Here’s today’s big headline, as explained in Rolling Stone:

In a text exchange from Dec. 23, 2020, mere days before a riotous mob attempted to sabotage the Electoral College certification of President Joe Biden’s win, conspiracy theorist and former Army colonel Phil Waldron updated Meadows on his efforts to have voting machines in Maricopa County, Arizona, seized and examined.

Complaining that a judge had dismissed a lawsuit brought by MAGA legislators demanding the machines be turned over, Waldron texted Meadows that the decision removed “our lead domino we were counting on to start the cascade,” of rulings in other states. “Pathetic,” Meadows replied.

Waldron was deeply involved in the scheme to seize voting machines in states with close electoral margins. He allegedly drafted an executive order for the White House instructing the seizure of voting machines but the order never came to fruition, as it was very clearly illegal. Waldron additionally communicated to Meadows that he had allegedly reviewed troves of suspect electoral data constituting what he described as a “southern steal.”

That’s kind of a big deal, seems to me. The other phone news is that on January 6 there was a 9-second call from the White House to one of the insurrectionists, a 26-year-old Trump supporter from Brooklyn named Anton Lunyk. Lunyk was in the Capitol building and was sentenced to a few months of home confinement, probation, and a small fine. He appears to be a minor player in that event. This may come to nothing.

Yesterday there were several stories in the right-wing press that claimed FBI SWAT teams with drawn assault weapons had raided the home of a nice Catholic man in Pennsylvania named Mark Houck. Several different accounts (example) claimed he was arrested in front of his seven traumatized children and this is OVERREACH by BIDEN. This article claims “A pro-life leader is calling for a Congressional investigation of a bogus FBI raid that resulted in the arrest of a peaceful pro-life advocate of a minor incident outside an abortion center and a federal charge that could put him in prison for up to 11 years.”

So I looked it up. Houck is a long-time abortion clinic terrorist, one of those thugs who gets off on intimidating and harassing women seeking medical care. In the “minor incident” he twice assaulted a 72-year-old man acting as a patient escort, knocking him to the ground. Houck has been charged with two counts of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which makes it a federal crime to use force with the intent to “injure, intimidate, and interfere with anyone because that person is a provider of reproductive health care.”

The FBI said no SWAT teams were involved in the raid. They did send armed agents to make the arrest, but said “FBI agents knocked on Mr. Houck’s front door, identified themselves as FBI agents and asked him to exit the residence. He did so and was taken into custody without incident pursuant to an indictment.”

Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. I hope Houck gets the eleven years, but he probably won’t.

Here’s the moment at which Trump declares he could declassify documents “just by thinking about it.” He didn’t even have to tell anyone, apparently.

I don’t know about you, but random secret declassifications seem a tad dysfunctional to me.

Jennifer Rubin:

In a pre-recorded interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, he insisted: “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, it’s declassified. Even by thinking about it, because you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago or to wherever you’re sending it.” This, of course, acknowledges that the documents he hoarded were highly sensitive, that Trump knew they were and that he sent them to Mar-a-Lago anyway.

It’s probably not possible to understand how Trump understands this. He has the mind of a small child, and a dimwitted small child at that. But he seems to be clinging to the idea that as long as the documents had been declassified, he did nothing wrong by hoarding them in the basement. Which is not how any of this works.

Yesterday it felt as if the whole planet was declaring it was out of bleeps to give. Massive street protests broke out in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, at the hands of the morality police. Amini had been detained because of “unsuitable attire,” by which I understand her hijab wasn’t properly adjusted. And she died in custody, apparently beaten to death. Women in Iran are burning their hijabs.

Yesterday Russians took to the streets to protest the war in Ukraine. This happened after Putin initiated a draft, apparently.

Images and videos show police cracking down on demonstrators in multiple cities,with footageshowing several protesters at a demonstration in central Moscow being carried away by the police and authorities in St. Petersburg attempting to contain a crowd chanting “no mobilization” outside Isakiivskiy Cathedral.

