Trump Derangement Syndrome

It turns out that random drivel produced by foreigners and thrown into the enormous, all-consuming maw of American social media doesn’t have much effect.

Not all conspiracy theories are created equal.

The same people who pride themselves on rigorously insisting on the facts — ideally, explained in the dulcet tones of an NPR anchor — are happy to embrace conspiracy theories supportive of their own worldview.

This is why the idea that Russian disinformation on social media influenced or even decided the 2016 election has gained such purchase, even though a new study finds, unsurprisingly, no evidence for it.

A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of a former teacher in Vancouver, Washington, concluding that his wearing a hat supporting Donald Trump to school was protected speech under the first amendment.

Documents from the ninth circuit court of appeals show that Eric Dodge, a science teacher, brought the Make America Great Again baseball cap to an Evergreen Public Schools building twice before the 2019-2020 school year.

According to the Columbian newspaper, the first occasion was a staff-only cultural sensitivity and racial bias training.

As expected, the House Ways and Means Committee Democrats used their final days in the majority to release six years of tax returns connected to former president Donald Trump. This is an unprecedented action, one that was condemned by committee Republicans, and rightly so –this is banana-republic stuff. Committee chairman Richard Neal (D., Mass.) sounded a note of reluctance in his statement, putting most of the blame on the IRS for not auditing Trump enough while he was president. Leaking a tax return is a felony; regardless of the procedural hoops Democrats jumped through to get these returns out there, they’re now as public as they would have been if they’d been leaked, and the committee effectively forcing the leak creates a very bad precedent (can we see Hunter Biden’s tax returns next?).

Former President Donald Trump’s tax returns have been released, ending a bitter six-year long battle to gain greater insights into his finances.

Ever since his entry into politics, critics have been keen to get Mr Trump – whose foundational pitch to voters had been that his business success made him the best choice to run the country – to show what his wealth actually looked like.

He had steadfastly refused.

And … Jan. 6 panel drops Trump subpoena as it wraps up work

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee has dropped its subpoena against former President Donald Trump as it wraps up work and prepares to dissolve next week.

Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chairman, wrote in a letter to Trump lawyer David Warrington on Wednesday that he is formally withdrawing the subpoena.

“As you may know, the Select Committee has concluded its hearings, released its final report and will very soon reach its end,” Thompson wrote. “In light of the imminent end of our investigation, the Select Committee can no longer pursue the specific information covered by the subpoena.”

h/t Mauser

If anything, the referrals could undermine the DOJ’s building of a successful prosecution.

There is a danger in repeating the same script ad nauseam, as the House January 6 committee has done in its not one but two final performances.

Recall that the last one, in October, featured the dramatic proclamation that the committee was issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump’s testimony . . . under circumstances where it knew it would never get such testimony. Monday’s theater — apparently the finale, with Republicans poised to take control of the House and shutter the production — featured the dramatic proclamation that the committee is referring the former president to the Justice Department for prosecution . . . under circumstances where it knows such referrals are nonbinding and generally ignored by the Justice Department, except to the extent that they may be counterproductive to the building of a successful prosecution.

Donald Trump should be charged with crimes related to the assault on the US Capitol, according to the congressional committee investigating the 6 January, 2021 attack.

The committee claimed the former president instigated the attack by his supporters and provided “aid and comfort” to the rioters in violation of multiple federal laws. “None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him,” the summary of its final report says.

The charge of seditious conspiracy is the same as in a recent trial of members of the Oath Keepers militia, but the Proud Boys defendants are accused of a central role in the fighting at the Capitol.

On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, as scores of Proud Boys were getting ready to take their place in a pro-Trump mob outside the Capitol, a leader of the far-right group sent a message to his colleagues.

“I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today,” he wrote.

Almost two years later, the notion that the Proud Boys wanted to provoke violence among the “normies” — or the normal people — in the crowd that day rests at the heart of the government’s case against five members of the group who are facing trial on charges of seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol attack.

Expect lengthy sentences as pretext for railroading Trump.

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump should face criminal charges for his actions in connection with last year’s Capitol riot, according to the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

The bipartisan panel recommended the Justice Department charge the 76-year-old Trump with insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements to investigators, and conspiracy to defraud the US government, after discovering the former president pushed claims he knew were false about the 2020 presidential election.

The congressional inquiry into last year’s Capitol riot will reportedly recommend three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.

The House of Representatives panel will seek an unprecedented charge of insurrection against a former US president, according to US media.

The criminal referrals to the justice department will be disclosed on Monday, along with most of the final report.

The department is already investigating Mr Trump’s role in the unrest.

When Jack Smith became a Wasserstein Fellow, even while, unironically, serving as head of the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, seemingly soliciting and accepting a grant funded by a leftist billionaire, he joined a list of leftist activist lawyers working for the ACLU, Earthjustice, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Soros’ Open Society, Catholic Charities and the UN.

The mission of the Wasserstein Fellows was to gather “a diverse group of accomplished public interest lawyers who are enthusiastic about sharing their passions with law students on how to utilize their legal education to promote social justice.” Those passions included illegal migration, letting criminals get away with committing crimes and dismantling America.