  Friday, July 28, 2023

TODD ZWILLICH

Deputy DC Bureau Chief, VICE News

Washington, D.C. Bureau
@toddzwillich

Former United States President Donald Trump attends the UFC 290 event at T-Mobile Arena on July 08, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)

Congratulations to VICE News on receiving 30 Emmy nominations this week, including "Outstanding Recorded News Program" for VICE News Tonight. Breaking the Vote didn't manage to get a nomination this year, because the Emmys are fake, rigged, and stolen. Winners will be announced in September!

The Art of the Del-ete

It's pretty wild to think that while Jack Smith sat with Donald Trump's lawyers in the coup attempt matter in Washington, he knew that within hours he'd be dropping a superseding indictment in Florida in the Mar-a–Lago case.

The Special Counsel has alleged three more charges against Trump, and they're beyond serious. You've probably heard that Trump, his valet Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago maintenance director Carlos De Oliveira are charged with conspiring to delete the property's surveillance footage before DOJ served a subpoena in its search for documents.

I asked a former federal prosecutor about the superseding indictment, and he confirmed a suspicion of mine. The indictment doesn't show any direct evidence of Trump ordering the servers to be deleted. According to the charges, Trump spoke to De Oliveira, and De Oliveira told another employee, Yuscil Taveras ("Employee 4") that "the boss wants the server deleted." Will the government's case ultimately be circumstantial here, based on what "the boss wants," or do prosecutors have more?

Also, it's now clear that DOJ had the infamous Iran document that Trump waved around in front of non-cleared people at Bedminster, all along. Trump returned it with 15 boxes of documents on Jan. 17, 2022, nearly a year after he left office. Remember, if the indictment is correct, that means Trump (duh) lied when he claimed he was waving around papers about properties and deals when he complained about Gen. Mark Milley and his attack plans. Now Trump's been charged with a new, 32nd, count of mishandling secret documents.

The Hunter games

The grand jury hearing evidence in the Special Counsel's attempted coup investigation meets (most) Tuesdays and Thursdays at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, D.C. But they came and went yesterday with no indictments handed down for Trump, or whoever else might get swept up in likely charges.

Trump tried a new tone as his lawyers met with Jack Smith. Instead of attacking prosecutors as thugs and monsters, he called the last-ditch, don't-indict-my-client meeting "productive." That is, right after throwing his lawyers under the bus. That tone will likely change back to vitriolic—maybe even threatening—as soon as the expected indictments come. For now, every day of delay helps Trump try and push accountability until after the 2024 election—meaning, never.

Another federal courtroom showed just how urgent that accountability is. It was in Delaware, where Hunter Biden was about to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax evasion charges and a gun charge. Hunter's plea deal with federal prosecutors fell through at the last minute, apparently because the parties had very different ideas about how much immunity protection Hunter would get in exchange.

But the back and forth with US District Judge Maryellen Noreika revealed how Trump's attack on democracy and the rule of law has already taken root, even while he's out of office. During the chaotic arguments, the judge seemed upset by a part of the plea deal that would give her the power to determine if Hunter stayed off drugs and alcohol, as he must to avoid jail time on the gun charge.

That power is usually in the hands of prosecutors, ie, the Justice Department. And Hunter Biden is famous, not only for his laptop and crimes, but for his proximity to the president. That's made him a target of right-wing propaganda and GOP deflection on unfair prosecutions, and a gleeful target of Trump and his vows for retribution if he ever regains the Oval Office.

Biden's lawyers know that if Trump's DOJ holds their client's freedom, he'll be targeted for retaliation. Trump has already promised that one of DOJ functions, should he win, is to go after his enemies for revenge. Judge Noreika seemed to acknowledge that this was a problem, even if, for now, she rejected the arrangement on Constitutional grounds.

We'll see what Hunter and the government come up with for his plea deal, and if he gets prosecuted for more than the tax and gun charges. But what's clear to this Trump-appointed federal judge, and everyone else who read the transcript of that weird day in court, is that Trump's re-election means the federal justice system becomes his personal tool of retribution—and personal, corrupt absolution.

Put another way, every MAGA accusation that Trump is a victim of political persecution masks the reality that, as soon as he is able, he intends to use the law for exactly that.

(BTW, back in Washington, the bus Trump was throwing his lawyers under is an "advice of counsel" defense. "I was just doing what my lawyers said was ok!" For so many reasons, that's unlikely to work here.)

It's hot in D.C., it's hot in Fulton County. Sign your friends up for Breaking the Vote!

Never gonna give you Rep.

Are Alabama Republicans hoping the Supreme Court was just kidding when it ruled against the disempowering of Black voters? Not exactly, but they do appear to think there's a chance at least one justice who likes beer will change his mind just weeks after ruling against them.

Plaintiffs have until today to file a new challenge in the case of the Alabama GOP's congressional map. SCOTUS ruled in June that the map violates the Voting Rights Act by including only one Black-majority district, in a state where a quarter of all voters are African American. They upheld a ruling ordering a new map including a second Black-majority district, or something "very close" to it.

