The court takes Wednesdays off in Donald Trump's New York criminal trial on 34 felony counts related to his use of hush-money paid to a porn star to help him cheat his way to winning the 2016 Presidential election. So, today is a good opportunity for us here on The BradCast to get caught up on our trial story so far with two guests who are following it closely. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But, FIRST UP, it was Primary day in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, and though the nominations for both major party's Presidential candidates are long ago all but official, the turnout and results from the Keystone State's closed primaries on both sides are somewhat revealing. Tune in for details, but suffice to say, Joe Biden appears to have outperformed Trump in the narrowly divided battleground state yesterday, where Dem turnout outpaced Republicans and Nikki Haley, who quit the race weeks ago, racked up nearly 17% of the GOP Presidential vote. There were several U.S. House races of note and uncontested primaries for this year's critical U.S. Senate race in PA, where incumbent Democrat Bob Casey is taking on billionaire hedge-fund manager Dave McCormick (who has been less than forthright about his upbringing.)

President Biden signed a long-overdue $61 billion aid package for our democratic allies in Ukraine after overwhelming Senate passage on Tuesday night. That followed on the heels of Saturday's passage in the House by Democrats following an about-face by GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson. The package adopted by Congress and signed by the President today is for $95 billion in all, including funding to replenish Israel's missile defense systems following Iran's attack last week, billions of dollars in humanitarian aid in Gaza, and military aid to Taiwan. The bill also includes a ridiculous measure that may result in the popular social media app TikTok being banned in the U.S.

In reproductive rights (or lack thereof) news, the corrupted far-right majority on the U.S. Supreme Court appeared skeptical during heated Oral Argument on Wednesday over a Biden Administration mandate under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The 1986 statute requires hospitals that accept federal medicare funding to offer emergency, life-stabilizing care to all patients who arrive in the emergency room. After SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, the Administration reminded facilities that such care includes abortions when a patient is "in serious jeopardy" or any condition that might impair bodily functions or organs, no matter the state's own restrictions on reproductive care. Idaho disagreed and sued. The packed rightwing supermajority on the High Court was working hard today to side with Idaho.

There was somewhat brighter related news in Arizona on Wednesday when, after three weeks of trying, Democrats in the state's House were finally able to vote to repeal the state's 1864 territorial ban on nearly all abortions. Three Republicans joined all 29 Democrats to repeal the law. The measure still needs passage in the GOP-controlled state Senate, after which AZ's 15-week abortion ban would take the place of the 160-year old near-total ban.

And THEN, we're joined again today our friends award-winning columnist and blogger HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullaballoo and former attorney (and former Republican) KEITH BARBER of Daily Kos to get up to speed on this week's fits and starts in Donald J. Trump's New York criminal trial.

After last week's faster-than-expected jury selection, the trial began with Opening Statements on Monday in which prosecutors described Trump's criminal scheme to hide several sexual affairs just before the 2016 election as "election fraud, pure and simple". On Tuesday morning, during a contempt hearing on at least 10 instances in which Defendant Trump violated the court's gag order against attacking jurors and witness, the judge instructed Trump's attorney Todd Blanche that he was "losing all credibility with the court." Says Barber today: "In a list of phrases that could be the worst to come out of a judge's mouth in the first two days of a trial, that would be right at the top of the list."

On both days, shortened for the Passover holidays, David Pecker, former National Enquirer publisher and longtime friend of Trump, took the stand on behalf of the prosecution to discuss hush-money payoffs he'd arranged as part of an alleged conspiracy with Trump and his attorney Michael Cohen to publish damaging stories about Trump's political opponents and quash stories that might be damaging to him. As Pecker detailed, that included paying off a Trump Tower doorman to shut up about his claim that Trump fathered an out-of-wedlock child with a maid who also worked there, and to "catch and kill" the story of Playboy model Karen McDougal who says she carried on a nearly year-long affair with Trump while his wife Melania was pregnant.

Parton describes the first witness in this case as offering several ironies since Pecker "said that their little scheme back in 2015 and 2016 was all fake news. Literally fake news. They made up stories. They killed negative stories about Trump and pushed negative stories that were literally fake news about his rivals. It's like gaslighting to the thousandth power."

Pecker's is expected to continue his testimony on Thursday regarding the $130,000 hush-money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, which was repaid to Cohen by Trump via monthly installments during his first year in the White House. Those payments became the falsified business records at the center of this trial, as the Trump Organization logged them as legal retainer fees, rather than unreported reimbursements that ran afoul of campaign finance laws, according to prosecutors.

Both Parton and Barber find it curious that, while Trump has been relentless in his attacks on witnesses like his longtime attorney and fixer Cohen, he has not said a negative word about his friend Pecker since the former Enquirer chief signed a cooperation agreement with prosecutors in 2018. She believes there is much more that Pecker knows about Trump above and beyond the scandals he's already detailed in this case. Barber concurs: "There's reason to believe that David Pecker has more of Trump's bodies buried in various places."

Each offer many more thoughts and insights on all of the above, including much more that we've learned over just the first two days of this historic trial, the legal hurdles faced by prosecutors, and what we should expect in the days ahead...

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During opening statements in the disgraced former President's ongoing criminal trial, prosecutors argued the scheme surrounding his hush-money payments to a porn star just before the 2016 election amounted to "election fraud, pure and simple." Similar fraud since then, by Trump and now much of his Republican party, pervades many of our stories on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• It's Primary Day in Pennsylvania. We'll have noteworthy results and/or problem reports on tomorrow's program. (Recent elections in PA have revealed serious problems with the touchscreen voting systems still shamefully used in a number of jurisdictions.) But the election in the Keystone State today --- as some voters are reportedly struggling with newly implemented Photo ID requirements --- also provides a reminder as to why it's a good idea to vote in primaries, even when races at the top of the ticket may already be foregone conclusions.

• Donald Trump's election-fraud-via-hush-money criminal trial in New York continued on Tuesday. We offer a a few quick updates. One point we missed Monday's opening statements, included the fact that prosecutors say they have hand-written documentation from longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg as to why Michael Cohen was paid $420k as reimbursement for his $130k payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Today, the day began with a contempt hearing over at least ten instances in which prosecutors allege that Trump has violated the court's gag order on attacking jurors and witnesses. The judge has yet to issue his ruling, but the hearing culminated with Trump's attorney Todd Blanche being upbraided by a frustrated Justice Juan Merchan, who told him, "You are losing all credibility with the court." For that, it appears, Trump's campaign and associated groups have been paying about $145,000 in donor money for legal fees each day since early 2023, according to newly released numbers. After the jury arrived, the trial's first witness continued his testimony. That would be former National Enquirer publisher, longtime Trump pal, and alleged "catch and kill"/hush-money co-conspirator David Pecker.

• Arizona's 2022 Republican election losers, Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, both falsely claim their elections, for Governor and Sec. of State respectively, were stolen from them somehow, by the Republican officials who run elections in the state's largest County. They sued in 2022 and have lost in court after court ever since. On Monday, the corrupted rightwing U.S. Supreme Court also rejected their case. They are both running again in 2024, for U.S. Senate and state Senate respectively. What could possibly go wrong?

• Speaking of 2024 Republican U.S. Senate candidates in battleground states, Wisconsin's Eric Hovde really, really wants you to know that he totally thinks "elderly should absolutely vote". Even after his previous comments about elderly voters in nursing homes that really kinda makes it seem otherwise.

