Judge Shoots Down Trump’s Attempt at Trial Delay in 9 Words​

Jose Pagliery​

Political Investigations Reporter
Updated Sep. 06, 2023 11:56AM EDT / Published Sep. 06, 2023 11:49AM EDT



A New York judge—unmoved by the incessant pleas from Donald Trump’s legal team to delay trial—made quick work of the former president’s last-minute request Tuesday night to push back his first big upcoming trial for bank and tax fraud.

On Wednesday morning, Justice Arthur F. Engoron pulled out a pen and scribbled a nine-word remark at the bottom of the draft order that Trump’s lawyers wanted him to sign, rejecting it outright. “Decline to sign; Defendants’ arguments are completely without merit,” Engoron wrote, signing it with his trademark ligature “Æ.” The Trump family is now less than four weeks away from the start of a monumental civil trial in which AG Letitia James seeks to siphon at least $250 million away from the Trump Organization over accusations that it routinely inflated asset values and lied on official paperwork.

Enough! Advertisers and Governments Must Dump Elon Musk.​

The world’s richest man scapegoated the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for costing his business money. There’s a word for that.

​

David Rothkopf​

Published Sep. 06, 2023 4:47AM EDT
OPINION
We’ve seen enough, Elon Musk. You are a bad guy.

You’re not merely eccentric. You’re not just a bullshit artist. You don’t just play footsie with authoritarians and thugs worldwide. You are much more than that.

You’re a menace. And while it is certainly your right to be an asshole, it is not your right to put others at risk. Further, you are not entitled to the support of government or private businesses when you undermine their interests, attack their values, or aid and abet others who are dangerous or worse.

Indeed, those governments and businesses—and the private individuals who are their constituents and consumers—must actively use everything in their power to stop you from doing greater damage.

Twitter has suffered massive advertising losses because of your toxic cocktail of blending really dumb business decisions with other decisions meant to support your racist, anti-democratic, sometimes infantile political and personal agendas.

Indeed, everything we need to know about your character was revealed over this past weekend, when you sought to blame those losses on someone else—and that you chose to do so in a way that played to the lowest impulses of an antisemitic mob.

It was one of your ugliest displays. And that is saying something.

“It won’t be easy to get the world to divest from you. You are, after all, the world’s richest man.”

As Ben Samuels in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz put it, “After helping #BanTheADL trend worldwide over the weekend, replete with posts riddled with antisemitic conspiracy theories and smears, the world’s richest man continued his attacks on the Jewish anti-discrimination organization while threatening legal action.”

You blamed the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for antisemitism on Twitter because, wait for it, they complained about antisemitism on Twitter.

Your posts taking issue with their stance included amplifying views that called the ADL “pro-Hitler.” You then blamed the nearly two-thirds fall in Twitter ad revenues “primarily” on the ADL, and threatened to sue them for “defamation.”

Go for it, Elon. The process of discovery about you, your past, your associations, and the real causes of gutting of the value of your company would be priceless.

You say you are not an antisemite, Elon, but we know better. Because one who amplifies antisemites, promotes grotesque and unfounded antisemitic conspiracy theories and tropes, and then actually seeks to blame the Jews for the attacks he leads against them is, by any definition, not just an antisemite but among the most dangerous forms of that repugnant breed.

As disgusting a display as your weekend assault on the ADL was, please make no mistake, Elon, the reasons for taking action against you are not limited to your antisemitism or your support of antisemites. Indeed, in just the past week, a wave of other stories showed in greater detail the scope and nature of the damage you are doing.

On Sept. 1, a story appeared in The Washington Post with the self-explanatory headline, “Musk’s new Twitter policies helped spread Russian propaganda.” It details how a study by the European Commission showed how—despite your pledges to the contrary—Twitter policies “played a major role in allowing Russian propaganda about Ukraine to reach more people than before the war began.”

We should not be surprised, of course. You have boasted about how close you are to Vladimir Putin, who has used you like a puppet. And, of course, we know that even though the U.S. government subsidized your provision of Starlink services to Ukraine, you then unilaterally decided to deny use of the service to Ukraine to support critical operations in defense of Russia’s war of unprovoked aggression.

Equally disturbing have been recent revelations about Twitter activities in Saudi Arabia. Admittedly, in one of those stories, Twitter’s actions to support Saudi efforts to “commit grave human rights abuses against its users” came prior to your takeover of the company. However, not only did you proceed to buy the company anyway—and do so with Saudi backing—as the situation for Twitter critics of the Saudi regime has gotten worse, you have remained steadfastly silent about it. When one Twitter user was sentenced to death for his tweets, you, the self-anointed champion of free speech, kept your mouth shut. (Which is also nothing new, supporting regimes that crack down on free speech that has actually become a signature characteristic of Musk-era Twitter.)

It won’t be easy to get the world to divest from you. You are, after all, the world’s richest man.

You can, as you have demonstrated, flush billions of dollars down the toilet on a whim. But the rest of us still have some clout left, too, and you have made it clear that it is time to mobilize our influence and utilize the mechanisms at our disposal to stop you before you do even greater harm.

It is time for the United States and other like-minded governments to stop subsidizing your ventures. It is time for advertisers to recognize that every dollar they give you to support the site formerly known as Twitter goes to amplify the views of hate-mongers, racists, and despots.

It is time for consumers to reject advertisers who continue to support you.

It is also time for all of us who invested in Twitter long before you did—who created the content and the community that are the only true valued assets the company has—to use the platform to speak the truth about you even as we seek other social media homes that will maintain the kind of basic community values that seem to value our efforts as contributors and offer some protections from the repulsive mob you, Elon, seem so eager to attract and elevate.

Safe to say....ELITE SPEED..

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Trump was warned that FBI could raid Mar-a-Lago months ahead of time, lawyer's notes show​

Trump attorney Evan Corcoran saved his recollections in a series of voice memos.

