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Yesterday, Newsweek — bless them — was the only corporate media platform to cover a shocking story broken by stalwart independent journalist and legal analyst Julie Kelly, with this dramatic and infuriating headline:




While we’ve all been distracted by the mad gutter fireworks in Merchan’s Manhattan joke of a p*rnopgraphic Soviet show-trial, much more momentous things have been happening down in Florida, where Federal Judge Cannon has ordered a lot of government documents to be unsealed and unredacted.

One document unsealed yesterday was the FBI’s "operations order” for the agency’s execrable, banana-republic-style Mar-a-Lago raid. The Operations Order included a long "policy statement" regarding the "use of deadly force," which provided in part: "Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary."

So it’s going to be like that.

The language wasn’t boilerplate, or at least, it wasn’t just boilerplate. The Operations Order also required attaching a medic to the search team, and even included a map and instructions to the nearest trauma center, presumably for people who got shot during the raid. The small army of FBI agents — 37 of them — was armed, and was also ordered to conceal their weapons and dress undercover, increasing the palpable risks of confusion and an ‘unfortunate accident.’

Grassroots reactions to yesterday’s disclosure were (and still are) incandescent. Julie Kelley demanded, “What country is this?” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), angrily tweeted “The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light.” Social media influencer Tim Pool opined in outrage, “This was either an attempt to kill Trump or incite civil war, maybe both.”

The media machine responded promptly, coolly arguing that the FBI was only following “standard procedure:” ...

I’m not an expert on FBI criminal procedure. But completely coincidentally, I once sued a city for excessive force over a militarized SWAT raid against my high-end commercial real-estate brokerage client. Not only were my clients completely innocent — they were never even charged — but the raid was just a document search, like the Mar-a-Lago raid, that could easily have been handled using an investigatory subpoena.

Here’s my hot take: The FBI’s “standard procedure” argument stinks. There was nothing normal about the Mar-a-Lago raid. It wasn’t like the FBI was raiding a Harlem crack house. The FBI was raiding a high-end luxury property secured by the Secret Service where the most recent former President lives with no intent to arrest anybody. The FBI knew that people with guns would be there — Secret Service agents — and yet proceeded with its “surprise” raid in undercover clothing.

It is also difficult to credit the lethal “boilerplate” to simple negligence. The layers of required approvals ran all the way up to Grandma Garland herself. Under no circumstances should deadly force have been authorized. The Secret Service should have had prior notice. The agents should have been unarmed to exclude any possibility of an accident.

As I said, based on the limited amount we know, it stinks. The already historic raid on a former president by his campaign opponent just became even more historic and disgraceful.

Hunter Biden ‘Indisputably’ Lied Under Oath, House Investigators Reveal

“Joe Biden” has been especially effective at containing the Grand Golem of all white supremacists, Trump, from deconstructing our utopian democracy. This Trump uttered perfidious misinformation that the 2020 election was less than fair and upright. He is under indictment in Fulton County, GA, for conspiring to transmit this incorrect thinking to other white supremacists and creating an unsafe space for GA Sec’y of State Brad Raffensberger by asking him to “find” additional votes. What log was Bradraff supposed to look under, anyway (ha ha!)?

The case is being guided by Fulton County DA, the indomitable Fani Willis, at least for now, as she awaits a process known as getting the bidness from a white supremacist so-called ethics committee in the Georgia State Senate, where she has been falsely accused of mis-spending state money on vacations with erstwhile special prosecutor Nathan Wade. These trips were, of course, fact-finding efforts. One fact found is that the white supremacist cruise ship directors attempt to kill black people by luring them into all-you-can-eat buffets at sea, from which escape is impossible.

“Joe Biden” also got Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint Lawfare paladin Jack Smith to prosecute this nefarious Trump in the most upright of all federal court districts, Washington, DC, for instigating what “Joe Biden” recently called an “erection” against our democracy. Trump, you see, told a gigantic mob of white supremacists to penetrate our nation’s capitol building so as to obstruct certification of the 2020 electoral vote and murder then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, if possible, along with all congresspersons of color. Legal experts at MSNBC, Andrew Weissmann (of the Mueller Special Counsel office), and Andy McCabe (former Deputy Director of the FBI), have already found this Trump guilty, and they know about these matters better than anybody, so the trial under Judge Tanya Chutkan may be unnecessary.