• The Trump Campaign and the RNC (now effectively one and the same) have announced their plans for an "Historic, 100,000 person strong Election Integrity operation"! We've got a few thoughts about what that really means. Though it probably doesn't help that a statement from Trump himself included in the announcement echoes almost precisely a statement long attributed to Josef Stalin that "it's not who votes that matters, but who counts the votes".

• As to actual election fraud, as usual, the call is coming from inside the Republican house. This time, it's a guy named Austin Smith, an Arizona's Republican state Rep. and top leader of Turning Point Action --- a group which has long echoed Trump's false 2020 election fraud claims. Smith has apparently been caught submitting dozens of signatures, in his own hand-writing, for his own reelection campaign. While denying the charges, now being investigated by the AZ Attorney General, Rep. Smith has since resigned from Turning Point and called off his reelection campaign. But really, he insists, he didn't do it!

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here for our latest Green News Report, including today: news on Europe's stunning rate of warming; new details on the plastic manufacturing industries contribution to man-made climate change; and another series of sweeping actions from the Biden Administration on Solar for All, the American Climate Corps and a whole bunch of brand new conservation initiatives that I can almost bet you haven't heard about until now...

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It was yet another busy news day and, thus, it was another very busy BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Among the many stories covered today...

• It has been a very very bad 24 hours for our disgraced former President in three of his four criminal cases, as he's now received rejections from three different judges to three different motions to dismiss or delay in three different jurisdictions over that period. Last night, Juan Merchan, the judge in his New York hush-money fraud case rejected his last minute motion to delay his April 15th trial until after SCOTUS rules on his laughable "Presidential Immunity" claim. The judge in his Georgia election theft conspiracy case, Scott McAfee, rejected Trump's effort to dismiss on ridiculous First Amendment "protected political speech" grounds. And even Aileen Cannon, the corrupt Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing his case in Florida for stealing national security documents upon leaving the White House, finally issued an order rejecting his absurd Presidential Records Act defense as cause for pre-trial dismissal. Sad!

• The secretive, supposedly "centrist" No Labels group announced they will not be running a third-party candidate for President in 2024 after all.

• Kim Taylor, the wife of an elected Republican official in Iowa who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, will get just four months in prison after being found guilty last year of 52(!) election fraud crimes, including registering and casting votes for her husband in the names of others. (Tip for vote fraudsters looking to get off easy: Be a Republican.)

• Wisconsin's newly progressive Supreme Court majority will now decide whether to reverse the previous right-wing majority's ban on the use of absentee ballot drop-boxes in the critical battleground state this year.

• An out-of-the-blue call on Tuesday by a rightwing extremist on Twitter to change the way Nebraska will allocate its Electoral College votes in 2024 --- in hopes of awarding an extra vote for Trump this year --- gained support just hours later from the state's Governor and the desperate former President before failing in a vote by the state legislature Wednesday night. Bigly. The measure still could come back up for another vote, however, before the legislative session's end on April 18, or in a Special Session thereafter if called by the Governor.

• Following a reportedly tense call on Thursday between the nation's two leaders, the White House announced that President Biden issued a warning to Israel's far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Change course in Gaza or...else. The White House said the President demanded swift changes to Israel's war on Gaza to allow much more food and humanitarian aid to reach starving citizens and protection for both civilians and relief workers. Though it remains unclear how U.S. support may change, an Administration spokesperson said they expected to see action from Israel "in hours or days" before reassessing current policy.

• On Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders joined President Biden at the White House to tout their successful efforts at lowering the cost of healthcare and, specially, prescription drug prices following the adoption of the Inflation Reduction Act which every Republican in Congress voted again. After forcing Big Pharma to lower the cost of insulin and certain asthma medication for Medicare recipients to no more than $35/month, both men called for still more cuts in the price of overpriced prescription drugs sold in America to everyone, not just those on Medicare.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report with news on a looming, climate-change fueled hunger crisis in Southern Africa; the Biden Administration's largest-ever investment to decarbonize American manufacturing; how melting polar ice is bending time itself; and the opening of America's first commercial-scale offshore wind farm...which is decidedly not killing whales (insists Desi.)

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As it is said, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." It continues to bend mostly in that direction on today's BradCast.

Among our many stories today...

• Donald Trump finally coughed up a bond for $175 million --- of the $454 million plus interest that he still owes in full --- in his New York civil fraud case as his appeal continues.

• The judge in Trump's New York criminal trial related to hush-money payments to a porn star to help him win the 2016 election, has expanded his gag-order [PDF] against the disgraced former President to cover family members of jurors, witnesses, prosecutors and the judge himself, whose daughter had been repeatedly (and fraudulently) attacked in recent days by the GOP's Presidential front-runner. His trial, on 34 felony counts, begins on April 15.

• Gov. Ron DeSantis' packed state Supreme Court in Florida tossed out decades of state constitutional precedent to allow his Big Government 6-week abortion ban to take effect. At the same time, the court also narrowly allowed a Constitutional Amendment to protect reproductive rights on this year's general election ballot in the Sunshine State. It, like a measure to allow the sale of recreational marijuana that the Justices also approved for the ballot on Monday, will need to receive support from more than 60% of voters this year to take effect. Democrats are hopeful that the ballot measures could help them win back the former swing-state for the first time in years this November.

• GOP state legislators in Arizona are on the verge of adopting a ballot measure for this November which would end most early voting and vote-by-mail in the state where more than 80% of voters currently take advantage of such conveniences as well as end the use of convenient Voting Centers in the state's two largest (and most Democratic-leaning) counties. Since the resolution will result in a ballot measure, if passed next by the state Senate, it can't be vetoed by the state's Democratic Governor. On the other hand, it'll be something for voters to think about as Dems are now just two swing-seats away from flipping each chamber of the state legislature from "red" to "blue".

• Ever since Republicans decided to pretend the Presidential election was stolen from them with massive --- if evidence-free --- voter fraud in 2020, almost every case of such fraud that has been found has been carried out by Republicans. Today, we've got two more examples of GOP officials caught having committing such fraud. One is from a state Representative in Alabama who was forced to step down after lying about his residency (his seat was filled last week by a Democrat in a Special Election), and another was by a high-ranking state Republican Party official and rightwing talk show host in Georgia who was voted illegally 9 times. Both got off with largely slaps on the wrist.

  Whenever these stories have come to light in recent years, we've found ourselves comparing the velvet glove treatment of white, Republican voter fraud criminals to the years-long hell on Earth faced by Crystal Mason, the black Texas woman [pictured above] who was sentenced in 2018 to five years in prison for unknowingly casting an unlawful provisional ballot that was never even counted back in 2016. Last week, at long-last, Mason was acquitted of the charges she never should have never faced in the first place.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is back with our latest Green News Report, as an iconic cliff-side coastal road collapses amid heavy climate-change fueled rains in California; Republicans protest federal funding to rebuild the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore; a new report finds our man-made climate crisis is taking a brutal toll on the economy; and the Biden Administration's EPA makes some major moves on methane leaks and truck pollution...

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It may be April Fools Day, but its no joke that we are back on today's BradCast after a half-planned, half-doctor-advised Spring Break week off! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Before we left, it seemed like last week might prove to be a slow news week, with Congress on vacation, no primary elections last Tuesday and Trump's New York felony hush-money trial postponed a few weeks until this month.

Boy were we wrong about that. Last week was anything but a slow news week, and we've got the headlines today to prove it! To add some actual context, depth and insight to those headlines --- and to hold my hand after I'd been trying to look away for the past week --- we're joined by two old friends, though only one who you may have heard on this program before.

