…don’t quote me [DOT 31/1/23]

…in terms of articles of faith

Trump’s circle insisted, falsely, that the Mueller inquiry was a hit job that employed Russian disinformation — via the Steele dossier — to frame Trump, all part of a plot cooked up by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Durham seems to have bought into this Trumpist conspiracy theory, and to help prove it, he tried to employ what appears to be Russian disinformation to go after the Clinton camp. More specifically, he used dubious Russian intelligence memos, which analysts believed were seeded with falsehoods, to try to convince a court to give him access to the emails of a former aide to George Soros, which he believed would show Clinton-related wrongdoing.

…there’s a lot of hallmarks of a cult involved in the carousel of counter-factual confabulations being trumpeted

Astonishingly, The Times found that while Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr and Durham were in Europe looking for evidence to discredit the Russia investigation, Italian officials gave them a “potentially explosive tip” linking Trump to “certain suspected financial crimes.” Rather than assign a new prosecutor to look into those suspected crimes, Barr folded the matter into Durham’s inquiry, giving Durham criminal prosecution powers for the first time.

Then the attorney general sat back while the media inferred that the criminal investigation must mean Durham had found evidence of malfeasance connected to Russiagate. Barr, usually shameless in his public spinning of the news, quietly let an investigation into Trump be used to cast aspersions on Trump’s perceived enemies. (The fate of that inquiry remains a mystery.)

This squalid episode is a note-perfect example of how Republican scandal-mongering operates. The right ascribes to its adversaries, whether in the Democratic Party or the putative deep state, monstrous corruption and elaborate conspiracies. Then, in the name of fighting back, it mimics the tactics it has accused its foes of using.

…leaving aside the part where the only prosecutions durham tried to bring were legally DOA…a credible lead on the serially-criminal behavior of the un-presidented one parlayed into an implied offence by the people they failed to find any actual evidence against is some pre-meditated shit…&…I don’t know what the normal procedure is but I’m pretty sure that if he wasn’t supposed to have already made reference to the fact he investigated those claims (which I would have guessed he ought to have) then if he ever gets around to producing his report at the very least there ought to be a bit of it that provides the grounds for his declination in terms of the corresponding prosecution he elected not to pursue…pretty sure that’s a thing

It’s important to keep this in mind because we’re about to see a lot more of it. Now that they control the House, Republicans have prioritized investigating their political opponents. McCarthy has stacked the Oversight Committee, central to the House’s investigative apparatus, with flame-throwing fantasists, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar and Lauren Boebert. Further, as Politico reported in a “field guide” to the coming Republican inquiries, McCarthy has urged Republicans to treat every committee like the Oversight Committee, meaning all investigations, all the time.

There are going to be investigations into Hunter Biden, and investigations into the origins of the pandemic. There will likely be scrutiny of the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago and Biden’s handling of classified documents. And, as my colleague David Firestone on the editorial board put it over the weekend, “Republicans in the House are launching a new snipe hunt” for proof that the F.B.I. and other intelligence agencies were “weaponized” against conservatives.

…honestly, I can’t decide…either it’s astonishingly cynical to rely so heavily on your audience being incapable of seeing through the sheer lack of substance involved…or the inherent certainty that your opponents are really just like you translates into a matching certainty that they must be pulling the same shit you would (&/or do) given even the illusion of a chance…& I just don’t know which of those seems like a bigger concern

It remains to be seen whether our political media is up for the task of making these distinctions. The coverage of Trump and Biden’s respective retention of classified documents offers little cause for optimism. Again and again, journalists and pundits have noted that, while the two cases are very different, there are seeming similarities, and those similarities are good for Trump. This is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, since by speculating about political narratives, you help create them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/durham-republican-investigations.html

…sure does seem like it helps to have the courts on your side when you want to ignore what the law says, though

An accommodation requiring an employer “to bear more than a de minimis cost” — meaning a small or trifling cost — need not be granted, the court said in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison. In that case, an airline maintenance worker claimed a legal right to avoid Saturday shifts so he could observe the tenets of the Worldwide Church of God, which he had recently joined. Ruling for the airline, the court noted that if one worker got Saturdays off for religion reasons, the burden would fall on other workers who might have nonreligious reasons for wanting to have the weekend off.