ByKatherine Faulders and Mike Levine
September 6, 2023, 2:46 PM




Mark Meadows contradicts Trump’s defense in classified documents case: Sources
Sources tell ABC News that former President Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Me...Read More

In May of last year, shortly after the Justice Department issued a subpoena to former President Donald Trump for all classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump's then-lead attorney on the matter, Evan Corcoran, warned the former president in person, at Mar-a-Lago, that not only did Trump have to fully comply with the subpoena, but that the FBI might search the estate if he didn't, according to Corcoran's audio notes following the conversation.

Only minutes later, during a pool-side chat away from Trump, Corcoran got his own warning from another Trump attorney: If you push Trump to comply with the subpoena, "he's just going to go ballistic," Corcoran recalled.

Corcoran's recollections, captured in a series of voice memos he made on his phone the next day, help illuminate Trump's alleged efforts to defy a federal grand jury subpoena, and appear to shed more light on his frame of mind when he allegedly launched what prosecutors say was a criminal conspiracy to hide classified documents from both the FBI and Corcoran, his own attorney.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him and has denied any wrongdoing.

The recordings, which have become a key piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith's classified documents case against Trump, contain information that was later described in Smith's publicly released indictment and in media reports -- but many of the details in them have never been made public.

ABC News has reviewed copies of transcripts of the recordings, which appear to show the way Trump allegedly deceived his own attorney, and how classified documents, according to prosecutors, ended up at Mar-a-Lago in the first place.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, responding to the development, told ABC News, "The attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest and most fundamental principles in our legal system, and its primary purpose is to promote the rule of law. Whether attorneys' notes are detailed or not makes no difference -- these notes reflect the legal opinions and thoughts of the lawyer, not the client."

Cheung added that Trump "offered full cooperation with DOJ, and told the key DOJ official, in person, 'Anything you need from us, just let us know.'"

A spokesperson for the special counsel's office declined to comment to ABC News. Corcoran did not immediately return ABC News' request for comment.

'Complying with that subpoena'​

When Corcoran joined Trump's legal team in April last year, the FBI had already launched a criminal investigation into Trump's handling of classified information. Nearly 200 classified documents had been found in 15 boxes that Trump reluctantly returned to the National Archives "after months of demands," as the indictment stated.

But Justice Department officials believed Trump was holding onto even more classified documents in other boxes at Mar-a-Lago and refusing to return them -- so on May 11, 2022, the Justice Department issued a federal grand jury subpoena demanding the return of any and all classified documents.

Corcoran and another Trump attorney, Jennifer Little, flew to Florida to meet with Trump. "The next step was to speak with the former president about complying with that subpoena," Corcoran recalled in a voice memo the next day.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/timeline-...dling-classified-documents/story?id=101768329
But while sitting together in Trump's office, in front of a Norman Rockwell-style painting depicting Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton and Trump playing poker, Trump, according to Corcoran's notes, wanted to discuss something else first: how he was being unfairly targeted.

As Corcoran later recalled in his recordings, Trump continuously wandered off to topics unrelated to the subpoena -- Hillary Clinton, "the great things" he's done for the country, and his big lead in the polls in the run-up to the 2024 Republican presidential primary race that Trump would officially join in November. But Corcoran and Little "kept returning to the boxes," according to the transcripts.

Corcoran wanted Trump to understand "we were there to discuss responding to the subpoena," Corcoran said in the memos.

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21-3 OR at halftime
Cordeiro 9/15 62yrds
SJS has rushed for 46yrds

Mar-a-Lago IT Worker Strikes Deal to Flip on Trump: Ex-Lawyer​

AJ McDougall​

Breaking News Reporter
Published Sep. 06, 2023 8:17PM EDT



The Mar-a-Lago information technology worker identified as “Trump Employee 4” in the classified documents case against Donald Trump has struck a deal to cooperate with federal prosecutors, his former attorney revealed in a court filing on Tuesday. The employee, whose real name has been confirmed by multiple outlets to be Yuscil Taveras, agreed to the deal with Jack Smith’s office after the special counsel threatened to prosecute him for lying to a grand jury.

Taveras, a key witness in the case, falsely told the grand jury weighing the case that he could not recall having had any conversations about purging the Florida property’s security logs. The IT worker admitted he’d lied after dumping his MAGA-linked lawyer, Stanley Woodward, for another attorney offered up by the federal defender’s office in Washington.

Woodward was the attorney whose Tuesday filing revealed Taveras’ deal. It was previously reported by prosecutors last month that Taveras had flipped on his former boss, but it was not clear at the time whether he might still face perjury charges. The revelation of the deal with Smith erases that possibility.

Mar-a-Lago IT Worker Strikes Deal to Flip on Trump: Ex-Lawyer​

AJ McDougall​

Breaking News Reporter
Published Sep. 06, 2023 8:17PM EDT



The Mar-a-Lago information technology worker identified as “Trump Employee 4” in the classified documents case against Donald Trump has struck a deal to cooperate with federal prosecutors, his former attorney revealed in a court filing on Tuesday. The employee, whose real name has been confirmed by multiple outlets to be Yuscil Taveras, agreed to the deal with Jack Smith’s office after the special counsel threatened to prosecute him for lying to a grand jury.

Taveras, a key witness in the case, falsely told the grand jury weighing the case that he could not recall having had any conversations about purging the Florida property’s security logs. The IT worker admitted he’d lied after dumping his MAGA-linked lawyer, Stanley Woodward, for another attorney offered up by the federal defender’s office in Washington.

Woodward was the attorney whose Tuesday filing revealed Taveras’ deal. It was previously reported by prosecutors last month that Taveras had flipped on his former boss, but it was not clear at the time whether he might still face perjury charges. The revelation of the deal with Smith erases that possibility.

Georgia Prosecutors Land a Significant Win in Trump Case​

A judge on Wednesday denied Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell’s attempts to sever their cases.

