So much for Republicans for the Rule of Law.

 

Aileen Cannon Is Trying to Put Trump Beyond the Rule of Law

She's more than a bad judge. She's working to subvert the legal system itself.

Jonathan V. Last

Mar 22, 2024

Today on the Secret show, Sarah broke me. I genuinely lost it and . . . I guess I’m voting for Trump now? Because this country deserves it? I don’t know. I’m going through some stuff this morning.

You can catch the show here.

1. The Fix

Here is the thing about the rule of law: If you believe in it, you have to do so knowing full well that it will frequently fail to deliver justice.

The goal of the rule of law isn’t to guarantee justice.

It’s to create a stable framework of general standards and procedures that have to be followed by everyone—even though individual outcomes will be wildly different.

Meaning: When you sign up for the rule of law, you sign up for both the good and the bad.

You will get smart prosecutors and dumb prosecutors. Reasonable jury verdicts and nonsensical jury verdicts. Guilty people going free and innocent people going to jail.1

You will get honest judges. And you will get judges like Aileen Cannon.

We should all be inured to a judge performing the way Judge Cannon has over the last several months because she is operating within the rule of law and we accept the rule of law for what it is: Not a guarantee of justice, but a coherent, transparent set of rules and processes that will sometimes deliver justice and sometimes thwart the interests of justice—but will always be consistent.

Judge Cannon has operated with the framework of the law. She has followed the processes set forth in the law. Has she used her prescribed powers of discretion in ways you or I might think are biased or unwise? Yes. But that is her prerogative under the rule of law.

Further: She is subject to judicial review.

So if Judge Cannon rules in ways you or I do not prefer, and her rulings are reviewed by appellate courts, and the stolen documents / obstruction of justice case against Trump results in an outcome that we believe is contra the interests of justice, then . . .

Well, them’s the breaks. We are committed to the rule of law and that means living with outcomes we believe are unjust so long as the process is followed.

And yet, something about Aileen Cannon’s case feels wrong in a way that does not jibe with the rule of law.

Why is that? 

Government protects Government.

Government protects Government. Merb forgot the immunity case of Seligmann, Finnerty and Evans v. Mike Nifong. Prosecutors fill threatened by lawsuits which is why they scream when their immunity is threatened. "If somebody tells you they need absolute immunity from civil liability—even for intentional civil rights violations—they’re telling you exactly who they are and what their vocation has become. And we should listen."

Attorneys know how to kowtow to prosecutors and hide evidence of misconduct to keep their relationships intact. The cops testimony that Chilli was not true bootlicking media and had no freedom of the press was priceless. I love how the prosecution had to run from any argument about the 1st amendment and recording the police when the cop was clearly retaliating for just that .

The “Waiting for Mueller” Mistake and the Right Wing Bubble

https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/03/14/the-waiting-for-mueller-mistake-and-the-right-wing-bubble/ 

March 14, 2024

Simon Rosenberg didn’t panic about a 2022 Red Wave. As analysts everywhere were wailing that the Sky Was Falling, he was quietly confident.

Keep that in mind as you listen to this conversation he had with Greg Sargent. I have about the same cautious optimism as Rosenberg (I was less confident than he was in 2022) on this year’s election, but he’s a pro who works from fundamentals, not just last week’s poll results.

Among other things, he talks about how any of six big negatives for Trump could blow the election for him:

1. He raped E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room
2. He oversaw one of the largest frauds in America history and that he and Rudy Giuliani through all their various misdeeds own over $700M dollars
3. He stole American secrets, lied to the FBI about it, and shared these secrets with other people
4. He led an insurrection against the United States
5. He and his family have corruptly taken billions from foreign governments
6. He is singularly responsible for ending Roe and stripping the rights and freedoms away from more than half the population

I would add two more: First, Trump routinely defrauds MAGAt supporters. Over the last week, he turned the RNC into a means to do so on a grander scale. Republicans need to hear that they’re being taken to the cleaner by Trump — and by Steve Bannon, whose trial for doing so will also serve as backdrop to this election season.

More tellingly, Rosenberg addressed this detail when he described how Biden’s two big negatives have resolved (my biggest complaint about this interview is it didn’t address Gaza, the unmentioned third), not when he addressed Trump’s scandals.

The Biden crime family story, we just learned in the last few weeks, was a Russian op that was being laundered by the Republican party that blew up in their face.

Rosenberg treated the manufactured “Biden crime family” that was actually a Russian op laundered by the GOP as a resolved Biden negative after he made this point, the most important in the interview, in my opinion.

We have to learn the lesson from waiting for Mueller. Waiting for Mueller was a mistake by the Democratic Party. It prevented us from prosecuting the case against Trump and his illicit relationship with the Russian government that was out there all for us to see. Right? The Russians played a major role in his election in 2016. This is not in dispute in any way. And so I think now what we need to do is not wait for Jack Smith or wait for Merrick Garland. We need to use what’s in front of us and prosecute this in ways that we know is going to do enormous harm.

