…it’s just one of those things

Fueled by false claims about whether ballot tabulation machines are properly certified or accurate, supervisors in Republican-controlled Cochise county tried to conduct a full hand count of its election results and attempted not to certify the county’s results.

Their efforts ultimately failed, but they reveal how election denialism has taken hold in parts of the United States and could continue to wreak havoc on American democracy.
[…]
The effects of the county’s decisions do not just affect local residents. Arizona is a swing state and will play a decisive role in the 2024 presidential election, as it did in 2020. If the supervisors hinder certification again next year, it could disenfranchise county voters and delay statewide results for this critical piece of the electoral map.

In this red county, nearly 40% of voters are registered Republicans, the county’s largest voting bloc. Many have embraced the supervisors’ conspiracy theories. At a county meeting in February, community members floated ideas that would dismantle the existing election system, praising the supervisors for their “incredible courage”.
[…]
A former mining stronghold once dominated by union labor, Cochise county was not always conservative. But in the years since the mining industry declined, the area has grown redder as jobs disappeared and the border industry grew.

Judd, one of the far-right county supervisors, attended the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally near the US Capitol, and Crosby is a former border patrol agent. Their crusade, particularly the decision not to certify the election without court intervention, was in part a protest against the election in Maricopa county, Judd has said.
[…]
The day before the supervisors voted to give Stevens more control over elections, the Arizona attorney general’s office warned them the plan might run afoul of state law. The solicitor general, Joshua Bendor, said the office had “serious questions” about whether it was legal for the board to give some of its duties in election oversight to another elected official.

Stevens told the Guardian he did not seek out the job; instead, he feels obligated to help because of an upcoming all-mail election about jail funding, which takes place in May. If he did not step in, the election could be canceled, he said: “Basically, if I don’t do it, the election’s gone.”

Stevens’s increased role has caused concerns, especially among local Democrats and independents, who question his friendship and entanglements with Finchem, a prominent election denier, as reported recently by Votebeat.
[…]
Crosby filed for re-election in January, seeking another term in 2024. Even if the recall is not successful, Lamberth said she hopes it sends him a message that “these few people you keep listening to are not the way the rest of the county feels”.

Some still want to see Crosby and possibly Judd charged for their initial refusal to certify the election, hoping it will deter other officials from trying to do the same in the future. When she was secretary of state, the Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, asked the then attorney general, Mark Brnovich, to investigate the delayed certification and potentially bring charges.
[…]
For Tyndall, the elections debate left a lingering sense of distrust in the community that she wants to see repaired.

“We are your neighbor,” she said. “We’re the same person that you waved to when you’re rolling the trash can down the driveway in the morning. And I think that we need a reminder that we are a community – we’re not two separate realities.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/16/arizona-cochise-county-republican-election-denialism

…when we talk about realities

Local media reported that the Swiss cabinet had gathered for a crisis meeting at 5 p.m. local time (12 p.m. ET) Saturday at the finance ministry to discuss the bank’s future, as reports swirled of a possible takeover of the ailing bank by its biggest Swiss rival, UBS (UBS).

Investors and customers pulled their money out of Credit Suisse over the past several days as turmoil swept the global banking industry following the collapse of two US lenders.

Shares of the bank lost 25% over the course of the week, despite an emergency $54 billion loan from the Swiss National Bank. The price of financial contracts designed to protect investors against possible losses on its bonds soared to record levels. More than $450 million was pulled from European and US funds managed by the bank between Monday and Wednesday, according to Morningstar.

The lifeline from the Swiss central bank, announced late Wednesday night after the stock had crashed to a new record low, only bought Credit Suisse (CS) some time.

Reuters and the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, both reported that Swiss regulators were urging the banks to agree a deal before markets open Monday to shore up confidence in the country’s banking system. The FT said the boards of UBS and Credit Suisse were expected to meet separately over the weekend.

BlackRock (BLK), which owns 4% of Credit Suisse, denied a separate report in the Financial Times that it was drawing up an alternative bid for all or part of the beleagured bank.

