This guy is deranged and yet probably represents a large majority of the agent population.

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Behind paywall but here’s the link (I subscribe to WaPo but they don’t allow copy/paste):

‘I give you my word as a Biden,’ for instance, should be an instant clue.

Joe Biden is a serial fabulist, habitual plagiarizer, and a reliable falsifier of facts great and small alike. But while the president is a known liar, he’s not very good at it.

Biden has developed a series of verbal tics that tend to either precede or follow some of his more flagrant mendacities. One way to tell that the president is pulling your leg is that he is quick to assure you that what he has just said is “not a joke.”

Far-right intimidation campaign turns to FBI agents, prosecutors​

Threats against federal prosecutors and FBI agents have reached an “unprecedented” level. Unfortunately, they're not the only ones.


Sept. 15, 2023, 7:00 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

The Hunter Biden investigation is challenging for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the degree to which Republicans have made public declarations about their expectations. But complicating matters is the fact that federal prosecutors and FBI agents involved in the case have also become the targets of threats and harassment by radicals who want to see the president’s son punished.

NBC News reported on the intimidation efforts and the larger pattern.

It’s part of a dramatic uptick in threats against FBI agents that has coincided with attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department by congressional Republicans and former President Donald Trump, who have accused both agencies of participating in a conspiracy to subvert justice amid two federal indictments of Trump. The threats have prompted the FBI to create a stand-alone unit to investigate and mitigate them, according to a previously unreleased transcript of congressional testimony.

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Jennifer Moore, then an executive assistant director of human resources for the FBI, recently told the House Judiciary Committee, “We have stood up an entire threat unit to address threats that the FBI employees’ facilities are receiving. ... It is unprecedented. It’s a number we’ve never had before.”

She went on to testify that in the six months spanning October 2022 and March 2023, FBI agents and facilities faced more threats than the previous 12 months combined.

There’s obviously no defense for this, and Republicans who’ve gone to great lengths to villainize federal law enforcement should probably take note of how some have seized on their deceptive rhetoric.

But I’m also struck by the familiarity of the circumstances. It was two years ago this week, for example, when Reuters reported on the right’s “sustained campaign of intimidation” against election officials at the state and local level. As regular readers might recall, a variety of others — from public health officials to school board members to flight attendants — faced similar threats.

In the months that followed, the list grew. Librarians have faced threats. After Donald Trump’s classified documents scandal began in earnest, officials at the National Archives were targeted, too. The Internal Revenue Service felt the need to launch a full security review of its facilities nationwide in response to “right-wing threats.” (It was the first such IRS security review since 1995 — in the wake of the domestic terror attack in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.)

The Florida magistrate judge who signed off on the Mar-a-Lago search warrant has faced similar threats. So has Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. And U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The next time we hear Trump and his supports applaud the principle of “law and order,” keep this campaign of intimidation in mind.

Steve Benen

Romney: GOP members feared far-right violence ahead of key votes​

According to Mitt Romney, some Republicans wanted to hold Donald Trump accountable, but they feared violence. That raises some uncomfortable questions.


Sept. 15, 2023, 10:20 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

As much of the political world now knows, Sen. Mitt Romney spoke at great length with The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins for a book that will be out next month, and a lengthy excerpt was published online this week that generated a lot of attention. It’s well worth your time, though there was one element that stuck with me after reading it.

The retiring Utah senator told Coppins about routine reluctance among GOP members to hold Donald Trump accountable for wrongdoing, largely because they feared a political backlash. “But,” Coppins wrote, “after January 6, a new, more existential brand of cowardice had emerged.”

One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him — why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome? Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.

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Romney was dismayed by the perspective, though he understood it at a personal level: In the wake of the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, the book excerpt added, the senator shelled out $5,000 a day “to cover private security for his family.”

It’s not clear exactly how long that level of security continued — it might still be in place now — but for context, it’s worth noting that $5,000 a day is roughly $1.8 million a year.

If Romney’s version of behind-closed-door events is accurate, it’s an extraordinary peek into a deep pathology. In a healthy society with a stable political system, elected officials don’t cast votes out of fear that their families might be killed.

