I just so happened to see a video of the "Kids In The Hall"s secretaries skit:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/v/bAKsCy26xbw&hl=en&fs=1 expand=1]
And something about Scott Thompson's portrayal put me in mind of anti-choice nut Leslee Unruh:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/v/hWCRCj0-2gQ&hl=en&fs=1 expand=1]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/v/xOVhyXHmuS4&hl=en&fs=1 expand=1]
Politico reporter Betsy Woodruff Swan quipped on Thursday that former President Donald Trump appears to be deploying the strategy of innocence through attacks on social media.
Speaking on a panel with former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman and former FBI agent Peter Strzok, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace asked if it was possible that Trump has already been indicted and it simply isn't public yet.
"I think the short answer is, it's possible. But the short answer is no," Litman said.
Wallace then broached the subject of one of the biggest "tells" for Donald Trump is the level of freakouts on his social media.
"When he was under investigation by Robert Mueller, it was the all-caps threats, his pleas for a Roy Cohen or whoever he thought would shield him from his own Justice Department. If you fast forward, I guess it was more recently his grave disappointment he's been expressing toward Bill Barr and other ex-DOJ officials. I'm not sure what he thinks they could be doing. They certainly did a heck of a lot when they were there."
She asked about deciphers for the all-caps attacks and the fixation on President Joe Biden's foundation office being in "Chinatown" in Washington, D.C. The National Portrait Gallery is also in D.C.'s Chinatown, as is the arena where the Washington Wizards play. There's a Chick-fil-A, a McDonald's and a Starbucks, as well as a number of churches. It appears Trump is using it as another opportunity to link Biden and China in the same sentence.
"It's certainly clear Trump recognizes he's in significant, enormous, legal trouble and he's not thrilled about it," said Swan. "This is the type of rhetoric he's been pushing going all the way back to the very earliest days of the Mueller investigation, seemingly operating under the assumption if he tweets with enough exclamation points and capital letters, it will somehow reduce the amount of legal jeopardy he faces. Also, Trump and his allies see a political benefit to be had in positioning him as this potential victim or this person being attacked by the nefarious forces of the deep state."
The comments come just as The New York Times published a report that Trump and his team are deploying a familiar strategy trying to defend the former president in the court of public opinion.
"Mr. Trump launched a pre-emptive strike against a possible indictment, posting a pair of messages on his social media platform early Thursday morning that sought to delegitimize the inquiry," the report began. "Mr. Trump accused a top federal prosecutor in the documents investigation of seeking to 'bribe & intimidate' a lawyer representing one of the witnesses in the case. He claimed that the prosecutor had offered the lawyer an 'important ‘judgeship’ in the Biden administration' if his client ''flips’ on President Trump."
Co-authored by Trump whisperer Maggie Haberman, the Times report said that the move was part of a playbook Trump "has used time and again to undermine inquiries into his conduct."
The Times said that Trump's lawyers have worked to gather allegations about prosecutors that could damage them personally or professionally as part of a way to bring down the investigation. It's what he did when he attacked special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation by linking it to FBI agent Peter Strzok and Mueller prosecutor Lisa Page, who were having an affair. Their relationship had nothing to do with the Mueller probe, but it gave Trump ammunition to attack the probe, saying that Trump haters were after him. At one point, Trump even went on a tirade against Mueller, saying that he was unethical because he left Trump's country club seven years prior.
Trump aides and lawyers have assembled a list of "misconduct" they say prosecutors in the DOJ can be accused of. It comes as the impending indictment looms.
Trump's "list of grievances was then placed in the draft of a letter written to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland intended to alert Mr. Garland to the lawyers’ concerns about how Mr. Smith’s team has handled the documents case," the report said, citing those close to Trump.
Part of the letters sent to the DOJ also requested a meeting with Garland. Instead, it happened with Trump's lawyers and Smith.
According to the allegation, a top prosecutor in the documents case brought up a municipal judgeship application that one of the lawyers had submitted. Trump's legal team says it was a veiled threat designed to pressure the lawyer into getting his client to cooperate with the feds.
"Throughout his life, Mr. Trump has treated every challenge to him like an ongoing negotiation," said The Times. "His impulse is to go directly to the person he considers the top official of an organization to lodge his complaints... By broadcasting his complaints on social media rather than making them in court papers to a judge, Mr. Trump avoided the normal method of lodging accusations about prosecutorial misconduct — a method that, of course, also puts a burden of veracity and accuracy on the accuser."