…”we”

GPT-4 has brought a storm of hype and fright – is it marketing froth, or is this a revolution? [Guardian]

…maybe aren’t always realistic

“BlackRock is not participating in any plans to acquire all or any part of Credit Suisse, and has no interest in doing so,” a BlackRock spokesperson told CNN.

Credit Suisse, which is among the 30 most important banks in the global financial system, has been on the ropes for years following a series of scandals, huge losses and strategic missteps. Its stock is down 75% over the past 12 months. But the crisis of confidence escalated rapidly this month.
[…]
Then Credit Suisse dropped another bombshell. Publishing its annual report on Tuesday, the 167-year-old bank acknowledged “material weakness” in its financial reporting, adding it had failed to adequately identify potential risks to its financial statements.

The following day, its biggest shareholder — the Saudi National Bank — made clear it would not be pumping any more money into the bank, after spending $1.5 billion last year for a stake of almost 10%. That spooked investors.
[…]
UBS would likely spin off Credit Suisse’s Swiss business since the combined market share would make up about 30% of Switzerland’s domestic banking market and mean “too much concentration risk and market share control,” they added.

edition.cnn.com/2023/03/18/business/credit-suisse-crisis-ubs/index.html

…I mean

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/16/cash-strapped-banks-have-borrowed-300bn-from-the-fed-this-past-week

It may seem surprising that First Republic, a midsize bank catering to wealthy clients in coastal states, became such a danger to the American banking system that the government had to cudgel the industry to stage an intervention.

The reason has a lot to do with the high-net-worth people who bank there.

“It’s the biggest example of a bank that could go down and shouldn’t go down — a first-class bank,” said a source close to the 48-hour deal to infuse First Republic with $30 billion in cash.

San Francisco-based First Republic, the 14th-largest bank in the country, received the cash infusion from 11 rivals, including America’s largest lenders.
[…]
The government-organized rescue isn’t a bailout — its goal is to give the bank enough cash to meet customer withdrawals and assure investors that it can withstand the turbulence that’s shaken the industry over the past week.
[…]
“The market is saying, ‘This is still not enough. We need more,’” Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James, told CNN on Friday.
[…]
“These depositors are particularly trigger-prone,” said Patricia McCoy, a law professor at Boston College. “They’re sophisticated, they know they have other options, and they have mechanisms in place to move money quickly.”

That “particularly volatile” base of depositors presents a risk for investors, said McCoy, who helped establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Big banks like JPMorgan Chase have diversified their depositor bases to include more of what McCoy calls “sticky deposits.” In other words, regular folks who have less than the FDIC-insured limit of $250,000 in the bank.

About two-thirds of First Republic’s deposits were uninsured. That’s far less than the 94% uninsured that Silicon Valley Bank had, but First Republic also had an unusually large 111% loan-to-deposit ratio at the end of last year, according to S&P Global — meaning it has loaned out more money than it has in deposits.

First Republic is a hot mess. The reason has a lot to do with its wealthy clientele [CNN]

www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/16/first-republic-bank-rescued-latest

…a healthy debate is all very well

Wealthy Executives Make Millions Trading Competitors’ Stock With Remarkable Timing [ProPublica]

…but

Some on the left are arguing that it was a lack of government intervention that led to the bank’s collapse, and are blaming Donald Trump and the 2018 partial rollback of the Dodd-Frank banking reforms he signed into law as president. This is incorrect. The Dodd-Frank rollback — one of the few bipartisan pieces of legislation passed under Trump — still left SVB subject to lots of regulation and oversight. As Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who led the bipartisan effort to reform Dodd-Frank in 2018, told Politico, “If you read the bill, you’ll know that it doesn’t let them off.” Higher capital requirements wouldn’t have mattered, and the bank’s money was in what most considered the lowest-risk assets possible: Treasury bonds. Just two weeks before SVB’s collapse, KMPG, one of the big-four accounting firms, gave the bank a clean bill of financial health. The problem wasn’t poor regulation. The problem was that the bank was terribly managed.