“We will not readily construe the statute to require an employer to discriminate against some employees in order to enable others to observe their Sabbath,” the court said.

Treating religion as nothing particularly special, the decision reflected the spirit of the times but was deeply unpopular in religious circles. There have been many attempts over many years to persuade Congress to amend the law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to shift the balance explicitly in favor of religiously observant employees. Between 1994 and 2019, more than a dozen such bills were introduced. None emerged from Congress.

And so now, a very different court from the one that ruled 46 years ago is about to do the work itself.

That isn’t an idle prediction but rather the surely foreordained outcome of the new case the justices recently added to their calendar for decision during the current term. The appeal was brought by a conservative Christian litigating group, First Liberty Institute, on behalf of a former postal worker, Gerald Groff, described as a Christian who regards Sunday as a day for “worship and rest.”
[…]
The court in 1977 worried about the burden on nonreligious workers from accommodations granted to their religious colleagues. To today’s court, as Justice Alito has repeatedly expressed it, the real victims of discrimination are those who take religion seriously.

…if these assholes put a fraction of the effort they put into trying to subvert a religious facade for political ends into actually treating the tenets of just about any religion you’d care to choose seriously…all their roads would lead to damascus…but…no…it’s all stuck in the unholy lane on a road paved with allegedly good intentions

The moment is remarkable for the bold activism the court is about to display. In the days when the justices professed respect for the doctrine of stare decisis, or adherence to precedent, the general understanding was that decisions that interpreted statutes should be harder to overturn than those that interpreted the Constitution. That may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but the reasoning went like this: Only the Supreme Court can issue a definitive constitutional interpretation, so only the court can revisit a constitutional precedent if the justices later perceive a problem with it. But Congress has the last word on the meaning of a federal law, so the court should stay its hand and let Congress repair an erroneous statutory interpretation.

…it’s almost as though if there is a god…they might have made some mistakes

That Congress has refused for decades to revisit the meaning of “undue hardship” carries no weight with the justices pressing to revisit the issue on their own. That was certainly the view expressed by Justices Gorsuch and Alito two years ago in dissent from the court’s decision not to hear an earlier case challenging the 1977 precedent. “There is no barrier to our review and no one else to blame,” the two wrote in Small v. Memphis Light, Gas & Water. “The only mistake here is of the court’s own making — and it is past time for the court to correct it.”

The plaintiff in that case, Jason Small, was a Jehovah’s Witness. In two other cases the court has turned down in the past few years, the employees seeking religious accommodations were Seventh-day Adventists. The religious-accommodation provision of Title VII — a foundational civil rights law that prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race and sex as well as religion — has long been understood to protect adherents of just such minority faiths. A friend of the court brief filed in the new case by scholars of religion and employment law on behalf of Mr. Groff argues that the provision, properly interpreted, furthers constitutional values by making sure that followers of underrepresented faiths may worship in their own way “without putting their job at risk, to the same extent as adherents of more familiar faiths that are less often burdened by employers.”

It may be just a coincidence, but the plaintiff who finally persuaded the justices to take his case is in fact, according to the joint statement of facts agreed to by the parties, “an evangelical Christian within the Protestant tradition.” When the court doubtless rules for him later this term, the decision will not stand for a vindication of minority rights. It will instead signify the court’s complete identification with the movement in the country’s politics to elevate religion over all other elements of civil society.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/religion-supreme-court.html

…I don’t know…but I get the distinct impression that these people would be prepared to argue with every appearance of earnestness that to truly appreciate the wisdom of solomon requires a lot of bifurcated babies…which is a good thing, actually…& supports the stance of denying reproductive autonomy to the fairer sex so long as you’re prepared to do your own research…although you apparently need to because it’s not fair to go sharing yours with other people

Former President Donald Trump sued Bob Woodward on Monday, claiming the veteran journalist did not get his consent to release audio recordings of interviews conducted during the last two years he was in office.
[…]
In the suit, Trump says he consented to being recorded only for the purposes of Woodward’s book “Rage,” which was published in 2020, and that Woodward broke his promise to Trump by later using the interviews for an audiobook.