For all the recent Republican hysterics about “banana republics“ and “third-world“ countries, it was in the United States where GOP members of Congress were assessing threats of violence when making calculations about how best to vote.
This didn’t happen in the distant past, before the United States developed into a preeminent global superpower. By Romney’s telling, it happened just two years ago.

What’s more, according to the retiring GOP senator, members of his party wanted to cast principled votes, but they ultimately decided against it — because they feared violence.

Worse, these fears were not necessarily paranoid or irrational given recent events.

In a functioning democracy, this simply is not supposed to happen. Coppins added, “How long can a democracy last when its elected leaders live in fear of physical violence from their constituents?”

That need not be a rhetorical question.

Trump, His Kids, and His Bankers, Insurers and Appraisers: New York AG Lays Out Witnesses in Case​

TROUBLE!!!

The world will soon hear from Donald Trump’s long-silent bankers at Deutsche Bank, his insurers at Zurich, property appraisers at Cushman and Wakefield, and his children.

Jose Pagliery​

Political Investigations Reporter
Updated Sep. 15, 2023 1:01PM EDT / Published Sep. 15, 2023 12:52AM EDT

​

The New York Attorney General plans to have her lawyers grill former President Donald Trump, his oldest three children whom he made Trump Organization executives, and many of his most loyal bankers at his upcoming business fraud trial, according to a witness list obtained by The Daily Beast on Thursday.

The proposed 57-person list—buried in recent appellate court filings—shows the immense scope of the investigation that will be on display at the trial. New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office seeks to obliterate the real estate tycoon and former president’s corporate empire, squeezing it dry of profits gained over years of what she has described as a pattern of “persistent and repeated business fraud.”

If James succeeds, this will be the first time the former president is dragged onto the stand to testify under oath alongside his adult children, longtime business associates, and bankers who gladly extended him billions of dollars in credit in exchange for his farcical personal financial statements.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-turns-new-york-ag-case-against-judge-arthur-f-engoron
The American public will hear directly from Rosemary Vrablic, Trump’s guardian angel at Deutsche Bank who kept extending him a lifeline even when his businesses floundered—that is, until she eventually resigned in the days after Trump’s attempts to stage a presidential coup culminated in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The AG’s office plans to question five other current and former bankers there.

The list also includes Peter Welch, a former senior vice president at Capital One bank, and Jack Weisselberg, a director at Ladder Capital Finance who happens to be a son of the disgraced one-time Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg—who spent several months at Rikers Island jail for cheating on his taxes.

Investigators hope to squeeze out damning details from eight current and former employees at Cushman and Wakefield, which routinely helped Trump value properties in ways that allegedly benefited him handsomely by helping him secure otherwise unattainable bank loans and insurance policies. Justice Arthur F. Engoron briefly held the company in contempt last year when it refused to turn over documents.

The judge, who is running this as a bench trial and will alone decide its outcome, will also hear from current and former employees at insurance companies Tokio Marine and Zurich who appear to have been duped by Trump’s alleged inflation scheme.

Then there are the familiar faces. The AG’s office plans to call Trump’s former right-hand man, Michael Cohen, who was imprisoned and disbarred after taking the fall for his former boss and now rails against him in public. They also want to question Donald Bender, the longtime outside accountant at the firm MazarsUSA who, in a criminal trial against the company last year, acknowledged that he simply played along and didn’t question the finances of the very company he purported to examine.

But the former president will, of course, be the headliner—especially given that his appearance will disrupt his political campaign to snag the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump will finally be forced to testify about his stubborn tendency to lie about the value of his properties, from golf courses to commercial buildings. A highlight of his testimony is expected to be when he tries to justify the way he brazenly tripled the size of his ostentatious, gold-encrusted Manhattan penthouse—simply making up 20,000 square feet of space that simply doesn’t exist.

It would also force Trump to actually speak extensively in court under threat of perjury and supervised by an authoritative judge, a precarious proposition he has thus far avoided at other proceedings. When he was on trial earlier this year for sexually abusing the journalist E. Jean Carroll and defaming her by lying about it, he refused to show up—instead allowing a damning taped deposition to do the talking for him.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-trumps-new-argument-in-the-new-york-ag-case-wont-save-him
The sheer size of the list—which doesn’t even include the witnesses Trump’s lawyers plan to call—helps explain why the trial is scheduled to run for up to 56 days from early October until mid-December.