​

Justin Rohrlich​

Reporter
Updated Sep. 06, 2023 4:28PM EDT / Published Sep. 06, 2023 2:31PM EDT

Fulton County Jail​

A judge in Georgia on Wednesday denied motions from two co-defendants to sever their cases from one another in the sprawling racketeering prosecution against Donald Trump.

Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee handed down the decision after more than 90 minutes of arguments from prosecutors and defense counsel. The ruling is a win for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and means Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell will be tried together, beginning Oct. 23.

Being yoked to Powell is a potential “nightmare scenario” for Chesebro, according to former Department of Defense special counsel Ryan Goodman. But the pair are now “hurtling forward” toward trial, McAfee said as he set new deadlines and scheduling orders.

Chesebro is accused of masterminding the “crazy” fake electors scheme to keep Trump in the Oval Office after the president lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. He recently invoked his constitutional right to a speedy trial, which, as one former federal prosecutor told The Daily Beast, appeared to be a risky attempt to catch Willis unprepared.

Powell quickly followed suit, aping Chesebro’s motion to get on with things forthwith. Willis didn’t blink, forging ahead and securing a trial date just a month-and-change away.

Since then, Chesebro has done his best to sever his case from Powell, who has been called “a complete nut,” a “lunatic,” and “a ****ing nutcase.” The so-called Kraken lawyer is accused of being involved in a breach of voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia—a component of the alleged criminal enterprise that Chesebro’s attorneys say had nothing to do with him.

In court on Wednesday, Chesebro’s attorney asked McAfee why Chesebro should “have to deal with a jury who’s going to sit there for weeks, if not months, and listen to all of this evidence related to Coffee County and Ms. Powell?”

“He’s never been there. He’s never met Ms. Powell. He’s never emailed, texted, or called her; he’s never spoken with her, directly or indirectly.”

Powell’s legal team also tried to separate their client from Chesebro, telling the judge that the two never overlapped during Trump’s audacious but ultimately doomed attempt to cling to power.

“My client doesn’t know Mr. Chesebro, has never met him, has never really spoken with him,” Powell’s co-counsel insisted. “There’s no emails, or documents, or anything else [between them]. What he’s accused of has absolutely nothing to do with Ms. Powell at all.”

Prosecutors, however, argued that Chesebro, Powell, Trump, and their 16 other co-defendants are all part of one massive conspiracy, hence the RICO charges they now face together. Further, conducting multiple parallel trials would create severe logistical issues. As it stands, Fulton County prosecutors say trying all 19 defendants will take at least four months, not including jury selection. The state will call more than 150 individual witnesses, they told McAfee on Wednesday.

In a post-hearing wrap-up on MSNBC, former federal prosecutor Harry Litman discussed the defense teams’ unsuccessful attempt to recast the underlying conspiracy allegations as pertaining to a hodgepodge of wholly separate actions.

“Basically the defense tried to re-characterize this single RICO case as multiple conspiracies, some of which apply to some and others to others,” Litman said. “And the state came back and the judge accepted the position, no, this is a single sprawling case and therefore the law and evidence are the same.”

Rule #1 that I learned as a young litigator: always cite cases with rulings that are similar to the one you are asking for. https://t.co/0p0KDZxEPL
— Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) September 6, 2023

Click to expand...

Still, Chesebro’s team tried and tried again to create as much space as possible between their client and Powell, attempting to paint a picture of a man they said “is not a politician,” and that until six or seven months ago, “was probably unknown to 99.9999 percent of the population... And so now to force him to sit here in a trial where there’s evidence of all these other things, it’s just not fair.”

McAfee, for his part, dashed those hopes in a single sentence.

“Based on what’s been presented today,” he said, “I am not finding that severance from Mr. Chesebro or Ms. Powell is necessary to achieve a fair determination of the guilt or innocence for either defendant.”

While Chesebro and Powell are now inextricably entwined, it remains to be seen if all 19 co-defendants will stand trial together in October. Prosecutors are set to brief McAfee on the issue next week.

Washington Post​

A legal theory gaining traction argues that Donald Trump’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection disqualify him from being president​

By Maegan Vazquez
Updated September 5, 2023 at 1:28 p.m. EDT|
Published September 5, 2023 at 6:42 a.m. EDT

Before any votes are cast in the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump could face a legal battle on multiple fronts over whether he even has the right to be on the ballot. Some scholars and liberal groups are stepping up efforts to disqualify the former president based on a post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment.

They argue that under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Trump is ineligible for the presidency because he took the oath of office and subsequently “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies” during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Now, election officials around the country are considering how to navigate the issue, which could be decided on a state-by-state basis. The issue has already come to the fore in states including Arizona, Michigan and New Hampshire.

Some nonprofits — including Free Speech For People and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) — are moving forward with a push to get states on board with their argument and are preparing lawsuits as the Republican presidential primaries near.

What is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment?​

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states:
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

How could it be used to disqualify Trump?​

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — sometimes referred to as the disqualification clause — was ratified following the Civil War, when Southern states continued to send individuals to Congress who had held roles in the Confederacy or otherwise supported it. Applied specifically to that time period, Section 3 was meant to bar those individuals from these federal positions of power.

Some legal experts argue that Section 3 applies today with the same force that it did when it was ratified — much like the many provisions in the Constitution that arose from specific historical circumstances.

Noah Bookbinder, president and CEO of CREW, said Section 3 “sets up this qualification that is in many ways no different than the qualification that you have to be 35 years old to be president and to be a natural-born citizen.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But on Monday, Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, that the use of the 14th Amendment to disqualify him from the ballot is a “trick” akin to election interference.

Opponents of using the 14th Amendment against Trump argue that state election officials do not have the authority to bar candidates. They also contend that Trump did not engage in an “insurrection,” that Section 3 should not apply to a candidate before an election and that an act of Congress is needed to enforce Section 3.

Legal scholars have also raised questions about whether a former president who has never served in another office counts as an “officer” under the clause.