“President Trump told Woodward numerous times that the Interviews were to be used by Woodward—and Woodward only—for the sole purpose of accurately quoting President Trump for the ‘written word,’ i.e., Rage, and not for any other purpose, including providing, marketing, or selling the Interviews to the public, press, or the media, in any way, shape, or form,” court documents say.

…you can record me…because I don’t want you mis-quoting my pearls of wisdom…but…like…don’t be quoting what I say in full because…that wasn’t the deal

Woodward and his publisher fired back at Trump in a joint statement.

“Former President Trump’s lawsuit is without merit and we will aggressively defend against it. All these interviews were on the record and recorded with President Trump’s knowledge and agreement. Moreover, it is in the public interest to have this historical record in Trump’s own words. We are confident that the facts and the law are in our favor,” the statement said.

…the deal was I get to moan about you making me look bad…if you just leave me making myself look bad without any help…that looks bad…no fair

In a statement Monday night, Trump said the audio book “was an open and blatant attempt to make me look as bad as possible.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-sues-woodward-publishing-audio-recordings-interviews

…it’s not a joke…it should be a joke…it looks like a joke…it sounds like a joke…but it tastes like crap & it isn’t funny…so…color me grouchy

The difference between the carbon emissions of the rich and the poor within a country is now greater than the differences in emissions between countries, data shows.

The finding is further evidence of the growing divide between the “polluting elite” of rich people around the world, and the relatively low responsibility for emissions among the rest of the population.

It also shows there is plenty of room for the poorest in the world to increase their greenhouse gas emissions if needed to reach prosperity, if rich people globally – including some in developing countries – reduce theirs, the analysis has found.

…& shut-up-donnie-you’re-out-of-your-element will file a lawsuit with merit…hell will start bulk-ordering ice-skates…& prosperity will trickle down until the meek inherit the earth

Most global climate policy has focused on the difference between developed and developing countries, and their current and historic responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. But a growing body of work suggests that a “polluting elite” of those on the highest incomes globally are vastly outweighing the emissions of the poor.
[…]
In a report entitled Climate Inequality Report 2023, economists from the World Inequality Lab dissect where carbon emissions are currently coming from. The World Inequality Lab is co-directed by the influential economist Thomas Piketty, the author of Capital in the Twenty-first Century, whose work following the financial crisis more than a decade ago helped to popularise the idea of “the 1%”, a global high-income group whose interests are favoured by current economic systems.
[…]
Peter Newell, a professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, who has worked extensively on the issue of the polluting elite, and was not involved in the report, said it showed that patterns of consumption needed to change to tackle the climate crisis.
[…]
But he added that the report also showed how tackling global poverty could be achieved without increasing greenhouse gas emissions overall, a key point as the world must reduce emissions by about half by 2030 in order to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Newell told the Guardian: “[The report shows that] tackling global poverty will not overshoot global carbon budgets, as is often claimed. Failure to address the power and privilege of the polluter elite will. These are related because reducing carbon consumption at the top can free up carbon space to lift people out of poverty.”
[…]
“Combinations of progressive taxation, including on highly polluting activities, and the redeployment of subsidies for fossil fuels can help strengthen the welfare state and provide social protection to help bridge some of these gaps,” he said.
[…]
Last year a paper by the PIK Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, co-authored by the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, found that taxing the rich was one of the best ways to fund a shift to a low-carbon economy.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/31/emissions-divide-now-greater-within-countries-than-between-them-study

…but sure…tell me again how the muppet that thought lobbing a car into space was marketing genius is going to be the salvation of a humanity he doesn’t appear to possess in discernible quantities

Other employees noted the darker motifs of Musk’s career – the disregard for labour relations, the many current lawsuits alleging sexual harassment and racial discrimination at his companies – and found his interest in Twitter ominous. On Slack, a product manager responded to Simon’s enthusiasm for Musk with scepticism: “I take your point, but as a childhood Greek mythology nerd, I feel it is important to point out that the story behind the idea of the Midas touch is not a positive one. It’s a cautionary tale about what is lost when you only focus on wealth.”