However, the start date of that trial is now in question.

On Thursday, lawyers for the Trumps made a longshot emergency request for an appellate judge to temporarily pause the trial—a last-minute gambit that actually worked. Both sides are now drafting legal arguments they’ll submit to a five-judge panel, which could make a definitive decision in the coming weeks.

Still, the trial is set to go forward on Oct. 2—or sometime thereafter. And it promises to be pure fireworks.

The AG’s investigators of course plan to question Trump, who inherited the Trump Organization from his real estate mogul father and has spent the past 50 years expanding its vast collection of enterprises—always striving to give it the allure of luxury by inflating its brand value. The recently released transcript of his deposition in April hints at what he could say on the stand—which is sure to include self-incriminating gaffes and ludicrous leaps of logic.

One prominent gem is sure to be his twisted rationalization for claiming that a property could be worth whatever he says it is: his distorted sense of the flow of time that ventures into a new branch of theoretical physics. By Trump’s logic, an eventual increase in value means that it was always worth that—or more.

“Regardless it turned out to be true,” he said then.

But state investigators also plan to question the family members he appointed as executives to oversee sections of his real estate empire, like daughter Ivanka Trump, who worked on the family company’s acquisition of one of the tallest buildings in downtown Washington, D.C.—converting it into a Trump-branded hotel that became an influence-peddling ethical disaster during Trump’s time in the White House just a few blocks away. She was initially a defendant in the lawsuit, but her decision to veer away from the family business and launch her own products insulated her and relegated her to a mere witness.

The AG’s attorneys also intend to grill his son, Eric Trump, who initially refused to answer any questions the first time he was deposed by them behind closed doors in 2020. According to the company, he oversees how the company acquires new properties, real estate development, and construction.

Also on the list is Donald Jr., who has spent much of his time trying to help his father’s 2024 presidential campaign but otherwise is credited with evaluating deals and branding.

The Daily Beast acquired the witness list because it was attached to an appellate court petition the Trumps filed on Thursday that was only available at the courthouse in Manhattan. Both sides have submitted witness lists to Justice Engoron in the run-up to trial, but the court has yet to post them publicly.

Navy admiral: It’ll ‘take years to recover’ from Tuberville blockade​

The more Tommy Tuberville claims his radical blockade is inconsequential, the more military leaders who know what they're talking about explain otherwise.


Sept. 15, 2023, 7:40 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

Sen. Tommy Tuberville has come up with a variety of defenses for his radical blockade on military nominees, but there’s one talking point the Alabama Republican keeps coming back to: His tactics don’t really matter.

Leaders throughout the armed forces keep trying to get the senator to understand that his blockade is doing real damage to his own country’s military, but Tuberville has spent months insisting that he simply doesn’t believe them. To hear the coach-turned-politician tell it, the jobs are being filled; the work is being done; and so his policy is entirely inconsequential.

But for those who actually know what they’re talking about, the problem isn’t just that the Alabaman is undermining the country now, it’s a problem made worse by the fact that the effects of his blockade will be felt for a long while.

Politico reported:

President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the Navy’s top officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, said it could take the service years to recover from the impacts of Sen. Tommy Tuberville‘s blockade of hundreds of senior military promotions. Franchetti told the Senate Armed Services Committee during her confirmation hearing Thursday that the impasse has created “a lot of uncertainty” for Navy families.

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“Just at the three-star level, it would take about three to four months just to move all the people around,” Franchetti said. “But it will take years to recover ... from the promotion delays that we would see.”

As for the current implications, The New York Times summarized matters this week in a straightforward way:

[Many senior positions will be] filled on an “acting” basis. But acting officials are transition figures — like substitute teachers in grade school. They cannot hire people to staff their new positions. They cannot move into the quarters that come with the job. They cannot impose any long-term vision on the military. The holds are cutting deep....

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At least some Republicans on Capitol Hill are noticing. Rep. Dan Crenshaw told Politico this week, in reference to Tuberville, “I’m hearing more and more that his actions are having worsening consequences.”

The Texan, a former Navy SEAL officer, added in a text message to allies that he’s “at a point where I’m going to tear apart (if asked) coach/Senator/non-veteran Tuberville for personally attacking service members who have spent almost 30 years serving our country.”