Police detained the protesters across 38 cities in Russia on Wednesday, according to figures released shortly after midnight by independent monitoring group OVD-Info. The group’s spokeswoman Maria Kuznetsova told CNN by phone that at at least four police stations in Moscow, some of the protesters arrested by riot police were being drafted directly into Russia’s military.

Yeah, that will so not help Putin win his war. The Russian “military” is a big enough mess already without adding antiwar draftees to the mix.

And then, yesterday, NY AG Tish James smacked Trump with a $250 million lawsuit and the 11th Circuit federal appeals sided with the Department of Justice against Trump. You can read the decision here. It’s interesting.

See Aaron Blake, A thorough rebuke of Judge Aileen Cannon’s pro-Trump order and Greg Sargent, Appeals court slams Judge Cannon: No, Trump is not above the law.

Let’s hear it for New York Attorney General Letitia James! Today AG James filed suit in New York state court against Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization.

James said her suit is seeking around $250 million in disgorgement from the defendants. She is also asking that the Trump Organization be barred from engaging in any commercial real estate acquisitions in New York for five years and Trump and his children be prohibited from serving as officers or directors in any corporation in the state. She is further seeking the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee compliance, financial reporting and valuations at the Trump Organization as well as disclosures to lenders, insurers and tax authorities  for at least five years.

And Trump appears to have had a bad day in court yesterday, also. One of the ongoing puzzles of the Trump defense has been the choice of senior US district judge Raymond Dearie as one of their two special master candidates. The legal bobbleheads on MSNBC, Andrew Weissmann et al., have nothing but good things to say about Dearie. He’s a judge’s judge, one said yesterday. But then Axios reported that the Trumpers believe Dearie has a grudge against the FBI. Whatever. I suspect this is not going to work for them. In court yesterday Dearie let them know he’s not playing their games.

Robert Katzberg writes at Slate,

I and so many others have been unable to figure out why in the world the Trump legal team nominated Judge Dearie to serve as Mar-a-Lago special master in the first place. Yes, Judge Dearie is apparently a Republican, and yes, he was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan. But, really, Judge Dearie? Didn’t Team Trump know that the person they were choosing to uphold their dubious legal position is among the most respected members of the New York federal judiciary, admired for decades by prosecutors and defense counsel alike for his rational, ”by the book” approach?

Given Judge Dearie’s reputation for integrity and objectivity, it is no surprise that the Department of Justice quickly agreed to his appointment. After all, DOJ is appropriately convinced its legal position on the Mar-a-Lago seizure will be upheld by any fair minded, experienced judge, one like, say, Raymond Dearie. But from the Trump perspective, having lucked into the clearly sympathetic Judge Cannon to oversee the Florida seizure litigation, why would they let a model of judicial objectivity serve as special master to make key rulings in a matter in which they are, as a matter of law, flying by the seat of their pants? Why not just nominate another member of the Federalist Society with ties to the Republican right? Had they done so, the Department of Justice would have surely objected to both of their nominees, leaving it to Judge Cannon to make the selection. Given her rulings thus far, it would have been a good bet she would have chosen a Trump nominee, or at least selected a new special counsel of her choice who might have had sympathies consistent with her own.

Maybe someone on Trump’s team really wants him to lose.

BTW, I thought these Weissmann tweets were interesting —

Exactly ??
Trump appeal argument: govt has not proved it’s a duck other than it walks talks and looks like one, govt swore it’s one and we don’t deny it’s one. And it has a big sign on it saying “I’m a duck.” But other than that, govt has nothing. https://t.co/AV0X9EmGcw

— Andrew Weissmann ? (@AWeissmann_) September 20, 2022

This ?? is why the conservative scholars and their ilk are not supporting Trump argument. Undermines unitary (current) executive theory they champion. https://t.co/xSXollbZSc

— Andrew Weissmann ? (@AWeissmann_) September 20, 2022

I’m feeling a bit better. The antiviral pills seem to work well.

There’s a very good article about the Venezuelan migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard, by Judd Legum at Popular Information. Legum found evidence that the migrants were lured on the plane with promises of benefits they weren’t going to get. Authorities in Massachusetts have requested a federal criminal probe of Ron DeSantis.

