<Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) is introducing a resolution Friday to censure the judge overseeing special counsel Jack Smith’s case against former President Trump related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In a statement obtained by The Hill, Gaetz’s office said he is introducing the resolution against U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan “for showing open bias and partisanship in her official duties on the bench.” The statement also features a quote by Gaetz, a far-right Republican known for his strong pro-Trump stances, in which he says he is concerned about Chutkan’s “blatant political bias from the bench.”

“Judge Tanya Chutkan’s extreme sentencing of January 6th defendants, while openly supporting the violent Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, showcases a complete disregard for her duty of impartiality and the rule of law,” Gaetz said in the quote. “Justice may be blind, but the American people are not – we see Judge Chutkan for her actions, and we rebuke them in the greatest possible sense,”

Chutkan has tried to emphasize the nonimportance of politics to her decisions in the case. At a hearing over a protective order last week, she said she will not consider how her decisions affect political campaigns “on either side.”

“The existence of a political campaign is not going to have any bearing on my decision. I intend to keep politics out of this,” Chutkan said at the hearing.>

<U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan should assign the "earliest possible" start date for former President Donald Trump's January 6 trial and hold the ex-president in custody pending trial, according to former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.

Kirschner, a staunch critic of the former president, urged the judge to "make good" on her promise to punish Trump during an episode of his Justice Matters podcast on Friday. Chutkan warned the former president against making any "inflammatory" statements while issuing a protective order last week, promising to speed up the trial if he did anything that could "taint the jury pool" or intimidate witnesses.

"The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case which could taint the jury pool or intimidate potential witnesses, the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial to ensure a jury pool from which we can select an impartial jury," Chutkan wrote in her order.

Within days, Trump shared a post to Truth Social that claimed Chutkan had "admitted" she was engaging in "election interference" against him. In another post, the former president claimed that the federal judge "obviously" wanted him "behind bars" because she is "VERY BIASED & UNFAIR."

On Monday, Trump said in a post that Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan "shouldn't" testify to a Fulton County grand jury following reports that he was set to testify. Trump was indicted on 13 felony counts in the Peach State hours later.

Kirschner suggested that Trump's post regarding Duncan violated both Georgia law and the conditions of his release in the federal January 6 case, which is being tried in Washington, D.C.

"What has Donald Trump done since Judge Chutkan delivered that warning?" Kirschner asked. "He told a witness that he knew was about to go into the grand jury in Georgia and testify ... not to testify. He said that witness 'shouldn't' testify, thereby violating both Georgia state law and violating the conditions of his release in his D.C. case."

"Judge Chutkan should make good on her promise," he continued. "Set the earliest possible trial date. January 2, as proposed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, kind of has a nice ring to it ... [and] She should detain Donald Trump pending trial."

Kirschner reasoned that Trump should be held pending trial because "any" other defendant would have been detained for making the same remarks, arguing that "it ain't justice if it ain't equal justice."

Newsweek reached out for comment to Trump's office via email on Friday night.

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung accused Kirschner of being "a notorious trafficker of wild conspiracy theories and dubious legal analysis" who "has been shunned by the legal community at large" in a previous statement to Newsweek.

The former president's legal team on Thursday filed a request to delay his January 6 trial until April 2026, which several legal experts ridiculed as an unreasonable delay.

Kirschner claimed on Friday that Trump wanted the later date so "he and his supporters" would have more time to "harass, intimidate and threaten the judges, the prosecutors, the witnesses.">

<There is the potential for an unprecedented legal and constitutional battle next year involving Donald Trump, his trial in Georgia, and the results of the 2024 election, a legal expert has told Newsweek.

Trump was indicted under Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' expansive 2020 election-interference investigation on August 14, along with 18 other defendants. The former president has denied all the accusations against him and accused Willis of election interference with her probe.

Willis has already said that she wants to trial [sic] all 19 defendants at the same, each of whom are facing charges under Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Willis has also asked a judge to set a trial date of March 4, 2024.

However, due to the potential mammoth trial involving a former president and 18 other suspects—as well as the delays and arguments that the proceedings are sure to be met with—there is every chance that the Georgia trial will not conclude until after the November 2024 election, or until 2025 at least.

In this timeframe, there is a possible scenario that Trump, the frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary, is convicted of multiple charges having already won the 2024 election.

Should a jury find Trump guilty in Georgia after winning the election, but prior to entering office in January 2025, there is every chance Trump will use the courts and legal arguments to try to delay his sentencing until he becomes president under the assumption that he will then no longer have to serve time.

If Trump is found guilty having already entered the White House, a whole new range of non-hypothetical questions and arguments would be raised about whether a sitting president can be convicted for state crimes in a way never before seen in U.S. history.

"We are in completely new territory if a sitting president is convicted of crimes he committed before he was elected president, which will be the case here," Eric J. Segall, professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law and Constitution expert, told Newsweek.

"There's nothing in the Constitution about this. There's very little case law about this. We'll have to see. There's no way to predict how that would play out. No way," Segall added.

Due to the sprawling nature of Willis' RICO case against Trump and the other defendants, other legal experts have said that the DA has almost no hope in getting her trial completed before next November. The former president is already facing three other trials in 2024.

"In Willis' case, I would be surprised if we get to trial before 2025," Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, previously told Newsweek. "There are way too many defendants, and her delay in bringing charges likely puts her case fourth in line."

Willis was previously part of a major RICO case involving dozens of educators in Atlanta accused of cheating on standardized tests. The case was launched in 2011, with convictions after a lengthy trial not arriving until 2015.

Chris Timmons, an Atlanta-based lawyer and former prosecutor, said that the amount of defendants in the election interference case will almost certainly result in lengthy delays to proceedings.

"It takes a while to get everybody arraigned," Timmons told The New York Times. "It takes a while to make sure everybody's got an attorney. There's discovery that's got to be engaged in.

"There's a lot of information to process to get organized, to be ready to go," Timmons added.

Unlike in the federal classified documents and January 6 cases in which Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges, the former president cannot pardon himself if convicted in the Georgia case should he become president again because it is a state investigation.

Instead, the power to pardon a defendant in the state is granted by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. It is unclear if the five-person panel has any intention of pardoning Trump should he be convicted under Willis' probe.

There is also nothing in the Constitution from stopping Trump from continuing to run for president, even if he is convicted of a crime either in the Georgia case or the other three criminal trials the former president is facing in New York, Florida, and Washington D.C.

Willis launched her election interference probe in January 2021, and announced her indictments against Trump and others two-and-a-half years later.

Despite the potential headache that the timing of the trial may pose, Segall said the Fulton County DA was right not to consider the election or a potential Trump victory while working on the case.

