A lot has happened. Here are some things. This is TPM's morning note.
LOL What?
Poised to lose a House vote this week calling on the Justice Department to release Jeffrey Epstein's files, President Trump has lured away a fair portion of the political media. announcing on social networks mail The House of Representatives is due to vote last night on whether to release the files.
Knowing that he would lose the vote—and knowing that the vote itself would not be enough to force the files to be lost unless the Senate concurred and he vetoed—Trump tried to redefine failure by withdrawing his objection to the vote without actually releasing Epstein's files.
But who in the world will this fool?
The whole reason the House is voting is because Trump's Justice Department, short of a White House, doesn't want to turn over the files. That is: Trump will not release the files.
This is not a turn or a reversal. This is deception.
But it gets worse… It always gets worse
Trump's new nonsensical position – that he wants House Republicans to vote to demand the release of the Epstein files, which he refuses to release – came after the president on Friday. ordered The Justice Department should reinvestigate all contacts with Jeffrey Epstein other than his own.
While Trump has already broken the Justice Department, stripping it of its independence, capabilities, and reputation, demanding that the Epstein case be weaponized against Democrats will require a new level of Orwellian reality-denial on the part of Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
What's groundbreaking about the new and improved Epstein investigation is that not only career prosecutors, but also Bondi and Patel said just a few months ago that there was there's nothing left to investigate. Trump forces them to turn around and distort themselves, displaying a humiliating cult following that surpasses anything we've seen from them so far. At this point, the only thing they can do more cowardly and loyally is to investigate and bring charges against themselves.
Bondi immediately public outcry to Trump’s demand: “Thank you, Mr. President.” She turned the investigation over to Manhattan District Attorney Jay Clayton, who now faces his own test of loyalty.
Perhaps the biggest news since Friday
D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals – a disturbing and confusing decision — appeared to support the idea of not blocking U.S. District Judge James Boasberg from resuming contempt proceedings against the Trump administration in the original Enemies Alien Act case. I'm sorry if you had to read that sentence twice, but you'll have to read the disjointed court decision several times to understand its meaning. Chris Geidner does his best.
It's a critical case in the hotly-watched question of whether federal judges will withstand Trump's attacks on their constitutional role. If a district judge like Boasberg cannot begin to hold the administration in contempt in a historically significant case where it was clearly disrespected, then the battle to maintain an independent judiciary will be lost before it even begins.
Retribution: Jim Comey Edition
After a court hearing Thursday that signaled the appointment of Lindsey Halligan because the U.S. attorney may not pass muster while a judge considers the case, Attorney General Pam Bondi assumed almost full responsibility. incredible step attempts for the second time to ratify ex post facto and retroactively Halligan's conduct in his appointment to the grand jury that indicted Jim Comey.
new application from Bondi's attempts to patch up a hole in his previous ratification, when in court the judge discovered that Bondi had reviewed an incomplete transcript of the grand jury proceedings:
Trump's Justice Department simultaneously filed a lawsuit new declaration from Halligan, who is trying to mitigate concerns that parts of the grand jury proceedings were not recorded or were “missing.” Halligan testifies that the gap in the transcript simply reflects the time the grand jury deliberated:
Halligan's statement clarifies some, but not all, of the events that occurred during the grand jury proceedings. I assumed that after the grand jury returned the wrong bill on one of the charges, Halligan would return to the grand jury room and present an alternative indictment on the two counts they ultimately charged Comey with. But she had no further contact with the grand jury before it returned the two-count indictment, according to her statement.
Combine that with the paperwork snafu (if that's not too generous of a word) that caused the judge who accepted the indictment to subpoena Halligan, and you're left with what Marcy Wheeler calls “a lot of problems” that I expect Comey's lawyers will find a way to examine and perhaps exploit to their advantage.
Be sure to read
NOW: The collapse of the Justice Department… Sixty lawyers describe a year of chaos and suspicion.
Corruption: Mike Flynn Edition
Former Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn and former Trump White House lawyer Stefan Passantino join the gravy train of Trump allies seeking taxpayer-funded benefits from the Trump Justice Department over allegations that they were victims of politically motivated retaliation. Flynn demands $50 million
Has the case of fraudulent elections in Georgia been reopened?
This was stated by the Chairman of the Council of Prosecutors of Georgia Peter Skandalakis. appointed case of fraudulent electors in Georgia after his I can't find another prosecutor ready to accept this after the disqualification of Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis – but it is unclear whether he will keep trying to convince President Trump and his alleged associates.
Venezuelan watch
- NPR reports for the first time to comments earlier this year by Emile Beauvais, then a Trump Justice Department official and now a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, that may have foreshadowed the administration's lawless attacks on suspected drug-smuggling vessels:
At a Justice Department conference in February, acting deputy attorney general Emile Beauvais told the drug department's top prosecutors that the Trump administration was not interested in stopping crimes. vessels with suspected drugs more at sea. Instead, he said, the US should “just sink the boats,” according to three people who attended the speech.
- Saturday USA killed three people in its 21st lawless strike against suspected drug smugglers' vessels, resulting in a death toll Caribbean and Eastern Pacific at least up to 83.
- A controversial and still secret OLC memo justifying the US's lawless campaign against drug-smuggling vessels claims fentanyl poses a potential chemical weapons threat. WSJ reports this.
- Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, says reports that the OLC memo contains language exempting everyone in the chain of command from criminal liability for strikes are unusual: “This signals concerns that what they are doing is illegal and that they may be subject to criminal prosecution under U.S. and international law.”
Quote of the day
This is a reality TV presidency, and you need recriminations, heels, betrayals, the return of prodigals, and all sorts of plot contrivances to maintain the manufactured drama that has been created. Who knows where it is plot twist the result is:
Preach, sister
It amazes me that many people want politics to be related to their personal feelings, in which case they do not engage in politics, although they may engage in sabotage of politics. …
[Y]you vote strategically rather than expressively; this is a ballot, not a Tinder/Grindr profile or a confession, which is what I'm talking about because people often talk as if they need their candidate to be someone who matches them in every way, even if they are just one of hundreds or hundreds of millions of voters, or see it as a matter of purity, that is, choosing a candidate who has no sin or flaw, for whom they themselves will feel more pure by voting for…
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