America’s Mayor, White House Chief of Staff, RNC Official, State Party Chair Indicted
April 25: Arizona indictments … Presidential immunity … Space nukes … Power-plant rules …
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Eighteen people were indicted yesterday in Arizona for allegedly trying to help D4FRFP1 Donald Trump steal the state’s 2020 presidential votes from Joe Biden. Which is a crime even if you’re president.
The defendants include a host of veteran Republican leaders, nationally and at the state level. For instance, those named in the indictment include the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) top lawyer for election integrity, a former Trump lawyer, and a former personality from a right-wing TV network — and that’s all just one person!
Arizona is now the second state, after Georgia, to bring criminal charges against Trump aides and other Republican officials who sought to subvert democracy. Michigan and Nevada are also prosecuting fake electors there. And then there’s the federal case against Trump.
The Arizona defendants are accused of a conspiracy aimed at “preventing the lawful transfer of the presidency of the United States, keeping President Donald J. Trump in office against the will of Arizona voters, and depriving Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted."
Unlike in Georgia, Trump himself was not indicted. But he is named as Unindicted Coconspirator #1, the legal equivalent of a participation trophy. Here’s who the indictment does include:
Rudolph Giuliani: former New York City mayor, presidential advisor, and federal prosecutor; pleaded not guilty in Georgia
Mark Meadows: former White House chief of staff and member of Congress; pleaded not guilty in Georgia
Boris Epshteyn: Trump advisor, lawyer, former White House aide, and former Sinclair Broadcast Group political analyst
Christina Bobb: RNC senior counsel for election integrity, former One America News [sic] correspondent, former Trump attorney
John Eastman: director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional [sic] Jurisprudence, National Organization for Marriage board chair, former involuntarily pro bono Trump lawyer; former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; pleaded not guilty in Georgia
Jenna Ellis: former Trump counsel, felon who pleaded guilty in the Georgia case
Michael Roman: former White House aide, former Trump 2020 campaign director of Election Day operations, former Koch network operative
Tyler Bowyer: Turning Point USA chief operating officer, Arizona RNC committeeman
Kelli Ward: former Arizona Republican Party chair
Greg Safsten: former Arizona Republican Party executive director
Jake Hoffman: Republican state senator
Anthony Kern: Republican state senator
Robert Montgomery: former Cochise County Republican Committee chair
Samuel Moorhead: former second vice chair, Gila County Republican Party
In other words, it’s just a few bad apples!
The nine charges include conspiracy, forgery, and fraudulent schemes. (If yer gonna scheme in Arizona, it’s gotta be an honest scheme!)
Arizona state officials have already testified before Congress that Team Trump tried to get them to steal the 2020 election.
The defendants are accused of trying to pressure the then-governor, state legislators, and Maricopa County officials to violate their oaths of office because Trump über alles. Arizona’s fake electors, including some of the indicted, met on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign their fraudulent electoral documents, which they allegedly got from Team Trump.
It’s not yet clear who’s accused of doing precisely what because some names — Giuliani, Meadows, and Epshteyn — were redacted in the indictment until the totes guilty accused could be served.
Reportedly, Giuliani specifically is accused of spreading the lie that Arizona officials “made no effort” to determine the state’s votes were valid and encouraging electors to vote for Trump despite Trump losing.
As for Eastman, the alleged master[sic]mind[sic] of the fake-elector scheme, let’s consider how guilty he is (not of these charges, of which he’s presumed innocent, but generally, as a human being). Eastman is so inherently guilty that even Justice Thomas recused himself from an Eastman appeal. As constitutional scholars well know, a Thomas recusal is one of the events foretold in the Seven Scrolls unsealed by the Lamb in the Book of Revelation. At Mordor, I think?
The overall conspiracy, of course, just as in Georgia, involved getting a slate of fake electors to vote for Trump so that state officials and Congress and Vice President Mike Pence would have props on hand when they play-acted that the electors and their votes were real. “Defendants intended that their false votes for Trump-Pence would encourage Pence to reject the Biden-Harris votes on January 6, 2021.” Y’know, a fraudulent scheme!
Epshteyn reportedly already has a hell of a criminal record, including an assault conviction, something creepy with two women, and zero significant consequences.