No superhero will come tell any one of these stories for Democrats. Trump’s opponents have to tell the story of Trump’s corruption. They cannot wait for Mueller. Or Jack Smith.

One of many reasons I’m so focused on the Hunter Biden story is that it is actually what proves the continuity of that story of Russian influence that Democrats failed to tell. Trump asks for Russian help in 2016 and gets it. As part of a campaign in which Rudy Giuliani solicited Russian spies for dirt on Hunter Biden, Trump withheld security support from Ukraine to get the same. Even after that, Trump’s DOJ created a way to launder the dirt Rudy collected from known Russian spies to use in the 2020 election. That campaign created the shiny object that has created the “Biden crime family” narrative. Like Russia’s role in the 2016 election, none of this is in dispute. It’s just not known.

You cannot wait for Robert Mueller or Jack Smith to tell this narrative. But for four months this entire story — this arc — has passed largely unnoticed, even as Trump took steps to deliver Ukraine’s bleeding corpse to his liege, Vladimir Putin.

Those who want to defeat Trump — and honestly, Republicans like Liz Cheney and Amanda Carpenter have been doing a better job of this than most Democrats — have to make sure this story gets told.

This is what I’ve been trying to say over and over and over. The reason why the moderate press hasn’t been telling the story of Trump’s role in the insurrection, of his ties to militia members and his direct inspiration for the most brutal assaults on cops on January 6 is because all their TV lawyers have been whinging instead about their own misunderstanding of the January 6 investigation. They haven’t been telling the story of what we know.

They have been complaining that Merrick Garland hasn’t compromised the investigation to tell them them more, turning Garland into their villain, not Trump.

In the few minutes after I posted these comments on Twitter, commenters have:

• Complained that the full Mueller Report hasn’t been released, when really they’ve simply been too lazy to understand that the most damning bits have been released.
• Bitched that Merrick Garland hired Rob Hur, rather than bitching about Rob Hur telling a narrative even after his own investigation had debunked it.
• Complained about a delay in the January 6 investigation that didn’t happen.

Kaitlan Collins’ interview with Brian Butler, a former Trump employee whose testimony badly incriminated his one-time best friend, Carlos De Oliveira, has been drowned out by all the complaints.

The story barely made a blip. It’s not just the NYT that buries important Trump stories under complaints about Biden, it’s Democratic supporters.

Rosenberg went on to describe how Democrats need to improve this. He noted that the Right Wing noise machine provides them a great advantage on this front, one that Biden will have to spend to combat.

We have to recognize, Greg, that the information environment in the United States is really broken right now and that the power of the Right Wing noise machine to bully and intimidate mainstream media into being complicit in advancing some of their narratives is something that needs a campaign that has half a billion dollars in it to be able to draw even on. What we’ve learned is there is a structural imbalance in the information game between the two parties, that the Republicans have a significant advantage over us in a day-to-day information war.

This is true. But the insularity of the Right Wing noise machine can be made into a weakness for Republicans, even before spending the money. Because right wingers so rarely try to perform for a mainstream audience, as soon as they do — whether it is rising star Katie Britt or Kentucky redneck James Comer — they look like lying morons.

And in the face of that Right Wing noise, Democrats need to be disciplined.

The Biden campaign’s going to have to be wildly disciplined. They can’t chase the daily story. They’re going to have to pick the two or three things they know from research are the things that are a rubicon with the electorate.

[snip]

It’s going to be incumbent upon them to not allow the Trumpian mania and madness sort of push them around every day. They’re going to need to develop an offensive strategy both on what we’re selling and on what we’re indicting him with.

Rosenberg laid out the six bullets; I added two more. Trump will try to distract from that with daily outrages, with spectacle.

Trump — abetted by social media — will try to distract from that argument by demeaning all ability to make, or understand, coherent arguments.

I’m less sanguine than Rosenberg that even discipline is enough to overcome Trump’s circus. Therein lies the challenge.

But he’s right that those who want to defeat Trump have to make that case themselves. Neither Jack Smith, nor the NYT, will save you.

Tags: Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, Simon Rosenberg

Mary Sue characters backfiring on Hollywood.

 Michael Reynolds says:

Friday, 23 February 2024 at 11:17

A rant on doing the right thing, stupidly.

The Annennberg Center says DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) in film is actually regressing. I am not surprised. Indeed, I predicted it. Is this an inevitable result of the patriarchy? No. Is it racist? No. The cause, as is so often the case in this world, is stupidity. Doing good, but doing it so poorly you subvert your own cause.

