20240906 Emptywheel Fridays on the Nicole Sandler Show

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It's Empty Wheel Friday on the Nicole Sandler Show.

Oh, it is. And, you know, too bad, Marcy Wheeler, that not much has happened this week.

There's not a whole lot to talk about.

Oh, wait. The last 24 hours has been kind of insane.

So I've got a whole laundry list of stuff.

I'm not quite sure where to begin.

Do we start with this morning in a New York City courtroom with Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll?

I guess because it's just wrapping up.

And I guess Donald Trump, we're recording this now at a little bit after nine o'clock Pacific time.

Apparently, Donald Trump is mouthing off again in a press conference at which he's answering questions that weren't asked.

So, right. And at which he he he's complaining.

He's complaining about his lawyers because they were not successful or compelling it, arguing that he should get off on the first E. Jean Carroll lawsuit because it was legal to grope on an airplane.

What?

Because they brought in evidence of another woman who's suggesting that Donald Trump did basically the same thing to her that he did to E. Jean Carroll.

And now he's saying his lawyers never should have let that in.

Besides.

If you're arguing that it shouldn't have come in, that that the judge shouldn't have let it in because under when this happened, groping was legal on a plane.

And yeah, right.

OK.

And so E. Jean Carroll's attorney was like, no, here's the statute.

Here's a case of a flight attendant who was groped.

So, you know, it's the legal precedent is there.

I mean, look, let's start by talking about how.

You know, Donald Trump has had this lull in his legal cases and now they're back.

So he was in he was trying to appeal the first E. Jean Carroll verdict today on evidentiary grounds.

Then by the end of today, as you said, we're taping this just after noon East Coast time.

By the end of today, we'll get some indication from Judge Merchant about whether he's going to go ahead with sentencing in.

What is it?

Two weeks.

Yes.

September 18th.

Right.

And that's in the Bush payment fraud case.

Right.

And then Trump had tried to.

Yesterday, there was a status hearing before Judge Chicken.

This is probably the biggest news.

There was a status hearing before Judge Chicken in D.C. and about how to move forward, given the immunity ruling from the Supreme Court.

And I had argued, I guess, over the weekend because he had he like they had submitted their joint status report a week ago after we spoke.

Right.

And in that Trump had said we have to deal with whether whether Jack Smith was lawfully appointed first before we do immunity, even though a year ago we said we have to do immunity first.

And and Jack Smith was sort of like, oh, oh, by the way, we superseded.

We talked a lot about the superseding indictment last week.

Am I right?

We did.

So they said, well, we've superseded, you know, we you know, we're happy to start by explaining how we believe that everything in the indictment is is non-official conduct.

And so one of the lines I wasn't on the I wasn't in the hearing, but according to people in the hearing, one of the one of the snappiest lines was.

John Loro complaining, we don't have time to do all of this immunity stuff.

So, first of all, Judge Chicken was like, hey, Supreme Court told me to deal with this immunity stuff forthwith.

I'm going to do I you know, I'm going to do it.

Supreme Court, you're telling me not to do it to blow out Supreme Court.

They told me forthwith.

So we're going to start with the immunity.

And so John Loro was complaining about that.

We don't have time to do that.

And then.

Thomas Wyndham.

So the prosecutor was like, look, you guys were able to get a 90 page filing in New York in nine days.

So surely you can get something in here.

You've already had, you know, an extra two months to deal with it.

And actually, it wasn't John Loro at that point.

It was Todd Blanche.

But Todd Blanche was sort of like, oh, yeah, I guess that's right.

So in in the end, the the TLDR of it is that Judge Chicken set a schedule last night.

And the schedule says that we will have the first briefing.

Oh, I could pull this up.

I have it.

September 19th.

Is that OK?

Defendants reply briefs in support of his motion to compel.

That's the.

No, that's not the interesting one.

Oh, OK.

Sorry.

It's it's I did it all in a schedule on mine.

Yeah, I have it up here.

So, yeah.

So September 26.

So on September 26, we're going to get a fairly voluminous filing.

Probably including new evidence, possibly including unsealed grand jury evidence arguing about what Trump did.

So we may find new details.

I mean, one of the things, for example, that we may find is Trump's relationship with the Proud Boys.

Just before Trump killed this last December, prosecutors asked to introduce evidence that's not in the indictment, but that is related.

So, for example, one of their staffers in in Michigan tried to start a riot at the counting center in Wayne County.

And so they're like, this is related in that they tried to get Trump's stand back and stand by comment to the Proud Boys and then Trump's subsequent comments kind of ratifying what the Proud Boys did and offering to offering to pardon them.

So those are some of the things that I expect we'll see.

But, you know, I like on the Proud Boys in particular, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something more substantive just because I wouldn't be surprised.

OK, so that's September 26.

The government shall file an opening brief on presidential immunity.

So that's that's that's the first biggie that we're looking for in this new judge.

Right. And so unless Trump finds a way to stall, because basically what Trump had tried to do was do the presidential appointment first and not.

And so they were and as I pointed out, like the.

Trump argues that if the Mike Pence stuff is thrown out, then the entire indictment fails.

I think that that's wrong because you still have the fake electors plot.

But they you know, the Supreme Court and I predicted this.

A lot of people predicted this.

The Supreme Court specifically said we're worried about using comments between.

The vice president and the president, even if it was about the president, the vice president's role is president of the Senate, because we don't want to chill communications between the president and his vice president.

So my point was last weekend and people should keep this in mind, because right now Trump's response is due on October 17th.

Trump is going to have to argue that it was an official duty of his.

As president to almost get Mike Pence assassinated.

Yeah, because he wanted because he because he ordered Mike Pence unlawfully to throw out 81 million Joe Biden votes.

