Labor Day Weekend News

Posted on by

Truth Social was launched in 2021 on a foundation of SPACs and PIPEs and other entitites I had never heard of, but I wrote about them at the time. Now this financing apparatus, whatever it is, appears to be about to crumble apart. There’s a news story about it here. Don’t ask me to explain any of this.

Regarding the Georgia indictment, there’s more reporting today on Coffee County, Georgia.

Prosecutors allege that former county Republican Party chair Cathy Latham and former elections supervisor Misty Hampton helped to facilitate employees from a firm hired by Trump attorneys to access and copy sensitive voter data and election software. Surveillance video captured Latham waving the visitors inside, and Hampton in the office as they allegedly accessed the data. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Why Coffee County? It’s a rural county in southern Georgia. Trump won almost 70% of the votes there in 2020, as did David Purdue, running for the U.S. Senate. Both lost statewide, as you might recall. Why were Coffee County’s voting machines so interesting to the Trumpers?

It turns out that there is a history of Coffee County elections being mishandled. The county seat, Douglas, is majority Black, but the rest of the County is mostly White, and county government offices get filled by White people. There is a history of Black voter intimidation and suppression going back years. My guess is that Trumpers may discretely have inquired about voting machines throughout the state, but only the Coffee County officials said, Sure, come on down. Take whatever you want. 

Bill Richardson died. He was a good man. Jimmy Buffett is gone, too.

Worth reading: For All Rudy’s Troubles, There’s Much More Still There by Josh Marshall.

Enjoy the Labor Day weekend. I hope you find plenty of beer and barbeque, or whatever you enjoy on late summer weekends.

5 thoughts on “Labor Day Weekend News”

  1. I've heard it called "Tripe Social"

    Only in America: Jimmy Buffett Does Not Live the Jimmy Buffett Lifestyle

    …He played clubs all over the country, but it was the crowds in landlocked areas that seemed to love him most. In Pittsburgh, he and his Coral Reefer bandmates noticed that fans had started wearing Hawaiian shirts, just like they did, to the shows. One night, in Cincinnati, his bass player Timothy B. Schmit (also of the Eagles) likened them to Deadheads, the way Grateful Dead fans would follow that band. And so they were christened Parrotheads, just as a joke, but then fans began to wear feathers and beak masks to shows. “In their minds they wanted to go to the ocean,” he said. He understood he was bringing the ocean to them. He was no longer just a singer. Now he was a guru.

    So how could he serve his acolytes better? What could he do to make sure that even when he left town they could still have the island getaway they so longed for?

    Well, what if on your way to your burdensome job, you could listen to Mr. Buffett and the musicians he endorses? You could be stuck in traffic and listening to his SiriusXM Radio Margaritaville station. After work, you can bring Caribbean flavor to your kitchen with Margaritaville® Jammin’ Jerk Shrimp or Calypso Coconut Shrimp, both skillet-ready in minutes. Relax afterward by mixing up a batch of Margaritaville® Margarita Mix, in lime or mango flavors, because 9 a.m. will come soon enough.

    Finally, it’s Friday! No more working for the man! So crack open a LandShark® Lager, manufactured by Anheuser-Busch under the name of Margaritaville Brewing Company.

    Calendar pages fly off the wall, and at long last it’s time for vacation. There are six different Norwegian Cruise Line ships floating around that host the restaurants Margaritaville at Sea, 5 o’Clock Somewhere Bar and LandShark® Bar & Grill. Not seafaring? There are 11 Margaritaville® hotels, some of which have casinos. (The one I stayed at in Pensacola Beach did not, but it did have a clock that is stuck at 5.) When you check-in, you are given a lanyard to carry around your room card for when you get too drunk to find it — there it is, right around your neck.