Our friend known mostly as 'DRIFTGLASS' is back with us again today. He is co-host, along with his wife, of The Professional Left podcast recorded each week from "Flyover Country, Illinois." He is also, today, celebrating his 19th blogiversary at the Driftglass blog, so we're honored he agreed to spend it with us!

And, as if that's not swell enough, his Pro Left Pod co-hosting wife, FRANCES LANGUM, who is also a longtime Associate Editor over at the Crooks & Liars blog, joins us as well today for a romping, rollicking, breathless review of much that we missed last week and why most of it still matters this week!

Among the huge number of topics from last week covered on today's program...

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)'s vow to call for removing House Speaker Mike Johnson for his daring to work with Democrats to keep the government from shutting down by passing a long-delayed 2024 spending bill just over a week ago.

• The failed attempted conspiracy theories forwarded by Russia and its supporters following the horrific massacre by ISIS-K at a concert venue in Moscow a week ago Sunday.

• Donald Trump's failure to cough up a $454 million bond during the appeal of his New York civil fraud case and the various lifelines thrown to him (for now) by the Appeals Court in NY.

• Trump's scammy, just-in-time merger of his failing social media site with a public company that could result in billions of dollars --- including "straight-up bribery" as Driftglass describes it --- for the disgraced former President.

• Trump's New York criminal trial on 34 felony charges related to hush-money payments to porn-star Stormy Daniels to help him win the 2016 Presidential election is now set to begin on April 15. And, as Fran believes, Trump "will do anything to make the evidence that's going to appear in this case not come to trial." Including, she argues, even if he must "spend two or three nights in jail, violating the gag orders, in order to make this case not happen."

• What the Biden Administration's decision last week to abstain from a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza may mean for Israel and for some on the Left in the U.S. And why, if you don't like what Israel is doing, Fran advises: "Don't elect Bibi Netanyahu President of the United States --- which is what Trump is."

• Why NBC News' ill-considered hiring and then firing of former RNC Chair and attempted election thief Ronna Romney McDaniel matters.

• What Arizona's failed 2022 Republican Gubernatorial candidate and election liar turned 2024 Senate candidate Kari Lake's decision not to contest the claims in an election fraud defamation lawsuit filed against her by Maricopa County's Republican County Recorder (and chief election official) Stephen Richer means and how Lake is hoping to be saved --- somehow --- by a victorious Trump this year. (We wish her the best of luck with that.)

• The remarkable, 25-point Special Election victory last week by Democrat Marilyn Lands in Alabama who focused her campaign on reproductive rights and subsequently flipped a state legislative seat from "red" to "blue" after losing her race for that same seat by 7 points in the 2022 general election. What will a post-Dobbs, post-IVF general election look like in supposedly "deep red" AL and elsewhere this November?

• The desperate-for-quick-cash former President and huckster-in-chief is now selling bibles for $59.99 a piece. Though, to be fair, this version also includes the U.S. Constitution. Has Donald Trump ever read either of them? Says Driftglass today: "Good thing he did this to raise money to pay for the court costs of paying off a [porn star] that he was sleeping with while his wife was nursing their child. So the circle of absolute blasphemy is now complete."

• Joe Lieberman died last week.

• Independent 2024 Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., currently on the ballot in 8 states, thrilled dozens with his announcement of his running mate last week, the former wife of one of Google's founders, Nicole Shanahan. Or, as Driftglass describes her, "a big bag of money who is as crazy as he is".

That's just some of the firehose of news from both last week and this that we cover in today's very lively BradCast...

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On today's BradCast: We distill a whole bunch of stuff --- results, problems, politics, concerns --- from Super Tuesday's primaries and caucuses in some 15 states and one U.S. territory. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Included in our coverage today...

• Donald Trump won most, if not all, of the GOP nominating contests on Tuesday by largely anywhere from 60% to 80% over Nikki Haley who defeated Trump in Vermont. Nonetheless, she subsequently announced on Wednesday that she is suspending her campaign, without (yet) endorsing Trump, saying he must now earn her support and those of her backers.

• Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell --- after pretending to be outraged by the deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection which he described Trump as "morally responsible" for --- endorsed him for President on Wednesday. I've got a word or two about that today.

• Joe Biden won the Democratic contests in all of the states which voted on Super Tuesday, most by well over 80%. (He only received 70% and 73% respectively in Minnesota and Oklahoma. More on that below.) Nonetheless, if you were watching CNN last night, you'd have heard how Trump "DOMINATED!" his primaries, while Biden just did "very well" on the Democratic side.

• After the U.S. Supreme Court, last year, required Alabama to finally add a second U.S. House District where Black voters might elect a candidate of their choosing --- in a state where 27% of the population is Black but only 1 of 7 U.S. House seats are even held by a Democrat --- more than 6,500 voters in that newly redrawn district were misinformed by County officials about which Congressional District they were supposed to vote in on Tuesday. The Chair of Montgomery County's Board of Registrars blamed a computer "software glitch" for what several candidates worried may have led to mass disenfranchisement.

• Meanwhile, in Utah, where Republicans decided to run their own statewide Caucuses this year, an untold number of voters end up going home without voting when the Party's computer systems crashed or were otherwise unusable at many Caucus sites. The Salt Lake Tribune describes the "chaos" that ensued.

• In North Carolina, GOP voters elected their Holocaust-denying Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson as their nominee for Governor this year. Democrats, who selected state A.G. Josh Stein for the job on Tuesday are likely delighted about that. Also in NC, preacher and former Rep. Mark Harris appears to be heading back to the U.S. House after his 2018 campaign for the state's 8th Congressional District resulted in a do-over election after Harris hired a known election thief who illegally collected ballots and filled them in for Harris. That election was tossed by the state Election Board and a chastened Harris chose not to run again. But now he's back! And on Tuesday, he apparently won enough votes to avoid a run-off. So, he appears headed back to D.C. next year thanks to further GOP gerrymandering of his NC district since he last tried to steal the election there.

• In Texas, Democrats elected Rep. Colin Allred to take on Senator Ted Cruz this fall. Though state Republicans drew the line, apparently, at nominating a convicted January 6th insurrectionist for the U.S. House in the state's 19th Congressional District, sticking with the current Republican incumbent instead.

• Jason Palmer defeated Joe Biden on Tuesday to win the Democratic Caucus in American Samoa! Who is Jason Palmer? We discuss, while noting that the victory came in a 51 to 40 vote (Not percentage points! That's the actual vote tally!) on the U.S. territorial island some 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. Apparently it pays to actually show up and campaign! Palmer was the only Democratic candidate who actually did so. Other than that, yeah, Biden actually "DOMINATED!" on the Dem side last night.

• There was, however, a noteable vote for "Uncommitted" in Minnesota's Democratic Primary on Tuesday, with some 19% of voters casting a protest vote against the President, presumably as a statement in opposition to the Biden Administration policy regarding Israel's war in Gaza. The state has a sizeable Arab-American population. MN Democrats' bump for "Uncommitted" this year, as compared to the last time a Dem President ran for reelection in 2012, was substantial --- much more than a similar protest vote in Michigan last week --- even as all of the other states with similar "None of the Above" options on the ballot to date (Alabama, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Tennessee) all saw a decrease in such votes this year as compared to 2012.