Things are not going quite so well for SC Smith in the Martin County Federal Court of Judge Aileen Cannon, where this Trump stands accused of fobbing off with classified government documents, claiming some fabricated sort of presidential privilege — unlike “Joe Biden” who got his classified docs before he was president and therefore does not have to claim any such privilege (and was understandably “forgetful” when asked about the docs by the other SC Robert Hur). In any case, AG Garland can always dispatch an FBI SWAT team to Judge Cannon’s home to spur an attitude adjustment on the bench, if required.

Hopes really rest, though, on the current case against the Grand Golem Trump in Judge Juan Marchan’s Manhattan courtroom, where the most supreme of all white supremacists stands accused of book-keeping irregularities in furtherance of federal crimes so unspeakable that they have never actually been spoken. The case, engineered by veteran DC Golem hunters Mary McCord, Norm Eisen, Lisa Monaco, and Matthew Colangelo, fronted by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, goes to the jury after final arguments this week.

Judge Marchan is expected to instruct the jury to vote guilty because no other conclusion is possible. Thus, Judge Merchan will be celebrated far and wide for saving our democracy. But that’s not all. After the most excellent verdict of guilty X-23-Plus, he will have the pleasure of sentencing this Trump to life in the Rikers Island prison complex, where it will be difficult for the Grand Golem to organize any white supremacist activities and will be relegated to a diet of baloney sandwiches for the duration of his term.

The only downside for this scenario is that Trump might get elected President of the USA despite conviction, and on January 20, 2025, commence operations to put “Joe Biden” and all the others in his train of officials in jail for the rest of their natural lives. You have to wonder if they’re thinking about that this holiday weekend.

As Trump wows the public at rallies, Biden seethes behind the castle walls, demanding that his nemesis be convicted and jailed.

The next big news day for the regime will be Verdict Day! Oh, how they will celebrate.

And lest you get carried away with the fantasy that maybe they’ll acquit Trump in the city that made him, think again. There is little chance that the jury will go home to their friends and family and confess they passed on the chance to save Democracy because they had a sudden case of reasonable doubt.

Corrupt president, corrupt prosecutor, corrupt judge, corrupt jury. And Rachel Maddow will declare justice was served and Joe Biden will pretend that a bookeeping error was a big enough crime to warrant indicting a former president.

Reasonable Doubt? It’s been eliminated, along with due process and the presumption of innocence. The only thing that matters is whether or not Bette Midler and Stephen King can sleep at night and that Joe Biden gets to sit in the Big Boy chair at the White House and stare back at us with his tiny, angry, squinty eyes and bark about bloodbaths, dictators and “good people on both sides.”

But nothing Biden has done to Trump has helped move the needle in the polls.

The Democrats and Never Trumpers probably wonder how it is that Donald Trump can still be this popular after everything they’ve thrown at him. They keep doubling down on the hyperbole and overblown attacks against him, resorting to lying outright to win over a handful of low-information voters.

They probably haven’t figured out yet that what they’ve put in motion is a tale as old as time, one that resonates in each of us down to our bones, passed on through the generations, told by campfire light in the worst of times. It’s a story we need to hear again and again because it helps us keep hope alive.

The Hero’s Journey is a trope, to be sure, but it’s also the basis for some of the best movies ever made. We respond to characters put through their paces who come out the other side transformed. We need these stories because without them, what else is there but hopelessness.

The Democrats and Never Trumpers might have been able to convince the American people that Trump is the greatest threat they face. But after four years of Joe Biden, who has used most of his time in office demonizing Trump and his supporters, more Americans are waking up to the real threat to Democracy. ...

What will really condemn them when students of history look back is the unanswerable question of what Trump did to deserve upending the entire country to stop him from winning an election.

They can’t point to mass graves, or lynchings, or genocide. There are no crimes big enough to justify raiding a former president’s home, with authorization to use lethal force, then turning around and gaslighting us with “official protocol” as if any of this is standard procedure.

The prosecution has finally rested in the criminal case against former President Trump, having presented nine bullet-proof pieces of evidence that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump is guilty. Here they are:

Trump said he's innocent: Exactly the sort of thing a guilty person would say.
Before the trial, the prosecution's star witnesses both said Trump was innocent: It doesn't get any more cut and dry.
The judge decided Trump was guilty before the trial even began: It was that obvious.
No one in America has ever been charged with a felony for this crime before: Trump is so guilty they had to make up new laws. Case closed.
Trump was in Home Alone 2 alongside notorious criminals "The Wet Bandits": What more evidence could you need?
Trump spent evenings after trial delivering pizza to firemen: Exactly what a hardened felon would do. Lock him up.
Trump's signature on the checks in question is kind of hard to read: The plain mark of criminal conspiracy.
Robert DeNiro said he is guilty: Game over.
He's not a Democrat: Clearly belongs behind bars. That's just how law works.
If that's not an airtight list of evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump is guilty, then you belong in a cell right next to him!

