<....So what happened? There are two possible explanations, and they’re not mutually exclusive. One is that the pile-on that ensued after Bezos criticized the tweet caused a panic among the university’s administrators. Since the death of Elizabeth was a massive news story and the tweet was going viral, the university’s administrators seem to have succumbed to public pressure to sanction Anya in some way, out of a desire to defend the university’s reputation. As I’ve described at length before, the tendency of organizations to cave to spontaneously formed social media mobs is a terrible thing for a culture of free speech, and it’s a labor issue, too. There is always the option of trying to wait out the mob, which often dissipates as quickly as it forms.

Another explanation is that Amazon is currently donating millions of dollars to the university, and administrators may have feared that the money — or any future donations from Amazon or Bezos — might be jeopardized. It’s possible that the strange condemnation was an attempt to keep a patron happy without directly punishing Anya.

Either way, the episode exposes how social media continues to reshape speech norms. It is a great thing that people can publish their thoughts more easily and have their opinions travel much farther than before. But that exact phenomenon also makes the capacity for costly blowback more powerful than ever before. Ironically that risk unravels some of the very benefits of having these platforms in the first place.>

<According to the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, when the Department of Justice appealed Judge Ailleen Cannon's decision on appointing a special master, they left a clue that there more issues to be resolved.

Speaking with host Alex Witt, former agent Frank Figliuzzi called the legal notation "tantalizing."

Prompting Figliuzzi about the empty files that have DOJ officials concerned, Witt asked, "The DOJ filing says that the FBI is responsible for finding out if they are lost or compromised. Frank, how significant is that?"

'Yeah I mean, just as important as what they found is what they didn't find and the question is of where is it," he replied. "Because as you said, they've got 40-some odd empty folders marked classified and you've got to figure out whether that simply means that the documents were taken out of those folders and intermingled amongst personal belongings and other records, or whether they were truly, truly missing."

"And, again, that is linked to the risk review and the criminal case and even -- very kind of tantalizing -- the DOJ says in their, filing 'look, judge, your ruling is actually stopping us, impeding us is the word they used, from finding documents, other classified documents. which could be out there, even in other places.'"

"So this raises the possibility that they suspect those empty folders, those contents, might have ended up somewhere else," he elaborated. "And the question of somewhere else is why they need to get the investigation back up and running.">

<During an interview on MSNBC early Sunday morning, New Yorker Executive Editor David Rohde said his sources claim the DOJ investigators plan to put a pair of Donald Trump's lawyers before a grand jury and give them the choice of turning on the former president or risk perjuring themselves.

According to the editor, investigators are focusing on attorney and former OAN host Christina Bobb and attorney Evan Corcoran, both of whom they hope to put on the spot over their part in obstructing the DOJ from getting back sensitive documents the former president was keeping at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

As the Washington Post reported, the evidence laid out by the DOJ suggests they could "build a legal case that Trump attorneys Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb obstructed the government’s investigation, allegedly telling FBI agents and prosecutors that they had handed over all classified documents when in fact many remained in Trump’s possession."

As Rohde pointed out, that could be trouble for both Trump and the attorneys.

"It is a really serious thing to bring a case, most importantly because you do not want to prosecute Donald Trump and have him acquitted at trial," he told host Ali Velshi. "My sense is that they are just going to, as one person told me, investigate the heck out of this case: Mar-a-Lago and January six."

"These prosecutors are very good at this, the FBI is very good at it. and they're going to try to flip witnesses," he continued. "The key thing that you are talking about is the jeopardy that his lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago case face. I think they're gonna put them before the grand jury, Corcoran and Bobb, and get them to answer questions under oath."

"They will either implicate Donald Trump, saying 'Donald Trump told me all the classified documents have been turned over' when they had not," he continued. "And if they lie, they will have implicated themselves in a crime.">

Orange Criminal ordered to bear entire cost of special master review, not allowed to stick it to taxpayers:

<Trump-appointed District Court Judge Aileen Cannon gave former president Donald Trump almost everything he asked for, but denied his legal team’s request to saddle American taxpayers with half the cost of the Special Master review of documents seized during the FBI in the search of Mar-a-Lago.

