Trump criticizes UAW leadership amid strike, warns autoworkers’ jobs are moving to China​

PUBLISHED FRI, SEP 15 202312:30 PM EDTUPDATED FRI, SEP 15 20234:16 PM EDT

Amanda Macias@AMANDA_M_MACIAS



Former President Donald Trump speaks during an interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker, Sept. 14, 2023.
Meet the Press | NBCU

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump warned that U.S. autoworkers’ jobs will move to China and accused the United Auto Workers’ leadership of failing its members, thousands of whom went on strike Friday against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis.

“The autoworkers will not have any jobs, Kristen, because all of these cars are going to be made in China. The electric cars, automatically, are going to be made in China,” Trump told NBC News’ Kristen Welker in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview set to air Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

“The autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump,” added the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.


Approximately 13,000 U.S. autoworkers stopped making vehicles and went on strike following failed negotiations on a slew of issues, including higher pay.

The strike marked the first time the United Auto Workers union targeted the three automaker titans simultaneously.

Workers walked out at GM’s midsize truck and full-size van assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri; Ford’s Ranger pickup and Bronco SUV plant in Wayne, Michigan; and Stellantis’ Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator plant in Toledo, Ohio.

Trump specifically criticized UAW President Shawn Fain. “I think he’s not doing a good job in representing his union, because he’s not going to have a union in three years from now. Those jobs are all going to be gone, because all of those electric cars are going to be made in China. That’s what’s happening,” Trump said.

Fain has previously said that a second Trump presidency would be a “disaster.” But he has also withheld his endorsement of President Joe Biden.


United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain speaks with the media and union members outside the UAW Local 900 headquarters across the street from the Ford Assembly Plant in Wayne, Michigan, Sept. 15, 2023.
Matthew Hatcher | AFP | Getty Images

Speaking from the White House on Friday, Biden said he hopes all parties are able to strike “a win-win agreement.”

“The companies have made some significant offers,” Biden said, adding “But I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW.”

Biden said he also respects the right of workers to “use their options under the collective bargaining system.”

Trump has sought to seize the mantle of most fervent China hawk in the U.S. presidential election. He also tried to make Biden’s electric vehicle push a key part of his case against the president.

The crumbling relationship between Washington and Beijing, the world’s two largest economies, intensified under the Trump administration.

Trump placed blame squarely on China for a wide range of grievances, including intellectual property theft, unfair trade practices and the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden has sought to work consistently with allies in order to mount a more united pushback against China.

Biden has also previously said that during his political career, he has spent more time with Chinese President Xi Jinping than he has with any other world leader.

Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978​

The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. ß2201-2209, governs the official records of Presidents and Vice Presidents that were created or received after January 20, 1981 (i.e., beginning with the Reagan Administration). The PRA changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public, and established a new statutory structure under which Presidents, and subsequently NARA, must manage the records of their Administrations. The PRA was amended in 2014, which established several new provisions.

Specifically, the PRA:

• Establishes public ownership of all Presidential records and defines the term Presidential records.
• Requires that Vice-Presidential records be treated in the same way as Presidential records.
• Places the responsibility for the custody and management of incumbent Presidential records with the President.
• Requires that the President and his staff take all practical steps to file personal records separately from Presidential records.
• Allows the incumbent President to dispose of records that no longer have administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value, once the views of the Archivist of the United States on the proposed disposal have been obtained in writing.
• Establishes in law that any incumbent Presidential records (whether textual or electronic) held on courtesy storage by the Archivist remain in the exclusive legal custody of the President and that any request or order for access to such records must be made to the President, not NARA.
• Establishes that Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.
• Establishes a process by which the President may restrict and the public may obtain access to these records after the President leaves office; specifically, the PRA allows for public access to Presidential records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) beginning five years after the end of the Administration, but allows the President to invoke as many as six specific restrictions to public access for up to twelve years.
• Codifies the process by which former and incumbent Presidents conduct reviews for executive privilege prior to public release of records by NARA (which had formerly been governed by Executive order 13489).
• Establishes procedures for Congress, courts, and subsequent Administrations to obtain “special access” to records from NARA that remain closed to the public, following a privilege review period by the former and incumbent Presidents; the procedures governing such special access requests continue to be governed by the relevant provisions of E.O. 13489.
• Establishes preservation requirements for official business conducted using non-official electronic messaging accounts: any individual creating Presidential records must not use non-official electronic messaging accounts unless that individual copies an official account as the message is created or forwards a complete copy of the record to an official messaging account. (A similar provision in the Federal Records Act applies to federal agencies.)
• Prevents an individual who has been convicted of a crime related to the review, retention, removal, or destruction of records from being given access to any original records.