But absent this domino-like series of government interventions — starting with unprecedented near-zero interest rates which encouraged SVB to buy Treasurys, and followed by unprecedented lockdowns, government-stimulus-fueled consumer spending, runaway inflation and rising interest rates that devalued those Treasurys — this bank failure would never have happened. It’s just the latest evidence that Reagan was right when he warned us: “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

Big Government is to blame for Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse [WaPo]

…uh, huh…ok marc…lemme get this straight…you don’t think they’d have gotten us all in that mess if there’d been…less regulation of the banking industry…& here I thought it was doubt-that & bedbug-boy whose circular logic made me feel like I was reading my way around a möbius loop…anyway…speaking of going around in circles…when we talk about things being progressive or regressive

In 2018, when the company started up its expanded petrochemical operation, the Williams’ windows shook from the noise and cracks appeared in their ceiling, they said. Shirley retreated indoors; all but one of Arthur’s fruit trees died, the couple said, and he stopped gardening.
[…]
For over a decade, Baytown residents and environmental groups have been trying to force Exxon to curb its air pollution and pay a fine for the thousands of days it reported violating its Clean Air Act permits. Exxon has fought them at every turn, dragging out a legal battle that began in 2010 and that shows no signs of ending. The company recently won another round in court — a hearing that, activists say, could weaken ordinary Americans’ ability to sue industrial polluters across the country.

In late February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans agreed to reconsider the case before an en banc panel of all 17 full-time judges. The decision vacated the original panel’s 2-1 ruling upholding a $14 million penalty against the company for air pollution violations and granted Exxon a new hearing before one of the nation’s most conservative courts.

“They explicitly argue that citizens should not be allowed to bring wide-ranging enforcement actions, that [this] usurps the role of the government, which betrays exactly what they’re scared of: citizens taking action to enforce the law when government regulators don’t,” said Josh Kratka, a senior lawyer with the National Environmental Law Center and one of the attorneys representing plaintiffs in the case. “It serves as a warning to anyone who wants to sue Exxon for doing anything.”

Exxon argues that the environmental groups behind the case, Environment Texas and the Sierra Club, have not proved that the plaintiffs — people who either lived in Baytown or visited regularly — were injured by each of the more than 16,000 air pollution violations the company reported between 2005 and 2013.

“Long-settled law requires that citizens who bring claims for relief under the Clean Air Act show that they were actually injured by an event occurring at an industrial facility,” company spokesman Todd Spitler said in an email. “The law does not permit anyone, including environmental advocacy groups, to misuse the law in the way it has been misused in this case.”

Like other large oil companies, Exxon earned a record profit in 2022, bringing in $55.7 billion. While a $14 million fine would not mean much to the company, a loss could prove enormously costly for Exxon in other ways, by encouraging a wave of similar lawsuits and damaging its ability to hold itself out as a good neighbor.

At roughly 3,400 acres, ExxonMobil’s Baytown refinery complex is one of the nation’s largest petroleum and petrochemical facilities — and it has a history of excessive flaring, explosions and worker injuries. During a reporter’s recent visit, chemical odors from the complex hung heavy in the air. The plant’s emissions reports show that benzene and butadiene, chemicals linked to cancer, are among its pollutants.

Since the lawsuit was filed, Exxon has made changes to the Baytown refinery that have reduced its emissions and the company says it has spent roughly $1 billion on upgrades. Still, environmental advocates say this sprawling facility remains one of the worst polluters in the region, releasing chemical compounds that could pose long-term risks of cancer, asthma and other respiratory illnesses, even if the immediate exposure levels are not toxic.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/15/exxon-pollution-lawsuit-baytown-texas/

…sometimes

Wyoming has become the first US state to outlaw the use or prescription of medication abortion pills after the governor, Mark Gordon, signed into law a bill that was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature earlier this month.

The crux of the two-page Wyoming bill is a provision making it illegal to “prescribe, dispense, distribute, sell or use any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion”.

So-called “morning-after” pills, prescription contraceptive medication used after sex but before a pregnancy can be confirmed, are exempted from the ban.

The measure also includes an exemption for any treatment necessary to protect a woman “from an imminent peril that substantially endangers her life or health”, as well as any treatment of a “natural miscarriage according to currently accepted medical guidelines”.

Violation of the ban is to be treated as a criminal misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $9,000.