"The DA is an incredibly serious person. It wouldn't go through her head to say the election is here, the election is there. That's not her job," Segall added.

<Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney is speaking out on social media in the wake of the recent election interference indictments of former President Donald Trump, highlighting the work of the House Jan. 6 committee.

Despite serving as vice chair of the committee, and pledging to do whatever it takes to keep Trump out of the White House, it was Cheney's first public comment since Trump was twice indicted on election-related charges.

In a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Cheney said it "might be a good time" to review the product of the panel's 18-month investigation, pushing back on Trump's recent claims that the House committee destroyed "all" its evidence and records.

"No surprise Trump doesn't want you to see the J6 Committee evidence," Cheney wrote as she provided a link to the government site that houses many of those records.

"Here's the GPO website with transcripts, documents, exhibits & our meticulously sourced 800+ page final report," Cheney wrote. "Also links to our hearings. Might be a good time to watch those again."

Trump has denied all wrongdoing in both criminal cases. He has pleaded not guilty to four federal charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith. Earlier this week, he was indicted in Georgia along with 18 of his allies over an alleged scheme to overturn his loss in the state.

Cheney had declared Trump "unfit for any office" as the House Jan. 6 committee wrapped up its probe, but her leading role in taking on her party's de-facto leader cost her her political career.

In an interview with ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl last August, Cheney expressed disappointment in her Republican colleagues for their reaction to Jan. 6.

"I feel sad about where my party is," Cheney said. "I feel sad about the way that too many of my colleagues have responded to what I think is a great moral test and challenge of our time."

After Trump was charged by Smith, members of the Jan. 6 committee said the indictment lined up with their findings. Trump is facing four charges, two of which were recommended by the panel: conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and obstruction of an official proceeding.

"This does feel like a huge vindication of the rule of law and the work of the Jan. 6 committee to establish the factual narrative of what took place in the attempt to overthrow a presidential election by a president," Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said on "GMA3.">

<Former Attorney General Bill Barr covered a fair amount of ground yesterday during a Fox News interview, but of particular interest were his concerns about a possible second term for Donald Trump. As Barr explained, if the former president returns to the White House, Americans can expect to see the weaponization of federal law enforcement.

When Fox host Neil Cavuto asked the former attorney general whether he believes Trump would spend a possible second term weaponizing federal law enforcement, Barr responded, “That would be my concern — among many.”

The problem is not with the Republican lawyer’s assessment. The former president has, of course, left little doubt that if he’s returned to power, he has every intention of seeking retribution against his perceived foes. To that end, it’s a near certainty that Trump would seek political control over the Justice Department.

Indeed, it’s a core element of the power-consolidation initiative called “Project 2025.”

But stepping back, every time Barr raises public concerns about his former boss, I’m reminded of the disconnect between the message and the messenger. The former attorney general told a national television audience yesterday that Trump “wants to weaponize the Department of Justice.”

What Barr neglected to mention is that Trump already tried to weaponize the Department of Justice — and much of those efforts unfolded during Barr’s tenure.

To be sure, some of Trump’s relevant incidents predated Barr’s return to the attorney general’s office. In Trump’s first year in the White House, for example, he publicly pleaded with the Justice Department to go after his foes. A year later, the then-president told the White House counsel that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton.

But as Barr no doubt knows, ahead of Election Day 2020, Trump also called for Clinton’s incarceration and lobbied the then-attorney general to go after then-former Vice President Joe Biden for reasons unknown.

The New York Times reported last year that Trump and his team “tried to turn the nation’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power” to carry out the Republican’s wishes. A Washington Post analysis published soon after highlighted the many instances in which Trump leaned on the Justice Department to follow his whims.

To be sure, some of these steps came before and after Barr’s tenure, but the former attorney general isn’t in a position to pretend he was out of the loop. On the contrary, Barr earned a reputation as a relentless partisan and a willing partner to Trump as the White House sought to politicize federal law enforcement. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the former attorney general created a federal law enforcement crisis at the Justice Department with his political antics, which is why literally thousands of former Justice Department and FBI officials — from Democratic and Republican administrations — called for his resignation in May 2020.

Barr’s record, in other words, will continue to chase after him like cans tied to a bumper — and his recent candor doesn’t cut the strings.>

<AP African American Studies will be taught after all at the six schools in Arkansas that planned to offer it until state officials said last week students taking the course wouldn’t earn high school credit for it and raised concerns about whether it’s a form of “indoctrination.”

The schools were set to teach the course, banned in Florida earlier this year, as part of the second year of College Board’s pilot testing of AP African American Studies, a college-level class that covers themes ranging from early African empires and the transatlantic slave trade to reconstruction and Black power and pride. But the state's decision threw the College Board's plans into question, coming just as schools were starting the new year.

“District leaders believe that the AP African American Studies course will be a valuable addition to the district’s curriculum and will help our young people understand and appreciate the rich diversity of our society,” said Jeremy Owoh, the superintendent of the Jacksonville North Pulaski School District. The district’s only high school, Jacksonville High, will offer the class as an elective, he said.

Owoh also said students enrolled in the class will earn an elective credit and will be able to take the AP exam at the end of the year. Students can earn college credit based on their scores, and about 200 colleges already have said they will offer credit for AP African American History, according to the College Board. Arkansas has typically picked up the tab for AP exams, which cost about $100 per student, but the state has said it will not pay for students to take the AP African American Studies test.

About 35 Jacksonville High students are set to take the class, the school district said.>

<Now that former President Donald Trump has been indicted not once but twice for attempting to steal the 2020 presidential election, his apologists say he was merely pursuing his constitutional right to contest the results. They insist that he truly believed his campaign was undone by massive voter fraud and that all the post-election machinations carried out by him and his cronies were innocent and sincere.

Unfortunately for them, evidence continues to emerge showing not only that their claims of fraud were fabricated -- and ruled to be false in 61 lawsuits -- but that Trump had planned to carry out a conspiracy against democracy well before the election results were even fully tabulated.

Nobody should be surprised to learn that the latest confirmation of the Trump's campaign's nefarious intent features Roger Stone, the veteran dirty trickster and pardoned felon, who must have coined his "Stop the Steal" slogan while peering into a mirror. If there was an attempted "steal," he was one of the perps.

