David Edwards has spent over a decade reporting on social justice, human rights and politics for Raw Story. He also writes Crooks and Liars. He has a background in enterprise resource planning and previously managed the network infrastructure for the North Carolina Department of Correction.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) suggested recently that Russia has a military advantage over the United States because the country's white people don't feel guilty about racism.
"Nobody in Russia is quivering over their 'white rage' — whatever that is,' Gaetz said. "In China, they spend money modifying submarines, not the genders of service-members."
"And I'm going to battle against this," he continued. "Only a Benedict Arnold would surrender the Pentagon to the Woketopia without a fight."
Gaetz added: "We should leave the CRT curriculum books in Kabul when the last US plane pulls up its landing gear on the way out."
The Special Counsel report into President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents didn't recommend any criminal charges, yet there were comments within it about memory. Those comments were hailed by Donald Trump, but other conservatives see a warning sign flashing.
Some right-wingers are turning to conspiracy theories by suggesting that the special counsel slamming Biden is a bad thing for their side because it shows a plan to replace Biden with someone more palatable to the general public. Many have suggested Gavin Newsom, California's governor.
U.S. Army Iraq War Veteran Peter Henlein picked up on that interaction, saying, "If you think a special counsel report from Biden's own DOJ that explicitly portrays Biden as senile is a victory for the GOP or Trump, you are wrong."
He then added, "They are laying the groundwork for something. Biden would have soundly defeated Trump. Newsom will annihilate him. We MUST change course."
Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, who pleaded guilty in the Fulton County, Georgia, conspiracy case, shared that message and simply added, "Correct."
Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy also chimed in after the report dropped:
"I said it last year & I’ll say it again: Biden won’t be the Democratic nominee. Now it’s just starting to get more obvious," he wrote Thursday.
The Supreme Court was filled with drama as former law clerks were challenged by their former bosses.
For Trump's former attorney in his federal classified documents obstruction case Jim Trusty, there was one moment where fireworks seemed to be set off.
It was Judge Neil Gorsuch who was sparring with his former clerk Jason Murray about the merits of his case where he was attempting to convince the bench that former President Donald Trump deserved to be disqualified in Colorado's GOP primary contest because he claimed he engaged in insurrection which violates the Constitution.
I think they went reasonably well," Trusty told CNN's Kaitlan Collins. "These lawyers are people that clerked for Supreme Court justices, they were pretty at home."
"There were different levels of hostile fire as we heard before in terms of Justice Gorsuch turning the tables on his own former law clerk for a minute. It was not particularly aggressive. It wasn't what I would call an extra hot bench."
“Maybe put most boldly, I think that the question you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States,” she said. “That seems quite extraordinary, doesn’t it?”
Murray answered that it was “not unusual that questions of national importance come up through different states.”
That led to Justice Gorsuch bringing some firepower with his question.
“Do you agree that the state’s powers here over its ballot for federal officer election have to come from some constitutional authority,” he asked.
Murray made his best attempt to explain that the answer remains undecided.
He said, “Members of this court have disagreed about that.”
Trump's legal team is probably typing away on their filing to get his classified documents obstruction case scrapped now that President Joe Biden dodged criminal charges.
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig said the win for Biden to avoid criminal prosecution for being found to possess boxes of classified documents in his garage was a "close call" and may have cracked the window for Trump counsel to make a bid to convince the judge to stick a fork in his Florida federal case.
"Mark my words, Donald Trump's team in the federal [Special Counsel] Jack Smith classified documents team at Mar-a-Lago is going to bring a motion for what is called selective prosecution," he said. "Very, very hard to win these motions. what you have to do is show a judge, 'Somebody else did essentially the same thing I did. I was prosecuted. He was not.'"
"Now, Donald Trump has a basis to make that motion."
Special Counsel Robert Hur ended his 15-month probe of Biden with a decision to not bring formal charges for his mishandling of classified documents when he was phasing out as Vice President of the Obama administration and knocked him for being a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
Biden later appeared in a White House press conference defiant that he didn't "willfully retain" classified documents and called those accusations "not only misleading; they're just plain wrong."
Honig believes Biden came extremely close to becoming a defendant in a criminal case.
"This is a very close call," he said referring to his reading of Hur's prosecution memo may make Biden's behavior less problematic, but that he believes it was "close to the line" of being illegal.
"Here's the facts... Joe Biden retained sensitive classified documents after he left the vice presidency," he said. "Marked classified. Highest level. Top secret SCI."
"They related to our international affairs to war plans, foreign relations. He knew it. He knew it. He's on tape after he's out of the vice presidency, saying the classified documents are in the basement. He knew it."
Lastly, Honig makes clear that Biden appears to be trying to win the day by claiming he cooperated whereas Trump allegedly obstructed.
But he corrects him saying, "the fact that Joe Biden cooperated it's not a free pass," he said.