Where has this become an issue?​

n Arizona, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) has said that he does not have the authority to bar Trump from the ballot, but that the question about Trump’s eligibility is not settled.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said when asked about Trump and the 14th Amendment that voters “deserve the right to decide elections.”

Last week in Florida, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s candidacy under the 14th Amendment. The judge did not determine the 14th Amendment’s applicability in Trump’s case but said the plaintiffs who brought it forward lacked standing to bring the suit.

Who is talking about this issue?​

The legal theory about the 14th Amendment disqualifying Trump recently gained more traction after retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative, and Laurence Tribe, a liberal constitutional lawyer, co-wrote a piece in August for the Atlantic magazine outlining how Section 3 can be applied to the former president.

In the traditionally first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire, Secretary of State David Scanlan (R) has asked the state’s attorney general to examine the issue and its potential applicability in the upcoming presidential election.

In the battleground state of Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) recently said “there are valid legal arguments being made” for keeping the former president off the ballot and that it’s something she is discussing with election officials in other states. In a recent interview with MSNBC, she said states will “likely need to act in concert, if we act at all” regarding the constitutional challenges and predicted the issue will ultimately be settled in courts.

They cited a soon-to-be-published University of Pennsylvania Law Review piece written by William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen — two conservative constitutional scholars affiliated with the Federalist Society. The scholars conclude in their 126-page report that the 14th Amendment “disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 presidential election.”

The legal theory has also spurred discussion on the political stage.

Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson brought the issue up during the first GOP presidential debate in August.

“More people are understanding the importance of that, including conservative legal scholars, who say [Trump] may be disqualified under the 14th Amendment from being president again as a result of the insurrection,” Hutchinson said.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who served as the lead impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment, told MSNBC on Sunday, “By the clear terms of the 14th Amendment, [Trump] should be disqualified from holding office.”

Schiff, who is running for U.S. Senate in California, also emphasized that “this will be tested when a secretary of state either refuses to put him on the ballot or puts him on the ballot and is challenged … I would imagine it will go up to the Supreme Court.”

​

“We need responsible leaders to lead, to stop inflaming hatred and to step back from the brink before it's too late,” the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO said on Tuesday night.

Justin Baragona​

Senior Media Reporter
Updated Sep. 06, 2023 4:57PM EDT / Published Sep. 05, 2023 8:21PM EDT



Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called out Elon Musk on Tuesday night, saying it was “profoundly disturbing” that the Twitter/X owner was boosting the antisemitic #BanTheADL campaign while simultaneously contemplating a “frivolous lawsuit” against the civil rights group.

Greenblatt’s direct response to Musk comes after the “free speech absolutist” spent the past few days pondering whether to boot the ADL from the site formerly known as Twitter, blaming the organization for advertisers fleeing his struggling social media platform, and then threatening to sue the Jewish civil liberties group for defamation.

“To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League… oh the irony!” Musk wrote on Monday.

Musk, meanwhile, has also continued to actively engage with the hard-right pundits and provocateurs who initially launched the campaign to ban the organization from X, including an antisemitic YouTuber who is associated with white nationalists Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer.

“It is profoundly disturbing that Elon Musk spent the weekend engaging with a highly toxic, antisemitic campaign on his platform–a campaign started by an unrepentant bigot that then was heavily promoted by individuals such as white supremacist Nick Fuentes, Christian nationalist Andrew Torba, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and others,” Greenblatt said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Finally, we saw the campaign manifest in the real world when masked men marched in Florida on Saturday brazenly waving flags adorned with swastikas and chanting ‘Ban the ADL.’”

Over the weekend, dozens of Nazi-saluting white supremacists marched through the streets of Orlando, Florida, complete with flags emblazoned with swastikas. A separate group showed up at the entrance of Disney World with pro-Hitler signs and Nazi paraphernalia.

Greenblatt added that the ADL’s concern goes further than Musk’s threatened litigation, pointing to the rise of antisemitic attacks across the United States by linking to a map that details the nearly 4,000 incidents of harassment, violence and vandalism that occurred last year.

“But to be clear, the real issue is neither ADL nor the threat of a frivolous lawsuit,” he wrote in his statement. “This urgent matter is the safety of the Jewish people in the face of increasing, intensifying antisemitism. Musk is engaging with and elevating these antisemites at a time when ADL is tracking a surge of bomb threats and swatting attacks of synagogues and Jewish institutions, dramatic levels of antisemitic propaganda being littered throughout Jewish and non-Jewish residential communities, and extremists marching openly through the streets in Nazi gear. All of this is happening in a context of the highest number of antisemitic incidents that ADL has tracked in more than 40 years–and just two weeks away from the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.”

Greenblatt concluded: “And so, this behavior is not just alarming nor reckless. It is flat out dangerous and deeply irresponsible. We need responsible leaders to lead, to stop inflaming hatred and to step back from the brink before it’s too late.”

Twitter sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate in July, claiming the non-profit group that studies misinformation on social media was “actively working to prevent free expression” by reporting the dramatic rise in hate speech on the platform under Musk’s stewardship. Musk added that the CCDH was trying to hurt his site’s advertising business, which has plummeted since Musk purchased Twitter over concerns with content moderation and the billionaire’s own erratic behavior.

The Tesla CEO has since taken issue with the ADL for similarly reporting that there’s been “both an increase in antisemitic content on the platform and a decrease in the moderation of antisemitic posts,” claiming that the group’s claims are responsible for the loss of at least half of Twitter’s value.

A representative for Twitter/X did not respond to a request for comment.

Harris says Trump shouldn’t be an exception for Jan. 6 accountability​

BY CHRIS MEGERIAN
Updated 8:23 AM CDT, September 6, 2023

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that those responsible for the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the ensuing violence at the U.S Capitol must be held accountable — even if that means Donald Trump.

“Let the evidence, the facts, take it where it may,” Harris said in an interview with The Associated Press in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she was attending a regional summit.