And when he didn't, Trump released that tweet and basically said, you know, Mike Pence let us down, which immediately led to increased chance of paying Mike Pence.

Right. Right. And so and and frankly, we're not going to get a full Trump.

Trial on January 6th before the election.

But at least this will bring some of this evidence out that hasn't yet been introduced in the court.

Right. Well, and and I mean, again, I think the evidence is important, but just as important is Trump's argument.

Trump will be arguing. He has to argue that it is part of the president's duty.

To get his vice president assassinated because he refused.

An unlawful order. Wow.

And and I've argued from the very start.

I mean, the Supreme Court ruling is ridiculous, but I've argued that ultimately and one of the I mean, we probably talked about this last week.

I think one of the things that Jack Smith did by superseding, by presenting the you know, by stripping everything but Mike Pence out of this indictment was leave Mike Pence as the single thing Trump has to hang his hat on for an argument that he remains immune.

And.

And so they've set him up to make what should be on its face an utterly ridiculous argument.

Right. Right. Now, the headline on your post at EmptyWheel.net is Trump will have to defend his attempt to assassinate Mike Pence before the election.

OK. Yes. Yes. Yep.

So perfectly normal stuff before an election.

So. So, yes, Trump is back in. It's like all the cases it's been. He's had a nice rest.

We had the conventions and now things are happening again.

And so that's that's the little corner of Trump's legal problems.

And they are compounding. I think they're it's it's I think it's all getting to him.

So that's happening. Then yesterday in court, you actually talked about coming in for this, but you didn't.

And I guess now, in retrospect, it's a good thing.

Hunter Biden was to begin.

His trial on tax charges in California was to have started yesterday and a couple of hours before jury selection was to begin.

He pled guilty.

Yeah. What?

What? All nine charges.

OK.

You know, it sounds like I haven't spoken to anybody close to Hunter Biden, as they say, but he issued he issued a statement and Abby Lowell issued a statement.

And it basically came down to the degree to which prosecutors were intent on humiliating Hunter.

Biden and his family in the same way they did in the gun cases.

I mean, they had tried to exclude all the salacious material about prostitutes and drugs, arguing rightly that, you know, and he was willing, like he basically said, I will stipulate that I spent this much money on stuff that wasn't taxes.

I'm happy to stipulate that. And prosecutors won that argument.

And so they were facing the reality that, you know, Hallie Biden was going to have to testify.

Again, her sister was going to testify by Hunter Biden's kids were going to have to testify.

And so he did it to prevent the the the basically dick pic sniffing circus that we saw in Delaware.

So he pled guilty to all nine charges.

He can still appeal things that are not evidentiary.

So one of the biggest problems with him, I mean, and let's take a step back.

It was always the case that prosecutors had strong evidence.

On the gun and the taxes, they also won pretrial rulings that particularly in the gun case were ridiculous.

I mean, in the gun case, they they relied, you know, they misrepresented to the judge how much of what they were getting was from the laptop.

Then they presented the laptop in a way that should never have come in.

They managed to exclude the fact that the gun shop owners were rabidly anti Joe Biden.

And.

They excluded that and were in 2020 trying to make sure that Hunter Biden could face gun charges on these.

So so that none of that came in in Delaware.

There's stuff here like Hunter Biden may have gotten more evidence that some of the tax charges came from Rudy Giuliani, which got excluded very early on.

So that's a that's a fight I will go back to to to.

But so in other words, you know,

some of this legitimately did come from Donald Trump's attorney and the notion that that was excluded, it was excluded in both cases based, I think, improperly on some games that the that the judges played.

And once you once you excluded those things, once you treated the very good selective prosecution as if I mean, you know, again, I so particularly in Delaware,

all of those remain real.

And there's things in it and there are many in Los Angeles that remain real, although that judge was more clever about creating procedural ways to avoid appeal, you know.

And then there's, for example, Hunter Biden said, well, this case wouldn't have happened except for the disgruntled IRS agents since he played guilty.

That's going to be a lot harder to argue because the IRS agents were saying this should have been, you know, this should have been prosecuted all the time to make that argument.

The lead prosecutor, a guy by the name Leo Weiss, made a utterly false claim.

Now, maybe he doesn't know it's false.

I know it's false.

David Weiss, who was sitting in the courtroom, knows it's false.

He said, oh, there's no proof that the IRS agents had any influence on this case.

The FBI agent in that case said that as soon as as.

As soon as the disgruntled IRS agents came forward, they knew there were going to be threats against the prosecutorial team.

There were threats against the prosecutorial team.

David Weiss testified that he was worried about the safety of his family.

None of that came in.

None of that was permitted to come in.

And the questions of prosecutorial, you know, of selective prosecution.

And so what you have is that Donald Trump and Jim Jordan ginned up threats against this investigation.

And they decided to renege and they did renege on a plea agreement.

Yes.

With the help of a Trump appointed judge.

And so they reneged on an existing plea agreement and wrote these new indictments to be as humiliating as possible.

And that's what Hunter Biden was facing.

So it is possible he could appeal these.

The sentencing in this is going to be December 16th.

So obviously, Joe Biden will only be president until January 20th.

So if he you know.

And it's possible that, for example, I mean, Biden has always denied that he would pardon Hunter.

He was less categorical when asked whether he would commute Hunter's sentence.

In other words, say, well, you're guilty, but you don't have to do time.

I suspect that in particular, the Los Angeles judge will will sentence him ridiculously harshly because he has he has he has a reputation for doing that.

I also suspect that even in Delaware, the judge there will will prosecute.

Him fairly harshly because she she has because she has said things that lead me to believe that to be true.

So if they both, you know, if they both sentenced him to a year and a half in prison, to three years total in prison, to four years in prison, to something that would be ridiculous in any case.

And it would and it is ridiculous in any case that this goes to trial.