The measure stipulates that a woman “upon whom a chemical abortion is performed or attempted shall not be criminally prosecuted”.
[…]
The governor said he was also allowing enactment, without his signature, of a separate bill passed by state lawmakers to prohibit conventional abortion procedures except when necessary to protect the health and life of the mother, or in case of rape or incest. Exception is also permitted to end a pregnancy if doctors determine there to be a lethal abnormality of the foetus.

Wyoming’s new law comes as a rightwing push to crack down on medication abortions gathers momentum, with a federal judge in Texas currently considering a nationwide ban on the abortion pill mifepristone in response to a lawsuit by anti-abortion groups.
[…]
Medication abortions were the preferred method for ending pregnancy in the US even before the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, the ruling that protected the right to abortion for nearly five decades.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/18/wyoming-becomes-first-us-state-to-outlaw-use-of-abortion-pills

…the regressive sort might properly be called repressive

As Florida Republicans are introducing and advancing a wave of bills on gender and diversity that are likely to be signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), one GOP lawmaker acknowledged this week that his proposed sexual health bill would ban girls from talking about their menstrual cycles in school.

During a Florida House Education Quality Subcommittee hearing Wednesday, state Rep. Ashley Gantt (D) questioned her Republican colleague, state Rep. Stan McClain, on his proposed legislation that would restrict certain educational materials used in state schools, which Democrats and critics have likened to banning books. House Bill 1069 would also require that instruction on sexual health, such as health education, sexually transmitted diseases and human sexuality, “only occur in grades 6 through 12,” which prompted Gantt to ask whether the proposed legislation would prohibit young girls from talking about their periods in school when they first start having them.

🆘

Watch Florida State Rep. @StanMcClain tell Rep. @Gantt4Florida that his bill prohibits young people from talking about their period….

WHAT?!?! pic.twitter.com/PoEgRm4sK0

— Florida Planned Parenthood Action (@PPactionFL) March 15, 2023

McClain did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday. Gantt decried the bill to The Washington Post as “egregious.”
[…]
Gantt was echoed by advocates such as Annie Filkowski, the policy and political director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, who told The Post that “young Floridians will suffer if this legislation becomes law.”

“This bill shines a bright light on Florida’s political leaders’ perpetual thirst for power and control,” Filkowski said in a statement, adding that it was “ridiculous” to prohibit young girls from discussing menstruation with their teachers.

McClain’s proposed legislation is among a spate of new Republican-sponsored bills that could reshape K-12 and higher education in Florida. Bills filed by GOP state representatives and senators in recent weeks range from requiring teachers to use pronouns matching children’s sex as assigned at birth to establishing a universal school-choice voucher program. Other proposed legislation would eliminate college majors in gender studies, cut diversity efforts at universities and job protections for tenured faculty, strengthen parents’ ability to veto K-12 class materials and extend a ban on teaching about gender and sexuality — from third grade up to eighth grade.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/17/florida-bill-girls-periods-school-gop/

…or…when the motivating factors trace their roots to the likes of the house of saud the way that credit suisse getting nobbled did…or these kinds of attitudes towards the fairer sex could arguably be said to…downright fucking offensive

Speaking to conservative activists this month just outside of D.C., former president Donald Trump promised to be “your warrior” and “your justice,” vowing: “And to those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

The same day, speaking to a group of conservative donors in Florida, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (R) warned, “Joe Biden and the Democrats are destroying our people’s patriotism and swapping it out for dangerous self-loathing.”

And speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on March 5, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) argued that his state offered a refuge from a Democratic-led “dystopia, where people’s rights were curtailed and their livelihoods were destroyed.”

The trio of comments from 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls — either declared or expected — underscore the dark undertones and apocalyptic rhetoric that have pervaded much of the Republican Party in the era of Trump.
[…]
But much of the rhetoric from the declared and potential Republican candidates so far is remarkable for its dystopian tone. In many high-profile moments, these Republicans portray the nation as locked in an existential battle, where the stark combat lines denote not just policy disagreements but warring camps of saviors vs. villains, and where political opponents are regularly demonized.
[…]
Frank Luntz, a pollster and communication analyst who said he “came of age in the days of Ronald Reagan,” said that in the current Republican Party, gone is the era of Reagan’s sanguine optimism.