The comment would prove to be prophetic. According to more than two dozen current and former Twitter staffers, Musk has, since buying the company in October 2022, shown a remarkable lack of interest in the people and processes that make his new toy tick.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/29/tears-blunders-and-chaos-inside-elon-musk-twitter

…it’s almost like “follow the money” never leads anyplace good

Sergei Cristo, a Conservative party activist and a former journalist with the BBC World Service, has lodged a complaint with the investigatory powers tribunal, filing the case after corresponding with the chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, Conservative MP Julian Lewis, who recommended he take the information to the authorities.

The committee’s Russia report claimed in 2020 that the security services had turned a blind eye to “credible evidence” of Russian interference and Cristo’s allegations offer potentially explosive new evidence that confirms its findings. Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said “allegations that the security services ignored evidence from a Conservative whistleblower exposing Russian infiltration at the highest levels of the party are truly shocking” and claimed the “Conservative party’s Russia problem” was an ongoing threat to Britain’s national security.
[…]
The allegations centre around the formation of a group called Conservative Friends of Russia in 2012, and its relationship with a Russian diplomat, Sergey Nalobin.

In August of that year, the Russian ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, hosted a lavish launch party for the group in the gardens of his residence in Kensington with guests who included the former minister of culture, media and sport, John Whittingdale, and Boris Johnson’s now wife, Carrie Symonds. The Russian government also funded an all-expenses-paid trip to Moscow for a handpicked group of members including the future CEO of Vote Leave, Matthew Elliott.

Cristo says his suspicions about Nalobin, who was the political first secretary at the embassy, had been aroused two years earlier when he was approached by the diplomat and they met at the Carlton Club. When Nalobin learned that Cristo was a volunteer with the treasurers’ department of the Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ), he said he could “make introductions to Russian companies who would donate money to the Conservative party”.

“I knew straight away that what he was suggesting was illegal under UK law,” Cristo wrote in a letter to Lewis last year.

…but me no buts…but…who was willing to take an interest?

Alarmed by Nalobin’s efforts and the embassy’s sponsorship of the group, Cristo contacted Luke Harding at the Guardian and revealed Nalobin’s background and his disturbing relationship with the group. Harding and journalists at Russia’s The Insider found Nalobin had family connections to the FSB spy agency: his father, Nikolai, was a KGB general whose responsibilities included supervising Alexander Litvinenko, while his brother Viktor also worked for the FSB.

The resulting articles led to the resignation of the honorary president of Conservative Friends of Russia, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and the renaming of the group.

What Cristo has never previously revealed is his abortive attempts to get the security services to act. He says that he whistleblew to the Guardian only after his attempts to get the authorities to act failed. In 2011, he tried repeatedly to raise the alarm with MI5. After an initial meeting with a junior agent went nowhere, he wrote to the director general of MI5, which resulted in a further meeting with two agents in a government building in Whitehall.
[…]
Conservative Friends of Russia was reinvented as the Westminster Russia Forum and only finally shut down altogether last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile Nalobin continued to cultivate close relationships with MPs and Conservative party activists for a further three years until the Foreign Office declined to renew his visa.

In 2017, the Observer published an article that referred to Nalobin’s interest in the rivalry between David Cameron and Boris Johnson and his forced departure from the UK. It resulted in a series of furious emails from the Russian ambassador who sought to “correct” the article. The Observer declined to do so. Last year, Nalobin surfaced in Estonia when news broke that he had been expelled for espionage and had been “directly and actively engaged in undermining Estonia’s security”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/21/mi5-refused-to-investigate-russian-spys-links-to-tories-says-whistleblower

…but…you might stumble over the needle in a haystack when it spikes you in the toe

Barclays and UBS are facing questions about their ties to Roman Abramovich after his secretive offshore trusts were reorganised shortly before Europe and the UK imposed sanctions on the Russian oligarch.