The top 10 reasons the GOP began a pointless impeachment inquiry​

Why would House Republicans launch an unnecessary, evidence-free impeachment inquiry? There are a variety of reasons — enough for a top 10 list.


Sept. 15, 2023, 12:06 PM CDT
By Steve Benen

When it comes to the House Republicans’ evidence-free impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, one obvious detail stands out: The stated reason for the inquiry doesn’t make any sense. In fact, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy came up with a relatively detailed pitch to justify the partisan move, and a Washington Post analysis found that the California Republican’s claims amounted to little more than “exaggerations, irrelevancies, and dishonesty.”

But that leads to a related question: If the stated rationale is wrong, why exactly did the House GOP leaders do this? As Politico reported, Donald Trump thinks he knows.

Former President Donald Trump has “no idea” whether Republicans will vote to impeach President Joe Biden. But he does have a theory on what motivated House Republicans to launch a Biden impeachment inquiry: revenge.

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“They did it to me,” Trump told Megyn Kelly. “And had they not done it to me, I think, and nobody officially said this, but I think had they not done it to me ... perhaps you wouldn’t have it being done to them.”

Of course, this doesn’t much help the former president’s partisan allies. On the contrary, Trump’s rhetoric suggested that the entire endeavor is inherently political and unrelated to actual wrongdoing. By chalking the inquiry up to revenge, the Republican was effectively bolstering the Democratic complaints.

But that’s not the only possible explanation. Consider the Top 10 Reasons House Republicans Launched An Unnecessary Impeachment Inquiry.

10. Some GOP true believers actually think Biden did something wrong. These members’ arguments have been discredited, and the lack of evidence after all of this time should offer them a rather dramatic hint, but some Republicans genuinely seem to believe Biden did something wrong, even if they’re not altogether sure what.
9. This is about satisfying the demands of the GOP base. A variety of congressional Republicans conceded months ago that they were feeling enormous pressure from party voters to at least try to impeach the president, regardless of merit. Now we’re seeing the results.
8. This is about the futile search for evidence. GOP officials have spent months desperately searching for incriminating information to be used against Biden. They’ve found nothing. Some party officials have said, however, that they’re hoping an impeachment inquiry could help justify itself by intensifying the search for evidence that doesn’t appear to exist.
7. This is about fundraising. Almost immediately after the start of the impeachment inquiry began, Republican officials started using the effort as the basis for fundraising appeals. Imagine that.
6. McCarthy lacked the strength to stop this. The House speaker effectively took impeachment off the table last fall. He committed to an authorization vote earlier this month. But the Republican leader couldn’t follow through on his own positions because he’s in too weak of a position to actually lead.
5. Trump is still helping call the shots. It seems the former president too often plays the role of shadow House speaker, and since he wants Biden to face an impeachment inquiry, it’s happening.
4. This is about discouraging the public from seeing Biden as innocent. CNN reported in early August that House Republicans had said privately that “if they don’t move forward with an impeachment inquiry now, it will create the impression that House Republicans have essentially cleared Biden of any wrongdoing.” A month later, here we are.
3. This is about the 2024 elections. Politico spoke to a senior House Republican this week who was quite candid, explaining that the party is hoping “the timing of when this information comes out of Oversight and Judiciary is such that it gets right up to the convention next year. So that it’s damaging to Joe Biden.”
2. This is about blurring the lines. It’s not exactly a secret that Trump, assuming he’s the Republicans’ presidential nominee, will compete in the general election as a scandal plagued, twice-impeached disgrace who’s been indicted four times across three jurisdictions. If the party can smear Biden, too, the hope is that voters might see both men as corrupt in roughly equal measure, reality be damned.
1. It’s obviously about payback. Oddly enough, Trump’s explanation is the accurate one. Republicans haven’t made much of an effort to hide the fact that they’re seeking revenge, and their transparency helps make plain what is obviously true.

False claims from GOP’s James Comer start to catch up with him​

It’s a problem that James Comer keeps making untrue claims about Joe Biden. The motivation behind the Republican's deceptions makes that problem worse.


Sept. 15, 2023, 9:30 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

As House Republicans move forward with their evidence-free impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden, a small handful of members will be taking the lead — both in the investigation and as the public faces of the partisan endeavor.