Federal prosecutors have indicted Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, for his efforts to cling to power in 2020. The former president also has been charged in Georgia in a scheme to subvert the will of voters who elected Democrat Joe Biden instead of giving Trump a second term.

“I spent the majority of my career as a prosecutor,” said Harris, who served as California’s attorney general before moving to Washington as a U.S. senator. “I believe that people should be held accountable under the law. And when they break the law, there should be accountability.”

The White House has been circumspect in addressing the issue of criminal charges against Trump, who has pleaded not guilty, to avoid any whiff of political meddling in the work of prosecutors, particularly as Biden seeks a second term in 2024. But both Biden and Harris have been outspoken about what they view as the very real danger to American democracy the aftermath of the 2020 election exposed.

“Democracies are very fragile,” the vice president said in the AP interview. “They will only be as strong as our willingness to fight for it.”



The president’s absence disappointed some, but the White House emphasized that it remained committed to the region, which Harris reiterated in her interview.

“We as Americans, I believe, have a very significant interest, both in terms of our security but also our prosperity, today and in the future, in developing and strengthening these relationships,” she said.

Southeast Asia is a critical arena for the rivalry between the U.S. and China, particularly when it comes to the South China Sea. One-third of global shipping traverses its waters.

Beijing recently released a new government map that emphasizes its disputed territorial claims to the sea.

“It’s a violation of the law. And that’s where I put that map,” Harris told the AP.

ASEAN has struggled to make progress on issues such as the military coup in Myanmar, but Harris said the organization “absolutely” remains a critical forum.

“The fact that so many leaders are convening in this one place at the same time to address some of the biggest challenges facing our world is a sign of strength of both the commitment that each nation has to the coalition and the potential for collaboration,” she said.

Harris sounded a strong warning about reports that Russia was talking with North Korea about obtaining weapons for its invasion of Ukraine, calling the possible alliance “ill-advised.”

“Russia has been levied a strategic failure,” she said. ”Their aggressive, unprovoked actions in Ukraine have resulted in a situation where the aura and myth of the Russian military has now been dispelled.”

Harris dismissed concerns about Biden’s age, 80, even though he’s widely seen as too old for office. A recent AP/NORC poll showed that 77% of Americans and 69% of Democrats think he’s too old for a second term.

Harris is next in line to the presidency, a position that increased scrutiny of her as she serves with a president who would be 86 at the end of a potential second term. Some Republican presidential hopefuls claim that a vote for Biden would really end up being a vote for Harris — and not in a good way.

“I see him every day. A substantial amount of time we spend together is in the Oval Office, where I see how his ability to understand issues and weave through complex issues in a way that no one else can to make smart and important decisions on behalf of the American people have played out,” she said. “And so I will say to you that I think the American people ultimately want to know that their president delivers. And Joe Biden delivers.”

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I imagine he will become a major priority moving forward. Cole took an unofficial visit last month and expressed the desire to return for an OV. There is a window for OVs the last week of July.

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What say you...good or bad decision?

Who owns the West?​

Increasingly, land is shifting into the hands of billionaires.​

Jonathan ThompsonAug. 29, 2023From the print edition

Earlier this year, several Western states considered legislation that would ban or restrict foreign ownership of land, particularly agricultural parcels. While some proposed bills, including California’s, involved blanket restrictions, most sought to curtail ownership by foreign “adversaries,” mainly China, but also Iran, Venezuela and North Korea — even Saudi Arabia.

The reasoning behind this varies. Some lawmakers claim to be concerned about food security, while others are more candid about their fear of “foreigners” — especially Asian people — controlling the nation’s land. Still others say they’re worried about corporate consolidation of farmland.

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, meanwhile, worries that foreign investors will drive up the price of farmland, squeezing young Americans out of the market. That may be the most legitimate concern overall, though Chinese investors — who own just 62,000 acres of agricultural land in Western states — are less land-hungry than billionaires, not all of whom hail from other countries: Ohio-born Ted Turner, for example, owns almost 1.1 million acres in New Mexico, or nearly 3% of the state’s private land.

This got us to wondering: Who really owns the West?

THIS SAMPLING OF FOREIGN OWNERSHIP comes from Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act reporting for 2021. Companies or parcels may have changed hands since then. At the end of 2021, foreign entities or individuals held a “significant interest” in some 10.16 million acres, not counting lease-holdings, in the Western U.S.

Der Kowboys? Germany-affiliated Las Conchas Ranch Corp. owned 134,257 acres in San Miguel County, New Mexico, land of sprawling spreads, at the end of 2021, but does not appear as an owner on current county records.

Hong Kong-owned NV Big Springs Inc. holds an interest in 108,000 acres in Elko County, Nevada. Petan Company of Nevada, registered as a foreign business, owns almost 100,000 acres in the county, and the Ruby Land & Cattle Co., with an unknown partner, owns just over 180,000 acres.

Logging for Life Insurance: Companies affiliated with Canada-based John Hancock Life Insurance own more than 660,000 acres of forestland in Washington, Oregon and California, including a 97,492-acre parcel in King County, Washington, with an estimated value of $197.7 million.

The United Kingdom-based Hondo Company owns 97,000 acres in New Mexico’s Lincoln County and another 87,000 acres in Chaves, Otero and Eddy counties.

Chino Mining, based in Japan, owns 90,953 acres of pasture in Grant County, New Mexico, plus 16,335 acres in neighboring Luna County and a total of 129,417 acres in Nevada.

Twenty Six Ranch Inc. (Virgin Islands-based) owns 79,199 acres in Elko County, Nevada, plus an additional 50,218 acres in other Nevada counties.

Canada-based Barrick Goldstrike Mines Inc. owns 72,440 acres, mostly classified as “other agricultural” land, in Nevada’s Elko County.

Paloma Investment Ltd. Partnership, based in Switzerland, owns 67,690 acres of “crop” and “other non-ag” land in Maricopa County, Arizona.