The Oligarch files, a cache of leaked documents seen by the Guardian, suggest that before Russia invaded Ukraine the two banks held at least $940m (£760m) of assets on behalf of Abramovich’s trusts and companies he ultimately owned.

However, shortly before Moscow launched its invasion the 10 offshore trusts were rapidly rearranged to transfer beneficial ownership of a significant portion of Abramovich’s vast fortune to his children.

Documents suggest that in the last week of February 2022, as the reorganisation was completed, Barclays and UBS were informed that Abramovich’s children had become the ultimate beneficial owners of financial assets managed by the banks.

On10 March, the UKgovernment imposed sanctions on Abramovich for allegedly maintaining close relations with Vladimir Putin. The EU followed with its own sanctions on 15 March. Abramovich has denied the allegations and is appealing against the EU measures.

The files originate from the Cyprus-based offshore service provider MeritServus, which has managed Abramovich’s financial interests for more than 20 years. The firm administered 10 trusts established to benefit Abramovich and a sprawling network of offshore companies.
[…]
The documents, however, shed light on longstanding relationships between private wealth divisions at the two banks and opaque offshore trusts sheltering the riches of one of Russia’s wealthiest men.

According to the files, Abramovich was a client of UBS’s global family office unit in Zurich that advises the bank’s wealthiest clients. For Barclays, the relationship was handled by a branch of its exclusive private bank in Monaco.
[…]
Analysis of financial statements in the leak suggest that in the six months before the reorganisation, companies owned by just three of the trusts held at least $785m with UBS and at least $155m with Barclays.

Under UK and EU sanctions law, a bank is required to freeze assets if they are owned 50% or more by a sanctioned person. Freezes can also be applied when the sanctioned person owns less than 50% of the asset but exercises direct or indirect control over it.
[…]
In July 2022, the UK’s sanctions watchdog and the National Crime Agency issued a “red alert” listing common techniques used to evade financial sanctions, which included transferring assets to proxies such as relatives and reducing ownership of assets to below the 50% threshold.

Three days before Russia’s military attacked Ukraine, on 21 February 2022, the Cyprus-based trustees administering the Abramovich trusts wrote to Barclays’ “Russia and emerging Europe” unit at the bank’s ornate office overlooking Monte Carlo.

Providing an update to the beneficial ownership structure of companies held by the Zeus Trust, the trustees at Meritservus said Abramovich’s children were “entitled to 51% of any distributions” from the trust’s funds. For the Europa Trust, they disclosed that Abramovich’s children had replaced him as beneficiaries.

On the day of the invasion, 24 February, the trustees began sending a similar bundle of paperwork to UBS in Zurich.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/30/barclays-ubs-roman-abramovich-trusts

…but in a stack of needles you’d probably fear to tread without stouter footwear

An example of the patterns in these donations is that of former Tory treasurer, Andrew Fraser. He had been giving money to the party since 2004, but his big donations accelerated in the two years before he was awarded a peerage in 2016.

Just five weeks before David Cameron’s honours list was announced, he gave a further £261,900 – taking him over the £3m threshold.

Yet the year after taking the title Baron Fraser of Corriegarth, Fraser abruptly ended his donations and never gave another penny to the party again. Over the following four years, he spoke only four times in the Lords. He died earlier this year.
[…]
Speaking to The Sunday Times, one former Conservative cabinet minister said the £3m donation pattern showed that peerages were being used to reward the millionaires who bankrolled the party, and accused the party of overseeing “a scandal in plain sight”.

They added: “When it looks quite so transactional, of course it feels very uncomfortable.”
[…]
“It is a critical part of our legislature. This isn’t something like being made a knight or a CBE, or any of the other honours that [are] within the gift of government,” [Anna Soubry, a former Conservative business and defence minister who has now left the party] said.

“Laws and bills have to go to the Lords and [the system] is being grossly abused. It’s an embarrassment, it is absolutely appalling. It just undermines the real value of the House of Lords and those members who actually play a really important part of it.”

