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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Today's BradCast picks up, by and large, where yesterday's show warning, left off. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among the stories covered today...

• First up, it looks like the U.S. House has passed a Continuing Resolution to temporarily fund the federal government through early next year in advance of this Friday's otherwise scheduled shutdown date. With the farthest right of the GOP House conference balking, of course, Democrats were once again needed to save the day to pass the measure, which now heads to the Senate for likely adoption. New Speaker Mike Johnson's move is the exact same thing that got then Speaker Kevin McCarthy tossed from his Speakership by the extremists in his own caucus. Johnson, however, is apparently being given a pass, for now.

• Then, we return to my argument from yesterday regarding the failure by most of the corporate media to properly inform the electorate about the two currently most likely candidates to win next year's 2024 Presidential nominations. In the case of President Biden, media are failing to accurately and proportionately report on his remarkable successes. In Donald Trump's case, they are still not fully covering the very real threat his own promised policies for a second term present to the nation.

  But some are getting it, including former Republican Congressman turned morning show host Joe Scarborough and his guest yesterday, global politics Professor Brian Klass. After Scarborough cited Trump's recent Nazi-like rhetoric for what it is, Klass made clear, in no uncertain terms: "I study the breakdown of democracy, and I don't know how to say this more clearly: We are sleepwalking towards authoritarianism, and people are not waking up to this."

• After receiving blow-back for Trump, at a Veterans Day rally over the weekend, describing his perceived domestic enemies as "vermin", just as Hitler and Mussolini did before him, Trump Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung attempted to reject the criticism from some corners over the remarks...by doubling down in a statement promising that Trump opponents' "entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.” --- Not really helping, Steve.

• Moreover, after a number of chilling recent news reports cited Trump's own vows, along with his campaign's and affiliated outside rightwing groups to create extremist plans for a second term in office --- including promises to prosecute, jail and even execute opponents and to construct major "camps" to hold millions of immigrants and homeless Americans --- his Campaign's co-managers, Susie Wilies and Chris LaCivita, issued a statement hoping to downplay detailed policy plans issued by anyone but the campaign as "purely speculative" and "merely suggestions". Unfortunately, many of those plans have been discussed with media by former top White House officials and Trump loyalists like Stephen Miller at the suggestion of the Campaign itself. And, as the New York Times observes, "the most incendiary rhetoric and proposals have come from Mr. Trump’s own mouth."

• A judge in Michigan, just before airtime today, rejected a challenge to Trump's candidacy under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars those from public office who, after taking an oath to defend the Constitution, “engaged in insurrection” against it. Despite the repeated historical use of the Amendment over the last 150 years or so since it's adoption, the judge claims that Congress must act before it can be used to block a Presidential candidate from the ballot. (After tonight's show, with more details now out, it is clear that --- as with last week's ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court in a similar challenge --- the judge's ruling is only in response to Trump's placement on the primary ballot. Both courts have left open further challenges to Trump's viability in a general election. Also, as with last week's Minnesota decision, the petitioners have vowed to immediately appeal the decision to a higher court.)

• Meanwhile, Trump's criminal defense team in the Georgia conspiracy case against him and 18 others for attempting to steal the 2020 election in the Peach State, appears to be the source of leaked videos of three former Trump attorneys (Ken Chesebro, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis) and Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall. Each have pleaded guilty in the case and have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against the other defendants. The selective videos, leaked to both ABC News and Washington Post, are of the four defendants being interviewed by Fulton County prosecutors just before they copped their pleas. They reveal a number of new details in the case, but appear designed to undermine their witness testimony, send a threatening message to other potential cooperators and witnesses, and otherwise highlight Trump's expected defense in the case. Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis is now seeking an emergency order from the judge to prevent any further leaks of discovery evidence. The judges in Trump's other criminal cases would be wise to take notice of what he appears to be doing in Georgia.

• The U.S. Government released a massive, 2,200-page report today, its Fifth National Climate Assessment, finding that climate warming in the U.S. is now outpacing the global average and warning that every part of the country is being adversely affected by worsening heat waves, drought, wildfires, heavy downpours, and more. Minority communities are being disproportionately harmed. The cost of climate crisis damage to Americans is now averaging more than $150 billion each year, with last year clocking in at $178 billion. Along with the release of today's report, President Biden announced $6 billion in new investments --- paid for by the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act --- to "make communities across the country more resilient to climate changes...focused on key climate goals, including modernizing our aging electric grid to withstand extreme weather...Reducing flood risks to communities. Improving drought resilience. Support conservation for our national parks...And advancing environmental justice for disadvantaged communities, because they’re the ones always left behind."

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report --- for which the new National Climate Assessment came in too late today --- to report on last week's GOP Presidential Primary debate in Miami(!) which failed to even mention climate change; Australia's new treaty with the nation of Tuvalu as it disappears for good beneath the rising seas; and much more...

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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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Longtime listeners of The BradCast likely knew about the big news last Friday better than almost anyone in the nation. Certainly better than those in the corporate media. We'd been reporting on it for years now, so our listeners likely knew the name "Scott Hall" before pretty much everyone else in the country. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.

On Friday, Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall was the first among Donald Trump's 18 co-defendants to plead guilty in the Fulton County, Georgia racketeering indictment, detailing Trump's broad conspiracy to steal the state's 2020 Presidential election in the state. Hall was indicted in the RICO scheme [PDF] on five felony charges related to his participation in the January 7, 2021 breach of Georgia's voting system software in rural, Republican-leaning Coffee County. The plot included Trump supporters unlawfully gaining access to the state's proprietary voting system software at the County's elections office, making copies of it and illegally distributing it via the Internet.

The crime first came to light after Hall called longtime Election Integrity champion and frequent BradCast guest MARILYN MARKS, founder of the nonpartisan Coalition for Good Governance, and essentially confessed to the entire scheme. Marks recorded the phone call "confession" and we were the first in the nation to broadcast audio from that phone call last year in May. Marks' group has been leading a long-running lawsuit against GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, seeking to replace the Peach State's wildly vulnerable and unverifiable touchscreen voting systems with verifiable hand-marked paper ballots before next year's Presidential election. Her quick thinking to record Hall's phone call resulted in at least five of the indictments in District Attorney Fani Willis' case against Trump and friends.

"It was one of the more intelligent things I've done, which are not many!," quips Marks today. "But I'm glad I recorded that." She joins us today for the first time since Hall was the first to cop a plea in the case last week to avoid jail time in exchange for testifying against his fellow defendants. He received 12 months of probation and a $5,000 fine.

Marks explains that Hall will have a lot to share with Willis' team. "On mainstream media over the weekend, I heard many commentators saying, 'Well, he's kind of a small player.' Oh no no no --- he is not a 'small player'," she insists. "He knows the ladder, up and down. He was smart to get that deal he did. He got in early. And now Fani Willis has his truthful testimony about a whole range of characters and facts."