Yesterday, New York Magazine ran what might be the best post-Verdict analysis yet, in a remarkable story headlined, “Prosecutors Got Trump — But They Contorted the Law.”

Author Elie Honig — a former New York state and federal prosecutor — described how creative and unusual were the charges levied against President Trump:




Next, Honig described how trivial and stale the main misdemeanor charges were, comparing the legal weight of Trump’s “mischaracterization of legal expenses” to stealing a bag of Cheetos:




These trivial and expired charges, the author explained, were then jumped up by democrat prosecutors to felonies — just like with Dr. King — who electroshocked them back into zombie-like life, a legal Frankenstein custom-constructed to convict the former President ...

Among a vasty swamp of bad reporting, this article might be the best island of clarity about the Verdict anyone has yet assembled. Read the whole thing, and forward it to all your relatives who claim they don’t understand what the big problem is.

The comparisons to Trump’s trial are not going very well so far. Judge Noreika, presiding over the trial, has already ruled that, unlike in Trump’s case, Hunter’s prosecutors cannot use salacious evidence, like Hunter’s dishonorable Navy discharge, his pending tax evasion trial, or his deadbeat-dad child support case for his out-of-wedlock daughter in Arkansas.

They must only focus on the relevant facts.

Judge Noreika also ruled that, to prove the charges, prosecutor David Weiss must also prove Hunter Biden was addicted to drugs, which he denies, despite extensively discussing his addiction in his poorly received but highly profitable biography, and despite the many distressing pictures on Hunter’s laptop of the Resident’s son covered in cocaine like a piece of raw chicken rolled in flour.

But of course, we have been assured the laptop is just Russian disinformation. We’ll see what the jury thinks.

What do you want to bet the sitting president’s son’s trial gets a tiny fraction of the coverage that Trump’s trial got? We will find out soon.

If there was any doubt about why Hunter was prosecuted on the flimsiest charge that could have been brought — the charge of failing to check the addiction box on his federal firearms form — rather than much more serious FARA violations, or bribery, or human trafficking, et cetera, all doubt has now been erased. Hunter’s trial is meant to reveal that no one is above the law...

In fact, that was the very first point the government made in its opening statement, to make sure you dummies didn’t miss the point...

See? Hunter is being prosecuted just like Trump. Therefore, we can all conclude that Trump’s persecution is also not political. In other words, Hunter is the democrat fall guy, polished up and propped up to prove the DOJ is a totally apolitical institution that blindly follows justice wherever it leads. Nevermind that Hunter isn’t running for any office, has never run for office, least of all being a current candidate, and nevermind that the DOJ’s magic shrink ray has already miniaturized his criminal charges.

Nevermind all that. Now it’s even Steven. I mean, even Hunter.

The hot takes this morning are burning brightly again, but keep your cool. Politico reported the developing story, headlined “Judge in Trump's hush money trial flags Facebook post that claimed insight into jury deliberations.”

The news was lawyers in Trump’s Manhattan case got a letter from Judge Merchan yesterday, informing them of a scandalous post to the court’s Facebook comment section that popped up the day before the jury rendered its verdict finding Trump guilty:




That’s all we know for sure. The post has since been deleted, we don’t know by whom (the Court, Facebook, or the original poster). The media has so far been unable to figure out who “Michael Anderson” is. Nobody knows whether Anderson is actually related to a Trump juror or was just “sh— posting.”

Anderson’s account is still active. Responding to the controversy, he described himself as “professional sh— poster:”




It’s awkward when your defense is “I was just lying.” Nobody knows yet whether this amounts to anything, and to be honest, the odds favor Michael Anderson is just a stupid internet troll.

Problems with jurors sometimes crop up. Sometimes it’s just one sleepy juror, somebody seen on a device during deliberations, or it could be something affecting the whole group. What normally happens is the judge brings the jurors back, together or one at a time, and interviews them about what happened. The lawyers may or may not be invited to watch. They may or may not be allowed to ask questions. The judge then decides whether anything inappropriate happened.

It’s way too early to say anything for sure, and there’s nothing yet to get excited about. Most alleged juror irregularities get resolved without needing a retrial. We’ll see.

Hunter found guilty on all counts.

Yep, now no investigations into any influence selling