“Trump has turned Republican politics on its head, ” Luntz said. “We were so much more positive and hopeful, and it was Republicans who looked to the future with excitement and energy, but those days are long gone.”

Now, Luntz added, the cycle of darkness is self-perpetuating. “Pessimism and negativity breeds more pessimism and negativity,” he said. “You get darker and darker and go deeper and deeper into a hole, and you cannot emerge.”
[…]
While Trump is the undeniable champion of the vilify-your-opponent style of politics, he is hardly its only practitioner.
[…]
“The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left; the choice is between normal or crazy,” [Huckabee] Sanders said, ominously warning that “the Biden administration is doubling down on crazy.”
[…]
The risk of such rhetoric, some experts say, is that it strips political discourse and debate of its empathy and even humanity.

“At its worst, it divides and excludes,” said Alison McQueen, associate professor of political science at Stanford University and author of “Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times.” “It casts one set of people as heroes and saviors and another set of people as beyond the pale and evil. It’s good and evil rhetoric, and once you see your opponents as evil or the belligerent side in a war, that seems to legitimize treating them in ways we’d otherwise find very objectionable.”
[…]
At the Conservative Political Action Conference gathering on March 4, Trump warned of another global conflagration — “You’re going to have World War III, if something doesn’t happen fast” — and attacked members of his own party from the years before he became its standard-bearer: “We had a Republican Party that was ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists, open border zealots and fools.”

At one point, Trump declared, “This is it — either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country.”

…&…at another…which I’ve heard the audio of but haven’t a link to hand for…likewise declared that he could “very easily […] very easily” avert that third world war…to credulous applause…it’s not the clip I listened to (that one didn’t come with a video component) but it’s about 0:35 in this

“It’s authoritarian purity,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist and senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. “It’s what happens when you have to intensify the rhetoric to get the same response, and so it’s a downward spiral.”

He added, “Trump realized that there was gold in the hills if he could stoke fear and anger and amplify it. And most of those who thought that was the wrong direction for the party either left or were chased out, so then you spiral, you get darker and darker.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/16/republicans-2024-dark-apocalyptic/

…I dunno…maybe they’re just a bunch of FUDdy duddies

Senior care is crushingly expensive. Boomers aren’t ready. [WaPo]

His call to action is a reminder of the attention the former president still wields on social media among his supporters as well as leaders of the Republican Party, even amid questions about how much support Trump has for his third run for the nation’s highest office. His call for “protest” has also alarmed some of his advisers, who said they fear his rhetoric will grow increasingly incendiary as he feels cornered by prosecutors.

Two people close to the former president who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations said they did not know exactly when or if he would be indicted. They said advisers and lawyers on his team had warned Trump in recent days that an indictment could come early next week, including the possibility of Tuesday, but did not know why he singled out that day in his post.
[…]
Secret Service officials were caught by surprise Saturday morning by Trump’s post predicting a Tuesday arrest, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive planning. During discussions Friday in preparation for Trump’s possible indictment in New York, Secret Service leaders expected that Trump’s legal team would immediately notify them if his lawyers heard about any planned indictment.

The Secret Service officials also expect that the district attorney’s office would negotiate terms under which Trump could voluntarily turn himself in. The lawyers have provided no such notification, according to the person familiar with the Secret Service planning.
[…]
Mary McCord, director of a democracy advocacy center at Georgetown Law School, said Trump is whipping up extremists who could engage in violence.

“Trump knows the call-and-response impact of his words on his most ardent followers,” McCord said. “His call to ‘take our nation back,’ like his last-ditch call for them to ‘fight like hell’ on January 6, is not only the request but the permission for them to act, violently if necessary.”
[…]
A preliminary security planning meeting was held recently involving the district attorney’s office and the New York Police Department, according to one person with knowledge of the planning. That person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Law enforcement and court officials — including the NYPD, the Secret Service, New York State Court officers, the Manhattan district attorney’s office and judges — are expected to meet early next week to discuss security and logistics for Trump’s potential first court appearance, according to people with knowledge of the planning. The officials are likely to discuss issues including how to handle a potential rush of protesters around the perimeter of 100 Centre St., the borough’s main criminal courthouse.