Cannon had previously ruled that not only should a special master must [sic] be appointed to review the seized documents, she enjoined the Justice Department from using the documents in its investigation of Trump for crimes involving the Espionage Act in the interim.

In a joint filing laying out areas of agreement and disagreement between the DoJ and Team Trump, the two sides submitted their own candidates for Special Master, and argued over who would pay for the review, as well as whether the DoJ would be permitted to continue their review of the 100 classified documents seized.

Cannon ruled this week, and gave Team Trump everything it asked for — almost:

Related video: Judge grants Trump's request for special master to review seized Mar-a-lago documents

Judge grants Trump's request for special master to review seized Mar-a-lago documents The special master will be Senior Judge Raymond Dearie, who was put forward as a possible candidate for the special master role by Trump, who had sued in court to obtain the review. The Justice Department also endorsed Dearie’s appointment.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon also rejected the Justice Department’s bid to resume its criminal investigation into classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago last month. The denial sets the stage for the department’s dispute with Trump over the search to move quickly to an appeals court and potentially the US Supreme Court.

But there was one ray of sunshine for the Justice Department:

Plaintiff shall bear 100% (of) the professional fees and expenses of the Special Master and any professionals, support staff, and expert consultants engaged at the Special Master’s request.

The procedures for establishing and paying the Special Master’s compensation and expenses shall be determined in a later order.

Within ten (10) calendar days following the date of this Order, the Special Master and counsel for the parties shall confer on this issue, and the Special Master shall submit a proposal for the Court’s approval as to the procedures for paying the Special Master’s compensation and expenses.

Cannon did not specifically rule out payment of the costs in horseflesh.>

<According to a report from the Guardian, Republican candidates are finding multiple reasons to avoid appearing at debates before the midterm elections out of fears of being put on the spot -- choosing instead to stick to conservative outlets where they hope to rally their base.

As the Guardian's David Smith wrote, far-right Republicans see no reason to appear at debates and have come up with a wide array of excuses, including taking a tip from Donald Trump and stating they won't get a fair hearing because "the media" opposes them.

Case in point, Smith notes, is Pennsylvania's Doug Mastriano who is running for governor, with his report stating he "has rejected a televised debate with an independent moderator. Instead, he has reserved a hotel ballroom on 22 October and selected a partisan to referee: Mercedes Schlapp, who was strategic communications director in the Trump White House. Democratic rival Josh Shapiro has little incentive to accept."

In North Carolina, Trump endorsed Ted Budd refused to participate in four debates with his fellow Republicans who also sought the U.S. Senate seat and now is balking at one debate with his Democratic opponent Cheri Beasley.

On the other hand, in Arizona, Democrat gubernatorial hopeful Katie Hobbs is refusing to debate Republican Kari Lake, saying she wants no part in sharing the stage with an election denier

According to noted political scientists Larry Sabato, in many cases there is no upside for some candidates to appear with their opponents, explaining, "In the era of 400 channels, when polarization is so intense that the vast majority of voters already know for whom they’re voting, it doesn’t matter what happens in a debate or if there is a debate. The costs of not debating are very small. ”

Brookings Institute fellow Elaine Karmarck had a slightly different take.

“It’s dangerous because these televised debates at all levels have been one of the few good things about democracy in the modern era. People had to stand up there and defend themselves and say what they believed and let the voters take a good look at them," she explained.

She also suggested, "What you see here is a Republican party that’s gone off the rails led by Donald Trump. It is this year’s crop of candidates who are not very serious people and can’t debate( but) I do think debates will return when the Republican party starts nominating normally qualified people to run.”>

<NEWS FLASH!

I, The King of Perfidy, bought my LM title!

I stand before all of you, exposed, by <tacticalmonster>.

The sordid truth is that I was contacted by someone in USCF before a weekend swiss, which would be enough to put me over the top if I had a decent performance.