• Still, the protests from a small faction of the Left are unmistakable. Democrats dismiss those voters at their peril. Especially in critical battleground states like MI and MN. The protest was impossible to not notice at Rep. Adam Schiff's victory celebration last night in California. He will face Republican former MLB star Steve Garvey for the state's open U.S. Senate seat this November, after outpacing fellow progressive Congressmembers Katie Porter and Barbara Lee last night. But protesters chanted "Cease-fire Now!" and "Free Palestine!" throughout Schiff's entire victory speech on Tuesday, which the L.A.-based Dem handled gracefully. The Biden Administration does seem to be taking notice. Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris gave remarks on Sunday calling for an "immediate cease-fire", "given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza."

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On today's BradCast we mark the Presidents' Day holiday honoring the birthdays of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, with a quip from our friend Marcy Wheeler, independent national security journalist at Emptywheel, who tweeted: "Happy President's Day, America, a holiday celebrating the guy who said Presidents should not be kings and the guy who said insurrectionists should not be President." [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among our stories covered in that spirit today...

FIRST: During a stunning, hastily called news conference over the weekend in Pakistan, a top official alleged that the nation's recent parliamentary election was littered with fraud. He claims to know because, he says, he was in charge of it in one of the country's largest provinces. The official now claims to be ashamed of what he did, "stabbing the country in its back", and announced that he was both resigning and turning himself in to law enforcement. "We converted losers into winners, reversing margins of 70,000 votes of independent candidates for 13 national Parliament seats," he said on Saturday, as fraud allegations stemmed from, among other things, Internet and cell service that was shut down on Election Day, as polling locations were moved at the last minute.

THEN: Contrast that potentially very real election fraud, announced by a real whistleblower who expects to be thrown in prison for his crime, with the endless phony allegations of "election fraud" by Donald Trump and his duped supporters following the 2020 election. Those claims, shamefully, continue all the way up through today. Just last year, when Trump was again asked for evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, he cited an oft-debunked documentary film released in 2022 called 2000 Mules. It was a film made by convicted (and Trump-pardoned) election fraudster Dinesh D'Souza in partnership with the long-ago discredited Rightwing Texas-based "election fraud" group called True the Vote, as headed up by a woman named Catherine Engelbrecht.

Trump told CNN that the group had "found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras, where they were stuffing ballot boxes.” We already knew all of that was a lie. The much-debunked 2000 Mules film actually showed no such thing to anyone actually paying attention to it. But last week, it was reported that True the Vote was forced to admit in a court filing to the state of Georgia --- which is suing the group for information on their so-called "whistleblowers", who they had claimed were insiders to massive Democratic fraud in 2020 --- that they actually have no such information. They have no documentation, records of any conversations, or even contact details for the so-called "whistleblowers" and "informants" they said they had built their case on in their phony "documentary".

FINALLY: On Friday, Russia's democratic hero and Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony. He had been a prisoner of Vladimir Putin's on trumped-up charges since returning to Russia in 2021 after an assassination attempt (stunning details of which are revealed "live" in the extraordinary 2022 documentary Navalny). His death at 47-years of age stunned supporters, many of whom had assumed he would one day unseat Putin to become "Russia's first George Washington", it's first truly democratic leader. Instead, as one lamented, he will be their "Martin Luther King", as a moral example that will inspire generations of freedom seeking Russians.

On Monday, Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya again demanded the return of his body, which she charges Russia will keep long enough to hide allow any traces of the nerve agent she believes was used to kill him to dissipate. She also vowed to continue his fight against the Kremlin.

World leaders, including President Biden, upon word of Navalny's death, condemned Putin. Our own disgraced former President, however --- a huge Putin fan --- waited for three days before issuing an unhinged rant on his social media in which, after mentioning Navalny's name, quickly became a lengthy screed about his own legal problems.

In a chilling --- if inspiring --- portion of the documentary film Navalny, when asked by the filmmaker for a message to supporters if he is killed upon his then-planned return to Russia. He says, in English, "My message is very simple: don't give up." The filmmaker then asks him to respond directly to the camera in Russian.

"Listen, I've got something very obvious to tell you," Navalny quips. "You're not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power --- to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don't realize how strong we actually are."

Navalny then adds a familiar quote: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don't be inactive."

Putin is expected to win his fourth term as Russia's leader in Presidential "elections" next month. He faces no real opposition given that any such candidates have now been either jailed, killed or forced to live in exile.

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I'd say Tuesday was a high (or low?) watermark for GOP failure, but on The BradCast, we think it wise to never under (or over?) estimate them. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among our many stories covered today...

• Nikki Haley lost the one-person Republican Presidential Primary in Nevada by more than 30 points. (To be fair, it's not entirely her fault. Donald Trump rigged it. And he's setting up Republicans in the state for failure this November regarding the state's voting systems.) Joe Biden reportedly won his mostly one-person Democratic Primary in the state on Tuesday with nearly 90% of the vote.

• With three different swing-state GOP state Chairs (in Florida, Arizona and Michigan) ousted in recent weeks in scandals related to allegations of rape, bribery, or financial impropriety (and Nevada's GOP Chair heading to criminal trial in a few weeks for forgery as a fake 2020 elector), Trump's once-favored Chair of the RNC, Ronna Romney McDaniel, is being pushed out in the middle of a Presidential election year. Why? Trump's MAGA faithful are trying to find someone, anyone ... anyone but him ... to blame for their repeated, post-2016 election humiliations. Why not Ronna?

• But the humiliation continued on Tuesday, as newly tapped and freshly failed GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson engineered what Wall Street Journal described as "an embarrassment for the party", Punchbowl called "one of the most embarrassing days in recent House GOP history" (which is saying quite a lot!), and WaPo raved: "a stunning rebuke" for a months-long impeachment probe by Republicans hoping to identify "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" by Dept. of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. Turns out, they couldn't even convince their full caucus that he'd committed any, and one heroic Dem showed up from his hospital bed amidst chaos on the House Floor to deliver Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Green's phony impeachment scheme an embarrassing final blow. At least for Tuesday night, in the first impeachment vote ever against a sitting member of the Executive Branch.

• Actually, it wasn't the final blow on Tuesday night for House Republicans. Johnson held a subsequent vote for aid to Israel. It also went down in humiliating flames.

• All of that comes on the heels of Congressional GOP insistence that they would block any aid package for Ukraine --- now facing a very real existential crisis and invasion from a hostile neighbor --- unless the bill included a massive amount of money for the U.S. southern border, where Trump and Republicans pretend there is an ongoing "existential crisis" and "invasion". So, Dems gave in and agreed with Senate Republicans to add a very hard-right border deal to the aid package --- only to see Trump throw a fit at a possible real solution for the only real(ish) election year issue he seems to have left. So now House Republicans are vowing they will only consider an aid bill for Ukraine (and Israel and Taiwan) if it doesn't include money for the U.S. southern border. Seriously. It's as insane and stupid and dysfunctional and embarrassing as it sounds. And, it might even be hilarious, but for the fact that democracy remains on the brink in Europe, as the near-entirety of the Republican Party now cowers to the personal whims of their four-time indicted cult leader.

• Popular Republican criminal, pretend fake "pimp", and definitely fake "journalist" James O'Keefe quietly issued a tweet on Monday night, admitting that his reporting on 2020 election fraud in Pennsylvania was "wrong" and that he is "aware of no evidence or other allegation that election fraud occurred in the Erie [Pennsylvania] Post Office during the 2020 Presidential Election.” It took him four years and a begrudging lawsuit settlement to "correct" his false story about supposed massive mail ballot fraud by the USPS. Trump continues to fraudulently pimp that nonsense to this day. All of this on the heels of O'Keefe being pushed out of his own fake news organization, called Project Veritas, last year amid allegations of financial malfeasance and abuse of employees. Or, as his partner in the 2010 fake ACORN "pimp" hoax videos described it when quitting the group herself in December: "an unsalvageable mess --- one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and financial improprieties."