Then then, you know, if I'm Joe Biden, I certainly commute that sentence.

Right.

But.

But if I'm Hunter Biden, I still want to appeal these sentences because there's a lot of stuff that the prosecution literally sat on and that it should be exposed.

I mean, it is it is grotesque.

Some of the things that they pulled off and it you know, it it not only should it be exposed, but they still get to write a report where they're going to try and humiliate Hunter Biden still further.

And yet the reason they get to write a report is because they chased the hoax, the attempt to frame Joe Biden.

And by Alexander Smirnoff and and David Weiss should never have been in charge of the Alexander Smirnoff prosecution because he's a witness in that he's a witness in the way in which Alexander Smirnoff was permitted to frame Joe Biden by Bill Barr's DOJ.

Right. Well, the whole thing is so it's so fucked up because if his name was Hunter Smith, none of this would have happened.

And he's being, you know, persecuted.

I sound like Donald Trump.

But in this case, it's true for for being Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

This is I was I've been feverishly looking for the statement that he released because it's frankly heartbreaking.

Here's what the statement Hunter Biden released after entering his guilty plea.

He said, I went to trial in Delaware, not realizing the anguish it would cause my family and I will not put them through it again.

When it became clear to me that the same prosecutors were focused not on justice, but on dehumanizing.

Me for my actions during my addiction, there was only one path left for me.

I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment for all I have put them through over the years.

I can spare them this.

And so I've decided to plead guilty.

Like millions of Americans, I failed to file and pay my taxes on time.

For that, I am responsible.

As I have stated, addiction is not an excuse.

But it is an explanation.

For some of my failures at issue in this case, when I was addicted, I wasn't thinking about my taxes.

I was thinking about surviving.

But the jury would never have heard that or know that I had paid every penny of my back taxes, including penalties.

That I've been clean and sober for more than five years now because I have had the love and support of my family.

I can never repay them for showing up for me and helping me through my worst moments.

But I can protect.

I can protect them from being publicly humiliated for my failures.

For anyone now going through the scourge of addiction, please know there is a light at the end of that seemingly endless tunnel.

I was where you are now.

Don't quit right before the miracle.

I, you know, look, he's not without fault, but he's admitted it.

He paid his taxes again.

Any Joe Schmo on the street, this would never have even been brought to trial.

I, it's, it's really sickening what, what they're doing to this man.

Yep.

Yeah.

One other thing I should add is that they added a family member to the witness list between his June trial and this one.

And they did it like this.

They to do that, to force somebody to testify who asks for immunity, you have to get an assistant attorney general to approve it.

So they had.

Um, that the, the assistant attorney general for the tax division at DOJ approved all of these, including the gun ones, which is problematic.

So they got Haley Biden to testify based on, um, a tax claim because nobody in the criminal division was going to approve that right now.

And, and a verbal one, it ends up, there's no paperwork, but there's no contemporary paperwork behind it.

Um, and that wasn't public until I, I got the filing on that liberated, but then, so they,

they at the same time got Haley Biden forced to testify in, in LA, and then they went back and they got the same, um, the same assistant attorney general to prove it, but he didn't date the letter.

And normally this judge in California is really super, uh, particular.

And I'm like, how do you accept a letter without a date?

Like, you know, the date is important, not least because it reveals they didn't decide they needed her testimony until after the first.

Trial until after they, they got their fucking rocks off by humiliating the Biden family.

And that's really what it feels like.

Yeah, it is.

It is.

So, uh, yeah, it's, it's really, it's ugly.

And, and then on top of it, because in this world of gaslighting that Donald Trump, uh, lives, um, they're doing exactly what they accused the, you know, the Democrats of doing to him.

The difference is Donald Trump committed all these crimes.

You know, this is a, this is a witch hunt on Hunter Biden because his name is Biden.

It's, and, and not saying again that he did nothing wrong, but he's admitted to it.

He's paid restitution.

He paid his taxes.

He's done everything he could.

Uh, it's just, it's, it's stomach churning.

It's just really, it's really, really sickening.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it is.

It was, it's pretty dark.

Yeah, it really is.

Okay.

Moving right along.

In this crazy couple of days.

Um, this happened, was it just yesterday or the day, day before?

An internal planning document created by the Kremlin states that as a goal of the, of the campaign is securing Russia's preferred outcome in the election.

Russia, Russia, Russia.

The online infrastructure used by the Russian public relations company known as the social design agency or SDA and related actors included.

Uh, we had the strength of a

uh,

indictments today um big deal um so they it was one indictment and one takedown of some domains

okay um and the russia is using the takedown stuff i in fact i was reading they did a similar

takedown back in july of a bunch of bots on shitter okay um and so the uh russians are

using these kind of quasi public private almost marketing companies to engage in propaganda

and they have to spend a lot of time hiding who they are because of course you know the russians

aren't supposed to be doing this and so what they did in january in july was take down a bunch of

automated bots on twitter and what they unsealed here which is super interesting i put i i did a

post uh summarizing what what's there it is uh basically a campaign

to use um it's a it's a campaign to use social media to um to push anti-ukrainian lines to push

donald trump they were very explicit about why they want donald trump there's a there's a remarkable

thing it's actually not in my post but i it's on both my shitter and blue sky where they say one

of the problems with getting uh donald trump elected is that the economy is booming right and

i'm like well you know russia i guess has a

better sense of the economy than the new york times the economy is booming and so we have to

create artificial conflict at the border with mexico so that trump has some basis to win so

that was their logic on trying to affect mexican politics to help get donald trump elected there's

there were some other things about um these are fairly dated so they're you know they're all joe

biden they're all pre-june um and they're like well here joe you know our goal they had very

good goals they're like our goal is to drive joe biden's approval ratings down to 28 percent uh he's