See the conversation on "Deadline White House" below or at the link here.
Trump's strategy of attack and smear to prove innocenceyoutu.be
A 1-year-old boy in Detroit is miraculously recovering in the hospital after his 6-year-old brother shot him twice while he was in a bouncy chair, reported Local 4 News.
"The shooting occurred Wednesday (June 7) at 7:42 p.m. on Tennessee Street in the Jefferson Chalmers area," reported Brandon Carr. "Detroit police Assistant Chief Charles Fitzgerald gave an update on the situation. 'A 1-year-old baby was in his bouncy when another family member, a child, gets a hold of a gun and shot his sibling, not once but twice,' said Fitzgerald. 'The 1-year-old was shot through his cheek and through his left shoulder. We are very fortunate that that child is still with us.'"
"Officials say the baby’s mother was down the street visiting a friend while the father was outside in the backyard with an uncle and other children while working on a fence," said the report. "Fitzgerald said the gun was a fully loaded semi-automatic."
According to Fitzgerald, the gun in question was not properly secured. “Once again, preventable,” he said. “We’re here far too often talking about securing your weapons as there are gun locks, gun safes, or even the highest shelf you could find in your house. Put the gun up as high as you can.”
No one has been arrested as of now. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Michigan has a safe storage gun law, but not an explicit child access to firearms prevention law.
Children getting access to guns has all too often led to tragedy. Last June, an 8-year-old in Escambia County, Florida fatally shot his sister while playing with a gun that his father owned illegally. A few months later, a 4-year-old in Corpus Christi, Texas took a loaded handgun to school.
All signs indicate Jack Smith has decided to move his case against Donald Trump to Miami, signaling that the special counsel’s believes Washington D.C. presents “insurmountable” challenges in adjudicating his classified documents case, The Washington Post reports.
Devlin Barrett, Spencer S. Hsu, Jacqueline Alemany, Perry Stein and Josh Dawsey write that, “The switch comes amid clear signs that the investigation is nearly completed and that Trump could face criminal charges. Former prosecutors said it reflects an effort by the Justice Department to prevent Trump’s lawyers from challenging an indictment by saying it had been filed in the wrong place — a legal line of attack that could delay or even derail a trial.”
The decision on where to file potential charges against Trump is consequential, according to the report, which notes that any courthouse where such a case would be held would be at the center of “intense public interest and security concerns,” the report said.
Moving the potential case against the former president to Florida would also avoid a likely lengthy legal argument, the report said.
From Trump’s standpoint, Florida would be a more favorable venue to hold a potential trial, the report said, noting that just 5 percent of D.C. voters backed Trump in 2020, compared to 45 percent in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties who backed him in the most recent presidential election.
Barrett, Hsu, Alemany, Stein and Dawsey write that “conservatives and defense lawyers have argued that the spate of trials stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot have shown that District residents tend to take a harsh view of Trump and his supporters, and he might find a more sympathetic jury in Florida.”
Moving the case from Washington to Florida has surprised some legal experts, considering much of what is known about the case has centered around the nation’s capital, but the report suggests facts about the case that haven’t yet been made public may have factored in the decision.
“You don’t know all of the facts that would determine venue until you’re further advanced in an investigation,” former federal prosecutor Van Grack told The Post.
“As far as why now, it’s a sign they have largely completed their investigation, and they’re able to make determinations like venue in a way they weren’t able to eight or 10 months ago.”
Grack added that “A decision to switch grand juries “would indicate they thought [the challenges in D.C.] were insurmountable.”
The Constitution and many U.S. court rulings have long held that when possible, trials should be held near the scene of an alleged crime.
Barrett, Hsu, Alemany, Stein and Dawsey write that “A major guidepost for Washington cases is a 1971 appellate court decision involving a rape and subsequent shooting. In that case, a man named John Swann was accused of raping a woman in Washington. After the charges were filed, he went to her workplace in Maryland and shot her. Initially, Swann was charged in D.C. for the shooting, on the basis that he was trying to attack a witness in his rape case. But higher courts later held that he had to be charged with the shooting in Maryland, even if the crime was done to target a witness in his case in the nation’s capital.”
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