Among the many points we discuss with Marks today...

• What Hall knows about the Coffee County breach, its organization by co-defendant and Trump attorney Sidney Powell, and the genesis of the multi-state plot beginning in Trump's Oval Office in December of 2020.
• Why MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell flew into tiny Coffee County in his private plane for a few hours in the middle of the night as the County was preparing to fire its Election Director, co-defendant Misty Hampton, in the wake of the breach.
• Why did all of Hampton's emails from her years as the County's Elections Supervisor supposedly disappear after she was fired? (Though, on today's show, we found one of them! Read on!)
• Who else was involved in the breach but wasn't indicted by Willis (for example, Lindell and head of the now-defunct "Cyber Ninjas" outfit, Doug Logan) and why?
• Why has GA SoS Raffensperger been covering up the breach since it happened in early 2021, and why is he still refusing to take any action in response to it? For example, why is his office refusing to install new security patches created by Dominion Voting Systems for the touchscreen voting systems until after the 2024 Presidential election?
• Why is the state's voting system software breach in Coffee County important to the Coalition's lawsuit against Raffensperger, which seeks to move to hand-counted paper ballots? (The trial in that years-long case, by the way, is finally set to begin in federal court in January.)

"There is nothing to suggest that [Raffensperger] is remotely interested in learning what happened," Marks argues today. "He has still not started an investigation of the implications of this breach --- who was involved, how the administrative rules fell apart --- and has not done any kind of work on the security implications of it. It is absolutely shameful."

That's just the tip of the iceberg today which also includes another 'BradCast' first: We share the long sought after invitation letter allegedly sent by Hampton to the MAGA breachers on December 31, 2020, giving them the greenlight to come to the Coffee County Board of Elections office. "Y'all are welcome in our office any time," writes Hampton in the brief letter that Powell had claimed would somehow exonerate her, and in which Hampton goes out of her way to mention being in accordance with "Georgia Law" at least three different times, for some reason, in a single paragraph letter.

Tune in for all of that and much more today, including several news headlines on the federal government shutdown averted over the weekend, thanks to Democrats, and the price GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy may now pay for that; California Gov. Gavin Newsom's selection of political consultant, labor leader and Emily's List President Laphonza Butler to complete the term of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who died late last week; Today's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to two researchers who invested decades into developing the technology that would eventually become used to develop the COVID vaccines in record time in 2020; And several pieces of news from several different ongoing cases against Trump and his fellow co-conspirators, including his surprise appearance at the first day of New York state's $250 million civil fraud suit against him in Manhattan.

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It's still kind of hilarious that the Republican Speaker of the House this week, in announcing an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden for...(fill in actual crime here when available)...described the Democratic President as "the picture of a culture of corruption". It's particularly amusing given the bulk of today's news on The BradCast. [Audio link to full show follow below this summary.]

Among our stories today...

• The unspeakable death toll from flooding in Libya is now expected to be in the tens of thousands as bodies line the streets in the eastern coastal town of Derna, where 16 inches of rain fell in one day over the weekend resulting in the collapse of two dams. Given some of the horrifying new numbers from Berkeley Earth this week, however, suggesting that the planet has a good chance of exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius increase of warming since pre-industrial times which the Paris Climate Agreement seeks to avoid, we could be in for many more such horrific disasters in the years ahead.

• Following a nearly 5-year probe by a Trump appointed U.S. Attorney and a recently failed plea agreement, Hunter Biden was charged today with 3 felony counts related to using illegal narcotics while buying a gun. These are crimes which almost nobody is ever charged with, especially when they have never fired or even loaded the gun, which Hunter reportedly had for only 11 days. But that must be a part of the "special preferential treatment" the President's son has received, if you hear Republicans tell it. Try not to laugh.

• The state judge overseeing the sprawling, 41-count racketeering conspiracy indictment [PDF] against the former President of the United States, Donald Trump and his 18 co-conspirators for their attempts to steal the 2020 election in Georgia, has determined that all 19 defendants will not be tried in a single group beginning in October, as Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis had sought. So far, former Trump attorneys Ken Chesebro and Sidney Powell will stand trial next month, but a trial date for all of the others will be set later, likely for some time next year --- if a slot when Trump isn't standing trial on felony charges in three other jurisdictions can be found.

• The civil trial Trump faces --- along with his two eldest sons, his company and two top executives --- via New York state Attorney General Letitia James, for falsely and unlawfully inflating his company's net worth by billions of dollars in order to fraudulently receive bank loans and other benefits, begins on October 2. Just mentioning that since it seems few others are doing so these days for some reason.

• The Fox Corporation was sued yet again this week, related to the knowing lies Fox "News" told about the 2020 election being "rigged". The latest suit comes courtesy of New York City's huge pension funds. They charge neglect of corporate duty to protect shareholders by opening themselves up to defamation suits like the one from Dominion Voting Systems. That one cost the pretend news outlet $787.5 million to settle earlier this year. The state of Oregon, on behalf of their public employee retirement fund, has joined the suit. All of which begs the question as to why anybody's money is actually invested in a company known, for years. to be as corrupt as Fox. I might suggest that those whose retirement funds are being handled by NYC and Oregon (and elsewhere) demand the funds pull their money from similarly irresponsible and corrupt corporations --- such as the major fossil fuel companies --- before they too face the huge financial liabilities that await them.

• Are Wisconsin state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and his fellow corrupt Republicans in the state's obscenely gerrymandered Legislature blinking in their recent threats to impeach newly-seated state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz before she has even heard a case? The High Court's new liberal majority will soon be hearing two citizen petitions challenging the GOP's corrupt state district maps, which have ensured Republican majorities in both the Assembly and Senate for most of the past decade. But this week, just after state Dems announced a $4 million ad buy to let voters in the Badger State known what Republicans are up to in advance of 2024, Vos floated a new legislative "deal" to create new maps. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers immediately rejected the proposal as "bogus". We explain.

• Remember that Kentucky County Clerk who refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples back in 2015? Kim Davis will now have to pay one of those couples $100,000 for having refused to do so, according to a decision this week by a federal jury.

• Ken Paxton, the unspeakably corrupt Texas state Attorney General and close Trump ally who is facing trial in the Republican-dominated state Senate on 20 articles of impeachment brought by the state's Republican-dominated House this week, may have dodged at least one bullet. A last-minute deal was struck between the opposing attorneys to skip testimony from Paxton's mistress on Wednesday. She's the one who was given a job by a Paxton donor to make it easier for them to continue their secret affair. The impeachment trial of the state's top law enforcement officer continues in the Senate, which will soon decide if the Republican should be removed from office based on charges of bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of power. Paxton's wife is a state Senator and has been present all week at the trial. She will, however, be barred from voting on his fate.

