Hi there! It will be interesting to see whether Donald Trump hands himself over to be arrested by the Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg’s people on Tuesday. Or at all? I hear there will be no perp walk, but who really knows? It appears that at least three of the previous president’s investigations are coming to a head all at once.
Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating the ex-president for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election in his favor. And the Special Counsel Jack Smith who ran back to America from The Hague, where he has been investigating war crimes. Smith has two investigations running. The first and most complete was his investigation into Trump’s theft of highly classified and other documents. The second was a general investigation into the ex-president’s multi-pronged attempted coup.
I am including an article by Caleb Newton. We are both on the staff of The Bipartisan Report, and he is a gifted writer/editor. And for interest, I threw in a Punchbowl News update on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Enjoy!
Gloria
Racketeering & Conspiracy Charges In Trump Criminal Probe Under Consideration
In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is evidently considering bringing criminal charges including racketeering — which refers to a kind of criminal enterprise — and conspiracy in her ongoing Trump probe, according to a new report from CNN.
“Atlanta-area prosecutors are considering bringing racketeering and conspiracy charges in connection with Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation,” CNN explained.
The probe Willis has been conducting has focused on the sprawling attempts by Trump and close allies of his to undercut Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. Those efforts took many forms, from the multiple phone calls Trump had with state officials and investigators to Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, showing up to the site of an audit of the signatures submitted with mail-in ballots in a potential ploy to basically intimidate investigators, and the list goes on. Rudy Giuliani also incessantly lied to state legislators in presentations about the supposedly widespread fraud — helping endanger election workers like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.
Diplomatic Official Targets Ron DeSantis For Threatening Stability Of Democracy
Former JAG officer and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has received an invitation to visit from the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko wryly indicated that, as a former member of the Navy, isolationist DeSantis should know the difference between a “dispute” and a “war.” But if not, he is invited to go to Ukraine and see for himself.
DeSantis recently responded to a questionnaire from Fox anchor Tucker Carlson where he claimed the presently unfolding war in Ukraine was a “territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia,” as various outlets reported:
‘WHILE THE U.S. HAS MANY VITAL NATIONAL INTERESTS… BECOMING FURTHER ENTANGLED IN A TERRITORIAL DISPUTE BETWEEN UKRAINE AND RUSSIA IS NOT ONE OF THEM.’
‘Tuesday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy said House committees – which he controls – would “immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions…
‘McCarthy, speaking in Orlando, repeatedly called for calm, breaking with Trump’s demands that his supporters protest and “take your country back” in the event the former president is indicted
“I don’t think people should protest this, no,” McCarthy said of a potential Trump indictment. “No one should harm one another on this.”
Trump Drops Behind Biden In 2024 Poll As Prosecutors Close In
By Caleb Newton
A new national poll from Quinnipiac University showed President Joe Biden leading Trump by several percentage points in a general election match-up for 2024 that would, of course, directly repeat their contest from 2020. Among registered voters, Biden had 49 percent of the support, and Trump had 45 percent.
While presidential elections are, of course, decided state by state instead of just nationally, a lead to that extent for Biden is promising. Nationally, Biden ended up about 4.5 percent ahead of Trump in the 2020 race, in which the Democratic incumbent was obviously victorious.
Binding Code Of Ethics For Supreme Court Pushed After Clarence Thomas’s...
John Roberts, the Chief Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, evidently adheres to the belief that Supreme Court Justices are generally above substantive reproach and should self-monitor instead of adhering to an outside code of ethics. However, the actions of Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, have Americans calling for the court to conform to a code of ethics. Ginni was basically in the thick of the failed coup, and yet Justice Thomas didn’t recuse himself from a case connected to what happened and specifically dealing with whether the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot would get certain Trump records.
The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill in 2022 that would have held Justices to a code of ethics, although Republicans predictably opposed it, and the measure wasn’t implemented. That development meant a group of organizations were left to push for the imposition of ethical standards for the court.
Three White Lions podcast, Gloria Christie reads her week’s most important news/ commentary stories in the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Gloria Christie Report her newsletter for people on the go. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor in a briefer version of Bipartisan Report. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery. Find her here on Facebook.