    You blow out birthday candles, one more every year, and wonder what it’s all for. One day your cardiologist says to maybe ease up on all those cheeseburgers, and you’re just about done working for the man. Well, if you’re “55 and better,” you can move into Latitude Margaritaville®, an adult-living community in partnership with Minto which will be opening in Daytona Beach next year. Life could be like a never-ending stay in Margaritaville, with yoga classes and “FINtastic” dining. (Dialysis machines sold separately.)

    Mr. Buffett has given his fans a path to a simulacrum of the island life. In the course of it, he’s gotten very rich. How rich? According to Forbes, in 2016 Mr. Buffett, who has only had one Top 10 song (“Margaritaville” reached No. 8), was worth a reported $550 million. (Bruce Springsteen is worth a mere $460 million, according to that same list.)

    1

  2. Truth Social was a kneejerk reaction to the Twitter ban. Trump thought he could make a conservative Twitter that would make him money. The problem is the source of revenue has to be either advertising or fees to the user. The total signup hasn't been great – only 2% of adult Americans use the site monthly. If they don't care when it's free, how many will pay? My guess is that Trump wanted to take Truth Social public, sell stock to his rubes before they realized they bought a pig in a poke. (The process for getting to the point of selling stock is what's fallen apart, mostly because it was illegal.) A bunch of money has been spent and I hope Trump never makes a dime.

    Trump's lawyers are trying to sell the GA case as a disagreement about the phone call that got recorded. Ooops. So much for the "I never said that!" defense. And the moment the call became MORE than an inquiry about irregularities (each or which Brad R. had investigated and discarded) and turned into a rather direct threat of federal prosecution, the call was a crime. But probably not enough to charge Trump over. There are three more legs to the crime.

    Coffee County allowing Trump people access to voting machines was a crime BY the Coffee County officials. WHO they unlocked the door for connects a relatively minor crime to a second element of a conspiracy by Trump to defraud the voters of GA. I'm assuming that the prosecutor can directly link the people who got access to the machines to others in Trump's orbit (also named in the indictment)

    The third element of RICO is the attempt to intimidate Freman and Moss to sign a false confession to voter fraud. Again, the prosecutor has to link the people who approached them to people in Trump's orbit. If Willis can do that she's got another element of a criminal conspiracy. She needs two to make RICO stick.

    The fourth element (as I see it) is the fake electors scheme. Eastman and Giuliani are toast there. We know some of the electors have flipped. This may be interesting in the trial. Recruiting fake electors in other states isn't a crime in Georgia BUT the pattern that the overall plan reveals proves an intention to defraud the voters of Georgia. So stuff should be admissible under RICO that would not be admissible just under a vanilla violation of Georgia statutes. 

    It will be interesting to see if/how the pitch that Rudy made to the Georgia legislature is presented. I think it's a violation of Georgia state law to lie to state officials with the intent of persuading them to do (or not do) something in their official capacity. The Trump people will claim a First Amendment right to lie but this law should have been adjudicated relative to the First Amendment. So that's a fifth and bonus avenue to prove the second conspiracy that activates RICO.

    The move to break up all these cases to separate jurisdictions and individual trials on different days makes it tougher to prosecute RICO. (My opinion, and I'm not a lawyer.) On the other hand, the judge can see that which IMO is a reason to hold the cases together so all the evidence related to the conspiracy is in the view of the jury. What happens with Meadows will be crucial. Willis must have anticipated these ploys – I hope.

     

    2

  3. "Truth Social" how could something so antithetical to it's brand fail, it's just not fair. In other Stump "the loser" news word is he might have to fork over millions of loser MAGAT bucks to the Fulton County Sheriff. Seems he doesn't own the trademark or retail rights to his mugshot that he made millions off of selling t-shirts and chotski’s to his dullard fans. Again not fair!

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-mugshot-t-shirt-cash-grab-could-backfire-and-cost-him-millions-legal-experts/ar-AA1g9l0E?ocid=hpmsn&pc=U483&cvid=7e42531d350a4ee9b363e8cb255f89d6&ei=20

Comments are closed.