• Washington Post reports today that Florida's corrupt Republican Governor Ron DeSantis enjoyed a whole bunch of unreported and undisclosed private plane flights, luxury resort accommodations and meals with wealthy donors after being first elected in 2018. With his Presidential aspirations now failing, he must be angling for a Supreme Court nomination.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest 'Green News Report' with more on the horrific news out of Libya; the record costs of U.S. weather-related disasters so far this year; more bad news for Texas water drinkers; and a bit of encouraging news courtesy of Biden and the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act. Oh, we're also still keeping an eye on the powerful, slow-moving Hurricane Lee, a monster storm in the Atlantic which is currently brushing by Bermuda and threatening New England, Canada and Newfoundland over the next several days...

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It's been a few months since she's been on BradCast, but she returns today, for the first time since the sprawling RICO indictment against Donald Trump and 18 co-conspirators for attempting to steal Georgia's 2020 Presidential election. The indictment includes charges based on a phone call she received --- and was smart enough to have recorded --- from a Team Trumper who essentially confessed to the now-notorious breach of the state's voting system software in Coffee County. She deserves, and receives, a bit of a victory lap today, while breaking still more news about the breach which, she warns, has yet to be investigated by the state's Secretary of State or its Board of Elections in advance of 2024. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But first up today, a few somewhat related items...

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that E. Jean Carroll's upcoming civil trial against Trump will only be on damages --- how much he will have to pay the former magazine columnist who accused him of raping her in the 1990's and then lying about her years later. A civil trial that ended in May found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamatory remarks made about Carroll in 2022. Today, the judge found that the previous finding of assault and defamation already establish Trump's liability regarding defamatory comments he made about her in 2019, while serving as President and, therefore, the only question to be resolved in this separate suit is how much he will have to pay her. She is seeking not less than $10 million in this case and the judge has allowed her to add defamatory comments Trump made about Carroll on a CNN Townhall the day after he was found liable in the earlier case.

Picking up on our detailed coverage on yesterday's show of the various chief election officials around the country now grappling with whether Trump is even eligible for the 2024 ballot next year, based on his violation of the U.S. Constitution's "Insurrection Disqualification Clause" (14th Amendment, Section 3), the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit challenging Trump's eligibility for the ballot in Colorado on Wednesday on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated voters there. The matter is likely to move quickly all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, given that the state must settle its 2024 Primary ballot by January 5th!

A hearing was held on Wednesday in Fulton County, Georgia in Fanni Willis' RICO case [PDF] against Trump with co-defendant attorneys Ken Chesebro (alleged architect of the fake electors plot) and Sidney Powell (alleged organizer of the Coffee County voting system software breach) each seeking to be tried quickly and alone. The judge appears to have agreed on "quickly", setting a trial date for both beginning on October 23. But he he denied their motion to have their cases severed from each other. Still to be determined, however: the question of whether all 19 co-defendants must be tried at the same time, as Willis' team argues, given that guilt for any one defendant in the covert actions listed in the RICO charge (Count 1 of 41) means that all co-conspirators are guilty under state law. Prosecutors told the judge today that they expect the trial to take at least four months and will include more than 150 witnesses. (One of whom might be our guest on today's show!)

At the same time, a filing last week in the case by Powell claims she had nothing at all to do with the scheme to unlawfully breach, copy and distribute Georgia's state voting system software in the rural, Republican-leaning Coffee County. A report last week at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, however, which (literally) has the receipts, suggests otherwise.

But all of that --- including the receipts --- is only known publicly thanks to our guest today, MARILYN MARKS of the small, critical non-profit, Coalition for Good Governance. As first aired on this program in May of last year, Marks received a phone call from an Atlanta bail bondsman named Scott Hall, who, essentially, confessed to the entire Coffee County scheme. That is how we even know that the breach happened at all, and why four people involved with it --- one of whom is Powell, another of whom is Hall --- were charged last month in the scheme that still endangers elections both across the entire state of Georgia, where the same systems will be used again next year, and in more than a dozen other states.

Marks explains today how Hall originally "confessed" to the breach after calling out of the blue to bully her into turning over documents from her long-running civil lawsuit which is challenging the use of GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger's unverifiable, wildly insecure touchscreen voting systems. Hall claimed he had actually "hacked" into her group's legal documents.

"Instead of slamming the phone down, which was my first inclination, I instead decided to go into playing the sweet little old lady mode," Marks explains today, noting that she "kept him on the phone for about an hour" before he "just blurted out" the fact that he and other MAGA folks were allowed in to the Coffee County elections building to scan, image and copy everything. Two local officials, Coffee's then Election Supervisor Misty Hampton and the County's GOP chair Cathy Latham, have also been indicted in the same RICO conspiracy. (In addition to helping facilitate the software breach, Latham is also charged for her role as a fake elector in Georgia.)

Marks quipped that Hall has likely by now "realized that he, unlike Trump, had not made a 'perfect phone call."

In the meantime, Marks warns that, despite the indictments, the threat posed by the breach has still not been fully investigated by either federal or state officials. Two and a half years since the breach, which she believes Raffensperger learned of almost immediately afterward and has been covering up, "the Secretary and State Election Board have not even begun an investigation of Coffee County," Marks emphasized, telling me that "there are so many people that were involved in the Coffee County Breach that have not been held to any kind of accountability."

"What they did was just turn the criminal aspects of this over to Georgia Bureau of Investigation," she asserts. "But they are doing nothing at all. They have not even conducted one interview. They have not picked up the first piece of paper. They have not done anything to consider what are the impacts on the voting system? What are the impacts for future elections? How did this go wrong? What kind of better rules should have been in place? What kind of reporting structure should we have had? They have still not put in a single rule or requirement for reporting a security incident. If Coffee happened today, they would not have to report it."

That, Marks warns, remains a serious threat moving forward, especially since the software still remains in the wild and Raffensperger has refused to install Dominion touchscreen voting system security patches certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and strongly recommended by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the wake of the January 7th, 2021 breach in Coffee County until after the 2024 elections.

Marks' long-running lawsuit seeking to replace Raffensperger's Dominion touchscreens with verifiable hand-marked paper ballots is finally set to go on trial in January. "We are really looking forward to putting on all of this evidence," she tells me, after explaining why the Coffee County breach is so key to her case. "And, certainly we are hoping for a decision that will at least protect the November elections for 2024. After all, these breaches that happened in Coffee County --- they are still ongoing."

"Remember, all that software was posted on the Internet. Lots of people took it. Nothing has been done to mitigate it. So, if you think about it, every day that people have their hands on that software, sharing it with others, the breach continues."

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Today's BradCast might be best summarized by matching up the mugshots and court appearances this week (most of them just today!) of Republican attorneys who are being held accountable for felony crimes, most related to election fraud. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

From left to right of the rogues gallery pictured above...