In his boundless vanity, Stone allowed himself to be videotaped by Danish documentarian Christoffer Gulbrandsen while dictating a memo that outlined a plan to substitute fake electors supporting Trump for legitimate electors supporting Joe Biden. That moment occurred on Nov. 5, 2020 -- two days after the election and two days before Biden was declared the election's winner

Speaking slowly as an aide typed on a laptop, Stone declared: "Any legislative body may decide on the basis of overwhelming evidence of fraud to send electors to the electoral college who accurately reflect the president's legitimate victory in their state, which was illegally denied him through fraud."

Stone is not a lawyer, and that notion of an "independent state legislature" acting to overturn the actual election result in any state was thoroughly discredited before the Supreme Court rejected it. John Eastman, the conservative Trump attorney who conceived the fake electors scheme, has confessed that he knew all along the theory was hollow and that even Republican-appointed judges would dismiss it.

But the validity of the theory was beside the point, as Stone himself suggested in another interview with Gulbrandsen. The coup plot formulated by Stone and the rest of Trump's team foresaw a sudden assertion of illegitimate authority to seize control and void the election. Michael Flynn, Trump's pardoned former national security adviser, even urged a plot that would conclude with the imposition of military dictatorship. They meant to force the country to accept the outcome they demanded, with a spasm of military violence wherever that proved necessary....>

<....That was why Stone -- and Steve Bannon, the fascistic former White House strategist, also pardoned by Trump - both predicted, quite accurately, that Trump would declare himself the victor on Election Night regardless of the tabulated results. "I really do suspect that it'll still be up in the air," Stone said on November 1, 2020, anticipating the election a few days later. "When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law."

Speaking in the voice of Trump, he enunciated what he thought his client should say: "No, we won." If those tabulated results showed Biden in the lead, Stone added, then Trump should say:

"Sorry, we're not accepting them. We're challenging them in court." And not just in court, where all but one of Trump's challenges were repudiated by judges of both parties. "If the (Biden) electors show up at the Electoral College, armed guards will throw them out," Stone warned. Speaking again in Trump's voice, he went on, "I'm challenging all of it, and the judges we're going to, are judges I appointed."

None of that worked out according to Stone's expectations, as even Trump's appointees and his own vice president, Mike Pence, resisted the fake fraud charges, the phony electors and the entire coup plot. As articulated repeatedly by Stone, Bannon, Flynn and others around Trump, the intent couldn't have been more brazenly authoritarian and illegal. In early September 2020, Stone echoed Flynn on Alex Jones' "Infowars" show that in the event of a contested election, Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act, and arrest Bill and Hillary Clinton, the late Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and "anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity." He also urged Trump to shut down any publication that could supposedly be shown to have engaged in "seditious and illegal activities," and with its entire staff "arrested and taken into custody."

In short, the extremists around didn't hide their vision of a violent fascist takeover. That they couldn't execute the plan does not in any way exonerate them or Trump, who followed that plotline until it led to the mob attack on the Capitol. The latest video of Stone, preening and pontificating, is simply further proof of the criminal intent -- what the law calls mens rea -- that drove their attempt to overturn American democracy.>

<Multiple recent studies show that Republicans are as much as 8.5 times more likely to both believe and share fake or false “news” with others than are Democrats. The phenomenon is obvious, actually: while as many as half of Republicans believe the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, there’s no similarly disprovable “big lie” embraced by Democrats.

And it’s not limited to things like elections that are overtly political: Republicans were more likely than Democrats to reject basic science about Covid, and thus die of the disease at much higher rates than Democrats.

Even when their lives and their families’ lives are at stake, Republicans let themselves be suckered into believing things that are easily proven false. It’s gotten so bad that Republicans are more than 400% more likely to be banned from Twitter than Democrats.

Why is this? It turns out there are several reasons.

First, conservatives are more vulnerable to listening to and believing people who present themselves as authority figures. This tracks back to George Lakoff’s finding that conservatives are most comfortable in a world that’s run along “strict father” lines, while progressives prefer a “nurturing family” model of society and politics.

While a strict father limits freedom, he also provides a sense of safety: “Father will protect and take care of you.” Putting your trust in authoritarian figures diminishes the complexity of life: there’s less to have to know or worry about if you believe that “father” has it all under control.

But it also makes conservatives more vulnerable to believing any old thing that “father” tells them.

Second, there’s more conservative misinformation out there than there is liberal misinformation. Thus, conservatives are more likely to be exposed to it and to share it.

To a large extent, this flows from the conservative worldview being more adolescent, narcissistic and “me-centered,” with the myth of the “rugged individual” at its center. Ayn Rand’s writing epitomizes this.

The conservative worldview putting, as it does, the “freedom of the individual” above the “welfare of society,” is much more vulnerable to corporate-funded pitches that work to increase profits. The core message of most advertising is, after all, “You are the most important person in the world and you want this product.”

And make no mistake about it: a lot of what passes as news and commentary is actually advertising for the idea that corporations and billionaires should be able to do whatever they want.

“Low taxes, reduced regulations, smaller government”: it’s a sales pitch.

Our tax law is organized in such a way that anything that increases profits is tax-deductible to a corporation, so, for example, we’ve seen in the past few decades:

The tobacco industry organizing “smokers rights” groups in the 1970s and 1980s to keep people addicted and buying their products.

The fossil fuel industry organizing “climate change denial” think tanks, websites, and PR efforts to resist any efforts to “green” our power sources in ways that would decrease their profitability.

The weapons industry funneling millions into front groups like the NRA to buy politicians who will make it easier to sell their products, regardless of how many people die in accidental and mass shootings.

Rightwing media organizations promoting blatant lies from “Father Trump” about Covid and the 2020 election because Trump’s base of followers — their audience — is large enough to drive significant advertising revenues.

Just these four points have become foundational to the GOP: Republican politicians are fond of being pictured with cigars and guns while denying climate change and deifying rightwing media....>

<.....While Republicans have always been vulnerable to this sort of psychological manipulation, we had guardrails in place to protect the public from being swamped by it.

When Reagan took down the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, Congress passed bipartisan legislation putting it back into effect: Reagan vetoed it.

Various versions of the Telecommunications Act dating back to the 1920s limited the ability of corporations or the morbidly rich to own large numbers of radio and TV stations or have cross-ownership with newspapers. Those limits were all ended in 1996 when President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996: within a few years a handful of rightwing networks owned thousands of stations.

But even if those two guardrails for democracy were reinstituted, they do nothing for or about the internet or social media, which now competes with legacy media for the minds and hearts of Americans.

Almost half of Americans get much or most of their news from social media, and social media doesn’t have editors or systems to make sure that what people think his news is actually news.

Giant corporations and the morbidly rich people they create — along with foreign governments — can thus use their extraordinary resources to flood the internet with favorable websites pretending to be news and information sources, all while overwhelming social media conversations with their paid trolls and smart bots.