Prosecutors ring the alarm: Trump could trigger ‘violence’​

The new filings are part of a months long legal battle between the company now called X and the special counsel’s team.

By KYLE CHENEY
09/15/2023 12:40 PM EDT

Federal prosecutors secretly argued in April that if Donald Trump learned of their efforts to access his Twitter account, his public disclosure of the development could “precipitate violence.”

Newly unsealed court filings show that attorneys working for special counsel Jack Smith worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant of his Twitter feed just like he announced on Truth Social when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year. That announcement was followed by a surge in threats against federal law enforcement, culminating in the fatal shooting of a man who had attempted to breach an FBI building in Cincinnati.

Informing Trump about the Twitter search warrant “could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago,” the prosecutors warned.

The new filings, part of a monthslong legal battle between Twitter, now called X, and the special counsel’s team over whether the social media company, newly purchased by Elon Musk, could inform Trump about the search warrant the investigators had obtained before it complied with its directives. The company suggested that some of Trump’s private communications on the platform could be subject to executive privilege and wanted to afford him to opportunity to assert it.

But prosecutors — and ultimately U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell — scoffed at that suggestion and sharply rejected Twitter’s notion that Trump’s account might contain privileged material. Howell held Twitter in contempt in February and fined the company $350,000 for missing court-ordered deadlines to comply with the prosecutors’ search warrant. Ultimately, the company provided the documents Smith’s prosecutors demanded.

In the new filings, Smith’s team revealed that Trump’s account included just 32 direct messages, “a minuscule” proportion of the overall data it had obtained. Prosecutors also obtained data that could show Trump’s location at the time certain tweets were sent or whether anyone else was accessing his account.

But the newly unsealed filings provide new details Smith’s arguments for keeping Trump in the dark about the search warrant — primarily that Trump presents a “significant risk of tampering with evidence, seeking to influence or intimidate potential witnesses, and ‘otherwise seriously jeopardizing’ the Government’s ongoing investigations.”

“These are not hypothetical considerations in this case,” the prosecutors wrote in a 71-page brief dated April 21. “Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the former President propagated false claims of fraud (including swearing to false allegations in a federal court filing), pressured state and federal officials to violate their legal duties, and retaliated against those who did not comply with his demands, culminating in violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.”

Smith’s team also cited the charges against Trump for seeking to “undermine or otherwise influence the investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information following the end of his presidency, including publicizing the existence of the Mar-a-Lago warrant.”

“The former President’s obstructive efforts continue unabated with respect to this investigation here, in which he has determined to pay the legal fees of potential witnesses against him and repeatedly disparaged the lead prosecutor on his Truth Social platform,” the prosecutors added. “[T]his pattern of obstructive conduct amply supports the district court’s conclusion that the former President presents a significant risk of tampering with evidence, seeking to influence or intimidate potential witnesses, and ‘otherwise seriously jeopardizing’ the Government’s ongoing investigations.”

Twitter’s response to the prosecutors described the prospect of violence as “facially implausible” and contended that Trump already knew many details about Smith’s investigation into his conduct leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. His knowledge of the search warrant, the company contended, would not alter that equation.

But both Howell and a panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately rejected Twitter’s arguments. The company is now seeking review by the full bench of the D.C. Circuit, arguing that the panel, as well as Howell, failed to consider alternatives to demanding full compliance with the search warrant before giving Trump a chance to assert any privileges. The company says one option would have been to inform a representative for Trump about the warrant, while still keeping its details secret from the former president.
Prosecutors and Howell called such a proposal unworkable.

A little fat….
A little happy…..
(Maybe more than a little hungover)

and their new QB has that deer in the headlights look…..

Calling It Now:
NO 3PEAT

Mizzou hits the 61 yard FG as time expires…..
30-27

This is the annual Red Bandana game for BC….a 25 pt underdog today.
held in memory of Welles Crowther, a BC alum (and volunteer firefighter) who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11, at the age of 24.

Up to 18 survivors of the day credited a young man wearing a red bandana with saving their lives.
that young man was later determined to be Crowther.

BC players today wear no names on their jerseys only “For Welles” on the back, and a red bandana trim…..

this became an annual event in 2014….when BC upset Sark & USC.

This map scares the hell out of Democrats:​

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Winning!​

This was an elaborate edit as I had to adjust some audio levels and learn some new tricks. It came out well, though!