In the last round, I was 6-0 and facing a 1376 player, who had beaten three GMs, while I was crushing opposition averaging a robust 1287 in rating. Scared to death? You don't know the half of it, friends and neighbours. While I've played some tough hombres, this D-class player had me shaking in my boots, because I knew he was at least 1700 strength.

I called the kid aside, asked him how he'd feel about 'laying down', just so's I could have my moment in the sun, and he was all right with it.

His asking price was a case of Boone's Farm Strawberry Wine. The deal concluded, I promptly blew him away thus: 1.f3 e5 2.g3 d5 3.a4 c5 4.g4 Qh4 mate.

<“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying ‘It’s declassified.’”>

<Jennifer Rubin: Trump made things worse for himself.

In a pre-recorded interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, he insisted: “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, it’s declassified.

Even by thinking about it, because you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago or to wherever you’re sending it.”

This, of course, acknowledges that the documents he hoarded were highly sensitive, that Trump <<<knew they were>>> and that he sent them to Mar-a-Lago anyway.

Former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa called Trump’s remarks the “Secret Telepathic Unilateral Preemptive Irreversible Declassification” — or “S.T.U.P.I.D.” — defense.

Others simply called it “insane.”

All true, but most of all it is “typical” and “par for the course.”>

<On Wednesday night, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued a partial stay of District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling granting Donald Trump a special master to review the 11,000 documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago home by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The ruling exempts classified documents from Special Master Raymond Dearie’s review for now, and allows a criminal investigation pertaining to them to proceed.

The legal community, including many on the right, has been baffled by Cannon’s rulings in the case. Even Trump’s former attorney general, William P. Barr, called them “deeply flawed.” On the left, many have questioned Cannon’s independence because Trump appointed her, and she is presiding over a case that he is actively trying to discredit.

If history is precedent, however, all of this legal wrangling may be moot because there is another component to the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s storage of documents: a counterintelligence operation, which is a whole different matter. The FBI’s Counterintelligence Program is responsible for “exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities in the U.S.” that threaten “the nation’s critical assets,” and keeping “weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands.” Historically, this mission has been of utmost importance and justified the FBI using highly aggressive, secretive and sometimes unlawful tactics.

This history indicates that it is the counterintelligence element of the FBI’s investigation into Trump that could pose the most risk for the former president, especially because it is the part where the courts will be least likely to know what the bureau is doing and least likely to limit what it can do.

J. Edgar Hoover — the first FBI director and the man who led the bureau for nearly a half-century — epitomized the way the FBI deployed espionage-like tactics in its counterintelligence program. Hoover learned the art of such tactics in conjunction with fascist European police forces before World War II.

In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt hitched the New Deal to Hoover’s celebrity reputation to rebuff conservative critics. The FBI could chase bank robbers and kidnappers across stateliness, it was equipped with fast cars, fast guns and radios. It had links to Hollywood studios and New York publishers. Hunting outlaws like “Baby Face” Nelson, “Machine Gun” Kelly and “Pretty Boy” Floyd mesmerized audiences about the power of Roosevelt, Hoover and the New Deal....>

<....Meanwhile, below the radar, Hoover forged relationships with anti-communist police societies like the International Criminal Police Commission, which was taken over by Nazi Party officials in 1935. Hoover sent FBI delegates to Berlin in 1939 to learn what the ICPC described as “repressive and preventive measures against actions preparatory to crimes and other dangerous conduct showing criminal intentions.”

Roosevelt authorized Hoover to transform the FBI into a counterintelligence agency — but he presumed Hoover was anti-fascist and would target Nazi and Japanese sympathizers. Instead, the conservative Hoover wanted to stop American “Communists,” a label he applied broadly to the liberals crusading for an expanded federal government that offered a social safety net.

Hoover hid his disdain for the New Deal under the popular Roosevelt, sensing a battle he couldn’t win. But after Roosevelt died in 1945, Hoover began attacking its ideology, institutions, workforce and beneficiaries. Hoover and the new president, Harry S. Truman, already had an adversarial relationship, and whispers soon swirled around Washington that Truman was going to downsize the bureau and fire Hoover.