As I laid out in The Hidden History of Big Brother in America, Section 230 of Clinton’s Telecommunications Act eliminates most possibilities of holding social media or websites responsible for bad behavior ranging from lies to threats to online plots to overthrow the government.

This “get out of jail free” card has made more than a few social media billionaires, and with that money they’ll continue to carefully restrain Congress from any meaningful regulation, just as the media empires that grew out of the end of the Fairness Doctrine and radio/TV ownership limits will use their platforms to prevent any effort to reinstate those laws.

Which presents the majority of Americans who subscribe to the “nurturing family” model of life and politics with a problem: how do we protect our friends and families (and, thus, our democratic republic) from falling prey to corporate, billionaire, and foreign hustlers who are spending billions to control our understanding of reality?

Finland has started teaching critical thinking skills and media literacy in its school system to combat, in part, the lies and misinformation that spill into their homes daily from Russian television stations on their border.

Given how Republicans are all-in on banning books and censoring teachers, though, it’s unlikely anything like that will happen any day soon here in the US.

For the time being, we’ll have to double down on pushing real information to deluded friends and family, using the “parental controls” on elderly parents’ TV to block Fox, and sharing progressive media and websites far and wide.

And doing everything we can to elect politicians who will tell the truth and hold democracy as a higher value than simple political power.

Because if the fake news wins and neofascist politicians like Trump again gain serious national power, America will be on a fast track down the same road as Russia.>

<A federal judge denied Donald Trump's latest attempt to delay a defamation trial with author E. Jean Carroll because he found that neither party was getting any younger.

U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan issued an order Friday denying the former president's motion to stay the case pending an appeal of a previous ruling, saying he was not required to do so and raising concerns about the ages of both the plaintiff and the defendant in the trial, reported CNN.

“Both parties are of advanced age, and a stay of this case pending resolution of Mr. Trump’s appeal would threaten delaying any compensation to which Ms. Carroll might be entitled by at least several months, if not a year or more,” Kaplan wrote.

Trump is 77 years old, while Carroll is 79, and the judge himself is in his late 70s.

Carroll sued the former president in 2019 for defamation after he denied her rape allegations, saying she wasn't his "type" and made up the claims to sell a book, and Trump's lawyers are appealing the judge's ruling that Trump had previously waived the use of presidential immunity as a defense.

“While there is a public interest in immunizing presidents for actions properly taken within the scope of their duties, there is a public interest also in ensuring that even presidents will be held accountable for actions that – as this Court already has determined in this case – do not come within that scope,” Kaplan wrote.

Carroll won a separate lawsuit against Trump earlier this year under the New York Adult Survivors Act for battery and defamation for statements he made in October, and a jury awarded her $5 million.>

The Orange Criminal is one despicable sumbitch.

<A surprising and critical decision by a top Donald Trump adviser on which allies of the former president will get their legal fees covered by his PAC – and who is being excluded – could come back to haunt the now four-times indicted former president.

According to reports, Trump's Save America Pac has been shelling out millions to lawyers defending Trump associates who have been swept up in his alleged criminal activities that have him on the precipice of four separate trials in Manhattan, Florida, Washington D.C. and now Georgia.

As MSNBC's Hayes Brown wrote, senior Trump adviser Susie Wiles, is making the calls on who gets paid-for legal representation and who gets left out in the cold – which now includes former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, who are both accused of being neck-deep in the former president's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Now that both have been indicted under the RICO act by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Wills as co-conspirators, the decision to let them fend for themselves opens the door for them to flip on the former president for purely financial reasons, Brown wrote.

"Trump isn’t unaware of his former friend’s problems — he just doesn’t seem to particularly care," he said, before adding, "This penny-pinching seems like a bad idea when you consider that there’s still a chance that federal prosecutors could charge Giuliani for his role in trying to flip the 2020 election’s outcome — and in turn offer some kind of deal if he became a witness against Trump."

"And this stinginess hasn’t changed the fact that Trump’s political committee is paying a massive amount of money in legal fees, potentially threatening the presidential run that would inoculate him from several of these cases," he wrote before warning, "If the idea behind that expenditure is to keep the people who know where the metaphorical bodies are buried in check, then getting cheap now seems like a major strategic error for Trump.">

<Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed federal judge presiding over the criminal case involving Donald Trump’s willful retention of national defense information, is creating a legal quagmire that is even tying herself up in knots.

Cannon was previously overturned twice by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals back in 2022 in a related, but separate case, where Trump requested Cannon assert ‘equitable jurisdiction’ over a valid search warrant executed by the Department of Justice at Mar-A-Lago. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued two scathing rulings admonishing Judge Cannon that Trump was not special and that there was a reason no other court in the history of America ever asserted the type of jurisdiction Cannon attempted to assert. Pretty harsh. In layman’s terms, they basically called her a corrupt idiot.

But Judge Cannon hasn’t learned her lesson.

Judge Cannon was, unfortunately, randomly assigned the criminal case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the district court in Florida where Cannon sits, which is in the Southern District of Florida where Mar-A-Lago, the scene of the crime, is located. Already, Cannon has erroneously struck multiple under seal (confidential) filings lodged by Special Counsel Jack Smith, which were correctly filed under seal because the information involves grand jury secrecy in a case involving the theft of classified information.

Also, one day after a segment aired on Fox baselessly criticizing the continued use of a grand jury in Washington DC by Jack Smith following charges being filed in Florida against Trump, Judge Cannon asked the parties to brief the ‘propriety’ of the DC grand jury and seemingly adopting the ex parte arguments of Fox.

Most recently, Judge Cannon scheduled a hearing on a protective order for classified documents in her courtroom in Fort Pierce, Florida for August 25. There was only one problem. A glaring one. Under the Classified Information Protections Act (CIPA), that hearing has to take place under seal. Yup, “under seal” like the documents Jack Smith keeps filing that she keeps striking. Judge Cannon scheduled the CIPA hearing as public hearing. She messed up.

Rather than admit her mistake, on Thursday, Judge Aileen Cannon issued a minute order for a revised scheduling of the protective order hearing, arrogantly pretending that was her intent all along when it’s obvious she screwed up and had to learn what CIPA is and what it requires.

Fortunately, Judge Cannon’s errors have a silver lining. As of now, all of the other criminal cases (and big civil cases) against Donald Trump are likely to take place before criminal trial with Cannon. Also, the mistakes Cannon keeps making on her docket are likely to be fodder for an eventual appeal and recusal motion filed by Jack Smith before the Eleventh Circuit.>

<The scowling Green Monster certainly has its drawbacks, but the Tartakower variation remains viable....>

<In what’s shaping up to look like a “perfect storm,” former President Donald Trump faces what critics believe is very strong political bias in the January 6th case.