My interview with USC five-star QB commit Julian Lewis, his HS coach Joey King (who previously coached Trevor Lawrence), Rivals analyst John Garcia Jr., and then Max Browne and I pick our top five early-season USC MVPs not named Caleb Williams.

LISTEN HERE

I'm off to Lewis' game momentarily ...

HOW BIG CAN TRUMP'S LEAD GET? If you thought former President Donald Trump's lead over the Republican field in national polls could not get any bigger — you thought wrong. The three most recent major polls, conducted in the last 10 days, show Trump with a lead of 47, 48, and 50 points, respectively. In the RealClearPolitics average of all polls, his lead is 43.9 points — higher than it has ever been.

One of the new polls is from Fox News, and it shows Trump with 60% support, with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in second place, at 13%, 47 points behind Trump. DeSantis is barely ahead of entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, at 11%. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is at 5%, and former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) are tied at 3%. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is last with 2%. (The three also-rans, Burgum, Elder, and Hutchinson, are at 0%.)

So just counting the candidates who register any support at all, it's a seven-candidate field. And for one candidate to hit 60% support in a seven-candidate field is remarkable. It's just not done. But it is a good illustration of Trump's special status as a former president in a field of never-been-presidents and never-will-be-presidents.

Ryan,
I just saw that Aydin Breland narrowed his schools down to 3, Georgia, Oregon and Miami, we were left off it.
That is now about 6-Mater Dei players in the same recruiting class that USC would have love to take any of, yet we whiffed on all of them. In my opinion, the worst of all the losses were on the defensive side of the ball then the O-linemen. Anyhow, can you ask the tough question about what happened to the Mater Dei HS players, none looking to come to USC. I get some like to leave the city and state but all 6-players, none of them? Perhaps either coach Riley or any of the coordinators would be good to hear from as to why or what they think.

Jenna Ellis Turns on ‘Narcissistic’ Co-Defendant Trump​

BURNT

Mark Alfred​

Breaking News Intern
Updated Sep. 15, 2023 5:54PM EDT / Published Sep. 15, 2023 5:53PM EDT

​

Jenna Ellis, Donald Trump’s former senior legal adviser and current co-defendant in Georgia, has made a dramatic break from the former president, saying she will not support his third bid for the White House based on his inability to ever admit to wrongdoing. “I simply can’t support him for elected office again,”​

Ellis said during an episode of her show American Family Radio. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”​

Trump, for his part, had already turned on Ellis after she expressed some support for Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid earlier this year. Ellis, who falsely maintained that the 2020 election was stolen and also claimed she “would NEVER lie,” has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering and soliciting the violation of an oath by a public officer.​

“I think that we do need to, as Americans and as conservatives and particularly as Christians, take this very seriously and understand where are we putting our vote,” she said on her show.​

Testimony Reportedly Undercuts Key Parts of GOP’s Case Against Biden​

REALITY CHECK

Mark Alfred​

Breaking News Intern
Published Sep. 15, 2023 6:18PM EDT

REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein​

A slate of witness testimony assembled by Republicans as part of their impeachment efforts against President Joe Biden actually undercuts many of the claims put forward by the GOP, The New York Times reported Friday, citing hundreds of pages of transcripts.

House Republicans—having caved to its far-right members—are pursuing impeachment based on Biden’s supposed involvement in both his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings and in the Justice Department’s case against Hunter. Several witnesses contradicted claims of impropriety made by Republicans based on the account of an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower.

The whistleblower, Gary Shapley, has testified the federal government “slow-walked” a probe into Hunter due to political interference. But in closed-door meetings with investigators, witnesses pushed back on those assertions and gave accounts that directly refuted much of what Shapley said, seemingly revealing weaknesses in the case laid out by House Republicans.

I remember when this aired 15 years ago, but for those you had not seen it, it’s worth the 10 minutes to look back at what the man was trying to do. Login to view embedded media

It's FOF.
Be safe and enjoy the weekend with family and friends, and know that no one playing tomorrow will be better than our Trojans.

Joe Biden - dead man walking​

Biden weighed by economic concerns, age in potential 2024 rematch with Trump -Reuters/Ipsos poll​

But in a worrisome result for Biden, Trump held a small advantage in the seven states where the 2020 presidential election was closest: Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada and Michigan. In those states, Trump led with 41% to Biden's 35%, and 24% undecided.

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.

Click to expand...

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.

Click to expand...

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.