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/want-a-seat-in-the-house-of-lords-be-tory-treasurer-and-donate-3m/

EXCLUSIVE w/@HarryYorke1🚨

Boris Johnson was told to stop seeking Richard Sharp's "advice about your personal financial matters" days before announcing him as BBC chairman

The Sunday Times today reveals bombshell letter given to him by Simon Case 1/8 https://t.co/eZ90Sylt3s

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) January 28, 2023

Unknown to Case, in Nov 2020, Blyth was on Foreign Office list of four recommended candidates for CEO of the British Council

Blyth was top. No one will say why. Govt will not comment on leaks. Blyth says he believes civil service put him there.

4/8

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) January 28, 2023

Shawcross stepped back from the role a week after it was confirmed he would investigate Sharp, who allegedly helped Boris Johnson secure a loan of up to £800,000 weeks before he was recommended for the job of BBC chair by the then prime minister.

As the regulator who provides independent assurance that ministers’ selections for senior public roles and are fair and based on merit, Shawcross’s role leading the investigation into Sharp proved controversial.

His daughter is Rishi Sunak’s head of policy. When challenged by MPs at a pre-appointment hearing in September 2021, Shawcross said he would “not be doing deals around the dinner table”, though added: “I cannot say that the things I do will never be discussed.”

In a letter published on Monday, Shawcross admitted he had “met Mr Sharp on previous occasions”, and so would play no further role in the inquiry. He said his commissioner powers would be delegated to “an independent person who will be appointed by my office for this one investigation”.
[…]
Lucy Powell, the shadow culture secretary, said: “It’s taken him a week to realise a conflict of interest, sharing these cosy relationships. The truth must come out about this appointment.”

Last week, Shawcross told Powell in a letter that he intended to review the appointment “to assure myself and the public that the process was run in compliance” with the rules.

Sharp is facing a separate investigation by the BBC’s nominations committee, which is examining whether there has been any breach of its conflict of interest rules since he joined the corporation in 2021.

The Guardian revealed last week that the government-appointed panel that approved Sharp as a prime candidate included a Conservative party donor and prospective MP, as well as the wife of the former chair of the Spectator, who worked with Johnson when he edited the political magazine.

Sharp, who in the past has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservative party, is coming under increased pressure over the affair.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/30/head-of-watchdog-william-shawcross-recuses-himself-from-bbc-chair-inquiry-richard-sharp

“It relates to things that happened well before I was prime minister, so unfortunately I can’t change what happened in the past,” [Sunak] said.

“What you can hold me accountable for is: what did you do about it? What I did, as soon as I knew about the situation, was appoint someone independent, looked at it, got the advice and then acted pretty decisively.”

…if that sounds a bit rich coming from rish…well…there’s a reason for that

Sunak, who entered No 10 pledging to restore “integrity and accountability” after the Boris Johnson era, said his swift action on Magnus’s report demonstrated this was still his mission.

“That should give you some confidence that these things matter to me, and that I will take whatever steps are necessary to restore the integrity back into politics, and you can have confidence that the process works,” he said.

Earlier, a former health department colleague of Zahawi said there was no need for him to step down as an MP despite his breaches of the ministerial code.
[…]
“Nadhim was elected as an MP by his constituents back in the last general election,” she said. “We’re all accountable to constituents. And it’s not that long again until there will be another general election in which voters will again make those decisions.”
[…]
In a further sign of Zahawi perhaps believing he has been unfairly treated, unnamed allies of the former Tory chair briefed the Spectator on Sunday about what they believed were inconsistencies in the No 10 case about what Zahawi had told officials about his tax.

According to the article, the allies say Zahawi did tell officials about the HMRC investigation and the penalty he subsequently paid when he was made chancellor under Boris Johnson, and that the Cabinet Office was thus “fully in the picture” when he became party chair.

Other sources told the Times that a “furious” Zahawi believed he was not given the chance to properly put his case to Magnus, and may publish his own formal response to the sacking.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/30/nadhim-zahawi-pushback-helen-whately

…it’s all in the game, dawg

The former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has said “we mustn’t be too snowflakey” about bullying allegations levelled against the deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab.