In November 2022, President Biden’s U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith to be the special counsel to investigate former President Trump. Since then, Trump is facing a total of four criminal indictments — two of which are being led by Smith. Critics say Smith has been task with one goal: Get Trump.

Smith is known as a career prosecutor who was notoriously involved in the Lois Lerner IRS scandal during the Obama years. At the time, Lerner served as director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Unit and led an effort to target anti-Obama Tea Party groups and other conservative nonprofit organizations.

In the scandal, Smith reportedly pushed for the Department of Justice “to contact Lerner and the IRS in order to get the DOJ involved seemed to be the impetus behind the IRS sending the FBI reams of nonprofit tax records.”

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said, “Jack Smith was looking for ways to prosecute the innocent Americans that Lois Lerner targeted during the IRS scandal.” The DOJ ultimately admitted that federal agencies, including the IRS, committed wrongdoing by targeting conservatives. Lerner apologized to the country, but Smith faced no consequences for his role in the scandal.

Making matters worse for Trump, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan has been assigned to the case. Known as a far-left judge, former President Barack Obama appointed both Chutkan and her husband, Peter Krauthamer, to highly sought-after judgeships in Washington, DC.

The controversial judge has deep family ties to some of the most influential Marxists in Jamaica. In 1962, Chutkan’s grandfather, Frank Hill, and great uncle, Ken Hill, played a key role in founding Jamaica’s Marxist group called the People’s National Party (PNP).

In recent years, Chutkan has been using her power to hand out harsh sentences to January 6 defendants. She is known for punishing Trump supporters more severely than her peers on the federal bench. During the sentencing of a January 6 defendant, Chutkan complained to the court that Trump “remains free to this day.” Many Americans are demanding that Chutkan recuse herself from the case given her obvious bias and political motivation.

As the case begins, Smith proposed a trial date of Jan. 2, 2024, which is just ahead of the Republican primary elections. Some experts say Smith is intentionally causing election interference on Biden’s behalf as Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican Party in 2024.

Smith is proposing a date just two weeks ahead of the important Iowa caucus for the Republican presidential nomination. In response, lawyers for Trump proposed April 2026 as the date to start the trial in the case involving his alleged efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election. This new date would be long after the 2024 election.

Trump’s lawyers rejected special counsel Jack Smith’s proposed date of Jan. 2, 2024, arguing that he “seeks a trial calendar more rapid than most no-document misdemeanors, requesting just four months from the beginning of discovery to jury selection.”

“The government’s objective is clear: to deny President Trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial. The Court should deny the government’s request,” the lawyers wrote. “The public interest lies in justice and fair trial, not a rush to judgment.”

Chutkan will make a decision concerning the trial date on August 28th. It’s widely suspected that Chutkan will side with Smith.

“This case is not just complex or unusual. It is terra incognita,” the lawyers wrote. “No president has ever been charged with a crime for conduct committed while in office. No major party presidential candidate has ever been charged while in the middle of a campaign—and certainly not by a Justice Department serving his opponent.”

“These and numerous other issues will be questions of first impression, requiring significant time for the parties to consider and brief, and for the Court to resolve.”

<Donald Trump saying he was the "apple" of Vladimir Putin's eye is sparking some harsh criticism.

Trump, who has long been open about having a good relationship with the Russian president, reportedly said in a Fox interview that Putin never would have invaded Ukraine if he had been president. "I was the apple of his eye," the former president said in the interview.

The response was swift.

David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said helping Trump to become the president was Putin's "supreme accomplishment as dictator."

"A perverse truth here. Helping Trump into the US presidency was Putin's supreme accomplishment as dictator. A Trump 2nd term would have wrecked NATO from within," Frum wrote Saturday. "With no one to help it, Ukraine would have been easy pickings for Putin."

Conservative attorney and Trump-critic George Conway also chimed in, calling Trump a "Kremlin asset."

“'I was the apple of his eye.' — Kremlin asset D. J. Trump, on his 'relationship' with V. V. Putin."

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan attempted to put the development in a totally different perspective for those who might not be taking the incident seriously.

"Imagine, just imagine, if Barack Obama in any of his 8 years in office had proudly and publicly referred to himself as ‘the apple of [Putin’s] eye,'" he wrote Friday. "The right would have had an immediate and nonstop meltdown. Fox would have demanded impeachment and indictment 24/7."

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss took a more historical approach:

"Never heard Truman boast of being the 'apple' of Stalin’s eye," he said.

Ron Filipkowski, a former Republican, had an extremely simple response.

"Yeah, we know. Putin’s most useful American idiot," he wrote.>

<Appearing on MSNBC on Saturday, a former prosecutor stated Donald Trump's latest delaying tactic to bump out his Washington D.C. trial to 2026 will not only be slapped aside by District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Tanya Chutkan but she will probably instruct him to expand his legal team to meet her schedule.

Speaking with host Alex Witt, Kristen Gibbons Feden was asked about the millions of pages of documents Trump's lawyers need to review to prepare his defense over accusations he conspired to steal the 2020 presidential election so he could remain in office.

According to Feden the motion for a trial delay until 2026 has no chance of being granted by Judge Chutkan who has already indicated she expects a speedy trial.

Asked by host Witt if this was another case of Trump's "Delay, delay, delay tactics,' the former prosecutor stated," It could be wrapped up absolutely."

But the Trump lawyers do make a really good point," she admitted. "When you talk about the very first production of documents being 11 million pages, the trial date pushed out a year and a half makes sense, but again the court is not going to allow that."

"What I think she is going to say is, 'Look, Mr. Trump, it's time for you to hire more attorneys if you cannot handle the production and if you cannot, allow that to be part of your defense. So she is absolutely going to force that to be wrapped up before the end of next summer. Absolutely.">

The sound of a violin concerto is a lovely thing.

<Sen. Mitt Romney has to decide if he has another fight in him.

The Utah Republican plans to announce soon whether he is running for a second term, after a roller-coaster run in politics that included winning the GOP presidential nomination just over a decade ago. Since then, Romney has become a pariah for some Republicans because of his stubborn rejection of former President Donald Trump, underscoring the party’s shift away from traditional conservatism.

If he runs, Romney could face a wrenching primary contest, and one potential rival has piled up endorsements. He also will need to decide whether he wants another six potentially lonely years on Capitol Hill, where he is an increasingly rare breed of Republican, largely voting the party line but also open to working with Democrats on issues such as infrastructure, same-sex marriage and guns. At 76 years old now, he would be 83 at the end of his next term.

