Fucking Fearless
New York State Attorney General Letititia James says she's ready to fight Trump's ginned-up charges against her
Oct. 10: James indictment springs new allegation after previous claims went all poopy … Shutdown talks that aren’t happening zero in on potential compromise for Obamacare subsidies … Israel/Hamas peace deal takes hold … Nobel Peace Prize goes to one of the 7,999,999,999 people who deserve it more than Trump …
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New York State Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) on Thursday responded to her indictment by a grand jury saying, “I am not fearful, I am fearless.”
She credited her religion for her fearlessness, even though God had literally just allowed her to be indicted. But James’s press release also included a ton of real reasons not to be afraid. “These charges are baseless,” she wrote, “and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost.”
As with the case against former FBI Director James Comey — indicted for lying to Congress — it’s not implausible that the judge in James’s case will toss it out before it even reaches a jury due to the well-advertised political motives for it.
Just after the indictment, although not explicitly in response to it, Ed Martin, a Justice Department appointee of Pres. Donald Trump who’s overseeing these morally bankrupt mortgage cases, posted, “Promises made, Promises kept.” Grounds for dismissal made, too!
The case was assigned randomly — because Trump hasn’t figured out how to corrupt that system yet — to U.S. District Judge Jamar K. Walker. The judge was appointed by Pres. Joe Biden, but judging by Walker’s official portrait, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that’s only second on the list of Trump’s objections:
Of course, James is already in another legal battle with Trump. She won a verdict of civil fraud against him, his company, and two of his known sons. The $500 million penalty is still being disputed in the courts.
James was indicted on two felony counts. The first was bank fraud and the second making false statements. Her first court date will be Oct. 24.
Another reason for fearlessness: Trump’s hand-picked U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan has never won a single felony bank-fraud conviction. Or any conviction. She first became a prosecutor last month, without even staying at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
James is accused of obtaining a mortgage for a Virginia property that she claimed would be a primary residence, not a rental, and then rented it out anyway. That’d be the fraud and false statements.
And like an evil supervillain covering up her evildoing, James then declared the rental income on her taxes. And how much did she reap from this evil scheme? $18,933, or in accounting terms, roughly one Avogadro’s numberth of however much Trump has frauded or otherwise corruptly reaped from his respective evildoing.
And James would’ve got away with it, too, if not for those meddling political appointees! Actually, just one appointee.
Newsfuckers, not a single other prosecutor presented the case against James. It was Halligan all alone in the grand jury room, Halligan’s oddly non-pubic-looking signature all alone on the indictment.
Halligan may have had no choice but to present the case herself, even though usually assistant U.S. attorneys do that. The Washington Post reports that a top official in Halligan’s office thought the case was too weak to bring and protected her subordinates from being ordered to bring it anyway.
I’m not a lawyer or even, let’s be honest, always law-abiding1, but I’ve read a few indictments and although legal writing is often Byzantine, the grammar is usually unassailable. Not so much here.
Also, Halligan’s cover sheet for the indictment lists James as a resident of “Brooklyn, NJ.” Which means Halligan, too, is now guilty of making false statements in a federal document about James’s primary residence.
And the case Halligan brought against James isn’t even the one that was recommended by Bill Pulte, the Trump appointee who has turned the Federal Housing Finance Agency into an arsenal of ammo against Trump’s enemies, poring through their mortgages for weapons against them.
Pulte’s case was so shaky that a real prosecutor, Halligan’s predecessor, refused to bring the James case. It was so shaky that the official who oversees major prosecutions in Halligan’s office concluded they’ve got no case.
So Halligan filed mortgage-fraud charges on a different house. Halligan’s willingness to go for pretty much any Democrat-owned house has raised fears that Halligan could soon swoop up enough Democrat houses to convert them into Democrat hotels even if she can’t put any of them in Democrat jail without passing Democrat Go and collecting socialist $200.
In fact, reading between the lines, it appears as though Halligan pursued more charges than the grand jury was willing to return. Pulte’s initial criminal referral cited other properties, including one for James’s niece.
But according to the Washington Post:
Prosecutors had called James’s niece to appear before a grand jury as part of the investigation, according to people familiar with the conversations. Those people said the niece gave testimony that would bolster James’s case that she did not commit fraud.
Her niece, her witness!
So if we didn’t hear much on Thursday about James’s defense against these allegations, it’s because they’re brand-spanking new.
And it’s too bad that it took Trump going after a fellow Democrat in power — rather than Portland protesters or Caribbean drug traffickers — for Democratic leaders to start threatening consequences for those enabling Trump. But at least House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has now done just that.
In a statement Thursday, Jeffries said:
“These sycophants who aid and abet the President’s [sic2] vengeful schemes will not be able to hide from the serious legal consequences of their behavior. They will be held accountable.”