Challenged to have more female-led stories, Hollywood’s reaction was to simply gender-swap characters in genres that had never, and will never, attract large numbers of women. Stupid. In order to big-up their new female leads they belittled male co-leads. Stupid. Racial diversity was handled a bit better, IMO, for the excellent reason that Black men tend to like the same stuff as White men. Women do not like the same stuff as men of any color.

A very interesting case in point was Bros, which came out a year or so ago. It is a gay rom-com. Which no one watched, including gay men. 100% predictable, because gay men are men and men don’t watch rom-coms unless dragged there by a woman, just as women don’t go to superhero movies unless dragged there by a guy.

Is there a solution? Yes. Stop gender-swapping, it does not work. If you want a female-led action/adventure movie, take a look at Atomic Blonde. Or Mad Max Fury Road. Or Aliens. In each case you have a well-defined, grounded-in-reality female character who does not need to belittle male characters, but rather exists in her own space as a legit character with actual human characteristics to include: making mistakes, sometimes losing, re-training, learning and improving. You know, just like a male character might. Or a character, period.

Instead Hollywood did the easy and stupid thing: the ‘girl boss’, the ‘Mary Sue’, who has ALL the virtues, NONE of the weaknesses, CANNOT lose a fight against a male character, is NEVER wrong, and certainly never NEEDS anything from a male. This is not how stories work. This is stupidity that anyone with any grasp of story-telling could have told them, was not gonna work. And boy, did it not work.

Hunger Games, which for reasons of professional jealousy I have to pretend not to respect, did not have Katniss show up on Day One able to punch out Mike Tyson and invent entirely new technologies in her dorm room. She had a pre-existing skill with archery, and an in-world reason for having that skill. Her male co-leads were not simps, they were her equals. At times she was (gasp!) helped my male characters. At times male characters (horror!) outperformed her. It’s not that hard to figure out how to do it, Suzanne Collins used to be in Hollywood, before she started writing books. She probably could have explained the basics of story-telling, for the slow kids in the executive suites.

Katniss is not the only example. Buffy in,Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Xena, in Xena: Warrior Princess. The Bride in Kill Bill. Ripley in Alien(s). Sarah Conner in Terminator movies. Tris in Divergent. Or our girl Rachel, in Animorphs.. Or my girls Dekka and Lana and Brianna in Gone. None of the creators above were geniuses. Nor were they all women. What they all have in common is competent story-telling that serves the cause of DEI while also making money. Which is the relevant metric.

I don’t know whether it’s a dearth of writing talent, or the larger system crushing writing talent under the mouse shoe of oppression, but Jesus H., Hollywood has pissed away hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars, pursuing this utterly stupid approach, and is now in full retreat on DEI. Good cause, poorly executed, subverts good cause. It’s not enough to have your heart in the right place, you still have to do the work.

The Wisdom of Jill Filipovic.

 This point at the end of her article stuck out to me and set off alarm bells.

“an important [Question] meriting coolheaded analysis”… “of the seemingly growing consensus among social justice advocates that bigoted or simply emotionally triggering speech is akin to physical violence and should be regulated as such.”

No, “growing consensus among social justice advocates ” does not trump Free Speech.

Remember Policy, Procedure, Process, Protocol and Practice are more important to the Law Enforcement Caste than the Law or Constitutional Rights.

 Colorado Paramedics Found Guilty in Death of Elijah McClain

Miller v. Salvaggio Stonewall until Ruby Johnson dies and dismiss due to mootness.

I love Merb saying that if the police, prosecutors and the court all sign off on a warrant that proves probable cause.   And blocked mentioning Ruby Johnson  v.  DPD Detective Gary Staab.  A 77-year-old grandmother was subjected to a raid by a Denver Police Department (DPD) SWAT team.   The police, prosecutors and the court blamed each other for the manifestly deficient search warrant saying the other parties should have stopped it and now are responsible.   

“Detective Staab had no grounds to seek a search warrant,” said Mark Silverstein, ACLU of Colorado Legal Director. “His supervisor should have vetoed it. The district attorney should not have green-lighted it, the judge should have rejected it and the SWAT team should have stayed home.”

https://www.aclu-co.org/en/press-releases/aclu-sues-denver-police-detective-over-unlawful-swat-team-search-montbello

Is Trump Protected Because Of “Political Speech”? – Outside the Beltway

Is Trump Protected Because Of “Political Speech”? – Outside the Beltway

 

Is Trump Protected Because Of “Political Speech”?

Why "the First Amendment protects Trump" defense doesn't make sense

Matt Bernius · Wednesday, August 2, 2023 · 13 comments

Yesterday, history was made again as former President Trump was indicted for the second time in Federal Court. The “talking” indictment, a term for an indictment that intentionally lays out the core facts that underly the prosecution, accuses Trump and presently unindicted co-conspirators of the literally unprecedented act of attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. For more reaction to the indictment on OTB, see James’ article from today.