“I’ll make my own decision based upon my assessment of what I would be able to accomplish in the second term,” Romney said in an interview, pointing to deal making as “fun and productive” work. On votes breaking with his party, he said: “Just because I’m alone doesn’t mean I’m wrong…You get to a point in life where it’s not like sitting alone in high school in the cafeteria.”

He said he expects to make a decision in the fall, possibly around October.

Romney’s choice will reverberate beyond the Beehive State, coming as Republican voters look poised to renominate Trump for president—despite recent indictments, most recently in Georgia—and as partisanship in Washington leads to regular standoffs over spending and debt. Romney’s dilemma casts a spotlight on a central question for the Republican Party: whether there is room for lawmakers who plain can’t stand its most prominent member and are willing to say so.

Interviews with voters, officials and lawmakers indicate Romney would face a tougher fight than in 2018, when he failed to secure the nomination at the state convention of largely conservative activists but went on to win the primary comfortably. Critics charge that Romney is too obsessed with Trump. Backers admire his principles.

“There’s a strong Romney-support wing and a strong group that does not support him right now,” said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican who has also criticized Trump. “He says he can win, and I think there’s a path for him to win. But it will certainly be harder this time.”

Romney, who pivoted from a career at Bain Capital to help turn around the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and later served as governor of Massachusetts, filed the paperwork necessary to raise funds as a candidate, but he isn’t currently acting like someone running for re-election.

He pulled in less than $22,000 from individual donors in the second quarter, according to federal election filings. Some past donors are giving instead to a possible campaign by the Utah state House speaker, Brad Wilson, who has formed an exploratory committee. Wilson has drawn the endorsement of more than 60 state lawmakers, comprising more than two-thirds of the Republicans in the legislature.

People familiar with Wilson’s thinking said he is waiting to see what Romney decides. Spokesman Chris Coombs said Wilson “is exploring his own potential race, irrespective of what other potential candidates may or may not do.”

Romney didn’t hold events in Utah for the first half of the August break, but he plans several later this month, including one to honor Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).

McConnell, who has fought with Trump over the direction of the party, said he has asked Romney to run again. “He’s an incredibly effective senator,” McConnell said.

The GOP primary in Utah is in June. If Romney, who also has support among independents and some Democrats, makes it through the primary, he is likely to win the general election.

Sharp growth in the tech industry near Salt Lake City has brought a more diverse workforce to the state. Still, political analysts say the population changes haven’t yet significantly affected the state’s politics.

Romney sees some reasons to stay. He wants to shore up Medicare and Social Security, and address climate change and China. The job affords a prominent platform to push back against Trump, who Romney concedes is likely to win the GOP nomination.

“I think being in the Senate is without question an opportunity for a bigger megaphone and more impact than as a private citizen,” Romney said.

Trump wants Romney gone. He recently told Breitbart News that Romney was a “terrible Republican.”

The men have a long history. Romney called Trump “a phony, a fraud” in 2016, and Trump called Romney a loser for his 2012 defeat to then-President Barack Obama. Trump later endorsed Romney for Senate, but the peace didn’t last....>

<.....Romney was the only Republican to vote “guilty” in Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial over pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, the first time that a senator had voted to oust a president of his own party. After the House impeached Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, Romney was joined by six fellow Senate Republicans in voting to convict. Trump was acquitted both times.

Most of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over Jan. 6 either retired or lost re-election bids, and several of the senators retired. Some Romney critics were incensed by his impeachment votes.

“I think he sucks,” said Bob Kunze, a retiree from West Jordan, a Salt Lake City suburb. Romney “votes with the Democrats all the time against Trump.”

Chris Null, chairman of the Salt Lake County Republican Party, said the only thing Romney could do to win over the pro-Trump base would be to “turn back time and vote differently.”

Null is supporting Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs, who has entered the GOP race. Staggs supports Trump and said if elected he would align himself with conservatives, including Utah’s other senator, Mike Lee, focused on reining in the national debt.

Staggs said he has never seen Romney “get passionate about fighting government spending…. It’s been always just fighting Trump.”

Supporters say much of Romney’s record aligns with GOP voters. He was one of only three Republicans to back President Biden’s Supreme Court pick Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, but he joined GOP colleagues in opposing Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 package and the Inflation Reduction Act climate law.

“He needs to spend some time in Utah making his case and reminding the bulk of the Republican voters…that he is the guy getting things done for Utah,” said Kathryn Webb Dahlin, a Republican activist and Romney fan.

Rebecca Littlefield, a retiree from Herriman who supports Romney, said “the party doesn’t matter as much as his sense of morals. I love that.” She said she voted for Trump in 2016 but hasn’t supported him since.

Romney retains support from many members of the fast-growing state’s business community. They are looking for “compromise, rather than the two extremes,” said Derek Miller, who leads the Salt Lake Chamber.

Romney is one of a small number of lawmakers driving bipartisan deals, a group with an uncertain future. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I., Ariz.), who helped lead talks on Biden’s infrastructure law, said she sought out Romney “because he is fiscally conservative. And he also is someone who likes to negotiate.” Sinema hasn’t committed to running for re-election, nor has Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), another deal maker. Others such as Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) recently retired.

Utahns were initially cooler to Trump than voters in some other red states, which some analysts attribute to the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to which Romney and roughly half of the state’s adults belong, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2016, Trump came in third place in the state’s GOP presidential caucus.

A June poll by Deseret News and University of Utah Hinckley Institute of Politics found that 47% of Republican voters said Trump better represented them, versus 39% for Romney.

Jason Perry, director of the nonpartisan Hinckley Institute, said state Republicans’ relative centrism means Romney could win his primary, despite the anger of Trump supporters. Romney’s impeachment stance “has not and will not be politically fatal,” he said.

If Romney runs, he could quickly increase fundraising. He has national donors he can tap for cash, and extensive personal wealth. His campaign committee has roughly $1.6 million in cash on hand, in part from renting out his donor list to other candidates.

Wilson, the Utah House speaker, raised $1 million from individual donations last quarter. He lent his campaign committee an additional $1.2 million.

Romney is keeping up the warnings about Trump. He recently wrote an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal calling for weak GOP presidential candidates to drop out to consolidate support for a strong challenger to Trump.

Romney said several GOP colleagues texted him to praise the article. Asked if any would back its sentiments publicly, he responded: “No,” and laughed.>

<So now, as expected after decades of taking big bucks for her right-wing work on behalf of America's oligarchs, we learn that the wife of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginny Thomas, was in Trump's January 6th "rally" up to her eyeballs.