• Finally today, some listener mail with an important coda to our mind-blowing interview on Tuesday with Susan Greenhalgh, election integrity advocate and consultant on the just-completed civil suit trial by Marilyn Marks and the Coalition of Good Governance against the State of Georgia and its Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger. The suit seeks to move the state from easily-hackable, unverifiable touchscreen voting systems to verifiable hand-marked paper ballots; And, some email on Taylor Swift and the Superbowl, which I thought we decided we wouldn't be discussing this week on The BradCast?!!...

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This week in Dubai, the U.N.'s Climate Secretary declared "the beginning of the end" of the fossil fuel era. Also this week, in a D.C. federal courtroom, Rudy Giuliani's attorney warned a jury that awarding a penalty of tens of millions of dollars against his client "would be the end of Mr. Giuliani". Both sound good to us on today's BradCast.

Among our many stories covered today...

• The last minute, final agreement between 200 world nations at the COP28 U.N. climate conference hosted by the United Arab Emirates this week, calls for a "transition" away from fossil fuels. It wasn't the call for either a "phase out" or even "phase down" that many had sought. But it was a first. Including the first time in 28 years of such annual conferences that the words "fossil fuels" even appeared in the final unanimous joint statement issued by the parties. What does it all mean? It's both good and bad. We delve into some of the details with Desi Doyen today.

• As the world was working toward moving beyond deadly fossil fuels, the disgraced, twice-impeached Donald Trump was campaigning in Iowa by lying to his supporters that gas now costs as much as $8/gallon, only cost $1.87 when he was President (during the pandemic in which nobody traveled and he helped nearly a million Americans die --- though he didn't mention any of that) and vowing to renege on the U.S. pledge at COP28 to give $3 billion to the joint "Green Climate Fund" to help poorer countries leapfrog fossil fuels and transition straight to clean, renewable energy. He even vowed that he would claw it back if he was elected next year.

• As to Donald Trump's legal woes, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is now moving at "lightning speed" [PDF] to hear (and almost certainly reject) the twice-impeached former President's appeal on "absolute immunity" from the rule of law, in which he claims that he had the right to break any law he wanted while serving as President of the United States. On Wednesday, in a separate case related to defamation claims by writer E. Jean Carrol (who a court previously found Trump liable for sexually abusing), the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rejected [PDF] a similar immunity claim. In yet another courtroom in Manhattan this week, testimony ended in Trump's New York State fraud trial, in which he and his companies and his two eldest sons have already been found guilty. The only question is on the penalties they will face. They are likely to be substantial, to say the least. The judge's ruling will likely come early in the new year.

• In a different D.C. courtroom, Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman testified on Wednesday in the defamation damages trial against one of Trump's sleazebag attorneys, Rudy Giuliani who, along with Trump, repeatedly lied about her and her daughter Shay Moss committing fraud while serving as election workers in Fulton County, Georgia in 2000 in the middle of a pandemic. Both Freeman and Moss were viciously targeted by Trump's supporters after the lies were told about them, and Freeman offered heartbreaking and harrowing testimony on Wednesday about the horrific threats she received from Trump's supporters and how their lives were turned upside-down in the bargain. Giuliani's attorney, Joseph Sibley, didn't even try to cross-examine Freeman. And, in his closing statement, reportedly agreed that the disgraced former NYC Mayor's behavior was appalling. His appeal to the jury was that Rudy is old, and they should try to remember that, decades ago following the 9/11 attacks, Giuliani wasn't as appalling. The jury may be more likely to remember last Monday, after the first day of trial this week, when Rudy repeated his pathetic false claims about the two women in front of cameras on the courthouse steps.

  Just like Trump on Monday in his NY fraud trial, after vowing to take the stand, Rudy didn't. Both cowards and liars.

  The U.S. District Court Judge overseeing the federal case has already determined Giuliani defamed the two women. The only question is how much Freeman and Moss will be awarded by a jury for their pain and suffering (they are seeking as much as $43 million) and for additional punitive damages. If it will "be the end of Mr. Giuliani," as his attorney warned, it won't come soon enough. But it's unlikely to be the end. He still faces criminal charges [PDF] in GA for attempting to steal the 2020 election there; billion dollar defamation lawsuits from Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems; and a grotesque sexual assault suit by his longtime personal assistant, among other legal woes.

• A listener in Amsterdam writes in this week to correct us on a small, but important, error we offered this week regarding last month's shocking electoral victory in The Netherlands' parliament for the far-right political party of anti-immigrant extremist Geert Wilders.

• And, finally, Desi Doyen joins us again for our latest Green News Report with a wrap-up of COP28 in Dubai, and some very troubling news in the Arctic...

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Today on 'The BradCast: Lots of accountability under way for Trump and henchmen. And, also...for progressive author and journalist John Nichols?! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

FIRST UP: Donald Trump's best, if not only, chance of avoiding a verdict (and potential felony conviction) before next year's Presidential Election (after which, if he wins, he'll have the power to make most, if not all, of his legal troubles disappear) is to delay Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal Jan. 6-related trial against him from proceeding as scheduled on March 4th.

Trump has one legit chance to do that: his legal challenge regarding whether a President enjoys total immunity from criminal prosecution for crimes committed while in office. U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan has already ruled firmly against him. But he has the right to appeal the ruling all the way up the U.S. Supreme Court. The appeals --- first with a three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit, then with the full D.C. Circuit court, and then, eventually, at the U.S. Supreme Court --- could absolutely prevent the trial from beginning or ending before Election Day next year.

So, on Monday, Smith attempted to leapfrog the D.C. appeals court entirely by asking SCOTUS to hear Trump's appeal on an expedited basis. Smith's filing [PDF] to the high court asks: "Whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin."

The federal prosecutor argues that "it is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected."

Citing similar, if very rare, action by SCOTUS in, for example, U.S. v. Nixon, Smith's filing makes the case that "The public importance of the issues, the imminence of the scheduled trial date, and the need for a prompt and final resolution of respondent’s immunity claims counsel in favor of this court’s expedited review at this time."

And now we wait for at least four Justices to agree to take the case up. Everything rides on that and their ultimate ruling --- and the timeliness of same.

MEANWHILE: As far as a substantive defense in the federal Jan. 6-related case in which Trump stands accused of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as one of several attempts to steal the 2020 election from Joe Biden, recent filings by Trump, as Washington Post reported last week, "revealed that he has been pressing the Justice Department for information on far-right claims" that the Jan. 6 insurrection was secretly the work of "foreign actors" or "Antifa" or the U.S. Capitol Police somehow in cahoots with Nancy Pelosi, or..."John Nichols," described by WaPo as "a liberal journalist in Wisconsin".

John Nichols?! Our friend and frequent guest John Nichols?! Really?!...Apparently so!

We're joined today by longtime progressive journalist and author JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation, The Progressive and Madison Wisconsin's Capital Times to learn if he, in fact, was at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 (if not, where was he?); participated in inciting the riot there for some reason; and if he is now, or ever has been, a member of the Deep State?!

His answers today ('In Wisconsin at his daughter's orthodontist office'; 'No.'; And 'No.') may not surprise you!

So, how did all this happen? How did he come to be named in a Trump filing? Should we believe his many alibis (like filing an article at The Nation and speaking on the phone to many locked-down members of Congress that day)? Has he received any threats from MAGA in light of these Trump allegations? And what does any of this actually mean? Well...Nichols is here to explain it all to you.