currently under 40 and here's how we plan to get him under 20 you know very specific stuff it made

me as i was reading it um wonder whether paul manafort is sharing campaign strategy again because

some of the and you know i'll go back and i'm going to write um a specific thing about how

these materials think of social media but um but uh

you know it's basically it's the blueprint for what we know went on in 2016 um but it's explicit

and it's you know it's there's no doubt they're like okay we want donald trump now in it so that's

an effort that combines um this kind of media company uh with some help you know like rt would

play a role in it right the other one which is a big deal is that this company called tenant

yes um which is set up in tennessee by a couple who knew who had been working for

rt and then started uh creating basically um a front company for rt and then they were given a

list of right-wing podcasters that they were supposed to go out and try and recruit um one

of them the bet i mean the one that most people will know is tim pool a guy named benny johnson

dave rubin dave rubin yeah yeah and so these are right-wing podcasters um between dave rubin and

uh tim pool actually between the three that i just mentioned there were six altogether between

the three that i've mentioned there have been a ton of trump world interviews on this media

platform so including trump but also lara trump also um you know campaign managers so

they basically what they did is they went to these

podcasters paid them four hundred thousand dollars a month oh my god a month um and and and hid

from at least rubin and pool that they were working for russia they all claim we were

victimized we had no idea um you know everyone's saying how do you get paid five hundred thousand

dollars a month and not wonder about the dodgy french guy who purportedly you work for i i'm a

little more sympathetic to these guys i'm a little more sympathetic to these guys i'm a little more

than virtually anyone else partly because i live i live in this world i've seen what's happened to

glenn greenwald i mean these are glenn greenwald's peers wow and glenn greenwald is getting that kind

of money he's getting that kind of money and um and so of course it's not and you know and and

not now but there was a time in my life before 2016 where i would get far smaller dodgy offers

to do this media project mostly like wiki leaks adjacent right or i was getting money

from um ed snowden's foundation uh which i stopped doing because i was like you know when i when i no

longer believed the stuff ed snowden said about what he had did i was like i don't want i mean

and and that was money that i knew came from the united states but it's like when you're an

indie you know when you're an independent journalist um people do come to you and say

you know you don't get a hundred thousand dollar a year salary so let me do this project with you

and we'll pay you this amount of money it's not five hundred thousand

dollars or even close um and you're like well you know this is the kind of writing i'm doing

anyway um i i don't remember who i've joked with this about but i i can't count the number of times

iranian covers tried to recruit me and it was always you know it was always like no i click

you know click right but you get these pitches all of the time you get like um there's been a

lot of conversation because jill stein showed up at the trial of some alleged russian assets this

week

and you know we always go back to that art that that rt gala in 2015 right right where jill stein

attended with mike flynn but the people further down on the rt gala list are all people they're

people like uh um uh max blumenthal okay right who spends a lot of time apologizing for bashar

al-assad and a lot of people question his funding model um so there's a whole bunch of people like

they get invited the uh

greenwald himself has gotten invited to moscow for an rt event or for something and so you know

you would get this is what happens when you're in the sphere and and this is how russia was

recruiting people uh and so i'm not surprised that it happened what happened is that starting

in 2020 rt had to work a lot harder to hide that it was rt and um partly because they were they

were either banned or uh in the united states they registered as a foreign country and they were

an agent right the um and so they did you know like do i think it's do i think tim pool should

have asked who he was working for yeah yeah right um you know it's sort of like i'm not going to

work too hard to figure out who this french guy is and by the way pool at least used to work with

cassandra uh then fairbanks right um she's since gotten married but cassandra fairbanks worked for

rt and she uh she was

i i know kind of looked at closely for her ties to russia in the 2016 election so another reason

why tim pool really shouldn't have that much plausible deniability about all this so i'm a

little bit sympathetic about how these guys say you want to give me five hundred thousand dollars

i won't ask too many questions right the people who set up tenant though um lauren chan and her

spouse right liam donovan i think yeah so um they do they did know like they did work for rt

they did help to set up this cover tim pool has said you know the fbi has asked me for

a voluntary interview i assume he's being treated as media so um

they you know i wouldn't be surprised if we saw superseding i wouldn't be surprised if we saw a

separate indictment against tenant and chan uh-huh and that's interesting because chan has ties so

she got cut off from glenn beck's show she got cut off from glenn beck's show she got cut off from

glenn beck's show she was she was also working with glenn beck's show she also and this is where

it gets very interesting she also has ties to turning is a turning point turning point

charlie kirk's gig right oh god and then um the one of the one of the remaining podcasters

um southern laura laurence um the one woman she has ties to hungary she spends a lot of time

like she's gone and met with alexander dugan so she's gonna have a harder

time claiming that she doesn't know that this was a russian deal as well and she hasn't gone on the

record about this yet either so um chan is interesting though the lauren chan is interesting

because she is very networked into many different parts of the right wing um michael michael caputo

who uh remember is an old-time roger from florida we have to do florida um he tweeted last night

saying he's wrong

but he's like well they're gonna get fisa two orders of separation from lauren chan everyone

understand you know like there are people panicking about the communications they've had

with chan that go well beyond this tenant media thing now caputo's wrong that they would use fisa

and and here's part of the point is this indictment that we saw probably does rely on stuff as did the

um takedown by the way the takedown they found a stash of documents in june and they used a bunch

of those

probably they didn't get a warrant for that unless it was in somebody's google

you know google drive or something drive right yeah i mean so um so the indictments that we've

seen so far unless somebody shows up in the united states you know those will not be directly

prosecuted to indict lauren chan as knowingly working for russia and hiding it they would need

to do other work which is why pools

decision to go testify and one of the things they've done they've set up is cool has a choice

he can either say i was duped and all of them with the exception of that one woman are saying i was