Raab, who is also justice secretary, faces formal complaints involving at least 24 civil servants over alleged bullying, covering his posts at the Ministry of Justice, Foreign Office (FCDO) and the Brexit department.
[…]
Officials close to the inquiry are said to have been shocked by some of the claims that have emerged, including individuals being physically sick before meetings, regularly in tears and, in more than one case, left feeling suicidal as a result of the alleged behaviour.

However, appearing on Sky News on Tuesday, Rees-Mogg, who served as Brexit opportunities secretary and leader of the House of Commons under Boris Johnson, and was business secretary in Liz Truss’s short-lived administration, said there was a concern the handling of the allegations was “a bit snowflakey”.
[…]
“It’s a very difficult line to judge. It is not a straightforward issue in most cases. It is ‘how did someone react, what did somebody say, is it reasonable to demand from senior and well-paid professionals a level of good service’, and then you have to judge whether that line has been overstepped.

“But I do worry that we are getting a bit snowflakey about this.”

He added: “I think it’s completely sensible that the lord chancellor remains fully in post while the investigation takes place and then the prime minister makes a judgment as to whether or not these allegations are serious or not.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/31/snowflakey-dominic-raab-bullying-claims-jacob-rees-mogg

…& forgetting to mention the better part of thirty million quid…or to put it another way a sum fully three orders of magnitude greater than the average annual salary of the assorted taxpayers funding the exchequer he was made chancellor of…is “carelessness”…& allegedly blameless…so as snowflakes go it feels like a blizzard warning might be appropriate…& it might be a good time to take steps to avoid going snow-blind on account of all the glaring reflections abounding about the place

The US justice department told top House judiciary committee Republicans on Monday that it would decline to produce confidential information about the special counsel investigation into the recent discovery of classified-marked documents at Joe Biden’s personal home and office.

…it’s thin gruel…but…apparently continuing to point out things that ought to be obvious like

…continues to pass for “the good news”

The department said in a letter to the committee reviewed by the Guardian that it would not provide details about the president’s documents case – or any other inquiry – because it could reveal the roadmap of the investigation and risk the appearance of political conflict.

“Disclosures to Congress about active investigations risk jeopardizing those investigations and creating the appearance that Congress may be exerting improper political pressure or attempting to influence department decisions,” assistant attorney general Carlos Uriarte wrote.

The department also noted that because the attorney general, Merrick Garland, had appointed a special counsel to oversee the Biden documents case, it was bound by the special counsel regulations that allow for certain communications at the start and at the end of investigations.

“These regulations govern the department’s conduct in all special counsel investigations and will continue to govern our disclosures in this matter,” wrote Uriarte, a former top adviser to the deputy attorney general who currently leads the division which has been in touch with Congress.

The clear refusal from the justice department to open its files to the judiciary committee sets up the prospect of a bitter fight with the new House Republican majority, which has made political investigations into the Biden administration a priority for the next two years.

The justice department has long refused to provide to Congress confidential information that could compromise investigations or grand jury secrecy rules, as well as deliberative communications like prosecution memos because of the risk of political interference in charging decisions.

As the department explained in 2000 in a letter to the then-House rules committee chair, John Linder, its position has been upheld by the supreme court in United States v Nixon (1974) that recognized making such materials public could have an improper “chilling effect”.

The so-called Linder letter noted the department had reaffirmed during the Reagan administration that providing congressional committees with briefings on criminal investigations would place Congress in a position to exert power – and undermine the integrity – of those inquiries.

The Linder letter also raised the risk of inadvertent or deliberate leaks of materials that could reveal the roadmap of investigations to defendants, who could then use that information to assess the strengths and weaknesses of a potential prosecution.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/30/republicans-joe-biden-documents-investigation-rebuffed

…I guess if you’re in the business of throwing the baby out with the bathwater maybe you find it helps to cleave the poor mite in twain before you start as proof of the bona fides of your biblically prodigious wisdom…but just exactly which deity or alternative idolatrous incarnation of heretical blasphemy should I be appealing to to make sure these people don’t seize on a modest proposal next?

…why, yes…yes I did read that thread @megmegmcgee linked in yesterday’s DOT about the full-blown nazi homeschooling initiative…how could you tell?