This weekend Trump had a rally in Ohio that sounds unhinged even by Trump standards. Greg Sargent:

Donald Trump’s weekend rally in Ohio had no shortage of dark and disturbing moments: He mocked GOP Senate nominee J.D. Vance for “kissing my ass,” called for Singapore-style executions of drug dealers and enjoyed a moment of ritualistic crowd adulation set to what sounded like a QAnon song.

Yeah, I’m sure Mitch appreciated seeing Trump’s chosen GOP Senate candidate trashed. Good move.

But Trump also delivered a deeply serious message with real-world implications. He fully expects a GOP Congress to use its power to place him outside the reach of any and all investigations and prosecutions, now and into the future. …

… These are not idle ravings. They are better understood as a directive, as a declaration of what Trump actually does expect a GOP-controlled Congress to do for him. And you will hear this more as Trump holds rallies for other House and Senate candidates….

This was all about signaling to the GOP that they’d better protect him from prosecution, or his wackadoo cult followers will withhold their votes.

Josh Marshall:

Trump gravitates toward what secures his deepest and surest hold over his supporters. He’s in a mutually reinforcing cycle of radicalization with his most ardent followers.

It also seems likely that his rapidly intensifying legal exposure and predicament are fueling this shift. The Q fantasy has always been based on belief in a corrupt and evil liberal “deep state” which will result to all manner of criminality and threats and crimes against Trump before finally being vanquished in a dramatic turning of the tables in which Trump gets his violent revenge against his enemies.

Trump and his supporters have created a dynamic in which the predictable and perhaps inevitable result of his own criminal behavior now validates their narrative about his persecution and inevitable violent triumph over his foes. It also makes Trump’s reliance on the hardcore of MAGA/QAnon supporters more of an all-or-nothing thing.

See also Will Bunch, This QAnon-flavored soundtrack to Trump, GOP’s fascist right turn should terrify you.

I suspect posting will be light this week because I now have covid and feel awful. Wish me luck with this.

I honestly don’t know that much about Charlie Crist, who is running against Ron DeSantis for governor of Florida. I do remember he was governor of Florida before, but I don’t recall his record. However, I went to his “issues” page on his campaign website, and he’s running on good stuff now. I see reproductive rights, voting rights, housing, environment, etc. Click on the plans, and read what he proposes. Good stuff.

Ron DeSantis is running on being an asshole.

You can see the same thing in Texas. Beto O’Rourke has some definite proposals he’s running on, like a promise to end permitless carry of firearms. Which is damn gutsy for Texas.

It’s fairly obvious, however, that Greg Abbott is mostly running on being an asshole.

Here’s an example from O’Rourke’s website:

Case in point: Greg Abbott is using our tax dollars by the billions to take 10,000 members of the Texas National Guard away from their families, careers, and communities to serve as the backdrop for his photo ops at the border, even though they have zero authority to arrest or detain migrants. All the while, he has degraded their service, delayed their pay, and slashed their earned tuition benefits in order to afford their ongoing deployment. All he has done in his seven and a half years in office is pose tough at the border while doing nothing to make us any safer—the definition of a stunt instead of a solution.

The recent stunts of sending undocumented immigrants to blue cities is assholery cranked up to the infinite power. Take the flight from San Antonio TEXAS to Martha’s Vineyard, courtesy of the governor of FLORIDA. DeSantis didn’t have enough of his own undocumented immigrants to mess with, so Greg Abbott let him have some in Texas. Wow. (This could yet blow back on DeSantis; people were lured onto the plane under false pretenses. The DoJ has been asked to investigate. Possible kidnapping charges have been mentioned.)

See also the Miami Herald, DeSantis’ remarks prompt more questions on where migrant flights originated.

DeSantis’ administration is only allowed to “transport unauthorized aliens from this state,” according to budget language approved by state lawmakers this year. The governor’s office did not immediately respond when asked whether the migrants had moved to Florida or whether the state-funded program helped transport migrants from another state. DeSantis provided no details about the flights during a Thursday news conference.