U.K.-based Atlantic Richfield Company and its subsidiary Arco Environmental Remediation own nearly 10,000 acres in New Mexico, Washington and California. This spring, it snagged another 1,000 acres of land in and around Rico, Colorado.

The Switzerland-based Butte Rock Ranches owns 5,879 acres in Montrose and Gunnison counties, Colorado.



LATTER-DAY LANDOWNERS
In 2021, a company called Farmland Reserve outbid another landholding company to purchase 18,000 acres of farmland in southeastern Washington for $210 million. It might not have elicited much notice, except that Farmland Reserve is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and billionaire Bill Gates made the losing bid.
Both Gates and the church have been amassing acreage lately. Gates usually makes top-landowners lists, but the church is way ahead in terms of how much it owns nationwide. In 2020, Truth and Transparency found that church-affiliated entities owned at least 1.7 million acres across the U.S.; more recent analyses peg the acreage at 2.3 million — making it the nation’s second-largest private landowner. This land includes the grounds of temples, stake houses and other institutional buildings, but also farm and ranch land and commercial properties, most of which are held by subsidiaries.

The church’s sizable farmland holdings in the Northwest are mostly operated by AgriNorthwest, a subsidiary of Farmland Reserve, which is a subsidiary of AgReserves. The Church’s Property Reserves, City Creek Reserves and Suburban Land Reserves together hold 167 parcels in Maricopa County, Arizona, and 187 parcels in Salt Lake County, Utah, including a big chunk of downtown Salt Lake City.

COUNTRIES WITH WESTERN HOLDINGS

CANADA: 1.66 million acres. Much of this is in the form of mining, oil and gas and timber properties.

UNITED KINGDOM: 908,615 acres. That includes timber properties in the Northwest and Kennecott Utah Copper Corp’s 42,000 acres in Salt Lake County, Utah, and Moffat County, Colorado.

NETHERLANDS: 571,417 acres, including more than 100,000 acres in Washington, and 30,000 acres of sugar-growing land in Hawaii.

JAPAN: 436,907 acres, including orchards in Oregon, coffee-growing acreage in Hawaii and properties in Colorado and Washington.

LUXEMBOURG: 359,000 acres. Includes timberland in Oregon, Washington and California and resort property in Arizona and New Mexico.

MEXICO: 307,139 acres. Gents Cattle Co. holds acreage in New Mexico and mining giant Asarco owns 42,370 acres in Montana, Idaho, Colorado and Arizona.

BELGIUM: 227,621 acres. Belgium affiliated firms own more than 183,000 acres in Garfield, Rosebud and Big Horn Counties, Montana.

FRANCE: 120,000 acres, scattered across the West, including vineyards in New Mexico, California and Oregon and energy related-holdings in California.

CHINA: 62,000 acres, including 37,453 acres in Utah via Murphy Brown LLC — aka Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor — acquired by a China-based investment group in 2013.

EGYPT: 18,593 acres. Companies include Arizona Apple Orchards Inc. and Hualapai Valley Farm, also in Arizona.

SAUDI ARABIA: 5,000 acres. Fondomonte Arizona owns 147 acres in La Paz County, Arizona, where it grows alfalfa and ships the hay back to the Middle East to feed dairy cattle.

STATE OF PALESTINE: 11,420 acres.Nordic Crystal Falls’ acreage is in Stevens County, Washington.

NEPAL: 5,289 acres.This land is all held by Kamala Lama Sherpa in Sanders and Glacier counties, Montana.

SOURCES: USDA’s Farm Service Agency, Land Report, Bloomberg, San Miguel County Assessor, Elko County Assessor, Maricopa County Assessor, Salt Lake County Assessor, Weber County Assessor, Truth and Transparency, Widows Mite, Open Corporates, Turner Enterprises, Kroenke Ranches.
Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News. He is the author of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands.

The emails confirm David Weiss and his top deputies were fed the false New York Times story — which raises the question: Which FBI agent fed the Times the lies?

In yet another example of how corrupt the FBI is, an exclusive report from Margot Cleveland over at The Federalist has exposed how the bureau laundered lies about Biden family corruption directly to David Weiss' office.

The revelation comes from emails obtained by The Heritage Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act request. The contents contain proof that the FBI fed lies about the origins of the now infamous FD-1023 form implicating the Biden family in a bribery scheme to The New York Times. The FBI Office of Public Affairs National Press Office then forwarded the Times' false reporting to various officials surrounding Weiss, who then passed it on directly on to him.

“Ladies, here you have attached the NYT’s story ‘Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden’ which posted a bit ago. Link here,” a Dec. 11, 2020, 6:44 p.m. email from the FBI Office of Public Affairs’ National Press Office read.

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The names of the two email recipients were redacted. But the “(PG) (FBI)” and “(BA) (FBI)” coding suggests the National Press Office had forwarded the Times’ article, which spun evidence obtained by the Pittsburgh office as originating from Giuliani disinformation, to the Pittsburgh FBI office and the Baltimore FBI office — which provided support for the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.

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Within two hours of the FBI’s National Press Office sharing the false narrative about evidence of Biden family corruption, the link had been forwarded to a variety of Baltimore FBI agents, from there to Weiss’s top deputies Lesley Wolf and Shawn Weede, and further on by Weede to fellow Assistant U.S. Attorney Shannon Hanson and Weiss. Weiss himself then forwarded the Times article to another member of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, whose name was redacted in the FOIA-provided documents.

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Arguments over 14th Amendment, eligibility get Trump’s attention​

I won’t pretend to know what’ll happen when it comes to Trump and the 14th Amendment, but it’s of interest that the controversy finally has his attention.


Sept. 5, 2023, 2:33 PM CDT
By Steve Benen

It wasn’t long after the Jan. 6 attacks that some political observers started grappling with an unprecedented question: If Donald Trump ran for a second term, would he be disqualified for the presidency under the 14th Amendment?

