“That’s right, we took no evidence” 🤯

This is the clip that should be leading every newscast about the #PaxtonImpeachment

It’s just remarkable — watch at the end how three Senators in view (jurors — all three of which have telegraphed an anti-Paxton disposition) lean forward in unison as they realize how fatal it is to the core #txlege impeachment claims.

https://twitter.com/themattbeebe/status/1699915934884827419

Watch a stoic Dean of the Senate John Witmire (D-Houston) drop his poker face for a second and give the side-eye to the #txlege House Managers that are prosecuting a case that is falling apart before their eyes.

Pence errored on #Jan6 by not clearly following through on what he had telegraphed his plan was: present all purported certifications, ensure all evidence was fairly presented & weighed, and led the Joint Session through roll-call votes for all contested states.

I don’t believe there was extant evidence at the time or sufficient consensus to send anything back to state legislatures/reject any slate — so Biden would still be President — but the process would have played out in a credible and transparent way.

That’s where Pence failed: he failed to lead. He played footsie with Trump’s more audacious plan and then tried to “split the baby” in secret in the final hours. Had he actually taken the reigns and led, he could have ushered in a National healing moment. He failed to do that.

Vivek’s idea of proposing a bunch of legislation that wouldn’t pass is fanciful and naive. Recall Pence had spent the weeks leading up to #Jan6 validating the #StopTheSteal sentiment, and then cowardly released his letter at the last minute instead of messaging it & defending it. That all happened BEFORE the session convened and any protestors had been let into the Capitol. The crowd’s chants were unforgivable, but the feeling of betrayal was predictable — which is precisely why he released it the way he did instead of standing up and defending it.

The way he rolled that decision out incited the riot more than anything Trump said…

For more than two years, the “Trump was trying to get Raffensperger to lie for him” canard has been widely accepted as true, ended up in the second Articles of Impeachment, and will likely be the focus of yet another Trump indictment in Georgia.

Yesterday Barr slides this one… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… And let me be clear, the point isn’t that Barr should have “helped” Trump.

Barr, who wraps himself in the flag and distances himself from Trump’s brash style tries to transcend the moment and portray himself as a statesman.

As such, he has an obligation to be a truth teller.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

This DOJ has often abused 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) The Espionage Act. Let me tell you a quick story about one of the more egregious examples from recent history.
The case of Thomas Drake:
1/ twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Drake was an NSA executive who became concerned about illegal activities, waste, and mismanagement within the Agency. He attempted to raise concerns through standard channels, and even elevated his concerns to Congress as a whistle-blower.
2/

In most jurisdictions the act of trafficking a child so they can be abused would be a crime. Here in Texas, a “Family” Court judge is deliberately facilitating it. Outrageous doesn’t even begin to describe it.

https://twitter.com/lukemaciastx/status/1607943824394915840

After multiple years of legal battles & a shameful failure to act by a Republican dominated legislature, a complex legal case is going to @SupremeCourt_TX — but the underlying facts are simple: a deranged mother wants to chop the penis off her young son.

Yesterday’s 🧵 on Twitter’s abysmal information security ended with the following question “who had access to what? And maybe even more essential: why?”
Let’s let Mudge expound: “Because key parts of leadership lacked the competency to understand the scope of the problem” 🔥🤯 1/

https://twitter.com/themattbeebe/status/1601731247977693184

Let’s hear that again: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it” — Upton Sinclair

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
2/

Hey @elonmusk will you release ex-Twitter security chief Peiter "Mudge" Zatko from his confidentiality agreement? He was clearly right about everything in his whistle blower complaint. How did his hiring in late '20 intersect w/ everything else?
washingtonpost.com/technology/int… What really transpired during Mudge's tenure at Twitter, from hiring -- driven in response to the "largest hack of a social media platform in history" in July 2020 by teenagers simply asking users for passwords and going from there, to his subsequent firing is an untold story.

In Sep 2019 I became an occasional contributor to @FDRLST w/ some original reporting about the corrupt ICIG that led to the first impeachment; @dbongino and others RT'd me (Dan even amplified a key tweet thread on his show). Engagement & reach spiked, then immediately dropped 1/

https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/1601012181138407425

The spike & drop isn't unusual per se (flashes in the pan aren't uncommon), but I had half the followers then - apart from the occasional RT from followers with large accounts that breakthrough, reach has been horrendous since. The change over the 2 months is noticeable 2/

Been mulling this over… if POTUS has unilateral authority to declass which is constitutionally derived (I think we agree on that part @ProfMJCleveland) & he has unilateral authority to set the process for doing so, then isn’t the Q of whether he “sufficiently” declass’d it 1/

https://twitter.com/profmjcleveland/status/1572411792135012354

a constitutional question (if it’s a question at all & not self-proving by his possession), and not one that should be decided by a special master appointed by a district judge in an ancillary suit related to magistrate’s grant of an overly broad general warrant? 2/2