Let's just say it right out loud: the US Supreme Court is corrupt. And Americans know it.

No other federal court in the nation would allow a defendant in a case before them to fly a judge on a private Gulfstream luxury jet to a luxury hunting retreat in Louisiana and then, a week later, watch as that judge rules in that defendant's favor.

But Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did exactly that when Dick Cheney was sued for allegedly lying about his secret "energy group" that was planning the seizure and sale of Iraq's oil fields as he and Bush lied us into the war that opened those oil fields up to exploitation.

No other federal court would allow a judge to give a speech before a group that was funding a case before them and then rule in favor of that group's openly stated goal, but that's exactly what Neal Gorsuch did when he addressed the Fund for American Studies, itself funded by the Bradley Foundation that was helping fund the Janus v AFSCME case that gutted union protections for government workers.

No other federal court would allow a judge to swear revenge against a particular nonprofit corporation (in this case the Democratic Party), saying in his confirmation hearings that, "What goes around comes around," and then rule in cases directly affecting that organization (like voting rights) but Brett "Beerbong" Kavanaugh did just that.

No other federal court would allow a judge to rule on a case where he owned a half-million dollars worth of stock in the company presenting amicus arguments before the court—it's illegal in many states—but John Roberts did just that in the ABC v Aereo case. As did Roberts, Bryer and Alito in 25 of 37 other cases where they owned stock, according to the good-government group Fix The Court.

No other federal court would allow a judge's wife to openly interact with and advocate for the interests of dozens of litigants before the court over decades, and take nearly a million dollars from a group regularly helping bring cases before his court but Clarence Thomas and his wife have done both, as recently revealed in a shocking New York Times profile.

And now the Court is gutting the EPA—the agency Justice Gorsuch's mother infamously ran into the ground before resigning in disgrace during the Reagan administration—using Gorsuch's own BS "textualist" rationale to go after the agency today.

In addition, these Republican appointees are openly shooting down Democratic efforts to fight gerrymandered maps while supporting GOP efforts to impose them on states.

Is there no way, to paraphrase Shakespeare, to rid ourselves of this Court's corrupt behavior? Turns out, Congress has that power—although they haven't used it since Ulysses Grant was president and reorganized the Court.

Article III of the Constitution establishes the federal court system, and gives to Congress itself the power to create the lower federal courts. It also says that Supreme Court judges may only serve on the court if they behave themselves:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour….

It also requires Congress to regulate the Supreme Court. Article III, Section 2 says:

[T]he Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The issue of the Supreme Court needing regulation from the "first among equals" legislative branch (Congress), as specified by the Founders and Framers of the Constitution, has been with us for 101 years.

Most people remember William Howard Taft as the one-term progressive Republican president who followed Teddy Roosevelt into the White House in 1909 and was beaten for re-election by Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

But after his retirement from the presidency, Taft became the first former president to serve as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court in 1921. He was our 27th president and 10th Chief Justice....>

<....In 1921, it came to the attention of the nation and to Chief Justice Taft that US District Judge Kenesaw Landis was taking five times his annual salary as a judge from what was then called "Organized Baseball"—five years after ruling in their favor.

The scandal provoked Congress to pass, in 1922, a law creating a body that would provide advice and oversight to the federal judiciary. It came to be known as the Judicial Conference of the United States.

The scandal also prompted Chief Justice Taft to accept the unpaid chairmanship of The American Bar Association's (ABA) newly formed commission to write ethics rules for federal judges.

Taft's commission wrote, in 1923, the first Canons of Judicial Ethics, which included 34 categories of judicial conflicts and misbehavior that would either disqualify a judge or require their recusal from cases before them. They included conflicts of interest, personal financial investments, and even behavior in the courtroom itself.

Taft, in delivering the Canons, made it clear they should apply to all federal courts, including his own Supreme Court. Within a decade, every state in the union had adopted the Canons for their own courts.

The Canons, however, had no enforcement mechanism, particularly when it came to the Supreme Court. After all, who would judge the highest court in the land? That opened the door for literally a century of the Supreme Court ignoring Taft's work.

The issue came to the fore again in 1969 when Republicans went nuts when it was revealed that Justice Abe Fortas—a very liberal (Republicans called him a communist) LBJ appointee—had taken $15,000 for a summer teaching post, was receiving time-delayed payments from a law former client, and, worse of all, was secretly advising President Johnson.

Under massive incoming fire from Republicans and their friendly media, Fortas resigned from the Supreme Court on May 14, 1969. Over the next three years, the ABA put together a new commission to update Taft's original Canon on judicial ethics.

That commission released their new Code of Judicial Conduct in 1972, and it was adopted by the Judicial Conference of the United States, in 1973. The Supreme Court, however, chose to ignore it, arguing that they were above such considerations.

By that time the Supreme Court had made itself, as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, the most powerful of the three branches of government, asserting the power to second-guess both Congress and the President.

Ironically, in his 2011 annual report about the state of the judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts made lengthy and effusive reference to former Chief Justice Taft and his work with the ABA's commission on judicial ethics. His report, however, conveniently omitted the fact that Taft had loudly and publicly asserted it should apply to the Supreme Court.

Instead, Roberts noted rhetorically, "Some observers have recently questioned whether the Judicial Conference's Code of Conduct for United States Judges should apply to the Supreme Court."....>

<....I'll spare you extended quotes from Roberts' report, which you can read here, but the bottom line is that in his opinion the Court can tell the 1923 ethics recommendations, and the subsequent ones from 1973, to go screw themselves. The Supreme Court, in his mind, is answerable to nobody but itself.

As Sam Alito said, "I'm not aware of problems on the Supreme Court itself…we would not sit back. We would take action that's appropriate."

Back when Roberts was a young lawyer working for Reagan and trying to come up with a way to overturn Brown v Board and Roe v Wade, he was fond of quoting Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution.

This gave Congress the power, Roberts wrote, to simply overturn both Brown and Roe by passing a law creating an "exception" that the Supreme Court couldn't rule on issues of race or abortion (his lengthy writings for Reagan are in my book on the Court).

But now that he, himself, is in charge of the Court there's nary a peep from Roberts—in his 2011 Report or anywhere else—about Congress' power to regulate the Court.

In recent years multiple laws have been proposed to pick up the slack Roberts left to his fellow justices. Louise Slaughter proposed legislation in the house in 2015 that would require the Court itself to come up with its own code of ethics.

It went nowhere, and, besides, it would violate the basic premise of law dating back to Publius Syrus in 50 BC, cited by John Locke in the 17th century, and finally quoted by Madison in Federalist 10 that "no man shall be the judge in his own case."