duped or he can say i wasn't duped i really have been working for russia all this time and you know

he's going to want to go and say i was duped but then the fbi is going to go get him in front of a

grand jury to say yes i was duped and that's when it becomes easier to prosecute uh chan and her

so um but but but the you know one of the stories is that everyone in right wing a sphere will know

that she is presumably a very serious subject if not a target of this investigation and so now

they're panicking scott ritter panicked because they also sanctioned rt and he had been doing a

tv show with rt and he looked at it and he's like i can't continue my tv show without so

he's lost his funding to be a shill for putin i mean one of the things they've done immediately is

um they've taken a million dollars at least out of the right wing putin sphere right so between

like i said benny and um ruben had left already but just a couple of months ago

tim pool had not so tim pool is out of four hundred thousand dollars a month right so that's

money that he won't have to go

uh shill for putin whatever scott ritter was being paid he won't have money to show for putin

they also indicted dimitri symes who um if people remember in the muller he look him up people who

have a search and replace in the muller and the muller report he's he shows up in there um he was

part of the trump's first foreign policy speech in april 2016 and did some um roundtables throughout

the summer trying to pitch them up to the muller and the muller report and he was part of the

foreign policy when jared kushner wanted to find a number for putin to thank him after the election

he called symes so um so symes is somebody who shows up extensively and symes was also setting

up other back channels to trump um so symes is somebody if you look at the if you look at the

muller 302s the interview reports that jason jason leopold liberated the ones pertaining to him and

were the longest of the bunch by a good bit i mean the only one close is is a few steve bannon

interviews they were like 30 pages a piece and they had you know two days in a row 30 pages in

piece uh muller spent a ton of time investigating dimitri symes and most of that remains sealed

but um so they had an interest in symes presumably had been watching symes for some time

symes left the states uh after the invasion of ukraine and was can he like he has a job on

russian tv and was continuing to do ukrainian stuff on russian tv and they charged symes um

they charged him and his spouse for continuing to work with the tv the russian tv show that

he works for it's you know the same like that was sanctioned some years ago and so that's a

simple sanction issue his spouse was also prosecuted being charged for um serving as

a fixer for a different russian oligarch who had been sanctioned even earlier she was doing things

like buying art for him in the united states or allegedly um but for whatever reason symes kept

his estate in the virginia hills and so you know they're like and there's a lot of people who seem

to have some belief that symes has some ties to what scott ritter was doing like if you look at

what everyone was doing scott ritter uh tim pool

they're both meeting with rfk before rfk endorses donald trump um and randy credico so this crowd

is very tight and they were all kind of pushing an anti-ukraine line um and then you know the

networks that they point to are very interesting and so you know my guess is so they they searched

people will remember they searched both dimitri symes and scott ritter and they were all kind of

about um two weeks ago a month ago and um and you know the presumably they got a bunch of other

stuff that may be more interesting down the road scott ritter still dabbling in kiddie porn

right yeah um who knows um the other thing about the other thing about dimitri symes that doesn't

get enough attention is that he has close ties to the pauls to ran and ron paul oh god okay lovely

curious sir and curious yeah right um and in the what i call the double well they're called the

doppelganger the project is called the doppelganger in in the doppelganger dossier there's they were

they they show examples of here's what you should send out on social media and one is a member of

congress arguing against funding for ukraine and i'm not 100 sure but i'm pretty sure that it's

oh so um you know so you um oh and then the one other

funny thing is in the rt indictment there there were three producers involved and at least one of

them also knew they were working for russia okay and um and so when they were being asked to do

stuff there was one point there they were like really do you really want us to post this video

of um tucker carlson shopping in a grocery store in moscow if people remember he went to this

store in moscow and he was like oh my gosh you have to put a coin

in the in what we in ireland call the trolley in the united states you call it a car

right shopping cart right and then you give it back and then the trolleys that's what they do

here that's what aldi is they they do that yes it's a very common european thing he was quite

excited about it and acted like it was genius and doesn't exist in the west so um so she was

instructed to post that that's something so you've got you know it sort of nods to tucker carlson

rand paul are right on the edges of this network and then when you look at the panic from

the the larger right wing i mean people should understand that i mean people are

dramatically overstating how this implicates tim pool and those guys okay because doj at least

maintains they have plausible deniability that helps doj charge the farah case so this is why

they'll do an interview with tim pool so you can say i had no idea and they'll need that testimony

if they want to go after lauren chan right so

that is the intent um it tim pool may not be telling the truth but he needs to tell that

story for his own benefit and therefore that'll put lauren chan that'll expose her to some degree

but um but that you know doj could have charged dimitri symes much earlier than they did based

on what is alleged in the indictment because he he you know he was working for the the same tv

company from the time it was sanctioned so they could have charged him back

in 2022 and they held off and it's not clear why they held off but um you know doj is still gonna

keep the bar on going after anybody who's doing speech fairly high um and so you know that's where

that status is but it's quite interesting because because again i think what it does is it um

um it takes some of the money sloshing out of this network out of it

right tim pool's out of five hundred thousand dollars a month um who knows how much scott ritter

is out of um and it will lead other people to think more seriously about the um the kind of

plausible deniability that they give themselves right you know that those of us who've been doing

this for a while remember rt so rt used to be available on direct tv it was on all these cable

systems tom hartman had a show on rt and he was on all these cable systems and he was on all these

rt there were others go on rt rt was the only place that wanted to talk about drones and

torture right so i did go on rt i never was paid a cent for it but you know i would go

from rt to msnbc to talk about things um and you know at the like i you know when i think back

about the things i wish i hadn't done in my life i have a lot more squeamishness about the wiki

leaks adjacent stuff i did by far by it's not even close than the interviews i did in rt because rt

was just you know 20 minutes in your in your at your at your desk it was just like i'm gonna go