I’m betting the Crist campaign is producing new television ads on this very issue, as I keyboard this. I understand there’s also concern DeSantis may have used covid relief money for this little stunt.

Jonathan Chait:

Jeremy Redfern, a DeSantis spokesperson, embraced the comparison to illegal traffickers. In response to a complaint that DeSantis neglected even to give advance notice to Martha’s Vineyard so it could prepare accommodations, Redfern sniffed that coyotes don’t do this:

 

Do the cartels that smuggle humans call Florida or Texas before illegal immigrants wash up on our shores or cross over the border? No.

Welcome to being a state on the Southern border, Massachusetts. https://t.co/pkjWYnznna

— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) September 15, 2022

The premise is that DeSantis has no obligation to take any more interest in safeguarding human welfare than an illegal smuggling operation does.

What’s next, guys? Concentration camps?

This is ultimately about “owning the libs,” of course. But it sounds as if the libs haven’t been owned yet. The people of Martha’s Vineyard did not melt down, as expected, but instead rallied to provide food and shelter to the 50 Venezuelan refugees who had shown up with no advance notice. Today I’m reading that Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is sending the 50 refugees to a facility on Cape Cod that’s been used as a shelter in the past, with some National Guard called up to help them out until somebody decides what happens next.

On the day after Ken Starr dies we learned that John Durham’s grand jury is expiring, and it appears he’s not calling another one. Which suggests his investigation is over.

As you might recall, Durham has been working since 2019, and spending millions of dollars, to uncover the nefarious conspiracy about how the FBI and Hillary Clinton fabricated evidence and spread false allegations about Donald Trump’s campaign working with Russia to win the 2016 election.

His results? As of November 2021 Durham had issued single-count indictments against two Americans for making a false statement, and a five-count false statement indictment against a Russian national. One of the Americans was acquitted at trial; the other, an FBI lawyer, entered into a plea agreement with no jail time for doctoring an email used in preparation for a wiretap renewal application.

The Russian national, Igor Danchenko, goes on trial next month. The Right is feverishly looking forward to the Danchenko testimony that will discredit the evil Steele Dossier. The problem, of course, is that (one) the Steele Dossier has already been pretty much discredited; (two) the Steele Dossier wasn’t nearly as big a part of the evidence against Trump that the Right claims it to be. In fact, when the FBI began its investigation it didn’t yet know the dossier existed.

The basis for the investigation was instead that WikiLeaks had disrupted the Democratic National Convention by releasing Democratic emails believed to have been stolen by Russian hackers, and that an Australian diplomat said a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser had bragged to him about apparent outreach from Russia involving an offer to help the campaign by anonymously releasing information damaging to Mrs. Clinton.

And to my mind, those allegations are still outstanding. We never did get to the bottom of this. Tossing out the Steele Dossier comes nowhere close to proving that “Russiagate” was a hoax.

Paul Waldman:

In other words, Durham’s probe found almost nothing. If you gave me a staff of attorneys, a few million dollars and subpoena power, I could probably find more crimes committed last month at your neighborhood fast food joint. What Durham most certainly didn’t find was a vast conspiracy. Yet that’s exactly what many Republicans believed he would do. …

…We see this so often: Republicans insist they’re about to reveal a nefarious conspiracy, and when given the opportunity, they can’t deliver. Just look at all the investigations and audits of the 2020 election. Every time, they say “Now you’ll see how the election was stolen!” But even their own probes can’t locate the fraud, no matter how many ballots they scan for traces of bamboo.

The tales Republicans tell about these controversies have several key elements. They begin from the assumption that in every situation, their opponents have only the most wicked of intentions. A Democratic president can only be seeking the literal destruction of America (or as Fox News’s Tucker Carlson recently said, President Biden aims to “completely destroy the West in order to make way for Chinese global dominance”). No Democrat can merely be trying to win an election to implement the party’s favored policies.

I guess the news isn’t all bad.

Getting slammed with news today.