As one would expect, most Right Wing Media outlets immediately began to defend the former President and attack the indictment. And, as usual, Fox News turns to the heterodox Law Professor Jonathan Turley for assistance. Earlier in the day, Turley had tweeted the following reaction to the indictment which he more or less repeated on air:

Since Turley raised the specter of protected First Amendment speech a lot of his fellow lawyers have tried to figure out what he is talking about. Based on my understanding of the case, I think Jonathan Urick, a lawyer with the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center and a former clerk for both Justices Thomas and Scalia has it right:

In the area of First Amendment Law, the courts have long found that there are categories of speech. One of those categories is “political speech:” statements made by Politicians related to governance and political activities, in particular when they are addressing their constituencies. Along with religious speech, political speech was at the heart of the creation of First Amendment.

As such, in the US, political speech is highly protected. That understanding protected Trump when he was President. Perhaps the best example was in the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit where the Department of Justice under both Trump and Biden¹ advanced the argument that Trump’s comments about Carroll while on the campaign trail and as President fell under the category of political speech. And while that might seem like a stretch, the precedent was on their side. Take for example the case of a former Congressman who was sued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations for publicly blaming the organization for his divorce (among other things):

“Because the Congressman was acting, at least in part, for the purpose of preserving his effectiveness, this Court finds he was acting within the scope of his employment at the time of the incident in question,” U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon concluded in an opinion dated March 29.

The case stemmed from comments made by Ballenger to a home-state newspaper, The Charlotte Observer, in October 2003.

During the interview, Ballenger blamed the demise of his 50-year marriage on the proximity of his Capitol Hill home to the Council on American-Islamic Relations headquarters — a situation that he said caused significant stress and “bugged the hell” out of his wife. Ballenger retired at the end of 2004.

The North Carolina Congressman also accused CAIR of being a “fundraising arm” for the terrorist organization Hezbollah, a statement at the core of CAIR’s defamation suit.

But U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon granted Ballenger’s motion to dismiss the case, concluding that Ballenger “was acting within the scope of his employment.”

https://rollcall.com/2005/03/31/judge-throws-out-cair-suit-against-ballenger/

The First Amendment’s protection of political speech is also why it’s legal to outright lie in political speeches or interviews–something the indictment specifically calls out on page 2:

3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/129IFEN5MydlBCXRocEDzqw-wT3ed_TLs/view (h/t to Jay Caruso for creating an OCR’d verion of the indictment)

However, returning to the case of the Trump Indictment and Urick’s critique of Turely, the issue at hand are the limits of political speech. For example, take this exchange documented in the Indictment:

On January 1, the Defendant called the Vice President and berated him because he had learned that the Vice President had opposed a lawsuit seeking a judicial decision that, at the certification, the Vice President had the authority to reject or return votes to the states under the Constitution.
The Vice President responded that he thought there was no constitutional basis for such authority and that it was improper. In response, the Defendant told the Vice President, “You’re too honest.”

ibid

This private conversation, though it had to do with a political subject, isn’t necessarily protected as political speech. Or rather, this quote is doing something other than just political speech. In that speech act, Trump is calling attention to the fact that he is asking Vice President Pence to do something dishonest and outside of his power.² Context is critical. And the indictment is full of examples of these conversations that, in context, are clearly more than just political speech–especially when read in light of other statutes.

It’s also apparent that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s team has carefully considered this issue when we consider what wasn’t charged. And this gets back to Urick’s mention of the Brandenberg Incitement test.

While the indictment does contain a number of Trump’s incendiary tweets leading up to and on January 6th, note that Trump is not charged with Incitement. As Ulrick correctly notes, this is an area where the Supreme Court has set an extremely high standard for political speech in the case of Brandenberg v. Ohio (1969). It’s a landmark First Amendment case where the court found that there needs to be an exceptionally high standard of speech creating the Brandenburg Test:

1. The speech is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” AND
2. The speech is “likely to incite or produce such action.”

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test

For more on Brandenberg, I recommend an episode of the podcast Make No Law, hosted by Ken White (aka Popehat) on the case.

This is an area where I, and I suspect Urlick, think Turley is right. While odious, Trump’s tweets most likely do not meet the Brandenburg test. That’s also a position that Ken White, himself a former Federal Prosecutor, has taken repeatedly in the past. And, at least for the moment, Smith appears to be following the same logic.

The Brandenberg test also gets to the issue with Turley’s position. In his tweet and other comments, it seems like he’s suggesting that because many of former President Trump’s comments in the indictment fall into the category of political speech they are somehow inherently off-limits. To be clear, this has never been the way that political speech has worked.

As White wrote earlier today:

[P]olitical speech is the most jealously protected speech under the First Amendment. Speech is not inherently or automatically outside of First Amendment protection merely because it is false. On the other hand, fraud and speech inherent in a crime are acknowledged First Amendment exceptions.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/people-are-lying-to-you-about-the

Returning to Brandenberg, everything is about context. The Brandenberg test is not simply whether the speech is political or not, but rather does it meet the two standards. Like it or not, Trump’s speech acts don’t appear to rise to that level.