talk about torture the things i say about torture are absolutely right what has also changed in the

interim period right is that um is that you know it's one thing to go on tv and talk about torture

as i did and tell the truth about torture uh it's another thing to go on rt and say

ukraine invited the invasion right by russia sure right right um the you know and and these guys

were picked for they were picked for the views they already were espousing i think that um with

one except there is only one allegation in the indictment that they one of them was asked to say

something he was asked to say and i'm not sure which of them it was it wasn't tim pool it wasn't

to say something about the isis attack in moscow and it sounded like from context that they were

willing to say that the isis attack wasn't isis but was instead ukraine oh god because remember

russia tried to blame that attack on ukraine so that's the only allegation anywhere close to

somebody at tenet saying something that they wouldn't say otherwise but the idea is you know

so when i went on rt in 2011 or whatever i went on rt and told you know said what i was right

anyway and got no money for a minute right to talk about torture whereas you know and got no

money right even when i was getting money from edward snowden's foundation i wasn't getting much

money but um but these guys the one of the reasons they're getting five hundred thousand dollars a

month is because um i mean it's two reasons one is that those aren't views that most people have

right those aren't views that you're going to get anywhere on its own if you have but also i mean

um one of the interesting things that happened last night is patrick burn who is a propagandist

and who was honey trapped by maria butina right um patrick burn for more overstock uh january 6

nutball he started a false rumor that the ceo of rumble which is where these guys would be posting

otherwise he started a um what i believe to be disinformation that the ceo of rumble had

had also been arrested and rumble is where you see money

this changing hands it's where glenn greenwald has gotten rich for basically apologizing for

trump's fascism it's you know it's it is um and and that is that and so and um substack have

set up a way algorithmically to favor certain kinds of content and that content is very hateful

very fearful and ends up being very pro-fascist and guess what the people who fund these entities

including jd vamps are people who are very

you know pro-hungarian for example oh yeah there's so so many twists and turns in here

but yeah the point i was making is back then when you were going on rt there was you know it was

another outlet that the left could talk about torture and and go on and you know have an

audience and tom hartman did a show there um um oh god well lee camp you know there were people

who were there and and and then there was a split like everybody left a brad friedman you

have his show carried on sputnik which was their radio you know uh side um and then everybody then

there was this split and and then rt was dropped from all the local uh the the u.s cable systems

and stuff but those who remained went the way of glenn greenwald and you know it was and also

right around the time of the russia russia russia which donald trump keeps insisting was a hoax

which was most certainly not a hoax so it's it's yeah philip bump

has has something good in washington post he said whatever else we learn from this rt indictment

it's that uh it finally puts to death the notion that russia trying to interfere in the election

is a hoax right and the and the and the um doppelganger stuff is really really clear it's

like there's no they're they're they're like we have to do everything we can to get donald trump

elected yeah right and the post at emptywheel.net that deals with this was you you put up yesterday

the doppelganger dossier and lots of stuff there so

to read that um you know a related um sort of somewhat weirdness uh vladimir putin endorsed

kamala harris uh he's just trolling of course he is i just had to get that out there but

liz cheney did endorse kamala harris yeah it was sort of sad because she had she endorsed earlier

she would have spoken at the convention now i happen to think that kinsingers adam kinsingers

are the better speeches at the convention so you know i'm okay with kinsinger instead of

liz cheney because cheney isn't that isn't as good of a speaker in my opinion but so she delayed

because she wanted it to drop in september where we'd get more attention and she did it uh at the

same time as this tim pool indictment or this indictment of rt people were coming out and so

it sort of fell by the wayside but i hope she'll do some some events there's a um kamala harris

released a fundraising memo today

and described that one-fifth of their donations in the last month i think comes from registered

republicans or independents huh okay the headline which you're seeing a lot of is that they made

400 million in august the biggest month that any presidential candidate has had but down further

in the memo it describes that and i'm not sure i tweeted this out too but um i'm not sure exactly

what the what the whether it's of all those donations whatever but something like a

fifth of their donations are coming from people who are not self-identified democrats and some of

them are republicans they don't tell us how many are republicans but i mean you know this is still

an incredibly close race yeah which i don't get but okay right i mean because the republican

candidate for president today was um on on tv saying he should be able to rope legally people

in and in flights right yes um so when you're a star they let you do it

yeah we'll see what happens i mean honestly nobody knows what to make of this race

i think that polling may have a like that you know um if you look at i'm gonna bollocks his

name because i always do tom bonnier on on shitter t-b-o-n-i let me let me pull it up because

people should follow him um he does oh there it is t-b-o-n-i-e-r on shitter he um he does a lot of

analysis and he at this point he it's called target smart he is tracking new registrations

huh okay and so um and then when voting starts he tracks early voting how many people you know

so he's actually he is a very good source for alternative information on how the election's

going and as soon as kamala got in he's seeing this huge spike he he provided numbers today or

yesterday for new registrations in pennsylvania and

here it is this was yesterday new registrations among women okay um these are the pennsylvania

voter file that includes the week of july 21st so after kamala gets in um new registrations

among voters under 30 increased by 59.6 percent relative to 2020 so 2020 is a weird year to

compare with because of covid but like this is a big spike of younger people

newly registering but then the next one new registrations among women increased by 49

black voters 110 percent wow not a typo right and that's important because on paper pollsters

are still showing trump doing remarkably well with black voters yeah but what tom bonnier is

showing is there's a bunch of people who are responding to kamala getting in the race and

registering and then here's the big one new registrations among black women under 30 increased