• Ohio attorney and Trump donor James Saunders was found guilty on Tuesday of two counts of election fraud for having voted twice, once in Ohio and once in Florida, in both the 2020 and 2022 general elections. The judge immediately sent him to jail after the verdict, even before his sentencing next week. Saunders apparently committed the same crimes in 2014 and 2016, but the statute of limitations had already run before Cuyahoga County prosecutors nabbed him.

• Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's trial on 20 impeachment charges in the state Senate is scheduled to begin on September 5. The photo above (second from left) is his mugshot from 2015 when he was charged with state felony Securities Fraud which he has yet to be tried for. TX voters elected him twice since then, nonetheless. As to the charges for which he has now been impeached, Texas House impeachment managers this week released new details about Paxton's abuse of office as the state's top law enforcement official, which include abuse of office to help his friend and donor Nate Paul, his use of a fake Uber account, burner phones and secret personal emails accounts used, in part, to facilitate his secret visits with his mistress who Paul's firm hired in order to make it easier for Paxton to visit her in Austin. All of that, even as Paul was secretly paying to renovate Paxton's home in McKinney. Paxton, who led the failed U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit attempting to toss out every vote cast in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, in the 2020 Presidential election, is also under federal investigation for many of the crimes he has been impeached for in the Lone Star State where he is now serving his third term as A.G.

• A whole passel of Donald Trump co-defendants --- many of them also Republican attorneys --- were in the news today, as many surrendered to felony charges in Fulton County, Georgia, after being charged in the state racketeering conspiracy indictment along with Trump for their efforts to steal the 2020 election in the Peach State. Seen in mugshots above (slots 3 through 6) are Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman (booked yesterday), Ken Chesebro, and Sidney Powell. Also surrendering today in Atlanta was Misty Hampton, the Republican Election Director of Coffee County, GA who invited Powell, and a bunch of other MAGA folks in to the Elections Office in the rural, Republican-leaning GA county to make unlawful copies of the state's sensitive voting system software. Also in related news today were Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Trump DoJ attorney Jeffrey Clark. Both are co-defendants in the RICO case, currently seeking to move their trials to federal court. Both had moved in federal court to postpone or cancel their surrenders in Fulton County. Both motions were rejected by the federal court today just before airtime after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis made clear that they had both been given more than enough time before this Friday's deadline to turn themselves in.

In other, occasionally related news on today's program...

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Russian mercenary Wagner military battalion and leader of a short-lived coup against his former close ally, Vladimir Putin, earlier this year, reportedly died along with 9 others in a private jet that crashed shortly after takeoff approximately 60 miles north of Moscow on Wednesday. The plane was video-taped falling out of the sky after something appears to have caused an explosion after the jet had reached cruising altitude.

• Milwaukee Public Schools were closed today in Wisconsin due to a dangerous heat wave. The closure comes on the same day that eight GOP candidates --- none named Trump --- are to appear in Milwaukee this evening for the party's first Presidential Primary debate of the 2024 season. Pretty much all of these candidates, many of whom pretended to be furious about school closures due to COVID, are also climate crisis deniers. Nonetheless, they are unlikely to raise the issue of our climate emergency at tonight's debate, despite the school closures today due to climate change in the very city in which they will be debating tonight.

• The newly all-male state Supreme Court in South Carolina reversed the Court's own ruling from earlier this year today, regarding the state Legislature's near total abortion ban, even though the majority opinion concedes the new law infringes "a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy." The 5 men now serving as Justices --- following the lone female Justice's mandatory retirement earlier this year --- just don't care, apparently. Unlike the now-retired female Justice who wrote the majority opinion blocking the new law earlier this year, the dudes now sitting on the state's High Court believe those state Constitutional interests of women do not outweigh "the interest of the unborn child to live."

And finally...

• Trump says he will go in for booking at the Fulton County jail on Thursday evening, during TV's prime-time, of course. As he is set to be arraigned for his fourth criminal indictment of the year (his second one for attempting to steal the 2020 election), musical satirist Randy Rainbow returns with an all new, hilarious tune to mark the occasion and close today's program...

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We've got more Special Coverage on today's BradCast of the fourth --- and, theoretically, last, but who knows? --- criminal indictment of our disgraced former President for the Summer season. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

On Monday's show this week, just hours in advance of the massive new criminal charges out of Georgia, we detailed the dangers to next year's elections of the illicit Coffee County, Georgia voting system software breach carried out by Trump supporters beginning on January 7, 2021 (and covered up in the many months that followed by Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger). The scheme --- which we helped break last year and have been covering ever since --- is now known to have been just one part of a multi-state conspiracy organized by Trump attorney Sidney Powell and hatched inside Trump's Oval Office in December of 2020. It remains a huge threat to the security of next year's Presidential elections across the entire state of Georgia and in more than a dozen states with jurisdictions using the same breached, proprietry hardware and software that was stolen from Coffee County.

On Tuesday's show, we detailed the sprawling 97-page RICO indictment [PDF] of Donald John Trump and 18 co-conspirators charged with 41 felony counts by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia late on Monday. The charges are related to Trump's alleged (and failed) criminal enterprise to steal the 2020 Presidential election in the Peach State (and elsewhere) and comes out of the two-year probe by Fulton County, D.A. Fani Willis. We broke down all of the charges, detailed those who were indicted, along with a focus on the specific charges brought against Powell and the three others facing several counts related specifically to conspiracies to commit Computer Theft, Computer Trespass, Computer Invasion of Privacy ("with the intention of examining personal voter data") and Conspiracy to Commit Election Fraud as part of the Coffee County scheme.

The new indictment brings the number of criminal felony charges that our disgraced former President is now personally facing in four different jurisdictions at both the state and federal level to a gob-smacking 91!

And then on today's program, our hot indictment summer continues, with both legal and political analysis of the new indictment with two old friends. Former attorney KEITH BARBER of Daily Kos (who joined us last week for a splendid preview and explanation of what RICO charges are!) is with us again today, along with award-winning Salon columnist and Hullabaloo blogger HEATHER DIGBY PARTON.

Among the many topics discussed on today's program related to the latest Trump Indictment and what it means moving forward into next week's first-of-the-season GOP Presidential debate and next year's election...