Among them is Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer. For the GOP, that isn’t good news.

The principal problem with the Kentucky Republican’s recent work is that Comer has failed spectacularly to uncover any evidence of wrongdoing against Biden, despite months of effort. He’s periodically made bold promises and issued hyped findings to great fanfare, but in each instance, Comer’s revelations have been embarrassing flops.

But there’s a related problem: Comer hasn’t just been failing, he’s also been lying.

Axios reported overnight, for example, that the Oversight Committee chairman “has repeatedly exaggerated and distorted the findings of his investigation into the Biden family.” The report added that the Republican congressman has “at times undermined his credibility” by “overstating his committee’s findings.”

A Washington Post analysis came to the same conclusion.

On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee chairman appeared on Newsmax for an interview about his committee’s efforts to evaluate the business activity of President Biden’s son, Hunter, and any possible connection to the president himself. Over the course of the interview, Comer made a number of claims that were unsupported by publicly available evidence, contradicted by other parties or obviously false.

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Both the Post and Axios reports are worth your time, and they go into more detail than I will here. The bottom line is unavoidable: Comer, in his zeal to smear the president, has simply pushed claims that are at odds with reality, and which crumble under scrutiny.

To be sure, the GOP lawmaker is overseeing a complex probe, and it’d be understandable if he occasionally flubbed a detail or two over the course of his many appearances in conservative media. But we’re not just talking about sporadic and incidental Comer misstatements.

Rather, at issue is the Republican’s willingness to repeatedly tell tales he ought to know aren’t true — about everything from banking records to the National Archives, Burisma to imagined code words, Devon Archer’s testimony to the circumstances surrounding Comer’s participation in the Archer interview. This week, the chairman’s detractors were able to discredit one of his claims by pointing to his own earlier rhetoric.

Comer started overhyping his findings a while ago, and his willingness to play fast and loose with the facts seems to be getting worse.

But nearly as important as the Republican’s dishonesty is his motivation. Comer seems painfully aware of the fact that he hasn’t been able to deliver a coherent case against the president, not because of a lack of effort, but because the evidence simply doesn’t support his partisan crusade.

And so, it appears the Oversight Committee chairman has embraced “alternative facts” — in part to justify his work, in part to besmirch a Democrat who doesn’t appear to have done anything wrong, and in part to satisfy his party’s demands.

As the impeachment inquiry process advances, and Comer takes center stage, it will be important to keep this rhetoric record in mind.

Ukraine: Village Liberated After Frontline Breakthrough​

HERE WE GO

Nico Hines​

World Editor
Published Sep. 15, 2023 6:39AM EDT

Annegret Hilse/Reuters​

The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces announced the retaking of Andriivka, nine miles south of Bakhmut in Donetsk, on Friday. The 3rd Assault Brigade said they had surrounded the Russian garrison and “practically liquidated the whole of [Russia’s] 72nd infantry brigade” in a “lightning operation.”

A brigade spokesman said retaking the village was a breakthrough to the south of Bakmut that would be “key to success in all further directions.” Bakhmut fell to the Russians in May when it was captured by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner forces. Ukraine’s army says it has gained 19 square miles around the city since the counteroffensive began in June.

Zelensky Will Visit Washington to Meet With Biden After U.N. Confab​

Martha Mercer​

Senior Editor
Published Sep. 15, 2023 6:17AM EDT

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters​

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will travel to Washington, D.C., next week after appearing in person at the U.N. General Assembly in New York City, sources told The New York Times. Zelensky is not expected to address Congress, as he did in December, the Times reports, but will meet with President Joe Biden at the White House and members of Congress in an attempt to secure further U.S. aid to Ukraine.

The Biden administration is aiming to get the necessary votes in Congress to push through $24 billion more in humanitarian and military aid over GOP opposition. The Times reports the administration is also close to a decision on whether to send long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) amid Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive against Russia.

Impeachment Inquiry Shows Kevin McCarthy Is a Hostage In His Own House

The House Speaker is living up to his last name, reviving a 21st century McCarthyism with lots of ominous sounding allegations about bank records and shell corporations delivered with a somber tone—but without any evidence to back up the alarming words.
He looks California cool under fire, but launching an impeachment inquiry is a desperation measure to keep the hostage takers in his own caucus from taking away his power.