If you’re not familiar with Roman, as I was not, he was apparently brought on even before the 2020 election in order to sow doubt about its legitimacy. Because doubt-sowing was on his résumé. As far back as 1993, Roman convinced a judge to overturn a Pennsylvania state Senate race and give the seat to his Republican client.
All told, there are now 35 people fake electors across the country facing criminal charges because they thought it would be fun and exciting and patriotic to subordinate the legal process to their own fee-fees and cosplay as electors.
Meanwhile, here’s video of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, your newest Democratic hero now available for wholesale stanning until she turns out to be human like everyone else and we all remember not to do “heroes” until we do it again. (We literally just went through this with Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), people!)
MEANWHILE The right-wing Supreme Court today will hear arguments on whether laws apply to presidents, a legal puzzle that has vexed judges and legal scholars since never even one time ever at all once in any way at any time in a single courtroom in a single state or territory or client state in all of U.S. history, recorded and apocryphal — including parallel dimensions, divergent timelines, alternate histories, Elseworlds stories, and Marvel’s What If? series — ever anywhere once.
Nevertheless, Trump’s lawyers today are hoping to enter conclusive evidence that up is down and two plus two equals aluminum.
U.S. Cool with Militarizing Rest of Universe
The headlines today read that Russia unilaterally vetoed a U.N. resolution banning nuclear weapons from space. If you read the actual story, however, like a true Newsfucker, you’ll see a more complicated story.
Yes, Russia vetoed the nukes-in-space resolution. And U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield scolded the Russians: “Today’s veto begs the question: Why? Why, if you are following the rules, would you not support a resolution that reaffirms them? What could you possibly be hiding?”
But Russia and China said the U.S. resolution didn’t go far enough. So they also tried to add language calling on every major space-capable country “to prevent for all time the placement of weapons in outer space, and the threat of use of force in outer spaces.” In other words, all space-weapons and even the threat of space-weapons.
The U.S. vote helped kill it.
So Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia nyah-nyahed back at the U.S.: “We want a ban on the placement of weapons of any kind in outer space, not just WMDs. But you don’t want that. And let me ask you that very same question. Why?”
EPA Cracks Down on Power Plants
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced new rules including a mandate that coal and natural-gas power plants eventually prevent 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions.
According to EPA estimates, the new rules will prevent the emission of 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon gasses through 2047. The new rules will be challenged in court for infringing upon the God-given right of rich people to shit toxins into the respiratory systems of poor people who breathe air.
Biden Whops That Steel on Down
Pres. Joe Biden last week made a big play for union steelworkers, with joint announcements of tariffs on steel from China and a vow to block the purchase of U.S. Steel by a Japanese company.
Per The American Prospect, the U.S. Trade Representative has also agreed to a request by organized labor to investigate whether China’s illegally dominating the global shipbuilding market. China controls almost half the market, while the U.S. makes just 0.13% of the world’s ships, a major downfall precipitated by Reagan-era free trade policies.
Together, the announcements allowed Biden to demonstrate vigorous support for both American manufacturing and barely-subtle anti-Asian jingoism. Admittedly, there’s a logic to slapping tariffs on Chinese steel coming into this country, given that Beijing subsidizes its steel industry (which the U.S. definitely doesn’t do with American industry in a million ways).
It’s harder, however, to see the material advantage that accrues to the average American if U.S. Steel, a publicly traded company, is incorporated in the U.S. versus some other country. Playing to knee-jerk racism about Japan buying up American institutions, on the other hand, has an obvious political benefit.
As I’ve said one million times, the reason Biden continues to struggle politically is because he’s slapping Band-Aids™ on systemic economic issues one industry and one company at a time, instead of leading Democrats to fight for a vision of sweeping, transformative change that will provide every American with basic economic security for themselves, their families, their futures, and their pets.
And, yes, yesterday I made the case that the Band-Aids™ amount to something substantive. But what they don’t give us is a sense that the system itself is fucked. Given this reality, it’s understandable that some people are siding not with Biden but with the guy who is promising sweeping systemic change, even if that change is (a) very much very bad and (b) the same thing the same guy promised last time.
Enjoy Some New Tesla News – Because Schadenfreude Won’t Drive Itself!
Tesla self-drove off a cliff in the first quarter of 2024, newly released financial data show, and the only airbag in evidence is the hot one at the top of the ego-plagued non-pioneer in non-self-driving cars.