• General thoughts on and surprises from the new indictment.
• Barber on "the power of RICO".
• Parton on her article on whether former Trump Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows may be cooperating in Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal case on Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election.
• Barber on Meadow's motion to move his indictment from state to federal court.
• How and why did Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) escape indictment from Willis, despite his participation in the criminal enterprise to steal the Peach State election for Trump?
• The still wildly under-investigated matter of the scheme to replace Mike Pence as President of the Senate overseeing the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021 with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). (Willis refers fleetingly to this scheme in her indictment, see p. 44; Barber wrote a bit about this as "Trump’s Plot To Kidnap The Vice President" back in April of 2022.)
• Trump's post-indictment Tuesday morning claim that next Monday he will release an "Irrefutable REPORT" on "Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia" in 2020 which he claims will be a "complete EXONERATION!" for him. (Giggle.)
• How that "REPORT" is likely to be an unlawful continuation of the same criminal enterprise under RICO that he is already charged with.
• What we should expect from next week's first-of-the-season 2024 GOP Presidential debate in Milwaukee and whether Trump will (or should) show up for it.
• My continuing --- if, apparently, controversial --- Spidey Sense (not a prediction...just a sense, as explained today) that Trump will, ultimately, not end up being the GOP Presidential candidate on next year's ballot...

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We thought it possible that the news might break during yesterday's program, as we were covering some very related news. It happened, instead, later in the evening, just a few hours after we signed off from The BradCast. And it was just about as broad and sweeping as we've been arguing that it was likely to be. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

A Fulton County, Georgia grand jury handed up a sprawling 97-page indictment [PDF] on Monday evening, detailing 41 criminal felony counts for its 19 named defendants. Leading the case, of course, are the 13 new charges against Donald John Trump, who is alleged by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to have run a racketeering (RICO) scheme with the other 18 defendants. The purpose of their criminal enterprise, the indictment details, was to steal the 2020 election from Joe Biden, Georgia voters and the American people. Happily, his racket failed.

The charging document details the counts related to the many different unlawful ways in which Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to flip the 2020 results in the Peach State, including by strong-arming state officials from members of the Legislator to the Secretary of State; lying to them all about non-existent voter fraud; threatening election workers into making false confessions; creating fake Trump electors as part of the scheme to pressure the Vice President into discarding the legitimate Electoral College results on January 6, 2021; and more, including the notorious voting system software breach in Coffee County which we had a hand in breaking on The BradCast more than a year ago.

Trump's indicted co-conspirators include his disgraced attorneys Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Ken Chesebro and Sidney Powell; his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; former DoJ official Jeffrey Clark; a number of GOP operatives who conspired to threaten election worker Ruby Freeman; former GA GOP chair David Shafer; sitting GOP state Senator Shawn Still; former Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham; former Coffee County Director of Elections Misty Hampton and Atlanta bail bondsman, Scott Hall.

It was Hall's ill-considered phone call to frequent BradCast guest Marilyn Marks of the Coalition of Good Governance, bragging about his role in the entire illicit scheme to image hard drives on voting and tabulation systems made by Dominion Voting Systems in Coffee County, which initially helped reveal the unlawful plot last year. That phone call was aired for the first time on our show in May of 2022. We've been covering the entire plot --- a multi-state conspiracy hatched in Trump's Oval Office in December of 2020 and organized by Powell --- ever since on this show and at The BRAD BLOG, even as GA's Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger appears to have been working hard to cover it up ever since. That, despite the ongoing dangers to next year's Presidential election.

The breach plays a major role in Willis' indictment. She charges Powell, Hampton and Hall with seven conspiracy crimes each related to Computer Theft, Computer Trespass, Computer Invasion of Privacy ("with the intention of examining personal voter data with knowledge that such examination was without authority") and Conspiracy to Commit Election Fraud. Latham was also charged with those same seven counts and another four related to her dual role as one of the fake electors in Georgia.

All of that and more is detailed on today's program, including Willis' late night announcement of Trump's fourth criminal indictment in just over four months. He is now, personally, facing 91 charges in four different jurisdictions at both the state and federal level.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, which also happens to include some landmark good news for a happy change (along with the usual amount of grim news), to end today's program...

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New indictments did not yet come in Georgia as of airtime on today's BradCast. But, as the nation awaits the former President's almost certain fourth criminal indictment in about as many months --- and this could be the broadest and most sweeping yet --- a somewhat related "exclusive" by CNN on Sunday seems to have made a lot of folks suddenly pay attention to a story we've been covering in great detail on this show and at The BRAD BLOG for the better part of the past year.

The Coffee County, Georgia voting system breach by Trump supporters is likely to play a role in the expected new indictments from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, even though there was largely nothing "exclusive" at all about CNN's weekend report. At least to those of us who have been paying attention and reporting on it ourselves for the past year. But, that's okay. If CNN's coverage makes people sit up and pay attention to this critical issue, we'll take it.

If it helps people --- including other media outlets --- notice that the multi-state conspiracy is still either being ignored or actively covered-up by the folks who SHOULD be investigating it --- from GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) and even the Dept. of Justice --- then, okay, bring on more such "exclusives".

CNN's Sunday report, deceptively headlined "Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach," repackages material already reported long ago by outlets like Washington Post, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta's NBC affiliate 11-Alive and, yes, The BradCast and BRAD BLOG. Almost all of CNN's material comes thanks to information discovered in a long-running federal lawsuit challenging the use of Raffensperger's new, unverifiable and insecure touchscreen voting systems, as filed years ago by the Coalition for Good Governance (CGG). CNN didn't even have the decency to name the nonprofit group in their "exclusive", referring simply to material "originally unearthed as part of a long-running civil suit focused on election security in Georgia."

As to the content of the story well, see our program from April headlined: "The Multi-State MAGA Conspiracy to Breach Voting Systems Was Hatched in Trump's Oval Office: 'BradCast' 4/24/2023". That show, from four months ago, features most of what CNN describes in their weekend "exclusive".

On that program, we were joined by guest SUSAN GREENHALGH, a election integrity and transparency expert who now serves as Senior Advisor on Election Security at FreeSpeechForPeople.org. Greenhalgh had discovered admissions in sworn testimony given to the U.S. House January 6 Committee revealing that the plot to have MAGA activists unlawfully obtain and copy sensitive, proprietary voting and tabulation system hard drives in multiple states (Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania) was a scheme dreamt up during Trump's crazy December 18, 2020 meeting in the Oval Office with attorneys Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, disgraced National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, former Overstock.com CEO and billionaire Patrick Byrne and others. Yes, the breaches in several states were not over-zealous local MAGA activists. It was a scheme hatched with the President of the Unites States himself.

Greenhalgh joins us again on today's program to continue connecting dots in the multi-state criminal scheme which remain uninvestigated or prosecuted to this day. (Pay attention, or wait to read them at CNN in about 6 months as "exclusive".)

Were it not for folks like Greenhalgh and CGG founder Marilyn Marks --- who had the wherewithal to hit the record button when one of the apparent MAGA breachers (Atlanta businessman Scott Hall) called her to essentially confess to the crimes in Coffee County --- we might not even know about it today. Lord knows Raffensperger and his friends in the Peach State have largely been covering it all up ever since the breach first occurred on January 7, 2021, the day after Trump's insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

"Who knows if there were other counties that they went into in Georgia?," Greenhalgh observes. "There might have been similar breaches in other counties. Because we've lacked a real, robust investigation from the people that are paid to protect our citizens and our government from these types of illegal activities, they haven't uncovered it!"