“It’s an unbelievable security nightmare, and it’s going to inconvenience everybody at the courthouse whatever day we do it,” said Dennis Quirk, head of the New York State Court Officers Association.
[…]
Meanwhile, Trump’s team has begun fundraising on the prospect of his arrest, after the FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago home last year led to his best fundraising days since leaving the White House, The Washington Post reported.

“MANHATTAN D.A. COULD BE CLOSE TO CHARGING TRUMP,” one pitch Saturday morning read. “Patriot — With the Deep State gunning for President Trump with phony witch hunts like never before, we had to be sure you saw the private and secure message he wrote for YOU. See below!”

Trump and his team are preparing to go to “political war,” in the words of one adviser, to impugn the credibility of Bragg, Cohen and Daniels. Trump, who was kicked off numerous social media platforms after the Jan. 6 attack, has been getting his accounts back. On Friday, he posted on Facebook and YouTube, telling his followers he was back online.

Trump calls for protests of what he claims is his imminent arrest [But advisers to the former president said they have no specific knowledge of the timing of an indictment in the Manhattan case] [WaPo]

…maybe at some point it’d be nice to quit chasing our tails

The world is facing an imminent water crisis, with demand expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40% by the end of this decade, experts have said on the eve of a crucial UN water summit.

Governments must urgently stop subsidising the extraction and overuse of water through misdirected agricultural subsidies, and industries from mining to manufacturing must be made to overhaul their wasteful practices, according to a landmark report on the economics of water.

Nations must start to manage water as a global common good, because most countries are highly dependent on their neighbours for water supplies, and overuse, pollution and the climate crisis threaten water supplies globally, the report’s authors say.

Johan Rockstrom, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and a lead author of the report, told the Guardian the world’s neglect of water resources was leading to disaster. “The scientific evidence is that we have a water crisis. We are misusing water, polluting water, and changing the whole global hydrological cycle, through what we are doing to the climate. It’s a triple crisis.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/17/global-fresh-water-demand-outstrip-supply-by-2030

…or watching the latest round of cover-that-ass

On Saturday, Trump announced he would be arrested on Tuesday in a criminal case involving hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, but there has been no official confirmation on the likelihood that charges will be brought.
[…]
Among those coming to Trump’s defence on Saturday were House speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said a possible indictment would be “an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA [district attorney] who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance” against Trump.

McCarthy said he would direct relevant Republican-led House committees “to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions”. McCarthy has not endorsed Trump’s White House campaign, but Trump helped McCarthy secure the speakership after a contentious campaign that required multiple rounds of voting.

McCarthy’s predecessor as speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement, “the former president’s announcement this morning is reckless: doing so to keep himself in the news and to foment unrest among his supporters.”

“He cannot hide from his violations of the law, disrespect for our elections and incitements to violence.”

On Saturday, Trump posted a message on his Truth Social platform, referring to himself in the third person, saying: “The far and away leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States of America will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”

Law enforcement officials in New York have been making security preparations for the possibility that Trump could be indicted, but there has been no public announcement of any timeframe or any indictment.

A spokesperson and a lawyer for Trump said later on Saturday that his post was based on media reports rather than any actual update from, or communication with, prosecutors. Trump’s post cited “illegal leaks from a corrupt and highly political Manhattan district attorney’s office”.
[…]
In his post, Trump called on his supporters to “PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”

The post evoked the message from the then-president that preceded the insurrection by extremist supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 which ultimately failed to thwart the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

…sigh…it’s gonna be a long week

Trump has said he would continue his presidential campaign even if indicted.

…make that month…year…race to the bottom…whatever the word is

Federal prosecutors in 2018 charged Cohen with campaign finance crimes related to payments to Daniels and to a Playboy model, Karen McDougal, arguing that the payouts amounted to impermissible gifts to Trump’s election effort. Cohen pleaded guilty, served prison time and was disbarred. Federal prosecutors never charged Trump with any crime.

Any charges in this case would most likely involve state crimes of falsifying business records, typically a misdemeanor but a felony if it was part of a cover-up or wider criminal wrongdoing, and here could revolve around campaign finance illegality.

