A Really Bad, Awful, Losing Day for MAGA

Wow.  Let me count the ways the Trumpian scheme to negate rule of law and/or reality cratered this week.

1. The informant who armed righties with supposedly damning evidence about the Biden family was indicted for making it all up.

2. An attempt to derail Georgia’s prosecution of Trump and associates ran into major difficulties, thanks to the televised testimony of DA Fani Willis. 

3. The Manhattan DA’s case against Trump will proceed to jury selection on March 25th. Don’t let lazy headline writers fool ya; this is about much more than a payoff to Stormy Daniels. 

4. A Supreme Court conference today will open the door on the subject of presidential immunity.

5. Vladimir Putin’s best known collaborator, Tucker Carlson is being ridiculed over videos painting a rosy picture of life in Russia.

Since the day Joe Biden became president, right wing activists have been trying to organize an impeachment. 

Their “smoking gun” got extinguished on Thursday as the Justice Department  announced the indictment of FBI informant Alexander Smirnoff, alleging he’d been lying about the supposed $10 million in bribes paid for by Burisma, a Ukrainian oil company.

• “The Defendant’s story to the FBI was a fabrication,” the indictment alleges, “an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts that had actually occurred but at a later date than he claimed and for the purpose of pitching Burisma on the Defendant’s services and products, not for discussing bribes to Public Official 1 when he was in office.”

The irony here is that the FBI’s attempt to verify the bribery allegation was –in part– a response to demands from Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to verify a document claiming there was evidence about “an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions.”  

Eventually, Sen. Grassley released the document, which turned out to be an unverified field report about an interview with Smirnoff.

From Oliver Darcy at CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter:

• The emergence of a confidential FBI informant coursed through right-wing media, where talking heads and outlets spotlighted the claims as damning evidence of criminal wrongdoing. It spawned scores of articles. Hundreds of Fox News segments. Republican lawmakers like James Comer and Jim Jordan, eager to bathe in the media spotlight, appeared on radio and television programs to stoke the conspiracy flames and demand investigations. 

• Hannity's program served as the primary vehicle for driving the narrative to the GOP base. On his Fox News program alone, the claims formed the basis for a staggering 85 segments in 2023 alone, according to data from the progressive watchdog Media Matters . Hannity indicated to his millions of nightly viewers that Biden had been "compromised," using the informant claims to declare the president was "very credibly accused of public corruption on a scale this country has never seen before."

Fox News, along with their media wannabes, have been strangely silent about this latest development. MAGA followers are so devout that it wouldn’t surprise me if the House proceeds with hearings on impeaching Biden later this year, just as the Dear Leader has demanded.  

We’ll see if the President’s brother, James Biden, who is scheduled to testify on February 21 before House Republicans conducting the impeachment inquiry gets questioned.

Here’s the thing; Alexander Smirnov was motivated to fabricate these falsehoods, according to investigators because of political distaste for the president and the administration.  

The fabrications in question now have a life of their own; they were repeated by sympathetic media figures and became an article of faith. This is just how the MAGA disinformation cycle works… wash, rinse, repeat.

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The former president and associates’ Georgia defense team has been trying to get prosecutor Fani Willis disqualified based on allegations of a conflict of interest caused by a now-ended relationship with another prosecutor.

At a hearing on Thursday, Ms. Willis took the stand unexpectedly to defend herself. She was emotional as she refuted the claims against her. This was clearly personal for her.

What followed (because Georgia allows cameras in court) was a televised thrashing of defense lawyer Ashleigh Merchant.

Here’s the money shot: 

• "You're confused, you think I'm on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020,” Willis told Ms. Merchant. 

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In New York, Judge Juan Merchan denied team Trump’s motions to dismiss the payoffs case, saying he was prepared to start with jury selection on March 25. 

The prosecution’s case goes beyond the Stormy Daniels descriptive shortcut. They’re saying there were numerous payouts to silence multiple individuals in the run up to the election.

The judge’s ruling is a major development in the timeline of trials for the former president.

Should the case take the full six weeks predicted by the Judge, there is enough time for a verdict to be rendered in advance of the Republican National Convention. 

And, there will be sufficient time for the federal case in the District of Columbia to go to trial before the election, should the Supreme Court act expeditiously.