Hoover retorted that any attempt to remove him from office was an international Communist conspiracy to weaken U.S. defenses as part of a Soviet attack. In the burgeoning Cold War climate, this was a potent claim — one that protected Hoover’s job.

The contention fit with Hoover’s broader tactics in this era. In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which made the FBI responsible for protecting nuclear secrets and empowered the bureau to remain a counterintelligence agency even with World War II in the past. Hoover used this authority to help foment the “Red Scare,” which mixed the actual problem of nuclear espionage with fearmongering that the New Deal sheltered traitors who wanted to weaken the FBI.

Beginning in 1956, Hoover went even further tactically, launching an operation called COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) that combined vast amounts of surveillance, blackmail, propaganda and violence. He valued dirty secrets about his adversaries and their loved ones that he could use to silence dissent.

Assistant Director William Sullivan oversaw COINTELPRO and later wrote in his memoirs that the moment Hoover got dirt on a senator, he sent an emissary to Capitol Hill to make sure the senator knew that the bureau had “by chance happened to come up with this data on your daughter.” Hoover wanted the senator to know this, because “from that time on, the senator’s right in his pocket.”

<....COINTELPRO targeted not only politicians and activists, like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but also the organizations and social movements to which they belonged. Over the 15 years of its existence, it focused on the Women’s Liberation Movement, Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizations, environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement, Chicano and Mexican American groups, Puerto Rican independence groups and the civil rights and Black Power movements, especially their leadership. While COINTELPRO mostly focused on groups on the left, it did also investigate far-right groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the National States’ Rights Party.

COINTELPRO could have a devastating impact on organizations. FBI records for “COINTELPRO — BLACK HATE” directed agents to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations.” Accordingly, the FBI planted inflammatory material on organizational members to sow division. The FBI also used coercive tactics to turn friends and allies against each other. Other common COINTELPRO tactics included perjury, witness harassment, witness intimidation and the withholding of exculpatory evidence.

COINTELPRO was the state’s response to the civil rights movement and accelerated with the tumult of the 1960s as Cold War fears about subversives continued to swirl. The program was exposed in 1971 by a group of concerned citizens calling themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. The commission burgled an FBI field office in Media, Pa., and passed secret documents to news agencies. Sordid revelations about the program caused an uproar, prompting its demise. But in its 15 years, it had a major impact on American politics and society, exposing how far secretive counterintelligence operations could go without arousing scrutiny.

Counterintelligence programs peak at times of heightened concern about nuclear espionage and nuclear war. The recent deterioration in the relationship between Russia and the United States and the tensions between China and the U.S., as well as the unusual activities at Mar-a-Lago, are reminiscent of conditions that gave rise to COINTELPRO.

<The New York attorney general's lawsuit against Donald Trump last week revealed new details about the former president's finances, but a Congressional probe could soon unveil additional documents that he's long been trying to shield from public view.

The accounting firm Mazars Group, which handled Trump’s account for decades, has handed over some of its documents to both Congress and the New York attorney general's office, potentially providing new revelations after six years of delay.

The documents from 2014-2018, which Mazars is providing to comply with a legal settlement, could shed light on potential conflicts of interest. More specifically, the documents might provide evidence of possible violations of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which bars federal elected officials from receiving money or gifts from foreign governments.

But two key questions loom. How much insight will these records provide? And is it too late to hold Trump accountable for conflicts when he was in office now that he's no longer president?

“All we get to see in the disclosure forms is the fact that the government official owns an interest in or controls this particular entity and then the entity's a black box,” says Richard Painter, who worked in the George W. Bush White House and sued to get these documents in 2017.

‘These records are only going to give you snapshots’

Aside from the possible opacity of the documents, Congressional investigators have to confront the reality that the Trump Organization might have given its accounting firm incorrect information.