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Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made his deal with the devil when he ceded sufficient clout to the rightest of the right-wing crazies to gain their votes after 15 humiliating ballots. That bill comes due now as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the Queen of the Extremists, puts down her marker: She would not vote to fund the government without an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

When MTG speaks, McCarthy listens. His job is to muster majorities for spending bills that will keep the government open beyond the Sept. 30 deadline. He has such a narrow margin that he can’t lose more than three or four votes, and MTG speaks for at least a dozen hardliners.

McCarthy has no choice but to do her bidding if he wants to keep his job. His deal with the devil includes a provision that any one member of his caucus has the power to force a vote on the House floor calling for his removal, a vote that would be more humiliating than the first one, and that he would likely lose.

“Impeachment is a fool’s errand for the party doing the impeaching.”

So, he chose the path of least resistance, alleging without evidence that Biden is guilty of “abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption”—charges that sound remarkably similar to what former President Donald Trump is contending with on the campaign trail, except the allegations against the former president are buttressed by 91 counts brought in four different jurisdictions.

Conversely, the allegations against Biden for allegedly profiting from his son’s influence peddling are buttressed by no evidence—just smears and wishful thinking on the part of Republicans.

“We will go wherever the evidence takes us,” McCarthy intoned before turning on his heels to avoid the barrage of questions from reporters.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

]e off a recall vote, doing just enough to keep the far-right at bay. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Almost exactly four years ago, McCarthy, then the minority leader, introduced a resolution assailing then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi for launching an impeachment inquiry into Trump by “unilateral decree of the Speaker” and without a full House vote.

Just days ago, on Sept. 1, McCarthy told Breitbart News, “To open an impeachment inquiry is a serious matter, and House Republicans would not take it lightly or use it for political purposes. The American people deserve to be heard on this matter through their elected representatives. That’s why, if we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House, and not through a declaration by one person.”

He’s “directing” three committee chairmen to begin an impeachment inquiry, which according to the Constitution can’t proceed without a House floor vote. He’s engaging in wordplay, giving the hardliners their language on impeachment and hoping the more moderate Republicans can find cover in this more limited scope.

McCarthy doesn’t have the votes to muster a floor majority—at least not yet—and Republicans are at each other’s throats with MTG holding government funding hostage to impeachment. She’s unconcerned that a vote for impeachment, should it occur, would almost certainly throw 18 Republican moderates overboard in districts Biden won.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kevin-mccarthy-learned-what-happens-when-you-dance-with-arsonists​

Impeachment is a fool’s errand for the party doing the impeaching. Trump didn’t “learn his lesson” after his first impeachment, as Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) predicted. A second impeachment also didn’t lead to a conviction, further emboldening Trump.

President Bill Clinton’s approval ratings soared into the 60s during his impeachment. Democrats gained seats in the 1998 midterm on the strength of voter backlash to what seemed like an overzealous prosecutor. A Republican-controlled Senate failed to muster even 50 percent, let alone the two-thirds majority needed to convict. Newt Gingrich, then the House Speaker, resigned soon after under a cloud of ethics violations.


Then-President Donald Trump and then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy walk toward Marine One.

Democrats were prepared for this eventuality. Borrowing a page from the Clinton war room, the White House has revved up its legal team and communications staff to cordon off its impeachment defense. An array of outside groups prepared to act as rapid response are in place. “Investigate the investigators,” a phrase now deployed by Republicans, originated with the Clinton team.

Minutes after McCarthy’s announcement, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), former chair of the DNC, was on cable news making the case that a dozen or so MAGA extremists in the House GOP caucus are “a fully owned subsidiary of the Trump campaign.” According to Wasserman-Schultz, they are “allowing Trump to hold our economy hostage and to potentially crash our economy.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kevin-mccarthys-only-weapon-is-his-willingness-to-be-humiliated

The more immediate hostage is McCarthy, whose goal is to stay in office no matter what. His impeachment “inquiry” is a lot like Trump imploring Ukraine’s president in 2019 to just announce an investigation into his potential rival, Joe Biden, and he would do the rest.

For no good reason other than petty intra-partisan politics, the government could run out of money and hard-won Republican seats in blue states like New York and elsewhere could be at risk—just to go through the motions of an inquiry that has no legitimacy and is likely to end badly for the GOP.