262 compared to the same week in 2020 that's a 3.5 times increase so you unsurprisingly you know

the first black women on the ticket you see a lot of young black women who are registering to vote

and that's the kind of thing that makes polling really difficult because i mean to begin with

those are younger voters and they would be considered by pollsters less likely to vote

in any case but um but since they're new voters

it's not clear to what degree because also there's all these weird vote models where people

are working off of registration decks and those are outdated you know so there's a lot of reasons

this race is super difficult to to to pull right we're seeing you know although kamala harris is

ahead in enough states to win if there's no fuckery and if the polls are accurate are accurate

well it's still right now far closer than the

than anyone wants it to be and in fact she's behind joe biden's numbers in 2020 so if the

polling errors are off as they were in 2020 then we're all fucked um and meanwhile um tester in

montana's is not doing well there so that you know that unless you win florida texas or nebraska

you you know you you stand the possibility of losing the senate which is not surprising

that's what people have been expecting but um

well the math does favor the republicans in this cycle just with all other things aside

so it's an uphill battle but i also saw something that said there's you know you haven't seen this

much enthusiasm among voters since 2008 right um i spoke to my um niece and nephew this week

because i was like this is the thing that people i mean you should you know um something like 12

million voters were not eligible to vote in 2000 because they were too young or they were not yet

citizens and so you know there's a lot of journalists who are not eligible to vote in

2000 because they were too young or they were not yet citizens and so you know there's a lot of

journalists who are not eligible to vote in 2000 because they were not yet citizens and so you know

there's a lot of journalists who are not yet citizens and so you know there's a lot of journalists

oh we don't have to talk again about grabbing them by the pussy people already know that i'm

like so i went to my niece and nephew who are both um the nephew will vote for the first time

and my niece voted uh she she would shoot this will be her second presidential um and and you

know it's like tell me what you know from 2016 um and they were both more they both had more to

say about the parkland shooting so 2018 than they did about grab them by the pussy they had a lot

to say about gun violence um necessarily than trump's sexual assault but um and you've got

eugene carroll in the news in any case but but there's so much that they just weren't tuned into

until in 2016 and um and but the but one of the more striking things that um my my niece said

she was like none of us remember we weren't voters in 2008 right okay so

they've only been voters in what are what are called double hater elections they've only been

voters in elections where everyone is choosing not who they want to vote for but who they want

to vote against um which was true until biden dropped out it was true in 2020 it was true in

2016 so um so my niece was like you know we we weren't there in 2008 we don't know what it's like

to to be enthusiastic about voting so there's this whole actually two generations of people who

i mean i think we were less enthusiastic in 2012 than 2008 and so um really interesting insight

because um you know i gaza aside and that's a big big big issue and it could cost kamala

michigan i think people need to be realistic about that but gaza aside i think um

kamala is running on a progressive platform in a way that obama simply didn't obama you know and i

do worry about david pluth telling kamala to

you know be too more conservative than she should be but it seems to already be happening and

happening in a few things capital gains tax and other things yeah um but uh fracking but nevertheless

it's a it's an interesting dynamic and and i think the press is just too you know jaded they're like

we don't have to talk about donald trump being a rapist because everybody knows no they don't

and we don't have to talk about the fact that donald trump can't coherently address policy it's

like

yeah yeah i did i did a post for those who didn't see it that got a lot of attention it's called

um the soft bigotry of no expectations on donald trump it's from last weekend uh and and it showed

a used a washington post editorial where they said okay we've gotten more policy from kamala

harris but she in you know in the interest of democracy should offer more and i'm like

wait a second you know donald trump has been running for now just about it'll be 22 months

next week and i'm like wait a second you know donald trump has been running for now just about it'll be 22 months next week

kamala harris is still not halfway done right i keep counting like kamala harris's uh election is

107 days and donald trump's is 24 months and you know and and people aren't accounting for that

pacing difference right so kamala harris has built a base the base has made choice uh for trump and

for other republicans a really devastating issue and let's see where let's i mean there there was

a poll today that people shouldn't get too excited about but nevertheless a poll today that showed

um debbie mccastle powell within one point really really crazy i mean like um like um

colin allred has a chance against ted cruz but dmp has maybe more of a chance against scott

that's wild partly because abortion is on the ballot now and he is so so unlikable look as

as unlikable as trump is and he's so unlikable as trump is and he's so unlikable as trump is

or desantis i mean rick scott is voldemort i mean he's just there's nothing i i don't know how he

ever got elected but this man got elected governor twice and senator i guess this is his second uh

you know go around trying to get elected and debbie mccastle powell you got to remember

served one term in congress and lost re-election in a fairly blue district i mean there's nothing

there so the fact that she's within

striking distance is huge i also saw a poll that said uh the vote is is split among uh cuban

americans which must be an aberration but i'm going to break in because there's uh breaking

news which is that um merchant is not going to sentence trump before the election really wow

now what what um i just saw i'm just seeing a headline i'm not okay i haven't you know so wow

that's that's disappointing um

uh yeah that wow uh i i i just pulled up uh msnbc and it looks like lisa rubin is

let's see what she's talking about i don't think it's she's talking about that um

they were substantively nearly identical to things that he has said in the past

for which he has been found liable it looks like they're talking about trump slamming you

are you uh gene carroll eugene carroll yeah i'm i'm seeing uh the first person to see it that i've

got is a daily news journalist in the u.s. i'm seeing uh the first person to see it that i've got

is a daily news journalist in the u.s. i'm seeing uh the first person to see it that i've got is a

okay yeah so they don't have it yet well we'll watch that um my i mean not knowing anything

any reasoning they're giving my first reaction is well that's that sucks yeah i mean and it

may mean that you know merchant may feel that he has to delay it so that he gives full hearing to

the immunity issues i guess uh sentencing is november 26th great thanksgiving

okay november 26 well well that sucks all right well there's still uh two other

trump cases in the news and hopefully uh judge chutkin um will will will bring more facts out

so that you know the american public gets to hear it that's it's just another kick in the gut this