Likewise, any of the speech acts in the indictment need to be read against the corresponding criminal statutes to determine contextually if they meet those standards. The majority consensus, outside of the Right Wing Media ecosystem, is that they do. And it clearly was enough for a Federal Grand Jury to Indict. Whether or not that thinking will survive the higher standard of a jury trial remains yet to be seen.

---

Note: I am not a lawyer. I have taken legal classes specifically on the First Amendment and specifically Brandenburg (among other topics). I am married to a Federal Clerk and these are topics we discuss. So without a doubt, Jonathan Turley has forgotten more about the First Amendment than I have ever known. However, it’s also worth noting that a lot of other Lawyers with First Amendment experience and Federal Criminal Prosecution experience disagree with Turley’s take (see both Ulrick and White as a few examples).

Also, I’d encourage anyone whose gotten this far and wants to raise the “well Turley’s an expert and you aren’t” to ask yourselves how your feel about Turley previously stating that he thinks that the last round of Federal changes against Trump are serious and well-founded. If you accept that Turley is right that all of this should be thrown out as political speech, then why don’t you accept Turley’s legal analysis of the Mar A Lago document situation (i.e. that this isn’t just an unfounded witch hunt?).

¹ – As Trump has continued to advance the same attacks on E. Jean Carroll since leaving office, the DoJ has reached the conclusion that those comments no longer fall under the “political speech” protection.

² – The “You’re too honest” quote is really important as Trump’s best defense is that he “honestly” believed he had won the 2020 election. However, admissions like this one, and other examples in the indictment where he refuses to consider evidence to the contrary, speak to the fact that he understood that the facts are against him and didn’t care, intentionally asking people to do dishonest things and take actions that are not legal.

About Matt Bernius

Matt Bernius is a design researcher working to create more equitable government systems and experiences. He's currently a Principal User Researcher on Code for America's "GetCalFresh" program, helping people apply for SNAP food benefits in California. Prior to joining CfA, he worked at Measures for Justice and at Effective, a UX agency. Matt has an MA from the University of Chicago.

Only prosecutors get to quote dicta

Jack Smith in this indictment quoted a single judge in Trump v. Wisconsin. But I am not allowed to quote the plaintiffs, Soyomayor or RBG in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action because true lawyers would not do that.

On December 14, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected an election challenge by
the Campaign. One Justice wrote, “[N]othing in this case casts any legitimate doubt that the people of Wisconsin lawfully chose Vice President Biden and Senator Harris to be the next leaders of our great country.”

Progressive double standard. Prosecutors are smart legal geniuses for using the same argument that shows you are a member of cult.
WRONG!! bad legal theory and arguments: Quoting dicta to show that the last 4 females appointed to Supreme court by Democrats believe the 14th amendment and due process protections from it do not apply to white people.

CORRECT!! Smart and savvy legal theory and arguments: Prosecutors quoting dicta in the Trump indictments. Like DA Bragg mentioning the Trump Access Hollywood tape in his indictment.

 

“Get the checkbook out”: Trump voter hires Dominion lawyer to sue Fox News for “destroying” his life

Ray Epps says DOJ informed him he will be criminally charged, which he blamed on Tucker Carlson's smear campaign

By IGOR DERYSH

Senior News Editor

PUBLISHED JULY 13, 2023 9:01AM (EDT)

Ray Epps, in the red Trump hat, center, gestures to a line of law enforcement officers, as people gather on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

ATrump supporter at the heart of a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory pushed by MAGA allies filed a defamation lawsuit accusing Fox News of a years-long smear campaign.

Ray Epps, who attended pro-Trump rallies in D.C. on Jan. 5 and 6 and was seen on a video encouraging people to enter the Capitol but was not initially charged with entering the building himself, sued the network after former Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that he was a government informant — which the FBI and Epps have denied, according to The Washington Post.

Epps claims in the suit that the Justice Department informed him in May it "would seek to charge him criminally," which he attributed to "the relentless attacks by Fox and Mr. Carlson and the resulting political pressure."

"Fox, and particularly Mr. Carlson, commenced a years-long campaign spreading falsehoods about Epps," the lawsuit alleges, claiming that the falsehoods "destroyed" the lives of Epps and his wife, forcing them from their home.

The lawsuit, which was filed in Delaware, alleges that Fox and Carlson knew Epps was almost definitely not a federal agent but chose to disregard that information.

"Fox engaged in purposeful avoidance of the truth, intentionally ignoring information and evidence that directly contradicted Fox's outlandish lies about Epps," the complaint says. "Fox refused to retract, correct, or apologize for its demonstrably false and defamatory accusations against Epps well after Fox knew definitively that they were false, providing yet additional circumstantial evidence of actual malice. Fox thus broadcast its lies about Epps with a high degree of awareness of probable falsity."