Charges were recently brought against some of the participants in Michigan's several breaches --- at least five of whom are also known to have been involved in the Georgia breach --- and charges may soon be brought against some of them by Willis in Georgia in the coming hours. But, as Greenhalgh argues, the threat posed by theses breaches to next year's 2024 election --- and accountability for all of the people who allowed it to happen --- is crying out for a federal conspiracy probe of this organized crime that took place in multiple states following the 2020 election.

"There's no deterrence," Greenhalgh asserts. "What we saw happen in Coffee County --- if these people do not face any consequences, the message that is being presented is, 'It's okay. Go ahead and do this. If you can get a complicit election official, go in and do whatever you want to the voting machines and nothing is going to happen to you.' This crime happened on videotape. There's no question about it. If this was a corner store robbed by some kids, they'd be in prison by now."

There is a lot more of note in my conversation with Greenhalgh, and she offers much more in a well-sourced and linked "Background Briefing" document published late last week.

Finally today, some very good news out of Montana, where a landmark legal challenge by young plaintiffs, aged 5 to 22, challenging Republican state lawmakers for failing to follow the state constitution's mandate guaranteeing a "clean and healthful environment," was victorious! The court found that the Montana Environmental Policy Act, which weakened environment protections on behalf of the state's fossil fuel industry, is unconstitutional. The first-of-its-kind ruling by a judge in the U.S. may very well affect similar suits by youth plaintiffs as now filed in all 50 states and nations around the world...

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For some reason, it seemed like a good moment on today's BradCast to bone up on exactly what "racketeering" or RICO charges are. I have a feeling it may come in handy in the days ahead. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

But, FIRST UP, it's Election Day in Ohio. One single statewide ballot issue, in the middle of August. That's because Republican lawmakers were hoping to undermine a ballot measure set for this November which, if successful, will codify protection for reproductive freedoms into the state Constitution.

For more than 100 years in the Buckeye State, Constitutional Amendments were adopted via the ballot with a simple majority vote. Today's measure, Issue 1, would raise the requirement needed for passage to a 60% super-majority. Of course, the GOP's Issue 1 on the ballot today would require just 50% + 1 for passage.

As we've been reporting, despite the state Republicans' attempt to sneak their anti-democracy Amendment past voters (after, earlier this year, adopting legislation to ban August Special Elections), early voting has been huge. Today's Election Day turnout was reportedly higher than expected as well. Happily, there were, so far, only a few reported problems at the polls. We'll see if that changes and we'll have reported results on this critical measure tomorrow.

THEN, over the weekend, Donald Trump's top attorney on his new indictment by Special Counsel Jack Smith for his many failed attempts to steal the 2020 Presidential election, was all over the news shows offering absurd defenses for his client's crimes. John Laura told Meet the Press, for example, that "a technical violation of the Constitution" isn't actually unlawful.

Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who happens to be a Constitutional law professor (as well as both the Lead Manager for the U.S. House during Trump's second impeachment for insurrection and a member of the bipartisan House Select Committee investigating it) strongly begged to differ. Critically, he noted in his response to Lauro's remarks, there are people serving years in jail in this country for falsifying one single vote, whereas Trump "tried to steal the entire election."

Thank you, Congressman!

NEXT, we continue to await what is almost certainly going to be Trump's fourth criminal indictment in about as many months. This one will come any day now, likely this week or next, courtesy of Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis in relation to Team Trump's failed attempts to steal the Peach State's election in 2020 from Joe Biden and the state's voters.

Her case, for reasons explained on today's program, could be expansive, including many charges and many conspirators acting in concert with Trump. Exactly who will be charged and what they will be charged with remains unknown.

Among the many questions about Willis' case: Will she invoke the state's "Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations" (or RICO) Act or just simple conspiracy charges? And, oh, by the way, what are the difference between the two, as RICO is best known for use against organized crime by the mafia, etc.?

Luckily, KEITH BARBER, former attorney, former Republican and current Daily Kos contributor on law and Constitutional matters, recently wrote about exactly that and joins us today for a helpful RICO primer and insights into Willis' likely imminent indictments.

Short version of the difference between "conspiracy" and "RICO", as Barber wrote last month: "Conspiracy requires an agreement between the co-conspirators to commit what are usually specific crimes. RICO does not require proving any such agreement. So long as the parties commit the required predicate offenses, as part of the same 'enterprise,' acting 'in furtherance of a common purpose,' RICO can be satisfied."

As Barber tells me today: "The mob boss doesn't necessarily plan anything with the guy who is running the protection racket He may not even know him. But they are both engaged in the same broad criminal enterprise. That's the distinction between RICO and conspiracy. You don't have to show the connections that are shown in the [Jack] Smith indictment of Trump between the co-conspirators. It's sufficient if they engage in a pattern of racketeering activity in furtherance of the same general objective."

If you'd like a more detailed explanation, tune in to today's show, when Barber also offers his thoughts on who is likely to be indicted. "All indications are, all the hints are, that it's going to be a whole lot of people, with a whole lot of charges. It's kind of mind-boggling how many people it could be."

Also discussed: last night's court ruling in columnist E. Jean Carroll's rape and defamation case against Trump and his counter-suit for defamation against Carroll. Short version: Trump's suit was tossed as the judge confirmed that, yes, Trump was found by a jury to have been a rapist according to common vernacular, and Carroll's second civil trial against him (she already won $5 million from him during the last one, now she's suing for at least $10 million) is scheduled to begin early next year and could be a very very short trial given everything that was already established as a fact in the first trial.

FINALLY, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, as the death toll rises under prolonged extreme heat in Arizona; climate change unleashes a brand new flooding problem in Alaska; President Biden moves to protect a million acres from uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, and extreme rains and deadly flooding continue to pummel parts of Europe...

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Literally minutes before today's BradCast, news broke that the grand jury in D.C. hearing Special Counsel Jack Smith conspiracy case against Donald J. Trump regarding his many failed attempts to steal 2020 Presidential election had handed up a four-count federal indictment against Donald J. Trump. Seconds before airtime, Smith offered a brief statement on the new indictment. We cover both today...on the fly...

As Smith announced (we share his brief remarks in full), Trump was indicted on four federal felonies...

• Count 1: Conspiracy to Defraud the United States [18 USC 371]
• Count 2: Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding [18 USC 1512(k)]
• Count 3: Obstruction of, and Attempt to Obstruct, an Official Proceeding [18 USC 1512(c)(2)]
• Count 4: Conspiracy Against Rights [specifically, the right to vote and to have one's vote counted, 18 USC 241]

Six of Defendant Trump's alleged co-conspirators are briefly described in the 45-page indictment [PDF], though not named within it. The co-conspirators appear to be uncharged at this time. Most of their names were pretty simple to identify based on their description in the indictment (see pages 3 and 4). According to Washington Post, which names 5 of the 6 of them, it appears we got them pretty much correct as we read through the early portion of the charges on today's show. WaPo identifies them as...