In fact, just six weeks after the attack on the Capitol, Rep. Jamie Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, reminded the political world that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars any public official who swore an oath to protect the Constitution from holding office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

The Maryland Democrat explained at the time, “Donald Trump is right in, you know, the bullseye middle of that group,” referencing how the lawmakers at the end of the Civil War intended for it to be used. “And so, he really does fulfill exactly the constitutional prohibition there.”

More than two years later, as the former president faces criminal charges related to his post-defeat efforts, the conversation about the 14th Amendment has reached a level that has apparently gotten Trump’s attention. In fact, it was nearly 24 hours ago when the Republican turned to his social media platform to do something he has largely avoided: Trump commented on the constitutional provision and pushed back against the conversation. From the missive:

“Almost all legal scholars have voiced opinions that the 14th Amendment has no legal basis or standing relative to the upcoming 2024 Presidential Election. Like Election Interference, it is just another ‘trick’ being used by the Radical Left Communists, Marxists, and Fascists....” 🤣

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There are a few angles to this that are worth keeping in mind. The first is that Trump almost certainly didn’t come up with this wording himself, at least not all of it. While it stands to reason that the Republican would refer to constitutional provisions he doesn’t like as a “trick,” it’s also true that “no legal basis or standing relative to...” just isn’t how he normally communicates, especially via social media.

The second is that the former president’s claims are plainly wrong. The idea that “almost all legal scholars” believe the constitutional provision is unrelated to his candidacy is contradicted by all kinds of prominent legal voices who’ve made the opposite case.

As my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown explained a few weeks ago, “[T]wo prominent conservative legal scholars have released a draft of a pending law review article arguing that Trump is constitutionally ineligible from reclaiming the White House. In doing so, they provide a necessary bulwark against Trump’s ongoing threat to American democracy.

The argument comes courtesy of University of Chicago law professor William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.”

Meanwhile, several leading Democrats — including Rep. Adam Schiff of California and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia — said over the weekend that questions about Trump having disqualified himself have real merit. (A spokesperson for the former president told Axios this amounted to an “absurd conspiracy theory,” though the debate relies on neither a conspiracy nor a theory.)

Finally, the process of testing the underlying questions about Trump’s eligibility bears watching. A new Washington Post report summarized that there are “two major routes that anti-Trump groups are taking or considering to stop the former president from appearing on state ballots.”

The first route is to urge state election authorities, such as secretaries of state, to rule that Trump should be excluded. If an election authority decides that Trump is ineligible, the former president can challenge that determination in court. The second route is a candidacy challenge, through state election board complaints and lawsuits. The focus so far is expected to be on states’ primary ballots.

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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes added this morning, “Whatever you think of the idea, there will be a lot of due process.” Watch this space.

OAN and Chanel Rion Settle Lawsuit Over Their Bonkers Claims About a Dominion Exec​

‘FACE OF THE FALSE CLAIMS’
OAN had trumpeted bogus claims that Eric Coomer took part in an “Antifa conference call” and boasted that he would make sure that Trump wouldn’t win in 2020.

Justin Baragona​

Senior Media Reporter
Updated Sep. 05, 2023 4:43PM EDT / Published Sep. 05, 2023 2:56PM EDT

Far-right network One America News and its star correspondent Chanel Rion have settled a defamation lawsuit with Eric Coomer, a former executive for voting software firm Dominion Voting Systems whom the conspiratorial channel falsely reported as working in concert with antifa activists to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump.

Terms of the settlement, which was reached last week in a Colorado district court, were not released.

“Plaintiff Eric Coomer, Ph.D. and Defendants Herring Networks, Inc. dba One America News Network and Chanel Rion have fully and finally settled the disputes among them concerning Plaintiff's claims against Herring Networks, Inc. dba One America News Network and Chanel Rion only,” the Aug. 30 filing reads.

Representatives for OAN and Rion did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to Coomer’s lawsuit, which was filed in late 2020 against Trump’s campaign and several conservative media outlets and figures, he became “the face of the false claims” that Dominion rigged the 2020 presidential election by flipping millions of votes from Trump to then-candidate Joe Biden.

Days after the election, Colorado conservative activist Joe Oltmann told far-right podcaster Michelle Malkin that he listened to an “antifa conference call” in which Coomer assured the leftist activists that the fix was in against Trump. “Don’t worry about the election, Trump is not going to win. I made ****ing sure of that,” Oltmann claimed Coomer said on the call.

Oltmann’s claims, which have never once been corroborated, soon caught fire in Trumpworld—especially as the then-president’s legal team was spreading wild conspiracy theories about voting machines changing ballots to ensure a Biden victory. Eventually, Eric Trump tweeted out the claims, and Trump campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell publicly blasted Coomer as a “vicious man.”

OAN, meanwhile, helped propel the false claims about Coomer when Rion made a multi-part video called “Dominion-izing the Vote” starring a conspiracist who alleged that Coomer “could be tried for treason” because he was “responsible for putting his finger on the scales of our election.” The ex-president shared the video on social media and YouTube.

In his lawsuit, Coomer said he was forced to go into hiding because of the death threats he received due to the baseless claims spread by right-wing media and Team Trump. Noting OAN and Rion had “no credible evidence of any ‘Antifa conference call,’” Coomer said that they still “knowingly and recklessly published false statements about Dr. Coomer to support a preconceived conspiracy that the election was fraudulent.”

Newsmax, another MAGA cable channel that trafficked in election fraud lies after Trump’s loss, settled with Coomer in April 2021, issuing a public apology and retraction at the time.

“There are several facts that our viewers should be aware of. Newsmax has found no evidence that Dr. Coomer interfered with Dominion voting machines or voting software in any way, nor that Dr. Coomer ever claimed to have done so,” Newsmax said in a statement that was broadcast on the air. “Nor has Newsmax found any evidence that Dr. Coomer ever participated in any conversation with members of ‘Antifa,’ nor that he was directly involved with any partisan political organization.”