Michael Teter, an attorney for Epps, sent a letter to the network in March demanding it retract its claims but did not receive a response.

"This lawsuit marks another moment of accountability for Fox News," Teter said in a statement. "For years, Fox News and Mr. Carlson created and amplified conspiracy theories about Ray that lacked any foundation in fact. Their lies exposed Ray and his wife, Robyn, to harassment, intimidation, and abuse – voicemails warning Ray to sleep with one eye open, bullet casings found on their property, death threats sent to their home."

Epps gained attention in right-wing circles after videos recorded on Jan. 5 showed him urging Trump supporters to "go into the Capitol."

Epps in the lawsuit claimed that he believed parts of the Capitol would be open to the public and that Trump supporters could legally enter them. Epps' photo briefly appeared on the FBI website seeking information about various protesters but was removed after he was interviewed by agents in July 2021.

The disappearance of the photo and lack of charges prompted a series of right-wing conspiracy theories alleging he was planted by federal agents to provoke otherwise peaceful Trump supporters into violence.

Carlson in January 2022 described Epps as a person who "helped stage-manage the insurrection."

During another show earlier this year, Carlson focused on the fact that Epps hadn't been charged.

"Why is that? Well, let's just stop lying," Carlson said. "At this point, it's pretty obvious why that is."

During a July 2022 episode, Carlson guest Darren Beattie, a former White House speechwriter, called Epps "the smoking gun of the entire fed-surrection" without any pushback.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham also discussed Epps in an October 2021 segment that featured a graphic asking "Were Federal Assets Involved in Capitol Riot?"

Some Republican members of Congress have also embraced the conspiracy theory.

"I think somebody that worked that hard to get people to go in the Capitol, why aren't they rotting away in the D.C. jail?" Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said during a live stream last summer.

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, during a hearing with FBI Director Chris Wray on Wednesday, brought up Epps and accused the FBI of "protecting this guy."

Wray refuted Republican claims that the FBI was involved in the attack on the Capitol.

"This notion that somehow the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was part of some operation by FBI sources and agents is ludicrous and is a disservice to our brave, hard-working, dedicated men and women," he said.

The lawsuit says that Epps and his wife were "loyal Fox viewers and fans of Tucker Carlson and other Fox personalities," and "were persuaded by the lies broadcast by Fox" that the election had been stolen. After Carlson's segments, the lawsuit says, he and his wife were deluged with threats and harassing messages, forcing them to flee from Arizona, selling the property at a low price.

"After destroying Epps's reputation and livelihood, Fox will move on to its next story, while Ray and Robyn live in a 350-square foot RV and face harassment and fear true harm," the complaint says.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of a nearly $800 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems over false claims the network aired about the election. Media Matters' Matthew Gertz flagged that Brian Farnan, the lead Delaware counsel for Dominion, is listed as one of Epps' lawyers in the lawsuit.

University of Utah Law Prof. RonNell Andersen Jones told the Post that Epps can show that he was harmed by the false claims but "the key question here is whether he was defamed, and that is going to require some careful situating of his facts within the framework that the law recognizes."

Though Carlson never directly said Epps was a federal agent, "when the whole story added together leads to a defamatory meaning, it can be found to be defamatory," Andersen Jones said. "This will almost certainly be the underlying theory of some of Epps's case."

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Thursday said Epps was one of numerous "ordinary people" whose lives had been ruined by Trump's election lies, also citing Georgia poll workers attacked by TrumpWorld and predicting the network would be found liable for defamation.

"Let me say that again, not a public figure, not used to this," he said. "The death threats, the security problems they had, I'm telling you, if I'm representing Fox News, I'm saying, 'Get your checkbook out and start writing.' They're going to have to do it again, Tucker Carlson is probably going to do it again because this guy isn't a public figure. It's not going to be hard for him to prove defamation."

Just like the defamation case against James Blake

 

Will Ray Epps Be Next To Sue Tucker And Fox News?

Inquiring minds want to know.

<iframe width="600" height="338" src="//embed.crooksandliars.com/embed/f1jCRQwo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

By John Amato — July 9, 2023

New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters told MSNBC that the next shoe to drop for Fox News could be if MAGA-smeared Ray Epps sues Fox News for defamation after Tucker Carlson hyped the QAnon conspiracy theory scapegoating him as a government agent over the January 6 insurrection.

Far right conspirator site Revolver News and its white-nationalist editor/writer Darren Beattie, concocted a conspiracy theory that Epps was at the Capitol as an FBI plant inciting Trump supporters to riot.

Beattie was a constant guest on Tucker Carlson, and along with Glenn Greenwald promoted this outrageous lie with no proof to try and give aid and comfort to the seditious traitors led by Donald Trump.