Kevin O’Brien, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Ford O’Brien in New York specialising in white-collar criminal defence, told the Guardian that for a felony charge, prosecutors would have to prove Trump showed an “intent to defraud” when his company “falsely accounted” for the payments to Daniels as legal expenses and effectively argue that the payments were synonymous with illegal donations to Trump’s 2016 election campaign, which would violate New York election law.

O’Brien said that any criminal charges for Trump would be messy and confusing for voters and potential jurors alike.

“How could this guy be running for president facing a conviction for an act of dishonesty that was indictable?” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/19/trump-allies-and-rivals-rally-to-his-defence-after-he-claims-arrest-is-imminent

…I mean

On her final day as the top judge in the District of Columbia on Friday afternoon—in her final act—Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell did more than grant the Justice Department permission to question former President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. She actually took the rare step of handing over the lawyer’s notes to federal prosecutors, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.

In doing so, Howell may have planted the seeds for a future constitutional challenge. But in the immediate term, she’s handed Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith a parting gift: what she deemed evidence of a crime involving the former president improperly hoarding classified documents after he left office.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-attorney-evan-corcoran-hires-attorney-of-his-own-in-classified-docs-case

According to a source, Corcoran’s professional notes about private communications with his client were turned over to Judge Howell, who was conducting an “in camera review”—a carefully controlled screening of confidential records that typically takes place in a judge’s chambers.
[…]
“She’s taken all the legal relief out of their hands. If she orders them to do it, they can take up an appeal on an emergency basis. She may have been concerned from what she read in the documents. She may have not trusted them to comply with an order,” said David Cross, an experienced federal litigator at the Washington firm Morrison & Foerster who is not involved in the Trump case.
[…]
On Friday, as part of a sealed proceeding, Howell ordered Corcoran to provide additional testimony to the DOJ, CNN first reported on Friday. She decided that investigators could pierce the typically ironclad blanket of attorney-client privilege because of something called the “crime-fraud exception.” In essence, the judge found that whatever legal advice Corcoran gave to Trump was used in furtherance of a crime.

But in turning over his notes, Howell’s alleged actions stand in stark contrast with the more traditional approach taken by a federal judge in California who faced similar questions last year. In that case, the Jan. 6 Committee was trying to access documents protected by attorney-client privilege to explore how Trump employed conservative legal scholar John Eastman in an attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.

U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter concluded that “President Trump and Dr. Eastman more likely than not committed obstruction of an official proceeding… and conspiracy to defraud the United States.” But when he ordered on June 7, 2022 that Eastman turn over 159 documents to the congressional committee, he gave Eastman a day to comply.
[…]
Howell’s last-minute decision in the Trump case could mark a turning point in the special counsel’s probe, because it has the ability to supercharge the investigation. But notably, the saga keeps playing out behind closed doors. Her orders in this case remain sealed, and the grand jury investigation continues in legally protected secrecy.

The total lack of transparency in this historic case—and the surprising ability of news journalists to still squeeze out details about the secret proceedings—became the subject of much humor during her goodbyes on Friday, according to Politico, which described her being “toasted and occasionally roasted.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/federal-judge-beryl-howell-hands-over-donald-trumps-lawyer-evan-corcorans-notes-to-doj

…if one of these things is much liked by the other

“The source believes the former president will still have to be fingerprinted and processed like every other defendant.”

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 17, 2023

US DOJ could take some pointers from The Hague.

— Brian Lee (@ForensicExpert6) March 17, 2023

Technically, they just assumed the role of the USSR but it was never legally voted on soooo 🤷🏻‍♀️

— Marv 🇺🇸🇺🇦🏳️‍🌈 (@marlowc2324) March 17, 2023

…but…it’s sunday…I don’t know about you but I could stand to see the funny side…so

The Brilliant Inventor Who Made Two of History’s Biggest Mistakes [NYT]

…maybe give up on all that for today & fall down a different rabbit hole…reddit’s damn near inexhaustible that way…how about…biblical tales reframed as florida man news…see…once you start thinking about it it’s a weirdly good fit, right?