• Co-Conspirator 1: Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani
• Co-Conspirator 2: Trump attorney John Eastman
• Co-Conspirator 3: Trump attorney Sidney Powell
• Co-Conspirator 4: DoJ Asst. Attorney General Jeffrey Clark
• Co-Conspirator 5: Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro
• Co-Conspirator 6: A still unidentified "political consultant" whose description matches several potential different Trump henchmen.

Looks like we were correct, at least, on Co-Conspirators 1 through 4. Emptywheel's Marcy Wheeler agrees WaPo's ID of Chesebro as number 5 is "sound". He is described in the indictment as "an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding". We speculate on the show that Co-Conspirator 6 could be Trump's 2020 campaign Director of Election Day Operations Michael Roman, but that's just an on-the-fly guess.

The most central aspect of the charges, at least to my eyes, is that Donald Trump not only attempted to steal the election by lying about it, using dozens of fraudulent claims for months after the November election, but knew that he was lying about every aspect of it.

"The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election," the indictment reads in its first paragraph...

He lost. He knew it, because he was told by his closest advisors and all the top state and federal officials with whom he conferred. And, yet, he fraudulently claimed otherwise in hopes of defrauding the American people and stealing a Presidential election. He is finally be charged for all of the above.

It's all spelled out, quite readably, in the indictment [PDF] which Smith, in his brief remarks, encouraged "everyone" to "read in full".

We will, no doubt, have more on all of this in the days ahead. In the remaining time on today's show, as salvaged somewhat from our previous planned program...

• The sudden death of New Jersey's Lt. Governor Sheila Oliver, the first statewide black official in the Garden State and a central character in my 2011 blockbuster exclusive on then Gov. Chris Christie's secret address to the Koch Brothers secret political gathering that year in Vale, CO.

• The critical election next Tuesday, August 8, in Ohio, where corrupt, authoritarian Republicans have suddenly called a special election to try and adopt a constitutional amendment that would require 60% approval by voters for all future constitutional amendments placed on the ballot. This measure, however, would still need only 50% to be adopted. The scheme is meant to undermine a citizen's ballot initiative planned for this November that would write protections for reproductive freedoms into the Buckeye State constitution.

• Finally, Desi Doyen has our latest Green News Report with news on the hottest month ever recorded in human history (July 2023); President Biden's new federal heat protections for workers; Canada's first steps toward ending subsidies for the fossil fuel industry; and the landmark banning of natural gas hook-ups in new construction by a major state in Australia...

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Today's BradCast is dedicated to the good people (and not the bad ones) of the great state of Georgia. The entire program, in one way or another, is devoted to the Peach State and the real patriots who live there --- as opposed to the fake ones who describe themselves as part of the so-called "Patriot Movement" while dedicating themselves to actually undermining democracy. [Audio link to full show follows this brief summary.]

I'm gonna try to keep this short today, because you've got plenty to both listen to on today's show and read in a BRAD BLOG investigative exclusive published on Tuesday.

FIRST UP, actual patriots, Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman --- the Atlanta election workers who Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump despicably and falsely declared to have committed fraud in 2020, as they bravely worked unspeakable hours in a pandemic to help safely carry out the election --- were fully cleared of any and all wrong doing. That, according to a long-overdue report issued Tuesday by the state's Board of Elections (BOE), Bureau of Investigations (GBI), the FBI and GA Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger. The pair's defamation lawsuit, however, against Giuliani continues. We hope it is successful. They deserve it.

THEN, we're joined by journalist DOUGLAS LUCAS to discuss his detailed investigative report today headlined: "A Secret Meeting Within a Secret Meeting: Unspooling the Coffee County, Georgia Voting System Breach and Continuing Cover-Up."

Lucas takes a deep dive into the bizarre and continuing machinations by the local County Board of Elections and County Commissioners in Coffee County to continue the cover-up of what actually happened when a group of Sidney Powell funded and organized MAGA conspirators breached the local Elections and Registration building in January of 2021 to make unlawful copies of the sensitive and proprietary software on the state's new and wildly vulnerable Dominion Voting Systems computers.

The intruders, as we have learned, were invited in to the elections office by Coffee's then Election Supervisor, Misty Hampton, with the help of several local GOP officials in the right-leaning rural County. The breach began the day after the Trump-incited January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, though was hatched in Trump's Oval Office in December of 2020. There has been a wild effort to hide the truth of what really went on there, how it came about, the threat it now poses to next year's Presidential election in the critical battleground state and in more than a dozen other states where the same Dominion systems are now used.

Lucas' report involves lies and cover-ups by local officials, members of a major national law firm that represents the County, and even from Sec. of State Raffensperger who appears to want to make the entire matter simply disappear. The still ongoing tale also includes a bizarre cameo appearance from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who, for some reason, landed his plane at the tiny airport in Coffee County for a few hours late one night, after a long and circuitous trip from Mar-a-Lago to D.C. and back down to Douglas, Georgia the night before the local Election Supervisor was to resign (or be fired) in February of 2021, the month following the breach.

With nobody yet held to account, County officials are still obfuscating and refusing to answer questions about secret meetings in Coffee the day after Lindell's brief visit, but Lucas breaks a few key nuggets of the story to help crack the wall of silence, with confirmation from local officials who are finally beginning to talk. At least a little.

"Raffensperger should be the bulldog on this," he tells me today. "The best you could say is that he is slow-rolling this, which is not a legitimate thing to do when we're talking software for elections, including the 2024 general elections and Presidential election...He should absolutely be pursuing this harder than he has." But Lucas is being more generous to the SoS than evidence suggests he deserves. An investigator from Raff's office was actually caught on surveillance footage walking in during the MAGA breach. Yet, we are still waiting for Raffensperger to take any real action about whatever happened --- and is still happening --- in Coffee County.

Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis is believed to be investigating some of the players in this story. But, with her hands more than full, there is much more that she has yet to show any sign of probing. That's where we come in with today's report, along with help from some of the local residents of Coffee who now find themselves in a battle for the very soul of their beloved county.

Tune in for the full story on today's show and see Lucas' deep-dive at BradBlog.com today for all the details!...

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At first glance, a closed-door executive session of the Board of Elections at the Coffee County Courthouse in the battleground state of Georgia appeared to involve nothing more than discussion of that day's resignation letters from then-Election Supervisor Misty Hampton and her assistant over their purported cheating on timesheets.