FINALLY: Trump's $250 million New York State fraud case against him, his companies and his top executives (including his two eldest sons) was to reach a zenith today in Manhattan with the long-promised testimony of Donald Trump himself. On Sunday night, however, he announced on his social media cite he was chickening out and wouldn't be testifying after all. Surprised?

Also today, the civil defamation trial against Trump's disgraced alleged criminal co-conspirator Rudy Giuliani got under way in D.C. During the pre-trial proceedings, the federal judge in the case had already found Rudy guilty of defamation against Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. He falsely accused them of rigging the election in Atlanta against Trump in the Fulton County counting room in 2020, charging that the two black women were secretly seen on video surveillance tapes passing USB thumb drives back and forth "like they were vials of heroin or cocaine."

They weren't. Freeman was, however, handing her daughter Moss a ginger mint and their lives have been turned upside by the baseless claims repeatedly made by Giuliani, Trump and his many supporters and the vile threats which followed them. The trial is now only needed to determine the amount of damages against the former New York City Mayor. The pair are seeking between $15.5 and $43 million. Giuliani's attorney admitted in his opening statements that Rudy lied about the two women, but he argued that the amount they are seeking "would be the end of Mr. Giuliani."

We can only hope so.

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It's impeachment madness on today's BradCast! Also, a whole bunch of Republicans are otherwise quitting, backing down or facing jail time. In other words, Tuesday. [Audio link to full show is posted below this summary.]

Among the many stories covered on today's program...

• Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), a U.S. Senator and grown man who goes by the name Tommy, finally backed down from his pointless, one-man, months-long blockade of promotions for more than 400 U.S. military officials. He had been protesting a Pentagon abortion policy that none of the officers in question had anything to do with. The Senate quickly promoted all of them by simple voice vote shortly thereafter.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announces he has "no choice" but to hold a floor vote for a (revenge) Impeachment inquiry of President Biden next week. The announcement follows the latest bombshell disclosure by Oversight Committee Chair and supergenius Rep. James Comer (R-KY) that Republican investigators have discovered secret monthly payments made by China to Joe Biden and laundered through his son, Hunter! Err...Three monthly payments of about a $1,400 each from Hunter Biden to his dad in 2018 to repay him for the purchase of a used truck the then former Vice President helped him buy. (Yes, the same bombshell loan repayment reported almost two years ago by the New York Post.)

• The bow-tied, far-right, but not-insane-enough-for-today's-House-Republicans Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has had enough. He joined a growing number of colleagues announcing they will be quitting at the end of this term.

• An important CORRECTION following my mention yesterday of North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum dropping out of the GOP 2024 Presidential race, and the RNC announces the four candidates who have qualified to appear at Wednesday's night's "Presidential Primary Debate" in Alabama. (Neither Burgum nor Trump will be there. DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy and Christie will, for some reason.)

• The three top officials for Ron DeSantis' "Never Back Down" super PAC have backed down. They quite over the weekend, joining a growing number of other Never Back Downers who have exited the Florida Governor's losing 2024 campaign in recent days.

• Two Republican Cochise County officials, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, have been indicted on state charges in Arizona for conspiracy and interference of an election officer after refusing to certify the county's 2022 election results because...well, tune in.

• Kim Taylor, the wife of Republican Woodbury County, Iowa Supervisor and failed GOP Congressional candidate has been convicted on 52 counts of election fraud-related charges for falsifying voter registrations and casting dozens of fraudulent votes in the names of others in the 2020 election. Her husband, Jeremy Taylor, named as a co-conspirator, has yet to be indicted for some reason.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report (and our only one this week, due to our coverage of this week's dumb GOP "Presidential Primary Debate") with a bit of surprisingly good news out of the U.N.'s COP28 climate conference this week in Dubai, and more good news on the Biden EPA's new rule that will eliminate all 9 million toxic lead water pipes across the entire nation...

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This is just getting ridiculous. As detailed on today's BradCast, the long-awaited, criminal report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) on Team Trump's unlawful January 7, 2021 breach, copying and distribution of Georgia's statewide voting system software in rural Coffee County, appears to leave out more than it includes! [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Our guest today is ANNA BOWER, Legal Fellow and Courts Correspondent at Lawfare. She recently obtained the report [PDF] and yesterday published extensive coverage under the headline, "What the GBI Missed in Coffee County: At almost 400 pages, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation report on the Coffee County caper looks impressive. It's not."

"One could be forgiven for thinking initially that the GBI's report on Coffee County is an authoritative account. It is, after all, nearly 400 pages long, and those pages summarize a voluminous body of evidence. ... But the document turns out to reflect a less vigorous investigation of the effort to unlawfully access the state's voting machines than may initially appear," Bowers reports.

In fact, she continues, "The document suggests, rather, that the GBI did not investigate the Coffee County affair fully at all. The agency relied almost entirely on the previous work of civil litigants [that would be frequent BradCast guest Marilyn Marks and her Coalition for Good Governance] and the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. It failed to seek interviews with key witnesses, and it omitted relevant evidence that is readily available in public documents."

And yet, GA's Republican Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger has been citing the GBI's long-running investigation as one of the reasons that his office has taken virtually no action over the past two and a half years in response to the unprecedented breach which threatens the legitimacy of next year's Presidential election in the critical battleground state. He has even ignored the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's warning to immediately apply security patches created by Dominion Voting Systems following the breach.

While Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has brought criminal charges [PDF] against five of Donald Trump's alleged co-conspirators involved in the scheme --- including Trump attorney Sidney Powell, Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall (both of whom have pleaded guilty), former Coffee County GOP Chair and fake elector Cathy Latham and former Coffee County Election Supervisor Misty Hampton (both of whom pleaded not guilty) --- there were dozens more involved in the plot that have yet to be brought to account by anyone.

Moreover, according to Bower, GA's Republican state Attorney General Chris Carr, who has also cited the GBI's criminal probe as explanation for a lack of state charges to date, has "been ill served" by his investigative department. Maybe, however, like Raffensperger and the State Board of Elections, he's just fine with that.

While there is almost zero new information of note in the GBI's long-awaited report, as Bower details on today's program, the state agency inexplicably leaves out enormous, well known chunks of the story --- such as the infamous Trump Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020 when the Coffee County plot was hatched with Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Flynn and others who were not interviewed in the agency's criminal probe. "In total," Bower explains, the GBI "interviewed only about 15 individuals" in their year and a half probe, "Many, if not most, of those interviews were conducted in under an hour."

"This account does not even attempt to answer certain key questions. Who devised the plan to access voting systems in Coffee County? When did the plan first arise? Who or what connected the then-president's attorneys to several locals in rural South Georgia? The report bizarrely omits readily available facts that help connect these dots."

On today's show, we attempt to connect at least some of the dots that the GBI didn't bother to, including those involving bedding impresario Mike Lindell and his still-unexplained, two-hour visit to the County in his private plane after flying from Mar-a-Lago to D.C. and back down to rural Southeast Georgia just prior to the breach; why the GBI would be seemingly be working so hard to cover up what actually happened; and why all of this is critically important to the state's (and nation's!) 2024 elections.

"For Georgians who care about elections, for Georgians who think that it's very serious that the then-President's legal team, aided by local allies in Coffee County, had a plot, a conspiracy, to copy and distribute Georgia's most sensitive voting system data, that is incredibly serious, and it warrants a serious investigation. And that just didn't happen here," Bower tells me.