President Biden's commission on the Courts recently recommended that the Supreme Court adopt an "advisory" code of behavior, but Roberts didn't even bother to comment.

Most recently, Senator Chris Murphy introduced the Supreme Court Ethics Act that would seek to regulate the Court's out-of-control politicking and conflicts of interest. Predictably, it was blocked by Republicans in the Senate.

Public outrage is building: the Court's approval rating is now around 40 percent, a historic low. Congress needs to act, requiring them to adopt and conform to the federal code of judicial ethics at the very least, and expand the Court at best, before an entire branch of government sinks into an irredeemable partisan muck of corruption.>

<We have come to expect that on a daily basis, Donald Trump will take to his social media account to:

Whine and complain about being a victim.

Post QAnon death cult memes.

Harass or attack someone who is usually a judge, prosecutor, witness, President Biden, or anyone who doesn’t pledge full obedience to MAGA, or…

A combination of all the above. Usually it’s a combination of all the above dozens of times a day.

While legacy media ignores this behavior as “Trump being Trump,” we here at the MeidasTouch Network believe Trump’s behavior is disqualifying and repulsive to our democracy and country and must be called out. Every single day.

This is especially the case where Trump’s behavior, as reflected in his posts, are getting even more deranged and are now fully consistent with someone who should be involuntarily institutionalized under a 5150 psychiatric hold.

Take a look at some examples from today in posts made by Trump, which reflect a complete detachment from reality and sociopathic behavior at the most dangerous measurable levels.

Exhibit A

Donald Trump began the day by posting “Crooked Joe Biden…is telling everyone to Indict Trump, take him off the campaign trail, and let him spend his money on legal fees rather than ads saying that Biden is the WORST and MOST CORRUPT President in the history…” (emphasis in original) Here is the full post:

Exhibit B

Donald Trump posts an imaginary conversation he believes that President Biden is having about him mixed with impulsive expressions of grandeur. Here is the full post.

Exhibit C

Donald Trump praises an extremist freshman MAGA Republican State Senator from Georgia who demanded Georgia Governor Brian Kemp hold an “emergency session” of the legislature to stop the prosecution by the Fulton County District Attorney. The State Senator referenced in Trump’s posts also went on a media tour falsely stating that the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was seeking the death penalty by lethal injection against Donald Trump.

Exhibit D
Donald Trump falsely posts that he “easily won” the state of Georgia in 2020 because he won the nearby states of Alabama and South Carolina. These false statements reflect a continued proclivity to maliciously make false statements in furtherance of the criminal conspiracy he has been charged with in state and federal court. Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp has stated he is willing to be a witness against Donald Trump during the criminal trial and to testify that the election in Georgia was safe and secure.

A few hours have now passed. Donald Trump again posts that “Crooked Joe Biden…MUST BE STOPPED!” (emphasis in original) Trump then calls the Department of Justice the “Department of Injustice” and complains about the expense of the cases against him, even though Trump has used more than $40 million from money donated to his Political Action Committee in the last 6 months alone to pay for legal bills including the legal bills of witnesses.

Donald Trump, who is known for having tiny hands and low stamina, posts a video made by Laura Ingraham from Fox who interviews a guest who compliment’s [sic] Trump’s large ‘lunchbox’ size hands and Trump’s ‘stamina for days.’ This is equally humiliating for Trump to post as it is for Fox to degrade itself daily with such sycophantic filth.

Once again Trump makes a post complaining that the prosecutions against him are not “fair.” Here is the post:

Donald Trump, known for cheating in golf like all things he does, and who spent more than a year of his time disgracing the White House playing golf, posts a video of himself hitting a golf ball.

There are many other posts Donald Trump has made in the past 24 hours in addition to those highlighted by Exhibits A-H above. However, a fraction of any of the words uttered by Trump in the exhibits above would be disqualifying, and frankly be unfathomable, from any other candidate.

Donald Trump does not need to be treated like a baby and get special favors by the media. He should be treated like anyone else and be held accountable.

Period. Full stop.>

<A Republican congressman has criticized former President Donald Trump for his attacks on the criminal justice system.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) on Friday called out Trump on CNN, advising him to act innocent if he is.

"If you're innocent, start acting like it," Buck said while discussing Trump’s legal issues and the 2024 presidential race.

"I can't think of anything worse than trying to attack the criminal justice system because you're a criminal defendant, and I think that's just terrible of any defendant to go through that process."

Trump has been attacking those involved in his four felony indictments, with many becoming targets of violent rhetoric and threats.

Buck, who is also a lawyer, described the threats against jurors performing their civic duty as “despicable.”

Despite his criticism, Buck expressed optimism about the future of the Republican Party, mentioning potential candidates like former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

These comments from Buck came amid a series of legal issues surrounding the former president. Earlier this month, Trump took to Truth Social to post a screenshot of a tweet that alleged that Judge Tanya Chutkan was running an “election interference.”

He has repeatedly maintained his innocence and called the dozens of charges a "witch hunt."

However, a Fox News poll recently revealed that a majority of voters believe Trump “did something illegal” related to “efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”>

<According to former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, he is amazed that special counsel Jack Smith has not asked that U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon has not been taken off the Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago documents case.

The controversial Trump judicial appointee has been under intense scrutiny over her past rulings favoring the former president and Kirschner claimed there is enough already on teh record to ask for her removal if she refuses to recuse herself.

Asked by MSNBC host Katie Phang about how Cannon is handling questions about whether indicted Trump aides Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira should have access to secret documents as part of their defense, the former prosecutor was skeptical.

"I do not want to be unkind but I do not think she will manage them well," he replied. "

"She has a track record, unfortunately, that involves the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that she abused her judicial discretion; doing something that the law does not allow to the extreme benefit of Donald Trump," he stated. "Katie, I maintained the minute I saw those appellate court opinions that her impartiality can reasonably be questioned. The federal law provides that if a judge's impartiality can reasonably be questioned, that does not mean that she can't be fair, she can't be impartial, but if there are reasonable questions that can be asked about her impartiality, she is required under federal law to recuse herself, to remove herself."

"I'm still a little surprised we have not seen a motion to recuse filed by [special counsel] Jack Smith and his prosecutors that may still come if she continues to make questionable rulings," he added. "I have a feeling, Katie, that the documents case is on a slow train to nowhere. at least as compared to the federal prosecution of Donald Trump in D.C., the RICO prosecution of Donald Trump and so many of his co-conspirators and co-defendants in Georgia."

"Frankly, perhaps, even the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump in New York for all of his falsification of business records," he suggested.>