This is all political fun and games, except there’s real work to be done. The government runs out of money on Sept. 30 and disaster aid for wildfires and hurricanes and flooding are on the line, together with vital assistance to Ukraine.

Government shutdowns are losers for the economy, for the American people, and for the party that bears the most blame for putting the world’s greatest democracy through what amounts to a shakedown

I just wrapped up at Carrollton HS with Julian Lewis and his coach (who was also Trevor Lawrence’s HS coach).

Julian didn’t want to do video but the plan as of now is to run the interview as a podcast segment (unless they change their minds about that). Either way I’ll have a full story tomorrow and hopefully a full podcast — also recorded segments with his coach and Rivals analyst John Garcia Jr.

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Joe Biden’s brain isn’t working fine.

He doesn’t respond to questions in an appropriate fashion. His words aren’t diplomatically chosen. His thoughts don’t follow in logical order. And, no, he doesn’t remember what he’s just said — or even where he was on 9/11.

The reason that “73 percent are seriously concerned that his physical and mental health might not be adequate for another term” is that his physical and mental health are not adequate for another term.

He’s ancient, superannuated, fossilized, geriatric, enfeebled. He’s “up there,” he’s “getting on,” he’s “well-seasoned.” He’s an antique. It would be a massive, massive risk to reelect Joe Biden because, actuarially, there is a reasonable chance that he will die pretty soon.

I have friends in England who do not follow American politics — and who would certainly not agree with my politics if they did — who have texted me to ask if the guy is okay, given that he “looks like a skull.” Strangers notice it. Partisans notice it. Everyone notices it. The dividing line on this one is the willingness to say it aloud. If you have eyes and ears, you’ve seen and heard it. Joe Biden is too old to be president. Hell, Joe Biden is too old to be a greeter at Walmart. I don’t care if that’s rude or inconvenient to confirm. It’s true.

Or, to put it another way: Joe Biden is too old to be president. He’s too old to be president now, he’s too old to be president next year, he’s too old to be president in 2025. He’d be too old at his next inauguration, he’d be too old by the next set of midterms, he’d be too old when his second term wrapped up. He’s not vigorous or eloquent or diplomatic; he’s a rambling, angry, senile embarrassment. He can’t do the job at home, and he can’t do the job abroad. He can’t think, he can’t manage, he can’t talk. His judgment has always been poor, and he’s always been a terrible and dishonest person, and these flaws have been exacerbated by his age.

I have the column in hand, am currently editing but have to head to campus soon so I'll finish it from there. Just an update -- and hopefully not a misleading subject line this time!

Interviews today: Josh Henson, Zachariah Branch, Tahj Washington, QUINTEN JOYNER, Jarrett Kingston, Braylan Shelby, Domani Jackson, Jamil Muhammad, and Christian Roland-Wallace.

California To Drop 'Medical Misinformation' Law After Judge Blasts 'Dramatic Examples'​

California has quietly announced it's ditching Gov. Gavin Newsom's draconian 'Covid-19 medical misinformation' law, which would threaten the licenses of doctors who don't agree with "scientific consensus" on various issues.



The law, AB 2098, was signed into law by Newsom last year. In response, five doctors alleged it to be unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the US constitution.

New Allegation About Shady Meeting Joe Biden Had With Hunter Biz Associates - at VP Residence​

Joe Biden has said for years that he did not talk with his son Hunter about "his" business. As we've shown with a boatload of evidence over the years, that was not true. Democrats and some in the media like to play this "there's no evidence game." Except, of course, for the emails, texts, phone calls, meetings, and witness statements that all relate to or involve Joe.

Democrats are having trouble dealing with the evidence that has already come out, as we noted. They sent out a "talking points" memo to the media on Wednesday, calling on them to "ramp up the scrutiny" against the Republicans over the impeachment inquiry and act like there isn't any evidence.

But now there's another shady allegation about Joe Biden that the Democrats are going to have to struggle to explain away.

Watch McCarthy patiently educate a stupid person, typical dolt:

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With the initial 2026 rankings this week, here are 10 teams that have a jumpstart:

We were just notified. I meet with Julian Lewis in three hours, so I’m getting ready for that in the meantime.