First, from the WTF Is He Thinking department — Lindsey Graham TODAY introduced a nationwide abortion ban bill to the Senate. He claims this will help Republicans in the midterms.

All together now — WTF Is He Thinking?

It’s called the “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act.” It would ban abortions after 15 weeks gestation, which is way before “late-term” status. Also,

The bill includes exceptions for “situations involving rape, incest, or risks to the life and physical health of the mother,” Graham’s office said. It also “leaves in place state laws that are more protective of unborn life” — indicating that it would not supersede more draconian bans in red states, but would hypothetically impose new restrictions in blue ones.

If he thinks this is some kind of compromise that would be broadly accepted, I think he’s nuts.

In the medical world, “late-term” is used to describe the very end of a pregnancy; births can stretch from early term at around 37 weeks to late around 41. The anti-abortion world has successfully hijacked the phrase to apply to much earlier abortions, implying that the procedure would be done on a virtually fully developed fetus. The gambit goes hand-in-hand with the long anti-abortion tradition of using imagery of very advanced fetuses on its signage and promotional material, even while the vast majority of abortions happen in the first trimester.

The notion of “fetal pain” is another popular one in anti-abortion circles, and the legislation for which they lobby. The medical consensus is that fetuses don’t develop the necessary structures to feel pain until the third trimester — well past Graham’s 15 weeks. 

This isn’t going to satisfy the True Believer Abortion Criminalizers at all. And some Republicans are still going with the “Dobbs just returned it to the states” talking point, and this messes them up. Never mind being bad law; politically this was a purely boneheaded move on Graham’s part. Politico is reporting the bill is not being well received by GOP senators.

Mar a Lago News. The usual people I can usually count on to write smart legal analysis of things filed in court haven’t yet addressed yesterday’s response from the Trumpers I posted about yesterday. This best I could find is Jennifer Rubin —

The Trump legal brain trust’s latest filing has been met with proper ridicule. From its characterization of the documents retrieved from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as “purported ‘classified records’ ” (Is there some doubt?) to its contention that the former president had the power to declassify documents (even though the absence of classification would not protect him from prosecution under the Espionage Act), the brief is incoherent, to put it mildly. Former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa tells me, “It literally contradicts itself in several places.”

Nevertheless, the filing is quite revealing, even if any rational judge would dismiss it out of hand. It demonstrates that Trump really has no excuse for having highly classified documents unsecured at Mar-a-Lago. …

… There is a risk of overanalyzing the brief. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe explains, “His defense comes down to ‘I’m President Trump.’ ” Trump seems to balk at the suggestion that he has to explain to the FBI which documents he considers privileged. “To me, that’s equivalent to: ‘Shut up, I explained.’ ” Tribe says. “Not much of a defense.”

General Trump Corruption News. If you saw Rachel Maddow’s last night you heard the interview with Geoffrey S. Berman, who was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2018 through June 2020, when he was fired by Trump. (Here’s a 2020 article from Vox with background.) See also the New York Times. The basic charge is that Trump’s White House, through AG Bill Barr, pressured the SDNY to be a political tool — for example, by bringing charges (any charges) against Democrats Trump didn’t like, and especially before the 2018 midterm election. When people on Trump’s side faced investigations, pressure was brought to drop the investigations or even reverse convictions.

Investigations into this have been announced.

January 6 News. Also yesterday, the New York Times reported that in the past week the Justice Department has issued 40 subpoenas in regard to its investigation of January 6. They also seized phones of a couple of Trump advisers I don’t think I’ve heard about before — “Boris Epshteyn, an in-house counsel who helps coordinate Mr. Trump’s legal efforts, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign in 2020.” It is alleged they are connected to the fake electors scheme.

There’s more! Greg Sargent:

The Associated Press adds more, reporting that subpoenas have been issued to seek “information about the political action committee’s fundraising practices.”

This is of interest because the Save America PAC’s “fundraising practices” seem to represent the moment when the “big lie” monetized itself into the “big grift” in spectacular fashion.

I may be caught up now.