Coomer still has active litigation against several other co-defendants in the lawsuit, including Oltmann, Giuliani, Powell, Malkin, the ex-president and his son Eric, far-right website The Gateway Pundit, and others.

This isn’t the first time OAN has settled a defamation lawsuit for airing bogus election claims on its airwaves. The right-wing channel reached a settlement agreement last year with two Georgia election workers, who have since won their suit against Giuliani, over claims they conducted widespread voter fraud.

“The results of this investigation indicate that Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ‘Shaye’ Moss did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct,” the network stated. “A legal matter with this network and the two election workers has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement.”

While the network has come to terms with Coomer, it still faces billion-dollar lawsuits from Dominion and fellow voting machine firm Smartmatic for peddling election lies following Trump’s defeat. Fox News paid a whopping $787.5 million to Dominion in April to settle allegations that the conservative cable giant knowingly amplified baseless election conspiracies to boost sagging ratings.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, nearly every cable and pay-TV provider has dropped OAN from its lineup, resulting in a massive loss of revenue and exposure.

Players are starting to walk to the practice field and Raleek Brown is here and suited up for practice.

Another GOP attempt to rig the election foiled. Many, many more to go

Wait, didn't Trump say there was no sedition conspiracy?

Trump threatens retaliatory scheme he already tried to implement​

Donald Trump insists he now has “no choice” but to weaponize federal law enforcement, seemingly unaware of the fact that he already tried to do that.


Sept. 5, 2023, 10:02 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

As Donald Trump takes stock of his dramatic legal difficulties, including four criminal indictments across three jurisdictions, the former president is making little effort to hide his retaliatory ambitions. National Review summarized the Republican’s eyebrow-raising comments from last week.

Former president Donald Trump recently said he’d have “no choice” but to lock up his political opponents if he wins the 2024 presidential race because his opponents are already doing the same to him and his allies. Trump’s comments came during an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Tuesday.

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When the host specifically asked Trump whether he’d “lock people up” if given a second term, the former president replied, “The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us.”

It was not an off-hand comment. It was about a month ago when the Republican used his social media platform to ask, “Is this going to be the future of elections in America? Can a president order his Department of Justice to indict an opponent just prior to an election?”

Nearly two weeks later, he published a related missive, asking whether he’d be “allowed” to indict his perceived foes if he returns to the White House, adding that such an abuse is “a horrible and unconstitutional thing.”

Just two days ago, Trump returned to the subject. “The Crooked Joe Biden Campaign has thrown so many Indictments and lawsuits against me that Republicans are already thinking about what we are going to do to Biden and the Communists when it’s our turn,” he wrote. “They have started a whole new Banana Republic way of thinking about political campaigns. So cheap and dirty, but that’s where America is right now. Be careful what you wish for!”

For now, let’s put aside some of Trump’s more trivial nonsense — though I do find it amusing when Republicans capitalize “banana republic” for no reason, as if the nation is now a clothing retailer. Let’s instead focus our attention on what really matters.

In Trump’s mind, President Joe Biden is secretly pulling the prosecutorial strings behind the scenes, orchestrating his predecessor’s indictments from the shadows. There is, of course, literally zero evidence to support such a ridiculous claim, but the former president apparently envisions a scenario in which he returns to the White House and begins an identical prosecutorial campaign, using federal law enforcement as a weapon against his political foes.

Trump recently characterized this as “a horrible and unconstitutional thing,” but he added last week that he believes he now has “no choice” but to pursue such a course.

There is, however, a nagging detail the former president apparently hopes the public will forget: Trump is threatening a nightmare scenario that he already tried to implement. The Republican would have Americans believe that Biden has indicted his likely opponent during a campaign for no reason, while in reality, Trump is the one who actually did try to get his opponent indicted during a campaign for no reason.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane.

As his first year in the White House came to an end, Trump claimed he had “absolute” control over federal law enforcement, endorsed a system in which an attorney general’s principal responsibility would be to protect a president’s interests, and

A month later, Trump publicly questioned why his attorney general hadn’t launched more investigations into Democrats.

In August 2018, Trump published a list of perceived enemies he wanted the Justice Department to go after, pleading with the attorney general to go after the “other side.”

Three months later, The New York Times reported that Trump specifically told the White House counsel that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute Comer and Hillary Clinton for crimes unknown.

In August 2020, less than three months before the presidential election, Trump publicly pressed his attorney general to target a variety of foes, including Biden and Barack Obama. A month later, the Republican echoed the rhetoric, saying Bill Barr could become “the greatest attorney general in the history of our country,” but only if he went after Trump’s perceived enemies.

Two months before Election Day, Trump again declared publicly that he saw Biden as a criminal. One month before Election Day, the then-president told voters explicitly that he expected the Justice Department to arrest his foes, including the then-Democratic presidential nominee.

In early October 2020, with early voting underway across much of the country, Politico published an especially memorable headline: “‘Where are all of the arrests?’: Trump demands Barr lock up his foes.”

In late October 2020, as early voting continued, Trump again told the electorate that his opponent “should be in jail“ and complained that Barr hadn’t put Biden behind bars. “He’s got to act, and he’s got to act fast,” the then-president said in reference to his then-attorney general. “He’s got to appoint somebody.”

A day later, Trump again explicitly and publicly called on Barr to target Biden with prosecution.

In other words, we’re left with a head-spinning dynamic: The politician who’s now asking, “Can a president order his Department of Justice to indict an opponent just prior to an election?” is the same politician who, as president, pressured his Justice Department to indict his opponent just prior to an election.

Trump expects us to believe that he has “no choice” but to weaponize federal law enforcement and pursue charges against his political opponents, seemingly unaware of the fact that, while in office, he already tried to weaponize federal law enforcement and pursue charges against his political opponents.

"They have started a whole new Banana Republic way of thinking about political campaigns," Trump wrote over the weekend, ignoring the fact that for him, there's nothing "new" about it.