced. The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr reports that Fox says it will not be required to issue an on-air apology. (Dominion’s lawyers did not address this.)

It is notable that Fox News said in its post-settlement press statement that “we acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” But that acknowledgment is pretty thin gruel if it’s the only mention Fox gives about its conduct. It’s merely stating something that the court said without necessarily endorsing it. (Fox media reporter Howard Kurtz did say on-air after the settlement that the allegations were “obviously false. Those were conspiracy theories.”)

Dominion sought to cast Fox’s statement as more significant, with chief executive John Poulos saying that “Fox has admitted to telling lies about Dominion.”

But even if you recognize that Fox was admitting the statements were false, the network did not address whether those statements were lies. “Lies have consequences,” Dominion lawyer Justin Nelson said, adding: “Today represents a ringing endorsement for truth and for democracy.”

As for the dollar figure, it’s surely one of the largest in history for a defamation suit (the totals in such suits often remain confidential). It also compares to some estimates of the total cost of the phone-hacking scandal last decade that cost Rupert Murdoch’s media empire as much as $1 billion.

Fox, which owns the nation’s leading cable news outlet, had $4 billion in cash in its last financial filing, meaning it would seem to be able to cover such a large payout. But it’s a huge blow to the bottom line.

3. What’s next?

And it might not be the end of it. While the news of the settlement is hugely significant, there’s more to come — even on this specific issue.

Fox still has to contend with a similar lawsuit from another voting technology company, Smartmatic. The company was often lumped in with Dominion while the false claims were made on Fox, and in some cases the claims against Smartmatic arguably went further.

A New York judge last month allowed Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit to move forward. The size of the payout in the Dominion case will only make the stakes of this next case even larger.

Another major issue looming over Fox is what its shareholders might do. Shareholders can sue the network over how its decisions damaged their assets. One of them filed suit this month. Others have demanded company records.

While the Dominion payout might not severely hamper Fox, the combination of all of these things could exact a growing and much larger toll. And as far as Fox is concerned, the issue as a whole isn’t completely settled. What just happened suggests it’s not exactly fighting from a position of strength.

Dominion says it’s not done, either, with lawyer Stephen Shackelford saying: “We’ve got some other people who have some accountability coming toward them. And we’ll move right on to the next one.”

Dominion is also suing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who promoted the false election claims on Fox and elsewhere. (Lindell’s fate would also seem to matter greatly to Fox, given that documents in the Dominion case show Fox referring to him as the network’s top advertiser.)

4. Late missteps from Fox

Before the two sides were able to reach an agreement, Fox repeatedly earned the ire of the judge, including on Tuesday.

Judge Eric M. Davis removed Fox communications executive and spokeswoman Caley Cronin from the courtroom after she was caught taking pictures. Cameras and tweeting from the courtroom are forbidden during the trial, which is being held behind closed doors.

Davis said that when admonished, Cronin “turned on everybody else” and said others were “actively tweeting in the courtroom.” So Davis took the opportunity to remind everyone of the rules and assure those in the courtroom that they would be enforced.

Davis last week sharply rebuked Fox’s lawyers and ordered an investigation after Dominion said Fox obscured Murdoch’s status as an officer at Fox News and the Fox Corp. Dominion said Murdoch’s actual status would have entitled it to more evidence in the case. Davis said Fox had a “credibility problem” and that the issue might have influenced his own previous decisions.

Fox later apologized to the judge while attributing the omission to a “misunderstanding.” Davis earlier Tuesday had appointed a special master to look into whether Fox abided by its obligations to produce the documents and communications it was required to.

The situations reinforced that the proceedings were a growing headache for Fox — and one Fox had all kinds of reasons to try to get rid of.