“These records are only going to give you snapshots,” says Noah Bookbinder, president of the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. For example, he added, "If Saudi Arabia spends money at a Trump property, does that show up in bank records? It could under certain circumstances, but in a lot of cases it won't.”

The offices of Donald Trump's former accountant, Mazars USA, are located in Manhattan. In February, the Supreme Court has cleared the way for investigators to obtain the former President's records from the company.

In her court filing last week, New York Attorney General Letitia James also claimed that Trump and others "engaged in conduct intended to mislead Mazars in connection with its work compiling” their financial records. Mazars itself, in a letter disclosed earlier this year, said that it couldn’t vouch for the documents....>

<Yet another election denier on the campaign trail has reversed his position as the general elections inch closer. TV personality-turned-Senate hopeful Mehmet Oz announced that he doesn’t actually think the 2020 election was illegitimate, despite courting true believers in the past.

Oz has been running to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate against Democrat John Fetterman, partially through an online tete-a-tete using Internet memes (to varying effect). The Republican nominee has also been winking at denying the results of the 2020 election to curry favor with Trump supporters, while trying not to alienate swing voters at the same time.

At a Pennsylvania Senate debate back in April, he said that “we cannot move on” from the election, and that it was a “tragedy” that Republican voters in the state should have to question the results.

He also gave a noncommittal response when asked directly whether he believed the election was stolen on Fox News earlier this month. “There’s lots more information we have to gather in order to determine that and I’d be very desirous of gathering some,” he said.

He’s notably refused to clarify his beliefs on the topic—that is, until Wednesday.

According to the new book from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Trump’s support of the fellow celebrity has been calculated from the start: He once told his advisers that he needs people like Oz in office in case the 2024 election is challenged or Congress tries to impeach him again.

Oz already hadn’t been very keen on accepting Trump’s endorsement throughout his campaign, but on Wednesday he finally decided to fess up.

“Doctor Oz has made it clear that he would have voted to certify the results of the 2020 election, and that he’ll accept the results of the 2022 election,” Oz spokeswoman Brittany Yanick told a Politico reporter when asked for comment.

It’s not just Oz. As we inch closer towards the general election, several election deniers who launched their political careers on the back of the Big Lie have similarly reversed their stances on the 2020 election.

<Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has become a familiar, and to some a reassuring, face on numerous television channels through the traumatic aftermath of Hurricane Ian’s rampage through the state.

But the near-constant presence of the Republican, who in less chaotic times limits his on-screen appearances largely to the Fox News faithful, is not sitting comfortably with others, nor are his appeals for public contributions for hurricane relief while he is using taxpayers’ money for “political stunts”.

DeSantis announced at a press conference on Friday morning that public donations to the state’s disaster fund had surpassed $12m, coincidentally the same amount he was allocated from the state budget, funded by interest on federal Covid relief payments, for a controversial migrant-removal program.

The governor, a likely candidate for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination, has already spent a chunk of that money shifting two planeloads of Venezuelans from Texas to Massachusetts, raising questions over why he was shuttling immigrants between two states of which he is not governor on the Florida taxpayers’ dime.

DeSantis says he expects to arrange more flights until the money is spent, but his actions have drawn a criminal investigation from a sheriff in Texas and two lawsuits. The first is a class-action suit filed on behalf of the migrants by the group Lawyers for Civil Rights, alleging breaches of federal immigration law.

“What we hope to do … is stop the shipment of immigrants across state lines by misrepresentation and fraudulent efforts, specifically from Ron DeSantis and the state of Florida,” Miriam Albert, one of the group’s lawyers, said.

The second lawsuit was filed by Democrats in Florida seeking to shut down DeSantis’s migrant-movement program altogether.

Also under scrutiny are his requests earlier in the week, immediately granted by Joe Biden, for federal money for hurricane relief.

Critics have noted that among DeSantis’s first acts after being elected to Congress in November 2012 was to join 66 Republican colleagues and vote against a government aid package for victims of Hurricane Sandy, which killed more than 100 as it devastated north-eastern states.