Also avoid making false assertions in your 1st sentence; if they were "its own … records" they wouldn't have had to go get them, now would they? tbh, the entire case comes down to this question tho: are they the current Executive Branch's records or Trump's presidential records?

https://twitter.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1570950958200553473

this is really just not true either... if they are "Presidential Records" they are not "government property" (in the sense that they belong to the current Executive Branch). Their case for the purportedly classified documents keeps withering away

"hold fire until we have more facts" is good advice, but a pretty ironic admonishment given the conclusion jumping and factual assertions @TPCarney was making last week. 🤷‍♂️

Like when he said this:
1/

https://twitter.com/dcexaminer/status/1567564007338397699

And elaborated on how Trump kept records "he shouldn't have" -- which is a great big assumption:
2/

BREAKING: Apparently there were other classified documents at Mar-A-Lago that the FBI didn’t want acknowledged… it’s pretty damning stuff! a cache of documents relating to the FBI’s intellectual & legal basis for the entire Russia investigation was found behind this cover sheet: They also found a copy of the Congressional Republican’s “comprehensive plan to respond to the abuses of government power during the Trump presidency & reign in the deep state”— it was classified as follows:

Remember back on 8/30/19 when then President Trump tweeted out overhead imagery to own the Ayatollah’s? I was critical then & have always thought he was sloppy with classified 1/4

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1167493371973255170?s=12

But other than some grumbling on Twitter, the criticism didn’t go anywhere. Then there was that crap about him telling the Ambassador stuff. None of it went anywhere. Why?

It’s universally acknowledged POTUS has the unilateral authority to declassify. 2/4

Carl von Clausewitz is credited with the concept of the “fog of war”, and —as per usual— the first 48 hours of knee-jerk hot takes about the Uvalde tragedy demonstrate how much this “fog” can obscure & disorient people — especially when it’s enflamed by social media.
1/ Let’s make a few things clear: as is always the case, the facts take time to come out. It’s increasingly clear that this whole “the officers waited outside and did nothing” claim is a horrible and despicable libel.

Do better if you’ve been spreading it.
2/

Twitter needs to fully explain any changes to its “Responsible Machine Learning” models made over the past 48 hours

blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/c… “Machine learning enables Twitter to drive engagement, surface content most relevant to our users, and promote healthier conversations” blog.twitter.com/engineering/en…

Circling back to this to more fully explain.. Durham can’t prosecute the text as a “materially false statement” because of the SOL; the contemporaneous notes go to what Baker told them about the totality of the case, not to exactly what he said *in the meeting*; Only… 1/

https://twitter.com/McAdooGordon/status/1511902227937509376

..only two people know what was said *in the meeting* — Sussman, who says he didn’t say it, and Baker who has consistently equivocated on exactly what was said. Recall Durham now has to prove that the “materially false statement” was said *in the meeting*. 2/

Another gem from @ProfMJCleveland lays the foundation for something I’ve been trying to figure out how to concisely articulate. You know the old anti-teacher joke about “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”?

Well, the same is true within the “gov’t industrial complex” 1/

https://twitter.com/fdrlst/status/1511021435510312977

We’ve previously discussed the “revolving door” between govt, contractors, media, and academia… and how insidious that is. But an oft overlooked point is that many of those left behind in drab govt jobs who don’t get to traverse that revolving door yearn to… 2/

Y’all ready for a rabbit hole? The most straightforward explanation of Durham’s intentional verbiage of “in the vicinity of the WH” w/ regard to the so-called “yotaphone traffic” is Joffe & the boys were likely fusing GPS geolocation data from a cell network w/ their DNS trove. Now you get to decide if you’re more concerned about the collection & sharing of that geolocation data or the potential that the traffic represents exfil from an adversary’s emplaced sensors. #hypothetically

Significant misunderstanding from #Durham filing being circulated about the "White House Servers" that were used in the Clinton-funded and media & deep state fueled #RussiaHoax operation ultimately used to spy on President Trump 1/ NOTE, this analysis is constrained to the publicly available information about the DNS servers. As I've said before, there is currently no indication anything was "hacked" or "infiltrated". Irresponsible to suggest otherwise IMO 2/

I’m vaccinated, as I felt like that was the best course of action based on the available data. But my religiously driven worldview compels me to eschew a government mandate for compulsory injection of anything into me or my child. Why? 1/ If I’m obligated to bend my knee to a governmental authority on an issue as fundamental as medical consent, I’m not an independent and free creation of God, I’m a pawn in a “might makes right” game played by my betters.
2/

Southwest is gaslighting here — until they accept a NEW contract or a mod/extension of an existing contract they’re not a “covered contractor” under the EO & “Safer Federal Workforce Task Force Guidance” (ex post facto is still a thing) 1/

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1447924663372427288

He correctly points out that he’s obligated to provide accommodations to employees — but the employer has very wide latitude here; indeed it is very likely that prudence will require a company to accept ANY proffered rationale for an exemption or face discrimination lawsuits 2/