(And, yes, we can have some faith in this new data, because CEO Elon Musk is prohibited by Securities and Exchange Commission rules and federal law from lying about previous quarters the way he lies about future quarters, in which Tesla will benefit from imminent Musk inventions such as teleportation, time travel, and tunnels.)
Now, you probably want specifics. And at least two categories of people love specifics: Entrepreneurial-genius cosplayers…and Newsfuckers uncharitably salivating over the chance to revel in the anguish, failure, and public humiliation of entrepreneurial-genius cosplayers. And so, it gives me no great pleasure to share with you the following Tesla data for Q1 2024:
Revenue: $21.3 billion, down 9% from Q1 2023, when people still thought Musk was smart, like, Joe Rogan smart.
Profit: $1.1 billion, down 55% from $2.5 billion, which is more than half, if my humble non-genius math is right.
Profit margin: 5.5%, down by half from Q1 2023.
None of this was surprising — except to Wall Street bros who think Musk is a genius like them, which is true, but not in the way they think — because we already knew that, in Q1 2024, Tesla…
Saw sales of its hilariously, video-ready-bad vehicles fall by 8.5%.
Announced plans to reduce its staff size by 10%, or 14,000 non-CEOs who actually contribute to Tesla productivity
Musk has a clear, 10-year strategy to first make big capital expenditures on weed, disburse various forms of anti-woke shit-talking online, and then utilize resources mined from his ass to keep conning Wall Street bros into worshiping his genius and convincing their clients to buy his stock.
With Tesla’s stock plummeting this year, Wall Street bros had begun to voice some concerns that Musk’s lunch is being eaten by competing CEOs who work during the day. What the smart bros were trying to figure out was whether Tesla is the Twitter of cars or if Twitter is the Tesla of social-media platforms.
Of course, Musk remedied all that this week by announcing Tesla will be offering a lower-priced vehicle next year. Tesla’s stock surged again, thanks to Wall Street bros who are the absolute easiest species of human to scam.
Crime Watch
VIOLATING THE RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE College administrators around the country today are teaching students a vital lesson about American power in Intro To Constitutional Rights Don’t Mean Jack - 101, with guest lectures from many, many cops holding sticks.
Columbia University so far has arrested more than 100 people who’ve put up a makeshift encampment on campus that’s probably still nicer than the dorms. The University of Southern California is also arresting kids for protesting peacefully. The AP reports that cops at the University of Texas at Austin injured one journalist and “aggressively” arrested 34 people, including another journalist, at the request of Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), because when the people approve of government tactics against one group, those tactics inevitably get turned against all the people, the AP doesn’t report.
More college arrests that high-school kids might want to know about if they haven’t decided where to go yet:
New York University: 133 people.
Yale: More than 40 people.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) literally threatened to call out the National Guard — which he cannot legally do but could illegally do — during a visit to Columbia University that he made for some reason. Johnson is routinely called a “devout” Christian by Washington reporters unfamiliar with the phrase “turn the other cheek.”
Campaign Watch
HOUSE The votes are in, and in turns out that Yahweh actually will let you win a Democratic primary even if you don’t support every single thing that Israel’s far-right coalition government says or does!
Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) has condemned Hamas and antisemitism but still got shit for accusing Israel of the war crimes it is obviously and in the case of some cabinet members gleefully committing.
Her opponent in this week’s primary said she was out of step with her district. Which she has now won by a 21-point margin. Just days after voting against unconditional military aid for Israel.
The first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in the House, Lee was elected in 2022 in the face of a flood of spending by groups who are supportive of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unlike most of Israel. This time out, reportedly, those groups spent their money elsewhere after figuring out how in-step Lee was with her district.
TCB
I’ve got some stuff I need to take care of, so there’s a decent chance no TFN tomorrow. If I do end up ghosting you, I’ll be back on Monday, and you can always come say hi on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, or Spoutible.
And if I do manage to send out another TFN tomorrow, you can always express your monumental sense of relief by becoming a paid subscriber! That way I can keep doing this forever and forswear job interviews in which I smilingly recount my lifelong ambition to help financial firms tell their stories.
Go get ‘em, kids…!
D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.
What are your thoughts on the Democratic convention being in Chicago? I thought it a dumbass move. Why not Atlanta, Detroit, or Milwaukee and build power. Chicago is so 1968--almost an invitation for trouble.