man is teflon he he he could i think shoot someone on fifth avenue and somehow get away with it

yep yeah um all right so uh well that kind of threw me off uh trump they i'm just looking at

msnbc the the chiron reads trump i'm disappointed in my legal talent and and he's got alina haba

standing behind him and some other guy anyway that's uh what's happening here well what a way

to start the weekend um anything else that i had oh i guess you know you brought up your

niece and nephew and they were more

uh obviously um well versed on parkland i lived right next door i you know i lived in coral

springs which was the sister community to parkland and kids in my neighborhood went to

marjorie stoneman douglas high school i mean that's how close it was so i lived through that

and then you have jd vance yesterday uh let me i just need to play this clip because um you know

i don't know how anyone can respect this man when he says something like this

i don't like this i don't like to admit this i don't like that this is a fact of life

but if you're if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines you realize that our schools

are soft targets and we have got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who

walks through the front door we've got to bolster security so that if a psycho wants to walk through

the front door and kill a bunch of children they're not able to and again as a parent do i

want my kids school to have additional security

no of course i don't i don't want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like you've

got to have additional security but that is increasingly the reality that we live in and

a bunch of my colleagues in the senate we actually worked on legislation that would give schools more

resources to bolster their security because if these psychos are going to have to go after our

kids we've got to be prepared for it we don't have to like the reality that we live in but it is the

reality that we live in we got to deal with it it's the reality that we live in we got to deal

with it

um did a post today comparing what uh stephen miller who might call discount uh discount

gogles what he has said he keeps demanding that democrats focus on the trump shooting

um where you know definitely one adult died but it wasn't a shooting in a school

and and i and i was like no you know trump is no different um everything that they've learned

about thomas crooks the the guy who tried to shoot trump is that uh

is that he is basically a glorified school shooter he wanted to be you know

yeah i mean he looked up some school shootings just as the guy in florida did so uh and it's

you know you can't jd vance saying schools are soft targets donald trump wasn't a soft target

but nevertheless he was shot at by a guy with an assault ruffle so maybe the problem isn't

soft targets maybe the problem is the assault rifles hello and but the good news good news

when you're talking about four dead people two kids another school shooting a 14 year old

doing the shooting but now we learn the father bought him the gun after he had been interviewed

by police after being tipped off by the fbi that he was making threatening posts online about

shooting up his school and so his father gives him a gift of an ak-47 or whatever ar-15 whatever

the hell the gun is charge the father they charge the father with murder

yes and good good they need to do that so that you know like the notion because i you know like

they've done that psychologically the people who are most likely to be shooters are are men under

the age of 29 and it's like well uh let's delay the time when men get guns unsupervised and to

give a 14 year old a weapon after he's already you know made comments about shooting people up

you you should be liable for that you should absolutely be liable for that

i said yesterday before i even knew that the father bought him the gun is that like they did

in the michigan case that the parents need to be charged i don't know where the mother is but i

understand she's been in and out of jail so maybe she's not even in the picture but seeing the

father in court this morning it's like okay at least something something yeah yeah i mean because

right because the you know like i when i heard this story i thought back to this family who's

to the

north carolina or somewhere in the south and and um and they were like well we had no idea we didn't

know and it's like you have to like there were there were probably at least 20 people who've

prosecuted for January 6th, who brought minors with them to the attack. And it's sort of like

those old lynching pictures where you'd see these small children brought to the lynching of an

African-American. And these people are raising kids in this culture of gun violence with impunity

for themselves. So hopefully this murder charge will do something about that.

I hope so. All right. I'm looking up and MSNBC is now on the judge moves Trump New York City

hush money sentencing to November 26th. Yeah. All right. Well, another week is going to start

on Monday. We have the debate coming up. This should be interesting or not. And the weird

opposite world element of the debate is Kamala Harris wanted to change the rules back against

what Biden had negotiated.

Where you mute the microphones when the other person's not speaking. The Trump people said,

no, let's keep that in because they know it helps Trump. So the mics will be muted. And

yeah. And Brian Fallon has been making a big has been teasing. And Kamala sort of has an out. She

says if he keeps saying things when the microphones are off, you know, we have some means to turn them

back on. I will see how the debate goes. I mean, I think that Trump.

Has not been particularly cogent of late. And I think that there are questions that like I think

he I think it's more likely he's going to get asked a gun violence question than he would have

before the Georgia shooting. You know, and and and he's like I said, he's spent and Stephen Miller

spent months saying, oh, look at me. I got shot. And it's like, great. You got shot. Can we finally

start talking about doing something about weapons? Yeah. Which is what Kamala Harris is going to say.

He'll get asked questions about choice. He gave this ridiculous. It wasn't it wasn't an answer. I

mean, he like he. About child care yesterday. Yeah. Oh, my God. It was it was word salad in

the truest sense of the term. It there was nothing there. And then even worse was the

people who applauded his non answer. Which was astounding because he said nothing. It was a

couple of words. So. Yeah. And one of the things he said is he said, oh, I appointed Ivanka. I'm like,

great. And Ivanka didn't get anything done. So can we hold you accountable for appointing your

unqualified daughter to do something that she was never going to do in any case? Right. Right. So

we've got that to look forward to. And then, of course, we'll be back again next Friday to tie it

all up in a neat little bow and then look forward to the next week. About 100 things that happened

between today and next Friday.

Yes, there will. It could all come bunched up at the end. But Tuesday is is the debate. So

there's that. Marcy Wheeler, of course, be reading her at EmptyWheel.net. There's a lot of great

stuff there. So and then we tie it all together next Friday. As always, thank you. Enjoy your

weekend. And I'll talk to you next Friday. Thank you very much. Thanks. Talk to you next week. And

all right. All right. Have a great weekend, everyone. Peace out.

Bye.