In an interview on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox this week, DeSantis appeared to have changed his view.

“We live in a politicized time, but when people are fighting for their lives, when their livelihood is at stake, lost everything, if you can’t put politics aside for that, you won’t be able to,” he said.

Normally fierce critics of each other, Biden and DeSantis have reached a kind of uneasy detente because of the hurricane, similar to the temporary peace between them over the Surfside apartment complex disaster in Florida in June 2021.

The pair have spoken several times this week, and DeSantis has acknowledged Biden’s support.>

As well as bosses who actually care about journalistic principles, a dynamic not in evidence at Fox News.>

<Giving a speech in public, taking an academic examination, or taking your driving test are all examples of tasks that can illicit stress....>

<WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court Thursday rejected without comment Donald Trump’s bid to restore a special master’s power to review some 100 classified documents federal agents seized from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago property.

The move will allow prosecutors to proceed with what they say is the most serious part of their national-security investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of presidential records taken from the White House.

The court’s one-sentence order provided no explanation, as is typical in emergency matters, and noted no dissents.

Mr. Trump’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, and the Justice Department declined to comment.

In September, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Atlanta, removed the classified materials from the purview of a special master, or independent arbiter, a district judge appointed at Mr. Trump’s request to review the thousands of documents the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized from the Florida resort. The August search was conducted after authorities determined presidential records remained on the property despite Trump representatives’ assertions that all such materials had been returned.

The federal district judge in Fort Pierce, Fla., Aileen Cannon, appointed the special master last month after Mr. Trump’s attorneys argued that the former president potentially retained privileges that could allow him to deny investigators access to at least some of the materials. The government is appealing the special master appointment, but asked the 11th Circuit for immediate access to the classified materials so the investigation could proceed.

The appeals court granted the government request on Sept. 21. “An injunction delaying (or perhaps preventing) the United States’s criminal investigation from using classified materials risks imposing real and significant harm on the United States and the public,” the panel said.

Mr. Trump then asked Justice Clarence Thomas, who oversees emergency matters from the 11th Circuit, to restore the special master’s authority over the classified materials. The government filed its opposition brief on Tuesday.

As is typical in high-profile cases, Justice Thomas referred the issue to the full court, which then issued Thursday’s order.

Judge Cannon’s decision to appoint the special master was criticized by legal scholars and practitioners, and Justice Department attorneys argued it would slow their investigation down. Judge Cannon was appointed by Mr. Trump, as were two of three judges on the 11th Circuit panel and three of the nine Supreme Court justices.

The National Archives and Records Administration had been negotiating with Mr. Trump’s team for the return of documents for more than a year. The Trump administration turned over 15 boxes of records in January and another small batch in June. The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, obtaining a warrant after authorities concluded that sensitive records remained at the Trump resort.

Prosecutors have said that they have evidence of possible obstruction of their investigation and that potential crimes they are reviewing include violations of the Espionage Act, which governs national-defense information, and the Presidential Records Act, the post-Watergate measure setting standards for preservation of White House materials.

Since the materials were recovered, the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, has been overseeing an assessment of potential damage to the nation’s security that may have occurred from their handling. The archives recently told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that it hasn’t recovered all of the records that were supposed to be turned over by the Trump administration.>

<NEW YORK — Attorney General Tish James asked a state court Thursday to freeze the Trump Organization’s New York assets and install an independent monitor in her civil suit targeting the former president and his real estate business.

James alleged last month a years-long scheme to fraudulently overvalue the Trump Organization’s portfolio by billions of dollars. And on Thursday, she warned the state Supreme Court that Trump might be shifting his holdings outside of New York — and the reach of its courts.

“Since we filed this sweeping lawsuit last month, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have continued those same fraudulent practices and taken measures to evade responsibility,” she said in a statement. “Today, we are seeking an immediate stop to these actions because Mr. Trump should not get to play by different rules.”