Trump didn’t take the hint. Instead of letting his judge, Aileen Cannon, disentangle from the mess she made with her bonehead Labor Day decision, he and his lawyers still want to block the feds from reviewing the classified documents.

In brief, Trump is saying Nyah nyah nyah! So send it to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. I’ve packed it with my judges already. They’ll sit on it forever.

Josh Kovensky says at TMP:

For months, former President Trump and his allies have claimed that, at the end of his term in office, he issued a broad declassification order.

Some of these statements — from Trump acolytes such as the former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) staffer Kash Patel — came even before the FBI executed search warrants at Mar-a-Lago last month.

Now, in a Monday court filing, Trump is repeating those claims, except for one key point: he won’t say in court that he actually declassified the records seized by the FBI.

Trump’s attorneys stopped short of that defense. Instead, they claimed that, hypothetically, Trump had the power to declassify the records in question, and that he very well may have done so. Besides, they argued, isn’t the burden on the government to prove that the records themselves were no longer classified?

“The Government contends that President Trump can have no such interest in the purported ‘classified records,’” the filing reads. “But, again, the Government has not proven these records remain classified. That issue is to be determined later.”

Exactly what part of “Trump has created a national security crisis” are they not getting? Oh, never mind.

It’s my understanding that the government documents are stolen property, classified or not. Even if Trump were able to persuade a court that he really had declassified everything, he doesn’t get them back.

Trump’s lawyers also argue that the government can’t possibly be all that concerned about the allegedly classified information. Colin Kalmbacher at Law and Crime:

The 22-page motion in opposition the DOJ’s motion for a partial stay pending appeal attempted to undercut the government’s “serious harms” position by pointing to recent “unauthorized leaks” of information about the allegedly “classified records” in question.

“The Government is apparently not concerned with unauthorized leaks regarding the contents of the purported ‘classified records,’ and would presumably be prepared to share all such records publicly in any future jury trial,” the motion argues in a footnote – which contains a link to a Sept 6, 2022 Washington Post story titled: “Material on foreign nation’s nuclear capabilities seized at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.” …

… “[F]or the record, these leaks are very problematic,” national security attorney Kel McClanahan, who has generally been critical of Trump’s legal position in the case, tweeted on Monday morning. “They already formed the basis of Cannon’s original order. I understand why the person is leaking them, but they need to keep in mind that if they end up losing this fight, it will be in large part because of them.”

Trump’s lawyers also argue that “President Trump clearly has an individual interest in and need for the seized property.” Yeah, he needs to know another country’s nuclear secrets.

I’m sure there will be more commentary popping up about this as the day goes on.

Update: Emptywheel, who is smarter than most of us, says that the authority Trump’s lawyers cite in their filing today — an Executive Order signed by President Obama in 2009 — actually makes the DoJ’s argument that ex-Presidents have no rights to classified documents.

It appears the Russian army was routed out of some key areas in eastern Ukraine. There was a huge loss of Russian equipment, reports say, as the Russians appear to have just abandoned everything to run for their lives. Not all news sources are using the word “rout,” but it does sound like a rout.

The Russians are saying it’s just a redeployment.

The Russian Defense Ministry on Saturday confirmed that it had pulled forces out of Balakliya and Izyum, after a decision to “regroup” and transfer them toward the regional capital of Donetsk in the south “in order to achieve the goals of the special military operation.”

Here’s the warning label:

The stunning rout of Russian forces by Ukraine’s flash counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region does not, on its own, signal a decisive shift in the war to Ukraine’s advantage.

Radio Free Europe is reporting that Moscow Municipal Lawmakers Demand Putin’s Resignation. They’ve got more courage than the Russian army.

And something funky is going on in Moscow.

In Moscow, squares are being closed off. Ok. However, I would urge some also to close their windows: you never know, birds, rain, wind, or wind currents which drain you from your 3rd floor apt and make you fall from the 6th. https://t.co/3bthQ9JVzz

— Andrea Gilli (@aa_gilli) September 10, 2022

And that’s all I know about Russia and Ukraine.