Washington Post, New York Times, NBC retract reports that said Giuliani was warned by FBI he was target of Russian disinformation operation - CNN cnn.com/2021/05/01/med…
While it’s crucial that the media get the story right, so far as Giuliani is concerned this isn’t a big deal. This couldn’t have come much of a surprise: there have been rumors for months that he has been under investigation by the feds. 1/3
And SDNY probably had the goods on Rudy already. But what Michael Cohen and others are pointing out now is that *Trump* and his allies have to be worried about communications Giuliani had with *them*. 2/3
It is safe to assume that the feds (Garland and Wray) are after *Trump* just as much as Giuliani--indeed even more so, since he was the presidential capo di capo in all this--and no doubt proud of it. 3/3
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@ParryPierce Just to be clear: Dershowitz’s position (so far as it can made out) is absurd--and will prove to be yet another embarrassment to Harvard Law (along with the likes of Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and Kayleigh McEnany). 2/19
@ParryPierce First of all, there is absolutely no evidence that the attorney-client privilege was violated in this case, because of the well-known and well-tested crime-fraud exception to that privilege. 3/19
@ParryPierce This is especially important here, because the attorney-client privilege was, it appears, annulled in this search warrant decision, meaning that Trump is quite possibly in trouble. 4/19
McConnell is getting high marks for his speech, even from some Ds. He does deserve credit for torching Trump for his conduct. Even so, his main argument--that the Senate properly acquitted b/c only a sitting officer can be convicted--is disgraceful. 1/22 tinyurl.com/yxzedgcr
McConnell’s argument is based on the entirely erroneous and unsubstantiated allegation that the Constitution considers only two possible kinds of individuals: (1) private citizens, and (2) a POTUS, VPOTUS, or government official currently in office. 2/22
This is nonsense. There are THREE types of individuals to consider under the Constitution: the two kinds McConnell mentions, and *a person who is a private individual NOW who WAS an officer and who engaged in impeachable conduct when he or she WAS in office*! 3/22
The Constitution clearly provides for the Senate to either: (1) acquit; (2) convict, remove, not disqualify; (3) convict, remove, disqualify; or (4) convict and disqualify if no longer in office. What we’re looking at, beginning tomorrow, is (4). 1/5
Senate Republicans can’t argue that disqualification is out of order because 74 million deluded and dangerous Americans voted for Trump in the last election. 2/5
Like, you know, it’s not as though the drafters of the Constitution didn’t consider the possibility that a convicted president might be popular and constitute a significant threat in the future. 3/5
Section 320 of the Communications Decency Act provides in part that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." 1/11
Congressional Ds are now proposing to significantly amend Section 230.
It is easy to see why Sen. Warner’s proposed amendment is an existential threat to two major destructive forces in American cultural and political life: Facebook and MAGA. tinyurl.com/y57y9b4v 2/11
Consider the lawsuit against Fox News, which led to Lou Dobbs's termination there.
Among other things, the amendment would put FB and other social media companies in the same legal posture as Fox News in defamation lawsuits. They would no longer have any special protection. 3/11
Trump’s approval rating is now around 34% (latest Gallup poll), and 63% of voters disapprove of him. And only 40% of Rs want him to run again in 2024.
But the remaining 60% is obdurate, and isn’t going away. As I see it, this is an insoluble problem for the GQP. 1/6
The GQP leadership might be thinking that the voting intensity of the MAGA right is greater than the voting intensity of non- and even anti-MAGA voters, so the party can win by presenting two quite different faces to the world, 2/6 tinyurl.com/y3xfna3e
but voters understand that one faction in a party is going to prevail over the other eventually, and it is clear now that the winning faction on the right is going to be the MAGA crazies. 3/6
A run down of MTGreene’s record of anti-Semitism. It’s quite vile. Since she’s a white Christian nationalist, like much--even most--of Trump’s MAGA base, Greene’s anti-Semitism came w the territory, but it’s sobering to see this collation. tinyurl.com/y4rc7qyn
It seems that MAGAts can tolerate any amount of cognitive dissonance. They don’t object to Jews like Jared Kushner, for example. But that can be explained by their Dispensationalism and Christian Zionism, and there is plenty of anti-Semitism in those groups too. 2/3