As far as I’ve seen, most Democrats are merely pissed, rather than talking about consequences. Pro tip: Start talking about consequences. Jeffries gets it.
COMEY He pleaded not guilty on Thursday.
The case against him is already falling apart. Prosecutors claim Comey lied to Congress about leaking stuff to the press on Trump and Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election. Specifically, Comey allegedly authorized a friend, Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman, to pass info to the media.
One snag: ABC reports that Richman told the FBI that he didn’t leak (while Comey was at the FBI, anyway). And that Comey told him not to speak to the press.
Oh, well. Maybe they can get Comey’s niece to testify!
TRADITIONS Reading about the James case, I saw, not for the first time, the firewall between the Justice Department and the White House described as a “tradition.” It’s not a tradition.
A tradition is playing Bing Crosby’s and David Bowie’s Little Drummer Boy at Christmas even though creepy smarm-meister Crosby condescends throughout to the guy whose legacy so dwarfs Crosby’s legacy that Crosby’s now remembered as that creepy smarm-meister who once did a bit with David fucking Bowie.
No, the distance between White House and courthouse is not some quaint formality, it’s a bedrock manifestation of America’s commitment to rule of law, enshrined in hundreds of laws and federal guidelines over the decades, observed in thousands of instances. It’s not sacrosanct — Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush obviously did their best to warp our justice system for political benefit — but always understood for its necessity in protecting us from venal, corrupt presidents like Nixon, Bush, and Trump.
Progress Seen in Shutdown Talks GOP Refuses To Have
With the federal government shutdown poised to extend through another weekend, congressional Republicans still refuse to engage in negotiations with Democrats before re-opening the government, and they report that those negotiations are going well.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) are apparently permitting negotiations-by-proxy.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Thune’s number-two (hee hee!), said Thursday that Republicans “are in discussions” with the Democrats they refuse to negotiate with. One emerging scenario: Democrats agree to vote for the Republican spending bill, and Republicans agree to allow a vote on extending Obamacare subsidies so they don’t double or triple at the start of next year.
TFN trusts that you astute Newsfuckers see the prepositional problem. Democrats vote for. Republicans allow a vote on.
Republicans could still kill the Obamacare extensions by voting against them. No one outside Washington will give a shit — or a number two — if all Democrats walk away with is, “But we got to hold a vote before we lost!”
There’s another wrinkle. Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who caucuses with Democrats, is proposing a two-year extension of Obamacare subsidies, and capping them based on income. No one making more than $200,000 would qualify, which is, yeah, a lot, but remember that means paperwork for everyone and as with all of this shit, it means yet again we’re moving away from the ultimate goal: Just fucking provide free health care, ya brigands.
One wrinkle in King’s wrinkle — rendering his proposal a veritable Shar Pei of legislation — is that it’s very very late to impose a whole new bureaucracy around that income cap in time for Jan. 1.
Israeli Cabinet Approves First Stage of Peace Deal
An Israeli cabinet vote Thursday to approve the first elements of a peace deal with Hamas started the clock ticking on a sequence of events:
Israeli cease-fire within 24 hours, now in effect.
During that 24 hours, the Israeli army withdraws from half of Gaza.
The humanitarian aid that Israel was definitely allowing in to Gaza will now be allowed in to Gaza.
Hamas then has the following 72 hours to release the 20 living hostages and the bodies of 28 dead hostages.
The hostage release is expected early next week, although literally finding some of the dead hostages may take time.
A timeline has not yet been set for Israel to release Palestinian prisoners, as negotiations continue over which ones. All the women and children detained in Gaza since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks will be among 1,700 to be released. Another 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israel are expected to be freed, as well.
Israel has already said no to some requested releases, including prisoners popular among Palestinians. And there’s no guarantee either side won’t fuck this up as they always do.
Still, the agreements already achieved in retrospect make it even more difficult to defend Pres. Joe Biden’s refusal to press Israel harder to stop the massacre of 67,000 people. And to defend the illegal actions of the State Department approving arms for Israel.
That said, the dynamics of how Trump got Hamas and Israel to agree are complicated, so I’m going to read up a little more and give time for more facts to come out, and by then the war will have probably started up again.
AND FOR ANY MAGA OUT THERE Your no-foreign-wars president landed the first of some 200 U.S. troops in Israel on Thursday. Their mission will include:
Monitoring the cease-fire
Helping with delivery of humanitarian aid
Assisting the transition from Hamas governance to a civilian, non-murderous government.
In other words, no fighting involved. Just a safe, simple, advisory mission like the first U.S. troops to Vietnam.
Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Venezuelan Believed Not To Be Trump at All
Despite the possibility of Pres. Donald Trump declaring war against Norway, the Nobel Peace Prize committee in Oslo this morning awarded it to Venezuelan dissident María Corina Machado, perhaps best known for not at all being Trump.