After a group petitioned with the Federal Communications Commission to deny the broadcast license renewal of Fox Corp-owned Philadelphia TV station FOX 29, Peters said this is not the end.

There's this individual, Ray Epps, who was a Trump voter, but he was there on January 6th and somehow became the target of various Trump, pro-Trump conspiracy theories that Tucker Carlson repeatedly uttered on his show.

And talking to defamation experts in a story that I have coming over the next couple of days, this could be the next Dominion-type defamation lawsuit, because this guy's life was basically ruined by Tucker Carlson's promotion of false stories about him being a secret government agent.

So Fox paid big for Dominion, almost a billion dollars, and it's very likely that they will continue to pay because of lawsuits like this and challenges like this, you know, this FCC or FCC, rather, petition.

I don't know how successful, ultimately, that's going to be, but it's an example of the kind of legal pressure that Fox is under.

Every person and company that was derided, smeared, and defamed by Trump supporters in and out of the media to justify the Big Lie should be sued to the high heavens. And yes, Fox News should lose their broadcast license after the damage they've done.

A democracy cannot stand if fascist conspiracy theories are allowed to go unpunished when punishment is warranted.

Topics:

defamation, Fox News, Ray Epps, Tucker Carlson

#MaskCult upset when you point out they were wrong. Engage #DukeLacrosse talking points and protocol #covidamnesty #JustMoveOn

 Tomi Lahren Channels M. Night Shyamalan

Shorter Treadmill Lobotomy: I see dead masks everywhere!

Tomi Lahren Channels M. Night Shyamalan

By John Amato — May 1, 2023

Fox host Tommy Lamborghini (AKA Tomi Lahren) is having flashbacks!

Treadmill Lobotomy sees Covid masks in her sleep. On Sunday she tried to troll "the Left" over an anti-COVID complaint that ended a long time ago.

Huh?

Tampon Leglift was an original anti-vax shutdown nutjob. In April of 2020, when the pandemic was lifting off. Toothpaste Lipgloss called the Trump-ordered shutdowns a “trial of communism.”

The mask requirements are pretty much gone everywhere. Even in California, the state Republicans seem to hate, doctors' offices don't require a mask, so what the f*ck is she talking about?

Tostito Laxative seems haunted. She should have tweeted, "I see dead masks."

 Imani Gandy 

@AngryBlackLady

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We need a palate cleanser: I’m Tainted Labia. Nice to make your acquaintance.

Frances Langum contributed the Tomato Lozenge names to this post.

The Six Stages of Scandal

This old chestnut works for any political scandal and for this impeachment (Hat Tip to Mickey Kaus)

Stage 1: It can’t possibly be true.

Stage 2: It’s not true.

State 3: You can’t prove it’s true.

Stage 4: Why are you trying to prove it’s true?

Stage 5: It’s disgusting that you’ve proved it’s true.

Stage 6: What’s the big deal anyway?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA The Dem Tears

 https://archive.ph/Athrw

DeSantis’s Martha’s Vineyard Stunt

This is just playing crass political games with human beings.

Steven L. Taylor · Thursday, September 15, 2022 

“Ron DeSantis” by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Via Fox News: Ron DeSantis sends two planes of illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard*

“Yes, Florida can confirm the two planes with illegal immigrants that arrived in Martha’s Vineyard today were part of the state’s relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to sanctuary destinations,” the governor’s communications director, Taryn Fenske, told Fox News Digital.

“States like Massachusetts, New York and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals who they have invited into our country by incentivizing illegal immigration through their designation as ‘sanctuary states’ and support for the Biden administration’s open border policies,” she said.

[…]

Fox News Digital reported in April that Florida’s budget since approved by the state legislature included $12 million for the Florida Department of Transportation to remove illegal immigrants from the state and relocate them.

More details on this story, including accounts of the deceptive way these people were lured to be flown to Massachusetts can be found via NPR’s Morning Edition: Fla. Gov. DeSantis sent migrant flights to Massachusetts, his office says. Weirdly, the migrants were not in Florida, but were in a shelter in San Antonio, TX:

The plane arrived out of the blue on a sunny afternoon. The passengers, men, women and children, almost all from Venezuela, arrived at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport. They had boarded the plane earlier that day in San Antonio. Officials were not informed ahead of their arrival. Once on the ground in Massachusetts, local authorities and nonprofits scrambled to feed and house them. Lisa Del Castro, who runs the island’s homeless shelter, said resources were scarce at first.

[…]

Three migrants each separately described to NPR how they were lured onto the plane with promises of help getting work. Each of the three were told they were being flown to Boston and that, once they were there, they could more quickly get work because they were told it is a sanctuary city. Andres Duarte, a 30-year-old Venezuelan, said he had recently crossed the border into Texas and eventually went to a shelter in San Antonio. A woman who he and other migrants identified only as Perla approached them outside the shelter. They say she arranged for some of them to stay at a hotel, offered them food and then got them on a plane.