Speaking of Scotus, all nine justices will be together for a conference today. It’s conceivable they’ll have an opportunity to discuss what to do with Trump’s presidential immunity appeal.

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I can’t quit today without heaping scorn on Tucker Carlson, the fired Fox host now trying to make a living with videos circulated through Elon Musk's Xitter.

Tucker’s sit down with Vladimir Putin was predictably a wiffle ball of an interview. The host asked fawning questions, and the Russian leader smiled a lot and said not much of anything.

After the fact, Putin said he was disappointed with the interview, faulting Carlson for not asking tough questions. Was this dis legit? You betcha!, as a certain washed up cold weather politician used to say. Authoritarian leaders like to remind subordinates of their power.

As part of his Russia is better than the US schtick, he’s been making videos featuring raves about Moscow as “so much nicer” as well as “prettier,” “cleaner,” and “safer” than any city in the United States.

His vids featuring visits to a subway station and grocery story were too much for columnist  Emily Zanotti, who wondered aloud if Carlson had “never been to Publix?” 

Via Mediaite:

• “Like, my cheese department looks bigger than that whole store,” she continued, before calling it “pretty ironic that a guy whose wealth comes from connections to the Swanson fortune, built largely off of selling Americans frozen processed food and the eat-in-front-of-the-TV lifestyle, is complaining about the state of American food consumption.”

Viewers at Xitter added context:

• Over 60% of Russians spend half of their salary on food, according to Russia's state-owned news agency TASS.

This couldn’t be happening to a more deserving individual than Tucker, except maybe Sean Hannity, who should be required to do a fawning interview with President Biden as an apology.

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Friday’s Other Stories of Note

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US takes aim at real estate money laundering - Via the International Consortium of Journalists-  A new rule would close a loophole Treasury warns is exploited by bad actors using ill-gotten cash to anonymously buy residential properties.

• “All-cash transactions are a favorite tool of criminals because they allow them to fly under the radar, avoiding scrutiny from banks and other financial institutions that are subject to extensive anti-money laundering measures.”

• If finalized, the new rule would require certain real estate professionals to flag these “high-risk” transactions with FinCEN by filing “real estate reports,” similar to the suspicious activity reports, or SARs, filed by financial institutions.

• The reports would identify the beneficial owners of the entities or trusts that properties are transferred to, with the information to be stored in a non-public database, accessible to law enforcement and national security agencies.

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How the city of Sacramento found a solution to California’s affordable housing crisis by Ben Raderstorf in the San Francisco Chronicle

• Rents in Sacramento are falling faster than any other large city in California even as it remains the most popular relocation destination in the country. The median rent is approximately half San Francisco’s. Right now you can find an apartment that is affordable for lower-income people, at least according to the government definition of roughly $1,000 to $1,500 for a one-bedroom, at market rates (it’s true, check Zillow). A prime location studio listed for $1,400 last year is just over $1,100 today. 

• True, $1,100 a month is still unaffordable for many people. But it’s progress. And unlike other cities, that decline has nothing to do with an exodus (again, the Sacramento region is the fastest-growing in California).

• Instead, this affordability comes from a deliberate choice by city leaders to pursue a “more of everything” housing strategy. Yes, more subsidized, affordable housing. But also more higher-end housing with the amenities some renters are looking for — swimming pools and dog showers and so on.

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The top doctor for CBP tried to order fentanyl lollipops for a helicopter mission in New York, whistleblowers say Via Julia Ainsley at NBC News

• The chief medical officer for Customs and Border Protection pressured his staff to order fentanyl lollipops for him to take to the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in September, according to a whistleblower report sent to Congress on Friday. 

• The whistleblowers said Dr. Alexander Eastman’s staff raised questions about why he would need to order fentanyl lollipops to take with him, and he answered that it was part of his duties to make sure that any injured CBP operators were cared for, making the argument that the lollipops would be necessary for pain management should an emergency occur.

• “Eastman spent copious hours of his and Office of the Chief Medical Officer staff time directing the OCMO staff to urgently help him procure fentanyl lollipops, a Schedule II narcotic, so that he could bring them on the CBP Air and Marine Operations helicopter on which he would be a passenger in New York City,” the whistleblowers said in the report. “Dr. Eastman claims that his possession of fentanyl lollipops was necessary in case a CBP operator might be injured, or in case the CBP Air and Marine Operations team encountered a patient in need.”