"Georgia continues to use the same software and the Sec. of State's office has said there will not be an update before the 2024 elections. Election security experts have said that means that we could have increased risk in terms of vulnerability during the 2024 election. That software data that has been distributed and is still out in the wild from Coffee County [and] could be used for disinformation campaigns, because people can take the otherwise legitimate data, and make it look either edited or selectively presented. Adversaries could basically use that software to test it for vulnerabilities, and then potentially use that in the future for subverting the operation of that software through malware or other" means.

Federally, she observes, she has seen few signs that Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating "these multi-state breaches. That, in itself, is concerning"...

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You may have noticed the nation is a bit of a tinder box right now. If the currently presumptive 2024 GOP nominee loses in Georgia again next year and just one precinct, out of thousands in the state, experiences something akin to what happened last week during elections in Northampton County, Pennsylvania... well, I don't even wanna think about the likely ramifications. Though we do discuss that today as part of our BradCast, which focuses almost exclusively on election-related lawsuits and criminal cases in the Peach State. Our guest is one of the plaintiffs in one of the most important cases you probably haven't heard about on your favorite cable news station. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

The long-awaited Curling v. Raffensperger voting system trial is finally set to begin in Atlanta in January, just after the start of the new Presidential election year in the critical battleground state Originally filed in 2017, the long-running federal lawsuit has already been extraordinarily consequential.

Among other things, it resulted in the 2019 banning of Georgia's then nearly 20-year old, unverifiable, insecure touchscreen voting systems made by Diebold after the judge still overseeing the case, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg, found the systems so deficient that their use was determined to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

In response, and ignoring the advice of voting system and cybersecurity experts, GA's Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger replaced the Diebold systems with newer, similarly unverifiable and insecure touchscreen voting systems made by Dominion. The plaintiffs challenged the use of those systems on similar Constitutional grounds, hoping to see the state move to verifiable hand-marked paper ballots at all polling places, where voters are now forced to vote on the unverifiable touchscreen systems. Raffensperger has refused.

As AP noted last weekend, the case also "spawned a landmark expert report that identified vulnerabilities in the election system used in Georgia that led [the US Dept. of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (or CISA)] to issue an advisory" to all jurisdictions around the nation that use the same equipment, recommending they immediately apply security patches produced by Dominion to mitigate at least some of the systems' known insecurities. Raffensperger stunned the federal court in Atlanta earlier this year when his office announced they do not plan to apply the recommended security patches until after the 2024 Presidential election in the highly contested swing-state.

Perhaps most famously (or infamously?) the Curling case also resulted in the revelation of the January 7, 2021 statewide voting system software breach in Coffee County, GA. That led to the criminal indictment of Sidney Powell and four others, with Donald Trump, in Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis' sprawling racketeering conspiracy case against the former President and 18 alleged co-conspirators. The revelation of the unprecedented Coffee County breach, copying and Internet distribution of Dominion's sensitive software occurred when Atlanta bail bondsman, Scott Hall (who, along with Powell, has since pleaded guilty in the indictment), called and essentially confessed the entire plot to one of the plaintiffs in the 'Curling' case, who was smart enough to record the phone call. That call was originally aired by The BradCast in May of 2022.

That plaintiff, MARILYN MARKS, longtime, indefatigable election integrity champion and Executive Director of the non-profit good government group, Coalition for Good Governance, is once again our guest on today's program, as she and her team prepare for trial against Raffensperger and GA, now set by Judge Totenberg to begin on January 9th.

Late last week, Totenberg released a 135-page Opinion and Order [PDF], denying the State's attempt to dismiss the case and setting a trial date. For clarity, she took pains to note: "the record evidence does not suggest that the Plaintiffs are conspiracy theorists of any variety. Indeed, some of the nation's leading cybersecurity experts and computer scientists have provided testimony and affidavits on behalf of Plaintiffs' case in the long course of this litigation."

In the Order's conclusion, the federal judge emphasized: "The importance of the security, reliability, and functionality of state election systems, classified by the U.S. Homeland Security Department as critical national infrastructure, cannot be overstated in a world where cybersecurity challenges have exponentially increased in the last decade. The dynamics of how a breach in one part of a cyber system may potentially carry cybersecurity reverberations for the entire system for years to come exemplifies the important concerns raised in this case."

But, Totenberg also writes in her ruling that she is unable to order the use of a new voting system for the State, asserting that only the Legislature may do that. Thus, she urges the parties to find a compromise resolution. Nonetheless, as Marks explains today, this same judge, who will oversee a bench trial without a jury, found the old Diebold systems so dangerously deficient nearly five years ago, that she not only found them unconstitutional, she barred their use in any further Georgia elections.

"We've never asked for her to order hand-marked paper ballots," Marks clarifies today. "That ultimately just becomes the default, because state law already says that if the electronic system is not working, hand-marked paper ballots is what you go to. That's what the law says." She notes that Judge Totenberg "has the power to enjoin unconstitutional behavior, and that's what we are asking her to do."

"No amount of software patching is going to fix this Constitutional problem. No amount of so-called auditing. You can't do a real audit with those machine-printed ballots," argues Marks. After an election, only hand-marked paper ballots can be known to have been verified by the voter. Studies have found that voters didn't notice more than 93% of the time when a touchscreen voting system flipped their vote on a computer-printed paper ballot summary.

Last week, in Northampton, PA's elections, similar touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices to those used all across GA were showing voter selections one way on the screen in two different contests, in some cases, but printing the opposite on the paper that gets tallied. Imagine if that occurred in even one precinct next year in GA with Trump on the ballot. That is among the nightmare scenarios Marks is hoping to side-step by forcing the state to finally dump their insane --- and insanely expensive --- statewide system.

She says the solution is simple and inexpensive and can be done immediately. Emergency hand-markable paper ballots are already required at every precinct in the state. Just print more of them, and use the existing scanners in each polling location to tally them. "70% of Americans vote this way. This is not hard," Marks asserts. "Of course, the State pretends that it would take rocket science to make this happen."

There is, to say the least, much at stake in this upcoming trial, even as it is not receiving nearly the amount of attention of the other election-related case underway in GA right now, the Fulton County criminal case against Trump and his co-defendants. On that, we have some news as well on today's program, including...

• An attorney for defendant Misty Hampton, the former Coffee County Elections Director, claims he is the one who leaked video proffers of Powell, Hall, and Trump attorneys Ken Chesebro and Jenna Ellis to the media. But is he really?
• Willis is seeking the jailing of co-defendant Harrison Floyd for attempted witness intimidation. He is among those indicted in the conspiracy for threatening Atlanta election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss over false claims that they carried out ballot fraud in 2020.
• And Freeman and Moss are now seeking between $15 and $43 million from former NYC Mayor and Fulton County co-defendant Rudy Giuliani in their civil defamation trial against him in federal court. The Judge in that case has already found Giuliani liable. The D.C. trial set to begin in December against him will now determine how much he'll have to pay to the two women.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our last Green News Report before our Thanksgiving break! We will be off --- from both The BradCast and GNR next week. So we send our best and thanks to everyone! We will return after the holiday...

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A bad day in court for the former President is a good day for America and democracy. Happily, as reported on today's BradCast, it was a very bad day for the former President. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Rudy Giuliani's attempted election theft sidekick, rightwing media darling, accomplished liar and opportunistically Christian Trump attorney Jenna Ellis offered a teary apology-ish in an Atlanta courtroom today, as she threw Rudy under the bus and pretended to be contrite for helping him and Donald Trump try to steal the 2020 election in Georgia.