But the previously undisclosed, simultaneous presence of an unacknowledged quorum of County Commissioners at that executive session --- a secret meeting during a secret meeting, a game-changer confirmed by The BRAD BLOG --- combined with curious doth protest too much efforts the County is still using to defend its secrets about the supposedly humdrum assembly, indicate the February 25, 2021 meetings (now known as meetings plural) and surrounding events were the nexus of a much broader statewide, perhaps even nationwide, cover-up.

That night, the very same reputedly run-of-the-mill Thursday in February when the elections board gathered at the Courthouse, MyPillow founder and close Trump associate Mike Lindell --- a chief Stop the Steal bankroller --- landed his private jet in the county's tiny seat of Douglas, population 11,685. A few hours earlier, flight records show, he landed in D.C. A few hours before that, his plane took off from a runway not 15 miles from the private Mar-a-Lago club belonging to a certain twice-impeached Florida Man named Donald J. Trump. Why did Lindell fly so circuitously from the Palm Beach area to the nation's capital and then back down south to rural Coffee County, of all places?

And why did he want to speak with Misty Hampton, Coffee's resigning Election Supervisor? Evidence yielded from a years-long lawsuit by actual election experts challenging Georgia's Dominion voting system has revealed that the far-right bedding baron's lawyer, Kurt Olsen, tried to get ahold of Hampton the previous evening to talk, as word spread that she'd be dismissed the next day. Why would he want to do that?

Over the January prior to the unexplained meeting(s) --- in fact, beginning just the day after armed and violent Trump supporters assailed the U.S. Capitol in hopes of preventing Joe Biden's 2020 election victory --- a motley mix of mostly MAGA operatives illicitly entered the Coffee County elections building on multiple occasions. The breach was funded and organized by Trump attorney Sidney Powell, that prolific and since-sanctioned filer of failed lawsuits seeking to steal Biden's 2020 win.

One client of the breach-funding Powell, it turns out, was "fake elector" Cathy Latham, the former Coffee County GOP chair. Latham was found to have helped facilitate --- and to have lied about her presence during --- the breach at the elections office, where the invited intruders copied Dominion's proprietary software that is still to be used in the 2024 Presidential election in Georgia and numerous jurisdictions beyond.

Hampton, as director of elections for the Republican-leaning county, welcomed the Powell-paid team into the local elections office to have at the voting equipment, tabulators and sensitive election management systems.

With statewide voting systems gravely compromised by the ensuing breach --- Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger forces every county to use the same touchscreens, also employed in more than a dozen states nationwide --- and with traces of top Trumpers everywhere, the scandal is, as the county seat's Mayor Pro Tem recently put it, "only getting bigger."

Indeed, Atlanta-based District Attorney Fani Willis is reportedly investigating the Coffee County breach, along with Team Trump's multistate plot to gain access to and copy data from voting systems in other states as well. The scheme, as we have since learned, was hatched during a notorious December 2020 meeting in the Oval Office with Trump present. That fact came to light in testimony to the U.S. House subcommittee that investigated January 6th.

Frustrated, fighting back tears, Douglas Mayor Pro Tem Olivia Pearson, a lifelong Coffee resident and voting rights activist in the majority black seat of the majority white county, said at a recent gathering as the reality of the breach finally began galvanizing local residents, "We have got to make it right. We can't keep covering it up!"

Starting in earnest last month, local residents have increasingly attended the Board of Elections' open meetings, only to be told, more than once, by its unapologetic Chairman Wendell Stone --- who some locals are said to describe as "Chairman Stone(wall)" --- to stop asking questions.

Of course, that makes us want to ask many more questions about what really happened among the cows and cornstalks in the rural Peach State county. Such as: Why did Hampton and her assistant who helped facilitate the unlawful Trump/Powell/MAGA breach to illicitly copy and distribute Coffee County's sensitive voting system software actually tender their resignations on February 25, 2021?; Did local and state officials know about the breach and attempt to cover it up with secret meetings? What on Earth was Mike Lindell doing there for several hours that night?; And why has the office of Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, heralded by some as a 'moderate Republican' hero for not helping Trump steal the state's election in 2020, denied the severity of the breach and lied by both omission and commission to aid in covering it all up?

And, yes, all of this matters at the national level --- not only to the Coffee residents, who have lately found themselves in a fight they never asked for over their beloved county's soul...

On today's BradCast we catch up on where each of the major, still-unindicted criminal investigations of Donald Trump currently stand with the one person who may pay closer attention to the details of the cases than even the prosecutors working on them! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Over the weekend, longtime national security journalist MARCY WHEELER of Emptywheel wrote three articles, summarizing the latest status in each of the three ongoing criminal probes of the already-criminally-indicted-in-New-York former President, and what the final issues are that prosecutors must nail down before indictments can be brought.

Those cases include Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal investigations of Trump's January 6 related conspiracies and the documents he stole from the White House, as well as Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' broad probe into Trump's failed attempt to strong-arm state officials into stealing the 2020 election from Joe Biden.

Among the many points discussed with Wheeler, who joins us today from Paris...

On Jan 6 and related matters:

• Why determining the legal definition of "corrupt purpose" in the D.C. federal court circuit, in regards to Trump's attempt to obstruct the Electoral College vote certification, is so important to Smith's case.
• Why pending cases against Jan. 6 insurrectionists remain key to that definition.
• Why the fake electors schemes in several states and Trump's fraudulent fundraising on his lies about election fraud is also critical to Smith's case.
• Evidence that Trump's own attorneys knew in advance that their fake electors scheme was unlawful.
• Why nailing down testimony from cooperating witnesses is so important and whether former VP Mike Pence --- who testified before Smith's federal grand jury last week about Trump's attempt to have him assassinated --- can be made into a sympathetic witness on the stand.
• Will we see a broad set of indictments against Trump regarding Jan. 6 or just one or two focused, easily provable charges?
• Is Smith investigating the multi-state conspiracy to breach voting system software in states like Georgia, Michigan, Colorado and elsewhere as part of his probe?

On the Stolen Documents:

• What's the hold-up in bringing charges on what has always seemed like the simplest of the many ongoing cases?
• Why it's helpful that Smith is overseeing both this case and the Jan 6 probe, given that several witnesses are key to each of the cases.
• What the specific criminal charges may ultimately be, and the important related decision on whether they will be brought in Florida or in D.C.

On the GA Conspiracy:

• What's the hold-up for D.A. Willis in bringing charges in the Georgia-related crimes?
• Why Trump is likely to try and move any GA charges to the federal level (and into Smith's lap).
• How and why a number of co-conspirators may have suddenly decided to cooperate with Willis after all in recent days.
• How there may be an additional 24(!) previously-unknown witnesses to Trump's infamous Jan 2, 2021 phone call to the GA Sec. of State attempting to strong-arm him to "find" 11,000 votes to steal the state's election from Biden.

That's just a sample, of course. Wheeler joins us for the full hour. Dig in...

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