The allegations are the latest new strand in Trump’s expanding web of legal woes, which stretches nationwide as he tangles with lawsuits and probes related to classified presidential documents in Florida, the ramifications of the Jan. 6 riots in Washington and fallout from his election denial in several states. It also ratchets up an long-running battle between New York’s top lawyer and the ex-president.

In the new court papers, James says Trump incorporated a new “Trump Organization LLC” in Delaware on Sept. 15, then registered the company with New York as “Trump Organization II LLC” on the day her lawsuit was filed on Sept. 21.

James’ suit seeks monetary penalties up to $250 million and an order blocking Trump from real estate transactions in New York for five years — moves that could doom his unraveling empire. But she now says his lawyers won’t assure her that Trump’s not moving assets out of state in advance.

Trump attorney Alina Habba called James’ filing “a thinly-veiled attempt” at keeping the case in front of Justice Arthur Engoron — who previously held Trump in contempt for not complying with an attorney general probe — and out of the state court’s commercial division.

“We have repeatedly provided assurance, in writing, that the Trump Organization has no intention of doing anything improper. This is simply another stunt which Ms. James hopes will aid her failing political campaign,” Habba said in a statement, repeating a common line of attack against James, who is fundraising off her legal fights.

James, who is is asking for an October 2023 trial date, wants the court to prohibit the Trump Organization from transferring material assets to anyone not a party to her lawsuit, or otherwise disposing of property without the court’s blessing.

She also wants an independent monitor to oversee the company’s forthcoming 2022 financial statements and to ensure he does not employ the same accounting tricks alleged in her complaint last month. For instance, James contended that Trump continues to count $93 million held in a Vornado partnership as his own cash, even though he shouldn’t.

Engoron will consider James’ requests at an Oct. 31 hearing, according to an order entered later Thursday.>

<During an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday morning, former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade emphatically stated that she believes Attorney General Merrick Garland will files charges against Donald Trump and then singled out a specific criminal act that will be the basis for the indictment.

Speaking with host Ali Velshi, the former prosecutor stated that she believes that Garland will actually charge the former president in order to back up his statement that no one is above the law.

Asked by the MSNBC host what would be the easiest charge to file against Trump, she claimed his attempts to get former Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election has all the hallmarks of a slam-dunk case.

After stating, "I think that there's been a public perception that Merrick Garland is moving too slowly or cowardly or he is afraid to bring charges," she added, " We will see charges against Donald Trump."

"I think everybody's looking for the big charge of tying Donald Trump to the seditious conspiracy; that's a hard one to prove his connections to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Maybe it's there and it sounds like they're looking there," she elaborated. "They have given cooperation agreements to a number of those charged with seditious conspiracy already."

"But I think you can make the case by showing a conspiracy to defraud the United States by the pressure he applied to Mike Pence," she explained. "The lie is the fraud, the pressure on Mike Pence is the criminal act, and that is a serious crime: trying to interfere with the lawful transfer of presidential power. So I think that case is there and I think Merrick Garland will charge it.">

<If Nets' Kyrie Irving is a beacon of light, why does he shroud his beliefs in ambiguity?

Irving wants to be a leader, but resists telling people exactly where his intellectual wanderings are taking him

By James Herbert

Kyrie Irving calls himself a "beacon of light." He described himself this way in Thursday's contentious press conference at the Brooklyn Nets' practice facility, and in a prepared statement released the previous night by the Nets, the Anti-Defamation League and Irving himself. He also described himself this way last season, first on Instagram Live on media day, then after a game in January, both times discussing his decision not to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

If Irving is beacon of light, though, then he wastes a surprising amount of words shrouding his beliefs in ambiguity. Irving has twice taken questions about his decision to publicize a film full of antisemitic conspiracy theories. At no point in either media session did he clearly explain why he promoted that particular film, "Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America," on his Twitter and Instagram accounts. Irving said he watches documentaries to "elevate my consciousness," and he is "not going to stand down on anything that I believe in." Instead of making it clear where he stands, though, all that he clarified was that he resents anybody asking.