Ellis was allowed to plead guilty to a single felony charge (she was originally charged with two) in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' sprawling racketeering conspiracy indictment [PDF] against Trump and 18 co-defendants. She will receive no jailtime if she follows the terms of her plea deal and cooperates with prosecutors against her fellow co-defendants, which include Trump, Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman and others.

The manipulative Ms. Ellis (pictured above either crying or smiling following her remarks to the judge on Tuesday) boasted just last month about raising more than $200,000 for her legal defense in the case, which she characterized as "the criminalization of the practice of law" by a "weaponized government."

On Tuesday, however, she suddenly decided to claim "deep remorse" and that she should have made sure "that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true." She told the judge through her tears: "I believe in and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges."

And you shouldn't believe her for a second, as discussed today. Ellis is the fourth co-defendant to plead guilty in Willis' case, and the third attorney to do so after Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro last week. To date, all have avoided any jail time...as we discuss as well.

Elsewhere, on a very Trumpy news day (sorry, not sorry)...

• Moments before midnight last night, at the deadline for pre-trial motions, Trump filed a flurry of desperate pleadings in the felony indictment case against him by Special Counsel Jack Smith in federal court in D.C. for efforts related to his attempt to steal the 2020 election, including the January 6 insurrection. TPM's David Kurtz has an excellent quick round-up of the filings; former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade characterizes them as "all losers"; and our friend Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel offers the shortest, sharpest round-up of the pleadings which appear destined to fail miserably.

• In a New York state courtroom on Tuesday, where Trump, his company and his two eldest sons face the loss of their fraudulent business empire in Attorney General Letitia James' civil case against him, Trump's former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen testified --- as Trump glowered from the defense table --- that, when he worked for the Trump Organization he was "tasked by Mr. Trump" to inflate the value of company assets to "whatever number Trump told us." The judge in the case has already found Trump et al guilty on the key fraud claims brought by James. Several other issues and the final size of the judgement against the defendants remain at stake. Also, the question of whether Trump and his attorneys will be sickened by COVID again.

• In Congress, Republicans in the U.S. House spent the last two days selecting their newest Speaker Designate after moving to fire Kevin McCarthy three weeks ago. On Tuesday, after five rounds of voting in a close-door conference meeting, House Republicans selected Majority Whip Tom Emmer (MN). A few hours later, after being attacked by Trump, Emmer --- following in the footsteps of Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan before him over the past two weeks --- dropped out of the running. And we're back to square one with no Speaker and a House that is unable to do any business until the GOP can grow up and govern before next month's deadline for a full government shutdown.

• And, in one more Trump-related story from Friday. A state judge in Colorado rejected three different attempts by the disgraced former President to dismiss a lawsuit charging that he is ineligible to appear on the state's ballot next year under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the "Insurrection Disqualification Clause". The filings from both Trump and the Colorado GOP were all but laughed out of court by the judge. The trial in the matter begins in state court next week!

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report. The good news: Trump's name doesn't come up. The bad news: Pretty much everything in our latest Green News Report...

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That's two. And this is a big one, as discussed on today's BradCast with someone who helped make it happen. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty in Fulton County, Georgia today. She was the second of 19 co-defendants to do so in District Attorney Fani Willis' sprawling racketeering indictment [PDF] against Donald Trump and his alleged co-conspirators who tried, but failed, to steal the 2020 Presidential election in the Peach State.

Powell is, perhaps, most notorious for her so-called "Kraken" lawsuits filed after 2020, which she promised would expose evidence of massive Democratic fraud in several states. Her suits includes no such evidence and were all quickly dismissed. Her claims, for example, that dead Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was somehow involved in stealing the election with voting machines --- in which Powell bastardized and misused some of my own accurate exclusive reporting on Dominion Voting Systems circa 2010 --- all turned out to be false.

But, as our guest today helped reveal earlier this year, Powell also organized and paid for a scheme to breach proprietary statewide voting system software in Coffee County, unlawfully make copies of it and distribute it across the Internet to sources still unknown. She was indicted by Willis on 7 felony counts related to that plot and, today, pleaded guilty to 6 misdemeanor charges that would keep her out of jail and on probation for 6 years, with the requirement that she cooperate fully with prosecutors and testify truthfully against her 17 remaining co-defendants still facing felony charges. Scott Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman who initially confessed to the plot in Coffee County during a recorded phone call to frequent BradCast guest Marilyn Marks, as first aired on this program, pleaded guilty earlier this month and is also cooperating with prosecutors as part of his plea deal.

We're joined today for both a bit of a victory lap and a very serious warning by SUSAN GREENHALGH, longtime election integrity expert and Senior Advisor on Election Security at the non-partisan Free Speech for People. With Marks, whose Coalition for Good Governance has a long-running lawsuit against GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, seeking to replace the state's touchscreen voting machines with hand-marked paper ballots, Greenhalgh helped reveal that the plot to breach the voting systems in GA was actually part of a broader, multi-state conspiracy hatched during an infamous December 18, 2020 meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. In addition to Powell, co-defendant Rudy Giuliani, disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and others on Team MAGA were there that night, hoping that Trump would issue an Executive Order for the military to seize the nation's voting machines. Instead, they settled on the Coffee County scheme and others like it in several other states.

"We know that [Powell's] been involved in voting system software breaches in other states, like in Michigan," Greenhalgh explains today. "But Sidney hasn't been charged there. It's important to keep in mind that this was a networked, coordinated, multi-pronged plan to get access to voting systems in multiple states that she was a part of, and she really shouldn't escape responsibility for her role in those alleged criminal activities in other states."

Greenhalgh recently co-wrote a piece at Slate, calling on the U.S. Justice Department to launch a probe into the multi-state scheme which, she explains today, still poses a very serious threat to the 2024 elections. "Suppose there was a plutonium laboratory that had a robbery, and your local police prosecuted the thieves and the people that let them in. You wouldn't expect them to stop there. You'd expect the feds to go out and find out who got the plutonium and what was the plan to do with it. That's the kind of investigation that we need right now."

For today, at least, the guilty plea by Powell was good news. Marks called it "eminently important...for raising public awareness of the seriousness of the offense that puts Georgia’s 2024 elections at risk because Powell’s team released Georgia’s software into the wild."

As we've discussed with Marks on the program many times, however, Raffensperger has taken no action and has arguably helped cover up the Coffee County breach from the jump. "While Georgia’s Secretary of State has turned a blind eye and declined to either investigate or mitigate this massive security failure," Marks said in a statement today, "at least DA Willis is holding some of the ring leaders accountable in ways that will certainly expose other actors’ wrongdoing in this unlawful attempt to subvert the 2020 election."

For her part, Greenhalgh says today that, though she "was surprised at how lenient the deal is", she is hoping that Powell's guilty plea is "really going to bring the goods" on the multi-state plot and, of course, the involvement of higher-ups in the food chain like Trump and Giuliani.

Greenhalgh encourages listeners to contact their members of Congress to insist they take action on the ongoing threats posed to our voting systems by the breaches in Coffee County and elsewhere before 2024.

Given the mind-blowing and ongoing dysfunction in the GOP-run U.S. House right now, however, amid the Republican Party's continuing inability to choose a Speaker --- as we also discuss on today's show --- it's unlikely that there will be any kind of hearings or anything else there for quite some time.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with bad news for snow crab fans; a decades-long scheme by the natural gas industry to cover-up health concerns about gas stoves; and some potentially encouraging news regarding both solar energy and U.S. climate goals...

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