Last week the GOP governor and legislators dropped a map appearing to openly defy that order. The hope seems to be that some legal breadcrumbs left by Brett Kavanaugh could lead them to an obscure reversal of the court's 5-4 ruling this summer. The court is going to have to deal with the latest disenfranchising map one way or the other.

Better call solicitation

Monday starts the 19-day window that Fulton County DA Fani Willis has flagged for indictments. Last week there was news that prosecutors are eyeing the state's racketeering statute to potentially charge Trump at the head of a broad criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

Now add a host of potential felony solicitation charges to the list, including solicitation to commit election fraud, solicitation to destroy ballots, and trying to get a public official to fail to perform their duties.

Attorney, u-turny

Ok, fine, the stories I told of two Black election workers running around like drug dealers, passing off clandestine thumb drives, and stealing an election in Fulton County were all defamatory lies. But I can still win the case!

Rudy Giuliani's advisor says that admission, filed by Rudy this week in Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss's defamation suit against him, is only a legal matter and not an actual admission he lied. Ok, sure, but remember: Rudy's been doing America's-mayor backflips to avoid handing over discovery in the case of his Trump-aided campaign to demonize Freeman and Moss.

As a legal matter, that admission seems to be signaling that whatever's in that discovery is worse for Rudy than losing the case brought by those two women, who told the Jan. 6 committee that harassment, intimidation, and threats set in motion by Giuliani and Trump ruined their lives.

Have Fulton County prosecutors—or the feds—seen the discovery Rudy is doing his best to keep hidden? Even better than the filing: Rudy's post-filing gaslighting.

FWIW, one of Rudy's other lawyers says he hasn't gotten a target letter and doesn't expect to be charged in whatever the Special Counsel has cooking in the Jan. 6 grand jury (despite testifying for eight hours). I'm not betting Rudy's defamation gambit is the last of his legal exposure.

Rudolph Giuliani, attorney for President Donald Trump, conducts a news conference at the Republican National Committee on lawsuits regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election on Thursday, November 19, 2020. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The Great Fakes region

You can see the defenses to Michigan's 8-count felony case against its GOP fake electors starting to take shape. "We were duped," says one, who claims the gaggle of Trump allies was summoned and told to sign cards that were later used to transfer their signatures onto fraudulent elector forms.

Each of the 16 fake electors is charged with forgery, conspiracy to commit forgery, election fraud, and more. It's unclear how much evidence Michigan AG Dana Nessel has to cut against the idea that the group were just naive tools of skeevy Trumpist operatives. To wit! Trump lawyer and Jan. 6 committee criminal refer-ee Ken Chesebro told other attorneys that the Michigan fake elector caper was a legally little "problematic"... but they did it anyway.

Low down dirty Shea

The last of Steve Bannon's wall-defrauding buddies to face federal charges for the "We Build the Wall" scam is going to prison. A federal judge sentenced Timothy Shea to five years and three months for his role in the scam where four felonious fellas raised $25 million in private donations to build a border wall, then spent millions on themselves.

Two other co-conspirators, Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, pleaded guilty and were sentenced earlier this year, and Donald Trump pardoned Bannon in the very final hours of his presidency. Bannon is facing trial next fall on New York State's prosecution of the same scam, where no Trump pardons will be available.

I SAID WHAT I SAID

"I went to the mattresses on COVID and the election fraud issue, only to have Rudy Giuliani say, 'Yeah. I was lying.' And Jason Miller say, 'Oh, we knew it was all BS.'"

— BlazeTV host Steve Deace.

Tabulator rasa — What caused Maricopa County's tabulator machine problems in the 2022 midterms? It was a combo of paper weight, ballot size and the interval f the ballots going through the machines that weren't picked up in testing, according to a county report. (Republicans called this a vast conspiracy, of course).

It's Guo time — When the feds arrested Steve Bannon for that "We Build the Wall" scam in August, 2020, they plucked him off of a yacht in Westbrook, Conn. The yacht belonged to the Chinese billionaire and Bannon benefactor Guo Wengui, a rightwing enemy of the Chinese government. This week Guo was arrested and charged with 12 counts, including securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The feds say he scammed his followers and donors out of millions.

Check out VICE News's great coverage of Guo, including a visit to his 5th Ave. luxury apartment, just steps from Trump Tower.

U Madison? — Wisconsin Republicans are using—surprise!—false conspiracy theories to scapegoat the state's top nonpartisan election official. Democrats are using weird procedural tactics to counter them, and the whole thing is putting Wisconsin's election system in jeopardy for 2024.

Extremely Ron-line — A staffer on Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign caused outrage when he produced and published an anti-LGBTQ campaign video featuring Nazi imagery. What was remarkable was how difficult a time the political press had processing the implications of Nate Hochman's firing. Hochman wasn't so much a sign of a "too-online" campaign in "disorder," or a glaring example of far-right, as one of extremist ideology infecting the GOP.

The perfect candidate — A 2022 GOP candidate for governor in Michigan pleaded guilty for his role in the Jan. 6 riot this week. Ryan Kelley pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing on restricted grounds and will be sentenced in the fall. He was arrested last June during the GOP Michigan governor primary, which he lost to Tudor Dixon.

Oof — That ain't reich.