By the way, since Venezuela is one of the countries that the American right uses as a great bogeyman, it seems odd to pick on potential refugees from a country that is very much experiencing an economic disaster (but logic and reason are hardly the core of the actions being described herein).

Let me underscore that the main incentive for immigrants coming to the US is that they are seeking better lives for themselves and their families. And while we can debate the notion of sanctuary cities, the odds that such are primary drivers of migrant flows is rather absurd. Indeed, even mentioning them is just evidence of how all of this is red meat politics. The jobs migrants can get are the main incentive, and many of those jobs are in Texas and other Republican-controlled states (if that is the game that DeSantis wants to play). But, of course, the over-arching incentives are difficult to remove and the failure at setting a national policy to address the complexities of the issue is both long-standing and bipartisan (although so as to note that I am not just both-sidesing this, at least the Democrats aren’t trying to scapegoat and demonize immigrants).

Regardless, while there might some legitimate debate to be had concerning the burden of unauthorized immigration into the US on border states, the solution to such inequities should be addressed by the federal government via the federal legislature, not via stunts at the state level. This isn’t even Florida sending persons in Florida to other states, it is Florida sending persons in Texas to other states. It is absurd as any kind of policy or as an act of responsible governance.

Beyond any of that, and central to why this story should be highlighted: we are talking about human beings here. It is flatly grotesque and inhumane to use humans, especially extremely vulnerable ones, as pawns in a political game.

This is all made the worse by the fact that not that long ago, DeSantis was stoking fears about “secret flights” when the Biden administration was moving underaged immigrants around the country to alleviate pressure on border states. Here’s a Fox News story along those lines from November of last year: Florida gov says Biden admin has landed dozens of secret flights carrying illegal migrants into the state. These stories made it sound like the Biden administration was just dumping migrants around the country in some nefarious secret plan. Yet, as NPR reported in June: ‘Ghost flights’ are the latest GOP effort to weaponize immigration ahead of midterms

“There’s no warning,” said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at a press conference last week. “It’s just in the middle of the night. And then you’ll wake up and someone will say, ‘they brought a bunch of unaccompanied minors.'”

But federal officials insist that these flights happened exactly the same way during previous administrations, including under former President Trump. 

“This is completely consistent with the law and our responsibilities,” said Jorge Silva, a deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at U.S. Health and Human Services, in a statement. “Our legal responsibility is to care for unaccompanied children while they are on our watch, and that includes connecting them to vetted sponsors.”

Federal officials say that flights carrying migrant children happen at all hours, and that they don’t release information about the children on board to protect their privacy. Even the contractor operating the charter flights hasn’t changed since the Trump administration, they note. 

What has changed is that the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border reached an all-time high last year, topping 100,000 for the first time. And immigrant advocates say the amount of fear-mongering about them is rising too, in a way that’s “really just divorced from reality and from facts,” Nagda said.

Look, I fully understand that all of this is DeSantis just stirring the base, so trying to talk about actual public policy solutions is almost pointless, but this whole thing is beyond galling. Dumping human beings in various liberal-leaning states to basically own the libs for TV purposes is grotesque. Again, these are people. That there are poor, likely have brown skin, and don’t speak English doesn’t make it okay to treat them like objects.

When I see things like this, it is hard not to think of the following, especially since a lot of the base DeSantis seeks to please are likely self-identified Christians.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

One need not adhere to the Christian faith to appreciate these sentiments.**

If GOP politicians don’t like to be referred to as “semi-fascist” they shouldn’t treat a group of people like sub-human pawns nor should they engage in pure power moves just to score political points. And, likewise, those in the public who relish these kinds of actions need to engage in self-reflection (note that my expectations are not high on this count.***

This really is indefensible behavior. Again: human beings and vulnerable ones at that.

Can we have differing, legitimate policy positions on how to deal with immigration and refugees? Of course we can, but no one should be allowed to pretend like tricking vulnerable people into boarding a plane to be taken two thousand miles to a place unprepared to help them is a legitimate policy position.

It is cruelty and a clear case where the cruelty is very much the point.

Update: FWIW, I had not seen Jonathan V. Last’s Bulwark post until after I had written and posted the above. But he had very similar thoughts about both the cruelty of it all and the clear betrayal of core Christian principles evidenced in DeSantis’ behavior.

---

*I see that James Joyner also noted this story in Thursday’s Tabs. I started writing this before his post, but was unable to come back to finish until much later–also why I am only seeing the discussion in that thread now.

**Sentiments that I have to mischievously note sound pretty damn woke to me.

***Dare I note another woke notion: that we should treat others as we would like to be treated, as some long-haired social justice warrior once said.