Machado is currently in hiding in Venezuela, but not from Trump. She fears government persecution after being barred from running for president under the autocratic regime of President Nicolás Maduro, whose 2024 election victory was widely deemed illegitimate.
In classic style, the Trump regime this morning stepped on its own southern-hemisphere dick by diminishing Machado’s honor, claiming Oslo’s “politics” denied the prize to Trump. But Machado’s politics aren’t that far from Trump’s.
She’s a right-winger who supports privatizing the Venezuelan people’s resources. Celebrating Machado’s prize could have energized popular opposition — and maybe even rebellion — against Maduro.
But the politics are complicated. In my own reporting, over on my actual-reporting Substack, I wrote that one of Trump’s sources of Venezuela intel, ex-CIA official Gary Berntsen, claims that the administration favors someone other than Machado to replace Maduro.
So, assuming the White House is acting strategically here — which your rigorous TFN would never assume — maybe they’re trying to diminish Machado to blunt her chances of taking power in the post-Maduro world they’d like someone to regime-change for them.
LIVE CHAT Veteran national-security reporter Seth Hettenna joins me on Monday at 4:30pm eastern for a live chat about his reporting on Trump’s Venezuela intelligence and mine (which you made possible!) Mark your calendars with this link now so you can join us!
Four Quickies
Over at Law Dork, Chris Geidner writes up Thursday’s court developments in Portland, OR, and Chicago. Federal judges for now are blocking Pres. Donald Trump and the unlawful-order-complying U.S. Northern Command from deploying troops in Chicago where there is no war but there is America. Meanwhile, an appeals court consisting of two Trump-appointed judges and one normal judge sounded skeptical about blocking National Guard troops from saving Portland from the war Trump is hallucinating there.
The Republican chair of the bipartisan National Governors Association is also opposing Trump’s use of out-of-state National Guard to fight his fictional wars. Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK), who is usually a Stitt-head with literal Stitt for brains, responded to Trump sending Texas National Guard troops into Chicago by saying, “I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this.” Stitt is the first governor to show an ounce of principle on this issue, suggesting that other Republican governors may soon start to not.
Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), the frontrunner in the California gubernatorial race, has frontrun into some self-inflicted trouble. There was the awkward, testy media interview … on-camera. And newly surfaced video shows her barking at a staffer, “Get out of my fucking shot.” Which wouldn’t normally get you into my fucking news, but when it’s a pattern and they’re starting to write about it…not a good look, especially as it jibes with accounts of her demeanor and treatment of staff. If yer gonna tear into people, apparently ya gotta have a whiteboard prop when ya do it and they should preferably be shady rich bankers rather than underpaid staffers and journalists.
Serial rapist and President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a proclamation honoring the man who brought to the Americas the European practice of sex trafficking: Christopher Columbus, the fifteenth century’s own Jeffrey Epstein, with his own islands and everything. Trump’s declaration designating Monday, Oct. 13, as Columbus Day omitted Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which in recent years has been celebrated in parallel. Many municipalities have begun to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day because by Columbus’s own account the indigenous people were pretty fucking awesome and he was a fucking sociopathic serial killer and human trafficker. Trump, who is both stupid and unthoughtful, declared Columbus an “American hero.” Columbus was, of course, an Italian
-Americanwho never set foot on American soil, wasn’t a hero, and came to the Caribbean islands as an undocumented immigrant who totally overstayed his visa.
Taking Action
You can get info about and sign up for the general strike at GeneralStrikeUS.com.
The next round of No Kings rallies is October 18. You can find events at NoKings.org, and keep checking, because new events will get added.
Protest rock group Triple is on Bandcamp here and on Instagram here.
TCB
SELF-INDULGENCE Because Monday is Indigenous People’s Day in the utopian future we’d all like to hurry up and get here, Monday’s TFN may be shorter and later than usual. Okay, probably not shorter — why can’t I ever make it shorter — but possibly later. That’s on the assumption a lot of you have the day off and won’t be up as early. So, thank you!
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Go get ‘em, kids! And, y’know, happy Indigenous People’s Day...
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
I have sped.
“President” is not capitalized unless you’re titling a specific person, such as President Trump, who is the president. Be nice to see Democrats stop needless gestures of deference, too, before we’re all rounded up by the secret grammar police.
I get testy about the way any testiness from a woman running for office gets treated like a character flaw. I want testy women fighting for democracy! You know who's fucking testy: NY State Attorney General Letitia James! Fucking fearlessly testy!
I was surprised when I saw that you had capitalized president. Yes, I already knew, as you explained in your footnote of when it should be an upper-case letter. Luckily, I am not afraid of the grammar police; I refuse to capitalize either his name or so-called title. So there!