At Defector, Diana Moskovitz wrote this week that Irving defended himself with "his characteristic defiant opacity," a phrase I haven't been able to get out of my head. For all of the moves Irving has pulled off on the court, he is never more evasive than when he's questioned about his beliefs. The Nets suspended him Thursday not just because he'd spread an antisemitic film and refused to condemn the ideas in it, but because, according to ESPN, he'd ghosted team owner Joe Tsai, declined to communicate with the Anti-Defamation League and rejected several opportunities to state on the record that he does not hold antisemitic beliefs. Irving said multiple times that he respects and embraces "all walks of life," as if that mere statement should quash any concerns people might have about his sharing of a film that alleges that Jewish people have been lying about who they are, lying about the Holocaust and want to "extort America" as part of "their plan for world domination." (That last bit is attributed in the film to Adolf Hitler; the quote is fake and Hitler's first name is spelled incorrectly.)

This scandal is hardly the first time that Irving has bristled at questions about his beliefs, nor is it the first time that his forays into the world of conspiracy theories have caused controversy. You probably remember that Irving pushed flat-Earth bunk on a podcast in 2017, but you might be under the mistaken impression that he has since denounced it. Almost immediately afterward, NBA commissioner Adam Silver laughed it off and called it an effective comment "on the sort of so-called fake news debate that's going on in our society right now."

The truth is that, after passionately questioning the validity of Neil Armstrong's footprints on the moon's surface and saying that "particular groups" are lying about the Earth being round, Irving only apologized for saying what he said publicly, rather than in "intimate conversations." He claimed that he was being intentionally provocative, but never disavowed his comments supporting the conspiracy theory and repeatedly complained that people were mad about them.

In a 2018 interview, Irving told the New York Times' Sopan Deb that he is "not against anyone that thinks the Earth is round" and "not against anyone that thinks the Earth is flat." Irving also told the Times, "I've definitely wanted -- well I know I am -- a generational leader. To do that, it takes a long, long time of learning about other human beings, history and incorporating all that into things that I love," adding that he "absolutely" wants to own his own television network one day and wants to bring "a certain sense of authenticity" to audiences.

Irving may want to learn and lead, but he resists telling people where his intellectual wanderings are taking him. Although he was willing to miss most of the 2021-22 season instead of getting vaccinated, he took offense to the notion that he is an anti-vaxxer and has still never explicitly explained his rationale. "It's not about being anti-vax or being on one side or the other," he said on Instagram Live last September. Days earlier, Rolling Stone had reported that Irving had liked Instagram posts by a conspiracy theorist who "claims that 'secret societies' are implanting vaccines in a plot to connect Black people to a master computer for 'a plan of Satan.'"....>

<....Last Saturday, he said three times that he does not want to be "divisive," and insisted that all he does is "post things for my people and my community and those that it's actually going to impact," adding that, if anyone criticizes something he posts, then "it obviously wasn't meant for them."

If you try to discern Irving's most strongly held beliefs through his public statements, you will inevitably conclude that he is fanatically devoted to one idea: He should never be labeled or judged for what he thinks. While Irving has invited Kanye West comparisons lately, in particular when he said Thursday that he "cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from," the way he responds to criticism has long evoked West's earlier work: "once again I am being attacked for presenting new ideas."

"Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America" is not an informative documentary that comes with an unfortunate side of antisemitism. It is a wildly antisemitic film featuring "vile and harmful content," as Silver put it in a statement. And Irving has still not entirely denounced it. In his apology on Thursday night, Irving wrote that he is "deeply sorry" to have caused pain to the Jewish community and is "apologizing for posting the documentary without context and a factual explanation outlining the specific beliefs in the Documentary I agreed with and disagreed with."

So what, exactly, does Irving agree with? He has said that the film "may have had some unfortunate falsehoods in it," adding that "some of the criticism of the Jewish faith and the community" is not true, but, unless he decides to get more specific in between now and his next media availability, he will eventually face another stream of questions, at which point he'll have the same choice he's had before: Obfuscate, thereby ensuring that it will the stream will keep flowing, or shut it down with clear and direct answers.>